Fatal Strike (22 page)

The phone rattled, clunked, as someone dropped the headset, and a couple seconds later, a woman spoke, in an overloud, professional tone. “Hi, this is Kim of Beat Street Style! Can I help you?”

“I was looking for Keiko,” Lara repeated. “Is he—”

“He’s not here right now! May I take your number?”

Lara tried to speak, but her voice cracked, blocked. She coughed. “Please,” she forced out. “Please, just tell me. Is he okay?”

The woman hesitated. “Are you the press?”

Fear ballooned, dark and sickening. “No. Just a friend.”

The woman’s voice went up in pitch, quivering. “I’m sorry to tell you this, then. He’s not okay. He’s dead. Both of them. Him and his boyfriend, Franz. Bill went up . . . he found them, and they were . . .”

The voice continued, but Lara no longer heard her words.

Cold swallowed her up. She had been an idiot, an asshole.

The phone bounced on her feet. Her fantasy bubble had popped, and now she was naked in the cold. Outside the Citadel. The connection between her and Miles had broken. She hadn’t done it consciously.

People all around her, their mouths moving, but she was a million miles away. Keiko was dead. Franz, too. She’d killed them both, as if she’d mowed them down with a car, or pushed them off a cliff.

Just like she was going to kill all these people in the room with her, who were trying so hard to help her. All their kids, orphaned at best. If Greaves didn’t decide to punish their kids, too.

And Miles. He was talking, shaking her, his dark eyes full of love and concern. She could not hear his voice over the roar in her ears. He was so beautiful and gentle and brave. She was deflating, the world disintegrating as the vortex sucked her down . . .

She recoiled with such violence, she jolted back into her body. She was on the floor, wedged between the couch and the coffee table.

“. . . the hell is going on? Did she faint? Is she conscious?”

“. . . Christ, we need a doctor, this shit’s way over our heads—”

“Keiko’s dead,” she said. “And Franz, his boyfriend. Both killed.”

The room fell dead silent.

“I murdered them with that telephone call,” she said. “Just like I’ll murder all of you if I stay anywhere near you.” She looked at Miles. “You, too.” She shoved his encircling arms away from herself. “Don’t touch me. The more you touch me, the truer it gets.”

“What?” Miles yelled. “What are you talking about? What’s true?”

“That I’ll kill you,” she repeated. “You’ll die because of me. Oh, God.” She lurched up onto her knees. “Where’s the bathroom? Quick!”

“There’s a utility bathroom off the kitchen,” Aaro offered.

“Lara!” Miles shouted after her. “Hey!”

She bolted, the high-tops squeaking on the kitchen tiles, and made it just in time. She lost the sandwich, the coffee, the orange juice. Up it all came. The violent heaves felt like being torn to pieces.

When the retching was over, Miles tried to help her up, but she swatted his hands away, rinsing her face in the big utility sink. She grimly did the cleanup herself, wiping down and spraying the toilet.

She caught a fleeting glimpse of herself in the small mirror over the sink when she straightened up from that task, and looked away fast. Frightening. Those red, wet eyes, staring out of her white face.

She splashed with cold water again. Fighting for air. The feeling was unbearable. Writhing on the floor, begging for death—unbearable.

“Lara.” Miles was still in the door. No shoving or snarling rudeness would dislodge him. “Get back inside my shield, please. You’re safer when you—”

“No.” She whirled on him. “I can’t. It’s not safe, Miles. It’s not just about me. It’s about Keiko and Franz, and all your friends, and their kids! And you, too! You’re going to die, if you keep trying to help me. I’ve seen it. Understand? In a vision. I have
seen
it.”

“No, I’m not going to,” he said. “Trust me, Lara.”

Despair sank deeper, looking at his stubborn face. He was so convinced that he was doing the right thing. Blindly following his own heroic instincts, even though they would drive him right into his grave.

She refused to let that happen. “Get away from me, Miles.”

His gaze did not flicker. “Too late for that, Lara. Dream on.”

“It’s not a dream. It’s reality. I saw you dead! Do you get it?”

“You saw Tokyo, too. Doesn’t have to happen.”

“I paid a price for that! I sacrificed Keiko and Franz for Tokyo! Who do I sacrifice next? Your friends? Their children? Your mom?”

His mouth tightened. “We’ll find a way, Lara.”

“Get away from me. Run!” She flapped her hands at him.

“Your friends, too! I’m poison, I’m toxic! I’ll kill you! Can’t you see it?”

