Authors: Kelly Meding
Noah Scott was dying, Dahlia.
And he let Ace save his life. They were one and the same now. They were Noah Scott.
He
was Noah Scott.
“Dahlia?” Gage stood in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. “You should see this.”
I put the pictures back in the desk and followed Gage to the room across the hall. It was stark, unlived-in. Aaron’s room? Simon hovered over the bed and a slew of photos. He
moved aside to let me see them, twenty or so in all. My chest tightened with each image I studied. One after the other, photographs of me—in uniform, in civilian clothes, on the street, at jobs, with others or alone. In each one, I had the familiar orange streak in my hair. All of the photos had been taken since January.
My eyes were drawn to one near the top of the bed. I picked it up with trembling fingers. The stained jeans and old sneakers. Hair piled up in a messy ponytail. Standing on the sidewalk, one can of paint in each hand. “This was taken three days ago,” I said.
“They were targeting you from the start,” Gage said.
“They couldn’t have been. They were in Weatherfield until two weeks ago. Kinsey said the Changelings had no contact with the outside world. They could not have been stalking me since January, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Then someone else was, Dahlia. How else do you explain this?”
“I can’t!” I wanted to curl into a ball and scream until logic returned and reared its lovely head. “I can’t explain any of this, Gage, and it’s driving me crazy. It’s like I woke up this morning and the world stopped making sense.”
“They could have left this behind on purpose,” Simon said. “Maybe some clue as to why she was targeted at the warehouse fire. They couldn’t talk about it openly, but that didn’t prevent them from leaving bread crumbs.”
“Leading back to what, though? Some mysterious third party who wants me dead?”
Simon nodded.
I sank down on the edge of the bed, pictures crinkling beneath me. The world seemed gray, fuzzy. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“We’ll take the photos with us,” Gage said. “The fire marshal still hasn’t declared the fire an accident or arson. If it was arson, then we know someone set it to draw us, particularly Dahlia, out into the open.”
“Why would someone want me dead?” Shivers racked my body despite the heat in the apartment. “Why?”
Gage crouched in front of me, silver-flecked eyes boring into mine. Determined and strong. “That’s what we’re going to find out, Dal, I promise.”
I trusted his promise—when Gage gave his word, he meant it. I just didn’t trust the people around us, particularly the unknown party who wanted me dead. Even if Gage fulfilled his promise and found out why, nothing prevented the would-be conspirator from following through with his intentions.
Nothing.
Except three Changelings and a scientist. We just needed to find them.
G
age’s com rang while he negotiated our exit from the parking lot. He accepted the call, swerving a bit before carefully maneuvering the Sport back into its proper lane.
“Cipher.” His grip on the wheel tightened. “Following up on some leads, Detective Forney, same as you, I’m sure.” He looked into the rearview mirror, right at me, and winked. “Unfortunately, I don’t have anything new I can share with you.” Messing with fire, playing with words.
“Yes, my people did interview Dr. Kinsey again. . . . We didn’t believe he told us the entire truth during our first conversation.” He started to speak, but was cut off. Then, “He did? That’s good to know.” Pause. “I’ll do that.”
He ended the call and rolled his eyes. “She and Pascal have less to go on than we do. I just hope we can figure this out before she calls again and I really have to lie.”
“Me, too,” I said. “What was the second part of the conversation about?”
“Apparently Kinsey’s boss at Weatherfield has sworn out
a complaint against Kinsey, accusing him of conspiring to steal top secret materials and for embezzling funds from corporate accounts. Dr. Abram Kinsey is now a wanted man.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“Forgive me for voicing an unpopular opinion,” Simon said, “but now that Kinsey has been implicated by his own people, wouldn’t it be better to tell Pascal what you know? Two thousand more eyes in the city looking for the Changelings is better than just our five pairs.”
“We can’t,” I said. “Even if the police find Kinsey first, he won’t give up his sons.”
Simon twisted around in his seat to look at me. “How do you know that?”
“Because I saw them together, Simon. He’s their father. Is there anything you wouldn’t do to keep Caleb safe?” It was a low blow. He turned around without another word.
