“It’s nothing that concerns you, Rem—”
“Like hell it doesn’t concern me! This bastard held a gun to my fucking head!” Remy shouted, her voice echoing through the kitchen. She jabbed her finger at the man in the chair. “He tried to shoot me! And that redheaded bitch told him to! I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know five seconds ago!”
Brandt hesitated, looking from Remy to Gray and then glancing at the man in the chair, who smirked at him despite the pain he was in. “Not now, Remy,” he said. He hated how much his voice sounded like he was pleading. “Not now. I’ve got to get information out of this guy, and I can’t do that and answer your questions at the same time.”
“Answer the question,” Gray said. He stepped into the argument and grabbed the man’s forearm. Brandt tensed, and he wrenched his arm from Gray’s grip.
“Not now,” Brandt repeated. He raised his voice just enough to show the two that he meant business. “Get the fuck out of here while I get what I need from him.”
Chapter 18
“I don’t like this,” Gray said. He paced the creaky hallway floorboards, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his boots scuffing the floor. He glanced at the closed kitchen door and wondered what the hell was going on in there, what was taking Brandt so long to get whatever he needed from the wounded man. “I don’t like this at all.”
“And you think I do?” Remy snapped. She didn’t look at Gray. She stood at the end of the hall, staring into the darkness of the living room, her hands on her hips. “I want to be in there just as badly as you do.”
“What is he doing in there?” Gray asked in frustration. He approached Remy, and the woman shot him a warning glance that he ignored as he stopped beside her.
“Hopefully what I want to do,” Remy grumbled. She moved away from Gray and deeper into the living room.
“Which is?”
“Granting that motherfucker a slow, painful death.”
“Remy, that’s not right,” Gray started to protest. The woman turned on him and shoved him against the wall with a firm strike of her hands against his chest. He bit back a grunt as his shoulders bumped into the sheetrock.
“Not right? That’s not fucking right?” she repeated. “What the hell, you asshole? That son of a bitch and his fucking little friend put a gun to the back of my head. They were talking about how much fucking fun they were going to have with me, and I had to pretend like I was going to go along with something that I am so morally against just to give myself an opening to do what I needed to do. They were going to pull the damned trigger until I rolled over and shot them. What part of them nearly killing me is difficult to comprehend?” She braced her hands more firmly against Gray’s chest and pinned him harder against the wall. “Ethan would never have stood for this kind of shit. Even he would’ve thought it was okay for me to go down fucking fighting! Hell, he did! Are you telling me you think I’m not entitled to do the same?”
“I’m just not comfortable with the idea of you sinking to their level,” Gray said. He caught her wrists and squeezed them gently. Her pulse raced under her skin; he slowly and soothingly rubbed his thumbs over the soft skin on the insides of her wrists and tried to calm her down, pulling her to him in a tight hug. “You’re better than that. You’re a better person than that. You wouldn’t kill someone who isn’t infected and who isn’t directly threatening you at that moment. You’re too good to do something like that.”
Remy watched Gray with a wide-eyed, almost hurt expression on her face. “You say that like you’re desperate to believe it,” she said. Her fists slowly relaxed, her fingers uncurling.
Gray pressed his lips against her temple and sighed. “Maybe I am,” he murmured. “Maybe I want to believe there’s still some goodness in the world. Maybe I just don’t want to see you do something I know you’d regret later on.” She kept watching him, her eyes still wide, and he felt the overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss her. But that urge was broken when Remy sighed and pulled away from him.
“If you say so,” she said. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that I really want to shoot that bastard right in his ass.” She glanced at the kitchen door and crossed her arms, hugging herself. “You think we’re going to go after Cade?”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of if so much as when,” Gray admitted. He, too, looked at the closed kitchen door. Everything was silent on the other side. He itched to get in there, to find out what was going on in the other room. Brandt was hiding something, and Gray wanted to know what it was.
