by Ladew, Lisa
But West couldn’t kill him and he knew it. West had never killed anyone in his life, but he could start now, for this dirt bag, if this guy wasn’t his only line to Katerina.
There was no terror in the man’s eyes. Only cold calculation. He knew West wouldn’t kill him. West suddenly realized he didn’t know where the man’s hands were. At the same time, he felt a cold, hard length of steel slide on his arm and press into his side. He only had seconds before he was dead.
“Don’t shoot!” he screamed, his hands still around the man’s throat. “Drop the gun!”
The man’s eyes went unfocused and the gun clattered to the carpet.
Thank God.
West grabbed for the gun and scrambled backwards quickly, pointing the gun at the man’s head. The man still looked out of it. As soon as West’s hands left his throat, he coughed and rubbed his neck, but his gaze still floated off somewhere past the ceiling.
I’ve never tested it. I don’t have any idea what this ability of mine can do.
West wanted to kick himself in his own ass for not testing how his ability worked, but he never expected to use it again in his life.
West noticed a change coming over the worm on the floor. His eyes were focusing again and his movements had more rhythm.
West made up a plan of attack and jumped into action. He dropped to one knee and grabbed the man by the throat again, holding the gun at eye level.
“Where’s my wife?” he screamed.
The man only looked at him, his eyes narrowing.
“Tell me where my wife is!”
The answer came, flat and unmotivated. “On a plane.”
West’s heart sunk. Was she already gone?
“Where is she going? Tell me!”
“Operation Arma.”
“Where is that?”
“Nevada. Under Area 51.”
“Under it? What does that mean?”
“Under it. It’s an underground facility.” The man spoke remotely, his tone completely without emotion. His eyes stared off and never met West’s face.
West couldn’t help but feel like he was wasting time. But what could he do? Should he bring the cops up here? If he did that, would the government swoop in and shut down the investigation. Would he and Katerina disappear forever? He couldn’t chance it.
“When did the plane leave?”
“Didn’t.”
West felt something small building in his chest. Hope.
“When is it leaving?”
“2:05.”
He had three hours to save Katerina before she went off to some government facility that he would never have any hopes of reaching. But how?
West let the gun drop a little, but kept his hand on the man. “Stay still. Don’t move.”
He thought furiously. What were his options? The press? Would that even work?
He looked back down at the man under his hand. The guy’s face was ashen, and he looked like he might throw up. West shook him. “What would happen if the press found out about your little plane and the underground facility in Nevada? About you kidnapping United States citizens?”
The man didn’t speak. His eyes glazed over and his complexion turned yellow. West shook him and dug his fingers into his throat, seeking out the trachea and tugging on it, knowing the pain would be exquisite. “Tell me! Answer every question I ask!”
“Nothing. We would deny it. You can’t prove anything and if anyone got too close, we would take care of them.”
West stood up and hauled the man up by his shirt front, his decision made. He would have to go after Katerina himself. They had very little chance of surviving if he did, but she had none if he didn’t. “Can you get close to this plane?”
“Yes. I have clearance.”
“What are you driving?”
“I have four sedans nearby that I can access.”
“Pick the closest one. Let’s go.”
***
West looked out the window, knowing Hickam Air Force Base was drawing close. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of everything that would probably go wrong in the next few minutes. He would just keep driving forward, pushing, seeking, not stopping until he had Katerina or he was dead.
He had determined on the drive over that the man’s name was Edgar Snoot, but he liked to go by Raven. He had a strange affinity for code names. He also learned that the government wanted Katerina to study her powers and possibly to turn her into a weapon. What they really wanted was someone who could use their mind to kill people from a distance, and make it look like an accident. They wanted to study Katerina and see exactly what she could do.
Raven drove directly up to the front gate of Hickam Air Force Base and flashed his security badge. The airmen guarding the gate asked to see his ID. West kept a guiding finger on Raven’s elbow, whispering instructions to him, but it didn’t seem to be necessary. Raven stayed robot-like and compliant, as long as West’s hands weren’t off of him for too long.
The airmen at the gate inspected the underside of Raven’s car with the mirror, then ran a dog in a circle around the vehicle. Then they were waved through. Raven drove through the maze of streets and eventually pulled up in front of a hangar. He sat and stared out the front window.
“Which plane is she on?” West asked, eyeing the humongous airplanes lining the runway.
“That one,” Raven said, pointing at the biggest plane.
The very back of the plane was open, and men in military uniforms were shuttling crates into the belly of the flying monster. West saw two men with rifles guarding each entrance onto the plane.
“What kind of a crew is on that plane?”
“I don’t know. I just delivered the woman.”
West itched to pound the man’s face in. Katerina was not ‘the woman.’ She was someone important, with a name and a life.
“How can I get on there?”
Raven shrugged and didn’t say a word.
West grabbed Raven’s tricep and squeezed as hard as he could. He screamed into Raven’s face, all the anger and frustration he’d been dealing with since he woke up that morning spilling out. “Think of something!”
Raven grimaced and blood burst from his nose.
“Fuck!” West yelled, pulling back. He looked around, opening the glove box, and pulling out a handful of napkins. He threw them at Raven. “Clean yourself up,” he demanded.
