by Maya Banks
As Ari had requested, as soon as Ari “surrendered” herself to the guards and went without a fight, her father gathered her mother to his side and stood directly in front of the cot, his arms firmly around her.
Ari stared back at them as she was roughly shoved through the cell door. She memorized every marker, every detail, taking mental measurements of as much of a barrier she’d need to encompass them both and keep them from harm.
Then she smiled and mouthed “I love you” just before one of the guards yanked on her arm and hauled her out of view of her parents.
It was hard for Ari to act resigned, afraid, and tentative. Like she feared these bastards. When what she wanted to do was rain hell down on them with a fury they’d never experienced in their life. What life they had left, that is.
But she forced herself to be patient, knowing she needed this to go off without a hitch. She needed to be far enough away from her parents so that the most devastation would occur in the center of the compound and not the periphery where the cells were positioned and where her parents were being held.
She focused on and anticipated seeing the shock and the eventual realization that they’d seriously underestimated her. That they had fucked with the wrong woman. Revenge was thick in her mouth, a coating on her very soul. Not a taint. Not a scourge. Nothing she would ever be remorseful over.
It was sweet. Or so the saying went.
Because the world was a better place without people like these. People who thought nothing of death, intimidation, hurt and fear to achieve their twisted objectives. The hell of it was she still didn’t know what their primary goal was. Only that they wanted to use her—her powers—in a way she knew was evil.
It could be said she was as twisted and as evil as they were, and she supposed there was some truth to that sentiment. But at the end of the day, her actions, her conscience, the consequences for her choices were between her and God. And she was okay with answering to the higher power who’d gifted her with her own “higher power.”
She was once again shoved into the sterile, blindingly white laboratory with the same two goons—this time she was going with Pete and Repete—and the smarmy “medical professional” who no more had a medical degree than she did.
“So what now,” she said tiredly, purposely injecting extreme weariness—and resignation—into her voice.
The lab rat rubbed his chin in an exaggerated fashion and studied her intently, his eyes flashing with irritation.
“So far you’ve proven to be a major disappointment,” he said in disgust. “And considering the time and money that have gone into the careful cultivation of gaining access to you, disappointment is an understatement.”
“Gee,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “I feel so insulted that a lab rat and his goons find me a major disappointment. What’s the matter? Were you expecting me to be able to achieve world peace? Or maybe fix the ozone issue. Oh wait, there’s also the issue of all the starving children in Africa.”
She began to press each digit of her hand to count down each point.
“Or maybe you wanted me to find a cure for Ebola. There’ve been at least ten cases reported in the U.S. over the last month or so. Want me to annihilate all the African nations on the Ebola watch list for you?”
“For someone who seemed willing to do anything to save your parents, you show none now,” “Pete,” aka Goon A, said in an icy tone.
She sent him a mocking smile that had him furrowing his brow in brief confusion.
“You can’t touch my parents,” she said softly, satisfaction forming her smile.
“Clearly the brain bleeds leeched most of your intelligence,” the lab rat said, shaking his head. “Perhaps a demonstration is in order.”
He turned to Repete, Goon B, and issued an order that would have made Ari’s blood freeze in her veins if she wasn’t certain that she was capable of pulling this off. Now more than ever, as much as she’d asked her parents to believe in her, she had to have absolute faith in herself. There was no room for error or a breach in her concentration. This was the most important stand she’d ever take in her life. She’d die before failing her family.
They turned on the monitor, and to Ari’s relief, her parents were still standing in the exact spot, in the same position as when she’d left them. She breathed a silent thank-you that they’d trusted her and prayed that they wouldn’t react to whatever this asshole had up his sleeve. Because shit was about to get real.
Goon A barked an order to execute her mother through his radio and mere seconds later, without even opening the cell door, two minions appeared on the periphery of the monitor and opened fire.
Three mouths dropped open when the bullets bounced harmlessly off an invisible barrier surrounding her parents. Her father had instinctively wrapped himself around her mother, turning so he would take the bullets if Ari had failed, but they hadn’t moved from the boundary she’d set. Thank God for her father’s rigid discipline.
The lab rat turned his seething glare on her and began advancing, a syringe in his hand. His two goons also began to close in around her and she let her powers fly.
Every single thing she’d dreamed up while lying in the cell with her parents unrolled with ease. She didn’t dare close her eyes to concentrate on what she was attempting to achieve over a much longer distance because she faced the very real threat of being drugged, which would render her ineffective. The barrier around her parents would simply disappear and they would die.
So one problem at a time. Her parents were safe. She still had faith that Beau would come to the rescue. All she had to do was wreak some serious havoc in the meantime. And right now? After all these bastards had put her and her family through?
She was thinking this was going to be a lot of fun.
