by Kit Rocha
Helplessness was unacceptable, but it was his current, frustrating reality.
At least he and Bren were finally doing something. When Bren twisted the last few wires together, mechanics rumbled behind the door. The surface of the wall chipped in a vertical line from floor to ceiling, followed by crumbling mortar as the painted-over doors slid smoothly apart to reveal a long, straight tunnel.
Bren let out a whistle. "Direction's right. This tunnel might actually run right under the city."
"And it's big, too." Maybe big enough for vehicles, and wouldn't that be a fucking coup? They could truck in supplies to foster rebellion right under Eden's nose—and bring out people who wanted to switch sides. "This could work."
"Yes, it could."
Not Bren's voice, and Cruz had his gun in his hand before the familiarity of the voice pierced through blind instinct. He still couldn't check his turn, but he ended up with the pistol pointed down and to the right of Ashwin's Base-issued military boots. "Ashwin."
"Cruz." Ashwin ignored the gun—and ignored Bren, too. "I need a favor."
The blood pounding through Cruz's veins turned to ice. These were the words he'd been braced for every time Ashwin appeared. The four little words that meant something else entirely, because they weren't a request. They were a reminder.
You owe me one.
When Ace had lain dying, Cruz would have bartered anything to see him safe. His life, his heart, his soul. Instead, he'd bartered this. A favor. And Ashwin would expect him to pay.
"All right." Moving slowly, precisely, Cruz holstered his gun. "Can Bren stay for this?"
Bren didn't move, but his shoulders tensed, and he almost smiled. "Bren most certainly will stay for this."
Ashwin's gaze finally flickered to Bren. Just for a moment, but Cruz imagined Ashwin mentally reviewing Bren's entire dossier. "There are some risks associated with knowing. If he's willing to accept those risks…"
"He is," Bren answered stoically.
Ashwin pulled a miniature tablet from his back pocket and handed it to Cruz. It was the kind of tech gadget he hadn't seen since leaving the base—Eden preferred delicate tablets with wide, vivid screens. This one was sturdy enough to survive being knocked around and small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
He activated the display. Instead of a collection of mission and data folders, there were only two things on the home screen—a custom application and a photo.
Cruz selected the photo. The face that filled the screen was pretty, blonde—and familiar. He'd last seen Kora Bellamy lying in the trunk of a car, blindfolded and trembling because Ashwin had kidnapped her from her cozy Eden life and brought her to the sectors to put a man back together.
To put Ace back together.
"She's in Sector One," Ashwin said quietly. "She slipped past her handlers and made it to the hospital there. She's been treating patients for the past week."
"And?"
"I need you to find her. Take her somewhere safe."
Cruz waited for the rest of the favor, but it didn't come. Ashwin simply watched him with a steely blankness that scared the shit out of him, because this was nothing. Extracting a woman from an allied sector and stashing her in a safe house? There was no risk, no danger, no reason Ashwin couldn't have done it himself already.
Chilled, he stared back. "What else, Ashwin?"
"Hide her. Don't tell me where she is."
He tacked it on like it was nothing, an afterthought. But the chill in Cruz's blood spread to the rest of his body as he forced himself to nod. "And if you come back, asking?"
Some Makhai soldiers were good at mimicking emotions. Ashwin wasn't, and he knew it, so Cruz had rarely seen him bother. But he smiled now, with a terrible, false emptiness. "Not telling me is the favor."
"Understood." Cruz barely managed to keep his voice steady.
Ashwin nodded, pivoted, and headed back into the darkness, vanishing around a corner before Cruz had regathered his wits. He still waited, shaking his head, when Bren opened his mouth, silently counting off the steps that would take Ashwin far beyond earshot.
Then he let out his breath in a rush. "Fucking hell."
Bren shuddered. "That guy is terrifying."
Coming from Bren, it was the next step up from pissing himself. "You have no idea."
But because Cruz did have an idea, he closed the photo on the tablet and let his thumb hover over the application. Just a simple blue box labeled ACTIVITY, seemingly harmless.
