by I. T. Lucas
There was no way she could risk saying goodbye to him or even hinting that she was leaving. The poor guy would feel so betrayed. Just like her, he was under Marisol’s compulsion, but unlike her, he didn’t have Jacki to whisper the truth in his ear.
And then there were the little things, like not having gone to see the underground lake yet. She should have done it while she still had a chance, but things had been hectic. Between the long hours in the classrooms, the grueling physical training, the homework, and spending time with Richard, there hadn’t been much time left over for hiking trips to see the natural treasures of the mountain.
Perhaps she should leave Richard a note? Something he would find after she was gone?
And say what?
It was better not to say anything, especially since she didn’t know whether Mey was going to show up for sure.
Last week, Jin had stuffed her backpack with all the things she’d thought she couldn’t live without, but Jacki had told her to leave it because it could be bugged. Jin had spent most of the ride to Harrisonburg thinking about the contents of that backpack and whether she could live without them. The answer was that there had been nothing really important in there, just a couple of favorite shirts and a few knickknacks that she’d brought with her. Those had sentimental value, like the small jewelry box her mother had given her for her sixteenth birthday, but they were replaceable. The contents of that box were so few that she could wear all of them at once, and it wouldn’t look weird.
This time, she was not going to take anything with her. Not even her purse. Her wallet could go into her pocket.
With a sigh, she looked around the lovely studio that had been her home for the past month. She was going to miss having her own place too.
Where was she going to live?
She couldn’t stay with Mey because that would be the first place they would come to look for her. Her best bet was to go back to Israel. Could they get to her there as well?
Probably.
The more Jin thought about escaping, the more impossible it seemed. There was nowhere to run, and the benefits of running were not as clear to her as they were to Jacki.
Perhaps she should wait and see what Mey had planned. Her sister was a smart woman, and she wouldn’t have organized an escape for Jin unless she had all the details figured out.
But that was assuming that Mey was indeed coming to whisk her away and not just to check whether she was okay.
Except, if Mey had managed to figure out where to find her, she must have had help. Probably old buddies from her army days. Though that didn’t make much sense either. How would they have access to such information?
The most likely explanation was that Jacki’s vision had been wrong, and Mey wasn’t coming.
Jin let out a relieved breath.
Yeah, she’d been working herself up for nothing. If she really wanted to run, she could just walk out of the mall and keep on going. The one supervisor who had accompanied them last week had spent the entire time just walking around the mall and going in and out of stores. He hadn’t been paying much attention to them until it was time to head back.
Which reinforced Jacki’s claim that they were all under compulsion. No one had expected them to run, or even to try to contact their families. It could have been as easy as walking into the bathroom and asking a random person to borrow her phone for a moment. And yet, it hadn’t even occurred to Jin until now.
With a groan, she draped an arm over her eyes.
Why hadn’t she called Mey last Saturday? And why hadn’t Jacki thought of that either?
Jin was under compulsion and not thinking straight, but Jacki wasn’t, and she wasn’t stupid either.
As the dim light outside got brighter, Jin glanced at her watch and gasped. It was five minutes to seven, and by seven-thirty, she was supposed to be ready and waiting outside together with the rest of the team for the minibus to pick them up.
12
Kian
Present day
As everyone assembled around the dining table, Kian caught Mey looking at him expectantly, either waiting for his reassurance that things were going to turn out okay or perhaps just wondering if there were any last-minute updates.
“Let’s have breakfast first and then go over the plan one last time.” He reached for his coffee and smiled at her. “Everyone will pay better attention after they are caffeinated and their bellies are full.”
Mey nodded. “Thank you again for doing this for me. Without your help, I couldn’t have found Jin, let alone gotten her out of that program. I’m forever grateful to you all.”
Yamanu took her hand, clasping it between his two. “You don’t need to thank us. We are your family.”
As Mey tried to discreetly wipe the tears misting her eyes, Kian pretended not to notice. The poor girl had been through a lot recently, and she was handling it like a trooper.
Less than a month had passed since she’d met Yamanu in New York, and her life had changed in so many ways that it was a wonder she was holding up as well as she was. Her transition hadn’t been difficult, but growing fangs had, not so much physically as emotionally. A female Dormant growing fangs was an anomaly, and it had been upsetting to Mey. Developing a physical trait that was typically male had bothered her greatly, but the ladies had done a superb job of cheering her up, all claiming to be envious of her fangs.
He wasn’t sure whether they were sincere about it, but he appreciated what they had done for Mey, helping her make peace with it.
Pouring himself another cup of coffee, Kian leaned back in his chair and waited for everyone to be done with breakfast.
Once Arwel returned from feeding Eleanor, Kian addressed the group. “Let’s go over the plan one last time. Julian and Brundar. You are going to stay with Eleanor. Once we have Jin, you are going to take Eleanor back to the resort, put her in the hotel room, and plant evidence of drug use. Brundar, you are going to shroud the three of you from the moment you arrive at the hotel’s parking lot. Once you are done with Eleanor, go into the security office and erase any footage of that and of passing through the lobby, etc.”
