Secret Legacy (33 page)

Within their vision, Trinity looked beyond her transparent walls, toward the angry men grouped on the other side. Then her tiny hand reached for Sarah’s cheek. Her touch flashed a rainbow of color through their minds as Sarah’s senses rushed back.

“Richard?”
Sarah called with her mind.
“Trinity’s awake. She’s been inside a center lab all this time.”

“I’m here.”
His response was instantaneous.
“We picked up her energy spike. A recovery team’s entered the complex undetected. They’re on the way to her. Get Trinity ready to move.”

“She’s terrified.”
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears.
“There are men everywhere, the men who experimented on her mind and fed her nightmares.”

“Talk her through it. Prepare her, so the team won’t sense her as a threat. The Watcher team will take care of the rest. But she has to go willingly. She has to be willing to leave or the elders will call off the recovery.”

“It’s the raven,” gasped the shaking little girl in Sarah’s arms.

“His name’s Richard,” Sarah assured her. “He looked out for me when the center hurt me. Now he wants to help me look out for you.”

“Is . . . is he coming?”

“His friends are. They’ll be here soon. You have to go with them.”

“Watchers?” More tears flowed. More fear.

“Friends. Your family. Leave your mind open to them. They’ll make the men on the other side of the wall go away, then they’ll get you out. They’ll bring you to me.”

“And the seashore? From the painting? I don’t like the ocean, but I like the pretty sand and the clouds in the sky over the water.”

“Then that will be our first dream together.”

Sarah clung to their vision, desperate to hold the little girl in real life. To introduce her to her aunt and soon-to-be uncle, and to Richard. To the world opening up for their legacy.

“We’ll paint a dream of the shore together, honey, while we get rid of everything these horrible people have done to your mind. You’re the light in my dreams. You’re the sun just starting to rise above the ocean, making all the beautiful colors in the sky possible. Remember that, when your Watcher friends come. Remember the dream we’ll create once they take you away from the center.”

Trinity clung to her in their vision, her head nodding as she tried to believe. Beyond her glass walls, there was a flash of light, a strobe of energy as Watchers dressed in black fatigues stormed the observation room. Scientists tried to relay for help. They were stopped instantly. Not with the automatic weapons Ruebens had programmed into Trinity and Sarah’s ocean nightmare, but with the expertly trained minds of the warriors the Brotherhood had sent to claim her little girl.

Sarah saw another flash from her daughter’s reality: a child’s head rolling to the side to watch her rescuers subdue the last of the men who’d tormented her.

“They’re here,”
Sarah projected to Richard.

“They can’t push through her control over the lab’s door,”
he said.
“She has to let them in, Sarah. Tell Trinity to drop her shields. There’s no time. She has to let them in now.”

“Trinity?” Sarah said in their dream. “Let your new friends in, so you can come dream with me. I’m waiting for you, honey.”

Trinity swallowed, her consciousness flooding Sarah’s with so many emotions, Sarah closed her eyes to keep her mind from flinching away. Hope. Fear. Betrayal. Fury. All of it strong, just like her little girl. And weak, just as Sarah herself had been when she’d done the unthinkable and allowed herself to trust Richard.

“Come back to me, Trinity.” Sarah pressed her cheek to her child’s. She’d never been more terrified than she was in that moment, as she waited, helplessly, for the Brotherhood to rescue the secret part of her she’d left behind at the center. The best part of her. “Come see what we’ve become.”

Then suddenly the Watchers were beside Trinity’s bed, both in Sarah’s dream with her child and in Trinity’s reality. One of the warriors lifted Trinity into his arms.

“Mommy?” the little girl cried as she was rushed out the door, her arms reaching behind her to where Sarah still sat by the empty bed in their dream. “Help me!”

“I’m right here, honey.” The Watchers disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived. Sarah’s link to her daughter blurred to a blinding white. “I’m right here,” she promised. “They’re bringing you to me. Stay with your Watchers. Stay with them. Trinity? Trinity!”

