Cuff Lynx (34 page)

Forty-One

I
sat on the floor and folded my legs into a lotus. Breathing in and out, I focused my force on the sound of
om
. I fought an inner battle to ground and release.

Finally, I emerged from my meditation centered and calm, and ready to think my way through the puzzle. I pulled the elastic from my hair and used my fingers to comb it back into a fresh ponytail. My phone buzzed.

“Hey, Spyder. Everything okay?”

“Have you seen the news?”

“Not in the last few minutes? Why? What?” Anxiety painted my words psychedelic colors.

“Omega’s rats are jumping ship. They’ve set their headquarters on fire.”

I scurried down the corridor and burst into our temporary office to find the men on their feet watching CNN, fingers laced and hands resting on their heads.

“Did you do that?” I whispered into the phone.

“Omega believes it can slow or thwart the inevitable by destroying evidence. But of course, the evidence has already been dispersed.”

“I. . . wow.”

“Exactly.” Spyder said, without a hint of stress in his voice. “There will be a lot of hot heads, needing to blow off steam. You are to stay on campus.”

“I don’t know that I can promise that. We’re still looking for Striker.”

After a long pause, Spyder said, “Understood. Be safe, Lexicon. Keep your head down.”

For another minute we watched as Omega Headquarters burned. The firefighters seemed to have their hoses trained on the buildings surrounding it instead of the Omega building, preventing the leaping flames from spreading.

I had an inkling that Omega’s burning had as much to do with Indigo’s being gone as the data dump. Without Indigo at the helm, things would quickly fall off-course. I wondered if Sylanos, Omega, and the Assembly knew he had died, or if the members were too focused on their individual survival to care. “That shouldn’t happen,” I said..

Blaze turned his head toward me. “We were talking about that. Omega must have shut off their water so the sprinkler system wasn’t functioning.”

“Holy smokes,” I said.

Blaze looked over and laughed. “That sums it up.”

“Don’t think they’re done, though. There will undoubtedly be some arrests, and whoever’s left will reform under a new name. This’ll shake things up a bit,” Jack said. He focused down on the list of sniper names. “Maybe make a few go underground.”

“And make us one hell of an enemy,” Gater added.             

Spyder thought we could cauterize the heads as we lopped them off the Hydra, and the beast would be dead. Surely he knew better. When you cut off the head of a Hydra, two grow back. Had we just doubled our enemies?

“What have you got there, Deep?” I asked.

“Iniquus sponsored Super Bowl tickets greased the palm of the phone company guy who got us Vine’s direction. She seems to be heading due west, sticking to the highways. She’s on I-70.”

“How far?” Blaze asked.

“We need to turn them around,” Deep said.

“Lynx, you’ve got to figure out a way to get her headed back into town with a text message,” Jack said.

I read over Indigo’s texts, trying to get their rhythm so I could send her a message that didn’t raise her suspicion.

I started with,
Okay?

Cat –
Tired. Glad I brought a team to help me with the drive. Good call. Thank you.

Team? She had a team with her? Not just a single helper. Deep and Jack read over my shoulder, then Deep wrote the text on a paper for everyone to read.

Dad –
Are you listening to the news?

Cat
– Guys wanted rock station. Why? What’s happening?

Dad
– Omega Headquarters is on fire. Had to evacuate.

Cat
– OMG! Are you okay?

Dad –
OK. Have the team turn around and head back to DC. I have information that will make you more effective. Are you getting anywhere with him?

Cat –
He loves me. He is so in love with me, Dad. That bitch just did some energy voodoo to him. Cast a spell. Witches should burn at the stake
.

Yes, that was her explanation and her justification in some of her rantings. Her dad had told her about my abilities with healing energy, and that I did Reiki. He assumed I did it on Striker regularly. Therefore, I was influencing him energetically to love me, and not her. Vine had said that two could play that game. She was “fighting fire with fire,” “fighting for her man.”

Dad –
That may very well have happened
.
You’re going to like what I’ve discovered. I need you to head back. I’m so happy for you, Tabby Cat. Your well-deserved happily ever after is so close.

