He put his arms on mine to steady me. “Oh my, are you all right? I didn’t see you there.” His voice was thickly accented, but I didn’t know from where. I knew the moment he felt my power—his hands began to warm against my sleeves.
People bumped and pushed at us, trying to squeeze between us and the rejoicing family. I pushed a little suggestion into his mind to calm him down and not worry about the power he felt coming off me.
“Here, come over here,” he said once my persuasion had set him at ease. He guided me to the nearby bathrooms, where Tony was staked out inside. I caught a glimpse of Sharon stuck on the other side of the family reunion.
“I need to get to baggage claim,” I said, tears pooling in my eyes as I limped. “I’m meeting my boyfriend, and I have to get down there. Oh, it hurts! And there’s just so many people.” I pushed another suggestion into his mind, then looked up at him, blinking in the most innocent way I knew how.
“I’m heading down to baggage claim as well,” he said. “In fact, I believe there may be an alternative route that would allow us to avoid some of the crowd. Oh yes—there! I’m quite certain it’s off that way past that pub.” I looked in the direction he pointed, the way I’d suggested he find, and saw the corridor in between a sports bar and a yogurt shop. Bingo.
“Are you sure that will take us to baggage claim?” I asked, fluttering my eyelashes. For the first time, he really looked at me. He was a distinguished forty, thin in a way that made his cheekbones look sharp. And he was thoroughly committed to the man he was currently seeing. But when he met my eyes, I released just a touch of my natural sensuality. His mouth opened with a small gasp; his eyes dilated.
“If you’re sure,” I said sweetly. “Then I’ll just stay with you.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, you just stay with me.”
He slid his arm around my waist and helped me limp to the narrow hallway. I glanced over my shoulder. Sharon was gone. I reached out to the minds of everyone around us. The multigenerational family was finally moving its way through the terminal. Sharon wasn’t anywhere near them. He wasn’t farther down the terminal. Wasn’t in the men’s bathroom. We were steps inside the corridor. I could hear Luce and Colin getting anxious.
“Dr. Holmes Everett. I’m sorry, sir, but I need you to come with me.”
Sharon was suddenly there, catching his breath, standing in front of us. I instantly ducked my head and stared at the floor. Everett stumbled over his words. “I’m sorry, but I think you have the wrong man. I need to help this young woman get to baggage claim. Excuse us.”
Everett tried to move us past him, but Sharon stepped into our path. I knew what I should do. I should just direct Sharon’s thoughts, get him out of our way and out of my life. So why didn’t I? I snuck a glance at him and instantly looked at the floor again. God, it was like I was that girl all over again. The victim, ruled by fear and pain. How many times had this man stood by while I’d been hung and burned? How many times had he handed my father the instruments while he experimented on ways to draw out the most pain? Anytime I’d fought back at the estate, my punishment had been a hundred times worse. If I’d released my power while I was being whipped, even if it was just in reaction to the pain, the whipping would turn into a gutting. Then Sharon would bring out the salt. I trembled before I could stop myself.
“Your client has provided transportation as well as accommodations for you and your partner at his family’s personal estate, Dr. Everett,” Sharon said. “If you would come with me, I’ll make certain that your cargo and personal effects are appropriately collected.”
I closed my eyes. Michael Kane—an obvious alias for Maxwell Kelch if you were looking for it. Oh God—if Uncle Max was bringing this guy to the estate, then he was already dead. Whatever business deal they had going, it was done. Everett would hand over the artifact thing he was smuggling, and Max would kill him. And Colin’s team would be out a key target.
Heat warmed at the base of my spine. I looked up at Everett. He had gone statue-still. A driver? Accommodations? This wasn’t in his plan at all.
We were just inside the corridor, enough so people walking past couldn’t fall over us if they tried to keep to the terminal walls. Past Sharon, several feet down the corridor, Colin emerged. I knew the moment Everett saw him because the place where his hand rested at my lower back burned even hotter.