Raven cleaned himself up mechanically, then spoke. “Let’s check the supplies. They will fill that plane before they take off. Maybe you could hide inside of something.”
West nodded. It was the best they could do for now.
Together, they walked inside like they belonged there, Raven holding a napkin to his nose. West surveyed the interior of the hangar, trying to stem the intense, seething hatred he was feeling. Crews worked diligently at the other end of the hangar where it was open to the air, but no one came near them or took notice of them. West gripped Raven’s elbow and led him towards the rows of pallets stacked high with supplies stretched out in front of them.
“What’s going on that plane?” West asked Raven, prodding him.
Raven strode forward and looked at a packing slip on a pallet that was so tightly wrapped with plastic West couldn’t tell what was inside. “This is.”
He strode to the next item. “This too.” He walked to a Humvee. “This is going too.”
The tiny light of hope inside of West grew slightly. There had to be something in here that he could hide inside. What about the Humvee? West circled it, eyeing the workers at the far end of the large building. No one was looking their way, and best of all, the very back of the Humvee was blocked from their sight by a monster pallet in front of it.
He looked back at Raven. He couldn’t leave him here. No way. “Climb inside,” he said indicating the back of the vehicle. Raven didn’t move. West strode to him and pinched the back of his arm. “Climb inside,” he said his voice low and deadly. Raven moved to comply instantly.
Wes
t looked around one last time, then followed him.
Chapter 13
Katerina gagged, retching at the horrible, burning taste in her mouth and nose. She kicked and punched and threw her head backwards, trying to connect with her attacker.
Slowly she realized she wasn’t being attacked anymore. In fact, she was sitting motionless in a chair, and her arms and legs appeared to be bound. Katerina opened her eyes and realized she was no longer inside the lobby of the hotel.
In a panic, she whipped her head back and forth and tried to pull loose of her bindings. She worked spit up in her mouth and let it fly, trying to clear the taste from her mouth of whatever horrible drug had put her under. She took great, whooping breaths and pulled madly.
When nothing worked. she willed herself to calm down and try to find some control. She breathed deeply and stared at the floor in front of her feet.
Wait, there had been an airplane.
When she had started to wake up in the airplane, a wet towel had been slapped over her mouth, and then someone had injected something in her arm. Katerina’s mind burned at the thought. Kidnapped. She’d been kidnapped the day after her wedding.
Slowly, with fear so great it was eating away at her life span, she looked up and around at her surroundings. Directly across from her, ten feet away, was a glass partition that went from ceiling to floor. Two people were looking at her from behind it. One was an old, bald man who almost looked out of place, wearing a long white coat like a doctor. The second was a woman with flaming red hair and a contemptuous look on her face, also wearing a white coat. They stared at her, telling her this was no ordinary kidnapping. If there was such a thing.
Katerina’s senses all felt on edge, heightened. She watched as the man leaned forward and opened his mouth, about to say something. Katerina didn’t want to hear it. She screamed at the top of her lungs, and noticed someone shifting in place just out of her field of vision. She whipped her head to the left and saw a young man in an army uniform, staring at her with unease painted clearly in his expression. Next to him, stood another man in an army uniform, but he was older. And in his arms he held a rifle, which was pointed directly at her. Katerina tried to look behind her, but couldn’t. Instead she looked to her right and there, she saw another soldier with a rifle pointed at her.
She stopped screaming abruptly and looked from soldier to soldier, her breath coming in sharp gasps.
“Miss Holloway, can you hear me?” a controlled masculine voice said.
Katerina whipped her head towards the doctors, if that’s what they were. The older man was talking.
“Right, yes, well. I won’t waste words or imagine you want to be here. Let me just say that the sooner you cooperate, the sooner you’ll be free to go on your way.”
Katerina narrowed her eyes. That was obviously the biggest lie on the planet.
“My name is Dr. Ablewhite. This is Dr. Pritchard.” He motioned towards the redhead next to him. “You have some, uh, abilities, we are interested in. We’d like to see a demonstration.”
Katerina leaned forward in absolute disbelief. Until now, she hadn’t even tried to think why she might be here. Because of her powers? They wanted to know what she could do? They wanted a demonstration?
The man spoke again. “Could you make electricity arc from your fingers?”
Katerina goggled at him. He wanted her to do what?
“Pvt. Poole will release one of your hands. If you hurt him, Sergeants Hughes and Nichols will shoot you. Not to kill, of course, unless you force them to.”
Katerina’s mouth dropped open. He was lying again. About what she wasn’t sure. The shooting part? Or just the killing part? The red-haired woman behind the partition with him rolled her eyes and then focused on Katerina with the same contempt and hatred she’d seen before.
Pvt. Poole, the young soldier without a gun, came forward slowly. Katerina watched his face. He would not even look in her eyes. She could feel the terror coming off of him in waves. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be doing that. And he was terrified of her. He gently released the medical-style cuff holding her right arm and ran back to his spot against the wall.
“Okay,” the man behind the shield said. “Go ahead.”
Katerina shook her head, her mind bending in disbelief. What did he want her to do again?
