by Eva Chase
John’s breath hitched, and he bowed over her with a shudder.
Jemma sagged onto the bed, and John sank down so we formed a sort of triangle between us, a careless assortment of limbs. As my breath evened out, my gaze lingered on my friend’s face, the fall of his light hair around it, the broad brow and the soft cheekbones I’d seen thousands of times without really paying attention to them. The mouth that had met mine so eagerly.
His gaze lifted and found mine. My throat closed for a second. Then I said, “Come here?”
He eased up on one elbow. “What is it?” His earlier tentativeness had returned.
I licked my lips. His eyes tracked the movement. Fresh heat quivered through me, but I needed to know for sure.
“I’d like to kiss you once with no other variables involved,” I said. “To see… to see what it is when it’s only us.”
Something shifted in his expression. As he swiveled around to face me properly, Jemma eased back, watching us. John definitely looked nervous again. My own body tensed now that the rush of passion had faded.
“You don’t have to if—”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I want to.”
He brought his lips to mine like that first gentle kiss. The quiver of heat turned into a wave. I kissed him back, reveling in the unexpected sensation, until we eased apart again.
“Well,” I said, “that was definitely not off-putting at all.”
Jemma let out a guffaw and sat up, swatting my back. “Hopeless,” she said. “Totally hopeless.” But she was grinning with an air that I’d have called joy, as if seeing John and I unearth this new possible realm of our partnership gave her genuine satisfaction.
She’d led us to this discovery. Shoved me would really be more accurate. Just for the selfless enjoyment of watching us find our way there.
This woman was a puzzle. A thief. A murderer, if only of other criminals—as far as we knew. The most gifted liar I’d ever met. Yet beyond my fascination with her brilliance, perhaps I was coming to simply like her too, for reasons I couldn’t argue away.
And tonight, we might lose her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jemma
Technically, the caves weren’t any darker at night than they had been when I’d explored them the other afternoon. No sunlight penetrated solid stone either way. They felt darker, though—the shadows around the beam of my headlamp denser, the chill in the dry air thicker—as I picked my way toward my destination.
My load definitely weighed heavier on my back. I had to brace my hands against the rough stone walls to keep my balance with the pack Bash had loaded up for me. The sugar cube I’d popped into my mouth at the entrance had long since dissolved, leaving my mouth faintly sticky. I wasn’t even halfway to the top yet, and my back was already damp with sweat.
The trio and their band of police should be waiting higher up on the mountain by now. What would they be talking about to pass the time? I distracted myself from the strain of the climb by thinking back to Sherlock and John’s fumbling negotiations after our interlude in Sherlock’s hotel room.
Just to be clear, I’m not looking to make some big romantic thing out of this, John had said as he’d straightened out his clothes. It just might be nice to, er, kiss or whatever else fits the occasion, when the right moment comes up.
Sherlock had managed to look lofty even while he was tucking himself back into his pants. That sounds like a reasonable proposition.
I had to smile at the memory. They really were ridiculous. It was a good thing they’d found each other in their roundabout way. I could even take a little pride in having given them a kick on the ass to help them get there.
When I reached the first pit trap, I had to toss my pack over the thin slab of stone before I hurled myself. After I’d heaved the bag back over my shoulders, I had just a brief climb to reach the small gap in the ceiling I’d noted before.
That spot was definitely darker than last time, the hole barely discernible against the dimpled rock even with my headlamp pointing at it.
I pulled the four flare guns out of the pack. The first one was to get the commune’s attention. The others were to convince them something major was going on that they’d better investigate—and a backup in case one or another hit a tree branch on the way up.
Positioning myself beneath the gap, I angled my arms so the flare should shoot out at a slight angle and burst even closer to the commune. They had to feel the potential threat was nearby to guarantee that some of them would leave to investigate.
I squeezed the trigger, and the first shot crackled through the air. My ears rang, but I listened as closely as I could. A sound like a thunderclap and a distant blaze of light penetrated the cave through the gap. Grinning, I reached for the next gun.
The second one blasted off without a hitch. With the third, I must have shifted my angle by accident, because all I heard was the thunk of it hitting something above. I adjusted my position again, and the fourth one sparked another stream of light high above.
I tossed the used guns aside. It didn’t matter if the commune found them now. Either I’d be long gone with the dagger by the time anyone from the cult had a chance to search around here, or I’d be dead. Simple as that.
The flares were also the signal for the police to start down the mountain toward the commune. I had to make sure I got there first. I scrambled on up through the narrowing passages.
My arms strained to pull me up the particularly steep section. I gritted my teeth and shoved myself onward. A strand of my hair got caught in a jagged bit of rock and yanked out from the roots, leaving me wincing. I rubbed the stinging spot as I hustled along.
The beam of my headlamp bounced over the uneven walls and ceiling in a way that looked much more eerie than before. I pushed myself faster.
There. My gaze caught on the outline of the wide opening and the boulder sealing it where the cave narrowed to nearly a tunnel up ahead.
I hadn’t forgotten my close call the other day. I treaded carefully along the edge of the still partly hidden chasm and stepped gingerly over the tripwire—and another tripwire a few feet after that.
