The bomb was easy to disarm. No remote. All it required was a simple disruption of electricity into the timer. Nothing that Blue had not done a thousand times before during his stint in the navy. Nothing that should have been a real threat, given his skill with electronics.
Only this time, something still felt wrong.
He opened his mind wider, casting out his senses, searching hard for another trace, a whisper of dangerous currents, but there was too much around him—cell phones, televisions, cars, radios, power lines, even human bodies—and his mind drowned in the sensations. His bones rattled with them. Blue turned—
He felt the explosion inside his head before the blast wave hit him. His feet left the ground. He learned how to fly.
Later, Blue remembered screaming. He remembered the scent of smoke and blood and, somewhere near, a child wailing as if its heart were breaking, broken, gone. He remembered sirens, shouts, the sensation of needles in his arms. Another voice, a woman’s voice, soft and gentle.
He also remembered guilt.
But that was later. Blue slipped away and lost track of his life.
The world changed. Blue felt the difference while still unconscious, trapped inside his dreams—dreams that were unending, a plague upon his soul, which tossed and turned inside his body, fighting to crawl from his flesh. He did not want to stay in darkness. He did not want to see what his memories showed him again and again. But he was slow to wake. A sluggish process, a struggle into awareness.
He noticed his skin first, because he felt movement on it—gentle, a warm breeze maybe—and he heard the rustle of leaves, smelled flowers and ocean salt and vanilla bean. At first he thought those scents and sensations were part of another dream, but only because they were quiet, removed, deliciously low-tech. Nothing electric touched his mind. And that, in this day and age, was quite unnatural.
Blue opened his eyes. A white canvas ceiling stretched above him, shadows flickering on its pale surface. He stared, orienting himself, trying to remember—Why this? Where am I?—and he heard paper rustle.
His gaze slid left, and images passed through his brain—flapping blue tarps, rickety tables, sweaty men—as he looked at a long wooden table covered in thick white candles, backpacks overflowing with bottles of water and food. Again he heard a rustle, this time of cloth, and he looked past the table and flickering points of flame at … a woman in sunglasses, sharp, with—No. Not her. But blond hair, yes. Blond hair that framed a lovely round face, a face he recognized. Blue felt a laugh rise up his throat, though the only sound he made was a dry croak.
“Dela,” he said. Delilah Reese. Artist, weaponsmith, best friend, and one hell of a woman. What a sight for sore eyes. Her hair had grown out, and her clothing hung dark and loose. Bands of leather covered her forearms; steel glittered. Throwing knives.
She grabbed a bottle of water before approaching his bed and held it to his mouth. Blue was not quite certain he was not thirsty, but at that first touch of water to his lips he felt the cracks, tasted the blood, the dry thickness of his tongue and throat, and latched on like a baby, gulping down great painful swallows. Dela reached under his head, cradling him close and steady as he drank the entire bottle.
“You want more?” She shook the last drop into his mouth. Blue glanced past her and saw mosquito netting instead of walls; beyond, darkness.
“No.” He tried to wipe his face. His arm worked, barely. His muscles felt weak. He also had a short beard, which was a shock. “What happened to me? And why are you here?” Why, when Dela and her family were supposed to be in California on their mountain ranch, not in Indonesia …?
Unless he was not in Indonesia anymore.
Again, Blue pushed outward with his mind and caught the edge of nothing. No electrical devices, no wires, no batteries or engines. The silence made him uneasy. Made him feel as though he was caught in a void, like there was a muffler wrapped tight around his head. Under any other circumstances, great, relaxing—but this was not a good time for unexplained surprises.
Dela smiled sadly. “Do you remember anything, Blue?”
“I …” He stopped, heart sinking. “Yes. Yes, I remember.”
Remembered in a flood, a rush, one fat gag of sound and pain that made him close his eyes and fight down vomit. He held on, on and on, and after a moment felt the warmth of Dela’s body as she leaned close. She touched his hand.
