Illicit Senses (Illicit Minds Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  Gasping, she clicked the mouse and let the website load. It was a site devoted to the goings on at Earthquake, the institute for Conditioned people on the west coast of the United States. Looking quickly, she knew almost immediately that it was a conspiracy-driven website, and the counter at the bottom of the page showed her it didn’t get very much traffic. It didn’t matter; in her current circumstances, even weird internet conspiracy theorists knew more than she did. She scanned down the page until she got to the section that dealt with Guy McKidd. Evidently, ten years earlier, a man by his name had escaped from Earthquake and vanished. The police had no leads and no idea where to find him. There was, of course, no mention of the Fury, as the average person believed them not to exist, but Addison knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Fury would have looked for him.

  Lower on the page was a follow-up article in which, in two sentences, the police declared that the suspect was dead. The website author had written in a strange font over the article the words “Why so brief on the story of his death?” Addison sat back in her chair, chewing on her lower lip. Actually, that was a pretty good question. Where were all the gory details of his death? Surely, there had to be more to the story than that.

  Noticing that Guy McKidd was underlined on the page, she sat forward again and clicked on the link. The website changed to a picture of a man who looked to be in his late twenties, with long hair that went past his shoulders. He stared at the camera, giving whoever had taken the picture the finger. Addison couldn’t help smiling as she wondered if they’d run that picture in the newspaper.

  She racked her brain and still couldn’t remember the story ever making national news. There had to be more to it. She groaned and leaned on the desk, holding her head in her hands. Maybe she was deluding herself. Maybe Roman had just been thinking of two different things, and the numbers had nothing to do with Guy McKidd’s disappearance. Snippets of that conversation came back to her. Right after he’d given her the numbers, he’d remarked that he knew she’d sent her crazy aunt to the Caribbean. Well, maybe she was embellishing with the crazy remark. Roman would never have said that out loud—at least not to her.

  Addison made herself focus on that point. It was odd that Roman had brought it up at all. Why had he mentioned it?

  “Wow. That’s it. That’s it!” She jumped from her seat. Could it be that easy? She looked down at the numbers again. It had to be. She couldn’t have come to this conclusion if it weren’t true.

  She ran back to the computer. Her aunt was in the Caribbean, and she would bet any money that if she plugged those numbers in as longitude and latitude coordinates, it would take her to a place in the Caribbean. That was where Guy McKidd was hiding, and Roman had been trying to tell them that was where they could go to get away.

  18, 22, 64 and 50. 18°22 N 64°50 W placed them smack in the middle of the ocean, just north of St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands. It was international waters with no major landmasses to speak of. She rubbed her nose. The Caribbean was littered with small, nothing islands—some owned privately, some not. She didn’t bet—what was the point of giving someone the money you’d earned for nothing? Except in this case, she’d wager any money that Guy McKidd was on one of those islands and the Fury couldn’t touch him because they only had American jurisdiction.

  Every country had its own version of the committee—well, the ones that didn’t execute the Conditioned immediately. If that island belonged to no one—if it was privately owned and the people on it were “dead” and not paying taxes—the possibilities were endless. Why didn’t every Conditioned person escape there? Duh. She felt like smacking her forehead. Because no one told them, no one explained it, and the people who knew—like William Rhodes—were in the business of making sure it didn’t come out. What would Rhodes be without Safe Dawn? Just another Conditioned man not welcome in America. As it was, with the status quo, he was important, relevant…

  She blinked and got back on track. This still didn’t solve the problems in front of her. Spencer and Jeremy were locked up in Safe Dawn. Spencer was probably due to be executed. Even if she could somehow get a boat and if she was right about all of this and Guy McKidd really was on that island and they could go there and hide away to live their lives, it still meant she had to get them out of Safe Dawn. Somehow, she suspected she was no longer going to be welcome inside. Not to mention, she couldn’t leave the others—they all belonged to her now. The crew that had helped her deserved their freedom, too.

  Like a child with a toy, she spun around in her chair until she got dizzy and jerked it still. Every problem had a solution, and so did this. How could she sneak them out? It would take bribing the guards. No. She shook her head. It wouldn’t.

  She knew what she needed to do; she just had to get inside the walls. Grinning from ear to ear, she rose from her seat. There was a way into Safe Dawn. She knew that from firsthand experience.

  Once again, she turned to the internet. Typing the words “sex with Conditioned men” into her search engine made her cringe. When this was over, some authority would likely seize her computer and find that in her cache—even if she tried to disguise it, which she didn’t intend to do. They’d write her off as a sexually depraved loony based on that search alone.

  Message boards where women discussed and described their sex with Conditioned men popped up on the screen. She clicked on the first one, distressed to see that Spencer warranted his own section. For a moment she debated looking at it before deciding it was a really bad idea. He said he didn’t participate in the sex parties, and she believed him. Instead she clicked on the phrase “Sex Party.”

  After moments of searching what she was certain were illegal websites, she found a phone number to call if she wanted a good time with Conditioned men. She looked at the clock; it was four in the morning. Oh well. Whoever was running this thing couldn’t be keeping regular business hours.

