by D. Laine
“This guy’s a student too.” Jake read from the identification he found on the vessel. “Member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.”
“No shit?”
Jake looked up. “You know something about that?”
I nodded. “There’s another vessel in that frat. The one I told you about—the geology student from the bar.”
“Sure this isn’t him?”
“No way.” I peered at the dead vessel at Jake’s feet. This one was too lanky, and blonde. “That’s definitely not him.”
“So we have two vessels in the same fraternity?” Marcus asked in his attempt to keep up.
“Had,” I countered. “Now just one, and the professor.”
“And an unknown number of tags,” Maria finally spoke up. She pushed to her feet, then turned to offer me a hand. Once she pulled me to my feet, she shoved her palm into my chest. Hard. “A little warning would have been nice.”
“We didn’t know, Maria,” Jake offered softly. “We still have no idea how many tags there might be.”
“In a college town?” Maria turned to split a glare between Jake and me. “With fraternity row vessels running around? My guess is a lot.”
I hated to admit it, but she was probably right. What better way to create an army of tags than through the use of a few fraternity guys with regular access to booze and girls looking for a good time?
Except one of the vessels had his sights clearly on one girl—one that had avoided being tagged so far. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as Maria feared. Bad, yeah, but not a total disaster. Otherwise, we’d have been overrun by tags by now.
I wasn’t as concerned about the unknown number of tags in this town as I was about the fact that the one normal person I had met since I’d arrived was immersed in a world she didn’t have any knowledge of.
Thea was surrounded by them. Though she had managed to make it this long unscathed, I feared her luck would eventually run out. That was, if it hadn’t run out already.
WE DIDN’T bother to hide the bodies. Despite the fact that they were left in an urban location where they would be quickly discovered, the agency’s ironclad rules outweighed common sense. We skipped out of there as quickly as we could.
Back at the hotel, Maria excused herself to the room she shared with Marcus. Marcus followed Jake and me to our room to get filled in on all the investigating Jake had done so far. While the two of them stewed over the details on the Crazy Wall, I took a shower.
Blood didn’t bother me, necessarily. I’d seen enough of it in my lifetime to not get queasy over the sight of it, but I sure as hell didn’t want it all over my face either. By the time I finished in the bathroom, Maria had joined the guys. She glanced up as I sauntered across the room.
I smirked at her. “You look like you’re feeling better.”
Her eyes raked over me with clear and visible desire. “Likewise.”
I shot a glance at Marcus, and jabbed a finger at her. “You see that, man? You’re mad at me, but she’s the one—”
“I’m mad at both of you,” he growled. “She’s already gotten an earful.”
“Must not have been enough.”
I collapsed onto my bed in utter exhaustion. Behind me, Jake continued to update Marcus and Maria on what we’d uncovered so far. Mostly him.
I hadn’t gotten very far. Which was not like me.
This case?
This one was different. For a lot of reasons.
I let my mind drift back to earlier today. The whole day I’d spent with the geology students and the professor . . . and Thea . . . and what did I learn?
That Thea liked turkey and cheese sandwiches, sour cream and onion potato chips, and orange soda. Her friend, David, was more infatuated with her than I originally thought, and he knew a lot about geology. The professor seemed like a normal college professor, and I would have totally bought his cover if I didn’t know better.
Thea was passionate about photography. That was what I learned the most about today. I saw it in her eyes, in the way she carried herself and the camera in her hand. I had almost screwed up right before I got the text from Jake.
I’d nearly asked her to join me for a drink tonight.
I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t treat her like another local girl in another town on another case.
She wasn’t a normal girl. She might be a tag.
I sighed warily when Maria got up from her seat. I braced for another exchange, but she slid right by me on her way to the board Jake had positioned on the wall next to my bed. The one that organized his search for his sister.
Sadly, there wasn’t much to look at.
“What’s this?” Maria asked softly.
I glanced across the room to find Jake and Marcus bent over the computer. “It’s Jake’s. He’s, uh—”
“Is this Jessa?” Maria plucked a photograph from the board.
His sister couldn’t have been more than five years old in that picture. I knew that because that’s how old she was when she was abducted. Her bright eyes smiled at the camera while a scrawny Jake grinned broadly. His arm was draped over her shoulders. They were the same size, same height, with the same eyes and hair color.
As twins, I suspected that was normal. I couldn’t remember if my sister had looked that much like me.
“Yeah, that’s her,” I told Maria softly.
“She’s here?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it. That other picture was taken at least ten years ago.” I nodded at the one with his sister standing by the statue here in Bozeman.
“That’s a shame.” Maria returned the picture and turned to me. Her mouth opened, and I knew what she wanted to ask.
I quickly sat up to avoid the direction of that conversation. Unlike Jake, I hated talking about my sister. Maria knew that, of course, and wisely didn’t pursue the topic.
Instead, she murmured, “Too bad he doesn’t have something more recent. Who knows what she looks like now.”
“You kidding me?” I turned to look over my shoulder at Maria. “Look at you and Marcus.”