Cat –
Tell me!

Dad
– Turn around.

Cat
– Stopping for gas next exit. U-turn. Back in a few hours. Thanks, Dad. I love you.

Dad –
Love you, too. Text me as you’re coming in to town. I’ll tell you where to go.

Cat
– Will do.

Forty-Two

I
raised my eyebrows and curled my lips in.

“You think she bought it?” Deep asked.

“How could she contradict it? Indigo has been neutralized. She won’t get anyone if she tries any other means of communicating with him. If she tries to connect with Omega, it’s on fire. If she tries to connect with the Assembly or Sylanos’s people – well, they’re probably busy trying to use whatever escape hatch they’ve put in place for themselves. I’d say we’ve got a good shot. Deep, you need your contact to keep track of those pings and follow them in.”

“On it,” Deep said, and went to the hall to make his phone call.

Jack clapped hands on my shoulders. “You keeping it together?”

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m going to reach out to Mrs. Coleridge at the lodge. I imagine Major Trudy is there by now. I’m wondering if he did the remote viewing for me.”

“If he thinks there’s fifty-thousand riding on actionable intel, I bet it’s the first thing he did stepping off his plane,” Gater said. “Why don’t you call Titus?”

“Comms could be compromised. I don’t want to make any move that might give Omega fuel.” I moved to the front of the room. “I need to paint a picture for you guys.”

Deep walked back in and lifted his chin to let us know his guy was on the task.

“As you can see from reading the logs, time is of no consequence to a remote viewer in the ether. These are not my skillsets at all. I’m not sure I understand all of the ramifications. While we’re here in Iniquus, though, our plans are protected b
y
Tsukamot
o
’s art work, but we will have to leave this protection in order to get Striker. Once we are off the Iniquus compound, we’re vulnerable. If Vine does a remote viewing and sees what the outcome is of our rescue mission, she’ll plan for our actions and thwart our success. Just like they did at the Fuller Mine.” I waited while that sunk in. “While Vine is not tactically adept, she has an Omega team with her, and we don’t know their level of expertise. I have to assume that Indigo sent the best of the best to protect his daughter.”

I walked over to the flip pad and wrote, “UNKNOWNS:”

1. What is Vine’s success rate as a remote viewer and how does her delusions affect her?
   
2. How many operatives are with her? What are their skillsets?
   
3. Will they stick with her once they know Omega is falling?
   
4. Are they indeed heading home?
   
5. What seeds were planted in General Elliot’s mind? Is he a risk to anyone or anything?
   
6. What seeds are being planted in Striker’s mind? Is a he a risk to anyone or anything?
   

Wow—that one rocked my foundation, as if I were trying to stand through a magnitude-seven earthquake. My head was suddenly and fearfully in Suzanne Collins’ novel,
Mockingjay
. The Capitol had used tracker-jacker venom to create false memories and hallucinations in Peeta Mellark, and he tried to attack and kill the love of his life, Katniss. What if I were Striker’s Katniss? What the hell? What the holy hell?

“Blaze, can you work on that last question right now?” My voice wobbled, and the magic marker waved violently in my hand as I tried to point with it. “Can you look through the influencing logs from the time Striker’s house was attacked until the most recent, and make sure that the only influencing she did was as benign as ‘Striker loves Grace, and they will live happily ever after’?”

Deep nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do the same with Indigo’s.” His phone buzzed. “Pings are headed due east now.”

There was a “whoop!” to celebrate our minor victory.

The whole Peeta Mellark thought gave me an idea. I puzzled it through, and the nursery rhyme’s steady hum of
Lady bug, Lady bug
didn’t intensify. I explained my plan to Jack to get his take. Could go either way:

I texted -
The witch burned at the stake. No longer a problem.

Cat –
What? How? Did you do it?

Dad –
She tried to break into my place. Caught in Omega fire. Rescued. Died of smoke inhalation at the hospital.

Dad –
Just rewards
.

Cat
- So relieved
.

Cat –
We’re on our way back to DC. Is the fire under control?

Dad –
Not yet.

Cat –
Did she set fire?

