The Reckoning (23 page)

“Wake up!” Shadrach shouted as he shook the lifeless figure of a guard. “Where’s my son?” He began talking and cursing in a language I didn’t understand, his grief obviously sharp and painful.

Mari scowled over her shoulder at the dark trees, as if they were responsible for Shadrach’s grief. “What if the employees go back to the factory?”

“If they’re that stupid they deserve what they get.” I didn’t really mean it, but my gaze had caught on a figure just inside the clearing who hadn’t made it into the woods, and I was steeling myself for who it might be. The man lay face down, blood from a gunshot wound gushing over his back, the flow already slowing noticeably. The guards had apparently claimed at least one victim.

The gunshot wasn’t the man’s only wound, though. As I knelt and turned him over, sorrow knifed through me. It was Dr. Crandall. I felt for a pulse, but I could already see that his life force was gone. Crandall would never make it home to his wife and daughter. I was crying before I realized it, pushing my thoughts into his mind, searching for a spark of life. There was nothing.

Dimly, I became aware of Shadrach kneeling beside me, his hands over mine on top of Crandall’s body. “He’s gone, dear. He’s gone.”

I nodded.

We’d done well. We’d stolen the plutonium and rescued the employees. Only one missing—Shadrach’s son. And only this one casualty. I felt like vomiting.

Shadrach’s hand touched my shoulder. “Come and help me with the guard. I think I’ve healed him enough that you can look into his mind. See if he knows about my son.” Shadrach was pulling me to my feet as he spoke, and since there was nothing I could do to help Crandall, I went with him. Soothing feelings came from Shadrach’s hands where he touched me, and some of my tiredness leaked away. At that moment, he reminded me so much of Dimitri, I wanted to fall into his arms and be comforted.

Instead, I knelt down next to the unconscious guard, who had three bullet wounds—two in his chest and one near his groin. Was this the man who had killed Crandall? His life force was burning more brightly than those of the other seven soldiers, and in his mind, I found a lake of unconsciousness and thought bubbles instead of the black emptiness of death.

There was no fast way to explore his mind. Unlike with a conscious person, I couldn’t insert a thought or verbally encourage his mind to bring up what I was looking for. It was slow going. This agent was not an Iranian sympathizer, and he detested the employees and the few agents from that area of the world, but he was, as so many Emporium Unbounded were, a true believer of his importance in society and in the Utopia the Emporium pushed, like perfumed and disguised waste, in front of their devotees.

No sign yet of Shadrach’s son.

Chopper sounds reverberated through the still-dark morning sky, momentarily drawing my attention. “We have visitors! Two choppers!” The worried shout came from Cort, but then he looked at his phone and relaxed. “It’s Ritter and Jace. Must have caught a ride from the CIA.”

I continued looking into the guard’s mind. He was ordinary, as far as Unbounded went. He had two brothers and a sister who were mortal. Long dead. He didn’t mourn them. They were inferior.

Ritter reached us moments later, squatting beside me, and I relaxed against the arm he slid around my back. It felt right to have him with me. “I’m sorry,” I told him in a whisper. “I was wrong about waiting.”

“What?” He stared at me, obviously concerned. But I couldn’t exactly explain with everyone listening.

That was when a huge pressure inside me burst, releasing like an infected tooth spilling pus, though I hadn’t realized I was under so much pressure until that precise moment. I knew exactly what it was: the shiny snake had burst through the first box I’d formed. The pressure made sense to me now since the box was created from my own thoughts and was a part of me every bit as much as that snake was Delia’s construct. With the release of pressure came not pain but a sweet relief that made me catch my breath.

When I didn’t elaborate, Ritter said, “We have a little problem. Stella went back to the hotel after we passed off the cask, and she said that reporter’s there. The one you sent to the airport. Apparently, he didn’t leave but contacted the rental agency and had them activate the GPS in his car, which led him to the hotel. Says he’s heard from Shadrach’s son.”

