by S. M. Butler
“How about you?”
Murphy shrugged. “Giroux tried to kill Addison. Me. Hardy. You. He killed his own family. That list of crimes is long. He needs to be brought down.”
At least we agreed on that. Alex needed to be stopped, and that meant that we needed Jack on our side again. He had all kinds of access, and Alex thought he had the man on a leash, a tight one.
The thing about Jack was that he didn’t stay on a leash. Jack did what was best for Jack. And while most people would be wary of people like that, I actually thought that made him more reliable in a way. While most would be iffy on trusting Jack—and I was—I knew he wanted his daughter free. And that was where our agreements laid. He’d stay with Alex and report back to us as he could, and in return, we’d find where his daughter was and keep her safe.
“I have a few hours to burn before I leave. I’m gonna eat something.” Without waiting for Murphy to say anything, I left, heading toward the chow hall, which was a little more than a twenty foot room. But with less than ten of us there at any given time, it was usually sufficient.
But the sight in the chow hall was enough to make me almost want to skip this meal all together. Not because it was bad, but because everyone was there. Well, most everyone. And unfortunately, “most” included Dylan Urban.
“Hey, Cadence!” Richter waved happily. I waved back.
I wasn’t ready to face Dylan yet. I’d let him walk away in Valonia. I’d made my choice, and yet, I couldn’t reconcile it. Every time I saw him, I needed him, craved him desperately. His eyes found me immediately, zeroing in on me like heat-seeking missiles. He downed the shot in his hand, and picked up his beer, never losing eye contact with me.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, I broke contact and headed for the box of MREs. We sometimes had someone from outside the team here to do the cooking for us, but apparently, when Stephen split the team from the regular military, creature comforts like regular food vanished. I missed regular food. MREs messed with my stomach. But I understood the need for security at this point.
I grabbed one package and a bottle of water and sat down, apart from where they were drinking. I wouldn’t be there long enough to get sucked into conversations.
Dylan plopped into the seat across the table. “Hey, sweetheart.”
I glanced at Dylan. He didn’t look drunk… “Look, Dylan—”
“Oh, the Ice Queen does know my name after all.”
“Please don’t.”
“Don’t? Don’t what? Talk to you?” Dylan laughed. The boisterous sound caught the attention of a couple of the others, but they went back to what they were doing, leaving Dylan and me alone. “Don’t worry. I’ll behave and not talk about feelings.”
“What do you want?” I whispered. Even having him this close, seeing the anger radiating off him, it hurt my heart more than the phantom pain of my bullet hole scars in my chest.
“I need to know. This is important.”
“Know what?”
He sighed, and the anger seemed to deflate from him, leaving behind a pained expression on his face. “You love me. I know you do. But you won’t let yourself. Why?”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about feelings.” My voice almost sounded like a stranger’s to my ears. It was rough, and quiet.
“I lied,” he said through clenched teeth.
“It’s too complicated, Dylan,” I said.
“It’s really not.” He sighed. “You’re pushing so hard. Keeping everyone back. But I don’t give a shit about them. I want to know why not me? When I know that you feel the same way, why not me?”
“Oh, Dylan…” I let out a long shaky breath. He really didn’t know what he did to me. “If it could be anyone that I loved, it would be you in a heartbeat. I can’t let myself.”
“Why not? Because not loving, not being human worked out so well for your mentor?” he snorted and pushed himself to his feet. The chair fell backward in the process. All conversation in the room ceased. Dylan’s anger suffocated me, enveloped and wrapped around my lungs, my heart, anything it could touch. He seemed to notice he’d attracted attention, his eyes casing the room briefly before they settled back on my. When he spoke again, he leaned over the table, his voice dangerously low. “You have a fucked up view, Cadence Long. But dumb sap that I am, I’ma still be here, whenever you decide to unfuck it.”
He walked away from me for the second time in a week, grabbed that beer he’d just opened before he came over to me, and left the room. I sat in stunned silence, trying hard not to burst into tears, trying hard not to be that pitiful, to be crying over a guy that I had decided I shouldn’t have… but in the end, I had to grab my food and leave, because I just couldn’t bring myself to fall apart in front of the team.
~*~*~
Dylan
I sat down on the chair I’d been in before Cadence came in the room. Richter stared at me, a frown creasing his forehead. I ignored him. “Dude.”
“Don’t ‘dude’ me, Jesse.” I already knew what he wanted to say. It was a harsh way to talk to her, and I’d even seen the beginnings of tears. Cadence never cried. It wasn’t her style. She’d sooner punch me in the junk than cry.
“Seriously. That was kind of harsh.”
“I don’t care.” Truth was, I did. Too much, and that was the core of the problem, wasn’t it? Everything would be second to Jack Allen and the Revenge of Cadence Long.
“Maybe that’s what I need to do, Jesse.”
“Whatev’s, yo. Letting her leave like that… that’s rough.”
Leave? I turned toward Jesse, who shoveled a huge bite of the chili mac and cheese into his mouth. “What do you mean, leave? You mean the room?”
“Nah. She’s leaving with Allen. In like, ten minutes or so.”
