Chapter 15 #2
The guy grimaced. “Fat lot of good that will do you.”
“And what’s your real name?” Jake asked.
The man clamped his lips together.
“He said there was something strange about us,” Rachel murmured.
I guess he’s going to find out what it is, Jake answered.
Let me see what I can do, Rachel suggested. She felt Jake mentally step back, allowing her to direct the process as she probed the man’s mind.
The guy’s face contorted as he felt her mental fingers walking through his brain.
“You’re doing it again,” he shouted.
Ignoring him, Rachel dug for information.
“You’re not Eric Smithson. Your real name is Carter Frederick,” she said after several seconds.
His eyes widened. “What did you just do?”
“What Dr. Solomon made it possible for us to do,” she answered, watching his face.
He reacted to the name.
Getting Frederick’s name hadn’t been all that difficult, but extracting more information wasn’t so simple.
The guy who called himself the Badger had taken the code name to stay anonymous.
From their business conversations, all Carter Frederick knew was that the man who’d hired him had been some high-muck-a-muck in Washington.
He’d moved somewhere out west, but Frederick didn’t know where.
Rachel rummaged around in the man’s head, not sure exactly what she was doing. But one clear memory stood out.
“You killed Evelyn Morgan,” she breathed.
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
He gave her a defiant look. “You can’t prove anything.”
Could they?
Maybe if Frederick had been in better shape, he might have resisted. But the recent information in his brain was theirs for the taking. She saw the scene in Evelyn Morgan’s hotel room. The woman had opened the door, and Frederick had burst in.
He’d tied her up, started asking questions and gotten rough when he didn’t get what he’d wanted.
She’d lashed out at him with her legs, then made a dash for the door. But Frederick had caught up with her, and she’d hit her head on the radiator while trying to get away.
Rachel felt sick as she leaned against Jake.
She glanced at Carter Frederick who was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, his breath shallow. “I want to get away from this disgusting piece of work.”
“Let’s go outside.”
After Jake checked to make sure there was no chance of Frederick’s escaping, they stepped onto the covered porch and walked across the gravel parking area, to where a picnic table sat under some shade trees.
“What are we going to do with him?” Rachel whispered when they had both sat down.
Jake shook his head. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.” But there’s something else that’s important. Carter Frederick was afraid of the Badger. Which means he’s dangerous, if he scared a hard case like Frederick.
Rachel felt a spurt of dismay. The Badger guy must know we were children from the project. If he can’t find us through this guy, he’ll use someone else.
And then what? Kill us to get rid of the evidence of the doctor’s experiments?
Or maybe he thinks he can use us.
She shuddered. Are you saying we have to give up the lives we’ve made for ourselves in New Orleans?
For now. Until we can . . . His voice trailed off and he shrugged. I don’t know what the answer is.
They had been focused so completely on the conversation that they hadn’t noticed anyone on the road–until a man and a woman came striding toward the parking area in front of the cabin.
Rachel gasped as she recognized them.
It was Mickey and Kira. When they had escaped from the warehouse, they had kept looking for her and Jake. Maybe they’d zeroed in on their psychic energy, now that they recognized it. And their confrontation had drawn them.
The newcomers didn’t give them any warning, they simply attacked, sending a bolt of energy toward Rachel and Jake that would have knocked them over if they had been on their feet.
Rachel cried out. Jake grabbed her hand, grounding her.
He dived into the bushes taking her along.
When she started to speak inside her head, he whispered, “Don’t communicate that way unless we have to.”
She did as he asked, wondering if it would do any good.
A bolt of power landed near where they’d entered the underbrush, then another close-by. Both of them singed the leaves where they hit, but the foliage was apparently too damp to catch on fire.
In the face of the assault, Jake froze, and she did the same.
Another bolt landed, but this one was farther away, and she knew that the attackers didn’t know exactly where she and Jake had gone.
“I think it’s because they can’t zero in on us when they can’t see us and we don’t use our powers,” Jake whispered. “And that includes speaking mind to mind.”
That was good news–until they had to fight.
They crept deeper into the underbrush along the bayou, tramping through standing water. It was strange not being able to reach for Jake’s mind, but she kept herself from doing it.
When a snake slithered in front of them, they both went stock-still.
Jake squeezed her hand as the reptile undulated out of their way, obviously as alarmed to see them as they were to see it.
