Rush (Phoenix Rising) (19 page)

Cash followed Kai into the forest yelling, “Send the others this way.”

Q
paused on the edge of a copse and cocked his ear to the right, where he’d last heard the footsteps. He had to filter out the sound of his breathing and that took several long seconds. Sounds always flowed in and out of his consciousness, just like they had before his hearing had become ultrasensitive. Now there were just more sounds, from more varied distances, creating more depth and more chaos to tune out.

But the same way Q knew that the sound of a certain car door closing in the Castle parking lot meant his week had just gone to shit, the footsteps scraping along dirt and cracking over limbs and leaves signaled someone wearing boots—lightweight, thin-soled, military-grade canvas boots. Something he had about as much random chance of knowing as how to read the Chinese symbols on Jessica’s neck.

An unease coming from somewhere or something he couldn’t name created a cold track down his spine.

Whoever wore those boots was nowhere near the bunker, but still on the property. From the various
click
s sounding when he walked, he carried at least three weapons that tapped against each other with his movement.

Q turned east and started running again. He made a wide circle around the intruder to come up behind him. The trees’ colorful leaves blurred in Q’s vision. The man’s footsteps and the
click
s from his gear directed Q through the forest, down hills, through the ravine.

Q’s mind shifted into some cool, serious, determined mode that felt both surreal and familiar. His body worked better than it had since his limbs had stopped obeying his mind. He weaved through the trees easily and maintained even, regulated breathing. Only a slightly elevated heart rate thumped in his ears. After the first few stabs of pain in his feet from rocks or limbs, they’d gone numb.

Behind him, near the bunker but very distant now, Jessica’s voice touched the edge of his mind’s filter, then the voices of others—Cash, maybe Kai. A sense of urgency pushed even more adrenaline into his veins.

He didn’t know why he thought these things. Didn’t know what he was feeling or why. On the outside he was numb, while deep inside a desperate need drove him forward. He couldn’t stop. He knew without having to try that no matter how hard he focused his brain to stop his body, it wouldn’t work. His body would continue on whatever the hell mission this was, passion fueling his muscles and organs with more strength and stamina than he could have ever imagined.

The realization would have terrorized him if it weren’t for some small sparkle of rightness. A sureness that whatever his brain had planned would benefit his team. Though he didn’t know when he’d made the switch from thinking of them as possible enemies to either
his
or a
team
.

After a few more miles of that consistent, driving run, his vision wobbled, turning everything in his line of sight watery. Q recognized an aftereffect of the drugs and checked in with the rest of his body.

His mouth had run dry and his ribs burned. But the bodily exhaustion from lack of food and water didn’t register with this disconnected inner drive. And if he didn’t stop now, he’d collapse when he needed his strength most.

He put both arms out in front of him and steered himself toward a tree. He braced for the impact, but his arms still failed and he hit with his chest. His lungs compressed. He bounced off the tree and landed in the mulch ass-first.

He froze, grimacing. Finally, the pain eased enough for him to suck in air. Still he didn’t move, unsure if the target had heard him, if he was already moving in.

Q reached for his weapon. When his hand hit nothing but a jean-covered hip, he looked down at himself. His mind seemed to split in two, one side confused to be reaching for a weapon he’d never even touched before, the other frustrated not to find that same weapon where it should be. Where he always carried it.
Always.

He turned his hand over and stared at the palm as if he expected the Ruger he’d been reaching for to appear.

He looked up at the kaleidoscope of treetops. Then he glanced around at the isolated forest. What in the fuck was he doing? Who in the fuck was he?

“Schizophrenia?” he whispered the possibility, his rational mind struggling for a logical answer. But he sure as hell felt as if he had two different people working inside him. “Psychotic break?”

For a millisecond, Q stared into the trees and wondered if this was another hallucination. Or a dream, like his dreams of Jessica. Only . . . Jessica was real. Wasn’t she? Or maybe an alternate reality, like that little side trip to the Middle Eastern desert. If that’s what it had been.

