“Don’t.” Shawn buckled himself into place. “Just fly us down.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
New Seattle had become a fractured city. Not just politically, but in every literal way.
For the second time in as many days, Kayleigh sat inside a helicopter circling the city that was all she knew of the world. Outside the protective walls, just visible in a sea of black, the earth was desolate and cracked, fissures opened along the path of the Old-Sea Trench. She could trace it by memory—every schoolchild knew in what direction the fault line reached out—but now she could see it, clear as day.
Portions of the city looked as if claws had been taken to the streets. The layer cake tilted, ruptures slanting from lower tiers to upper looking more like wounds bleeding shadow than the fissures they were.
Lights flashed, neon still popped and brightened as if nothing was wrong, yet as the helicopter sank below, Kayleigh touched the cool glass beside her and knew she was looking at the end of an era.
The earthquake must have triggered somewhere in the fault line. The ensuing tremors jerked the city back and forth, and the tiers had shifted like a house of cards on the razor edge of collapse. The engineers had done well; fifty years of effort didn’t end in the obliteration of the city as before.
But it was an end.
“Come on, Simon, stay with me.” Parker hadn’t stopped murmuring. Her voice remained calm, low. Soothing. The very fact she hadn’t started screaming brought tears to Kayleigh’s eyes.
She was strong. Her baby would have a fighting chance. It was all Kayleigh could hope for.
Her tears didn’t fall. Gritty and dry, it was as if her body refused to lose anything more.
She looked away from the window.
Dark eyes met hers. A spark inside Shawn’s gaze quickly banked to stony resolve, and they slowly closed.
Exhaustion carved deep grooves into his blood-caked features. His head lolled as the helicopter circled, hands tucked into his jacket. It hid the scrapes, the blood and dirt ground into his knuckles.
Her father’s blood?
“Jonas, do you copy?” Silas kept trying the comm. His voice, like Parker’s, remained low, as if afraid to tip over the balance of eerie calm in the cargo bay.
The woman flying the chopper said nothing.
Shawn had called her Amanda. Even while searching for her comm, she’d heard the pain in his voice.
His friend. His lover? Maybe once?
Kayleigh’s throat ached as she closed her eyes. Good for him. Them.
Maybe he’d find some peace.
She must have dozed. The next thing she knew, a warm hand curved over her shoulder and Shawn murmured, “Kayleigh. We’re here, Kayleigh.”
Groggy, eyes crusted over, she scrubbed at her face as a flurry of activity outside the open cargo door greeted her.
Generators thrummed loudly, a racket drowned only by the helicopter’s blades slowing.
“Phin!” Silas called.
A handsome, dark-haired man jogged into view, wasted no time in helping Silas carry a clammy, bone-white Simon from the helicopter. “How bad?” he demanded.
“We need Naomi,” Silas roared back, both men hunching under the blades. “Where’s Jessie?”
“The shake knocked out communications,” the man yelled back. “She’s fine, with Jonas.”
Palpable relief softened Silas’s grim features.
Shawn slid out of the cargo door in their wake, turned and offered a hand, but Kayleigh had already moved. Insides quaking, she hit the broken pavement on feet that felt like bricks, squinted in the eye-shattering light flooding the makeshift landing pad.
Tents made of tarp and plastic rippled in the helicopter’s squall, people ducked as they hurried back and forth across the field of equipment, parked vehicles and more. Somewhere, a generator failed, and a quarter of the lights flickered.
Shawn’s hand dropped as she passed him silently.
“Out of the way,” a woman yelled. Kayleigh stepped back as a jaw-droppingly gorgeous woman with three eyebrow piercings and a lip ring pushed by her. “How bad is it?” she asked, echo of the man named Phin, who smiled in welcome and just as quickly fell solemn.
“Naomi! Thank God. Gunshot wound, maybe some damage from debris,” Parker said rapidly. “He’s been bleeding steadily.”
The woman called Naomi—the one who’d loaned out her clothes, and Kayleigh could see the street-chic flair mimicked in her tight shredded jeans and vinyl-patched crimson jacket—pointed back the way she’d come. “Meet him at the first triage station. Go!”
