Resist (4 page)

His voice is heavy with emotion. He traces my lips with a fingertip, and my eyes close as he slides his thumb down my throat. I need to tell him to stop, but I've lost the ability to speak. When I open my mouth, it's only to gasp with pleasure as he reaches the curve of my breasts. His thumbs graze my nipples, which are tight from the chill and his touch, and then he slips his whole hand around my hip.

As though on autopilot, my hands grip the excess fabric of his shirt. His body heat seeps through the thin material, urging me on. “I didn't look like myself tonight.”

“Fake hair and eye color are meaningless. I could see you underneath, and you will always be beautiful.”

Then his lips find mine, gentle but sure, and I'm kissing him back hungrily. I'm not the perfect soldier, nor the right girl for him. But he very much makes me want to be.

His weight presses me against the SUV, and I'm no longer cold. I'm moaning, nearly as disconnected from reality as I was in Nobel and Reese's stairwell. Only now I'm trapped by these sensations, unable to think clearly. Cole's grip on my hip tightens, and his body hardens, burrowing nearer through our clothes. Everything about the way he holds me, the way he takes my mouth in his, is protective. Possessive. He's used to being in charge.

“I can see you underneath any disguise,” he whispers, and his breath is a warm kiss against my skin. “We have time. We don't have to head back immediately.”

“Cole…”

But he's lifting my shirt, wrapping his strong hands around my waist, and I squirm from the tension. I need to tell him to stop, that this can't continue, but his touch is igniting my skin as his hands climb higher up my stomach. He only pauses when confronted by the strong elastic of my sports bra.

He slides his arms around my back, bringing me closer again, and I stretch on my toes to kiss him because I can't help myself. Every ridge and line of his body is taut, and it taunts me. I've never been this close to him before. At least I don't think I have. Too many of my recent memories are missing to say for sure.

I'm saved by his phone.

Cole groans, and it sounds like a curse as he pulls away. Yet he doesn't immediately answer, and his hands are steel around me. “You're mine, Sev. Always were, and I need to know you always will be. Nothing's going to change that.”

The way he says it sounds almost like a question. His face tightens for a second, and his eyes flash something like fear. I'm more confused than ever. “What's going to change?”

Cole swallows and lets me go. His phone buzzes a third time. “Nothing. We were made for each other.”

I can't help but think that if we were, someone made us wrong. Because I'm broken, and Cole is not. And while I love him, my heart knows it can never be free with him.

Chapter Four

Early Tuesday Morning: Night of Escape

Three hours ago I would have sworn I couldn't sleep, but when I jerk into consciousness for unknown reasons, I discover I'd have been wrong. Jordan's arm digs into my back, but the room appears still. I prop myself up on my elbow, trying to figure out what woke me.

The answer is another arm. Jordan's other arm to be precise. It's lying over my pillow where it has no right to be.

As I yawn, the room and my last twenty-four hours comes into focus. I'm crammed into a bed with Jordan and Summer. Octavia, Gabe and Lev sleep in the other. Cole is on watch, and Kyle… I crane my neck and find him sitting at the rickety table near the window. The glow of a disposable phone illuminates his strained face. He looks ghostly, or maybe it's more accurate to say he looks haunted.

I have another hour before my watch shift, but this seems like as good a time to talk to Kyle as any. We haven't been alone since fleeing this morning.

Nope, scratch that. We might have stolen a couple minutes together this morning, but it doesn't exactly count as alone time when people are shooting at you. Therefore, it makes more sense to say we haven't truly had time to talk since we tore through Mass General Hospital on Saturday.

That was sixty-one hours, fourteen minutes, twenty-seven seconds ago. My internal clock is as precise as ever, but as useful as it is, I'd rather have telepathy so I could do this whole talking business in private. As far as I know, that's not yet scientifically feasible, although I'm certain someone's working on it.

I push aside these random musings and more carefully assess the room. If I can't have telepathy, and Kyle and I can't be alone, maybe we can still talk with something resembling privacy. The others seem to be sleeping, even Summer, and Cole shouldn't be able to hear us through the door.

I crawl off the bed, stretch, and my new jeans slide down my hips. They don't fit the best and aren't particularly comfortable, but we needed to make do with what the stores had available.

Kyle watches me warily. He changed out of his own bloody clothes earlier, grumbling over the loss of his favorite band T-shirt. In his new jeans and a plain shirt, he doesn't look all that different than normal, unlike my unit members. I got used to seeing myself dressed in civilian clothes while at college, but something about Jordan and Lev in jeans and sweatshirts is funny.

As I carry the room's other chair over to Kyle, my gaze fixates on his lower lip, which sticks out in an adorably pouty way. I want to kiss it. To crawl on his lap and snuggle against him. But that would be a mistake. His dark eyes make it clear he's not in the mood. They're cautious, as are his movements as he sets the phone down.

