Beyond Surrender (Beyond #9)

by Kit Rocha

  "We could stick together and clear the floors one by one…" Cruz let his gaze slide up the endless side of the building. "But it'll take a long time."

  "So we split up." Ryder checked his rifle and tried not to think about Nessa.

  She'd be waiting for him, back behind the front lines. He'd tried to convince himself she was too smart for that, but it was no use. It wasn't about being smart, or realistic, or even about understanding how lucky they all were to have made it this far.

  It was about hope.

  But hope was a dangerous thing. It introduced fear into the equation, made you think about all the things you stood to lose if your day went south fast. So Ryder shoved it down, locked it away.

  This was his mission. It always had been. And that was why he knew exactly where he'd find Smith Peterson. "Cruz, you search the lower floors. Bren can handle the middle. I'll take the top." Because where else would a douchebag like Peterson go but the penthouse?

  Cruz studied him for a silent moment, as if he knew exactly what Ryder was thinking, but he only nodded. "You'll need someone with security clearance to get you to the top few floors—or just their bar code. Anyone in Special Tasks can do it."

  Ryder grinned. "By the time I get there, I'm sure I'll find a spare arm or two the original owners don't need anymore."

  "Probably." As they reached the empty lobby, Cruz broke away toward a bank of elevators. He swiped a hand between a sensor in the doors of one, then a second, setting off a smooth mechanical hum. "Don't get reckless. There are about ten O'Kanes who want to haze you a little in the cage before they give their blessing for you to go chasing Nessa."

  It hit Ryder like a blow, and he closed his eyes against the pain.

  When he opened them again, Bren was staring at him. "Be careful," was all he said.

  "Yeah." Ryder turned for the south stairwell. His boots thumped on the cement stairs, keeping time with his heart but not his racing thoughts as he climbed floor after floor.

  He made it to the twenty-first floor before meeting any resistance. A soldier stood on the landing, propping open the door with one foot. Ryder slammed the butt of his rifle into the man's jaw, then slung him over the railing to tumble through the stairwell. His prolonged scream brought his comrades running, and Ryder dispatched them with quick, clean shots.

  He didn't have time to waste.

  He exited at the top of the stairwell, four floors beneath the penthouse. Most of the lights were out, and the few that were still on flickered ominously, casting the long, interminable hallways in eerie shadow.

  Ryder carefully pulled the stairwell door shut and paused in the darkness of an alcove. He could rush the halls, shooting the place up, but it would bring the rest of the soldiers running. He had no idea how many Peterson had standing guard in this one spot—Christ, probably more than the whole rest of the goddamn building. Men like Peterson never left their own safety to chance. They'd risk anyone else, sure, but not their own sorry asses.

  Discretion is the better part of valor. Jim's voice, echoing in his memory, and Ryder listened. He wouldn't do anyone any good if he got himself killed now, here, so close to victory he could almost taste it.

  He slung his rifle over his shoulder, drew his knife, and crept toward the first intersection, ready to fight quick and dirty. But the intersecting hall was deserted in both directions. Not a soul, dead or alive.

  For a moment, confusion gripped him. Had he miscalculated? Was Peterson holed up somewhere else in the building, well-protected by a heavy guard that Bren or Cruz would have to handle all alone?

  No. Ryder's instincts told him he was right, goddammit. Which left another, even more baffling possibility—that the soldiers guarding Peterson had fled.

  Ryder pressed on.

  On the other side of the building, voices echoed in the empty corridor. He stopped short, straining to make out the words.

  "You saw him, Sawyer." The man's voice was low, urgent. "It was Donnelly down there. Forget all the rest of it, that motherfucker cannot be trusted. He'll shoot you in the face and laugh about it."

  "I never worked with him," the second voice replied, just as low. "But I grew up on the Base with Cruz. I trusted him a hell of a lot more than I ever trusted anyone giving us orders."

  "Maybe back in the day, sure, but not anymore."

  "He hasn't been gone that long. Not even two years. And tell me you never thought about walking off the job and never coming back when Miller was calling the shots."

