Beyond Addiction

by Kit Rocha

  She wasn’t moving, but she seemed to still anyway as realization dawned. “Get it...because it’s in Five.”

  Finn tugged her away from the milling people—and away from Dallas, though his gaze followed them. “Nobody else knows where the place is. It’s the kid’s only chance.”

  She opened her mouth, but the argument she obviously wanted to make died on her tongue. “For Hana,” she said finally.

  He slipped his fingers into her hair and pulled her close, until he could lean down to press his forehead to hers. “For you,” he corrected. “This is your family. I get it. I still don’t know shit about having one, but let me protect yours.”

  Trix wrapped her hands around his wrists. “Be careful?”

  “I’ll be back before you know it.” He smiled and stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Donnelly’s crazy, but I bet he’s real useful in a pinch.”

  “I mean it, Finn.”

  He kissed her. Short and abrupt, because it wasn’t the place and there wasn’t time, but even that brief taste of her made his blood pound. “You think I’m taking any fucking chances with you waiting for me on the other end?”

  “Hell, no.” Her voice shook the tiniest bit. “I’ll be here.”

  And he’d be one step closer to belonging. “Give me a good-luck kiss, doll.”

  She brushed her lips over his, softly at first. Then she sank her teeth into his lower lip with a moan. “Remember what you promised me.”

  Finn caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “This is home. Nothing will change that.”

  She curled her fingers to stroke his beard. “Then hurry back.”

  Noah Lennox was a little scary.

  Finn had known him for years, since the days when he was a newly recruited enforcer and Noah was still a surly teenager, the brilliant son of Sector Five’s bitter, angry tech specialist. Fleming had always gone easy on the kid, too afraid of spooking a valuable resource—especially after the elder Lennox opted to overdose his way out of life.

  Then Noah had fallen for a girl. Emma Cibulski, the little sister of one of Finn’s least reliable dealers. Finn didn’t know when the idiot had started rolling on his own stash, but he’d bet every credit to his name that Fleming had helped Cib along the path to destruction.

  And Emma had been slated for a fate like Trix’s—addicted to the dangerous shit, held hostage to ensure Noah’s good behavior. Scaring the two of them out of the sector had been the first decent thing Finn had done in a while, but fresh off the latest attempt to wean Trix from her addiction, it had been the only choice he could stand to make.

  If he’d had a clue just how dangerous Noah could be, he might have chosen a different route.

  With a datapad in one hand and a lock override device in the other, Noah led Finn and Bren through doors Finn had never realized were even there and down tunnels he would have sworn on his life didn’t exist. “This is fucking insane,” Finn muttered to Bren as they watched Noah hack the control panel on a huge steel blast door. “Is there anywhere he can’t get with that thing?”

  “Through a solid wall, maybe.” Bren patted the backpack slung over his shoulder. “But that’s where I come in.”

  Finn raised an eyebrow. “I always heard you were a sniper, not an explosives nut.”

  “Nut is such a strong word. I prefer enthusiast.”

  “You’re a crazy motherfucker, is what you are.” But Finn grinned. “Was that your work on the factory? Trust an O’Kane to burn shit to the ground with zero casualties.”

  Bren’s vague smile vanished.

  Shit. Maybe there had been casualties—or injuries—and Finn hadn’t known. Mac had already shut him out of the inner circle by the time the O’Kanes had blown the factory, after all.

  The door whispered open ahead of them, and Noah turned to pin Bren with a serious look. “You’re not brooding, are you? We all made it out of there alive. Mistakes happen.”

  “No, I’m not brooding,” Bren muttered. “And fuck you.”

  Noah waved his arm, and Bren stepped through the door. “All right, big guy. You wanted access to this quadrant of Five, and now you’ve got it. Where do we go?”

  Noah held out the tablet with its map, but Finn didn’t need it. He’d studied the tunnel schematics back in Sector Four, memorizing the route from this door to familiar territory. “This way.”

