No Love for the Wicked (5 page)

The first hit came before I could brace myself. Blood poured into my mouth as the side of my face shattered. The pain was excruciating, but I didn’t care. This was just an anger session, where Father would beat me until I was a broken mess on his floor. I’d rather be Father’s punching bag a million times over than the guinea pig in one of his many experiments.

It wasn’t too long before he complained that his fists weren’t creating enough damage; I wasn’t bleeding as much as he preferred. So he brought out the antique engraved blades he kept locked away in his office safe. An hour later, I pretended to be unconscious and peeked through swollen eyes to the big-screen TV built into the wall
behind Father’s desk. Blood had pooled around my head; the side of my face was gone from the slicing cuts of Father’s razors. But from what I could make out, the monument lights had looked really pretty on the TV.

Maybe I’d get the chance to see them for real sometime.

“No one responded to you,” Thirteen said, pulling me back to the present.

I turned to face him. He stood by the door, watching me. “The agents out in the bull pen,” he continued. “Not a single one noticed you any more than they would have any other young, attractive woman. How is that possible?”

I knew what he was referring to, and I smiled a little in pride. “I can hold it back now. The sensual allure that radiates off me, it’s another aspect of my power that I’ve learned to control. It’s not hard—kind of like holding back a yawn—but I’ve found it’s easier to deal with people if I tone it down a bit.”

Thirteen’s eyes glistened, and I could feel that he was impressed. My smile widened.

He drew my attention to the opposite side of the room. “They’ve been questioning him for over two hours. I’d hoped they’d made more progress than this.”

I stepped up beside him. The wall was actually the window side of a two-way mirror. The room next door was an interior conference room—no windows, only straining fluorescent lights. At the end of a long table, a middle-aged man sat sweating in his seat. He wore a uniform of some sort and had unbuttoned his collar. He tugged at it as if it still wasn’t loose enough. I’d never seen the man before. But the two men facing him sent my heart thumping.

“It’s Jon and Charles!” I exclaimed, then slapped my hand over my mouth.

“It’s OK,” Thirteen assured me. “They can’t hear you.”

Jon Heldamo, my former teammate, stood at casual attention. His light-brown hair was trimmed and gelled perfectly. He wore a sports jacket and khaki pants that I knew weren’t required but were just his style. If Jon was here, chances were that Theo was somewhere close by. My body grew tingly as I reached out to the rest of the building. Fifty-two floors, a couple thousand people, but no Theo.
Damn.

As Jon spoke, he strolled behind the empty conference chairs, moving with the arrogant authority of a natural leader. He stopped a few seats away from the man being questioned and put his hands on the back of the chair where Charles Hilliby sat glaring.

I stifled a cringe at the sight of Charles and his buzz-cut hair. Wearing heavy cargo pants and a tight black turtleneck, he looked every bit the angry ex-soldier I remembered him to be.

“Who are they questioning?” I asked.

“He’s a pilot,” Thirteen explained. “For the last two months he has been flying your father and Senator Kelch to various locations throughout Eastern Europe. Chang broke the encryption on the travel logs from the private airport they used, so we have times of departure and arrival but no recorded destinations. Captain Bennett here logged in as pilot for every flight. We believe the brothers have been making regular visits to somewhere outside Romania, but we need the pilot to confirm. Unfortunately, he seems to have absolutely no memory of ever flying your family anywhere.”

Charles pounded his fist on the conference room table, making Captain Bennett jump in his seat. The captain ran his hands over his face, then held out his palms as if pleading. It was no use. They could beat him with questions all day long—hell, they could beat him with sticks all day long—it wasn’t going to change the fact that Uncle Max had erased the man’s mind with his supernatural persuasion.

“What do you usually do with victims of aggressive telepathy?” I asked, trying to sound official. This was the most exposure to inside Network workings that Thirteen had ever allowed me. I didn’t want to blow it by sounding unprofessional.

“There is no ‘usually’ with this kind of power,” Thirteen replied. “If you recall, we were unaware that this level of mental manipulation even existed until you pointed it out to us. We have been able to recover some memories of a few minor informants using a sensitized serum that your teammate Cordele Bleu has developed. But when someone has experienced the level of specified neurological damage that this pilot has, it has little to no effect.”

“Hmm,” I responded with a nod.

His gaze shifted down to mine. “Would you like to help them?”

“Really? Like go in there and ask the guy questions?”

“I was thinking more of utilizing your gifts from here. Assist Captain Bennett with his recollection of events.”

A sharp pang of remembered betrayal tightened my gut. I knew that being part of Thirteen’s team would include being used for my supernatural gifts. It was part of the reason I’d worked all these months to gain such perfect control. But there was still a little piece inside me that wanted him to see me as just another key member of the team—not a secret tool to be called on to make their jobs easier.

It didn’t matter. I wanted to work with Thirteen and the guys on my old team. Now I was getting the chance.

“OK,” I said, stepping closer to the glass. Thirteen flipped a switch on the wall, and Jon’s voice filled the room. I could already hear every word, but this way Thirteen could listen in as well.

“…to a destination somewhere along Russia’s western border. This is fact, Captain. We have records, satellite feed, flight logs—you flew that plane.”

