“Why don’t you just tell us what happened and I’ll decide which details are appropriate for the rest of the team.”
My eyebrows shot up.
Theo spoke through gritted teeth. “Nothing happened, Thirteen, so how about you back the fuck off.”
Thirteen’s eyes narrowed. I looked back and forth between them.
After another long minute, Theo said, “Like I said, they tranq’d me with some kind of hallucinogen and took me to the Kelch estate. I assume they dressed me, too, since I was in boxers when I went to bed and in this when I woke.” He pulled his tattered shirt from his chest with two fingers. “The drugs had me seeing things that weren’t there, so I have no idea which one took me. As soon as they knew I was awake, they strapped me on a table and started slicing up my back.”
A need for vengeance washed over me so fast and so strong that the whole room turned crimson. The men, the walls, the light—everything red. I blinked and the room turned back to normal color.
Great…something else that never happened before. What was with me these days?
Theo continued, “After they’d been at it a few minutes, they stopped and one of them started whispering in my ear…in French. Qui est l’annuaire? ‘Who is the calendar?’ It didn’t make sense to me, but there it is.”
Wait a minute. What?
“French?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Yeah, pretty sure. I only took a couple of years of it in college, but I think I can recognize it when I hear it. Why?”
“It’s just that foreign languages—yeah, not my family’s forte. The only foreign language any of us are remotely familiar with is Romanian, and that’s just because Grandmother lived there when she was younger.”
“So you’re saying that none of your family speaks French?” Theo asked, his voice rising. “So, what? Either I was tortured by someone not in your family, or I hallucinated the question.”
I exchanged a frown with Jon then looked over at Shane. He was just as confused. Finally, I turned to Thirteen. His face was ghost white, his expression more void than I had ever seen. And before I could even get a read on his thoughts, he leaped from his seat and raced out of the house.
The rest of us just stared at each other. Then all at once, we jumped to our feet and flew out the door after him. We were just in time to inhale the cloud of dust left behind as Thirteen sped up the gravel driveway.
I went to my car, ready to follow him, when Theo called out, “Mag!” I spun around. All three of them were still on the porch, watching me. What were they waiting for?
“He’ll be back,” Theo called. The hum of Thirteen’s car was fading. We had to hurry. “He’s done this before,” Theo continued. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. We just have to wait.”
I listened again and the hum was gone. I couldn’t even tell which direction he’d driven. Shit! I glared at Theo and the others as I stomped back to the house. When I got to the door, I slammed it, leaving the guys on the porch.
I needed a drink. Damn it, something was up with Thirteen and I hadn’t caught it. And if Theo was right, all I could do was sit here and wait.
I stayed on the love seat by the front window, ignoring all the others and their patient confidence. All assured and accepting. Their “he’s fine” and “he’s done this before”—it was wearing on my last nerve. Wasn’t anyone worried about Thirteen?
No. All they cared about was what information had him acting as he had. They worried about being out of the loop, not whether Thirteen was still alive or not. Bastards.
Theo’s image wormed past my mood. Sprawled out over my sheets, his broad chest rising as he slept. I was glad he’d gone back to bed, but the need to join him distracted me. I pushed it away, downed another drink and kept my thoughts strictly on Thirteen.
It was almost nine o’clock that night when Thirteen finally pulled into the drive. Relief washed over me; air filled my lungs once more. The whole team was here now. I pulled my legs up under me. No reason to rush out to meet him. After all, he hadn’t even said good-bye. Or called. Or texted.
He ambled through the front door. I nearly choked on my drink. His hair was disheveled, his eyes ringed with dark circles. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in a day. With barely a greeting to anyone, he lumbered into the great room and sat heavily in one of the love seats. His head hung forward to rest in his hands.
“Um, would you like something to drink?” I asked quietly.
He lifted his eyes to mine and smiled. “That would be wonderful, Magnolia. Thank you.” I moved to the kitchen in a blur. The next moment I was back at his side, fresh OJ in hand. He took the glass. I took my seat and waited with everyone else. Theo leaned against the wall behind me, a warm weight at my back.
Thirteen finished his drink then clapped his hands together. He took a deep breath and began. “When Theo was in the confines of the Kelch estate, he was asked a single question: ‘qui est l’annuaire?’ His translation was correct, but there is another, broader meaning to the term l’annuaire. Directory. In this case, the Network directory. L’annuaire is the living compilation of our entire membership. Every piece of information about every single member of the Network, present and past, is housed in the well-protected l’annuaire…a man named William Broviak.”
“William Broviak is l’annuaire?” Theo asked after a pause. “A man is this directory?”
“That’s correct,” Thirteen said. He sounded tired, resigned. “You see, William has a special gift, a psychic talent that he has spent the majority of his tormented life trying to alleviate. William sees relationships.”
A relationship psychic? Well, let me just add that to my growing list of “what-the-hell-is-going-on.”
Thirteen continued, “He has the unique ability to instantly see the connections between individuals the moment he meets someone. For example, in meeting Charles he would know that he is married to Marie, has two brothers in the military; his father, his mother, his coworkers, everyone he knows and has an emotional tie to would be imprinted in William’s mind. So when he first met a certain member of the Network…”
“He knew the identity of every Network member,” Cordele finished his sentence.
