Forever by Janie Crouch
Chapter Twenty
Jess
Alena smirkedat me as she jumped down from the Jeep. “See? I knew this is where they would come.”
“So you did,” Radu said. He seemed more than a little annoyed, but his eyes were still steady on Ethan and me.
The look on Alena’s face was victorious. Deep down, I hadn’t wanted to believe that it was real. I’d hoped there had been some sort of mistake. But the woman in front of me was not the woman I had become friends with over the past two years.
This person was hard. She had anger and cruelty in her gaze. As she took in my predicament, gun pressed to my temple, she broke into a full smile.
“Looks like you’re not the only genius around. It was almost pathetically easy to avoid your attempts to find the mole. It was simple to plant suggestions that you took without question. And now look at you. Even that famous brain isn’t enough to save you from a bullet, Dr. O’Conner.”
She was right. My PhD in biotechnology wasn’t going to save me.
“Why are you doing this?” The soldier holding me pressed the gun harder into my skull, and I winced. “I don’t believe this is who you are.”
“You don’t know shit about me or who I am.”
I shook my head before remembering the gun and going still. “How can you say that?”
“The most prestigious biotechnology program in the world and all the main recipients are independently wealthy. Do you know how absolutely fucked that is? Your father is a musician that the whole world knows. Russell’s father is a billionaire. An actual, literal billionaire. And Susan’s family has money too.”
“So you’re going to sell off our research?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to scrape for everything you have. You’ve never been poor. You’ve never had to work for anything in your life. It’s all been handed to you because of your pretty blue eyes and the fact that you’re smart. But I’ve worked for everything. And finally it’s paying off. I’ll never be poor again after this.”
I swallowed. “Alena. Please. You can’t do this. You know who Radu is? What he’ll do with the research? He assists terrorists. He’ll make sure our information gets into the hands of people who will use it for the most harm.”
Alena knew exactly what our research was and how it could be twisted. A sickening realization hit me. Alena was the one who’d pushed us in that direction. We’d discussed as a team the possibility of weaponization. She’d been the one to argue that we should continue along that line anyway.
She’d planned this from the beginning.
“You did it on purpose,” I said. “You pushed us to research what we did so that you could sell it. That’s all you ever wanted. How deep does this go, Alena? Did you join the fellowship program knowing that you would do this?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “To all of it. Yes, I know exactly who he is, and I don’t care. We’re both useful to each other. Radu can give me what I’ve always deserved, and in the process teach a lesson to all you rich people who insist on looking down on the rest of us.”
I couldn’t stop the small cry that escaped me at her words. Ethan’s gaze snapped to mine, checking to see if I was all right. I wasn’t. I was the furthest thing from all right.
Everything I’d said on the train last night was true. This was my fault, and I should have seen it. Now we were in this mess, and I honestly didn’t know if we would make it out alive.
“I never meant to make you feel like I looked down on you, Alena. I’m so sorry. I grew up for a long time without money too. My mother cleaned houses for a living until my father came into our lives.”
Alena’s face went utterly cold. “So smart, aren’t you? Trying to emotionally manipulate me. Make it seem like we’re alike. We’re nothing alike. Although I’ll soon be rich. But you’ll be too dead to appreciate the new similarity.”
This was bad. I didn’t know how much of Alena’s true personality was a lie, but there was one thing I knew about her. Once she decided on something, she was done. That was the decision. She’d already thought through all the options and all the ramifications. And she’d decided what she wanted to do to me a long time ago.
There was no way that Ian’s pilot could land. There was enough firepower here that they would simply shoot down the plane if he tried. There was no getting out of this.
I looked at Ethan, panic crawling up my throat. This couldn’t be the end of everything. We couldn’t have worked so hard to make our way back to each other only to die. I would not accept that. Could not.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Alena.” I had to think. Figure out a plan. A weakness.
She opened her mouth to go at me again, but Radu cut her off. “Enough. Your drama makes no one any money.”
He walked toward me slowly, and the way he was looking at me made my skin crawl. The first time I’d seen him, he hadn’t known which of us actually had the research. He’d only known that it wasn’t Alena.
