Fateless (Stateless Book 3)

by Meli Raine

  “A car bomb isn’t nothing,” Drew reminds her.

  “My own ranch was torched by arsonists. Stateless is capable of way more.”

  “They're dissembling,” Silas points out.

  “Or regrouping. Biding their time,” Mark adds. “Jane's right, though.”

  She nods. “It doesn't add up.”

  And then they all look at Callum and me, as if we have the answer.

  We both shrug, imitating the gesture so many of them use.

  “I agree,” he says with a frown. “There should be more of a presence. It doesn’t make sense.”

  The front door opens, every person in the room reaching reflexively for a weapon even though we have strong security everywhere, the movement making me realize I'm the only one without a gun in here. Even Allie has one in a holster at her sacrum.

  “It's me,” Duff announces. “Not Stateless.”

  Lily's body goes loose with relief.

  He walks over, eyes on Callum, curious. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Jane was just pointing out that we haven't been attacked yet,” Callum tells him.

  “You haven't? I heard about the car bomb.”

  “But that's it. That's all. Think about all the ways we were attacked.” Jane gestures at Lily and Lindsay.

  “Me, too!” Allie says. “My sister and I were knocked out in our own home.”

  “I don't even want to talk about what happened to my best friend and me in that storage room,” Carrie groans, hand moving down from her weapon.

  “It's worth noting. And being extra careful,” Drew says, looking at Duff, Mark, Chase, and Silas. “Maybe having everyone here in one place wasn't such a good idea.” His gaze rests on Emma, who is still asleep in my arms.

  “You have entire teams here, Drew. This place is a fortress,” Lindsay argues. “I told you Emma and I are safer here than at home.”

  “Yeah,” he says grudgingly. No place is ever safe enough to protect the people you love.

  I look at Callum, who is looking at me.

  “Here,” Lindsay whispers, taking Emma back from me. “I'll leave the floorplans with you. You have a car. Glen can drive. Can you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let's plan this out.”

  For the next hour, all twelve of us huddle around the table, Lindsay leading the group because of her intimate knowledge of the house blueprint.

  “Tell me again why we're here talking about all this shit,” Chase mutters to Mark. He's not trying to be quiet, but he's not rude, either. Allie whaps him, but lightly, on the arm.

  “Remember how unsafe it was in those first few months after everything went down with Allie? The kidnapping, her face...” Mark replies. I use peripheral vision to look at her, the light scars making more sense.

  “You think I'd ever forget it?” Chase grunts.

  “And how even now, we have to sleep with alarms on, and two guys outside, always watching us and Carrie and Allie? It's because of this shit. El Brujo was just a player in an enormous game. Every bit of info we give them – ” Mark looks at me, then Callum “– helps put an end to it all.”

  “You said that after we rescued Carrie and Amy from that storage room. And after Lindsay was rescued in Drew's apartment.”

  “You weren't there.”

  “No one asked.”

  “Chase,” Allie says, wide sympathetic eyes on me. “If anything we've shared can help, it's worth it.”

  “I know. It's just... what have we shared that helps?”

  “Knowing the background. Knowing what Glen knows. If someone brings up El Brujo, or a detail about the motorcycle gang that kidnapped you, Allie, it'll keep my cover,” I explain.

  Chase lets out a begrudging grunt as Mark gestures toward me with both hands, as if to say, Case in point.

  “And Mark's here because he's been embedded in so much,” Carrie adds. “I'm just here for the pizza.”

  Drew rolls his eyes but says nothing, tapping the blueprints.

  “The plan: Callum will hack into the Grove's database and swap Kina's prints for Glen's. He'll monitor all tech and security from afar. Lindsay and I already have clearance. One – or both – of us can handle any glitches.”

  “Glitches?” Callum snaps. “Better not be any.”

  “It's not a mission without glitches,” Silas points out.

  “What about backup?” Duff asks.