Dad –
Electrical system, they think.

Dad -
Need you to turn off his drip. Meds need to get out of his system.

Cat -
What? Why?

Dad -
Need him clear for this to work. He should be ready by the time you arrive.

Dad –
So happy for you.

Cat –
OK. Done. Thank you, Dad.

I set the phone down on the table and laced my hands in my lap. I stared at the phone. My nerves rubbed raw against my skin. “Do you think she bought it, Jack?” I whispered.

“No idea. One way to tell is if there is another change in direction, or if she turns off her phone, so we can’t track her. Another way would be to try to get the information from the remote viewers.”

“Mrs. Coleridge said she’d call me as soon as they’re done with the task. Sixty-five percent chance of correctness if they pick up anything at all.”

“Sixty-five percent gives a better shot than nothing at all.”

“Unless we make a decision based on the 35% that may be wrong information, and Striker pays the price.”

Jack clenched his jaw.

“Lynx, I’ve scanned through all of the influencing sessions on Striker. I’m only seeing where Vine is trying to convince him he loves her – like a love potion kind of thing.”

“Indigo’s logs are the same. Negative thoughts about you, loving thoughts about her. We don’t have anything from the work she’s done since Striker’s been drugged. I can’t see how she’d change much,” Blaze said.

“And Indigo was sick as a dog, and had the breach of his penthouse to contend with, so Striker and wild new seeds were probably not high on his list.” I offered up a plastic smile. “Well, we’ll see when Striker wakes up if he likes me anymore.” Whole and healthy were the things that mattered. Sane and capable. His loving me lay much farther down the list.

“We only have a short time frame to get an extraction plan together and get ourselves in place. We need a location that Vine won’t be able to remotely view. Let me explain doorknobbing to you. Hmmm. Let me start by saying that this is not a perfect solution because Vine can simply project her mind forward to a time that informs her about the outcomes. Truly, if she is good at this, and she tasks the right question with her remote viewing session, all of this can go very badly. This is a formidable enemy."

Forty-Three

Dad –
Reservations made for Maryland State Park private site on bay name of Matt Huff. Prepaid. Should be beautiful – romantic.

Dad –
Plan to stay there 2-3 days. I’m bringing food/supplies.

Cat –
Great.

Cat -
GPS says an hour twelve minutes.

Dad
– Did he wake up?

Cat –
He’s awake but groggy, cooperative. He’s restrained.

Dad –
Good.
What does everyone want for the campfire?

Cat
– They say steaks and beer. I want shrimp, plz.

“Pings are still headed east, about thirty minutes out of DC,” Deep said.

“That’s about right. The park is about forty minutes beyond that for them,” Jack said.

The guys had changed out of their uniforms and into jeans and flannel hunting shirts. This was a rogue operation. We weren’t functioning as Iniquus operatives. We didn’t have warrants – couldn’t get them, either. The judges were jammed with requests put in from the data release fallout. And too, we really didn’t know whom we could trust. Spyder had a judge he said was golden. But Spyder wasn’t answering his phone.

This was pushing hard against the limits of the law. Okay, we were stretching a toe well over the line. But we couldn’t see another way around this. So we’d try to stay within the Maryland law and hope for the best. Every single one of us was willing to go to jail to save Striker, but, honestly, we’d rather not.

Jack set up our campsite at the top of the road. It was the only way in or out of this finger of land. Jack served as eyes and ears, which pissed him off, but he hadn’t recovered yet from the last gun fight, so he’d been sitting on the bench for this one We chose this site because several big battles were fought out here both in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars—it should create enough energetic havoc that our efforts would be covered, just like on General Coleridge’s land.

Gater and Blaze, our best snipers, lay in the weeds in their ghillie suits on the high ground above the campsite reserved in Matt Huff’s name.

Deep, swathed in his ghillie suit, hid in the evergreens, a silencer screwed into his Glock. I shadow walked along the tree line.

We would use no comms—strict radio silence. We would break squelch to signal, and nothing more. In came the signal, right on time—the rasp of the radio must mean Jack saw the camper driving in.

