A woman’s voice, not Kayleigh’s. Not Amanda’s.
The man caught his swing, but Shawn feinted hard and drove his knuckles into a jaw made of iron.
“I said stop!” A clinging weight slammed into Shawn’s back, sent him staggering as an arm banded around his neck. “Shawn,” yelled the feminine voice in his ear, “we’re friends—ouch.” He twisted his fingers in her collar and hanks of her hair. “May sent us!”
He froze. With one arm bent behind his head, grip tight in the back of his feminine assailant’s slick jacket, he stared directly across the line of a large, rough hand locked around his throat. The muscled forearm lifted another half inch, forcing him on his toes. “Let,” growled a voice deeper even than his own, a rumble of violent warning, “her go.”
A thin beam of light shattered the dark; the lethal gaze of a man built like a brick shithouse stared right back. Shawn very carefully let go of the woman’s collar on his back.
Kayleigh’s voice cracked. “What . . . the hell?”
The weight on his back slid to the floor. The man in front of him relaxed a fraction. His fingers loosened, lowered, allowing Shawn the chance to breathe again without grinding his own esophagus against brawl-scarred fingers. Gray-green eyes flicked to his side, narrowed in a craggy face carved from granite.
Shawn wasn’t a small man, but this guy made him feel it. He sidled one step away from the woman circling him, her fine, delicate features lit by a wary half smile. “Thank you for not killing each other. It’s like watching two tanks go head-on.” She adjusted her jacket, her smile deepening into elfin lines as the man beside her grunted.
The light jerked. Shawn spun, turning his back on the large man and the blond woman, caught the penlight as Kayleigh’s trembling hand dropped.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, the back of his neck prickling with the awareness of two sets of eyes drilling into it.
Kayleigh sagged, but when he would have reached out to steady her, she took a step back. Her shoulders straightened just as quickly as her chin lifted. “Fine.” Stubborn as hell. Until her cool fractured, gaze skimming over his mouth, his chest. “Are you?”
He fought back an exhausted smile. “Fine.”
“If you two are done, uh . . .” The feminine throat clearing behind him brought a deep flush to Kayleigh’s cheeks. Her face turned away, shackles clinking as she tucked her hair back behind one ear.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” rumbled the man. “Jessie.”
“It’s May,” the woman said on cue. “And it’s important.”
Shawn turned. “What does she want?” And then, as the incongruity of the situation settled over him, his eyes narrowed. “How did you find us?”
The woman, Jessie, smiled faintly. “It’s what I do. A lot, actually.” She jammed her hands into her synth-leather coat, straightening her arms in a way that made her appear small and fragile. Especially next to her ham-fisted partner. “My name’s Jessie, this is Silas. You’re Shawn, and you—” Her gaze, tinted amber in the dim stream of light, flicked behind him. “You look terrible.”
Kayleigh murmured something bemused. Silas’s gaze narrowed a fraction as Shawn shifted; the not-too-subtle move placed him squarely in front of Kayleigh, blocked her from Jessie’s speculative study.
The larger man, obviously the more impatient of the two, settled a hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “Sunshine.”
She winced. “Um . . .” She took in a deep breath, shoulders shifting under his hand. “We’re here because your comm isn’t working—”
“We’re too far from a comm bank.”
Her expression said, No kidding louder than words. “—and they need you back in the low streets. Like, now.”
His jaw set. “Too bad.”
“I’m not asking because—”
“I’m not going,” he cut in.
“Fuck me sideways, already.” The epithet thundered. Silas glared. “May’s laid up in a low-street hospital, so anytime you’re done playing the tragic outlaw—”
“Silas!” Jessie turned, arms outspread in outrage, but Shawn didn’t hear them. “Tact. You’re as bad as Naomi sometimes.”
May? Hurt?
Silas grunted. “We’re wasting time.”
Jessie made a similar sound, impatience and apology all rolled into one. “Shawn—”
He stopped paying attention. Couldn’t. The blood drained from his head. A vision of May—her face lined with age, eyes sparkling, iron will and unstoppable energy—filled his mind. His memory.
