by Kelly Meding
“Just Rick. I won’t need anyone else.”
“And Rick is?”
“He made the blue power sparklers.”
Firework Boy. Good to know.
“Where do you want to meet?” Teresa asked.
“Off the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“The J. Fenimore Cooper rest stop,” I said without thinking. I’d been there, I knew how to get back. And it seemed fitting, somehow.
“Agreed,” Sasha said. “Nine p.m.”
“They’ll be there, with the supplies.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Sasha hung up. We stared at Teresa’s phone for a few seconds, letting that sink in. My nerves jumped. Another clandestine meet-up with brainwashed superpowered teenagers on the side of the turnpike. The first one had ended in a semi-kidnapping to a strange, small town. I had to assume this one would end better.
I hoped.
* * *
Driving away from our HQ and my friends felt a little like saying good-bye. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to happen, something I couldn’t stop, and that I might never see them again. I tried not to look at the distant shape of the observation tower as it receded in the distance. Tried to keep focused on the tasks at hand.
First task: drive to the rest stop.
Second task: let Bethany talk without pissing off the kids she needed to get on our side.
Third task: get home safely.
Task three seemed to be the one giving my gut trouble as I turned onto the Jersey turnpike and drove south. These kids were unpredictable and dangerous, and our enemies had an inexplicable way of tracking us down whenever we left HQ. Anything could happen at any moment, and while Bethany and Thatcher had some pretty awesome powers, I had a Coltson strapped to my back and not much else.
Sarcasm was so not a useful weapon in nonverbal negotiations.
Bethany fidgeted in the backseat the entire trip, tapping her feet and humming nonsense until I wanted to stretch a hand back and slap her. Fortunately our destination arrived before I gave in to the urge.
The motorcycle Landon had arrived on a few days ago was gone, a prize too tempting for any thief to leave abandoned. I drove to the front of the empty restaurant where another car was parked—old, rusty, the kind of junker you wouldn’t expect to run at all. Next to it, my Sport looked positively Space Age.
A little bolt of apprehension tore through my gut as I climbed out of the driver’s seat. I scanned the parking lot but saw nothing distinctly out of place. The occasional hum of a passing car crept over from the turnpike. Somewhere a crow called out, and I couldn’t help wishing Marco was nearby, watching my back. I never went off without my friends like this, and now it was twice in three days.
Thatcher took point, approaching the glass restaurant doors with careful steps. Bethany followed with the satchel of medical supplies, and I brought up the rear. The glass was tinted and reflective in the sunlight, preventing a good look at the interior. The door opened with a tired squeal, and we walked into the lion’s den.
The restaurant lobby branched to the left and right into two separate eating establishments, chains long ago gone out of business. Booths with red vinyl and black tables filled the room on the right, and two familiar figures stood up front near the shiny metal counter. Sasha wore the same clothes as before, along with a brand-new weight of exhaustion. Next to her Rick was rubbing the fingers of his right hand together, creating little blue sparks that were probably supposed to intimidate us.
He looked too tired, young, and scared to be all that intimidating.
Thatcher stopped with a good six feet between us and them, then crossed his arms over his chest, doing a very good impersonation of an impatient parent waiting for his unruly kids to come clean about their latest disaster. This, of course, made Rick bristle, pegging him as the Alpha male of their little group. He moved forward half a step, putting himself in front of Sasha.
We went through the formality of introducing ourselves. Sasha glanced at the face of her phone, then said, “You have thirty minutes. Go.”
“Uh . . . ,” was Bethany’s inauspicious beginning.
After she found her voice, she launched into a brief history of the work she and Landon did for small, starving communities; our little battle at the warehouse and next-day meeting; Landon confronting his father for the first time and taking us to the little town with no name. While she spoke, Thatcher called HQ and got Landon on the line, and he added his two cents over speakerphone. Afterward, it was Thatcher’s turn on the floor, repeating the same things about the War, the Bane label, and being told his wife and son were dead—things that I already knew.
