A Perfect Darkness (13 page)

“Amy—”

“You wanted to help me.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to sneak around
with
you.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't involve you.”

Ozzie stripped out of his blue-and-white-striped dress shirt. It was warm and smelled of that god-awful cologne he always wore when he came over. Her hair was close enough to his in color. In her bedroom, she pinned it back so it didn't stick out. She changed into blue jeans and stuffed her backpack beneath her shirt to match Ozzie's little pooch. Her heart was already thudding. Cyrus wasn't going to tell her to butt out again. Something had happened.

Lucas. No, please don't tell me he's gone.

A sinister thought popped to mind: was this a setup?

She walked back into the living room. “Thanks, Oz.” She handed him the remote control. “Hang out, enjoy. I'll see you soon.”

He didn't take it. “Will you?”

“I…I don't know.” She gave him a quick hug.

She hadn't turned on the light outside her door, so her spy guy wouldn't get a good look at her. He would have taken note of the guy who'd come over, if he was any good at his job. She saw the black, innocuous-looking car and tried not to look at it. She walked like Ozzie in that quick way that hardly used any body motion. Two buildings down she walked into the—thank God—first floor apartment. As soon as she closed the door she looked out the window. She didn't see anyone following her. With a breath of relief, she slipped out of Ozzie's shirt and put on one she'd stuffed into her backpack.

She grabbed a Baltimore Ravens cap sitting on the end table and walked out the back door to the courtyard after checking to see that it was clear. She then got into Ozzie's bright green Prius and headed out of the parking lot.

Cyrus hadn't mentioned Quiet Waters Park, obviously because he'd been concerned about someone listening in. She pulled up to the park entrance twenty minutes later. It was closed, of course, being long after dark. But the moon was nearly full, casting everything in a two-dimensional light. The gate was closed, but she spotted where Cyrus had removed two posts so she could drive around it.

Beyond the gatehouse and where the road curved to the right, she saw a flash of light in the woods. She took the right that led to two pavilions. The light beckoned, and she pulled into the parking area of the first one. Her headlights lit up the pavilion that people used for parties. Cyrus stood by one of the white columns. The night air was in the low fifties, and she hadn't thought about grabbing a jacket. She wrapped her arms around herself as she approached him, feeling as cold inside as she did outside.

He glanced toward the road on the other side of the woods as he stepped out from under the roof. She could hardly see his features, only the flat planes of his face in the silvery light and the halolike shine of his head. For the first time, though, she could see his glow. It was brown and jagged: fear and lots of it. It was contagious.

As soon as she neared him, he said, “Amy, it's too late to go back now. All you can do now is get out of here.” He shoved a thick envelope at her. “Take this. It's all the cash I could get my hands on without alerting anyone.”

“Cyrus, I can't—”

“Take it, dammit. Now is not the time to be noble or argue.” He slid out of his jacket and wrapped it around her. “There's enough money for you to live on for a while, and the name of someone who can help you change your identity. There's also an address and description of a car along with a key. I just bought it from my aunt, but it's still registered to her.”

“Cyrus, you're scaring me,” she said, echoing Ozzie's words.

“I didn't do a very good job of it earlier. I wish I had. But I don't think it would have made any difference.”

“It wouldn't have.”

“Amy, your new friends, Eric and Petra Aruda—and Lucas—they killed a man. A CIA officer named Gladstone.”

She could hardly breathe the words, “Killed him?”

“You can't trust them. Eric, in particular, is very dangerous.”

“What is this all about?” she asked, hearing desperation in her voice and not caring. “Please, tell me. I need to know what I'm up against.”

“I don't suppose it matters anymore. I'm done at the CIA.”

“Because of me?” It hit her then, that he'd been trying to dissuade her for her own protection. “I'm so sorry.”

“I deserve it, so don't go feeling guilty. In fact, I hope you can forgive me. I can't keep doing this, and if I leave the DST, I'll be ruined anyway. I know too much. And now they don't trust me.” He took a ragged breath. “Back in the seventies and eighties, several government divisions were running experiments on using psychic abilities, mostly remote viewing. Back then we thought the Soviet Union was way ahead of us in their psychic warfare programs. The president's staff, as well as Secret Service agents and CIA officers, were trained on blocking someone from getting into their minds. We weren't just being paranoid.

