Fuse

by Angel Payne

  My heartbeat surges with an inspired thrill. I trade a tearful glance with Joany, seeing that she agrees, and I wonder if Reece does too. I’m only able to see his profile, but there’s a lot of information even in that. His jaw hardens again. The dark slashes of his eyebrows emphasize his curious gaze. He’s peering at Chase like the guy’s just landed in a spaceship with a talking raccoon as a copilot and then told him ELO’s the greatest band to ever live. Funny thing is, until everything went down in Paris, that scenario was higher on the probability scale than this open compassion and support from Chase.

  As if still in a daze, Reece stammers, “Wh-What are you saying, man?”

  Chase wraps his fingers against Reece’s nape. “I’m saying you have our support.” He encourages Trixie and Joany over with a determined nod. “All of us, Reece. We’ve talked about it, and we’re in agreement. You’re not alone in this anymore. You’ll not be alone ever again.”

  Trixie steps closer. At least I think she does. It’s hard to clearly discern anything through the tears bashing my composure—especially as I hear the words Trixie adds to Chase’s.

  “Your father wasn’t always a horrific person, boys. But the choices he made, in the name of bringing glory to our family, led him into dark quicksand.” She sniffs while turning toward Tyce’s boulder and flattens both hands to the monument, her fingertips trembling against the stone. “You saw that,” she raggedly whispers. “You saw that, my amazing boy, and you tried to stop the slide. And in the end, in your incredible way, you did.”

  My vision blurs as I watch Chase and Reece surge over, securing their mother in their combined embrace. With their silent permission to let her grief tumble out, she does. It takes over her body in racking sobs and aching mewls.

  A needed step…a necessary moment.

  A shared love.

  But as soundly as my head embraces the knowledge, my spirit rebels. I glare out at the ocean and then up into the olive and sycamore trees, attempting to gain the connection I have always found in nature, but the effort is useless. Hasn’t she endured enough? Can’t she have some comfort now and recognize her son as the hero he was…he always will be?

  There’s no answer for me except Trixie’s continuing cries, stolen by a hot wind that moans through the trees with cold castigation. Frustration and sadness fill me—and for the first time, I start to understand the frenetic force that’s turned Reece into damn near a madman for the last three weeks.

  Will we ever be able to get the upper hand on the Consortium? And if so, at what price?

  Not more lives.

  A hard swallow is my only way of holding back an anguished gasp.

  Not Reece’s life.

  We have to push harder for answers.

  Try harder.

  Be better.

  Somehow. Somehow…

  I’m on the verge of congratulating myself for the private pep talk when the wind shifts direction, bringing the odd sense that someone else is climbing the hill to join us.

  Inside a heartbeat, I see that Reece notices too—and reacts by shoving Trixie and me behind him. Before I can stutter out a solid protest, Joany’s hissing something similar to Chase, who does the same thing with her. Sawyer moves to shield Lydia, but she fumes and fights him off.

  “What the hell is with you guys?” she charges. “It’s just—holy shit.”

  I don’t blame her for the gasping reaction to the sight before us on the hill.

  Though we’ve both seen Angelique in the fullness of her post-Consortium-fuckery mode before, with her thick blond hair replaced by a burned black dome and her green gaze turned the eerie shade of an approaching hurricane, this is the first time she’s borne the new look with her old imperiousness. To be honest, it works. To be really honest, it’s kind of badass. To be brutally clear, it might even be what we all need in this moment…

  Until the woman turns the hurricane gaze into a green steel stare and wields every inch of that blade directly at Reece.

  And follows up the stab with equally gut-dicing words.

  “We need to talk.”

  I swallow against a surge of reactions. Not exactly the words a girl wants to hear from her fiancé’s sultry siren of an ex, despite the melted bowling ball skull and crazy emotional history. But Angelique wouldn’t have found a way to get out of the Source and then all the way to California for simple surface facts. She’s arrived in person for a reason.

