Resistance

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

About half a mile shy of the Sanctuary, Dante pulled the car into the parking lot of a small grocery store that was closed for the night. He parked around back by the delivery entrance so that no one driving by would see the car. Not that there was any traffic out in the middle of nowhere at this time of night, but you couldn’t be too careful.

According to the map on Dante’s handheld, if they forged ahead on foot through the woods behind the store, they would eventually emerge right near the Sanctuary. It was still chilly at this time of year upstate, and the woods looked relatively easy to navigate with most of the undergrowth still dormant. Even so, the moment they stepped out of the car, Nate realized they had a couple of problems, both centered around Agnes’s opera finery. For one, she had on high heels that would make it impossible for her to even walk through the woods, much less run. For another, since she hadn’t been planning on an excursion outside, she hadn’t even brought the gossamer, ineffectual wrap she’d worn into the theater. If Nate felt the cold through his tux, she had to be freezing in her strapless gown.

“I think you’ll have to wait with the car,” he told her as she crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. “You’ll never get through the woods in those shoes.”

She looked down at her feet as if startled to find she was wearing heels. “Damn,” she said, her breath feathering in the cold air.

“We can’t leave her here alone,” Dante protested, eying Agnes with suspicion.

“Oh, come on!” Agnes said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “What do you think I’m going to do? Steal your getaway car? You have the keys, and you have my phone battery.”

Dante ignored her and focused on Nate. “You should stay here with her.”

Nate laughed with no humor. “Yeah, right. Not gonna happen.”

“She could run off the moment we have our backs turned,” Dante argued. “Just because she doesn’t have a working phone on her doesn’t mean she can’t find one. No offense, Miss Belinski, but I still don’t get why you’re ‘helping’ us, so I’m not about to take any chances.”

“I’m not helping you,” Agnes said with disdain. “I’m helping Nadia. And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m already in this up to my neck by now. Plenty of people saw me leave the theater with Nathaniel—willingly. Once they figure out what he’s up to, they’ll know I was an accomplice. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but it’s not going to be anything good.”

Her eyes shimmered with tears. It was a rare Executive girl who couldn’t conjure up crocodile tears in an attempt to get her way, but even so, Nate believed her. In the heat of the moment when she’d insisted on helping him, and even when she’d refused to allow them to lock her in the trunk, Agnes might not have fully comprehended what the consequences of her actions would be. But she’d had more than four hours to think things through, and she was not stupid. It was far too late to change her mind now, and she knew it.

“I’m coming with you,” Nate told Dante, “and Agnes will wait with the car.”

Dante bristled, drawing himself up to his full height and shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet in a posture that screamed of aggression and intimidation. He was an imposing specimen with muscles on his muscles, and Nate had no doubt he knew how to fight. He probably learned all kinds of useful skills like that in spy training school.

“Stay with Agnes,” Dante ordered, as if ordering around the Chairman Heir were business as usual for him. “Or I’ll make you.”

“He’s your servant,” Agnes put in drily, nodding. “Ri-ight.”

Nate was sure he’d come out the loser if he got into a fistfight with Dante, but he wasn’t about to let the bastard ride off to Nadia’s rescue while he sat around in the car and twiddled his thumbs. Internally wincing, pretty sure he was about to get the crap kicked out of him, he raised his fists and gave Dante his fiercest glare.

“Fine. Make me.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Agnes said before any punches were thrown. “Put me in the trunk if that will satisfy both of your overblown egos. Stop acting like kids on a playground and get moving.”

Nate’s face flushed with heat as he realized how right she was. What possible reason could he have for refusing to back down except that his ego was too big to let Dante be Nadia’s hero? Childish and selfish. He was really on a roll.

Nate forced his fists open and straightened up from what he was sure was a pathetic imitation of a fighter’s crouch. Conceding to Dante was harder than it should have been, and he chose his next words carefully, trying to get his point across without escalating hostilities once more.