  "Of course I did. We all did." Silence. "But we never did it."

  Sawyer sighed. "Maybe that doesn't make us the trustworthy ones."

  Ryder's recall of the building's layout was absolute, etched into his brain from dozens of hours of study. If he wanted to get to the elevator, to Peterson, he had to go through these men.

  He crept closer as the first man launched into another story about just how evil Bren was. He'd almost made it to the end of the wall when the voice cut off abruptly, mid-sentence.

  Like his buddy had signaled for him to shut the fuck up.

  Dammit. Ryder shouldered his weapon and swung around the corner, but there was only one man standing in front of the elevator, glaring down the barrel of his high-tech rifle.

  A door whooshed open behind Ryder, followed by the quiet scrape of boots on carpet. "Drop your weapon."

  Just like that, he was fifteen again, cornered by MPs in the city square and facing death. But what flooded him this time wasn't fear—it was certainty. He tightened his grip on his rifle and shook his head slowly. "I'm not here for you."

  The man in front of the elevator sneered. "I know why you're—"

  "Shut up," Sawyer said from behind Ryder, and there was something in his voice. A vulnerability.

  Ryder had heard that tremor before. Every time he'd taken on a new persona, he'd run into men worn down by working for powerful, corrupt assholes. Every day brought new horrors to batter their consciences but, for most of them, there never seemed to be a good way out.

  Part of his job had been to figure out who needed a nudge in the right direction and then make it happen. He'd been working up to it with Finn in Sector Five, back before Trix had shown up to give him a shove of her own.

  Sometimes, all it took were the right words.

  "There's still time," he murmured, pitching his voice low.

  The soldier guarding the elevator frowned in confusion. But the one behind him sighed again, exhausted and resigned. "Is Markovic really alive?"

  "Yeah." Ryder watched the man in front of him shift his grip on his weapon, his finger tightening slightly on the trigger, and fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. "Yeah, he is."

  "Sawyer, what the fu—"

  Gunfire exploded in the narrow hallway, and Ryder steeled himself against flinching. The die was cast, and whatever was going to happen would happen.

  But when the smoke cleared, Ryder was unhurt. The soldier named Sawyer stood there, stone-faced and silent, but with bleak eyes. He stared at his fallen comrade for five seconds before lowering his weapon. "He was a son of a bitch," he said quietly. "A real asshole. That's all they let us be."

  There was only one question to ask, one thing that mattered. "What do you want to be?"

  "Gone." He strode past Ryder and stepped over the man he'd shot. The elevator doors had a flat panel embedded next to them, and he swiped his wrist across it. A moment later, they whirred open. "Go. He's in the penthouse."

  He didn't need to be told twice. Ryder stepped into the elevator, then turned. "You should find Dallas O'Kane and—"

  But the man was already walking away, his gun lying discarded in the hallway.

  The doors slid shut, and Ryder pressed the button for the top floor. There would be no more guards—if Peterson didn't trust them to patrol the upper floors, no fucking way would he trust them right at his back. There was nothing left between Ryder and his target.

  Nothing, it turned out, except one woman with a gun pointed at her he
ad.

  She was seated in a chair in front of Peterson, her hands gripping the arms so tight her knuckles stood out white against her light brown skin. A bruise was rising on one cheek, and her ponytail was disheveled and falling down, as if Peterson had used it to drag her somewhere.

  As Ryder stepped out of the elevator, Peterson's triumphant smile faltered. He stared past him, his gaze sweeping the empty car, and his brow furrowed. "Where is he?"

  "Who?" Ryder kept the barrel of his rifle pointed down, but ready. "Your guard?"

  "My…?" His gaze swung back to Ryder, and he spaced out his words, as if speaking to a child. "I don't give a shit about my guard. Where the fuck is Markovic?"

  In another time or place—and without a frightened hostage between them—Ryder would have laughed. "That's what you think this is, a coup d'état? You think Markovic busted out of your torture chamber and decided to take over the city?"

