I needed to stop overthinking this. Campbell hadn’t given us any other instructions other than to get off the train, but Andreas and I followed him through the station to the other side. A vehicle idled, waiting for us.

  He ushered us both into the back, along with the three other security personnel, before he slid into the front next to the driver. Phone to his ear, Campbell said, “We’ll be there in thirty.”

  That was it. Nothing in his tone betrayed who he spoke to or any other details. Andreas placed a hand on my thigh, and I covered his hand with mine. If we needed to know, Campbell would tell us. I had to believe that.

  Maybe if I reminded myself enough, the unease swarming my system would calm. If anything, the closer we go to our destination, the more unsettled I became. I swore it was like bees buzzed under the surface of my skin. My pulse kept jumping, and I was having to consciously control my breathing to avoid panting.

  Was this a panic attack?

  I had them all the time in the memoriam. It was what would shatter the constructs when the truth of my circumstances hit me. I needed rationality and order. Discovering I was living only through the manipulation of what was essentially a dreamscape, and that the men I loved were willingly trapping themselves inside my mind in order to reach me, had both humbled and terrified me.

  Andreas squeezed my hand and began to run his thumb in small strokes across my knuckles. It helped, but I still couldn’t shake the apprehension coiling through me. If one could describe the sensation of being simultaneously drawn toward while also being repulsed by some indefinable magnetic force, I imagined it would be much like what I experienced right now.

  It only got worse. I counted our arrival time down, a mental distraction, but it did nothing to truly distract from the worry invading every part of me. Then we were there, and it was hard to take a deep breath.

  “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I told him, even if I didn’t want to worry him. The physiological panic responses were not something I could hide easily, if at all. “But we’re here.”

  Here proved to be a large estate of some kind, one located at the end of a very long and lonely stretch of drive lined by trees. There was a fountain in the center of the circle in front of the house. But no water ran in it. Gray clouds had rolled in, casting the stone building in shadows. All it needed was some lightning and rain to create a truly terrifying tableau.

  Leaves stirred and swirled in the breeze, and I had to suppress a shiver. Campbell hurried us inside with the word that they would get our bags for us. Three steps inside the gloomy interior, and my patience with the exercise snapped. The unease in my system had turned to a flood of adrenaline. We didn’t have time for this deviation from the plan that had been working so far.

  “Why are we here?” I demanded, refusing to take another step. There were two of his men behind us. The third and the driver were still with the vehicle. Campbell pivoted to face me.

  “I know you have questions,” he began.

  “And you’ve been steadily not answering them. I have cooperated. I respected your skills and your experience to get us this far, but we are shortly going to lose our window to make the meet. We agreed to this plan, and now you are altering it without sharing why.”

  He frowned, but a voice from the hall answered for him.

  “They came because I called them.”

  Andreas jerked at the sound of Oz’s voice, and I released his hand to stride forward and around Campbell. Oz stood on the second landing of the wide stairs. He looked…almost exactly as he had all those weeks earlier, when he’d told me he couldn’t stay anymore. That he had to go back.

  Only…more tired.

  Dressed in a dark blue shirt and jeans that looked more like something Hatch or Dirk would wear, Oz descended the steps slowly. Light stubble graced his cheeks and even his head. He usually kept it shaved so smooth. The darkness of his skin was such a beautiful contrast to the brighter colors he would often wear. Of all four of them, he was the most put together.

  The most organized.

  The most likely to have extreme care with his appearance.

  Not out of a sense of vanity, but of personal pride. It had meaning for him.

  He was also here, after insisting he couldn’t be there for us anymore because he needed to do something else. Honestly, I couldn’t even think of the exact words he’d used. Only that he’d left and ripped out part of my heart when he went, and I couldn’t even fault him for it. They’d all done so much for me, how could I demand he do more?

  For the first time in my life, I had no words for the riot of emotion surging under my skin as he descended the steps.

  “Valda,” he said in the softest voice, the one that asked me to listen. To hear him out. “You look…amazing.”

  And I found my words.

  “You look very much not where you said you were going.” I tilted my head, torn between the desire to slap him and hug him. Maybe not immediately, but anger bunched up in my muscles and threatened to strangle me.

  “I’m exactly where I need to be though,” he admitted. For a moment, he reached out a hand toward my face, but something in my expression must have changed his mind because he curled his fingers into his palm. “I had to come. I had to try and get to them.”

  Them.

  Dirk and Hatch.

  “Where are they?”

  “Upstairs,” he began, and I stopped listening to the rest. I had to. Because I wanted to lean into his words. I wanted him to touch my face. I wanted to demand he explain why lying to me was the plan. I didn’t slow until I reached the landing, and I glanced back to find Andreas and Oz staring up at me.

  Andreas wasn’t surprised.

  He’d known.

  He’d known, and he’d kept it from me.

  We would discuss that later.

  “Second door on the right,” Oz told me. His dark eyes held so much sorrow that my resolve nearly crumbled.

  “We’re going to talk later,” I informed him crisply, my voice a hell of a lot steadier than I felt. The unevenness in my system seemed to be translating to the world around me. I hadn’t experienced issues when we’d left the boat for land like I had now. The faint sway had to be coming from me. I would need to run some tests, but right now, I had to see Dirk and Hatch.

