Caro looked around. “Doomsday plan? What the hell? Somebody explain.”
“Noah’s way of keeping us safe,” Hannah said. “Scatter us across the world to randomly selected destinations, with new identities, and no connection to each other. No past, no future, not a chance of getting back together, ever. What fun.”
“Got a better idea?” Noah demanded, eyes narrowed. “Let’s hear it.”
“Uh, no, but we’re only dealing with Mark alone,” Sisko argued. “Not all of Obsidian.”
“None of you seem to get how dangerous he is,” Noah pointed out. “And don’t forget. We agreed years ago that I would be the one to make this call.”
Zade and Sisko exchanged telling glances. “Here we go again,” Zade said. “You self-important prick.”
“Too bad,” Noah said. “The party’s over. Everybody out of the pool.”
Appalled silence followed his pronouncement. After a few moments of it, Caro shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You can’t do that, Noah.”
He was taken aback. She was supposed to be on his side—at least he’d assumed as much. The Midlanders bitched and moaned and pushed back, but they always deferred to him in the end. Caro just defied him. In his face. No compromise.
His vision was overlaid by a haze of hot red. The scrolling, the flickering. Fuck.
Hannah gave Caro a startled look. “Right,” she seconded quickly. “Amen.”
“I’m not gonna toe your line either.” Zade said, his voice steely. “That shit’s over.”
Sisko’s clear gaze was just as unyielding. “You’re outmaneuvered, buddy,” he said. “We’ll all come up with a plan together. It’s cool.”
Noah closed his eyes, flexed his hands, breath shuddering.
Giving in could be fatal for them all. But what the fuck else could he do when he was outnumbered? He looked one by one at the familiar faces of his crew. All of them waiting in silence for him to cave.
“Everybody has to be ready to bolt,” he said. “Plane tickets, documents. We salvage what we can, if it all goes to hell. Sisko, warn the out-of-towners.”
Sisko nodded.
“Don’t forget me,” Asa said, his voice wry. “If your people all run off to the four corners of the earth, I’m screwed.”
“Tough,” Noah said. “If that happened, you’d be long past caring.”
Asa looked faintly impressed. “Fuck you, too. Expenses just doubled, brother.”
Noah met his gaze. “Give me an itemized bill when we’re done.”
Caro spoke again. “I’m going to bait the trap,” she announced.
“The fuck you are,” he said savagely.
“Like Asa said,” Caro went on. “Mark’s too smart to walk into an empty trap. I have to be there. I’m the only one who has what he wants.”
“But not what you need to survive,” Noah said. “You’re not combat trained yet, or modified for speed and resistance.”
“I’m the only one who can lure him in,” she said stubbornly. “And he can’t kill me until he gets what he wants from me.”
“But he will get it,” he said harshly. “Could take him hours. Or days. He’ll break you. Brutally. He’s good at it. He lives for it, in fact. He won’t kill you until you’re begging to die. Which will be long after he’s forced you into opening the safe.”
Caro sighed. “Noah, please shut up. I can share the risk with all of you.”
“No.” His voice was a whip crack, making her flinch back. “Get out of this room. You’ve done enough damage.”
“What?” Her eyes widened.
“Just go.”
She didn’t move an inch. Sudden fire with a white-hot blazing center bloomed out of her sig. It hurt his eyes.
When she spoke, her voice was cold and clipped. “I didn’t go through fucking hell on earth to be sent to my room like a bad little kid.”
No one else dared to speak.
Asa finally broke the silence, chuckling under his breath. “Yeah, you tell him,” he murmured. “Someone has to. Way overdue.”
“I did not ask for your input,” Noah ground out.
“Like I care.” Asa went back to staring into the laptop, his rugged features lit by its faint blue glow.
Noah closed his eyes and walked a tightrope inside himself, trying to block sensory input until he could breathe again. Asa’s voice dragged him back.
“. . . prefer to rip my arms off and beat me to death with them?” Asa’s tone was casual. “Or look at Mark’s counterproposal, instead?”
Noah positioned himself at a safe distance with a clear line of sight to Asa’s laptop screen. Caro ignored him, perching with a dancer’s grace on the edge of the sofa.
A little too close to Asa. Who didn’t seem to mind.
Noah got the unspoken message. He wasn’t in charge unless he wanted to fight for it.
Good thing fighting was what he was made for.
Chapter 31
Sitting crosslegged on the bed, Caro smoothed the final fold of the origami Pegasus. Various other paper creations were scattered over the bed. Making mythical animals out of squares of colored paper was her latest tactic to distract herself from the solitude and suspense of the last few days.