Wild Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  I ignored her, because if Cal was safe… “Cal! Where’s Milo? Did you already find him?” I asked, but then refused to wait another moment for an explanation. I turned and again charged toward the doorway of the snack kiosk men’s room—

  —and crashed directly into my perfect, wonderful, and very-much-alive-and-safe and smiling boyfriend.

  Why was he smiling?

  Oh my Lord you’re okay you’re all right oh Milo Milo Milo…

  As soon as we collided, my super-special Greater-Than telepathy-with-Milo-and-only-Milo clicked on, and I felt my thoughts echoing in Milo’s mind.

  He’d turned the collision into a bear hug, and as he wrapped his arms around me, I felt his confusion. Skylar, of course I’m all right. What did Dana tell you?

  I wrenched myself from the embrace to turn and glare at Dana, even as I instantly understood. This was a training exercise?

  “Are you kidding me?” I said.

  Dana ignored me as she stomped around and muttered choice words that started with F and ended in -ing.

  Calvin removed his helmet. And yes. He was grinning, although his smile started to fade when he saw the thunderous expression on my face.

  “Fail! Fail, Sky! This was not good!” Dana paced furiously back and forth in her bare feet as she plunged her hands through her short blond hair and glared back at me.

  “Excuse me?” I exclaimed. “Not good? You got that right! This was not good at all!”

  I sensed Milo directly behind me as he chimed in. “You didn’t tell her this wasn’t real?” he asked Dana. His voice was low, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. The more upset Milo was, the quieter he got.

  I, however, got louder. “This was really just a game…?”

  “Of course I didn’t tell her. Why would I tell her?” Dana answered Milo before she stopped pacing and planted herself directly in front of me. “This was no game, Princess. This was a test. A pop quiz.”

  I could feel my jaw drop. “A pop quiz?”

  “And you flunked,” Dana declared. “Miserably.”

  Calvin started giggling into his steel-encrusted sleeve. He always giggled when he was nervous or uncomfortable, so I forgave him.

  Dana, however, was a different story. She’d gotten me out of bed with the heart-stopping news that Milo was in grave danger—to give me some kind of twisted test?

  “First off”—she was still barking at me—“you didn’t acknowledge your weaknesses. This was a potentially highly dangerous situation, and you know damn well you suck at stealth. And you also know that I’m just as capable of being stealthy as you are not. Yet your master plan had us both circling the building. What you should have done was assign the task of perimeter sneak-and-peek to me, while you stayed put, which is your best shot at staying silent—although that’s questionable, too. Instead, by crashing through the brush the way you did, you put us all in harm’s way. Lover-Boy included!” Dana jabbed at the air in Milo’s direction.

  Milo opened his mouth as if to speak.

  “Then you didn’t even stick to your shitty plan,” she continued, cutting him off before he even began. “Once you went all Rambo by making a run for it like you did—which I could hear, even from around the corner, P-effing-S: you basically turned yourself into a giant target. No, not a target, the target! You’re the target, Bubble Gum!

  “That is a truth that you must never, ever forget! If and when some nasty-ass em-effers grab Milo or Calvin or your mother or the sweet little old lady who lives next door…? They’re doing it to get to you! So what did you just do here? You put a freaking bow on your head and gave yourself to them on a silver platter, special delivery!”

  “You’re, um, mixing your metaphors,” Calvin pointed out.

  “You not only didn’t stop to think about the bad guys’ motives or goals”—Dana ignored him as she continued to skewer me—“but you also didn’t take that butt-ugly truth a logical step further. Because if you had, you would’ve realized that if and when someone grabs Milo in order to get to you, once they have you, they’re not gonna just let him go, like thanks for your help, bro, here’s money for a cab. No! Once they get you, he’s dead. So congratulations, you just killed Milo!”

  She was right. To some degree. But I had to blink hard to keep my tears from escaping. I was still that angry that she’d let me believe that Milo was really in peril.

