Never Fade (7 page)

And I finally was getting a good one.

When Liam had told me he had an older brother, I had imagined him to be
much
older—twenty-five or twenty-six, the same age as Cate. But I’d overheard some of Rob’s tact team complaining about him on the flight back. About his punk-ass attitude, how he was only twenty-one, but Alban wasted all of the good Ops on him.
The little golden boy
.

Three years—that was all that separated him from Liam. From IAAN. Cole was a member of that narrow generation that had been just old enough to avoid the disease’s grip.

“Didn’t get much of a chance to talk on the plane, did we?” he said, bandaged fingers brushing the damp hair back over my shoulder.

He had a few inches on his brother, which I became well aware of as he leaned down to study my face, a pirate’s smile working across his own. Cole might have been narrower through the shoulders and waist, but there was something familiar about his stance.…

I shook my head, trying to clear the flush from my cheeks as I knocked on the door. It brought the argument inside to an abrupt end. Alban rose from behind his dark wood desk as I came in, shutting his laptop and cutting off the low murmur of the radio scanners on the nearby table. Rob and the frog-lipped adviser were already standing, both of their faces flushed from the argument. Seeing us, Rob rolled his eyes up and away, leaning against one of Alban’s many shelves of useless knickknacks from his old life.

“Sir,” I said, “you wanted to see me?”

“Goodness, sit down, sit down,” Alban said, waving a hand toward one of the folding chairs opposite him. “You both look dead on your feet.”

“I’m fine,” I said, then added, “thank you,” as an afterthought. I hated how small my voice became around him.
Hated
it.

Alban settled back down into his seat, lips pulling back to reveal a smile of mostly yellow teeth. The man didn’t make it out that much in public—not with a hefty bounty on his head. If they needed him to make a recorded video speech, they always cleaned up his pockmarked skin and brightened his complexion in post-production. They also liked to Photoshop him into pictures of American landscapes or cities to give the impression that he was a lot more fearless about going outside than he actually was.

“I’d like to have a casual debriefing about the operation to retrieve Agent Stewart last night, if the three of you are agreeable. I don’t think it can wait.”

He waited until Cole had eased himself down into the chair next to mine before reaching across the desk to clasp his hand. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see your face again, my dear boy.”

“Well, lucky you.” Cole dragged the words out, with no short supply of bitterness. “It seems like you’ll be seeing a lot of this beautiful boy from now on.”

Cut it out,
I told myself, before I could tense. Cole was not Liam, no matter how much alike they looked. No matter how similar their voices were.
Focus on the differences.

Cole was more solidly built than Liam, and cleaner cut, too. He’d buzzed his hair down since I’d last seen him, making it look two shades darker than the blond I knew it was. The Liam I had known was scruffy around the edges, warm in every way imaginable. And here was his older brother, stiff and beaten within an inch of his life, looking like he had been carved from ice. Not looking all that different from the state I’d left Liam in. And it was so awful, so horrible how quickly my mind swapped in one brother for the other. How much it lifted my spirit and eased the tightness in my chest to imagine Liam was here next to me again.

Stop. It.

Frog Lips shut the office door and retreated to the corner of the small room, slipping into Alban’s shadow.

“—would never normally interrupt your recuperation,” Alban was saying, “but after hearing Agent Meadows’s oral report, it sounds like there was some, shall we say, confusion. I’m interested to hear what happened from your perspective, Ruby.”

I didn’t register he had spoken to me at all until Rob pushed himself off the bookcase, the wide expanse of his shoulders spreading as he took a deep breath. Before leaving on the Op, he’d buzzed his dark hair short again; it made the bones in his face more pronounced. It changed the way the shadows fell against his skin.

God, why were we doing this? Where was Cate? I was never debriefed without her and never here, in Alban’s office, behind a closed door. I was surprised by how anxious I was; I didn’t trust her, but somewhere along the way, I guess I’d gotten used to her silent, steady presence waiting to catch me if I tripped up.

“Are…we waiting for anyone else?” I asked, careful to keep my voice steady.

Alban understood my question. “This is just a casual talk, Ruby. The level of secrecy surrounding this Op means that we can’t hold the debriefing in front of the whole organization. You should feel free to speak your mind.”

