10 Fatal Strike

by Shannon McKenna

  “Oh, sir!” Miranda’s eyes batted, sucking up without shame. “That’s brilliant! I took the sheet from the house where they stayed, so we can use that! They very definitely had sex on it.”

  Greaves frowned. “Poor girl. Putting her right to work for her keep, I see. Fragile as she is. It’s a disgrace.”

  “Yes, of course,” Miranda backpedaled hastily. “Terrible.”

  “Davenport has been out of circulation for several months. He’s been depressed, injured and brain damaged, and that supports our story,” he mused. “Take the bodies of the men he killed this afternoon, and bury them behind his cabin. Keep them in the body bags, so the police can find his prints on the duct tape he bound them with. We can say that these were men I hired to look for Lara Kirk myself. I am such an admiring patron of her artwork, I decided to help in the search. My men found her at this cabin, and contacted me. After which I never heard from them again. What do you think?” He looked around, bright eyed. “Does it hold water? Is it good?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Excellent, sir. Perfect.” Fawning murmurs swept the room.

  Anabel could not bring herself to say anything. Her throat felt like a tube of concrete.

  Silva piped up. “He has the McClouds and his other associates to serve as alibis, and to testify about the rescue from the facility at Kolita Springs,” he reminded them.

  “An excellent observation, Silva, but I think that once their children start to die of inexplicable organ failure, they may rethink their story on what happened at Kolita Springs,” Greaves said. “They do not strike me as stupid people.”

  Silva subsided, and Greaves clapped his hands briskly. “Make it happen, people. Set the bots to sift for Davenport’s face, in addition to Lara’s, Miranda. Silva, bring me the latest statistical analyses of the prison populations. I haven’t looked them over properly yet.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Anabel approached Greaves. “Sir,” she said. “A request.”

  “Now is not a good time to ask for favors, Anabel.” Greaves did not look up from the sheaf of documents that he was flipping through.

  “I just want to go on record as saying I’m ready to pay the price.”

  Greaves frowned up at her. “What price?” he snapped. “Are you still concussed, Anabel? You’re not making sense.”

  “No, sir.” Her jaw throbbed from clamping her teeth. “I’m talking about the old-fashioned technique for releasing latent psi. The kind they used on you. I don’t care how much it hurts. I’m willing to do it.”

  “Are you indeed?” Greaves was expressionless.

  “I’m not afraid of pain,” Anabel said.

  “Hmmph.” Greaves’ blue eyes narrowed, speculative.

  Anabel shuddered as she tried to relax into the sudden telepathic probe. He flung open door after door, peering into her darkness. Each stab of inquiry jogged loose memories that hurt, like being shocked with electricity. But she was stronger now. She could take it.

  Finally, the probe withdrew. Anabel waited, bruised and shaken.

  “No,” Greaves said. “I think not.”

  Anabel stared at him blankly. “But . . . but sir, I—”

  “You don’t have the right character,” Greaves said. “Too much damage at an early age. That bad business in your preadolescence, the confinement, the sexual abuse, brrr. Terrible. Such a shame, with your amazing potential. Parts of your brain function are suppressed, other parts are overcompensating, there are chemical imbalances of all kinds, a general state of imbalance and chaos. You’re a mess, Anabel. If I stressed you that hard, you’d almost certainly go mad. Or die.”

  “But I’m not afraid of pain,” she said. “Or death.”

  “You should be,” he said, with what looked almost like sympathy. “That’s part of the problem. Can you imagine, if I were to give tremendous, irrevocable psychic abilities to someone, and then find that person had gone insane? It would be so irresponsible.”

  Anabel kept shaking her head. “But I . . but I’m not—”

  “A wise person knows her limitations. To be honest, if I had been the one screening you before you first dosed, I would never have chosen to enhance you at all. Too unstable, too many issues. But there it is, so let’s just make the best of it. With the psi-max, you’re a very strong telepath, and your other psi talent was entertaining, too, as I recall. The sexual magnetism. You seem to have lost interest in it. I haven’t seen your beautiful glow for quite some time.”