She’d always been there. Always. Just like his parents.
For a stark, brutal moment, he forgot to breathe.
Not again.
He’d never passed out in his life. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. Clawing his way back into narrow-eyed focus, Shawn didn’t realize Kayleigh had grabbed his arm until he took a step forward.
Chain dragged across his skin, shockingly cold.
“Where?” he demanded over her, shrugging off her touch before any more of her heat seared into his skin. Branded him as the fool he was.
He should have been there. But no, he had to have bigger plans, didn’t he?
“How did she get hurt?” If Lauderdale had sent his agents, somehow found her—
Black rage streaked across his vision.
“An earthquake,” Silas told him, matter-of-fact.
It cracked through the blinding sea of scenarios his imagination formed. Shawn blinked. “What?”
“About two hours ago, a portion of the city rattled like a tin cup. The place came down around them.” Jessie’s face was a blur, but sympathy obviously colored her voice as she added, “Last thing she was demanding was you, so . . .”
His knuckles popped as he raised his face to the dark chasm. An earthquake?
“That’s impossible,” Kayleigh murmured behind him. “If it reached that far . . .”
“Oh, yeah.” Jessie’s voice flattened. “It’s bad up there. Add panic and a lot of injured—”
He didn’t need time to consider. “Take me to her,” he demanded, and if they noticed the rough rasp in his order, they didn’t ask him if he was all right.
He wasn’t. He wouldn’t be until he saw her.
Instead, Jessie gestured behind him. “What about her?” A beat. “Uh, and kinky jokes aside, why the handcuffs?”
Shawn didn’t look behind him. Didn’t stop as he passed them both. “She’s Laurence Lauderdale’s daughter,” he said tightly, ignoring Jessie’s gasp.
The chain clinked quietly, but Kayleigh said nothing. If she moved, if she even looked at him as he strode away, he didn’t know.
He refused to look.
His shoulders itched, skin tight with anger and uncertainty and, shit, things he didn’t even have the energy to explore. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Keep her close,” he found himself saying. “But don’t trust her.”
Only a fool trusted a Lauderdale. He knew that much.
He just had to remember it.
Chapter Fourteen
“Sir, another report from the edge of the mid-lows.”
Director Lauderdale rubbed his forehead, gaze fixed on the spread of data fanned across his desk. “Where?”
The voice on the feed—one of many, and nameless in his focused memory—paused. Chatter filled the transmission background, the buzz of hardworking men and women fielding calls, cycling information.
“Just before Pike.”
Carefully, Lauderdale marked off another red line. “Thank you,” he murmured, but his attention no longer focused on the frequency. The map smiled at him, a crescent swath of red lines and shaded blocks.
Background noise filtered in from the open frequencies; words spoken in clipped, professional tones, faded to a blur as he stared hard at the visual representation of destruction.
Earthquakes. Mysterious and destructive; the earth itself giving rise to fury and frustration.
A shudder of dread seized the base of
his spine.
He remembered. The fear, the chaos.
His wife in his arms as the first tremors struck.
“Director Lauderdale, the bishop’s office is demanding an update.” This new voice, female, sounded harried. Sarah? Susan? He leaned back in his chair, allowing his eyes to close for a brief, blessed second.
Matilda had always been so strong. So much stronger than their children. Than even he, some days. She’d held them all together.
Through the fires as devastated Seattle blocks fractured and collapsed so many decades ago, through the flood as the bay overwhelmed the shore in a fury of water and destruction.
His hands shook.
“Director?”
They’d made it through because of her. He had driven their stolen truck through the carnage left behind, he’d navigated a brutal path through devastation so thoroughly unforgiving that he still remembered details in a sea of faded memories.
A child’s teddy bear, soaked through. A lifeless, bloated corpse left to rot in the crossroads of a once-busy thoroughfare.