Exactly as planned, Vine’s RV pulled onto the pad. For several long moments, nothing happened as the engine went quiet—the Omega team was probably observing the area. Finally, the door opened. The operatives descended cautiously, guns in hand. Eyes scanning.

I worked on projecting the rough browns and greys of the bark in front of me, protecting my presence from their view.

Keep your guns in your hands.
I sent my own thought seeds out into the wind. The Omega team had to be armed when we took them down—it was the best way to keep the law on our side.

The Omega team stooped to check for tracks, then stood, their eyes searching above them in the limbs of the trees. If they were seasoned soldiers, then they should be able to sense our trap. And it seemed they did sense something. They were nervous, checking in with each other, staying in crouched positions, their guns hugged to their chests, ready to thrust out and squeeze their triggers. Their circle grew wider as they searched for the threat.

“Hang tight for a second,” one of them called toward the camper door.

And there she was. Barefooted. Dressed in black yoga pants and a turtleneck, Vine moved down the stairs with her mouth painted bright red, bearing a smile of victory.

The guy waved her back, and she moved to the bottom-most stair.

Jack should be making the requisite 911 calls from each of our phones by now. The ones required by Maryland law before we could pull a trigger to protect ourselves.

Knowing these men would probably be wearing body armor, Blaze and Gater aimed at the spot between the men’s eyes that would stop the brain stem completely on impact and plunge them straight down to form lumps on the ground, like so much dirty laundry.

As the subtle crack of rifles with sound suppressors sent the birds winging noisily into the air, Deep took his shot at the man in front of the camper. Three men dropped dead.

I ran full out for the door towards the gaping Vine. That’s the joy of shock—unless you’ve had a hell of a lot of experience with it, it freezes you like a statue. I had seven seconds to make my sprint. I didn’t make it in time.

Vine whipped out her gun and shot wide. The bullet ricocheted off the door frame and pinged back into the camper.

“Are you crazy? Drop your weapon,” I ordered, hoping to forestall her next shot.

Her gun fired and the bullet whizzed over my ducked head and out the door. I barreled into her, jamming my head into her gut and thrusting her backward with my momentum.

She pulled her leg in to thrust-kick me away, but I spun in place, and her foot kicked the counter instead. She screamed.

I was desperate to see Striker and make sure he was okay. But right now, my full focus needed to stay  in the fight. She threw elbows, and I blocked them. I heard Gater’s yell. Vine glanced up and kicked a button by the door, as my fist crushed her nose with a sickening crunch. The door immediately shut and a metal mechanism slid into place. She’d locked us in.

She grabbed hold of my hair and yanked as I ground her toes with the heel of my boot and wrapped her arm to trap and snap it. There was little room for a fight. Barely any room for our feet. No space for a takedown throw. Even chambering a punch meant knocking elbows into the fixed furnishings of the camper. I palm-fisted her chin, knocking her head into one of the cabinets that loomed in at us from the sides.

Sirens sounded from up the road–the park rangers had gotten here fast. Faster than we’d accounted for.

They can’t arrest her,
was the thought I had pinned in the front of my brain. But she was fighting without a weapon. I wasn’t in fear of my life. If I killed her, then it was murder, pure and simple. We had all agreed—if nothing else came of this, Scarlet Vine had to be neutralized. If she was in prison, America wouldn’t be safe. But we also assumed she’d have a weapon in her hand, and I would have every legal right to protect myself and Striker. Now all I could do was subdue her for arrest.

Vine grabbed canned goods from the counter with her one functional arm and slung them at my face. I grabbed up a cushion to block them and push her back farther and farther in the camper. Back to where Striker had his hands cuffed over his head. I wouldn’t look at him.

Bare-handed, I worked to wear her down. A broken nose. Swollen eyes. Knee kicks to the diaphragm. She had backed herself into a corner, trying to reach the door to the bedroom in the back and respite.

The sirens wailed outside of the camper. Over Vine’s screams, I could hear the park rangers demand that we come out with our hands up.

