Embrace The Night (13 page)

Maybe she was ready to have a relationship now. And Theo was…well, her best friend. And he obviously—
obviously
—felt something for her. And he was handsome and very special, and—

Sage realized everyone was staring at her. Now her face was burning up and she quickly tried to corner her shattered thoughts. “Um…Ian Marck intercepted me on my way back from the restroom,” she said.

Apparently, they already knew this, because the expressions in the faces around the table didn’t change. “I didn’t know who he was until Simon told me,” she explained, gaining control of her scattered brain and focusing on the story. “And he didn’t pretend to know me, but he did ask me if I was a Corrigan from Falling Creek.”

“What did he say? Exactly?” Theo’s voice was hard, and she saw the same sort of darkness in his eyes that Simon’s had held. She felt the tautness of his body next to hers.

“He wasn’t rude, if that’s what you mean. He just asked me.” She caught Jade’s concerned gaze and suspected that her friend was thinking about the last time she’d come face-to-face with Ian Marck and his father. That was when she’d been brought back to Preston, the Stranger who’d imprisoned her for three years as his mistress.

“What else did he say?” Lou asked, his voice calm, his bespectacled eyes steady. Lots of people in Envy—in fact, most of them—thought he was more than a little crazy, with his conspiracy theories about the Strangers. But Sage knew how brilliant and razor-sharp he was, and how perceptive. Now he sat, waiting for her story without making assumptions or inserting his own opinions.

“He said, ‘You might want to let your friends know there’s information in Falling Creek.’” Sage remembered how serious his eyes had been, those intense blue ones. If she’d known he was Ian Marck, she might have been apprehensive, but the man she talked to hadn’t given her any reason to be concerned.

“I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Remington Truth. They might find something there.’ Then he sort of looked at me funny. ‘They’re looking for him. Trying to beat the Strangers, right?’”

“Opportunity there…” Lou murmured. Sage knew his mind was working because his wrinkled, veined hands drummed on the table. “‘Your friends.’ He obviously knows who we are. After what happened with Jade, he knows we aren’t supportive of the Strangers.”

“Raul hung his ass out to dry, practically turned him over to Preston,” Elliott said. “I doubt Ian’s hanging around his father anymore. If Raul’s even still alive.”

“Nice thing to do to a son,” said a clipped voice.

Sage realized Quent had been standing behind her for a while. The blond man didn’t look happy at all. His hair, which was usually neatly combed away from his forehead and temples, straggled around his face, which looked haggard.

No one responded to his comment, which hung there for a moment. Then, with exaggerated, precise movements, Quent pulled a chair over and sat down.

“Anyway,” Sage said, once again picking up the thread of the story, “I got the impression that he was trying to tell me something.”

“Obviously,” Theo said. He looked at Lou, and Sage could almost hear the sizzle in the air as their thoughts raced, connected, and swirled together. The fact that they were twins left them often following the same train of thought, usually ending up at the same location and conclusion.

“If there’s a clue to Remington Truth in Falling Creek, we should check it out,” said Lou.

“He’s a bounty hunter,” Theo added. “He kidnapped Jade and was working with Preston. Why would he want to help us find Truth?”

Elliott shrugged his broad shoulders and Sage saw him exchange glances with Jade. “He cared about a girl called Allie enough to risk bringing me there against the will of the Strangers,” Elliott said. “Maybe now that he and Raul have parted ways, he’s rethought his position.”

“Or maybe it’s a trick,” Theo said.

“Maybe it is. But we should check it out anyway. And besides,” Lou said, “Falling Creek would be a good place for an NAP…and a member of the Resistance.”

“We can’t just show up in Falling Creek,” Theo said. “They’re fu—” He stopped and glanced down at Sage.

“You can say it,” she said, leaning forward on the table. The others who didn’t know about FC were watching with interest. “They’re strange. And weird. And very closed. Which is why it makes perfect sense for me to go.” She smiled, looking around at everyone.
At last…something to do outside of the computer lab.

“I’ll go with you,” Theo said immediately. “You’re right—we can’t just show up and expect them to allow us to join them. But they’ll let you in. Hell, they’ll welcome you back. The prodigal daughter returning home.” He looked immensely pleased with himself. “And you definitely can’t go alone.”

