Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (34 page)

“
Mine, too,” Penny agreed,
drawing me back to the present.

“
Have either of you been
able to contact her, then?” Frederick asked, again checking the
immediately vicinity for eavesdroppers.

“
I had a weird flash,” I
said. At the same time, Penny said, “Nope.”

“
And?” Frederick asked me,
making an out-with-it gesture.

“
I was in Victoria’s
office last night,” I started. “I wasn’t actively trying to contact
Tals, but it was almost like she reached for me. She was in the
ocean, being pulled under the waves. Then, she started flying. But
she was struck by lightning, I think. I don’t know. It happened so
fast. And Talia booted me out of her mind before I could ask her
any questions.”

“
What time was that? Do
you remember?” Frederick asked.

I shook my head. “Not sure. Two in the
morning? Three, maybe? I tried reaching out to her when I got back
to my apartment, but she was blocking me. I also tried to view her,
since she can’t prevent that. But that didn’t work either.”

“
I also couldn’t get to
her,” Penny added morosely. “I’ve tried both mental communication
and viewing, too. Nothing either way—just a blank
space.”

Frederick nodded, as though he’d expected as
much.

“
It took me a couple of
tries,” he said. “I finally saw her about an hour ago, just before
the meeting. I wasn’t even trying, either. It was sort of like she
reached out to me, too. I was just sitting in Victoria’s office,
listening to Warden Cali explain that his people hadn’t made any
progress with their search and bam.” Frederick clapped his hands
together once, miming a collision. “Out of nowhere, I’m staring at
a girl’s dirty face under a fur-lined hood. She said something
like, ‘Oy, you’re awake,’ and then everything went black
again.”

“
Okay, so Talia is
somewhere cold,” Penny reasoned.

I could practically see the wheels in
Penny’s head turning as she calculated the distance Talia could
have traveled between the time she’d been missing and the top speed
of the pods. With unprecedented speed, Penny made a mental list of
all the possible places Talia could be. Then, she crossed off the
ones with an average temperature above freezing this time of year
and was left with only five options.

The process was so dizzying, I regretted
reading her thoughts while she did it.

“
Why do you think the
vision might be fake?” I asked Frederick.

“
I don’t know, exactly,”
he admitted. “It was hazy, for one. Almost like it was
out-of-focus. And it wasn’t at all what I was expecting from Talia,
given her current situation. But, in general, it just seemed…off.”
Frederick shrugged, his expression apologetic.

“
Maybe she’s been
drugged?” Penny suggested.

“
I guess that might
explain it,” Frederick replied. “It would also explain why I
couldn’t view her earlier—sometimes it’s difficult to view drugged
or sleeping people.”

“
When, though?” Miles
asked, confused. “She had enough control to escape. She also took
down two guards inside her cell. They both claim she used her
powers on them, though I’m guessing that’s just their excuse for
screwing up. Regardless, when exactly would she have been
drugged?”

Penny shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The
guilty expression that momentarily darted across her features spoke
volumes to me. Penny had a theory. One she wasn’t ready to voice
aloud.

I poked Penny’s mental shields, testing for
vulnerable spots. No dice.

Just as I was about to take a mental
sledgehammer to Penny’s defenses, I noticed that Frederick also
suddenly appeared uneasy.

“
Spill,” I barked at him,
deciding to first take the path of least resistance.

“
Talia definitely has use
of her talents,” Frederick confirmed. “As you all can imagine,
Warden Cali is incredibly pissed about that. He wants to know how
this happened. He’s accused everyone and anyone who’s had contact
with Talia in the last thirty days of wrongdoing. Even Victoria.
The councilwoman denied any knowledge of it, of course.”

He paused, and I pounced on the opening to
demand that Frederick get to the point.

“
What does Talia having
her powers have to do with her being drugged?” I
snapped.

It was Penny who answered.

“
That escape was
elaborate. I mean,
extremely
elaborate. It wasn’t simply that the opportunity
arose and she took it. At least, not entirely. Whoever orchestrated
Talia’s jailbreak would’ve needed a lot of time to devise the plan,
then even more to put all of the pieces in place. What’s more,
Talia would have needed access to her talents for it to work.” She
stared at me pointedly, imploring me to connect the
dots.

Unfortunately, I understood exactly what she
was getting at.

“
You think someone was
behind Talia’s escape,” I stated. “Someone who wanted her out of
jail and alive, but not necessarily conscious. Someone who lured
her out, then drugged her once she was free.”

“
The pieces fit,” Penny
responded quietly. “It makes sense.”

I realized that she’d been thinking the same
thing from the moment we considered that Talia might’ve been
drugged.

“
Now, the real question
is, who wants Talia badly enough to go through so much trouble to
get her?” Penny continued.

My mind turned immediately to Nightshade and
the list of targets. Someone was willing to pay a great deal for
her capture.

Out of nowhere, another
memory surfaced on the heels of that one—the text communications
Talia received at the auction. An unknown number had sent her
several messages. The last one had said:
I’ll be seeing you soon.

I wanted to kick myself for not remembering
sooner. Or put my fist through a wall.

“
Did anything more ever
come of those text communications?” I asked, interrupting Penny as
she started to say something about Anya.

Frederick stared at me blankly.

“
The ones from the
auction,” I clarified.

