Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (40 page)

“This is so weird. Weird and
impossible.
My mother must have had this engraved a year ago. In which case all this black crud would have been cleaned away with the engraving tool.” She twisted the piece, trying to read the numbers. Almost impossible. If she hadn’t been looking closely, she would have missed them completely. Dismissed the little she
could
see as some sort of pattern on the inside of the metal circle.

She picked up a sheet of pale pink tissue paper, used when she boxed her own designs, and placed it on the inside of the piece of jewelry, then ran a soft pencil gently over the numbers, hoping they’d be able to read them a little better.

“Is that working?” Lark asked, watching her intently from across the room.

“Amazingly, yes.” Heather removed the thin sheet of paper from the circle and laid it on the table. All the numbers appeared to be there, revealed by the rubbing of the lead pencil. “We have what we need.”

She slipped the heavy metal bracelet onto her left wrist and stood. “Let’s go.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Lark said in a neutral tone. “We have professional operatives who are trained to do retrieval.”

“Excellent. Then send a bunch of them with me. Because I have to tell you, the thought of going anywhere near A, terrorists, and B, large tanks filled with fishy water scares the bejesus out of me.”

Lark gave her a cool-eyed look. “And what do you think
you’re
going to do when you get there?”

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“I’m going to do exactly as they tell me to do.” Heather returned Lark’s stare. “Hand this damn bracelet over. Then I expect your ‘professional operatives’ to get Caleb and myself the hell to safety. How long do I have to wait, and how many are coming?”

“You’re out of your mind. You know that?”

“In case you aren’t as empathetic as you claim, I’m in love with the damn man. Which absolutely makes me out of my mind. Is
that
reason enough?”

“Not if your craziness gets you killed.”

“Is
Caleb
the only person who can put a protective spell on me?”

“If you recall, that didn’t work worth a damn.”

“Because
he
did it.” The fact that Caleb’s spell didn’t work gave her a warped sense of satisfaction. He might not like it, but if what Lark had told her about the Curse and a Lifemate was true, Caleb did love her. Despite his actions and attitude.

That remained to be seen. But first things first. “Can you protect me?”

“I can,” Keir Farris said grimly, appearing over by the window in a shadowy flash.

“She likes us to knock,” Rook told him.

Four raps sounded in quick succession. Two on the table in the middle of the room, one on the closet door, and one on the wall by the kitchen.

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“Excellent,” said Heather dryly. “Gratifying to know that wizards can be trained.”

The El-Hoorie brothers looked more like their Greek mother than their Arabic father, Caleb though, his brain thick and fuzzy from the drugs they’d pumped into him. Apparently their parents had hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down, then added insult to injury by breeding a pair worse-looking than themselves. Both brothers were large mounds of too-tanned flesh, curly black hair, and the flat features of a pair of identical gerbils. Kicking their asses could only be an improvement.

Hell, being capable of
moving
right now would be nice.

Unfortunately, he was weaker than a baby, and freaking drugged to the gills to boot. They’d propped him up on a bench and left him there half an hour ago, knowing he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d just mastered
blinking
five minutes ago. The exercise had left him dizzy and exhausted.

Twin sets of mud-colored eyes had bored into his, daring him to fuck up their plans as they’d slapped Flexi-Cuffs on his wrists and ankles tightly enough to instantly cut off his circulation. Considering at the time that he was barely conscious, he guessed they weren’t quite as stupid as they looked. He wasn’t going to be out of it forever.

It only fucking
felt
that way right now.

He tried to snap open the cuffs magically. The effort left him limp and sweating, and the cuffs secure.

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Damn it.

From his forced perusal of the three-story-high kelp forest tank, he caught sight of a watery El-Hoorie image as they directed the men to various positions in the semi-dark aquarium behind him. The aquarium was obviously closed, and the enormous building was empty save for himself, the El-Hoorie brothers, and their men. About twenty of them in all. Other than an occasional squeak of a rubber sole on the floor, and the susurrus of voices, it was eerily quiet.

The brothers weren’t actually stupid at all. They hadn’t gotten where they were in the world of terror—Number 4 on T-FLAC’s terrorist watch list—by not thinking things through all the way. The fact that they’d also managed to think on their feet and grab him was an indication of the level of their intelligence.

And, Caleb thought groggily, trying to force his brain to come onboard, him being here, showed the level of
his
intelligence. Swamp scum was smarter than he was at the moment. Un-fucking-believable that he’d walked directly into their hands. It sucked that it was his own fault he had prime seating for this event.

He’d come to in the hospital—apparently it had been touch-and-go, and he’d fallen into a coma.

Yeah—whatever. He’d woken up, back at the same San José facility where he’d spent those endless months after his knee replacement. Even before he’d opened his eyes, the first thought as he swam back to consciousness was
Heather.

In his more dead-than-alive addled brain he’d had some crazy notion that he should talk to her. Make her not…hate him. In a mental fog, he’d even thought about the “L” word. Stupid. It was just that he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had unfinished business.

He’d yanked out the IV and found his clothes. He wanted out of there. He wanted, God damn it,
Heather.
It was a minor detail that he was only just ambulatory, and his brain was uncooperative. He’d been on autopilot.

Heatherpilot.