I was surprised that Walker had the guts to come searching for us after his Hunter contact had been killed. “Wait, how did he remember us? I took the thoughts from his mind.”

“He recorded it all on his phone. Part of the fight in the alleyway, and then your conversation in the car.”

I cursed under my breath. I should have caught that from his thoughts. I’d been sloppy, and I hated that. “He knows where Habid is?”

“Says he does, but he won’t tell us anything unless we bring him along.” A rush of breath squeezed between his lips before Ritter added, “Idiot.”

“Right.” Apparently the reporter had a death wish. Shaking my head, I stared back down at the unconscious guard, mentally stepping out of the way of his memory from two days ago. I was getting closer. Maybe.

In the next instant, I found what I was looking for. I saw how the guard and his buddies had raided the employee condo back in the city and brought everyone here. Everyone except the troublemaker, Habid Salemi, who had been hauled away with the plutonium by the senior guards.

I made a faint sound in the back of my throat. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Ritter asked.

I took a moment to collect my thoughts. What I’d found in this guard’s mind told me that our op wasn’t nearly over but just beginning. I turned my head to look at Ritter, who still had his arm around me. “The cask from the boat—was there anything in it?”

“Enough weapons-grade plutonium to make a bomb.” Ritter’s voice was grim.

I was on to another memory now inside the guard’s unconscious thoughts, and I shut my eyes to concentrate better. “Then it wasn’t the only shipment. Just the first.” Everyone’s attention focusing more intently on me.

“You mean to Iran?” Shadrach gasped in horror. “More than one shipment of plutonium to Iran?”

“I don’t think so.” I opened my eyes, still probing the guard’s memory bubble. “According to this guy, the rumor is that the shipment we intercepted was bound for Iraq.”

Ritter glanced at Cort, horror echoing on their faces, but it was Shadrach who spoke. “Makes sense. If they’re going to encourage Iran to strike at Israel and US targets in Iraq, giving terrorists in Iraq the ability to fire back at Iran . . .” He shook his head, furrows creasing his forehead. “If they succeed, this century will become the bloodiest humankind has ever known.”

I agreed. With the Emporium pulling the puppet strings, no one was safe. “We have to stop them.”

“You finished here?” Ritter asked me, glancing at the unconscious man.

I nodded. “He doesn’t know any more.”

“The CIA has agreed to transport these fellows to our plane at the airport,” Ritter said, gesturing at the unconscious Emporium guards, “so we can eventually get them to Mexico. I’ll send Jace with them.”

I had forgotten that Jace had come with Ritter, but I could feel my brother now, off to the edge of the clearing, already hefting one of the Emporium guards.

“Mari,” Ritter added in a lower voice. “I need you to shift to the plane to help Chris prepare the berths. Better go into the woods first. It’s getting light, and they don’t know about us.” He jerked his head toward the four CIA agents who had accompanied him.

Mari grinned and started to walk toward the comparative darkness of the trees. I felt her shift before she was quite out of sight, but I doubted the CIA agents would notice.

I stared at where she’d vanished as I said to Ritter, “Now that they know we’re on to them, the Emporium won’t use the route they detailed in Desoto’s papers to smuggle the plutonium into Iran. They’ll shake things up to make sure we don’t grab it like we did the other.”

“Come on.” Ritter pulled me to my feet, his hands gripping mine far too tightly, but I wasn’t about to complain. “Looks like we’ll be taking that reporter along after all. If he knows how to find Shadrach’s son, he might lead us straight to the plutonium.”

I hoped he was right.

I also hoped that Walker Anderson wouldn’t be one more death I would have on my conscience.

AFTER THE EMPORIUM GUARDS HAD
been loaded into the CIA choppers, the rest of us borrowed the Emporium guards’ van and rode back to the hotel. Cort drove and Shadrack was in the front with him, while Ritter and I sat on the floor in the back, where the seats had been removed to fit more workers. I felt content for the moment to lie back against him with his arms around me.

