Beyond Addiction (10 page)

Her heart pounded as the dust clouds resolved into two distinct trails, coming in fast and hard.

Hawk’s hands flexed on the wheel as he angled the car to the right, skimming past their pursuers as gunfire echoed over the roar of the engines. Metal dinged, and Trix had only a moment to realize they were bullets before the back windshield shattered above her head.

“Get
down
,” Finn roared as the car lurched again. He turned as if to shoot out the back windshield, but Hawk made a sharp turn, slamming them both against the side of the vehicle. The shiny black car behind them skidded, trying to follow, gravel and dirt pinging skyward in a huge cloud as the wheels lost traction.

The car behind flipped in a cacophony of crunching metal and shattering glass. Hawk let out a short whoop, but his satisfaction died when the second car sped out of the dust, quickly closing the distance between them.

“Can you get a shot off on this motherfucker?” he asked tersely.

Finn rolled down his window and twisted to lean out, ignoring the wind whipping at his hair and clothes. Gunfire erupted behind Trix, and she ducked down in the seat. She wanted to drag Finn back in along with her, but he only grunted when Hawk swerved again, then returned fire.

She leaned up and caught a glimpse of the passenger and back seats loaded with armed gunmen. There were too many of Beckett’s men pursuing them for them to win a firefight—

—which meant Hawk had to outmaneuver them.

“I thought you were a bunch of gearheads,” she muttered. “Fucking
drive
.”

Hawk grunted. “Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“Grab the wheel.”

Finn lunged back into the car and seized the steering wheel. Hawk reached down into the front floorboard and hauled up a massive weapon, something that looked like a two-foot metal tube with handles fused to the sides. He slid a smaller canister inside it, casting a glance her way.

“Keep your head down,” was all he said before swinging out the window and lifting the tube to rest on his shoulder.

It looked like the kind of thing that would be loud, but it fired with little more than a whistle. Trix uncovered her ears and peered through the ruined window in time to see the projectile make contact with the second car.

It
exploded
, raining fire and shrapnel on the desert.

Finn bit off a curse and gripped the wheel until his knuckles stood out, stark and white. “You’re a crazy motherfucker.”

“I know.” Hawk slid back into the car and reclaimed both the gas pedal and the wheel.

But the relative peace of the moment fractured with a grinding slam as a third car sideswiped them and sent Hawk’s car spinning. The gun flew out of Trix’s hand, and she scrambled for it as the car whirled in dizzying circles.

Shots fired, and the window above her head exploded. Glass rained down on her as Finn swore again. The car shuddered through another impact, metal screeching against metal.

Trix lifted her head. The other car was close, close enough to reach out and touch. Instead, she raised her weapon and fired off a shot at the driver. It found its mark, snapping his head to one side as the car careened out of control. It went reeling, scraping in two full revolutions through the dirt before crashing into a boulder.

Hawk straightened the car and met Trix’s gaze in the rearview mirror briefly before altering their course, cutting slightly back toward where Eden rose in the distance, its tallest towers reflecting the light above its pristine walls. “We’re almost to the border.”

Trix released the breath she’d been holding, but it came out on a sob. “Good.” Her gun hit the seat with a thump, and she rubbed her shaking hands over her face. “Maybe we can—”

The sound of engines rose again, sending her heart lurching painfully into her throat. But these were motorcycles, not cars, sunlight glinting off chrome as they formed a line between Hawk’s car and the edge of Sector Four.

Hawk tensed, easing off the gas as they coasted toward the wide, pitted road that marked the official boundary between sectors. “Friend or foe?”

“I—I don’t...” Then one of the riders pulled off his helmet, and her heart dropped out of her throat and into her stomach. “Mad.”

The car hadn’t even stopped when she pushed at the back door. It swung open with an angry creak, dented and hanging from its hinges, but Trix ignored it, ignored everything as she tumbled out and ran toward the line of bikes.

Mad met her halfway, catching her against his chest in a rough hug. “Hey, sweetheart,” he murmured, turning them to put his body between her and Hawk’s car. “I got you. You’re home now.”

She clung to him, desperate to ground herself against the adrenaline-fueled rush of relief. “We ran, but Beckett—Jesus, I didn’t know if we’d make it—” Her voice broke, and she shook her head and kept babbling. “And oh my
God
, Zan. Tell me he’s okay. Please.”

