Rush (Phoenix Rising) (11 page)

After about two minutes, he let go of her hand. “No work.”

Jessica blew out a relieved breath and opened her eyes, only to find Mateo reaching for her again. With a determined frown pulling his brows and puckering his cupid lips, he pushed the coin into Jessica’s hand. Then he covered it with his, sandwiching the metal between their palms.

As soon as he turned his attention back to the map, heat flowed up Jessica’s arm. Mateo bounced on his toes and pointed to the United States. “There.”

Mitch pulled a bigger map of the U.S. from the pile and set it on top. The current grew stronger and heated Jessica’s whole body. The boy pointed to Utah.
Utah?
And Mitch changed the maps again. The room grew warm. Stifling.

“Doing good, little man,” Mitch said.

Jessica’s heart thumped against her ribs, as annoying as someone popping gum in her ear.

She would say he’d mistaken her for someone else, but that would be admitting that she’d really seen and heard and felt everything she swore had been a vision. For him to have seen her, she had to have been there. To have been there . . . something really freaking crazy had to have happened with her powers.

“Q is here!” Mateo’s excited cry brought Jessica’s attention to the map—and to the way a cold film of sweat had developed over her face, neck and chest.

His palm lay flat over Salt Lake. Cash was already at the laptop, pulling up the area on Google Earth.

“Good job, buddy.” Mitch patted the boy’s head and looked over at Jessica. “I really need you to focus here. This is where it counts.”

She came out of a trancelike fog she hadn’t realized she’d fallen into. An enlarged map of Utah lay on the table now, all the elevations marked in thin lines. Her head felt dizzy enough to spin off her body. And the ripping fear she’d suffered when she thought she was leaving that cabin without Quaid grabbed her by the ribs.

“I . . . I . . . don’t . . .” She put a hand to her chest. Panic crawled up her throat. Lightning flashed beyond the window, full, thick bolts piercing the sky, followed by the thrum of thunder. “I . . . can’t . . . breathe.”

Teague appeared in front of her. He put his open hands on either side of her head. His touch melted the anxiety like warm honey over ice. Her muscles relaxed. Her lungs expanded. The nausea slowly dissipated.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “I know this is hard, but we’re right here. Better?”

She took a few deep breaths, then nodded. Teague stepped aside. Jessica didn’t close her eyes this time, fearing the darkness would bring back the vertigo. Instead, she tried for that hundred yard stare where everything blurred into a monotone waterscape.

She visualized the forest surrounding the cabin, the break in the trees where the building stood, the porch. She didn’t let her mind go inside the house, but remembered the part of the floor plan she knew—the living room, hallway, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom....

“Q!” Mateo yelled, jerking Jessica from the confusing memory. “Q is here.”

Mateo’s little finger traced a ridgeline along Salt Lake. Cash roamed the area with Google Earth, a barren wilderness where nothing but acre after acre of forest filled the screen.

“There,” Mitch said. “Go back.”

Cash manipulated the computer to Mitch’s instructions until a little structure filled the center of the screen. The same silver metal roofing. The same blue sedan sitting out front. Jessica squinted. Even the same porch railing.

“That’s it,” she said, voice shaky. “That’s the house.”

She hadn’t imagined it. She hadn’t imagined the man inside.

“Oh, my God,” Jessica whispered, pressing the fingers of her hands together, then to her lips. If she hadn’t imagined the house, she hadn’t imagined the man. “Oh, my God.”

No. That didn’t mean anything. Okay, the man was there, but he was
not
Quaid.
He was not.
She’d buried her husband. She’d lived without him for five excruciating years.

And even as she continued to deny the whitewashed memories from the cabin, Jessica also recognized that sliver of hope hiding in the shadows. And she had no idea how she’d protect that fragile part of herself from the disappointment of finding another man, and not Quaid, in that house.

“Good work, my man!” Mitch touched buttons on his phone and raised it to his ear while he swung his other arm around Mateo, pulling the boy up and out of the chair.