So many of those corpses. Some places he’d driven through had laid them out like a nest, a blanket of tangled arms and legs and battered, broken faces.
They’d survived it. He and Mattie and what few of the initial subjects they’d been able to save.
“Director Lauderdale, what should I tell the bishop’s office?”
Hospital patients, lab volunteers, some nurses, even a doctor. And they kept stopping for more. Stragglers, survivors. Children, too.
That’s what mattered. That people had stopped everything to help. That they kept on going, supported one another, helped one another.
He opened his eyes. Sharon. That was it. Sharon Jones. “Inform the bishop’s office that I would like to arrange a meeting, Ms. Jones. One hour.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll schedule it right away.” Relief colored the feed, even over the chatter. “What should I tell them in the meantime?”
Lauderdale studied the map in front of him, gnarled hands framing the bloody smile. “Tell them . . .” He was aware of the sudden dimming over the feeds, the hush that told him more ears than hers strained to hear.
His comm unit whispered a warning, a subtle thrum he felt against the desk under his hands. A glance at the screen, words enlarged for his failing sight, forced a scowl.
AG checked in. Op a failure. Advise.
Failure. Kayleigh was still out there.
The hope of a city on the brink.
Failure just wouldn’t do.
His spine straightened, frail and aching shoulders setting with purpose. “Tell them that God will not abandon us now. That we must help our brothers and sisters and ensure that we remain calm, above all, to do it.”
Her voice firmed. “Yes, sir.”
Lauderdale stood, shuffled to the window and looked out. Not at the quad beneath the windowpane, filled to the brim with agents and employees scurrying like worker ants, but to the horizon. The sky was gray and cloudy—not black with volcanic ash as he remembered, no glowing red heart of a volcano pulsing like a jewel on the horizon.
But he remembered still. The tremors that came first and sudden, the quakes that sent cracks through the city streets.
The hysteria.
Kayleigh was a single entity, and if he was very lucky, Ms. Green had forced the kidnapper to change locations. He had to count on that. If God was feeling kind, she’d stay out of the earthquake’s radius.
He could not sacrifice the future of New Seattle for one person, even if his chest hurt to consider it. He had to hope—trust—that she was every bit as strong as her mother.
Anything else could undo decades of planning.
Kayleigh.
“Ms. Jones, inform the media outlets to cease coverage of the demolished areas,” he said quietly. The sensitive equipment had no trouble picking up the order. “I want full efforts on twenty-four-hour emergency analysis. Set up a press conference on the steps of the Holy Cathedral.”
“Will I be informing Bishop Applegate’s office about this?”
Lauderdale touched the glass. His eyebrows furrowed deeply. “No. Our spiritual leader will have a great deal of prayer on his mind. I’ll inform him myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Ms. Jones?”
A beat. “Yes?”
Lauderdale allowed himself the luxury of a smile. “Excellent work. Your department is invaluable.”
Her tone warmed. “Thank you, sir. I’ll pass it along.”
She didn’t have to. Those with ears on the channel would do it first, and it would spread like a wildfire. This time, when the frequency filled again with its white noise of directions and information, he detected a new thread; a subtle strengthening of resolve. Of purpose.
Good. Very good. They’d need that.
If everything stayed true to expectation, a few hours could see it turn so much worse.
Lauderdale had trained his people well. They’d be ready.
Make a better world.
This city would not fall for nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Chaos.
The clinic—a small three-story structure built into the base of the higher tier’s foundation—thrummed with the turmoil of harried doctors, grimly efficient nurses. Shawn felt the pressure of it hammering at him, drilling into his head, but he didn’t have time for it.
Didn’t care for anything but the room in front of him.
The whole district was in disarray, rubble left on the street where tenements and brownstones had crumbled. The quake had done a number over a wide swath, and he’d stared at the damage as they’d driven through it in a rusted, burnt orange pickup truck.
Now, it seemed a thousand miles away.
His hands fisted. Somewhere behind him, Jessie had taken Kayleigh to get her wounds bandaged and clothes changed; somewhere, he was aware of the scurrying din of overworked medical personnel.
