Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (25 page)

“We could talk to the Institute,” I said. “Broker a deal with them somehow.”

“I won’t go back,” Eric said.

“They won’t kill you,” I shot back.

My brother stared into space, and I was reminded yet again of his hints that he might take his own life. In this case, perhaps he was considering suicide by cop. I couldn’t let him die. I couldn’t let him kill anyone else. I didn’t know what to do.

“You’re too valuable to them,” Justine chimed in. “Cat’s right. You’d be safe.”

He gave the barest shake of his head. “I won’t go back,” he repeated.

“Can you help us at all?” I asked Dorian, desperation creeping into my voice.

She nodded, as if it were a perfectly everyday question. “While I can’t offer you a permanent home, I am quite comfortable offering you sanctuary for twenty-four hours or so. I’m more interested in justice than the letter of the law.”

I guess she had to be to work with Jamie.

“You will need to be careful when you leave here. I’ll get my assistant to show you to some rooms. Catrina, you may use the one you had before.”

We stood and Dorian walked us to the door. As I went to follow Eric and Justine out, she put a hand on my arm.

“Just a moment,” she said.

I waited as she closed the door, and then returned to my side.

“Where is James?”

Hope sunk even further. “I hoped you might know. We got into…a tight spot, you might say, and we lost him. I assumed he’d come back here. He’s probably on his way.”

“Let me try calling him,” she said, and dialed the number. Not many people could remember phone numbers these days, but she clearly knew it by heart. She pressed a button to put the call on speakerphone, but it went straight to voicemail, without even a ring at the other end. She shrugged. “He’ll probably turn up soon. He’s done this kind of thing before.”

I nodded my farewell and headed for my room. I passed Jamie’s room and paused, placing my hand on the doorknob.

When he came back he’d probably come here first. Logically then, this was the best place to wait for him. I could sync up with Eric and Justine in the morning. I turned the handle and let myself in.

Jamie’s room made me hungry for him. His scent hung on the air, as people’s essences do in their private rooms, the scent of leather, soap and spice. The bed was unmade, as we had left it.

I closed the door behind me and went to the bed. I lay down on it and buried my face in his pillow. With my eyes shut, it was almost as if he were there.

“Come back soon, Jamie,” I said, muffled, into the pillow. “Come back soon.”

I waited there for him through the afternoon and evening, and it wasn’t until after midnight that I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Dozing off and on—in the bed, on the chair, and even on the floor at one point—made the hours pass like treacle.

I began to wonder if Jamie had decided he’d had enough. I felt sick, thinking about the conversation we’d had about our relationship. By his words, we were nothing but friends, and he owed me no information about his whereabouts.

Finally, I fell asleep properly, in the bed this time. When I woke, it was dawn. My first act was to grab my cell phone, and I realized I’d gotten a text while I was sleeping.

Got sidetracked by another project. I won’t be back for a while. Good luck! – J

I stared at the small screen, my eyes scanning the words over and over, trying to find something that wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t accept this was just…it. Could it be code? If so, for what? Surely, he’d have found a way to give me a hint if he was in trouble.

Despite what he’d said, I thought we’d had something, started to form a bond. Looked like he didn’t care enough to help finish off this “project”. This was precisely the type of thing everyone had warned me about. I wanted to scream, to punch someone.
I’ll see you when I see you. Indeed.

As seductive as it was to feel sorry for myself, I assumed he would return Dorian’s calls and we would find out where he was sooner or later. Right now, I had to find another option for Eric, and I had to do it without his help. Rage and pain at his rejection would drive me on. I would use it as fuel.

I got up and splashed my face with cold water, trying to clear out the cobwebs and wash away the hurt I felt at Jamie’s text. He’d promised me nothing. I had to move on. Eric. I had to focus on Eric.

If Eric died in a police gun battle, or took his own life, I couldn’t help him. And time was running out.

The idea of calling Ryder floated into my mind, talking to him about getting help for Eric. I shook my head to get rid of the idea, and began pacing around.

Even if I could convince Eric to move on, leave the country, or adopt a new identity, he was still out of control. Any solution would be limited by the fact that he could kill people at any time without any intent to harm. I didn’t care about the risk to myself, but there was Justine to think about, and a world of innocent bystanders.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced talking to Ryder was the right thing to do. He’d made reference to methods for controlling Talent. If he couldn’t help, then no one could. I’d talk to him. What could it hurt?

 
As the sun rose over the gardens, I slipped out of the house and walked over the lawn toward the front gate, looking over my shoulder to check that no one followed me.

After leaving the property, I headed down the road, past mansion after mansion. I began to jog. The burn in my chest and legs began earlier than usual, but it felt good. I left the subdivision and turned onto the main road, continuing my run until I arrived at a strip mall. Only then did I pull out my cell phone and Ryder’s business card, now creased and grimy from living in my pocket.

I dialed the number, fumbling at the screen.

Despite the earliness of the hour, the voice that answered was crisp and awake. “Ryder,” he said.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Catrina?” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t think you were going to call me again, after you stood me up last time.”

“The situation has changed. We need to talk.”

“How do I know you won’t stand me up again?”

“You don’t.” I waited, twisting his card into a tortured mess.

“Where are you?”

I paused, then made my final decision, and described the location of the donut store I stood outside.

“You’re close,” he said. “I’ll pick you up.”

