by Anna Durand
She whipped the revolver out of her purse and peeked into the office. A door on the left must open onto the rear area. Another door led out the back of the office. The stale smell of dust drifted out of the air conditioning vents. She wiped her clammy hands on her pants.
Tag had told her to take the side door. She hustled over to check it was unlocked, then retreated to the lobby, closing the office door.
From her position behind the reception desk, she reached out again with her psychic senses. The walls turned semi-transparent once more. It was strange, peering through the ghost image of the walls, seeing through the solid matter but knowing she couldn't walk through it, not in her corporeal state. She spotted the commandos outside the lobby doors. As she observed them, they surged forward and headed straight for the doors, storming through them with guns raised. The doors banged open and the commandos' boots thundered across the floor.
Her vision reeled back to the normal, and the seven helmeted, armed men arrayed in front of the desk. She held the revolver muzzle down, her arm slack, the weapon hidden behind the desk. Her finger hovered over the trigger, separated from it by millimeters of air.
One commando, apparently the leader, detached from the group to approach the desk.
"Grace Powell." He sounded far too pleased with himself. "Gotcha, sweetheart."
A glacier hardened in her chest, expanding to scour out her soul. That voice. The way he said "sweetheart" with a slight snarl. Holy shit. "Battaglia."
He removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. The sneer was familiar too, and it triggered a flashback of him tackling her, threatening to stab a syringe into her neck. Her trigger finger itched to pull.
Six bullets. Seven men. Bad odds, even for a crack shot. Which she wasn't.
Battaglia sniggered. "I'm tickled pink you remember me, honey. Maybe this time you'll show me why so many guys are after your sweet little ass."
"Tesler wants me undamaged." She hoped.
"Yeah," Battaglia said, his leering gaze traveling down to her breasts and back up to her face, "but I can do lotsa things without causing permanent harm."
A legion of phantom insects skittered over her skin. She muttered, "You're just as crazy as JT."
"What was that, sweetheart? Didn't quite catch it."
She raised her voice. "Go to hell, you sick son of a bitch."
His guffaw echoed in the small space. He slashed one hand through the air, gesturing toward her. "Cuff her, boys."
Oh hell no.
She must lead them away from the motel, away from Tag. How long he'd slumber, she couldn't gauge. If Battaglia decided to check the closet…
No one else died for her.
Raising her gun, directing it at Battaglia, she aimed a nasty smile at him. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Battaglia shook his head and sighed heavily. "You really are a dumb bitch."
"So come and get me."
She bolted into the office, thwacked the door shut, and locked it.
The knob jiggled.
Battaglia bellowed, "Unlock it or I'll blow it open."
With her inner radar, she did a quick check of the motel's vicinity. The two commandos in the van had not moved, and no others had shown up to join the operation. She withdrew her psychic senses, snapping the walls back into solid form, and ran for the door at the back of the office. Twisting the knob, she flung the door inward and fled outside. Her footfalls clapped on the sidewalk and echoed off the building as she tore down the pathway, past the closed doors and curtained windows of the motel rooms. Someone must've heard the gunshot, yet no one so much as peeked out between the curtains. She couldn't blame them, she supposed. They feared for their own lives.
The air whooshed over her. A gust of wind snatched up gravel and dirt, flinging it into her face. Grit stung her eyes, pebbles pinged her skin, and the earthy taste of dirt infiltrated her mouth. Her leg muscles burned hotter and hotter with each step she took, screaming for a rest. She pushed her body to run faster.
A gunshot boomed behind her, inside the motel office. Voices shouted, but she couldn't make out the words. The rushing of her own blood in her ears, the huffing of her breaths, and the smacking of her footsteps obscured the words of the commandos.
Just short of the end of the building, she swerved left to race across the parking lot toward the scrubby woods beyond it. The sickly light from the parking lot streetlights petered out at the edge of the woods. Her heart pounded so hard and fast it made her head swim, but she couldn't stop. Her feet left the pavement, landing on dry, rock-hard ground and parched grass. She kept running.
The shouting resonated closer. She glanced back.
Commandos streamed out of the office.
Run. The thought spurred her body into more speed. In the instant she refocused her attention on the woods ahead, a shot detonated behind her. A projectile sliced across her arm, setting off a scorching pain that lanced through her, knocking her off balance. She stumbled, nearly fell, and caught herself a second before she hit dirt. Her arm burned, but she refused to look at it. Not now. Not yet.
She pushed her legs to pump harder. The muscles cramped in protest. She ignored the pain, the sweat stinging her eyes, the scrambling and thumping of boot-clad feet behind her. Another gunshot boomed. She ducked into the trees. Bark exploded from the tree she'd just passed. On and on she raced, panting so hard her chest ached, fighting for each breath.
Her toe caught on a tree root. She tripped, sailing face-first onto the ground. Her body struck the earth with such force it knocked the sense out of her. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't think.
Branches cracked. Dry grass rustled. Boots clomped.
They were coming.
Snap out of it.
She sucked in a breath, pushed onto her knees, and glanced over her shoulder. Black silhouettes, distant but moving closer each second, headed straight for her. No time. She must do something. The only thing she think of would come with a hefty cost.
