Her head tilted to the side as if becoming too heavy for her neck. Weariness and agony cascaded from her. “I’m already in hell.”
“We all are, but we need you. We’ll never get out if we don’t help each other.” The gun pointed to her delicate head was fucking with his brain. Bombs exploded and screams echoed in his head—an immediate flashback to pain and death. To Frankie dying in his arms, surrounded by gunfire and devastation. He shoved himself back to the present. “Please, April.” His voice shook. “Don’t do this.”
Her eyes focused. “It’s too hard.”
His eyes filled. “I know. God, I know.” Slowly, so as not to spook her, he approached until he was close enough to grab the gun. “Please, put down the gun.” He could probably take it, but she needed to make the decision to live, or no matter what he did right now, she wouldn’t.
April focused on him, so much anguish in her eyes he wanted to yell. The toy angel dropped from her hand, and her gaze followed it. She stared at the now dirty angel. Her shoulders slumped. An anguished sob echoed from her chest. Finally, her hand trembling, she lowered the gun to the mud.
Wyatt instantly reached her, lifting her to stand and securing her weapon in his pocket. “Let’s get you inside, sweetheart.” April leaned into him, moving almost like a robot.
More flashbacks bombarded Jax, and he wavered, turning around.
Lynne eyed him, her skin pale, her lips shaking. But she held her ground.
He tilted his head to the side, watching her, not sure what he was seeing. Bombs kept going off, and his body jerked.
“Jax!” Raze’s voice shot through him.
“What?” He turned, and his gaze dropped to the fresh grave. To the present and not the fights of the past. The day hazed. Dead kids. Too many dead kids surrounded him. “Why?” he breathed.
Nobody answered.
Raze cleared his throat. “I’ll finish here and smooth things over. You get Tace and Lynne back to headquarters and out of the storm.”
Storm? What storm? Jax settled, the hollowness inside him spreading until pain became everything. “No. You go. I’m not done.”
“No,” Raze said.
Jax jerked up his head. “I said, I’ve got it.”
Raze’s head lifted, and his somber blue eyes glowed through the gray. “Fine. Tace, take Lynne. I’ll cover.”
Tace moved toward Lynne.
“No, I—” She stopped speaking when Jax jerked his focus to her. Whatever she saw in his face had her backing toward Tace. Raze reached them and walked away as well.
Jax waited until they’d crossed the street and were halfway across the old parking lot fronting headquarters before grasping a shovel and patting the earth smoother around Haylee’s grave.
When he finished, he leaned on the shovel, his entire body hurting. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
An hour after Haylee’s burial, Lynne sifted through Tace’s laboratory records, failing to find another source of vitamin B but refusing to give up.
She sat on an examination table with a box of papers from Baker and Baker. An hour later, her head hurt and her eyes burned. Yet she picked up a new box and moved on. Most of the notes in the first box were about vitamin B and different SRI inhibitors that might assist in slowing down the progression of the infection. Her mind quickly cataloged everything she’d read.
Her entire life, she’d been quick. Very smart. But since surviving Scorpius, her brain worked even faster and more efficiently. She’d remember everything she read.
Ideas began to form.
When she reached the third box, a list of shipping addresses caught her eye. Numbers lined up evenly. She bit her lip. What did they mean? She memorized them, her breath catching when she deciphered a very faded pencil line at the bottom. Myriad. The letters were scratched in and tilted, but they spelled Myriad. Shit. The sheet was about Myriad Labs. What did all of the numbers mean? Was it some kind of code?
Tace entered the doorway. “Dinner has been over for a couple of hours, but there’s still food. You need to eat.”
She slowly nodded, more than willing to take a break and let her subconscious take over with the code. After she ate something, she’d get right back to work.
Tace escorted her into the soup kitchen where Raze was already eating, and in a few minutes, she’d eaten a little dinner. Soon she held a chipped plastic cup next to her silent companions, Raze and Tace.
She hadn’t spent much time with Raze and had yet to hear him speak a complete sentence. He’d tied his shoulder-length black hair at the nape, showcasing sharp features with definite Native American markers. His light blue eyes showed no sign of emotion, but he seemed to be on constant alert. She could ask him about himself, but forging another connection with a person, even so lightly as with general conversation, was just too much right now.
Dinner had consisted of some sort of bread meal mush that had actually filled her belly. The mood in the rec room remained somber, and death hovered all around. She cleared her throat and focused on the man she already kind of knew once her brain kicked back into gear. “How are you feeling?”
Tace rubbed his whiskered jaw. “Like I got run over by my granddaddy’s farm pickup. Twice.”
Yeah, that about summed up the fever. She needed the right words, but the time for niceties had passed. “You’ve been getting injections of B now, so that’s good. How’s your cognitive functioning?”
Raze lifted an eyebrow but didn’t comment.
Tace tapped fingers on the table. “I don’t know. I don’t want to kill anybody or plan a mass murder, but . . .”
“But?” Raze asked.
“So you can speak,” Lynne blurted out.
Raze cut her a look and focused back on the medic. “But what?” he asked.
Tace rubbed the back of his neck. “My brain processes seem . . . slow. Muddy and hindered.”
Lynne breathed out. “You had a high fever, and your body is still reeling. It can take weeks to get back to normal.”
Tace nodded. “I know, and if I get the urge to bite somebody, I’ll let you know.”
Raze shoved back from the table, stood, and stalked toward the outside door.
“Well, good-bye,” Lynne said without heat. What an odd guy.
Tace smiled with a definite lack of humor. “He doesn’t talk much.”
They needed to get back to work, but for a moment, her eyes stung. So she stayed put. “What’s his story?” Not that she cared. Sometimes the scientist in her reared up when she least expected it, and curiosity won out.
Tace shrugged. “Hell if I know. He walked into camp two weeks ago, fully armed, and said he wanted every member of Twenty dead. That was good enough for Jax.”
Yeah, that would be. “Will Jax go after Cruz now that Haylee has died?” Lynne asked, trying to sound casual. She needed Jax Mercury alive and ready for the next battle. One he didn’t even know was coming.
“Yes.”
That made sense. Her body shook in a yawn, and her vision blurred.
“You’re exhausted.” Tace pushed back and stood. “I can escort you to your quarters if you’d like?” While the suggestion was posed as a question, his manner said it was anything but.
Lynne stood. “So I’m still under house arrest?”
“I don’t see that changing.” Tace grabbed their dirty dishes to place in a hollowed-out tire near the food. “Sorry.”
“I can keep working for a few hours.” She swayed.
Tace shook his head. “Come on, Dr. Harmony. You know as well as I that sleep is necessary for brain function.”
She regained her balance. A couple of hours would probably do her good. She should probably ask who did the dishes, but at the moment, she didn’t really care. “Are we meeting in the, ah, lab tomorrow?” It was still early, but exhaustion lived in every one of Lynne’s movements.