Riding the Storm (27 page)

"We're
safe for now," he said. "Unless you think they could get through that
storm."

"I
think it's bad enough to hold them off for a while. Besides, they don't know
these swamps the way you do. I have a feeling this is off the maps."

"Yeah,
it is. But these people must have other ways of tracking us."

She
nodded. "I just hope they don't have Trackers."

"This
marsh doesn't hold tracks," he said.

"No,
not like that. Trackers are people who can see psychic footprints. They see
auras instead of actual tracks. Doesn't work in water, though, so we may be
okay."

"What
kind of people do you deal with?" he asked, and the look of concern on his
face must have been obvious, because she reached up, touched his cheek.

"Don't
worry about me, Remy. I can take care of myself. And you." Her clothes
clung to her, and God, it was obscene for him to be this turned on now, but the
tie between lust and danger was impossible to ignore.

"I
need to know more about this enemy we're up against," he said.

"And
I need to make sure you keep up the weather," she murmured, her fingers
already working the buttons of his shirt. She pulled it open, ran her hands
along the flat of his abs. His nostrils flared and his breath seared his throat
while he concentrated on her and the weather.

"What
more do you need?" he asked.

"Tornados,"
she said. "Or a microburst. Something that will screw with their
communications and their ability to move. Something big."

He
nodded, watched as she knelt down before him, unzipped the straining fly and
freed him.

"You
can do this, Remy. I need you to do this."

His
fingers twined in the softness of her hair as her mouth enveloped him. He
shuddered at the warmth of her mouth against his rain-chilled body and forced
himself to just let it go, to be Haley's hero for this moment.

He'd
never had to do this before—force a storm to grow more powerful than the
atmospheric conditions would naturally allow. But for what seemed like hours
after she'd stopped him twice from coming, Haley pressed her naked body against
his and they kissed and fondled like teenagers making out in their parents'
living room, seizing the moment and not caring if they got caught.

Finally,
the frenzy built beneath his skin until the electricity shot off his body and
he felt the earth shifting beneath their feet. A howl like an oncoming train
echoed in the distance as he concentrated on the coordinate points where he'd
last seen the enemy, and when she let him sink into her warm heat, he prayed
he'd done enough.

Oksana
Minsky curled her fingers into her palm until blood began to drip down her
nails. "Imbeciles." She ground her teeth but succeeded only in
grinding her temper even hotter.

"You
imbeciles! We had him. How could you let him get away?"

Niles,
the pasty-faced Brit whose extraordinary telekinetic powers made killing him a
waste, turned to her, muddy and sopping wet after the downpour and tornado that
nearly killed them all. "We had no way of knowing Remy had such control.
Perhaps if you and Apollo had tortured more information from his father, we
wouldn't be standing here like bloody fools."

Her
fist plowed into his face, producing a satisfying crunch, and he fell backward,
clutching his nose. "Only one of us is a
bloody
fool."

She'd
needed no reminder regarding her failure. The formidable empathic abilities
that had helped her lure Remy Senior out of the bar had allowed her to steer
their interrogation in directions most likely to gain the responses she required.
Unfortunately, the feelings of guilt that rolled off him in unbearable waves
had probably enabled him to resist all her forms of torture. The man hadn't
spoken a single word about his son. Not even when they took his pinky finger.

Oksana
didn't doubt that they could've broken him, but they hadn't had time. Setting
the trap for the younger Remy had been their priority.

"We
have the ACRO agent's equipment." She supposed the speaker, an
excedosapien with remarkable strength, thought he was being helpful, but like
most excedos, the trade-off for his enhanced physical abilities was a serious
lack of brain power.

"Her
computer will have safeguards. The moment we attempt to retrieve the files, the
data will be destroyed. It's useless."

Cursing,
she slapped a mosquito feasting on her arm and hoped her next deployment would
be someplace more civilized. She hated capture missions, by far preferring the
undercover spy trade that allowed her to work alone like she had with the KGB.
Itor offered better pay and more interesting assignments, suited for her
empathic talents, but sometimes, like now, she wished she'd never left the
other agency.

Because
although failure in the KGB meant punishment, failure for Itor meant far, far
worse. She wasn't looking forward to telling Apollo, the team's leader, about
their fuckup here.

"Niles,
if you're done bleeding, call Apollo and tell him to proceed with plan B. And
tell him to make it extra-painful." She stared into the tornado-twisted
copse of trees where Haley and Remy had disappeared. "If I have to pay for
this, so will that ACRO bitch."

Haley
peered through the hazy darkness at Remy's muscular outline as he prepared for
battle. He'd strapped his knife to his arm and another to his ankle. Practiced
hands fastened a chest harness into place, and then, after checking the ammo,
he slid his pistol into the holster.

"You
always go on vacation prepared for World War Three?"

She
expected a smile at her teasing, but instead he shot her a look devoid of any
and all emotional traces of the hot sex they'd just had. Apparently, he could
dismiss their physical connection much more easily than she could, given that
her body still hummed with post-orgasm afterglow.

"This
wasn't a vacation. It was an ambush." Closing his eyes, he concentrated,
and the rain and wind pounding through the bayou increased in intensity. The
tornado had ripped a path south of them, but had fizzled after his climax.
"One you set for me when you paid my dad to lure me here."

"I
know it's too late for an apology, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
Guilt tore through her as she checked the ammo in her own weapon. "The bad
guys weren't part of the plan."

"Then
what was?" He crouched next to an opening that looked out over the trees.
"Were your people going to lock me in on invisible choke hold instead of
whoever the hell is out there? And how did they do that anyway?"

