Touch No Evil

by A. K. Alexander

  “Who are these two women?” asks my mother.

  Jacques gestures at us. “These are your daughters.”

  “My babies?”

  Mom’s eyebrows draw closer in confusion.

  I step forward, smiling. “Not babies anymore. We’re all grown up now.”

  “These are not my babies!”

  She says it again, and again, growing louder. “These are not my babies! I had four babies! Four! These are not my babies!”

  So much for wishing I could hear her speak. The sound of her screaming tweaks something inside me. I can’t stand seeing her like this. Something about the way she looks, the expression on her face, the wild, long hair, and the rampant rage in her eyes, terrifies me like I’m a little child.

  In a blind panic, I run from the room. The next thing I know, I’m back in the lobby, and flying straight into John’s waiting arms. Collapsing against him, I let loose with the heaviest sobs I’ve ever experienced in my life. Wave after wave of sorrow spills out, drawn up from a place deep down inside me.

  I think: That creature isn’t my mother anymore, and hate myself for it. I can’t leave her like that. I will find a way to help her. But for now, I’m too distraught to even stay on my feet without John holding me.

  Coming here was a mistake. I truly hadn’t prepared myself properly.

  No, not at all.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “That was freakin’ awesome!” Noah shouts, gawking at the gardens of Notre Dame de Sion in the Judean Hills. One moment, he’s standing in the safe house with the others, the next he’s here, at the monastery. Mind…blown.

  “I know, right?” Hope giggles, swishing back and forth so her dress flares.

  “Welcome back, you two,” Sister Marie-Luce says from one of the stone benches near the fountain in the center of the garden. She smiles broadly. “What took you so long?”

  In spite of his initial skepticism about this place when they first pulled up at the monastery a couple of weeks earlier, it’s become one of Noah’s favorite places. After all, with the help of Sister Marie-Luce, he’s come to realize the extent of the deception the woman he thought loved him perpetrated. Although this place will always remind him of discovering that treachery, he finds it a welcome, blissful place.

  “I feel so at peace and free whenever I’m here,” he says. “I know we throw the term safe house around a lot, but this place really does feel safe. Not all of them do, you know?”

  Hope leads him past the fountain, to a seat beside the nun.

  “I know, child,” says Sister Marie-Luce, patting his hand. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Because you miss me?”

  She smiles. “That, and you need help remembering; in particular, the location of the compound with the GEPSI children.”

  “Excuse me, sister, but I fail to see how you can help me remember the location of the compound. Those really aren’t clear memories.”

  “Not me. Hope.”

  “She is an audial telepath,” he says. “And time traveler… wait, no way.”

  “Way,” she says, smiling. “Hope will take you back to those moments in the past so that you can observe your exact actions. The team needs this information to help find the compound, but they also need you.”

  “But the team has me,” Noah replies, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Your friends need more than your gifts, my son. They need your trust and confidence. You have doubt. In John, in yourself. You have fear.” Sister Marie-Luce offers a gentle smile. “And you have jealousy.”

  Noah cringes inwardly. He’s been jealous of the growing bond between Kylie and Ayden, and now, it seems any chance he might have with Kylie has died a final death due to John’s return. His envy only multiplies because of his distrust of John. But something about this place quells his anger enough to confront the truth of it head-on. He stares into the trees, sorting his feelings back and forth. Hope mutters in a soft tone to Sister Marie-Luce, something about a bird.

  “Can’t we just figure out where the kids are and go from there? We can fix me later.” Noah glances at some motion overhead, his gaze tracking a darting squirrel.

  “The team needs you, Noah. All of you. Besides, we have the time. The rest of the team have some things to deal with in France.”

  Noah lets out a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’m game. Where do we go first?”

  Sister Marie-Luce nods to Hope, who gets up and approaches him, looking very serious. This is, he suspects, her game face. After a moment of staring up into his eyes, she extends a hand. “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  She nods, closes her eyes, and the surroundings fade to some manner of laboratory. A short distance in front of him, a man’s body lay stretched out and strapped down to a gurney.

  The sudden change of scenery disorients Noah, leaving him wobbly on his feet. “What the…? Where are we? Who is that?”

  “That’s John. We’re inside the place where Grant poisoned him,” Hope whispers. “Oh, drat, I forgot my shoes. The floor is so cold here.”

  Noah blinks. He’s stunned, confused, fascinated. “But I think we’re going to be looking into my past and trying to figure out what happened to me?”

  “First, this. Come.”

  She leads him to the gurney, still holding his hand. Wow, John looks horrible, nothing like the hardcore, special ops, tough-as-nails leader Noah knows. The former Marine has become a shell of that man, barely recognizable.

  “As soon as he got away, he did everything he could to help you guys. He knows that you’d been lied to and would probably hate him, but he still protected all of you and my sister as much as he could.” Hope looks from John up to Noah. “Even when he wasn’t a part of the team, he was still a part of the team.”

  They’ve all been in several impossible situations—like in the tunnels under the Vatican, where he and Ayden were pinned down until someone came out of nowhere and intervened. A van barreling out of an alley to swipe a pursuer off their tail, a mysterious sniper, all manner of inexplicable good fortune replays in his memory. He really was shadowing us. And he could’ve screwed us at any time, but didn’t.

