Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (60 page)

“
About that,” Penny said.
“I’m not positive that she is, with Kenly I mean. Talia has been
spotted all over London. UNITED has been chasing down leads all
morning.”

“
So?” I needed more water.
Spotting the mini-fridge, I summoned two bottles of cold, glorious
H
₂
O.
They sailed into my outstretched hands, and I drank them both with
only a breath in between.

“
So, if Talia was running
around the city, why would she have sent Kenly instead of coming
herself? It doesn’t make sense.”

Penny had a point. That did sound fishy.

The water cleared the fog from my brain
enough that I was able to think straight.

“
Not Talia,” I said after
several moments of contemplation. “She’s too smart. She sent Kenly
to me because Kenly is a light manipulator. She came here
invisibly.”

Penny stared at me blankly. I wasn’t making
sense. I knew that. Taking a deep breath, I started again. “The
girl people keep seeing must not be Talia. It’s probably the same
girl that was with Anya in Nice. Have you actually seen any footage
of this supposed Talia?”

“
Nothing clear. Bus cams
and café surveillance footage show only half of her face or the
image is blurry,” Penny admitted. “But Erik, do you trust Kenly?
She does hate UNITED.”

“
But she cares about
Talia,” Brand interjected softly.

“
She’s also the one leaking
sensitive UNITED information to the public,” Penny shot back
angrily. “She’s compromised agents. She’s responsible for a number
of lost lives. She’s also responsible for several of the Created
incidents, since she intercepted the communications before UNITED
received them. Kenly isn’t innocent guys.”

My head was spinning again. Information
overload.

“
How do you know this?” I
asked.

“
Kenly isn’t the only
expert hacker in the world. In case you’ve forgotten, I did fake my
way through being a Brain for several years. I actually do know how
to do quite a bit of crypto stuff. Good thing, too. Victoria asked
me to take a look at the hacks on UNITED’s classified files. Since
none of her trusted Brains were able to trace Kenly’s intrusions,
she asked me to give it a go when I had time. After overhearing
what Kenly had to say to you, I decided to make time.”

“
She’s been at it all day,”
Brand added dryly.

“
Kenly’s good, I’ll give
her that. I wouldn’t have been able to trace her if I hadn’t known
exactly what I was looking for. Knowing the intruder up front makes
a world of difference.” Penny sounded reluctantly
impressed.

Even though she was dumbing it down for me,
I didn’t really understand what Penny was saying. I had created
Higher Reasoning abilities, same as Penny. But I didn’t know how to
use all that brainpower. Computers were like magic in my mind. I
typed messages into my comm unit, and I got one back in return. I
pressed buttons on the keyboard, and all sorts of crap appeared on
the screen. Magic.

“
Have you told Victoria all
of this?” I asked Penny.

“
No.” She glared at Brand.
“Somebody seems to think we should give Kenly the benefit of the
doubt.”

“
She isn’t being
malicious,” Brand argued. “Besides, she didn’t tell you guys where
she and Talia are hiding. We can’t take the chance that UNITED
finds Talia before Ian’s people, which they might if they suddenly
make finding Kenly a priority. With the crypto work you’ve already
done, they have a good shot of pinpointing Kenly’s
location.”

“
You don’t even like
Talia,” Penny wailed, throwing her hands up in
exasperation.

The vice closing my head between its
pinchers returned. I wanted to tell Penny to lower her volume, but
Brand started yelling, too.

“
No, I don’t, Penelope.” He
called her by her real name—bad sign. “In fact, I sort of hate her.
She’s a manipulative, entitled—”

“
Careful, Brand, that’s my
girlfriend you’re talking about,” I interrupted calmly. I didn’t
like him insulting Talia in front of me, but he’d said worst to her
face. Also, despite his words to the contrary, Brand didn’t hate
Talia. He didn’t like her exactly, but he definitely didn’t hate
her.

Brand huffed. “That girl is more trouble
than she’s worth. But she means a lot to you.” He reached out and
stroked Penny’s cheek with the back of his, his expression
softening with the caress. “She’s also important to Ian. And drunky
over here.” Brand nodded in my direction. I ignored the dig. “I
promised you all that I would help keep her safe, and I intend to
do just that. I’ve already told Ian about Kenly. He will tell
Victoria when he deems the time is right. He also agrees that Kenly
is disgruntled, not vindictive. She believes what she is doing is
right. Kenly isn’t part of some underground cult or mercenary
group. She isn’t working for anyone who wants Talia dead.”

