Tested (2 page)

Seamus leaned forward, his arms braced on the table. “First of all, you’re taking the piss if you think she gives a shit what I have to say.”

“Damn right,” Phoenix said.

“Secondly,” Seamus continued, ignoring her, “I’m almost inclined to side with her on this.” He held up a hand as Trent got ready to argue. “Look, we’ve been holed up in here long enough. If we don’t start doing something, we’re all going to go crazy. We have no idea what Ludwig or Douglas is up to, we have a whole army that could possibly help us that we need to find a way to contact, and we have one of our men out there, having God knows what done to him. There’s really no other choice but to go out and start getting something accomplished.”

“How will we accomplish anything when we’re lying dead in Ludwig’s fucking interrogation room?” Trent replied.

“A happy morning I see,” Lake said as she walked in, Pixie following silently. Sam and Vi were close behind, Sam’s loud voice filling the kitchen as the three at the table sat in tension.

“What’s wrong here?” Sam asked, sitting down beside Seamus.

“Phoenix wants to go out, and I’m supporting her,” Seamus answered.

“Thank God!” Sam hollered. “Where we off to then?” she asked, looking to Phoenix. Her body visibly hummed with excitement. Missy smiled, thinking how childlike Sam looked at the mere prospect of going outside. She’d once been like that – before. Now being inside was her only comfort.

She placed the food in the middle of the table just as Bridgette, Roman, Charlotte and Pete walked in. Bridgette instantly grabbed the stack of plates from the counter, setting one in front of each person. Missy smiled at her in thanks. She liked Charlotte’s older sister. She was nothing like her’s. Where Phoenix was loud and opinionated, Bridgette was quiet and thoughtful. As Missy went to grab cutlery, she noticed Roman watching Bridgette as she made her way around the table, his eyes never leaving her. The emotion she saw there tugged at something inside her.

“Pete, talk some sense into your best friend please,” Trent said. Missy looked away from the two lovers, and focused back on the task at hand.

“Mate, I’ve only just woken up. Give me a few minutes before I have to play referee between you two,” Pete replied.

“What’s going on?” Charlotte asked.

“They think it’s okay to go out today,” Trent explained.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Roman said.

Trent threw his hands up in there air. “Finally! Someone who agrees with me,” he said. “And it’s Roman Adamson of all people.”

Bridgette gave him a warning look before sitting down beside her man.

Roman ignored him as he went on. “The increase in soldiers is only because Ludwig suspects you are here. He’s specifically searching for any of you. If you get caught…” He let the unspoken words hang in the air amongst them. They’d be dead, Missy realized. There would be no coming back if they happened to get caught. And now that they’d made themselves known to the New World leader, the stakes were higher than ever before.

“Well, be that as it may,” Phoenix said, standing up from the table, “I’m still going out there and finding out what the hell is going on in
my
territory. We’ve been keeping this place safe for a long time now, and I’m not about to stop.”

“No one is asking you to stop looking out for your people,” Charlotte said.

“We’re just as anxious as you to find Tyler, if not more,” Pete added. “If we start going out into the streets again, we’re going to have to be
very
careful.”

“
We
?” Trent said through gritted teeth. His palms slammed the table top making Missy jump. “Jesus, don’t tell me you’re going to walk out that door too. Has everyone here gone mad?”

“How can you sit here while your friend is out there somewhere?” Phoenix said, her cheeks flushed with anger.

“That’s right, Princess,
my friend
, not yours! And I’m no good to him if I’m dead!”

“You’re no good to him if
he’s dead
either!”

The room fell into a tense silence. Missy placed her fork down silently, no longer hungry. She watched as the muscles in Trent’s shoulders and arms slowly relaxed as he stared at her sister. Finally he took a deep breath, his eyes breaking away from her to look around the table before nodding his head slowly.

“Fine, we’ll go out today and start asking questions. But you had all better get dressed up in some sort of disguise so you don’t get caught, or I swear to God when I find you again, I’ll kill you myself.”

“You sure have a way with words,” Pete said with a grin.

Trent practically growled at him. “Shut up.”

The kitchen door slammed open as Garrett walked in, his long, blond locks in complete disarray around his face. Baby blue eyes took in the room as each person looked over at his sudden arrival. “What did I miss?”

CHAPTER TWO

Being out in the streets again was like a breath of fresh air – literally. Phoenix couldn’t remember a time when she had felt more confined and restless as she had the past couple of weeks. It wasn’t like the Archers to stay hidden away, but of course things were drastically different now. Ludwig Tennebris was officially aware of them, and had seen their faces. He didn’t know anything else, but it would have been obvious to him that their group wasn’t in-league with Douglas Hatchers’.

Everyone had split up to cover more ground. Phoenix wasn’t overly pleased about not having back-up, but she trusted her girls to stay safe. She didn’t know much about the others, but she figured the guys from the eastern ghetto knew enough to stay low-key. It was definitely hard to miss them in a crowd, she thought, thinking of the burly form of Trent McKay. A man like him didn’t go unnoticed. Not that she noticed, she added as she kept up a brisk walk. Sure, she took note of his size, but only because he was so much larger than she was. It wasn’t like she appreciated his size, or good looks.

She gave herself a quick mental shake. Enough of that. She needed to stay focused and help them find their friend. People didn’t go missing right off the streets on her turf. Something strange was happening, and she was going to get to the bottom of it. The whole situation reeked of the General, but she wouldn’t know for sure until she got some concrete answers.

“Hey, Red!”

Phoenix turned at the sound of a man’s voice to see one of the homeless guys she often networked with come stumbling down the street toward her.