  After two rings, a man answered. “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello, I got your number from a website called deviancealliance.com.” She took a deep breath. “I want to have sex with Conditioned men.”

  She closed her eyes as she said it out loud. Even the day before, she couldn’t have imagined having this conversation. Now it wouldn’t even be amongst the strangest things she had done.

  “Then you called the right place. You’re lucky, we’re about to take the number down. It’s been up for too long. Periodically we have to change websites.”

  “Yes, well, then it’s my lucky night.” She cleared her throat. “I want to have sex with Conditioned men.”

  “Right, you said that. It doesn’t come cheap. To get into an institution, you’ll need to fork over one thousand dollars.”

  Okay, not a problem. “Wow.” Better not to seem too interested. “Okay. If that’s what it costs, that’s what it costs. When can I get into Safe Dawn?”

  “Wait a minute, girlie. Who said anything about Safe Dawn? I heard that place has gone into lockdown. Not sure what’s going on over there. I can get you into Earthquake or Silver Dust.”

  “No, it has to be Safe Dawn.” She left the unspoken “damn it” out of her speech. “Look, mister… what is your name?”

  “You can call me Prometheus.”

  “Is that some kind of Frankenstein reference?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She sighed. “It has to be Safe Dawn. It’s the only one I’m interested in.”

  “I told you, no can do.”

  She looked at her clock. Five minutes had passed since she’d gotten on the phone. Enough was enough already. “I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars for Safe Dawn tomorrow.”

  Prometheus sucked in an audible breath. “I’ll make it happen, but you have to hand-deliver the money right away.”

  “I’m in the New York City area.”

  “That’ll work.” He gave her an address in the Village and told her to ask for someone named Zeus. She rolled her eyes. She was going to a drag club
at four in the morning to deliver twenty grand to a man named Zeus. Life had never been so completely out of her control.

  She hung up the phone and looked at her computer one more time. There were two things left to do. The first was to break into Wade Corporation’s mainframe. When she was done, it would take them six months to locate their boats and weeks to determine that she’d stolen one. Her grandfather had thought it a waste of time for her to learn how the system operated, but it was going to turn out to be time well spent. After that, she needed to make a phone call to her friend who helped run one of the morning news segments.

  Tomorrow night, she would either have broken them all out and be on her way to her new life, or she’d be locked up with them.

  Either way, she was through.

  She was Addison Wade, and she was done hiding. Screw the world if they didn’t like it.

  Twenty-Three

  Oliver waited to see Grace Ann’s eyes flicker open. Her head hung down in front of her body, her neck no longer able to support the weight of her head as she was tied sitting up in a chair. For a moment, a blank, confused expression crossed her features before memory and realization reconvened in her eyes.

  “Oliver.” Her voice was no more than a croak. Torture and abuse at the hands of the Fury could do that to a person. He wouldn’t know from personal experience, just from watching the events he’d ordered to take place on twelve different occasions. Not too many, considering he’d been on the committee for thirty years.

  He yawned. “Yes, Grace Ann?”

  “Surely as two reasonable, rich, powerful people, we can work something out between the two of us?”

  “No, Grace Ann. You see, I’m a reasonable, rich, powerful person.” He stood up from the wooden chair that made his back ache. At his age, that was happening more and more often. Maybe it was time to find a chiropractor. “All you are now is a talking corpse.” He looked at the Fury—number seven, the one he always called on for this kind of activity because of the joy the man seemed to take in using the instruments. “Finish her.”

  He walked down the hall and then through the steel doors that led outside.

  Someday, he supposed, he’d have to tell Addison about these secret rooms. She would need to run what went on down here. He rolled his eyes. The way the girl had acted at the warehouse, it might be another decade before he hardened her up enough to take over Wade. She clearly needed more time in the trenches. Perhaps it was time to send her back into the stock houses to do cattle inventory again.

  Not that it had helped the last time he’d ordered her there. Rather than letting it beat her down, she’d reorganized the cattle houses, making them run at top efficiency. The memory made him grin. He might give her a hard time, but she was a credit to him in many ways.

  He heard the click behind him that meant the steel doors had resealed. He was surprised to see the Fury with designation three standing in front of him, holding some sort of translucent ball in his hands.

  He pointed to the object he didn’t recognize. “What is that?”

  “Wade Corporation made it. It’s a static electricity ball. It gives out just enough of a push to make a Conditioned person better able to control their unusual abilities.”

  “I never gave the order to have that made.” It was a stupid waste of money. He didn’t want them getting control of themselves. That would mean people would start to demand they have rights, and no one knew better than he did that the Conditioned should never be allowed back into society.

  “Addison suggested it be made five years ago when she first started at Wade. I doubt she even remembers she did it. Probably she just signed a piece of paper authorizing the money and didn’t look at it again.”

  “That’s Ms. Wade to you, number three.”

  Number three nodded. “As you say, Committee Member Wade. You’re right, it’s Ms. Wade. Needless to say, when I read about it in the Conditioned reports, I never forgot that she did that.”

  “It was wasteful spending, and when she gets back to work, I’m going to speak to her about it.”

