Beyond Pain

by Kit Rocha

  Or maybe she really was getting soft.

  Some part of her trusted Bren, for better or worse, and that made his words true on every level. Closing her eyes, she leaned in until her shoulder touched his. She wouldn't be able to ignore her body's shiver of reaction forever, but tonight she focused on the satisfaction of friendship. "No. I'm not alone."

  "So, how 'bout it?" He hesitated. "I can't skip the party, but you could, if you wanted."

  She considered it for a moment, balanced the loneliness of being the only person on the compound not celebrating against the awkwardness of being the only outsider at the party.

  Except no one treated her like an outsider, not with Bren around. "I'll come. I want to."

  "Good. Trix'll want you to be there."

  Something he'd been careful not to mention until after she agreed, just as he'd kept any hint of encouragement from his voice. Smiling, she clinked her beer against his. "Then it's a deal. As long as I can scowl at Ace if he tries to make me dance."

  Bren downed half his beer in several long swallows. "Scowl at Ace for whatever you want. He probably deserves it."

  "Yeah, but he probably likes it, too." At least he'd stopped tossing her those flirtatious smiles, the ones that were all charm and dirty promise--and all the more alarming because she didn't think he did it on purpose. "But he's not so bad anymore. Did you tell him to stop hitting on me?"

  "Might as well tell the sun not to shine, sweetness."

  She laughed. The sound was so foreign it still startled her sometimes, another way her body turned traitor around Bren. The warmth and the tingles and the smiling and now laughter. Low and a little rusty, but it was real. "Are you almost done working?"

  "Yeah." He pulled down the metal rod propping up the hood and let it slam shut. "Want me to walk you to your place?"

  "Sure." She slid off the worktable and tried not to let her gaze linger on his shoulders. This was always the most dangerous time, when she was loose and relaxed enough to remember a time when sex had been more good than bad, when she'd appreciated a man with a hard body and beautiful shoulders.

  White looked good on him, especially with all the engine grease. His T-shirt clung, the sleeves stretching wide over flexing biceps. Aside from his O'Kane cuffs, his arms were free of ink, but a black swirl curled up his neck from beneath the fabric, hinting at the tattoo that covered his entire back.

  She loved watching him fight in the cage, watching all those muscles move together so perfectly she thought the prissy bastards in Eden must be at least partly right about their God. Only a higher power could have created something as graceful and stunning and deadly as Brendan Donnelly.

  He turned and caught her staring--he must have--but he didn't call her on it. Instead, he finished off his beer and held out his hand. "Come on."

  Exhaling, she slipped her fingers into his. His hands still bore smudges, the kind that would rub off on her skin as tangible proof of contact. She knew she'd stare at it later, at the dark grease on the back of her hand that marked the spot he'd rubbed his thumb over, and she'd remember the way it felt. This jolt, the way his touch shivered along her nerve endings as if her instincts couldn't decide if he meant blissful safety or delicious danger.

  Her gut already knew. Her body was safe with Bren, but her mind, her heart, her soul... Hell, Wilson Trent had shattered her into a thousand razor-edged pieces, but Bren could grind those shards into dust.

  If she had half a brain left, she'd run.

  Chapter Two

  Slums were slums, no matter where you went.

  Bren ducked a low-hanging clothesline and marked the progress of the footsteps behind him. Quick, too light to belong to someone his size. Nervous, like a scurry.

  He stifled a sigh and slowed. He knew better than to wear his normal clothes on an errand like this. He didn't dress fancy, but O'Kanes could afford quality. Forget the silver he wore or the cash in his pocket, his leather jacket alone could feed a desperate kid for a month.

  He should know.

  The scuttling steps drew closer, and Bren spun in time to intercept the arm swinging at him. Dirty steel flashed, and he twisted his wrist with a jerk, flinging the knife into a pile of trash heaped against the nearest wall.

  His attacker was just a girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen, but she looked older under her dirty, matted hair. The features youth should have softened had been starved into sharpness, and her eyes were flat. Not hard, not quite, but dull. She stared up at Bren, who could have snapped her neck like a twig, but no fear materialized. No worry, but no hope, either. Like it didn't fucking matter what happened to her, she was finished either way.

