Blaze

by Joan Swan

  “Good thing,” Luke said, “ ’cause the others are coming on fast.”

  They were also already shooting. Keira resettled into position, tuned out the pings of bullets hitting their car.

  “They’re going for the tires,” Luke said. “I’m going to make this a little tougher for you.”

  He swerved to the right and back. A shot hit the rear window. It shattered. Mateo screamed, clutching her leg. Another bullet hit the driver’s window at an angle. More glass shattered. Luke’s head whipped sideways. The Jeep jerked, then straightened out.

  “Fuck,” Luke bit out.

  Keira’s attention turned forward, where Luke pressed a hand to his temple. “Are you hit?”

  “I’m fine. Would you get rid of those motherfuckers already?”

  She aimed out the freshly opened space. “Thank you, kakee andras.”

  More shots rang out, snapped against the body of the car as Luke’s haphazard driving made it hard for Keira to sync up.

  “Give me a rhythm, Luke.”

  He did, steering and whipping the Jeep into a perfectly wild, chaotic rhythm that reminded her of the way their passion used to dominate them as they made love.

  She pushed that thought from her mind and focused. Gave herself over to the swerves and curves. Watched the other driver’s reactions. And, once she recognized the pattern, squeezed the trigger.

  Four shots pounded through the windshield of the other car. It veered, hit the embankment hard, and went airborne. An extended moment of eerie silence floated as the vehicle flipped, midair. Then came down on its roof with an ear-piercing crunch of metal and rolled off into the darkness.

  Keira laid her forehead against the seat. She was sweating and shaking when Luke’s voice pierced her adrenaline crash.

  “You are—officially—fucking amazing.”

  She laughed through shaky breaths. “Remember that . . . when I’m . . . making you crazy.”

  “Fováme, Thia.” Mateo clawed at her jeans, his voice a high whine. “Kráta me.” Keira pulled him into her arms. “It’s okay now, baby. You’re safe.” She realized those were the same words Luke used to bring her back from the edge of the anxiety attack. “I’m right here.”

  “He’s talking more. That’s a good sign.”

  “Wish I could understand what the hell he’s saying.” She smoothed a hand over his hair. “Luke, he’s shaking.”

  “Baby, after that fiasco, I’m shaking.”

  “This is so royally messed up.”

  Luke sputtered a laugh. “You’re just figuring that out?”

  She rubbed Mateo’s round cheek with her thumb. “What is it about you, little guy? I mean, heck yeah, you’re cute as can be, but even I wouldn’t go to these lengths for a cute guy.”

  “Well,” Luke drawled, “that’s reassuring.”

  Keira pulled at the tight little curls at the base of Mateo’s neck, as if she could straighten them if she tugged enough.

  That’s when she felt it, a ridge beneath his skin, just above the hairline. She probed to get a better idea of its size and shape, worried she might have overlooked an injury.

  But the more she assessed, the more confused she became. She repositioned the boy in her lap and tilted his head forward. “Put your head down, baby. Let me see this.”

  Keira hit the overhead light and brushed the curls away. The linear bump she’d felt was a scar. Above the scar, something else lurked beneath his skin. In the shape of a square.

  Her stomach went cold, then hot, then nauseous. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” Luke looked back, frowning.

  “At the first safe opportunity, pull over,” she said. “I think I’ve found an answer to at least one of my questions.”

  “Which one?”

  “How they keep finding us. I think he’s got a tracker.”

  Cash O’Shay barely noticed the chill radiating off the tall rock walls of the hallway leading to his cell. He rubbed at his eyes. “Where did I go wrong?”

  Gomez, the guard of the day, stopped at the door to Cash’s cell and turned the lock. The clank echoed off the surrounding stone. “Get some sleep, Cash. It’ll come to you. You’re close, man. Real close.”

  Cash’s mind cleared for a second as he looked at Gomez. The older man’s dark face held a familiar expression: pity. Cash had come to recognize and read all the people here over the last three years—lab technicians, scientists, administrative personnel, guards, even the cleaning staff.

