Page 240 of Deep Cover

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Annie

"Ihave been out of my mind afraid for you. I want to take a look at you right now."

Mark wouldn't stop pawing at me. For a rescue, it felt remarkably like an arrest. Cole had insisted we let it go for now. He was relying on his money and prestige and the fact that a retired, once up-on-charges cop and a not-quite-doctor still doing rotations weren’t exactly supposed to be leading a proto-police force.

I was relying on the fact that this was my family but at the moment it was more of a problem that they were my family and what I wanted to do was put my fists in their faces and go back to Cole's side.

I'd wanted to go back to him the entire time I'd been held by Vincent but I had thought that made sense. Vincent had been torturing me. He'd been an actual kidnapper.

These were supposed to be family.

The idea of family is fairly fluid. It can change when you're not looking, the same way the concept of home can.

"Mark, let go. Give me a little space."

Mark's a big guy. He played high school football and he played in college the first two years before he became serious about being a doctor and his studies became everything. That was about the time we met, so I'd always known him as a big, strong guy – five-eleven, one-eighty – who was definitely going to have to watch his carbs later in life. Or sooner.

I could take him easily, though. Unless he was going to do some football thing – I couldn't even remember what position he played, running back, I knew that, I just didn't know what they did and it was in the past so he didn't bother to explain it – I was the one with the training and I was good at what I did.

That didn't give me free license to throw my semi-ex fiancé over my shoulder.

Mark didn't back off and give me room. He continued to guide me as if he had a fucking clue where he was going. He was steering me by one elbow and when I attempted to stop by digging my feet in, he dragged me.

Right. That got my heart pounding because it meant the so-called rescue was as problematic as I feared.

My father was right there, but he was useless to me. Every other second he raged at Cole, who answered him calmly and continued speaking even after my father began to rage again.

"Come this way," Mark said and dragged me several steps before he realized I wasn't going willingly. "Annie, please be reasonable.'

"About what?" We were in the main house of the compound, having gone from the suite through the April heat and back inside as if Mark had any fucking idea where he was going.

He looked back at me, his wire-rimmed glasses obscuring his eyes briefly and making him look like – I wasn't sure.

Something threatening. When his glasses flared white like that and I couldn't see his eyes, it seemed like he was something else. Something not human. Or something horribly possessed from some bad horror movie.

The strangeness of the day was creeping up on me. I was barefoot but wearing jeans and a t-shirt. That made me feel a little better.

"Jesus, what happened to your hair?" he asked as we stood staring at each other in the hallway.

Anger grew again. "Is that really what you want to know?"

"At the moment." He kept his head turned toward me, glasses still white, and irritably I shifted so I could see his eyes.

They looked both like the eyes of a weak man who took his victories in petty ways, and like someone determined, perhaps dangerously so.

My heart started counter-beating in my belly, like a deathwatch.

"I cut it," I said, owning it suddenly. I hadn't, but it gave me strength to know, suddenly, I'd done something that Mark had no say in.

He looked at me critically, leaning in close to look at the back of it. "Why so short?"

"Screw my hair, damn it! What are you doing here? I'm getting help and you team up with my father and just break in here?"

His face went stony. "I'm here to take you home. I've been hearing things about this guy. Things I'm having a hard time believing and hope aren't true. I need you to come with me."

"Yeah, I got that," I said. "Seattle? Portland?" Or did he have some other surprise, like "we" had moved.

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