Chapter Eighteen

Jeni thought she'd seen awful things—the wanton destruction of Sector Two, Hawk's family having to burn down their own homes. Shipp's blank eyes. Luna's dying moments.

Nothing was worse than watching two MPs try to beat Hawk to death.

The interrogator stood to one side, watching stone-faced as they carried out their work. He hadn't asked a question in minutes, minutes that seemed like hours as Jeni bit her lower lip until she tasted nothing but blood, willing herself not to scream.

Finally, the interrogator lifted one finger. The men stopped immediately, leaving Hawk swaying from the chains that stretched his arms above his head.

He caught his balance and spit blood from his mouth, then grinned when his gaze locked with hers. “Don't worry, darling. They don't hit half as hard as Flash when he's had a bad day.”

She wanted to laugh or say something lighthearted, reassuring. She wanted to play his game, but if she unclenched her jaw long enough to reply, she'd start screaming.

Without altering his expression, the interrogator pointed to Hawk's feet. One of the MPs kicked them out from under him. His body dropped fast and jerked hard when the chains drew taut. Jeni's shoulders ached in sympathy, but Hawk just sucked in a breath and hung there.

“You won't be able to enrage us into killing you, you know.” The interrogator circled Hawk and studied the blood slicking his skin and the rising bruises. “Even if I wanted to vent my temper on you, I could call someone to repair the damage and start fresh. But regeneration technology isn't magic. Your body will still hold on to every bit of the pain.” He paused. “I can make you feel like you've died a dozen deaths.”

Hawk got his feet under him slowly. As soon as he straightened, the MP kicked them out again. He flinched this time, but his smile didn't falter. “Only a dozen?”

“Defiance won't deter me, either.” The interrogator crossed his arms over his chest. “The ones who bluster always break the hardest. So I'll give you one more chance, and then I'll let my men crush as many of your bones as they can without killing you. Who do the communes answer to now?”

Hawk was breathing raggedly. His smile faded, and his head dropped forward. Slowly, as if every movement hurt, as if he was anticipating the next blow, he shifted his weight and planted his feet, taking the pressure off his arms and shoulders.

Please, Jeni thought desperately. Tell them enough to make it stop.

As if he heard her, Hawk mumbled something.

“Speak up.” The interrogator stepped closer and grabbed a fistful of Hawk's hair. “Answer the—”

Hawk lunged to the end of the chain and slammed his forehead into the man's nose.

The interrogator wheeled back with a shout, clutching his nose. Blood ran over his fingers, and his eyes blazed with rage as one of the MPs drew his sidearm and smashed the butt into Hawk's face.

“No!” Jeni surged forward, straining against her chains. “Leave him alone! You leave him the fuck alone!”

The interrogator flung his hand toward her, splashing drops of blood on the painted wall. “Shut her up!”

The larger MP took a step toward Jeni, and the room exploded into chaos.

One second, Hawk was hanging from the chains. In the next, he had the slack wrapped around his fists. He shoved off the wall behind him with a roar, and cement cracked as the bolts securing his chains broke free. The MP who'd struck him fumbled with his gun, and Hawk took him down with a hard right straight to the temple.

The other MP took another step toward Jeni. Hawk surged after him, pushing the interrogator out of the way, and slammed into his back. He looped the length of one chain around the soldier's throat, drove a knee into his spine, and they both went tumbling to the floor, inches from where Jeni sat.

Hawk wasn't out for mercy, he was out for blood. The chain bit into the big man's neck, raising angry welts. His face had already turned red by the time he reached for the gun in his holster.

Jeni kicked out, every thought centered on keeping the barrel of that gun away from Hawk. She caught the man's hand with one smash of her heel. Bone cracked, and the pistol went sliding across the floor.

The interrogator dove for the gun. He came up with one bloody finger on the trigger, the barrel pointed straight at Hawk.

This was it. Jeni reached for the distance and calm that had brought her this far, but she couldn't find it. Instead, what gripped her was a bone-deep rage that burned away her fear. This wasn't how they were supposed to end. Even in her worst nightmares, Hawk was alive, safe to carry on without her. But this—this was the unimaginable. The worst thing she could think of in the world.

