Renegade's Run

by Brenna Lyons

  Baker forced her chin up until Sarah winced, reminding Jonas that he could kill her easily. “Stop right there, Paige.”

  Jonas put a hand on Steven’s arm to restrain him. “It’s over Baker. Let her go. You can’t win this one.”

  Baker’s eyes shifted to the talent amassing behind them then back to Jonas. “Can’t I? You’re renegades. You know what the military will do. You’ve been on the receiving end of that already. They’ll let you die this time, because there won’t be a keeper there to save you.”

  Sarah met his eyes miserably, fighting back tears.

  Jonas slipped past her shield to touch her mind. He looked back to Baker. “What then? The deck is stacked against you. All we have to do is hold them off long enough to state our case.”

  “You won’t turn me over. You don’t dare.”

  “Why is that?”

  Baker ran the hand under her chest to the swell of their baby. “I’d hate to lose Sarah and this baby, but if you leave me with no other choice, I will take them with me.” Baker’s smile spread as he caressed her again.

  Sarah took the opening to elbow him in the ribs.

  Baker pulled her chin around until she looked at him over her shoulder. “Be friendly, Sarah. After all, you have just as much to lose. Or to gain.” He brushed his lips over her forehead.

  Sarah shuddered, paling at his blatant insinuation. “You’re insane.”

  Jonas sent her calming. “He won’t get the chance. I promise that.”

  Baker turned on him, reading his active talent outlay and guessing the use. He tightened his grip on Sarah until she squawked in protest. “Don’t try it, Paige. You’re the one who’s going to lose this round.” He backed toward the door to an iso tank, releasing Sarah’s face long enough to punch a series of buttons on the control panel. The door slid open, and Baker entered more commands.

  Sarah looked at the door in surprise, a panic settling on her face. She started kicking at him. “No. I’m not going in there.”

  Baker snagged her chin again, his expression murderous. “Don’t try that again, Sarah. An hour or two in iso, and we’ll go back to life as usual.”

  Jonas met her eyes and nodded slowly. Baker was unbalanced enough to kill her if Sarah balked him. Sarah moved her eyes to the chamber and swallowed a sob, settling in Baker’s arms.

  Baker released her jaw and started punching buttons again. “That’s better. Here are the rules, Paige. I’ll be locked in the iso chamber with Sarah. You can’t reach us. Interfere with the controls or try to get inside, and she is at my mercy. You know she’s no match for me physically or in psi talent. She’ll be dead before you break my shield or shoot me down. You know she will.” He backed into the iso tank and waved as the door closed between them.

  Jonas stormed to the monitor and punched up the camera system inside the tank. The screen lit up, and the speakers cracked to life. Evan took over on the control panel, as Jonas moved closer to the screen.

  Inside, Baker set Sarah on her feet. She backed away from him, her arms crossed under her chest. He moved toward her, and she dodged him.

  “He’s overridden the security features and passworded with a three-time loser. We can’t play with that,” Evan reported.

  Jonas nodded grimly.

  Baker put his hands in his pockets and smiled. “Has life been so terrible the last few months?” he asked.

  “Have I stopped asking to go home, Mr. Baker?”

  His smile disappeared. “Drew,” he barked at her. “You know I want you to call me Drew.”

  Sarah flicked a look at the camera and closed her eyes. “I want to go home, Drew.”

  “Why?”

  Evan growled in frustration. “He’s engaged the mag-lock protection. We can’t even force it open. He knew what he was doing here. I can’t even explain how he took the stun spray nozzles offline, and you know he’s carrying a mask for himself somewhere under that coat. Even if I got them back online and sprayed him before he made it to his mask, five won’t be enough to get in there.”

  She looked around nervously and edged behind the restraint table.

  Baker turned with her, facing Sarah across the insubstantial barrier she put between them. “You still want Paige? I can’t imagine why. The man slept with you, because he was ordered to.”

  Sarah shook her head, but she didn’t say anything that would incite him.

  Baker pulled himself up on the table, folding one leg under him while the other kicked lazily off the edge. “I’ve seen the tapes, Sarah.”

