Rose smiled. “I like baseball too.”
With that Kayci stood. “I like to shoot things. And I think we’re ready to draw him out.”
Rose nodded. “This is going to be dangerous.”
Jordan said, “It always is.”
Chapter 23
There was more than one thing about this that Kayci didn’t feel good about. It wasn’t the first time she’d let herself be the bait on a hook. As she sat there broadcasting her locations and intentions it started to feel like more of a mistake with each passing moment. The fact was, that the little trio she’d assembled here was likely inadequate to take on whoever might be hoarding the nugget.
Jordan had proved to be quite handy with a pistol, and she trusted him to have her back. But Rose admitted she didn’t handle a gun often, and Kayci didn’t know her enough to trust her fully. Still, she was a spy and had to have qualified at some point. And if Colleen trusted her that had to be enough. Their plan to lure out the meat puppet, to lead them to the frequency of the user had to be timed perfectly. It was a tricky little game.
The cloudy sky and drawing dusk settled a lull over a usually bustling 12th Avenue. The bus stop enclosure closed in on her. Being trapped inside the acrylic walls that were trapped by the surrounding buildings made her feel vulnerable. The pain from the bullet that ripped through her shoulder not very long ago was still fresh in her mind and mild in her body. But it was enough of a reminder how lucky she was up in Syracuse that morning.
If there was a sniper in one of these buildings, she hadn’t felt them yet. Using that special link to Jordan was tough right now. He and Rose sat nestled inside the steel walls of the rooftop maintenance room about twenty-six stories above her head. Just as she suspected, the construct of that room blocked almost all the energy. But that was the idea. If she could lure out the attacker, whoever it was, by making them think she was alone, it would allow Jordan and Rose to get his frequency and location. They’d been practicing all day, the only problem was that they would only have a few precious seconds before whoever it was felt it and cut the transmission.
She noticed a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of cans and bottles. Something about him seemed odd. Standing up to get a closer look, she never took her eyes off his hands. They twitched. One look up at his face revealed it twitched too, struggling to maintain composure.
Kayci kept her hand on the butt of her pistol, ready to draw. The closer she got, the more it felt like his frequency was too strong and erratic. He was the puppet. She knew it. She slid her thumb over the send button on her phone to alert Jordan to step outside and strike when something hit her in the back of the head and sent her reeling forward into a brick wall. She spun off and faced her attacker, a man she didn’t know. Reaching for her pistol she was hit again from behind again. She spun again to see the homeless man flip off his hobo trench coat to reveal military style fatigues.
She tried again to draw her weapon but it was too late. Both attackers were on her. She snapped a kick out at the first man, caught him in the midsection and sent him bending forward. When she pulled back her arm for a right-hook the other man grabbed it, spun her and punched her in the face.
The punch sent her head spinning into oblivion, the other man joined back into the fray and in no time, she was hit again, and again. She felt sick as the ground rushed up at her and the world turned black.
* * *
Jordan was starting to get a little worried that they hadn’t yet heard from Kayci. It was two minutes beyond their deadline and she was never late. But this room was blocking everything from coming in and his phone hadn’t received any texts. He got up and headed towards the door to open the path.
“No,” Rose urged him. “Give her more time.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“You can’t expose us. If the hijacker has a puppet around he’ll know where we are.”
“So what? We’ve exposed Kayci long enough. He has to know where she is by now.”
Rose stood to meet him, stepping between him and the door. Her large dark eyes were very convincing. “Rose, I’m just going to open the door, check on her and then come back in.”
“But if whoever has that nugget is watching, they’ll be waiting for that moment, they’ll see you pop up on the grid.”
Jordan shook his head. “No, not if I use the chat box.”
“You don’t now that.”
“You can’t see it. Nathan couldn’t see it. Not even the great Cayden Taylor could see it.”
“But they were people, this is a machine, it has no emotional flux, it can’t be fooled.”
“Yeah but—”
“No, Jordan, you don’t understand how this thing works.”
“Neither do you. This is uncharted territory for both of us, so don’t stand there and get all superior on me because you’re as blind as I am.”
She nodded solemnly. “You’re right, but I do understand how the thing reads, and it reads in a flat open wave. People are selective and this thing just scans for frequencies and alerts the user to direct his or her energy onto a specific target. If he programmed your frequency in it’s going to alert him right away.”
“Wait, I thought this was just some sort of amplifier.” Jordan glared at her, narrowed his eyes. “You know something.”
Rose turned her glance to the floor. “Jordan—”
“Don’t you Jordan—me. You know something.”
She shook her head. “Nothing that can help us.”
Jordan took a step towards her and got in her face. “Rose, listen to me, Kayci means the world to me, so help me God if something happens to her and I find out you could have stopped it.”
Rose let out a long audible sigh. “Jordan—”
“No, you know what? Save it.” He turned away and ripped open the heavy steel door, allowing a burst of air to rush into the room and with it a flood of the frequencies that skittered around him.
