Line of Sight

by Rachel Caine

  The guard laughed. “What you need water for?”

  “My wife brews the beer. I’d rather drink the water.”

  More laughter. They’d already heard about his wife. The guards weren’t fools, though; one took the beer, flipped the cap, and handed it back to Stefan. “Drink it,” he said, and when Stefan hesitated, cocked the lever on the automatic pistol strapped casually around his chest. “Drink it, amigo.”

  Stefan obligingly downed it, and gagged. It was foul, all right. The guard grinned and tossed him a bottle of chilled water. “Here,” he said. “You earned it. Where’d you learn that?”

  “This?” Stefan produced another beer out of nowhere. “Eh. It’s nothing. My uncle taught me.”

  Magic fascinated everyone, from the smallest child to the most cynical bastards. Stefan continued to do sleight of hand. He was out of beers, so he moved on to cards, using a worn American deck with Budweiser advertising on the back. He gathered attention, which was what he wanted. It took about three minutes for someone with higher rank in the cynical bastard department to arrive and tell him to get lost; he promptly folded up his deck, handed over his last beer and went back to the truck.

  He’d done everything he could to get Katie’s attention, short of yelling her name, but she could have been anywhere, could have been still somewhere on the road and unaware….

  The passenger-side door opened, surprising him. He hadn’t seen anyone walking up.

  Katie climbed inside. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked furiously. Her eyes were more green than brown now, blazing with fury. “You stand out in the open and do magic tricks? Do you understand the kind of risks—?”

  “We have to go,” he said, and started the truck. “They moved the girls out five minutes ago.”

  Katie’s mouth shut with a snap, then opened. “Where?”

  “Teal can’t see through the tinting. They’re in a big black Hummer, and they were heading into Tumaco. Can’t be that hard to find.”

  Katie was no longer angry. Stefan bumped the flatbed out onto the road and roared toward Tumaco, not caring about the delicate machinery of the cage itself, or anything, except finding the girls before they lost them again.

  And…they were back at the airport.

  “Funny,” Stefan said sourly, and eased the truck into Park on the street in front of the terminal. “We could have just waited. All that work for nothing.”

  The Hummer was visible behind the fence, sitting on the tarmac next to a gleaming Learjet—it dwarfed the more modest private plane they’d flown to get here. This one was a Learjet on steroids, Katie thought. Of course, Juan Mercado Tulio would have only the biggest and the best.

  “We’ll have to leave the cage,” she said. “Too much time to load it again.”

  Stefan looked briefly pained, but he nodded. “I’ll get to the plane and get it ready for takeoff.”

  “We’re going to be moving fast,” Katie said. “Tell the pilot that once the girls are onboard, we don’t stop. We don’t stop for anything.” Once they were in U.S. airspace, she could get Allison to give them an escort fighter, but the danger was between Colombia and the U.S. And in taking off at all. “Go, Stefan. Hurry.”

  He nodded and slipped out of the truck, heading for the side gate of the airport. It was secured with a shiny new lock, but she didn’t expect that would slow him down.

  Katie gathered her shadows around her, concentrating hard on being nothing. She had no idea what it would look like to someone actually watching her do it, but in her own mind she simply began to fade…slowly…away.

  Until she was invisible.

  She walked into the terminal, past unseeing security, past armed guards, out to the tarmac.

  The Hummer was five hundred feet away, glimmering in the sun like polished onyx. It was surrounded by armed men, all facing outward and scanning for trouble. She took a second to order her mind, then kept walking.

  You don’t see me. You see nothing at all but a dull brown beetle making its way across the concrete. Nothing.

  She was fifty feet away, with a gun in her hand, when the Hummer’s back door was opened and Lena Poole was yanked out onto the ground.

  Katie felt a hot rush of anguish. So close, we’re so close… Lena’s eyes skipped right over her, then suddenly came back and widened. She can see me. If Lena could, it was only a matter of time before the guards saw through the illusion, too. Katie pointed to her right, toward the hangar where Stefan’s plane was powering up its engines.

