Secret Worlds (451 page)

Wheezing, she made it ten unsteady steps before she blinked the sand from her eyes. She froze.

Across the road from the single turn into Santo Domingo, Reyes leaned against the hood of the Volt, ankles crossed in front of him, hands in pockets. He’d lost the sunglasses, and his dark glare burned across the distance. The heat of it belied his relaxed slouch. Sometime in the hour it must have been since she’d run from him, Reyes had recovered. He wasn’t happy.

Lena’s breath hissed out of her. She started to reach out to the Dust in his body again before remembering her overloaded brain might well stroke out. She was on her own.

• She side-stepped away from the agent scraping the ground behind her. The town was right there, on the other side of a thick earth wall. If she started running now, would either of them catch her before she made it?
  

Reyes might be slouched against the car, weakened and in pain from her attack. Maybe he wasn’t able to run.

Doesn’t seem hurt. Seems like a coiled rattler.

Where he’d positioned himself, he’d only have to intercept her.

The agent behind her coughed and got to his feet, spitting blood.

“Enough,” Reyes called out as the younger man made to reach for her. He jerked his head in a sharp gesture for the man to head back through the desert. “It’s done.”

She could feel them now—the Natives gathering in the town. Reyes was right. The Kewa wouldn’t allow these Councilmen to lay hands on her now.

Lena let her head fall back for a moment. Gooseflesh rose as a breeze sighed across her skin and cooled the rivulets of sweat. Her hands went up to her hair, smoothing the damp, dark red strands back behind her ears. She crossed her arms tight over her chest and walked right up the middle of the crumbled road. She could see a faint energy bloom hazing the air around him.

Reyes is a Spark, too?

He must have grounded and then abstained in order to fool her with the employer/employee act they’d used to gain access to her. For some irrational reason, that pissed her off even more.

She didn’t stop until she was in front of him. If he’d wanted to, he could reach out and grab her. She didn’t say anything, just stared right back into those dark, angry eyes. She’d be damned if she’d apologize for hurting him. It wasn’t she who had come to his house looking for trouble.

Reyes shook his head, unclenched his jaw, and laughed softly. His gaze flicked to movement in the town behind her. When he looked at her again, he’d managed to dampen the worst of the heat.

“That was a pretty neat trick you pulled back there,” he said. His voice was low and rasping raw.

She would not feel bad about this. She shrugged.

Reyes cleared his throat. “Don’t suppose you’d consider telling me how to do it?” He managed an amused snort at the look on her face. “No? Not even if I promised not to turn around and use it on you?”

It was her turn to bark a laugh.

As if you could.

She said nothing, but didn’t bother to hide her scorn. Her father had made sure she understood no one could do what she did. It was why they wanted her.

Reyes’s smile faded. He gave her another sharp look, considering. He pursed his lips. “Okay, Lena.” He nodded. “So, here’s the thing. Council’s been waiting for a girl like you, but they’re not the only ones interested. What do I have to do to get you to come with me? What reassurances can I give you—?”

She shook her head. “There is nothing you can say or do to ever make me go with you.” She paused to be sure she had his attention. “Not ever. I have zero interest in being one of Peller’s Pistons.” Her mouth twisted at speaking the title. It was an affectionate term coined by the man who had figured out how to use Spark abilities to rebuild civilization. They were all just parts of his machine.

Mark Peller had died long ago, but the term was still in use. Peller had been that important. He had become their First Councilor, faraway in Zone Two, starting the restoration among those left alive in the relocation center there.

“C’mon.” Reyes uncrossed his legs and stood, shrugging his shoulders. “There has to be something you want. I’m not really a useless rich boy, but I do have influence with a certain group—”

“I already told you. I want to be left alone,” she said. “I want to be myself without constantly looking over my shoulder. I want what everyone who hasn’t been mind-fucked by living in a Relo-city wants, Reyes. I want to live for me and not the Council.”

He chuckled. She didn’t think he was all that amused.

“Do I look like the kind of guy who is easily mind-fucked?”

