Dave… Oh, darling, nothing I’ve done has made any difference, has it?
“Thank you,” Jean-Baptiste said.
I stared at my wine glass and absently smoothed a wrinkle on the tablecloth. Unanswered, his words hung aimlessly in the air. One of his bodyguards shifted awkwardly off to the side.
“They’re kids,” I said finally. “I would’ve done the same no matter who they were. This had nothing to do with you.”
“Thank you, anyway.” His deep voice wavered, and he made no move to touch his wine glass again. “So where do we stand?”
I gave his mind a testing push. His defenses were stronger than I remembered, but I hadn’t truly tried to get past them in years. I gathered up all the wrath and anguish I’d felt in the aftermath of his men’s attack on the boat—the desperate searching for Dave in the cold water, the passage of each second in the hospital waiting room, my hand clenched around the gun as I aimed it at the man who’d fired the rocket launcher—and I flung it at Jean-Baptiste.
He reeled, and his shock and alarm were like a lighthouse in the dark. I followed the beacon, and though he bolstered his mental defenses, it was a split-second too late. I slipped by, and there was nothing to stop me from seizing everything he thought and felt.
A kitchen knife rested on the table—one of the ones Irma liked, because it looked perfectly domestic but sliced flesh as easily as foodstuff. At my mental command, Jean-Baptiste grabbed it and pressed it to this throat.
His bodyguards lunged forward, but they only made it half a step before I took their minds and froze them. Jean-Baptiste, it seemed, was no better than Joey at picking henchmen who could resist mind-control.
The kitchen was perfectly still now, and I leaned back in my chair and contemplated Jean-Baptiste. I had his face tilted up to better expose his throat to the blade, and if he had control of his own hand, it would have been shaking. I was inside his head, so he couldn’t hide his heart-pounding panic. I could feel the sweat forming beneath his suit, the way he was hyperaware of the sharp edge pressed just above his Adam’s apple. He’d known it would come to this, dreaded it from the moment Joey had laid out his demands.
Unexpectedly, his panic subsided, replaced by a numb sort of calm. His thoughts turned to Emmanuel and Farah. It was mildly interesting to “see” them from his perspective. Whereas I would picture Elisa’s face, he associated them with their voices, their scents, the feel of their hands in his. There were a million little thoughts and memories that built his perception of his children, and I barely recognized them as the same kids I knew so casually. I recognized the feeling, though, that aching, all-encompassing love.
As Jean-Baptiste held the knife to his throat, he thought of them sitting safely in the car as it carried them into hiding. If he had to trade his life for theirs, it was more than worth it.
I leaned back my head, a huff of air leaving my nostrils. Then I took a deep breath and forced myself to look back at him, to summon the fury I’d felt when I’d wanted to kill the man who’d fired the rocket launcher—the man Jean-Baptiste had sent, the same as he’d sent people to kidnap Rosa and murder Dave in his hospital bed. It didn’t matter that Joey had forced him to. Jean-Baptiste had hurt my family. I had to kill him to send a message, so that no one dared threaten me and mine ever again.
But as I looked at him, I just felt hollow. With a disgusted groan, I released my mental control.
Jean-Baptiste slumped and flung the knife onto the table. His men staggered and then went for their guns.
“No.” Hearing them, Jean-Baptiste waved a hand. “Stand down.”
They reluctantly obeyed.
Jean-Baptiste went for the wine glass and took a slow, comforting sip. The slightest tremor went through his hand. “Why?” he asked.
Because I’d gone soft, just like Joey and my father always said. Because I had a lot of family, but Jean-Baptiste probably my only friend.
“Because you were right,” I said. “When you drugged me, you said I’d do the same thing in your place. And I would have.”
He was silent, his hands steady now.
“But don’t mistake mercy for weakness,” I growled. “From here on out—”
He jerked, knocking over his wine glass and staining my tablecloth red. That could only mean one thing. I went into his head and found him flashing to the future.