  “Okay. I understand,” Noah says.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Okay, where to next?”

  “Into the past. Your past.” Hope peers down at her feet. “After I get my shoes.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ayden’s taken over the driving.

  Julia sits in the front passenger seat beside him as we leave the asylum outside of Paris. I slouch into John in the back seat, still crippled with grief over the state my mother is in.

  We ride in silence. I stare into the void in front of me, at war with the tangled ball of thoughts and emotions that have been set off when I heard my mother screaming. I’ve got to get myself back together. Grant Simms, John, Hope, Julia, Noah, Ayden, my father and my mother press in on me from every angle. And looming over that is enormous pressure to find those kids—oh, and save the world.

  I am feeling better by the time we get back to the hotel in Paris. No one says a word as we walk from the parking area into the building. Since we have a futurist among us now, we relax and take the elevator. She’s damn handy, if she can be trusted.

  Before long, we’re back in our room and free of immediate worry.

  I’ve been turning over in my head what my mother said. I look at Julia, who’s standing awfully close to Ayden. Correction, she’s leaning into him. Correction, he has his arm around her waist. Are they an item? I shake my head; I’ll deal with him later. “Julia, what do you think she meant when she said there were four babies?”

  But she doesn’t answer, not immediately. She has that far-off look in her eye we all get.

  Ayden answers. “Well, we know she has three daughters; you, Julia and Hope. Was there a fourth?”

  “Jonah,” Julia blurts.

  “Say again?”

  “The fourth baby’s name
is Jonah.”

  “How do you know that? Where is he? What have you seen?”

  “Just his name, for now. He’s shielded. But I’m getting flashes and bits of broken conversations, but not a full picture of the future. I feel like we are going to find this Jonah at the compound we’re looking for. He’s one of the GEPSI kids. And, Ky, he’s our brother.”

  I nod, gut-punched all over again. “The boy shaking hands with the president.”

  “That could be him, yes.”

  “Then we have to get to him before Simms can poison him like he did to John,” says Ayden.

  “Julia,” I say. “Did you happen to get a fix on where this compound is?”

  She shakes her head. “Like I said, it’s all shrouded in a thick fog.”

  “Ayden? Is there anything you can do? Maybe if the two of you combined your gifts you could—”

  “Never tried that before.” He looks at Julia, who shrugs.

  “Worth a shot,” she says.

  Ayden and Julia leave through the door adjoining the two rooms.

  Once they’re out, I sigh. Things aren’t looking good for the team. Ayden is distracted, I’m rattled, and Noah, too, has been acting strange. Are we coming apart?

  “Hey, Ky, relax. We’ve got this.” John draws me into his arms.

  I let him hold me and close my eyes. I am just drifting off in his arms, when a familiar—and completely unexpected—voice reaches my ears.

  “If you two are done smooching, I know where the compound is.”

  I spin around, gasping. Noah and Hope are standing in the middle of the hotel room.

  “No way!” I say. “And we aren’t smooching. Just resting.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says, and I hear the tightness of jealousy in his voice.

  My kid sister rushes at me for a hug. While I’m embracing her, Noah steps toward John and extends his hand. “Welcome back to the team, John. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I mean that one hundred percent. I’ve been an ass.”

  I stare at the two of them with a startled expression.

  Noah winks back at me. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He smiles sadly, and I can see he’s doing his best to deal with the jealousy.

  Upon hearing Noah’s voice, Ayden and Julia hurry back into the room. As Noah fills us in about the secret location of Simms’ compound and, hopefully, the GEPSI kids, Hope flops on the bed, chin propped on her hands, feet swaying back and forth. She looks like such a normal, almost-bored tween, my heart gets a little heavy. Normal tweens don’t have a front-row seat to a meeting for invading a top-secret facility.

  Nothing we can do about that now, though. We’ve got to move on this as fast as possible. Watching John, Ayden, Noah, and even Julia coming together to plan this out gives me a surge of confidence. Right when it looks like we reach our worst, we’ve become stronger and tighter than ever.

  Now, it’s time to put a stop to Simms, once and for all.

  I turn to Hope. “I need you to go back to Sister Marie-Luce and wait there for us. Stay quiet, and don’t do anything unless or until I call you,” I say.

  Hope whines. “But, Ky! I wanna help! I can’t just sit there while you’re in danger.”

  I pull her into a tight hug. “You’re only twelve. A kid.” I squeeze her a little harder. “You’re a kid who has never been able to be a kid.”

  She gurgles. “Air. Need. Air.”

  I relax my grip—a little.

  Hope fake-glares at me. “I may be a kid, but I have super-awesome powers. And you should let me do something.”

  “No way. You are staying safe. I’m not risking anything going wrong and you winding up hurt—or worse.”

  She clenches her jaw, not making eye contact.

  “Please. Stay safe, for me.” That compound has done enough mental damage to her. I don’t want her ever seeing it again. Observing the place out of time while protected by Sister Marie-Luce’s watch was bad enough. Remote viewing, at least, couldn’t have trapped her physically there.

