Secret Worlds (471 page)

“What are you doing here? How did you get here?” Before Ace could answer, she whirled to Alex. “You brought him!”

He shrugged. “I figured you could use a friendly face.”

Lena launched herself at him. Before he could even get his arms up, she had her own wrapped tight around his back.

She squeezed herself tight against him for a moment before leaning back and grinning up at him. “Thank you for this.”

Alex worked hard to keep his smile in place as he extricated himself from her spontaneous hug before his Dust could start dancing inside for her again. “It wasn’t a big deal. And he’s kind of a pain in the ass, anyway. Two birds. One stone.”

“It’s a big deal to me,” Ace said, his voice solemn.

She nodded at them both. “It’s a big deal. It’s—I needed this, especially today. Thank you.”

He shrugged again. “Lena, you do need to know…you have to be discreet. Ace can’t know where he is.” He raised his brows at her. “It could potentially endanger too many people, including you.”

“Wait. He doesn’t know?” She looked between the two of them.

Ace grimaced. “All I know is we walked for a long time. And then we rode.” Her brows furrowed as he continued: “I came in with a sack over my head. Agent Reyes does paranoid very, very well.”

She digested that for a moment. She turned back to Alex. Would the new understanding between them hold? Had he earned her trust back?

Alex held his breath. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. Thomas had been adamantly opposed to the idea. He thought Lena needed a clean break with everything and everyone in her past. Alex had argued that she’d had a couple too many involuntary clean breaks in her life. Thomas should have understood. His childhood had been just as traumatic, but he’d put it behind him. Alex remembered what it felt like to be torn from people he loved, even forty-three years later. It wasn’t something one should forget.

She was suddenly subdued. Did she suspect how hard he’d had to fight for this brief reunion? She searched his face. He didn’t know what she found, but she nodded at him.

“I’ll be discreet.”

He returned her nod. “Good.” He turned to Ace with a sardonic smile. “Looks like you get to go home, after all.”

Ace squinted at him, and then he turned to Lena. “He’s joking, right?”

She gave him a small smile. “Sure. Reyes is the comedian of the place.”

“I’m a laugh-a-minute.” He put his hands on his hips. “We know the rules, kids?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No going outside? No talking about where we are or anything related to where we are? And like that?”

“Exactly.” He crossed to the door. “Unless Ace already ate it all while he was waiting for you to be done with your lesson, there’s food in the basket by the table. Enjoy your lunch. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Wait. You’re leaving us?”

Ace crossed his arms and raised his brows. “You’re going to trust us to be good? Funny, I kind of figured you’d be sitting here with us the whole time, holding our hands, and leading us in campfire songs.” That earned a smile from Lena. “I wouldn’t have guessed you were the trusting type, Alex.”

The excitement and gratitude playing over Lena’s face made it worth the hassle.

“I’m not. But everyone has to start sometime.”

***

Alex left them and headed straight for his little-used office. After the frenzy of activity at the Council offices in Azcon following Lena’s disappearance from the collapsed Council building six weeks before, he had earned an hour of quiet. He also had no desire to rehash this decision with Thomas. He had as much a right to make it as his partner did. That was a simple fact.

They had originally envisioned themselves running things together from this end. As soon as it was practical, Alex had taken a large step back. He’d reassured Thomas that he wasn’t relinquishing his founding role, merely using his strengths in the best way he could to further their cause. He belonged out in the trenches. Thomas didn’t always understand the decision.

Maybe Thomas needed help? He had to manage a zone, a school, and a quiet revolution’s worth of reports on the Council’s actions. Alex had only himself, the plan, and the people on the ground. It hardly seemed a fair division of labor. Perhaps it was time to find a replacement Alex, someone with the skills and the tenacity and the drive to bring their ideas to fruition on the outside.

Which brought him around to Jackson Lee.

Alex had a moment’s warning when he heard the lock click over. Other than himself, only his partner had access to this office. He sighed.

Thomas leaned against the jamb. “Thought I might find you here. Left them alone, did you?”

Alex pursed his lips and nodded, unrepentant. He’d made his views clear. That Thomas had thought he’d talked him out of them was irrelevant.

