Page 7 of Fuse

A shared love.

But as soundly as my head embraces the knowledge, my spirit rebels. I glare out at the ocean and then up into the olive and sycamore trees, attempting to gain the connection I have always found in nature, but the effort is useless. Hasn’t she endured enough? Can’t she have some comfort now and recognize her son as the hero he was…he always will be?

There’s no answer for me except Trixie’s continuing cries, stolen by a hot wind that moans through the trees with cold castigation. Frustration and sadness fill me—and for the first time, I start to understand the frenetic force that’s turned Reece into damn near a madman for the last three weeks.

Will we ever be able to get the upper hand on the Consortium? And if so, at what price?

Not more lives.

A hard swallow is my only way of holding back an anguished gasp.

Not Reece’s life.

We have to push harder for answers.

Try harder.

Be better.

Somehow. Somehow…

I’m on the verge of congratulating myself for the private pep talk when the wind shifts direction, bringing the odd sense that someone else is climbing the hill to join us.

Inside a heartbeat, I see that Reece notices too—and reacts by shoving Trixie and me behind him. Before I can stutter out a solid protest, Joany’s hissing something similar to Chase, who does the same thing with her. Sawyer moves to shield Lydia, but she fumes and fights him off.

“What the hell is with you guys?” she charges. “It’s just—holy shit.”

I don’t blame her for the gasping reaction to the sight before us on the hill.

Though we’ve both seen Angelique in the fullness of her post-Consortium-fuckery mode before, with her thick blond hair replaced by a burned black dome and her green gaze turned the eerie shade of an approaching hurricane, this is the first time she’s borne the new look with her old imperiousness. To be honest, it works. To be really honest, it’s kind of badass. To be brutally clear, it might even be what we all need in this moment…

Until the woman turns the hurricane gaze into a green steel stare and wields every inch of that blade directly at Reece.

And follows up the stab with equally gut-dicing words.

“We need to talk.”

I swallow against a surge of reactions. Not exactly the words a girl wants to hear from her fiancé’s sultry siren of an ex, despite the melted bowling ball skull and crazy emotional history. But Angelique wouldn’t have found a way to get out of the Source and then all the way to California for simple surface facts. She’s arrived in person for a reason.

One that’s turning my guts into barbed wire and my stomach into a lake of acid.

Reece pivots and braces in a stiff stance that matches hers. “Then let’s talk,” he charges. “What the hell is it?”

I swap gazes with Sawyer, the unspoken communication a fast note of needed comfort for me. The guy has heard the same subtext in Reece’s tone as me: the hundred questions that didn’t get asked on top of that. Where have you been for ten days? What the hell is going on? Do we need to be worried? Has the Consortium found us? Has your cover been blown?

But worse than all the unasked queries is the feeling I get by looking back at Angelique.

And the sense that she’s about to answer them all anyway.

Just not exactly with the answers we’re going to like.

Angie shores up her posture with a measured, heavy breath. “They are ready,” she finally declares. “And they are bringing the storm this time.”

Reece marches at her by a couple more steps. Small clouds of dust kick up around his boots. Small blue sparks crackle from between his fisted fingers. “When? How?”

Angelique dips her head as proxy for fully shaking it. “I do not know exactly when—but soon.”

“And the ‘how?’” Reece demands.