  That was what decided her fate. "You need to pick your marks better. Cash is worthless if you're too dead to use it."

  She bared her teeth at him, but even that gesture of defiance stirred no emotion in her exhausted gaze. It was a challenge born of stubborn habit, like her words. "What, you some kinda do-gooder?"

  "No." He didn't release her. "But I know a place you can go."

  Suspicion tightened her features. "If you're a pervert, you're too far east. The cribs are on the other side of the city center."

  Her conclusion was too logical for him to find it amusing. "No, no sex. I'm on my way to visit a friend. You can come with me, get something to eat."

  It must have been days since her last meal, long enough to make the tiniest scrap of hope worth risking everything. She stopped trying to wrench free and stared up at him in silence for one second. Two. "Okay," she muttered, looking away. "Whatever."

  "The concrete building past the tunnel access. Do you know it?"

  She nodded, silent and wary.

  "Good." She'd be able to find her way back on her own. "Come on."

  Bren didn't slow down for the girl as he continued on to Cooper's building. She kept pace, undoubtedly accustomed to moving fast through the packed alleyways. "What should I call you?" he asked. Not her name, just something.

  Her gaze rested heavily on him. "Syd," she said finally. "Call me Syd."

  "I'm Bren."

  "Bren," she echoed, like she didn't believe him. "You don't make any damn sense."

  "No?" He stopped in front of Coop's door and pounded on it with the side of his fist, watching the girl out of the corner of his eye as his jacket sleeve rode up to bare the ink around his wrist. "I'm from the sectors. Four."

  She'd stared him right in the face with the threat of death hanging between them, but the sight of his O'Kane tattoos widened her eyes. She inhaled sharply and tensed, as if she might bolt, but the scrape of the door caught her attention.

  Coop was old and grizzled, his once-powerful body stooped with age and the ache of joints that had suffered too much punishment in his youth. But his eyes were still sharp, and he snorted roughly as his gaze jumped from Bren to Syd. "Good thing I had Tammy cook extra. This one looks like she'd chew her way through my boots if I gave her the chance. Bring her on in."

  Bellyaching aside, Bren knew the old man would take care of any strays he dragged along with him. He urged the girl through the door and followed her. "Cruz couldn't make it, but he sends his regards."

  "That boy's not flexible enough to travel between worlds," Coop said, only pausing long enough to let Bren bolt the door before leading them both down a narrow hallway. "Wherever he's standing, he puts down roots, and that's all there is to it."

  He was right. Cruz had settled in to Sector Four and life as an O'Kane, but only because he'd thrown himself headfirst into work. Running jobs for Dallas wasn't that much different from being a high-level, decorated military police officer in Eden. You did what your boss told you to do, no matter how ugly or dirty.

  A soldier was a soldier.

  "He still thinks about you, though." Bren pulled a credit stick out of his jacket pocket and pressed it into Coop's hand.

  Coop tucked it into his pocket as they passed through the open door and into a warm, brightly lit kitchen. "Good. Maybe next time you com
e around, he'll unbend enough to visit."

  The busty blonde bent over the stove turned with a smile of greeting that froze when she caught sight of Syd. Cooper's housekeeper wasn't much older than Bren, but she had a maternal streak a sector wide and a backbone stiffened by years of dealing with Coop and his protégés.

  Syd didn't stand a chance. One second, she was still eyeing the hallway as if considering a bolt for freedom. In the next, Tammy had pressed a warm meat pie into the girl's thin hands and was sweeping her toward the stairs with the promise of a hot bath and clean clothes.

  Coop watched them disappear with a look of fond amusement. "Suppose it's just as well Tammy's living here full-time now. She's good with the wary ones. Doesn't take any shit, but she doesn't scare them like my busted face seems to."

  Survival--the strongest drive of all. "A hundred bucks says you still catch her trying to rob you tonight."

  "I hope so," Coop replied heartily. "Those are the ones who have a chance. The ones who ain't done fighting."