“You’re crazy,” she spit out. “I can’t do that. I never could.”
The man inclined his head and clucked his tongue at her like she was a child. “You don’t want to resist. Your time here can be very unpleasant and yes, even painful.”
Katerina bit her lip and realized her whole body was trembling. She looked up at the ceiling and prayed that this was just a bad dream. That she would wake up soon, safe and warm in West’s arms.
“Miss Holloway?”
Katerina ignored him. It was a dream. A nightmare. It would go away soon.
“Miss Holloway?”
“Shepherd,” Katerina muttered under her breath.
“Miss Holloway, I really have to ask you - “
“Shepherd!” Katerina screamed. “My name is Mrs. Shepherd!”
The two scientists or doctors or whatever they were looked at each other and the redheaded woman rolled her eyes again, then spit out a diatribe. “That fucking idiot. If he brought the wrong woman I’m going to have his rank. I’ll have his fucking job. I’ll fucking castrate him. Get Storm.”
A third voice behind the partition said something, even though Katerina couldn’t see a third person in that area of the room. All she could see was the two doctors, but only from the waist up. The rest of them was hidden behind the desk they stood behind. The voice sounded slurred and thick, like maybe the speaker was drunk.
“I’m here.”
The redhead jumped and took a step away from where the voice came from. Katerina could read utter repulsion on her face, like she’d seen a spider the size of a kitten. Or maybe a rat carrying a baby in its mouth.
Katerina’s already overworked heart jumped in her chest and its rate tripled. Who or what was Storm? A seemingly seamless door in the partition slid open and Storm emerged in a wheelchair. A fancy wheelchair with a motor, that he only had to press a tiny joystick and it rolled forward.
No! Katerina’s denial died in her throat. She knew who it was. The man wheeling towards her with a nasty grin on the destroyed face was Dylan Phillips. She’d thought he was dead. Hoped he was dead. Never, ever asked what exactly had happened in that hole beneath his family home after he had kidnapped Jordan and lured Katerina to the house and then threatened to kill Jordan. West had never spoken a word of it. Jordan had tried to tell her - had said Katerina had melted him. Katerina had covered her ears with her hands like a two-year-old who didn’t want to hear what her mother had to say, then squeezed her eyes shut. Melted? How could that possibly be?
But Katerina saw how that could possibly be right in front of her. Dylan’s face looked liquid, sliding to one side. There were no teeth left in his mouth. His eye sockets seemed too large for his face and his eyes looked in danger of falling out. His entire body was twisted and lumped to one side, his left shoulder sitting a good foot higher than his right. Even his skin looked wrong - too white, too smooth, and horrifyingly shiny - like a poisoned hard-boiled egg.
Katerina wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and pretend the nightmare didn’t exist. The nightmare kept coming closer. When he came within a few feet of her, she could see scars where his hairline should have been, but she couldn’t really call it a hairline since he only had a few wispy hairs clinging to a lumpy scalp here and there. The straight and clean scars seemed to stand out, like they were fairly new, like maybe he had just had surgery.
“It’s her,” Dylan said, then rolled to a stop within a foot of her.
Katerina clamped her teeth together tightly, trying not to scream or whimper or beg.
Dylan showed his gums in a wider imitation of a grin and held up one hand. Blue-white electricity jumped fr
om his thumb to his pinky, sparking at each finger in turn. The noise was awful, terrifying, like the squeak of a gate into hell.
Katerina shrank back from his demonstration of power, even as she noticed his mouth pull into a grim line. It pained him to do that, she could tell.
Screaming sounded in the corner behind her and Katerina tried to whip her head that way in fear. Now that her hand was unbound, she could turn a little farther in her chair. Behind her, sat a row of twenty or thirty cages, tiny brown monkeys in each one. They were screaming and chattering at the sight and sound of the electricity.
“Shut up,” the military man closest to them snarled, kicking the first cage. “Shut up, or I’ll fry you myself.”
Katerina’s mouth went dryer still at the words. What in the world were the monkeys here for? Did they experiment on them? Did Dylan zap them with electricity? Did Dr. Asshole and Dr. Bitch expect her to do that too?
The electricity in Dylan’s hand died away and he dropped the hand to his lap with a grunt.
Katerina shrank in her chair, wishing she were anywhere else. Praying that God would strike her dead before He let her be fried or tortured.
Words came tumbling out of Katerina’s mouth of their own accord. “Look, I never could do that, but now I can’t do anything. I’ve - I’ve lost all my powers. They are all gone.”
Dylan chuckled, although his voice seemed softer than before. “That won’t work here sweetheart.” He looked at the two doctors behind the partition. “I’ll convince her,” he said in a grinding voice. “Re-fasten her hand,” he barked at Pvt. Poole.
Katerina pulled her arm into her chest, but where could she go? The young private fastened his hands on her wrist, his face clearly saying he expected to be fried where he stood, but within a minute he was back at his post against the wall, safe and sound, Katerina fully bound again.
Dylan leered and his too-large tongue fell partially out of his mouth. Katerina squeezed her eyes shut as he heaved himself closer to her. She felt him yank on her shirt and felt air on her chest.
