CHAPTER ELEVEN
With her hand tucked in Damion’s, Lara followed him down the dressing room hallway, then watched him peer around the corner and into the store, watching the subtle flex of muscle along his shoulders, the lethal air of danger that seemed to radiate off him. He was tall, broad, and sexy—things that made kissing him oh-so-good and oh-so-dangerous. Because when she did, she not only forgot the hum in her head, but she forgot who and what he was. GTECH Renegade—one of the killers who’d stolen her family from her.
And so Lara had made a decision back in that dressing room, a decision that surviving meant not only taking things one moment at a time, but with her head in a muddled mess, she had to trust her instincts. The facts as she knew them were most certainly flawed. How flawed was the question she intended to have answered.
Going with the flow of that instinct, she believed Damion had no idea he could control her hallucinations with his touch, his kiss. He was right. She’d been desperate to save his life, willing to risk her own, known on some level that she was even supposed to. Instincts. Yes. They were all she had, and she was putting them to use. And Damion. She had Damion. Whatever that meant, good or bad, she was going with it and with him. Almost, but not quite, trusting him. There was something about Damion, something that spoke to her soul. She didn’t understand it and didn’t want to try. She just needed him to be worthy. God, how she needed him to be one of the good guys.
He motioned her forward, and together they weaved a path toward the side exit, avoiding the main mall entrance, where Lucian and Sabrina would be likely to enter. They kept close to the walls, hidden by clothing racks. They eased into the main walkways only when moving from one department to the next.
The loudspeaker announced five minutes until store closing, and Damion cast Lara a displeased look. The crowds, which offered cover, were already thin, and they were about to get thinner.
They were close to the door though, only one department left to clear, and on the move again, in the home stretch and counting, when Damion suddenly yanked Lara into a corner. In an instant, her backside was pressed against his hips, his hand sliding intimately to her stomach, his mouth near her ear. “Shhh,” he murmured, a second before Lucian and Sabrina walked by.
Heart racing, she shrank against him, her hands pressed behind her, flattening them on his powerful thighs, as she tried to melt farther into him, and into the shadows of several clothing racks.
His fingers spread on her stomach, his grip tightening, as if offering reassurance. She reveled in that silent communication, in the way he reached out to her, and the way that connection defied all she had ever been taught about GTECHs, Renegades included.
And so she waited, with this man, this stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger anymore, this enemy who didn’t feel like an enemy anymore, and prayed Lucian and Sabrina would pass them by. Watched as the two of them headed toward the mall exit where they would hopefully be locked out of the store as it closed. Just when Lara was ready to let out a breath of relief, and feeling certain they were going to get out of this all right, Lucian and Sabrina suddenly stopped in their tracks.
“Oh God,” Lara whispered.
Damion turned her to face him, his hands on her arms. “We’re running for it. Now.”
“What if they shoot us?”
“Not likely in public,” he said, dismissing her concern and moving on. “The minute we hit the door, we wind-walk, and I don’t care who sees us. We don’t have time for discretion. This is about staying alive.” He didn’t give her a chance to argue or contemplate the uncertain and very bad side of his “not likely in public” assessment. He grabbed her hand and took off running, her in tow.
It was a pure, adrenaline-driven, forty-yard dash that ended when a female in a suit opened the door and offered them access to imperceptible strands of wind.
Instantly, Damion grabbed one and took her with him, which she already knew from their poolside departure, wasn’t so different from traveling on her own.
They reappeared in an alley, and she didn’t have time to figure out where that alley was. Damion was already pulling her forward and down a stairway. Subway, she mentally computed. They were at the Washington subway.
Damion edged her in front of him, sheltering her against an attack from behind, she realized, urging her down the long, narrow passage of stairs. She didn’t have to look back to know they were being followed, to know Lucian and Sabrina were there. She could feel them in the shiver down her spine, the hair standing up on her arms.
The ten o’clock hour meant only a few people would be dallying around, offering no crowd for camouflage, and she hoped Damion knew what he was doing.
“Jump,” Damion yelled, as she approached the metal-armed ticket booths.
