“I am?”
“Yeah, you are,” Ethan confirmed. “You’re … you seem older. And somehow a lot … angrier.”
“I am angry,” Remy admitted. She looked at her hands, picking at a broken nail. “I’m just so angry, Ethan. I just want to burn the fucking world down.”
“I think I know how you feel,” Ethan said. “But, Remy, you can’t let that anger consume you. You can’t let yourself turn into something that isn’t you. You can’t let it control you. Because that kind of person, the kind that would burn the world down, that would get so consumed by revenge, ends up destroying themselves instead of taking down what they set out to destroy. I don’t want that to happen to you. You’re better than that.”
“Very deep, Ethan,” Remy murmured. “You sound a lot like Gray. He tried to tell me the same thing before we left the safe house. About how I was a better person than all that.”
“Gray was a lot smarter than most of us,” Ethan acknowledged. “I’m sorry that he … that he fell.”
Remy nodded and looked away from him for a moment. Then she picked up the conversation as if they’d never stopped. “The fact of the matter is that’s how I am. I thought you knew that. Very … passionate. About everything.” She huffed out a breath. “You should’ve met me before all this shit started. I’d hope you’d have been intrigued by me, but something tells me you’d have been completely turned off by how insane I was.”
Ethan chuckled. “Well, that’d explain the tattoos,” he commented, brushing his hand against her right arm, where he knew a tattoo of a black dragon wound snakelike around her bicep. He was intimately familiar with every one of her tattoos: the song lyrics and musical notes on her legs, the dragon on her arm, the large, somewhat clichéd angel wings covering her entire back, the unfinished outline of a sparrow on her thigh. “I think we all have wild times in our lives where we do crazy shit like get tattoos.”
Remy smirked and glanced at Ethan. “You don’t have any tattoos,” she pointed out. “You must not have had a crazy period.”
“Oh, I had one,” Ethan admitted. “There’s a reason I know how to drive a motorcycle, and it wasn’t just because I thought it’d be a fun skill to pick up. I thought I was hot shit on that Harley.” Ethan laughed a little and added, “I just didn’t get any tattoos because I was a little too straight laced for that.”
“You? Straight laced?” Remy let out a gasp of mock horror, pressing a hand over her heart. “I’d never have guessed!”
Ethan chuckled and shook his head, draping an arm around Remy and giving her a squeeze. “Hey, a man has to keep some secrets, you know,” he joked. He pressed a light kiss to her hair and glanced in Brandt’s direction again.
In the time between then and the last time Ethan had looked at him, the Marine had risen from his perch on the roof’s edge. Cade still sat, looking disturbed as she shifted her eyes to the ground below, her fingers clenched around her knees. She was upset about something, but Ethan knew there was no chance of getting what it was out of her. She’d never been one to open up about what was bothering her, not even to him.
Brandt paced across the roof, moving closer to them so everyone could hear what he had to say. He rocked on his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets and clearing his throat, drawing the attention of all present. He didn’t look at them as he began to speak. “I’ve got a plan,” he announced. “At least, I think I do. But it’s not going to be a plan that everyone here will like or agree with.”
“Oh great,” Remy muttered. “Last time he said that, we ended up neck-deep in the shit.”
“He has a habit of that,” Ethan conceded. He grabbed her hand again and gave it a squeeze as he focused his attention on Brandt.
“Just … please keep in mind that this plan’s designed to minimize risk and casualties as much as we can,” he added. “I know everyone here has a bone to pick with Alicia Day. But we’re here to save as many lives as possible, as many lives that are a guaranteed save. Those in the Westin aren’t a guarantee, so we’re focusing on those that are. And yes, that includes members of this group.”
“So what’s the plan then?” Kimberly spoke up. Her eyes were riveted to Brandt as he stared at the roof fixedly. When Brandt finally looked up, instead of addressing Kimberly, he spoke to Isaac.
“Isaac, Cade tells me there are almost forty people in the apartment building you guys hide out in,” he started. “Ms. Geller, I want you and Dr. Rivers to go back to that apartment building.”
