by Meli Raine
“You can't do this,” I tell her.
“I am doing this. No one can see me. The foliage covers what I'm doing. Callum,” she pleads. “Listen to him. Go with him.”
“You go first.”
“I'm not going. I’ve covering for you.”
“WHAT?”
“COME ON!” McDuff screams.
“I can't leave the babies.”
“If you don't go, I don't go, Kina. You know damn well what they'll do to you if you go back there without me. They'll torture you for information.”
“I know. I accept it. You have to go.”
Grabbing her around the waist and dragging her is my only option.
So I do it.
“PUT ME DOWN!” she rasps, clawed fingers digging into my shoulders, my waist, my ass, her power stronger than I imagined but not strong enough. It takes effort to tame her, a cloud of moving hair in my face, one strand catching in my eye, making it water.
I grunt with the effort, one of her legs getting loose, kneeing me in the ribs, but my arms have become steel bands. She’s going whether she likes it or not, because all I can do is move toward this.
Madness takes over when we don’t remain laser-focused on The Mission.
But what if madness is my mission now?
“LET GO!” she screams, but the words are smothered by her face in my crotch as I grab a stabilizer bar and hold on for dear life. The four wheeler lurches, moving slowly with so much weight, but McDuff maneuvers deftly into the woods, trailing the swamp's edge, picking up speed.
Weeds taller than me whip at our faces, Kina thrashing in my lap, but soon we rise above the weeds as McDuff drives straight up a ramp and into the back of an open bread truck. A guy is standing right next to it, his arms full of one hell of an automatic weapon.
In seconds, the dude lifts the ramp, jumps in, and as the truck takes off, pulls the door shut.
What the hell just happened?
We're either kidnapped or rescued.
No matter what, we're in deep shit.
“No way is this going to work,” I snap at McDuff, who is being tumbled around like a tennis ball in a clothes dryer as we climb off the four wheeler. Kina is sputtering to herself, making angry noises as she straightens her clothes and pushes her hair off her partially bloodied face. “They've got drones.”
“Our hawks took them out already.”
“They'll find us in ten minutes.”
“You came readily. Why would they chase?”
“Do you understand who we are?”
“I do. Do you?”
I look at Kina. Hands planted on her hips, face twisted with disgust, she glares at me like I'm the bad guy.
But it's what she does next that astonishes us both.
Reaching up her thigh, her fingers move under her shorts, right against her outer–
What the hell is she digging around for?
“Kina,” I choke out as she pulls, wincing.
And shows me a small memory stick attached to black electrical tape.
“Here,” she says, plunking it in my hand. “Here's all the proof you need, you asshole. He's your brother. You've been stalking your own brother for the last nine months.”
Machine-Gun Guy's eyebrows go up to his hairline, above the sunglasses that hide his eyes.
“How do you know this?” I demand. “This reeks of a set-up. We shouldn't even be–”
She grabs my arm, right where I'm chipped.
Rustling in my jacket pocket, I find the jammers and hand her one, torn for a split second. Show the enemy what I possess, or reveal our location to Stateless leaders?
All options suck in times of war.
And make no mistake–that's exactly what this is.
“Silas,” McDuff says, “got the extra clothes?”
“Yeah.” The guy with the automatic rifle shoves a backpack at McDuff, who starts pulling clothes out.
“Here,” he says, handing Kina a red shirt. “Put this on and–”
“Wait,” I snap, shoving my hand in my pocket to get my phone.
Two gun barrels meet my gaze.
“I'm getting my phone,” I explain slowly, frozen.
“She can do it,” Silas says gruffly. Must be Silas Gentian. I've seen him before, from a distance, but obviously never met him.
This will have to be our formal introduction.
Kina's cheeks turn pink as she reaches her hand into my front jacket pocket.
“It's in my pants,” I tell her.
The blush deepens. Her fingers are featherlight against my hip, digging deep for the flat phone. Hands up, I make sure McDuff and Gentian know I'm no threat.
No obvious threat, at least.
“Why your phone?”
“I can call them off.”
They look at each other.
“No. Callum, no,” Kina whispers, knowing already what I'm about to do.
She finishes her excavation, my cock hardening in my pants, my heart even harder. Contacting Svetnu directly is the best approach. I'll claim what I need to claim.
“It's the only way,” I tell her as she hands me the phone.
One text: We're in. Will report what we find. Call off pursuit.
Tapping Send feels like the first shovel of dirt on my grave.
“Drop me off,” Kina insists. “I'll go back. The children!”
Gentian and McDuff look at each other. “Kids? Where?” McDuff asks.
“At the compound. There are twelve children directly under my care, and many more above the age of four. I'm worried that if I'm not there, if I'm perceived to be a traitor, that they'll...”
I grab her hand and hold it tight. “They won't do anything.”
“How do you know?”
Her openness with the enemy is killing me. All these words spilling out of her in an uncontrolled babble reveal far too much. My brain clicks into manipulation mode, the slide from one frame to the other a little too easy. We're well trained. Why can't she elevate now?
