Chapter Nineteen

Hawk had held strong through a beating that should have put him on his knees.

Jeni got him there with one word. “Wait.”

She faced the other man, resolve radiating from her bruised, dirty face. “He's not the one you want, Peterson.”

“Oh, is that so?” A sneer twisted his mouth as his gaze raked over Jeni with a disdain that had Hawk shifting his weight. But the minute the chains clinked, Peterson swung the gun away from Hawk.

To point at Jeni.

“I was listening,” he continued, every word dripping with condescension. “You're the sector-tainted brat of that social-climbing whore. Do you share her delusions of grandeur?”

The words rolled off of her with no visible impact. “No. But I am smarter than you and your interrogator put together. I mean, was he ever going to figure out he was beating on the wrong O'Kane?”

Hawk's heart thumped wildly. He could protest, beg her to stop talking, but that would only confirm to Peterson that she had something of value to tell. Or he could bluster and swear she knew nothing—and confirm to Peterson that she was of value to him.

“The wrong O'Kane?” Peterson pointed the gun toward the ink on her wrists with a rough laugh. “Oh, I get it now. You do have delusions. You think a man like O'Kane put that ink on you because he gives a shit about anything other than having you around to keep his men happy?”

“Men talk in bed,” she shot back. “So do women. But you already knew that, didn't you? How many of your secrets did your wife spill?”

Peterson turned red. “You mouthy little—”

“I don't forget.” Jeni clenched her hands into fists. “Ever. Your people brought us up in a service elevator, but we passed a directory—fourth floor, Legal Department and Planning Commission. Suite 400, Sebastian Bell, Senior Legal Counsel. 404, Lydia Laterza, Executive Assistant. 405, Cameron Feldt and Iona Simon—”

“Stop.” Peterson frowned, his rage bleeding into thoughtfulness. “Describe the men who brought you in.”

“There were three. One your height—white, bald, with a brown beard and a scar on his left cheek. The second one was taller, by maybe four or five inches, black, clean-shaven. Also bald. The third guy was wearing a dark cap and had stubble. Only he used names—he called the others Banks and Sullivan—and he was left-handed.” She paused. “He groped my ass when he was dragging me out of the truck.”

That spiked Hawk's rage again. He watched the barrel of Peterson's gun, but it didn't waver from Jeni's face. Any movement, any word could end with her bleeding out on the floor.

Hawk had never been so fucking helpless in his life.

“All right.” Peterson gestured with one hand, ordering Jeni to take a step closer to him. “Do you know who's calling the shots in the communes?”

“No one.” She took that step—slowly, deliberately. “They just don't like any of you.”

He made a rude noise. “Assume that I believe you're telling the truth. What's your price? I could make you and your grasping excuse for a mother very comfortable in exchange for actionable intelligence.”

“There's only one thing I want.” She glanced at Hawk, but she kept her eyes averted—as if she couldn't bear to meet his gaze. “You get him back to Sector Four, alive, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Jeni, no—” Hawk bit off the protest. This had to be a ploy, a way to buy them both some time, because she wasn't stupid. She wasn't a traitor.

And she wasn't serious. She couldn't be fucking serious.

But his outburst had already drawn Peterson's attention. A smug, mean little smile twisted his lips as he surveyed Hawk. “Not so different from your mother after all, hmm? Always looking for a better meal ticket.”

Jeni stared at him. “Sure.”

“I'll consider it.” He backed out the door and gestured to a guard in the hallway. “Clean this mess up.”

“Peterson?”

Men swarmed the cell, dragging the unconscious guard back while someone covered them. Peterson stood on the other side of the bars, one eyebrow raised. Amused by Jeni's presumption. “Yes?”

“Ask yourself if it's worth fucking me over,” she said softly. “Everything I've seen, everything I know. All you have to do is let him live.”

The guards dragged the bodies free of the cell. Peterson slid the door into place, and the click of the lock was a spike through Hawk's heart. “Believe me, young lady. You have my attention.”

Jeni stood there, motionless, until the sound of solid steel clanging shut rang through the hall. She flinched, then dropped her face into her hands.

Hawk surged to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, dragging her against him. She was stiff in his arms—scared, as scared as he was, but he buried his face in her hair and steadied himself with the familiar scent of her shampoo, still there under the blood and soot. “It's okay. You did good, Jeni. You bought us time. We can make a plan—”

“Hawk.” Her voice was flat and steady. “This is the plan.”