Gunshots split his eardrums, punctuating someone’s shouts. Jean-Baptiste crouched, his heart pounding double-time and his muscles taut. His right shoulder stung, though I couldn’t tell how he’d been cut, and his fingers splayed across a cold stone floor. He waited, poised, listening for something.
“She had it coming,” said a voice I instantly recognized as Joey’s.
Then someone started screaming. It took me several seconds to realize the voice belonged to me.
The flash ended, leaving Jean-Baptiste back in the present, the puddle of wine on the tablecloth now dripping onto the floor.
I swallowed. “How far off is that?”
“Not long,” he said. “The aftertaste of wine was still in my mouth.”
Damn it. I debated running for it, but I’d rather face Joey here on my home turf than out in the open. And I didn’t want to run from him. I wanted to kill him. That’s why I’d come here, even though I’d known the house might be under surveillance. I’d hoped to draw him out and end this once and for all.
Judging by the sound of my scream, I’d overestimated my chances of taking him in a fight.
“Irma,” I called.
She appeared in the doorway almost instantly.
“Joey’s about to pay an unexpected visit,” I said. “Whatever you got out of Eddy’s storeroom, it’s not enough.”
“Right.” Her eyes lowered thoughtfully, and then she smiled in a way that would give a normal person chills. “I’ll go dust off the Uzis, shall I?”
She left, and I turned to Jean-Baptiste. “Leaving or staying?”
He’d stood, and drops of wine on the leg of his white pants looked eerily like blood. “Joey Giordano took my children,” he said. “I get a piece of him, Val. I’m owed it.”
“I’ll try to save you one, then,” I said lightly, hiding my relief.
We got to work. All the windows in the house had bulletproof glass, so I checked that all the doors were bolted and had Jean-Baptiste’s men move furniture to act as barricades. Irma glided around like a waitress at a cocktail bar, only instead of alcohol, she offered a variety of firearms and ammunition. Jean-Baptiste’s men looked particularly impressed as they took their pick, and I just hoped it was enough.
The sound of my scream echoed through my head, all that pain and rage. What could Joey do to make me scream like that?
I pulled out my phone to speed dial Elisa. My finger hovered over the call button, and it felt as if everything in my stomach had turned to ash. What would I say to her? I’d just worry her for no reason. There was nothing she could do—well, nothing I wanted her to do. She might jump into the car and race over here, and Joey… Joey had gone toe-to-toe with Dave before. He was one of the few people out there strong enough to physically hurt her.
I put my phone away. I was overprotective at the best of times. With Dave in a coma, I couldn’t risk Elisa, too. Losing her would destroy me.
“You all right?” Irma asked, passing by with a rifle slung over her shoulder.
I shrugged, trying to ignore the way my intestines crawled. “Let’s just say I’m not a fan of the future Jean-Baptiste predicted for me.”
Irma gave me a piercing look, as if she was the telepath and was picking all the details from my brain. Then her eyes softened.
“Valentina Belmonte,” she said. “I’ve kept you safe since you were still playing with dolls. Don’t think I’m going to start slacking on the job now.”
Warmth spread through me, but then a metallic crash sounded outside. A screech of tires followed, and I went cold. Someone had just rammed my front gate.
Irma and I spl
it up as we dashed to our positions.
I checked my watch. “Seven-minute warning,” I commented to Jean-Baptiste as I passed him. “Anyone ever told you your powers are kinda crap?”
“I know they are.” He didn’t match my joking tone at all. “They only predict danger to myself. What good is precognition if it can’t protect my children?”
I had no answer to that.
We waited as the sound of an engine grew louder. I stood at the edge of the entrance hall, right at a corner that I could duck behind if I needed cover. One of Jean-Baptiste’s men waited across from me, casting nervous glances back at where his boss waited a few feet down the hallway behind us, having refused to hide deeper in the house. Irma and Jean-Baptiste’s second man had gone upstairs to take advantage of the higher ground. With their guns pointed out the windows of my study, they should have an excellent shot of the driveway.
Sure enough, the pops of their gunfire rang out like fireworks on New Year’s Day, but the rumble of the car engine didn’t stop.
