Her Own Best Enemy (The Remnants, Book 1) (24 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Grace woke with a rush, heat flooding her limbs. She swallowed past the raw sting of her throat in an attempt to drown the overwhelming dryness with moisture.

Awareness burst into her consciousness like kernels of corn exploding in the old-fashioned popper Ryker loved to watch.

Ryker!

She bolted upright. Had to find him. Had to find him now.

Her head swam, whirling a distorted vision before her eyes of Keith and Ryker sitting side by side on a concrete floor, a deck of cards between them.

“Uh-uh. I doubt it,” Ryker said, shoving his glasses up on his nose, in a manner that made him look far older than his eight years.

Keith grinned and tossed his hand of cards on the floor. “You win, Dude. You’re too smart.”

Grace squeezed her eyes shut tight then reopened them, but the image of Ryker and Keith grinning at each other remained.

Her heart clenched. Was she dreaming? Oh God, if she was, she never wanted to wake up.

“Ry-ry?” His nickname scratched past her throat.

His head turned at the sound. “Mommy?” He jumped to his feet. “Mommy!”

She tried to get her legs to cooperate so she could run to him, but he beat her to it and threw his arms around her neck.
Her baby
. She squeezed him in an embrace, the familiar weight of his body settled on her lap, his familiar scent enveloped her and his warm breath wheezed past her ear.

He was real. So real.

Tears scalded down her cheeks. “Ryker? Oh my God, Ryker. It’s really you.” She cupped his face in her hand in a desperate need to reassure herself. “Oh, baby. I missed you so much. I’ve been out of my mind with worry.” She kissed the top of his head, her throat tightening when his hair tickled her nose. “Let me look at you.”

She ran her hands down his cheeks, touched the sweet little dimple in his chin then checked him head to toe for injuries. “Did they...? Are you hurt?”

“My ankle hurts, but it’s okay. Keith says it’s just a sprain.”

He coughed and the sound of it made her chest hurt. This cool, damp place wasn’t doing a thing for his asthma, but she’d seen him have worse attacks. As long as he kept calm, he’d be fine. She’d make sure of it.

She smoothed his hair from his forehead. “Listen to me. I don’t have your medication. You’re going to have to stay calm. Can you do that for me?”

He nodded, his eyes so wide and serious. “You came for me.”

“Of course I came for you. I wouldn’t have stopped looking. Ever. Not until I found you.”

He burrowed his face into her neck and the edge of his glasses pressed into her skin, but she welcomed the small prick of discomfort.
Ryker was in her arms!

Grace looked over the top of her son’s head to where Keith leaned against the wall. The dim fluorescent bulb didn’t provide much light, but she could still see Keith’s hazel eyes trained on her, clouded with an emotion she couldn’t name. Naked curiosity was stamped on his features.

“You okay?” He caught her staring and looked away.

“I am now. How...?”

Keith shrugged. “I heard him. In the next room.” He gestured to the corner. “There’s a boarded up door back there.”

She tore her gaze away from him and fixed it on the clutter of boxes and splintered boards that littered the floor at the back of the room.

A lump rose in her throat. He’d kept his word. Through her doubts, her mistrust, her insistence that her way was the right way, Keith had never broken his promise. Not once.

Ryker rubbed his cheek on her shoulder and drew her attention away from Keith. His breath shuddered from deep in his chest and she clutched him closer.

“How bad is it?” Keith voiced concern, but didn’t move from his position at the wall.

“It doesn’t sound good. He’s congested, but he’ll pull through.”

He nodded his head at Ryker. “I don’t think he’s slept since they brought him in.”

“I can’t believe he’s here.” She smoothed Ryker’s hair. “Next to me.”

She had Keith to thank for that. A mixture of relief and shame speared through her.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. I never would’ve found—”

Keith straightened from the wall and shoved an impatient hand through his hair, giving her the cold shoulder. “Don’t thank me yet, Grace. We’re far from out of the woods. I’ve gone through this place and can’t find a way out.”

