Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  Trix stared up at him, her eyes wide, her chest heaving with shallow, quick breaths. “Okay,” she said finally. “Okay, I get it.”

  He forced himself to release her chin before his fingers dug bruises into her delicate skin. But he’d already left marks—smears in the sticky, drying blood splattered across her face. He’d blown a man’s head off not two feet from her, while she was tripping through daisy fields, rolling on Jesus knew what.

  And she was still holding it together. He had to do the same. “I’m sorry.” He gentled his voice. “It’s not gonna come to that, okay? The only guy up there with any brains at all is Ryder. By morning, he’ll have them crawling all over the area south of the sector.”

  She nodded, then sagged against the wall, sliding down it as her knees gave way. He helped her sit, and she combed her hands through her tangled hair. “It’ll be all right,” she muttered.

  Finn murmured reassurances and dragged Ryder’s bag closer. It was packed with the medical kit he expected, plus emergency rations, water, and a tiny radiant heater with a fully charged battery. He also found a loaded handgun and a tightly folded reflective blanket.

  Ryder had been ready to run, which explained a lot of things. Why he hadn’t taken Finn’s offer. Why a man with his brains and skills was in a shithole like Five to begin with. Men with morals didn’t rise high in Fleming’s operation unless they had a reason to.

  Clearly Ryder had a reason. Whatever it was, Finn hoped the man could keep his hide intact while Beckett seized power. Then again, considering Beckett’s disdain for Finn and appreciation for culture and class, Ryder probably had Finn’s job already.

  That was good for Finn. He pulled out the blanket and handed it to Trix. “Wrap yourself up while I see about your wrists. It’s going to get cold in here tonight.”

  She obeyed, though it took her several moments to work the blanket open, and her shaking was worse. A lot worse. “They don’t hurt.”

  Shit. He dropped the kit and settled against the wall next to her. “Come here, doll.” Not quite a command, and he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he held his arms open, offering her the chance to come to him.

  She closed her eyes, as if shutting out the sight of him. “Don’t.”

  It hurt. But he had it coming, so he didn’t let it show. He took the blanket and tucked it around her without touching her. Her jaw clenched, and she held herself stiffly, her back rigid and straight.

  Oh yeah, he had a lifetime of this coming. He’d lost the right to touch her the first time he’d laid hands on her, all those years ago when he’d still suffered under the delusion that he was a half-decent guy. Wanting her had cured him of that. Losing her had driven the lesson home.

  All he could do was get her back to Four, back to the loving arms of her real family. Preferably before she figured out Dallas O’Kane wouldn’t greet him with hugs and kisses.

  Chances were fifty-fifty he’d end tomorrow in a ditch with an O’Kane bullet rattling around in his skull. As long as she was safe, he’d consider it a fair trade.

  She couldn’t stop shaking.

  At first, it terrified her. She had no idea what drugs her abductor had forced on her—and whether they were laced with the addictive additive Mac Fleming favored. It had been years since she’d suffered through the twists and pangs of withdrawal, but the memory was etched in her brain.

  Agony. There was no other word for it, not just the pain but the craving. The bone-deep knowledge that she’d die without the drugs, the moments where she would have done anything to end the torment. Watching Jade scream and cry through the same thing so recently had brought those memories rushing to the surface, sharp and stinging.

  Gradually, Trix realized this was different. Not once had she thought to ask Finn if he was carrying, and that fact helped to settle her. At one point, she’d have done more than ask him for drugs—she’d have climbed into his lap, cajoled, whispered filthy promises in his ear.

  At one point, she might have shot him in the fucking head and gone through his pockets afterward.

  The thought almost brought her off the wall to put more space between them. But he was cold, too—he hid his shivering well, but he couldn’t stop his lips from turning blue—so she eased closer and shifted the blanket. “Here.”

  “I’m okay,” he replied quietly, but he didn’t move away. He caught the edge of the blanket and held it against his chest, his focus never wavering from the door.

