Shifting Fate (12 page)

“
There,” he said, “that
wasn’t so bad.”

I looked back at him, standing casually
behind me as I leaned, almost kneeling and grasping the angle of
the roof for dear life. His smile returned and I narrowed my eyes
at him.

“
Come on, then,” he said.
“Keep your knees bent and stay close to the crown, I don’t want you
pulling us both off.”

Chapter Thirteen

Found

We crossed the roof to the second building
where Logan helped me across. It was attached at a different
height, and we climbed up to find skylights, vent pipes, and
massive metal boxes covering the rooftop. Logan held my hand,
crossing to a large hatch door to kneel down. It was secured with a
lock, but Logan just slid a tool under the old hinges and popped
them free. He flipped the cover open and peered inside.

“
It isn’t that far to the
joists. There are plenty of pipes and beams to get you to the first
platform, or I can lower you.” He placed a hand on the carabiner at
his waist.

“
No,” I said, shuddering at
the reminder of my attack. “I’ll climb.”

He took my hand. “Get to the platform and
wait for me. I’ll be right behind you.”

I dropped my legs into the opening, feeling
blindly for the first step. When I got my footing, I reached down
to find no lack of handholds. A latticework of wires, cables, and
pipes zigzagged their way through the narrow ceiling space all the
way to a rusted steel platform. I navigated the network of wires
carefully at what I considered a pretty impressive pace, only to
hear Logan’s boots slam down onto the platform before me.

“
Nice job, Brianna.” He gave
me a hand down. “We can take the stairs from here.”

I brushed rust and grime off my jeans, taking
a look at the factory-like space around us. “What is Morgan’s
obsession with warehouses and factories?” I asked.

Logan shrugged as he walked forward. “I don’t
think that’s it, really. It’s more likely that the abandoned
buildings give him a privacy he couldn’t get anywhere else. No
outside surveillance, and on paper, it would just look like another
investment.”

The thought made me feel a little bad for
Morgan. It must have been horrible to grow up under the eye of so
many, to know what they expected of you. But when the echo of metal
from our footfalls rang in my ears with far too much familiarity,
the pity was gone. “This is it,” I whispered to Logan’s back.

He stopped, and I realized he’d been focused
on a small block room on the floor below us. “Are you sure,
Brianna?”

He wasn’t asking if I was sure this was the
right place. There was no question we had found it, and somehow,
Logan knew it, too. He was asking if I could handle it, if I could
walk into the room where Morgan held my mother. The room where she
took her own life.

I nodded. “I have to, Logan. This isn’t one
of those choices.”

We navigated the maze of steps to the bottom
floor—concrete and open. Any equipment had been removed, nothing
except a few containers and cabinets lined the walls. Metal bars
covered the blacked-out windows, and the exterior doors all
appeared to be welded shut.

The block room was centered on the front
wall, no windows or openings, so it must have been something like a
boiler room. The door wasn’t even locked.

The cold metal of the handle hit me with a
force that might have been unbearable a few weeks ago. But I was
ready. I had to do this. The only light was from the three feet of
open door, and it cut a distorted rectangle across the dusty floor.
There was a faded blue blanket in the corner, like an unzipped
sleeping bag. Dark shapes marked the back wall, and I knew they
were the hooks and pulley system. It would be a solid wall, metal
plate, and cool to the touch. The corner was all shadows, but I
knew, too, that there would be scrapes across the floor there,
marks from Morgan pulling his chair through. To watch her.

Logan drew an LED flashlight from his pocket,
and I laid my hand over his. “Please,” I started in a whisper, but
my voice broke. I couldn’t see it in the light. Not yet.

He stepped closer, wrapping an arm around my
waist as we let our eyes adjust. “She hung there,” I said after a
long while, “because he had to touch her to use his sway.” Logan
squeezed me tighter. “It wasn’t easy,” I continued. “She fought him
with everything she had. She hurt him, even.” I glanced up at
Logan, his face in darkness, dim light from the warehouse behind
him. “But he healed. He always healed.”

