by Kit Rocha
"Just in case," Dallas agreed, turning back toward the car. He wasn't going to make Bren say it. If there were assassins crawling out of the city, the hospital could wait. Dallas needed to park his ass somewhere Eden couldn't get to him.
Someone had to lead this damn rebellion.
Ryder
"You really think that crazy bastard can pull this off?"
Ryder tossed his napkin onto his cleared plate and eyed his mentor. Jim Jernigan had been more than a boss to him over the years. More like an uncle—and if you listened to the stories his mother liked to tell about the early years, that was nearer to the truth than anything else. Jim and his father had been as close as brothers, but with the kind of bond that was stronger because it was choice, not blood.
Sometimes Ryder thought that must be why Jim admired Dallas O'Kane so much—because he hadn't stopped with one best friend. He'd made a whole fucking family for himself.
"I don't know," he answered finally. "It's a little late to worry about it, though, isn't it? All the pieces are already in play."
"You know better than that. We can stop worrying when we're dead." Jim finished his drink and eyed Ryder over the rim of the glass. "Will the hospital be ready?"
"Stocked and supplied. The rest is up to Dr. Jordan."
His distaste must have shown on his face, because Jim laughed. "Don't count the good doctor out, Ryder. Once upon a time, he was Eden's brightest young star."
"A shooting star, maybe." He'd sure as hell burned out like one. "I don't trust people who can't handle their business without crawling into a bottle of anything."
Jim rose to his feet. "That doesn't leave very many people."
A gentle admonition, but Ryder took it to heart. He had to get better about that if he was going to be working with the other sector leaders. Not everyone had spent years infiltrating Mac Fleming's regime, watching him do things with drugs that were barely human, much less humane. "Sorry, you're right."
"So are you." Jim clapped a hand to his shoulder. "That's why you're the only one I could trust with Five. You'll make the right calls."
"I'll try—" The door slammed open, cutting him off with a tremendous bang as the solid wood rebounded against the wall.
"Get down!" Even as Jim shouted the words, he was shoving Ryder out of his chair. It tipped over and crashed to the floor. His head hit the leg of the conference table, and he saw stars—bright, blinding, loud as fuck—
Not stars—gunshots. Ryder rolled off the floor, his gun already in his hand, training taking over for his bewildered, aching head. He fired—once, twice, three times, and when the assailant fell to the plush carpet, another bullet for good measure.
"Ry—" His name disappeared in a wheezing cough.
He whirled around. Jim had fallen against the window, the blinds buckling under his weight. Four bright blotches of red had seeped through his white dress shirt, soaking the starched fabric as they slowly spread.
"No." Ryder lunged for him, caught him just as he collapsed, but he knew it was too late. There was no life left in the sightless pair of pale blue eyes that stared up at him.
Jim was gone.
Gideon
Maricela fretted when Gideon didn't finish his breakfast. It was the only reason he was still pushing the eggs around his plate, pretending he had any intention of eating them.
Mad had arrived in the sector by foot after nightfall, crashed in the Riders barracks, and torn out before dawn on a borrowed motorcycle. The fact that he'd avoided the house and his comfortable bedroom in favor of sleeping in Deacon's empty bunk was telling. Undoubtedly, it had everything to do with the rumors winding their way through the sectors—rumors that Jade had taken her first bloody stand as a sector leader.
Deacon had been displeased. Not that he'd said so in as many words, of course. To the Riders, Jade was already an extension of the Rios family. They wanted to protect her the same way they sheltered Isabela and Maricela, the way they fought to shelter Gideon. To them it was that simple—they'd accepted damnation and an afterlife devoid of forgiveness, so what was one more drop of blood on their hands?
The fact that Jade didn't see it that way gave Gideon hope. Hope that he now had another ally who saw leadership as a responsibility, who wouldn't ask for what she wasn't willing to give.
It would take time for Mad to see it that way, but Gideon had to believe he would. Mad deserved the peace that came with love, perhaps more than anyone Gideon had ever met.
As for what he deserved... Gideon would push the damn scrambled eggs around his plate all day if it helped him avoid thinking about it.
