“I'm having the weirdest déjà vu.” He grabbed her waist and cut her loose.
“Roxy? What are you doing here?”
“Remember that time when you saved me? Well, it's like that. If all goes well.” She fell into his arms.
“Where's Charlie and John?”
“Oh, they decided you weren't worth the effort, pet. Now, come on, before it starts to—” The rain struck the road. “Bloody typical.”
* * *
The water fell in a heavy wave, drowning the road and the vehicles. Charlie was on his knees. His chest was aching, his lip swollen and bleeding from old and new splits. Scarlet was standing over him, her hair clinging to her ghostly skin. He hated her. Every part of him wanted to see her suffer. But he was weak. She had already corroded his body, corrupted his mind. He couldn't beat her. And he couldn't beat her because he still didn't understand why she did it.
“You're a monster,” he said as the rain dripped down his nose.
She laughed. “You're a fine one to talk.”
“What you did to Sarah—”
“What I did? What about what you did? I wasn't the one who was married. I wasn't the one who had a family to protect. You didn't have to come back to my room, Charlie. And don't tell me you didn't enjoy it, because I know you did.”
“You butchered my wife!”
“And you're very welcome. What were you thinking? Trying to play happy families. This was always going to happen. And you know it. You are not meant to have happiness, Charlie Smith. That life is not for people like us. You are meant to be alone.”
“He is never alone.” John strode out from behind the overturned vehicles. His steps were cautious but casual, his attention fully focused on Scarlet. “You should know that.”
Charlie saw a shift in her shoulders. Despite her wide smile, she was anticipating the danger. She was ready. He prayed to God John was too.
“Hello, brother.”
“I'm not your brother.”
“You're more my brother than you ever will be his. Isn't it about time you stop playing Reacher and come home?”
“I will kill you.”
“And rob your brother of his vengeance? He would never forgive you.”
Charlie had imagined killing Scarlet. He imagined strapping her to a kitchen table and replaying what she had done to Sarah. But now he could see this wasn't his fight. Scarlet wanted him to attack; she wanted to draw Charlie in, because she was stronger and faster and more dangerous than he could ever be. She wanted to kill Charlie in front of John, knowing it would break him.
And Charlie could see now. This was not about him. It was John's battle. It always had been. So Charlie did the one thing she didn't expect. He let John take his place.
He rolled left, looking up in time to see John fire off a round. Scarlet was moving too. She was fast. As fast as John. Maybe faster. She pulled her own gun, making to shoot Charlie, but John was already on her. He grabbed her arm, twisting it back. Her head connected with his. When he fell back, he was holding her weapon. But she was holding his. She fired, but the bullet jammed in the chamber. John did the same. But the gun was empty.
“Why do you think I let you have it?” she said.
She turned, swiping her leg. Her foot connected with his jaw, and John fell back. His swipe back missed, and he grappled on the floor as she hit him again. He caught her hair, bringing her down. But the proximity worked against him. From her boot she pulled a knife, slashing him across his chest three times.
Charlie watched from the dirt. His brother's face was dripping with blood. He was struggling—losing. His shirt flapped like a useless limb, stained with sweat and blood and dirt. If Charlie didn't do something, she'd kill them both. And he was older. He was responsible for his little brother. He had pulled John from the laboratories; he'd kept him safe, kept him grounded.
John's discarded gun sat under the third vehicle. Charlie dived for it, using his assisted leg to propel him forward. He stretched his fingers, drawing the weapon to him. Unclipping the chamber, he let the bullet hit the road and reloaded.
They had all been paired in the laboratories, but it had only taken with two of them. John and Charlie were the exception. All those experiments, all those years. They were made for the battlefield. An ultimate weapon. This was why the Institute wanted them back. This was why they were here now. Charlie raised his brother's gun. He closed his eyes, reaching out to John with his mind. The sky exploded in another raging clash of thunder and lightning. John grabbed Scarlet, allowing her blade to penetrate his abdomen—a wound that on anyone else would probably be deadly. And Charlie fired.