“In the eighties, the pressure to find hostages was tremendous. Reagan put the thumbscrews to Casey, the CIA director at the time, and he put them on us. The psychic programs had achieved some success, but not enough to keep the funding. They were shifted from one entity to another and eventually shelved. But
one program went further than the others, a program called BLUE EYES that only a few knew about. The subjects were people with high perception. A scientist created a secret blend of nutrients that boosted their abilities even more.”

“Psychic abilities? Like mind reading and telling the future and…what did you say? Remote viewing?”

“The ability to see a place psychically.”

The thought stunned her. “Like…psychic spying?”

“Exactly.” He looked into the woods again before returning his attention to her. “Though it wasn't publicized, three hostages were located and rescued due to our efforts. The results were astounding, and the possibilities unlimited. But there were side effects, whether from the Booster or the stress of their missions, we don't know.”

“Side effects?”

“Their sexual appetites were ramped up. Not only with their significant others but with their fellow participants. That, we could have lived with, but their psychological states began to deteriorate, too. One went on a rampage and killed three people. A few others committed suicide.”

“Dad?” she whispered, the pieces coming together in loud crashes inside her mind.

“Your dad was one of those subjects. When I brought him in, I didn't know how it would turn out. I knew he had extrasensory perception, and he was excited about serving his country in such a progressive way.”

“Dad was…psychic?”

“One of the best in the program.”

“Oh, my God.” She clamped her hands on either side of her head, trying to compute it all. “That's why he was crazy at the end.”

“I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before. The program was shut down and hushed up, and we were all sworn to secrecy. It was something we wanted to forget, everyone except the man who ran the program. He was devastated, couldn't stop talking about what we could have accomplished.

“Nobody thought about the effects being passed to their offspring. Extrasensory abilities do run in families, but what about our enhanced subjects?” His voice grew low, and she heard regret. “Several months ago I brought up your uncanny ability to read people to the man behind BLUE EYES. I was worried that if you'd inherited your father's abilities, you might inherit the psychological problems, too. Unfortunately, he wasn't concerned about you; all he could see was the possibility of reviving his beloved project. You should have seen the look in his eyes. The thing is, the cause is a good one. Rescuing hostages, finding terrorists. But at what cost? I couldn't talk him out of it. He assigned three officers to track down the offspring of the subjects and analyze them.”

Her voice was hard when she said, “And I was your Offspring.”

He lowered his head. “Yes.”

At least that meant he hadn't just been in her life to assess her. “And Bill Hammond.”

He nodded. “A lot of you don't know you even have abilities.”

“Wait a minute. You're saying that seeing glows is a
psychic
ability?” She shivered. “You tested me on
those recruits a few months ago. But you weren't testing them. You were testing me, weren't you?”

“Yes, and you passed. But I failed you, at least as far as my reports went. I didn't want you involved. Somehow the Rogues—that's what he calls Eric, Petra, and Lucas—figured some of this out. And now we're here.” Sadness permeated those last words.

“Cyrus, I can't get my head around this.”

“Amy, what you've got to do is get it out of your head. I told you so you wouldn't make yourself crazy trying to figure it out. Now let it go—let Lucas go—and keep yourself safe.”

“Lucas said they were injecting him with something. Are they giving him this Booster stuff?”

“It was supposed to be destroyed, but I don't know if it was. I've been a reluctant participant this time, so they've kept me out of the lab and out of the loop.” At the sound of a branch hitting the ground, both of them jerked their heads toward the woods.

Cyrus's voice became more hurried when he said, “There's something else. We believe that the children born of affairs between two subjects may be even more powerfully enhanced. And more dangerous. They're called Ultras, and they're likely to become psychologically unstable. Eric and Lucas are Ultras. But Amy, here's the important thing—the two men behind BLUE EYES are the most dangerous and most powerful of all. Their cause is all they care about. You won't win if you try to fight them or find Lucas. You'll only die, and I couldn't handle that. Take the money and the car and get lost for a while.”

She stared at the envelope and then stuffed it into her backpack. Since it contained her identification
and her own money, she wasn't leaving it behind. “All right.” Even as she uttered the words, though, she knew she couldn't abandon Lucas. Her heart tore at the mere thought of it. “How can the CIA sanction this kind of project?”