Since this was all an epic rerun of information for me, I studied Sasha and Rick while they listened and occasionally interjected to ask a question. They were exhausted, that was plain to see. And they looked lost. They were both raised to follow orders, to report to someone older and more experienced than them, and now they’d been cut off. They were floundering and doing their damnedest to be strong for the other kids. In some strange way, it was like looking in a funhouse mirror at Teresa and Gage ten months ago.
“Your mother was a good friend of mine,” Thatcher said to Sasha. “She was a strong woman, loyal and brave.”
Sasha’s eyes got glassy and wet. “Is she alive?”
“She died a few years ago. She got sick after her second daughter was born, and she never got better.”
He left out a big chunk of conspiracy theory there. Some of the island residents had blamed a handful of deaths on the depressant the government had pumped into the fresh water supply. Warden Hudson’s bosses had wanted the Banes docile, no matter what. No one had tried to prove the drug caused the deaths. Yet.
“Second daughter?” Sasha asked.
“Whitney. She fell ill, too, a few months ago. She passed away.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “You said something about a half-brother?”
“Yes, he’s eight. He doesn’t live in Manhattan anymore. Maybe one day you’ll be able to meet him.”
“They could be tricking you,” Rick said. He sounded like he was trying to make himself believe his own accusation.
“Your father’s name was Arnold Anderson,” Thatcher said to Rick. “We knew each other during the War. He was a good man. If he was anything like me, he gave you up to protect you from people who would use you against him.”
Rick’s expression soured. I flashed Thatcher a surprised look. I hadn’t been aware that he’d figured out who Firework Boy was, and I was annoyed that he’d kept that bit from me. I couldn’t help but wonder what else he was keeping to himself about these kids. And damn him, anyway, he wouldn’t look at me.
Thatcher didn’t say anything else, and Rick finally relented and asked, “What happened to him?”
“He was killed by police seventeen years ago. Forty-seven bullets.”
Rick flinched.
My heart beat with anger on Arnold Anderson’s behalf. Forty-seven bullets to kill one man? The fucking police had gone way overboard—but that wasn’t the first whisper of excessive violence used against Metas during the War. Just the first I’d heard spoken so plainly.
“We’re all Metas,” Landon said over the phone. I’d forgotten he was part of the conversation. “We need to fight together, not separately. We’re stronger as a family.”
Sasha looked at her phone. “Your thirty minutes are up. Medical supplies?”
Bethany inched close enough to hand over the satchel.
“Maddie will get better treatment at our HQ,” I said. “Bullet wounds are tricky, especially if they get infected.”
The look Sasha and Rick shared dinged a bell for me. The infected comment must have hit pretty close to home.
“Part of being a leader is taking risks,” I added, speaking directly to Sasha. “When someone’s life is at stake, sometimes you have to play the odds and trust strangers.”
“I want Maddie to get better,” Sas
ha said, voice rough.
“Then let us take her to our doctors. Please.”
“We’d need a trade,” Rick said. “One of you for her, just in case.”
“I’ll go with you.” The words left my mouth before I could even think them through. I couldn’t very well nominate someone else as a hostage, and while I didn’t relish the idea of being blindfolded and carried off again, I could do it. Just as long as they didn’t try to tie me up. Thatcher turned to glare at me, and I gave him a shushing look in return.
Off Sasha’s dubious look, I added, “What? I’m the harmless one, remember?”
Bethany snickered.
“All right, agreed,” Sasha said. “When we bring you Maddie, you’ll come back with us while she’s being treated.”
“Deal. Where?”
“There’s a place in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Warinanco Park. One a.m.”
“Okay.” I committed that crazy name to memory.
“I want to go with you,” Bethany said.
“We have a trade already,” Sasha replied.
“Not as a hostage or whatever. I want to go with you and meet the others. I just want to talk to them, you know? Please?”
