Rush (Phoenix Rising) (21 page)

“What? How?”

“You were trying to protect me.” She lifted her head and met his eyes with so much regret, so much guilt, it made his gut ache. “There were two containers of chemicals. One exploded and hit you. When we came in to help, you knew the second would explode, too, so you knocked me down and covered me.”

Q imagined the scenario. A truly heroic act, though Q couldn’t see it as something he’d done. He saw it as something Quaid had done. Something Quaid had done out of a deep love for Jessica.

Damn it, there had to be some of Quaid inside him if he still had these strong emotions. And he
wanted
to
remember
.

“How did that make me worth taking above the others?” he asked.

“You had double the chemical exposure. It would stand to reason your abilities would be stronger.”

Q sat back. “Abilities?”

“Your powers.” She raised a cautious gaze to his. “Cash told you—”

Q shook his head.

Jessica’s gorgeous mouth rounded into a perfect O. Her eyes widened.

“Well, you’d better tell me now.” A new sense of anger lodged between his ribs. “And you’d better be honest with me, Jessica. I’ve spent all of the life I can remember being lied to, having secrets kept from me. I won’t live like that again.”

Jessica swallowed. “The first thing we all noticed was how fast we were healing from the burns and breaks. Then how little scarring we had. But later, after we were released, we each noticed different abilities we didn’t have before.”

“Like?”

“Like Keira is clairaudient, which means under the right conditions, she can hear people’s thoughts as if they are speaking. That’s how she knew to come back today to help with this guy.” She tilted her head toward the prisoner. “She heard a combination of Kai’s and Cash’s thoughts. And Teague has thermo-kinetic abilities, so he can heal with the heat in his body.”

Q’s jaw loosened and his mouth dropped open. He’d suspected he had paranormal powers, even though he hadn’t known what kind, but he’d been thinking more along the lines of super strength or superfast thinking or heightened intelligence.

“I know this sounds crazy,” she said, “but you wanted to know.”

“What can you do?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m not really sure. I thought I could scry, but then this thing happened with your coin and instead of just seeing another location, I
traveled
to that location. Only I wasn’t really there. You were the only person who could see me. So I don’t know what my power is exactly.”

He lowered his face into his hands and rubbed his forehead. The fact that she hadn’t been a dream at the cabin actually made more sense now. She’d never interacted with him in his dreams. What he couldn’t get his mind to take hold of yet was whether those other times he’d seen her had been dreams or . . . something else. Something more like whatever was happening with Trent.

He lifted his head. “And the others?”

“Seth, who you haven’t met yet, has telekinetic abilities. He can move objects with the power of his mind. And Kai is an empath, which means he senses other people’s feelings and can also sense emotion in the universe related to our team. Again, when you went after that guy, Kai knew because he felt the spike of emotion you gave off, not because I told him.”

“And Alyssa, Mitch, Cash?”

“They don’t have powers. Only those exposed to the chemical have them, which is why Mateo has abilities. Mateo was tested much the way you were. He has the phoenix marking and is a remote viewer, which is kind of like my scrying in that he can see things in real time in other locations. The difference is
how
a person accesses the visions. With scrying, visions arise from a shiny surface or crystal ball or mirror. With remote viewing, there are many more possibilities—touching something related to a person or place, extreme focus, meditation, training. . . .”

Q braced his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his fingers. “Okay, that might be enough.”

Her cool hands slid over his head, caressing. Then she kissed the top and rested her head against his. “Things that might seem crazy to you could simply be your powers at work.”

“Or it might be insanity.”

She hesitated, then with a smile in her voice, said, “There is that.”

He laughed.

“What’s happening that seems so crazy?” she asked.

“I’m seeing things. Or . . . I don’t know what it is. I think I’m seeing things, but then it feels like I’m really there, then the next minute I’m not. Like just now, I was here, then I was in some desert somewhere, then I was back here. Like my dreams of you when I was at the Castle. I have no control over where I go or when I come and go.”

She went quiet. Her hands stilled.

“Hold his head straight, Teague,” Kai said from behind Jessica. He stood in front of the prisoner and snapped a picture with his phone.

