Beyond Jealousy (32 page)

They wrapped the pillar in silence, and Cruz secured it. Dallas was determined to send a message, but not at the cost of innocent bystanders' lives. The sheeting would limit the range of the blast, keep it focused to the pillar itself. No mess, and no mistakes.

They had already hit the third support column and were starting in on the fourth and final one when the muffled sound of gunshots died down above them.

Bren looked up and shook his head. "Took them long enough."

Longer than it should have, but Bren knew why as well as Cruz did. Dallas had no problem killing the men trying to infringe upon his territory, but he wouldn't take the easy path and tell himself he'd had no choice. When they brought this building down, Dallas would know who was in it and who wasn't--no accidents with wives or sisters or desperate children who'd been pressed into working.

They drilled the final holes, and Cruz reached for the explosives. "What do you figure Fleming will do when this place caves in?"

Bren snorted. "Pitch a hissy fit worthy of any cranky toddler."

"And when he's done kicking his heels on the floor?"

"Who the fuck knows? Come at us, probably. A crazy bastard like Fleming can only run the slow play so long before he needs a little blood-and-guts gratification."

It could mean a sector war--a
real
one, the kind of messy bloodshed that hadn't happened in years. That sort of battle would spill past the O'Kanes and Fleming's men, dragging everyone in both sectors into a fight that would end with one side's death, or with Eden coming down hard on all of them.

There was no safety in that option. Ace would be in the thick of it. Rachel, too, when it came down to it, though Cruz couldn't stand the idea of encouraging her back into the city. He needed them both where he could see them, touch them. Protect them.

"We could take care of that," he said, keeping his voice carefully casual. "It'd only take one bullet."

"Maybe, but without clear evidence that Fleming moved against us first, a strike like that would make the other sector leaders nervous. We can't have
everyone
against us." Bren leaned around the pillar with a serious look. "You've got to trust Dallas, man."

Cruz flexed his fingers and looked away, staring at the tangle of wires instead of his friend's face. "It's fucking terrifying, isn't it? Having to decide who's worthy of your loyalty?"

"At first. It gets easier."

Cruz managed a smile as he finished wiring up his side. "Can't get harder, I guess."

Bren barked out a laugh as he double-checked his detonator and secured it to the concrete. "Famous last words."

When they had wrapped the final charges, Bren zipped up both nearly empty bags and hoisted them onto his shoulder. They made their way back through the basement and up to the main floor.

Dallas stood in the center, arms draped over his chest, watching as Mad riffled through a crate of liquor bottles. He scowled when he caught sight of Bren and Cruz, jerking his head toward the exit. "I considered looting the place, but Nessa would stab me if I brought her the shitty grain they're using. Set the charges and let's get the fuck out."

"Yes, sir." Bren dragged the control box from one of the many pockets on his vest.

The moment he clicked the yellow arming button, an explosion rocked the floor beneath them.

Something had gone wrong. Cruz's brain tried to process the possibilities as the floor shuddered beneath them and his ears rang with the painful aftermath. Dust billowed up, damn near blinding him, too, but he was still alive, which meant all of the explosives couldn't have detonated--

The building kept shuddering. Kept groaning. Dallas staggered and Cruz lurched, landing painfully on his knees as he watched the far side of the floor crumble away, taking Mad with it.

Jas was already on his feet, running toward the crater and listing walls that used to be the rear right quadrant of the building. "Bren, what the fuck?"

Bren was just as fast. "I don't
know
! The detonator must have shorted out--"

Too much of the structure had gone down on top of Mad. Digging him out of the rubble from here would be hard. Doing it before the rest of the fuses blew--or Mac Fleming responded to the first one and swept down on them--would be fucking impossible.

His brain struggled to the realization, but his body was already shifting position. Up to his feet, stripping away his heavy gear because he had to
go
. "The tunnels! Lennox--move your ass."

Noah's bootfalls thudded behind him as Cruz sprinted out the door, around the corner to the access hatch set into the cracked pavement of the alley. They'd already removed the rusted bolts--just in case they needed an escape route--and shimmied the heavy steel plate loose. Cruz pried it up as he ruthlessly ordered his thoughts.

