“Still learning how to aim?” he teased.
“Not now,” I told him. We had to stick together and focus. He could save his jokes for later.
“Dr. Shaw?” I asked.
Rosa huffed. “More coming from ahead.”
Cassidy glanced at the incoming Xol patients—some looking angry and confused as they left their rooms and others sprinting down the hallway as they entered from wherever else they’d been in the building. They were going to swarm as word got out that their leaders were unconscious on the floor.
Cassidy nodded. “That’s Tami.” Her sharp, curt way of introducing me to the woman who’d given birth to her was cold. I didn’t assume it was some mommy-daughter turmoil she was evading, but the panic of having to face more tenacious enemies.
“What the hell are we going to do?” she asked.
We collected into a circular shape. Our backs weren’t exposed as the four of us stood shoulder to shoulder. All of us had our hands raised with blue tranq guns pointed out in the direction of incoming attackers. Jonah and I doubled up and had a handgun in our nondominant hands as well.
This had to be it. We were outnumbered and outpowered—the goddamn theme of my life since I’d known about this secret science. Our Xol-effective darts wouldn’t last us more than a minute.
We’d come so far and had fallen so short. It wouldn’t take them long to regenerate past their injuries, and by then, we’d been more pawns to torture. Michael would get back up and gloat about always being able to pander to his woman.
Hope lingered in the recesses of my mind. A firm flash of determination remained—that where Jonah, Cassidy, Rosa, and I might fail at causing a setback inside this facility, Dale and Zero might be able to dismantle the organization from the outside.
I wasn’t going to cede defeat. As long as I was breathing, I’d protect the woman I loved, fight for the good of humanity. There was no way to dismiss the pending surrender speeding toward us, but as we held each other up, not backing down, a calm washed over me.
“We’ll follow this to the end,” Rosa answered Cassidy.
We damn well will.
The only silver lining was the fact I’d been granted one last chance to kiss her again. To have another moment of peace in her arms.
We’ll go down fighting.
Chapter Twelve
Cassidy
To the end.
It was here.
The end was right here in my face.
I wasn’t being dramatic like Tami liked to accuse.
It was a bold-faced fact.
We had no ammo or physical stamina to withstand all these people heading toward us. Xol patients staggered out of their rooms, nurses in scrubs frowned at us as they stalked closer. Lab coats swished as tech and maybe other “doctors” approached.
Like a punk who’d poked a hole in a hive, these members of the Xol cult swelled up and swarmed to beat down the trespasser.
“I…” I gritted my teeth, loathing this feeling of helplessness. I’d overcome so many damn episodes of hell only to lose after all? It was… This was bullshit!
“I love you.” I spoke the words before I wouldn’t have the chance.
Luke deserved to know.
“No,” he said. “Not now. You’re going to tell me that when we’re not stuck here like this.”
I admired his spirit, his take-no-shit dominance. His rugged strength and unflinching drive to stand up to true killers bolstered my faith in survival, but…
There was no way we’d get past this many mutated people, all of them unhappy we’d disturbed the purpose of this place.
Like a flood, they rushed toward us. My fingers trembled but I refused to lower my tranq gun. A wave of their voices clashed louder and louder as they shortened the distance between us.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
I was wrong. I still sucked with confrontations. This wasn’t a scrimmage, this was sitting vulnerable in the battlefield of a crusade.
Despite the air conditioning chilling the building, sweat collected and teased at my temple. I fidgeted, too attuned to the annoying sensation to ignore it. Rolling my shoulder, I tried to wipe at my face with my shirt sleeve, and in that motion, I froze.
Looking downward for just that brief moment, instead of staring at the angry-faced growing mob coming our way, I tracked a simple motion.
Something rolling.
Spinning.
Toppling into an oblong oval wobble.
A little circular plate. Just like—
“Luke!” I gripped his arm and dragged him to see.
He grunted as he shifted. Perhaps I’d jostled him too much in his wounded stance. Regardless of any discomfort I might have caused him, he heeded my call and he looked down just as the flat gas bomb began to emit a translucent azure cloud.
Blue? We’d deployed several of those sedative trinkets Dale had given us, but they’d all released toxins invisible to the eye.
Another puff of blue rose, snagging my attention toward where Michael still lay.
And one more, further down the hallway where Xol patients headed toward us.
And another. And another.
All along the seemingly never-ending hallway, more discs rolled and disengaged.
“Our masks!” Jonah said, reaching for his back pocket.
“What is this?” Rosa asked.
Luke shot out his arm, halting his brother from grabbing anything. “No. Look.”
We did. Instead of staring at the azure haze spreading quickly through the air, rushing faster near HVAC vents, I gasped.
Xol mutants. The patients, the ones dressed normally like Jolene and Michael and Tami…
All of them were falling to the ground like hypnotized monsters.
We were still standing.
How in the hell…
I opened and closed my mouth, struggling to make sense.
“Now that works a helluva lot easier on them than shoving them outta my plane.”
The man who spoke had called out his drawling greeting from down the hall.
I’d recognize that red hair anywhere.