“What?” Kimberly exploded. “There is no way I’m going back like a dog with my tail between my legs!”
“Would you shut up?” Brandt snapped vehemently. Ethan raised his eyebrows in surprise, rocking back a few inches in the face of the man’s anger. “I’m not fucking risking Dr. Rivers getting killed by the infected. He’s too fucking important for that. He’s the only one I know of who’s even got a chance of coming up with a cure, and I don’t want that chance lost because I was stupid enough to take him into danger with me.” He paused for a few seconds and then continued through clenched teeth. “I want you and Dr. Rivers to get everyone at the apartment building together, get them packed up with their essentials, and do whatever you can to get them out of the city. Go east. Head for Hollywood, South Carolina. We’ll meet you there as soon as possible.”
“Why Hollywood?” Derek asked, crossing his arms. He didn’t appear argumentative, simply curious.
“We were hiding out there,” Brandt explained. “There were few infected in that area. It’s probably as safe as it’s going to get for now.” He cleared his throat again and turned back to Isaac. “You and Dominic are going after vehicles for us,” he told the man. “I want you to find something capable of holding at least six people. You’ll probably do well to find an SUV. Try to find one in good condition, with at least half a tank of gas. Bring whatever you find to the intersection of Spring and Baker. Guard the vehicle. We’ll meet you there.”
“What about the four of us, Brandt?” Ethan asked carefully. He glanced at Cade, and their eyes met as Brandt spoke again.
“We’re going into the Westin after Alicia, and we’re taking the bitch down,” Brandt said firmly.
Chapter 49
When Isaac arrived on the roof in the early afternoon to take her place on watch, Cade was dog tired. Her lack of sleep over the past several days had finally caught up with her, and she dragged herself to the roof-access door and stumbled into the darkness, venturing down to the floor where everyone else had commandeered hotel rooms. She had half a mind to just find a corner in which to curl up and pass out, but the other half of her mind wanted to find Brandt. She decided that sleep could wait a bit longer. She had some apologies to offer.
Cade stepped into the dark hallway and eased toward the end of it in the general direction in which everyone else had staked out rooms. She reached for her flashlight to help her eyes cut through the almost impenetrable darkness, but she stopped when she saw the familiar glow of an LED camping lantern shining out of one of the hotel room doors. She hesitated, pausing at the doorway and peering inside.
Brandt sat at a small round table in a hotel suite’s kitchenette. He slumped in the chair with his right arm resting on the kitchen table, some sort of band wrapped around his bicep just above his inner elbow. Derek sat in another chair close to him, leaning over Brandt’s arm and prodding at the crook of his elbow. Four small vials of blood were already on the table in front of Derek, and as she watched, he slid another vial inside the Vacutainer. The vial drew the blood from Brandt’s arm, filling quickly. Once it was full, Derek pressed a cotton ball to the inside of Brandt’s elbow and withdrew the needle, fastening the cotton down with a piece of medical tape. Brandt let out a heavy breath.
“I think this will be enough,” Derek said as he checked to make sure the vial was sealed. He put a piece of medical tape over the seal for added security. “Thank you, Brandt. Really. I might not be able to do anything for you, but you’ve possibly helped
a lot of people out there.”
“I’m not doing it for all those people,” Brandt said. He unfastened the strap from his arm and massaged the limb. “I’m doing it for Cade and the baby. I’ll do anything to reduce the risks to them.”
“So why are you letting her go into the Westin if you care about her so much?” Derek asked.
“Because, even though I don’t want her to go, I wouldn’t trust anyone else to have my back,” Brandt replied. At his words, Cade couldn’t help the small smile that quirked at the corner of her mouth. “And because if I’m going to die, I don’t want it to be anywhere else but beside her.”
Derek began to pack the five vials into a small, foam-padded case. “I just don’t understand what’s so different about you and this virus. It’s like it’s bonded with you. You’re not even contagious.”
“Wait, I’m not?” Brandt sounded shocked as he lifted his head to look at Derek in surprise. “Then how did … how did Gray get infected? It had to have been the blood from that Hispanic guy.”