  One that’s turning my guts into barbed wire and my stomach into a lake of acid.

  Reece pivots and braces in a stiff stance that matches hers. “Then let’s talk,” he charges. “What the hell is it?”

  I swap gazes with Sawyer, the unspoken communication a fast note of needed comfort for me. The guy has heard the same subtext in Reece’s tone as me: the hundred questions that didn’t get asked on top of that. Where have you been for ten days? What the hell is going on? Do we need to be worried? Has the Consortium found us? Has your cover been blown?

  But worse than all the unasked queries is the feeling I get by looking back at Angelique.

  And the sense that she’s about to answer them all anyway.

  Just not exactly with the answers we’re going to like.

  Angie shores up her posture with a measured, heavy breath. “They are ready,” she finally declares. “And they are bringing the storm this time.”

  Reece marches at her by a couple more steps. Small clouds of dust kick up around his boots. Small blue sparks crackle from between his fisted fingers. “When? How?”

  Angelique dips her head as proxy for fully shaking it. “I do not know exactly when—but soon.”

  “And the ‘how?’” Reece demands.

  She lifts her head back up. This time, there are no hurricanes or cutlasses in her gaze. It’s permeated with only one defined energy.

  Fear.

  “A weapon they have been working diligently on. I do not know what they are calling it right now, but…”

  “But what?” Sawyer gives the order now, stomping up to stand next to Reece—until Angie pins him in place with a gaze distorted by even more apprehension.

  At last, she whispers, “But we used to call him Kane.”

  Chapter Three

  Reece

  Every single sense in my body—yeah, the sixth one too, whatever the hell that means right now—is on high alert, crackling with awareness every time Angie’s face changes by the slightest nuance. Anyone who’s ever written off the theory that humans aren’t creatures capable of raw electric energy simply hasn’t been plugged in to someone bristling with intense emotion.

  I’m really plugged into Angelique La Salle now. Whether either of us likes it or not. Though at the moment, I’m not certain she’s given herself permission to feel anything, bad or good, about the bomb of information she’s just dropped on us. I’m also considering that might be the hugest chunk of wisdom the woman’s ever had. I’m sure as hell struggling for the same neutrality, though failing miserably, while processing the announcement that’s just tumbled out of her.

  We used to call him Kane.

  “Holy. Fucking. Hell.” I say it with soft volume but harsh emphasis.

  Angelique looks ready to roll her eyes. The haunted darkness in them serves as the instant off button for the notion. “I am not certain there is anything ‘holy’ about any of this,” she mutters.

  “About what?” Sawyer interjects. “The last time we saw Kane, he’d signed for Mitch’s body and then left for Charles de Gaulle.”

  “Tibet.” I blurt it as if everyone needs to be filled in. They all know where Kane has been for the last month. They all know, because each of us at some point has voiced that we wished we were in the same place. Even yours truly, the head taskmaster of the Team Bolt research crew, has had at least a couple of moments a day of yearning for the peace and pulchritude of the Himalayas.

  Angelique eyes me with anything but peace and pulchritude. “He did not go to Tibet.”

  “What the hell
?” Wade, who’s been dutifully quiet along with Fershan and Alex, finally fires it.

  It’s oddly comforting to watch Angelique respond by thrusting out a hip and folding her arms. For an awesome moment, the woman who arrived up here beneath a cloud of her own trepidation is back to being the bitch de fantastique, complete with a pouty scowl. “He did not go to Tibet.”

  I draw in a deep breath, surprised when I don’t inhale the stench of shit. Though Angie’s simply relaying the mess Kane got himself into, the news itself is disgusting enough for a tangible reek. “He went to Spain,” I finally state, grimacing from the equally fetid burn of the words. But just wiping them away and moving along isn’t anywhere near an option anymore—a truth getting a solid underline in the distinct tension of Angelique’s posture and the way she sweeps the toe of one elegant boot back and forth through the dirt.