As the two nodded, Kian continued. “You are going to take the new van that Turner has arranged for us, and once you leave the area, change the license plates. If everything goes according to plan, we will meet you at the airfield.”
Callie lifted her hand. “What I don’t understand is why are we driving all the way to Washington DC if we are going to board a private cargo plane in a tower-less airfield outside the city? That’s adding two unnecessary hours to the escape route. Couldn’t we fly out from a nearby airfield?”
“That’s a good question, and I asked Turner the same thing. He made a compelling argument for his choice. Once Jin is reported missing, they will start an investigation, and after checking all the commercial flights going out from around the area, they are going to move to the private ones. But since there are thousands of rural tower-less airfields throughout the country, they are not likely to check all of them. The further away we go, the better chance we have of avoiding detection. And we are not flying straight home either. We are going to Nebraska to another rural airfield first, boarding a different private plane to Alabama, and from there, flying on our own jet home.”
Syssi sighed. “That’s going to be a long day.”
“At first glance, it seems like overkill, but we can’t be too careful.” Kian rubbed a hand over his jaw. “As it is, we are taking a huge risk by poking the bear.”
Mey groaned. “What if Jin refuses to come with us? I can just imagine how much this is costing the clan. It would be such a colossal waste.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kian said. “Even if Jin stays, we still need to be extra cautious because we abducted Eleanor, and she might remember what happened to her despite the drugs. And as to the cost, I consider it money well spent. We’ve learned a lot from Eleanor. We know now that she is a recruiter of suspected paranormal talents. Following her, w
e will be able to identify those paranormals and go after them once they are done with training and sent out on missions. That could be a great source of Dormants that we wouldn’t have had access to any other way. The government is actually going to help us in our search.”
“Did you implant Eleanor with a tracker?” Ella asked.
“We’ve considered it, but even though it could have been beneficial to us, we’ve decided against it. If the tracker is discovered, it could lead back to us, and that’s a risk we cannot take. Given the level of secrecy and security around the program, we should assume that the personnel working there are routinely screened.”
Ella nodded. “So, how are you going to follow her?”
“Hopefully, she will keep her current fake identity, and if she changes it, William and Roni can find her new one. Whenever she books a flight, we will know.”
“What if she uses military transport?” Mey asked. “In the same way that we managed to stay under the radar, she could be moving around the country completely incognito.”
“It’s possible but not likely, for the simple reason that she doesn’t need to be that secretive. On the face of things, everything she does is legal.”
13
Arwel
As good as Kian’s plan was, Arwel still felt uneasy about it.
Eleanor, aka Marisol, was way too confident about their inability to convince Jin to come with them. She hadn’t even asked what they were going to do if Jin refused to leave.
Obviously, she wasn’t telling them everything. The group of paranormal talents might have more security personnel with them than the one escort Eleanor had mentioned, or they might be implanted with trackers, which the handheld device Turner had sent them wasn’t going to detect. It was only good at detecting devices hidden in clothes and perhaps implants that were just under the skin. But if an implant was buried deep inside the body, medical-grade equipment was needed to detect it.
Another possibility was that the government was using a different kind of tracker which the device wasn’t engineered to detect. But as long as it wasn’t implanted inside Jin’s body, they had a simple solution for that. The plan was for Jin to dump what she was wearing and change into an outfit that Mey was going to give her. But if the thing was inside her body, they were screwed.
Bridget was going to meet them at the keep and run Jin through her medical equipment the way she’d done with the Doomers, so the village would be safe no matter what. Still, they were running the risk of exposing the keep, and it would be a shame to lose the place. Having another secure location for their people was an essential precaution in case the village was compromised.
Kian continued. “Once the bus arrives, we are going to wait until everyone disembarks and goes into the mall. Hopefully, people are not going to wander off to other places because it would force us to split up, and we don’t have enough Guardians.”
Amanda huffed. “You wouldn’t have that problem if you let us come along. Dalhu and I can thrall, and so can Wonder.”
“I don’t want to leave Syssi, Callie and Ella without protection. Besides, you, Dalhu and Wonder will attract too much attention. None of you can blend in easily.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Amanda stuck her chin out. “We can shroud ourselves.”
Kian arched a brow. “For how long? Five minutes, ten? That’s not long enough, and Dalhu can’t shroud at all.”
The guy grimaced. “I’ve been practicing, but I’m not good at it.”
When Amanda sighed, conceding defeat, Kian continued. “Anandur and I are going to stay outside and take care of the bus driver and those of the group who might decide to venture outside the mall. Mey, Yamanu, and Arwel will follow Jin inside under the cover of Yamanu’s shroud. We don’t want Jin to see Mey before we can isolate her from the group. Her initial reaction to seeing her sister might alert their escort and ruin the entire plan.” He turned to Arwel. “This will be your job. You will need to thrall Jin to go into the ladies' bathroom or a clothing store’s changing room.”
