Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05]

by One for the Wicked

  Silence thrummed on the line, sizzling with tension.

  He didn’t let it hold for long. She knew him better than he knew her, but he knew enough. “Don’t try and find me, May. If you do, I’ll kill her.”

  “If you kill her,” May threw back, “we lose our shot at a cure.”

  “For what?”

  “For people who are dying, Shawn.”

  It took him a moment. When the thought calcified, bypassed shock and disbelief, laughter cracked from his throat.

  A cure for a dying killer.

  He covered his eyes with one hand, blocking out the shadows pressing down from every direction. “For the missionary. Are you kidding me? That’s what all this is about? Some genetic witchy bullshit?” He shook his head sharply. “Fuck him. He can die with all the rest of the Church puppets.”

  “For God’s sake, listen to yourself. Neither Simon nor that girl are responsible for your parents’ death!”

  “Murder.” His throat closed around the word. Squeezed until red climbed in around his vision and he realized he’d stood, feet crunching on grit and debris. “It was murder, May, and the hell she isn’t.”

  “She was just a child! So were you.”

  He was seventeen, and more than old enough to have done something. Anything.

  He didn’t then. He could, now. “She’s in charge of that fucking lab, what do you think she’s responsible for now?”

  “Shawn—”

  “She will return to her precious father when he returns our people.” And gave himself up, but Shawn didn’t say that aloud.

  It surprised him, still, how hard it was to give voice to premeditated murder.

  “Damn it, Shawn—”

  “Sorry.” And he was. Not enough to forgo the plan that would end in the return of a half-dozen resistance fighters, not enough to give in to the woman who’d saved him from a fate like them—a fate like his parents—but enough to give her that much. “One goddamned missionary isn’t worth them. He isn’t even worth one of them.”

  “That’s not how this operation—”

  He snapped the lid closed, severing the connection. For a long moment, only his breathing—fast, tight, a thin veneer of calm—filled the silence.

  Two days. Laurence Lauderdale got two days. Jenkins, Amanda, Collers, Digs, and the others he didn’t know personally would be home, safe and surrounded by people he knew they’d need to patch them back together. He’d face the music then.

  If Lauderdale played hard to get?

  Shawn’s fingers crushed the comm to the point of pain.

  He’d start sending reminders of the stakes.

  Kayleigh Lauderdale.

  Maybe the woman knew what her father had done. Maybe she didn’t then, but she sure as shit had to now.

  It didn’t matter. She was the enemy. He had to remember that. Let the Church-born witches implode. His people, his friends, mattered more than a bunch of indoctrinated slaves.

  Obviously, you’re a product of your miserable life.

  His feet moved before his brain gave the command; he stepped over broken steps and the shattered remains of wood long since rotted beneath the ever-present damp. Mud and moldering residue squelched beneath his boots. It didn’t pay to wonder too closely what a man strode through down here. Enough people died in the quakes that ripped up the fault lines that he could be walking through a whole slurry of flesh fertilization and never know it.

  Since they worked for the Church, he was positive that the Lauderdale family knew a thing or two about disposing of the dead.

  He uncurled his fingers from the lantern haft, impassively dropped the piece he’d broken off. It clinked behind him, the tinny echoes swallowed up by the eternal night. Unlike the lower streets of New Seattle, no light filtered here that wasn’t brought.

  He’d walked out with the only source of it.

  Was she afraid of the dark?

  A flicker of unease, something that felt suspiciously like sympathy, corded along neural pathways he’d thought himself long since done with.

  It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

  But he’d better go check on her. Just in case.

  Chapter Seven

  She wasn’t going to sit here like some kind of ritual sacrifice. If he wanted her to be good little bait for her father’s money, he had another think coming.

  But what were her options?

  The dark closed in around Kayleigh, a muffling fist squeezing her ribs until even breathing sounded overly loud. Her eyes strained, wide enough to hurt as her brain desperately sought something, anything in the dark. The restraints at her ankles and wrists refused to budge.

