“All right,” Margaret conceded, “we’ll leave as soon as they finish talking.”
The brothers went back and forth for another tense minute. Finally, Khoggi returned to the table, smiling stiffly.
“I am so sorry, my goddesses. My brother, he is all business, all the time. How do you say? He is a damp blanket.” Hameed watched sternly, arms folded. “We have some guests, and he would like me to discuss something with them,” Khoggi went on. “I will only be a moment.”
He turned on his heel and joined his brother. The two resumed debate as they ascended a short set of marble steps to the rear room from which Khoggi’s brother had appeared. As the door closed behind them, Janis reached with her mind. She heard conversation, but it wasn’t in Arabic.
“Um, Margaret? Those guests he mentioned? They’re speaking Russian.”
“Russian? How is that possible?”
“You tell me, Miss United Nations.”
Margaret frowned. “The Saudis and Soviets haven’t had diplomatic relations since, like, the 1930s. Right now, they’re practically at war over Afghanistan. Not to mention this business with the oil.”
Janis spread herself throughout the meeting room. Besides the two brothers, she made out four pale-faced men—the ones speaking Russian. Another man appeared to be acting as translator. They were seated around a table. But before Janis could pinpoint what was being discussed, fresh shouting sounded, this time from Khoggi. The back door clapped open, and Khoggi stormed from the room.
“That was fast,” Margaret whispered.
Khoggi was almost to the bottom of the steps when one of the pale-faced men burst out behind him and reached into his jacket. In a flash, Janis understood what was about to happen.
“Look out!” she cried, and pushed.
The force from her outstretched hand tangled Khoggi’s legs and sent him to the floor. Gun shots rang throughout the restaurant. Janis pushed along the momentum lines of Khoggi’s fall, sliding the prince behind a table, out of harm’s way.
With her free hand, she tugged Margaret’s arm, trying to get them both under their own table. Instead, Margaret shot to her feet, eyes blazing green as she faced the shooter.
“Stop it!” her sister cried in Russian.
Janis reached for her arm again. “Are you crazy?”
The man yelled, “My Dogovorilis!” as he fired another shot in Khoggi’s direction. It took Janis a moment for the message to translate: We had an agreement. Then he pivoted toward their table, his gun raised.
Margaret didn’t flinch. If anything, she stood taller. “Stop,” she repeated.
The man hesitated, the anger lines across his brow trembling with uncertainty.
“Set your weapon on the floor,” Margaret ordered.
The man did as she said.
“Now—” Margaret began.
Mini-explosions popped off, and the man collapsed. Janis craned her neck toward the dining room. The men in dark suits were moving toward the downed Russian, handguns drawn. As one of the men shoveled him onto his backside with a foot, the others pushed through the door he’d emerged from.
Khoggi returned to the table, dusting off his jacket lapels and adjusting the sunglasses in the neck of his shirt. “I am so sorry for interruptions,” he said. “Never good to mix business with pleasure. I am always trying to explain that to Hameed. Here, allow me to drive you back to palace.”
“Best idea I’ve heard all night,” Janis said.
She looked from Khoggi to the back room, where a fresh commotion of shouting and scuffling was taking place. The fallen Russian lay face-up at the top of the steps, a dark patch spreading across the breast of his gray jacket. Janis turned back to Khoggi, her heart drilling her chest.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Oh, disagreements, you know?” Khoggi waved a hand dismissively. “My men will settle it. Come, come.”
This time, Janis accepted the prince’s offered elbow, if only to hasten their departure. Behind his back, she exchanged a look with Margaret that said, What the frick? A cry made them all turn.
Khoggi’s brother was loping after them, babbling as though he was on the verge of tears. Khoggi cut him off, no longer speaking with the melodic cadence of before. Hameed gripped his thinning hair and showed his hands, his lean body bowed forward in supplication. Khoggi spoke more blunt words, then cut a hand through the air in a gesture of finality.