  “Fucking. Hell.” The echo gets extra punctuation in the form of my heavy stomps—backward. If I don’t get some distance from everyone, I’m liable to clock someone in Kane’s place. And yeah, probably in my own place too—because if it had been me having to sign for Emma’s body in Paris, I’d have done the same thing he did. Screw peace and pulchritude; the only obsession on my mind would have been vengeance on everyone in the Source I could get my hands on.

  No matter how high the shitpile I created because of it.

  The massive mound poor Angie has had to haul all the way here from Spain.

  The least I can do is relieve her of it now.

  During another labored inhalation, I concentrate on flexing my fingers in place of fisting them up. Only when I’m sure all ten will stay spread and at my sides do I go on.

  “Okay, so let me take a spin at the rest of this now,” I growl. “He never got on the plane to Lhasa. He had Mitch cremated in Paris, which is why the ashes got back to us so fast.” Not observing a speck of denial in Angie’s gaze, I barely pause before going on. “He flew straight to Barcelona instead—but passed up the castles, the churches, the aqueduct, and Ibiza and instantly went for the gutter. Started scratching all the right underbellies in all the right places. And surprise, surprise, the Scorpios scratched right back.”

  Angelique’s posture remains steady; her stare continues as clear as a windless sea—but she’s changing too. Subtly. Enough to tell me that whatever I’ve assumed as the facts in all this, it gets even worse.

  “But the Scorpios didn’t stop at just scratching, did they?” I get out with deceptive calm. “Goddamnit.” And maybe calm is fucking overrated. “They got him, didn’t they?” I stomp back over the dried twigs and pebbles beneath us while struggling to dig my mind into the sickening truth I have to vocalize. “Those monsters got their claws into him. And…changed him.”

  From the second Angelique dives her gaze to the ground, I already know I’ve banged that gong of fact. But the ominous gulp she lets me see as a follow-up? I’m clueless about interpreting that and not sure I want to. My relief hits in a rush as the woman pulls in a noticeable breath and then starts to pace in a careful circle herself. She’s not going to make me guess at the next part—though my heart rams my ribs harder as she contemplates how to express it.

  “He was very upset,” she mutters. “And bitter. And determined. He wanted vengeance for Mitch.”

  I jerk my way through another nod. “I know. His death haunts me every day too.” Another step, a louder crunch underfoot. “It’s a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone I care for.”

  She nods, but not as if my consolation has changed anything. Knowing Kane, even if I stood here and professed it to his face, it wouldn’t. “He refused to listen to me, even after they brought him in and locked him up,” she declares, swiping a hand back across her mottled skull. She curls her fingers at her nape, as though she’s forgotten she’s not wearing her wig, and there’s no real hair left to grab. For a telling instant, a wince takes over her face, though I sense the expression has nothing to do with her missing hair. Clearly she’s just figured out what the two boulders on the ridge stand for.

  “He told me that getting caught was part of his plan. He also insisted he did not want my help, that he had plenty of training.” She goes on in a somber murmur. “He said he knew what he was doing and was only there to get the intel he needed before he escaped and brought it to you. I believe his exact words were that it was not his first time ‘being in the shackles of terrorists.’”

  “Why doesn’t that part surprise me?” Foley mutters.

  “Why doesn’t any of this surprise me?” I retort.

  “What the fuck was he thinking?”

  “You assume he was thinking?”

  During our parrying, a defined frisson of confusion crosses Angelique’s eyes. As soon as she blinks those kohl-lined greens again, the woman is back to embodying refined French poise from head to toe.

  “They took him straight to the hive,” she explains, referring to the slang term for the Source’s lab facilities with their hexagon-shaped experiment rooms. “But I was on duty in another area and did not realize it until they had him on the lab table for several days.” Her veneer finally cracks a little, but not enough that she surrenders her crisp composure. “Everyone seemed to realize his connection to you, as well as his Special Operations history. The security watches were tight.”

