Uncharted by Adriana Anders

Chapter 25

Though the wind howled and things crackled in the woods below, Elias could hear nothing but Leo tossing and turning in the tent. She’d gone to bed an hour ago and didn’t appear to have slept a wink. He could relate. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep either, despite his exhaustion.

It wasn’t a surprise when the tent zipper came up and Leo emerged. “Can’t sleep.” She made her way over to where he sat with Bo splayed out across his feet like a living electric blanket, and settled beside them—close, but not touching. “I’ll take this watch. You do the next one.”

He nodded but didn’t move. “Cold?”

She grimaced.

Rather than go into the tent and suffer through his own insomnia, he sat quietly beside her.

“You like it here?” She broke the silence. “Alaska?”

He blinked. “Um…”

She snuffled, the sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “You didn’t choose this life.”

Was this her asking, in an oblique way, what else had happened ten years ago? Maybe. Probably.

“I chose it.” He infused as much certainty into the words as he could. Not easy to do while the memories converged—an uncomfortable hodgepodge of images and feelings. He sorted through them, or tried at least. Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to tell her. Everything.

“It was just a job, you know?” He shook his head. “I could have let it slide, like everybody else did—like we were pressured, and then ordered, to do. Could have toed the line, agreed with my superiors.” His eyes flicked her way, though she was just a shadow, any physical responses hidden by the night. “Dr. Campbell Turner was a traitor. That was the message. Plain and simple. He’d stolen something very important from the government. Highly classified. Way beyond my clearance level.”

“Why were you involved to begin with?”

“I’m the one who tracked him down. He escaped custody—with the help of a colleague. Who died, too, by the way.”

“Everyone dies,” she said, quiet and grim.

He wanted to hold her hand. Instead, he nodded, knowing she couldn’t even see him. “I’m the one who figured out where Turner had hidden.”

“How?”

“Put myself in his shoes.”

“And?”

“He’d moved into a house in his old neighborhood.” He swallowed. It was painful, tight. “To keep an eye on the wife and kids. It’s what I would’ve done. Anyway, he was holed up in a place that was about to go on the market. I only found that out through a neighbor. On our third interview. Thing was, I expected a dangerous man. What I found was a heavily injured, intelligent guy who didn’t want to die but couldn’t leave his family behind. He talked right away. Told me about the virus, the research. Let me know he’d tried to reason with his employers. He’d been injured on the run. Never saw a doctor. They’d threatened his family, everyone. Told him they’d take him to a black ops site, where they’d do more than withhold care.”

“They planned to torture him?”

“They tortured him.” He met her gaze. “They’ll do anything to get that virus back.”

“I know.” She leaned in. “What were they using it for? What’s the whole point? We can’t figure it out. Are they planning to use it as a bioweapon? Is that it?”

“Sure. You could call it that. But it’s not just a bioweapon, Leo. This thing…it’s not a subtle killer.”

Was Leo holding her breath? He couldn’t tell, but he thought so. She was utterly still, as if suspended—waiting for what was next.

“They were testing the novel Frondvirus.” He expelled a hard breath and tried not to remember. “There was footage.” Memories so raw they hurt. He felt sick, wrong. “Suffering like you wouldn’t believe. The damn thing was immediate and unstoppable. It could take out entire populations. In no time at all.”

“They were working on a vaccine.”

He startled. “How’d you know that?”

“They planned to test it on friends of mine.”

The anger swelled again, fresh as the day the curtain had lifted on this whole sick scenario—the pure burn of fury, hot enough to cauterize wounds.

Almost.

“I don’t get it. They don’t have the virus. How’d they test it?”

“There’s another sample.”

No.A shock went through him, sizzled at his extremities, set off a buzzing in his head. “Where?”

“Discovered under the ice in Antarctica.”

“Shit. If they’ve got the damn thing, then what do they want me for?”

“They don’t have it.” He could hear the smile in her voice. She sounded self-satisfied. He figured she’d probably earned that feeling. “We got to it first. Took it with us.”

He blinked. “You have the virus?”

