by Jaime Rush
He entered the man’s dream and merged with him, opening his eyes to see the dimly lit hallway downstairs.
The guy stood and checked the second door. Earlier it had been slightly open, and he’d been able to see that it was an office. No light shone beneath the door. No sounds from within. The guy twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Dark. He walked in and found the computer in the light from the clock. He turned it on and sat down to wait for it to boot up. A minute later, he went to the online maps and searched for the address of the estate. He needed to find the perfect place for his date with Olivia, near water. It destroyed evidence, hid bodies, and bought time.
The guard scanned the area and found what he was looking for: a river, with a park. He zoomed in, and Sayre memorized the direction and roads leading to it. Next he had the guy look for Woodbridge. It was forty-five minutes to an hour and twenty minutes away, depending on traffic.
“My work here is complete.” He laughed. “For now.”
Olivia woke in her bed Saturday morning, sunshine streaming through her sheer curtains and spilling onto her bed. She usually loved waking up on the weekends, not having to go into work quite as early.
She rubbed her hands down her arms, feeling a chill that wasn’t in the air. Vague but creepy memories of another nightmare filtered into her mind. She wanted to push it away, but she couldn’t do that anymore. The dream…it wouldn’t come to the surface, but she knew he had been in it. The question was, had it been a normal nightmare, or one that he had produced? She pressed her fingers against the pendant. Could this protect her?
She grabbed the phone on her nightstand and dialed her father at home. He answered, and she said, “Is there any chance Sayre could get out?”
“Escape? None. Not while he’s in the attic quarters. The door and windows are impenetrable, plus there’s always a guard at the door, not to mention the guards outside.”
She heard the patronizing tone in his voice. He used to chide her about her nightmare terrors. Why be afraid of something not real? But this was real.
She would tell him about her decision not to sleep at the estate tomorrow. “I hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right. The guards will be checking in through the day and night. I want you to check in with me, too. I wish you’d let me assign a guard to you. Maybe Nicholas won’t hurt you, but he doesn’t run the Rogues.”
“You’re wrong about that. I don’t think the Rogues will attempt an attack on the mansion. Nicholas’s warning was exactly what he said: to protect me.” But she wasn’t at the estate now, wasn’t physically anywhere near Sayre. “The only person I’m worried about is Sayre. And possibly the guards.”
“Olivia—”
“You won’t convince me otherwise, so don’t even try.”
After a pause, he said, “You don’t sound like yourself. Is something wrong?”
She wasn’t his compliant little girl anymore, but she wasn’t going to tell him that on the phone. “Everything is fine. Goodbye.”
In the shower, as the water sluiced down her body, it wasn’t her safety on her mind; it was Nicholas’s. What if Sayre really could get Lucas to kill his comrades? That included Nicholas.
Deep down she knew he wasn’t a bad guy.
If he’s not, then what does that make your father?
It was a question she couldn’t answer.
She turned off the water, her chest tightening. She had no way to contact Nicholas, to warn him that Sayre was going to use Lucas to kill them.
“Nicholas, if you can hear thoughts, please hear this: You’re all in danger.”
In the kitchen, she heated water and scooped coffee powder into her cup. Her stomach was too tense for food. She picked up the piece of paper lying on the table and looked at the three names and addresses on it:
Carl Merrimack. The last time she’d seen him, almost a month ago, Eric had just smashed his head into the floor. He was still unconscious when the medics arrived.
John Hanson, whom Lucas shot, also when the Rogues broke into the asylum to rescue Rand Brandenburg.
Mark Jackson, guard at the asylum, shot in the shoulder.
Her encounter with Harry haunted her. Maybe he was good at pretending. He was CIA, after all. Not so, these other guys. She was going to check on a hunch, one she wasn’t even sure she could explain.
She poured hot water into her mug and stirred, breathing in the scent of French vanilla. She managed to down a piece of toast, then headed to her bedroom to get dressed. On the way, some envelopes on her desk caught her eye. She always kept her bills in the basket, so why was her electric bill perched on the edge of her desk? She put it back in the basket and continued on.
An hour later, she stood outside Carl’s apartment door, the television blaring inside. She hoped to find a family member who could give her an update on his condition.
He answered the door, a pleasant but curious expression on his face. “Yeah? Can I help you?” Not a hint of recognition.
“Carl, it’s me. Olivia. Don’t you remember me?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Crap, did we go out or something? Look, if I didn’t call—”
“No, we worked together up until a month ago.”
He took her in again. “You and me worked together? I don’t think so.”
She saw no sign of injury on his head. “Can I see your right hand? Humor me.”
Warily, he held out his hand. Eric Aruda had shot him in the hand. She turned it back and forth. No sign of any kind of wound.
“This can’t be,” she whispered.
“I think you’re a little mixed up.”
“Don’t you remember working for Gerard Darkwell? At an old insane asylum? You were shot in the hand, beaten…”
He was shaking his head. “I just finished an assignment guarding some warehouse for a few months, and I’ve been working at a bank for the last three weeks. I took a bullet when I was a cop, but that was twelve years ago. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Maybe the men had been debriefed to keep their assignments quiet, but where were his injuries?