Penny remained unconvinced. I was on the
fence. Kenly wasn’t my favorite person, but she genuinely cared
about Talia. The moments they’d spent together outside of Walburton
Manor, before Talia let Kenly fly off into the sunset, had shown me
that fact. Still, Kenly had tried to kill Talia while under some
sort of mind control. How deep did those tentacles of manipulation
run? Was it possible that Kenly was still under TOXIC’s control? If
so, who was pulling the strings?

You’re paranoid, delusional—a paranoid
delusional.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and
stretched.

“
Alrighty, guess there is
only one way to learn the truth: Tonight, I’m going to find Talia,”
I declared.

“
How?” Brand demanded.
“Your track record isn’t exactly stellar, man.”

I glared at him. “The old-fashioned way,
Brand. Legwork. It’s time I had a sit down with Bryn
Wellington.”

“
Bryn Wellington?” Brand
and Penny echoed in unison, both so stunned their annoyance with
each other was temporarily forgotten.

“
Bryn is James’s sister,” I
said calmly, searching the bedroom for my discarded clothes. At
some point in the night, I must have gotten hot and stripped down
to my boxers, because that was all I was wearing.

“
Right,” Brand agreed,
still not understanding.

“
And James is Kenly’s
boyfriend. James and Kenly are hiding out together. I vaguely
remember her mentioning that fact.”

“
Yes, she did, several
times,” Penny confirmed.

“
Well, doesn’t it make
sense that Bryn knows where her brother is? And if she knows where
James is, then she knows where Kenly is. And if she knows where
Kenly is—”

“
She knows where Talia is,”
Penny finished for me.

I grinned and tapped my temple, then
immediately wished I hadn’t. Even that small amount of pressure was
painful.

“
I’m going with you,” Penny
insisted.

“
So am I,” Brand
added.

“
I hoped you guys would say
that. Now we just need Miles onboard, since he won’t let me out of
his sight for very long.” Hands on my hips, I blew out a long
alcohol-laced breath. “Let’s get the bullshit over with, and then
go find my girlfriend.”

The interviews were
tedious, with each reporter asking me the same questions over and
over and over again until I wanted to rip my hair out. Variety,
however, was even more aggravating. When a reporter from
Teen Rampage
asked me
what I thought of Caro Cato’s new fall line, since I’d apparently
been wearing the designer’s suits at my rallies, I
flipped.

“
Clothes? You want my
opinion on clothes? Are you fu—”

“
Interview’s over,” Miles
interjected before I reduced the reporter to tears.

Thankfully, that was the last one. From
there, a limo whisked Miles, Penny, Brand, my security detail, and
me to Hyde Park for the rally. Henri and Frederick followed in a
different hover. They were helping with crowd control, since UNITED
expected the rally to be heated.

I’d already set up the meeting with Bryn
Wellington for that evening. Getting in touch with her hadn’t been
easy, but after a lot of virtual digging, Penny had learned that
Bryn frequently spent her nights at one of her family’s clubs, Pure
Bliss. I’d called the club to see whether Bryn was expected that
evening, and found out that she was. So when I said that I set up
the meeting, what I really meant was that I planned to ambush
her.

Bryn had been feeding UNITED information on
the Poachers, including her own family, but was steadfast in her
assertion that she didn’t know her brother’s whereabouts. I didn’t
believe that for a second. Bryn had risked too much over the years
for her brother, more than even he knew, to not know where he, and
by extension Kenly, were currently.

Surrounded by my security team, I exited the
hover limo to a waiting crowd of supporters and haters alike. Giddy
with the knowledge that one way or another I would see Talia soon,
I waved placidly to the crowd but didn’t break stride once. No more
photo-ops for innocent looking children. That hadn’t turned out
well the last time.

This rally was not like the others, a fact I
learned as soon as I stepped onto the makeshift stage. The entire
Joint Nations’ delegation was seated on the platform, every one of
them anxious to hear my final plea for coexistence.