Now that he knew, he looked at me like a starving dog looked at a raw steak: absolute, feral desire. To him, now, I represented millions of dollars. Maybe hundreds of millions. I wasn’t a person in his eyes, and he wasn’t going to treat me like one.
Radu stopped in front of me, barely a foot away, and looked me up and down. He nodded to the soldier holding me, and the man let me go. I stumbled but managed to stay upright. His gun was no longer against my head. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know it was pointed at me from behind.
Radu took a cigarette out and lit it. Everything about his stance was casual, as if it were completely normal to have guns trained on people. In his life, it probably was.
When he spoke, the words were quiet. “I know a lot about you, Jess O’Conner. Alena has told me that you’re the shining star of the program. The mind that a thousand people would kill for, and much of the reason the research you stole is so valuable to me.” Another drag on his cigarette. “I appreciate that. And I want to give credit where it’s due. So thank you for your contribution.”
I said nothing. I didn’t want his praise. If I’d known that what we were studying had anything to do with him, I would have stopped it. I would have tried to lead us down a different path.
“Now that I’ve done that,” he said, “I need you to give me the research.”
My throat was dry, the lie scraping past. “I don’t have it.”
Pain exploded through the side of my face as Radu’s fist crashed into it. Ethan shouted, and a scuffle broke out. It was so sudden and blinding that I didn’t know how I’d gotten to the ground.
When I blinked the pain from my eyes, Ethan was now on his knees, two soldiers forcibly holding his arms behind him. His body was straining, and I had no doubt that if he managed to get free, he would kill Radu with his bare hands.
A word spoken in Moldovan, and I was hauled to my feet again, dizzy, head throbbing. The hands on me forced me to face Radu. He was still calm, like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“You might think I’m a killer,” he said. “But I don’t like to kill unnecessarily.”
He pulled out a gun and made a motion I’d seen a thousand times in my life: the smooth slide of the barrel as he chambered a round.
Growing up with people who taught survival skills, I’d quickly learned to spot when someone was familiar with weapons. Radu breathed them. The gun was an extension of his body, and this man wouldn’t give me a second thought after he put a bullet through my head. I could see it in his eyes.
He may not like to kill unnecessarily, but what he did not say was that my death was necessary if I didn’t give him what I wanted.
My heart pounded, and I tried to calm myself down.
When I was younger, I’d wondered what I would do if I were in a situation like this—like the ones the Linear Tactical guys told me about. I liked to think that I would be brave and walk into the arms of death without flinching.
But right now, I didn’t want to. I was terrified and didn’t want to die. I wanted to have the life I’d grown up picturing with Ethan. Our family. But it was disappearing right in front of me. All the color drained from the world.
Radu pointed the gun at my forehead. “The research,” he says. “I won’t ask you again.”
I took a breath, gathering every ounce of my courage, and looked Radu straight in the eye. If there was one thing that I’d learned in my life, it was to look my enemies in the eye without flinching.
If he killed me, they would never find the chip. Ethan would never give it up. “I told you I don’t have it.”
Radu pulled down the hammer, and I closed my eyes.
“Allow me to handle her,” Alena said, stepping up beside Radu.
I caught the surprise on his face when I opened my eyes again. But he handed her the gun. What was most likely here? What would Alena do? Would she shoot me in the knee and try to torture me into talking? At this point I wouldn’t put it past her.
But it was so much worse. Alena walked the short distance to where Ethan was still kneeling and pressed the gun to his head. All the air in my lungs disappeared. The world slowed down.
Of course she would do this. She knew how I felt about Ethan. I’d told her everything about him. How deeply I loved him. How we’d been together our whole lives. How he knew me better than I knew myself.
She knew that out of anything in the world, Ethan was my greatest weakness. I would do anything I could to save him.
And this time I couldn’t.
Ethan looked at me and gave me the slightest nod. He knew. I blinked back sudden tears because this was the worst thing I could imagine. What was on the tiny chip around my neck was worth more than his life. And my life.
We had to protect it, even if that meant that I was about to watch him die, and I would die a moment afterward.
He nodded again, telling me that he understood and that he was ready. Love shone from his green eyes in a way I’d never seen. A way that said he’d loved me with all his being in this life, and he would find me in the next and love me just as hard.
