20. Quaid
CHAPTER 20
QUAID
A fter wrapping up my report from our surveillance, I head to Oliver’s office to discuss our next steps. When I arrive, Oliver Harrison, my oldest friend and Phoenix’s commanding officer, is standing with Brad, watching the monitors on the wall. The cameras show River and Greer walking around the cafeteria. I wonder how Oliver is going to handle the situation. We knew Greer was coming, but River is an unknown who we’ve let into our compound. Something we never do.
Whatever he decides, I trust it will be the right decision. Oliver and I went to West Point together. Both of us Army brats, but that is where the similarities end. Oliver’s grandfather was a general and his father a colonel before he left the service to be a senator. Generations of service to our country and obscene family wealth is one hell of a legacy. Oliver wears the mantle of heir well.
My father was a grunt. Career military from the ground up. I lived on bases throughout the world. Army was drilled it into me from a young age. Tough and rough around the edges. I’m the guy you want by your side in combat.
Most of our classmates were surprised when Oliver and I started hanging out, but we only saw the Army in our blood, not the status of our birth. Add in our inherent ambition, and our friendship was as easy as breathing.
While we both reached the rank of Major, Oliver is the one who leads Phoenix. His strengths lie in strategy and political maneuvering, which is only helped further by his mental power. My strengths lie in leading missions and tactical explorations, and my ability to manipulate fire comes in handy when dealing with the enemy.
The cameras show River and Greer with their heads together, talking low, but it’s easy to see from their body language that there’s a closeness between them. More than friendship?
“They look tight,” I grit out, irritated by the sight. Stuck with following them for the last couple of days, I couldn’t help but be a little pissed off. They never noticed us. What if we had been Raven?
Oliver throws me a speculative look. “Yes, it’s obvious there’s an attraction between them.”
Brad frowns. “I don’t like him. He had a quick answer for every question. Either he’s telling the truth, or he’s really fucking good at lying. My gut says it’s the latter.”
I agree with the old man, although I don’t dare call him that out loud. Brad was an Army Ranger for a long time. He knows more ways to kill a man than I could even dream of learning.
Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose. “To make matters worse, Nash couldn’t find anything on River after he dropped out of high school.” Nash is our resident computer genius, and he always finds something, which tells us River’s past is buried. “River said his mom took them off-grid, and it’s possible he slipped through the cracks, but at some point, he popped up on Raven’s radar. The question is—when? And why?”
“Do you believe his explanation of how he escaped at the gas station?” Oliver turns and asks me. “He said the proximity of the forest boosted his power and gave him the strength to wake up sooner.”
My gaze drifts back to the cameras. “I believe it. When he was knocked out in our SUV, I could feel his power reaching for the side of the road. Trees bent toward us. His command of nature is on another level.”
Oliver absently nods. “I can feel his power through the cameras. It’s close to matching the level of yours. Drawing on power reserves when someone is unconscious is incredibly rare, but not impossible.” He lifts a shoulder. “I wonder if he developed his power naturally, or was he pushed past his limits like us?”
The military conducted a lot of experiments on us when they discovered we were more powerful than the first generation. Endless days of testing our physical and mental response to the most rigorous of trials. Dark times. The more boundaries we broke through, the more our powers grew until we were pushed to the brink of madness.
“Did you see his eyes?” I ask Oliver, handing him a picture of River from high school. “They changed—from blue to that startling green color.”
Mine used to be boring brown. Nothing special. Until the experiments changed them into what I see in the mirror every day. Amber with a ring of fire, like my power can’t be contained within my mind. It has to have a physical manifestation, too.
I stare at the dark-haired beauty by River’s side. “How do you want to handle this?” Personally, I’d keep her here and dump the smirking shit out in the middle of nowhere, but again, it’s not my call.
Oliver’s blue eyes narrow. “Put her in the program. She has a lot to learn. Lionel sheltered her from this world, and Brad believes she needs basic survival skills. Maybe if she learns how to take care of herself, she’ll stop relying on River.”
Brad looks up and reluctantly informs us, “Lionel said she didn’t have powers until last week.”
“What is her power?” I ask, irritated that we didn’t think to get that answer when we had her in the interrogation room.
Brad lifts a shoulder. “Lionel never said, but it has to be something special if Raven is hunting her, right?”
Oliver taps his chin with his finger. “I don’t know. Something’s off. There are no late bloomers.” He looks at me. “Get her in to see Beckett. Tell him to dig deep. If she went all those years without using them, something powerful must have been blocking her.”