“We do.” He didn’t need daylight to feel the weight of her gaze. “Just barely got it out before the entire testing facility was razed to the ground. Until that moment, we had no idea how big this was. Thought it was just Chronos, but…” She shook her head, as if in the throes of her own traumatic memories. “Blowing up an Antarctic research station? That’s some massive firepower.”

That had happened before they’d met, and still the relief he felt was palpable, as if he’d lived through the fear of almost losing her. The feeling was as heady as his first sip of booze after months out here, but deeper, more permanent.

“What are the applications for this…weapon? Did Turner say?”

He shook his head, unwilling to let himself get swamped by it all over again.

“Elias.” She set her hand on his arm.

He stared down, though he couldn’t see more than the shape of them joined in that place.

“Applications? Kill everyone. Absolute devastation.”

“Like, nuclear?”

“Cleaner, was how they put it. No environmental ‘side effects.’ In fact, they’d apparently sold it to the government higher-ups as the simple, sterile method. No more war. Just nice, neat, blameless slaughter. Population cleansing.”

“Did you go to someone with this? Media? Anyone?”

“Everyone. Dies.” He said the two words with absolute finality.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Yeah.”

“All of them.” He thought of the journalist he’d talked to—a woman who worked for the Post. Dead. Her editor. Dead. “Everyone this thing touches dies. They all die.” He took a breath, let it out. “I killed men, Leo. I did it to survive.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“No. No, you need to know. I may have been a law-abiding citizen when this started, but I did some of the things they accused me of.”

An image pulsed in his mind, as clear as the day it happened. The words came out like pulling shards of glass from his innards, each extraction painful but necessary. “My parents’ murderers were still there when I arrived. At their house. No idea if they were government agents or…consultants.” He couldn’t keep the poison from his voice. “Those bastards are dead. I made sure of it.” There’d been nothing noble about slitting the first man’s throat. Nothing clean or good or whole. Revenge hadn’t been the soul cleanser he’d hoped for. If anything, it had brought him down to their level.

“Elias.” His name was a ripple in the cold night air, a dip in pressure.

“It’s better for you to know these things.”

“Yeah,” she said so gently it hurt.

Recently, he’d felt so hollowed out, petrified almost. Only now did he realize his insides were teeming with the things he’d seen. Memories that ate at his soul like gangrene.

He shut his eyes and searched for something else to give her. Anything.

A random picture popped into his mind. “You ever see Chronos Corp headquarters?”

Leo might have shaken her head no. If so, he couldn’t make out the movement.

“It’s this massive half castle, half bunker, built into a mountain, blended into the boulders and forest. And at the bottom, there’s this, I don’t know, like big, old-fashioned mansion, commissioned by some guy who wanted to rival the Rockefellers, I heard. Surreal. Anyway, there’s a top-secret lab in there. Subbasement level five. Highest security I’ve ever seen in my life.” He coughed out a humorless sound. “Not that there’d have been anything to find when I went there.”

“How’d Turner get the virus out? How’d he steal it?”

He smiled. Finally something he could hold on to. “He didn’t.”

Her exhalation puffed loudly between them. “He destroyed it?”

“All but one sample.”

“Why not destroy it all, if it’s so devastating?”

He sighed, shut his eyes, and thought of all the people who’d be alive if things had been different. “It’s deadly. To everything.” He inhaled, let the cold, clean air burn his sinuses and clear out his lungs. “Including cancer, Leo. Turner showed me photos of documents. The Frondvirus could literally obliterate cancer from the surface of the planet.”

“Were they doing that?” Her voice was laced with a quiet excitement. “Working on that?”

“No. They’d just been given the new directive: no more cancer work.”

“So, instead of saving lives, they decided to start taking them.”

“Exactly. The virus was too important to the government. There were threats, insinuations. People started dying.”

“People? Were researchers getting contaminated?”

“No. They were dying mysteriously.” He couldn’t help the raw edge to his voice. “Dissenters were put down. Like dogs.”

“Turner got scared.”

