Lunatic Fringe

by TL Schaefer

  “All I can figure is she doesn’t have a real system in place yet, even though we thought she might. That having Tori and Monica and I as part of her stable was the beginning move.

  “We don’t have enough on Grace to bring her in for anything other than questioning, not yet. You hearing her voice isn’t proof that she’s involved. Bringing her in would seriously tip our hand, show what we know.” He paused, then shifted tack. “Just like seven months ago, when Arin came on the scene, I’ve had the children moved to a safe location not even Trang is aware of.” His voice went icy and hard, like the Farrell we were used to. “And when he wakes up, we’re going to find out exactly what he knows.”

  Chapter Eleven

  WHAT CAME BEFORE...

  A cop? They wanted me to be a cop? I was the very last person who should hold a gun, for God’s sakes. But that’s what the paper TI Millington had handed me said. “Welcome to the Defenders, princess.” Over the past eight weeks her snarls had been just as vicious, just as terrifying, but today those ruby, slashed lips softened. “You’ll do fine,” she said. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  And then she was gone and I was left looking at the piece of paper crushed in my hand, the piece of paper that would drive the rest of my life. A cop. Jesus please us, Mama was gonna kill me.

  Now, Denver...

  A doctor poking his head into the conference room broke up our skull session.

  I think both Heath and I were ready for a break.

  “Your daughter is starting to come around,” he announced, and Joe and I shot out of our chairs like we had springs attached to our asses.

  She was still groggy when we entered the room, but when she saw us her face crumpled. “Mommy,” she said, her voice so small it almost broke something inside of me.

  I snuggled into bed with her, not giving two shits what anyone thought, and held my baby.

  “Shhh, Tori bear, shhh. Daddy and I are here. We’ve got you.” Tears came to my own eyes as I sent wave after wave of love through my hands, through my words, petting and soothing her until her sobs tapered off, and she drifted back into sleep again.

  I lay there for a few minutes more, soaking in the feel of my child. Alive, healthy. Alive.

  Disengaging myself from her was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but I wanted her to stay in the healing slumber she’d dropped into.

  I stood, unsteady on my feet, my head a bit fuzzy and light.

  Joe reached out a hand to steady me and shot me a questioning look.

  I shook my head and settled into the chair next to him. Unless the world shifted on its axis, we’d be here when she woke again.

  “Did Farrell really light this Trang guy on fire?” Joe’s voice was soft for the brutality of the question, not carrying past us to the bed.

  I nodded, tired beyond imagining. My headache had morphed from a steady banging to a long, constant howl. “It’s real, Joe, all of it.”

  He went quiet, then... “Did you ever control me, Monica?”

  His words hit me like a punch. “What?”

  “Did you ever control me? I have to know.” He had his lawyer face on, the once that I’d seen him wear in the courtroom with a particularly difficult witness. An expression that said he’d get the truth and stay there all day to do it.

  “God no,” I said, horrified. “I didn’t even have a clue about my Talent until a few months ago, and by then you and Tori had already moved out. And the healing piece didn’t become apparent until today.” The words felt strange coming out of my mouth, as if I was validating my Talent simply by uttering them.

  “You said you were an empath,” he said, his eyes still suspicious, but not as hard-edged as before.

  “How do you think Trang survived?” I said simply. “He was minutes away from death, but I brought him back somehow. I think the empathy piece is merely part of being a healer.” I looked down at my hands as if they belonged to someone else.

  I shifted my attention to Tori, sleeping soundly. Knew I’d given her something of myself to put her down so deeply, into a true healing place. “I’d do the same thing all over again, no matter how much it hurt, to save Tori.” I faced him again. “So no, Joe. I never manipulated you, never controlled you.” I sighed. “We were never really suited, and we both know it. But damned if we didn’t create a beautiful child.”

  Joe’s expression softened as he looked at Tori. “That we did, Monica. That we did.”

  With his words I knew that for now, everything between us would be all right. No matter what tomorrow brought, today we were okay.

