Outbreak (22 page)

Harper makes another pitiful sound, and I feel her pain as if it were my own.

“Stop!” I scream.

Jayden just smiles.

I throw Harper an apologetic look, and a lone tear rolls down her cheek.

Something inside me cracks, and I have the sudden heartbreaking realization that I’m not going to be able to save her.

Constance never intended for Harper to leave this room. Jayden is going to torture and kill her right here in front of me so I’ll never step out of line again.

“That’s what I thought,” she whispers. “You’re a coward, Parker. And now Riley sees it, too.”

Just then, there’s a knock at the door.

Jayden doesn’t move a muscle, and Harper’s still staring at me with that hopeless, pained expression.

The knocking becomes more insistent, and I realize faintly that the noise isn’t coming from my dream at all. It’s coming from my compartment door.

My compartment?

Suddenly, Harper and Jayden disappear. I’m no longer standing in the stuffy chamber, but I still feel overheated despite the cool air of my compartment. My sheets are tangled around my legs like shackles, and I can feel a fine sheen of sweat all over my body.

I’m alone in bed, and someone is knocking frantically on the door.

I spring to my feet, nearly tripping over my sheet in the process. I yank the door open and see Harper standing there wide-eyed. Her gaze snaps down my bare torso and back up to my face, and a slight flush creeps over her cheeks. 

She’s wearing a sexy black getup I’ve never seen before that shows a lot of skin. I’m not wearing anything except a pair of boxer briefs, but I’m too relieved to care.

Before Harper can get any words out, I pull her into my arms and crush her against my chest. She lets out a little breath of surprise and then snakes her arms around my waist. I squeeze her tighter and drag her inside. 

Darkness envelops us as soon as I close the door, but I don’t want to let go of Harper even for the second it would take to turn on the light. I know I’m about to lose her, but it’s the right choice.

Even if she hates me for lying to her and leaving her behind, she’ll be safer here than she would be out on the Fringe.

“Eli . . .”

I can’t make out her features, but she feels so warm and so good that I don’t even bother asking why she’s here.

Caressing her bare arms from where they’re locked around me, I forge a trail to her neck and cup her face between my palms. She shivers, and I have the sudden urge to wrap myself around her and keep her here forever.

Her skin feels unbelievably soft. And when I bring my lips down on hers, I’m overwhelmed by sensation. Her lips are hot — almost feverish — and her breath is coming in uneven little spurts. 

She kisses me back slowly, and I can tell there’s something else weighing on her mind.

I should ask her what it is, but I don’t want to think about anything else — not when this could be the last time I hold her in my arms.

She’s here. She’s alive. She’s with me.

I deepen the kiss, and she opens her mouth with a tiny groan. 

There’s nothing I like better than tasting her. After a workout, there’s a faint hint of salt on her upper lip, but right now, I taste the sting of artificial strawberry. She must have been wearing lip gloss, though I’m not sure why.

I take her lower lip between mine and suck a little, pulling away with a tiny bite.

When she tilts her head back, I tug gently on her silky hair and trail kisses down her neck and throat.

I can feel her pulse racing under my mouth, and I pull away for a second to nuzzle her neck. Her breath catches, and that spurs me on. My hands wander through her hair and down her back, finally settling on the hem of her shirt. I can feel an inch or so of velvety skin between her tank top and her pants, and I slide my hands back up to feel her smooth stomach.

Harper’s lips caress mine once again, and this time, she teases me with her tongue. Her hand moves from my cheek to the back of my head, and I see stars when she drags her fingernails against my scalp.

Her other hand burns a trail down my chest, and her thumb finds the groove in my side between my hip bone and my waistband.

She pulls her lips away and breathlessly says my name again. I know she wants to talk, but I’m desperate to reassure myself that this is real.

I kiss her again — softly this time — and whip her tank top over her head with an impatient tug.

Harper lets out a soft note of surprise but quickly closes the distance between us.

When she pulls me into her and crushes her chest against mine, a tremor rolls through my body. Something about the dream has awakened a new desperation inside me, and the skin-to-skin contact is almost too much.

