Hal stood, dripping wet, his lip bleeding. He reached up, touching the cut gingerly, but his focus was on her. Sam reached down and picked up a good-sized rock that had some pointiness to it.
In response, Hal pulled out a switchblade and snapped it open. Long and thin, this knife wasn’t for intimidation, like the motorcycle rider’s had been, but for business. For ending unpleasant ordeals quickly and quietly. Unpleasant ordeals like herself.
Not a word was said. They were past that now. Instead, he just ran towards her.
Movement was slow in a foot of water. Sam knew better than to try and run. Instead, she sidestepped, ducking under Hal’s outstretched knife arm. Spinning, she barely had time to counter his next strike by swinging the hand with the rock up and into his incoming blow. She got lucky, hitting the back of his wrist hard enough so that he dropped the blade.
The knife disappeared into the water. She could use that. Sam dived for it, but Hal snagged her by the back of her shirt, tossing her forward. A disturbing crack rang out as her left knee smacked into a boulder. Before Sam could recover, Hal was on her again, grabbing her by her face, forcing her backwards and into the water. Sam kicked and punched like a fury, but Hal had a good hundred pounds of body weight on her.
She went limp, but Hal was smarter than that. His grip remained firm, his fingers digging into her forehead as he pushed her down into the water. Her body acted on its own and tried to breathe, pulling in a great lungful of gritty creek water, which it immediately tried to force out. Feeling her chest spasm, Sam panicked. Her brain screamed in the frustration of having power and not being able to use it. Her nails dug deep scars in Hal’s wrists, but still he held firm. She was drowning, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
Chapter 28
In the midst of her flailing, Sam felt something scratch her right hand, a branch. No time for thought. No room for planning. Her body reacted purely on instinct, the instinct to live.
Clutching the branch, she brought her right arm up and out of the water, stabbing randomly, senselessly, until it stuck. The grip eased up enough for Sam to struggle to her feet, pushing Hal off her. When she rose from the water, she saw him standing a few feet back, clutching the branch in place as blood leaked from the wound. With a roar of rage, he screamed, running towards her. But something knocked his feet out from under him; he slammed to his knees in the water. Sam didn’t hesitate. Reaching down, she picked up her rock again. Hal looked up at her, dazed, as she approached. He could only blink in surprise as she brought the rock against the side of his head with all the strength she had left.
It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was enough to render him unconscious. He slid into the water, limp. She hefted the rock in her hand, raised her arm up—
“Samantha!”
The sound of her name shocked Samantha out of her daze. She let her arm fall, but it wasn’t until her name rang out again that she turned to see Lane, Tess, Harry, and Al standing on the path at the edge of the bridge. And it hit her, in a flash. The fact that her lungs were full with water, the soreness of her neck, and the biting, shooting pain in her leg.
Whatever it was that had been keeping Sam moving fled from her in a rush. Coughing and hacking, she let the rock fall from her hands. Lane ran forward, barely catching her before her legs gave way. He led her to the creek’s edge, where he pounded her on the back, helping her to continue cough up water.
Suddenly cold, Samantha couldn’t seem to stop shaking and shivering. While Lane tended to her, Harry and Al jumped off the bridge, working together to pull Hal up and out of the water and look at his wounds. Tess talked to herself quietly, looking from Hal to Sam, as though unsure of who’d been in the wrong.
“Sam, are you OK?”
OK. That sort of depended on your definition of OK. She was alive, that should count for something. Without looking up, Sam slowly nodded her head in answer.
“OK, great. Good.” Staggering a few steps away, Lane bent down and started throwing up. Sam wanted to help, but felt like standing up on her knee would be tricky right now.
Instead, Tess went over to help him. “Lane, what’s going on?” She turned accusing eyes to Sam. “He’s never done this before. He’s a doctor, for chrissakes!”
Sam gave a shrug, what could she do? Not her fault the guy had a problem blocking her. Hell, and he couldn’t even handle her pain as well as she handled it. Wait, was she handling it, or was she in shock?
