I slumped over him, utterly drained. It was difficult to think through the pain in my arm, I was still woozy from the crash and I’d picked up all sorts of cuts and bruises I hadn’t even had time to notice until now.
What brought me back to reality was the sharp smell coming from Powell’s military fatigues: a tang of mould that made my nose wrinkle. I shook off the pain: I couldn’t rest yet. She needed me.
I managed to stand, stumbled around to the rear of the car and fumbled with the trunk release until it popped open. And there looking up at me was the sweetest sight I’d ever seen: Emily, pale-faced and panting in fear, but alive. She flung herself out of the trunk and into my arms and I hugged her, not giving a shit how much my arm hurt. “I am never,” I said in her ear, “ever going to leave you again.”
She clung even tighter to me, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You’re goddamn right you’re not.”
I heard a car in the distance, driving too fast to be just a late-night commuter. “We have to go,” I told her. “Right now. They’re coming.”
Neither car was drivable: we’d have to go on foot. As thunder rolled overhead, I pulled her towards the nearest alley. Hand in hand, we ran into the shadows.
Emily
We threaded our way through alleys for half a block and then, when we were sure there was no one following, we turned onto a street. We’d wound up in a pretty lousy area of DC, not one I’d ever visited. The shops favored security shutters and razor wire and there were a lot of homeless people around. The two of us stood out a mile: Kian was in a suit and I was in an evening dress and heels. At any other time, I would have been nervous but, given what we’d just been through, walking through a scary area of town seemed like nothing. Plus, the thunderous expression on Kian’s face probably made any potential muggers think twice.
We’d walked less than a block when a car screeched around the corner, heading straight towards us. It was close enough that I could see the guys inside had guns... and they’d seen us. Kian grabbed my hand and pulled me into an alley, running so fast I could barely keep up. I thought again about taking my heels off but the alley was littered with broken bottles.
Two turns, three, and we finally slowed. Kian kept us moving, though, putting more distance between them and us. “That wasn’t a coincidence,” he panted. “They were heading straight for us. How did they find us?”
I shook my head. I had no idea.
Until we stepped onto the next main street and I saw it, across the street. I grabbed Kian’s hand and pulled him back into the shadows, then pointed.
Kian followed my finger to the white, boxy security camera. It was high on a post where it couldn’t be tampered with, but even from here we could see its distinctive red, white and blue logo. Rexortech.
“Oh, shit,” breathed Kian. Then the full horror of it sank in. “Oh, shit!”
I nodded. “DC is Rexortech’s testbed city, remember? Those cameras are all over the city now. All with facial recognition, all feeding back to Rexortech HQ. He must have someone feeding the info to Powell and his men. Wherever we go, they’ll spot us in a couple of seconds.”
Kian looked ill. “I’ve been trying to figure something out,” he said. He took his radio off his belt and showed it to me. “Remember how all the radios suddenly stopped working at the museum?”
I nodded.
He rotated the radio to show me the Rexortech logo on the back.
“Oh my God.” I thought back to that day when the techies had swarmed all over the White House. “Everything is Rexortech. The radios, the phones....”
“Kerrigan’s people control it all.” Kian shook his head, sounding almost impressed. “They blocked the radio signals from the Secret Service guys inside the museum. That’s why no backup ever showed up: no one outside knew anything was wrong until it was too late.” He cast another glance at the camera. “We have to get off the street.”
“Why can’t we just go to the White House?” I asked. “Call the Secret Service, have someone come and pick us up.”
Kian shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.
“Why?”
He put his hands gently on my shoulders. “Just let me figure out what’s going on first, okay?” He had a look on his face I’d never seen before: not just worry, more like sick fear. As if he really, really hoped he was wrong about something. What isn’t he telling me?
As we stood there staring at each other, it began to rain: I’d forgotten about the brewing storm. It started as just a few heavy drops but, within seconds, we were in a full-on downpour. The rain was freezing, the sort of big, heavy drops that soak right through your clothes. There was no shelter in the alley so Kian pulled me to his chest and wrapped his suit jacket around me. His warmth was welcome but we were still both quickly soaked.
Kian looked up and down the alley then at the camera, making a decision. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.” He pulled off his jacket and draped it over our heads as a makeshift umbrella. It would also hide our faces from the surveillance camera.
I fell into step beside him. We slipped arms around each other’s waists, our hips brushing, and that made me feel better. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere out of sight,” he told me.
We turned onto the street and I felt the back of my neck prickle as we passed the camera. I imagined a roomful of operators somewhere scanning the camera feeds, computers flashing up alerts as they locked onto my face. If I looked up, if I stumbled on the wet sidewalk and the jacket slipped from my shoulders....
We walked for three blocks like that. After the first block, it was impossible to get any wetter but we got steadily colder and colder, the chill seeping right to our bones. We finally stopped outside the sleaziest place I’ve ever seen. Only three of the five neon letters in the MOTEL sign were working.
“Wait here,” Kian told me, pushing me into a dry spot beneath an overhang. “They might recognize you and I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.” He hurried into the tiny motel office.
