by Brenna Lyons
“Dammit, Markham!”
“Mom and the nephew might have killed. We aren’t sure.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
Markham nodded. “She was five, and he was four.”
Jonas found breathing difficult. “Lethal toddlers?”
“So, they believe.”
*
February 14th, 2015
Jonas glanced around his hotel room and scowled. It was Valentine’s Day, and there was no hope of either love or lust for him. Even if he wasn’t dead on his feet from almost two months of tracking, Markham had him on his leash.
He closed his eyes and daydreamed of when he turned twenty-five. According to his contract, his keeper would be more a formality and less a babysitter, then. He could go on trail with as much or little backup as he deemed necessary; and though Markham would show up to debrief and keep his logs, he wouldn’t interfere along the way.
Even then, the keepers would keep track of his sexual exploits, often to embarrassing extremes. Jonas had learned after his night with Valerie that the keepers were placing bets on his conquests by radio now. How long to contact, how long till consummation, how many times— Jonas forced himself to shake it off. At least he was getting laid. It was the price he paid for what he had going for him.
Markham came in and tossed a bag of food on the bed next to him. “Eat before you drop.”
Jonas’ mouth watered as he grabbed it up. It was Boston Market—half a roast chicken, a double order of mashed, a large side of herbed corn, cornbread, two slices of cherry pie, and the largest cup they had of Barqs. Jonas had to admit one thing about the DoPT, DoD, and the training academies. When you were on their dime and doing things their way, they fed you well.
Of course, they didn’t have much of a choice. The only alternative was having their operatives and trainees dropping like flies, falling into a near-comatose state, or dying. That extreme hadn’t happened yet, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t.
The use of talent required varying levels of energy from the operatives. When the drain was too high, the available sugar was leeched from the bloodstream, and the operative entered shock-state. Carbs were life. Few agents traveled anywhere without emergency carbs, even around town while they were off duty. You never knew when you might have to stop a renegade, and having no means of recharging could literally mean death.
Jonas looked at his plate in surprise. Eating had become automatic over the years. The entire meal was gone in five minutes. Still, his blood screamed for more. He reached for his belt pouch and pulled out a Three Musketeers Bar and a snack pack of Oreos.
Markham raised an eyebrow at the move. “You did too much.”
“I did my job.”
“What did you get?”
“Whoever he is, he’s good. I get ghosts, and then he fades away. It’s almost like he realizes people might be looking for the release of talent. They’re somewhere near the cruise docks. I’m getting closer.”
“Good. I hate February in Florida. Forty degrees and raining just isn’t my style.”
Jonas stifled a laugh with a mouthful of cookie. Raised on the waves of San Diego, it was about as far from Markham’s style as you could get. “So, what’s the news?”
“There is a TV, Paige.”
“You know I hate watching the bullshit parts. You give me the highlights.”
Markham nodded, swallowing a mouthful of chicken. “The Supreme Court has accepted the case. They want briefs submitted within thirty days.”
“That fast?”
He shrugged. “There are a lot of American lives at stake here, and there’s a lot of pressure for a decision on both sides. Guess who the benchmarks are?”
“The Randalls and Thompson?”
“You got it. They’re all at Carver, now.”
Jonas looked up in surprise. “They put them together?”
Markham shrugged again. “Doesn’t seem to matter. The psi link and telepathy are unlimited anyway. If they want to organize, there’s no stopping them. So, when Marcus Randall and his team of lawyers for talent rights filed the injunction and demanded they be roomed together, what was the point in fighting it?”
“How old are the kids?”
“Kyle Thompson is no kid. He’s your age.”
“He’s the nephew?”
Markham nodded. “Steven is twelve, and Alexander is ten.”
Jonas looked at the last bite of his candy bar in rising distaste. He set it on the nightstand and curled away onto his side on his bed, rubbing his fingertips over his chest. “How are they handling the unanswered questions?”