She definitely agreed with that. There was no way she was going alone.

“I think we do need to check it out,” Lou said. “And Sage is the obvious choice. You still have family there, and they’ll remember you. And aside from that, you know exactly what we’ve been doing with the NAPs and the network. You could set one up yourself.”

She nodded, her pulse faster and her mind racing. “I’ll tell them I’ve just decided to return home, that I’ve come to agree with their…philosophy.”

“Philosophy of what?” Elliott asked.

“The residents of Falling Creek live there in a sort of…well, commune. Compound. And they believe that the most important thing we need to do is to repopulate the human race,” Sage explained. Remembering growing up there sent a little nervous shiver through her, but she reminded herself she was older now. In control of herself and she knew what life was like beyond the walls of FC.

“So all they do is have orgies? I’m so there,” Fence said, then grinned as he took a big drink of beer.

Sage didn’t take offense. She’d heard worse, much worse. “I was only twelve when I left, so I don’t know all of the details,” she said. Although that was a little misleading, because she knew more than she’d let on. Or cared to think about. And the proper term was escaped, not left.

After all, she was being prepped for her own wedding. To a man thirty years her elder. Who already had five wives and twenty kids. Yes. He’d been doing his part to procreate.

No, she was definitely not going alone. In fact, she was going to go as a married woman.

“You can’t go, Theo,” Jade said.

Sage felt him tense next to her again and swivel to face Jade. He opened his mouth to speak, but Lou beat him to it. “She’s right, bro. You can’t. You’re too recognizable. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be fine,” Theo said, stubbornness…and maybe a little desperation rolling off him. “Sage can’t go alone.”

“No, she can’t go alone, but you can’t go with her. It’s too risky. Nor can Jade or Elliott. Or me,” Lou added firmly. “It’s got to be someone else.”

“Theo,” Sage said, putting her hand on his. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Don’t risk it.”

He squeezed her hand, hard enough that it almost hurt. “Maybe it’s too dangerous for you too.”

Sage shook her head. No, he wasn’t going to win that battle. “Theo.”

“I’ll go,” Fence said, sitting upright in his seat. His eyes were full of good humor.

Then Sage looked down the table at Simon, who’d said absolutely nothing since they sat back down. He was watching her, and as their eyes caught, a wave of trepidation…and something else…washed over his face. Then it settled into an expression of bald reluctance.

Before she realized it, Sage was speaking. “Simon’s going to go with me.”

“You going to fill me in on our plan for getting into Falling Creek?” Simon asked.

Sage looked over at him, her glorious hair caught up in a ponytail that rested as low on her neck as his own did. He exhaled slowly. He was in such deep shit.

She had to shade her eyes against the bright sun in order to look over and up at him. “I will. And I never did thank you for agreeing to go with me,” she said as they hiked.

“You didn’t leave me much choice.”

She smiled. “I know. That’s why I’m thanking you.”

She might be thanking him, but Theo Waxnicki was definitely not.

No, the Geek Squad had
not
been pleased when he realized how it was going down.

Simon felt some sympathy for the
vato
, so he’d drawn Dragon Boy aside for a little man to man. “You’re gonna have to trust that I know how to keep her safe. I will. I’ll bring her back in one piece.”

He’d met the other man’s furious eyes and bored into them with his own steady ones. He made them cold and hard, and full of warning, and hoped Theo would get the message that he was not to be messed with, and what he was capable of. No one would hurt Sage on his watch.

Simon could also have told Theo that he had absolutely no interest in Sage, that his own unbreakable personal code included never, ever poaching on a friend’s—or boss’s—woman, and that he’d been in even more tenuous situations in the past…but he didn’t. He thought it would be best not to even put the thought in the other guy’s mind.

Let Geek Squad simply worry about her safety, not also about her affections. In either case, she was in no danger.

In order to expedite the trip, Theo had driven Sage and Simon most of the way to Falling Creek in an old humvee. He and Elliott had stolen the truck from the Strangers a few weeks ago, and it had become the Resistance’s first official vehicle—kept hidden from prying eyes and used only when necessary. In this world, no one but Strangers had access to automobiles or fuel so they kept it under wraps so as not to draw attention to themselves.