Logan pressed his face against my hair and I
closed my eyes. My hand came up to cover his over my waist, my
fingers trembling. Morgan did this, he put my mother in this place.
Trapped her here in an empty room, nothing but a single blanket on
the floor for comfort. I wondered how the Division had supplied him
in his own captivity. Surely he had heat, a bed, or at the very
least clean water and light. None of us were monsters, not in the
way Morgan had been. And what of him now, had captivity made his
madness worse? They wouldn’t have allowed anyone access to him, no
one to see or touch him, to even stand near the thick walls that
held him in place. Wesley would see to that.

The boy would be a kinder captor for certain,
but even Wesley couldn’t allow himself within range of Morgan’s
power. I’d found a connection in him, an ability unique to his
makeup. It had taken some time to bring it out, to get him to fully
understand how to use it, but he had the capacity to create a kind
of barrier for his body. I wasn’t confident even I fully
comprehended how it worked, but it seemed to be his own electrical
impulses, and they were able to block that pulse that gave the
others control of the humans.

It wasn’t foolproof by any means. If Morgan
was close enough to overpower it, or if they were to touch, to
physically breach that shield, Wesley would be powerless, no matter
how hard he concentrated. But it had been a step forward, one more
connection that I’d found and repaired that might save them from
the fate that was coming. From the chain of events Morgan had set
into motion.

The chain that brought us here, where my
mother had made her last choice, one she hoped would spare us.

I opened my eyes with the thought. Logan had
said she had a choice, but she must have seen the outcome of that
decision. She must have known there was only one way, known that
this was the best way. And she would have seen the endgame, seen us
standing here.

“
Turn on the flashlight,
Logan.”

He pulled free of our embrace, clicking the
penlight on to illuminate the floor in front of us.

“
She left me a message,
right? That’s why we’re here.” I fell to my knees on the sleeping
bag, the only thing left in a barren room, and felt through the
fabric for a lump or the crinkle of paper. “She wouldn’t have done
it for nothing. She waited, she suffered through those final days
to make the choice that would best help us.”

Logan knelt beside me, drawing a small knife
from his pocket to cut the liner free. He split it and I tore,
ripping it open to the matted cotton fiber below. My fingers dug
in, threading through and tearing apart the filling. There had to
be something. She had to give us something.

And then I caught the edge of a folded
document and froze, the frantic clawing ceased as the unmistakable
sound of paper popped beneath my hand. It was narrow, a crumpled
strip, and just a few pages. She must have rolled them up, tucked
them in through a small hole in the material and they’d gotten
smashed flat.

“
Logan,” I whispered, but
the sound of his pocket buzzing interrupted me as it echoed through
the still room.

He took out the device, glanced at it
briefly, and then his shoulder slammed into my side as he threw me
onto my feet.

I let out a huff of air,
only to be jerked behind him as we ran. There was a
pop
outside, and the
frantic pressure in my chest told me it was the sound of gunfire.
It was followed quickly by a bang of metal, a shout, and an
unfamiliar screeching. We were halfway across the open floor when
the
bam
bam
bam
of footsteps on a
metal roof started, and they were closing in in a hurry. Logan
yanked me sideways, throwing us both inside one of the gray metal
cabinets lining the wall. He pulled the door shut, nothing but a
thin strip of light through the cracks to reveal there was only an
old uniform hanging inside.

That was when I remembered the building’s
doors were welded shut.

“
We’re trapped,” I
whispered.

He nodded, light catching the blond of his
hair in staccato bursts.

I was panting, my chest heaving with panic. I
wasn’t supposed to do that. I swallowed hard, forcing myself to
calm. I needed to think.

Logan was pressed tight against me; he must
have noticed my ragged breathing, my lip tucked under a tooth. He
reached up and dragged a thumb over my cheek, wiping away the tears
I’d shed for my mother. His hand slid into my hair, cradled my
neck.

“
Brianna,” he said in an
impossibly low voice.

“
Yes?” I breathed as his
gaze trailed over my lips, came back slow and deliberate to linger
on my eyes.