“Hey, Hal,” she greeted.

“It’s Cal.”

“That’s what I said.” Phoenix took a small step back as the man reached her, the harsh stench of unwashed body enveloping the space around them.
Breathe through your mouth,
she instructed herself. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got some information you might want,” he said with a loud burp or hiccup, it was hard to tell which, at the end.

“What about?” She crossed her arms, keeping a passive look on her face. Half the time the men off the streets had very little of substance to pass along. Most of it was either made up, or completely useless to her. However, now and again they’d pull through for her so she always listened to what they had to say. Someone lives out on the streets long enough, they’re bound to see or hear something.

“I heard you were asking around about a van?”

She perked up, dropping her arms. “You heard right. Have you seen one?”

He smiled, the remaining teeth in his mouth blackened and rotted. Phoenix cringed inwardly. “Sure have,” he replied. “A bright white one.”

“You sure it was white?”

“Red, ain’t no vehicles come around these parts hardly, unless they are those large, black trucks them soldiers drive. When something white and even larger comes along, I notice the difference. I’m a drunk, not blind.”

Well she couldn’t argue with that, although she was tempted to point out that his sight was definitely impaired when plastered, but she kept her mouth shut.

“They been picking some of us up,” he continued.

“Who has? Who’s us?” Phoenix asked.

“The people in the van,” he answered. “They’ve been driving around, picking up people off the streets. I haven’t seen any of them since.”

Phoenix stood up even straighter, her blood now chilled. “You sure about that? You’ve seen them take more people?”

He nodded. “I don’t know who they are, but they appear and disappear like ghosts.”

She looked down, wracking her brain on just what could be happening right now. None of this made any sense.

“Except one time I followed them,” he said, with a proud smile. Her head snapped up, looking at him as hope bloomed inside.

“Followed them where?”

Phoenix was practically running as she made her way back toward the main market square where they’d all planned to meet. As she rounded the corner she ran smack into a hard chest that had her bouncing back toward the pavement. Strong hands gripped her arms, saving her from a nasty fall. She looked up into sea green eyes, narrowed in annoyance just like they always were.

“Hey, hot shot,” she said with a smile, ignoring the feeling of his hands on her. Trent righted her before glaring down.

“You should watch where you’re going,” he said. “What are you running from?” He looked behind her, his eyes scanning the area. Phoenix took that brief moment to let her eyes roam the hard lines of his face. His dirty blonde hair curled around his ears, tempting her to run her fingers through it and mess it up a bit, but of course there was no way she was going to do such a thing. Trent McKay might be nice to look at, but he annoyed the crap out of her. She was surprised they hadn’t killed each other yet.
There’s always tomorrow,
she thought.

“I’m not running from anything,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I was just excited to get back. I learned something.” She was practically jumping. Actually, she wasn’t practically, she was. Hopping in excitement, she quickly told Trent what Hal had told her.

Trent listened in silence, his eyes watching her as she exploded with energy. Where Phoenix was constantly moving, talking – acting like a person who was
alive
– Trent was stoic, quiet, and appeared pretty much bored to death. She couldn’t understand how he managed to remain so
blah
all the time.

“Maybe we should go check this building out first, before we tell the others,” he suggested. His reply actually made her stop moving in shock. She had wanted to go by herself when she’d first learned about the building Hal had followed the van to, but knew the others would have her head for it. The man standing in front of her would have been the first to jump down her throat. The fact that he was suggesting the two of them go without anyone else was the last thing she would had expected.

“It will be easier for just the two of us to sneak around than it will be for the entire group,” he said.

“Aw,” she said, batting her eyes at him, “are you just trying to get me alone, hot shot?”

His mouth thinned as his jaw ticked. “You should be so lucky, Princess,” he said. “Are we going or not?”

The area wasn’t far from where they were, but it felt completely different. No one walked the streets, the buildings too destroyed for anyone to inhabit. The eerie silence gave Phoenix the creeps. It was like walking through a ghost town. The Archers stayed away from places like this, knowing not many people ever went to them. That, and they all knew what could happen if one of them got caught out in these areas alone. Missy’s incident made them all a little more cautious.

The building Hal described was at the end of the block, looking just as empty as those around it. Phoenix and Trent walked slowly, their eyes constantly scanning the area. New World soldiers were known to walk the emptier neighbourhoods, preying on anyone who happened to be passing through. Phoenix knew for a fact this was true.

As they drew closer to the building, Phoenix tried to get a look at some of the windows dotting the exterior for any sign of life within, but all were black. They could have them covered up from the inside, she reasoned.

The sounds of footsteps had her looking away from the building right as Trent’s body crashed into hers. Suddenly she was pressed between the brick wall behind her, and the hard chest of Trent. Her hands reached up to grip his biceps with the intention of pushing him off her, but his whispered words had her halting.

“Two guards are coming this way,” he said against her ear. She tried not to shiver at the feeling of his lips brushing against her as he spoke. “Act like we’re drunk and fooling around. Maybe they’ll ignore us and walk by.”

Phoenix highly doubted it, but her rebuttal froze on the tip of her tongue as Trent’s face lowered to the cradle of her neck. His hot breath heated her skin as he pressed even closer. Her hands now gripped him of their own accord. His lips brushed along the side of her neck so lightly, she wasn’t even sure it had happened. Her heart quickened as blood rushed through her body from the heat of him. Normally she would have been concentrating on the possibility that they were about to get into a dangerous situation with soldiers approaching, but Phoenix was having a hard time focusing on anything but the man in front of her. They might be pretending for the sake of the moment, but her body didn’t seem to know it.