Gage made a left onto a one-way street. “Dal, call Tempest and see if he’s got anything.”
I put my com piece into my ear and speed-dialed. Crackling, then the whirring rush of wind blasted over the channel. “Tempest, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, Ember. I’m above Burbank right now. Nothing but me and the birds. I don’t really know what the hell I’m looking for.”
“Suspicious activity?”
“I should stay away from Santa Monica, then, or I’ll be chasing people up and down the street.” His teasing tone made me smile. “How’d your house call go?”
“The good news is, the place wasn’t rigged to explode the minute we opened the front door. We found a few bread crumbs, but no pieces that make any sense.”
“So, no sign of them?”
“No, and there’s a pretty good chance someone who isn’t Kinsey or the Changelings is responsible for the shooting, in a roundabout kind of way.”
“You mean they were hired to do a hit?”
“Yeah.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s your next move? House-to-house searches?”
“You say that like it’s a bad idea.” Streetlights whirred by in a blur of color, making the nighttime city streets as bright as normal daylight. “Don’t stay out too late, okay?”
“Yes, Mom.”
He hung up. I settled back against the seat, catching a glimpse of the clock. Had it really been only a day since Teresa was shot? It felt like a lifetime had passed. So many things in such a brief period, combining to turn the world on its head. Normal was a freshly foreign concept.
“I’m guessing Ethan has nothing new?” Simon asked.
“You guessed right.”
Gage’s com chimed again. He grunted as he accepted the call. “Cipher . . . what?” The tone of his question made me sit up straight and take immediate notice. “We’re on our way.” He leaned forward, checked the street signs, and made a hard right onto another block.
I slammed sideways into the door. “What the hell, Gage?”
He looked into the mirror, a new pallor drawing color from his skin. “They had to take Teresa back into surgery.”
I buckled up and held on as Gage navigated the city streets, sparing neither speed nor safety to get to the hospital.
He stormed the
surgical floor’s nursing station. A woman with tidy brown hair and pink scrubs saw us coming, and didn’t flinch when Gage began asking questions, demanding to know what was going on, without ever raising his voice. Simon flanked him, a little scary in his intense silence.
I hung back by the elevator, observing without interacting. Useless.
Gage started gesturing, apparently not receiving the answers he wanted. I watched, concerned now, as his expression grew more and more confused. He asked to speak with a doctor, someone in charge. Not good.
“You’re Ember, right?”
I jumped, head snapping toward the voice. An orderly stood next to me, his linen uniform stained and rumpled. His face was lined with age and too many emergencies, but he regarded me kindly. Almost curiously, without threat.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
He put his hand in the pocket of his trousers. “Someone asked me to give you this.”
My heart nearly stopped. Stark. The gun. Chaos and the odor of wet pavement. All of it flashed through my mind in a symphony of images and memory. I struggled to react, to summon up some measure of my power in order to defend myself.
The orderly produced a flash drive. I stared. My heart started beating normally again.
Paranoid, much?
“Here,” he said.
I took it carefully between two fingers. “Who is this from?”
“Punk kid gave it to me, along with fifty bucks to wait here until you came along, and to make sure you got it.”
“Did he have green eyes?”
“Yeah.”
I turned the memory stick over in my hand. Something was on here Noah wanted me to see. So that meant—
“She’s not in surgery,” Gage announced, unexpectedly standing next to me, Simon next to him. He didn’t acknowledge the orderly. I half expected his head to explode from the sheer force of his fury. “What kind of sick joke is this? The nurse said no one here placed the call.”
“Someone wanted to get us here,” I said, holding up the stick. “I just got a gift.”
“From who?”
“I think it’s from Noah.” I slipped past him, down the hall toward the nursing station. The woman in charge tensed. I tried to charm her with a smile. “This is going to sound weird, but do you have a computer I can use?”
“Is it an emergency?”
“It could be.” I held up the flash drive. “This could have important evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation, and I need to view its contents right away. I just need the computer for a minute.”
She eyed it. “What if it has a virus?”
“I’ll buy you a new computer network,” I said. “I’m rich, I can do that. Please?”