“Amazingly enough, they have a ton of evidence indicating that they have never renegaded. They have journals and depositions from everything from police officers to doctors stating that they were, in fact, fighting renegades. Isn’t that a kick in the pants?”
“Yeah. That’s great.”
“Paige, you okay? I’ve never seen you walk away from food.”
“Fine. Just worn out.”
“Okay. Well, unless civil liberties have died, they’ll win. There’s no way the constitution will support this.”
Jonas pressed the heel of his hand into his solar plexus. “What about the damage that’s already been done, Markham?”
“The stigma? Yeah, that sucks, and it can’t be undone easily. Those people have been marked, now. Jobs, neighbors— It’s going to be a mess. There’ll be lawsuits and reparations, but there’s no way they can ever make things right now.”
Jonas forced his body to take a deep breath despite the mounting pressure from the phantom bands over his chest. “No. They never can.”
*
April 1st
Jonas ambled down the avenue away from the docks. He was close. He knew he was.
He ducked into the bar just outside the Port Authority. He could do that now. Markham had arranged for bartenders in a few of the local bars, trusted government employees who could breeze into town with fake papers and get hired on to serve a certain adult-looking teenage powerhouse some mock drinks and report back when he seemed to be onto something. If Jonas needed to find perps and wandering around wasn’t helping, he could always trust that someone would show up at a bar eventually—especially one that served food.
The agents weren’t talents. The presence of talents besides Markham, who was white noise to Jonas, would only be counterproductive to what he was trying to accomplish.
Jonas let his mind wander, drinking in the thoughts and feelings of people around him without using an active class that would ping on his adversary’s radar. His adversary was good, too good. Jonas had never spent more than two months on a trail before. He’d almost doubled that already on this one.
There were three sailors in the corner. He smiled. They called the area Liquordale.
Too bad it wasn’t P-Can this trip. I have family there. Or Puerto Rico. Not much to do there but pick up some Bacardi 1863, and the Captain will always give up a torpedo tube to 1863.
The last trip they made to Puerto Rico, one of the firemen on board had made a weapons sign so the tube read “Booze loaded.” Jonas chuckled at that.
“Can I get you something?” the bartender asked.
It was Peterson, he noted. Jonas had worked with Peterson before. He was a good man in a fight. “Sure, rum and Coke.”
He sighed as he realized Peterson wasn’t paying attention. The agent was making a real rum and Coke.
“Hey, make that a special,” Jonas added.
Peterson’s head snapped up, and he bumped the glass into the sink. It would look like an accident to anyone else, but Jonas knew he did it on purpose. “Yes, sir.” His eyes reflected his fear. If he’d’ve handed Jonas that glass, it would have meant his job—after Markham finished with him.
Jonas nodded as he took the glass from Peterson. He knew the drill. It would be a Coke with a synthetic rum extract that would mimic the real thing right down to the smell on his breath, but wouldn’t dull his s
enses or break any laws.
Jonas nodded as he accepted his drink. It had a bitter aftertaste, but he imagined real alcohol would taste worse. When Jonas was twenty-one, he’d be allowed to drink moderately off duty, but he’d never be allowed to take even a sip on duty.
The woman in the corner was sizing him up.
Bigger and with a lot more stamina than you’re counting on, honey. He sighed. She wouldn’t be here much past dinner. He might have talked Markham into letting him blow off some steam tonight, just a few hours at her place. Jonas glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Damn! She was built.
The last man in the room was strangely silent. Jonas couldn’t send a spike to check for a shield, so he used a passive class that wouldn’t ping, something only he could do unless the great Randall family could. He read the man’s shield and mimicked his own to it to examine its layout.
Jonas switched back to his personal shield in a mixture of excitement and disgust. It was mechanical, a 3000-series. It wasn’t the renegade, but it might be one of his men. Even the least talent had a personal shield, and with the way the renegade was fading out, he had a good one. Such a smooth fade wasn’t mechanical in nature.