When I told Ritter that I regretted making him wait, I meant that I should have married him the first moment I knew what he meant to me. But marriage to him, an Unbounded, meant a lot longer than I could even fathom. I’d been so afraid that in a hundred years, I’d want out of the deal or that I’d regret making the commitment. Or that maybe I’d wished to have spent time with Keene, whose demands never frightened me like Ritter’s. Keene asked for nothing; Ritter asked for it all.

We hit a bump in the road and Ritter’s arms tighten around me, giving me strength to be honest with myself. Sure, Ritter asked for it all, but wasn’t that what I wanted? Maybe the real truth was that Ritter was so much a part of me and our lives so filled with turmoil, that I was afraid of losing him—and therefore myself.

Ritter wanted children. I’d seen him envisioning me with a belly full of his baby, but he would let me make that decision, and in the meantime, I was reasonably confident I could work out Stella’s nanites. It wasn’t as if we only had a few decades to decide. I had a thousand years before my fertility would begin to decline in the slightest. He could wait. We could wait—until I reached a time when having a baby would be more important than the fear of losing the child.

Yet now, with the snake having burst from the first box, I knew we didn’t have much time. I would have to face Delia very soon.

I’d wasted these last weeks when we could have been together, but I was going to fix that at the first opportunity. A shiver of anticipation slid through me. Ritter’s hand rubbed over my thigh, telling me that I was projecting and that it was affecting him. I didn’t care.

Thoughts flew through my head. Now that the pressure inside that box was released, I felt better and stronger than I’d felt in weeks. Ritter was here. We were together. For the moment, that was enough. The snake in my head was probably feasting abundantly without Jeane around, but for once I didn’t feel tired or weak. I felt exuberant. Confident. In control. It had been weeks since I’d felt this good.

The feeling wouldn’t last because the snake would eventually break through the outer box, and what happened then, I didn’t know. But my whole future was riding on the outcome of my confrontation with Delia Vesey. I had to beat her because if I didn’t, I’d lose everything I ever cared about.

When we arrived at the hotel, Cort and Keene left for the airport, taking the Unbounded agent I’d brought back earlier. I was glad the brothers would have some time alone because I was curious about Keene’s ability, and Cort, once Keene told him what was going on, should be able to understand and explain the talent, if anyone could.

In the brief moment that we were together before Keene headed for the airport, I’d felt my strength increase. Keene didn’t seem to be doing it on purpose, so I took Ritter aside and made sure he told Chris to give the all unconscious Emporium soldiers another dose of knockout juice before Keene arrived, just in case they were also affected by his ability.

When we entered the hotel room, Stella looked up from her laptop, looking no worse for her desperate fight on the boat. “Good, you’re all back in one piece.”

I had a brief vision of Dr. Crandall, blood welling from his back.
Not all of us.
But I didn’t say it aloud. My eyes wandered to Walker Anderson, who’d stood up from the chair next to Stella as we entered. “Where is Habid?” I demanded.

He glanced nervously at the queen bed closest to the door where Jeane still lay unconscious and not breathing. His jaw clenched with determination. “Not until you promise to take me along.”

Anger swept through me at the request. I glanced at Ritter.
May I?
I thought at him. He inclined his head, and I moved to Walker’s side and shoved him against the wall, placing one hand on his neck and the other against his stomach. “What makes you think you can force us to do anything?” I put all the fury I felt at Crandall’s senseless death into the words.

“Because,” choked out Walker, “you guys aren’t like them.”

Ritter had moved to my side. Not because he was worried about Walker striking back but to give me pointers. “Really, you should push a little lower and harder, like I told you with Jeane back home.”

“Like this?” I dug my thumb deeper.

Walker’s eyes grew big. “Stop,” he gasped. “Can’t . . . breathe.”

“Hmm. It works.” I smiled at Ritter, letting up slightly without releasing my hold.

“Why’d you stop?” Ritter asked, his dark eyes glittering dangerously. “What do you care if one more foolish mortal dies?” I knew his words were only to scare the reporter. I’d seen Ritter go to great lengths to protect innocent mortals—even stupid ones like Walker.