“They think it's a program to predict terrorist attacks using computer programs and intuition.”

“DARK MATTER,” she guessed.

“How did you know?”

“That's not important. Who are the men behind these programs?”

She heard a strange sound. Before she could even turn, Cyrus groaned and fell forward. She tried to catch him, and warm blood spattered her hands. The strange
whoosh-thump
sounded again, and with sudden and startling clarity she knew what it was—bullets.

They were shooting at her!

She couldn't hold Cyrus up. He slumped to the ground in a heap.

Ohmygod, they're shooting at me, they shot Cyrus, and they want me!

She crouched and ran into the dark woods, her heart beating so hard it was slamming against her skin. Her footsteps sounded as loud as sonic booms. She zigzagged to the left. She had no idea what lay beyond, but anything was better than what was behind her.

Another bullet whizzed by, so close she heard it hit the tree next to her. They could see her! They probably had those night goggles on. They'd heard everything Cyrus had just told her, and now she would die and Cyrus was probably dead, and…
oh, God, please help me!

L
ucas shot out of his mission. One second he'd been looking at the Arab man's face and the next he'd seen Amy, or rather, felt her: fear, horror, her dry mouth, and pounding heart. He smelled pines and her sweat. But he couldn't see anything.

The darkness around him swallowed him up. He yanked off the cap and jumped from the table, needing to do something, to move, to bang on the door. They didn't restrain him anymore, except when they gave him a shot. What could he do? He'd already ascertained that there was no escape from the room. The threat to Amy kept him painfully compliant.

“What are you doing to her?” he screamed at the camera mounted in the corner.

He wasn't able to hold onto her like he used to. His connection to her came in pulsing images that hit him hard and then were gone.

“What are you doing to Amy?” he screamed again, slamming his fists against the glass.

The curtain opened. A guard stood a few feet away. The brown-haired woman he'd seen earlier looked in,
a serene, pretty face that showed a hint of disconcertment at his behavior. She pressed a button outside the door. “What appears to be the problem, sir?”

Sir?
Was she kidding? “They said they wouldn't hurt Amy if I cooperated.”

She looked puzzled, and then Robbins rushed into view and ushered her out. She kept glancing back while Lucas continued to bang on the glass.

Robbins returned a few minutes later. “Lucas, what's going on?”

“That's what I want to know.” Fear strained his voice. “Something's happening to Amy. She's running away from someone in some dark place. It's got to be you guys. You said she wouldn't be hurt if I cooperated, and dammit, I've been cooperating.”

Robbins looked as in the dark as Lucas was. “I'll find out what's going on.”

Lucas paced in the spill of light coming from the hallway. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Come back, baby, come back.”

After a few minutes he hit the glass again. He couldn't bring her back. “Dammit! What are they doing to me?” Since they'd been injecting him with God-knew-what, his skills had grown stronger but more out of control. He used to be able to pull Amy into his consciousness when she experienced a strong emotion.

Another storm of images sent him to his knees.

Oh, God, please help me!

“Amy!” He couldn't talk to her other than in the dreams, but he could always comfort her. Only if he could keep the connection, though, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.

He couldn't help her. He pressed his forehead to the floor and drowned in helpless rage.

 

Gerard Darkwell was in his office watching Lucas having a meltdown when Robbins returned. They'd been observing Lucas while he undertook his second mission when a call came in. At the same time, Lucas shot up and yanked off the sensors. Gerard sent Robbins to check it out.

The officer on the phone was breathless. “We've got her in our sights.”

“If she's going to escape, target her legs. I want her alive, if possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

His razor instincts had proven themselves again when he'd had Cyrus tailed. Damn traitor. Why did people let their personal loyalties and their misguided sense of righteousness keep them from seeing what was important? Could they not feel the power of justice, the victory of taking out dangerous enemies, and at the small price of a few people's lives?

He hadn't wanted Hammond taken out, though. The asset, known only as Steele, reported that Hammond took him off guard and he had to change the plan. Gerard hated losing even one of the Offspring. Each was useful, either voluntarily or not. Except for Eric Aruda. He had to be removed.