She glanced across the room at her brother. Her brow wrinkled, clearly not understanding what I was pointing out—that she looked a hell of a lot like her brother.
“Look at all the teams with the agency,” I added. “All twins. All of them look like twins.”
“So?”
“So . . . my point is: she’s going to look like him.” I nodded my head toward my partner. “I’ve spent the past ten years living with the guy. Trust me, we will all know her when we see her.”
THE HEAT from the crackling fire is the first to hit me. Then the smell—the familiar aroma of homemade cookies. Mom is always making homemade stuff for us to eat—breads, pies, and cookies. But the holidays are special. Every day there is a new treat waiting for Sadie and me after school. Screw Santa—he doesn’t exist anyway. The holidays are about yummy treats.
On the mantle above the warm fire sit the two shrewdly assembled gingerbread houses Mom helped us build that morning. I can’t wait to eat mine, but she’s making me wait until Christmas morning. I bet she won’t notice if I take a piece early—just a small one.
“Dylan, are you listening to me?”
My eyes snap from the mantle and settle on the stern gaze of my father. I nod.
“You’ve been chosen for this life,” he reminds me. “It is an honor to be given this gift. I never got to use mine, but you two”—he glances quickly between Sadie and me—“you will use it. Your generation will save the world . . .”
Sadie’s slender fingers slip between mine. We squeeze each other tightly, as if a firm grip can chase off the scary unknown we are about to face. As twins, we instinctively know what the other needs. Sometimes what the other is thinking. We’ve always had a strong twin bond. Since birth, Mom always says. We were born holding hands.
We’re still clinging to each other a few days later.
A deep dread spreads through me the instant the backseat of Mom and Da
d’s car materializes around me. We are going to the desert, my father explains. Nevada. People are waiting for us there. Other kids that are going to help us save the world.
The moment the black vehicle with tinted windows pulls alongside us, I know everything is about to change. I choke on the fear. I bite back a scream as our small car flips end over end. When we come to a stop, we’re upside down and I’m covered in shattered glass and blood. It’s eerily quiet. I cough when thick smoke tickles my nose. I blink away the burning in my eyes from the powerful stench of gasoline. I reach for Sadie’s small hand next to me.
It’s covered in blood. Her eyes are open, staring at me. I think maybe she’s dead. Then she blinks once, slowly. Her eyes widen at the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel outside the car, drawing closer.
The door behind her swings open, and she screams. I reach for her. Her fingers graze mine, and then she’s gone. As well as I can hear her screams, I can feel her fear. Both fade as she is taken away. I don’t know what the maximum distance our bond reaches or the distance that a scream can travel. But Sadie is taken there, to the point where I can no longer hear her or sense her.
I fumble with the restraints holding me captive in my seat. “Mom?” I plead in a small, frightened voice. “Dad?”
I’m answered by a sudden deafening boom. My ears scream in pain. Through the ringing, I can hear my mom’s muffled cries for mercy. From my seat in the back, I can see her—upside down, hands shaking as she tries to free herself, her head shaking frantically back and forth. Beyond her, through the shattered windshield, I see the dark shadow of a pair of legs stalk closer to her.
I watch a faceless man shoot my mother. My mouth drops open to scream then, but I don’t know if I’m making any noise. I can’t hear anything over the boom that echoes inside the car.
My door bursts open, and two black-gloved hands quickly move to my restraints. I swing. I kick. I fight back with my battered and feeble twelve-year old body.
A large fist to the jaw snaps my head to the side. I blink away the stars.
I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t cry. Dad always tells me to never cry.
The man gets my restraints undone. He grabs my waist to haul me partway out the door. Then he drops me. I roll toward the front of the car until I’m face-to-face with my mother. I’m staring at her lifeless eyes when another boom forces me to move. I clamber toward the open door Sadie was ripped from.
I can hear voices outside now. All around me. Tears well up in my eyes, and I tell myself it’s from the smoke and gasoline. I’m not scared.
I freeze when I reach the door, only to find a pair of eyes the color of night peering inside at me. In his hand is a slick black gun. I think maybe it’s the one that killed my dad, my mom, and maybe even Sadie since I don’t hear her . . . and the tears in my eyes spill. Fast and furious and I can’t stop them now that they’ve started.
“It’s okay, son,” the man tells me in a surprisingly soft voice. “We’ve got you. It’s going to be okay now.”
He reaches his hand out to me, and I notice that it’s not gloved. Behind me, the man with the black gloves lays in a pool of blood outside my open door. I turn to look into the eyes of the man offering me safety.
On his lips is a faint smile. “You’re going to be okay, Dylan. You’re with the agency now . . .”
10
My eyes snapped open and settled on the brown stain on the ceiling above me. Artificial light seeped through the thick curtains to my left, barely illuminating a snoring Jake in his bed. I glanced at the clock between us and groaned when I saw the number six. The other numbers didn’t even matter. It was too damn early.
There wasn’t a chance in hell that I would fall back to sleep now. Same as yesterday morning, and the morning before that. The dreams were worse now—almost as bad as they were when I was a kid. I blamed Maria for bringing up the sister shit Saturday night.
