by Kit Rocha
Bren slung the bag over his shoulder. "Call it, Cruz--you want to plant the tracker or deploy the drone?"
Cruz grinned, and for a moment it was like a decade had fallen away, like he and Bren were on just another mission, ready to give each other a hard time right up until the bullets started flying. "You're out of practice, Donnelly. Stick to the easy shit and leave the tracker to me."
"You saying I've gone soft?"
"Maybe."
"Whatever," Noah interjected as the door slid open. "You're both crazy scary motherfuckers, so get out there and do your thing."
Cruz slipped through the door, into the darkness of an abandoned office. This section of Eden was mostly warehouses, empty caverns of space that had once held surplus supplies looted from cities within driving distance. But Eden churned through resources faster than necessary, and didn't trust a populace that got poorer every year. Anything of value had been moved to a more secure location years before Cruz had run his first mission.
Short-sighted. Stupid. No wonder men like Ashwin Malhotra no longer considered loyalty to Eden their first priority.
Bren held up one hand in a silent gesture--stop--and cocked his head. Activity bustled on the other side of one thin wall, the sounds of wood scraping and glass clinking. He scanned the room, pointed two fingers to his eyes, then indicated the far side of the warehouse.
With one finger, he quickly sketched a box in the air. Window. At Cruz's nod of understanding, he slung the bag containing the surveillance drone off his shoulder and melted into the shadows.
The window wasn't large, but Cruz didn't need it to be. It squeaked slightly when he lifted it the first two inches, but through the gap he could hear the men in the alley, talking over an idling engine. No shouts--they wouldn't want to call attention to what they were doing any more than Cruz did--but they weren't good at stealth.
Cruz was. With the tracker and the rest of his tools secured to his belt, he opened the window all the way, slipped through it, and lowered himself silently to the ground. Gravel stirred beneath his boots, just a whisper, and he dropped to a crouch in the shadows and looked to his right.
The truck was facing him, parked at a crooked angle, as if backed up to the door by someone without much skill. Even better for Cruz--they'd swung the truck doors open to unload the merchandise, blocking their view of the narrow space between the vehicle and the building.
He could have strolled in and slapped the tracker into place in broad daylight.
Not that he was careless. Too much was riding on this for any accidents. Cruz stayed low, inching along the side of the building, thankful that Eden didn't waste energy on streetlights here. He made it within a few feet of the front fender before dropping to roll under it, careful not to disturb any stray garbage. He was close enough to hear the men clearly now, and all it would take was one slip--
"I can't believe they go through this shit so fast."
"No kidding. Good thing for them it's cheaper than the real stuff."
A snort. "You been in this joint? They charge more than the real stuff. Didn't think that was possible."
"Fancy fuckers," a third voice replied as Cruz dug out the tracker and affixed it to the undercarriage. "Money makes 'em stupid."
"Amen." Bottles clattered, followed by a vicious curse. "You drop that, and the boss'll have your ass."
"Hell, you think I'm scared of--"
The third man, the one with an unmistakable thread of intelligence running through his voice, hissed. "Shut the fuck up. You know the MPs have eyes and ears all over the goddamn place."
It was truer than they'd ever know. Bren might have already deployed the surveillance drone, which would send video back to Noah's tablet as long as he stayed within range--a limitation the official drones didn't share. By the time Cruz crawled back through the window and into the tunnels, the hacker would be cleaning up whatever shots he'd managed to get of these men's faces. If he was fast, he'd be comparing them to Eden's files.
The drone would tell them who, and the tracker would tell them where. Knowing both would give them time to do real surveillance, to plan an attack that wouldn't just lop off a few branches, but tear the whole messy operation up by the roots.
Cruz made sure the tracker was secure before crawling back to the wall, but he was still three feet from the window when the truck doors slammed behind him.
No time for careful. He hoisted himself and went through the window headfirst, biting off a curse when his shoulder smashed into the cement floor. Not the most graceful roll, but he managed to come up on his knees, crouched just low enough to watch the men pull the delivery truck past the window and out of the alley.