Robbins returned and stood beside one of the chairs in front of Gerard's desk. Half circles of sweat beneath his armpits darkened his white cotton shirt. “He's got a connection to Amy. He felt someone chasing her.” He wore a questioning look.

“Cyrus just betrayed all of us by telling her about
DARK MATTER. We can't let her go back to the Arudas with this information.” He gave Robbins a hard look. “Diamond has left the program.”

“You're firing him?”

“I'm afraid it's worse than that.”

Fear robbed the man's face of color. He looked at the monitor, where Lucas was again banging on the glass with the flat of his hand. “What should I tell him about Amy? We promised we wouldn't hurt her.”

“
If
she kept her nose out of our business.”

Damned connection to Amy Shane. He wanted to get as many missions out of Lucas as he could, for as long as Amy was alive and as long as Lucas's sanity held out.

Frustration at the slow progress of the war ate away at him. Now, after twenty years of watching the war on terrorism flounder, he had a chance to make something happen. He needed this to succeed. Not for the glory his older brother sought. No, he needed success because it filled an emptiness he'd always felt inside him. Patriotism gave him purpose. It didn't matter that his father or brother would never know what he'd achieved.
He
would know.

 

“Amy Shane, we can see you. Come out and you won't be hurt,” a man called.

She crouched behind a tree, trying to hear her pursuers over the hammering of her heartbeat. No matter how clever she had been in escaping her spy guys, she knew she wasn't going to get away from these men. She was going to die or, worse, be captured.

I'll be with Lucas. Not with; they won't put us together. But near.

A sterner voice said,
You can't save Lucas by being captured and shot up with whatever they're giving him. And you damn well can't give up. And don't, for God's sake, think about Cyrus lying there with bullets in him.

The sharp pain in her chest had nothing to do with exertion.

They might be able to see her, but with all the trees in the way, they wouldn't have a clear shot at her. If she could get to her car…but that was only viable if there wasn't an officer left behind to watch it.

“Hey, what's that?” one of the men said to another.

She took the opportunity to run. Branches whipped against her face, stinging her skin. A loud flutter exploded beside her. Birds? Whatever it was made a racket. She saw a light in the distance. The gatehouse? She had no idea where she was in relation to the road. Her shoulder rammed a tree trunk, shooting pain down her arm and throwing her to the side. Branches beat her up. Here in the woods the moonlight barely penetrated. She was running blind in an obstacle course. She needed to get out in the open, or no, maybe not, or—get to the highway. Stop a car and pretend she was being chased by a rapist. Yes!

With a plan and hope, she didn't even feel the bite of the branches. She ran toward the light. Several minutes later she came upon a building that looked like it held maintenance equipment for the park. One large light illuminated the door and part of the parking area. She ran for the corner, planning to be out of sight in seconds.

“Hold it right there!” a voice barked from way too close behind her.

She turned, heaving in oxygen. Her body sagged at the sight of two men emerging from the woods with guns pointed at her. One of them whispered, “If she moves, nail her in the knee.”

Guess I'll go with Plan B: get captured and find Lucas from within.

She reluctantly raised her arms. She saw the night vision goggles around one man's neck. How could she, Eric, and Petra hope to win against the CIA?

“We've got her,” one of the men said into a phone earpiece that reminded her of
Star Trek.
“Alive.”

They wanted her alive.

The other man kept his gun aimed at her. Both men advanced slowly.

Grief and fear crashed through her the same way she had crashed through the trees. Her knees wobbled. She felt light-headed. So she thought she was imagining the odd light that suddenly appeared on the right man's sleeve. Until he jerked his arm with a painful yelp.

The other man backed away. “What the hell?”

The first man's arm was on fire. Just as bizarrely, another fire erupted on his pant leg. Both fires intensified as though someone had thrown gas on them. He dropped his gun, fell to the ground and rolled. The other man just stared in horror, and she stared as well, though part of her brain was screaming,
Run!

Despite his rolling efforts, the fire grew worse. He was now screaming in pain. The other man stripped off his jacket and threw it over him, but it, too, flared up. The air filled with an acrid scent—

Oh, God, the man's burning flesh.

The presence of someone nearby jarred her, and she
jerked around to find Eric watching the flames with a look of eerie satisfaction on his face. Not just watching, but mesmerized.

“You did that?” she whispered fiercely.