Gray wasn’t an idiot. He’d known all along that something wasn’t right with Brandt. Unlike the rest of them, the Marine had never been forthcoming about his past. Sure, they’d all had their secrets, things they wanted to keep hidden; no one wanted to tell every detail about themselves and their lives prior to the outbreak of the Michaluk virus. But unlike everyone else, Brandt had kept nearly everything hidden. All Gray knew about the man personally was that he’d come from Atlanta and had a sister there who’d died at Emory University—a sister about whom he never talked. Gray couldn’t help but be suspicious of what the man was hiding. And when Brandt had kicked him and Remy out of the kitchen to interrogate the wounded man in private, well, that had only heightened Gray’s suspicions.
As Remy paced down the hallway, her dark eyes fluttering to the broken front door with every other step, the kitchen door eased open, and Brandt emerged. The man looked tired; there were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was a mess from running his fingers through it constantly. He met Gray’s eyes for a fleeting moment before he shifted his gaze to Remy. Gray grimaced.
“What’s the deal, Brandt?” Gray asked, breaking the silence and drawing Remy’s attention to them. She approached, walking slowly across the living room, appearing uneasy. “What’s going on?”
“They’re taking Cade to the Westin at Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta,” Brandt answered after a long, careful pause. “There’s a group of people living there. It’s led by a woman named Alicia Day.”
“Who you seem to know, judging by your reaction to the guy’s news in there,” Remy said. “Who is she?”
Brandt breathed out and looked away from them pensively, moving into the living room and halfway up the stairs to retrieve his backpack. He carried it back down as he answered, not looking at either of them. “Alicia Day is a woman I knew a while back, before all this shit happened,” he said. He waved his hand vaguely to indicate the circumstances they were in. “She was in the Military Police, Marine branch, as far as my understanding went,” he explained. “I knew her as an acquaintance, nothing more. We weren’t exactly close, needless to say.”
“Is that why she kept referring to you as Michael?” Remy asked. She leaned against the post at the end of the staircase railing.
“Yeah, it’s what I used to go by,” Brandt answered. He stopped beside Remy and set his bag and rifle down before sitting heavily on a step. He dropped his head into his hands. “It’s … well, this is a long, complicated story. I don’t want to go into details. I don’t have time to go into details. Cade’s more important than all this shit.”
“But you’re going to tell us the bare basics regardless,” Gray said firmly. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall across from Remy, effectively blocking any potential escape route Brandt would have had. “Because I absolutely refuse to allow me or Remy to go along and help you when you’re not being fucking straight with us.”
“You would,” Brandt muttered to the stair below him. Gray chose not to say anything in reply. Brandt heaved a sigh before continuing. “I wasn’t honest with you about my past in Atlanta,” he said. “I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell you anything either. I guess I lied by omission more than anything else.” Brandt breathed out again, slowly and steadily. “I was at the CDC when it fell.”
Remy raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“No, that’s not it by far,” Brandt admitted. “I was … there were these tests. Like I told you l
ast month in the back of that truck. The tests and experiments with the pathogen on Marines and other military volunteers.” Gray’s eyes widened as his brain caught up with what Brandt was saying. “I was one of the volunteers. One of the Marines that Michaluk was supposedly tested on.”
“Jesus,” Gray hissed out.
“I wasn’t one of the actual test subjects, though,” Brandt said in a rush. “Well, I was. But my doctor, the one in charge of my case, he said I was in the control group, not one of the groups getting the actual pathogen. He said I was being given placebos. Nothing more than that.”
“And this Alicia chick?” Gray prompted.
“I don’t know about her,” Brandt admitted. “She was there too. I talked to her a few times, but only fleetingly. She struck me as a hate-the-world type, and I never really enjoyed hanging out with those types of people. I don’t know anything about her case, though. Derek was never willing to enlighten me on details about her or anyone else. Hell, he screwed up and compromised the testing just by telling me I was in the control group.”
“So what’s this got to do with the bitch taking Cade?” Remy demanded.
