by LeAnn Mason
Holden vibrated next to me, his rage screaming at me just as loudly as the others. I clamped a hand around his wrist. “Don’t. It’s not like that.” That was all I could get out with the warzone my head had become. I needed to breathe through it and put up my wall.
I began laying my bricks. Problem with the wall was that it took a lot of concentration while it was up, so I wouldn’t be retaining anything else from this meeting. We needed to diffuse.
Jade wasn’t on the defensive which meant that she felt his emotions as clearly as I heard his thoughts and knew where Dev was truly directing his anger. We were just too overwhelmed by all the Primal testosterone running around the room to do more than sit there like the stupefied audience we were.
“What the hell? That’s not what I meant!” Devlin growled, his hands up in a supplicating gesture, but his face was a mask of fury. “You guys think I think less of abused females?” He was backing up, but he had nowhere to go. We couldn’t let all our Primals flip their switches. I needed backup. I couldn’t do anything myself other than monitor their thoughts. Super helpful. I guessed there was one thing I could do…
I leapt from my chair, moving to plant myself in front of Devlin. “Steve. We could really use your help right about now.” I hated admitting that, but he and Jade were about our only hope in keeping this from turning into a full on brawl.
One moment I was staring down two intensely pissed off Primals who would reach me in half a heartbeat, the next I was nose to chest with Dane. He was plastered in place, a fire I had never even imagined existed burning in his eyes. His body coiled and straining, every part of him ready to strike – only he couldn’t. I moved to extricate myself from the makeshift Nat sandwich that I currently embodied while Jade made her way to the irate men.
Once they’d had their anger replaced with calm, the fire extinguishing from their eyes, Steve released his hold. Commander James and Dane melted like a wicked witch when wet, slowly collapsing to the floor in sloppy heaps, panting with exertion.
“What the hell was that?” I screeched. “You guys are supposed to have a whole lot more control than that!” I was furious now. That display of irrationality was just the kind of crap that Primals were known for. We needed to be better than that. For the whole of our people.
Dev sat heavily into his vacated chair, rubbing at his eyes. “I didn’t mean that I was disgusted by the females I talked to. I was as angry as you are now, only at the woman who inflicted their pain. I was angry for them.”
Both men on the floor finally looked contrite, realizing that they’d not only jumped to a wrong conclusion about Devlin but also that they had both allowed their Primal emotions to overtake them, their rationality and objectivity completely out the window. How did they do this job then? How in the world did they speak to bad people or people who were victimized without flipping? This was a huge impediment to our objective. We all needed better control of ourselves. The fact that Commander James lost it like that had me at a loss. I couldn’t pull my attention from the man.
Our leader had shown a chink in his armor, but now I knew why he was so fired up. It hit too close to home. Holden. When Commander James thought of the abused, he pictured his nephew.
CHAPTER 12
A POUNDING ON THE door made me flinch but was successful at pulling the tension from the room. My eyes fell closed as I tried to loosen my body. The person on the other side of the door would love nothing more than for us to fail, no matter what he said. “It’s Councilman Davidson,” I relayed to the team. “We need to be on our game. This shit stops now.”
Taking a deep breath and shaking the tension from my limbs, I strode to the door more than happy to know that Steve’s dad couldn’t just waltz into this room. I couldn’t imagine him having unfettered access to all of our case information. I didn’t see that ending well for us. Maybe I was just a skeptic, but from what I knew of the man, we all should be.
Plastering on a ridiculously fake smile, I yanked the door open. “Mr. Davidson, what can we do—”
“You do not get to ignore calls from me Commander,” Davidson barked as he pushed past me. “You answer to me. I have the power to shut this thing down at any time!”
I loved seeing the poor excuse for a man squirm, and while no one else saw it, I did. He didn’t have that power. He was only a mouthpiece for the ninnies. Once again my mouth let loose. “No you can’t. The ninnies need to appease their masses. Too many are calling for equal rights, you are just a glorified tattletale. You. Have. No. Power.”
