Nate kept staring at something slightly past me, thinking, and I felt myself deflate. Springing that on him, now, might not have been the best of ideas, hence my rambling. I opened my mouth to make a joke—any kind of joke, which would likely just make it worse—but he silenced me as he leaned in, a finger softly brushing my lips as he caught my gaze and held it. Yes, there was fear in his eyes, but that was not the only thing I saw there now.
“I’m not mad at you for making that decision without asking me first,” he said, barely loud enough for me to hear, as if he wanted this to stay just between the two of us, our shared little secret. “Actually, you telling me that we might have another shot at making a baby is the best news I’ve heard all week.”
Nate using phrases like “making a baby” weirded me the fuck out, and judging from his goofy yet twisted grin, I wasn’t alone with that.
“And there I’d thought me surviving would do the trick,” I snarked.
Unlike what I’d expected, he didn’t take the bait, instead turning serious. “Bree, I would not have heard anyone pronouncing you dead,” he said, his tone hard, his eyes boring into mine. “You have no fucking clue how close I was to tearing Hamilton apart when I saw you lying in your own blood with him standing over you. And the urge didn’t go away even when I rationalized that it hadn’t been his fault. The only thing that saved him was the fact that you would have bled out in the meantime if I’d chosen to come after him, and even if you hadn’t, the others wouldn’t have managed to get to you through us before it was too late. And it all came roaring back at twice the strength when you told me it had been fucking Marleen who tried to kill you.”
He swallowed thickly, licking his lips. I exhaled slowly, trying not to listen to the voice of panic screaming in the back of my mind. “That’s why you went looking for food,” I surmised. “You were hoping that slaking one thirst might quench the other.”
I got a jerky nod from him. “I didn’t dare try one of the guards. Chances were high that they’d gotten the serum, and I didn’t want that to possibly add to my own fucked-up biochemistry. Same with the scientists. I know that most of the serum project staff had been inoculated to cut down on possible work accidents, so they weren’t safe. That left Stone or one of ours, and I told myself, if he really was that insignificant, he would have been clean.”
“Well, otherwise you’d have found him shambling around the viral vault, still knocking over tanks because he didn’t manage to make his way out from between them,” I wisely pointed out.
Nate made a face but let my failed attempt at being funny slide. “Either way, it worked. I wouldn’t call myself calm and centered, but Hamilton’s not the only one with a good measure of self-restraint.”
I just had to interject there. “You mean, unlike me?”
I got a deadpan stare back that was one-hundred percent Nate—and more reassuring than anything he could have said. “Just maybe try not to get stabbed for a minute. You know that I don’t give a shit about your scars, but it might be nice if our kid didn’t come shooting out of your uterus already put back together three times over.”
I made a face, and not just because of the mental image his words created. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything. I don’t go looking for trouble nearly as often as it finds me.”
“That’s something,” he muttered before turning around to face forward again, leaning deeper into his seat. I watched him for a few moments, waiting for more, but now he seemed content to sink into one of his endless silences. I considered using Sonia’s diatribe for an excuse to bail and let someone else suffer endless boredom instead of me. I wondered if I should share the joy of what she’d told me—valid, yes, but also unfair; and Nate deserved at least half, if not more of the blame than I’d gotten. I decided against it. That was a conversation for another day, or maybe never.
“So your former lover and sometimes help is working for your former mentor who’s trying to wipe us all off the face of the earth now,” I summed up our most recent findings. “Guess we’re in for an entertaining summer.” Nate scowled at my description of Marleen—or so I thought, until he didn’t stop. “Why, what am I missing?”
He took his sweet time answering, and when he did, his voice was less sure than I would have expected. “Something about this is rubbing me the wrong way.” My mouth was open, ready for a snarky remark about that maybe being connected to them almost getting me killed, but he forestalled me. “Just, listen to me explain and then you can get in my face about it, okay?” he offered, unfamiliarly hesitant.
“Sure. Shoot.”
He did some ruminating before he finally let me have it. “On the surface, it all makes sense. I can see that, mostly because you haven’t uttered a breath of doubt. It’s my gut feeling that’s telling me that can’t be it. Or not all of it. And yes, I’m aware that I’m not omniscient and can be—and frequently am—wrong. But this is Decker we are talking about, and he has never been anything but methodical. If I look at his purported motives now, they don’t gel. There’s something that doesn’t fit, and it’s larger than us not having all the details. I’ve spent over a decade of my life learning to think and act exactly like he wanted me to, and even though I might not like it, his machinations should make perfect sense to me. But they don’t.”
“Could it be because he’s a manipulative asshole and just made you think you can read him that well?” I suggested. “I mean, we are talking about the guy who thought it was a brilliant idea to break both of his top guns by having one’s sister raped and forcing them both to watch it happen.”
