28
The first thingReaper saw was Caroline’s empty hospital bed. He saw the empty lines hanging around it. Was he too late? Smoke drifted around the room, falling into the open door from the explosions he’d set down the hall. Dust lifted in the air. His visibility was hazy at best.
His heart plummeted into his stomach and straight to the floor at the thought. If Ranier had already moved her, he knew without a doubt that he’d never see her again. The ramifications for his team were horrendous, but the ramifications for him were worse.
She’d managed to somehow pull him out of the black hole he buried himself in so deeply and forced him to see the light around him. She’d given all of herself to him—and he’d knocked down her every attempt at the end, he’d done his best to annihilate her feelings for him. Surely, she’d be safer away—
How wrong he’d been.
His throat was closing from more than the dust in the air, and Reaper croaked out her name, “Caroline?”
There was a cough and then her voice, like the sweetest music, filled his ears, “Reaper?”
Reaper impatiently fanned the dust and smoke away. Caroline had pushed herself up from the floor into a half-sitting position, her face and bare arms covered in a coat of grime. He went to his knee instantly. “Caroline, come with me. Hurry.”
He hadn’t expected her to follow his lead, but the slash of horror that twisted up her features and sent her jerking away from him made his gut recoil.
Fuck. They didn’t have time for this; the soldiers he’d managed to maim and kill on the way in would be replaced by more within seconds. He had a few more grenades and well-placed bombs ready to go off to cover their tracks, but they had to hurry. “Look, I don’t have time to explain, but you’ve got to come—now.”
She scrambled away on her hands and feet. “So, you can just torture me like them? Use me as your donor the same way you used my body?”
Every word she said was a knife to his chest. And now that he’d opened himself up to the possibility of hope, it was like his entire soul had been flayed open and lay at her feet. The numbness he’d cloaked himself in so long was absent.
Is this how he’d made her feel with his hateful, lying words? Like his very insides were being boiled in acid?
He couldn’t help but reach for her, knowing she’d pull away and the pain that would cause him. “I was wrong. Completely wrong. I realized my mistake as soon as I left. God dammit, you’ve got to believe me.”
Her chin lifted, stubborn as ever, there was no hiding the traces of the trail in her baby blue gaze as she stared at him with loathing. “I’d be a fool to believe a single word out of your mouth. And I’m no longer innocent enough to fall for your lies. Get out.”
Sweat was trickling down his brow and he glanced at the timer he’d set on his watch. In three seconds, another explosion would go off. Without explanation, he threw himself over her body just as a huge wave of shockwaves rocked the room, sending more dust and dirt and smoke raining down.
When it was safe, he lifted his hands and trapped her delicate face between his palms, forcing her to look at him. “If you believe nothing else, believe this. I’ve set a series of timed explosions and every 30 seconds, they’re going to go off, each one closer to us than the next. If you stay here, you’ll die.”
She wrenched from him, staggering to her feet, and she stared down at him with nothing but pure scathing disgust. “At least it would be a quick death. I’d rather be taken out by a bomb than slowly drained. Besides, I have no one to go home to. I don’t care anymore.”
Every dark memory crawled out from behind the walls he’d built and seeped into his pores, the weight of despair more staggering than a pile of concrete on his back. He’d done this to her. He’d managed to destroy that nurturing innocence that had drawn him to her like a moth to an inferno.
She’d rather die than go with him. Could he blame her?
Crushing the fragile hope sprouting inside his should, he’d used every weapon in his vast arsenal to ensure she hated him enough to never come back.
“I don’t care. I don’t care whether you’d rather die than come with me; I’m not willing to let you make that sacrifice. If I have to knock you out and throw you over my shoulder, I’m taking you from this place. As soon as we get to safety, I’ll set you free and you never have to see me again, but you are not dying today.”
Caroline threw up a hand as if to ward him off and Reaper took a menacing step forward. Another voice, female, pierced his awareness. “Caroline, I sent for him. He’s here to save you. We have to go with him.”
Reaper froze, his muscles point tight, ready for an attack as a dark-haired woman wearing a lab coat stepped through the haze surrounding them. His chest went on lockdown as her face came into view. “I recognize you.”
In the same stubborn way as Caroline, the brunette lifted her chin. “I was Dr. Winters’ assistant.”
Reaper’s entire core shifted and he took a deadly step in her direction. “Then you deserve to die the same way she did.”
Caroline cried out and flew in his direction, yanking his arm back as he reached for his weapon. “No! You can’t hurt her. She’s the only one that’s helped me in this hellhole.”
In a daze of rage, Reaper shrugged her off and withdrew his pistol, taking aim at the woman’s forehead with a steady hand. “If she worked for Winters, and she’s responsible for the torture of my team, she deserves to die.”
“In the beginning, before I realized the true evil nature of Project Mayhem, you’re right. I willingly participated. But I swear on the Hippocratic oath that when I discovered what Winters was really up to, I started subverting everything I could. I was the one that saved Quantum when Winters wanted to let him die so she could dissect him.”
A whiplash of fury so potent it choked off his air slammed into him. He gritted his teeth together, uncaring if the force of his bite cracked his jaw. “And what about John Dawson? You didn’t save him.” The last that Reaper had seen of his teammates had been Dawson being wheeled out in a black body bag and him helpless to do anything but stare.