  WHEN TORI FINALLY, fully awoke an hour later, she flew into my arms. “Mommy, I was so scared,” she choked out the words. Joe joined me at her bedside, stroking her hair.

  “I know you were, sweetheart. But you’re safe now, with me and Daddy.” I tilted her chin up. “I need to know what you remember, Tori.”

  Her face began to crumple a bit, and Joe stiffened, but didn’t say a word when I shot him a look. In order to keep her safe, we needed to know, and now was a good time to start.

  “A man came to school, said Daddy told him to pick me up, that something had happened to you.” Her gaze searched my face. “But he lied. Another lady was in the car, and she kept telling me to do strange things.”

  I tensed. “Like what, sweetie?”

  “To touch my nose, meow like a cat. Weird stuff like that. And when I didn’t she got mad.”

  Grace. Or at least that’s what my instincts were telling me. If Tori could pick her out of a photo lineup, Kavenaugh would have probable cause to hold her while the case of interstate kidnapping was investigated. Tori might just be our trump card.

  “Then what happened?” Joe prompted. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was.

  “They made me take a pill, and then I did all the things they asked. The lady was still mad, but she quit complaining. Told me to go to sleep, and when I woke up, I was in that room.” So she didn’t remember leaving Dallas, probably didn’t even know she was in Colorado.

  “Did you see the man and the woman again?” I asked.

  “Just the man. He brought me food, and when he told me to do silly things I did them.”

  Simple Simon. Either Grace’s talent wasn’t strong enough to control Tori or our daughter had a natural shield of sorts. I was hoping for both.

  None of Tori’s answers belied any kind of terror or trauma, other than the fact they’d asked her to do goofy stuff. Perhaps Grace had been honest with Heath and me in this at least. Tori had been bait, pure and simple.

  Which still infuriated me on a level I’d rarely felt, but overwhelming relief tempered the emotion.

  “Rest up, baby.” Joe tugged at a lock of her hair playfully. “I’ll hang out with you here while your mom figures out what happened, okay?”

  She grasped my hand tight for a long second, then looked at me with eyes that were suddenly decades older. “You’ll find them, Mommy, before they hurt someone.”

  Her absolute conviction that I’d be the one to bring Grace Pearce to justice was daunting. I shot Joe a pleading look for understanding, that I needed to leave now that I’d seen my baby safe.

  He nodded back to me, and in the way of a couple that’s been married for years, I knew we were going to be all right. We’d never be together again, but as co-parents, we were going to be fine. Just as soon as I kicked in Grace Pearce’s teeth for daring to touch my daughter.

  WHEN I WALKED INTO the conference room Kavenaugh and Roney were saddling up. Heath was manning a laptop at the other end of the table. The distance between him and the other men was thick, and not measured in feet, but rather in trust. Or a lack thereof.

  “How’s Tori?” Roney asked, and I heard the genuine concern in his voice. Heath was watching me with a hawk’s eyes.

  “She’s fine. She saw her kidnappers. If she can pull Grace out of a photo lineup, you’ll have probable cause to at least question her.”

  Kavenaugh smiled, a
nd it was a fierce thing. “I’ll have my guys put something together. Did she see Trang as well?”

  “Not sure. She saw a man.” My brain was starting to work like a cop’s again, rather than an enraged mother’s. “And the guy who dosed us with Simple Simon is still out there. Could be him, could have been Trang. My money’s on Trang, just because he was there, and basically did the same thing to us. We need to establish that before we approach Grace, though. One way or the other, just so we know who’s in her camp.”

  “Not many, not anymore,” Heath said quietly from the end of the table. “I started transcribing everything I remembered from the last time I was at her estate. Her staff was non-existent compared to the past. I need a bit more time, but I think I may have motive now, and if I’m right, it ties in Wes Burke and Dave Gordon and everything that’s happened in the last year.”

  Kavenaugh gave a grunt, then grabbed his phone and called the office, ordering one of the junior agents to put together the photo lineup.

