“Oh, whoa is me.”
Rose shot him a nasty look. “How dare you—you don’t know what I’ve been through. Just because your life has been charmed—”
“Charmed?” He snapped back. “Are you friggin’ kidding me? My father died before I was even born. I watched my best friend die on my thirteenth birthday. And every day after that, with increasing regularity I might add, I watched random people die. I’ve seen more tragedy in the last decade than most soldiers see in a lifetime. The fact I’m not on the ledge of a tall building is a miracle. Do you have any idea how many people have died in my arms? No you don’t! So don’t sit there and tell me I’ve led a charmed life. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“And you don’t know anything about me.”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t want to.”
“Good.”
“Good!”
Jordan wasn’t angry with Rose, he was angry with himself for what he was feeling. He felt like he had to convince himself that he wasn’t developing feelings for her but he knew he was. Not in the same way he and Kayci felt but in a different way and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Look, Rose, I’m sorry.”
She flashed her dark eyes up at him briefly. “It’s fine.”
“No it’s not.” He blew a long breath. “I’m just…I don’t know.”
“I know. You’re confused.”
“I am?”
“You feel something for me and you can’t understand why.”
Jordan was a little surprised but he shouldn’t be. “Guess I can’t hide feelings from a master psychic.”
Rose turned a slight smile. “No, you can’t. At least not yet.”
“But you can.”
“You’re right I can.”
“Have you been?”
Rose shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I lied.” Jordan confessed.
“About what?”
“About not wanting to get to know you.”
“I know.”
He laughed. “Of course you do. I should be used to this by now but it’s not easy.”
“I, and anyone else, will only know what you want us to.”
“I suppose.”
Rose brushed her hair back. “What do you want to know about me?”
“How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“New York City.”
“What’s your full name?”
“Rose Marie Giacco.”
Jordan laughed. “Oh boy, my mother would love you, good Italian name.”
“You’re half Irish.”
“Yup, my mother’s family hated that she married a, quote—unquote—Mick.”
“What’s your mother’s maiden name?”
“Contento.”
Rose made a face. “Huh, that’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Where’s she from?”
“Brooklyn, Pitkin ave. Why?”
Rose’s eyes widened in surprise. “I grew up down the street from Frank and Annette Contento.”
Jordan shook his head. “Okay, that’s weird.”
“Are they relatives?”
“Yeah, they’re my grandparents.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“But, aren’t they, you know…well I mean there were always rumors about them. Wait, is your mother Teresa Contento?”
“One and the same.”
Rose leaned forward. “Are you kidding me? This is crazy.”
“Yeah it is.”
“So, were your grandparents in the—”
“Restaurant business?” Jordan cut her off and smiled. “Yes they were. My grandfather owned three places, one in Manhattan and two in Jersey.”
Rose nodded. “Huh, I’ll be damned.”
“It’s a small world after all.”
“You can say that again.”
Jordan looked at Rose. “So how’d a girl like you end up in the NSA?”
She gave him a bashful look. “A girl like me?”
“Yeah, you know, an Italian princess as they say.” He smiled.
“Well, I’m no princess. My parents weren’t rich. My father was a garbage man for the city and my mother poured coffee over at the Bed-Stuy diner. We got by but certainly not like the real princesses in town.”
“So you know the value of a dollar.”
“My mom always said; if you want something go out and earn it, nothing comes easy and nothing comes free. When I was eleven, I started working at the local fruit stand. I wanted a bike, she told me to go buy one. So I walked around all weekend asking every local store if I could do some work for some money to buy a bike. Mister Mancini, he owned the fruit stand by our house and he knew my dad, he gave me a job, filling up the fruit and veggie racks outside. It took me forever but I finally earned enough to buy this used bike at the shop down the street. It was rusted and had a wheel that was missing a few spokes, but I was determined to make it work. My dad took me to buy it, and we drove right past the shop. I was like, Daddy—you passed it. And he said, you can’t have that bike. Turned out he and mom made a deal, that they’d match every dollar I earned. So he took me to the department store and we got a brand new bike.” Rose’s smile grew wide. It was the first time Jordan had seen her really smile.
“That’s a great story.” Jordan said. “Your parents sound like good people.”
Her smile quickly faded. “Mom died a few years ago, lung cancer. She smoked like a chimney all her life. We tried for years to get her to quit, and she would for a while but it always crept back.”
“I’m sorry. How about your dad?”
“Dad is still healthy and kicking, lives out in New Jersey now by the beach and owns a small gift shop. He makes key chains and stuff out of driftwood and sells them to the tourists for a huge markup.”
Jordan let out a little laugh. “We should hook up our parents. They’d probably get along great.”
“I have no doubt about that.” She looked at him. “How’d your father die?”
