by Kay Hooper
“That doesn’t explain what you know about building security here,” Brodie said. “We were two blocks away.”
Murphy’s inner debate was brief, because she’d known he would ask. “Sarah and Tucker are a mile away,” she told him. “She didn’t see shadows in the condo, but one of the security people felt off to her. The way this whole neighborhood feels off. And that’s good enough for me.”
Brodie handed over the automatic in his pocket immediately, but said, “What the hell are they doing in this?”
“Orders, just like us,” Murphy said without really explaining. “Ask me, it’s a good thing we’ve got them nearby. Because for the life of me, I can’t figure out what Duran is up to this time.”
“It’s like a web,” Tasha murmured. “All around me.”
Brodie looked at her for a moment, her strained expression clearly visible in the street light, then looked back at Murphy. “What’s Duran waiting for?”
“Yeah, that’s my question. Look, you two get back to Tasha’s condo. I want to do some recon around the neighborhood, and tonight is as good a time as any.”
“Murphy—”
“You know it’s the right thing to do. Unless and until we have some idea of what Duran is planning with all this, making any move could be playing right into his hands. Let’s take a little time and try to figure out what’s going on. Astrid’s out of commission, probably well into tomorrow. It’s too late for Duran to bring in another of his psychics. Look, I’ll have Sarah on alert. She can reach farther than any of us.”
“Check in every four hours,” Brodie told her.
“Don’t worry. For once, I’m really not crazy about being out here alone.” And before Brodie could say a word, Murphy had faded back into the darkness of the alley and vanished.
“Will she be all right?” Tasha asked.
“If anybody can take care of herself, it’s Murphy.” He frowned suddenly. “Sorry there were no introductions.”
“She’s on our side, I got that. It’s enough. For now, at least.”
“Come on.” Brodie’s hand tightened on hers, and he led her toward the entrance of her building. “Your hand’s like ice.”
Looking at the attractive building looming above them in a way she never had before, Tasha murmured, “I wish it was just that.”
FOURTEEN
“Sorry,” Astrid said rather thickly, through the folded handkerchief pressed to her sluggishly bleeding nose with one hand, while her other hand adjusted the ice pack on the back of her neck. She was more or less just leaning back on that, using the chair’s high back to hold the ice pack in place. She hadn’t been conscious very long, and she felt like holy hell.
Duran was watching her, his pale eyes narrowed slightly. “Murphy did this to you?”
“Well, she was the only one I sensed, the one circling the neighborhood on guard against any kind of psychic probing of Solomon. And I was focusing on her when it felt like a truck hit me.” She squinted a bit as she returned his stare. “Can you turn down the lights a bit in here?”
He didn’t move. “You’re sure it wasn’t Solomon?”
Astrid didn’t move her head because she was certain it would have fallen off if she did. “Absolutely certain. I’ve been in her mind, I’d recognize the touch of it. Brodie’s too.”
A slight frown drew Duran’s brows together. “Brodie isn’t psychic.”
“Yeah, we’ve had this conversation before. I’m telling you, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that he’s some kind of psychic now. Not sure what kind, but whatever it was, it was triggered by your little maze test. She needed help getting out, and he helped her. Solomon may be the only one he can connect with, like Tucker Mackenzie and Sarah Gallagher.” She blinked. “I mean Sarah Mackenzie. But he can damn sure connect to Solomon.”
“But it wasn’t either of them who put you down.”
“Nope. It was Murphy’s mind I was touching—and I was only able to do that because she was probing the area for other psychics. So I guess they’ve caught on to that little habit of yours.”
Calm, he said, “They caught on to that some time ago.”
Astrid hurt too much to waste a glare. “And you sent me out without even warning me. Knowing it was nothing more than an exercise in futility and an invitation to the worst headache of my life? Wonderful. Then this is on you. Whether I go to one of the healers or not, I’m useless as a psychic for at least the next couple of days, and maybe longer than that. So if you think you’re going to need one of us, better call somebody else in.”
“Do you think Murphy knows she put you down?”
“I wish you’d stop calling it that. It makes me sound like an animal being put out of its misery. But, yes, I’m reasonably sure she knew exactly what she was doing. I got the sense just before the train hit me that she was even a little gleeful about it.”
“And she knew who you were?”
“Yeah.”
As he continued to frown at her, Astrid said, “You know, this is my room. I asked them to help me in here so I wouldn’t have to get up again. So unless you happen to have something stronger than aspirin on you, please do us both a favor and either call for a strong painkiller or a healer. Seriously, Duran, if something isn’t done soon, you may be short a psychic entirely.”
She was in too much pain to feel much else but was aware of a flicker of surprise when he turned and left her room. Then she heard him tell someone outside the door to send for a healer, and a chill was added to her agony.
A healer would take away the pain; that was pretty much a certainty. But how she would feel after having . . . that . . . in her mind was already causing her skin to crawl.
The agonizing headache was almost better.
Almost.
