by K. C. Archer
Teddy said, “Nilsson and Stanton showed up in Tahoe today. Nilsson made a grab for the Xantal. Didn’t get it,” she clarified at Dara’s gasp, “but somehow they knew where to find it. Whether or not they’re working with Yates, I don’t know. But they knew Miles carried it on him. So this can’t wait. None of it can. Whitfield needs to know what’s going on.”
She turned and made her way downstairs. Whitfield’s chef was in the kitchen. As she passed the dining room, Teddy heard the clatter of pots and pans, the sizzle of something cooking. The aroma of onions and garlic wafted from the kitchen. It smelled delicious and absolutely unappetizing at the same time. For once, Teddy had no desire to eat.
She found Whitfield in his study, seated in a thronelike wingback chair upholstered in perfectly distressed leather. A fire blazed in the hearth. The picture of regal contentment. At her knock, he glanced up from the book he’d been reading. “Miss Cannon. Come in.” He set aside his book and gestured to a bottle of Scotch with an exotic label. “Can I offer you a drink? Or are you officially on duty?”
“Yes, but either way, I’d pass, sir,” she said. She didn’t want to drink with this man.
He indicated the chair opposite him. “I assume everything’s all right?” he said once she was seated.
“Actually, no. It’s not.”
Displeasure flashed across Whitfield’s patrician features. The look was tinged with maybe a hint of superiority, as though Teddy were a valet reporting that his car had been scratched. “If you’re unhappy with your room, Miss Cannon, I’ll ask my housekeeper—”
“I’m talking about what you’re doing to Miles. I’m talking about Xantal.”
Whitfield put down his glass. Carefully. Took a moment to square the edge of the bottle to the edge of the tray. Once satisfied with the arrangement of objects on the side table, he returned his attention to Teddy. “What do you know?”
“I know you created a supervirus and then a drug to suppress psychic expression.” She waited for several pulsing moments as he took that in.
Finally, he said, “And how did you find that out?”
Teddy couldn’t control her anger, but she didn’t want to. “You’re experimenting with a medication that would destroy people like me—the very people your school is supposed to be educating—and your concern is how I found out?”
He pressed his lips together. “I’m asking because you’re focusing on only a very small part of the picture.”
“You’re medicating Miles without his consent! How can you rationalize—”
“Ms. Cannon,” he said, “I understand you’re upset.”
Upset? He had to be kidding. She was furious. Betrayed. “I—”
“You need to listen to me,” he interrupted. “I’m not trying to hurt Miles or anyone else. I believe in the power of psychics to do so much good for our world. That’s why I founded the school. But you have to understand. My son, Julian, was a powerful psychic. Incredibly powerful. But he couldn’t control his gift. His gift was bigger than he was, and it eventually destroyed him.”
“Miles isn’t his father.”
“He has the same ability. A highly dangerous one. Not just to him but to others. I’m doing my best to protect him from that. To protect us all from that.”
He stood and moved to the fireplace. He braced one hand on the mantel, lifted a poker, and stirred the logs. Directing his gaze toward the flames rather than her, he said, “After my son was killed, I devoted myself to helping psychics learn to control their powers and harness them for the greater good. But I always knew that there were some psychics, like Julian, who would never be able to perform that role. So I founded Hyle. Funded the research and development of Xantal. It’s groundbreaking therapy. One that can alleviate a burden from those who can’t protect themselves. It could be Miles’s only chance at a long and healthy life. His only chance at not being a force of destruction. Can’t you see I’m doing the right thing? Can’t you see I’m acting in his interest and not against it?”
Teddy rubbed her forehead. She understood. But didn’t Miles deserve to know? Didn’t he deserve a chance to see if he could master his powers? “Even if I did agree with you, it wouldn’t be fair not to at least let him decide for himself. Besides the interpersonal family drama, which I’m not about to get into, can’t you see that what you’ve opened is a veritable Pandora’s box in terms of psychic genetics? If this research falls into the wrong hands, HEAT would be the least of your concerns—”
Whitfield’s cell phone rang, interrupting Teddy’s thought. He checked caller ID, then looked at Teddy. “I am willing to take that risk. If you’ll excuse me, I have to take this. And I demand privacy.”