  “Haven’t been in the mood lately,” she said, woodenly.

  “Just so. Can’t say as I blame you. Oh, wait.” His eyes widened. “I just had a thought. You are the perfect choice to head up the team that will prepare Davenport’s cabin! The chains, the shackles! It’s ideal, see? Use your own personal experience! This is a perfect opportunity for you to take your disadvantage and turn it into an advantage!”

  Anabel stared, blank and baffled. “Sir?”

  “Don’t you see?” he encouraged. “Who better than you can make the scenario of Lara’s imprisonment and sexual slavery watertight and convincing for the forensics experts and the psychologists? After this, anything Lara Kirk might say in Davenport’s defense will sound like the results of brainwashing. We will have killed so many birds with one stone. It has to happen fast, though, because I want to tip the police off first thing tomorrow. Before daybreak, understand? So get to it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her voice was hollow.

  “Oh, why the long face?” He patted her back. “It might help you, doing a sort of re-enactment. Lance the boil, eh? It’s worth a try!”

  She cleared her throat. “Of course, sir.”

  “No time to waste. Be careful to leave no signs of yourselves. All evidence must point to him. And now, if you will excuse me.”

  He walked away. She was already forgotten.

  She stood like a statue, as the wind swirled in through the open doors, bringing with it the icy threat of snow.

  Margot McCloud ran her fingers through the springy mop of red ringlets on her daughter’s head. “You sure you don’t want to go back to the hotel?” she asked gently. “Auntie Erin’s heading back with Kevvie. She’s got movies, and she’s going to order some pizza.”

  Jeannie shook her head. Her mother recognized the look on her daughter’s face. When Davy got that expression, it meant there was no longer any point in arguing. “I’m staying here, with you,” Jeannie said. “I want to know what the doctors say about Daddy.”

  “Okay,” Margot said. “But it’ll be a long wait. Hours and hours.”

  “I’m waiting with you. I don’t care how long.”

  She squeezed Jeannie’s shoulders, trying to fake the tower-of-strength act. Tough, when her stomach was in free fall. How often she complained about Davy’s stubbornness, his stoicism, his set-in-stone opinions and principles. Never fully conscious of how heavily she leaned on the massive, solid rock that was her husband’s out-sized personality.

  Not until Fate threatened to rip it away did she realize how he defined her world. He was her bedrock. Without him she would fall. With two kids in her arms, and no idea how far down there was to go.

  It was unthinkable to lose Davy, and likewise unthinkable to imagine him comatose, reduced. Davy’s defining characteristic was his colossal strength and endurance. But it happened every day, at random, to all kinds of people. It could just as easily happen to him. To them. A car accident, a heart attack, whatever.

  She tried to exhale, but her chest had shrunk since she got Sean’s call, and found out they were prepping Davy for brain surgery. Cerebral damage inflicted from a psychic attack, from some maniac who was messing with Miles and his new mystery girlfriend. She hadn’t actually been listening to the strange tale at that point. Her mind hadn’t really gotten past the words “brain surgery.”

  It was still stuck, banging on that closed door, but too afraid to imagine what was on the other side. Her Davy, hurt. Or changed.

  She f
ought it down. If Jeannie had consented to the pizza and movies at the hotel, she could have sat there alone and blubbered all she liked with no one but her brothers-in-law to see. But with Jeannie there, she had to be tough. It was what Davy would expect. At least little Jamie was in Portland with Lily and Bruno, and Liv had taken Maddy, Erin’s youngest, to Lily and Bruno, too, along with her own little Eamon. It was comforting for everyone, to huddle together. She missed her little Jamie, though. Stoic, too, in his own way. Like his daddy.

  Kevvie and Jeannie had both put their feet down about coming. They had the McCloud strength of character, in spades.

  Erin walked over, after a whispered conversation with Connor in the hospital corridor. Connor grabbed her, pulled her back, and kissed her hard. Margot looked away, horrified by the stab of envy and fear the sight of that caress gave her.

  Please, please, Davy, be okay. I haven’t had you long enough. Jeannie and Jamie haven’t had you long enough. Nowhere near.

