Breaking Point (31 page)

“One of our guys got caught,” said Jack. “They beat him pretty bad. Kept him on a breathing machine in that rehab facility and toured him around the base. Wanted to show off what happens when you bite back.”

It was the first time I’d seen him without his tough front. Even Truck was quiet. The cold air around us grew thin and brittle.

My anger for Tucker was scalding. How could he have neglected to mention this? If he’d really been inside that building, he would have known what went on there. Unless his supposed training—and his contact on the inside—were just more lies.

“What happened to him?” I asked weakly.

“Mags,” said Truck. “Mags went topside with a team, to this old abandoned high-rise across the street. From the top floor you can see down onto the courtyard on their roof. When they brought him outside, she took him out.”

“Mercy kill,” added the medic. It was the first time I’d heard the term used with something other than a bird with a broken wing, and it sunk into my body like fangs. “Mags is tough as nails. She could probably teach you a thing or two, Sniper.”

It took me a moment to remember my role, but when I did, all I managed was a one-shouldered shrug.

Now I knew why the gang outside had silenced when we’d mentioned where we needed to go. Why they’d all waited for Mags’s reaction. She’d killed one of her own men there, and instead of being horrified, they’d been reverent.

It occurred to me the sniper could have been in Chicago all along. It made perfect sense. Mags was cold, protected by a legion of ex-soldiers who could defend her if needed. I wished Chase was here. I wondered if he’d woken yet; if he was looking for me.

My mind turned back to Rebecca, my fear for her swelling. “Why couldn’t the team break into the facility and get him? You said there aren’t many soldiers.”

The three Chicago boys glanced at one another warily.

“A Sister has to accompany any soldier into the building,” Truck told me. “And it’s not that Mags couldn’t rig that, but what were we supposed to do with him once we got him out? We can’t support that kind of care down here.”

Sean had had enough. He tore out of the car into the darkened passage.

I shook my head, wishing I could replay this conversation with a different outcome. But we’d come here for answers, and we’d gotten them.

I left the car and found Sean just outside, pacing.

“Sean,” I said. He didn’t stop. I stood in front of him. “Sean!”

“I still have to go. I have to see.” He crouched, hands on his head.

“Sean, stop it,” I said, grabbing his shoulders. “We’ll figure this out.”

“How? How are we going to do that?”

“I … I don’t know. Yet. I don’t know
yet,
okay? But we’ll think of something.”

He stood, shaking his head. “I should have gotten her out of there years ago.”

“Sean, it’s not your fault. If anyone’s, it’s mine.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I was supposed to look out for her.”

“Sean…”

“Chase got you out!” His voice was powerful enough to push me back a step. “Chase didn’t wait, but I waited. I kept waiting, thinking that there’d be a better time. She’d age out, and then I’d go AWOL…”

Sean was losing his control, and as he did, mine returned. My hands had captured his wrists, and squeezed when he tried to brush me off.

“Sean, listen to me.”

“I swear, if they’ve been towing her around the base…”

“Stop. They said it’s run by Sisters. I promise, if I have to go in there by myself and get her, I will, okay?”

“I should have—”

“We’ll tell Mags tonight we’re going to try Tucker’s contact.” I couldn’t believe what I was saying, but we had no other options. “We’ll see her tomorrow, okay?”

Finally, he blew out a strained breath.

“Dawn,” he said.

CHAPTER

17

WHILE
Sean stayed in sick bay to question the Chicago resistance for more information, I ran back to the barracks to wake Chase. Now that I didn’t have to be strong for Sean, I became aware of the fear, rooting deep inside me. Rebecca was in more danger than I’d ever suspected. She’d been hurt—badly—and now they were torturing her, showing her off like that poor boy in the Square. I thought of Mags, cold and hard, standing in that window and shooting her own man.
Mercy kill,
the medic had said. We couldn’t do that to Rebecca, even if her life had become what they’d described.

Chase was not in the barracks.

I ran back past the showers, but he didn’t answer when I called his name.