  I walked to the end of the table and settled in next to Heath. Roney watched for a long moment, then sat opposite me. “I’ll follow your lead, Monica,” he said quietly. Just like I’d followed his when it was Sara in danger. When we’d been downrange about a million years ago.

  Roney had always had my back, and I his. Besides the love of and for my daughter, it was one of the true constants in the last fifteen years of my life. Even when we’d both left the military and become cops, we’d been in each other’s orbit. Gratitude swelled in my chest as Kavenaugh returned to the table.

  Heath waited before the agent was seated before beginning. “Back when this all started, when Wes Burke came out of the woodwork, I thought this was a coup of sorts. But I had the instigator wrong. It was never Burke, never Gordon. It was always Grace. She hated the fact I inherited the Meece Foundation, and CASI as a part of it. Even contested Hugh’s will. But Hugh had left her everything else. Millions upon millions, so she didn’t have much of a case to take the Meece Foundation when the foundation didn’t have much more on the books than a crumbling building that used to be a private school.”

  Roney broke in. “Wait a second. When we did all the research on you, on Meece, we learned the Foundation was flush. CASI was just a small part of it.”

  “It is now, but ten years ago, it was basically just CASI. Sara and Burke shut it down, Green ran away, there was nothing left, and not much to do but rebuild it from the ground up.”

  Kavenaugh whistled, almost beneath his breath. I knew what he was thinking. The Meece Foundation was indeed flush, CASI barely a blip on the financial spreadsheet.

  Heath had done all of that and done it in under a decade.

  We’d all known he was savvy, smart, but that kind of turnaround was remarkable. It was suspicious. And Kavenaugh wasn’t one to back down.

  “How much of that fortune was leveraged from information you got while you worked for the NSA?”

  Heath smiled, almost gently. “Nothing that would raise any legal or ethical concerns. But I’m not a stupid man, Agent Kavenaugh. Using connections and acquaintances isn’t against the law. In the NSA, I got to know a lot of powerful people. People who were looking to invest. People who wanted to finance new ideas, even if they thought it was a loss, a tax write-off. So no, I didn’t use anything I learned at the NSA to further my own wealth, but I didn’t turn away any advantageous deals my acquaintances brought my way. In the end, I made us all rich.”

  His answer made me squirm a bit in my seat.

  I’d been getting used to the new Heath, the one who seemed more down to earth, more vulnerable. But right now, there was no doubt what he was. A shark. Sharkier than even Joe, who I’d thought was the dictionary definition.

  I inserted myself into the conversation, even though I had absolutely no official standing in this situation, now that Tori had been rescued. “I realize we’re waiting for Trang to regain consciousness.”

  An expression of discomfort crossed Heath’s face before being quickly banished.

  “In the meantime, I want Tori out of here. She’s not injured, mentally or physically, that I can see. There’s too many people moving around here for me to be comfortable.”

  Heath nodded in agreement. “It may be presumptuous, but I’ve secured a safe house for all of us. Grace is obviously mentally unstable.”

  “On that, I’d have to agree.” All of us jerked in response as a new voice entered the conversation, a stranger none of us had seen enter the room.

  Kavenaugh and Roney’s hands were at their weapons, my own hand instinctively reaching for a holstered weapon that wasn’t there.

  The man at the door was tall, distinguished, in a high-end suit, his generically handsome framed by a perfectly trimmed goatee. Everything about him screamed power broker. So how had he ended up in our conference room and how did he have any knowledge of Grace Pearce?

  He walked into the conference room, closing the door behind him, before placing a briefcase on the conference room table.

  “My name is Warren O’Donnell,” he began, his voice all soothing and lawyerly, “and I’m here to enlist your help.”

  Kavenaugh rose to his feet, his movements seemingly casual. Unless you’d seen him in action, like I had. “Not sure what you’re looking for, Mr. O’Donnell, but we’re supporting our friend,” he nodded to me. “Her daughter is here in the hospital.”

