“Because this is as close as you get right now.” He turned his head toward her so she could see he had an earpiece in his left ear. “I’m hooked in. My job is to keep you safe and out of harm’s way. When it’s time for the boom, they’ll let me know. You won’t miss it.” He reached over and laced his fingers through hers. “This won’t bring them back,” he gently said.
“I know,” she told him. “But it’ll make me feel a little better for a few seconds.”
He squeezed her hand and settled in to wait.
A couple of times, she heard him speak out loud in response to something on the radio, usually a clipped reply, like, “Roger roger,” or, “Clear.”
He held her hand through the long wait.
Finally, nearly thirty minutes later, he released her hand and started the car again. “Okay, baby. It’s time. You do not leave this car, you hear me?”
She nodded.
He pulled out onto the street and sped up, sliding around a corner. He pulled a small one-button remote out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Do not push that button until I say so, okay?”
“Yeah.”
He picked up a side street that ran behind the church, heading toward the apartment building. She stared at the button in her hand as he floored the car, straining the solar engine as he coaxed it up to over seventy on the quiet street.
They were approaching, nearing, coming up on the facility. She held her breath as they passed the building.
“Now,” he said.
She hit the button. Turning to look, she heard the blast as a brilliant orange fireball erupted into the evening sky behind them.
He braked hard, drifting around a corner before flooring it again, taking them away from the area.
“Good enough boom?” he asked.
She turned and faced front again, nodding as she closed her eyes, the negative image of the fireball fading behind her eyelids. “Yeah. Good enough. Thank you.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Once everyone safely returned from the mission that night and Papa had debriefed them, Quack and Lima led Stacia upstairs to their new room on the second floor. The men had acquired a queen-sized mattress and tucked it into the far corner opposite the room’s windows and away from the door. With the blinds closed, the light filtering in from street lights outside was dim, enough to see by, soothing and not jarring.
Standing next to the mattress, they slowly, silently undressed her, kissing and caressing every inch of her flesh with each piece of clothing they removed. Including kneeling on either side of her and stroking her legs, taking their time.
Making her feel loved. Needed.
Wanted.
Cherished.
They hadn’t even undressed yet, their focus on her.
She turned and tugged on their hands. “Come on,” she whispered before sitting down on the mattress.
The concern in their eyes nearly started her crying, but she felt like she’d done more than enough of that over the past few days.
She wanted to move forward. Never look back. Not forget her aunt and her brother, but to hold their memories, the good ones, safe in a protected shrine in her heart.
From this point on in her life, she needed to devote every ounce of energy she had, every bit of strength, to taking down Silo for good. To helping the Drunk Monkeys find as many of the people from The List as possible. Laugh in the face of failure, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Kick.
Farking.
Ass.
To do anything else wouldn’t honor the memory of Marvin and her aunt. It would mean their lives meant nothing.
She lay back and pointed her index fingers at them both, circling them, indicating she wanted them naked.
They stood and silently stripped, lying next to her on the bed.
When it looked like Quack was going to speak, she laid a finger over his lips. “No talky,” she said. “Not tonight. Not right now. Please?”
He kissed her finger. “Love you,” he whispered, a smile curling his lips.
“I love you, too.” She looked over at Lima.
“Love you, baby,” he whispered.
She finally smiled. “Love you, too.”
Quack kissed his way down her body, between her legs. In no rush he took his time, licking and nuzzling, stroking her flesh, exploring. She was glad she’d let Clara put the five-year in her. It meant no condoms to worry about unless they were doing anal.
And she fully intended to do more of that with them. There was nothing comparable to the rush she felt with both of them embedded in her at the same time.
Lima cradled her in his arms while Quack nestled his face in her pussy and started working on her clit with his lips and tongue and fingers until the world melted away and he took her to that sweet place where her mind gave over everything else to pleasure.
She let him pull two orgasms out of her before she crooked a finger at him. “Hard and fast,” she said. When he started to make a face like he might be about to question her, she shushed him and reached for his cock.
Quack filled her, slowly at first until he was completely embedded inside her. She held on to him, her fingers digging into his back. Looking into her eyes, he started moving, just like she’d asked, hard and fast, a pounding, frenetic fuck that drove her out of her head one more time and made her come. When she did she raked her nails down his back, her cry of pleasure and pain and rage and rapture all mixing and flowing and ebbing until his lips were on hers and making it all go away again.
Desperately, she clutched at Quack, not wanting him to pull out yet, not wanting to lose that contact with him. Lima had his body curled around hers, her head nestled in the crook of his arm while he stroked her hair.
Only when she felt stable again did she finally let go of Quack. She turned her head and kissed Lima. “You, too,” she said. “Pound that cock into me.”
The men switched places. Lima slid into her and she grabbed him and held on tight.
