Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (3 page)

She spotted signs for an Amtrak station, and an idea formed in an instant. If she could get onto the train without getting caught by any security cameras, she had a decent chance of getting to Needles before getting recaptured. No one expected the bad guy to make her getaway on a train anymore, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the hazards attached to stealing a car: Lo-Jack, fuel stops, nosy gas station clerks.

But a train ticket required money. No reason to risk discovery by hopping a train. Classic mistake. She had to go legit.

Time to steal some cash.

Luckily, this was a busy city, which meant a bank on every corner. After scouting the location of surveillance cameras, Dahlia propped herself up against a lamp post and watched the activity in a bank’s lobby from the corner of her eyes. When a man who put a substantial stack of bills in his inside jacket pocket made his way toward the exit, Dahlia straightened, lowered her hood, fluffed her hair, and licked her lips. Show time.

The man was middle-aged and the best kind of victim: distracted. He was busy texting on a phone, one painfully slow letter at a time, as he came through the double glass doors, so he didn’t see as Dahlia approached. She plowed into him, gasping as though surprised while quickly reaching into his jacket pocket to lift the cash. Then she stumbled back and pretended she was about to fall on her ass.

The man’s reflexes kicked into gear, and he clasped her by both shoulders. His annoyance at being run into evaporated as his squinted eyes took in her long, wavy hair and exotic features. “Whoa there,” he said with a wink. “Sorry about that.”

Dahlia gave a breathy giggle. “Oh my goodness, I should watch where I’m going. Thank you so much for catching me.” She even threw in a quick fanning of her face with one slim hand.

He released her and stepped back. Before he could continue what was sure to be some sort of inane pick-up attempt, Dahlia flashed him one more smile and then dashed off, giving the impression she was in a hurry.

Which she was. It was only a matter of time before he felt for his money. She didn’t want to be around for that. She hustled around a corner and quickly checked her make. Five hundred dollars.

Thank God. She wouldn’t have to rob someone else. This was enough for a train ticket. She peeked around the corner once more, saw her victim was nowhere in sight, and continued toward the Amtrak station.

She paid for a ticket to California and was waiting for the train just a few minutes later. She’d spotted several security cameras, so she was half hidden behind a pillar as she fumed that the train trip was going to take two days.

Two days! So much could go wrong in that amount of time. She needed to be there yesterday. Or last week. Dahlia sighed. Honestly, she should have been there for the last eight years. She had only herself to blame for this situation. Herself and all of her bad decisions.

As she was scanning the platform and assuring herself that the train trip was her best bet, she spied a young boy walking up to the edge to look at the rails. Dahlia forced her eyes away and stared blankly at a poster for the National Archives while she tried to swallow around the lump in her throat and ignore the pang in her heart. She only lasted a few heartbeats before her eyes were drawn back to the child, and then she jerked upright.

The little idiot was leaning far, far over the edge. Obviously, he hadn’t studied gravity yet in school. Dahlia searched for a parent, but it appeared the boy was by himself. She took two quick steps forward before she remembered the security cameras.

Her eyes flicked to the closest one, and she breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t walked into its line of sight. She glared at the boy’s small back, hoping he would feel her stare and turn around.

He teetered, and Dahlia broke into a dead run. Just before he fell onto the tracks, she grabbed him by the back of his hoodie and jerked him backwards. He fell so hard on his bottom that he skidded a couple of times. Wide brown eyes blinked up at her like an owl, and his thin little-boy lips began to tremble.

She realized with a start that she was standing directly in the beam of the security camera. She stamped her foot and clucked her tongue as she turned on the boy. “Just what the hell did you think you were doing?”

• • •

“A murderer?” Jericho scoffed. “You seriously expect me to believe that?”

A muscle in Eli’s jaw ticked. “I have personal experience with that fact, so, yes. Dahlia is a murderer.”

Jericho fell silent. He didn’t know exact details about Eli’s torture, but he knew death had been involved. Repeated death. Because Eli had been a test subject for the fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life, he could never die. That knowledge had been gained by good old-fashioned lab work. Eli had been the lab rat.

