The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (2 page)

Sadie waved his question—and his hand—away,
dodging his touch. “What happened with the ambulance? And the
bomb?”

“Well, the military guys who showed up
dropped the bomb, obviously, and it nearly knocked us right off the
road,” Keith explained. “The backdraft picked up the tail end of
the ambulance and dumped it back down, and Dominic managed to keep
us on all six wheels through some seriously masterful driving. I
think you hit your head on one of the cabinets during that and got
knocked out. Cade had her baby while we were on the road, and Derek
treated you once he wasn’t tied up with her and the child.”

“Was Jude hurt?” Sadie asked. “Is he
okay?”

“Jude is fine,” Keith said. “He’s been
worried about you. It was all I could do to get him to leave your
bedside for a couple of hours and come downstairs to eat and get
some sleep.” He smiled and added, “You have a very lovely
brother.”

“Lovely?” Sadie repeated.

Keith’s cheeks flushed. “Lov
ing
,” he
said, correcting himself with visible embarrassment. “He’s been
glued to you ever since we got here.” Sadie narrowed her eyes and
didn’t respond. She slipped past him and descended the stairs to
look for her brother.

Sadie found Jude lying on his back on the
black leather couch in the living room, eyes closed, face relaxed
in sleep. He had one arm flung above his head, the other draped
across his stomach. His dark hair was a mess, tangled and knotted
from lack of brushing and probably from him running his hands
through it like he did whenever he was worried. He’d removed most
of his weapons, which were lying within easy reach on the coffee
table in front of the couch, though he still wore his boots. Sadie
reached out to wake him, but when she saw the dark circles under
his eyes, she pulled her hand back. Their long-held roles had been
reversed: Sadie, the one who usually went without sleep for days on
end in her efforts to protect her brother, was well rested, while
Jude lay on the couch looking like he’d been two seconds away from
collapsing when he’d been put there.

“I’m glad you made him get some sleep,” Sadie
said to Keith, who had followed her down the stairs and was lurking
at the bottom, his hand resting on the bannister. “He looks like he
was about to wear himself out.”

“I think he might have been.” Keith moved
away from the stairs and to the coffee table, where he picked up a
heavy black flashlight from the jumble of supplies there, and
gestured to her. “Come on, let’s step into the kitchen so we don’t
wake him up.”

Sadie followed him down a short hallway and
through a swinging door into what looked to have been a
well-appointed kitchen. The room had been ransacked; the once-shiny
cherry wood cabinets all hung open, their shelves bare, the
stainless steel refrigerator and freezer doors wide open. The
counters were covered in a thin film of dust and grime, and the
floors were tracked with dried mud, dirt, and blood. Sadie wrinkled
her nose at the dirtiness of the kitchen, and Keith chuckled.

“I know, right?” he said. “This was how we
found the place. It wasn’t in good shape compared to the houses in
Woodside, but we haven’t had time to clean anything yet. Not sure
it’s worth the effort, since I don’t think we’re going to be here
much longer.”

There was a bar stool near the island at the
center of the kitchen, and Sadie climbed onto it. She rested her
elbows against the edge of the grimy counter to avoid staining her
long-sleeved t-shirt any more than necessary and asked, “What makes
you say that?”

“Brandt’s been taken captive, by all
appearances by the United States military, and Cade is hell-bent on
going out to find him,” Keith explained. He set the flashlight on
the island counter, balancing it onto its end so the beam shone
onto the ceiling and reflected back, casting a dim, whitish glow
over the room. “I suppose we’re going to ignore the fact that we
have
no
idea where he’s been taken to or where to start
looking.”

Sadie shrugged. “People have been found with
less information to go on, you know. And we’ve actually got a good
lead on where to start. The military took him, so we can assume it
was to military bases or installations. We can eliminate the ones
we know were destroyed or compromised. That will help us narrow
down the possibilities to the operational ones.”

“Yeah, but none of us has the knowledge of
the current status of every single military base in the continental
United States,” Keith pointed out. “It’s a fool’s errand. He’s long
gone. Hell, he’s probably dead already.”