I hated pulling the money card, but it seemed to work. She relented, waving me toward the room at the back of the station. It led into a small lounge, with a table and chairs, refrigerator and coffeepot, and a computer workstation. Gage and Simon followed me inside, heads lowered and eyes averted. I could only imagine the tense conversation they’d had with the head nurse a minute ago.
“Thank you so much”—I glanced at her badge—“Alice. I promise I’ll take care of the computer.”
She sniffed and retreated from the room. I glared at Gage over my shoulder. He shrugged, chagrined. Rolling my eyes, I sat down in the desk chair and inserted the flash drive into an appropriate port. It initiated, and in a few seconds, a video program loaded.
The image opened on a shot of Cipher, Trance, Onyx, and Tempest, all in their original Ranger uniforms. I knew it instantly. Remembered the way they stood there, Trance and Tempest facing off against the crowd of reporters. Firetrucks and rescue workers in the background, frozen in midmotion.
“Is that when I think it is?” Gage asked.
“Yes,” I said, and pressed Play.
It was six-month-old footage of the very first press conference given by the reactivated Ranger Corps. A demolition accident had brought them to Inglewood, and the quartet worked together to rescue four trapped construction workers. They all made it out successfully and chose to speak to the throng of reporters desperate for the hottest scoop in town.
I had been in that crowd, only two months on the job as a cub reporter for the
Valley Gazette,
which was little more than a gossip rag. Trance had chosen me, of the dozens of people there, to ask her questions. The questions on all of our minds. The questions and answers were as fresh in my memory as the day they happened, reinforced by hearing and seeing it all again. I heard the awe in my own voice, the fear and excitement.
The camera was jostled, and a man’s shoulder came into view. The angle changed, getting out of the man’s way even as he spoke. Asking a question out of turn. Alan Bates, Channel 4 News. He cheated, and Trance ended the interview. The footage ended a few seconds later. It wasn’t raw, probably part of a news feed from six months ago, the same section the initial newscast would have aired.
“This was the first time we met,” I said. “For some reason, Teresa picked me, before any of you knew I had powers. It was the second most surreal day of my life.”
“What was the first?” Gage asked.
“Two days earlier, when I discovered my powers.”
“So what does this mean?” Simon asked. “How does this interview help?”
“Maybe it’s the starting point,” Gage said. “Some of those photos of Dahlia go all the way back to her first week with us. Maybe whatever vendetta this person has against her started that day, with someone who was there.”
“That has to be a hundred people,” I said, boggling at the idea of narrowing the list down.
“We’ll start with Alan Bates,” Gage said. “Maybe he’s still at Channel Four.”
I closed the video program and yanked out the flash drive. “There’s only one way to find out,” I said, standing up.
Instead of leaving
the hospital right away, we detoured to ICU to check on Teresa. Despite the assurances of the staff, Gage wouldn’t truly believe she was okay until he saw her with his own eyes. Simon volunteered to wait in the visitors’ lounge and call Renee with our latest update, while Gage and I went inside.
It was past visiting hours, but they let us in. Trance and Cipher’s romance had been briefly played up by the media back in early February. It was a good press angle, and it didn’t hurt that they were an extremely good-looking couple. Gage could have had the entire nursing staff eating out of his hand if he’d put any effort into it. But Teresa was his whole world, and I don’t think he remembered how to flirt with anyone else.
I hovered near the door outside Teresa’s cubicle, content to keep her in sight and let Gage have time alone. She looked so small on the hospital bed, surrounded by machines and equipment I couldn’t name, doing jobs I didn’t understand. Her left arm was nearly buried beneath wires and tubes—an IV, a pulse monitor, something else that seemed to be either draining or giving blood. The purple marks on her face were incredibly dark against her pale, pale skin.
She seemed at peace, no hints of new trauma.
And I hated seeing her in that place.
Gage crossed to the right side of her bed and gently took
her hand in his. His touch was so light, tender, as though afraid of squeezing too hard. He stroked her hand, her arm, then bent closer to brush his knuckles across her cheek. Whispered something I couldn’t hear.