The Rasner Effect (28 page)

Damn him.

Jen threw off the sheet, untangled her feet from the spread, left it bunched on the floor and padded barefoot to the balcony. She sidled up on his right, letting the length of her arm graze his. She leaned forward and folded her hands on the railing in front of her as the sun wiped away what was left of the night.

In the trees, a small black bird flew from branch to branch. Rick suddenly spread his feet on the deck, raised his gun, and pointed it at the tree. He fired a shot that echoed down the treeline and back. Three birds flapped away from the tree as Rick let out a loud exhale. “My aim is off. I’m out of practice.”

“And you’re still very angry.”

“I haven’t been able to feel anger of any kind for a very long time. Let me revel in it a while, won’t you?”

“I do miss our conversations, why don’t we talk instead?” She ran her hand up his arm to his shoulder.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“You’ve been avoiding this conversation all day, babe.” Jen gave him her usual sarcastic grin. “But we did say we’d catch up. So why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you, besides the obvious?”

“Well, were you…loyal to me while I was gone?”

So that was why he hadn’t laid a hand on her. Because he thought she’d been with someone else. That was just BS. She knew him better than that.

“Come on, Rick, it was a very long seven years—and you were dead. Well, we thought you were dead. Everybody did.” She unfolded his fingers from around the gun and laid it on the rail. She maneuvered ’til they were face to face and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?” She tilted her head up to peer into his face where a slight smile had formed.

His humor faded as quickly as it arrived. He backed away, unwinding her arms. He picked up the gun again. “Seven years, that’s what’s bothering me.” He banged the gun butt on the wood. “Those fucking assholes stole seven goddamn years from me. From
us
.”

Rick flipped the gun in the air and caught it by the barrel. Like a Frisbee, he threw it at the glass door behind them. The glass shattered, but did not break. An enormous spider web appeared. Sort of like her life, she thought, going in a million different directions at once.

She moved closer to the door and examined the break. “Well, you’re certainly reveling, now aren’t you?”

“I can still feel this damn chip pressing against my forehead!” Rick growled through gritted teeth. “And worse yet, I still can’t shake those bullshit memories Obenchain put in my head.”

“You will be able to shake them, though, right?”

Rick turned to Jen, eyeing her carefully. He then let out a quick chuckle. “I know where you’re going with this, Jennifer.” He placed his arm around her shoulders. “You don’t have to worry, I am me again. Their experiment failed, they didn’t change me into something I’m not. Maybe when I’ve got new memories—real ones—the artificial ones will go away.”

“It was a concern, to see what you were like before we shorted that thing out…”

“They made me forget my entire life.” He heaved out a long breath that whispered over her head. “And now I wish I could just forget the last seven years. But don’t worry about me. You want to put the Duke Organization back together and I’m with you a thousand percent.”

“Obenchain suggested were you given a choice, you wouldn’t want your old life back. That you were happy the way you were.”

“He’s wrong. I knew that wasn’t really me, none of it ever felt right. I’m glad I now know who I really am and I want it all back.”

“Good.”

“There is something I need to do before anything else, though. I want to track down Straker. I want to kill him.”

“Yes. Straker will be first. And then we take steps to get our name out there again. Jobs will come in so fast there won’t be enough time in the day for all of them.”

“You’re in agreement with me?”

“Why so surprised?”

“You’re not going to tell me we’re better off waiting, business before pleasure and all that?”

“You’re a big boy, Rick. You really want this, and I know if I get in your way, it will consume you. We can’t have that.”

“Thank you.”

Jen straightened her back and raised her head to look up at him. She threw her right hand across her eyebrows in order to block the glare from the bright sun.

“Our first mission
should
be Straker. In fact, I think it’s a necessity. We have all been in hiding for a long time. In that time, we were forgotten. You know what that means?”

“No one’s afraid of us anymore.”

“Exactly.” She laid her head on his chest and listened to the thump thump of his heart. The thumping triggered her hormones—as if they hadn’t raged enough last night. “And thus,” she continued, “we’re not worth anything on the market. Our return to the field needs to begin with the man who took us off the field in the first place—as a message to everyone that we are players once again.”

