Bear in Mind

by Kate Rudolph

  They left it on the table as he marched her out of the restaurant.

  Ruth didn’t show up to rescue her this time. Sandra hadn’t really expected it, but every second that ticked by, she hoped it would happen. The ride went by far too quickly and ended at a rundown looking farm thirty miles outside of town. Evergreen trees dotted the property line, obscuring the view of the farmhouse from the road.

  Sandra’s hands were cuffed in front of her, a sweater thrown over her lap to disguise them. It would have been more secure to bind her arms behind her back, but if the car had been pulled over for some reason, it would be obvious that she was being restrained. Given a few minutes and the proper supplies, Sandra could have gotten out of the cuffs. But she had neither, and there were three armed men with her in a car traveling at least sixty miles per hour. Even a high school student could figure out that word problem.

  They slowed as they arrived at their destination. Until they turned down the gravel drive, Sandra hadn’t been able to get a good look at the house. When they did, she saw that it looked in worse condition than her own home. The paint had been white, but was now so cracked and chipped that it appeared a dark gray. At one point there had been landscaping ringing the house, but now it was just bare dirt. But the damage was merely cosmetic. All of the windows were intact, the door was solid, as were the steps leading up to the porch.

  One of the mercenaries, James, she caught his name from a quick scan of his thoughts, opened her door and pulled her out while Bastien stayed in the car. Once she was standing, Bastien turned off the engine and he and the third guard got out to march her into the house.

  She caught a glimpse of the kitchen and a dilapidated couch in the living room. There were at least two more mercenaries that she saw, and a Jeep parked in front of the house. No one spoke to her or even looked at her as they took her to her prison. That didn’t surprise Sandra. This wasn’t an interrogation, it was a prisoner hand off.

  Once they had her seated on a metal chair that had been bolted to the ground in one of the upstairs bedrooms, one of the guards handcuffed her arms behind her and then secured her legs to the chair with riot cuffs. She cursed internally—why couldn’t Jung have hired incompetent professionals? When they were all satisfied with the bindings, they left her alone.

  Sandra took the time to study her surroundings. She’d left the diner just about thirty minutes before. Derek had to be coming for her with Canary and Ruth not far behind. Ruth said she knew where this place was, and Sandra hoped she was right.

  There was nothing useful in the room besides the chair. As a matter of fact, there was nothing in the room besides the chair she was sitting in. If she were telekinetic, that would be enough to get her out. As a psychic, she was screwed.

  The room had a window, but Sandra was far enough away that she couldn’t see out. If she got out of her cuffs and off of the chair, it would be the fastest way out of the house. Of course, she was willing to bet that it was nailed shut, and getting enough force to break the glass would not lead to a nice, soft landing in the dirt below.

  Of course, if she could fly...

  But there was no use going through the list of powers that her co-workers in the Sector possessed. Yes, there were a dozen better powers in this moment, but she didn’t have any of them. She only had her wits, her strength, and the hope that her people were coming for her.

  Two minutes after he left, Bastien returned. He closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall, watching her silently.

  Wish I kept my gun.

  The thought slid against her mind so smoothly that for a moment she thought it was her own. But it was Bastien’s. He had come back unarmed. Made sense, on the off chance she overpowered him, he wouldn’t have a gun for her to steal.

  Damn, they were good.

  “What’s so special about you?” he asked. His arms were crossed and he leaned back against the wall in an almost relaxed manner. And yet, he knew twenty-three different ways to incapacitate her if she got free. As he kept picturing them while watching her, Sandra learned them too.

  Sandra tried to shrug, but with her hands behind her back, it ended up looking more like a roll of her shoulders. “You tell me.” He had nothing to tell her, and that frustrated him. If she had time, Sandra knew she could use that against him, open the little crack in his armor that she needed to escape. But there was no time for that.

  If he didn’t have half a dozen men out there, she’d try to put him to sleep, just as she’d done to Ruth. But she’d never make it far enough for that trick to be worth it.

