Never Fade (12 page)

I might as well have socked her in the face. Cate reared back, a look of horror filtering through her usual mask of calm. “I fought to get him off this, Ruby. I assigned Vida to go with you, but someone convinced Alban that Jude should be activated early. They need a Yellow for the security system, and Alban said it didn’t make sense to bring in two different teams on a simple Op.”

We were attracting a few stray glances. Cate took my arm and steered me over to an empty table, forcing me to sit down.

“You have to try harder,” I insisted.

Our little Sunshine didn’t perform well in high-pressure situations, and he had the tendency to wander off to explore shiny things when he needed to be conducting surveillance. The only thing he knew about using a firearm was that the end with the hole needed to be pointed away from his face.

“He’ll be fifteen in a few weeks.” Cate kept one hand on mine. “I’m sure—I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is a good, straightforward Op to let him dip his toes in the water.”

“I could do it by myself. If this involves sabotaging some kind of electrical equipment, I can—”

“My hands are tied, Ruby. I can’t keep pushing back against Alban, or he’ll start seeing me as a problem. And—” She took a deep breath, absently smoothing first her hair, then her skirt. Her voice sounded stronger when she spoke again, but she wasn’t looking at me now. “The only comfort I have in all of this is knowing that he’ll be with you and that you’ll look after him. Can you do that?”

Her skin was hollow beneath her high cheekbones, like she had just recovered from a long illness. I leaned forward, noticing now the way her makeup had collected in the new, fine lines around her eyes—how dark the circles were that rimmed her eyes. She was only twenty-eight and was already starting to look older than my mother had when I left her.

Sometimes it felt like this was where I found the real Cate—in the pauses. I wouldn’t describe our relationship as “good,” because it was built on a lie, and a pretty cruel one at that. She could say one thing and mean something else entirely. But right then, surrendered to the quiet, her face told me everything. I saw the struggle in the lines of her face and knew whatever words came next were more for the agents around us than they were for me.

“I have to go up north,” she said in an even voice, “for an assignment.”

“Up north,” meaning the surface streets of Los Angeles. Meaning it probably had something to do with the Federal Coalition. Cate was a senior agent now. She’d earned her wings. If they were sending her up there, it was to do something important for Alban.

“So you won’t be coming with us?” I asked.

Cate glanced behind me and waved at whomever she saw standing there. I felt something cold drip down the back of my neck, though my hair was nearly dry.

“There you are,” Cate said. “I was just about to tell Ruby that she’ll be in good hands on the Op. You’ll keep a careful eye on my girl, won’t you?”

Rob had never, not since the first day I met him, willingly touched me. He, like the others, knew better. Still, I watched his hands where they hung at his sides, dark hair curling on the backs of his knuckles. My throat tightened.

“Don’t I always?” Rob said with a faint chuckle.

Cate stood, her moon-pale face glowing in the artificial light. “See you later, gator.”

It was her stupid, childish send-off, the same one she always gave us when she left. The others wouldn’t have hesitated to finish her little rhyme; Jude had thought up the little good-bye as a play off her call sign. Now, I could barely choke the words out.

“In an hour, sunflower.”

As soon as they walked away, I saw Cole sitting at the other end of the room, an open book on the table in front of him. By the dark look on his face, it was more than clear he’d heard the entire conversation.

You said you would protect him
. Was there really no one in the entire League I could trust? These people couldn’t be counted on for anything. All of their promises bled into lies.

Cole shook his head, turning his palms face up on the table. It was a weak, silent apology, but at least he understood. Shifting this one single piece on the board was enough to change the whole game.

SIX

T
HEY SMUGGLED
J
UDE AND ME
into Boston in broad daylight, riding in the jump seats of a fat-bellied cargo plane. It was an older model than the one we’d used to fly back from Philadelphia, and its smell lent some possibility to Jude’s theory it had once been used to move dead meat.

I watched the enormous crates in front of us, trying to ignore the way they creaked under the strain of the straps holding them in place. All of them were marked with Leda Corporation’s elegant golden swan, which felt like some kind of horrible wink from the universe. The rational part of me knew it didn’t mean anything—that it wasn’t some bad omen. We flew on Leda Corp’s planes all the time. They’d realized the benefit of playing nice with both Gray and the Federal Coalition, which meant they had special “privileges” to travel to and from California to move their product. As uncooperative as always, Gray had the brilliant idea to try to starve the Federal Coalition out of California by forbidding imports into the state and exports out of it—unfortunately for the rest of the country, California was where most of the fresh produce was, and they had easy access to the oil they were drilling in Alaska.

The Federal Coalition was our matchmaker, though. We got to piggyback on flights like this in exchange for serving as their knife in the dark. Alban saw it as a “fair trade” for the intelligence we’d gathered and countless Ops we’d run on their behalf over the years, though I knew he wanted more. Specifically: respect, money, and the promise that he’d be given a place in their new government once Gray was out.

On the other side of the plastic-wrapped heap of crates was Beta Team, laughing, laughing, laughing at some joke that had been lost to the steady snarl of the engines.

I pressed the backs of my freezing hands against my eyes, trying to ease the throbbing there. What little heat was still circulating in the cargo space must have been clinging to the ceiling, because I felt exactly none of it. I sank down lower in my seat, wrapping the black puffer coat as tightly around my center as I could with the seat belt in the way.

“Deep breath in,” Jude was chanting, “deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out. You are not in an airplane; you are floating through the sky. Deep breath in…”

“I think you actually have to be taking deep breaths for that to work,” I told him.

