by Jena Leigh
Aaron shook his head at the mirror.
“So what,” Aaron? He snorted. So maybe you were an idiot to trust the guy, after all.
Only, that wasn’t right.
Aaron had never trusted his benefactor—and he was starting to think he’d been a damn fool to believe he could make a deal like this one and not pay a price for it.
Dr. Edward Li first showed up on the front step of his foster family’s trailer six months earlier. It was just one day after Aaron’s eighteenth birthday. Li was dressed in Armani and stood sorely out of place amidst the piles of junk, the crabgrass speckled lawn of dirt, and the aging Buick propped up on blocks.
Aaron’s initial reaction was complete and utter distrust.
Strangers often mistook Aaron’s slow way of talking as being a sure sign of a low intelligence. It was a misconception he liked to encourage. Being underestimated by everyone around you was actually a good thing when you were trying to maintain a low profile.
In reality, Aaron Michael Gale was anything but an idiot. Especially when it came to understanding the finer points of human nature.
Some of the most important lessons he’d learned as a child were that the world was anything but fair, that absolutely every gift had its price, and that only a fool trusted a man in a thousand dollar suit.
So when Li skipped the pleasantries and proceeded to offer him, flat out, the life of his dreams, Aaron laughed in his face.
“What would a guy like you get out of helping a guy like me?” he’d asked once the laughter subsided. “I ain’t exactly what your financial advisor would call a ‘sound investment.’”
Li smiled at that, cast his gaze skyward, and said something that rattled Aaron Gale to his core.
“I know what you are, Mr. Gale,” he said, nodding to the fast moving clouds above their heads.
“I don’t know what you’re talking ab—”
“Weather data rarely lies, Mr. Gale. And it would seem that this area of the Appalachians has seen some rather… interesting weather patterns of late.”
Aaron scowled at the stranger.
“I know what you are,” Li repeated. “And I know just how valuable a man like you could be to someone like myself.”
“Valuable?” asked Aaron, struggling to regain his composure.
No one, not a single living soul, knew the truth about what Aaron could do. He’d guarded the secret viciously since the death of his father, six years earlier.
“Exactly how might I be of value to a man like you?” he asked.
Before losing his battle with lung cancer, Aaron’s father taught him many things about who and what they were, and about why it was so important that he kept that information secret.
His father’s teachings involved a version of the past that hadn’t made it into the history books; one that explained in stark detail why Variants would never—could never—trust the norms with the truth of their abilities.
Secrecy was a lesson he’d learned at a young age.
And it was, quite possibly, the only thing that had kept him alive this long.
Seeming to sense the source of Aaron’s unease, Li replied, “I can assure you, Mr. Gale, that I’m not interested in using your ability as a weapon.”
“Right,” Aaron drawled. “You’d just like to keep me around to ensure that outings on your sailboat are always windy, and your garden parties are all 75 degrees and sunny.”
Li shook his head, smiling. “I don’t blame you for your incredulity. But the fact remains—I’m offering you this assistance because I’m currently in a position to help you… and because I happen to know exactly what you’re going through.”
Aaron narrowed his eyes. Li just kept on smiling.
“And if my garden parties should one day become the envy of polite society, I’ll simply count that as a bonus.”
“How could you possibly know what my life has been like?” asked Aaron.
“Because I started out in this world living in a place a whole lot like this one,” he said, gesturing toward the debris-strewn yard behind him. “And because, like you, my own abilities have made my life a bit more… complicated, than the average Variant’s.”
“Abilities?”
Li pulled a lighter from the inside pocket of his coat, flicked it open, struck a spark, and then drew the open flame into his palm.
Aaron had heard of pyrokinesis before, of course, but growing up in a town with a population smaller than the head-count at most inner-city high schools meant he’d never actually seen another Variant in the flesh.
No one besides his father, anyway.
Aaron schooled his expression. “Impressive, I guess.”
“Oh, I’m not finished quite yet,” said Li. He dissolved the flame and stepped off the porch, then disappeared in a brilliant wave of violet light.
Li reappeared briefly on the other side of the yard, before jumping back to where he’d begun.
This time, Aaron couldn’t hide his awed expression. “You have two abilities? The odds against that are… are…”
“Astronomical,” finished Li, tugging at the cuffs of his dress shirt to straighten them. “Yes, I’m aware.”
Aaron studied the man standing before him. “What’s the catch?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The catch,” Aaron repeated. “What do you get out of this deal you’re offering?”
Li shrugged. “I won’t claim to be entirely altruistic in my motives, Mr. Gale. I’ve already admitted to the fact that having you around would be of great value to me.”
Aaron crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for him to get to the point.
“There will, at some point down the road, come a time when I will ask for your assistance.”
And there it was.
Aaron shook his head, but Li interrupted him before he could reply.
“However,” Li continued, “I can promise you that anything I might ask you to do to assist me will comply with your own moral code. I will never force you to do anything. It will always be your choice.”