The area right beneath the entrance looked clear. Dragging in a breath, I reached into the pack and took out the rectangular thing Bash had called a “minor explosive.” With a wiggle of my hand, I wedged it as far into a crevice between the boulder and the opening as I could. Then I lit the fuse and darted back the way I’d come, shutting off my headlamp.
Even several feet away, I crouched down to shield my body in case the explosive did more than propel the boulder off its seat as Bash had said it would. This little thing shouldn’t do more than crack the ceiling a bit, he’d told me, but explosives in caves seemed like exactly the right moment for a little extra caution.
The flame hissed up the fuse. Then the explosive blasted apart with a wallop of sound. The rock around me trembled—and the boulder flew off its resting place.
My heart skipped a beat. I leapt forward, covering both trip wires at once, listening for sounds of approach. The whole commune wouldn’t have gone down the mountain to check out the flares, and whoever was left here wouldn’t ignore a noise like that.
Peeking out through the opening, I found nothing but trees looming all around. The caves must open up beyond the edge of the actual settlement. A few shouts were carrying from somewhere to my right.
With my pulse pounding through my chest and limbs, I hauled myself out through the opening and ducked behind a tree. My hands wrenched the pack open. I grabbed the grenades stashed near the bottom, flicked the pins, and hurled them off into the forest. With the first fiery boom, I dashed in the opposite direction through the trees.
Footsteps hammered across the ground and veered to the side to track the impact of the grenades.
“What the hell was that?”
“We’ll check it out. Shine the lights down there. And keep your guns ready.”
I slunk away as they headed deeper into th
e forest. With a little luck, my gambit would stop them from even noticing the open cave until I’d gotten out of here.
Some of the cultists would be investigating the flares. I’d drawn a few more away with the grenades. Now I just needed to tackle however many had stayed behind to guard their great prize.
I took out my own gun, a light pistol Bash had picked up for me years ago, and kept it raised as I eased toward sparser woods up ahead. More moonlight streaked through the forest there.
The outline of a wooden hut came into view, the roof draped with fresh branches to blend it in with the canopy. Others lay beyond it, scattered haphazardly between the trees. Any sort of pattern to a layout made the shrouded folk uneasy. They liked randomness, wildness, like the flaring of a fire, like the searing of the sun they fed off.
A couple of figures moved between the buildings. I froze, watching them as they peered after the departed cultists. They murmured to each other in voices too low for me to make out.
I peered into the space beyond them. Where would they keep the dagger? Definitely toward the middle of the settlement, so it was protected on all sides. And no doubt they had a few people standing guard right by it at any given time. I wasn’t making it to my prize through stealth alone.
Stealth could take me pretty far, though. I slipped behind one of the huts and eased around the back. The scent of the shrouded folk, dry and sour like long-rotted meat, wafted over me.
My stomach turned. I’d gotten several weeks without having to taste that stench since I’d left Bog behind. Now it seemed to pool in my lungs, congealing into bile.
The people around me didn’t even notice the stink anymore. When you grew up in it or gave yourself over to it for years on end, it was the fresh air beyond the boundaries of the commune that tasted off. It’d taken me months to totally adapt to the regular scents of human life after I’d escaped my parents’ settlement in New Mexico.
I darted from one hut to another. Someone on the other side of those walls was humming to themselves in an erratic rhythm that told me they were probably swaying with periodic jerks in a reverence meditation. Even though I’d fallen into that trace nearly every day until I was fourteen, even though I’d wanted to align my soul more closely with the shrouded folk, it’d always unnerved me watching other people at it.
I’d navigated about half of the perimeter before I felt certain of the village’s layout. Seventeen huts stood sporadically throughout a rough circle about a quarter of a mile across. One just off-center had even more branches heaped on top of it than the others, and now and then the moonlight caught on random dents and slashes on the walls where they’d been carved in deference to the shrouded folk. The dagger had to be in there.
The doorway was so narrow I’d barely fit without turning sideways, hung with a burlap curtain. Three cultists in brown robes stood just outside it. I had to go through them.
I didn’t have much time left. I eased closer, grimacing at the sight of their faces, which were smeared with dark smudges of blood. Possibly their own, possibly that of another person or an animal—one way or another, obtained through pain. The shrouded folk liked that kind of burning too. By hurting, you make holy, one of the elders in my settlement used to say.
I guessed they were going to be particularly holy after tonight.
With my fingers tight around the pistol, I braced myself. Then I dashed across the last short distance to fling myself at the guards.
My knee caught the nearest one in the gut before he had a chance to react. He doubled over, and I fired a bullet into the side of his head.
The woman next to him whipped around with a submachine gun. Adrenaline spiked through my veins. I slammed my elbow into her wrist and dispatched her with a shot to the forehead.
As she slumped, I caught her just in time to make her a living shield. The third guard fired a couple shots. I shoved her backward into him and blasted the back of his head off as he stumbled. Before he even hit the ground, I was hurtling through the doorway.
