Mary watched a white van with a florist logo move down the block and park a few houses away. She was still watching when Jorge exited the van by the back doors, looked up and down the street, then put his hands in his pockets and started loping toward her apartment, his head down. Mary went back to the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife. Not much of a weapon, but it was the most dangerous thing at hand. It would have to do. She prayed she wouldn’t have to use it.
The doorknob jiggled, and Mary heard the familiar sound of keys jangling as Jorge let himself in. She took a deep breath, still gripping the knife with her right hand, down at her side, hidden by the kitchen counter.
“Mary?”
Jorge only called out once before he saw her. The smile died on his face when he met her gaze. All her suspicions must have been there for him to see. Mary didn’t say anything.
Jorge put his keys back in his pocket and walked over the easy chair, patting the back of it. There were still scorch marks on the arms, the remnants of one of Helen’s temper tantrums. “I guess it was too much to hope she’d come back home.”
Mary still didn’t say anything, but she readied herself to move quickly if need be. If he came at her, she had to be ready to defend herself.
“Listen, Miss Mary, we have to talk. I haven’t been perfectly honest with you.”
“Who are you working for?” Mary was proud that her voice remained calm and steady, even though her heart felt like it might leap out through her throat.
“It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like then? What are you getting for selling us out?”
“I was only trying to help. The Director promised no harm would come to either of you.”
The Director? Mary switched the knife to her other hand, wiping her sweaty palm against the side of her pants and trying to shove down the burst of hope that had bloomed in her chest. “What did he want you to do?”
“Just get you back here, so they could bring in your mother before anyone else got hurt.” He took a step toward her but stayed several feet away, still in the living room. “You said yourself that your mother needs help. We both know there’s only one place that can give it to her.”
“So you agreed to get us here. And what were they giving you?”
“Not me. Miguel.”
Miguel? “Your brother? The one that was missing?”
“That’s him. The thing is… Miguel’s not the same boy he used to be. Whatever happened out there… It changed him.”
“Changed him how?”
“He can do things now. Weird things. Impossible things.”
Mary narrowed her eyes, thinking. “So the Director said he could help your brother if you helped him get to us.” It was a plausible story. She would have done the same for her mother if the situation had played out differently, if she had known.
“I’ve brought some people who want to talk to you.” He grinned and smoothed his hair with one hand, a gesture she recognized as practiced and probably usually effective at diffusing feminine anger. It did call attention to his cheekbones. “Actually it’s pretty freaking amazing. You need to see this. Will you go for a ride with us?” He held out a hand, waiting.
Mary set the knife on the counter, letting it clatter on the tile. Jorge’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t say anything. “Let me get my sweater.” Mary walked into the bedroom and closed the door. She took a moment to throw some things into her messenger bag, then took another deep breath before opening the door. This might be the biggest mistake of her life. Or she might be catching a much needed break. There was only one way to find out.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s see what these friends of yours have to say.”
Cindy’s Had Enough, Period
Cindy leaped from the car as soon as it stopped rolling and ran to her storage unit. She entered the numbers into the lock, breathing a gasp of relief when the combination worked and flung the door half-way open. It got stuck, and she ducked underneath and ran inside, leaving Mekai and her father to follow her or not.
She didn’t much care if they did or didn’t. What mattered were the emeralds she had stored here. If she could get them and get out of Springfield before Helen knew she’d been there, she might make it through this yet. No matter what Dr. Ayres said, that wasn’t a fight she planned to take on. She wasn’t fireproof.
Hurrying to the center of the storage unit, she reached for the string to turn on the light, but it dangled tantalizingly out of reach, a few inches higher than she could reach standing on her tiptoes. “Mekai,” she yelled. Her voice echoed strangely against the metal walls. She winced at the reediness of it. Cindy turned back toward the half-raised door and shouted again. “Mekai.”
A moment or two later, she heard a car door close and heavy steps moving over the pea gravel. There was an un-oiled metallic shriek as Mekai pushed the stiff sliding door the rest of the way up. Cindy stood waiting for him, holding one hand up at the light. “A little help?”
He was obviously annoyed, but Mekai obliged her, stepping over something on the floor. He tugged the string, and the bulb flickered weakly to life and started buzzing. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. It had been a long and tense drive, with her father arguing with her all the way while Mekai followed a circuitous route to avoid more run-ins with agents of the Department, taking a long journey and stretching it out even longer. His silence had been brutal. Cindy had a bad feeling that he agreed with Dr. Ayres about what her next step should be. “Anything else?” he asked, in a tone that suggested there had better not be anything else.
Cindy wasn’t looking at him. She crouched on the concrete floor of the storage unit, a look of horror spreading across her round face. “It can’t be,” she said.
“What?”
Cindy pointed at the message scorched onto the concrete and held out the little stub of emerald. “She’s been here already.” Still squatting on the floor, she rocked back and forth, her hands on the sides of her head. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“That’s no way for a young lady to talk.” Mekai grinned mischievously. He’d heard her father chiding her on her language over the many miles they’d traveled together.