Murphy hadn’t said anything about sending Jack Allen anywhere. But then, I’d asked not to be involved, hadn’t I? And he’d respected that. Now I kind of wanted to punch him for listening to me. “I gotta go.”
Jesse said something but I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I ran out of the chow hall and headed down toward the interrogation rooms. I stopped midway and flipped around. We didn’t tend to keep people in the interrogation room once the interrogation was done. They’d move him to the back rooms, where the holding cells were, the ones where Murphy had grabbed Addison when she hid from us.
When I got there, one cell door was open, with no one in there. She couldn’t really think she was going to leave without… Was that what she was trying to tell me? Was she trying to tell me goodbye? And I hadn’t listened? I couldn’t let her leave like that. We had to fix things before that. Because if I knew anything about Cadence Long, it was that if she left, she might not come back.
I sprinted toward the cargo entrance, because that was the only real secure exit we had for a prisoner transfer. I didn’t stop until I’d traveled up fourteen flights of stairs because the elevators were too slow. Breathing hard, I stopped close to the cargo entrance. I could hear voices. One female and one male.
I ducked down behind a rack as I saw Jack, cuffed with his hands behind him. Cadence guided him into the backseat.
“What’s your boyfriend going to say when he finds out you ran away with me?” Jack grinned at her in a way that made me want to stand up and punch him.
“Don’t have a boyfriend.” Was that bitterness I heard in her voice? Or was I just imagining what I wanted to hear? “And we’re not running away.”
He chuckled. “Why is it the lovebirds always have no clue that they’re lovebirds?”
“Shut up and get in the car, Jack. And while you’re at it, can the attitude. No one else is around. Your tough guy routine doesn’t work on me.”
Except me, but they didn’t know that.
“Fine. It’s just a hard habit to break after you’ve been doing it so long.”
“Oh, don’t give me the sad sack routine, Jack.”
“Are the handcuffs necessary?”
She stopped a
nd faced him. “You shot me in the chest. Twice. Trust is a little bit on my No Go list for you.”
“Sweet pea, that was five years ago.”
“Okay… You’re right. It was a long time ago.” She paused and held up her hand, ticking off her fingers as she spoke. “Let’s go with what you’ve done in the last week then. I have stitches from where your knife cut me. You drugged me all up to high heaven and tortured me for information you knew I wouldn’t give you. You stole my laptop and tried to steal government secrets from it.” She rounded on Jack, her anger flaring. I was so damn proud of her for not taking his shit. “Explain to me why exactly I would trust you?”
“You make a good point,” he replied, leaning back on the seat. “I’ll keep the handcuffs.”
“Damn straight.” She slammed the door to the car in his face and stalked around to the driver’s side. She opened the driver’s side, and just as she was about to get in, she paused. Was Jack saying something to her I couldn’t hear? She glanced up, searching. Her green eyes zeroed in on where I was sitting, as if she could see me where I hid.
Her lips pursed together tightly. Shit. She could see me.
But she didn’t try to approach me. Instead, she walked back around to put a blindfold over Jack’s eyes. Then she shut the back door again, and turned toward me and crooked her finger at me.
Crap.
I stood up from my hiding spot and walked over to her. She did not look happy.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was just—” I glanced back at the rack.
“Murphy said you didn’t want in on this. So why are you here?”
“I guess I was just wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“Wondering what was so much more important than us.”
She shook her head, putting her hands on her hips. “Jesus, Bambi. Is that what you think?” She lifted her head back and then met my eyes again. “I can’t talk about this right now. But we will talk. When I come back, okay?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid, Cady. I’m not.”
“I know…” she whispered. “I know that. But it’s the only way that I can keep my head around you.”
That admission had to hurt, had to dig deep into her. It was the closest admission to actually loving me that she’d made yet. And it was the best I was going to get. She sighed, heavy and frustrated. “I have to go. I’ll be back.”
“Are you sure?”
She put her hand on my chest and whispered. “Trust me. Please.” Long moments stretched out around us while she waited for a response. But I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to trust her, but more than that, I wanted her trust. Even walking away from her hadn’t given me peace from that.
Slowly, I nodded. “Fine.”
She didn’t smile, didn’t react to my answer. At least not for a few seconds. She searched my face. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Finally, without saying anything else, she seemed to have the answer she wanted. She left, got in the car with Jack in the back seat and drove away. Trust was a funny thing. I’d put my trust in her, yet again, but I still had my doubts that she would come back at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cadence
For the most part, I ignored Jack’s inane prattling. We had a two hour drive ahead of us and I didn’t want to have to stop and gag him in addition to the blindfold. Why had I never realized how irritating the man was before? With the ego alone, I was surprised that we both fit in the car.
I knew why I hadn’t found him irritating before. I’d been blind to it. I’d been so into hero worship I’d hung on every damn word he’d said. He’d killed that in me a long time ago, about the time he’d shot me in the chest. I hadn’t died that day, but a big part of who I had been before that day had.
“You used to be much more talkative, Cady.”
“Maybe I just don’t have much to say to you anymore.”
Jack fell silent, and through the rear-view mirror, I saw his face fall, even with the blindfold over his eyes. But he seemed to remember that I could see him, so he perked up and grinned. “It’s kind of weird being the one talking.”