Steve pushed his way to his father, knowing that his dad was about to lose his cool. Davidson senior knew I was right, and that’s what burned. Sages hated people knowing the truth behind the facade. Steve started mumbling to his dad, trying to salvage the situation… for his father.
“I can remove you from this team, Miss Dae,” the entitled ass seethed.
“No, I don’t believe that you can.” Commander James returned as he came to a halt in front of the Davidson duo. He was back to the calm, cool leader I knew with the added feature of intimidating Primal badass that I’d only seen a handful of times in my months with the team. This was the man who no one would mess with if they knew what was good for them. This version was the one who knew how to dismember a body one digit at a time and would do it if needed. “She was handpicked. They all were.” He angled himself toward the team at his back before facing his foe once more.
“This team does not answer to you. I do not answer to you. I am in contact with many heads of departments in the NE world. I know you like to think yourself our leader and king, Davidson, but you are not. You hold no authority in this situation because it was at the direction of the Non Enhanced. I am bound only to them, and they are satisfied with my methods and production.”
“Someone was killed in my town. That is my business, and it is my right to demand the culprit be brought to justice!”
Commander James nodded, his arms clenched across his chest so that he wasn’t tempted to reach out and strangle the dull peacock on parade in front of him. “You’re right that you should be kept in the loop about what we find—”
“Then why are you stonewalling me?” Davidson senior shot without letting Commander James finish, which ramped up his pissed-off-meter yet again. His hands clenched so tightly against his arms the areas around his fingers were turning white with the lack of blood flow. Geez, how much harm could the man do to himself in restraint?
“I will report our findings when there is something to report. I told you it was deemed not a natural death. That is all we know at this time. You cann—” he growled when Davidson tried once again to interject, Steve wisely holding him back.
“You cannot berate me and hound me day and night. Not only will you annoy the shit out of me, but you will become an active hindrance. The people who gave you your title wouldn’t like that.” Commander James went on, deciding to take a step back from the interloper. Now that Davidson wasn’t talking, he could dial down his intimidation factor.
“Have you even thought of how you’re going to broach the subject of integration with the NEs? That would be of use to the people of Minefield so much more than you hovering over our shoulders here,” I put in.
“I’ll cross that bridge when and if your team performs satisfactorily.”
I tsked. “I really don’t think that would be in your best interest and definitely not in theirs. Do you even comprehend that literally everything that we’ve come to know will change?”
The councilman shook off his son “You think I do not know what will change? How do you think they will respond to being gawked at? How about having to confirm to Non-Enhanced payment practices? How many do you think will be overloaded by the outside world?” He straightened his suit jacket, putting on the show again, and looked directly in Commander James’s eyes. His own narrowed in an ineffectual display of intimidation. “You don’t know what the people need.” I couldn’t help the snort that escaped, but then neither could
anyone else. There were several. We were all lobbing mental insults at him.
I wondered if anyone else in town was this hated. It seemed we were all on the same page with our loathing of our so called “leader.” Well, all except his son, though interestingly, Steve’s thoughts weren’t as warm and fuzzy as one would expect of his child. I guess I wasn’t one to talk about parental sympathies as my relationship with my mother wasn’t warm either. It really seemed more like a Sage thing. Weird. Weren’t we wired as humans to seek our parents’ approval? Or was that part of our divergence from the Non-Enhanced?
“You will inform me when you have news to report,” the councilman conceded, with barely restrained contempt, then turned on his polished heel and strode out of the command post, leaving a cloud of cloying man perfume in his wake. It was awful. Musty and stale. It smelled like decay. Why would anyone wear that?
A clap of thunder broke my contemplative stare after the elder Davidson. Nope, not thunder, just Commander James. The sound was immense and echoed around the room. I’d never heard a clap like that. It did its job; I was paying attention.
