Winds of Change

by Christine Pope

  “During 9/11,” he explained, and the frown disappeared, replaced by a look of startled sympathy.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said at once.

  “It’s been almost twenty years,” he replied, which he knew wasn’t much of a response but better than nothing. “But you can understand why I went to work for Homeland Security.”

  A nod. She let go of the chair’s arms and settled her hands in her lap. “I still don’t see how people who can move things with their minds or change their appearance or even summon storms have much to do with national security.”

  Was she really that naïve? No, a second passed, and he thought he noted a slight gleam in her eyes. She was only pretending to not understand in the hope that he might let something slip he didn’t intend to.

  Well, he’d been playing this game too long to make an amateur mistake like that. At the same time, he didn’t see the harm in doing his best to make her understand why she was here…why all of them were here.

  “You and your fellow guests have extraordinary abilities, Ms. Grant,” he said. Her mouth twitched at his use of the euphemism “guests,” but she didn’t call him out on it, only sat there and waited for him to go on. “As I told you at our first meeting, those abilities can make a great deal of a difference when it comes to making this nation more secure. First, of course, you all need to become more acquainted with your talents, so they come to you as easily as breathing. This is why Dr. Richards suggested the mindfulness exercises. Have you tried any yet?”

  “A couple of them,” Adara replied. “Natalie and Ethan sat down with me and walked me through a few this afternoon.” A lift of her shoulders, and he realized she’d put on a cardigan over the T-shirt she’d been wearing when she met him on the north field earlier that day. “I think I can see the benefit. I was going to try again after I ate.” She paused there, frowning slightly. “Not that you gave me the opportunity. They’d just delivered my food when your assistant showed up.”

  “My apologies,” he said. “You can have a late dinner when you go back, but I wanted to speak with you.”

  “About?”

  “I thought we might revisit the subject of your benefactor Jake.”

  The frown deepened. “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  “You told me a story, true. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the real one.”

  Her arms crossed, and she settled against the back of the chair. A protective gesture, although Lenz wasn’t sure whether she was protecting herself…or the mysterious Jake. “You can think what you want, Agent Lenz,” she said. “I told you what happened. I have no idea why he did what he did — why he came for me in the first place, or why he thought it was safe to leave me in Riverton for a few days. Or at least, I’ve already given you my possible explanations. You probably know a lot more about undercover operatives than I do, so you tell me.”

  The challenging note in her voice was clear enough, but he didn’t take offense. Actually, he thought he almost admired her for going on the attack and hoping the stratagem would take him off guard.

  However, he knew better than to fall for a ploy such as that.

  And whoever “Jake” was, Lenz could be almost certain that he wasn’t a spy. There had been a flash of shock and worry in his eyes when Lenz confronted him on the doorstep of Adara Grant’s modest rented home in Kanab. It had been the look of a man who’d run into something he hadn’t been expecting. If Jake really was a Russian operative…or a mercenary…he would have known there was a good chance that other parties would be interested in someone with Adara’s abilities, and would have planned accordingly.

  He said, his tone mild, “We don’t have to be enemies, Ms. Grant.”

  Her fingers tightened on her arm. An unconscious gesture, he knew, but one that gave away her worry, her inner fear that nothing she said or did would be enough to put him off the scent. Still, her voice was cool as she replied, “After what you did to my mother, I don’t think we can be anything else.”

  There it was. He reminded himself that her grief was still very fresh — that terrible day was only two weeks in the past — and that he needed to give her more time.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I understand, however. Just try to remember that none of it would have happened if Jake hadn’t intervened. You were planning to go with me peacefully.”

  Now her knuckles stood out white against the black cardigan she wore. Tone ragged, she said, “Is there anything else? I’m tired and hungry, and I want to go back to my room.”

  No reason to push things any further. He’d planted a seed in her mind, and now it was time to let it alone and see if it would eventually bear fruit.

  “Of course,” he said. “I won’t keep you any longer.”

  He pushed the intercom button on his phone. “Ms. Liu, you can come and take Ms. Grant back to her apartment.”

  Almost at once, Corey Liu was at the door. She led Adara out — but not before he caught a glimpse of the doubt and worry in his test subject’s eyes.

  Good.

  Time to wait.

  His phone binged, and Jake startled awake, dislodging Taffy, who’d taken advantage of his distraction to jump on the bed and fall asleep on his feet. She landed on the rug with an offended shake, then shook herself again before trotting out into the hall.

  No time to worry about the dog, though. The display on his phone told him it was nearly two in the morning, and there was only one reason he’d be getting a text message at that hour.

  I’m in, was all the message said, but that was enough.

  Excitement sang through his veins, and his hands shook slightly as he texted back, On my way. Be there in 10.

  Sooner than that, probably, but he knew he’d have to pause long enough to put on some pants.

  His jeans were still slung across the chair where he’d left them when he went to bed, so he grabbed them and slipped them on, leaving his Lumberyard Brewing Company T-shirt untucked. Shoes and socks seemed like way too much of an effort, but there was a pair of flip-flops handy near the closet door, and he slid into them just before hurrying out of his bedroom.

