Page 50 of Black Bay Protector
Her eyes flew to his and her previously pale cheeks filled with bright spots of color. “You heard that?”
He tapped his mechanical hand against the plate on the side of his head, the metallic sound clanging through the room.
“Right.” Paige nodded. “Right. Right.” Another clearing of the throat and she finally said, “Graham Neely.”
The name made him blink and his mouth parted as he sucked a breath in sharply. His non-robotic extremities prickled with an icy chill. His sister was still talking, her mouth forming words, but he didn’t hear any of it. There was a roaring in his ears as memories burst into his head. Clear. Vivid. And so painful, the processer in his head was screeching a warning. A younger him standing in front of that mirror trying to button that stupid black shirt that he would later burn. He’d been dressing for a funeral. Graham’s funeral.
They’d been best friends since pre-school. Nearly inseparable, they were always at each other’s houses. Brothers not through blood but through choice. They’d been planning to enlist after high school together…
In their senior year, tragedy struck. It had been a weekend like any other, the two of them, along with several other friends, dressed in their combat gear and armed with paintball guns as they moved through the course, smack-talking and whooping it up. He and Graham had just taken cover behind a tall stack of hay bails when Graham had suddenly dropped to the ground, his body convulsing. A seizure he’d later learned had been brought on by a tumor in his best friend’s brain. Cancer. Aggressive, inoperable, terminal.
Other memories flooded through one after another like puzzle pieces suddenly falling into place. So many pieces. Precious memories that had been purposely repressed so that the scientists, and the government, could control him. They’d stolen his life. Rage was a red haze over his vision.
Grady stood so fast, the cot banged into the wall. “Get out.”
His sister stood with a look of concern, her hand reaching out to him.
“Go!” he bellowed. “Leave!”
The guards rushed to Paige’s side to hustle her out and not a moment too soon. Grady’s control snapped. With a roar of rage, he picked up the cot and threw it across the room. The flimsy metal frame snapped as it connected with the wall, pieces of it landing in the bedding that now littered the floor.
His robotic leg kicked out at his foot locker, denting one side so deeply the top buckled. Throwing back his head, he released another scream. One that was primal and laced with the pain of loss as well as the blood fury that cried for vengeance.
He was breathing too hard, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. His processor was attempting to force a shutdown but with a quick turn of his mental focus, he was able to circumvent the protocol. He was the master here.
Squatting down, he braced his forearms on his thighs – one side metal, one flesh and blood – and another memory floated to mind. Graham’s burial. A small hand took his, and while that hand had since been replaced with a robotic prosthetic, he could still feel those tiny fingers against his palm.
Paige. She’d been eight at the time. So small, with tears welling in her big, sad eyes as she looked up at him. “It’s okay to cry, Grady,” she’d said to him. “I miss him too. But you can lean on me until you’re ready to be strong again.”
In that long-ago memory, he’d squatted down just as he was now, and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. Smiling softly, he’d told her, “That’s the big brother’s job.”
“It can be a sister’s job too.”
His little sister. So smart and strong, so determined to help him, and let him lean on her, even now when he’d done nothing to deserve it. He’d been a shitty big brother. That changed now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Paigehuggedherarmsaround herself and tried to rub away the goosebumps on her skin as she headed toward the guard tower where Jace was taking a shift. She felt chilled to the bone even under the heat of the early summer sun.
God, that had been horrible. Recounting Graham’s death had been painful for her too. He’d been another big brother, always around, playing with her, joking, rough-housing, and teasing in that gentle way that only big brothers could do. The look on Grady’s face though… She shivered. He had truly frightened her there at the end. At that moment, she hadn’t seen Grady, but the Terminator that Jace liked to so often call him. So much anger. So much hatred. It had made the air heavy, electrified, until every tiny hair on her body had felt like it was standing up in primal warning. Still, the nurse in her hadn’t wanted to leave him.
Mounting the stairs to the tower, Paige began to climb. Her knees were wobbling like crazy, but she kept going, pulling herself up with the rail. She needed to feel the strength and security of Jace’s arms around her.
He was smiling when he saw her come through the door, but that smile quickly fell as he rushed to her side. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
With a shake of her head, she burrowed into his warmth and felt his arms come around her. With a hard shudder, the chills began to recede.
“Talk to me,” Jace murmured against her hair. “Tell me what happened.”
With her face still buried against the warm skin of his throat, she told him about Lark’s advice and the memory she’d chosen as well as her brother’s reaction.
“And then,” she added, growing indignant now that the initial fear had passed, “the guards picked me up and carried me out before I could see if Grady was okay.”
She felt more than heard the low, rumbling growl vibrate through Jace’s chest. “Picked you up how?”
“One on either side grabbed my arms, lifted me off my feet, and ran me out of the room between them.”
Jace’s tense stance relaxed. While he was grateful the guards had gotten her out of harm’s way, his first irrational thought had been that another man had scooped her up into his arms and held her close, and jealousy had surged through him.Heshould have been there to protect her.
