Shattered Highways

by Tara N Hathcock

  Logan shifted again, continuing to mirror the man’s movements. The Colonel wasn’t just assessing Logan’s physical strengths and weaknesses. He was assessing his mental stability. Poking, prodding, seeing if he could use Jones to push him off-balance. But this wasn’t about Jones. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t even about Quincy. This was about Logan, about his ability to put his feelings aside and be nothing more than a soldier. It had been awhile, but it wasn’t something you easily forgot and he felt himself slide seamlessly back into the habit. The Colonel must have come to the same conclusion because he sighed.

  “What a waste,” he said, almost sadly. “What a bloody waste.” And then he attacked.

  Chapter 64

  Logan

  Logan didn’t have time for thought or planning. He simply reacted. His instincts, honed by three combat tours, took over. The piece of glass the Colonel was clutching in his left hand glinted as it swung, carving a path down Logan’s left cheek, before Logan ducked and flung himself forward, colliding with the Colonel’s midsection and taking him down in a classic football tackle. He had just enough time to think about how proud Jones would be of that one before the Colonel was using his momentum to roll them, pinning Logan to the floor and wrapping his hands around Logan’s neck. This guy clearly had his own special forces training and if he let him get a good grip, it would be over. Logan threw out his elbows, creating too much space for the Colonel to close around, and then bucked his legs, tossing the other man forward and allowing Logan to land a solid palm thrust to his nose. The satisfying crunch let Logan know he’d found his mark and the Colonel jerked back, blood spraying across Logan’s shirt and face.

  “Very good Lieutenant,” the Colonel said, using his sleeve to wipe some of the blood from his face. “It’s been too long since someone gave me a decent fight. Shall we end this?” he said, glancing meaningfully over Logan’s shoulder towards the door. “I’ve a feeling we’re on borrowed time.”

  “No need to finish something that never should have started,” Logan replied mildly. The Colonel would never take the out. Logan knew that. Knew the type of man he was dealing with. But he couldn’t not make the offer. Couldn’t not try to avoid the inevitable. Because the Colonel was throwing down an ultimatum. It was going to be them or him. And despite the amount of death Logan had seen, had even been responsible for in his time in the service, he never enjoyed it. Killing was always a choice. It might also be a necessity, but it was always a choice. Logan just never wanted it to be his first choice.

  The Colonel almost smiled. “Now Lieutenant,” he said in amusement, “you know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why?” Logan asked. “Because of the money? I know the company must pay you pretty well to be their hunting dog.”

  “It has nothing to do with the money,” the Colonel answered. He seemed almost surprised by the question. “Yes, the company pays me very well. But I live by a code. I accept a job. I finish a job. It’s as simple as that.”

  “And it doesn’t matter what that job is, so long as you complete your mission?” Logan asked. “I’m not sure that moral compass is worth bragging about.”

  “A moral compass has nothing to do with it,” the Colonel replied calmly. The older man casually began to circle the balcony, running his hand along the railing as he did. Logan tugged Quincy back a little further, trying to make sure she would be out of the way when the fight started again.

  “A job is a job,” he said. “I don’t allow emotion to drive my actions. Something you might want to look into.” He reversed direction, wandering back the opposite way. He was looking for an opening, studying Logan for weak points. But Logan was doing the same.

  “No,” Logan shot back. “I’m good. I think I’ll stick with the caring and sharing. Might make things harder sometimes,” he admitted, “but it also keeps me on the right side.”

  “The right side of what, I wonder?” the Colonel mused. “From what I can see, all it’s done is caused your death.” And he surged forward.

  Chapter 65

  The Colonel

  The Lieutenant was good, the Colonel would give him that. It had taken longer than he’d like to admit to catch his breath after Davies had caught him with a palm strike to the face. Five years ago, something like that wouldn’t have phased him. Now, he admitted wryly, if only to himself, the pain and blurred vision was harder to ignore.

  So he’d engaged the man verbally. He’d used it as a distraction to move and watch as the Lieutenant countered. The shoulder injury would certainly come in handy. And unless he was mistaken, the left knee was a considerable weak point as well. But Davies’s physical weaknesses weren’t his biggest problem. He tuned back into the conversation.

  “A job is a job,” he said. “I don’t allow emotion to drive my actions. Something you might want to look into.” He reversed direction and watched as Davies mirrored his movement. For a soldier, Davies was remarkably involved with the girl’s welfare. She was his mission. She shouldn’t have become more than that. Not if he wanted to successfully protect her. Feelings clouded the mission.

  “No,” Logan shot back. “I’m good. I think I’ll stick with the caring and sharing. Might make things harder sometimes.” Well, at least the man knew it wasn’t the optimal way to run a mission. “But it also keeps me on the right side.”

  “The right side of what, I wonder?” the Colonel mused, finished with the dialogue portion of the fight. He’d gotten the intel he needed about his opponent. Now he was prepared to finish it. “From what I can see, all it’s done is caused your death.” He surged forward.

