Beyond Surrender (Beyond #9)

by Kit Rocha

  His casual words didn't soothe her spike of worry. If anything, it grew worse as she helped him with the painstaking, dangerous task of shifting broken boards and heavy stone and steel bars away from the tangle blocking the door. The ghostlike illusion wasn't just the dust anymore—Flash was getting pale.

  And sweaty. He grunted softly as he reached for a board, and sweat cut a line through the dust at his temple and down his cheek. "Flash—"

  He ignored her and lifted, his muscles bulging. And maybe she was overreacting, because she was sweating, too, and the shit she could move on her own was half the size of what he was dragging around. Her fingers were cut and raw, and she had a splinter embedded under one nail that spiked pain every time she braced her tired muscles to lift the next piece.

  But when Flash staggered a few minutes later, she knew something was wrong.

  "Hey." She caught his shoulder before he could lift the next piece of debris. "Let's sit down for a second and catch our breath."

  He turned, and her blood ran cold through her veins. Along with the sweat and dust, there was blood on his face now—a trickle of it at the corner of his mouth.

  But enough.

  "What?" Flash stared down at her, his brows drawn together, then swiped the back of his hand across the edge of his mouth. "Aw hell, Nessa, this is nothing."

  But she knew it couldn't be nothing, another legacy of her life on Quinn O'Kane's ranch. Men fell from haylofts. They got kicked by horses or crushed by equipment or trampled by bulls who didn't take kindly to being wrangled. Nessa had seen enough internal bleeding to understand that Flash was full of shit when he said he got knocked around a little.

  And he was full of shit now.

  "Sit," she commanded, pointing to a clear spot of space. "I'm not fucking around, Flash. Do not lift another fucking thing."

  He didn't argue, just did as she said, his upper lip beaded with sweat. "Okay. Okay, I'm sitting."

  The fact that he'd obeyed was the scariest part yet. How much pain must he be in? How much had he ignored to do what he had to do? Enough that Nessa turned back to the door with renewed stubbornness, ignoring the burn in her muscles and the raw flesh on her hands. She ignored the glass that cut into her skin and the bruises where she slammed her legs and arms into hard edges.

  She dug, and she did the math. Some men on the farm went slow. Quinn never could do anything for them, but Quinn hadn't had Doc. Or regeneration tech. Or access to all the drugs Sector Five could produce, not to mention a state-of-the-art hospital. If Nessa could get Flash out—

  And people would be digging from the other side. Dylan would already be on his way, with the squads of helpers Jyoti had trained and all of the medicine they'd been stockpiling. They just had to meet in the middle. Clear enough of a space to get Flash through to the help waiting on the other side.

  The metal bar she was trying to lift slipped in her hands. She blinked down at the blood smears and stopped long enough to wipe her hands on her jeans. The cut on the heel of her hand kept bleeding sluggishly, and she didn't remember getting it. Couldn't take time to bandage it. She lifted again, dragging the bar out of place and wincing as rubble began to shift dangerously.

  Stop. Think. The last thing that would help Flash was bringing even more debris down on top of them both. So she took a step back and tried to use the edge of her shirt to staunch the bleeding. "You hanging in there with me, Flash?"

  He was leaning his head back against a busted booth, eyes closed, torn vinyl curling against his cheek.

  Fuck. She abandoned the rubble and sank to her knees next to him, clasping one clammy hand between both of hers. "Hey, dumbass. Look at me. Come on."

  Slowly, he complied. "When did you get so fucking bossy?"

  "I don't know, when I was twelve or something?" His gaze was glassy and unfocused, and when she put a hand to his cheek, it was clammy too. More blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and she wiped it away gently. "You have to stay focused, though. We gotta decide which bottle of booze you're giving Amira for her birthday."

  "Oh, fuck." His chest heaved in a deep breath that turned into a rattling cough. "Fuck. I'm gonna miss her fucking birthday."