Without hesitation, I pull her off her feet and deposit her onto my bed. She kicks off her boots and inches sideways to make room, but I position myself directly above her so I can feel every part of her body.

I suddenly wish I had a window looking out onto the Fringe so I could see her sprawled out on my bed, drenched in moonlight. I want to memorize every part of her, but I can only see her eyes reflecting back the sparse light, so I take her in the only way I can.

This time when I kiss her, she arches up to grind her hips against mine. I groan and push them down onto the bed, holding her in place.

I want to take my time tonight, and that’s not going to be possible with her doing that.

I leave a trail of kisses from her jaw to her neck, and a wild desire flares up inside me. My lips have a mind of their own as they skip down to the soft skin between her belly button and her waistband. I tug down her pants and slide my hand slowly up her leg, but then she disappears. 

In the dark, I can see Harper’s shape moving toward the headboard, and confusion swamps me as she withdraws.

“Eli, wait,” she gasps.

A new kind of panic spills into my stomach. 

Shit, shit, shit. 

I should have stopped to
think
for a second before I ripped off her clothes and threw her onto my bed. I came on too strong, and now I’ve wrecked everything.

“Sorry,” I say in a raspy voice. I clear my throat and try to slow my pounding heart. “I’m sorry. Was that too fast?”

“No, no. It’s just . . .” She sighs and takes a second to collect herself while I teeter on the brink of a heart attack.

“What is it?”

If I didn’t ruin things by jumping her as soon as she walked in here, something else must be bothering her.

I reach over to turn on the lamp, and it’s all I can do not to let my mouth hang open when I see her sitting on my bed practically naked. She’s perfect.

Luckily, Harper doesn’t seem to notice my gawking. She’s still flushed and a little winded from our exchange, but her head is clearly someplace else. She takes several more breaths and then says, “I came here to tell you that I know about Celdon’s little assignment.”

My stomach drops.

I can’t believe Celdon told her already, the little shit. It’s bad enough that I lied to Harper; I also dragged her best friend into it.

I grimace, searching for the right thing to say, but Harper keeps going.

“I don’t like that you got him involved with this . . . hacking into Constance’s feeds . . . but we just saw Owen on camera.”

It takes several seconds for that information to sink in. I wait for Harper to start yelling at me for cutting her out and planning to fake Owen’s death, but she seems to be waiting for
my
reaction.

Finally she grows impatient and continues. “He was at the pawn shop.”

“You saw Owen on the feed?” I repeat.

God, I sound like an idiot.
But I’m still confused as to why she’s taking the news so well.

“I looked at the time stamp. It’s live footage.”

“Was there a clear shot of his face?”

“No. I just got a glimpse. He looked like he didn’t want to be spotted, but it was definitely Owen.”

That’s reassuring. If Harper didn’t get a good look at him, it’s unlikely that Jayden will see the resemblance and put two and two together. And judging by her casual attitude, it’s possible Celdon didn’t tell her everything.

“How long do you think it will take for Constance to identify him on the footage?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure they have someone monitoring it twenty-four/seven. Jayden is desperate to find the gang leaders.”

“So we’ll probably be sent out soon . . . won’t we?”

Harper’s use of “we” feels like a round kick to the stomach. It breaks my heart to drop her as a partner, but I don’t want to break the news to her now.

“Yeah,” I murmur. “Soon.”

In that moment, she looks so crestfallen it makes my chest physically hurt. I remind myself that I’m only doing this so she won’t have to face an indefinite deployment. It’s the right decision, but it’s still going to hurt her.

Then there’s the issue of Owen showing up on the feeds. Knowing he’s in that town sets me on edge. He’s in serious danger, and by the time Jayden sends me out, there’s no telling where he’ll be. 

I just wish I’d had a little more time to prepare for deployment — time to figure out the right way to break the news to Harper.

Suddenly the mood shifts. Harper’s probably wondering if tonight will be her last night in the compound. Impersonating Owen raised the stakes, and now the town is crawling with drifters who probably want us dead. 

