by Anna Durand
The other man shoves his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. "Which serum?"
"The only one there is!" Tesler snarls. "Fetch me Jackson Tennant's personal formula."
"But we're not supposed to use that anymore."
"Bring it here!" Tesler's voice booms off the walls, a deafening assault on her astral eardrums. "And spice it up with a bit of thiopental sodium."
Truth serum? Of course. To encourage Sean to cooperate. The monster thought of everything.
Yellen trots out of the room. Tesler moves to stand beside Sean. He rests his hands on the chair's arm, no more than an inch from the kid's arm. His gaze drops to the floor, his brows gathered tight.
Head bowed, he speaks in a hushed voice. "She loved you."
Sean is too lost in his agony and terror to hear, to comprehend. Tears prick her eyes just watching his features contort with each sob.
Tesler's hand floats up, toward Sean's face.
He yanks it away. Lips drawn in a pucker, he scowls at Sean. "I did love her once. You may not believe it, but I did. So very much. I wish this could be another way… " He steps back, squares his shoulders, and the icy expression overtakes him again. His voice is equally chilled. "But there is no other way to deal with your kind. I need Janet Austen, and you will give her to me."
Footsteps clap in the corridor.
Yellen scampers into the room and hands Tesler a syringe. "The serum, sir."
Tesler snatches the syringe from Yellen's fingers and lowers it to Sean's arm. He hesitates, his brows pinched again.
With an annoyed sigh, he stabs the needle into Sean's arm, depressing the plunger.
The kid flinches, but the tears choke his voice.
Sean convulses. His eyes bulge. He sucks in one wheezing breath.
His body slumps in the chair. His eyelids flutter and his face settles into a dazed look.
Tesler bends near Sean's face. "Now, track David Ransom."
"Can't… " Sean's voice is slightly slurred. "Not my power."
"I just gave you more power than a weakling like you deserves. Track David Ransom."
Sean moans.
Tesler slaps him across the face.
The kid jerks.
"Do it," Tesler hisses. "That's an order."
She feels the shift as Sean departs his body, like a change in a ship's ballast. He's gone for minutes, and all she can do is glare at Tesler. She itches to slug him, throttle him, strap him to an evil dentist chair and pump mind-scorching drugs into his veins.
Sean rouses, his head rolling side to side. His glassy eyes gaze toward the ceiling.
Tesler grabs the kid's chin and wrenches his head. "Who is she?"
Sean clamps his teeth shut.
"You. Will. Tell. Me." Tesler smacks him, his head snaps back, his pops open. "Who is Janet Austen?"
"She… ahhh… "
"Tell me!" Tesler seizes Sean's shoulders and rattles him hard.
His jaw quivers. Tears stream down his cheeks. She sees him battling the drugs, but he can't break free of them. A sharp sob racks him. "Grace Powell."
A sickening grin splits Tesler's mouth. His eyes sparkle with a dark glee. To Yellen, he says, "Make sure the boy remembers nothing."
The other man nods.
Tesler sprints out of the room. She flies after him, unbound by physical laws, a spirit in pursuit of a mad man. Tesler bounds into the room where David still sits tied to the chair, though now his eyes are open, if bleary. He glances around as if he doesn't recognize the surroundings.
Tesler stops in front of him and claps his hands. "You, dear boy, have given me exactly what I wanted." Bouncing on his toes, he inclines toward David. "I broke you at last. JT will be quite pleased with this development — and with you, for finally acquiescing."
David stares blankly at Tesler.
The scientist plants his hands on the chair's arms and bends over David, their eyes level. "You gave her to me. Grace Powell is ours."
David shakes his head, slowly at first, then with ever-increasing ferocity. His hands grip the chair with such tension they tremble. He stills his head, and for a moment, his face becomes a stony mask. Then his jaw clenches, muscles twitching, and he sears Tesler with a look of pure hatred.