Her daughter’s lab faded.

Trinity’s cries faded.

Their dream dissolved until Sarah could no longer feel her child.

She fought to hold on, to be sure that Trinity was safely away from the center. But familiar arms were pulling her close, pulling her back, anchoring her to another reality. She could sense a strong mind, an even stronger heart, that she couldn’t deny. Medication flew through her veins, opening her senses to the world beyond her closed eyes.

“Wake up, Sarah.” Richard’s voice was coming from the other side of sleep instead of through their link.

“Trinity?” she asked, still sensing her child, but there was nothing to see when her mind reached for their link.

“She’s safe,” Richard said. “They’re bringing her straight here.”

“Richard?” Sarah clung to the sound of his voice and the solid strength of him leaning close, and the brush of his fingers, his lips, against her face.

“Come back to me, Sarah.”

Her eyes flickered open. “Richard?”

“I’m right here.” He smiled down to her. “So is
Madeline. She’s coming around, too. Jarred’s pacing a trench in the floor next to her.”

“But . . .” The bunker’s lab came into focus around Sarah.

She was wearing the same scrubs she’d had on when they began the dream mission into her nightmare. She was lying on the same table Richard had settled her onto after the planning meeting. It was as if none of the rest had happened. As if her misfiring brain had dreamed up every bit of it.

But that wasn’t possible.

It couldn’t be possible.

“Trinity.” Sarah pushed up until she was sitting. “I know I met her. I found her. Tell me it’s real. My daughter’s real. Where is she?”

“She’s real. You found her. She’s only a few minutes away.” Richard pressed Sarah back to the table. “The team was able to cloak their movement once they were beyond the complex. They even think . . .”

“What?”

A moan shifted Sarah’s attention to her sister, who was waking on the exam table beside her. Jarred hovered over his fiancée. Sarah reached for her twin’s hand. She could feel her sister’s mind more clearly through the contact. And with Maddie’s centering presence, she could feel Trinity’s fear drawing closer. She could sense her child’s disorientation at being outside, being driven quickly through the night, being surrounded by strangers, being carried again.

“I’m here,”
Sarah tried to project to her, but there was no response.

“Her extraction team’s shielding her mind.” Richard
brushed Sarah’s bangs from her eyes. “They believe Trinity’s strengthening their reach. That she helped them escape the complex without their movements being detected.”

“Her Watchers . . . They have to—”

“They’re being very careful with her. She’s not resisting. I can feel her, too, Sarah. I can feel her through you. She’s doing remarkably well.”

An innocent mind. A damaged mind that had never known life beyond suppression and control, loneliness and anger, and—

“Mommy?”
Trinity called.

“I’m here, honey.”
Sarah pushed herself up again.

“They’re—” Richard said.

“Inside the bunker.” Through Trinity, Sarah saw the side entrance from the woods. A rush of images followed: hallway, elevator, strong bodies moving in a protective circle. Each observation swam with a little girl’s panic as Trinity was rushed deeper into the ground, inside once more, shut away from a world she’d never seen.

“I have to—” Sarah’s legs buckled as soon as her feet hit the ground. Richard caught her against him. “I have to go to her.” She tried to step away.

“She’s here,” Richard said a second before a six-man Watcher team entered the lab.

One of the men—Donovan—walked straight to Sarah, the beautiful dark-haired child in his arms twisting in his grasp, her arms opening.

“Trinity?” Sarah was engulfed in the sweetest, most delicate hug imaginable. Her child was shaking so badly, and they were both so weak, Sarah was able to hold on to Trinity only because Richard wrapped his
arms around them both. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

She cupped Trinity’s head to her shoulder, and her daughter’s silent tears soaked into her scrubs. Richard’s hand covered hers. She turned and tried to lay Trinity on the exam table.

“No!” The child clung like a vine, arms and legs tightening. She burrowed her head into the crook between Sarah’s neck and shoulder. “Don’t let go!”