Q was restless with this new information, unsure of how to add it into the puzzle. Uneasy with this growing closeness to Jessica, even though part of him knew it was what he wanted, he stood, pulling Jessica to her feet at the same time. Then he wandered toward the group.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Kai glanced up and grinned. “Well, look who decided to join the conversation. I’m sending the pic to my boss, see if he can get anything more on this guy than Keira was able to pull from his brain.”

“Who is this boss anyway?” Jessica asked. “A private jet. Weapons. Now this?”

“What about a private jet and weapons?” Q scanned Kai again. He was military—Q had noticed that right away. The way he stood. The way he talked. The way he looked at someone or something, or didn’t look. His choice of simple, plain T-shirt and cargo pants.

Kai didn’t take his eyes off his phone. “He’s retired Air Force Intelligence, working contract for the government.”

The prisoner’s eyelids flicked open.

Kai’s mouth kicked up in a lopsided smile. “Sleeping Beauty awakes. Did you want to start talking now,
amigo
? Better for us to hear it from you than from someone else. Either way, we’ll find out who you are and why you’re here.”

The man said nothing.

“Come on,” Kai cajoled as if ribbing an old friend. “Not even your name, rank and serial number?”

Nothing.

“Crap, not even a sense of humor.” Kai shrugged one shoulder and turned his attention back to the phone. “Keira said his name is Reggie Alsadani, ex-Marine, reporting to Colonel Owen Young. He’s on a seek, find and destroy mission.”

“She got all that from hearing his thoughts?” Q asked, still finding the idea unbelievable.

“She probably got more and left the colorful stuff out,” Kai said. “My boss has face recognition software and I’ve already scanned in the guy’s fingerprints and sent those.” He finished what he was doing and looked up while sliding the phone into his pocket. “Within eight to twelve hours, we’ll be able to confirm Keira’s information plus know when this guy eats, sleeps and shits.”

A strange sensation nudged the back of Q’s mind. “Is your boss’s name . . .” Kai looked up, expectant. “Abernathy?”

“No, it’s Waterbury.” Kai waited. “Why?”

Relief loosened Q’s shoulders. He shook his head. “How are you sending his fingerprints?”

“On the glass. Look here, Boy Wonder.” Kai pulled out the phone, tapped the front glass and the face lit up bright blue. Little boxes dotted the display.

“What’s ‘boy wonder’?” Q asked, watching the colors and information change as Kai touched the glass.

Kai laughed, the sound soft and not particularly joyful. “That’s one of the things I used to call you. When I was in a good mood.”

“Why?” He looked at Kai now.

“Because you could do anything you set that stubborn mind of yours to. Look,” Kai said, pressing his thumb against the face of his phone and drawing it away. A crisp fingerprint remained, the ridges glowing red. Two buttons beneath the image read SCAN and CLEAR.

“If I hit SCAN, the program will record the image and send it wherever I ask it to. If I hit CLEAR, we can start over with your fingerprint.”

Even though Q didn’t know how to use any high-tech equipment, what Kai claimed this little box was capable of didn’t surprise him. “And in the meantime?”

“We research and strategize so we’re ready to move when we find out who this guy is.”

Damn. Q turned and wandered toward the door. He’d hoped Kai or Mitch or Teague had another trick to show him. He’d spent his entire life—or what he knew of it—waiting. He didn’t want to wait another second.

Alyssa snipped the thread. “Done. Brody and his guys are going to have to monitor his blood pressure and heart rate throughout the night to make sure there’s no internal bleeding.”

Q’s stomach twisted and he grimaced as his gaze skimmed over the black stitches in the man’s face. “Was I like this before? Violent? Did I . . . hurt people like I did him?” His gaze pulled from the prisoner and searched out Jessica, fearing the answer to the question. “Did I . . . hurt you?”

“What . . . ? No, never.”

“So,” he started, casting a look at the others in the room, “I wasn’t like this before.”

Kai’s laugh bounced off the walls. “You couldn’t even kill a damn spider, dude. You had to get a container, coax it inside”—he accentuated the statements as if each task was a big ordeal—“then set it free like some freaking pansy. It was goddamned episodic.”

