Again.
THERE WASN’T A BONE in Alex’s body that didn’t hurt. The fight with Dayne had left his arms weak, his legs even more unstable than they had been in the past few days. His shoulder was so sore that his arm hung limp and nearly useless. His head burned like fire and he’d sweated through the bandages and smacked it on something during the night’s adventure. It throbbed and felt as if it might burst through its bandages and explode. He couldn’t tell if that was why he had trouble focusing, or if it was the MS. He had been through hell for the past few days and he had trouble sorting out what was a symptom, what was fatigue and what was a normal casualty of the job. Not knowing made him crazy and he shook it off, trying to concentrate.
He fought the urge to doze off as he waited, and he knew it was only a few moments before he heard the engine of Brin’s SUV idling beside him, though it felt like hours. She parked, but left her engine running, came around and slid into the passenger side of the Porsche.
“Okay,” she said.
Alex nodded. He pulled a black box out from under his seat and placed it in his lap. It was simple, three switches and a few status lights. He flipped the first button and the lights flickered.
One light glowed amber, and the others flickered, then grew steady. Each was green, like the indica-tors on the receivers had been.
“They’ve found the signal,” he explained.
“You ready?”
“No, but do it and get it over with,” Brin said. Her eyes were dark, hovering somewhere between fear over what was to come, and anticipation. Alex nodded, closed his eyes and flipped the two switches.
For the first couple of seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Brin turned to look over her shoulder toward the building, started to speak and was cut short by a flash of light. There was no sound at first, then the explosion registered and the car shook. Brin screamed and Alex put an arm around her to steady her. They turned together and watched.
What looked like a pillar of light shot up the center of the building then, seconds after the initial blast, the other four charges went off. They weren’t exactly in sync, and it sounded like a string of giant, out-of-control firecrackers. There was no hint of sunrise on the horizon, so when the flash died, all that remained was a white cloud illuminated from within, and then, nothing.
“Wha—” Brin started to speak again, and it was that moment that a cloud of dust and silt began raining down on them. Another wave of energy washed over the Porsche and around it, blowing outward and shaking the windows. The small vehicle shuddered. Brin clutched at her armrest on the right and Alex’s thigh on the left until the moment passed.
It was hard to see out the windows more than a foot or so.
“Wait for the dust to clear,” Alex said. “It will be hard to breathe out there for a few minutes. As soon as we can see, we’ll go.”
“I’ll have to come back,” Brin said.
He stared at her again. “There’s nothing to come back to,” he said softly.
She turned to him, glaring. “I know that, Alex.
I’m sitting right here. I have to come back. I’m the manager of the research lab. If I just don’t show up, how is that going to look? When my people show up for work, and the building is gone, they’re going to be looking to me for guidance. Maybe you’ve seen this kind of thing too much. You sure don’t seem to see the people behind your actions—
not even when I’m one of them. I have to come back and help try to make sense of this.”
Alex sat back as if he’d been slapped. It felt that way, actually. She was right, and not for the first time in a very short span his respect for her grew and his confidence in himself dwindled. He was starting to feel very weak and small, and he hated the sensation almost as much as he hated seeing the hurt in her eyes.
They sat in silence for a few minutes longer, then Brin opened her door and stepped out. She leaned in and caught the stricken look in his eyes, leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you at home,” she called as she closed the door.
Alex sat and waited until she was back behind her own wheel and pulling away from the curb, then he started the Porsche and sat a few minutes longer. He had a lot of things to sort out.
He slapped the car into gear and pulled out onto the street, fighting the urge to gun it and race home.
He wanted to, but the professional in him still held sway. If he drew attention to himself now, there might be questions. If they questioned him, they would find out who he was, and if they found out who he was, they’d find Brin, and everything she’d just reminded him of would become a serious problem.
Of all the times in his long and dangerous career, Alex thought that the next few hours, or days, were going to prove to be the trickiest and most difficult. He hoped he had the strength left to see it through.
Behind him the last of the dust settled over the rubble that had been the MRIS complex.
Alex pulled into the driveway and parked beside Brin’s vehicle. He’d taken his time on the way, running the car through an automatic car wash while fighting fatigue and doing his best to just concentrate on getting home. He hadn’t wanted to risk a ticket, and that meant driving with steady control when he felt anything but steady. Fatigue had begun to claim him. His wounds ached, and he felt his shoulder seeping blood into the bandage.
His legs trembled and made working the gas, the clutch and the brake a challenge.
Brin had obviously taken less time on the trip.
Her SUV was dark, and the lights in the living room were lit. He didn’t know what would be waiting for him inside, but he knew he had to get in and face it. If he sat in the Porsche any longer, he thought he’d pass out, and the ache in his heart matched any that his body could serve up.
He climbed out of the Porsche without bothering to lock it. He staggered to the front door and fell against it for a moment, then gathered his strength and turned the knob. As he entered, he saw that Brin was waiting on the couch. She sat very still, and very stiff. Her back was straight, and she held a bottle of beer. There was another bottle resting on a coaster on the coffee table. Alex took the hint. He limped across the floor, trying to keep his face from registering the pain. She never looked up, never offered to help him, and didn’t wince when he gasped. She sat, and she waited, and somehow he knew this was part of what was to come, and he took it in stride.
Alex tried to sit down carefully, but at last, it was too much. His legs trembled and he collapsed, crashing to the couch and nearly causing Brin to spill her drink.
Finally, she moved. She put her beer on the table and turned to him, tears in her eyes and wrapped herself around him. He started to speak, but she shook her head, and he fell silent. For a long time, she held him, and as she did, he felt some of the tension drain from his limbs, though the pain remained, a dull ache that pounded with his pulse.
His eyes were heavy, but he fought for control of his thoughts.
Brin pulled back and studied him. She seemed to be searching for something, and he didn’t know what she wanted to see, but he couldn’t have given her anything but the honest truth of his pain and his love. He had no strength, no ability to think, so he let it all go, hoping she’d sense the truth. They’d always been able to communicate without words.
It seemed like an eternity that she watched him, then, like lightning, she hauled back and slapped him hard. Alex didn’t pull back, but he was shocked. His head rang from the blow, and he felt a flush of pain on his cheek, newer and sharper than the thousand other pains. She fell on him then, pounding, one fist, then the other, beating against his chest, his arms, until one blow glanced off his shoulder and he cried out from the pain.
It brought her under control. Her eyes went wide and stricken, and she fell into his arms. She didn’t speak, but he felt wet tears soak his hair and his cheek, running down his neck. When she finally pulled back slightly, he started to speak but she silenced him, this time with a hand over his mouth.
“Never again,” she said softly. “I trusted you, Alex, trusted you with everything I am, everything I care about —my home, my family, our daughter.
You lied to me. Not a little lie, or the kind that you can forgive, but the deep, bottomless kind of lie that will always be there, just out of sight. I won’t let that happen twice.”
Alex didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
She wasn’t asking him a question or making a suggestion. She was just laying down the rules as she saw them, and telling him how it was going to be.
She had that right. He knew there was no way to argue. Everything he’d told her about his life, his work and so
