Undercover Memories by Alice Sharpe

cool and fresh and yet warm, too, and so soft.
    It was a brief kiss and he knew its purpose was to dissuade a cop from investigating them closer, but it was also the most wonderful thing that had happened to him in twenty-four hours. It connected him with another person in a way that fused the crevices of his soul, like pouring warm water on a block of ice.
    It was over in a few short seconds, and he stared down at her as she checked out the street behind him. Her profile was beautiful, her lashes long and luxuriant.
    “They’re gone,” she said. “We should leave before they come back.”
    “Or Korenev does,” he added. As he led her to her car, he told her about the roadblock. “You leave me here and drive out the main way. You’ll run into the police in about ten miles and then you’ll be safe.”
    “What about you?”
    He shook his head. The truth: he was loath to see her go. It felt wonderful to have her beside him again, to not be alone. He didn’t want to lose her in the worst way possible.
    But he couldn’t stand the thought she might run into Korenev again because of him.
    “John? You can’t get out of here on foot. We’ll stick together for now, okay?”
    “No. Absolutely not.”
    “I don’t want to be by myself,” she said, and now for the first time, her voice trembled. “Don’t make me drive off alone, please. If you want me to go to the cops, then come with me.”
    “I can’t. I have to find out who and what I am.”
    “I know you do. So, get in the car. I’ll drive to make it all legal, although my wallet is back in the Pollocks’ car.” She hugged herself as she added, “I really don’t want to go back into that forest.”
    “You don’t have to,” he said and pulled her things from his pocket. She took them gratefully. Fingering the blue leather wallet with the strangest expression on her face, she looked up at him. “You said that for better or worse, we were in this together. Did you mean it?”
    “Absolutely. But—”
    “Then let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Six
    Paige clutched the steering wheel with sweaty, shaky hands. Some sort of delayed reaction had begun to erupt inside her. It was all she could do not to turn around and go find the cop whom she’d been so cavalier about only minutes before.
    She sneaked a glance at John, who was tinkering with the GPS that came with the car. She’d used it only once and that was to find her way to the mountains a few days earlier. Then she’d been alone and heartbroken but by comparison with how she now felt, her former condition seemed downright lighthearted.
    She glanced at John again. “Can you make sense of that thing?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Don’t ask me how. It looks like there’s a subsidiary road a few miles south of here that goes east through the mountains. It’s roundabout. In fact, it will make a four- or five-hour trip into one three times as long, but should work.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “It’s probably unpaved, you know. It could be hard on your car.”
    “That can’t be helped. It’s our only alternative.”
    There she went again. Of course it wasn’t her only alternative. She could take John up on his offer. She could drive off by herself and find a whole bevy of policemen. She chose to be in this vehicle with John Cinca, sharing this danger, and the reason for that completely baffled her.
    Unless— Was this some kind of irrational in-your-face payback to Brian because he’d humiliated her? He’d thought he’d ruined her life. He’d begged her forgiveness even as his gaze kept straying to his ex, Jasmine.
    All Paige had wanted was to disappear off the face of the earth. No, that’s not true. She’d wanted Brian and Jasmine to disappear, too.
    So now she was risking life and limb for another good-looking guy with a hard-luck story. And this one could be a cold-blooded murderer like Anatola Korenev, because it was obvious the two men shared some kind of history.
    “You’ve gotten pretty