  I don’t want her ever seeing this hellhole again. Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  I kiss her on her forehead… and she promptly disappears.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  We pack our stuff up as fast as possible and rush into motion.

  If the Child of Anarchy is among the kids in Simms’ compound, time has already run out. Not only that, Julia Dennison’s face has been plastered over every television in the world for the past few hours. Evidently, the powers that be have decided not to keep her disappearance under wraps. One mistake and we’d have Secret Service all over us.

  Fortunately, since Julia is a futurist, she can see trouble coming ahead of time. But, for sanity’s sake, Hope gives her a “ride” so to speak, to keep her out of the public eye. It’s damn handy having a kid sister who can basically teleport anywhere she wants, even backward or forward in time.

  Unfortunately, the compound is shielded to hell and back. I’m not sure if those shields are the reason Hope never teleported away when she wanted to escape, or if she just didn’t realize she could do it at the time. There’s so much about my little sister I don’t know, but I’m also hesitant to bring that place up. She tries so hard to be brave, but she’s still a child. Despite her intelligence, the way they treated her has stunted her emotionally. Hope does her best to maintain the façade, but I can tell she’s still traumatized. Who wouldn’t be? Children aren’t supposed to be treated like prison inmates.

  With Julia ahead of us courtesy of Hope, the rest of us take a commercial flight so we can bring our gear. Flying at all is risky due to all the security, but we’d never make it driving. Luckily, we have iron-clad forged IDs, and they do the trick. Not to mention, each of us has been trained to lie our asses off. Spies are spies, psychic or otherwise. We do what we have to do to get what we need. And in this case, we needed to not get caught.

  The plane lands in the wee hours of the morning, one day after all the damned birthdays.

  The compound…

  Simms has cleverly concealed it beneath an inconspicuous chalet not far from the luge run at the Le Crêt de la Neige ski area right across the border from Geneva, Switzerland, near the town of Lélex, France.

  In a rental vehicle, we watch it from a half mile away, while Noah tunes into it. I tune in, too, and we both come to the same conclusion: four sentries are on guard duty, two women and two men. Well, at least Simms is an equal opportunity employer. We watch—and listen—to them go about the same routine over the course of a half-hour span. Noah, John and Ayden head out around the perimeter, while I hang back with Julia. I hate hanging back. I’m usually one of the people out front, but the team overrules me taking point. Of course, it helps that they make sense. Combining my audial abilities together with Julia’s considerable talent should allow for the guys to safely make their move on the compound.

  John’s psychic skills aren’t as highly developed as Ayden and Noah’s, but they are enough that he can communicate with them without radios and whisper mics, an enormous advantage over a typical special ops assault team.

  They spread out along the perimeter and prepare to make their assault, trusting Noah’s intel, Julia’s futuristic visions, John’s tactical expertise, and my long-distance hearing.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Two couples occupy the chalet.

  By all outward appearances, they are four normal people enjoying a relaxing weekend retreat together. Unless one has a trained eye and knows what to look for, they wouldn’t notice the four “vacationers” are hyper-fit and casually vigilant. Or the subtle bulge of firearms concealed under clothing. No, the people in the chalet aren’t civilians or happy couples. They are highly trained sentries, and the team has to take them out first, without making a disturbance. If any of the guards raise even the slightest alarm, the entire mission will be blown.

  John Herrel knows that regardless of how well an op is planned, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I hop
e we can prove that old adage wrong, for the sake of those kids.

  I’m right there with you on that, chief, Noah replies in his mind.

  Are we ready to do this then, team?

  Just waiting for this dude over here to pick up the ax, Ayden replies.

  The sentry in the green sweater picking up an ax is the signal to begin, based on Noah’s brief observation of the future. Ayden was in position to take out the target designated ax-man.

  They wait, silencing even their thoughts, as thinking is akin to radio chatter. John glances at his friends one by one, grateful to have everyone back together. Being separated from them, and not merely Kylie, had left an enormous hole inside him. Finally, things feel like old times again, and that makes him smile.

  Yeah. Just like old times, Noah thinks.

  John hadn’t expected to transmit that, but the other two operate on a whole different level of psychic.

  Cut the chatter. Ayden laughs mentally. Here cometh the ax-man.

  Ayden pauses, then pounces, snapping the man’s neck in a deft motion while simultaneously guiding the body to the ground without a sound and dragging him back into the bushes. Noah circles around to the opposite corner of the chateau, and twenty-three seconds later, one of the women—dubbed Uggs, due to her footwear—appears and walks directly into his waiting grasp. Ayden clamps a hand over her mouth and eliminates her with a quick snap of her neck, too.

  At fifty-one seconds from the ax leaving the ground, the other woman, Ponytail, slips through the door. She stops in obvious shock at the sight of the dropped ax and missing person. John, flattened against a wall next to the door, doesn’t hesitate. He snatches her as she emits a short gasp of shock, which draws the attention of Last-Guy. John covers Ponytail’s face with his hand, using his healing gift to short-circuit her brain, inducing a sleep that should last for several hours. He eases her to the ground, keeping his eyes focused on the doorway and the appearance of Last-Guy.