“Don’t let Cade hear you say that,” a voice
behind Sadie said. She twisted around to see Isaac stepping through
the kitchen door, looking tired yet upbeat. “She’ll kick your ass
right out the back door.”

“Literally,” Keith said.

Isaac looked Sadie over, assessing her
current state of health. She gave him a tight, crooked smile, even
as she wished he wouldn’t. She hated the perception that, since
she’d been hurt, she was something to hover over and worry about.
There were more important things to be concerned with on their
plates.

“I see you’re up and about,” he commented.
“How’s your head?”

Sadie sighed. “It hurts,” she said with a
nonchalant shrug. “I’ve had worse pains. I can live with it. A
little aspirin and I’ll be good as new.”

“Good,” Isaac said. “Your brother has been
worried.”

“So I’ve heard,” Sadie said.

“He’s been chasing Derek around with a
notepad trying to ask him questions since we got here,” Isaac said.
Sadie could picture that, and she bit the inside of her cheek to
keep from laughing. “He’s managed to kill a pen already. We had to
scrounge up another one for him earlier today.”

“How is Cade?” Keith spoke up. He had a smile
on his own face at Isaac’s comments about Jude. When he noticed her
looking, he erased it and schooled his features into a neutral,
somber expression. Sadie raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t look at
her again.

Curiouser and curiouser,
she
thought.

“She’s fine, considering she pushed out a
baby,” Isaac answered. “A little girl that she’s named Olivia,” he
said before Sadie could ask the question that sprang to the tip of
her tongue. “Now that she’s actually
had
Olivia, though,
she’s all gung-ho to head out and find Brandt. Derek is trying to
get her to wait a week or three before going out on a mission
that’s going to involve so much physical effort.”

“Is she listening to him?” Sadie asked.

Isaac snorted. “What do you think? It’s Cade.
She never listens to anybody unless they’re telling her what she
wants to hear.”

“So what are you going to do?” Sadie asked.
“Tie her down to a bed for three weeks until she’s healthy enough
to go after him?”

“Wish I could, but she’d find a way to
escape,” Isaac said. He folded his arms over his chest, leaning
against the edge of the counter beside Sadie. “She’s going to go,
and that means some of us will have to go with her.”

“Which of us are going to go?” Sadie
asked.

“That’s something we’re going to have to
discuss,” Isaac said. “Not right now, though. How about for now, we
get you something to eat and drink, and then I can take you
upstairs and let Derek check on your head wound? Maybe we can get
that aspirin you need and have this whole problem nipped in the
bud.”

Sadie nodded absently. She slid off the stool
to follow Isaac to the stairs, already planning and plotting,
because she had every intention of going with Cade, no matter
what.

To say that
Cade was angry would have been an understatement of epic
proportions. She’d slid beyond angry and straight into furious.
Despite the pain and the soreness she felt, despite the exhaustion
that nibbled at the edges of her consciousness, she was two seconds
away from coming off the bed Derek and Isaac had put her in and
tearing the world a new one.

The target of Cade’s wrath stood at the foot
of the bed, his arms folded over his chest. She could imagine that,
at any moment, Derek would start tapping his foot with impatience,
but she didn’t care. She was too furious to give a shit.

The ticking clock on the wall was the only
sound in the room. She glared at Derek, struggling to hold her
tongue while they waited for the conversation’s third party to
return. Just when she began to wonder if she would burst, the thump
of boots walking down the hall reached her ears, and Isaac stepped
into the room.

“Sadie’s awake, and she needs aspirin,” he
said, pushing the bedroom door partially closed. Derek crossed the
room and dug into his medical kit for the requested medication.
Once he had it, he passed it to Isaac, who gave it to the young
woman out in the hall. He shut the door and cast a glance at the
swaddled infant on the bed beside Cade, her hand resting
protectively on the sleeping baby.

“Where were we?” he said, his voice low.

“I believe Derek was telling us why I can’t
go find my husband and save him from the fucking United States
government!” Cade snapped. “And
I
was telling him why he can
take that explanation and shove it up his ass!”

“Hey, that isn’t fair,” Isaac said. “Derek is
only looking out for your health and the baby’s health.
He’s
got to be concerned about this, because
you
sure as hell
don’t seem to be.”

