Chapter 19
Connall’s laughter followed us into the stacks of shipping containers. Seagulls swooped overhead, startled into an abrasive chorus. The security lights, which had been off, flickered on and cast Beck and me into view. I squirmed under the artificial light, wishing for shadows.
“Fuck you, Connall,” I muttered under my breath as I followed Beck.
My lungs burned with frantic breaths, and I ducked my body to the side as light swept over us. The graze on my arm pounded pain through my body, and I threaded it with the adrenaline flooding my veins. If Connall thought three minutes wasn’t enough for us to escape, he hadn’t known me long enough.
“Straight, and then right.” Beck’s voice was a rumble.
The containers swelled over us. My boot slapped into a puddle, and murky water sprayed up my thigh. Time was finite. Every second I push now would be worth it in the end. I felt like a rat scurrying for escape. Or a cockroach.
Those were indestructible. I was as well.
Metal and the hot tang of blood flooded my nostrils. The Unseen were coming. This wasn’t a joke or a dream. This was a nightmare, and I needed every bit of logic to get out of here alive.
We paused for a breath, backs against an icy container. The ridges cut into my shoulder blades. We strained to listen through thundering heartbeats.
“At least four.” Beck tossed as we darted forward again.
“They’ll have more outside.”
Who watches those in the shadows?
A choked laugh bubbled in my throat.
Who’s watching you now, assholes?
Beck hesitated at one corner, eyes bouncing up the five-high stack of containers. I’d memorized the map of this place, using drone footage, but it still took a moment to get my bearings. This place was a metal maze.
“Left.” I took the lead. “Then we can double back.”
With only a few exits out of this place, I took us to the old one, before the port expanded.
Beck panted close to my back, following me without argument. He might have been the leader earlier, but he was brave enough to let me take charge when needed. My heel swung out on a slippery section, but I couldn’t slow my sprint. Beck grabbed my elbow and steadied my balance.
Voices shouted behind us, bold orders they didn’t conceal. It wasn’t the words that made ice skitter down my spine, but the volume.
“They’re herding us.”
“You want to chance it?”
They’d scoped the exits and were waiting for us. The men behind us were supposed to frighten us into making an error and make us rush toward the exits that were already covered. Scared people made mistakes. My ribs tightened at the thought of Jonah and Ray.
Please let them make it.
“We’re fucked either way.”
Even if I wanted to turn back, we couldn’t. We’d come too far and were up against too much opposition to escape this time. Beck nodded, gaze sparked with pride. A feeling fluttered in my chest when I remembered what he said that scared him.
You, dying without me.
Beck might get his wish because if The Unseen had their way, we wouldn’t walk out of here alive. A jolt of desperation pushed at my heels. He’d follow me without hesitation, and there was strength in having such power at my back.
The stacks opened, wide enough for a forklift to travel down if needed, and beyond was the old site office and a wire-fenced gate. Weeds sprang out of the cracked pavement, and gulls perched on the concrete lip next to it, ready if something appetizing jumped from the water.
Escape. It tasted like berries bursting in my mouth.
But Beck’s arm caught around my middle, and he dragged me back, down a smaller corridor. Salt air whooshed out of my lungs. Tires screeched, and several doors slammed.
“Four agents,” Beck whispered.
Boots pounded past us, and my chest moved from the force of my heart. A wave of dizziness narrowed my vision to a pinprick for a moment.
“We’re cornered.”
Beck’s face was blank with focus. No matter how my pulse ratcheted, nothing could unseat Beck’s cold calculation. It settled my trembling muscles.
“Follow me.”
We slunk through gaps, pausing with bated breath at each sound. The barking of orders had stopped, but that didn’t mean agents weren’t waiting for us. Beck snatched a metal bucket from the ground, one used to catch used cigarette butts. The fermented soup of tobacco and rainwater sloshed out.
“We’re going to have to bunk down.” Beck jerked his head to the entrance, where a blacked-out car idled. “The site office is close enough to exit if we get a chance.”
We raced out of the floodlights toward the office with its rusted ramp and salt-crusted windows. Gulls circled us in lazy arcs.
“What if it’s locked?” I wasn’t thinking straight.
Beck tried the door as I watched the shadows for movement.
Morning was creeping in, stealing away what cover we had.
He rattled the doorknob with a low growl.
He brought up the metal bucket and slammed it on the knob.