Mateo squealed and laughed. Mitch carried him into the open living room and turned in circles, swinging the boy as he spoke into the phone. “It’s a go. Get the guys to the airstrip. I’ll call the pilot.”

Fear, pure and hot, smashed Jessica’s sternum. “What?” She searched the room of faces. “What do you mean? What guys? What pilot? What are you doing?”

“We’re going to get your man, Jess.”

The new voice hit her from behind like an unexpected smack on the back, and she gripped the chair in front of her before turning. Kai and Luke stood behind them. Jessica noted Kai’s overly excited expression and her whole body tightened with tension. Her gaze skipped to Luke. If Kai looked strung out, Luke looked almost zenlike, the two men a study in opposites.

“Hey, Jess,” Luke said with that easy, sexy grin—not at all the demeanor he’d had in the years following his and Keira’s breakup. “Lookin’ good.”

“Luke.” Jessica’s eyes narrowed. She turned her head and caught Keira grinning at him like a love-struck idiot.

Keira met her eyes, tried to stifle her smile and raised her eyebrows and her shoulders at the same time. “What?”

“You know what.” Jessica couldn’t hold back a smile even with all the turmoil circling. Keira and Luke were perfect for each other. Jessica was thrilled they’d finally overcome their demons and figured it out. “When did that happen?”

Keira pulled her lower lip between her teeth, darted a look at Luke, then returned her attention to Jessica, unable to keep the smile off her face any longer. “Last week, during, you know . . . this mess.”

“I guess meeting up again
did
go better than expected,” Jessica said. “Much better.”

Jessica looked at Luke, put two fingers to her eyes and pointed at him.

He laughed. Saluted. “I’m on my best behavior.”

Bracing internally, Jessica met Kai’s eyes. “Kai.”

Kai’s intense gaze made Jessica feel trapped. His beautiful green irises were so bright, his grin so sharp, he reminded her of a junkie on a high. But she knew Kai wasn’t high on drugs. He was high on this insane idea of Quaid being alive.

He advanced on Jessica and took her into a sweeping hug that pulled her off her feet. “He’s alive, Jess,” Kai said against her hair. “He’s
alive
.”

Emotions of love, loss, confusion, grief, too many more to name, twisted through her, and she pushed away from him. He put her down and leaned back, his smile so extreme he looked a little crazed. A little like the Batman’s Joker.

“Kai, God.” She pulled out of his arms, anxiety growing. “This is insane. This is
insane
. Yes, there is a man being held prisoner in this house. Yes, in some ways, he looks like Quaid. But there are more differences than similarities. One coin, a few coincidences and you’re all ready to believe Quaid has come back from the dead.” An eerie sensation swept over her, and she sought out Cash, then Keira. “Unless you know something I don’t. What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s not what we’re not telling you, Jess,” Keira said. “It’s what you’re allowing yourself to consider. You have all the same pieces we do.” She brought up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “The classified chemicals at the fire, our paranormal abilities, Teague’s false conviction of murder, DARPA’s attempt to duplicate our powers, Mateo’s abduction, Mateo’s testing, Zoya’s murder, Cash’s imprisonment.”

Keira dropped her hands, but the plea in her eyes implored Jessica to walk off that cliff edge, just as if a dealer were holding out a dime of coke. “I think the real question is: Why
couldn’t
Quaid be alive? And if he is, what are we going to do about it?”

T
he pilot announced their imminent landing at Bolling Air Force Base. Owen straightened and looked out the window, but he didn’t see the familiar sights marking his many flights in and out of the base. His mind wrapped around questions. And suspicions. And doubts.

He’d showered the filth off him on the jet and changed into his uniform, but inside his mind and heart the grit created by the carnage he’d witnessed earlier in the day remained. And the flight had given him too much time to worry and wonder about Jocelyn. Too much time to replay her last words to him in his head. And too much time to create theories as to why she’d been at the Castle.