Handing Bethany off to them was a double-edged sword. We were down one Looney Tunes teenager who seemed to entertain herself by hitting on anyone who struck her fancy. We were also turning her loose on the world, putting her right into the hands of some other wild-card kids I still didn’t fully trust. Plus Landon would shit himself if his “sister” ran away with the bad guys.
“It’s okay with me,” Rick said. He eyeballed Bethany, who cocked a hip for his benefit.
I rolled my eyes.
“Fine,” Sasha said. “You pick a fight or get out of line, and I’ll dump your skinny ass on the side of the road somewhere in Ohio before you’ve figured out what’s going on.”
Wow. Just how fast did the human tornado spin?
“Cool,” Bethany said.
I glanced at Thatcher, who finally met my gaze. He didn’t look any happier about this situation than I was, but we both knew the same thing—the decision wasn’t in our hands this time.
The three of them left first, marching out of the decrepit old rest stop in single file, Bethany a prize between them. Once the door swung shut with a bang, Thatcher made a strangled, somewhat infuriated sound.
“I can’t believe we let her go with them,” he said.
“What were we supposed to do?” I retorted. “Tell her no, she can’t hang out with her friends, she’s grounded?”
“What if they use her against us?”
“They can try, but they won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Instinct.”
“Great.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Look, I know you’re worried about how Landon’s going to react, but he’s a big boy. He’s not going to bust his stitches or throw a clot over Bethany going off on her own.”
The way his jaw twitched told me I’d hit right on the mark.
“Derek, the important thing is that Maddie is going to get the treatment she needs.” I didn’t even know the girl, and I wanted her to get help. She might have been raised on lies about how she became an orphan in Uncle’s care, but she was still a Meta. She was still a kid. She deserved a chance.
“You’re right.” The heavy sigh tacked onto the end made me think admitting that was a huge burden for him. The jerk.
I stepped up to him, better able to see the barely contained frustration and anger in the way he clenched his fists and breathed hard through his nose. The heightened emotions made him impossibly better-looking. “One step at a time. First HQ, then the swap.”
He stared down at me, mouth pressed into a thin line. He raised a hand and touched my cheek, and I didn’t flinch away. “I am so mad at you for trading yourself for Maddie,” he said softly. Roughly.
“I couldn’t tell,” I teased, forcing a smile I didn’t feel. My insides twisted up at the idea of being a hostage again.
He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, as he worked out whatever he was trying to (or trying not to) say. I waited, anxious and curious and scared as hell.
“The hell with it,” he said.
A warm mouth pressed gently to mine, a flutter of lips and heat. The vaguest taste of coffee and man hit me in the gut, and a noise deep in my throat broke loose. Something needy and wonderful and embarrassing all at once. I cupped the back of his neck and pulled him closer, opening for the kiss that didn’t deepen right away. His lips played at mine, tasting and teasing, until the tip of his tongue swiped across my teeth, and then it was over.
My heart slammed against my ribs, and I clung to his shoulders, breathing hard despite the gentleness of the kiss. I wanted more, but couldn’t make myself ask for or take it. I’d lost that courage somewhere these last few months, lost confidence in myself as a sexual person. In some ways, I felt like a teenager getting her first kiss from a forbidden older boy. And it was awesome.
He brushed his lips across my forehead. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I said, “Disappointed?”
“Hardly.” He pulled back a few inches. “Are you going to slap me for taking liberties?”
“Taking liberties?” I laughed, genuinely amused at his words and his concern. “No, I’m not going to slap you. I’m impressed you made the effort.”
“You can’t see your own beauty beyond your old injuries, can you?”
I pulled away, and he let me go. A few feet of safe distance between us shattered the spell of that lovely kiss, and it brought back up a nice, defensive wall. “We should get back. We’re on a timetable.”
“Right.”
