Sweet Mercy (5 page)

Wow! Fluke took a few deep breaths himself. Incredible. Feeling what his kiss did to her… feeling her pleasure along with his, the intensity of her desire along with his own. The rich mix of her unfettered emotions stunned him: the momentary hesitation just before her passion swept it aside, her ferocity, her barely checked fury at its frustration, her embarrassment when Tamara let her know how many people had been in on that intimate moment.

Maybe others had felt something of it—one side of the equation—but he doubted it compared to what he’d experienced at the epicenter of the event. Her desire had been for
him
. She felt her pleasure at
his
touch,
his
kiss. He
liked
that feeling of being at the center of her world.

He turned away from the two women, stared out the kitchen window at a pair of sparrows squabbling in the eaves of a neighboring house. He stood silent when Tamara departed, giving Rachel a chance to center herself and giving his soldier a chance to settle—at least to half-mast.

“You okay?” Rachel spoke at last, her tone back to its mellow default. “I should have warned you. I didn’t expect the kiss—you couldn’t know—there’s no such thing as a private moment with me.”

He turned back to her. A pretty pink flush still touched her cheeks. She held her eyes lowered, not quite meeting his.

“I asked for it.” He used a joking tone. “We’ll just have to choose our time and place more carefully next time.”

She glanced up, surprise—and anticipation?—showing briefly as she caught his eye, before looking away again immediately.

“I know I promised you lunch,” she said, but he cut her off.

“Hey, it’s okay. Take some time. I’ll grab lunch someplace else—maybe home. I can handle throwing a sandwich together.”

He turned, heading out the way he’d come. What was wrong with him? Since when did he pass up on an advantage when he had one? But she’d been so upset. He felt like a mind reader, sensing so clearly her need to sort out her thoughts. She might as well have whispered it in his ear. He knew what she wanted and, given how good it felt, he intended to cultivate a habit of pleasing her.

~ * ~

After parking on the nearest side street, Mesmero walked casually past the house, noting the discreet sign posted by the front door. Yoga lessons at reasonable prices. Interesting. Which of the two he’d followed here taught yoga? Maybe he’d just knock at the door and ask about lessons? He only needed a few minutes alone with targets to get into their heads…

But wild Talents were unpredictable. That clairvoyant in Cincinnati had seen him coming and her talent had counteracted his somehow. He couldn’t get into her head, spoiling the plan to use her to predict the movements of his primary targets. He’d had to run. Good thing she hadn’t known who he was—or why he’d been after her. He hadn’t even told her his name, not that he’d left her in any condition to talk about it. And he hadn’t had his name then. Mesmero. The police would know it soon enough. At this point they had no reason to connect an attempted bombing in the Twin Cities with an apparently random attack in Cincinnati, or to connect either to the apparent suicides of Al Johnson’s ex wife and her new husband.

He’d lingered too long outside the house. Some nosy neighbor might notice. He had just turned back toward the corner where he’d parked, when a wave of horniness swept through him. He sported a major boner in that instant, felt like banging the nearest tree like some lapdog keen to hump the nearest leg. What the hell? He scanned the vicinity for explanation. No one. Nothing moved along the street shaded by large old maples, or on the green lawns flanking sleepy old houses.

In the next moment the lust passed as quickly as it had risen, replaced by keen embarrassment, then a growing calm. Damn. He looked back toward the house where he’d tracked the two presumed Talents. One of them must be some kind of especially potent projective empath. If he could control that… he could make those Capital Finance bastards
really
suffer. Hurt the empath, add that pain to the other suffering he planned for them.

Mesmero returned to his car and positioned it where he could watch the front of the house. He soon saw the man he’d followed earlier depart in the red Porsche.

~ * ~

By the time Rachel centered fully and had a bite to eat, Tamara’s class intoned their final ohms and left the house.

Tamara joined her at the kitchen table, helping herself to a couple of the dolmades left on the serving plate. “How are you doing?”

Rachel shrugged and smiled. “Better. I reminded myself how embarrassment stems from ego. I’ll get over it.”

“Good. That’s what I told my class. They’ll get over it too, but I think Mr. and Mrs. Cox will be getting it
on
when they get home.”

“At least it did somebody some good.” Rachel fielded another round of chagrin, just as the front doorbell chimed.

“You eat. I’ll get it.” She jumped up, waving Tamara back to her seat. Probably a student who’d forgotten something. The ashram had amassed quite a collection of odd scarves, sweaters, sun glasses, umbrellas and mismatched gloves over the years.

The figure she confronted as she opened the door could be a

student—she didn’t know them all—but he somehow seemed too stiff.

“Hello,” he said. “I saw your sign and wanted to ask about the classes.”

“Sure. I’m Rachel.” She smiled and ushered him into the office area—what had originally been the front parlor of the house—where they’d set up a desk and a few chairs. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“No. I can’t stay more than a minute.” He jangled keys in the pocket of his blue polyester sports jacket. “You got a brochure or something?”

“Of course.” Rachel plucked one from the display at the front of the desk and handed it across. Her fingers brushed his as he took it, and she recoiled, unable to conceal her shudder. The brief touch had given her the weirdest sensation—like flies crawling on her bare flesh. She wanted to wipe her hand, but restrained the motion. She took a deep breath and calmed. “That should tell you everything you need to know.”

