by D. Laine
“And?”
“It’s only four hours away,” she informed me, as if I needed the geography lesson.
I didn’t, of course, but I also didn’t understand what was so bad about Los Angeles.
“They’ve been gone for three days,” she added.
“They’re one of three teams who are overdue,” Kent added.
So that was why everyone was antsy. Jake and Dylan hadn’t come back when everyone thought they should. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. They could have had transportation problems, or ran into an unexpected delay, or . . .
It didn’t mean anything.
“Fucking CeeCees aren’t talking, of course,” Maria muttered. “I swear they get off on keeping shit from us, like they think they’re so superior.”
“I heard Jake put one of the tech guys in medical before they left,” Keith volunteered.
“I heard it was Dylan,” Kent countered.
“My guess would be Dylan. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Marcus’s chuckle sounded forced, but the others laughed.
I realized they were trying to keep me calm, so I ate a few bites of my dinner to appease them. After finishing half of it, I realized it wasn’t settling very well and pushed the tray away.
I could not let this go.
“Who do we have to talk to find anything out?” I asked.
“Spence,” Kent supplied. “He’s the only one—”
“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice cut in from behind me. Everyone stared at the source over my head, and I turned around to find an agent looking down at me. “Agent Spence wants to see you in his office.”
“Spence?” I squeaked. “But why? What—”
“Now,” the agent tacked on before walking away.
I met the stares of the others at the table as I stood with my tray. Their glum faces worsened the churning in my stomach. I knew what they were thinking. This wasn’t good.
I left the mess hall without a word. I didn’t trust my voice to not give away the fear squeezing my throat. Dread twisted my gut as I drew closer to the command center. My feet carried me on autopilot in the direction I somehow remembered to go. When I got there, I didn’t recall taking a single step.
One stone-faced agent stood outside Spence’s office. His eyes zipped over me critically before he opened the door behind him.
Agent Spence waited for me in his chair, elbows perched on his desk and hands intertwined in front of him. His head nodded over my shoulder, and the door clicked shut behind me.
When he turned his hard eyes on me, the painful bundle in my stomach exploded. I wrapped my arms around my middle, hoping that might prevent me from throwing up all over his office.
“We’ve been unable to reestablish contact with team one,” he informed me in a matter-of-fact tone before glancing down at a stack of papers in front of him.
“Team one?”
He glanced up with a hint of annoyance. “Your team. Walker and Romero.”
I swallowed around the lump expanding in my throat. “Wh—What does that mean?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” He set the papers down and peered up at me expectantly.
“I don’t understand.” I wobbled under his critical gaze. I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I had a hard enough time processing the meaning behind his words.
Unable to reestablish contact. Was that code for . . . dead?
“Do you feel any connection to your brother?” Spence asked, his words laced with impatience.
I started to shake my head. “We never really—”
“You never bonded?”
“A little,” I offered. “He can sense me when I’m mad, or sad, or scared to an extreme level. He was getting better at it than me.”
“Hmm.” His eyes lowered to the desk and his mouth worked in contemplation.
Shouldn’t he be out there looking for them? Or me? Could I use my bond to Jake—as unreliable as it was—to search? Or was it too late?
“Sir, what does this mean? Are they—”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? The idiots took their own goddamn communication devices off. We haven’t seen or heard from them in three days. Considering the satellite images we’ve collected of the large population of tags in the area, I’m inclined to say yes, they’re more than likely dead.” Spence shook his head with a scoff. “But I had them figured for dead for weeks before they showed up with you so . . .”
“You were hoping I could tell you?” I asked timidly.
“That would certainly help,” he muttered.
“I didn’t know I could . . .”
“Not all can. Distance can be a problem for some.” With a wave of his hand, he directed me to the door. “You can go. If you sense anything, I want to be the first to know.”
That was it?
Jake and Dylan were missing—may or may not be dead—and he was shooing me out the door like an unwanted stray cat? Would he even bother to look for them? To help them? To find out what had happened to them?
Or would I be forced to drift through the minutes, hours, and days never knowing?
I didn’t remember walking to my suite. I barely registered the walls around me, or the soft cushions that cradled me when I fell into them. I barely felt the hot tears streaming down my face.
The ache in my ripped-open chest drowned everything else out.
LATER, I wandered into Jake’s suite. I touched things—the seats, the walls, the coffee pot where he brewed us both a cup of coffee every morning—in an effort to open the bond between us. I was desperate and had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how I had put the wall up, so how could I tear it down? I gave up when my head started to pound.
Venturing into Dylan’s suite, I paused to take in the hint of masculinity that lingered in the air. I ended up in his bedroom, where piles of clothes littered the floor.
I giggle-snorted at the mess before picking up one of his shirts. I put it to my nose, and breathed him in before falling onto his unmade bed. His scent enveloped me, and I couldn’t hold the tears back.
I must have cried myself to sleep, because I eventually found myself submerged in a dream. Or a memory, because it felt strangely familiar.
“Jessa!” Jake’s high-pitched little boy voice calls out to me.