Resolve and determination settled over her, cloaking her with confidence she hadn’t imagined ever possessing. And she set about unleashing the hounds of hell on the three men who posed the most immediate threat to her.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” she said in a soft, menacing voice that didn’t so much as tremble with fear.
Gone was the meek, shrinking violet weak Arial Rochester. Yeah, that’s right. Rochester. Her name. Her heritage. Blood meant nothing. After all, look where it had gotten Caleb and Beau and their siblings.
Really shitty parents who didn’t one damn about them. Yet her adoptive parents had given her more love in twenty-four years than most people were blessed with in a lifetime.
“That’s my line,” Goon A said coolly. “I have a score to settle with you, little bitch. And don’t think I’m not going to enjoy every second. The people who pay me may want you alive, and now that we’ve confirmed your powers, your price just skyrocketed, but there’s nothing to say I can’t make you wish you were dead.”
Before she could react, taunt him back or make a wickedly sarcastic remark, he pulled out a pistol and put a bullet in the back of lab rat’s head. Before Goon B could respond to that shocker, he also received a bullet. In the forehead. Right between the eyes.
Holy shit!
Oh God, oh God. Okay the little fucker had completely stolen her thunder and had temporarily scrambled her brains, and now she was at a loss as to what the hell to do next.
Play it cool, Ari. Never mind you’ve never been a cool kind of girl. You freak at the slightest fright. You’ve always been frightened by your own shadow. Get over it. You’re not that girl anymore.
“Well, thanks,” she said cheerfully, her mind racing as she ran through the possibilities. For once, her photographic memory came through in spades. Yes, it was helpful in her profession as a teacher, not that she’d likely ever have that job again. But now it was going to save her ass because her mind was processing each scenario at the speed of a computer, discarding ones with the least likelihood of succeeding, latching on to the ones with more merit.
His eyes narrowed at her quirky response.
“What?” she asked. “You not
used to being thanked? My mama did teach me manners. You just took out two of the guys on my hit list. Now if you’d be so kind as to shoot yourself then I could move on down the list and call it a day.”
She was doing a miserable job of covering her panic and hysteria and the bastard realized it. He actually smiled at her. It was a perfectly evil smile, worthy of any movie villain. But then they could be the lead roles in a sci-fi movie. Hell, they were living a damn movie because who would ever believe this shit?
Her mom was so going to wash her mouth out with soap. Apparently being around Beau and his co-workers had lowered her verbal acuity by more than a few points. She’d never cursed so much in her life, despite her father’s own propensity for F-bombs.
“What I think is that you’re scared shitless, Arial,” he said in a mocking tone. “Not so brave now that you have blood on your hands. Were you playing pretend? Or were you really going to kill us all in cold blood?”
“Damn straight,” she said, anger injecting a bite to her words. “And I’ll suffer not one iota of remorse when I send you straight back to hell, where you crawled from. This time I hope you stay there and rot for eternity.”
He clapped, the sound jarring, startling her, his eyes laughing, mocking her at every turn.
“Watch and learn a lesson,” she hissed. “Never piss off a woman who has the power to take your balls and feed them to you on a plate.”
She caught his look of surprise just as he lifted straight up into the air and hurtled backward, slamming into the wall several feet away. The force with which she sent him flying through the room made the sound of his impact loud and forceful. Satisfaction gripped her and it was her turn to openly mock him.
“Amazing how much of a pussy men become when you threaten their wee little manhood,” she drawled. “Bet you don’t have that much to work with anyway, so I don’t imagine it’ll take much effort on my part to separate you from your smaller head.”
She donned a thoughtful expression and cocked her head to the side just before she sent him straight upward, crashing into the ceiling. She held him suspended, pinned against the ceiling as though he were caught in a spider’s web.
“Although there are limits to my powers,” she said in amusement. “I have to be able to imagine it in order to manipulate it and if there’s not much to work with . . . Well, you understand my problem.”
His eyes glittered with fury and then, strangely, triumph. A chill went up her spine just as the overwhelming urge to duck and react defensively overtook all else. She dropped like a rock and then performed a powerful leg sweep, rotating blindly behind her.
She connected with something hard and solid, pain shooting up her leg at the contact. Judging by the muffled oath, her assailant hurt worse than she did, though. Splitting her concentration between two objects, or rather people, was more difficult than she’d imagined it would be.
Goon A, still suspended from the ceiling, dropped about a foot before she shot him upward again, but the lapse in concentration cost her dearly. A fist connected with her chin, sending her reeling back several feet. The damn man had bricks for hands.
She grasped her jaw, massaging as she focused on keeping the man who scared her the most where he could cause her no harm while planning her offense against her newest assailant.