  “Well, this is clearly not a jealousy thing. No man goes this far for his mistress.”

  “Hey!” She knew she shouldn’t be insulted by her kidnapper, but she still had her pride. “Any man would be lucky to have me as his mistress. I’m a motherfucking delight.” It was probably a good thing Derek hadn’t heard that. He liked her, loved her maybe, for who she was. It was all she needed in her man.

  For the first time, Bastien gave her a real smile. Everything back at the restaurant had possessed a taunting tilt. This, though, was his real emotion. He thought she was funny. And when he smiled like that, he looked at least ten years younger, closer to thirty than forty, and a hell of a lot less scary. “I was speaking about your abilities and your friends. Not your looks.”

  “Friends?” Suddenly, Sandra felt cold. She tried to read Bastien, but he was so intent on keeping her guarded that he was unconsciously guarding his own thoughts from her.

  “The woman who crashed into my men. The two of you were able to incapacitate three highly trained operatives.” He held up a hand, waving it around a little. She got the idea that he liked to speak with his hands but he was holding it in, because he thought it wouldn’t appear disciplined. “Tell me, what kind of bomb did she use? The report said it looked like a lightning strike, but that’s impossible.”

  Since he was being so chatty, Sandra would play along. “That’s classified.” He wouldn’t expect any other answer. “How was it that you came across this job?” The job being her. But it was better to sound detached, no matter that she was seething inside. “There are plenty of ex-soldiers looking to make a buck. Why the foreign team?” Of course, they weren’t all foreign, but he didn’t know that she knew that.

  “We had...” he searched for the word for a moment, “The right stuff.”

  The sound that Sandra made was not a snort. “Under other circumstances, I think we could have hit it off,” she admitted.

  Before he could say anything else, his head jerked toward the window. He took a few steps to peer out before turning around and say, “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. Your ride is here.”

  She heard it a few seconds later, the beat of chopper blades. Hurry up, Derek. I need you. They hadn’t thought that these men would be able to mobilize so quickly. Sandra wanted to hang her head in defeat, but she stiffened her spine instead. This wasn’t over until she was dead.

  He looked back at her. “I wouldn’t be too worried. The contract was explicit that you were not to be harmed.”

  Was he trying to comfort her now?

  They didn’t talk any more as the sound of the chopper got closer and closer. She heard it touch down somewhere behind the house and then it quieted as its blades stopped spinning. Bastien went back to leaning against the wall while they both waited for whoever was out there to come retrieve her.

  Three minutes later, the gunshots started.

  Sandra bolted up in her chair, or tried to. The handcuffs held her down. But Bastien wasn’t as restrained. He rushed over to the window and gripped the ledge, pressing himself against the glass.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded. She had an idea, but it wouldn’t be good.

  He stalked across the room with big steps, closing the distance between them and grabbing at her throat with one hand. “How did your friends get that helicopter?”

  Sandra sputtered and choked. His hand was big and his grip strong. She co
uldn’t speak around it until he loosened it just enough. “Not me,” she eked out.

  “You expect me to believe that?” He scowled, but he let go of her.

  Sandra gasped for air, sucking in deep breaths. He hadn’t had enough time to deprive her, but she could still feel the indent of his fingers. That would bruise. “I told you that you were in over your head. That’s the guy that hired you. He chose your team because he didn’t want witnesses once you handed me over.” She could feel the pieces click into place for Bastien. She was speaking his language, but he did not like the sound, no matter how easy it was to believe.

  Bastien was about to say something, but he choked it back as a fresh burst of gunfire flashed outside. He walked to the door and banged on it three times, signaling the guard on the other side to let him out. Five seconds passed, then ten, and then another ten. Bastien banged again, this time calling, “Murph, it’s me!” But Murph didn’t answer. Bastien turned back to her. “Talk.”

