10 Fatal Strike

by Shannon McKenna

  “Go ahead,” he muttered. “Do your worst.”

  “Your enthusiasm overwhelms me,” Edie said, but his permission had set her hand loose. She was already scribbling frantically.

  The pencil, scratching against paper, scraped nastily over his nerve endings.

  “So,” Kev said. “Woods, mountains. Did it help?”

  “When I was there, it did,” he said. “Doesn’t do shit for me now.”

  “It’s not a solution,” Aaro broke in. “Hiding like a rabbit in a hole.”

  Miles kept his gaze fixed firmly on the dessert menu.

  “So, uh, the sensory overload,” Kev asked. “Is it still . . . ?”

  “Kicking my ass,” Miles supplied.

  Nina reached out again, as if to touch his hand, but stopped. “So why are you here?”

  “Didn’t want to piss off Bruno and Lily,” he offered.

  Sean grunted. “You haven’t cared about pissing us off for a while.”

  Miles was silent, trying to think of something to say that would ward them off, but no such thing existed, or else he was not smart enough to think of it. And these people were his good friends, even though he couldn’t feel the connection. He was looking at them through a tunnel that was light years long.

  A racking shiver went through him. Surrender. He opened his mouth, and the miserable truth fell out, heavily.

  “I was thinking about trying the meds again,” he said.

  An appalled silence greeted that statement.

  “You said the meds made you feel half-dead,” Sean said. “You barely recognized your own family when you were on that shit. You think you’re crazy? Really? It’s that bad? Has it gotten worse?”

  Nina tugged her chair over until she was sitting directly in front of him. Forcing him to meet her eyes. “What’s going on, Miles?”

  “I’ve done time on antipsychotic drugs,” Edie said. “I don’t recommend it. I don’t think you’re there, Miles. None of us do.”

  “But the voices,” he blurted. “I . . . well, I don’t exactly hear her.”

  “Her? Who’s her?” Aaro snarled. “Make some sense, damn it!”

  “Her?” Nina’s eyes went huge. “Lara? You’re talking about Lara? You hear her?”

  “Well, no. I don’t exactly hear her,” he said again. “It’s, uh, text messages. She, ah . . . she texts me.”

  They all glanced around at each other, utterly perplexed.

  “You mean, on your phone?” Davy said, his voice tentative.

  “No,” Miles forced out. “No, I mean, in my head.”

  It took them an interminable, silent interval to process that. He waited, teeth clenched. Braced for it.

  “Weird,” Connor commented, finally.

  “Yeah,” Miles agreed. “I never even met this girl. I’ve been assuming she was dead. And even if she isn’t dead, how would she ever have learned my password?”

  “What the fuck?” Aaro sounded angry. “Password? I could wrap my head around voices. But texts? You’re a machine, with circuitry?”

  “That’s what’s happening to me, so eat it,” Miles growled.

  Aaro gave him the stony mafiya stare. “Don’t give me attitude.”

  “You’re the one with the attitude. If you can’t shove it around or bully it, you don’t want to deal with it at all,” Miles retorted.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Nina scolded. “We’re getting off track.”

  “It’s his hero complex,” Aaro said. “He needs a damsel in distress to save. Cindy’s out of the picture, so he’s creating a new one.”

  Miles snorted. “When the damsel starts texting my brain directly, it’s time for the fucking meds.”

  “You think she’s a psychotic delusion?” Nina asked.

  “Matilda wouldn’t have thought so,” he replied, and then he had to explain all about Matilda, her cryptic voicemail, and her subsequent murder. Those grim details quelled even Edie’s scribbling for a while.

  “This is creeping me out,” Aaro muttered.

  “You’re not the only one obsessing about Lara,” Nina said. “She was like my little sister. Aaro and I have turned this thing inside out.”

  “Me, too,” Miles said bleakly. “I followed them—every clue. Roy Lester’s dead. Dimitri Arbatov, too. Anabel’s disappeared. Rudd got splattered. There’s no such place as Karstow, as far as I can tell. And Thaddeus Greaves is a dead end.”

