Dalhard tore his eyes away from the photo. “Find her. Now.”
Sweat trickled along Karan’s temple, and he hurried away without another word, leaving Dalhard with the picture. Who are you, my dear? Are you the piece I’ve been waiting for?
“Danielle,” he whispered. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Chapter Nineteen
Staring at dull concrete walls, Eric seriously considered going insane. There was a family precedent, after all. It would be a definite improvement over staring at blank walls and being alternately ripped up by guilt and fear. He had no sense of time passing—they’d taken his watch, and no natural light filtered into his isolated cell. Only a bare compact fluorescent bulb hung from the ceiling, buzzing quietly and incessantly to itself. He couldn’t make out any sounds from the hall or adjoining rooms. No scents reached him other than his own stale sweat.
Meager meals arrived at irregular intervals: stale bread, nauseatingly half-melted cheese, and water. It never varied, and he couldn’t anticipate the delivery. The slot in the door would scrape open, and the flimsy cardboard tray would appear.
For a man who always used his enhanced senses to collect more information than those around him, this isolation was doubly disturbing. He’d never felt so alone and helpless… or guilty.
He’d wanted a legitimate job, something with a W-4—something real, not under the table or between the cracks or any of the euphemisms for the unseen and shadowy parts of society. But thanks to his obsession with legitimacy, he was trapped in a cell. He didn’t even know if Vincent—his little brother, the pest who followed him everywhere and whom he’d promised to protect—was still alive.
Fresh pain blossomed in his clenched jaw, but it provided a welcome relief from the monotony of his thoughts. Vincent hadn’t cared. As long as they had money for parties and to impress women, he didn’t worry about where it came from. He’d done well with their gypsy lifestyle as children, always more interested in the adventure on the horizon rather than the pain of ripping up roots with each move. Eric had been the one to convince him to try going straight, painting pictures of themselves as bodyguards to the powerful elite. In the end, Vincent shrugged, agreed, and followed, only to be shot.
The sensory memory sprang up full force: warm blood soaking through Vincent’s trousers after their escape attempt, the coppery scent of his failure. If there had been anything left in his gut, it would have made an abrupt exit. He’d failed at the only important task in the world: protecting his family.
He wondered if they’d gotten Dani, as well. She’d been on her way when they’d been recaptured. If they’d waited, she would have driven right into an ambush. Had they guessed all of them were related? If they knew, the information would lead them to the little farmhouse and Gwen.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered the words, knowing Vincent couldn’t hear but needing to say them anyway. Please don’t be dead. Please let me have another chance. I’ll make this right somehow. I swear it.
Metal scraped outside, louder than the food slot. Immediately Eric tensed, ready for a fight. Just let them come close enough, even for an instant. He would make them pay for locking him up.
Instead, the door swung open. Three men stood in the hall, holding guns pointed at him. Eric stared at them, noting their stance, how their fingers casually rested on the triggers. Professionals. He inhaled, breathing in alertness with no trace of fear.
“Come with us, please.” The guns never wavered. Most amateurs automatically gestured with their weapons, leaving opportunities to overwhelm them.
Damn.
Eric got to his feet slowly. He didn’t have to feign the pain of his cramped muscles. However long he’d been in the room, it had been long enough for everything to knot from inactivity despite his attempts to stay limber. He dragged himself out of the door and limped into the bleak corridor. Gray doors dotted the walls at regular intervals, each with a whiteboard full of cryptic symbols. His guards adjusted their positions, not that he expected any less at this point. All three to his right, which probably meant he should go left.
He obeyed the unspoken command, concentrating on limbering up his muscles. After days in a box, his body wasn’t going to move as swiftly or as easily as normal. He needed to find the new limits. Always watch and be ready for your opportunity. One of the first lessons his father had taught him. If he could get away, he might be able to find Vincent and get them both out of there.
More guards were waiting beside an open door around the corner. “In here.”
The scent of bread and meat wafting in the air drowned his tongue in saliva. Peering suspiciously through the door, he saw a small table with breads and slices of chicken and ham. The promise of food loosened his self-control, and he dashed into the room, nearly falling.
As soon as he cleared the threshold, the door closed behind him with a quiet click. Eric whirled, furious over his error. But the food was still there. Drugged or poisoned, it didn’t matter. He needed to eat. Picking up a slice of ham, he forced himself to eat it slowly. Gorging would only sicken him more. As he ate, he took inventory.
A rectangular room, fifteen feet by twelve, he guessed. Ceiling at least twelve feet. Each wall glowed white. The door he’d been shoved through was almost invisible from this side, so no hinges or handle to work with. The table was cheap laminate. It would splinter and collapse if breathed on wrong. Paper plates under the food. No utensils. Nothing he could use as an effective weapon.
Faint vibrations in the floor announced a new arrival. He could make out vehement cursing outside.
The door snapped open barely long enough for the guards to shove someone inside: Vincent. Bruised, thin, and with a bandage around his thigh, but alive. Eric had never seen anything so welcome.
“Asshats!” Vincent pounded on the door to make his point clear. His eyes narrowed when he spotted Eric. “Remind me to never fucking listen to you again.”