No choice.
She disengaged from her physical body. Her mind soared upward, a balloon cut loose in the wind. Her mind flew into the dark tunnel, up and up. Bursting out into the crossroads, she halted with an abruptness that would've snapped her neck if she had a body. Pain radiated from the base of her skull, down into her neck. Floating there, she extended all her psychic faculties and reaped as much juice as she could from the energy matrix around her. The stars pulsed and swelled. Power, searing and molten, cascaded into her.
She plummeted downward, bursting out into the world and back into her body with a suddenness that stunned her. Every nerve in her body twanged, the psychic pain as sharp and real as the throbbing in her neck and the stinging in her arm. She focused her newly acquired power on one objective.
Destroy the commandos.
Wind erupted in front of her. In a wall of swirling current as strong as a hurricane, the wind swept out away from her toward the commandos. The gale uprooted small trees, drawing them into its eddies. Chunks of dirt and rocks twirled up from the ground, swirling on the currents of the wind.
The commandos ran straight into the maelstrom.
Someone shouted, "Jesus Christ!"
Male voices screamed in pain as rocks and airborne trees socked into them. Still the wind spun, traveling forward at breakneck speed. The maelstrom hefted the commandos off the ground and hurled them through the air. The bodies smacked down with wet thuds.
Nausea swelled inside her. She choked back the bile rising in her throat, tasting the bitter acid.
The screams ended.
She released the air. Saplings, rocks, and dirt rained down onto the ground. As the ruckus settled into silence, she bent forward and vomited.
Wiping her mouth on her shirt, she finally looked at her arm. Blood trickled over her elbow and down her forearm. It originated from
a wound on her upper arm, a couple inches below the shoulder. It looked like a deep scrape. A bullet must've grazed her. The wound still smarted, and she dabbed at it with her fingertip. Pain shot out from the wound. She gasped.
Her stomach hurt. Her head pounded as if a metal spike had been shoved straight up her spine into her skull. Every muscle trembled. She struggled to stand, but her knees buckled. She flopped onto her butt on the ground. Tears spilled down her cheeks, driven by sobs that racked her body, triggering sharp pains in so many places she lost count.
Hot shards pierced the backs of her eyes. The first signs of a migraine.
Shit. Considering how much power she'd funneled through her mind and body, she wouldn't have much time to get to safety before the migraine disabled her. She rose onto all fours.
Her right hand crunched an object.
With two fingers, she picked it up. Her cell phone. Demolished by a large and heavy booted foot.
Tossing it aside, she stashed her gun in her purse and crawled through the debris from her whirlwind. When she discovered the first body, she halted. The commando lay motionless, eyes wide and dead. She checked his neck for a pulse anyway. Nothing. She noticed the radio clipped to his belt, but that wouldn't help her. Not unless she wanted to chat with the buddies of the men she'd killed.
She ducked her head. She'd killed… how many men?
Don't think about it. They would've killed you in a heartbeat.
With trembling hands, she searched the man's jacket pockets for something, anything, that might help her. What dragged like hours, but probably had been seconds, ticked by before her unsteady fingers closed around a hard object in the man's hip pocket. She jiggled the thing until it popped free of the pocket.
A cell phone.
Relief flooded through her. Tears flowed anew, streaking down her cheeks as she dug in her purse for the card Roland Wickham gave her. Finding it, she held the card up to read the text. Tears fogged her vision. She sniffled and wiped them away. In the few seconds before new tears emerged, she read the number on the card and dialed it. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
"Hello?"
She almost burst into sobs again at the sound of Gabriel Amador's voice. Her own voice rasped when she said, "It's Grace. I need your help."
"What happened?"
"I'll explain later. I'm pinned down behind the Stay-A-Night Motel, just off the interstate."
"I know where it is. Stay out of sight until I arrive."
"Okay." Despite her best efforts not to, she sniffled.
"Hold on, Grace," Amador said, his tone authoritative. "I am on my way."
He hung up.
She dropped the phone. He hadn't even asked what she meant by pinned down. He didn't seem surprised at all she needed help. In fact, she could've sworn she detected a note of triumph in his voice — faint, but there. Probably her paranoia rearing its head again.
Either way, some kind of help was coming. If she could evade the remaining commandos until then.
A twig cracked.
She pulled the gun out of her purse. Hold them off, that was all she had to do.
For how long?
Chapter Eleven
Grace clambered away from the body as fast as she dared move, and as fast as she could manage, taking the dead man's phone with her. Despite worrying about the commandos' ability to track their buddy's phone, she decided the benefit of keeping it with her outweighed the risk. At least she hoped it did.
The pulsating in her head strengthened with each passing minute. She started out waddling on all fours, but when her arms crumpled, she resorted to belly-crawling. The parched earth, cracked and jagged, clawed at her flesh. Her injury impelled her to adopt a limping belly-crawl that favored the arm. The effort of hauling her body over the uneven terrain — with a blinding headache, a wounded arm, and spry commandos on her tail — drained her beyond exhaustion. She longed to collapse under a nice, shady tree. She didn't dare stop for even one second, for fear she might never rouse herself again.
