Rush (Phoenix Rising) (5 page)

In her world, despair led straight to alcohol, cocaine and heroin.

And just one more time down that road would lead her straight to the grave.

This was possibly the hardest thing she’d ever done short of rehab. To give herself the strength she needed, she envisioned a steel pole replacing her spine.

“We’re done here.” She crossed her arms, squeezed herself tightly against the slicing pain of her next demand. “Get out . . . of my office.”

Jessica met Keira’s stare with her own expression of rock solid conviction.

Teague took Keira’s arm and guided her toward the door. Keira’s gaze turned worried, even a little panicked.

Teague simply nudged her out the door with, “I’ll be right there.”

It took everything Jessica had left to hold onto that steadfast commitment to her own needs, her own safety when Teague turned back to her.

“I’m so sorry, Jess.” He came toward her, head down with that pitiful, sorry-I-brought-a-frog-in-the-house remorse and the coin turning over and over between his fingers. “We didn’t mean to hurt you. Really, we . . .”

He lifted his head and met her gaze. The anguish and hopelessness there twisted the knife already stabbing her heart.

“No.” She reached out and grabbed hold of his forearms. Tears she’d been holding back flooded her eyes and spilled over. “
I’m
sorry. I’m sorry for a million things. But I can’t do this to myself. It would break me.”

“I understand.”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead. Then he laid his palm over her heart. The thermo-kinetic abilities he’d acquired at that terrible fire infused heat and healing. The pain dimmed, but didn’t disappear. It would never disappear.

“Take this.” He pressed the coin into her hand. “It’s rightfully yours.” Teague kissed her head one more time before he turned to leave.

The coin pulsed with heat and energy. Powerful, vibrant sensations shimmied up her arm and spread through her body. Sensations of love. Of hope. Both so long forgotten they stole her breath. She turned toward the windows, moved around her desk and slumped into her chair. Blue lightning crackled across the sky, making the charcoal clouds glow.

A roll of ground-rocking thunder passed through the streets. A millisecond later, one quick strike of lightning split the sky. The jagged bolt speared the glass and smashed against the coin, refracting directly into Jessica’s eyes.

She yelped and shaded her face, but the luminosity intensified, showering her with heat, engulfing her in a cone of golden light. Sizzling tingles traveled across her body, matching the effervescent sound rising in her ears. A sense of weightlessness made her dizzy. Then she was moving, a rush of air and pressure and prickles over her entire body. She grabbed for the arms on her chair, but found nothing. Panic seized her chest. She gasped for air, but her lungs clamped down tight. And just when she thought she’d lose her mind to the hovering terror, she slowed. The pressure eased. The light’s intensity faded at the edges. The fizzing in her skin calmed.

Her heart thudded hard. Air scraped in and out of her throat. She squinted past the light still shining off the coin and the foreign sight of pine trees drifted through.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.
Shit no.
Another doorway. Only this time, she’d gone through the damn thing.
Hell, no
. She hadn’t signed up for this.

B
eneath the tires, the ground turned from cracked asphalt to gravel. The car’s front right tire took a deep divot at forty-two miles per hour. Q could calculate their speed by feel. His body jerked side to side, his shoulders knocking the men flanking him in the backseat of what he guessed was a Ford Taurus by the construction of the bench beneath him.

That jolt had pulled him right out of his memories of
her
. And that really pissed him off, because memories were all he had anymore. Q had stopped dreaming about her almost a year ago now. Every time he closed his eyes, he hoped and prayed the fiery redhead whose mere presence had a way of holding him together, would be there. But every time, he was disappointed. And he was beginning to lose hope. Considering his situation, that said a lot.

“What the hell, Davis?” Moist heat from his breath filled the black cloth bag covering his head, making it even harder to breathe. “Are you taking this piece of shit off-roading?”

His question went unanswered. They rarely spoke to him, and Q normally preferred it that way. But this was no ordinary transport to just another testing center. Those he took in the back of a windowless van, cuffed to a bench, alone. Now, he was stuffed into a sedan with their four best men—Davis, Samuels, Pike and Green. And the Castle he had called prison for as long as his memory stretched lay in rubble behind them. That caused a bizarre illogical mix of emotions within him. Emotions he didn’t have time to analyze. Emotions he couldn’t risk feeling in this situation or in this company. So he shut them off. And they disappeared instantly.

“How long have we been driving? Three, four hours?” He knew exactly how long—five hours, forty-two minutes. He shifted his numb ass on the bench seat. “Can’t you take this hood off now? I’m having a hard time breathing. Wouldn’t want me to keel over, would you?”

Nothing. Not even a grunt.

Fuck this.
He’d had enough. He lifted his cuffed hands toward the mask’s edge and dragged it up. Before he cleared his eyes, Samuels, on the left, knocked Q’s hands down. “Leave it.”

Q shoved the asshole’s hand back. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

Samuel’s backhand connected with Q’s cheekbone. His head snapped sideways. Pain launched through his face. “You couldn’t get that lucky.”

Q shook his head to dispel the burn. “Not my fault you got dragged out of bed. Beat up on Dargan for a change.”