  She narrowed her eyes but didn’t rise to the bait.

  “You really believed him, didn’t you? You didn’t know he was playing you.”

  Sarah paled and straightened her spine.

  Katie groaned and muttered a curse.

  Steven sighed. “Now he’s done it. He just sealed his coffin. I know that look.”

  Sarah turned cold eyes on Baker. “You should have studied my file closer before you flushed it, Drew. Oh wait. That’s right. Your hacks could never get past my shield to find out what I could do, could they? I can’t read thoughts, but I can read emotions.

  “In fact, I read Jonas the first time we made love—every time we made love. I knew he was talent before he got much past taking my shirt off. Don’t think for a second that he was playing me. If anything, he was playing you. You really believed he didn’t feel anything, didn’t you?”

  Jonas slid a look of disbelief at Steven. “Christ! She’s good.”

  Steven bit back a smile. “So, that’s why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why she made a habit of purposely dropping her shield for you after that first time when she lost it accidentally. She knew you were reading her, and she liked it. Damn, but she is one devious woman.”

  Jonas groaned. “You were linking?”

  Steven laughed lightly. “We’re always linked when the shield comes down enough. Six times in thirteen hours. You do have stamina, Jonas.”

  Katie snickered. “And I thought Keith was insatiable. I can see how Sarah would become endeared quickly.”

  Steven cast his mother a boyish smile. “And he’s good, too. Sarah never—”

  Jonas blushed, reading the rest of the statement before Steven could verbalize it. “Enough. I don’t need to hear about those losers. Anyone who treated Sarah like that doesn’t deserve my time even to renegade on him. Now I have to figure out how to save her from one more loser.”

  “Maybe we can help with that.”

  Jonas turned to watch the procession of children heading through the parting crowd. The one in the lead was a tall, red-haired boy in his late teens, twirling a guard’s pass card through his fingers.

  Evan leaned close to his ear. “Flynn,” he confirmed for Jonas.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jonas eyed Flynn and his rag-tag group warily.

  Flynn pushed his hair out of his eyes and slipped past Jonas to the wall a foot or so from the doorway. He started giving orders. “Tyler, go to work on those bolts. Just like we planned. Slow and easy so you don’t trip the interlocks. Alice, have Cindy ready to fry the circuitry.”

  Jonas touched his shoulder, and Flynn shook him off with a hard look.

  “I’m working here, pretty boy. Take a hike.”

  “What are you doing? Opening the mag locks or disengaging the psi wave so we can reach them?” Jonas asked, needing to plan his next move.

  Flynn scowled at him. “Are you brain dead? Do you honestly think the safeguards for those are out here? They’re buried behind six inches of brick and two inches of steel and have their own wave inhibitor to boot.” He rolled his eyes, as if everyone knew that much about the system they were fighting.

  Flynn glanced at the preteen boy—Tyler, and his eyes widened. “Slow down, bonehead. You trip that interlock, and we can’t do a damn thing for her.”

  Tyler looked at him in a mixture of sadness and pain. “Sorry. I just—”

  Flynn nodded and clasped a hand
on his shoulder. “No rushing. Be your own keeper. Remember Sarah staring Boyonton down. Five minutes, and she didn’t move a muscle. She did that for you. It’s her butt on the line now. Don’t give Sarah less than she gave you.”

  Tyler nodded and turned back to his work.

  Flynn glanced at a blond boy no more than eight or nine years old. “Talk to me, Danny.”

  “Sweet, bro. No spikes. She’s all green board.”

  “Good job. Call Tyler off if she twitches. Alice, be ready to pull that panel away. We’re halfway there.”

  The leggy brunette handed a preschool girl off to Flynn, wiped her hands on her jeans and moved closer. “I’m your girl.”

  Flynn sent her an appreciative look. “Why else would I get you involved in this?” he teased.

  Alice elbowed past him with a look of annoyance. “Because I’m the best.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “Tease.” She smiled at the comment.

  “Let me pay off, and I won’t be a tease, now will I?”

  “Shut up and watch Cindy.”

