Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (33 page)

“
Aw, come on now, no
crying.” Miles shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Her outpouring
of emotions clearly made him extremely nervous. He handed Penny a
clean napkin to wipe her tears.

She gave Miles a watery smile and sniffled a
throaty, “Thank you.”

“
So what do you suggest?”
I demanded, working hard to keep the anger out of my tone. “Because
I’m not leaving her out there to fend for herself.”

“
Simmer down, kid. Can’t
you see she’s upset?”

I ignored Miles’s chastisement, not caring
whether he thought me insensitive.

“
You both think I’m some
skeleton key that automatically unlocks all of Talia’s
vulnerabilities, that my presence will be her downfall. And you, at
least,” I jabbed an accusatory finger in Penny’s direction, “doubt
Victoria’s ability to protect Talia. So, truly, I want to know,
what do you two suggest we do?”

Seething, I sat back in my chair, crossed my
arms, and glared at my companions. I needed a plan of action, and
they were just shooting me down without finding alternatives. It
was maddening.

Penny sniffled again. Her eyes were
bloodshot and tears were still flowing freely, but her voice was
full of conviction when she spoke.

“
We use UNITED’s resources
to find Talia,” she said. “Then, once we locate her, we tell my
uncle where she is. He has hundreds of soldiers, all loyal to him
above UNITED. He can send them to get her, and then Uncle Ian can
hide her. Like I said before,
he
is the person we need to trust right
now.”

“
Ian is on the council,
though,” I pointed out. “Don’t you think it might cause a bit of a
rift between your uncle and the other council members if he steals
Talia right out from beneath UNITED?”

“
I’m sure it will,” Penny
agreed. “But he won’t care.”

I stared at her skeptically.

“
Let’s let him decide if
he’s willing to lose a couple friends for Talia’s sake, okay?”
Penny’s confidence in uncle was unwavering. “After everything she
did to help him, he’ll help us.”

I sighed. It wasn’t my favorite plan.
Nonetheless, the lack of plausible alternatives made it the best
possible course of action moving forward.

“
Okay,” I
agreed.

“
Okay?” Miles and Penny
repeated in unison. Both were shocked that I’d acquiesced so
easily.

“
Okay,” I said again. “For
now, Penny’s plan is all we’ve got. So, for now, I’ll go along with
it. But,” I glanced first at Penny, and then at Miles, daring them
to refuse me, “weakness or not, if Crane can’t promise his men will
reach Talia before UNITED’s agents, I am going to get her myself.
She is my world. No matter what you two think, Talia and I are
stronger together.”

Neither Penny nor Miles was prepared to
argue with me, leading to another awkward silence. They both
understood that doing so would be a waste of breath and energy,
though I could tell they didn’t agree with my Plan B.

Miles’s communicator suddenly began to buzz,
followed immediately by an alert from my apartment’s smart system.
Penny jumped when her own communicator vibrated in her pocket an
instant later.

Miles tapped his wrist unit. “You’d better
get dressed, kid. We’re due upstairs for a briefing.”

Without a word to either of my companions, I
headed to the bedroom I’d once shared with Talia.

The briefing about Talia’s escape was held
in the auditorium, the only space on Eden large enough to
accommodate so many agents. The entire council was present in one
form or another; three of the members were physically in the
auditorium, while the other seventeen appeared as holograms.

Victoria addressed the hundred or so agents
who’d been pulled away from their usual posts to aid in the search
for Talia. It was a dauntingly large task force, particularly since
its purpose was to find a single person.

Then again, my girlfriend was a highly
dangerous escaped convict.

The cynical part of my brain wondered why,
if they planned on killing her anyway, UNITED was putting so much
manpower into the search.

The rest of my gray matter understood that
if someone out there wanted Talia alive badly enough to hire a
group like Nightshade, UNITED would spare no expense to prevent
that someone from exploiting her considerable power. Even worse, I
had a bad feeling that the council wouldn’t hesitate to use that
fact as further justification for executing Talia. After all,
taking Talia out of the equation completely meant she couldn’t be
used as a dangerous weapon against UNITED.