Cindy was in no mood for his crap. She shot him a withering look. His grin stayed in place, but the amusement in his eyes died. Mekai took a step forward and looked down. After reading the message, he clicked his tongue. “A message from your old friend Helen, I take it?”
“You’re half right, anyway,” she said. “She’s old.”
Mekai let out a low whistle. “You must have ended on great terms.”
“You think?” Cindy stood and scuffed at the ground with her sneaker. They’d ended things well if you thought being abandoned in the face of danger was a good basis for friendship. Everything was just peachy between them. “This is going to make things complicated.”
“I don’t like complications.”
His tone made it clear to Cindy that he meant it. He had brought her here, as promised, but that didn’t mean he bought into her mission. Though he’d fought for them at the Qmart, Cindy knew that wasn’t out of loyalty to her, but more about the commitment he’d made to Bertrand and an inborn inability to back down when faced with a fight. Cindy paced, thinking fast. Dr. Ayres insisted Helen was Cindy’s responsibility, and it looked like she would have to step up after all. Her sense of self-preservation screamed that any contact with her former companion was dangerous in the extreme. But she had to have those emeralds to continue her work, and the work was everything.
Cindy needed Mekai on her side. Looking up at him, she pushed out her lower lip and drooped her face, putting on her best imitation of a dejected child. “I need those emeralds,” she whined.
To her dismay, Mekai laughed out loud, crouching forward in exaggerated amusement like the laughter actually took the wind out of him. “Oh, Ms. Liu, you’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid.”
Cindy immediately returned to her bu
siness-like demeanor. It was a relief to do so anyway. “Fine. What will it take to get you to help me?”
“That depends. To help you do what exactly?”
“Tie up a big, fat, fire-wielding loose end.”
A shadow fell across the floor, and Cindy looked up to see her father standing in the middle of the doorway, leaning on his ever-present cane. It looked even more ridiculous when the rest of him was dressed in an Indiana University sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants picked up at a gas station. He tapped the ostentatious affectation impatiently on the floor. “Well?”
Cindy didn’t dignify him with a response. She turned back to Mekai. “I mean it. I can’t face her alone. She’ll burn me to a crisp.”
“And how exactly do you think I can help?”
Anton walked over to join them, his cane thumping noisily on the concrete floor. “Is this still about that woman?”
“Stay out of this, Dad. It’s none of your business.”
“Of course it’s my business. You put us all at risk with this… nonsense.” He waved his cane at the shelves. “I should be in my new lab pursuing my work, and instead we are here, on a wild goose chase. We can see to your little experiments later.”
Cindy’s face grew hot with rage. “My ‘little experiments’ are saving your sorry ass. Without me, you’d be dying in a Department lab someplace.”
He laughed, a bitter sound nearer a cough than any place of mirth. “You brought them to my doorstep. If I had not tried to save you from them—rescuing you when you had no place to go—they would never have even known I existed. I’d still be in my compound. I’d be in my new body by now instead of trying to keep this one from falling apart.” He stretched out his arms, and Cindy noticed he didn’t wobble anymore even without the support of the cane. Part of her was proud of that even as she contemplated knocking the man to the ground and beating sense into him with her fists.
Cindy turned to Mekai, hoping for support, but he had turned away and was assiduously studying the contents of the shelving, contents that she could see at a glance had been rifled and looted. His hands were in his pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his heels. Obviously, he planned to stay out of this one.
She stalked away to the back of the unit and started pulling out boxes and going through the contents. Maybe Helen had left something they could use. She pulled out bottles and jars, books, beakers, scales, crystals, a magnifying glass, and lined them up on the floor, automatically sorting them by category. Her father’s cane pinged annoyingly against the floor as he moved around, but she ignored him. A few items she slipped into her pockets, but box after box proved to hold nothing of value. Definitely no emeralds.
She thought about her lab animals, all killed in the house fire last spring. Her scent snake would have been useful right about now. So would her microscope, her centrifuge, and her fireproof chamber. Suddenly angry about the loss of all that work and equipment, she yelled out in frustration and threw a glass bowl against the wall, feeling only slightly appeased by the sight of the shiny shards on the ground.
Mekai cleared his throat behind her. “Cindy?”
She whirled on him, wiping tears out of her eyes and hating the way they seemed to spring unbidden these days. It was like she had no control over her emotions. She cried because she was angry, which made her angrier, which made her cry. It was freaking endless. “What do you want?”
“Did you cut yourself?”
Cindy looked down at her hands. They were a little dirty but undamaged. “No. I’m fine.”
Mekai looked down at his shoes. Was he embarrassed? Cindy waited for him to spit it out, tapping her foot and listening to the crunch of bits of glass under her clunky rubber soled shoe. Finally, he spoke, “Your pants.”
My pants? What was the man on about? Cindy twisted at the waist to try and look at her backside, stretching the pants out and finding them damp and sticky. “Jesus H. Christ in a handbasket!” She kicked a box, sending it skittering across the storage unit. The two men stood still, staring at her.