He turned and found Bren standing there, grinning. "Now who's out of practice?" he asked, tossing the bag to Cruz. "Come on. Let's see if Noah's turned up anything yet."
"Impossible," Cruz retorted, but a few minutes later he was standing next to Noah, eating his words for a second time.
Noah was fast. He was good. Scary good, because Cruz had known techies who could make computers sing, and they would have been hard-pressed to pull a clean image and a facial match out of thin air, much less using a portable tablet and home-brewed algorithms.
Noah didn't just have the faces. He had dossiers, and a serious expression that spelled trouble.
With dread building in his gut, Cruz lifted a brow and tried to sound casual. "And?"
Instead of speaking, Noah handed the tablet to Bren. He stared down at it for several endless moments before shaking his head and passing it on to Cruz. "One unidentified...and two known associates of Liam Riley."
Fucking hell.
Chapter Fourteen
Dallas had thrown the gang into lockdown mode, which usually led to a lot of pissed-off O'Kane women, resentful of the restrictions on their freedom.
Tonight, three of their own had been attacked. Tonight, lockdown had led to drinking.
Ace heard the voices from the first floor of the living quarters, the kind of wild feminine laughter that only seemed to happen when men weren't around. Ace had gate-crashed enough girls' nights to know just how ribald a group of women could get before they broke out the liquor.
On any other night, that would have been reason enough to climb the stairs to where Lex and Noelle had claimed Dallas's party room for a different sort of debauchery. But tonight--
Tonight, he really needed to see Rachel.
Nessa's voice rose as he approached the door, edged with liquor and laughter. "--so then he was like, 'most women only get off from anal sex--'"
"Wait, wait, no--" Noelle gasped, barely getting the words out around her giggles. "He said that while he had his hand in your pants?"
"Yeah, but I didn't let him keep it there after that," Nessa retorted. "Maybe that works on women who've never stuck their own hands in their pants. But even then, fuck. If he gives up after thirty seconds with his fingers, what are the odds he knows what to do with his dick?"
"Zero," Trix declared confidently. "Well, maybe two percent--but only because he could've gotten lucky and hit the right spots by accident."
More laughter, as Noelle and Six started to argue over whether two percent was too high or not high enough. Ace paused in the shadow of the doorway, peering in. Most of the women were there--even Amira, with tiny Hana nestled in a clever sling and sleeping against her mother's chest.
Rachel sat there right along with the rest of them, a drink in her hand and a bright smile on her face. But the smile was fixed, nothing like her usual, gentler expressions, and it didn't quite reach her eyes.
She was trying. Lord, she was trying, because she knew this was for her benefit. The stories, the drinking, the women gathered together--they were here for Rachel, to have her back, to make it clear she'd never be alone.
So Rachel would be here for them, because that was who she was. Giving until it broke her.
Fuck that.
Ace swung into the room, grinning. "Okay, ladies, I'm here. The party
can start now."
"Uh-uh, no penises allowed." Amira threw a pretzel in his direction. "Not even yours."
"I'm wounded," he retorted, swooping down to kiss her cheek. He spared a moment to stroke Hana's dark hair and trace a fingertip over her tiny little ear.
Babies were a new addition to the O'Kane compound--unsurprising, considering the danger of their lives and how much it cost to get reproductive drugs that made them possible--but Hana was enchanting when she wasn't screaming or puking. Small and perfectly formed and capable of a surprising range of emotion between her papa's big blue eyes and her mama's pretty smile.
Hana stirred, and Ace stroked her cheek again. "Hey, peanut."
"Oh, that's cheating," Noelle groaned. "Being adorable with the baby is out-of-bounds. Lex, make him stop."
"Can't." Lex arched an eyebrow as she reached for a half-empty whiskey bottle and refilled her glass. "Adorable is Ace's middle name."