The click of his office door opening stole even that distraction. Sighing, he let the fork clatter to the plate and rose as one of the workers assigned to the kitchens stepped in. "Do me a favor, Donny, and scrape the plate before it gets back to the kitchen. Maricela will scold—"
It was as far as he got. When he glanced up, Donny was staring at him, his blue eyes bloodshot and red, his expression tortured. Gideon's vision narrowed to the gun in his shaking hand, shock slowing everything to a crawl. He saw Donny's finger squeeze the trigger, saw his hand jerk.
The crack of the shot snapped the world back into focus as pain exploded through his abdomen. Hot, grinding, nauseating pain so intense he fell back into his chair.
Or maybe that was the surprise. Of all the ways he'd imagined leaving this world—and he'd imagined so many, too many, sometimes with an air of anticipation that would have scared the shit out of anyone who knew him—this had not been among them.
Shot by a follower racked with silent sobs so intense, he couldn't even take him out cleanly.
Tears streaked Donny's cheeks, and words tumbled from his lips, words Gideon had to reach for through the pain. "—sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want to, I didn't, but—"
"But someone in Eden threatened your family," Gideon guessed. It wasn't a very clever guess—the man was clearly here under duress—but Gideon was who he was. He uttered mundane logic, and true believers heard the prescience of a god among men.
Donny paled even more, his fingers twitching as if he wanted to cross himself. "They have my eldest son," he whispered. Begging for forgiveness, with his eyes and voice and the tears that made his words waver. "I thought, the wine—it would have been painless. I just wanted it to be over. But I moved too fast, and they punished him for it. I have to get it right this time."
Moved too fast. Those words were important, more important than his lingering anger over Mad's brush with death, more important than his own pulsing agony and the blood drenching his fingers. They implied a timeline. Coordination.
Sector leaders. Kill enough of them all at once, and chaos would sweep through their territories. Any glint of rebellion would die. The O'Kanes might hold it together if Lex or enough of Dallas's inner circle survived, but Jim had held absolute power in his own two hands, Five would fracture into factions without Ryder, and Isabela and Maricela…
They'd be fighting to quell a holy war, maybe even fighting to start one. Unless Mad survived to help them, but Mad would be…
"Gideon, what's—" Maricela hovered in the doorway, a look of disbelief frozen on her features. "Donny?"
Donny began to turn toward her, and panic lent Gideon the strength to stand. "Maricela, get out."
The disbelief vanished, overtaken by horror. "Santa Adriana—Gideon!" She rushed into the room, straight to his side, and he bit back a snarl of frustration as she pressed a trembling hand to his blood-soaked shirt. "What happened?"
"Maricela, please." Donny's hand trembled as fresh panic filled his eyes. He was strung so tightly, his finger still on the trigger, but Maricela ignored the danger. No, not ignored—she was oblivious, because they'd sheltered and cosseted her so completely, she simply couldn't fathom a world in which her life hung by a thread as fragile as a desperate man's terror.
"You." Trembling with anger, she spun to face that desperate man. "How could you do this? How?" She rounded the desk,
each step taking her closer to death.
Donny would pull the trigger. As soon as he realized he was already damned for Gideon's murder, he'd salvage the only thing he could—his son's life in exchange for two deaths. Gideon tried to lunge after Maricela, to pull her back, but his knees buckled after two steps. He crashed to the floor as fresh pain spasmed through him, graying the edges of his vision.
Maricela reached for the gun, still bold, still oblivious—until Donny slapped her away, his cry of alarm nearly drowned out by the blood roaring in Gideon's ears. He caught one glimpse of Maricela's face—shocked, a splash of angry red spreading over her ashen cheek.
Then she screamed, not in terror but in sheer, righteous fury, and threw herself at Donny.
Gideon must have had one foot already in the grave, because he heard a whole damn symphony in that scream. An opera, an awakening. Shattered innocence and thundering rage and grief clawing at her heart, and Gideon prayed to every martyred relative in his family tree and the God his grandfather had profaned, prayed that Maricela would survive and Isabela would protect her, and Mad—
Moved too fast.
