Rush (Phoenix Rising) (4 page)

She wiped at her forehead again. Her throat felt thick. Her heart beat fast. Her breathing came shallow and quick.

Just because ninety percent of addicts and alcoholics relapse within the first year doesn’t mean you have to be one of them.
Her sponsor’s encouragement whispered in her head.
You will be the one out of ten who makes it. I have no doubt.

Jessica closed her eyes and focused within. After a year of daily meditation, she centered quickly. Her mind and body aligned. Fused. Settled. Now, she just had to hold herself there.

Trying again, she lifted her phone and tapped into her contacts. But she had to brace her arm against her body to control the shake as she dialed Alyssa’s number.

“Great, that lasted all of thirty seconds.” She put the phone to her ear, vowing to give the rest of the day over to yoga, meditation, the spa, whatever she needed to get back into complete balance.

A hard knock sounded on her office door. Jessica startled and dropped her phone. Outside the clouds burst and poured.

She turned, a scowl and a scolding ready for her partner, only she found Teague standing in the doorway.

Teague?
Jessica’s mouth dropped open, but before any sound emerged, Keira pushed past him and into the room carrying a very big, very black, very frightening gun.

“Jessica.” Keira’s voice was steady and even, but cold. So very cold. “Is anyone else here?”

Jessica shook her head, unable to form even a basic question. “What . . . Why . . . How . . .
Shit
.” She covered her face with both hands, half believing her mind had finally cracked and that when she took her hands away, she’d be alone in the office. “What the hell is happening?”

“Please, Jess.” Damn, the Keira replica was still there. Still talking. Still sounding exactly like her friend. “I need to know. Is there anyone else in the office?”

Hands still on her face, Jessica shook her head. This was just too much. Too damn much.

The door to her office clicked shut and the room fell silent. For a surreal moment, Jessica wondered if asylums really had padded cells. If pink was truly a calming color. Whether or not they still made patients wear straitjackets. Surely modern medicine had advanced beyond such barbaric treatment. Hadn’t it?

A strong arm circled her shoulders. Teague. His body was tall and steady and warm alongside hers. “Hey, Jess. That glad to see us?”

His touch, his voice—she couldn’t deny the reality of it any longer. Terror gripped her lungs, making it hard to breathe. She turned to him and clutched at the soft cotton T-shirt over his hard chest. “Alyssa?”

His fingers tucked a strand of her hair behind one ear. “She’s fine.”

“The . . . baby?” She almost couldn’t get the word out, terrified of the response.

“He’s fine, too. Almost here.”

Relief softened Jessica’s bones and her knees gave. Teague tightened an arm at her waist to keep her upright. When she looked up at him, a soft smile curved his lips and the condition of his handsome face registered for the first time.

“What happened to your—” Another wave of fear crested. “What in the hell? Why are you here?”

“We need your help, Jess.” Keira put a warm, firm hand on Jessica’s arm. When she glanced at her friend again, she got her first real look at the scrapes and bruises she hadn’t been able to absorb in her panicked state. Keira’s sweet freckles and striking, sky blue eyes seemed to make the damage to her beautiful face that much more severe. “We need to talk—now and privately. Can we do that here?”

Their expressions were similar to that day five years ago when they’d come into her hospital room and told her Quaid had finally succumbed to his injuries. That he’d passed in the night, alone, because the staff at the military hospital wouldn’t allow Jessica to stay in his room.

She stepped away from Teague, suddenly afraid to maintain contact and pressed both hands against her chest as if she could help herself drag in air.

“The others?” Her voice came out tight and feathery. “Luke, Seth, Kai? Are they hurt? Are they . . . ?” Jessica couldn’t bring herself to ask if they were dead. “Just tell me.”

Keira’s stern expression softened and she slid a wry smile at Teague before returning her gaze to Jessica. “They’re all a little too fine. Bitching, moaning, complaining and harping on each other as usual. We’ll see them soon.”

“They’re
here
? All of you are here? Together?”

Keira hadn’t spoken to Luke since their breakup three years before, and wasn’t particularly chummy with Kai, who’d moved to bum-fuck-nowhere, Wyoming, about the same time.

