Shatter (5 page)

Mitch skidded to a stop on the side of the ramp. He stared in horror at the catastrophe. Cars continued to skid along the asphalt, hit, and ricochet off each other. He grabbed his phone and pushed the driver’s door open. He was dialing emergency when he remembered Halina.

“Nine-one-one operator.” A woman’s voice sounded in Mitch’s ear as he turned and searched for Halina through the windshield. “What’s the nature of your emergency?”

She was curled around the shepherd and even from where he stood Mitch could see her shaking. His mind shot back to the moment before the crash and Halina’s strange reaction. Then clicked with everything he’d experienced with the team of firefighters and their paranormal abilities. An eerie, heavy foreboding crept through him.

“Hello?” the operator prompted. “Are you calling to report an emergency?”

“Uh, yeah.” He turned back to the freeway, stunned once again at the devastation. “Car accident on interstate ninety, headed East. Just past the Mercer exit. Jackknifed big rig and, shit, at least a dozen cars. Bad. Really bad.”

Like he-and-Halina-nearly-died bad.

He was having a hard time catching his breath, he shook like he’d been drinking double espresso shots all day, and his gut burned icy hot. He turned away from the spectacle to check on Halina. She hadn’t moved, her arms clutching Dex.

When he finished the call, he took a minute to get himself settled before he approached the passenger’s side. But how did he settle himself after the realization that Halina could very well have a paranormal power? A power much like those of the others who’d been exposed to the warehouse chemicals.

Mitch’s mind ran in circles—present to past, then working itself back to the present again—until his head throbbed. He couldn’t make sense of this without information from Halina.

He took a deep breath of cold air, gave thanks for his life and Halina’s, and opened the car door. Dex’s gaze, which had already been focused on Mitch through the glass, grew sharp. His big body tensed in the front seat next to Halina and his throat rumbled with an
if-you-touch-her-I’ll-chew-your-arm-off
message.

Halina’s hand fisted and released in his multicolored fur, massaging the muscles of Dex’s shoulder. “
Priyatel’,
Dex.”

Her voice sounded a lot like his six-year-old niece’s when she emerged from a nightmare and clung to Mitch, shaking. He wouldn’t have been human if her distress hadn’t pulled at his heart. The dog’s growl instantly transitioned to a half whine, half yowl, a sound that made it seem as if he were trying to tell Mitch something, like, “Help her.”

He crouched beside the door and laid a hand on her knee. “Halina, what just happened?”

She shook her head against Dex. “Please, Mitch, just get me to the storage unit.”

Frustration balled at the center of his chest. “You’ll tell me when we get there?”

“I’m not . . .” Her voice was muffled against Dex’s neck. “I don’t know what just happened.”

Mitch slid his fingers into Dex’s fur and over Halina’s hand, squeezing. “You need to talk to me, Hali. We almost just died. As in
dead
. Gone. Forever. No second chances. Do you want to die without telling me the truth? Do you want me to die believing what I believe?”

She lifted her face and met Mitch’s gaze through a tangle of black hair that had long since fallen out of her bun, her eyes vivid and wet. “I . . . don’t know what I want anymore.”

He pushed to his feet, shut the door, and turned away from the car. Hands on hips, he wandered toward the trunk swearing under his breath. Then rubbed both hands over his face and scraped his fingers through his hair.

It didn’t matter what she wanted, because she was going to do what he wanted her to do. This wasn’t the way he’d wanted it to go. He’d hoped she’d cooperate. If he was honest, he’d hoped for more—he’d hoped for closure. But he’d do what he had to do to keep everyone safe and finally end this.

Halina could waste the opportunity if she wanted, but Mitch used it to remind himself that life was short. And he hadn’t come this far only to let her stab him again when he wasn’t looking.

Inside the car, Mitch had a harder time separating the emotions that surfaced as soon as her scent hit his nose. Her ability to completely ignore him as if he didn’t exist helped. He navigated back onto the highway, wondering how long she’d had abilities, what they were exactly, and whether or not she even realized she had them.

The scientifically oriented Halina Mitch had known would have completely shunned the mere possibility. And forcing her to face it would have been like inviting a hurricane into a mobile home park. Then again, he could have read the situation all wrong. He’d certainly read everything else about this situation wrong.

He’d expected at least some level of regret on her part for what she’d done seven years ago: wrong. He’d expected her to have more than a passing flicker of rekindled interest in him: wrong again. He’d expected to find her relatively street ignorant and easily manipulated: seriously wrong.

