Vivid Avowed (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 3)

by Kaydence Snow

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “Eve, think about this.” Josh looked defeated.

  “Please . . .” Ethan’s eyes just about broke my heart. I didn’t think even he knew what he was pleading for.

  “I can’t lose you again, Evie.” I’d never seen Alec cry, but he was close in that moment, his jaw trembling. “This isn’t on you. It’s not fair.”

  I so badly wanted to give in, to let them talk me into staying in hiding and maintaining the illusion of safety. But I had to be strong.

  “Life’s not fair.” I shrugged. “The five of us know that better than anyone. And no, this shouldn’t be on me—I don’t want this responsibility. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the best chance we have of drawing him out. He wants me. He’s not even hiding it anymore. He’s practically obsessed.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Josh was really struggling with this. “Just knock on the door to one of his secret facilities? He’ll see us coming a mile away. We’ll be outnumbered and unprepared. What’s the point?”

  “No. We make him come to us,” Tyler explained, and I knew I had him. We were moving from whether to do this or not to the practicalities of it. “We level the playing field and draw him out.”

  “How?” Ethan growled.

  “I stop running.” I moved to my bag in the corner of the room and dug around in one of the pockets for my stash of passports. It took only a moment of flicking through them to find the one I was looking for.

  I slapped my Evelyn Maynard passport down on the table—the only legitimate passport I’d ever had, the one I’d applied for as soon as my true identity became known.

  “How do we know this will draw him out? How do we know it’ll work? How can you just put yourself in danger like this?” Alec continued to argue. I understood why. I didn’t want them anywhere near danger either, but it was time for us to do what we’d been working so hard to do since we met. It was time to be brave and honest and work together as a Bond.

  “I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.” I looked around at them, squaring my shoulders. “But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I can’t keep sitting here, hiding and doing nothing, while the world burns. And I know you can’t either. I know in my soul that this is the right thing to do, and I know I have the strength to do it. Because I’m not alone anymore.”

  We took a day to prepare.

  Whatever Nina’s impassioned speech had been to her leaders, it worked. The Lighthunters were going public. They hoped to burst onto the world stage with a message of hope and unity to distract from Davis’s hateful crap.

  They were also putting the full weight of their support behind any organization focused on peacekeeping around the world.

  Tyler and Alec reached out to the few people we trusted and filled them in on the plan. Every call met with resistance and arguments, but once we’d made a decision together as a Bond, we were united. My guys may not have liked what we were about to do, but they supported me one-hundred-percent.

  We packed our meager possessions and went over the plan repeatedly. Alec’s team and a handful of other agents would be with us, prepared to go rogue and defy orders if necessary. A few other players in the Variant world were behind us too, including a good number of Mr. Takata’s trusted contacts.

  When I spoke to Dana, however, she was so quiet on the line, her answers so short and reserved, by the end of it I was questioning my faith in her.

  “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask—this is really fucking dangerous—so I completely understand if you can’t be there to back us up, but please, at least don’t tell anyone about it. Give us a fighting chance.”

  “Yeah . . . I gotta go.” She ended the call without even waiting for a response.

  “Shit.” I dropped the phone and dropped my head into my hands. “Shit fuck fucking tits.”

  Ethan chuckled as he leaned over the back of the couch to massage my shoulders. “Nothing you can do about it now, baby. You had faith in her humanity—you trusted her. I, for one, am glad you haven’t lost the ability to trust altogether after all the shit you’ve been through.”

  His words were comforting, as were his strong hands on my shoulders, but I still worried I’d made a colossal mistake.

  Once we’d spoken to everyone we could trust, we fell into silence, sitting about the room lost in our own thoughts.

  Tyler’s computer pinged, and he shook himself out of his contemplation to look at it. “It’s Charlie again,” he announced, then smiled as he kept reading. “He’s asking if the phone is free to set up a secure line? Dot’s demanding to speak to you, Eve.”

  He typed as he spoke, and a few moments later, the phone next to me on the couch rang.

  I took a deep breath and answered. “Hey, girl.”

  “Don’t ‘hey, girl’ me! If you fucking die pulling this shit, I’m gonna be so mad at you. So mad! I mean, I know when we did that whole ‘go rogue to Australia,’ that was a stupid move, but this is some next-level shit. Didn’t you all run off so you could be safe? And now you’re gonna walk right into the lion’s fucking mouth! Girrrrl, you better not fucking die!” She ranted on about how her friends kept dropping like flies, then went on a tangent about how I’m not even a friend, I’m family. That last bit made me choke up, but I let her get it all out of her system.

  When the sounds coming down the phone were more heavy breathing than shouted threats, I asked, “You done?”

  “No!” She huffed, then after a pause: “Yes . . . I’m scared, Eve. I don’t want to lose any of you.”

  “I’m scared too. But this is the right thing to do.”

  “Eve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really fucking proud of you.”

  I had to swallow around a lump in my throat, and even then, my answer still sounded choked. “Thanks, Dot. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  I cleared my throat and wiped the tears off my cheeks. “What’s been going on with you? I’ve only been gone a week, but it feels like a year.”

