I ignored them and opened the browser instead. I’d never exchanged numbers with Gina, so I did a search for Duke’s and dialed—waiting impatiently while I listened to it ring. Frustration welled in me when it rolled the voicemail, and I hung up and dialed again with the same result.
“Fuck!” I slammed the heel of my hand against the steering wheel, my head dropping back on the seat to stare at the ceiling. It would only be a matter of time before Ethan came looking for me, and I could feel the seconds slipping away with each breath. Every instinct I had told me to run, but I wasn’t in this situation because I was particularly good at following my gut. “Fuck,” I said again, then sighed and climbed out of the car, shoving my phone back into my pocket as I walked towards the bar. I kept my head down when I walked through the crowd, the hair on the back of my neck raising when they all went quiet to watch me pass.
It was far too early for the bar to be open, and the door was locked when I tried to escape through it. I knocked, shifting from foot to foot in the silence, aware that every eye was on me. I was just about to knock again when the lock clicked, and Gina opened the door a crack, the annoyance on her face fading to a blank look of surprise when she spotted me.
“Can I come in?” She hesitated only a moment before nodding and stepping aside, holding the door open just enough for me to slip through before slamming and locking it again. Once inside, I glanced around to make sure we were alone. The bar was empty, though the jukebox was playing, and on one of the tables an open ledger was surrounded by a scattering of receipts and a half empty glass of orange juice. It was all I needed to know that Gina had been here working by herself for some time, and when I looked back at her, I found she hadn’t moved, waiting with her arms crossed over her chest, her expression guarded.
“I can’t stay,” I told her, deciding to get right to the point. “I just came to tell you that the Templars have Alex.”
She paled visibly. “What?”
I needed to say it all as quickly as possible, before I lost my nerve and any more time. “That’s why I’m here. Yesterday, Alex went with me to the warehouses to find London. He took me there—” My voice faltered, and I took a deep breath before trying again. “He took me there to trade me for her. They’ve been stalking me since I got here and I…” I trailed off at the look on Gina’s face, watching as she shifted uncomfortably, suddenly unwilling to meet my gaze. I blinked at her, comprehension dawning slowly, though when it did, it was followed immediately by horror.
“You knew.” She flinched, guilt taking over her expression. It was all the confirmation I needed, and my eyes widened as I realized how deep the betrayal ran. “Oh my god. You knew I was going. You sent him.”
“Avery—” She stepped forward and I immediately backed away until I came hard against the bar.
“No,” I gasped, “No, stay the fuck away from me. What is wrong with you people? I thought you were my friend!”
“I didn’t send him,” she snapped, “I’m not a monster. I called him to stop you and he told me the Templars were willing to trade London for you. He said he had a plan to get you out.”
“You let him do it. You let him set me up.”
“You set yourself up,” she reminded me, “You were going anyway. At least this way someone would know what happened when you disappeared.”
Logically I knew what she was saying made sense—the Templars would have taken me whether Alex had been there or not. “You still let it happen.” I shook my head, eyeing the space between her and the door. Gina was bigger than me—if she wanted to stop me from leaving, she probably could, and right now she had me blocked in. “You knew they would take me, and you let it happen. You both did.” My tone was bitter now. It didn’t matter that I was on my way out of Dust, or that I’d planned on never seeing Gina or Alex again. It only mattered that I’d let myself trust them. I’d believed them when they said they wanted to keep me safe.
Gina looked suddenly tired. “What was I supposed to do?” Defeat etched her features as her shoulders slumped. “Lucus has never been willing to give her up. We’ve tried to get her out for months and nothing worked. Then you showed up—”
“I showed up and suddenly you had something to trade.” I’d intended my words to come out angry, but instead they were resigned. “Priorities, right?”
Gina opened her mouth to argue, then she closed it again and looked away. I sighed then, some of the anger draining out of me. I knew what it was like to want to save the person you loved, to be willing to sacrifice just about anything to keep them safe. “Will you tell me where my brother is, please?” Gina’s voice was quiet.
“She didn’t say. The factory, I’m guessing.”
Gina’s gaze snapped back to mine. “Who?”
“London. She was in my apartment just now. She asked me to tell you, she said—” I took a deep breath before continuing. “She said that they’re going to sacrifice him tonight. It was supposed to be me, but they’re going to use him instead.”
Gina’s eyes flashed, and she cursed under her breath, stalking by me to slip behind the bar. I’d expected fear or horror at the words, but she didn’t seem surprised—she seemed pissed. “Are you upset she didn’t come to you?” I asked.
“No.” She reached beneath the bar and pulled out her gun, slamming it down on the counter before dropping a box of ammunition beside it. “She couldn’t have come here, they would have known.” She shook a handful of bullets out on the bar and went to work loading her gun. “I probably wouldn’t have believed her anyway.”