  The tunnels in this part of Five were in decent repair, lit from above by long fluorescent lights that washed out color and cast creepy shadows. Few people in Five knew this section of the tunnels existed, but they were kept in excellent repair on orders from the military installation known simply as the Base.

  Knowing that, Finn kept his hand close to his gun. “The guys from the Base were pretty regular with their pickups, but who knows what the hell Beckett’s done to the schedule? If we run into trouble, it could be your kind of scene, Donnelly.”

  Bren swung a small flashlight from one side of the tunnel to the other as they walked. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not run into anyone from the Base.”

  “No shit.” Finn had only had to oversee a handful of the monthly meetings, but the men who usually showed up to collect the experimental medication redefined cold-blooded. Even at his lowest, Finn didn’t think he’d looked at the world with that level of disconnected calm.

  Hell, even Beckett showed emotions sometimes. Usually greed and sadistic satisfaction, but that was something.

  A loud clang echoed dully above them, and Bren cursed. “How close are we to the surface, Noah?”

  Noah held his hands about four feet apart. “Don’t talk too loud.”

  Finn snorted as they reached a familiar intersection and swung a right. “Not many people have the passcodes for the doors down here. There should be three guards on duty, but most of the time Mac only spared the manpower when the Base was due for a pick-up.” The rest of the time, guarding the stockpile was considered a sweet gig. Plenty of men had spent their shifts blissed out and jerking off to porn on their monitors.

  “Nice to know.” Bren shifted his pack, revealing a gun in his hand. “Watch your back anyway. Better yet, watch mine.”

  “Everyone watch everyone’s back,” Noah muttered, his gaze on his tablet. “I don’t want any of your women coming after me for not bringing you home.”

  It was Bren’s turn to snort. “Tell me about the security in the vault. Not the guards—the setup.”

  “It’s got a keypad. A passcode they haven’t changed in years.” Finn snorted. “Some brilliant jackass bypassed the alarm at one point so it doesn’t even trigger if you enter the wrong one. The vault’s steel, maybe twelve inches.” The hard part, the part that could stop them in their tracks, was the door.

  “So if the code’s changed, I just hack it?” Noah asked.

  If only. “It’s got an old-school door. Four inches thick, iron frame, with locking bolts the size of my fucking wrist. It has relockers on top of relockers, so if you make a wrong move with the code panel…” He glanced at Bren. “I guess you get to work that enthusiasm.”

  “Great.” Noah stopped at the next intersection and gestured to the left. “Is this it?”

  Finn stopped next to him and stared down the short hallway. The door at the end had the usual access panel. The basement beyond was reinforced, even though the building above was nondescript. Most people in the Sector thought the house upstairs was just another Fleming office. There was no reason for strangers to visit, no chance of having to deal with more than one or two guards at the most.

  If everything went well, Finn could get them in and out and back to Four with no one the wiser.

  Striding to the control panel on the door, Finn lifted his hand and then hesitated. “If you hack the door, will it leave any trace in the entry logs?”

  “I can make sure it doesn’t,” Noah said, easing up next to him. When Finn stepped aside, Noah held up his tablet and typed something. The lights on the panel blinked twice and turned green, and
the door slid silently open.

  Yeah, the clever fucker was useful. No wonder Mac had chased him so relentlessly for four damn years.

  Inside, the basement was lit with the same low lights as the tunnels. The far wall surrounding the vault was solid concrete. Finn could still remember standing guard, smoking cigarette after cigarette while he watched the workers put in the framework for it.

  In the center was the vault door. Bren made his way to it and immediately began running his fingers along its edges. “Just in case,” he muttered, almost as if he was explaining himself. “How many bolts?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He nodded slowly, touching the top of the door and then the sides at regularly spaced intervals. “So...two on the top, five on each side, and two on the bottom?”

  “Yep.” Finn couldn’t stop one brow from going up. “You break into a lot of safes as one of Eden’s MPs, Donnelly?”

  “You have no idea. Noah?”

  The hacker had already located the vault controls and was frowning at his tablet. “Fuck, this shit really is old-school. I don’t think it’s capable of wireless broadcast. I need a knife.”