Let me take a moment to describe my house’s entrance hall. It was a big room with a white marble floor and pillars, and a spiral staircase rose directly across from the front door so as to be the first thing a visitor saw when they came inside. The paintings decorating the walls were classical art, which I should know, because I’d stolen two of them from museums. (Don’t tell Dave.) The ceiling held a golden chandelier, and fresh flowers bloomed in porcelain vases along the walls. It was all very classy and tasteful, which I’m telling you so you can appreciate how I felt when a car plowed through it.
It crashed through the front of my house, taking out the door and a good chunk of wall all around it. The bang rattled my bones, and dust and debris spread through the air like smoke. The car was stuck halfway inside, its front end totaled. A black SUV, its front windshield was tinted so that I couldn’t see who was inside. I reached out telepathically, but before I could sense anything, Jean-Baptiste’s man opened fire.
Rapid-fire bullets punched through the windshield and broken hood, but Jean-Baptiste’s man didn’t stop there. Keeping the trigger down, he let out a war cry, hammering the car with a steady stream of fire. If he didn’t have to worry about ammunition, he probably would have kept it up for minutes. In reality, he ran out of bullets in less than thirty seconds, but that was enough time to fill the car with more holes than Elisa’s favorite T-shirt.
I stared at him.
Breathing heavily, he looked back and gave me a flat “What?”
Shaking my head, I crossed the entrance hall, weaving around the chunks of wall and splintered doorframe that were now scattered across the floor. My poor house. I was getting a headache just thinking about how long I’d have to deal with contractors to get this fixed.
“He could still be alive in there,” Jean-Baptiste’s man called.
Yeah, right.
“I don’t sense anything,” I said instead. Granted, I hadn’t been able to sense Joey before, but no matter how strong he’d gotten, he couldn’t have survived that.
I reached the dented driver’s side door and pulled, and the entire thing fell off its hinges and clattered to the floor. I expected the driver to be just as broken, but an arm shot out at me.
I jerked back with a gasp, and the reaching fingers brushed my shoulder but didn’t get a grip. The body it belonged to hadn’t escaped the gunfire unscathed. Bloody holes had been punched through its crisp black suit and white shirt, though its mask remained unscathed. White and plastic-looking, it was molded into the shape of a bland, expressionless face. It completely covered the features of the one wearing it, though I could see the shaved head and inflamed lobotomy scars on back of the head.
Legs trapped beneath crushed metal, the figure kept reaching for me, a hoarse grunting coming from behind the white mask. I doubted he—it—could feel the pain. It wasn’t human anymore, hadn’t been since Dr. Sweet had carved out its brain and programmed it as a mindless automaton. It was a No-Man, a zombie-like slave.
What the hell was it doing here?
“What is it?” Jean-Baptiste called.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. How was Dr. Sweet involved in all this? Had I been wrong about everything? No, Joey had orchestrated the assault in the Keys and Jean-Baptiste’s actions. So, was this attack unrelated? But why now? What did Dr. Sweet want? I stumbled another step back from the car, feeling as if the ground had been taken out from under me.
“It’s—”
A distinctive muffled crack came from the back of the house, a sound I’d heard many times before. It’s what happened when someone with super-strength forced a door open. Of course. The car crash was just a distraction.
Someone—or something—had just snuck around back.
Chapter 21
I ran back across the entrance hall and stretched my senses wide. I couldn’t feel anyone besides Irma, Jean-Baptiste, and his men. But that didn’t mean anything if it was another No-Man; they didn’t have enough of a brain left to sense.
Behind you! I warned Jean-Baptiste and his man telepathically.
Jean-Baptiste’s man shoved his boss back protectively and dashed down the hall. As I hurried to catch up, he tossed his empty gun aside and drew another. Then he slowed his pace to a cautious creep. I reached him, my own pistol in hand, and we entered the living room area. It was a comfy space with soft couches, bookshelves, and a big-screen TV. Large windows revealed the patio and bright blue pool out back, and beyond that lay the water of Biscayne Bay, sparkling gold and orange as it reflected the dusk sky. A cool breeze ruffled my hair, coming through the doorway that had been broken open.
