by Jena Leigh
Grabbing the strap of her bag, Alex put it over her shoulder and started toward the bathroom. She had just turned the corner at the back of the cafe when a bell jingled softly at the front entrance.
“Good afternoon, Mr. O’Connell,” said a cold voice.
Nearly tripping over herself in her surprise, Alex scrambled to flatten her back against the wall of the hallway so that she wouldn’t be observed by anyone at the cafe’s entrance.
“Director,” said Declan, his voice a little louder than was necessary, obviously hoping to catch Alex’s attention.
She cringed.
Subtle, Declan, she thought. Real subtle.
“You’re a long way from DC this afternoon,” he added. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this ambush?”
Alex snuck a quick glance at the entrance while Declan spoke.
Director Carter stood just inside the door to the cafe, dressed smartly in a white pantsuit that, when combined with the paleness of her glacial blue eyes and the glint of her silvery hair, gave her the appearance of a modern-day Snow Queen, straight out of a fairy tale.
Ice Queen is more like it, thought Alex.
Two men in black suits flanked the Director. Alex immediately recognized the man on the left by his bland smile, shaved head, and the black tattoos swirling out from the collar of his dress shirt. It was the same agent who had once stood guard over her friends and Aunt Cil while they were being held hostage at an Agency black site in New York.
The agent—Dimitri, a Vladivostok-born Variant capable of turning himself and others around him invisible—swung his head in her direction.
Alex ducked back out of sight.
Had Dimitri used his ability to help the Director eavesdrop on her conversation with Declan? Did they know Alex was here in the cafe?
“Where is your charge this afternoon, Mr. O’Connell?”
“How should I know?” he replied. “School’s out. I’m off the clock.”
The Director took a few steps closer, her heels clicking on the polished concrete floor. “Odd weather you’re having this afternoon, wouldn’t you agree?”
Declan snorted in amusement. “Climate change sure is a bitch,” he said. “Never know what to expect from Mother Nature these days. You might expect her to follow the rules, but more often than naught, she turns right around does the exact thing you were hoping she wouldn’t do.”
Alex furrowed a brow.
Was that…?
Did Declan just order her to go and find Aaron?
“Dimitri.” The Director’s voice was angry. “Check the back rooms. Find Miss Parker.”
“Yes, sir.”
Crap.
There was no time left to sit and puzzle over Declan’s veiled instructions.
Alex jumped.
— 19 —
“Alex slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel to the right, sending up a spray of wet sand as she sped off down the empty side road, back in the direction she’d just come from.
Wind breezed through the open windows as Alex squinted at the road ahead. The intermittent rains had ceased once more but, if anything, the storm over Bay View was only growing stronger as the afternoon went on.
Alex had finally given up on trying to tame it.
Instead, she’d switched the majority of her attention toward not accidentally wrecking the jeep as she crisscrossed town in her desperate search for Aaron.
Her borrowed telepathy allowed her to scan the nearby neighborhoods as she drove, but with so many distractions on the road, she was finding it difficult to split her focus.
Alex wished she’d taken the time to find Kenzie after jumping back to campus to get the jeep. She could have used Red’s help with the search.
For the third time in as many minutes, Alex found herself wondering how her friends were faring. Her cell phone was still on silent, buried somewhere in her messenger bag, abandoned to the floorboards of the jeep’s backseat.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
The rain was holding off, for now, but the increasingly gusty winds had already made a mess of the roads. And of course, there was also the distraction of the cloud-to-ground lightning striking within yards of the jeep every few minutes.
Which was always a fun thing to deal with while driving.
Palm fronds, broken branches and stray litter whipped wildly across the streets, creating an obstacle course that required Alex’s undivided attention. Something that, unfortunately, just wasn’t an option at this point.
After twenty minutes of driving, Alex still was no closer to finding her quarry. His mental signature was nowhere to be found.
She was starting to worry that he’d ditched class earlier in order to skip town.
Alex skidded to a halt at a four-way stop.
Left or right this time?
“What the hell?” she muttered to herself. “Let’s go left.”
Alex peeled out, whipping the jeep through the traffic, tires squealing—then immediately swerved to avoid a fallen branch taking up an entire lane.
Suddenly, the winds stilled.
Alex only had a moment to puzzle over the sudden quiet before the skies opened up, releasing a torrential downpour and a shower of pea sized hail that ricocheted loudly off the hood.
What would she do if she couldn’t locate Aaron?
A bolt of lightning struck a towering water oak tree ahead and to her right, splitting its trunk in two.
Alex gasped as the top half of the tree crashed down into the roadway just in front of her.
She brought the jeep skidding to a halt, inches from the massive trunk.
Cursing, Alex parked the jeep and fought to catch her breath. She’d probably lost a few years off her lifespan after that little scare.
Alex let her head fall back against the seat.
