by Angel Lawson
“And you’re sure he’s trustworthy?” This agent had known Atticus’ location. Quinn can’t discount it.
She shoots him a glare that forces him to keep that thought to himself. They take the back entrance into the gym and instead of going to Atticus’ office, Astrid leads Quinn through a series of security checks to a two-story apartment attached to the back of the building. They enter the living room, a cozy room with leather couches and a large entertainment system taking up one side. Rows and rows of movie boxes are lined on the shelves along with a vast book collection.
Quinn glances at a photograph of Atticus and Astrid when she was maybe ten or eleven. She had on a baseball cap—looser than what she’d worn at the group home, and a simple hoodie. They both have smiles on their faces.
She doesn’t waste a moment and heads straight to the bar, pouring and gulping down two drinks before he’s finished checking the locks.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure we’re secure up here.”
“This place is Fort Knox. Atticus…” She stops and swallows. “Atticus has had the security on point for years. We’re fine.”
Quinn believes her but he also knows someone got past her mentor tonight. A man who has kept a woman with superpowers hidden for over ten years. Just like Holden. It can’t be a coincidence, but he knows now is not the time to talk to Astrid about it.
“What can I do for you?” he asks. Astrid stands in the middle of the room. The best word he can use to describe her is lost. Shattered. Her blonde hair is wild. Smoke stains combined with tears streak down her face from the explosion, and blood stains her hands. “Anything. Just ask. I’ll keep watch outside—monitor the security systems. I’m okay at computers. I’ll start tracking down the bastard that did this. Whatever. I’m at your service.”
When she finally looks at him, his heart lurches, the unknown bond between them still connected after all these years. Her blue-green eyes cut through him like lasers.
“Or I can just go.”
He doesn’t expect her reply. “No…uh, will you stay?”
“Of course.”
Her eyes stray to a photo of her and Atticus on a bookshelf across the room. She wipes her cheek and then looks at her blood-stained hands. “I should clean up.” She looks at him. “You, too. There should be clothes in the closet just off the locker rooms. Sweats. That kind of thing.”
“Thank you.” He studies her. Suddenly she looks like the little girl he knew all those years ago. “Want me to wait?”
“No. I think I need some time.”
He gives her a tight smile. “Take what you need. I’ll be here, okay?”
She exhales; a deep, distressing shudder. It’s painful to watch but he knows that in the end she’ll survive and he will too. “Okay.”
Chapter Fourteen
Astrid
After scrubbing every inch of her skin raw and piling shampoo in her hair trying, trying, trying to get the blood and grime and death off her body, Astrid slides down the tile wall and releases the dam of emotions she’s held in since finding Atticus’ body. Using the privacy of the moment, she allows the angry, grief-fueled sobs to take over.
Atticus had been her everything.
Her only.
Her only parent. Her only friend. Her only mentor and champion. He taught her everything she knew from math to how to take a punch. He watched over her. Protected her. Trained her.
What is she going to do?
Water runs over her head, the heat long gone, but she’s numb--at least on the outside. Her skin prickles painfully from the cold. But it’s a good hurt—not like what she’s feeling on the inside. God, she’d give anything to truly disconnect. She’d never say others’ grief isn’t valid, but hers? Her sensitivity is real. The pain, the loss and ache in her heart? Quadrupled. Atticus’ tested it. She isn’t normal. Every emotion, every sensation is multiplied compared to a typical person.
Blinking past the water, she gazes around the white tile bathroom. The cat food bowl on the floor and her Elite sweatshirt balled on the counter. The room looks normal but she isn’t. No. She’s not. What she would give to have a regular life. In a world where parents don’t die, leaving their kids alone. And their mentors don’t get their brains blown out while their protégé is playing superhero by setting a drug factory on fire.
She presses her cold cheek to the wall. Numb, numb, numb. Praying it will cover her like a blanket of snow.
It doesn’t work. The questions and feelings race through her. How does she cope when her everything is gone? When the fate of his business, his secrets, and something much, much larger rests on her not-entirely-capable shoulders?
She can hear the quiet shuffle outside the door. Hear his hand touch the door…hesitating. Even wet, the hairs on her arms stand on end when he finally musters the courage to knock. She freezes—literally—wet on the shower floor.
“Astrid?” Quinn’s voice calls.
God. Quinn. She spoke to him badly before. How can he be alive? And does his story make sense? His mentor is dead and hours after he reveals himself, hers is too?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Oh yeah, there was that kiss, too. What the hell had she been thinking?
Shit.
“Astrid?”
“Yes.” She says it too loudly, flinching at the sound of her voice, bouncing off the tiles. “I’m okay. Be out in a minute.”
She’d read him if she could. Find out what he thinks. Who he really is. She’d discover his secrets and his vices, filter out the lies. But she can’t. That’s the weirdest thing of all.
She can’t and now she’s left without a guide. Alone with a man she doesn’t know and she can’t rely on her abilities to read who and what he is and it looks like together they have big fucking mystery to solve.