“Shit,” Jessica said, “this has to be really bad.”

“Shh.” Teague slid his arm around her shoulders and squeezed Jessica tight to his side. “Listen to Keira now, honey.”

The last time Teague had called her “honey” had been at Quaid’s funeral. Jessica wished she’d downed a triple dose of Xanax.

“It’s
that
, isn’t it?” She waved at the television. “That DoD lab in Nevada.”

“Whoa, whoa.” Keira put her hands on Jessica’s arms, a gentle touch. “Sweetheart, slow down. I know this is a shock—”

“You could have all been killed.” Jessica’s veneer of control cracked. Keira’s lack of denial was as good as a confession. “My God. What would I have done if that had happened? Did you even
think
about what getting that news would have
done to me
?”

Suddenly cold, Jessica hugged herself again. She was always left out. Always alone. The irrational, childish hurt welled up beneath the fear and tangled with her growing anxiety. She couldn’t pull the emotions apart or control them.

“Maybe I’m no federal agent like all of you or a military contractor like Kai or even a damn firefighter anymore like Seth. Maybe I couldn’t have helped whatever the hell you were doing—not that I would have even wanted to—but you could have at least
let me know
. Not blindsided me like this.”

Keira pulled Jessica into her arms. “Okay,” she whispered, compassionate, understanding, but not coddling. Not enabling. “Shhh, now. You can handle this. Hear us out.”

“We didn’t forget you, Jess,” Teague said. “You were in Venice.”

“So, you couldn’t let me know what was happening?”

“Kai called your hotel. Left you a message.”

“Kai?”
Of all the team members to call, Kai would have been the last she’d expect to pick up that duty. Kai was the source of her deepest hurt. The one who’d been the most frustrated with her inability to move on after Quaid’s death. The one who’d taken the greatest offense to her move across country. And aside from Jessica, Kai was, ironically, the one with the most guilt over Quaid’s death, the least able to accept or deal with the tragedy and the last to admit it.

“I didn’t get any message. And something is terribly wrong for Kai to call. He hasn’t talked to me for four years.” She crossed her arms, squeezing them over her stomach and the new burn there. “Shit,
what
did you do?”

“Long story, Jess,” Teague said. “And we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Jessica,” Keira said, “do you remember the coin we all received for our work at the warehouse fire?”

The question came so far out of left field, it could have been a meteor. “What could that possibly matter—?”

“Humor me.” It wasn’t a request.

Jessica clenched her teeth, rolled her fingers into fists. This was a bitter, bitter subject. In a bitter, bitter month. “The meaningless scrap of metal they gave us for ruining our lives? For
killing
Quaid?”

Keira took both of Jessica’s arms, her expression imploring. “Do you still have yours?”

“No. I had it melted down and donated the gold to the Joseph Still Burn Center. How could you even think I’d keep something symbolic of the worst day, the worst pain of my life?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “They said a high-ranking official of DoD is missing. Who is it?”

Teague shared a look with Keira before he said, “Dargan. Pretty sure it’s Jocelyn Dargan.”

Jessica pulled in a surprised breath, her mind spinning so fast she could have levitated. The deputy director of DARPA had worked under Schaeffer while he’d been employed there. Even after Schaeffer had become a senator, Dargan continued to run his black ops for him and had been dogging their team for years. “What does this mean? Will they finally leave us alone?”

“Doubtful,” Keira said. “What about Quaid’s coin, Jess? It was buried with him, right?”

Out the window, the storm clouds had descended upon the streets of the Hill, obscuring the Capitol building. Rain fell in sheets now, flooding the gutters, and her mind felt just as congested. She could barely think around the confusion, the loss, the memories.

Keira’s eyes narrowed as she looked out the window at the foul weather. “You’re doing that, aren’t you?”

“I’m not
doing
anything.”

“This is important, honey,” Teague said. “Where is Quaid’s coin?”

“They buried it with him, yes. I didn’t want them to. I told them no. But those bastards did it anyway, just like they did everything else.”