She stepped into the hall but lingered outside his door. She would grudgingly accept that their conversation had been interrupted, but she was unwilling to consider it over. Not until they’d discussed what had happened that afternoon. If the PC was after Xantal, Whitfield needed to be made aware of that threat.
Moments later—was it her imagination?—she thought she caught the words “demonstrators” and “Hyle Pharmaceuticals” from the other side of the door.
Teddy froze. The combination of protesters and Hyle Pharmaceuticals meant only one thing: HEAT was active once again. Coupled with Nilsson and Stanton’s appearance in town, it was all too coincidental. If she’d learned anything from training, it was that coincidences were never just coincidences, not when so many threads of a case suddenly came together.
She didn’t waste any time debating whether to use her astral projection to slip inside Whitfield’s study and hear what was going on. Lives were at stake. She needed to know.
With Pyro and Clint’s coaching, Teddy had perfected the art of meditating into a near-instant state of relaxation. She planted her feet firmly on the ground, slowly breathed in and out. Straightened her spine, brought her head high, aligned her chin with her chest. Relaxed her body, zoned out of her current surroundings, and eased into an otherworldly state of being, mentally connecting it to the earth and sky, bringing herself into the oneness of the universe.
Then she released her astral body from her physical one. And there it was—that jerk—a terrible, dark, agonizing pull. Followed almost immediately by lightness.
Her astral body was inside Whitfield’s office, floating over his mahogany desk as he sat, his fist curled around the old telephone receiver. From her vantage point, she could see that Whitfield’s seemingly thick white hair was starting to thin at the crown.
“What do you mean, you can’t clear them from the property?” he demanded. “They’re protesters, a bunch of wannabes.” A pause as he listened to whatever was being said on the other end. “I don’t care if the media is there. They’re on private property. Call the police. Do something. That’s what I’m paying you for.” Another pause. “You sure it was him? That Nevin character? And you caught him on our security camera?” A note of victory crept into Whitfield’s voice. “Have him arrested. He almost killed my grandson.”
Eli Nevin was alive. Shock coursed through Teddy. She struggled to decide whether she was deeply relieved or furious that his disappearing act had put Jillian through a solid month of hell. Both, really.
“If you can’t handle it, I’ll handle it myself,” Whitfield barked into the receiver. “Get the plane ready.” With that, he slammed down the phone.
The noise startled Teddy’s astral body, and it went crashing back into her physical one. Her knees nearly gave out, but she recovered enough to remain standing.
Whitfield flung open the door to his office and stepped out. Gave Teddy a cursory glance as he strode past her. “Pack your things. Tell your friend and Miles, too. The jet will be ready in thirty minutes. We’ll have Christmas in San Francisco.” With that, he walked away.
* * *
This was the first time in a long time that Teddy had felt some sympathy for Clint. How, truly, can you protect someone from himself?
She didn’t have an answer when she k
nocked on Miles’s door. “Almost ready?” she called.
“Just about. Come in.”
She opened the door and saw Miles throwing his things into a suitcase. She looked around and didn’t see any sign of his satchel or the syringes. She hesitated in his doorway.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“I was just wondering about your medication.”
“What about it?”
“Are you taking it with you?”
“Why do you care?”
“Miles, I just want to make sure it’s someplace secure—”
“But you’re still going to keep me in the dark.”
Teddy stepped inside the room and shut the door behind her. “For a little while longer, yes.”
“First some crazy woman tries to steal it from me, and now you come in here all concerned about ‘securing’ it.” He turned and pulled something out from under the pillows on his bed. When he turned back to her, he was holding the canvas bag. “I’ve been injecting this shit into my body. Don’t you think I deserve to know what the hell is going on?”
“Of course you do,” Teddy said, and she meant it.
“Then tell me!”