If he said Dahlia was a murderer … “She conducted the experiments?” Jericho whispered, not sure how this conversation would affect Eli, and not sure if he was ready to hear the answer.

Abilene, Eli, and Sergeant Collins all exchanged a loaded glance. After several moments, Eli finally spoke. “Not personally.”

A breath of relief. “Then you’ve never witnessed her actually commit a murder.” Eli began to speak again, but Jericho cut him off. “Do you have proof?”

Abilene tossed her hands in the air. “Jericho, you can’t be serious! She was working with Major Taylor! She personally shoved the fruit down my throat.” When Jericho didn’t say anything, she continued, “
After
she’d kidnapped me from Sergeant Collins’s home in the dead of night.”

Jericho nodded. “Yes, those are serious crimes — ” and Jericho knew she would have a good explanation for behaving so poorly, “ — but none of them are murder.”

Sergeant Collins stepped forward as the tension in the room tripled. “All right, let’s just take a break from this line of discussion. I
do
have some intel to share with you, Jericho.” The man gestured to the long, mahogany table that dominated the meeting room, and all four of them took a seat while Collins continued. “As soon as Dahlia left the facility, I had a tap into every security camera in a one-hundred-mile radius. We got a hit about thirty minutes ago.” Collins pulled the video feed up on his laptop, and everyone crowded close to watch the grainy footage.

On the small screen, Dahlia lunged forward and pulled a small child back from the edge of a train platform. A couple of seconds later, she began what looked to be a pretty heated lecture, and the child burst into tears.

Jericho gave the others a superior look as he felt an onrush of pride. His mate saving innocent lives.

Eli’s lips twitched. “She pulled a small kid around by his neck.”

“
Away
from the rails,” Jericho pointed out.

Abilene pointed at the screen. “He’s crying.”

Jericho slashed his arm through the air, cutting her off, as another woman rushed onto the scene — the boy’s mother — and put her arms around the boy, escorting him off-camera with a vicious, black look over her shoulder at Dahlia, who was surreptitiously glancing at the camera that had caught her heroic action.

Jericho fought disappointment. “She knows she was caught on camera.” This was going to be a dead end. She wouldn’t do anything he could use to find her if she knew she was being watched.

“Just wait,” Sergeant Collins said.

A train pulled up to the platform, and they all watched as Dahlia visibly battled whether or not to board. They collectively sucked in a breath when, just before the doors closed, Dahlia jumped on board.

“Wow, she must be desperate,” Abilene said.

Jericho silently agreed. Her choice to take the train had been a sloppy mistake. Whatever was waiting for her on the other end of her trip had to be pretty damn important.

“I knew it,” Eli whispered and all eyes in the room turned to him. “She’s got a secret. Her choice to take that train, even though she knows she’s been spotted, proves how desperate she is to protect it.” Eli turned to Jericho. Abilene and Sergeant Collins followed suit, and Jericho tilted his head, bracing himself for what was about to come. “Finding out what it is needs to be your main objective, Jericho.”

A secret? Jericho knew instinctually that Eli was right, but what he was being asked to do — find it out and report it back …

“Why?” he heard himself ask in a defiant tone, which immediately got everyone’s attention. Jericho was an order follower. Not once in his entire military career had he ever once questioned one of his orders.

Eli and Sergeant Collins looked at each other for a heavy moment, and Jericho fought not to apologize. But he needed to know. As his mate, Dahlia deserved a certain amount of loyalty — like all he had to give.

“Dahlia is … ,” Sergeant Collins began, “difficult to manage.”

Abilene snorted, and Eli dipped his head to hide what Jericho suspected was a smile.

Sergeant Collins shot them a look like they were misbehaving children, and then continued. “If we knew her vulnerability, she might be more willing to be cooperative.” Jericho opened his mouth to argue — Dahlia’s cooperation wasn’t any of their concern — but Sergeant Collins cut him off. “And she may be hiding something that would be important to the Operation.”

Jericho shut his open mouth. All argument evaporated, and shame rushed in. Of course they had a good reason for seeking out Dahlia’s secret. And he had dared to question his superiors, to ponder defying orders. “Yes, of course,” Jericho said in a quiet rush. “I’m sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Thought and the Impulse don’t really go hand-in-hand, man,” Eli drawled with a half-smile that only made Jericho feel slightly better.

