Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Everything was going too fast—the car was black, a two-door model. He dumped Rowan onto the seat, almost bashing her head against the edge of the car’s door.
“Move over,” he said, and she blindly scrambled for the passenger side. She made it to the other side and started frantically scrabbling at the door lock. It wouldn’t budge.
At that moment, all the fight went out of her, like water going down a drain.
She actually felt her will to resist slip away.
Her hand dropped down, and she pulled her knees up on the seat and hugged them, making herself as small as possible.
Tears slid hotly down her cheeks. There was a limit to what she could do, and what exactly did this man want?
It was a nightmare, only a bad dream, and she’d wake up soon.
He dropped into the driver’s side. Rowan took a deep, shuddering breath and stared out the windshield. Her feet ached with the cold. Daddy. Her shocked brain reeled.
There was a huge black van with a trailer parked in front of her house, its lights turned off. Her house was completely dark, the front window broken. Oh, God, Daddy.
The man closed the car door. “Got to get moving. Are you hurt? Rowan? Are you hurt?” He didn’t precisely yell, but his tone was harsh. He dug in his jacket pocket and produced his cell phone.
“N-n-n-n-” Rowan shivered. She couldn’t finish the word.
The car was cold, and her feet were bare.
The sweater did nothing to keep her warm.
Her teeth started to chatter. She stared as shadows detached themselves from the van and tramped through her front yard, surrounding her house.
Now there were lights—flashlight beams. She saw a light flicker upstairs.
They’re searching the house. For what? Why would someone want anything in our house? The television’s old, and Dad’s laptop is ancient.
“It’s Delgado,” the man said into the cell phone. “I need a diversion. The Sigs have cleared the house. Two casualties.” A pause. “No, I got us both out. No net, just a single unit on primary penetration. They just now sent in the net… Don’t give me a goddamn editorial, General. Give me some help.”
They shot my Daddy, she thought, and Delgado glanced over at her. She shivered, pulling away from his gaze. They shot Hilary. Oh my God.
“She’s in shock, and I’m not too goddamn happy either. Get me out of here, General.” Another pause. “Okay.” He hung up. “We’re going to wait for a distraction,” he said quietly. “Then we can get out of here. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, numbly. “Daddy,” she whispered. His blood still coated her hands. They had shot him in the chest. Shot her Daddy. “What the hell is happening to me?”
“They want you, Rowan.” Very quietly. She got the strange idea he was trying to be soothing. “Because of what you can do. They’re Sigma, a black-sector government division. They take psionics and drug them, brainwash them and turn them into weapons. Nasty stuff.”
It was as if he was speaking a foreign language. Rowan blinked at him, then stared out the windshield at her house. “Why do they want me?” she heard herself ask.
“Because you’re very special, Rowan. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of you.” His eyes moved smoothly over the house and the black van.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “What have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything. They tried to pick you up this morning, and I stopped them.
I didn’t think they would take a risk like this so soon in the game.
They must want you very badly. I’m sorry, I really am.
You don’t deserve this.” He didn’t look at her; he was too busy watching the house.
“Sorry about dragging you, too, but we had to move fast and there was broken glass on the floor. Your feet.”
What the hell, someone just shot my dad and he’s talking about my feet? “Hilary,” she heard herself say, in a wounded little voice.
He looked at her. The car was parked in a pool of shadow, taking advantage of two overgrown pine trees blocking the glow from the streetlight.
He’d carried her, cutting through the weak spot in the hedge between her back yard and the McClellan’s.
She remembered the junipers grabbing at her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Rowan let out a dry, barking sob.
A tiny thread of sound interrupted the tense silence inside the car. He flipped his cell phone open. “Delgado.”
Whatever he heard must have been good news, because he twisted the key in the ignition.
The car purred into life. “Waiting for it,” he said, and then, “Okay.” He closed the phone, dropped it into his breast pocket.
Then he put the car in gear and freed the emergency brake.
“I promise I’ll explain everything. Right now I have to get you to a safe place, where you can have something to eat and warm up a bit.
Half an hour, forty-five minutes at most. Can you do that? ’
“Daddy,” she whispered. “Hilary.” It seemed all she could say.
He nodded as if she’d said something profound. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to make sure you aren’t forced into anything.”
Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you. Memory lit up like a klieg light inside her head again. She fastened on it. It hurt less to think about last night that what had just happened.
“It was you last night,” she said again, numbly. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“Not now. Look, I’ll tell you everything soon. Right now I need to get us out of this, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, Rowan, I swear it. I was trying to find a safe way to break the subject to you.”
“My dad,” she said. “Hilary. You could have helped them. Warned them. Why didn’t you?”
The car drifted slowly past her house. Rowan’s heart leapt into her throat.
She stared at the black van, then at his profile.
His dark eyes were on the road, his mouth drawn into a thin line.
He had a gun under his left arm. She knew that because he had shot one of the men in black.
Otherwise he was dressed normally—jeans, a navy-blue T-shirt, a hip-length black leather coat, a pair of Doc Martens. He looked normal… but maybe he wasn’t.
“My priority is you, Rowan,” he said.
Why is he repeating my name? she wondered. Nurses did that at work to calm down an hysterical patient. Keep saying the name over and over, soothing the person. “Who are you?” she asked again.
“Delgado,” he said grimly. He guided the car slowly around the corner onto Smyrna Avenue, flipping the headlights on.
“Society operative attached to Henderson’s unit.
Specializing in covert operations and infiltration, interrogation and assassination.
I measure a six-point-seven-five on the Matheson scale.
You rate about an eleven, I’d guess. If not more. ”
“What are you talking about?”
The car accelerated. “The Matheson scale is a scale for the rating of psionic power. You’re a psi, Rowan. Psionic.”
“No I’m not,” she whispered. He knows. He knows what I am. God, please don’t let him tell anyone, please don’t let him hurt me.
He shrugged. “The Society will help you, if you want. They’ll teach you how to control it.”
“No.” Her throat was raw, she could barely speak. “You’re one of them. You’re one of them.”
“Did I try to snatch you in the parking lot? Did I shoot your father?” He shook his head. “If I had my way, I would have made contact and waited until you could trust me.”
“No.” She buried her face against her knees.
“I’m sorry, Rowan.”
“Shut up,” she said, her voice muffled by her jeans.
He shut up. He turned left—Rowan peeked—onto Sigell Avenue, past the gas station Dad liked to visit because it was full-service.
Daddy.
She sobbed, tears soaking into her jeans.
He flipped the heater on. Welcome warmth stung her feet and hands.
The man said nothing, just drove. Rowan knew she should be watching where he was going so she could get back home, but her eyes just wouldn’t focus.
She couldn’t think, could barely even breathe.
When he slowed for the final time, Rowan looked up in time to see an antique iron gate opening.
As soon as he drove through the gate, she gasped.
It was like sliding through a plastic film—and as soon as the film tore and the car was inside, it snapped closed.
The air was suddenly curiously dead, as if she was inside a bell jar.
The little prickles of electricity running over her skin intensified. “Where is this?”
“A Society safehouse, shielded from the outside. Feels good, huh?”
It didn’t feel good. It felt like she was suddenly, utterly naked. Rowan shuddered. “You’re crazy,” she said. “They killed my father. What about Hilary?”
“I’m sorry.” His mouth was a thin line again. “I didn’t know Sigma would move in so quickly. It’s my fault.”
“No,” Rowan said dully. “I’m a freak. I’ve always been a freak.”
“Not a freak. A psion. There are more than you think.” He pulled up a long graveled driveway to a slowly opening garage door. “Don’t worry right now. We’ll get you something to eat and—”
“I want to go home.”
He pulled into the garage. Rowan looked over and saw a neat row of cars, all dark-colored, and two black vans with heavy privacy tinting. And a shabby blue van parked at the very end that looked vaguely familiar.
She was too tired to think about it. Her entire body hurt. Her head pounded, an agonizing dry pain. Daddy.
“If you go home, Sigma will scoop you up and fill you full of Zed. That’s a bad thing, in case you’re wondering. I’d hate to have to come and collect you.”
“I don’t believe—” she began.
He shut the car off, set the parking brake, and looked over at her, his dark eyes glittering.
“I would come and get you, Rowan. I’ve seen psionics that get taken by the Sigs.
Mind-shattered hulks, most of them, and the rest just like dogs on a leash.
You don’t deserve that. I’m sorry, and I’ll watch over you. Okay?”