by L. B. Carter
“What?” Her brows dropped. “Oh, no.” Her hands came up, and she stepped back from him. “No, I’m not going back in there. Nor promised—” Her sentence fell with a half-sob. She looked around her for help but, having rescued them, the bystanders on the bridge had returned to their passive natures, unwilling to take action.
Ace advanced. “It’s the only option with a high chance of success. I’ll get Nor, and we’ll come back for you. I—”
“No.” Her voice solidified, and her head half-turned, one hand shooting out straight, palm toward his chest. “Don’t you promise, too. This is what I get for letting people into my life. I put them all in danger.”
Ace hated groups too, but that was not his reasoning. Maybe he was selfish. His mother would be proud. “You’re also in dan—”
“Yeah, but if I go with them, they’ll leave you all alone. It’s me they want back. Nor will be safe.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Ace corrected softly.
“Semantics,” Sirena gave a half-hearted smile, using Henley’s quip.
“An important delineation, in this case. They want me and Henley, too. Nor will be safe. They’ll let him go. But you won’t see him again if they get you.”
Her arms wrapped around her torso, one hand splayed across the base of her throat, opening and closing rapidly, a heart-valve, pumping furiously to sustain life.
“But—” she started, looking off the side of the bridge where Ace could hear the rotors coming closer.
He grabbed her, stomped across the bridge, saying, “Go back and wait for us,” and tossed her over the far side, turning to confront the arrival before Sirena’s cry of surprise and panic had even cut off with her entry.
He hadn’t broken his promise. He didn’t let her fall into the water; he’d tossed her in. She was right. She wasn’t his damsel, but he still had to try to save her.
◆◆◆
“Tell me about Val.” Ace tried not to growl, but everyone was ignoring him.
After landing on the helipad and descending several flights of stairs, they’d plopped him and Nor in some chairs in a hallway.
“And where did you take Henley?” He snapped as another person walked past.
All of them paid him no heed as they traversed in a quick power-walk to wherever they were desperately needed. The flight-crew in the helicopter hadn’t let him even see around their bodies, blocking Henley’s prone form, and she’d been whisked off the chopper first, taken in an elevator on a gurney that had appeared next to the open door as soon as they touched down.
“If you yell at them, they’re unlikely to respond,” Nor commented. He was sitting next to Ace, continuously running his fingers through his hair.
Ace had informed him of Sirena’s whereabouts over the cover of the loud helicopter, but since then, they hadn’t spoken of it. Ace was waiting until he damn-well saw someone he knew and trusted before sending a rescue after the girl, now that he knew this one wasn’t Professor Tate’s ‘copter, and she was still likely on the prowl nearby.
Ace’s premonition about having no one to greet him when he arrived home had been realized. He couldn’t entirely blame the other USGCS employees for avoiding him and Nor. Both of them were still damp to varying degrees, and there was undoubted chaos regarding the newly collapsed bridge, forcing a schism in the country, almost as if it were a cell dividing into two. The helicopter had lifted off the moment they’d disembarked to rescue others stranded. Ace comforted himself with the fact that they had still been priority.
Had they gotten his note, or was it just right place, right time? Was what Reed had said about Valerie true?
“Ace Acton?”
He jumped to his feet. A lackey stood a few feet away, eyeing the puddle forming on the floor under Ace’s feet as if it were blood and he hemophobic. Ace could tell it was a lackey, because the guy was coming to fetch him instead of doing something more useful during a national crisis.
“Ace?” Nor echoed from behind in the chair, eyebrows raised so high they were hidden under his drying hair. He pushed smoothly to his feet to get eye to eye. “I thought you were Buster. The Bus.”
Ace just raised one eyebrow. “And you are Norton Stanley.”
Nor squinted but let it drop.
“Mr. Acton?” The lackey looked at his watch. “We must hurry. She’s waiting.”
“She? Valerie?” Ace’s hope launched like the firework he’d set off. He tried to tamp down the sparks igniting.
