by C. I. Black
“Jeez. When did I start—? Never mind. This just proves Randy might not have noticed he was becoming angrier. If he thought Lisa needed protecting, his anger would have seemed appropriate.”
“So let’s say you’re right. He suddenly discovers he has superpowers—”
“For lack of a better word.” Gage’s encyclopedia would have called it magic or Kin ability.
“He has powers, sees his opportunity to break free, and what? Goes to Carol Cho to find out where Lisa is?”
“Exactly. He forces Carol to talk, and she tells him Lisa has moved in with Brandon.”
Kate sat forward. “Of course. Now his friend has betrayed him twice. He turned Randy in to the police and took his girl. Randy grabs the money and jewelry that he knows is in the Chos’ safe, so he and Lisa will have funds while they’re on the lam together.”
“Then he goes to Brandon’s to ‘rescue’ Lisa, only to discover Lisa isn’t there.”
“He gets angry, they fight, he murders Brandon, and then tries to stick around and wait for Lisa, but you show up.”
“Stroud Boyson had nothing to do with this. Which leaves us the question, where’s Lisa Cho now?” If Morgan was right, Randy would go after Lisa, and that would be their chance to catch him.
CHAPTER 9
A quick call to the marshals’ office confirmed Lisa Cho had gone to the hospital to be with her mother. Yes, a uniformed officer was stationed at Carol’s room, and no, Ed wasn’t going to send a team. Randy had taken revenge and money and was likely six hours out of town by now. The marshals were stretched too thin to have a team sitting around the hospital in hopes their fugitive would just walk in.
Morgan couldn’t fault Ed’s logic. Until there was solid evidence that Randy was after Lisa, the theory was just that, a theory.
She contemplated updating Gage, but she would run into the same problem, and this theory had nothing to do with the Kin. Even if she was certain Stroud Boyson and the Devil Riders had nothing to do with Randy, she had no way of proving it.
Better to wait for evidence before wasting everyone’s time, as much as she really wanted the cavalry to be there.
Morgan and Kate arrived at the hospital and took the stairs to Carol’s room on the third floor. Morgan hadn’t had the patience to wait for the elevator, and as a good friend, Kate had obliged her.
“So I have a question.” Kate yanked open the fire door in the stairwell, and they strode into the gleaming hospital hall. “Our guy is super-strong and can freeze things with his touch. How are we going to apprehend him?”
“Particularly since we have no backup?” There were really only two options. The first seemed impossible: convince Randy to give himself up. The second she didn’t like: kill him. “I’m working on it.”
“Handcuffs won’t hold him. They didn’t hold him in the corrections’ van.”
“I said I’m working on it.” Really, their only option was to keep him busy long enough to call for help and for it to arrive. Well, there was a third option: use her abilities and partially petrify him, but she’d only managed that once, and the flower hadn’t gone through the process unscathed.
“Will bullets even hurt him?”
“I think so.” Of course, they hadn’t done much against any of the ogres Morgan had encountered, and she really had no idea if bullets would hurt giants. The only thing she knew for certain was that a bullet to the head would kill him.
Kate reached for her sidearm. “I’m not sure I like that our only option is shooting this kid.”
“Then we’ll have to convince him to give up.”
“And how are you planning to do that?”
“I’ll think of something.” Morgan tried to flash a smile, but from Kate’s expression, it came out more like a grimace. “I will. I always do.”
“Well, let’s do it before anyone else gets killed.”
They approached the final corner. Instinct slid Morgan’s hand to the grip of her gun. A hint of fire licked around her eyes. She could do this. Before she’d gone on medical leave, she’d been good at this. They’d find a way to apprehend Randy. Maybe Gage had some special frost giant capturing spell or something—she couldn’t believe she’d just thought that. Besides, there was no guarantee Randy was even after Lisa.
Morgan slowed and peeked around the corner. The hall was empty, and that included a missing police officer, who was supposed to be on duty at Carol’s door.
Morgan’s heart stuttered, then kicked into steady, determined beats. “The officer is gone.”