  Taffy was in the kitchen, getting a drink of water. The dog gave him some serious side-eye as he headed for the back door, as if asking what the hell he was doing going out at the time of night.

  “No time to explain, kiddo,” he said, although he paused long enough to give her a brief pat on the head. “I’ll be back to feed you, though.”

  After delivering that promise, he went out the back door and hurried down the path to the detached garage. For just a second, the boxy white shape of the Jeep Wrangler parked there took him aback before he reminded himself that he’d gotten rid of his Gladiator in exchange for the much more anonymous Wrangler.

  At least he’d already gotten the seat and mirrors where he wanted them, so he didn’t have to waste valuable time making adjustments. Within the minute, he was backing out of the driveway, reminding himself not to take off in a squeal of tires and thereby wake the neighbors.

  The distance to Trident HQ had never felt so great, even though the place was only about five minutes away. Soon enough, he was pulling up to the curb, since Jeremy’s Dodge truck was already parked in the driveway.

  Jake got out of the Jeep and hurried along the front walk, then practically ran up the porch steps. When he entered the house, he saw that the front room with all its Mac Pros was still empty, but the door to the PC lab now stood open.

  “Hey,” Jeremy said as Jake stuck his head in the room. He looked like hell — shadows under his eyes, a darker scruff than usual obscuring his cheeks and chin, hair sticking out in all directions — but at the same time, triumph was clear in his expression. “Take a look.”

  He pushed his chair away from the computer desk where he sat, allowing Jake a clearer view of the screen in front of him. It showed a quadrant of different scenes — a long hallway, what looked like a reception or guard desk with a pretty Asian woman seated
at it, an elevator, a dimly lit room where a man appeared to be sleeping.

  “This is the facility?” Jake asked.

  “Yep,” Jeremy replied.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “I think it’s Ethan Sitko. He’s one of the test subjects — you know, the guy who’s been there for three years.”

  While that nugget of information was mildly interesting, it didn’t answer the question foremost in Jake’s mind. “Where’s Addie?”

  “Don’t worry — she’s there,” Jeremy replied. “You need to be patient. This feed cycles through a bunch of different cameras, and I didn’t want to start messing with the sequence and possibly alert someone that their system isn’t quite as secure as they think it is.”

  While Jake could understand his brother’s caution, he wanted to scream with impatience as the security feed traded one set of images for another, none of them showing Addie. At last, though, he caught a glimpse of her, lying soundly asleep on what appeared to be a king-size bed, dark hair spread out on the white pillowcase.

  He remembered waking up to see those same silky tresses covering the pillow next to him, and his gut clenched with worry. But she seemed fine, as far as he could tell. It was hard to pick out many details because the room was dark, but the place where she was sleeping looked almost like a high-end hotel room or vacation condo. Clearly, his worries about her being locked in a cell or restrained in her bed had been unfounded.

  “They all have suites like that,” Jeremy remarked as he reached for the energy drink he’d left sitting off to one side. “Beats the hell out of the dorm room I stayed in my freshman year.”

  “So, they’re taking good care of their prisoners,” Jake replied, not bothering to keep the irritation out of his tone. “They’re still prisoners.”

  A shrug. “Anyway, do you think that image is clear enough for Connor and Angela to work with?”

  Jake had to hope so. But there was only one way to really find out. “I’ll have to have them come over and take a look.”

  “Now? It’s two in the morning.”

  “I know, but Connor told me to call him no matter what time it was.”

  His brother looked dubious. “Yeah, people always say stuff like that, but when you actually call them at 2 a.m., they’re not quite so enthusiastic.”

  Maybe not, but it was a risk Jake was willing to take. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and went to his contacts list, then pressed the entry for Connor’s cell phone. The matter was urgent enough that he didn’t want to waste time with a text message.

  The phone rang twice, and then Connor said, sounding sleepy, “Jake? Do you know what time it is?”

  He really hated it when his brother was right. “Yeah, I know,” Jake said. “But you said to call when Jeremy got into the system. Well, he’s in, and we have a visual on Addie’s position. We just need to know if it’s clear enough for you and Angela to work with.”

  “Got it,” Connor said, sounding much more awake than he’d been even a minute earlier. “I’ll come take a look — we don’t both need to be there for this, and it’s better if Angela stays here with the kids. Otherwise, I’d have to wake someone else up to come watch them while we’re gone.”

  Right. Jake tended to forget about all the logistics involved when children were included in the equation. Hopefully, one day he’d have to take those sorts of concerns into consideration himself, but for the moment, he needed to focus on getting Addie away from her captors. “No problem. We’ll just hang tight until you get here.”

  “I’ll be as fast as I can,” Connor promised, then ended the call.

  “He’s on his way,” Jake informed his brother.

  Jeremy nodded. “I’ll try playing with the resolution on this end. They have some good cameras, or the image wouldn’t be as sharp as it is despite most of the rooms being dark, but there’s always room for improvement.”

  He turned back to the computer and pulled up what looked like some kind of remote console, although Jake couldn’t tell for sure what all the controls embedded in it were supposed to do. Apparently, Jeremy didn’t have that sort of problem, because he fiddled with it for a moment and managed to make the picture both a little brighter and a little sharper. Now Jake saw that framed pictures hung on the wall — landscapes or seascapes of some sort — and a lamp with a rounded metal base sat on the nightstand.