She wanted to. She’d been medicated for so many years; learning the truth about who she was and who her parents had been had liberated her. She opened her mouth, wondering what small bits of truth would satisfy him. But it was impossible to give him any piece of it without unraveling the fiction of his happy life and exposing secrets that she had promised to keep. The silence stretched.
“Fine,” he said, and turned his back to her. In one quick movement, he pulled one of the wrapped syringes from the bag, ripped off the paper with his teeth. “I think I need another dose.”
“Miles, don’t.”
He dropped his pants and stood there in his boxers, holding the syringe next to his thigh. “And why not? The drug levels my moods, calms me down. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t take it.” He pressed the needle against his flesh, ready to plunge it.
“Because it’s not designed to treat a mood disorder.” She exhaled, hoping that would satisfy him for now.
His expression was dark, unappeased. “Then what’s it for?”
For a moment, she considered letting him do it. After all, he had taken it before. But she couldn’t. She either had to tell him or let him inject himself with a drug that Hyle was developing to suppress psychic expression.
She tried to remember how Clint had first told her. He was direct, she recalled. Straightforward. “There’s no simple way to put this,” she said, “so I’ll just say it. You, Miles Whitfield, are psychic. And that drug was designed to repress your power.”
Miles stared at her. “Psychic? I’m not psychic.”
“Specifically,” Teddy continued, “you’re ergokinetic. Why do you think the bomb exploded but didn’t hurt anyone at your grandfather’s party? You absorbed the energy. Why do you think that tree branch crashed in the woods, landing squarely on the hood of the reckless driver? The icicle that nearly impaled the thief? You channeled the energy. You’re psychic, Miles. Like me.”
Miles dropped the needle as his face went white in shock. Teddy slumped back against the door. She’d done it—told him the truth. There was no going back now. And so, with only ten minutes before they had to catch a plane to San Francisco and head to Hyle Pharmaceuticals, Teddy told him as much of the truth as she could: about his father, his grandfather, the Whitfield Institute, and her own psychic abilities.
“Miles!” his grandfather called from downstairs. “We have to leave. The plane is ready.”
“Just a minute,” he called, and then said to Teddy, “You actually believe I have psychic powers?”
Teddy remembered how hard it had been for her to accept this fundamental truth about herself. Miles was definitely an ergokinetic. No other explanation fit.
She studied his face and felt like she was looking straight into her own past.
“Yes, Miles. I really do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AS FAR AS STRETCH LIMOS were concerned, the one that picked them up at the airport was relatively sedate. More like something a politician would ride in than the kind of glitzy, blinged-out monstrosities that cruised the Vegas Strip. Still, Dara was impressed. “Never been in one of these,” she whispered to Teddy. “Too bad this isn’t the time to poke my head through the sunroof and wave around a bottle of champagne.”
Later, maybe. Definitely not now. Teddy and Dara sat with their backs to the driver, and Whitfield and Miles faced them. There was a small bar lined with top-shelf Scotch, vodka, and gin, but Teddy knew no one was in the mood to drink. No one was in the mood to talk, either.
She glanced around the vehicle’s interior. She didn’t need to read minds to follow the paths everyone’s thoughts had traveled. Whitfield was anxious about the disruption at Hyle. Miles was furiously brooding over the fact that not only had his grandfather hidden the truth from him for years, he had also medicated him without consent. Dara was wondering if the stretch limo had a sick sound system. Teddy was sorting through the events of the last few months. Though she knew it all intersected somewhere—Hyle Pharmaceuticals, the PC, Whitfield Institute—the Venn diagram connecting them felt too narrow to wedge open with words. So they traveled in uncomfortable silence until they reached the laboratory.
The corporate headquarters occupied a four-story building located on a one-way street in South San Francisco. A building so plain and unremarkable, Teddy would have passed by without a second glance had it not been for the police car idling in front, blue lights flashing, monitoring a group of roughly fifty protesters who swarmed around the entrance.
Whitfield cursed under his breath, his body stiffening. He cracked his window, perhaps to get a better look at the scene, and the crowd’s muffled chants amplified: “Cruella! De Vil! How many animals did you kill?”