“I’ve got the wrong something. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Next she went to John Hanson’s house. His gunshot wound had been pretty serious. She’d heard Jerryl say Lucas had thrown himself between Hanson’s bullet and Amy Shane. Hanson had taken a serious hit and was likely dead.
She knocked on Hanson’s door, and a woman answered, her expression becoming wary when she spotted Olivia. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for John Hanson. I worked with him when he was shot, and I wanted to see how he was doing.”
Her blank look wasn’t a surprise. Bizarre, but not a surprise. “John wasn’t shot.”
“He was working on a classified assignment until recently, right?”
She nodded. “He came home a few weeks ago and said the assignment had abruptly ended. It was disappointing, what with our son’s birthday coming up, but we managed.”
“I must be mistaken.”
Mark Jackson was a handsome man who’d worked the perimeter of the asylum. He’d been shot in the shoulder and hit in the face with a gun. He, of course, showed no sign of either injury as he walked to his car in an apartment complex parking lot. She walked within his range of sight and smiled at him. He smiled back in a polite, stranger kind of way and got into his car. No spark of recognition, despite the fact that he’d joked with her every week about being clandestine when she gave him his pay envelope full of cash.
These men weren’t pretending they’d forgotten the assignment. They truly did not know her. And they’d miraculously healed from their injuries.
She leaned against a car, not one possible explanation coming to mind. She remembered something Jerryl had said to Fonda: The Rogues wouldn’t die.
But these men were normal people. So what had happened to them? Or more precisely, what had her father done to them?
Lucas’s whispered words woke Nicholas: “It’s still going to
happen.”
He woke instantly. Amy was coming awake, too, and Eric sat in the chair, his eyes glazed.
Lucas had done the last sketch.
Panic shot through Nicholas. “Even though I warned her.”
Lucas nodded.
“You intervened when Amy was going to be attacked. You stopped it. So can I. I’ll watch over her all day from a distance.”
“Too dangerous,” Eric said. “Darkwell’s men could be watching her.”
“I’m not letting her die. I’m going to check on her.”
Nicholas turned down the lights and reclined on the couch. His eyebrows furrowed, his body twitched. His mouth tightened. He tuned his focus in, putting all of his attention on Olivia. This time, as fear throbbed inside him, he felt the darkness of the abyss. It pulsed, like a living thing, threatening to swallow him. He had once been in the vicinity of a tornado, and the pressure in the air, or perhaps lack of it, felt the same as the abyss. He couldn’t breathe. It pressed closer, forcing him back.
This is where he usually had to retreat. Not now. Not when Olivia’s life was at stake. He tried to suck in a breath. No oxygen. Must push past it. He gritted his teeth and stepped into the miasma of what looked like…smoke. Thick, vile smoke, stealing away the oxygen. He stopped. That’s why the abyss terrified him. Smoke. Fire.
His chest felt crushed from lack of air. The black mass had no smell, but the wall that stood before him was thick and oily. Not even fire could stop him from saving Olivia. He took a step. The vile blackness surrounded him, pressing tight against him. He took another step. Another. Like slogging through water, but it didn’t stop him. And finally he stepped out on the other side, into a different kind of darkness. He’d been here before. The ether. Now he could find her.
He focused on her face, trying to keep the fear from interfering. Other than the times he’d tried to find a missing child, he’d never had a deadline. Now, time was running out.
He felt his spirit glide toward her. Come on, bring me to her. Just as he was getting nearer, he hit an invisible wall. It bounced him right out. He held on to his connection and went to the estate. He looked in her office, roamed the hallways, then checked her suite. He didn’t see Darkwell or Olivia.
He pulled out and sat up. “I can’t find her or see her. It feels like the same kind of block I got when I tried to remote-view Darkwell. I’ve got to check her condo. I know the city, but not the address. I need a touchstone to find a place. Sometimes that’s a person. If I can’t find her, I need something of hers that would be at her apartment. Then I can find that, at least.” He tapped his fingers against his mouth in thought. “She wore some silver spiral earrings once. As long as she isn’t wearing them, I could find them.”
He zoned in on those earrings, coming down into her condo, looking around at the cozy and cluttered living room, kitchen, then her bedroom. He saw the jewelry box the earrings were in, but he was more interested in checking for Olivia.
A few minutes later, he opened his eyes. “She’s not there, either. How am I going to find her?” Nicholas ran his hand through his hair and started pacing. “I’ve got to do something. I can’t let”—he looked at the sketch—“that happen.” He implored them with his eyes. “Don’t any of you have some skill, anything…?”
Amy shook her head. “I’m sorry. Seeing auras and talking to dead people isn’t going to help. Rand can see ten seconds ahead, but that only helps in the moment. Zoe’s got telekinesis, but moving things…” She shrugged.
Nicholas came to stop at the sketches, which were all laid out in a row. “Lucas, didn’t you say you got images of things that were going to happen?”
“Sometimes, but I can’t control them.”
Nicholas studied the sketches, then the map. “He’s going to take her to the water. There are two lakes near her condo. And there’s the Potomac River…miles of it. But you saw a lake.”