Great. Now I had a nervous pyro to deal with. I looked up at Colin. Fists clenched, he moved toward us quickly. Luce appeared behind him, farther down the corridor. Maybe I could move with Everett at super speed, get him away from Sharon, and—
“Oh my God. Magnolia.”
I turned my gaze and found myself face-to-face with a sheet-white Sharon. His beady eyes were wide in shock; his mind raced. I was dead. They had confirmed it. The senator and Sir Magnus had seen my body, knew for certain. He had to tell them. Now, before anything else. He reached for his cell phone. I didn’t think. I just reacted.
The sound of his heart pounded in my ears, in my throat, in my chest, until I could feel his pulse moving against my palm. I hadn’t moved an inch or touched him at all, but I felt the weight of his heart in my hand like an invisible ball that my fingers could curl around. My hands didn’t transform. I didn’t need them to. I’d seen Father do this a hundred times, always when it was necessary to leave a clean death. It was just like moving anything else with my mind: closing a laptop from another room, floating my bottle of Beam from the fridge to the table. Slowly I closed my fingers around the swelling beat that I felt speeding up against my palm. Sharon gasped. The heat sizzling through Everett’s hand paused. I closed my hand tighter. Sharon dropped his cell phone and gripped his hand to his chest. Everett took a step back as Colin hurried closer. I grabbed Everett’s arm and kept him at my side. Luce, a few steps farther down, went for the gun at her back. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. Sharon dropped to his knees. My fist closed, and I squeezed until my nails dug into my palm. Against the pads of my fingers, I felt the pulse of Sharon’s heart as it stilled. He collapsed with a painful sigh.
“Holy Mother,” Everett breathed. His arm burned where I held him. There were singe marks around his cuffs. And this guy dealt in priceless artwork? I shook my head to stay in the moment. Colin jogged the last steps to join us, thick wire cuffs ready in his hand.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, looking furiously at Sharon, Everett, and me.
I looked at Everett, but his eyes were set farther down the corridor, where Luce now had her gun in hand, ready to go. The flash of heat where I held his arm was a painful shock, but I didn’t let go. He tried to pull away, but I only held on tighter.
“Don’t move.” Tony had come up behind us. Wearing the same thick gloves as Colin, he gripped Everett by the back of the neck and held his gun into Everett’s ribs, pushing us all farther down the hallway. Everett stiffened. Flames ignited on his sleeve, singeing my turtleneck and instantly burning my hand.
“Will you stop that!” I hissed at him. He blinked and stared down at me, confused. Together we looked at where my hand had begun melting against his arm. My fingers were red and blistered. Around the edges of my palm, the skin was turning black. “Damn it, pull it back, Holmes!”
Maybe it was my use of his first name, or maybe it was watching my hand melt away in front of his eyes, but either way he sucked back the fire. Colin passed the wire cuffs to Tony, who made quick use of the cuffs to get Everett restrained. “I don’t know who you people are, but you are making a terrible mistake. I am Dr. Holmes Everett of the Aunre Institute.”
“You are a pyrotechnic smuggler who just set fire to one of our agents,” Colin said, getting in Everett’s face. “Luce, Tony, escort the good doctor to the holding car. Darrel is standing by with his cargo.” Tony pushed Everett forward, the gun still at his back. When they moved, my hand peeled from Everett’s arm, the skin pulling like bloody goo where it clung to his now-cooled flesh. Luce made a strangled noise.
“Dear God,” Colin sa
id, cringing. “We need to get you to a hospital.” He whipped out his phone.
“Don’t bother,” I cut him off quickly. I studied my hand and sucked in air through my teeth when a glop of skin dropped onto my boot. “It’ll heal on its own soon enough. And it doesn’t really hurt anymore anyway. Kinda stings a little, you know, around the edges.” I held up my hand so they could see what I was talking about. “But the part in here where the bone’s exposed—he burned right through the nerves there, so I can’t feel it at all anymore.”
I looked up, and all four of them were gaping at me. “What?”
Colin closed his eyes and murmured something under his breath. When he opened them again, he look not at me, but at Sharon. “What the hell happened with this guy? Who is he?”