Her gaze lighted on the pistol the goon trapped on the ceiling had shot the lab rat and Goon B with. Evidently, he’d dropped it when she slammed him into the wall. Remembering what Beau had told her about Glocks she whispered a prayer that this was a Glock as well and she didn’t have to figure out how to mentally turn a safety off. But then surely the goon wouldn’t have engaged the safety after killing two men.
Now that she was effectively splitting her mental energy between three things, she found it a lot harder to summon the pistol from across the room. It went skittering erratically over the floor, bumping and knocking. She winced hoping to hell it didn’t arbitrarily go off because if she had to ward off a speeding bullet, she could kiss all her other focus goodbye.
Finally the gun lifted into the air and floated toward her, unseen by her newest assailant. The damn goon shouted a warning though, and the man turned just in time to see the gun dangling in front of his face.
Shit!
He reached for it and her instincts, or self-preservation, kicked in. She pictured the gun leveling itself, aiming for the man’s shoulder, because damn it, she just couldn’t bring herself to be the cold-blooded killer she’d almost convinced herself that she could be.
The gun went off and the man went down, holding his left shoulder as blood rapidly spread, seeping through his fingers, coating them red.
She flipped the goon off and then sprinted from the room, knowing she had a hell of a lot more to do before she could call it a day. She squared the ceiling goon away, compartmentalizing him in a section of her mind, issuing a firm command for him to stay.
Then she realized, to her utter horror, that she’d been thinking she was having to split her focus on three things when, in fact, she had four things going on simultaneously.
Her parents!
Oh God. What if the barrier had slipped? What if she’d killed them because she’d spent too much time focusing on not killing someone who actually deserved it? She and her conscience were going to have a serious come-to-Jesus meeting when this was all over. Because clearly, having a conscience didn’t get one ahead in life. If anything it put her at a major disadvantage in the evolutionary chain.
Her plan would have to change on the fly. She couldn’t very well bring the building down and reduce it and everyone in it to rubble if her parents were vulnerable. Damn it all. She wasn’t an on-her-feet thinker!
She’d committed the winding passageways to memory—again, thank you, eidetic memory—on her way out today with the guard dogs because her first trip through them wasn’t exactly under the best circumstances.
It took her three of the longest minutes of her life before she finally entered the long hallway that housed the ancient jail cells. Where the hell were they, anyway? What kind of creepy place had a lab and prison cells?
She was at full sprint, counting the cells, until she skidded to a halt outside the one that housed her parents. The door was wide open and not only was there no invisible protective bubble. There was absolutely no sign of her parents.
What she did see froze her heart to the very core and fear blazed like a wildfire through her veins.
There were multiple puddles of blood—a mortal amount of scarlet liquid pooled on the floor exactly where she’d instructed her parents to stand. Fresh blood. Worse, there were smears of blood that ran from the spot in front of the cot all the way to the door, and as she looked down, she realized it had continued into the hallway. What the hell had they done to her parents? Had they shot them and then dragged them off to parts unknown?
While she was being snarky and sarcastic, indulging in taunts with her enemies, her parents had been left unprotected because she wasn’t adept at multitasking with her newly tapped powers.
Utter despair, grief and . . . rage flooded her mind, swamping her in wave upon wave of agony. She’d failed. She’d vowed to them she could do this. Had made them swear they’d trust her.
And she’d failed.
Desolation and vast emptiness invading her soul, she slowly turned, her eyes glowing so that she felt the warmth emanating from them. Robotically, she stalked back through the passageways, the twists and turns that would take her back to the center.
God help whoever crossed her path. Gone was her conscience, her squeamishness over killing quickly and efficiently. Revenge and retribution consumed her. She could taste it, feel it. Wrapped herself in its cold and soulless embrace.
A sound alerted her to the presence of men in the passageway with her. They stepped in front of her, an ambush.
She lifted her frigid gaze, completely unruffled by the fact that they were spraying the entire hallway with bullets. They bounced off her, off the bar
rier that had formed without her even needing to focus on its construction. She saw fear in their eyes, the realization that she was untouchable. It was the last cognizant thought they’d have.
She simply snapped their necks—a quick mental flick of her powers and they collapsed onto the floor. She kicked one aside as she pushed past them, not giving them any more attention than they deserved.
They would pay. They would all pay. Starting with the bastard still suspended from the ceiling where she’d left him minutes before.
THIRTY-FOUR
“WE’RE going in hot,” Beau said grimly as the highly classified stealth chopper prototype that did not officially exist zoomed over the land, hugging the treetops and traveling at a dizzying rate of speed. “This has to be fast, as clean as possible, until we retrieve Ari and her parents. Once they’re accounted for and safe then I vote we level the entire goddamn place.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Zack muttered.
