CHAPTER 13
Tick, tick, tick.
Brenna foggily identified the sound: Internal combustion engine sputtering, misfiring, still sparking when by rights it should be dead.
Something warm dripped on her upturned face. She opened her eyes. The Corporal’s torso was folded over the steering wheel above her, his face unrecognizable. She thrashed, knocking tempered windshield glass off her chest.
She was stuck on her back, her hips wedged in the gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.
Her scalp was grazing the dashboard, and the gearshift was high-sticking her.
She jerked, struggling to free herself, but the front of her shirt was so soundly snagged she could scarcely budge.
Fighting gravity, she tightened the muscles in her belly, and rose to a semi-situp position to see what she was caught on.
Grace’s fist. Bunched up in the front of her shirt.
When Grace had lunged just before the impact, she hadn’t been flung forward. She’d caught Brenna and kept her from being thrown into the windshield and ejected from the van. Good reflexes for a suit.
Grace moaned.
Brenna lifted her eyes from the front of her shirt to Grace’s face.
It was plastered against the back of the driver’s seat, her cheek distorted by the impact.
“Alcott?”
Her death grip on Brenna’s shirt tightened.
“Alcott.”
Grace shifted and unstuck herself from the seat. She was in shock. Blood was oozing down the left side of her face from a ragged gash over her eyebrow—bleeding so profusely, she could hear it trickling.
No. Brenna shook her head, trying to fully clear her brain. Not blood.
Gas!
And the engine was still sparking.
She jerked in sudden realization, instantly clear-headed.
“Alcott!” she barked. “Let go of me! Get up!” She covered Grace’s fist with her own and tore herself free. They had to get away from the van, and fast. “Come on! We’ve gotta get out!”
Grace sat back, trying to hitch her butt onto the seat again.
Struggling to sit up, Brenna got upright, and grabbed Grace’s lapels. “Alcott!”
“You know,” Grace said, “good manners go a long—”
“Get out!” Brenna grabbed her lapels and shoved Grace toward the shattered side window. The van was as crumpled as a beer can on Super Bowl Sunday. No way any of the doors were going to open. “Out the window!” she shouted, shoving Grace toward the opening. “Now! We’re gonna ignite!”
The manhandling got Grace’s attention. Her eyes lost their glaze. “Holy God,” she said, clumsily scrambling out the window to the road.
The camera. Brenna leapt into the back seat. The unit was cushioned between the other two bags. Good. It didn’t get flung. She grasped the bag handles and yanked. Bad. The van had accordion-pleated. Her gear was jammed.
“The Corporal!” Grace shouted, staggering unsteadily, hauling vainly against the front passenger door, trying to reach the young driver.
“He’s dead!” Brenna shouted, yanking at the camera. Without it, there was no point being in Kav?ak.
Gas vapors filled the van. The engine ticked, misfiring.
“Get out,” Grace ordered.
“I need. The fucking. Camera.” She snarled each word, yanking the hell out of the jammed tangle.
Grace fished through the window for her.
The bags broke free. “Bloody right.” She tossed them out, one after the other. “Take them! Run!”
“No. You.”
She plopped her butt on the seat, stuck her feet out the window, and clutched the camera to her chest. Grace had no commitment to it. No way she was handing it off. “Pull me!” she shouted.
“The glass—” The window frame was bristling with it.
“Pull, goddammit!”
Grace grabbed her ankles and hauled.
Brenna slid forward. Her shirt pulled out of her pants and the shards raked her bare back. She hit the ground.
Grace grabbed the duffels.
“Go! Go! Go!” A wall of intense heat flared up behind Brenna with a whoomf. A fireball blasted outward. The concussion shoved her forward. She stumbled, trying to keep her feet beneath her.
In the periphery of her vision, she saw Grace and the bags bouncing over the cobblestones like dice cast across a casino table.
Brenna lost her footing, twisted, fell on her hip, and rolled, fighting the instinct to throw out her hands.
Tuck in, she told herself. Don’t let go of the camera.
She came to rest a scant three feet from the sunshine.
Above her, a banner erected by civilians marked the boundary between concealment and sniper sight lines.
“Pazi, Snajper!” it warned. Clutching the camera, she scrambled back, deeper into the safety of the shadows.
Grace landed in the shadows, face up, eyeglasses hooked over one ear, grabbing at the frigid cobblestones with out flung arms while the reeling planet tried to toss her off.
Thick black smoke billowed above her, spewing debris.
A blizzard looked like this from below. But these weren’t big fluffy flakes. They were red.
Embers.
She closed her eyes—a moment too late.
Oh, God.
She rolled onto her knees, ripped her glasses the rest of the way off. Her eyes were burning, on fire. She stuck her filthy knuckles into her eye sockets and dug frantically.
Cool strong fingers circled her wrists.
“Stop,” Brenna ordered. “It makes it worse.”
She yanked her frenzied hands away from her and, crying out, screwed her knuckles in again.