  He’d attempted to befriend and even manipulate and bribe just about every one of them in an effort to escape, but he’d come to realize there was no greater motivator than fear. And all the people here were clearly still here because if they tried to leave, they feared for their lives and the lives of their families. Everyone was a prisoner of some sort.

  Cash could have easily overpowered Gomez, despite the weapon strapped at his hip, but he knew from experience the guards weren’t his true gatekeepers. The motion detectors, the alarms, the cameras, the Comanche helicopter surveillance, and the U.S. Army soldiers posted twenty-four-seven outside the massive facility in the middle of nowhere—those were the insurmountable obstacles for one man with no resources.

  “Not close enough, Gomez.”

  Cash turned into his room, scanned the space he’d seen every day for the last three years. A space they—whoever the hell they really were—tried to pretend was some fancy city loft with polished granite floors, frosted glass enclosures, stainless-steel fixtures, and furniture with fine linens. What Cash saw was industrial, indestructible flooring, tempered, unbreakable glass, bolts holding in fixtures and furnishings, and linens that didn’t degrade, stain, or tear.

  A familiar fear tapped his thoughts: the fear he’d never see the sky again. Never feel the grass. Never smell fresh air. Or never hold his son again. That hope was all that kept him going, day to day, month to month.

  “Go home and enjoy your family, Gomez,” Cash said. “It’s all any of us really have.”

  With a sage nod, Gomez backed out of the room.

  Cash steeled himself for the harsh sounds that inevitably came next, but it didn’t help. The slide of metal on metal twisted his stomach. The clank of the lock made him flinch.

  And as he stood surrounded by his cold, hard furnishings, a film of hopelessness inked his insides. After today’s failure, he just couldn’t take one more day of this life.

  Repressed rage boiled up from his very core. His vision blurred. He leaned in and swept the contents of his bookcase to the floor with a guttural yell. Shelf after shelf of science texts and fiction hardbacks smacked the floor. He ripped his bedcovers off, overturned his mattress and box spring.

  At the dining table, he hoisted the single chair over the tabletop, brought it down with all his strength. Metal clanked on glass and bounced back, smacking him in the head. Blood seeped from his skull, but he barely felt the pain.

  “Motherfuckers!” He pounded until the metal band bordering the glass broke and a piece of the table chipped off. Then he swung the chair one final time and let go. It sailed across the room and slammed against the cement block wall without leaving so much as a nick.

  Cash’s mind broke. He didn’t have any solid thoughts as he continued to demolish his room, only thrived on releasing the years of pent-up violence.

  He was bleeding from his face, head, arms, and hands when pure exhaustion finally brought him to a stop. When his mind cleared, he was right back where he’d started. Imprisoned. Hopeless.

  The single glass shard glittered in the light filtering in from the corridor. He picked up the substantial triangle and stumbled backward until his spine hit a wall, then let his muscles go and slid to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his legs and pressed his eyes to his knees.

  He would go for his carotid. Forget the wrists. If he was going to kill himself, he was going to go fast. He didn’t want them finding him too soon and patching him up. No, when he left this hell, it would be for good. And
tonight seemed like as good a night as any.

  Nothing in his army training, not even courses in surviving enemy torture, had prepared him to make it through this. He was in the fucking United States, not Iraq. He was a damned American citizen. Joined the military at eighteen and dedicated his life to protecting his country. Yet the government he’d served in good faith was the very one that had imprisoned him here.

  “Fucking sonsofbitches!”

  He tilted his chin back and set the point of glass against the pulse at his neck. If he pushed hard enough, he could cut both the carotid and the jugular with the first slice. The faster the better.

  Cash took a solid hold on the glass wedge, squeezed his eyes closed, took his last breath—

  “Hold it down, man. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  The distant, familiar voice lanced Cash’s chest with a silver light.