  Flynn shifted the child onto his hip, perfectly at ease with holding her. “Okay, Cindy. We showed you which two wires. Hit them together and leave nothing but smoking insulation. You can do that for Sarah, right?”

  Cindy winked a conspiratorial eye. “I am the best.”

  Flynn laughed. “Yep. Now prove it.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “How’s it going, Tyler?”

  “Outer panel coming off now, Jeremy.”

  “Danny?”

  “Green lights. All green, but that was the easy part.”

  Alice knelt and started firing up as Tyler pulled the panel away and backed off, guiding it telekinetically to the opposite wall.

  “My turn,” Alice breathed.

  Jonas looked to Flynn again. “What does this hardware control?” he demanded. He had to plan for the next stage.

  “Interior psi wave. She won’t be hobbled anymore.”

  “That means Baker can attack her at the first sign of trouble,” Jonas protested, horrified at Flynn’s idea of an answer.

  Flynn rolled his eyes. “If you think that idiot from DoPT has a snowball’s chance in hell against her, you don’t know Sarah very well.”

  Steven groaned. “It wasn’t a fluke.”

  Jonas turned to him in surprise. What else hadn’t they told him about Sarah’s capabilities?

  Steven was pale and jittery. “She’s been practicing on the kids,” he decided miserably.

  “What wasn’t a fluke? What has she been practicing?” Jonas demanded.

  “She’s developed a new trick.” He met Flynn’s eyes. “Can she control it? Is this a sure thing?”

  Flynn laughed heartily. “They want to know if Sarah can control it.”

  Alice snorted. Tyler rolled his eyes. Cindy giggled.

  Danny groaned. “Why don’tcha just ask if the sun knows how to shine?”

  Alice snorted again. “You’re the one who was too stupid to back off. Just had to prove that she’d break first, didn’t you? Well, we know the answer, don’t we? Sarah is queen of the hill.”

  Danny darkened. “At least I wasn’t stupid enough to try a frontal assault,” he grumbled.

  Flynn cleared his throat, shooting Jonas a nervous look. “Old news. Back to work.”

  “Freeze!”

  Jonas looked at Danny. His shout, coming without warning, sent chills down his spine. If they trashed the system, there was no telling what would happen.

  The boy was breathing hard. “Amber. Let it reset,” he cautioned.

  No one moved. The kids barely breathed while they waited for the all clear.

  Jonas looked to Steven. “What is this new trick of hers?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. She got me once—long distance. It was like my binding, but there was something inherently different about the feel.”

  Flynn chuckled. “It’s a mirror. The more you throw at her shield, the more powerful the reaction that bounces back from her.”

  “I wasn’t throwing anything at her,” Steven insisted. “We were psi linked.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Energy is energy. Sarah can rebuff anything from telepathy and scans to telekinetic attack. You send energy her way, and she can direct it right back at you.”

  “Green,” Danny reported, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “Take it easy. She’s twitchy now.”

  Alice nodded. “Spice up my life. I love a challenge.”

  Jonas rubbed his temple and watched the monitor intently. Baker paced the room, checking his watch while Sarah curled up in the corner. Was she resting or planning? He wished he knew.

  “How did you learn to disable the psi wave?” Jonas asked quietly.

  Flynn cocked an eyebrow. “It was repaired about six months ago, and the repair man had a 3000-series shield. All I had to do was hang out in my room over there and pretend to read a book for an hour or so, and I knew everything I needed to know about the system.”

  Jonas nodded. Flynn lived on lockdown wing like he had. Jonas resisted the urge to see if it was one of the rooms that he had the few times that he made it out of Max-Sec.

  Alice grimaced. “Shut up, Jeremy. I need to concentrate.”

  A handful of tiny screws landed lightly on the floor. The inner card shook.

  “Amber! Dammit, Alice. It won’t take much more of this. We’re flirting with interlock.”

  “Shut up, Danny. This is hard enough.”

  Flynn sighed. “Quit arguing. Sarah taught you better than this.” He cast a sidelong glance at Jonas and Steven. “She’s seen worse.”

  “Green. Wait. Amber again. This isn’t going to work.”

  Jonas tensed at that proclamation.