When he touched it, Kora Bellamy's life spread out before him in precise, methodical detail. Video, audio, surveillance, and schedules. Every person she saw, every patient she treated, every place she shopped…
Bren peered down at the tablet. "Holy fucking Christ."
Cruz paged through the information, each report more damning than the last. "When I was twelve, one of the earliest generation of Makhai soldiers became...fixated on his domestic handler. She'd fallen in love with him, which compromised her judgment as far as the Base was concerned. They tried to remove her, but she didn't want to leave him. So they went after her, and he—"
Words barely existed for the swift escalation of violence. The first man to touch the woman had lost his arm. The next two had their necks snapped before they could get near her. In the end, the Base had to threaten to blow up the entire apartment before the Makhai soldier would surrender.
The handler vanished. And the soldier… "Have you ever seen a man tear himself apart?"
"Please tell me you're speaking metaphorically."
He couldn't, so Cruz ignored the question, shut down the tablet, and shoved it into his pocket. "Ashwin can't be too far gone if he has the self-control to make this request. So we'll hide her."
"Uh-huh." Bren raised one eyebrow. "Hiding her isn't the favor, remember?"
Which was why Cruz wouldn't be telling anyone where he stashed Dr. Kora Bellamy. When Ashwin came looking for her—and Ashwin would come looking for her—Cruz needed to be the only person standing in his way.
Chapter Nineteen
The streets in Two closest to the brothel district made sense to Scarlet. They were—or, at least, had been—laid out in the same grid pattern one could find in Sector Three. Streets ran in one direction, avenues in the other, and blocks were a uniform size that you could use to judge distance as well as addresses.
Out toward the far edge of Two, all that changed. The roads began to meander, weaving in and around fences and wooded areas until Scarlet had to check the sun to orient herself. Finally, she realized that the small forests surrounded by high brick walls were estates, but before she had time to do anything but stare, Mad pulled through an open gate and down a long, wide drive.
He stopped the truck in front of a house every bit as majestic as Gideon's home in One. It was fucking palatial, with large, ornate columns and a goddamn fountain decorating the circular drive.
And it was Jade's.
Mad didn't seem to notice. He hopped out of the truck and circled to open her door before she could reach for the handle. "I visited Avery's patron's house with Lex once, and I thought that was swank. Guess he was small fucking potatoes."
"I guess." It was a long way from her childhood in the tenements. "I wouldn't know. We had three rooms when I was growing up. My dad let me take the bedroom so I'd feel like I had a space of my own. He slept on the couch."
"I'm sorry, Scarlet."
"For me? Don't be." If anything, she felt sorry for her father—working double shifts at the factory before coming home to try and rest on a lumpy sofa that sagged in the middle. But kids never saw their parents' sacrifices clearly, and she was no exception. "I had it pretty damn good."
Mad slid an arm around her waist and turned her toward the wide glass doors. "Me too, in the beginning. And recently, too, for that matter."
The familiar heat washed over her where they touched, tempered a little this time by her nerves. Jade was already inside this huge, ridiculous house, getting things in order
as the new head of Sector Two. "You really think this is a good idea, Adrian?"
"Jade taking over, you mean?" His arm tensed, and he pulled her closer as they mounted the steps. "I don't know. But I don't think telling her she shouldn't is a better idea."
"I just—" She hauled him to a stop in front of the door and faced him, struggling to put the cold knot in her gut into words. "We all have places we can't go again—because they hurt us so much, or we don't like who we were in them. I can't think of a better example of that for Jade than this whole fucking sector, you know?"
"And I thought I couldn't go back to the place where my mother died. I couldn't, Scarlet. It hurt so much." He framed her face with his hands and smiled slowly. "Until I went there with the three of you. Sometimes you need to go back, but I didn't have to go back alone. And neither does Jade."
He made things sound so easy. "Okay." She gripped his wrists and held his hands to her cheeks. "We can help her."