It was enough to dislodge the lock. Boots slapping the damp concrete rang out, and I pressed myself against the wall.
Beck pushed it inward, catching it before it bounced on the metal wall and gave us away.
He dragged me inside, and the graze on my arm protested.
Our ragged breaths amplified in the musty space.
The cheap vertical blinds were closed tight, except for one half-broken slat that let in the light.
There was an abandoned mug on a table, with a chip on its rim.
“They’ll check here.” I leaned against the desk.
“Eventually.” Beck peered through the slat. “But they’ll think it’s too obvious to come here first.”
Beck fiddled with the screws attaching a portable air conditioner. It sat in a shoddily made cavity made by someone desperate to escape the heat of the site office and added their own adjustments. Beck dragged it out, stirring up dust that caught in my throat.
“We won’t fit.”
“You will.” When I stared at him, he added, “get in.”
I stiffened and waited for the flood of panic about being in such a small space. But it didn’t come. Now I knew the truth behind how my mom died, small spaces couldn’t confine me. My rage was enough to burn through anything.
I held up a hand. First, I needed to check how bad my wound was.
The bullet had taken a chunk out of my arm only, which was a plus.
But the mess of my jacket and the blood made me cringe.
I stifled a noise as my finger slipped too deep into the wound.
Beck’s face pinched, and he ripped off his shirt and fit it around my arm.
Tattoos covered his marble-sculpted body, but something about them caught my eye. His fake tattoos always had a glossy sheen, and inevitably, the edges cracked and peeled. You couldn’t do the work Beck did and keep them perfect. My fingers itched to trace out a stingray tangled in plants.
“What?” Beck’s voice was husky.
I was too busy looking at all his tattoos, more intricate and colorful than I’d ever seen.
A joker card on fire.
Lines of disintegrating code
A baby doe, with innocent eyes.
And a lyre on his neck.
Each tattoo told a story of a soulless man who’d found a family. I thought I’d been the only one who found a home in Greenich Bay, but Beck had as well. My heart squeezed so tight it stole my breath.
“These look real,” I frowned.
There was a patch of bare skin over his heart, and my stomach twisted strangely at the sight.
“They are.”
“What?”
His eyes bore into me. “The tattoos are real.”
Beck gripped my hand and brought it to his chest. He dragged my fingers over a chameleon hanging off a branch. How many faces had Beck and I worn over the years? But we’d never been more stripped bare than the space that framed his heart.
“B-but…”
The words wouldn’t come. They stuck in my throat like ineffectual glue. What could I say when I knew what this meant. It all crashed into me like a wave. Beck had been away so many times, only to return sweating and ill.
“Tattoos involve needles.”
Beck made a promise. To never let another needle pass through his skin. I’d taunted him with that, knowing Beck wouldn’t cross that line. Beck pulled me into his arms, and a magnetic energy thrummed around us. He dragged my hand up and flattened it over the empty space of his heart.
“They do.”
I thought of teenage Beck, and the torture he’d endured with a thousand needles. How, even though he didn’t feel terror, his friend did, and Beck had so few of those.
“Beck, I don’t understand.”
He dropped his forehead to mine, and the breath we shared was bittersweet. My thoughts rattled as his heartbeat crashed under my palm. Tremors raked through him.
“It’s penance, Lyra. The least I could do.”
“You did this for me?” My throat narrowed. “Why?”
His heartbeat was erratic under my hand.
“You really have to ask?” Beck whispered.
No, I didn’t. I could see the reason in the fathomless depths of his dark gaze. When I first began training at The Unseen, I wondered what thoughts stirred behind his magnetic eyes. They saw everything and showed nothing.
Not now. Regret blazed out of every pore. Desperate, sharp-edged love.
“You faced your biggest fear because I’m made wrong. No matter how many times I apologize, I can’t take back the mistakes I made.” His voice cracked, and he steadied the chasm with a full breath. “You don’t owe me forgiveness, but I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn it.”
“Beck.”
“How can I ask anything of you if I don’t face the same fear? I never felt weaker than with a needle in my arm, stealing my strength and making me a ghost.”
I pressed my fingers to his lips, anything to stop the terrible shiver. He was cutting himself open for me.
“Every tattoo is my penance for hurting you. It’s my fear made into ink and a permanent mark of how I failed you. I’m meant to be your monster, for you, not to you.”