Rush (Phoenix Rising) (8 page)

“Incoming!”

The Marine’s yell brought Owen Young’s gaze up from his path of charred concrete chunks and twisted rebar. An Army Black Hawk floated overhead with another bundle of supplies wrapped like a cocoon and swaying at the end of a rope.

Owen squinted and held his hard hat down as the chopper’s rotors whipped the air. The supplies hit the ground with an earthshaking thud, the rope snapped free and the Black Hawk angled back into the blue Nevada sky, just starting to peek through the spiraling pillars of smoke.

His eyes burned and watered, but he’d stopped paying attention long ago. He was numb. At least for now. As soon as night fell without word of Jocelyn or they had to suspend the search because of the site’s instability or . . . God, forbid, they found her body . . . then he would be in deep-ass shit. Which was why he couldn’t think of that now. He had to continue to hope. And search.

Military personnel crawled over the new supplies like ants on a sugar cube, and Owen continued his slow trek over the rubble, looking for signs of life. Or death. He would find Joce. Until he did, he held onto the words she’d spoken to him on the phone just hours ago.
“I want to talk to you when this is all over. About what you said the other night. About wanting you. I do.”

He’d been waiting a long time to hear those words from her. Now, after finally hearing them, she’d gone and gotten blown to hell? Could fate be that cruel?

He knew damn well it could. He knew damn well it was, more often than not.

But he hoped like hell this time fate had taken pity on him.

The dismal thought brought his gaze up and over the vast devastation again. The one-hundred-thousand-square-foot, four-story, state-of-the-art military laboratory was now a fifty-foot crater in the desert floor. Military firefighters poured water on still-burning sections and dug through debris for hot spots. Military investigators pored over every inch of rubble and ash. Military personnel provided aid in every fathomable facet at the site from medical care to administration. All military.
Only
military.

Something big was going on here, but nobody would talk. He still didn’t know why in hell Jocelyn would have been here, but he’d been told half a dozen different times from half a dozen different sources she was here immediately before the disaster.

Owen didn’t know of any business she’d have to warrant a site visit to a place like this—one of the darkest government testing facilities in the country, complete with experiments utilizing human subjects.

Decades-old images from a village halfway across the globe floated from a dark corner of Owen’s mind. Men, women, children, even babies with their open wounds oozing puss and exposing bone. Their cries of agony tore through his head. All that pain, suffering and loss of life to shortcut the strict drug trial laws within the U.S.

“Colonel Young!”

Owen startled at his name. His vision sharpened as if he’d just woken and he wondered for a dizzy second if he’d fallen asleep on his feet.

“Colonel!” the man called again. He waved from fifty yards away where he stood beside a crane dragging cement pilings off a mountain of rubble. “We’ve got a survivor here.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, yes, yes . . .”

He picked his way over cement blocks, broken glass and rebar prongs until he was at the rescuer’s side, peering into the newly discovered darkness. Holding his breath, Owen crouched at the mouth of the cavernous space, and shone a flashlight inside.

His beam joined the others shining into the hole from rescue workers rimming the opening, waiting for the okay to go in. Down in the rubble, something moved.

“There.” Owen pointed directly below him, and the light beams followed, illuminating a dust-covered hand. To the right, he spotted the top of a head, the hair caked with ash. “Right there!”

Owen pocketed the flashlight, yanked off one glove, dropped to his stomach and stretched out over the edge of the hole.

“You can’t go in there,” someone above yelled. “It’s not stabilized. The whole thing could cave in if you—”

“Screw stabilized, someone’s alive in there. Grab my legs.”

Two strong pairs of hands gripped his calves. He dropped the top half of his body into the hole and stretched for the victim’s hand. But it had stopped moving and Owen couldn’t reach it on his own.

“We’re here,” he yelled. “My hand is right above you. Reach for me and I’ll pull you out.”

Movement. Just the fingers at first.

“Come on. I’m right here. Just a little more.”

The victim—
please let it be Joce
—finally seemed to get the idea. The arm pushed through the rubble and the hand gripped Owen’s.

