Faded Flare

by L. B. Carter

  So, Jen’s hatred for the Stanleys that she’d addressed earlier stemmed from their incompetency to do what she’d hired them to do. That did not reassure Ace about putting all of their lives in Reed’s hands.

  Henley blinked, quickly catching up to speed. “Well, it seems since you failed, you’ve been replaced; contract defunct. Under Jen’s orders, Sirena’s now being entrusted to Valerie.”

  Ace wanted to shut his eyes against Henley recklessly giving up that information, but it was already exposed, so instead he watched for a reaction. Ace could not read people beyond Henley who did not require expertise, broadcasting her emotions in her expressions—not like she could. He could, however, very easily deduce that that was the last comment Reed expected out of their mouths.

  “Val?” The name was whispered like a lament. Reed’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly, and he slowly spun back to face the road.

  Nor kept an eye on his flabbergasted brother and continued the conversation on their behalf. “How did you know Valerie?”

  “How do you?” Ace countered, eyes narrowed. He was aware of no one else in this region although he had been entrapped for several years, and communication might have gotten misdirected or simply withheld to avoid risking it getting into the wrong hands.

  “Maybe you’re talking about different Valeries?” Henley suggested half-heartedly.

  The chance of coincidence was far too minuscule for her hypothesis to hold any validity. No one bothered to reply. She wasn’t expecting one.

  “Confidentiality. I can’t tell you that,” Nor said with a wince, fully aware that the statement wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy Ace.

  “Likewise.”

  Nor glanced at Reed. He was still vacant. Was that what Ace appeared like to Henley when he walked around the university?

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Sirena declared, tossing her arms into the air. “Valerie was Reed’s ex-girlfriend,” she told Buster. “And she’s also Jen and Buster’s final destination—some government contact, who will protect me from Jen’s mom, and… well, I don’t know why Buster wants to get to her.” She shrugged.

  “Only one of the many mysteries he refuses to unveil,” Henley muttered, crossing her arms.

  “And,” Sirena continued, “she’s dead.”

  ∆∆∆

  It was Ace’s turn to wilt. He had wanted to keep the back and forth equal. This, however, was not news that he wanted to hear. It had been several years he’d been in the university; it was entirely possible they were telling the truth. Was his coded letter en route to a silent grave? No. She was too stubborn to die.

  “How do you know?” He was looking at Sirena and Nor. Ace was finding the vehicle’s interior lacked sufficient oxygen. “You may have been misinformed. You also have no reason to be truthful with me.”

  It was Reed whose voice filled the dense air. “I was there. I saw her—” His voice broke.

  “She was in an explosion,” Nor followed-up solemnly. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Where?” Was the destination itself also a dead end, literally?

  “Our organization’s headquarters.”

  Ace’s brows pulled lower. “Where? And don’t say confidential.”

  “Why?” Nor countered.

  “Because it impacts how open I am with you.”

  Nor exchanged silent communication with his brother, who was regaining alertness. “All I can tell you is Canada.”

  Ace’s head cocked. “Coastal or inland? East or west?”

  “East coast.”

  What had she been doing there? Not far from where Ace was based and out of her jurisdiction. Had she been alone? Could she well have been dating Reed? Did that mean they were trustworthy?

  “And I’m not getting more specific than that, so don’t ask. Now you. How did you know Valerie?” Nor repeated.

  “Yes, please enlighten us,” Henley quipped.

  They were gullible. Ace wondered if he was being deceived as well. “We go way back. Knew her as a child. She’s a contact now. Explain the necklace tracker.” Ace rolled over the revelation that yearned to halt the discussion. It was essential he determined what their weakness was. BTI could be in pursuit as they sat immobile, waiting to be caught. “And why didn’t you say anything before now?” Ace narrowed his eyes on Sirena, who was also keeping secrets.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know who’s who or what’s real or not. I’m a specimen.”

  Ace didn’t buy it. “You knew these guys would catch up to us.”

  Sirena shrugged again, eyes flicking to Henley at her gasp. “Hoped.”

