The Astral Traveler's Daughter

by K. C. Archer

  “You don’t understand, Theodora. I need you alive. That’s why I risked coming here today.”

  She released a bark of laughter. She couldn’t help it. “Protecting me? Who the hell do you think was bent over that little IED you set up at Whitfield’s party? If that had gone off, my face would’ve been splattered over the walls.” That last part was a test. If she could catch him in a lie . . .

  Impatience entered his tone. “Did you study the Polson case? Have you gained control of your astral travel?” A pause as he finally caught up, then, “IED? What IED?”

  She took a deep breath, reined in her anger. How could he have not known about the IED? But there was only one thing she needed from Yates now. “Where’s Eli? Whitfield’s security team caught him on their surveillance camera earlier, so I know he’s here somewhere. What have you done with him?”

  “Theodora, listen to me. I need to know—”

  “Where’s Eli? And don’t tell me you didn’t plant that suggestion for him to interrupt the production of Xantal.”

  “Xantal?”

  She gave an impatient wave of her hand. “X-498. Xantal. They’re the same thing.” She threw Yates’s words back in his face. “ ‘Do whatever it takes to shut down Hyle Pharmaceuticals.’ I know you influenced Eli, so don’t bother to deny it. That’s what you said: whatever it takes. Including planting an IED. Isn’t that right?”

  Yates looked away from her as though distracted. No, not distracted. Deeply concerned. “What else, Theodora?”

  “What do you mean, what else? You—”

  “I need to know what else has been happening.”

  She opened her mouth to spew an ugly retort, intent on walking away. Before she could get the words out, she felt something like an ice cream brain freeze but a thousand times worse. Yates had neutralized her mental defenses with an ease that was terrifying. Grimacing, she doubled over, her hands at her temples.

  “I’m sorry to do it this way, Theodora, but I have to know.”

  Teddy’s eyes widened in dismay as the pressure increased and the memories replayed in her mind’s eye. Eli, mentally influenced at the party. His subsequent disappearance. The IED. Miles’s ergokinetic ability. The attempted theft of Xantal by Nilsson and Stanton.

  At last Yates released her from his psychic grip. She staggered backward. Nauseated. Dizzy. Furious.

  Yates looked at her. “We may be too late after all.”

  Teddy couldn’t begin to guess what he meant. She couldn’t even figure out whose side he was on. She only knew she couldn’t let him get away. She lunged for him. The crowd swarmed closer, converging on them. Teddy was jostled, pushed, and shoved, carried away from Yates by a stream of shouting, chanting people.

  A HEAT protester whipped off her own shirt and poured what looked like blood from a water jug all over her head. Then she swung her long hair around and splattered the crowd with the red substance. Teddy felt some of it go in her mouth. A sweet, syrupy flavor. The crowd erupted in cheers, raising their signs and their fists.

  Teddy struggled to break free of the pulsing throb of bodies. When she finally burst from the crowd, Yates was gone.

  She caught her breath. She scanned the vicinity for a clue to the direction he’d taken. Not north, not south. Her gaze skidded to a stop at the eastern side of the building. Whitfield’s limo. The passenger door was hanging open.

  She was in a full sprint by the time she reached the car.

  Empty.

  No sign of Miles or the driver. As she took a step back, the glint from an object resting in the gutter caught her eye. Her heart drumming wildly in her throat, she reached down to pick it up.

  Miles’s glasses. The left lens cracked, the wire frames bent.

  Teddy ran to the side entrance and pounded on it. A security guard buzzed her into the service entrance foyer. He took one look at her and reached for his gun.

  “Wait. She’s with us!” The guard holstered his gun as Dara reached out to touch Teddy’s cheek. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding.”

  “Corn syrup and red food coloring,” Teddy gasped. “Is Miles here?”

  “Miles? I thought he was with you. In the car.”

  Teddy looked at the security guard. “Did anyone come through this door?”

