Omega (26 page)

She sighed. Everyone had baggage. They would be a freaking disaster as a real couple, so why did she feel so disappointed?

A knock at the door broke her out of her funk, and she opened it to find Krys—smiling for a change. “I think Aidan is ready to talk without yelling, and he’s promised Mirren won’t hit anybody.” She glanced down the hall. “Although, I probably wouldn’t hold him to that part.”

Randa nodded. “Think they’ll agree to talk inside the silver cell? It’s fairly soundproof, and Will and I have an idea we don’t want too many ears to hear.”

“This have something to do with what Hannah said yesterday? Want me to get her?”

“Definitely find her and Cage.” Will appeared in the hallway behind Krys. “Fumes are worse in the water-filtration room this morning. I put a sign on the door telling everyone to stay out because of a malfunction, and cut off the water supply to all the pipes.”

He led the way down the corridor to the silver cell and unlocked the door. Randa waited a heartbeat to make sure
Mirren wasn’t going to barrel out, fist first, but when nothing happened, she opened the door and went in.

Mirren sat on the floor in the corner, with Glory’s head in his lap, stroking her hair away from her face. He narrowed his eyes at Will and Cage, but didn’t say anything.

Aidan kissed Krys, and Randa felt a stab of jealousy at the long look they gave each other, full of love and forgiveness. No time to mourn what would never be. She believed people were put on earth for different reasons, including vampires, and she’d accepted a long time ago that her role was not to be a soul mate to some adoring male. She suspected she’d be unsuited to it.

Once Hannah and Cage arrived, Will closed the door and took a seat on the floor next to Randa. They all sat on the painted concrete except Glory, who’d moved to the bed next to Mirren, her hand draped over his shoulder.

“First, don’t ever pull a fucking stunt like that again.” Mirren’s gray-eyed glare shifted from Will to Cage and back. He didn’t give Randa a second look.

“It was my plan.” By God, she was not going to be overlooked, even if it meant getting chastised or punched. “Call it a mutiny if you want to, but we all agreed you and Aidan weren’t thinking as leaders. You were thinking as friends and mates.”

The room’s silence fell thick and tense. Aidan stared at her with raised eyebrows, and she’d definitely gotten Mirren’s attention. Except, instead of scowling, his mouth finally curved up in something approximating a smile. “Well, well. Aidan, you were right. About damned time, little soldier. We’ve been waiting for you to come to the party.”

Randa would have turned the color of a carrot and sunk into the floor had either been possible. Will coughed into his hand
in a pathetic attempt to cover up a laugh, and she glared at him, daring him to make a smart-ass comment.

Aidan had been quiet, but he took back authority with a single look. “I can’t say I like your methods, but you did what you thought was right. With some time, and Glory’s persuasion, we realized going directly after Matthias wouldn’t save the rest of you. You’d always be looking over your shoulders. So, thanks. Just don’t do it again.”

A wave of relief washed through Randa. The practical side of her knew Aidan would take this calmly, but some insecure core feared he’d send her back to the rank-and-file scathe or would at least regret making her one of his inner circle. He might feel that regret, but he wasn’t showing it.

Krys cleared her throat. “I think Will and Randa have an idea.”

They’d talked about it after waking from daysleep. It was so risky she couldn’t imagine Aidan going for it. But she and Will had agreed: they had to make it Aidan’s call. Penton had been his idea, his dream, had been made possible by his hard work and, sometimes, sheer force of will.

She nodded at Will, reflecting that, even as recently as two weeks ago, she’d have chafed at letting him take the lead. Now she not only trusted him, but recognized that he was more likely to be listened to by Aidan and Mirren, not because he was better than her or because he was a man, but because Aidan and Mirren had known him for decades. He’d already earned their trust.

She’d wasted a lot of time being childish and stupid, but she could make up for it now.

“Hannah, remember what you said about Randa and me and someone named Richard finding a way out of this mess?” Will asked.

The girl nodded, her eyes somber. “I dreamed it again last daysleep.”

Will and Randa exchanged glances. “The only Richard either of us knows is my father.” Randa took a deep breath. “He’s a retired army colonel, a tough-guy special-operations type.”

Mirren stood up and went to lean against the wall, hands in the pockets of his black combat pants. His defensive stance.

“It’s obviously risky,” Will said. “And I’m not even sure what we’re asking him for, if we decide to talk to him and he agrees to help us. Do we ask for help defending against Matthias in some kind of private capacity? Or would we be asking him to help us strategize?”

Aidan looked at Mirren, then at Randa. “Tell us about him.”

She blew out a breath and began to talk. She probably told them more than they needed, including her own rocky history with him. She talked about Richard Thomas the colonel, the father, and—as much as she could—the man.

When she finished, that awful silence filled the room again. Will reached over and squeezed her hand.

Aidan rubbed the nape of his neck and tilted his head toward one shoulder, then the other. The crack of taut tendons filled the room. “Hannah, can you see anything else? Can you see an outcome?”

The girl shook her head and leaned against Cage.

“Randa, you understand that if your father reacts badly, we might have no choice but to either wipe his memories or defend ourselves?”

Randa closed her eyes. She’d been thinking about little else. About whether she could live with it if they had to kill her father. Ironic that she’d asked a similar question of Will not so long ago. She was gambling that her father loved her enough,
and that he was fair-minded enough, to step away from his black-and-white world of absolute good and evil.

“I understand.”

“They go alone.” Mirren’s rumble cut through the room. “Randa and Will. Go to the colonel and get him used to the idea that vampires exist. Tell him you need help, but not our location. Not our names. If you decide you can trust him, he has to agree to come here, to Omega. Aidan and I have to approve everything.”

