That made sense. Simple explanations that left people with nothing to wonder about. “Was it possible to not survive the training?”
“In a word, yes. Let’s do this elsewhere. I’ve had two attempts on my life. It’s why I keep moving. Right now, the powers watching us seem to be preoccupied with chasing Warden. But they’ll be back on me. You need to get underground.”
I guessed that meant I wasn’t going to be traveling around with Derrick. “Where will I go?”
“I’m going to take you to Kade. That’ll be the safest. Judson’s had some attempts, too. It’s a good thing. Let them keep coming. All they’re doing is showing their hands. They won’t succeed. But Kade is hidden and so, baby, will you be. But don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
At this point, I didn’t know what to think. Derrick had come, and it seemed I was on my way to New Orleans. Again. Just this time with a different Letter.
Chapter 15
We landed in a private airport by Lake Pontchartrain. The pilot wasn’t Alliance. That was the last we’d discussed it before Derrick ushered me onto the plane. He was just an ant like me, going about his life, totally unaware that he might have signed a death warrant by flying us that day. Only everything had gone smoothly, and we’d landed with no trouble at all.
It wasn’t my first time in the airport. My best friend from high school had a brother who was a pilot. He’d taken us here a few times and flown us around. It had seemed like such a treat to be in New Orleans for the day and to fly like we had every right to do so. I shook my head. That felt like someone else’s life now.
Derrick didn’t get off the plane. I turned as I exited down the stairs to look at him. “Something wrong?”
“You’re going. Not me. I have to keep doing what I’m doing. It’ll help in the long run. Kade is waiting for you.” He nodded toward a blue car parked nearby. The windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see in them. “Keep your head down. I think it’s fine. They’re still after Warden. But I’m going to get them turned back to me. Go. Now.”
I took a deep breath. What was it going to be like to be alone with Kade? “Are you sure I shouldn’t have run, Derrick?”
“I’m sure. Kade doesn’t bite. And remember what I told you—you’re mine. Maybe you’re also theirs, but you’re mine.”
I rolled my eyes. I was never going to be owned. Maybe someday I’d share my life, but these Alliance men had another think coming if they thought that they’d own me. I opened my heart up a tiny smidgen to both Trace and Warden. Both of them had stomped on it. No thanks, I wasn’t looking to do that again.
With my head down, I ran to the car. I got inside quickly.
Kade stared at me from the driver’s side. “You okay?”
“I’ve been better. But I’m okay. Just a little shaken up, I guess.” I stopped talking. This was Kade. He’d had little to no sympathy for me thus far. “Thanks for coming.”
He nodded. “Derrick asked me to so yeah, I do it. There are some rules you’ll need to follow, but we’ll deal with that when we get there.”
“Rules. Right.” I nodded.
“Good.”
I hadn’t actually agreed to anything, but apparently he thought I had. Maybe everyone agreed with Kade all the time. Maybe that was just a given. Seemed to me there was a lot of agreeing with Kade and then sort of doing as they liked. That had to be aggravating for him, considering that if they’d listened to him from the beginning, my kidnapping and subsequent situation with The Alliance would probably have gone better.
Not that I was complaining since I’d been the beneficiary of the others breaking the rules. But the truth was if they actually did as Kade said, life might run smoother.
“Would it be okay if I asked a question?”
He made a hard right out of the airport just as the plane with Derrick on it sped away. I never thought I’d miss the very intense D, but as he flew off, a pang of regret hit my stomach. He really did seem to care about me, and I wanted to know more about him. What made Derrick, Derrick?
“You can ask.” That wasn’t a yes but then again I’d known that nothing with Kade was going to be easy.
“I can also not ask. That wasn’t my question. Maybe I should rephrase.” This was going to be very similar to what it was like in my ninth grade language arts class with Sister Raphaelea. I needed to speak precisely and mean every word that I spoke. “Would you be willing to answer a few questions if I asked them or would you prefer if I didn’t?”
