Paired Pursuit

Danger rises in the night…and so does desire.

Matched Desire
, Book 1

Her last living relative dead, Mari is evicted from her shipping container and leaves Flagstaff for the first time in seven years. Boarding a train for Scar City (formerly Reno), she keeps a white-knuckle grip on her debilitating panic attacks.

When the train lurches, she loses that grip—and is picked up, calmed down, and turned on by the only other passengers in the car.

Finn and Gareth are under orders from their superiors to follow a slim lead on a stolen alien device. At first Mari is only a pleasant distraction, but through their telepathic Twin link, the brothers discover they both sense a powerful attraction to her that goes far beyond pheromones.

With dawning horror, Mari learns the Twins are after the same device she's seeking, her only hope to get money for a better life. Once they reach Scar City, the three realize they're living on borrowed time—unless they can discover the device's secrets before attacking aliens bring the city walls tumbling down.

Warning: Contains two genetically modified warrior heroes, a woman whose worst nightmare is wide open spaces, and distractions of a vibratory nature.

Paired Pursuit

Clare Murray

Dedication

In memory of MMNVL, 1945-2002

Chapter One

2053, eleven years after the Invasion

The 10:04 to Scar City was late. That didn't matter much, since Marisol Aquino was the only person in the station waiting for the train, but it certainly didn't set her at ease. She clutched her nonrefundable ticket, trying not to crumple it as she paced along the platform.

Nobody was here to see her off, which meant nobody witnessed her trying to hold it together. Panic attacks were never fun. Trying to stave one off meant lots of deep breathing and self-distraction.

Mari had been able to half convince herself that being aboard a train didn't
really
mean she would be outside and unprotected. She would still be surrounded by metal, enclosed in relative security as the carriages hurtled down the line at over a hundred miles per hour. They were scheduled to arrive before dark. So, she told herself, an alien attack was impossible.

Of course, if the train didn't arrive soon, the latter point was moot.

Shuddering at the thought of traveling after sundown, Mari went over to the battered notice board. Its digital display no longer worked. Wooden plaques hung next to magnetic numbers, each with the name of a city engraved upon it.

The word
Reno
had a big scratch mark through it, and someone had scrawled
Scar City
in permanent black marker. It was both a slap in authority's face and a reminder that the world had been irrevocably changed. An alien mothership had destroyed half of Reno, leaving the city scarred but not broken.

One deep breath. Two. Whatever the rumors of Scar City's troubles, the place had walls, and she would be safe behind them. Once she'd cobbled a little money together, she could go anywhere.

On her third breath, Mari heard the distant whistle of a train. Most likely it had been held up at the gate. Four minutes late by the station's clock, three by her father's favorite watch. The masculine watch looked odd on her wrist, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to sell it. Not yet.

Some people would call her crazy for leaving Flagstaff. Even if it was isolationist, it was a solid, safe City with a growing economy. Mari would be comfortable enough here…
if
she married Tim Johnston. Since the man had twenty years on her and kept a mistress, she'd already told him a big fat no.

But Tim was nothing if not persistent. He'd called upon her three times this week, his beet-red face staring disapprovingly at the shipping container she called home. Each time, Mari had declined to walk with him. The third time, he threatened her with eviction.

“Shall we see how you like living on the streets, girl? I know the man who owns this land. So you think long and hard about marriage, before it's too late and nobody wants you.”

Mari had to admit that the offer was tempting in some ways. In return for tolerating Tim's mistress and bearing him a child or three, she would get a solid roof over her head and three squares a day. That was more than she'd had for the past year.

Not that she would have traded nursing her dying father for false comfort, but pain meds cost a bomb even on the black market. Now she was down to her last few dollars. She fingered the watch on her wrist again. There was a shortage of jobs in this City—at least ones that didn't require her to leave the walls. It was time to move on.

So there was no time to feel sorry for herself, no time for panic attacks. When the locomotive chuffed to a halt in a cloud of steam, Mari handed over her ticket to the conductor. Then she picked up her suitcases and boarded the passenger carriage. It was an old, repurposed Amtrak single-decker. The rest of the train consisted of freight cars. There wasn't a lot of passenger traffic in and out of Scar City. Given the fact that the City lived up to its name in two ways—scars
and
scarcity, Mari wasn't surprised.