Nate’s smirk was brief, but strangely self-satisfied. “Case in point. Take away your moral blinders, and see that for what it really is. He’d spent years of his life grooming and molding two independent, highly competent killers and was about to give them near unlimited capabilities, as close to superpowers as we have. He knew we would become the ultimate weapons, and because of our training and skills even more deadly than the men we were supposed to command. That’s not something you do lightly, and you make damn sure that you will retain absolute control over them. They’re both dedicated, and you trust them in that, but one wildcard remains—what if someone else can pull those strings? For me, it was easy. All I had for family was an asshole, ambitious brother who was a step away from estranged from me, and a mother who likely would have found the entire psychological side of it deeply interesting, maybe even enough so to forget who said subject was to her. I’d formed zero attachments to any women I’d had relationships with, if you could even call it that. But Bucky? He had an entire family, and while he is still the first to tell you that he couldn’t give less of a shit about his parents, his sister was a trigger waiting to happen. He was lying whenever he insisted she meant nothing to him. I knew that, and Decker knew that, and Hamilton himself must have known that as well, but I think he trusted that his act had been convincing enough. And then she ruined it all by showing up there, and Decker had his confirmation—and the perfect tool to teach his disappointing student one more lesson. He miscalculated, and that’s why he later let me switch tracks when he had to realize that his warning misfired. It made me grow a conscience and got Hamilton to lose all sense of self-preservation. A perfect tool needs to be always ruthless but is only useful when you can use it again and again. Decker rolled the dice and lost, but cutting his losses still got him a lot of good use out of us. Is it, without a doubt, the most fucked-up thing in the world to analytically plan shit like that? Absolutely. But his reasoning is right there, written all over it. Kicking off the apocalypse? Perverting the serum? None of that makes any sense. Not in the framework I’m looking at, or anything I can relate to that.”
I couldn’t say that was enough to make me agree with him, but as much as my skin was crawling with revulsion, I couldn’t wholeheartedly dismiss Nate’s concerns. “So what do we do now?” I asked. “Is your gut feeling enough to change our plans?”
He shook his head without hesitation. “N
o. We regroup. We do our best to weed out what moles and possible traitors we can. And then we come after that miserable old bastard and resolve this, once and for all. Whether we’ll find a bunker at that nav point Cole dug up or not, we will eventually pick up the right leads. They won’t get a jump on us again.”
I didn’t quite share his conviction that we would manage to pull that off, but decided that there was no use in telling Nate that now. Instead, I asked what I should have asked over a week ago, when it became obvious that Hamilton would be coming along for the ride.
“Why does he hate you so much? Hamilton, I mean. Yes, I get the resentment because of your former rivalry. And I get how what happened tore your friendship apart. But there’s a difference between that, and him outright blaming you for what happened. I don’t know how or why, but the more I’m forced to deal with him, the more I think the reason why he hates my guts is also connected to that. You know why, right? Tell me.” The polite thing would have been to ask, but really, almost biting it had a way of killing my patience for that.
Nate exhaled slowly, looking from the other cars over to me. “He hates you because I love you.”
I shook my head, irritated. “That makes no sense—”
“It makes perfect sense, to him,” he corrected me, his voice soft, almost wistful, as it sometimes got when we were dancing around this subject. “He lost the person he loved the most in this world, while you, you’re still here, and not just that. I found you, and I made you fall for me, and whatever fucked-up thing keeps happening to us, you’re still here. You don’t turn on me, and you won’t just leave, and as it turns out, again and again, you’re damn hard to kill. I got what Decker took from him, and he feels like, of all people, I’m the last who deserves it.”
It made sense in a very twisted way, but Hamilton was nothing if not complicated. Completely screwed up, but complicated, even though he loved to pretend he was a very simple, straight shooter. Except for one little detail. “But why?”
I thought Nate wouldn’t answer when nothing came for a full minute, but then he forced himself to respond. Nothing good ever came from moments like that, but I felt like I needed to know. “He hates my fucking guts because Decker added one more level to the whole rape shit. One simple condition. If I’d agreed to do it, he would have been satisfied with that. I wouldn’t even have had to rough her up too badly. Simply fucking his sister in front of him against her will would have been enough. Obviously, I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t have done it to anyone, and I knew Hamilton would never have forgiven me. I think he knows that, if that’s even possible in a scenario like that, I made the right choice. But he needs someone to hate, and that’s my burden to bear. I am deeply sorry for all the pain and grief that has caused you, but unless I kill Hamilton, it won’t stop. You can hate me for that, and for making that choice, but if Decker is still alive and we are going to take him down, I need Hamilton with me.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a moment, processing this. “Because you need to give him the chance for revenge. Because if you don’t, you’ll take this guilt to your grave, and if you can avoid that, you will.”
