The Price We Pay (Life After War Book 7)

by Angela White

  Marc had been puzzled by Greg’s defenses, but hadn’t punched through, assuming the man was hiding good feelings about Adrian not being killed.

  “What is it?”

  “She came to me not long after Adrian put her on our team. She told me what she was planning and then asked me how I felt about it.”

  Marc understood he meant Angela and went into alert mode. “What plan? This battle? Adrian?”

  Greg looked over with a frown. “Putting women in charge. She got some of the bunker females to convert to her ideas. They’re out there right now, spreading it.”

  Marc sat back, dumbfounded. That explains everything!

  “Are you…pissed?”

  Marc started to laugh, almost uncontrollably, and Greg stayed quiet, worried.

  Marc slowly got himself under control, but inside, he continued to roll on the floor at the irony. Angela had hidden it from him because she didn’t think he’d want women in control. That was hilarious.

  7

  Adrian saw the two vehicles flying up on him and pulled over across the road. He didn’t know if it was someone who might be a threat to the relocating camp and he wanted to check them out.

  Adrian stood near his open driver door, grateful to Kenn for providing him with wheels. The Marine had also made sure he had a kit and a radio.

  The two small cars were rusted, but seemed to be capable of good speed and Adrian was already considering the possibilities before they came to a stop. The Sergeant in the driver’s seat was someone he could use.

  As the small group of soldiers got out of their vehicles, Adrian had to wonder if Angela had refused them entry so that he wouldn’t be alone.

  “She told me you needed us more than she did,” David told him as soon as they were in speaking distance.

  I love you! Adrian sent.

  Angela didn’t answer, but Marc did.

  That’s your only pass. You’ve been banished. Don’t break it or I’ll come back for you.

  Adrian growled in fury. He wouldn’t even be able to talk to her!

  “No!” he screamed. “No!”

  Marc laughed and finally closed the mental door between them that he’d kept open since the trial decision. He would never trust Adrian to do the right thing unless he had something to gain from it.

  8

  “Did we do the right thing?”

  Jeff shrugged, reaching down to flip the radio off. “Hard to say.”

  He glanced over. “Do you want to go back?”

  “Not really,” Kevin admitted. He already felt more relieved with it just being the two of them to watch out for. “Do you?”

  “No,” Jeff lied. He could feel Angela scanning for him and slowly spoke to that voice inside.

  Can you make it so she can’t find me?

  Yes.

  Do it please.

  For a brief second, there was a feeling of lost joy and then his ears popped and Jeff couldn’t feel her scanning them anymore.

  Will she know?

  Yes.

  Can she reach us in other ways?

  We cannot avoid the calls that she will send out, but that does not mean we have to answer.

  Jeff was satisfied with that. He had an awful plan brewing in his mind and he couldn’t have anyone getting wind of it until he made his choice. If he did it, they wouldn’t see it coming.

  “Are you okay?”

  Jeff shrugged again. “As much as I can be. You?”

  “Yeah, just disappointed. I put in a lot of time there.”

  Jeff thought about the high-level position he was giving up and managed to keep a snide remark to himself. Being around so many rookies in Safe Haven had given him better control.

  “I can take you back,” Jeff offered, almost sure he would later wish he had done so.

  “No, unless you want me to go. And no biggie if you do. After what I’ve gone through, being alone doesn’t sound all that bad.”

  Does he mean that? Jeff asked.

  Yes. He thinks you’re too uptight for him, that he doesn’t need a grandfather.

  That snapped Jeff’s control and he turned to his passenger with a glower. “I’m not that much older than you!”

  Kevin gaped in shock. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  9

  “There they are!”

  Marcella kicked her horse, glad of the masks they’d made for their mounts. The grit was so thick they could hardly see.

  “Get them!”

  Marcella drew up a bit to let the other women have a turn. She had killed the last two stragglers from the bunker. These men had wandered too close to the all-female den. When they’d realized it and fled, Marcella had ordered their first hunt.

  Two of her women shot the man they could see, while three more of her girls rode their atvs over the fleeing draftees. Marcella was sure these men had followed them from the bunker.

  “There was one more! Find him!” she shouted, holding up her torch. The fire would become their signal. Nothing else broke through the grit and ash.

  Marcella pulled her facemask tighter and whirled her mount around to go back and search for prints. They could probably let the man leave, but it already went against their fanaticism to let a man roam their turf. Men didn’t belong here now.

  “This way!”

  Marcella followed the call and found the remaining soldier surrounded by her group. The females jeered at the man, who tried to break through and couldn’t, due to the lack of an arm. Someone had recently cut it off and the blood trail was clear.

  “End it,” Marcella ordered, tone calming them down. “We don’t enjoy our work that much, ladies. Remember to respect the duties we’ve been given.”

  “Respect the duty,” they chanted obediently.

  Marcella nodded and her XO, Stephanie, lunged forward and drove her knife through the panicking soldier’s eye.