“If you really think I’m more useful sitting in the car with Agnes than coming with you as backup in case anything goes wrong, then I’ll stay here. But we’re not putting her in the trunk.” She deserved better than that.

Dante looked back and forth between the two of them, then sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He stared at the pavement at his feet for a moment, then looked up again.

“Do you know how to use that gun you took off Fischer?”

“Um, I assume I just point and shoot.”

Dante grimaced as he held his hand out and made a give-it-to-me motion. Nate handed over the gun, and Dante took a quick look at it.

“This is a semi-auto,” he said, “so it is basically point and shoot. Just make sure you have the safety off before you do.” He turned the gun over and pointed at a toggle switch beneath the grip, then handed the gun back.

“Is it on or off right now?” Nate asked, even though it made him sound like an idiot too ignorant to be allowed around a deadly weapon.

“On. And keep it that way until I tell you.”

Nate swallowed a protest, knowing that objecting to Dante’s tone was just petty. If Dante was the one who knew what he was doing, then Nate was just going to have to be a man about it and listen to him. Even when he insisted on giving orders.

“I’m getting back in the car,” Agnes said, her teeth chattering with cold.

Nate slid his tux jacket off and handed it to her. “It won’t be much warmer in the car,” he said. He might have tried to talk Dante into leaving the keys so she could turn on the heater, but he didn’t want to start another argument.

“You’ll need it,” Agnes said, trying to hand the jacket back.

“With all this adrenaline pumping through me?” he asked with a grin. “I won’t feel a thing. Besides, we’ll keep warm by running.”

Reluctantly, Agnes slipped the jacket over her shoulders. “Good luck,” she said. “Bring her back safe.”

“That’s the idea,” Nate said under his breath.

And then he and Dante were jogging through the darkness of the woods, using Dante’s handheld as a half-assed flashlight and trying not to trip over roots and underbrush.

It didn’t take long for Nate to realize his occasional forays into the gym for a bit of exercise had not prepared him for real-world physical exertion. He was huffing and puffing in no time, even though they weren’t running terribly fast. Dante, of course, wasn’t even breathing hard. If Nate wasn’t careful, he was going to give himself an inferiority complex. He wasn’t used to feeling inferior to anyone, and he couldn’t say he much cared for the experience.

Eventually, they saw the glow of the Sanctuary’s lights in the distance, and they slowed down, picking their way much more cautiously through the woods. When they got close enough that they could catch glimpses of the fence, Dante came to a complete stop and crouched behind a tree.

Nate had no idea where they were in relation to the tower Nadia was planning to escape from, and he knew even the superspy couldn’t have figured out their position based on the tiny expanse of fence they could see through the trees.

“Why are we stopping?” Nate asked, his breath still short from the run.

“You need to stay here while I go on ahead and figure out where we are.” Nate started to protest, but Dante cut him off with a sharp gesture of his hand. “That white shirt of yours glows like a beacon. You don’t dare get too close to the fence, or someone might see you.”

Nate cursed as he looked down at himself and the crisp white tux shirt. He supposed he could take it off, but aside from the fact that it was freezing out, he didn’t think his pale skin would be that great an improvement. Dante, of course, was wearing all black, and his complexion was naturally darker, even though he’d lost the unfashionable tan he’d had when they’d first met. It only made sense to let him scout things out by himself, no matter how much it galled Nate to be left behind.

“Fine,” he said. “Just hurry.”

Dante gave him a look that managed to convey no shit without words. Then he began creeping forward, keeping low and darting from tree to tree. Even knowing where he was, Nate had trouble picking his form out of the darkness, and that had to be a good sign.

Dante was gone long enough that Nate wasn’t out of breath anymore when he returned. Nate knew that caution was absolutely necessary under the circumstances, but curbing his impatience was damn hard when urgency kept beating at him. It was possible his father had figured out Nate was going to show up here in an attempt to get to Nadia. Unlikely, given how impossible it seemed that he could get her out of there, but if his father did guess, pursuit wouldn’t be far behind.

“Looks like Nadia’s tower is about half a klick that way,” Dante said, waving to his right. “Let’s go.”