I was done. I needed to end this before she somehow got lucky with a blow to my head. I jumped as high as the ceiling would allow, landing the solidity of my forearm on her carotid artery, dragging the weight of my bones across her neck as my feet hit the ground. I squatted to hold the pressure for an extra nanosecond.

Vine sagged toward the floor.

I watched as she used the move to lift the leg of her yoga pants and pull a Sig from her ankle holster.

Relief swept over me as I swung behind her, crossed a hand to her shoulder, and grabbed her chin. With every drop of energy in my body, I pulled in opposition, snapping her neck like a dry stick for the campfire. Her lifeless body slid to the floor.

***

I lay on the hospital bed with Striker. He was so handsome now that his face had lost the slack look of sedation and his eyes no longer held the glazed-over opiate haze. The doctor said Striker hadn’t suffered any ill effects from Vine’s drugs, and we were waiting for his release papers.

“So, ‘Hiking Heroine who Helps Hidden Hunk’. . .”

I smiled a thin-lipped smile and shook my head. “I’m glad the news stations are busy with the data release, or this could be a real problem. Surely the police realize it was an operation.”

“Absolutely.” He guided my head back down to his shoulder and stroked my hair. “And Iniquus has helped them enough times that they’d turn their heads. But it was smart the way the team played it. You did them the courtesy of seeming to jump through their requisite hoops.”

I scooted down until my ear rested on his chest. “Are there any other crazy exes I need to prepare myself for?” I asked.

He laced my fingers with his and pulled my hand to his lips for a kiss. “I hope not.”

A knock sounded at the door. Spyder and General Elliot walked in together. I pushed to sit up, but the general waved me back into Striker’s arms.

“You, young lady, are a miracle,” the general said, pointing his finger.

I blushed hotly.

“As I lay there, fully able to think and reason but unable to move, I thought, ‘Lynx is my only hope.’ As a matter of fact, I had a lucid dream a couple of weeks back—I was crawling toward you and calling your name, and you answered me. You said you’d figure it out and make this stop. And that’s the first time I had hope.” He put his hand on my foot and waggled it the way my dad used to do when I was a child.

“I’m so glad to see you’re okay, sir.”

“You saved me. Saved your commander–and I’m guessing, from the position you’re lying in, your something more.”

Striker held up my hand, where my engagement ring shone.

“Ah, wonderful. I am truly happy for both of you.” He turned to slap Spyder on the shoulder and gave him a nod that Spyder returned–some thought of significance passing between them. 

“Welcome home from your adventure,” Spyder said to Striker.

“I hear you’re a divine hero now,” Striker said. “And you’ve retired the ‘Spyder’ call sign. Lynx says your new name is Hercules?”

Spyder threw back his head and laughed his whole hearted laugh. As he sobered he said, “Sadly, evil is like a leopard gecko. You can cut off its tail, but very quickly it will regenerate. The job will not be accomplished as long as man walks the Earth.”

“So why call this Hydra?” I asked, bending my arm so I could post my head and gain a better view.

“Perhaps I am just growing soft in my old age, wishing that evil could indeed be cuffed and removed from society,” Spyder replied. “Oh, now don’t get sad-eyed, Lexicon. I am here to answer the question Striker posed the last time I saw him in the hospital.” He came closer and laid a hand on Striker’s shoulder. “You have long lived in my heart, Striker, and I could have no greater joy than to call you son, as I call Lexi daughter. I wish you both every happiness.”

Striker and I smiled at each other. I wished us both every happiness, too. I was bending to kiss Striker’s lips when General Elliot’s aide moved into the room and whispered in his ear. The general’s face clouded, and he was no longer the benevolent grandfather. He was back to his rough and ready warrior stance.

General Elliot pointed his finger between us. “On your feet as soon as possible. I need you,” he barked, then raised his eyebrows to Spyder, and they left together.

I turned my gaze back on Striker. “It’s nice to be needed. . . I guess.”

“I’ll show you all about being needed.” He pulled me into a wonderful kiss—the kind that said
I’ll be kissing you this way for the rest of our lives.

Of course, with the lives we’ve chosen, now was all we had. We couldn’t possibly have guessed what tomorrow was bringing.

THE END