Rush (Phoenix Rising) (20 page)

Rough? Maybe brutal. Maybe horrifying. But Teague’s perspective gave Jessica something to think about on the walk back.

She trailed the team, dividing her attention between the colorful leaf-strewn ground and Quaid’s muscled back. Her brain scattered—from the past to the present back to the past. She tried to remember any circumstance, any incident, in which Quaid had shown some hint of violence—even if only the capacity. Had he ever thrown a chair? Had he ever started a physical fight? Had he even engaged in a fight when provoked? The answer to every question she could think to ask was no. Hell, the man had rarely ever raised his voice unless he’d been laughing.

A sharp, clear vision of Quaid—
her
Quaid—laughing, as he often did, filled her mind. The joy that followed was so clean and crisp and pure, it struck her like the stab of a knife. Her breath caught on a sudden and vivid slice of loss. She stumbled and caught herself with a hand against a tree.

“Hey.” Teague’s voice brought her head up. “You okay?” Beyond him, several other members of the team had paused and looked back at her, including Quaid. His eyes were unusually dark in the shade of the overhead trees, his hooded brow menacing with that serious, dark expression. The blood splattering his face and chest made her stomach squeeze.

“Just need to catch my breath,” she said. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up in a second.”

But Teague wouldn’t leave her alone with the unknown awaiting them in this multicolored forest, and Jessica gave up the hope of getting a minute to pull herself together. She pushed on against the painful realization that the heart of the man she’d married might not still live within the body of the man that had survived.

 

Owen sat back in his leather desk chair, one ankle crossed over the other knee, his gaze unwavering on Abrute’s face. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepled his fingers and pressed his index fingers against his lips.

“So, that’s all that’s missing,” Owen said, enjoying Abrute’s jittery, restless movements, his darting eyes, his sweat-beaded forehead.

He’d only been questioning Abrute for twenty minutes and the man was ready to split at the seams. All the questions had been asked and answered. Owen had the bigger picture in his mind. Now, he just had to confirm the information by asking a few key questions again and making sure he got the same answers the second time around. Then he had to figure out how to move forward.

“Yes, sir,” Abrute said, his dark head bobbing in affirmation. “Just the Method pages.”

A soft knock on his office door sounded before it opened and Stephanie, Owen’s very young, very pretty secretary, came in with two bottles of water. She set one on Owen’s desk and handed the other to Abrute. The man was appropriately polite and grateful, but his gaze lingered a little too long, and when Stephanie turned to leave, Abrute’s gaze slid down her backside.

“If you won’t be needing me, sir?” Stephanie said when she paused on her way out.

“No, Stephanie, thank you.” Christ, where had the day gone? “You can go home.”

“Thank you, sir. Also, I put that information you requested in your top drawer. Good night.”

Through the open door, he saw the two military guards still flanking the entrance to his office. Owen returned his gaze to Abrute and remained silent until the door clicked closed.

“And you have copies of all the previous Methods pages O’Shay had developed up to the point that the experiment was successful, correct?”

“Yes, colonel.” Abrute leaned forward and put a shaking hand on the papers in front of him. “They’re all right here, sir. As I told Deputy Director Dargan, I knew how important this project was to our military, and I felt compelled to secure a second set of documents. I know it is against procedure, sir, and I understand why. I take full responsibility and I—”

“Explain again, what this formula is for, Mr. Abrute.”

“We call it a second skin in that it is flexible, breathable and impenetrable. Safer than body armor, but weighs almost nothing. Imagine Gore-Tex meets neoprene with a thousand times the security of Kevlar.”

Amazing.
“Deputy Dargan doesn’t run any research branches of DARPA, Mr. Abrute. Who is this project for?”

Abrute’s eyes widened. “I . . . can’t say, sir.”

Owen stood, pushed his shoulders back and stared down at the man. He knew how to use his size to intimidate, and it was easy with Abrute’s meager never-drag-myself-from-the-lab body.

Abrute followed Owen’s movement with even wider eyes, sitting back in his chair and clenching his hands.

Owen pressed his fingertips to the desktop and leaned toward Abrute. He didn’t need to try to look frustrated or angry or impatient or at the end of his rope: He was already there.

“Mr. Abrute,” he said, his voice low, “you don’t have the luxury of choosing whether or not to answer me. You
will
answer me. And you will answer me
now
because this is about national security. Or are you a traitor as O’Shay was?”

The insinuation that Abrute could end up imprisoned as O’Shay had been made the man sit forward in earnest. “I am no traitor, sir. I’ve spent my career in service to this country.”

