Holmes (6 page)

As he fell, Adam released the sack and caught the boy. He was all skin and bone, and those haunted dark eyes.

“I’ve got you.” The kid’s clothes were nothing more than a few tatters, leaving him exposed. Adam knelt and put the boy on the ground. It took Adam a second to work the buttons of his own shirt loose and strip it off. He wrapped it around the boy.

The boy snuggled into it, circling into a ball and shivering.

“Here, I’ll take care of him.”

Adam looked up and saw Liberty appear. She was carrying a blanket and wrapped it around the boy.

“Thank you,” Adam said.

“I’ll get him to the med bus.” She looked up at the cage, sympathy and horror washing over her face. “I’ll organize some food and water for them.”

Adam took a deep breath and managed a nod.

But her gaze zeroed in on his face and then her cheeks went white. “You can’t get them out.”

His fingers curled into his palms. “No. The cage is rigged to explode, the outside is covered in raptor poison and some sort of electrical charge. And the aliens are on their way. It’ll take us hours to cut it open and we only have a few minutes before we need to be far away from here.”

“Oh, no,” Liberty whispered.

“And they’ve been experimented on. Looks like they’re all turning raptor.”

He turned and looked back at the convoy. People were huddled in groups by their vehicles, or pressed against the windows. They looked horrified, stricken.

They were all waiting for him to save these people. People each and every one of them knew could have been them.

He looked back up at the cage. Dammit all to hell.

“Adam…” Liberty gripped his arm. Squeezed. Between them the boy started sobbing.

“Get him to the med bus. Take care of him.”

She looked torn for a second, but then she nodded and gathered up the boy in her arms.

Adam stood, and despite the sun on his bare skin, all he felt was a lonely coldness move through him.

Marcus and his team had returned and stood, watching, waiting.

“Elle says the aliens are getting closer,” Marcus said.

Time was up. Adam looked at the convoy, at the hundreds of people he had to protect. “Marcus, do you have any KMA-3 grenades?” he asked.

“Bioweapons?” Shaw said, incredulous.

Adam nodded.

“Yeah,” Marcus said in a calm voice.

KMA-3s let off a gas that rendered its victims unconscious. It slowed the heart until eventually it stopped.

“It’s painless,” Marcus added.

Adam managed a nod. But no one really knew if that was true, did they?

“It’s the only call,” Marcus said.

“I know.” But Adam knew it was another thing to haunt him. A decision that would torment him in the dead of night.

“Claudia, we need the KMA-3 grenades.”

The female soldier sucked in a deep breath. “On it.”

Adam turned to the convoy. “All right. Everyone back in your vehicles. The aliens are on the way. We need to get out of here as quickly and as safely as we can. Remember, stay in formation, stay under the illusion.”

A lot of people started, panic crossing their faces. They scrambled for their vehicles. Other people just looked tired and resigned. Even though they’d experienced it so many times, he could see the wear and tear. Liberty was right, they couldn’t handle much more of this.

A woman clutching a baby in her arms stepped forward. “We…we can’t leave those poor people to the aliens.” She gripped her child tighter. “They’ve clearly suffered enough.”

“We won’t let the aliens touch them,” Adam promised with a heavy heart. “Now go.”

He watched the engines start and the convoy move out.

When he turned back to the cage, Claudia had returned, holding two small metallic grenades in her hand.

Adam strode forward and took them from her. “I’ll do it.”

***

Adam slammed into his truck, his thoughts a churning mess. “Drive,” he snapped.

The engine gunned and they pulled out. He didn’t even look at the private, just stared at his hands.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He snapped his head around and looked at Liberty. She sat calmly in the driver’s seat, her gaze focused straight ahead.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I traded with Matt.” She glanced at him. “I’m a very good driver.” She paused. “You did the right thing.”

Adam slammed his head back against the seat. “Spare me the psychoanalysis.”

“You need to talk about this. If you don’t, it’ll eat you through.”

“It already is.” The words rushed out of him. “Fuck.”

“Swearing helps,” she added. “It helped me.”

“And what did you need help with? What pretty clothes to wear, what perfume to spray on?” He knew it was mean and petty, but dammit, acid was chewing at his gut and he was feeling nasty. Liberty had climbed in here and made herself a target.

