by Kit Rocha
It really wasn't fair that he could make a T-shirt and leather jacket look just as fucking elegant.
"The crate," he clarified, then swung his duffel bag off his shoulder and set it down. "Let me."
He lifted it from her arms like it weighed nothing, and she would not gape stupidly at the cotton clinging to his flexing chest as he hoisted the crate onto the pallet.
She. Would. Not.
Grasping for any distraction, she refocused on the duffel bag. Unlike his supple leather jacket, the bag was plain olive-green canvas, sturdy but banged up and frayed at the edges. It meant something important, but her scattered wits couldn't quite do the math, and he was waiting for her to say something. "I figured you'd be over in Five, dealing with Eden."
"No, I'm going to be here." He turned and indicated the next crate with an upraised brow. At her nod, he picked it up as well. "Dealing with Eden."
"Oh." Presumably the bag held his belongings—though Nessa couldn't wrap her head around it. How could everything he needed fit in a bag that size? Maybe if she spent a few minutes prioritizing what vital belongings she'd pack, she could avoid thinking about the implications of having all that gut-punch gorgeous temptation living on the compound with her.
He came back for the next-to-last crate, and Nessa gave herself a hard mental shake. She had to say something normal. Something cool. "Thanks for helping. I usually have an army of lackeys to do the heavy lifting. I guess I should go hit the weight room and buff up or something."
Yeah. Or she could babble at him.
He hesitated, his brows drawing together.
She wondered how flushed her cheeks were and vaguely wished for death. At least it would be quicker. "Just ignore me. I'm a talker. And as you can see…" She waved both arms wide, indicating the empty warehouse. "I'm running low on people to subject to my talking."
"Okay." He hefted the crate and eyed her. "Do you know where Lex is? She said she'd set up a place for me to crash."
"Probably over in the bar." With the final crate loaded, there was no reason not to take him there. "C'mon, I'll walk you."
"Thanks." Ryder retrieved his bag and gave her a once-over, watching her with what she slowly realized was sympathy. "This must be torture for you."
For a second, she felt naked. Those seething, sexy brown eyes could see everything—her painful attraction, her awkward attempt to be smooth, her abject terror that she'd give in and do something stupid like actually want him, because it had seemed dumb before but now it seemed ridiculous, with him standing there with pity in his eyes—
"The hooch, I mean," he went on. "Making this raw stuff for the field. There doesn't seem to be much art in it."
"Oh." Relief drove the word out, and it put her back on solid ground. Booze was the only thing that ever did. "Yeah, well. It's not the most fun part, that's for sure. But I still have plenty of work to do. When you're making the good stuff, liquor's a long game."
"You might be surprised what a long game war can be."
"God, I hope that means you've been planning this forever and not that we're facing, like, ten years of this."
He followed her out the door and into the parking lot without answering.
Ten years of war. She'd thought about the possibility of victory. She'd even thought about the possibility of failure—in a vague, abstract I guess it won't matter if we're all dead by next week sort of way. But the idea of this tense, dangerous standoff dragging into weeks and months… Into years?
Her gut twisted into a knot, and she walked faster. The loose gravel crunched under her boots as they crossed the cracked asphalt, and she hated how loud it was. Sure, it was early in the day, but it shouldn't be so quiet. The guys should be shouting at each other from the warehouse. Trix and Rachel should be playing music as they readied the Broken Circle for the first wave of old-timers who liked to park their aching bones in a booth and warm them up with the whiskey that had made the O'Kanes famous.
How many years could she do this without compromising their ability to bounce back? One, maybe, if she stopped worrying so much about optimal aging. But the grim reality of war had people drinking hard and often, and she was already eyeing some of the six-years that were good enough to pass muster.
More than a couple of years, and she might as well start handing out the moonshine stacked on that pallet.
Shuddering at the thought, she hauled open the back door and waved for Ryder to follow. The corridor led into the empty kitchen, all polished steel and stacked crates—the liquor restock she'd pulled last night according to the new digital system—and a shipment of lemons from Sector One.