  “I know what you mean. So much has changed. I’ve stopped going to class. Mom and Dad are too freaked out, and the guys are on their side.” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I’m still doing a few classes by correspondence, but I’m starting to get cabin fever. I haven’t left the house in, like, three days. But I have had a ton of extra Internet time. At least that’s still up and running—we haven’t gone full Walking Dead yet.”

  I chuckled. Only Dot would be excited about still being able to check social media during a time of crisis. “Been doing some online shopping to fill the time?”

  “As if! I’d have nowhere to wear my new clothes. No, I’m using my uncanny digital communication skills to do some good. There’s a resistance happening, and it’s taking off. Eve, our generation, most of the young people I speak to, want nothing to do with this conflict, and we’re sick of being ignored. I started to see these groups pop up all over the world, independent of one another—people using social media to organize peaceful protests and sit-ins, that kind of thing. So I thought, why not connect them? Make a global network of resistance?”

  “Holy shit, Dot, that’s amazing.”

  “Yeah, Charlie helped me set some stuff up, secure webpages and shit, and even connected me with some of his hacker buddies. Anyway, we’re all working together to spread more messages of unity. There’s gonna be a worldwide peaceful protest next week. Oh! And we’re getting T-shirts printed!”

  I had to laugh at that. Of course she was getting T-shirts printed. I’d been gone a week and my best friend had managed to set up a global resistance movement. “I’m gonna make sure you speak to some of the Lighthunters. What they have planned is really in line with what you’re doing too. After . . .”

  I had no idea how to finish that sentence.

  Nina walked into the cottage, backpack slung over her shoulder. “Ready? The boats are waiting.”

  The guys started to gat
her up our last few things while my heart jumped into my throat. I gripped the couch cushion. “I have to go.”

  “Shit! OK, um . . .”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dot.” Considering how fucking terrified I was, I was surprised at how even my voice sounded. I didn’t want to say goodbye to her. I didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone.

  “Yeah . . .” She was crying again. “Yep. I’ll see you then.”

  I hung up and stood. Immediately, Josh took my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. Ethan waited by the door. Alec and Tyler were just outside, watching.

  I squared my shoulders and walked toward what I knew would be a defining moment of my life—if it didn’t kill me.

  And my Bondmates would be with me every step of the way.

  Three speedboats carried us and a delegation of Lighthunters to the mainland. No one spoke much, and in Athens, we split up. The Lighthunters headed off on various assignments to prepare for what they were about to reveal to the world, and the five of us headed straight for the airport.

  I gave the airport worker a weak smile as he checked my passport. In all my years of using fake documentation, I’d never been as nervous as I was to hand over my actual, legitimate passport. The man scanned it, stamped it, and handed it over.

  It was done. Evelyn Maynard was officially checked in to the international airport in Athens. I could just imagine some warning system in one of Davis’s buildings going off, alerting them I’d surfaced.

  I made room for Ethan, then Alec, behind me. Josh and Ty waited just past the little booths. As I moved to join them, I gripped the strap of my backpack, my knuckles going white, and looked up for the security camera. I spotted it in the corner, near the ceiling.

  Davis would get access to it.

  With every bit of determination and anger I possessed permeating my gaze, I stared it down as if it were the devil himself perched in the corner and not an inanimate object. Just for good measure, I mouthed, Come and get me.

  Then I turned and marched to our boarding gate.

  Thirty

  We had fifteen hours—the time it took to travel from Athens to Washington DC—to mentally prepare for what was to come. I’d expected to find it impossible to sit still, expected to fight against the adrenaline, but as we reached cruising altitude, a kind of calm fell over me.

  Alec and Tyler slept most of the way, conserving energy while they could. Ethan dozed too, but he found it difficult to get comfortable in the tight seats, which were definitely not designed for someone his size. Josh and I didn’t sleep a wink, both of us lost in our thoughts.

  We needed to give our people on the ground time to prepare, but I still wished the flight wasn’t so long. We’d debated taking a shorter one, just going somewhere in Europe or even waiting for him in Athens, but in the end, we’d decided to go home.

  According to intelligence reports, Davis was somewhere on the West Coast, and I wanted to make sure he came for me himself. Mostly, I wanted to send him a message—I was done running. He was not going to keep me from my home any longer, stop me from being where I belonged. While we weren’t flying into New York, it was close enough. Besides, DC was a smaller airport and would be easier to evacuate.

  We landed in late afternoon, the hot sun casting golden light over the vast planes of the airport, but when we parked on the tarmac and didn’t move for a long time, it became clear something was wrong. Passengers were getting restless by the time the pilot finally made an announcement. “Folks, we have an emergency situation, and I’ve been instructed by ground control not to approach the airport terminal. We’re going to deploy the emergency slides and disembark. I’ve been assured we’re safe here, but we do need to evacuate the aircraft in a calm and timely manner. Please pay close attention to what your flight attendants are saying. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  The level of chatter rose among the passengers as they started to get a bit panicked, but he flight attendants were professional and efficient, deploying the slides and ushering people down.