“But you believe it because she told me? What if it’s a trap?”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Gina answered, “But these guys aren’t that smart. They were brainwashed into a cult, for fuck’s sake. If they wanted me that badly, they’d have me already.” She slipped the clip back into her gun. “Someone broke into the bar last night, but they didn’t take much. My guess is they’re tearing the whole fucking city apart looking for you. Where have you been hiding?”
“At a friend’s.” Ex-friend, I reminded myself. I’d stolen his Jeep, after all. Gina slipped into her jacket, then reached around to tuck her gun at the small of her back, far smoother about it than I had been. I frowned, watching her, worry tugging at me despite it all. “What are you going to do?”
“Get him out,” Gina shrugged.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out when I get there, I guess.” She picked up her keys and made for the door, glancing back when I didn’t move.
I needed to go. I needed to get into the Jeep and drive as far and as fast as I could before I ran out of gas. Anywhere would be safer than Dust. I still hesitated. I knew it wasn’t my fault that Alex was in trouble, but I believed them—all of them—that he’d had a plan to keep me safe. A stupid plan, maybe, but he’d promised never to abandon me, and for some reason I trusted that he’d been telling me the truth. And now I was about to walk out on him—on both of them, without knowing what happened or even if they were still alive.
I knew I needed to go. I also knew I could never live with myself if I did.
“Wait,” I told her, “I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are,” Gina snapped, “You need to be as far away from this shit as possible.”
“I’m the one they really want.” Now she was the one who hesitated, watching me without moving, and I blew out a sigh of frustration. “They have that whole place locked down tight,” I told her. “I’m your best chance of getting in. I can distract them if nothing else. We’ll figure it out, let’s go.”
She studied me a moment longer in silence. “Fine,” she said finally, “But we’re doing this my way.”
“I really think the one offering herself as bait should get to make the decisions.”
“The fact that you’re offering yourself as bait says you shouldn’t be making any decisions at all.”
She had a point.
The crowd outside scattered
for Gina when she went out, giving her space to lock the door and avoiding eye contact when she walked by—obviously she’d made enough of an impression on them that they didn’t want to get in her way. The same couldn’t be said for their reaction to me, however, the press of bodies closing in behind Gina until my shoulders brushed theirs when I passed. I ignored them the best I could, though I could feel them watching when we left, headed towards the apartments.
“I’ll drive,” I told her, beeping the Jeep open when we got close enough. There was no way I was going back to the factory unless I was driving the getaway car. Gina paused on the sidewalk to take it in, her eyebrows raised.
“Where’d you get this?”
I gave her a sideways glance and climbed in, waiting until we were buckling our seatbelts to answer. “I stole it.”
Her eyes rolled. “You and my brother are perfect for each other. Who did you steal it from?”
“A cop.” My hands tightened on the wheel in case she tried to change my mind about driving. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Gina pulled a pair of sunglasses from her pocket and slipped them on, settling comfortably back in her seat. “Nope.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
I pulled my cell from my pocket and looked at the readout, my stomach clenching when I finally opened the text messages. I thought I was ready for anything—angry threats being high on the list of possible things Ethan had to say to me. Instead, I stared down at twenty-three text messages that all said the same thing.
You didn’t kill him.
A sob escaped me, and I covered my mouth, the screen blurring as my eyes filled with tears. Gina looked over in alarm, then leaned to read the message on my phone. “What the fuck?” I didn’t stop her when she took the phone from me to scroll through the rest of the messages before looking up at me again. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“I shot one of them,” I said shakily, “One of the guys who attacked us yesterday at the warehouses. I shot him in the leg and ran, and he turned up dead.”
“You thought you killed him.” Her mouth twisted up in a humorless smile. “No big loss if you had. It’s not like I don’t think abou—” She stiffened suddenly in her seat. “Shit. We need to go.”
I wiped furiously at my eyes, squinting down the street at what she was staring at. A group of men were walking towards the bar, moving like a malignant force down the sidewalk.
We weren’t the only ones who had spotted them; the crowd in front of Duke’s was now moving nervously, clustering together as one, shifting like sheep when a wolf is near. As I watched, one of the women broke free, a worried look on her face as she hurried past us with a click of her stilettos on pavement, casting nervous glances behind her. It took me a moment to recognize her as the same woman who’d been talking to me outside of the bar since I’d arrived. Once she had gone, the hold on the rest of them disintegrated, her departure apparently permission for them to scatter, some into the apartment building, others down alleys and around corners. Within a minute, the space in front of Duke’s was empty, and there was nothing standing between us and the men. They were still about a block away, but a darkness pushed ahead of them like a wave—even at that distance I could feel the pressure in my head beginning to build. I pressed my palms to my temples as the chanting started—my body beginning to shake. I could feel the pull inside of me to join them, one hand reaching for the door handle. I knew, somehow, that all of this was for nothing. There was nowhere to run, no reason to hide. I belonged to Him. I belonged with Him. I—
Fight.