On the other side of the swinging door, Lex was setting up trays of glasses behind the bar. She looked up, and a small smile curved her lips. "Hey, Nessa. Ryder."
He nodded.
She straightened and leaned one hip against the counter. "I have to admit, I wasn't sure you'd come through."
Instead of offending him, the words evoked a deep, rich laugh. "I don't know how to run. I'm still open for debate on the wisdom of that trait."
"Then you're in good company here." Nessa hopped onto the counter and leaned her elbows back against the bar. See, it wasn't so hard to stay cool if she didn't actually look directly at his hotness. Though hopefully he wouldn't laugh again—the laughter did funny things to her. "Ryder was looking for you. I guess you promised him a place to stay."
"That I did." Lex wiped her hands on a towel. "Do me a favor and show him up to Ford's old place, yeah?"
Nessa's leg froze in mid-kick. "Me?"
"Yes, you."
Shit. No point in flailing for a way out. Lex had sharp eyes and had known Nessa for way too many years. The only thing worse than embarrassing herself in front of Ryder was doing it in front of the queen of Sector Four. "Sure," she said, sliding back to the floor. "By the way, the pallet's all loaded. I'll be down in the aging room this afternoon."
"Got it. Ryder?" Lex was all business now. "Meeting's at ten. You know the place. Don't be late."
"I never am."
Nessa circled the bar. "This way."
Ryder fell in silently behind her as she threaded her way through the tables to the door that led backstage. "There are outside stairs too," she told him as she started up the narrow steps. "In case you don't wanna wander through the bar every time you leave."
Leather and cotton rustled as he climbed the stairs after her. "I can find my way."
Of course he could. He was a damn sector leader, for fuck's sake, which was why her whole body pulsed with an awareness so intense that she could feel the heat of him behind her on the steps. Her body loved inappropriate men.
She reached the top of the steps and the door to Ford's old apartment. It felt weird opening it without knocking, even though Ford and Mia had been gone for over a month. Someone needed to pick up the pieces in Eight now that the city had assassinated the old leader, and Ford had worked for Jim Jernigan for years before ending up in Sector Four.
Though he wasn't the only one who had. "I guess you knew Ford," she said as she flicked on the lights. They came on strong and bright—having Mia and Ford in control of the wind farms in Seven had at least gotten them off unreliable generators.
"Not well." Ryder glanced around the office. Ford's desk and filing cabinets had been moved, leaving a wide-open space in the middle of the rest of the furniture. "Jim tried to keep me away from him as much as possible."
"That sucks." Ford could be a stick-in-the-mud and a stubborn ass, but he was their stubborn ass, and she couldn't quite stop herself from defending him. "Jim missed out, driving him away. He's evil-genius-level smart."
But Ryder agreed with her. "Yeah, that's why he did it."
"Because he's smart?"
"It sounds crazy, I know." He studied her incredulous expression, then set his bag on a table by the far wall. "But the thing you have to understand about Jim Jernigan is that the man guarded his secrets. Only people he trusted absolutely could get near the
m. And he didn't know if he could trust Derek Ford. What he did know was that Ford was smart enough to figure out all those secrets on his own, if he had the chance." Ryder shrugged. "So Jim didn't give him the chance."
She shoved her hands in her pockets and leaned against the wall just inside the door. "So it's true, then? I mean, that's the rumor. That Jim had been planning his own revolution basically since the Flares happened."
Ryder unzipped his bag and pulled out a binder, so worn that a jagged crack between the spine and front cover had been repaired with tape, and the protective plastic covering had started to peel back at the edges. He stared down at it for a moment, then held it out.
Nessa accepted it gingerly, afraid it would fall apart if she handled it too roughly. When she set it on the table, it fell open in the middle, revealing pages filled with tiny handwritten notes and sketched diagrams. More notes were scribbled on top of the first set, angry red slashes through words and corrections recorded in the margins. The next page revealed close-set type with the same frantic, scrawled comments filling every available bit of white space.
