Illicit Senses: Illicit Minds #1

by Royce, Rebecca

  Oliver rose from his chair. He walked to the back window and looked down at the street as if contemplating something. His early days building sets at the back of the 9th Street Theater in Manhattan had taught him a thing or two about showmanship. Just to drive home his point, he placed both hands on the windowsill as if he needed support. Let them think he was weakening; it would draw them out sooner.

  “There was a reason we talked the President into creating the facilities thirty-four years ago. Four of you were with me when we made that decision. The other three… well, you’ve heard the stories.”

  Mumbles of agreement met his statement. “But we’re not monsters. We didn’t put them in ghettos; we didn’t starve them to death, or force them to work as slaves.” Some of the people in the room had wanted that, and he hoped his subtle reminder would bring up whatever small amount of shame the Council still had left. “We tried to fix them. Wade Corporation is still trying to find a way to ease the burdens of their ungodly behavior.”

  Grace Ann nodded. “How is that going? Any progress?”

  “As always, the progress in helping the damned is a slow-moving vehicle. It is out of my hands. I am merely a vessel for God’s work.” No one could talk the language these people wanted to hear better than he could. “We placed the right people in charge. Rhodes, Drummond, Cooper, Starlight. All people with minor manifestations they had under control. But they’re all getting older now. As am I. And, like me, they are looking to find new leadership to take over when the inevitable happens and they are—hopefully, despite their sins—allowed to enter God’s kingdom. To adequately assume this role, they need to know the ones they’ve placed in charge can balance the needs of the outside world with the requirements of the unfortunate who live within the facilities.” Oliver threw his hands in the air. “I’m afraid I can see no other option than to give a chosen few travel privileges.”

  He would handpick those few, and they would work for his agenda and on his terms. Unlike Rhodes. He would have killed Rhodes years before—the one true failure of his career—if doing so wouldn’t have created a cascade of problems.

  Susan Brilener, one of the quietest members of the Council, who for all her bluster was as pious as she claimed to be, stood, her white hair falling past her waist. Oliver was almost one hundred percent sure she hadn’t taken Jeremy. “I agree with Wade. We can’t continue to keep people safe from these spawn of Satan if we don’t do something to insure the future now.” She walked to the window to stand next to Oliver. The woman forever smelled like cinnamon. He wondered if she bathed in it.

  “After all, people are already going to them for help, signing them out if you will, for their own needs. They’ve been most helpful with some law enforcement difficulties, and some of them have cleared up issues pertaining to questions in wills by communicating with the dead.”

  Oliver could have snorted if he hadn’t been so adept at keeping his cool. That’s right. They all call those abilities godless, until they need them for their own personal use.

  “Even Oliver’s own family has gone to them.”

  He shook his head. “To what are you referring, Susan?” Oliver’s heart rate increased just a touch. For the first time in more years than he cared to remember, he had a feeling he was about to be surprised with some bad news. The shock of it was that it was coming from Susan. What was her game? His certainty in her innocence regarding Jeremy took a plunge. She was officially back on his list.

  “Why Addison, of course. I understand she had some private business at Safe Dawn today.”

  Oliver crossed to his chair, keeping his expression neutral. The girl had defied him. He had specifically given Addison instructions not to go there to ask for help, and apparently, she had disregarded him entirely. If he hadn’t been so furious, he would have admitted it was a sign that she was finally acting like a Wade.

  “Oh, Addison has been trying to set up Wade Corporation in some charity work that would help to let the inhabitants of Safe Dawn receive online master’s degrees in the subjects of their choice. You know how my granddaughter is. Hell, what twenty-six-year-old isn’t a bleeding heart?”

  That statement earned him the laughs he wanted and took the pressure off him for a moment. Deliberately, he avoided looking at Susan. Even the slightest eye contact would give the woman power over him she didn’t deserve. Just because she’d entered the realm of subterfuge, didn’t mean she got to play at his advanced level.

  It was time to call for a vote while he still had everyone’s attention. Then he would have Addison hauled into his office for a much-needed explanation, followed by a thorough investigation of Susan Brilener, including unearthing the name of her spy at Safe Dawn.

  “I think it’s time for a vote. Don’t you agree, Grace Ann?” He smiled at her and resisted calling her Gracie. Evidently, it was what she liked to be called in bed. Smiling to himself, he remembered that power was in the details, and he was the one with all of those. Susan Brilener would be nothing but a small blip on the Wade Corporation radar by tomorrow morning. By next week, she’d be off the Council, and if she was responsible for Jeremy’s kidnapping, she’d be dead.

  Grace Ann stood and asked the members to vote yes or no to granting Rhodes the power to bring to them several candidates for the so-called travel privileges. The yeses voted first and, as Oliver had expected, won the day by one vote. Grace Ann, Karen, and George joined him in granting Rhodes the power he’d requested. Oliver jotted their names down on a piece of paper before folding it and sticking it in his pocket. Susan, even after the speech that had alerted him to her hidden agenda, had stayed on the no side of the fence.