  Lena nodded.

  Teal was fighting extraction from the SUV—a critical lapse in security, as Lena’s guard loosened his grip to reach inside to help.

  Lena exploded into motion, racing toward Katie and the plane beyond. Katie went smoothly to one knee, braced herself, and began firing. Three guards went down, and then Teal appeared in the doorway of the SUV, held as a shield with the muzzle of a gun sticking out from under her arm.

  This is what they did before, Katie recognized coldly. When they killed the cops on the road.

  Teal was too tall to shoot around, and whoever was behind her was well covered. Katie knew she’d lost the element of surprise; she couldn’t recover invisibility once the illusion was broken, and the rattle of gunfire would bring all kinds of trouble down on them, anyway. She had seconds to act.

  “Hey, Sheila!” she called. “Christine Evans says your typing sucks!”

  It was a guess, but an educated one; the hand holding the gun was too small to belong to one of the male guards. She got a flicker of motion behind Teal, as the other woman—the one who’d wormed her way into a position of trust with the students and faculty at the Athena Academy—revealed herself for just a second, long enough to take a surprised look.

  It was enough. Katie didn’t miss.

  Sheila Richards Stanley’s body thumped back inside the Hummer, and the gun tumbled down to the floorboards. Teal jumped down from the truck, took a step toward Katie…

  …and then stopped. Something like realization spread across her face.

  And then, resignation.

  “Teal!” Katie yelled. “Come on! Hurry!”

  People were starting to react. At the Learjet behind the Hummer, a graying middle-aged man with a hawk-sharp face appeared in the hatch, and Katie recognized him instantly. Juan Mercado Tulio. An overbulked younger man crowded in next to him and pushed by to clatter down the steps—his son, Rudolpho, the one who liked to beat women.

  There was a third man in the doorway—about Juan’s age, with close-cropped brown hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. Caucasian. Katie didn’t recognize him.

  “Teal!” she yelled again. “Teal, come on, we’ve got to move now!”

  The girl took another step toward her, and their eyes met.

  And Katie saw Teal’s fingers blur into motion, fast sign language, just as a guard reached her and dragged her backward toward the waiting plane.

  Katie retreated—had to retreat—as the steroid-swollen hulk coming down from the plane sprayed a hail of automatic fire in her direction. He was a terrible shot, but he didn’t have to be good to kill her. Just persistent.

  Juan yelled at his son in Spanish, and Rudolpho stopped shooting. They must have realized that it put Teal in danger.

  Teal’s sign language had said, Can’t go now, have to find out more, you go with Lena.

  God, Teal was choosing to stay.

  More bullets bounced Katie’s way, driving her back. The guards were arriving, and they had an angle on her that wouldn’t endanger Teal. She had seconds to live.

  “Teal, come on! Run! You have to!” Katie shouted, even as she fired at the guards and retreated across the open tarmac. Behind her, Stefan’s Learjet was powering up, and she could hear him shouting something, but it was lost over the roar and gunfire.

  Something hot grazed her thigh. Katie controlled her flinch and dropped two more gunmen, steadily retreating and facing the enemy the whole way.

  Teal didn’t—wouldn�
��t—follow. She stood there, watching, until two guards closed in on her and began dragging her toward the other plane, where Juan, his son and the other man waited at the top of the stairs.

  “Teal!” Stefan yelled. “Teal, come on!” He was on the ground now, out of the plane. Katie cursed and kept firing until her gun ran dry, grabbed a second clip and changed it on the fly.

  “Stefan, get in the jet!” She was twenty feet away. Less.

  Instead, Stefan came toward her. Staring toward Teal, oblivious to his own danger.

  “Stefan!” she screamed, and in that moment she knew he was right, she was precognitive. For all the good it did.

  She saw the bullet strike him in slow motion, low in the chest, and then explode out of his back in a spray of blood.

  Stefan staggered, mouth opening, and went down to his knees. He looked confused as he tried to get up, as if his brain simply wouldn’t admit what had happened.