Page after page, and it took her a minute to see past the sheer crazy of it—like pre-Flare-conspiracy-nut-holed-up-in-a-cabin-with-a-murder-wall crazy—to process the words. Then one in particular caught her eye.
O'Kane.
The page was filled with terse words that summarized Dallas's connections to the power structures of the other sectors, potential methods he could use to seize that power, even what-ifs that talked about ways he could generate influence in Eden.
Beneath that, a brief list of bullet points stared up at her: concise little sentences in neat, clean type, each one a plan to assassinate Dallas should the need arise.
A murder book. It was an actual fucking crazy-as-balls murder book. "Uhhh…"
Ryder cleared his throat. "Sorry, some of it is pretty old. And...specific. It doesn't outline Jim's plans, see—it outlines every plan. Everything he could think of that might happen or need to happen, no matter how unlikely it was."
She turned another page and found a second bulleted list, this one outlining possible strategies for securing Dallas's loyalty. Was that soothing or even scarier? Nessa couldn't imagine living in a world this fluid, where everyone was both a potential ally and a potential enemy. There was nothing concrete here, no solid foundation. Just page after page of terrifying possibility.
Judging from the cramped, frantic notes and paranoid additions, it hadn't been so great for Jim's state of mind, either. "Wow," she said, closing the binder gently. "And I thought my grandpop was paranoid."
"Jim had good reason." Ryder set the binder aside and crossed both arms over his chest. "Do you think he would have survived the last forty years if anyone in the city knew he thought about these things, much less tracked them like this?"
"No," she conceded. She might keep her nose buried in her booze, but she wasn't stupid. She'd known Dallas her whole damn life, and he wasn't stupid, either. He'd spent a lot of years making sure Eden thought he kept his brains in his dick. "Pop used to say it's not paranoia if they really do want to kill you in your sleep."
"Wise words."
She waited for him to say something else, but he was just watching her. Looking at her, and she felt intensely self-conscious as the silence stretched. He might make a T-shirt and leather come across as elegant, but her boots were scuffed, her jeans were ripped, and she'd cut the neckline out of her T-shirt because the fabric bothered her, but she kept forgetting to give it to Lili so she could hem the ragged edges. A month of war meant her pink and purple hair showed an inch of black at the roots, and she'd piled it on top of her head in a sloppy ponytail because she hadn't been expecting sexy company.
She looked like the kind of street kid who rolled rich guys like him for their wallets, not the kind of person you shared important, sensitive information with. Shifting uncomfortably, she nodded toward the binder. "Why'd you tell me? That's some serious big-deal shit."
He frowned, a thoughtful expression that stopped just shy of turning his handsome features into something forbidding. "I don't know. You're easy to talk to, I guess." A hint of mischief glinted in his eyes. "Or maybe the babbling is contagious."
Holy shit, he was teasing her.
To hide her sudden, flustered flush, Nessa turned and waved toward the back part of the apartment. "There's a bedroom and bathroom through there. If you go back down these stairs, you can cross to the other side of the stage. Down those stairs is the other kitchen. Lili usually keeps some leftovers in the fridge. Up will take you to the conference room. If you need to find something else, I'm usually in my warehouse. I'm the only one sticking in one place these days."
"Thanks," he murmured. "For the tour."
Oh Jesus, not teasing. He was being charming. She chanced a look at him, just long enough to see that those dangerous brown eyes had warmed. There were little crinkles around the edges, and his soft, sensuous lips were—
No. She was not going to think about his lips. "You're welcome!" she said cheerfully as she backed toward the door. "I'll catch you later."
She didn't give him a chance to escalate to actual flirting before she was out the door and clattering down the steps. She hit the ground floor and leaned against the wall for a second, her heart racing and her stomach full of butterflies.
