by Alison Aimes
Ryker’s gaze locked with hers.
The mix of pain, regret, and love in his stare tore like claws through the flimsy composure she’d erected.
This was harder than expected.
“Go,” she mouthed.
He rushed to her instead, wrapping his arms around her waist and dragging her close. His mouth crashed down on hers.
She locked him to her, her finger digging into his muscled back. Her tongue claiming his as she reveled in their last, desperate, stolen moment.
She was breathing hard when he drew back, his eyes filled with so much love it made her want to weep.
“No matter what comes next,” he whispered, “I will never stop loving you. Never.”
“Ryker—”
“I mean it, Jade. I made a vow to you, too. And I fucking meant it.” He sucked down a sharp breath. “We’ll figure something out. Just don’t give up on me. Or us.” He pressed another hard kiss to her lips. “Forever exceptions, remember?”
She held him tight for one more precious heartbeat, soaking in the memory of his skin against hers—and then she shoved him away. Before she couldn’t let him go at all. “Find them.”
Whirling, he sprinted toward the tunnel entrance and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he turned back. “Be safe,” he demanded. “I’ll come as soon as I’ve rescued the others. I will be there to fight by your side. Just as I promised.”
In the next painful heartbeat, he was gone, disappearing down the corridor.
Hers no longer.
Though she believed with all her heart that he meant what he said, she knew he’d never get the chance.
Her kind was ultimately meant to stand alone.
“You good?” Grif’s voice, close to her ear, shook her from her thoughts.
That he’d been able to come so near without her realizing was a wake-up call. It was time to put emotion aside.
“Absolutely.” Tucking her knife away, she drew her next set of tools from the pouch she’d strapped to her thigh and stood taller, her skin beginning to hum with ice-cold adrenaline as she prepared to do what she did best.
“It’s our turn now. You ready?” he asked.
“One hundred percent.” Her employers had trained her for this, beaten and bled her for this, and she was going to use every one of the skills they had taught her to take down their monster and find a way to undo the damage 223 had done.
“You’re a good man, Grif.” She clapped her hand to his forearm and found herself amused by the shock that lit his gaze.
It almost made her want to smile. Sometimes doing the illogical and unexpected really was gratifying. It pleased her to realize she felt that way.
She would never be the person she’d been before Ryker, and she was okay with that.
“I wish you well.” With a flick of her toe, she kicked the iron band into her hand and clapped it around his bandaged wrist with a faint snick.
“What in the hell?” Lifting his wrist, Grif stared at the metal cuff as if he couldn’t quite make sense of it. Or the fact that he was now manacled to the cave wall by the same metal used to restrain the slaves.
She stepped back. “I appreciate your willingness to go for the weapon and risk yourself, but this has always been my mission to complete.”
Understanding dawned, then anger. “Bullshit.” He strained against the cuff, the veins in his biceps bulging as the metal clanked in protest. “Release me now. This is my time.”
She stifled a sigh, but couldn’t resist the odd flare of nostalgia. “It must be something about you Resistance felons.” She smiled at the remembrance. “Ryker struggled just as you are. He, too, believed his strength would be enough to free him from his chains. But some things just can’t be escaped.”
Like destiny.
“You said you trusted me,” barked Grif. “That you believed neither Ryker nor I would ever let that weapon be used in retaliation.”
“I do. Which is exactly why I will never risk your life over this. The new trip wire 223 has installed on his weapon will be no joke. Death is likely—and nothing I wasn’t already prepared to face. Rafi and the girls need champions like you to keep them safe. They need a settlement where they can learn to trust and feel safe. Once you’ve healed, your contribution will be invaluable.”
“Bullshit. You can do that just as well as me.”
“A Council assassin? One who may die anyway?” She shook her head. He was kind. Kinder than she’d ever believed a Resistance soldier could be when she’d begun this mission, but while her eyes had been opened, some things remained the same. “Someone like me is better off attempting this alone.”
“Bullshit. Plus, you’ll need my help with the operative. He’s too big for you to carry out yourself.”
“If I survive the attempt to retrieve the weapon, then we’ll worry about the operative and the deactivation code.”
“Absolutely not. That isn’t the plan.”
“It is now.” She shifted gears before he could protest. “You are a good friend to Ryker and you have been kind to me as well. If—if I do not make it back”—she ignored his rumble of dissent—“I expect that you will continue to be an unwavering support to all the captives as well as to Ryker, his wife, and child.”
A bit of warmth leaked back into Grif’s expression. “Why does that sound more like a threat than a request?”
“Because you know me.”
One lip quirked upward. “You scare me.”
“Then all is how it should be.”
Another growl. “Come on, Jade. You can’t sacrifice yourself. I know…I know things are up in the air, but think of Ryker.”
“I am.” He would come to understand and he would endure. He was stronger than he believed. “And this is no sacrifice. I’m not looking to die. But I won’t stop living, either. Protecting the innocent at whatever cost has always been my objective. It’s who I am. What I do. Whatever time I have left, I’m going to conduct myself as I choose. Nano-bomb or not, the Council will never take that from me.”