  “We have plenty of that.” Drew frowns at him, as if the question itself is offensive.

  “I mean inside the Grove. You need someone in case there's a problem.”

  “We've got that covered,” Drew tells him.

  “Who'd you assign?”

  A stern look is all Duff gets. Lily watches them, a concerned look on her face as she says, “Is it Duff?”

  “No.”

  She visibly relaxes.

  “What am I looking for?” I ask. “Specifically. Is there something you want that you haven't told me? Or Callum? What's the end goal of this?” I ask.

  “I wish I had more clarity,” Drew says softly. “But I don't. All we know is your compounds are being destroyed, terrorism incidents are on the rise, and it's all connected somehow to Glen. Anything she knows that we don't know is critical.” He looks at the blueprints. He sighs. Then he taps the papers again and says:

  “Follow the instructions. Meet us at The Grove. We'll act like we happened to arrive at the same time, but we need to be in contact so we actually do.”

  “How are the kids?” I ask Duff.

  “Fine. Philippa and Sela have them under control. They're well trained. No one says a word more than they need to. Makes them look cowed. The press is eating this up.”

  “But they're all safe? And healthy?”

  “Yes. Thanks to you.”

  “No–thanks to all of you.”

  To my horror, tears threaten to break out of my eyes. I just want to go back and see them all, but I can't. This mission is my mission. My true one.

  The only one that really helps the kids.

  “Let’s wrap up, then,” Drew declares. “Chase, you and Allie are already leaving. Mark is staying, but Carrie’s heading home–can you take Jane? I need Duff and Silas here.”

  “Of course, no problem,” Carrie replies.

  Mark peers at Drew as if reading him. “You think the danger level's higher than you expected?”

  “I just don't want to make it easy for them.”

  “You should go home,” Duff tells Lily, who rubs his head and laughs.

  “You're not getting rid of me that fast, big guy. I've barely seen you this week.”

  “For good reason.” He gives her a tender kiss on the cheek.

  “I'm staying,” she says firmly.

  “Me, too,” Jane insists, holding Silas' arm. “It's a beautiful house, security's tight, and tomorrow you have a lot going on.”

  He bends down and whispers something in her ear. She frowns.

  “Are you sure?” she asks him, earnest and worried.

  He nods.

  “Fine. Change of plans,” she says. “Lily, we need to let them focus.”

  Lily makes a face but doesn’t argue any further. She picks up her bag.

  “You can stay at our place if you don’t want to go home,” Carrie says to her. Jane, Lindsay, and Allie smile. It's clear they're all friends.

  Friends.

  I haven't had a friend since… have I ever had one?

  Callum's the closest. Maybe Judi. Janice, a little.

  Glen was my companion since the womb.

  But she was never my friend.

  A yawn overpowers me, making my head spin, my body yearning for solitude.

  “Your room is upstairs, first door on the right,” Drew says to me, helping Lindsay gather Emma's diaper bag. “Security's tight. Windows are safe. Sleep. Get as much rest as you can for tomorrow.”

  Lindsay's arms are full of sleeping baby.

  I wish I had a child in my arms to ground
me.

  Rather than say our goodbyes with the group, where hugging abounds, Callum and I depart abruptly. No one seems to mind.

  Tomorrow, I break into the president's personal home, pretend to be his lover, and steal government secrets.

  Ghosting on a gathering is the least of my worries.

  The bedroom Drew sent us to has one enormous bed covered in aqua and cream-colored pillows. It's dark in here, but neither of us turns on a light. I stand beside the bed, awkward. Last night, we slept together in a tiny single bed at the campground.

  Tonight, do we sleep together? What are the rules here?

  “Kina.” The way he says my name makes me feel warm. Comfortable. Like I can fall apart and also be strong. Like I can be terrified and also excited by the challenge.

  Like I can be me–whoever that is.

  “Yes?”

  “You don't have to do this.”