My fingers curl around the chair arm, crushing it for strength. “You should get some sleep.”

The rest of us can handle several days of sleep deprivation if necessary, although it will slow us down. Kyle, I assume, is more human than that.

He shakes his head. “I can't sleep.”

“Have you tried?” He was sitting in the same chair, playing with that phone, when I laid down.

“I don't need to try. I know.” Kyle's grip tightens around the phone, and I realize his face is pale, even without its glow.

I close my eyes, an attack of tears pressing daggers against my skull. My weakness, my helplessness, is killing me.

Control your situation,
Fitzpatrick's voice booms in my memory. She's been in charge of our training since we were children, and her harsh alto is forever tormenting me.
Control your fear. Control your response. Control. Control. CONTROL.

I tell the echoes to fuck off. I'm not in control here, but I wasn't back home letting Fitzpatrick boss me around either. More to the point, I'm sick of control.

“Kyle…”

“Don't.” He raises a hand. “Don't say it again. Don't bring it up. You explained already. I believe you didn't know the truth about what you were sent to do.”

I didn't, but my ignorance is just more failure on my part. Although rationally, I'm aware I had no way to know the truth about RedZone when they sent me to Robert Treat College, I can't shake the feeling that I should have figured it out sooner. I was made to be better than that. Smarter and savvier. Instead I was a naïve dupe who might get an innocent person killed or worse.

I let myself be controlled all the while thinking I had some.

I swallow past the lump in my throat because Kyle's right—there are no apologies I can offer that will change anything. RedZone sent me undercover as a student to RTC. I unearthed Kyle's secret for them, and there's no chance to correct my mistake. No taking that back. The only apology I can offer is to do my best to keep him alive until he can disappear once more. But how to make that happen when his face is now known…

That will be trickier. The technology to create a new face exists, both through legitimate hospitals and on the black market for people in exactly our type of situation. But on the black market, it will cost a lot more money. Particularly if you don't want just any idiot with a laser and reconstructive micro-tech implants coming near your skull.

Assuming we can come up with the money, however, we should all have it done. Although I'll miss Kyle's face if we do. Those long eyelashes, his sharp cheekbones, the way he smiles.

Smiled. Past tense. Kyle has no smiles at the moment, and it's unlikely he'll ever have any for me again.

My stomach rolls, and I have to get up and drink some water. The heater clicks on loudly as I do, and my hand twitches, spilling water down the side of the cup. Stupid, I chastise myself. It's no wonder I'm twitchy, but Cole's outside. If anything has found us, we'd know.

When I force myself to stop pacing and sit, Kyle is staring at the phone again. He's biting the pouty lip.

“Who?” I ask, because it's obvious why he's so anxious.

The phones are supposed to be so we can contact each other should we need to split up and run. Kyle, on the other hand, has friends he could contact, plus an adoptive mother and a stepfather.

Technically, I suppose I have friends too, people like my roommate Audrey at RTC. But though I'm worried about her and am sure she's worried too, everything she believes about me is a lie. She's better off if I stay away.

“Kyle?” I ask when he doesn't respond, and I put my hand over his.

The once-familiar gesture startles him, and he draws back. I lie to myself and pretend it doesn't bother me. “My mother. I tried calling her, but she's not answering. It's not like her, and I'm worried.”

I grimace. I wouldn't put it past Malone to go after Kyle's mother, to use her as a way to draw him out. I hadn't mentioned it earlier, but maybe I should have. Of course, there was nothing we could have done.

I want to lie to Kyle and say she's probably fine, but I've lied to him enough, and he wouldn't believe me anyway. So I stay silent, helpless again.

“Malone will kill her if he finds her,” Kyle says at last.

“No.” That much I believe. Malone might, but not immediately, which means we have a chance to save her if she's in danger. “If she's dead, she'd be worthless to him. If anything's happened to her, she's alive. Count on it.”

“No, they've tried killing her before. They'll do it this time. After what she did to them…”

“What she did?” I'm confused. As far as I know, Kyle's adoptive parents had nothing to do with RedZone. I was briefed extensively on his history before my assignment at Robert Treat College, and while a lot of what I'd been told was bullshit, I have no reason to suspect anything about his adoptive family was. It was Kyle's
biological
mother, Sarah Fisher, who RedZone wanted and who they eventually killed.

Kyle's back to fidgeting with the phone. “She defied them. Then tricked them. It's why we've been hiding my whole life. Malone wants her dead.”

I blink at him slowly, hoping the chips implanted in my brain can help the rest of me make sense of what he's telling me because I'm feeling overwhelmed. “Back up. Are you saying your mother—the one who supposedly adopted you—is actually your biological mother?”

