by Kait Nolan
The kid produced one from some pocket of his oversized gangster jeans, and Gage signed his other name to the back of their dinner receipt. He handed it over.
“This is so freaking cool! Thanks!”
“No problem.”
Embry was propelled into motion again as he took the food and thanked the delivery guy. She slid in behind him and shut the door. “That happen often?”
He studied her face, noting humor rather than concern. “Not too often. Depends on where I am. It’s more likely at a gym than just random public. Mixed martial arts fighting is popular, and while there are a lot of fighters, it’s a fairly small community.” He paused, the tactical disadvantage occurring to him. “I’m not sure whether it’ll be a problem or not on this mission. Maybe it’s time you told me what your plan is for getting inside the facility.”
She moved over and began removing containers from the bag. “I don’t know yet.”
Gage blinked. “You don’t know yet,” he repeated.
“We’ll know more after we perform our own reconnaissance.” She flipped open a Styrofoam container of beef lo mien and adroitly lifted noodles to her mouth with chopsticks.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“We knew this wouldn’t be easy.”
“Hard doesn’t scare me. But this kind of mission should be well planned or it’s suicide. We walk in that place via our own two feet or other means, it may very well lead to our own capture.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She ate more noodles. “I assume you didn’t have any luck.”
“You assume right. My head is all over the place right now. I’ll try again later.”
Her eyes flared gold for just a moment before returning to normal. “My father is counting on you, Gage. So am I.”
“I know it. I won’t let you down, Embry.”
Much later, after night had long since fallen and the sounds of other hotel patrons had faded, after Embry had finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep, Gage climbed out of bed and tried again in the full dark. But no matter how hard he tried, the shadows refused to bend to his will. He was still trying when the sun began to rise, causing his quarry to flee.
Exhausted, he fell into bed and admitted defeat.
Chapter 6
I made a mistake.
The suspicion stole through her body like a virus. Embry flexed her clammy hands on the steering wheel and glanced over at the passenger seat where Gage was sleeping, head tipped against the window. He looked terrible in the dying sun, the shadows under his eyes and the mottled bruising from the fight adding years to his face.
Embry knew he’d been up all night. She’d awakened twice to see him still standing in the dark, meditating. Not that it had done more than exhaust him. He’d been sleeping off and on all the way across Kansas and Colorado.
He couldn’t Walk.
Embry hadn’t expected that it would take this long. She’d gone into this expecting that giving him the antidote would be like lifting a curtain and all his memories would simply be there, as if they’d never been gone. She’d been naïve and foolish and selfish for thinking only of how he could help her. And now she was dragging him into a danger that he might not survive unless he could remember his skills as a Walker. They all might die if his memories didn’t fully return.
And what kind of life had she condemned him to if they did survive? Giving him back memories of the Mirus world eradicated any hope he had of going back to the life he’d built for himself.
It had never occurred to her that he would have built a nice life without her. She found herself unreasonably pissed off that he’d managed it so well.
He would be hunted. And it would be her fault. Again.
What have I done?
Gage jerked in his seat, bolting upright with fists curled at the ready.
“Bad dreams?” she asked quietly.
He relaxed his hands and scrubbed them over his face. “Where are we?”
“Middle of Wyoming somewhere. I forget the last town we passed. Wasn’t much to it other than a gas station and a post office.”
He settled back in his seat and lapsed into the relative silence of the road. It was one of those highways where something in the road made the tires go tha-dunk . . . tha-dunk. There was about 6 seconds from one tha-dunk to another. She figured that meant, what, 600 tha-dunks per hour?
She was at 438. Tha-dunk, 439.
“What did they threaten you with?” asked Gage.
Startled, Embry looked over at him, but she couldn’t read his face behind the mirrored sunglasses he’d fished out of the glove box. “What did who threaten me with?”
“The Council. Or the other Walkers. What did they threaten you and Adan with to keep you from coming after me? I figure it must have been pretty damn bad to keep you away this long.”
Potential lies tumbled through her mind. She was IED. No one but the Council knew the laws better than she did. It would be easy to spin a tale of threatened punishments to ease his mind. But it was the truth that fell from her lips. “They didn’t have to threaten us.”
In her periphery, she saw him glance at her.
“Did you think I’d be better off in my own world?”
Was he trying to give her some kind of out? Some way of proving that they’d had his best interests at heart? That they hadn’t just abandoned him, without family, without memory, in a world that didn’t give a damn about him?
“We thought you were dead.”
Gage tugged the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and peered over them. “Come again?”
With a sigh, Embry squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before focusing back on the road. “When the Walkers came to the dojo that night, they intended to kill you. The plan was to cut you out of our lives, our world, in the only possible permanent way.”
“Yet here I am. Why? If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Walkers are nothing if not good with the follow through.”
They didn’t have to follow through. That’s what I was for. Despite the fact that he sat whole and breathing in the seat beside her, she’d lived too long with the guilt of killing him to stop the immediate flash of his body, bloody, burned, and broken on the floor of the dojo. She blinked the image and the immediate prick of tears away.
“Embry?”