Not that it made much difference, because what was left of the roads were fucked up so badly it was almost better to not to drive at all.

Jade preferred horseback, but she had a way with the wild mustangs and could capture them almost every time she needed one. Hiking was still the most common mode of transportation, since people didn’t travel around all that much. Danger from the
gangas
, decrepit buildings, and wild animals kept everyone cloistered in their settlements or small villages.

Which was why the communications network the Waxnickis were building was so important to tie the human race together.

The trip in the humvee had been horrendously bumpy and jarring—due partly to the speed at which Theo drove—and Simon was sure that Sage was going to puke at any given moment. She hadn’t, but she’d looked pretty pasty for most of it.

Driving through the overgrown, destroyed streets, towns, highways, and suburbs was still a surreal experience for Simon. Reminders of twenty-first-century America were everywhere—overgrown and cracked mall and theater parking lots, random letters of now-playing movies still hanging onto their signs like tenacious claws. But they were so few that he couldn’t figure out the crossword puzzle of the titles, except one that said IR N M N 2.

Iron Man 2
, a movie he’d actually seen, having slipped into a theater during his flight from Mancusi and East Los in an attempt to shake off his pursuers. A half-century ago, and not the best of choices considering its loud violence.

He had enough of that in real life.

After driving them more than forty miles, Theo had stopped in a large, thick forest that might once have been a park with neat pathways, bike trails, resting benches, swings and slides and a skateboard park. An old garbage can sat, rusted and covered with moss, next to a row of equally rusted cars and minivans. Picnic tables and decrepit outhouses sat amid tall grass and eager trees.

Simon and Sage would walk the rest of the way—about four miles—and approach FC on foot so as not to garner any added attention. Simon had turned and walked away while Theo was saying good-bye to Sage, trying not to think about the fact that he was going to be responsible for her—which meant constantly in her proximity—for at least a week.

Pinche.

But, hell, if he could resist the beautiful, insistent Florita’s bold attentions—even after she ordered him to help her with her dress (getting out of it, on more than one occasion), and when she slid into his bed one night after he’d had too many whiskeys—Simon knew he’d have no problem keeping his distance from the unassuming Sage.

He was on a job, and it wasn’t as if Sage was going to be sliding into his bed or even giving him languishing looks like Florita had. Yes, she was gorgeous. Yes, her smile made his heart go berserk. And, yes, she had a brain to go along with a killer body that was just the slightest bit klutzy…But she’d never look twice at the likes of him.

Especially when she had buff, brilliant,
nice
Dragon Boy waiting for her.

Especially if she ever learned who he really was.

Simon looked at her, realizing she’d never answered his question. “So. Falling Creek. What do I need to know that I don’t already?”

She nodded and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. She’d gone for almost a mile without tripping. If she were Florita, she’d trip on purpose, just so she could brush up against him, maybe grab a handful of ass. “After the Change, there was a big argument about how to reinstate humanity, that we needed to repopulate the earth with humans. After all, the race had nearly been wiped out.”

“Not just from the earthquakes and storms,” Simon said, scanning the area of ghost-towned, overgrown subdivisions. Listening. “But some sort of disease or epidemic?”

“No one’s sure what caused it. Lou and Theo were there when it happened, so what I know comes from them. They said that about three days after the Change, people just started dying for no apparent reason. Either something was in the air, some sort of poison or gas was released during the Change or something…but whatever it was, some people who survived the cataclysmic events didn’t make it.”

“Obviously a few did.”

“But not many. They think more people died from the poison than the actual Change,” Sage told him. “Anyway, in Envy, there were two brothers, Robert and Kevin Corrigan. They were friends with a guy named Marck—Raul Marck’s father, I think. They survived the Change and believed that nothing was more important than to procreate and repopulate. I guess they were afraid another epidemic might happen and wipe out the rest of them. Everyone agreed, but most people didn’t subscribe to their ideas of breeding schedules and actually regimenting the process. Some people were more interested in making sure we had food and shelter.”