Danyael had made contact for no more than a second, Kyle told himself later—the briefest touch of skin against skin—but nothing could adequately describe the terror that surged into the man’s eyes; terror and fear so acute, so profound that they shredded the wall between sanity and madness. Behind the man’s psychic shields, his mind collapsed under the weight of stampeding emotions goaded by an alpha empath’s power. When the man screamed, it was the cry of an animal driven insane by horror.
His companions seemed glued to their seats, unable to tear their attention from their friend’s descent into madness. Their jaws hung slack, their eyes wide. Their faces turned ashen beneath their mocha-colored skin. When the man twisted around to slam his head into the wall, no one moved to stop him, except Danyael. He touched the man, and the man slumped to the floor, like a marionette with cut strings. Danyael turned to face the others and reached for Zara’s hand, his gesture casual. “Where’s Sofia?”
Kyle saw Danyael’s already dark eyes turn black as sin. Kyle had always known that the alpha empath was a killer in the guise of a helpless cripple, but in that moment, Danyael was almost ethereal—a demon in an angel’s body.
The truth gushed out of the three men as they stole occasional glances at their unconscious leader. Babblings of a warehouse in southeast D.C. Vague details of the armed guard that surrounded the place. Confirmation of the man in charge—Luis Sanchez, chief lieutenant in the Rue Marcha.
Danyael had turned hardened gangsters, known killers, into piles of mush in under a minute. Dimly, Kyle realized that he should be overflowing with admiration for Danyael’s brutal efficiency, but instead, all he could think of was all that devastating power wielded by a single man.
Kyle’s stomach churned with nausea. The taste in his mouth was sour. He had heard and seen enough. He spun on his heel, but Xin held out a hand to stop him from leaving the room.
Her brown eyes met his. “Danyael didn’t just do this for Sofia. He did it for them.”
He shook his head, dismissing her. “I have to get Sofia.” He had to do it alone. Zara, who was half-Venezuelan, could not help him.
Xin nodded. “Good luck.”
He stepped out of the room but not before he heard her whispered words. “You’ll need it.”
Chapter 15
Consciousness returned slowly. The dull ache drifting through her body coalesced into a painful throb in her head.
Sofia dragged her eyes open, and then squinted as a defense against the bright lights in the room. Spotlights glared down at her, unrelenting, merciless. She tried to bring up an arm to shield her eyes, but metal clinked at her wrists. The motion tugged at her other wrist.
Handcuffs.
Her eyes flashed open—spotlights be damned. She looked down at the steel cuffs that bound her wrists together. No big deal. She could pick the lock with her telekinetic powers, but then what? Sofia looked around a small room undistinguished by its cement walls and floor; no weird smears on either, though the latter was dusty and the air was stale. Boxes stood stacked high against three walls, leaving only the wall with the door clear.
It galled her to realize that her predicament was her fault. If she had not dashed off on her own, she would have been with Kyle and—
She paled. And what?
What could Kyle have done against the six thugs who snatched her off the street in broad daylight, right in front of the IGEC building? They had tossed her into the leather backseat of a car. She screamed. The last thing she recalled was struggling against the large hand clapped over her nose and mouth until darkness curtained over her vision.
If Kyle had been with her, they would have captured him too. Odds were the Rue Marcha would have perceived him as the greater threat and killed him.
Her heart skipped a beat. She swallowed painfully through a dry throat.
Common sense reasserted itself with a hard jerk.
If her hands were free, she might have smacked herself on the side of her head. She was worried for a mercenary, for God’s sakes, for a man who had likely gotten himself into and out of worse situations.
Focus on yourself, kiddo. You’re the one in trouble now, not him.
Sofia raised her hands in front of her so that she could study the handcuffs. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the small lock. Her mind zeroed in on its target—there was no other way to describe the odd sense of “tunnel-vision” that preceded the use of her telekinetic powers. Something almost tangible stirred in the back of her head, a motion, perhaps imaginary, perhaps not, but moments later, the lock clicked.
Sofia shook the handcuffs off. As a precaution, she slipped them into the back pocket of her denim jeans and then proceeded to explore the room. The door was locked, of course, but it was not a problem for a third-rate telekinetic. The wooden boxes and crates were sealed, but she pried the covers off and rifled through their contents. She was oddly disappointed when she found neatly packaged containers of pharmaceutical products, each labeled with the brands of well-known American and international companies. Where were the heroin and cocaine? The Rue Marcha members were drug dealers, weren’t they?
Sofia traced her fingers over the unopened bottles. Her brow furrowed. She recognized many drug names from her nursing program. The crates were filled with powerful prescription painkillers, depressants, and stimulants.
The Rue Marcha was trafficking prescription drugs and fueling the epidemic of prescription drug abuse in the United States.
Sofia bit down on her lower lip. All the more reason to break out of wherever she was, find the cooler, and make her way to the closest police station. Sometimes, her curiosity got the better of her, but until she was safe, she would have to restrain her nosiness.
After all, she was on her own. Kyle would not be coming for her.
