by Sylvia Ryan
Eyes fixed on his face, she waited to proceed. He ground his molars together and nodded slightly.
“I gave the speaker from your kitchen to a woman. She’ll be assuming the identity of a Sapphire who’s leaving New Atlanta through the tunnel.”
“Journey,” he rumbled.
“How did you know?”
“She’s the only woman in New Atlanta who’d want to give me a message.”
“She’s changed her tattoo to Sapphire. She’ll be working in the Emerald Zone. Something big, she said. But that’s all she could tell me.”
He looked at her skeptically. “Doesn’t sound like Journey.”
Laila nodded. “That’s what she said you’d say. She’s gotten more involved in the Resistance.”
Rock tensed at that tidbit of information. “I was afraid of that.” He took in a big breath and ran his fingers through his hair, probably trying to release some of the anxiety that suddenly saturated the space around them.
“She wanted to see you before we left but had to settle for sending a message instead.”
“Okay.”
“She said to tell you thank you and she’s grateful for everything.”
“When Journey first came to me, she was painfully shy.” He paused and tilted his head as if leafing through words that fit better. “Shy is not quite the word I’m looking for, but close enough.” He rubbed his jaw, rasping his fingers over his stubble. “She came a long way under my care and, it seems, even further in the past year. She’s been working for the Resistance leader since I’ve been gone, but I had no idea she could do what she did last night.”
“It seems like she’s grown into a confident, courageous woman. Because of you.” He got to his feet, bringing her with him and handed over her clothes. Rock shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. Just took care of her, loved her.
Rock pulled two envelopes from his bag, and she followed him to the kitchen. He tossed the envelopes on the table. One was labeled Dad, the other, Journey. He angled his head to meet her gaze. “I was like a papa bear raising up a baby bird. But I would never presume to take credit for her successes. I just gave her a safe haven so she could grow into herself.”
“It looks like she’s doing that.”
“Yeah.” His expression turned serious. “But assuming a Sapphire’s identity, very risky.”
“The woman she’s replacing just got designated. New job assignment. New apartment. Nobody will know Journey’s not who she says she is. It’ll be okay, Rock.”
Laila sat to put on her boots and got a glimpse inside his open duffel. She saw all the toys in it and glared at him. “You knew I would follow.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
Rock pulled out the prosthetic hand he’d built for Jordan and left it next to the envelopes.
“Journey said she ran across a pit full of dead men outside the Emerald Zone.”
“Not surprised.”
“I also saw something weird yesterday.” Laila told Rock of her discovery of the children on the Peacekeeper’s Compound, and he took the time to jot a quick note to Xander before they walked out of the drop house together.
The glorious morning sun kissed her face and worked on burning away the dew. When they arrived at the rest stop, Rock left her by their vehicle and headed toward Garret and Sydney’s truck.
A moment later, Garret walked around the back corner of theirs. “Where the hell have you been all night?” he snapped in a low voice. “I had to cover for you with Sydney.”
“I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped.” Laila said.
“You should be. Don’t put me in a position like that again.” He walked away without another glance, his anger still rolling off him.
Rock entered the driver’s side of the armored truck, and Laila laid her head on his lap.
“Day two,” he said before putting it in gear. The inside of the cab was warm, and they were moving at a good clip. The steady undulation of the truck combined with the white noise of the engine lulled her. For the next hour or so, she dozed.
The truck slowed noticeably. “Get up,” Rock said as he briskly rubbed her arm.
She righted herself. The truck ahead of them was stopped with a fallen tree in their path. Garret was already at the back, pulling a chain saw from the open door. She looked past where the men were working, worried the loud growl of the chainsaw would attract unwanted guests. The paved road was still visible through the encroaching vegetation and debris. The area seemed deserted, but the longer it took to clear the tree, the more her anxiety built.
As the minutes passed and her worry for Rock’s safety spiked, the mission took on seriousness as a new dimension of this journey became clear. Rock risked his life so she could experience her life’s dream.
Her suspicions that he was not returning to New Atlanta seemed to be correct. He’d deposited his two duffels into an SUV, joining at least twenty more of the same, before they’d left the drop house. It must have taken a year’s worth of trips to accumulate all of them.
For a moment, she considered whether he might be leaving supplies for someone who lived in Onyx, but then she remembered the toys packed in one of the bags. Those weren’t for somebody already out there. They were for him. That was why Journey risked everything to see him. She’d known.
Laila didn’t know whether to be angry or worried. Sure now that Rock was not returning to New Atlanta, she wondered why he hadn’t said anything to her about it yet. He wouldn’t deliver her to New Atlanta and then abandon her to start a new life. Would he? Would he leave her on her own, like he’d left Journey? God, she was unhinged by the possibility.
The entire morning and afternoon were filled with identical fits of starts and stops. With not much else but the scenery to capture her interest as they hopped their way north, she had a lot of time for those thoughts to wreak havoc with her sanity.