“Let’s break out and get going. We need leads. Devlin, I’m sorry for my reaction earlier. I know you are a good man,” he clapped Dev on the shoulder as he headed toward Trent and the computer bank on the right side of the room. “Trent, let’s continue with surveillance from anywhere available around the dump site.”
And just like that, it was back to business as usual with our team. Well “usual” with a side of death. Time to investigate.
*****
For the next two days, Devlin and I did interviews. We talked to everyone who we found could have a connection to Sasha Jenks; talked to the girls again, and wow, Sasha was an evil bitch. She constantly berated and abused them. Told them they were nothing, that they were hideous. That no one wanted them.
All these girls were beautiful, perfect embodiments of Primals, damn near perfect in general. But they’d been destroyed by a lifetime of abuse from the person who was supposed to love them above all others. A mother should never be so jealous of her child as to destroy their will.
None of the five girls would look at us. They looked at the ground, constantly fidgeted; with hair, with imagined dirt, scuffing shoes across the floor. I could see fading bruises on several of them. They didn’t wear makeup; their clothes were shapeless, their hair limp. These were women who tried their hardest to go unnoticed, but they were stunning. Every one of them drew the eye like a diamond in the sunlight. They’d be blinding if they ever blossomed into the women they were born to be.
Was there any chance of that after the upbringing they’d had? Maybe, maybe not, but at least, now they had the chance. That might have been the wrong way to look at this death, but I couldn’t help the feeling. The more I found out about Ms. Jenks, the angrier I got. The images and feelings thinking of her brought forth from her children made me want to vomit, but none had alibi issues, at least not that we could verify. We had no hard time of death to look into, nothing suspicious on any available surveillance… Needless to say, I had the mother of all migraines after these interviews.
Devlin and I trudged through the coded steel door to the command post on Monday evening after ending our interviews with everyone we figured may have information on Sasha Jenks’ death. We’d come up dry. There were plenty of people who had cause to beat the woman bloody, but I found no evidence that anyone we’d found had actually done it. She’d done too good a job of beating her daughters into submission.
Those poor women flinched at any sudden movements their direction, loud noises, people in general. They’d been taught they weren’t good enough to speak much, let alone look at people. That damned mother of theirs! I knew exactly why Devlin had reacted the way he had when the team had our initial meeting after the medical examiner’s report had reached us. Funny thing, “the waitress” that Jade had mentioned was probably Devlin’s date turned out to be the same girl I’d noticed at the diner when I had lunch with Holden. Her demeanor made so much sense now even if her job did not. She was a Jenks. An abused daughter of the late Sasha Jenks, worst-parent-award winner.
“I get your thoughts, Nat,” Dev sighed as he released a heavy breath and calmed his own rising ire. “I can only imagine how much worse it is for you, but you need to suck it—”
“Can you?” I shot. He got the idea of how much worse it was, but he’d never truly know. That was reserved for we oh-so-lucky few who could mind-mine. Lucky me, I saw everything they visualized. You ask about their abusive mother? “I get hit with a barrage of thoughts, images, feelings of whatever awful shit comes to mind. If you’re talking with someone and they are mentally undressing their girlfriend, lucky me, I get front row seats to the porn show,” I finished the thought aloud.
His eyes narrowed the longer I spoke, both our frustration bubbling. “This team, hell, enforcement is not for the tender hearted. You need to thicken that wall, if not your skin. There are bad people everywhere, and we’ll find them. You’re only good to me if you are functional and objective.”
“Harlow, you will never fully understand what it is to be in everyone’s head all the time. Be glad. I know how much you hate the idea that I can read you. I still hate it most of the time. I would love to be blissfully unaware of the random crap people let float around in their heads all day.”
“If you couldn’t do it, we never would have caught that asshole illusionist.”