The man on fire stopped moving, his screams dying. The other man looked up, his face ashen. He saw her and Eric, and then he ran—away from them.

“Let's go,” Eric said, grabbing her arm and hauling her around the side of the building. They ran down the short road, through a copse of trees, and out the other side, where a car waited. The Barracuda roared to life. He opened the door and shoved her into the back while Petra pulled out of the hiding spot.

Eric said, “Those two won't be following us, but I don't know if they have friends.”

Petra jammed the gas pedal and raced down the road.

The horrors of the past twenty minutes bombarded Amy as she trembled in the backseat. As on the night Lucas had been taken, the adrenaline drained from her and left her a boneless lump.

“To the tomb?” she heard Petra ask.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” she asked him.

“She met with Diamond. I wish you'd been there; I couldn't hear what they were saying. Then these two guys appear out of nowhere, shoot Diamond, and go after Amy.”

“And then Eric set one of them on fire!” Amy said, unable to hold in her horror any longer. She would never forget the man's writhing and screams and the smell, God, the smell.

“What?”
Petra said.

“We'll talk when we get home,” Eric replied.

Amy's teeth started chattering, and she clamped down on her jaw and curled up into a ball. She had to get herself together before they got back to…had Petra called it “the tomb”? She just wanted to go home.

Home. She could never go home, could never again be Amy Shane of Disc Angel, slightly dysfunctional but mostly a normal person. Yes, she had made the decision, but now it was real. Cyrus was dead and she wasn't who she thought she was. Her only allies were two people she couldn't trust…and one was a double murderer.

 

Gerard Darkwell watched Lucas's monitor while he impatiently awaited word from the two officers. He didn't know what Amy's skills were, since Cyrus had probably lied to protect her, but he didn't think she was dangerous. She wasn't an Ultra.

Lucas suddenly stumbled to the chair, tilted his head back and closed his eyes. His features relaxed and Gerard could see relief on his face.

He exchanged a look with Robbins. “He's not worried about the girl anymore. Why?”

He hated this. Everything had gone smoothly until the Rogues got involved.

His phone rang. Finally.

“Sir…” The man was trying to catch his breath. “Oh, God.”

Gerard stiffened in his chair. “What is it?”

His voice sounded strained. “They set Stephano on fire. First his arm and then his leg and suddenly…he was covered in flames and screaming, and I couldn't
do anything to help him. It happened so fast. I never saw anything. The flames were just there.”

“You said ‘they.'”

“We were chasing her, and then Stephano went up in flames and then there was this guy standing next to Shane, just standing there watching. The son of a bitch was smiling!”

Anger suffused Gerard. Eric Aruda. He must have gone with Shane. The idiot had lost her again at the apartment complex, but they'd tracked Diamond through the GPS in his vehicle after he'd given them the slip. When the officers reported that he was meeting with Amy, Gerard knew he had officially crossed the line to traitor. He harbored no hard feelings toward the man, though. Cyrus had given him his project back. In fact, he'd always been concerned about Cyrus's dedication to the cause, even back then. Robbins was another one who needed to be watched.

The most dangerous, though, was Aruda. They had to step up their efforts to find all three Rogues and dispose of them accordingly. Now Amy was one of them. She would be treated accordingly.

“Report to me immediately. Say nothing about what you saw. We'll take care of Stephano.”

He would tell the officer that Aruda had some kind of device that shot flames from a distance. The two men he'd tapped had been removed from active duty because they went off half-cocked on a mission in Afghanistan. The Agency was trying to figure out what to do with them. He hadn't told them they were acting unofficially or about the abilities of their quarry.

“Robbins, go check on our friend, see what you can find out.”

Obviously annoyed at being left out of the loop, Robbins exited with a huff.

Gerard phoned Steele. “I need you over here as soon as possible.”

Steele was a free agent the CIA used on unofficial business, though he was semiretired now. If he were ever caught during a mission, he couldn't be traced to them. In addition, Steele knew what the Offspring were and exactly what they were capable of. He would have no problem eradicating “those freaks,” as he'd called them twenty years ago.

Gerard walked down the hall to Lucas's “quarters.” Robbins was there, too. Gerard smiled after the guard locked the door.

“I found out what happened,” he said to Lucas, who gave him a wary look.