Jen looked up at him, but he was staring once again at the trees in the backyard. He’d stopped listening. She nudged him in the stomach with her elbow and he jumped. “Are you still with me in this conversation?”

“Yes, ah, and I look forward to it. I want to jam my gun so far down his throat I can watch the bullet shoot out his ass!”

“That’s a lovely picture.” She eased away from him and went to sit in one of the wicker chairs on the terrace. He followed, taking the other.

“I remember being on that operating table,” he mumbled. “I was tied down and I couldn’t move.”

She knew how much he always hated being pinned down, both physically and emotionally.

“I remember the needle being shoved into my arm.” He held up his left arm and pointed at a spot near his wrist. “It was right here. All this time and I can still feel it.” Rick gritted his teeth; his nose curled up like a snarling dog. “I remember Straker standing over me, making wise-ass comments about how I’d be a new person, perhaps a fucking priest. Then he threw back his head and laughed like it was some kind of new joke.”

Jen ran her finger down his arm. It was an attempt to make him feel better, but Rick was too lost in his memories to even notice.

“That’s the last god damned thing I remember before they…”

She waited several seconds, for him to finish. When he didn’t, she said, “Well, you’re you again. So relax. Soon, you’ll be the one standing over him laughing. We’ll all be there at your side.”

“The sooner, the better.” Rick slid his arm up hers and squeezed her shoulder. They leaned in toward each other, gazing up at the striated sunrise. There was much more that needed to be said, but he’d calmed for now and Jen wasn’t about to break this moment.

She leaned back enjoying the gentle pressure of his fingers kneading her flesh. The pink and purple ripples of sunrise evolved into orange yellow before her eyes. Sunrise wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to—for seven years. Used to be they’d return from a job and stay up to watch the sun come up, comfortable in each other’s arms, no matter which temporary headquarters they called home at the time. Jen let her eyes rove to it. She wondered how he’d react if she invited him there right now.

Instead she said, “So what’s the deal with this kid you brought us?”

Rick inhaled. “You said before, our troops are depleted.”

Jen chuckled. “And she’s the answer to our shortage?”

“We need people. Clara can be trained and she can be trusted.”

“Trusted?” She raised her eyebrows. “She’s a teenager, from the ghetto. I doubt there’s a sense of loyalty instilled in her.”

“Well, we were pretty rough when our training began. I think she can be molded.”

“To let you know, around midnight, she climbed out the window of the room we put her in.”

This time it was his eyebrows that rose.

“Don’t worry, I have Kobayashi keeping an eye on her.” When she’d set the man to watching the kid, she’d wondered why. Why not just let her run off? Be done with her. But Rick must’ve had a reason for bringing her in, and Jen at least wanted to hear what it was.

“Did she try to take off?”

“No, she climbed down onto the stoop and fell asleep on one of the lounge chairs.” Jen reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Rick, if she tries to run, our location could be compromised.”

“She won’t run.”

He sounded so certain. His judgment had always been good, at least when he took the time to think things out, but that was a long time ago and he had been through so much. This time she thought he might’ve gone wrong. “You have no doubt about that whatsoever?”

“She has nowhere to go, Jennifer. She has no one to run to. She’ll be back in the house in time for breakfast. Bet on it.”

“Tell me, why this particular kid?”

Rick turned around and leaned against the banister, kicking his feet out wide. “Miller was a heartless bitch, but she was right about at least one thing. Clara Blue is a kid filled with anger, filled with hate. She’s aggressive and violent, yet she was strong enough to fight those instincts. She fought them because she was deluded into believing it was the right thing to do. Left on her own with no training or focus, she’ll end up dead or in jail. Under our guidance, she can be capable of much more than that.”

“She could end up dead or in jail even with us, Rick. In fact, it’s more than likely in our world.”

“Maybe so, but at least it won’t be all for nothing. At least she will have a purpose. We’ll use that anger of hers. She’ll do good work for us.”