  I thought O’Donnell was going to roll his eyes in disbelief, then he just shook his head. “Agent Carter Kavenaugh, SAIC of the Denver Field Office. Detective Brian Roney, Dallas PD Homicide. Monica Foudy, formerly also a Dallas PD detective, now a private investigator, Talented, but we’re not sure in what area. Heath Farrell, retired NSA analyst, and half-brother to Grace Pearce, the man behind the Colorado Academy for Superior Intellect.” He stopped for a long beat and stared at all of us, then continued in a monotone voice, his words impacting like bullets. “Missing are Sara Covington, crime scene photographer and Talented foreseer and aura reader. Jonah Summers, headmaster to CASI and Talented controller. And Agent Arin Thomas, currently assigned to the unofficial cold case section.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Roney’s tone was rock-solid, which was a good thing because it steadied the spinning in my head, the nausea in my stomach.

  “As I said, my name is Warren O’Donnell. We’re going to become very good friends over the next few hours. You’re going to help me find and contain Grace Pearce.”

  Heath was the one who regained his composure first, probably because he was just as lethal as I suspected the man standing before us was.

  “Quite the bombshell, O’Donnell. Mind telling us why you’ve got Grace on a hit list? And why the hell you think we’ll assist you with anything?” He still sat in his chair at the end of the table, hands tented in front of him, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Roney’s hand had eased away from his hip, but I couldn’t see the distinctive butt of his Sig. He’d palmed it and was even now pointing it at O’Donnell. It made me feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy.

  “I’d rather wait until Joe and Lawrence Foudy are with us before I continue, and would prefer to do it in a more confined area, say the Field Office.” When none of us moved, just stared him down, he sighed again, as if we were the biggest pains in the ass in the world. “Because Grace was always cunning and cruel. But now she’s slipped her leash and needs to be confined before the Talented are outed to the world.”

  If I’d thought his bombshell earlier was a big one, I’d been dead wrong.

  A junior agent poked her head in the door, interrupting what was likely going to devolve very quickly. “Photo lineup you requested, sir.”

  Kavenaugh met her at the door, took the manila folder, excused her, then returned to the table. “Before any of us say another word, you included, O’Donnell, I want to know if you’re armed.”

  O’Donnell reached for his suit coat lapels very carefully, shrugged out of the jacket. “At my back you’ll find a Berretta
Nano nine-millimeter. I’m very aware that Detective Roney is covering me right this second. Nothing too hasty, please, Detective.” He turned his back to us, showing us the weapon holstered at the small of his back. His jacket had been exquisitely tailored to hide even that small budge.

  Kavenaugh disarmed him, then patted him down for good measure, but O’Donnell was true to his word. The small, deadly gun was his only weapon.

  I spoke for the first time. “How do you know Joe and Lawrence? Why do they need to be part of this discussion?”

  O’Donnell met my gaze. “Lawrence and I go way back. The firm has represented me on more than one occasion. But that’s all I’m willing to say until we’ve relocated someplace safe, where a first-year intern can’t listen at the door.”

  I hadn’t thought it possible, but this was getting weirder by the minute.

  Kavenaugh held up the folder. “Let’s get Tori to take a look at this, and we can go from there, okay?”

  I nodded in response, stood to join him. Roney gave us a hard-edged smile. “Heath and I will keep Mr. O’Donnell company.”

  Kavenaugh and I were barely out of the room before I whirled to face him. “Jesus Kavenaugh. What the hell is going on?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Monica, but I get the feeling our understanding of this whole situation has been woefully lacking.” He started walking again and I hurried to catch up. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Get Tori’s eyes on this photo array and we’ll move on from there, okay?”

  I blew out a breath. He was right, but I didn’t have to like it. Not when our lives had taken yet another turn for the surreal.

  TORI IDENTIFIED GRACE in about two seconds flat, and Trang right after that. There was no doubt in her voice as she pointed them out, and I was happy to hear anger in her tone, rather than fright.