  “Tighter than what?” I challenge. “Their system already scrambles GPS, cellular, Wi-Fi, stereo analytics, and even old-fashioned tracking technology.” Of course, I’m preaching to the proverbial choir. The woman knows this because we’ve tried tracing her using all the above plus a few others. Whatever cloaking device the Consortium has makes their compound a candidate for a damn sci-fi movie.

  Angie offers a small shrug. “I only know he was raising eyebrows—and that was before he started yelling.”

  A gruff snort from Foley. “Why doesn’t that surprise me either?”

  I don’t afford him more than one jumped eyebrow, choosing to concentrate on Angelique. The tiny tells in her behavior are finally starting to register with me. She’s toeing the dirt too much. Pumping air in and out with noticeable force. Kneading her lips together like a junkie needing a fix, only nothing else tells me she’s strung out. Her skin is flawless and her eyes are clear—if anything, a little too clear.

  “So what happened next?” I finally question, only to stop and stomp forward again. “Wait. Hold the phone.” I lift a hand with my sizzling fingers curled in, as if actually holding such a device. “Before we go on, you need to tell me, right now, if that asshole has exposed the ridge in any way.” I lean in, making damn sure I have Angelique’s very full, very undivided focus. “If he’s responsible for bringing Consortium bullshit to my front door, then let me take care of clearing everyone else out and—”

  “No!” It’s actually Emma’s strident wail, along with the sounds of her struggling against someone. I don’t look but hope ’Dia’s stepped in as the tether. When my woman’s fully determined, there are few who can rein her in. “Reece! Damn it!”

  I push a hand of authority in her direction. “Let it, Emmalina.”

  “I will not—”

  “I said let it!”

  My bellow stops the ground squirrels and launches a dozen birds into flight. The animals aren’t finished resettling before Angie pulls in air through flaring nostrils and folds her arms, still attempting le nonchalance with her overall demeanor. Does the woman really think she’s fooling anyone, especially after the fortieth time she casts a yearning stare toward Tyce’s memorial? And yeah, there’s nothing I want more than to let her have the solitude to grieve there too, but I’m not clearing anyone off this hill until I know it’s completely safe—and in order to know that, I have to collect every damn detail from her first.

  “Nobody is in danger,” Angie asserts into the new stillness. “I swear it,” she states, swinging up her head in order to drill her direct gaze into me. Despite the skittishness in all her other behaviors, the stare is steady and smooth as green glass. She’s giving
it to me straight.

  So why don’t I feel better?

  I answer my own question the very next second. “So…that means they still have him?”

  Before Angie answers, the query visibly affects the air, as well as everyone in it. Mom, Joany, and Lydia rub their hands against opposite shoulders, shivering against nonexistent chills. Chase noticeably stiffens, and Foley’s already poised like a gunslinger, arms stiff at his sides. The wind gusts up, wanes, and then blows back the other direction, providing damn appropriate symbolism for how many places my thoughts have whipped in the last hour alone. From loss and grief and fury to shock and bewilderment and—well, fury—especially if Angie’s answer is what I’m expecting…

  “Je suis désolée, Reece. He is still there.”

  Shit.

  Yep. Just what I supposed it’d be.

  Which leads to my next recognition. Which is worse than the last.

  “He’s…still there.” I enunciate every syllable with defined comprehension. That’s usually what happens when I grasp a clarifying fact…that’s leading to a staggering revelation. “But you’re here.”

  Her stare flickers back to me for a second. In that flash alone, I’m able to spot so much anxious meaning, but once again, the woman flips to stoicism to cover her smooth sidestep of a reply. “Well, when the branleur began yelling about sizes of needles compensating for other things, I knew I must get out of there as fast as I could.”

  In spite of this entire insane turn to the day, her quip sparks a small smile from me. “Oh, shit,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Did I use that one on the bouncer from Le Chat Rouge or the maître d’ at Arpège?”