AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He set a hand on her shoulder, silently telling her to let it go. And maybe she would have, but Alan wasn’t about to let the matter drop.
“You’re in on it, too, aren’t you?” he spat, his voice dripping with venom. “Covering for each other, just like you’ve been doing this whole time. I bet you planned this from the start. Lure us in, make us trust you, then pick us off one by one.”
Rhiannon’s eyes flared with frustration, but she kept her voice steady. “Listen to yourself. Why would we—“ As the murmurs grew louder, she broke off and shook her head in disbelief. “God, this is ridiculous.”
“Is it? We don’t know who we’re dealing with. We don’t know anything about him because he hasn’t told us shit.”
“Oh, come on,” Dottie said with an eye roll. “We’re dealing with a man who risked his life to save Michael, a man who, from the start, has been trying to hold us together and protect all of us.”
“Alan, I get it,” Rhiannon added gently. “You’re looking for someone to blame because you’re scared, but Pierce isn’t the enemy.”
Alan’s gaze shifted to her, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “You’re blinded because you’re sleeping with him.”
Guilt flared, bright and hot, in the center of Pierce’s chest. He hadn’t wanted this—for Rhiannon to be dragged into the crossfire of his secrets. He’d tried so hard to stay away from her, but the only time his head quieted was when she was in his arms, and the temptation had been too strong, the connection too powerful to resist. And now she was paying the price for his weakness.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” she protested.
“No?” Alan sneered, taking a step closer. “Because I saw you two cozying up the other night. You really think we wouldn’t notice? He’s playing you, Rhiannon. Just like he’s playing all of us.”
Before Rhiannon could respond, Dottie stepped forward, her voice clear and authoritative. “Enough. None of us are thinking straight. We’ve been trapped here for days, and now we’ve lost someone. Don’t let grief make you say something you can’t take back.”
Alan scowled but didn’t back down. “You’ll see, Dottie. You’ll all see. Dean was trying to warn us. He’s hiding something, and when it all blows up in our faces, don’t say I didn’t warn you, too.”
He turned and stalked away, pulling Lori and his boys with him. Several of the other survivors hesitated, exchanging uneasy glances, but one by one, they began to drift off, too, retreating to their own corners of the gift shop. Suspicion hung thick and heavy in the air like a lingering cloud of smoke.
Rhiannon let out a shaky breath, her shoulders slumping as she turned to Pierce. “Are you okay?”
He met her gaze and shook his head slowly.“No. I’m not.”The weight of his secrets was crushing him, and he couldn’t bear the burden alone anymore. He dragged in a breath and decided to let her in.“He’s right about me. I have been hiding things. But not what he thinks.”
Rhiannon swallowed, her eyes searching his. Then she took his hand, her fingers lacing through his, and led him away from the main group toward a small alcove near the back of the gift shop. Shattered snow globes and novelty keychains crunched underfoot. Once they were alone, she turned to face him, her green-gold eyes searching his.”What is it? What are you hiding, Pierce?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his hands still grasped in hers. He wished he could tell her with his voice. He wanted—needed—to keep their connection for this. Her touch grounded him in a way nothing else ever had.
Rhiannon squeezed his hand. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. I’m here for you, no matter what.”
Still, he hesitated. He’d kept these secrets for so long, buried them so deep, that the thought of dragging them into the light now left him reeling. But Rhiannon deserved the truth. She’dstood by him, defended him, even as the others turned against him. He owed her that much.
He dropped her hands and backed up a small step.
“You know I was in the Army,”he began.“What I didn’t tell you is what I worked on. It was called Project Iron Horizon. It was a weapons development project, highly classified, and…”He hesitated, studying her face, wondering if—when he dropped this bombshell—if she’d look at him any differently than she was now.“I was part of the team that helped create a device called a Tectonic Resonance Amplifier—Tectra-X. It’s capable of manipulating seismic activity.”
Rhiannon’s eyes widened in shock, and she exhaled in a rush. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it obviously hadn’t been anywhere close to the truth. “Wait, what? You… you helped create something that could causeearthquakes?”
chapter
thirteen
The horroron her face was like a punch to his gut, a visceral reminder of the devastation he had been part of, not just as an engineer but as a soldier who had believed in the mission. He had anticipated fear, maybe even revulsion, but the raw incredulity on Rhiannon’s face stung deeper than he imagined.
Rhiannon took a step back, her breath catching as she tried to process the magnitude of his confession. “You mean you could—” She faltered, her voice dropping to a whisper filled with disbelief. “You could destroy entire cities?”
Pierce held up his hands, reminding her to use ASL.
She bit her lip and glanced around, then switched to sign language.“Why would you create such a thing?”
A question he had asked himself over and over again throughout the last decade. And the only answer he’d ever been able to come up with is that he’d been naive, blinded by innovation and the challenge.
He took a deep breath.“I was young, cocky, and ambitious, eager to prove myself. They sold it to us as a tool for strategic military operations, a way to destabilize enemy infrastructure without the massive loss of life that bombing causes. They said it would save lives in the long run. That it was the futureof warfare. And I bought into it, hook, line, and sinker.”A sour taste coated his tongue. He’d never thought of himself as a stupid man. He’d always been top of his class, good at everything he put his mind to, but he’d gotten sucked up into the hype. The immense power they’d wielded had clouded his judgment.“I was so focused on the science, on pushing the boundaries of what was possible, that I didn’t stop to consider the ramifications. The potential for abuse. We lost control. Too much ambition, too little oversight, and I started to realize the weapon’s true destructive potential, the indiscriminate nature of it. By the time I got my head out of my ass…”
