Free Web NovelChapter 111: A Kiss
Elara was at the disposal yard in civvies and a tactical vest she had not worn since she was a sergeant.
She had a rifle Caleb did not recognize across her back and a sidearm at her hip and an earpiece that was patched into a channel only she and the Hacker were on.
Vance was at the gate.
He nodded at Caleb once. He did not speak.
He handed Elara a set of keys.
They took an unmarked transport van out of the yard at sixteen-twenty-two.
Elara drove.
The Hacker fed coordinates through the windshield HUD.
[Hacker: The convoy is moving east on the river road. Three vehicles. Aris is in the second one. The lead vehicle has four hunters. The trail vehicle has two and a heavy machine gun. I am giving you a service road that intersects them at the bridge in nineteen minutes. You will be ahead of them by ninety seconds. Use the seconds.]
Elara drove ten minutes in tactical silence. At minute eleven, she said, "You’re sure about coming."
"Yes."
"Your father told me he wanted you holding back."
"My father told me a lot of things."
She glanced at him, did not argue, and drove faster.
The bridge was a six-lane span over a freight canal. The convoy came across it at sixteen-forty-one.
The van was on the access ramp below.
Elara cut the engine.
She racked the rifle.
She said: "Lead vehicle is mine. Trail is yours. You take the gun first. The hunters second. Aris is in the middle vehicle. Do not put a round through that vehicle for any reason."
"Copy."
"Caleb."
"Yes."
"If the silver does what I think it does, I do not want to know until afterward. Don’t show me. Don’t tell me. Just do it."
Caleb kept the answer to himself.
She got out.
The lead vehicle came off the bridge at sixteen-forty-three.
Elara’s first shot took the driver through the side window.
The vehicle veered. The second hunter inside reached for the wheel. Elara put a round through his shoulder and a round through his throat with the same trigger pull. The vehicle slid sideways into the embankment.
The trail vehicle was forty meters back.
Caleb was already moving.
He came up the side of the road in a low run that should have taken him eight seconds and took him three. He hit the gunner on the heavy machine gun from below the mount, drove him sideways off the bed of the truck, and put his combat knife into the man’s neck before the man’s hands could come down off the grip. He was on the second hunter inside the cab before the engine stopped.
The sidearm stayed holstered. The knife and the speed were enough.
The silver under his ribs was warm.
This heat had none of the old key’s hungry pull. It ran low, steady, and focused along the lines of his marks, sharpening his vision and dragging speed out of muscles that should have been spent.
He killed the second hunter inside the cab in less time than it took the man to recognize him.
His attention dropped to the body, then to his own hands. His hands were not shaking. That was new. Aris was in the middle vehicle.
Bound at the wrists. Hood over his head. The bandage on his left hand was soaked through and dripping onto his lap.
Caleb cut the bindings and pulled the hood off. Aris blinked up at him.
"You came," Aris said.
"Yes." His eyes sharpened through the pain. "Elara?" he asked.
"On the lead vehicle. Alive."
"Then we move now. There is a second convoy ten minutes behind this one. The Hacker did not see it because the second convoy is not on Defense Force channels. It is on a private executive channel I was monitoring from the engineering bay before they took me. They are coming in three minutes. We need to be off this bridge."
Caleb pulled him out of the vehicle.
He was lighter than he should have been.
The bandage on his hand was leaking down his sleeve.
A new statue came around the embankment at sixteen-forty-eight.
Tali had the Paris one. Iharu had the Lagos one.
This one was new.
A statue Caleb had not seen before. Marks lit at four of twelve. Smaller than the others. Proportions slightly different. Shoulders less narrow, arms only barely too long.
This was not one of the eleven he had seen in the vault. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
The silver under his ribs spiked hot at the sight of it, a sharp local burn beneath the lowest right rib.
The statue stopped at the edge of the bridge.
Its head turned toward Caleb.
It said, in his own voice:
"Father."
Elara was at Caleb’s shoulder, close enough that he knew she heard it before she moved.
The statue did not move.
It held on Caleb in silence. Then its head turned to Aris, who Caleb was holding upright by the right arm, and the marks on its torso dimmed two notches without anyone touching it.
It turned and retreated along its own approach at a measured walk. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
Elara got them off the bridge in ninety seconds.
The second convoy passed the bridge thirty seconds after they cleared the river road. The Hacker confirmed it. The Hacker did not have a clean explanation for why the second convoy had not seen them.
Elara did not ask.
She drove to a safe house on the south side of the river that was not Iris’s safe house. Marcus had set this one up too, eleven years ago, for a contingency that had not happened until today.
Caleb carried Aris inside.
He laid him on the couch.
Elara closed the door behind them.
Aris was unconscious by the time Caleb got him to the couch.
He had lost more blood than the bandage could hold. The hand wound he had been keeping open for four days had finally taken too much from him.
Elara worked on him.
She had the kit. She had the training. She had done this on operators for fifteen years. She closed the wound, packed it, started a saline drip from a bag that was older than she was but still sealed.
It took her forty-three minutes.
At the end of it, Aris’s breathing was steady. His skin was less gray. His pulse was inside the band Elara wanted it in.
She sat back on her heels.
She had blood up to her elbows.
She had a cut across her cheekbone from a piece of glass in the lead vehicle.
She had not cleaned it.
Caleb was sitting on the floor beside the couch with the dampener still in his coat pocket and his hands flat on his thighs.
He had not let himself shake yet. The silver under his ribs was still warm.
Elara’s attention found him. She said: "Come here."
He came.
She took his hand. She put it on her cheekbone, over the cut.
"Clean it for me. Slowly. I want to feel my face for a second before I have to look at it in the mirror."
He took the cloth from the kit and cleaned the cut slowly.
The line of her jaw rested under his fingers. A slight tremor moved through her cheek, one she was trying to hide. Her breath warmed the inside of his wrist when she exhaled.
She did not turn away.
He cleaned the cut.
He pulled the cloth away.
She put her hand over his and held it against her face.
He kissed her.
She kissed him back without moving her hand off his.
For a second, the cut on her cheek was the only thing between his lips and her jaw.
Then she shifted closer.
She pulled him down beside her on the floor next to the couch where Aris was sleeping. Her face went into the side of his neck. Both arms locked around his back while the rifle stayed on the floor beside her hip.
She stayed quiet against his throat for a long time, breathing hard enough for both of them.
He held her.
He kept hold.
He counted her breaths because he did not have anything else to do with his hands.
He counted to two hundred and thirty.
Then she lifted her head, met his eyes, and said:
"This cannot be the night. I want it to be, but Aris is on the couch, we have not slept in two days, I am bleeding from my face, and I killed three men today. I want to remember what I want to remember when I want to remember it, and not in this room."
"Okay."
"Day Seventeen. If we are both alive."
"Day Seventeen."
She held his face in both hands and kissed him once more.
It was a small kiss.
It was a promise.
Then she got up and went to the sink to wash the blood off her arms.
He opened the envelope from Aris’s safety deposit box while she was at the sink.
The witness’s name on the typed statement at the top was not "Aris."
It was Lin.
The 1979 lab assistant who had heard the shot. Who had cleaned glassware. Who had written the statement and never delivered it.
Her name was Lin.
Aris’s mother had been Lin.
And Lin was one of the eleven unmarked names on Folder Two.
Caleb closed the envelope.
He let that settle.
Then he stood up and went to help Elara at the sink.