Stopping about fifty yards from the picnic table where they’d been sitting, Jake cautiously eased up so that he could look through a break in the screen of bushes.
He kept his voice low. “They’re just standing in the parking lot like they don’t know what to do. Mickey took a couple of steps toward the bayou, and Kira held him back. I think they don’t like the idea of getting up close and personal with nature.”
“Can we get to the car and get out of here?” she asked.
“Maybe. But then what? Fight them again the next time they find us? They attacked as soon as they saw us. They didn’t try to negotiate or reason with us. We have to assume that their goal is to kill us.”
She nodded, hating to acknowledge that he was right. They had to stop these people from coming after them, and this was as good a place as any.
When she started to stand, Jake tried to restrain her, but she gently took his hand off her arm. “I want to get a look at them.”
He made a low sound but didn’t prevent her from easing up behind a tree trunk and peering at the couple who were arguing in the parking area.
They weren’t speaking out loud, but she knew from their body language that they weren’t in agreement about what to do next.
When she hunkered down beside Jake again, she murmured, “Kira’s the leader. I think we need to focus on her.”
Jake nodded. “Agreed.”
“We practiced pooling our energy when we weren’t touching. How far apart do you think we can get?”
His jaw tightened. “No more than twenty feet.”
“Okay, I’ll come out of the bushes and pretend I’m trying to reason with Kira woman to woman. Then we’ll hit her.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “We should have a signal. When I say “give up,” that will be the sign to attack her.”
“Yeah, except that we’re going to make a little change. I’ll do it.”
“No,” she answered at once. “They’ll see me as less of a threat.”
He was silent for a moment, and she knew even without reading his mind that he hated her putting herself in danger again.
When he finally nodded, she went on, “And we keep our focus on her, no matter what they do. I mean, even if the attack seems to come from Mickey.”
She turned and pulled Jake to her, holding tight for a few emotion-charged moments. Then she eased away, stood up and strode out of the bushes.
The other couple saw her almost immediately, and she put her hands in the air like they were holding a gun on her.
“Don’t hurt me,” she called out. “I want to talk to Kira.”
The other woman jutted out her jaw. “Why?”
“Can’t we speak woman to woman?”
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s hurt.”
Kira shrugged. “What a shame.”
“Why are you doing this to us?”
Kira kept her gaze steady. “Because as long as you’re alive, you’re a threat.”
“If you kill us, it won’t solve your problem. We came to Houma because Dr. Douglas Solomon had a clinic here where he was doing experiments–we assume on fertilized human eggs.”
“Why?” Kira demanded.
“He was trying to create children with superintelligence. That’s where we came from.”
“He was trying to make telepaths?”
“No. Like I said, he was trying to create superintelligent children. When it didn’t work, his backer shut down the project.”
“How do you know all that?” Kira shot back.
“We’ve been doing research. But the point is, he was getting his subjects by running a fertility clinic, and there were hundreds of children involved. Are you going to kill all of them?”
“Hundreds?” Mickey gasped.
“Be quiet,” Kira ordered.
“You can’t kill them all.”
“You’re wrong.”
Mickey had a sick look on his face, and Rachel figured he hadn’t signed up for mass murder.
“Just let us go. We’ll leave the country, if that’s what it takes to satisfy you.”
Kira’s eyes narrowed, and Rachel knew that an attack was coming.
She might have shouted aloud, but there wasn’t time. Instead she called to Jake inside her head. Incoming.
At the same time she dodged to the side and back, closing some of the gap between them.
She could feel the power gathering between them, but it was already too late for the attack she’d planned.
A bolt of energy slammed into her chest. Another whizzed past her as she fell back, feeling like the air had been knocked out of her lungs. At the same time, her head spun and her vision blurred.
Behind her, she knew Jake wanted to leap from the bushes and rush to her.
Somehow she managed to shout No!
If they got him, too, they were lost.
No, they were already lost. Mickey and Kira must have been practicing their skills for a long time. They were stronger than she and Jake under the best of circumstances, and now she was lying on the ground with her head spinning.
Sadness and horror came down on her like a thick, dark cloud. Everything she had hoped for with Jake was lost. They should have run and figured out what to do next. They’d been crazy to stay here and fight.
She turned back toward Jake, but he was hidden from her.
Get away, she whispered in her mind. At least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing they hadn’t killed him, too.
What happened next totally confused her.