State of Pursuit (16 page)

“Check it out,” I tell my team.

Wounded and exhausted, I let Uriah and Alexander lead the recon team around and inside the mansion, making sure there are no signs of Omega or unsavory individuals. The scouts report back, and Alexander gives the all-clear signal.

I cradle my aching wrist. It’s swollen, black and blue. Every step brings a throbbing sensation of pain. We pass the threshold of the front door. It’s cold inside. Musty, dusty. Dark. Rooms full of expensive, dusty furniture.
Two sets of stairwells separate from the main hall, leading to an ornate second level.

“Take Chris upstairs, into one of the bedrooms,” I say. “I’m going to need a medic.” I pause. “Or two.”

“Roger that, Commander,” Andrew replies.

“Manny, you tend to that shoulder,” I command.

He winces, but still offers a smile.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says.

“And Manny?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Thank you for getting us out of there,” I tell him. “You saved our lives.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and give him a warm hug. An exhausted hug. One filled with relief and gratitude and disbelief – yes, we’re still alive. Really. Manny smells like sweat and smoke and fuel. He gently returns the hug, then steps away.

“It was a pleasure, my girl,” he murmurs, watching the men haul Chris on the stretcher up the stairs. “Just make sure he wakes up.”

“I will,” I say.

I turn and follow Chris’s still form up the stairwell. After the record-breaking adrenaline of the last few hours, I feel like I’m coming down from an epic high. It’s like getting hit by a truck.

“Here is fine,” I say, motioning to a bedroom on the left. This must have been the master bedroom. There’s a huge bed, a massive dresser and closet, and the carpet is soft beneath my feet. Too soft. I feel like I’m ruining it.

They lay Chris on the bed. I take a seat on the edge and slip my fingers through his. He doesn’t twitch. He only breathes in and out. In and out. He hasn’t woken again since the helicopter went down.

I press a soft kiss against his forehead.

“Please, wake up,” I whisper. “I love you.”

At this point, my prayers are all I have left.

Chapter Twelve

“My brother isn’t big on romantic stuff,” Jeff Young says. “It’s kind of a wonder that he is the way he is with you.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” I reply. “I feel like he loves me, but I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff. He just…
is
.”

“Yeah, that’s Chris,” Jeff agrees, laughing. He’s such a good boy. Good looking, funny, caring, sympathetic. Where Chris is rough, Jeff is sweet, and where Chris won’t discuss things, Jeff opens right up. They are, in so many ways, like night and day. And yet they’re alike
.

“Do you think he cares?” I ask Jeff. I rest my hands on my knees. We’ve been in Sector 20 for two weeks now, and we’re about to roll out to the Chokepoint to face Omega’s five-million man army. Both of us are young, nervous and afraid
.

“Cares about what?” he replies
.

“About me. Do you think he really cares?”

“Come on, Cassidy. Of course he cares. He wouldn’t have made an effort to rescue you from the labor camp if he didn’t care,” he says. “He wouldn’t be here now.”

“I don’t want him to stay with me out of some kind of moral obligation to keep me safe,” I sigh. “I want him to want this.”

Jeff grins, and he takes both my hands in his
.

“Cassidy, my brother loves you,” he says. “He doesn’t say it, but he shows it. You and I both know that.”

I press my forehead against Jeff’s and take a deep breath
.

“If we get out of this alive,” I promise, “you and I are going to be besties.”

“We already are, Cassidy.” He kisses my cheek. “We’ve always been.”

I wake up suddenly, the memory slash dream ringing clearly in my brain. Jeff Young is dead. He’s no longer around for me to confide in. I close my eyes and burrow into the warmth of the pillow, the blankets soft around my shoulders. My wrist is wrapped in thick bandages. It’s painful, but necessary.

“Cassie.” I feel his breath on my neck before I feel his touch. “Hey, I know you’re awake.”