The stink of the shrouded folk hung so thickly in the air inside that I could almost feel its texture, like shreds of dry flesh. The room was empty other than a wooden altar just off-center. The dagger, curved and gleaming silver with pure gold strands randomly crisscrossing its hilt, lay on a pool of white velvet in a bowl of carved moonstone.
Yes. I snatched it up and threw myself back out of the hut, jamming the dagger into the belted pouch at my waist as I went.
The curved metal shape bumped against my belly—and a spear of pain rammed through my chest from the protective cuff around my thigh. The sensation in the lower part of that leg and my forearms numbed. I staggered, falling to my hands and knees on the well-trodden forest floor. A choked croak escaped my lips as I fought to draw breath.
Fuck. I had to get out of here. Figures were racing through the trees, brought by the gunshots from just a few seconds ago. I heaved forward, swaying back onto my feet.
With my strained attempt at inhaling, only a trickle of air reached my lungs. The worst of the pain was easing back like it always had before, but the numbness was holding on, seeping deeper with a chill I couldn’t shake.
A woman charged at me with a knife. I yanked my gun hand up, much slower than it should have moved. Her blade raked through my oversuit and my bicep all the way to the bone before I managed to squeeze the trigger.
Blood soaked down my sleeve with an even sharper pain. My right foot still couldn’t quite find purchase on the ground, prickling tingles racing through it. My head was spinning with the lack of oxygen.
I lurched across the village toward the shelter of the thicker forest. Toward Bash waiting for me at the base of the mountain.
I had the dagger. I had my permanent escape, my chance to turn this all around against the shrouded folk and watch them burn. No fucking way was I failing this close to my goal.
A shot rang out just as I ducked farther forward. It clipped my shoulder deep enough to make my flesh flare with agony. I gritted my teeth and stumbled onward.
Then a sound I’d never thought I’d welcome rang out from behind me: a voice speaking strident Croatian, raised to a bellow by a megaphone.
“Down on the ground and stay where you are, by the order of the police!”
The beam of a searchlight swept the village grounds. I was already staggering past the last of the huts into the dense forest that would lead me down to safety.
I made it ten more steps before my half-numbed foot snagged on a root I hadn’t seen. I pitched forward into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jemma
Lights came and went farther up the slope. Voices echoed. Something crashed to the ground. One shot split the air, but I didn’t hear any gunfire after that.
The members of the shrouded folk’s cult were obsessed, but they’d know when they were outnumbered. When they’d seen the number of police coming at them, their first priority would have been to destroy as much evidence of their activities as they could. I had faith that my trio would ferret out enough to put the cultists they rounded up away for one crime or another even if the police weren’t as adept.
I had less faith in my ability to make it down the mountain to Bash. I’d been counting on having two working legs and also two functioning lungs. After my fall, which I believed had left me with many bruises but nothing worse, I’d managed to scoot into a dip sheltered by shrubs to try to recover.
What felt like at least an hour later, my chest still strained to drag in even half a breath. My right leg prickled with rising and ebbing waves of numbness. Despite the strips of cloth I’d torn from my oversuit’s sleeves to wrap around my wounds, my head was only getting dizzier from lack of blood.
The gold cuff around my thigh set off periodic jabs of pain. The damned thing that was supposed to be protecting me had fucked me over even worse tonight. I had to assume it was reacting badly to the shrouded dagger, but I couldn’t exactly leave that behind.
I couldn’t c
all Bash to come collect me either. My phone had been in the pouch with the dagger, and the fall had crushed the screen against the metal blade.
My best option seemed to be staying huddled there like a wounded deer and hoping the cuff would cut me a break sometime soon. Going down the slope wasn’t going to take as much energy as coming up had, but I did need to be able to count on both my legs staying in this realm of existence.
The sharp spruce-like scent of the shrubs tickled my nose. I teased my lower lip under my teeth, wishing I had another sugar cube.
A crunch of footsteps in the brush reached my ears, much closer than any had come before.
I stiffened in the moment before a familiar voice called out, low but loud enough to carry. “Jemma?”
It was Sherlock, a fact confirmed by the shuffling gait with which he continued to move toward me, back on his crutch under duress but refusing to let that slow him down. A couple other figures moved through the forest with him. I could guess well enough who they were.
I stayed tensed for a few seconds, my heart thudding, debating my options. I’d wanted to be well on my journey away from the London trio by now. I’d expected the interlude in Sherlock’s hotel room would be our last hurrah. But he’d clearly picked up on some clue that had suggested to him I needed help, and, frankly, I wanted to get off this fucking mountain. Keeping the rest of my blood in my body would also be nice.
They’d helped me get this far. I could rely on them a tiny bit farther.
Sherlock was only a few feet away now, pausing to crouch down by the ground with a flashlight. I eased myself upright.
“I’m here.”
The beam flashed across my face and hit on my shoulder. Someone—I thought Garrett—sucked in a breath. Then John was pushing forward, one hand tight around his walking stick, the other groping into the messenger bag he was carrying.
Sherlock kept his flashlight trained on me as John produced antiseptic ointment and a roll of gauze.