“He’s dead. His heart stopped beating, so when they find him it will be ruled natural causes. But we’re going to have a problem. This is the driver I told you was sent to pick up Dr. Everett.”
“But there wasn’t a driver,” Colin argued. “He has a rental car.”
We looked at Everett, who shrugged. He wasn’t admitting anything. A security golf cart passed by. We moved quickly down the hallway, away from the main terminal. I glanced back long enough to glimpse Sharon’s dead body one more time. Then I looked down at my hand. How many times had that man assisted in making my whole body look like this?
Yeah, not sure I could muster up too much guilt on this one.
Luce pushed open an unmarked metal door that led to an enclosed stairwell. I followed quickly as we rushed down the stairs in silence. At the garage, Luce pushed through the exit and found Darrel waiting in an oversize SUV. She climbed in the backseat and maneuvered Everett in next to her; then Tony got in to sandwich the guy. Colin shut the door and turned to me.
“We have confirmation that his partner, Ken Ward, hasn’t yet left his penthouse in London’s West End. The drop site is set for ten forty-five a.m. All of our intel was right on this one.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Everett had no clue a car was being sent for him. That’s just how his client works. No surprises and total meeting control.”
Colin leaned back on his heels, his face that practiced blank that all Network leaders liked to wear. “We are still waiting confirmation on his client’s alias.”
I let out a breath that might have been a dark chuckle. “Yeah, well no need for that now.” I winced as my melted hand started to ache. “That driver was the personal chauffeur to Senator Maxwell Kelch.” Colin’s mouth dropped open. “Dr. Everett’s client is my uncle.”
CHAPTER 17
I hadn’t been home an hour before the soft beep of the alarm announced visitors. Not surprising—I’d seen Colin’s worry before they’d left the airport. No doubt he’d called Thirteen the minute they’d pulled out of the garage to report my “injured in the line of duty” incident as per Network procedure. Whatever. I wrapped up my hand with some clean gauze from the first aid cupboard in the kitchen. The kit in the bathroom had wraps, tape, and antiseptic spray, but as damaged as my hand was, the soft cloth would feel best until it finished healing. Stupid deep-tissue burns. They always took so much longer to heal than regular wounds.
A car door slammed out front. Then another. I listened carefully. That wasn’t Thirteen. I unlocked the front door with my thoughts and finished wrapping my hand. Tony and Colin paused long enough for a quick knock before pushing open the door.
“I figured you guys would be busy processing your new prisoner,” I said, keeping my back to them as they entered the kitchen.
“How’s your hand?” Colin asked from the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder. They were still in their snowboarder clothes.
“I told you it would be fine.” I held up my hand so they could see the shiny flesh before I continued with the bandage. “The skin has already started growing back. It’s still a little raw in some places, but it’s fine. Did you really come all the way out here just to ask about my hand?”
“I’ve never had an agent injured on an assignment,” Colin said.
“Well, don’t worry. I’m not going to file for workers’ comp or anything.” I turned and faced them. “Was there anything else?”
“We don’t care about a medical bill, Magnolia,” Tony said. “We wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine.”
I kept my eyes locked on Colin’s. I could feel his conflict. That need to bite his nails was back with a vengeance. “Actually,” he reluctantly started, “there is something else. What do you know about the man who was there to pick up Everett?”
Power grew warm in my stomach. I curled my lip and said, “That’s a conversation you’ll have to clear with Thirteen. My time is too valuable to waste explaining things your team should be able to figure out on their own.”
“My team had correct information.”
“Your team didn’t even know who your target was meeting!” And, damn it, why hadn’t they known? I should have been prepared for Sharon being there. I mean, my God, he saw me. Saw me! He’d had his finger on my uncle’s speed dial. One push, and I was found out. Bile rose in my throat. That had been so close. Too close.
Tony stepped forward, subtly putting himself between us. “Let’s just take it down a notch. Magnolia, you have something to drink around here, right?”
I held my scowl a moment longer, then lifted a hand and floated the bottle of Jim Beam down from its post at the top of the fridge to land softly on the table. Colin’s eyes went wide; Tony lifted his eyebrows. I walked over to the cupboard and took out three glass tumblers, filled them with ice. We all took seats around the table while Tony poured.