Complete silence swelled inside the car for a heavy second, followed by a simultaneous
shhhhh—
the brush of skin against dress shirt collars as the men turned their heads and looked at each other.

“I wish you’d just left me in that dungeon to burn with the others.” He paused and listened closely. More looks among them. Tension within the car thickened. “The lab is dust, isn’t it? How many died in there?”

Samuels and Davis ground their teeth. In the remaining silence, Q worked past the knot in his gut and built enough nerve to ask the dreaded question.

“How about that other guy? The one in the cell next to me? I heard someone in the sally port saying he escaped.”

Q held his breath.
Please let him be alive. Please make all this hell worth something.

A furious heat wafted off Green in the front passenger’s seat, making a new layer of sweat break out over Q’s covered face. The other three men tensed, their muscles emitting a low-pitched moan that only Q’s heightened senses could perceive as the fibers contracted and slid against tendon and bone. He had his answer.

Q relaxed. Then laughed, a low chuckle he hadn’t known was coming. But as reality and deeper relief poured in, the chuckle grew into a full, hearty laugh. Getting one over on these pricks was the most satisfying thing he’d done since he’d messed up that psycho Gorin’s latest experiment with a food strike. The best part was that he knew Cash was somewhere laughing, too. Somewhere free. A rare and delicious joy flashed in Q’s veins.

Samuels’s elbow landed square in Q’s side. Pain ripped through his abdomen. A faint click hinted that Samuels had just broken one of Q’s ribs. His laughter died. His momentary joy faded. But not his bubbling sense of success or his hope for Cash.

“Jesus, Samuels.” This from Pike on Q’s right. “Lay off.”

Q liked Pike. He was young, raw, which was why he still had a soul.

Pike yanked the mask above Q’s mouth and nose. “Stay quiet, it stays off.”

Q took a deep breath of uninhibited air, sat back and shut up.

“Pussy,” Samuels shot across Q toward Pike.

“Scab,” Pike shot back.

“Shut up,” Davis snarled from the driver’s seat. “All of you.”

Green said nothing.

In the volatile silence that followed, Q thought of Cash out there, headed toward a reunion with his son and sister. He couldn’t be happier for his friend. His one and only friend. And at the same time, something unsettling nagged inside him. Questions about his own past—one missing from his memory banks—crept out of the shadows. He didn’t allow himself to think about this often, but now he wondered what, exactly, these bloodsuckers had taken from him.

The gravel road gave way to dirt. Q tuned into the sounds around him. More smells. Sensations. All their fucking with his brain had given him advantages even their best scientists didn’t know about. His hearing had grown as accurate as an owl’s. His sense of smell as keen as a bear’s. His eyesight as sharp as a raptor’s.

They had developed other abilities within him. Paranormal abilities. But those were a mystery to Q. He only knew about them because he’d overheard them talking.

He often wondered if the woman in his dreams came to him because of those powers. He’d never interacted with her, never been ordered or asked to interact. And if one of his powers was to bring her to him, he sucked at it. His dreams of her always began in watery distortion, like viewing a scene through a rainy window, only becoming progressively clearer as the dream went on until he was left watching her sleep in clear, crisp Technicolor.

Technicolor
. Q made a quick search of his mind, but found no reference for the word, and tucked it away in the mystery file.

Just the thought of watching his gorgeous redhead fast asleep warmed him. Relaxed him. Filled in all those empty spaces inside him with contentment. Which was the main reason he didn’t think those dreams were one of the sick fucks’ imposed abilities—because seeing her made him happy. But also because he remembered every dream. Every moment with her. And when Gorin tested him, whatever he used to put Q under wiped out his memory upon waking.

And he desperately wanted to find a way to bring his beauty back.

If he focused and took advantage of this rare opportunity with his captors, maybe he could learn something that would help. Plus, minimal security equaled maximum possibility for escape. The stars had aligned, giving karma the perfect chance to kick some ass.

The car slowed and Q tightened every muscle in preparation. Of what, he had no idea. He was working completely on the fly here. But with no past to remember and no freedom in his future, he had nothing to live for. And with nothing to live for, he had absolutely nothing to lose.

He picked up the scent of salt through the air vents and grew restless to feel the direction of the wind, to listen for animals, vehicles, planes, voices. Anything to give him a better feel for their new location. Nearing Salt Lake—definitely. But how close to the city?

“I have to take a piss,” he said.

“Keep your dick on,” Ice Man Green growled from the front seat.

“He speaks,” Q said. “Thought you’d had a coronary.”

“You wish.”

“Hell, yes.”

The engine cut out and all four doors clicked open. Q sucked in the air—dry, hot, salt-laden. And thin. They were in the mountains of Utah above Salt Lake.

“What’s this place? Not one of your rat labs. I’ve been to them all.”

Facts about the Salt Lake area clicked through his mind. There was no government testing facility that he knew of in this area, so unless they were going to use some private laboratory they’d cooked up like Colombian drug runners . . .