Nate didn’t know how far a klick was—a kilometer, maybe?—but he wasn’t about to admit his ignorance by asking. He wondered if Dante had used the term just to be annoying, or if he’d had military training before becoming a spy for Paxco security.

Nate reminded himself that he didn’t actually care how far half a klick was, that he’d run another five miles if that was what it took to get Nadia out of the Sanctuary. He took off after Dante.

It felt to Nate’s burning lungs and leg muscles that they had run at least a mile when Dante called a halt again. This time, he allowed Nate to get a little closer to the circle of light surrounding the Sanctuary’s fence, but he still made him stop before Nate could see much of anything.

“If you could see the guy in the tower,” Dante reminded him, “then he could see you. The last thing we need to do is put him on alert before Nadia gets there.”

Nate looked at his watch. It had been a good thirty minutes since they’d talked to Nadia. “She should be there already,” he said as his heart rate jacked up on a fresh surge of adrenaline. It felt like it had taken him forever to get here, and Nadia had had much less ground to cover. If the Sanctuary staff had caught her trying to escape …

“She’s cautious, Nate,” Dante said with a hint of impatience. “It takes a while to get from place to place when you’re cautious. Not that you’d know about that.”

Nate closed his eyes and ordered himself not to rise to the bait. And not to get testy that Dante insisted on calling him Nate when they were far from friends. “You really want to pick a fight now?” Talk about your bad timing.

“I’m not picking a fight. I’m just telling it like it is. I’m going to get closer, and you’re going to wait here. Might be a good time to get out the gun and turn the safety off. If things look like they’re about to go to hell, I’ll whistle. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re sure you have something to shoot at. And try not to shoot Nadia or me if it comes to that.”

Nate’s self-control was definitely getting better. He refrained from making a smart-ass reply. He was never going to like Dante, but he had to grudgingly admire the guy. By being here, he was defying not only his official bosses in the security department, but his unofficial ones in the resistance. It took major guts to do that.

Nate withdrew the gun that he’d stuck in the back of his pants. He couldn’t see the safety in the oppressive darkness of the trees, but he found it by feel and flicked it off as Dante crept forward once again.

Nadia hit the ground with a thump that rattled her teeth. Her ankle buckled on impact, sending a stab of pain up her leg. She choked off a cry of pain as she fell to her hands and knees. The lights of the guard tower felt like a spotlight, picking her form out of the darkness and screaming “she’s trying to escape” to anyone nearby. Her ankle throbbed, but she felt too vulnerable in the light to wait for it to ease up.

Hobbling as fast as she could, she half-walked, half-limped toward the trees. She caught a flash of motion, nothing more than a patch of shadow darker than its surroundings, and she came to a sudden halt, panting with exertion and pain.

“Dante?” she called in a breathless whisper, her hand straying to the canister of knockout gas, in case it wasn’t him.

“Keep moving!” Dante said abruptly, stepping into the fringes of the light.

Nadia wanted to throw her arms around him and weep, but Dante was all business, grabbing her and dragging her toward the trees. She stumbled along behind him, her ankle screaming in protest. Once they left the circle of light, she could barely see anything. The cloudless night and Dante’s black clothes made him practically invisible.

As soon as they were safely under cover of the trees, Dante hauled her into his arms and hugged her so tight she could barely breathe. Not that she had the slightest inclination to complain.

“Are you all right?” he whispered in her ear, and the brush of his lips against her skin made her shiver.

Her sister was dead, her life was in ruins, someone had just tried to kill her, but other than that …

Nadia pulled back from the embrace so she could look up into Dante’s eyes and drink in the sight of him.

“I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered.

He gazed down at her, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times as if he couldn’t quite decide what to say. In the end, he settled for kissing her, his lips hot, hungry, and almost desperate against hers. He pulled away sooner than she wanted, his hands cupping her face.

“I wish we had time for a proper hello,” he said, “but we have to get moving.”