“
Is it now?”

A confused,
“
What
?” slipped
out, too loud.

The corner of his mouth turned up, the
smallest amount, and I knew immediately what he was asking.

“
No
!” I hissed, the sound of boots on the metal grate platform
causing me to grip him even tighter as I protested.

“
Good,” he whispered. He
glanced briefly at the crack in the door, smiling at my indignant
expression. His hand came free to push a lock of hair behind my
ear. “Because that means we’re in less trouble than I
thought.”

His words were punctuated with a series of
metallic bangs, followed by shouting to, “Get on the floor.” And
finally a loud, “Rhona, clear.”

“
What does that mean?” I
asked, ignoring the noise outside to focus on his words.

He shrugged. “If it hasn’t happened yet, then
we’re probably not going to die today.”

“
Fox, clear,” a voice
overhead called.

“
Daniels, clear,” a third
echoed, this one closer.

“
You can’t …” I hissed, “…
that’s not how it works, Logan.”

He stared at me in earnest. “Oh trust me,
Brianna, I’m not letting it end until that vision plays out.”

I opened my mouth to form some kind of
stunned protest, but before I got the words out, Logan took a step
back and the cabinet doors swung open to his team.

A man yelled, “Black, clear. Locket,
clear.”

The one in the center—tall and thin—tilted
his head toward me in greeting. “Miss Drake.”

“
I’m the locket?” I asked
after a full ten seconds of silence.

His cheeks colored and the dark-haired man
beside him lip’s twitched. He nodded and cleared his throat. “Not
my call, ma’am.”

The dark-haired man elbowed him. “He wanted
to call you the duck.”

The tall man’s mouth tightened. “Well it was
better than the serpent.”

My eyes went to the third man. “Then whose
idea was it?”

I followed his gaze to Logan, whose lips drew
down as he shook his head in denial. “Really, Brianna. We should
go.”

Chapter Fourteen

Return

In the end, Logan’s team simply knocked one
of the welded door frames through its jambs and away from the block
wall in a single, solid piece. I didn’t mind walking out on level
ground, but when we reached the gravel walkway, a fourth
man—dressed in cargo pants and a loose black T-shirt—tossed Logan a
set of keys. He frowned down at me.

“
What?” I asked.

“
You sure are hard on
cars.”

“
I’m sorry,” I said, wiping
a smear of grease from my arm. “I liked that one, too.”

He smiled, and gestured toward my filthy
jeans. “Don’t worry, we’ll take you back for your things.”

“
Doesn’t matter,” I said,
tucking the folded paper tighter in my hands.

Logan led me toward our new car, a black,
unidentifiable sedan with dark tinted windows. “A hot shower and
fresh clothes always makes it better.”

I smiled. “Is that so?”

He nodded sagely and said, “Trust me,
Brianna. I’m an expert on close calls.”

I wasn’t sure whether he’d meant Morgan’s
men, or the kiss.

By the time we reached Southmont, the
crinkles were pressed out of the folded papers inside my grip. I
wouldn’t open them until I was back in my room. I couldn’t. But
when Brendan met us at the door, ready to escort me there, I found
out Logan had other plans.

“
Brianna,” Brendan said,
taking no notice of Logan or his own guards, “I’m so glad to have
you back. We’ve been working around the clock to tighten down all
points of access on the property. No matter how stealth, there will
be no more incidents, I promise you.” He reached toward me. “Let
show you to your room.”

“
She’ll be staying in
mine.”

It was all he said, and as Logan took a step
forward, Brendan placed a hand on his arm. Logan’s gaze went
purposefully from the contact to Brendan’s eyes.

Brendan’s jaw tightened, but he lowered the
hand. “The security updates on Brianna’s room are complete. I
assure you there is no risk.”

“
I’ll make that call,” Logan
said. He urged me forward before calling over his shoulder, “By the
way, my team will be bringing in a few of Morgan’s men.” Logan
glanced at his watch. “In about fifteen minutes. I suggest you find
a safe place to confine them.”