by Alisha Rai
“Give me some soldiers then.”
Marc shook his head, regret stamped in the lines of his face, and left, closing the door softly behind him.
Gabriel pointed to the chair he’d vacated. “Sit.”
James sat, his foot tapping hard enough to set his entire leg wagging. “Gabriel—”
Gabriel sighed. “James, we truly know nothing of what’s going on here. How can you ask me to second-guess Marc, tear away soldiers who may or may not be ill or who are engaged in life-or-death work here and at Sanctuary, and send them on a wild-goose chase? For all we know, the equipment did malfunction, and Jules is on her way right now to her original destination. We could be getting notification in a day from an outpost that she’s made it. She isn’t stupid.”
“My equipment doesn’t malfunction.”
“But what if it did? Maybe her collar fell off. Maybe her car went dead, and she had to borrow a new one. Maybe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything.”
Like maybe after she thought about it she decided she’d rather go off and investigate Cheyenne than listen to you.
James shoved the treacherous—if there was still a country in place, he would even call it treasonous—suspicion out of his mind. No way. Jules didn’t always obey, but she was pretty up front about her insubordination. Plus, she wasn’t stupid. “The only way that collar could fall off is if someone took it off. Her heart accelerated…”
Gabriel shrugged. “She could have been jogging.”
Goddamn it, no. He knew her habits better than he knew his own. Jules preferred to walk instead of run, and if she did work out, she did it through the combat program in the specs. Her exercise was all practical. “You don’t think it’s highly unlikely that she went off grid in an unknown area? That her van hasn’t moved and her collar malfunctioned right after her vitals went haywire? Surely you don’t believe in coincidences like this, Gabriel.”
Gabriel studied the ground for a long moment. “No. I don’t. However, I can’t justify sending people into a potentially dangerous situation without confirmation that something actually has happened. I’m sorry, James. I promise, if a couple of days go by and she doesn’t turn up at a Sanctuary outpost safe and sound, maybe then we can send a team out there to investigate.”
A couple of days? There were so many horrible things that could happen to a person in a couple of days. There were so many horrible things that could happen to a person in a couple of minutes.
Flesh ripped away from bone. Fire. Screams.
He screwed his eyes shut. Gabriel’s heavy hand came to rest on his shoulder. “James,” he said quietly. “I get where you’re coming from. You care about this girl, I can tell. But you must understand where I’m coming from. I have to think about all our people. If it was just my life I was risking, I would go after her in a heartbeat. But I’m incapable of doing that. I can’t ask others to do the same.”
“If you don’t hear from her,” he asked hoarsely, “in forty-eight hours exactly, will you promise to send someone?”
Gabriel’s hand slid from his shoulder. “If we have the manpower and they are willing after hearing the situation,” he said firmly, each caveat making James physically ill. “I won’t send anyone blind or against their will.”
Those qualifiers made Gabriel’s response practically a no. Their best soldiers were ill. What were the odds that in a couple of days they’d be hale and hearty and ready to move out again?
But that was that. There was no arguing with that note of finality in Gabriel’s voice. At any other time, he wouldn’t dare. Nice James would get up quietly, defer to the man and take his leave.
And that was exactly what he did now.
If it was just my life I was risking…
An unnatural calm descended over him as he walked down four flights of stairs, back to his office.
If it was just my life…
The germ of the plan in his head was ridiculous. It would have been ridiculous for anyone, but particularly for him.
He hadn’t left this bunker in two years. Not for a peek, for nothing. To contemplate not only leaving but driving across country into possibly even more danger was absurd.
My life. My risk.
He stood in the middle of his office and swallowed, feeling as though he was poised on the brink of some gaping hole.
The scarred, damaged baby in him bleated. What if you’re sending yourself into certain danger? What if she’s already dead, or on her way back home and it’s all for naught? What if you die two hours into this multiple day and night journey?
His response was immediate. Better to die out there within the next day or so than to live with himself for another fifty years in here never knowing what happened to Jules. At least then he would have tried.
And hell, if she turned out to be safe and sound, then it was even more cause for celebration.
He glanced at his watch and cursed. If he really was going to leave—
You can’t be serious about going into the big, bad outdoors, the baby whined.
—because he was really going to leave, he needed to see to some matters first. He grabbed the spare handheld off his desk, checked it for the charged battery and then pivoted and went in search of someone, anyone, who could help him.
He completely ignored the handful of people he encountered on the way to the lab, except to size them up and evaluate if they’d be fit for his purposes. No. No. No.
The doors to the lab opened soundlessly to admit him. This room was the largest in the entire compound and, similar to their war room, retained some of its earlier glory in the remnants of equipment that had once been state of the art and functional. Back then, the place had probably bustled with activity, with an engineer or technology guru at every console. Tonight, it was empty, save for a curvy, red-haired female sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor. Numbers flashed by on the screen, too fast for him to even comprehend them.
He’d been hoping to find Kevin, but she would do.
A frown pleated her usually smooth forehead as she studied the series of digits.
“Hey, Alice.”