Lara didn’t have to be told twice. In a well-executed leap, she scaled the rows of machines, ignoring shouts of some of the onlookers as she did, but weak, injured, and without the food and rest her body required to heal, she stumbled on landing. Damion was right there by her side, taking her arm and righting her footing, then pulling her with him toward the terminal. A hard thud of feet hit pavement behind them, and she didn’t have to look back to know who followed.
A train stopped at the top of the ramp, the doors sliding open, and they made a run for it. They were close—so close, she was certain they were going to make it.
The rush of success already screaming through her, Lara was about a step from the car, when something latched onto her other arm.
Training and more of that instinct she’d relied on, mixed with a whole lot of adrenaline, Lara reeled around in fight mode, thrusting her flattened palm into what turned out to be Lucian’s nose. A split second later, Damion’s boot landed in the exact spot where her palm had been, and with such force that Lucian landed flat on his ass. Before Lucian ever made full ground impact, Damion thrust Lara into the car and kicked behind him, this time landing a blow smack in Sabrina’s gut and thrusting her halfway across the platform.
On some distant level, Lara registered the observers, a few shouts and gasps, but she tuned them out. Lucian was on Damion again with a hard punch in the stomach resembling the one Damion had blessed Sabrina with, and Damion grunted and bent over at the middle.
Lara was behind Damion, holding the door, which was chiming angrily at her, trying to close, and she searched for anything she could use as a weapon. She found it in the form of an umbrella and launched the metal end over Damion’s head and straight into Lucian’s face, where it tore through muscle and flesh.
Damion yanked her fully into the car, and the doors shut. The excitement over, the few riders went back to their own business, like they were used to seeing weird stuff in subways—and they probably were.
“That was wicked,” Damion said, straightening. “Remind me not to piss you off, will you? Oh right. I have bite marks to prove I already have.” He grabbed her hand, angling toward the door that connected the cars. “Let’s go.”
“Hey!” an elderly lady shouted, standing in their path, all five feet and a hundred pounds of her, with her hands on her hips. “That was my umbrella. What am I supposed to do now?”
Damion and Lara exchanged an amused look. “Sorry about that, ma’am,” Damion said, Mr. Perfect Gentleman in action. He fished a couple twenties from his pocket. “Hope that does you right?”
The elderly woman pursed her lips and gave a nod. “It’ll do.”
His lips curled in a smile. “Glad to hear it.” He eyed Lara, the smile fading to a look of urgency. “Now we go.” They traveled past the “do not enter” sign from one car to the next, until the train stopped, and they got off and then right back on yet another. And then did it all over again.
Finally, on the third train, the car was empty enough that she could risk conversation without someone overhearing. “How many times do we do this?” she asked, sharing a pole with him, all too aware of their legs touching, their bodies close, of the intimacy between them that seemed to grow with each passing moment.
“Until I’m sure we’ve got them chasing their tails well enough that we can go above ground without Lucian immediately tracking you.”
Lara didn’t like how that sounded. “So, anytime I’m above ground, a Tracker can find me? Please tell me there’s a way around that.”
“I’m teaching you one of those ways now,” he said. “You dilute your presence and stay underground. A Tracker can’t find you underground. We don’t know why, but that’s how it is. And it takes time and skill once you’ve lost the target’s energy path to find it again, which is exactly why we’re going to move around enough that Lucian won’t have any idea where you go above ground again.”
She studied him—his light brown hair, cut short, framing his handsome, strong face—looking for signs of worry and finding none. But then, he was a soldier, who’d likely been taught, just as she had, to never let them see you sweat. The thought brought an odd sense of discomfort to her chest—emotion and a hint of the memories that Damion’s touch had been suppressing. She shoved it aside and asked the question that was bothering her.
“And when we go above ground,” she said, “then what?”
“We get to another safe house, like the cabin should have been,” he said, “so you can rest and get well.”
“And this safe house. Will there be other Renegades there?”
“No,” he said softly. “Just you and me, Lara. Someplace safe where you can rest and heal.”
For a moment, she wanted to thank him, to simply trust him blindly. There was a cold, hard reality though that she couldn’t escape, no matter what fantasy she might have over who, or what, this man was. No matter what she wanted him to be. “Then you bring in your people and start drilling me for answers. I’ll be a prisoner.”
