Prior to her abduction, Cate had been interested in coming to Haven, learning more about her ability, but now… “No. She wants her old life back.”
Cal frowned. “That may not be possible. We all know going back is rarely an option.”
Gage turned to the window. Cal had never blamed Gage for the experiments, for what Gage had done to him, but Gage did. Not for a minute did he forget what he’d done to those anomalies. It didn’t matter that they’d volunteered. He never forgot that he’d exploited them in his own selfish pursuit of science and failed to help them.
“You coming to movie night tonight?” Cal asked.
Gage shrugged. “Maybe.” All the island’s residents gathered around a big outdoor screen once a month. Kids ran amok, adults caught up, and everyone ate too much popcorn. It seemed wrong to go have fun when Cate would be suffering alone.
Cal paused in the doorway. “You want to stop by our place for dinner beforehand?”
“Is Mara cooking?”
Cal grimaced. “Unfortunately.”
“Then I’ll pass.” Gage loved Cal’s partner, especially since she’d helped Cal find some measure of peace. But he didn’t love her enough to risk her cooking.
“I’ll see you later then,” Cal said.
After Cal left, Gage tried again to do some work. Eventually he sank back in his chair, tired of pretending. He glanced at the window, his gaze falling on the washing line. A row of neatly pegged washing swayed in the light breeze.
There was no sign of Cate.
Gage jumped to his feet and hurried out of his office. He rushed out of the lab and hurried over to where he’d left her.
Not a sign of her. Jesus, had he been wrong? He thrust his hands on his hips, searching the trees. Had he just unleashed a dangerous killer on the island?
“Worried I’d run away, Doc?”
He swiveled and spotted her sitting on the ground, back pressed to the rough trunk of a palm. His racing pulse subsided. He made his way to her and realized from where she sat she had a perfect view of a small clearing part-way down the hill.
And the children playing in it.
Gage sat down beside her. Two girls ran in circles, laughing. They were trying to outrun a young boy. Cate stared, her face so expressionless she looked like a statue.
“They’re about the age of the children in my class.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So young, so innocent.”
Worried at the edge in her voice, Gage studied her face. “Do you feel tempted to—”
“Hurt them?” She turned to look at him. “No. Thank God.”
The girls ran off giggling but the boy paused. Looking up, he spotted them. He lifted a hand and shot them a wide grin, then was gone too.
Cate’s gaze stayed on the trees where the boy had vanished. “He’s a soul stealer.”
Gage nodded. “His power hasn’t manifested yet, of course.” Finn would have to wait for puberty for his skills to manifest. That was one mystery Gage had solved in the lab. It was hormones that activated the dormant Anomaly gene. “His mother and grandfather are soul stealers. The trait’s strong in his family.”
She nodded. “My grandmother was a soul stealer. The power never manifested in my mother but my parents had been on watch for it after I hit my teens.” Cate’s eyes closed for a second. “I accidently killed our dog, but I learned to harness the skill. I shut it down and never used it, until…”
Until Leven had upended her world.
Gage resisted the urge to touch her.
“I’ll never be able to teach again.” Her voice was deathly quiet.
Her eyes had darkened, her teeth clamped onto her bottom lip. “Cate—”
She held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter how ‘normal’ I ever feel, how healed, I’ll never trust myself around them.” She released a long, shuddering breath. “I always believed teaching was my calling. I was good at it.”
Gage didn’t see rage. Just a quiet acceptance and so much sadness. “I wish I could take away your pain, or at least lessen it.” Again, he felt horribly useless, the same way he’d felt the day Theo had taken his life.
Gage reached out, wanting desperately to stroke her hair or touch her skin, some sort of contact. But he dropped his hand to the grass.
Her gaze stayed trained on the empty clearing, as though she still saw the kids, or other ghosts of her former life.
Then he felt a brush of something on his hand.
Shocked, he glanced down and saw her slim fingers on his.
“You do lessen the pain, Gage,” she whispered.
Feeling like he’d won the lottery, he clasped her hand in his. Her skin was warm and so soft. Gently he squeezed, afraid he’d frighten her off.
She squeezed back and they stayed there in silence, listening to the squawk of the tropical birds overhead.
Gage didn’t want to break the connection, but he had to put her safety first. “We need to start documenting what you remember from the last few months.”
She pulled her hand back. “I killed. Over and over.”
Gage flexed his empty hand. “Leven forced you to kill. We need to work out what his plan is.”
“I’m not sure I’m strong enough to revisit those memories…that place.”
Gage wanted to comfort but he forced himself to finish. “Stop fighting yourself.”
“I’m not—”
“Fight back and don’t let Leven win.”
She thrust her shoulders back. “Fine, Dr. Walker. You want to drag me through hell again?” She shot to her feet. “Then let’s do it.”
Chapter Five
“Leven’s men snatched me off the street in Melbourne. I was on my way to meet friends for coffee.” Cate sat in Gage’s office and tried to block the emotions swirling inside her.