  And I might’ve muttered an apology for failing her little late-night class in Abducted Boyfriend Rescue 101, if she hadn’t piled on and continued her rant about everything I’d done wrong.

  “And what the hell was that with Calvin anyway?” Dana huffed at me. “You just stop in the middle of a clearing”—she gestured to the open space we were standing in, between the kiosk and the jungle—“and have a conversation with someone who potentially wants to knock you unconscious, throw you in the trunk of their car, and take you to a Destiny farm where they’ll bleed you dry?”

  “I wasn’t—” I started.

  “He says freeze and you freeze?” Dana asked. “What were you thinking? Why were you thinking? You should’ve at least tried to blast him with your telekinesis before you even turned around!”

  At this, I exploded. “That’s bullshit!” I exclaimed, the foul word exiting my mouth like a glob of poison. “And you know it! I knew it was Cal!”

  “His voice was disguised,” she argued.

  “I knew it was him,” I insisted. “And yes, his being here made me a little confused, but—”

  “All the more reason to send out a mental shock wave,” Dana insisted. “I mean, yes, considering your limitations, it probably wouldn’t’ve worked—”

  “You seriously are on my case because I didn’t hammer my best friend with a big ol’ telekinetic left hook to the balls?” I laughed humorlessly, because last time I’d checked, Dana had been adamant about not letting me use my extremely limited water-based TK to try to move people—not even in a no-stress training session, let alone one like this. Although as I looked at Cal, I realized his robot suit wasn’t just for visual effect.

  He knew what I was thinking and tapped on his chest. The sound he made was similar to that of a drum kit’s hi-hat. “Pretty sure this technology makes me Skylar-proof. Not only did we crash-test both the suit and the chair, but we’re pretty sure you can’t move me because you can’t access the fluids in my body. The metal shields me. Neat-o, huh? The suit’s just a loaner—we’ve got to give it back—”

  “As in, we need to return the stolen goods?” I interpreted.

  “Semantics,” Dana said dismissively as I shook my head.

  “It’s not the easiest thing to move around in,” Cal continued, “and I gotta admit it’s toasty warm in here, but…” He shrugged as he glanced over at Dana. “Hot blond chicks can talk me into things.”

  That pissed me off even more. “Dana! Seriously! Did you mind-control Calvin into doing this?”

  Dana shook her head. “Cal signed up willingly. The point here is that whether you knew it was Calvin or not, that was not the right time to stop and have a freaking chat!”

  I shook my head, exhausted and angry, but also tremendously relieved. I turned to look at Milo, who was still standing slightly behind me. The important thing was that he was safe.

  I didn’t think the moonlight was bright enough for him to see the tears that were brimming in my eyes, but he reached out and took my hand and our connection immediately clicked on.

  I’m so sorry. His thoughts immediately filled my mind. I love you.

  I kind of laugh-sobbed as I nodded and squeezed his hand. I love you, too. I had to let go of his hand, or I would’ve started to cry. And I was not going to cry in front of Dana. She was my friend, yes, but these days she felt more like my worst frenemy.

  She was still stomping around, trying to turn this farce of a so-called test into a teaching-and-l
earning moment. “You know, Bubble Gum, if you’d waited for me—your teammate—you could have given me the command to move him.” She pitched her voice higher. “Dana, zap the monster! And I would’ve…” She nodded, her brows furrowed in concentration, and we all watched her use her powerful telekinesis to blast Calvin’s chair high into the air. He whooped like he was on an amusement-park ride, and she twirled him a few times before she gently set him down on the other side of the clearing. “Done that.”

  “Oh, snap!” I heard Cal call from the distance. Then, “Hey, can I come back now?”

  Dana’s grin flashed and then faded so fast, I might not have seen it if I wasn’t looking directly at her. But then she nodded again, lifting Calvin back through the air and placing him in the exact spot where he’d been before. Along with Calvin came the return of Dana’s scowl, as she once again tried to stare me down.