She took a bracing breath and decided to leave out her own role in what had happened that night. “Matthias had what you might call an attack of conscience. You know what their missions are like. Always follow the Council’s orders. Over the years he had quite a bit of innocent blood on his hands. You didn’t do anything to justify execution—not really. My father is the one who brought you into our world, raised you to be a Walker. It was he who broke the laws. You only did what you were told. Matthias had a contact—a witch he knew from way back who dealt in old magics. He got the Lethe potion from her and gave it to you. Taking away your memory was the only way he could avoid taking away your life.”
“Well bully for him,” said Gage drily. “So I take it he didn’t share that fact with you or Adan?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t until the news came about my father’s capture and the Council handed down their decree that they wouldn’t be mounting an extraction mission that he broke his silence. And I think he only did then because he knew I would go no matter what.”
“And he knew it was a suicide mission,” he finished.
Tha-dunk. Tha-dunk. Tha-dunk. Tha-dunk.
“I wish I’d never gotten you involved,” said Embry.
“Now hold on a damn minute. I know I haven’t been successful Walking yet, but I’m not exactly a liability.” The first hint of temper crackled in his voice.
“That’s not what I meant.” She took a breath. “I didn’t think of you when I made this decision. I haven’t done a helluva lot of thinking at all since my father was captured. When Matthias presented you as an option for help, I jumped at it. Apart from the gift of you being alive, I knew no o
ne else would cover my back better. But I didn’t give a single thought to the consequences for you. I took your life away, Gage. And there’s nothing I can do to reverse that. I dragged you back into my world for purely selfish reasons, without any regard to whether you wanted it or not. There’s a really strong possibility that you’ll get hurt or killed. I’ve been through that loss before. So yeah, I wish I’d never gotten you involved.”
Tha-dunk. Tha-dunk.
“So you’d rather I’d have stayed safe and ignorant?”
“Something like that.”
“Fuck that, Embry. Give me some damned credit. Yeah, I’ve built a life for myself. One I even happen to like a lot about. But it’s hollow. Whatever friends or connections I made, they never erased the sense that I had family somewhere out there. People who loved me, who missed me, who cared if I lived or died. You and Adan are my family. I would do anything for either of you. If you think I’d rather have stayed blank the rest of my life while both of you died, when I could’ve done something to help, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Tha-dunk.
“I’m sorry my worrying offends you, Gage, but it doesn’t change the circumstances. I don’t want to lose you both.”
“Pull into this rest stop,” he snapped.
She took the exit, following the drive to the squat sandstone building that served as the restroom. There were no other cars. Without a word, Gage shoved open the door and climbed out of the car. Embry assumed they would finish the argument when he got back from relieving himself, but he stalked beyond the building.
She got out herself. “Where are you going?”
“I’m taking a fucking walk,” he called back from the dark.
* * *
The Crystal Grotto my ass, Gage thought as he wheeled the Charger into a space beside a mud-spattered dually. No images of elegant merfolk and jewels to go with a name like that. It was just another dark and dingy roadhouse, pretty much like the others they’d stopped at the last two days. The half-assed pile of cinderblock squatted by a gravel parking lot about a half a mile from the one-street town of Rossum, Montana. Thirty miles from Fort Hurley, it was the first place that looked like it might offer up something resembling dinner. Not that he was sure Embry would eat. To say that their reconnaissance at the base hadn’t gone well was like saying pneumonia was just a sniffle.
She said nothing as they both stepped out of the car and headed inside. The smoky haze stung his eyes and made it amply clear that nobody had been by to actually enforce the state-wide smoking ban. Twangy country was punctuated by the crack of pool balls. Gage paused just inside the doorway to scan the interior, taking in the half-filled row of booths along one wall, the scattering of abused looking tables and chairs in the center, and the pair of crude signs indicating the restrooms—Poles and Holes. Classy.
Seated at a table that gave him clear view of the bar, as well as the entrance, he grabbed a menu. Embry’s eyes wandered over the crowd, scanning and assessing as he had, then turning back when she determined none of them were a threat. Her gaze flicked to the approaching waitress, then dropped to the menu she clearly wasn’t reading. Since she seemed disinclined to decide, Gage ordered beer and cheeseburgers for them both. “Oh, and ranch dressing on the side for her.”
“You remember that?” Embry asked. But he detected no warmth or pleasure in her voice at the fact.
“It was floating around in there somewhere.”
The waitress left and silence descended at the table. Embry dropped her eyes and wouldn’t look at him again. She was focused entirely inward, using considerable effort to keep the emotions that fueled her fire banked and under control. Considering that this mission was fucked six ways from Sunday, he couldn’t really expect anything else.
When the waitress came back with their beers, Embry took a long pull before setting the bottle on the table with a thump. “This is hopeless.” Her words fell between them like stones as she stared at her beer.
Gage wanted to contradict her, to say something that would wipe that dejected, grieving look off her face. But he’d been with her on the ridge overlooking the compound. The place was fucking impregnable. A veritable Cheyenne Mountain, complete with single road access and mandatory ID badge and fingerprint scanner for entry. Easily two dozen highly armed soldiers stood watch at regular intervals along the two-story, electrified, chain-link fence surrounding the facility. There was no back door. No accessible ventilation shaft or utility tunnels. They had no schematics. And without him being able to Walk, no way to acquire additional intel of any kind.