“Wait.” Phin caught the back of her head, pulled her close for a hard, fast kiss. “I’ll be at the second station. Don’t overstrain yourself.”
Naomi grinned, lots of teeth. “Won’t. I’ve got a battery.”
The man glanced beyond her, his gaze skimming off Kayleigh to fall on another woman, who nodded as she passed. This one, short and curvy, held out a small can. “And I brought you one of Jonas’s boosters,” she announced, less encouraging than skeptical. “At his insistence.”
Phin raised his hands, moving back. “Take care of her, Jules.”
She stared at the chaos, enfolded in an icy blanket of shock.
A hand caught her arm.
She looked up, everything unfolding in slow motion, and found Shawn looking down at her. His face, so hard beneath his mask of blood and dirt, framed eyes that glittered in the flooding light. “Kayleigh. Please listen—”
Her gaze slid away. Whatever energy she had left pooled to the soles of her feet. Leaked out. “What is there to say?” she asked dully. “You took the shot. It’s done.”
“Don’t. Please, don’t.”
Her laugh tore through her empty chest. “Despite everything, he was my dad. I need . . .” She turned; his hand slid away. “I need time.” Lifting her fingers to her ear, she plucked the mic from it. Held it out.
Face carved in mud and stone, he took the black device.
“Parker!” A man, too boyishly handsome to be over thirty, jumped from the edge of the lot. He waved his hands. “Parker, we need your help, now!”
“But Simon—”
“I know, I know, but Jonas needs—”
Too much. It was all too much. Kayleigh stepped away from the chaos, from the shouting debate that ensued behind her. Hollow and cold, she clutched her rescued comm to her chest and went in search of something. Somewhere.
Anywhere.
“Move.”
Jessie heard his approach seconds before Silas shoved open the storefront door. The tiny bell strung at the doorknob jingled.
Braced against the back of Jonas’s chair, she looked up from the string of gibberish the man hammered out of his keyboard. “I’m fine,” she said automatically. “We lost communications due to the impact, nobody here specifically is hurt. Is Parker okay? Tell me she’s okay.”
Silas didn’t stop. Didn’t say anything.
She knew him—knew him like she knew her own heart—and nothing short of reassuring himself would do. Until then, it was like talking to a wall.
“Parker’s fine, I sent her for a quick checkup.” Jonas leaned out from his chair, one thin elbow braced on the table. Bags under his eyes told the same story everyone else was already singing the refrain to: exhaustion, nonstop effort.
Unlike most everyone else, though, Jonas was the glue keeping the resistance cells organized for the citywide rescue efforts. With the resistance leader still under care, even with Naomi’s stretched-thin help, Jonas was all they had.
Silas stepped around two harried volunteers who stopped dead, took one look at the fierce intensity all but burning up the air around him, and hastily got the hell out of his way.
Jessie straightened ruefully.
“You guys.” Jonas sighed. “You know I love you both dearly, but if this is going to be one of those moments, get the hell out of my command center.”
Not that it was much of one. The place was a wr
eck, many of the clothes it had once displayed now distributed among the needy, the rest shoved aside to make room for the tech.
Jessie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Got this,” she murmured.
Silas reached her just as Jonas chuckled softly. The man turned back to his computer, ignoring Jessie’s muffled sound of resigned amusement as callused fingers encircled her wrist, and without a single word, turned and dragged her back out of the store.
“Send Parker in if you see her,” Jonas called. “And hurry up, Jess, I need your eyes.”
The door swung shut.
Her amusement died as Silas rounded on her.
Under the grime, gray-touched green eyes blazed at her, fury entangled with stark fear. “That,” he growled, entangling his fingers into her hair and tipping her face up, “will never fucking happen again.”
She didn’t cringe when he bodily moved her from the doorway, tucking her up against the front facing. Glass thunked hollowly behind her, but it didn’t hurt. She trusted him. With more than just her well-being.
“I’m sorry.” She met his furious stare and, as she was trying so hard to remember how to do, didn’t lie. She didn’t have to lie anymore, not with him. “I went into a vision to try and see the connections Lauderdale had. After a few false starts, I followed one all the way to the Trench.”