  “Okay,” she muttered, the sound of her own voice the only comfort she could find in the pervasive black. She felt it watching her, staring at her.

  She wasn’t going to come up lacking.

  The dark wouldn’t bite. Nor was it doing anything at all but sitting there, filling up the space. She could breathe. Kayleigh forced herself to take a deep breath, just to prove it. See? In and out. Just like normal.

  That left her with only one major problem to solve.

  How to get out?

  She was a smart woman. All she had to do was put all that brainpower to use.

  She turned her head in either direction. Her neck, stiff and sore, complained, her hair drifting over her cheeks, but she saw nothing but the ongoing void around her. She twisted her hand gingerly. The unforgiving strap ground against the fine bones of her wrist; she flinched as one hit a nerve and zinged all the way up her arm.

  It hurt. It hurt bad enough to bring tears to her eyes, but the alternative was worse.

  Adrenaline spiked through her veins, jostled her heart into a frantic beat. Setting her jaw, Kayleigh tested the other wrist, turned it faintly in either direction.

  Was it just her imagination or did the strap give some?

  Another turn, another zinger slammed up her arm, but there it was. The faintest tug, a slide of her skin beneath the fastener. She bared her teeth fiercely in the dark.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, her smile became a clamp of teeth on her lip, a deterrent against any sound she might make as she wrenched her arm toward her body. Pain immediately jangled through her wrist; she clenched her fist, realized the added bulk to her stiffened wrist wouldn’t work, and forced her hand to relax.

  She knew how this worked. There’d be pain, more of it, but her dad hadn’t raised her to quit. Giving in now seemed somehow worse.

  Her jaw ached, chest tightening with a groan she struggled to stifle, but it was nothing compared to the raw agony surrounding her wrist. The skin pulled, tighter and tighter, until it was so taut she imagined it stretched like paper across her bones. The restraint rattled, stuck hard.

  Her fingers pulsed, tight with pressure.

  “Come on,” she hissed between her teeth, and with a muffled cry, she jerked her arm, slammed it again and again through the restraint until something gave, torn or lubricated by sweat or blood.

  Her hand slid out from the restraint, sending tingling pins and needles all the way up to her elbow. It throbbed from wrist to fingertip, and she was positive she’d taken off a few extra layers of skin, but she’d done it. Maybe her duplicitous, son of a bitch captor was trying to be kind; she doubted it. More like, Shawn Lowe didn’t think she had the gumption to hurt herself to get out of the restraints. A little pain, and the rich blond cheerleader would give up. She’d given up her body easy enough.

  Asshole. Showed what he knew.

  Triumph dulled the bite, allowed her to reach for the latch on her other arm, fumble the buckles free. Positively barbaric, this chair.

  Within moments, holding her breath as she stiffly worked the restraints at her ankles, she was free.

  Her fingers skated across a bandage under the hem of her slacks. She stilled.

  He’d wrapped up her leg. Why?

  If it were her—not that she’d ever considered kidnapping a helples
s woman and holding her for ransom—she didn’t see a point to wrapping up a minor injury.

  Was it for her benefit?

  Or his?

  It didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t her only injury of this escapade and she couldn’t dwell on it now, bandaged or not. Her left hand thudded in time with her heartbeat. Until she got somewhere with light, she wouldn’t know if she’d caused real damage or if her limb was just reacting to the temporary loss of blood flow to the region. She could move her fingers, though. A major enough win, given the stakes.

  Now for the rest of her plan. Of which, she realized as she studied the darkness with grim desperation, she had none to speak of. Escape didn’t cover much by way of details.

  Her fingertips pulsed. Wincing, she glanced from side to side, screwed her mouth into a hard frown, and willed the shadows to lessen.

  A warehouse, maybe? If it were insulated well enough, it could explain the cool temperature and musty air. Soundproofing would make the rest of the city fade away, just her and the insane man who’d kidnapped her.

  Was her dad searching for her even now? Frantically mustering agents to locate her, gathering whatever money he could?