Li handed him a business card and told him to call the number once he made his decision.
It took Aaron a full week to say yes, and then another 24 hours to find himself and his meager belongings shuffled onto a private plane destined for Florida.
Li put him up in a modest apartment, enrolled him at a local public high school, and then left Aaron to his own devices.
For the last six months, life in Bay View had been uneventful, to say the least.
Then came his benefactor’s second odd request.
Aaron blinked, struggling to identify his current surroundings.
Where was he?
Aaron stared straight ahead—a direction he later realized to be upward—toward his living room’s popcorn ceiling. The dark panels of a ceiling fan spun quickly overhead, the pull-cord tap-tap-tapping against the glass dome of the light. He closed his eyes again, trying to lessen the sensation of vertigo and dispel the fog engulfing his thoughts.
Nearly a full minute passed before Aaron realized he’d passed out on his way to the kitchen.
He sat up, rubbing the back of his head. Rain was once again falling steadily outside. He hadn’t been out long.
Sighing, Aaron got to his feet.
This all started after he received an unusual phone call from Li, three weeks earlier.
“I’d like you to meet me in Bay View High School’s junior class parking lot at precisely 6:45 P.M., this Friday evening,” Li said. “It’s crucial that you not arrive late to this appointment.”
Aaron hadn’t been late.
But his benefactor had. In fact, Li failed to show up at all.
The only person Aaron met in the junior class parking lot that night was Alex, who emerged from the forest at exactly 7:11 P.M., covered from head to toe in black mud and scared out of her mind by whatever she’d seen in there.
Aaron was sick of waiting and he really didn’t want to find out what had s
cared the girl so badly. When he saw Alex’s friends approaching from across the lot, he promptly took his leave.
Then came the storm.
He hadn’t missed the coincidence that mere moments after meeting the girl for a second time, another low pressure system began ravaging the skies above Bay View.
Was Alex the one responsible for these storms? Had Aaron’s presence somehow triggered her latent abilities? And if it was Alex, didn’t she realize what she was doing?
Even the greenest weather manipulator could feel their abilities emerging, building slowly from a gust of wind caused from their laughter at age eight, to a hurricane-force gale when they lost their temper at 16. You simply learned to control the ability as it progressed.
But this? This was ridiculous.
From the sheer size of the storm overhead, it felt as though an entire army of weather manipulators was conspiring to create it. He’d never seen anything like it.
Aaron simply wasn’t strong enough to fully counter the effects.
Whoever was doing this, they were more powerful than he’d ever imagined possible.
And that, more than anything else, scared the hell out of him.
— 18 —
A buzzing sound made Nathaniel glance up from installing the newly reupholstered bucket seat in his half-restored 1970 Dodge Charger. He’d placed the leather seat atop the metal pedestal on the passenger’s side, but it still needed to be positioned and bolted in place.
Bzzz, bzzz, bzzzzzz.
He’d barely heard the sound over the roar of thunder.
The unexpected storm had doubled in intensity over the course of the last half hour and was only getting stronger. The radio was now advising everyone to stay indoors until it passed.
Bzzz, bzzz, bzzzzzz.
Nate’s cell phone bounced across the top of his workstation. One last pulse and over the edge it went.
He shot out a hand and the phone changed direction, taking a sudden left turn and landing in his outstretched palm instead of in pieces on the concrete floor of the garage.
Nate answered the call without checking the ID. “Yeah?”
It was the burner. There was only one person it could be.
“Where is she, Mr. Palladino?”
The question caused Nathaniel to jerk his head up and into the roof of the Charger. He cursed as he pulled his upper-half out of the car.
“Well?” asked the Director.
Nate stole a quick glance at his watch. It was 1:45. Alex should be in class for another ten minutes, but the Director already knew that.
No doubt the woman had at least one agent in Bay View at all times, keeping an eye on their would-be asset. If Alex had disappeared, something big must have happened.
“She’s at school,” he said, pulling his primary cell phone from his pocket.
No new texts or voicemails. Did that mean Declan was handling it? Or did it mean the situation was so out-of-control that he couldn’t call for back up?
Using his TK, Nate guided the seat out of the car and dropped it onto the floor.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Nathaniel. Where is Alex Parker?”
Nate slammed the passenger side door. “And I’ll answer you one more time, Director. I can’t tell you what I don’t know. Alex should be in class. If you want to know her exact location, you’ll have to go looking for her yourself. I can’t help you.”
He ended the call, slipped into the driver’s seat, and tossed the burner phone into the empty space to his right. He hoped he hadn’t pushed her too far this time.
The Director hadn’t exaggerated during their last meeting—she currently held all the cards. If their deal fell apart, then so would everything else.
Nate placed his palm over the ignition and concentrated on turning the engine over. He’d left his keys somewhere in the main house and there was no time left to go looking for them.
As the engine roared to life, he gunned the Charger through the garage bay door and hit number two on the speed dial of his main cell.