  Flat silence followed this litany of dead leads. After Nina and Aaro’s adventure, no one was left alive to ask where Lara Kirk might be, except of course for Greaves himself, Rudd’s billionaire boss. Who had insisted that he was as innocent as the dawn. According to Greaves, his minions had gone tragically rogue. So shocking. And embarrassing.

  “I couldn’t read him, when I was close to him,” Nina mused. “His shield was like a force field that swallowed anything it touched. Yours feels kind of like that, too. Remember when you came up with the encrypted computer as your analog for a shield? And I made you write down the password? I remember it. All caps LARA, hashtag—”

  “Stop, Nina,” he warned, but it was too late. The questing tickle in his mind intensified as she dredged up the rest of it, picking up speed.

  “Star, exclamation point, your aunt in California’s zip code—nine two six one nine, hashtag, all caps KIRK, and two question marks!”

  Crack, she breached it—and his world collapsed inward.

  Rudd hung over him, his demonic face purple, screaming. Ear-splitting noise, nerves screaming, searing heat . . . a flash of light . . .

  . . . nothing.

  His eyes fluttered open, later. Flagstones, cool against his cheek. Wrought iron table legs. Human legs, in hose and heels, dress shoes.

  He turned his head. Leaves against a white sky. Anxious faces swam in his vision. He struggled to put names to them, to himself.

  They jolted heavily into place, like train cars coupling. The blur of rust-colored chiffon beside him was Nina. She clutched a bloody napkin to her nose, shaking with sobs. His nose bled, too. Edie passed him a napkin. He plugged the leak, glad for an excuse not to speak.

  Oh, man. And he thought his head had hurt before.

  “Would somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Aaro snarled, as Kev and Davy hoisted Miles up into a sitting position.

  “Oh, God,” Nina whispered, her voice thick. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” Miles said. Though of course, it wasn’t.

  “What didn’t you know?” Aaro bellowed.

  “Shhh.” Nina soothed, patting Aaro’s cheek. “I didn’t know how bad it was,” she said to Miles. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. I don’t know how you’re walking around, with all that going on in your head.”

  “Think I should go for the padded cell, then?”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but surprise, surprise—no one laughed.

  Nina shuddered. “That’s where I’d be,” she said.

  “You had a seizure,” Kev told him. “You were yelling. Looked bad.”

  “Stress flashback,” Sean said. “Rudd?”

  “That’s what happens if I drop the shield. The shield holds it all together.” He glanced pointedly at Nina. “If nobody fucks with it.”

  “Sorry,” Nina whispered, abjectly. “Really. Just trying to help.”

  He started to shake his head. Stopped, with a hiss of pain. “I’m past help. When you start getting text messages from dead girls in your head, it’s time to call the guys in the white coats with the little van.”

  “No,” Nina said. “You’re not crazy, Miles.”

  The murmuring stilled. Miles’ mouth was dangling. He closed it with a snap. “Ah . . . how do you figure?”

  “I saw a little in there, before the seizures,” Nina said. “I felt some of your memories. You never met Lara, but I did. I know her vibe. And I felt it. I felt her. She’s not dead.”

  Miles felt that drum roll starting up. Part dread, part compulsion, rumbling omin
ously inside him. “Nina. Please. Don’t do this to me.”

  “She got through the shield, just like I did,” Nina insisted.

  “You got through it because I told you the password!” he shouted. “How could she get through? I never told it to her. I don’t know her!”

  “You didn’t have to tell her,” she said. “She is your password.”

  Miles struggled to his feet, batting their hands hands away. Batting the whole thought away. Too crazy. Too weird. Blood roared in his ears. His heart thudded, a swift, panicked gallop, even as it slipped into place, with a soft, inevitable “click.”

  This explained so much. He clutched his head in his hands, on the verge of total brain meltdown. Trying to process it.

  She is your password. Holy freaking shit. Could she really . . . ?

  “You think she’s alive, then?” he blurted. “And locked in a dungeon for real? And the only person she can talk to is me? Just because I put her name into my goddamn password?”

