Tom nodded, eyes blank again.
“Good. Time to get her out of here.” He jabbed a thumb at Rachel.
“You’re going to send me alone?” she asked, surprised. “I thought you’d want to be there to watch your own show.”
“It’s all being captured on camera. I’ll follow with your friend.” He nodded at Tamara, “So don’t get any ideas about ducking out on me. I want to give you some time to appreciate the conditions there, help my other guests feel it all more keenly.” He smiled nastily.
“Where to?” Tom asked Mesmero.
“The facility where you took the other two. Lock her in with them, then come right back for your next assignment.”
Tom stood and approached Rachel, picked her up chair and all.
Fluke ducked out of sight as Mesmero paced around the table.
“My Hepplewhite!” Mabel cried out as Tom carried Rachel to the back porch and the scene vanished from around her.
~ * ~
Crouched below the level of the windowsill, Fluke listened as Mesmero continued pacing around the table.
“As soon as Tom reports back, I want you, Mabel, to drive me and the young lady here,” he must mean Tamara, “to the warehouse district. I don’t want to miss any more of the
live
show than I must.”
Fluke heard a chair being pulled up and someone sat. Mesmero continued to Mabel, “Have a seat. It should just be a few minutes before he returns for his next assignment, but we may as well get comfortable.”
Fluke edged away from the window and pinged David. He sub-vocalized for the pickup, “Just listen. I’ve found Johnson. He’s at the address belonging to the owner of the blue Toyota who followed me and Rachel earlier. They may not be here long…”
Peering around the back corner of the house, Fluke witnessed Tom’s arrival as he appeared out of empty air to land on Mabel’s back porch and re-
enter the house.
“They’re shifting location to someplace in the warehouse district. I’ll stay on their trail until you can send help.”
“How many we dealing with?” David queried.
“He’s got Stanton, Mabel the home-owner, and Tamara from the ashram as puppets, and maybe others at his warehouse. Rachel had time to tell me he’s got the two board members there.”
“How is she?”
Not a question Fluke wanted to address. How could he tell David he’d sent the man’s sister into danger when he might’ve busted her out of there? And he’d felt her fear even as she’d insisted she had to go.
“She’s already at the new site—with the board members. Tom just returned from transporting her. Johnson—he’s calling himself ‘Mesmero’—plans to join them there.”
“I’m on my way to you now.”
“Stay low.” Fluke ducked back behind the corner of the house as Tom, Mesmero, and the two women exited the house and gathered on the back patio. “I’m patching you in to the audio pickup.”
Mesmero addressed Tom. “You’ve got the address for the next board member—and the tranq. Go; bring him to the facility. I can program him there.” The teleporter promptly vanished. “You two, come with me.” Mesmero gestured then stopped and turned to Mabel. “Where’s your car?”
“I parked in the front drive,” she said, and turned, leading Mesmero and Tamara around the side of the house opposite Fluke. Thank God, or his luck, or thank Mabel, to the extent she retained some will of her own and knew Johnson for a bad guy.
When they’d rounded the corner Fluke addressed David again. “They’re heading to the front of the house. Don’t let them see you. I’ll be around back.”
~ * ~
Rachel told herself to breathe, to focus while the world spun around her. She wanted to cling to someone but couldn’t even hold herself with her arms bound to the arms of the chair. It could be that Tom tried to set her down gently when an alleyway appeared around them in the next instant. Still, she jounced against her ropes as he deposited her, chair and all, on a loading dock behind a square red brick building, its windows boarded over.
Tom pulled a key from his jacket pocket and used it to open a door beside the loading bay.
“Wait, Tom.” She breathed deep, summoning all her memories of the times they’d worked together, friendly banter at the Team’s council table, teasing him at the party celebrating his brother’s engagement to the Team’s shape-shifter. She summoned all her fondness for the man he’d been—and could be—when acting on his own will. She sought to project that understanding of him along with the feelings.
He paused in the act of bending to pick her up again.
“Tom, that man never said I had to stay tied up in there, did he?”
A line of strain showed between his brows.
“I know you’re still in there. You may have to do what he tells you—but there’s got to be some room for you to have a few ideas of your own, to remember what—and who’s—important to you. I know you don’t really want to hurt me or leave me helpless with men who aren’t in their right minds…”
“It’s. Hard. Just. To. Delay…” Tom spoke through clenched teeth.
“You can get me in there faster if I’m on my own feet.” She spoke swiftly, managing by will alone to keep herself calm and her feelings warm and steady. “If you loosen the ropes enough for me to walk you’ll actually do a better job of fulfilling Mesmero’s orders” Hopefully, he remained inwardly defiant enough of his puppet master not to examine her logic too closely.
“You’ll run…”
“With this chair still tied to my arms?”
“Hmmm.” Tom knelt, worked at the knots tying her legs to the legs of the chair. Tamara had tied them. And, by how easily Tom freed them, Tamara had obviously managed to find some wiggle room in her own orders.
Rachel soon stood, in a half crouch with the chair on her back. Dutifully she preceded Tom as he opened the door into Mesmero’s facility.
