by Chloe Neill
“Not going to help my driving if you complain about it.”
“I think tires are the best bet,” I said. “I need you to get me in position.”
“And how would you like me to do that? Hold that thought,” he said, and swung the car right to avoid driving into the lagoon. I fell backward, slamming into him, and managed not to drop the gun.
“We have to stop meeting like this!” he said while I climbed back onto my side of the car.
“Yeah, this is all fun and games,” I said, dropping down when another bullet flashed the passenger side. “They’re trying to conserve bullets.”
“Probably only one gun in that car, and they’ll need it if they stop us. Otherwise they’d have done what you’re doing.”
Or they wanted us alive, because Ezekiel wanted in on the killing. That seemed equally likely.
“I need a clearer shot. Best way is to let them get beside us.”
“You want me to slow down?”
“If you want me to disable the vehicle, yeah.” I looked at him. “Or I can drive, and you can do the shooting.”
“How close do they need to be?” he asked quickly.
“Close as you can get without getting us killed.”
“Fair enough,” he said, watching the road ahead. “There,” he said, pointing to another long pond in front of us. “I’ll slow down like we don’t want to hit it, jerk the wheel to the left. That should bring them up on your right.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“If this doesn’t work, and they stop the truck, run for the trees, run back to the Quarter.”
“No, if this doesn’t work, we run together.”
We looked at each other for a moment, understanding passing between us. We were in this together, and neither would leave the other behind. That was Ezekiel’s play, not ours.
“You ready?” Liam asked.
I balanced my elbows on the armrest. I didn’t balance the gun yet. I didn’t want to scare them off. “Ready.”
“Then here we go.” He took his foot off the gas, swerved left.
The other truck was still accelerating to our right, which put them on our passenger corner, and then parallel. Their shooter fired, two shots that dinged against the back of the truck.
I saw her face through the window—the young, blond woman with thin arms and big eyes who drove the truck. She didn’t look as helpless as the other women I’d seen. In her eyes was the fire of a believer.
Breathe in, breathe out, aim, and . . . fire.
The sound was enormously loud, the ricochet singing through my arm. I hit the tire’s sidewall. It would lose air, but not fast enough to stop the vehicle outright.
The driver screamed something to the man in the back of the truck, swerved the vehicle away from us. That put me in the perfect position. I fired again, then again, and again.
For a second, I thought I’d lost the gamble.
But I’d hit my target three times over; it just took time for the air to drain. The tire deflated, and the driver overcorrected, swerved to avoid a tree, and fishtailed. The back of the truck slammed into the tree anyway, knocking down the man who’d been shooting over the cab. Everything went still.
Or so it seemed. Fingers shaking with adrenaline, I kept the gun trained on the truck. Two people in linen climbed out of the cab. One kicked at the vehicle. The other aimed with a handgun, but we were out of range, and she wasted her bullets.
Liam headed for the main road again, and the ride smoothed out.
We stayed quiet, but I didn’t move, and kept my gaze trained on the darkness for some sign Ezekiel had sent another vehicle, another group with guns to take us out. If they had the arsenal of C-4, it was a pretty good bet they also had an arsenal of guns. But grass and trees and water were the only things that passed behind us, and the truck’s engine was the only sound that pierced through the darkness.
“I’m taking a shortcut,” Liam said. “Turn around and hold on.”
I turned in time to see the chain-link fence looming in front of us. I covered my head with my hands, and Liam roared along with the truck’s engine, like his feral yell would be enough to push us through.
Steel rushed over the truck, and we bounced down onto the road below.
We’d made it out alive. We’d made it out together.
Liam pulled the truck to a stop. He put it in park, ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.” I looked at him. There was a cut on his forehead, glass dusting his shoulders like snow. “Good driving.”
Liam nodded, blew out a breath. “Good shooting.”
I nodded and put the gun away again, clenched my fingers. “Thanks.”
He looked at me, gaze on my swollen lip. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” I held up a hand. “Plenty of adrenaline to go. We need to get back to the store.”
“We will,” he promised, then leaned over and pressed his lips to mine.
I didn’t have a chance to argue, to remind him who or what we were, or to wonder if he’d dealt with those issues, overcome them.
Or I didn’t take that chance. I took the other chance and grabbed locks of his dark hair, pulled him closer until his throat rumbled with satisfied sound. He touched my face gently, then slipped his finger to the back of my neck. The kiss deepened until Ezekiel, the camp, City Park, and all the rest of it disappeared, replaced by a glorious haze across my mind.
Liam pulled incrementally back, lips swollen and eyes closed, before moving back to his seat. “We should get back to the store.”
He’d pulled back physically, and he’d pulled back emotionally. But we were alive, and for now I was going to count my blessings.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The lights were blazing when we pulled up in front of the store. Tadji and Gunnar raced to the door, opening it as I climbed out of the truck, glanced in the back.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, looking at Liam. “My boxes are gone—they had the aprons in it, the money we got today, the goods we traded.”
It took Liam a moment to process. “Including the deer jerky.”