She couldn't watch. She wrapped her hand around Hawk's, squeezed, and closed her eyes.

At least they would go out fighting.

“Briggs, what is the meaning of this?”

Jeni's eyes flew open. The man standing in the open doorway of the cell was painfully familiar, but it took her panicky mind a moment to place him—Edwin Cunningham, longstanding member of Eden's Council.

Noelle's father.

The interrogator straightened and wiped his bloody nose with his sleeve. “It's under control, sir. Just taking care of a few last things.”

“Get out.”

“But—”

Edwin glanced at the two MPs lying on the floor and then back at the man's bleeding face. “Your incompetence has been noted. You can leave and await a disciplinary hearing, or I can have my guard carry out a summary sentence right now.”

With a glare for Hawk and Jeni, the interrogator straightened and stalked to the door with as much pride as he could muster with one hand still pressed to his face. When he drew even with Edwin, the councilman extended his hand in quiet command. After a brief hesitation, the man relinquished the gun and stalked from the room.

Edwin turned the pistol over in his hands and spoke to the guard behind him. “Follow him. Find him a nice cell to occupy while he thinks about what he's done. Somewhere out of the way.”

“Sir?”

“I'll be fine.”

With obvious reluctance, the guard inclined his head, then disappeared down the hallway. Edwin turned back to them, his gaze sliding over Hawk's injuries before landing on Jeni. “You're Ashley's daughter. Jeneva.”

“Jeni,” she corrected. “Why did you stop him?”

Edwin slipped a hand into his pocket, pulled out a key, and tossed it to Hawk. Hawk reached for Jeni's wrists, fitting the key into place and sighing with relief when the first cuff fell away from her chafed skin.

“I abhor everything Dallas O'Kane is,” Edwin said quietly. “I loathe the fact that he's dragged my only child into sin with him. But I prefer the devil who owns his perversions to a liar who cloaks his sin in righteousness.”

Jeni didn't have time to argue right or wrong with a true believer—and she didn't care to. Only one thing mattered to her as she climbed to her feet. “How do we get out of the city?”

“I've arranged—”

The shot was so loud, it was like thunder in the room. Hawk covered her body with his, but she could still see over his shoulder. And it was like Sector Six all over again, but worse, because Edwin Cunningham was standing there without most of his face. Just standing there, as if time had frozen in the new worst moment of her life.

Then he fell, and she caught sight of the man behind him. The man with the smoking gun.

When Jared had opened his bar in town, Smith Peterson had made his life a living hell. He'd even gone as far as to have him picked up by MP thugs and beaten. Jared had chalked it up to a small man with a very personal vendetta—Peterson's wife was a longstanding client of his—but looking at him now, over Edwin Cunningham's corpse…

Hatred blazed in his eyes as he stared at them, but so did something else. Hunger, anticipation. Interest, but not in anything as base and simple as sex or even revenge.

Smith Peterson was after power.

He stepped over Cunningham, the barrel of his pistol trained on Hawk's forehead. “My best interrogator couldn't break you, so I won't try. But I think it's only fair to give you one more chance to talk.”

Hawk met Jeni's gaze. The chains still attached to the cuffs on his wrists clinked softly as he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “Remind me again what we're going to grow on our farm.”

She knew what he was doing, what he was saying. Even if this had to be how they went, it could still be on their terms, not Peterson's. Fighting tooth and nail to your last gasping breath wasn't the only way to die with grace.

Jeni was so fried she didn't try to hold back her tears. All the back and forth, the ups and downs. They were going to die, they were going to live—she couldn't even process it anymore, the surge of hope only to have it snatched away. Here she was, facing the unimaginable again—the worst thing she could think of in the world—

She couldn't do it. She couldn't do it.

“Strawberry,” she whispered. Not an answer to his question, but the safe word she'd chosen by candlelight, a lifetime ago. Hawk stared down at her, the soft confusion in his eyes melting into realization too late.

She turned to Peterson. “Wait.”