It was several minutes before he reappeared with a key. “Sorry,” he said. “They weren’t used to renting rooms for a whole night.”
I made an eurgh face and followed him along a passageway, up a rusty metal staircase and to a cheap wooden door. And then, at last, we stepped out of the rain.
I hadn’t realized how tired I was until we were safe. The jacket slithered down my back and fell in a wet heap on the carpet and I just collapsed against Kian’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight, resting his chin on the top of my soaked hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he told me. “It’s going to be okay.”
But when I shifted position slightly, I felt his body stiffen in pain. I pushed back from him and looked in horror at his wounded arm: he’d been hit by a bullet outside the museum but, like my exhaustion, he’d been blocking out the pain until now.
I helped him peel off his soaked shirt. The rain had made the blood spread into a pink stain right across his left arm. When I got the shirt off, I could see the ragged wound that stretched across his bicep.
“It didn’t go in,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Just scraped past.”
We had no medical supplies so we just had to do the best we could. The room had a coffee maker and I used that to boil some water, then let it cool and washed the wound out as best I could. Then I ripped strips from his shirt and used those as bandages. I could feel his body tensing in pain under my hands but he never once cried out.
When I was done, he turned on the TV and flicked to a 24-hour news channel. He grabbed my hand and held it: I didn’t understand why, at first.
Then the picture appeared and I gripped his hand harder than I ever had before.
“—White House still won’t release any information on the status of the President,” said the anchorwoman. “We know that he was shot, at an event at the Museum of Natural History, and that he was rushed to George Washington hospital where he remains. The First Lady is said to
be at the White House. We don’t know—” She broke off. “I’ve just been told that we’re going live to the White House for an emergency press conference.”
The screen changed to a shot of Jessica standing in the White House Press Briefing Room. She’d aged at least ten years since I’d seen her a few hours ago. She cleared her throat. “I have a short statement,” she said. “I won’t be taking any questions.” She swallowed. I’d never seen her so hesitant, so downright scared. “Approximately ten minutes ago, there was an emergency Cabinet meeting. Under Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, the powers and duties of the President have been transferred to the Vice-President. The Vice-President is currently at a secure location and will address the nation shortly. That is all.”
Jessica turned away but there was an immediate uproar. Every single member of the press corps jumped to their feet. “Jessica! Is the President alive?”
“Has anyone claimed responsibility for the shooting?
“Is a suspect in custody?”
Jessica started to walk off stage.
A man at the back yelled, “Jessica, what about Emily? Where is the President’s daughter?”
Jessica looked towards the man and there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head and walked off stage.
As the news channel returned to the studio, I started to shake and couldn’t stop.
Edward Kerrigan was now the most powerful man in the world.
Emily
“We—We have to go there.” I was babbling, the words flooding out as uncontrollably as my shivers. “We have to go there and tell them, we have to tell everybody—”
“We can’t go to the White House,” said Kian.
I gaped at him. “We have to! We have to tell everyone what happened! Kerrigan is running the country!”
He gently placed his hands on my shoulders. “It isn’t safe anymore,” he said, the emotion making the Irish come through in his voice. “Look.” He pointed to the TV.
The shaken anchorwoman was now talking through the implications of Kerrigan becoming President. Over her shoulder, live footage from the White House Press Briefing Room showed Jessica being escorted off stage... by two guys in Rexortech uniforms.
“This is what I was afraid of,” said Kian. “Kerrigan can do anything he likes now. And the first thing he’s done is to put his own people into the White House—he’ll say it’s additional security, to back up the Secret Service. No one’s going to question it, after what happened at the museum. Those guys will be loyal to him and they’re just waiting for us to show our faces. We’re the only ones who know what Kerrigan’s done. He wants us both dead.”
Now I understood. If we called for rescue, Kerrigan would insist that Rexortech, not the Secret Service, be the ones to pick us up. And then, on the way to the White House, there’d be another attack by the Brothers of Freedom. We’d never make it to the White House alive.
“Kian, my mom is there,” I said. “They said she’s in the White House. The Secret Service are probably too scared to let her leave to visit my dad, like after I was shot. That means she’s right there with Kerrigan’s guys!”
He pulled me close, folding me into his arms. “She’ll be okay. She doesn’t know what Kerrigan’s done: she’s no threat to him.”
My stomach churned. I could see the sense in what he was saying, but I hated to think of her there, unaware that she was now right in the middle of the lion’s den. “We could call someone we trust,” I said in a small, scared voice. “Harlan. Even Miller. Get them to bring us in.”
Kian shook his head. “Remember, Rexortech are tied into all the White House communications equipment. They’d intercept the call... and they still have people cruising the streets looking for us. They’d get here before the Secret Service could. Even if we could get to the White House, the place is filled with Rexortech guys. That building is the most dangerous place in the world for you, right now. All he’d have to do is get someone to slip something in your drink or inject you with something while you slept. I can’t protect you there.”
My last hopes crumbled. The one place I always thought was safe was now a trap. I buried my face in Kian’s chest. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.
His hands tightened around my back. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I swear to you, I’ll get you out of this.” I was still shaking—from the fear and from the cold. I’d been sitting there in my freezing, soaked dress the whole time. “God, you’re freezing,” he told me.
