Beyond Pain

by Kit Rocha

  "He is. We are," Bren corrected, edging closer. "She sent us a message, said you had information about something going down. Something big?"

  "The what is bad enough. It's the who that I think you'll be real interested in."

  "So spit it the hell out," Dallas growled. "I don't have time for games."

  Noah's gaze flicked to Bren. "Russell Miller."

  The name sent chills down Bren's spine and raised the hair on his arms--and, judging from the look on Noah's face, he'd already made the connection. "My commanding officer from Special Tasks."

  Dallas's head whipped around. "The bastard who burned you?"

  "Yeah." Bren took another step forward. "What's Miller up to out here?"

  Noah reached inside his jacket, moving slowly, and pulled out a small tablet. "Dealing in the kind of merchandise you'd better put a stop to," he said seriously, holding the tech out to Dallas. "People."

  Dallas's eyes narrowed. "You're telling me some MP big shot is engaging in human trafficking in Three?"

  Lennox shrugged. "Ask him if Miller's capable of it."

  After claiming the tablet, Dallas slanted a look toward Bren. "Is he?"

  Russell Miller was capable of torture, rape, murder--any goddamn thing you could think of, and probably a good handful of things a decent person couldn't imagine. "A hundred and ten percent."

  Dallas's face hardened. "Is everything on here?"

  "Everything I could find."

  "And how much is it gonna cost us?"

  Noah waved a hand. "The information is free. The price is dealing with it."

  "All right." Dallas handed the tablet to Bren without looking away from Noah. "Bren?"

  "Watch yourself," he found himself saying. "Miller's not just another asshole out to make a buck. He's Eden-trained. He knows better than to run an operation without proper intel, which means he's got someone local. Someone who probably knows your face."

  "Oh, I'm taking care." Noah met Bren's eyes, serious and a little wary. "I know the sorts of things an Eden-trained soldier is capable of doing."

  For once, Bren welcomed the condemnation. "Good. Then you might stay alive."

  As much as she was starting to enjoy waking up with Bren, Six still loved having her own room with a door that locked, even if it was full of furniture someone else had picked out for her.

  No, especially because of that.

  She never would have chosen a bed with a solid, elegant headboard carved from real wood. She wouldn't have dared go for all the shit that had come with it, either. A dresser and mirror, table and chairs, solid pieces that had been dusted and shined, any one item worth more credits than she'd seen in a year as a teenager.

  At first, every damn thing an O'Kane had given her had felt like a weight around her neck, a debt she'd have to repay before she could begin squirreling away enough money to build a new life. Now, they felt like something else. Gestures of good faith.

  Or gifts from family.

  Her favorite gift was on the couch. She kicked her boots into the corner and swept up the tablet, activating it with a quick swipe across the screen as she curled up on the couch, ready to continue the latest book Noelle had helped her download.

  But her book didn't open. Instead, a message appeared, one the tablet began to read in its friendly, feminine voice. As the words rolled out of the tiny speakers, her stomach sank.

  Six--

  Maybe the good's worth the bad, but everyone deserves full disclosure. Watch it all before you make any choices you can't take back.

  Noah

  Before she had a chance to wonder what she was supposed to watch, a video popped up, filling the screen. Bren's face stared up at her, at least a decade younger. Some of the rough angles and scars she'd traced with her fingertips were gone, and his nose looked a little straighter.

  A man behind the camera's field of view spoke. "What was your mission objective?"

  "To stop the trafficking, sir," Bren answered immediately.

  The unseen man cleared his throat and repeated the question. "What was your mission objective?"

  Bren shifted in his chair. "Sorry, sir. Our objective was to find the subjects wanted for trafficking and eliminate them."

  "Did you?"

  "I terminated one of the targets. My team took care of the other three."

  "And yet you fired..." paper rustled, "...twenty-two rounds. For four targets? That sounds like a sloppy operation, soldier."

  "It was--" Bren swallowed hard and looked away from the camera for the first time. "They had captives, sir. Lieutenant Miller told us we had to leave them."