  Erin walked over. “So? Jeannie coming back with us? Kevvie’s brought along the first two Harry Potter movies.”

  Margot shook her head. “She’ll wait with me.”

  Jeannie’s thin, strong arm wound around her mother’s waist, and squeezed. Which made a fog of tears spring up. She sniffed them sternly back. Do the hard thing, goddamnit.

  Erin put her hand on Margot’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay,” she said quietly. “He’s tough.”

  Margot didn’t trust herself to reply. Sean came in, his arm flung over his nephew’s shoulder. Kevvie, who looked just like Connor, his father. Long and lean, heavy mane of dirty-blond hair, pale green eyes.

  Erin gathered up her bag and her son, kissed them all, and took off for the hotel. Sean sat down beside them, ruffling Jeannie’s hair, and slumped, unusually silent for him.

  “How’s your head?” she asked. “Did you guys schedule MRIs?”

  “First, we get through this surgery,” Sean said. “That gives us time to think of a way to phrase it. How would we explain it to the staff? Excuse us, but would you mind just doing a brain scan on the two of us, because we feel like it, you know, to pass the time while you operate on our brother’s brain? Or is it better to say, do it because we both just got psychically hammered from afar by an evil scumbag with magical powers? We’d end up sedated in the psych ward.”

  “I don’t think you should wait.” Margot’s voice shook. “Don’t risk it. I don’t care what the people here think. I promised Liv I’d bug you guys about it, and you’re both being assholes and ignoring me.”

  “Shhh,” Sean soothed. “We’re fine, other than the mother of all headaches. Got any more of that ibuprofen on you?”

  “Sure.” Margot dug into her purse, shook a couple pills out into Sean’s hand, which stayed extended until she shook out another two. “You should eat something with that big a dose,” she said.

  Sean tossed the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry. “Kev will bring us something,” he said. “He and Edie and Nina and Aaro went out to grab a bite. Kev’s all worried about Edie getting stressed out in her delicate condition. Can’t blame him, really. I would be.”

  “You need to drink water with those pills,” Jeannie lectured her uncle. “You’ll choke. Here, I have my water bottle.” She pulled out her little black and pink Barbie flask, and shook it, frowning. “I’ll go fill it at the drinking fountain out there. Be right back.”

  “Don’t go out of my sight!” Margot shouted after her.

  “Just to the drinking fountain. It’s right there.” Jeannie scampered around the corner. Connor was right there, talking with one of the nurses, and Jeannie was directly in his line of sight, so she tried not to be a nervous freak about it. Jeannie came back into the waiting room a few seconds later, and plumped down on the couch between them, offering the bottle to her uncle.

  He accepted it with a kiss, and it was while he was squeezing and wrestling and knuckling her head until she giggled and wiggled that Margot noticed the sticky note. It was from a prescription pad that advertised some antibiotic or other, stuck right in the middle of Jeannie’s dark blue tunic sweater.

  That was odd. It wasn’t a place where a sticky note might normally end up on a person by mistake, like a sleeve. No, it was smack dab between her little girl’s shoulder blades.

  Chill apprehension condensed into fear, and froze as she plucked it off. Nothing was written on the front. She turned it to the adhesive side. Her heart stopped beating. Scrawled in ink, the note read

  cute kid

  she’s next

  “Sean,” she said.

  He looked up, catching her tone with his danger antennae, highly developed in all McCloud men. His eyes zapped to the note. Margot silently indicated with her shaking hand, where it had been stuck to Jeannie’s back, and held it up for him to read.

  Sean’s face, already pale, went ashen.

  His eyes met Margot’s, and lit up with that hot, fierce war glow she’d seen in Davy’s eyes many times. A hard comfort, but still a comfort. Thank God for the tough, strong family she had found.

  “Connor,” he called.

  Connor’s antennae were sensitive, too. He looked over, swiftly closed his conversation with the nurse, and strode over so purposefully one would barely notice his limp.

  Sean held up the note. “On Jeannie,” he mouthed.

  “Mama? What is it?” Jeannie had caught the vibe, and was looking around, eyes wide with alarm.

