She lowered her own shield, so he could feel the truth for himself. “You told me how, actually,” she said.
“I did?” He looked baffled.
“Spiders,” she said. “You said he hated them. I projected the image of black widows, crawling on his shoulders. While he was freaking out about the spiders, I whacked him with that phone.
And then I, ah, choked him with the phone cord. Until he passed out. I ran off, hid from Roy in the trees while he was coming back from taking you to the car. No big heroics. Just, you know.
Tricks.”
His eyes gleamed. “Hell of a trick.”
“That’s a hell of a cousin,” she retorted, with feeling. “If that’s an example of your family, I can see why you wanted to disappear.”
“Yeah, Arbatovs are special that way,” he said. “But Dmitri was never that much of a problem for me before tonight. Just a pain in the ass. Jealous, sneaky.”
“The problem was your father, right?”
He gave her a slit-eyed look. “Are you peeking again?”
“No. Just remembering what Aunt Tonya said, at the hospice,” she said. “It sounded like he was . . . problematic.”
He choked off his laughter. “You’ve got this amazing gift for understatement. Funny, though. Last night, when Rudd was kicking my ass, I had a sense that I’d felt that sensation before.
With my father.”
She was startled. “You think your father used psi-max?”
Aaro shook his head. “No way. He would never use drugs.
He’s willing to make a fortune manufacturing or selling them, sure, but he despises people who use them. I mean, naturally.
Like Tonya is naturally telepathic and clairvoyant, Oleg has a natural talent for coercion.”
Nina was sobered by the thought. “Wow. If that’s true, then I can certainly see why your shield was so strong.”
“Me, too, now that I think about it.”
“Speaking of talent,” she asked delicately. “Are you feeling anything strange? You know, since they injected you?”
He looked startled by the question. “I forgot all about it,” he said. “Too much going on to even think about it. But no, I guess.”
“No weird phenomena?”
He grinned. “Nothing yet. No zombies for me. I can read your mind, sort of, but only when you want me to, so I probably just catch what you’re projecting to me on purpose.”
She looked him over, long body sprawled over the backmost seat of the bus, long legs propped out in the aisle. They had bought plain jeans and cotton knit shirts, but a sponge wash in the Target customer restroom could not erase the marks last night’s adventures had left upon them. Aaro had bruises on his face, marks around his mouth where the duct tape had adhered.
His wrists had bracelets of dark scabbing, and his hair, well. It had to be said. His hair needed help.
She herself had a black eye, a swollen lip, bruises on both cheeks, lacerations on her shoulders, scab bracelets, and a collection of contusions, scabs, and scrapes, plus a wild mass of snarled, blood-stiffened hair. They were a mess. The Target personnel had tried to call an ambulance for them. Aaro had nixed that idea on the spot, and scared the bejesus out of the assistant manager in the process.
Yet, battered and exhausted as Aaro looked, he seemed more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. Smiling, sprawled out as if he were lying on a beach. Probably just too tired to be tense.
She wished she could say the same for herself. It was the morning of the third day since Helga had injected her. She didn’t want her life to be almost over. Not with Aaro smiling at her like that, making her heart thud and skip. She’d never wanted so badly to keep living before.
Wrong thought to think. It triggered a greasy stomach flop . . .
and suddenly Aaro’s face hovered over hers, smile gone, his face tight with fear. His voice sounded far away. “Nina? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
It took time for the power of speech to come back, and she still couldn’t manage to sit up when it did. “Woozy,” she whispered.
“Sorry.”
“I’m going to tell the driver to stop somewhere,” he said, propping her up on the seat. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
As if she could. Don’t, I’ll be fine, she tried to say, but the words didn’t have enough energy to punch their way out of her mouth.
Chapter 25
“We can’t stop now.” The fat, grizzled driver scowled.
“We’re behind schedule. You should’ve gotten her a snack at the rest stop.”
“She needs a meal, not a snack.” Aaro hung onto his temper, long unused to having to ask permission to get out of a moving vehicle.