“They were all scared. Every person who worked in that facility was slated to die. Turner got angry.”

“So what did he do with it?” When he didn’t answer, she pushed harder. “Did he take it or not?”

He puffed out a loud breath, shook his head, and looked at her. “Shit, Leo… If they find out about this…”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s still there.”

“There?”

“The virus is in the facility. He never took it out. He hid it. And I’m the only one who knows where.”

“Whoa.” After a few quiet seconds, she shifted closer, talking fast. “It’s still there? In that building you described? The Chronos headquarters in West—”

“They wouldn’t be after me if they’d found it, would they?” He stood abruptly, dislodging Bo and disturbing the quiet around them. “I’ll get the blankets. It’s cold out here.”

It was colder in the tent. And lonely.

The second he returned to her side, the desolate feeling fell off, despite the gaping dark around them, the endless distance. This should be the lonely, echoing place, but it wasn’t—not with her pressed against his side and Bo covering their feet.

“Hey. Um.” He pulled in a shaky breath. “Should we just set up the…” He swallowed the word bed and opted for something less intimate sounding. “Sleeping area out here? Keep each other warm?” He cleared his throat. “The three of us, I mean.”

“Good idea.” She stood to help him spread out the things, although they did more bumping in the dark than was useful. It lightened the air, though, gave a little levity to an atmosphere that was bound to get heavier before his story ended.

By the time they’d put the covers out and she’d settled under them, he half regretted the suggestion. He’d be warmer, all right, but he didn’t trust his body—or his brain—not to do something stupid.

“You staying out there?”

“Oh. Um… No.” He crouched, pulled off his boots and slid in under the piled-up bag and fur and blankets she held open. Once in, he settled onto his back and looked straight up at the stars. Beside him, she seemed tense, suspended. Was she even under the covers or had she scooted out to make room for him? “You warm?”

“I’m fine.”

He opened his mouth to protest and shut it.

“Oh, wow.”

He was on his side before she’d finished. “What? What is it? You okay? Hear something?”

Her barely voiced ooooh sounded more amazed than worried, and slowly, his muscles released.

“The stars. There are so many of them.”

He lay back again and took in the night sky, trying to see it the way she was. It wasn’t the same sky folks saw in the lower forty-eight, or even in Schink’s Station. It was bigger, closer, brighter, throbbing with life and mystery. In a place this empty, with no other lights, no neighbors—even distant—the stars and planets were more accessible, somehow, more real, pulsing with warmth and light and possibility. Like looking out your window to see a neighbor’s lamp on at three in the morning.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” He paused, remembering the way he’d seen the sky after running here. The way he’d looked at everything. “It didn’t seem beautiful ten years ago. I mean, I’d seen the sky here before, but never alone, without a light around. Without a soul to share it. On the way here, running for my life.”

“Yeah?” The word was gentle. “Kinda like now, then?”

“No.” His scalp prickled. “Nothing like now.”

“Yeah? What’s different?”

Everything. Every single thing.“You.”

She caught her breath and rolled toward him. “Me?”

He didn’t know what to say now that it was out, but she had to hear the harshness of his breathing. Christ, she had to know he wanted her.

“Come here, Elias.”

Shock sparked through him, but he turned toward her. It took them a while to find each other in the dark. Those few fumbling seconds tore at his nerves and ramped up his heartbeat, turned the dull bellyache he hadn’t even noticed into something hot and frenzied.

“Come here,” she said again, only this time her hand was on his coat and her voice was the low, pained groan of ice scraping ice without finding purchase.

And, dammit, he wanted purchase.

Though their lips barely touched, the sizzle could have lit up the night. None of this made sense—not the current running through them, not the deep, burning need, nor this feeling that he knew her. And she knew him.

Her lips moved, enough to make this a kiss instead of an innocent touch, but just that slight friction made him hard as nails. And hungry.

He opened his mouth under hers, sought her soft, silky tongue, breathed, taking in the little things he hadn’t had time to notice when they’d lost it against the tree. She wasn’t quite familiar, but she was…right in a way he couldn’t recall feeling before. Her smell, her sounds, the easy way her body moved against his. His hands were already on her, gripping whatever they could find, frustrated by all the clothes.