—
Jeffrey Bell had lost all track of time. If there even was time wherever they were holding him.
It didn’t look like anything. It looked like everything.
The bright, hard glare was constantly in his eyes, in the space around him he supposed, and that made it impossible to really see anything. In fact, he had closed his eyes what felt like forever ago.
He was cold. He was naked. He was strapped down to something that felt metallic.
When they touched him, it felt cold and slimy. It felt like if he didn’t keep his eyes and mouth squeezed shut, something horrible would ooze into the orifices. Into him.
At first, it had seemed almost more comical than threatening. He was a seer and the future was beyond his reach, so all he had were his normal five senses. Waking up naked and catching, before the glare forced him to close his eyes, weirdly shaped blobs of darkness coming closer and then retreating. He felt embarrassed. Uneasy. Baffled.
He tried to ask them what the hell was going on, but for some reason he found himself unable to speak.
Then they began hurting him. And there was nothing comical about that.
He knew he was writhing on the table, but the scream he desperately needed to let out was trapped inside him, crawling around, echoing inside his head as if there were absolutely nothing else in there, just a keening, primitive wail of agony.
What were they doing to him?
He didn’t know.
It felt like they were burning him. And tearing at his flesh. Ripping him open to see what his insides looked like.
Pulling his insides outside.
And because he couldn’t scream, he could hear them. Even through the horrific pain, he could hear them.
Whispering. Rustling. Talking to each other in no language he had ever heard in his life, something filled with clicks and whirs and a crackling sound like stiff paper crumpling.
And they smelled like dead earth, like the dirt scraped from a deep, deep hole, so deep nothing had ever lived in it or grown in it, something that had never seen light.
Maybe that was why they liked it so bright here and now.
Wherever and whenever it was.
They stopped hurting him for a while, and still the scream he couldn’t release crawled around inside his skull, his throat, behind his teeth, until it faded to a whimper, and even that found no escape.
He knew grunts and strangled sounds did escape, knew frantic breaths blew snot from his nose, or maybe it was blood, and he knew he was crying. That he had been crying for a long time.
Then they went back to hurting him, searing his flesh, stabbing him, probing as if they had lost something terribly valuable inside his body and needed to find it. They did things to him he didn’t even have words to describe, even to himself, things that were slowly, inexorably, driving him insane.
And when he could, finally, at last, scream, the sound that erupted from his tortured throat sounded more like the agonized shriek of some dying primitive beast, skewered alive on a spit for roasting.
It was only when he was sobbing for breath in the aftermath of that scream that they began to talk to him.
Jeffrey Bell had believed he had known fear in his life.
He hadn’t.
Not until then.
—
Tasha had not expected to sleep at all that night. It had taken all the calm she’d been able to muster to walk into the condo building with Brodie, to smile at the security guard at the desk and comment on what a pleasant walk they’d had, plus delicious dessert and wonderful music to enjoy.
This was the usual weekend evening guard, Nelson, so Tasha assumed that Stewart had ended his extended shift. But she had no idea when that was, or which of the guards might be—apparently was—an operative for the other side.
One of the shadows.
By the time they got up to her condo, Tasha was shaking, mostly from an inner chill, but Brodie nevertheless calmly suggested that she take a hot shower and get ready for bed, and he’d fix her a cup of soothing tea.
Tasha really wanted to object to being coddled, to point out that she’d slept most of the day already, and she wasn’t sure if it was a mutinous expression on her face or Brodie’s new and rather unsettling ability to read her that caused him to stop her at the doorway of her bedroom, his hands on her shoulders.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly. “Whatever Duran has planned is more elaborate than anything I’ve known him to do, and that means it’s been in the works for a long, long time. That means he’s committed. It means that taking Astrid out of play, even if it’s for a week instead of a day, isn’t going to stop him. He’s a chess player half a dozen moves ahead, so he considered this possibility, planned for it. He may have to take a detour, we may buy a few more hours or an extra day, but sooner or later, he’ll be ready for his next move.”
“Me?”
“You’re part of it. At least his endgame. Vital to it, I’d guess.”
“But you don’t know how.”
“Even more than usual,” Brodie confessed a bit wryly. “This is more than just a desire to add to his psychic collection. He could have grabbed you before I ever got here. And we know now that he had people in place that could have done just that, probably without even raising an alarm. But he didn’t, and we don’t know why he didn’t.”
“No,” Tasha said, “he just encircled me with a web of enemies pretending to be my neighbors and friends.”
“As far as I know, he’s never done that before.”
Tasha felt incredibly tired all of a sudden, whether because she had used her abilities in a new way or simply because all the questions and puzzles and dangers were simply overwhelming.
“You’re safe here,” Brodie told her. “I automatically activate the jammer every time we come in, just in case they slipped somebody in to plant more bugs, even though Duran usually doesn’t repeat himself. Listen, go take that shower to get warm again; I’ll have the tea ready when you are. After that, you need to sleep, and I mean all night. You have to conserve your energy, Tasha, rest whenever you can.”
