“I don’t know.”
“What sort of food were you given?”
“Bars.”
“Protein bars?”
“Granola.”
“And what else?”
He shook his head.
Lee laced her fingers to keep them steady. Make him well. She no longer knew if she was ordering herself or someone else.
Someone else? Who else was there? The deity that had let a Constabulary rogue abuse him for months?
Lee’s hands spasmed, still intertwined, and rose to her face.
“Lee?” Violet said.
Her lungs constricted. Her mind saw the geranium petals she’d ripped apart the last time she couldn’t breathe and tried to count them. Fewer than one hundred thirty-eight.
“Lee.” Sam’s deep voice, closer than he’d been standing a moment ago.
Get away from me, all of you.
“It’s … okay.” Marcus.
She lowered her shaking hands. His eyes weren’t his, not with so much missing from them, but his frown drew down the same way it always had.
“You.” His gaze took in Sam and Violet, then returned to Lee. “This. Here. I’m …” He coughed and gripped the edge of the mattress until he could stop. “Going to be. Okay.”
Lee pressed her palms into the mattress and catalogued every feature that wasn’t Marcus. Empty eyes. Rusted voice. Shrunken body. Broken words.
One hundred thirty-eight days.
9
Most people would have listened to Agent Stiles’s parting advice. Austin had listened to half of it, finishing out the workday as if all was normal. Stiles disappeared around three o’clock and didn’t return to his desk. Hopefully, Brenner had been hospitalized by now. If he had, Stiles would frown on Austin’s failure to heed the second half of his advice.
“Do not under any circumstances go home.”
He scanned his surroundings five times as he let himself into the apartment foyer and sprinted up the stairs. Nobody around, yet his arms and neck prickled. He wasn’t here to stay, not even to spend the night. He’d grab the sports bag from the hall closet, the one Esther called his “we’re perfectly fine” bag, and go to a hotel or something. The duffels he’d packed for the girls—those could stay here for now. They only held clothes, toiletries, and packaged trail mix. Unbeknownst to Esther, hers also held the smallest-capacity iPod model, fully loaded with obnoxious pop music.
The contents of Austin’s bag were slightly more practical—clothes and toiletries, of course, but also a wad of cash, a preloaded Visa card, enough beef jerky to sustain him for a week, and his secondary firearm. And yeah, okay, a few books. And the tickets to the last concert he’d taken Violet to, not that he’d admit to keeping them.
He inserted his key into the lock. Before he could turn it, the door swung open on its hinges.
Someone had broken the lock.
Austin drew his gun from the shoulder holster and stepped over the threshold and flipped on the light—
Weight cracked against his wrist. The gun dropped to the floor, safety still on. Austin pivoted toward the source of the blow, stars blinking in front of his eyes. A fist aimed for his throat. Austin ducked to one side, and knuckles clipped his cheek, and something within him exploded. He dived at—yeah, of course, Jason.
Jason staggered back, then righted his balance. Austin threw punches but hit him only half the time, and every landed blow sent searing pain up his arm. A fist crashed into his upper chest, then his shoulder, still trying for his throat. Then Jason danced backward like a boxer and pulled his gun and fired.
Carpet in his face. His voice bursting free now, never a scream but yes a cry. He was on fire. He rolled on the floor and tried to put it out. No, he was shot … everywhere.
“Austin.”
He panted through the pain until it melted off him. Tased, then—not shot. He couldn’t stand up, so he didn’t try. Tennis shoes moved into his vision.
“Where’s Brenner?”
In custody. In a hospital. Or … not.
Austin rolled onto his back and cradled his wrist. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jason holstered the Taser and circled him. Get up. Hurry. Austin blinked against the stars. Twin tears trickled down his temples, into his hair.
“You little piece of crap,” Jason said. “This is what you do with my trust.”
“I didn’t do—”
Jason kicked his side, below his ribs. The pain hardly registered. Austin pushed up onto his elbows and rolled to his knees. Jason grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him to his feet. This time, the punch didn’t miss his throat. Austin crumpled backward, and the couch cushions caught his back and his head. He sprawled, half on the floor. Black out and you’re dead.
This time, Jason did pull his sidearm.
Dead no matter what. Austin’s mouth dried. His heart hammered.
Jason eased the safety to disengage. He leveled the gun at Austin’s forehead. “You’ve forgotten a few things.”
Think, think, hurry. Think.
“Such as, I outrank you. I can end your career. I can put you behind bars with one piece of planted evidence. I can do to you whatever I want.”
“I can find him.” Austin’s voice wheezed through the swelling in his throat.
“Certainly hope so.”
“Twenty-four hours.”
Jason’s stare lasted a whole minute. He tilted the gun as if calculating the bullet’s path through the air into Austin’s skull. He wandered to the bookshelf and browsed titles, then crouched at Austin’s feet. With an easy flip of the gun, now holding the barrel, he swung the grip hard against Austin’s ankle. Austin bit down on a gasp.
“That’s because I think you were planning to run.” Jason stood. “You can find him? Go ahead and find him.”
“I said—”
“Have you earned twenty-four hours of trust?”
“Yes.”
