Willpower

by Anna Durand

  He picked up the needle and walked around the desk, halting a couple yards from her.

  Now or never.

  Without closing her eyes, she pictured Sean in her mind and stretched out tendrils of energy to search for him. She'd never tried this before, as far as she remembered. The tendrils snaked out in several directions, invisible to everyone but her — she hoped.

  JT said, "You better hold her, Batman."

  Grace ignored the clomping of Battaglia's boots as he came up beside her. She concentrated on the tendrils of energy, feeling for a hint of Sean's presence.

  Battaglia grasped her bound hands and yanked her toward him. His other arm he looped around her shoulders, squeezing her tight against him. She tried not to react, but even distracted as she was by her search for Sean, she couldn't help flinching at Battaglia's embrace. He jerked her hands up, stretching her arms out to expose her inner arm.

  JT rolled up her shirt sleeve. He tied the rubber band around her upper arm.

  Sean. There, she felt him. He wasn't far away, actually. David had said neither he nor Sean could manifest, or affect the physical world, without her assistance. Since she felt less than able to offer such help right now, she'd have to go with another plan. Instead of drawing him to her, she sent a message down the tendril that led to Sean — and she prayed whatever she was doing would work. Hard to feel confident when she didn't understand how her own powers worked.

  JT found a vein inside her elbow. He lowered the needle toward her skin.

  She gathered every particle of energy inside her, compacted them into a stream of thought, and beamed it straight into the brain of one man.

  "Wait," Waldron said.

  JT frowned like a child who'd just been told not to eat that delicious cake sitting right in front of him.

  Waldron cleared his throat and nodded toward David. "I, uh, think I should take this one outside. He's probably considering trying something while we're all distracted by your phlebotomy experiment."

  Waving the needle at Grace, JT said, "He's our insurance against her trying something."

  "I'll keep my weapon aimed at his head. But let me take him into the corridor. If she tries anything, I can still shoot him, but he won't be able to see what's happening in here or do anything to help her."

  JT's expression turned contemplative for a moment, then he shrugged and said, "Whatever. Do it your way, Waldo."

  Though she couldn't turn to look back at them, what with Battaglia holding her in a snugly threatening embrace, she heard two sets of footfalls move away toward the corridor. The door opened and shut behind Waldron and David. She felt David's absence, like the sunlight disappearing behind a cloud.

  Sean was almost here. Time to let Waldo go.

  She released him with a snap of power that surged back into her, melting into a faint sensation of static electricity. Neither JT nor Battaglia seemed to notice it.

  She needed more power. Way more power.

  David had explained that psychic abilities stemmed from a place, or maybe a state of mind, known as the crossroads. His explanation had left many questions unanswered. Still, if she could reach the crossroads again — as she'd done twice now, once accidentally and once on purpose — she might draw in enough power to really do something.

  JT ran a finger over her skin. "Where'd that stupid vein go?"

  Keeping her eyes open, hoping she looked scared rather than absent from her own mind, she let go of the invisible tether that bound her to the world around her. Her mind soared out of her body, up through a dark tunnel, and shot out into the vast blackness of open space. Star-like pinpoints of light winked into existence. They surrounded yet never touched her. She imagined throwing her arms open wide, welcoming in the power that burned everywhere in the void. It flowed into her, warm and soft and natural as a her own blood. It belonged to her, and she to it. Ribbons of light unfurled from the darkness between the stars to draw variegated lines connecting them.

  Networks of power.

  One line glowed brighter than the others. When she focused on it, the white strip pulsed green and then blue. At one end, the line broke free of the star anchoring it and writhed across empty space, stretching out into nothingness. A new light coursed down the line, turning it a shimmering gold.

  It wanted her to follow it. She wanted to obey. The need almost overwhelmed her as she sensed the raw and unfathomable power the line promised her.

  No. She couldn't go anywhere except back to the facility. Everything that mattered to her in the world depended on it.