I’m thinking about how tonight could be the last I spend with Harper.

She shivers and crosses her arms over her chest, glancing up at me from under thick, sooty lashes. I don’t want this to end, but I don’t know what to say. 

“I better go,” she whispers, moving toward the edge of the bed.

Talking about Owen and the impending deployment effectively killed the mood, but I don’t want her to leave.

“Stay,” I hear myself blurt out.

Harper freezes. I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do, but I don’t want her to go.

“Stay with me.”

I expect Harper to refuse. I expect awkwardness. I expect to spend the rest of the night alone, wishing I hadn’t said anything. I
don’t
expect her to nod and crack a smile, but that’s what she does.

Surprise and elation surge through me, and suddenly I don’t know what to do. It’s not as though we haven’t slept in the same bed before, but this feels different than it did out on the Fringe — more real, somehow. There’s no immediate danger — no reason for her to lie down in my arms other than the fact that she wants to.  

Harper scoots back across the bed, and I move toward her slowly.

When I reach her side, she seems to melt into my sheets, and I lean over so I can feel her against my bare skin.

I place a soft kiss on her lips, and she returns it with gentle pressure. I let my hand drift down toward her belly button, and her body responds to my touch. 

Then a heaviness settles over me, and Harper’s movements become more lethargic. I lie down beside her, and she rolls over onto her hip. I reach over to turn off the lamp and pull her toward me so our bodies are flush against each other.

I invited her to stay with me, and she did. 

The thought makes me so happy and so unbearably sad at the same time. 

I squeeze her tighter and crane my neck to place a soft kiss on her cheek. She lets out a contented sigh, and that little sound sends an overpowering warmth through me. 

I take a mental snapshot of this moment, trying to commit every detail to memory. Then I match my breaths to hers and drift into a peaceful sleep.

nineteen

Celdon

It’s easy to lose time in Systems. There are no clocks on the walls and no windows.

Only the small geometric skylights filter in daylight, so one hour seems to bleed into the next until there is no more daylight. Once night falls, it’s easy to work until dawn without even meaning to.

I glance at my interface. It’s oh-three hundred, which means Harper should have been back by now. When she left to tell Eli, I thought she’d be gone an hour tops, and I’m starting to feel the faint prickle of unease.

I should have warned Eli that Harper knew about the surveillance but nothing else. He probably slipped up and told her everything and then spent the next few hours riding out her storm of fury. Poor guy.

I sit back in my chair and force myself to blink slowly. I haven’t left this spot since the Owen sighting. My eyes have been fixated on the pawn shop door, but Owen has yet to emerge.

Maybe he’s dead,
I think.
Maybe Eli’s little stunt out there got him killed.

My thoughts are interrupted by a soft
click
out in the bull pen. I stare out through the glass at the hundreds of empty stations, waiting for some indication that I didn’t imagine the noise.

“Harper?” I call, knowing full well it can’t be her. She couldn’t get into Systems without a key card. 

It’s
way
too early for even the most brown-nosey programmers to show their faces, but it could be an Operations worker here to clean. I’m on a first-name basis with the night guy, Mitchell, so I need to be ready to kill the footage if he wanders in here to chitchat.

The place looks empty, but I still have a strange feeling that I’m not alone. 

I slide my chair out from the desk and walk out onto the main floor, careful not to make a sound.

Instantly, the warmth from all the computers envelops me, and my jittery feelings intensify. Between the tiny fans on each monitor and the soft buzz of the server lights, it’s impossible to pick out any human noises. The little rounded stations throw shadows over the chairs, so I can’t tell if anyone is lurking in one of the egg-like enclosures.

My nerves are stretched to the breaking point, which is strange, considering I’ve never gotten the creeps in here before. But my senses are tingling, telling me something isn’t right.

“Hello?” I call out.

Suddenly, a low chuckle breaks through the mechanical hum and nearly sends my heart into overdrive. I whip my head around in the direction of the noise, but it dies on the air as quickly as it appeared.