She chose a seat near the middle, but she could have chosen almost any other seat. The carriage was empty save for two men sprawled nearby. They sat across from each other, so they were together. She avoided their gazes, avoided even looking at them. She just wanted to get to her destination without trouble.

Mari adjusted the holster at her waist, keeping the handle of the Glock ready to draw. As the whistle blew, she stowed her bags and seated herself, disdaining to look out upon the City she was leaving. There was nothing left for her here save the ashes of her parents…and she had been too cowardly to venture outside the walls to place flowers atop their wooden memorials.

A harsh squeal of the whistle heralded the train's departure. It rattled out of the station and across a bridge before coming to a halt again. That wasn't troubling, because she knew what was going on—the guards ahead were opening the double gates in the huge wall that protected the City against alien attack. In a few minutes, they would be in ungoverned territory, in the middle of an openness that made her stomach clench just thinking about it.

Once, Mari had loved traveling. She had reveled in road trips up to the Oregon cabin her parents owned. Even after the Invasion, she hadn't minded working jobs outside the walls, tending stock and helping harvest crops. Everybody knew the aliens only came out at night.

Carter's death had changed complacency to fear. He'd died when the sun was at its zenith.

When they moved again, the whistle tooted only once, then went quiet as the train picked up speed. They would now average a hundred miles an hour—too fast for even the most determined predator to catch them—throughout the rest of the day and into the late afternoon. Then they'd reach Scar City, last stop before the Sierra Nevadas.

She'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit she was still skirting the edge of a panic attack. It had been years since she'd left the safety of a City. Mari remembered the Invasion as a blur of horror, a long, extended evacuation from place to place that ended in the death of her mother soon after they settled in Flagstaff.

Her father was—had been, she corrected herself—a notable scientist, one who had been peripherally involved in multi-government projects. Those projects had resulted in the creation of the Twins, genetically modified so-called super-soldiers. Tabloids had heralded them as saviors, playing up their enhanced physical abilities. In those pre-Invasion days, when the motherships were mere blips on human telescopes, they'd seemed like gods.

Afterward, when half the world lay in ruin, there was much speculation as to whether there'd been enough Twins in the first place. Some were of the opinion that governments had turned to infighting, competing with each other instead of collaborating to fend off the approaching motherships. Conspiracy theorists loudly proclaimed Twins had never existed in the first place.

Mari wasn't sure she truly believed in them herself, since she'd never seen one with her own eyes. Her father had never been one to dwell upon his old life, so Mari had never dared to ask him whether the reports were true—that the Twins had been instrumental in saving entire cities, that their superhuman reflexes and strict training made them weapons that even the birdbrained aliens feared.

She toyed with her unused seat belt and peered surreptitiously at the men in the corner. Panic was fading to deep anxiety, so she amused herself by wondering if
they
might be Twins, with a capital T. Certainly they were identical—well, not quite, perhaps, upon careful, if furtive, examination. There was a scar near one man's hairline, visible only because the sun hit him just right through the window.

Mari dropped her gaze before she attracted their notice, then found with a little thrill that she could study them almost as well by looking at their reflections in the window. Both had closely cropped dark hair and physiques that gave even her jaded heart a jolt of excitement. Clad in matching leather jackets and hard-wearing steel-toed boots, they sat casually, although each man gripped the underside of their seat as if steadying themselves. They wore their seat belts cinched tightly across their identical black jeans. If the rumors were correct, the muscles underneath their clothes were rock hard and far more efficient than those of the heftiest human bodybuilder.

But Mari didn't believe half those rumors. Information these days was spotty, traveling as it did by word-of-mouth and what remained of electronic communications. Some places had taken to using carrier pigeons. Others relied on telegraph lines. Very rural communities even used signal fires.

She looked closer at the reflection, wondering where their guns were. Twins were supposed to be superb fighters, and there was enough gossip flying around about them making the difference in fights that even she believed there was a kernel of truth there. Curious, she dared a direct look at them.

Unexpectedly, the train entered a tunnel, plunging the carriage into semidarkness. When it emerged, both men were looking her way. Her gaze tangled with theirs before she could avert her eyes. Mari drew in a sharp breath. Surely she was mistaken, but the pupils of their eyes seemed to be slitted like a cat's. Twins were renowned for their ability to see in the dark…

And for their tendency to share women.