  The golden line beckoned her.

  She turned away from it. The loss flooded through her like grief, but faded as quickly as it had come. The power she'd gathered from the crossroads burned inside her, a welcome fire to chase away the cold. She sank down, out of the void, falling faster and faster the closer she got to the real world. This time, though, she softened the reentry in a way she couldn't understand but knew how to accomplish. Rather than slamming back into herself, she settled in gently.

  "Ah," JT said, tapping her arm along the inside of her elbow. "There it is."

  He'd located the vein again. Adjusting his grip on the needle, he prepared to pierce her skin.

  "Experiment's over," she said.

  He scrunched his lips as he squinted up at her. "Not hardly."

  Without even tensing a muscle, she flung JT and Battaglia away from her simultaneously. The billionaire crashed into his desk and tumbled backward over it, end over end. Battaglia hit the wall so hard the door rattled in its frame. His eyes bulged, then fluttered shut as his body slid down the wall to crumple on the floor.

  A crashing sound erupted outside the door, muffled by the barrier.

  That wasn't her. Sean must've arrived at last.

  Grace whirled toward the doorway.

  "Hang on," a voice croaked from behind her.

  She hesitated. A scrabbling noise made her twist around to glance at the desk.

  JT clung to it like a castaway to a life preserver. His hair was tousled, his mouth open as he gasped for breaths. The redness of exertion, and perhaps pain, colored his pale cheeks.

  Why was she waiting? Not because he'd told her. No, surely not. An intuition encouraged her to hear him out. She could always hurl him into the wall in a minute or two.

  The notion struck her as exceedingly odd, yet true. At least for the moment. The power burning inside her had dimmed a teeny bit. How much longer she could retain it, she didn't know.

  JT pushed up onto his feet, dragged his chair closer, and plopped down onto it.

  Grace nabbed Battaglia's weapon from the floor near the unconscious guard and yanked her gun out of his waistband. Striding to the desk, she trained her gun on JT He looked terribly annoyed, but also very weak.

  "I need to show you something," he said, pointing at the laptop computer that sat on one corner of the desktop.

  She marched around the desk to stand beside his chair, careful to keep her gun aimed at his head. Nodding toward the computer, she said, "Go ahead."

  He dragged the laptop computer across his desk toward him. Flipping up the computer's lid, he tapped keys. A window opened on-screen. It looked like a video feed, though the room it showed was cloaked in shadows. He tapped more keys, and on the other end of the feed, lights powered on inside the room. He was remotely controlling the lights and who knew what else.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded, jamming the gun into his skull.

  He paused in his typing. "Turning on the lights so you can see. Don't worry, Gracie, I can't kill you with my computer." He threw her a sidelong glance. "Which doesn't mean I can't kill you at all."

  "Shut up and get on with your show and tell."

  He punched keys. The camera panned left and stopped, then zoomed in on a lump on the floor. Though a blanket covered the lump, a rounded shape st
uck out from under it.

  A human head. The lump was a person.

  Grace swallowed. Her jaw tightened.

  "Watch this," JT said, pointing at the screen.

  Above the blanket-covered human lump, a newspaper was taped to the wall. JT zoomed in on the paper, until she could read the date printed below the masthead. Today's date.

  As he zoomed out again, JT told her, "I have the guards change out the paper every day. I knew this time would come, and you wouldn't believe it without proof."

  "Believe what?"

  He waved his finger at the screen. "About time the old fart woke up."

  On the screen, the person swaddled in the blanket stirred, shoved the blanket off, and pushed up into a sitting position. The man scratched his bald head and yawned, deepening the wrinkles on his face.

  Oh God. It was her grandfather.

  "This is a trick," she hissed. "My grandfather died in a plane crash."

  JT smirked. "I made it look that way. But I needed to know what he knew, so I held onto Edward. No matter how much I hurt him, though, he wouldn't tell me anything. It was really annoying."