“How many died in the blast?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened. “Three. All men.”
“There was a child….” Blue swallowed hard. “I remember a child screaming.”
“There were some injuries. Nothing fatal. This was not your fault.”
“Of course it was. What happened afterward?”
Dela hesitated. Blue peered at her knives. Danger, danger, and more dangerous, still—Dela did not go armed unless she thought there was a need for it.
She tossed the empty water bottle on the ground. “We’re not certain what happened after the explosion. Roland received a message saying you had been hurt, but no location, no contact information, nothing. He had Dean do a remote viewing. Found you in a run-down medical clinic by the quay. Only patient, no doctors to speak of.”
“You shouldn’t have come. Santoso might have had his people watching me.”
“And leave you dead or dying? Right, Blue.” Dela shook her head. “Hari and I were in India, so we got tagged. Roland filled us in on what and who you were hunting, so we came prepared for anything.”
“And your son?”
“Mahari is safe. He’s back home in California with my grandparents.”
Blue slowly released his breath. Yes, Dela and Hari’s small child would most definitely be safe with Nancy Dirk and William Steele. The elderly founders of the agency still had sharp teeth—and vast resources to match.
Dela reached for another bottle of water and lifted it up to Blue’s mouth. “I think we got there just in time. Whatever hit you was from a high-order explosive. The shock wave alone caused abdominal hemorrhaging, and that doesn’t include the crush injuries or the burns. You’ve been in a coma for almost two weeks.”
Blue choked on his water. “Coma?”
Dela grinned. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you.”
Blue pushed her hands away. A coma. Abdominal hemorrhaging. Crush injuries. Blue knew exactly what a high-order explosive could do. But here he was, still able to move. He could feel his entire body. Wiggle his toes. He ached, but not horribly. Not enough to believe that he had lingered near death, that he had suffered injuries that might debilitate him for years to come.
“How?” Blue asked. How am I still functioning?
Dela sighed. “Elena and Artur arrived not long after we did.”
Which was all she needed to say. If Elena Baxter-Loginov was involved, anything was possible. The former Wisconsin farmer might not be an agent of Dirk & Steele—not yet, anyway—but she was married to one of the agency’s most valued members, and was, hands down, the most powerful psychic healer Blue had ever encountered.
As in, start up your own revival, Mrs. Miracle Jones.
“Where is she? I need to thank her,” Blue said. Maybe get down on his knees and kiss her feet.
A faint flush touched Dela’s cheeks. “She and Artur already left.”
Blue frowned, but before he could ask where they had gone, and why Dela could no longer look him in the eyes, her hand fluttered over his chest, down his arm. “As soon as she stabilized your body, we got you out of Indonesia. Had to take a boat to do it because of the effect you were having on certain … electrical devices … but we managed the trip. We’re in Malaysia at the moment. My grandmother owns an estate here, though we’ve set up camp about a mile from the main house.”
“Good accident prevention,” he said, though it bothered him that extreme measures had been necessary. Years since his last exodus, a forced retreat into the mountains, far from the modern world. Alone for six months, just to rest his mind, and
since then other similar trips—brief sojourns in his remote Colorado cabin. Precautionary measures, enough to keep him from running too close to his breaking point.
You’ve pushed yourself too hard over the past several months. And now you’re paying for it.
Him and anyone else in his vicinity. He was not entirely certain he wanted to know how bad it had been. Blackouts? Communication failures? Car accidents and chaos and the international news?
“Dela,” he began, but she shook her head.
“The trouble was localized,” she said, though her voice was uneven, rough. “It took city officials only an afternoon to restore power to the affected areas.”
One afternoon. Lucky break.
“You weren’t followed here?” he asked.
“Not to our knowledge, but we doubled security. Hari and I have also been taking shifts.”
“Making sure no one finishes the job, huh? I’m flattered. You’d think, though, that if Santoso or his crew really wanted me dead, they would have killed me when I was alone and helpless.” Blue tried to sit up. “I need to get back there, Dela. I have to finish what I started.”
