White noise filled Kayleigh’s ears. Droned in her head.
They didn’t mean anything. Not exactly. But she knew the format.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You . . . you were a subject.”
“My mom—my donor,” Jessie amended, grimacing, “rescued me. Rescued a lot of them, actually.”
“But—” Kayleigh’s mind raced. Impossible. It was impossible. At twenty-nine years old, Jessie should have already been suffering from degeneration. Even dead. Simon was the oldest of her surviving subjects, he’d made it to thirty.
If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon.
She seized Jessie’s hand in both of hers. “How do you feel?”
But the witch surprised her. Her eyes flashed humor, not pain. Not fear. “A few wild zingers through the witch sight now and again,” she said, pitching her voice quietly to avoid attention from a small family bustling down the crowded hall. Kayleigh watched them navigate through the maze of stretched-out legs and piled belongings, children huddled together. “All in all, great since your mother fixed me.”
Kayleigh’s head came back around so fast, her vision doubled before it caught up. “That’s impossible.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “You didn’t know?”
“My mother is dead.”
“Yes,” Jessie agreed, but her hand tightened around Kayleigh’s. “I knew her before—”
Kayleigh jerked her hand free. “That isn’t funny!” Her insides twisted, pain lancing through her stomach.
Frowning, Jessie splayed her hands in the air, palm-out as if Kayleigh were a wild cat, hissing and snarling.
She felt like it.
“I’m serious. Matilda saved my life.”
Oh, God. The hurt coiled in her chest was a thousand times worse.
Was this Shawn’s doing? “Did he put you up to this?” she asked stiffly, lips numb and skin cold; anger and exhaustion swirled, a pit in her heart.
“Who?”
“Shawn!”
“No,” Jessie said, surprise in her amber eyes. She glanced down the hall, past the people milling through it, settled on the fringe with their minor injuries. “Actually, I don’t think Shawn knew her.”
Kayleigh flinched. “Stop saying that.”
“Honey—”
“You had to be, what, six when she died? Seven?” She shook her head hard, clambering to her feet as if she had anywhere to run. She didn’t. Not here, surrounded by strangers. She turned, glared at the sea of patients. “I was eight years old. I don’t remember you.”
Behind her, the witch sighed. “We never met. Kayleigh, I’m so sorry, I had no idea—” She beckoned, gestured to the floor. “Your mom was alive and well when she saved my life. Mine and Silas’s,” she added, features softening. “Did you know she was a witch?”
“No, she wasn’t.” Kayleigh felt like a broken recording, looping over and over back on denials as her world spun more and more out of control. She shook her head until the ends of her hair whipped around her shoulders. “You’re lying.”
“She could see the paths laid out before someone,” Jessie continued, hands laced at her knees. Her gaze was steady. Weighty. Merciless. “Choices they could make and how it might work out for them.”
Oh, God. She was lying. She had to be. Kayleigh flung out her hands, fingers splayed, her chest aching, lungs feeling as if she couldn’t get enough air. “Stop lying!” Faces turned, eyes flicked to her. Voices dimmed to a murmur.
She didn’t care.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry—” Jessie stopped. Her eyes widened, pupils dilating so fast it was as if her eyes had gone briefly black in a thin band of pale brown. “Oh, shit.” A whisper. “Shitfucker.” Less so. “Naomi!” Her shout demanded the eyes of every stranger in the hall.
She clambered to her feet, graceless, harried. Grim. One hand slid on the wall, and Kayleigh reached out to steady the suddenly manic woman.
Froze.
A ripple of motion, a subtle wave of anticipation slid through the hall. Kayleigh’s gaze skimmed from wall to wall as every hair on the back of her neck lifted.
The floor vibrated beneath her.
“Another earthquake!” screamed a young man beside them.
As if that were a cue, chaos erupted; the walls shuddered as a violent tremor shook the clinic, threw the patients inside into pandemonium. Screams filled the narrow space, and Kayleigh stumbled as a stampede of wild-eyed humanity crushed her against the wall.