  She had to get out. She had to make it home before he worried himself sick.

  Before she disappointed him any more than she already had.

  The first step she took wobbled. Clenching her fists sent shards of pain through her wrist, echoed by a dull ache in her shin, but she didn’t fall. Didn’t run into anything. She used the chair as guide, aware he’d left by striding immediately away from her. Yet he’d initially come at her from behind.

  That meant, she thought very carefully, eyes painfully wide, that there was a second way out. Or maybe an avenue circling around. She couldn’t be sure until she reached the far side.

  Grimacing, she forced her hands out, concentrated on taking step after cautious step. Half expecting to stumble over crates or discarded boxes, she pressed on. The silence mocked her shuffling progress. Her senses, blind and deaf in the dark, screamed that she should stop, turn back, fall into a useless pile of quaking limbs, and wait for rescue.

  No. Her dad would be looking for her. The least she could do was meet him halfway, skin intact.

  She wasn’t afraid of the dark; Kayleigh never had been. She’d spent enough time lying awake in the darkness, counting down the hours until she could justify getting up again. Working again.

  But this? This wasn’t just “dark.” This was a living, breathing force, a smothering shroud sucking the air from her lungs, filling her nose with old, musty aromas that tickled her sinuses and stung her eyes. She smelled . . . things. Things she didn’t recognize, things that put her in mind of old air, forgotten corridors. Like dust and mildew. Old wash left too long.

  Wherever she was, however far from help she might be, she couldn’t be that far from an exit.

  She could do this. She’d done things with genetics everyone else had considered impossible. She’d seen miracles—performed miracles, watched her father build on the miracles her mother had begun. This? This was child’s play.

  All she had to do was walk into the dark.

  Her fists jammed into her stomach as it twisted.

  A muted clink behind her, tinny and hollow, made the decision easy. Light gathered, slowly lighting the pitch-black to something murky and thick. Throwing a wild glance over her shoulder, picking out nothing but more black just ahead, Kayleigh threw caution to the stale air and darted into the unknown.

  She’d expected more than six feet before the floor gave way to nothing.

  She didn’t have time to cry out. Her tongue snagged between her teeth as gravity yanked her over the edge of the missing floor and into oblivion. For the longest second of her life, she hung in suspended animation; a thousand outcomes flashed through her mind, lightning calculations that ended in shattered bones, bloody abrasions, splattered brain matter.

  “Oomph!” Each scenario ended abruptly when she hit the ground, knees folding, wrist twanging like a tightwire as she jutted out her arms to keep from planting face-first into the dirt.

  Flailing for a handhold back up, she found it painfully, abruptly, when her knuckles scraped against cement.

  The foundation of the floor jutted in a semicircle arc around her, ragged to the touch. Only four feet up.

  Relief and adrenaline conspired to send her gasping for breath, giddy laughter rising to her throat. A tiny fall. Not even worth writing home about. Abrasions would heal, the shock would wear off in a matter of seconds, and she’d survived the first step. Take that.

  Over the rim of the jutting floor, the light solidified into a blinding orb.

  She swallowed hysteria down hard, blinking furiously as the light shredded what little night vision she’d succeeded in cultivating. Heart pounding against the bruised cage of her ribs, she half ducked, hunching in an awkward limping stride that took her away from that oncoming light and—she coasted on a surge of triumph—the dangerous man that held it. Breath held, Kayleigh sprinted into the gloom.

  “The hell?”

  A shimmer of gold at the farthest edges of the light jerked his attention away from the empty chair. Shawn leaped into motion, sprinted after her as her shape vanished into the dark recesses of Old Seattle.

  She was going to get herself killed.

  And fuck all if he was going to let his collateral get away that easy.

  The half room he’d stashed her in should have been enough. He’d found it years ago, staked it out this time as the perfect prison for his unwilling guest.

  He hadn’t expected her to magic herself out of the thing.

