Lethal Engagement (An Unbounded Novella) (10 page)

“Four months.”

She nodded, a shy smile curving her lips. “He’s cute.”

I blinked at her. She was checking Keene out? Then it dawned on me that she meant he was cute for me. I laughed. I was definitely warming up to this woman who seemed more like a reclusive princess than anything else. “Yeah, I guess.”

She laughed. “You know you have it bad for him, don’t you?”

“Let’s hope the media doesn’t think so.”

“They won’t. It’s just a look I saw between you two, earlier. So am I right?”

I’d thought so, but his secret might have destroyed that forever. “I really don’t know.”

She shrugged. “Give it time.”

Thinking of Keene made my anger come rushing back. He’d hidden so much of himself these past months. I’d thought the feelings between us in Venezuela had been real, but maybe it had all been in my head. Regardless, we were in the same Renegade cell. We were friends. That he hadn’t told me hurt more than I cared to admit.

I glanced through my bedroom to the sitting room where Patrick sat on an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair, bent over papers he’d spread out on a round table. A phone pressed to his ear, and he was saying something I couldn’t quite hear. “We have half an hour before we leave for the school,” I said to Lucinda. “I need to talk to my partner about security.”

Lucinda’s pale eyes widened. “Okay, I’ll finish here for you.” Her voice lowered as her gaze also strayed to Patrick. “But you should really think about letting him know how you feel.”

Oh, yeah. I was going to let him know
exactly
how I felt.

Excusing myself, I marched through the suite, nodding at Patrick as I passed him, wishing I could simply shift. It would have made for a much better scene, appearing before Keene had his defenses up, but for now I would respect his privacy. A Secret Service agent was seated in a chair near the window in the hallway. He studiously averted his gaze as I crossed the hall and rapped on Keene’s door.

AT HIS INVITATION TO ENTER
, I walked into Keene’s sitting room where the double doors to his bedroom stood wide open. Like me, he had boxes with tissue paper and several suitcases. I did shift now, appearing an arm’s length away from him. “So,” I said, hands pressed on my hips.

He removed a shirt and shook it out, laying it on the bed before grabbing another. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

His eyes shut and opened slowly, sending unwanted heat coiling through my belly. “Tell you what?”

I yanked the shirt from his hand. “You
Changed.
”

“You say that like an accusation.”

“Does everyone know? Am I the last to find out?”

His jaw worked. “Yes.”

“Why? This is good news, isn’t it? Or do you really hate us?”

“No. I wanted to be Unbounded. All my life.” There was a curl to his lip that hinted of self-loathing. “I wanted it too much. When I hit thirty-six, I realized it wasn’t going to happen. I’ve never personally known anyone who Changed that late. The worst of it was the disappointment in my father’s eyes.” His voice sounded empty, as if all his hope had been consumed by that man I’d never met but detested. A little of my own anger died in that moment.

“But you did Change! How?”

He shrugged. “I’d been doing gene therapy with Cort and Dimitri, but if it was that, it only worked because of my direct heritage and all the sperm manipulation surrounding my birth. More likely, I’m just a late bloomer.” His mouth turned slightly upward at the corners but his tone was mocking.

“Your ability. That was you in the car.”

He scrubbed a hand over his beard. How could I have ever thought they’d done something to make it longer? If I looked closely, I could already see that the part closest to his skin was brown, not auburn.

“It’s called synergy,” he said. “I can see patterns in everything like my brother, but I don’t understand how they work. Rather I see how to change them, mostly increase them.” He grimaced. “Sort of like an atomic reaction.”

The skin on my arms pebbled. “The explosion in Morocco. I thought that was Erin.”

“It was both of us together. Her channeling Cort so we could see how to do it without taking down the whole building.”

Why didn’t you tell me?
That was what I really wanted to ask, what hurt the most. Keene prided himself on being honest, and I knew he’d never voice an outright lie, but this felt like the biggest lie of all.

“In the car I saw your color,” I said, pushing back the hurt to a place where it didn’t make me useless and unwanted. “And I can still find you when I reach for a shift. That means it stayed with me, taught me something.”

His expression hardened. “If you remember, you also couldn’t breathe. Now quit mutilating my shirt.” He pulled it from me.

“I didn’t understand what was going on, that’s all.” I took a step toward him. “I forgot that I don’t need my lungs to breathe, that absorbing works for oxygen too. I was never in any real danger of suffocating. If you help me using your ability, I might be able to find anyone. Maybe I could travel longer distances. Maybe I could take someone with me!”

“Maybe I could blow you up.” He turned away, but not before I saw the firm set of his jaw. “You might end up in the middle of the ocean. Or on Mars.”

“What are you talking about?”

He whirled on me. “I can’t control it! It’s unpredictable. I might just as well help the other side. It was my synergy that made that fire in Venezuela burn out of control, trapping us in that closet. And if Erin hadn’t shielded us in Morocco, I would have killed us all!” Grief blazed from his eyes. “People died, Mari.”

“You’ve killed before.”

He nodded once, sharply. “The difference is that this time some of those who died were people I was trying to protect. People who were just walking by the hotel.”

I understood what he was saying. In fact, I understood a lot of what I hadn’t before. “But I’m guessing your ability is why they sent you with me. Ava wants us to experiment together. That’s what you and Cort were arguing about.” I
was
the woman
they’d been discussing.