The ache in her chest was equal parts hurt and fury. He had protected her and even gotten shot because of her, but he was still a stupid ass. Couldn’t he see that she was different from Danyael, from the alpha mutants? How dared he act as if he was the injured party just because she had not revealed that she was a mutant from the moment they met? Hello, I’m Sofia Rios. I’m a mutant though you wouldn’t know it because I can’t do crap worth mentioning, but you should still feel free to treat me like shit just because you can’t see past that goddamned chip on your shoulder.
She ground her teeth. Damn him. And to think I was falling in love with you, thinking that maybe you’d actually see me for the person I am.
He was an idiot, and, everything considered, he’d gotten off easy. When she got out of here—wherever here was—she was going to yell at him some more.
Yelling helped drown out the silent tears inside.
Sofia pressed her ear against the door but could not hear the sound of any movement outside. She breathed in deeply to steady her nerves. No better time. She squatted down to study the lock. Her brow furrowed with concentration.
Metal ground against metal. The door lock wrenched back. No delicate “click” here; the sound grated and echoed through the small room.
Someone had to have heard that sound.
Sofia winced and held her breath. Minutes passed, but no one came.
She did not bother to wait until her heartbeat settled down; she had more or less given up on the hope that it would. Slowly, she eased the door open wide enough for her to peek out. The door opened onto an indoor balcony made of steel. Closed doors, which presumably led to rooms similar to the one she vacated, flanked one side of the balcony. The other side overlooked the interior of a large warehouse space, partially filled with crates.
Male voices, speaking Spanish, engaged in idle conversation. From the doorway, she could trace the play of bulky shadows moving around the warehouse floor. On the other side of the warehouse, a series of staircases led to a lighted, glass-windowed room high above the warehouse floor—an observation room, perhaps.
The exit, if there was one, was nowhere to be seen.
Her gaze fell on a clutter of t
ools and equipment in front of the next room. She bent down to pick up a crowbar—not that it would do much good against one of the over-muscled thugs, but holding something that resembled a weapon made her feel better—and inched forward.
She peered down the length of the bridge. At the far end, a staircase led down to the warehouse floor.
Not a good option, but it was the only one she had. It was the only way out.
Shadows swathed large portions of the bridge, but spotlights were interspersed at regular intervals, though if no one looked up, she would be all right.
Sofia crossed the first expanse of darkness but hesitated at the brink of the pool of light. It was insane—twenty feet of unrelenting brightness. If she tried to move quickly, she would likely create enough sound to draw their attention, and if she moved slowly, the greater the likelihood that someone would look up and see her, smack in the spotlight.
Think, Sofia. Think.
A distraction. She needed a distraction.
Her brown eyes searched the breadth of the warehouse space below. Bare lightbulbs hung from long electrical cords in the ceiling. She frowned. Her father, a former engineer and amateur do-it-all handyman, would have had something scathing to say about it, but under the circumstances, she was grateful for the sloppy build out.
Her weak telekinetic powers fluttered. On the far side of the warehouse, a lightbulb swayed, moving in a languid circle as an invisible hand gently swung the long electrical cord around. Shadows danced erratically, drawing cries of alarm from the men on the warehouse floor. They rushed over to that corner of the warehouse; Sofia dashed quietly across the pool of light.
She managed to get across two lighted areas before the men’s interest in that innocent lightbulb faded. Another three bright areas stood between her and the staircase. She did not think another lightbulb trick would work.
Directly beneath her, under the bridge, someone screamed.
She pressed against the wall, shrinking into the cover of the shadows as men raced across the warehouse floor. They were standing beneath her, their attention focused on something other than her.
Her heart pounded. She forced herself to move, scrambling across the bridge and racing down the staircase. A maze of boxes and crates beckoned. She ducked into its questionable safety; at that moment, its dubious cover was better than nothing.
The crates were stacked higher than her short frame. She ran until she found a corner, where she could keep an eye on both sides of the corridor of crates. From her position, sound was muffled, and she strained to catch snippets of the excited flurry of Spanish words. Something about an unconscious man. A silenced weapon.
Someone shouted out orders to search for an intruder.
Was it Kyle? Had he come for her?
Would he, in spite of everything that had happened between them?
Hope was noisy, vibrant. Her heart thumped so loudly she had to press her hand against her chest in an instinctive move to quiet it.
He would not come with guns blazing into a situation in which he must have known he would be grossly outnumbered, or at least she hoped he would not. Stealth. He would use stealth. He had taken on the disguise of an attorney to enter IGEC. He would, she expected, dress down to match the coarse garb men used in hard labor, wear a cap, perhaps, to conceal his distinctly non-Hispanic features.
In other words, she had no chance of picking him out from a distance.
Effectively, she was still on her own. She had to find the Proficere Labs cooler, and then get the hell out of the warehouse. She glanced up. The observation room; she had to reach the observation room. If the cooler were in the warehouse, it would almost have to be up there, far away from the chaos on the warehouse floor.