“Easily? No. Not easily. But they had plenty of time, didn’t they, with their Testing Year, and their special programs for talented children? Tell me, Reyes, did you go to the regular gifted school with the mid-range Sparklets and work your way up, or were you one of the special kids? Did they snatch little Alejandro away from Mommy and Daddy and make him a Ward?” She could feel the heat in her cheeks and felt her eyes go glassy with moisture.

Keep it together, Lena.

When she was a girl, she’d wanted the chance to show she was as good as those boys, but it was forbidden. Her father had made it clear: the Council would never allow a girl like her to show she was stronger than the Ward boys. They’d take her away from her family, yes, but not to teach her. They’d use her. Or they’d kill her.

Reyes’s impassive face gave her nothing. The mere thought of what her parents had worked so hard to shield her from upset her, but clearly he’d come to terms with his stolen childhood long before. His face was such a mask she didn’t think she’d even gotten through.

But then he asked with a soft note of pity in his voice, “What happened to you?”

She laughed and shoved her hair behind her ears in a quick, defiant motion. “Bad childhood, I guess. So I’m an antisocial misfit, and I have attachment issues, and I—”

“Is that an official diagnosis or did it come from an over-eager program leader?”

“I—what?” She shook her head. “No, Reyes. It came from me. I made it up right now.” It wasn’t true. Her sister had spat those words at her the last time she’d visited.

She threw her hands up in the air. “Why are we even having this conversation?”

“I’m trying to figure you out.”

“Why?”

“I like you, Lena. That much of today wasn’t an act.” A sly smile pulled his lips up, and he held her gaze. “And I am in a unique position to make sure you are safe and happy.”

She felt her skin prickle, almost an electric response. She shifted away from him, took a step back, and shook her head. “I’m never going back. Not even if you ask nicely.”

She waited a beat, but he just put his hands on his hips and shrugged again.

• “So unless you plan on trying to force me into your car…?”
  

Reyes rolled his eyes. He cocked his head to the side and leaned out to look past her at the Pueblo, and then leaned back in again. His tongue slid across his lower lip. “That probably wouldn’t be a good idea, considering.”

“Probably wouldn’t. Considering.” She took a step backward then stopped. “Reyes? How did you know I would come here? You know, instead of haring out and holing up in some abandoned wreck somewhere?”

He shrugged. “You live four miles from Santo Domingo. The Kewa belong to one of the biggest Nations. It made sense for you to come here, knowing we wouldn’t go in after you. And it’s what I would have done.”

Lena nodded.
So much for not being predictable. Better get to work on that, chica.

She backed away across the road to the Pueblo. She hated being predictable. “Goodbye. Have a good life, Reyes.”

He smiled and shook his head, calling after her, “This isn’t good-bye. In fact, you should call me Alex. We’ll see each other again.”

She turned away and strode into Santo Domingo. “Not going to happen,” she shouted back over her shoulder.

“Yes,” Reyes said, the certainty carrying to her with his voice. “It will.”

Alex leaned back into the corner where the bar and the wall met, watching the young people circulating in the long room. The far end held a tiny dance floor and a small corner stage where a trio of young men worked setting up a homemade drum set. Tables hugged each other in the space between the bar and the dance floor. The whole place was dim, lit by tallow lamps hung on short chains well out of reach of customers in their twenties flitting around each other. His gaze moved with the crowd. Was one of these people the key to bringing Lena back to the city?

“We might’ve had her if we’d approached her differently,” he told himself under his breath. He couldn’t believe how thoroughly the op had been screwed.

Lucas had been after him for months, telling Alex he was ready to lead and implying Alex was holding him back. A rumor had come in about a powered girl living in the desert—yet another nonexistent ghost girl. Alex had given the entire file to Lucas to shut him up. He remained hands-off, letting Lucas build his own op and handle his own research and contacts. Alex had assumed she was a Neo-barb, or at best a mid-range runaway they’d drag back to the city and put to work in the power grid. He had encountered both before. From the moment they’d driven up and he’d seen her up on her roof making repairs and glowing like the sun, he’d known she was the real deal. So had Lucas. What a clusterfuck.

