When there was no immediate sign of them, Remy looked around the parking lot, taking a mental inventory of what was there. There were at least three dozen military-style vehicles, though she couldn’t have told anyone who asked what kind they were. The only vehicles she recognized were the Humvees, and there were eight of those, lined up in a neat row near the far edge of the parking lot. There had been nine of them before, she remembered. Brandt had taken one of them the year before, when he’d evacuated her, Cade, and Gray out of Atlanta. It hadn’t been a comfortable ride, and it wasn’t one she was eager to repeat.
She looked at the cargo-like truck she was standing on top of and wondered what was in the canvas-covered storage area. Probably a whole lot of nothing, considering the Tabernacle’s proximity to the Westin. That had been one of the number one complaints that Isaac and his crew had had regarding the group of survivors that had lived in the Westin: they’d taken everything—food, water, medicine, weapons, ammunition—and hoarded it for themselves inside the towering hotel, leaving nothing for the rest of the small enclaves of survivors inside the city’s limits.
She lowered herself to her knees and crawled toward the rear of the truck, staying on the metal cab since she didn’t know how sturdy the canvas covering was. She reached behind her, withdrew a hunting knife from the sheath on the back of her belt, and stretched her arm out as far as she could reach. She stabbed the blade into the canvas and dragged the knife toward her, ripping a slice through the material and creating a gap she could look through. She returned the knife to its sheath and grabbed her flashlight, shining it into the darkness below.
To her surprise, Remy spotted several unlabeled, dark green crates inside the truck, stacked against the end closest to her. She had no way of knowing what was inside the crates or why Alicia Day’s people had decided to leave them behind, but the sight of them ate her up with curiosity. With one more glance down the road to assess whether or not Sadie and Dominic were returning, she grasped either side of the cut in the canvas and pulled, tearing it open wider so she could climb inside. She took a deep breath, grabbed one of the canvas canopy’s supports in her left hand and the edge of the cab in her right, and lowered her slim body through the tear into the gaping maw of the truck’s cargo area.
The inside of the truck’s bed was faintly pungent, and a shine of the flashlight around the interior revealed why: there was the dead body of a soldier lying face down on the floor of the truck a few feet away from the crates, so close that Remy almost stepped on it. She cringed, sidestepping away from the dead man for fear of disrespecting his corpse, and turned her attention to the crates, wondering if the body was why Alicia’s people had left this behind.
But no, a body wouldn’t be enough to deter Alicia’s crew. They had been used to seeing bodies. Hell, they’d been used to making dead bodies out of formerly live ones. She moved the flashlight’s beam around, searching for booby traps and other potential dangers. When she didn’t see anything, she checked the body for anything useful, found a grenade, and stuffed it in her backpack. She grasped the heavy black metal clasps on the case and unfastened them, then lifted the lid.
“Holy shit!” Remy gasped as she saw what was inside. If she wasn’t mistaken, she was looking at an entire case full of C4 and all the detonators she’d need to make the plastic explosives into bombs.
She almost abandoned the back of the truck and went to get Cade. Almost.
Brandt wasn’t the only person who liked a good explosion. Remy was rather fond of the spectacular sight, and she was no stranger to creating ones for herself. She had, after all, singlehandedly blown up an entire kitchen and killed the infected inside of it the year before. She hadn’t admitted it then, not even to herself, but the sight of the fireball going up, the rush of air being sucked inward toward the fire and blowing out, the debris flying into the air and littering the ground below…it had given her more than just a little thrill. She could only imagine what this haul would do.
She swung her backpack around and unzipped it, shining her light inside to see how much room she had in it. Not nearly enough to take as much as she wanted, so she started pulling things she considered unnecessary out of her bag: mostly clothes and food, since she didn’t think she needed either one. She hadn’t felt the need to eat at all since she’d injected herself with the fluid from Derek’s vial. Once she’d cleared enough space in her backpack, she started grabbing the bricks of C4 and the detonators, packing them into her backpack. When she was done with that case, she shouldered the pack, making sure it wasn’t too heavy, and shoved the case out of the way to see what was inside the one below it.
That one was empty, though it wasn’t a big deal. She had found plenty of fun stuff. She wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
She stepped over the body on the truck bed and strode to the tailgate, hopped down from the truck, and started toward Luckie Street, looking back at the Tabernacle only once as she made her way past the row of cars alongside the edge of the road to stand in the center of the street.
She was tempted, so very tempted, to bail. To just take what she had on her and walk away and keep walking until she got back to Louisiana. She was too far away from home. She wanted to be on the familiar soil of her home, to stand in the middle of Bourbon Street and smell the spilled alcohol and hear the shouts of drunken revelers during Mardi Gras, to drink chicory coffee and eat beignets at the Cafe du Monde, to breathe in deep the earthy scent of the bayous that littered the entire state. None of that existed anymore, she reminded herself. Well, except for the bayous. Those would always exist, populated with snakes and alligators and the odd bayou hermit that was probably, even now, surviving as he’d always had out in the wilderness. She wanted to crawl right into the bayou and build her own home there where no one and nothing could find her.