  “The locket.” Reed sat up taller, checking his mirrors then pulling onto the road having picked up on Ace’s intensity. “It’s more of an SOS beacon. We each have one. Lynn’s—which Sirena inherited when Lynn died attempting to rescue her from BTI.. the first time—that was in a locket.”

  “What?” Sirena asked. “It was empty.”

  Nor picked up the tale. “It’s not inside the halves; it’s in the metal.”

  “I thought you said only things with signals like the phone I brought could be tracked,” Sirena said to Henley.

  “Phone?” Ace growled. “You brought a phone with you? Where is it?” He held out a hand across Henley.

  “I already disposed of it,” Henley said smugly, “in the hotel room when I lamented not having the tech to check our location, and she revealed the device. It’s discarded back at the hotel. So, I will take your high-five.” She awkwardly slapped his waiting palm with her right.

  Ace didn’t cease his stare into the inhuman irises, unwilling to release the experiment of guilt so readily. “You led them to us.” Just as she’d wanted.

  Sirena was unaffected. “Be glad it’s them and not BTI.”

  Ace was thus far undecided if that was an improvement. Jen said they wanted to destroy Sirena. That didn’t seem to be the case. However, Jen wasn’t going to let them have her, and Ace needed Jen. He also didn’t know what fate they had in store for the rest of the BTI group.

  Sirena leaned forward toward Nor. “So why didn’t you just track me from the beginning instead of all that mess back home with Shayna?”

  Reed responded. “I told you. It has to be activated. Lynn never activated it—likely died too quickly. It only went off recently; we just headed west since that’s really the only direction, and Nor insisted you’d never be dragged on a boat.”

  “Did you do something to it recently?” Nor asked Sirena intently.

  “No.” Sirena pondered. “I don’t even have it.”

  “It’s gone?” Nor’s confusion pulled his brows down enough to appear beneath his shaggy hair.

  “I gave it back to Jen. She told me it was a gift from Mark, Jen’s step-father or mom’s-boyfriend. Whatever he’s called. When he and she got me out the first time. So, I guess, these are the people who have helped me escape from BTI twice,” she told Nor.

  “With help from Lynn.” Reed was quick to point out their organization’s role in her rescue, taking the credit as if to combat Ace’s efforts this time.

  Well, they’d lost her hadn’t they? he thought smugly. Clearly he was a better option for the experiment. Although, his scowl wrenched from his pride, under his care, she was back in the Stanleys’ car.

  “Who’s Lynn?” Henley inquired belatedly.

  “A colleague in our organization. She was killed on her mission to collect Sirena.” Nor grew somber, blue eyes darkening as they met Henley’s.

  “Stranding us all in Podunk nowhere,” Reed added.

  “Jen’s mom, Katheryn Tate, wasn’t the one to hire us then?” Nor asked.

  “More importantly, she had a boyfriend? And deigned to flirt with me on the phone?” Reed slipped in.

  Nor was unamused.

  “I guess so,” Sirena said. She peeked into the trunk. “We really need Jen awake for all this. I think it’d make more sense coming from her. And we can ask her about the locket.”

  H
enley nodded. “The time-line is not chronological by what I’m hearing.”

  “Well,” Reed said cheerily, “let’s just sit in uncomfortable and hateful silence until she wakes. That’ll be fun.”

  “Fine with me,” Sirena chirped, then pulled an imaginary zipper across her mouth.

  Nor raised a brow at her.

  “As long as we orient toward my meet-up,” Ace entreated. It was still worth a shot. Someone might receive his note. He hadn’t decided if he believed these guys anyway.

  Nor’s blue eyes assessed Ace. “To what benefit is that for us?”

  “Protect the experiment. Clearly you have a relationship with her.”

  Reed guffawed. “Can’t even fool someone you just met! And you thought you could convince me you weren’t ‘involved.’”

  “I’m not! We’re not,” Nor sputtered.

  Sirena smiled serenely, miming an additional lock on her lips.

  Ace was confused. “Did you not know each other before?”

  “We did,” Nor agreed. “But not… in that way.”