  "So you executed them."

  "He told us we had to leave them."

  Six slapped at the tablet. The video paused, leaving Bren frozen, his gaze fixed somewhere off camera, his face turned away.

  Her gut churned. The air in the room felt stale, stuffy. She rasped in a breath and then another, forcing herself to breathe slowly, forcing herself to think.

  She barely knew how to operate tech, but she'd seen Noelle and Nessa run enough movies. Placing her finger on the slider along the bottom, she dragged it backwards, until it was flush against the left side of the tablet.

  When she lifted her finger, the video started again.

  It was no easier to watch the second time. The word trafficking echoed inside her skull, banging against her temples and scraping at mental doors she'd bolted firmly shut. Bren's voice came again. "They had captives, sir. Lieutenant Miller told us we had to leave them."

  Shuddering, she silenced the screaming in her head and dragged the marker back to the beginning, as if listening a third time would change the content.

  "Do you know how much each of your rifle rounds costs this city, Officer Donnelly?"

  Silence.

  "Was that an appropriate and necessary allocation of resources?"

  "No, sir." Then Bren's chin rose, and a quiet sort of defiance lit his eyes. "But I'd do it again."

  She smacked her palm down on the tablet, silencing the voice and obscuring Bren's face. The walls were pressing in, making her room feel too small, too dark.

  It had been dark in the back of the trucks, too. Endless dark, with only the crying of the younger children to remind her she wasn't alone. It had taken years before she could stand the dark again, even more before she'd learned to love it for how easy it made to hide.

  "So you executed them."

  Bren had come across captives. People snatched from their lives, kidnapped, lost in the dark and doomed to God only knew what fate. And he'd shot them.

  She didn't know what horrified her more--that her stomach could roil at the thought, or that her mind skipped instantly to rationalizations. If she let herself, it would be all too easy to conjure the feeling of chains around her wrists and ankles, of staring into the darkness where the door should be, throat parched, stomach empty, scared the captors would come. More scared they wouldn't.

  Faced with the choice between leaving those people to a slow death or making it quick, he'd chosen mercy. And the city had chastised him for it. He'd been defiant.

  But not defiant enough to try to save them.

  "Fuck." The word slipped free, and she moved in a rush, shoving the tablet down between the side of the couch and the cushion before lunging to her feet. Pacing didn't usually help, but it did remind her body that the room wasn't small and she wasn't trapped.

  Most of all, she wasn't a helpless kid. And she wasn't going to let Noah Lennox fuck up the only good thing to ever happen to her.

  Leaving the tablet and its damning video, she flung open the door and stepped into the hall, intending to stalk to Bren's room to wait for him. She'd taken only two steps before the echo of gunfire jerked her to a halt.

  It was close, and loud. So loud that she spent a few tense moments wondering why O'Kanes weren't bubbling out into the hallway, weapons in hand, ready to defend their territory.

  She spun in the opposite direction and whirled around the corner s
o fast she almost slammed into Trix.

  "Hey." Trix laid a hand on her arm. "It's all right. Just a little target practice."

  Six listened to round after round, each echo leading into another shot. "That's target practice?"

  "It is when Bren does it." Her carefully curled red hair bobbed as she jerked her head toward the back of the building. "Closed-off alley in the back. You can watch from the roof or take the fire escape down."

  "Thanks." Six stepped aside so the other woman could pass, too unsettled to manage small talk. "See you at the bar tonight?"

  "Double shift. Wouldn't miss it." Trix rolled her eyes a little and laughed. "See you."

  Six held her easy expression until the redhead was gone, hating that it felt awkward, that she wanted to drop her masks and let someone else see her distress, even comfort her.

  Christ, right now, she'd take one of Noelle's hugs.

  She had to backtrack to get to the stairs, climbing past the second floor and its party room and the third floor with its echoing rooms that still seemed in various stages of construction. They'd be in use soon, if the O'Kanes kept inking new members.