"Because we don't have to help her alone, either." He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers once, then again. On the third gentle touch, he tilted his head, opened his mouth, and kissed her—deep and hard, until the shocks from each rasp of his tongue over hers began to crash into the next.
The sound of someone clearing her throat broke through the haze of pleasure, and Scarlet jerked away to find an older woman in a neat black dress standing in the open doorway. "You must be Lady Jade's guests. She's expecting you."
"Thank you," Mad said easily, looping his arm through Scarlet's again. And he walked right inside, as if some random woman answering Jade's door and calling her Lady wasn't just normal, but the proper way of things.
Scarlet didn't think she'd ever get used to it.
"You're here." Dylan's voice rang out from the second-floor landing above them. An ornate double staircase flowed down from the landing to the open foyer, and Dylan hurried down one side of it. He looked as comfortable surrounded by all this opulence as Mad was, leaving Scarlet the odd one out.
"My last job ran long." Mad didn't release Scarlet's hand as he threw his other arm around Dylan in a rough hug. "How's Jade doing?"
"Hanging in there. Hi, sweetheart." Dylan bent and kissed Scarlet quickly.
When she licked her lips, she could taste him and Mad both, and a shiver ran up her spine. "Where is she?"
"Upstairs. Make a left at the end of the hall, third door on the right."
Scarlet left them in the foyer, muttering to one another in voices too low for her to understand as she climbed the marble stairs. The upstairs hall was lined with giant, gilt-framed portraits of stern men and women, and Scarlet kept her gaze straight ahead, focused on the light streaming through the huge window at the end of it.
The room Dylan had sent her to was dark, with a massive fireplace and a polished wooden desk that made everything Dallas O'Kane owned look like he'd dragged it home from an alley dump. The walls were lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, and every shelf was filled with books. Jade stood in the middle of it all, sorting papers into three stacks on the desk.
She glanced up at Scarlet's entrance. "Maybe Dallas has a point about tech. It doesn't work as well when your infrastructure's been destroyed."
"No shit." Scarlet rounded the desk and pulled Jade's hands into hers. "Hi."
"Hi." There were shadows under Jade's eyes and a weariness in her grip, but excitement shone in her smile. "Thank you for coming to help."
"You're welcome." A lock of hair had fallen over her forehead. Scarlet brushed it back and let her fingers linger on Jade's temple. "What can I do?"
"Make me take a break." She turned her cheek to Scarlet's palm and closed her eyes. "There's so much to set right. But if I can arrange for food and shelter for those who need it, at least in the short term—"
"Come on." Scarlet began to back up, around the desk and toward the door, pulling Jade with her. "We'll grab the boys and have dinner. If there's someone here whose job is to open the door, surely there's someone who cooks."
"Actually, there's a kitchen staff. A head cook, a junior cook, and three assistants." Jade laughed. "I don't need them all, but I can hardly fire them. I was thinking of having them take on more assistants, then they can feed the people who are helping rebuild. It would let some of the girls learn a trade."
It would be an utterly foreign concept to the girls who'd grown up in the brothel district, but everyone who hadn't been sold or pressed into prostitution was probably already well-acquainted with the rigors of domestic service. "That sounds like a good idea."
"I have lots of ideas." Jade twined their fingers together and led Scarlet back down the hallway. "There's another manor almost this big on the other side of the river. I want to set up a nursing school in it."
"Jesus, you don't fuck around."
"I don't have time to fuck around. We can clear out the tunnels and build a hospital and fill it with supplies, but that won't do any good if we don't have nurses and doctors who know what they're doing."
"Hey." Scarlet tugged on her hand to slow her down a little. "Pace yourself, okay? All that stuff can't happen overnight."
"I know, I just…" Jade paused at the base of the stairs and turned to look up at Scarlet. "I need to do something big, something they can see. I need to show the girls that there are more types of lives they can live than the one they were trained for."
Mad stepped up behind Jade and kissed her temple. "You're showing them that already. So will Avery and Lex and Mia."