“Coffee break?” Kate asked. It had happened before, but wasn’t likely, particularly given that they suspected Carol had been attacked by a murderer who was still on the loose. For all they knew, Randy could come back to finish the job.
Morgan reached for her phone, but stopped. They still had no proof. Gage wouldn’t come running unless she had real hard evidence.
Someone in the room screamed, high-pitched and terrified.
Kate raced for the door. Morgan drew her gun and followed, fire caressing her cheeks and forehead.
Kate grabbed the door handle and met Morgan’s gaze. Ready? Ready.
Something clattered, bright and loud like steel, against the floor. A deep masculine voice yelled something. Morgan couldn’t make out his words, and the feminine scream came again.
Kate threw the door open, and Morgan stepped through the doorway and to the side to give Kate room.
“Randal Boyson,” Kate said.
Randy jerked around to face them. He stood at the end of the hospital bed, frozen mist pouring from his mouth and nostrils, his chest heaving, his face flushed. The officer lay unconscious just inside the door, and Carol and Lisa huddled in the corner behind a chair, clutching each other.
“Give up, Randy.” Kate widened her stance, her gun trained on him.
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he growled.
“What way is it supposed to be?” Kate asked.
Morgan inched deeper into the room along the wall. If she could get past him, she could get between him and Carol and Lisa.
“It’s not—” Mist spewed from his nostrils. He shook his head; his blond dreadlocks, heavy with ice, clattered against each other. Chips broke free and rattled to the floor. “It’s not right. This isn’t. I want—”
Morgan shifted a little more. Now she stood in line with him. Carol and Lisa sobbed in the corner.
“What do you want, Randy?” Kate asked.
“I want—” More mist billowed around him. He roared and swiped at his crystallized breath. “Just stop!”
Lisa screamed. Randy leapt toward her.
Shit. No clear shot.
Morgan holstered her gun and threw herself at him, shouldering him into the wall before he could grab either woman. Randy shoved her back, slamming her into the wall with an enormous force. Her breath burst from her lungs, and the world stood still for a second. Pain beat through her numb body. Randy reached for her, but Kate grabbed his arm and wrenched him around.
With a growl, he grabbed Kate’s neck, his massive hand covering her throat and up her cheeks. Ice crackled over her skin, drawing a scream. She grabbed his wrist, but his hand was too big for her to get the wrist lock.
Morgan threw her arm around his neck, squeezing her biceps and wrist against his carotid arteries. Freezing mist clouded their heads. Randy grabbed the back of Morgan’s jacket and yanked. Pain bit her armpits, and something in her jacket ripped, but she kept the hold.
Kate jammed her thumb in the nerve just under his elbow and wrenched on his wrist. Randy jerked his hand back, heaving Kate forward. She stumbled, and he slammed his fist into her face. Her head snapped back, and she crumpled to the floor.
Randy staggered forward, grasping and twisting, trying to shake Morgan loose. She squeezed tighter. Fire beat across her face. The frost from his breath stung her cheeks.
He wrenched around and slammed back into the wall, his weight pounding against Morgan. Her body w
ent numb. Her grip weakened. He twisted, grabbing her arm and breaking her hold on him. She fought to regain it, but he seized her jacket and hurled her across the room.
She crashed into the floor, slid out the door, and careened into the wall on the far side of the hall. Pain shot through her chest. She couldn’t catch her breath. Fire raced across her eyes and cheeks.
Not the option she wanted.
Randy rushed at her. She drew her gun and fired. He jerked to the side. The bullet slammed into his biceps. With a howl, he seized the front of her jacket, hauled her up, and pounded her back into the floor.
More pain snapped through her chest. Her breath vanished. There was nothing to expel, and she couldn’t make herself draw in any air. Her head ricocheted off the floor, and the fluorescent light above her twisted out of focus. Fire roared through her, pouring into her eyes, threatening to explode in petrifying, destructive certainty everything she looked at.
She struggled to blink it back, draw breath, focus, anything.
