“Hell, Zion.” He swallowed, his complexion paling. “You have to calm down. Everyone here has been vetted by me. They’re not going to talk. You can trust us.”
My mouth dry, I gritted out, “I thought so. But things have changed.” The traitor lurking in our ranks had caused me to reconsider the people surrounding us. “I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”
“Then don’t. If we break our word, we know what awaits us.” The doc looked at his two team members. “Everyone got it?”
Mute, his colleagues nodded their agreement.
“Gedeon? Can you hear me?” the doc asked Gedeon stirring on the table, groaning as the two men pulled the leather restraints from underneath and secured his limbs. “We don’t have enough pain meds. And your injury doesn’t necessarily require anesthesia to attempt…” he trailed off, and then sighed. “This is going to hurt.”
But before he yanked out the knife, the doc gave me a sad smile. “Zion, we’ll survive without Gedeon. He’s an authority person, not our compound itself.”
“He is to me,” I whispered. The doc’s eyebrows slowly rose, and as I backed toward the exit, I spilled the truth, the one and the only. “He’s our life. Mine and hers.”
15
KALI
Alive.
Standing.
Fighting.
Watching.
Alive.
He wasalive.
“Wait!”
Ignoring Zion’s shout, I leaped out of our car parked in front of the central building and sprinted down the street. The silhouettes moving in the windows and the rare night roamers blurred in my peripherals as I navigated through our compound, across the grassy field, and then flew into the surrounding forest.
I slipped on the damp moss, the vegetation awakened from its winter slumber?—
My shoulder collided with a maple tree. Pain tested my joint as the splintered tree bark snagged on my leather jacket, abrading the supple material.
But I paid no attention to the scratches ruining the clothing I’d purchased after Gedeon’s had ceased smelling like him. I couldn’t convince myself to wear his things anymore.
And now I wouldn’t have to.
He was here.
He’d been here all this time.
Oblivious to the ache spreading in my scalp from the twigs catching my hair and the late-night humidity leaching warmth from my fingertips, I circled the clearing I’d grown fond of.
One circle.
Two circles.
Three circles.
Four circles.
I ducked under boughs, jumped over gnarled roots, brushed away the spider webs, and repeated it all anew, the smarting cut on my cheek forgotten.
Seven circles.