No room for panic. No room for any emotion but calm. He could find the closest point to the cave-in, open the secured door with Noah's help, and work from there. But he couldn't do it if his mind acknowledged the ticking clock, so he locked that away.

He had time. All the time in the world.

He jumped the last few rungs of the ladder down into the tunnel, ripping a light free of the pocket of his cargo pants as he landed. He'd committed the tunnel schematics to memory, more out of habit than anything else, and now he was damn glad he had.

One hundred meters due north, second branch to the left.

All the time in the world.

Noah started swearing before they reached the door--and its ominously dark panel. "The power supply's been disrupted."

"Can you open it?"

He bit off another curse and smacked the wall beside the panel. "These locks re-sequence when they lose power. I won't be able to override it again without cracking it, and brute force'll take twenty minutes. Minimum."

There was another way, a destructive last resort no one was supposed to know about. Cruz had learned about it during his training on Base, and employing it now would reveal exactly how much knowledge he possessed about Eden, the sectors...and everything that lay beneath them.

"Out of the way." He slapped his emergency light to the wall. Then he jerked a multi tool out of another pants pocket, flicked it open, and pried away the recessed plate beneath the panel.

A bevy of wires greeted him, a rainbow of colors oddly out of place in such a cold, sterile construct. Blue, red, green, yellow, white. Ace would probably have other names for them, prettier ones that would distract from the horror of the situation.

Cruz only had a blade.

One by one, he stripped away the plastic coating, keeping the wires carefully separated as he worked.

"No, you can't do that." Noah stopped just short of grabbing his wrist, but his hand hovered there. "You can't overload these. You think I haven't tried? You'll jam the damn lock for good."

Not if you did it right. Cruz rattled off the sequence he'd learned all those years ago, vaguely surprised by how easily it all came back to him. "White and blue to yellow. Yellow to red. Red to green. Any other combination won't work. It'll fry the circuit, but it'll disable the lock first."

Boots pounded toward him from the far end of the tunnel. "Why isn't this fucking thing open?"

Dallas. Noah answered him, repeating his caution about the danger of fucking around with the circuitry. Cruz blocked it all out as he held his breath and twisted the first wires together.

"Bren--"

"Shh." Bren cut off Dallas's question. "He knows what he's doing."

Dallas cut through Noah's protest with a curt noise, and put his trust--and Mad's life--in Cruz's hands. "Get him out of there."

Mad hated the dark.

He hated the silence of it, the emptiness. It wasn't natural. Outside, under the night sky, the world gave him a hundred subtle sources of sound and endless pinpricks of light. God had never intended for man to have to survive alone in the darkness.

He hadn't meant for man to survive underground, either. Mad could feel the weight of the earth pushing in around him, and not just because a few chunks of building had landed on him in the aftermath of the explosion.

Lucky. He'd been so, so lucky. The floor had crumbled and carried him down, but he'd managed to roll before the ceiling followed it. Trapped in claustrophobic darkness was still better than crushed to death, even with a body bruised and his head throbbing with the kind of pain that would have Doc in a panic.

If he ever saw Doc again.

If he ever saw
anyone
again.

He couldn't think in the dark. He couldn't breathe in it, either. That was the only sound left, the dim, faraway rasp of air flooding his lungs and rushing out, and it was probably his imagination that it felt thinner every time his lungs expanded.

"It's all right,
mi hijo
. We're going to get out of here."

No, no
they
weren't. But she sounded so confident every time she said it, because Adriana Rios had grown up as the daughter of the prophet, Sector One's adored, benevolent princess, and she refused to believe in a world where love didn't conquer all.

"Here." Something brushed the backs of his fingers, a phantom touch that crawled over his skin. "Squeeze my hand. Can you do that for Mommy?"

His hand would be larger than hers now. God, it almost had been then. He hadn't been thirteen years old in decades, but he'd never forget the shame of clutching at her hand like a little boy when he was old enough to be a man. Maybe if he'd been a better one, she would have walked out of that cramped cellar with him.