Owen slapped the desk with both hands. Abrute jumped. “Then you’d better continue,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Now.”

Abrute’s gaze flicked away. He licked his lips. “I’ve only heard . . . rumors.” He looked up at Owen with sincerity in his eyes. “Normally, when I’m working on a project, I have direct access to a member of the group I’m developing for, you know, to better meet their needs, to touch base along the way to check if we’re on target. But this wasn’t my project. I only oversaw O’Shay and reported back to Deputy Dargan. She never told me who this skin was being developed for other than the military—”

“You’re testing my patience.”

Abrute licked his lips again. Glanced around the room as if he thought he’d see someone materialize. “I could be in danger if I say—”

“You’re in danger
now,
” Owen said. “And you’ll be in more danger if you
don’t
say.”

Abute’s gaze lowered to Owen’s desktop and he thought for a second before plucking a pen from the holder. Then he pulled a blank pad of notepaper toward him and wrote while still talking. “It was only rumor, Colonel Young. There is no validity in rumor and I could be damaging someone else’s career if I spread the rumor, not to mention my own. It was mentioned that the formula was for a company, not the military, and you know we only do work for the government, so it couldn’t have been true.”

He put the pen down, pushed the notepad across the desk, and looked Owen in the eye, steadier now. “I’m sorry, Colonel Young, do to me what you will, but I don’t know anything for sure.”

When Abrute didn’t go on, Owen cast his narrowed eyes from the man’s face to the notepad and read.

A moment of shock burned in his gut, but was quickly replaced with anger.

Q
entered the supply room and passed the prisoner without glancing at him. The need to choke off the fucker’s air still thrummed through Q’s fingers, and the only reason he wasn’t fighting every other person here to get to the guy was because of the way Jessica had looked at him back in the forest.

Like he was an animal.

An animal that terrified her.

He stalked to the farthest end of the room, then paced along the wall, unable to hold still. Exhaustion dragged at his mind. Starvation gnawed at his stomach. But those were nothing compared to the self-disgust beating through his veins.

“What’s wrong with me?” he muttered, trying to understand why his mind splintered. What it meant. How he could make it stop.

He glanced toward the front of the room, where the others had cuffed the spy to a chair. The guy was bleeding from his head, face, arms, hand . . . everywhere. Q didn’t remember beating him to that extreme. But he had to claim everything except the bullet Keira had put through his palm.

Keira and Luke had left—for the second time—for their trip to Washington, but Keira had spent some time with their prisoner and then talking with Kai before she’d gone.

Teague held the intruder still as Alyssa checked his wounds. Kai scavenged through the man’s pack and Cash inspected his weapons, now laid out on the floor: three guns and four knives. Jessica stood near the door, arms crossed tightly over her middle, eyes glazed over with shock.

Q turned his back to the sight. He wiped his face and glanced around, trying to clear the confusion from his head. The interior of this small space was the same unfinished concrete as the main bunker. A spare cot sat in one corner, a small table and chairs in another. In the ceiling, instead of recessed canned lighting, bare bulbs screwed directly into ceiling outlets.

As Q stared at one of the bulbs, moths appeared, one by one, and fluttered around the light. Something shifted inside his mind. In his peripheral vision, the moth’s shadows danced as black dots along the gray walls. He darted a look that way, tension tightening his shoulders, then back to the bulb on the ceiling, where the moths had multiplied fifty times and fanned out along the ceiling.

“About fucking time you showed up.”

Q jerked his head toward the voice. The same man from his previous vision stood with the same rifle strapped over his shoulder, but now his fatigues were caked with dirt, his face scratched.

“What the fuck?” Q stumbled backwards. He shot looks right and left.

He wasn’t in the supply room anymore, though he was in some type of building. This one had similar concrete block walls, but it was larger, the floor made up of packed dirt.

And these walls were stacked floor to ceiling with weapons. Sleek, hi-tech rifles Q didn’t recognize were neatly stored in racks. Crates labeled ox6 with the words
STABILIZED OCTANITROCUBANE
were piled alongside the rifles. A new explosive, Q could only guess by the name, and he damn well hoped that substance
was stabilized
or one poorly placed boot and he and Trent—
that
was his name, Trent—would blend right in with all the grainy dirt on the floor.

Another entire wall was obscured by wooden boxes of ammo, two deep. Magazine casings spilled out of one and bullet bandoliers draped over another, loaded with a size and shape of ammunition Q had never seen before.