“Thanks,” he grunted, turning back to the door. “I’ll look it over.”

Waiting until the front door shut behind him, Rachel wiped her hand down her slacks. Weird. Something about that guy rubbed her so very wrong.

“Who was it?” Tamara emerged from the kitchen.

“Potential student.” Rachel shook her head. “I gave him a brochure.”

She returned to the kitchen, collected the few plates, glasses and utensils from the table and started the hot water running. She couldn’t remember ever having as strong an attraction to a man as she’d had to Fluke earlier. She should stay the hell away from him. If there was anything she did
not
need in her life it was a man who could make her forget herself like that. She had no desire at all to involve the whole neighborhood in some giant orgiastic Love-In. Maybe not all, but enough of them knew of her talent. She’d never be able to show her face in public again. Her cheeks warmed again at the thought.

Breathe. Wash the plate, rinse the plate, set the plate in the drainer. Repeat. She should stay away from him, but what she
should
do wasn’t what she wanted to do. Thus divided against herself, her plan for the afternoon now included a yoga workout and meditation—until she got back some of her inner peace. In the process, she had to figure out how to reconcile her better judgment to her recently awakened libido.

~ * ~

After grabbing a quick lunch at a Greek shop in the City Center—his appetite whetted by Rachel’s mention of dolmades—Fluke headed over to the offices he’d donated to Team Guardian, situated in the twenty-story building he’d recently acquired as his first major real estate holding in Minneapolis. Real estate represented a departure for him; maybe not as chancy a venture for him as for some people, but he still preferred the rapid play of the stock market. He counted buying this place as “doing his bit” for the team.

As he entered the building the signal came in on his specs

announcing a team confab. He called that good timing. He found David Connolly in the conference room, simultaneously on the phone and on the specs’ communications channel, as usual. Fluke pulled a chair up beside him and gave a salute as he joined the channel.

“For those just joining in,” David said, “We’ve got an update on the bomber. Longo is in a coma state, but the police got a partial thumbprint from an inner component of the unexploded bomb. Not Longo’s. They ID-ed it as belonging to one ‘Albert Johnson,’ last known address in Milwaukee.”

“Last known?” Fluke interrupted. “How long ago?”

“Over ten years. Pre-Event. Get this: he lost the house to foreclosure—by Capital Finance.”

A chorus of ahs greeted that over the specs’ channel, and one live “aha” as another man entered the room. The teleporter—what was his name? As he took a seat across the table, Fluke gave the fellow a nod and consulted his database. Being new kid in town made him a big fan of databases. Tom. Tom Stanton.

“Before the foreclosure, Johnson had been let go from a sales job with Farmland Dairy Distributors and soon after, divorced by his wife. We figure he left Milwaukee about then, but he drops off the map. We’ve got nothing on him since the Event. No address of record, no driver’s license, no credit trail. His nearest relatives thought he was dead.”

“But his print was on the bomb?” Tom asked.

David gave him a nod.

“And we did some checking. His former employer, the man who fired him, was recently found dead at his home outside Cincinnati, apparent suicide. And three months ago Johnson’s ex-wife and her second husband died in Milwaukee—looked like a murder suicide, with the wife shooting the husband, then turning the gun on herself. But I think in light of recent events, we’ll be taking a second look at these deaths.”

“Could we have a puppet master on our hands?” Fluke asked.

“Given Longo’s state, that’s the working hypothesis.”

Groans greeted the news.

David went on, “It’s a rare talent. Hopefully we’re wrong. Could be drugs, hypnosis—some other form of coercion involved. We’ve got people checking Longo out before we make a final determination.”

“If Johnson made himself vanish for ten years, why’s he coming out of the woodwork now?” Rachel’s icon accompanied the message, the sight of it kicking Fluke’s system into high gear.

“We think his ex-wife’s second marriage triggered him somehow.”

Questions flooded in from the team members.

“How do we deal with a puppet master?” Stacy Peterson, telekinetic, according to the database, asked.

From Tom Stanton: “What’s his next move?”

“We got any photo ID on the guy?” asked Hank Stanislaw,

transmuter.

“Think he’ll try again for the Capital Finance board?” Fluke added his own top concern to the queue.

“The only photos we have are over ten years old.” David responded, “but I’m uploading one now over your links. And yes, we think he’ll try again for the Capital Finance board. He appears to be going after people he blames for his hard luck back pre-Event.

“Problem is, a puppet master is not likely to do anything directly. He’ll try to get at them using someone else—could be anyone.”

“I don’t see any clairvoyants on the local team,” Fluke noted.

“No. True, reliable foreseeing is a rare talent, and we just lost the nearest one, out of Cincinnati... looked like a suicide, but we’ll check on that one too. There are a couple more on the continent and we’ll try to get one on the case.”

“David?” Rachel’s icon glowed in Fluke’s VR field. “Um. I’ve seen this guy. Today.”

“What? Where?”

“He looked older than the picture, but he would… a little grayer, a little balder, but the same guy. He showed up here, at the ashram—not long after Fluke dropped me off.”