“You were in an institution full of aggressive and violent children. Yet she was the only one you decided to liberate and recruit.”

“Unlike the others, Clara has a brain in her head. She’s smart and she can read situations very well. It’s a gift that right now she has no use for. We can teach her, just like your father taught us.”

She loved this man’s passion and she missed seeing it. It was one of the things that infatuated her about him even when they were children themselves. But how could he possibly be right on this one?

She wasn’t through challenging him. “And how do you know she would take to that teaching?”

“She will take to it. She’ll adopt our way of life as if it were her own. And even if she doesn’t, she’ll stick with us anyway, because what we’re offering is better than what she has. Hell, it’s better than what she’s
ever
had.”

“We are not babysitters here, Rick. Dad trained us from a younger age so we’d grow up with the temperament to pull the trigger when necessary. She didn’t exactly seem a willing participant this morning.”

Rick turned to lean forward over the railing. She got up and went to stand behind him, fitting herself against the contours of his thighs and backside. She reached both arms around and meshed her fingers in the hair just above his navel. Then she closed her eyes and leaned her head on his back.

“Do you remember your first assignment, Jen?”

She heard his words mostly as a reverberation through his spine and smiled. “Of course. On my fourteenth birthday, dear ‘sweet’ Mom.”

“And do you remember why your old man chose her?”

Jen’s smile straightened and she lifted her head away from him. “What’s your point?”

“My point is this kid has mother issues as well. Clara has a lifetime of anger toward the woman, just like you did and for similar reasons. It makes her the perfect initial target to begin the chain.”

Rick twisted around so they were face to face. He grinned down at her as he set his arms across her shoulders. He leaned into her face to talk. His warm breath smelled like chocolate milk. “Clara will further our operation and perhaps even take over for us someday. I can see it in her. She needs something to believe in, something to be loyal toward. More importantly, she needs someone to believe in her. Honestly, I believe she could be the next Jennifer Duke.”

Flattery, he really did want this. Jen leaned her head on Rick’s shoulder absorbing his comments. “So you’re taking on a new student to teach the business. You truly are following in my father’s footsteps, I see.”

“We can teach her together. We’ll raise her in our own vision. Think about it, Jennifer, she’s practically a blank slate for us to mold.”

“Perhaps the prospect of an intern would be intriguing. And are we going to train her the way my father trained all of us?” Rick’s arms around her shoulders tightened. His sudden growl said her comment had hit a nerve. At least he remembered that part of his life.

“Just like your father,” he said through gritted teeth, “except I won’t smack her in the face with a metal pipe when she screws up. I won’t toss her in a rat-infested cellar for the night. I won’t try to dehumanize her all for his personal war against the world.”

“Then maybe she won’t conspire to kill you when she grows up?”

But he was not amused. “He treated us with the same ruthlessness he did everyone else. It shouldn’t have been that way, not with us.”

“He always was hardest on you. You were justified putting that knife through his heart.” She laid her head back down, feeling his left nipple in her ear. “He did make us all close though, didn’t he? We are family.”

Rick had once again become lost in thought, staring up at the sky, mumbling to himself. After all this time, he still had that habit. And it still annoyed her to no end.

“Speaking of the family, Rick, some of them are incarcerated.” She reached out and smacked Rick’s shoulder to get his attention. “We should get them out and back with us as soon as possible.”

“We will. But Straker has to come first.”

“I already told you I agree. I’ll even state my agreement to the group when we meet over breakfast. Derrick, however, will probably be pissed…”

“I don’t care. But I’m glad you understand where I’m coming from.”

“All right, Ricky-baby,” Jen stepped back and went to sit in the lounge chair, “whose past demon do we exorcise first? Hers or yours?”

“We can do both,” Rick answered. His eyes were bright; finally, his attention focused in the right place. “Derrick can get the information on both targets. You take Clara, prep her, and then watch her pull the trigger. Think of it as her test. It can serve as the proof I’m right and she belongs.”