“All through school,” Teague said, “you were always one of the biggest kids in our class, but I had to step in and save your ass on the schoolyard when someone picked a fight. You could have whipped anyone who challenged you, but you refused to fight.”

Teague
saved
his
ass? Nobody else saved his ass. Q carried his own weight. Q sometimes carried other people’s weight, too.

Trent’s face filled his mind. Guilt flowed in its wake. Q wasn’t carrying his weight now.

God, he suddenly wanted, needed to know everything, yet wanted to run in the other direction as fast as he could.

He clenched his hands, drew a deep breath and said, “I want to know who I am. I mean, who I was. I want to know what I was like. What did I love? What did I hate? Did I have hobbies? Did I make a difference? Was I good at my job? Did I have family?”

He pulled in a breath, checked in with his mind, heart and body after that sudden demand. Found it felt right. Found it was what he needed. “I want to know everything.”

J
essica stared out the sliding glass doors, her fingers fisting and releasing as she waited for Cash to finish the book he was reading to Mateo so they could talk.

Quaid was in the shower, Kai in the kitchen washing and cutting fruit for his famed power smoothies, Mitch watching the security video screens in the nook across from the dining room. Alyssa, Teague and Cash were in the living room reading to the kids.

The house buzzed with activity and burst with the aromas of fresh fruit and spices.

“Anything out there?” Kai asked Mitch, slicing the flesh of a mango from its skin.

“Not that they can find.” Mitch turned from the screens and sat down at the dining room table, where he had three different laptops set up, each searching different information databases via the web. “But there are three dogs working the property now, so if we missed anyone on the surveillance tapes, we’ll get them with the dogs.”

“I don’t think we’ll find anyone else.”

Mitch slipped on wire-rimmed reading glasses and asked, “Why’s that?”

Kai popped a piece of mango in his mouth. “I’d bet my boss’s plane he’s an asset.”

“Asset?” Jessica said. “What’s an asset?”

“Black ops assassin,” Kai said bluntly.

Shock stung her stomach.
“What?”

Kai’s gaze slid toward the living room and the kids, then back to Jessica. Her gaze followed and she pursed her lips, realizing that even if they didn’t look like they were paying attention, kids picked up on adults’ stress. She forced an ease into her voice she didn’t feel, asking, “And who would be sending an asset after us?”

“Schaeffer or someone higher at DoD. Castle scientists,” Mitch said. “Who the hell knows?”

“Which is why we need to figure things out and make a plan,” Kai added. “If he doesn’t report in soon, they’ll send another.”

“But why would they send someone to . . . do that?” Jessica asked. “I thought they wanted Quaid and Cash for research. It makes no sense to try to kill them.”

“Sometimes,” Mitch said, his tone unusually solemn, “people who can’t have what they want don’t want anyone else to have it either.”

She crossed her arms and shook her head. Even after everything they’d been through, the depth of twisted greed she encountered in Washington shocked her. What scared her even more was that she knew the darkness wasn’t limited to Washington.

When Cash and Mateo finished their story, Cash stood from the sofa and his son crawled into Teague’s lap to listen to Kat read to Alyssa.

Jessica refocused out the sliders, letting her gaze soak in the beauty of the fall foliage as she tried to tune out the various conversations. She searched for a place of peace inside herself, but she only found stress. And fear. Her hands ached with it. She rubbed them together. Massaged her fingers. Still, they hurt.

She took hold of her locket, sliding it up and down the chain as Cash came up beside her. Now, even though she’d asked him to talk with her about Quaid, she found herself lost, unsure of how to put her insecurities into words.

“Do you think that guy is an asset?” she asked quietly.

Cash nodded.

“Can’t you make a deal with them? Trade the formula they want for your freedom?”

“I might be able to do that if I had the formula. Unfortunately, I destroyed the Method pages so they wouldn’t find them on me. It was part of my escape plan. I thought it would be easier to recall the formulas and recreate them after I was free, and do exactly what you’re suggesting.

“What I didn’t count on was the way the explosions during the escape from the Castle kinda shook up my head. I’d need access to a lab to recreate those few final steps again and make sure they were right. If I tried to exchange a bogus formula, I’d be dead. If we weren’t on the run, I could do it in just about any high school or college chemistry lab, but I’m SOL at the moment.”