“Jeep crash in the military. He was just a kid, nineteen years old, a few weeks into training. He was on his way back to the barracks after a long session of something and the Jeep went off the road. Supposedly it was so hot, all the guys had taken their helmets off and my father sustained a head injury when the Jeep flipped. He only joined the military because of me, well because my mother got pregnant. He said he didn’t want to be a bum working some crappy job trying to get by. So after training he was going to move my mother to the base. But he never made it back.”
“Your mother’s very open with you? She wasn’t worried you’d blame yourself?”
“She’s not one to lie or keep the truth from me. Once I was old enough to understand I always knew what happened to him.”
“Honesty is usually the best policy.”
“It is.”
Rose’s face drew long. “What’re we going to do here, Jordan?”
He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I don’t know.” He looked around the room, inspecting the walls and door. “But I do know those two maloogas that greeted us are not in their right minds.”
“They’re being manipulated.”
“Big time twitches and glitches.”
“That’s worrisome. That’s beyond the scope of what anyone should be able to do with that nugget as far as I know. I’ve never heard of two subjects at once being acquired.”
Jordan met her eyes. “How much do you know?”
“Not that much more than I’ve told you.”
“Rose, I feel like you’re being less than honest with me.”
Rose raked her teeth over her bottom lip. “I’m just not sure what I know.”
Jordan wrinkled his brow. “I don’t understand what that means.”
“I was part of the research and development team, briefly, I was a tester, that’s true, there were several o
f us. But they did something to us, every one of us that worked in the program. I don’t know if it was drugs or something else, but our memories became sort of garbled.” She shook her head. “I remember bits and pieces, and even then I’m not sure what’s real or what my imagination is filling in.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us that?”
“Because, I…” She looked to the drab gray ceiling.
Jordan nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You were playing us a bit, holding that edge of plausible deniability. You wanted us to think you knew more than you did or less than you did or whatever.”
“Like I said in case I needed the leverage.” A glassy wetness slowly welled up in her eyes. “I’ve been afraid to look the truth in the eyes for so long. I feel like a failure of a mother. How could I have let this go on for so long? My little girl has been out there all these years and I’ve been too afraid to admit it.”
“Maybe you were being a good mother, subconsciously.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s like Anna has said to me. Sometimes things that seem out of our control are actually very much in our control. Maybe you knew inside that she was in a safe place and you didn’t want to take her away from that.”
“And now?”
“Maybe now she needs you, and you know it. So you feel compelled to find her.”
Rose pulled a strand of her silky black hair in front of her face. “And we’re in here, with no way out.”
Jordan stood up and walked over to the door. He stood on his toes and tried to look out the open window on the top of the door but he couldn’t see much. If he could just touch one of those guards, he could bring him down off his mind-bend. Even if the frequency was too tight, as they seem to be with this nugget thing, he had been able to take them down when he touched them.
When he turned around Rose was standing right in front of him, close to him, too close to him. “Whew, you’re really close to me. You’re like a ninja.”
She reached down and took his hand. “We might not live through this, and I’d like to know what it’s like to really kiss you. I know you felt it, in that kiss I gave you earlier.”
Jordan really wanted to say no, he really wanted to—but it was not easy and downright impossible as he looked into her eyes. Something more than frequency was pulling them together and then she leaned into his lips.
The kiss was slow and soft, it really pulled at him, she slid her arm around his waist and Jordan felt himself sinking and floating at the same time. But before anything else could happen, Jordan forced himself to pull back. “Rose, I can’t.”
She touched his face. “You can’t, or you won’t?”
“I won’t, I’m not that guy. It’s not that I don’t find you attractive and it’s not that I don’t feel that pull we have, because I do. But I love Kayci. I can’t do this to her, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Rose lowered her hand and smiled warmly. “She’s a very lucky girl.”
“It’s me who’s lucky.” He took a step back. “Maybe in another time or another place. I mean, if things were different. You’re a really great girl.”
“I get it. We don’t share the same frequency like you and Kayci do. I can’t compete with that.”
Jordan shook his head slowly. “No, you can’t. But it’s not just that. Kayci and I share more than that. And what I feel for you is something, and as much as I want to act on it, it would just—”
“I know…no need to explain.” She shrugged. “As curious as I am, I’m not the type to push the issue. But know that I’m here for you, as a friend, if you need me.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
As Jordan turned back towards the door her heard some footsteps shuffle around outside the steel cell. An idea came to him, although it was risky. “I think I have a plan.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Take your skirt off.”
Chapter 30
Kayci had a strange feeling that she couldn’t shake off. It was the feeling that Jordan was close, very close, but that didn’t make sense. There was only a remote chance at best they’d figured out who was holding her. She didn’t even know who it was so they probably had no clue. Of course she’d know if there was a work around for this room.
With this frequency-jamming current running through the walls, there was no way she could get a message out to him so there’s no way she could feel him close. She’d been trying but it was useless. Still, the feeling was oddly real. There were no frequencies but something else was pawing at her brain, tugging at her heart perhaps.