A small side smile appeared on Kade’s face. “I’d be willing to hear your questions, but I’m not promising to answer if I don’t like the question, don’t think the question is appropriate for you to know the answer to, or I just want to be a dick.”
I laughed. I shouldn’t. He was pretty much being a dick by stating it that way, but his honesty was awesome. And after the day I’d had, apparently funny. To me, at least.
“Fair enough. All right, let’s start with which one of you is in charge?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he merged onto I-10. “No one is in charge. It’s a circle. Let me back up, you must know by now that a circle of 5 run The Alliance.”
I had gathered that much, yes. I nodded so he’d continue. “The odd number means one side wins in votes, most of the time. Unless they end up with more than one option on things.”
“And who makes the others live up to the vote? I’m not trying to poke a sore subject, but I’m calling you Kade not K.”
He grimaced. “I determined that and let them know. No vote was taken. I am hopeful that the ways of The Alliance will mean they are compliant to the system. It works when things are not… so fucked up.”
Maybe he was right. Still, knowing Trace, Derrick and Warden the way I did now, I had a hard time imagining them just doing as they were told if they disagreed with something. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were good Alliance members and they’d be the perfect five in a meeting. Still, it seemed to me every organization I’d ever known or been involved in had a leader.
I bit my tongue. I wasn’t going to push him anymore on this.
Besides, we were suddenly turning off the highway and into a graveyard. Burying the dead was different in New Orleans. It had to do with sea level. The city would flood and anyone buried under ground was suddenly not so buried anymore. No one wanted to see their dead relatives floating down a river, hence they had developed mausoleums: cities of the dead.
I knew my Louisiana history. Everyone who grew up anywhere in the state did. The question was why were we here now? I swallowed through a lump in my throat. “Kade, are you going to bury me alive here?”
“What?” He shook his head. “No. Fuck. You’ll see. I have… kind of a hideout.”
“A hideout. Like a superhero?”
He shrugged. “Not a bad comparison.”
I tried not to laugh and mostly managed not to. Maybe a little snicker escaped. He had superhero fantasies. Alliance or not, he was still male. The twenty-somethings I knew were the same way. Maybe I should figure out how to get him a cape.
“Seriously, though, what are we doing here?”
He pulled his car over to the side. “We walk the rest of the way.”
“To where?” I took off my seatbelt and followed him into the graveyard. “Aren’t we exposed walking?”
He shrugged. “We might be if we were anywhere else. I pay the guy who upkeeps this place—and that is exaggerating the term, upkeep, my ass—to let me keep the car here. No one is looking over here. I designed the systems they’re using to track us, and I put myself in the hole. Well, one of the holes where it is possible to hide. Here, a spot in Philadelphia. A couple of locals in England. And most of the country of New Zealand.”
Well, this was interesting. “Are they just places you want to be?”
“It had more to do with angles of the Earth and satellite and not wanting to interfere with the government’s equipment that I also designed.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I j
ust knew where to put myself when I made my escape pod so to speak.”
Now we were using science fiction terms. This was a whole new side to Kade. Apparently when he wasn’t yelling at me or ordering me around, he could be funny. Geeky.
He didn’t wait for me, and I followed him quickly from the car for a very brisk ten minute walk through the old mausoleums. They weren’t well kept up. In fact, most of them didn’t have legible writing on them anymore. Marble was broken, cracked. I sighed. These had been lives. Weather and time had taken away even the dignity of their deaths. Or maybe the whole fucking thing was ridiculous anyway. Dead was dead. No, I didn’t feel that way. In my heart, I was sentimental.
Kade walked to a particularly old looking mausoleum, and he took out a key to open it. I stopped. “Are we going in there?”
“Yep. Come on. Don’t be superstitious. There are no dead bodies in here. It’s a good place to hide.”