Just recite the facts. But she wondered if her friends had searched for her. If they missed her. She’d missed them terribly in the first few weeks, but now they seemed so far away. She was certain none of them would understand what had happened to her.
“What happened next?”
She blinked. Gage was behind his desk, taking notes on a tablet. She pushed out of her chair, unable to stay still.
“They took me to a warehouse…no, a hanger at a private airstrip. After that it was an endless carousel of different locations. I lost track pretty quickly.” She’d tried so hard to block the memories, conjuring them up now hurt. It was like ripping a scab off a still-bleeding wound. “When he demanded I kill, I resisted. For days, weeks, I think.” She’d been deprived of food, light and water. “I was dehydrated and starving, I think I was hallucinating. The first soul I stole—” God, the man’s face was still frighteningly clear in her mind “—at first it didn’t seem real. I thought it was a dream, a nightmare…but it felt so good.”
She hated that she liked something so horrible. What did it say about her?
“Leven had me tortured for the next kill. Chains, a beating, nothing that would leave me too damaged. By the third kill, I wanted it.” Her chest was so tight she thought she’d explode. “I craved it.”
Gage was by her side. He ran a hand down her cheek and for the first time in so long, she wanted to lean into someone else.
“What else, Cate? There must be something else.”
“I don’t have any secrets.” She turned away, wandering to the bookcase filled to bursting with books, journals and science magazines. “I am…was a schoolteacher. Single, love to read, I like mango smoothies and love macadamia nuts. I’m an open book, like you.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I can see it in everything you do. Dedicated doctor and scientist. You like helping people.” He was everything she would never be. “You’ve never given up on me. If it weren’t for you and Dr. Akita, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Nobody’s perfect, Cate. Least of all me.” There was a hard edge to his voice. “Did you see anything, or hear anything when you were…”
“Killi
ng for him.” Bitterness spilled into her words.
Gage watched her steadily. “I was going to say in captivity.”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Some of it’s a blur and some of it, I don’t want to remember.”
“Were there others? Other anomalies?”
“A few.” She worried her bottom lip, sorting through the memories. Some were stark and horrifying, others murky and unclear. “Some willing. Some not.” She frowned, images clearing. “There were scientists in white coats. He did tests on me.”
Gage leaned forward. “What kind of tests?”
She rubbed her temples, remembered the pressure. “I’m not sure.” God, what had Leven done to her? “Maybe I don’t want to know.”
Gage lifted her chin with one finger. His brown eyes were understanding. “You’re tougher than that.”
“Only you seem to think so.” She wanted to touch him. To feel a connection to another human being that had nothing to do with death. Instead she shoved her hands in her pockets. “I seem to recall them talking about activating the Anomaly gene.”
A scowl crossed Gage’s face. “Leven wants to create his own anomalies. A small army of private soldiers.”
Cate gasped. “He’d be unstoppable. He’s so hungry for power, likes everything his way.” Her gut twisted. “Many of the people I killed—”
“That he forced you to kill,” Gage interjected.
God, he was stubborn under the endless patience. “Semantics won’t change the fact they’re dead. They were people who’d broken Leven’s rules. Displeased him. He said they deserved to be punished.”
“Jesus.” Gage’s gaze drifted to the window. “He’s stuck in the abuse loop.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Leven’s father beat him savagely as a child. Forced him to follow strict rules and punished him when he wasn’t good enough. Killed his mother in front of him.”
Cate’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”
“Bay Archer, the time thief who helped rescue you from Leven, and her husband, Sean, found information on Leven. And Cal’s done more searching. The info’s hard to find, but Sean and Cal turned up some old police reports, hospital records, school evaluations. What we’ve pieced together is a pretty horrible picture of what twisted Gabriel Leven into a monster. He thinks ultimate power and control will help him escape his past—”
“But he’s just perpetuating it,” Cate finished.
“Our past is always with us. It’s impossible to escape it.”
The words echoed in her ears. Her heart thumped hard against her chest. “I’m not like Leven.”
“I never said that.”
“You think I’m trying to escape what happened to me? Deny it happened? I’ll never forget their faces!” She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “They’ll be with me until I die.”
“I have faces that haunt me too.” He turned away.
Cate stared at his tense back. What haunted Gage Walker? He seemed so solid, so easygoing. A part of her wanted to know his secrets and a part of her was afraid to find out. “Just because I want the things I love back, doesn’t mean I’m escaping.”
“Only you can answer that.” Gage sank back into his chair. “Can you remember the details of any tests? Did they draw blood, put electrodes on you, inject you with anything?”
Clouded memories flooded her head. She dropped into the chair, pressing a palm to her forehead. The memories hurt.
“Cate?”
She pulled through the images. They were almost like faded photographs, didn’t feel real. “I don’t know if what I remember is real or imagined. I remember seeing people placed in tanks of freezing water.”
Gage frowned. “I’ve never heard of anything like that in reference to Anomaly powers. What else?”