He didn’t disappoint. His cock slid across her clit as he started fucking her, slowly at first until he picked up the pace once he was sure she was okay. When he kicked the fucking into overdrive, she felt the climb start again, gentler than when they made her come with their mouths, but even sweeter because of it. He held off until she let out a cry that turned into a sob, digging her nails into his flesh the way she had with Quack. He came hard, gasping for air as his balls emptied into her cunt.
And then her tears came.
She held on to him as he rolled them onto their sides so Quack could spoon her from behind.
They didn’t try to soothe her. They didn’t try to tell her it was okay.
They knew.
They knew it wasn’t okay, that she wasn’t okay, not now, and maybe not ever again.
But she would rebuild herself, with them and their love to hold her, and find a new center of stability. It wouldn’t be tomorrow.
It would happen, though. As long as Kite or the goddamned assholes who killed her brother didn’t get them all first.
And she didn’t consider Marco to be the one who murdered her brother. It was that damn Reverend Silo and his asshats in that program. They stole her brother from her. They infected him with Kite, and then he died.
The bullet was irrelevant, it just sped up the inevitable.
If Silo’s people hadn’t suckered Marvin into volunteering, the two of them never would have been standing there in the park.
Marco might have tried coming after her, but Marvin would have been okay. And Aunt Darla would still be alive.
She took in a deep, shuddering breath and let it out again.
Quack’s lips felt warm against the base of her neck.
“I love you two so much,” she whispered. “I can’t do this alone.”
They both hugged her. “We love you, too,” Quack said. “And you are not alone. Not ever again.”
“We will love you forever,” Lima said. “And we will not leave y
ou.”
She didn’t open her eyes. She wanted to just lie there and soak up the warmth from their bodies, the scent of their lovemaking all mixed up together.
She wanted to just be. With them. Like this.
Until they had to get up and kick ass again, at least.
* * * *
The next afternoon, Stacia was sitting in the common room at a table with Clara and Pandora, watching the news on TV. She’d made a final run to the apartment with her men earlier to get the last of the things she wanted and clean out the fridge. She’d set the rent and utilities up to auto-pay from the bank account so they’d have the apartment as an emergency safe house if they needed it.
The money was irrelevant to her now. If she needed more, Papa would give her more. It was more important to take precautions so they were all safe.
How quickly priorities change. A few weeks ago, she would have been ecstatic to know her money troubles were over.
Now, money was the least of her concerns.
The commander walked into the common room, his tablet in his hand. “Bubba came through for us. He’s triangulated the latest signals and thinks he knows approximately where Dr. Perkins is.”
“Does this mean we’re staying in LA for now?” Quack asked Papa.
He shut the tablet off. “Yep. We’re this close to finding her. We can’t give up now.”
“Do you think Reverend Silo is going to come after us for blowing up his building?” Stacia asked.
Clara snorted. “Bet your ass. One way or another, that fucker will be totally pissed off. We took away his toy and fucked up his fun. Expect a tantrum to follow.”
“If he even puts it together that it was us,” Papa said. “Who knows? He was careful enough to make sure the facility couldn’t be tracked back to him or the church on paper. Even the planes the volunteers were moved on were rented by a shill company with overseas accounts. All we have is our gut instincts that it was him and his church behind it.”
“Can you teach me how to do that castration thing?” Stacia asked Clara.
The nurse grinned. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Clenching her teeth, she added, “Because I want to be the one to do that to Silo when we take his ass to the fucking ground.”
“Yeah, she gets dibs on Silo,” Lima said.
“We need to get proof on Silo first,” Papa said. “But yes, duly noted. If there’s a way to do it, I agree that Ak should get the honors, if possible.”
“Thanks.” Stacia knew it wouldn’t bring Marvin back.
But it sure as hell would help her sleep a little better at night, though.
Love you, bro.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alone, Silo trudged up the stairs leading from his penthouse office to the top of the building. Standing there, he could turn and take in a gorgeous, panoramic view of Albuquerque. In the early summer temperatures, he watched heat shimmers distort the landscape, a tantalizingly close representation of what was there, but just a little out of reach.
Not unlike what seemed to be happening to him every time he thought they were drawing close to either getting their hands on people from The List, or making their own progress to develop a vaccine.
Raising his head to the sky, he released a pent-up howl of rage, frustration, all the filth he’d swallowed back over the past several days as their plans to spread the Kite virus and drug, and come up with their own vaccine, were not just unraveled, but the strands sliced cleanly through and so thoroughly that there was no way they could restart the Preachsearch project at that time.
Maybe not ever.
He screamed until his vocal cords ached, with his fists balled up and thrust upward to the clear blue sky draped over the landscape. When he finally emptied his lungs and could no longer draw in enough air to scream again, he stood there, staring at the sky.
Tell me what to do, God! If You even exist.
Or was there a God? He’d doubted it plenty of times in his life. He hadn’t entered religion because he felt a calling for it. He did it for the money, prestige, and power.
The control over people.
No way if there was a God would He have let Silo do some of the things he did.
