Kismet (12 page)

“Can’t sleep?”

“No,” I reply. “The bomb has me on edge.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, Shalana. I know you blame us for bringing them down on—”

“No shit?” Her sarcasm is heavy.

“I’m sorry. Really. I’m sorry your way of life is over.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. “I was stupid to imagine we could go on like this forever. That El Toro’s men wouldn’t find us. I suppose we were a ticking time bomb. Besides, how can I stay mad at you when you saved my life?”

She smiles at me again, only this time it reaches her eyes. She reaches out her hand, and I take it, squeezing it to affirm our new truce. I sigh and start to release the anger of Isabel’s death. The good of the many and all that.

“Doesn’t it seem odd that they gave up only after one detonation?” I ask her.

“They were either testing how much rubble actually stands between us and them or trying to scare us to escape in a panic.”

“And how much rubble does stand between us and them?”

“A whole skyscraper is on top of us, which is why I’m pretty sure it was a scare tactic. Hyde feels the same way.”

“What about other vulnerable points? There’re a lot of little shafts going out from here.”

“I had all my men explore them, as well as the underground water pipes. It’s all collapsed.”

“Then the only access is the main vault door. It’s pretty sturdy,” I observe.

“But not unsinkable.”

True. The military has several weapons that could make mincemeat out of that door. I shiver, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

“If you want to get some rest, I’ll take over the watch.” I can see Shalana hesitate. But I can also see the exhaustion in her dark eyes. “Go on. I can see you need some sleep.”

“All right,” she agrees. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

I sit in the room with the bank vault door along with many others, listening to the mindless chatter among the people. My tryst with Hyde has left me edgy, restless. Anger simmers just under the surface, at myself for giving in to the temptation of Hyde’s raw masculinity and at Hyde for letting me succumb.

I quickly comb my hair with my fingers and then braid it back. I recheck my weapons: two guns, my throwing knives, and extra ammunition. I almost feel naked with so little in my arsenal.

Sometime later, a woman comes and relieves me of sentry duty. There aren’t that many people around. Probably still sleeping. But I do see Hyde talking with Shalana. With one look at him, all I want to do is run. I don’t want to have to face him. But I can’t bury my head. There are people to save. And death is clawing at the door. So I walk toward them.

“Morning,” Shalana greets me in her husky voice. Tension has tightened her features, giving her a pinched, unhappy look.

I nod in greeting before turning my gaze on Hyde. I brace myself to act indifferent around him. “What’s going on?”

“I’m going topside,” he says. There’s a hard edge in his eyes. “I’ve got to direct a safe path for these people to get to the rendezvous point.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

“I was hoping you would stay with Shalana and organize everyone for the trip to MacArthur Park.”

I cock an eyebrow. “I don’t know where MacArthur Park is located.”

“Shalana knows where it’s at,” he shoots back.

“I would assume she does. She’s from here.”

Hyde grabs my upper arm and escorts me past Shalana’s curious gaze and into a private area near the main entrance. I jerk my arm out of his hand and turn to frown up at him. Something is off. There’s a closed look on his face.

“I want you to stay with Shalana,” he tells me. “She’ll need a hand if those topside warriors are still trying to fish us out.”

“She has fully automatic assault rifles,” I point out with the barest hint of sarcasm. “I think she can do without my two GLOCKs.”

“But not enough people who know how to use them.”

This time I can’t even hold back a shred of it. “It’s pretty self-explanatory, Hyde. Just point at the bad guys and pull the trigger.”

“Do I have to give you an order, Evie?”

My jaw drops. “Excuse me? I’m not in the military!”

“No, but this is a military operation and therefore falls under my jurisdiction since I’m the highest-ranking officer around. You will adhere to my orders,” he said in a tone squeezed out between tightly clenched jaws.

“I can help you.”

“I don’t want you to help me. Kris is my partner.”

And there it is. How much more simply can it be laid out to me?

“Meaning thanks for the sex, but you and he have it covered.”

He doesn’t even flinch at my accusation.

“Meaning,” he stresses, “you are a civilian, and I want you on a lift out of here.”

