Rush (Phoenix Rising) (29 page)

Q lunged upright and gasped for air. His gaze darted around the room, assessing, preparing . . . But it was empty. The room quiet. Voices drifted in from the living area. A surge of nausea caught him by surprise and he clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, willing it away. When it passed, he fell back on his elbows, turned and reached for the orange juice Jessica had left beside the bed and took a few slow sips.

Then he sank back into the bed, breathing hard, sweating. Utterly depleted. He tuned into the conversation in the living room through the partially open door.

“Teague’s healing powers get sucked dry after only a minute or two working on Cash,” Alyssa said. “He’s not doing well at all.”

Worry enveloped Quaid’s chest, but he didn’t have the strength to move, to speak.

“Has someone called Keira?” Jessica asked.

“He asked us not to,” Alyssa said. “He asked us to wait.”

“Quaid’s healing abilities are obviously fighting whatever this is,” Jessica said. “But not well and for how long?”

“If Quaid could repair himself after shattering every bone in his body, he can beat this.” Kai was obviously wound tight again. The man definitely had anger control issues, though Q wasn’t one to talk.

The room remained silent a moment and Q fought the pull of sleep.

“Look, it’s clear we can’t wait to go after the neutralizer,” Jessica said, pulling Quaid back. “We’re not giving up Quaid or Cash, and Cash doesn’t have the formula finished. So Schaeffer’s not going to give us the neutralizer.

“I know everything about Schaeffer, right down to when he brushes his teeth,” Jessica said. “I have an in with his hairstylist, his new chauffer, one of his housekeepers. We socialize in all the same circles. I can get close to him. No one else here can.”

“What are you saying?” Kai demanded more than asked.

“Thank you, Kai,” Q muttered, resting his forearm over his eyes.

“I’m saying that I’m our best bet to get to Schaeffer and get that neutralizer.” Jessica’s voice had that determined tone that said they were in for a fight if they disagreed. “Kai, you need to fly me to Washington. I’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

Q’s eyes opened and stared up at the gray ceiling. She couldn’t be serious.

“I’m not flying you to Washington just to get your butt arrested,” Kai said. “Or killed.”

“I owe you, brother,” Q murmured.

“Contrary to popular belief,” Jessica said, “you guys aren’t the only ones who can handle a gun. Schaeffer won’t be calling the police with a couple of his fingers shot off. If I have to spend a few years in jail to save Quaid and Cash, I’ll do it.”

“No, no, no . . .” Q tried to roll off the bed. Put his arm into it. Managed to get to a sitting position. He picked up the orange juice and took another big swallow. He needed the sugar rush.

“There’s got to be a better way, Jess,” Kai said. “You know a lot of powerful people in Washington. Don’t you have an ally you can pull into your corner given all this evidence? Someone Schaeffer can’t manipulate? His involvement is incredibly clear. Every op Quaid cited corresponds to a technical development within Millennium Manufacturing in the following six months, which then led to a military contract for Millennium within the six months after that.”

A moment of silence followed before Mitch’s voice cut in. “It’s good, but it’s not a slam dunk. We need corroboration if we want this all to stick. I need time to gather information on the weapons Quaid mentioned and records of the transactions.”

“I’m not going to trial, and Schaeffer’s no legal eagle. I’m a damn good bullshitter when I need to be. I work with these politicians all damn day, every day, I’d better be good. And if all else fails, I’ll . . .” She paused, took a deep breath. “Damn it, I’ll take all the information and your audio/video of Schaeffer’s call to the Secretary of Defense.”

Q’s eyes opened in shock. The bold sureness in her statement came as if there would be no problem getting in front of such a powerful man. Which made a trickle of unease slide through his chest. An ugly unease. One he instinctively didn’t want to look into.

“Will Dutch?” Mitch asked, surprise clear in his tone. “You know Will Dutch?”

“Yes. He’s . . . a friend. He’ll listen to what I have to say. He’ll look over the documents if I ask him to. He’s smart. He’ll see the connections. And he’s not one of Schaeffer’s biggest fans.”