  Chapter 66

  Logan

  The Colonel came at him and Logan stopped thinking. He had done what he could to spare a life. But this man was determined to kill Quincy and Logan wouldn’t allow that. It was how he had survived on the ground in so many war zones. He simply eliminated failure as an option. Once that was off the table, the fear always vanished and his instincts took over. It was the same now. The Colonel came at him from the left and shot an arm towards Logan’s face but it was a feint. Logan had seen him zero in on the knee he’d injured a few years ago after a jump gone bad. So Logan turned into the punch, allowing his momentum to carry him away from the Colonel’s leg sweep and pulling the man up and over. As the Colonel landed on his back, Logan rolled with him, pinning him in place and aiming another palm thrust towards his nose. He might have shaken off the first strike but landing a second hit to an already broken nose would be harder to ignore. But the man caught his arm, using Logan’s own momentum against him to tug him closer. The Colonel’s hand wrapped around the cut in Logan’s shoulder and squeezed, causing Logan to flinch and clamp his teeth together to keep from howling while the Colonel delivered his own palm thrust to Logan’s face. He missed his nose but it was still enough to shake Logan’s grip and the Colonel to roll free.

  The Colonel was on his feet again in an instant, the knife back in his left hand. He came at Logan without hesitation, not giving him a chance to regain his own feet. The knife came down swiftly but Logan managed to catch the Colonel’s arm with his own. He struggled to his feet under the weight of the other man’s force. He needed to end this. Now. The Colonel was a skilled fighter and, if failure had been an option, Logan might have been worried. But as it was, his main concern was how long it would be before someone else on the train, another passenger or even one of the dozen staff serving aboard, found their way to their car. He might not be worried about failing but he was concerned about the fall out from being caught in a deadly fight.

  The Colonel shifted suddenly, pulling the glass shard he’d used previously out of thin air and bringing it towards Logan’s unprotected left side. Logan dropped like a rock, the movement sudden enough that the Colonel was caught off guard. He stumbled forward and Logan took advantage of the momentary lapse, pulling both legs in tight and launching them up, catching the Colonel high in the chest. He flew back, slamming into the railing and clutching at it to sta
y on his feet. Logan was on him in an instant, not as steady as he preferred, maybe, but steady enough. The uppercut he threw connected with the Colonel’s jaw at the same moment the man pitched forward, the force strong enough to carry the Colonel up and back. He caught the railing on his lower back and toppled backwards, disappearing from view.

  Chapter 67

  Logan

  Logan doubled over, out of breath and hurting, and stared at the place the Colonel had disappeared from. Was he...did he really… Logan stood and shuffled over to the rail, peering over. There was a service platform about five feet wide running the length of the car but it was empty, save a small smear of red along the outside edge of the back corner. Below the platform was nothing but air. They were going over a bridge, hundreds of feet in the air, and Logan shoved back quickly, breathless from the height and from the beating he had just taken. The Colonel had worked him over good, Logan thought, swiping his hand across his face and grimacing when it came away bloody. He glanced over at Quincy, who still hadn’t moved since she’d fallen. He had managed to slide her out of the way of the fight and the coat he’d given her earlier was wrapped protectively around her, mercifully blood-free. He crouched down beside her, feeling her pulse again to reassure himself, and then slipped the coat from around her, being careful not to get any blood on it. He pulled his shirt off and turned it inside out, using it to clean the blood off his face as best he could, and then pulled the coat on, zipping it up high. It would have to do for now. If their luck held, no one would come out to the balcony tonight, the cold only increasing as the sun sank. He’d get Quincy back to their sleeping car and come back if he could to clean up the mess.

  He scooped Quincy up as gently as he could, adjusting her hair to cover as much of her bruised neck as he could and eased the door to the balcony car open quietly. No one in the compartment. Knowing his luck couldn’t hold much longer, he carried Quincy through. He stepped back into the hall and shifted her in his arms, pulling her as closely against him as he could. He could feel her heart beating weakly against his own chest and he whispered soothingly in her ear. What he actually said, he couldn’t say. It was really more for his own benefit than hers he thought, considering she was unconscious. He had come so close this time. So close to losing her. If he hadn’t gone back for his phone. If he had decided to wait for her to come to him, she’d be dead. He felt sick with the knowledge and more than a little lightheaded, though both could be explained away pretty easily by his injuries. He figured he had a concussion and bruised ribs at the least, and he hadn’t even looked at his knife wounds yet. But that could come later. Quincy was the priority. Strangulation, even unsuccessful, was traumatic. Her trachea wasn’t crushed because she was still breathing but it could very well be constricted or the cartilage inside fractured. She could have damaged or paralyzed vocal cords. At the very least, the swelling in her throat would keep her from talking above a whisper for several days. She would be able to hide the angry welts and bruises on the skin around her neck but there would be no hiding her eyes, the whites red with blood from burst capillaries. Petechial hemorrhaging, the doctors called it. And then there was the emotional trauma. Strangulation was slow. It was violent. And it was personal. By its very nature, it elevated the terror of the situation and allowed the victim to understand and feel what was happening for minutes before they lost consciousness. It was callous and cruel and Logan was very much afraid that this would be the last straw. How much more could she take before she cracked? She’d handled everything that had happened over the last several days so well - the sniper, the migraine, being kidnapped and confronted with the reality of brain injury and amnesia. And now this. Would she feel safe with him anymore? She’d been attacked three times on his watch. This might just be the push she needed to disappear again, this time for good.