  “Q?” Hope created a painful pressure beneath his ribs. He searched for the vent at the base of the concrete wall supporting him. It wasn’t as if he could see the man through the vent, only that the metal grate provided their lifeline of communication. Was this his imagination? Cash had been going a little crazy without his friend for conversation and support. “Q, is that you?”

  “Who else do you think it would be, bonehead?”

  Cash dropped the glass, suicide postponed, and scooted closer to the vent. “Where have you been? It’s been like a month. I thought they’d finally killed you.”

  “They killed me one hell of a long time ago, Sci-Fi. Now they just fuck with what’s left of my brain until they get bored.”

  The nickname Q had given Cash when they’d first talked through the walls and Q had discovered Cash was a military scientist brought tears to the backs of Cash’s eyes. Over their sketchy years in this dungeon, through the slats of this vent, they had built a bond stronger than Cash had once had with any of his military buddies, stronger than any childhood friend. The only relationships that meant more to him had been those with his wife, Zoya, his sister, Keira, and his son, Mateo.

  “I . . . I don’t think I can do this anymore, Q.”

  “You have to,” Q said. “You’ve got a kid to think about.”

  “Do I? I don’t even know if he’s still alive. They’re probably using that lie as a fucking carrot.”

  The possibility had always been out there, lingering in the back of his mind, but he’d never said it aloud. Now he knew why. Even the remote chance his son was dead gutted him.

  “What if it’s not? What if he is out there?” Q paused, then said, “I take it your shit didn’t gel tonight.”

  Cash thought back to the moment his experiment had failed. He’d hoped to create the substance for a bulletproof, fireproof, flexible, breathable material for the American troops, but it hadn’t hardened from a sticky liquid into the projected neoprene-like “skin.” There would be no success. Which meant no freedom. No Mateo. No new life. “No. It didn’t gel.”

  “Did you let the mixtures breathe before you joined them, like I said?”

  Cash couldn’t bring himself to think about the circumstances of the experiment failure. Q had learned everything he knew about science and experiment from Cash over their years of talking through the walls. They either talked about Cash’s previous life, science, or fiction, because Q didn’t have any memories or self-knowledge to discuss prior to his time in the Castle. He didn’t even know how old he was.

  Cash often wondered if the man stayed sane precisely because he had nothing else to live for—at least that he knew of—outside these walls.

  “I told you that won’t make any difference,” Cash said.

  “You also told me that the polymers have to split before they join.” Q’s tone remained patient. “And you told me that these polymers have the ability to split at a certain temperature, which could only happen if you let them rest in a controlled environment for a certain amount of time before you joined them.”

  Cash’s mind stopped spinning. Q’s words took on amazing clarity.

  “Oh, man.” Cash squeezed his head between his hands. “Why didn’t I see that?”

  “Because you’ve been embroiled in this for three damn years. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to see all the options.”

  Cash clicked through the changes he’d have to make in the experiment to fit Q’s scenario.

  “What the hell are you waiting for, Sci-Fi? The sooner you get that shit created, the sooner you get out of here.”

  Cash pushed off the floor, dragged himself to the cell door, and pounded with his fist. “Gomez! I need to go back to the lab!”

  NINE

  “You are such a good sport.” Luke fitted the final pieces of Mateo’s foil helmet into place. “Kat would have kicked and screamed and ripped this thing to pieces by now.”

  On the other side of the car, Keira scrunched up the remaining scraps of foil from the box they’d purchased at a mini-mart on the way to the Fallon airport. “If this weren’t so screwed up, it would be funny.”

  “Are you kidding? It would be hilarious.” He patted the boy’s metal head. “I’m sure we’ll look back on this and laugh our asses off.”

  “I hope so.” Keira continued to scan the small Nevada air strip. At this hour of the morning it was deserted. Another reason Luke was able to relax a little. Between them, Mateo fought to keep his eyes open. “I wish we could have gone there. I hate making her come all the way here so late in her pregnancy.”

