Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  “Could be,” she replied, a glint of blue laughing at him from under her lashes. Those fingers crept higher. Along his sides. Dug short fingernails into his skin, and even pain wasn’t enough to dull the sudden pulse of need tightening low in his gut. “How much time do we have?”

  Oh, Jesus. To think anyone ever thought her cold. Simon crowded her into the wall, bracing his weight on his forearms, and took her rain-wet mouth in a kiss that soothed him in ways he’d never be able to explain.

  She didn’t hold back. Her lips opened for him, sweet and warm despite the acid-tinged rain he tasted on her.

  As her fingers tightened against his chest, as his cock made abundantly clear exactly how little time they had, Simon nipped at her lower lip. “Behave.”

  “Or what?”

  Another nip. Hard enough to elicit a gasp, her eyes flaring with heat and pleasure caught on this side of pain. “Christ,” he murmured, soothing the hurt away with a flick of his tongue. “There isn’t nearly enough time in the world to explore you.”

  This time, the pain that flickered in her bottomless gaze had nothing to do with the physical.

  Clumsy. Simon gathered her in his arms, turned so his back flattened against the wall, and wrapped her in his coat. Wordlessly—what could she say?—Parker tunneled into his warmth. She was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, nuzzling into her wet hair. His arms tightened around her. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Quit it.” Her fingers bunched in the back of his shirt. “You keep talking like it’s a done deal. It’s not. I swear to God, I’m going to get that syringe back—”

  “Parker.”

  “—if I have to hunt Kayleigh down—”

  “Parker.”

  “—to hell myself—”

  “Fuck.” Simon caught her chin, tipped her face up and smothered the fierce stream of words with another kiss; another melding of lips and breath and heat that had her swallowing her diatribe on a ragged moan.

  Not all heat. He heard her fear, tasted her frustration as he swept his tongue inside to rasp against hers. He poured everything he had into that kiss, everything he didn’t know how to say. Love and need and fear for the future—her future, without him. Her body melted, boneless against his.

  Lights cut through the alley.

  Simon didn’t think, didn’t have to. Reacting purely on instinct, he spun, tucking Parker behind him, one arm holding her in place against the alley wall as he reached for the Colt under the jacket.

  A silhouette loomed into the alley mouth, backlit by the rain-hazed streetlamp. “Please don’t shoot me,” came a masculine voice easy on the ears, but unfamiliar.

  “Hands up,” Simon growled, shaking his head hard as vertigo slipped in under his senses. Shit.

  “Okay. I’m unarmed.” Hands splayed on either side of the silhouette. “Jonas sent me.”

  Parker stiffened behind him. “Mr. Clarke?”

  “Phin’s fine,” came the calm reply, although the man didn’t move.

  Simon lowered his gun. “Phin Clarke. I should have known.”

  “I’m not alone.” The shape of a hand beckoned. “We need to get going.”

  Parker gently pushed at Simon’s back. “It’s okay, Simon.”

  As far as her safety was concerned, nothing was okay.

  But his director didn’t take her cues from anyone. She sidled out from behind Simon, hooked an arm in his, and said flatly, “He’s rocky on his feet.”

  “Parker, damn it.”

  Phin stepped fully into view, a lean man with dark brown curls plastered to his head and—

  Simon squinted. “The hell are you wearing?”

  The man’s very white teeth flashed in a smile as he took Simon’s other arm. Because it beat falling on his face, Simon let him. “The same kind of thing you’ll be wearing in about ten minutes.”

  Carefully and fashionably shredded jeans, something that looked like a cross between a man-corset and a dress-shirt, a synth-leather jacket. Club-wear. The kind of getup a topsider wore when he hit the party streets. “Hell, no.”

  Parker smothered a laugh.

  Phin only shrugged. “Come on, let’s go meet the cavalry.”

  Parker slid into the back of a plain silver car—not too fancy, expensive but lacking in all the gilded edges of the topside elite—and stared at a neon pink blur as it filled her vision. Dangling from a set of callused fingers just on the edge of—

  She hesitated to call them straps.