Probably shock, she reasoned.
Tess, meanwhile, stood, caught in indecision between the desire to help the man she loved and the obligation to help the girl she didn’t like. Lane solved the problem by getting his act together and standing up. Unfortunately, he still didn’t seem to have his head on right, as he headed straight towards Hal, a determined look in his eye.
Sam, catching that look, guessed what it meant. He must have picked up more than just her pain. Tess caught on fast to his intention because he hadn’t taken more than a few menacing steps in Hal’s direction before Tess moved to block him. “Lane!” she said, snapping her fingers in front of him, “Sam’s hand is bleeding, I think you better look at it.”
Looking down, Sam noted in surprise that her right hand actually was bleeding. She must have gotten cut while blocking the knife, she thought absently. Hunh.
“It’s really bad, isn’t it, Samantha?” Tess said, her voice laden with false panic and a touch of pleading. Catching on, Samantha nodded, sticking out her hand. It wasn’t too hard to pretend it hurt like a son of a bitch, because it did. Along with the nasty red burns that speckled her arms and legs. With a last furious look towards Hal, Lane nodded. “We need to get her to the car. I have medical supplies there, and blankets.”
“And Hal?”
“He has a little bit before he’ll bleed to death.”
Tess grabbed Lane, forced him to look her in the eyes: “You know we can’t do that.” He sighed heavily, nodding in agreement. He looked over at Hal again. Harry had propped him up, against the bridge, preventing him from drowning. Calmer now, Lane went over to inspect the pyro’s wounds. “He needs to go the hospital, but he should be fine. She missed the major arteries.”
“Thank god for small miracles,” Tess muttered, before she launched into a laundry list of orders: Al to call an ambulance; Harry to tie up Hal and keep an eye on him; Lane to take Sam back to the car for medical attention of her own.
Sam might have been annoyed at the easy way Tess took control, but she couldn’t help but think that maybe her show of character reflected well on Lane’s taste in women. Plus, at this point, she felt far too drained to waste energy on anger.
#
Lane practically ran back to the car, and Tess had to jog to keep up. The positive about that, Sam thought, was that Tess couldn’t talk when she was out of breath. When they arrived at the Land Cruiser, Lane fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them to Tess. After opening the front door, she went to the back to drag out the blankets and first aid kit.
Once Sam was in the SUV, with the heater running full blast, the shaking finally started to slow down enough for Lane to clean her hand. It would only require a couple of stitches, but it was bleeding pretty badly. She voiced concern about bleeding all over the upholstery, but Tess shushed her, “That’s totally not an issue.”
“Can you make her go away?” Sam asked Lane plaintively, “I don’t like people—” He waited for her to finish the sentence, but she shrugged. She didn’t like people. Period. She didn’t have the strength to pretend otherwise right now.
“If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have found you. You’d be dead.”
“I saved myself.”
“Yeah, and then what? You die of hypothermia and shock? Do you even have any idea where the hell you are? You’re in the middle of the woods and it’s freezing cold out here!”
Sam looked at him, mouth open. It hadn’t occurred to her, Lane saw, that she would have had a problem beyond Hal.
&
nbsp; But he knew. If he hadn’t caught up to her in time, it would have been a corpse he’d found in that creek. Bile rose in his throat at the thought. He gagged and swallowed heavily, feeling dizzy.
“Sorry, I’ll try and block more,” Sam panted, misreading his look, “I think I tore a stitch or three out of my shoulder.” That was enough to change the subject. She could block a little better now than she had before, but it still took all of his concentration to tune out the pain interference he was getting from her so that he could push her T-shirt sleeve up and back and inspect the damage. She had, in fact, torn two stitches.
“Sam,” Lane groaned, “How could you do this to yourself?”
“I didn’t,” Sam replied simply, “Hal did.”
“You’re right,” Lane said, his voice a growl, “But it was my fault.”