Jason laughed.
Austin stayed on the floor. Let him walk out of the room with the upper hand. But it was pointless. No way Jason would leave him.
“Whoever you have to call, you can do it here and now in front of me. Go on.”
“Okay.” Austin braced his elbows on the couch cushion behind him and stood. Not as shaky as he thought.
He dug his phone from his pocket. No one to call. He woke his phone anyway and started to dial. The beep of the first number made him jump, and Jason made a scoffing sound. Austin kept punching numbers, first a one, then an area code, then seven more and a final eighth digit that he hoped would sound like calling out. He stood with the phone to his ear, eyes on Jason. He’d have to hit the gun first and succeed in knocking it away. Or he’d be dead.
If he didn’t try, he’d be dead anyway.
“Well?” Jason said.
“They’re not picking up.”
“Who’re you—?”
Austin dropped the phone and charged, his whole weight crashing into Jason’s gun arm. The weapon hit the floor. A few punches hit his midsection and then he was behind Jason, luckily taller. He dropped his arm around the man’s neck and squeezed until Jason stopped trying to claw his eyes out and then went limp. Faking, maybe. Austin held on a few more seconds, shook him, trying to get a reaction, but Jason’s arms flopped like a ragdoll’s. Austin let him fall to the floor and checked his wrist for a pulse. His shaking hand took a minute to find it, and he sighed when it beat against his fingers.
He swept up the phone, raced to the closet, and grabbed his bag. He should tie Jason up, but if the man woke, one of them would end up dead.
10
Austin rotated his throbbing ankle as the headlights approached. The last five cars hadn’t been Stiles. This one probably wasn’t, either. The guy could be anywhere, could come home anytime.
He slid the seat back until it bumped his sports bag on the floor behind him, then propped his elbow on the arm rest to elevate his wrist. He had to sit here as long as it took. Good thing Stiles lived alone. Doubly good thing he was listed in the white pages.
You don’t have to be here. Let Stiles fend for himself.
Not for the first time, his hand reached to turn the key in the ignition.
No. This guy could be in danger, and he’d saved Brenner’s life. A good cop. Ironic, considering forty-eight hours ago Austin hadn’t wanted to grace him with the title of cop at all. Well, a guy’s actions made all the difference.
Twenty minutes later, a black town car pulled into the driveway, and the garage door opened. Austin crossed the street, curtained in darkness. Stiles had parked and was halfway to the door when Austin stepped into the garage.
“Hey,” he said.
The man jolted and spun to face him.
“It’s Delvecchio.” Austin raised his hands to midtorso. “We’ve got to talk.”
In the hours since he’d last seen Agent Stiles, new stress pulled at the man’s crow’s feet and the lines around his mouth.
“Showing up at my house doesn’t qualify as lying low.”
“It’s important,” Austin said. “Things you need to know, about—”
Stiles waved him to silence and hit the garage door opener. The door rumbled shut. “Whatever it is, I already know.”
Heat pulsed behind Austin’s eyes. He charged closer, pushing at the edge of Stiles’s personal space. “Yeah? So you knew he’d threaten to kill me? Could’ve mentioned it.”
“To kill—you went home?”
“Had to get some things if I was going to run for my life.”
“You. Went. Home.” His voice clipped each word shorter than the last.
“Yeah, well, I’m not dead, so—”
“You absolutely should be.”
Yeah, I know. What was Austin doing, anyway, thinking Stiles might be trustworthy? If his mentor could turn out to be a sociopath, so could any other Constabulary agent, even a desk guy like Stiles.
No, not Stiles. Not the guy who’d taken Brenner out of that room and hidden him.
Still, being here was pointless. Austin headed for the side door. He’d get back in his car and …
And what?
“That a limp?” Stiles’s voice came over his shoulder, closer.
Austin pivoted to face him, almost stumbling on the stupid ankle. “Reminder not to run.”
The man’s dark eyes narrowed, scanned up and down Austin. “You favoring that arm?”
“Wrist. I think it’s just bruised.”
“What else did he do?”
Heat flushed Austin’s face. The old shame probably wasn’t reasonable when his attacker had a Taser. Still, being beat up did nothing for a guy’s self-image. Good thing the jacket collar covered his throat. “Nothing mortal.”
“Why’d you come to me?”
“I didn’t come to you. I came to warn you. Unneeded, obviously.”
“Obviously, when I told you not to go home in the first place.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “But he didn’t shoot you.”
“He might have. I knocked him out.”
“Knocked him out?”
Austin shrugged. “Sleeper hold. And then I got out of there. I don’t know where he is now.”
“Crap.” Stiles scrubbed at his face, and his breath shook on its way out. He couldn’t be rattled like this only for Austin.
“You didn’t take Brenner to a hospital, did you?”
Austin wasn’t certain of it until he spoke the words. If Stiles had denied it, he probably would have believed him. But the man’s eyes flickered down to the cement, long enough to be a confirmation.
“Are you …?” Their eyes met. “Stiles, you’re part of this somehow, aren’t you.”
Part of a terrorist underground. Maybe Stiles knew something Austin didn’t, something about the entire Constabulary, not only Jason. Maybe they were all less upstanding than Austin’s training had taught him.