Jordan’s most recent awakening was really starting to take hold. He quickly found Kayci. But what he saw was not what he expected. His suspicions were right, something had happened to her. Back through the door into the steel room, “She’s gone.” He took out his phone and called Kayci.
Rose’s eyes grew big. “What? Are you sure?” She pushed past Jordan through the door onto the rooftop. Lifting her eyes to the gray sky, she sighed. “This isn’t right, he can’t have...”
Jordan watched her face and just knew she wasn’t telling him everything. “Rose, I’m going to ask you to tell me what I need to know one more time. And I don’t care if you’re one of the most powerful psychics on the planet. It’s not going to help you unless you can fly because I will toss your bony ass right off this building.”
She leaned her back against the wall and brushed her long dark hair behind her ears. She looked at him and then lowered her gaze. “I was previously consulted on Project Pyrite, during its effectiveness determination trials to test certain parameters.”
“And you didn’t tell Kayci this why?”
“Because, it wouldn’t have mattered, and…well…”
Jordan nodded. “Because of your daughter?”
“If I’d told Kayci, everything I knew, I was afraid she might not help me find my little girl.”
“Why, what does that have to do with anything?”
Rose shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just worried she’d get the wrong impression about my motives. And we’re taught in the spy business to always have leverage, you never tell anyone everything because you never know when you’re going to need something later. You need to have something in your back pocket, even in an alliance. It’s just how we operate and I’m sure Kayci knows it. I’m sure she does it too. I’m sure there are things she’s kept even from you.”
Jordan ignored that last part for now. He didn’t care if Kayci was hiding things from him, so be it. But he still felt like Rose was hiding something. If she wasn’t like him he’d read into her brain, but it didn’
t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was finding Kayci, that nugget, and wrecking whoever was behind this mess.
Chapter 24
Kayci opened her eyes and hoped for some light, but didn’t get any right away. As her eyes adjusted, she began to see a little bit of something become apparent. She stood up from the chair and started to walk around the tiny cell. The soreness in her left arm from the injection they gave her only made her angry. Whatever the hell they gave her left her with a nice headache. The fact they didn’t kill her confirmed what she suspected. The hijacker knew who she was and was afraid to kill her.
As she took a step something touched her head, she jerked back before realizing it was a hanging light switch. A soft tug and the thin rope dropped into her hand uselessly.
After a thorough scour of the room, she saw another switch option on the wall. Flipping it on caused a soft yellow light on a drop-fixture to simmer alight. It was an ancient incandescent bulb—the likes of which she had not seen outside of old black-and-white movies. But the light was soft, steady and welcome.
To the left of the switch spanned a steel, riveted panel door, with an open-air barred window at a height of about six feet. She moved to face the door, twisted the L-shaped handle up and down but it didn’t move. Standing on her toes, she could barely see out the window. Her view was nothing but the ceiling of what she assumed to be a hallway.
Taking in the details around her made it apparent this was the holding cell of an old prison, psychiatric facility, or something far worse. The musty smell indicated she was underground, possibly in a basement or somewhere near water. The most alarming thing was that not a single frequency crept into her mind and that isolation was something she’d never before experienced.
For as long as she cared to remember there had always been the feeling of people around, and over time that comfort gave her stability. This scary isolation was something more frightening than anything she’d ever known. She tried to reach out with her mind to Jordan but couldn’t even tell if he was getting it. Whatever these walls were made of they blocked the channels of energy efficiently.
With an angry huff, she brushed her hair back and sat in the old leather chair. She’d wanted some time alone with her thoughts, but this is not what she had in mind. Going back to that moment on the street, she was pissed at herself for not seeing there were two men. The homeless guy was a decoy. She had her attention on him while the other one got the drop.
Whoever was behind this was way more savvy and advanced than she’d given them credit for. Those kinds of tactics were not what she suspected. She didn’t think whoever was controlling the nugget would have the ability to control two subjects at once, that was something impossible to her knowledge so she can’t really fault herself for not suspecting there was another puppet. The only explanation was that whoever was behind this, had to have a partner. They had to. There was no other way to explain it. No one was that good to control two subjects. No one.
The pounding on the cell door startled her. Springing to her feet, she went over and stood under the open window. “Hello?”
“Hello Kayci.” A man replied.
“Who are you?”
“No one you really know. And it’s of no concern anyway.”
“What do you want with me?”
“Frankly I don’t want anything with you. But you’ve been interfering with my plans and I can’t have that.”
“What’s your name?” She asked. “You know mine, it’s only fair.”
“My name is not important.”
“What is important?”
“Having fun, carrying out my plans—and I can’t do that with you and your boyfriend running all amok, causing me all sorts of problems.”
Kayci stretched, peered out the window and wished she could see him but there was no chance unless he was about six-foot-five, which he wasn’t. “What are you plans?”
He laughed. “Why would I tell you?”
“Why not? You obviously have no intention of letting me out of here alive, and this is clearly some sort of steel-walled room that blocks my special abilities. But you know all that already, don’t you?”