“Kayleigh!”
An elbow dug into her ribs, a shoulder clipped hers, sent an arc of pain and choking claustrophobia through her senses. A fracture split down the plaster in front of her face.
The screams echoed, shrieks of terror and pain, and then, just as suddenly, it stopped.
The building went still. Panicked cries turned to questions; the crowd faltered. Sobs trickled through the stunned silence.
“My baby!” The terrified cry sparked a new sea of them.
Suddenly, people shouted for nurses, for doctors. For help.
Hands grabbed her arm; Kayleigh spun, thrusting out her cuffed hands for balance, and caught Jessie’s shoulder. “How bad are they hurt?” she demanded, already tucking the aftershocks into the back of her head.
That didn’t matter right now.
The little boy sprawled on the tile floor and curled around his teddy bear mattered. The mother with her hand over her daughter’s bleeding nose and lip.
The screamer in the crowd and the half-wild faces surrounding her; those mattered more than anything else.
Years of training kicked in. One thing at a time.
“The doctors can—”
“More injured coming in,” a nurse called from somewhere by the reception desk. Even down the hall, her voice carried. “Betty! Get on the comms, call everyone in!” The intercom crackled. “We are on diversion. All personnel be advised, we are code purple.”
“What is that?” demanded a woman who grabbed Kayleigh’s shirt by her hip. She knelt, eyes glassy, looking through Kayleigh as much as at her. “What does that mean?”
She bit her lip. “Every bed is full.”
“Fuck me,” Jessie whispered. Her grip tightened on Kayleigh’s arm. “It’s going to get worse. The amount of injured coming in—” Her voice broke.
Kayleigh blew out a hard breath. Her gaze swept the chaos, the order a band of tightly wound nurses and personnel tried to make of the front desk eight feet away.
“Uncuff me,” she said, even before she’d even consciously made the call.
She could help. She was a geneticist, sure, but she’d done all her requisite clinicals. Still did them every year.
“What?” Jessie closed her eyes, as if she were having trouble concentrating.
“Jessie? Jessie!”
Shock? When she opened them again, they weren’t entirely clear, still dilated, but intensely focused. “I’m okay.”
Kayleigh thrust her hands out, jaw set. “Uncuff me. I can help.”
A crack of thunder split the barely controlled madness.
The whole clinic shuddered, but it didn’t feel the same as the aftershocks. The hall rocked suddenly, threw people to the floor, slamming them like dominoes against each other. Jessie seized Kayleigh’s wrists.
A blast of cold air ripped down the hall like a vacuum, sucking dust and plaster debris with it.
The intercom crackled once, shorted on a series of sparks as the lights popped and fizzled to darkness.
“Then help,” Jessie shouted in her ear. “ ’Cause the whole east side just came down!” Her voice cracked. Strain, a sort of detached focus.
The cuffs came off. Kayleigh didn’t even notice as they clattered to the floor behind her.
Too much. There was too much happening around her, too many secrets unfolding beneath her. The lab, her mother, her father, her life.
She didn’t know what was what; didn’t know who lied, whom to trust. Shawn was a mystery, Jessie a witch, h
er father—
No. Not here. Not now, when the world around her collapsed on itself. She couldn’t do anything about them, about her past, about the future.
This? This she could do something about. One injury at a time.
Chapter Sixteen
Everything hurt, knocking skull to pounding aches shooting through his spine, but Shawn didn’t slow down until a grim-faced nurse pushed an open bottle of water into his hand and pulled him to the fringe.
“Before you collapse,” the man ordered, but was already turning away.
The argument died on Shawn’s lips.
Lifting the bottle to his mouth, he drank slowly, gaze skimming across the wreckage of the clinic and neighboring facilities.
A whole wing had slid into rubble, rocked loose by the earthquake that had rattled four city blocks in either direction. The city was in chaos; radio stations were breaking silence, emergency channels counseled calm while newscasters covered the wrecked areas and fought to stay on the air. Two had already gone dark, and Jonas continued to maintain every feed, every frequency he could juggle from the nearest resistance safe house thirteen blocks southwest.