  The women cheered as the body fell, but not so loudly that it would offend the Maker. Marcella had told them everything. As secretary at the bunker since the war, she’d gone through every document and file the base had and even some in other bases, when she could access their data banks. She now knew more details about the conspiracy than anyone alive did. Marcella wasn’t a descendant, but she was extremely intelligent and she’d been given a goal that no one else in history had ever achieved.

  “I’ll be the first of millions,” she swore, gigging her horse around to head back to their underground shelter. “I will honor her.”

  Marcella thought again about that powerful voice in her head, about how it had whispered for long minutes on how to accomplish such an enormous task, and Marcella waved the torch to gather her girls around close enough to hear. She would begin step two right now.

  “I want a camp vote on leadership in the morning. I only want women with me, who are really with me. If you vote me out, no problem. I’ll go find a group that does want me.”

  Most of the females she’d grabbed from those fleeing the bunker were much younger and easy to manipulate. The only older woman was Stephanie, who already knew her place in Marcella’s pecking order.

  The girls argued about her leaving, promising they didn’t need a vote, and Marcella was confident she could carry out all the steps of Angela’s master plan. Once she found a few descendants to help her, it would go faster than even her benefactor might have imagined.

  10

  “That’s our site for the night, ladies and gentlemen,” Angela said into her mike. “We’re going to stop here overnight. Do not get out of your vehicles. If you were a member of Safe Haven, you already know that is standard procedure. If you are new, remember it. When you get out of your vehicles before we’ve cleared it, you are on your own to handle anything bad that comes from it.”

  Satisfied she’d gotten her point across, Angela doled out the waiting list of orders that she and Jennifer had worked on for the two-hour ride here.

  “Set camp in the clearing. Center fire goes by the boulder shaped lik
e two big balls. Eagle teams Six and One, will provide a perimeter around our vehicles. All other teams will clear the area by a thousand feet outside the tape.”

  The area filled with activity and Angela took the moment to observe the general moods and levels of satisfaction. They all seemed okay, grateful that they no longer had to worry about the government coming for them.

  Angela was finally able to release the breath she’d been holding as she stepped from the truck and found herself facing her team. The men were busy and these women had automatically taken up the slack and come over to watch her six.

  “We always will,” Jennifer stated, closing the door. “Where’s our new member, though?”

  “Right here.”

  They all looked up to see that Kendle had moved to the top of the semi-trailer and had a rifle in her hands.

  “I’m not sure we can trust her,” Jennifer said suddenly. “She’s not really one of us.”

  “I know,” Angela answered. “But I do trust Adrian with my life. He said she belongs on the hardest team in Safe Haven. That’s this one.”

  “He told me something too,” Kendle said, not looking down at any of them. “He said if I wanted to be like you, I had to love you enough to pick up the details. I thought I’d give it a try.”

  Angela smiled, one of the few she’d had through the entire battle. “There are a lot of adventures still waiting for my army. I’m glad to have you.”

  Kendle sighed, already starting to feel Angela’s pull. “Push me easy, okay? I still think it would better if you shot me.”

  “So do I,” Jennifer agreed.

  Kendle snorted. “If I can come to feel that about you, I might not even want anything else.”

  Angela’s grin stretched. “That is the plan, dear.”

  Kendle rolled her eyes. “Another plan starting. Wonderful.”

  “Who said this one has ended yet?” Angela queried cheerfully.

  She headed for the clearing as her girls groaned and followed. They kept their hands on their unsnapped holsters, as they’d been trained and the men who’d held those classes eyed them proudly. Female Eagles wasn’t a female accomplishment. A lot of work had gone into the role of teacher and there was more to come.

  Angela stayed in the center of the chaos, directing it herself for a change, and she enjoyed the feeling of being able to control something like this so easily now. After what she’d just done to the bunker, getting camp set up was a breeze. It also gave her the opportunity to watch some of the results of her hard labors. Like seeing Theo and his team still working with Candy. She’d asked to go help them set up the bathrooms and Theo was currently showing her how to make sure the water tankers were nearby and ready to dispense what precious liquid that they had left.

  “Trip to the spring?” Jennifer asked, pen and notebook out.

  “Yes, but not until the day after tomorrow. I want us under shelter before the next storm hits.”

  “Should be three days,” Samantha answered, concentrating. “Yeah, three days. I’ll watch it.”

  “And the food supplies?” Angela asked, falling into mini-meeting mode.

  “We’ll have one full month at three meals a day for three hundred people. Are we sending the teams out tonight for that?” Samantha asked.

  Angela shook her head, lighting a smoke as she watched the Eagles signal for the supply vehicles and bigger campers to be driven in. “No one leaves camp tomorrow after we’re settled. Skeleton crews on everything.”

  “Why?” Cynthia asked, stomach growling.

  “We’re having a party,” Angela answered. “We’ve just finished one of the hardest, bloodiest eras of the new world. We need to have a night to remind us of what we’ve been fighting for.”

  That sounded great to everyone who heard it and the camp finished going up in good spirits as the word spread. It was really over. Angie had ordered a party. She wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t really over.