“You’re just having a freak-out,” he said. “Stop. It’s stupid.”

Oh
fuck
, it was the vortex pulling her from underneath. She fought it, with all her energy. She just did not want to see anything her personal oracle might show her right now.

She
was the vortex, she herself. She saw it, with horrible clarity. How anyone near would be sucked inevitably to their doom.

Pain jolted her. Knees, thighs, spine, jarring her teeth. She’d fallen to her knees. Miles was down there with her instantly, trying to hold her, but she fought him off furiously. “Don’t. Just don’t. Please.”

“It’s not you!” he insisted. “You’re not the one who’s toxic. You’re clean, Lara. Your heart is pure.” He pinned her flailing arms. “You’re not the one who killed Keiko and Franz, and you’re not going to kill me. I won’t let you. I’m tough. So get inside.
Now.
”

An odd quality reverberated in his voice that shocked her into doing exactly what he asked, as if he’d pushed some button while she wasn’t looking. It happened before she could stop it, her mental dance.

Suddenly, she was through the wall. Behind his shield.

good u stay there damnit

She could not bring herself to reply, but oh, God, it felt so good.

And it was so wrong. How had he bullied her into this? She was stupid and weak and selfish, and still she sagged there against him, in a state of empty, dumb relief. Staring blankly at the plastic buckets and pails, the shelves of cleaning supplies, the washer, and dryer.

His arms clamped around her. He smelled so good. He embodied everything she knew she could never have. Or even try to have.

People were talking from the bathroom door, making suggestions, lecturing, scolding. Miles said something sharp, and swung the door shut. The loud
thunk
sent mops and brooms toppling around their heads like tumbling toothpicks.

Miles shoved broom handles away and held her against his chest. Inside his mind, too. The embrace was warm, full of welcome. But she couldn’t take comfort with that vision burned into her mind’s eye.

The vision of his face, staring up from the bottom of the vortex, with dead, staring eyes.

 

“How far now?” Greaves demanded.

Silva, in the front passenger’s seat, had the self-preservation not to indicate how childish that question was, even telepathically. In fact, the man and woman in the car with him were both breathlessly careful with their thoughts. All three had been in the room on the day that Chrisholm had been chastised.

“Fifteen more minutes to the address where the phone signal originated. If the phone is still located there, of course. You should be in range in about—”

“I can calculate my own fucking range, Silva. I have a grasp of basic arithmetic.”

“Of course, sir.”

Greaves stared at the mountainous forest flashing by from the tinted window, vaguely noticing the pain in the palms of his hands. He turned them over. Half-moons, from his carefully buffed and filed fingernails. The crescents turned red as he watched. Blood welling.

He was literally trembling with eagerness, to sink his claws into Lara Kirk and her rescuer. Her shield was like a beacon of hope. The only ray he’d had since those first, early years after Geoff went into the coma. Before he realized that the boy really, truly would not come out.

His people had compiled extensive files for Lara Kirk and her parents, friends, lovers, acquaintences. There was no figure in those files who corresponded in any way to the physical description or profile of the mysterious figure who had rescued her. The man was clearly enhanced with psi-max or something comparable, and had astonishing physical characteristics, as well as combat skills that suggested military training. He must be gifted with long range telepathy to have communicated with Lara Kirk from outside the complex.

Most importantly, he had to have a compelling reason to help her.

That was the part that perplexed him the most. Lara was alone in the world, family gone, no husband or siblings, not even a casual lover, as far as his sources could tell. And the list of human beings on the planet capable of what Lara’s rescuer had done was very short. Cross-reference it with anyone who might have even a passing interest in or connection to Lara Kirk, and he came up blank.

Unless, of course, there was a new rival factor operating out there that he knew nothing about as of yet, and they wanted Lara’s unique abilities for themselves. That was a hypothesis that made sense to him.

In any case, he would soon know the truth.

He reached out, his mind a soft, wide net that extended miles in every direction. It was easier to sweep like this if he’d already tasted the flavor of a mind before. He homed in on familiar signatures much faster. The minds that he had touched thirty-six hours ago had all been very distinctive. All five of them shone very brightly.

Perhaps that was why he picked them up from so far outside his usual five- to six-mile range. Three of them he had tasted the morning before. The unshielded ones. Male, adult, intelligent, aggressive. Lara’s shooter, and his cohorts. They shared a bond that puzzled him, until it clicked into place. Genetic similarities. Brothers, or cousins.