“Two weeks out of the game? You must be joking. Santoso won’t let you get close, Blue. I don’t know why his people didn’t finish the job the first time around, but they won’t make the same mistake twice. You step foot in Indonesia, and we’ll never find your body.”
“Dela, there are people dying because of that man. Every day, people die. And those who do are probably luckier than the ones he leaves alive. Santoso is a harvester, a flesh peddler. He strips people of their vital organs to sell on the black market, and then ditches the leftovers, breathing or not, in some gutter to rot. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.”
His own eyes, his own hands, in Egypt and Brazil, the Philippines and Vietnam—hands covered in blood, trying to hold together the wounds, shouting for help, shouting his throat raw, and no one for miles willing to step in because it was just business as usual, good money, and why rock the boat, why help when you could be the next target?—and he could not shake it. He could not stop hearing the stories, the crying, could not stop seeing the dead and dying—young men, young women, too many children—giving up their lives for the promise of cold, hard cash. And even that, a lie.
Blue could still feel the blood beneath his nails. “I can’t walk away, Dela. I won’t.”
She might have responded, but her gaze flicked right, and he followed her line of sight to the loose walls of mosquito netting. Beyond, in the darkness, he sensed movement. Felt on the edge of his mind a flicker of bioelectricity, a heart-charge. Dela’s hand crept to her knives. Blue lowered his shields even more, but sensed nothing mechanical.
The netting pushed inward. A giant stepped into the tent, seven feet of hard muscle and bone, wearing loose linen pants and nothing else. Blue almost expected to see the hilt of a sword behind that broad scarred shoulder, or some other arcane weapon close at hand. Not that the man needed them. It was easy to see the tiger in his body, the shape-shifter he had once been still humming beneath his skin. Magic; another marvel to add to the miracles in Blue’s life. Which, despite all its gifts and resources, was still not enough to stop one man from committing mass murder.
The giant paused on the threshold of the tent, ignoring everything but Dela, and Blue watched that hard golden gaze drink in her face and body as though she were a lifeline—the perfect embodiment of breath and heartbeat. Blue wished he could be anywhere but there, caught between them. It was too intimate, and he felt like a stranger to those kinds of emotions. Nothing so deep, not ever. No passion for just one.
Blue suffered, for one instant, a pang of jealousy that this man should have found that kind of connection with another human being, that at any time he could simply reach out and … there, love.
“Hari,” Blue said, forcing himself to speak. “Hari, it’s good to see you.”
Hari tore his gaze from Dela. His eyes were grave, and when he spoke, his voice rumbled low like thunder. “The same to you, my friend. It is good you are awake. Had you still been unconscious … “He hesitated.
Dela stood. “What is it? Have we been compromised?”
Hari shook his head. “I was just up at the house. Roland called. He had … news from Blue’s mother.”
“My mother?” The rush of fear that swept through Blue was as crippling as any bomb blast. Goddamn. If Santoso had kept him alive only to go after his mom …
He tried to sit up, but Dela pushed him down, made soothing noises. Hari crossed the small distance and knelt beside the cot, placing one massive hand on Blue’s shoulder.
“No,” he said quickly. “No, Blue. She is fine. Unharmed. She simply had news, that is all. Bad news.”
“Bad news,” Blue echoed dully, barely able to hear himself over the hammering in his chest. What kind of bad news could possibly compel his mother to call the office? Dear God. The woman had practically refused to pick up the phone during her last heart attack. She hated asking for help.
“Hari,” Dela said sternly, and Blue thought, Just spit it out, tell me now, don’t make it linger, don’t make it hurt worse than—
“Your father has died,” Hari said.
It took a moment to sink in. And when it did …
Blue broke out laughing.