“There has to be a way. We’ll find one.”

“Are you always so damn optimistic?” He whirled around to face her, and yet, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “These people didn’t invite us for a tea party. They’re going to kill us because we’re no longer needed. What part of that don’t you understand?”

She flinched at Keith’s harsh words and hugged Ryker to her. “I understand the danger, Keith. I’m not naïve. But, I have to believe we’ll make it out alive. I haven’t come this far to give up. Not on myself or on you.” Her throat ached with each word from the leftover drug in her system. It would be so easy to let it go at what she already said. But, she was tired of taking the easy way out. She wanted Keith to know how much he meant to her.

She swallowed past the hurt. “I...I trust you.”

His eyes snapped to hers briefly then quickly shot away. “Well, you shouldn’t.”

“Wh...Why would you say that?”

Her heart took a nosedive, unease cramping her stomach. Why was he avoiding her? Why wouldn’t he look her in the eye?

She shifted the now sleeping Ryker off her lap and placed him on the cot. The thing had to be an asthmatics worse nightmare, but Ryker needed rest, even if only for a few moments.

Determined to get some answers from Keith, she stood, smoothing a hand across Ryker’s forehead one last time before crossing the concrete floor on unsteady legs.

Keith’s gaze followed her, his jaw tightened and his spine stiffened. “I’m just a man—a soldier—doing my job, Grace.” His husky voice lowered. “Don’t make me into something I’m not.”

She drew in front of him and studied the shadows of worry beneath his eyes. Just doing his job? No, she didn’t believe him. But how would he know? She’d spent the last week doubting him, doubting his every move, and making sure he knew it.

“I...” She reached out to touch him, but his hand came up and captured hers midway. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For misjudging you.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “You didn’t misjudge me, Gracie. You had me pegged right from the—”

“Stop it!” Her sharp words crackled in her dry throat. “I’m trying to tell you—”

He yanked her to him, pressed his lips to hers and silenced the rest of her words. Heat spiraled through her at the possessive kiss. He dropped her hand to slide his fingers along her jaw and up to her hair. She closed her eyes, fisted her hands in his t-shirt and his muscles tightened against her palms.

She put everything into that kiss, showing him with passion what he wouldn’t allow her to say with words. Before now, she wouldn’t have thought it possible for people to change. Once reckless and self-serving, always reckless and self-serving. But this Keith...this man he’d become...he’d showed her strength. He’d showed her honor and gentleness. Her heart burst into tiny pieces as he parted her lips and explored her mouth with his tongue with a poignant tenderness that brought tears to her eyes.

He made her want. She, who hadn’t wanted in far too long.

Her hands trailed up his chest to lock around his neck. She angled her head and Keith’s mouth slid to her jaw where he proceeded to trail soft kisses down her neck to the hollow of her collarbone. She arched her back.

“What was that?” Keith’s sharp whisper and the absence of his mouth on her skin made her flinch.

She shook her head. “I didn’t hear—”

But then she did. Something scraped outside the door. Metal on metal. “Key?” she mouthed.

He gave her a gentle push, not that she needed it. She was already sprinting over to the cot, ready to protect Ryker from whoever stood behind the door.

Keith crouched low and rushed the entry as the door squeaked open on its rusty hinges. Two men entered the room, pistols raised. Grace recognized the one she and Keith had dubbed “Shorty”. The other one, however, she hadn’t seen before.

He looked remarkably like Tom Cruise with a feral gleam in his blue eyes. He pushed past Shorty and swung the pistol in a downward arc.

“Keith! Watch—” Her warning strangled in her throat.

“Tom’s” pistol slammed across Keith’s nose. He stumbled, his knees buckled, dragging him to the ground.

Over the high pitched, terror stricken sound of her own scream, she heard Ryker’s soft, trembling voice behind her.

“Mommy?”