“It definitely looks like a lake.”
“I’m going to search Woodbridge, see if either of the lakes matches the sketches.”
“That’s what I did when I saw Amy being attacked. I had a few details, and I was a man mad to find the marina that matched those details.”
Nicholas could see the fear in Lucas’s eyes at the memory.
“I can’t let that psycho get her. If he touches her—” Nicholas stopped, his eyes widening, his cheeks flushing. He turned to them. “I couldn’t imagine having the urge to kill someone, for any reason other than self-defense. But now I know why you shot that guard, Lucas. And Eric, why you beat the guy who had Amy and Petra at gunpoint.”
“When you love a woman, you’ll do anything for her,” Lucas said softly, looking at Amy.
“I don’t know if I love her, but there’s this feeling I’ve never felt before of…of doing anything to protect her. And I will.”
CHAPTER 24
Nicholas drove toward Woodbridge, his head a jumble of frantic thoughts. Rand had offered to go with him. Nicholas’s first reaction was to refuse; he did things on his own. He could see, though, the value of having a team like these people behind him. Two things ultimately pushed him to refuse: Olivia was, in their minds, the enemy, and if something happened to Rand because of her, the Rogues would never forgive Nicholas. The second: the fear in Zoe’s face at the thought of losing someone she was obviously crazy in love with.
It still stunned him, the intensity of his feelings for Olivia. He’d never thought he could feel anything like that. Like what his mother had felt for his father, which had then destroyed her when he was killed.
It was easier to admit his feelings for Olivia because he could never be with her. He’d save her from whoever it was that had the nerve to think he could touch her, then they’d be adversaries again.
What if you can’t save her?
No, don’t think that.
And what was he going to do if he could find her? Lucas had given him a knife, which was tucked beneath the seat. He’d offered him one of their guns, but Nicholas had declined. It would be too dangerous without his having had any training.
So this was what it was like to care about someone so deeply he’d forsake his beliefs…his identity.
They were right. Love was a bitch.
Lucas pulled Amy close for a kiss. His last one, but he couldn’t let the emotions washing over him give that away. “Eric and I are going to do a little male bonding down in the range. Don’t wait up for me.”
“Male bonding, huh?” She raised an eyebrow. “What are you two up to?”
He leaned close, inhaling the strawberry scent of her hair. “I’m going to get him to try remote-viewing Olivia. I’ll have a better chance if he’s not doing it in front of everyone else. He’s got to keep up that blustery façade, you know.”
“That’s not a façade.”
She looked at him with those green eyes, so innocent, so full of love. Her hair was sticking up, wild in a charming kind of way. God, how I love her. God, how I hate to hurt her. Hadn’t he always known he would? She was strong. She’d survive, and she had a family here to protect and comfort her. At least they’d be safe from him.
His chest felt heavy as he and Eric went down two flights to the large room in the lowest level. They’d set up the storage area as a makeshift range, with white buckets as targets. They’d drawn faces on them, including one with Darkwell’s thick eyebrows and moustache.
Eric closed the door and leaned against it, his arms over his chest. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.” Lucas laid out a tarp on the floor. “Eric, you look like hell. I thought you were going to take a nap.”
He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. “My mind won’t shut down. It’s this…this thing you’ve got me doing tonight. It’s got me wired.”
“Then let’s get it over with. It’s almost seven.” Oddly, he felt calm. He’d heard that when people were about to drown, a sense of peace overcame them. This was what it must feel like. “You’re going to need time to
clean up and explain it to everyone. Then you can get some sleep.”
“Oh, yeah, like that’s going to happen. You were always the sensible, calm one. This shouldn’t be you.” He braced his hands on the concrete wall, lifting his face and closing his eyes. “I’ve always had this streak of anger. Dad—the man I thought was my father—told me I was an angry baby.” He turned to face Lucas. “Why do you suppose that was?”
“You were always mad and distrustful, even as a kid. It’s probably the Booster.”
“I’ve done some stupid things. You’re the only person I’ll ever say this to. But yeah, I admit it. Rage takes me over. I can’t control it. I know it worries all of you. Sometimes it worries me, too.”
“You have to master it. When I’m gone, you’ll be in charge, at least unofficially. You were the first one to figure out something was going on.”
He laughed, though there was no humor in it. “Yeah, I was the paranoid one. I guess that’s in my DNA, too.”
“Something is. Amy’s determined to find out what it is. Watch over her. She’s going to get a bit crazy after…well, you know. Don’t let her go find this scientist guy alone.” He lay down in the middle of the tarp. “If you stand over me and shoot, the mess should be contained on the tarp. Wrap me up tight and put my body down in the mechanic’s room before you tell Amy. Don’t let her see me.”
Eric hefted the gun in his hand. “You’re the meanest son of a bitch I ever knew, asking me to do this. And I’m insulted that you think I’m ruthless enough to do it.”
“Not ruthless, Eric. But you don’t mind killing people.”
His eyes took on a sheen. “The enemy, not the man I consider a brother. I love you, Lucas. You’re asking me to take your life to save the life of an enemy.”
“Not just her. You’re saving yourselves. And me.”