Why won't she elevate now?
“Tracking stopped,” Gentian says in a firm voice, ear on a phone. “Whatever Wyatt said did the trick. No drones, no four wheelers, no road vehicles. All turning back to the compound.”
“It's Callum,” I growl. “My name is Callum.”
He doesn't even blink. “Right.”
And not all of them are called off. Only the obvious ones. But I sure as hell won't tell them that.
Silence is the biggest tension generator on the planet. We sit in silence when we don't know what to say. We sit in silence when we do know what to say, but can't say it. We sit in silence when we're pissed, when we're grieving, when we're stunned, when our neurological systems are rendered mute and frozen.
This silence has decades of unspoken words weighing it down, the tension timeless, ageless.
Kina cuts through it.
“Why are we here?” she asks McDuff simply, with a purity that is naïve and sweet at the same time it is incisive and demanding.
“Because I found you,” he says, looking at me. “Your real name is Wyatt. Mine is Sean. I'm your brother. Our parents were killed when you were four and I was eleven and you were stolen. Taken for the Stateless Project.”
“We know that,” Kina says softly while I seethe next to her, my own silence gagging me.
“I know you know that. You were stolen, too. You and your twin sister, Madison.”
Glen.
One look at Kina and you know everything. One look at Glen's identical twin and these guys have to have realized just how high Stateless is right now.
As high as the Oval Office.
Banging the president.
“We know that, too.”
“Because of the documents I passed to you?” McDuff asks her.
“We figured most of it out before. What we didn't know was–”
“Kina!” I interrupt. “Stop. Don't tell them too much.”
“Define 'too much,'” she hisses back
.
The truck is small, the air stale, and I feel her lack of resistance. She wants to trust them. To tell them. To engage and exchange, to bond and connect. It's dangerous and crazy, the mark of an amateur.
It's also tempting.
We go silent again, the tension better than a fight in front of these people.
These people, who include my brother.
“How did you figure it all out?” I ask McDuff. “That I’m 'Wyatt'?”
“Your hair.”
I stifle the impulse to reach up to my head. “My hair?”
“Our grandmother kept a curl from your first haircut. We ran it through DNA databases. Finally had a match. A foreign emissary died in a suspicious attack. U.S. blamed someone else for it. Your hair was found there.”
“That isn't very specific,” Kina says with a strange huff.
Gentian's eyes narrow but he says nothing.
“The hair matched. Then we knew you existed and were with Romeo. We went from there.”
The word grandmother won't stop ringing through my head.
“What does 'went from there' mean?”
“When Romeo kidnapped Lily Thornton,” Gentian says, eyes darting to McDuff, who simmers, “she saw your neck.” He looks at me, brow going down, confusion pouring into his expression.
McDuff's hand moves toward me. I tense, fist ready.
“What happened to your birthmark?” he demands.
“I had it removed.”
“Must have been done in the last year. Lily saw it on you. At the club.”
“What club?” I shoot back, clicking into field mode.
Two eye rolls greet my words.
I look at Kina.
Make that three eye rolls.
“When Lily said she saw you, I–”
“Why are you telling us all this? That's not how field work functions. You're the worst operatives ever.”
McDuff's wide grin is chilling, ghoulish, sending a chill from my solar plexus up through my throat.
“Because, Wyatt, I finally get to meet you. For the first time since Gran died, I get to see someone I'm related to.”
“This isn't some American reality television show where we hug and cry and examine DNA results together, with ads for fast-food burgers in between.”
McDuff and I stare at each other until Gentian snaps, “No one's in pursuit. Let's just find the boat. The SUV’s on the other side, so we can get to the cabin.”
“Cabin?”
“We have a plan.”
Bzzzz.
My phone.
Confirmed, Svetnu says. Infiltrate and report back. Terminate as needed.
All eyes are on me as I slip the phone back in my jacket pocket.
“Where's the cabin?” Kina asks. “I don't want to go too far from the children.”
“You really want to go back?” McDuff asks with more compassion than I would ever expect.
“I have to. They're–they're my responsibility. They deserve to have someone protecting them.”
He swells, broad shoulders thickening, eyes sharp. “Then you'll go back. And you'll go back with help.”
My turn to roll my eyes.
But Kina falls for it.
She grabs my hand, squeezing. “Jay–what if he has another seizure? And Hayley’s new molar is coming in, and she's a week away from being moved to the trainee class. She turns five in a week, and...” Emotion chokes her voice.
“Elevate,” I whisper.
“What?”
“Elevate,” I urge.
Silence. Silence for a few beats, for a few minutes, for what feels like days–for what is actually maybe twenty seconds.
“I can't,” she confesses, as if she's done something wrong. The anguish in her voice echoes my own. We involuntarily switch into a detached state when we try to be intimate, but here–of all places, of all dangers–we can't elevate?
Our training betrays us.
Our emotions, too.
We could try, right now. Overpower these men, take their guns, shoot our way to freedom. It's not a fair fight–more of them than us–but I believe we'd have a chance. Even a slim chance is better than acquiescence.