  The final flight of stairs ended in a small landing and a door propped open with a garbage can. A huge sign covered the middle third of the door, its message conveyed in cheerful pink letters and profanity.

  The door locks behind you, dumbasses. Quit trapping yourselves on the fucking roof (ACE) because I do NOT have time to keep hauling ass up here to rescue you.

  Nessa had signed her name with a flourish and a heart.

  Biting her lip, Six pushed through the door, careful to ease it back against the garbage can. The shots were so much louder up here, thundering from the west side of the roof, where the barracks formed a blind alley with the long, L-shaped building that Dallas used for storage.

  She reached the edge of the roof and saw Bren in the alley below, a wickedly large pistol in his right hand. He pulled the trigger almost continuously, firing until the gun clicked uselessly. He flicked his thumb across the release, dropped the empty magazine, and replaced it before switching the weapon to his left hand and continuing to fire at the shredded target at the end of the alley.

  It was magnificent violence. Raw, skilled, the kind that usually cranked her up good when it was Bren causing the mayhem. And it did, even with his words slamming around in her skull.

  "I'd do it again."

  By the time he'd emptied the second magazine, there was nothing left of the target, only ragged bits of paper on a battered straw backstop. Instead of reloading, Bren lowered the gun and stood there, unmoving.

  The stillness shattered a moment later with a bellow of pure anguish as he exploded into movement, hurling the pistol down the alley. It skittered across the cracked asphalt, and he stalked after it, only to snatch up a board that was leaning against the wall. He smashed it into the bales with another roar, swinging again and again, sheer desperation radiating from him like heat. Like flame.

  She'd seen cracks in his control, tiny slips. Roughness in his voice, his body jerking toward hers, groans he couldn't hold back. This was a hundred times worse. A thousand. Bren's control had shattered...and shattered her heart with it.

  God fucking help her, she was in love with Brendan Donnelly.

  Bits of straw floated in the air, landed on his shirt and his hair, but he finally stopped swinging. The board clattered to the ground, smudged with red--blood, she realized, as he looked down and flexed his hands.

  Wounded, just like he was.

  Fuck Noah Lennox. Fuck Eden and the terror churning in her gut, the instinct born of a lifetime of avoiding danger. He wasn't some unknown threat, and he wasn't the cold-blooded bastard Eden had trained. He was Bren, her lover, her protector. Hell, he was the one who'd told her Sector Four had changed him, taught him to be better. Whatever they'd made him do, it was in the past.

  She'd make herself believe it. She had to, or else she was just a stupid girl who couldn't stop falling in love with psychopaths.

  So move.

  Shaking, she reached for the fire escape--and jerked back when the door creaked behind her.

  It was Jasper, who approached with a sigh. "He finally stopped?"

  "Yes." Her voice cracked, proving she was a coward. "His hands--I think he hurt himself."

  Jasper held her by the arms as he leaned over and peered into the alley, then cursed softly. "It's not easy to see him like this, I know. But he'll be all right."

  Like this. Jasper seemed concerned, but not worried. Not like the sight of Bren having a violent meltdown was unfamiliar. Which shouldn't matter, and maybe it wouldn't have, if she'd known.

  Swallowing hard, she looked away. "I was going to check on him, but maybe he'd rather be alone right now."

  Jasper didn't argue. "I'll head down and make sure he's square, okay?"

  She took a step back when his hands fell away, then hesitated. Whatever had triggered this must have wider implications than her feelings, because she couldn't believe Bren had just come home and lost his shit. "Did something happen while he was in Three? Something bad?"

  But Jasper only shook his head. "It's not my shit to talk about, Six. Give Bren some time to cool off, and you can ask him about it."

  He was closing ranks, protecting his brother's back, and Six would have as much luck dragging the truth out of him as she would beating her fists against stone.

  No shortcuts. She shouldn't have expected one. She'd told Bren the truth the other night, the only truth that mattered in this world.

  Nothing good came easy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  His hands ached like a son of a bitch.

