Forbidden Stranger Read online

Jordie growled. “You can shut up with your platitudes. Your advice. You stink of self-righteousness and smugness. I can’t wait to watch her wipe you out of existence. All of this is because of you. None of us should be here. None of us should have had this done to us. You will never understand that. You’re the one who made us into monsters, Mr. Donahue. I didn’t know that before, but now I do, and I knew it in the prison when I told my mother I could write the code for her, all she had to do was agree to get me out of there. And she did, but it was always for her own benefit, and now she’s dead the way you’re going to be dead, the way all of the rest of us will be dead and nobody, not a single person, ever again, will be able to use this tech!”

  Jordie’s voice faded as he ran out of breath from the rant. He lunged at Ewan, who didn’t flinch. Jordie stank of sweat and something deeper, like dirt that had been grimed into his skin and would never wash away. The stench nauseated her.

  “I’m not going to run,” Ewan told her.

  “I’m going to hit you again,” Nina said.

  She was going to hurt him because she could not fight this tangled, messy skein of impulses and compulsion that worked through her mind and out into her body, into her fists. She was going to hurt him because even though she did not believe he had classified information, whatever Jordie had done to her was making her feel like Ewan was a threat that needed to be eliminated. She swung again, this time with her left hand, equally as strong and capable as the right but still not the dominant fist and therefore, easier for her to pull at the last infinitesimal second.

  It still connected solidly enough to rock Ewan back another step, pushing him in the opposite direction. This time he stumbled and went to one knee. More blood spattered the floor. From far off, she heard screaming. Alarms. A rising, deeper stink of acrid smoke.

  Her heart did not beat faster. She didn’t gasp or pant. The world slowed in front of her as she braced to kick the man in front of her, kick him while he was down. If her foot connected with his face, it would crunch his bones. If she kicked him hard enough, she would drive the splinters of his nose into his brain, and she could kill him.

  She was going to hurt him because he had hurt her, so many times. Over and over. She was going to hurt him because she had loved him, and he had killed that love between them as easily as she was going to end his life right now.

  * * *

  This was the end.

  Ewan saw it on her face, in the twist of her lips and the cold light in Nina’s eyes. She was going to kill him, and even though every single molecule of him screamed in self-preservation that he needed to get away, or at least to fight back, Ewan only shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes. He spat blood to the side.

  And he loved her.

  Kneeling on a hard tile floor in a hospital hallway, the metallic burn of blood filling his mouth and the stink of smoke and worse filtering through his nostrils, he loved her. Pain racking his jaw from her dual punches, he loved her. Waiting for the final blow . . . all he could do was love her.

  Ewan couldn’t speak the words aloud. His jaw, perhaps broken, wouldn’t work. He’d bitten his tongue. He’d lost his voice.

  “Do it!” Jordie commanded. “Do it, Nina Bronson! If I’m going out, we are all going out! I’m going to save you, whether you like it or not!”

  Nina stayed still.

  “Do it, you jacked-up bitch,” Jordie said as he came up beside her.

  Nina moved.

  Ewan had seen her fight before and been stunned by her ferocious grace, but nothing he’d ever seen her do was close to what unfolded in front of him. She whirled, her fist connecting with Jordie’s jaw in an uppercut that seemed twice as hard as the one she’d landed on Ewan. Jordie staggered back, already recovering and coming at her with both his fists and his teeth bared.

  It was not an evenly matched fight. Nina and Jordie were both enhanced, but she had been a soldier, trained for battle and trained again after getting the enhancements on how to use them. Jordie, on the other hand had been a tech kid, soft from spending his days in front of a computer and from the candy he’d become addicted to.

  He was also crazy as a shithouse rat.

  There were no rules of combat. Nina and Jordie went at each other, hammer and tongs as the saying went, although both of them had only their bare hands to fight with. Jordie, taller but skeletal, had the clear advantage of no sense of self-preservation against Nina’s strategic attacks. He dove at her like a wolf going after a deer, but Nina countered with steady strength and determination.

  The floor lurched beneath all of them as the building shuddered. The emergency lights went out, plunging the three of them into darkness. Ewan, woozy from the smoke, fell back against the wall and used it to keep himself upright.

  The lights returned. The smoke had started to thicken, gray fog hovering a foot or so from the ceiling. His throat and eyes burned. He had to get out, but not without Nina.

  Jordie let out a roar and slammed Nina against the glass fire extinguisher box. It shattered. For the first time since their fight began, she shrieked in pain. She fell forward, and Jordie staggered under her sudden weight. They both went to the ground.

  Nina was on her feet before the kid. She laid him low with a swift, brutal kick to the head. Ewan couldn’t see her stomp, but he heard the crunch. By now the smoke was so thick he choked with every breath. Whatever Nina had done to Jordie, he was down and did not get up again.

  Through the smoke, her figure loomed toward Ewan. He braced himself for another punch or more than one. It would be a relief, finally.

  Her hands gripped the front of his shirt as she pulled him away from the wall. He stumbled forward, trying to cough but not finding even enough air in his lungs to manage it. A rumble like thunder rocked the building. The floor shifted under their feet again.

  “We need to get out of here,” Nina shouted.

  He couldn’t see, but she would be able to. Ewan didn’t fight her as she pulled him along the now completely smoke-dark corridor. The stairwell was marginally cooler but no brighter. They were on the seventh floor, but he lost track of the sets of stairs and landings. By the time they shoved through the fire door at the bottom, Ewan was barely conscious.

  He gagged on a gush of fresher air. All around them came the sound of rustling paper. Flames. It was fire, and the heat of it pushed against them like they were standing in front of an open oven. He went to his knees, coughing and spitting ashes.

  He looked up at her. “You should have left me up there. Easier than killing me now.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Ewan,” Nina said. “I love you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There was no saving the hospital. Anatoly Nguyen’s demolition skills had begun the building’s collapse from the ground up. Nguyen had timed the location of the explosions on purpose to allow for escape. Most of the patients had been evacuated in time, and Nina knew what that meant. He might still go to prison because of what he’d done, even though it had been forced upon him by Jordie Dev, but something inside Nguyen had resisted long enough to do his best to make sure everyone had least had a chance. The way she’d resisted hurting Ewan as much as she could have.

  Jordie hadn’t made it out alive, or least his body had not yet been recovered. Nina had seen enough terror viddies to know what that meant. He could turn up at any time, twice as evil.

  Nina had made sure Ewan got set up with oxygen, fluids, and whatever else the EMTs were doing with him in the back of one of the ambulances in the parking lot. Of her fellow soldiers, so far only Anatoly and Haven had shown up. Both had been discovered in the parking lot in the throes of battling each other. Presumably to the death, although Nina wasn’t sure anyone else knew that. They’d been taken into protective custody—not by local or even federal cops but by NorthAm soldiers. They’d also taken Nina, and she hadn’t fought against them. The truth was going to shake out soon about what roles, exactly, they’d all played.

  It was what