I was stunned silent. So was he. He stood straight and cocked his head in astonishment as my mouth opened and closed several times while I tried to formulate something coherent to say. Devlin Harlow was paying me a compliment. By accident, but still. Those were not easy to come by, and my mind went blank with anything other than stunned playback of those words. Never would have caught the illusionist without you.
The anger and self-pity I’d been bloated with left my body in a rush, leaving me tired and with a raging headache and an aching thigh and hip. Dragging around a leg that was encased in a walking boot while interviewing people took its toll.
“Yeah, Dae, don’t go getting all cocky on me. You’re still a pain in my ass.” He pointed at the black monstrosity my leg was hiding inside. “That proves you are breakable. You can be broken by the people we chase.”
“This was a twelve-hundred pound animal with an absurd phobia of flies.”
“Primals are just as absurd, especially if you’re threatening them.” He pushed through the security door and into the sterile corridor. “And we’re usually threatening them.”
Holy crap. Was Devlin worried about me? Was that the root of his hostility? Was he not the epic douche he portrayed when this team first came together? I knew I was getting to him, but lately I’d been seeing a whole new side of Devlin.
Protector.
My mind veered back toward the victim. I could only guess how many enemies the dead woman had though she seemed to put on a very pleasant facade to people outside of her home. Many we’d spoken with had been baffled at the idea that she’d had a child, let alone five. She was the worst kind of sadist. The one you didn’t know existed. The one who smiled and laughed and had light in their eyes. It was like she was two different people. The public charmer, the private horror.
Looks like horror won out. Was it wrong that I was glad? Probably. Didn’t change the fact that I was though. It’s called karma, and every once in a while, it swings by.
CHAPTER 13
MY DAY DRASTICALLY IMPROVED when I arrived at the hospital. I know? How many times would that ever be the case, but today the boot was coming off. Hopefully. Holden was my chauffeur as he seemed like a logical choice since he was in on the truth. I couldn’t have kept him away if I’d tried. This was directly related to my health and well-being, which rated pretty high up on Holden’s priority scale.
We met up with Dad in his office and all meandered to the radiography room where we took some more pictures of my foot to assess whether or not it had healed enough to rem
ove the boot. The wait for the pictures to develop was torture and seemed like an eternity. It was only like ten minutes, but I was so keyed up I couldn’t focus on anything else, and Holden soon gave up trying to take my mind off of it. He wandered around the room, stopping to inspect each of the descriptive posters on the walls. There was even one depicting the foot and ankle, naming and locating all the bones.
The door opened, and my father stepped through, the large black sheet with white depictions indicating the bones, and cloudy grey showing the outward structure of my damaged foot grasped in his hands. I couldn’t help but hold my breath as he inspected the sheet, popping it every once in a while to keep it upright.
“Well, let’s take a look.” Dad moved to push the radiograph into the clips that would secure it to the light box and illuminate it for us to examine.
The air grew thick with anticipation, all three minds holding hope. All three bodies holding breath. Until my dad visibly relaxed, his shoulder dropping, breath escaping in a long exhale. “This looks good, Nat. Really good.” He was nodding now. He whirled to face me and Holden who had been behind him while he looked over the x-ray. His hazel eyes were bright behind his black framed glasses. An excited smile lit his face, giving him a boyish look I only saw when he’d figured out something big.
Seeing him so excited warmed my heart. I missed him. A lot. I'd have to make a point of visiting more often, preferably not at the hospital because I'd been mashed by a fly phobic pony.
“So I can ditch the hugger?” My voice couldn't hide my excitement at the prospect as I pointed to the black monstrosity currently wrapped around my leg like a stage-three clinger. While it was a hundred times better than the crutches, it was still a hindrance that I wanted free of.
Both men chuckled at my elation, casting knowing looks toward one another before my father confirmed that I would, in fact, be heading back to the farmhouse sans boot. The moment those words left his lips, I scrambled to undo the mechanisms holding the brace in place like my life, or at least my leg, was in danger of being consumed if I couldn't escape it.