Tesler rises and casually places one hand in his pocket. "After all your suffering to protect her, you are the one who handed her to us. Waldron is already on his way to her. Thank you, David. JT's plan was floundering, but you saved it."
She feels the moment David gives up. Mechanisms click and whir in his psyche, realigning memories, altering perception. He chooses to forget, and this event recedes into the safe little box his mind manufactures for it.
Tesler begins to hum a cheerful tune and, spinning on his heels, prances out of the room.
David's head droops.
She knows. She understands. This is how they found her.
And this is the true torture inflicted on David.
Tesler will pay. She'll throttle him with her own hands, wring his filthy neck until his eyes pop out of his skull.
He must die.
Chapter Twenty-Three
David's back ached from holding this position — bent forward, arm outstretched, one hand on the far side of the table — but he did not budge. Not one of his limbs would move one inch until she came back to him.
Her eyes flitted behind her closed lids. REM sleep? No, she wasn't asleep. Her mind had disconnected from her body to travel not elsewhere, but elsewhen. Was it even possible? He disbelieved anything Amador told her, and yet…
There was still too much he didn't know about psychic faculties. Especially with Grace. She'd resurrected him from death, for Christ's sake. Death.
Sean had been right. Her use of healing was different this time. Everything about her powers had altered, escalated, mutated. He winced at his own thought. Mutated? Grace was no sideshow freak. She was beautiful, sweet, intelligent, compassionate, and powerful beyond comprehension.
Did he fear her?
Never. He might worry about the changes in her psychic makeup, but he would never — could never — fear her.
His arm cramped. He bit down on the pain and held still.
Grace muttered, her words indecipherable. Her eyelids popped open.
David nearly collapsed from relief. The tension slackened out of him.
A grim, knowing smile stretched her lips. She clutched his hand to her chest, as if his flesh moored her mind to the present. He watched her, careful to conceal his abject relief and enduring concern.
"You're back," he said, his tone guarded. "Everything okay?"
"Fine. How long was I gone?" She sounded calm, unfazed.
He didn't believe it for one second.
With his arm pinned to her, he could shrug only one shoulder. "You were gone a minute or two, I guess."
"You didn't experience it with me?"
"No."
She kissed his fingers, one by one. "I saw what really happened."
He ducked his head, shoulders flagging. Once, he would've sacrificed anything to know the truth, but now he wanted to slap his hands over his ears and pretend none of this mattered. Except it did. If he had endangered her, and he say no other explanation for the video, then how could she trust him? She might've sworn it made no difference, but that was before she traveled back in time to uncover the facts. After witnessing the event in person…
"David, look at me." She waited until he complied, and though he ironed his expression into a placid sheet, he feared his eyes disclosed his sorrow. She rested her chin on his knuckles. "Listen to me. Tesler tried to convince you after the fact that you gave him my name. But it's a lie. The leak didn't come from you. No matter how hard he pushed, you refused to give me up."
Speech, movement, thought — he'd lost his mastery of a
ll those things. So he huddled in silence, unwilling to look away from her, unable to respond.
"It wasn't you, David. That's what matters."
He narrowed his gaze on her. "Who was it? Who exposed you?"
She gave him that world-weary smile again. His fury, contained on the physical plane, must've bristled her metaphysical senses, but she simply pressed his hand to her cheek.
He ground his teeth. "I want to know. I demand to know."
She let go of his hand.
No anger? She hated it when he ordered her to do anything, which he rarely bothered to do because she ignored his commands anyway. For her to make no snide retort, it set his gut to churning.
He fisted both hands on the tabletop. "Tell me."
"You may think you want to know," she said, "but it won't make you feel any better. For once, let something go. Let this go."
He pounded his fists on the wood. "Whoever it is, I'm going to track them down and pun — "
"It was Sean."
The statement doused his fury in a heartbeat. Ice rushed down his veins. He jerked backward and his chair rocked. The front legs banged down again.
