“Because even a guy as screwed up as me knows a mistake when he’s making one.” With that statement, he gestured her inside first, no doubt unwilling to leave her back unprotected even for a second.
She faltered but then moved back inside, oddly surprised when he shut and locked the door behind himself.
Marcus Knight was finally inside her apartment.
“What now?” he asked mildly.
The smell of fresh raspberries nearly dropped Marcus to his knees. Oh, there was no real fruit anywhere in Vanguard right now, save for a bunch of lemons scouts had found last week. But in Penny’s space, surrounded by her things? His mouth started watering.
She gestured toward a bright green floral chair set next to an old couch. “Sit. Let’s talk.”
Talking wasn’t his strong suit. Even so, Penny had asked him to sit, so he would. He looked around, stretched over a couple of boxes, and dropped his bulk into the chair. From his vantage point, he could see her and the door, so he let his body relax as much as he was able. Then he finished his survey of the place. Small apartment with a bedroom and bathroom visible through doors. The kitchen counter was yellow and scarred, with the areas for the fridge and oven empty and piled with more boxes. Why would anyone have stolen the fridge?
“What?” she asked, reaching in a box for a bottle of Bulleit and two chipped cups.
“I expected organization,” he admitted, seeing more boxes inside the bedroom. She was clean but a little messy.
She poured the brew into the cups. “Medical records. Some of soldiers here and more of Scorpius we’ve taken from the Bunker. I’m running out of time to save those pregnancies.”
As far as he was concerned, Scorpius had won. He accepted her offered cup, noting it had a yellow cartoon bird on it. “Vitamin B does its job. Right?”
She lifted her cup, one with a purple dinosaur on it, to her nose and inhaled. A lovely pink infused her dusky skin.
His body felt too tight all of a sudden.
She held out the cup. “Cheers.”
He kept her gaze, clipping his glass against hers. “Cheers.” His blood thrummed strong and steady through his veins, so he took a gulp of the potent whisky. Damn, it was good. “Why try to cure a bacteria that has already got us?”
“Because we have seventeen pregnant women here at Vanguard, and so far, anybody infected with Scorpius has lost the baby by the fifth month.” She pushed a strand of dark hair away from her face. “We lost one last week.”
He took another drink, mildly surprised at how warm his gut became. “This world isn’t fit for babies.”
She paused with the cup almost to her mouth, her enticing pink lips firming. “Maybe not, but the babies are coming. Shouldn’t we do everything we can to give them a chance?”
He finished his drink and set down his cup. “Why? The only path for us is blood and pain.”
“So we just let them die?” Her voice lowered, a tremble in it that hurt to hear.
He tried to think of the right answer but could only give her the truth. “They’re gonna die anyway. It seems like a nicer place to go, inside a womb, then in this world. Right?”
She looked at him, her dark eyes luminous. “If you feel that way, why are you still here? Going on raids and working?”
“Because I promised you.” Without waiting for her to offer, he took the bottle and refilled his cup, topping hers off next.
She took a deep gulp of bourbon and then coughed. “It’s really all that simple to you? You live because you gave me a promise?”
“Yes.” Where was this conversation going? He took another drink, enjoying the feeling spreading through his limbs. Any feeling that wasn’t pain should be enjoyed. At that unsettling thought, his gaze dropped to her firm breasts beneath the striped blue shirt that was a size too small. He jerked his attention back to her face, but the damage was done. His dick had gotten so hard it was going to be difficult to walk out of there.
She looked up from her cup. “You have to have some hope, Marcus. We’re here, we’re alive, and there’s a future. Can’t you feel hope?”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel anything.” It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was the truth.
“That’s not true,” she countered, her voice slightly slurred. “You wouldn’t keep your promise or care what happens to me if you didn’t have feelings. I understand why you buried them to survive the experiments the scientists put you through, but you’re safe now. Or rather, as safe as it gets. Maybe it’s time to start feeling again.”