I bought coffee and a donut and sat on the curb outside to wait. My stomach felt hollow, and the one bite of donut I took sat like a ball of lead inside of me. In between swigging the coffee, I tore the rest of the donut into little pieces and fed it to some pigeons that hovered around in case of this eventuality. I tried to work out how you would tell one pigeon from another, rather than thinking about what would happen next.

After an eon passed, the dark blue Audi pulled up beside me, and the door popped. I took a deep breath, stood up and crossed over to the dark side.

Ryder said nothing, but drove in silence. I didn’t know where we were going. I stared out through the windshield, watching the buildings and trees slide by. I chanced a glance sideways. That sculpted all-American face held no emotion.

Not a hair on his white-blond head lay out of place. He had a suit on like a Fed, but to my relatively untrained eyes, it looked more expensive. As he turned the wheel, cufflinks glinted on his French cuffs. Still, he said nothing.

Dad told me when I was a kid, if the cops ever caught us, this was one of their favorite techniques. Say nothing, and wait for you to fill the silence with nervous and incriminating statements. Ryder and I drove on in our war of silence.

Eventually I felt his gaze on me and fought down the little surge of triumph as he said, “What did you want to talk about?”

“When we met before, you mentioned that you had ways of controlling Talent. Tell me more about that.”

He nodded, turning his face back to the road. “We have a training regime of mental discipline. A cadre of therapists. And if that doesn’t work, we have some experimental drugs.” Casting his gaze over one shoulder as he changed lanes, he remarked almost idly, “Of course, this is all classified. I can’t share the details with you. Yet.”

“How successful are these techniques?”

“About ninety-five percent, cumulatively.”

“And if they don’t work?”

He glanced at me again. “We have shielded quarters to protect certain individuals from themselves, and others from them.”

I added up the facts. “If you brought a Talent back under control…what would be the price?”

The car entered the DC Beltway, and Ryder appeared to be concentrating on merging into the busy morning traffic.

“We are not a charity, Catrina. We exist to give our country an edge in the war against our enemies, terrorists, rogue nations, dictators. However, for those who have been…injured…in service to our country, we provide rehabilitation so they may again become fit for duty.”

“What if they don’t?”

“I already told you what happens to uncontrolled Talents.” He shrugged. “In your brother’s case, I understand he found his former duties somewhat unpalatable. We have many possible roles he could fill once he was back on track.”

I considered. When I’d placed the call I’d felt like I was betraying Eric. Now I actually talked to Ryder, this solution felt like the only logical outcome.

“All right,” I said.

“Does he want to come in?”

“No.”

Ryder turned to look at me again, and for the first time an emotion crossed his face. Confusion. “Why are you here, then?”

I chose my words carefully. “Eric doesn’t want to hurt anyone else, and the techniques he’s tried to bring himself under control have failed. I think he’s out of options. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Will you help us bring him in?”

I sighed. This was it. The least of a bevy of evils. It was still wrong, and I would probably never forgive myself, but nobody else would die. I wished again I could have talked this over with Jamie, come up with a better plan, but I was out of options. “Yes.”

“Even against his wishes?”

“I will.”

Despite having stepped over what I thought was the line around my internal comfort zone, each step—discussing the plan with Ryder, his phone calls to summon help, him dropping me off outside the gates to the Order to preserve my story about going for a morning run—took me farther down the low road. Ethics be damned, I was trying to save Eric’s life. Once he was under control, perhaps we could come up with another plan, one involving escape from the Institute, but for now I was a turncoat, a traitor, a Benedict Arnold.

I wondered what Jamie would think of me. I wondered where he was, who he was with, what he was doing. I wondered if he thought of me at all. I thought about calling him.

I did a hundred jumping jacks before I ran up the driveway in order to get red faced and sweaty. The plan was for me to suggest we borrow a clean car from the Order and make for a back woods crossing into Canada. I would text Ryder before we left, and as we stopped at the gate, Institute security would descend on us.

Agreeing to appear to be taken by force myself sealed my complicity—that way I had some hope of maintaining Eric’s trust. Ryder thought it might be useful in our quest to bring him back into the fold. One day, I swore to myself, I’d be honest with my brother. But not today. Today I would save his life.

I went in through the French doors and back to Jamie’s room. There was no sign he had returned. I showered and changed into some anonymous clothes that had appeared in the closet of my own floral room. The cargo pants and black T-shirt fit me perfectly. I shivered, still awkward at the idea of being surrounded by Talents. Someone knew I needed clothes, and had guessed my size. Jamie’s comments about privacy came flooding back. That reminded me, and I went back to humming a song in my head, as instructed by Ryder. It was easier to maintain such nonsense than a consciously blank mind, according to him.

I needed to get all three of us out of here as quickly as possible, before one of the resident telepaths snooped and discovered my betrayal. They might not care, but I didn’t want to take the risk of Dorian interfering with my plan. They respected privacy here over security, Ryder had said scornfully, so I ought to be able to keep my secret for a little while, as long as I could keep my emotions under wraps. Not everyone here had the best control, he’d told me, which meant I needed to be careful and act quickly to minimize risk.

The quasi-military clothes gave me pause, taking me back to a thousand adolescent training sessions, and wondered if someone was trying to send me a message. Paranoia. No one would believe what I was up to, not even Jamie. Especially not Jamie.

I sat down on the bed one more time, and typed in the text I’d been composing in my head for the last few hours.

Going to turn Eric in to the Greys.

I paused. Shit. I’d probably never see him again, because after this he wouldn’t want to speak to me, even as a friend. I typed a few more words, hit send before I could change my mind, and shoved the phone in my pocket.