In that second, he knew it wasn’t Joce. The hand was too big. Too rough. Too strong.

A sob of disappointment choked him, but he put all his energy and focus into the survivor and dragged him upward. As the rock fell away, the head and torso of an older man appeared. He blinked, squinted, and choked on ash and debris. Several men ran off in search of stabilizing equipment and first aid.

“Take it easy,” Owen said, his voice too shaky for reassurance. “Nice easy breaths. We’re going to get you out. Just stay still.”

The man sputtered, took in the chaos surrounding him and panicked. He gulped air as if he were drowning, clawed at the rock still surrounding two-thirds of his body and tried to scream, but the sounds came out as guttural scrapes. His movement shifted the already-unstable rock walls.

“Stop!” Owen yelled, his command voice automatically emerging for the situation and the man froze. Owen forced his voice down. “You’re making it worse. Hold still and talk to me while the crews bring equipment.”

The man’s eyes flicked toward Owen. “O—Okay.”

“What’s your name?”

“D—Dawes. Com—mander Kenneth Dawes.”

“Commander, are you hurt?”

“I . . . I can’t feel my legs.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Dawes’s eyes had taken on that glassy look of shock. He didn’t answer.

Owen squeezed the man’s hand to hold his attention. “There was a very important member of the Department of Defense here. A woman. Tall, blond, beautiful. You couldn’t have missed her.” He swallowed, his throat dry in anticipation. “Deputy Director—”

“Jocelyn Dargan,” Dawes said before Owen could. “She was here.”

Fuck
.

“Where?
Where
did you see her?
Where
is Dargan? Was she here? Near you?”

“She was, but . . . then . . .” Dawes’s eyes closed, his head fell sideways. Owen yanked on his arm again and the man perked up. “Then she went back to the cells . . . the prisoners’ cells. Wanted to take another look for something. Missing . . . a key . . . Needed it . . . Thought O’Shay . . . thought O’Shay . . .”

“Thought O’Shay
what
?”

“. . . had it.”

“Why was she here?” Owen asked.

Dawes coughed. Wheezed. “Wants his formula. The one he’s been working on for the last year.”

The man’s ash-covered eyelids slid closed. This time when Owen tried to rouse him, Dawes didn’t respond.

Owen dropped the man’s hand and let the other rescue workers take over. He pushed to his feet, this new information rolling around in his brain—key, formula, cells, O’Shay—but none of it made sense.

He glanced around the site, spotted a man with a yellow helmet and floor plans rolled out on the bed of a truck and ran toward him.

He hit the side of the truck full force. “We found Commander Dawes. He said Director Dargan was headed back to the cells to look for something. I want you to get rescue crews to that area immediately, start a full-scale search—”

“Colonel.” The man’s expression suddenly registered with Owen. He’d seen it before—on the battlefield. He reflexively tightened his gut for the hit. The man turned and gestured toward the lowest part of the crater, where everything had been pounded deep into the earth and incinerated. “That’s where the cells were located.”

Owen’s stomach dropped. His knees went out, and he had to hold onto the truck to remain standing.

When Owen didn’t respond, the man said, “We’ve got rescue teams in every area of the site, sir. The deputy director is our top priority.”

Owen nodded, got his legs under him and wandered away. His mind circled and circled for his next plan of action, but couldn’t land. He’d seen this type of controlled chaos so many times—but that had always been during war. After senseless slaughters, misaimed bombs, a rebel insurgent attack. He’d always been prepared. And Jocelyn had always been by his side. Never under the rubble.

The thought of her slim, fragile body beneath all that jagged, harsh material pushed a sound of anguish into his throat. He forced the idea from his mind. She was strong. More than that, she was tough. If Dawes could survive, Joce could survive.

Another Black Hawk set down at the edge of the main carnage. A young Air Force sergeant climbed out and spoke with a member of the ground crew, who pointed in Owen’s direction.

Goddamnit.
He knew they’d come for him, but it was too soon. He wasn’t ready to take over Jocelyn’s work. To give up searching. To give up hope.