Q let his mind drift. He barely had the energy to remain sitting upright. He definitely didn’t have the energy to make it go where it didn’t want to go.

Jessica came in, nothing but a whisper of movement. Her simple presence eased his stress and lifted his energy.

She knelt in front of him on the floor, hands on his knees, worried eyes searching his. Good God, she was beautiful. She took his breath. Made him ache.

“Jessie . . .”

She scanned his body. “Is your fever up again? You took your shirt off.”

He didn’t remember taking it off. And he couldn’t seem to formulate an answer, just shook his head.

“Why are you sitting up?” Frown lines crinkled her smooth brow. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

“You.” His eyes slid closed. “All I need is you.”

“Well, you’re in luck. I’m all yours. Lie down.”

Grateful for the permission, he dropped back on the bed. Jessica wrung a cloth in the cold water on the nightstand and wiped down his face, his neck, chest, arms. It helped. Gave him a zing of energy.

“Don’t go to Washington,” he said, forcing his eyes to hers. “Wait until I get better. I’ll go with you.”

“We don’t have time for that, Quaid. Cash isn’t doing as well as you are. He may not even have twenty-four hours.”

Quaid slid his hands up her arms and pulled her toward him. She came easily, willingly, and a rush of sweet gratitude filled him. He rolled to his side, taking her with him. He kissed her lips, gently, sweetly. Combed his fingers through her hair.

She kissed him back, and that already-familiar deep bond they’d developed so quickly wrapped them in intimacy. And relief. And comfort. And joy.

His hand slipped under her top, caressed the soft skin of her back, fingers memorizing the sleek muscle there. He slid his thigh between hers and pressed it high to the core heat of her body.

Jessica hummed in pleasure, wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. “You have to get better, Quaid. I can’t live without you again.”

“Shh.” His mouth slid to her cheek, her jaw, her neck. “We’ll be okay.”

He rolled her to her back, slid down her body, lifted her shirt and pressed his mouth to her belly.

She caressed his head and shoulders as he kissed his way up her belly, pushed her tank top over her breasts and groaned when he found them bare beneath.

He eased up on his elbows and looked down on her, staring at her breasts. This was the first time he’d seen her body in the light. They’d made love with most of her clothes on. They’d made love in the dark. Now, his hands caressed and shaped as his eyes watched. “So beautiful.”

He lowered his mouth and treasured her with his lips and tongue, losing himself in the feel of her body, the softness and warmth of her skin, the sounds she made, the way she moved beneath him.

“Quaid,” she murmured. “We’ll have to finish this later, when you’re well. I have to go get the neutralizer that’s going to make you better.”

What if she left and he never saw her again? He couldn’t wait. Couldn’t put off making love to her one more time. He pulled his mouth from her breast, pushed to his knees and brought his hands to the button of her shorts. His eyes wandered up her body as he flipped the button open, eased down the zipper.

And froze.

“Quaid?”

He didn’t answer. His gaze was caught on a scar. A small, smooth scar beneath her left breast. He sat back on his heels and reached up, letting his fingers slide over the light flesh. Images flickered in his head. Extremely unpleasant images—Jessica and a man on a sofa in some big house. The images and sounds at this stage of his dreams . . . or visions . . . or whatever they’d been had always started out hazy, blurry, watery, distorted, sometimes so much so, he couldn’t actually see or hear in detail what was happening, but enough to know . . . He hadn’t seen—or experienced—her with another man in a long time. The memory slammed into him like a truck.

She touched his face. “Quaid.”

Quaid took her hand, but didn’t look away from the scar. “What’s . . .” He swallowed, the memory coming back to him even as he asked the question. “Where’d you get this?”

She didn’t even look at the scar, but pulled his hand away from it. “I . . . don’t remember. Where were we?”

And memories.

Her avoidance created a weakness in his mind like a crack in a damn, and the memories poured in.