John twisted, turning her into the path of the bullet. She gripped him as it hit her shoulder. Then tumbled backwards. Her fingers touched a hidden wound in her chest. She looked up and glared at Charlie in outrage. John pulled the blade from his stomach. He staggered forward with purpose. She did the only thing she could. She ran.
Her body was instantly lost in the foliage. Charlie fired another desperate shot into the treeline. He made to go after her, but John stopped him.
“Priorities,” he said, holding his stomach. “We get Rachel now. She'll wait.”
Charlie reached for his brother's hand. “How bad is it?”
“I'll live.” John spat a globule of blood on the floor. He took his gun from Charlie and sighed. He wasn't used to losing this badly. He stepped forward, his body unsteady. Charlie reached out to help him, but he shook off the assistance.
“Can you run?” Charlie asked.
The look he received was not friendly. “Can you?”
Charlie smiled. “Okay, fair enough.”
Their car was concealed off the road on a side track below the main route north. Charlie slid down the bank, recognising the silver bonnet and the two silhouettes waiting for them. One was unmistakably Rachel. She was resting against the car, her body clearly hurting as much as his. But she was alive. He found he could run, and he did.
Rachel fell into him, wrapping her good arm around his neck. She sobbed violently into his shoulder—relief, fear, he didn't know. He was crying too. It had been close. Too close. But they were back together, and that's all that mattered. He held her tightly, breathing in the dampness of her hair.
“You stupid bastard,” she whispered. “You shouldn't have come for me.”
Charlie wiped the strands of soaking hair away from her face. He pressed his forehead against hers. “We will always come for you,” he told her.
“It was a trap.”
“I don't care. If it's a trap, a lost cause, whatever. We will come for you. You're one of us. Do you understand? If we couldn't save you, we would make sure you never got there. You're never going there. Not as long as I'm alive. Now, let's get out of here before they come back.”
She let out a gasp and collapsed against him again. Her body trembled as he helped her into the back of the car. When he closed the door, Roxy was waiting, fruitlessly trying to light up in the rain.
“Anyone see you?”
“No one that will live to tell the tale.” He glanced to Charlie's right. “Bloody hellfire, what happened to you?”
John approached the car, his scowl hindered by the swelling of his face. He pointed a bloody finger at Roxy. “Not another fucking word,” he growled, and went to get in the driver's seat.
“Oh, I don't think so, sweetheart. You're going to get blood all over the dashboard. Get in the back with the rest of the walking wounded, and we can play doctors and nurses later.”
If John wanted to argue, he didn't. Defeated, he flopped in the back, next to Rachel. She linked her fingers with his, offering him a grateful smile. Despite the injuries, John smiled back. As bruised as they were, they'd won. This was a victory. A sore, purple victory.
Before Charlie could get in the car, Roxy stopped him. “Did you get her?”
“No. She got away,” he said. “But she's hurt. As bad as John looks, she's got off worse.”
Roxy
's tired eyes widened. “Wait, she did that to him? Just her?”
“Yup. Although he gave as good as he got.”
Roxy clutched at his hair, his eyes darting over the trees. “We can't let this one go, Charlie. She's too fucking dangerous.”
“I know. And we won't. But we're not in a position to stop her now.”
“I suppose not. Not with the useful ones out of commission anyway. No offence.”
“Lilly first. Then we take her down.”
He conceded. “Okay, I guess I'm driving. Any idea where we're going?”
Charlie patted the keys in his pocket. There was only one place left to go.
38
Charlie's ribs were cracked. His lips bled when he smiled, and the dull ache that liked to sit in his back had moved up to his shoulders. It took them three days to make it back to S'aven. Three days of sleeping in shifts in the back of their vehicle. Three days of sharing the same stinking space, surviving on protein bars and Roxy's bad jokes. Any other time Charlie would have been disheartened, but not now. Despite the pain, despite the hardship, they had won.
