He stuttered, “T-tell me, Nina. Last summer-when you helped me-what did you-what did you…”
She understood.
“I felt your pain. Your fear. Whoever he was, he allowed me to take some of that from you. He said it was the only way to save you.”
“And you did.”
“I owed you,” she smiled, a little. “You did the same for me once.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.
She answered the question expressed in his gaze, “Ohio. When my team was ambushed. You came all the way out there to bring me back. I’m just saying, I owed you for that.”
He admitted freely, “I couldn’t abandon you. After all you’ve meant to us-to me.”
Nina felt her heart race. There, in a simple sentence, all her suspicions confirmed.
After all you’ve meant-to me.
He slipped his hands free of her grasp. He had said too much.
“Nina, things are coming to a head now. You’ve got a soldier’s instincts, what do you feel?”
“From what you said in the meeting this morning it sounds like things don’t look good. I’m just saying, if The Order doesn’t break through at the Mississippi this next time, then they’ll just keep coming until they do.”
He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Then go after them, Nina. This is your last mission. Hit them where it hurts. They need to farm; hit their farms. They set up forward operating bases; take out their command and control. Hurt them, Nina.”
“I will,” she promised.
Trevor then leaned in close; so very, very close. She felt his breath against her cheek. She swore she could hear his heartbeat.
He spoke in a not-so-subtle code. On the surface they could each pretend he spoke of all humanity, but in reality they both knew the truth to be much more personaclass="underline" “Nina, they’re the ones who stole from us. Make them pay for that. Hunt them down and hurt them. For me-and for you. For what we lost. For what they took.”
Then she felt his lips against her forehead. A gentle, light kiss.
That warm feeling returned stronger than ever. It wrapped around her in a blanket. She felt needed and loved. Without any consideration she found her arms wrapping around his waist, her face burying into his chest, and his strong hug embracing her. And with it came a power she had never known.
I love you.
When he released and stepped back, awkwardly, she found a different emotion: acute anger. For she realized now what she had once had with Trevor Stone, a feeling more powerful than any weapon she ever wielded; more intense than any firefight.
And they had taken it from her, those architects of Armageddon.
…they’re the ones who stole from us. Make them pay for that. Hunt them down and hurt them.
And she would.
They will pay.
Trevor glanced around the estate grounds. He saw no spying eyes.
She replaced the beret on her head. A soldier again.
“Good luck to you,” he offered from two full paces away.
She replied, “You, too.”
“I have to go,” he said, reluctantly. “I have to-I have to go visit an old friend. Something I have to do. That’s sort of been the story in all this,” he tried to send another message. “There have been things I’ve had to do. And things I have been forced to give up.”
She figured that whatever wrong she had done to him had been beyond the point of forgiveness. She had been one of those things he had been forced to give up because she had done something to deserve abandonment. She could not blame him; not if she had betrayed him.
“I–I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he corrected but lightheartedly. “Maybe someday you will. Maybe someday-when all this is over-it will be clear. I don’t know if that will make things better or worse. I guess we’ll see. In any case, let me say it again: thank you, for saving me.”
Nina closed her eyes and conjured that feeling of warmth and being wanted. No matter what The Order had taken from her, at some point in the past she had been a complete person.
No, Trevor, thank you for saving me.
“Mother,” Jorgie Benjamin Stone stood at the doorway to his room with his grandfather at his side and looked in at Ashley, “I won’t need all of that. Father said we’ll be traveling light.”
Ashley had already stacked a small suitcase full of underwear, socks, and t-shirts. The second suitcase-for pants, sweatshirts, and jeans-would come next.
Her frustration boiled over.
“Well maybe your father is wrong, did you ever think of that? Did that ever cross your mind? Father isn’t always right, you know. He-he makes mistakes. He’s been known to be wrong. Maybe just once mother knows what’s best.”
Benjamin Trump-elderly and thinning-tried to intercede, “Oh, now Ashley the boy didn’t mean anything by that.”
JB’s reply came not in words but in a bear hug against his mother’s legs. She silenced her tirade and returned his hug. A lump grew in her throat. A big hole opened in her chest.
Grandpa, who had already said his goodbyes to JB over a game of catch, bowed his head and walked away.
“I’m-I’m sorry,” she apologized.
She realized her son cried. Honest-to-god tears. Deep sobs. His shoulders raised and lowered. His arms clutched tight around her legs.
For a moment he shed the trappings of the mysterious child with the evolved brain chemistry and the supernatural insights. For a moment there stood nothing more than a nine-year-old boy about to leave his mother, possibly forever.
“Mommy,” he pleaded, “I love you, Mommy. I love you!”
“I know, I know,” she stroked his hair. “Listen, JB, I won’t let Trevor take you. You don’t have to go.”
The child answered through sobs, “Yes, I do have to go. Father is right. It is the only way. But I love you, Mommy. I hope you know that. I love you so much!”
He buried his head into her again and cried. She felt damp streaks from his eyes run along her pant leg.
“I love you too, honey. I always have. You’re my son.”
“Yes,” he agreed as if it might be a revelation. “I’m your son. I came from you, too.”
Ashley grabbed his hands and knelt in front of her boy. She searched his red eyes and spoke strongly to her son. Her words held a mother’s power; a power gentle enough to sculpt the heart of a child and strong enough to change the universe.
“That’s right, Jorgie, you remember that. You are a very special boy, but you’re also my son.” She held his hands up in her own, pressing her flesh to his. “A human boy. No matter what happens-no matter what else you may be-remember that. Remember our time together. Remember what it is like to be happy and sad; to love your parents, to play catch with grandpa. Don’t you ever forget, do you hear me?”
“I won’t, Mommy.”
“Promise me.”
Jorgie-tears still flowing-stepped to the bed, grabbed his stuffed bunny wrapped in its tiny blanked, and answered his mother.
“I promise.”
Clouds rolled in over the horizon and spoiled another brilliant May sunset. The cover overhead draped the hillside graveyard in early shadows. A gust signaling an approaching thunderstorm-still far off-blew between the rows of stone markers carrying dried leaves and tiny buds in a mix of old and new.
Hauser managed to land Eagle One with his usual skill across one of the cemetery roads with the landing gear touching down between headstones. The pilot waited behind as Trevor strolled among the tombs searching each name one after another until he found his old friend.
Dante Thomas Jones.
Trevor removed the baseball cap from his head and knelt first to one knee, then to both. He stared at the letters etched in stone.
He could not forget that Dante Jones had played a pivotal role in the plot against him. Nor could he forget, however, that Dante Jones had been his friend for many years going back to the days before the old world ended.