  “Nothing, baby,” she said.

  “Nothing, my foot!” Jeannie’s light green McCloud eyes narrowed.

  “When?” Connor asked.

  “Just now,” Margot replied. “When she went to the drinking fountain.”

  Sean paced out into the corridor, scanning up and down.

  Connor put his hand on Jeannie’s shoulder. “Honey, when you went to the drinking fountain, did anybody touch you?”

  Jeannie frowned in concentration. “Yeah, someone did brush by me when I was filling the bottle. But when I looked over there was just a bunch of doctors walking away. They had the white coats, and those green pajamas. I didn’t know which one it was.”

  “Man, woman?”

  “I saw both in the hall.” Her voice was small.

  Sean came back into the waiting room. He held another note. “This was on the drinking fountain,” he said.

  It was from the same prescription pad, message on the back, as before.

  then comes the boy in 317

  Jeannie wiggled around until she could see it, too. “That’s our room at the hotel! How do they know our room? Isn’t it a secret?”

  “It’s supposed to be,” Margot said. “Keep your voice down, baby.”

  “What name did you check in under?” Connor asked, pulling out his phone.

  “Erin checked in for us. She used the new credit card and ID, the one you told her to use.”

  Connor cursed under his breath. He punched the phone, waited. “Hey,” he said. “Come back here right now, babe. Don’t go to the hotel . . . yeah, I’ll tell you when you’re here. Hurry. Yeah . . . I love you.”

  Sean was on his phone, too, presumably calling Kev and the others. “Yo, dudes. Drop everything, get back here. We’ve got a situation. Very bad. Yeah. Okay. Hurry.”

  He closed the call. They moved closer together, huddling around Jeannie. A human wall. Staring at every person walking by, sitting, working. Everyone they saw, a potential enemy with deadly secret weapons.

  “God, I hate this shit,” Sean murmured, under his breath.

  “We have to move the kids,” Connor said. “Or have someone else move them. Bruno and Lily. Nick, Seth. Petrie would help.”

  “To someplace we don’t know,” Margot said. “If they’re reading us.”

  Sean winced. “We have to block them,” he said. “We can do something like what Miles suggested, in the car. We thought about breakfast, to fake out the telepaths waiting on the road. Pick something vivid and fixate on it.”

 
Margot almost laughed. Yeah, right. Like, her husband under the knife, his brain opened up. That was all she needed to foil a telepath.

  “I’m all set with my image,” she said grimly.

  “We need our own psychic goon squad,” Sean said.

  “I tell you what we need,” Connor said. “We need Miles.”

  23

  eat yr soup

  The command typed itself out onto the screen in her mind.

  Lara looked up from the saltine cracker she was contemplating. Miles was not looking at her. He had not spoken to her at all since their fight, other than curt directives; take a shower, put your clothes in the washer, put these on, hurry up. No smile, or touch. Or eye contact.

  She pressed her hand against the knot in her belly. The shower had relaxed her a little, but she still saw those hanging bodies and distorted faces, blood dripping. Keiko and Franz, too. Her vision of Miles, a pool of blood behind his head. Greaves’ crushing stranglehold. If she’d had any digestive enzymes in her system, they were long gone by now.

  cant she replied.

  He looked at her. An icy look that unexpectedly stabbed into her head like a needle. The cracker shattered in her hand and the table rattled as she lurched to her feet, hands to her throbbing temples.

  “Oh, ouch. Jesus, Miles,” she gasped. “That hurts.”

  “Oh, fuck.” Miles shoved the dishes out of the way and sagged forward, knocking his forehead against the table. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  She tried to breathe. The sharp pain was slowly beginning to recede. “Miles,” she said, somewhat shakily. “You cannot do that to me.”

  “I know.” His voice was muffled.

  She waited for him to get a hold of himself. After a few seconds, he sat up, shoved his snarled hair back, and met her eyes.

  “We’re running for our lives,” he said. “You’ve been starving for months already. What am I supposed to do if you collapse? Where do I take you, Lara? What do I tell them? Help me out, here!”