“Look at me, Jessica. Listen to me, now.” Keira took hold of her arms again, her fingers so tight they stung. Outside the wind grew stronger, slamming the rain against the windows. “The fire in Nevada was in a military laboratory and I’ll tell you everything that led up to that later. Right now what you need to know is that we went into the facility to rescue a prisoner. But when we got in, we discovered he wasn’t the only one. They were holding another man, too.”

A million questions circled in Jessica’s mind. Before she could form even one, Keira said, “That’s where we found Quaid’s coin.”

Jessica’s mouth fell open. Her brain froze in mid-thought. “
What?
No. No you didn’t.”

“His is the only coin unaccounted for. We found it in a cell used by the other inmate.”

Fear. Panic. Terror.
It toiled and coiled and rose toward her throat. Couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

A sensation of complete chaos, of her world crumbling around her, had her seeking logic. “They didn’t bury it with him? Someone stole it?”

She pushed past Keira without hearing her answer. At the windows, she turned and sought reassurance from Teague. But she got just the opposite. The look on his face—tortured, filled with anguish and guilt, burned through Jessica’s heart like a live wire.

“Teague?”

When he didn’t answer, she pressed her fingers to her temples.

Logic. Logic or she’d crumble.

“Okay.” She looked up, stared straight at the wall across the room. “It obviously can’t be the same coin. They must have given out similar coins for other incidents.” She turned her gaze on Keira, then Teague. “I don’t understand—”

Teague pulled his hand from the front pocket of his jeans and opened his palm. The sight of the coin that symbolized so much pain, such unfathomable loss stopped her mid-sentence. Her stress level spiked when she was already too close to the edge for safety.

“What . . . why do you have that?” Her gaze clung to the gold piece centered in Teague’s palm, glinting in the light. Her hand floated to her neck, and she slid the chain there through her fingers until her locket rested in her hand again. It always gave her strength. But today, she needed so much more than the small talisman could provide.

“We have it,” Keira said, “because we were hoping you could scry with it to help us find the other prisoner, the one who had this coin.”

Jessica’s brow pulled and she looked from Keira to Teague and back. There was more. Far more. But the churn of her belly warned against asking. Against voicing her deeper fear—if the coin was indeed Quaid’s and she scryed with it—she risked seeing things she couldn’t bear. Things that would drag her under.

“You know my powers are worthless.” She worried the locket’s engraved platinum surface between her fingers. “I’ve long since killed whatever abilities I might have had with the drugs.”

“If you’ve killed your powers, Jess”—Keira lifted a hand toward the window—“I’d say they’re rising from the dead.”

Jessica glared out at the sheeting rain and slashing trees. “That’s just . . . a response to my bad mood.”

“Only because you’ve never tried to control it.”

“There’s no point.” Jessica didn’t want to argue. But she didn’t want to relapse either. She didn’t want to go back to that life. And she’d never been so close to the cliff edge. “They’re chaotic and erratic and unreliable. I may as well try to calm the sea.
Just drop it.
”

Keira clenched her teeth and pressed her lips together. Pain joined the frustration in her eyes and she cast a look at Teague before turning away.

Guilt flooded in, but Jessica shored up the dam. She had to take care of herself. She had to set limits. On a heavy breath, she looked at Teague. “I’m sorry, I just—”

“There’s more, Jess,” Teague said.

Fear flared again. Anger raced in to stand guard. She let her hands fall and slap her thighs. “It doesn’t matter—”

“We believe the other prisoner is Quaid.”

Jessica’s mouth hung open for a long moment. White-hot pain overran her like wildfire in dry grass, leaving behind a swath of charred emotions. She snapped her jaw shut and her teeth clicked hard. Her heart iced over in protection. “Enough.”

Keira spun around, her eyes crystalline and sharp. “They call him ‘Q.’ He’s been there at least four years that we know of, probably more. They’re testing him, experimenting on him in a program
Dargan
was managing for
Schaeffer
.” She took two meaningful steps forward. “We
believe
this man is
Quaid,
Jessica.”

No. No, no,
no
. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears and sing
la, la, la, la, la
. She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t let herself hope. Hope always led to despair.