“You want me to leave LA,” I clarify. “To leave Kris.” I’m not going to make it easy for him to kick me out of Kris’s life.

“I’m fairly certain Kris would want you to leave as well.”

“We’re not talking about what Kris wants. We’re talking about what you want.”

“I’ve already stated what I want.”

“You want me gone.”

He hesitates for a fraction of a second. “I want you on a lift and out of LA.”

I lick my lips, trying to reorganize my brain. I’m hearing what he’s saying, but I’m not listening very well. I don’t
want
to listen. “Hyde, your life is in danger—”

“Enough! This isn’t a game, Evie!”

“I know that! Why do you think I don’t know that? It’s why I’m here, Hyde, for you and Kris!”

“Kris and I take care of each other.”

“You need me!”

“I only need Kris!” he finally yells. “And Kris only needs me! Did you really think a piece of ass could come between us? He’s my partner. We live and die together.”

The air leaves my lungs in a
whoosh
. And suddenly, I get it.

“You’re jealous,” I say, stunned. “Of me.”

He doesn’t acknowledge my statement. “Listen, go with Shalana. The people Kris and I find are processed through Wyoming. I assume you’re in the system already, so for fuck’s sake, just go there, and we’ll sort all this out later.”

I don’t know what I would have said or done next, because all of a sudden the world explodes. Literally. There is the loudest boom I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear. Everything turns mute as dirt and debris, worse than yesterday, detonates around us in a cascade of hellfire and brimstone.

It is only as I try to move that I realize I’ve been blown backward. I am lying on my back with my arms stretched out. People are screaming, and I hear what I think is gunfire, but my mind seems to be swimming through cotton. I shake my head to clear it out, but that only makes things worse. Wetness oozes down my neck, and when I reach up to touch it, blood comes away on my fingers. I trace the source of the bleeding and discover it’s coming from my ear.
Shit
. No wonder I’m woozy and can’t hear a damn thing.

I roll to my undamaged side and ease up with my forearms. Through the haziness of my mental faculties, I see people rushing around, the tribal tattoos adorning their flesh designating them gang members from topside. I blink. How the hell did they get in here?

I turn my head as everything rages over me, and in my field of vision near the entrance tunnel, I can see the bank door blown clear across the room. I’m trying to comprehend this, because the only way they could have gotten through such a massively impenetrable door is by something equally massive in firepower.

My GLOCKs are still attached in their holsters, and I reach for them. Once the cool metal is in my hands, I feel more stable, so I force myself to my knees, ignoring the pain in my left ear and the fucking headache that’s attached itself to the perforated eardrum.

I close my eyes and just let my body relax. I need to rest for a moment, to let my body catch up. I tune everything out. I take big, deep breaths, in and out, relaxing my mind and pushing the pain far away. I haven’t had too much experience with busted eardrums, but I’m hoping it’s not too bad and will heal on its own. There isn’t a lot of time for assessing each bump and bruise, so I do the best I can by focusing. And when I think I’ve gotten a hold on the disorientation, I push to my feet and open my eyes.

The underground city is gone. Decimated. All the homes destroyed, some burning. I see bodies lying, obviously dead from the blood pouring out of them. Others are being wrangled together and forced to leave on chains locked to each other. Cries. Tears. Grief. Despair.

I have failed them.

In front of me, a woman is grabbed by the arms by one of the bad guys. I have no hesitation as I rush forward, using the butt of my gun to knock him out. The woman runs away, though I don’t know why. Where can she go? The only thing we can do is fight back, because this haven has become a deathtrap.

I sprint forward to the next bad guy, tearing him away from the man he is struggling with and shooting him in the arm. He screams and falls down, clutching the wound I gave him.

It is a fine line to walk, choosing who should live and who should die. What I perceive as a “bad guy” may be not necessarily be the case, but with the visions that I have, I have sometimes minutes to decide how to handle the situation. Had this been a normal world, who knows how I would have applied my gift? But in this case, clearly it’s either kill or be killed, and so I have no remorse over using my guns.