And yet, this isn't that. This isn't weakness. It's a growing, surging sensation of rightness. Of alignment. The second McDuff handed Kina a firearm back at that shed, I knew we were entering into wholly unique territory. Nothing in our training prepared us for this.
Gut instinct is a reflection of analysis plus... emotion.
My gut is telling me to trust this.
Even as my mind is screaming.
20
Kina
What have we done?
The truck stops, jerking to a halt so hard that I fall into Callum, who catches me, holding me in his arms for a split second longer than needed. Sunlight blinds us as the back door opens and McDuff and the guy named Silas climb out. They usher us aboard a small boat with an outboard motor.
No one is following us, but they hold their guns in anticipation.
This gnawing fear about the children won't leave me. They are in danger. I feel it. It’s nothing specific, but an all-consuming wave of physical panic rushes on the shore of terror deep inside me. So many little ones, the steady influx of newborns skewing the ratio of walking toddlers to babes in arms. Philippa's alone at the compound, probably being interrogated about me, and left to manage all the children with just a few trainees helping part-time.
What will Svetnu do to them?
I freeze, unable to move, unable to take another step away from the compound.
“Kina?”
“The babies,” I say, the words hard to form, my organs melting inside me as if I'm dying.
“They're fine,” Callum assures me, putting his arm around my shoulders, giving me enough support that I can lean on his comfort for a few seconds. Take the burden off.
Let myself believe him.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” he says reluctantly. “But Svetnu isn't stupid. Until we're back, no harm will come to them.”
“The server-farm bombing harmed them plenty.”
“Security's at a high level,” he says as we realize we're being watched very attentively by men who want to move.
We take seats on the boat, Callum, me, McDuff, Silas, and whoever the driver is, a no-nonsense man with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a commanding attitude that makes me think he's used to being in charge.
“Foster,” McDuff shouts as the boat engine roars and we move out into marsh. “Cabin?”
The man gives a thumb's up.
Foster.
That must be Drew Foster.
The air whips my hair around my face. The heat inside the small truck turned my hairline sweaty, so the cool wind chills me, a temporary physical relief that is a welcome distraction from my panic. I have only what I'm wearing, and my phone. That's it. I raced out of my apartment when I realized Callum was likely going to kill McDuff.
If he'd killed his own brother, how could I live with myself for not trying to stop him?
And yet, all the babies are back at the compound without me. My mind races, clawing and frantic, to imagine how they are right now. Philippa is alone, wondering where I am. Likely being told I've gone on a mission with Callum.
A “mission” none of the leaders approved.
I have an idea of what Callum told them. He said we were going to infiltrate and collect information.
Which we are.
But I also know that this is different. Fundamentally different. Something about these men makes me trust them in spite of myself. I cannot explain it.
I can only feel it.
Our boat journey is choppy, water splashing up, a thick piece of water lily sluicing through the green water and onto my thigh. I've been in a small boat on the compound before, on a pond, but never racing across a lake to get away from my own people.
My skin is on fire, but cold, too. I'm everything right now–every sense, every movement,
every breath, every cell. When I can't anchor my mind, what's the best approach?
To experience.
At least, I guess so. This is all dizzying. Terrifying and overwhelming, exhilarating and transgressive.
New.
Watching Callum try not to look at McDuff is the only way to distract myself. Callum's hair is blown back off his face, the absence of his birthmark jarring. His eyes are open, steady, fixed on the horizon, but I know he's watching his brother. How could he not? I always had Glen, at least until we finished training. I can't imagine having a sibling and not knowing.
Then meeting them.
Right before you're about to kill them.
I want to connect with Callum. Comfort him. Assure him. Not that he needs me. He needs no one. I'm unmoored and uncertain where I stand, terribly worried about life back at the compound. Did Callum convince the leaders that we escaped as part of our mission? That we're fooling these people into thinking we're double crossing Stateless?
What do they know? What do they think they know?
And what's safe to tell them?
The motor slows, wind dropping to nothing, my ponytail settling back down between my shoulder blades. We're at a dock, a long wooden rectangle that floats, Silas jumping from the boat to the dock and wrapping a line around a metal cleat. He uses another line to hold the boat close to the dock. McDuff steps off first, offering Callum his hand.
Callum refuses.
I do, too.
Drew watches us, talking on his phone, arguing with someone. He looks up at a small cabin, half obscured by deciduous trees.
Someone in a window waves.
Drew’s face turns livid.
“What?” McDuff asks him.
“Lindsay and Jane are here.”
Silas lets out a grunt. “I told them not to come.”
“They gave you a heads up?”
“Jane said she and Lindsay wanted to be here to help Sawyer.”
Sawyer.
They think of me by that name.
“They've just doubled the danger level,” Drew grouses. He strikes me as a man who is disappointed with the world most of the time.
“Good luck stopping them,” McDuff adds.
“Looks like you have the same problem,” Silas says with a half grin, pointing to a third woman in the window.
“What the hell is Lily doing here?” McDuff barks, outraged.