The lackey didn’t confirm, merely shuffled ahead like the White Rabbit.
“Where are we, anyway?” Nor asked, keeping pace beside Ace, supremely suspicious now as he scrutinized the hallway. It was basic; he would find no information there.
“United States Geological and Climatic Society headquarters,” the lackey replied courteously in a clipped tone. “USGCS for short; governments love their acronyms.”
So, he’d respond to Nor but not Ace? Was Ace in trouble? He hadn’t had much choice in his method of getting home. And he hadn’t come empty-handed. He had what he’d intended to bring back. And what was asked of him. And more.
“Geology?” Nor glanced sideways at Ace. “You’re an undercover geologist?”
Ace scowled. “No. I’m—” He waved a hand, affronted. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
“He’s one of our associate atmospheric dynamicists in the Natural Disaster Department,” the lackey offered.
Ace did actually growl.
“Oh, my apologies,” Nor said sarcastically, a hand going to his heart. “An undercover weatherman.”
Ace bit his tongue. “And you’re a what? An undercover lawn protector? What was your family’s company called again, Green Solutions?”
Nor’s eyes flashed, and he shut up.
“Green Solutions is a small, family-run firm that helps protect and preserve academic property, usually of the environmentally-friendly categories, and it also performs a small amount of its own research in biology and earth sciences.” The lackey sounded robotic as if he’d memorized a script.
“What are you, a walking encyclopedia?” Ace muttered at their guide. He was starting to worry that the guy was another design of Henley’s from BSTU and had wandered incredibly far from Faneuil. They wouldn’t infiltrate a government facility. The BSTU administrators were strict but not the rule-breakers he’d led Henley to believe.
“I am the Natural Disaster Management Director’s aid.”
Ace walked faster, catching up. “Director? What’s the director’s name?”
“Here we are.” The aid stood to the side of a door and gestured into an office.
Ace darted around him, but it was empty. He started inspecting all the surfaces for personal items, photos, a name placard.
“The director will be right with you.” The aid shut the door behind Nor, leaving the two of them in the office.
“Well, they’re incredibly hospitable here. I see why they wanted you to bring Sirena.”
“They didn’t,” Ace said, rifling through a sheaf of folders and pages from the other side of the desk.
“What?”
Ace glanced past the monitor, which glowed to show a login screen as he tapped the keys.
Nor’s gaze was sharp, penetrating.
Ace sighed. “They will keep her safe.”
“But you weren’t supposed to bring her.” It wasn’t a question. “Ace.” With Nor’s lids narrowed, the stare was paradoxically less intense, their blue color almost as disarming as the irises belonging to the subject of their discussion, which Ace had last seen plummeting off a bridge.
In retrospect, that hadn’t been the safest option for her, but he hadn’t known who operated the helicopter.
“No.”
With furrowed brows, Nor crossed his arms, flexing muscles that Ace didn’t have. Ace was bulkier though, bigger boned. It was not clear who would win in a fight. However, the director would be displeased if they ruffled all the neatly stacked repo
rts more than he was already doing… particularly if the director was his sister.
“So why did you?”
Ace abandoned the computer, having failed enough logins that it locked him out. He was going to be in trouble for that one regardless of who walked through the door. He was likely already in enough trouble as it was that it bothered him not at all.
He straightened up to face his… well, his current opponent. Before, he wasn’t sure if they could be considered friends. He had little expertise in discerning human relationship statuses. Now, Ace wondered if he had destroyed that possibility. “It was a package deal.”
“What?” Nor was becoming visibly agitated the longer Ace took to explain, so he laid it all out.
“When I reported that I’d retrieved what I was sent there to procure, I received communication to coordinate my departure with a Miss Jennifer Tate and ensure she returned with me. Jennifer, once I contacted her to coordinate, insisted on bringing her experiment—”
“Rena,” Nor growled dangerously, taking a step forward in a threatening move Ace wasn’t sure Nor even knew he’d made.