*
The next moments in Astrid’s life are surreal. She walks out of the bathroom wearing her black Elite sweatshirt and leggings and finds Quinn, the ghost from her past, sitting on the couch in an identical outfit. Well, he’s wearing shorts, not tights, and holding Harry Styles in his lap.
“Tell me this isn’t the same cat,” he says, scratching Harry under the chin. The skinny, old, black and white cat purrs and holds his head up, ignoring Astrid.
“That’s him. Fourteen and counting.” She walks past him to the kitchen and grabs a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet and finds a spoon in the sink. She washes it off and dries it on her shirt. Then she takes a giant spoonful of peanut butter and shoves it in her mouth.
So much better.
Returning to the living room, she sits on the other end of the couch, reaching for the blanket and covering her toes. The freezing shower may have been a bad idea. Quinn looks at her and frowns. A shiver rolls down her spine. “What?”
“Your lips are purple.”
“I’m fine,” she says, around a gob of peanut butter. “The water just got a little cold.”
“And you’re shaking.”
With wobbly hands, she reaches for her traitorous cat and pulls him into her lap. Harry is so skinny that he doesn’t provide much warmth. “Seriously, I’m fine.”
The tugging lines of concern do not disappear as he watches her pet the cat. Harry circles her lap and settles in a tight ball.
“I remember when you found him.”
“You do?”
He nods. “You’d been at the home for a few months and you were so quiet. Nothing but big green eyes peeking out behind that pink hat. You never said anything. Never complained. You kept to yourself, but that one afternoon Miss Rosalie told me to get out the milk. I was a little shit back then—”
“Really? I remember you as nothing but a ray of sunshine.” Astrid can’t help herself. She’s also not sure how to handle this story, this moment, but Quinn keeps talking anyway.
“Yeah, I refused because it was my goal in life to be contrary back then, but you got it for her and she took you out on the porch and showed you the kitten. It was the first time
I saw you smile.”
She scratches him under the chin and he purrs in response. “I named him Harry Styles after the kid in the band that the older girls all liked.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence for those girls.
“It was a good name. Suits him.” Quinn doesn’t seem to like the quiet, and keeps talking. “I thought he died in the blast.”
“Me too, but Att—” She swallows. “He must not have been near the house when it happened.”
Quinn stretches his arm across the back of the couch. “So it’s been fourteen years.”
Since they’d seen one another. “Yep, and it looks like we’re both orphans again.” She tries to say it lighthearted, but the words catch in her throat. She’s still cold even with the blanket and the cat. Quinn looks sad and lost. They’d both suffered in the last few days—him as much as her. She focuses on licking the spoon.
“We’ll figure this out,” he says, but the words mean nothing. There was no “we” in this situation, and then he does the one thing that Astrid can’t handle. He moves toward her, closing the gap.
“Don’t.”
He stops, holding up his hands. A small flicker of energy hums between his fingers. “I didn’t mean anything—you’re just cold and sad and…I thought maybe…”
This conversation is not something Astrid wants to have. It’s not something she’s ever spoken about—outside a few vague commentaries with Atticus. But this is different. Quinn has his own gifts and limitations. That energy rolling under his skin is deadly and she finds herself caught in a complicated spot.
Astrid has longed for the casual and affectionate touch of others her whole life. But now that it’s here—that it could happen? How does she even adjust to that possibility? That kiss earlier had been a mistake—the adrenaline and pent-up sexual desire. Nothing more.
“I’m not a normal woman, Quinn, just like I wasn’t a normal girl back then. The fact that I can touch you without hearing your echo…I’m not sure how to handle that.”
“I understand.”
“I believe that you do. Which is why I regret my anger and tone from before. Please be patient with me.” She picks Harry up and stands, taking the jar back to the counter. “You can stay. Sleep on the couch. We’ll figure out everything else in the morning.”
There are a million questions behind his eyes but he just nods.
“Good night, Quinn.”
He nods again and she feels his eyes on her back as she walks across the apartment and into her room. She has no choice but to trust him—to let him stay. Atticus trusted him. She locks her bedroom door anyway.
Chapter Fifteen
Quinn
He’s an idiot.
A fucking dumbass.
She told him once not to touch her. Firmly. And he’s not the kind of guy that doesn’t listen to a woman. Not that he’s known many, but Holden taught him how to be respectful to others. She just looked so sad—so lost—exactly how he felt, and all he wanted was someone to touch. A friend.
Astrid would never be that person and he knew it. Not the kind that gives hugs or comforts physically. He’d known it when they were kids and it’s no different now.
He can’t sleep. Much like he assumes the woman behind the locked door can’t either. The past two weeks have been straight out of a nightmare. Finding Holden dead and then the cryptic trail leading him to Elite. He touches the flash drive in his pocket, filled with data he’d taken off the computer before he fried the system. From what Holden told him, it should match up with information Atticus has here.
He rolls to his side, staring across the room, his eyes focused on Astrid’s door. Discovering Astrid on the street that night had been a stroke of luck, but then again, he thinks maybe it’s something deeper—a connection they have from being part of Project 12.
Although he never said anything, Quinn is certain Holden knew something was coming. After all the years of absolute secrecy, he’d suddenly told him about Project 12. About the explosion that took out the house and about Atticus and Astrid.