Nate didn’t answer, but there was no need for it. I didn’t want to, but on some level, I got it. It explained so much—also about Hamilton. Like the fact that he was as ruthless as they came, but even he had lines he wouldn’t cross, and often deviated where he felt that maybe nobody would notice. I probably owed my life to that not just once, but several times over—at the factory; at our truce at the Colorado base; getting to Canada, and not dying in France or on the way back. Not letting me bleed to death was the first time he actively helped me, but I would have been lying if that made that much of a difference. I hated to admit it, but in a sense, Hamilton had been acting as my disgusting, baleful guardian angel—if only so I could survive and deliver the killing blow to Nate that he, for whatever reason, wasn’t ready to deal yet.
And there Sonia was giving me shit for being a dysfunctional asshole after dealing with this for the past several years.
One thing was for sure: whatever Decker was cooking up, wherever he was hiding—he was about to meet his match, and we would deliver the resolution we all so desperately needed. Even if Nate was right and something about this wasn’t as it seemed, that didn’t scare me. Between the three of us—and the people who would come along with us—we would find a way to deal with anything and everything that he could throw in our way. And we would succeed. Who cared if it was the last thing any of us did? I was more than ready to face the music, and none of us would go down without a hell of a fight.
Patreon
Love the books? Can’t get enough of them? Need something to fill the void until the next one is out? Maybe fancy a few outtakes, short stories, and behind-the-scenes information? I have just the thing for you! I’m now on Patreon where I post exclusive content on a monthly basis—starting with the Prequel, of how everything began between Bree and Nate, before that fateful Friday that they met again at the coffee vending machine in the Green Fields Biotech atrium. Here’s a quick teaser for you!
Here’s a little teaser for you:
I absolutely don’t get what my brother saw in her. Dr. Brianna Lewis, Bree to her friends, cutie pie to her girlfriend. She’s so not his type.
I allow myself a momentary smirk at reducing a woman whose academic credentials are longer than her name to her appearance. I’m sure she must love that whenever it happens.
Of course, my brother’s interest in her started—and presumably ended, as well—with her intellect. I’ve read her dissertation and all of the scientific publications that she has to her name, but understanding is a different thing. That’s why she has a PhD, and I’m the product of the research she was hired to work on—presumably. That I can’t say this with certainty has been irking me for months.
What I can say for sure is that Dr. Lewis is one thing above all else: boring as fuck.
Find out more on Patreon!
Acknowledgments
Wow, book #11—almost done with the series!
Yes, book #12 will be the last—and I’ve already started working on it when you’re reading this (on release day). A few weeks ago, that is, since it picks off right where Retribution ends—and may I say so, I’m so psyched about the ending!
But we’re not quite there yet, so let’s talk about GF#11.
This was an interesting book to write. I thought I would have to make up so much about it—the city with its ravines of concrete and glass, and the tunnels… and a day into researching such things, I happened on an article about the train tunnels underneath Dallas, and that completely blew me away! I’ve also fallen in love with the actual city, and can’t wait to visit it one day. Of course there’s plenty of artistic license in the book, but I was extremely happy to find reality had, unexpectedly, handed me the perfect blueprints for once.
I wrote the second half of the book in under a week, so some of the breakneck speed and exhaustion is definitely my own. If there’s something like method writing (akin to method acting) this book definitely checked that box. It’s one of my favorites, and I can’t wait to hear what you think!
My eternal gratitude goes to my editor—she’s the best!—and my trusty beta readers, who never fail to amaze me with their willingness to help . You guys are amazing! And what would any writer be without her readers? Let it be said here that you continue to blow me away with your eagerness to get your hands on my next book. Thank you so much!
About the Author
Adrienne Lecter has a background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, loves ranting at inaccuracies in movies, and spends increasingly more time at the shooting range. She lives with the man and two cats of her life in Vienna, Austria and is working on the next books in the Green Fields series.
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Books published
Green Fields series
#1: Incubation
#2: Outbreak
#3: Escalation
#4: Extinction
#5: Resurgence
#6: Unity
#7: Affliction
#8: Catharsis
#9: Exodus
#10: Uprising
#11: Retribution
coming in 2019:
#12: Annihilation
Find outtakes and short stories on Patreon!
Thank you!
Hey, you! Yes, you, who just spent a helluva lot of time reading this book! You just made my day! Thanks!
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As of August 2018, I’m on Patreon, a crowd-funding platform where you, the reader, can support us, the artists. I’m posting updates, exclusive short stories, and behind-the-scenes notes every month—why not check it out?
Retribution: Green Fields #11 Page 32