“Obsession isn’t a feeling.” He finished a second cup of whisky.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ve let yourself become obsessed, and since you’ve kept me so safe, I appreciate it. It’s time to let go a little and try to find yourself. Reconnect with your brother.” Tipping back her head, she finished her cup.
He eyed the bottle. While he wasn’t feeling much, she was obviously getting buzzed. If he gave her a little more, maybe she’d go to sleep and leave him alone. So he poured them both another cup.
“I like you,” she said, reaching for her cup.
He jerked and leaned back. “Penny. You can’t say things like that to people.” His first thought was of how he could use that information, and he didn’t want to see her hurt. “They’ll take advantage of your kindness.” It had been a mistake to leave her for night raids. The world was full of predators, and she wanted to save everybody. “You need to toughen up.”
She blinked and sat straighter. “I’m plenty tough, and you need to soften up. I do like you, and I want us to be friends. Plus, it’s not like you’d try to take advantage, right?”
Was she challenging him? By her direct gaze and lifted chin, it certainly appeared so. The idea of his taking advantage of her should be one she considered. When he slept, which wasn’t often, he either was tormented by nightmares or dreams of her under him. Or over him. All around him. “You’ve played with the beast enough tonight, sweetheart.” He pushed to his feet.
“Oh, buddy. I haven’t even gotten started,” she retorted.
What the hell did that mean? “What are you saying?”
She wobbled on the sofa, but her gaze remained steady on his. “It’s time to live again. Let’s start as friends.”
Start? He frowned. “And end up where?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “You feel this, right? Whatever it is between us.”
No. That was on his side, only. She was better than him, and she should never look at him as anything other than a bodyguard. “Night, Penny.” He had to get out of there.
Now.
4
The quiet around me is a warning—more attacks are coming and soon. Unfortunately, that isn’t my main concern. It’s much closer to home.
—Jax Mercury, Vanguard-Merc leader journal
The mornings were finally cooling off. Jax Mercury shuffled through papers on the conference table he’d taken from an old law office and tried not to look longingly toward his weapons room, which also served as a war room. While the handwritten notes were neat and precise, they still gave him a headache. He’d agreed to lead this ragtag group during the Apocalypse, through gunfights and threats, through pain and death. Not through records and data entries, damn it.
The door opened, and he sat up, embarrassingly relieved that somebody wanted to interrupt him. He went from embarrassment to surprise at seeing his brother there. “Marcus.”
Marcus filled the doorway, his body still and sure, no hesitation. He’d filled out so much, it was incredible. “Hi.”
Hi? That was it? Hi? Jax pushed his leather chair back toward the one window in his office. For Vanguard headquarters, which was now Vanguard-Merc headquarters, he’d used the first floor of an old building for offices, an infirmary for soldiers, and a cafeteria. The second and third floors held apartments for his lieutenants and other key officials. “What’s going on?”
Marcus stepped inside and shut the door, moving for a chai
r.
What the hell was happening? Hope, unusual and odd, filtered through Jax’s chest. Did Marcus finally want to reach out? Maybe being patient had been a good idea. He’d doubted the shrink’s plan, but it looked like it had worked. Or perhaps Marcus’s memories were finally returning. There was a chance. “Are you okay?” Jax asked.
“Fine.” Marcus scratched a bruise on his bicep, right beneath a tattered black shirt. “I think I made Penny mad last night. Might’ve given her too much bourbon.”
Jax kept his expression stoic, even as dread slammed to his gut. This wasn’t going well. “What happened?”
Marcus blinked. “I just told you. I gave Penny too much bourbon, and she has a headache this morning. She was really cranky when I escorted her to the clinic.”
Jax breathed in and then out, counting slowly. “What happened after she drank too much?” The brother he’d known would’ve never harmed a woman, but this wasn’t the same man, and he had an obsession with that particular woman. What was Jax going to do if Marcus had screwed up? He didn’t want to shoot his own brother. His headache increased until his temples pounded.