  “Dating,” Henley explained when Ace continued to be unsettled at just how stunted he was at human understanding. “They think you mean a romantic relationship.”

  “I meant an acquaintanceship. I apologize for the confusion.”

  Henley’s jaw dropped. “They get an apology? For confusion? And yet you refuse to explain anything to me. With no remorse. You don’t even have an acquaintanceship with these guys.”

  Ace ignored her, largely because she was not incorrect in identifying his unjust bias. “Regardless of the level of your interactions… You want the experiment.” It was a fact.

  “Yep.” Reed snapped his fingers in confirmation.

  “Rena.” Nor frowned.

  “For what purpose?” Ace didn’t know what he was going to be fighting against when he allowed Jen to bring her experiment.

  “It’s—”

  “Don’t say confidential.” Henley snapped waspishly at Reed. “It is not beneficial, all these secrets.” Ace received another glare.

  “It’s for her protection is what I was going to say,” Reed answered mildly, amused by Henley’s wrath rather than offended. “We were rescuing her from BTI at the behest of someone on the inside, who we thought was Professor Katheryn Tate.”

  “It was a Tate but not her,” Sirena opened her mouth to say, without unlocking it first, breaking the pantomime.

  Reed shrugged, keeping his hands on the wheel. “Doesn’t matter at this point. We just needed the specimen, not the contract letter, to uphold our end of the agreement.”

  Ace recalculated. “We have the same objective, then.”

  “Seems so.” Reed was further amused.

  “Is the location you were taking her secure? After the explosion with Valerie?”

  Nor winced. “Well.”

  “Father is working on it.” Reed’s tone had darkened.

  “Assuming he’s functioning better than he was when we left,” Nor softly reminded his brother.

  “Well, your direction is missing your contact, isn’t it?” Reed reciprocated to Ace.

  “According to you,” Ace said benignly with an inclination of his head.

  “So, which way is the right way?” Henley posed to the car as a whole. “East to the insecure or west to the unknown?”

  Sirena whispered to the window, “Either way, there’s death.” She didn’t voice the end of her sentence. It simply permeated the air. Would there be more?

  Chapter Seven

  About thirty seconds later, it didn’t matter. Jen awoke with fervor. The last thing she knew was that there were two guys chasing them down, who had claimed Sirena and were in pursuit of her, while Henley and Buster had either escaped or were also caught. Her senses took all this prior information into account, layering on thickly the new awareness of being in the trunk of an unknown, moving vehicle, and reacted accordingly—choosing fight.

  In the ensuing chaos, Reed somehow managed to maneuver to a park while water bottles pelted at his head. That was fortuitous for Jen as by that point, she had gotten hold of the internal emergency latch on the back door and swung it wide open, dropping onto the tarmac at a bit of a jog as they slowed—switching to flight.

  Throughout it all, the reassurances and warnings being shouted at her were either not penetrating the fog that was likely a reward from the accident, or else together, they overlapped to form such a cacophony as to be unintelligible.

  She blindly took off into the woods at a stumbling trot, one of the guys’ duffels dragging behind, the strap clutched in one hand, another water bottle clutched in the other.

  Reed was the fastest. Before Henley could even shove the slow-moving Buster out the door to tumble after him, Reed was already in a hand-to-bag combat with a confused and enraged scientist in between the trees. That’s how it appeared, but as Henley paused to watch, she realized Reed was actually only on the defense, doing nothing to damage the injured girl further.

  She was doing enough of that to herself, the bag being an ineffective weapon. However, the dried blood on her face really enhanced her rabid, animalistic snarl, keeping everyone at bay. With a whip of her arm, the duffel sailed through the air in a leisurely swing Reed could easily evade before it wrapped around the back of her legs and caused her to stumble into a nearby trunk.

  Reed took advantage of her leaning posture and lunged, wrapping his arms around hers in a bear hug that essentially forced her limbs to her sides.

  Unfortunately for him, she still held the water bottle, which, with a flick of her wrist, impacted the most vulnerable part of his anatomy.

  He dropped to his knees with a groan to cup his groin, freeing Jen.