His heart stopped beating. Just fucking stopped. “Bullshit. Bullfuckingshit.”

She pulled free of his embrace. “It's one or both of us. I'll take that deal, and don't try and tell me you wouldn't.”

It would be a lie, and she knew it. Worse, he knew the chance of getting both of them out was slim. He stalked past her and grabbed the bars on the door, testing their strength. “It doesn't matter. It can't be you. You've seen too damn much, Jeni. You know too much.”

“I know what I'm doing.”

Maybe she did. This was her world, after all—Eden and all its sick games. “You think you can fool them with false info? Maybe the first time or the second…” He reached through the bars and groped for the lock, hoping for something he could pick. But it was smooth metal, probably controlled electronically. “I won't let you do it.”

“Hawk.”

He spun around and stopped dead. Jeni stood three feet in front of him, her eyes sad and her throat bare.

Her fingers curled around his collar.

“Jeni—” Her name came out broken. The pit of loss inside him opened so wide it swallowed his heart, his voice, his hope. “Put it back on.”

“I'm sorry,” she rasped. “About everything, about Shipp and—and Luna. I'm sorry that I have to leave you. But I can't be sorry that you have a chance to live.”

Laughter shredded his throat. It came out rough and mean, and he didn't care. He didn't fucking care. Maybe if it hurt her enough, she'd change her mind about throwing away her fucking life over a future he didn't even want anymore. “You really think that, don't you? Did you ever know me at all?”

She looked down.

He clenched his fists against the temptation to advance on her. To press her back against the wall and kiss her until she melted, because he knew her. He'd learned her, studied her, memorized everything he could about her so that she'd be safe trusting him. So he wouldn't hurt her.

Either she didn't know this would destroy him, or she didn't care. He didn't know which hurt more. “Look at me.”

Trembling, Jeni met his gaze. She was breathing too fast, shallow and almost panicked.

Instinct clashed within him. The need to soothe her, to hold her. The need to rage because she'd taken away any chance he might have had to save her.

“You can't do this,” he whispered. “What if they break you?”

Her breathing slowed, almost stopped, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “You can't break someone who's already broken.”

They were both shattered. All his precious control lay in shreds, and his tongue was running away from him again. Not with dreams though, not this time. Nightmares. “You think you can send me back out there, with my home burned down and Shipp's blood—Luna's blood—still on my hands and…what? You think I'll want to live, knowing that I failed you like I failed them? That any time I touch someone, I wreck their lives. That no one trusts me to save them and they're fucking right not to.”

She pressed one hand to the center of her chest. “What's the alternative? This is all I can do, Hawk.”

“All you can do now.” He closed his eyes to block out her big, sad eyes, because he couldn't do it. Helplessness could give way to fury, but her pain stirred something worse. “You took away my choice, Jeni, without even fucking asking.”

“I know I did.”

Nothing he could say or do mattered now that she'd proven her worth. He could offer himself up, and they might keep him, too. But they wouldn't let her go. Not unless he offered them something they wanted more.

Like the sectors on a silver platter.

He considered it. For a few seconds, he actually fucking considered it. Striking a deal for Jeni's safety, betraying the O'Kanes and his family and everyone in their fucking world. Because they wouldn't give her up for information, not when she could convince them she had all they needed. No, they'd want something serious, like sending him back into Four to plunge a knife into Dallas's damn heart.

And, because she'd backed him into a corner, he had to wonder if he'd do it.

Maybe.

His stomach churned with loathing. For himself. For her, for finally dragging him all the way down to the very darkest part of his soul. To the possessive monster who'd do anything, kill anyone, destroy everything if it meant keeping her.

“You ruined us,” he rasped. “You killed us both.”

It was too much, too far. The emotion drained from Jeni's face, and she held out the collar. “You should take this. They won't let me keep it.”

He couldn't touch her. He couldn't take the damn chance. The brush of her fingers against his might be enough to tip the balance, and the monster would slip free. He'd betray himself and everyone he knew, and it wouldn't matter.

Even if he saved her, she wouldn't be his. Not if he hurt the people she loved to do it.

“It's yours,” he said, turning away. “I'm not taking it back.”