“OK,” Colin said after a quick swallow. “Obviously there’s more going on with this target than we thought. We were after a known smuggler with pyrotechnic abilities and a history of arson. None of our communications hinted at Everett’s current client being a Kelch.” I didn’t miss the shudder in his voice when he said the name.
“Everett didn’t know that Uncle Max was his client. He never realized that Michael Kane was an alias, so you were a step ahead of him there. Everett also didn’t know that Sharon was going to pick him up. He wasn’t too thrilled when he found out, either.”
“How do you know he wasn’t thrilled about it?” Tony asked.
I lifted my injured hand. “Our pyro isn’t the most emotionally adjusted supernatural art smuggler. When he gets nervous, he gets hot.”
“OK. So about this driver—”
The alarm in the bedroom beeped. Tires squealed as a car slipped and slid all over the slushy path of my driveway. When it spun to a stop beside the house, my breath caught in my chest. A car door slammed just as the alarm beeped again. A second vehicle turned into the driveway, slightly more controlled.
Tony and Colin jumped to their feet as the front door flung open. “Mag!” Theo called out. He pounded his way into the kitchen, then abruptly stopped when he saw Colin and Tony. I rose slowly. He looked totally fierce, eyes burning behind dark wet hair that had fallen over his face. He hadn’t shaved that morning, even though he’d obviously gone home to change clothes.
God, had it just been a few hours ago that I’d woken up beside him? His thoughts were blocked, but the way his chest heaved and his nostrils flared, I could tell he was reeling.
He spared Colin and Tony brief glances before raking me with his gaze. He spotted my bandaged hand, and I swore I heard him growl. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Who the hell are you?” Tony asked, earning a glare. Theo moved around the table past Colin. When their eyes met, Colin set his jaw. “Mahle.”
“St. Pierre.” Theo sneered.
Although he’d been stalking his way around the room, when he finally got to me, he lifted my hand with surprising gentleness. My stomach fluttered as he studied the pink of my fingers. His own fingertips were like butterfly wings as he brushed over my bandages. “I felt your pain,” he whispered. “I didn’t kn
ow what happened, but I knew you were hurt and I had to get to you.” He lifted my palm to his lips for the barest of kisses. “The healing is painful,” he murmured softly, making my heart ache. He knew what the healing felt like; I’d healed his many wounds last summer after my brother’s men tortured him for information.
I met his eyes, and my pulse stuttered. Everyone else in the room faded away. Seconds stretched as our hearts began beating in time to one another. Beat. Beat. Beat. My hand grew warm where he touched the bandages. I couldn’t look away, and in the reflection of his dark eyes I saw the subtle glow coming off me.
The front door opened and I jumped back, pulling my hand to my chest automatically. After I’d broken the contact, an instant chill fell over me. Jon and Heather rushed into the kitchen. Jon pulled up short as he sized up Tony and Colin. Heather just pushed right past them.
“Oh, Magnolia,” she said. “We were at the Turtle going over surveillance footage when Theo stopped his recap midsentence and just ran out of the room. It’s because of you, isn’t it? You’re hurt, aren’t you?” She wanted to pull me into her arms, but she knew that would make me uncomfortable. I sighed and opened my arms in invitation. She took full advantage. She threw herself into me, knocking me back a step. Theo steadied me from behind. I glanced over at Colin and Tony. Both guys were eyeing Theo and me carefully. Had they seen us glowing?
Heather held me at arm’s length. “Is everything, you know, healing the way it should?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her, giving her back an awkward pat. She stepped back. “My hand got burned by a pyrotechnic art smuggler. No big deal.”
“Mission targets are confidential, Magnolia,” Colin snapped at me.
“And mission leaders are supposed to establish contingencies that ensure the safety of their team,” Theo growled back at him.
“Colin didn’t do anything wrong,” Tony argued, adjusting his stance to cover both Theo and Jon. “The target is in custody. Outside factors altered the execution, but the mission was successful.”
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