  Nessa wanted to deny the truth. She wanted to open her mouth and let a reassuring avalanche of babbled denial wash over him, enough hope to erase the last hour. They could be back in her office. She'd give him his bottle of liquor, and he'd leave and be somewhere else when the world caved in around her.

  And then he'd be there for Amira's birthday. He'd be there for Hana's next birthday. He'd be there to give her a little brother or sister, to watch the next generation of O'Kanes grow up in a world that was a little less cruel, a little less hard. A little more hopeful.

  She built that alternate timeline in her head, parted her lips...and nothing came out. No words of reassurance. No protest.

  Flash was dying. And they both knew it.

  "Tell me," she whispered instead. "What you want to give her for her birthday. For all of them. Tell me all of it."

  "The bourbon," he rasped. "And make—make her go see the ocean. She has to take Hana—" His eyes squeezed shut. "They have to see it, at least once. I promised."

  "I'll go with them." She tightened her grip on his hand. "I love you, meathead. You're the most annoying, exasperating, awesome big brother I have. I'll do anything for them. We all will."

  He didn't answer.

  "Flash." She patted his cheek, softly at first and then harder. He didn't stir, and tears formed an impossible lump in her throat as she pressed her ear to his chest.

  His heart was still beating. Weakly. There was nothing she could do but cling to his hand and choke on tears as the erratic thumps slowed. Her brain scrambled for something, anything, but even CPR wouldn't help now. His blood just wasn't where it was supposed to be.

  All the money and tech and medicine in the world, and sometimes death was still inevitable.

  Flash's heart stopped long before she heard the crash of debris shifting and the shouts of rescuers, but she couldn't bring herself to move. She just stayed there, her cheek pressed to his chest, listening to all that emptiness. She let the silence expand until it pushed everything else from her mind.

  No thoughts. No grief. Nothing but numbness.

  When Lex finally came to pry her away from Flash's dead body, she still hadn't cried.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ryder had never known real fear before.

  He thought he had, plenty of times. He'd certainly been in situations that called for it. Back when he was a kid, he'd run messages in and out of the city. His mother never wanted him to go, but Jim had insisted that no one could understand true evil without seeing it with their own eyes.

  So Ryder would go on his runs. One day, a confused older woman stopped him in the market square—and called him by his father's name. Between sobs and apologies about not trying harder to save him, she managed to draw the attention of a few MPs. Ryder talked his way out of it, but not before a special kind of horror had gripped him. Fifteen years old, and that was the first time he truly understood that his life could end—over, forever, just like that. All because of a sad old woman, choking on memories and regret.

  That day, he learned that terror had a taste, suffocating and metallic, and that he never wanted to feel it again.

  So he learned to ignore it, and then to master it. He almost compromised his cover in Sector Five on at least a dozen occasions by refusing to follow Mac Fleming's orders. Every single time, he'd stare into Fleming's flat, cruel eyes and wonder if that would be the end of it, one step too far. And every single time, Fleming would break with a laugh and a remark about his backbone or cunning or balls of steel, leaving Ryder to wonder what kind of hell Fleming saw in those moments, staring back at him.

  He wasn't scared of dying, not anymore. But when he heard the explosions and one of the scouts radioed in to say Sector Four was under attack, that copper-penny terror came rushing back. Because the only place to
strike at Dallas O'Kane was in the heart of his compound—the jewel of his empire, the Broken Circle.

  And Ryder had left Nessa sleeping in his bed.

  He always walked to Four, but bikes were faster, so he took Hector's. The drive was a blur that turned into a tangle of frustration three blocks away from the club, where debris and people clogged the streets. He abandoned the bike and worked his way through the crowd, ignoring the confusion and anger and desperation.

  Ignoring everything but the hard knot in his throat.

  The street in front of the Broken Circle looked like a war zone—because it is, you idiot—bustling with medics assessing the injured and rescuers digging through rubble. Ryder stopped at the edge of the chaos and tried to find a familiar face, anyone he recognized.

  Instead, his gaze snagged on a line of cloth-draped bodies close to where the front door had been. Some were covered in dark fabric, but others in light-colored shrouds soaked through with blood.