The plane dipped, only to bob up a second later.

“Is that—” His voice cracked. “Was that normal?”

“It’s just a little turbulence,” I told him, trying to pull away from his grip. “It happens on every flight.”

Jude had strapped a tact team member’s helmet to his head and a pair of goggles over his eyes. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if the plane went down, a head wound would be the least of his worries.

God. He couldn’t handle the stress of a
plane flight
.

This was a mistake—I should have fought harder, argued, swayed someone to get Jude off this Op. Back at HQ, the thought of having to bring him along to search for Liam had been frustrating, an annoying dose of reality to swallow, but now…now I was just scared. How was he going to handle the pressure of escaping Rob and Beta Team if he couldn’t sit still for five minutes? If his imagination had already stolen his courage and had made a run for it?

Maybe I can find a way to leave him with Barton, I thought, rubbing my forehead. The problem was…how did I know that Barton wasn’t one of the agents who sided with Rob in arguing for attacking the camps? How did I know that any of his teammates wouldn’t gladly put a bullet in Jude’s skull, neat and easy?

“This is going to be great. It’s going to be so cool.” Jude’s Op folder was stained with specks of whatever he had eaten for dinner the night before, and he was looking a little soft around the edges.

I wanted to scream.
Scream
. It was another mouth to feed and another back to protect. Jude was the living embodiment of a distraction. But what was the alternative here? Sending him back to that hellhole, hoping he’d still be there, alive, when I got back and Cole put his plan in action?

No. Jude was dead weight, one I was going to have to carry on my shoulders the whole way, but I was stronger now. I could do it. I’d find Liam, and I’d keep both of them safe—because that was the only option. That was the only one I was willing to accept.

“Bartlett. What do you think he does?” Jude asked. The pages fanned under his fingers. “I recognize the other names. Frances is nice—she gave me a candy bar once. I like Lebrowsky and Gold and Fillman, too. Cool guys. They taught me how to play solitaire. And I like Leader, too. I’m glad Barton got promoted. But who the heck is Bartlett?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” I said, focused squarely on the medical crates in front of me. Actually I did know who Bartlett was—some new guy who transferred in from the Georgia base of operations. I had overhead some of the Green girls in the locker room talking about what a “fine specimen” he was, but they had spotted me and split before I could find out anything useful.

Jude was humming now, one foot tapping out a frantic rhythm against the mats underfoot. The compass hanging around his neck had slipped out from under his jacket and was swinging in time with him. I don’t think he had stopped moving the entire five hours we were in the air.

“Bartlett got his training at West Point—do you think that means he’s good?”

“If you have the personnel files in your folder memorized, why are you asking me?”

“Because people are more than what a piece of paper or computer file says about them. I don’t really care that Bartlett’s specialty is knife fighting—I mean, don’t get me wrong,
holy crap
, but I’d rather know why he joined the League, what he thinks about that decision now. Favorite food—”

At that, I turned to look at him, half amazed, half horrified. “You think his favorite food is more important than knowing his preferred method of killing you in a fight?”

“Well, yeah, it kind of is—”

I couldn’t stop myself, and I couldn’t explain why anger flashed so fast and hot through me. “You want to know about Beta Team?” I could hear my heart hammering in my ears. “For the next twelve hours, they are the only six people who won’t be trying to kill you. But they don’t have to protect you, especially if it interferes with the Op. So follow Leader’s orders and keep your damn head down.
That
is all you need to know.”

“Jeez,” Jude said, blinking. “Not every adult in the world is trying to bury us.”

My tongue was trapped behind my clenched teeth.
You think killing you is the worst thing they could do to you?

“I just want to know people,” he explained. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, sorry,” I said. “Most of them won’t want to know you.”

“No, I mean…” He waved his hands through the air, like that was going to unravel the mystery of whatever he was trying to say. “It’s just that nowadays people are so quick to boil you down to bare bones of info and upload you into a system, you know? And I think no one can ever really know another person unless you really pay attention.” He stopped, stretching his long neck out to glance around, but our minder for the Op was busy playing a game of cards with Frances.

“Like, look at Rob. His file is perfect. He went to Harvard, was an Army Ranger, then an FBI agent for a while. He’s six feet tall exactly and weighs two hundred and three pounds. He knows how to use firearms and speaks decent Spanish. But that… Nowhere in there is anything that hints at the fact that he…” Jude trailed off. “I don’t want to just see someone’s face; I want to know his shadow, too.”

I don’t think Jude had ever lost anyone before Blake. He had heard about agents killed on this mission, or on that raid, or in that explosion—but once you fully settle into the special brand of pain that comes with being separated from someone you know down to the marrow of his bones, you learn not to try.

“Yeah?” I asked. “And do you know my shadow?”

Jude looked away, down to where the heels of his comically large boots were bouncing against the mat. “No,” he said, so quiet it was almost lost to the thousands of miles of crystal blue air beneath us. “Sometimes I don’t think I’ve even really seen your face.”

It didn’t bother me. Feeling left my hands, but it was only because of the cold, not the ice that had somehow manifested between us in the span of a few seconds. My jaw only clenched to keep my teeth from chattering, not to bite back an ugly, frustrated noise. I didn’t need to be liked, or wanted, or cared for—I didn’t need friends, and I certainly didn’t need the kid who once brought down the League’s entire computer network tripping over his own huge feet, trying to guilt me into being something I wasn’t. I was fine. Just a little cold.

I burrowed down just a little farther into my coat, watching him fidget out of the corner of my eye. He was wringing his hands red.