"Tesler made him do it," she said. "He gave Sean JT's formula, plus truth serum. Then he ordered him to find you, because he was sure you'd come to me. The trick worked. Sean learned who I am, and he couldn't help spilling the news to Tesler. The poor kid was drugged out of his head."
David propped his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. "I know what that's like. They gave me JT's wonder serum once. It's like having hydrochloric acid injected into your veins, and then the world turns into a fun house and your powers get amped up so high it's unbearable. Feels like your skin's peeling off, your brain's dissolving, and at the same time, you can do anything. There's a compulsion to do more, more, more. But it rips you apart from the inside out."
Dammit, why Sean? Why did Tesler have to drag a teenage boy into this nightmare?
It's my fault. And yes, it was. If he'd cracked, then Tesler would've left Sean alone. He wished he could claim he would've done things differently if given the chance, but he knew that was a lie. To protect Grace, he would sacrifice anything, anyone.
Once, he might've thought that made him a monster, like Tesler. No more. The woman he loved, his only family in this world, should come before all else — his friends, the world, his own life. His one regret was that it took him so damn long to figure that out.
He raised his head a little to peer at her from between his fingers. His hands muffled his voice. "We can't tell Sean."
"I know." She rubbed her arms.
"You're cold." He jumped from the chair and held out his hand. "Come on. We need to get you back by the fire."
Without protest, she accepted his hand and allowed him to shepherd her to the living room, to the sofa he'd angled toward the fireplace earlier. At his behest, she plopped down on the cushions. He settled in beside her, one arm across the sofa's back, behind her shoulders. She rested her head in the crook of his shoulder.
The familiarity, the intimacy, of the action and the moment uncoiled a spring deep inside him, relieving a pressure he'd lived with for far too long. The pressure of a secret. The horror of what he believed he'd done. Grace proved he hadn't betrayed her. Though he worried for Sean, the boy seemed unaware of his actions. Ignorance really could be, well, if not bliss then at least a kind of sanctuary.
Grace's head sprang up. Her eyes flew wide, and her mouth slipped open.
He turned her face toward him and searched her eyes for some clue. Their pale brown depths revealed nothing. "What's wrong? Are you feeling sick?"
"No." She leaned into his touch. "It's not me I'm worried about."
"Tell me. Please."
"It's Sean." She shut her eyes. "I think he's Tesler's grandson."
Grace shimmied away from David. She perched on the sofa's edge, hands gripping the cushions, and fought the urge to look at him.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It's awful, but it makes sense."
While cocooned in David's arms, her thoughts had wandered back to her postcognition experience. Something Tesler said bothered her. She'd replayed the incident as best she could, with her mind so worn out. After Tesler went to Sean, he complained about David resisting his efforts to control him. Then he decided to use Sean instead, and he referred to Sean by an insulting term instead of his name.
"Tesler called Sean a mewling mutant," she explained to David. "I suddenly remembered that, and then I remembered where I'd heard the term before."
David huffed a breath out his nose. "Tesler thinks all psychics are scum."
"Shut up and listen." She risked a glance then, and his wry smile pinched her heart. "Sorry. But please, let me finish."
One arm on the sofa's back, his posture relaxed and casual, he looked like a normal guy having a normal conversation with his normal fiancée. If only.
"In the files on Amador's DVD," she said, "I read a report written by Tesler. He mentioned a boy, his grandson, who he would not acknowledge because the kid had psychic abilities. He called his grandson a mewling mutant."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"I think it does." She straightened her spine and rotated toward him, her body twisted at the hips. "Tesler has freckles, like Sean. His hair's gray these days, but it mightve been red once, like Sean's. During my postcognition episode, Tesler seemed almost regretful about the need to torture Sean with JT's formula. Then he said the strangest thing."
David's brows rose, then scrunched together. "What did he say?"
"She loved you. And later — I loved her once." She lifted her fingertips to her cheek. "I think he was talking about his daughter, Sean's mother."