“Rena,” Ace amended feeling out of sorts using such an intimate nickname. “—with her,” he concluded his interrupted sentence.
Nor’s chin tilted up, marginally satisfied. “And Henley? Jen tacked her on, too? Or did she bring herself? I wouldn’t put it past that spit-fire.”
Ace swallowed. “No. She was my addition.”
Nor was curious rather than attacking, head tilting to the side, nearly dry hair adjusting to the new position, when he asked, “Why?”
Ace looked off to the side at an oversized satellite map of the country. Someone had slathered on the new coastlines, burying green land in blue marker scribbles. The intercontinental seaway consumed most of the middle of the continent, widening to the base so that North America looked more like a pair of legs connected at the top than its old rectangular shape.
“Because I need her,” he told Nor as he’d told Henley.
Nor waved one hand, indicating the building. “If this place—your work—didn’t request her, what are your intentions?” Then he snorted. “I sound like my Father talking to Reed when he started dating Valerie.”
“Yes, tell me, when was that? I need to better understand the timings of her—”
The door opened, and they could see the back of a head with layered, shoulder-length, dark hair. “—and then report back to me once you’ve heard from them. Don’t do anything else yet until they give us a status update, got it? I don’t want anything leaking before we can process and get PR to provide an approved brief.”
Whomever she was talking to, presumably the lackey, agreed hurriedly, and their feet clipped away.
The woman swung around, starting at her guests, a hand going to her chest. “Oh! Forgive me, we’re so busy I had forgotten you were—” Her words trailed off as dark brown eyes met genetically similar dark brown eyes. “Ace,” she breathed, one hand still on the doorknob, the other pressing over her heart as though to contain it, as her eyes shone.
“Mom. What are you doing here?” Ace was just as shocked, and the realization of what Reed had promised sank in.
She wasn’t here. She was gone.
Then something else occurred. “Where’s Dad? Why aren’t you with him? Who’s—”
“Relax, he’s fine.” She blinked back the tears, gave a brief smile, and then collected herself, bustling over to her desk and sitting down, folding her hands on top. “Please, sit.” She gestured, and the two dropped into the chairs before Ace’s mother at her authoritative command.
“I see where you get it from,” Nor said out of the side of his mouth.
Her eyes snapped to him. “And you are?”
“Norton… Stanley.”
“Hmm.” Her pursed lips made it clear she didn’t believe his honesty for one moment. “And you’re also from BSTU?” Her concern was razor-edged.
“No, ma’am. A private non-profit—Green Solutions.”
She nodded. “I’ve heard of you. Bodyguards for science.”
“In a sense,” he acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “My parents run—ran the company. My mother passed not too long ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I think I read one of her papers once. Very eloquent. Now, Ace.” She turned to look at her son coldly. “Would you like to explain to me why you brought this fine gentleman—” One hand uncurled from the other to indicate Nor. “—and not the person you were supposed to bring?”
“I left her in a safe location. If you send transport, I can direct them to the correct area. She’ll be here within a few hours.”
Thin brows rose. “And where is this location?”
“A small farm east of the bridge.”
“The Juarez family,” Nor put in. “She’s safe. We left my brother with her. …if you don’t mind having him brought in too, ma’am.”
“Mmm, well collecting them is going to prove difficult now that you’ve gone and blown up the only link between there and here, now, isn’t it?”
Ace cleared his throat, gearing up for the long explanation that he had no doubt would be poorly received regardless of the circumstances or whether he’d made the right decisions at the time.
But she wasn’t done berating him for this disaster, which was not entirely his doing. “A dozen or more injured, possibly killed—I haven’t gotten the final count yet—hundreds of people stranded, a major economic transportation route disconnected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure damage that will come out of taxpayers’ pockets.” She stared.
