Page 41 of After All The Wreckage

I handed the bag back to her, and she looked inside. Emotions ran over her face.

I rounded the corner where she’d come from. “Where was all of this?”

She pointed to a nook between one of the air ventilation shafts and the backside of the rooftop entrance to the building. He’d been camped out there, maybe planning to go back to the Capitol today, just like she’d said.

Had he woken up screaming? Had he had vision after vision and been huddled there alone? My heart couldn’t take it. I thought I might throw up. I leaned my palm against the brick wall with my eyes closed, trying to get control over my trembling body.

Two arms surrounded me from behind. Soft and strong. Muscled and gentle. The heat of her mixed with a well of sorrow, bleeding into me.

“He was smart enough to get out of sight, Gage. Maybe we just missed him, and he’s gone back to Dunn’s office. The pain and fear Ivy felt could be for a hundred different reasons. Maybe when he tried to jump down from the fire escape to the ground, he fell wrong. Or he was sore from huddling all night on the cold cement.”

I turned my head toward her voice, looking over my shoulder and finding her eyes watching me. “You believe us. About the visions. About Ivy’s abilities.”

She swallowed hard, and I read the doubts that still lingered there. “I believe you believe it.”

My chest took another nosedive off a cliff.

I desperately wanted this woman—because that’s all I could see her as now—to believe the truth of us. For some inexplicable reason, it felt like Rory believing us was the difference between finding Monte and not… of having my family whole again or not. What would it be like if we forever had someone like Rory on our side? Not just for Monte’s sake… but for mine.

I swallowed hard again, twisting in her arms, so our fronts were touching. The swell of her breasts in that damn purple sweater brushed against my chest in nothing but a T-shirt. The fierce chemical reaction drifting between us was as strong as the electricity in the thunderclouds above us.

If we’d been there for any reason other than searching for my brother, I would have let the view of D.C. and the tempestuous energy of the storm pull us into a heated embrace. I would have kissed her until she had no other choice but to believe me. Until there was nothing but desire and passion in the air.

Her dark lashes lifted, and those amber eyes hit me. The tiny green rays around her pupils were a shimmering eclipse,as if hiding the truth of her just like her dark and edgy outfits obscured the softness underneath. The little girl who’d thought she’d broken her family was trying to be tough and emotionless when really she was swimming in them.

“I’ve never lied to you,” I said, my voice low and rough. “Not when we were teens and not now. Why would I make any of this up? Why would Monte?”

My heart pounded as those all-seeing eyes stared into me. Reading me. Uncovering my truths just like I was uncovering hers.

“You’re right. You wouldn’t,” she said softly.

My cracked and bleeding heart felt like it was wrapped momentarily in cotton gauze. As if she had the power to heal it. But it was there for only a mere second before she pulled herself away from me.

I cursed myself silently for multiple reasons.

For thinking, even for half a second, of spreading my burden onto hers. For getting lost in Rory for a heartbeat. My brother was missing, and I was thinking of the heaviness of my burdens and the way my body felt aligned with hers, proving I was more fucked up than I’d ever thought.

She held her phone up, waving it around as if trying to get a signal.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to pick up RF signals.”

I raised a brow.

“Some cameras put out a radio signal. If anyone is using one nearby, I might be able to tap into them.”

She stopped, pointing at the office building next door.

“I need my computer.”

She all but vaulted over the wall, booted feet banging on the metal of the fire escape. Once again, she left me jogging to catchup. Rory moved as if she were in a race. Like I should have been moving all along. Time was everything with my brother missing.

She was at the back of the Pathfinder with her hand out, waiting for the key fob in my pocket by the time I caught up.

“No lock picking?” I said as I handed the keys over.

“I could, but I didn’t bring the right equipment with me today.”