  Wordlessly, Finn pulled his from his boot and handed it over, hilt first.

  Noah balanced his tablet above the controls and pried the panel free to reveal a mess of wires. “Even if the alarm on the code panel has been bypassed, there’s a fifty-fifty chance I could still trigger it manually if I try this.”

  Finn glanced at Bren, who was still caressing the safe like he planned to seduce his way into it. “Blowing it won’t be any quieter. So I guess I’ll handle whoever comes down the stairs.”

  “Mmm.” Bren knelt, unzipped his bag, and began to pull out tiny black boxes, no bigger than two inches on all sides. He laid them out by the wall, one by one. “Directed charges. If we can’t get in the easy way, I’ll blow the bolts.”

  He sounded almost pleased at the idea, and Finn gave in to the moment with a laugh. “I’m glad we’re friends now, because you have got some scary hobbies.”

  Bren started organizing the charges into neat stacks. “Sure, now I’m cool.”

  “Hey, who doesn’t love a good explos—”

  “Fuck,” Noah growled, a heartbeat before the screech of the alarm tore through the room. Finn raised his gun and took cover with a good view of the stairs, while Bren snatched up his carefully ordered stacks of explosives. He deployed them fast, his hands moving in a blur as he slammed them against the frame of the door, fixing them over the spots where the bolts should be.

  He’d just dropped to put the last few in place when the door at the top of the stairs crashed open.

  For a tense moment, Finn stood frozen, staring up into a familiar face. JC, one of Beckett’s favorite guards. Not one of the lazy, strung-out pet bullies Mac always stuck on the cushy gigs, but a cold, smart, ruthless enforcer.

  Recognition widened JC’s eyes. Finn braced himself, knowing he could show no mercy. They couldn’t risk leaving behind witnesses to blab about O’Kanes in their most secret vault, not with relations between the two sectors balanced on a tower of polite threats and less polite lies.

  It should have been easy. JC was a mean bastard. He’d undermined Finn more than once, hungry for the power Finn had grown sick of using. A few weeks ago, Finn would have already pulled the trigger. The death wouldn’t have bothered him, but it wouldn’t have pleased him, either. It would have been one more drop in a bucket of regrets that had been overflowing for years.

  So much had changed in so little time, but one thing most of all.

  Finn had someone to live for. Someone to fight for.

  JC went for his gun, and Finn shot him twice in the chest before climbing the stairs to put one in his head.

  No regrets, not this time. Maybe this was what being on the right side felt like.

  A series of beeps sounded in the room below, growing faster with each passing heartbeat. Then a dull thud shook the stairs, followed by the sound of solid steel hitting the floor.

  Finn raced down the stairs, jumping the last four, and snatched up the empty bag Noah held out. “Everything you can grab off this shelf,” he directed to Bren, pointing to a collection of high-quality analgesics and stimulants. If they were gonna knock the place over, they might as well make it good.

  The experimental drugs were at the back, along with a stack of sturdy plastic cases. Finn shuffled through them until he found the right label and popped the case open. A dozen vials of the retrovirus sat nestled in foam padding. God only knew what they did with them on the Base.

  Finn only cared what Doc could do with them now.

  He tucked them into the bag before grabbing everything else Doc could possibly use, along with a few things Finn hoped he never had to. A fortune’s worth of the latest medical advances, and Finn was almost sorry he wouldn’t be around to see the look on Beckett’s face when he realized he’d lost something the Base didn’t consider his in the first place.

  “Out. Now,” Bren barked shortly, and the three of them turned for the exit to the tunnels just as more footsteps thundered down the basement stairs. Finn skidded through on Bren’s heels with Noah stopping long enough to trigger the door.

  “I scrambled the code,” he said as he caught up to them. “But that won’t hold them for long. You can override that shit from inside the building.”

  Finn nodded and picked up the pace, but they’d only made it two turns before shouts and heavy footsteps echoed behind them.