“There’s food.” Eric stepped away from the table.
“Oh, well that makes everything just fine. Stick me in a fucking box and poke me, not to mention shooting at me, but spread out a five-dollar snack table and I’m won over,” Vincent shouted at the ceiling and walls, his dark curls matted with sweat.
“Eat it while we can,” Eric ordered. Dramatics wouldn’t help them.
“While we can?” Vincent lifted his shoulders in exaggerated comic surprise. “You mean you have a plan? Count me out. I’m still bleeding from your last plan.”
“We have to stick together,” Eric said as his brother helped himself to the bread and meat.
“And it’s going great so far. Awesome job.”
There would be no reasoning with him. Eric let his brother have the last word and focused on restocking calories. The small supply quickly vanished, barely denting their hunger. “What do they want with us?”
“Maybe it’s a focus group for testing bullets. Which ones hurt the most going in.” Vincent picked up crumbs with a finger.
“Be serious for once.”
“I am serious. Deadly fucking serious. Who cares what they want? Does it really matter at this point? We’ve got nothing to fight them with. And we’ve already proved we’re not bulletproof.” His brother glared at him, eye to eye.
“Let me think.” There has to be a way out.
Sprawling in a corner, Vincent began to hum the theme song to Jeopardy.
Despite himself, Eric smiled. “You can be such an asshole.”
“Aim to please, big brother.” Vincent’s smile vanished. “Someone’s coming.”
Eric frowned. He couldn’t feel any vibrations in the floor or hear any steps in the hallway outside. He looked back at Vincent, whose hand was spread wide on the wall beside him. Eric’s eyes darted up as the top half of the wall blinked into transparency, revealing a powerfully built man in a suit. The puppeteer finally revealed.
Vincent slowly got to his feet, moving to stand behind his brother.
The man nodd
ed at them. “My name is André Dalhard.”
“I’d care, but I so fucking don’t,” Vincent replied.
A hint of a smile touched Dalhard’s lips.
“What are you laughing at, fuckwit?”
“I’m glad you haven’t been broken. Empty defiance shows you still have hope. Your brother is keeping quiet. He isn’t quite so sure.”
Eric didn’t need to glance back at Vincent to know that his brother got the message. Stay quiet, learn what we can.
“It’s been a life-long pattern with the two of you, hasn’t it? You, the elder, watching out, playing protector. And you, demanding attention, playing the fool so others underestimate you. But there’s a missing party to this family dynamic, isn’t there?”
Dalhard’s amusement was not shared by his audience. Eric refused to answer. He’d heard enough psychics “fish” for information to avoid giving up anything he didn’t have to. The phone call might have led them to Dani, but he wouldn’t betray Gwen’s existence.
“Care to try to guess my age and weight?” Vincent took refuge in sarcasm.
“I care to offer you both a job,” Dalhard replied frankly. He signaled briefly to someone out of sight, and a doorway blinked into view beside the window. Dalhard stepped through, and the door immediately resealed behind him. Someone else had to be behind the wall to manage the controls, making the door a less-ideal method of escape.
Dalhard made a show of examining the brothers. “You’re doing better with food in your stomachs, but neither of you is in particularly good condition.”
Eric took a deep breath to catch Dalhard’s scent. Expensive cologne underlaid with the harsh bite of hand sanitizer. A mask, like the designer clothes.
“Stupid move, coming in here. What’s to stop us from getting a little payback?” Vincent snarled.
“The certain knowledge that you would be killed in seconds. Neither of you have a death wish, and thus I can be certain you will behave as reasonable men. Shall we settle the terms of our agreement?”
“Neither of us has agreed to anything,” Eric said. All of his instincts were screaming warnings at him.
“I’m offering two hundred thousand per year, each, plus expenses.”
“To do what?” Eric watched Dalhard’s face carefully for signs of deceit. He was definitely hiding something, but Eric couldn’t put his finger on what.
“Now that is the question. I know you both have certain abilities beyond the norm. I know you’ve worked hard to keep the fact hidden. You and your sister.”
Eric knew the sudden tensing of his neck and hands betrayed him. Even if Dalhard wasn’t a skilled observer, this session would undoubtedly be taped and watched by someone who was. He waited, desperate to know what this man had discovered.
“I would ask you to handle certain jobs for me and serve as donors for some scientific experimentation. Nothing too onerous.”
Play along. Find out what he knows. Hoping Vincent would follow his lead, Eric took the first step. “I want details.”
“And I want out,” Vincent announced. “I don’t know who you are, freak-ass, but this is not some kind of fucking job interview. It’s usually considered bad form to shoot the potential employees.”
So much for the hope of Vincent following along. Eric needed a new plan.
“It’s also considered bad form to trash a lab and seriously injure nine of your future colleagues. One of them won’t walk again. You shattered his lower vertebra with your bare hands.” Nothing fazed Dalhard, not Vincent’s surliness or Eric’s silence. “It was quite a demonstration.”
“Take it out of our paycheck,” Eric retorted. He needed to convince Dalhard to relax the security measures, and pretending to accept the offer might do it.