His pain brought up anger. Which quickly rallied rage. Fury toward the fuckers who’d done this. Who’d stolen his golden opportunity to be with Jocelyn. And by the time the sergeant had jogged the distance and stood in front of him, saluting, Owen was ready to hunt the bastards down.

“Colonel, sir,” the sergeant said. “I’ve been assigned to escort you to the airstrip at Area 51. A C10 is waiting to take you to the Pentagon.”

 

Q could do this. If he’d brought her to him once, he could do it again. He sure as hell had never needed her as much as he did right now.

His face throbbed. His chest ached. His belly screamed. Green had beaten him just short of killing him. The animal would never give Q the reward of death.

In this case, Q hoped the pain would be a gift, because it pulled him from the void of unconsciousness just enough to use his mind. Or at least try.

Remembering her was easy. He swore he could still feel her mouth on his. That kiss had been amazing. Absolutely amazing. Whatever he’d experienced with her had definitely been different from seeing her in his dreams. In his dreams, he never touched her, never smelled her. In his dreams, visions of her dissipated over time. But today, he’d had all of her, and she’d been crystal clear . . . right up to the moment Green had nailed him in the chest.

Fiery hatred bubbled up from deep inside him. Q didn’t waste energy on anger; it never served him. But this was an involuntary rage that coiled hot in his belly when he remembered her panic. If he’d been able to speak, he would have told her he’d be fine. Not to worry. But Green had stolen his air on the first kick, and then she’d vanished.

Q could still see her, on her knees, searching for something on the floor. Could hear her screaming . . .

The sound tore at him. His thoughts hazed. Images faded. He fought the pull of darkness and dragged his mind backwards in time, to the moment he’d first opened his eyes and seen her. She’d been holding . . . Something shiny. Gold.

A coin.

He envisioned her there, sitting beside him, tilting the coin toward the window. God, she was more beautiful every time he saw her. Her deep red hair long and shiny over her shoulders. The skin of her face so creamy and perfect with that little spray of barely-there freckles across her nose. Her lips . . . His mind transitioned from the sight of them to the feel of them as she’d kissed him. Pleasure and relief replaced the tension in his body and he drifted....

No. No, he wanted to remember. To bring her back.

Her soft, sweet voice filled his head. He focused in on the coin again until the gold disk filled his mind. The surface blurred. Then shimmered like a reflection on the water.

Control over the direction of his thoughts slipped away. When the shimmering reflection stilled, Q stared at many coins, not one. And he wasn’t envisioning anymore, he was seeing. A box of
real
coins in shades of silver and gold and bronze sat on the ground in front of him where he knelt on sandy earth beneath harsh sunlight.

Q tensed. His mind scavenged for traction. He was fully conscious. Fully in control of his mind again. If he could call this
in control,
because he didn’t know what the hell was happening.

He did know he was no longer at the safe house. No longer restrained. And he knew this was not an illusion or a dream. He didn’t know
how
he knew, but he had no doubt that this new . . . situation . . . was reality.

External sensations hit him—hot, dry air and sweltering sun on his skin, the scent of oil, gasoline, gunpowder and sweat, the sound of angry voices.

“It’s about fucking time.” One of those angry voices shot toward Q from behind. “What the hell is going on with you? You can’t go disappearing anytime you fucking feel like it.”

Everything inside Q clicked on. He pulled his gaze from the coins and looked over his shoulder toward the voice. A man stood twenty feet away. He held an M90 assault rifle on a group of six young men, dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. They stood with their backs to a crude canvas structure, hands up.

Q took a quick survey of the camp. Small, temporary, apparently deserted but for the men standing at gunpoint.

“Q?” The man holding the weapon called to him. “Come on, man. What’s going on?”

Q stood and turned, squinting from the strength of the sun. His ribs groaned. His head swam. Sweat broke out across his body. “I . . . don’t know.”

But he recognized the new weight on his shoulders as his burden of responsibility to this man. He was Q’s partner. They were in the desert. Judging by the desolation, the sandy soil, the bare mountains, and the dark look of the men, it was a Middle Eastern desert.