“Including the damn deer jerky.” I could have worked out some solid frustration by gnawing on deer jerky.
“Why are you limping?” Gunnar asked from the doorway as we walked inside. “And why is there a bruise on your face? What the hell happened?”
“I’m only slightly limping,” I said, rolling my foot to test it. “It’s better now.”
“Camp Couturie happened,” Liam said, locking the door and peering into the darkness for a moment before turning back to the rest of us. “Asshole militia bastards.”
Gunnar glared at him. “I thought this trip was going to be simple. I thought you were going to be careful and keep her out of trouble!”
“Still in the room,” I pointed out. “Which is in the store I own. So.”
“You’re in the store you own looking like the cat dragged you around a little.” Tadji took one of my hands in hers, looked down at my wrists. “You were bound?”
“I was.”
“Go sit,” Liam said, directing me to the table. “Get off that ankle.”
“Sprain?” Gunnar asked.
“Just twisted it,” I said, “and during our heroic escape. Really, it’s nearly fine.”
“I’m going to get you something to clean your wrists up,” Tadji said, and hustled to the back of the store.
“There’s some salve in a tin,” I said, looking at my raw wrists. “Mrs. Proctor brought it.” She was one of my regulars. “It smells horrible, but it works on scrapes.” My wrists were burning, and the stuff worked miracles. I could stand having garbage wrists for a little while.
“What happened?” Gunnar asked, taking my arm and leading me to the table, too.
“We sold beets, ask
ed very subtle questions, and had a fine time,” Liam said. “We headed to the truck, and they hit us. Ezekiel had us dragged into a tent, accused us of being spies.”
“Which, in fairness, was accurate,” I said.
Tadji came back, handing a dampened cloth to Liam, the tin of salve and a roll of gauze to me. I popped off the lid and took a tentative sniff. Still smelled like hot buttered garbage, but there was no help for it.
“I’ll do it,” Tadji said, and I held out my wrists. Her touch was careful and delicate, but I still winced at the knife-sharp sting. The cooling sensation that followed it was better. When she’d gentled salve onto the abrasions, she wrapped a couple of rounds of gauze around them, tucked the ends into place.
“Good as new,” she said. “And you can sport the latest fashion accessory.”
“War bracelets,” I said, holding them up so everyone could see.
“Continue,” Gunnar said.
“We made it out,” Liam said, the cloth pressed to the cut on his forehead. “They gave chase, and Claire disabled their vehicle with a forty-four.”
“Engine?” Gunnar asked, glancing at me.
“Tire,” I said. “Took a few shots, but we had limited ammo, so I took a chance.”
“Good call,” Gunnar said, pulling out the chair next to mine, spinning it to face me. “Why’d they decide you were spies?”
“One of the Campers saw us at the Bourbon Street protest,” Liam said.
“One of the chicks who walked in the front with Ezekiel,” I added. “She only came out of the tents for a second, then disappeared again. It was near the fountain.”
Gunnar nodded. “So two confirmed Reveillon members at Camp Couturie.”
“That we saw,” Liam said. “And that’s not all we saw. They have an arsenal.” He told Gunnar about the C-4 we’d found.
“Damn,” Gunnar said. “That much explosive, they can take out whatever they want. Bridges, buildings, levees.”
Liam nodded. “They didn’t know we’d found it, but they knew we’d found them, and they only send one car?”
I hadn’t considered the possibility they’d let us go, and I didn’t really want to consider it now. “I prefer my version of the story.”
“You did take out an enemy vehicle,” Gunnar said.
“Thank you for that. Although Liam’s truck suffered the consequences.”
Gunnar nodded. “Containment will repair the damage. You were technically on a mission, after all.”
“Appreciate it,” Liam said. “Bulletproof glass would not be turned down.”
“You think you and Claire will be targeted?” Gunnar asked.
“Ezekiel is now very pissed off at both of us. He doesn’t know we saw the explosives, at least not that we’re aware, but he knows that we know where he operates.”
“He’ll come after us,” Liam said, “and he might decamp. He can’t move all of Camp Couturie out quickly—there are just too many people—but he’ll take his core group, the rest of the arsenal they’ve put together.”
Gunnar stood, began to pace. “Joint Ops will want to reallocate now, send teams in. Priority will be finding the bombers and the explosives, getting them out of Reveillon’s hands.” He looked back at us. “You get any sense of the size of the group? Everyone on their side, a few people on their side?”
“Hard to say,” Liam said. “We only saw a few dozen people. Of them, only a few wore those linen garments, but we don’t know if that’s a requirement or just something the diehards choose to do.”
“Some of them are probably just trying to survive,” I said, thinking of the men and women we’d seen at the market. They hadn’t seemed oppressed, but they hadn’t exactly seemed happy, either. Life in the Zone could be difficult under even the best conditions; life at Camp Couturie seemed pretty hardscrabble when you got down to it. “Some don’t have time to worry about waging war against Containment. They’re focused on making sure they have basic necessities.”
“On the other hand,” Liam said, “that’s probably exactly the thing Ezekiel has used to bring some over to his side.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Gunnar agreed.