He picked me up and carried me, taking most of my weight on his good arm, then put me down in the tiny bathroom. He turned on the shower, waited until the water ran hot, then pulled off my heels and pushed me inside, still in my dress. I gasped as the water sluiced down over my scalp and shoulders, almost too hot to bear... but then the warmth started to soak into my bare arms and it felt good. While I warmed up, he worked at getting my soaked dress off me—not easy, because the fabric was clinging to me, but he gradually managed to work it up over my head and off. My breasts sprang free, the flesh chilled and the nipples hard from the cold. Then the water hit them, too, and I caught my breath as they started to warm up.
Kian hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my panties and stripped them down my legs and off—even they were soaked. The water ran down my stomach, over my thighs, gradually warming me from the top down. My toes were numb from trudging along in the freezing rain but they started to thaw, burning and tingling. I hugged my arms around myself and lifted my face up to the water, letting the heat sink into me. I felt better... but not right. Inside, I was still trembling.
I reached out toward Kian. “Please,” I said. “Hold me.”
He stripped off his pants and shoes and stepped into the shower, his big body hulking over me. For a second, he blocked the spray and I went cold... but then the water cascaded down from his shoulders and hit me, warming both of us. He pulled me into his arms and cradled me there, my cheek against his chest, and we let the water flow down our backs while our fronts warmed each other. My trembling slowed and finally stopped.
I began to run my hands up and down his arms. I needed to feel him, needed to reassure myself that he was real. He was the one thing I had left to hang onto now that everything else had been ripped away.
And he was the only thing I needed.
My palms smoothed over his shoulders, taking in their wideness and the hard bulk of the muscle there. They swept down, remembering to dodge the bandaged wound, and my fingers skimmed the slippery-wet bulges of his biceps. The size of him, the sheer power of his body made me feel safe... and made me go weak. My hands worked back around him, tracing the contours of his back, my fingers so delicate next to him: I was a vine, clinging to a rock face.
He responded, pushing my wet hair back away from my face and gathering it into a rope so that he could bend over me and kiss my neck. I pushed against him, my breasts pillowing against his chest, as his lips worked their way down behind my ear, his teeth nibbling at my shoulder. He drew back and we nuzzled against each other, noses brushing cheeks, lips brushing chins. I could feel the tension in his body, his hands starting to squeeze as he worked them down my sides and onto my hips. We were at the tipping point, sliding from comforting to raw and sexual.
I parted my lips... and that was all it took to tip us over the edge.
Immediately, he was kissing me, his tongue teasing the edges of my lips and then plunging deep to own me. I moaned through it, running my hands down his body. Back in my bedroom at the White House, he’d done most of the touching. Now I was free to explore him, feeling the hardness of his ass and the brute power of his thighs. As I shifted against him, I felt his cock swelling against my thigh, already half-hard. I reached down and curled my fingers around it and he gasped. God, so thick, so hot, stiffening and growing under my fingers in a way that made my chest flutter. I started to stroke it and he growled and pushed me back against the tiled wall.
“Christ,” he muttered, and that gleam of Irish silver w
as thick in his voice. “You’ve got no feckin’ idea how much I want you.”
His hand slid down my wet stomach and then on down between my thighs. I caught my breath and parted my legs for him. His fingers brushed through the damp curls of my hair and found my lips. He rubbed me there and then pushed slowly inward, one thick finger sliding up into me. I groaned in response, mashing my ass back against the tiles. His palm was hard against my clit and I rocked against it.
We pressed our bodies together, him fingering me and me stroking him as the water sluiced down on us, trapping us in our own little world of heat and comfort. His finger moved faster and then he added a second finger, stretching me just right. My nipples were hard again, scarlet threads of pleasure lashing through me every time they scraped against his wet chest. I kissed a line between his nipples, burying my lips in the deep center line that ran down his chest. He growled, then pushed back and looked into my eyes.
“Don’t move,” he told me. He stepped out of the shower, retrieved something from his discarded pants then stepped back against me. He tore open the packet, rolled on the condom and then he was stepping between my legs, knocking them wider with his knees. The tip of him rubbed up against my lips, throbbing and hot, and I grabbed for his shoulders. Then he was easing into me, one glorious, heated millimeter at a time.
This time, I didn’t have to worry about making a noise. In fact, with the water pounding down all around us and the fact we were in a tight little room within a room, in theory I could really let loose. If only I was like that, I thought. I’d never dared to be vocal with the few boyfriends I’d had: I was too self-conscious. Even now, I—
The head of his cock reached its widest point, stretching me, and then slipped in. “Ah!” I gasped, unable to stop myself. Immediately, I flushed. But Kian was staring down at me with nothing but lust in his eyes. He wanted to hear me.
He pressed me back hard against the wall, pinning my shoulders there with both hands, and started to move deeper, never moving faster than a few millimeters a second. I began to pant: the sensation of being steadily filled, of being made aware of how damn wet I was, was indescribable. Pleasure blossomed outward, making me claw helplessly at his arms.
Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) Page 19