Before the End (Beyond Series Ultimate Glom Edition)

by Kit Rocha

  "I know." She didn't tremble. She didn't flinch. "If what you stand to gain wasn't worth the risk, you wouldn't be there. Why can't I make the same choice?"

  "Because I won't let you." The truth, stark and damning, but he'd rather have Lili out here, safely hating his guts in Sector Four, than anywhere near the fucking vultures in the city. "Sorry, love, but there it is."

  After a tense moment, she nodded stiffly and turned. Every movement was carefully precise as she poured herself a drink and took a sip. "You're wrong, you know. My mother never could have rallied support. She was no threat, and everyone knew it. She was broken." She eyed him over the edge of her glass. "She was obedient."

  But not Lili. Fire burned in her eyes, and Jared loved her for it even as it scared the hell out of him. "There are plenty of ways to spread your wings here."

  "I know," she said again, and this time there was pain in her words. In her eyes. "I can't say you didn't warn me. But I thought we'd grown past friends. I thought—" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Maybe I'm still naïve after all."

  "I'm sorry." Not for his actions or words, but for the necessity of them. There was nothing he wouldn't risk to keep Lili safe—his happiness, his heart. His life.

  "What do you want from me?" She finished her drink and met his gaze. "Or, more to the point, what will you allow me to give you?"

  "Does it matter?" he asked softly.

  Her lips curved in a tiny, sad smile. "You're the one drawing the lines. I'd give you everything. That doesn't obligate you to take it."

  She wanted proclamations—or maybe even finality. "I can't do this right now."

  Wordlessly, she retrieved his empty glass, refilled it, and offered it to him. It was mindless, automatic, as if she'd reverted to habit. Shut down.

  He grasped her chin and tilted her face up to his. "Lili."

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you when you're under so much stress."

  It chilled him to his core—not just the words, but the flat, careful tone. "Lili, stop."

  "I can't." Her eyes glistened, and she blinked rapidly. When that didn't banish the tears, she fought his grip, trying to twist her face away. "You can't deal with my feelings right now. So I can hide them or I can lose you."

  You could never lose me. Hollow reassurance, considering the harsh reality of their situation, and he couldn't bring himself to say it. Instead, he released her. "Tomorrow night, after the opening," he whispered. "Wait for me?"

  She rubbed at her eyes, as if she could wipe away the evidence of her melancholy. But when she looked back up at him, her cheeks were smudged with eyeliner and tears glistened on her lashes. "Will you let me make you breakfast? And actually eat it?"

  "Anything you want, love." But his chest ached, and the knot between his shoulders had twisted tighter, because there was nothing left to say. No right or wrong, only two people in pain, and no way to fix it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The grand opening was an unqualified success.

  Jared had stopped trying to count the number of people who showed up—plenty he recognized, but many he didn't, as well. Influential people, ones who had always remained outside his circle of acquaintance because their tastes ran more to drinking and gambling than whoring.

  And the politicians. Men from the Council, who were careful to pretend they'd only answered their invitations out of civic duty, to make sure nothing untoward was going on in his illegal underground bar. Men who aspired to the Council, but who were biding their time in lower positions, waiting for their turns to come.

  In and out the door, men and women, old and young, rich and richer. Jared smiled, shook their hands, suggested the perfect drinks. He even made a few introductions. The consummate host.

  All the while, he was ticking them off in his head, sorting them, making lists. Which ones carried secrets close to their chests. Which ones carried other people's secrets, like burdens they couldn't wait to lay down. Who could be persuaded, and who could be bought.

  Outside, he was smiling. Inside, he was deadly, cold, as efficient as the data skimmer Noah had created.

  The last stragglers stumbled out the door, and one of the servers shut it hastily behind them, leaning against it for good measure. "Thank God. If they'd stayed much longer, they'd have been wanting breakfast cocktails."

  A quick glance at his watch confirmed that the sun would be rising soon, if it hadn't already peeked over the vast horizon far outside the city. "Dianna, you did a wonderful job tonight. Thank you."