“Exactly.”
Hmmm…I glanced back at Theo.
“But none of us knows all the members,” Charles argued. “We only know those we directly work with. Everyone else is an anonymous face in the crowd. ‘You could pass a fellow member on the street and not even know that you both worked for the same elite organization.’ Isn’t that what you told us from the beginning?”
“You don’t know every Network member,” Thirteen corrected him. “But I do. At least the ones in my division. As a chief in the organization, it’s part of my job to recruit and work with every member on their assignments. William was discovered by one of my predecessors nearly twelve years ago. His ability was revealed to the chief at the time and he was put immediately under the care and protection of our agents. And has remained under that protection ever since.”
“Wait,” Heather said, waving a hand in front of her. “You took him from his life and just kept him? Made him the Network’s prisoner just because he had some ability that wasn’t his fault?”
She had a point. And I could see where the situation might hit a little too close to home for Heather. Still, she wasn’t the only one trying to work through this new information. Everyone’s mind was reeling, processing. I took another drink.
“He is no prisoner, Heather,” Thirteen said sternly. “He has his own life, however self-destructive it may be.” The last he said under his breath. He was getting a headache. And when I saw the man’s image in his thoughts, I understood why.
“The smelly old drunk guy at the Turtle?” I announced without thinking. “That’s l’annuaire?”
“Wait, you mean Bill?” Theo asked from behind me.
“Drunk Bill is l’annuaire?” Jon asked at the same moment.
&n
bsp; Thirteen sighed so deeply his shoulders fell forward. “Yes, Bill at the Turtle is l’annuaire. He’s watched by Miller, and others, but refuses to allow us to help him deal with his ability. He prefers to live on the street where people walk past him and look the other way. They just let him be, and he prefers that life to anything we’ve offered.”
So that was Miller’s role in the Network—directory babysitting. Thirteen took another drink. Good idea. I finished off my whiskey.
“When Theo told us this morning that the only question asked of him was about l’annuaire, I had to move quickly to contain William. He was immediately moved to a secure location where he will remain until I assign him keepers and move him to a guarded safe house.”
“Do you need this house back?” I offered. Oh God, please don’t make me give up my house already.
“No. William will be moved out of state.” Thirteen shook his head to himself. “We always knew that if the one of our enemies discovered l’annuaire it would be devastating to our organization. It’s why so few in the Network know of his existence—we couldn’t risk someone being broken and leaking his identity.”
Shane sat forward. “Plausible deniability.”
Thirteen gave one slow nod. I sat forward.
“Then why the hell are you telling us now?” Shane controlled his volume, but just barely. Inside he cursed Thirteen left and right. “Kelches are still abducting Network members—still torturing us for this information. So why even tell us about this guy? Now, if one of us is captured, we’ll have exactly what they want.”
Thirteen’s eyes were cold, his voice controlled. “I tell you because it is now your job to protect our most valuable secret. It is now your duty to make absolutely certain that our enemies do not acquire l’annuaire. The Kelches already know that he exists. We’re not going to waste precious time and resources on concealing a secret that has already been revealed.”
Marie sat forward, her glare so venomous Jon and Charles adjusted in their seats. “How did the Kelches even find out about l’annuaire?” she asked. “None of us knew that he existed. And it’s not like anyone here could just pick a word like that out of someone’s head. Oh, wait! Yes they could.”
What a bitch!
The glass in Marie’s hand shattered. “Did you see that?” she gasped. “See what she did?”
“Oh, please,” I said and sat back in my seat. “I didn’t even draw blood.”
“Magnolia!” Thirteen put his arm out as if he were going to hold me back. I have enough on my plate without having to worry about your temper!
He was right. Great, now I felt bad. Sorry.
He turned back to Marie. “We don’t know how the word was introduced to the Kelches. And while other Network members are currently investigating that very subject, this team’s focus should be on our assignments going forward.
“The Kelches have always had limited interest in the Network. They view us as nothing more than an annoyance or a cleanup crew that sometimes hinders their well-laid plans. They have never seen our organization as a true threat.”
I looked at Thirteen. Had I told him that, or was he just that perceptive?
“So why the interest now?” Jon said, finishing Thirteen’s thought. “Why make the effort to track down a Network directory if they don’t see us as an important adversary?”
“Precisely. Why now? Logic would dictate that either we have done something to cause the brothers more irritation than they have led us to believe, or…”
“Or they really are getting ready to do something big…something that can’t afford to be hindered.” Shane concluded. He turned to me and glared. God, it was like every day the guy hated me more.
Thirteen looked grave. “Exactly.”
The double beep of the alarm sounded. Everyone looked around the room.
Who wasn’t here?
“There was an unidentified substance in the remains of the bodies of the Network agents,” Thirteen continued, unaffected. “Something that our Network staff recognized only after the initial reports were released. It was so minute in mass that the coroner dismissed the substance as drug residue from the weapons that were used to torture the victims. I had a Network agent analyze a sample of the substance to determine its origin.”