Q
pulled his hands from Jessica’s as he remembered the night she’d gotten that scar, the last night he’d seen her in his dreams.

Jessica had already been high when her flirtatious,
“What’s a good looking secretary of defense like you doing at a party like this?”
had started a conversation with Will Dutch, one that had continued throughout the night.

She’d looked like a sparkling jewel in an elegant, deep emerald dress. He’d visualized the night fairly clearly up until the last hour. Until after Jessica had made her last trip into the room of the house designated for drug use. After that, everything had gone blurry.

The home where the party had been held was luxurious beyond Q’s imagination. All the men dressed in tuxedos, the women in full-length gowns that sparkled and shimmered. But no one had been as beautiful as Jessica.

Q had watched the attraction grow between Dutch and Jessica, the building flirtation and Jessica’s increasing but clandestine ingestion of cocaine and alcohol. Dutch had not taken part in the drugs, but had made his share of trips to the open bar and simply looked the other way when Jessica used.

When they’d escaped to a private room in the house to have sex—something Q had anticipated with pleasure at the time, something that made him want to kill the man now—Q had to admit, the man had been good to Jessica, at least in comparison to the others.

But the drugs had taken their toll and afterward, when Jessica stood, she passed out and hit the coffee table on the way to the floor. The sight of her torn dress and the vivid red blood on the carpet was bright and fresh in Q’s mind, as if he’d dreamt it last night, not over a year ago.

“Quaid?”

Her voice pulled him out of the memory. Pain lingered in his chest, but he leaned down and kissed her belly button. “I heard you talking about the secretary of defense,” he said, rubbing his lips across her soft, soft skin. “How do you know him?”

“Just work,” she whispered, sitting up and kissing him.

Pain stabbed his heart. He pushed away, turned and sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. He couldn’t think. His brain was so full. So confused.

She laid a hand on his back and he stood, needing distance.

He paced to the wall, then turned. She sat in the middle of the bed, tank top pulled back into place. “I told you, in the very beginning, I needed honesty. I
told
you.”

Her face paled, and those brown eyes seemed to grow huge in the absence of color. She swallowed and nodded. “I . . . I got it . . . I fell and hit a table. Needed stitches.”

He took one big step forward, hands clenched. “God
damn it,
Jessica.”

She flinched and shrank from him. The gesture piled guilt on top of pain and he turned away again, rubbing his face with both hands. God, he was so tired. His legs felt like they would collapse under him.

“I was there that night, Jessica,” he said, disillusioned by her continued need to keep secrets from him. “I know how you got the scar. I know how you know Will Dutch.”

“Quaid.” Her voice vibrated with tears and panic. He turned back and found her holding her locket, rubbing it like she expected a genie to pop out, though he didn’t know what the hell a genie was. “Quaid, listen to me. If I could go back and live my life over, I’d do it all differently. If I’d known you were alive, if there had been even a
remote chance
that you were alive . . . I’ve never wanted anyone but you. I was crushed. I was trying to find a way to survive. It was the wrong way and I’ve suffered for it. But I thought you were
dead
.”

He knew that. He understood all that. He could see that she’d obviously suffered. She didn’t have to explain pain and hopelessness, or doing what you had to do to find a way to survive to him of all people. Yes, the memory of seeing her with other men hurt. But her lies, her secrets, hurt far more. And by the way she clung to that locket, he sensed there was another lurking nearby.

He closed the distance and when she dropped the locket, Q grabbed it. One solid pull and the chain snapped.

“Oh, my God, no.” She lunged for the necklace. Quaid turned his back to her and opened it. She scraped at his back, pulled at his arm, stood on the bed and grabbed for it over his shoulder, begging, “Quaid, please . . . let me explain. . . .”

He fumbled with the small piece in his big fingers. Fending Jessica off didn’t help. Finally, he caught the latch with his fingernail and pulled the locket open.

A gold band lay inside.

