Lunatic Fringe

by TL Schaefer

  “Is the house clear?” I asked, not daring to look at Tori again, not yet. I’d fall into a million pieces if I did.

  “Clear. No other threats, though I suspect we’re still on camera. Cavalry is on the way.” Heath affirmed, and that was all it took. I didn’t care how he’d called for help, how he’d known where we were. All I cared about was my kid.

  I crawled to Heath’s other side and pulled her into my lap, crushing her against me as I breathed in her scent, felt her heartbeat against my palm. Slow and steady and alive. Somehow she still smelled like the coconut shampoo and conditioner she used.

  Tears squeezed past my lashes, and then Heath was holding us both, scooping us into his arms, making me feel safe for the first time in a very long time.

  I cried big. It wasn’t pretty or quiet, but when I was done, it was as if I’d been reborn.

  I heard voices, and looked up in time to see Roney and Kavenaugh crowding the door, identical looks of relief on their faces. Then they saw Trang and those expressions turned to horror.

  KAVENAUGH’S DECLARATION that Trang was being charged as a domestic terrorist and transported to the high security wing of a Denver hospital wasn’t all that surprising to me. Nor was the fact everyone left Heath and I alone for a bit in a small private hospital room in the same hospital. Tori was still asleep in the room next door, guarded by an exceedingly gigantic FBI agent who looked like a NFL linebacker. The docs said she was fine, just likely under the influence of a heavy-duty sedative.

  Wealth, rank and a federal badge had its privileges and I was more than willing to exploit them.

  My head pounded like a bass drum and my throat was raw from screaming, like I’d gargled with razor blades, but it still didn’t stop what I demanded from Heath. The truth.

  “You’re Talented, and you never even hinted at it,” I said. I wasn’t even trying to keep the betrayal out of my tone. He’d seen how terrified I was. And yes, he’d been there for me, but he could have said so much more, done so much more. “Spill. I need to know.”

  He looked down at his feet, at the curtained windows, anywhere but at me. It was disconcerting, even through my continuing anger.

  I’d never seen Heath Farrell look uncomfortable, not really. And that calmed me down like nothing else could have. Because he had been there for me. Had talked me through the last few days, when I thought my world, and then my very life, were coming apart at the seams.

  I gentled my tone. We all had demons, and I was so damned tired of being on guard and outraged and angry at the mysterious “them” out there. Who we now knew to be Grace. Which was seriously fucked up.

  “Seriously, Heath, I need to know.” My use of his name, maybe my tone, non-judgmental, calm, jerked his head up. “I need to know what to say to the others about what you did to Trang.”

  He’d saved Tori, saved me. Right now I didn’t even want to think of what might have happened had he not gone all Firestarter on Trang. But I had a pretty good idea, whether I wanted to go there or not.

  “No one else knows,” he replied, and now his gaze was locked with mine. The Iceman was gone, as if he’d never existed. This was the real, human Heath Farrell I doubted anyone had met in decades. “I was Hugh’s first student, back in the day. I’m the reason he started CASI.”

  Oh Mother Mary. A ton of things began to make sense. His near fanatical desire to see CASI work, his protection of the students. I’d thought it was because of his children, but it might be both. “Are your kids talented as well?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know yet. I’m serious, Monica. No one living knows about my Talent. No one.”

  His words struck me. “How is that possible? CASI is your school. How does Summers not know? What about Sara? Can’t she see your aura?”

  He leaned back in the chair, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him. “Sara sees ice. Everyone sees ice or cold. It was what Hugh and I worked on most of my adolescence, right up until he died. So I’d have complete control. A way to mask the fire. It’s easier for people to believe I’m a cold bastard. Methodical. After awhile, the lies become your personality. It becomes who you are.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” I said, even though any rational person hearing our conversation would have us both committed, and right this second. “What was different today? Why’d you lose it? You’ve been in danger before, especially in the last year.”

