by Angel Payne
Angie’s answering smirk is nice to see, despite it not having a prayer of reaching her eyes. “It was our driver back to the hotel,” she reprimands. “You were very drunk and started asking if his stick shift was sized in proportion to other things.”
“Ah, yes.” I chuckle. “He wasn’t very happy with me.”
“No, he was not.”
I’m thankful she leaves the explanation at that, though there’s enough implied meaning in what we’ve both said that anyone with half a brain can deduce what happened that night. Not that Emma’s brain has ever been satisfied with running at just fifty percent capacity. Her silent fume brings me back to the edge of uncomfortable with Angelique—though it’s not like either of us can bail out from the subject this time.
“Okay. Full stop,” I reprimand Angelique—wanting to go easier on the tone but keeping it edged. If I don’t, she’ll go for some other evasion tactic, and physically guiding her back to the subject is out of the question. “You’re here because you had no other choice, aren’t you? Because you tried to help Kane escape…”
“Merde.” She dashes her gaze down anyway and purposely retracts her stance a little. “Reece, do not ask if you do not want to hear—”
“Wanting has nothing to do with this anymore.” And damn it, before I realize it, I’m grabbing her by the shoulders. Silently, I plead that she doesn’t make it necessary to grab her by the chin too. This information is fucking necessary to get out of her, but I’m really fond of keeping my balls in the process. I can feel Emma’s stare, fixated on every move we make—thank God. That means she also sees the painful grit of my jaw, joined with the steeled lock of my stare. “I need to know this, Angelique.” I twist my grip tighter. This really is all business, and damn it, the woman in my hold has to be informed of that more than anyone. “Did you blow your cover for just the chance to save Kane’s ass from those bastards?”
The woman’s responding nod is sleek and gracious—even before she utters words that are astoundingly tenuous. “If I did…is it so, so horrible?”
“Christ.” I can’t clutch her any tighter, so I take the chance of pushing in toward her by another inch—hoping the determination of my stare fully conveys the intense meaning in my heart. “Of course it isn’t. Angie”—I’m failing to get through, so I risk one adamant squeeze of her nape—“you’re not there anymore. You’re here. This is us. And you blew your cover, and probably risked your whole neck too, in trying to save one of us.”
“But I failed.” Her voice is wobbly.
“But you tried.”
At last, thank fuck, she looks up. I’m able to return my hand to her shoulder, despite how a dozen tears are tracking down her flushed cheeks. “I…I at least can relay some information. It is not much, but—”
“Not much is better than nothing at all.” As Foley scoots around, he whips his phone from his back pocket and scrolls to a blank page on his notepad. “Give it to us, Alain.” And then adds a fast wink, lightening the mood at least a little by using Angie’s pretentious radio call sign.
Angelique laughs a little, dipping an equally miniscule nod. “There is much—how do you say?—absence of minds in the Source,” she tells us, though quickly shakes her head as if the words aren’t adding up.
“Absence of minds,” Foley repeats. “You mean absent-minded? Distracted?”
“Oui.” Her face lights up, and she taps her nose with a rapid-fire finger. “They are distracted.”
“Why?” I speak up.
“There is a sense of pressure,” she answers. “As if filtering down from the top—”
“Wherever or whoever that is,” Foley comments.
“It is feeling so much like a ticking bomb, no?” she finishes, though adds a validating nod to Foley’s point. “As if everyone is racing the clock, preparing for a deadline, though nobody knows exactly when it is coming.”
I let a chuff escape. “I know the feeling.”
“And have made damn sure the rest of us do too.”
Though Foley finishes it with a kidding-not-kidding bump to my shoulder, Angie nods as if sarcasm was in fashion four seasons ago. “Bien,” she murmurs, nodding with matching solemnity. “Yes. That is very good.”
I refrain from gloating. “Why?” I press, just a few notches shy of flaunting my victory with neon fingers in his face. Instead, I refocus back to Angelique, who’s observing our testosterone war with bemusement.
