Act of Surveillance: Paranormal Security and Intelligence® an Immortal Ops® World Novel (PSI-Ops/Immortal Ops Book 7)

by Mandy M. Roth

  That also happened to be her last day at that home.

  Several homes later, she’d ended up at one that didn’t leave her feeling like a total and utter freak. One that had others like her. Kids who were different.

  Special.

  It wasn’t without fault, but it had been a hell of a lot better than the first ones. And it helped being around others who were like her. Plus, she’d met her best friends there. Isobel and Daisy were the same age as her and had very similar memories from early childhood. They too suffered from nightmares. They’d wisely stopped sharing them with others as well.

  Now they only talked about it with one another, no outsiders. Of course, some details didn’t line up exactly. Like the fact Liberty’s dreams included a man who she knew deep down wasn’t trying to harm her. One who had helped her. The man with the Eastern European accent.

  Liberty wanted to locate the man who had helped her—the man who’d made her feel safe for the first time in her life. She’d never been able to thank him and very much wanted to express how much his kindness helped to show her there was good in the world.

  “I just need to remember something useful,” she said out loud. “Something more than his eyes and that he smelled like apple pie.”

  Closing her eyes, she did her best to focus, hoping for something—anything—to help piece it all together. She was about to give up when the urge to stroke the statue she was still clutching to her chest came over her. She did.

  As she concentrated, images flashed through her mind of the man who had been kind to her. Like always, she couldn’t make out all his features, but she could picture his eyes clearly.

  They were royal blue.

  He was big, she knew that as well—like a giant to her child mind at the time.

  And oddly, she had vague impressions of braiding the man’s dark brown hair, but that couldn’t be right. Could it?

  A nervous chuckle escaped her. She had to be remembering it all wrong.

  There was a light rap on her door, followed by a soft voice speaking to her. “Libs?”

  The door creaked open gradually. A petite woman with long white-blonde hair was there, her blue eyes wide with worry as she peered into the room. As she spotted the floating items, she frowned. “Did you have another bad dream?”

  The second the question left the woman’s lips, the items all fell. Most hit the floor, some dropped onto the dresser or the bedside tables.

  Liberty shot out a hand and barely managed to catch the framed photo before it would have crashed down as well. She set it on the side table and then did the same with the statue. “I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Daisy entered the room more, carefully stepping over the items that were strewn about. A random shoe that had ended up landing on the edge of the dresser fell to the floor as Daisy walked by it, paying it no mind. “You didn’t wake me. I couldn’t sleep. I drifted off, but that didn’t last long. I stopped trying to fall back asleep. We need to be up in a few hours anyway and it’s kind of sticky out tonight with the humidity. Makes it hard to sleep.”

  Liberty glanced at the mess in her room and bit her lower lip. “Did I make anything else in the house float while I was sleeping?”

  Daisy shrugged. “A few things. My bed was one of them. No biggie. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, and I caught anything that was headed for my open window.”

  “No biggie?” asked Liberty as panic filled her. Her imagination ran wild with what might have occurred. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

  Daisy snorted. “I’m fine. Had a little exorcist moment there but figured out right away that you were probably dreaming and that my bed wasn’t inhabited by a demon. Least I hope it was you doing that to my bed. You don’t think the demon across the street moved in here now, do you?” she asked before lifting a hand dismissively. “Kidding. I don’t actually believe in them.”

  Liberty couldn’t help but laugh. “We have enough of our own problems. We don’t need demonic entities joining in, but you should know, I totally do believe in demons.”

  Daisy groaned. “I know.”

  “Sorry about the bed thing,” said Liberty. “And sorry that I keep losing control at night so much lately. I’m pretty sure I’m the reason things keep showing up in new spots around the house—you know, other than where they started.”

  “Yet they always show up,” countered Daisy, seemingly unconcerned by it all.

  This was becoming something of a habit. For the past three months, it had been a nearly nightly occurrence.

  While Liberty had been having bad dreams all her life, they’d gotten more intense as of late. So had Daisy’s worrying. Her concern wasn’t to be taken lightly. The woman’s sixth sense was unnerving and as Daisy got older, she seemed to get a better handle on it.

  Liberty knew it could all be traced back to what they were doing—hunting for answers to questions they had, while doing what they could to find others like them. Others who were different. She slid over on her queen-size bed and pulled the covers back, making room for her friend.

  Daisy’s feet padded across the hardwood floor as she hurried to the other side of the bed. She crawled in and immediately lay on her side, facing Liberty, her gaze troubled. “Did you have the dreams again?”

  “Yes,” replied Liberty, lying back down, turning onto her side to face her friend as well.

  “Anything new?” questioned Daisy. “Was the blue-eyed man in them?”

  “He was,” confessed Liberty.

  “I don’t suppose you caught a break and remembered something new, did you?” asked Daisy.

  “He called me Little Paw in this one,” said Liberty.

  Daisy adjusted the pillow beneath her head, regarding Liberty curiously. “Little Paw? Why would he call you that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Daisy sighed. “Nothing else then? No name? No face? Nothing?”