  He sighed. “I haven’t. Not really. Lloyd was always there to move me away from it. In hindsight, I’m positive he didn’t know about my Talent, or he would have outed me to Grace years ago. It was simply what he did, his job. As for Grace, she was probably hoping I have a nominal amount of talent, like she does, and that being with you would boost it, in our child.”

  I considered his words and I saw the truth. All of us had been pushed to the edge in one way, shape or form in the last year. All of us but Heath. Everything had been far away for him, at least when it came to confronting physical danger.

  “I thought about what he and Grace were willing to do to you, to Tori, to us. And his voice, he was so fucking smug. It destroyed every bit of my conditioning until the fire was all I knew. Until I had to burn him, and the house, down.”

  He stood, walked to the tiny sink in the corner of the room and poured a cup of water. Downed it in one gulp.

  I watched him, watched the strong muscles of his throat as he swallowed. Wondered why I wasn’t running out of the room screaming. It all came back to one very simple fact.

  He’d returned to me from the abyss. Granted, I’d slapped the shit out of him, but still. He’d regained enough control to return to the world of the living, and then tend to my daughter while I tried to save Trang.

  “Grace might know now,” I said quietly. It had to be voiced.

  He turned, propped himself up against the sink. “She might,” he agreed. “but I’m thinking the camera, if there actually was one, was pointed toward the bed, not the door. She’ll have audio, but likely no video feed of what really happened.”

  “Bitch,” I spat. The very concept of what she wanted, of what she’d been ready to watch and record, made my stomach clench.

  “She is that,” Heath agreed. “She always has been.”

  “She never knew about you, about your talent?” I wasn’t altogether comfortable diving into Heath Farrell’s past, his private life or his feelings, but it had to be done.

  “No. She’s older, was gone from the house when it first started manifesting. But Hugh knew she had a decent amount of talent, likely something passed down from our mother. He also didn’t altogether trust her, although he never told me why. So no, I don’t think she’s aware of my talent, but she’s always been jealous of my relationship with Hugh. Was pissed when he died and left me CASI. Sued me to try and get it, and the Meece Foundation. She failed.” His tone was hard now, like the Heath I’d known for years. “But I have to admit that Trang’s placement was a masterpiece. I never suspected him.”

  “It needs to be Kavenaugh questioning him, you know that, right?” I could deal with everything that had happened in that room—including the kiss that had burned down my world—a bit later. Right now Trang was still our best bet for information, and that was the track we needed to take. Not discussing personal things. Not when Grace was such a wild card.

  Heath walked to me, pulled me up from the chair until we were standing toe to toe. “How, Monica? How can you accept what I am, what I did, so easily?” His hands held mine lightly, and I knew I could break away any time I needed. Instead, his touch was welcome, made me feel safe.

  I pushed the feelings aside. They wouldn’t do us any good in the here and now.

  “Because we’re both Talented. We’re both freaks, just on different ends of the spectrum.” I did move away from him then, shifted to the side of the chair, out of his reach.

  Not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid I’d step closer, that I’d tip my face up and that he’d kiss me like he’d kisse
d me in the room. “I want to sit with Tori until she wakes up.” I stepped to the door. “What are we going to tell them about Trang? About how he got burned?”

  Heath blew out a deep breath I hadn’t realized he was holding. “I’ll figure something out, just back me up. Go be with Tori. I’ll send Joe up as soon as he arrives.”

  “He’ll come after both of us, just like he did earlier,” I warned.

  “I know he will, and I deserve it. Let it play out, Monica,” he said, “just let it play out.”

  And, coward that I was, I fled the room to sit with Tori, and let him deal with the fallout.

  TORI WAS STILL ASLEEP when I slipped into her room. I pulled the chair up beside the bed and just looked at her.

  She had my stubborn chin, Joe’s eyes. But her spirit was one hundred percent Tori. I hoped to God she’d be the same child she had been just a few days ago. That Grace and Trang hadn’t done something irrevocable to her.