“No,” he said. “I meant what I said. It will be just you and me.” He hesitated. “At least for now. I’ll make that promise on one condition. I need to know that whatever you’re involved in isn’t an imminent threat to our country’s security, and that it won’t cost innocent people their lives. I need your word.”
“You’d take my word on something this big?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll take your word.”
Trust. He was giving her trust. Or playing her like a master musician. She studied him, reached inside herself, clinging to her instincts that told her he was real—the most real thing in her life right now. That he was the one person she could trust. She had to meet him in the middle. She had to go out on a limb with Damion. “I thought I was protecting those very things, that the people I worked for were protecting those very things. So the answer is no. I’m not aware of any threat to our country or to innocent lives.” She hesitated a moment, and then went on, charging into this full steam ahead. “The hallucinations don’t seem to be hallucinations at all. I think they’re more…” She choked on the next word. It unraveled all she knew to be real. “Memories. Like a past that was wiped away now resurfacing.” She inhaled and let it out. “So even if I was ready to trust you, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.” And then another hard admission. “I’m not even sure I know who I was before.”
He reached up and cupped her cheek. “Then let me help you find out.”
Her hand went to his. “Don’t make me regret this,” she said, knowing her statement, in and of itself, was admission of some level of trust.
“Nor you me,” he said softly, a hint of tension in his voice, his hand falling from her face. “I don’t throw caution to the wind, but I am, for you.”
“Don’t,” she said, suddenly afraid of more than trusting him. “Please don’t. I’m as afraid for you to trust me as I am for me to trust you. I don’t know how I am or even what I am. So… don’t trust me. Not yet.”
“Too late,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve already decided I’m going to do enough trusting for both of us. You can catch up later.”
“And if I don’t deserve it?”
“You will. And I will. Watch and see.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Sometimes the facts aren’t clear, and all a good soldier has is his innate survival instincts. Mine are stronger than most. They’ve kept me alive too many times to count. I think yours are too, which is exactly why we’re standing here now—united against Lucian and Sabrina. And it’s also why we’d much rather kiss each other than kill each other.”
They stared at one another, time standing still, a bond weaving between them, a silent connection that reached beyond the raw sexuality of their attraction, broken only by the announcement of their stop. The doors opened, and Damion grabbed her hand. Lara tugged him back, drawing his attention. “What if while we are trying to make Lucian and Sabrina chase their tails, we end up right back in their path?”
One corner of his mouth lifted, softening the hard lines of his expression. “We find another umbrella.”
Sabrina waited impatiently outside the subway while Lucian tended his wounds with supplies she’d bought at a drugstore a block away. Finally, he sauntered down the hallway leading out of the restroom, a large bandage taped on his face, looking tall and broad, his civilian attire of jeans and a T-shirt doing nothing to disguise the soldier beneath. The female in her warmed at the sight he made, but the soldier in her—the leader of Serenity—fumed at his slow, loose-legged swagger that said he was in no rush, making her want to strangle him.
Sliding her teeth together in a hard grind, she charged toward him. “They saw you,” she said. “The Renegades saw you, and Lara was fighting against us. Serenity is as good as exposed, and yet you seem in no rush, as if you don’t even care. What is wrong with you? We have to make a plan. We have to decide what to do now, not later.”
He reached down and took the subway map from her hand, amusement in his dark midnight eyes. “What we aren’t going to do is get desperate and behave foolishly,” he said, his gaze and his tone hardening as he indicated the map. “And this is the kind of foolishness I expect from a follower, not a leader.” He motioned toward the exit. “Come now.” He started walking.
Dread curled inside Sabrina, a jab of searing warning. Calling Lucian had been a mistake, a desperate, horrible mistake, which had now trapped her.
Charging after him, she caught him at street level and grabbed his arm. “They know we aren’t with Adam,” she ground out. “Lara will tell them about General Powell. She was helping them. She was fighting with them.”