  “Don’t move. Come on. Give me a green board, baby. Wait. She’s green. Go.”

  Alice nodded. “Take two.”

  The card eased free of its mounting pins and barely past the opening in the wall.

  Flynn squeezed her shoulder. “Easy. Don’t overextend the wires. Cindy needs play.”

  “She’s steady. Get Cindy in there.”

  He carried Cindy to the floating panel, and Jonas held his breath, resisting the urge to demand to do this himself. He could do anything they needed, and it sounded like they needed EM burst of some sort. Jonas fisted his hands and let them work. The kids needed this, needed to know they did this for Sarah. He wouldn’t take that from them.

  Flynn pointed to the wires. “The one behind the chip that’s marked for you and the one behind the breaker,” he instructed.

  “I know,” Cindy snapped, rolling her eyes at him as she reached tiny fingers in to clamp on the wires. She fired up. “Count me down, Jermy.”

  He put a hand up to shield her face and closed his eyes. “Prep,” he yelled.

  Danny and Alice closed their eyes. Jonas shielded his.

  “Three, two, one. Spike her.”

  The wires in her hands burned white-hot for an instant, and Cindy pulled back with a cry of pain. She curled to Flynn’s chest.

  “Is she all right?” Panic edged Alice’s voice.

  Flynn fumbled for the child’s hands, but Cindy fought him, screaming in pain and fear.

  “Cindy, I can’t do this if you don’t—”

  Jonas slipped past her insubstantial shield, imposing a class two calming followed by a class seven hold, forcing nerve impulses to be ignored. He touched her cheek gently. “It’s okay. Let me see,” he crooned to her.

  Cindy reached her hands to him and smiled as he took them in his own.

  Jonas checked her over. “First and second degree. Get some ice gel and skin bands for the blisters, and Little Miss Cindy will be just fine in a few days.”

  Flynn nodded and threw the passkey at Tyler. “You heard the man. Move.”

  The boy sprinted away toward the infirmary.

  Flynn moved his eyes to Jonas’ face. “Thank you.”

  Jonas smile
d. “You don’t say that often.”

  He blushed. “Only to Sarah and you.”

  “Well, Cindy put herself in danger for Sarah. I don’t forget my friends, and friends of Sarah’s are friends of mine.”

  Tyler pushed past to smooth the ice gel on her burned fingers, and Jonas wrapped the skin bands on her.

  “I think you can release her,” Flynn noted.

  Jonas nodded. He sent a class seven command for several hours of pain-free sleep before releasing her. “Hand her to Tyler and send her to her room,” he ordered.

  “What did you do?” Flynn demanded.

  “She needs sleep.”

  “We need her for one more burst. Wake her up.”

  “We’ll do it. Show me what needs done.”

  Flynn shook his head. “I need a small EM—very localized.”

  Jonas nodded. “That’s me. Precise burns are more Steven’s style, but EM is my department.”

  Flynn handed Cindy off to Tyler. “This is delicate,” he warned. “One screw up, and everything we’ve done is wasted. Cindy is—”

  Steven started laughing, while Katie raised an eyebrow in disbelief. The assembled talents erupted in a variety of nervous giggles and whispered comments. Flynn looked at them in growing unease. Jonas waved Tyler away.

  Evan spoke first. “Jeremy, there is no one better. If he knew the plan, Jonas could have done all of this without pissing around with moving panels and burning hands. Tell him what you need and stand back.”

  Flynn nodded, as Alice rose and backed away, the panel carefully placed back on its pins.

  “It’s ready,” she informed them.

  Jonas looked to Flynn. “Tell me what needs done.”

  “Disable the chip to the right of the breaker. Just the chip. Nothing else.”

  Jonas squatted to the opening and used a localized EM on the chip’s delicate inner workings, destroying the electronic balance. “Done.”

  “Danny?” Flynn breathed.

  “Black. She’s dead. We did it.”

  Flynn turned to the monitor. “Go, baby go. Show Mr. DoPT what you’re made of.”

  Alice grabbed his hand, winding her fingers through his. “Sarah will. You know she will.”