  The urge to touch him damn near overwhelmed her, and it only grew stronger the closer she got. But she couldn’t keep pulling away, so she settled for stroking his forearm. “I think they’re gone.”

  “Probably.” He tensed under her fingertips, his strong muscles flexing. “You should eat and drink something and get a little more rest.”

  Nothing he planned on doing himself, obviously. “I’d like to clean up.”

  After a moment of silence, he snagged the medical kit from the bag. “Will you let me bandage your wrists, too?”

  Anything to give him a task, something to distract him from staring at the door with a gun in his hand. “Thank you.”

  He moved slowly. Precisely. He’d always had a lazy patience to his movements, but it seemed more serious now as he took inventory of the kit and pulled out gauze, med-gel, bandages, and a handful of antiseptic wipes. He laid out the supplies in a neat line before shifting to his knees, one hand hovering beneath her chin. “Can you tilt your head up a little?”

  The hesitation made her chest ache, so she guided his hand to her jaw as she complied. “I’m not scared of you, Finn.”

  “Never thought you were, doll.” He cupped her chin, warm and gentle, and began to carefully clean her cheek. “I’m sorry about this. I should have handled him better.”

  “You did what you had to do.”

  “No, I did what I wanted to do. The usual.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. You always have been.”

  “Have I?” He snorted as he tilted her head back and worked his way along her jaw. “It’s been a while, Trix. Things change.”

  “Yes, they do.” She closed her eyes and tried not to focus on the impossible gentleness of his rough fingers. “You haven’t asked me why.”

  “Don’t need to. You always were smart, even when you were high. You did the smart thing.”

  “Not the leaving. After I got clean, I meant to get in touch, let you know I was okay.” Maybe even to ask if he would ever consider leaving, too. “I never could figure out what to say.”

  He sighed softly. “You don’t have to explain. You didn’t owe me anything, you got that? Other way around, really.”

  “It feels like I did.” He’d been the one to keep her from spinning out of control, from winding up dead because she was too fucked up to keep herself alive.

  “Uh-huh.” He tilted her head in the other direction, his touch still gentle. It lingered this time, his thumb making small, soothing circles against the underside of her jaw as he cleaned her left cheek. “Well, thinking I’d gotten you killed got me clean, so whatever feelings you have, count us square.”

  Clean, maybe—but he seemed hopeless, not happy, such a far cry from her new life in Sector Four. Guilt suffused her. “After everything you did for me—”

  “Stop,” he grated out. “Just—you live in Four now, don’t you? Land of the motherfucking heroes. You should know the difference between being good and not being as bad as you could have been.”

  Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away. “All right.”

  He muttered a curse and dropped his hands. “See? I’m still a shitty hero. But I’m trying this time.”

  She felt the loss of his touch so sharply. In the weeks and months after she’d kicked the drugs, that had been the thing she’d struggled with the most. The previous years of her life had been blurry, every sensation vague, and getting sober was like waking up to a whole new world.

  She had relished it, thrown herself into a hedonistic pursuit of
sensory decadence. Food, laughter, sex, dancing. Everything had been real, maybe for the first time ever...and her only regret was that Finn hadn’t been there to share it.

  It was easy to see now that he’d been wallowing in blame and self-loathing, instead.

  Trix moved without thinking, taking the wet gauze from his hands and turning her attention to the blood smeared on his cheeks. “I missed you.”

  It was his turn to close his eyes. “Me too, Tracy. Trix.”

  His brows drew together, and she smoothed away the furrow with her thumb. Such a tiny bit of contact, but it zinged through her like a shock, and she realized it felt right, like a habit she’d completely forgotten.

  She’d touched him like this before.

  The feeling of familiarity only increased when he rested his hands on her hips. “You seem good.”

  “Good?” Across to his temple, down over his cheek to the rough beard covering his jaw.

