Dead of Eve (48 page)

“How did the Drone get past you?” So quickly and uninjured?

“He flashed.” Roark pointed the sword at the door. “He moves faster than ye doing that blurry thing when you’re lamping bugs.”

Knew that after two months on the painful side of his flashing fist. “Tallis and Cliff?”

“They saw him fly off starboard.” Michio hauled on jeans and a shirt, the blades gone from the staff in his hand.

“And they didn’t get a shot off? Harpoon his ass with their fishing gun? Nothing?”

Brows collided over black eyes. “It’s dark.”

“He flew all the way here, just to be chased away? He’s fucking with us.” I strapped on my arm sheaths and four knives. Jesse must have collected my spares from the Humvee. “How close is Genoa?” Goddammit, Jesse better be there. In one piece.

“On the horizon.” Michio kissed my bare shoulder and draped a tee over it. “I’m going up.” The door snicked behind him.

Roark leaned against the cabinet beside me. I scoured the racks for mags, filled the ones I found with ammo, unable to ignore the weight of his gaze. “What?”

“Ye were just gonna hurl along up there after the Drone in the nip, were ye?” His eyes made a perusal over my nude skin, stopping on the only thing I wore. Michio’s boxers, rolled at the waistband, determined to give up their fight against gravity.

I tugged them up and slammed my pistol in the holster. “Survival before modesty.”

His eyes darted to the shirt flung over my shoulder. “Think your doctor disagrees.”

A shaky sigh escaped. “Add it to our list of disagreements.”

His slouch against the cabinet grew taller. “That so?”

We didn’t have time for melodrama, but my fragile relationships wouldn’t work without communication and honesty. I turned toward him and traced fingers around his curling ones, intertwining our hands. “He knows about our negotiation. We talked after you went up on deck last night.” Talking wasn’t the only thing we did.

The tic in his cheek told me he caught the flush in mine. I straightened the strap on my holster, stalling. “We’ll work it out. Nothing to worry about.”

“Tell me wha’ I’m not worrying about, then.” His expression, so open and full of affection, made it easy to bare all, give him all.

“Okay.” I raised our laced hands, pressed a kiss to his scarred knuckles. “It’s the touching.”

His eyes darkened, locked on my mouth. “What about it?”

“The intimacy you and I share…he’s wants to draw lines at—”

He tossed his hands in the air. “Then throw us a bloody Sharpie, why den’ he? We’ll just draw ‘Do Not Enter’ zones on your body. Is that wha’ he wants?”

“Stop making him out like a barbarian. It’s not any different than the lines you and I drew. And don’t forget, he just left us alone down here, with me wearing only underwear.” I stretched out my arms, baring the reminder.

Cheeks splotched, he dropped his head and asked the floor, “Wha’ do
ye
want?”

I stepped into him and raised his whiskered chin with a cupped hand. The worry bracketing his gorgeous eyes was my undoing. “I want you, you fickle, fucked up, beautiful man.”

His lashes dropped through a ragged inhale and snapped back up. “Ye want the doctor.”

My selfish heart jumped to my throat, choked my response. “Him, too.” When he tried to look away, I hardened my grip, waited for those eyes to focus on mine. “And if he loves me like he says he does, he’ll understand that nothing is worth holding on to like the love we share in touch. I won’t let anyone take that from us, okay?”

“Bloody hell.” His face softened, as did his body. We melted together, forehead to forehead, palms holding cheeks, and let our mingling breaths seal my vow.

I perched between Roark and Michio against the starboard bow. Cliff monitored port side. Tallis stretched behind the wheel. A cigarette sagged from his brazen lips as he steered us into Genoa’s harbor.

Pale-breasted gulls screeched into the early morning twilight. Piers fingered from the shoreline, buried under concrete and metal. Disemboweled ships leeched the decrepit docks.

My grip on the railing clenched. In that moment, with the defensive walls of a dead city collapsing around us and the jaws of death echoing through the devoured streets, I felt so very far away from home. My breath caught in my throat, clinging to a lost hope.

One little girl.

My past followed me to every city, weighing me down. Surrounded by a foreign horizon, I lost the fight to keep all things familiar buried. Maybe it was the countdown to docking, the dread that came with the dangers waiting on land. Maybe it was the empty wharf, the sickening feeling that Jesse didn’t make it. When I released a long-held breath, it escaped with an unobtainable wish.

One little boy.

I longed for wings. To let the wind carry my feet. To fly home, to the brick and boarded husk of the life I once had, to the woman I used to be. I ducked my head, didn’t want them to see me, crumbling like the ships in the harbor.

A hand settled over mine on the railing. Sandalwood breaths stirred my hair. “Let it go.”

“As if it were that easy.” My voice wobbled. I swallowed the weakness, hardened it. “Did you let…someone go?”

“Parents. Brother.” Michio’s fingers curled, straightened, stroking between mine. “My girlfriend.”

I cleared my throat. “What was her name?”

“Isabella.”

Beside me, Roark closed his eyes and hooked his pinkie around my free one. Words didn’t comfort, didn’t undo what was done. So I said nothing.

Michio dropped his forehead to my temple. “Everything sad, everything dead, the past brought us here, alive.”

The blades on my arms glinted against the sparkling ebb of the sea. “It’s unforgiving.”

His lips feathered my earlobe. “It’s living.”

“Living is relative. And not always ideal.” I steeled my shoulders against the glaring empty wharf. But where would I be without Roark’s faith in me, Jesse’s loyalty, and Michio’s strength. Things would be much, much worse.

Distant barking fluttered across the harbor. I jumped.