The only reason to use a mechanical shield if you had your own was if yours was weak and you were facing a talent you knew could crush your shield. Baker was never without a neuro-mechanical shield around Jonas and Griffin. It never failed to slay Jonas that the brass lived in fear of their top two operatives.
He drank a mouthful of his rum and Coke and ordered food. The guy had just settled in and ordered a meal of his own, so Jonas had time to build up his blood sugar. Peterson lowered his face to hide his wide eyes as he took the order—an order of cheese fries, a platter of fried mushrooms, cheese sticks, and onion rings, a basket of tortilla chips with a spinach and cheese dip, a basket of calamari, and a slice of apple pie a la mode. Peterson knew Jonas had a target in mind if he was carbing up like this.
The food came out one dish at a time to minimize the impact of how much he was eating, and Jonas drank another mock rum and Coke with every offering. No one seemed to register the fact that he kept eating, and he forced himself to eat slowly to avoid drawing attention to himself.
Jonas watched the news while he ate. There was coverage of the Supreme Court trial, though not inside the courtroom. The Randalls were brought in, unrestrained but surrounded by a ring of federal agents.
Katheryn was an intense-looking woman with long black curls that were only lightly grayed. She had one arm around a blonde boy who looked ashen and wide-eyed. That was Alexander, he realized. The blonde man beside her was obviously Kyle Thompson. He held her other arm hooked through his own. Even though his face showed no sign of it, Thompson was scanning. Jonas could tell.
Over Katheryn’s shoulder, Jonas spied Steven. The boy’s hair was only slightly lighter than his mother’s was. He scanned his vibrant blue eyes over the crowd angrily, and Jonas closed his eyes. If one of them renegaded, it would be Steven. He was twelve, and he was lethal. He was in Jonas’ class, and either Jonas or Griffin would be set on his trail.
Two more men joined the first suspect, both wearing 3000s. Paydirt. Jonas just had to wait for them to move and hope they led him where he needed to go. In the meantime, he had a second slice of pie.
He had three more mock rum and Cokes while he waited for them to leave. When they rose to go, Jonas kept his position for the first block and a half while he handed Peterson a hundred and twenty to cover the bill and tip.
When Jonas walked out into the night air, he walked at a leisurely pace, as if he had nowhere to be. Now that he’d locked on their shields, he had only to keep them within a few blocks to keep from losing them.
He hesitated at the edge of a motel parking lot. Now what? He could have Markham call in eyes for the night, but those hotdogs were known to want the glory of the terrorist bust without taking the renegade into account. The renegade was Jonas’ primary concern. The terrorists came second, though Jonas would handle as many of them as he could. Overall, the renegade could do far more damage in the long run.
Jonas could take a room for the night and call Markham from a pay phone on his way in. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t protocol. There was no cover story and it could raise suspicion.
He sucked in his breath as a warm body sidled up to him.
“Waiting for someone?” The voice was low and inviting, and the female hand on his arm reminded him that it had been more than three months.
Jonas looked at the woman from the bar with a wide smile. “I was, but I think I got stood up.”
She adopted a pout that he found less appealing than her inner hopes. “Wife or girlfriend?”
He laughed. “An older brother who probably got lucky and forgot all about me.”
She pressed her body to his. She was drunk, but more than a little interested. “Living well is the best revenge, you know.”
Jonas wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. It wasn’t protocol. From having sex with a woman without his sensor and keeper to ditching Markham, he was breaking a lot of rules, but it gave Jonas cover when he needed it and some much-needed down time while he got the job done. “Do you have a room here?” he asked.
“Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
*
April 2nd
Jonas kissed Ronnie goodbye and pulled his jacket over the plain, Kevlar silk-lined T-shirt Markham insisted on for tracking. The jacket was Jonas’ idea, a windbreaker with Kevlar silk backing the soft lining. With cop-killer rounds out there, two layers of protection couldn’t hurt.
He let himself out of her room and strolled away with a smile on his face. Ronnie only lasted twice, but it was an enjoyable two, and with one part of his mind always occupied with keeping tabs on his prey upstairs, Jonas got a good bit of information while he enjoyed himself.