Jade leaned into him without looking away from Scarlet. "In other words, Scarlet is right."
"She usually is," Mad murmured. "It's a good thing she's so cute, or she'd be unbearable."
Dylan was trying to hide a smile behind his hand, so Scarlet flashed him a wink before turning to Mad. "Funny, that's not what you were saying last night."
"That's not what I'll be saying tonight, either, if things go well." He waggled his eyebrows in a suggestive invitation so overdone he had to have stolen it from Ace. "Are things going to go well?"
The sleeve of his black T-shirt had bunched up and gotten trapped under the supple leather of his shoulder holster. Scarlet freed it and smoothed it down, smiling when the muscles in his arm flexed beneath her hand. "One thing at a time, Adrian. Dinner."
"It should almost be ready." Jade slipped past Mad to kiss Dylan on the cheek before tilting her head. "This way. We might as well try the formal dining room once before we decide whether to turn it into something more practical."
Calling the dining room formal was a fucking understatement, like calling Jade kinda smart or Mad a little intense. The cavernous ceiling was crisscrossed with beams that had been plastered and decorated with shit like cherubs and scrollwork, and huge windows let in the last of the fading sunlight.
It gleamed off the long table, which could have easily accommodated two dozen people, and Scarlet was the only one who looked awkward sliding into an ornate chair at one end of it. Her discomfort left her trying to fill the silence, and she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "What kind of a person really lives in a place like this?"
Jade opened her mouth, then shut it again when a door at the other end of the room opened. Half a dozen people weighed down with silver trays streamed in, led by an older woman with a scarf tied over her hair and a basket cradled between her hands.
The older woman came straight to Jade and placed the basket in front of her. The dinner rolls inside were piled precariously, golden brown and so fresh from the oven they made the whole room smell like baking bread.
"My sweet yeast rolls, just the way you always liked them," the woman told her, and Scarlet swore there were tears in her eyes. "You look so much like her, Miss Jyoti. So much like Lady Radha—"
"Thank you," Jade said swiftly, squeezing the woman's hands. "It means a great deal to me to know she's remembered fondly."
"You both are."
"Thank you, Molly."
The woman dropped an honest-to-fucking-God curtsy an
d turned to herd her staff out of the room, leaving Jade staring at the basket of bread.
"My mother's patron," she said, "was the sort of person who lived in a place like this."
Not just her mother's patron, but her father. The words reverberated in Scarlet's head, throbbing like a heavy bass line. "You lived here?"
"Not for long. I was seven when we left, remember?" Jade picked up one of the rolls, which steamed when she broke it in half. "On nights when my mother had to help my father entertain guests, Molly would let me sit in the kitchen with her while she planned menus. I think I remember her better than I remember my father."
She said it so calmly, like she was just telling a story about something that happened to someone she once knew. Like she wasn't describing the awful twists and traumatic turns of her own life. "The sector leaders sent you here to set up shop?"
Dylan reached for her hand. "Scarlet—"
She shrugged him off. "No, what the hell? Mad and I passed a dozen places just like this on the way. How could they do this? Didn't they know?"
"I don't think they did." Jade tore the bread into smaller and smaller pieces. "I chose it."
"You—" Words failed her, and Scarlet stared at the demolished roll on Jade's plate. "You what?"
"I know it might seem morbid." Jade finally met her gaze. "But I like to think of him sitting somewhere in Eden, right now, knowing that I'm sitting at his desk here, undoing everything he ever did. And this house..."
"Should have been yours," Mad finished gently.
Jade's hands curled into fists. "No, not mine. Hers. My mother's."
So she'd come here for what—revenge? To reclaim part of her past? Scarlet had never begrudged anyone the chance to face down their demons—Christ knew she'd spent enough hours staring at the remains of the factory where her father had perished. But staring into that abyss was hard enough on its own. If you did it when you were already on unsure footing, you could fall. "Be careful, Jade. Please."
"I will," Jade replied softly, reaching for Scarlet's hand. "I can do this, because I'm not alone."