“I locked her door and then slept in the hall outside.” Marcus looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “I wouldn’t hurt her. Ever. Neither will anybody else.”
“Right.” Jax studied him, looking deep for the boy he’d once been. His shoulders relaxed. Okay. The doctor was fine, so that crisis had been averted. For now, anyway. “Why are you here?”
Marcus slid his chair slightly to the side , keeping the closed door in his view. He wore a gun strapped to his thigh and a knife in his back pocket, but there was no doubt he was deadly without the weapons. “Penny wants to save all the pregnant women.”
Jax set the pen down on top of the useless notes. “I’m aware, and that doesn’t answer my question.” He’d always been patient with his younger brother, and that wasn’t going to stop now. Especially since Marcus was finally seeking him out, for once. “I’ll do everything I can to help Dr. Penelope and the women.” Was Marcus there to ask for help? Jax was doing everything he could.
Marcus set his hands lightly on his ripped jeans. “The cure for them, maybe for Scorpius, is probably in the other Bunkers.”
Jax’s chest heated. They’d found two underground Bunkers, which had been created by the US government in case of a pandemic. One Jax now controlled, and the other had been blown up. There were supposed to be several more, and hopefully one of them held data or even a cure. For weeks, Marcus had been unapproachable. Jax proceeded like he would with any wounded animal. “Are you saying you want to help? To finally remember?”
Marcus didn’t move a breath. “Yes.”
Jax sat back, wanting to yank the memories out of his brother. Instead, he kept his voice level and his face calm. “Well. Okay, then. You must be remembering things. Let’s talk it out.” He’d missed talking things out with Marcus. Hell. He’d just missed his brother. Period.
“I spent time in several different Bunkers,” Marcus said.
Spent time. What a shitty euphemism. “You were experimented on by rabid assholes,” Jax retorted. “At several Bunkers.”
A rare smile flashed across Marcus’s face. “Right. I know that because I can remember the metal cell doors. Blue in Century City, green in Reno…and red and yellow. Also a lavender.”
Jax started. “You remember three other Bunkers?”
“I remember the doors,” Marcus said, his voice so much deeper than it used to be before Jax had entered the military and left home. “I also remember the doctor, a Dr. Ramirez, who traveled with us.” A predatory threat spiraled through Marcus’s eyes.
“What about me? Do you remember our childhood?” The words ripped out of Jax so fast, his accent came to life.
Marcus shook his head. “No.”
All right. Well, door color could be a start. “I know Vinnie offered to hypnotize you, but keep in mind she was a profiler and not a shrink.” Even though Vanguard had put her into a shrink position the second she’d agreed. Vinnie Wellington was brilliant, kind, and probably nuts. But she was the best Jax had.
“Raze doesn’t want me near the shrink,” Marcus said, his voice lacking any inflection.
“I’ll talk to him,” Jax said. Raze was one of his top lieutenants, engaged to the shrink. The massive ex-soldier was overprotective and an excellent sniper, and Jax didn’t want his brother in Raze’s scope. This might finally be their chance to find the right Bunker and the information they needed. “You need to reassure him that Vinnie is safe.”
“Everyone is safe, so long as they don’t endanger Penny,” Marcus said.
Finally, some intensity from Marcus, but not where Jax wanted it. He needed to check in with Doc Penelope again, just to make sure she wasn’t frightened of Marcus. Every time Jax had asked during the last month, she’d told him to bug off. So she must feel somewhat safe, although alcohol had never been in the equation. “What were you and Penelope doing drinking alcohol together?”
Marcus moved to stand. “I’m done talking.”
Jax stood. “You always were a stubborn son of a bitch, Slam.” Every once in a while, his brother’s nickname poured out of him. Marcus had been a hell of a baseball player and had earned the nickname.
“Was she?” Marcus stood all the way, eye-to-eye with Jax.
“Yeah,” Jax muttered. “Our mother was one. But at least she picked cool last names for us both. God knows what our last names really were.” No doubt their biological fathers had been just as crappy as the men their mom had dated through the years when not passed out from drugs and booze. “You’re not missing anything in forgetting her.”