When Declan didn’t answer he tried for number three.
The world outside the garage looked like something straight out of that movie The Perfect Storm. Wind thrashed at the trees, the skies had turned an ominous shade of midnight blue bordering on black, and lightning was striking so often the roar of thunder was continuous.
Nate had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what—or, more precisely, who—was causing it. And if he was right, then either their timeline for the event had gone completely off the rails, or Brian’s visions had missed something really important.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening.
Not yet.
Even worse was the fact that Alex was already walking a thin line with the Agency. If this storm was her creation, then she needed to get it under control before the Director figured out what was going on and counted it as the final strike against the case for Alex’s freedom.
“Moshi moshi!”
Nate pulled the phone away from his ear to check the display, wondering if he’d somehow dialed the wrong number.
“Nate?” said the voice again.
“Kenzie?”
“Hai… Nanika atta?”
“English, Kenzie,” said Nate, taking the Charger through a hard left turn. “You know my Japanese is terrible.”
“Yeah, well,” she said in an undertone. “You did call me in the middle of class, and seeing as how my Japanese instructor is expecting to hear nothing but Japanese conversations right now, I figured I’d at least attempt to fly under the radar.” The sound of a door closing carried over the line. “Okay, I snuck into the hall. You’ve got sixty seconds. Is this about Alex and Declan cutting class?”
“They cut class?” he repeated. “Why? Where did they go?”
“No clue on either count,” she said. “There was this really weird déjà vu thing that happened earlier. I’m pretty sure Alex caused it, but I couldn’t begin to tell you how she did it or what it actually was.”
Déjà vu?
“And they left campus?”
“Yeah,” she said. “About fifteen minutes ago. Hey, that reminds me. Feel like giving me and Cass a ride now that ours has left us behind?”
“Call the boss, or ride the bus,” he said. “I’ve got to find Alex.”
“The bus?” she asked, aghast. “You’re joking right?”
“I’m not,” he said. “And if you figure out where Alex is you call me the second you know, got that?”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“There’s a good chance Alex is the one who created this storm,” he said.
The sound of Bay View High’s release bell carried over the line.
“Alex did? But that’s impossible. Weather manipulators don’t exist anymore. And even if they did, there sure as crap wouldn’t be one hanging around Bay View. They’d have a hell of a time flying under the Agency’s radar living next to the ocean. They’d be spending all their time…”
She trailed off.
“All their time doing what?” asked Nate. “Trying to avoid storms exactly like the one moving ashore right now?”
Nathaniel arrived at the turn off for Alex’s street, slowed, then drove straight past it.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” asked Kenzie.
A late model black Challenger was parked out front of Alex’s house.
“It’s the Agency,” he said. “They’re here for Alex.”
* * *
“Twelve minutes, Alex.”
“Okay, see, that? That counting thing? That is so not helping.”
“How hard is it to just take a breath and relax? That’s all you gotta do,” said Declan. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Just breathe, dammit.”
Alex stared through the window and across the windswept promenade at the brick facade of the storefronts opposite the cafe.
She tried again to clear her thoughts.
It didn’t g
o so well. Less than a minute later, she was weighing the pros and cons of jumping to some barren wasteland, or maybe an unpopulated island in the middle of the Pacific.
Partly to relocate the storm to a place where no one would be harmed.
Partly to escape from Declan.
Trying to concentrate on anything with him hovering like that was proving next to impossible.
“There’s something about this ability that I just don’t get,” she said, finally. “If anything, all my attempts to weaken this storm are just making it worse.”
Bayside Brews had remained empty since their arrival, the storm effectively putting a halt to tourism on the boardwalk for the afternoon.
Before disappearing into the back room, the barista warned them that she, too, would be closing up shop in half an hour, unless the storm started to let up.
It wouldn’t make much difference for Alex either way. In another ten minutes, Declan would be dragging her back to the beach house—and then knocking her out.
He was still being disturbingly vague about exactly how he planned to do that.
“I need to find Aaron,” she said. “He’s the only one who can tell me how to control this… this… whatever it is.”
“Not gonna happen,” said Declan. “You can’t just go around telling everyone we meet about what you are and what you can do. We know nothing about this guy.”
Declan’s words said “no,” but there was a waver of uncertainty in his voice that suggested he was beginning to doubt his decision.
“Yeah, and we know nothing about his ability, either,” she said. “Knocking me out makes sense for the short term, but that’s not going to help me if this happens again. I need to be able to control it.”
Declan shook his head.
Swallowing a sigh, Alex slipped off the barstool.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Declan.
She arched an eyebrow. “The bathroom?”
“So you can jump and run off to look for Aaron? Not a chance.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Paranoid much? Decks, we’re sitting in the empty corner of an equally empty cafe. If I wanted to leave you and go find Aaron, then I would just leave you and go find Aaron. I wouldn’t have to sneak off to a bathroom to do it.”