  A lot of footsteps.

  The final blast door marking the edge of the quadrant lay before them. They stumbled through, and Noah hauled the door shut behind them as the first shot ricocheted off it. His fingers flew as he tried to secure it, only to bite off a curse. “I’m not set up to reprogram a quadrant door. I need time.”

  Bren hesitated for only a moment before snatching something out of his bag. “Fuck it,” he said, then edged Noah out of the way and slammed a charge against the control panel. “Grab the transmitter.”

  Finn swept it up and seized Noah’s arm. “Move.”

  The hacker did. Finn followed him, shifting his bag to one shoulder so he could flip the switch on the transmitter. Disabling the door would mean the end of their easy access, but the chances were good that this sort of stunt would only have worked once anyway. So Finn shoved Noah around the corner and glanced back to make sure Bren was clear of the door.

  Then he jammed his thumb down. The charge exploded, and the access panel disintegrated. The heavy clang of metal bolts sliding firmly into place echoed deep within the core of the door, followed by frustrated shouts on the other side.

  Bren plucked the transmitter out of Finn’s hand and grinned at Noah. “More than one way to lock a door.”

  “As long as you’re okay never unlocking it again,” Noah grumbled, but he grinned as he tucked his datapad into a pocket on his vest. “Just the same, let’s get the hell out of here before they figure out a way around.”

  True fucking words. Finn wanted out of these damn tunnels, out of the whole fucking sector. He wanted to be back in Trix’s room with her wrapped tight in his arms, feeling every slow, even breath against his chest because she was alive, and that would never stop being magical.

  He hefted the bag holding the retrovirus and met Bren’s eyes. The words didn’t come easy. They didn’t feel natural. But he tried them on for size and didn’t hate them. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was only so much tension you could burn off with liquor and cage fighting.

  When the going got tough—really tough, like waiting to see if Doc’s cure for little baby Hana would work—the O’Kanes turned to poker.

  Rachel tossed in her cards with a disgusted sigh. “Fold. My luck is for shit tonight.”

  “Maybe that’s your concentration,” Jade said lightly as she slid a stack of painted red chips into the middle of the table. “I’ve noticed Ace only has one hand above the table.”


  “One hand’s all I need,” Ace drawled, his flirtation a brittle layer of charm over obvious worry.

  Trix slid her own chips into the center of the table. A week ago, the unbearable tension would have been the result of her friends sitting down with Finn. Now, they seemed to accept him as part of the group—and Trix would have traded it in a heartbeat.

  The cloud of worry hung over all of them, including Jade. Trix eased her hand over hers for a quick squeeze as the other players called Jade’s bet.

  Zan leaned back in his chair, his arm still bound up into a sling. “Maybe we should make it a thing—everyone plays with one hand tonight. Just to be fair.”

  “In the interest of fairness,” Cruz agreed, no smile ruining his perfectly serious expression as he dealt the fourth card face up into the center of the table...and then dropped his hand casually under the table.

  Next to him, Ace let out a soft groan. “Fucking hell, Zan. Brilliant idea.”

  It was desperation, pure and simple, a way to forget. Even so, Trix’s cheeks heated, and she glanced at Finn. He was studying the three community cards with a look of concentration so intense, she might have suspected he’d missed the groping.

  Then he winked at her.

  He was trying, too. For her sake, and maybe for his own. Trix answered with a wink of her own, then slid her hand into his.

  Zan snorted. “This isn’t working. We should have more booze. Or maybe get rid of these chips and go straight for strip poker.” He leered at Ace. “Show me your new scars, and I’ll show you mine.”

  Ace made a rude gesture with his free hand. “Don’t even whine. So you got shot a couple times. Someone twirled my guts around like pasta on a fork.”

  “Ace.” Jade’s complexion took on an unhealthy tinge. “Have mercy on us and bet.”

  “Nah, my cards are shit, too.” He tossed them on top of Rachel’s and turned to Finn. “What about you, new guy? How many bullets did Doc dig out of you that first day?”