Chapter 27
The woods were unforgiving at the best of times.
In the three days since she’d left the Nest, she’d been exposed to poison ivy, had tripped and twisted her knee, and had eaten most of her food.
Cade’s jacket had caught on branches and shrubs and now sported several tears that felt like rips in her own heart.
However, in her wandering, a new idea had come to her, and she’d taken out the compass she’d packed to navigate toward a new destination.
After another day of walking, Asha stood at the threshold of the Zone of Control.
It was a one-kilometre area around the Cave where soldiers patrolled, and supplies were moved around, surrounded by a chain-link fence with warnings to Wastelanders to keep out.
It separated the Cave from the Wasteland. Civilization from its ruin.
She’d decided to return to the Cave because of something she happened to remember the night before, as she lay on the ground, longing for a safe shelter: a small bunker underneath the school where she’d worked, with a keycode that only the teachers had known.
Built to protect the school staff in an emergency, it held vital supplies like long-life food packets.
It was possible that the Order had already raided it…
but she doubted it. She hadn’t seen any of her former colleagues among their ranks.
In any case, it didn’t matter anymore. She had nothing to lose by checking it out, and if they caught her, she’d work up the courage to shoot herself.
It seemed as good a plan as any, especially with starvation on her horizon.
At the very least, she could resupply there while she contemplated her next move.
Asha watched carefully through the fence.
The Order drove the large trucks that had once belonged to the Cave’s military, ferrying supplies into the compound from who knew where.
Probably gangs like hers, if their threat against the Guardians was anything to go by.
She waited patiently, knowing from Cade that her implant would protect her from the guns on the Cave’s high walls and help her avoid detection.
Eventually, opportunity arrived in the form of a truck that stopped in the middle of the Zone, down for a mechanical failure. As the agitated driver waited for techs to arrive, Asha slipped into the cargo hold unnoticed, as quick and silent as a cat.
Another life she’d lived was ending, and once she’d successfully hidden herself among a bunch of barrels in the back of the truck—where no one could see or hear—she finally allowed herself one small, broken sound of anguish.
Cade knew he’d fucked up the second Asha spit in his face.
He’d been in a fog of rage that hadn’t descended since he discovered his mother dead on the kitchen floor. He’d always had a temper, but it took a lot to truly anger him. It had taken the threat of losing the one truly good thing he’d found in the Wasteland to unleash that particular fury.
He’d always known the darkness that lurked inside him, but he’d rationalized that he tried to use it for good.
To protect people who deserved it. To bring justice and vengeance on people who did wrong, who hurt others.
He didn’t want to be his father, whose anger consumed everything it touched, like a wildfire that he fed with his own pain and despair.
Whose rage on one ordinary afternoon had destroyed the only woman he’d ever professed to love.
He was his father, though. He was everything he’d hated his entire life.
But he still didn’t think she’d actually leave.
Shame kept Cade from going after Asha immediately, from following her into the dark night and making sure she was alright, walking through the Nest alone.
But he couldn’t—not when he had been the one to threaten her.
Not when he was the danger. More than that, he felt sure that she’d respond to him following her by pulling away that much harder.
He knew her; she needed time away from him to feel safe again.
So, Cade went to the clubhouse courtyard and lingered for a couple of hours, staring vacantly into the fire.
At various turns, the men tried to engage him, to bring him back to the present, but he batted them away.
He could think of nothing but the absolute betrayal in Asha’s eyes, and then, almost as quickly, the pure hatred in them.
She’d been a wounded soul from the moment he’d met her, though she’d never have described herself that way.
But he’d seen it, in the way she expected less than nothing from everyone around her, and the way she’d offered herself to him that first night they lay in bed together, even when she was raw from rape and torture.
Because she expected him, like everyone else, to take advantage of her. To use her up and throw her away.
The only time she’d ever wept was when he was kind to her. When he’d showed her tenderness instead of disgust or indifference. Mercy instead of cruelty.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dom asked, in a rare moment of verbosity. Cade glanced up at his friend, usually so stoic and silent. He now looked vaguely concerned, which in a person who showed as little as Dom did, probably meant he was very worried indeed.
“Nothing,” Cade mumbled back, but the lie was acrid on his tongue.
It was the thought of Asha’s tears that made him finally push past his shame and disgust to seek her out.
He assumed she’d gone home, and he fully expected to sleep on the floor that night.
To spend weeks, or months, clawing his way back to the place he’d been.
The place where she’d trusted him, when she’d never trusted anyone.
He didn’t know what he’d do about the Order, or how he’d make Asha see that he loved her more than he’d ever loved anything. He loved her bravery, and her sass, and her secret soft side. He loved her submission and her strength.
But he hadn’t cornered her, threatened her, because he loved her; he’d done it because he was terrified.
Terrified of losing her like his mother, or Janie, or any of the countless men or women he’d seen die.
So terrified that he’d sacrifice anything, and even become a monster like Angel, to keep her safe.
Cade walked up the steps to the house, promising himself he’d be so patient with her, so attentive, for as long as she needed.
He wouldn’t push. He’d be happy with whatever she was willing to give, and in time, when he’d earned back some of her trust, he’d ask for her forgiveness.
Whenever she gave it, he would make love to her—sweetly, tenderly.
He’d be so gentle. He’d tell her, at last, that he loved her.
Instead, what he found was a dark, silent house. Worse, Asha’s few belongings were gone. The jacket he’d given her was missing, along with a handful of supplies. She’d left no note, nothing that told him what had happened or where she’d gone.
Yet somehow, he knew, with absolute certainty, that she’d left him. Before he could object, before he could sway her with all the things he’d just been thinking of doing. She didn’t want his apology; she knew how easily those could be taken back, or nullified with more ugly abuse.
Cade looked for her, of course. He grilled the guards at the gate over what they’d seen of her.
“She just left,” one of the men said with a shrug that infuriated him. “Said she’d be back.”
“When?” he asked shortly, though he knew the answer.
“She didn’t say,” the guard replied, running a hand through his greasy brown hair. “She said you’d sent her on a mission.”
Cade ground his teeth. “I’d never send her alone.”
The guard shrugged again. “If I’d known, boss, I woulda stopped her.”
Cade tried to act rationally. He organized a search party. He tore apart the Nest looking for her, and then the wider Guardian territory in the city. No one reported seeing her besides the guard, which meant only one thing.
She’d retreated into the wilderness, and she could be anywhere by now.
As the sun rose on the horizon, Cade had to admit defeat. He was exhausted, and there was still no sign of Asha. His heart ached with the thought that she might be lost, afraid, or hungry. Or that she might die out there, all alone, and he’d never told her all the things he should have.
Eventually, Leo ordered him to get some sleep, but it was only after Dom promised to keep searching that he returned home.
Cade sat on his bed, lowered his face into his hands, and wept like he hadn’t since he’d found his mother dead.
He took short, stuttering breaths in staccato, shaking like a leaf, and remembered the way he’d relayed his mother’s words to Asha: tears are a pressure valve, a way to expel pain when it’s too much.
These released nothing, however. They only reminded him of how much he’d lost in the last three years, and of the precious little he had left. When he finished, he got up to wash his face at the basin, and as the cool water soothed his salty skin, he made a decision.
There were eyes and ears in all the Settlements.
He would bide his time, stall the Order for as long as possible, and use all his new resources as leader to find her.
However long it took. He expected that she’d have to stop at one of the Settlements at some point; she had little in the way of practical survival skills, and she would need to resupply.
There was still time.