The first person to ream his ass, if he got out of here in one piece, would be his doctor. Barely able to stand, sure as shit not thinking straight, he’d slipped out AMA. Against doctor’s orders, and feeling the
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warm drip down his side indicating that he’d messed up the man’s handiwork before he reached the front door of the hospital.

The second would be Lark. The list went on from there.

Heather, with the way he’d left without saying goodbye, probably just thought he was out of her life.

And she probably wanted him to stay there. She didn’t need to know how close he’d come to biting it for good in her apartment.

He’d stuck close to a hedge in the dark and made it down the long, private driveway without being seen by security personnel, who were watching for people trying to get in, not break out. They were good, but even in the condition he’d been in, he was better.

By the time he slipped through the gates and walked three blocks in search of a cab, he was holding onto walls to keep upright. Drenched in sweat, barely conscious, he knew he’d done something unbelievably stupid.

Shit, he might as well start a list. A
long
list of all the stupid shit he’d been doing lately.

Maybe this whole couvade syndrome had somehow eaten up the majority of his brain cells. He had no idea. But he’d better freaking snap to it and find some smarts
fast.

The El-Hoories must’ve lain in wait and followed him from the hospital. Later, he’d figure out how the hell they’d tracked him down. He hadn’t been quite able to get his cell phone off his belt, and they’d snatched him up as he’d been searching his pockets for the change he needed for the pay phone.

That injection into his throat had come fast.

He’d woken up here. With the fishes.

Whatever drug they’d given him was still sluggishly floating around in his system. That, combined with
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his already drastically weakened state, made him an easy freaking mark.

Note to self: Revivification sucks the juice out of a man. Got it.

They’d used some sort of paralytic, which had been extremely effective. And here he was, tied to a bench. Damned uncomfortable, but not life-threatening. He tried to move. His eyelids were still all he could control. Hard to kill a guy with a fast-moving lid, he thought, too doped up to be as scared as he knew he should be.

He wasn’t used to being or feeling helpless. He wasn’t used to operating without his powers for this long either.
That
scared the crap out of him and got a good bit of adrenaline surging through his veins.

He’d depended on magic to get him through almost every type of situation, had depended on it
being
there, all of his life. He’d always taken his powers for granted. Yeah, he was a good shot, sure he could use hand-to-hand combat to take down his enemies. But it was his
powers
that always saved the day.

Yet here he was—powerless. For how frigging long?
That
was the billion-dollar question.

Caleb almost wept when he found that he could now manage to wiggle his thumbs. Yes! He concentrated on moving each finger in turn, relief washing through him as they each seemed to work.

Sluggishly, but mobile.

It took every scrap of concentration, but he magically snapped open the cuffs on his ankles and wrists.

With the paralytic added on to everything else his body was trying to fight, he needed to flush out his system. Fast. Keeping an eye on the activity, Caleb conjured a matte-black jar containing a high-potency vitamin/ energy drink.

He chugged it down, filled it with water, and kept drinking until he couldn’t manage any more. While he’d managed, at great effort, to summon it, he was still incapable of enough movement to hold it in his hand, and he didn’t have enough power to keep the glass suspended near his mouth for long. It fell to the floor with a soft clatter, then rolled beneath the bench. No one appeared to notice the sound.

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The water seeped into his parched cells, reviving him while he waited for the vitamins to go to work.

He opened and closed his fingers. Made fists. Yeah. Getting there.

The brothers’ main claim to fame was a proclivity for blowing things up, and they were chillingly good at it. Preferably locations where loss of human life could be counted in the hundreds, if not thousands. Like the London Underground station they’d blown up last spring. Or the Tokyo baseball stadium they’d made a big nasty hole in six months ago. Killed seven thousand people. It didn’t take any wizardly skills to know this aquarium was their next target.

Since arriving, he’d watched their men positioning enough C4 to blow the lid off the place. For what purpose Caleb had no idea. Who the hell were these guys planning on killing? A handful of schoolkids on a field trip tomorrow? Didn’t make sense.

There was an easel with a sign on it at the far end of the room, but he couldn’t read what the poster was announcing. Whatever the event, the brothers planned on killing it in their usual spectacular way.

While Caleb exercised his fingers and tried to bring blood back into his hands, he watched for the brothers’ return. Since he had already played the Who-has-it-where-is-our-money game for the better part of half an hour, with various new bruises to prove it, he knew they were waiting for his brain and mouth to connect before giving him another opportunity to answer their questions.

In the meantime they knew, and he knew, that he wasn’t going anywhere, and wouldn’t be chatting for a while.

The kelp forest in front of him would have been cool, if he hadn’t felt like the proverbial axe was about to fall. He knew enough of the plan to realize they were waiting for someone tonight. Who?

Bad guys didn’t have a toll-free number to T-FLAC, so he was curious to see just who they’d called.

Who did they think could tell them where their money was?

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Couldn’t be Heather. They didn’t know where she was, and even if they did, she had Lark and his team with her. No one was going to get near her now.

A leopard shark did a lazy one-eighty through the gently swaying kelp. The glass on the giant tank was a good seven, maybe eight, inches thick and the air filters and mechanics were merely a faint hum in the silence. The tank was open to the room, and pale moonlight filtered through the gently undulating amber-colored fronds, highlighting the silver scales of a school of sardines as they darted about.