As they broke over the S'aven border, he took Rachel's hand. She was distant and distracted, but she afforded him a smile. The Institute had come too close to her, and the haunted glaze to her eyes would be there long after her body had healed. She had faced her fear without ever having the opportunity to overcome it. But he would help her. Whatever it took, he would make sure she never faced that prospect again. He pressed her hand to his lips, and she turned back to look at the concrete structures shadowing the road.
To his surprise, John was less troubled by his encounter with Scarlet. Charlie had expected his brother to brood, or sulk, or even be more cautious than usual. But John never did what was expected of him. He rested in the front of the car, seemingly unperturbed by Roxy's driving. If his face hadn't been so purple, Charlie wouldn't have believed he was even hurt. John flashed him a look, and Charlie realised his brother shared his sentiments. He had survived. They had Rachel back. And soon enough they would have Lilly. There had been twists on the way, but their ambition to get back at the Institute was taking shape. They could do this.
“Should have some coverage,” Roxy said, and flipped the radio on. Static crackled before a local broadcast burst forth.
“The headlines for tonight: All forty-eight passengers are now confirmed dead, following the Southrail train crash this week. Including Agent Wade Adams, who is believed to have caused the crash in an attempt to end his life. In other news, the army now claim to have the rioting in S'aven under control. We'll have more on that later. But first, government officials—”
John switched it off. They had heard rumours about a train crash. Charlie could put enough pieces together to figure out what had happened. Adams took one for the team; although what team he was on still escaped Charlie. The suicide would be written off as the selfish act of a government worker who'd reached the end of his tether—not exactly a rarity in London. Other than a prominent London doctor, nobody of influence was on the train. The story would fade into obscurity soon enough. Adams would fade. And so would the doctor.
Rachel thought it was sad, and Charlie supposed in many ways it was. But it was what Adams had wanted, and few men ended their lives so victoriously. He died, but he won. The Institute never got their great atrocity, and Curtis was stopped. Charlie only hoped he would be half as successful when his time came.
S'aven was much changed from when Charlie had last been here. The rioting had eroded the town, not just her exterior, but her soul. She sat, the battered wife of a tyrant bully. But she wasn't out. In the concrete and tarmac there was a buzzing, a potential for more defiance. It would happen. One more push and it would happen. The world could change in a day. Charlie had first-hand experience of that.
They reached the industrial estate before the first shift of factory work commenced. Row upon row of containers sparkled like treasure as the sun rose. Charlie squeezed the keys Adams had given him and took a steadying breath. This was it. He would get Lilly's location, and the Institute would not know what hit them. They would regret taking his girl from him. He'd make sure of it.
They climbed out of the vehicle, a quartet of pensive apprehension. John checked the road while Roxy helped with the door. It opened with a lazy creak, spewing out dust. The morning light shone inside, illuminating rows of haphazardly stacked boxes and files. Papers sprawled across the metal floor, leaking from containers, tarnished with dirt. Hundreds upon thousands of sheets of information, compressed into one tiny space. All of it Institute secrets.
Rachel poked her head inside. “And I thought Roxy was a slob.”
“I live in organised chaos.” Roxy pushed past her and prodded the towers of filing with mistrust. “This may take a while.”
Charlie didn't mind. He'd waited a long time for this moment. He'd go through every inch of this place if he had to. And while he hunted for her, he'd find more things. There was so much Adams had kept. So much potential. Charlie was overawed.
Nothing was labelled, or even logically heaped together. Old boxes mingled with new, as though Adams had regularly delved into his library, contaminating the paperwork. They lit up the container with solar lanterns, each taking a corner to sort and filter.
“There's all sorts here,” Rachel said. She sat cross-legged on the floor, pulling pictures from a file. “So many people. I can't believe he kept it all.”