  “That man out there can do things that you can’t understand. So can I. So can my friends. If you help me get out of here, and you don’t let him get me, we’ll both live. Otherwise, he’ll just murder you.” She’d survive, but she remembered that night on the street in Kiev. She never wanted Oskar Jung to touch her again. She shook her hands back and forth until they clanked against the metal chair. “Do we have a deal?”

  Bastien thought about it, she could hear him weighing the pros and cons of it in his mind. His thoughts whizzed by, an almost incessant humming. But after a moment, he nodded and pulled a key out of his pocket. “If you betray me, I’ll kill you.”

  Sandra believed him, but she could handle a death threat. It wasn’t the first time. “See? I knew we’d get along.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Derek called Morse in the moment after Sandra left, his heart pounding and mind consumed with fury. He didn’t give a shit about guarding their hostage. He only wanted Sandra back, safe and sound. But it took time, too much damn time. It was another fifteen minutes before Morse met him downtown and neither of them could get a hold of Ruth or Canary.

  Everything had gone to shit way too fast. Derek’s mind felt like it was on fire, his thoughts all swirling around, none coalescing into something that he could act on. He paced back and forth in the back hallway of Mama’s Cafe, hands massaging his temples, just trying to get a grasp on this situation.

  Instead of figuring out what to do, he tried to figure out what he needed:

  1. Sandra to be safe.

  2. The people who took Sandra to be in pain.

  3. The threat to Sandra to be gone for good.

  He didn’t know how to do it, but it was a checklist, the first step to a plan. And by the time Morse found him, he wasn’t pacing any longer.

  “So the plan didn’t work?” Morse said, his eyes crinkled with concern and determination.

  Derek shook his head. “I didn’t catch it all, but the guy who met her said something to make her leave with him.”

  Morse was half in darkness in the dim light of the hallway, “And you’re certain that she wants us to come after her?” He said it carefully, as if worried that Derek would rip into him. “You’re positive that she didn’t go with him for her own reasons?”

  “Yes,” Derek bit out, his faith in Sandra absolute. “We’re wasting time. Ruth and Canary are both radio silent, but they told me where the soldiers are camped out. They’ve got guns, but they’re only human. We can take them.” He’d take a hundred bullets if it meant getting Sandra out safely. And he’d tear those men apart to do it. Derek had never been the violent type, but now he knew that he had just been waiting for something, for someone, worth fighting for. The bear inside of him was hungry for blood, and the man was in agreement.

  Some of the color drained from Morse’s face and he looked sick. There were probably a hundred things he wanted to say to Derek, but this wasn’t the time for it. He just nodded and said, “Let’s go.”

  They didn’t need to discuss it when Derek slid into the driver’s seat. It was a race down the road, chasing an enemy over thirty miles away when they had more than a fifteen minute head start.

  When they finally got close, after what felt like hours, Morse stopped him. “We can’t just drive in. I’m fairly certain that machine guns could take us out.”

  Derek gripped the steering wheel tightly, his jaw set. Damn it, Morse was right. Derek jerked the car to the right, off the road and towards a thicket of woods. Morse braced himself in his seat and cursed as they drove over sticks and rocks.

  He finally stopped the car when the path got too narrow to go any further. Derek looked at Morse. “We’re bears, man. I’d say it’s time we finally acted like it.”

  The house was empty of all of the mercenaries, but Bastien and Sandra still moved slowly. The gunfire had died down, now only firing in rapid bursts as if waiting for the targets to emerge from their cover. Bastien’s men wouldn’t be taken out easily, not those who survived the first wave. But if Oskar Jung was the same man that Sandra had met in Kiev, she doubted the mercenaries would prevail.

  Instead of going downstairs, Bastien led her down a small hallway to what had once been the master bedroom. Now it was a makeshift armory. Guns and ammo were organized and easily accessible. Bastien piked up a handgun and slipped it into an unseen holster, adding three clips of ammo to his pockets. He then grabbed an assault rifle and strapped it to his back.