He was silent, fingers tight at her scalp.
“He’d set up a serious bomb right in the crevice. Judging by the looks of things, it wasn’t his first.” She slipped one hand up his shirt, warmth filling her. His heavy muscles leaped under her touch, his heart hammered against her palm.
The fire in his eyes altered.
She didn’t have to lie to change his focus. Hiding a smile, Jessie said very seriously, “I was fine. I was careful and didn’t cross the boundary between seeing and affecting. Jonas says that Lauderdale must have been trying to find that perfect spot to trigger an all-new city-busting earthquake. Silas, that thing was freaking huge.”
“God damn it, sunshine, you could have—!”
“No,” she cut in quickly. “Don’t go there. Matilda’s cure left me more stable, remember? I was never in danger from the bomb. When it blew up in the Trench, it hit that earthquake nerve because there was the first shake, then I saw the rest. That’s when I tried to warn you, but I had literally seconds as the shockwave spread.”
“Fuck me,” he rasped, leaning down to rest his forehead against hers. His eyes closed as he inhaled deeply through his nose. “Communications dropped, I didn’t know . . .” He couldn’t finish the statement.
Jessie didn’t want him to. “Hey.” As she pushed up on tiptoes, her lips found his with unerring accuracy; his fingers tightened in her hair. Between one breath and the next, he stepped forward, pinned her between his hard body and the unyielding storefront glass. A rough hand tilted her head, and the reassuring kiss she’d intended altered into a mind-blowing, heart-pounding mesh of lips and tongue and breath.
Thunk! The glass shuddered as a fist pounded once from the inside.
Jessie startled, eyes flying open, but Silas only palmed the glass over her head and rumbled, “Fuck off, Stone, she’s busy.”
Jonas’s laughter, beautifully serene, trickled out. “Sorry, Smith, I need her back.”
“You don’t get her.”
She grinned up at him, lips tingling. Skating her nails gently over his ridged abs, she withdrew her hand and promised, “Later. You need a bath, and I need to help.”
Blunt fingertips slid over her cheek. The manic fear was gone from his eyes, but the lines carved into his dust-smeared face didn’t ease. “Don’t wear yourself out. Juliet’s with Naomi.”
“I’m good.”
“I know you are, sunshine. That’s why I worry.” He straightened his arms, a modified push-up that flexed powerful muscles. It sent zingers of appreciation from toes to forehead. “I’ll bring food in an hour.”
“I’ll find a dark corner where we can . . .” Jessie licked her lips. “Eat.”
His chuckle, as much thunder as laughter, followed her back into the store.
“All right, Jonas,” she said, feeling much more at ease. “Where else can I look for you?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I couldn’t believe it when they told me who you were.” Juliet Carpenter sat on the edge of a cooler dredged up for Kayleigh’s use in the small tarp tent, the wilting edge of a patchwork blanket sliding off the plastic top beneath her.
Kayleigh smiled at her, but with hesitation. For the past twenty-four hours, she’d managed exactly five hours of exhausted sleep, untold hours helping the endless train of injured as they came—some under their own power, others carried by volunteers. She’d worked herself to the bone, threw herself into every task she could. Avoided addressing anything but the triage line of fractures, lacerations, worse.
It was easier than coping.
Now, she faced a tent full of expectant faces and wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. “I’m sorry?”
“No, don’t be.”
Easy for Juliet to say.
She was much shorter than Kayleigh had pictured when she’d first gone over Mrs. Parrish’s old files. Operation Wayward Rose, one of Sector Three’s most classified missions, had focused on finding Juliet Carpenter, for reasons Mrs. Parrish had never made clear.
It was the same mission that had killed her.
Now here Juliet sat, right in front of Kayleigh. Her figure was notably curvy beneath her street-worn jeans and definitely too-big sweater, and her skin had that quality of pale reserved for the majority of people who didn’t see the sun much. She’d spent, according to the data Kayleigh had acquired, twenty-five years in the low streets, which explained it.