"You know it, sister." Ace offered Noelle a wink, grabbed the bowl of pretzels, and parked his ass next to Rachel. He threw an arm around her, too, trying to make it look casual even as he tucked her close to his side. "So, Nessa. Tell me more about this ass-lover so Bren and I can round up Jas and Mad and kick him into next year."
"Oh, God." Nessa shot him both middle fingers. "This is why I never get laid, seriously."
Rachel poked him in the side. "Being an idiot isn't an ass-kicking offense."
"Being an idiot to an O'Kane woman about sex is," he retorted.
Hana fussed a little louder, and Amira squinted at Ace as she eased her daughter from the sling. "He who wakes the baby holds the baby, Santana."
Maybe he shouldn't have been pleased, but Ace still smiled as he held out his hands. "Give her here. She loves me just as much as the rest of you do. As she should, because I'm damn lovable."
Amira settled the infant into his arms. Ace shifted her carefully, tucking the blanket more snugly around her body. He'd been scared of holding her at first, terrified of breaking her. Everyone had been, except Jas and Six, who'd grown up on farms where Eden didn't bother with birth control in the water. Babies meant workers on the farms--everywhere else, they were just more mouths to feed, a drain on resources.
That's what they were in Sector Four, too, but damn, they were cute.
Rachel finished her drink and slid her finger into Hana's outstretched hand, like it was the most natural thing in the world. The baby gripped it and cooed, eliciting the first real smile Ace had seen on Rachel since walking in.
It slayed him.
"She's sweet," Rachel said quietly. "Reminds me of my baby cousins."
Ace had only had one "uncle"--a man who may or may not have been related to him--but that grumpy bastard sure as hell hadn't reproduced. "Did you have a lot of them?"
"More than my share," she admitted. "In my old neighborhood, babies were a sign of prosperity. The bigger the family, the better off everyone knew you were because it meant you could afford to pay the bribes and take care of them all."
Eden supposedly had limits on children for the same reason they pumped birth control into every source of water they could reach. You could only balance so many rich people on the backs of the poor, after all. It figured they broke the rule as fast as they could make it, as if that extra bribe money would do them shit-all good when they were outnumbered ten to one and everyone was hungry.
They'd never realize it, though, not until it was too late. Ace had nailed enough wives and daughters of councilmen to know those fancy bastards couldn't see what was going on right under their noses--or in their own beds.
Hana made a pleased, burbly sound and waved her little fist with Rachel's finger still firmly in hand. Ace hadn't known about her cousins. He hardly knew shit about her life before, because it wasn't the sort of thing you asked about. Life in Eden was bad--and if hers hadn't been, why grind salt in the wounds by reminding her she could never go back?
A safe enough rule, but it felt shallow now. Not because he thought he should ask, but because he honestly wanted to know. "What about your family? Did you have brothers or sisters?"
Rachel's smile went rigid again. "No. Pregnancy was hard on my mother, so there's just me."
And she'd been exiled, taking the fall for her father's bargain with Dallas O'Kane. Way to go, Santana. He couldn't even manage basic human bonding without the verbal equivalent of kneeing someone in the guts. Cruz should have been there, petting her or holding her or saying all the right things.
Too bad Cruz was out exercising one of his ten thousand other skills, and Rachel was stuck with Ace. The guy you called when you wanted to get inked or fucked.
Lex poured refills all around, and Rachel eagerly wrapped her trembling fingers around the glass and downed it all at once.
Silence fell, a little awkward until Jade rose and glanced at Amira. "Do you mind if I hold Hana?"
"Go ahead." Amira tilted her head. "I think it might be time for Rachel to get some rest, anyway. It's been a long damn day."
"I'm fine," Rachel protested.
"You're tired," Noelle countered as Jade gathered the baby out of Ace's arms. Nessa collected Rachel's glass and kissed her cheek, and before Ace knew it they were both upright, with half a dozen women flashing him meaningful looks when they thought Rachel wouldn't see.
So much for rescuing Rachel from the clutches of well-meaning sisterhood. We gave you your chance, all those pointed looks practically screamed, demanding that he step up and make this work. And it shouldn't have been so fucking hard--he knew how to soothe a woman, how to make one smile.
