I spentthe next two weeks coming back to Aubrey’s cell with little bits and offerings—fruit and stolen pieces of jerky. A bottle of cold, instant coffee that was probably so far past expired it would have made most people cringe. He took it all from me without question and smiled while he did it. Every day, he’d reach his fingers through the metal and touch my tags gently before he’d settle on his bunk and we’d start talking.
Every day, I wondered if it was possible to love a person before you’d ever met them, because there was a part of me that felt like I’d loved Aubrey my entire life. Maybe that was just him, though. Maybe that was what Aubrey Malcolm and his foxfire eyesdidto people.
It was the only explanation I had for the way I reacted when I came to the prisoner area and heard the sound of low grunts, the growling of a voice that wasn’t Aubrey’s.
The sound of skin slapping skin.
And I knew.
I knew when the food I’d brought slipped from numb fingers and somehow found itself replaced with my gun.
And I knew when I found his cell door open and saw Morris on top of him.
I didn’t think when I put a bullet in Morris’s shoulder, and I didn’t think when my boot collided with the side of his head to cut off the scream before he brought the rest of our squad down on us.
“Aubrey.” He jerked like I’d hit him when I kneeled beside him and untied his wrists. He was curled in on himself, his clothes ripped, his brow bloody. He looked dazed when he turned his head and his eyes met mine. “Hey.” I pulled off my jacket, covering up the long gash that ran along the length of his back, trailing to the top of his ass. “Hey, let’s get you fixed up, okay?”
It took another few seconds of him looking at me to finally focus, and when he did, he smiled through a busted lip. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before.”
His voice was so hollow, and he was shaking when I helped him pull his pants up and tie his shredded shirt around his back as a makeshift bandage. He closed his eyes when I secured my jacket around his shoulders, my fingers lingering, like that piece of fabric could somehow protect him from what had just happened.
And he kept his head down as I glanced between Morris still breathing on the ground and the open door.
Everything… everything was falling down around my feet—the world, who I thought I was going to be and what I thought I was going to do with my life—because I pulled Aubrey out of his cell and started walking. I knew the soldiers were light on duty at night, and I also knew there was an emergency exit stairwell beside the regular holding area.
He came to a standstill when we rounded the corner, his eyes fixed on the cells that were emptier than they’d been since the last time he saw them.
“We have to help them.”
I wanted to tell him there was nothing we could do—that I had the key code for the stairwell but not the prisoner’s individual locks.
But…
“You don’t look like you can help anyone.”
His brows came together, and his green eyes were pleading when they turned to me. Maybe he was running on pure adrenaline. Maybe it was determination. Whatever it was, the stubbornness in his gaze trumped the pain I’d seen on his face earlier. “I’m not leaving until those doors are open.”
Protocol.
Protocol said I should have left him in that cell and let Morris rape him. Protocol said I should turn him in to the head scientist. Protocol said I was fucked, and I didn’t care.
“Under an emergency, every door in this place automatically opens.”
“What kind of emergency?”
It was a bad idea—there was every chance we’d get caught—but I also knew they’d moved the chemicals from the storage room into a closet close to the holding cells.
I knew a lot of the containers had one word written across them.
Flammable.
“A fire.”
Aubrey’s eyes widened, but his lips quirked into a soft smile. “I know how to start fires, Bishop. Let’s burn this place to the ground.”
TWO YEARS LATER
CHAPTER