Randy shoved a meaty palm against her cheek, forcing her head to the side. His icy touch seared her skin. Ice shattered from his hair, stinging her face. The fire in her eyes snapped, roaring through her sunglasses. It hit a gurney a few feet away, and it exploded into stone powder.
Randy gasped and slammed her head against the floor again. The hall spiraled and darkened. He wrenched her gun from her fingers and tossed it aside. His massive weight on her chest vanished, and she fought to bring the hall back into focus. Through the door, the hospital room tilted. Randy grabbed Lisa’s arm and hauled her up. The girl screamed. Carol yelled.
Morgan pulled her body around, getting her hands and knees under her. The hall blackened. More screams. The fire of her powers beat across her face, and the frost burn on her cheek and hand had gone numb.
“Just listen,” Randy growled.
Her vision flickered back into focus.
“Just listen,” Randy said again, yanking Lisa out the door into the hall.
“Randy, stop.” Morgan shoved up to her knees. Fire poured into her eyes. She fought to keep her powers in control.
“I won’t go back.”
Lisa twisted in his grasp, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We can work this out.” It was a stupid thing to say, but Morgan had to keep him in the hospital, had to call Gage for backup.
“No. We can’t. You don’t understand.”
Lisa clawed at his hand. “Randy.”
“Let me think,” he said.
“Yes. Let’s just think about this,” Morgan said.
“Randy, please.”
“No. I need to think.” The air in the hall snapped with cold. A flash freeze swept across the floor around his feet. “No. Stop.”
“Please,” Lisa sobbed.
“Let. Me. Think.” He slapped her across the face, and she went limp.
Shit. Morgan staggered to her feet. “Randy, let’s work this out.”
“No.” He tossed Lisa onto his shoulder and bolted down the hall.
Morgan staggered after him, hit the ice on the floor, and slammed face-first into the linoleum.
CHAPTER 10
Morgan jerked awake. Kate stood in the doorway to Carol’s hospital room, and behind her, Carol sobbed and trembled in the corner.
“How long was I out?” Ice still covered the floor. Morgan couldn’t have been out that long. She staggered to her feet, clutching the wall to keep her balance.
A nurse rushed toward them, slipped on the ice, and hit the floor. An orderly scrambled to help her.
“You were unconscious?” Kate asked.
“And so were you.”
“Well, I was waking up when Randy grabbed Lisa just before you face-planted into the floor.” Kate holstered her gun. “Is that ice?”
“Looks like he can also make a flash freeze.”
“Just wonderful.”
Three more nurses slid toward them. The closest one, a willowy black woman with short, tight curls, reached for Morgan.
She batted the nurse’s hands away. “Help Mrs. Cho.”
“But,” the nurse said, her gaze locked on the frost burns on Morgan’s face.
“I haven’t got the time.”
All three nurses opened their mouths to argue.
Morgan glared at them. Their eyes flashed wide, their faces paled, and they scrambled into the room.
“All right. Regroup. Randy has Lisa.” A pounding started behind Morgan’s eyes.
Kate pushed away another nurse, turning the woman toward Carol, and stepped into the hall. “Yay us for being right. Now how do we find him again?” She pressed her arm to her side as if it hurt to breathe. She’d need medical attention sooner rather than later, but there was no way Morgan was going to be able to convince her of that until they’d apprehended Randy even if they were in a hospital. Lisa was in immediate danger. That came first.
“You said you couldn’t get ahold of Lisa to tell her about her mother. Was that a cell phone number?”
“What do you think the odds are that Lisa’s phone is on now?” Kate reached for her phone. That was the procedure. Call in backup, pray Lisa’s phone was still on, and get a GPS lock on it. But Randy would destroy any human who got in his way, even if he didn’t mean to.
“Stop.”
“Excuse me?” Ed’s phone rang through Kate’s speaker.
“You can’t bring Ed in on this. It has to be Gage.”
“This is not the FBI’s collar.”