“The connards have been skittish of their own shadows since you took this fight public,” she finally responds. “But something has changed within the last week.” She adds a thoughtful shake of her head. “Something big.”
“Big…how?” Foley interjects.
“I do not know, exactly.” She grimaces. “Désolée. I am sorry. Things have been very different lately at the Source. We have all been more monitored.”
Foley narrows his eyes. “You just said everyone is distracted.”
“And they are,” she explains. “In many ways. But in others…”
I hold up a hand, the motion as much to dim Foley as it is to acknowledge Angie. “To get from one room to the next, someone likely has to punch in three passwords and have their retina and fingerprint scanned. But once they’re through, they can strip naked, smear themselves with Dijon mustard, and do the Hamilton opening rap without anyone caring.”
Foley cocks a brow at Angie. “Is that what you had to do to try to spring Kane?”
“Almost.” More mirth flicks through her eyes, but it only lasts a second. “Though I might have gladly preferred that.”
“Why?” When Angie answers with nothing but a tighter scowl, I repeat it from tight teeth. “Why?”
She answers my seethe by shuffling her balance and rolling her eyes. The woman looks as insouciant as an exotic house cat again—which pricks at every nerve ending in my body, and not in the great do-that-to-me-again-baby way. “Mon dieu,” she huffs, waving a hand as if brandishing a handkerchief. “Votre femme est correcte. Tu es un bœuf têtu.”
“Yep. A stubborn fucking ox,” I snarl. “And for the record, I proudly own every damn syllable.”
I relish the few seconds in which she fumbles for an adequate reply. If the woman thinks a spitting throwdown is going to make me back off, she really has forgotten how stubborn I can be.
“Fine,” she finally concedes, getting in another eye roll. “The apartment in Paris was burned down last night.”
Emma’s gasp beats even my gritted profanity. She paces over, her attention locked on Angie. “Dear God. That beautiful place…” She stops to frantically chew her lower lip. “The entire building?”
“No.” Angie’s shoulders rise as she pulls in a hard breath. “But enough that the intent was clear. It was not an accident.”
The wind, with ideal timing, beats through our four-way silence. Hell; through the nine-way silence. Even Wade, Fershan, Joany, Lydia, and Mom realize this isn’t just another of Angelique’s progress reports from behind the Consortium lines. All of this information is game-changing—and not in favor of the right team, goddamnit.
“So they’ve probably learned about your relationship with Tyce too,” I finally grate.
She stares back up the hill, at my brother’s grave marker. Her eyes go dark as midnight forests. “Oui.”
“And they went fire fetish on the apartment, just to make sure you were filled in on the scoop,” Foley adds.
“Oui.”
“Which means they probably know you were the one who tried to free Kane,” Emma utters.
“Oui.” This time, she only whispers it.
“So you really are blown.” I hate how it loads more tension onto Angie’s shoulders, despite how my intuition has been pounding with the conclusion since the woman appeared in the flesh fifteen minutes ago, following the eerie lapse in her updates.
“Désolée.” Her whisper is barely audible.
“Why?” I damn near growl in return. “At least you got out alive, Angie—and we at lea
st know that Kane’s alive too.” I insist on tucking her close, resting my chin atop her head as I grate, “Nothing sucks worse than being in that place and assuming nobody even knows you’re there.” I mean it from the fucking follicles of my toe hairs.
“That’s exactly right.” Emma curls against my other side, though there’s tangible tension in her form even as I stretch a hand down to her waist and tug in, keeping her close. She relaxes only when Wade and Fersh amble over and yank Angie away into short but meaningful hugs.
“We’re glad as hell you made it out too,” Wade confesses.
“Bet your bottom cellar!” Fershan beams a blinding smile.
“You mean bottom dollar?” Wade jerks up a brow.
“Sure. If she needs one.”