“You could just not talk,” I reminded him. It would be nice to be alone with my current thoughts. But then, my current thoughts couldn’t move beyond Dylan, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea.
He chuckled. “Am I annoying you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“What is your deal, Jack? You’re going back. You’re getting what you want. Jack wins again.”
His jaw set in determined stubbornness. “What I want is my daughter free. That’s what you promised me.”
“And that’s what will happen as long as you hold up your end of the deal.”
He scoffed. “Like the government is any different from Alex Giroux. Everyone wants something in exchange for something else.” He shook his head, disbelief shining through his visible features. I almost wondered what was in his eyes beneath that blindfold. “She’s nothing more than a bargaining chip to you people. But she’s my daughter.” For a brief moment, I saw the real Jack, the one he kept hidden from everyone. The one that was father to one little girl who was in big trouble.
“Don’t lump me in with Giroux.”
“Don’t act like him.”
Was I? Saving his daughter wasn’t contingent on him not betraying us. She didn’t deserve to be put in the middle of this thing. I’d save her regardless, but Jack didn’t need to know that, though I’d have laid odds he’d figure it out quick enough.
He resituated, probably uncomfortable since his hands were cuffed behind him. But trusting Jack wasn’t on my list of things I needed to do. He’d burned that bridge with me.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“There’s a small town. I’ll drop you there, and you can use my contacts there to get you back to Giroux.”
“Where?”
“Just relax, Jack. It’s a few hours away.”
“You’re being vague.”
“I know.”
“So I can’t lead Alex back to you and your team?”
“That’s right,” I told him. Were they my team? I worked with them, but I didn’t really fit in with them. Not really.
“I see,” he said. Silence reigned over us. “So… The kid. It seems like he likes you.”
“Oh, we are so not talking about that,” I snapped. “My love life, or lack thereof, is none of your goddamned business.”
“You know, you were always cute when you got defensive.” He chuckled. “It was hot.”
“Shut up.”
It continued like that for the next two hours. Jack making snide remarks, sometimes hitting on me. It was a circular pattern. Over and over until I couldn’t stand it anymore. But luckily, we arrived in the town without killing him. I stopped just outside the small village. I hadn’t been back here in five years, though I’d remained in contact with a few people here. Even though this place was burned as a safe house for me, it was worth it to continue to foster assets here.
I swallowed. I came around the car, and opened the back door. “Come on.”
He stood and I put my hands on his arms, guiding him to turn. “Turn.”
He didn’t seem to have anything to say at this point. He was silent as I unlocked his wrists. He reached up and pulled the blindfold off. He blinked in the bright sunlight, taking in his surroundings. Recognition flared in his dark eyes and he laughed. “I can’t believe you brought me here.”
“It’s fitting,” I told him, fixing a stray lock of hair that had fallen down in his face by pulling it behind his ear. It was incredibly intimate, and left me feeling exposed. I wasn’t used to Jack having the longer hair. He’d always kept it short. But this was a necessary move.
“That’s the place, right?” He asked, pointing to a small two story building. I nodded, and his smile fell away. “You’re not so bad, sweet pea. You grew up.”
“Oh
, hush. Don’t tell me that.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear it. It almost made him human again. “Listen, I’m not giving up on you. You’re kind of an asshole, but we’re going to get you out, with your daughter, safe and sound. As agreed. And we’re going to take down Giroux in the process. He won’t ever hurt your family.”
“Right. You’ll understand if I withhold judgment on that, for now?”
“Just stick to the plan. No deviations. No improvisations or all bets are off. I will put two in your head myself.”
He hesitated. Uncertainty crossed his features. I took some satisfaction in that. He didn’t know how to handle Cadence With a Backbone. Good.
“I know you probably won’t believe me, but I really didn’t want to shoot you. I’m sorry, Cady, for what I did to you.”
I grinned at him, to hide the rampant roller coaster of emotions inside me. I shook my head. “No, you’re not sorry about shooting me, old man. You’re just sorry I survived.” I shut the back door and walked back around to the driver’s side. I pointed back toward another building, on the other end of the town. “Go there, and ask for Jesus. He’ll patch you up after and he’s got a phone you can use.”
He nodded and blew out a breath. “Right. So, let’s get this over with. I’m putting my life in your hands.”
I would have been lying if I said I didn’t like how uncomfortable Jack looked in that moment as I pulled out my gun. The very slight shifting of his weight from foot to foot matched the way he rubbed his fingers with his thumb. It wasn’t like Jack to give me—or anyone—nervous tells like that. He really thought I was going to kill him.
“Don’t worry, Jack. If I wanted you dead, that would have happened hours ago.”
“I just don’t normally trust… anyone, especially not when they’re about to shoot me.”
“Relax,” I raised my gun.
“You know, people like us… we don’t really ever relax.”
“I know,” I whispered, and fired the weapon. The sound ricocheted all around us, and the small bullet slammed into Jack’s shoulder with such force that he lost his balance. I stepped over to him as he moaned and started to push himself up with his good arm. Blood was already starting to flow fast and furious. “I’m not like you, Jack.”
