Beyond Addiction (24 page)

“You could still close the door, though,” Finn grumbled.

The door swung shut, and Jeni’s voice drifted through it. “Sorry.”

Trix swallowed another round of giggles. “Think she apologized enough?”

“She didn’t pull a gun on me.” Finn rubbed his thumb along her jaw. “I’d call it a win.”

She closed her eyes and leaned in to his touch, letting the quiet peace of the moment steal through her. “The pearls are yours, and so am I.”

“Fuck the pearls. I only need you.”

I’ll never leave you.
For the first time, she believed it.

Finn heard the voices from inside the garage. Not one or two people having a too-loud conversation or a party that had spilled out of the Broken Circle, but the distinct murmur of an anxious crowd—one that was growing larger.

Abandoning his current project, he stepped out into the courtyard and surveyed the tight knot of O’Kanes hovering just outside the barracks. Dallas and Lex stood to one side, looking grim enough to twist worry through Finn’s gut. He scanned the crowd quickly, that worry ramping up when he couldn’t find a flash of familiar red hair.

He found Bren instead. Finn stopped next to where the man stood on the edge of the crowd. “Is something wrong?”

“Maybe,” he answered cryptically. “Doc’s been in there with Flash and Amira.”

The bouncer and the waitress weren’t the sort of power players Finn had needed to know about for his duties in Sector Five, but on the O’Kane compound one thing set them apart from everyone else—their daughter.

Before Finn could ask about her, a strangled sob came from inside the building. Muffled but audible, more so when the crowd fell silent.

“Shit,” Bren muttered under his breath.

The door opened, and the doctor stepped out. He was a mess, his jaw stubbled, his eyes bloodshot. But he looked sober, at least, even if it seemed like he hated being that way.

That discomfort just got worse when he faced the crowd, and Finn got the feeling the man hadn’t been coming out to explain what was going on. He was flat-out fucking fleeing whatever had set off those heartbreaking sobs.

Dallas lifted a hand and crooked two fingers in summons. Doc obeyed, but with a snarl. “Fuck off, O’Kane. You want to know, you talk to Flash. Doesn’t matter, anyway.”

Dallas’s stern expression didn’t waver. “Tell me. Now.”

“Or what? You’ll beat the shit out of me?”

“Dylan.” Lex’s voice cut through the silence, but not in command. She stood there, both arms wrapped around her midsection, as if shielding herself. “Please.”

“Oh, fucking hell.” The man grimaced. “Hana’s sick.”

Dallas didn’t ask how sick. He didn’t need to, with the sound of Amira’s grief ripping through all of them. “How do I fix it?”

The doctor’s answer was final. Damning. “You can’t.”

“Bullshit. I can find a regen tech—”

“And it won’t do any good, O’Kane.”

Dallas balled his hand into a fist, looking seconds short of driving it through the doctor’s face. “Stop telling me what I can’t do and
explain
it.”

“Amira noticed some muscle weakness in the baby, and she told me something was wrong. I thought she was being paranoid—until I did the blood work.” Doc sighed heavily. “It’s a metabolic enzyme deficiency. The prognosis is—” He cut off with a vicious curse. “The prognosis is shit, that’s what.”

“There has to be something we can do. Medicine.” Dallas shoved his hand through his hair and looked at Finn. Just for a second, but long enough for Finn to read the conflict there.

Even if there was medicine that would help, Beckett wouldn’t hand it over. Not without getting something—or someone—in return.

“Gene therapy in utero,” Doc whispered. “That’s how they’d fix it in Eden. But it’s too late for that now.”

Not necessarily. In Eden, registration for reproduction involved genetic counseling meant to avoid situations like this. But rich people broke the rules, and there was always a demand for experimental drugs on the Base.

Getting them would be dangerous. Dallas would have to beg for them or steal them, and, in either scenario, Finn was likely to be front and center. He’d promised Trix that he’d stay with her.

He’d promised himself he’d deserve her.