She really shouldn’t be driving and scanning at the same time. If she’d been any more focused on her search for Aaron, she might not have hit the brakes in time.
Alex closed her eyes.
… can’t breathe… never going to be able to control it if they… stay awake… run… I have to run…
Her eyes flew open.
Aaron!
“Gotcha,” she said, flashing a real smile for the first time that afternoon.
Alex latched onto the thought signature and dipped into one of its more recent memories—a string of images still at the forefront of the person’s thoughts.
He was staring into the bathroom mirror while blood dripped steadily from his nose, mixing with the tap water in the white porcelain sink below. Brilliant pink eddies raced each other toward the drain.
His head ached.
His concentration was slipping.
He was terrified.
He couldn’t control the storm any longer, but what would happen if he stopped trying? This storm now had the potential to make the previous hurricane look like a light shower in comparison.
A knock sounded at his front door and he staggered into the living room.
He pressed his palms against the white wood, smudging it red with the blood on his hands, and leaned forward to look through the peephole.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, pushing off the door and tottering backward toward his couch. “Jesus effing Christ…”
A rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins, clearing his thoughts and prepping his tired muscles to run.
The Devil was knocking at Aaron Gale’s door.
Something slammed against the center panel.
Again.
And again.
It was only a matter of time, now, before the splintering frame gave way.
So he ran.
Out the back door, onto the patio, through the yard, and deep into the forest behind his apartment.
He ran and he ran and he ran until, finally, the world went black.
Alex withdrew from Aaron’s mind faster than if she’d grabbed a live wire, disoriented and sporting a blinding new headache, grateful beyond
measure that she hadn’t attempted that little trick while driving.
This wasn’t the first time Alex glimpsed someone else’s memories.
It was, however, the first time she’d fallen down the rabbit hole so hard and so fast that she hadn’t been able to find her way back out.
Until Aaron’s world went black, Alex temporarily ceased to exist.
She was Aaron. She lived those moments exactly as he had.
Five minutes into his run, Aaron had passed out, only to wake alone and aching in the middle of the woods.
Currently, he was waging an internal debate over whether or not to give in to his overwhelming urge to collapse, or to stay awake and to keep running.
He was trying his damnedest to control the storm, even as he fled, and it was killing him.
But that wasn’t the only thing that prompted Alex to turn off the jeep, yank the keys from the ignition, and jump. It was also because of the face she’d seen through Aaron’s own eyes as he’d stared through that peephole.
The Devil was knocking at Aaron Gale’s door, and the Devil looked a hell of a lot like Director Carter.
* * *
Aaron ran.
And when he felt like he couldn’t run any farther, he staggered. He lurched. He crawled.
The world around him was a haze of greens and browns. Of rain and shadows in the darkened woods; half seen blurs that slipped past him as he fled.
He couldn’t stop.
Couldn’t allow himself to be caught.
“Do you see this woman?”
“I ain’t blind, Dad.”
His father popped him lightly upside the head. “Don’t get smart. I really want you to look, now.”
“Alright! Geez, sorry. I’m lookin’, I’m lookin’.”
His father laid the photo on the kitchen table next to Aaron’s bowl of cereal.
Aaron stared at the woman with the cold eyes and the severe expression. “Is this her?” he asked. “Is this that lady from the Agency who tried to—”
“Memorize that face, son,” his father said. “If you ever see her—if you ever see anyone from the Agency—you run, Aaron. You hear me? You run like hell, and you don’t look back.”
Aaron opened his eyes.
The blackouts were coming more frequently now. If things progressed in the same way they had during the first storm, he’d soon start going down for ten and twenty minutes at a time, and then he’d be out for a full day, at least.
He needed to get somewhere safe before that happened… but where?
Aaron was back on his feet and staggering blindly through the woods.
Had he been back home in the mountains, he would have known exactly where to go.
But he wasn’t in the mountains, he was in Bay View, and he’d never really gotten around to making contingency plans for his new home.
Had his father been alive, the old man would have whooped him but good for being so lazy.
Reckless, Aaron, he thought. Too damn reckless.
How had they found him? Was it because of the storm?
They weren’t even supposed to know Aaron existed. His father had taken every precaution known to man to keep his son from ending up in the Agency’s directory.
As far as they were concerned, Aaron was a ghost. And he probably would have stayed that way, had it not been for this goddamned storm.
Aaron’s surroundings tilted violently to the right, his shoulder slamming into a tree trunk as he struggled to shake off the onslaught of vertigo.
If he never saw that girl again, it would be too damn soon.
“Aaron! Aaron wait!”
He turned his head to locate the owner of the voice—and wound up sliding down the side of the tree instead, landing flat on his back in a pile of wet pine needles.
Heavy droplets of rain fell against his face as he struggled to roll onto his side.
“Aaron!” said the voice again, this time from somewhere above him.
He looked up and into a set of steel gray eyes.