Odd. That did not fit his hypothesis. Family connections suggested a more emotional reason for the rescue, but who? Why?

He scanned for Lara, but felt nothing. Other signatures surrounded his three. He sensed the fourth one, the shielded one that had been on yesterday’s attack team. Silva and Levine were in his car, and Biehl, Mehalis, and Wilcox were in the other. Miranda’s telepathic abilities were on a level with Anabel’s, and Silva, besides his knack for coercion, had a specialized ability almost as precise as Greaves’ own—to cause telekinetic damage on a microvascular level. He could constrict a person’s blood vessel, provoking a fatal heart attack. He was the ideal assassin. Greaves had trained him personally.

“Drive faster,” he said.

“Sir, I’m already going eighty-five, and—”

“Shut up!” He closed his eyes to savor the contact. Almost close enough to read their thoughts.

He could hardly wait to tear them apart.

S
omething was coming down. Something bad.

Even closed in the bathroom, locked in one of those apocalyptic hugs with Lara, Miles felt the change in the energy outside the door. His neck, his balls. Tingling in a nasty way.

He knocked aside the tangle of broom handles. “Let’s see what’s going on out there.”

There was a knot of agitated people around the bar when he emerged. He pushed closer.

Davy was doubled over, his head resting on the bar, holding his temples. His eyes were squeezed shut. “Oh, shit,” he gasped. “Bad.”

Davy being stoic almost to the point of insanity, that sight scared the living shit out of Miles. “What’s going on? A headache?”

Davy slowly lifted his head. His face was gray, contracted. “We didn’t leave soon enough,” he croaked. “He’s here.”

“Yeah.” Sean’s face was pinched, “I’m feeling it, too.”

“And me,” Connor said, grimly. “Asshole. Squeezing us.”

Miles looked around at the people in the room. Davy dragged in a sobbing breath, clutching his head.

They were all here in answer to his call. He had dragged them into this, assuming as always that these exceptional people could handle anything thrown at them. But nobody could handle this crazy shit.

“Got a sense of what direction he’s coming from?” he asked.

Davy lifted a hand, wagged his finger “no.”

“Just pain,” Sean muttered. Sweat shone on his forehead.

Miles turned to address the room. “We’ll split up, and take all the vehicles. Nina and Aaro each drive one, with your shields up. I take Lara, and go south, Nina, you turn right and take Hauser Road north, Aaro, cut across the pasture and offroad until you get to the other side of the valley, and go east. Kev, you and Edie get your car out, too. Everyone. No vehicle can stay here for them to trace.”

Val slapped Miles’ back, and held out two sets of keys. “I brought my motorcycle. It is in the back of our van. You might need it, no? Take the van.”

Miles pulled out his own keys and handed them over. “Thanks, man.”

He grabbed the bag by the couch that had the computer, the router, the smartphone, and slung it over Lara’s shoulder. He helped Aaro lead the staggering Davy out the door. He was slumped, eyes half closed, blood streaming from his nose.

Once they’d heaved Davy into Connor’s vehicle, he muscled Lara into the van. Tam’s car, Nina at the wheel, was already barreling down the driveway at top speed. Connor’s vehicle, Aaro driving, tore straight across the pasture, due east. Tam and Val followed Aaro in Miles’ pickup, peeling off in another direction. Kev and Edie followed them.

He made haste, wheels spinning madly in the gravel before they found purchase and propelled the vehicle, heaving and bouncing along the driveway and onto the road, southbound. Which is when he realized he’d left the goddamn gun upstairs, too. Christ. In mortal danger, with the woman he loved, and he was stark fucking naked. Unarmed.

“Miles.” Lara’s voice was hollow. “Your friends won’t make it in time. The shape Davy’s in.”

The dead tone to her voice scared the shit out of him. “They might,” he insisted. “Those guys are bad-ass. You would not believe what they have pulled off in the—”

“It has nothing to do with toughness, or smarts,” she said. “He’s too close. He’ll track them down. And he’ll kill them.”

“Fuck,” Miles muttered under his breath. “Fuck, Lara! So what do you want me to do?”

“It’s something I have to do, Miles,” she said. “Not you.”

He realized what she intended, and fear stabbed deep. “No, Lara,” he said. “Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t you fucking
dare.
”

“Listen carefully. I’m leaving the Citadel. If I offer myself up to him as bait, he’ll follow me, and the others will have a chance.”