He’d failed again last night. Though Embry had said nothing, it was the white elephant that had ridden with them across the better part of two states. Her lack of faith pissed him off, but at this point, maybe she was right. He wasn’t any closer to Walking now than he was two days ago. Not that he was about to be the one to suggest they abandon Adan.
“There has to be another way,” he said. “Maybe we can somehow infiltrate their ranks.”
She lifted her gaze to his then dropped it again. “That’s a long term op with a slim margin for success. We don’t know if he has that long.”
The regret in her eyes sliced him deep. He was letting her down in the worst possible way. Curling his hand around hers, Gage said, “He’s not dead yet, Ember. We’re going to find a way in, and we’re going to get him out.” He infused his voice with a conviction he wasn’t absolutely certain he felt. He needed to find some faith and fast.
Before Embry could make any kind of response, the door banged open, grabbing their attention. Five men spilled inside. Though they were dressed in civilian clothes, Gage knew instinctively that they were military. It was in the way they carried themselves and in the barely there buzz cuts.
A sudden movement in one of the booths drew Gage’s attention. A youngish Native American guy sat stiffly in his seat. A worn, shearling-lined denim jacket draped awkwardly across his lap, sliding as his knee bounced. His hands shook a little as he shoveled the last of his fries and sandwich in his mouth. He left a few bills on the table, and slid out of the booth, one hand going swiftly to the knife on his belt then away again, as the newcomers finished jamming two tables together. One of the meatheads stepped backward right into the kid as he walked by.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, Tonto.”
For a moment anger flared in the kid’s face. But he was gawky and lean, not yet grown into the promise of his frame. He seemed to think better of reacting and dropped his gaze, mumbling something as he tried to move on past.
The soldier grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back around. “What was that, Walks With Tiny Dick? I know you didn’t just disrespect me, boy.”
Seeing the situation heading south, Gage was already on his feet and moving by the time the kid opened his mouth to make a reply. Whatever he said was drowned out by the instant smack of fist on flesh and the crash of the kid’s body falling into another table.
Gage stepped in as the next fist went flying and smacked right into his hand. He felt the sting of it up to his shoulder as he closed his fingers around the other man’s hand and twisted. Meathead’s face went red with outrage, shock, and pain as he struggled not to go to his knees and failed. “You’re gonna want to stop that right about now,” said Gage equably. But in his mind he could already see the guy surging up from the floor, plowing into his gut in a tackle. At the first sign of movement, he stepped to the side. Meathead stumbled awkwardly and crashed into another table.
“You son of a bitch!”
As Gage went through the motions, he was vaguely aware of the Native American kid slipping out. Good. No need for him to get caught up in this shit. After a couple of minutes, he tired of the dance, of trying not to truly engage, and nailed the meathead with a left cross that knocked him on his ass, where he stayed. “Seriously, you really don’t want to do this, man. You’re outclassed as a fighter here.”
One of the other soldiers stepped in. “And what exactly is the Ulti
mate Fighter doing in a shithole bar in Montana?”
Gage flicked his gaze to the man who’d spoken. “Tryin’ to have dinner without having to intervene in somebody else’s stupid.”
Meathead scrambled to his feet again, fists clenched.
“Stand down, Stegman. You’re done here.”
“Fuck that, Sarge. This asshole made a fool outta me.”
The sergeant slapped a hand against Stegman’s chest. “Simmer down, Private. I think we can find a way to satisfy everybody here.” He turned his eyes to Gage and studied him with interest.
“And how’s that exactly?” asked Gage.
“An exhibition match. You against one of ours. May the best fighter win. You game?”
An exhibition match? I could take these guys in my sleep.
“Where?”
“Fort Hurley. Our guys could use some entertainment.”
A way in. Halle-fucking-luia.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. 19:00 hours. Be a good dinner break.”
“We’ll be there,” said Gage.
“We?” The sergeant’s gaze swung toward Embry, who had stood back from the fight wearing an expression that looked like amusement to anyone who didn’t know her.
“I’m his manager,” she said easily. “He doesn’t fight without me being present.”
After a few humming beats, the sergeant nodded. “Fine. We’ll wait for you at the gate.”
Chapter 7
“The sensible thing to do is use this opportunity as recon only.”
Embry had to reach deep to keep a hold on her temper as she stalked past him into the ratty motel room. “Fuck sensible, Gage. We may never get another shot at this. We’ll be inside. The most logical thing to do is for me to slip away while you have them all occupied during the fight, release Dad, and get the hell out.”
“And how exactly do you think that’s gonna work?” he demanded, locking the door behind them. “You have no idea where he’s being held in that facility, no idea how big the place really is. If he couldn’t Walk out by now anyway, he’s not going to be able to do it once you release him from wherever they’re keeping him. And no way in hell are those soldiers going to just let the two of you out the front door. And that’s assuming he’s in any shape to be mobile. You don’t know what condition he’s in.”