I returned to sick bay. He wasn’t there either. Neither was Sean, or the Chicago guys.

We still had an hour until the meeting, but clusters of people were already filtering out of their respective stations and funneling toward what Truck had called the Loop, just beyond the mess hall. Sharp-smelling bodies surrounded me, bumping me, reminding me of the tight quarters in the Knoxville Square.

I searched for Chase, but would have settled for Sean or even Tucker. It made sense for Chase to go on to the meeting site without me; it’s where I would go if I’d woken unable to find him. But moving through the crowd of muscled arms and dismissing faces was about as easy as wading through quicksand; I kept getting stuck. Finally we passed the mess hall, where everyone who had just eaten was filtering out into the tunnel.

I saw the tall, athletic build and the golden hair, and staggered only momentarily before pursuing. I was sure it was Tucker this time. He was heading to the supply room—the opposite direction from the meeting. I lunged onto the platform and sprinted past the refrigerators and the counter made of shiny plane hull, to the back of the mess hall. Only a few stragglers remained. Most had left for the meeting.

A flash of movement near the coal carts caught my eye and I dashed after it, but the supply room was empty when I entered.

“Where’s the sniper fan club?”

At the sound of Tucker’s voice I spun back to the entrance that he now was framed within, the shadows over his face sending a chill straight to my bones. His eyes, pinched around the corners, looked edgy—like they had when he’d told us how Cara was killed.

I became acutely aware that it was just the two of us. My hand gripped the flashlight. When his head tilted curiously to the side I gritted my teeth.

“Not still worried about being alone with me, are you?”

He took a step toward me, and I moved back like the wrong end of a magnet.

“Guess that answers that question,” he said.

Laughter filtered through from the platform, not too far away. If Tucker tried anything, I could scream, and they’d be close enough to hear me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Stealing.”

I twitched.

“Relax,” he said. “My arm hurts.”

He rolled up his sleeve and revealed the pink, swollen forearm that until yesterday had been hidden within a cast.

“Looks traumatic,” I said. “Why don’t you go see the medic?”

“I don’t need to see the medic.” He regarded me with too much familiarity, the way a big brother shuns his annoying little sister. He began to sort through a box atop one of the tables. “I get the feeling there’s something you want to say.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased to hear whatever it was.

I gripped the flashlight harder.

“Apparently there’s a little problem with your rehab facility,” I said. “You neglected to mention that it was a
physical
rehab, not a girls’ reformatory.”

His golden brows arched. “I didn’t know a distinction was needed.”

He was incapable of honesty. Slippery as an eel.

“Is she even there?”

“Yes. Unless she ran away. Which I doubt. Where does one run in a town full of soldiers?” he mused when I narrowed my eyes.

“What really happened with Cara?”

The lines of his mouth drew tight. “I told you what happened.”

“Sorry if I don’t exactly trust you.”

He shook his head and glanced up at the exit sign. I had the fleeting fear that he was planning on bolting. He was going to escape and we would take the heat when he didn’t show up to report to Mags. She’d probably ground us so we couldn’t break Rebecca free.

“Believe it or not, I thought Cara was all right,” he said. That look of regret was back, and it made my spine tingle. I believed Chase could change, I could change,
everyone
could change, but not Tucker. “She had it bad,” he continued. “She told me she used to host at FBR socials. They didn’t always treat those girls so well.”

Cara?
She may have been flirty, but not desperate.

I thought of how harsh she’d been to Sarah when we’d found her in Tent City, and then later, when she’d called her nothing more than a party favor. Then, strangely, I found myself picturing Cara in the pretty dress. Cara chatting with soldiers. Cara doing what she had to in order to stay alive.

“You mean
you
didn’t treat those girls well,” I countered.

A dark speculation filled me as the pieces slid into place—Chicago was quick to believe that the cartridge came from a sniper’s rifle, and Cara had been a part of the team that had hijacked the Horizons truck, the very place I’d found it to begin with. The other guys at the Wayland Inn had said she’d disappeared more than once; she’d even been in the Square during the last two shootings.