Wade shakes his head, clearly mulling over whether Fersh’s gaffe is worth a full explanation, before Angelique gives him a hand by changing the subject—so to speak. They’re both consumed by smitten silence from the second she mushes red-lipped kisses on both their cheeks.
“You truly believe that, oui?” she rasps. As they nod again, she bursts with a teary gasp. “Merci, mon amis. Merci, merci, du fond de mon cœur.” Then a long rip of a sniff. “I did try, so hard…when I finally realized that Alpha Three-Twenty-Three was actually our Kane…”
She trails off, with actual sobs taking over her memories now.
Though I sure as fuck don’t blame her.
Now that her sadness overlays my shock.
My shock, which doubles upon itself.
Then quadruples.
From the ultra-firestorm her confession has swept over the landscape of my psyche and flattened every section of my soul.
The explosion that blasts me free from all of them, tilting away and stumbling back over to Tyce’s memorial marker. But though I brace myself over the plaque, hands flat and locked against the stone, none of the engraved words make any sense.
Nothing makes sense.
I’m ripped open as if by a harakiri sword. I’m standing with my guts in my hand…
And my heart swollen in my throat.
“Alpha Three-Twenty-Three.” I really do want to believe my intestines have been split open more than accepting this reality. “Three. Twenty. Three.”
Somehow I manage to lift the bowl of rocks once known as my head, though I realize they aren’t rocks at all. The weight in my senses is the burden of despair—a heavier load than any I endured during those days when nothing lay ahead but hours of pain and fear atop a steel lab table.
Unbelievably, this mess is worse.
Way worse.
The feeling of knowing that over two hundred other alpha subjects have been processed by the Consortium between myself and Kane. If they’ve captured and experimented on half as many omegas, the other designation the bastards gave their prisoners, then that makes nearly three hundred and twenty-five innocents those monsters have captured and tortured in their giant hive of a cage.
A cage we still can’t fucking find.
People we still can’t save.
Horrors we’ll never reverse.
More markers we’ll have to engrave.
A force churns through me. Hot then cold, pain then nausea, grief then rage, thunder then lightning. Through foggy vision, I watch the storm of it move down my arms, surging through my muscles and burning through my blood, until it slams its bright-blue force into my fingers. I hiss through my teeth but let the tempest strike again, erupting in electric arcs as I raise my hands off the stone only to bring them back down in fisted fury.
Somewhere behind me, Mom’s stunned cry is backed by tearful gasps and gritted oaths. I don’t say a damn word. I’m not sorry for beating on my brother’s grave so hard that the boulder looks like a fallen comet from some exotic cobalt planet. Tyce would be the first one to laugh at that, asking if a bevy of blue babes arrived with the order too.
“Damn it.” I get that much out, though barely. My lungs are beaten to shit, and my throat is a tight tunnel of grief. “Goddamnit!”
Upside to the outburst: a moment of clearer vision, though that does me no damn good. As I take in the stony letters that are all I have left of Tyce, my hearing is sharpened as well—to the point that I swear I can hear the cocky bastard chuckling in amusement at all this goddamned pathos.
Which makes me pummel at his stone again.
And again.
And again.
No way, fucker. You don’t get to do this, Tyce Frederick. You do not get to laugh in my face after pulling all this bullshit. After showing me what you were really made of and then stealing every chance I ever had to know you. To honor you. To love you. Goddamn you!
“Love of Christ.” Something about the stringent command punctures through my pain, making me stop, blink, and dip my head to the side. Vaguely, I acknowledge Chase’s presence in that spot—but only for the few seconds before Foley appears, attempting to haul him back like a bystander at a car crash.
“Dude.” Foley tugs harder at my big brother. “It’s so not the time to go Good Damon on Bad Stefan right now, okay?”
“Please, Chase.” Joany sprints forward, grabbing Chase’s elbow with an impressive grip. “Listen to the man. If Reece needs space…”
I shove down a calming breath, nodding to appreciate her consideration—though right now, I need a hell of a lot more than space, damn it.
I need answers. Vital ones.