“Zan’s okay,” he said quietly, edging her toward the bikes. “Beckett lifted the embargo, and Dallas’s regen tech got there in time.”

The words sent a chill up her spine, and she jerked back. “Beckett tried to
kill
us.”

Gravel crunched behind them, and Mad spun, drawing his gun so fast Hawk froze mid-step, slowly holding both hands out to his side. “I just gave the lady a ride.”

“Stop it.” Trix pushed at Mad’s arm, driving the barrel of the gun toward the ground. “He helped us get here, me and Finn.” She gestured toward the car, but Finn was still sitting in the passenger seat, the door ajar—

His face deathly pale.

He met her eyes and worked for a smile. He shoved the door wide and climbed out of the car only to crumple to his knees, and the last thing she saw before he hit the ground was the blood blooming across the front of his shirt.

The first thing Dr. Dylan Jordan did was fill a syringe with enough potassium chloride to stop a fucking elephant’s heart.

He didn’t use it, but it was there, within easy grasp, and its mere presence made him feel better about digging a bullet out of a man he’d much rather kill.

“Why are we saving him?”

Adrian Maddox could move silently when he wanted to, that much was certain. Dylan tilted his head without looking up. “Because he brought Trix back.”

Mad eased the door shut and crossed to the opposite side of the bed. “How do we know he didn’t take her in the first place?”

“You saw her,” Dylan answered absently as he reached for a pair of forceps. “Did she look like a woman who was scared of him?”

“No.” It came out grudgingly, and Mad crouched down to put himself on eye level with Dylan. “But we both know that doesn’t prove a damn thing. Just means it’ll hurt more when he betrays her.”

Such a clever, beautiful,
vengeful
man. “Someone else might buy that...but I’m not someone else,” he murmured. “You and I both know what this is really about.”

Of course Mad denied it. He would always deny it, because he wanted to be the sainted hero. “It’s about him posing a danger to the gang. It’s about the people he could hurt.”

It was about Jade, pure and simple, and the fact that Finn had been the one to hand her the drugs that had nearly killed her. Dylan embraced the knowledge, because owning it was the one thing that could keep him from lunging for that deadly syringe.

“Say we let him die,” he mused aloud. “What then?”

Mad’s gaze held a new edge, a darkness that had been there since the night he’d wound up trapped in that cave-in. “Then the people we care about are safer.”

“Are they, Adrian? Or would it just make you feel
good
?”

“They’re safer,” Mad insisted, but after another heartbeat he squeezed his eyes shut with a whispered curse. “And I want him dead. I want him dead before he has a chance to hurt Trix. I want him dead before Jade has to look at him and remember what happened to her every time he drugged her. I want him dead.”

Satisfied, Dylan confessed, “So do I.”

“Then
why
?” Mad rose abruptly and paced away. “Why save him?”

The answer was simple, visceral. All-consuming. “Control.”

“Control? Of what?”

“Of myself.” Dylan stripped off his gloves and picked up the syringe. “Potassium chloride. A high enough dose results in hyperkalemia and disrupts cardiac muscle function, resulting in fatal arrhythmia. I’m told it burns like a motherfucker going in, too. Real bad way to go.” He set it down again, closer than before. “I have it here to remind myself—I could use it, but I won’t. Control.”

Mad’s gaze locked on the syringe, his brow furrowing. “You already had the needle ready.”

Dylan allowed himself a small smile. “It isn’t much of a test of my self-control otherwise, is it?”

“No.” Mad resumed his pacing, prowling like a wild creature trapped in a too-small pen. “You care. I wasn’t sure before, but you wouldn’t be this pissed if you didn’t...care.”

He cared too much. It had dragged him to the very edge of darkness, left him staring into an abyss so deep and hopeless that sometimes he thought death was the only escape. But he couldn’t seem to stop, so he’d embraced that, too.

Control.

He put on a fresh pair of gloves and nudged the box toward Mad. “Help me dig this goddamn bullet out of him, and we’ll continue the conversation over drinks. O’Kane’s best, perhaps? I think he owes me.”

Mad caught his wrist, strong fingers burning against his skin. “And if he gets out of that bed and hurts the people we care about?”

“Then we’ll deal with it.” He kept his voice low, a soothing, secret whisper just for Mad. “Trust me.”

