The Reckoning (Unbounded Series #4) (36 page)

“No!” Shadrach said, his sharp tone stopping Ritter in mid-stride to the locked door. “We can’t. Not yet.”

I arched a brow. “Hey, you’re the one who contacted us. Remember that cryptic email sent to our bogus chat group?”

“I meant we can’t leave without the others,” he said, coming to his feet.

We all stared. “You mean the Emporium agents? The people who tried to kill us in Morocco?”
The people who murdered your son.
But I didn’t say that last part aloud.

“We can’t leave them.” Shadrach shook his head, his face looking suddenly ill. “You don’t know what it’s like here. They cut off my arm last week just to see how long it took to grow back. They put out one guy’s eye. Oh, they’re kind enough to give us morphine. Except for the guy they electrocuted to death. Yes,
electrocuted.
The guy they froze also didn’t have any painkillers. They wanted to test his tolerance for cold.” Shadrach swallowed noisily in the abrupt silence. “Those are only the highlights. They’re far worse than the Moroccans—and they were nasty enough.”

“Their people will come for them.” Ritter’s jaw clenched and unclenched like his fists.

“That’s right. They will—and they’ll murder every mortal here. But the doctors and staff are only under orders, for the most part, and they don’t deserve that.” Shadrach’s dark eyes went to Dimitri in appeal. “In the past three months since the explosion on that rooftop, I’ve done what I can to help the Emporium agents heal, to ease their pain. They trust me, and since the announcement, they’re different. They want to live in peace. They don’t want to return to the Emporium.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Ritter said. “Maybe you have some other reason to want us to help them.”

Shadrach grimaced. “I know what you think of me, and maybe I was wrong in Morocco—”

“You almost got us killed!” Ritter didn’t take a step toward him, but the fury in his face made Shadrach step back until his calves hit the couch.

“I know,” Shadrach said, his voice strangled. “But you’re going to have to trust me on this one. Because you’re not going to leave me here, so either you drag me kicking and screaming or you take them too.”

The veins in Ritter’s neck bulged. “Believe me, I won’t have to take you screaming.” For an instant, I thought Ritter was going to punch the healer out and throw him over his shoulder. I’d probably help him.

Dimitri stepped in. “Let’s hear him out.”

“Okay,” I answered for Ritter, giving him time to calm down. “We’ll listen. But we’re going to make the final decision, Shadrach. Not you.”

“Agreed,” he said.

Ritter’s fists relaxed. “This could be a plan on their part. Did you think of that?”

Shadrach scrubbed a hand over his face and into his black hair, causing it to fall out of place. “If so, it’s an elaborate plan that started back in Morocco. Two of these agents hate the Emporium as much as I do, and the other has listened to us. I won’t pretend that their courage doesn’t come mostly from knowing Delia Vesey is dead. The fact that she can’t hurt them or their families anymore if they don’t do what she orders was a huge factor in their decision.” He paused before adding, “Vesey caused some damages—perhaps permanent—in one man’s mind, the one who took convincing. I fixed what I could, but he’s not all there in the logic department. Reality is hard for him to understand. But the others, I’m sure of.”

Now he made a direct appeal to Ritter. “They know where the Emporium strongholds are, at least five of them. The major ones. They’re willing to share that information with us.”

Ritter’s head swung toward Dimitri and they shared a long, silent stare. I knew what it would mean to locate Emporium headquarters. They’d recently relocated many of their safe houses after we’d obtained intel on the locations from a thumb drive recovered in Mexico, and since then we’d made little headway on tracking their whereabouts. This intel could prove invaluable.

Shadrach’s eyes fixed on me. “Erin can see that I’m telling the truth.” The shield around his mind dropped—an invitation I immediately accepted. In the representation I created of his conscious mind, I stood on a sort of stage, and his thoughts fell from the darkness above me in a stream of what looked like sand, curving downward and disappearing again into the darkness at hip level. Each grain of sand represented a thought or memory, past or present. I would see only those he currently made or recalled for me, but it would be enough to get a feel about his truthfulness.

I stared deeper, more interested in searching for Emporium traps—the mental constructs Delia Vesey, a former Emporium Triad leader, had been so good at placing in people’s minds. Mental traps could be fatal for the person carrying them and for any sensing Unbounded attempting to repair the damage. Delia’s assistant had survived the encounter in Morocco, so he could have planted something in Shadrach’s mind, and the Emporium had at least a few other sensing Unbounded, if the rumors were true. But Shadrach’s mind was clean. Not a hint of Emporium meddling—or prefabrication on Shadrach’s part. He believed what he was saying.

“He’s telling the truth,” I said, “and I don’t see any Emporium constructs in his mind.”

Ritter nodded once, his face grim. “Then we’ll do it.” His surface emotions radiated determination, but his mental shield was otherwise strong.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Oliver said in my earbud. “Are you guys sure about this? Because that’s going to take longer, and I kind of feel like a sitting duck all alone out here in the van.”

“Aren’t you masking it?” I asked. His ability of illusion was the reason we’d let him come with us at all. Because while Oliver was a genius, his arrogance made us all pretty much want to kill him.

“Well, it was a fruit stand for a while, but people stopped and tried to buy some.” He groaned. “I had to make the fruit appear moldy to get them to leave.”

I bit my lip “So put up a closed sign!”

“Right.”

Trust Oliver to take such pride in his illusions that his fake fruits looked and smelled great enough to make people stop to buy them even in this manufacturing area.