“Do you have any diseases?” Brenna asked, capturing her wrists once more and gripping them with strength. “Hepatitis? HIV?”
Grace fought her.
“Answer me!” she commanded, lurching with her as she struggled. Her voice was hard and impatient.
The edge in it cut through Grace’s panic.
She’d heard that tone before, back in her office.
I will turn my back on you and walk away.
Everything went dark inside her. Brenna Rease had no allegiance to her, no reason to inconvenience herself for her.
She could desert her, blind and alone, in a city at war.
“Dammit, Alcott, I’m trying to help you!”
Help? Help was 9-1-1, not an interrogation about her medical history—or was it? Her face was awash in blood. If Grace were infected and Brenna came into contact with it, she’d die as surely as the boy in the van. Everything I do is calculated.
“No,” she said. “No HIV. No—”
“Then be still,” Brenna ordered. The testy edge vanished from her voice. “Let me help you.”
Swiftly, before Grace could react, Brenna released her wrists, grasped the sides of her face, and pulled her forward like an ardent lover. Grace irrationally expected Brenna’s mouth to meet hers. Instead, it covered her left eye, warm and moist and open, her tongue laving the burning eye.
Miraculous relief trailed in its wake. No eye wash, no ophthalmic ointment could have worked so effectively.
Brenna moved rapidly, tilting her face so she could lick the lid with the broad of her tongue, then again with the edge of it.
Grace moved with her, fingertips light on her hips, no longer resisting.
Brenna spat, once, twice, off to the side, and switched to her right eye. Their breasts brushed.
A moan welled inside Grace, originating in a different lifetime. She remembered soft. Soft was an undertow. Soft was seduction. Soft made heat swell in intimate places.
Brenna’s tongue quivered over the crease of her eyelid, lifting it gently now, delicately probing the rim, cleansing the last irritants.
Don’t think about it, Grace told herself. Don’t think about her breasts, her sensuous mouth, her—she instinctively tipped her pelvis forward, closing the distance between them.
Brenna faltered.
Grace slid her palms frankly down the curve of Brenna’s hips and onto her bottom. Cupping her buttocks, she pulled her firmly forward, first steps in the ancient dance. At her ear, Brenna took a shaky breath. Five years, without this, Grace thought. How had she managed?
“Alcott—did you fall on your head?” Brenna said, her voice breathless and unsteady.
Grace slid her uninjured cheek down the curve of Brenna’s silky face.
“Alcott, dammit.” She pressed her hands against Grace’s shoulders. “Stop. This is as good as I’m planning to make you feel.”
Grace halted abruptly. Blinking hard, she came back into focus. “Oh, Christ,” she muttered. What in God’s name am I doing? “Sorry. Sorry, I—”
“Come on.” Brenna grabbed a handful of her sleeve and tugged. “We’re in the middle of the road.”
Grace scrambled after her, chagrined by her inadvertent impropriety.
Leading her to a pile of burned-out car chassis and construction debris, Brenna settled her in the same nook where she had stowed her camera.
“I’ll be right back.” She sprinted into the middle of the road and collected the tote bags.
Beyond her, the van crackled. Grace’s blood went cold. The Corporal.
Racing back, Brenna hefted the camera, verified the technical settings, and put her eye to the viewfinder. Camera setup was a rite, Grace realized, and Brenna was a priestess. She could probably do it in the pitch dark.
Squeezing the record button in the handgrip, Brenna turned the lens toward the flaming van.
Grace remained silent. If she spoke it would ruin the soundtrack.
Brenna crossed the street, filming additional footage from different angles.
Grace closed her eyes. Somewhere in Alberta, Canada a ranching family’s life had just changed forever, and they didn’t even know it yet.
Returning to Grace, Brenna set the camera aside, and pulled her tote bag closer.
She ripped open an outer pocket and took out a first aid kit.
“Take your glasses off,” she ordered, tearing open a foil packet with Betadine-soaked cotton balls inside it.
“Head back. I’m going to dribble some of this into the cut over your eyebrow.”
Grace removed her glasses, tipped her head back, and tightly shut her eyes.
Dabbing at the cut, Brenna spread the cut open to make sure she disinfected as much as she could. It stung, but she had a gentle hand.
“I thought if I got in trouble, you were going to abandon me,” Grace said.
The dabbing paused. “Yeah, well. I lied.”
“Do you do that often?”
A dribble of Betadine ran down her temple. “I was pissed off.”
Grace tried to sit up.
Brenna held her back. “Not yet. Let it dry.”
After a moment, Grace felt her move away. She sat up and gingerly opened her right eye. Brenna was deftly opening an adhesive butterfly bandage. Grace needed to apologize for her sexual reaction. “About what happened just now—”
“Forget it.”
Easy for her to say.
She lined up the bandage, stuck one side down, tugged the broken skin together, and gently tapped the second wing into place.
The medical debris drifted across the street on a gust of frigid wind.
“Let’s go.” Brenna shouldered her bags. “We need to move.”