“Hispanic guy?” Derek’s brow furrowed as he snapped the case closed. “You mean Cortez?”
“I assume so,” Brandt said. He shrugged and dropped his hands to the table. “He was with Alicia. He tried to kill us.”
“What’d you do to him?” Derek asked quietly.
“Stabbed him in the chest and cut his throat.”
“That’d do it.” Derek sighed and tapped his fingers over the case’s lid. “Cortez was infected. Like Alicia. He was on medications to suppress the virus. If he died, and you got his blood on you and it got into Gray’s wound, then there is a high possibility that he became infected that way.”
“Oh God, that’s a relief,” Brandt breathed out.
Derek looked at him carefully in the dim light. “Look, just be careful, okay? All four of you. I can’t say whether or not this will be enough, and I want the option to come begging for more again.”
Brandt laughed. “You don’t have to beg, Derek. Hell, if Alicia had acted like a sane person, she wouldn’t have had to either. But she didn’t, so here we are.”
Derek smoothed both hands over the case. “I don’t know if it’s the virus or just her general temperament that’s got her acting like she’s been, but …” He looked up, and his words trailed off as he spotted Cade in the doorway. Busted, she gave the doctor a smile and stepped into the room with a nod to him.
“Hi,” Cade greeted the men. She shoved her hands into her pockets as she stood in the doorway, feeling awkward at the intrusion. “Sorry I interrupted. I can just …” She motioned to the door behind her, indicating that she’d leave if they wanted her to.
“No, no,” Brandt said, shaking his head. “Come on in. No worries. Derek was just leaving, right?” He glanced at the doctor.
“That I was,” Derek agreed. He scooped up his bag and slipped past Cade, disappearing down the hall into a different hotel room.
Cade stood in the doorway for a minute more, shifting from one foot to the other and scanning the kitchenette, pointedly avoiding looking at Brandt right away. When she finally did, she wasn’t surprised to discover Brandt still staring at her, patiently waiting on her to speak. She eased forward toward the table, but Brandt spoke before she reached it.
“Hey, can you get the door?” he requested. “I didn’t even mean to leave it open. I figure you might want some privacy.”
“Why would I want privacy?” Cade asked. She took a few steps back and pushed the door closed with her foot, then resumed her walk to the table. Once there, she spun a chair around and straddled it, resting her forearms against the back of the chair.
“I don’t know. Figured we haven’t really talked privately since we … reconnected,” Brandt said. He rested an elbow against the table, his head on his hand as he stared at her. “I figure we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“We do?” Cade asked innocently. Nervousness stirred in her gut, though she knew, just by eavesdropping, that Brandt already knew what she had to tell him.
“Yeah, we do,” Brandt agreed. He gave her a smile, his eyes meeting hers, and added softly, “Like the baby?”
Cade sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. She shifted her hands to grip the back of the chair. “Yeah, like that,” she said. “I take it Remy told you?”
“Yeah, right around the same time she stuck a gun in my face,” Brandt said thoughtfully.
Cade snorted before letting out a burst of laughter. “Remy put a gun in your face?” she repeated in surprise.
“Yeah, she was pretty pissed off at the time,” Brandt admitted. “She wasn’t in a good place, I don’t think.” He sighed and sat up straight, picking lightly at the tape holding the cotton ball to his inner elbow. “How are you, Cade? I mean, really.”
Cade considered her words before answering. “I think I’m okay,” she said. “I’m a little scared, if you’d like me to be honest, but it’s not anything I can’t handle.”
“Yeah, I think I’d rather you be honest with me,” Brandt said. He pulled the tape free and wrapped it around the cotton ball. “I’m scared too,” he admitted. “I mean, this is serious. Really serious.”
“It is,” Cade said, nodding in agreement. “What’s going to happen if we fail? What if we don’t get to her?”
“Then we’ll be dead,” Brandt said simply, an odd amount of confidence in his voice, considering the subject matter. Cade saw right through it, though, and she studied him as she tilted her head to the side.