“No. My abusive ex-husband. The one who mentally berated me, physically beat me, raped me, and controlled my every move for two years.”

Adam sucked in a breath and turned to look at her. She looked her usual calm, beautiful self. He found it hard to imagine her trapped in an abusive relationship.

“I escaped…eventually.”

He saw her hands flex on the wheel, and realized it wasn’t as easy as she was making out. “That takes courage.”

“Oh, I had no courage left by the end. He’d turned me from a happy, confident young woman into something far less. He eroded my sense of self, my confidence, my courage. It was pure desperation that finally let me escape.” Blue eyes met his. “I knew if I stayed another day, he’d kill me.”

“Liberty—”

“It’s my past, Adam. It made me who I am today. A woman who vowed to enjoy the hell out of every day.” A small smile flirted on her face. “Alien invasion or not, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let what he did to me ruin life for me. I vowed to enjoy sex, enjoy clothes and looking good, enjoy just being me. All the things he’d denied me. But I couldn’t start doing that until I healed. Therapy helped me with that. Talking, swearing, raging at it all, helped.”

“I can’t unload this on you…on anyone.”

She raised a brow. “What? You have to be superhero? Never lean on anyone, or be seen as less than strong?”

“I’m the leader.”

“God, Adam, you get to be human, too.” Her voice lowered. “You were human with me last night in your bunk.”

His muscles tensed, memories rising. “That shouldn’t have happened. Can never happen again. It was a mistake.”

She smiled. “Then it was the best mistake I’ve ever made.”

Chapter Six

It was quiet in the truck. Liberty felt the terrible tension throbbing off Adam. When she glanced sideways at him, she saw the muscles in his forearms were strained, and torment filled his handsome face.

She knew he was thinking of those poor people—trapped, abused, mistreated. It turned her stomach, made her feel incredibly sad, and so angry at the aliens.

But looking at Adam, knowing the hard decision he’d made in order to end those people’s suffering, it made her realize more than ever how much he shielded them all from those hard choices.

Instead, he shouldered all the anguish alone.

“You did the right thing,” she said quietly.

He made an angry noise. “I killed them.”

“You ended their suffering. Even if you’d gotten them out, they wouldn’t have survived. The aliens killed them.”

Silence.

“And you got that boy out,” she added.

Adam shifted in his seat, the muscles in his chest flexing. He seemed unaware he was still shirtless. “Did Doc Emerson say anything about the boy?”

“His name is Elijah. He’s dehydrated. Malnourished. Scared. No signs the raptors experimented on him. He’ll need time.”

“And now he has no mother.”

Liberty gripped the steering wheel. “No. But he has a group of people who want the best for him. People who understand and will protect him. And he’s no longer a prisoner.”

The silence thickened again. She knew what it was like to dwell on the horrors in silence. She’d done plenty of it after she’d escaped her abusive marriage. She’d spent a whole lot of time with her toxic thoughts, blaming herself for not getting out sooner, questioning every little thing she’d done or not done.

She fiddled with the comp on the dash until she found the music list she’d uploaded to the convoy’s systems. There were no radio stations anymore, but she’d spent the last eighteen months collecting music from every survivor and pestering the tech team for anything they could recover. She eyed Adam again and picked a song.

As the melodious female voice of a soul singer popular over a hundred years ago filled the vehicle, she sensed Adam looking at her.

“How the hell could you possibly know my favorite artist?” There was suspicion in his voice.

Liberty stared straight ahead and smiled. “She’s your favorite? Must be a coincidence.”

“I get the feeling there are no coincidences with you.”

Liberty kept smiling. Who knew confounding Adam Holmes would be so much fun?

She negotiated the narrow road, following the vehicle in front of them. They were near the front of the convoy, and the drive was incredibly slow.

They had to wait for constant feedback from the squads creating the diversions and the drone operators. Still, it was better than stumbling into an alien patrol.

There was nothing more frustrating than knowing the Enclave—safety—wasn’t that far away, but they had to practically crawl to get there.

“General, do you copy?” Elle Milton’s voice came through the comm.

“Go ahead, Elle,” he said.