  The brunette grinned at him. "Don't thank me. Just tell me I get to keep some of the credits I have stuffed in my bra."

  "They're yours. You earned them."

  Her grin widened as she pushed away from the door. "No taking that back after you see how much I made. These Eden bastards will swoon over a bare ankle and imagining my tits."

  Of course they would. Add to it the heady adrenaline rush of doing something forbidden, something dangerous, and Jared was surprised they'd been as well-behaved as they had—something that might not last.

  More security. Another mental note to add to the list. "Make sure you lock up," he advised. "If you need me, I'm stepping out back for a minute."

  "I'll be here." She eyed the sticky tables and the piles of glasses. "Until noon."

  "I'll come back and help," he assured her, already reaching inside his jacket for his cigarettes.

  The door screeched as he pushed it open and stepped out into the alley. The air was chilly, the deep shadows dulled by the eerie gray predawn light. Jared lit his cigarette, leaned against the rough brick, and rubbed the back of his wrist over his forehead.

  He had an hour, two at the most, to figure out how to fix things with Lili.

  Except there wasn't any fixing it, was there? He'd thought he was doing the right thing by telling her the truth about his job, but he'd failed to make sure she understood what it meant. He'd failed, period. Everything after that was on him.

  And knowing it changed nothing. It was selfish to ask her to wait at home in Sector Four while he waded through the slime in the city, and even more selfish to lock her out emotionally in a strange mirror image of the marriage she'd fled. He would never hurt her physically or purposefully, but he understood now that it didn't matter. Every terse answer, every sidestepped question, would pierce her in ways Logan Beckett could never have dreamed of.

  Which left Jared shit out of options.

  He took a long drag on his cigarette and froze when the back of his neck prickled. Something was different, off—

  "I'm sorry." That was it, just the two words—and a hiss of air followed by a sharp pain in his neck.

  Lieutenant Malhotra. Recognition swept over Jared along with an unpleasant numbness that left him slumping against the wall. His mind fuzzed, heavy, like fog sweeping out over the reservoir.

  The last time the man had dragged him away from his bar, it had been to Council headquarters. His likely destination now—

  Except this time, Jared was pretty fucking sure he wasn't going through the front door.

  By dawn, Lili had given up any pretense of calm serenity and was waiting for Jared on the roof of the barracks building. She could see the entire compound from here, as well as the roads leading to it. The dawn was chilly but bearable as she huddled in her fur coat, one of the few possessions she'd brought with her out of Five.

  The waiting, however, was agony.

  Eden's walls gleamed even before the first light spilled over the mountains in the east. The electricity they consumed simply to light their city could have powered the sectors for a decade. That was what Eden did—greedily devour everything as whim struck. Power. Resources.

  Lives.

  The sectors were dark by comparison. Lights flared here and there—little spots of brightness where people burned whatever they could put their hands on to fight off the cold and the dark. Most had burned low by the time light crept through the streets. One block at a time, chasing the shadows bac
k, and Lili watched it creep toward the outer edge of the compound.

  One more street.

  One more street, and she'd go to Dallas and Lex. One more street, and she'd admit something was wrong.

  Her eyes hurt from squinting. But still she stared at the main street as if she could make Jared materialize by stubborn force of will.

  Instead workers begin to appear, trudging toward the marketplace or meeting on corners. Men first, then women, then teenagers ducking between them, and it wasn't just dawn. It was day.

  And Jared hadn't come home.

  Numbness wrapped around her as she headed for the door. Just a thin layer over terror, but familiar and comforting. She knew how to fear and still function. A legacy of her father and husband that she found useful as she listened to her heels echo on the concrete steps. All the way down to the first floor, into the section of the building reserved for the king and queen.

  She tried the office first, and her last shred of hope died when Lex opened the door fully dressed, somber, and silently stepped aside to let her in.