“I’m concerned about my health,” Cade
protested, resisting the urge to slap him.
He’s a friend, and
he’s worried, that’s all,
she reminded herself. She took a
couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down, but it was in vain.
Nothing was going to calm her down when she was this far gone. “I’m
also concerned about the state of
Brandt’s
health,” she
continued. “What if he’s dying? What if he’s
dead?
We don’t
know what sort of condition he was in when they took him and—”

“If they wanted him dead, he’d already be
dead, Cade,” Derek pointed out. “They wouldn’t have taken him alive
if they hadn’t wanted him to stay that way.”

“They shouldn’t have taken him to
begin
with!
” Cade said, too loudly. The baby, Olivia, stirred and
made a whining sound. Cade picked her up and cradled her to her
chest. The next time she spoke, she lowered her voice. “I want to
know why.
Why
did they take him? What the hell did they need
him for? And
where
did they take him?”

“We’ll get Dominic in here, and he can tell
us everything he saw,” Derek said in a soothing tone that made Cade
want to claw his eyes out with her blunt fingernails. “In the
meantime, you should be resting. Put aside this idea of going after
him and—”

“
I’m. Going. After. Him,
” Cade said
emphatically. The idea of
not
going after her husband
infuriated her, and she clenched her fists and tried to muster all
the authority she’d wielded in the IDF to make the two men listen
to her. “You’re not going to change my mind, so stop trying. You
can either help me and be part of the solution, or you can try to
stop me and be part of the problem. One way or the other, you’re
going to keep out of my fucking way.”

“Cade…”

“Do
not
use that fucking tone with me,
or so help me God, I’ll turn you inside out and shit on your
organs.”

“Colorful,” Isaac commented.

“So will you help me or not?” she asked
Derek, ignoring Isaac. “Because if not, I’d like to know now so I
can plan accordingly.”

“Why are you so insistent on going after
Brandt?” Isaac asked. His voice was gentle, inquisitive,
non-judgmental, and Cade was grateful for it. “I mean, I understand
that he’s your husband, but we don’t have the means or the
knowledge to track down his location. It’d be the literal needle in
the haystack.”

Cade sighed. “Atlanta,” she said, like that
explained everything. When both men continued to stare at her
blankly, she elaborated. “Earlier this year, when I was taken to
Atlanta by Alicia’s people, Brandt came after me. It didn’t matter
that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. It didn’t
matter that he had no idea where in Atlanta I’d been taken. He did
it anyway. And now that he’s in the same situation, I can’t
not
try to help him, even if that means wandering all over
the United States to find him.”

“Which hopefully won’t be necessary,” Isaac
said. “What about your baby? You can’t take her with you.”

“No, I can’t,” Cade agreed. “That’s a hurdle
we’re going to have to cross when we get to it. In the meantime,
it’d probably be best if no one pissed me off any more than I
already am. I’m tired, cranky, and liable to blow a gasket.”

“We most assuredly don’t need any gasket
blowing,” Isaac remarked.

Derek was still staring at her, and she
arched an eyebrow in silent challenge. “I can’t go along with this,
not willingly. There’s no way your health is where it needs to be
for you to go off and do something like this.”

“Before all the shit hit the fan, the blasted
hospitals were sending new moms home on practically the same day
they birthed their babies!” Cade argued.

“True, but that was before, when we had
access to far better medical care than we do now,” Derek said.

“Come on, Derek, there’s got to be
something
you can do to help her,” Isaac said.

Derek pointed a finger at him, giving him a
warning glare that was in no way intimidating. “Not you too.” He
turned his attention back to Cade. “Two weeks,” he requested.
“That’s all I’m asking for. Two weeks.”

“What if Brandt doesn’t have two weeks?” Cade
asked.

“Then he’s going to have to cope,” Derek
said. “Physically, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out in
such circumstances, not until I’ve made sure you’re okay. I think
two weeks will be enough time for me to verify that. In the
meantime, we can use those two weeks to come up with a plan and
prepare, because I’m not allowing you to run off half-cocked.”