Jonas had a name for their renegade now. From the sleepy musings of the men in the other room, he knew the renegade was a man named Martin Dillon. He was twenty-six, blonde, brown-eyed, roughly one point eight meters tall and ninety kilos. Jonas did the conversion smoothly. That placed Dillon at a cool five foot ten and 200 pounds.
He’d stop by the room later and have Markham run a check. Much later—Jonas grimaced. Markham was gonna be pissed that he hadn’t checked in last night, but telling Ronnie he had to call his babysitter would have definitely been a bad move.
Jonas caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and noted Peterson moving toward him. He met the other agent’s eyes as he stepped onto the sidewalk and shook his head.
Peterson halted and looked away, but Jonas could feel his confusion. Knowing a thought scan would be a permissible way to pass information when he couldn’t stop to talk to the other agent, Jonas sought out the situation in the only way he could–and grimaced at what he saw.
Markham had the entire team of agents under him searching for Jonas. When Peterson reported that Jonas left the bar about five minutes after three men and had carbed up, Markham had called him names Peterson hadn’t ever heard before for not reporting in sooner. Then, Jonas didn’t show up back at the hotel, and Markham had the men out for half the night trying to find him in fear that someone got the drop on him.
If Peterson saw him and let him go, he’d have to answer to Markham. On the other hand, if he screwed up this detail, he’d have to answer to both men—and Baker. Better Markham alone, Peterson decided.
“Right answer,” Jonas whispered as he rounded the man and kept walking.
Peterson’s relief was instantaneous. Then he started dialing Markham. He couldn’t follow Jonas now that he’d been warned off, but he could get Markham on his trail before they lost Jonas entirely again.
Jonas filtered out Peterson, as the agent recoiled from the force of Markham’s outburst. Jonas would have to face Markham later. The renegade was his highest priority. Markham wouldn’t fault him that. That was his job.
His stomach grumbled.
What Markham would fault him for would be waltzing into a ring of terrorists and a renegade low steam. Jonas fished in his belt pouch and started eating all the candy he had on hand. It was a lousy way to carb up his bloodstream, but it would have to do unless they passed a place to grab some complex carbs and a protein stabilizer.
When the candy was gone, Jonas dumped the empties in the top of an open trashcan. Markham wouldn’t like to see it, but it was better that his keeper knew Jonas was doing his best to prepare, even if it meant depleting his stash for later.
He used the Porta-meter tube from his pouch to check his blood sugar. It was standard equipment for both trainees and field operatives. Jonas kept in mind that his blood sugar would rise a little from the candy he just ate, but it was still too low for his comfort.
Jonas sighed as he pulled out his emergency stash. As a rule, he hated the cane cubes—the sandy sugar they carried for emergencies, but he was stuck. It was better to force down cane than get caught short. He ate ten of the twelve cubes he had and ditched the gold wraps in the next open trashcan he passed. Like it or not, Jonas was charged as he could be.
His prey was up ahead, and they had to be getting close. It had been a mile and a half, and they were nearing the piers. Most people wouldn’t walk much further than this, anyway.
Jonas stopped. His shielded leaders stopped then started to move again after a few moments. Damn! There was a checkpoint. Jonas expected as much, but it did cause certain problems. If he used active talent to get past the guards, he’d never make it to his renegade.
He cursed his luck. If Markham were with him, Jonas would have stun spray and Markham’s gun. As it was, he had hand-to-hand. No, not even that. He had hand-to-their-weapons and talent he couldn’t touch without lighting up the entire sector.
Jonas read the direction and distance to the shielded men. They had turned left down the pier beyond the warehouse he was standing in the shadow of. Jonas smiled and turned back. He’d be a little soggy, but he had an idea.
No one gave Jonas a second look as he walked down the neighboring pier. After all, there wasn’t a band of terrorists and a renegade on that pier.