Quaid stared. He flashed hot. Then cold. His hands started to shake. Then his body. Jessica yelled at him. Pleaded with him, but all sound dimmed in the rush of blood in his head. He plucked the ring out of the locket and dropped the necklace. It bounced against the cement, but the sound never reached Q’s ears.

He held the gold band up to the light and it gleamed. The ring was simple, elegant and polished, but marred with a heavy diagonal nick across one side. Inside the band, etched lettering caught the light.
QUAID, ALL MY LOVE, FOREVER.
Jessica. And a date. Six years earlier.

Jessica clung to his waist, face pressed to his spine, sobbing. Quaid held the ring at the end of his left ring finger, his chest so tight, he could barely draw air into his lungs.

He slid the ring on.

The gold band passed snugly over his knuckle, then lay loose around his finger above. He stared at it on his hand. An absolutely surreal sensation swirled in his head. Stunned at the way a simple gold band transformed his whole identity from a separate, lone man to the important half of something beautiful. Something vital.

Something he should have been told.
Immediately
.

“We’re
married
?” He turned on her. “We were
married,
and you didn’t tell me?”

The door to the bedroom pushed open and Kai, Teague and Alyssa came in, eyes wide with worry.

“What’s going on?” Kai asked.

“We were
married
and none of you bothered to tell me?”

All eyes darted to Jessica, who held her face in her hands, then back to Q without a word.

“I told everyone not to tell you.” Alyssa pushed to the front, her expression worried, but stern. “What you want and what you need are sometimes very different things, Quaid. As I told Jessica, pushing that information on you before you were ready could have sent you into shutdown. Your brain could have completely turned off and you could have been in a catatonic state for an indeterminable amount of time.”

Fury and betrayal lit him on fire. He thought of Schaeffer, of Gorin, of all they’d taken from him for their own greedy purposes.

“Goddamned fucking scientists,” Q growled, visualizing Gorin. “You all think you have the right to control other people’s reality.”

“Just stop there, Quaid.” Teague stepped up next to his wife. “That’s—”

Alyssa put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay.”

Now that Q had a choice—he chose his own reality.

And he teleported straight to Gorin.

 

“Quaid, don’t do that . . .” The nervous tone in Alyssa’s voice brought Jessica’s head up. “Quaid . . .”

Jessica focused through blurry eyes, sure her traumatized mind had failed. Quaid held his arm out in front of him, looking down at his open palm. The sight of his hand faded and reappeared.

He dropped his arm, closed his eyes and, with a look of concentration, entirely faded from sight.

Jessica gasped. Alyssa swore. Everyone looked around as if Quaid would reappear somewhere in the room.

“Holy shit,” Kai breathed, raking a hand through his hair.

Jessica jumped off the bed. “Quaid!” Fury struck through her like lightning. Outside, the sky responded with a flash of illumination. A roll of thunder echoed right behind it. “Quaid, goddamnit, get back here. Don’t you dare leave me again.”

Shaking with fear, with rage, with more emotions than she could name, Jessica clenched her hands and punched the air. “
Goddamn
you, Quaid.
Goddamn
you,” she screamed at nothing. “You fucking coward.”

Her insides caved. She curled in on herself and fell to the bed. No, she wasn’t perfect. Yes, she’d made mistakes. But that didn’t make her worthless. That didn’t make her expendable. He hadn’t been perfect either, and she’d stood by him. She’d mourned him for years. Now, she continued to stand by him even though he didn’t even
remember
her.

“That . . . fucker . . .” she stammered through sobs.

“Has he always been able to do that?” Mitch’s mildly annoyed voice entered the fray. “’Cause if he has, when I get my hands on that bastard, he’s gonna wish he’d done it a hell of a lot sooner.”

“What happened?” Cash’s soft, rusty voice sounded in the doorway. “Where’s . . . Q?”

Jessica scrambled to the corner of the room and rummaged in the pocket of the jeans she’d been wearing the day before. She pulled out Quaid’s coin and sat back on her heels. Holding the coin out, she searched for light to reflect off the surface. But it was dull and flat.