She sighed and shifted gears. “How do you think Quaid’s doing? He seems awfully stressed to me.”

Cash turned his gaze out the window and shrugged, the movement tight. “He almost beat someone to death. That’s a little stressful.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t try to reintroduce him to his past right now.” She turned toward Cash, but he remained focused out the glass, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t want it to put too much pressure on him.”

“I think not telling him what he wants to know will put even more pressure on him.”

The way Cash didn’t meet her eyes made her uneasy. She might have only known him a short time, but from the very beginning he’d always been so straightforward.

“Cash, I need to know more about Quaid’s dreams. The ones of me.”

Cash’s head jerked toward her, blue eyes sharp. “Why?”

Cold fingers of dread touched her stomach. “Because I think he has powers similar to mine. He told me he’s struggling with what he thought were hallucinations, what he describes as visitations, where he’s somewhere one minute, somewhere else the next. He thinks he’s going a little crazy, but I think he’s traveling and doesn’t understand. And if he was traveling to me, not dreaming about me . . . I . . . need to know.”

With his jaw muscle flinching, Cash returned his gaze to the forest beyond the glass and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “We knew he had some type of powers, but didn’t know what. They put him under when they . . . did whatever they did to him—tested him, trained him, whatever. I think they did that so, one, he wouldn’t resist them, and two, he wouldn’t learn how to use the powers they brought out in him. Easier to control him if he didn’t know what he could do, you know?

“But if you think he’s traveling,” Cash went on, “then they might also have put him under so he could reach a state of consciousness where that type of travel could take place. Because what you’re describing is linked to the theory of quantum physics, which takes a certain state of mind, or state of being, to accomplish.”

“You’re talking way over my head,” she said. “Can you just tell me what his dreams of me were about?”

He was avoiding her gaze again. “You know dreams, Jess. They never make any sense.”

“You said he’s dreamed about me ever since you’ve known him.”

“Yeah”—he shrugged one shoulder—“up until about a year ago.”

A year ago? He’d left that part out. “Yet, none ever made sense?”

“I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on the dreams. Who knows what any of that means?”

She was growing more fearful that Cash knew exactly what they’d meant. “Cash.” She waited until he looked at her. “I’m going to find out, either from you or from Quaid. Which do you think would be better?”

He searched her eyes for a long moment, his unreadable expression darkening. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the others, who were all occupied in their own activities.

He leaned in but kept his gaze averted. “His dreams of you were . . . sexual . . . in nature.”

A zing of surprise and awareness traveled through her torso and lodged in her belly. But Cash’s demeanor set Jessica on guard.

“As in he and I having sex?” she asked cautiously.

Cash scratched his temple. “Uh, not . . . exactly.” He stuffed his hand back into his pocket. “As in you having sex with other men.”

Jessica sucked in a shocked breath. Blood rushed into her neck and face, the shame of her past coming back to humiliate her as she’d always feared it would. She took a step back.

He turned and put a hand out to her as if to keep her from escaping. “He just thinks they were dreams, Jess. He was crazy about you.
Is
crazy about you. The other men never seemed to bother him. But that was before he discovered you were real and that you and he have a history. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting him believe they were dreams.”

“I don’t think one-hundred-percent truth is the best answer to every situation. If telling him sets him back instead of moving him forward, then I think it would be better to let him believe what he already believes.”

Jessica wrapped one arm tightly around herself and rubbed at the growing ache in her temple. She couldn’t lie to Quaid. As tempting as it was, she knew how one lie led to another. The same way lying about her drug habit created the need to lie about where she’d gone, which then created the need to lie about what she’d been doing, which then created the need to lie about whom she’d been with . . . And so it went.

She’d carved out a life of truth over the last year and it kept her honest. It kept her accountable. She would hate herself if she lied to Quaid and risked having him hate her, too. Of course, he could very well hate her when he found out those other men had been real.

“Shit,” she whispered, squeezing her forehead between her fingers.

A grinding noise made Jessica jump and turn toward the kitchen. Kai blended something peach colored and she blew out a startled breath.

