Sabin, A Seven Novel (2 page)

Though it’s been seven years, the memory slams me as I enter the silent room. The only perceptible sound is the soft tapping of fingers on glass as commands are given to the complink. Images flash across the dozens of screens that cover every square inch of wall space, and then some. I do a thorough scan of each screen, processing what I can.

“How did it go?” Rafe, my second in command, asks.

“How the hell do you think it went?”

“That bad, huh?”

“If you count having my ass handed to me with my balls propped up right next to it on a silver platter bad, then yeah.”

“The hell? The Council wouldn’t listen, then?”

“Oh, they listened. Right before they ripped me to shreds. And Ali’yah was gloating. You should’ve seen her. I swear the bitch’s teeth have become pointed since, well, you know.” My fury is explosive. All I want to do is destroy this room, but that would be childish and futile. Instead, my hands fist in frustration.

“You look like you need a good fight.”

“You willing?” I ask.

“Only if you promise not to beat me to a pulp.”

Giving my head a shake, I say, “Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. I’m fucking pissed. They sit in their lofty positions and have no idea what we put ourselves through for their safety. Worse yet, they aren’t willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. I take that back, Rafe. I’ve got a raging hard on, I’m so damn furious. Mother fucking pricks.”

“Let’s get out of here. I need to kick your ass or we’ll all be paying the price for who knows how long.”

“As if.”

An hour and a half later, Rafe and I are dripping sweat, bloody and bruised. He was right about the ass kicking, only I was the one who did the kicking. Well, mostly. He got in his due. I look him up and down and then myself. We both look like hell.

“You keep looking at me like that, I’m gonna think you’re hitting on me,” he says.

“I should knock the shit out of you again for that.”

“I do believe you imagined I was Ali’yah the whole time,” he states. Rafe’s half right. Maybe three quarters.

“Yeah. Either her or the Council.”

“Sabin, don’t even bring them up. I don’t want your mood to go south again. My body couldn’t take it.” He flexes his arms, then stretches his back. Everything cracks into place.

“You sound like you’re in need of a few new joints, the way you creak.”

He grunts. “And you don’t? You must be deaf.”

I growl in response. He’s right. I feel like I’ve been dragged behind a truck for twenty miles on a gravel road at ninety miles per hour. And that was
before
we sparred. I drop my head back and work out some of the kinks in my neck. When I look up, Rafe stares at me.

“Sabin, you are my commanding officer first, and my friend second. You have to let this go. You did not fuck up, no matter what they say. You can’t carry this on your shoulders.”

“You are wrong. We’re going to have this conversation one time, and then you and I are going to drop this and never refer to it again. I did fuck up. I should never have let Juliette out of my sight. I shouldn’t have taken Kade Hart so lightly. But I did. As leader of the mission, I call the shots and I royally fucked up. So now, it’s my responsibility to fix this.”

Rafe stops me. “No.
We
have to fix this. We are a team, remember?”

“Yes, but since I’m the one who gives the orders, it’s my responsibility and duty to make it right. I can’t put this on you or the others.”

Rafe doesn’t say a word for a bit. Then he offers up some advice. “You don’t like it when I contradict you, but I’m going to anyway. Yes, we are your responsibility. But dammit, we did the best with what we had to work with. We couldn’t tell Juliette a damn thing, Sabin, so that limited our capabilities. Our hands were tied. And then her ability to see us when we were transparent made it nearly impossible for us to do our jobs. You have to stop blaming yourself.”

“I can’t. If we had been better at monitoring their conversations, we would’ve known they were planning to leave. And
we are better
than that. I made a bad call, Rafe. I take the blame. Fully. Completely. Now we end this discussion. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“How are the Harts, since we’re on the topic?”

“Assimilated back into their life in Denver. Never missed a beat. You can see for yourself. Verus monitors them.”

“Excellent.”

“Question. And I don’t want to ruin a good moment. Did you ask the Council for more men?”

“Do you think I went in there only to get my ass chewed? Of course I asked. I’ve been asking ever since the League started this operation. It falls on deaf ears. Rafe, just between us, we have a troop of halfwits manning the Council. And it scares the piss out of me. Hell, you know Ali’yah. If she’s on it, then you can figure out the types that run the show. It’s disturbing.”

“How the fuck were you two ever married?”

“Beats the hell out of me. Now are we here to discuss my ex-wife, or did you have something else to tell me before I hit the shower? I have a lot on my plate that needs my attention before I get some sleep, and I’m half starved, too.”

“Right. I’ll catch you back in the security center.”

We part ways and I head to my quarters to shower and change. As the hot water soothes away my aches and pains, I can’t help but think the Council is right. I really did leave a gaping hole where Juliette and Kade Hart were concerned. Yes, Juliette had Judgment Day, the necklace, and they left Denver unexpectedly to go to the British Virgin Islands. Yes, Kade thought he was helping Juliette by getting rid of what they thought was only a troublesome piece of jewelry. But it’s not like we don’t have the power to ascertain these kinds of things. I could’ve executed a better plan, could have ordered the men to be more intrusive on their lives. But the truth of it was I didn’t want to. I wanted Juliette and Kade to carve out a piece of happiness and I wanted them to have their privacy. That was my monumental error. When they flew out of Denver I knew I was screwed. My plan changed from protecting them to finding them alive and hoping that damned necklace was still in their possession.