  I had to see and know they were all right. I hadn’t seen either since I’d had Dirk eject Hatch from the memoriam.

  “I would like that,” Oz answered me. “I’ll be here. Do you want me to come with you?”

  Did I? Yes.

  Would I allow him to?

  No.

  The conversation we needed to have was far different from the reunion ahead of me, and I couldn’t afford to falter just yet.

  He was here. I could accept that as enough for the moment.

  “No,” I said, but then added, “Unless you think you need to monitor them.” If my presence would somehow be detrimental.

  “Go see them,” he said, his voice soft, yet it still eddied up to carry his words to me. “I’ll catch Andreas up.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder.

  I would have said something more, but a door opened and I turned to head up the last few steps. Dirk stood leaning against the doorframe, his huge body battered and marked. One of his eyes was still puffy, and his lips were chapped and split.

  His beautiful mane of hair was gone, and there were injuries to his scalp. There were injuries over every inch of him. He looked terrible.

  He looked wonderful.

  “Valda.” The rasp of his voice galvanized me, and all my intentions to be careful fell away as I ran up the last few steps. He caught me, and I wrapped my arms around him. He was alive. He really was here.

  “You’re here,” he whispered against my throat, and his arms tightened around me like bands of steel. “You’re here.”

  “Bloody hell, luv, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Hatch called from somewhere behind him, and just the sound of his accent had tears clogging my throat. “Hurry up and let her go, you bastard, and give her to me.”

  They were both alive.

  For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I had them all again.

  We were together.

  Chapter 9

  “I dwell in possibility.” - Emily Dickinson

  HATCH

  Fuck, she really was a sight for sore eyes and Hatch’s eyes were fucking sore. Oz still had them on IVs, not that it had slowed Dirk down. The moment the sound of her voice reached them, he’d plucked the tubing right out and headed for the door. Not that Hatch could blame him. He did, however, marvel at how easily the man made it look after what seemed like endless days of physical abuse. Then she was there and Dirk had her in his arms, and Hatch could see her face over his shoulder.

  Some dead weight in his chest lifted, like a mountain of rubble he’d been trapped under for the last half a decade tumbled away. Dirk still held on to her with such fierceness, Hatch worried it would crush her. Yet not a complaint left her as she clung to him. Then with a reluctance Hatch understood on a visceral level, he set her on her feet and backed up a step, giving them both a solid look at her.

  Too skinny by half. She’d lost a good measure of her curves. There was a hollowness to her cheeks that had never been there before. The nice clothing couldn’t disguise the faint jut to her hips or how the swell of her ass had lessened. At the same time, he’d never seen anything more beautiful than the light in her eyes, even if sorrow marred the glow when she looked from Dirk to him.

  “No tears, luv,” he ordered. “This is a good moment.” And fuck everything, that was exactly how he would treat it. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, fully intending to rip out his own IV. He couldn’t go another second without holding her, touching her, making sure she was real and not some bizarre hallucination his mind conjured in a moment of weakness.

  The soft rush of feet pulled his head up, and then she was there. The soft feather of her hand against his face had his eyes closing as he leaned into the contact. Snaking his arms around her waist, he pulled her between his legs and then pressed his head to her chest.

  Thump-thump.

  Her heartbeat.

  Hatch rubbed his cheek to her chest, even as he forced his fingers to not bite so hard into her sides. A profound sense of peace blanketed him, like something he’d been missing slotted back into place.

  Thump-thump.

  Dampness splashed against his scalp as she curled over him, and he ignored even the faintest of twinges as he lifted her off her feet. He would never let her go again. Fuck everything else. Where she went from now on, so did he. The endless pit that opened beneath him the day they discovered her unconscious in her lab had sucked the world out from beneath him. Finally, fucking finally, they’d not only crawled out of that hole, they’d pulled her up with them.

  He’d begged. Borrowed. Stolen. Killed. And he’d fucking do every bit of it again, because she was right here in his arms. Pulling back a little, he slid his hand up to her face to thumb away the tears. Valda never cried. Not openly and certainly not with such raw intensity. He’d learned how to get her out of her head, used to pride himself on that.

  Until she’d gotten trapped there.

  “Luv…” Words failed him as he stared into her beautiful brown eyes. The earthiness there always seemed to remind him that despite the intensity of her brilliant mind, and the stunning combination of her deep, almost golden-brown skin and dark hair, she was not some ethereal being. Had a hallucination ever been so fucking accurate?

  “It wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. “Seeing what they had done to you.”

  Reality slammed into him as she trailed her fingers over his scalp. They’d really shaved his head, the fuckers. But he cared less about his vanity than the tragedy in her eyes as she traced these delicate touches over him. Then she was cupping his face, almost a mirror of how he held her cheek.

  Thump-thump.

