Mercury Striking (The Scorpius Syndrome #1)(49)

Shit. “April, honey? Look at me. Focus.” Another two feet, and he could get the gun.

She twisted and put the barrel under her neck.

Panic tightened his throat. “April, don’t do this. We need you. I know you’re in pain, but we need you.” He lowered his voice to soothing, edging closer, trying to connect.

Tears filled her eyes. Finally. “I can’t.” Her lips trembled.

“You can,” he said gently, his hands shaking for the first time that day. “It almost kills you, but you can. The fight is all we have left.”

A tear fell from her eye. “No fight left. They’re all gone.”

He scrambled for anything to get through to her. “You’re religious and believe you have a purpose. Don’t end your time here.”

She blinked. “Or I’ll go to hell?”

He didn’t want to touch that one. “No, honey. Just please put down the gun and we’ll talk,” he said.

Her head tilted to the side as if becoming too heavy for her neck. Weariness and agony cascaded from her. “I’m already in hell.”

“We all are, but we need you. We’ll never get out if we don’t help each other.” The gun pointed to her delicate head was fucking with his brain. Bombs exploded and screams echoed in his head—an immediate flashback to pain and death. To Frankie dying in his arms, surrounded by gunfire and devastation. He shoved himself back to the present. “Please, April.” His voice shook. “Don’t do this.”

Her eyes focused. “It’s too hard.”

His eyes filled. “I know. God, I know.” Slowly, so as not to spook her, he approached until he was close enough to grab the gun. “Please, put down the gun.” He could probably take it, but she needed to make the decision to live, or no matter what he did right now, she wouldn’t.

April focused on him, so much anguish in her eyes he wanted to yell. The toy angel dropped from her hand, and her gaze followed it. She stared at the now dirty angel. Her shoulders slumped. An anguished sob echoed from her chest. Finally, her hand trembling, she lowered the gun to the mud.

Wyatt instantly reached her, lifting her to stand and securing her weapon in his pocket. “Let’s get you inside, sweetheart.” April leaned into him, moving almost like a robot.

More flashbacks bombarded Jax, and he wavered, turning around.

Lynne eyed him, her skin pale, her lips shaking. But she held her ground.

He tilted his head to the side, watching her, not sure what he was seeing. Bombs kept going off, and his body jerked.

“Jax!” Raze’s voice shot through him.

“What?” He turned, and his gaze dropped to the fresh grave. To the present and not the fights of the past. The day hazed. Dead kids. Too many dead kids surrounded him. “Why?” he breathed.

Nobody answered.

Raze cleared his throat. “I’ll finish here and smooth things over. You get Tace and Lynne back to headquarters and out of the storm.”

Storm? What storm? Jax settled, the hollowness inside him spreading until pain became everything. “No. You go. I’m not done.”

“No,” Raze said.

Jax jerked up his head. “I said, I’ve got it.”

Raze’s head lifted, and his somber blue eyes glowed through the gray. “Fine. Tace, take Lynne. I’ll cover.”

Tace moved toward Lynne.

“No, I—” She stopped speaking when Jax jerked his focus to her. Whatever she saw in his face had her backing toward Tace. Raze reached them and walked away as well.

Jax waited until they’d crossed the street and were halfway across the old parking lot fronting headquarters before grasping a shovel and patting the earth smoother around Haylee’s grave.

When he finished, he leaned on the shovel, his entire body hurting. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

An hour after Haylee’s burial, Lynne sifted through Tace’s laboratory records, failing to find another source of vitamin B but refusing to give up.

She sat on an examination table with a box of papers from Baker and Baker. An hour later, her head hurt and her eyes burned. Yet she picked up a new box and moved on. Most of the notes in the first box were about vitamin B and different SRI inhibitors that might assist in slowing down the progression of the infection. Her mind quickly cataloged everything she’d read.

Her entire life, she’d been quick. Very smart. But since surviving Scorpius, her brain worked even faster and more efficiently. She’d remember everything she read.

Ideas began to form.

When she reached the third box, a list of shipping addresses caught her eye. Numbers lined up evenly. She bit her lip. What did they mean? She memorized them, her breath catching when she deciphered a very faded pencil line at the bottom. Myriad. The letters were scratched in and tilted, but they spelled Myriad. Shit. The sheet was about Myriad Labs. What did all of the numbers mean? Was it some kind of code?

Tace entered the doorway. “Dinner has been over for a couple of hours, but there’s still food. You need to eat.”

She slowly nodded, more than willing to take a break and let her subconscious take over with the code. After she ate something, she’d get right back to work.

Tace escorted her into the soup kitchen where Raze was already eating, and in a few minutes, she’d eaten a little dinner. Soon she held a chipped plastic cup next to her silent companions, Raze and Tace.