She was worse than a stranger to him now: she was an enemy.
“Did you find the location?” Roman’s voice in his ear startled him.
He smiled. “Addison says we should get you a bell.”
“That would defeat the purpose.”
Spencer thought he heard amusement in Roman’s voice, but he wasn’t sure. With his brother, it was so hard to tell.
“I didn’t recognize it, but when I described it to Addison, she did.” He shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to wait until she wakes up.”
Roman strode away from him, his footsteps loud this time. He stopped right in front of Addison and Laurel. Spencer raised an eyebrow and followed him. What was his brother up to now?
Roman ran a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. Spencer had always thought they had the same color hair, but lately he’d been noticing that Roman’s hair had darkened. All in all, he seemed to be aging more quickly than Spencer was. Of course, it could just have been that he was eleven months older. Maybe that was what Spencer would look like in a year.
Clearing his throat and glaring at Spencer like he knew his thoughts, Roman finally spoke to Laurel. “Is she burned?”
“No, she’s just sleeping deeply,” Laurel answered.
“Wake her up.”
Oh hell, no. “Don’t do that, Laurel.”
“Spencer,” she hissed in a whisper. “He’s a Fury.”
“I’m aware of what he is—believe me, I’m more aware of it than you are—but he doesn’t get to say what happens to Addison.” She needed to sleep.
Mimicking the look Spencer had given him earlier—and Spencer was quite sure it was deliberate—Roman raised an eyebrow. “Really? You think I can’t make this go exactly as I want it to?”
And there was the brother he’d grown accustomed to over the last twenty-six years. Gone was the man who’d been helpful and informative, and in his place was the nasty, threatening Fury. He wanted to punch him, and it was hard to restrain himself.
“Are you threatening me, Roman? Seems a little beneath you.” Take the bait. Truth was, he was as tired as hell and didn’t know if he was up for a battle of wills with his brother.
“I’m not threatening. I’m letting you know how it is.”
Good. “Seems to me like you’re threatening, like you’re saying if you don’t have it your way, I won’t like the result.”
“Listen, kid, I can haul your girlfriend out of here and have anyone I want awaken her and get the info I want. I’m doing you the courtesy of asking nicely and letting you watch me question her.”
Better. It wasn’t often Roman lost his temper. He just needed to distract him enough to get his attention off Addison. A groan from the couch drew his focus instead. Addison gripped her head as she sat up.
“Can the two of you stop screaming at each other for two seconds? You could wake the frickin’ dead.”
Spencer went to her side and sat next to her. Her face was strained; her eyes barely squinted open, and looked red and bloodshot. Under any other circumstances, he would have thought she was hung over. As it was, he couldn’t help but be amazed she’d recovered so quickly.
“Ms. Wade, I’m afraid there’s no more time to waste. Where is Jeremy?”
“A liquor warehouse.”
Spencer wanted to throw something. “How can that mean anything to you? Do you know how many liquor warehouses there must be in this country, let alone the world?”
Addison reached out a hand, and he took it. “Roman knows exactly what I’m talking about, Spencer.” Her gaze left his and landed on his brother. “Don’t you, Roman?”
His brother’s face was a mask of hardness. His eyes were steel, all his attention focused on Addison. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “But she’s a member of the Council.”
“Who else could have manipulated this?”
Pounding on the wall above the couch with his free hand, Spencer looked between them. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Grace Ann Charters, one of the premiere members of the committee—her family is the largest maker of liquor in the United States. They’re hugely rich, hugely powerful.” Addison closed her eyes and leaned back against the couch again. “My guess is that your brother isn’t going to do anything now.”
Spencer stood, releasing her hand. “Is that true, Roman? Now that it’s one of them, one of the committee, you aren’t going to help?”
“I can’t participate in anything related to her. She’s exempt from the Fury.”
Addison stood next to him. “It’s a cushy little rule that I believe Grace Ann added herself a few years ago. No one on the outside paid much attention to it, as most of us believe the Fury is just a myth. I can’t possibly imagine why she would have made that rule, can you?” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.
“Roman.” Spencer didn’t like what he was about to say. “Don’t help us as a Fury. Help us as my brother.”
He’d counted on Roman—on his stealth, on his knowhow—to get them in and out of wherever they had to go. He had contacts the rest of them could never have. But even more than that, he’d finally decided he could count on Roman again. His brother just kept showing up every time he turned around. Why did he do that? For manipulation?
“I’m only Fury now.” An emotion Spencer couldn’t identify surfaced in Roman’s eyes. He wished it was regret, but that might just have been what he wanted to see.
“Then you need to leave. You don’t belong in Safe Dawn, and you know it.” If he sounded cruel, then so be it. He wanted him out of his sight. He’d just asked his brother to help him, something he’d never done before, and he’d been unequivocally denied.
Nodding, Roman turned toward the door. He stopped and looked at Addison. “Do you still have what I gave you?”
“Those numbers? Yes, but I have no idea what they are. If you aren’t going to be more forthcoming, then maybe you should do what Spencer asked and just get out of here.” Roman smirked.