Brandt lifted his head and looked first to Remy, then to Gray, and finally to the closed kitchen door. “Because for some reason, she’s fixated on this idea that I have the Michaluk virus and I’m just not showing symptoms because I’m immune or something. She thinks she can force me to, as the guy in there put it, ‘give up the cure’ and save the world or something.” His voice betrayed just how ridiculous he thought the idea was. “Doesn’t she know that if I had the fucking cure, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops?”
“Some people just aren’t receptive to reason,” Gray said with a sigh. “So why didn’t you tell us this before? Why wait over a year, when something bad has happened, before telling us anything to do with your time in Atlanta?”
“I didn’t want to not tell you guys,” Brandt said. “But I had to keep it to myself. I couldn’t let anyone know. Until a month ago, they all believed I was dead, and I wanted it kept that way. I didn’t want any of you in danger.”
“In danger from what?” Gray asked, unable to hide his frustration with Brandt’s evasiveness.
“From the Feds,” Brandt finally answered. Gray raised an eyebrow, and he looked the man over doubtfully. “Back in January of last year, when the Michaluk virus broke out and started to spread like hell all over the place, the Feds—the ones sponsoring the test to begin with—ordered the complete shutdown of the project. They sent in the Marines stationed at the CDC and an Army special task force to assist with the shutdown.”
“So they shut the project down,” Remy said. “So what?”
“So ‘shutdown’ entailed the complete elimination of everyone involved with the project,” Brandt said. His voice was hushed, his words a monotone. “The patients, the doctors, nurses, lab techs, everyone.”
“Jesus,” Gray breathed again before he could stop himself.
“I thought they killed them all,” Brandt said, closing his eyes. “That was my impression, anyway. Derek helped me get out. I never saw him again, figured he was dead. And I never saw anyone uninfected come out of that building. I thought they were all dead. I thought it was just me. I had no idea Alicia was still alive or even that she was a threat.” He shook his head. “I swear, if she’s so much as hurt a single hair on Cade’s head, I’m going to kill her with my bare hands.”
Gray believed every word Brandt said, and the older man’s tone suggested he’d let nothing stop him from being successful. He let out a breath and studied the man for a moment before speaking again. “So what’s the plan? How are we going to get her back?”
“And when do we leave?” Remy added. She pushed off the post and placed a foot on the steps, as if to start climbing them. “And, for that matter, what are we going to do about the guy in there?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Brandt said. “He’s dead. He was already dying. He hung on long enough to give me the information I needed.” He dropped his head back into his hands for a moment before standing abruptly. “Let’s get our shit together. I want to be out of here within the hour.”
“What about the bodies?” Gray asked tentatively as the other man began to climb the stairs.
“Search them, then leave them,” Brandt bit out. “I don’t have time to deal with some assholes who tried to kill one of us. They don’t deserve anything we can give them at this point.”
Chapter 19
Cade was in that pleasant haze somewhere between asleep and awake, where not everything seemed quite real, where the dream world intersected with the real one, brushing against the edges of her consciousness. She’d been like this for almost an hour, ever since Brandt had reluctantly rolled off her and dragged the sheets over both their bodies. She imagined she could still feel Brandt’s body against hers, his hands loosely gripping her waist. She shivered, and almost immediately, Brandt’s arms were around her, tugging her closer. She lay on her side, and he was just behind her, his nose buried against her hair as she hovered just shy of wakefulness, content. She could imagine that the infected didn’t exist, that the two of them weren’t fighting for their lives every day. It wasn’t hard to do.
Brandt’s stubbled chin brushed against her bare shoulder as he dropped a light kiss on her skin. Cade smiled and closed her eyes, forcing herself to relax for the first time in over a year. That was hard to do. Her back and shoulder muscles felt like they’d never be relaxed again, not after the tension and weight they’d carried. Brandt’s fingers found her side, tracing her ribs lightly before he spoke.
“Cade?” His voice was soft, hoarse with lack of sleep.
“Hmm?” she managed to hum out. She was too tired for anything else.
“Are you okay?”