“Come,” he said, leading Janis and Margaret over the bridge. His brother remained behind, arms dangling at his sides.
The Mercedes was waiting when they stepped from the restaurant into the cool desert night. As valets cannoned car doors open, abrupt gunfire sounded from the restaurant. Janis and Margaret were the only ones to glance back. Khoggi eased into the driver’s seat and tugged on his gloves, while the valets stood patiently beside the open passenger and back door.
When Janis reached with her mind, she could no longer feel the Russians. Executed, she thought. They’ve been executed.
She dropped into the back seat, numbness creeping over her face.
What was their crime? And what were members of the Saudi royal family doing with them in the first place?
As the car rolled from the drive, she ventured once more into Khoggi’s thoughts. She perceived his anger first, a rust-colored seething, and then beneath it, an image of a vast oilfield. Some sort of dispute over oil? she thought. But soon the oilfield changed into a checkered game board, the giant machinery and equipment melding into an array of familiar black and white pieces. The pieces were advancing, withdrawing, countering one another.
Okay, and he likes chess.
Janis withdrew before Khoggi could make the mental leap from his game preferences to her sister. She stared out her window. One dim street after another slid past, where men in white robes and headdresses congregated on corners and black-shrouded women watched from doorways.
Suddenly, Janis missed Gainesville very much.
26
Gainesville, Florida
Mr. Shine’s house
12:24 p.m.
By the time Reginald drew the custodial coverall up his wasted legs and onto his arms, the sunlight behind the drapes of the spare room had waned and taken on some color. Reginald knew what that meant. Morning was giving way to afternoon. He had to hurry the hell up.
Using the bookcase, he pulled himself to his bare feet, his knees and hips still refusing to straighten. When he began to scoot the bookcase from the wall, hot pokers skewered his low back, and he began to shake. In his feeble state, he felt less like fifty-year-old Reginald Perry and more like seventy-year-old Adrian Shine, the man he’d been impersonating—if Mr. Shine had Parkinson’s.
When the trembling ceased, Reginald finished moving the bookcase. The wall was comprised of vertical slats of wood that ran from floor to ceiling, sealed with brown grout. They haven’t been back here. Reginald ran his gaze along the ceiling until he found the faint pencil mark. He followed the slat down, picked a spot in its center, and hammered it with the side of his fist.
Reginald worked his fingers into the space where the board had separated from the others. He worked the board back and forth, grout crumbling away, then removed it and set it against the bookcase. From the skeleton of the wall, he pulled out a briefcase and a garbage bag.
Outside, his station wagon rattled up the driveway.
Shit.
She had been taking it out every day, though Reginald wasn’t sure for what purpose. The psychic abilities that Madelyn had helped him and the rest of the team develop so many years before were only good for sensing when someone was rooting around in their heads, digging for information. He couldn’t root around in other people’s heads, though, not even his own sister’s.
How long Shadow had been watching him, he couldn’t say. But he guessed it was long enough for her to learn his routines, study his guise, his manner. Now she was probably using both to get a close-up look at Scott, Janis, and the rest of
the Champions he had sworn to protect.
Reginald prayed she was only looking. He knew what she was capable of.
Sitting with his back to the wall, he began thumbing open the latches on the briefcase. He drew a pair of Glock 17s from their foam bedding, slid their receivers back and forth, and set the pistols on the floor between his legs.
The car door opened and slammed shut. Sand ground under swift footsteps.
Reginald dug a hand into the black garbage bag, where he’d stored the magazines. The rice inside was meant to keep the gunpowder dry. He swam his hand deeper, his arm disappearing to the crook of his elbow.
At the same moment his hand closed around a pair of magazines, the front door creaked open. Rice rained over the floor as he jerked his arm out. He set one magazine down. He wiped the other against his pant leg. More rice pattered against the wood. He reached for the closer pistol. The stiffness in his joints forced him to contort his trunk, slowing him.
Footsteps crossed the dining room and stopped in the hallway. Shadows appeared in the space beneath the door. A key scraped the lock.