CHAPTER TWO
Death was an inconvenience that Blue could have done without, and if it hadn’t been for the two highly moral individuals breathing down his neck, he probably would have pretended amnesia and simply ignored the news. After all, he was practically an invalid, newly awakened from a coma. Barely out of the bomb-blasted woods. He had an excuse. And for Christ’s sake, if his father was dead, there really wasn’t much that Blue could do about it now.
No such luck, though. Three days later Blue found himself bundled onto a commercial airliner, flying solo to San Francisco. He was the only person seated in the first-class cabin—not a surprise, knowing Dela and her credit card—but Blue did find it rather disconcerting to discover that the flight crew had been given instructions on how to handle him.
As in, with kid gloves. Which meant that for fourteen hours straight, Blue found himself under the carefully pressed and brightly smiling care of three women, who—though he objected strenuously—showered him with books, magazines, hot towels, a private DVD player, and one very large box of chocolate-chip cookies that resembled, in the vaguest way possible, large and bloated zoo animals. Blue felt like a stinking-rich twelve-year-old being sent on his first airplane ride. The only thing missing was a tour of the cockpit and a pair of those little plastic wings. If kids even got those anymore. Airlines were turning into cheap bastards.
More unfortunate than all of the unwanted attention, however, was the fact that the flight gave Blue a lot of time to think. As in, about all the different ways he was fucked till Sunday. Going home to his father’s funeral was just the icing on the cake. And so very convenient.
Convenient enough that he briefly considered the possibility of a conspiracy between his mother and Roland. Something—anything—to keep Blue from running away to continue his now fruitless hunt for Santoso and the core leaders of that organization. His mother, God bless her, was capable of such deception, and Roland … well, he was a master at games of manipulation, especially for good causes. Like keeping his people alive.
Because Dirk & Steele is a family, Blue thought, hearing the echo of Dela’s voice inside his head. All we have is each other.
Misfits, outcasts—even some pillars of the community—hiding in plain sight, brought together by an uncommon bond formed by nothing more than the odd genetic quirk and an unbending devotion to helping others. Living lives less ordinary—off the beaten path inside another world where telepaths and telekinetics and honest-to-God shape-shifters rubbed elbows with the mundane. Secret lives standing in line at the grocery store, at the gas station, sitting on the toilet in the stall next door, flying in an airplane—this freaking airplane—concentrating t
he entire time to prevent an accident, a short in the system, one tiny glitch that might send everyone down in a massive ball of flames.
Breathe, Blue told himself, gripping the arms of his seat. Breathe in, breathe out. Relax. Just … relax. Your mind knows what to do. This is nothing. Nothing.
Yeah, and there was nothing like thinking about nothing to make a person fixate utterly and completely on something.
He was so screwed.
And yet, halfway into the flight, with the lights turned down low, he finally began to relax. His shields felt strong, solid and tight, and though he could feel the hum of power surrounding him like a cocoon, it did not rattle his bones or buzz his tongue. Everything was quiet inside his head. Safe and very still.
And feeling very safe, and very still, he began to think again of Santoso Rahardjo. And of the woman who worked for him.
Blue’s gut ached, as did his ribs and right leg. His knee popped when he straightened it. His left hand was weak. The backs of his eyes felt odd, which coincided with the occasional bout of stars bursting in his vision. No complaints, though. He was still walking, talking, and if he had his way, he would be doing more than that in no time. Because even though Dela and Roland had assured him that someone was going to take over his investigation—that all his work ferreting out the hierarchy of body parts and money would not go to waste—Blue was not going to be satisfied until he was back in the game, danger or no.
You’re a control freak. A micromanager. Trust your friends. They know how to do their jobs.
And if they got hurt? Better him than them. Besides, it seemed to Blue that despite his miraculous survival, there was still a big, fat target painted on his head. And sooner or later, someone—probably that blonde—would come and finish the job.
Stop it, he told himself, digging into the box beside him for a cookie. Focus on now. On what you have to do when you get home.
Which was very simple. Heal up, take care of his mother—if she would let him—and attend a funeral where no one would know his name. Easy as pie.
Eye of Heaven Page 2