“Do you really think anything Ed throws at Randy will stop him? I shot him. He didn’t even stumble.”
“Waters,” their boss said over the phone.
Kate pressed the phone to her chest. “You shot him?”
“The marshals can’t help us.” Morgan hated to say it. It felt like betraying her family, but she couldn’t let them face Randy, knowing what she now knew. Morgan pulled out her phone. “Tell him Randy was here, but ran off.”
“I can’t lie to him.”
“That isn’t a lie.” It just wasn’t the whole truth. She turned her back on Kate and dialed Rika’s number.
“Goddess of all things knowable,” Rika said.
“Tell me that knowledge of yours can get me a GPS lock on a phone right now.”
“I am a goddess.”
Please let Lisa’s phone be on. “Randal Boyson has Lisa Cho.”
“Are you all right?” Rika asked. A flurry of taps clicked over the line.
“All right enough.”
The taps stopped. “Looks like Boyson is traveling south on Richardson Drive.”
“Why would he be on Richardson? Where is he going?” If he wanted to get out of town, the fastest way would be east to the expressway or north to the back roads.
“Richardson is half a dozen blocks from the house where Howard Cho was murdered,” Kate said, pocketing her phone and stepping close.
Morgan hit the speaker button.
“He just turned onto Selkirk,” Rika said.
“He has to be taking Lisa home, back to where it started.” Kate pressed her arm to her side again. “It’s crazy. I don’t know why he wouldn’t just run.”
“Because that’s where he first professed his love to Lisa. Not in words, but in actions.” Crazy didn’t have to make sense. Randy was being ruled by a Kin nature he hadn’t even known he had. Morgan could relate. “Rika, tell Gage he’s going to the Chos’ house.”
“Gage is on the other side of town still working on the Devil Riders lead. It’ll take him twenty minutes to get there even with his driving.”
“We can’t leave Lisa alone with Randy for that long. If she rejects him, he could lose his temper and kill her.”
“And you can’t face Randal by yourself,” Rika said.
“Well, we can’t wait for Gage. Tell him to hurry.” Morgan hung up and scanned the hall for her gun. It lay in the granite dust of the destroyed gurney.
“I’m going to hate this plan, aren’t I?”
&nb
sp; “We just need to keep him distracted until Gage gets there.”
“Sure. No problem.” Kate shrugged and winced. “Better us than Ed and the rest of the team, right?”
Morgan grabbed her gun. “Absolutely. It’ll be easy.”
* * *
Morgan parked up the street from the Chos’ house. She didn’t want to alert Randy to their presence until absolutely necessary, and that would hopefully be when Gage and the others arrived. The house sat back from the street on a double-sized lot with three towering maples standing sentinel. Multiple gables made the roof a jagged shadow, and a large front porch wrapped around the front and both sides. The house wasn’t half the size of Gage’s mansion, but it was still a stately example of Victorian wealth in the city. Morgan didn’t think she would have continued living in a house where her husband had been brutally murdered, but she could understand Carol’s reluctance to leave such a beautiful home.
Pale light glowed from one of the four front windows and through the stained-glass front door. It wasn’t enough for Randy and Lisa to be in the front room. All four of the living room windows would be bright if that was the case. No, it probably came from a room down the hall, likely the kitchen.
“He has clear line of sight over the front yard,” Kate said, her voice low.
“Yep.” If Morgan was wrong about Randy’s location, he’d be able to see them coming if they approached from the driveway. “But we need to get eyes on Lisa. Make sure she’s all right.”
The neighboring houses sat on double lots as well, but the closest one had a four-foot high hedge separating the yards between the two houses.
“All right. The hedge is the most cover we’re going to get. I think he’s actually in the back, probably the kitchen from the way the light is shining through the front window.”
“That would be my guess, too.”
Morgan checked to ensure her sunglasses were still secure in her hair, in case she needed them, and slipped out of the Jeep. They drew their guns and rushed up the far side of the neighbor’s property, keeping as far away from the Chos’ house as possible until they had the cover of the hedge.