Blood Victory
“One minute,” Luke says.
She tells herself not to get nervous if she doesn’t feel the symptoms of a remote dose right away. Re-dosing her during a trigger window apparently entails some risks, even though Cole’s never told her what they are. He’ll probably wait a beat. She’s tempted to share this with Luke. But that might reveal Cole’s actions to his business partners, and she’s guessing he’d like to keep them covert.
“Thirty seconds,” he says.
“Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m good without the countdowns. We can just wait for the beep.”
“Sure.”
As soon as they fall silent, she feels a sudden lurch in her stomach she assumes is fear.
31
Kansas Command
“Thirty seconds,” Scott says.
Cole can’t bring himself to watch the feed from the truck. Scott’s assumed that duty. He’s standing a few paces away from where Cole and Noah are practically resting their bowed heads against the door to Bailey’s lair, like parents eavesdropping on their child.
They’d look ridiculous if anyone was looking at them, but the ground team’s long gone, leaving their break room empty, and none of the monitoring techs have dared to leave their stations since Noah threw a chair. The last time Cole checked, they were hunched over their desks like kids in detention.
When Bailey yelps, Cole jumps.
Noah looks into his eyes. They’re both trying to decipher the sound, both realizing the other’s expression isn’t going to help with that endeavor. The sound from the man who holds Charley’s fate in his typing fingers could have been joy or terror, no telling unless they throw open the door and ask him. And Cole’s not about to do that. Not in this moment, when Bailey’s the equivalent of a surgeon with his scalpel pressed to his patient’s brain matter.
He can’t even bring himself to look at Scott for some indication of whether something went wrong on the feed.
“Cole?” Noah whispers.
“Yes.”
“If they kill her . . .”
“We’ll deal with them,” Cole answers.
Noah looks into his eyes again, and Cole realizes he’s satisfied by the answer in part but searching for more.
“Together,” Cole whispers.
“You mean you’ll deal with Stephen and Philip together or . . .”
“You and I will deal with Stephen and Philip together,” Cole whispers.
Noah’s smile looks so sincere, Cole’s distracted from the other thing he’s doing with his body. He’s raised one fist in front of him. It’s an invitation. It feels childish and silly, but he’d rather feel both of those things in this moment than the stark terror that’s defined the last twenty minutes.
He makes a fist of his right hand, bumps it lightly against Noah’s. As soon as he does, Noah takes his hand in his and grips it, interlacing their fingers and holding on tight.
A second later, Cole realizes they’re both resting their heads against the door and breathing like tired dogs.
32
Highway 287
It’s a quieter sound than she expected. Three quick little beeps. Easy to miss over the rush of the truck’s tires if she hadn’t been waiting for them. Three quick beeps that could mean the end of so many different things at once.
She reaches out, presses one hand gently against the glove compartment, feels its normal give. Presses harder, igniting the sort of achy pain in her wrist any human could expect to feel during such an effort. The glove compartment doesn’t warp or crack or give any sounds of audible protest over the truck’s engine.
She keeps pressing.
Her persistence must look a little manic to Luke, but he doesn’t say anything, knows better than to try to police her reactions in this moment. A minute goes by, then another. And when she feels none of the telltale unpleasant symptoms of a remote dose, she’s surprised by what comes next.
Tears, a sudden, hot sheen of them, but enough for her to blink away before they spill. Tears of anger and frustration. Because she wasn’t prepared for how this was actually going to feel—a reminder that this power isn’t really hers, that it can be taken away at a moment’s notice by forces she doesn’t always understand and often fears. Worse, a trigger window’s never closed on her in the heat of battle like this, with the job left undone. All her discussions of what they might do after this moment seem theoretical now. Empty. Boastful, even.
Now she’s just another woman who can easily be killed no matter how much she wants to help other women. She can’t save Luke. She can’t save anyone.
“Hey,” Luke says quietly.
He reaches out. When she takes his hand and squeezes it back, he’s got his confirmation that the window’s closed, and for the time being it’s not reopening.
“It’s taking too long,” she says.
“What?”
“They should’ve . . .” Done it by now, she wants to say, done it by now. She tries to cough the sound of tears from her throat, but it makes her hack, and that makes Luke squeeze her hand even tighter.
Their names. We don’t even know their names. How are we going to stop them if Mattingly never gives us their names?
“I’m sorry. I really thought they’d dose me again.”
“Well, maybe they will.”
“It’s taking too long.”
He doesn’t argue with her.
“I feel like a fraud.”
“What?” Luke sounds genuinely astonished. “Why would you say that about yourself?”
“I just didn’t expect . . . When the window closed, I didn’t expect to freak out like this. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . It’s not done, Luke. We’re not done.”
“I know, I know, and we don’t have to quit, Charley. We don’t. I’m sorry if I said it the wrong way earlier. I just didn’t want you to feel like you didn’t have a choice.”
“I don’t.” It feels like a painful admission, and maybe that’s why she says it with a sob. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Then we keep going, baby.” He brings her hand to his mouth, kisses her fingers. “And we do whatever we can with what we have.”
She gives in to every repressed urge she’s had since she first laid eyes on him again, squeezes up against him, embraces him as tightly as she can without pulling his arms from the steering wheel. A few minutes before the effort would have crushed him. But now she’s doing what she can with what she’s got, just like he said.
Just then she feels a sudden piercing headache that turns into blurred vision and a dizzy feeling. Then it gives way to a flush of heat down the back of her neck and along both arms.
33
Kansas Command
“I am the Prince of Awesome!” Bailey Prescott cries.
“There’s no such thing,” Cole responds. “Get off that chair.”
Bailey ceases his strange jig, which has made him look like a leprechaun crashing a hip-hop music video, and steps to the floor.
“Oh, by the way,” Bailey says, “we no longer have a remote dosing system. It was a ‘destroy the village in order to save it’ kinda thing.”