“She’s alive?” he asked that night in Holden’s study. He hadn’t thought of the weird girl in years. Just as he hadn’t thought of the others that lived in the house with him. The boy who played with fire. The kid who stacked cinder blocks on top of one another and lifted them over his head. The little girl who made her toys come to life, or any of the others. At some point he’d determined it was all a dream—a vivid childhood fantasy.
Except for the fact he could manipulate electricity.
“Yes. She has a mentor too.”
“And what can she do?” He had faint memories of her refusing to touch anyone and her crying when she had to take a bath or if her clothing felt strange.
Holden pulled a photo of a vaguely familiar-looking woman up on his screen. Green eyes. They were the same. “She’s clairvoyant. An empath, with a particular ability to read another human’s thoughts or catch echoes of their memories through touch. She also has extremely heightened senses. Hearing. Vision. Smell, touch. Everything to an excruciating extent.”
“That explains the way she covered her ears and all the clothes.”
He nodded. “The world was overwhelming. That was how she survived the onslaught of sensory overload. When she entered Project 12, she wasn’t at full power. It was mostly an extreme sensory disorder. The doctors brought her to full potential before the explosion.”
“Just like me.”
Holden looked at the photo. “Yes, just like you.”
“And what does she do with her abilities?” Quinn had spent a decade learning how to control his gifts. As a result he grew stronger, faster and more durable. He could manipulate the electricity to his bidding. Take down entire city grids or shock a person with the flick of his wrist.
All of these had been tested. Holden suggested he hide each and every one.
“Her mentor, Atticus, is the head of a top training program for the government. He recruits men and women for specialized field work.” He presses the keyboard and the photo disappears and a newspaper article replaces it. The headline says, “Crescent City Overrun by New Designer Drug. Three Deaths Linked.”
“When they’re not training the recruits, they’re committed to improving the quality of life in their town,” Holden said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’s using her abilities to help her community. Stopping crime. Protecting citizens. Atticus calls her Echo.”
Quinn stared blankly at his mentor. “She’s a superhero? A vigilante?”
“Close to it.”
“Wow.” He looked up at Holden and frowns. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”
The older man paused as though he was collecting his thoughts. Finally he replied, “After many years of being underground, it’s my understanding Project 12 is on the move again; rebuilding and developing their program.”
A knot twisted in Quinn’s stomach. “They’re not gone?”
“No. I’m not sure they ever really were. That’s why we hid you. But policies are changing. Crime is out of control. Terrorism has everyone nervous and political leaders are willing to look at experimental warfare in a way they haven’t in the past.”
“Experimental warfare.” He doesn’t like the sound of that phrase.
Holden pinned him with a hard look. “You. That’s what you were always supposed to be. A weapon. You and the others.”
“And you think they’ll come looking for us?”
Holden turned back to the computer and scrolled down to the bottom of the article, stopping at a black and white photograph. The image was grainy but it was possible to see what looked like a figure jumping off a building. Quinn squinted and asked, “Is that her?”
“Atticus confirmed it.” He sighs. “They believe in what they’re doing, but the risk is high for Project 12 to find them.”
“And when they do?”
“They could find you all.”
Quinn m
oves his fingers, feeling the electricity crawl up and down his skin, and thought on that for a moment. He asked, “Is this why you kept me close all these years?”
“As mentors we made a promise to protect each one of you. It’s why I’m unsure if there are even any others left alive except Astrid. Sending you into battle as a weapon of destruction is not something I can abide by. It’s inhuman.”
“What do we do now? Are we going to warn them?”
“I’m working on a plan and a way for us to make sure you’re protected forever.”
That was it. They hadn’t spoken about it again. Now Holden and Atticus were dead and he and Astrid had to figure out how to navigate without them.
Quinn rolls on his back, sleep finally getting the better of him. He has a lot to talk to Astrid about when she’s ready. He just hopes she’ll listen.
Chapter Sixteen
Astrid
Before
The dream was reoccurring and she woke in a panicked sweat. Demetria slept in the bed across the small room, a fairy doll tucked under her arm. She’s had this dream ever since she touched Owen on the arm. The fear. So much fear. So much pain.
She didn’t understand the root of it, other than the flashes of his memory. But she did relate to the pain. It was similar to the one she had when she thought of her parents. Of her purple bedroom back home. It was an ache more than anything else.
Sliding her legs over the edge of the bed, she walked past Demetria and quietly opened the bedroom door. The bathroom is down the hall, across from the stairs. She hears the heartbeat before she sees anyone, but even then her eyes adjust to the dark and she finds Owen sitting on the top step. His sobs rattle her ears and as much as she wants to ignore him, she can’t.
So she sat next to him.
No words were exchanged, which is fine with Astrid. She doesn’t need them to know the boy was suffering. Pain rolled off him in waves. He hadn’t been here long enough to start seeing the doctors. Maybe they could help him. Maybe. But she doubted it.
Instinct was the only word for what came over her. She pulled off her glove, just the left one, and laid her hand on top of his. Sorrow rushed through her, so much that she flinched, but she pushed back and fell into her own thoughts.