It was the final straw. Spencer launched himself at Roman, tackling him to the ground and punching him hard on the nose. Behind him, he heard Addison gasp.
Laurel yelled, “Addison, you have to stop him! Assaulting a Fury is a death sentence!”
Addison grabbed Spencer’s arm, her nails digging through the fabric of his sleeve. He only had a moment to realize how hard she must be gripping him before Roman landed a punch on his nose that made him see stars.
“Stop it,” Addison pleaded desperately.
He rolled off Roman as his brother gripped his own nose. He pulled his hand away and realized he was bleeding. He laughed silently. He deserved whatever came out of this. Just because he’d wanted to pound on his brother since he was four years old, didn’t mean he actually should have.
Roman stood, tugging on his clothes to straighten them. “I’m not going to report him, Laurel, so you can stop shrieking like that.”
Spencer clenched his fists. “Don’t do me any favors, Fury.”
“You never did know when to shut up, Spencer.” Roman spared Addison one more glance. “With the exception of your feelings for my brother, you seem to be a person who shows great sense and fortitude, Ms. Wade. I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do with those numbers.”
Tension flowed through the room as they all watched Roman exit.
It was no surprise to him when Tara spoke first. “It’s never dull with you, is it, Lewis?”
Addison never gave him a chance to reply. “We don’t need him, Spencer. Screw him if he won’t take the olive branch you extended to him. Any contacts he has, I have, too.”
Unable to help himself, he leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were soft—as he remembered them—but he could also feel the strength and fortitude in her that he’d been blind to before. His time with Addison might have been limited, but every second was a gift. He regarded her for a moment. “Can you go get us a van?”
She smiled. “I can.”
“Hey, Le
wis.” This time Jack wanted his attention. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to sneak all of you out of here. Who wants to go for a ride to retrieve a little boy?”
Twenty
In other circumstances, Addison might have been amused. The group from Safe Dawn gaped at everything they saw through the car window. She realized that at some point in her life she would have thought their childlike wonder at seeing a fast food restaurant fascinating. It might have reminded her not to take anything for granted.
But at that moment she was just pissed and irritated. All she could focus on was that it had taken two hours—one hundred and twenty goddamned minutes—to rent a van. The incompetence of the man behind the counter had been enough to make her head spin. They’d had the van; she had a really good credit card. Why had the process taken so long?
She gripped her hands in her lap in anger as she stared out the window in the front passenger side. Had the time delay cost them the element of surprise? Would Daniel and Loretta know that Priscilla wasn’t coming back to her body, or would they think she was still battling it out in dark space with Spencer?
“You’re thinking too much about things you can’t control,” Spencer said from the driver’s seat. He’d driven only once, but now, outside of Addison, he was the expert in the car. “Or I’m driving really badly. Which one is it?”
She didn’t want to smile, but he amused her. Damn. Why was it so easy for him to make her happy? “Two hours, Spence. Two frickin’ hours.”
He nodded. “So it’s not the driving, then?”
“No, you’re doing well. If you can drive stick, you can drive automatic.”
“This certainly doesn’t have the kick of your sports car.”
She laughed. That was such a male statement. “You’ve driven exactly twice in your life, and you’re already a car snob.”
“Hey, you’re the one who owns the car.”
A groan sounded from the back seat. No surprise, it was Tara. “Go get a room; spare us all this endless flirtation.”
Addison whirled around to stare at Tara and was struck again by how much the car stunk like orange air freshener. She wondered if she’d have to pay a fee for blood damage to the car if she bashed Tara’s head against the window.
“You know, we could have left you at home.”
Tara crossed her arms. “I can be pretty damn effective when I want.”
“Raising the dead is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Gina had been relatively quiet for most of the trip. “I can only do it for short periods of time. And it’s not pretty—they look however they looked when they died… or worse if they’ve started to decompose.”
Addison shuddered.
Tara snickered. “So here’s a question, rich girl.”
God, she could really do without Tara’s new nickname for her. She hoped it didn’t stick. “Yes?” She ground the word out between clenched teeth.
“How do you know we’re going to the right warehouse? I mean, you’re probably right about this Grace Ann person being responsible for it, but don’t you think the company has multiple shipping warehouses?”
Holland perked up in his seat. “It’s a good question.”
Addison sighed. She was going with her gut on this one. Still, she might be wrong. “They only have one warehouse in the Northeast, and it’s in Pennsylvania. The rest of them are out west or in Texas. I just don’t think they’d want to move Jeremy that far. It seems too risky. Grace Ann is a smart, calculating woman. Whatever her reasons for doing this—and honestly I don’t care at this point what they are—she’d want to minimize exposure. Kidnap Jeremy and take him away to a safe, secure location nearby that she can control.” Looking down at her feet, she tried to will her pulse to slow down. “Of course, I could be wrong and be dragging you all on a wild goose chase.”
Russell spoke first. “Then at least we all got out of Safe Dawn for a cool ride in the car.”