Much as she'd flailed for another explanation, the facts had bobbed up from the depths over and over, like apples in a barrel of water. Poisoned apples.
"I'm not saying Sean is league with Tesler," she told David, "at least not willingly. But Amador says Tesler wants to create an army of psychics he can control. Maybe Sean was his first test subject."
"You think he's brainwashed." His tone was flat, and he he remained perfectly motionless. Though he'd clamped down on his emotions, threads of them tantalized her mind. He was silent for a few seconds, then he said, "I can't swear he's not. All those months at the Mojave Desert facility, it wasn't Tesler who worked Sean over. It was always his underlings. And lately I have seen Tesler go easy on Sean, though I didn't understand what I was seeing at first. After what you've told me… I think Tesler might actually care about Sean, in his own twisted way."
"He didn't torture Sean, did he? When he — " The memory strangled her voice, but she cleared her throat and forged ahead. "When he killed you. He could've hurt Sean to make him talk, but he didn't. I think, on some level, Tesler regrets forcing Sean to out me."
"You may be right. But if Sean is brainwashed, there's nothing we can do about that right now." He leaned forward, his head close to hers. His nose brushed her hair. He pressed his warm, strong hand to her back and roamed it over her flesh, separated from his by only the cloth of her shirt. "I want to talk about you. Ever since you showed up here, you've been distant."
"I threw myself into your arms. That's not distant."
His fingertips splayed over her shoulder. "We can feel each other, remember? Even with your firewall, I can tell when something's wrong. You're uneasy, about more than Tesler and how we're going to stop him."
She cocked her head. "We? I thought this was your lone-wolf quest for vengeance."
He frowned. "I shouldn't have let you keep thinking my missions were about revenge. I was afraid to tell you the truth, when I thought I'd betrayed you. I was a selfish prick."
"David, you don't have to explain. After seeing what Tesler did to you and Sean, I understand why you're hell-bent on destroying him."
"No. You do
n't." With both hands, he grasped her upper arms, and his thumbs massaged in slow, delicate strokes. His voice was quiet and fervent. "This was never about my vengeance. It's always been about you. Protecting you from Tesler. Making sure he can't get his hands on you and turn you into his test subject. I could not stand by and let you be tortured — or worse." He dragged her into his chest, his grip firm, his expression determined and heated. His lips grazed hers with each syllable he spoke. "I would rather die than lose you."
His hot mouth slanted over hers. Hard. Hungry. She tried to catch her breath, but his lips devoured the air.
When he tore his mouth away from hers, his blue eyes burned into her. "Can't you understand? Everything is about you."
The quest for Tesler. Leaving her for days at a time. Risking his life to track down the new facility. He'd done it all for her. He died for her.
She shut her eyes and rested her cheek against his. Life heated his flesh. The spicy male scent of him surrounded her. She ran her palms up and down his chest, her breasts skimming his muscles with each shift of her arms. Alive. He was alive.
Death couldn't keep her from him. Nothing could.
Her lips trembled against his cheek. "Don't die for me anymore. Live for me. Live with me. Stay with me."
"There's nothing I want more."
Cheek to cheek, they sat in silence. The fire crackled. The wind buffeted the cabin, creaking its frame.
"Tell me the rest," he said.
"I don't know what you mean."
He took hold of her hair and gently tugged, until her head fell back and their gazes intersected. "Tell me what you're afraid of. And don't say Tesler. I know there's more." His fingers combed through her hair, his touch light and stimulating on her scalp. "I won't hold back anymore with you. So do the same for me. Let me in, Grace."
Yes, she did hold back. How could she not?
After criticizing him for keeping her at a distance, now she was pushing him away. And pulling him in closer. Push, pull. Push, pull. No wonder he was frustrated with her, but if he knew… if she revealed all…
Ropes in her gut gnarled into knots. The truth didn't matter anymore. She understood what must be done. He'd wanted to save her, but the time had come for her to save him. Again.