The monitor beeped again. The front door opened wide. Everyone in the room, myself included, turned in unison. My jaw dropped. A man, twice the size of the largest guard at the estate—maybe even bigger than Thirteen—appeared in the doorway. He was dark, hooded. Dressed in all black, he kept his shades on and let his shoulder-length dark hair hang forward.
I adjusted in my seat. Unfolded my legs for better maneuverability. Theo shifted behind me. Jon made sure his gun hand was free.
The man was all business. No emotion, no wasted energy on worry or excess. He silently named each individual as he looked around the room. When his eyes found me, his thoughts only stuttered a moment, barely a reaction. And he knew my name instantly. Thirteen must trust this man intrinsically. Not even Banks had been told about me before our personal introduction. So why hadn’t I met this guy before?
The man turned his head to Thirteen. From the waistband at his back, he pulled out a sealed packaging envelope. Thirteen crossed the room and took it anxiously. The dark stranger turned to me again. Behind the sunglasses, he met my gaze. My abilities came to him, one after another, as if he were reading them from a list. And he knew every detail—even the new things that I’d never done before now. I moved to the edge of my seat. His thoughts blanked out, gone. A wall had shot up in his mind, blocking me from him. He nodded to me once more and turned away, disappearing out the front door.
What the hell?
I was on my feet. Who was that guy? Thirteen shot me the briefest glance as he crossed back to his seat. Slowly, I sat back down. His daughter’s image flashed through his mind, his longing stronger than ever. Then he focused again on the package in his hands.
“Who was that?” Cordele asked breathlessly. A pink blush colored her cheeks. She fanned herself with a napkin. I wasn’t the only one intrigued by Mr. Big, Dark, and Brooding.
Thirteen tore open the envelope and quickly skimmed the contents.
“Jesse is an old friend,” he said finally. His tone made it clear that questions weren’t welcome.
Thirteen held up the envelope. “The substance in each of the discovered bodies was polonium 210, a highly toxic radioactive isotope that attacks its victim’s DNA. It is exceptionally rare. It is essentially a by-product of uranium. It kills the intended victim by radiation poisoning.”
“You mean like victims of a nuclear holocaust?” Cordele asked.
“Not exactly,” Thirteen said. “Polonium 210 is only hazardous when ingested. And once in the victim’s digestive system, it’s death by radiation from the cell level out.”
“If the Network members were killed by this radioactive isotope, how could the coroners not pick that up?” Charles asked.
“I don’t believe they were killed by the polonium 210. Only miniscule traces of the substance were found in their systems.”
“So what does that mean?” Jon wondered aloud.
“As a by-product of uranium, the substance must be generated rather than simply found. And to generate this particular isotope, a nuclear reaction must be created.”
Silence filled the room. My stomach sank.
“The Kelches have a nuclear reactor,” Theo said, quietly voicing what everyone else had concluded.
“We can’t be sure of that,” Thirteen said. “But if the Kelches do have a weapon of atomic destruction, and a plan to use it, it stands to reason that they would want their chief hindrance eliminated before putting their plans into action.”
No one spoke, but their thoughts were all the same: Holy. Shit.
I’ve asked a great deal of you, Magnolia. I jumped. Then turned dark eyes to Thirteen as his focused thoughts became clear.
More than we agreed to, by far, I snapped.
Yes…I would apologize, but you know in your heart that my intention has never been to deceive or use you.
That’s the only reason you’re still alive, Thirteen.
He lowered his head and smiled. I have no doubt.
So what is it now? I thought.
I don’t see another way.
I saw flashes of an unfinished idea flit through his mind. Terror stole my breath. I gripped the sides of my seat to keep from falling over. Heather turned toward me. Theo moved in closer.
You would ask this of me, knowing what could happen?
Thirteen’s gaze was frighteningly serious. They will never hurt you again, Magnolia. I swear this on my life. They will never touch you again.
Unwanted tears rose at the sincerity of those words. If only he could keep such a promise.
Thirteen’s face was tight with wear and intent, his silver hair a little frazzled from the day’s stress. His jaw set, his lips pressed. A face I had memorized over the last several months. The face of my freedom.
I closed my eyes. “OK. I’ll do it.”
Every time I thought of Uncle Max, the same scene came to my mind.
The estate’s library. Leaning against an antique desk with his sleeves rolled to the elbows, he fondled one of those pink-gray stress balls.
“Are all the guards really necessary?” he asked.
Father was crouched toward the back of the library using a bucket and towels to scrub my blood from his forearms. “It took eleven of them to get her shackled this time,” he groused. “Hell, the bitch ripped off Alec’s left arm when he first touched her. And he’s loyal even without the drugs!” He grumbled as he wet his towel. “Thank God he’s right-handed.”
Uncle Max tsked.
I lay on the floor. I couldn’t move past the pain in my stomach and lower back. Uncle Max strolled past the four guards posted against the bookshelves, eyeing me as he walked. He played with the stress ball, slipping it back and forth between his fingers, considering my wounds.
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