  A half-laugh came from Liberty. “Isobel’s impatience is wearing off on you.”

  “Sorry, I just have this feeling, deep down, that we’re so close to getting answers,” said Daisy.

  “Me too,” admitted Liberty.

  “What do we know so far about him?” asked Daisy, lifting a hand and ticking off her fingers as she ran down the list. “He’s got dark hair, blue eyes, he’s huge, has an accent, he may or may not have given you that plastic hunk of junk, erm, I mean awesome statue, and a stuffed bear that has seen better days, he called you Little Paw, and he was nice. Am I forgetting anything?”

  Liberty snorted. “That he smelled like apple pie, or at least I think he did.”

  “Gee, that is super helpful,” stressed Daisy. “I wonder if Isobel can hack a database that lists everyone who smells like a baked good.”

  “She probably already has that search parameter set up in whatever it is she uses her dark hacking powers for,” said Liberty with a chuckle, earning her a laugh from Daisy. “That and something that lists if they look good in leather.”

  “Right!”

  Liberty perked, recalling a detail she’d not shared with Daisy. “Oh, there is something else too. Braids. I think I might have braided his hair.”

  Daisy was silent.

  “Did you hear me?” asked Liberty.

  “Yep. Just trying to figure out how to best unpack that one,” responded Daisy. “French braid or what? Give me more details.”

  Liberty groaned.

  “Hey, could make all the difference.” Daisy grinned. “Think harder. Have you heard anyone in your dreams call him by his name?”

  As Liberty began to shake her head no, she stopped, a strange sensation moving over her. “Weird. I kind of want to call him Boris, or even Jackass.”

  Daisy’s eyebrows shot up. “Boris? Jackass? Yes, he sounds like a really sweet guy. Hope we find him soon.”

  “He’s not a bad guy,” argued Liberty. “I already told you.”

  Daisy nodded. “I know. He was nice to you.”

  “Well, he w
as.”

  Daisy twirled the end of her long blonde hair. “Okay, other things we know. We know we have overlapping early childhoods. We’re pretty sure we were held at the same place. And we’re fairly certain there were other kids like us who would be about our age now.”

  From the second Liberty had met Daisy and Isobel, she’d felt connected to them and had been sure she knew them well. When they’d opened up about what they could do and what they could recall from their childhood, they knew without a shadow of a doubt their pasts were interlinked.

  Daisy lifted her hand and raised a finger. “We know we’re not like other people. Not by a long shot. And we’re pretty sure something was done to us when we were little that made us this way, right? That we weren’t born this way. Those tests you did on us at the university, they showed weird things, right?”

  “Yes.” Liberty touched her stomach, the sick feeling still there like a shallow pit. Since she was working on her PhD in molecular genetics and microbiology, and worked at the university to help cover the cost of tuition and living expenses, she had a certain amount of access to labs others didn’t.

  Liberty had been curious for as long as she could remember, always wanting to unlock the secrets to everything. That included the mystery of what they were and how they’d come to be that way. When she’d broached the subject of digging deeper and looking for something on a genetic level, Daisy and Isobel had jumped at the opportunity. They’d been quick to let Liberty take blood and tissue samples. She’d taken her own as well. Then she’d snuck the samples in with the rest that were set to be tested.

  Preliminary results had come back with clear indications something was certainly different about each of them. Something that extended far beyond the known limitations of gene editing, venturing right into science fiction territory.

  But when Liberty had tried to access the full reports and dig deeper, the information went missing.

  So had the scientists she’d worked under.

  The last she’d seen of the men had been at the lab at the university. She was the last person to see either of them and had already been questioned more than once by campus police and the local authorities. Liberty had nothing to offer other than they’d been fine when she’d left them there. Of course, she’d neglected to mention what they’d been working on for her prior to going missing. Guilt clung to her over the ordeal, and she couldn’t help but wonder if helping her was why they were now missing.

  Both had been nice men who shared her passion for demystifying the human genome. It had been three weeks since they’d been seen or heard from. Three weeks of Liberty trying to find out what, if any, headway had been made on the case.

  There had been a detective who had originally interviewed her who’d seemed interested in digging deeper, and like he might be approachable for updates, but when Liberty had gone to the police station, they’d told her they didn’t have any detective by his name.

  That was just one of a string of weird things that had been happening.

  The day after the scientists went missing, it became nearly impossible to use a cell phone in the house and the internet had been on the fritz.

  As much as Liberty didn’t want to buy into any of Isobel’s seemingly endless conspiracy theories, it was starting to feel like something bigger than they could have imagined was at play. If Isobel was to be believed, their house was now bugged, and the government was listening to everything they did and somehow jamming their cell phone signals.

  Falling down Isobel’s weird rabbit hole of spy novel crap wasn’t high on Liberty’s agenda, yet all other explanations were starting to wear thin.

  “You okay?” asked Daisy, pulling Liberty from her thoughts.