But he could feel her now. Hear her. Maybe that meant his time had run out. The first explosion must have been a misfire, but the next ones wouldn't be. There'd be no time to dig Mad out, and Bren or Jas or
someone
would do their fucking duty and drag Dallas to safety before it blew. The end was rushing toward Mad, and his mother had come to take him home.

The next rough voice dispelled that perversely comforting thought. "You treat him like a child, Adriana."

"I don't want you," Mad whispered, and he didn't care that he was talking to empty air. Sound filled the silence, whether it was the rasp of his own voice or the murmuring of ghosts.

But not this ghost. Not him.

Rubble crunched under boots, and Mad felt hot breath on his face. "Live or die," his grandfather whispered. "It isn't in human hands. Your fate is God's to decide."

God hadn't thrown Mad and his mother into a dark room. God hadn't held a gun to Mad's head, grinding it so hard against his temple he still had the scar, swearing to Adriana that he'd kill her son if she didn't convince him to slice off her finger.

Her fate had rested in the prophet's hands. In human hands.

Mad's fate rested in human hands, too--but not in his grandfather's. Not this time.

Rolling over meant a moment of dizziness, but Mad forced himself to his knees, and then his feet. Panic made his heart pound. Pain made his head swim. The bomb had to blow, any minute now, any second--

The blueprints Noah had flashed at him floated through his head. They'd considered coming in through the tunnels, at first, before discarding the plan as too complicated. But they were there, a way out, if he could just move his feet--

--if Dallas remembered the tunnels--

--if someone got there in time to open the doors--

"I'm not a Rios," he told the ghosts, ignoring the insanity of talking to them at all. The first step nearly sent him sprawling, but he found the wall and oriented himself, struggling to remember the path he had to take. Away from the explosion, away from the wreckage.

Toward his brothers.

He wasn't a Rios. Wasn't even a Maddox, though that was the name he'd taken as his own. He took step after staggering step because he knew Bren wouldn't have dragged Dallas away. Dallas wouldn't have let him.

Mad had faith. The door would open.

"You can do this." His mother's voice--calm, level. No hint of the terror she'd tried so damn hard to hide from her little boy.

The door would open.

He wiped sweat from his forehead, only to realize it was too sticky, too warm. Blood, and he could taste it on his lips when he wet them. Every step hurt. It would be easier to lie down and close his eyes.

But the door
would
open.

He reached the far side of the basement and slammed into it, sagged against it, pressing his forehead to the cool steel. If he had a light, if his head hadn't been swimming, he could have tried to pry the panel off this side, struggled to figure out some way to force it open.

All he could do now was believe. Put his faith in O'Kane hands.

Empty space opened up in front of him. Light flared, hurting his eyes, but he was already falling, not toward the light but away from it, dizzy and weightless--

Strong arms caught him, and Bren's familiar voice rumbled, "Fucking hell."

The light swung back, illuminating Dallas's face as the man dragged him down the tunnel, his growled words chasing Mad into a different kind of darkness. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Rachel woke to the sound of screams. Terrified, horror-stricken screams that raised goose bumps on her flesh and made her bolt upright in bed. "What the
fuck
is that?"

Cruz had snapped to instant alertness, but Ace was the one who rolled from the bed with a muffled curse, diving for his pants. "I knew I should have stayed with Doc."

Mad. Cruz had told them about the explosion and the resulting cave-in, but nothing he'd said would explain the barely human noises echoing through the walls. "Is he--?"

But Ace was already gone. Rachel reached for her discarded dress, dragged it over her head, and followed him.

Mad's room was only two doors down, a vast suite that encompassed almost as much space as Ace's did. The door to the hallway was hanging open, and Rachel could hear Ace's voice already.

"
Está bien, 'mano. Estas bien. Estas a salvo en el Sector Cuatro.
"

Mad answered in Spanish, the panicked, pleading words spilling from him so quickly that Rachel couldn't understand a single one.