Beyond Pain (13 page)

"I know. And you will."

Six addressed the topic looming silently in the room. "And Bren's looking out for me. So I'll be fine."

"He doesn't fail," Lex agreed. "I don't think he knows how."

"Yeah." The words warmed her cheeks for no good reason, leaving Six to study her boots and try not to think about Bren and fucking and all the things they might be doing to each other in a few short hours.

"Yeah," Lex echoed, gentle humor lacing her voice. "Dallas is sending Bren out with Cruz tonight. If you want to raid my closet while he's gone."

Six had been in Lex's closet before, with Noelle, who'd blithely carried off a small fortune in silk drowning in lace and ruffles. Feeling awkward about the charity, Six had stuck to things that looked cheap--simple cotton pants, beat-up denim, and a couple of plain T-shirts.

She had some clothes of her own now, things she'd paid for out of her slowly growing hoard of cash, but everything was so practical. Tonight, she wanted to feel powerful
and
sexual. And maybe she wanted to shake Bren's perfect self-control.

Smiling, she met Lex's eyes, not minding for once if the other woman read everything she was thinking. "Okay."

Lex's humor grew into an answering smile, and she wrapped an arm around Six's shoulders as they headed for the door. "Okay."

Cruz had been running with Ace for weeks, and it seemed to be working out well. So when Dallas pulled Cruz off the usual runs for a special assignment, Bren had anticipated a quick recon mission into Eden, or possibly across the hostile border into Sector Five.

He didn't expect Cruz to point the car toward the wilderness at the outskirts of their own damn sector.

He stared out the window into the darkness. "We got problems at the outer edge?"

"Rumor is that someone's got a still up and running out here." Cruz seemed more relaxed than he'd been in years--since before he'd been pulled into the upper ranks of Special Tasks. Cruz had never coped well with moral ambiguity.

And there was nothing ambiguous about distilling moonshine in Sector Four. If you made it, you'd damn well better be drinking it yourself, because selling it wasn't an option. Dallas let most everything else slide, but having someone else run liquor through his territory would cut into his profits, make it harder for him to take care of his sector.

And the consequences were clear. Get caught once, he'd destroy your operation. Get caught again, he'd fuck you up good. Everyone knew it.

But Cruz wasn't everyone. "You know what goes down if this turns out to be a repeat offender, right?" Bren asked.

"I know." He flexed his fingers, as if in anticipation of a fight. "They had their warning. What happens next is on them."

They lapsed into silence again. It wasn't new for them, but the tension was. They'd barely talked since Cruz's defection from the city, mostly because Bren had been responsible for it--and still carried the guilt. "How have you been doing?"

"I'm okay. I'm..." A hesitation, and he caught Cruz glancing at his newly inked wrists. "I'm good, actually. I got something back that I thought I'd never have again."

"A conscience clear enough to sleep at night?"

The corner of Cruz's mouth ticked up. "That too. But mostly? Brotherhood."

"It's true, then? You and Ace are getting along?"

"Most of the time. He's not like anyone in Eden, is he?"

"Nope." Then again, Ace wasn't like anyone else in Sector Four, either. "I wondered if you two would be able to settle your shit."

Cruz shrugged one shoulder. "He still irritates me sometimes, but I misjudged him. I thought he stole Rachel from me, but you can't steal these women, can you? You can't own them."

"Only if they give it to you." Six's face flashed in his mind, her lips parted, cheeks flushed with pleasure. "If they don't hold anything back."

"Doesn't matter," Cruz said, his voice firmer. Like he was trying to convince himself. "I don't have any business wanting to keep a woman, not until I know the sectors. And Ace can teach me that faster than anyone."

So could he, but Cruz and Ace seemed to have a connection that went beyond work. "You'll do good. You already are."

"It's not just him, it's everyone. It's good to belong to a team again."

Bren had had that once, the security of knowing that he was part of something, a team, and that he made it stronger by being a part of it. They'd lived together, fought together, laughed together. And then it had all fallen apart.

Bren cleared his throat. "Did things get so bad after I left?"

Cruz didn't answer at first, not until the car had zipped past the last of the original buildings that had been built at the same time as Eden. They were into the true slums now, dwellings cobbled together from debris and whatever could be scavenged.

"We rotted," he said finally. "From the outside in, I guess. From the top down. The day before you left was the last day we all trusted each other."

A breakdown in trust meant a breakdown in operations. A unit like that couldn't function if you weren't one hundred percent sure the man at your back would have it covered if you dove into the middle of a firefight. And Lieutenant Russell Miller, their intrepid squad commander, wouldn't have been able to fix that dissolving trust.

He was, after all, the cause of it.

"You saw the truth," Bren said simply. "Miller gave me a direct order to plant that evidence, and when it was uncovered, he sold me out. But he betrayed every single one of us."

"He picked the wrong man for the setup." Cruz glanced at him. "You may be crazy as a Sector One preacher, but every damn one of us knew you wouldn't balk at a mission like that. So half of us were left thinking about what loyalty earns you, and the rest broke something inside themselves, trying to believe in Miller."

Bren snorted. "Just glad I can put you in the former category."

Cruz didn't smile. "We all were, to start. But once Miller started talking people around... I can't prove shit, but people who never warmed to him had a higher chance of coming back in a body bag."

"I wish I was surprised." The past was past, but maybe Cruz needed some closure, too. "He comes out into the sectors sometimes. Unauthorized. Uses forged passes."

"And you haven't done something about that yet?"

He could have. He'd followed Miller around the sectors, cataloging his movements...and waiting. "Can't move on it until I can be sure it won't come back on the O'Kanes."

"Understood." Cruz slowed the car and pulled off the road beside a hovel with a collapsed roof. "It's supposed to be a quarter mile past this building. How do you want to approach?"