The New Seattle Riot Force had mustered, ostensibly to help, but Shawn noticed how the few media reporters who’d arrived had quickly disappeared again.
Shawn had found a shirt, but now it was as bad as his first, covered in dirt and plaster dust and smears of blood. Not his.
He’d spent two hours helping move the wounded. Helping dig through the rubble.
Carrying the dead.
And he’d spent just as long watching Kayleigh.
What kind of fucked-up world was it when he worked to rescue injured people and couldn’t stop thinking about the woman who was supposed to be his enemy? This whole city’s enemy. Daughter of a monster; leader of a witch factory.
Possibly in possession of information relevant to all of New Seattle.
And he liked her. He just had to come to terms with that, because every time he turned around, she was there.
He took another drink, his gaze sliding to the triage tents set up hastily in the street. He found her easily, her pale hair a beacon in the flickering streetlights. At this time in the evening, there wasn’t a chance in hell this street would see any other light.
They’d set up generators for more lights, and now they afforded Shawn the opportunity to watch Kayleigh work among the other medical staff.
She moved like she belonged. Like she knew the routine.
But she looked like something out of Shawn’s world.
Her borrowed synth-leather pants hugged her body in sleek lines, painted every slender curve in black matte. The heavy spiked bracelet around her wrist forced a lash of amusement, tempered by the white bandage circling the other forearm. She had to be hurting, but she didn’t complain.
She’d never complained, had she? She fought. Argued.
Strong girl. Much stronger than he gave her credit for. Still so ignorant about so many things.
Her tank top cupped her small breasts, offered a teasing peek at beige lace when she bent to check on a patient. The rough guise didn’t match the delicate bra he was positive she didn’t mean to flash—this street-ready outfit wasn’t anything like her so-prim topsider armor—and the knowledge of it settled somewhere in the base of his spine. Burned, pulsed, a steady pressure.
Everything had gone to hell.
May was safe in another location, recovering thanks to Naomi’s efforts, but still too weak to risk being seen in public. The hospital was in disarray, the street filled with huddled, frightened people, with volunteers, with injured.
Rubble and debris had been swept aside in the two hours Shawn had worked to clear the immediate clinic grounds.
Earthquakes, witch factories, traitors turned friends and friends turned traitor.
Yet here he was. Clutching his water bottle like it could somehow give him the answer to everything. To his life, his choices.
The world.
Her.
Kayleigh touched a young girl’s hand, smiled down at her with none of the grim solemnity she’d displayed as she worked. Tireless, steadfast.
Shawn knew better. Knew the effort it took to put on a mask of reassurance for those who demanded answers.
His heart twisted as the girl flung her arms around Kayleigh’s neck.
Kayleigh herself wrapped both arms around her little body and clung for a moment. Just a breather.
He knew that need.
Felt it fist in his heart.
He’d rocked her world in every way but the one he wanted to, and it kicked him in the ass to understand that. To realize it in himself.
He wanted her, but more than that, he wanted to sit down and work this shit out. He wanted her to understand where he came from and why.
He wanted to understand her.
Damn it. He just wanted.
He couldn’t. He should have pulled her out of that first aid camp, slapped those handcuffs back on her, and dragged her somewhere quiet to grill her about her father. About these earthquakes. About Jonas Stone’s intel.
He fucking couldn’t.
As if she could sense his interest, his stare, she looked up, found him almost instantly. Their gazes collided, and it was like a punch to his chest. A grip around his throat.
Her eyes gleamed with barely held-together restraint, even across the street, haunted and hopeless and dark. Her cheeks were pale, features drawn.
He raised his water bottle in silent salute.
Her mouth tilted up at one corner, and with a deep breath, she pulled away from the child.
He couldn’t ask her now. Not when she was so obviously at her breaking point.