Chapter 20
Rock pulled up near the front of the capitol building and put the truck in park. Laila’s knee bounced up and down as she leaned forward and visually explored what she could through the limited angles of the windshield and passenger window. He followed her gaze. The capitol looked in remarkably good shape, considering it had received no maintenance for twenty-eight years.
When her hand reached for the door handle, he reined her in. “You can open the door so you don’t get too hot, but don’t get out until I give you the okay.” Her groan made him smile as he got out of the truck and worked with Sydney and Garret to set up an electrified security fence. He felt her intense frustration burning through his body armor and landing heavily on him. After he finished the inner fence, Rock walked a larger perimeter and triangled the camp with laser alarms that would activate if someone or something crossed them.
When he finally helped Laila out of the truck, she was talking before her feet hit the ground. “First we need to scout the first few items on the list. They are priority. According to the intel Morgan had from his father and my research, when the Gov realized the collapse was imminent, they moved the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights from display in the National Archives to a secured room underground.” Laila smiled at him. “Let’s see if they’re still there.” She started walking toward the archives building.
“Whoa, girl. Hold up.” He reached for her, grabbing the edge of the flak jacket she wore to jerk her backward. “You’re identification and conservation. We’re scouting and security,” Rock said, motioning at himself and the other two.
“You follow us, not the other way around,” Garret said from behind her.
Rock focused over her shoulder as Garret said, “Sydney and I will go find the items and make sure it’s safe to bring you in. Then you can come.”
Rock nodded his agreement. Laila grabbed his arm, pulled him away from the other two, and whispered wildly at him, “You have lost your fucking mind if you think I’m going to stay here while they go traipsing off, f
umbling around priceless historical artifacts.”
Rock laughed. “You need to take a breath, peanut.” He paused. Their gazes locked, and he realized, in this, he couldn’t say no to her.
He sighed. “You have to wear your side arm. Be ready in five minutes.”
Almost an hour later, Laila found the documents in the pitch-black darkness of a maze of underground rooms. “This recovery will be the easiest of all the artifacts if the titanium and aluminum cases are still intact.” With a flashlight, she meticulously inspected the cases housing the documents. “They seem to be pristine and should be easy to transport to the armored trucks by hand,” she said to the three shadows lurking behind her.
The quartet made three trips from the archive building to the trucks. Rock covered Sydney and Garret as they carried the cases. Laila helped by opening doors and shining light when necessary. The sun was low in the sky by the time all three were secured in the back of the lead truck. Laila stood, studying the last document secured. “The actual U.S. Constitution. It’s hard to wrap my brain around.”
Rock stood behind her, also looking at the three-hundred-year-old document. “Too bad it doesn’t mean anything anymore. In this century, not all men were created equal.” He turned and walked away.
The following week was filled with the retrieval, packaging and transfer of priceless art and items of historical significance. Laila meticulously cared for and packaged John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But other items on the list, like the Hope Diamond, and printing plates for US currency were either missing or destroyed by vandals.
As Laila admired the next painting she would be preparing for transport, she felt Rock’s sexual need, surging out of him and saturating the area they occupied. It had been over a week since the over-consummation of their relationship. He radiated a constant simmer she couldn’t get away from, adding to her angst at a time when she was already on edge about his still undisclosed plans to leave New Atlanta.
During the first days of the mission, she’d waited for him to tell her. Initially, she was confident that, when the time came to leave, he’d take her with him. But days passed, and the sometimes tedious work she did to prepare items for transport gave her significant time to think of other, less positive scenarios. She dwelled endlessly, wondering why he kept her in the dark. She daydreamed of all the possible things, life changing, future-altering things that would happen if she were to run away with him. It would be crazy, having significant ramifications on her life, including never seeing her mother again and leaving her life’s work behind.
By the end of the first week in DC, she’d found herself emotionally withdrawing in anticipation of the news that someday soon she would have to say goodbye to this man. It was incredibly hard. He often sought her gaze, pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger. She found it hard to close even one door he’d opened during the two-month inventory he’d taken of her. When I was sure he loved me.
He did love her…right? This one secret between them changed her entire perspective on their relationship, and she got a good taste of how it felt to be the person waiting, hoping when the secret was revealed, it wouldn’t tear her world apart.
Since they arrived in DC, they hid their relationship twenty-four hours a day. She felt so far away from him. The sudden, prolonged disconnect had opened her up to doubt and depression that kept getting stronger as the days passed.
After over a week of waiting, there was a change within herself. The blues and insecurity were morphing into something uglier—anger.
She sighed, fingering the chain around her neck and refocusing on the painting in front of her. He hadn’t touched her since that first night, the night of her punishment. Every night since then, they’d lain side by side in their bedrolls with the inches between them feeling more like miles. She’d spent hours lying awake, listening to his even, rhythmic breathing and feeling uneasy about the footing of their relationship. She ached for his enormous frame to surround her. She missed him, missed the routine. Over and over, she thought of his soapy hands sliding over her skin, washing her like he’d done every afternoon since the very first day. The loss of that simple ritual left her feeling detached from him. She missed every single thing they’d spent the last sixty days building. A week ago, she would have said their love was built on bedrock. Now she wasn’t so sure.