  “Is this a dress or a freakishly bright bondage scenario?” she asked dryly, tugging the material out of her face. She scooted along the seat to make room for Simon beside her and raised her eyebrows as the large man wearing chauffeur black met her eyes through the rearview mirror.

  “It damn well better be the former,” Simon growled, plucking the material from her grasp. He opened it, gave the one-piece a cursory glance, then turned narrowed eyes to the man Parker had never met. She didn’t have to.

  She’d been all over that docket.

  “Silas Smith,” she offered evenly. “Most people think you’re dead.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Phin Clarke slid into the passenger seat, his dark brown eyes crinkled with amusement as he shut the door. “Do you two know each other?”

  “No.” The man had a voice like a truck engine, deep and powerful. It fit. By all accounts, Silas Smith was a missionary who’d forged a path for himself after a mission gone wrong, long before Parker’s time. His features were ruggedly square, carved of granite, and set in implacable lines.

  The eyes in the mirror were gray-green. Cool, assessing. Every inch a missionary, no matter where he drew the line now.

  But they hardened to jade ice as his gaze settled on Simon.

  The silence between them held volumes—unspoken words, emotions, something. A give-and-take Parker wasn’t keyed in to the right frequency to understand. Finally, Simon nodded. Once. “I owe you.”

  “You’re damn right.”

  Parker’s mouth curved up. Wry humor. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith.”

  He grunted a non-answer.

  “I suspected you were alive. And Naomi? She was your partner, wasn’t she?”

  “Manner of speaking.” Not a forthcoming sort, then.

  “Okay.” Phin pulled a bag from the floor at his feet, passed it over his shoulder. “There’s towels back there, and clothes for you, Simon. Change up.”

  “Into this?” Parker snatched the slinky pink material from Simon’s grasp, flushing under his suddenly all-too-wickedly amused scrutiny. “What’re we going to do, make security blind?”

  “Oh, they’ll be blind, all right,” Phin said, but his smile evened into a straight, no-nonsense line as he met Simon’s narrowed gaze. “You, too, Simon.” He turned back around, deliberately shielding his view with a hand as the car pulled out into the street.

  “I’m not wearing a dress,” Simon declared.

  Parker grimaced. “This barely qualifies.” But she unzipped her jacket, aware that Silas raised a large hand and tilted the rearview mirror to the roof.

  How chivalrous.

  Simon wasn’t remotely the same. He watched her as she shimmied out of her coat, helped her when her sleeves caught on her wet skin. His eyebrow quirked as she unbuttoned her blouse.

  The look she shot him didn’t help anything. He only grinned, a wicked slant, and traced a line from her collarbone to her navel as she struggled out of her shirt.

  Ripples of nerves, of awareness, shimmied out from that imaginary line. Curled deep inside her body.

  “I don’t suppose,” she said to break the awkward silence, “there’s a brush and makeup in there?” Her voice betrayed nothing of the butterflies Simon’s touch lodged in her belly.

  His grin deepened.

  “Jessie said she put everything you’ll need in the bag,” Phin replied without turning around. “Including a wig. If you need a hand, I’
m—”

  “Don’t even think about it, pretty boy.” Simon’s voice held nothing back. The leashed menace in the order earned a snort from Silas—that surprised her—and a fierce frown from Parker as she flipped her hair off her shoulder. It slapped him in the chest.

  “Thank you, I’m good,” she told the man. “I’ve been to too many meetings to not know how to freshen makeup in a car. By Jessie, you must mean Jessie Leigh.”

  Simon caught a handful of her hair, tugged in warning, but tucked it neatly behind her back with gentle fingers.

  “Yes, she’s on our side.”

  “What part of our side do you mean?” Parker asked mildly, planting her feet and raising her hips to peel the wet denim down her legs.

  Simon growled something almost under his breath as he dug through the bag.

  “It means that she’s no fan of the Salem situation.”

  “Because she’s a Salem witch,” Parker said, tucking her sodden clothes at her feet. “Like Juliet.” The cool air in the car settled over her damp skin, coaxing gooseflesh over her limbs. She shuddered.