“Okay.” Mad’s thumb slid in a slow circle, the calloused pad scraping the inside of Dylan’s wrist. “I do. I have. You know that.”

The tiny touch sparked more than heat—warmth, curling low and spreading up to make his chest ache. Mad had always been tough, tough enough to survive, but there was a vulnerability in him, as well. Nothing as prosaic and delicate as fragility, but an openness. Holes in his armor, places where things touched him so deeply they could shatter him from the inside out.

Dylan almost shuddered, but he locked it down—just like everything else. “Put on the gloves and help me,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll go get that drink.”

It took Trix less than five minutes to learn what a treacherous, lying bastard Logan Beckett really was.

She stared at Dallas, dumbfounded. “He told you
what
?”

Dallas leaned back in his chair, the sprawling, easy posture belying the tension in his dark eyes. “That your friend out there got real pissed when he realized Fleming wasn’t planning to hand you over to him, so he put a bullet in his boss’s head and kidnapped you himself.”

It was just close enough to the truth to be not only plausible but probable. But she knew better. “Finn didn’t have anything to do with it. Fucking Beckett.”

“So who killed Fleming. Beckett?”

“No, he—” She dragged her hands through her hair with a frustrated groan. Nothing she said came out right, and it was all because Dallas didn’t know what had happened before, years ago, when she’d lived in Five. When she and Finn—

She drew in a deep breath. “Finn shot Fleming, that much is true. But none of the rest of it makes sense unless I start at the beginning.”

Dallas reached for a cigarette and took his time lighting the tip. It flared brightly as he snapped the lighter shut and studied her. “Lex knows some of it. When we brought Jade back, she told me you’d been hooked on the same shit and had survived. But I imagine she doesn’t know who gave it to you, or she wouldn’t have let Finn walk away in one piece.”

“No.” She had to swallow past the lump in her throat. “That was one thing Finn always kept me away from. Someone else gave it to me first, and then he didn’t exactly have a choice.”

The harsh edge of his expression softened, just a little. “So tell me the story, darling. From the beginning.”

The beginning. She’d suggested it, and she realized with a start that she didn’t even know what that meant. When she’d first met Finn? Or when she’d first set foot on that collision course?

She took another deep breath. “Things in Five are different. Messy. If you don’t have a factory job to inherit, you’re shit out of luck when it comes to earning straight. And women don’t have a lot of options either way. So if you’re young and pretty, you party with the dealers. Hope one of them likes you well enough to take you home, make you his girl.”

Dallas’s scowl returned. “Yeah. I’ve seen their kinds of parties.”

The girls all gave themselves different names, considered themselves different things—girlfriend, mistress. Wife. But it all boiled down to one thing, a transaction older than any other industry in Mac Fleming’s sad little sector.

“It’s a peculiar kind of prostitution,” she whispered. “They consider it uncivilized, trading sex for money. So the men in Five find other ways to pay their whores. They buy them clothes, a place to live. Give them drugs. It’s how things are done.”

“It’s shit,” Dallas said, voice quiet but vicious. “Civilized is giving a woman something she can spend. Something she can own. Anything else is about fear and control.”

A laugh bubbled up, and Trix pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth to hold it back. “No kidding.”

“So, Finn. What did he give you?”

A drink and a smile, the first bit of his grudging attention. Everyone knew about Finn, that he didn’t keep women, but his interest kept the worst of the predators at bay.

And then it had turned into something more.

She steeled her spine. “What do you want to hear, Dallas? That he drugged me? That he made me fuck him for my next fix? He did and he
didn’t
, because none of it was that simple.”

“I just want to hear the truth, Trix.” He stubbed his barely touched cigarette out in the ashtray and leaned forward. “Especially the ugly parts. Because lying won’t protect him, love. There’re a few dozen O’Kanes out there who will take him apart and put him back together inside out if they think he’ll hurt you.”

“I know.” She looked away. “Once I was addicted, it was like things spiraled out of control. Finn tried to get me clean, but it didn’t take. And then I caught Mac’s eye. So I left, and everyone in Five thought I was dead. Even Mac.” She couldn’t sit still anymore, so she rose out of her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t you get it? It was Dom. He convinced Mac to send his men after me, some sort of sick revenge thing.”