So far, she'd kept ahead of the commandos. Maybe they got distracted by the bodies of their comrades. The memory of their lifeless forms jolted her, yet she was fresh out of guilt. They shot her.
In the wake of her own deadly action, she realized one fact. If David killed anyone, he must've done it in self-defense. She knew him, and she understood through far too much experience that sometimes a person was provoked into taking another's life. Her gut still churned from the desperation of choosing between her own survival and the innate inhibition against killing.
Most people operated under that inhibition. Some did not. They were the ones who compelled people like her and David to enact deadly measures.
Please, David, just tell me the truth.
She prayed he heard her plea, even through the wall blocking off her mind.
The phone in her pocket vibrated.
Catching her breath, she paused to pull out the appropriated phone and glance down at its screen. The number on the caller ID was familiar. She pressed the button to take the call but didn't dare say hello.
"Don't speak," Amador said. "I am at the motel. Leave this line open and I will track you."
Oh great. If he tracked the phone, then her pursuers might be closing in on her too.
As if he'd read her mind, Amador said, "I don't think Tesler's men are tracking the phone. They seem to be setting up a perimeter to begin an organized hunt for you."
Could he read her mind? David swore trying to read minds led to insanity, but he might be wrong about that. Amador could've thought of the same thing at the same time she did by coincidence. Whichever it was, the answer hardly mattered at the moment.
"I have your signal," Amador said, in a hushed voice. "Hang on, Grace. I will mute my phone and come for you. Do not hang up."
The line seemed to go dead. He must've muted the call on his end.
She huddled there, on her belly, propped up one arm, gripping the cell phone in one hand and her gun in the other. As she tilted her head to listen, she also scanned the woods with her eyes — her physical eyes. All her psychic senses were hollow, emptied of power. She could do little more than lie there, squinting from the migraine pain and struggling not to vomit again.
Sleep. She yearned to curl up in a ball and snooze for days.
Would her psychic barrier stay in place if she slept? She hadn't taken so much as a nap since building the mental barrier this morning. Good lord, had it only been this morning? It felt like days elapsed since she sat on the bed with David, both of them trying to figure out how she might erect a psychic firewall. She checked the display on the dead man's phone. It gave the time as 11:02 PM. She flipped the phone facedown in her palm to hide the glow from its display.
Even the fragile moonglow hurt her eyes.
Her eyelids threatened to close. With a gargantuan effort of will, she kept them open.
David, I need you.
He wouldn't come. He couldn't. Besides being held hostage at the Montana facility, he most likely couldn't track her down because of her psychic wall. Lowering the barrier would let him reach her, but it might also let in enemies. Soon she might not be able to fend off sleep any longer, and her psychic wall might become a moot point.
Rustling. Behind her.
She rolled onto her back, raising her gun.
From behind a bush, out stepped Gabriel Amador.
Grace nearly keeled over right then, out of sheer relief. Her arm fell to the ground, and the gun tumbled from her fingers. White lights flickered in her vision, a signal her migraine had worsened. The pain swallowed her head, fractured her mind, and vacuumed every last ounce of strength from her body. She tried to push up onto her elbows, but her arms gave out. She toppled to the ground.
Amador crouched beside her. He plucked her gun from the dirt, shoving it into her purse.
Her tight throat strangled the words she tried to speak. So tired. Sleep beckoned to her, though she battled against it. Keeping her eyelids open got harder and harder. They drooped half closed. She peeked through her lashes, her gaze intersecting with Amador's.
His expression was pinched.
She tried one more time to speak, but eked out nothing better than a moan.
And then, like a hero in a movie, Gabriel Amador scooped her up into his arms and lugged her out of the woods. David carried her this way once, in a similar situation. In his arms, she'd enjoyed safety and warmth. Cradled in the arms of Gabriel Amador, she suffered an odd mixture of relief and tension.
The pain and exhaustion brought on by her migraine overpowered everything else. By the time they reached Amador's vehicle, some kind of enormous SUV, she gave up the fight.
Her eyelids fluttered shut as she sank into a deep slumber.
David scuffled to a stop a few feet inside the doorway of the twenty-foot square room. Fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling cast quivering light onto the white walls and concrete floor. The far wall housed a two-way mirror that would, undoubtedly, allow Tesler's fans and cohorts to observe his sessions with travelers. Nkosi staggered in behind David, coming up on his left, an arm's length away. Armed sentries guarded them, one to Nkosi's left and on David's right. Both their gazes were riveted to the sight in the middle of the room.
A metal chair hunkered there, padded with meager cushioning. The seat resembled a dentist's chair, though without the cozy atmosphere. In the chair — strapped down with restraints around his wrists, ankles, and forehead — huddled Sean Vandenbrook.
The boy's green eyes glittered bright with anger. He lifted his chin high, his lips compressed.
David tipped his head to Sean, and the boy almost smiled. In the past six months, Sean had labored to become a man, bolstering his body and mind through sheer force of will. To Sean, achieving manhood meant never crying or showing weakness. David tried to explain showing emotion didn't make a man weak, but it sounded hypocritical coming from him. He didn't exactly excel at sharing his feelings.