  Joe poked his head in a few minutes later. His expression softened when he saw Tori, then went hard again as his gaze landed on me. He walked to the bed, brushed back the bangs on her forehead, then leaned down to place a soft kiss there.

  Then he turned to me. “Let’s talk, Monica,” he said softly, so as not to wake Tori.

  I sighed internally and stood, running a comforting hand down her arm.

  This wasn’t going to be pretty. It didn’t matter that Heath had saved our daughter. It didn’t matter that we’d been kidnapped. What mattered was that our daughter had been put in danger by my association with CASI, with these people. I already knew what Joe was going to say, and I couldn’t disagree with him.

  We squared off in the hallway, in between our assigned rooms. The FBI agent stationed at Tori’s door gave us a side eye, but kept his post.

  I wondered if the agent was about to hear every last bit of my dirty laundry.

  “Are you okay?”

  His question was the very last thing I expected, and I looked at him with wide eyes.

  “I may be pissed at you for putting Tori in danger, but you’re still my ex-wife. Still the mother of my child. Of course I was worried about you.”

  He pulled me into a tight hug that should have been uncomfortable, should have been awkward. Instead, his scent, so familiar, enveloped me and reminded me of home, of better times. Of days when Tori was small, and we were still trying to be a couple.

  I snuggled in for a long moment, then pulled away.

  Remembrances of yesterday were all well and good, but we had bigger things to deal with today, things that still endangered us, endangered our daughter.

  “Where is the rest of the crew?”

  Joe didn’t look hurt by me going all business, and I was happy at that. Maintaining civility around Tori was important. Maybe more important than anything, because if we weren’t raising a good kid, one who understood the rights and wrongs of behavior, then what was the point of all this?

  “In the waiting room. Kavenaugh managed to grab us a conference room. How much confidence do you have in this guy guarding Tori?” He kept his voice low, but the agent heard him and shot us a disdainful look.

  “I remember him from Oklahoma City,” I replied. “He took care of Arin there, even took a bullet for her.”

  The agent nodded in confirmation. “And I’ll do the same for your little girl. Now go figure out how to stop all of this bullshit. I want to go back to a nice life of bank robberies and white-collar crime, thank you very much.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” I poked my head into the room Heath and I had been brainstorming in.

  “C’mon. Kavenaugh’s got us a conference room. We need to debrief.”

  Heath looked at me in the open doorway, at Joe behind me, and I could see the moment their eyes met, the animosity that had been hidden all this time was now on full display.

  “I may have almost forgiven Monica, but you’re still on my shit list, Farrell.” Joe’s words were like bullets.

  “As I should be, Joe. I endangered you and yours. One way or another, this ends, and soon.”

  He joined us at the door and let Joe lead us down the hallway without another word.

  IF I NEVER SAW ANOTHER conference room in this lifetime, I’d be perfectly happy. It seemed like I’d spent the last year in and out of different rooms with whiteboards and stickies, all trying to find out what the holy hell was going on with CASI.

  Kavenaugh sat at the head of the table, a legal pad full of chicken scratch in front of him. Brian was a welcome sight in the chair next to him. He rose, walked to me and placed a smacking kiss on my forehead. “You scared the shit out of me, Monica. Don’t ever do that again.”

  I smiled, and it was probably the first true smile I’d felt curve my lips in a long time. Tori was safe, I was safe. “I’m pretty sure I scared you much worse than this in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

  What little humor had been on his face fled. “I’m serious, Monica. You two took ten years off my life.” He reached behind me and shook Heath’s hand. “Arin headed south to CASI to be with Sara and Jonah, just in case there’s a threat there.” Lines creased his forehead. “Unless we think Trang was it.”

  Kavenaugh cleared his throat. “Let’s all settle in before we go there. We need to know what happened in that house.”

  We chose our seats in the uncomfortable chairs, Kavenaugh at the head of the table as the grand poohbah. Heath sat to his right, with me beside him. Roney and Joe completed the group across the table.