It seemed so clear now, I didn’t know how I’d missed it before.

Unless I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Wallace had to have known what Cara had been doing. He’d sent me out into the streets knowing I’d been accused of a crime she committed. They’d used me as her cover, so that she could keep killing soldiers.

Thank you for what you’ve done,
she’d told me.
Thank you for taking the fall
is what she should have said.

I felt ill.

I lifted my eyes to Tucker, doubting his story more than ever, suspecting that he knew, as I so certainly did now, that Cara was the sniper. But gone was his arrogance from the base, stripped away like his blue uniform.

“Hey, Sniper!” someone shouted from outside the room. “Come on, the meeting’s getting ready to start!”

“You should go,” he said.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

He moved toward the door, hesitating near the entrance, as though he expected me to join him. When I didn’t, he walked away.

Every muscle within me was shaking. Wallace had lied. Cara had lied. Tucker was lying. Everyone was hiding some truth my life relied upon.

I hated secrets.

I removed the St. Michael medallion from my neck. It couldn’t touch my skin anymore. It was for the sniper. It had been given to me right in front of the sniper. I’d been her cover all this time. Even in death.

It slid from my trembling hand and bounced on the floor with a fragile metal
click
.

I don’t know why, but amid the pounding revelations my mind found Chase. Clearly I saw him, sitting beside me on the tailgate of Tubman’s truck, telling me about St. Michael, and the spirit world, and his hope that my mother had found peace.

Before another thought entered my head I was on my hands and knees, retrieving the coin from where it had fallen, beneath one of the long tables covered with hodgepodge supplies. I needed it. It had kept me alive. I couldn’t let it go.

That’s when it happened: a deafening, thundering crash. The walls shook. Dust spilled down from the ceiling. It was a short burst of an earthquake, over in seconds that felt like a lifetime.

I was still on the floor, halfway beneath the table with the necklace locked in my fist. Terror had seized my muscles. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

A high screech of twisting, tearing metal filled my ears. The flashlight’s beam vibrated against the wall. The sounds were coming from deeper in the tunnels. Somewhere closer to the remains of downtown. Somewhere near the Loop, where the meeting was to be held.

Where Chase and Sean and Tucker were all headed.

One more explosion, and I watched the ceiling crack open like it was paper torn down the center. I heard it grumble angrily and whine, and then vomit rock and dust. The walls, so solid in appearance, bowed, the racks broke and spit supplies into the center of the room.

The world went bright white, and then black.

*   *   *

THE
pain receded. Not immediately, but in stages, like I had slipped into a hot, healing bath. My muscles relaxed. The fear dissipated. Soon the darkness seemed as natural as nighttime.

And then she was there. I don’t know how, or even when she came exactly. All I knew was that she was there, as real as I was. She crouched on her knees and then laid down close beside me, so that we were both staring up into the black.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, baby.” Her delicate fingers wove between mine and our joined hands came to rest on the soft T-shirt covering her stomach.

“So I’m dead then,” I said. It didn’t seem so bad; I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t tired or angry or hungry. But even though she was here, I still had the strange sensation that something was missing. Some crucial part of me.

“I don’t
think
you’re dead,” she said.

I snorted at her uncertainty. Of all people, she should know.

She hummed quietly, running her fingers over the back of my hand. I sighed. For the first time in a long time, my mind was quiet, peaceful. I turned my face and smiled, and she smiled back, and I thought of how we had the same mouth. I liked that.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

She was warm, but when I tried to snuggle up to her side a rock embedded into my ribcage. What was that doing here? Just a moment ago the ground had been soft. I released her hand to pull the rock out, but though I felt the rough edges, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see my hand. All I could see was her.

My head began to throb, building to a hammering in the base of my skull that sent waves crashing behind my eyes. There was something in my other hand. A flat and round piece of metal. It was wet, and my fingers hurt from squeezing it so hard.