  “Shit,” Nor empathized. Henley caught his wince, and a similar flicker crossed Buster’s cheeks.

  Henley had once gotten an elbow to the breast, when a male colleague was helping her to loosen a screw that had over-tightened, to her inner feminist’s chagrin. She imagined Reed’s pain was similar, though several orders of magnitude amplified with more nerve-endings.

  Since the other men made no move to get close for the safety of their own bodies, Henley stepped in, easily loping up to Jen who, untangled, was once more wavering through the foliage. To avoid startling the girl, who was muttering to herself, Henley eased her hand—her warm hand—into Jen’s duffel-vacated one, trying to be neither startling nor too domineering. She slowed them to a stop instead of yanking Jen back abruptly.

  Confused at first by her leash, it took Jen a moment before she spun, raising the water bottle in threat, but her other hand didn’t pull free, which Henley took to be a sign that some part of her frenzied mind recognized that Henley wasn’t an enemy. The bottle had been squeezed at some point during the commotion and slowly dripped onto Jen’s head.

  Henley kept hold and lifted her opposite hand in peace. “Don’t worry, Jen. It’s me, Henley. You’re safe.” She gave Jen’s sweaty hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’re safe.”

  Jen’s fevered gaze fixated on their hands and slowly focused, her turbulent thoughts settling like a hysteric dog feeling the soft, consoling pet of its master. Was that how Sirena felt with Jen? Or was it more like being trapped by an abusive parent? “Hen?”

  “Yes, it’s me. We’re okay.”

  Jen’s wide eyes went past Henley. A trickle of water was mixing with the blood on her chin, turning it from dark and crusted back to a sanguine color again, enhancing her fierce look. “Who—?”

  Henley took a cautious step closer, smelling the iron of the blood and Jen’s stressed body odor. With little effort, she extracted the water bottle, careful not to tighten her inhuman hold to prevent more pressurized fountaining. Jen’s arm fell limply to her side. “They’re not BTI. They’re safe.” Henley hoped. “Sirena knows them.”

  Jen’s gaze shifted, probably to seek out Sirena, someone with whom she was more familiar.

  “Sirena?” Henley called in a low voice without taking her ha
nd or attention from Jen. “Can you confirm that you know Nor and Reed, please?”

  Jen didn’t seem to recognize the names immediately.

  “They’re good guys,” Sirena vouched, avoiding getting into details. “They’re not here to hurt anyone. In fact, if anyone should trust them, it’s you—you hired them.” That statement merely refueled Jen’s agitation, her mind cautiously reeling back to sanity.

  Henley slipped the water bottle between her arm and waist and snagged Jen’s other hand, knowing the scientist was too distracted to notice its coldness and rigid texture through the glove’s perforations, and ensnared her regard, using both the physical and visual links to envelope Jen in her bubble of comfort.

  “We can talk more after you’ve rested. There was a misunderstanding, but we are not in current danger.” Henley spoke into Jen’s dilated pupils. “…From these two,” honesty led her to clarify.

  “You were in a car accident—not badly hurt, but we need to get your heart rate down and give your body time to recuperate. Okay? We can go sit in the car and calmly discuss everything.” It felt like talking to her little sister back when Bromley was too young to understand family rules about social expectations and politeness. Mama’s parenting skills had faltered without Daddy.

  Jen’s brows slowly relaxed, the crease between them smoothing like a straightened bed sheet. “Okay.”

  Henley nodded and smiled supportively. “Okay.” She kept one hand trapped in hers and looped the bad one around Jen’s waist, supporting her as they walked side by side back toward their waiting audience.

  Reed roused himself as they passed, hoisting first himself to his feet and then the duffel. His scowl was weak—just for show; he didn’t blame Jen for her self-defensive instincts. He trailed behind them.

  Jen tried to look round at the sound of his footsteps, so Henley gave another reassuring, one-armed hug.

  “He’s just escorting us,” she guessed, “not herding.”

  Nor’s frown and raised brow insinuated some level of amusement, probably at Jen’s fighting vigor against Reed, considering the brothers’ sibling rivalry.