  He had to go look. He knew he had to look, he just couldn't make his feet move.

  "Ryder." It was Finn's voice at his shoulder, a moment before a hand gripped his shoulder. "When did you get here?"

  At least his voice still worked. "Where is she?"

  "Nessa?" Finn waved toward the far side of the parking lot. "Lex took her to get checked over—"

  He kept talking, but Ryder didn't listen. There would be time for the other shit later—status reports and casualties, strategy and rebuilding—but right now all he cared about was seeing Nessa, feeling her strong, steady pulse thump beneath his fingers.

  His gaze finally locked on her. She was at the edge of the makeshift first-aid station, seated on a folding table with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was disheveled and coated with dust, and her expression remained blank as Jyoti bent over her hands, dressing angry welts and jagged scrapes with med-gel.

  She looked like she'd been through hell—and he'd never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  Even when he walked toward her, she didn't see him. She just stared into the distance, shock painting her features with a distant sort of pain that made his stomach clench. "Nessa? Nessa, sweetheart, I'm here."

  Nothing. So Ryder glanced at Jyoti, who nodded and handed him the gauze and gel applicator. He took over dressing Nessa's wounds, talking softly as he cared for her. "You scared the hell out of me. I couldn't get here fast enough. I stole Hector's bike, and he's gonna be so mad when he finds out that I don't even remember where I left it."

  She blinked slowly. Didn't look at him. "Flash is dead."

  He thought about those bodies lined up outside the Broken Circle. "What? How?"

  "Surveillance drones." She wet her lips. "They had...something attached to them. Like clay. Explosives? They—" She blinked again, her gaze suddenly fixing on him. "I was in the bar with him."

  Part of his brain went to work immediately, cataloguing the information and analyzing what it told him about Eden's resources, their strategy, their desperation. But the rest of him—most of him—could only focus on dressing Nessa's hands with waterproof bandages and pulling her against his chest. "I'm sorry."

  "I couldn't save him." Her words were small and muffled. For the first time, she sounded fragile. "He must have gotten hit hard—I think he was bleeding internally. And I couldn't get us out fast enough. I tried…"

  "Nessa, stop." He tilted her face up. "This isn't your fault. The city leaders—they did this. They killed him."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "They killed him."

  It was so much worse than the situation in Five. After the thwarted invasion, there were surely people just like Nessa—shocked, but slowly slipping out of their numbness to face devastating grief and pain. But he hadn't had to look at them. They'd been locked away in their homes, facing the emptiness of their losses, while he'd been preoccupied with assessing the casualties in a purely tactical way. No faces, not even names, just numbers. Assets. The only way to make it through a war without losing your mind.

  But at what cost?

  Nessa's pain was tangible. It flowed from her in pulsing waves, dragging at him every time she hauled in a ragged breath. This was how the people in Five—his people—must have felt, and he'd missed it. He'd ignored it.

  In that moment, Ryder hated himself.

  "Come on." He lifted her off the table, supporting most of her weight, but keeping her feet on the ground. Something solid in a mad whirl of confusion. "Where should we go?"

  People were watching them. Nessa seemed to notice, and her back stiffened. She stood straighter, drawing her O'Kane pride around her like armor. "I need to get out of here. To my office or my room."

  "Someplace safe," he qualified. "Have the other buildings been checked yet?"

  "I don't know." She swallowed and looked around, but when her gaze reached the wreckage of the Broken Circle, she shuddered. "Dallas would know. Or Jas…"

  The first person he saw when he turned around was Lex. Only the bloody, ripped edge of one sleeve remained on her shirt, and beneath it, a stark white bandage wrapped around her upper arm. Dirt streaked her face in odd patterns, and Ryder realized with a start that the cleaner lines on her cheeks were dried tear tracks.

  Her eyes burned when they fixed on Ryder, then softened when she glanced at Nessa. "Jasper and Ace checked out the secondary warehouse. It wasn't hit."

  All this carnage, and Eden didn't even manage to take out the place where the O'Kanes stored their weapons. Their intelligence is shit, the small voice in the back of his head whispered.