The word came faintly through the chanting in a strained, rasped voice. My hand froze on the handle, suddenly aware of what I was doing. “No,” I gasped, my body jerking against the unseen force trying to push me from the car. Each second I resisted, the pressure inside my head increased until I thought I might scream with the pain.
“Avery!”
It was Gina’s voice this time, not Carter’s, that pulled me from it, the sound of her panic jerking me back from the edge. I stared at her unseeing, my teeth gritted as the pressure slowly faded and my vision cleared. She pointed, and I blinked at her in confusion before looking back down the street where the men were now about half a block away now. “Shit.” My hand shot forward, fumbling with numb fingers to turn the key in the ignition, the Jeep rumbling to life just before I threw it into drive and made a sharp U-turn from the curb. Gina twisted around in her seat, watching through the small back window. “They’re going towards the bar,” she said after a moment, her tone oddly flat. She turned back, slumping in her seat. “I think you just saved my life.”
I glanced in the review mirror but didn’t slow down, taking several turns at random before a red light finally brought us to a halt. Only then did I look at Gina, who was staring at my phone again.
“E.H. is the cop, right?”
“Yes, why?”
Gina turned the phone where I could see the flashing screen. “He’s calling you.” My hand shook when I took the phone from her, but I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. “You can’t tell him what we’re doing,” Gina warned before I could answer, “Half the cops in Dust belong to the Templars.”
“Not this one,” I shook my head when she gave me a look. “I know, I know. I won’t tell him.” The traffic light had turned green, but there was no one coming from any direction—even the sidewalks were empty. It was like the entire city had gone into hiding, taking shelter from an incoming storm. The phone was still flashing Ethan’s number and I braced myself, hitting the button before it could roll to voicemail.
“Hello?”
I heard a muffled oath of surprise and a sudden shuffling—after twenty-something tries, he’d probably given up thinking I would answer. “Avery. Thank god.” Guilt flashed through me at the relief in his voice. “Did you get my texts?”
“Yes. Is he still dead?”
“He’s dead, but you didn’t kill him. The gunshot was a flesh wound. He died from a massive brain hemorrhage.”
I felt myself go cold. “A what?”
“In really simple terms, his brain exploded.”
“Fuck. Did he have the—”
“Yes, he had the mark. Avery, no one knows about the leg, you won’t even be brought in for questioning. You don’t need to run. I can help you.”
“It’s too late, Ethan.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“I’m sorry about the Jeep.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the Jeep. You turned off the tracking on your phone. Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Avery—”
“I’m sorry, Ethan.” My voice cracked, and I shook my head, pushing out the thoughts of him and the protection he offered. I knew there was nowhere safe for me now. “Thank you for trying.” I disconnected and dropped the phone into the center console, ignoring Gina to stare out the front windshield at the empty street. Ethan was a cop, who in less than twenty-four hours had lost track of me twice—there was no way he’d sit back and allow it to happen again. He was coming for me now. My fingers curled around the steering wheel. “We need a different car.”
“We can take mine. Make a left on Graham.”
“Where is it?”
“My mom’s,” she frowned, scanning the empty streets around us as we drove. “We need her help, anyway.”
“With what?”
“You’re getting worse,” Gina said bluntly, “We need something to keep them from getting to you.”
“How is your mom going to do that?”
“Magic,” Gina shrugged, then pointed to an upcoming street. “Turn right.”
The highway ran east to west through Dust, and on either end the factories had taken advantage of the easy shipping access by dominating the outskirts of the city. To the north, however, housing developments sprung up in several small suburbs just outside the city limits, consisting mostly of single-family homes built in tidy cul-de
-sacs with street names like Whispering Grove and Shady Glen. Whatever vision planned for these communities had long since been lost, but in some neighborhoods, it was clear the residents had banded together to keep the American dream alive despite the creeping darkness. Houses were painted, yards mowed, and cars were mid-sized, though here and there the rot showed through in foreclosure postings and faded For Sale signs. These were the good people, the hopeful ones who struggled to make a living in what was left of Dust, pouring their salaries into mortgages on homes that no one wanted anymore—not even the banks.
I followed Gina’s directions, and in about twenty minutes, was pulling into a neighborhood about a quarter mile from Maria’s. I parked at the curb in front of a tidy blue shuttered house with a dark green minivan in the driveway, figuring it would only take a day or two before the owners got sick of looking at the mud-splashed Jeep sitting in their front yard and called it in. It seemed the easiest way to get it back to Ethan in one piece, and I locked it up before falling into step beside Gina, each of us with a piece of my luggage in hand.
We hadn’t spoken much on the drive over; Gina had called ahead, and the result was a long, loud conversation in Spanish that I had no hope of following. I’d occupied myself instead by looking down streets and through the windows of buildings in a constant search for Carter. Deep down I knew I’d never find him that way—he’d always come to me, not the other way around. Still, the gnawing memory of my dream kept me looking. Just in case.
Into Dust: The Industry City Trilogy - Book One Page 16