She threw her hands into the air and sighed, fighting the urge to lie down on the ground and weep. “It’s my fucking period.”
Both men took a step back, and Cindy laughed even while tears fell down her cheeks.
Mary Climbs Aboard
Mary followed Jorge into the back of the van and took a seat on a bench along the side, trying not to worry about what she getting herself into. The van was full of technology equipment instead of flowers. One other person sat in the back. Mary knew him immediately from the news footage she’s been watching ever since her mother attacked at the press conference the day before. The red shirt was instantly recognizable. Fuerte. He was larger than he looked on TV. Larger and a little older. There was some gray mixed with his dark brown hair.
Fuerte thumped the wall behind him, and the van pulled out onto the road. The turn was a little abrupt and Mary and Jorge lunged forward. Fuerte stopped them both with one extended arm. Running into his arm was like smacking into a tree trunk. Mary clambered back onto her seat and grabbed one of the hooks dangling from the ceiling to hold herself in place.
“Thanks,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“Thank you for coming.” The man inclined his head in a sort of bow, causing tendrils of lightly curled brown hair to fall across his chiseled jawline. “I am Fuerte.”
Mary turned to look at Jorge as if to verify this was real. She was riding in a van with an honest-to-goodness superhero.
“I know,” Jorge said, lacing their fingers together. “It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”
Fuerte rested his hands on his muscular thighs, leaning forward to look her in the eyes as he spoke. His eyes were a soft chocolate brown behind the golden mask. They radiated kindness and concern. “We don’t have much time, Mary. The city is in danger, and we need your help.”
“Is this about my mother? Because I don’t know where she is either.”
“No.” Fuerte grabbed two of the straps and swung himself around to another seat, so he was seated face-to-face with Mary, his knees all but resting against hers. “Believe it or not, Helen is not the biggest danger in Springfield at the moment.”
Mary digested that for a moment. “So who is?” She listened as Fuerte told her about The Six, a group of six people who could manipulate people with their minds. “Mental manipulation, huh? That sounds familiar.”
“The Director said you have a resistance to it.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
Fuerte blinked, seeming not to comprehend. Mary filed that away with other interesting things she would need to ponder more deeply later. “So where are we going?”
“We’ve found where The Six are hiding out. We’re meeting a team there.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re taking me into a fight with mind-controlling bad guys? Right now?”
“This isn’t the kind of thing most of us can fight. You might be our only hope.”
“Stop the van.”
Fuerte tapped twice on the wall behind him, and the van pulled over to the side of the road. Mary already had the back door open before the vehicle had even fully stopped. She jumped out and took off at a brisk pace.
“Wait. Mary.”
She looked back. Jorge and Fuerte stood on the sidewalk, a third smaller man standing between them. The smaller man tugged on his jacket sleeves and stood up straighter. Just for a moment, she saw a young Jimmy Stewart. The Director? Mary turned back, coming to within a few yards. Close enough to talk, but not close enough to be grabbed; at least, she hoped not. “I should have known you’d be here.”
The Director smiled. “It’s good to see you, too, Mary.”
Mary was overtaken with a warm glow, a feeling of wellbeing, a desire to put her faith in the man in front of her. She glared at him. “You know better than to try that shit with me.” The feeling melted away in an instant.
“See? That’s exactly what I mean. We need you.”
“You have
n’t done much to make me trust you. How do I know this isn’t a trap? A ploy to bring my mother back in.”
Jorge looked confused. “But isn’t that what you want? For the Department to help your mother?”
“Stay out of this, Jorge. This is between me and the Director.” She turned and walked down the street. “Are you coming?” she called back over her shoulder. A few steps later she heard dress shoes clicking on the sidewalk and ducked into an alley to wait. A beat or two later, the Director rounded the corner.
“Mary, if you’ll only listen for a moment.”
“No. You listen. I don’t know what you did to my mother, but she is not the woman she used to be.” Mary thought about the wildness in her mother’s eyes whenever she used her firepower, the manic energy and single-minded focus on vengeance. She thought about the burn scars on the guards and the pile of ash that had once been a hospital employee. “I want my mother back.”
“We didn’t do anything to your mother other than heal her injuries and try to understand her abilities. What does she claim we did?”
Mary kicked an old paint can with the side of her foot, sending water tinted light blue splattering against a wall. It was true her mother never claimed to have been mistreated by the Department. Her ire was all directed at Cindy Liu, the woman who empowered her, befriended her, and abandoned her. While she’d been happy to be rescued from the facility and regain her freedom, she’d never claimed she’d been maltreated.
Maybe all of this could have been avoided if Mary had been more patient and a little more trusting. If she had looked a little longer before she leaped. All of this could also have been different if the Department hadn’t kidnapped her off the streets and drugged her as a greeting. Now she was stuck trading favors with a man and an organization she didn’t trust. She wanted a third option.
Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3) Page 21