He stepped forward, drawing Doc’s attention. “What if I could get my hands on a programmable retrovirus?”

“Excuse me?” Doc stared at Finn like
he
was the crazy, tripping, suicidal bastard.

For once in Finn’s damn life, he actually wasn’t. “The Base does gene therapy all the time. Experimental and dangerous as fuck...but it happens.”

Dallas raised an eyebrow. “Well, Doc?”

“Could you make that work?” Lex took a step toward him. “If this is as bad as you say, anything you can give Flash and Amira… They’ll take it.”

“I stored some of Hana’s umbilical cord blood when she was born,” he admitted. “I don’t know, maybe. But it’d take a fucking miracle, even if Beckett’s boy here is telling the truth.”

“I’m not Beckett’s boy,” Finn replied, meeting Dallas’s eyes. “Though I’m sure he’s dying to get me back.”

“It might have come up,” Dallas said, way too casually. Beckett was making demands, then, which made it a good time for Finn to prove he was useful for more than fixing cars and building gardens.

He turned and gestured to Bren. “When Trix and I were in the tunnels beneath Five, she said something about Noah. That he can hack his way through all those damn security doors?”

Bren nodded. “You got a plan?”

“There’s a storage drop on the edge of Five. Fleming was required to keep a stockpile there of everything the Base uses.”

It was information, not a plan—but Bren only nodded again. “When do we leave?”

Dallas pointed at Doc. “You stay right here. We’re gonna go find Cruz and see what he knows about the Base’s experiments. Lexie, love?”

“I’ll take care of them.” She slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind her.

“Bren?” Dallas jerked his head toward the Broken Circle. “Round up Noah and map out a route. Figure out who you need.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you.” O’Kane folded his arms across his chest and stared at Finn for long enough to prickle wariness down his spine. He was used to assholes and sociopaths leading sectors, but Dallas O’Kane knew how to level a look that made a man feel bared to his soul, judged for his sins and found sincerely wanting.

Since there wasn’t much to say in his defense, Finn stayed silent.

“You,” Dallas repeated. “If you fuck us over, Finn, I’m gonna find you. No matter how the fuck far you run or who you think could hide you. I will find you, and I will turn you inside out. And then I’ll bring you back here and let Lex at you.”

A threat only an O’Kane could make—saving the scariest for last. Dallas O’Kane could break your body. Finn didn’t want to see what kind of vengeance Lex could be stirred to when properly motivated—especially when she knew his most vulnerable spots. “My loyalties are pretty damn simple.”

“Trix?”

“From start to finish.”

After a moment, Dallas nodded. “Good enough for now. Go with Bren. Get this shit figured out. And, Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Dallas said quietly. “Don’t break her heart. Come the hell back.”

It was the promise he’d already made, the one he had to keep. “I’m planning on it.”

Trix stumbled out of the back door, her eyes wide and her chest heaving with shallow breaths. “Lex said…” She trailed off as she caught sight of Finn.

“Hana needs medicine,” he said, meeting her eyes. No pain, not yet. Because she hadn’t figured out what came next. “I’m going to help Bren and Noah get it.”

She wasn’t moving, but she seemed to still anyway as realization dawned. “Get it...because it’s in Five.”

Finn tugged her away from the milling people—and away from Dallas, though his gaze followed them. “Nobody else knows where the place is. It’s the kid’s only chance.”

She opened her mouth, but the argument she obviously wanted to make died on her tongue. “For Hana,” she said finally.

He slipped his fingers into her hair and pulled her close, until he could lean down to press his forehead to hers. “For you,” he corrected. “This is your family. I get it. I still don’t know shit about having one, but let me protect yours.”

Trix wrapped her hands around his wrists. “Be careful?”

“I’ll be back before you know it.” He smiled and stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Donnelly’s crazy, but I bet he’s real useful in a pinch.”

“I mean it, Finn.”