  "The ones like me?" Bren hit the living room first and dropped into his favorite chair in the corner.

  Coop handed him a bottle of beer before claiming his spot on the throne-like recliner. "No one's quite like you, boy, and thank God for that. You wouldn't have stopped until you'd taken everything that was bolted down."

  "I brought it all back." And so would this girl. She was beaten down, but not broken to the point of cruelty. Not yet.

  He cracked open his beer with a glance at the label. Liam Riley was still the only brewer in town, and that wasn't likely to change. Rachel made plenty of beer in Sector Four, but her brew stayed in the sectors, where it wouldn't compete with her father's.

  As if he could sense the thought, Coop lifted his own bottle. "How's Liam's girl? Still sitting snug with O'Kane?"

  "Yeah." Bren skirted the news of her dancing and of her brief involvement with Cruz. None of those things were his to discuss.

  "You come across the wall just for a visit, or did you have business in the city?"

  Business. Bren busied himself with his first gulp of beer, anything to postpone the inevitable answer the man wouldn't want to hear.

  But Coop had always been good at reading between the lines. "Miller, huh? When're you gonna finally put a knife between that bastard's ribs?"

  "When the time's right." A quick, easy answer, as if Bren hadn't spent hours trailing him. Years biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

  Lieutenant Russell Miller--Bren's former commanding officer, the man responsible for his banishment from the city. The mission had been simple: plant some contraband on a mid-level executive at one of the biggest import companies in Eden, a man suspected of embezzling funds. The resulting investigation would include his financial records, making the evidence-gathering process easy for his employer.

  Simple, except the man hadn't embezzled anything, and he hadn't gone easy. He'd gone public, and Miller had denied ever giving Bren the order. Instead, he'd sacrificed him to the nonexistent mercy of a perfunctory military tribunal.

  Bren tried to imagine Dallas doing the same, abandoning one of his men instead of owning up to his own failed maneuvers, but he couldn't do it. Miller was a man without conscience, without honor, and one day he would die for it.

  "Hey." Coop snapped his fingers. "You goin' down the rabbit hole or something?"

  "No." Bren drank more beer. It was smooth, with none of the bite Rachel brewed into hers. It made him miss home. "You heard about Three? The other sector leaders put Dallas in charge of cleaning up the shit Trent left behind."

  "Is that what's going down?" The old man grunted. "Heard a hell of a lot of rumors, but they're nothing compared to Gareth Woods turning up with his throat slit. Been fifteen years since someone managed to murder a councilman."

  Bren swirled the amber liquid in his bottle. "It's a mystery, all right."

  "Ain't it? And that fancy lady from Two on the hook for it, and not a whisper of your boss anywhere."

  "Maybe he wasn't involved." It wasn't exactly a lie, since Lex had been the one to take Woods down.

  Coop grunted again. "Just as well. I hear Eden's got their fancy knickers in a twist over a whole mess of things."

  Of course they did, because the sectors were in upheaval. Power fluctuations were unstable, dangerous. Maybe no one gave a shit that Gareth Woods--a councilman, one of their own--was dead. The man had been crooked, even depraved. But with the sectors in flux, they'd be watching anyway.

  Bren changed the subject. "Anything else I should know? Word on the ground?"

  Coop nursed his beer for a moment before nodding abruptly. "A lot of eyes on the sectors, but it's more than that." He hesitated. "The whole city's got a vibe, like something bad might go down, but we don't know what it is yet."

  A warning, loud and clear. When the men with the helicopters and explosives got nervous... "Everyone's waiting to see what happens next, and whether they need to blow it all to hell and back."

  "Wouldn't be the first time." Coop fixed him with a steady gaze. "You just make sure you're not standing there when it does. I put too much effort into you to have it all go to waste."

  "I'm an O'Kane now. If it comes to that, you know exactly where I'll be."

  Coop sighed. "I know. At least you've got Cruz to watch your back now. That's something."

  It wouldn't be a visit to his friend and mentor, his surrogate father, if he didn't ask. "There's a place for you there, you know. No questions. Tammy, too."