  “Just Mr. Whitfield’s driver. He needed to use the bathroom. Dude looked all spaced out. I thought he was going to be sick.”

  Spaced out. Teddy knew what that meant. He’d been mentally influenced into leaving the vehicle. It was Yates, it had to be. Meaning Miles had been left alone, completely unprotected. With four syringes of his medication tucked away in his canvas messenger bag.

  She turned to Dara. “Miles is gone. And so is the Xantal.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  LEAVING DARA ON DUTY TO accompany Whitfield to his home in Tiburon, Teddy caught the first ferry back to campus. The nearly empty vessel slugged its way through the bay’s choppy currents, battling unusually rough water and fog so dense her hand disappeared when she held it in front of her. She stood at the bow, welcoming the cool sting of salt water and the rough jostling of the boat.

  Miles was gone. It had been her job to protect him. If Yates hadn’t distracted her, he’d be safe right now. Home with his grandfather in Tiburon, getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Instead, he was gone. No, worse than that. Gone implied that he’d taken off for a little while but would soon return.

  Although Hollis Whitfield had said it wasn’t unusual for Miles to take off in a sulk when he was irritated, Teddy’s professional instinct told her that wasn’t the case now. Whoever had taken Miles had also succeeded in grabbing the Xantal. Which meant it was very likely that Miles was in danger. She absently twisted his glasses in her hands, mentally willing the ferry to move faster. She had to talk to Clint. To Wessner.

  When the ferry bumped up against the pier, Teddy leaped onto the dock without waiting for the crew to lower the gangplank. She raced up the path that led to campus, checked through the security gates, then barreled straight toward the faculty wing.

  Teddy had envisioned her role as that of town crier. Raising the alarm and rousing the troops. Spinning everyone within earshot into immediate and urgent action. But heavy silence echoed through the halls. Clint didn’t answer her urgent rapping at his office door. Neither did Wessner.

  Her pulse began to thrum heavily in her ears. Christmas break.

  No classes, no students, no instructors. Surely someone had been left behind to keep an eye on things. Fighting a rising sense of panic, she turned and headed toward the faculty living quarters. She pounded on Clint’s residence door, but it was the door across the hall that flew open.

  “Teddy?”

  She spun around. Nick Stavros. He studied her with a puzzled frown. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d been assigned Whitfield’s detail.”

  Teddy’s relief at having found someone to talk to was so acute that her knees nearly buckled. Her words tumbled out in a long, almost incoherent stream. “Nick, I screwed up. I was supposed to be protecting Miles, but there were so many protesters, and when I saw Yates in the crowd—”

  “Whoa.” He held up his palms. “Hold on.” He widened the door to his suite, beckoning her inside with a tilt of his head. “Come in.”

  Teddy nodded and brushed past him. But the moment she stepped inside, she abruptly stopped. Everything looked exactly as it had a year ago, when she had invented a pretense to sneak into his room to secretly copy his laptop files. The memory struck her with such mortifying clarity—how she’d come on to Nick, turned their physical attraction into something she could manipulate to achieve her own ends—that for a moment her sense of shame was so great, it drove all thoughts of Miles from her mind.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  Teddy nodded, recalling what had brought her there in the first place. She had bigger issues to deal with at the moment. She scanned the room, considering her options. The sofa, across which was spread a newspaper he must have be
en reading when she’d interrupted him, or a club chair set at a right angle to the sofa. She lowered herself into the chair and watched as Nick moved to the suite’s tiny kitchen, removed a glass from a cabinet, and filled it with tap water.

  “Here.” He passed her the glass. She hadn’t realized she was thirsty, but to her surprise, she downed it in one long gulp. He took the empty glass, set it on the coffee table, then seated himself on the sofa. “All right. Give me a full report. What happened?”

  A full report.

  Exactly the words Teddy needed to hear. A not so subtle reminder that she was a recruit and was expected to act like it. She collected her thoughts and walked him through the day’s events.

  “Did Yates directly threaten Miles in any way?” Nick asked when she’d finished.