“
You’ve got this,” Penny
told me encouragingly as we waited in the wings for me to be
announced.

“
It doesn’t matter what I
say anymore,” I muttered.

“
You never know,” Penny
replied. “Some of the delegates are still undecided. You may be
able to sway a vote or two.”

“
True,” I
admitted.

It felt like this was the final quarter of
the game, and I was sending up one last Hail Mary shot for the win.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know the current score. So I had no way of
knowing whether sinking the three-pointer would even make a
difference.

On stage, Victoria Walburton was just
finishing her speech. The councilwoman had flown in for this to
show UNITED’s support. Which, in the grand scheme of things, meant
very little to most gathered, including the delegates.

“
You have all seen him. He
is Created, and he is powerful. He, like so many of you, believes
that if we work together, the gifted and the norms can live
together in harmony. He plans to use his abilities to make a safer
world for us all. Now, without further fanfare, I give you Erikson
Kelley.”

Her words were met with overwhelming
applause with only a few audible boos.

I walked confidently out to the podium as
Victoria took her assigned chair among the Joint Nations’
delegates. Placing my hands on either side of the lectern, I
grinned down at the thousands of people who’d come to hear what I
had to say. Many returned the smile. Others flipped me the middle
finger. One guy screamed obscenities. I wanted to tell him that I’d
been called a lot worse than “Satan’s effing pawn” but held my
tongue.

The speech Victoria’s minions had prepared
especially for this rally was in my jacket pocket. I started to
reach for it. Screw it, I decided. There was no point in pandering
to the crowd. They didn’t matter, not really. It was the delegates
I needed to sway. I had to convince more than half of them that
coexistence was proper.

My wife will never forgive me. Can’t let her
die. One life not worth millions. But she’s my wife.

I didn’t know where the stream of
consciousness was coming from, but I felt the delegate’s fear and
confliction. Whoever it was, his or her thoughts were so powerful
that they’d broken through my mental barriers. I took a deep breath
and blocked them out, even as I caught Penny’s alarmed expression
out of the corner of my eye. She’d heard the thoughts, too.

“
Let me deal with this.
I’ll figure out what is going on,”
Penny
sent.

I nodded subtly, and then refocused my
attention on the crowd.

“
Hey, guys.” I waved. “I
see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd tonight. A lot of you have
been to numerous of these rallies. You have heard me preach about
how the Created are harmless, and how we deserve the same rights as
the norms.”

“
Erik,” Victoria hissed
behind me. When I ignored her, the councilwoman screamed inside my
head.
“What are you doing? That is not the
speech I had prepared.”

“
I’m being honest. Like you
should have been with Talia from the start,”
I sent back, and then blocked Victoria from my
mind.

Talia was never going to be safe as long as
Nightshade was after her. Alex, Beth, and the others would never be
safe as long as Nightshade’s client was out there hunting down
strong Talents in order to make more of us. Talia had gone
toe-to-toe with Mac and destroyed TOXIC to stop this type of
experimentation and exploitation. UNITED had given me a soapbox to
stand on, and I was going to take advantage of it.

“
Well, I’m here to tell you
that we aren’t harmless,” I continued. The murmuring started as
slow hum, growing to a full-on buzz by the time it reached the
edges of the crowd. I spoke louder to make sure I was heard. “I
possess so many abilities that I lost count. I have killed in war
and because TOXIC told me to. Sometimes, I wonder if I truly know
right from wrong anymore, because my entire life has been lived in
very dark shades of gray.” I paused and surveyed the crowd. People
were nodding in agreement, as though I’d said something profound.
Odd. “But the thing is, no matter how far south my moral compass
dips, there are worse people out there. People with an agenda.
Yeah, you could argue that every politician has an agenda, and they
do. But I’m talking about an organization willing to kidnap and
torture children to influence the way the world spins. They lurk in
the shadows. They are puppeteers, and we are simply their
marionettes. Currently, they are working with an unknown group to
make more people like me. But as where the thoughts in my head are
my own, the next generation of Created isn’t likely to be able to
say the same. Danbury McDonough used mind control on his operatives
prior to the Battle of D.C. Whoever has taken up his mantle is
likely to do the same.