She knew she couldn’t do that. Not because she wanted to help Cade—the woman had done more than enough to piss her off to tempt her into walking—but because she wanted to help Brandt. It was impossible for her to forget what the man had done for her earlier that year, when she and Gray had followed him into Atlanta to rescue Cade from Alicia’s clutches. Though he hadn’t been able to save Gray, he’d fought to protect her from Alicia and her cronies, and she could never repay him for keeping her alive when she’d been up to her eyeballs in more trouble than she’d banked on.
She owed him. There was no other way around it. She had to help Cade. Helping Cade meant helping Brandt, and she owed him.
Remy’s problem with temptation was decided for her. As she stood in the middle of Luckie Street, staring off into the middle distance, someone shouted her name. It was a familiar male voice, and her heart leaped. She looked around frantically, searching for the source of the voice, and saw Dominic coming towards her from the direction of Marietta, Sadie behind him. She broke into a run, racing across the torn-up asphalt to him and flinging her arms around him in a tight, exuberant hug.
“Oh my God, you made it!” she exclaimed. “I was so worried that you…” She trailed off and shook her head. “No matter. You’re back!” She took a step backwards to look him over and frowned. He was dirtied and stained with blood, and his dark skin was damp with sweat. Sadie didn’t look much better. Remy regretted leaving her water bottles and extra food in the truck where she’d found the explosives. “Are you okay?”
“As well as can be expected,” Dominic said. “How do we get inside?”
“Follow me,” Remy replied. She turned on her heel to lead the two of them to the dumpster. Sadie cut in front of them, boosting herself up onto the dumpster, and Dominic followed, turning to offer Remy a hand. Though she didn’t need it, she accepted it anyway, letting him pull her onto the dumpster, and the three of them slipped through the gate. After securing the entrance, they went inside the building, and the door swung closed behind them.
Chapter 26
“Because I’m going to do my damnedest to break you out of here.”
After L
indsey had made her dramatic declaration and left his cell, Brandt had remained lying on his back, staring at the blank ceiling, fighting off a rising sense of hope. He had an ally, one coming from completely unexpected quarters, and a song about small worlds kept ringing through his head in an incessant loop as he contemplated the possibilities. Small world indeed. Who would have ever predicted that he’d run into his sister-in-law, of all people, in a place like this?
His brain sobered once again. He’d been going through a mental loop over and over since he’d been shut away in that cell, rising hope as the idea of getting out of there was dangled tantalizingly in his grasp and crushing despair when the reminder that Cade might not be alive anymore reasserted itself. The never-ending slosh from one emotion to the other was giving him a monster of a migraine.
He pushed himself to a sitting position and scrubbed at his face with both hands, scowling when he felt the stubble sprouting on his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved in several days even before he’d been captured, and he could feel the beginnings of a beard. He smelled pretty badly by now, too, and he wondered how hard he’d have to beg to get a shower here. He was sure if they had electricity, like the fluorescent lights above his head suggested, then they had to have running water, even beyond the high-pressure hose they’d taken to him when he’d first arrived. He wondered if he’d be allowed to use a shower if he asked.
While Brandt stewed over this and debated whether or not to ask, the sound of his cell door unlocking drew his attention. He sat up straighter and scooted down the bed, further away from the door. Private Bayer stepped inside, holding a plastic tray loaded with food. Beyond the door, Brandt could see Private Hutcherson standing guard in the hallway. Other than these two, there didn’t appear to be anyone else guarding him. Bayer set the tray down on the foot of the bed and left the room without saying a word.
Brandt waited until the door swung shut with a clang before he moved toward the tray. There was a turkey and cheese sandwich on it, alongside an apple and a paper carton of milk. It was the kind of lunch that would have been served at an elementary school cafeteria, and he scowled again, realizing that there were only enough calories on the tray to keep him at a subsistence level. Despite that, he grabbed the sandwich and took a bite, savoring the first taste of fresh bread and sliced turkey and cheese—fucking cheese—that he’d had in quite some time. He didn’t care that the turkey was salty, like it’d come from a grocery store Oscar Meyer package, or that the cheese was obviously “processed cheese product,” as the packages always said. It was different from the fare he’d been eating over the past two years, and that made it delicious.
Brandt finished off the sandwich and milk on the tray, then put it by the door and flopped back onto his bed, starting in on the apple. He ate it slowly, staring at the steel cell door, contemplating how to get through it without getting himself killed. Meal time was a weakness if they were going to make it a habit to come into the cell with only one guard standing by. He’d have to watch more carefully during the next meal time to see if the same held true, and if it did, he was going to figure out how to slip the information to Lindsey so she could use it. Maybe meal delivery would be a good time for her to bust him out of here.