“Do you even know what’s in those powders you’re throwing in there?” Mitch’s voice rose over the loud whir. “You could be poisoning yourself and not even know it.”

“This one’s for you, shark.” Kai flashed Mitch a devious grin. “Super B complex, selenium, phospha-tidylserine, Tyrosine, Phenylalanine . . . they’re all natural mood-enhancing supplements.”

Mitch pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He shot a you’re-so-not-funny look and an obscene hand gesture toward Kai.

“God,” she muttered, turning back to Cash. “I can’t take this anymore.”

“Jess?” Concern filled Cash’s voice as she moved past him.

She hesitated but didn’t turn. It wasn’t his fault—none of this was his fault—but she couldn’t stand to see the pity on his face a second longer. “Don’t worry. I just need to think.”

She wandered down the hallway housing the bedrooms as she chewed her thumbnail and tried to figure out how to minimize the damage her past mistakes could cause to her and Quaid’s future. Lying was not an option. But simply telling Quaid how unimportant those other men were to her as lovers . . . Shit. That didn’t sound much better. She knew how she would feel if the situation was reversed. Trying to explain how they’d been her attempt at diversion, a human Band-Aid for her broken heart . . . to a man who’d been imprisoned and tortured hardly made a sympathetic picture either.

At the bathroom door, Jessica stopped and leaned her back against the opposite wall. The sound of the shower created white noise, aiding her thoughts. Unfortunately, it didn’t help bring forth any solutions.

If she could show Quaid how deeply she loved him, show him how differently she felt about him than she had the others, maybe that would help melt the other memories when they came to full realization. And, maybe, that could even bring back some of
their
memories.

Then again, her attempts to reconnect with him could rekindle his memories of her with other men. And, boy, could that backfire big time. If he asked her about the other men, she could be setting herself up for a situation where she’d have to choose between lying and saving his feelings. Or even saving their marriage.

The shower shut off. She pulled her nail from her punishing teeth and clenched her hands. Her stomach fluttered with indecision. The muffled click of the shower door opening met her ear and she envisioned Quaid naked—all that lean, sculpted muscle, tight, tanned skin. And those hands. She loved his hands. Loved the way they’d possessed her when he’d kissed her.

The memory of his mouth on hers, hot, hungry, demanding, shot liquid fire to the center of her body and propelled her toward the door, where she stared at the flat gray metal. She couldn’t think about what would happen if this failed. She needed to connect with him. Needed to reach him on that intimate level only they shared. She needed to help him find his way back from the dark place he’d been for the last five years. And she was running out of options.

Her nerves coiled tighter and tighter in her belly, but she raised her hand to knock anyway, determined to set at least one part of this mess right.

Before her knuckles met metal, Quaid’s voice echoed through the door. “It’s open.”

Her stomach jumped. Then her mind darted back to Cash’s explanation of Quaid’s heightened senses and she blew out a breath.

Swallowing her doubts, Jessica turned the knob and cracked the door enough to put her head through and glance around. Steam filled the small room and fogged the mirror. Quaid stood in front of the sink, hands braced on either side, staring down at the white porcelain, a white towel hooked around his waist. The sight of his phoenix and all that gorgeous muscle added a heady, tingly sensation to her tension.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Those deep, rich brown eyes stared a moment, and then he looked back at the sink without responding. Her anxiety nudged out the thrill.

She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door. “Pretty rough day for you.”

“Equally rough for you.” His voice curled around her, as soft and warm as the room.

“I highly doubt it.”

She stepped up behind him. He tensed, his head turned just enough to track her out of the corner of his eye. Heat and the fresh scent of soap and skin lifted off his body. She settled her hands at his hips and pressed a kiss to his back.

His muscles contracted beneath her lips and a sound rolled in his chest and vibrated through her lips. Her body hummed with need.

She slid her tongue along the indention of his spine, paused and kissed him again. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

A heavy breath rocked his shoulders. “You can never stop doing that.”

A smile turned her lips and some apprehension melted. “That can be arranged.”

She kissed her way up his spine, pressing her body to his and slid her hands over his hard, warm abdomen. The ribbed sinew beneath her fingers flinched.