I shuddered. Warden’s safe house had running water and a pond. Kade’s was a place where they put dead bodies. I almost didn’t follow him. I almost turned and ran. Apparently, I could really be creeped out. But I shuddered and didn’t hesitate at the door. He closed it behind us, and lights turned on. I blinked rapidly. I didn’t know how this worked most of the time, but I couldn’t imagine these things were lit up. Or so… big inside.
“Is this the Tardis?” I asked the question without even considering the audience. Usually, I kept my fandoms hidden, but given the conversation we’d just had in the car, I had a pretty good feeling he would understand the reference.
He grinned. “Not a bad comparison.”
The inside was huge, because it went down, down, down. Apparently, he wasn’t concerned about the river flooding. I touched the wall. It was steel. Yes, nothing was flooding in here. I followed him down the stairs. Eventually, it was like being in a bunker.
The ceiling was low but plenty big over my head so that I wasn’t worried I was going to hit it. Kade was taller than me, and it was closer on him. “How did you have this done?”
I called after him. “I used a crew that is loyal to our side. We worked at night. I don’t keep it hidden from those I trust. Obviously, Warden knew where it was. He was going to bring you here.”
“Why don’t they all come? Why are they out there when everyone could just be hanging out down here in this… Fortress of Solitude you created?”
He winked at me. “That’s not underground. I offered. They don’t come. Everyone has their own thing to do. Warden is obviously going to go after the funds. Trace is figuring out what they want. At least I assume he is. No one has heard from Trace in a while. I think we would know if they had him. He tends to go quiet when he wants to get things done. Judson can only go so long without doctoring. It drives him. Derrick we need out in front. So that leaves me.”
An air conditioner turned on, making a loud blowing sound. It was like a small jet engine had turned on. I jumped. Okay, this was just really… weird. “You just stay here underground?”
“Yes. It’s pretty impenetrable. That gate I closed behind you is a vacuum seal. They’d have to really come at it, and by then the alarm would go off. At that point, the secret exits I built myself, that even the crew didn’t know about, would be how I got away. I’ll walk you through it in a bit.”
Well, at least we weren’t going to be stuck in here while the place got raided. “At what point did I become so okay with how strange the world actually is?”
“Maybe it’s in your genes. Your father does fine with the weird, too.” He motioned for me to follow him again, and I did. We ended up in a small bedroom. It wasn’t bigger than a bed, a tiny closet, and a bedside table with a lamp. There was a bathroom attached, too. It was small but functional, or at least it looked like it was.
Everything was very institutional in color. Brown. Gray. Tan.
“Is this where I stay?” A thought dawned on me just as I asked. “I don’t have any clothes. I mean none. Everything is back in Warden’s house or in Judson’s.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck. Yes, of course you don’t have any. Well, we can’t do anything about that right now. I really don’t want to go out of here. That’ll have us showing up on the satellites. It was one thing to hide in the car while I knew they were watching Warden. You can wear some of my clothes until I can figure something out.”
As tall as I was, Kade was taller. I was going to look like a little girl playing dress up in an adult’s clothing. It was fine. I didn’t need to be dressed up to wander around this place doing whatever Kade did down here in his converted mausoleum.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
He waved his hand. “None of this has been your fault. And since it was my idea to motivate your father using you, I suppose it’s the least I can do.”
“What will we do here? I mean do we just sit here and stare at the walls. I’m good with all of that. Just want to know what to expect. I’ve had a lot happen lately. I… I would love to have a sense of what to do.”
He nodded. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”
I entered a room loaded with video screens. Numbers shot everywhere. I couldn’t follow them and didn’t try. This was different than the screen in the basement at Judson’s. This looked more like the Matrix movie.
“It’s just the algorithms running. I’m searching for the Alliance council. They’re also in hiding, just sending their dogs after us. We need to locate them so we can send our dogs at them.”
This was a lot of dogs, and since the dogs came with guns and cars, they were obviously not dogs. I would have preferred canines. “Let’s call them what they are, shall we? Kidnappers. Assassins.”