  Simon pulled out a bundle of clothing, his angular features settled into a hard scowl, but he nodded. “Different batch than me, but stamped all the same.”

  “Forgive my candor,” she said as she pooled the slinky pink material through her fingers, “but she’s not dead because of Matilda Lauderdale, right?”

  A beat, and she saw Silas and Phin exchange a glance.

  She didn’t need confirmation at that point. She’d suspected as much. Pulling the dress over her head took effort, and she rapped her knuckles on the ceiling twice before she managed to pull it over her wet hair and face. “I guess you know about the syringe.”

  “We know,” Phin said.

  Regret kicked her in the spine, hard enough to hunch her shoulders as she straightened the halter dress. It clung to her like a second skin, an electric bright sheath that barely capped at mid-thigh. “I was . . . I couldn’t keep it—”

  Simon closed the distance between them, tucked her so firmly against his side that he might as well have planted a flag in her and named her his. The bare skin of his chest warmed her cold flesh, seared a line down her side. It helped. A little.

  His teeth flashed as he snarled, “Too many games. Too much politics. Parker got caught in the middle and Lauderdale has the serum.”

  “It’s all right.” Phin almost turned, caught himself. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

  “Thought it’d happen, anyway,” Silas added grimly. “Let’s focus on getting you through the sec-lines.”

  Right. One thing at a time. “Hand me the makeup bag.”

  “And a brush,” Simon told her, putting both in her hands. He dropped a kiss on her temple, sweet and exquisitely tender, before bending in the cramped quarters to pull his boots off. The streetlights and district signs they passed gilded his muscled shoulders in ripples of color.

  Parker took a deep breath and bent her attention on applying makeup without a mirror. As she did, she listened to the rustle of Simon’s clothing, his muttered swearing as he struggled to change in the small space of the backseat.

  She wanted to laugh, but given her precarious position with an eyeliner pencil, she asked instead, “What’s going on up here? The feeds aren’t helpful.” And she was used to a constant stream of information. It bothered her to be so blind.

  To her surprise, Silas’s dark rumble answered her. “As far as the media is aware, the bishop is now in control of the Mission. Sector Three is still playing close to the vest, but it’s a sure bet that the real power lies with them.”

  Parker shouldn’t be so surprised. The man was a trained missionary, after all. No matter what he fought for now. She nodded—caught herself as the eyeliner pencil came dangerously close to her eyeball and said aloud, “Director Lauderdale has always been the keystone to Sector Three. He’ll have half a dozen strategies in place to secure Bishop Applegate’s loyalties.”

  “Which is why we’ve got to move fast,” Phin interjected, “before this has a chance to gel.”

  “Any solid plans?” Simon asked. An elbow narrowly missed Parker’s hip as he struggled with his wet jeans.

  “First, we get you out of the line of fire.”

  “And then?” Parker pressed.

  “Then we try to get as much data as we possibly can using Jonas and his new buddies.” Silas glanced over his shoulder as he eased into a lane of light traffic, his gaze briefly touching on Parker as she hunched over the pencil she struggled to apply. His eyes flared, a glint of something warm and reluctantly approving, before he looked quickly back to the windshield. “Fuck me.” It wasn’t an invite.

  Parker bit back a smile as Phin chuckled. “I’ll take that as a good sign. You done, Miss Adams?”

  “Not yet. Do we know what Lauderdale’s plans are?”

  “No,” Phin admitted. “But Jonas is keeping watch. It’s strange that Sector Three hasn’t made any sort of public move.”

  “Not that strange,” she said slowly. “They’re used to secrecy. Problem is, they’re good at it, too.”

  “We’re almost there,” Silas interjected. “Hurry up.”

  It took a lot of concentration, a few starts and stops and a close call with the mascara brush, but she did it. As she brushed out her hair, pulled it up into a tight knot, and yanked the blond wig she’d found in the case over it all, she declared, “Good as it gets.”

  Silas’s gaze remained on the road, but she saw Phin’s head tilt. “Can I look?”

  She ran both hands through the chin-length strands of fake hair. “Go for it.”