There was no mercy in the blackness swimming up to claim him. Because someone was killing sector leaders.
And Mad would be with Jade.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There were advantages to being a Rios.
There were also disadvantages.
Currently, the largest disadvantage was standing between Mad and the door to the gardens. If life had turned out a little differently, Mad might have held the place Deacon did. Right-hand to Gideon. Leader of the Riders. Steeped in the same amount of blood, etching reminders on his skin, and facing a bleak, lonely future.
Well, that last part might not turn out so differently if Deacon didn't move. But he stood there, solid and implacable, every second ticking him closer to outright disobedience.
No, that wasn't fair. Deacon wouldn't consider a refusal to move disobedience if he truly believed that keeping Mad from Jade meant protecting Mad from himself. Mad simply refused to agree with him. "I have to see her, Deacon."
Deacon folded his arms over his chest.
"I need to apologize. For both our sakes."
"She doesn't want to see anyone. Sir."
Mad couldn't stop the wry smile from curving his lips. "Which one of us are you protecting?"
Deacon answered with a rueful grin of his own. "What, it can't be both of you?"
Of course it would be. Because who could watch Jade, witness her passion for protecting this sector, and not feel the pull of loyalty? Jade was everything Sector One revered—a warrior for good.
"I won't push her," Mad promised quietly. "But I hurt her, Deacon. She needs to know I believe in her, and I need to tell her."
For a few agonizing heartbeats, Mad didn't know if the man would relent. But he finally did, with a terse nod and a jerk of his head. "I'll be inside."
Mad waited for him to turn the corner before stepping through the metal gate.
The gardens were extensive and pristinely maintained. Hedges were trimmed to perfection, flowerbeds sat turned and tended, and carefully raked gravel paths wound between shaded arbors climbing with vines, stands of trees, and a fountain that was the twin of the one in the front yard.
The only thing missing was the workers. Dozens should have cluttered the paths, busy with the spring chores of weeding and planting. Jade's desire for solitude must have been absolute, which only wrenched the guilt in Mad's gut into tighter knots as he followed the path toward the edge of the woods.
Jade was on her knees next to a raised bed, dressed simply in a homespun skirt and cotton blouse. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a sloppy ponytail, and dirt smudged her cheek and forehead. A pair of discarded work gloves lay at her side as she sank her fingers into the earth, digging a row of neatly spaced holes for the seedlings in the tray next to her.
Mad had rarely seen her in anything but elegant silks—unless she was stripped naked. And he'd rarely seen her without her hair perfectly arranged—unless she was fresh from his shower or panting for breath after a screaming orgasm. This woman with dirt under her nails and a total disregard for perfect presentation could have been a stranger.
Then she looked up at him, her brown eyes seething with hurt and challenge and the tiniest hint of mocking acknowledgment, as if she knew precisely what he was thinking.
Jyoti.
She would expect an apology. He had come prepared to give her one. But that look stirred a deeper memory of the first time he'd laid eyes on her. It seemed like a million years ago, that meeting in Cerys's house where Dallas had ended up with control of Sector Three—and Lex in his bed.
Cerys had sent Jade to them. To him and Bren, more accurately, no doubt with orders to coax O'Kane secrets from brutish bodyguards who would get stupid the instant a pretty lady touched their dicks. And Mad had been so noble, so full of righteous anger, so ready to see her as a helpless victim.
She'd seen through him from the first. Her lips had quirked, her eyes had filled with that wry, mocking challenge. And before he had a chance to be honorable, she'd dismissed him and dragged Bren off for who knew what sort of kinky fuckery without a backwards glance.
He had to stop underestimating her.
She tilted her head. "Are you just going to stare at me?"
"I was thinking about the first time we met. At Cerys's estate."
"Oh." Jade sat back and reached for a towel. "That seems like a different world, doesn't it?"
It did, more than a little. There was nostalgia there, a yearning for a time when life as an O'Kane had been simple. When he'd been shattered beyond hope, because there was an easy comfort in knowing you had no chance for something better. It seemed like the more he fit pieces back into his heart, the shakier the ground beneath him became.