As luck—and not the good kind—would have it, we found them about forty-five minutes too late. Juliette had tossed Judgment Day into the Caribbean Sea. My men did a thorough search for it and found that it had already been moved. And then all hell broke loose.

Do you know how many times we’ve saved your ass from getting flayed open by the Shaurok?”

“I can’t answer that because I don’t even know what a Shaurok is.”

“That night that I covered your body, little girl, with mine. The night I told you not to walk home in the dark by yourself. Yeah that night, the night I took the beating for you, those were Shaurok. And they want your blood. In the worst way. And won’t stop until they have it. Oh, and don’t think just because you don’t have the necklace anymore they’ll forget. It doesn’t work that way.”

Juliette. I shake my head when I think of her. That girl has more moxie than any other person I’ve ever encountered doing this job. She never backed down from me. Ever.

Juliette slams her hand on the table. “I’m tired of your shit. You know? I’ve been running from these assholes for almost three years, and I have no idea who they are. I didn’t even know why they wanted me until now. Try putting yourself in my shoes. What would you have done, Mr. High and Mighty?”

Guilt rains down on me, like the water from the showerhead. I did her and Kade a huge disservice. By giving them more freedom, I actually almost got them killed. Slamming my palms against the solid surface of the shower wall, I growl. How long before my raging anger will dissipate? I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself. What’s worse is that she burrowed into my heart, into a place where I allow no one, and that makes it all the more painful. My last words to her roar back at me with a vengeance.

Juliette smacked me on the shoulder and asked, “When we leave, will we ever see you again?”

“You will. Kade, probably not since he could never pick up on us.”

Lies. I won’t ever allow her to see me again. Because I fucked up in too many ways. And to let her back in would be far too dangerous. She will be protected, but not by me. Not ever by me.

I scrape my face with calloused hands. For all I learned from the shit I’ve been through, little good did it do when it came to this case. Right now I feel like an adolescent trying to find his way. Cursing for the hundredth time, I pound my fists against the wall, bruising them further in the process. And I honestly don’t give a fuck. I have too many evil spirits roaming around in my brain that need to be purged the hell out of there. The sparring with Rafe and this shower were meant to cleanse me of this, but that certainly isn’t the case. I want to rip some heads off right now. And that bitch, Ali’yah. What the hell did I ever see in her? She used to look good, I guess, but was never good in bed. Hated sex, I think. God knows I tried with the she-devil. Now she’s nothing but a damn shrew. She ruined my life for too many years and she’s still fucking with me.

Pull your shit together. You don’t have room for this kind of thinking.

I turn the water off and shake off the excess as I step out. I really need to regroup here. I can’t face my team with this much turmoil going on in my head. That won’t set a good example at all.

Juliette and Kade. They must be kept safe. Always. And Judgment Day must be located. Whoever grabbed it from the sea must’ve been there the same time Juliette threw it overboard. Verus thought he had a lead, but it didn’t pan out. We’ve traced it all over the damn place … from the Caribbean back to the U.S. And then back to the Caribbean. It ended up in North Carolina for a while. Verus believes he has a new lead. He thinks whoever has it is a deep sea diver. He also believes the reason we’re having difficulties is because that individual keeps passing the damn thing around like a fucking toy.

Time to go to work, to pull my act together, and take the reins again. I need to stuff my sappy-assed self away and face the fact that we have a potential disaster facing us if we don’t get our hands on whoever has Judgment Day, and fast.

I plunge my aching arms into my shirt, and then tug on my pants. Pushing away all other thoughts, my mind focuses on what it needs to—finding Judgment Day. Once I’m dressed, I hurry back to the sec center where Rafe and Edge wait and Verus is on the complink.

“Let’s roll. Show me what you’ve got, Verus.”

Home. Or that’s what it’s supposed to be. The old, two-story structure, more unwelcoming now than ever, causes a sense of dread to rush through me as I pull my duffle bag out of the trunk. More than anything, I’d like to get back in the car and get the hell out of here. It’s like this every time I visit them. My parents complaining about everything from how awful I look to telling me I need to get a better job. Some things never change.

When I was young, life with them sucked, for lack of a better word. I didn’t recognize it then because I assumed all parents were like that. Wrong. They were ancient compared to all the other moms and dads. And I was bullied, not specifically because of that, but because of the way they dressed me and forced me to wear my hair. I was their little accident, their mistake. My arrival threw a monkey wrench in their carefully planned out retirement. Suddenly, they were two fifty-year-olds with an infant. My sisters are twenty-five and twenty-three years older than I am. They clearly did not want me. So they pulled all their old baby items out of the attic, things they should have thrown away years before, and dressed me in them. As I grew older, I was given clothes that had been stored up there for decades. They were disgusting, and no matter how many times they were washed, that musty mothball odor clung to them like glue. But Mom refused to buy new ones, saying they couldn’t afford it. The kids in school didn’t whisper about me; they made fun of me to my face. I don’t think I had a day in school where I didn’t suffer some sort of nasty humiliation.

Serena, you stink.

Serena, where did you get
that
outfit?

What hole did you crawl out of, Serena?

Has anyone ever told you how ugly you are? Who’s your date to the prom, Frankenstein?

“Remind me not to shop where you do—Clothes
Aren’t
Us!