Nadia agreed on both counts. She had no idea how long she had before the alarm was raised, or even what the Sanctuary staff would do about it when it was—and she didn’t want to find out.

“Just give me your arm for a bit,” she said, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow. “I’m a little gimpy.”

Dante swept her off her feet so fast she gasped in surprise. Her arms settled around his neck by instinct, and she held on tight as he made his way through the darkened trees. She couldn’t help cuddling against him, noticing the firmness of his chest and the breadth of his shoulders. He carried her with an effortless strength that was undeniably sexy, and she felt way safer in his arms than she had any right to feel under the circumstances.

“Where’s Nate?” she asked, though she was reluctant to let anyone else intrude on this moment. “And Agnes?”

“I left Nate a little ways back,” Dante answered, “and Agnes is with the car. We’ll have you out of here in no time.”

And then what, she wondered, but didn’t ask because she doubted Dante had any more answers than she.

Nate’s breath frosted in the air, and the cooling sweat on his skin made him shiver. He stared intently at the little slice of the fence and tower he could see from his position.

The shivering got worse and worse, and Nate regretted his moment of gallantry in giving Agnes his jacket. It felt like the sweat from the long run was freezing against his skin, and he held the gun with great care, afraid his shaking fingers might get him into trouble.

The wait seemed to last forever, and it took all of Nate’s willpower to keep himself planted in position. He would never forgive himself if he crept forward to see what was taking so long and someone spotted him and sounded the alarm. He hoped the lack of commotion meant nothing had gone wrong at least.

Eventually, he saw movement in the trees coming toward him. He gripped the gun with both hands, then let out a shuddering breath when he saw Dante approaching, carrying Nadia like she weighed about two pounds. She was cuddled intimately against his chest, one arm locked securely around his neck.

Nate turned the safety back on and stood up. Jealousy stirred in his gut, an instinctive reaction he couldn’t will away, no matter how much he wanted to.

Throughout his life, Nadia had always been there for him. She’d understood him like no one else and just generally been his rock. He genuinely wanted her to be happy, and he wanted her to find love, just as he had found it with Kurt. That didn’t make it any easier to accept the changes a burgeoning romance would make to their friendship. Somehow, he had to train himself to stop relying on her so heavily, to get used to the idea of her being someone else’s rock now.

“Why did it have to be him of all people?” Nate muttered to himself. Couldn’t she have fallen for someone who wasn’t such a dick?

A dick who could have pulled off this whole rescue without any help from Nate, thank you very much. It was Dante who’d gotten word of Gerri’s death and warned Nate. It was Dante who’d provided the transportation. And it was Dante Nadia had called for help. Nate was merely tagging along, proving himself to be exactly the kind of useless aristocrat Dante thought he was.

Nate shoved his self-pity to the side. He could bemoan his uselessness later. Nadia was out, but they were hardly out of the woods—har, har—yet.

As soon as Nate stood up, Nadia raised her head from Dante’s shoulder and stopped cuddling against him. Nate wondered if she was trying to spare his feelings. Then he wondered why he always seemed to think everything was about him.

Damn, he needed to get out of his own head.

“Nate!” Nadia cried with a smile that would have lit up the night if it weren’t for the shadows in her eyes. She held out her hand to him. “I’d give you a hug, but this caveman refuses to put me down.”

Nate clasped the offered hand and squeezed it firmly. “Are you hurt?”

“Just a twisted ankle,” she assured him. “I just need to walk it off.”

“We need to hurry,” Dante said, not about to put her down. “We’ll move faster with me carrying you than with you limping.”

Nadia shot a pleading look Nate’s way, but he shook his head, reluctantly agreeing with Dante. “For the duration of Operation Rescue Nadia, he’s in charge. Let’s get the damn thing over with before I kill him.”

There was one and only one benefit to having Dante carry Nadia the whole way back to the car: even the superspy couldn’t run through darkened woods while carrying someone, at least not indefinitely. Which meant that not only could Nate keep up, he didn’t have to do all that panting and sweating in front of Nadia.