He stared down at her, unmoving and hard, then suddenly grasped her arms and backed her into a dark corner behind a rank-smelling Dumpster. “Control yourself,” he said, “before you convince me I should tell Powell you aren’t capable of leading. Leaders lead. They solve problems. They don’t panic like some schoolgirl princess who can’t get a manicure on schedule.”
He was so like every man who’d abused and used her throughout her entire life. She hated him. “What are we supposed to do?”
“One step at a time, doll,” he said, brushing his fingers over her cheek. “Take out the targets, and then do damage control.”
Doll. Oh yeah, she hated him all right. She despised him far more than the life that had ensured there would never be schoolgirl manicures, shopping malls, and family and hearth in her future. She’d always been alone until Serenity, until Powell. She’d foolishly created a situation that threatened to steal her security, her place where she finally belonged.
“She’s underground,” she said, resolved to deal with this problem before it got out of control. “You won’t immediately locate Lara when she comes above ground again, and she’s someplace secure.”
He snatched Chale’s cell phone from his pocket. “We have Damion’s number. We call our tech team, and they signal us the minute his phone pings to life. Damion is a Renegade. Unless he feels imminent threat, he won’t wind-walk in front of onlookers. We’ll wind-walk to their coordinates, and I’ll have Lara’s energy link again. They won’t escape. They die tonight.”
What part of this didn’t he get? “Even if that works, the other Renegades saw us, and we don’t know what she’s already told them. The damage reaches beyond their lives now.”
“I’ll smooth this over with Powell,” he said, sliding his hands to her waist. “I’m to return to his side by morning, and by tomorrow night, he’ll have made sure we’re both linked to Adam as one big plot to undermine the Renegades. And neither Lara nor the Renegade with her will be alive to dispute that.” His hands brushed up her rib cage and brushed the curves of her breasts. “Then we’ll celebrate our new arrangement. You and I… leading Serenity.”
You and I leading Serenity. The bastard was going to double-cross her with Powell, use this to jockey more control for himself, and less for her, just as she’d feared. Even if she held onto her position as leader of Serenity, she’d be led around by his cock for the rest of her life. She was done with that life. She’d been a fool for calling Lucian into this. A damn fool.
He pushed off the wall and dialed their tech team, setting up Damion’s phone trace. Sabrina listened, her heart thundering in her ears, her stomach so sick she wanted to throw up, on him preferably, but that would be short, cold comfort.
He flipped his phone shut. “Damion won’t return to ground level anytime soon. He’ll want to take his time diluting Lara’s trail. So let’s go eat. I don’t like to kill things on an empty stomach.”
He turned and started to walk away. Adrenaline rushed through Sabrina’s body, and a sense of being out of her body, of acting without thinking, took hold. She’d fought too hard to get where she was to lose it now—she feared death, feared life. No. She couldn’t lose it now, not over Lucian.
She pulled her gun with its silencer, pointed it at the back of Lucian’s head, and fired the fatal shot, all too aware that even a GTECH couldn’t survive a direct hit to the brain. Before he ever hit the ground she was behind him, wrapping her arms around him, and wind-walking to the top of a mountain near the cabin where they’d found Lara. It was too dark to see down the steep incline she knew to be to her left, but she could hear the river she’d seen earlier below.
She dropped Lucian’s dead weight on the ground, removed both his cell phone and Chale’s from his pockets, and then shoved the body over the incline, waiting until she heard the splash. Without hesitation, she wind-walked to the subway terminal, which she’d determined would be a good bet for Lara and Damion’s exit, while studying her maps. A long shot, but one she had to take. At least she was a close wind-walk to any location the cell might ping to.
Sabrina waited for the tech team’s call, thinking through what came next after she killed Lara and Damion. Smiling, she realized exactly what she’d tell Powell. Lucian and Lara had been plotting to take over Project Serenity, and she, Sabrina, his most loyal follower, had killed Lucian, Lara, and the Russian. But not before they’d potentially exposed Serenity to the Renegades.
Powell didn’t want Serenity exposed any more than she did. He’d do damage control. He’d fix the leak of information, work his magic. Most importantly, she’d be given credit that he’d even had the chance to do that. It was perfect. She would look like a goddess and have more trust and power than ever before.