“You heard that?”

“Some of it.” I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to release my frustration. I hoped they had a gym in this mausoleum or I was going to go crazy if I couldn’t shift whenever I wanted. “Look, whatever your reservations about your ability, this is
good
news. You’re Unbounded!” I wanted to make him see—feel—what I did. From the moment I’d recovered from the trauma of Trevor’s violent death and began testing my ability, the new me had just wanted to
live.
Everything seemed brighter, had more potential. I still couldn’t wait to discover the entire world! Even two thousand years might not be enough time for all I wanted to do. Keene’s fear only wasted time.

“Unbounded,” he said with a little sneer. “It makes a difference to you after all.”

My mind tried to catch up with what he was saying, tried to untangle his words from my hurt. “What do you mean?”

“This.” In one step he closed the space between us, his hands clamping down on my forearms and pulling me against the length of his body. His mouth angled over mine, pressing downward. One hand slid around to the back of my head, pushing my face closer. The other cupped my back.

Energy crackled around us. Desire sparked all the female parts of me, urging my arms around his chest. I saw numbers, larger than even I could count. I experienced more colors than I had believed existed. I pushed closer, kissing him back, long and hard. Exactly the way I’d wanted to ever since Venezuela.

Venezuela.

I saw the combinations of numbers that would take me to that burned building where we would be alone, to finish this kiss where it should have begun. Or maybe we’d somehow stay in the
in between
for as long as it took to get our fill. I almost believed I could take him with me. The anger and hurt had vanished. I felt like laughing and singing and melting into him.

“Mari,” he groaned against my mouth. Panic layered the word.

“Let it go.” Only half aware of what I was doing, I pulled numbers toward me. The Venezuelan ones beckoning the loudest. The thrill of the unknown surged throughout my entire body, the rush of adrenaline every bit as intoxicating as his touch. I felt powerful. Filled.
Keene’s synergy,
I thought. Emotions waved higher and higher to an impossible crest. The breathlessness was there again like it had been in the limo, but now there was a subtle difference. Keene was doing something different that didn’t steal my breath completely.
See?
I wanted to say.
You can learn to control it.

The kiss ended almost as abruptly as it had started. “What the hell?” Keene stared at air where another scene shimmered before us. Jungle, warm sun. Venezuela. His nostrils flared as he stepped away, arms dropping. The scene vanished, as did the kaleidoscope of colors and the numbers in my mind. The letdown made my knees sag before I stiffened them with the resolve that had gotten me through three years of marriage to Trevor.

“If I were still mortal, that never would have happened.” Keene’s voice was satisfactorily jagged, but his words once again made no sense.

“What? Why not? I’ve been wanting to do that ever since Venezuela. Wait, is this about you and Erin?” I was back to clenching my fists again, my body and mind screaming with anger. “Look, I’m not Erin. Maybe she chose Ritter over you because he’s Unbounded and she thought you weren’t, but I think it’s more because they belong together. I think she chose him because for her there was no other choice, not with him alive. But I’m
not
Erin. I’ll never
be
Erin. Maybe that’s the real problem—that you can’t get over her.” I waved a hand as if I didn’t care, hoping it wasn’t shaking like my insides or my traitorous knees. “Whatever, but don’t expect me to act like her. I think being Unbounded is the most incredible gift you’ve ever been given, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

He stared, his eyes not leaving mine, mouth slightly ajar.
Wind out of his sails,
I thought.
That’s right. Who’s the woman now?
His expression was slightly lost, and I had the urge to reach out, to recapture the moment of the kiss. But no way was I ever throwing myself at another man, especially one who was obviously hung up on a woman who happened to be one of my best friends.

I’d rather fight Hunters with my bare hands and no backup.

“And for the record, you didn’t almost kill me in Venezuela or Morocco. I could have shifted out at any time.” I grinned—okay, maybe it was more of a smirk. “Guess now the next move is up to you. But not right this minute, because it’s almost time to leave and I still have to get our weapons from Cort. Plus, I’m seriously annoyed at you.”

I shifted to the door and yanked it open because I needed to be away from him. But as I stepped out into the hallway, glass shattered and an explosion rocked the mansion.

I LANDED ON MY STOMACH
in the hallway. A picture careened down the wall and slammed on the floor, barely missing my head. The Secret Serviceman was likewise on the floor, but stirring, so he wasn’t dead. No time for the questions flooding my brain. I had a job to do.

I shifted into my suite, appearing directly behind Patrick where he’d sat at the table, but out of Lucinda’s line of sight. Or at least that had been the plan. I always remembered exact dimensions of a room, having once stepped into it—like one of those oddballs on TV who never forgot anything. Except my ability only had to do with numbers and spaces and calculations. Everything else I forgot like the rest of the world.

Neither Patrick nor Lucinda was where I’d left them. Looked like Keene and I weren’t the only ones taking advantage of some private time. They were wrapped in each other’s arms in the double doorway between the bedroom and sitting room. Patrick swung out an arm to steady them as their lips parted.

I leapt up from the floor, one of my knives slipping into my hand. More numbers appeared in my head, though not as prominent as when Keene’s synergy had been at work. My instincts warned me to shift away from the house altogether, but I wasn’t leaving Patrick. When I could identify no immediate threat, my heart rate ratcheted down to a level that permitted me to push the numbers away from my seeking mind.