There had been so many times I’d almost sought Flint out to ask him about it. To have him laugh at me and tell me Oliver was full of shit. Or at least I’d hoped he’d say that. And, really, the reason I hadn’t gone to him was partly out of fear that Oliver wasn’t kidding.
Scooping up the towel I’d left on the weight bench, I wiped my face and then tossed it into the hamper beside the door before heading to Flint’s office.
He was waiting for me outside his door. “Walk with me, Jake.”
I nodded, falling into step beside him as we ventured off down a hallway I’d never been given access to use.
At the end of it, Flint swiped a badge past a white panel mounted beside a solid steel door and gestured me through before closing it behind us.
“I talked to Oliver the other day, and he said he told you about Trent,” Flint said, walking casually beside me with his hands in his pockets. “I have to admit it surprised me that you didn’t come to me demanding answers.”
“Would you have told me the truth if I had?” I asked, wondering what he was getting at.
“No. At least not without Cole’s permission,” he answered, giving me a brief smile. “See… there’s more to it than what Oliver told you. You’ll have to excuse him; this program freaks him out a little bit. I can only hope once you see what’s happening and talk to Cole about it, you’ll understand it better.”
”He’s not the only one freaked out about it,” I said.
“Flint? Oh, good, you brought him down. Hello, Jake,” Cole said, beaming from ear to ear as he walked towards me, hand outstretched.
Cole did not look at all like I’d expected. Not even a little bit. For one thing, he was young… like really young. Maybe only a few years older than me.
“Not who you expected?” he asked, seemingly reading my mind. “Don’t worry. I get that a lot.”
I had no idea what to say to that, so I went for the easiest reply and shook his hand as I said, “Nice to meet you.”
Cole looked between Flint and me, his eyes gleaming with something like amusement. “Nothing’s changed as of right now. She’s still unconscious, but her brain activity is right on target.”
“She?” I asked, biting my tongue for speaking out loud.
“I was just about to check on her. Follow me,” Cole said.
I found myself walking behind him, oddly curious as to what I’d see as I listened to Cole rattle off medical terms and math equations. “What’s really interesting,” he said, pausing long enough to look over his shoulder at me, “is that this particular young lady was loaded up with a very high level of heroine, but was never a habitual user. How she ended up overdosing on it is quite the mystery.”
“Where did they find her?” Flint asked.
“In a dumpster behind one of Nicco’s rival clubs. A busboy taking out the trash found her. She was still alive at that point,” Cole answered.
“What was the official cause of death?” Flint asked.
“Cardiac arrest.”
We came to a stop just outside a long stretch of windows, and there she was. Her chest rose and fell in rhythmic movements, like someone in a deep sleep. There was a flushed look to her cheeks, nothing like the washed-out look of someone on their deathbed.
Flint sucked in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh before he said, “There’s nothing to her. Are you sure she’s going to be strong enough for this?”
Cole shrugged. “It was either take her, or wait for God knows how long before another body came up to be donated to science. Really, it’s the timing that’s key.”
“Timing?” I sounded like a damn parrot.
“It’s complicated, but I’ll try to break it down for you. In order to bring a person back, they can’t have been dead for more than a few hours. So really, that takes my choices down to like one in five thousand. Of course, that’s a ballpark estimate. I won’t bore you with the intricate details.” He smiled, showing a flash of perfectly white teeth. “Lucky for me, the coroner and I are pretty good friends, so when he called me and told me what he had, I jumped right on it. If not, it could be years before another opportunity presented itself. As it stands, it was sheer luck the coroner was at the hospital when this young lady died.”
“But isn’t that… wrong?” I asked. Morally, I couldn’t work it out. If a person died, bringing them back well after they’d passed was a horrific idea. Not only did it go against everything I’d ever thought, but there were also other things to consider as well, like brain damage. Why bring someone back in that sort of mindless state?
“Depends on how you look at it.” Cole said as he gestured for us to follow him.
“How you look at it? She had a life, a family, and now what’s she going to have? Will she even remember who she was? And what happens if someone she knew sees her?” I asked.
“The same could be asked of you. What happens when someone you used to know sees you?” Cole asked, smiling.
“I didn’t die,” I answered.
“Technically,” Cole said, a smirk curling along the corner of his mouth. “And no, she won’t remember who she was, which is for the best.”
“How long before she wakes up?” Flint asked.
Cole crossed the room, making his way from one machine to another, twisting knobs and pushing buttons. “I’m still tweaking a few things in the programming, so I’m keeping her under for a little while longer. Until I know for sure that the new codes are working, I’ll hold off on bringing her all the way back.”
“And the glitch?” Flint asked.
“That’s what I need to be sure of,” Cole answered.
“What glitch? Are you telling me that you’re somehow programming her like a robot?” I asked, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer.
“I assure you, she’s anything but that,” Cole answered, reaching out to put his hand on hers. Her fingers curled in response. “She’s as alive as we are right now, just under very heavy sedation.”
“And when she wakes up, what then?” I asked.
“We welcome her in and start her training,” Flint answered.