  Katie screamed, emptied her clip toward the plane, grabbed Stefan with one hand and towed him toward the steps. She had to drop her gun to get him up into the fuselage.

  “Go!” she yelled to the pilot, who was standing in the cockpit opening, looking frozen. He threw himself into the seat and flipped switches. “Oh God, no, Stefan—”

  Katie sobbed, but she didn’t let it stop her. She grabbed the steps, yanked them up and closed and locked the hatch. Bullets were rattling on the skin of the plane, and it was entirely possible they were all going to die here, all of them, but it was out of her hands now and Stefan was bleeding….

  Lena was sitting in one of the leather seats, eyes wide, looking terrified. Katie barely registered her presence as she threw herself to her knees next to Stefan and rolled him over to take a look at the wound in his back.

  It wasn’t gushing, so he had no torn arteries, but it was bleeding badly. Katie stripped off her peasant blouse, wadded it up and jammed it into the wound, pressing as hard as her shaking muscles would allow.

  “Don’t,” she panted. “Don’t you die on me, Stefan. Don’t you dare die on me now.”

  His eyes were open, but she wasn’t sure he could see her. Her tears fell on his face as she rolled him onto his back, pinning the makeshift bandage in place, and applied pressure to the bullet wound in the front. He was still breathing. There was still hope.

  There had to be hope.

  “Teal,” he said, in a pale thread of a voice. Katie choked back another sob and put her hand on his cheek.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “We have Lena. She’s safe.”

  “Teal,” he said again, and his eyes drifted shut. “She stayed. She wants to be a hero.”

  Katie hung on to him against gravity and the world as the plane hurtled down the runway and into the air.

  Chapter 14

  T he only sounds in the hospital room in Los Angeles were the sounds of machines. Stefan’s chest rose and fell, draped in white. Katie pillowed her head on her crossed arms and tried to sleep, but despite an extreme amount of weariness, she couldn’t close her eyes.

  She had the feeling he was an illusion, that the second she looked away, he’d disappear and she’d be left with nothing but tears.

  Somehow, he’d hung on during the flight; they’d put down in El Paso, and Stefan had been rushed into surgery. It had taken days before he was strong enough to transfer via helicopter here, to Cedars-Sinai. She hadn’t left his side. Neither had Lena Poole, until the FBI had arrived to debrief her, then return her to her family.

  Katie missed Lena. The girl had brought warmth with her, a kind of constant cheer that left the world feeling a bit colder in her absence.

  Small victories, seeing Lena cradled in her mother’s arms.

  Small tragedies, seeing Teal’s family without that comfort.

  The FBI had come and gone. Katie hadn’t paid much attention really; she already knew that she was likely to be censured, at the very least, and she had no argument with it. She’d done what was necessary at every turn, and so had Stefan.

  And Stefan had paid the real price.

  “Katie.”

  She raised her head. Ben Blackman was standing there, holding out a cup; she registered the warm, nutty aroma of coffee. Another product of Colombia, like the bullet that had torn through Stefan’s chest, narrowly missing the tangle of arteries, nicking his right lung but miraculously avoiding any of a dozen fatal bounces.

  Stefan’s spine was intact, and so was his heart. Hers was near to breaking, though, at the look in his father’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, and stood up slowly. “I’m so sorry. I broke my word to you.”

  Ben put the coffee down and opened his arms. Katie stepped into his embrace, sucked in a deep, uncontrolled breath, and tried—failed—not to cry. It felt good, being forgiven so freely. She didn’t deserve the grace.

  “My son loves you,” Ben said, and moved her back to look into her tear-streaked face. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “He barely knows me.”

  “He knows you better than you know yourself, Katie. And you didn’t break your word. My son’s still here.” He kissed her gently on the cheek and let her go. He walked to the bed and took Stefan’s limp hand in his. “I know you can hear me, son. I love you.” He smoothed Stefan’s tangled hair back. “Angelo sends his love. He even forgives you for the car, but he says you have to pay him back. So you have to wake up. It’s a really big loan.”