I giggle from my hiding place when he races by. I am so much better at hide-and-seek than he is. But I suck at keeping quiet.
“Jessa?” His voice fades as he wanders away, looking in all the wrong places. “Jessa?”
Thea?
I stirred from sleep at the soft flutter in my head—like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and trying to take flight for the first time. Instead of slamming a wall up to trap it, I let it fly. I opened my mind to the intrusion. With it came the memory of Spence’s words to me earlier today.
They couldn’t be dead. I would know if they were. I should feel it in my soul.
Right?
I’m coming, Thea.
The words were not audible in my head. I didn’t hear them as much as I just knew them. Nor were they a remnant of my dream. They were real and their source was getting closer. I felt it deep in my core, growing stronger.
My feet hit the floor and carried me toward the door with careful curiosity. The hallway was empty, but I turned toward the stairwell, sensing something hidden there. The butterfly in my head soared. Seconds later, the door burst open.
I put a hand to the wall, no longer trusting my legs to keep me upright. Nor did I trust my eyes, because I swore I saw Jake standing in the doorway.
“Thea?” He paused long enough for me to notice the dirt and ash that covered him. Then he started toward me. “I sensed you were upset. What’s wrong?”
His words acted as a bucket of cold water, snapping me out of my confused and disbelieving daze. I pushed away from the wall with a rapid shake of my head.
“Thea, what—”
I ran the remaining distance between us and threw my arms around hi
s neck. Dirt and ash enveloped me but I didn’t care. Not when he was warm and alive and currently wrapped in my embrace.
“I heard you,” I mumbled into his shirt. “You were calling to me.”
“You were upset.” I felt his shoulders shrug. Then his arms surrounded me. Tentatively at first, then more confidently. “Are you okay?”
“Spence told me you . . . I thought you were dead,” I admitted. My head whipped back with a resurgence of panic. “Where’s Dylan? Is he—”
Jake’s gentle hand came down on my shoulder. “He’s fine. He’s giving Spence an earful at the moment. We were outmanned and unprepared. We barely made it out, lost our transportation, and had to walk back.”
Fresh tears sprung up the moment Jake told me Dylan was alive. I didn’t think I had any left, but they flowed in a wave of relief. A whimper escaped me as I buried my face in Jake’s filthy shirt.
He was okay. Both of them were okay. Thank God because I didn’t know what I would have done without either of them.
Jake didn’t speak for a long time as I tried to pull myself together. Finally, he murmured, “You need to tell him, Thea.”
I eased out of Jake’s arms to shoot him a curious look.
He shrugged. “I don’t need the bond to know how much you care about him. It’s pretty obvious.”
My face blanched. “It is?”
“To me, it is. To him? Not so much.”
Behind Jake, the door to the stairwell banged open. I stepped out of Jake’s embrace and shifted to peer over his shoulder. Dylan came to an abrupt stop when his eyes landed on me.
He glanced at Jake. “What’s going on?”
“Spence assumed we were dead.”
Dylan snorted bitterly. “Yeah. The son of a bitch—”
Jake cleared his throat to interrupt Dylan. “He told Thea.”
Dylan’s mouth froze around an inaudible “Oh” as his gaze swung to me.
“She can sense me now,” Jake added lightly, “but apparently I have to be pretty close.”
Dylan nodded silently. His eyes widened as he stared at me, obviously at a loss for what to say or do. All because of me and my stubbornness. It was up to me to fix it.
I gave Jake’s arm a squeeze as I moved around him. I hoped our bond was working now, because I really didn’t want my brother to witness what was about to happen.
Dylan stood a little straighter as I approached him. He didn’t have as much ash in his hair and on his face as Jake had, which meant he had taken the time to wipe some of it off. His clothes were stained and wrinkled, but that wasn’t going to stop me.
If anything, his disheveled appearance only reminded me of how lucky I was to still have the opportunity to make everything right between us. And that was exactly what I intended to do.
I grabbed Dylan’s stubble-and-dirt-covered face in both hands and pulled his mouth to mine. He pressed back tentatively at first, as if wary of my intentions. I gripped him tighter, sliding my hands around his neck, to let him know this was for real.
Finally, his arms slipped around me. He parted my lips, and a sigh seeped out of me when his tongue found mine. In an instant, he morphed into the Dylan I had come to know. The one I yearned for now more than ever.
His embrace tightened, and my feet lifted off the floor as he pulled me flush against him. He was all hard lines and strength, yet his kiss was languid with the patience of a man who had all the time in the world. He definitely knew how to use his mouth, and I savored, without a doubt, the single best kiss of my life.
My toes barely grazed the floor when he finally eased us apart. He lowered me with one arm while he used his free hand to brush aside the curtain of hair covering my face.
“What was that?” he whispered.
My mouth opened to tell him how I felt. Instead, I countered with another question. “Can we talk?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Talk? Yeah, we can . . . talk.”