Half an hour after he’d finished the apple and returned the core to the tray, the door unlocked and creaked open again, and Bayer leaned inside to pick up the tray. Brandt peered out the door as discreetly as he could, and once again, the only person visible was Hutcherson. Brandt cleared his throat to get the soldier’s attention and when Bayer looked at him, he said, “I think I’m ready to talk.”
Bayer straightened, and Brandt saw excitement coming into the man’s eyes. “I’ll go get Major Bradford.”
“No,” Brandt replied before the man could leave. “I won’t talk to him. I like that bastard about as much as I like head lice. I want to talk to Dr. Alton.”
“I don’t…I don’t know if I can do that,” Private Bayer said, his tone wary.
“I’m not talking to anyone but Dr. Alton. If you can’t get me Dr. Alton, then I’m not talking at all.”
Bayer stared at him for a long moment, and then he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He backed out of the cell and shut the door behind him with a clang.
A slow smile spread across Brandt’s face. His plan was now officially in motion.
Chapter 27
Within an hour after Dominic and Sadie arrived at the Tabernacle, they’d finished helping Cade gather all the paperwork scattered across tables and the floor, and she, Jude, and Keith were sitting on the stage sorting through it all in search for information on where Brandt might have been taken. Dominic kept looking at Remy when she wasn’t looking at him, watching her scoop up sheets of paper and stack them together without looking at them. His brain was muddled, confused over what had happened out on the street when he and Sadie had arrived, when Remy had looked at him with such wholehearted relief and had thrown herself on him. He wanted to know what it meant, what she’d been thinking, why she’d been so relieved that he’d come back.
He hoped it meant what his instincts thought it meant. Because if it didn’t, he was going to be crushed.
Dominic looked at the stage. Cade was rooting through the papers with a look of intense concentration on her face. Sadie wandered up, leaning against the stage and talking to Cade in a low voice. Dominic tore his eyes away, scanning the room, accounting for everyone. The only person left was Remy, and she wasn’t in the room with them. He frowned, wondering which way she went, and decided to go look for her.
He headed toward the back of the theater area, weaving between tables and chairs and passing the bar at the back to step out of the general admission area. The large, door-less frame led out into a lobby area with stairs that went up on either side, leading to the balcony. Nearby, there was a flight of stairs that went to a darkened basement area where, if Dominic recalled correctly, band merchandise sales used to take place. He aimed his flashlight beam down the staircase, and when he didn’t see anything, he decided to check upstairs in the balcony first.
After a quick debate, he took the stairs on the right and started to climb. The old wooden stairs creaked underfoot as he ascended to the landing, pausing at the short bar there before continuing on to the balcony level. He stepped through the door near the top of the stairs, looking at the rows of seats that lined the balcony, which curved around the lower floor general admission area in a semi-circle. He could see Cade and the others on the stage below, talking and sorting through papers. He angled his flashlight toward the seats, trailing the beam along the rows until it landed on a figure sitting in the back closest to the balcony’s bar. The figure didn’t move as the light played over it, and he angled the beam away and started in that direction.
He slid into the cushioned seat next to Remy. She lifted the glass bottle of vodka she had and took a swig out of it, not looking at him. She held the bottle loosely in her right hand, which she draped over the leg she had propped against the back of the seat in front of her.
“Enjoying the view?” he asked, shifting in his seat to mimic her pose, propping his feet up onto the seat in front of him.
Remy shrugged and took another swig from the bottle. The clear fluid sloshed as she lowered it. “What’s the point in all this?” she asked, staring toward the floor below. “If there isn’t any information in those papers, what’s Cade planning to do? Start wandering around the entire fucking world until she stumbles across Brandt?”
“You know as well as I do that if that’s what it takes, that’s what she’ll do,” Dominic said. “However, something tells me that’s not why you’re hiding up here drinking…” He took the bottle away from her to look at the label, “…some surprisingly expensive vodka. What’s wrong?”
Remy sighed and reached out like she was going to take the bottle back from him, but her hand dropped to the armrest between them. “There’s nothing exactly wrong,” she said and shook her head. “I take that back. Ever
ything is wrong.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She sighed, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been thinking too much, I guess.”
Dominic offered the bottle back to her. She took it, though she didn’t drink from it. “If you want to talk, I’m here.”
Remy smiled tightly before looking away again. “I know you are. But it’s hard to talk to you about my problems when you are my problem.”
Dominic looked at her with wide-eyed confusion. “Did I do something wrong? If I did, please tell me, and I’ll try to fix it.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Remy said, studying the vodka bottle like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “It’s me. I’m all mixed up in here.” She tapped the side of her head with a fingertip, and Dominic caught her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “I’m confused over a lot of stuff. Like…” she glanced at him like she was embarrassed, “…like you.”
Dominic’s mind dredged up the way she’d leaped on him when he reached the Tabernacle. His skin tingled at the memory, and he shifted in his cushioned seat with discomfort. “Does this have to do with what happened outside on the street?”
The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) Page 16