“I suppose you’re right. But I’m still not going to tell you my plans even if you beg me.”
“I don’t beg. Why haven’t you just killed me?”
“Oh I will, but first I need to catch another fish.”
“Jordan?”
“I can’t have that freak out there trying to interfere with me.”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve got extensive plans.” Kayci probed.
“That’s right.”
“What were they again?” He was close enough for her to read his frequency through the small window but he was something of a tricky one. He was not powerful but he clearly had some ability and could be evasive. If she had to guess that was his only skill. “You’re a good liar aren’t you?”
“Oh, aren’t you just the tricky little minx. You didn’t think I’d fall for that old trick did you?”
“It was worth a shot.”
“Ha! Sorry babe I’m not that dumb. I may not be in your classification but I can hold my own against most people.” He rapped on the door. “But as long as you’re in here, you won’t be any trouble.”
“What is this place?” Kayci touched the walls and fell a slight vibration, and then she knew, there was a small electrical current running through the walls, probably at the perfect frequency to shut her down. This had to be the nugget at work.
“It’s a nice place, huh?”
“Not so far.”
“It’s just a little home away from home. It’s nothing special but it has the unique architecture for my purposes.”
“Who are you working for?”
He laughed. “I don’t work for anyone sister, I work for me. I make all the calls because I’m so damn good.”
“Wow, quite the ego you have there.”
“As I should. And it’s not ego it’s confidence, earned and warranted.”
“So you’re a hotshot?”
“I’m the one you’ve heard about.”
Kayci knew there was some message in this but she just couldn’t see it. And the tiny window was not allowing any real scope of frequency. “Why would I have heard about you? Who’re you working with?”
“Nice try again. No, sorry you don’t get to know anything.”
“You didn’t answer no, which means you do have a partner.”
“Sorry babe. Keep fishing but there’s no bait on that hook.” His footsteps shucked down the hallway and out of earshot.
She put her hands back on the wall to feel the current. If there was some way to cut the power to the circuit, she could get a message out to Jordan. But a quick examination of the walls didn’t provide any way to do anything. Even the plate on the light switch was riveted to the wall. Though even if she could get the plate off, cutting that circuit would likely provide no relief. Whoever this man was he was going to be smart enough to keep those circuits separate.
It was possible for her to unlock the frequency in the walls and work right through it, but it would not be easy, it would take some time. And if this guy was smart enough he’d have the modulation changing, which would cycle and alter the frequency every so often just enough to work but make it hard to crack.
The room was very draining, as if the current running through the walls was sucking her life force away. She knew that wasn’t the case but the isolation was really starting to take a toll. Even when lonely, a truly gifted practitioner of energy is never alone. There is energy all around us at all times and we can pick and choose which type we’d like to be part of.
When they’d come up with this plan, it didn’t quite look like this. Of course, none of these plans ever worked out the way you wanted, but this was about the last thing she expected. She’d underestimated her enemy again.
Chapter 25
Jordan was as frustrated as he’d ever been. It was no secret he and Kayc
i worked best as a team, but this was the first time since this all started that he’d felt like he couldn’t reach her or couldn’t feel her out there. She was completely off the grid. This was new territory and he had no idea how to handle it. He wasn’t even feeling the same in his head. There were odd thoughts that the last few weeks of chaos had been a complete dream and Kayci never even existed. It was literally like his other half was missing and it hurt.
He glanced at Rose as she stood, leaning over the water with her elbows on the railing. The slight sway of her hips was oddly hypnotic. Something about her bothered him. He didn’t want to trust her completely. But part of him wanted to kiss her and see what happened. Chances are nothing was going to happen, but it felt weird. He was attracted to her in a way that he could not explain. The fact that she could be feeding his brain made him leery and skeptical that she was playing him for a fool.
After all, she’d already lied to them. She knew more than she’d told Kayci and that very fact may have changed Kayci’s plan. A part of him wondered just how much more she was withholding.
He looked over at her again as she overlooked the murky Hudson River. “You should have told us what you knew.”
She slid her dark eyes to meet his. “I know. But—”
“No excuses.”
Rose stepped away from the railing and crossed the weathered concrete sidewalk to face him. “It’s going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that. Neither one of us can contact her. For all you know she’s dead.”
“No, she’s not dead.”
“You don’t know.”
“I do know, Jordan. Just because I can’t communicate doesn’t mean I can sense her life force.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes. “You can really tell that?”
“Yes, I can. One of my talents is knowing that truth. I can sense, down to a certain level that the soul is still within the chamber of the body.”
“You know a lot about that aspect of this, don’t you?”
Rose nodded. “I do. Kayci, she’s great at what she does. But she’s clinical, hard edged and pragmatic. It makes her a great spy, a genius at mind war and manipulation. And she’s taught you the finer points of that. But what we do, is not just about battle and upping the opponent. I’m more spiritual and from that spiritual side, comes other gifts that those like Kayci don’t have. You and I are different. We’re softer of hand.”
Soul Frequency (Frequency Series Book 2) Page 13