My gaze traveled over his tattered clothes with a sudden sense of uncertainty. I didn’t even know what he had been through the past several days. Obviously, he’d had it rough.
“Maybe now isn’t the right time . . .”
His finger tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “I want nothing more than to talk to you.” The corners of his lips tipped up. “But I also haven’t showered in about four days, so the choice is yours.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.” His eyes darkened slightly, suggesting that he wasn’t referencing only food.
But that was a whole other discussion, which we were definitely going to have. As soon as he was fed.
“I’ll get you guys something from the mess hall.” I tossed a glance over my shoulder. Jake had gone into his suite—thank God. “Go clean up. Then we’ll talk.”
14
DYLAN
I passed Jake in the hallway after grabbing a clean change of clothes. He had already showered. I would have envied him for that if not for the reason I had been delayed. I stood taller when his gaze swept over my face and came to a stop on the grin permanently affixed to my lips.
“You know I love you like a brother,” he started, prompting me to nod. He scowled when my grin grew. “But if you hurt my sister again, I will punch you in the throat.”
My brows shot up. “Wow. In the throat? You mean business.”
“I’m serious, Dylan.” He jabbed a finger in my face. “There were unusual circumstances the last time, and I get it, but no more passes. I don’t want any details, but you had better be up front with her from the start. I can’t feel that kind of pain, and not do anything about it, again.”
I sobered at his terse reminder, and gave him a stoic nod.
“I mean it.” His finger swung up again.
“I got it.”
“Alright then.” He patted me on the back as he continued past me. “Glad you’re still alive, man.”
I chuckled as I walked into the shower room. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that I looked as terrible as I felt. Almost as bad as when I had walked in here, covered in mud and ash and blood, a week ago. Though not much time had passed, it felt like an eternity. So much had changed.
Then, I had carried a heavy weight of uncertainty. I hadn’t known where Thea was. I hadn’t known what had happened to her. Now, despite having barely made it back with my life, I stepped under the stream of hot water and scrubbed away the ash and filth with a sense of hope I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I wanted to take more time, to enjoy the process of getting clean a little longer, but knowing that Thea was waiting for me encouraged me to zip through the motions quickly. I finished, shaved, and dressed in about ten minutes.
The smell of food waiting across the hall twisted my stomach until it grumbled. I decided on food first, Thea second. No sense in talking on an empty stomach.
When I pushed open Jake’s door and saw that Maria and Marcus had joined our little reunion, my shoulders sagged. Only because their presence meant that getting to Thea would take a little longer than I wanted.
My eyes darted to her, where she sat in the chair. For the first time in too long, she offered me a faint smile.
“I brought a little bit of everything.” She motioned to the smorgasbord spread out on the table.
Jake had already claimed a seat on the sofa and was currently stuffing his face. I plucked a French fry from the tray as I took the empty seat beside him.
Looking up to find Marcus watching us, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“They just heard we were back,” Jake mumbled around a mouthful of food.
“What happened?” Maria wondered.
I glanced at Jake to find him shoving a brownie into his mouth. He shrugged a half-ass apology.
“We walked into a mob of tags. They destroyed our transportation. We had to hike it back on foot,” I summarized before stuffing my mouth.
“Let me guess. The agency severely underestimated the size
of the threat?” Maria waited for me to nod before shooting her brother a dark look. “What’s going on with them lately?”
“We’re not the only ones?” Jake asked.
“We got surprised on our last mission.” Marcus waved a hand at his sister. “It wasn’t anything as bad as your encounter, but we weren’t prepared for the numbers we saw. I heard a few other teams complaining about similar experiences.”
“Teams twelve and thirty-two went out same day as you. They’re still missing,” Maria added.
“Spence is in over his head,” I grumbled. “I mean, I know everything is more complicated now with the tags being activated, but we can’t swing anything our way and get rid of the vessels with that kind of piss-poor intel.”
“Let alone find Lucifer.” Marcus nodded his agreement before plucking a fry from my plate. He backed away cautiously as if he expected me to fight him for it, then shot me one of his elusive smiles before he popped it into his mouth.
“He must have been sweating when you two went MIA,” Maria mumbled.
I shrugged. I didn’t really care.
“Not really,” Thea opposed quietly. When everyone shifted their attention to her, she shrugged. “Spence was . . . business-like when he spoke to me. Like it was just another team, another day, another bump in the road. He seemed more irritated than concerned.”
“I noticed that too,” I offered. “I got no apology, no explanation, no ‘thank God you’re alive.’ Nothing.”
“Awe,” Maria cooed. “Does it hurt your feelings to not be the boss’s pet?”
“I’m hardly his pet,” I grunted. “The dude only tolerates me because I’m good at what I do.”
Maria snorted. “Conceited asshole.”
“What’s your rank?” I winked up at her.
“Shut up, Dylan.”
“Didn’t you guys get bumped up to second now? Who’s still in front of you?”
If looks could kill, I would be a dead man. She should have known by now that her fury only encouraged me.
“Jake and I have been number one from the start,” I reminded her. “So don’t give me any more shit.”