Whether dream, alternate universe or reality, he wasn’t in it alone. And his gut told him he wasn’t safe. His team wasn’t safe. Jessica wasn’t safe.

Very slowly and silently, Q rolled to his stomach, did a quick push-up and jumped his feet beneath him. He used a tree for cover and peered around the trunk, just enough to look into a distant clearing.

The man stepped into view and Q’s vision brought him in with sharp clarity. Military rogue. Late twenties, shaved head, drab olive T-shirt darkened by sweat, matching cargo pants with a Sig Saur strapped to his thigh and—Q zeroed in on his boots—military issue.

The guy held up a small electronic device with a map on the screen and panned it around the area. As he twisted away from Q, a rifle came into view—an HK416 strapped over his back. German engineering, 5.5-millimeter round, twenty-thousand rounds-per-minute, non-jamming gas system; the weapon that had nailed Osama bin Laden.

Whoever the hell that was.

Q wished he could claw his brain out of his skull and stomp on it. Since he couldn’t . . . the HK-lover looked like a good substitute.

Moving slower now, Q headed toward the man even as the man headed toward Q. He edged out from the forest’s cover and skirted the border of the ravine, moving in quick sprints between rocks and brush. Part of him wondered what the hell he was going to do when he caught up with the stranger. Another part knew he’d take care of that when it happened.

He angled around behind the intruder, who continued hiking toward the bunker. Q’s body felt light and strong, his brain alert and sharp. Maybe he could find a way to hold onto this feeling after . . .

“Stop thinking,” he whispered and crouched behind a boulder, assessing the other man’s position as he approached a particularly steep area of the ravine ahead.

Q darted from boulder to brush. From brush to rock cluster. He eased closer to the intruder. The intruder moved closer to the ravine wall—right where Q wanted him. Why, he had no idea.

He eyed the last boulder he planned to use for cover before he attacked. Coiled the muscles in his thighs. A sound pulled his attention left. He scanned the ravine, the brush beyond. Saw nothing, not even a rodent. Then he peered farther, to the outskirts of the forest, then into the forest—and his stomach dropped.

Kai and one of the guards Q had seen patrolling the grounds earlier crept through the trees, crouched, holding semiautomatics.
Shit.
Q looked right, across the ravine and found Teague and another guard skirting boulder clusters. And Q would bet a trip back to the Castle that Cash, Mitch and the remaining two guards were on his ass. He didn’t even need to look.

Sonofabitch.
He was surrounded.

The intruder found finger and toe holds along the ravine wall and hoisted himself onto the rock. Q skipped the cover boulder and sprinted for the guy.

This time, the man heard Q’s movement. Not a huge surprise. The intruder dropped from the wall, maintained his crouch in a twist, aimed and fired, all in fluid, split-second movements.

Q dropped, rolled, scrambled. More gunfire, another maneuver, but this time when Q found his feet he was close enough to lunge. Another shot rang out. This one from a different direction. From a different weapon. From a distance. One of the others trying to take this guy out before he took Q out.

The intruder was still standing, but distracted. Q went in at an angle, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the gun, shoved it sideways and jabbed the inner elbow. The man grunted and the gun dropped, but he struck out. Q blocked, caught the guy’s jaw with a cross. Ducked a jab, blocked a body shot. Came back with a double punch to his gut. The intruder bent toward the pain and Q kneed him in the chin.

The intruder flailed, stumbling backwards. Q advanced. He grabbed the man’s throat with one hand, his shirt with the other and slammed him up against the rock wall. The man reached for Q’s face, but came up short. Q body-slammed him again. The man’s spine popped and ground against the rock. He clawed at Q’s arms. Q hauled him back and drove him against the rock again. And again and again and again, punctuating a very clear message: “I’ll . . . never . . . go . . . back.”

With the man’s spine wedged against the rock, Q squeezed the intruder’s throat. He wheezed, gagged, brought up bloody hands to pry at Q’s fingers. That’s when Q saw the bullet hole through the man’s palm, and all the blood spilling from it. He remembered the shot that hadn’t hit him. Thought of Keira. Then of Luke. Then of each member of the team. Of Jessica. All they’d sacrificed. And something deep inside him glowed white-hot-pissed-off.