“Yeah, and the thirty other passengers on this bus need to get where they paid to go. You’re not the only ones on the bus, buddy, so unless she’s having a heart attack, forget it. We’ll stop at Mormont at the diner, and take a half an hour then.”
“How far’s Mormont?”
“Hundred and ten.” The guy’s voice was unsympathetic.
Damn. Two hours, at this speed. Aaro hung between the seats.
Hammering the driver to the ground was not an option. So?
What?
A thought flashed through his mind, sparked by the recent conversation with Nina. What would Oleg do? Of course, Oleg would never be in a similar situation, being wealthy beyond a normal man’s capacity to even comprehend. But if he were . . .
“Go back to your seat,” the driver ordered. “You’re bugging me, hanging over my shoulder. We’ll stop when we stop.”
Aaro scooted backward, thinking about Rudd’s attack. The way it reminded him of conflicts with his father. He tried to imagine how it would feel to be on the giving end of that, not the receiving end.
And as he imagined, something inside him twitched, stirred . . .
and stretched. Something strong, restless. Eager to come out and play.
He breathed through the dread, and followed the impulse.
Gently . . . gently. The guy was driving a large vehicle full of people on a busy highway at fifty-eight miles per hour. Gently. He was touching the guy’s mind. It felt different from touching Nina’s. Prickly, staticky, incoherent bursts of energy. Sometimes he caught an articulated thought, mostly just a blur of anger. . . .
prick . . . looks like a criminal . . . thinks the goddamn world revolves around him and his fluff of a girlfriend. . . .
Fluff, his ass. The fluff who fought her way free of psychically enhanced killers, rescued his ass from the trunk of a car, and looked smoking hot all the while. He dragged his mind back to the driver’s mind. The guy was hungry. Could use a piss. Had prostate issues. The munchies, too. He ate when he was angry.
And he was always angry.
Aaro burrowed deeper, leaned on those two points. A long, loud piss rattling into the john, ah, the relief. After, a hot, juicy bacon cheese-burger with a slab of sliced onion and fuck the heartburn. . . .
He leaned . . . leaned . . . then pushed. . . .
The bus hummed on. Countryside flashed by. Nina was still fainting. The only difference was, his headache was back, a new, improved version. He headed back toward Nina. So much for his enhanced psychic powers. They were a great big pile of steaming fail, and now his head was going to—
Buzzzz. “Stopping in fifteen, in Caldwell,” the driver announced on the intercom. “We’ll take a half hour at the truck stop.”
Aaro hurried back to Nina, but his Mr. Psychic Hot Shit euphoria evaporated when he found her slumped against the seat, lips blue.
Was it that drug? He shoved the gut-melting fear away. All his energy had to be dedicated to getting them to this Greaves Convention Center, at which point, he’d pick the place up, turn it upside down, and shake it until Kasyanov’s B dose fell out. Something had to come to him. He could not stand this fear. Could not banish it, either.
Nina came to while he was carrying her through the parking lot toward the t
ruck-stop diner. She tried to insist on walking. He laughed in her face. She got some color once she was seated in a grubby booth, sipping heavily sweetened coffee, but that was as far toward lunch as they got. The overworked waitress with the mousy ponytail and the swollen ankles ignored them, and continued to ignore them. Five minutes ticked by. Ten. The driver was digging into his burger and fries.
Bugger this shit. Aaro reached out for the woman’s mind as she hustled by, getting a weird, disorienting rush of aching feet, exhaustion, and beneath it a sucking-down vortex of money worries, kid worries. She wasn’t getting to the day care on time to pick her kids up because Terri hadn’t shown up for work, and that lazy bitch really needed to lay off the sauce. Her resentment and frustration seethed, tired as she was.
He called out the next time she swung by. “Excuse me, ma’am, but our bus is leaving. Could you take our order and put a rush on it?”
He slid inside . . . and pushed.
The woman turned to say she’d get to them when she could . . .
and her face went blank, like she’d just lost her train of thought.
