After a moment, she turned away, too. Then, mercifully, from off in the distance came the low, electric drone of engines. Together they waited for Jack’s friends in silence, the space between them raw.

Inola Hart was not at all what Magnus had been expecting.

She was about Jack and Morgan’s age, elegant and severe with her dark hair pulled to a tight chignon at the nape of her neck, which served perfectly to highlight the angular attractiveness of her face. Sloe-eyed, tall, with nut-brown skin and a commanding air that suggested she was used to ordering people around, Nola, as she’d instructed they call her, seemed the kind of woman who’d be equally at home in a ballroom or on a battlefield.

Magnus decided he liked her immediately.

The young man she introduced as her nephew, James, however, Magnus disliked immediately, primarily due to the way he couldn’t stop ogling Lumina.

Magnus grudgingly admitted that James tried to be circumspect about it, but from the first moment he’d pulled off his motorcycle helmet, his eyes had gone straight to Lumina’s face, and stayed glued there. When they weren’t blinking in admiration at her body, that is, which was on spectacular display in one of the tight-fitting warrior chick costumes Honor favored. She’d dyed it black, at least, so she didn’t stick out like a spotlight, but the stretchy, figure-molding material left little to the imagination.

“Good for ease of movement,” Honor had said breezily in response to his bug-eyed look when Lumina first emerged from the caves to meet him at the helicopter, and if he hadn’t known better, he’d almost have thought Honor was smirking.

“James, take Lumina. I’ll take Magnus,” Nola said, about to don her helmet.

“No,” Magnus said firmly, stepping forward. He stared at James. “I’ll take Lumina. You and James can ride together, Nola.”

James held his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Whatever works for you, man. I’m easy.” He dismounted the bike—sleek and black, one of the newest electric models—and ambled over to Nola, who was watching this exchange closely.

Her gaze flicked between him and Lumina. “We’ve got about an hour’s ride ahead of us. If either of you need to take care of business, do it now. Unless it’s a dire emergency, we won’t stop again until we get home.”

“I’d rather get started now,” said Lumina.

Magnus agreed. He mounted the bike, handed Lu the helmet from the peg on the back seat, then donned the extra one Nola handed over. He slid his small shoulder pack around to the front, giving Lumina room, and she swung her leg over the seat and climbed on.

Her arms slid around his waist. Her chest pressed against his back. The weight of her settled against him, firm and plush and agonizing. And, as Magnus depressed the ignition button and felt the bike hum to life beneath them, he said a prayer for strength to a god he knew did not exist, because he’d never answered a single prayer before.

TWENTY-ONE

The safe house was in a small town near the Belgian border. The house itself was distinctly European, with a steep mansard roofline and charming shutters, but beyond that, the planned community offered zero in the way of diversity or interest. The town might have been anywhere. Like London, it was entirely devoid of life.

Except for the pair of black motorcycles that had traversed its roads.

Surprisingly well-preserved roads they were, too, except for the occasional ragged crack or pothole. The bigger problem was the rotting husks of abandoned cars, but the motorcycles had maneuvered around them handily, and Magnus was again impressed with Nola. From what Jack had told him, he gathered that Nola was the person Jack trusted most in the world, aside from Hawk. She and Nola had been best friends in their lives before the Flash—Jack, a reporter for the New York Times and Nola, an attorney for the United Nations—and Nola had proven herself unwaveringly loyal. When Jack had founded the Dissenter movement, Nola was the first one on board.

Travelling through an unlit, uninhabited town at night was always eerie, but Magnus was accustomed to it. By the time they reached the safe house he should have been feeling more relaxed. They’d landed easily, made the rendezvous, made good time over the highway without encountering any trouble. Only he didn’t feel relaxed. With Lu’s body so tightly fused to his, her thighs around his hips, her arms clinging to his waist, Magnus felt like he might explode in frustration.

Not for one second, however, did he regret not letting her ride with James.

They cut the engines, dismounted, pulled off their helmets. Nola led them around the side of the darkened house, through a wooden gate that groaned open on rusted hinges. Magnus expected a normal suburban backyard, but instead found himself looking at a small, shed-like building on a slab of concrete, surrounded by nothing but a wide expanse of dirt. Nola led them to the shed, and lifted a hinged door, revealing an empty interior.

“Bring the bike in,” she instructed over her shoulder. “There’s just room enough for the four of us.”

He did as he was told, eyeing Nola speculatively, but she simply shut the hinged door behind them, looked to make sure no one was within a few inches of the walls, then pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling.

With a jolt, the cement floor below their feet began slowly to descend.

Lu jumped, but Magnus had to chuckle. “You’re full of all kinds of surprises, aren’t you, Nola?”

Lu flashed him a look he couldn’t decipher, quickly recovering to adopt a bored expression. Nola shrugged, smiling. “Every woman is full of surprises, much to man’s great horror or delight. A woman only has to surprise a man once to find out what he’s made of.” Her smile deepened. “And whether or not he’s worth her while.”

“What about you, Lumina?” prompted James. “I’ll bet you’re full of surprises.”

Lu sent him a sideways, penetrating stare. “You have no idea.”

The way they looked at each other made Magnus’s chest tighten. He had to curl his hands to fists to stop them from curling around James’s throat.

After a short descent during which James stared at Lu, Lu stared at Nola, and Nola stared at the walls crawling upward, the platform came to rest at the end of a short, dark tunnel. At the far end a pair of lanterns flanked a closed door.

“Leave the bikes here.” Nola rolled her motorcycle a few feet into the tunnel, kicking down the stand. Magnus parked his bike behind hers, and the four of them proceeded to the door.

It was steel, reinforced with rebar through the concrete on either side. Magnus noted the small black eye of a camera mounted to the ceiling. “How do you have electricity so far from the cities?”

Nola waved impatiently to the camera. “We siphon it from the grid, but we have a few generators for emergencies, too.”

“Siphon it from the grid? And the IF doesn’t notice that?”

Nola looked at him over her shoulder, her expression amused. “If they did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, now would we?”

Full of surprises, indeed, he thought admiringly. Lumina stiffened. He glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at him, focusing instead on the door, which had opened.