Everyone was talking, but she ignored them, rushing to the single window and tilting the coin toward the sunlight until it sparkled in her eyes. She took a shaky breath and blurred her vision.
Come on. Come on.
Shadows began to swish and sway inside the reflection, then take shape. A figure, a man, moved through monochromatic, institutional hallways, throwing doors open.

“Need a doorway,” she whispered, turning the coin to catch the light. “Come on, give me a—”

The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, hit, bounced and speared right into Jessica’s eyes. White light blinded her. She squeezed her eyes shut and lifted her hand. The light grew brighter, bigger, and showered her entire body with heat.
Fizzle-pop,
the sound of a bubbling soda grew in her ears. Jessica’s body went light, her head dizzy. Then she was moving, falling. A rush of air and pressure prickled over her skin. Adrenaline sizzled so hard her blood frothed in her veins.

Even knowing the process, panic rode high in her chest, choking her. The pressure made it hard to breathe. Then as suddenly as it had grown turbulent, the air calmed. The pressure eased. The turbulence in her skin calmed.

She focused on the cool cement beneath her hand. She shaded her eyes and squinted into the light. The intensity faded to reveal that monochromatic, institutional hallway where she’d seen Quaid.

She tuned into her senses and found the space eerily quiet. Down the length of the hallway, doors stood open, some still swaying. Which meant she’d just missed Quaid.

Using the wall and the floor for support, Jessica pushed to her feet, tested her surroundings for stability and started down the hall, following the path of open doorways. She peered into rooms only to find vacant offices, empty laboratories, as if the place had been abandoned. There was no sign of what institution this was or in what city, or state, or even what country. Hell, she could be on Mars.

This had to be a damn dream. It had all the crazy earmarks of a dream—the fuzzy-edged images, the distorted perspectives, the freaky sensation of total isolation and foreboding. Then again, maybe that all came with this bizarre state of consciousness.

A muffled
bang
sounded far off to her left. Jessica started down that hallway. Then another—
bang
. She envisioned more doors opening and slamming against walls and pushed into a jog.

Bang
.

“Gorin!” Quaid’s distant, furious bellow knifed through her. “Where the fuck are you?”

Then she heard another voice. And an immediate argument.

Jessica ran. Her bare feet had good traction on the smooth linoleum and she sprinted down halls and around corners, moving toward the voices. Every hallway, every room, looked absolutely identical. If she ever had to find her way back to where she’d started, she’d be screwed. This was a house of mirrors, minus the mirrors.

She turned another corner and found Quaid—a splash of color inside an otherwise white rectangle. He had one hand wrapped around a doorknob, yanking at it, the other flat and pounding against the door as he peered through the one-foot-square window at eye level.

“Open this door, asshole,” Quaid yelled. “If I have to teleport in there I’ll be three times as pissed as I am now.”

Jessica stopped twenty feet from him, breathing hard. “Quaid.”

He jerked toward her, eyes wide. When he recognized her, his expression clouded with exhaustion. Sweat drenched his face, neck and chest. “Get out of here.” He peered through the window again and slapped the door hard. “Open. This. Door. Gorin.”

She dug her fingers into his arm and jerked him around to face her. “Newsflash, asshole, you’re not the Lone Ranger anymore.”

“The what?”

“It’s a
who
. You have an entire team of people wrapped up in this with you. More than a dozen who have risked their futures, their lives, to see you safe. So, guess what? You can be as pissed at me as you want. You can hate me. You can fucking divorce me if that’ll give you the vengeance you need.” She drove a finger into his chest. “But you don’t get to screw them, too.”

“A team of people who lied to me.”

“For fuck’s sake, get the hell over it. You act like we tried to steal your DNA to create a serial killer. We wanted to keep you
safe
. We didn’t want you to jump off a psychotic cliff. Excuse us for
caring
.”

In a sudden show of exhaustion, Quaid slumped against the door, holding himself up by the handle. “Have you always had a mouth like that?”

“Shut the hell up. You’re not one to talk.”