Thomas came into the room and closed the door. He sat heavily on a chair placed at an angle to the desk. Alex leaned back in his own chair and hiked his feet up onto the desk, crossing them at the ankles. His friend was gathering his thoughts. He let him gather.

“My objections to this friend of hers, and to this visit, are not rooted in a desire to keep her isolated.” Thomas raised his pale regard to Alex. “She is both young and volatile—”

Alex’s mind flashed back to the scene he’d walked in on: Lena grinning up at Jackson, green eyes shining and full of mischief, legs wrapped around his waist. He forced the memory away. “Do you think I haven’t taken that into consideration?”

“Let me finish, please.” Thomas’s stare bored into him. He waited until Alex had settled back in the chair, fingers laced across his stomach, staring up at the ceiling as he listened. “I manage things here. I read, I listen, I balance and weigh, and then I make decisions. You make them happen. You cannot be reckless, even if someone else must suffer a little. The price to everyone is simply too high. You go down, we all go down. You can’t be replaced.”

The silence stretched between them.

“Are you done?” Alex asked the ceiling. He took Thomas’s silence as confirmation. He turned to look at his friend, shaking his head. “That’s bullshit. What we’ve done in the last twenty years is bigger than both of us. We’ve talked about this, Thom. Neither of us is irreplaceable. Give Lee half a year, and he can handle most of what I do.”

The kid had the skills. Short of Thomas and Alex, and now Lena, Jackson was the strongest Spark the Ward School had seen and a gifted young agent. He was also pretty compromised when it came to Lena. He said all the right things, but Alex would be shocked if he could extricate himself from their dalliance.

Like you’d be able to?
He gritted his teeth at the taunting thought.

Perhaps it would be best for everyone to separate Lena and Jackson, train him, and let him take over Fort Nevada’s interests in Zone Three. He’d already made the offer to Jackson earlier in the corridor. In a moment of frustration that admittedly had little to do with the kid, he’d asked the kid why he was so comfortable remaining behind and babysitting at the Fort. What had happened to the kid he’d met in the cafeteria, the one chomping at the bit for a chance to prove himself out in the world?

Lee’s face had been a study in discomfort. He knew his responsibilities and his role, but she captivated him with her attention.

Alex had made him a promise. If Jackson could keep his distance and help Lena realize her importance to them all, then he would be assigned to Azcon to train with Alex. She would be free to focus on her lessons and her vengeance. Jackson would get the training and the experience he desperately wanted. Alex would get the skilled junior partner he had needed since Erika had been sent to Zone Six. A real partner, one whom he could train to take over the operations in Azcon in anticipation of the day Alex moved on to their next target Zone.

He could use a partner who was one of them. He was tired of looking over his shoulder. He had his people in the city, but they had other assignments and he expected them to keep their focus where it belonged. This thing with Merritt, the Junior Director of Council Security, served as a reminder that he needed someone to watch his back.

Alex and Merritt were both under the Councilor’s consideration for the newly empty position of Director. Everyone in the inner sanctum knew Alex had a foot up simply because the Councilor had particular tastes and Alex was prettier. Merritt was looking for anything he could use against Alex.

He rolled his eyes at the thought and tipped his head to look at his friend again.

Thomas was still, except for one finger tapping on his thigh, likely as busy wrestling his thoughts as Alex had been. Finally, he leaned forward and told Alex matter-of-factly, “Well, he’d look better doing it.”

Thomas loved to rib him about the youthful vanity he had indulged in so many years before, even more so since he had outgrown it. The memory made Alex wince.

He snorted. “Okay, see, now you’re just being mean. Don’t make me throw your ass in the sparring ring.”

Thomas laughed. “Maybe that’s what you need. It’s been a while.”

“It has. You done licking your wounds yet?”

“Ha!” Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Can you hear out of your left ear yet?”

Alex rubbed his ear in memory. That had been a shithead move. He told him so.

His friend shrugged and smiled. “It got you off me.”

“It almost got you killed.” Alex’s vision didn’t cloud with the red wash of fury often, but when it did, it could be hard to pull himself back into focus.