But it was worth the fear. They were worth the fear. "A different world, but I keep doing the same stupid shit. I looked at you and saw a victim. I'm sorry."
Jade took her time wiping her hands on the towel before slowly, reluctantly nodding. "You looked at a woman in Sector Two and saw a victim. You were wrong, because it was me. But if it had been someone else—almost anyone else—you might have been right."
It was a hand extended across the chasm between them, and more absolution than he'd expected. "Jade—"
The wind shifted, and a thrill of warning shot up his spine. The hair at the back of his neck stood up, and he was already moving when his brain caught up to tiny clues his instincts had neatly put together. Eerie silence from a forest that had been alive with birdsong while he argued with Deacon. The soft crack of a branch just inside the tree line.
The feeling of being watched.
Sunlight glinted off metal as something sailed out of the trees and bounced toward them. Gut-level recognition had him lunging for Jade as a pop sounded, followed by a gentle hiss. Colored smoke billowed from the sphere, and the sudden sickening sweetness on his tongue answered the question Mad's mind still hadn't had time to ask.
Not just smoke, but some sort of gas. Tear gas, nerve gas—he didn't know, couldn't know. Not until it had them choking or puking up their guts or seizing on the ground.
Jade opened her mouth. Mad covered it with his hand and shook his head. Her thin cotton blouse was feeble protection, but he pulled it up over her mouth and nose and turned her toward the house, keeping his body between her and the woods. "As fast as you can," he told her, hustling her forward. "Try not to breathe it in."
She nodded her understanding and quickened her pace as much as she could in the rising haze. The wind was at their backs, pushing the smoke after them like a pack of hunting hounds. Mad pressed closer to her, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible, all of his focus on outrunning the cloud of smoke.
Jade stumbled, and Mad jerked her off her feet and hauled her clear of the encroaching smoke. The house loomed ahead of them, twenty feet, fifteen… The back door flew open, and he'd never been s
o fucking glad to see Deacon in his life. He staggered the last ten feet and shoved Jade at him. "Get her to safety. I'll deal with this."
"No!" Jade's hand shot out, her fingers tangling in his jacket. "Come with us, Mad."
"I can't." It risked shattering their moment of understanding, but Jade's survival trumped everything. "You're a sector leader now. Your job is to get someplace secure so you can keep protecting the people depending on you. Just like Dallas would." He cupped her cheek. "My job is to take care of the problem."
She hesitated, her eyes shuttered. Then she wrenched free of Deacon's grasp to grab Mad's hair, hauled him down, and kissed him hard. "Come back," she whispered hoarsely. "Come back, or Scarlet and Dylan will never forgive me."
Scarlet and Dylan would never forgive him for playing the martyr, for sinking a blade of guilt into Jade's heart. If he died today, like this, the wound would bleed forever.
So he wouldn't fucking die.
He kissed her again, but Deacon pulled her away. "Watch your ass," he said tersely, then slammed the door.
By the time he turned, the wind had brought the great billows of smoke to him. But he could still breathe and control his muscles, which meant the grenade was probably filled with some sort of psychoactive agent. Soon, he'd be tripping higher than a Sector Five junkie, but at least the smoke offered some cover. He wouldn't make for an easy target.
He drew his pistol and crept slowly into the pale cloud. The earth tilted beneath him as he listened for footsteps, for the slightest hint of his attacker's location, but all that filled his ears was a high-pitched whine that swelled and receded like the tide.
He couldn't trust his eyes, either. Shapes flitted in and out of the smoke, formless and fleeting, and he edged closer to the wall that surrounded the garden. It was something solid, maybe the only thing he could rely on with the ground itself trembling under his feet.
A shot cracked through the air, hitting the wall next to him. The brick splintered, and sharp pain sliced across his cheek, but he didn't care. He didn't care because it gave him a direction. He charged forward, firing at the shadow that darted past him. He was rewarded with a grunt of pain before the smoke swallowed the figure, but he kept firing, following the crunch of gravel under boots.