  Chapter 68

  Quincy

  Awareness came slowly, like swimming up through the deep end of the pool. The clickety-clack of the train rolling over the track was oddly soothing, the slight movement of the cars enough to lull her back to sleep. It was warm here, and quiet. And it wasn’t often she slept so deeply, so she didn’t feel like moving quite yet. She could smell coffee brewing and the faint clatter of pots and pans in the distance told her it must be close to breakfast. She didn’t remember going to bed last night but she was feeling too relaxed to worry about it. A sound to her left, like a door opening and closing, caught her attention but she ignored it. The faint scent of pine and sea salt drifted to her, overlaid by the suddenly stronger smell of coffee. Logan must have gone down to the breakfast car and picked up drinks. She wondered if he had brought any doughnuts too, then decided she didn’t care. She didn’t want to wake up and doughnuts weren’t a strong enough bribe to make it happen. She wanted to stay exactly where she was. It was peaceful. And safe. And no one wanted to talk about things she’d rather ignore. But the coffee...oh, the coffee. Coffee was more difficult to ignore than doughnuts and Logan knew it. Which was probably why he’d brought it. Shameless, letting coffee do his dirty work for him. She could hear him moving around, unzipping and zipping his bag, pulling open cabinet doors and closing them quietly, and a few seconds of silence before the shower kicked on. A shower sounded nice right now. Hot shower, hot coffee...maybe she could be convinced to roll herself out of bed after all.

  Quincy moved to stretch and yawned, gagging suddenly as pain shot through her head, neck, and chest like fire. It was so unexpected and so intense that she coughed reflexively, lurching up in bed in an attempt to force air down a windpipe that just wasn’t having it. Her hands grasped at her neck but jerked back quickly as she realized the pain wasn’t just on the inside. She could feel the swelling and burns around the skin of her throat and when she tried to turn her head to control the coughing, it didn’t want to move. She grabbed a pillow from behind her, holding it to her chest and burrowing into it, trying to control her breathing. She didn’t know how long she sat there, tears streaming from her eyes, but eventually her body unwound, the muscles in her chest and throat uncoiling as the instinct to cough slowly fizzled out.

  She sat, hugging the pillow like her life depended on it, trying to think through the haze of pain. What had happened? What could have caused that much pain? She reached back, trying to comb through recent memories but nothing stood out. She noticed Logan’s phone where it sat on the dresser behind her and slowly, oh so slowly, reached back and felt around, bumping the phone and almost sending it crashing to the floor before her hand closed around it. She brought it around and tried to open it, hoping to use the camera to see what the damage was. Locked. She grit her teeth in frustration, sending another wave of pain through her upper body. What was the deal? She was afraid to get up, afraid of what other kinds of pain she might find. It would be so much easier if she could just unlock Logan’s phone. She stared at it. What would Logan use as a pass code? Most people used numbers that meant something to them, something they could easily remember. Logan had told her his birthday once, back on that walk they had taken through the park. It had been his way of trying to cajole some kind of personal information out of her. A ploy to see how far back her memories went, she knew now. If it had been irritating at the time, it was maddening now. She fought the urge to shake her head, knowing she would regret it, and focused back on the phone. As she stared at it, trying to piece together numbers that might mean something to Logan, her mind started to narrow, fading a little around the edges. Soft, almost like her brain was wrapped in cotton; the buzzing in her head intensified briefly before going completely mute. Quincy jerked her focus away from the phone. She knew what this was. She recognized it, now that she understood. This was what the Colonel was talking about. What Logan had been trying to tell her. This was RNB. Reflexive Neurological Bias. It was the feeling she got before she did something crazy, like stitch up a torn artery. The Colonel had told her the company he worked for wanted to weaponize her, to use whatever weird brain activity she had to build better weapons
, or be a better weapon, or something like that. But Logan had said Dr. Garrison could help her learn how to control it, so she in turn could help other people who were going through what she was going through. So maybe it wasn’t all bad. Maybe she could learn to channel it, whatever it was. But how? It was a good question, she thought wryly. If only Logan’s super special doctor friend was here to answer it.

  Quincy thought back. Every time she could remember it happening, she had been focused pretty singularly on one thing, whether it was wires in a car, a gaping injury, or a musical instrument. And just now, she’d been thinking about Logan and numbers that might be important to him. She looked back at the phone still clutched in her hand and allowed her thoughts to lock on that one thought and then scatter. Logan. Numbers. Logan. Numbers. The edges of her mind became blurry, soft and out of focus again, but this time she didn’t pull back. She heard the shower turn off in the back of her mind but it barely registered. Logan. Numbers. Logan. Numbers. Logan. 5625. Logan. 5625 Logan 5625 Logan 5625. Without thinking, she entered the number into the security screen and the phone unlocked.