She dropped onto the cot, gathered him in her arms, and pressed his face to her chest. “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

But it wasn’t okay. Her heart thumped with a furious frenzy in her chest. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She felt it in the sickening heat that rushed through her and churned nausea in her stomach.

Blood trickled from Keith’s nose. His eyes, clouded and turbulent, ensnared hers as he reclaimed his feet.

“Oh, God, Keith.” She covered her mouth, fighting the fluid that rushed up her throat. “What’s going on?”

The Tom Cruise look-alike swung the barrel of his pistol at her. “Shut up. All of you, shut up.”

He angled the pistol to Ryker, who continued to whimper into her chest. “What’s he doing in here?” His eyes narrowed on the gaping hole in the splintered door along the wall. “The boss isn’t going to be happy about this.”

“We’ve got a bigger problem to take care of first.” Shorty stepped in front of Tom and speared her with a look that turned Grace’s blood to ice. “Where is it?”

She sucked in a breath and tightened her hold on her son. Her hands shook. Clenching them into fists didn’t help. “Where is what?”

Shorty stepped forward, his arm raised. “The real flash drive.”

“What do you mean? You have it. You took it.”

Her eyes strayed from Shorty to Keith, his body coiled tight from head to toe while the other man held him at gunpoint. A slow swallow slid down his throat and then he turned to capture her with hazel eyes clouded with remorse.

“He has it, doesn’t he?” She didn’t need to see the barely perceptible shake of Keith’s head to know, in her heart, that wasn’t the case.

“Oh, we have the drive. Even the codes. Only problem is they can’t be read because someone put a man-eating virus on the drive that ensured they’d corrupt the moment they were opened. But, you know all this, so why am I wasting my time? Cut the bullshit and cough up the codes.”

He stepped forward and pressed his own pistol to her temple. The cold metal cut into her flesh and shivers skittered through her, but her thoughts weren’t on her own imminent death. She had to keep Ryker safe at all costs.

“Mommy?” Ryker tugged on her shirt, his head lifted.

“Don’t move, baby.” She hunched her shoulders, wrapped her arms around him as best she could and guided his head back down. She tried to measure her words, to keep them smooth and comforting, but they came out strangled instead.

Then she hardened her voice and locked eyes with Shorty. For Ryker’s sake, she wasn’t going down without a fight. He needed her strength, not her terror. “It’s not our fault if those codes went bad. We delivered the information as promised.”

“Went bad? Like sour milk?” He snorted. The pistol pressed deeper into her skin. “Nice try. Those codes were deliberately corrupted. Weren’t they, King?”

Her eyes stung and her stomach churned up a tidal wave, but the sick feeling was nothing compared to the slice to her heart over Shorty’s words.

“Is that true?” The words flew from her mouth, unwanted.

Did she really need to ask? She’d seen it in his eyes, in the tightness of his jaw and his rigid stance.

He’d betrayed her. Betrayed Ryker.

Same old Keith. Had she really, deep in her heart, believed him changed? Yeah. He’d blinded her with his kind words and his strength. What she’d perceived as loyalty and honorability had been nothing more than an agenda. He’d been doing his job, just as he’d said.

“Why?” The single word choked in her throat like a bitter pill.

His hand stretched toward her, but when he would’ve gone to her, he stopped and flicked a glance at his captor’s pistol, before his gaze came back to plead with her. “I had to.”

What if the corrupted files had been discovered before he’d found Ryker? What if these same men had marched next door and killed her son instead of barging in here? Keith had risked her son’s life over a bunch of security codes.

“I trusted you.” She could no longer keep the tears at bay. They slid down her cheeks, heating her skin and blurring her vision. “Why did I let myself trust you?”

“Grace—”

“No, don’t—”

Shorty struck her. Pain sliced across the wetness on her cheek and her head snapped back. He reached past her grip on Ryker, grabbed a hold and ripped him off her lap. Her frantic hands grasped for her son, latched onto the hem of his shirt and squeezed in an effort to keep him with her.