  “Wait.” He frowned. Dirk had followed her, the silent sentinel back where he always wanted to be, firmly at her back or at her side. His troubled expression told Hatch he’d heard the same words. They’d only discussed the ‘hallucination’ an hour earlier, and his confession had been met by severe skepticism from both Dirk and Oz, but… “That really was you?” He searched Valda’s face. “Talking to me, telling me…”

  “That we were coming,” she whispered, and her voice had that same husk to it that always went straight to his dick. She sniffed. “The nanites, Hatch. The reason I had to get you out of the memoriam.”

  The words spilled over him, but the reminder of how she’d had Dirk force him out barely registered. He’d been furious at the time.

  It seemed less than important now.

  “Valda,” Dirk said, pulling her attention to him, and Hatch hated him a little bit. Not much and he’d get over it, but fuck, he wanted her eyes on him. He flexed his fingers against her hips, keeping her with him. “What about the nanites?”

  Instead of moving away, she twisted then leaned into Hatch, and he took it as all the permission he needed to gather her properly in his lap. His dick stirred, but it could damn well wait a minute. Holding her close while inhaling the sweet scent of her shampoo had him edging his hand up to the scarf she still wore tied around her hair.

  Itching to touch that mane of hair, he tugged it free and then unpinned the braid. The single plait wasn’t as long as he expected. Had she cut it? Had it been necessary? What the fuck happened after she woke?

  Dammit, he should have been there.

  “…the memoriam was mapping all of you, cerebrally, the longer you connected. That last construct, where Hatch loaded all of my earlier constructs and memories…I was able to more properly interact with it. Hatch was nearly fully mapped and connected. I think the nanites are reacting to that mapping, to the neural pathways carved and acting like a bridge. It’s a theory, probably not an elegant one, but for a few moments, I could see him wherever you were being held.”

  She turned those expressive eyes on him, and Hatch smiled at her. “Best sight I’d seen in weeks, trust me. I’d been stuck staring at his ugly mug.”

  Her lips twisted into a faint mockery of a smile. “You’re both beautiful, though I could gut whoever did this to you.”

  The threat of violence was new.

  Surprise flickered through him, hot on the heels of the possessiveness threading through his veins.

  “Are you in danger?” Dirk’s question slammed him back to Earth, and Hatch dug his fingers into her hips. He told himself to ease up, he didn’t want to hurt her, but his hands spasmed with the need to pull her closer, crush her into him, so he could surround her. Was this…whatever the fuck she wanted to call the connection hurting her?

  Valda let out a little sigh, the corners of her mouth dipping down, and Dirk focused on her, his eyes intense. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a brief silence, and shock rippled through Hatch. “I have no basis for what was done specifically, the programming behind the nanites, why they would still be active outside of the equipment, or even what the equipment did specifically, and I haven’t had time to read up on it.”

  Not the answer he wanted to hear. “Can we sever it?” He’d rather cut off his own arm than be a threat to her.

  The question pulled her gaze back to him, and he looked desperately for any sign she was hiding the answers. Valda would protect them above all else, of that he had no doubt. They’d always believed her work was her deepest passion, and that they were allowed even a piece of her had been a gift. But the memoriam had taught him more about her than he’d ever imagined and gave proof to every loving thought he’d had about their too rational for her own good scientist.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, then pressed her face against his throat, and he curled a hand around her braid. “I don’t understand this, and I haven’t had time to do any research.” The note of longing in her voice squeezed him like a vise. “I don’t even know why the Blossom Foundry took you or how you got out…”

  “I can answer some of those questions,” Oz offered from the doorway. The caution in his demeanor seemed to put Dirk on edge. The captain had not been happy with Oz’s decision to infiltrate the Blossom Foundry. Too many things could have gone wrong. He could have been in danger. He’d also left Valda to come for them.

  Hatch admired the bloke, but fuck all if he was getting in the middle of that clusterfuck. Valda’s weight on his thighs while she leaned into him, allowing him to cuddle her close, satisfied him on every primitive level.

  Well, not every single one, but he supposed asking the tossers to get out so he could fuck them both into bliss would be rude.

  Fine, he’d give it thirty minutes. He could do that much for his brothers.

  Dirk folded his arms and faced Oz. It wasn’t lost on Hatch that he angled himself to be slightly in front of Valda. With a sigh, Oz ran a hand over his stubbled head. Exhaustion lay waste to all of them, but Oz more so than them. Had the doc had even a single fucking nap in this nightmare? There was a sallow cast to his dark skin and a weariness in his eyes as he tracked his gaze to Valda. Andreas trailed him into the room.

  Of the five of them, he looked the best, though the relief etched into his expression held a candor rarely seen. That, and he was smiling.

  Admittedly, Hatch wasn’t sure who was more surprised when Dirk greeted him with a swift hug and a pat to his shoulder before he resumed his protective stance. As happy as he was to see the priest, Hatch settled for lifting his chin rather than dislodge Valda from where she cuddled against him.

  “Good to see you, brother,” Andreas told him, his own gaze softening as it dipped to the woman they all loved.

  “And you.” Seriously, it was. Then it hit him. For the first time in years, they were all together and not in the memoriam. Unlike the last time they’d been together like this, there was an ease, even with the crackling tension radiating from Dirk as he waited for answers. Andreas leaned back against the wall, more comfortable than Hatch had ever seen him. Oz, usually their calm center, gave an agitated sigh.

 

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