  Tensions began to fade as the showers and mess opened right after the bathrooms, and Li Sing hurriedly got cold food laid out while his assistants got the hot meal started. Angela had told them to butcher a cow this time and they’d done it at the carpet warehouse to leave the gore with the other messes they expected nature to clean up.

  The only unhappy people in camp had lost a loved one and Angela left them alone. Zack and some of the others would need time to grieve and until they wanted to talk to her, she would treat them the same and not push for more than they could give. There was still a chance that a few people here would take off on their own, like Jeff and Kevin had. Angela thought maybe those two would end up coming back, but she hoped it was for the right reasons and not because they had to.

  Canada hadn’t seemed like a bad idea for her either, when she’d been waiting for the vote results. She hadn’t been able to see the outcome of her trial beforehand, because Marc hadn’t made his choice yet. Once he had, it became clear, and then she knew what to use on the camp. If he had gone the other way and insisted for Adrian’s death, Angela would have done exactly what Marc had feared when he thought it through. She loved Brady, but if it meant Adrian’s life, Angela would have saved him and then had to leave herself. After all she’d accomplished, she wasn’t going to walk away empty handed or even watch someone else lead these people.

  From there, the future would have collapsed for everyone, but she had known she wouldn’t be able to watch him die, even if he deserved it. The vow they’d made was much more serious than she’d led Marc to believe. He was extremely quick on the uptake though, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he sent his demon out for answers, just to verify her story. It was the way Marc worked and it was quite effective. Angela planned to use that brain of his to ensure she was never around Adrian alone, even when he had information she needed. As long as she had extremely limited contact with him, she could still syphon off his knowledge. She would miss a few of the finer details by handling it that way, but once everyone saw she intended to have no contact with their banished leader, the rest of the bad vibes in her camp would fade-like government.

  “I’d like to make an adjustment to that plan,” Marc said from nearby. He looked at her guards. “Give us a minute?”

  Angela let Marc lead her to the woods on their right, aware of her team trailing them. They expected her to be distracted and Angela suddenly realized what Marc was about to do.

  “It’s what you need, right?” Marc asked. He’d made his choice, but he had to be sure it was required.

  “It’s not required. You’ll cover me.” She stepped into his arms. “No contact unless it’s needed, Marc. Not mental or any other. I’ll honor that.”

  “I know you’ll try,” Marc began, holding her back so he could see her face. “I also know you’ll do anything to help these people and I won’t have you lying and hiding things from me anymore, not even for them.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” she asked, letting a bit of her own pain bleed through. “I’ve banished him, stripped him of not only his camp, but of every single person who idolized him. Even now, Kenn’s not sure if he’ll help him anymore. I took everything except his life and I’m the one who will still feel that with him!”

  She spun around as the tears wanted to fall, finishing his thoughts. “And it’s because you can’t share, yes. I know I can’t have both, yes. I chose you, yes. Don’t make this any harder for me than it already has been.”

  Marc was stung, but he could also see it from her point of view. She’d stayed loyal despite amazing odds and she would continue to honor his wishes by not sharing her love with another man. He didn’t think it was too much to ask for, but he was only in love with her. If he had felt this way about Kendle too, he would have found it hard to pick between them.

  “Thank you for being able to understand that without hating me,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

  “But his love is the reason all of this happened,” Marc pulled from her min
d. “That’s why you care so deeply for him. He gave up everything he needed and wanted, to provide these people with a future.”

  “Yes. And now he’s hated. It breaks me to see him so disrespected.”

  “He’s bad, Angie. When are you going to see that?”

  “He matches that side of me, Marc. When are you going to understand that? He fills things in me that you never will because you’re decent and still a boy scout. He’s an oozing stack of slime and I need him, or I’m so alone you can’t imagine.”

  Angela walked away and Marc studied those words, trying hard to understand. It wasn’t easy for him because he still saw her as one of the good guys, even after she’d taken so many lives and begun to change the order of the world. She was still his Angie.

  She’ll always need you for that, the witch spoke up when Angela didn’t. She needs him for the other side. There are places you can’t go without being corrupted and she will not let that happen. Instead, she intends to bottle it up and hope no one shakes her enough to blow the top off.

  Marc had already made his choice and he sent it with the command of an alpha, even though he knew she was strong enough to laugh it off.

  Don’t ask, don’t tell.

  Angela stopped and turned around. She looked at him for a long time and Marc was almost sure she would refuse his concession. He was hoping for it.

  “I stand by my word. Keep him away from me.”

  Marc let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you.”

  Angela turned away without answering. Sacrificing her needs for others was in the job description.

  She’d been doing it her entire life and she saw no reason to change it now, especially not when she had already seen the future. The next few years would be hard even without Uncle Sam breathing down their necks and she needed Brady’s love to see her through it. If fate was kind and the last of her vision could be changed, she would never have to call on this moment and use the free pass he was currently assuring her she had whether she wanted it or not.