In The Afterlight

Of course he hadn’t taken a burner phone with him—there was no way to contact him to see if he could pump information about Lillian Gray’s whereabouts from this same “friend.” If she was still with the League, where were they keeping her? She’d been running her research near Georgia HQ with only a few agents assigned for her protection. Would they have brought her to Kansas HQ with the others when they closed the other location?

I passed by the gym and did a double take at the sight of Zu, Tommy, Pat, and a number of the others trying to fuss around with the exercise machines.

“Sorry,” Pat ventured, stepping away from the weights. “We were just...doing nothing. And we wanted to do something. Since, you know, we’re going—me and Tommy.”

“Going?” I repeated.

Tommy popped up next to him, bright red hair glowing under the bare lights overhead. “We volunteered. For Oasis. Sorry, we voted after you, um, left.”

Ah. I looked at the two of them, sizing them up. When Tommy squirmed under the scrutiny, Pat smacked his side to get him to stop, forcing his chin up higher. I smiled.

“Do you want to learn some self-defense?” I asked.

I’m not sure if their reaction could have been more enthusiastic if I’d offered candy. The other kids abandoned the machines, darting over to the mats, where I instructed them to line up. I led them through stretches, taught them how to break out of different holds someone might have on them, and demonstrated—repeatedly—how to flip someone over your shoulder if you weren’t a Blue. And hours later, when we were finished, I couldn’t say who was happier with how the day had turned out—me, or them.

Finally, Cole announced his arrival with three bangs against the tunnel door. I came barreling out of Alban’s old office, abandoning the ancient Op files I’d been looking through, and unlocked it. He gave a guarded, uncertain smile as he came up the stairs.

“The others are back, too,” he said. “I told them to bring everything around to the garage’s loading dock. Can you gather up the kids to help haul the stuff in? I’ll go ahead and cut the chain so we can get the damn door open—”

“Cole,” I said sharply as he started to walk away.

He shuffled to a stop, turning his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Gem. They’re looking for the agents, but they don’t know either. Liam must have contacted Harry behind my back, because he got in touch with me this morning to say he’d ask around. He’s ex-Special Forces and still has a number of buddies in different branches of the military and government.”

The mention of his stepfather brought a flash of the memory I’d seen in Cole’s mind, and pain stirred in me. The man from his memory, his biological father, smiling down at their mother that way...

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Thanks for trying.”

He let out a shuddering breath and forced himself to shrug. “You...okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let me go get the others. I’ll meet you down there.”

Cold night air filled the warehouse with a crisp, clean scent that reached us in the tunnel. The door at the other end was already open, waiting for us. But the moment I stepped through, I stopped dead in my tracks.

The whole place looked as though they’d power-washed it for hours on end. They hadn’t been able to actually remove the junk from the building—it might have attracted too much unwanted attention—but they’d somehow fit everything together, using the four walls as the frame of a puzzle. They’d lined up all of the shelving units, made some new shelves out of the broken bunks, and created a workstation with the tools they’d found. The car lift and frame were still at the center of the expansive space, but it looked like they were piecing even that back together. Someone had outfitted it with wheels, at least.

Two large SUVs and one white van had come up the loading ramp and were parked inside. I jogged over to Liam and Vida as they used their abilities to lift boxes out of the trunks and set them aside.

Liam looked up as I came over, a familiar smile on his face. He waved the group coming in behind me over. “We’re organizing by type. Set computers and electronics over there—”

There was an actual, blissful sigh from one of the Greens, which made him chuckle.

“Food and water goes here. There should be a few bags of clothes, bedding—no, no, leave the stuff in the white van,” he said, jogging over to shut the door. “It’s—Cole’s going to take care of that stuff.”

Meaning, I’d guess, weapons for our locker.

Vida was...blank. Her expression didn’t so much as flicker with annoyance as Chubs pelted her with a series of endless questions. I wasn’t sure she was even aware of what she was doing, there was that much of a visible, numb disconnect.

Zu came to stand beside me, her dark gaze meeting mine in question. I wanted to tell her not to worry about this, that I was coming to see the heavier your heart got, the stronger you had to be to keep carrying it around. But the truth was, all I wanted to do was risk a punch in the face and hug Vida. So, I tried.

And she let me.

Her arms stayed down around her sides, pinned there by my tight grip. Slowly, her hands rose and pressed against my back. I smelled dust and the salt of ocean water on her skin, mingling with the exhaust from the cars, and I wished like hell I had thought to volunteer to go instead, so she could have had the day to recover.

“We are going to f**king get her back,” Vida said fiercely. “I will burn Gray’s house down over his head. If she’s not all right, I’m going to rip out his heart and eat it.”