Page 3 of Chaos Destiny
Hunter and Rashida went one way.
Omar and I went another.
Shots rang out behind us.
While Omar provided cover fire, I searched for another exit, only to be hit with a locked door.
I swiped the card Julien gave me.
The lock clicked.
The door opened, and Omar pushed me into the sunlight, where our aching lungs soaked up fresh air. A half-wall blocked us from view as additional troops descended on the complex.
“Your turn to follow me,” he said, coughing as he reloaded. “Stay close.”
I nodded and stayed so close that our bodies created a single shadow along the exterior walls. Several minutes into our escape, he stopped underneath a bridge-like structure.
I collided with his back.
Despite it being midday, the campus was like a ghost town. The building’s glass walls towered over us, and the trees swayedin a gentle wind as if they knew what was about to happen but didn’t care—an indicator that it would be our sole burden to bear.
Omar jerked his head toward something ahead of us. “So, that’s how they do their own?”
I looked at where he was staring.
A visibly dying moth was perched on the breast pocket of Jane’s lifeless body, its wings opening and closing, their ends tattered like the hem of an old beach towel.
“Hey.” He gently grasped my chin. “Like I said, stay close, all right? Use that gun if you need to, even if it’s on me.”
I nodded again.
We headed for the empty main road.
As if needing further confirmation of what I’d seen, I looked over my shoulder.
Jane was now on her feet, looking directly at us.
2
GAGE WOLFE
I checkedmy phone for the third time in the last ten minutes, but there weren’t any new notifications. As much hell as I’d given Julien over the years, there was no way the kid wouldn’t show up for the birth of his first child.
However, Julien’s plane should have landed at DCA at least three hours ago. While traffic could get bad in the D.C. area, it was nothing like the West Coast congestion I experienced that couldn’t be cleared with the strongest dose of Sudafed.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Ari.
She looked at me from the hospital bed with glazed-over eyes, her brown skin ashen. Then she sent me a nod of reassurance—as if I couldn’t see what she looked like. As if we haven’t known each other since childhood, so I’d know from a glance when she was in a great deal of pain.
I stood, the fabric of my jeans brushing the side of the thin mattress. “I’m going to find someone. No one’s been in here in over a half hour.”
While I knew labor pain, in itself, didn’t usually lead to anything fatal in modern times, I couldn’t stand seeing her like this. Plus, depending on the severity of the pain, there could becomplications, which we would have known if someone came to the room more than once every blue moon.
“Don’t shoot anybody,” she said.
I smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “No promises.”
Initially, I was supposed to be in Atlanta. My corporation was bidding on a government contract to build new offices on the southern edge of the CDC campus. All the finalists had been invited on a private tour of where the structures would be located, but the meeting was canceled at the last minute, and no tentative date was set for a rescheduled showing. Then, two days ago, the application closed without warning.