No response. This was standard for any of the techies. Once they got started working on a project, more oblivious people were never born, and he included himself in that description. Normally he would ease his way into the conversation, but he had no time for that. “Alice. Alice. Alice.”
She glanced up, blinking at him. The vague expression in her eyes was replaced with welcome. “James. How’s tricks?”
He wanted to laugh. Tricks were most definitely bad right now. Be nice. You need something from her. “Complicated. You?”
“Kiddo sprained her ankle yesterday, so I’m feeling kind of rundown. Horrible patient, that child.”
“That sucks. Hope the monkey’s feeling better.”
“You should stop by and see her. She wants to thank you properly for the little robot toy you made her.”
He made a noncommittal noise. Normally, he enjoyed spending time with Alice and her young daughter, but suddenly his short-term future looked uncertain at best.
She brightened. “I’ve actually been running some code that I’d like to get your input on. I think it would help immeasurably in the training exercises for your agents—”
“I’d love to see it,” he cut her off, before she could get too into her own work. “But I actually wanted to ask you if you could do me a favor.”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Can you take over my agents for a few days?” Maybe longer.
Her blue eyes widened. “All of them?”
“Yeah.” He leaned in close, dropping his voice. “It’s urgent, Alice, or I wouldn’t ask you. I promise I’ll pay you back.” He hoped he got a chance to do so, at least.
“Can I ask why?”
“It’s classified. I may need to…go somewhere. I can’t really give you any details, but it’s extremely important to me.”
“Wow. Something to
p secret for the boss man, huh?” Her tone was a mite reverent when she spoke of Gabriel. Alice had come in a couple of months ago, her and her daughter rescued from a homemade bomb shelter in Delaware. Most of the noobs either regarded Gabriel with reverence or fear.
James made a noncommittal noise, neither confirming nor denying her assumption. He had never been a particularly good liar, but then he’d never had everything riding on his ability to keep a poker face. She studied him while he held his breath. He could ask others, but Alice was possibly the most discreet and the most softhearted. Plus, she had some working familiarity with the programming that went into surveillance. She’d shown some interest in it in the beginning, so he’d given her a crash course and even assigned an agent or two to her before she’d decided to focus exclusively on back-end technology development.
“I guess I can. But you owe me for tearing me away from this new project right when I got it started. And your agents better not wake me up too much in the middle of the night, or I’m going to cut them loose.”
He nodded solemnly, recognizing the bluff for what it was. Alice was so warmly maternal, she’d probably pester his agents checking in on them at the slightest sign of trouble.
“Try to keep it quiet, please.” It wouldn’t take long for people to realize he was gone, but he’d delay the inevitable gossip for as long as he could.
“Very well.”
He unclipped his handheld, and with a couple of taps of his finger, transferred all of his agents, save Jules, over to Alice. The handheld beeped as it received the information.
She sighed. “I must say, I was hoping I’d left this work behind. It’s so much easier to focus on lab stuff in here than it is to be on the front lines out there, isn’t it? Even virtually.”
Preaching to the choir. “Thanks again, Alice. I owe you.”
“You certainly do.” With a grim smile, she picked up the handheld, swiveled on her stool and stood. “I’m taking over your office while I do this so I don’t have to strain my eyes on this itty-bitty thing.”
“That’s fine. Move everything else in there to the side.” All of his projects could be shoved to the back burner.
After she left, James returned to his bedroom, his mind clicking away. With at least a two-day trip ahead of him, he needed to maximize every hour of daylight. He would utilize the next few hours to prepare, and head out in the wee hours of the day. He would have to see about appropriating a car…
The smart thing, the least suicidal thing to do, is wait and see if Jules checks in soon. Like Gabriel said.
His fingers curled, and he had to clench his teeth. Normally he had no problem listening to the dictates of his brain. He was a reasonable man. Only once before, in his entire life, had his every instinct clamored for him to override his common sense.
James took a deep breath and headed for his closet. He would plan. That was his specialty, after all, and he wouldn’t think of all the things that could be going wrong at this moment. And this moment. And this moment…
He shoved aside visions of a broken and bloody Jules, replacing them with an exasperated Jules driving back to California in a borrowed car.
Nor would he consider the dangers that awaited him outside, should that scenario not pan out. He wouldn’t think about the fact that all of his knowledge of the world waiting outside the bunker walls was theoretical.
Think of the destination, not the journey.
Think of Jules.
Chapter Six
If there was one thing Jules missed from her childhood, it was the luxury of waking in slow increments. Not that there had been very much to wake up to. On the weekends, back when her mother had been alive, the most Jules could hope for was that the woman had thought to stock the kitchen with foods that her child could make on her own before going off on one of her benders. Still, the harsh reality of life awaiting her had made the experience of leaving her dream world slowly even more wonderful.
Since she’d been on her own, she’d gotten into the habit of jerking awake in a flash, ready to move or flee at a second’s notice. Trained instinct now clashed with her body’s abnormally sluggish response time. This wasn’t the slow rise and shine of her childhood. As much as she tried to become alert, it was like each sense was arising independently of the others.
