Kristen Simmons - Breaking Point

“Sean…”

“Chase got you out!” His voice was powerful enough to push me back a step. “Chase didn’t wait, but I waited. I kept waiting, thinking that there’d be a better time. She’d age out, and then I’d go AWOL…”

Sean was losing his control, and as he did, mine returned. My hands had captured his wrists, and squeezed when he tried to brush me off.

“Sean, listen to me.”

“I swear, if they’ve been towing her around the base…”

“Stop. They said it’s run by Sisters. I promise, if I have to go in there by myself and get her, I will, okay?”

“I should have—”

“We’ll tell Mags tonight we’re going to try Tucker’s contact.” I couldn’t believe what I was saying, but we had no other options. “We’ll see her tomorrow, okay?”

Finally, he blew out a strained breath.

“Dawn,” he said.

WHILESean stayed in sick bay to question the Chicago resistance for more information, I ran back to the barracks to wake Chase. Now that I didn’t have to be strong for Sean, I became aware of the fear, rooting deep inside me. Rebecca was in more danger than I’d ever suspected. She’d been hurt—badly—and now they were torturing her, showing her off like that poor boy in the Square. I thought of Mags, cold and hard, standing in that window and shooting her own man. Mercy kill, the medic had said. We couldn’t do that to Rebecca, even if her life had become what they’d described.

Chase was not in the barracks.

I ran back past the showers, but he didn’t answer when I called his name.

I returned to sick bay. He wasn’t there either. Neither was Sean, or the Chicago guys.

We still had an hour until the meeting, but clusters of people were already filtering out of their respective stations and funneling toward what Truck had called the Loop, just beyond the mess hall. Sharp-smelling bodies surrounded me, bumping me, reminding me of the tight quarters in the Knoxville Square.

I searched for Chase, but would have settled for Sean or even Tucker. It made sense for Chase to go on to the meeting site without me; it’s where I would go if I’d woken unable to find him. But moving through the crowd of muscled arms and dismissing faces was about as easy as wading through quicksand; I kept getting stuck. Finally we passed the mess hall, where everyone who had just eaten was filtering out into the tunnel.

I saw the tall, athletic build and the golden hair, and staggered only momentarily before pursuing. I was sure it was Tucker this time. He was heading to the supply room—the opposite direction from the meeting. I lunged onto the platform and sprinted past the refrigerators and the counter made of shiny plane hull, to the back of the mess hall. Only a few stragglers remained. Most had left for the meeting.

A flash of movement near the coal carts caught my eye and I dashed after it, but the supply room was empty when I entered.

“Where’s the sniper fan club?”

At the sound of Tucker’s voice I spun back to the entrance that he now was framed within, the shadows over his face sending a chill straight to my bones. His eyes, pinched around the corners, looked edgy—like they had when he’d told us how Cara was killed.

I became acutely aware that it was just the two of us. My hand gripped the flashlight. When his head tilted curiously to the side I gritted my teeth.

“Not still worried about being alone with me, are you?”

He took a step toward me, and I moved back like the wrong end of a magnet.

“Guess that answers that question,” he said.

Laughter filtered through from the platform, not too far away. If Tucker tried anything, I could scream, and they’d be close enough to hear me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Stealing.”

I twitched.

“Relax,” he said. “My arm hurts.”

He rolled up his sleeve and revealed the pink, swollen forearm that until yesterday had been hidden within a cast.

“Looks traumatic,” I said. “Why don’t you go see the medic?”

“I don’t need to see the medic.” He regarded me with too much familiarity, the way a big brother shuns his annoying little sister. He began to sort through a box atop one of the tables. “I get the feeling there’s something you want to say.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased to hear whatever it was.

I gripped the flashlight harder.

“Apparently there’s a little problem with your rehab facility,” I said. “You neglected to mention that it was a physical rehab, not a girls’ reformatory.”

His golden brows arched. “I didn’t know a distinction was needed.”

He was incapable of honesty. Slippery as an eel.

“Is she even there?”

“Yes. Unless she ran away. Which I doubt. Where does one run in a town full of soldiers?” he mused when I narrowed my eyes.

“What really happened with Cara?”

The lines of his mouth drew tight. “I told you what happened.”

“Sorry if I don’t exactly trust you.”

He shook his head and glanced up at the exit sign. I had the fleeting fear that he was planning on bolting. He was going to escape and we would take the heat when he didn’t show up to report to Mags. She’d probably ground us so we couldn’t break Rebecca free.

“Believe it or not, I thought Cara was all right,” he said. That look of regret was back, and it made my spine tingle. I believed Chase could change, I could change, everyone could change, but not Tucker. “She had it bad,” he continued. “She told me she used to host at FBR socials. They didn’t always treat those girls so well.”

Cara? She may have been flirty, but not desperate.

I thought of how harsh she’d been to Sarah when we’d found her in Tent City, and then later, when she’d called her nothing more than a party favor. Then, strangely, I found myself picturing Cara in the pretty dress. Cara chatting with soldiers. Cara doing what she had to in order to stay alive.

“You mean you didn’t treat those girls well,” I countered.

A dark speculation filled me as the pieces slid into place—Chicago was quick to believe that the cartridge came from a sniper’s rifle, and Cara had been a part of the team that had hijacked the Horizons truck, the very place I’d found it to begin with. The other guys at the Wayland Inn had said she’d disappeared more than once; she’d even been in the Square during the last two shootings.

It seemed so clear now, I didn’t know how I’d missed it before.

Unless I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Wallace had to have known what Cara had been doing. He’d sent me out into the streets knowing I’d been accused of a crime she committed. They’d used me as her cover, so that she could keep killing soldiers.

Thank you for what you’ve done, she’d told me. Thank you for taking the fall is what she should have said.

I felt ill.

I lifted my eyes to Tucker, doubting his story more than ever, suspecting that he knew, as I so certainly did now, that Cara was the sniper. But gone was his arrogance from the base, stripped away like his blue uniform.

“Hey, Sniper!” someone shouted from outside the room. “Come on, the meeting’s getting ready to start!”

“You should go,” he said.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

He moved toward the door, hesitating near the entrance, as though he expected me to join him. When I didn’t, he walked away.

Every muscle within me was shaking. Wallace had lied. Cara had lied. Tucker was lying. Everyone was hiding some truth my life relied upon.

I hated secrets.

I removed the St. Michael medallion from my neck. It couldn’t touch my skin anymore. It was for the sniper. It had been given to me right in front of the sniper. I’d been her cover all this time. Even in death.