She massaged her temples. “The people were so thin, starved, emaciated. No—” Why was everything so jumbled, so strange? “—others I remember more clearly. A woman, she was a time thief. They…they dissected her while she was alive.” Cate’s stomach revolted and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “More of those people, they looked like skeletons, they had dead, dead eyes, like they’d been exposed to too much misery and their souls were already gone.” She gripped the desk. “They were injected with something. A liquid. Poly…poly something. I can’t remember the name.”
Gage tapped furiously on his tablet. “That’s good. I’ll see if I can find anything on it.”
She rubbed her temples again. “I remember one test most of all. They had me hooked up to some sort of machine with a monitor. They stuck electrodes on my temples.”
He looked up. “Keep going.”
“Then they put something over my head, like a cap. It was freezing cold.” Her face screwed up. “I was screaming in pain then they knocked me out.”
Gage’s fingers paused. “Cortical cooling.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s a relatively new technique for studying the brain.”
“Why study my brain?” The thought of Leven poking around in her head made her sick.
Gage’s frown deepened. “By disrupting parts of the brain tissue by cooling it, they can access specific parts of the cerebral cortex.”
“In English, please.”
He blinked. “Right. He’s trying to find something in your brain.”
“What? How to grade spelling tests? I don’t have anything he’d want.”
“Could be part of his experiments with the Anomaly gene.”
But she detected a faint hesitation in Gage’s voice. “But you don’t think so?”
He sighed. “No. The latest use of cortical cooling is to access parts of the brain associated with memory. It’s highly experimental.”
“Memory?” What the hell could Leven want from her?
Gage’s brow creased. “I need to get online, do some research and see if I can work it out. Maybe we can recreate the test.”
There was something about the way he got all focused and studious that made her tingle inside. She couldn’t control her smile.
Gage looked up. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Will you let me run the test on you?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
Cate realized that she trusted him. Completely. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me, Gage.”
“Let me do some research. I want to make sure I have everything in order before we try anything. You can say no at any time.”
“Okay.”
With a nod, he stood. “Do you like movies?”
She frowned, not following his train of thought. “Everyone likes movies.”
“What kind?”
“Action.” She smiled. “I like car chases and explosions.”
“Excellent. I was afraid you were going to say romantic comedies.” He held out a hand. “Would you like to go see a movie with me?”
With only the slightest hesitation, she placed her hand in his.
***
Gage walked alongside Cate and enjoyed the quiet solitude of evening falling around them.
His gut was still tight. Knowing the tests Leven had submitted her to…it made Gage want to track Leven down and inflict as much pain on the man as he could.
The sunset was a strip of orange in the west and to the east, stars were twinkling in the darkening sky. For a little while, he was just going to pretend they were two regular people on a nice evening out.
As they neared a clearing ahead, he heard the hubbub of a small crowd. So did Cate.
She stopped, her body tense. “I thought we were going to watch a movie?”
“We are.”
“With other people?”
He turned to her in the gathering darkness. “Other anomalies and their families. Movie night’s a regular event.”
She rubbed her palms on her shorts. “I’ll be on display. The freakish killer for everyone to gawk at.”
&
nbsp; Was that really how she saw herself? “They aren’t like that. You don’t have anything to be afraid of.”
“I’m afraid of myself.” Her blue eyes were huge, dark pools. “Of disappointing you.”
The quiet words struck him deep. He wanted to pull her to him. “Not going to happen. We’re just going to see a movie.”
She straightened her shoulders. “Okay. But I’m guessing Scary Callahan will march me back to the lab when he sees me.”
“Leave Cal to me.” Gage gestured her forward.
They entered the clearing. A large screen had been erected on the far side. People crowded in front of it on camping chairs and picnic blankets, or sitting on the grass. A portable popcorn machine was nearby, manned by a couple of teenagers, and the area was ringed by tiki torches, which gave the place a friendly glow.
A few people shot curious glances their way. Cate ran a hand over her hair but Gage pressed her forward.
“Popcorn?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I haven’t really felt hungry.” She breathed deep. “It does smell good.”
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand, pleased she didn’t pull away. He tugged her over to the popcorn machine.
He ordered and handed her an enormous plastic bowl. She juggled the overfull container, small kernels of corn tumbling to the ground. Gage helped himself to a handful then pressed one to her lips.
As she took the treat, her lips brushed his finger. They both froze.
He saw something ignite in her eyes and it sparked an answering rush of warmth in him. Then her face shuttered. “Uh oh.”
Gage glanced over his shoulder and saw Callahan striding up to them. Gage slung an arm over her shoulders. She tensed, then relaxed against him.
“Clearly you didn’t understand my order,” Cal said with lethal quietness.
“I understood. You were wrong. As head doctor, I overrode your order.”
Cal’s frown deepened. “Gage—”
“Oh, relax, Cal.” A tall woman stepped out from behind Callahan. Dark red hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her jeans sheathed wicked curves and an emerald green T-shirt set off her pale, pale skin and green eyes. “Cate’s here now, so let’s just see how it goes.” Then Mara turned to Cate. “It’s good to see you.”
The Anomaly Trilogy Boxed Set Page 20