But the narrow window in front of him, a transparent divide set into the door, seized his guts in an icy grip.
Through it, he could see that May’s eyes were closed, her face slack. A wicked purple bruise rimmed over her eye, swelled to a bloody red before it vanished under white bandages.
Her skin gleamed sickly and pale, so different from the tough-as-nails woman he’d left behind only yesterday.
Two figures leaned over the bed, a man and a woman. He didn’t need to see the kid’s face to recognize Danny. He expected her grandson to be here. The woman, her magenta-streaked hair hiding her face in a choppy curtain, shrugged.
The murmured conversations ceased around him; Shawn heard only the rapid, panicked beat of his heart as he reached for the door handle.
The dull chatter of a radio peppered the air.
Two sets of eyes looked up in tandem. Hers, an exotic near-violet gaze, narrowed, but it was Danny’s that flashed fire. “You son of a bitch!” he snarled, lunging for Shawn.
He braced, but a figure in the corner stepped out, hooked a wiry arm around Danny’s chest. The action jerked the thin man hard to the side. A pair of glasses slid crookedly down his nose as he flinched, lines of pain bracketing his mouth. “Danny.”
Jonas Stone. Even the single, soothing word fell in a perfect tenor Shawn would recognize anywhere.
“I want him out!”
Shawn’s jaw cracked; his teeth gritted so hard, the sound dulled the blade-sharp accusation in the kid’s near-sob.
“Get him out, or so help me, I’ll take him out myself!”
The woman perched on the edge of the bed straightened. “You idiots are in a hospital—” She pointed. “Either all of you get the fuck out,” she snapped, such leashed menace in her authoritative, husky voice, “or you settle down like goddamned adults and shut the hell up.”
Danny went still. The look Stone sent the woman was masked behind light brown hair longer even than Shawn’s, but Shawn saw her roll her eyes at him.
The woman was beautiful. Exotica
lly so, with some kind of Asian heritage, model-quality cheekbones, a mouth almost too lush for easy comfort, and an array of facial piercings that did nothing to soften the violence he read in her eyes, in the set of her body.
Even settled on a hospital bed, wearing a jacket made of blue buckles and straps clinging to every curve, Shawn recognized a trained killer when he saw one.
He’d gotten very good at spotting them on the streets.
Shawn shut the door quietly behind him. “I’m not here to fight.”
“The fuck you—”
Stone’s arm tightened around Danny’s waist. “Danny, please.”
Where May was thin to the point of whipcord lean, Danny was squarer. Not as rock solid as he could be with enough time, not yet, but the traces of youthful optimism that had always marked him had vanished under a mask of worry and pain. His eyes flung daggers at Shawn, while the man who held him back from his ill-advised threat captured the back of Danny’s neck in a long-fingered hand and held on tight.
It was the kind of move he’d pulled on Kayleigh, and that realization made his guts wrench; uncomfortably sharp. Too damned close.
Shawn raised his hands. “What happened?”
“What happened?” Danny spat the words over Stone’s shoulder. “What happened is that she wasn’t even supposed to be there, you egotistical son of a bitch!”
“Danny.” Stone’s fingers tightened.
“It was his fault, she was looking for him!”
Shawn flinched.
“Hey.” Stone reached up with both hands, caught Danny’s face between his palms. Danny was taller, but the kid hunched, angry mask cracking as he rested his forehead against Stone’s. “It’s okay. Naomi’s going to make sure your grandma makes it, okay?”
Naomi. Fuck’s sake.
Danny shuddered, eyes closing. “I know. I know. I just—”
“We know.” Stone pulled him to the side of the small room. When he glanced at Shawn through his frameless glasses, that shrewd mottled brown and green stare left him feeling exposed as hell.
His bare chest couldn’t be helped until he found a shirt, but he’d haphazardly scrubbed the dirt off his exposed skin before coming in. He wasn’t that much of a mess.
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 15