  Beside her, Simon struggled into his synth-leather coat, elbows narrowly missing the window and her head. As Phin turned in his seat, his grin split into a fully fledged smile. “Damn, you two.”

  Simon muttered a curse. “Shove it, Clarke.”

  Parker leaned away to study Simon’s new look. Black synth-leather pants hugged his lean hips, outlined the muscles of his legs. The tank top he wore was just this side of don’t give a damn, and the way his hair spiked back from his face looked as if he’d spent hours getting it just messy enough to tempt a girl to run her fingers through it. The crowning glory, the long synth-leather coat, made him look like a gunslinger out on the prowl. Or an extremely bored topsider.

  He looked dangerous. Delicious. So completely outside the scope of his usual worn denim and flannel that part of her wanted to laugh.

  The other part of her—the part barely covered by a strip of pink—wanted something else entirely. Her grip tightened on the tube of lipstick in her hand.

  Simon glowered. “The pants are too short.”

  “Tuck them into your boots,” Phin instructed and turned his critical eye on her. “Great job on the makeup. Too light for a real night out, but it’ll do. Lose the bra.”

  “What?” Her gaze jerked to him. “No way.”

  “Lose it, Miss Adams.” His smile turned wry. “No slummer would ruin the sightlines of a dress like that with a bra. Are you wearing a thong?”

  “Am I going to have to get out of the car?” she snapped.

  “Maybe.”

  “Damn it.” Gritting her teeth, she worked her bra off as Phin once more turned away.

  Another grunt from Silas, but this time, she swore she heard laughter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The current splashed and frothed beneath the flat-bottom boat, dragging it along the rock wall. The god-awful shriek it made had Parker huddled against Simon’s side, her hands over her ears.

  Simon bit back a smile and only held her tightly.

  “Sorry!” At the back of the boat, Phin plunged a long oar into the water, wrenching back against the water’s grasp. “Almost there.”

  Getting through the sec-lines had been a piece of cake. Prepared for the worst, Simon had kept one hand on his gun as the car idled at the sec-line checkpoint. They’d timed it perfectly. As the guard peered inside—his flashlig
ht had spent an inordinate amount of time on Parker’s breasts—Parker had flashed a smile with enough wattage to fry a lesser man, and Jonas’s promised distraction had gone off.

  Whatever it had been, the man’s comm crackled with orders from the security station, and he’d waved them through hurriedly.

  Simon hadn’t expected it to go that easy. He hadn’t expected the drive to go as smoothly as it had, the shift into a battered orange pickup truck, the route into the ruined carcass of Old Seattle buried under the metropolis, and he sure as hell didn’t think about the Old Sea-Trench as somewhere safe.

  But then, this is where Matilda protected her people.

  This was where she’d died.

  Parker’s hair gleamed in the summer sun, a fiery red and copper braid flung over Simon’s arm as she clung to his arm. Molten flame, as cool and silky as it was vibrant. He loved her hair. Thank God the wig was gone. “Where are we?” she demanded. Exhaustion bruised the skin under her eyes, but she didn’t complain.

  She wouldn’t. Still the same Parker.

  “Near as I can tell,” he said, looking up, “we’re about half a mile out of the city. Maybe more.” He knew exactly where they were—but he hadn’t known about the water entry. The only way he’d found Matilda’s sanctuary had been directly through the ruins.

  And even then, he suspected she’d led him there.

  “Will Silas be okay?” she asked Phin, shifting on the boat bench. The dress rode up on her hips, but she’d pulled her jeans on underneath once they were safe enough to get away with it.

  “He knows the way in,” Phin assured her. “There’s two that we know of.”

  “In to where?”

  “You’ll see,” Phin chuckled. “Hang on.”

  She shuddered. “I never want to go through Old Seattle ever again.”

  It amused Simon. After so long in the lower New Seattle streets, he forgot that Parker had never really been off the beaten path. She was a topsider, through and through.

  The ruins buried beneath the paved streets of the towering city remained among the most dangerous places Simon had ever been. Liberally littered with pitfalls, rotting structures ready to collapse and worse, he’d only stared at Phin when the man suggested they go there.