25. Chapter 25
Raz’s heart fell to the floor when Kate’s eyes rolled back into her head with blood streaming from her nose. As she tilted over, her hands slipping from Danielle’s head, Raz caught her.
“Kate?” He squeezed her shoulders and leaned close to her mouth.
Even if his dragon sensed a heartbeat, he still checked to make sure her cool breath wisped reassuringly against his cheek.
The link was empty between them, but consciousness flickered from her side.
She had used her remaining strength. Ripping the sleeve off his T-shirt, he held it against Kate’s nose, but the bleeding had seemed to stop as soon as she passed out.
A presence approached from behind. Caige rested his hand on Raz’s shoulder. “She’ll be okay. She just needs rest, but we need to pack up before Danielle wakes up.”
Danielle lay next to them, her forehead beginning to bruise from her fall. Raz didn’t know if Kate had finished planting memories, but Caige was right. They needed to hide the evidence of what they were doing.
“Stay with Danielle,” Raz said, picking Kate up in his arms. “I’ll secure Kate.”
Raz walked back to the torpedo room to find that Caige had moved the coffin outside the room and closed the door. He’d carefully placed Naomi at the bottom so that she was in something like a fetal position around Lucifer’s Bell.
The metallic surface and evil energy that felt like death and decay were just as he remembered.
A fist of hatred curled around his gut at the monstrosity, and he wanted to destroy it rather than transport it with either of the women so close to it.
He would destroy it, but first they’d have to get off the submarine safely.
He rested Kate in the case so that her bloody cheek pressed against Naomi’s shins as the Bell lay between them. Naomi’s breathing mirrored Kate’s.
How could you abandon your friend to save your own skin?
He felt as if he didn’t know the woman in front of him, and that stung.
Even if Midnight murdered Lukas and worked for Matsuda, Kate had nearly killed herself to make sure Naomi got out without Matsuda knowing, and Raz wouldn’t waste her sacrifice.
There were pieces he still couldn’t piece together, but they still needed to finish this mission.
He put the partition in place to hide them.
There were enough holes along the side of the container that Raz didn’t fear their suffocation, but it still panicked his dragon when he closed the lid and locked it.
“Hey, we need to get moving,” Caige said in the guard’s voice.
Raz stood and turned to see Danielle heading into the room.
“What happened?” Raz asked.
“I must have fallen and hit my head,” Danielle murmured, holding her head.
Raz released a breath he’d been holding. Kate had finished her work. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so, but I’ll need to have a CT to know if I’m concussed.”
“We need to get back to the surface pronto,” Caige said, walking around the case to get to the other handle.
“Danielle, head on toward the front. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Okay,” she said slowly as she began walking in that direction.
Caige nodded toward him, and the two of them picked up the case to follow Danielle.
They only had to get themselves and the case back on the rescue submarine, back to base, and then leave base before this mission was complete. But Raz knew he’d be holding his breath until Kate woke up again.
“How are they doing?” Caige asked after they dropped off Danielle at a hospital to stay in character as her guards. The setting sun’s light shot through the houses of a gated community as they drove toward the airport.
“They’re sleeping.” The steady, quiet drum of consciousness along the link told Raz as much for Kate. Sitting in the van’s middle row, Raz unlatched the coffin to prop the bottom partition up.
That escape had been close.
No matter what happened down there, his dragon still saw Kate as his soulmate. But this situation planted seeds of doubt in his ability to trust Kate. She’d betrayed her best friend to save her own skin and used him to save that friend.
Raz slammed his fist against the car door.
“You doing okay?” Caige asked.
“Just fucking peachy. I’ll be happier when that damn Bell is destroyed.
” His body trembled, recalling the feel of that tone as it knifed straight through him.
It was as bad as he remembered. And the LRAD replica was still out in the world—capable of wreaking even more havoc than the Bell they had.
“Do you really think Midnight will help us recover the other one?”
“Hard telling. Kate seems to think so. If Midnight has any remorse for anything she’s done, she’d want to stop it.”
“What if he’s already sold it?”
Caige’s hands clenched on the steering wheel. “Then we’ll figure out who it went to.”
“Who puts together a weapon of mass destruction just to sell it?”
“Men with superiority complexes sometimes just need to prove that they can.”
Raz sighed into his chair. “I knew she was hiding something, but this…” Raz stared at the unfamiliar thirty-something Asian woman.