  “Do what?” I eye the bed.

  “Pretend to be Glen.”

  “Of course I do. It's our best hope.” As he speaks, the calmness in me splinters, like each piece of it is being pulled in a thousand different directions.

  “But not our only one.”

  “Is this my mission, Callum?” He moves closer yet does not touch me. I look up into the blue eyes I know so well. In my dreams, while he was gone, those eyes were the only window I had into the world outside the compound.

  But here, they're windows into my own soul.

  “It might be. Not an official one, but your deeper mission.”

  “How can we know what to do? How do we decide what is right, all on our own? We were trained to follow orders. To use judgment in smaller ways. Not like this.”

  “I think we know what's right in our guts. Instinct directs us where we need to go.”

  “Everything I know is gone. Everything. How do I know my own moral code when it turns out the leaders are monsters by mass society's values? We're monsters, too, by default.”

  “You're the prettiest monster I've ever seen.”

  I almost kick him for that comment.

  “I feel like a live wire, spitting and twisting after a vicious storm, and no one's coming to secure me to make me less likely to hurt or kill people.”

  “You're planning to hurt or kill someone?”

  “Aren't you? Isn't that how this works, Callum? We're in the fight of our lives. I feel like I felt the night of The Test. I'm someone's prey, like The Test and Jason. This time it’s someone far more powerful and with a much stronger motive.”

  “I didn't let them get you then, and I sure as hell won't let them get you now.”

  His hands move to mine, grasping them, his touch warm.

  “We’ve gone through so much. And tomorrow, you face a challenge I don’t want you to face.” He squeezes my hands so hard, the bones ache, but I welcome the pressure.

  It grounds me.

  “I don’t want to do it either, but I have to.”

  “I know. If I could take the pain away from you, I would.”

  “The challenge is how we grow. You know that. Suffering builds character.”

  “Suffering just causes pain. We can build character in other ways.” A light touch on my arm is anything but suffering, Callum moving closer. We’re inches apart now, our faces so close. I feel sadness, wondering if it comes through in my eyes.

  Pulling me to the bed, Callum directs me, moves my body for me, signaling to me about what I know I need desperately. We sit next to each other, the bed so big, so sprawling, inviting us to take advantage.

  Inviting us to take each other.

  Through the kiss that comes next, I know how much he wants me. Losing myself in him, I will the racing thoughts to run away, play tag with each other, go somewhere I can’t hear them. The only way to find transcendence is to allow myself to sequester every piece of me that fights for attention, leaving only my body and heart, completely engaged in the way Callum’s tongue traces my teeth, how his hand cups my jaw, fingers pressing into my scalp with a gentle massage that nearly makes me purr.

  “I don’t want you to have to go to The Grove tomorrow,” he says against my mouth, punctuating his words with little kisses, as if each one can take some of my searing fear away.

  “I don’t want to think about tomorrow. Please. Can we just think about right now?”

  “We can do more than think, Kina,” he whispers as his hand cups my breast, the move making me gasp. I lean into him, sliding my arms up, wrapping them around his neck as he pulls me over him. My hips dig into his, the hard fullness of his erection against me making my body shiver at the same time an impossible heat explodes through me.

  This feels so good.

  How could I not know how good this would feel?

  His hands reach for my ass as his hips move up slowly, the rhythm hypnotic, making me wet and wanting.

  And then I feel the pull.

  No.

  Not now.

  “Please,” I rasp, unsure whether I’m asking Callum for more or for elevation to stay at bay.

  Both, really.

  Callum takes that as a plea, hot hand moving up under my shirt, unclasping my bra, freeing me. Rotating our bodies, he sits up as I straddle him, his hand on the hem of my shirt, stripping me bare in an instant.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmurs as he presses a flat hand between my shoulder blades and rises up, mouth taking in my left nipple.

  I melt.

  I ignite.

  And then–I elevate.