Bennett held his head in his hands, his fingers curling into his messy gray hair. “I didn’t. I swear to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I pushed into his mind. Poor guy—Uncle Max had really done a number on him. He barely knew his address, let alone where he’d flown in the last month. I scanned past the mental scars and holes and found what it was they were looking for.

“It was a city,” Bennett said suddenly, surprising himself. “Bohlren. A small dirt airstrip. I thought we were landing on the water at first, but then suddenly there were guide lights. A wide river. And buildings.”

Charles quickly got over his shock at Bennett’s sudden revelation and scribbled furiously on the pad of paper in front of him. Jon looked over his shoulder to the two-way mirror. “You flew to a city called Bohlren. A city on a big river. Who was on the plane with you?”

Bennett frowned as he tried to hold on to his train of thought. “I—I’m not sure. A guy, I think. Yeah, definitely a guy.”

“What did he look like?”

Bennett rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. Tall? Maybe. I don’t know. Look, I don’t know why I’m remembering any of this anyway. Did you drug me or something?”

“We didn’t drug you,” Charles growled.

“Because until this moment right now, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I’ve never flown outside the continental US. But I have. I remember it now.”

“Yeah,” Jon said and turned to face us in the two-way mirror again. “That is strange. But now that you do remember, let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.”

I pulled back as Jon began his next round of questions. “Getting a description is going to hurt him,” I explained. “I can pull it out of him in a mindsweep, but chances are he’ll probably hemorrhage.”

“No,” Thirteen said. “We already know who was on the plane. That’s enough for our purposes. Jon and Charles should be able to fill in some of the holes in the logbooks with what you’ve brought out of him.” He turned to me, his face set in a practiced blank that told me something important was brewing in his mind.

“Thank you,” he said after a long moment. “Once again, you’ve offered aid to our team in a way that no one else has the capability of providing.” He held out his hand. “I would like to formally offer you a position as a task force agent within the International Network of Special Defense.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “So this was a test. Is that it?”

“It was a test, yes, but not how you think. Our agents go through years of education and training to acquire a pittance of the knowledge you possess on supernatural strength and ability. The few moments you’ve experienced where you’ve had to make the choice to put the goals and safety of the team ahead of your own ego and insecurities, you’ve never let me down. If you work with the Network, I will ask you to use your gifts on assignments, in interrogation, while retrieving target information, or however else the situation may call for. And I will ask you to provide intimate information about your father, uncles, and surviving brother. I will ask these things and expect you to comply.”

My stomach quivered at the bluntness of his words. But I understood what he was saying. And why. It had been a misunderstanding of expectations that had led to intense feelings of distrust between us the last time around. Neither of us wanted to go through that again.

“I can do this. I
want
to do this.”

He slid his big hands down my arms, held out his hand once again. “Then, Magnolia Kelch, welcome to the Network.”

Thirteen treated me to the Thirsty Turtle Bar and Grill for a late lunch. We walked in and I immediately scanned the minds of the crowd. Something felt off. Maybe it was knowing that my father was only a few miles away, but my paranoia had seriously spiked since we’d left Thirteen’s offices. Fortunately, no one seemed to be paying us any attention—or thought.

“Where’s Miller?” I asked as we slipped into a booth. I’d scanned the entire building, including the secret conference room deep beneath the Turtle’s basement, and hadn’t found a single sign of the gruff bartender.

“Miller doesn’t run the Thirsty Turtle for the Network anymore,” Thirteen explained. “He was reassigned a few months ago.” The pang of frustration surprised me. So much was different now. New agents, new offices, no Miller to growl at me about my drinking. When I’d lived on my family’s estate, it had been a torturous hell, but at least it had been a consistent torturous hell.
I’d been in the real world for nearly a year now, and it seemed as if nothing stayed as it was for more than a few moments.

Thirteen and I split a breaded tenderloin the size of small hubcap while I entertained him with stories of my travels. His eyebrows drew together when I told him about some of the unsavory people whose plans I’d thwarted. “I had to practice to make sure I was in control of my powers,” I explained with a shrug. “Wasn’t like I really hurt anybody. I mean, if I did hurt someone, I healed them right after.”

“I’m sure you did,” he murmured. “And did you enjoy it? Not the stalking, necessarily, but being out there on your own?”

I thought about going to the movies for the first time, going to a mall and shopping like all the other twentysomething girls out there—the freedom of being normal that I’d never experienced until those months away.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I liked it. But there were too many unknowns. I know you said that my father and Uncle Max haven’t made any moves like they know I’m still alive. But when they found Markus, whatever excuses they gave to the media, they had to know that something powerful killed him. A normal person couldn’t have torn him to shreds like that.”

Thirteen spoke hesitantly. “I understand you believe your uncle Mallroy saw you during the rescue mission last summer.”

“How did you—”
Right. Theo.

“All estate security disks were confiscated during the FBI investigation. We’ve replayed the escape over and over, and while there was footage of your uncle standing on the ledge of the estate’s wall, oddly waving to the prisoners as we drove away, there was nothing that indicated that he saw you past your invisible shield. You didn’t show up on the disks at all.”

I’d basically convinced myself of the same thing. But it still didn’t ease the odd feeling that something felt off.

“I’m full,” I announced, my appetite suddenly gone. “We should go if we’re going to meet everyone at Jon’s house.” After another moment, Thirteen called for the check.