  “Well, no, not specifically.” She replayed their conversation in her mind. “But Nick, it was Yates. You can’t imagine his presence there was just a coincidence.”

  Nick leaned back and stretched one arm over the back of the sofa. Looked thoughtful. “I don’t know what his presence meant, but we shouldn’t assume he had anything to do with Miles’s disappearance.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Teddy, think. If Yates did want to grab Miles, why would he make his presence known to you?”

  “He wanted to distract me. Get me to leave Miles unprotected. An obvious ploy, but I fell for it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not saying there’s not a connection to Miles’s disappearance. But let’s not assume the worst. Miles might have wandered away on his own. You said he was agitated, upset at his grandfather. Maybe he saw the protesters, a group he’d been sympathetic to in the past, and just wanted to get away.”

  “And his glasses?”

  “Knocked off as he jostled through the crowd.” Nick shook his head. “You heard no gunshot or cry for help. Saw no signs of a struggle or foul play. So we call it a disappearance, think about where he might have gone, and take it from there.”

  “The Xantal?”

  “We should assume Miles has it with him.”

  “But—”

  “Less than twenty-four hours ago, that woman, Nilsson, made a grab for the Xantal. She showed no interest at all in harming Miles. What would have happened to change that?”

  Teddy stood abruptly, moved to the window, and looked down. The view was of the courtyard, though it was too dark and foggy to see much of it. All she could make out was the dim glow of solar accent lights illuminating the rocky footpaths below. Even though she couldn’t see the courtyard, she knew it was there. Just as she couldn’t prove Miles was in danger, but she felt it deep inside.

  Turning, she said, “What about Eli? That has to be connected, doesn’t it? Eli disappears, shows up at this HEAT protest, and now Miles is gone?”

  He frowned. “They don’t have to be connected, but they could be. I’ll concede that.”

  “I would feel a hell of a lot better if I knew where Miles was right now.”

  “I would too.”

  He drew the knuckle of his index finger along his bottom lip, a habit she’d forgotten he had, but one that sent her spiraling back a year in time as effectively as any Pilgrim’s Tunnel. She’d once found that particular gesture so sexy. But now, watching him, she felt nothing at all. She hadn’t necessarily wanted a relationship with Nick—she could see now how unsuited they were for each other—but she had sabotaged any chance they might have had with an ease that shocked her. Just the way she had tried to push Pyro away, nearly sabotaging any chance they might have had. Fortunately, she hadn’t succeeded. She suddenly missed him with an intensity that surprised her.

  Although her thoughts had temporarily wandered, Nick’s stayed straight on track. “You said Dara stayed with Hollis Whitfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’ll get Dara on the phone, tell her to have Hollis give her a list of Miles’s friends, places he liked to hang out. We’ll start looking there. While she pulls that together, I’ll contact Clint and Wessner, bring them up to speed, check out Clint’s most recent intel on Yates.”

  Teddy nodded. It sounded like a good plan. “What should I do?”

  “Assuming we don’t find Miles within the next couple of hours, what’s the first thing Clint and Wessner will want to see once they’re back on campus?”

  Teddy sighed. “A written report.”

  “Exactly. So get on it.”

  Back in her room, Teddy could think of nothing she wanted to do less than paperwork. But at least it kept her busy. She toyed with Miles’s glasses as she waited for the knock on her door, for Nick to tell her that Miles had been found unharmed.

  It didn’t come.

  A little after two in the morning, she undressed and climbed beneath the covers, but sleep eluded her. No matter how desperately she tried to redirect her thoughts, they kept drifting back to Miles. Where was he? Was he frightened, injured? She’d let him down in so many ways, and not just professionally. She focused on the shadows flitting across the ceiling until she finally drifted into a light, troubled sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  TEDDY WOKE ON CHRISTMAS MORNING to find a note slipped beneath her door. A slim white sheet with Clint’s name printed on the top, two words scribbled beneath it: My office.