She woke near dawn with his vise-like arm around her waist, pulled into the curve of his body with his dick wedged nicely between them. In sleep, his body sought her out, but the erection pressed against her ass was a consolation prize. Something he’d given in sleep. It meant nothing to him but everything to her. Lying awake in his arms, her punishment haunted her. What would their first time together have been like if she hadn’t had to finish her Resistance obligation the night before they left? The natural thought that followed squeezed her chest tight. Would she ever get the chance to find out? She needed his touch so badly she barely contained her arousal. Her body was ready for him, her panties damp as she spent almost an hour longing for his rough palms to rasp over her nipples. She never got it.
A cold, bereft place expanded inside her. This, compounded with her mind’s machinations about whether he would soon leave her wore her patience thin. Something seemed terribly wrong. She wanted to cry or scream most of the time now, feeling muddled with frustration and fear.
They’d spent the last couple of days stalled in the National Gallery of Art. She glanced over her shoulder at the man who, for days, had watched her complete the painstaking work of preparing Renoir’s A Girl With a Watering Can for transport.
She tried to wear him down during the hours spent alone with him. She did everything in her power to stoke his need in seemingly innocent ways. His hunger for her spiked every time she brushed against him, and his gaze was on fire when she leaned over, giving him a glimpse of the lace bra covering the curve of her breasts. Nevertheless, he still gave no outward reaction to her provocative teasing, even when no one was around.
It could be his way of distancing himself. That meant he would return her to New Atlanta and leave her there.
“What are you thinking? I’ve never seen that look on your face before.”
Rock’s words sucked her back into the present. “I was actually thinking about you.”
He raised his eyebrows as if surprised at her answer. “What about me?”
“I can’t figure out why you’re working so hard to stonewall me.”
Rock straightened and replaced his expression of interest with his Rock wall. “I’m not.” He began to turn away and walk to the chair by the doorway. Laila grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“Is it me? Is there something about me that isn’t attractive to you anymore?”
His expression darkened as he cupped her face. “God, that couldn’t be further from the truth.” His hand lingered on her cheek. A look of sadness, or maybe regret, clouded his face. He twirled a wayward curl around his finger then he dropped his hand.
“Then why haven’t you told me you’re not returning to New Atlanta?” The words were squeezed through her constricted throat. She was a moment away from bawling like a pathetic idiot.
He straightened, obviously surprised she knew. “I’m not sure yet how I want to proceed. I’ll tell you once I’ve decided.” His tone had been sharp, the words clipped.
“What exactly needs to be decided?” She waited for his answer, heart thumping hard in her chest. He’d find the right words. He’d tell her he’d never leave her. This worry she’d been carrying around with her would seem like a silly tangent her mind had traveled.
He glanced over his shoulder in the direction where they’d left Garret and Sydney. “When I know, you’ll know, and that’s all I have to say on the subject right now.”
Laila looked down at her toes. It was not the profession of love she’d been hoping for. She deflated. “Okay. I get the message. I’ll leave you alone.”
/> Rock squared his jaw and stared down at her with a cool mask of indifference. She waited for him to say something else, but got nothing. For an instant, she felt his struggle, and then that was gone, too. She didn’t feel the connection she craved, only a vague sense of isolation. He had closed himself off.
Laila turned her attention back to her work, essentially turning her back on him. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to get a grip on her emotions. How the hell did her dream, her heart’s desire to be on this mission turn into something else entirely? She was miserable and very tired of the bipolar roller coaster ride of hope and rejection. She’d had enough.
The simmering anger she’d been harboring since she woke up that morning advanced to a rolling boil. His detachment made her crazy and exposed her insecurities, making her feel desperate and pathetic. Fury rose within her. Her face heated with the rise of her blood pressure. She pulled in a long breath. She had never been so mad at anyone, ever.
Rock moved behind her. Then, his hand landed on her shoulder. He turned her around and sighed. “Laila—”
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she warned through clenched teeth. “I never want you to fucking touch me again.” She jerked herself out of his grasp and walked away, never looking back.
* * * *
Rock’s attempt to stall his decision had unintentionally hurt Laila, but he hadn’t known it until just now. He found her where Garret and Sydney stood at the front entrance of the museum. Laila stood close to Garret with her head tilted up, looking at him and smiling. Fucking smiling, when just a moment ago she’d shot him a look that made him flinch.
Sydney looked down on his sweet girl with sheer hatred in her eyes. He’d not seen the woman look at Laila like that before. He swore under his breath and knew he’d made their lives more dangerous by putting Sydney in her place all those weeks ago. Blood rushed full bore through his veins. His temper rose and his thoughts roared, demanding Laila be moved away from Garret and Sydney. Standing there, watching Laila’s silhouette in the open doorway, Rock came to the harsh realization that, for the first time in his life, he was stuck. He was off his game, scattered and indecisive. There was no right answer to the dilemma of where to keep her as safe as possible while he set up their home. There were only varying levels of danger.