Like those eyes, Aaron’s world was starting to turn gray around the edges.
He knew what would be coming next.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Alex, her breaths coming in quick gasps, as though she’d been running a long while in her efforts to catch up with him. “They’re not far behind me.”
“Then run,” he said, his voice strained. “Leave me… and run. I… I can’t anymore.”
She smiled down at him, then took his hand in hers.
“No reason you can’t come with me.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than Aaron surrendered to the most intense pressure he’d ever experienced.
Aaron blinked his eyes open and immediately fell into a violent coughing fit.
What the hell was that?
Alex had released his hand. Was she still nearby?
Curled on his side, Aaron struggled to take in his surroundings and to catch his breath.
Blinding sunlight, an azure sky and triple digit heat replaced the cold wind and rain.
Aaron sucked in one last, deep breath.
The pain in his head started to let up.
He was exhausted—utterly spent in every way imaginable—but somehow, he felt better. Like maybe the worst of it was over.
“Can you sit up?” asked a small voice from a few feet away.
He turned toward it.
Alex was here. She’d brought him here.
But how?
With a little help, Aaron pulled himself into a seated position.
A warm breeze sent sand skittering past them. Everywhere he looked, a barren landscape stretched as far as the eye could see.
They were in the desert.
They’d jumped to the desert.
“You’re a jumper,” he said, surprised. “I thought… I thought you were…”
“Like you?” she said, taking a seat beside him. “I’m that, too.”
He blinked at her, simultaneously amazed and confused. “You’re a weather manipulator and a jumper?”
“For now, anyway.”
Impossible. What were the odds of meeting two Variants with multiple abilities in the same year? Hell, even in the same lifetime? It was like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same damn day.
“Bullshit,” he said. Because it had to be. There was no way she could be telling the truth.
But why should she lie?
Aaron took a moment to look the girl over. She was drenched, the pretty clothes she’d been wearing at school that day now muddied and torn, presumably from her trek through the woods.
The expression on her face was—of all things—currently one of embarrassment.
Alex sighed. “Declan’s going to shoot me,” she said. “Okay. The short version? When I was a kid I was given a… a trial drug, of sorts. Something the Agency concocted years ago that was later lost in a fire. It changed me. Made it so that I temporarily absorb the ability of any Variant I touch.”
“Temporarily?” he repeated. “Any Variant?”
Alex nodded.
“So when I bumped into you in the hallway today, you—”
“I accidentally borrowed your weather ability. I’ll be stuck with it for another day or two.”
He looked up. The sky that had been so clear and blue upon their arrival was gradually filling with clouds. They hadn’t left the storm behind. Not really.
Alex was simply recreating it here, in the middle of the desert.
He stared at her quizzically.
One girl… one girl created that entire storm.
And she hadn’t even meant to do it!
“When we leave a storm we’ve created behind,” she began, “does it disappear? I mean, now that we’ve left Bay View, will it just fade away?”
Aaron frowned. “No. Unless I—” he paused. “Unless we intentionally bring down the intensity, the storm stays in place until it’s fully run its course.”
“Well
… shit.”
No kidding.
“So that storm is still raging back home?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I need your help, Aaron,” she said. “I need to learn how to control it.”
Aaron scowled. “Why should I help you, Alex?” he asked. “It’s your fault all this is even happening in the first place. It’s your fault the Agency found me! I’ll be running for the rest of my natural born life now, thanks to you.”
Alex’s face fell. “I’m really sorry, Aaron. I never meant for… for…” Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “How did they find you?”
“What?”
“The Agency,” she said. “I mean, I know the lengths your father went to in order to keep you off their radar. How did they figure out it was you that I absorbed this ability from?”
“How do you know about the things my father did to keep me hidden?”
There was that look of embarrassment again.
Her expression personified the word “whoops.”
“I, uh,” she stood up. “I can kind of read minds, too. At least, I can for a few more hours.”
“You’re in my head?” he threw up his arms, exasperated. “What else can you do, Alex? See the future?”
“Erm, no,” said Alex, then added in an undertone. “Not at the moment.”
“Because I’d love to see how this mess you’ve gotten me into turns out,” he finished.
She paced nervously in front of him for a few moments, then dropped back down.
“Aaron, I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for any of this to happen. And I feel horrible that I’ve blown your cover and exposed you to the Agency, but I do have some friends that might be able to help you.”
Aaron took a moment to process her words—and then he took a moment to consider all the risks that went along with trusting people he’d never even met.
He wasn’t without “friends” of his own.
All it would take was one phone call to Dr. Li to explain his current situation, and he could probably find all the help he needed.
Li wasn’t without the means to assist him. A guy like him should have enough loose change lying around to give Aaron the fresh start he needed, complete with a new identity and a new town to call home.
And if Li wanted to keep his pet weather manipulator from falling into the hands of the Agency, he’d probably be more than willing to make it happen.