She looked up just in time to see the big green sign with the white letters letting them know they had reached Allentown, the location of the warehouse. She took a deep breath as she pointed out the sign to Spencer. He swerved to the right to make the exit. Gasping, she gripped the side of the van, hoping he didn’t tip them over.
Jack shouted from the backseat. “What on Earth possessed you to let him drive?”
“Hey, I’m still learning here, okay?” Spencer didn’t sound at all repentant, and she wondered if he actually liked the adrenaline of the near miss. It wouldn’t surprise her to find out he had the fascination of a teenage boy with things that went fast. “It just has a different center of gravity than Addison’s car.”
“Hey, Addy.” Holland had taken to using her nickname like they were friends.
He had knocked her unconscious; maybe he thought that gave him certain rights.
“When we’re done with this, can you teach me to drive?”
Addison had a feeling that when they were “done with this,” she wouldn’t be teaching anyone anything. She’d be lucky if she got out of there with Jeremy intact, without getting herself hauled off to Safe Dawn, or sent to jail for murdering Grace Ann Charters.
“If I live through this and I can get us to a car, Holland, I will teach you to drive.”
Tara snorted. “We’d all like to learn. Can you make a signup sheet?”
She had a vision of herself opening up a driver’s education school that specialized in the Conditioned.
She directed Spencer to the warehouse. Ironically, she’d been there once before. When she’d been in high school, her class had done a project on the life of a product from creation to consumption. Her grandfather had called Grace Ann, and she’d gone on a tour of the facility to see where liquor was stored before it was sent out to the stores.
Luckily, she had a good sense of direction. She’d looked up the address and found her bearings by searching the internet on her phone and plugging it in. This place, however, seemed like it had been designed to mess with the phone’s GPS. It wasn’t locating it correctly. This had to have been manipulated by the Council.
After a few starts and stops, they arrived at their destination. As they pulled up, the people in the car got quiet. The warehouse looked all but abandoned. Even though it was Saturday, Addison was surprised there wasn’t at least a little activity in the area. Most of the houses they’d passed in the same vicinity were old and run-down.
The sign on top of the wooden, multi-storied warehouse was only partially lit, making visible only the C, ART, and S of the name CHARTERS. She bit her lower lip as she wished she’d spent a little less time bemoaning the rental car and a little more doing some quick research on the financial affairs of the Charters family. Could this be just a simple case of extortion? Did they want the Wades to pay? Were they going out of business? Why had there been no ransom request?
“Ready?” Spencer cut into her musings. She nodded, climbed out of the van, and followed him toward the warehouse.
Reaching the outside door, Spencer tried the handle. “It’s locked.”
“Did you think it was going to be that easy?” She was keeping the sound of her voice very low.
He shrugged. “No. This is me, after all. Things don’t go that easily for me.” Raising an eyebrow, he stared at her with an unreadable expression on his face. “You don’t happen to have another hair pin, do you?”
Addison banged on the heavy, partially-rusted, industrial-strength door lock. “I don’t think this one is going to open with a hairpin and your nifty finger tricks.”
“My nifty finger tricks?” He grinned, and she blushed as she realized what she’d just said. “Girl, you’re going to give me a hard-on at exactly the wrong time. Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself for the moment, won’t you?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“No one teases you very much, do they?”
She shook her head. Before Spencer, no, there hadn’t been anyone who had teased her, not even
her parents.
“I would say we could remedy that, but after I get Jeremy out of here, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see each other again.” He walked toward the others, presumably to tell them what was going on.
As soon as they recovered Jeremy, she would cease to have a reason to see Spencer. It wasn’t like she could go and visit. Her heart pounded and tears sprang to her eyes. She could feel energy surging inside her. Oh hell, she was going to have another attack.
No, she corrected herself, not an “attack.” She had to stop thinking about them in that way. They were powers, and at least with this crew of people, she didn’t have to hide them. Priscilla had said that people who moved in dark space could do a lot of things even in the “real” world. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to contain the power surge for a few more minutes.
She’d broken a window. Maybe she could break a lock.
Concentrating, she pushed her energy at the lock, keeping her gaze focused entirely on the hardware. As the energy poured from inside her through her skin, she shook—the pain of trying to contain what, by nature, did not want to be contained was agonizing. She felt her knees start to give and willed herself to stay standing. Strong arms grabbed her around the waist, supporting her in an upright position.
Spencer’s angry whisper steamed her ear. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting us inside.”
With a snap, she heard the lock give as it broke into three pieces and collapsed to the ground. She sagged in Spencer’s arms, letting him take all her weight while she collected herself.
“Are you nuts? You practically burned out in dark space today. Now, you want to play around out here? You’re going to give yourself a brain hemorrhage.”
“That’s possible?”
Spencer laughed and kissed her cheek. “Yes, that’s possible, my little naïve Wade girl. Half the people the Fury catch are found in hospitals suffering from brain bleeds. They overdo it.”
Illicit Senses (Illicit Minds Book 1) Page 21