  She couldn't speak. If her grandfather was alive …

  "Oh," JT said, studying her expression, "I'm afraid your folks are dead, dead, dead. I lost my head when Chris-cross lied to me. She shouldn't have done that." He leaned back in the chair, folding his hands over his abdomen. "When I found out Edward was lying to me, that he wasn't in Washington lobbying for grants for the project but was plotting with a senator to shut me down … well, I reined in my anger and came up with a better plan for him."

  She thrust the gun in JT's face. "Where is he?"

  The scumbag smiled at her. Smiled.

  "Where?" she demanded.

  "I'm not telling." His lips worked as if he were trying not to giggle. "Until you give me what I want."

  "My blood."

  "Mm-hm."

  She bumped the gun's muzzle into his forehead. "No way."

  "Can't kill me, Gracie. Not if you want to find Gramps."

  She stared at him, anger boiling inside her. Killing him sounded like a great idea. Though she was no murderer, and had never wanted to kill anyone before, right now she wanted to pull the trigger more than she wanted to breathe.

  But she couldn't. Not yet.

  JT propped his left ankle atop his right knee. "I can tell from your cute little frustrated expression that you're finally catching on. You have no choice."

  He emphasized the last two words, as if she needed a reminder. She did not.

  "You can't find him without me," JT said.

  Acid churned in her stomach, and she felt a surge of queasy desperation. Until a realization flooded over, cold and sudden as a bucket of ice water dumped on her head. He was wrong. She didn't need him to tell her where to find her grandfather. She could do it alone — psychically.

  David had said a traveler needed a connection to the other person in order to track them. Everything he'd done, everything she'd felt from and for him, told her that she already had the best connection of all.

  Love.

  It linked her to David, and to her grandfather. She could find Edward McLean without any help from anyone, especially not Jackson Tennant.

  She took a step back, snaked her left arm under her right to reach the desktop, and slammed the computer's lid shut.

  The look of self-satisfaction on JT's face crumbled. His eyes widened as his mouth dropped open just enough to prove he understood that his advantage had snuffed out in the space of one second. He knew she'd figured out she didn't need him, though he still needed her. Almost in slow motion, his expression morphed through childish irritation and into seething anger. Lips squeezed into a pout, he huffed out a breath through his nose.

  "It won't work," he said, sounding less than convinced himself. "You're not strong enough to find him with your powers. Amnesia makes you weak. You don't remember how to do that stuff, which means you totally suck at it."

  His tone had shifted into childish territory again, lending him the air of a little boy holding his breath until he got his way. He wouldn't get his way this time.

  She stood there looking at him, her gun pointed at his head. A moment ago, she'd wanted to kill him. Now, she didn't know. Maybe she ought to kill him, because he sure as hell wouldn't give up stalking and tormenting her until he got his way. But shooting an unarmed man, it made her gut twist.

  The door burst open.

  Grace didn't jump. Didn't even flinch. Somehow, in the back of her mind, she'd known the door would be thrust inward — and she'd known who would walk through the opening.

  David stomped across the office to the desk. He paused for only a split second to glance at the unconscious guard slumped against the wall. Battaglia showed no signs of rousing anytime soon. Sean hovered outside the doorway in the corridor, clutching a handgun. Waldron lay sprawled on the floor at Sean's feet, in the direct path of the handgun's muzzle.

  Her guys had disabled Waldron and commandeered the man's gun. Sean must've received her message after all. She really hadn't been sure that had worked until right this moment.

  Across the desk from her, David glowered at JT. Wow, he looked as ready to kill the murderous twit as she had felt moments earlier.

  She tossed Battaglia's gun to him. David caught it in one hand.

  "Keep an eye on him," she said, nodding toward JT. "While I plan our road trip."

  He arched his eyebrows, but leveled the big gun at JT.

  She wondered why the creep hadn't tried to attack her. Given his pallid skin and sunken cheeks, he probably lacked the strength to challenge her physically. Crazy though he was, he must've known his current limitations. That's why he had Waldron and Battaglia, his devoted minions.