I couldn’t stop the sob that escaped me.
And then Ethan, my silent Ethan, began to speak. “Did I tell you why I got out of the Navy, Jess? I got out because after I came to London, I realized that I couldn’t live without you anymore. I was done spending years apart from you. I love you. More than anything. More than life itself. Our entire lives, I’ve loved only you.” The rest of the words were unspoken. He would continue to love me after the end of our lives. Even if that was right now.
Tears spilled over, my breath ragged. I couldn’t look away from him.
But now his eyes were different. Still full of love, always full of love, but more determined. Strategic.
He tilted his head to the right, down toward the ground. It looked uncomfortable. Not a natural motion. He caught my eyes and then looked at the ground. And then he did it again.
“I bought a ring,” he said. “And my plan was to ask you for forever as soon as we got home. Because you are my forever, Jess.”
The words struck me in the heart, but he was still looking at me and then the ground, nearly frantic, though his expression was neutral. Ethan knew something I didn’t, and he was trying to let me know. The ground. The only thing I could think of was to fall.
“We’ll build a house,” he said, continuing to talk and slumping his shoulders like he might keel over. He looked at the ground again. “Anywhere you want. We can do it ourselves.”
“Quiet,” Radu said, and turned to me. “Enough. You choose. Your man with all his love words or the chip. Right now.”
My eyes were still on Ethan. I didn’t dare look away. His mouth rounded in a single word.
Now.
I dropped to the ground, letting all my weight collapse. The guards holding me didn’t expect it, and their hands slipped off me. Then everything happened at once. The distinct sound of silenced gunshots rang out, audible in every direction like an echo.
Everybody around me fell to the ground, as if someone had switched off the power button. Radu, Alena, and all the soldiers dropped like lifeless dolls.
That was all I saw before a body landed on mine, hard. Ethan.
He covered me, not caring at all if he caught one of the flying bullets. His hands wrapped around my head. If something deadly was going to get to me, it was going to have to go through him first.
I pushed at him, unable to stop the words that spilled out of me, even though at this moment they should be the last thing on my mind. “You bought me a ring?”
His head lifted so we were eye to eye. “I did,” he whispered. “I love you, Jess. So fucking much. You’re my everything.”
His lips were hot on mine, our bodies so close as he kept protecting me.
Around us I heard the sounds of struggle, and then nothing. The quiet that followed was louder than everything else had been.
An amused chuckle. “You can get off her now.”
I shook my head, blinking. That voice could not possibly be right. “Daddy?”
Ethan slipped off me and helped me stand. It was my dad. And not just him, but Ethan’s dad, Uncle Finn, and most of the other Linear Tactical team. Zac Mackay. Gavin Zimmerman. Dorian Lindstrom and his wife, Ray.
“What?” I asked. “How?”
Ethan hugged his dad while I hugged mine.
“As soon as Ian told us what was going on, I got the team together and got them over here myself in case unofficial backup was needed,” Dad said. “One of the perks of being famous is that the government allowed me and my posse in to visit as long as I promised to do a show.”
“Ian was supposed to let you know we were headed your way from town,” Finn said. “But he lost contact with you.”
Ethan still had his arm around his dad. “When I heard the plane, I knew it was too big for what Uncle Ian would’ve sent just for us. But believe me, I’ve never been happier than to see you signaling me from the woods.”
“You guys handled yourself well,” Zac said. “If you hadn’t been able to communicate to little Jess that she needed to drop, taking them out would’ve been a lot more difficult.”
Little Jess. They’d called me that for most of my life, even as an adult. But today they got a free pass.
“Are Landon and Isaac okay?” Ethan asked. “Alena had intel on where they were going.”
Finn nodded. “Yes, they’ve already gotten Russell and Susan to safety.”
Gavin looked around. “We need to head out before any government officials arrive. Let’s get Ian on the phone and see how he wants to handle the mess we’ve made here.”
Dorian grinned. “Plus, I hear there’s an impromptu Cade Conner show in town tonight. We don’t want to miss that.”
Dad looked at Ethan. “And you and I need to have a chat, I think. One time about fifteen years ago, you sat me down to have a man-to-man about Jess and what she deserved. Now I think it’s my turn to return the favor.”