The plane’s landing gear rumbled into place and Owen did what he’d done for the last two decades when he needed to focus—he closed off his emotions and operated on logic. At least, it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

A car waited to take him to the Pentagon, and on the drive, Owen thought of the Castle’s destruction, the three downed Apaches, the dozens of deaths, the lost years of experimental data, the millions of taxpayer dollars in ruined equipment.

Then, like a ghost, Dawes’s words floated into Owen’s mind.
“Thought O’Shay stole it.”

Stole the key.
The only key Owen could think of was the one in the envelope that had come just last week from Jason Vasser’s attorney. Since Jason had left his assets to Jocelyn in his will, Owen could make a fair guess the key probably fit either a building or a safe-deposit box. Stephanie, his secretary, was looking into both possibilities. How O’Shay could have gotten possession of the key . . .

Owen rubbed a hand over his mouth.
Don’t go there.

Of course, he couldn’t
not
go there. The idea of Jocelyn having been close enough to O’Shay for him to gain access to something that personal . . .

He didn’t even know if it
was
the key from that envelope. That thought helped him put a stop to those torturous thoughts.

But then there was the other little bomb Dawes had dropped.
“Wants O’Shay’s formula.”

Owen knew Cash O’Shay was serving out a sentence for treason at the Castle utilizing his genius chemist’s brain to benefit the military. How Jocelyn could have possibly had a reason to interact with O’Shay was completely beyond him.

Owen definitely wasn’t being told the whole story. Jocelyn had been harboring secrets. Which left him in complete limbo as to what she’d meant by telling Owen she’d wanted him just before the explosion.

“Doesn’t matter,” he told himself. But it did. How she’d felt about him mattered in ways he couldn’t name at the moment. Mattered beyond their romantic relationship.

He wanted answers. He wanted justice. And by the time he walked the long, cold halls of the Pentagon toward the office Schaeffer inhabited as a member of the Armed Forces Committee, Owen was itching to lead a team of Special Forces soldiers toward an assassination of whoever had committed this act of terrorism. And after mulling over the possible culprits for hours on the flight, he’d pretty much narrowed it down to one group.

He entered the outer office and greeted Schaeffer’s secretary, a pleasant, middle-aged Asian woman named Cherry.

“Yes, sir.” Cherry stood with a friendly smile, smoothed her straight navy skirt and opened the office door for him. “The senator is expecting you.”

But Owen wasn’t expecting the senator . . . at least not
this
version of the senator.

Gil Schaeffer paced the room. The man never paced. His never-touched, two-hundred-dollar cut was mussed and standing on end. His expensive suit jacket lay crumpled in a heap on a couch and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows.

Owen slowed his step, donned mental body armor and stood at ease in front of Schaeffer’s desk. It took every ounce of patience he still possessed not to open with an attitude-laden, “You rang?” Instead, he waited.

As soon as the secretary closed the door, the older man turned his way. “Any sign of her yet?”

Damn. All Owen’s fears surrounding Jocelyn’s status slammed against his shields. They held, but only barely. “Not yet, sir.”

“All right, then.” Schaeffer picked up a stack of files and dropped them on the other side of his desk. “Sit. We have a lot to go over.”

Schaeffer squeezed his overfed, under-exercised frame into his desk chair and pulled out a tablet.

Owen eased himself to the edge of the chair across from Schaeffer’s desk, already uneasy. “What, exactly, are we going over, sir? I can’t stay for an extended amount of time. I have to get back to the site and rejoin the search. And I’m in the middle of a project at DARPA—”

“I’ve already cleared your current duties with Cox. He’s delegating. As for Jocelyn, if they haven’t found her by now, they aren’t going to.” He waved Owen off with the flick of one hand. “We’ve got serious damage control to deal with.”