  "And what would you have me believe?" Peterson waved the gun at Ryder before returning it to his hostage. "That Jim Jernigan's little orphaned pet and Dallas O'Kane executed a plan of this magnitude? Besides…" This time he jabbed the pistol into the back of the woman's head, provoking a choked whimper. "Penelope is his pet."

  The hacker. Ryder took another step, then stopped when she whimpered again. "Don't know what to tell you, Peterson. Markovic isn't here. I'm here."

  "Well, that's disappointing." He grabbed Penelope by the hair and hauled her head back. "You were supposed to be useful for something other than offering excuses for why your work is so inferior. How does it feel, knowing he asked you to throw away your life and didn't even come to save you?"

  She clenched her jaw and said nothing.

  He sneered and shoved her. The chair toppled sideways, spilling her to the ground with enough force to send her skidding across the carpet. She came to her knees immediately and scrambled back against a desk, silent and wary.

  Peterson ignored her as he righted the chair and gestured to it. "I suppose this is better. Nikolas Markovic is tiresome. For years, all he's done is bleat the same naïve sentimentality. Jim Jernigan, though…" He met Ryder's gaze and smiled. "That was a man who understood the value of pragmatism."

  Ryder shrugged. "Sure, he did. Until you had him killed. It was you, right?"

  "An unfortunate necessity." Peterson strolled around the desk and dropped his gun on it with a clatter. A thumb pressed to the edge of the surface triggered a drawer that slid smoothly open. From it, he pulled a box of the finest cigarettes manufactured in Sector Eight. "Though, in all honesty, I was surprised he died. Especially when so many inferior men survived."

  As if taking a bullet to the heart was a test of character instead of something that would kill a king as quickly as it would a peasant. It spoke volumes about Peterson—instead of viewing his power as a construct, something he'd taken from others through manipulation and force, he saw it as something intrinsically his. A God-given right to rule.

  Disgusting.

  Peterson lit a cigarette before laughing at him. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I can't believe Jim raised you to be a fool. Jim and I go way, way back. We found a way to work together through all the years of disagreements. He wouldn't want you to waste the opportunity in front of you. Think about it—all eight sectors could be yours."

  He wasn't entirely wrong. Jim Jernigan was a hard man. Ruthlessly practical, willing to make deals with the devil himself—if it furthered his cause, and that was the part this grandstanding jackass would never understand. Every compromise, every backroom deal he'd ever made, had all been in preparation for this.

  The only opportunity Jim wouldn't want him to squander was the chance to put a bullet right between Peterson's eyes. But something stilled his hands.

  Peterson gestured toward the window. The view was breathtaking from this high up, offering a clear sight of the rolling orchards and distant farmland of the northern edges of Sector One. "If you don't want the bother of running all of them, you can have your pick. I've heard that Gideon's estate is quite nice, if you don't mind being cut off from civilization. All you have to do is take care of him. And O'Kane, of course."

  Anger sizzled through Ryder's veins, most of it directed at himself. He had a clear shot, and he was hesitating. Why, goddammit? He'd met blessedly few people in his life who deserved to die as much as Smith Peterson. Hell, he deserved worse than death—

  And then it hit him, the answer that Jim had always been too filled with cold rage to consider—this man's fate wasn't theirs to decide. He belonged to the people of Eden, and they would have to figure out what to do with him.

  This shot belonged to someone else.

  "You're under arrest." Simply saying the words aloud made Ryder feel like the weight of the world had lifted from his shoulders. It wasn't clean and easy, but it was fair, and it was just.

  Peterson laughed and crushed out his cigarette on the smooth, expensive surface of the desk. "What a disappointment you're turning out to be," he murmured, shaking his head. "At least Jim's not here to see it."

  He honestly didn't know what Jim would think. Would he be angry that he'd made all these plans, and Ryder was ignoring them? Hell, maybe he'd be proud of him for forging his own path. For all his faults, Jim had never wanted him to be a puppet.

  His mother, that was easier. She would have been glad to see him rise above the easy satisfaction of death and vengeance to look ahead to his future. And his father—

  His father never would have wanted his death to consume anyone, much less the three people who'd meant the most to him.