  Well, maybe not that devoted. She got the feeling Waldron disliked JT with an intensity that bordered on the murderous. Battaglia seemed to care mostly about his own wants, which revolved around violence mostly.

  A sickly mastermind. Minions with shaky allegiances. Perhaps the situation wasn't as hopeless as she'd thought.

  An alarm buzzed.

  The sound echoed down the corridor. Red lights along the floorboards began to pulse outside the office door. Inside the room, everything stayed the same. A recorded voice issued from speakers hidden somewhere in the room and the corridor.

  "Emergency," the female voice declared. "All personnel should make their way to an approved evacuation route in a calm and orderly fashion. Emergency — "

  The message repeated, then fell silent as the alarm continued to buzz in rhythm with the pulsing red lights.

  JT chuckled. "Guess you didn't know about the cameras. They're everywhere. Plus, Waldo would've called for backup."

  Eyes and ears everywhere, Sean had told her. And she'd completely forgotten. Why hadn't Sean reminded her?

  She glanced at the kid in the hallway, holding a gun on the much-bigger Waldron. Sean looked up at her, as if he'd sensed her attention on him. His cheeks flushed and he shrugged one shoulder.

  No, she couldn't be mad at him. He'd done what she asked, without question and without hesitation. If she remembered knowing him before, maybe she'd understand why he trusted her that much. Sean was too polite to toss her an I-told-you-so.

  Not that any of them could've done much about the security cameras.

  Grace squinted at JT. "What's with the emergency declaration? You that afraid of me?"

  "Not hardly. I don't need help anymore, but I don't want any witnesses either."

  She almost asked witnesses to what, but then decided the answer would only unnerve her. And she needed all the nerve she had.

  "Give up," JT said, spreading hands wide. "You can't win."

  She marched around the desk, heading straight for Sean.

  The boy looked up in surprise.
She reached out to pat his arm.

  "You warned me," she said, "and I screwed up. I need your help again."

  Sean bit his lip. "Okay."

  "You know this facility inside and out, right?" When Sean gave a weak nod, she whispered, "Good, I need your expertise right now. Want to help me save the world?"

  The boy's eyes bulged. He blinked and glanced down the corridor. As his eyes returned to normal, his face took on an expression she'd never seen on him before — at least so far as she recalled. He looked not quite smug, but definitely full of mischievous confidence.

  "Sure," he said.

  Grace tapped her gun against her thigh. She had an idea. And she was positive David would hate it.

  Oh well. He'd get over it.

  Stepping over Waldron, she sidled up close to Sean and ducked her head to whisper to him. "I need you to tell me how to do something."

  David refused to look back at the doorway. He wanted to see what Grace was doing, wanted to hear what she and Sean were talking about, but he knew if he averted his attention from JT for one second, the bastard would take advantage of the lapse.

  From somewhere out of sight, down an adjoining corridor, boots pounded out a cacophonous beat. Soon a battalion of guards would arrive.

  Whatever Grace was up to, it couldn't be good.

  Boots pounded closer.

  JT leaned his head back against the chair, eyes half closed. He looked far too comfortable with his situation.

  Turning sideways to the desk, keeping the gun aimed at JT, David called out to Grace, "Get in here, both of you."

  Grace pointed at Waldron. "What about him?"

  "Forget Waldron. Get in here and shut the door. Lock it manually if you can."

  At Grace's urging, Sean hustled into the office first. Grace followed close behind him and closed the solid metal door. She found the lock, engaging it with a faint click.

  "What now?" she asked, walking up beside David.

  "Not sure yet."

  Though her expression betrayed nothing, he sensed her unease. Not psychically, not really. He felt it in the way two people who knew each other intimately, in the emotional sense, could discern the other person's feelings. Unease was warranted. Once the guards arrived, they'd find a way through the locked door. Ram it down. Blast a hole through it. Anything.