  “Happy. Healthy.” His thumb swept over her hip in a slow arc, tracing the curve. “You were always too damn skinny. I used to worry.”

  I know. But the words failed her as heat washed up her spine. Oh, she remembered this. His hands, scorching even through layers of fabric.

  It wasn’t enough.

  She stared at his mouth. It would be easy to blame her arousal on the adrenaline, on emotion and danger running hot and high, but the ache ran deeper than that. Harder.

  “Trix.”

  He was watching her now, and she met his intent gaze with another jolt. It was stupid to sit here and not touch him, assuage that ache, especially when she’d lain awake so many nights wanting to do just that.

  O’Kanes didn’t deny their desires. They indulged them.

  So she shifted, leaning closer, until her lips almost touched his. “What?”

  “If you’re up to it, we should keep moving.”

  The regret in his voice—and the reality of their situation—helped to ease the sting of his words. She leaned back and nodded. “Right.”

  “Hey.” Roughened fingertips touched her cheek, and he smiled as he let his thumb ghost across her lower lip. “You just returned from the dead. I need to keep you that way. Alive.”

  “Is there a way around the collapsed section of tunnel?”

  “Probably, but not one we can use. Most of the locks are electronic, and I can’t do shit about those. We’re going to have to risk going up.”

  There was a rumpled map sticking out of the open bag, one she vaguely remembered him cursing at as they made their way through the tunnels. She pulled it free and unfolded it on her lap.

  A maze of tiny, intersecting lines confronted her. She blinked to clear her lingering double vision and tilted her head. The whole thing looked like a wheel, a blank central point surrounded by a larger circle marked off in radiating sections.

  The sectors.

  She traced a finger from Five due east to Four. There were fewer tunnels marked in that direction. Most of the map seemed dedicated to the opposite—multiple routes leading across the river through Sectors Six and Seven, all the way up to Eight. “It looks like your friend planned on going this way.”

  “Six,” Finn said after a moment. His finger joined hers, sliding over the lines that delineated the sector. “I know people there. If we can’t get across the border to Four, we can go that way.”

  But Four was so fucking close. All they had to do was cross the damn street, and she’d be there, home. Did they even know she was gone yet? More importantly, had they found Zan in time?

  Trix pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “They have to know we might try to run for it.”

  “Yeah.” He smoothed her hair. “If we get to Six, we can send word to O’Kane, one way or another. You’ll be safe, and they’ll figure out a way to get you home.”

  It wasn’t enough. “We both have to make it through this, Finn. Promise me.”

  Finn caught her hands and tugged them from her face. When she looked up at him, he smiled. “I can’t keep you safe from the grave, doll. I promise. I’m not looking for a way out of this life.”

  The way he said it made it sound like a new development. “It was the truth, wasn’t it? You were waiting for a chance. Not just to take him down, but to kill him.”

  His smile didn’t falter as he rubbed his thumbs over her palms. “I’ve been waiting to kill him since the day you died.”

  And Mac Fleming deserved it. Because of the drugs, because of the way he used and disposed of people, and because he’d created a culture of hopelessness in his sector, where even men who wanted to do the right thing couldn’t. Where men like Finn bowed under the pressure until they broke.

  In the end, there was only one thing to say. “Good.”

  Dallas

  For the third time in under a week, Dallas was in danger of losing one of his men.

  Zan’s blood was everywhere. A goddamn miracle, considering how much of it he’d left back in the alleyway where they’d found him—alive, somehow. Zan was a stubborn bastard clinging to life with both massive hands, and Dallas already knew from the look on Doc’s face that it might not be enough.

  And Dallas was fresh out of miracles.

  Doc faced him, grim and ashen. “I’m getting really fucking tired of delivering bad news, O’Kane.”

  “So don’t,” Dallas growled. “Tell me you can fix this.”

  “Your man damn near bled out on the street...but he’s conscious now. Asking for you.”