Arwel nodded. “In case Mey and I get separated, a photo of Jin would be useful.”
“I can send you several,” Mey said. “But I doubt you will need to look at photos to spot Jin. She is probably going to be the only six-foot-tall Asian girl in the whole place.”
“You never know,” Amanda said. “Expect the unexpected. There are many tall Chinese people, and a female basketball team from China might be visiting that mall right at the same time. Sūn Mingming is the tallest professional basketball player in the world at seven feet and nine inches. Or was. I think he is retired.”
“Right.” Mey chuckled. “As if that is likely to happen. I’m going to send them to all of you.” She pulled out her phone and selected several photos. “I’m group messaging Jin’s pictures to everyone on the team.”
As Arwel’s phone pinged with an incoming message, he flicked the application on and touched on the first picture to enlarge it without really taking a good look.
Stifling a gasp, he stared at the face on his screen, trying to figure out why he’d responded so strongly to it.
He’d never been into Asian beauties, or into brunettes in general, and certainly not into six-foot-tall females. His ideal type looked a lot like Carol and shared her personality. He liked petite, curvy blondes, with flirtatious attitudes, sunny dispositions, and strong personalities.
There was nothing sunny or flirtatious about Jin. She radiated power, a smart badass with a no-nonsense attitude. Her gaze was so intense that Arwel felt as if she was looking out of the picture straight into his soul and issuing a challenge.
He could almost hear her whispering, do you think you are man enough for me?
And the funny thing was that he responded with a resolute, heck yeah.
He was probably overreacting, and it was nothing more than his hormones going into overdrive. He hadn’t been with a woman since before the trip to New York, and this was the first pretty face he’d seen that wasn’t mated to one of his friends.
Shaking his head, Arwel switched to the next photo, hoping to see a different aspect of Jin’s personality. A smile would be nice, something to soften the effect.
Big mistake.
The first one was only of her face. The second one was a full-body shot, and Jin’s was spectacular. Despite her height and slimness, she was all female, with delicate curves in all the right places.
As if having a mind of its own, his finger brushed lovingly over the screen.
Perfection.
“Arwel?” Kian asked.
He lifted his head. “Did you say something?”
Several chuckles answered his question, and Julian clapped him on the back. “That’s how it all started for me. One look at Ella’s picture, and I was a goner.”
Arwel shook his head. “Jin is very pretty, but it’s not like that. I’m just memorizing her features.”
Liar.
Julian clapped him on the back again. “Right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
14
Jin
“You feel tense,” Richard said. “What’s going on?”
Jin shrugged. “It’s the Mandarin. I’m struggling with the most basic stuff. I’m going through a list of phrases I’m trying to memorize, but I keep forgetting words. It’s just so difficult, and the pronunciation changes the meaning. The same word can mean ten different things depending on the tone and the emphasis.”
That was all true, so Richard wasn’t going to detect a lie, but it was a mild stressor compared to the big one of possibly escaping the program.
They were on the bus, on the way to their once-a-week leave, and having Richard’s arm draped around her shoulders meant that he was privy to the storm going on inside her.
“I can help with that.” He started kneading the tense muscles. “Do you want to practice Mandarin on me?”
“Not really. If I keep at it, I’m going to get a headache.”
Richard was a decent
guy, and Jin felt bad about her initial unfavorable impression of him. He’d seemed so full of himself, and she had no patience for arrogant pricks. Except, there was more to him than his inflated ego, and it came out in moments like this, when he was doing nice things for her.
Crap, it would have been easier if he hadn’t done that.
Leaving him behind without a word was a bitchy move, and she hated having to do it. Some of her friends thought nothing about ghosting a guy they didn’t want to see again, not answering phone calls or texts, but that was wrong on the most basic level of common courtesy. It was a coward’s way out, and Jin was no coward.
Except, that was true for all things romantic, not daring escapes from secret government programs. She was scared shitless.
Jacki turned around and smiled. “You can practice on me tomorrow. I promise to listen to every word.” She winked.
The girl had nerves of steel. She was sitting next to Wendy, who was an empath, and the girl hadn’t said a word about Jacki being stressed. Perhaps her immunity to mental tricks made her emotions undetectable too?
Lucky girl.
Jin wished she was an impenetrable vault like that. If Marisol’s compulsion hadn’t worked on her, she wouldn’t be sitting on this bus with a bunch of other freaks that she was going to miss terribly.
Only a month had passed since she’d joined the program, but everyone in it felt like family to her. They were her tribe, her kind of people.
As the bus stopped near the entrance to the mall, Doctor Roberts stood up in the middle aisle and lifted a plastic bag full of walkie talkies. “Don’t forget to take your device before leaving the bus, and make sure that your name is on it, so you don’t take someone else’s. If you need me for whatever reason, don’t hesitate to contact me. No one is to wander away from the mall without checking with me first and without a buddy to accompany them. No exceptions.”