Reginald shoved a magazine into the pistol. It didn’t take. He pulled it free, tapped out some grains of rice, and pushed the magazine back home. This time, it snapped into place.
Using both hands, he aimed the Glock at the opening door.
Only to find the space empty.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Prince Khoggi’s compound
Creed stood on the other side of the king-sized bed in a pair of boxers and a black AC/DC T-shirt. “Could you scoot over some more?”
“I’m scooted over as far as I can,” Tyler said. “Anyway, this thing is huge.”
Creed scowled. “Prince Ali Baba’s got enough gold to fill a swimming pool and he can’t splurge on a fourth bed?”
“Whatever, man.” Tyler turned onto his back. “Sleep on the floor, then.”
“How’d you two end up with your own beds?” Creed called across the room. “Shouldn’t we have pulled cigs or something?”
Off to Tyler’s left, Jesse picked a crumb of something off his shirt and flicked it away. In the bed beyond his, Scott continued to snore.
“And when did you start wearing a Walkman?” Creed asked Jesse. “You look like a candy ass.”
When Jesse didn’t answer, Creed grumbled and threw the covers back. “There’s a line down the middle of this thing,” he told Tyler as he climbed in. “If I wake up and find one of your legs thrown across it—or worse, across me—you’re not gonna live to explain yourself.”
“Yeah, fine,” Tyler mumbled, already starting to drift off. The day had been a beast, from being called to that emergency meeting back in Oakwood to jetting halfway around the globe to jumping right into a training session.
Through his foggy, fading thoughts, he worried about their mother, two months sober now, almost three. Kilmer had promised to have someone check in on her while they were away. Tyler hoped it would be enough. They were finally starting to get her back.
Then there was his chat with Janis on the plane, their first in months. He dwelled less on what was said, though, and more that the exchange seemed to wield resonance, like an electrical charge. He dug her—he admitted that—but something else was going on. He was finding it harder and harder to be away from her, which wasn’t like him. Not at all.
And the dreams he’d been having…
“Frigging three beds,” Creed mumbled.
Faint metal music started up, and Tyler peeked over to find his brother setting large padded headphones over his ears. Tyler rolled to his other side. Ten feet away, Jesse was reclined on the covers of his own king-sized bed in street clothes, one knee drawn up, orange earphones around his neck. Tyler couldn’t tell whether his deep-set eyes were open or closed.
“You still awake?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jesse grunted.
“Hey, man. Creed told me about your dad. Is everything cool?”
When Jesse shifted his weight, the entire bed groaned. “They’re still working on him.”
“He giving in any?”
“Haven’t heard one way or the other, but I doubt it.”
Tyler nodded, remembering the time his own father had brought the truck to Mr. Hoag’s garage for some body work. Mr. Hoag charged him a hundred more than he’d quoted, which sent Tyler’s father into a shit fit. But no matter how loudly his dad shouted, Mr. Hoag wouldn’t change his tune. In the end, Tyler’s father paid up. “Man’s stubborner than a corpse,” his father muttered. And coming from his old man, that had been saying something.
“How much time they gonna give him?” Tyler asked.
“Dunno.”
“You think the Program would really … you know … send you guys down the road?” Tyler had a hard time seeing them giving up Jesse. The guy was a one-man army. Even Steel’s men were becoming less and less willing to engage him in the training simulations.
“It was part of the deal the Program made with the government,” Jesse said. “They can’t hold any of us against our wills. Rights as U.S. citizens.”
Jesse remained staring along his outstretched leg, where a toe the size of a child’s fist punched through a hole in his sock. Tyler couldn’t say quite how, but Jesse looked different, sounded different.
“Hey, that guy who called you at Eddie’s,” Tyler ventured, “and told you about this Saudi Arabia thing? Have they learned anything more about him?”
“Naw. Call came from a blocked number.”
“Someone from the royal family, maybe?”
“Dunno.”
“How do you think he knew where to find you?”