“Fox?” I spluttered, still not lowering my tranq gun despite the Xol falling to the ground. The pilot who’d flown us to Mexico—Tramer’s buddy.
“Hey!” he called out jubilantly, like this was an everyday occurrence.
As he came closer, others similarly dressed to him came forth. They’d dressed for stealth and defense, black cargo pants held up by a duty belt with all kinds of necessities for violence—cuffs, canisters, knives, guns, and ammo. Beneath their Kevlar vests, they wore black shirts, revealing their toned physique to kick ass.
Three of them, however, wore masks.
If they were protecting their faces, were they untrusting of the gas and paranoid, or…protecting themselves from breathing it in. Meaning—
I jerked my tranq gun toward the trio of tall soldiers not breathing in the blue air.
They were Xols? On…our side?
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…”
I turned toward the other deep voice, this one coming from the other end of the hall. Tramer led the way to us, high-stepping over the fallen mutants asleep on the floor. Several men followed him, too.
“They’re with us,” Tramer said as he came closer.
“They’re…Xol?” Luke asked, his head shaking side to side as he eyed Tramer and then the three men in masks.
“Yeah.” Fox reached us, his serious gaze checking out Luke as he staggered in his position. Jonah and I dodged over to help him stand. “Need some help?”
“How are they Xol and not…” Rosa asked.
“Insane?” Tramer offered.
“How are they not part of their cult?” I asked, gesturing to Tami on the ground. All the Xol patients were conditioned to their will.
Fox whistled and another militant came closer. While the rest of the two dozen soldiers went through the hallway, stopping to cuff the
Xols, Fox and his comrade took Luke from my and Jonah’s shoulders. “Better patch you up before your girl sees you faint.”
Luke deadpanned at the teasing jibe in the Special Forces pilot’s tone.
“Two of them are military hostages who were given the treatment against their will. Seems Interpol had files on them. The third”—Tramer gestured to a black guy who was restraining a couple of disgruntled human lab techs still standing—“is a former prisoner who escaped the Xol facility he was at for tests, and then came to the FBI. Confidential case. They’d tried those blue darts on him and missed, so he kept it. Then he gave it to a former Daysun technician who helped make those blue gas bombs.”
“Dale knew about this?” Luke demanded, his tone accusatory.
Tramer shook his head. “Nope. A…certain hacker located the independent lab who was creating them.” He shrugged. “Our man Zero knows a lot of people—or how to get their attention.”
Damn. And those two hostages—probably prisoners of war—who’d be forced into Xols and to serve… So messed up.
Dale had mentioned Xol recruits being used in the military. Top-secret, of course, and for nefarious gains and personal profits, I was sure. How much could Tami and Michael have sold Xol-powered men to serve in violent ways?
“How the hell…” I laughed, the breath of relief nearly bowling me over. Giddy euphoria claimed me, almost to a narcotic high. I felt weightless, lighter than I’d ever experienced as it really hit me.
Surrounded by men prepared for combat, and aided by Xol mutants who weren’t evil…
This was the end.
This was it.
We were safe, at last.
No more running. No more guessing. No more fearing the worst and facing something even more wicked than that. No more Xol freaks or Xol masterminds on the loose.
“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, huh?” Tramer said with a rare smile.
Luke squeezed my hand, and like every time his contact grabbed me in the possessive and protective way, my heart beat faster. I squeezed back and dared to smile. A true, honest-to-God grin.
“Stay with me?” he asked.
I snorted. “Like you’ll get rid of me now.”
“Let’s get you fixed up,” Fox said, glancing at all of us. “And you.” He eyed the cut on my lip and I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten that Tami had struck me.
“Her first.” I let go of Luke’s hand to step back to Rosa. She was still standing there, pressing her palm to her side. As I moved toward her, she inhaled a deep breath and reached for me.
The strength of her thin arms around me surprised me, and I allowed myself the chance to soak in her hug. She’d never been quick to show affection, especially not in displays as physical as this. Now I knew, though, that she’d loved me more than life itself, that she’d gone to extremes to keep me safe from things she probably still wished she could have spared me from even knowing about.
“Thank you,” I said into her hair as I held her tight.
She shook her head. “For what?”
“For being my mother.”
She sniffed, and I held her as she cried.
****
It didn’t surprise me that Luke refused to cooperate with the medics.
My man wasn’t a pushover by any stretch of imagination, and if I hadn’t been there with him, holding his hand, I doubted he would have even let them tend to his wound.
I kept my fingers threaded with his, not because he wasn’t brave enough to face his injuries being accessed and tended to, but more, I felt, because he refused to let me out of sight.
It was a mutual addiction. Staying with one another. After the raw way I’d been kidnapped, and what was likely a nerve-wracking ordeal of him getting to me, we needed the obsessive reassurance that we weren’t going to disappear on each other any time soon.
Fox and another of his team had helped carry Luke out of the Xol labs. Rosa was taken to an ambulance, and it had been a tricky moment of deciding where I belonged. The two people who mattered most to me were in different directions.
“Go on,” Luke said. He looked up from his seat on the gurney in the ambulance. He must have noticed me glancing back and forth between the two vehicles with their doors open. Rosa lay on the gurney, talking to the medic who checked her blood pressure.