  And Dallas would have to face him, look him in the eyes, and know he’d failed him. Because he’d pissed off the wrong sociopath, the one with a stranglehold on the regen tech that could keep Zan alive. The only promise Dallas had left was revenge. “Did he see who shot him?”

  Doc grabbed Dallas’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “He wasn’t alone.”

  The next second took forever. He lived a damn lifetime of panic between one beat of his heart and the next, his brain tripping down the list of his people, trying to remember which ones he’d seen in the past hour. Noelle, Mad, Lex—thank God, he’d seen Lex—

  “Who?” he asked hoarsely, already turning for the door. Rachel and Cruz were curled safely around Ace. Six and Bren had been on their way out to Sector Three. But there were so many more names, so many people in danger now that war was coming for them.

  Zan was whispering something beneath his breath as he fidgeted restlessly on the bed, his skin pale and sallow. His heart heavy, Dallas gripped the other man’s hand and leaned down. “I’m here, Zan.”

  The whispers solidified into one terrifying syllable. “Trix...”

  Fucking hell. “Trix was with you when you were shot?”

  Zan shook his head and grimaced. “They took her. Fle-Fleming’s—”

  “Shh, okay. We’ll get her back.” Dallas pressed his free hand to Zan’s forehead, wishing he could will strength into him. “I need you to hold on for me, you hear? We’re gonna fix you up.”

  “I tried, Dallas.”

  “You did good, man. You did real good.”

  Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Not enough.”

  Dallas squeezed Zan’s hand, unwilling to let go and turn to face Doc. He already knew what words would be coming, the same Doc had murmured over Ace’s almost-dead body.

  I can make him comfortable had to be the five most helpless words a leader could hear. All of his power, all of his wealth, all the things he’d wrested from the hands of other petty dictators, and it still came down to this. Easing his man—his friend—out of the world.

  He’d choke the life out of Mac Fleming with his bare hands for this.

  “Declan.”

  Lex’s voice was usually a comfort, but now it was heavy with the same pain that twisted in his chest. When he turned, he saw that pain reflected in her eyes. Zan was theirs, a man who’d pledged his loyalty and trusted them with his life.

  And he was dying. The hardest lesson of all was the one Dallas still struggled with—sometimes yo
u had to see to the living. “Fleming has Trix.”

  “Not anymore, he doesn’t. He’s dead.” Her hand tightened on the doorframe. “His successor is on a video call for you.”

  Maybe he wasn’t out of miracles after all.

  Chapter Three

  Finn couldn’t decide what painted a bleaker picture of Sector Six—the fact that they were crouched in an abandoned warehouse that should have been packed to the rafters with this year’s harvest, or the unlit, unguarded street outside.

  “We shouldn’t have to go too far,” Finn murmured, still watching the street through the dirty window. “I think I know where we are.”

  Trix kept her back flat against the wall and nodded. “I’m just glad to be out of the tunnels.”

  So was he. It had taken a full day to make their way this far, a day spent in the darkness, advancing and backtracking, wasting hours trying to find a path that didn’t end abruptly in a solid door with an electronic lock. A day watching their rations diminish while he refused to consider the possibility that they might end up lost and wandering the underground labyrinth forever.

  Finn pulled their last bottle of water from the bag and passed it to Trix. “Drink. Are you hungry?”

  “Anxious. I don’t steal cars during desperate escapes all that often.”

  “Don’t be.” He kept his voice easy and confident, trying to will a little of that into her. “All we have to worry about here is being scarier than the other criminals, and I could do that in my sleep.”

  A tiny smile tilted up one corner of her generous mouth. “I know.”

  That smile made everything better, so he didn’t mention the larger dangers. The leader of Sector Six loathed Mac Fleming and was supposedly allied with Dallas O’Kane, but Timothy Scott was also an idiot. Finn couldn’t trust their safety to the whims of an idiot, especially not a greedy one who might be swayed by a phone call from the new head of Sector Five.