“Because we may have to move. In a hurry.”
“We may. Or you may have to use your abilities unexpectedly, and that’s always going to take energy. No matter which way you look at it, you need to rest when you can.”
Tasha hadn’t thought it possible, and later she hazily suspected that Brodie had put something in the hot and soothing tea he had ready for her, but she really didn’t care. She needed sleep, and falling into that curiously safe and warm unconsciousness was too blissful to fight.
Brodie stood in the doorway of her bedroom for a few moments just listening to her even breathing, then slowly retreated, drawing the door almost closed behind him. She would sleep, he knew, for at least eight hours and probably more. He wasn’t at all sure he should have slipped an herbal sleep aid into her tea, but his instincts told him she needed to rest, deeply, and the combination of herbs they had discovered some time ago seemed to help psychics, especially, rest when they needed to. And so it was something he always carried in an inner jacket pocket whenever he was working.
Brodie debated with himself briefly but finally dug in the other inside jacket pocket for another burner phone, a little surprised to find that it still held a charge, and called base.
“How’s Tasha?” she asked by way of a greeting.
He kept his voice quiet. “Asleep. And badly shaken. Do you have any idea what the hell is going on? This is not Duran’s usual MO, and I’m baffled as to why he’d change tactics at this stage.”
“Maybe to throw us off.”
“I don’t know. I get the sense this has more to do with a specific plan concerning Tasha than a general change in his tactics.”
She sighed. “I get the same sense. But I don’t know what it means, John. None of our psychics are getting anything—and I mean even more so than usual.”
Brodie frowned. “Can you explain that?”
“No. We have a theory about it, but no way to really test that theory, not without opening up too many of our psychics to attack. Duran has—for want of a better term—thrown up a net of his people surrounding Tasha, whether to keep her in a single area and under observation, or to keep something or someone away from her. Either way, they’re taking no steps to harm or interfere with her. Just watching, and even that seems casual and unthreatening.”
“Except that now Tasha feels threatened.”
“Because she saw them. The shadows. Even more, now she knows she can see them. And as frightened as that makes her, it may be your only way to get her out of there.”
“You believe we should leave?”
“Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. We have a safe house ready, but . . . I’m not at all sure hiding Tasha away is the answer, not for her.”
“Because we don’t know why Duran wants her?”
“Yeah. We need to know that, John. We can’t really gauge the threat against her until we have that information.”
“How do you propose we get it?”
“Sarah believes she can find out.”
Brodie knew he was frowning now. “I really wish we had another way. We don’t know for sure that going public and being so visible is the protection we hope it is.”
“True enough. But she has Tucker, and he has almost unlimited resources—besides being her husband and being connected to her on a psychic level. He’s probably better than anyone we have in place to make sure nobody gets to her.”
“I know, I know. I just . . . don’t like it.”
Shrewdly, she said, “Because you aren’t their Guardian?”
“I have trust issues; we both know that.” He drew a breath and let it out in a short sigh. “But my focus now is and has to be Tasha, so whatever Sarah is up to, the rest of you will have to keep an eye on.”
“We will. John, we have more than one operative out there gathering intelligence. Even th
ough the security in Tasha’s building has been infiltrated, so far they’ve shown no intentions of harming Tasha or even going after her. I hate assumptions as much as you do, but for now we need to assume that the two of you are safe locked in her condo. I know she’s sleeping; you need to get some rest as well.”
“I can’t rest not knowing what’s happening.”
“Get comfortable on her couch and take a few of those catnaps of yours tonight. Look, put something against her door, a rough and ready but highly effective alarm. Use a table with a shaky vase on the edge, something that would wake you instantly if it was disturbed; Duran’s people can’t walk through walls any more than we can. But get some rest. We both know everything could change in a heartbeat, and you’ll be no good to Tasha or us if you’re not at your best.”
“Okay, okay. Just try to get me some answers, please. I really don’t like fumbling around in the dark. And I like even less being at the center of this web of Duran’s, especially when I don’t know if this is a new tactic he’s trying out—or something designed just for Tasha.”
“Get some rest, and we’ll try to find out.”
“Copy that. Let me know if and when you do.”
“Of course. Take care of Tasha.”
Brodie turned off the cell, then repeated his actions of earlier and flushed the battery before dropping the useless phone into the trash can in the kitchen. Then he did as suggested, rigging a makeshift early-warning system by placing Tasha’s small hall table against the inside of the condo’s door and carefully balancing a vase he found on the edge.
Any pressure on the door from the outside and, alarm or no alarm, the vase would hit the marble entryway floor, and if Brodie happened to be napping the crash would wake him instantly.
He checked on Tasha again, finding her sleeping deeply, seemingly peacefully, then made himself comfortable on her couch in the living room, the TV on low to a documentary channel.
And despite everything on his mind, with a soldier’s long practice he was almost instantly asleep.
—
“There are,” Murphy said, “just some things you can’t plan for. Not even a chess whiz like you.”