He was no angel.
He wasn’t perfect.
But he’d led countless people toward good, Christian lives. The church’s charity projects had done a lot of good for people.
Certainly that should give him brownie points, right? Count for something?
Jerald had located security camera pictures from a liquor store just down the street from the facility. In the pictures, it had shown what could only be a small, covert, military-grade operation leaving the LA facility moments before it’d exploded in a fireball. When Jerald went back to the day of the first attack on the facility, he found images of a couple of pedestrians. When run through facial recognition software, a couple of them triggered partial hits on some of the Drunk Monkeys.
It was enough proof for Silo.
While his business was in religion, Silo didn’t believe much in random coincidences. Jerald confirmed that it appeared perhaps the Drunk Monkeys had been behind the facility’s destruction.
That no one in law enforcement or the press had contacted anyone from the church about the bodies that had been stored in the coolers there and awaiting disposal at cremation facilities, volunteers who’d failed to complete their training and had been euthanized, also pointed to that likelihood. The SOTIF unit wouldn’t want anyone putting together their presence with the arson, wouldn’t want to draw undue attention toward the facility’s true purpose, even if it meant covering up evidence of other crimes in the process.
Even Macaletto was clueless about what had happened, when Jerald finally got in touch with him. Nothing had been mentioned to Macaletto about it via the food chain.
It was as if nothing more than a vacant building had caught fire and burned down.
Unfortunately, taking all their samples and Kite vaccine research with it. They still had off-site backups of the research data, but that was all.
Actually, from the glimpses of what had been spirited from the facility, the Drunk Monkeys likely now had their Kite samples and research.
Silo finally made his way back down to his office where Jerald still waited for him. If his assistant knew what he’d just done, he made no mention of it.
“Yes?” Silo finally asked when he was seated behind his desk once more. He felt weary, through to his bones. “What else? I thought we were done.”
Weariness. Exhaustion. Those were not feelings he was used to having, not without the accompanying satisfaction of a sermon given so goddamned well that people were willing to tithe their kidneys and all their children in addition to their bank accounts.
Or the satisfaction of having emptied himself into one of Mary’s holes.
“I wanted to run an idea past you, sir.”
“If it’s to replace the Los Angeles operation, I don’t think we can risk it right now.” The only luck they’d had was that the “mysterious” fire had destroyed all evidence of what they’d really been up to, including any records that might have led to authorities or, worse, the media, figuring it out.
“No, sir, I know that. I was thinking perhaps we need to strike from another direction. Perhaps we need to be in election mode.”
He arched an eyebrow at Jerald. “Just spit it out, son. I’m tired.”
“We wage a propaganda war. Church of the Rising Sunset—good, long history of charitable work, trying to find a vaccine for Kite, trying to protect people. Drunk Monkeys—bad, renegade crazy men the military has lost complete and total control of, borderline traitors who’ve taken the scientists hostage and who knows what they might do with them? Why, it is suspected they are behind the destruction and tragic loss of life at a Los Angeles Kite research facility, although we can’t be sure of it at this time.” He smiled.
Silo leaned back in his chair and considered it for a few minutes. “We would have t
o go about it carefully. On top of what just happened, we can’t risk people finding out what we were really up to, much less that we were behind it.”
They couldn’t even risk following up on the twenty operatives they’d successfully deployed. No telling how long before they developed active symptoms and could no longer spread the drug and infection. Or someone caught them, tested them, and euthanized them when their Kite infection was discovered.
The only way to follow up would be to carefully monitor health department reports in the areas where the operatives had been deployed.
Three days ago, Silo’s contact at the CDC in Atlanta admitted in a phone call—he refused to put it in writing in an e-mail—that yes, they were secretly euthanizing people testing positive for Kite in New York. The man thought it might be happening elsewhere, but considering the virulent nature of the virus, and the high mortality rate, it was pointless to let victims linger in urban hospitals, wasting resources and possibly infecting others at the same time.
Far better to cull them early, painlessly, with less chances of the victims spreading the virus to others.
“We have plenty of contacts who can help us get the word out,” Jerald said, bringing Silo’s thoughts back to the conversation at hand. “As much as it pains me to say it, we’d have to start slowly, of course. If we slam the networks all at once, they’ll get suspicious. I’ll set up a couple of blog posts that I know will likely get picked up with some of the more legitimate conspiracy theorists. Not the tin-foil-hat people, of course. The ones we’ve fed inside info to in the past, who turned out to be right and gained notoriety as a result. Arrange a couple of phone interviews with lesser-known journalists. As it gains momentum, stage a couple of ambush questions between reporters and politicians, who will deny any knowledge, of course, but will promise to look into it. I’m thinking in a couple of weeks it might build enough energy to take off on its own. It certainly can’t hurt our own cause. We simply don’t let it be tracked back to us, is all.”
Silo let his focus fade again as he stared at a picture on his far wall. It was a large picture of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
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