  He didn’t blink when Sandra grabbed a similar rifle. She didn’t take a handgun, there were no holsters and she wasn’t going to risk accidentally shooting herself by placing the gun in the waistband of her pants.

  Bastien was ready to move, but Sandra stopped him, tugging on his sleeve. “You’re broadcasting our location loud and clear.”

  He shook his head, “I don’t have a radio.”

  Normal people were so damned difficult. “No, you’re mind is broadcasting our location. The guy shooting out there is going to pick us up the second he starts scanning. You need to blank your thoughts.”

  Bastien pulled his arm away from her. “We don’t have time for nonsense. Let’s go.”

  “He’s psychic.” At least, she thought he was. “So am I. I don’t have time for your doubt. Think of anything besides me or where we are, and hold onto that until we’re safe.” She wasn’t going to let this slide. Bastien’s mind was wide open, easy to read and easy to manipulate if a person had the time.

  He made a dismissive sound. “Psychic? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Fine. It looked like she did have time for a small demonstration. Sandra dove in deep, hoping she gave him a headache. She searched for little things that she couldn’t know, things that he didn’t share. He was a private person, it wasn’t difficult. “Your mother is Johanna, your father is Rene. You have two sisters and you had a little brother, he died when you were ten. Would you like me to tell you how?” She almost gagged at the thought, but her voice was cold, matter of fact. His mind was a dark hole and she was happy to step out of it.

  The blood drained from Bastien’s face. “How?”

  “No. Time.” Sandra bit out. “Think of something to keep him out.”

  “What? Like a brick wall?” He still looked confused and now a bit vulnerable. Sandra didn’t have time for pity and she wouldn’t spare it on a kidnapping mercenary. At least he believed her.

  “Get a song stuck in your head, even just one line.” It wouldn’t block out everything, but it acted like a chain link fence, a deterrent. Sandra thought that earworm might even be some sort of evolutionary defense against psychics that humans didn’t know they had.

  He didn’t ask anything else. But he hummed as they made their way down the hall. They stopped before every door, Sandra covering low while Bastien went in high, guns drawn. He was humming Barbie Girl.

  The house was empty, but their caution burned up at least ten minutes. The gunfire had almost completely stopped, which Sandra knew wasn’t a good thing. Bastien’s men were dead a
nd Jung and his people were coming for her.

  She started humming Barbie Girl as well. She was so preoccupied with getting out that she was worried that she’d slip up and give them away herself.

  Bastien led her out the front of the house and around toward the driveway. The helicopter had landed in back. If they were quick, they just might make it to the car in time.

  The ends of Sandra’s hair cracked, lifting up as if gravity didn’t matter anymore. Or as if the air was charged with electricity. Lightning crackled, snapping somewhere behind them. Someone screamed, the sound cut off with another flash of light. Then there was a new burst of gunfire.

  A roar went up from the woods as two bears charged out, one brown, the other white..

  Bastien’s eyes widened and he raised his weapon at them. Sandra pushed his hands back down. “Not on your life, buddy. That’s the cavalry.”

  Bears! He didn’t say it, but those were thoughts that Bastien couldn’t control.

  “Fine, that’s the distraction we need.” He tried to move towards the driveway. Her friends were attacking the men by the helicopter, but Bastien wanted to take one of the cars and get out.

  “So you’re just going to let him get away with killing your people?” Sandra asked.

  Bastien looked at her like she’d suggested they fly in on butterflies and rescue everyone. “I’m here to survive.”

  She threw her hands up. “Good riddance to you, then.” Sandra didn’t have time to convince him to stay. At least she didn’t need to worry about him turning on her.

  They split up, Bastien running towards the cars and Sandra heading back towards the house. She was up the steps to the front porch when she heard footsteps and thoughts inside.

  Find the girl. Find the enemy. There was no clutter in those minds, just a clear purpose.

  Sandra practically dove down the stairs, giving herself just enough time to sprint to the side of the house where she could duck for cover. It was a temporary reprieve.