I go through the haze of the lingering smoke and ash, fighting bad guys like a horrible computer game. When my nines run out of bullets, I quickly change magazines but grimly realize that they are my last. My mind briefly travels to my Cat and all the wonderful ammunition I have stored on it, wishing I could see it one last time. Hell, wishing I was driving it away from this fuck-hole.

I spend the next few minutes ducking, dodging, and shooting. And pretty soon my bullets are spent. I toss the guns since I have no more magazines and grab my throwing knives. I rush up to one man who takes a swing at me. I duck and bring my knives up, embedding one in his armpit and the other in his neck. He half screams, half gurgles his pain and then falls. I yank my knives free and rush onward.

A leg comes from out of nowhere, though I don’t realize it until I’m sprawled on the ground again. I lose the grip on my knives. A hand grabs my hair and bashes my head on the concrete beneath me. My eyes clash with stone-cold black ones as red hair swings through my blurry vision.

Had I been functioning normally, with all my senses intact, I probably would have been able to break the bitch’s hold. She’s strong and tough, but I count myself right up there with the best, and I can fight dirty. But with my brains rattling around again, I’m very slow to process the world at large, so all I’m able to do is turn my head and throw up on her shoes, which Red Hair doesn’t appreciate too well. She kicks me in the gut, which doesn’t help at all.

Before I can take a deep breath, I’m yanked up by my hair again and brought face-to-face with Red Hair. Seriously, I’m so over the pain right now that the anger is pushing everything else aside.

“Lemme go,” I slur and use my palm as an uppercut to her chin. Only I misjudge the distance, and the hit harmlessly slides off her shoulder.
Fuck
. I’m in worse shape than I thought.

Red Hair leans into me and buries her nose in my hair, breathing in and letting out a sigh of appreciation. It would’ve been hot had she not been a total lunatic.

“I might have to make some special time for you,” she practically purrs in my good ear, “after El Toro has his little sporting game, of course.”

“Fuck off,” I manage to grate out, though even I have to admit my protest sounds very weak and warbled.

She laughs. “Come on, Beauty.”

She zip-ties my hands together and yanks me up, pulling me through the throng of people still fighting. But even I can see it’s a lost battle. It was a lost battle when the bomb went off.

Red Hair takes me past her fighters, past the lines of people caught. Up the stairs and through the hallway where more and more tattooed assholes are rushing forward. We step out into the cool night air, and I squint, thinking I was positive it had been morning. What the hell?

Was I that out of it? That’s slightly disconcerting.

There are people all around. Bonfires giving light. All that is missing is the boom box playing some type of old-school eighties techno, and I’d feel like this is John Carpenter’s
Escape from LA.

“Let her go!” Hyde yells from somewhere in the flickering darkness.

Before I can even begin to be relieved, Red Hair pulls me into her arms and places her gun barrel against my temple.

“Come out, GI Joe!” she yells. “I’m not afraid of dying, and I can easily take her with me.”

Hyde steps forward from the shadows, his gun held high and steady. All around him Red Hair’s goons swivel their guns.

“I guess we’re at a standoff,” he says.

“Not really,” replies Red Hair. “I can kill her, shoot you, and still have one to play with. Tall fellow, dark hair, tattoo on his lower back. So, unless you put down that gun and sashay your ass over here, he’s going to be my new fuck toy.”

The next few seconds seem to drag on forever. Then Hyde eases his finger off the trigger and flips the safety on. Two men rush in from the sidelines, rifles aimed. Hyde puts his hands up beside him, and one man moves in to grab the weapon while the other grabs Hyde. I have a flash of my vision, when Hyde gets shot, and with sickening clarity I realize this woman is the start of my nightmare.

Chapter Eleven

We are led like cattle, chained together and whipped along. Hyde is at the back somewhere. Shalana is next to me, banged up. I can see an underlying fear in her eyes, but I don’t think it’s for herself. She keeps glancing at people on our chain gang and gnawing on her bottom lip.

It was daylight when we were taken, but now it’s more like twilight. I think these
Mad Max
bad-guy clones are taking the long way home, because I swear I’ve seen that pile of twisted steel once or twice already on our shuffle to the final destination.

The Staples Center, or what is left of the once famous arena.