I pressed my hands down on my knees, trying to keep them from bouncing.

“Agent Meadows,” I started, sounding too loud to my own ears, “ran through the mission parameters with us on the flight, laying out the objective and what we knew about this particular bunker’s layout. He also reminded us of the fallback plans we had discussed prior to leaving.”

Alban’s mouth was wide and fairly unskilled at hiding his feelings. One corner twitched up. “And did any of these fallback plans include you and Vida leaving the bunker?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Agent Meadows ordered us to hold our position in the stairwell to cover them from there.”

Alban placed his elbows on the table and leaning his chin against his fingers. “Can you explain, then, why you left?”

I didn’t turn to look at Rob, but I knew he was looking at me. Everyone was, and from the weight of their stares, I got the impression that “Meadows” had already answered this question himself.

If I get Rob in trouble,
I thought,
how much trouble will
I
be in?
He had a hot temper. I had known he’d be angry even when I made the choice to stay outside with Vida, but it would be nothing compared to his fury if I sold him out and told the others about what happened on the stairs. I couldn’t let them see the creeping suspicions on my face; I couldn’t ask the questions I wanted to.
Why didn’t you warn us?
My comm had been working then; I would have heard him.

“The stairwell was…compromised. I gave Vida the order to leave so we could monitor the situation from outside.”

“And you didn’t tell me this because…?” Rob asked, his anger already betraying him.

“My comm was broken,” I said. “As you saw when we regrouped.”

He grunted.

“All right,” Alban said after a moment. “The stairway was compromised? How so?”

There was a grenade. Rob set off a grenade.
Nine words. One perfect way to ensure Rob would be forced to swallow every ounce of bitter reprimanding he deserved. Alban would believe me. He had never, not once, doubted my word—had defended it, even, to his advisers after I’d pulled some unwanted news out of an unfortunate mind. Nine words to tell him the truth: that Rob had jacked his own Op, by sheer stupidity or intentionally, and came within a hair’s width of killing both Vida and me.

I don’t know how I knew, or even why I felt so sure of it; it was as certain as the blood thundering in my ears. If I nailed him on this, embarrassed him, next time he had me in his sights, he wouldn’t miss.

“It wasn’t…well built, and it collapsed,” I explained. “It couldn’t handle the weight of all of us at once. Crappy construction.”

“All right,” Alban said, drawing the words out. “Agent Stewart reported that it was you and Vida who actually retrieved him. How did that come to pass?”

“She and the other one completely ignored my order to return to the bunker, that’s how!” Rob said. “I know for a fact she heard it. I know that
you
were the one who refused to double back.”

All four men had turned toward me. My vision narrowed, black seeping in again at the edges. I pressed a hand to my throat, pulling at the tight collar, trying to free the breath that was caught there.

I wanted Liam. All I wanted was Liam right there, standing close enough for me to breathe in the leather, the smoke, the sweet grass.

“Ruby,” Alban said, his voice as calm, and deep, and patient as the sea, “will you please answer my question?”

I just wanted this to be over. I wanted to go back to the sleeping room, crawl into my bunk in the cold darkness, and drift into nothing.

“He’s right. I told Vida to disregard the orders. Once we went aboveground, we saw that the National Guardsmen were moving the prisoners out of an entrance we didn’t know about. I didn’t ask for permission to proceed. I know I should have.”

“Because you goddamn know the only thing you’re supposed to do is follow your Leader’s orders!” Rob barked. “You think we would have lost so many men if you’d been there to cover our escape?”

The TVs behind Alban were off, but I swear I could hear their static breath growing louder and louder the longer the man stayed silent. He pressed a hand to the top of his head but didn’t once tear his gaze away from me.

And then came Cole’s voice, Southern as sweet tea: “Well, thank God you
disobeyed
; otherwise I’d be halfway to hell by now.”

It was clear that I had underestimated just how much influence Cole actually carried in the organization.
Influence
wasn’t the right word for it. A sway, maybe, that was mostly charm backed up by deadly results. Alban’s eyebrows rose, but he only nodded, allowing Cole to continue.