“That gets my vote,” Eliza said, a scowl darkening her pretty features.
Dane simply nodded his own agreement while the other two operatives, Isaac and Capshaw, gave a thumbs-up, something that amounted to eagerness reflected in their eyes.
They were all looking forward to some serious payback after the breach that resulted in Ari’s abduction. It was a black mark and a blow to their pride that they’d been fucked on their own turf. For a second time.
When this was all over with, Beau was going to take great satisfaction in leveling the fucking house that had proved nothing more than a means of hurting the people he loved. And if he was lucky enough to have a future that included Ari—God he hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for major disappointment—then he’d build a fucking fortress that would make security at Fort Knox look like child’s play.
Ari would always need protection from the public eye and fanatics wanting to harness and use her powers for their own twisted agenda. Oh hell no. Not while he breathed.
Just as Caleb had closed ranks around Ramie and was ruthless in his protection of her, so too would Beau do the exact same with Ari. He may not have understood his brother’s overzealousness when it came to Ramie in the past, but he damn well understood it now. Identified with it. He’d spend the rest of his life keeping Ari safe, no matter the cost.
“Almost there,” Dane said, his eyes sharp with readiness for the mission ahead. “Everyone needs to be ready to go on my count. This has to be fast because we’re open targets when we descend the ropes from the chopper.”
Dane, with his endless connections, half of which still managed to bewilder Beau, had gotten his hands on a fucking military stealth helicopter that was invisible to radar and looked like something out of a futuristic movie.
It always pays to have friends in low places.
That was Dane’s pet phrase and one he frequently whipped out when asked how the ever loving fuck he managed to get his hands on something most civilians would never even know existed, much less actually see. Not that they’d know what the hell they were looking at if they ever did lay eyes on it.
Zach, who’d headed the recon of the partially underground compound in the Mojave Desert, had uploaded scanned schematics from ground and air surveillance. Using a high-tech classified heat-seeking device, they’d been able to identify three heat signatures just hours before on the periphery of the compound where old jail cells were housed. And Beau had been able to confirm that Ari was one of those heat sources by pinpointing her location with the implanted tracking device. Thank God they’d at least gotten that accomplished before everything went to hell or they truly would be uncovering a needle in a haystack, and he shuddered to think of Ari being out there and him not having the first clue where to start their search for her.
The building used to be a sanitarium in the 1800s. The prison cells were later added in the early 1900s when the hospital had turned into a maximum-security prison for the criminals clinically insane and exceedingly dangerous to society.
The place was creepy as hell and had been deserted for decades. Or so the records stated. It was owned by a corporation not publicly traded and there were zero public records on file for the company that pointed to yet another dummy corporation. Things got interesting, however, when Eliza uncovered a link between PRI and the fictitious corporation that owned the facility.
PRI, or Psychic Research Incorporated, leased the main holding as well as half a dozen outbuildings on the sprawling thousand-acre parcel. Coincidence much?
Apparently some nut research foundation was not only active in cultivating and exploring psychic phenomena, but had invested a mind-boggling amount of money into an actual breeding program disguised as a surrogacy foundation called Creative Adoption Solutions.
Beau had a sickening dread that Ari was a product of that breeding program; and worse, courtesy of Eliza’s mad hacking skills, further digging had uncovered a complicated and well-disguised record of substantial “investments” to the foundation by none other than Franklin Devereaux.
How to explain to Ari that not only was she the product of an experimental birth, but that his own father had a significant role in funding its “research”? Suddenly Gavin Rochester’s association—and subsequent visit to Beau’s father a mere day before his parents’ suspicious deaths—seemed not only plausible but in fact highly probable.
Neither Beau’s nor Ari’s fathers was a shining example of the founding principles of capitalism and success the old-fashioned way—working your ass off and earning it. No, these two men were so steeped in shadowy dealings that they’d never hold up under concentrated scrutiny no matter how well they covered their tracks.
The question was whether Ari’s father had had a hand in Beau’s father’s—and mother’s—untimely deaths. The “coincidences” were mounting and were quite staggering. He was disgusted by his father’s participation in something so completely fucked-up and wrong. But then it seemed, the more he discovered the kind of man his father was, the more he realized that he was likely only uncovering the tip of the iceberg, and God only knew what other nefarious acts his father was involved in.
Beau sighed because it was one giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. If Ari’s parents were recovered alive, the bombshell of the true circumstances of her birth and his father’s role in the whole sordid affair was going to be one big-ass hurdle for Beau and Ari to overcome in their relationship.
Ari could only be expected to forgive so much, and she was already reeling from the shock of finding out she wasn’t Gavin and Ginger Rochester’s biological daughter. The additional information could simply prove too much for a woman already on the verge of breaking.