The clutter of boxes and crates simplified her task. She darted from one cluster to another until she was almost at the foot of the staircases leading up to the observation room. Her fingers brushed against two large circuit breaker boxes located on the wall underneath the staircase.
The low buzz of conversation behind her assured her that the search for the intruder continued. She prayed it would keep the focus on the floor when she climbed the stairs.
She tucked her long hair inside her jacket, drew the collar around her neck and face, and walked up the stairs, affecting confidence she did not feel.
Each step drew her closer to the top.
Beneath her, on the warehouse floor, activity swirled as men searched between stacks of crates and boxes. Mercifully, no one looked up.
She continued on her way, a step at a time. She spared a quick glance down. If Kyle was somewhere down there, she did not see him. She had almost made it three quarters of the way up the stairs when a cry of alarm cut through the air.
“Allí arriba. La chica!”
Damn it. Forget confidence. Forget stealth. Sofia ran, her feet racing up the steel staircase that vibrated with the sound of heavy boots pounding after her.
She burst into the observation room. It was empty. The switchboard panel set against the wall glowed red and green. Two metal chairs had left scuffmarks on the white-tiled floor, but there was no sign of any cooler.
Her heart sank.
She was trapped.
Kyle saw her long before anyone else. In the dusty clothes of a day laborer, his work hat pulled over his features, he had little fear of being identified as he joined in the search for the intruder—himself. He had knocked out the guard at the entrance, but the man had been found sooner than he had liked.
He knew Sofia’s hand was at work when the lightbulb started swinging. Like the other men, he had raced over to investigate, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sofia’s slight form scramble across the balcony when all the men’s backs were turned. She darted between walls of crates.
He concealed the smile of pride. That’s my girl.
Now, if only he could work his way over to her.
The damned woman, however, seemed determine to head in the opposite direction from the exit. Frowning, he mentally traced her heading and looked up. What could she possibly want in the observation tower?
He made his way toward the staircase that led up to the observation room, but others were closer still, and inevitably, one of them looked up and shouted an alarm.
Kyle raced up the stairs, but others were ahead of him. They were steps away from the observation room when he heard the sound of shattering glass. Sofia must have broken the glass windows overlooking the warehouse floor. What the hell? Was she going to jump?
He surged forward. He had to stop her.
In that instant, the entire warehouse plunged into darkness.
Sofia crouched by the entrance of the observation room and held her breath as the first thud of heavy boots entered the pitch-black room. It was impossible to tell how many had entered the room. She only knew that she was completely outnumbered.
Divert. Distract. Then run like hell.
She had used the crowbar to smash the glass windows on the far side of the door of the observation room. Her telekinetic powers flipped the circuit breaker at the bottom of the staircase.
Please work, she prayed silently. The combination of the shattered glass and the darkness should lure the men to the far side of the observation room, farthest from the door, giving her a chance to make her way back down the stairs.
Her weak telekinetic powers did not lend themselves to a direct fight. She was also, just then, incapable of directing her feeble mutant powers to do anything more than they were already struggling to do. Her head hurt from the psychic effort of holding up the crowbar over the men’s heads with the mental equivalent of thumb and forefinger.
“¿Dónde está?” male voices asked.
From the sound of the voices, Sofia guessed that the men were clustered on the far side of the room, gingerly feeling their way around the broken glass. Carefully, Sofia crept out of the observation room. Now! She blinked and let the crowbar fall.
A loud curse preceded the chaos that followed as the
crowbar dropped on unsuspecting heads. Sofia scurried down the steps, the faint sound lost in the thuds and curses that filled the observation room. She had almost made it to the bottom of the stairs when the lights flared on.
At the bottom of the stairs, a heavily mustached man held the Proficere cooler chained to his wrist. He smiled, exposing perfectly even, white teeth. “Where are you going, chica?”
Sofia did not look over her shoulder, not even when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. She had been outplayed, outmaneuvered, but she did not back down.
“That cooler’s not yours,” she said.
The man smiled. “I paid for it. You shouldn’t have kept it from me.”
“You don’t know what—”
“Oh, I do. I know exactly what I paid for.”
Behind her, she heard the clicking of a gun, and then Kyle’s voice. “You have what you want. Let her go.”
Startled, she glanced over her shoulder. Kyle stood behind her, his clothing as disreputable as the others. He held a handgun in each hand, one pointed at the man who held the cooler and the other at the men crowded on the staircase.
“I don’t have it all,” the man said. “Where are the antidote and the formula for the antidote?”
Kyle responded before she could. “It’s not in there. It never was. The professors didn’t include it.”
“Oh.” The man raised his eyebrows. “Then you will go get it for me before I release this little chica.”
“I don’t think so. Your issue is with the professors. You’re going to let us walk out of here.”
The man shook his head. He opened the cooler and snatched out a liquid-filled test tube. “I drop this, and your little Latina girlfriend here dies.”
“But so will you.”
The man smirked and pulled out a gas mask. He waggled it in his hand, the gesture taunting.
“But your men. They’ll all die, too.”
The man shrugged, callous and indifferent.
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