“Fair enough. See, the thing is that they don’t know how to use my equipment like I do. I invented it. I make the satellites do things they can’t make it do. We’ll find them.”
I slid into a chair next to him. “So there’s more than just the five of you.”
I didn’t know how he looked at that screen for so long. It made me sort of dizzy. I glanced at him instead. He leaned back in his chair. “I keep thinking I’ll hide things from you. But the guys have told you so much stuff, and I think fuck it, I’ll tell the pretty girl everything and work out the shit later.”
Pretty? Ugh. I was such an idiot because that made butterflies in my stomach. I ignored them. “Tell the pretty girl. Go for it.”
“There is a schism happening in The Alliance. People have seen what happened. Every day more and more of them are contacting us with allegiance, so yes we have people. And some of those have skills that are very useful. Like Derrick. He has those skills, too. He just sometimes refuses to use them.”
A previous conversation with Derrick flooded my mind. He’d said no to something and they’d killed Alyssa. I wasn’t going to ask about that now. I wanted to stay on topic. “So you find them and your people try to kill them. Why all this effort? You have all this shit. Why not let them have their Alliance and you can form your own club of world dominating secret dudes? You could call it the Society. Then you could do your thing, let them do theirs. Everything couldn’t be more fucked up, could it?”
He stared at me, and under his gaze, my cheeks heated. I sighed. Okay. That was dumb, and now Kane could think I was even a bigger idiot than he already did. Scratch that idea. I moved on. Sliding into the chair next to him, I used that moment to try to regroup.
“So who are we looking for? Warden said Nathan Barton.” I’d kept that name in the front of my mind. He’d been one of the ones to send men with guns to the beach. I’d never forget it as long as I lived. I wanted the other names. I’d remember them forever. Anger seethed at the thought. It was possible to hate someone you never met, it was possible to wish them harm. I wanted the other names.
Kane smiled. “Warden particularly hates Nathan. The current council is older than us, and they trained us. And Nathan was distinctly hard on Warden during training. Yeah, he’d go after him first. The other four? Ben Gray. J
osh Kralik. Marcus Petrone. Henry Laparra. The big five. Nathan. Ben. Josh. Marcus. Henry.” He spun in his chair. “They can only search for two of us at a time. Me? I can find all five. They have to come out sometime even if all I’m doing is waiting them out.”
I cleared my throat. “Do they know the safe spots?”
“Nope.” He smiled before he jumped up. “Hungry?”
He was really at ease here. Much more so than he’d been at Judson’s. Also, his clothes were totally different. He’d been so put together there and here he was in jeans and a t-shirt with a stain on it. I wondered if this was much more his environment, if somehow it was possible to be more at home in a converted mausoleum watching numbers on a screen than it was to be in a mansion on a frozen lake. I rose slowly.
He was sexier like this and that threw me. Somehow this was doing it for me.
“So this schism… how does it end?”
His face fell. “One way or the other, people are dying.”
Of course they were. These Alliance guys treated life and livelihood like it was nothing. I was never going to get used to it. “I’m not actually hungry. I might go lie down. I’ve had a long day.”
“If you need something let me know. You wrecked Warden and Trace, Everly. Are you going to wreck me?”
I turned to stare at him. “They wrecked me. Not the other way around. I don’t even know who I am right now. This person? I don’t recognize her.”
He leaned against the wall. “The Alliance does that. It gives us rebirth, reshapes us, and molds us into someone else. That’s why those people cannot run it. They are destroying it.”
“But I’m not Alliance. I’m a woman. That automatically makes me an ant in your eyes.” I took a step away. “Or are you rethinking your life bathed in misogyny?”
His smile was slow. “You can be the queen of the ants, Everly.”
“Not good enough.” And I meant it. I wasn’t anyone’s ant. “I’m not going to be an ant of any kind.”
Hard Truths (Kiss Her Goodbye Book 1) Page 17