A random woman, maybe. Not the woman he loved.
Shit.
He had to try, so he slipped an arm around her waist and guided her toward the door. "Come on, angel. Walk with me?"
"I'm--" She swayed, stumbled, and stepped on his foot. "Christ, I'm a fucking mess, aren't I?"
What would Cruz have done?
No question, really. Ace hoisted Rachel in his arms, cradling her against his chest as he started toward his room. "No, you're a tough-ass woman who had a fucking awful day."
She curled her fingers in his shirt with a moan. "It's so much stupider than that."
"So tell me, honey. Talk to me."
She turned her face into the hollow of his shoulder. "I can't."
His heart hurt like hell. Maybe he'd sprained it, trying to do something beyond his abilities. Loving wasn't any easier than fighting--it took training and skill, and he was shit with both. But she sounded so lost that he kept trying, shoving through the ache. "You can tell me anything, Rae. I swear it, okay? On my life. On my ink. Hell, on my dick."
Her sudden laugh huffed against his skin, and she lifted her head. "I'm sweet. That's what you always say. Cruz, too."
"Because you are," he said, and knew it was wrong the second the words left his lips. Not because they weren't true, but because there was a rawness in her eyes, a fear he should have seen. "But that's not all you are."
"I wasn't that at all. Not today."
He bit his lip on the instinctive protest and concentrated on navigating the stairs. At the bottom, he let her slide slowly to the floor and cupped her face, tilting her head back. "You kicked ass today, because someone was trying to hurt you and your friends. What's not sweet about that?"
"I don't know." She tried to turn her head, but he held her tight, and she closed her eyes. "Sometimes it hits me, and I remember. I'm not here because someone wanted me to be an O'Kane, but because Dallas and my father made a deal. I'm here because Eden had to have someone to punish."
"Bullshit," Ace said, the word rough enough to have him wincing. He pressed his forehead to hers and softened his voice. "So you got the ink by saving us from Eden. Then you made us love you. You, not your daddy, not your big sacrifice. You walked in here, drank your double shots, and belonged more than most of us ever could."
She melted against him with a soft sigh, her cheek to his and her mouth close to his ear. "Say it again."
>
No playing stupid, because he knew the words she wanted. They were easy because they'd been true forever, and hard as hell because they had never mattered this much before. "We love you," he whispered. "I love you."
Her arms locked around his neck. "I protected my friends. Myself. And I still hate it. I hate what happened."
"Hey, I know. I know, Rae." He smoothed his thumbs under her eyes. "Some people kill easy. Some feel like shit. Some can't do it at all. I hate that you had to, but only because it's hurting you. And it has nothing to do with how sweet you are."
"I'll be better tomorrow," she promised. "I'm drunk and stupid, that's all."
"You're tired." He dropped a kiss to each eyelid before brushing his lips against hers. "And maybe a little drunk, yeah. Ready to tumble into bed, angel?"
"Mmm." She opened her eyes, looking blurry and dazed. "Maybe I shouldn't have had that last drink."
And maybe it was exactly what she'd needed. Sweeping her up into his arms was easy this time, and she nestled against him like she belonged there. "It's okay, honey. I've got you."
"Stay with me," she mumbled, soft and slurred.
"Always, angel." Or at least until Cruz came back to say all the right things.
Rachel woke up with a splitting headache, in a room she'd never seen before.
It had to belong to Ace. Mounted canvases hung on every wall, surrounding her in blazes of vivid color. But instead of the relatively smooth surfaces she'd seen on the pre-Flare artwork collected by Ace or Lex or Dallas, these pieces had been piled high with paint. It had dried on the surfaces in raised ridges and whorls, creating a three-dimensional effect that made her itch to touch them.
Between the paintings were shelves and racks of chains and floggers and toys, and she blushed, hot and sudden, as she averted her eyes. It was too intimate, being in Ace's bedroom for the first time, even without the blatant reminders of all the things he could do to her--and Cruz--in it.