He kissed her. Short and abrupt, because it wasn’t the place and there wasn’t time, but even that brief taste of her made his blood pound. “You think I’m taking any fucking chances with you waiting for me on the other end?”

“Hell, no.” Her voice shook the tiniest bit. “I’ll be here.”

And he’d be one step closer to belonging. “Give me a good-luck kiss, doll.”

She brushed her lips over his, softly at first. Then she sank her teeth into his lower lip with a moan. “Remember what you promised me.”

Finn caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “This is home. Nothing will change that.”

She curled her fingers to stroke his beard. “Then hurry back.”

Noah Lennox was a little scary.

Finn had known him for years, since the days when he was a newly recruited enforcer and Noah was still a surly teenager, the brilliant son of Sector Five’s bitter, angry tech specialist. Fleming had always gone easy on the kid, too afraid of spooking a valuable resource—especially after the elder Lennox opted to overdose his way out of life.

Then Noah had fallen for a girl. Emma Cibulski, the little sister of one of Finn’s least reliable dealers. Finn didn’t know when the idiot had started rolling on his own stash, but he’d bet every credit to his name that Fleming had helped Cib along the path to destruction.

And Emma had been slated for a fate like Trix’s—addicted to the dangerous shit, held hostage to ensure Noah’s good behavior. Scaring the two of them out of the sector had been the first decent thing Finn had done in a while, but fresh off the latest attempt to wean Trix from her addiction, it had been the only choice he could stand to make.

If he’d had a clue just how dangerous Noah could be, he might have chosen a different route.

With a datapad in one hand and a lock override device in the other, Noah led Finn and Bren through doors Finn had never realized were even there and down tunnels he would have sworn on his life didn’t exist. “This is fucking insane,” Finn muttered to Bren as they watched Noah hack the control panel on a huge steel blast door. “Is there anywhere he can’t get with that thing?”

“Through a solid wall, maybe.” Bren patted the backpack slung over his shoulder. “But that’s where I come in.”

Finn raised an eyebrow. “I always heard you were a sniper, not an explosives nut.”

“
Nut
is such a strong word. I prefer
enthusiast
.”

“You’re a crazy motherfucker, is what you are.” But Finn grinned. “Was that your work on the factory? Trust an O’Kane to burn shit to the ground with zero casualties.”

Bren’s vague smile vanished.

Shit
. Maybe there had been casualties—or injuries—and Finn hadn’t known. Mac had already shut him out of the inner circle by the time the O’Kanes had blown the factory, after all.

The door whispered open ahead of them, and Noah turned to pin Bren with a serious look. “You’re not brooding, are you? We all made it out of there alive. Mistakes happen.”

“No, I’m not brooding,” Bren muttered. “And fuck you.”

Noah waved his arm, and Bren stepped through the door. “All right, big guy. You wanted access to this quadrant of Five, and now you’ve got it. Where do we go?”

Noah held out the tablet with its map, but Finn didn’t need it. He’d studied the tunnel schematics back in Sector Four, memorizing the route from this door to familiar territory. “This way.”

The tunnels in this part of Five were in decent repair, lit from above by long fluorescent lights that washed out color and cast creepy shadows. Few people in Five knew this section of the tunnels existed, but they were kept in excellent repair on orders from the military installation known simply as the Base.

Knowing that, Finn kept his hand close to his gun. “The guys from the Base were pretty regular with their pickups, but who knows what the hell Beckett’s done to the schedule? If we run into trouble, it could be your kind of scene, Donnelly.”

Bren swung a small flashlight from one side of the tunnel to the other as they walked. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not run into anyone from the Base.”

“No shit.” Finn had only had to oversee a handful of the monthly meetings, but the men who usually showed up to collect the experimental medication redefined cold-blooded. Even at his lowest, Finn didn’t think he’d looked at the world with that level of disconnected calm.

Hell, even Beckett showed emotions sometimes. Usually greed and sadistic satisfaction, but that was
something
.

A loud clang echoed dully above them, and Bren cursed. “How close are we to the surface, Noah?”