  “No!” I utter before the sensation overwhelms me, turning his touch into a cold, wax-like sensation, as if a glob of gel were smearing itself across my skin.

  He stops.

  He rakes one hand through his hair as I gaze over his right shoulder, body aching to be used to defeat him.

  He pulls away, giving me space.

  We pant in silence.

  In sadness.

  What feels like a year passes in a few minutes, a deep shame emerging as I de-escalate the elevation.

  “You?” I finally mumble. “Did you?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “I’m–I’m sorry.”

  “Never apologize. It’s not your fault. It’s never your fault. Ever,” he hisses, the words so emphatic, his anger at what has been instilled in us easy to confuse with anger at me.

  “I don’t know what to say.” A part of me wants to cover myself, to get dressed. Another part wants to strip him bare and make love, elevation be damned. Now that it’s fading, I’m left with a stone-cold exhaustion.

  I put one hand on his shoulder.

  That seems to signal something to him, for he touches me again, his hands on my knees. Our eyes meet, seconds passing, no words shared.

  In that gaze, we find our way back.

  Tired, but back.

  He pulls me next to him, carefully peeling the bedsheets and cover back. We crawl under and I curl into him, waiting.

  I hold my hand up in the air, yawning, wondering how the children are, where they are sleeping, whether they'll settle. No longer concerned that they'll behave in certain ways that meet our leaders' expectations, I find myself thinking about their feelings.

  How do they feel?

  It's transgressive to think this way.

  And I like it.

  A yawn escapes me, then the contagion strikes Callum, who pulls me closer, his arm casually around my waist, finger brushing my ribcage.

  “Sleep, Kina. You need it.”

  “So do you.”

  “I needed that more.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “We did,” he whispers. “We tried. It counts. It matters.”

  And those are the last words we say to each other before sleep steals our voices.

  I wish it could be a thief of fear as well.

  Chapter 15

  Callum

  “How's this?” she asks, blonde hair smoothed back, a bit of bangs over her forehead, the eyeliner strong and bold.
>
  Just like her sister.

  “You could be her twin.”

  “I am her twin, Callum!”

  The joke is intentional. She's so nervous. Her anxiety will give her away. She has to snap out of it.

  Has to.

  “You look like her. Now, be her. Just for a moment.”

  “I don't know what Smith was thinking. If anyone should have been promoted to Romeo's position, it's me. Not Callum. He's too weak,” she snarls, the curl of her lip perfect as she uses her tongue to press it away from her teeth in a gesture that is quintessentially Glen.

  I reel back. It's like someone flipped a switch from Kina to Glen. “You–wow. That's convincing.”

  “I can do whatever she does.”

  “Including sleep with the president? And possibly Josephs?”

  Flat eyes meet mine. “If that's what it takes to get the information and save the children, then yes.”

  “Really?” My own reaction surprises me. What is this pull in my chest, the one making my fists clench, my jaw tighten? I want to handcuff her to the bed to keep her from going to The Grove.

  “Of course. We're trained to do whatever's needed. You know that.”

  “I don't want you sleeping with Bosworth.”

  “I don't intend to. But if I–”

  I kiss her to stop the flow of words that make me rage.

  Tap tap tap.

  The knock on the door startles us, making her teeter in her high-heeled boots. I grab her shoulders and steady her, the kiss interrupted. My interruption was upstaged by someone else’s.

  “Sorry,” Mark Paulson says. “But we need you to get going. Drew called–there’s been a change of plans. You're going by car service. Glen's used them before, and it makes it easier to handle the two-car situation. It’ll arouse less suspicion.”

  “Is the car here?”

  He looks at his phone. “You've got two minutes.”

  An unexplained ripple of emotion makes me angry. Furious. Someone threw a lit match on the pile of gunpowder that is my heart.

  Kina touches my arm as Mark backs out of the room.

  “Callum. I feel it, too.”

  “What?”

  “Two minutes. He doesn't know.”