  "Hands up, Peterson. Behind your head."

  Instead of complying, the man snatched up the gun he'd abandoned on his desk and fired.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nessa had always assumed she had a handle on the whole waiting at home to stitch up the wounded gig. She'd been doing it for most of her life, first on the ranch under Quinn's guidance, and then at the warehouse as the men went out and fought the battles that won Dallas control over Sector Four.

  She was always the calm one, soothing the people left behind as they fretted over their loved ones who had gone off to fight. They were all loved ones to her, from the first men to sign up to the rawest recruit.

  But love was a word with shades now, and her heart didn't seem to care whether Ryder was the knitting or the liquor—it just cared that he was gone. Fighting. Maybe dying.

  And all she could do was wait.

  Well, that wasn't all she could do. She could free up the more experienced doctors and nurses by dealing with the basic injuries. She sewed up shopkeepers from Sector Three and farmers from Six, guards from Sector One and former pleasure house trainees from Two.

  She babbled at them. Reassurances she barely believed and promises they all knew she couldn't keep. When she discovered one of the Armstrong brothers sprawled on a pallet, nursing a nasty slash on his thigh and another across his cheek, she teased him about being a war hero and told him his brother would be the handsome one now.

  Pain tightened his features for the first time. "Ike got hit just inside the wall," he rumbled, then jerked his head toward the side of the parking lot where the dead were stretched out, covered with whatever fabric they'd been able to scrounge up.

  "I'm sorry." It was all she could manage. She finished stitching his wound, applied med-gel, and moved on to her next patient in silence.

  She couldn't find the reassurances anymore. Even the empty ones.

  "Nessa!" Trix's voice cut through the noise, quick and panicked. "Help me! Finn's been hit."

  Oh fuck. She throttled down panic as she smoothed a bandage into place and snatched up her kit. Trix's red hair stood out in the jumble, and Nessa threaded her way through the crowd to where Finn was sitting on a stack of pallets, his teeth gritted in pain.

  "Okay, deep breaths," she said first, grabbing Trix's shoulder and squeezing until the woman looked at her. Then she shoved her kit into Trix's hands. "He's upright and he made it b
ack here, that's good. Find the painkillers."

  Trix obeyed, and Nessa crouched next to Finn and touched his wrist. His pulse beat steadily beneath her fingertips, but his jeans were a bloody mess. At least the bullet had gone straight through, and the fact that he hadn't bled to death already meant it probably hadn't hit anything too vital.

  Probably.

  Bullet wounds were above her paygrade. She flagged down one of the medics before taking the injector from Trix's hand. Finn opened his mouth—undoubtedly with some dumbass argument about how he didn't need drugs—and Nessa jabbed him in the arm. "No displays of manly ego allowed today."

  Finn grunted, but his expression softened when he looked at Trix. "I'm fine, doll. You know it takes more than a bullet to knock me down."

  She dragged his hand to her cheek. "I wish you didn't feel the need to keep reminding me by getting shot."

  "Men," Nessa huffed, reaching for the adhesive gauze. Staunching the bleeding until a real doctor showed up wasn't much, but it was all she could do. "You ask them to show up naked with dinner, and they go get shot like heroes instead. They're fucking impossible."

  Finn stroked Trix's jaw. "I may come home a little banged up, but I'll always come home."

  Nessa's chest collapsed. Trix and Finn didn't seem to notice, so maybe she was successful at hiding the sudden appearance of a black hole of sadness right where her heart was supposed to be. God, what she would have given to hear Ryder murmur those words, or anything close to them…

  Or anything, right now. At all.

  She finished wrapping Finn's thigh and rose, prepared to bluff her way out. But she didn't need to. Trix and Finn were in their own perfect world, gazing into each other's eyes like they were going to fall in and swim around for the rest of the day. Nessa gathered her supplies and started across the lot again, only to stop cold when two teenage boys ran by her with a stretcher.

  "Ace!"

  Nessa raced after them, reaching their side just as they set him down. He grunted softly and squinted up at her. "Thought I heard you, glitter-bug."