  Despite the cursory nature of the summons, relief bloomed within her. Clint was back. She threw on her clothes, dragged her fingers through her hair, and shot out the door, heading straight to the administrative wing. Her mind raced ahead of her steps. Nick must have reached Clint last night and explained the situation. Now Clint was here, ready to help find Miles. Maybe he already had. Maybe Miles was safe, having spent the night with a friend, and Clint had returned to campus to reprimand Teddy for her failure to keep Miles under surveillance. Which would be fine. She’d accept whatever punishment Clint doled out as long as Miles was safe.

  She reached his office, knocked, and threw open the door. One look at Clint promptly disabused her of any hope that Miles had been found. Clint’s jaw was set, his posture stiff. Dara was already there, her expression every bit as grim as Clint’s. To their left stood Pyro and Jillian. Teddy fought an instinct to launch herself into Pyro’s arms for a reassuring hug.

  Clint gestured her into a chair. “Dara’s already given me her version of events,” he said. “Now I want yours. Take it from the top and fill me in.”

  Teddy held nothing back, relating everything from Miles’s mood swings to the fact that he’d been prescribed Xantal. She concluded with her suspicion that Yates had been involved in Miles’s disappearance. Intellectually, she understood Nick’s arguments to the contrary, but on a gut level, she wasn’t buying it. They continued to retrace the events leading up to Miles’s disappearance until a knock on the door interrupted them.

  Agent Wessner stuck her head inside. “There’s been a development.”

  Teddy tensed. Wessner’s voice was as carefully neutral as her expression, but that in itself was a giveaway. Wessner wouldn’t go out of her way to hide good news. And she certainly wouldn’t be so scrupulous about avoiding Teddy’s gaze. Which meant whatever she had to share was at the very least troubling. And at worst, well . . .

  “If you will all follow me to the conference room.” Wessner turned without another word, leaving them to follow.

  Teddy rose from her chair, her shaky legs barely supporting her. She didn’t dare meet the eyes of her friends—she couldn’t face the blame she might find there. Teddy had been the one assigned to protect Miles. If something had happened to him because she’d screwed up, she’d carry that with her the rest of her life.

  As they stepped into the conference room, Teddy was surprised to see four people already seated at a large mahogany table: Hollis Whitfield, Nick Stavros, Kate Atkins, and General Maddux. Teddy’s gaze went to Hollis Whitfield. He appeared to have aged decades in the hours since she’d seen him last. The patrician self-a
ssurance was gone. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin ashen.

  Wessner waited for the newcomers to be seated, then moved to the head of the table. On the wall behind her was a flat-screen television. She lifted a slim black remote and announced, “Approximately thirty minutes ago, we received a video from a group identifying themselves as members of HEAT.” She pointed the remote at the television, then hesitated and looked at Whitfield. “Hollis,” she said, her voice softening, “you’ve already seen this. If you’d rather wait outside while we—”

  “No.” Whitfield fixed his eyes on the screen. “Play it.”

  Wessner opened her mouth as if to object, then seemed to change her mind. She gave a curt nod and pushed a button. Nothing but static fuzz until the screen slowly went dark, reduced to a glowing pinprick of light. A digital blink and a single image swam into focus.

  Miles. Unconscious and strapped to a metal chair. His head against his chest. Bleeding from the temple and chin. His lower lip split, his left eye swollen and bruised.

  Teddy heard a soft cry of distress, and it took her a full second to realize the sound had slipped through her own lips. She clamped her jaw and stared at the screen, refusing to allow herself even the momentary relief of looking away. She was responsible for this. She had to see it.

  Initially, the camera’s focus had been tight on Miles. Now the view broadened slightly as the angle widened to reveal a vast, dimly lit space. Cement floor and metal walls. Lofty ceilings and industrial lighting, scraps of sheet metal haphazardly piled in one corner. Teddy had the general impression of a warehouse. No windows, or windows that had been partially blacked out. Either way, impossible to tell whether the video had been shot at night or during the day.