He stopped at another door just inside the short hallway they entered, this door consisted of a blank panel of steel, with an electronic security pad on the wall beside it. He keyed in a sequence of numbers too quickly for Rachel to catch them. The steel door slid open to reveal a small space like an elevator car, with another door on the opposite wall. Tom propelled Rachel into this space and stood blocking the exit.
“The second door will open a few seconds after this door closes,” Tom told her. “Mesmero never said I should leave that chair…”
Rachel turned so Tom could reach the knots securing her arms. So, her instincts proved good. Mesmero’s puppets were essentially unwilling and would oppose him to the extent they could. Tom had grown more lucid with her help, with reminders of himself. And he’d originally seemed to be more deeply under Mesmero’s control than say, Mabel, at least before Mabel had encountered the puppet master again in her house.
The ropes loosened and she withdrew her arms even as Tom pulled the chair away and closed the door between them, locking her in.
Rachel had to remind herself to keep her breathing even and slow in the few seconds before the inner door could open. Mesmero wanted her here so her fears and suffering would exacerbate those of his victims. But she had no intention of giving him that satisfaction. He didn’t know who he was dealing with. She’d lived on the streets before and she’d learned to handle her feelings about it—from desperation, to doubt, to feelings of worthlessness and despair, to the gnawing fears and that had haunted her
nights whenever David had to leave her on her own. She could handle this.
The door facing her slid open and an icy wind blasted her full on like the embrace of a Norse frost giant. Geez. She looked around at what appeared to be another alley like the one she’d left outside the facility, lit only dimly from somewhere high above. It came complete with blank brick walls, dumpsters, and tarmac scattered with trash and broken glass, stretching ahead to disappear into shadow.
Rachel hugged herself for warmth. The scoop-necked jersey top, yoga pants, and sandals perfect for fine June weather seemed too close to nakedness now. Right. Mesmero had said he chilled his facility at night. Those poor board members might already be suffering hypothermia. He’d also said it would be unbearably hot by day. Dawn couldn’t be too far off now. She shouldn’t have to hold out too long before the transition, or before Fluke and the Team could follow Mesmero here. She hoped.
But that wouldn’t give her long either to find her fellow prisoners. Mesmero’s taunts about programming them to destroy each other had her worried. If the Team failed to stop Mesmero in time, she had to remind the board members of themselves, circumvent the puppet master’s programming before he arrived to countermand her.
The men must be freezing, must have sought some sort of shelter… places to huddle down and conserve their warmth. From what Mesmero had said, they wouldn’t be together. He’d set them up to act as enemies.
She headed for the bulk of the nearest dumpster. Rotting garbage generated heat, and by the smell…
The metal lid burned her bare fingers with cold as she pried it up. Shadows filled it, too dark to make out any shapes, but a sound—half whimper, half groan, told her she’d found at least one of her men.
“Hello.” Even as she bounced in place, shivering in her sandals, she kept her tone bright and focused on projecting warmth and good will. “Hello—I’m here to help you—at least—help is on the way. Who am I talking to?”
“Hello?” A weak voice ventured from out of the darkness. “Who’s there?”
“My name is Rachel. I’m with Team Guardian.” She leaned over the opening. “And you are?”
“The superheroes?”
“Right. I’m afraid I’m not too super. I don’t have super strength, but maybe I can help you out of there, and the rest of the Team is on the way.” Again, she hoped.
A figure rose up, pushing the lid of the dumpster up and out of her grip to crash against the brick wall behind. The taller of the two board members. What was his name? Frustrating, not having her specs.
“How are you doing?” she asked him.
“Still kicking.” He coughed. “Got caught in the rain before I thought
of hiding in here. Got soaked. Too cold to get any sleep…” He extended his hand, “I’m Graham Hanson.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.” She made sympathetic noises as she took his hand and helped him scramble out of the dumpster. Poor man. He seemed half dead on his feet. Ignoring the smell, she put an arm around him, encouraging him to walk. “Let’s move around some, get your blood moving.”
“Right.” He leaned heavily on her but seemed to move more easily as they proceeded down the ersatz alley.
“Where’s your friend?” Rachel asked him, “Is he okay?”
“Friend?” Hanson halted, standing stiffly in place. “If you’re talking about Rosso, he’s no friend of mine—tried to keep me from getting in that dumpster, with the rain coming down and the temperature dropping. I could have frozen to death!” He paused, coughed, and then laughed. “But he couldn’t haul his fat ass up and into it, so he ran off down this way.” He gestured along the route they walked.
“That’s too bad.” Rachel projected more warmth and compassion, “Sometimes it’s best to make common cause with people who aren’t our friends—”
“There’s no compromise with that man!” Hanson shouted.
“Is that you, Hanson?” A voice sounded, quavering, from around a corner in the darkness ahead.
Thank Goodness.
The other one, Rosso, lived.
“You keep your distance!” Rosso shouted. “I’m armed now. I found something better than your smelly dumpster and you’re not taking it from me!”
“Why that—” Hanson made to charge toward the voice, but Rachel stayed him with a calming hand on his arm. The man could barely stand unassisted. What was he thinking?