  He could eliminate the nos. Someone who’d voted yes had kidnapped his great-grandson. A power shift had just begun in the council, and it hadn’t been started by anyone who’d voted against him. As with all the best schemes, one of his so-called allies had betrayed him in the deepest possible way. He knew these things, not in the way the aberrant knew them, but just enough to have become hugely successful.

  He accepted Grace Ann’s suggestion that they all go to lunch at the newest high-priced gourmet eatery that had opened down the block.

  * * *

  Addison walked straight-backed into his office an hour after he returned from his overpriced, tasteless meal. Her eyes were distant, her demeanor set as though she had nothing in the world to fear or worry about. If he hadn’t been so angry, he’d have been proud. No one outside their small family circle had any idea Jeremy was missing.

  “Come in, Grandchild, and close the door behind you.”

  She did as he asked before crossing to the leather chair she always sat in when called into his office. Addison was nothing if not predictable and organized—up until she’d visited Safe Dawn despite his orders not to. Now, he had to wonder what else his darling granddaughter was hiding.

  “I got your message and came as quickly as I could manage. I was across town at a meeting with the garment suppliers. I think this entire venture is going to be a huge success. A thinner bulletproof vest. It was a brilliant idea, Grandfather.”

  It had been, but he hadn’t called her here to discuss that. He cleared his throat and leveled a look at her that had made grown men whimper. She didn’t even lower her gaze.

  “Do you want to explain to me what you were thinking?”

  “I’d be happy to, if I knew to what you referred.”

  Insolence. Addison knew exactly what he wanted, and still she was going to make him say it out loud.

  “I want to know what you were thinking going to Safe Dawn this morning.”

  Now she shifted in her seat. Maybe he’d been wrong; maybe she hadn’t known what he wanted, or she’d been hoping it was something else.

  “I was thinking that I want my nephew found.”

  “And the insinuation there would be that I don’t want that.”

  “I’m just not clear why you aren’t doing more to locate him.”

  “My methods and my decisio
ns are none of your concern.”

  She crossed her legs. “Except, of course, they are.”

  He gripped the edge of his desk. Usually Addison backed down immediately. He had clearly not prepared enough for this meeting. “Since when are the decisions I make for this family your concern?”

  “As I’m a member of this family—one fourth of it—I would say that your decisions are very much my concern. But even more than that—and here is where it’s going to get really tricky—Jeremy is almost entirely my concern, as he was entrusted to me specifically.”

  Oliver wanted to explode. If Addison continued down this path, it was going to take her into shark-infested waters. He raised an eyebrow. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe her foray into deception meant she could handle this.

  The question was whether he was willing to let her make the attempt.

  “You do understand that when you deal with these people—maybe it’s not fair to even call them that—there is always a hidden agenda. You think you’re hiring them for their abilities, and you end up owing them something. You end up caught up in the web of destruction that caused us to lock them up to begin with.”

  She paused before speaking. “I did get the impression that William Rhodes is playing many cards at the same time, and certainly Spencer Lewis is a handful, but they are both well within my ability to deal with.” She sat forward in her seat. “I can handle them. This won’t be a problem for the Wades. The only thing Safe Dawn, William Rhodes, or Spencer Lewis will be getting from us is money for their services. We will find Jeremy.”

  She looked down at her hands, and for the first time Oliver wondered how much of Addison’s affectations had been learned from him. Was she playing him with her apparent insecurity?

  “Don’t punish Jeremy because I went against your orders. If you don’t think I can handle it, take it over, but let them find Jeremy for us.”

  He stood and walked around his desk until he towered over her. It was keenly important that Addison understand the severity of this situation. For a moment, as he gazed at her, he was struck by how much she looked like his late wife. Nothing like her own parents, who had been dark-haired, Addison had Sharon’s blonde hair and blue eyes.

  Blinking, he let the memory fade away. This was no time to pick up sentimentality.

  “I don’t know who took Jeremy, but I’m working on it. Unlike the authorities, I believe if Jeremy were dead, we would have found a body by now. Someone has him. The question is why.” He studied her clasped hands. Standing this close to her, he could practically feel the tension radiating from her body. “If you must hire Safe Dawn, then hire them. But I need you to remember something. I sit on the council. If something goes awry with them, I, unlike the average citizen, will have no choice but to bring in the Fury to handle it.”

  Addison gasped. A-ha. He had shocked her. “I thought the Fury was a myth.”

  He shook his head. “Not a myth. Keep that in mind when you deal with Lewis or whomever Rhodes sends you. Ask yourself if you want death and mayhem on your hands.”

  Four

  An hour later, Addison sat in the back of the town car, staring out the window as the landscape changed from urban Manhattan to rural New Jersey. It always amazed her how fast everything altered outside New York City. In under an hour, she’d gone from cityscape to farmland. She wished more of her life could be that way, as if she could just make a small adjustment and switch the landscape of her own existence.

  Her mind whirled.

  The Fury was real and her grandfather was so powerful that he controlled them. How was it possible that she’d never known any of this? She’d known he sat on the Council, and understood that he was one of the richest men in the country, but she hadn’t realized just how involved in things he actually was. No wonder Rhodes had been so interested in what she’d wanted from them.

