The Takeover (18 page)

“I helped you kill Delia.” Jeane rolled her neck as she glared at me, as if a camera were filming and we were in some kind of movie.

“You tried to capture us for the Emporium.” I’d also seen her shoot a mortal in the back, with no remorse. There was no way I would ever trust her again.

Jeane’s eyes shuttered. “Well, things have changed.”

I knew that. I still couldn’t see her life force, though she hadn’t tried to null anyone’s ability yet, which was fortunate for her. None of us had much patience where she was concerned.

“What things?” I asked. “And what were you doing at Ropte’s?”

I sidled over to where she sat on the couch under the watchful eyes of Cort and Mari. I was anxious to help Ritter and Keene gather supplies for the upcoming rescue, but I was even more anxious to find out what Jeane knew of Ropte’s plan.

Jeane’s eyes opened again slowly. She leaned forward, her blue and white, peasant-style blouse dropping open to reveal her breasts in their see-through bra. “I’m not working for the Emporium anymore. I thought going back was the right thing with Delia gone, but I was wrong. I no longer have any loyalty toward them. Or Ropte.”

I arched a brow. “Oh, yeah? Because you were in his house on a first name basis with his wife. You going to explain that?”

She sat back and remained silent.

“That’s what I thought. Look, Jeane, you will tell us what we want to know, one way or the other.”

“Go to hell,” she muttered.

“Why don’t you think about it? For now we have more important things to do.”

I nodded at Cort, and he lifted a large syringe. Jeane’s nostrils flared as he grabbed her hand, but she didn’t struggle as he plunged the sedative into her arm. She lay back on the couch with a dramatic sigh, going limp. Her eyes fluttered closed.

“It should last twenty-four hours unless we give her something to counteract it,” Cort said. “But we’ll restrain her and get her on an IV to make sure she stays asleep. We can’t spare any of us tonight to watch over her.”

“So sad,” Mari said, looking down at Jeane’s still form and shaking her head. “Why would she want to work with the Emporium? After what they did to her?”

I sighed, pushing away a pity I didn’t want to feel for Jeane. “I bet she thought with Delia gone, she might be able to move up. Because the only thing Jeane cares about is herself. Let’s never forget that.”

Ritter came into the room, looking dark and dangerous dressed in black and carrying his customary assault rifle. Something moved inside me seeing him this way. All business. A killing machine that miraculously had found a place for me in his heart. I briefly fingered the rings I wore on a gold chain around my neck. They were always with me, except during workouts and ops where they might be a liability. This chain and the rings—the new one that was mine and the older two that had belonged to his mother and his little sister—represented Ritter’s heart.

Ritter and Cort locked Jeane away in one of Noah’s spare bedrooms while Mari gathered the others for our pre-op briefing.

“Stella’s intel on the first three families’ whereabouts was correct on all accounts,” Ritter said, “but thanks to our work at Ropte’s, we now have exact addresses and a location for the fourth family in Kansas. Keene and I will head our two teams. Cort, Mari, and Patrick will go with Keene to Maryland. Erin, Noah, and I will take the house in Virginia.”

I was leery of using Patrick, who had little training and was a pacifist at heart, and Noah, who, despite years of good training, really had no aptitude for combat. They were better than no backup at all, but I hated dividing our forces. In Idaho and Kansas, Ava and Dimitri would also be down on personnel, but our three mortal, former black ops employees were well equipped for this kind of rescue.

“Remember, in and out,” Ritter continued. “Both teams will wait until we hear from Ava before going in. Mari, we’ll depend on you to shift your family back to one of the DC safe houses, and then call Erin and arrange to do the same with our family once we’re close enough for you to locate.”

“Okay.” Mari’s eyes gleamed, and my heart echoed her excitement at the idea of saving those families. “If something goes wrong, you should just have Noah sing. Judging by the reactions of people today, we should have been using Noah all along as our secret weapon.”

Noah grinned. “I’m game. Though I think Erin’s ability enhanced their emotions as much as my singing ability did.”

“Teamwork,” Mari agreed.

“And FYI,” Noah said. “Our Renegades from New York are already in place to move the families of the other politicians to safety, and the president has assigned Secret Service to the representatives themselves. Hopefully, that will prevent another kidnapping.”

“If we’re successful tonight, my father will also initiate an early vote with the proof we gather about these families,” Patrick said. “Once the term limits and the protections are in place, the kidnappings should stop.”

I hoped so. But it left me wondering what else the Emporium had planned.

“Let’s go,” Ritter said. “Showtime.”

MARI SHIFTED US BACK TO
a DC safe house, and from there we divided into separate vans. Ritter, Noah, and I would be heading to Louisa, Virginia, while Keene and the others drove to Denton, Maryland. They’d arrive in less than an hour and a half at a newly built farmhouse on nearly seventy acres of land. Our trip to a two-hundred-acre farm in Louisa would take two hours. Ava had reported that the other locations in Nampa, Idaho and Lawrence, Kansas were equally isolated.

“At least they’re consistent,” Noah said as she steered our van over the gently winding freeway. She seemed to take delight in driving faster than any other vehicle on the road. “Obviously, they want to make sure the families don’t have a chance to escape to any neighbors.”

“Who are the properties registered to?” I asked.

Ritter looked up from the middle seat where he was studying maps on his laptop. “According to Stella, they’re all registered to different dummy corporations. Which means the properties could belong to any of the Emporium members or even the Triad themselves.”

“Ropte.”

“Possibly,” he conceded. “In fact, they are likely his, given that the information was on his computer.” He hesitated a few seconds before adding, “It bothers me that they are all so remote.”

“Makes our job easier. We don’t have to worry about neighbors.”

“Yes, but neither do they. They’ll be heavily armed. And they won’t hesitate to murder the families if they think they might lose them.”

