Slow Burn(2)

    “I can’t find my shoes,” he said.

    I could not believe that. “I don’t have time to help you look,” I said. “I only get to talk to my dad once a month, and this is the day.”

    “Yeah, that’s what you said last night,” said Rough Hands. “And it sounds kind of weird. What’s going on with your dad? Is he a fugitive from the law?”

    Augh. I needed to remember not to tell people this stuff. I couldn’t trust anyone. That was what my dad had tried to tell me. “Never mind. Just forget I said anything.”

    “He is, isn’t he?”

    “Find your damned shoes and get out of my life.”

    He shook his head. “You know, if you treat all the guys you take home like this, it’s amazing anyone comes back for more.”

    I glared at him. “Comes back? Men are renewable resources. You’re used up. Did you find your shoes yet?”

    He tugged them out from under the bed. As he was walking out, I heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.

    Oddly enough, it didn’t even make me angry.

    I’d been called worse. And out loud, to my face, not from some West Virginia co-ed with a big nose. I could handle it. The only reason I was here was that my father was trying to sock me away where no one could find me. Thomas, West Virginia was practically the middle of nowhere. He’d stuck me here because he was in some kind of danger. I was too, I guessed.

    Honestly, I wasn’t real clear on what had happened.

    Six months ago, I was at a normal college in Boston, and my father was ignoring me the way he had for his entire life. My dad had a job for Dewhurst-McFarland, the international arms corporation. I don’t know exactly what he did, because the corporation kept a tight lid on all their projects in development, and that was what he worked on.

    Work was my dad’s life. And I was only an annoying distraction to that. Since my mom left him when I was too small to remember her, I’d been raised by a series of nannies, and my dad had worked. As a kid, I barely saw him. He seemed happy enough when I was finally old enough to go to college. He could send me away.

    Not that I cared. I mean, not really. I didn’t need the guy. He’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in me.

    So, anyway, six months ago, I was in college at Boston. I had a great boyfriend named Eric. We’d only been going out for about two months, but we had a lot of fun together. We liked to party. We were crazy. We were up for whatever. That night, whatever had been a baggy of coke and a bottle of tequila.

    We shouldn’t have gotten in the car.

    I remember Eric laughing behind the wheel. I remember that the lights on the highway were so bright and that they were streaming past us, like we were on a carnival ride. I remember feeling so alive.

    And then everything changed. It was fast. There was a car coming at us. Apparently, Eric was in the wrong lane. I saw it. I screamed. He screamed. I squeezed my eyes shut and—

    Then I woke up in the backseat of my father’s car in a hospital gown. He was driving and babbling stuff at me. Stuff I didn’t understand.

    He said that Dewhurst-McFarland was developing this serum to make supersoldiers. It boosted healing ability, making a person nearly indestructible. My dad had stolen some and given it to me. Without it, he said, I would have died.

    I didn’t know he cared.

    Of course, he didn’t help Eric. My boyfriend died back there in Boston. And I didn’t even get to go to the funeral.

    Apparently, the people at Dewhurst-McFarland were not happy that my father had stolen the serum to give it to me. Not happy at all. And apparently, in addition to being an arms corporation, they were in the side business of killing people. They used the test subjects for the serum as for-hire assassins. And they’d sent them after my dad. He knew too much. Apparently, Dewhurst-McFarland didn’t exactly color within the legal lines, and my dad could expose them. Apparently, they wanted us both dead.

    My dad went on the run. He hid me here.

    We only communicated once a month. There was a cell phone in a safety deposit box in Cumberland, Maryland, which was about an hour and a half away from where I lived. Close enough that I could drive there, but far enough away that if the phone got traced, it wouldn’t lead anyone bad to me. Dad called the phone at an appointed time. I had to be there to answer it.