“I need to know your plan,” Stiles said. “Every detail.”
I don’t have one wasn’t allowed to come out of his mouth. Austin pressed his lips together.
Stiles leaned an elbow on the roof of his car, as if his own body were becoming too heavy to hold up. “Well?”
“I—I have an emergency bag with me. Clothes, my other gun. Money. I’ll figure it out.”
“Highly doubtful.”
Never mind that he’d managed to overpower Jason and escape—Stiles thought Austin was a prep school wuss. People often did. It was in Austin’s build, lean no matter how much weight he trained with. In his preference for business casual dress. In his vocabulary. He didn’t look like a man whose schooling in violence started at the age of six.
Not that Sam Stiles needed to know any of that, but he needed something, so Austin shrugged out of his jacket and rolled up his T-shirt sleeve. The blue bruise spread a few inches up his arm.
“I get it, Stiles. Jason made sure I got it.”
“That could be broken,” Stiles said.
“Nah.”
“Because you’d know if it was, of course.”
“I broke it once when I was a kid.” Actually, I didn’t break it.
“What—is that ligature marks? On your neck?”
Austin pulled his jacket back on. “He didn’t strangle me.”
“What, then?”
“It’s nothing, really.”
Stiles pressed his thumbs against his eyebrows. “Crap.”
Yeah, pretty much. Austin headed for the side door.
Behind him, Stiles sighed. “Hold up a minute.”
No, thanks. He opened the door and stepped outside.
“I said—” A hand clamped down on his shoulder.
Let go. Austin wrenched the thumb until the hand went slack.
Stiles sprang back with more agility than his hair color should allow. He lifted his unwrenched hand, palm up. Shoot. There’d been nothing threatening in his gesture. Any other day, Austin would have stiffened and shrugged away from the grasp.
“What’s wrong with you?” Stiles said.
“Sorry. I’m, uh, jumpy.”
“Starting to see a pattern here.”
You think? Austin shrugged and turned away. No more delaying.
“You can’t just hang out in a hotel, Austin.”
He was Austin now? After almost breaking the guy’s thumb? “I’m aware of that, believe it or not.”
“He’s … crap. He’s going to find you, and you’ll be dead.”
The one time Austin had been hoping to have someone talk him down, tell him he was overreacting … Apparently not. Great.
“We can’t turn him in,” Stiles said. “There’s absolutely no evidence linking him to what was done to Marcus.”
Marcus. This man was on a first-name basis with the leader of the resistance movement. He didn’t seem to notice his slip, unsurprising given the exhaustion in his eyes.
“He’d be investigated, sure, but they’d clear him, and you’d still be dead. And at that point, so would I. And I don’t have anywhere to hide you. Obviously, Jason’s going to figure out we had a conversation yesterday—people saw us. So he’ll look for you here. Even if he doesn’t expect to find you, he’ll look.”
“Sam—”
“I’m not going to let you walk out of my garage and never see you again. Or hear two days from now that they discovered your body. It’s not an option, so all I’ve got is …”
He walked over to the cement steps leading inside and sat. His crossed wrists dangled between his knees, emphasizing his lankiness.
“I can deal with this,” Austin said.
Part of him w
anted Sam to believe the lie. Part of him shuddered, because Sam might. The words sounded convincing, of course. He’d said them enough in his lifetime to polish them.
“Shut up.” Both Sam’s hands scrubbed his hair. “You’ll have to follow me over there. I don’t know what else to do with you.”
“Where?”
Sam looked up, and the fluorescent garage lights made the gleam in his dark eyes look feral. “Your MPC career is over. You can never work for, with, or near Jason Mayweather again.”
Austin’s thoughts hadn’t ventured that far into the future.
“If I’m going to do this, you have to understand that, Austin. And you have to realize you could bring a whole nest of Christians to Jason for arrest, and it wouldn’t change that you’re the reason he lost Marcus Brenner. What’s between them is personal.”
No arguing that one. Jason had put his hostility on display in that cramped, foul-smelling room. Slowly, the full meaning of Sam’s words lit in his brain. Sam was going to hide him … with a bunch of Christians.
“If there were any other way for me to keep you alive … and maybe there would be, if I could spend the next week arranging something, but Jason’s going to be setting up a manhunt. Likely already is.”
“Sam …”
He stood smoothly and propped his hands on his hips. “Follow me.”
Austin shook his head. “If they find out I’m a Constabulary agent, they’ll kill me.”
Sam barked a laugh. “Right. The violent terrorists. What was I thinking, letting their leader go?”
If Austin went to Jason now, exposed Sam … Surely Jason could get Sam to tell where Brenner was. But Austin had now assaulted a Constabulary officer. Nothing could erase that. And even if it could, then what? Austin would go on with his career, and Jason would go on … abusing people.
Not an option. Ever.
“Well?” Sam said.
No bullying, no manipulation. Austin could say no. But one fact branded his mind, turning all his objections, moral and otherwise, to smoke: Jason probably would catch up with him.
“There’s no way resistance members will let me anywhere near them,” he said.
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