  But I held her gaze and lifted my chin as I stood my ground. The biggest fail here was hers. “Dana, you made me believe that Milo was in serious danger! I honestly thought he was going to be killed!”

  “That’s exactly what I was going for!” Dana insisted. “A truly emotional response from you—so that you could learn to perform under pressure. Hell, if I’d had someone train me this way when I was first honing my skills…? I’d be thanking them, not bitching about it.”

  Bitching. Bitching?

  Once again, Milo took my hand. She doesn’t understand, he told me through our telepathic connection. “Let’s talk about this later,” he told Dana, even as he silently told me, After Lacey was taken and Dana’s father was put in jail…it’s been hard for her to let herself love anyone.

  He’d met Dana in a really shitty foster home when they were both in their early teens, after her dad had been convicted of brutally murdering her little sister, Lacey. But Dana had recently come to believe that Lacey was still out there, somewhere, held prisoner by horrible people but potentially still alive. And this knowledge was making her extra crazy. We were all trying to be considerate of her feelings, but tonight she’d pushed me too far. And to call me bitchy, to boot?

  I was thinking in emotional whirlwinds rather than clear sentences, but Milo caught the gist of it anyway.

  Still thoughts. He sent what had become our calming mantra back to me, even as he told Dana, “It’s late. Sky needs to get some rest. We all do.”

  Dana looked from Milo to me to our tightly clasped hands, and she scowled. It bugged her that we could communicate this way—she said it was rude, like whispering in someone’s ear at the dinner table—so we tried not to do it so blatantly in front of her.

  But right now, I didn’t give a crap. I held tightly to Milo as I glared back at her.

  “Whatever,” Dana said impatiently. Then, as she turned away, she said more quietly, “What a disappointment.”

  I felt a pang at that, and I realized that at least part of me felt bad about letting her down. I wanted to be a warrior—in many ways, I longed to be more like her. But at the same time, I was still so angry at what she’d done. The two feelings battled their way through my chest in the form of a solid lump that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I tried.

  “Well,” Cal said as Dana stomped off down the trail on the other side of the kiosk, opposite from the way we’d run in. I knew from a brief telepathic blast from Milo that Calvin’s car was strategically hidden about a quarter mile away, near another hole in the fence. I also realized that Cal’s robot suit really was unwieldy. He wasn’t rolling along the root-covered path—Dana was using her TK to float him along behind her. He turned to look back at me. “I know it was a little too real for you, Sky, but I gotta confess, I had fun.”

  Fun? I heard myself make another one of those vaguely sob-like sounds. I was still so upset, I just wanted to get away from everyone. I wanted to go home so I could be completely alone to curl up in my bed and cry…

  And yeah, I’d sent that thought straight to Milo. I felt him realize that I’d lumped him in with the generic “everyone” I wanted to get away from, and then I caught a very solid wave of his own distress. Skylar, if I’d known she wasn’t going to tell you this was just a training exercise, I never would have agreed—

  I know, I thought over him. I really do know that. I was just so scared—I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.

  Holy crap, had I actually thought that aloud? Well, no, of course not aloud, but I’d certainly expressed my feelings in an orderly, easy-to-understand sentence with a verb and a noun, instead of the messy and wonderful wave of emotion that Milo and I swirled around in when we shared our precious and too-infrequent private time.

  I pulled my hand away from him to cut our connection. I didn’t want to be that girlfriend, needy and terrified, desperately clingy and relentlessly weepy.

  But Milo’s eyes were intense as he grabbed my other hand and stopped to pull me gently in front of him. We stood facing each other for a moment as he held my gaze. You will never. Ever. Lose me. I promise.

  You can’t promise that, I told him, fighting to keep my tears from escaping. But I couldn’t do it. I could feel them start to roll down my cheeks. If Dana were there, she’d have been yelling “Fail! Fail!”

  Yeah, Milo told me. I can.