Sergeant Collins stepped forward and handed Jericho a folder. “The train she boarded will arrive in Chicago, Illinois, tomorrow, just before 0900. I have a chopper waiting on the roof to take you to the intercept point outlined in that folder.” He clapped Jericho on the shoulder. “Bring her back, son. And stay strong. She’s a tricky one.”

Jericho gritted his teeth. The implication that he could be swayed from his objective stung all the more harshly because of the slip-up he’d just had in priorities moments ago. He was supposed to bring her back, he’d bring her back. He would allow nothing to stop him.

And then? Once he had himself and Dahlia back in the facility safe and sound? Jericho straightened. Well, then they could begin to explore what had happened to them the moment they’d laid eyes on each other. Maybe he didn’t have to be miserable for the rest of his life. Maybe his instinct had paired him with another perfect mate: a sweet, innocent, loving woman who could make his life whole.

Jericho nodded curtly. “We’ll be back. Expect us tomorrow evening.”

Dahlia sat back in her seat on the train and breathed easily for the first time in a while. The train had pulled away from the station over four hours ago. No one had stopped them, even after that little snafu with the security camera.

Trees zipped by the window, and Dahlia looked at the other passengers while trying to swallow down the panic and need to rush. The train car was fairly empty, which was why she had chosen it. Five passengers sat in various dove-gray pleather seats, all of them far away from her. She cringed at having to sit still for so long — she longed for action — but it wasn’t like there was anything she could do. She was at the mercy of the general laws of time and space.

As the train turned a bend, a peculiar noise drifted in past the typical train-travel soundtrack. It took a few more seconds as the source neared for the other passengers to hear it, but once they did, they began looking questioningly at each other, their eyes clearly asking, “What is
that
?”

Dahlia knew what it was. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. She pushed to her feet and pressed against the nearest window, craning her eyes to the sky. She’d relaxed too soon. They had come for her.

A shiny, black helicopter was fast approaching the speeding train, and Dahlia wondered who was on it. Who was the person she was going to have to disable to get away? She sighed. Well, at least she was now distracted from the bulk of her anxiousness.

Her fellow passengers had begun to murmur to each other nervously. She didn’t need them interfering. “Nothing to worry about. Looks like a military helicopter. They’re probably running a training drill out of the nearby base,” she told them with a confident stunner-smile.

There was no nearby base, but apparently, none of them knew that because all of them relaxed and resettled into their seats. The sound of the helicopter blades grew deafening, and Dahlia peeked out of the window again to watch the action.

A thin, black cord dropped from the cargo hold of the helicopter to rest of the roof of the car two behind Dahlia’s. Moments later, a fatigue-clad, gladiator-sized man swung out of the chopper and began rappelling down the cord.

It was
him
.

Dahlia closed her eyes and gathered her strength as she tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter who it was. She would disable him. He was nothing to her.

It only took her two seconds to realize she was fooling herself. She of all people knew the strength behind the Impulse. Thanks to biology and a lot of other mysterious shit, her body had claimed this man as her
mate
. Even now, as she watched the man descend closer and closer to the train, it was difficult to keep her eyes from eating him up. Her breathing was suddenly shallow and strained, and she had to clamp her lips shut to keep from licking them. Hurting him was going to be … problematical.

Okay, so you move to Plan B
, a Voice coached her.

Dahlia nearly lost her footing. “No, not that,” she said out loud, causing the other passengers to look at her curiously.

Dahlia closed her eyes and gripped the gray curtains. The Voice was speaking to her now? She hadn’t heard from it since it had whispered
The One
to her back in the compound. The Voice had never spoken to her after she’d eaten the fruit from both trees, and she’d hoped that, maybe, she would be spared this particular side effect of the Impulse. She didn’t particularly crave the presence of some kind of cosmic Jiminy Cricket. A benevolent guide would hinder her ability to wreak havoc without a thought. This situation was getting more and more inconvenient by the heartbeat.