“Then we’ll shoot first,” I retorted.

Ritter gave his first hint of a smile. “That sounds like a very good idea.”

Darkness was still two hours away when we arrived in Louisa near our destination. Parking the van off the road, we climbed over barbed wire fences that were barely an obstacle and then hiked through a small forest of trees to get to the house. As I searched the house for life forces, Ritter debated with Ava on the phone whether or not we should wait until nightfall. All the other teams were in place and ready to move.

The beautiful Victorian house had strong gothic influences that resulted in a steeply gabled roof, reminiscent of a medieval cathedral. A beautiful pillared porch ran around the entire front of the house, wrapping around one side. Luscious hanging baskets of flowers decorated the porch at intervals, signaling to me that someone lived here or visited regularly. A balcony on the second floor also spanned the front of the house, and I could see yet another partial balcony on the third floor at the rear of the house. The whiteness of the building contrasted sharply with the deep green of the short lawn and the thick line of fir trees.

Ten life forces were inside the house, five dimmer than the others. Definitely shielded minds. The Georges, the family we believed was being held here, consisted of a mother and three children, ages nine, fourteen, and seventeen. That left the five shielded minds, who were likely Emporium soldiers, and another person who was unknown. Someone was in the kitchen area of the house, and I suspected that extra mind was a housekeeper or cook of some type. Probably a woman. Maybe even the person who watered those luscious baskets of flowers. Would she be aware of the kidnapping? I didn’t see how she could be unaware of what had happened, and the Emporium would never allow her to survive with the knowledge once this was over. So she was in every bit as much danger as the Georges.

Ritter looked at me. “Ten,” I said. “One I believe is the housekeeper, but I can get a little closer to see for sure.”

“So five hostiles.”

I nodded. “The family seems to be on the second floor in the room on the left end. All together. Two dim life forces are outside the room. Three dim downstairs on the main floor, and a bright one in the kitchen.”

In Maryland, Keene and Cort would send in microbots to determine the numbers of hostiles. For a moment, I worried about them, but Keene and Cort had been on far more missions than I had and they would be thorough. They also had Patrick, who could tap into their surveillance system, and Mari who could shift around inside the house and spirit the family away before the guards were even aware that something was wrong. Even so, if the distance between us weren’t too great for Mari to locate me in this place she’d never visited before, I might text her to shift here and take me back to verify their count.

Thinking about it was useless. I needed to focus on the here and now and trust them to do their job. That’s what Ava did with all of us.

It was harder than it looked.

“What about cameras?” Noah asked.

“Three here in the front.” Ritter pointed them out. “I’ll circle around to see what else they’ve got. Much as I don’t want to wait, I think Ava is right about moving in after dark.”

The custom metamaterials bodysuits were Cort’s invention, made of particles smaller than the wavelength of light. The suits came from a theory he’d worked on for the past century and was finally able to implement as technology caught up. We weren’t completely invisible wearing this second generation of suits, but they helped us slink around unnoticed in the trees and would be as good as invisible in the dark. Once the heat nullifiers were activated, not even radar could detect us.

Darkness came slowly, and then we had to wait more long minutes until night fell in Idaho as well. At least we were able to verify that the families weren’t being moved. Of course, that did nothing to stop their anguish. Closer to the house, I could feel their emotions. Fear, mostly, but anger too. Desperation. Worry. The mother was suffering from an arm injury that sent agony rippling through her body every time she moved.

The housekeeper retired to her bedroom on the third floor, which was an added bonus to the waiting. At least she’d be out of the line of fire. Ritter would go in on the main floor and take out the three guards. Noah and I would sneak past the cameras in our suits and scale the building to the balcony on the second floor. My job would be to take out the guards, while Noah’s would be to comfort and calm the family. Ritter and I would also retain a mental connection throughout the op so I could channel his ability.

I didn’t worry much about Ritter as he smiled at me and left. One or more of his three targets might be mortal offspring; the Emporium seemed to be raising more expendable servants these days. Even if the three were all combat Unbounded, he’d likely shoot two of them before they were aware of him.

Pulling my metamaterials hood from my pocket, I concealed my hair and face. “Wait for my signal,” I told Noah.

I sped past the camera at the left corner of the house. Even if I set off a motion sensor and someone was watching a monitor inside the house, it was unlikely they’d see me. Beneath the camera, I shot my grappling hook onto the balcony and began climbing. I whistled to Noah to follow. Even using Ritter’s increased ability to see in the dark, I detected only a ripple moving across the yard as she made her way toward me.

Up on the balcony, I checked for additional cameras, but there were none. I could feel the thoughts from the mortals inside the house louder now. Mostly fear as the family sat together in a clump. The mother was singing softly, ignoring the throbbing in her arm. The youngest was asleep, the seventeen-year-old girl was crying silently, and the fourteen-year-old boy plotted revenge.

The housekeeper on the third floor was thinking about what she would make tomorrow for breakfast.
Something to please the little boy. He’s sweet, unlike his older sister, who won’t eat anything if their mother doesn’t make her, and the angry teen boy who glares at me with hatred. Spoiled rotten rich kids. It’s not my fault they’re here. Really, such attitudes are the parents’ fault, though the mothers seems gracious enough. But at least that little boy is an angel. So small and quiet.
He reminded her of her own son.
She knelt down and prayed for his safety
.

The minds of the guards were blocked, but their shields weren’t terribly strong. I beat at one forcefully until it caved. With a planted thought, I could see he and his companion were combat Unbounded. No way did I want to engage both of them simultaneously. I’d have to shoot at least one, but that would end our surprise. Unless I planted another thought and sent one of them to the bathroom. They were probably bored and had eaten more food than normal while they’d been stuck here, so the suggestion should seem normal.