Kyle nods. “The papers for my adoption were forged in case anyone got too curious. She was trying to put an extra layer of protection between us, so no one would know I was her biological son. If anyone found her then, they'd have no reason to go after me too.”

“But…” I'd seen photos of Sarah Fisher's dead body. Were they faked? Was I lied to about it? I was just pondering how easy it is to change a face, and it's easier still to doctor a photo. And yet my mind reels at the implications. Did Malone know all along that Sarah Fisher was alive?

Though I'm struck dumb, Kyle merely looks weary as he stifles a yawn and shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “After she destroyed her lab and went on the run, my mother was placed in witness protection by the CIA. I guess someone there leaked her location. So, after that, she decided Malone might have informants everywhere, and she faked her death and went into hiding on her own. I don't remember any of it. I was just a baby.”

I wet my dry lips. “And your stepfather?”

He laughs once, but without much humor. “Really is my stepfather, also adoptive obviously. He's the guy my mother hired to teach her self-defense years ago, after the death-faking thing. They've been together since I was little. I have no idea who my biological father was. She doesn't talk about him, and I think he's dead. Killed by RedZone. I never knew him, and I kind of have more important things to worry about. Stefan helped raise me—as far as I'm concerned, he is my father.”

I sink back into my chair, processing everything Kyle's told me. The whole time I've known Kyle he's been evasive about his family and his life outside of school. Suddenly, much more about him makes sense.

Back at RTC, I'd learned he was rightfully paranoid about his safety, suspecting people might be searching for him and the secrets in his blood. But how he knew who'd they be and the fact that he'd showed himself to be proficient with a gun, like he'd been waiting for the day when he'd have to use one…everything is starting to come together.

“Thank you,” I say, before I realize why those words are spilling from my lips.

Kyle looks up sharply. “For what?” The suspicion in his voice stabs me in the gut. He still expects betrayal.

I bide my time, sipping my water, wishing I'd held my tongue. What I'm about to say sounds so stupid, but I
will
keep my resolve not to lie to him anymore. It's the only way he might ever trust me again. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about your mother.”

Kyle swallows noticeably and drops his gaze to the phone once more. “I probably shouldn't have.”

The sadness in his voice and on his face kills me. I can't sit any longer. The painful tears I've been holding in wail inside my skull, and my breathing is heavy as I walk away.

“Sophia, I'm sorry. I…” He can't finish because he has no reason to. He certainly has no reason to be sorry. Sorry for what? Hurting me? He can't hurt me as badly as I hurt him. Besides, any pain he inflicts on me is deserved.

I take my time, counting the brown circles on the room's hideous drapes. Eighty-eight. Eleven rows of eight. I count way too quickly, and I don't have my composure back before I finish. “It's okay. You're right. You shouldn't trust me.”

Stepping around the scattered shopping bags, I head outside. The cold air whips me in the face, a chilly slap of reality and one that reminds me I don't have time for this emotional baggage. A few flurries blow by, and I suck in a breath of the night, a strange mix of wood smoke and exhaust. The air feels lighter out here, and it lifts some of my tension.

I don't want to leave Kyle, but I'm glad he won't come outside. My head—or is it my heart?—needs a rest.

Of course, the reason Kyle won't come out here sips his coffee, watching me with concerned hazel eyes. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I don't attempt to lie convincingly because Cole's seen my face. I should have adopted a happier expression when I left the room. Then maybe he would have believed me.

But it's too late for that, so I turn my back on him to avoid the hundred questions dancing over his face. Our room is on the second floor. Like most motels, the hallway is on the outside, and I rest against the half wall, gazing down into the parking lot. The night is surprisingly quiet.

Cole puts a hand on my back. “Sophia, talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Funny. Where do I start with the list?”

Usually Cole is a source of comfort for me, but I suspect I know what he wants to ask about, and it's the last topic I'd care to discuss. Although I'm not in the mood for weighty conversation, if I want to avoid the one he wants, I need to bring up a more important one. “I have proof, and as soon as we can, I'll share it with you.”

He sets the coffee cup on the floor and leans in next to me. His body heat is welcome, but this closeness makes me nervous. “I don't doubt you have solid reasons for why you ran.”

His tone suggests otherwise. And solid reasons aren't the same as believing I have proof.

“You really think I'm that irrational?” I wince.

“I don't think you're irrational at all.” He punches me lightly in the arm. “I do think you're a gentle soul, and your mission at RTC kept you undercover for three months. That puts a lot of strain on an agent. You know it as much as I do.”

I roll my eyes. “So I'm not irrational, but I might be acting irrationally due to stress. Gee, I feel better.”

“Don't twist my words.” His shoulders slump, and he hangs his head. “I trust you had good reasons, and I trust your heart is in the right place.”