“She needs you,” he said, nodding at the other ambulance.
But…I need you.
He almost smiled, that aw-shucks charming grin. “I do, too, but you’re coming back to me.”
Overwhelmed with love and the comfort of knowing I belonged to him, I climbed into the back of the van. I gripped his face, relishing the warmth of his cheeks between my hands, and brought my lips to his.
He groaned at the hard kiss and clutched my shirt. Before I could fall into his lap, someone cleared his throat behind me.
Jonah grinned, avoiding looking at us. “Maybe I can get a ride with someone else.”
“No.” Luke stared at me with a heady intensity that revved me too hot for what should be appropriate in an ambulance. Too needy for him when he was shot. He roved a slow stare over me, settling on my lips as he said, “I’ll get my turn with her later.”
Forever.
I smiled softly, grateful for his consideration of Rosa needing someone to comfort her too.
Jonah exchanged spots with me, going in to wait with Luke in his ambulance while I headed to Rosa’s.
From the building, local police led cuffed patients into buses. Most were still wearing hospital gowns, but some had blankets protecting them from the night air. One by one, all these people who’d been transformed by the Xol treatment, most likely many with the Last Time dose, were now in the hands of the police. It was a hectic frenzy of officers and agents out here under the moonlit sky. Choppers flew above, probably the news. Acronyms on vests and coats flitted back and forth in the busyness. SWAT, FBI, NARC, and various levels of federal and California law enforcement.
As corrupt as Project Xol was, I doubted all these first responders could be legit. I hoped though, that with Tramer involved, the leadership from at least one direction could be trusted.
As long as they’re going far away from me. Away from my loved ones.
I sighed, picking my way through the foot traffic, and came to Rosa’s ambulance. She rested there peacefully, watching me approach.
“So, Luke, huh?” she asked.
A blush stole up my cheeks and I shrugged. No. Screw that. No more shyness or silly reactions. I wasn’t ashamed of Luke, or that I’d hooked up with him. Meeting him had changed my life for the better.
“Yeah. Luke.”
She raised her brows and her mouth twitched, like she was biting back a smile. “He’s…an unlikely match for you.”
I smirked, waiting her out.
“He’s so…rough, and he has such an…ugly past.”
“And now he and I have one hell of a past together.” Because it was in the past. Xol was over for me. It had to be. My mother—or any other scientist—could go to hell before they’d use me as their personal pawn for power.
“Go on,” she said, waving at me to leave. She’d borrowed Luke’s exact words and I couldn’t help but laugh at the coincidence. I was determined to support them in the immediate aftermath of tonight’s horrors but they didn’t want to claim me. I wasn’t so silly to think they didn’t want me, only, they respected that the other might need comfort more.
Two giving souls. And they were both mine to keep in my life.
“Go on, go on.” She smiled softly and then yawned. “We’ll reconvene shortly. I’m sure we’re heading to the same place now.”
If she hadn’t seemed so normal, walking, talking, and not expressing pain, I would have hesitated to leave her. None of us knew exactly what Tami had used for the poison—what kind of lethal chemical she was slowly killing her with. With one final look back at her, checking that she seemed content and safe in the hands of the medic at her side, I left.
&n
bsp; It was a crowded fit in the ambulance, with an EMT on Luke’s left and me on the right. Jonah opted to ride with Fox, but Rosa had been right. We’d been taken to the hospital, a legit place for healthcare, and I’d waited while Luke’s leg was examined.
Through and through again. Once the site wounds were cleaned, he was stitched a bit and given painkillers and antibiotics.
Reveling in the simple comfort of Luke’s touch and a moment to simply breathe without anyone demanding anything of us, I sighed deeply.
Knocks sounded on the door before Jonah entered. “Dale’s waiting for us at the hotel. He says it’s nuts out there. As soon as you’re clear to go, we’ll fly over.”
“Fly?” I asked.
“Chopper. Media’s swarming the hotel lobby. It’s nuts nuts.”
“What’s going on?” I asked Luke.
“Dale teamed up with your computer geek to expose Project Xol,” Jonah said.
“Computer geek?” I sassed back. If he was referring to Zero, that was a gross understatement of what my friend was capable of.
“Zero’s been helping Dale.” Luke shifted to sit and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Easy,” I warned him.
“I’m sick of waiting to get out of here.”
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, he was the most impatient man on earth. But I needed to make sure he was okay to recover elsewhere.
“Reminds me of…” He rubbed at his face.
“The Xol place?” I asked, smoothing my hand over his back.
Jonah shook his head. “Prison?” he guessed.
Luke nodded. “After Ryan… When they’d patched me up.”
I scooted closer to hug his side. It was still hard to accept Luke had endured nightmares of a different kind in the time before he’d met me and embarked on our crazy journey to end Project Xol. It wasn’t fair for him to have suffered and lost so much this far in his life, but I vowed then and there that I’d be there with him to ride out every bad memory or any flash of anger.
Because he’s already doing the same for me.
After I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, I said, “We’ll go as soon as we can.”
Given: Project Xol Page 9