He called HQ while I drove. Teresa was, as expected, pissed about us losing Bethany. She was less angry about the trade for Maddie, because she understood the decision I’d made—“I’d have done the same thing,” she said, and that made me feel better about the whole deal. She told us Dr. Kinsey would be ready when we got back to the parking lot.
Derek and I made the rest of the drive in silence.
Eighteen
Dirty Outs
Warinanco Park was easy to find. As soon as he heard the destination, Marco shifted into his raven form, then flew off to find the place so he knew exactly where to go later. He would be driving the Sport containing me, Teresa, and Dr. Kinsey. Teresa had insisted on being part of the exchange, not just for security but in case Kinsey needed assistance with Maddie on the drive back to HQ.
My entire body hummed with kinetic energy, with the need to stretch and flex and use the power that my damaged skin no longer allowed. Mostly it was from nerves. I was scared to go out there without my friends. Scared to be a prisoner, even if it was with a bunch of teenagers. Their powers rivaled ours and they knew it. So much could go wrong so easily.
So what else is new?
Teresa twisted around in the front seat and looked back at me, her eyebrows arched. I stopped tapping my fingers on the door, starting tapping on my thigh, then just sat on my hands. Her sympathetic look made me want to burst into tears. No one knew how long the swap would last. Dr. Kinsey needed to assess Maddie’s wounds before he could guess at her recovery time.
The entrance to the park loomed like a table at a high-stakes poker game—one wrong move, one tell, and it was all over. I shivered.
“Learn everything you can,” Teresa said for the third or fourth time since the trip began. She was nervous, too, if she was repeating herself. “Try to get on their side.”
“I was the way wrong person for this job if it requires being friends,” I said. My attempt at levity fell flat, because it was so often true. I wasn’t the diplomat of our group, and I never would be.
Why had I volunteered to do this again?
Marco met my gaze in the rearview mirror, his glowing green eyes warm and sincere when he said, “You will succeed, Renee.”
His vote of confidence meant
more to me than anyone else’s. Marco didn’t offer encouragement very often. Hell, he didn’t talk much anymore, period, but he had a quiet strength he couldn’t hide, even if he tried, and I liked knowing he believed in me.
“Thanks, sweetie,” I said. I reached up and squeezed his shoulder. The muscles under my hand tensed. Relaxed. He patted my hand, then returned both of his to the wheel.
The park was no longer used—like the rest of the town of Elizabeth—and vegetation had begun to retake the grounds. Our headlights bounced off trees and bushes, casting creepy shadows all over the damned place. Marco drove toward a large lake that reflected the moonlight. He stopped when the lights fell on the same rusty oiece-of-shit car from the rest stop. He shifted into park, but left the engine running so the lights stayed on.
Teresa opened her door first. The rest of us followed suit. I almost fell over when I hit the ground. My knees were watery and I wanted to barf up the sandwich Teresa had forced me to eat before we left HQ. I made my feet take forward steps and met my group at the Sport’s fender.
The two front doors of the car popped open. Sasha emerged from the driver’s side, clutching a linen bag in her hand. I expected Rick again, but it was the Incredible Growing Boy, sporting a red-stained bandage on his wrist. The pair of them came toward us.
“You’re the doctor?” Sasha asked, looking right at the man in question.
“Abram Kinsey,” he replied. He lifted the shoulder supporting the strap of his travel medical kit. “May I see Maddie?”
“Barry will take you.”
The Incredible Growing Boy, aka Barry, led Kinsey over to the car. Kinsey opened the back door and leaned inside to do his thing.
“Thank you for trusting us to help her,” Teresa said.
“I don’t have a choice,” Sasha replied. “Maddie and I haven’t know each other very long, but I can’t let her die.”
“You don’t have to know someone well to know you’re connected.”
“True.” She tossed the linen bag at me, and I almost dropped the thing. “Put that on, please.”
My insides clenched up tight when I pulled a collar out of the bag. “This wasn’t part of the deal,” I said.