Betrayal's Shadow (16 page)

CHAPTER 10

Mia closed the refrigerator door, slid energy drinks and food into the backpack, and headed to the wingback chair by the fireplace in the living room.

The last several nights she had fought any attempt to let herself “
fold
” to Turen, as he had termed it, with bad side effects. The sleeping pills altered her body rhythms and left her nervous and out of sorts. The attempts at white noise to distract her mind kept her awake all night and left her exhausted and irritable the following day.

No more fighting the
fold
.

Whether Turen wanted it or not, her determination for solutions outweighed his dictate for avoidance. She’d given his way a fair shot. Staying home resolved nothing, with the exception of the response she’d received from her email.

A few years back she’d done several articles, recounting her interviews of true-crime author, J.T. Mason. The articles followed Mason’s research of a several decades’ old mob hit. Even with time to dampen the facts, the details proved more raw and gritty than Mia had anticipated, but she learned a great deal. Mason’s reputation stemmed from his ability to get to facts not even the police could uncover.

Over the course of the interviews, they’d formed a friendship and now kept in contact when their professional objectives intersected. They both understood the need for discretion and diligence. Mason’s strata of information intersected with the Tucson Police department—the location of Isabella’s last meeting for Turen. Mason had confirmed the discovery of a female body and that of the undercover cop found dead with her within the timeframe of Turen’s meeting.

Mia deliberated whether this breached her promise to Turen of silence. Yet logic dictated she could get information he couldn’t. She would just have to deal with the fallout of her decision later.

Her email to Mason left the request for help with information on Isa’s death open-ended. Whatever Mason could provide would be useful. Mia stated her role as an intermediary for a possible relative of a missing woman living in Tucson. Her contact was overseas in the service and wanted more details on his missing cousin. Mason wouldn’t pry. Instead, he would expect exclusive rights if she found something to break the case open.

Given the circumstances, he would never hear the resolution. That was the line Mia wouldn’t cross.

True to form, Mason unearthed a battery of details, which arrived via overnight mail delivery on a thumb drive followed by a phone message.

“Have sent you the initial police report. It’s public. Will send some autopsy pics as soon as I can get them. Those aren’t. Sort of touchy. Case is still open. Hope this helps your contact with resolution on his cousin’s disappearance, though a harsh ending. Tucson police and DEA are eager for anything to close this case. It’s a crime against one of their own. FYI, the M.E. for the case died in a car crash two days after he finished his diagnosis. Too convenient. Be careful.”

Mia deleted the message.

Mason’s files consisted of a brief synopsis of the details, copies of the medical examiner’s report and several image files. The sum total created more holes in the story, though the core points boiled down to a relationship Isa had somehow developed with an undercover cop linked to drug cartel surveillance. One of the officer’s contacts clearly indicated a man named Rasheer as a potential intermediary supplier.

Isa had exchanged a series of text messages with the cop from an email account, noted in the report.

Hardly seemed useful given her death. Mia rubbed her eyes with a sigh.

She had stalled accessing Rheanna’s files too, unable to replicate her access to the previous entries. She wondered if the problem was her own reluctance to reveal more of the Guardian’s sad tale. Finding a way to further her search was worse than walking hip-deep in mud.

She tapped her fingers on her leg and glanced at the time. Already nine o’clock. Tonight she would wrestle back control.

First step, get to Turen’s cell under her own steam.

Blatant exposure wasn’t smart, but planning offset risk, though intangibles were a problem. Like how much of her drive was a physical longing to be with Turen. At least she was honest about the desire. Her body didn’t care if he wasn’t completely human. She’d absolved him of potential threat and viewed him as unquestionably innocent. That should be nagging at her instincts. Yet no alarms rang in her head.

With confusion a vehicle for risk, she put a stake in the ground and firmly planted her faith in Turen’s innocence. She believed. If he was lying to her, she was screwed.

So be it.

She leaned back in the chair, inhaled slowly, and filled her lungs to the count of ten. Hold. Clear the mind. Slow breath out.

She worked through the sequences as she counted and kept her eyes closed for the plan’s last phases. It took several times but, concentration focused, she moved the superfluous negativity out of her mind’s space and rid her brain of fluff.

Meditation had helped both her focus and her sword practice. It compartmentalized the mental baggage and honed her defensive skills, both confidence boosters. Granted, she couldn’t yet battle her way out of a paper bag, but she could hold her own enough to get away. Baby steps.

Positive. Focus. Breathe.

Now she needed some control of her ability to come and go, to control the “
fold
” when she was awake. She wouldn’t be as vulnerable if she could do this.

Getting ahead of yourself. Focus. Breathe.

With her spine straight and her arms woven through the straps of the backpack in her lap, she let her hands fall loose, flexible over the pack’s canvas.

If she fell asleep, she would end up in Turen’s cell, but she would lack control. Not the way she wanted to work her endeavor. She needed to rest on the fringes of relaxation without slipping over the edge. Then, with any luck, she could make it happen again and eliminate coincidence.

Reach him and then tackle the return trip home.

Eyes closed and breathing steady, she drifted, letting her body drive. The lightness floated inside her, translucent. She waited and let the intrusion of her extraneous senses fade away as she chose the one she wanted, the internal sound, to pull her to him.

She wavered, loose and lax, calm and focused.