Tadji looked at me. “I don’t want you to stay here alone tonight. Either you can come home with me, or, if you want to keep an eye on the store, maybe Liam can stay?” She gave Liam a pointed look that suggested the “maybe” wasn’t entirely optional.
“Good idea,” Gunnar said.
“Is anyone interested in my opinion?” I asked.
“Not especially,” Gunnar and Tadji said together.
Liam rolled his eyes, looked at me. “You have a place for me to sleep?”
“So many possible answers to that question,” Gunnar muttered.
“You’re hilarious,” Liam said. “Let’s make this situation even more awkward.”
“It shouldn’t be awkward,” Gunnar said. “Wouldn’t be, if you two would just do it.”
You could have heard crickets from Algiers Point in the silence that followed that comment.
“Liam will want to go back to Devil’s Isle,” I said, ignoring the comment altogether, and looked at him. “Won’t you want to check on your grandmother?”
“I can check on her,” Gunnar said. “Better yet, I’ll put someone on the door. Someone sympathetic.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” Liam said.
“I’ll need to get a message to Malachi,” I said, and lifted my gaze to the stairs. I couldn’t fit much in a note attached to a pigeon’s leg, and it would have to be cryptic, but it would have to do for now.
“Then it’s settled,” Tadji said. “Liam will stay here tonight.”
“All right,” Gunnar said. “Now that we’ve got that worked out, I need to go. Claire looks like she could use some sleep.”
“She could,” I said, not stifling an enormous yawn.
“You want a ride back to the Cabildo?” Tadji asked him, rising. “I’ve got the car.”
Calling her tiny box a “car” was generous, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. “I’d appreciate it,” Gunnar said.
We said quick good-byes, and then the door was locked again, and Liam and I stood alone in the store together. And it was awkward.
I blew out a breath, decided I might as well get some of the awkward over with. I could use a good night’s sleep, and the faster I could get to it, the better.
“There’s a bed in the back room,” I said, gesturing to the room behind the kitchen, where I stored extra merchandise. “I think it’s actually pretty comfortable. Gunnar did some time there and only complained about it within usual Gunnar levels. I’ll go upstairs and get some blankets.”
Liam looked toward the back room, then back at me. “I’ll go with you.”
My hackles lifted. “I don’t need a chaperone,” I said irritably. “We’re safe from a second-floor ninja attack.”
“I want to check the layout of the building. I haven’t seen the third floor.”
Fair enough, I thought, and was glad I hadn’t imagined he’d been curious about where I lived, where I slept. We’d moved past that, I reminded myself. We’d been through trauma together, had come out on the other end of it. We were friends—good friends—and that was fine. There was nothing wrong with having good friends.
We took the stairs, and I stopped at the second floor, gestured to the storage room. “Linens are in here.”
His eyes were dark and unreadable. “Mind if I go up?”
I did mind, but that was mostly just personal, so I shook my head. “Help yourself.”
While the treads squeaked beneath his weight, I put aside consideration of what Liam would look like in my bedroom and focused on finding sheets. I hadn’t been able to salvage any from our old house during the war, but my father had a pretty fantastic collection
of linens at the store. With age, the sheets and pillowcases had been worked into a perfect softness. And, I thought, pulling them from the bureau drawer, they now smelled like the rose and lavender sachet I’d packed them with. Hopefully, Liam wouldn’t mind smelling floral in the morning, or the mismatched embroidery.
When I put together a set and turned off the light again, the hallway was empty, the third-floor light still on. Still checking things out, or just snooping around?
I took the stairs, arms crossed around the linens, and stepped into the doorway. He stood in front of my bureau, looking over the things I’d gathered there. A silver brush and comb set, a small piece of brick I’d taken from the fallen St. Louis Cathedral.
He looked back at me. “I like the space.”
“Thanks. It serves its purpose.” I walked to the table by the window, drafted a note for Malachi: “Reveillon at Camp Couturie. Armed and dangerous. Containment going in.” Hopefully, that would be enough to keep him and the rest of Delta safe. And maybe they could use the information.
I slipped the note into the bird’s leather pouch, ran the back of my fingers down the silky feathers at its neck. If it liked the petting, or didn’t, it gave no sign. I let it fly, watch it lift into the air, black wings against moonlit clouds.
Duty done, I closed and locked the window again.
He picked up the stack of documents I found in the storage room, looked at it. “What’s all this?”
“Nothing,” I said, toeing off my shoes. “I’ve been looking through my father’s things, the inventory, trying to find—I don’t know. Something confirming he was a Sensitive, saying how he felt about it. Confessing it to me, I guess.”
“Everything I know about him—which isn’t much—says he would have been very careful to hide it, to keep you and the store out of danger.”
“I know. But I looked anyway. I found the papers in a carved-out book—The Revolt of the Angels.”
“Ironic.” He read through them. “Your father bought a building on Carrolton?”
“No.” I said it on a laugh, and looked back at Liam. He’d spread the documents across the top of the bureau, was reading through one of them.