His mind took one of those bizarre hairpin turns, the ones it made whenever he stumbled upon information he had no way of knowing, but did. And the endless questions followed: Was he from Colombia? Had he worked in Colombia? Did he have relatives in Colombia? How did he know Colombia had a drug problem? Why did the phrase “Colombian drug runners” roll off his tongue?

And the questions were inevitably followed by doubt. What kind of man would know such people? Who was he to be so well acquainted with such behavior? Had he harmed others in his involvement with or knowledge of these people?

Ultimately, all the questions boiled down to one: Was this information leaking into his conscious from his stolen past or his hidden present?

That uncomfortable ripple up the back of his neck continued over his skull. The scars there caused the skin to stretch unevenly and pain burned across each thin, raised line.

Q pushed the useless musings away. He’d save those for the long hours he spent alone, caged—or, if he succeeded in the next few moments, running. To make that happen, he forced his mind to the present.

Pike hooked a hand around Q’s bicep and pulled him across the bench seat. The other three started toward a building several yards away. He knew the structure was there by the way sound traveled around it, by the way the atmosphere felt denser in that direction. Sure enough, their feet pounded up wooden steps, then strolled along a deck and inside over wooden floors. He detected no other presence—no other voices, no other movement, no other body heat. They were alone. As for technology, he sensed no fences, no all-terrain vehicles, no helicopters, not even a garage on site. He heard no buzz of high-tech security systems, no electrified boundary, no listening devices, no satellite dishes, not even a damn two-way radio system.

No props—aside from the weapons, of course.

Now, Q let a smile tip his mouth.

It was one against four.

His best odds ever.

“I really have to piss.” Q kept his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear. “Come on, Pike, just show me a tree.”

“Can’t you wait?”

“They’re going to take forever to case the house.” And every moment lessened Q’s chances.

The nearly inaudible swoosh of Pike’s skin against his shirt meant he was contemplating the request as he turned his attention toward the house. Pike let out a frustrated breath just before his feet crunched mulch. He pushed Q toward a thick copse of trees—pines by the density, size and scent.

“Make it quick,” Pike said. “I don’t need Green chomping on my ass.”

Q pulled the bag off his face, let it rest on his forehead. He didn’t want to toss it to the ground and snap the filament of Pike’s good will. He squinted, allowing his eyes to make the adjustment. He’d been right—pines. But they were interspersed with aspens. The round gold leaves of the thinner, white-trunked deciduous trees shimmered in the hot fall air. The sight of them pulled at something inside him. He walked toward the copse, wondering if the natural beauty he so rarely experienced at the concrete prison and industrial testing sites caused this longing in his chest or if it was something else.

Reaching out, he fingered one of the beautiful leaves and found it surprisingly soft and supple. Nothing sparked in his mind. But nothing ever did. The only way he’d ever learn anything about himself was to get away from these people.

Without moving his head, Q surveyed the area, gaze keen, hearing perked. One small cabin-style structure sat on the secluded property, covered in trees as far as Q could see—which was damn far. A hawk screeched overhead. Something small rooted nearby. By the distance they’d traveled on dirt and gravel roads, Q guessed he was two hundred miles from any type of civilization.

Didn’t matter. He didn’t need civilization. He’d been jailed in a ten-by-ten concrete box forever, exposed only to Gorin, the psycho scientists’ assistants, Castle guards and Cash—his lifeline for the last three of Q’s unknown number of years at the Castle.

Q let the prayer float out to the universe as he unbuttoned his jeans with his left hand, leaving his weaker arm in the sling he always wore. He hadn’t needed the aid for months, but the guards didn’t know that. Gorin still thought he’d permanently disabled Q’s entire right side. It was weak, yes, but not completely worthless.

In his peripheral vision, Q saw Pike look back at the cabin, hands on hips, sport coat pushed back, revealing the standard-issue Glock nine in his belt holster.

The sight of the weapon made something click in Q’s mind. As quick as he shut down his emotions, something else clicked off, too. Something he couldn’t explain or describe or even understand, but internally, he went cool, hard and sharp.

Now or never
.

Before the thought had dissipated, Q was moving. He pivoted, raised his good elbow and whacked Pike in the cheekbone.

Q shifted within time and space until he had a strange sense of being slightly removed from his body . . . yet, not. Pike’s head jerked sideways, eyes closed, spittle flying, arms flailing. Q felt himself reach out. Felt the butt of the weapon in his hand. Felt his bicep tense and jerk the weapon from Pike’s holster.

For an extended instant, Q stood over the unconscious Pike, gun in hand. The steel-cast stranger inside Q tensed his finger on the trigger. If the man lying at his feet had been any of the other three, Q would have let whatever this instinct was take over. He would have emptied the gun into the bastard’s brain. Since it was Pike, Q turned toward the trees and ran.

He stripped the sling from his weaker arm and let the canvas trail behind him. He pushed a swing into his gait to aid his bad leg forward, but it remained as stiff as the tree trunks he dodged. Somewhere beyond this obstacle course of pines, aspens and shrubs a creek trickled. Q ran scenarios through his mind as he moved. Get to the bottom. Follow the creek. Find a hiding spot. Hold out ’til nightfall. Head out again before they brought in dogs. Choppers. Crews.