  She ran her hands through her hair to flatten it as she tapped her foot on the floor of the car. “Gregory, when we get there—when you get to Safe Dawn—could you please pull up front and park so I can run inside and retrieve Mr. Lewis?”

  Why on Earth had she thought it was a good idea to go pick up Spencer Lewis? One misstep on his part and her grandfather would call in the Fury, and then he’d be dead. She’d be lucky not to follow him to that end. Maybe she wouldn’t die; maybe she’d simply wish she had.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not letting you inside that place without me. No way, no how.”

  Addison smiled. Greg had been with her family so long, she wasn’t even sure the exact year he’d started working for them.

  Even her grandfather couldn’t bully him. He always said what he thought, at least to her. He liked to remind her he’d driven her mother to the hospital when she’d been in labor with Addison. That had given him some rights.

  Who was Addison to argue with logic like that?

  Greg was approaching sixty—the same age her father would have been if he’d lived—completely gray, with a belly that was getting bigger every year.

  “It’s okay, Greg. Aunt Morgan and I drove down there this morning. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Well, you didn’t have me with you this morning, Addison, and if you had, I wouldn’t have let you and Ms. Wade in there without me. Which, I might point out, is precisely why you drove yourself.”

  He was right; it was why she’d done it.

  “So, then, I suppose you’ll be coming with me?”

  “Damn right I will. Your grandfather is crazy letting you come here without a man to protect you.”

  Addison rolled her eyes. She’d long ago stopped arguing with Greg about how capable she was. Besides, it was nice to have someone left in the world who cared what happened to her. Her grandfather barely thought of her at all, and her Aunt Morgan only concerned herself with her when she needed something. Her sister had understood the character of the people in their family perfectly, which was why she’d entrusted Jeremy to Addison.

  For a month, she’d done things the way others wanted her to do them. Now she would trust her own instincts. The Fury be damned.

  Even thinking of that organization caused shivers to cross her body. The rumor—which had proved, incredibly, to be true—was almost too much to believe. Thirty-four years earlier, when the President had decided that people with the Condition were too dangerous to be left out in society, he’d opened six institutions to relocate the dangerous creatures. In his private memoirs, he would later say the Conditioned had to have been spawned by Satan and couldn’t be left amongst the good, decent Americans just trying to live a simple life. Even the ACLU couldn’t help. People had rights only if they were actually considered to be people, and not dangerous manifestations of evil.

  But it hadn’t proven so easy to institutionalize them. Hell, some of the children who’d shown the strange, dangerous abilities could blow up a person’s brain with just a thought. So how had they managed it? The public line had been that eventually, through negotiation, the parents of these children had seen the benefits of placing their offspring in the care of people who could handle them better. Professionals who could keep them safe, keep them from hurting innocents. That had never made sense to her. For most parents, it would take a little more than persuasion to give away their children.

  Addison shuddered now that she knew how the children had been taken away. Quietly, the rumors had persisted. The whole thing had happened eight years before Addison had been born, but she still heard them discussed in private where public ears couldn’t listen. The council, some said, had taken it upon themselves to find a way to police the Conditioned from within the community itself.

  The Fury had been born. Chosen for their special abilities to control those like themselves, they’d trained to work for the council and been given the freedom to live in secret outside the institutions because they tracked down and identified—hunted, really—people like them.

  Try to hide your child? The Fury would find you.

  Try to escape your institution? T
he Fury would take you back… or kill you.

  Even non-Conditioned children were terrified of the Fury. It was every little boy and girl’s fear that they might be falsely identified by the Fury and taken away from their families. Now, it looked like the Fury would be monitoring Addison during her time with Spencer Lewis.

  Bad news, considering she’d already had to take out her childhood rhymes to keep her mind from doing funny things. If she wasn’t completely careful, Spencer could be killed and she would be exposed. The possibility made her stomach turn.

  The Fury is real.

  “We’re here, Addison.”

  Jolted back to reality, she looked up as they pulled into Safe Dawn. If possible, the facility seemed even more imposing to her than it had earlier. Everything about it seemed to scream, “stay away.” The building was large, but not huge. Behind the facade, surrounded by walls and guard towers that made it all but invisible to public view, was a small village of houses and apartments serving as homes to the Conditioned. The gray-and-beige-bricked building with the black roof was only the public part. It was off-putting. The big problem was that having come this far, Addison couldn’t obey its unspoken commandment.

  After she and Greg showed their identification cards, they were waved through. It took about two minutes for the car to reach the main building. Addison expected Gregory to have to look for a parking space until she saw Spencer standing outside.

  He leaned a shoulder against the guard post in a lazy pose. Addison narrowed her eyes, wondering if she could be reading the situation wrong. It looked to her like Spencer was actually joking with the guards who surrounded him. He said something, and the one holding the machine gun cracked up and slapped him on the back.

  Well, it appeared that the guards weren’t afraid of him, so maybe she didn’t need to be either. Of course, it could just be that they were holding guns and could blow off his head.