  He shoved that detail back with the others and pulled Nessa's arm around his neck. "Thanks, Lex."

  "Don't go too far." She brushed a stray lock of hair back from Nessa's forehead. "Dallas wants everyone to stick close for now."

  Just in case. She didn't say it, but it was there all the same, flaming in her dark, red-rimmed eyes.

  Noelle had already taken charge inside the warehouse. Her eyes were as red as Lex's, but there was steel in her usually sweet expression. She stood just inside the door, directing dancers and bouncers as they carried stacks of blankets and crates of bottled water into the center of the newly cleared space.

  Her easy rhythm faltered when she caught sight of them. "Nessa—"

  "I'm okay," Nessa said quickly.

  Noelle didn't believe her any more than Ryder did, that much was clear. But she nodded and squeezed Nessa's shoulder gently before looking at him. "If you can help her up the stairs at the back, there's a suite with a shower at the end of the hallway. I'll find some clothes for her and have someone leave them outside the door. Maybe some food, too—"

  "No food." Nessa's complexion was sickly pale. "I just want to be clean."

  She had to eat eventually, but there would be time. Too much time, maybe, once her haze had worn off and she was left with her pain cast in sharp relief.

  Ryder took her upstairs instead. The suite was small, just two bare, undecorated rooms with exposed block walls, a utilitarian bath, and a narrow bed on a scarred iron frame. The shower barely had room for both of them, but Ryder stripped down and climbed in with Nessa anyway.

  She was bruised underneath her clothes, covered with bumps and tiny cuts and bright red spots that would deepen to purple by morning. And it wasn't just dust in her hair. She stood silently, her hands braced on his chest, as he carefully worked the wood splinters and tiny shards of glass from her tangled strands.

  She stood like that until he'd rinsed the last of the soap from her hair, then tilted her head forward until her forehead rested on his collarbone. Her first sob was silent, lost beneath the sound of the water cascading over them, but her shoulders shook violently beneath his stroking hands.

  There were no words to break the heavy silence. Nothing to be said.

  The water started to go cold before she cried herself out. Shivering a little, she lifted bleak eyes to him. "I don't want to feel this anymore."

  "I know." He cut off the water and cupped he
r face between his hands. "You're not alone. I'm here, and so are all the other O'Kanes. People who loved Flash, too."

  "They'd been through so much," she whispered. "All the danger of building the O'Kanes, and then when Hana got sick—" Her voice broke. "Tank was hard. He made winning bittersweet. But now winning can't feel like winning, because even if we take down Eden, he won't get to see it. And I know that's so fucking selfish because other people have died, too…"

  A painful echo of his earlier guilt, but falling from Nessa's lips, it seemed unfair. "Of course it hurts, Nessa. But you can't stick this next to winning the war and say it's not worth it, because it's never really been about winning. It's about having a chance to live." He swallowed hard. "Flash won't have that chance, but Amira will. Hana will."

  "I know." She wrapped her arms around his neck and went up on her toes, and the agony in her eyes made her words a lie. When she kissed him, it was hard and desperate, more pain than passion.

  She was hurt, spiraling, and sex might make her forget for a while, but it couldn't last. So Ryder gentled the kiss, soothing her with his lips as much as his hands smoothing over her back.

  When she broke away, he reached for a towel and wrapped it around her. She didn't fight as he lifted her out of the shower, tucking her face against his throat with a soft sigh. "Tell me about your cabin."

  He considered it as he grabbed a towel for himself, then guided her to the bed and stretched out behind her. "What do you want to know?"

  Her voice came out small and soft. "Is there room for me in it?"

  He hadn't thought about the cabin in a while. Too long, perhaps, but he'd been so busy with planning and fighting and Nessa that it hadn't even crossed his mind. "If you want."

  "I'd go with you." Her body trembled until he pulled her closer. Her hand slid to cover his, as if she was holding his arm around her. "That's what I want to dream about tonight. A cabin in the woods. I'm trying to imagine it."