Her kiss was too gentle to quell the need zapping through him. He grabbed, tugged, until she’d rolled half over him. He tried to pull her all the way, but she stopped, out of breath.

“Wait. Wait.” She gasped and leaned back.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot about your side.”

His side? Fuck his side. He tightened his arm and slid a hand to the nape of her neck, urging her closer. “It’s fine.” The last word was eaten up by the collision of their mouths.

His cock was as hard as granite. And not just hard, but aching with want—mindless with it. He wanted this more than breathing.

Her groan was just as needful, just as low and animal as the stuff flowing through his veins. She bracketed his head with her hands and licked into his mouth, tasting, then biting him, sipping deeper. Her body was the most fantastic thing he’d ever felt. Christ, he was burning up. Didn’t need this blanket. Didn’t need his clothes either. Couldn’t stand wearing gloves when they kept her from his touch.

With a growl, he pulled away enough to shove one gloved hand into his mouth and yank it off with his teeth, then the other. He’d just gone back to the warm, wet haven of her mouth, his skin so close to touching hers, when she shifted fully onto him. Pain shot through his side.

He saw stars, only not good ones this time.

She was off him in a heartbeat—too damn fast.

“Oh no. Did we open up your injury again?”

“No.” He wasn’t actually sure, but he’d do whatever it took to get her to climb on top again.

“Crap,” she said, sounding breathless, her chest pressing his arm with every inhale. “I’m sorry. I lost it for a second. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing at all,” he bit out.

“Yeah, well, then it’s us. There’s something wrong with us, together.”

Wrong? Hell no. Together, they were right. More right than anything he’d experienced in…fuck, well over a decade. He wanted to taste her again, wanted to feel those desperate, panting exhalations, wanted to see what noises she’d make if he managed to slide his hands under all those layers. He’d bet she was soft there. He’d bet she was hot between her legs. And, shit, he wanted her to be wet, to want him like he wanted her, to need him, the way he needed her now—bone deep.

“You okay, Elias?”

He screwed his eyes shut, tried to clear his mind. Not easy, given all the hormones flooding through him. He could almost laugh. “Yeah. Fine. You?”

“Me?”

“I seem to recall that you injured your head a couple days ago. Is it all right?”

“Um, no.” Her laugh had a slight edge to it. Was it bitterness? Hysteria? He didn’t know her well enough to recognize it. “I’m pretty sure the crash jarred a screw loose or something.”

She slid back into her spot—closer than before, but still against him. He liked that. Maybe she didn’t regret what they’d just done as much as she thought she did. He didn’t regret it at all.

“If you’ve got one loose, I’ve got a whole damn box of ’em. But you know what? I don’t care.” At her happy-sounding sigh, he leaned down and kissed her cheek, full of a tenderness he’d never thought he’d feel again. “This,” he said against skin that he could have sworn conducted electricity, “is what I’ve been missing.”

***

Getting caught was bad. Amka had expected to have more time. She needed more time. To save her family, her friends. Her wife.

Though her first instinct was to fight, she went completely still, her pulse flickering at the edges of her vision. Shit, she’d never been so scared in her life.

The man—whoever he was—didn’t move either. He just stood there in the dark aircraft, holding her so tight she thought he’d cut off her air.

After a good twenty seconds, when he hadn’t knocked her out or killed her or even put a gun to her head, she decided that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

“Don’t smash my ride,” he whispered right in her face.

She swallowed and caught her breath. His ride. Okay. She could do that. She could keep her hands off the helicopter. He hadn’t sounded the alarm. This was good.

“Okay.” She worked to get more words out. “Don’t kill my people.”

“Deal.”

Her eyes widened.

“If I let you go,” he whispered, so close you’d have to be in the helicopter to hear, “you gonna scream?”

She craned her head, trying to get a better view of whoever this was.