  “Yes. Just thinking about everything. I’m with you on feeling like we’re close to getting real answers, but I also feel like—”

  “We’ve opened a dangerous can of worms?” asked Daisy, finishing Liberty’s thought.

  “Yes. Exactly.” Liberty took a moment to think before saying more. “What if Isobel is right?”

  “Do you think we should stop looking for answers?” Daisy watched her closely.

  Liberty thought more on it. “I’m torn.”

  “Same. What I remember happening when we were little isn’t anything good,” said Daisy, her voice low. “It’s pretty far from good, actually. If it really happened, then I firmly believe the people behind it all could and would kill to keep it from coming to light. And I’m wondering if Isobel might be on to something. Maybe I’m being dramatic.”

  “I don’t know that you are,” confessed Liberty.

  “I’d like to figure out what was done to us and what, if anything, it has to do with what’s going on now.”

  “And you want to find the blue-eyed guy who smells like pie,” said Daisy with a wink.

  “I do. I feel like I owe him a thank you.”

  Daisy sat up quickly. “I’m guessing he was part of the group of men who saved us. I remember them kicking in the doors, coming in from all angles. I was scared at first—but then I wasn’t. They weren’t in tactical gear or anything, but they were armed. I remember that much. I remember guns. Lots of guns. That is, of course, if these memories we’re all experiencing are actually real.”

  “The very fact you even used the term tactical gear tells me you’re spending way too much time with Isobel and she is starting to rub off on you,” Liberty said with a smile.

  “You two are sort of cut from the same cloth,” expressed Daisy. “You’re both kick-butt. Me? Not so much. What do I bring to the mix? Nothing useful. I’m the fodder in a horror movie. The woman you feel a little bad for when she ends up being slaughtered by the killer, but you can’t actually remember her name or anything about her later. I’m that. Disposable.”

  “Hey, not true,” Liberty protested.

  “Name one thing I offer that’s been of use for us so far,” dared Daisy.

  “Your intuition has guided us more times than I can count. I don’t know how you do it but I’m thankful for it. And you talk Isobel and me out of a lot of stupid things. That takes skill. You’ve seen what we can get into when left on our own. And we both know how quick Isobel is to dig her feet in on something.”

  “Oh, she’s horrible,” Daisy said with a laugh. “You’re at least a reformed bad girl. Isobel does her best to add to her rather colorful arrest record. You know, the one that magikally vanishes every so often, only to return with nothing of significance listed on it? I especially enjoyed the time she changed the system to report she was wanted for being awesome. I’m sure the police department really appreciated needing to comb through their computer network to find all the new things she added.”

  “It could have been worse,” said Liberty. “Remember the time she used her hacking skills and nearly started a world war?”

  Daisy’s eyes widened. “Yes. Let’s not bring that up with her. I don’t want to give her any ideas for how to spend her weekend.”

  Liberty grinned. “Good thinking.”

  Chapter Five

  PSI Division B Headquarters, location classified…

  Rurik set his sights on the physical therapist, who he strongly suspected moonlighted as a torture expert, as she gave him yet another set of directives to follow. She’d already spent the greater part of their current morning session putting him through his paces, forcing him to work muscles he didn’t want to be working.

  And the woman never tired.

  She was terminally peppy.

  It was downright irritating.

  He sent a scathing look in her direction.

  She smiled wider.

  Americans had a weird thing with smiling at strangers. It always made them look touched in the head. When he’d first relocated to America, he’d been taken aback by the number of people who smiled at him in public for seemingly no reason. At first, he assumed they were all deranged. Took some doing, but he finally got used to it—somewhat.

  Kind of.

 
; He continued to stare at the woman before him like his first assessment of her being touched in the head wasn’t far off the mark.

  The therapist reached out and touched the tip of his nose, giving it a quick tap. “Aww, adorable.”

  He growled, narrowing his gaze on her.

  Usually, when he glowered at people, they backed down, giving him ample space. They didn’t call him adorable. And no one tapped him on his nose.

  Ever.

  Not if they wanted to keep their finger.

  She eased closer and he fought the urge to recoil.

  The woman was clearly insane. It’s like she wanted him in a pissy mood or to totally and completely bear out.

  “You can do it,” she said, clapping for him, still closer than he liked. She didn’t look to be out of her early twenties, and he had to wonder if she was taking a mood enhancer because he’d never known anyone in his life to be that happy all the time.

  She did an upper body shimmy movement that drew attention to her chest.

  Under normal circumstances, he’d have found her attractive. Her excessive cheer took from that. The last thing on his mind was getting laid. Even if he were in the mood, there was something about her that left him easing back to avoid making too much contact.

  When he’d first seen her this morning, she’d been nursing a bloody nose. He’d offered to take her to find one of the many doctors on staff, but she’d insisted she’d only just come from one. That everything was fine.

  Rurik had let her make her own decision, like he wished someone would do for him. He was sick and fucking tired of being told what to do.

  The perky blonde clicked her fingers in front of Rurik’s face, pulling his attention back to her. “Focus, stud. All right. Give me three more reps with that hand and then we’ll move to working the other. Are you excited? I’m excited.”