Thomas stood up. “I can take a drubbing, so long as you stay sharp.”

Alex could see the genuine worry. He sighed. “Thom—”

“No. It’s fine. I understand your motivation, and I even agree with it, to an extent. But she’s a new cog in the machine. I want to be certain it will still run smoothly before letting her run.”

“She’s not the only new cog.” He shook his head. “We need to get new people up there.” Thomas would understand his reference. Something was going on in the Council of Nine. Even as a member of the Council, Thomas had no idea who or what moved in the background. Their missing agents in Zone Four spoke of a consolidation of power there reminiscent of their own start twenty years ago here in Zone Five. He needed to be there. He needed to get a sense of it for himself. “I don’t like being blind. Not with Lucas back there. I can’t be sure what he knows.”

“I’m working on it.” Thomas cleared his throat. “With Jackson gone tonight, she’ll be on her own. Are you returning after taking the friend back to Azcon?”

“Not tonight, no. I need to go in and put in an appearance so my absence two days running won’t be as notable.” His lips twisted. If it hadn’t become crucial to the plan, he’d pull out of consideration for the Director’s position.

The mind-games and one-upmanship with Merritt, while something he might have once had fun with, were another distraction in the post-Lucas era of looking for answers before he knew the questions. However, Merritt had made it obvious that if he got the position they both wanted, he’d make sure Alex wasn’t assigned to the Council Meet delegation as Agent Liaison, which would scrap the original plan. It was Director of Councilor Security or nothing, and nothing wasn’t an option. They couldn’t wait.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.” Alex shrugged. “So have dinner with her. Answer her questions. Get to know her.
Her
, not your idea of her.”

“Oh, I’ve abandoned my idea of her,” Thomas said with a dry laugh. “And any notion of pursuing her myself. She’s just not my type.”

Alex raised his brow, a smile playing about his lips. As far as he knew, Thomas didn’t have a type. Like Alex himself, he availed himself of female company when and where he needed without the complications of emotional attachments.

“Really? Untapped power beyond words isn’t your type?”

Thomas cocked his head to the side. He pursed his lips. “I don’t know. There’s something off….”

“About Lena?” Alex winced internally at the sharp undertone in his own voice.

Before he could examine what made him feel so defensive, Thomas shook his head. “No, no. My expectation, I suppose. We waited so long to find a woman like her, and then—”

“If you tell me she’s not as amazing as you thought one of them would be, I’ll call you a liar.” She was breathtakingly amazing. A huge pain-in-the-ass, yes, but she was also amazing. That was the problem.

“No. She is. Even damaged and prickly. She’s just more than I expected. You don’t know, because you’re not here, but we can feel her. All the time. Her energy, her EM field, the amount of Dust she carries within her, whatever it is, it pulls all the time. She’s almost too much.” Thomas’s eyes narrowed.

How like us fickle humans.

Alex’s lips quirked up, and he told Thomas what had occurred to him.

“Let me guess,” his friend answered, a teasing note back in his voice. “There’s a poem for that.”

Alex laughed, not caring what his friend thought of his love of Stephen Crane. They were familiar enough with each other’s foibles to be comfortable expressing them. “I was in the darkness,” he began, quoting the poem.

“I could not see my words

Nor the wishes of my heart.

Then suddenly there was a great light—”

• He stopped at the stanza break, grinning at Thomas for effect. “‘Let me into the darkness again.’ That’s what we do, you know. We stumble around until we get what we want, and then once we see exactly what it was we really wanted we’re terrified of it.”
  

“Ah,” Thomas said, “there he is, the warrior-poet I know and love. Take me to bed, Agent Reyes. Ravish me now.”

“You wish.”

“Ha. I know it breaks your heart, but you’re not my type, either.” Thomas laughed at him, shaking his head in wonder. “Seriously, why are you wasting your verse on me? That’s good stuff, man. You should be reciting poetry to women, not keeping it bottled up. But you haven’t. And you won’t.”

Alex was quiet. His face must have reflected the memory, because Thomas’s brows shot up.

“You didn’t? Really?”

“Shut up.”

“To Lena? I get the lure of the power, but really? She’s built like a boy.”