The coldness of the hard concrete on which she lay seeped through her thin T-shirt. Somewhere, a door slammed shut, the noise reverberating under her back, sending a shooting pain up through her skull. A soft sobbing mingled with the scrape of metal against something hard. The curiously antiseptic smell in the air made her stomach churn in agony. Was she hungover?
No. No, she hadn’t gotten drunk. She’d been taken by the bad guys.
Assume nothing. Her personal rule. People could be good, bad and everything in between. But since she’d been drugged, beaten, stripped and strapped down, she was pretty sure it was safe to assume these weren’t the good guys.
She blinked her eyes open, prepared for those same doctors to be standing around her.
But no, she was in a dark, pitch-black room. A far cry from the harsh lights and bug-eyed jerks—
Jules stiffened. The bastards who’d taken her collar. Shit. Fuck. Her hand shot up to her neck, searching, but her fingers only met the curiously alien sensation of her bare throat. The ramifications increased her nausea as the simple truth pounded into her skull.
It was gone.
James was gone.
She was on her own.
The instant the panic came, she tried to tamp it down. Stay cool, Jules. Stay cool. You’ve been on your own before. You’ve been in tighter scrapes than this before James came waltzing into your life, and you’ve wormed your way out.
No. Need. To. Freak. Out.
A slow inhale and exhale helped her get her racing heart under control, though it wasn’t easy. First things first: she needed to get her bearings.
She sat up slowly, wincing from the ache in her skull. She flexed the fingers on the hand that the thug who’d caught her had smashed, relieved that nothing seemed to be broken. The blow to the head she’d taken had raised a nasty lump, and all she could do was pray she didn’t have a concussion.
Other various pains made themselves known as she staggered to her feet. A vicious ache in her biceps had her massaging her arm. It was too dark to see what the damage was, but she supposed she had probably received more bruises after she had been drugged.
She had no idea how much time had passed, but she hoped she was still in the same place as before. James would have realized when her collar was taken, and he’d have her last-known coordinates.
Of course, he wouldn’t come out after her, personally. But another agent or military unit had to have been sent for her. James wouldn’t abandon her. She took another deep breath. But just in case he was busy or something, she’d do what she could to save herself.
Thankfully, her clothes were on her, though her handy-dandy belt and the pockets on her cargo pants were light. Damn bastards had taken all her toys.
She smiled grimly, rolling to the balls of her feet, still shod in her tattered boots. No, not all of them. She had one trick left up her sleeve. Or rather, on her feet. The boots were unlaced, which meant they’d been checked, but not carefully enough. She sent a quick thank you upward for the girls from her old neighborhood, who had counseled her to always have at least one dirty, hidden way out of every fight.
Her eyes had adjusted somewhat, and she was able to see that there were bars in front of her. She turned in a circle. Correction, there were bars all around her. Those pendejos—whoever they were—had put her in a fucking cage.
She wrapped her fingers around the bars, testing them. They weren’t the best quality, but steel was steel, and she was certainly no superman.
Using her hands as her guide, she was able to detect a door, and with some fumbling, a keyhole. Opening locks had never been her forte, but if she’d had a single hairpin on her, she would have given it a try.
<
br /> With a sigh, she tried to utilize her other senses, facing the source of that weeping. It wasn’t coming from her own three-by-three cage, but it also wasn’t very far. A neighboring cage, perhaps? A fellow prisoner? The girl from earlier?
Lord knew, she felt like crying too. “Hello,” she said quietly, unsure what the surveillance and monitoring situation was. Was the room bugged? Electricity wasn’t required to work surveillance equipment.
The crying cut off as if Jules had flipped a switch. Ever so slowly, that metal scrape came again, and she could isolate that noise behind her. Two prisoners? A chill skittered up her spine. She turned around. “Hello?”
Scrape.
She took a step toward that noise. “Anyone there? I’m here to help.” Well, she had been here to help. Now she needed help. But no need to quibble over little details. “Hello?”
Scrape. Like iron rubbing against concrete.
She reached the opposite end of the cage, closest to the sound. “Come on, amigo. Help a girl out here. I’m really scared, and I could use some comfort.” She injected a tremulous note in her voice. “Please talk to me.”
“I’m scared too.”
The whispered voice was thin and reedy, and she could identify it as almost certainly belonging to the teenager she’d helped before. Jules whipped around again and grabbed on to the bars of her cage. “Who’s there?”
A sniffle came from the darkness. “My name’s Carrie.”
Jules instinctively dropped to a crouch, as if to make herself appear less threatening, even though she couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her face and she assumed the girl couldn’t either. She adopted the same coaxing tone she used to bring people out of their attics and bomb shelters. Trust me, sir, I’m here to help. I’ll take you somewhere safe. “Hi, Carrie. I’m Jules. You don’t have to be scared. I’ll help you.”
“I’m so sorry you’re here. It’s all my fault. I was supposed to escape, and I couldn’t even do that right.” Her voice dropped, filled with self-loathing. “Now everyone’s going to die.”
“Not if I can help it,” Jules said firmly. “How old are you, Carrie?”