“I see we’re finally starting to understand each other.” Dalhard extended his hand.
The brothers glanced at each other. Vincent looked horrible. He couldn’t go much longer trapped in a cage. And neither could Eric.
“I’m traditional,” Dalhard thrust his hand forward. “You can learn a lot from a handshake.”
Eric took the proffered hand and immediately regretted it. Pressure built in his skull as if someone were driving a heavy wedge deep into his brain. Dalhard’s cool green eyes stared at him, overwhelming every other sense. His eyes were like poison seeping into his body, taking up residence like some sort of invasive vine.
The sensation vanished as soon as Dalhard released his hand. Eric forced himself not to reveal how it affected him. True fear began to chill his confidence. Had he made another potentially fatal error in underestimating his opponent?
Vincent took Dalhard’s hand before Eric could gather himself enough to warn his brother. Vincent winced at the contact, but Dalhard held on for a few more seconds, staring intently at Vincent’s face. Eric gritted his teeth. His brother could spoil everything now with one ill-timed comment.
“Now that we’re settled, it’s time for a performance test.” Dalhard released Vincent and sauntered back to the door.
“What kind of test?” Eric demanded, grabbing Vincent before he could fall to the floor. Vincent shook him off, clinging to the table to keep himself upright.
The door resealed behind Dalhard before the man answered. “I need you to kill a man.”
Chapter Twenty
“That’s your daughter? How old is she?” Michael asked Ruby, gesturing to a picture of a tiny blond girl grinning at the camera. Dani failed to hide a smile as she flicked through a rack of sequined costumes off to one side. When she’d first rushed him backstage, he hadn’t been sure where to look as costumes changed in a flurry of glitter and pasties. Her earlier accusations still stung. He didn’t consider himself a prude or judgmental, but preconceptions about exotic dancing had definitely taken root in his mind. His solidly middle-class parents never would have dreamed of venturing into any kind of club, and he’d simply absorbed it as something good people did not do. Now, though, he’d begun to talk to the dancers, seeing past their stage personas to the women beneath.
“Three going on thirteen,” the petite blond dancer answered as she painted on her dramatic stage makeup. “My sister watches her while I’m here.”
“It must make for rough mornings, being up so late,” he guessed.
“She’s just so darn adorable when she comes running into my room at five in the morning, chirping, ‘Good morning, Mommy,’ as if it were the best part of her day. Good thing it gets me going.” Ruby laughed.
His preconceptions were slowly smothering under the weight of truth. He wasn’t so naïve as to believe it could be like this everywhere. There were reasons people assumed the worst. He’d seen some of the darkness himself, women trapped by drugs or desperation, young girls with no sense of self-worth. That wasn’t what he found here, though. Ruby was a single mother who’d found a lucrative way to support herself and her daughter when her ex-boyfriend vanished during the pregnancy. She could be home during the day for her child and earned enough to support them. Opal was putting herself through nursing school. Neither of them had any history of physical, drug, or alcohol abuse, and both had made deliberate choices to work here.
Opal put it bluntly when he asked her. I could bust my butt for forty hours a week, trying to sell jeans or hamburgers or answering phones somewhere. Or I can make money off guys watching me dance and still have enough time to study.
He watched as Dani pinned up her dark curls, trying to understand. So many layers. He’d seen her protective and gentle side with George and with her fellow dancers. She’d been frantically worried after he’d touched the fabric in Vapor’s apartment. But at the same time, she seemed to enjoy shattering preconceptions and shocking people, like Kristen and Brianna at Different Ways. She could be terribly cynical and practical with a core of steel. She accepted the world for how it was, or at least how she believed it was, and she used what she had to get what she wanted. She wasn’t anyone he would have imagined being in his life, but now that she was, he had tro
uble imagining it without her.
Her actions might not be heroic, but she didn’t pretend to be a hero. She was gifted, but she didn’t feel any obligation to make the world a better place. Her focus was finding and helping her family. Was it really so wrong? He still believed in the classic Spider-Man message, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and he’d done his best to live by it. But should everyone have to? The thought unsettled him.
He shifted to one side to let a woman covered in row upon row of inflated balloons pass. His mother taught him to hide in plain sight as a child. Never let anyone suspect what you can do. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t give anyone a reason to think twice. Only invisibility could provide protection.
He’d believed she was wrong until the day he told his father what he could do and found himself on the wrong end of his father’s religious beliefs. Only some quick verbal work and months of grounding convinced his father he’d been lying to show off.
But even though he’d cloaked himself in conformity, he’d always thought of it as a disguise, a secret identity. Now he wondered if he’d allowed his talent to dictate too much of his life.
“Earth to Professor. Your brain is about to overheat from thinking so hard,” Dani interrupted, moving to stand beside him.
“You’ve been giving me a lot to think about,” he answered honestly. “We were both taught to hide, but you haven’t let it define you. You put yourself out there.”
“Easiest way to fool someone. People don’t ask questions when they already have answers.” Dani shrugged and then batted her inch-long fake eyelashes. “No one takes a dancer seriously. Especially not one who takes off her clothes.”
Revelations: Book One of the Lalassu Page 12