Chapter 9
“I hope I can trust you not to say anything to anyone else for the time being,” Flint said as we stood inside his office.
“Who the hell would believe me?” I asked. How the hell could you explain something like that without someone actually seeing it firsthand?
Flint shrugged. “It’s not about anyone believing you. It’s about me being able to trust you with confidential information.”
“Don’t worry, Flint. I won’t say anything.” I meant it too. There was no way in hell I’d ever tell Riley, or the others, that Cole was raising people from the dead just down the hall.
“Good. Right now, our focus needs to be on finding Robert de Fleur. Grant and Nadia aren’t going to rest until they know that particular threat to Jared has been taken care of.”
“Speaking of Jared, where is he? I haven’t seen him in few days.”
“Colorado. He and Murphy were sent there to sit down with a couple of agents to go over some intelligence and see if they can get any sort of idea as to where the hell Robert de Fleur disappeared to. Aiden is following up on a handful of leads before he heads off to Scotland.”
“Wait, he didn’t go right to Scotland with Nadia and Grant?” I asked. That hadn’t been what they’d told us.
“You’ll soon figure out that unless we’re moving in to take someone down, or rescue someone, things change all the damn time. We’ve been trying to set up the Scotland location for almost two years now, but it’s never worked out. This is the closest we’ve ever been, and I have a feeling it won’t be long now. Grant will be headed there just after he checks out a few leads in the Netherlands.”
“What about Nadia? Where is she?” I asked.
“She’s meeting our contacts in South America,” Flint answered, settling in his chair.
“We’re really all over the world?” I would have never thought it w
as such a big network.
“Most locations are just intelligence based. Our operatives are kept to a smaller scale between a few locations. Here and Colorado to be exact, but this is the largest location. It might not look like much from where you’re standing, but we’re the main hub for all the locations. Anyone who is new comes here first for training, and then once they’re done, they’re put into the field.”
That worried me. A lot. “So you’re telling me that once my training is done, I could be sent somewhere else?”
Flint let out a deep laugh. “Worried, Ace? That’s what the others call you, right?”
“I signed on to help keep Jared safe, yet Jared’s not here, so who am I protecting? Was that the plan all along… bring me in and then once I’ve committed, there’s no turning back?”
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” he said, leaning forward, eyes narrowing as he spoke. “There is no turning back, but lucky for you, Grant and Nadia won’t allow you or the others to get too far out of their sight. That’s what you’re worried about, right? Being taken from Riley and the others?”
My fists clenched. “I won’t let anyone keep Riley and me apart. Not now. Not ever.”
Flint shook his head. “Jesus, you sound just like Grant did when… Never mind.”
“…and you don’t get to make that call.” The sound of a very enraged Riley reached my ears. I leaned out into the hall and caught sight of her and Oliver walking briskly toward me.
“Get it through that thick-ass head of yours. You are not an operative,” Oliver answered, drawing out the last sentence as if it would sink in better for her.
“You don’t know that,” she hissed back.
“The hell I don’t. You,” he said, pointing his finger at her as she kept pace with him, “don’t have the right training for something like that. And—”
Before he could finish his sentence, he was down on the floor, Riley’s knee in his back as she said, “Would you like to continue with what you were saying? Or would you rather just shut up now?”
“What the hell is going on out here?” Flint asked over my shoulder. “Oliver, get the hell off the ground.”
I heard the humor he did nothing to conceal in his voice as we both watched Riley move her knee from Oliver’s spine. She then held her hand out to help him up.
When he got to his feet, scowling, Riley gave him a feral-looking smile. “I might be a girl, Oliver, but I’m not your average simpering female in desperate need of a man to protect her.”
“I didn’t say that you were, now did I?” he rumbled back.
“No, but what I believe you said was that I was a girl. Therefore, I didn’t belong in the field as an operative.” She held her hand up to keep him from butting in when his mouth opened. “Which I took as something like ‘women belong in the kitchen’. And to that, I give you a great big one of these.” Her hand snapped up in between them, middle finger waving back and forth like a flag.
He rolled his eyes. “That’s not very ladylike.”
She busted out laughing. “Neither is throwing a grown-ass man on the floor, but there ya go.”
He shook his head, rolled his eyes, and then tossed his hands. “Fine! But you still need to clear it with Flint.”
“Clear what with Flint?” I asked, wondering what in the hell was going on.
“I want to do sims training, and Oliver thought I shouldn’t do it because I’m a girl,” Riley said. Sparks practically shot from her eyes as her cheeks glowed with the anger she was doing her best to contain.
I knew that look all too well. It had been turned on me before.
“Why sims training?” Flint asked.
“Why not?” she fired back at him.
He shrugged. “Just curious. We hadn’t discussed what your next step in training would be, but I was going to see if you’d be interested in checking out the medical facility we have on site.”
I cringed. Would that put her in contact with the girl Cole brought back to life?