If cockroaches can’t hide forever, why can’t we find the Consortium’s nest?
If good is supposed to win over bad, why have they captured and tortured hundreds of others since I escaped—including my brother?
If love is supposed to trump evil, why was Tyce the one who died and Faline the bitch who got away?
And why am I standing here, moaning about the fact that I have none of those answers instead of being back down the hill in the lab, trying to discover them?
Why haven’t I made a single dent in the hides of these cocksuckers?
Why haven’t I made a difference at all?
Why?
My psyche has no answer but helpless rage, merciless frustration, and more of the blue inferno that blazes through my bloodstream. Before I can generate a thought to control it, that same fire is carving apart the boulder in front of me, and Mom’s shrieks are slicing the air around me, joined by Chase’s countering shouts. Then Foley’s bellowing again too, and Wade is putting in his two cents, followed by Fershan’s strident shouts and Joany’s gentle chides…
But I don’t hear her. The one voice I need. The logic in my chaos. The hope in my heartbreak.
Fuck.
My heart is breaking.
And though I fight the rift, it widens. Beckoning with a blackness she’ll never understand—nor do I ever want her to—though I need her to help heal it. To help close it back up so I can turn away and move on…
But when a slender hand squeezes my shoulder, it’s not hers. The scent is way off. Though other elements sometimes get mixed in, that clean core of my Emma, rain and wind and sea, stays the same.
I tilt my head, recognizing the blended colors of a bare and mottled head, before meeting the direct attention of a clear green gaze.
Angelique says nothing.
And because of that, says everything.
I am your friend now. And I understand now. Perhaps more than ever.
“Three-Twenty-Three.” I let the syllables rivet themselves to the air like the profanity they should be. “Alpha Three-Twenty-Three, damn it. Damn it.”
“I know.” She releases my shoulder. Extends her arm to rub my upper back instead.
“How can there be that many?” I turn all the way toward her, needing to get the ugliness of it out, even if just through the virulence in my posture and the agony in my stare. “How can there be that goddamned many without the world knowing about it? Without us doing more to stop it?”
“I do not know. I am sorry. So sorry. I hurt for them too. I hurt for all of us.”
I’m co
mforted, at least a little, to hear the desperation in her voice. Then to see the defeat and horror in her eyes as I hug her close. When I release her, I feel a little better. Somehow we’ve managed to slog through the murk of our souls and past the ugliness of our history to lend commiseration to each other.
But commiseration is far from completion, and no matter what peace we can make with each other, Angelique will always be part of the biggest mistake of my past, not the light of my future. There’s only one woman on earth good enough for that designation, and I pivot as I seek her with a gaze starved too long of her strength, her hope, her beauty.
The search doesn’t take long. If she were a flower, I’d find her in the middle of a giant meadow from a hundred miles away.
At once, despite every shit factor of this situation, I smile.
Only to see that in reaching for the flower, I’ve also grabbed a bee.
Except instead of fuzzy bee legs, this ball of nectar has smooth, curvy, creamy limbs that consume my desire, haunt my fantasies, and turn moments like this into acute lessons in torture.
Definitely torture.
As she flicks that figurative stinger with one exquisite spin, embedding the fucker deep with the awkward dip of her shoulders and the nervous jab she takes at her hair with one hand. Then the other.
Shit.
Then the way she heads straight for the path back down to the house without looking back, even once.
Hell.
Then as I recognize, courtesy of the censuring stare emanating from my own mother, that letting my ex-girlfriend “comfort” me, even during this bizarre fiasco of a memorial service, was a choice as wise as greasing Randall Getty’s skateboard ramp.
And that’s not even the most slippery part of the equation.
All Mom’s been told about Angie is that she’s an agent for the Consortium who went rogue after the bastards supposedly killed Tyce—and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Especially now. No need to muddle this situation by lobbing a wad of TMI in the form of Angelique’s “extended” involvement in my past.
Because right now, the situation’s muddled enough as it is.
Chapter Four