Something in the man’s voice made Cade raise an eyebrow. She opened her eyes and shifted onto her back to get a look at him. In the faint moonlight coming from the second-story window, she could just make out his eyes, soft and dark and a little droopy. He looked exhausted, but at the same time, he seemed oddly alert.
“What makes you ask?”
“Just thinking about tomorrow,” Brandt admitted. His grip on her tightened. “Everything that can go wrong. All the bad shit that could happen. How I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Cade let a faint smile drift across her lips as she smoothed her fingers down his arm, tracing the knot of bone at his wrist. “I’m not going to get hurt,” she said assuredly. “Do I ever?”
“Well, there was that time with your knee in Biloxi,” Brandt pointed out.
Cade rolled her eyes and shifted until she lay on her other side, facing him. “Hey, that wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “You’re the one who threw me down, if you do recall.”
“I do recall,” he agreed with a soft chuckle. “I also recall making you jump out the fifth floor of an office building.”
“Let’s not go there,” Cade warned. “The thought still scares me.”
Brandt chuckled again, the sound vibrating through his chest. He smiled and nuzzled his nose against hers affectionately, pressing a kiss to her lips, a soft noise escaping his throat as he twisted his fingers into her hair. She returned it, of course; Brandt was a fantastic kisser, and she’d have been a liar if she said she didn’t enjoy it.
When he finally pulled away, his fingers still threaded in her hair, Brandt’s eyes were serious. “I don’t want to go to sleep,” he confessed.
“Why not?” Cade asked. She smoothed a hand over his cheek, her fingers caressing his skin idly.
“Because sleep is for the weak,” he attempted to joke, but Cade could tell his heart wasn’t quite in it.
“Seriously, Brandt,” she persisted.
“Because I’d rather stay awake and talk to you,” he said, catching her around the waist again and pulling her more firmly against him.
Cade raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what exactly should we talk about?”
Brandt shrugged. �
��I don’t know. I’m sure you could come up with something.”
Cade mulled over and rejected an entire list of possible topics of discussion before settling on an old standard she used when she wanted to know more about someone. “Tell me something about you that I don’t already know,” she requested.
“Something you don’t know about me,” Brandt repeated. “What kind of something are you thinking of?”
Cade shrugged. “I don’t know. Just … something you haven’t told the others. Something no one in the world today knows about you.”
Brandt fell silent at the request, staying that way for so long that Cade lifted her head to check whether he’d fallen asleep. But no, he still lay awake, staring at the ceiling, his hand rubbing slowly up and down her back as he thought the question over. Finally, when he spoke, his words were surprisingly hushed.
“I was married once,” he started. Cade looked at him in surprise, her eyebrows rising, but he didn’t seem to notice the look. “Long time ago, back when I was young and pretty stupid. Thought we were in love. Maybe we were, I don’t know. I’d accidentally gotten her pregnant. Usual sad story, you know?”
“How old were you?” Cade asked softly, wondering why he’d never mentioned any of this.
“Seventeen when I got her pregnant,” Brandt said. “Eighteen when I finally married her. Shit was good for a while. She had a boy. We stayed in Atlanta, mainly because I didn’t want to live anywhere else.”
“So what happened?”
“There was an accident,” Brandt said. “Baby died. And Kayla wasn’t quite the same after that. Things got really bad. She asked for a divorce when I was nineteen. I gave it to her.” Cade heard the sadness in his voice as he uttered those last five words.
“It wasn’t what you wanted though, was it?” she asked softly. “You didn’t want a divorce.”
“No, I didn’t,” Brandt confirmed. “But it was what she wanted, and I wanted to see her happy, so …” He trailed off and shrugged. “What else could I do?” He closed his eyes. “So we divorced. She went her way, and I went mine. Never heard from her again.” He traced a circle along Cade’s spine, and she dropped her head onto his chest again. “After that, I drifted aimlessly for about six years. Worked shitty dead-end jobs, barely scraped by. I finally decided to join the military when I was twenty-five and entered Marine boot camp a few months before I turned twenty-six. I’m sure you can guess the rest.”
The Becoming: Revelations Page 10