I caught a glimpse of irritation on Ritter’s face before he said to Oliver, “We may need a distraction at the front of the building. Something with a lot of fireworks. Be prepared. And have Stella extend her satellite surveillance to a radius of three streets in case the Emporium decides to join our party. I want to know if there’s anything unusual.”

“Will do,” Oliver said, sounding chastised. He didn’t have a lot of respect for the rest of us, but his admiration of Ritter was almost as irritating as his know-it-all attitude. “The satellite we tasked here did go down for a few minutes. Could have been someone hacking our feed, but it’s back up and running perfectly now, and we’ve detected no unusual activity so far.”

“No other fruit stands?” Dimitri asked, a hint of a smile in his voice.

Oliver took offense at his gentle jibe. “As a matter of fact, there is a defunct one. That’s what gave me the idea. There’s an orchard only two miles from here, so it’s completely logical for a fruit stand to be in this area.”

“I was sure you had a reason, but that’s good to know.” Dimitri had more patience with Oliver than the rest of us. Probably because he considered himself the father of our cell.

Biologically speaking, Dimitri
was
my father, but I’d only known him since my Change just over seven months ago. I’d come to terms with my uncertain beginning, and while I still considered the man who raised me to be my real father, Dimitri and I were closer in many ways.

Shadrach shifted nervously, his eyes going to the door. “So what now?”

Ritter’s eyes narrowed at the healer. “Now we try not to get killed.”

END OF SAMPLE.
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Chapter One

M
akay Greyson bent over the book in her lap, but she didn’t read the words. Her eyes kept running off the page to see if he was coming. This was always the most dangerous time. She never knew if she’d have to run, make up a story, or simply walk away with another month of rent.
Hands shoved in her pockets, she held her jacket tightly around her, shivering despite the warmth of the evening.

There he was, coming down the walking trail past three little girls kicking a bouncy ball on the grass. The trio was laughing hysterically, and Makay knew it was their way to feel free after spending the past month back in school. Their mothers sat together on a blanket nearby, two of them with babies. Seeing the girls and hearing the laughing made Makay’s stomach hurt. She’d known little girls like them, but she never remembered being one.

The man ignored the children, though his foot grazed the ball as it landed in his path. He looked just like his picture, an attractive, sixty-something man with gray hair that still had enough dark in it to be called distinguished. His brown slacks and striped brown shirt didn’t seem to be special, but she didn’t know enough about brands to be certain. He wore the cuffs of his sleeves turned up. Looking for a fight? She hoped not. The pistol she hid under her jacket was mainly for appearances.

Makay didn’t look up, but she followed his progress beneath her eyelashes. He was alone as far as she could tell. No one lingered at the edges of the park, staring in their direction. In fact, the park was almost deserted; it seemed most people in the town of Gilbert were heading home to get ready for dinner. Her stomach growled at the thought. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten, but that would have to wait. Unfortunately, she still had a thirty minute drive to Phoenix to pick up Nate before she could even begin thinking about home.

She shifted her booted feet as the man sat beside her on the bench. Blaine Cooper was his name, but she didn’t really care. She looked at him now, saw him glance at her and then at the children as he reached for a fat white envelope in his pocket and laid it on the bench between them.

Makay reached for it, but his hand didn’t move away.

“How do I know this is it?” he said, still staring at the little girls. “That you won’t come back for more?” He paused before adding in a rush, “I can’t believe anyone with my blood would do something like this . . . this extortion. I work for what I get. I don’t steal from others. You’re nothing but a leech.”

Hot anger flared inside Makay. It was all she seemed to feel these days with anyone except Nate. “Don’t worry,
Daddy.
I won’t be back. This is a one-time deal. Your wife and children will never know about your affair with my mother—or about your current girlfriend.” She put venom into her voice. “And you know what? I feel exactly the way you do. I can’t believe any
blood
related to me could be so detestable.” She snatched the fat envelope from under his hand and placed it between the pages of her book, snapping it shut. “For the record, I earned this every night I went to bed hungry.” And also for every tear she’d shed for a parent who had never wanted to know her, but she wouldn’t say that aloud.

Cooper moved suddenly and she tensed in expectation—it wouldn’t be the first time one of the marks had hit her—but he simply stood. This time his eyes fixed on her face. For a moment she thought he might say something that would show he wasn’t as calloused and indifferent as she believed, but the thought was fleeting, blotted out by the fury in his dark eyes.

“I won’t pay twice for a mistake I made almost twenty-five years ago,” he snarled, his pale face becoming blotchy. “If you contact me again, I won’t call the police. I’ll hire someone to deal with you.” He strode away, every line of his body taut with anger. He didn’t look back.

Makay jumped to her feet and walked in the opposite direction. On the whole it had gone rather well. She much preferred a mark’s anger to his sorrow and remorse. The outright rejection to nosy personal questions and answers she’d have to make up. Exact sums in the envelopes instead of extra bills that tried to atone for the sins her targets weren’t willing to make right.

Pushing thoughts of Blaine Cooper from her mind, Makay left the park, pausing only to count the money once in her blue Chrysler Sebring convertible, because it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been shorted. Thankfully, all five thousand dollars were there. She stopped by the bank in Phoenix to deposit some of the money at the ATM, and the rest she put under her seat on top of a manila folder that contained information about Blaine Cooper. She checked four times on her drive from the bank to Lily’s House, and no one appeared to be following her.

The wooden sign Lily’s husband, Mario Perez, had put up over the gate entry gleamed with new paint, as if welcoming her personally to Lily’s House. Makay sat in the car for several minutes just looking at the old place. She and Nate had moved out two years ago when he was four, but somehow it still felt like home.