  Nina gazed at him steadily. “You put a Lara Kirk shaped hole in your mental shield, Miles. Who better than she could find her way in?”

  “This isn’t helping,” Kev warned. “You’re setting him off. He’ll go off on a quest when we should be calling the paramedics.”

  “It could just be a hallucination,” Davy said.

  “You didn’t feel what I felt,” Nina said.

  “Thank God for that, if feeling it comes with a nosebleed,” Tam commented, with distaste. “I hate getting blood on my clothes.”

  Miles covered his face with his hands against the overload. Too much. That machine inside him, gears grinding. Doors opening, air rushing in. New possibilities, electrifying him.

  “If she’s alive, I’ll find her,” he said.

  “Oh, fuck, no,” Sean muttered. “Here we go again.”

  He’d already tuned them out. He brushed the dust from his suit. He’d whanged his elbow and knee somewhere, going down. Add those high and low notes to the cocktail of undifferentiated pain.

  But as messed up as he was, it was such a relief to give into it. Like he’d been craving something that he knew was bad for him, and now he was like, fuck it. Binge city. “Later, guys,” he said. “I’m gone.”

  “Don’t do this!” Kev sounded angry. “You’re not up to it!”

  “What else am I good for?” he asked, looking around at them. “Seriously? The shape I’m in? What the fuck else do I have to do?”

  Nobody had an answer for that. But he hadn’t expected one.

  Tam pulled a ring off her finger. “Take this. I was too busy with Irina this morning to tart myself up properly, or I’d give you more.”

  Miles held the delicate thing gingerly. The jewelry Tam designed tended to hide lethal secrets. “Is it poisoned?”

  She gave him her most mysterious smile. “I don’t wear pieces treated with poison while I’m with my children. It’s got explosives, though.”

  Miles studied Tam’s striking design. Twists of white and yellow gold tangled around faceted jet. “What’s the trick?”

  “Twist it counterclockwise. It’s a tack, and inside is a wad of explosives. The button on the ring band is a detonator. Punch the spike into a car tire. It won’t blow the tire until you detonate it with the ring band. Stay close. It gets unpredictable at over five hundred meters.”

  “Ah,” Miles said, doubtfully.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure out uses I’ve never even thought of.”

  Miles had no illusions about his own potential sneakiness as compared to Tam’s, but it was a nice thought. He tried to put the ring on his pinkie, but it wouldn’t go past his big knuckle. He slipped it into his jacket. “Thanks.”

  Edie stepped forward and held out the dessert menu that she had used for her drawing. “Take this,” she offered.

  Miles almost dreaded looking at it. “What is it?”

  “Haven’t got a clue. You tell me.”

  It was a mountain peak, two prongs like lopsided horns, and a downward sloping crest between them, like the bridge of a big nose; a metaphor that came easily to him. Superimposed was a crosshatched pattern, like chain link. The tops of three tall conifers framed the scene.

  He looked up at Edie. Shook his head mutely.

  She sighed. “Whatever. It was worth a try.”

  “Thanks anyway.” Miles shoved the picture into his suit jacket, along with the ring. “I’m gone.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Sean said.

  “And me,” Kev added.

  “Me, too,” Aaro chimed in.

  No way,” Miles said. “A mass exodus of all the important guests at Bruno and Lily’s wedding? Stay. Do your duty. I’ll call you later.”

  “No, you won’t,” Aaro said.

  The pain in Aaro’s voice made Miles pause, but only for a moment. He could not deal with his friend’s hurt feelings right now.

  He simply did not have the equipment.

  5

  Greaves gazed at his staff over the rim of the cup, letting them all sweat. He was a benevolent man, who wanted only the best for the people in his charge. But he did not suffer fools gladly.

  He placed the empty cup in its saucer. Someone whisked it away. He turned to Anabel, and Jason Hu. “We’ll begin with you two. What progress have you made on the formula?”

  “Not a great deal,” Anabel admitted reluctantly.

  “Have you taken Lara up to twice a day, as I directed? Upping the doses by three percent daily?”