He looked down at his hands, his body. Still wearing bloody jeans and nothing else. But the smells were completely different. The air was dry and dusty and gritty. The rank scent of body odor and urine filled Q’s head, wiping out the scent of blood on his skin.

Panic grew. He had to go back. He wanted the mountains. He wanted his team.

He wanted Jessica.

How did he get back?

“ ‘What the fuck?’ is right, dude. Where the hell you been this time, a gladiator ring?” Trent swung the rifle off his shoulder and set it on the floor, leaning it against the wall. “You okay, man? You hurt?”

“No.” He met Trent’s eyes again. Steel gray. Flat. Serious. Then Trent grinned and those eyes sparked. Q knew this man. He
liked
this man. And that’s when Q knew, he should be here with Trent. Every time Q left, he was abandoning his partner.

He suddenly found himself trapped between two places he belonged after a lifetime of belonging nowhere.

“Good,” Trent said. “’Cause now I can kick your ass for leaving me in this hell hole with those fucks.”

He gestured behind Q.

Oh, God.
He didn’t want to look. Shit, he didn’t want to look.

“Almost makes me mad enough to tell you to stop insisting that Gorin pair us on these missions,” Trent went on. “But then I’d never get out of my fucking cell. And since I don’t have a
snuggle buddy
like Cash,” he ribbed, “I’d have to talk to the walls. You’re so much more fun to annoy.”

“Trent.” Q tried to fill his lungs, but it felt like a rock crushed his chest. “I’m . . . not right.”

“Man, you scared the shit out of me.” Trent ignored Q’s distress and turned toward a box in the corner, crouched and rummaged. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming back. Damn, I’m starving. Now we can set up the meeting, dump these guys and get out of this place. I’m not looking forward to seeing Abernathy, though. We’re behind schedule and, shit, man, he’s going to rip us both new assholes.

“Hey”—Trent grinned up at him—“maybe you could throw some of your new mind control his way. You know, that shit you used to make me give you the last of my beef jerky?” He snorted and shook his head, turning his attention back to the box. “You still suck at it, but it couldn’t hurt, right?” He pulled something out of the box and broke it in half, holding out one side toward Q. “I’m still pissed about my beef jerky, but I’ll share my last power bar with you anyway. You’re looking a little scrawny. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Trent . . . man, shut up a second . . .” Panic crawled through Q’s chest. He reached out for the other man, not sure why or what it would accomplish. “Something’s . . . wrong. God . . . I don’t know what’s happening to me. . . .”

“Shit.” Fear flashed in Trent’s eyes. He dropped the power bar and rushed at Q. Grasped both his arms and shook him. “Stay with me, Q.”

“I can’t control it.” He turned his hand over and grabbed Trent’s arm. “Can I . . . can I take you? Can you come with me?”

“You can’t go.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“No! Damn it. Don’t give me that sorry shit. I need you. I can’t set up the rendezvous on my own, and I’m running out of food and water.” Trent’s grip tightened. The
clink, clink, clink
of the moths hitting the bare bulb grew loud. “Come on. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Just sit down. . . .”

Trent’s voice was drowned in the moths’ wild fluttering. Q looked over his shoulder, his last sight as the scene faded that of six young males, gagged and bound and lined up along the wall, their dark eyes fixed on Q and filled with the terror of having just seen a ghost.

When he looked back at the light, the moths were gone. The clinking sound had been replaced by a loud buzz still filling his head. Trent’s hands were still on his arms. Shaking him.

“Quaid. Quaid, look at me.”

Couldn’t be Trent. A female voice. Small hands.

He looked down and into deep brown eyes. Beautiful eyes. Filled with fear and confusion.

“Talk to me,” Jessica said. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

He was going insane, that’s what was going on. “I’m so fucked up.” He put his hands to her shoulders and pushed. “I’m sorry.”

He moved back to the corner and paced in the shadows, trying to differentiate between reality and mind games. There could be a man out there who needed him to get food and water. A man who needed him to gain his freedom. Q couldn’t just leave Trent there. How long could the guy survive without water?

He scraped his hands over the itch in his scalp, dropped his arms as he reached the wall and pivoted one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. A hand grabbed his. He swiveled, grabbed the person’s forearm with his free hand and met Jessica’s gaze.

“Let me get some of this blood off you,” she said.

He didn’t understand until she held up rags in her other hand. Water dripped down her arm. He released her and stepped back, casting a glance around the room again. The others had gone back to their tasks—Alyssa doctoring, Teague guarding, Kai and Cash inspecting.