“Why the hell aren’t the police doing anything to get rid of these idiots?” he growled.
“It’s called the First Amendment,” Miles said. “They have a right to protest against something they feel is wrong.” He leveled his grandfather with a dark glare. “We all should have that right. Informed protest.” Only Teddy could name the emotion behind his words: betrayal.
Whitfield frowned but didn’t pursue the comment. He directed his driver to pull around to the side entrance.
Teddy scanned the crowd for Eli. She couldn’t spot him in the jostling mass of people but knew he had to be there. She’d overheard Whitfield confirm it. Besides, this was a HEAT event, and HEAT was Eli’s baby.
As the limo slowed, Dara leaned toward Whitfield. “Sir, you and I will jump out and move inside at the count of three. Do not look at the protesters, keep your eyes on the door.” Teddy started to slide over to join them, but Dara shook her off. “I’ll cover Whitfield, you stay with Miles. He’s your charge until we’re released from duty.” She turned back to Whitfield. “One, two, three.”
Dara threw open the door and hustled Whitfield into the side door. Teddy watched, impressed at her friend’s professionalism. She might just make one hell of a Secret Service agent.
Miles stared after his grandfather. Teddy saw his jaw tighten. Watched the cords in his neck stretch. He flexed his knee up and down, clenched and unclenched his fist. “All these years. I was actually grateful to him for taking me in after my dad died.” He gave the canvas satchel resting at his feet a pointed glare. “And what has he been doing? Lying to me.”
Teddy immediately regretted having told Miles the truth. Her timing had been awful. If she’d only waited until they reached Tiburon, Whitfield could have explained his reasoning. Explained that he’d been trying to protect Miles, not hurt him. But the more time Miles had to brood over what Whitfield had done, the more furious he became. Teddy did not want to see his ergokinetic energy released here. Not within this pulsing mass of people. The odds of someone getting hurt were too high.
She saw her greatest fear: a buzz of e
nergy hovering just on the edge of her perception. She had come to recognize it as the stirrings of psychic power. “Listen to me, Miles. You have to stay calm. Those breathing exercises you learned for managing pain? Do them now. Don’t let your anger—”
We must speak, Theodora.
Yates. A chill raced up Teddy’s spine. She shored up her protective psychic walls.
Miles asked, “What? What is it?”
Teddy held up a finger. She twisted around and tapped the partition. The driver slid it open and met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Swing around and make a slow pass by the front gate,” she instructed.
The driver inched the car forward. Teddy peered through the tinted window, searching the faces of the protesters. Mostly early-twentysomethings waving signs. Loads of scraggly beards, ripped jeans, and backpacks with patches of hackneyed wisdom sewn on.
Then her gaze stumbled over a slim man standing by himself on the eastern side of the building, away from the swarm of protesters. Deliberately removed from the crowd. Closely shorn hair, dark gaze. A posture that suggested confidence and control.
Derek Yates.
Teddy swung around to face Miles. “Wait here,” she said firmly. “Do not get out of this car.” She turned to the driver. “Let me out, lock the doors, and drive back around to the side entrance. Do not let anyone in this car except Dara, me, or Hollis Whitfield. Understood?” She was barking orders and it felt good. Anger was her charge.
Teddy flung open the door and stepped onto the asphalt. She was on fire, flushed. The noise around her was nearly deafening.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho! Animal testing has got to go!”
She shouldered through the crowd of protesters and made her way over to Yates.
Teddy was sick of this man. Sick of his witty banter, his half-truths and manipulations. Everything. She needed him gone. Out of her life and back in prison, where he belonged.
That hurts, Theodora.
She was so angry she had momentarily allowed her mental defenses to slip. She shored them up once more before he could reenter her thoughts. “No, you don’t. You aren’t going to mentally influence me, Yates. You don’t get to use me the way you used Eli. In fact, you don’t get to talk to me anymore. Consider this our final goodbye.” Teddy was yelling now, but it didn’t matter. The din of the crowd was all around them, blanketing their words. They were in a private cocoon.