It was going to take quite some time to explain about Professor Tate and the kid in the glasses who had a fixation on Sirena, particularly as Ace’s mom didn’t know about that experiment of BSTU’s yet. Really, it was all Jen’s fault for bringing her lab toy with her. He had just been doing as he was told, bringing Jen. Actually, Ace realized, if he told his mom about the miracle that was Sirena, she might forgive him for adding another person whom they needed to collect.
Before he could start, she jumped in again. “And, I might add, using our resources at a desperate time, when we need to be assessing the damage and responding to distressed citizens, for pick-up and medical attention for a different girl whom I definitely did not ask you to bring.” One brow rose.
Henley. “Is she all right? Have you heard?” Ace burst out, adjusting in his seat.
His mom’s other brow rose. “I haven’t. I’ll get Richard to inquire when he reports back, if it means that much to you.”
Ace sat back in his chair, ignoring the smirk on Nor’s face.
“And who, might I ask, is this girl whom you decided to add to my personal worries as well as those of the entire nation?”
Chapter Fifteen
Pain. Agony. Ache. Throbbing. Torture. Torment. Discomfort. Suffering. That was eight. Fewer than her list of criminal acts.
Henley continued to list the synonyms that she could conjure to describe her current state of being in the attempt to distance herself from the impact of those actual words.
It wasn’t helping. She wished for more drugs to carry her back to the padded world of sleep.
It was the second time in her life she wished she could just turn her brain off and not… be, just for a while. In fact, it felt just like the last time.
She tried a happier mental thesaurus. Joy. Glow. Happiness. Euphoria. Cheer. Glee. Delight. Jubilance. Also eight. She needed one more to tip the scale. Hope.
She tried to pull in those feelings, ground them in her center and kindle their radiance. When was the last time she was happy? A memory might actualize what she desperately needed. Henley wracked her past memories, rapidly skipping over the most recent with a wince.
There. Peace. Contentment. Warmth. Serenity. Comfort. Bliss. Faith. Pleasure. One more… Love. Nine.
She pictured golden fields, a rising sunrise above a long, empty stretch of white road, a lulling rumble in her ears and w
ind whipping across her face, solid warmth at her back countering that chill, and secure, strong arms and legs wrapped around her own, enveloping her, a chin pressed to her collar.
…But they left. She left. Because he was just using her.
Henley couldn’t help the groan that slipped free.
“There now, almost done, dear.”
Henley peeked a lid open a sliver to eye the elderly nurse who smiled knowingly back.
“Just one more bandage to re-wrap. You’re doing wonderfully; anticipating my next move—it’s very helpful. Speeds things right up. Have you seen this done before?” she asked, with praise.
“A long time ago,” Henley replied, shutting the eye again. Over seventeen years.
“Well, then you probably know what I’m going to tell you next.”
“Don’t scratch,” Henley said in a monotone.
“Good girl,” the nurse rewarded as if she were a puppy.
Henley sucked in a breath through her teeth as the bandage pulled. She thought of Buster again, whose fault it was that she’d had to face off with that wretch of a professor.
Anger. Wrath. Loathing. Hate. Infuriation. Rage. Ruin. Destruction. Eight again.
“Oh, should I come back?”
“Murder,” Henley snapped aloud, the power of all the words swelling through her mind erupting behind it.
“I’ll come back.”
“No, no. I’m just finishing. About done… There.” The nurse rearranged Henley’s blankets. “Come in. There’s a chair up near her head. I’ll leave you to talk. Just push the button if you have any discomfort okay, duck?” She chuckled to herself. “Hen—duck.” Her laugher faded.
“Discomfort.” Henley snorted, muttering to herself. More like agony, torture, suffering…
“Can I… do anything?”
Henley peeked open an eye at Buster. “You’re increasing my discomfort,” she informed him.
He sighed and looked away, but didn’t leave. “I just wanted to check that you were okay and to say, sorry.”
Her brows flew up, and she winced as it pulled at the healing skin on her forehead. There was very little of her that wasn’t in pain. Aching. Throbbing… “I didn’t know you knew that word.”