The room looked deserted. I reached out telepathically, hoping to pick up at least a flicker of brain function somewhere, when suddenly they appeared. They emerged from behind bookshelves and the grandfather clock, lurching around the corner from the dining room. No-Men. Dozens of them.
Silently, they shambled toward us, armed with knives and clubs. Jean-Baptiste’s man opened fire, spraying the living room with bullets. I winced as they tore into my upholstery and shattered a decorative wine rack. To be fair, some of them hit their targets, striking the No-Men in the chest, but it didn’t stop them.
“Headshot or it’s useless!” I shouted over the gunfire, taking my own careful shot at the center of one of their white masks. The No-Man dropped instantly.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Jean-Baptiste’s man. “When did this become a video game?”
He raised the barrel of his gun, and most of his bullets hammered into the walls and windows now, but a few struck their marks. No-Men fell, but there were always two more to step up and take their place. More shuffled in through the broken door, and I found myself slowly backing up as they encroached no matter how many I shot down.
Jean-Baptiste’s man shouted as one hit his shoulder with a bat. The gun dropped from his grasp as he fell to one knee. I swung around and shot the No-Man in the forehead, but another one was right behind him. I aimed—
A hand grabbed my wrist, and my shot went wide. A No-Man had me.
I switched the gun to my left hand, pressed it against the plastic mask, and pulled the trigger. Having no sense of self-preservation, the No-Man didn’t even try to dodge. Something hot and wet splattered across my face as it collapsed, but by then it was too late. More of them grabbed my arms, my waist, and my hair. The pistol was wrenched from my grasp, my arms pulled behind my back as they dragged me away.
That’s when Jean-Baptiste’s man started screaming. He was on the floor, surrounded by No-Men who descended on him with bats and knives, not caring if they hit each other in their single-minded determination to destroy him. His scream cut off with a gurgle, and I grimaced.
“Valentina.”
Joey. Sometime during the fight, he’d taken a seat on the couch like an invited guest.
“I got tired of you mind-controlling my men, so I found some you can’t,” he said.
I pulled against their gr
ip. “You idiot. You made a deal with Dr. Sweet? You’ll be dead by the end of the month. Even Dad didn’t mess with that lunatic.”
“Oh, Val. So many things you think you understand.” He stood and stretched in anticipation. “I don’t have time to educate you. You’ll find out soon enough.”
He reached out, and I forced myself not to flinch, to glare at his face so I could spit in it as he killed me. But he didn’t crush my skull in his bare hands as I expected. He gently cupped the side of my face and closed his eyes.
What the hell?
Then it hit me: a hostile presence in my mind. I threw my shields up, practically hearing a metallic clank as every opening slammed shut and every door locked. But the presence seeped through them like smoke through the cracks in a doorframe. It oozed over my thoughts as I desperately fought back. How was this possible? I had to stop it now. My panic was quickly being swallowed up by a sense of triumph, the feeling that I’d finally gotten what I’d wanted for so long.
Joey. He was doing this somehow. I tried to jerk away and break contact, but he gripped my face more tightly, fingers digging into my cheeks. This shouldn’t be happening. Joey wasn’t psychic. He couldn’t telepathically assault me. But the presence in my head didn’t feel anything like Joey Giordano. It felt like…
“Dad?” I breathed.
A feeling of overbearing smugness filled me. But how could it be him? I’d seen him die.
“Joey Giordano.”
Jean-Baptiste’s voice cut through the storm in my mind, and it was like a plug had been pulled. The presence vanished, leaving only my own thoughts in my head, and I slumped. If the No-Men hadn’t been holding me, I would’ve hit the floor.
“Jean-Baptiste Dupree,” snapped Joey—no, not Joey. My father. Somehow, that was my father. “This is none of your business. Do you really want to die over it?”
The White Knight & Black Valentine Series (Book 4): Kill Them All Page 16