“Don’t! Stop, just a second, and let’s—”

“When you’ve gone a ways, stop the car, and leave me. Just run. He’ll never find you, not with your shield.”

“No! Fuck, no! I’m not leaving you!”

“It’s the only way.” She looked at him, with terrible, quiet purpose in her eyes that drove him absolutely bugfuck. “Thanks for everything.”

“Wait! Wait just a second! You can’t just—”

“Goodbye,” she whispered. Words appeared on his inner screen.

i love u

And the bright place in his head went dark.

He howled, swerved madly to avoid a fencepost, fishtailed on the gravel in his panic. “Goddamnit, Lara!”

But she was already past hearing him. Here eyes were wide, staring at nothing, hands to her temples. She gasped for breath.

Miles took a sharp curve on screaming tires, yelling obscenities as her convulsions started.

 

“Stop the car!” Greaves barked. “Turn. Go back!”

Silva braked abruptly. “But the others are—”

“I don’t care about the others!” He squeezed his eyes shut, lunging for her. She shone in the mist like a pearl. He lunged for her, again, with desperate, slavering eagerness.

And he had her. He wound himself around her, psychically immobilizing her. Exulting. “Lara Kirk is south of us. Turn!”

But it took too long for Silva to do the maneuvers on the narrow road. Halfway through, Greaves lifted the vehicle and its inhabitants two feet off the ground, spun it a hundred and eighty degrees, and let it drop with a teeth-rattling thud to the roadway. “Drive!” he snarled. “Tell the others to follow!”

Silva obeyed. The other car would lose the scent of the other men without Greaves’ guidance. They weren’t close enough for Wilcox’s hunter talent to lock onto a target. But Lara Kirk and her rescuer were more tempting. And considering the state in which the mysterious ogre had left his staff the last time he visited, six people might by no means be too many to deal with the man.

 

Miles veered around the hairpin, fishtailing on loose gravel, perilously close to the sheer edge. A dry streambed on the hillside that fed into a big culvert under the road caught his eye. Further on, a logging road switchbacked sharply uphill once again, in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t a plan so much as desperate impulse. He braked on the curve, leaped out. Hauled out Val’s precious Ducati, and shoved the gleaming machine into the huge culvert, along with the dirt, the gravel, the drifts of dead brown scrub oak leaves and pine needles. He tossed his computer bag in, too. Back to the van. Lara was gasping for breath. She had slid down, crumpled half on and half off the passenger seat.

He revved the engine, whipped it around the sharp turn on two wheels, and bounced and rattled up onto the logging road, lurching and tipping and swaying on the deep ruts.

Lara was terribly silent. Her body swayed with the centrifugal force, hitting the gearshift, then the door. Limp and flopping.

Where to stop was an artibrary decision, based mostly on the fact that he could not listen to that silence for another second without exploding. He jerked the vehicle to a stop. Raced around, and extracted Lara’s rigid, shaking body. She was still breathing, but her eyes were wide, dilated to vast black pools.

He couldn’t feel her, couldn’t find her.

He loaded her onto his shoulder, and took off through the trees. Not that there was any point in running while Greaves had a telelpathic fix on her. The first flat, grassy place he found, he let Lara’s body slide down, and laid her gently on the ground.

She stared up at the sky, breath shallow, heart racing. Her body trembled, as if she were lifting a weight that was too heavy for her.

He slapped her cheeks. “Lara! Goddamnit, Lara! Do you hear me? Get back inside! You can’t do this to me!”

Fucking duh. Could, too. The world did what it wanted. It knocked people around with no regard for their feelings or wishes.

Still, he shook her. Bellowed and pleaded. Bawled into his hands, like a child. Hit the ground until his hands bled. He was so fucking furious, he was having a tantrum, slapping at the tree branches.

Jesus, just let him do this for her. Let him go and do the mortal combat with that evil motherfucker on her behalf. Let him be the one to get trashed, for God’s sake. He’d been totaled already, so what the fuck, why not? What else was he good for? Throw him out into the ring, let him freak out, crush everything that came his way. Mayhem Miles.

He’d do anything, if she’d just open her eyes and come back.

He held her in his arms, his face wet. He would follow her, but where was she? How the fuck did she get to that place in her head? She was the active one, the seasoned psychic traveler who made the wild flights into the otherworld. He just huddled inside his shield.

Unless . . . he didn’t.

Bone weakening fear thrilled through him at that thought.