Her short, choppy black hair gleamed in the fluorescent white light. She tucked it behind one ear, drawing attention to lighter brown roots contrasted at the crown of her head. She was pretty. Not like Parker’s classic beauty or Naomi’s downright intimidating sex appeal, but in a warm sort of way.
Kayleigh could see why Caleb Leigh had a hard time letting her out of his sight.
Or maybe, she thought as he glowered at her, arms folded across his chest, he had a hard time letting Juliet into Kayleigh’s sight.
He loomed behind her, scars outlined in sharp relief by the generator-fueled lantern clipped to the bar over Kayleigh’s impromptu work desk.
Still alive, and definitely kicking.
Lounging behind him, propped on the only chair his designated nursemaid had been able to find, Simon watched them with tired but razor-keen eyes. She felt like a bug under a microscope. Of them all, only Juliet and the dark-haired young man introduced as Danny—under strict orders to keep an eye on Simon and make sure he rested, much to both men’s chagrin—seemed to hold no animosity toward her.
Simon, however, seemed to hate the world. She couldn’t blame him. He was starting to look rough only a few weeks ago, but now he looked like hell. Cheeks sunken, drawing more attention to the contrast of his sharp cheekbones, and bruised circles under his jaundiced eyes gave him a skeletal appearance she found disturbing on too many levels.
Not the least of which was the knowledge that his degeneration labored in the last stages. She wanted to ask him questions, mark his progress, help in some way, but he watched her with such open hostility that she wasn’t sure how to try.
Manufacturing the Eve sequence would be a start. She had hours, maybe. The wounds he’d sustained had taken a terrible toll. If Naomi kept using her purported healing powers on him—and Kayleigh’s fingers itched to get samples of her DNA to study—then maybe she had days.
Kayleigh wound a plastic strip around Juliet’s arm, slanting Caleb a wary look as he shifted impatiently.
“Don’t mind him,” Juliet said, amusement thick in the dismissal. “He’s half convinced you’re out to poison me or kidnap me or cook me up and feed me to the wounded.”
Caleb, any boyish good looks he might have possessed long since ha
rdened into stark, edged planes, glowered. “She’s a Lauderdale.”
The reminder hurt. It was supposed to.
Forcing herself not to wince, Kayleigh twisted the tie in place and said soothingly, “You’re going to feel a pinch.”
Juliet closed her eyes, her free hand reaching up to her shoulder.
A scarred hand claimed it, held it tightly. “You sure you want to do this, Jules?”
“Yes.” A harsh whisper, and Kayleigh didn’t waste time. Quickly, before the girl could change her mind, she inserted the needle into the thick vein at the crook of Juliet’s arm.
Juliet flinched, a whimper caught in her throat. Her knuckles went white in Caleb’s.
“It’s okay,” Kayleigh murmured. “Almost done.” She released the tourniquet, drew three vials of blood as rapidly as she dared. “Jessie warned me you’d feel this way about needles, so I’m being fast as I can.”
“Comes from spending your life poked and prodded by them,” Simon said, and if his voice wasn’t quite cutting, it hadn’t warmed by any stretch.
“It’s fine,” Juliet said between her teeth. “For God’s sake, Simon, be nice.”
“No.” Kayleigh didn’t look at the injured man as she withdrew the tube and pressed a swatch of gauze to the woman’s skin. “He doesn’t have to be.”
Someone, one of the men, snorted.
She couldn’t be sure who as she added softly, “Put your fingers here, hold it in place.”
Juliet did as suggested, her pretty light green eyes serious as they flicked to Simon. “I don’t hold her accountable.”
“I do,” he said.
“She didn’t make us.”
Kayleigh winced, collecting the three capped vials and turning back to her microscope. “It’s okay,” she started, only to shrink, ducking her head, as Simon growled, “We’re just as much Mattie’s as she is.”
Danny breathed out a sigh. “Calm down, Simon, or Parker’s going to be pissed.”
“Parker’s not here,” he retorted, and turned his hazel regard back to Kayleigh. She felt it boring into the side of her head. “What’s the point of bleeding us, Kayleigh? You’re only reinforcing the comparisons between you and—”
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 25