“And River?” I sneer, unable to help myself. There’s something about him that makes my gut clench. Maybe I should introduce him to Jax. He scares the shit out of everybody.
“Offer him his choice of classes,” Oliver suggests with a pensive look on his face. “I’m curious to find out which ones he chooses. It could give us the answers we need.”
River drops a brief kiss on her lips, and the two head toward the line to get some food. I grind my teeth together and leave the room to find Beckett. The sooner we separate them, the faster we can determine River’s angle and re-establish the security here.
* * *
The light flicks off, and the door to Beckett’s office opens, but the second his young patient sees me, he immediately backs away. Stifling my irritation, I attempt a smile and motion for him to leave, but he stares up at me without moving. Beckett walks up and places his hands on the kid’s shoulders. With a soft exhale, the tension leaves the kid’s body, and he walks out with a smile on his face.
“I’d tell you to stop scaring my patients, but I know that’s not your intention,” Beckett states firmly as he looks at his watch. “I’ve got five minutes before the next patient arrives. What do you need?”
Beckett was also at West Point with me and Oliver, but we didn’t hang out together. His friends were cerebral in nature, geeks interested in military intelligence and technology. The field he would have entered if they had let him. When the Army found out Beckett’s talent was psychometry, they used his ability to find the rest of us, turning him against his fellow soldiers.
Here, at Phoenix, his talents are used to help his fellow psychics instead of putting a target on their back. With a simple touch, he can glean information and emotions, but his ability to calm the overwhelming emotions that come with our powers is pure gold. It also doesn’t hurt that he looks completely non-threatening.
“We have a new… woman… here. We don’t know what her power is, but it apparently didn’t show up until a little over a week ago,” I tell him, stammering like a complete idiot. “Oliver thinks she needs to see you to figure out why she suppressed it.”
Beckett’s grey eyes light up with a spark of interest. “How old is she?”
“Twenty-three,” I inform him.
“Hmm. Definitely a woman,” he says with a straight face, as if I can’t see the laughter he’s holding back.
I’m thirty, not eighty. “Whatever. She likes this guy she came in with,” I explain with a snort. “Maybe you should talk to him, too. My gut says he’s bad news.”
Beckett raises a single eyebrow. “I’m not sure your gut is reliable. You didn’t trust me either.” He taps on his phone. “What are their names?”
“Greer Vickers and River Fulton,” I tell him.
He types in the names. “Any relation to Colonel Vickers?”
“He was a surrogate father to her after her dad died,” I inform him with a sigh. “Brad said she picked up his name when she went on the run. I don’t know her real name.” I pause at the thought and wonder what it is. “According to her, Lionel was killed by Raven.”
Beckett looks up and waits for me to explain.
I summarize what she’s gone through the last few days. “She’s definitely telling the truth. Kind of self-contained but let loose when she saw Brad. I think he reminds her of Lionel. You can’t fake that level of trauma, but Brad and his team didn’t find Lionel’s body. Raven could have taken it with them, but why? It’s not something they usually do.” Lionel was a good soldier. A man of integrity who led more top-secret missions than most of the special ops guys I know. He deserves a proper burial.
“I see,” Beckett replies after a second. “Hopefully, she’s open to diving into her psyche, because I agree with Oliver. It’s odd for psychic powers to show up so late. Maybe she was subconsciously using them but never noticed, then they suddenly evolved or increased. Usually, I would speculate a low power level, but if they were, Raven wouldn’t be after her.”
His comment makes me sit up straighter. “Come to think of it, her power doesn’t register at all. No wonder I forgot to ask her about it. I didn’t feel it.”
Beckett’s eyes light up. “That is interesting.” He makes a note on his phone. “And River?”
“You’ll feel his power coming a mile away,” I tell him. “Enhanced to the nth degree, similar to mine and Oliver’s. We don’t know what caused it, though.”
He’s practically vibrating with excitement. “Let’s get them in here tomorrow. You said they’re in some sort of relationship?” I nod, and he dips his chin. “Good. I want to see her at 9 a.m., and him immediately after, at 9:30 a.m. If they know they’re back-to-back, I could use that to ferret out more information.”
Considerably more relaxed than when I entered, I shake my head at him. He obviously used his power to bring my emotional response down a notch. “Thanks. I was a bit wired.”
He takes off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “It’s what I do.”