Mari let out a yelp as the train lurched abruptly from side to side. Since she was sitting on the outside seat with nothing to brace herself against, she tumbled into the aisle, rapping her head sharply on the edge of a seat. Pain made her dizzy.

What happened? Had they crashed? Panic reared its ugly head, reminding her of how vulnerable they were out there in the open. Mari clutched at the seats, trying to right herself amidst the still-lurching train.

“Hey, easy now.” Strong arms wrapped around her, drawing her upright. Another pair of hands went to her head, probing for any cuts. Scenery still flashed by. So they hadn't crashed—or even slowed down for that matter.

“I—I'm fine.” Mari detested the quiver in her voice, but she was close to tears. Last night she had allowed herself to cry for the first time in ages, knowing she was leaving the city she'd lived in since her mother's death. Not that she was fond of Flagstaff, but it had been all she'd known for the past seven years.

Going to Scar City was a gamble, and a risky one at that. If she couldn't find what she was looking for there, she'd have to sell herself into marriage as a broodmare to a man who only wanted her for children to repopulate the world. If she were very unlucky, she'd be tied to a man who'd insist upon knocking her up every time she became fertile.

“You'll marry me,”
Tim had insisted.
“I'm the only man you'll ever get.”

Since Tim was wealthy by today's standards, Mari knew the man was right. He would drive off any competition for her hand through threats and intimidation. She shivered.

“You're not fine. You're still trembling.” The second voice came from above, and she realized belatedly that both men were tending to her. Through a sheen of tears, she looked up, making her second faux pas of the journey so far.

“Twins. You really are Twins,” she blurted. The one holding her started to withdraw, and Mari impulsively reached out to grip his arm. “Thank you for watching out for me.”

His gaze heated, dark green eyes hyper-focusing on her like a beast sighting prey. Even so, Mari forced herself to remain still, her grip lightening so that only the pads of her fingers touched his forearm. His muscles
were
impressively thick. No wonder he could lift her so easily. At five foot eight, Mari hadn't been carried since she'd been a child, but the man placed her into a seat as if she were one.

The man she was touching spoke. “I'm Finn.”

Mari turned instinctively to the other man, the one who had placed her back into the seat.

“Gareth.” He searched her with the same intensity his brother did, then sat down across from her, knees bumping against hers. Far from being annoying, it was rather companionable. And after all the walking she'd done that morning, she was glad to let her legs rest against his.

Finn took the seat next to her so that she was hemmed in against the window. Without asking, he reached over and clipped the seat belt around her waist.

“Keep that on,” he told her. “The tracks can be bumpy.”

Slightly discombobulated, Mari frowned at the passing landscape. Panic rose again. She began to babble. “I don't see any evidence of aliens. Where do they hide during the day? There's no houses out here.”

“The Barks can dig huge burrows, so they aren't entirely reliant on roofs to keep the sun off.” Finn referred to the aliens by their derogatory name. It was said they communicated like dogs, with varying whimpers, whines and howls. Others said they physically resembled a cross between bunnies and sharks, hence the name. But there were so many rumors around that Mari preferred to believe her own eyes.

Not that she wanted to see an alien in the flesh again. Ever.

She hadn't known they could dig burrows. The thought filled her with horror. UV light burned alien skin and rendered them blind, so they had to hide during the day and hunt in the night.

It was common knowledge to get behind walls at night. Everyone knew they had to hole up somewhere safe as soon as the sun went down. Not many thought about where the aliens hid during the day. Mari stared out the window, unseeing. Carter had entered that barn to fetch an errant lamb. Neither of them had thought a Bark might be hiding there…

“They can slow their breathing and metabolism right down, so being underground isn't a problem. You don't know much about them, do you?”

“Why do you say that?” He was right, of course—most of her knowledge was based on rumors—but she wasn't entirely without pride.

“Because you carry a gun.”

“Yes, I do. Why is that a problem?”

“Bullets hardly dent Barks. You can gut them like fishes with swords and knives, or brain them with something blunt. Or, preferably, crisp them with lasers. Guns? They're only good against other people.”