I open my eyes and look up, flat on my back. Chris is looking down at me. His face is weary, but he’s smiling. It’s a beautiful sight. His green eyes – those vibrant, electric green eyes – are ringed with pain and tiredness. But he’s awake. And alive.

“Chris!”

For the first time in
forever
, I explode with joy. I haven’t been this happy since I found my father earlier this year. I fling my arms around Chris’s neck and cry,
sobbing out of sheer relief and happiness. He presses his fingers against my waist and kisses my neck. “It’s okay,” he says. “Cassie, it’s okay. Don’t cry. Shhh.”

But when I pull away and study his face, there are tears in his eyes, too.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“War happened,” he replies. He gently brushes his lips across my cheeks, catching my tears with his thumbs. “You crazy girl. You shouldn’t have come all this way for me.”

“I wasn’t alone,” I reply, holding him tightly. I love the way it feels to be in his arms again. I feel safe. Whole. “Everyone here came of their own free will.”

“So you didn’t bribe anybody into it?” he smiles.

“Ha. No.” I kiss his forehead, his cheeks. “Oh, my God, Chris. I missed you. I was so worried. I thought you were dead.” I start to cry again. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He holds me close, rubbing comforting circles into the small of my back. “You’re amazing, you know that?” My head sinks into the pillow. He gazes at me with an incredibly gentle expression. “Why did you do this, Cassie? You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did.” I trace my finger along his jaw. “I love you. You came for me when I was imprisoned. It was my turn to come for you. I wasn’t going to let you die.”

“You should have.” Chris looks sad. “You put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

“That can’t be helped. Not anymore.”

“It can be helped if I have anything to do with it.”

“Well, you were a POW, and you didn’t have anything to do with it.” I laugh. “They voted me Commander. Can you believe that? Me. How weird is that?”

“Not weird at all,” Chris replies solemnly. “It’s always been in you.”

“Everyone that came with me,” I say, “are all here because they believe in you. They respect you. Because we need you
back
.”

“I’m here now.” He presses soft, lingering kisses along my shoulder. “What happened to your wrist?”

“I sprained it.”

“I can see that. How?”

“Bumpy helicopter rides. Always wear a seatbelt.”

He chuckles. “I’m sorry.” He kisses my fingers. “Cassie, how did you get me out of the Holding Center? I don’t remember anything.”

“Maybe we should cover that later,” I say, pulling his head down to mine. “Just kiss me.”

He laughs.

“Fair enough,” he agrees.

It’s a good agreement. The best one I’ve had in a long time.

Our wait at the rendezvous point can only last for so long. Eventually we will have to move on. I hope Derek shows up soon. The longer we wait here, the more of a chance Omega has of finding us.

Chris’s head is in my lap. We’re sitting in the couch in the back of the bedroom. His wounds have been tended to by the medics. He was suffering from a concussion, extensive bruising from the beatings and torture of Omega interrogation, malnutrition and extreme dehydration when Manny found him in the POW truck outside of the helicopter at the Holding Center. We’ve been at the rendezvous point for six hours, now. Most of the militia team is asleep. We’re exhausted, and most are wounded to one degree or another. If we want to have enough strength to make it back over the Tehachapi Mountains, this is a necessary rest.

“Tell me everything,” I encourage Chris, twisting his hair around my fingers.

“It’s not pleasant, Cassidy,” he replies.

“I think that’s obvious.” I dip my head down and kiss the tip of his nose. “I didn’t come all this way for you to
keep things from me. You don’t need to protect me anymore. Those days are over.”

He gazes up, capturing my hand.

“Yeah,” he says sadly. “I guess they are.” Silence hangs between us before he finally begins. “Back at the Chokepoint, when I sent you into the drainpipe with Jeff and Sophia,” he starts, “I
was
right behind you. It was just one of those things. I was shot in the shoulder. Here.” He pulls down the collar of his dark blue tee shirt. There’s the bright red scar of a recent wound. “It nailed me. I just couldn’t make it fast enough. I’m sorry.”

I stare at the ceiling.