Schaeffer’s comment about clearing Owen’s duties with the director of DARPA, Carter Cox, went right over his head. It was the allusion to Jocelyn’s death that hit him in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer. For a moment, Owen couldn’t breathe.

“We?” he finally asked.

“Yes, Owen,
we
. You’re directly under Jocelyn in the DoD org chart.”

Jesus, she hadn’t even been confirmed dead, hadn’t even been missing more than a few hours, and life was already moving on as if she’d never existed. An eerie chill settled over Owen. What kind of life was that? To be forgotten before your body was even cold?

Not his soon-to-be ex-wife. Hardly his kids. And certainly not the man across the desk. Schaeffer cared about one person—and one person only.

“What do you know about this op?” Schaeffer asked, looking up from beneath manicured salt-and-pepper brows. “And don’t bullshit me, Owen. We need to go at this straight up. What has Jocelyn told you about the work at the Castle?”

That chill turned into foreboding and had him positioning his feet to stand, pivot and run. As always, he braced himself for battle instead.

“I’m realizing I had very little knowledge of what Jocelyn was working on. I know nothing about the Castle or the projects there. I only know Cash O’Shay was incarcerated there, working off a sentence of treason. Now, why don’t you bypass the bullshit on your end and tell me exactly what the fuck was going on at the Castle that made someone—and not a phantom homegrown terrorist cell—angry enough to want the facility blown into Arizona.”

Schaeffer’s lips parted in surprise. His gray-brown eyes glazed over. Owen basked in the satisfaction of getting under the asshole’s skin until Schaeffer pulled himself together.

He sat back in his chair and regarded Owen with eyes positioned too close together. “You’re a smart man, Owen. I expected you to have that figured out by now.”

“With what? No one on scene will talk to me. I have no history of the activities at the Castle. Jocelyn obviously wasn’t sharing information.”

“Make an educated guess.”

Okay, so Schaeffer was going to play power games. Owen had come on strong, so Schaeffer needed to take control back. Owen was a pro at these games. He’d mastered them a long time ago. And mastery included knowing when to lose a battle for a better shot at winning the war.

“Considering Jocelyn told the phoenix team about Cash’s existence in a power play for his son, I assume the team stormed the Castle to break him out.”

“Phoenix team?” Schaeffer asked.

Owen shrugged a shoulder. “Their scars resemble the shape of a phoenix. Jocelyn coined the name.”

Schaeffer only nodded.

“What I don’t understand,” Owen said, “is if they caused this catastrophe, why no one has come out and identified them as the ones responsible for the attack. Or why this homegrown terrorist rumor is floating.”

“That’s not all you don’t know or understand.” Schaeffer’s arrogant tone grated on him, but Owen let it pass. “This is one time I wish Jocelyn hadn’t been so goddamned good at keeping secrets. Now, tell me what you know about the team.”

Owen’s anger built like steam in a kettle. “They were exposed to classified chemicals in a fire that altered their DNA, resulting in paranormal abilities. One man died. The others recovered from their injuries and all but one left the fire service. All are intelligent and skilled and formidable. I know they have agents assigned to shadow them, to monitor them and their powers as they develop. And I know O’Shay’s and Ransom’s powers are enhanced when they’re together.” His gaze dropped to the files. “Sure as hell not enough information to fill all those.”

Schaeffer pushed himself from his chair with enough effort to make the spectacle an uncomfortable one to watch, and then paced in front of the windows. “I’ll give you the highlights. You take those folders back to your office and get yourself up to speed on the details
tonight
. This is a matter of national security.”

Owen’s brow fell. National security? Like hell. Who the fuck did this guy think he was talking to? Before Owen let his temper loop a noose around his own neck, Schaeffer said, “The firefighter that supposedly died—”

“Quaid Legend. Jessica Fury’s husband.”

“—didn’t die,” Schaeffer finished. “He was the first on scene. The one who got hit with a double dose of the chemicals. Which made him the best research candidate.”

Owen stiffened. “The best . . .
what
?”