He leaned close, tightened his fingers until the spy’s eyes bulged, and vowed, “You’ll never get them, either.”

 

Jessica came to an abrupt stop on the border of the ravine. Keira and Luke had disappeared over the edge. Keira must have heard Quaid’s thoughts, or maybe Kai’s or maybe her own, because she and Luke had come back. Jessica had almost reached the ravine when she’d heard the squeal of tires. Then Keira had raced past her, a weapon in both hands, Luke right behind her. She’d skidded to a stop at the ravine’s lip, taken what seemed like less than a second to aim and almost as soon as Jessica realized Keira had fired, a man’s screams echoed up from the ravine.

Now, Keira and Luke skidded over the rocky embankment below toward the valley. Jessica peered past them, into the ravine and stepped toward the ledge. But the sight below killed her plans to descend.

Quaid held a man by the throat, smashing him up against the ravine wall. Over and over again, he pulled the other man back and slammed his body against the rock. The man jerked, then clawed and kicked, but Quaid had complete control.

Jessica’s mind refused to absorb the scene. It seemed flat and unreal.

Quaid. Violent.

Those two words just did not link up. Yet she couldn’t mistake all that blood. It coated Quaid’s chest and arms. It was smeared across the other man’s T-shirt and pants. His hands, arms and face. She thought of Keira’s shot. Feared it had hit Quaid. But, if it had, it hadn’t deterred him.

Kai and Teague scrambled down opposite sides of the steep embankment. Two of the military men guarding the property immediately followed. Cash and Mitch came at Quaid from behind. They were closest, and Cash led the way in a dead run.

Jessica dropped to her knees on the rocky soil, hands clenched. Fear sliced through her body in icy cuts as her stomach tightened and rolled with sickness.

“Oh, my God.” She barely breathed the words, hardly able to speak through the horror. “Stop.
Stop
.”

She wanted everyone, everything to just
stop
. Reality had exploded completely out of control.

But nothing stopped. Cash jumped on Quaid from one side, grabbing his arm and prying it from the man’s throat. Mitch attacked from the other side, yanking Quaid back by the waist of his jeans.

Kai reached the man on the ground, and Teague helped Cash and Mitch restrain Quaid.

Within thirty seconds, everyone was smeared with blood and yelling.

Jessica dropped her face into her shaking hands. “Oh, my God.”

What had possessed him? What would they do if he’d killed that man? Even if he hadn’t, how would they hide his attack? And why did she immediately consider lying and evasion as a remedy? How quickly her year of commitment to truth had succumbed to fear.

Maybe Quaid had gone insane in that place. Maybe he hadn’t just lost his memory, but his
mind
. And maybe she was going to follow right behind him.

She peered down into the ravine again. Kai had lifted the victim, now apparently unconscious, over his shoulder in a familiar fireman’s carry. Cash led Quaid toward the long path up the ravine by the arm. Mitch followed, carrying what looked like the man’s pack and Keira wandered behind, her attention focused on a . . .
rifle
?

Jessica scanned Keira’s body and found a rifle strapped over her back. A semiautomatic handle stuck out of the holster on her thigh. Her gaze moved to Luke, found his rifle strapped over his back and his semiautomatic in his hand. She quickly took inventory of Brody’s two guys, who held their own rifles.

“Oh, shit.” The victim was looking less like a victim.

She ran to meet the others in the forest at the top of the ravine. Teague hiked at the end of the group as they headed back to the bunker, and Jessica grabbed his arm. “What in the hell is going on?”

His eyes were sharp, his expression intense. Blood smeared one side of his chin. “We’re not sure.”

“Is he . . .” She glanced at the pack moving ahead, the limp man bumping against Kai’s back as he walked. “Is he . . . alive?”

“Yeah. He’s alive.” Teague tossed his arm over Jessica’s shoulders and pulled her into step beside him. “Look, Jess, I know that may have looked rough, but if that fucker is part of this bullshit, Quaid was far more restrained than I would have been.”