Sinking
down near him, she placed her gun next to her and tried not to cringe when her
shredded skirt stuck to the cuts on her shins. "Telekinesis. One of their
agents must have a lot of power."

"That's
great. What else do I have to watch out for?" When she didn't answer,
because she wasn't sure how, he turned to her. "Haley? I need to know what
we're up against."

"I
don't know. Itor is pretty secretive, and I'm not an operative, so I'm not
privy to all the intel." A breeze sliced through her wet clothing, and she
shivered, rubbed her arms. "But based on what I've seen at my agency, we
could be dealing with powerful psychics, people with natural night vision,
people who can communicate with animals or plants, super-humans with radar or
superior hearing, speed—"

"Speedsters,
Brawlers, Mentalists," he murmured. "Are you asking me to believe in
the existence of multiple agencies full of comic book superheroes and
supervillains?"

"Yeah,
well, hello, Mr. I Control the Weather. What's that called in your comic book
world?"

"An
Elementalist." He jammed his fingers through his wet hair, leaving unruly
tufts. "It's just… Shit."

"What,
Remy? You can tell me."

His
dubious snort told her exactly how much he thought he could tell her. He peered
out into the darkness, his mouth a grim slash, and the wind that had started to
die down picked up again.

"It's
been difficult enough for me to accept what
I
do," he said finally.
"So the idea that there's a whole world of people out there who are like
me, who I've been reading about and drawing since I was a kid…

She
stood because sitting was making her crazy, but there was no room to pace in
the creaky little shack. "There are a lot more than you think."

"So
who are these Itor guys? Where are they located? What government do they work
for?"

"They
work for whomever hires them. We think they have a central command, but they
also have several small cells scattered around the world."

"What
about your agency?"

"We
work out of one location, but there's talk of expanding." She threw back
her head and looked up at the ceiling, and immediately wished she hadn't. Even
in the darkness, she could see misty spiderwebs the size of her head hanging
from the boards. "We've got to get to a phone. My boss needs to know about
this. They can get us out of here."

"I
can get us out of here."

"Haven't
you been listening? We're not dealing with a handful of gun-toting
terrorists."

"I
can—"

"No,
Remy. You can't. I know you aren't a team player, but for once, you need to
trust someone else."

"And
you're that someone? You, who has been lying to me from the second I met
you?"

"Not
everything has been a lie."

"Name
one thing that hasn't."

Her
heart shifted in her chest as though warning her not to admit anything
personal. But Haley had never been one to follow orders, not even ones that
came from her own mind and body.

"I
wasn't lying when I said I liked you."

His
body went rigid, and then he swung around. "That was probably the biggest
lie."

Why
she should care whether or not he believed her was a mystery to her, but the
fact that he didn't, that he blatantly rejected her admission, made her burn
with humiliation.

"Think
what you want," she snapped. "And keep being an asshole, because that
way maybe I can stop liking you."

A
long pause broken by the sound of rain on the roof settled into the tiny shack.

"Ah,
hell," he muttered. "I want to believe you. Don't know why. But I
do."

It
was crazy, the way she'd wanted to slap him one minute, and now she wanted
nothing more than to climb into his lap and let him hold her. Especially
because they might not have much time left. Either Itor would capture them or
ACRO would rescue them, but either way, their moments alone were numbered.

"I
hope you can," she said quietly. It had been a long time since she'd asked
anyone to have faith in her. After all, if her own parents couldn't believe in
her, how could anyone else?

Knowing
she shouldn't, because every touch chipped away at the emotional barrier
between them, she reached for him, but a stabbing pain in her temple stopped
her short. Cringing, she pressed her palm to her forehead. Now was not the time
for a migraine. Not that this felt like a migraine, but…

A
bolt of agony tore her skull apart. She cried out, dimly heard Remy repeating
her name over and over. She grasped his wrist, tried to look at him, but images
floated into her vision.

Remy's
father. Battered, bloody and nearly unrecognizable. A man was beating him,
kicking him. Then he turned, his thin, angular face filling her vision.

"You,
Ms. Holmes, have caused us a lot of trouble. The way you caused your parents a
lot of trouble by being born despite your mother's attempts to terminate her
pregnancy with herbal remedies."

Dear
God, how did the man know that?

"Bring
Remy to us, and we'll forget the time and effort you've cost us. Agree now, and
we'll make you rich beyond your wildest dreams."

"Never,"
she shouted, and she felt Remy's hands come down on her shoulders, his
concerned voice asking what he could do.

The
man smiled sickly and pain stabbed her brain like punctures from a nail gun.
"Tell Remy we have his father, and if he wants to see him alive, he'll
come to Lafayette. South Red Rover Road. Three o'clock tomorrow." The man
slammed his boot into Remy Senior's face. "And Haley, don't speak a word
of this to ACRO, or I swear to you, I'll skin this man alive and send you the
remains while he's still twitching."

The image
fizzled, but Haley still couldn't see, could feel only the warm trickle of
blood running from her nose and the dull knock of a pounding headache. She felt
Remy's hands on her body, but she couldn't hear him. Dizziness and nausea
gripped her, and the world spun, just before she toppled over and everything
went dark.

Remy
had had plenty of medic training, had done his fair share of plugging gaping
bullet holes in his teammates—and himself—with his bare hands. He'd carried
unconscious men across a field of raging gunfire, and held their hands while
they lay dying. And still, he'd never had the tear of absolute fear cutting
through his heart like it was right now, with Haley draped unconscious in his
arms.