His comm vibrated against his side. He unclipped it from his waistband and cracked it open without checking the number. “What?” Weary, even to his own ears.
“How bad?” came Jonas’s greeting, and for once, the man’s voice was just as strained over the fuzzy line.
Shawn didn’t even have the energy to gloat. Welcome to the resistance. “Bad,” he said instead. “The clinic lost one of its two wings when the foundation gave out, and we’ve been moving people into the street. No more aftershocks, but it’s a hair away from mass hysteria over here.”
“Damn.”
No kidding. Shawn watched Kayleigh direct the young girl to a small knot of children, watched her place both hands at her lower back and stretch. “How’s May?”
“She’ll be fine with time,” the man replied, quickly and without pussyfooting around the subject. Shawn respected that. “Naomi’s magic did its thing and she’s awake, but it’ll be a while before she’ll be at a hundred percent. That’s not why I’m calling, though.”
“What’s going on?” Shawn turned away, hunching a shoulder to dull the white noise of the city street behind him.
“It’s topside news. So far, they’ve got the most stable feeds, but it’s all blocked past the sec-lines.”
Shawn frowned. “Did they get hit?”
“Not exactly, and that’s the problem.”
“Spit it out, Stone.”
“Jonas, okay?” But he continued without prompting. “The Bishop’s dead.”
Shawn’s frown deepened to a scowl, eyebrows furrowing hard. “How?”
“The official topside reports are saying debris from the quakes, tragic accident, and so on, but they’re not even trying on this one.” His easy tenor hardened with the implied insult. “We’re not stupid. The quakes didn’t rattle the city that far up, and far as any of my sources say, Bishop Applegate was still topside.”
“Jesus Christ.” The repercussions reached out, scored through the thinning remnants of Shawn’s calm. He turned, eyes immediately searching for Kayleigh. “This means—” Fuck. She wasn’t there.
“Yeah.” Jonas’s voice thinned. “Laurence Lauderdale is officially head of Holy Order of St. Dominic.”
Shawn’s fingers clenched around the unit. “Keep me informed,” he manage
d, a bare thread of civility as the growl leaked through his teeth. “I have someone to question.”
“Shawn!”
He paused, waiting.
“Go easy. There’s no evidence she knew.”
“There’s no evidence she didn’t,” Shawn replied, and shut down the line.
Of course she knew. There was no way she didn’t know that her own father had planned the most thorough coup in New Seattle’s bloody history.
His shoulders slumped.
Was there?
The only bit of privacy she could find came in the form of a clinic room. Evacuated due to cracks from floor to ceiling, plaster dust coating the single narrow bed in white powder, it showed no further indication of falling apart.
Even better, no one would think to look for her here.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move she’d ever made, but she needed space. Kayleigh sagged on the edge of the bed, staring down at the comm she’d stolen from a patient on the street. He wouldn’t miss it, not while he remained unconscious.
She’d return it before she left.
Unlike hers, his family might want to get in touch.
Her throat ached from holding back tears for so long; her chest hurt so badly, it drowned out even the steady burn in her stomach.
So many injured. So many people caught in the tragedy that had already defined generations of people. She’d tended broken limbs and bleeding lacerations; abrasions and burns and head wounds.
She’d worked tirelessly, sometimes aware that Shawn watched her from wherever he worked. Sometimes mindless and grim as she bandaged, taped, sutured, and hydrated.
The ones she couldn’t help weighed on her. Nameless, broken.
Now, she sat alone and empty, staring at the indicator on the comm screen. The one that assured her no one had tried to call her line.
No one had left her a message.
No one had noticed that she was alive but the man who’d taken her from that life.
The doubt eating at her swallowed another portion of her mind. Her heart.
Was he right? Was Shawn right about everything? Parker, too?
Was she the blind one?
Her hand slid to the side pocket of her pants, a narrow slit barely enough to hold money—which was probably the point. These weren’t the kind of pants one wore for anything but drinking, dancing, maybe a one-night stand.
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 17