“You’re not as confident as you’re trying to sound,” she observed. “That’s a first. I figured you’d never have a moment of self-doubt. You’re always trying to be so … tough.”
Brandt raised an eyebrow, and a smirk spread across his face. “Are you teasing me, Cade?”
“Maybe.” Cade reached to the small of her back and slowly drew a survival knife from the sheath at the back of her belt. It was a short-bladed one Isaac had given her, but it would do for her purposes. She studied the blade, flicking her thumb lightly over the edge, testing its sharpness. Then she flipped it over, caught it by the blade, and offered it to Brandt hilt-first. “I need you to do me a favor,” she requested.
Brandt slowly took the knife from her. “Sure, anything within reason,” he agreed.
Cade slipped a hairband from her wrist and braided her hair, snapping the band around the end before pulling the tail over her shoulder so Brandt could see it. “I need you to cut this off.”
“You need me to what?” Brandt asked, his voice rising in pitch with surprise. “Cut your hair? But I like your hair!”
“Provided we survive this evening, it’ll grow back,” Cade said. “There’s a high chance we’ll walk into a bad situation and have to do close-quarters fighting. I don’t want to have another handle to be grabbed by.”
“Yeah, I get that, but … your hair,” he said forlornly. The disappointment he expressed at her decision to cut her hair off was, honestly, fairly amusing. Cade smirked as she waved the braid at him.
“Come on, Brandt. Get it over with before I change my mind,” she said.
“In that case, maybe I should drag ass until you do,” he joked, even as he slid out of his chair and moved to stand behind her. He took the braid into his hand and ran his fingers over the strands. Cade squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as he slipped the knife underneath the tail and started to cut. She heard the strands break and snap under the assault from the blade, and she bit down on her lip as the blade broke through the last of the hair. Her shortened locks fell away to brush against the back of her neck. Cade reached up hesitantly to touch the strands that were left, her fingers feeling the coarse ends midway down the back of her neck. She let out a soft breath.
“How does it look?” Cade asked hesitantly, twisting around to look at Brandt. He still held the thick braid in his hand, winding it around his fingers.
“Ragged. It’ll need a trim,” he answered.
Cade shrugged and forced the fleeting sadnes
s she felt over her hair out of her mind. “I’ll worry about evening it out later,” she said.
Brandt sank back into his chair, sliding the braid and knife across the table to Cade. She sheathed the knife and rested her hand loosely on top of the braid before looking at him. His expression was strangely uncertain, as if he wanted to say or ask something. He drew in a deep breath, reaching out for her hand, and forced the words out.
“Cade, are you … are you absolutely sure you’re pregnant?” he asked carefully. “I mean, is there any doubt about it whatsoever?”
Cade understood why he’d be so uncertain over it. After what he’d told her the month before, after the hell he’d gone through losing his first and only child and then looking divorce right in the face, she could grant him some level of uncertainty. She twisted the braid between her fingers and nodded slowly.
“Yeah, Brandt. I’m pretty certain of it,” she said. She let out a soft chuckle. “I took four pregnancy tests over the span of a day and drank practically an entire gallon of water. All the tests came back positive.”
“And the chances of a false positive across all four tests would be pretty damn low,” Brandt said. He mulled the news over, tracing his fingers slowly along the scar crossing Cade’s palm, before asking, “So what do you think about it?”
“Honestly, I haven’t had much time to,” Cade confessed. “We had only … I mean, it caught me by surprise. And before I got a chance to really process it, the shit with Alicia started, and it got shunted to the side in my mind in favor of survival.” She rolled her eyes. “God knows everybody else is fascinated by the news, though.”
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Brandt muttered. He sounded so bitter that Cade looked at him in surprise. He had his head in his hands, elbows resting on the edge of the table, his fingers plunged into his dark hair. “I don’t want people to hurt you just because of me. It’s not … I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Cade slid her chair around the table to sit closer to him. “I don’t care, Brandt. I can take whatever they throw at me.”
The Becoming: Revelations Page 27