“No, don’t touch me. I don’t know what the hell is happening to my head. I think I’m going crazy and I don’t want to hurt you. Just stay away from me, Jess.”

“What do you mean?” She came closer despite his warning. “Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t.” He started pacing again, but kept his voice low. “For five years all they’ve done is fuck with my mind day and night. I don’t understand my actions or my feelings. I don’t know who I am or who I’m not. I don’t trust myself, and I can’t have you near me when I can’t control this . . . whatever this is inside me.”

She caught his arm again, met his gaze with steadfast warmth that settled him deep down. “I’m not leaving you alone, no matter what you say. You may as well just accept that.”

Q shook his head, wondering if she had a screw or two loose. “Have you always been this stubborn?”

“No. It’s developed over the last few years. I’ve changed, too, Quaid.”

Q let her lead him to a chair in the corner away from the others. When she lowered to her knees at his feet, an uncomfortable tightness wrapped around his chest. He sat forward, pressing his hands to the arms of the chair to rise, but she put a firm hand on his knee and looked up at him with those damned eyes. They begged for everything he couldn’t give and offered everything he’d ever wanted.

“Please, Quaid. I can’t stand seeing you like this another minute.”

With him leaning forward and her looking up, their faces were only a few inches apart. Her gaze lowered to his mouth. His throat tightened. Her breath touched his lips and she licked her own.

He reached for her at the same time she leaned back. Instead of catching her head, so he could pull her in to taste her again, his hand was grasped by both of hers. She didn’t meet his eyes, just started scrubbing at his fingers, his nails, his palm with the rag. And the sight of the blood coming off his hands took his mind off kissing her.

There was something incredibly . . . humbling . . . about the way she willingly sat at his feet, like a servant, caring for him.

“How did this happen?” he asked. “How did I end up at the Castle?”

Her gaze darted up and her hands stilled. “I thought Cash told you. . . .”

“Cash told me we were all firefighters together on some special team. That’s all.”

Jessica pressed her lips together, rose up on her knees and scooted forward, forcing him to open his thighs to her. She smelled amazing, a pretty sweetness and an edgy spice wrapped around her own sensual scent. He wanted to press his face to her neck and inhale.

She rubbed the cloth along his collarbone and worked her way across and down his chest. “That’s because it’s better for you to remember—”

“On my own. I know. How long are we going to wait for that to happen? I want to know now. After all I’ve been through, I would have shut down a long time ago if it was going to happen.”

Her gaze flicked to his, then over her shoulder toward Alyssa. Q put his hand under her chin and guided her gaze back to him. “Jessica, I need to know. If it’s too much, I’ll tell you.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then resumed work. “Do you remember anything about the warehouse fire?”

“No. What fire?”

Pain flashed in her eyes. “Our team was called to a warehouse fire. The building was owned by the government and there were chemicals in the warehouse, chemicals that shouldn’t have been stored there.”

She glanced up, searching his face. When he shook his head, she said, “The chemicals exploded in the heat and everyone was critically injured and exposed. We were taken to a military hospital nearby, the only location with quarantine facilities large enough to house us all—or so we were told.”

She paused to refold the rag. Her hands shook. Q found himself leaning forward. “And then what?”

She pulled in a breath, wet her lips. But couldn’t seem to form words. After she started on his other arm, tears slid down her cheek and she rubbed them away with her shoulder.

“And then . . .” she said with a helpless little shrug. “You . . . died.”

“You mean I coded? My heart stopped? And they brought me back?”

“No.” She looked up at him with a sudden and unexpected rage tightening her expression. “I mean someone decided that you would be a perfect science experiment and told the team that you didn’t make it. That you’d died. They
took you
—”

She choked on her emotions. Struggled for air. Q gathered her in his arms, held her close.

“They took you from us,” she finished against his shoulder, fingers digging into the skin of his back.

Her pain brought tears to his own eyes, but as the view of his life widened, all the happiness, all the possibilities that had been stolen from him surfaced and his fury boiled. He could see how close this team had been. How important he’d been to these people. How drastically and painfully their lives had been changed by his death. He was humbled to have meant so much to such good people and enraged that those bastards had taken such a rich, meaningful, rewarding life away from him.

Jessica pulled out of his arms and sat back on her heels. She wiped at her wet face with her forearm.

“Why me?” he asked. “If we were all in the explosion, if we were all hurt, why did they take me and not anyone else?”

Her hand paused mid-stroke along the top of one foot. She didn’t look up, but her lashes lay against her cheek for a long moment as she closed her eyes. “That’s my fault.”