Victoria had contacted me while I was off
doing the peace rally circuit to tell me the cryptos had been able
to trace the messages back to the sender, but the communicator was
no longer in use. It had been ditched shortly after the
auction.

“
Oh, no. At least, not
that I know of. But you can ask Victoria in a minute. That’s
actually why I came over—she wants a private word with both of
you.” Frederick nodded towards me then Penny. He turned to Miles.
“She didn’t specify whether you were to come along.”

“
I’m the kid’s personal
bodyguard. Where he goes, I go,” Miles replied.

Frederick’s blond eyebrows jumped halfway up
his forehead.

“
Bodyguard?” he asked
incredulously. “Erik is the last person who needs a bodyguard.
Especially on the islands.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s more that he’s
supposed to guard other people from me. You know, in case I go
mental.”

“
Fair enough.” Frederick
wasn’t nearly as surprised by this admission as I’d have liked.
“Look, we can talk about all of this with Victoria. We’d better go.
You know how she hates to be kept waiting.”

The four of us stood.
Victoria was still at the front of the auditorium speaking with the
warden and several other council members. She didn’t seem to see
us, but then two words screamed inside my head:
My office
. One look at Penny told me
that she’d heard them, too.

“
I thought she hated
mental communication,” I said.

Frederick smiled knowingly. “She’s gotten
pretty used to it while you two were gone. It’s the only way she
and Talia could talk during their daily visits.”

The fact that Victoria had been visiting
Talia shocked me more than hearing the councilwoman’s voice inside
my head.

Talia

The Atlantic Ocean

Three Days Before the Vote

The pod broke the surface nearly one hundred
miles west of the Isle of Exile. Anya was explaining about a small
town where friends of her family had a château in the French
countryside. I’d stopped paying attention to her constant nervous
rambling not long after we’d zoomed at top speed away from Vault,
more interested in the plan forming in my own mind.

I’d told the council that I had no idea as
to the whereabouts of my wayward mentee. Technically, that was
true. Sort of. Kenly never told me where she planned on going after
leaving Walburton Manor, and I had never asked. But prison provided
me without a lot of downtime, long stretches where I had nothing
but time to contemplate the many wonders of the messed up world I
currently lived in. One of the many things I’d pondered was where
Kenly might have gone. I’d narrowed the infinite number of
possibilities to a mere handful.

Well, actually just one, to be precise.

All roads lead to
London,
I thought.

Dead set on taking down the Poachers, Kenly
and her merry band of cohorts would have wanted to locate
themselves in the center of the action. From Victoria’s mind, I
knew James, Kenly’s boyfriend, was from a Poaching family and had
contacts in London. Most notably, this included his older sister
Bryn, who had been feeding UNITED information on the despicable
organization for several months. Prior to gatecrashing the Poachers
auction, I’d read background intel on the group and knew that many
of the major players owned and operated nightclubs in London.

UNITED had the same information that I did.
I attributed their inability to find Kenly to her superior
cloak-and-dagger skills, as opposed to the possibility that she may
not have gone to London after leaving Walburton Manor.

She’s there,
I told myself. It was a fact I felt deep in my
bones, because it was where I’d have gone in her shoes.

Laying low with Kenly and her friends for a
couple of days would buy me a few days to think of a better,
long-term hidey-hole. It was risky for everyone involved. And had
there been another option for me, I wouldn’t have even considered
putting Kenly and the others in jeopardy.

Maybe this is a bad
idea,
I thought, not for the first time. I
hated the idea of leading UNITED directly to Kenly’s
doorstep.
She’s a big girl. Let her
decide,
I told myself. Once I contacted
Kenly, I would explain the situation, including all of the dangers
involved with harboring a fugitive, and then she and the others
could talk it over. If they decided I was too big a liability—well,
that was a problem for later.

UNITED wanted Kenly, but she wasn’t a high
priority target currently. With the treaty vote nearly upon us, the
Created as a whole had moved down the list. An escape convict,
however, was a top priority. UNITED would spare no expense and no
amount of manpower locating me.

Oddly, that knowledge brought about a fair
amount of guilt. Another tidbit I’d gleaned from Victoria’s mind
was the chaotic state of the world. Each dawn brought with it a
dozen new attacks, norms assaulting Talented, Created, and anyone
and everyone they so much as suspected fell in either category. The
reverse was true as well. The animosity between the two races had
never been higher, at least not in Victoria’s memory. UNITED agents
were working with local governments to keep the peace until the
vote. My escape would draw those agents away from their posts so
that they could search for me.

“
My family has a lot of
friends in that region, they’ll help hide us,” Anya was saying for
the umpteenth time.

I was sitting in the driver’s seat, even
though the pod was programmed on autopilot. Scanning the control
panel, I located the release switch for the glass hood.

“
Good. That’s very good,” I
mumbled absently in response to Anya’s comment.

I began shedding my prisoner garb, until
only my cotton undergarments remained.

“
I’ll find a way to get
word to E that we’re safe. He won’t be able to meet up with us
right away, but he’ll come soon. I’m sure of it. Wait, Talia, what
are you doing?”

Anya had finally noticed that I was
practically naked.

“
Oh, right. Sorry. Of
course, you’ll want to change. That prisoner number is a dead
giveaway. I bet there is a UNITED uniform in here somewhere,” she
said, answering her own question.