If he opened his shield. If he even could at this point. If he went out into the dark, naked as a newborn in that other dimension where his logical brain could not guide him. Could he find her?

It scared him to death. He’d tried so hard to block all that stuff out, hold it away from himself. The whole concept of psi offended his logical ideas of the way the world ought to be, so he hid from it, like a kid hiding under the covers with a flashlight.

But Greaves was coming. And Lara was dying.

He could hear them already, with his enhanced senses. The vehicle on the road below was slowing on the hairpin turn to come up the hill. The engine hummed and labored as it climbed. Two cars.

Worst case scenario, it killed him. No biggie. His life was worth nothing anyway if he didn’t try.

Blood trickled out of Lara’s nose, splitting into twin rivulets.

He called up his parent’s faces in his mind, and he offered a silent plea for forgiveness for being so distant. For not saying goodbye.

He wiped away tears and snot with his sleeve. Grabbed Lara’s cold hand, with his own grubby, bloody one. Tried to open the shield.

It wasn’t wired to open from the inside. All his efforts had been aimed at automating the mechanism, making it stay shut without having to think about it. He had put no effort at all into automating a reverse process. Each time he tried, he froze, and choked.

Not until he held the image of Lara’s beautiful face in his mind did he make any progress. Those shining eyes, the soft, shy smile. Her hand on his chest. Pressing his heart. Their lovemaking.

And he got it. The softness. Opening.

It was slow, awkward. Gears grinding, sparks flying, the shriek of metal against protesting metal, big wheels rolling, big bolts retracting.

Darkness swirled in, chilling him. Filling him. An infinity of . . . he had no way to frame it, other than darkness. Other-ness.

He moved through it like a swimmer in a dream, reaching out. Casting a huge net, like he did when he was fishing for ideas, but he was fishing for her. He was a flare in the darkness, a beacon fire.

It didn’t take long. He was bound to her. They were like a rubber band stretched out, poised to snap back together.

He sensed her presence, and her struggle. She was wrapped in a strangling, consuming darkness, like shadowy spider-silk. Fighting it.

He gathered his energy into a ball, and hurled it like a bolt of blinding light, straight at that amorphous thing that was clamped around Lara. Surprise jolted it loose . . .

Get back inside, now now now
, he wanted to scream, but he had no voice, no interface. He wanted to bellow his frustration but he had no throat, no body.

And suddenly, like a light flashing on, she was inside. His shield snapped shut like a clam instinctively against the attack from outside.

Energy battered against his shield. He hunched over her, panting, with deep, rasping breaths. Stinking with fear sweat.

He opened his eyes. She was looking up at him.

wt the hell were u doing? goddamn it why didnt u run?

if u have 2 ask he snapped back. cmon lets go

Cant move im done pls go without me run run run

fine then give up if you want 2 watch me die tnx 4 caring

go! fuck off!

no

Her body shuddered and arched as she suddenly dragged in a breath, like she’d been underwater. “Goddamn you, Miles,” she croaked.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Move.”

He made a move to pick her up. That roused her right away.

She pulled out of his grasp, and followed along in a staggering run, with much stumbling and a terrifying amount of noise. Periodically Miles stopped, held her tight against him, listening around the racket of her panting breaths, and her thudding heart for Greaves and his team.

His perceptions kept spreading, wider and wider. He didn’t feel any limits to them. He was amped up to the max. Information organized itself into a topographical grid, with his attackers as bright moving points of energy. No self-doubt. No stressing about making some dumb-ass mistake and paying with Lara’s life. No time to play out the worst-case scenarios. He was in the zone. Everything was channeled into the algorithm that crunched data and churned out an array of continually shifting strategies. Taking their opponents out, doubling back down to the road, and hauling ass while Greaves still assumed they were on foot, that was their best bet, at this precise second.

He dragged Lara into a grove of young trees, pushing her down into the wild rose bushes. “You stay there,” he said. “And stay inside the shield. Got me?”

Her eyes looked haunted. “Where are you going?”

“To clear a path,” he said.

She gave him a short nod. b careful

He moved silently down the hill. Maybe his shield had a component like Nina’s. They didn’t seem to sense him at all, but he could clearly feel the closest three opponents, moving steadily uphill. All enhanced up the wazoo, but in distinctly different ways. One was a telepath. Miles had enough experience with telepaths to recognize the vibe. The guy—somehow, he knew it was a guy—was scanning for Miles’ thought waves, but his probes just slid over his shield like it was oiled.