“He’s been housed at the Castle since the incident, his abilities developed and utilized to gather military intel from all over the world—Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hong Kong, China, Egypt. His intel comes in at ninety-eight percent accuracy.

“The recent arrests of eleven al-Qaida-linked terrorists with bombs ready to blow up the Western Diplomats’ Conference? Legend. The Hezbollah cell arrested in Mexico with truckloads of C-4 meant for the Golden Gate Bridge and smuggled into the States through undiscovered tunnels? Legend. Rescue of eight Marines in Afghanistan scheduled for beheading? Legend. Rescue of the Atomic Energy Coalition’s CEO from terrorists with plans for a dirty bomb? Every single one of those happened because Legend gave us the intel we needed.”

Schaeffer glanced over his shoulder at Owen’s stunned face. His mouth barely turned, but a condescending smile played at the corners of his eyes. “And those are only a sample of the ops he’s been involved in. He’s saved an untold number of American lives, both here at home and overseas, civilian and military.”

Owen didn’t know what to make of this. The information was probably true. The incidents were too high profile for Schaeffer to pull them randomly. He’d know Owen had the clearance to find out if he was telling the truth.

But Schaeffer was painting a rosy picture. Owen had been around too long to forget the flip side of every op. Things no one liked to talk about. Things like how many people died for the information Legend pulled in. Like what Legend did or said to gain access to such sensitive information. Like what else Legend was doing that didn’t necessarily benefit the American people, only Schaeffer specifically.

“How?” Owen asked. “How is he performing these miracles from a cell in Nevada?”

Schaeffer turned toward the window and clasped his hands behind this back. “That’s classified as need-to-know, colonel.”

Owen clenched his teeth. Fine. He’d find out on his own. “So what about him? If he was at the Castle, isn’t he dead?”

“He was getting ready for transport to another facility for testing when the chopper hit the lab. We got him out, detoured him to a safe house in the mountains of Utah with a transport team until we get this mess settled.”

Owen narrowed his eyes, a hot stream of alert sliding down his chest. “Transport team?”

“Four of our best agents are on him.”

Owen waited for more security details, but got nothing. He wasn’t sure why he had the inclination to laugh. There was a prisoner out there—a powerful, skilled prisoner—inadequately guarded, and yes, that did make Owen’s skin tighten with the urgency to act. But he just sat there with the irony blooming in his chest until he couldn’t stem a smile and the shake of his head.

“That’s it?” Owen asked.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”

“I mean, that’s the extent of your security on a high value prisoner?”

Schaeffer thrust his shoulders back. His mouth tightened. “That’s why I’ve called you in, Owen. You’re the expert, not me. Take whatever measures you feel necessary to secure him.”

“And what budget am I using, sir?”

“The black budget,” Schaeffer said.

This was a black op. Fine. Owen had done his share of black ops. But there was something very wrong about this one.

“Does Cox know—”

“No one is in on this unless I say they’re in on this.” Schaeffer turned on Owen with a gaze so fierce, Owen almost flinched. That would have been a very poorly timed submissive move. “This is a need-to-know operation. Do you understand, colonel?”

This was why Schaeffer had everyone scared shitless of him—he had a frightening ice-cold streak that gained teeth whenever something he wanted was at risk. And a man like Schaeffer didn’t waste his time with anger unless he had something important to lose.

“Seems like there’s a lot of that going around,” Owen said. “You still haven’t explained what any of this has to do with the media spreading disinforma—”

He didn’t need to finish the leading comment before he saw below the surface of Schaeffer’s fury. Owen stood, grateful for the desk between himself and the other man or he’d already have his hands around the bastard’s neck. “What do they have on you?”

“It’s not just me.” Schaeffer’s indignant tone only intensified Owen’s anger. “There are a lot of important people whose reputations and careers will be damaged if Mitch Foster leaks the information he’s got. But the American public will go ape shit if they discover some of the projects going on at DARPA.”