  “Before we get started, how did you know where to find us?” That part had been working at the back of my mind.

  “It was the house the Sheriff’s Office called us in to surveil. Your kidnapper slipped the surveillance by using a back road we weren’t aware of, but since it was all we had to go on, as soon as we got your texts, we headed straight there.”

  “What about our texts seemed wrong?” Heath asked, and I could tell he was genuinely curious.

  It was Roney who answered. “Monica’s was just off. While I can see her dying to take off to go after Tori, she’d never go without backup, and right now, that’s me. Never mind going after a clue of some sort. It was too atypical of how the military trained us, and that kind of training is not something you forget—ever.”

  “He’s right,” I added. “I would have rallied everyone, but only someone who’s been downrange would understand that.”

  Joe looked a bit miffed. Yet again the military was proving to be a wedge of sorts between us. I know he could easily see me going it solo, without a backup plan, because that’s what he’d do. But he’d never taken sniper fire, had never rolled over an IED, had never crouched in a bunker as round after round of mortars arced into camp.

  “Now that we’ve got that established,” Kavenaugh interrupted, “let’s start from the beginning.”

  I opened the story. “They used room service, purportedly from Joe, to dose us with Simple Simon.” Joe opened his mouth to protest and I held up a hand. “You had nothing to do with it. But the fact they knew you were with us is a concern. How would they? You should still be in the hospital.”

  Kavenaugh grunted and wrote something on his old-school paper notebook.

  Dollars to donuts the DPD would be his first call when we finished.

  “You saw the room they had us in, the room where they kept Tori. No way out, unless you went through someone, like Trang.”

  Heath took over the tale, running a weary hand down his face before beginning. “My half-sister Grace and I have had a complicated relationship since we were children.” He cleared his throat. “We’re both Talented. I control fire, and she can minimally compel people by speaking, but only when they’re within range, and not all that well. Or at least she didn’t used to be able to really use it.”

  Shocked silence met his words. Even I was surprised, and I’d seen him fry Trang to a crisp.

  He filled the silence before we could erupt with questions. “My stepfather started the Meece Foundation
, and CASI, for me. He recognized what I was, what Grace might grow into as she hit her teenaged years. I think it runs in our family, although he never confirmed that. But Grace was always ambitious, could sometimes be cruel, even before her Talent became apparent. Cruel or not, I had no idea she had the capacity to go this far. Luckily, she left home before my Talent began to manifest, so she has no idea of what I’m capable of, and Hugh wasn’t exactly her biggest fan. Even if she was his daughter. She always had a cold streak he couldn’t abide.”

  I’d had a bit more time to digest Heath’s new reality, but the rest of the men in the room all had a vacant look, as if they were still processing everything that’d been laid out. I figured it’d take them a while to figure out how to look at Heath through this new lens and see a teammate, not a strange new sort of animal. Because of that, and because we had a mission to complete, I jumped in.

  “We woke up, and a few minutes later someone, maybe Trang, but it was hard to tell, rolled in a TV that showed us Tori, asleep in another room. Then Grace’s voice came over the intercom,” I paused. “She wanted us to have sex to produce a child for her.”

  I’d thought the silence after Heath’s admission was deafening. I was wrong. The expressions on Kavenaugh, Roney and Joe’s faces were priceless. I laughed harshly. “I know, I still have a hard time believing it myself. When Heath basically called her out, said we knew she wouldn’t harm us or Tori, if what she really wanted was a Talented kid, Trang showed up.”

  Heath cleared his throat and I backed away from the story. This part was his to tell. “He had a shotgun, no way he would have missed if he’d fired. There was no other way out, and once I realized he’d been Grace’s asset since the very beginning, I lost my composure. He knows everything about CASI, about our work there. Everything.”

  It was as if a lightbulb went on over all of our heads. We’d all been dazzled by Heath’s display of power, of his admission of Talent. Jesus. All those kids at CASI. Trang had set up the security there, knew the vulnerabilities. Why hadn’t he acted before today?