Once they’d returned to Azcon, Alex had sent Lucas to both Council and city offices to research all official employees named Danny. Lucas had tried to fight him, of course. Alex had been forced to coach him through the process, yet again.

“Listen, we already have all the information we need. We have her name, Lena. We know her brother is her contact, which means she has family in Azcon. We know her brother’s name is Danny. And we know from your contact that he uses a messenger to bring her client lists when he can’t get away—the messenger who put our names on the list.”

Lucas stared at him, wheels finally turning. “And if he has access to a runner he trusts and the ability to get out here regularly—”

“Well to the south of the fields and the range land—”

“Then he probably works for the city or the Council.”

“Exactly. Now, go find him.”

Lucas would follow any leads he found. Alex had conflicting loyalties, which meant he saw the problem of Little Miss Lena from a different angle, and he didn’t need Lucas peering over his shoulder.

Back at her place, tucked up next to the wall on her work table, had been a small stack of old books from the Azcon library. He’d grabbed one off the top and fanned through the pages. A slip of paper fluttered free from Orwell’s
1984
.

Someone had written on the scrap in loopy, classical writing, “Piece of Asp. Saturday. Drinks are on me, girlie.” It was signed “Ace.”

Alex had no way of knowing which Saturday the note referred to, but the note told him either Lena or the mysterious Ace might be a frequent visitor to the Piece of Asp. He’d hoped to find someone who knew her to take her a message.

But he’d have to wait for that someone to find him. He had come in earlier than the usual post-shift crowd to chat up the bartender. He’d described Lena. The bartender’s eye twitched as he glanced out at the growing crowd. He shook his head and told Alex she didn’t sound familiar. Alex dropped her name, then, and her friend’s, too. The bartender’s shifting gaze told Alex he was lying when he said he’d never met a Lena; he didn’t know any Ace, either. The man had moved off to serve other customers. And, Alex believed, to find Ace.

Alex waited, sipping an excellent, house-made tequila, and focused on tasting it instead of frustration. He leaned his head down to rub his eyes. He was tired. Tired enough that he found his usual discipline slipping in little hitches. It was just flashes of Lena’s freckled face or that energy bloom, unlike any he’d seen before. But those flashes were intrusive signs that he needed to focus. That on-target dig she’d made about him being snatched from his parents didn’t help any. It had taken everything he had to not respond, to focus on her pain instead of his own old wound. Now, with her no longer in front of him, he could allow some of it to leak out. Not much. Not enough to make him weak. Just enough to fuel him through the rest of his work.

He needed to be on his way, first back to the office to write up his Council report, and then to Fort Nevada to make his real report. It was already an hour past dark, and it had been a long day with no sign of rest in the immediate future. If it weren’t critical to make some kind of contact with someone Lena trusted, he’d leave now.

A pair of hard arms, heavily muscled and burnished deep brown, appeared on either side of him. One hand came to rest on the bar to his right, the other on the wall to his left. The breath Alex had just taken whispered out as his body subtly tensed, easing into position for quick, deadly movement.

“Hey there, stranger.” The voice in his ear was deep and too close. “I don’t know you. Is there a reason you’re dropping my name?”

Alex took a last sip as he turned his head. He cupped the small glass, and as he took the measure of the man leaning in, he recognized what a shame it would be to splinter the glass into the perfect skin of the face before him. The dim light gave his dark skin a bronze and gold glow over a clean-shaven jaw and pate. Pale whiskey-brown eyes shone out from his dark skin and fed the illusion of the glow.

“Depends, Ace,” Alex kept his voice low, “on whether you’re interested in ensuring the continued safety of a mutual friend—the one living in the middle of nowhere?”

Ace’s eyes darkened. He didn’t so much as twitch an eyelid, but Alex could feel the shift from curious to menacing.

Oh, yeah, Ace and Lena are close.

He had the man’s attention. He leaned in, putting his head next to the other man’s. “When did you last see her?” Alex kept his voice low and friendly. “I saw her this afternoon. Four Council teams threw her a party at her place.”

Now he had a reaction. The man’s jaw muscle jumped in time to the rapid pulse at his temple.

“But she left early and took off to stay with her friends in Santo Domingo,” Alex said.