“No need to get into that now,” Tess interrupted, “There’s an N.T.U. team on their way here to pick up Hal, but we have to get Sam warm and safe and far away.”
Al appeared, and Tess handed him two blankets, the medical kit, a cell phone, her car keys, and a business card. “Take these back to Harry,” she said, “He has to stay to meet the ambulance and guard Hal until the control team gets here.”
Al looked askance at Sam. She nodded briskly at him, and he turned to jog back into the woods.
“You want the most powerful person to stay with him,” Tess explained, “In case he wakes up, Harry can zap him.”
“Done,” Lane announced, wrapping up Sam’s hand. He’d made quick work of the two stitches on her shoulder, as well. Gently pushing up the leg of her jeans, he inspected her knee and made a disgruntled noise. “All we can do for this is clean it and keep it elevated. You’re going to need an X-ray at least. More than I can do.”
“Get in the car,” Tess ordered him, then, “No, back seat. Keep Sam company. I’ll drive. I know the way better than you, and I can get us there faster.”
Lane couldn’t argue with that logic. He climbed into the back with Sam, helping her adjust her leg properly. Al arrived, huffing and puffing, and climbed into the front seat.
“Deep breaths, everyone,” Tess said, “We’ll be safe and sound at N.T.U. in no time.”
#
No one bothered turning a light on in the car. They sat in the dark, the subdued green lights from the dash casting an eerie glow. Tess spoke briefly on the phone with N.T.U., briefing them on the situation with Hal and giving them their ETA. Sam tried not to shiver but couldn’t help it. Damp hair always made her feel cold. The after effects of adrenaline left her hollow and shaky. It was hard switching from “fight to the death” to “ride quietly in the car” mode. Yet as cold and miserable as she was, when Lane tried to put his arm around her shoulder, she slid out and away from him, turning a blank face towards the window.
It was nothing personal against Lane, but she couldn’t face being touched right now. Her feelings about what had just happened could best be described as “mixed.” Had she succeeded in proving that she could handle a full-fledged bad guy herself? Or had she just proved that she couldn’t do anything without Lane’s help—indirect as it had been?
Lane looked over at her and reached out, enveloping her in a hug that she couldn’t escape.
“What is this?” Sam sputtered.
“I’m sorry,” Lane said.
“For what?”
“Everything.” Meaning he blamed himself.
Sam turned a level gaze on him. “There’s only one person who gets to take credit for my decisions, Lane, and that’s me. I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”
“Wait a second—you knew it was Hal and you still left with him?”
Sam blinked at Lane, “Of course. You didn’t actually think I was drunk, did you?”
He had, she could see it in his face. Lane couldn’t hide things the way she could. That rankled, deep down, that he would honestly think she was so stupid as to get drunk and wander off with a stranger considering the circumstances. Hell, she wouldn’t have done that in any circumstance. Did he know her at all? Sure, she’d been stupid to face Hal alone, but that was an entirely different kind of stupid.
Although, it wasn’t, apparently, to Lane, whose jaw clenched and unclenched. “You decided to face Hal alone. By yourself. With no talent. No way to match him. Why, Sam, why in God’s name would you do that?”
Sam stared at Lane, bewildered. So she’d put herself in danger, so what? It was her body, her health, and her decision to keep the rest of them out of it. But she’d misjudged, again, how deep his sense of loyalty ran. “I set a trap. Since I was alone, he thought he had the upper hand. It gave me the element of surprise. And I had a gun, so I—”
“Wait—you had a gun? Where’d you get a gun?”
Oh. Crap. This was not going quite right. Her head hurt. Her body hurt. Sam did not feel like defending herself when she herself couldn’t quite explain how things had gone careening so far out of her control.
“You took the gun of that assassin, didn’t you? You took it and you hid it from the rest of us.”
“I—well, yes. I needed it.”
Up front, Al and Tess exchanged looks and turned their attention back to the road as one. Pretending that they both weren’t listening with all of their might.
