off too bad, and we’ll all be fucked.” Gray stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Want me to handle it?”
Knox’s entire body tightened, and he tried to control his tone. He really did. “Handle what, exactly?”
“Distraction.” Gray huffed out a low laugh. “Come on, man. I know I’m no Rafe, but that might work to our advantage. The lady seems to prefer her men a little rougher around the edges.”
Gray had been the closest thing Knox had to a friend for nearly a decade, the first man he’d brought onto his team when he formed the Silver Devils. The man he depended on to tell him ugly truths and have his back on increasingly dangerous missions.
Knox had never wanted to punch the bastard quite this much before.
“No.” His voice sounded harsh to his own ears. Maybe he’d never had as much self-control as he flattered himself to possess. “I have a … connection to her. I understand how she thinks now. I can manage this.”
Gray hummed and turned his attention back to the battle playing out on the screen. “I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or to yourself. That’s new.”
“I have to manage this.” Their words were all but swallowed by the booming from the speakers, but he still lowered his voice. “I just talked to Luna. She’s okay. For now.”
That put Gray on edge. “You told her we’re on our way, right?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t be more than a few more days to the exchange coordinates if we can keep moving. We just have to keep our shit together and focus on her.”
“A lot can happen in a few days,” Gray muttered.
Conall’s whoop of laughter rose above the sound of the movie. The truth of Gray’s words sank like a rock to settle in Knox’s gut as he watched Conall offer Maya half of his nutrition bar. She wrinkled her nose and crossed her hands in front of her in an X, the universal sign of no deal in the outlying neighborhoods. Then she picked up a silver packet and tossed it to him.
Knox couldn’t tell what was in it in the dark. They seemed to have a million of those little packets, each one representing some friend or neighbor who had come to them for assistance and left a little bit of their harvest behind.
What would happen to those people when Nina didn’t return? Someone would probably take over her building, someone without her idealistic streak. They’d charge for all the things Nina offered for free, and life in her corner of Atlanta would get a little harder, a little darker.
God, he was a son of a bitch. “Yeah,” he agreed, embracing the bolt of pain. He almost missed the numbness, but doing something this shitty should hurt. “A lot can happen in a few days.”
* * *
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
Request to promote 66–615 to rank of lieutenant conditionally authorized, effective immediately. He should be assigned to a pragmatic captain who can assess if his persistent idealism is an affectation or a character flaw.
Recruit Analysis, January 2073
* * *
TEN
The oppressive heat didn’t abate as they continued north. If anything, it grew heavier, sinking down until Nina felt like it was pressing her into the earth, and even the truck’s air conditioning struggled to counter it. Rolling down the windows didn’t help. Along with the heat came smothering humidity. It had to be hovering upward of 80 percent, the kind of level that turned everything into soup. The kind where even sweating didn’t help, because the moisture just sat on your skin, refusing to evaporate into the already saturated air.
But, still, it didn’t rain.
They stopped in the middle of nowhere this time, at a quaint, old-fashioned filling station with a small attached garage. It was the kind of place that used to be common in minuscule settlements that barely qualified as towns, a place for people to grab a drink or some gasoline, then catch up on the gossip while some affable man with his name embroidered on his shirt saw to that pesky Check Engine light.
The store had been cleared of anything useful, its shelves standing empty and sharp like the metal spines of long-dead creatures, stretching out into the darkness. The solar lanterns they brought in chased away the gloom, but the stifling stillness remained, closing in on Nina.
At least the stewing heat outside came with the occasional puff of wind. And it didn’t feel like a tomb.
By unspoken agreement, everyone dropped their gear in a