“Hell Squad reports that there is a stream ahead. The convoy’s water levels are becoming dangerously low. Requesting we stop to take on water and clean up.”

Liberty saw Adam look at his hands. They were still stained with dirt and blood from the trap. He also glanced at his bare chest, and his eyes widened.

“That’s a yes, Elle. Pass the word around. But we can’t stay long.”

“You got it, General,” Elle confirmed.

Not too far ahead, Liberty saw the lead vehicles pulling over. She slowed the truck and pulled them off onto the dirt beside the road. Just down a shallow slope, a wide stream gleamed in the sunshine.

“Don’t forget a clean shirt,” she said.

Adam pushed opened his door. “I won’t.”

She lowered her voice. “I really don’t want all the single ladies discovering what you’ve been hiding.”

He glanced up fast, blue eyes hitting hers. Ah, there it was. That spark of desire he kept buried.

He stared at her for a moment, the air thickening in the cab of the truck. Then he got out.

Liberty sighed. Her general was going to take a little more convincing to loosen up and spend some more time with her.

He grabbed a blue shirt from the back of the truck and with it slung over one shoulder, they headed down to the stream. Hell Squad was supervising some of the convoy members, who were filling large water containers. The containers hovered on iono-lifts above the ground. The flat cargo lifts were used to carry heavy items and utilized electrohydrodynamics to produce the thrust to stay in the air. From there, it would be loaded into the trucks and run through purification filters.

Claudia and Shaw were knee-deep in the water, dragging the containers through, then passing them back.

As Liberty watched, Shaw glanced around, then slapped a hand in the water, sending a huge spray up at Claudia.

The female soldier whipped around and skewered him with a look. “Moron.”

The general ignored them. “Marcus, how’s Gabe?”

Amusement flickered briefly over the tough soldier’s face. “Awake. Grumpy. Doc’s keeping him in a bunk in the med bus, and he’s not happy about it.”

Some of the tension in Adam’s shoulders eased. “Good. Glad he’s okay.”

Adam moved to the water’s edge and started washing his hands and face.

Shaw whistled. “General, either you wrestled a lion, or you’ve been holding out on us.”

Liberty frowned and saw Adam straighten. She got a perfect view of his back and her mouth dropped open.

“What?” Adam said with a frown.

Liberty saw Cruz grinning, Claudia smothering a smile, and even Marcus was smiling.

Cruz rubbed the side of his nose. “Some she-cat left a
whole
lot of scratches down your back. Looks like she drew blood.”

God, she’d done that? Liberty stared at the scratches, couldn’t look away. She’d never left gouges in a man like that before.

Adam turned to hide his back, his cheeks filling with dull color. He quickly pulled his clean shirt on and set to work doing the buttons up.

Shaw shook his head. “General, you hound dog. Here I am, imagining you sitting at your comp at night or poring over maps, all alone. Our fearless leader who does nothing but work tirelessly—”

Claudia elbowed the sniper. “Shut it, Baird.”

Adam glared at them all. “We need to get moving.”

The soldiers nodded. Claudia splashed out of the water but paused beside Adam. “Don’t know who she is—” the female soldier smiled. “—but she’s a lucky woman. Looks like she enjoyed herself…a lot.”

A laugh burst out of Liberty and everyone looked her way. She pressed a hand over her mouth.

Adam cleared his throat, a sound almost like a growl. “Get everyone ready to move out. Now.”

***

Adam walked along the line of convoy vehicles. As he talked, consoled, and offered motivating platitudes, he wondered if any of them heard the tiredness in his voice. He wondered how much longer he could keep telling people they were almost there, and that everything would be all right.

He headed back toward his truck, wondering where Liberty was. He couldn’t believe he’d paraded around without his shirt on and let everyone see the marks she’d left on him.

He didn’t care about himself. Hell, he was honest enough to admit he liked knowing she’d left her mark on him. He’d been more worried she’d be embarrassed.

Not that she’d appeared to be. Instead, she’d looked…intrigued.

He felt a curl of desire.

Dammit, he was supposed to be staying clear of personal entanglements with her. It was bad enough being trapped in the same vehicle, smelling her perfume all around him, watching her out of the corner of his eye.