Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(26)

“No! We can’t leave them. I need them.”

There’s a sound by Lucas’s door. An arm covered in tattoos reaches in and takes the keys. Lucas is dragged out, and several men lead him away. My door won’t open. A man in sunglasses stands by my window.

“Doyle?”

“Hello, Lyric. We need to have a talk,” he says. His shirt has a logo. It’s a white tower on a black background.

My head spins, and then everything goes away.





Chapter Ten


I’M SITTING IN A BOOTH IN A LITTLE RESTAURANT THAT HAS gone way overboard on the pastels and florals. Doyle sits across from me, sipping from a mug of coffee. He smiles.

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Menard, Texas.”

I’m still loopy, and the black swirl in his cup hypnotizes me. I feel disconnected from my thoughts, like someone has cut the cord that connects communication between the two sides of my brain. Still, there is a feeling that something is really, really wrong. A little voice calls out from the fog. It tells me to run.

“You have had a rough two weeks,” he says, eyeballing my outfit.

“Where’s Lucas?”

“Lucas is fine, Lyric. I’m sure you have a million questions, but first, I’m very glad to see you, very glad that you survived the tidal wave. Better yet, I’m thrilled you found your way here. You are an incredibly resourceful young woman. Of course, you had a little help from me—”

“You’re with Tempest?”

He nods his head, and I feel bile rise up in my throat.

“I’m what you would call an independent contractor. My job title is Combat Trainer and Strategic Engineer. In layman’s terms, I train soldiers and plan security details for high-risk clients. I’m also an expert in crowd control.”

“You took Bex and Arcade!”

He nods. “It was important to separate the three of you so we could have this conversation. I didn’t want the others to sway—”

“You killed that cop.”

“No, I wasn’t there,” he says as he gives me the “just a minute” sign. “And that wasn’t how the operation was planned. The three of you were supposed to run, and my team would catch you one by one. It was regrettable, a breakdown in the command structure. The company has offered to pay for her funeral expenses and set up a college fund for her son—”

Before he can finish, I lean forward and slap him so hard, it’s a wonder his nose doesn’t come off and land on the table. I don’t know if the noise attracted the waitress, but one comes strolling out from the kitchen with a pen and pad in her hands. She’s a stout woman with hair braided so thick and long that it touches her belt. It’s also streaked with gray and brown.

“It’s hot out there today,” she says, easy with the small talk. She sizes us up, and I can see we’re not what she was expecting. A middle-aged guy in a black jumpsuit and a filthy teenager with murder in her eyes.

“Do you have any pie?” Doyle says as casually as he can. There’s a growing red welt on his right cheek that she can’t see, but it might as well be flashing a beacon into space, it’s so bright.

“Absolutely. We’ve got apple and blueberry.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any cherry, would you?”

“I can check.”

Doyle smiles wide and winks. “I would love you for it.”

The waitress smiles warily. On her way to the back, Doyle begs her to turn on the television mounted on the ceiling. She obliges, and all at once, the screen is full of Coney Island. Soldiers are fighting Rusalka, who keep leaping out of the water. They fire M-16s and rocket launchers at everything as a reporter on the scene hyperventilates while trying to tell us that most of the military’s efforts are having little effect.

“Oh, I hate watching this,” the waitress says, but before she can change the channel, Doyle stops her.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Leave it.”

“Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug, then wanders off in search of his dessert.

“I don’t want any more people to die while I work to keep you safe and alive.”

“Nothing you say makes any sense, Doyle,” I growl. “You and your company kidnapped my parents. You’ve got Alpha in a torture camp. You’re experimenting on them. Now you’re here to tell me you’re trying to protect me.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Doyle says. “Lyric, you’re the most important person in the world.”

“Me?”

“You can put an end to the fighting, Lyric,” he says.

“It has nothing to do with me,” I say.

“It has everything to do with you,” he argues.

“No! You know what could have helped stop the fighting? Thirty thousand Alpha living in a tent city in Coney Island. Maybe if people like you hadn’t harassed them, they might have been willing to fight those things for us.”

“I completely agree, and when this is all said and done, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs and go to jail, but right now pointing fingers doesn’t solve the crisis.”

“And exactly why am I supposed to care?”

He takes a deep breath, fighting the urge to continue the pointless debate.