In a frightening epiphany, I wondered if the
same argument could be used in favor of adding my and Penny’s names
to the execution list. Maybe even the other seven that Nightshade
was after, just to be thorough.

The idea sat like lead in my gut. The
situation was becoming more complex, more dire, the longer I
thought about it.

At the front of the auditorium, Victoria
finished reciting Talia’s dossier, just to reiterate how skilled
and lethal my girlfriend truly was. Next, the warden of Vault, a
man named Cali, took center stage to fill everyone in on the
details of the actual escape. Since Victoria had already told me
everything the previous night, nothing he had to say was new.

“
At this time, it is
unclear whether Dr. Pritcher was a willing participant in the
escape, or merely a pawn controlled by the inmate.” The warden
paused for dramatic effect. “Natalia Lyons is an exceptionally
strong Talent and extremely proficient when it comes to using her
abilities.”

He paused and gestured to an assistant
standing in the corner of the room. A map of the world appeared,
with dozens of blinking red dots.

“
My team has located all
of the pods that were launched at the time of Inmate Lyons’ escape.
So far, we’ve recovered nearly half of them,” Cali continued,
motioning to the visual display. A large number of the dots turned
blue. “Unfortunately, none of those appear to be the one the inmate
used to leave Vault.”

My jaw clenched each time Cali referred to
Talia as an inmate.

Both Penny and Miles quickly picked up on
the reaction. Penny placed a hand over mine and patted absently.
Miles, never one to show too much physical affection, gave me a
sympathetic smile.

Instead of listening to Cali ramble on about
their efforts to recover the remaining pods, I imagined all the
different ways I’d love to make him apologize to Talia. Just as
they were beginning to get particularly creative, the warden
finished. I watched him leave the stage, shooting death glares with
every step he took.

Warden Cali was officially on my shit
list.

Victoria resumed the podium, and I returned
my attention to the front, tuning in as she began giving
instructions on how we were to proceed. The councilwoman called out
the names of twenty agents, the task force’s team leaders, and
announced that each already had the team’s assignment.

Unsurprisingly, Penny, Miles, Frederick,
Henri, and I were conspicuously left off her list. Nonetheless, I
was glad to see several familiar faces troop to the front of the
room as team leaders: Janelle Longpre, Cadence Choi, my brother
Edmond, and Marcel, who’d been part of the rescue team that freed
me from Tramblewood when TOXIC took me hostage.

All of them liked Talia, and would follow
Victoria’s strict orders to bring her in alive and unharmed.

As each of the leaders took turns calling
out the names of the agents on his or her team, I was surprised to
learn that none of Talia’s closest friends had been selected to
take part in the search at all.

After the roll call was completed, I turned
to Penny.

“
So, we’re just supposed
to sit here on this damned island and twiddle our thumbs while my
girlfriend is out there?” I asked angrily. In a much lower voice, I
added, “And how are we going to make sure your uncle’s men find her
before these jerkoffs?” I flung my arms wide to indicate all of the
agents in the room, nearly knocking Miles’s head off in the
process.

The older agent ducked nimbly out of the way
to avoid injury.

“
Jerkoffs? Hope I’m not
included in that colorful description,” a voice said from behind
me.

He’d approached so quietly I hadn’t heard
him. I whipped around, confirming the owner of the voice.

“
Hey Frederick,” I said,
forcing a small smile for my old friend.

“
Erik. Penny. Agent
DeSanto,” he greeted each of them in turn, bending down to kiss
Penny on the cheek before offering his hand to me. We shook, and
then Frederick did the same with Miles.

The last time I’d seen Frederick was the
night we returned from the auction in England. Along with Talia and
me, Frederick had incurred repercussions for his role in freeing
Anya from the Poachers. His hadn’t been severe by any stretch of
the imagination; Victoria had simply relieved him of field duty and
assigned him to her personal staff. She’d been using Frederick’s
rare gift of remote viewing to track down the remaining members of
Danbury McDonough’s inner circle, so UNITED could interrogate them
about their involvement with the creation drug and the extent of
TOXIC’s experimentations.