One of the worst moments of my life was realizing that Chris wasn’t following me out of the battlefield – that I was returning to base without him. It was a nightmare.

“What about Max?” I ask softly.

Chris stayed behind to help Max, our resident explosive professional, after he had been wounded. Uriah abandoned both of them on the field. It’s for that reason I’ve had such a hard time forgiving Uriah for his cowardice. You could almost say that it was
his
fault that Chris was captured.

“Max is dead, Cassie,” Chris whispers. “There was nothing I could do.”

I close my eyes. Tears burn like acid in the back of my throat.

Goodbye, Max. You were a good man. You saved my life once
.

“I know,” Chris says, stroking his thumb across my hand. “I’m sorry. Believe me, nobody’s more sorry than I am.” He lets the horrible news sink in for a moment before continuing, “I was pretty banged up. All I know is that they didn’t kill me outright because they knew who I was. Harry gave orders to take me alive, if possible.” He shrugs. “Next thing I know, I’m beaten, knocked down, tied up and in a truck headed south. By the time I was halfway conscious, I was in a cell in the Holding Center. Ten by ten room, no windows, standard jail cell.” He sighs. “Harry’s motives for keeping me alive are a lot more personal than they are critical to Omega’s war effort.”

“He wanted revenge,” I state. “He always hated you for showing him up when we were camped in the mountains. He hated me, too.”

“No, I don’t think he hates you,” Chris replies. “I think he wanted you dead merely for the purpose of exacting revenge on me. He knew it would kill me if anything happened to you.”

“Why was he so obsessed?” I ask.

“Selfish pride,” he says. “Ego. Maybe a little bit of insanity.” He shrugs. “Does it matter? He interrogated me for a week on militia strategy and battle plans. I didn’t give him anything except false leads and nonsense. Nothing.”

“Of course you didn’t,” I smile. It’s a sad smile, though. “I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is,” he answers. “I think he realized I was worthless to him for information, but I still made good bait. That’s when he moved me to a different cell. I was in there for almost a week…I think. It’s hard to say.”

“Manny found you in the end,” I say. “He saw the POW transport truck on the tarmac. If it wasn’t for him, we never would have found you in time.”

“Harry was leaving?” Chris looks puzzled. “That son of a…he wasn’t kidding.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He kept talking about going ‘up north,’ to some Omega gathering,” he explains. “He was hoping to have both of us there. As trophies of war, maybe. The founders of the militia groups in the central valley? It might have scored him extra points with the high ranking Omega officers.”

“Up north?” I wonder. “I wonder where he was going?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “He was taking me with him? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you’re an egotistical sociopath,” I say. “You’re right. He was probably hoping to use both of us to earn brownie points. A public execution would have gotten him another promotion.” I slam my fist against the couch’s armrest. “I don’t understand. There’s got to be more to this picture than what we’re seeing. This isn’t right. It’s just…there must have been a good reason. More than just revenge.”

“I don’t know.” Chris nuzzles my waist, drawing me closer. “Thank you.”

“For…?”

“For being you,” he says. He sits up slowly, drawing me close to his chest. “There aren’t a lot of women that would do this for a man.”

“You’re not just any man.” I lean my cheek against his skin, listening to his steady heartbeat. “And this isn’t just any normal situation. This is war. And I love you, Chris. There wasn’t a question of
if
we could come for you. It was
when
.”

“I know,” he laughs. “Like I was saying. You’re one of a kind.”

He kisses me. Deeply, heavily. It’s a kiss of relief and desperation and hope – all of those things wrapped into
one. He gently squeezes my hips and I sit on my knees, my hands tangled in his hair.

“Cassie,” he says softly, cupping the back my head in his hand. “There’s something you need to know. I’d rather tell you now…”

“Tell me what?”

“Just-”

Someone knocks on the door. I bolt upright, flushed with color, breathing hard. Chris grins and pulls me back to him. I laugh softly and kiss his cheek one last time.