Cliff’s voice ripped through the tension. “The dog’s our green light to berth.”

My heart panted as I leaned over the railing and squinted. A blur of black and tan streaked across the pier. I shoved my way to the port side. Darwin squatted on the edge of the dock, tongue lolling, tail whipping.

A man loomed on the shore, his back to us. He glanced over his shoulder and the first rays of sun caught the copper in his eyes. Then he returned to his watch, bow and arrow at his side. A position that would allow lift and release in one breath. My pulse sped up.

The yacht docked. I scrambled down the ramp and dropped to my knees in a furry reunion. Lathered in puppy kisses and dog hair, I caught the amusement cartwheeling across Roark’s face. “What?”

He shook his head and gestured up the dock with his chin. “Ye gonna give your Lakota the same greeting?”

Tallis and Cliff walked the perimeter, rifles raised. Jesse leaned against a pier support, hands stuffed in the pockets of jeans hung low on his narrow hips. He didn’t have Roark’s height or Michio’s bulk, but his trim physique was solid and intimidating all the same. He watched me with his usual bored expression.

Roark’s hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. I loped up the pier with Darwin bouncing at my heels and stopped an arm’s length away.

Last time I saw him, he was saving my ass on Dover pier. And there we were, another pier, another ass saving. There was so much to say, yet the only thing my mouth could produce was a weak smile. Definitely not a high-confidence moment.

“The doctor give you my message?”

I missed that smooth Texan accent. His gaze floated to my shirt where my scar curved above the low neckline. His copper eyes darkened under furrowed brows and his mouth dipped in a scowl.

“You weren’t responsible for what happened in Dover. Or River Tweed.”

His jaw clenched and his fists went to his hips. “Fuck if I wasn’t.
I was there
.” Such pain in his voice.

We stared at one other, paralyzed in time, gazes fused in a war of emotions. I wasn’t sure who moved first, but when we did, we collided, entangled, hugging as if it were our last. Standing there, wrapped in Jesse, invoked a sensation so long anticipated, I felt it from my crown to my toes. I felt safe.

“The Drone got away.” His voice pulsed against my neck, arms banded around my waist.

“I know. But so did I.” I pulled back, met his eyes. “Thank you.”

Footsteps approached. He looked behind me, the moment gone. “We need to go.”

Our cavalcade comprised of the Humvee and two Harley Davidson army bikes. Roark’s eyes narrowed on Cliff, who straddled the enduro that had carried us from Lloyd’s pub that cold night six months prior.

I nudged his arm. “If you wanna ride, kick him off.”

He pinched my chin, gave it a jerk. “Naw, love. I stay with ye.” He pushed me into the back of the Humvee with Darwin and all our gear then climbed in the front with Michio behind the wheel. Tallis mounted the other bike.

The minute the engines turned over, my insides jerked in the toils of vibrations. The pounding of boots neared my open door. Jesse fell in, bow arched, and landed in my lap. “Step on it, Doc. Go, go, go.”

A claw followed him in, attached to his leg. Then the aphid was on us. Its jaw snapped open and the spear shot toward Jesse’s chest. His arrow released, sunk a bulging eye, and exited the back of the head.

I kicked at the torso skipping over the cement with the Humvee’s momentum. It let go and I slammed the swinging door, longing for the safety of the boat.

The whine of the enduros led the way. Aphids scurried from crowded high-rise buildings and spread over the lot. Darwin barked, claws curled against the rear window. Jesse climbed into his own seat and spit arrows out his window. Roark and I used our sidearms to pick off the aphids blurring too close to the bikes.

The bounce of the Humvee over debris and bodies jostled our aim. I needed Yang. Next to me, Jesse’s arm flew in a stream of arrows. His back muscles waved through the movement. It probably wasn’t the best time to explain why he and I needed to remove our shirts and press up against each other.

I switched to the carbine and held it steady at my shoulder. Exhale. Squeeze. Squeeze. Bugs squealed and rolled around us.

When the enduros zipped far enough ahead, the swarm fell back. Gravel shot up from our tires. Soon, the only thing trailing us was a haze of dust. A collective sigh washed through the Humvee.

A few minutes into the drive, I turned to Jesse. “Tell me what happened with the Drone.”

Roark stirred in the front seat. Jesse didn’t budge his head from the feather he was attaching to an arrow shaft.

“Jesse?”

He frowned without looking up. “What do you want to know?”

“You can start by telling me how he got away.”

He tossed the arrow aside and raked a hand through his wavy russet hair. “I cornered him in the chamber at the top of the main tower. His army was barricaded outside. I was feet away, arrow nocked…” He palmed his nape.

I waited several heartbeats then cleared my throat.

“What do you want me to say? He just disappeared. It was dark as shit, but I know there was nowhere for him to go.”

“But up?”

He stared at me.

“You were in
my
chamber. It has open rafters.” I met Michio’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “He flew away.”

Jesse blinked, his lips in a thin line. “When he disappeared, the aphids scattered, wandering mindless without his control. Maybe one of my arrows hit him after all.”

“He was on the yacht last night.”

His face turned scarlet. “He what?”

“He slipped in while we slept.” Michio’s tone was cool as he walked through the event and brushed over what we knew about the Drone’s metamorphosis.

“And where the fuck were Reynolds and Dilman?”

“The Drone sneaked into the stateroom,” I said. “Came after me while I slept between two capable bodyguards.”

Jesse dug a fist into his brow. “This is unacceptable. I hired them to do a job. Either they do it or I’ll—”

“You’ll do what? While we’re on the subject of threats,” I said, “you need to stop. Scalping, strangulation, castration?”