  Katie covered her mouth with her hands, tears sparking again. Stefan hadn’t moved or spoken since that terrible moment on the plane, and the doctors weren’t sure whether or not there had been brain damage from the blood loss. He could wake up five minutes from now, or next year, they’d said. He could be fine, or he could be severely impaired. The brain is delicate. We’ll just have to see.

  She half expected him to open his eyes, but Stefan just continued to sleep, limp and pale, fed by tubes.

  When Stefan’s mother came in, Katie retreated, heartsick. She walked down the hall for air, got coffee she couldn’t taste and didn’t want, and paced. There were a hundred dramas unfolding around her, but she couldn’t care about any of them at the moment.

  Teal wanted to stay. Stefan hadn’t explained that, and she couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t possible for Teal to have been brainwashed so quickly, was it? Lena hadn’t hesitated to take the opportunity to run, but Teal…Teal wanted to stay. Because Teal understood how deep this thing went.

  Teal was offering herself as a secret agent, already on the inside.

  Katie gnawed on a thumbnail already bloody with the habit, and was turning the problem over and over in her mind when she heard familiar voices. She hadn’t realized what she was doing, but she’d been gathering herself in again, making herself small, and as a result, the three women standing just a few feet away hadn’t spotted her.

  Allison, Kayla and Alex. They didn’t know she could hear them.

  “—Spider files,” Alex said. “Rainy’s daughter Lynn helped break the code. Looks like Arachne wants those files destroyed, whatever the cost.”

  “Arachne?” Kayla asked and frowned.

  “You probably know her as A, but it’s the same woman,” Allison said. “Lynn and Kim Valenti from the NSA did a superb job getting as far as they did. Those files are unbelievably difficult to crack. Even as much as they’ve done, there’s still a lot more we can’t read yet.”

  Alex nodded, arms folded. “Let’s leave that for another day. What about Morgan? Is he coming?”

  “Can’t,” Allison said. “NSA’s got him on another job, but he knows what happened. He tried to get free, but things were too tenuous where he was. He knows Katie’s in some trouble, and he’s prepared to help sort it out. I think it’s going to be up to Athena Force to pull some strings, though. She went way over the line for us.”

  Morgan? Katie’s brother was barely a presence in her life, these days; his job was his life, and even though she’d been through hell, he wasn’t likely to declar
e an emergency and fly to her side unless she’d been the one hooked up to machines. Still, it was nice to know he’d thought about it. She’d always thought of her family as more polite strangers than real support, but maybe…

  She was still thinking about Morgan, and family, when Allison suddenly looked her way, eyes wide. The other two women stepped back, equally surprised and off balance. “Katie,” Alex said, recovering her poise first. “I didn’t see you there. How’s Stefan?”

  “The same.” She managed a quick smile. Kayla murmured something polite and left; Alex went with her, casting a puzzled glance at Allison, who shook her head and took a seat next to Katie. After her initial start of surprise, Allison looked self-contained, and if she was feeling sympathy for Katie’s suffering, she didn’t show it.

  “How is he, really?” Allison asked.

  “Still in a coma,” Katie said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Business,” Allison said. “To do with you, actually. I need to show you something.”

  Katie nodded and sank down into one of the hard leather chairs against the wall. Allison perched next to her, reached into her bag and pulled out a small color PDA. “There was a reporter at the airport in Tumaco, taking some unauthorized footage of the drug traffic. For obvious reasons, he didn’t want to be identified, but he tried to peddle the video of the shootout to the media. The Colombian authorities confiscated it, and we got a copy. We went over the footage frame by frame, and we found something.”

  “What?”

  Allison hit a button, and a blurred still image appeared on the screen, a close-up of the Caucasian who’d been on the plane with Tulio and his son. Brown hair and goatee, light-colored eyes.

  “I don’t know him,” Katie said. “Why? What’s so important?”

  “His name is Dr. Jeremy Loschetter,” Allison said, “and we think he’s behind the abduction.”

  “What kind of doctor?”