  Once on the ground, all the passengers were herded onto waiting buses. Men clad in black and holding automatic weapons stood by, watching everything carefully. As we approached the bus, one of the armed men stepped forward and gestured for the five of us to follow him to the side. I could feel the eyes of the other curious passengers burning a hole in the back of my head.

  The buses drove off, leaving us with the four armed men on the deserted tarmac. As soon as the other passengers were out of sight, the men relaxed their tense stances and greeted Alec and Tyler.

  “Everything’s in place. Airport buildings should be cleared within the next ten minutes,” the man who’d stopped us in line reported.

  “I don’t know if this is brilliance or pure fucking madness,” another said to Tyler, but his eyes kept darting to me. I must’ve looked like a mess after the long-haul flight, my hair crazy, my clothes wrinkled, my skin drenched in sweat from the summer sun. It must’ve been ninety degrees out there.

  “We’re not paying you to wonder about the merits of missions,” Tyler said with a teasing grin.

  “Man, you ain’t paying any of us for shit. I don’t even know if we’ll have jobs after this, if we even make it out alive. Anyone from Melior Group that’s here today is going rogue, acting against direct orders from the board and siding with Lucian Zacarias and you fuckers.”

  People were putting their jobs, their lives, on the line to help us. Some of the resigned calm that had fallen over me on the plane was chased away by uncertainty.

  In place of a reply, Alec clasped the man’s hand, and they patted each other on the back. He repeated the gesture with the other three, and I had a feeling they’d known each other a long time.

  We parted ways, and a short golf buggy ride later, we walked into the terminal building.

  I sighed, glad to be in air conditioning after the oppressive heat. Or maybe it was the situation itself that was oppressive.

  Walking through an abandoned airport was kind of surreal, like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. Stores were still lit up and wide open while plates with half-eaten meals and still steaming mugs of coffee littered the tables of restaurants.

  We settled in near a wall of windows overlooking the tarmac. Ty and Alec sat calmly on either side of me at one end of a heavy wooden table. Ethan leaned against the window, his feet crossed at the ankles. Josh paced slowly, looking down the wide corridor every once in a while. Really, we had no idea where any potential threat could come from. It could crash through the ceiling for all we knew.

  None of us spoke.

  Should I be more nervous? I was waiting to face head-on the threat my mother had been running from my entire childhood. But I was eerily calm, as calm as the abandoned airport. I’d made peace with whatever happened next. If I was to die, I was taking him down with me.

  The sharp sound of glass shattering in the distance was the first sign we were no longer alone.

  We all rose to our feet, and the guys positioned themselves in front of me. Tyler and Alec pulled their guns, and Ethan conjured an angry blue fireball. I’d already transferred all the extra Light I could to them. We were as prepared as we could be, so I just planted my feet wide and waited, craning my neck to see through the gap between Alec and Tyler’s broad shoulders.

  Davis’s men barely made a sound as they approached. The breaking glass had likely been a distraction to get us all looking down the wide corridor, because when they appeared, they converged on us from all directions.

  A shadow caught my eye, dancing jerkily on the concrete floor to my left, and I turned just in time to see several masked men rappel down the tall windows and shoot the glass. It all happened so fast, their movements so precise and practiced that I barely had time to blink before one of them landed mere feet from me.

  The guys tightened their position around me, boxing me in, as the masked men approached. Despite the assailants’ dramatic entrance, they weren’t shooting or moving to at
tack. They just surrounded us, guns pointed.

  One of them stepped forward and spoke, his voice muffled through the mask. “Hand over the girl, and we’ll kill you quickly.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. My heart battered against my chest, and my breathing sounded obnoxiously loud.

  I couldn’t see Tyler’s face, but I could see the way his cotton shirt pulled taut over his tense muscles; I could imagine the way his gray eyes narrowed on the piece of shit threatening to kill them. When he spoke, his voice was firm and loud. “No.”

  As soon as the word left his lips, Tyler and Alec both fired in rapid succession, taking out two men each with clean headshots before anyone else could react. Ethan threw the fireball, the blue flames engulfing his victim faster than any fire I’d ever seen; he threw more as fast as he could conjure them.

  Josh simply backed up, his back connecting with my right arm, and watched everything with a look of intense concentration.

  Davis’s men started firing.

  Every bullet came within a foot of us and then dropped to the ground. The tinkling sound of ammo piling up at our feet mingled with the deafening gunfire.

  “Take out the blond one!” someone shouted.

  So far, only bullets had been flying at us, but when more assailants started running up, it became apparent Davis had sent in his Variants too.

  Unnaturally fierce wind started to lift anything in the area that wasn’t tied down. At the same time, several machines—transport buggies, vacuum cleaners, anything electronic and on wheels—started careening straight for Josh.

  Alec isolated the Variant with the wind ability and the one with the tech ability and took them both out, their screams of pain audible even over the rest of the cacophony.

  As Alec defended Josh, Ethan paused throwing fireballs. Instead, he lifted his arms over his head and sent wave after wave of bright golden fire in every direction: the signal for our own backup to come charging in. From every back room, storage area, and hidden location, our people burst out to join the fight.