  "I know, but I still have a few comforts inside these walls. And Tammy's tough as nails, but she's an Eden girl to her bones." Coop's smile returned, amused and a little self-mocking. "She gets flustered at the idea of kissing before marriage. You O'Kanes would give her a heart attack."

  "Could be. But I think you'd be surprised how fast that fades when you get outside of these walls."

  "A lot of shit does," the old man acknowledged. "You look good, Bren. You happy out there?"

  "I'm--" He had everything. Power, security, the kind of family he'd have killed for as a child on the streets in the slums of Eden. Not a damn worry in the world.

  Except for Six.

  His lips formed the words without his thought or consent. "You've had a lot of kids come through here. How broken is too broken? How do you know what you can't fix?"

  Coop didn't answer right away. He twisted the beer bottle in his hand, staring at the label as he picked away at the edge. "No one's too broken. But you can't fix a damn thing. All you can do is figure out which ones want to fix themselves, then give them the tools to get the job done."

  Wise words, and it was just as well. Bren wasn't the man anyone called to fix things. He tore them down, ripped them apart. Killed them and disposed of the evidence.

  He wasn't a man meant to build things--Eden had made sure of that, both with his childhood and his military training--but maybe he could stand beside her while she picked up her pieces. And the truth, something she'd definitely never heard from Wilson Trent's lips--about her situation, about Bren himself--he could give her that, too.

  Surely it would be enough.

  Bren was used to being called to Dallas's office. The man handed out orders from behind his wide desk, inhabiting the space with an assurance that spoke of power.

  The woman at his right hand, though... That was new.

  Lex studied Bren as Dallas poured a round of drinks. She had stepped fully into her role as queen, all right, but it was obvious she didn't intend to plan parties and serve as eye candy on her man's arm. She was in it, advising Dallas every step of the way.

  "Bren can handle it," she said finally. "And if he can't, he'll let you know. He won't let his ego choke the shit out of him."

  "You hear that, Bren?" Dallas grinned. "Rare fucking praise, indeed."

  Bren held his answering smile in check. "I didn't know I had an ego. What exactly am I handling?"

  Dallas stabbed a finger down on the map spread out between
them. "Sector Three."

  Bren stared at the lines marking out the sector. So far, Dallas had sent the usual suspects over to Three--him, Jasper, and Mad. "Why me?"

  Lex downed her whiskey shot. "Don't ask questions I already answered, Donnelly."

  "There's what she said," Dallas agreed. "But it's also time. Lex and I need to focus on the bigger game. That means Jas is stepping up here in Four to cover more of the day-to-day shit, and I need someone I can trust keeping an eye on Three. Then there's Six." His lips twisted. "The girl. Not the sector, and that's fucking confusing. Don't suppose you've gotten a real name out of her yet?"

  Bren arched an eyebrow.

  Dallas sighed. "Fine, I'll deal with it. But you get to deal with her. I figure she can help you cut through a lot of the bullshit over there. She knows who's who, the lay of the land."

  His first instinct was to refuse. She was still on shaky ground, barely trusted him, and maybe the last thing she needed was to go back there. But to not even allow her to make the decision for herself? Unacceptable. "She's not an O'Kane, not yet. If she says no?"

  Dallas opened his mouth--then shut it and looked at Lex, who laid a hand on his shoulder and answered. "If she says no, that's fine. She can answer questions and provide information without budging. But if you're going, she'll want to go with you."

  "Probably," Bren allowed, dropping his gaze once more to the map. "What's my objective?"

  "Information, to start." Dallas bent and resurfaced with a second map, which he unrolled on top of the other one. It outlined Three, but large parts of it had been sketched vaguely with pencil, while other parts remained completely blank. "Ace pieced this together from the intel we have, but it isn't much. We need to know what's over there, who's got it, and who might try to take more when we're not looking. And if there are people in a bad way, people who could be loyal if we threw a little help in their direction... Well, I want to know that too, so I can take advantage of it."

  Lex snorted. "It's not quite as mercenary as all that. Dallas O'Kane takes care of his own, and that now includes Sector Three."