Jesse shrugged.
Behind Tyler, the music continued to whine from his brother’s headphones. Across the room, Scott snorted and then resumed snoring. “You think he’s got anything to do with that group Kilmer’s worried about?”
Jesse didn’t even shrug this time.
“Huh?” Tyler pressed.
Jesse raised the orange headphones from around his neck and placed them over the lumpy discs of his ears. He depressed a button and closed his eyes.
For several minutes, Tyler watched him. Following their meeting the night before, Kilmer and Steel had asked Jesse to stay behind. Whatever questions they’d put to him, Tyler had almost no doubt Jesse had answered with the same flat stares and “I dunno’s.” But Tyler knew Jesse in a way they didn’t. He knew when his friend’s mind was grappling with something.
And right now, Jesse’s mind was grappling big time.
A hard knock sounded on the door. Tyler sat up as one of Agent Steel’s men pushed it open. “The director wants you in the training room in ten minutes,” he said. “This is not a drill.”
Gainesville, Florida
Reginald squinted through the Glock’s rear sight at the empty doorway. After several seconds, his shoulders began to tremble. Six days in the Nanny, and he could hardly hold a two-pound pistol aloft.
“I can hear you breathing in there,” Shadow said. “Are you waiting for me to show my pretty little head so you can blow it off?”
The door to the spare room had opened inward, and Reginald guessed she’d seen the empty contraption—liquid nutrients dripping all over the floor—and recoiled. By the acoustics of her voice, she had retreated into the bathroom. Without shifting the pistol, Reginald eyed the slice of wall to the right of the door. A wall his bullets might penetrate, but it would be shooting in the dark.
“Techie is going to be so disappointed when I tell him about your Houdini act. ‘Inescapable,’ he called it.” She gave a short, sharp laugh. The mirror covering Reginald’s medicine cabinet clicked open. “Maybe not true of his little invention, but some things are inescapable, aren’t they, Reggie? Our bodies, for example, with their nasty mutations.”
Reginald heard the clinking sound of his vials being gathered up.
No.
“We dropped in on you Sunday, right? Assuming you took your injection that day
, you’d be due another in, let’s see, about a week? Though I’m guessing your window is a little smaller.”
It was. He’d injected the Wednesday before, which meant he was due in four days. He used his shoulders to blot the sweat from his eyes, then drew his knees in to support his elbows. He thought about pushing himself to his feet, but he was too weak to rush her. She’d be armed, anyway.
“You already took my future when you murdered Madelyn,” Reginald said, surprised at the strength in his voice. “What the hell else do you want from me?”
“What you were supposed to have given us years ago.”
The vials sounded as though they were being dropped into a carrying case.
No, no, no. “Can we forget the Scale for a minute and talk like brother and sister?”
“I don’t have any family,” she replied coldly.
“If you can’t see your face in mine, for Christ’s sake, then search your memory. We were five years old, living on a tenant farm in Georgia. We had a horse named Ginger. Real gentle. We’d take turns boosting each other onto her when Mom and Dad weren’t around.”
His sister gave the vials a jangle. “If you want more, you know who to call. As for me, I have a flight to catch to the Middle East.”
Their blue eyes met briefly as she strode past the open door in a black body suit, a duffel bag with his medication—his life—hanging from her shoulder. He squinted along the pistol’s barrel. Maybe it was the memory of her sitting atop Ginger, kicking her small, dusty feet and squealing at their horse to “gid-up” that made him hesitate. The gun remained as mute as his lips.
“I’ll be sure to say hello to your friends while I’m over there.”
Friends?
“They’re more helpless than they realize.”
The moment her meaning clicked, the gun in Reginald’s hands jumped. Bang! Bang! Bang! The wall between him and the living room splintered. Casings flipped off as smoke puffed past his face. Reginald squeezed until the receiver locked open. As he dropped out the empty magazine and pawed for the other one, he realized how vulnerable he’d left himself.
XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Page 19