“Ah, yeah. What can I get for you?”
They ordered. The waitress scurried to put it in, bawling to the cook that it was a rush. Whoa. That had come to him so easily, it was scary. Or would be, if he didn’t have so much other shit to be scared about. As things were, this didn’t even make the cut.
His hamburger and her grilled cheese and tomato soup cup came out in record time. Food helped. The shadows under Nina’s eyes seemed less pronounced, at least on the side where she didn’t have the black eye. The swelling in her lip was almost to normal proportions.
She finished off a triangle of sandwich, licked her fingers.
“How on earth are we supposed to dress for this party, anyhow?”
He’d been waiting for that, poised. “What do you mean, we?
Miles is coming with me. He’s bringing tuxes. You’re lying low in the hotel with your mind shielded, clutching a loaded gun. You think I’m letting you anywhere near that psychopathic motherfucker again? You saw what he can do. And that hell bitch blonde of his, too. They’re lethal!”
She seemed to grow three inches. “You think Rudd’s going to attack us at a big, fancy fund-raising cocktail party, Aaro? A psychic duel, out in front of the ice sculptures? That he’ll coerce us into drowning ourselves in the reflecting pool? Hell of a floor show, but I guess for fifteen grand, you’re entitled to something spectacular.”
“He can be more subtle than that if he wants to be. He was hurting us last night just for the fun of it. He’s deadly, Nina.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Nina’s voice was gentle. She reached out, touching his hand. “Dangerous is a relative term, Aaro, when you’re dying.”
He jerked, like he’d been pinched. “Don’t say that!”
“I’m coming,” Nina said quietly. “It’s day three. This is it for me. I’m a telepath. You and Miles aren’t. The party is the only place on earth where this ability might help us. It’s our only hope for a clue for those B doses. And even if it’s too late for me, maybe I can at least help you.”
He kept shaking his head. She was right, but it didn’t matter.
He couldn’t bring her back under the same roof as that sadist. He couldn’t protect her from that guy. He’d demonstrated that fact very thoroughly the night before. He could not go through it again. Just couldn’t.
He leaned in close, touching the wide, shimmery tingle that was Nina’s beautiful mind. Groping around for her thought process. Sensed her determination, her heroic resolve. He looked for weaknesses, but it was hard to find one. Just fear, and he hated to lean on that; she had enough problems, for fuck’s sake. But there was no other fault line presenting itself, so he leaned . . .
pushed . . .
Nina put her hand to her temple, and flapped her hand at him, looking irritated. “Would you stop that, please?” she snapped.
“Stop what?” he asked, all innocence.
“Whatever you’re doing with your mind.” She took a bite of her sandwich and frowned as she chewed. “It tickles.”
He subsided, gloomily resigned. He might have known it wouldn’t work on her. That would be too easy. Nothing ever was.
Nina took one of his french fries, and nibbled it. “So, back to my original question. The party. I need a dress, shoes, makeup.
Underwear, for God’s sake. How can I go shopping if we’re trapped on a bus?”
“Miles has your dress,” he admitted. “He’s bringing it with him.”
Her eyes went big. “What? But . . . but how—”
“Lily had him pick up the outfit you’re suppposed to wear to the wedding,” Aaro admitted. “She had it all ready for you.
Guess she didn’t trust you to dress yourself for that blessed event. Go figure.”
Nina dabbed her lips with the napkin. “Wow,” she murmured.
“It’s red,” Aaro informed her. “With sparkles. Miles peeked.”
Nina winced. “Oh, God, I can’t wear red. I’ll look like a stop-light!”
“So stay at the hotel,” he suggested.
“Don’t even start,” she snapped.
He dumped ketchup on what remained of his fries, and held his tongue, with a huge, muscular effort of will.
“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she fretted. “The psi-max that they gave you. I wish . . . I hope it has no effect on you at all.”