They could cut the lights, but the sound of the engine would carry out here in the desolate stillness. "Pull up and head in. I'll go around the back and cover you."

Cruz obeyed. "How big a mess are we making?"

"As big as it needs to be."

The drive was short, even at a careful, creeping pace. Their destination was little better than the shack down the road--at least on the outside, and at first glance. A closer look revealed shiny water lines running from a well out back, not to mention not one but two metal chimneys that damn sure didn't lead to fireplaces. Boilers, no doubt, like the ones Dallas used.

Bren cursed under his breath, and cursed again when an inspection of the back door revealed solid steel--and an electronic lock, the kind that cost. A high-dollar operation meant high-dollar weapons, not to mention the muscle to use them. And with Cruz already on his way in at the front, Bren had no time to lose.

He jerked open a pocket on his cargo pants, pulled out his popcard, and jammed it into the key interface. The card activated with a silent flash of blinking lights, and Bren hit the red button on the end. It could take the card up to thirty seconds to isolate the lock's code, but it only took two to overload the circuits.

The lock popped with a sizzle of sparks, and he pushed open the door just as the first shot sounded in the front room. Bren raced down the narrow hall and ran headlong into two men. He took out one with a quick blow to the temple, but the other wheeled back two steps, already groping for his gun.

Bren knocked the pistol out of his hand, caught it by the barrel as it flew through the air, and spun around. He harnessed the force of it into a blow, striking his other attacker in the jaw, using the pistol grip like a club. The man reeled and slammed against the wall.

Gunshots sounded in the next room, two loud retorts followed by a shout and a third, then silence. Bren kicked through the door to find Cruz examining a graze on his upper arm, his booted foot resting on a groaning thug's face. The man's knee had been blown out, and four other bodies lay unmoving, necks at awkward angles, a path of efficient carnage from the front room.

Bren frowned. "I only got two."

"Sorry. You can have this one." Cruz lifted his foot and jerked his head toward a table set against the wall. "I kept him alive after I saw that."

"Oh,
shit
." Not merely a well-funded distillery, after all. The bottles lining the table all bore identical labels emblazoned with a familiar logo, the same one printed on the sheets of unused labels in a crate at the far end.

The suicidal bastards were bootlegging O'Kane liquor.

Cruz stepped away. "New mission objective?"

"Yeah." Bren hauled the remaining survivor up by his collar. "We drag this piece of shit back to Dallas."

"O'Kane!" the man sputtered.

"O'Kane," he agreed. "My boss. The man you're ripping off."

"But I'm not! I didn't take anything. Every bottle's there--you can count it--"

Bren cut him off by twisting his collar tight, but only for a second. "Who do you work for?"

The man's eyes rolled toward Cruz and back. "For Dallas O'Kane."

"Then why the fuck were you shooting at me?" Cruz demanded, lifting an arm to flash his new ink. "Look familiar?"

The man shook so hard, Bren thought he might piss himself. "I didn't-- Shit, if you're an O'Kane, why did you come busting up in here?"

"Because this isn't Dallas's operation." Bren released his captive but stayed ready to snatch him back up, just in case. "He doesn't farm out O'Kane liquor. We make it ourselves."

Confusion knotted his brow. "Buzz
is
one of you. He has the ink."

Cruz stalked back to the front of the room and rolled one body with the toe of his boot. "Which one is he?"

"He's not here."

Through the open doorway, Bren could see four stills, which were powered by the two boilers he'd noticed outside. "We'll let Dallas sort it out," he told Cruz. "Take him out and put him in the trunk. I'll destroy the equipment."

Cruz bit off a curse, but he locked it down and dragged their captive toward the exit.

The larger room had a woodpile in the center, between the stills, but both boilers were cold. A quick tap on the large tanks resounded dully, which meant they weren't empty but full of fermenting mash.

Not for long.

Bren picked up an ax from the woodpile and smashed the first tank, slicing through the thin metal with each swing. Sour-smelling mash flowed out of the holes and onto the floor to splash his boots.

He hit the other three tanks, as well. It was impossible to patch tanks without leaks, and there was no way the bastards would be able to replace them.

Not before he brought Dallas back to see what they'd done.

The pants she'd borrowed from Lex's closet were dangerous and sexy, and by some miracle fit Six like they'd been made for her. The leather hugged her skin but was supple enough for her to move freely, and the laces climbing from her knees to her hips flashed enough skin to tease without making her feel naked.

They were hot, and they made
her
feel hot.

And they'd been in a heap on Bren's floor since just after midnight.

Clad in her underwear and a tank top, Six alternated between nervous pacing and restless dozing, mostly trying not to wonder how many ways a job could go wrong. Bren and Cruz could handle anything between the two of them. Whatever was keeping Bren away from his bed--and the woman he'd invited to it--it couldn't be serious. And if someone had been hurt, she'd know. This whole place had boiled up like a hill of fire ants when Lex and Noelle had gotten shot.

She'd given up pacing for another round of fitful half-dreams when the click of the door brought her upright.

Bren came dragging in and dropped his jacket over the chair by the door, leaving him in dark pants, a dark T-shirt, and a worn leather shoulder holster. "Sorry I'm late."

She took a more complete assessment of him, letting her gaze slide from his face down to his boots in search of any sign of injury. Finding none, she exhaled in relief and rose. "You're okay?"

"Tired." He shrugged out of the holster and draped it, pistols and all, on top of his jacket. "Run tonight got complicated. They weren't just selling liquor, they were putting Dallas's name on it."

Then they were idiots. Even Trent had briefly considered--and quickly discarded--the idea of reusing empty O'Kane bottles to sell knock-off liquor. All it took was one inferior bottle getting back to Sector Four, and you'd wish Dallas O'Kane had only crushed your balls.