She didn’t believe in intuition, not in that unknown sense. Intuition was just sense of frequency, it was factual and measurable or so she’d always believed. Maybe her desire to have some human contact was just creating things in her head. The pending doom and loneliness was too hard to take and impossible to accept.
Kayci was not one to give up easily. She’d fought tooth-and-nail many times in her life, sometimes just to gain every inch she could. It was a hard fight just to prove she belonged in SORC from the beginning. Intelligence in general has always been a boys club and women have to constantly prove they are worthy of being called spies. That was slowly changing for the better over the past few years but it still existed.
She was tough, she’d been chased down, beaten, thrown from moving cars and shot, there was no way she was going to give up now. But those sick feelings of doom and isolation would not go away.
As the moments went by, all her feelings started to shift to anger. There was a way out of this and if anyone was going to find it, she would. She started pacing, then jogging in place. It was time to stop feeling sorry for herself. Feeling the contact of frequencies was only one aspect of life. Anna had warned her many times that she was receding too far from the fabric of the physical world and this experience was only proving how far she’d fallen. Sometimes life in the flesh left a lot to be desired and being inside your head was the best place to be. There you could pick and choose what world you wanted to believe existed. If you rely on that aspect of life for everything, it will eventually overtake you and ruin you. Trying to get Jordan to understand his ability had only made it worse. She’d been retreating too far and now it was time to get herself back.
She started doing some calisthenics, a few jumping-jacks to warm up. Then she dropped down and did some pushups, then she moved to the more advanced burpee exercise and really pushed it until she started sweating. She went hard for several long minutes. It had been so long since she’d done a nice workout she’d forgotten how good it felt and how mentally therapeutic it was. For the first time in a long stretch, her mind was growing crisp, clear and itching for a battle.
With each movement, she felt stronger both physically and mentally. It made her recall something she’d learned long ago from Avery. He was a fitness and healthy food fanatic. He always felt those things made him a stronger psychic and Kayci never disagreed. For all his insanity and faults, Avery was a powerful psychic but he wasn’t naturally gifted. He worked hard and attributed his results to his clean diet and exercise regiment. He felt processed foods were unnatural and ruined our abilities. Being regimented, kept him grounded in the physical world and he highly recommended everyone in SORC be in top physical condition, but of course, not everyone followed his suggestions. Kayci tried, and usually hit the gym five days a week, but sometimes she let herself slip. Lately she’d been a lot less disciplined and now she was mad for doing so because with every repetition her mind was feeling stronger. The more she sweat-out the toxins the more she started to feel like breaking this cage was possible.
The feeling was so good that she actually started to cry. It was not a sad cry but tears of overwhelming relief. She didn’t even realize how bad she was feeling but this was like a rebirth to her true self that had been slipping away in recent weeks.
Standing up after ripping off one hundred crunches, she felt great. A few quick stretches
and she started relaxing a bit as her heart rate returned to normal. Her mind was feeling awesome. Everything was starting to grow clear. She couldn’t help but wonder what a nice line run would do for her if just that twenty minutes or so made her feel so good.
The footsteps in the hallway grew as her captor came close. He rapped on the door. “Kayci Taylor, are you still alive in there?”
“Fuck-off,” she replied with adrenaline leading her mind.
“Ha, you’re a real charmer aren’t you?”
“Why don’t you open that door and find out, you miserable little prick.”
He sighed loudly. “How do you know I’m a little prick? I could be a really nice guy with a big prick.”
“I don’t care who you are.”
“Oh but you will.”
“And you’ll be sorry.”
“You’re in no position to threaten me.”
“Maybe not right now.”
He banged on the door several times. “And you never will be again.”
He’d just made a critical error that he probably didn’t even realize he made. But when he hit the wall he momentarily sent a ripple into the blocking energy. For the first time, Kayci got an impression of his frequency. The electricity pumping through the walls had weakened in that spot. Add to that the fact the exercise must have given her the edge she needed. It was something her captor could never have known. “Don’t be so sure about that.” She was careful not to give away what she’d just started feeling, but the sudden spike in his frequency was evident.
He banged on the door again, unknowingly making it worse for him. He said, “Well, don’t worry about your friends coming to save you. They’re snuggled up together in a very small cell just a few hundred feet away.”
At first, Kayci thought he was bluffing, but she realized he wasn’t. “Big mistake.” She muttered.
“Oh I disagree. Now all three of you are in here, and there’s no one that can stop me from doing what needs to be done.”
“And what is that exactly?” She probed his mind, hoping he would slip up.
“Naaa, you don’t need to know that.”
“What’s the harm? If we’re all so secured, if you’re in such control, what does it matter?” Then she felt something. “Oh, I get it now. You’re afraid to kill us.”
Soul Frequency (Frequency Series Book 2) Page 16