  More details…but would they be enough?

  The image on the screen shifted, showing once again a hallway, empty at that hour. More of the prisoners’ rooms. Somehow, even though Jake had seen their photos in the files Jeremy had unearthed on the SED’s servers, catching a glimpse of them like this, asleep and defenseless, drove home to him even more that they were all individuals, people whose lives had been taken over by Randall Lenz’s ruthless ambition.

  “I hate this,” Jake murmured, and Jeremy expelled a breath.

  “Me, too. And maybe at some point, we’ll be able to do something about it. For now, though, we need to worry about Addie.”

  True enough. He was about to reply to his brother’s comment when a soft knock came at the front door, followed by Connor quietly easing himself into the house. “I’m here,” he called out.

  “In the PC lab,” Jake replied.

  The primus entered the room where the other two warlocks were waiting. His gaze went immediately to the screen in front of Jeremy. “Is that it?”

  “Almost,” Jeremy said. “We’re waiting for it to cycle back to Addie.”

  Connor nodded and jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, tension clear in the set of his shoulders. He was wearing a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms, flip-flops, and a faded Northern Pines University T-shirt, and clearly had rolled out of bed without bothering to change or even comb his hair.

  “There it is,” Jake said as the image on the screen shifted once again to Addie’s room.

  The primus squinted at the image in question and rubbed at the dark scruff on his chin. “I don’t know…there’s not a lot of detail. I can’t even tell what those pictures on the wall are supposed to be.”

  Exactly what Jake had been afraid of. “Are you sure? I mean, you can see the position of the bed and the table next to it. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Not really. That could be any one of a thousand rooms. Without a really good look at the place, Angela and I would be putting ourselves at risk if we tried to teleport there.”

  Well, shit. Jake wanted to curse but knew it would be a waste of energy. He couldn’t ask Connor and Angela to put themselves in danger because of his impatience. They had more to lose than most people.

  “Hey, wait,” Jeremy said then. “I think she’s waking up.”

  Immediately, Jake’s head swiveled back toward the screen. Sure enough, Addie had sat up in bed and was staring out into the darkened room as though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at. Then she reached over and turned on the bedside lamp.

  The light showed the soft tan paint on the wall, the watercolors of the seascapes, the muted beiges and blues and browns of the comforter on the bed. He looked over at Connor.

  “Is that enough detail for you?”

  “Definitely,” he said, eyes fixed on the image.

  Which shifted then to the next one in the rotation. That time, Jake went ahead and let himself curse.

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s all right,” Connor said quickly. “I saw enough.”

  “I was just about to get a screen grab, too,” Jeremy remarked, his tone morose. “Shitty timing.”

  “Really, it’s okay.” Connor scratched his chin again. “We don’t both have to know where we’re going as long as one of us does.”

  Jake didn’t know whether he should allow himself to be hopeful. “Even when you’re taking a third person along?”

  “Even then.”

  “Still, we’ll wait and see what happens when it swings back around again,” Jeremy said.

  That sounded a little too optimistic, b
ut Jake didn’t reply, only waited while the feed cycled through what felt like an interminable sequence of images before returning to Addie’s room. The light was still on, allowing Connor to study the image once again and Jeremy to quickly perform a screen grab. A door in one of the walls opened, and Addie emerged. Although the space behind her was dark, Jake could make out just enough detail to realize it was the bathroom.

  He supposed he should be grateful that there apparently weren’t any surveillance cameras in there.

  It hurt to watch her, though, to know she was standing there almost three thousand miles away and that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. She climbed back into bed and pulled up the covers. Something in her expression appeared almost resigned, and he wished he could reach through the screen to hold her and let her know she wasn’t going to be a captive for much longer.

  Connor seemed to detect something of his cousin’s unease, because he clapped a hand on Jake’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Jake. We’re going to get her. Now that we know where she is for sure, it won’t be long. Tomorrow night, probably.”

  That felt like an eternity away, but Jake knew his cousin was only being cautious. Stealing Addie in the middle of the night seemed like the safest course, and Connor and Angela would have to make arrangements to have someone watch their kids while they were off making the rescue attempt. Probably, they’d have the kids stay with Margot, since they went over to play with Margot and Lucas’ daughter Mia all the time. And since Lucas would be coming along anyway, doing so would make the arrangement that much neater. The fewer people who knew what was going on, the better.

  Still, a lot could happen in a day.

  Hang on, Addie, he thought.

  We’re coming.

  10

  The next morning, Dr. Woodrow came alone to take me to a small laboratory on the ground floor of the building. I didn’t ask him where Dr. Richards was; something about her set my teeth on edge, and if I was going to be put through my paces, better to do it in the company of the much friendlier Dr. Woodrow. At the same time, I had to wonder about the third scientist on the team, the “Dr. Keegan” that Natalie had mentioned but who I had yet to actually meet. Was his area of specialty something that didn’t mesh well with my particular talent, and so Dr. Richards had assigned me to Dr. Woodrow instead?