“Oh,” he said. “Um. About that.” He took a moment to wipe grease off his fingers. “Maybe there is something.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her gaze jerked up, her face taut. “Tell me!”
He wished he hadn’t said anything. Where did this uncontrol-lable impulse to share come from, anyhow? Info like this might scare her, or skeeve her out. “I think I’m, uh, like Rudd. And Oleg,” he admitted.
Nina’s brows twitched together. “Coercion? Really? Wow.
What makes you think so?”
The fact that we got off the damn bus. The fact that we’re eating lunch.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said vaguely. “Just a feeling.”
“A feeling,” she repeated, looking at him very hard, but he offered no further explanations. “Actually, it makes sense,” she said, after a few minutes. “In fact, it’s appropriate. For once, nature knows best.”
“How’s that?” he asked, suspicious.
“Only a principled person can be trusted with a gift like that.”
He coughed, sputtering his coffee. “You figure?”
“Hell, yes! A talent that easily abused? It could be used for every trivial thing a person might want, out of sheer convenience! That power is only safe in the hands of a person who can be trusted absolutely!”
The glow of conviction in her eyes made his stomach sink.
“You think I’m principled? And trustworthy? Really?”
“I know you are.” She had that ring in her voice. People were turning to look. “I know you. I can read you. You would only use a power like that in self-defense, and under the direst of circumstances.”
He didn’t understand this irresistible impulse to confess, but he leaned over the table. “I coerced the waitress into serving us lunch.”
Nina’s jaw dropped. Shock vibrated against his mind like the jangle of an alarm bell. Then came the imperious knock against his vault doors, summoning him to open up, show that it was true.
He did so, docile as a lamb.
She gasped. “Aaro,” she whispered fiercely. “That is despica-ble! ”
“Yes,” he agreed meekly. “Horrible. Heinous. I know.”
“Never do that again!” she hissed. “To anyone! You hear me?”
“It was just an experiment,” he protested. “I had to see if my hunch was for real, so I—”
“Experiment, my ass! It makes you a monster! Like Rudd!”
“Uh, OK, fine. Never again. Except, uh, in self-defense. And in the direst of circumstances.”
He squinted. “Huh? Owe her what?”
“An apology, at the very least! But since that’s inadvisable right now, we’ll settle for a big tip. A massive tip! You manipulative bastard! ”
He shrugged. “I don’t have a wallet,” he reminded her. “I’m flat busted, Nina. You’re the one with the cash.”
She dug into her purse, pulling out the manila envelope from Wilder’s car that contained their dwindling cash stash. She pulled out two C-notes, and slapped them on the table. “This is a loan.
You will pay me back, Aaro. Every last cent.”
He stared down at the money on the table. “Nina. The bill is nine dollars and seventy-nine cents,” he said. “That’s a hundred-ninety-dollar-and-twenty-one-cent tip.”
“I’m so glad you pointed that out!” She dug into the purse again, rummaged, and slapped down another ten. “You should make it an even two hundred. She can use it. Her kids need shoes.”
They stared at each other. Her eyes sparkled. There were pink spots in her cheeks. He’d pissed her off so much, it had kicked up her blood pressure. Awesome. That flushed look of righteousness.
The bus driver drained his coffee cup, and stood. “Five minutes, and all aboard!” he bellowed to the restaurant at large, before stumping heavily off to the bathroom again.
“Next time, it will be four hundred,” she warned. “Then eight, and so on. You do the math. Never, ever again! Understand?”
“Whatever,” he muttered. “Let’s get on the bus.”
He followed her out the door. Anger smartened her step. At this point, he judged it impolitic to confess what he’d done to the bus driver. It would fry his synapses to give four hundred dollars to that prick, as well as wiping them out of cash. Lucky she hadn’t caught it herself while peeking. Nina strode on ahead, still seeth -
ing. He admired the angry ass twitches as she flounced up the steps of the bus.
She flopped down in the back, staring stonily out the window, clutching the big black purse to her tits like a shield. Blocking him out.
One Wrong Move Page 31