He heard her moving, but she didn't say anything for a long time. Then, finally, she sighed. “I didn't expect you to make this easy. I wouldn't ask for that. I don't have a right to. But I thought…” She sighed again. “It doesn't matter.”

He couldn't touch her, but he couldn't do this, either. Let her spend her last hours standing here, alone and small and scared and bleeding from verbal wounds. He should fill up the rest of the time they had with each other. Try to live the life they'd never have, try to make her feel the love he'd waited too long to offer.

All of his dreams, all of his fucking naïve fantasies—and this was what he'd built for her. The choice between a slow, painful death, or watching him burn down her family to keep her safe.

Almost as shitty as what he'd built for himself. Live knowing that he'd let her die, or die knowing he'd ruined what was left of her life.

“Jeni—”

The click of the door cut him off. It started to slide open, and Hawk stumbled back, instinctively shielding Jeni.

A plump blonde woman in white coveralls ducked inside, her ponytail swinging. “Got to go. Not much time.”

Suspicion clashed with razor-sharp hope. “Go where?”

One eyebrow rose in an are you kidding me? arch. “Anyplace is better than here, sweetheart. Is that a key?”

It was on the floor next to Jeni, where he'd dropped it on Peterson's arrival. Without taking his eyes from the woman, Hawk swept it up and started unlocking the cuffs still clasped around his wrists.

Jeni didn't move. She just stared blankly, a reaction that seemed to elicit more sympathy than his questions. The blonde touched Jeni's shoulder gently. “Come on. Just a little bit longer, and you'll be back home. Coop is fetching Councilman Markovic—”

“Coop.” The name snapped Jeni to attention. “Bren's friend.”

“That's right, Bren's friend.”

Jeni's eyes focused on the woman's face. “You're Tammy.”

Tammy smiled. “Yeah, see? You're all right. Now let's get out of here.”

A grunt from the hallway dragged Hawk to the door. Markovic's cell was open, too, and the councilman was on his feet—kind of. An older man with snowy white hair and a face carved with deep lines stood under one of Markovic's arms, bearing his weight as the councilman tried to take a step.

Coop, the former MP who'd scooped Bren off the streets as a surly orphan and trained him into a soldier. He was stooped with age, but his eyes were sharp as he appraised Hawk. “You look like you went a few rounds, but you're still on your feet. Can you help Markovic?”

If it meant getting Jeni out of here sooner, Hawk would have crawled on busted limbs over broken glass. The ache in his side bloomed into throbbing pain when he bent to get his shoulder under Markovic's other arm, but he ignored it and braced the councilman's weight. “Where are we going?”

“Out,” Coop replied. “Tammy?”

Tammy hustled Jeni out of the cell and past Hawk. He tried to meet Jeni's eyes, but she looked away, and somehow the pain stabbing through his heart made all the rest of it worse.

It was better this way. Both of them alive, no one betrayed. He wouldn't have the dream or the nightmare, just the brutal, miserable grayness of life that always existed somewhere in between.

With every miserable step, Hawk told himself it was fine. He told himself over and over, until Coop ushered them out into a loading dock, and he saw the reason Coop had been so vague about the plan.

Dead bodies filled the back of the truck. Noelle's father lay sprawled across the top—part of his face gone, his remaining eye staring up at the night sky. Jeni balked, but Tammy wrapped an arm around her and whispered, soothing and reassuring in a way Hawk wasn't allowed to be anymore.

It was still better than death.

But once Jeni was in the bed of the truck, Hawk slid into place over her. She stiffened beneath him, and he knew he deserved it, but it was his turn to take this choice away from her. He sprawled over her, struggling not to wince with every rock and sway of the truck, and when they stopped at the gate, he listened to Coop's laughing claim that he had a message for Dallas O'Kane and tried not to puke.

The tarp above him rustled as someone jerked it back, and Hawk lay as still as possible. His blood and bruises would paint him a plenty convincing corpse, but the guards might sink a few bullets into his back anyway, just for the fun of it. But Jeni would be safe, Jeni would survive—

The tarp settled over him again, and the vehicle lurched forward.

Under him, Jeni choked on an almost-silent sob.

Broken inside and out, surrounded by death and listening to her cry, Hawk groped for some reason—any reason—to be relieved they hadn't just shot him.