Movements swirled around her, so faint at first she mistook them for her own breathing and heartbeat. The drum of the rhythm, a remote pulsing under water and from a great distance, grew stronger with each breath she took. The floating lightness dissipated, replaced with the luminescence of glass, then of ice, and then pressure, all real to her imagination. Each lacked permanent substance against her body. Weightless, the peace faded away and the luminescence hardened. Behind her closed eyelids, light turned to gray and then to black. Calm stiffened to momentary panic, and then warmth bled to cold, hard rock.

She blinked and adjusted to the cell’s dim light. Turen sat beside her, silent, waiting for her to speak.

“Hey.” The backpack bulged and dug into her ribs as she crouched against the cell wall. In addition to water and food, she’d added more tools, heavy and weighty. She shifted to move the pack to the floor but he reached out first and set it aside.

“You’re laden like a pack mule. If you have to run with that pack, you won’t be able to maneuver.”

“I’ll drop it if I have to, but you need supplies or you won’t maintain your strength. Besides, between you and my instructor, I’m getting stronger.”

He raised a brow. “You’re awake. Did you manage this under your own efforts?”

“Sort of. I don’t understand the process yet. Lack of control drives me nuts.”

“You don’t say.” The sarcasm in his voice softened with his quick smile, though the hard shell of concern dropped back over his features too quickly. “This is a very dangerous thing. How about you practice going back home now?”

“This was your idea, remember? I agree about the risk,” she added quickly. “But don’t try to manipulate me with threats of danger. I don’t do fear well.”

“You don’t do caution well, either.”

“This”—she waved her hand around his cell—“isn’t something I can control, but I’m doing the best I can. It makes a difference to me that I can get here under my own steam. Let me decide what role I’m supposed to play. What role I’m able to play.” She shrugged and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Don’t I at least deserve that?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You deserve many things. None of them are here. I’m not fighting you. I worry for you.”

She reached and covered his hand. “I understand, I really do. And while it doesn’t make you a troglodyte, it does waste my energy to push past all your ‘saving me from myself’ attempts. I need energy for other things. These last few nights of forcing myself to stay away didn’t help anything.”

He turned his hand and curled her fingers in his palm. His innocent gesture triggered a hot tingle through her body, and she pulled away before she lost control. Sanity and focus were critical. She couldn’t allow him to use sensual distraction just when she had finally made a little headway.

“I will support you to the best of my ability. So we’re clear on this, it will not go well with me if something bad happens to you. Please use caution in your pursuit of this adventure.” The stern measure of his tone changed with a tilt of his head and the deep assessment he gave her.

She reached out and touched his jaw with her fingertips. “I’m good with taking it one step at a time. You have to help me figure out how to help you. Maybe that’s all it will take to free both of us.” She forced back the cold tight grip in her chest. What a liar she was. She wanted him safe, free of the abuse and pain inflicted on him in this place, but then she would never see him again. Not something she’d prepared for yet, but an inevitable outcome.

“How can I support you?”

Mia distracted herself by searching through the pack for a sandwich and water. He accepted the food and waited on her answer.

“Your people have existed for a long time?”

“Since the beginning of mankind.”

She must have reacted, for he frowned.

“Is it too much to believe more than the human race originated from the primordial soup?”

Ignoring his sidetrack, she pushed further. “Did your race begin in the Sanctum?”

Turen paused, his sandwich uneaten. The quiet deliberation of his thoughts signaled his wariness, his evaluation of what to tell her and where the line should be. The gaze he gave her was intense, calculating, a scrutiny of enemy or threat. A twinge of regret surged through her at eliciting this response. She had no choice.

“I trust you with my life, but I cannot extend that trust to my people. If you betray me, one of us will come for you. Know this.”

She nodded slowly. “I understand. But I
need
to know.” And she did understand. One slip and they would come for her. Her life would be forfeit, though he had said “one of us,” not that he would come and take her life.

He shook his head in exasperation, then followed with a curt nod. “My people started their existence at the Sanctum. We exist from the edge of the same bowl of creation as mankind. There are a finite number of my people. Each of us maintains a particular set of genes—genetic traits, abilities. Each set, intended to align and enhance corresponding skills and attributes in the human race. If these traits are lost in my race for all time, mankind’s ability to evolve and succeed, as it was intended, is derailed. Our existence is tied to the human existence in other, more elusive manners, too.”

The souls? He offered her the superpowers, but his stronger reluctance lay in explanation of the souls. “Why?”

“We are intended to have a symbiotic existence, Guardians and humans.”

An indication that humans weren’t lower on the food chain, just on a different chain. He was concentrating enough, shielding other information that he’d slipped in the Guardian reference without thinking. Good, she would be okay to slip in that detail herself, since she knew it through Rheanna’s messages. “What do Guardians get from this symbiosis?”

He frowned, evidently realizing his mistake, aware she wouldn’t let him take it back. “The same as humans: the fulfillment and attainment of a higher level of being. We become whole.”

There was something wrong with his statement, a glaring omission. She would never have detected it if she hadn’t spent hours by his side. Without the intimate exposure they’d shared, she would have taken him at his word. The tension in him read like a line of text, the strain of his breath, the false ease with which he’d tossed out the statement, all with tight restraint. His answer held truth and omission, certainty and confusion. Something else had been lost to his people with the destruction from the virus. Had they lost their link to their true purpose?

“Without children, then your contribution is gone forever? There’s no way to get it back?”

“Without children it is lost.”

“Is there no way to—”

“What? Manufacture one of us? Clone us?” He gave a sour laugh. “Something intrinsic would be lost. It’s like starting from scratch with a newborn without the ability to pass on our universal knowledge.”