  Lili clutched her coat around her to fight off a sudden shiver as she edged past Lex. "You've heard something."

  "Gia sent a runner," she confirmed softly. "Jared was closing up the bar this morning, and he just...vanished. Staff didn't hear or see anything."

  Lili turned away, but there was no comfort in the rest of the room. Only Dallas O'Kane himself, hard and tired, sitting at his desk looking like Lili was the last person he wanted to be laying eyes on right now.

  Her gut knew what that look meant. Her heart needed for her gut to be wrong. "What are you going to do?"

  Dallas clenched his jaw and said nothing.

  Lex touched her shoulder lightly, and Lili barely felt it through the thick fur and icy numbness. "If the military police picked him up, that means Council involvement—" She broke off and cleared her throat. "It's too risky, Lili. I'm sorry."

  She refused to look away from Dallas. "He's yours," she whispered roughly. "I know he is. I know what he's risking. For you."

  "For all of us," Dallas corrected. "You think I don't want to go in there after him, girl? If it was just my skin, or my men, I'd risk it. But if the Council decides I crossed the line, they'll blow this whole fucking sector off the map. Jared knew that. And he made me promise."

  Her lips were numb now, too. And no amount of huddling in her coat would help, because the cold was coming from inside. "What promise?"

  "That I wouldn't risk all those lives for a chance to save his."

  Lex pried her fingers open and pressed a glass into them. "We have to wait it out. They've picked him up for questioning before. It might be as simple as that."

  Another thing he'd never told her. Her hand was oddly steady as she lifted the glass to her lips, but she could barely taste the liquor. "How long did they keep him that time?"

  Dallas stared at her in silence, his gaze so intense she had the sudden queasy feeling that he could see beneath her skin. She'd never felt stripped so bare by a simple look—or felt so demandingly judged.

  Whatever he saw made him rise and cross to a safe against the far wall. The keypad beeped as he typed in a lengthy code, followed by a soft click. He returned with a file stuffed with scrawled notes. Not Jared's elegant handwriting, but something tight and barely legible.

  He shuffled through them, came up with a printed sheet, and held it out to Lili. "Markovic picked him up last time. Left him cooling his heels for a while before asking him a lot of interesting questions."

  She took the paper and blinked until she could focus on the words. And when she did, her stomach turned over again.

  It sounded like Jared. She didn't even know how—it was just a report of a conversation, but the observations were witty and pointed, the occasional deft turn of phrase both formal and wryly self-aware.

  The picture it painted was an odd one, for a councilman. A man of earnest intentions, one who wanted to do good. Not just within the walls of Eden, but for everyone who stood in the city's shadow. Jared's impression hadn't been that of a man searching for a link to the O'Kanes in order to condemn, but of one hoping for a link in order to...

  Something. That was the question at the end of the page. Markovic's endgame. His motives seemed pure, but what he hoped to accomplish remained a mystery. Jared had indicated a willingness to nurture that contact and deduce exactly what Markovic's plans might involve—and whether an alliance with Dallas was truly his goal.

  "Markovic suspects Jared's connection to the O'Kanes," Lex said. "If he does, you can bet the others do, too. An O'Kane rushing in to save him would only confirm it."

  She might be made of ice again, but the eye for nuance that Jared had helped her develop still lingered. She didn't think she was imagining the slight inflection in Lex's words, or the tightly leashed impatience in Dallas's eyes.

  An O'Kane rushing in to save him would only confirm it.

  "If Jared is in trouble, Markovic could get damn near any fucking thing he wants from me in exchange for stepping in." Dallas tugged the paper from her hand and returned it to the file. "You know that."

  No one knew better. In exchange for her public performance of pain, Dallas had given her safety, a chance at family, and hope for a future she never could have dreamed possible. Dallas O'Kane paid his debts.

  Someone needed to tell Nikolas Markovic that. Someone who knew it, firsthand.

  Someone who wasn't an O'Kane.