“You misled us, Sam. And you don’t even feel guilty!”
“I just didn’t tell you—”
“A lie by omission is still a lie, Samantha!”
She couldn’t argue with that one, she happened to agree. Muffling a sigh, she slid back against the leather of the car seat. “I’m sorry,” she said, “But I have to keep myself safe.”
“And just how far are you willing to go to do that, Sam?”
And how far would she have gone if Lane hadn’t shown up? The second question hung in the air, unasked and unanswered. The truth was, Sam didn’t know. As far as I had to, she thought, but somehow she couldn’t say that out loud. It was the truth, but it made her sick, the way Lane looked at her right now, like he didn’t know who she was. Like he couldn’t trust her to do the right thing. The problem was, she couldn’t in all honesty tell him that she would. At this point in her life, Sam didn’t even know what the right thing was any more.
Chapter 29
Seattle glittered in the night, an art deco silhouette set against a backdrop of evergreens, the ocean, and, hard to distinguish in the night, a shadowy mountain range. Sam sat up as they drew closer, intrigued by the dark beauty of the city, which was so different from the one she currently called home. Seattle was known for its rain but the natural byproduct of this flaw was an abundance of foliage. Driving into the city, Sam was a little taken aback by the greenery that seemed to be everywhere. Like the city had grown out of a forest itself.
The N.T.U. building didn’t stand out among the skyscrapers. It, like many others, looked like a piece of modern art, all chrome and glass and acute angles with columns that looked like inverted pyramids. Sam was disappointed to find that N.T.U. did not take up the entire building. Rather, they leased the top six floors under a different name.
“All the better to remain anonymous,” Tess explained, “And because we don’t need to waste space.”
Tess’ passcard got them into an underground garage and through two sets of doors. A second passcard got them access to a new set of buttons in the elevator. Seeing the double-digit number Tess pressed, Sam’s stomach flip-flopped. She hoped that the room they took her to didn’t have windows. Her palms damp, she rubbed her good hand on her pants, already sweating as the elevator rose. Great, Sam thought, I get to meet my destiny smelling like nervous sweat and looking like hell.
The door opened into a slick lobby. Classy but unassuming. Bland linoleum floors, wood furniture, polished chrome fixtures. It might have been the lobby of a nice department store. Except for the four large men standing guard, each posted in a corner of the room. Another man, tall, slender and dapper, manned a tall counter in the middle like it was the command deck of a battleship.
He smiled as Tess led the motley group from the elevator.
“About time, Theresa.”
“Sorry to keep you here late, Joseph.”
The receptionist shrugged and made a show of stretching his arms out, “I’ve got my Venti latte because it’s going to be an all-nighter. And you,” Joseph turned his twenty watt smile on Sam, “I know who you are, but you still have to sign in.”
He pushed a clipboard across the counter. “The rest of you, too. All guests sign in and sign out. Those are the rules.”
Picking up the pen, Sam tried to curl her fingers around it. But the gash on her right palm made it hard. Lane, noticing, inclined his head in question, reaching forward.
“I can do it,” she muttered, managing a half-legible scrawl for her name before passing the clipboard over to him. Sam felt a tickle on the back of her neck. She rubbed the offending spot, only to find that the tickle seemed to have spread into her skull. She gave a quick shake of her head, like a horse trying to shake off a fly.
“Joseph,” Lane said, “Knock it off.”
“Knock what off?” Joseph’s eyes widened in a perfect picture of confusion. But the tingling stopped. Rolling his eyes, Lane finished signing and handed the clipboard over to Al, who did the same.
“Now that we’ve gotten that taken care of, you may proceed to the waiting room. Have a pleasant evening.”
The waiting room projected more upper-end blandness, with lush but worn-in leather couches, heavy mission-style coffee tables with a few magazines to read.
“Coffee, water, pop?” Tess asked, “I need a mochaccino. Back in a few.”
Chasing Power (Hidden Talents) Page 24