This was a crush. A stupid crush. He was different from all the men around her—sleek, sophisticated, elegant. Like Jared, really, and she'd had a whopper of a crush on him the first time she'd seen him stroll into the Broken Circle wearing a tailored suit with all the arrogance usually reserved for the O'Kanes.
That had faded. This would, too.
And if it didn't, she'd just remind herself that he'd been raised by a psycho sector leader with a murder book. Dallas might be responsible for winning this war, but Nessa was the only one who could give them the means to keep going once it was over.
No dangerous men for her. No matter how much they made the butterflies dance.
Chapter Three
Dallas O'Kane's reaction to Jim's binder was the polar opposite of sweet little Nessa's—pure, straight-up delight.
"That crazy motherfucker," he murmured, making it sound like the highest compliment he'd ever offered. He turned another page and burst out laughing. "God, he wrote down every time he pushed my fucking buttons. Remember this one, Lex?"
She leaned over his shoulder and scanned the page. "The meeting in Two. How could I forget? You were ready to beat him to death with his own dick because he asked if he could buy one of Cerys's girls and have you train up another me."
Dallas snorted. "I should have seen it. He was always too good at pissing me off. I could keep my cool with the rest of them, but he knew just where to jab."
Ryder leaned forward. "Yeah, about that—"
"Don't you dare apologize." Lex straightened and shook her head. "It's a damn shame. All that time, we thought he was an asshole, and it turns out he was a goddamn scientist."
"It's a tragic loss," Dallas said, his voice edged with something that could have been sympathy. "I wish I'd gotten a chance to know this devious bastard."
The words hit Ryder like a blow, right to the center of his chest. The sincere regret in Dallas's voice was the kind of eulogy Jim had deserved. His obsession had been matched only by his brilliance, and his paranoia only by his determination.
Ryder had to clear his throat to speak. "Every bit of information we need to win this war is in there," he rasped. "We just have to find it."
Dallas smoothed his finger along the edge of one ragged page. "I never thought I'd be the one saying this...but maybe we should let Noelle scan it or whatever she does. Get it into her tablet so she and Jeni can cross-reference it with what we've got."
"Whatever you need to do." The time for guarding the information—at least from the other sector leaders—had passed.
Not that there were many of the sector leaders Jim had known left. Cerys was long gone, with Two bombed
to hell. The leaders of Six and Seven had died in the wave of assassinations that had claimed Jim's life. Now, people wearing O'Kane ink controlled fully half of the sectors—Two, Three, Four, and Eight. A majority, if you didn't count the ones that had fallen to Eden's control.
That only left Ryder and Gideon Rios, the god-king of Sector One. And Gideon's favorite cousin, One's proverbial prodigal son, belonged to Dallas, too. The man would listen to his cousin's counsel and fall in line behind O'Kane.
Dallas closed the binder and slid it to Lex. "Anything that can keep Eden off-balance is a win right now. I want them scrambling."
Ryder rose to get a better look at the map spread across the table. "The city has Six. How are things in Seven?"
"Ford's still holding the wind farms." Dallas leaned forward and studied the map with narrowed eyes. "By the skin of his teeth, though. Gideon's had to send soldiers over to help protect them. If Eden can't get that electricity back, they'll burn it to the ground to keep us from using it."
"They'd be stupid not to."
"I wish they were a little stupider." Dallas sighed and shook his head. "Doesn't matter, in the end. The power's good for morale and makes things more comfortable, but we know how to live without it. What I care about is where they're gonna hit next."
There was no doubt about that, never had been. "Easy. They want your head, and they'll have to come through Five to get it." He traced out the path with one finger.
Dallas tapped his finger on the other side of the map, on the border between Two and Three. "And if they have two brain cells to rub together, they'll try to cut us off from Gideon and his army of the devout."
Lex looked up from flipping through the pages of the binder and regarded Dallas thoughtfully. "That's their mistake, isn't it? They're still thinking of the sectors as separate entities, individual armies to divide and conquer."