  Shawn’s feet hit the dirt, light swaying as he caught his balance on the edge of the fractured floor and pushed off after her. “Stop,” he shouted. “Don’t go any farther!”

  Like he expected her to listen to him.

  Son of a bitch, he should have seen this one coming.

  She darted away at the very edges of the light, a willowy ghost playing dodge with the rubble dotting the landscape. The ruins were bad news on any day, but at her reckless pace, she could break a leg, fall headlong into a pit; hell, find the trench and tumble in. The place was a bona fide death trap, and the little fool sprinted through it without care.

  If he were half the man he wanted to be, he’d let her kill herself and never let on. Force Laurence Lauderdale to relive every moment the way Shawn did. The way he always would.

  If only.

  To his disgust, he wasn’t that man. Even now, with the odds stacked against her and the solution to his aggravation laid out right in front of him, Shawn firmed his grip on the lamp. He jumped over the stacked remains of fallen walls, his boots kicking up grit as he navigated the steep slant. Keeping one eye on her and one on his path was a bitch, but he had no choice.

  He knew how easy it was to disappear here. To die here.

  Bracing a shoulder against a broken cornerstone in a sharp slide let him rebound off it in a hard right angle, which allowed him to duck under a broken cornice and shave off a few feet between them. If he played his cards right, he’d intersect with her before she could do much damage to herself or—his shin bounced off a jutting metal tank; he cursed long and hard—to him.

  She stumbled. His guts jerked hard in response as he heard her sheared-off cry.

  Idiot. Idiot of a woman.

  A haunted look over her shoulder showed him the faintest glimpse of her face, a pale oval with wide, hollow eyes. Her hair caught the light swinging in his hand, threw it back in that glinting web of gold, as bright as any flare he could have wished for.

  The light still loved her. Still clung to her, a beacon in the dark.

  He forced his legs to eat up more ground than ever safe in the ruins. Years of cautionary care, gone.

  Slowly, the rest of her body came into focus. She was limping.

  But damned if she was giving up.

  Admiration fizzled beside stone cold fury.

  S
hawn cursed under his breath, sweat dampening his shoulders. A quick scan of the environment gave him nothing to work with—more rock, more fallen buildings, more skeletal foundations thrusting the remains of walls and rooms and barriers into the dark. She stumbled again.

  He watched her pale hand catch the edge of half-tilted doorway. Her arm clipped the frame; she sucked in a ragged breath he heard even through the ear-rattling slam of his pulse as he picked up speed.

  Close. Closer. The light painted the ground in front of her, now, providing her with as much opportunity as it did him.

  Dirt smeared down the back of her blazer, a flash of a pale hand as she flung it behind her for balance provided him all the opportunity he needed.

  With monumental effort, he crouched low, leaped over a pile of treacherous debris she tried to skirt, and snagged that hand. It jerked hard as he landed, twisted in his grasp as he flailed.

  Her eyes flared, threw back the light like diamonds. “Let me go!”

  “Stop— Shit.”

  The scrap gave way beneath him. The light went flying, a flickering globe arcing into the shadows.

  He lost his footing; she lost her balance. As he wrenched Kayleigh in a semicircle with him, it was all he could do to catch her waist in one arm, tuck her hard against his chest, and grit his teeth as every jagged edge, point, prong, and rivet slammed into his side, his back, his forearms wrapped around her back. Metal screamed against metal as his body weight jarred it loose; a line of fire carved itself into one arm.

  To her credit, she didn’t scream.

  But as they came to a stop, debris clattering to stillness around him, Shawn found himself cradling her against his chest, staring up into nothing as he struggled to pull in air through his bruised and battered body.

  The rasping, panting echo was hers.

  Lights sparkled somewhere beyond the scope of his vision, pops and crackling feelers made of shock and pain as his nerves checked back in. Spine, limbs—Christ—fingers, skull . . . Intact.

  Rocks jammed into his back. His tailbone ached like a motherfucker, one elbow throbbed in direct counter to everything else, and yet . . .