“I’ve got you.” Sarah sat down instead, pulling her daughter deeper into her lap. “I’ll never let you go, honey. I’m here.”

“Lieutenant Donovan?” Richard asked while he felt for Trinity’s pulse at the base of her neck, then looked into her eyes with the device he used to gauge pupil reflexes.

“She’s been agitated,” the lieutenant said, “but cooperative. We could sense . . . her mind searching ours. There was no malicious intent. She definitely assisted our escape. We got out clean thanks to your intel on the complex’s layout and her augmenting our shields.”

“Good girl.” Sarah kissed her child’s cheek, sensing that Trinity wasn’t hearing a word.

It was too much activity. Too much stimulation. Too many voices and minds and images after being locked away alone in room full of windows like a prize rat in its maze.

“You did so good, honey,”
Sarah projected.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to make everything okay.”

“I can’t
. . .
”
Trinity’s mind sent back.
“Don’t make me, Mommy. I can’t
. . .
I don’t want to. I never wanted to. Don’t make me
. . .
”

“No one’s going to make you do any of those horrible things
again. We know you didn’t want to. You’re free now. We’ll never let the center have you again.”

Clouds, dark with fear, edged with the crimson of Trinity’s rage, flowed through Sarah’s mind. Agony seared through her already-crippling headache. She glanced to Richard and caught his flinch. Donovan braced himself against the barrage of energy as well. His eyes narrowed. He and the entire team inhaled. Slow. Deep. As one, they exhaled. All of them were using Richard’s techniques to help her daughter, because each Watcher understood exactly what Trinity was going through.

“She’s losing control,” Maddie said.

Jarred helped Sarah’s twin sit up on her table. She was pale and shaking. Her chest was heavily bandaged. But Maddie was smiling at the image of Sarah and Richard cuddling Trinity close.

“I need everyone out of here,” Sarah said to the room. “I need to be alone with her and my family, so we can calm her down.”

Donovan’s gaze shifted to Richard.

Richard’s nod released him.

The Watcher team turned to go.

“Thank you,” Sarah said to the men, her gratitude warring with her lingering resentment toward the Brotherhood. “Thank you so much for protecting my little girl. My legacy. You’re all . . .”

“You’re welcome.” Donovan waited while his team preceded him from the dream lab. He studied the quietly crying child in Sarah’s arms, a hint of a smile kicking up the corners of his mouth. “It was our plea sure.”

The lab’s door slid shut behind him, sealing Sarah’s
family within its protective walls. Richard crouched until he was looking up at Sarah.

“The council’s given us whatever time we need to stabilize Trinity,” he said. “They’ll debrief the recovery team first, before they’ll need your report.”

“How?” she asked, feeling his calm, soothing energy easing her and Trinity’s confusion. “How did you talk the elders into all this?”

“Logic,” her gypsy answered with a devilish glint in his eyes. He patted Trinity’s back, smiling when she didn’t cringe at his touch. “Unemotional, unattached, objective logic. It was the most important con of my life, and I failed miserably. Jacob saw right through it. He saw my love for you and the complete conflict of interest our relationship has become. And he still made the right choice for the psychic realm. Because you had gotten through to Trinity enough for her to send us the sign we needed.”

Sarah clutched her child tighter.

“We came so close to losing everything,” she said.

“But you’re here now.” Maddie placed her hand over Richard’s on Trinity’s back.

“We all are.” Jarred added his touch to their physical link, all of them merging with Trinity’s mind, their energy washing through her panic like cool, healing water.

Trinity sighed, her body relaxing against Sarah’s, the storm clouds in her mind receding. One tiny arm slipped up to encircle Sarah’s neck. Her thumb popped into her mouth. It might have been an immature coping reflex for a six-year-old who’d seen and done the things this powerful six-year-old had. But in so many ways Trinity
was still a baby. An innocent, untouched consciousness waiting to soak up the light and the positive energy she’d been denied for so long.