  “Her blood pressure dropped when we jumped from seventy micrograms to seventy-three,” Hu said. “I dialed it back. I’ve been increasing it in increments of .5 percent. Her sleep cycles are disordered, so we’ve been dosing her at night, and sometimes in the early morning, since that seems most conducive to—”

  “Next time, do exactly as I direct you,” Greaves said. “To the letter. Do not second-guess me again.”

  Hu gulped, his eyes darting down to the table. “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to Anabel. “Do you continue to lose contact when she ranges?”

  “Her ability to shield seems to be growing,” Anabel admitted. “I hang onto her for a while, but I always lose her at some point.”

  “Odd,” Greaves mused. “I had no problem at all monitoring her on the day that she first-dosed. It seems your abilities as a telepath are dwindling. As your other abilities seem to have done, as well.”

  She turned mottled red at his reference to her neglected talent for sexual magnetism. “My talent is as strong as ever, but it’s like I told you, sir. Her shield is impenetrable. If she gets behind it, I get nothing, and neither do the other telepaths. I don’t understand how she—”

  “There is a great deal that you don’t understand, Anabel.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Shut up. I’m done with you for now. Levine, Houghman, Chrisholm, Mehalis. Have any of you had better luck penetrating this momentous shield?”

  The other four telepaths on his staff exchanged nervous glances, and shook their heads. Greaves ground his teeth. Lily-livered idiots, all of them. Anabel was the strongest of the lot, and even she was falling short. He was so sick of hand-holding, micromanaging.

  “Very well,” he said, through his teeth. “Let’s discuss the telepathic surveillance project, then. How is that proceeding?”

  “Fine, sir,” Levine said. “We take six-hour shifts, as you directed. We haven’t detected anyone yet, except in the staged test runs.”

  “Sir,” Silva piped up. “I wanted to speak to you about that. It strikes me as a poor use of resources, considering their limited range. They can’t detect anyone beyond, say, forty meters, and—”

  “It is an exercise, Silva,” Greaves explained patiently. “One does not extend one’s range unless one is forced to push oneself. Are you familiar with the concept of pushing yourself? Because I am beginning to wonder.”

  “Of course, sir, but I think that using just the infrared and motion detectors rather than staff who could be
concentrating on complex—”

  “I ask you to trust me on this, Silva,” Greaves suggested gently.

  Silva subsided. An intelligent decision on his part.

  “Continue with the rotations,” Greaves directed. “Has anyone noticed any increase in range?”

  He looked around, tapping his fingers. No one would meet his eyes. Disappointing, but at least they had better sense than to lie to him. “Very well,” he said crisply. “Moving on.” He flipped through the brief that laid out the research team’s latest results and projections.

  “Lewis.” He addressed the team’s head researcher. “You released the aerosolized toxin into the air ducts of the correctional facility for men in Chikala, Utah, six months ago. Summarize what you have observed since then.”

  Lewis consulted his notes. “Put briefly, there was no perceivable change in the first two months, but in the third month, incidence of violence went down fourteen percent. By the fourth month, it was down thirty-three percent. Fifth month, fifty-seven percent. The sixth month, sixty-eight percent. There were sixty percent fewer visits to the infirmary this past month, and it appears the inmates’ overall general health has improved, as well. Colds, fevers, infections, all way down. The prison staff is healthier, too. Less absenteeism, fewer complaints and conflicts on the job. Inmate suicide attempts are down to almost zero, for the past four months running.”

  Greaves smiled. “Finally, some good news. Thank you.”

  Lewis went on, emboldened. “This recreates the results we got on that last two prison trials, almost exactly. This form of the toxin appears to have a calming effect upon the endocrine system. It lowers stress hormone production, and it mitigates, or even reverses depression. And in an odd side note, it seems that drug use is down, too, though that is difficult to measure in a prison population. Even smoking appears to have decreased.”

  “Very good,” Greaves murmured. “Go on.”

  Lewis fumbled with his papers. “Incidence of sexual violence is down almost sixty-five percent,” he announced.

  Greaves frowned. “Only?”