  Dallas and Lex would never ask. If they had to ask, she wouldn't be strong enough for it. If they had to ask, she might do it out of obligation or fear or the belief that her future in Sector Four depended on her risking her life.

  If they had to ask, Jared would never, ever forgive them.

  That coldness inside didn't feel like her enemy anymore, and now she knew it had never been only the drugs. She could be steel when she had to be, as hard as Lex, as ruthless as Dallas. The courage to shoot a guard and walk across two sectors in the middle of the night was part of her, just like the protective fury gathering beneath her icy calm.

  She'd never had a chance to save her family. She wasn't going to sit quietly in her room and wait for news that it was too late to save Jared, too.

  Turning, she met Lex's eyes. "How would you get into Eden, if you had to?"

  "I'd call in a favor," she answered quietly. "From someone who loves Jared as much as I do."

  Gia. It had to be. Not just because Ace was an O'Kane, but because Gia was the one with the connections and the power and the money.

  And the secrets.

  Lili set down her glass, reached for Lex's hand, and tried to come up with the right words. Something that could convey the depth of Lili's gratitude. For the truth. For a chance. For seeing something in Lili that even Jared hadn't—someone who had the right to fight for the people she loved.

  Nothing came. Words weren't enough. So she squeezed Lex's fingers and kept it simple. "Thank you."

  "Save it, honey." Lex gently brushed Lili's hair back from her cheek. "You might feel differently once you get inside those walls."

  "I'm not afraid of Eden," she replied.

  It was the raw truth. She'd survived growing up with her father's unpredictable rages. She'd endured marriage as a child bride, and had come to maturity pouring drinks and planning meals for the people who made Eden the gilded cesspool it had become.

  She wasn't the desert or the flowers. She wasn't ice or steel. She was a goddamn diamond, formed under terrible pressure, as hard and unforgiving as the rock Logan had put on her finger.

  And she'd cut the fuck out of anyone who didn't get out of her way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I understand what powerful men do when you cross them.

  Lili's words rang in Jared's brain as another blow snapped his head to the left, and the taste of blood filled his mouth.

  He flexed his hands, and the plastic zip-tie cuffs dug into his wrists. The drugs were wearing off, but the MPs hadn't waited to
start the beating. Clearly, whoever had ordered it—come, Jared, don't be obtuse, you know it was Peterson—didn't care about information so much as making him bleed.

  Another blow, and his nose gave a sickening crack. "Not so pretty now, are you?"

  "Still prettier than you," Jared drawled, as if none of it could touch him. Hurt him.

  That earned him a growl and a fist in the belly. "I can fix that."

  Oh, they could smash him up good, fuck up his face in ways even Bren Donnelly would be jealous of once they were finished. The thought—combined with his lingering high—dragged a laugh out of him.

  "Crazy motherfucker," the guard snarled, but fear lurked beneath the words. Fear that Jared wouldn't be cowed. Fear that only made the blows fall faster and harder, and Christ only knew how much damage they were doing that had nothing to do with his pretty face.

  "Enough," snapped a familiar voice, and the beating stopped abruptly. When Jared forced his swollen eyes open, he wasn't surprised to see Ashwin standing just inside the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression utterly blank.

  The guard who'd been hitting him looked queasy. "I was just—"

  "I can see what you were doing." Ashwin's gaze slid methodically over Jared, cataloguing his injuries. "If your enthusiasm results in a delay in questioning, the counselor will hold you personally responsible."

  Counselor. The word was enough to make a man's blood run cold.

  The door opened, and a short woman in a white coat wheeled in a cart loaded with vials and machines. Behind her was a slender, unremarkable man in a dark uniform, vaguely similar to the ones the military police wore. But instead of rank and insignia, his bore only a small, ringed star on the collar.

  He stopped in front of Jared's chair and studied him. "Can he talk?"

  "I'm not sure." Ashwin's gaze drilled into Jared's, with no hint of the apology he'd uttered in the alleyway. Just even, unemotional assessment. "The guards were overzealous."