“I mean, let’s call a spade a spade here,” Cole said, leaning back to make himself more comfortable. “She’s the one who got me out. Why would she be in trouble?”

“She disobeyed my direct orders!”

Cole dismissed Rob with a bored wave. “I mean, Christ, look at the poor girl! She got the shit beat out of her on my behalf. If you think I’m gonna stay quiet and let her take the blame for a mission that wasn’t, by the way, a failure, you have another think coming.”

No one spoke; I stared openly at Cole’s smug expression, then at Rob’s murderous one. The sliver of space between them was filled with more than just distrust and annoyance—there were years of history resting there, colored with a hatred I didn’t understand.

The tension in Alban’s face bled off like running rain until he, too, was smiling.

“I’m inclined to agree with Agent Stewart here, Ruby—thank you for thinking so fast on your feet.” Alban shuffled a few papers around on his desk. “Agent Meadows, I’ll review your full report this evening. For now, you’re dismissed.”

When the senior agent stood, so did I, swinging toward the door for a quick escape. Instead, Alban’s voice caught me. “Just one more thing, Ruby, if you don’t mind. I’d like to discuss something with you and Cole.”

Let me go, let me go, let me go
.…

Rob did not like this, that much was clear, but he also had no choice. The door shut so hard behind him, it actually rattled the old glass Coke bottles lining the shelf over it.

“Now, on a different note…” Alban looked my way. “I should begin by saying that you’re being trusted here, my dear, well above your security clearance. If I hear a word of this conversation being breathed outside of these office walls, there will be consequences. The same rules apply here as downstairs.”

No, please not this. Please don’t let it be this.
“Yes, sir.”

Satisfied, he turned toward Cole. “I meant what I said before. I’m sorry to have to do this before you’ve fully recovered.
But
, as you’re well aware, we need to retrieve the intel that was taken from you.”

“I
am
well aware,” Cole said, “but I told you, I don’t know who has it. They knocked me out, and I saw someone take it, but truthfully, sir, I don’t remember much beyond what happened after they got me to the bunker. I’m not sure it was my contact who picked it up.”

I watched him drag a bandaged hand over his close-cropped blond hair, wondering if it was as obvious to Alban as it was to me that he wasn’t telling the truth.

“And that’s understandable considering the circumstances,” Alban said, leaning back in his chair. He threaded his fingers together and rested them over the bulge of his stomach. “This is where Ruby comes in. She’s been instrumental in helping…to jog the memories of assets. She’s helped us track down more than one piece of information that’s gone astray.”

Please, please, please, not him.
I didn’t want to see inside his mind; I didn’t want to see flashes of Liam or their life. I just wanted to get away from him before my shrinking rib cage shredded my heart.

Cole went pale under his tan, from the creases between his brows down to the fingers clenching the armrests of the plastic chair.

“Oh, come on now.” Alban laughed. “I’ve been told it’s completely painless—and if it’s not, we’ll have her stop immediately.”

That, I didn’t doubt. Even if I went rogue and didn’t release Cole’s mind, all of the advisers and senior agents carried these hand-held speakers that functioned like miniature White Noise machines.

“You’re the first to volunteer to jump off bridges and infiltrate the PSFs, and you can’t let a girl take a quick peek inside your memories for the good of your family here—for the good of your country?” Alban’s smile never wavered, despite all of his needling.

Clever, I thought. The Do It for Your Glorious Country speech was one step above a direct order, and Cole was smart enough to realize how much better it would look if he agreed by his own “free will.”

“All right,” Cole said, finally turning to look at me. “What do you need me to do?”

It was several moments before I found my voice, but I was proud of how strong it sounded. “Give me your hand.”

“Be gentle with me, sweetheart,” Cole said, his fingers giving a slight twitch as they touched mine. Alban laughed outright at this, but Cole blew out an uneven breath and closed his eyes.

His hand was ice cold and slick to the touch. I tried to ignore the insistent press of his thumb against mine. I’d always felt like Liam’s hand swallowed mine when he held it, but this one was somehow bigger, the palms rough with the kind of calluses that only came with years of being shredded by weights and weapons and fights. The way the fingers on his left hand kept twitching every few minutes.