Chapter 10 Kaye #2
She grabs his wrist before he can unclip his seat belt. “Let the lights stay on. You can foot that bill. Let’s just go.”
Again, he dismisses her.
“You have your phone, right?” She nods, fingers brushing lightly against one of the romper’s oversized pockets. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, call the police.”
Her shoulders sag, but she nods, palming her device in her lap.
I follow Charade up the long, curving cement pathway, his invisible shadow. “This is exactly how horror movies start.”
Not that it makes a difference; he can’t hear me.
He presses a code into the security pad to the right of the main doors and they glide open with a hum.
The air inside is thick, humid. Don’t places like this usually have air conditioning?
The sterile scent of hand sanitizer burns my nostrils, bringing back memories of hospitals and sickness.
It feels oppressive in this heat, the clean of it rotting into a pervasive stench.
Doorways line the hall. Silhouettes of desks and chairs appear in some, but most are bare. It feels so empty. I turn and Charade is strolling down the hallway. I have to run to catch up. The path expands into a tall atrium with a wall made of reinforced glass. The darkened riverbank waits beyond.
Straining my ears, I think I hear something, but it’s gone too fast for me to catch.
We reach an expanse, smaller than the atrium, but open except for a few columns carving up the space. Computers whir to our left, their artificial glow lighting up a corner to the far side of the room. A doorway beyond luminates in a brilliant yellow orange outline.
The sound comes again—shuffling. And voices.
Charade slows as we near the doorway’s incandescent brightness. He ducks to the side, pressing himself flat against the wall.
“Don’t be an idiot.” I whisper. “Call the police.”
I count four men as large as linebackers.
Backs to us, they pillage the office. Cardboard boxes lay in haphazard piles across the floor.
Equipment lines the four corners of the room set on ancient, but clean and sturdy stainless-steel desks that float out from the wall in an ‘L’ shape.
Almost half the room has been emptied already, leaving only wires and dust in its place.
Charade sprints to the next column of the wall, edging up behind me.
“What do you think you’re going to do about this?” I hiss at he passes. Each man carries a holster at his hip, the black grips glinting like a promise in the limited light. Even if he manages to get one of them under his influence, bullets are faster than persuasion.
His fingers tremble a little as they tug his phone out of his pocket. Nine—one—
“Drop it, Zane.”
We both jump at the sound. A man leans against the already emptied metal to our left no more than a couple yards away. Though he is cloaked in darkness, he has the kind of commanding presence that demands attention. I can’t believe I didn’t see him sooner.
“We tried not to alert anyone.” His voice reverberates, though his tone is flat. Empty. “That nosy, old bastard must have better eyes than I thought.”
Charade doesn’t respond. I wait for his finger to press that last number, but it never happens.
I curse as emotions rock through me as though they are my own.
Shock. Betrayal. Fear. They unlock a downpour of images from Charade’s memories—of nights spent pouring over results.
Laughing over cold sandwiches, discussing everything from the latest scientific articles on their screens to philosophy and literature.
But for all his charm and intellect, the man was an enigma.
Always covered head to toe in scrubs, a surgical mask revealing little more than a pair of bright baby blues topped in bushy brows.
Germaphobe, C had said.
That self-deprecation had made him an easy man to like. No pride or ego to appease. And if there were certain parts of him he wanted to keep private, did that really matter when there was work to be done? Not when there were lives to save.
“I’m sorry, Zane.” The words ring true, but not enough to help.
“What’s going on?” Charade—Zane—stalls.
“I asked you nicely to put the phone down. I won’t do it again.”
Tears gather along my eyelashes. I step in front of Charade, making a wall of my body and reaching for powers that are locked away in the outside world.
Part of me falls just a little in love as I watch his finger press that final one on the glowing screen.
A searing pain shoots through the left side of our skulls.
The weapon strikes the floor just before we do, the sight of it making my skin crawl.
A claw hammer, black rubber grip beginning to drip with something I don’t want to think about.
I can’t bring myself to look at the blunted metal end too closely. Not after knowing its bite.
My eyes fall instead to the strange smile on Charade’s bloodied face. To the phone still in his hand.
His thumb slides over the green button.
Light sparks behind us with a deafening crack.
A scorching bolt gnaws into our backs—our combined powers filtering Charade’s pain into mine.
My face presses into the cold concrete. I writhe as it burns.
Oh god, it burns! My vision narrows to a red pinprick of pain.
I feel Charade spasm somewhere to my left, but I can’t think. Can’t breathe.
Wet gurgles escape Charade’s mouth, but not my own. I guess memory wounds do no physical damage, but they certainly hurt like a bitch.
“I’m sorry,” C repeats. The sound of his voice makes me nauseous. He slides out the clip, giving it a once-over before inserting it back into the gun somewhere above us. Fresh hatred burns through me, and I can’t tell if it’s mine or Charade’s anymore.
I open my eyes to see old, wooden planks full of splinters rest against my cheek.
The river races between the gaps in the boards below us.
The lab is full of light and life now, engulfed in an inferno and turning the sky black and orange.
The flames have already spread through the interior of the building and have begun to spill out the windows like vines, reaching upward, devouring whatever it touches.
They never tell you how loud an inferno is.
How it roars like an animal, devouring all in its path.
Or that the taste of ash will fill your mouth from more than a hundred yards.
That it will coat your teeth with grit and soot.
“Moira!” Charade’s voice is choked and guttural. He tries to launches himself forward and fails, falling down to the wood beside me. Scarlet paints the planks at his other side.
Moira is a crumpled doll next to him, hair golden where not matted with blood and gore. I swallow bile as I look away.
“It was fast,” C promises.
A sob tears out of Charade’s throat, washing over me in a wave. His heartache and rage are my own, ripping, gnashing through our hearts as one. He gags, a coat of crimson dripping from his chin to the wood.
“I’ll miss our discussions, Zane. And your brilliant mind.”
Charade is dragged to the edge of the dock.
With a kick, C sends him over, and I drive after him.
The water is murky, a metal tang seeping through the seal of my lips.
It stings my eyes as I search for Charade, swimming further down into the muck and clay.
Panic sets in at the first clutch of my lungs. I kick for the surface.
And break with a gasp into the shock of my own body.
My shoulders shake as I cough, lungs aching and the ghost of freezing water caressing my skin. I become aware of the floor beneath me as my breathing slows, the grain of the wood digging into my skin. The smell of dust and spice rides the air.
Charade.
Zane.
I search out the comforting warmth of his brown eyes, eyes that looked with such love and compassion at Moira, and gasp.
The beautiful brown irises are gone. In their place are cold, distant irises of vibrant, electric violet, glittering with open fury.
His bare fingers clutch my wrist in a grip that brooks no opposition. He rises, dragging me with him until my back presses into a wall. His free hand wraps around my neck, this thumb resting over my pulse with light but steady pressure.
I panic as the threads of his power sink into my skin. In a snap decision, I pull at them with my own. It takes all of my strength to push and guide them along the path I found before. We tumble into the dark together.