“Damn it.” Grif jerked against the chains. “I get where you’re coming from, but they’ll kill me. You can’t just leave me here like some sitting duck.”
“I won’t.” She held up a gleaming key, the same one once used to free the other captives and herself. “Leave the operative and the weapon to me.” She eased the pack with the explosives from her back and set them at his feet. “Once you’re free, set the bombs as planned. It’s the only way Ryker has any chance of getting the captives out alive.”
“That was my damn line.” But she could see the resignation in the man’s gaze.
Everything was falling into place. Just as she’d planned. “Good-bye, Grif. I hope to see you soon, but if I don’t, I hope that whatever pain you carry inside finds its way out. Having lived so long keeping everything trapped inside, I know how dark that path can be.”
Grif’s gaze shuddered completely, but she didn’t mind. She’d said what she wanted.
Without another word, she pressed the key into his palm and took off, sprinting down the corridor as she hugged the rocky wall, knife at the ready. It was time for her to come full circle.
Last time she’d held the weapon in her hand and been ready to face her death, a pesky, hotheaded felon had kept her from completing her mission. This time, nothing would stand in her way.
38
It didn’t surprise Jade to discover the lean, muscular lines of a familiar back curled over the work table as she entered 223’s work space.
“So, not dead then?” The operative didn’t turn around.
A quick scouting of 223’s sleeping quarters had revealed the monster himself to be still abed, safely surrounded by too many guards for her to take out without risk of raising an early alarm.
Still, even knowing Grif would be along soon to seal 223 and his guards in, it had been hard not to keep from stalking to the gang leader’s bed and slitting his throat—until she’d observed that neither the weapon
nor the operative were among those in 223’s sleeping quarters and a bad feeling had slithered down her spine.
Hightailing it to the work area, she’d taken out six guards in the corridor before they could utter a word, their eyes going wide with shock as they died on a silent scream, but she should have known sneaking up on a Council operative would not be so easy.
Still, she was gratified to find both him and the weapon together.
“No, not dead.” She drew her knife high. “Despite your lack of assistance.”
Caleb still didn’t turn around, but his hold on 223’s weapon tightened. “I sensed you were here surveying the tunnel not too long ago. Believe it or not, I wasn’t completely displeased to learn you might have survived. Still, I knew it meant I had to move up my timetable to retrieve the weapon.”
If Ryker hadn’t insisted on coming immediately, they might have been too late. More proof that impulse and emotion did sometimes trump the most logical of plans.
Her focus shifted to the weapon.
Hard to believe something so compact and sleek could be set to wipe out an entire planet.
“Did 223 finally find a piece to replace the one I destroyed?” She glided forward a few more silent paces and wondered exactly what the operative had been up to before she interrupted.
“He didn’t do a thing. I found it for him.”
“Fool.”
His shoulders tensed. But he didn’t turn around. “On the contrary.” His hand stroked the length of the weapon. “I needed the device completed. He was the best man for the job.”
“And now?”
“223 claims there are only a few tweaks left before his greatest achievement is done and the Council and everyone on New Earth will pay.”
Tools lay scattered around the operative.
A chill slid down her spine. “Tweaks you’ve already made.”
“Correct.” No expression. No regret. No emotion at all. “As of a few short moments ago, it’s fully operational.”
Fucking robot. She took a guess. “And you’ve reinforced whatever trip wires 223 placed there, making it next to impossible to disarm.”
“Another astute observation.”
For an instant she wished Ryker was with her so she could hear a satisfying curse. But then again, she didn’t want him or the others anywhere near this mess.
“But that’s not all,” she pushed. The operative was too sure of himself.
“True,” he conceded. “That’s far from all.”
“Tell me.”
He didn’t hesitate. “There’s no point in hoping you’ll be able to take the weapon to another site and take it apart there. I’ve made that option impossible by powering it up, turning it to mode two, and”—he held up a jagged piece of metal and wire that had clearly once been attached to the weapon—“ripping out the off switch.”
Her stomach pitched. He could be lying, but she doubted it.
The operative had switched on a bomb that could not be deactivated. Once his hand left the trigger pad, it would blow.
“But that was not your expressed mission,” she said, her shock genuine. “You are to retrieve the weapon and return it to Council. This…this alteration is a serious violation. You are ensuring your death.”
“You think you’re the only one who can defy Council? Who can refuse to be controlled by their threats?” He shook his head. “I thought at first that the solution to my recent”—he struggled to find the right word—“dissatisfaction was finding a teammate. Someone like you. I thought that together we could prove our worth to the Council, making them see that nano-bombs and threats are unworthy of people like us.”
Pity shot through her. His conditioning so ingrained that even in his rebellion, Caleb remained desperate for their employers’ approval.