“Why the hell would I do something stupid like that?” Her whisper was markedly louder than his. “Last thing I need is the rest of those assholes figuring out where I am.”

He let out a puff of air. Maybe a laugh, maybe just a show of surprise. There could also be relief in the way he shook his head. “I don’t like what they’re doing up there.”

“So stop ’em.”

“They catch me trying to sabotage this mission, I’m a dead man.”

“Think you’re not a dead man anyway?” He slowly released his hold and stepped back, head cocked, and even in the strange glow from the flashlight she’d dropped, she could read the resignation in the young man’s expression. “You think anyone’s survived this thing since it started over a decade ago? Anyone?”

One survivor. One.

“Shit.” He gave her more space, rubbed a hand over short blond hair, and had the good grace to look uncomfortable.

“How many are dead up there?” she asked, figuring it couldn’t hurt to get him talking.

“You mean yours? Or ours?”

She blinked. “Some of yours died?”

“Three are missing here. Know anything about that?”

She made her face as blank as possible. “Huh.”

“No?” He appeared to consider her and let it go. “Aside from those three, we got a few who didn’t come back.”

“What do you mean?”

The surfer boy leaned in. “Lost five in the field.”

“Five?” Oh, that was good news. Were Leo and Elias making their lives hell? Had they taken down some bad guys? Had they gotten away? She tried her best to keep the glee inside.

“Flew eight out the other day. Only one came back.”

Her heartbeat picked up. “One?” Elias was doing it. He was getting away, and in the process, screwing these assholes.

“Two stayed behind. Deegan, our team leader, and the tracker. Scary fucker.” He leaned down to look out the open door, jumpy as a jackrabbit. “I have no desire to die here. And I’m not into what they’re doing up at the lodge.”

“What?” Her body tightened, her old bones ready to pounce if she had to. “What are they doing?”

“Shot three people.”

Three!“Who? Who’d they shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Daisy? The owner? Tall woman, long face?”

“I don’t…” He closed his mouth and eyed her for a few seconds. “I don’t think so.”

“Are they dead? The ones they shot?”

“One dead.” He wouldn’t look at her, and in that moment, she wanted to kill him. “The rest are being held like cattle. Tensions are real high. People are dirty, pissed off, ready to blow.” He shook his head. “Something’s gotta give.”

She considered him. Tall, blond, all-American. Maybe even the kind of guy who’d come here on vacation, head out into the woods to shoot something. Not for the meat or the fur, but just to kill. “You hunt?”

He gave her a what the hell are you talking about, lady look. “No.”

“Ever kill an animal for sport?”

Something ticked in his jaw. “No.”

“Ever kill a human?”

“I’m a pilot. I don’t kill. I fly.”

Right. The pilot. Of course. He rose in her estimation. “How’d you wind up on this gig?”

“Long story.” He shook his head. “Stupidity mostly.”

“All right. What’s your name?”

“Jack.”

“I need you to do three things for me, Jack.”

“That it?” he asked, one brow up.

“Are you with me or not, young man?”

“I’m with you.”

“First, disable the aircraft.”

He walked over and fiddled with something on the console. “Done.”

“Can you make a call? To the outside?”

His nod flooded her with relief. Finally, they were getting somewhere. “Good. Now, you need to get weapons to the people being held in the lodge.”

“You nuts?”

“Maybe. But I don’t see how that’s relevant right now.” She pulled out every blade she carried. “Find a way to get them these. Or you die.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, dumbass. I’m telling you what happens when you work for the bad guys.”

Though he didn’t appear convinced, he looked guilty. That was enough for Amka. He held out his hand. “I’ll try.”

“What if I distract ’em?”

He considered, a hint of excitement lighting his features. “What are you thinking?”

“I’ve got a lot up my sleeve.” She smiled.

“Such as?”

“Dogs, stunts, maybe an explosion or two. What do you think?”

He squinted at her, head tilted back, as if looking at her in an entirely new light. “I think it’s a good thing I’m on your side and not theirs.”

“Damn right, son.” She snorted. “Damn right.”