  “Shall I just get rid of it from the building?”

  Oliver narrowed his eyes. “What is your Condition, number three? Remind me. I always think of you as the smart one, and I can’t seem to fathom why you were locked in Safe Dawn to begin with.”

  The Fury smiled. “Among other things, I’m a power dampener. That’s my main ability.”

  Oliver’s head felt fuzzy. The usual buzz that allowed him to reason out any problem was eluding him. Maybe he needed to see a doctor, or maybe he was just getting old. In any case, he was going home. “What was it that you asked me?”

  “Sir, I inquired as to whether or not you wanted me to get rid of this?” He held up the strange-looking ball. “To remove it from the building?”

  Waving his hand in a dismissive gesture, he nodded. “Do whatever you want to do with it, Fury.”

  “Yes, sir.” Number three smiled at him, but there was no joy in it.

  “Oh, number three, before you go, tell me something. Why is it that you suddenly look so familiar to me? I know I’ve known you, seen you trained since you were nine but why now is there also this ‘otherness’ about you that I find familiar?”

  The blond man cleared his throat. “Maybe it’s because you just signed my younger brother’s death warrant. I’m told we have a very similar look.”

  “Lewis is your brother?”

  “Spencer is, yes.” Still holding the ball, the Fury walked toward the exit. “We’re both Lewises. Don’t worry, though. I’m Fury through and through. I swore an oath to be, and I always keep my promises. I won’t interfere in Spencer’s punishment. If he’s in Safe Dawn tomorrow morning, he’ll be executed with no help from me.”

  Oliver nodded. They were good sentiments—just the kind that years of training and drilling and brain manipulation in the Fury academy programmed into the young men and women selected for it.

  “Very good, then.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  He didn’t answer. What business was it of his whether or not he had a good night?

  Walking toward the exit, he hummed the opening song of The Sound of Music.

  Funny, he hadn’t thought about that musical for years. Why was it in his head?

  “You know, if you had come to me, perhaps I could have helped you.”

  Spencer looked up from his study of the floor tiles in his prison to see William Rhodes standing in the room. He hadn’t heard him come in. That was how out of it he currently was.

  “Come to you? Like you came to me and told me your concerns when Priscilla,” he couldn’t help his dark laugh, “died? I walked around here like the living dead for months, feeling responsible for that, and you didn’t utter a word.” He paused as a thought occurred to him. “Or was it that you weren’t sure you could trust me? You didn’t know if I was involved in it, too?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “Emphatically no. I knew you weren’t in on her deviousness. I just wasn’t sure you would believe me without proof. You believed in her, and one of your biggest faults—and strengths—is that you hold tight to those you consider friends.”

  Spencer sighed. He was sitting on the bed. It was, after all, the only place to sit in the room, which contained only a bed and a toilet, not even a window. He laid his head against the wall. “So you decided to go to Roman?”

  “Is that what bothers you the most about this? That I went to your brother?”

  “No.” Spencer sighed. “What bothers me the most about this is that Jack and Tara are going to die along with me, and Gina is going to spend the rest of her natural life locked up in the static room.”

  He knew unequivocally that had they been able to prove that Minnie and Marisa had been involved, they would be joining Gina in the static lockup. Laurel, Russell, and Holland were in trouble for leaving the institute. They’d probably have clean-up duties for years but weren’t in any physical danger.

  “Then maybe you
shouldn’t have dragged them out on a suicide mission with you.”

  “There was no way to get Jeremy without them.”

  Grace Ann was a sick, deranged woman and rescuing Jeremy would have turned out to be a blessing for all of them. The woman was going to use Jeremy to kill them all.

  Rhodes pounded the wall with his fist, his eyes flashing and his skin flushed. “You could have come to me.”

  Wow. Spencer raised an eyebrow. Rhodes was really angry. He actually couldn’t remember ever seeing the head of Safe Dawn so mad before.

  “I couldn’t.”

  Even now, he wouldn’t tell William why that was. Addison had to be kept safe at all costs. If his life was over, she still had hers in front of her, and maybe someday she’d be able to fix things on the committee. Not to mention that his love for her was such a large, palpable thing that even hours away from where she was, he could feel her filling the places inside him that should have long ago died from emotional neglect.

  Rhodes crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to him. “You know I had you as one of the candidates to take over for me when I stepped down.”

  Spencer cracked up. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It wasn’t. Everyone here respects you. They listen to you. You solved all those cases on the outside, giving you a certain amount of respected notoriety, not to mention that I think you would have liked the job.” Rhodes rested his head in his hands, leaning on his knees. “Now, instead, I get to walk you down the hall to where they’ll end your life tomorrow.”

  “How will they do it?”

  “They’ll inject you with something.”

  Spencer nodded. He supposed he should have been more worked up about his death. The week before, he would have railed against the unfairness of it all. Since he’d met Addison, things had changed. Even though it had been brief, he’d really lived for the first time in his life; he’d finally known what it was to feel like a man and to know the love of one of God’s angels on Earth. That was how he’d think of Addison for the next few hours of life: as a gift sent down from Heaven for him alone.