Riley’s eyes narrowed on me, but she didn’t question my reaction. Instead, she answered Flint. “I’m not asking to go through sims because I want to be an operative. I just think that if it’s as dangerous as you say for those of us working for Cole Enterprise, then we should all have as much tactical training as possible. I, for one, don’t want to be put in a situation I can’t think my way through. Sim training should be mandatory for everyone who comes through here, no matter what station they end up working in.”
Flint’s head bobbed along in agreement. “That’s very observant of you, Riley, and I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, you won’t get any special treatment. You’ll go through the same training the operatives go through when you do the sims. Deal?”
She stuck her hand out, and they shook on it. “Deal.”
“Are you bored? Is that it?” I asked, pulling back the shower curtain.
Riley stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror before pulling a clean towel from the rack and tossing it at me. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Because I find it hard to believe that you would rather go through endless days of either getting the shit beat out of you, which is hard to sit back and watch by the way, or the physical strain you put on yourself that has you puking.” I dried off, wrapping the towel around my hips before stepping out of the shower.
Watching Riley train alongside me was almost more than I could handle. But Riley wasn’t tapping out; she was digging her heels in further and further with each day that passed.
“What happens when one of you needs help, but there’s no one else around except me? What then? Am I supposed to say, ‘don’t look at me, I only do intelligence’?” she snapped.
“That’s not what I meant, Riles,” I said, hauling her against my chest. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s the thing, Jake. I don’t want anyone to be sorry about the choices we’ve all made in order to be where we are. I just want us to be able to move on as one. Stronger… more. None of us can do it on our own. And I want Nadia and Grant to see that we’re better together. That way, we’ll never be separated.”
“So that’s what this is all about then? Because I could have told you long before now that I won’t let anyone keep you from me.” I placed a light kiss on her lips.
“Yes and no. It’s not just about you and me. It’s about all of us. Jared, Eli, and Aiden. I know there will be times when we’ll be apart, but I don’t want it to be for years on end. It’s bad enough we’ve been cut completely off from Josh, Mark, and Paige…” She clenched her fist, looking away.
It wasn’t easy for her knowing there was a possibility we might never be able to have them in our lives again.
“I’m working through this the only way I know how. And, right now, that way is for me to be the best version of myself. So no, I’m not bored. I’m just ensuring my place,” she said.
It had been a long day, several of them in fact, with the way Oliver pushed us with our training. It was like he wanted to get us to the point where we were fit enough to head right out on a mission should one arise.
Riley had dove in headfirst since arriving in Cole’s underground world. Not only had she taken on the physical training, but she’d also immersed herself into the intelligence side too. It was almost as if she’d decided to put her finger right on the pulse of Cole Enterprise so she could be connected to the ebb and flow of every movement. Which, of course, was impossible. There were things she didn’t know about, and I wasn’t sure she ever would.
Like the not-so-dead girl just behind locked door number two.
“Jared and Murphy should be back by now,” Riley said, reaching for the bottle of lotion she kept on the counter.
I walked out of the bathroom and headed to the closet with the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine trailing behind me as Riley followed me out, lathering her arms.
“I wonder if they got any breaks while they were there,” I said, dropping the towel in front of the dresser.
Riley sighed and grabbed the towel from the floor as I stepped into the boxer briefs I’d snagged from the drawer.
“What?” I asked, looking back at her.
She shook her head. “You were two steps from the hamper. Two…”
“I would have got it,” I grumbled, pulling on my pants and then sitting down on the edge of the bed to put on my socks and shoes.
She mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear before pulling a shirt free from its hanger and throwing it in my lap.
I lunged at her, catching her around the waist. Dropping her in the middle of the bed, I rolled over onto her in order to keep her there. It had been a whole lot easier before she learned how to fight back.
When I pinned her arms over her head, Riley struggled to bring her knee up between us. “Let me up, Jake.”
I scowled at her. “No, I don’t think I will.”
She fumed, twisting against my hold. Realizing it was a lost cause, she went limp underneath me.
“You wanna fight about a towel on the floor? Or do you wanna tell me what it really is that you’re so pissed about?” I asked.
“I’m not pissed about anything,” she answered, digging her knuckles into my ribs when I let go of her hands and came up on my elbows to look down at her.
“So you’re just going to let whatever it is bother you until you snap?” I pushed.
“I’m not gonna snap!” She shoved at me to let her up.
I wasn’t going to let her go that easy, but I knew keeping her pinned under me would only piss her off worse, so I rolled us over. Sitting her on my stomach, I linked my fingers behind my head.
She closed her eyes with a sigh and I waited her out, going as far as lifting her up slightly to cross my legs at the ankle, settling in for the duration.
“I’m not mad. I’m edgy,” she admitted.
I hummed in response, feeling the tense way she sat on top of me.
“I feel like I could crawl out of my own skin most days, and some days, I don’t even know if I’m even in my own skin. I miss the sun. I miss the rain. I miss who we used to be, and I know that we’ll never be that again… and that’s okay. I close my eyes and see what it could have been like had we both made different choices. I’m angry that we can never be more than we are now. And then I realize that’s just a stupid, foolish, girly dream, and the reality is that we’ll be together no matter what… and… and… I—”
Relevance (The Six #2.5) Page 11