“Roxy, go get my laptop,” John said. He pointed to a box of storage devices.
“What did your last slave die of?” Despite his protest, Roxy was already moving. It had become an unspoken agreement between them. John's injuries were still holding him back, but he wouldn't acknowledge he needed to take it easy. Instead, he bossed Roxy about, and Roxy would bitch and moan, but do exactly what he was asked to let John save face.
With each file Charlie picked up, he expected to find his own name scrawled across the front. Perhaps if Adams had been given time, and if Charlie hadn't been rescued, his story would have appeared here. He wondered how many stories like his there were in this vault. And he looked at John, as his brother trawled the computer archive, and realised there was no story like his.
“There's so much, we're bound to miss something. We should take as much as we can carry,” Rachel said. “He's got files on Darcy. He just didn't realise it was one person.”
She passed him a manila case with missing Reachers suspected of being transported out of the country. Charlie had been heartbroken to find Darcy in that cottage, but the file somehow made up for it. All the people he had saved—John, Rachel, himself, it didn't even scratch the surface of what Darcy had achieved. He pressed his finger against the list of names. Many could still be alive.
“Charlie.” It was John's tone that stopped him. He'd used it once before, when he lay in a drugged stupor, his spine aching from the surgery. He'd asked his brother where his wife was, and John had said the same thing. “Charlie.” His name, spoken in a voice that could tear apart worlds.
He turned. John had stepped aside, balancing his laptop on a cleared shelf. The screen displayed details of the transporter that had removed his daughter from London. John swiped the screen, exposing a brief text box. Charlie scanned the words. He felt Rachel behind him, her hand on his scarred back.
“What is it?”
Charlie couldn't tell her. He had come so far. He had fought through so much. For what? For this?
“The Institute recorded the truck passing three checkpoints. It didn't pass through the fourth,” John said.
“I don't understand.”
“There was a crash. Probably one of the passengers trying to escape. They overturned the vehicle and it hit a river. The soldiers secured the vehicle, but they weren't authorised to open it. By the time help arrived, the passengers were already dead.”
“They let them die?”
“Were the passengers listed?”
“ 'Grade three, forty-four-year-old male
. Grade three, twenty-year-old female. Grade unknown, six-year-old female.' ”
“They let my baby drown.” He bit into his split lip. Blood poured into his mouth. This wasn't supposed to happen. He'd made himself strong. He'd pulled himself from hell to do this. Lilly needed him. She was trapped, and she needed his help. But he'd failed her. All this time, all these years. She was lost to him before he'd even begun.
No. It was too much. It wasn't fair. She was just a child. He hurled a box at the wall. He screamed until his voice stopped. Grade unknown. Six-year-old. Female. That was all they had of her. He wanted to scrawl her name on every sheet of paper. She should be here. She should have survived.
He dropped to his knees. Had she known? He had been face-to-face with the woman who had taken her. How could she not have known? He was a fool. He'd always been a fool.
Hands rested on his shoulder. John crouched beside him. Beneath the swelling, his eyes burned. But Charlie didn't have that kind of strength or resolve. He was done.
“She's gone.”
“I know.” John said. The room, the papers, everything seemed to blur. He was back in that cell, staring into an abyss. But he wasn't alone. He'd never been alone.
“They never got her,” John told him.
Charlie blinked. He looked up at his brother and frowned.
“She never went to that place. She never knew what it was like.”
“What do I do now, John?”
“What we were always going to do.”
He was right. With Lilly gone, the road was clear. The Institute would not know what hit them. They would regret taking his girl from him. He'd make sure of it.
Epilogue
She had made it through surgery and was healing. The pain was bearable and necessary to keep her mind focussed. Once again, she had failed. She had led her own secret operation, only to see it blow up in her face. In time the Institute would punish her, and she would accept the punishment because she was obedient.
Every Storm Breaks (Reachers Book 3) Page 22