I rolled off the sweat-dampened sheets with another groan. My legs shook under my weight as I stumbled into the bathroom. I took a leak then stopped to study my reflection in the mirror. Hallowed out, red-rimmed eyes stared back at me. Beyond them, the death and destruction of the day that haunted me was still as clear as it had been ten years ago.
The day I saw my parents murdered. The day I lost my sister. The day Agent Spence found me two minutes too late. The day I met Jake . . .
Thrust into the agency at the age of twelve, and meeting the only other future assassin without his twin by his side, we quickly learned to lean on each other. Though my experience was more traumatic than Jake’s, he was the only one that understood what I was going through because he, too, had lost his twin.
Though we shared a unique grief and agreed on our mutual goals of finding them again, there were some things about that day I couldn’t tell even Jake. There were some things that I kept to myself. Like the overwhelming fear and sadness that still followed me ten years later, and the fact that I had nearly given up.
Glancing at the clock again as I wandered out of the bathroom, I concluded that six in the morning was too early for tequila. The only other thing that came close to distracting me from the memories of that day was sex and . . .
I flicked my gaze toward the door. Maria was close.
I shook my head at my momentary slip of judgement. That wasn’t happening. Never again.
I slipped my shoes on quietly so as not to disturb Jake. Instead of heading next door, I decided to take advantage of the perks that came with being a fake student at the university.
The walk to the campus took ten minutes. My face was numb by the time I stepped out of the cold air and into the university’s student gym. I expected it to be deserted this early in the morning, but apparently more students feared the rumored freshman fifteen than I thought.
I passed through the large, open room that smelled faintly of sweat and rubber, avoiding eye contact with every single person I passed. After finding a quiet corner in the back, I went to work on the dumbbells. Fifteen minutes of heavy lifting passed before the images, smells, and sounds that plagued me started to fade.
I looked up for the first time since I started, and found that the number of students around me had dwindled. My eyes drifted toward movement by the door, where most of them were gathered around the television. Someone stepped forward to increase the volume, and the local news reporter’s voice drifted across the room.
“We’re live from Bozeman this morning, where police officials have just released the names of the two Montana State University students found dead early Sunday morning. The victims were identified as . . .”
Two school identification photographs popped up on the screen as the reporter rattled off the names of the vessel and the tag we took down Saturday night. As a few more students dropped their workout and made their way to the television, I pounded another set of bicep curls.
There were gasps of surprise and a few sniffles—all of which I ignored with practiced indifference. I reminded myself that they didn’t know any better. Only I knew what these “victims” really were, what they were capable of, and what they were destined to become.
Like I had been destined—only for the opposing side. Depending on how you interpreted the out-of-control string of “natural” disasters inflicting the world in recent months, you could argue that I was fighting for the wrong side. The losing side.
But I wouldn’t let it all go down without a fight. None of the assassins I fought alongside would, because despite some of the shit in the world, there was plenty of good too. Sometimes you had to look hard to find it, and sometimes, it was right in front of you.
My thoughts drifted to Saturday. The breathtaking nature I experienced in the park that day could certainly be included in that good, but I wasn’t surprised by that. What surprised me was Thea.
Not only her, but the way my eyes had kept drifting toward her. Surrounded by one of the most aesthetic views on Earth, I couldn’t stop looking at her. I didn’t get shit do
ne that day. Especially not after that stimulating lunch with her leg pressed against mine.
She had been just as affected by me as I had been by her. I had seen it in her eyes. I had heard it in the quiver of her voice.
Problem was I still felt the effect Thea had on me. I needed to find a way to get her off my mind. I needed to focus on the job. Not her. Not the desire in her eyes when she looked at me. Not the desire stirring in my pants when I looked at her.
She was exactly the kind of lingering distraction I didn’t need right now. I had to get her out of my system fast. She didn’t strike me as the type of girl that would be down for a casual hookup. Nor did she seem the kind of girl a guy would be okay with never seeing again. She was the one-night stand that you never wanted to go away.
I couldn’t have that. I needed to find another way to forget about her.
My eyes scanned the gym, and came to a stop on the backside of a brunette on the treadmill a few steps away. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail that swayed to her fast pace. Her form-fitting tank rode up a little in the back, showing a peek of flesh above the waistband of her short running shorts. From the back, she looked hot as hell.
“That will do,” I murmured to myself as I set the weight in my hand down.
I yanked the hoodie over my head as I approached the empty treadmill beside the brunette. Now in a sleeveless T-shirt, my sculpted arms were on full display. Years of training with the agency and killing vessels had conditioned me well. I was in great shape, and I knew it. If it helped to get me laid, then so be it.
That was one way to get Thea off my mind. At least temporarily.
I kept my eyes trained on the machine as I pushed the buttons to get it moving. Only after I had started off at a slow jog did I glance toward the girl beside me.
My jaw dropped when I saw Thea’s amused eyes peering back at me. My head tipped back with a chuckle, because of course the hot girl with a nice ass would be her.