She and Kate were similar in height and shape.
Midnight’s black hair flowed long and unruly compared to Kate’s bob.
He clenched his fist to keep himself from shaking Kate awake.
He was so angry with her but also had so many questions burning in his mind.
“Why are you so trusting of Kate?” Raz asked.
“At the gala, she risked this mission to make sure I could get closer to Matsuda. Some of her motivations may have been hidden, but her intentions never wavered. You trusted those intentions, or you never would have gone down there.”
“She should have told me the truth,” Raz said.
“Agreed. But you should listen to her before you call it quits.”
Raz clunked his forehead against the window. Everything was clicking into place: her actions, secrecy, and defending Midnight.
Her friend’s life was on the line.
Flashbacks took him under their control, and images of his clanmates piled on the floor, bile and blood covering their dead bodies.
Gerard had used the Bell to incapacitate them so he could kill them all.
Raz had trusted him, and his clanmates had paid for it.
A metallic tang filled Raz’s mouth. Kate didn’t murder his clanmates, but her betrayal hurt just as badly.
Especially when she knew what he’d been through before.
He didn’t understand why she didn’t just tell him the truth.
“Kate told me she gave Matsuda information about the Fallen,” Raz said. “But what…Midnight’s been walking in her spirit form while he’s kept her body from her?” He shivered, not wanting to think about what that felt like.
“It’d explain how she steals so easily. They call me a ghost, but I have nothing on her.”
Caige has never talked about Midnight in that regard. The minivan crested a bump as it headed through the airport gates. Raz had put the coffin together before they traveled through security. While Caige drove and parked next to the Osprey, Raz called Sid.
“Warm up the engines,” Raz said when Sid picked up. “We’ll be leaving here shortly. Lewis, we are going to need medical assistance.”
“Who was injured?” Lewis asked.
“Kate.” He didn’t want to bring up their other passenger quite yet.
“Got it.”
In the shroud of darkness, except for the few streetlights around the terminal, Caige and Raz loaded the coffin into the plane’s back. They placed it near the rear, where an empty cargo hold housed some of their small equipment.
“I’ll return the rental,” Caige muttered. He hesitated, glancing at the container as if he were afraid Midnight might wake up.
“Sounds good,” Raz said.
Caige walked to the minivan while Raz sighed.
Raz opened the coffin. Kate was in the same folded position. His heart lurched.
Can we fix this? Her consciousness was a steady stream along the link. He hated to wake her when she still seemed weak, but he couldn’t help but want to verify she was okay. He shook her shoulder.
Kate jolted in the tight space.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re back on the Osprey. Danielle believed the memory you spun.”
The link burst alive with shiny hope but also the heaviness of dread and guilt. She lifted her head with a wince, and her uninjured fingers shot to her neck, kneading the muscles. Black and blue bruising covered her wounded fingers. He winced at the memory of hearing the door slam on them.
Kate climbed to her feet, avoiding hitting Naomi. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as she wobbled free. What the fuck am I supposed to say?
He breathed in her delicious scent. His beast relaxed in his mind. Safe. Mine.
But the man wasn’t sure about the latter. “The only thing I can promise is that I’ll hear you out.”
She nodded and swiped at the tears falling down her cheeks.
His heart ached—torn in two. But it didn’t sway the anger that she hadn’t told him the truth.
“I hate to interrupt,” Lewis’s deep voice said behind them. “But who is this?”
“Naomi,” Kate croaked.
Lewis stood at the plane’s opening, holding a medic bag and staring at Naomi in the coffin. “Who?”
“Midnight,” Raz said. “She’ll be an asset in taking down Matsuda. He’s been torturing her body. She may also need medical attention.”
Lewis’s eyebrows knitted together in worry. “All right. Kate, let me see that hand.”
“I’m going to go check on Sid,” Raz said, needing space.
Kate stepped in front of Raz to stop him. “Can we keep the ramp door open?”
“Why?” Raz asked.
“If we fly over Naomi’s spirit, she might sense her body and return. After everything she’s been through, I want her to have easy access.”
“Will she be a danger?”
Kate glanced at Midnight, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “Restraining her body will upset her. She has no reason to attack you.”
“But she has every reason to attack you.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Frustration boiled up his neck, but again he felt shoved against the wall. “I’ll talk to Sid. Just keep us out of your crosshairs.”