  I shook my head. He couldn’t promise that the same way I couldn’t promise that someday I wouldn’t be grabbed and made to disappear the way that Dana’s sister, Lacey, had. I was a Greater-Than, as were both Dana and Lacey, and there were lots of very bad people out there. People who would harm and enslave us, and use our blood to make a dangerous and addictive drug called Destiny—if they discovered our powers.

  I would find you, Milo told me as we stood there in the silence of the night. You know that, right? If they take you, I will find you.

  His face hardened, and I couldn’t help but shiver. My boyfriend was sweet and gentle—with me. But he’d survived a terrible childhood that I still didn’t know all that much about. Somehow, despite our telepathy, he managed to keep those thoughts and memories walled off from me.

  He added, But no one’s taking you anywhere. As long as I draw breath, I won’t let that happen. That I can promise you, Sky.

  And that I believed. Milo would fight to the death to protect me. And to protect Dana, too.

  She’d vanished down the trail with Cal, but now she backtracked and tossed a key ring with a jangle and a thump into the dirt at our feet.

  It startled me, and I jumped apart from Milo, quickly wiping any traces of tears from my face.

  But Dana had already turned and started walking away. “Take her home on my bike,” she commanded gruffly, and then vanished again into the shadows. She didn’t bother to ask if I remembered where we’d left her motorcycle. She knew that I did. She also knew that I hated riding it, even with my arms wrapped around Milo’s waist. The only thing that had gotten me on it earlier was my need to find him as quickly as possible.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  As we both looked down at Dana’s keys gleaming in the moonlight, a breeze swept Milo’s long hair into his angular face—a beautiful face so familiar and dear to me, even though we hadn’t really known each other all that long. He pushed his hair back and pulled me into another embrace as he smiled at me—just enough to make his dimples appear.

  I’ll walk you home, he told me. And come back later for the bike.

  It would take us an hour to get to my house on foot, another hour for him to get back here…

  It’s okay.

  And despite all of the craziness of the past few hours, and all of the craziness that had occurred in my life before tonight—and there had been a crapload of crazy in my seventeen years so far on planet Earth—despite all of that, I knew that as long as Milo was with me, it was okay. It was and it would be.

  So I took a deep breath, pulled Milo with me into the shadows of that fugly snack kiosk, and kissed him with all
the passion of a girl who’d just thought the love of her life had come back from the dead.

  Little did I know that this latest deadly round of craziness was only just beginning.

  Chapter Two

  “We need to load up on ammo before we start this party,” Cal said as he steered his car into the gas-station parking lot.

  “Good call,” I agreed, glancing into the backseat at the collection of multicolored water pistols stacked in an ungraceful pile. Only a few of the guns were filled, but I could hear the water sloshing around inside the plastic as Calvin went over a speed bump and then turned his car into a parking spot near the pay machine for the water hose. “I mean, even if our weapons are more Fisher-Price than Smith & Wesson.”

  “Girl, it’s far less to do with the weapon and more with the person wielding it.” Cal nodded to me, since I was the person who’d be doing any wielding. “Plus you’ve always got the advantage, ’cause no one knows who they’re dealing with until it’s too late.” He gave me his best super-villain cackle as he tried to smile ominously, but it just turned into one of his world-famous toothy grins.

  I responded with a snort. “Yeah. Right. I’m soooo deadly.”

  I’d learned a few months ago, the hard way, that the objects I could move with my mind had to have a high water content, or no go. I could move people, true, but only if I imagined them as walking sacks of H2O, which wasn’t always easy to do.

  Which was why, even though Cal and I were both still tired from last night’s training-exercise-slash-disaster, and even though our private school was out for three whole weeks of winter vacation, we’d both gotten up at our usual way-too-early time to train.

  Every morning before dawn, even on school days, Cal helped by standing guard while I worked out my Greater-Than skills, which included running superfast and practicing control over my limited telekinesis.

  And because that training involved what Calvin referred to as cah-razy shee-it like running three-minute miles while keeping the waves at the beach from reaching the shore, I had to be careful to train privately, in a secluded place where no one could see me and start shrieking, Look at the freak!