  “Good Lord, don’t say that to her. She’s only seven months along and she’ll never let us hear the end of how she’s fully capable of doing everything she usually does. Besides, it’s a quick flight and we have more anonymity here.”

  Keria tugged at the edges of the foil at Mateo’s neck to maintain coverage. “You think this will work?”

  “It’s better than the metal strip I had wrapped around his neck earlier.” Desperate people did desperate things, like ripping up the floorboard to access a piece of metal that would do that job. “And nobody has jumped down our throats in hours. Yeah, I’d say it’s interrupting the signal.”

  “What if they’re just waiting? What if we’re putting Alyssa and Teague in danger by dragging them into the middle of an ambush?”

  “Why do you always have to think in worst-case scenarios?”

  “Because that’s my reality.” Her eyes sparked in the dim overhead lights peppering the industrial site. “Because that’s what I was born and raised with. What I’ve lived with my whole damn life. Forgive me if I’d rather be prepared than blindsided.”

  Luke’s jaw tensed in a combination of anger, frustration, and pity.

  “Let me check your head,” she said.

  He rubbed his temple. “There’s nothing wrong with my head.”

  “I beg to differ. Turn toward me.”

  He relented, resting the right side of his face against the driver’s seat so she could inspect his left temple.

  That bullet had made a direct hit. If it hadn’t been for the abilities that Keira had strengthened, his brains would be splattered all over the passenger’s seat, freezing in the desert.

  Her fingers parted his hair away from the injury site. “I knew you were lying. Damn, you are so lucky.”

  “Just what every man wants, a woman who knows when he’s lying.” He pulled away from her touch, stared out the window, frustration growing. “And my luck is only temporary. It will be running out soon enough, won’t it?”

  A mixture of pain and guilt darkened her eyes before she glanced out the windshield. “I think that’s Teague and Alyssa.”

  On the runway a Cessna floated in for landing, and Luke’s hopes sank in tandem. He reached for the door handle, but Keira grabbed his arm.

  “No, wait. Let’s make sure before we open ourselves as targets.”

  “Would you be more comfortable if they were shooting at us?”

  The venom in his tone must have penetrated. Her eyes shot to his as she released his arm. “Yes. Yes, I w
ould. That’s the big difference between us, Luke. That’s where I’m comfortable—behind a scope, not a picket fence.”

  “You are in such denial it’s pitiful.” He looked pointedly at the way Mateo rested against her, completely at peace. With a shake of his head, he pushed the car door open. “And who said they had to be mutually exclusive?”

  He’d stymied her right into an open mouth with no response.

  “How many agents do you know with kids?” he asked.

  “A lot, but—”

  “SWAT members with kids?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I’m . . . different.”

  He suppressed a bark of absurd laughter. “You mean you’re fucked in the head?”

  “Shut up.” She pushed open her own door and climbed out. “Like you’re perfect? Don’t even get me started.”

  “I never claimed to be perfect.”

  “Neither did I.” Mateo awoke and reached for her. Without even looking, she drew him into her arms and rubbed his back. She was a natural and didn’t even realize it. “You created that unrealistic fantasy all on your own.”

  Luke rounded the hood, his temper heating. “No, I based that opinion off what I saw when we were together.”

  Her mouth clamped shut, eyes darted away.

  “You were the sexiest, most fun-loving, generous, compassionate, gorgeous woman I’d ever known,” he said. “You may not have been raised with any sense of a normal family, but you created a family of your own with the firefighters you worked with, and you loved that family. You would have done anything for any one of them.”

  He closed the distance between them, took a handful of her hair, and fisted it gently, with just enough bite to get through that thick skull of hers. She lifted defiant eyes.

  “That’s the woman I fell in love with,” he said. “And after seeing you again, I’m not ready to give up hope that she is still inside the shell you’ve built around yourself. I’ve already seen pieces of her.”