  Bren toyed with the edge of one bandage as he watched Cruz enter another set of coordinates into the oversized tablet mounted on his wall. "Any patterns yet?"

  "Nothing obvious." Another point appeared on the map sketched out on the tablet. "But there wouldn't be, would there?"

  No, the bastard wouldn't make it that easy to catch him. "Everyone makes mistakes, even Miller."

  "Mmm." Cruz slid the coordinate list aside with a swipe of his hand and pulled up another box, one that spun out the raw data on the various locations. "He has one vice that's only gotten worse since you left. He hates going without his city comforts."

  "Yeah?"

  "He'll tell his team to catch some shut-eye on dirty concrete when it's five below and half of them have holes in their hide, but God forbid he has to spend a night outside the barracks. Or his whore. It's made him sloppy more than once."

  Bren leaned over, bracing a hand on Cruz's desk despite the pain. "Tell me where to find him, and those days are over. Truth."

  His friend pinned him with a sidelong look. "Have you got it locked down? If we do find him, I'm in no mood to let you get us dead because your head's somewhere else."

  Rage burned in Bren's gut. "You'd better not be saying you don't want him dead, because that's exactly what he is. He just doesn't know it yet."

  "Of course I want him dead." Cruz returned his attention to the wall, drilling down through the scrolling lists of data with practiced ease. "You're the one I'm hoping to keep in one piece, Donnelly."

  "I'm not getting crazy or careless."

  "Good." Cruz flicked his wrist, and four new spots lit up on the map, all of them ringing the main blast zone. "We're lucky Three is a fucking disaster. Not a lot of places fall within the common parameters with regards to resource access."

  If these shipments had been as regular as Noah Lennox believed, there were even fewer places they hadn't used recently. "We'll hit them all if we have to."

  "We should start here." Cruz stabbed a finger down on a dot glowing near the border of Two. "It's got tunnel access, it's close enough to leech off Two's power grid, and it's far enough west that no one's likely to notice the traffic."

  No one but the people they'd snatched off the street to sell into servitude--or worse. Bren started to unwrap his left hand. "So let's check it out."


  "Can you use those hands?"

  He needed another application of med-gel and a few more hours of healing time, but it seemed like a luxury when Russell Miller could take his cargo and slip out of Sector Three, right under their noses. "I'll let you do the heavy lifting. Happy?"

  "Oh, you can do the lifting." Cruz flexed his hands, and finally Bren saw his own rage reflected in the man's eyes. "I'll do the punching."

  "Deal."

  The place was deserted.

  Not just empty, but thick with a layer of dust that told Bren no one had been there at all, maybe not for months. They hadn't missed their prey by hours or days; they were on the wrong fucking trail entirely.

  He kicked an empty bottle with a frayed, faded label and swore. "Shitty luck of the draw, or did someone tip him off to our search?"

  Cruz crouched in the doorway, his gaze fixed on the street beyond. "I'm working this with a fraction of the data I usually have. Shitty maps, no access to Eden's cameras. Could be nothing more than that."

  Bren forced himself to take a deep breath. "Okay. Forget the number-crunching, then. You don't have cameras, what do you do? Talk to people, right?"

  "Will people in a shithole like this tell the truth?"

  "Maybe, maybe not. But we can't track him like an animal, and he's sure the hell not going to leave us a trail of breadcrumbs to--" The words caught in Bren's throat, colliding with his heart as it kicked up out of his chest. "It's backwards. We're doing this backwards."

  Cruz rocked to his feet and turned. "Explain."

  "We know how he operates. In a situation like this, he's bound to have help. The kind that comes straight off the streets of Sector Three."

  "Thugs," Cruz agreed. "Disposable thugs."

  "Thugs who know which poor bastards won't be missed if they up and disappear one day."

  "Who do we know who could help us pick out the likeliest suspects?"

  Six. Bren shoved the thought away. "There are a few men I could ask." He hesitated. "It's a riskier route. Might not lead us to Miller unless we time it right."