“You and I were close.” Marcus said it as a statement.
“Yeah, and we emailed when I went into the service.” It was either jail or the military, and Jax had chosen well. “Until Scorpius hit.”
Marcus rolled his shoulders back. “Let me know when you talk to Raze and Vinnie. I’d like to get started.”
Anything to make Dr. Penelope happy, apparently. Jax reached for the papers. “I’m going to have a meeting with my top lieutenants, if you’d like to stay.”
“No.” Marcus walked to the door, pausing to look back. “Is something going on?”
“A lot is going on,” Jax returned.
The door opened, and Lynne Harmony paused at seeing Marcus and Jax in the same room. Today she wore light jeans and a white shirt, with her blue heart glowing beneath the cotton.
Marcus’s gaze immediately dropped to her chest.
Lynne smiled, her intelligent green eyes full of curiosity. “Am I interrupting? I thought we were having a meeting.” She self-consciously tugged on the shirt, but at least she wasn’t hiding the blue any longer. A psycho had shot her full of an experimental cure for Scorpius, and it had turned her heart and the surrounding veins blue. Said psycho was currently sitting in a cell at the one Bunker Jax controlled. “I could come back,” she offered.
Jax held out a hand. “Come here, Blue.”
Her cheeks pinkened slightly. She side-stepped Marcus and reached him, taking his hand and grounding the entire world. The pressure around Jax’s chest released fractionally as he tugged her down to his lap. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re right on time.” Love had saved him, without a doubt. Maybe there was a chance for Marcus. Was there a way to focus that obsession into something good and right? In Jax’s experience, obsession rarely ended up any way but disastrous.
Marcus turned to face Jax. “What’s going on? You said a lot.”
Yeah. “I’m the freaking leader of nearly six hundred people, Slam,” Jax snapped. “We need to find those other Bunkers, or I’m going to lose pregnant women. Rather, they’re gonna lose babies. The Vanguard and Merc soldiers are still chomping at each other, and I have a brother who doesn’t remember me.”
Marcus rubbed his chin. “Is that all?”
“I wish,” Jax snarled.
“The president of the United States, Bret Atherton, is crazier than anybody else, and he wants my woman.”
“Hey,” Lynne protested, slapping a hand on his abs.
Jax swallowed. “He’s going to attack again soon. We were almost taken out last time by the missiles and interior fires, and next time, I’m not sure we’ll be able to see him coming.” He rubbed the scar along his jawline. “But that’s not the worst of it. Not even close.”
Lynne, her hand firm and supportive on his stomach, looked up. “What’s the worst?”
He exhaled. “I’d wanted to wait until everyone was here to go over this.”
“Do it now,” Marcus said, the sound not even close to a suggestion.
It was probably a mistake to tell Marcus anything. There had been a chance, from day one, that he’d grab Penelope and run, thinking he could keep her safer if it was just the two of them. Jax’s gamble of giving Slam some time to remember him seemed to have been a losing hand.
“Jax?” Lynne asked. “What’s happening?”
He looked down at the only woman he’d ever loved. The only one he ever would love. “We’re out of water, Blue. We have about two weeks left.”
5
The line between right and wrong has blurred inconceivably. The connection I feel for Marcus Knight is one that might harm us both. How can I fight his pull?
—Dr. Penelope Kim, Journal
Penelope organized her meager medical supplies in the closet and hummed softly to herself, the back door of the clinic open to allow a light breeze inside. Hopefully, the devastating heat of summer was gone. Considering Vanguard-Merc territory consisted of seven secured blocks of former slum apartments and crack houses dead center in what used to be inner city Los Angeles, all that surrounded her was concrete, bricks, and ash. Particles from the forest fires toward the north had finally stopped falling every day, but there was no doubt rainy season couldn’t come soon enough.
Knight Awakening (The Scorpius Syndrome Book 6) Page 3