“But you showed me the error of my ways.” He turned to face her, the weapon still clutched in his grasp. “Now I see that it was always up to me alone to show the Council what I’m capable of. They always said I wasn’t good enough. Fast enough. Efficient enough.” He gripped the weapon tighter. “But now they’ll see I was the one who retrieved their precious weapon and saved New Earth—and I’m also the reason they’ll end this mission with nothing.”
“You can thwart them without killing yourself or anyone else.”
“Save your breath. The Council treated me like a pawn when they should have hailed me as a hero. I will show them the error of their miscalculation. All that’s left to do is return to the surface so these rocks below don’t muffle the weapon’s maximum reach.”
He was determined to die in a blaze of glory, a final attention grabber to a Council that would only mourn the loss of the weapon.
Leaving her only one option: force the operative to blow the device below ground.
It would be simple, really. Requiring just enough force to break his grip on the device. Then, all those below would no longer be a threat and those above ground would be safe.
Everything inside her quieted, an icy frost creeping through her veins as reality set in. Hadn’t she always known it would end like this?
But not yet. Not until she knew Ryker, Grif, and the others were above ground and safe.
“Did you purposely ask to be assigned to this mission?” She’d stall however she could.
The slight stiffening along his jaw told her she’d caught him off guard. As intended. “What does it matter?”
“I am curious.” She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t already tried to kill her and move past unless…a part of him he might not even be aware of still clung to the last moments of his life, reaching for some kind of connection, however fleeting and unsuitable.
She could use that.
“There were many times as a Council assassin that I wished I’d been part of a team,” she confessed.
He studied her anew. “Is it the deactivation code you’re after? If so, it won’t do you any good.”
“I want that code, yes. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m telling you the truth. You’re not the only one who’s felt the desire for a connection. It’s not a flaw as the Council would have us believe.”
A loud boom. Then, another. She swayed as the ground beneath her shook. Rocks crumbled from the ceiling and walls, cascading to the ground.
Eyes narrowing, the operative watched her. “Your friends?”
She nodded, a spurt of relief shooting through her at the proof that the first part of their plan was proceeding as intended. Grif was doing his part. “Well-placed explosives sealing your new gangmates into their underground sleeping quarters.” Phase two of a three-part plan.
“They’re not my gangmates. They’re monsters. In this respect, we remain aligned. I intend their eradication as well.”
“But you intend to kill as many people on this planet as you can. Not just 223’s gang members.” She sharpened her tone. “I can’t let you do that.”
An actual frown tightened Caleb’s features. “There are numerous hidden connecting tunnels. You’ll never seal all of 223’s killers in. They’ll seep through the cracks like cockroaches do. Only this weapon can take them down and protect New Earth as you and I were sent to do.”
“You’ve witnessed the suffering of the slaves. They don’t deserve the death you have planned for them.”
“Sacrifices must be made. Look at all you and I have been asked to do.”
She tried another tack. “You don’t have to die to be set free. Or to prove yourself to the Council.” She risked another step closer. “Suffering isn’t all there is. You can have joy. Laughter. Love. Our employers took that from us. Tried to make us believe that wasn’t for us, but it can be.”
“Like you’ve found?” he scoffed.
It took her a moment to remember he couldn’t know what had happened with her and Ryker. Another heartbeat to realize he was simply unable to comprehend that people like them could find what she’d described.
“Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate. “I have found that. Enough t
o be one hundred percent certain that if that bomb were to go off right now, I will be remembered and mourned. Who will weep for you? The Council will do little more than incinerate your file and forget. There is no lesson for them in your death, but there can be in your life.”
His palm pressed harder into the trigger pad. “I don’t know what I am without the Council. Without the pain. Without the discipline or purpose.”
“I’ll show you.” She held out her unarmed hand. “Let’s work together to disarm the weapon, input our deactivation codes, and I’ll show you just how good life can be. Even when it’s hard.”
He still hadn’t moved.
A sudden blur flashed at the operative’s back. Metal glinted. A dagger lodged itself in the operative’s flesh.
“No!” She launched herself at the weapon.
39
With every step down the corridor and away from Jade, Ryker’s gut blared out an alarm.
He hadn’t liked the farewell tone to her voice. As if she knew something he didn’t. As if this really was good-bye.
Faint rumblings from up ahead refocused him fast.
Sprinting around the next bend, the scent of sweat, pain, and fear slammed into him like a freight shuttle.
At least fifty people were crammed in the small circular cavern, too many to even be manacled. Some stood, some sat propped against the cave wall, even more lay on the ground, their gazes empty and hollow. None even flinching or reacting as their jailers grabbed an unlucky female from the margins and dragged her to where four thick-necked bastards with whips and axes stood, their eyes bright with the feverish high of absolute power.
Ryker’s soul roared in fury, but he clamped his mouth shut and got to business.
He’d learned much from Jade and, if he was going to save these people, he needed that cool logic of hers more than ever right now.
He reached the guards before they’d even registered he was a threat. He skewered the first two in rapid succession. The lash of the third guard’s whip didn’t even slow him down. He cleaved the bastard in two and then cut off the head of the next.