Randa swallowed hard and nodded. “And if he doesn’t agree to that?” Her father was used to leading, not following. Especially not following a type of being he didn’t know existed and wasn’t likely to trust.

“Then you know your options.”

C
louds obscured any moonlight that might have otherwise reached the rural two-lane highway that stretched across East Alabama toward Columbus, Georgia, where Colonel Richard Thomas made his retirement home. After slipping out of the Omega exit one at a time just after dusk, Will drove the pickup he’d been hauling supplies in, Randa rode shotgun, and the literal shotgun was wedged into the storage area behind the seats. They didn’t plan to take it to their meeting with the colonel, but then again, being prepared never hurt.

The digital clock on the truck’s dashboard read 7:30 p.m.

They’d spent most of the previous night talking with Aidan and the other lieutenants, especially Cage, about possible scenarios and psychological reactions the colonel might have, not only finding out his daughter who died five years ago was still alive, but that she was a vampire. It would be a lot to take in.

Afterward, Will and Randa had returned to their room and made love with a frantic, frenzied urgency, neither of them saying what Will knew was true for both of them: If this went
badly, they might not have another chance to be together, to feel their skin heat with the friction of their movement, to taste, to touch, to love.

If this went badly, even if they survived, their relationship might be tainted.

If this went badly enough, Will might even have to kill Randa’s father, and she might not be able to forgive it, even though she understood the necessity of it.

Will had been shocked that Aidan and Mirren agreed so readily to approaching a human for help, even with the colonel’s connection to Randa. He had gone into that meeting prepared to argue, and the fact that both senior leaders of the scathe considered it a viable option without hours of debate told him how close they were to giving up.

Damn it, he wasn’t ready to give up. Before finding Aidan and helping him get Penton established, Will had spent decades on the move, avoiding his father, never settling down anywhere for very long, determined to never again get sucked into a life of recriminations, self-hatred, and fear.

He’d found a life he wanted to fight for and maybe somebody he wanted to share it with. That realization caused him to swerve out of his lane, and he pulled the steering wheel sharply to straighten their path. Ending up wrapped around a tree in Nowhere, Alabama, wouldn’t help matters, but hell, when did
Randa
and
future
become intertwined? Yet thinking about what she faced, confronting her father with some hard truth, made him fear losing her, if not to death, then to a family and a life with which he couldn’t compete.

“Would you watch where you’re going? Jeez.” Randa braced an arm on the passenger door. “Pull over and let me drive. Get your head out of your ass.”

Or maybe he was being a sentimental twit. The woman was seriously bossy. “Have you figured out what you’re going to say to him?”

Randa groaned, banging the back of her skull against the headrest. “No. Maybe knock on the door and see what he says? You got any better ideas?”

“Well, there is one thing that might help.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look that radiated suspicion, even through the darkness of the truck’s cab. “What?”

“Let’s stop at an all-night salon or something in Columbus so you can get your hair back to its real color.” He liked the short haircut now that he’d gotten used to it. It suited her. But he wanted his redhead back. “It might make it easier for your dad to believe it’s really you.”

“I hadn’t even thought about it.” She ran her hands through the tangle of loose waves. “Good idea, but there’s no such thing as an all-night salon, not in Columbus, Georgia, anyway. Look for a drugstore or a Walmart.”

Once they got near the bridge that crossed the Chattahoochee River and took them from Alabama into Georgia, Will spotted a superstore and pulled the truck into the mostly empty lot. “You got cash?”

“Yeah, I took some from your Robin Hood stash. Need anything?”

Sure he did. Clean water. No pandemic vaccine. Matthias to disappear in a cloud of dust. World peace. “I’m good.”

While Randa shopped for hair dye, Will tried to visualize his worst-case scenario. The colonel wasn’t likely to haul off and shoot them—he was too well trained and, if Randa was any indication, too disciplined. The hardest thing they might face initially was getting him to believe it wasn’t some kind of twisted scam.

Dye must have been easy to shop for; Randa was back inside of fifteen minutes. “Bombshell Bronze,” she said, holding up the white plastic bag. “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into Passion Fruit Pink or Oragutan Orange.”

Turns out Bombshell Bronze was sexy as hell. Randa had locked herself in the bathroom as soon as they’d roused a grumbling, sleepy clerk at a small roadside motel and checked into a room at the end of a row of units that had seen better days a few decades ago.

She emerged forty-five minutes later with painted nails, her army T-shirt and khakis, and hair that reminded him how beautiful she was. He wished they had time to hang around the motel so he could show her an appropriate amount of appreciation.

“You ready?” She was practically bouncing off the wall from nerves.

“Let me tell you something first. I…um…you…” He hadn’t been tongue-tied around a girl since his human life at about age sixteen, but he struggled to get the words out. “I just want you to know that…” What? That he wanted to find out what they had when they weren’t injured or running for their lives?

“You want me to know what?” Randa pulled him into a tight hug and laughed. “That you’ll love me no matter how big an asshole my father is?”

He pulled away from her, cradling her face in his hands. “That’s exactly it.” He pressed his lips gently against hers, a sweet kiss full of hope. “Exactly.”

They held each other for a few minutes, needing to leave but not wanting to let the moment pass.

Finally, Will huffed out a breath. “OK, we gotta do this before it gets any later.”

“Right.” Randa dug her cell phone from her pocket and punched a couple of keys. “Just going to make sure he’s home.”

Good thinking
. “Will he recognize your number and freak out?”

She shook her head. “It’s a new number that I got—” Her face froze a few seconds before she ended the call. “It was him. He sounds just the same. Will, I don’t know if I can do this.”

He took her hand. “You can do it.
We
can do it.” True, he didn’t have a big role other than providing backup. A lot of this was going to depend on her. All he could do was keep her safe.