Compared to Talia, both Frederick and I had
gotten off far too easily.

Climbing over the back of the seat,
Frederick plopped down beside me.

“
It’s good to see you,
man,” he said. “I’ve been watching you on the wallscreen. Pretty
powerful stuff, those rallies.”

“
Think they’ve actually
made a difference?” Miles asked.

Frederick smiled wryly. “We’ll know soon,
won’t we?”

Truthfully, I no longer cared at all which
way the vote went. Despite knowing the thoughts were bordering on
traitorous, sometimes I even wondered if it wouldn’t be better if
the treaty’s renewal failed to pass.

I’d been out there at every rally, facing
the hatred and fear head-on. Before becoming UNITED’s poster boy,
I’d never really appreciated how unwelcome Talents were in most of
the world. So many norms didn’t want us to be part of their society
any longer, maybe we should just grant that wish. Maybe it would be
better for us to live in our own Talented communities, free of the
persecution and contempt.

The only problem was that the Isle of Exile
wasn’t large enough to accommodate the number of refugees who would
need to immediately flee from their home countries if the vote
failed. In a perfect world, the Talented wouldn’t have to live all
huddled up on a remote strip of islands, but could instead build
communities in countries that welcomed us. It would take time,
though, and the Isle was needed in the interim. Before finding out
that UNITED intended to solve that problem, at least in part, by
offing my girlfriend, I’d felt horrible that only the lottery
winners would be relocated.

Not so much anymore. All that mattered to me
was Talia.

“
Have you seen her,
Frederick?” I asked, careful to keep my voice barely above a
whisper. “I mean, you know her so well, you should be able to view
her, right?”

Frederick looked torn, and I felt his
warring internal conflict.

Like me, he wanted to find her. He knew his
gifts should allow him to do that. But he felt like using his
abilities to help UNITED capture and re-imprison Talia was a
betrayal to her. A quick swipe of his thoughts told me that he
didn’t know about the proposition the council had passed the
previous morning. That was a situation I would remedy as soon as we
were alone.

“
I haven’t,” Frederick
replied. “I’m so sorry, Erik.”

“
But have you tried?” I
demanded, still speaking in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “Like,
really tried?”

His presence had brought me renewed hoped,
something I desperately needed in that moment. Though Talia could
block me from her mind, there was no way to block Frederick’s
talents.

Frederick’s gaze darted around the
auditorium, as though concerned about being overheard. The other
agents were all busy being briefed on their individual assignments
by their team leaders. No one was paying a bit of attention to our
group.

Frederick leaned closer to me. On cue, Penny
and Miles leaned in as well.

“
I have,” Frederick
confided. “And I saw her.”

Penny squealed excitedly, echoing the thrill
that tugged at my heart. Frederick held one scolding finger to his
lips in warning. I didn’t need to ask whether he’d divulged this
very pertinent bit of information to Victoria or the rest of the
council; the acrid odor of fear emanating from him clearly
indicated that he had not.

“
Before you throw a party,
I don’t think what I saw will be particularly helpful. Honestly,
I’m not even sure that what I saw was…real. The vision—it doesn’t
make any sense.”

Frederick shook his head from side to side,
as if the action would bring clarity.

“
Do you often have fake
visions?” I asked, confused. “I’ve only viewed a couple of times,
but I’m pretty sure my visions are always accurate. At least, as
far as I know, anyhow.”

An image of a roiling sea filled my head. A
jolt of pain shot up my arm.

I’d experienced the storm through Talia’s
eyes, not using remote viewing. Still, I had been uncertain whether
the out-of-body experience was real.

I mean, it definitely felt real. But was it?
Had Talia actually been flying across the ocean several hours
before? If so, where was Anya? Why had they separated?