Still, he was pretty damn sure he wasn’t wrong here.

Mitch pulled up to the storage facility’s gate after only another five minutes. He rolled down the window and stared at the security keypad. A wave of exhaustion hit him. “Code?”

She hesitated, then said, “Zero-four-two-eight.”

He’d punched the first three numbers when their significance hit him—his birthday, April 28. Which made his mind shoot back to her fictitious last name—
Raiden
. And her perfume. And her request of the gunman to release him and Dex.

A little flutter stung his heart, but Mitch smashed it and hit the eight. While he might have been able to force his emotions back into the corners, he couldn’t keep his mind from wondering how often she’d thought of him over the years. As the wrought-iron gate slid open, that thought became the flame on a fuse of a million similar thoughts.

But he pushed them back. He’d get his answers. He wouldn’t quit until he had them. But first things first.

“It’s the last one on the end.” She straightened in her seat, but her voice was weak and one glance revealed the circles forming under her eyes. “Park around the back of the building. I have another car inside. We’ll switch it with this one.”

“Another car inside.” Unease tingled through his belly and he cast her a longer, assessing look as he eased down the row of storage units. “And an attack dog. A self-defense expert. Weapons training. What were you expecting, Halina? The end of the world?”

“The end of
my
world.”

“Do you have another identity set up too?”

She didn’t respond.

Of course she did. Her trainer was an expert in all things clandestine.

At nearly two a.m. now, the storage yard was an empty, lonely dark rows of boxes, each with an exterior light casting a pool of yellow on the wet black asphalt. Mitch sat forward and drove with one wrist draped over the steering wheel, scanning the shadows. When he didn’t see anything suspicious, he parked and pulled his weapon from his belt. “What kind of lock?”

Halina sat forward, wincing, her hand pressed to her head. “Key. It’s on the ring. Has a yellow cover.”

Mitch pulled the keys from the ignition and grabbed the door handle. “Stay here. I’ll come get you when it’s open.”

By the time he’d rounded the trunk, Halina stood beside the car, steadying herself with a hand on the roof. Dex clung to her calf.

“You never did listen.” He searched the ring for the right key as he approached the metal door. “Would never accept help. So damn proud. Always had to do things for yourself.”

“Which, if I recall correctly, was one of the things you liked about me. My independence. My strength. The way I didn’t rely on you for every little thing.”

“I liked a lot of things about you, Halina.” He stalked to the lock and jammed the key in. “That didn’t make any difference to you then; why would you bring it up now? Noticed you’ve lost your accent.”

He clicked the lock open, visualizing himself as hard and cold as the metal in his hand. That helped keep him focused.

“I didn’t
lose
it,” she said. “I—”

Mitch jerked on the door and the metal rolled up and into the frame with ear-stabbing clacks. Dex barked, deep and angry.

When he turned toward the dog, scowling, he found Halina crouched, hands covering her ears like claws. A horrific moan ebbed from her throat and tightened Mitch’s gut. Dex pushed his muzzle behind her hands and licked her face.

“Shit.” Mitch reached for her wrist to pull her up.

Dex spun on him with a vicious growl, then launched into a bark that pierced Mitch’s brain. His patience snapped.

“Derzhat’,”
he yelled, shocked the small amount of Russian he’d learned all those years ago still lived in some crevice of his mind. His command to hold stopped Dex mid-bark, and the silence that followed caressed Mitch’s ears with relief. The shepherd lay down on the asphalt in an alert almost-crouch as if it took all his focus not to rip Mitch’s face off.

He pulled at Halina’s arm. “Up. Inside.”

She brought both hands to her head as she stood. “You’re an even bigger ass than I thought you’d become.”

“You have a habit of underestimating me.” He gestured toward the darkened space and ordered the dog to come.
“Nas-tupit’.”

Dex trotted inside and Halina followed, still holding her head. “Stop bossing my dog around. And when did you learn Russian?”

“Seven and a half years ago.” Mitch felt along the walls for a switch and clicked on the lights. He barely took a cursory look around before he turned back toward the door and said, “Cover your ears.”

He yanked the door back into place with another round of brain-jarring clatters. Halina swore, stumbling toward a sofa along one wall of the large storage space, and Mitch took a longer look at the unit.

It was set up more like a studio apartment than a storage locker, and another, older model BMW took up half of the space. The car was white and in pristine condition. The other half of the unit held a small amount of furniture, centered around the sofa where Halina had curled into a corner and laid her head on the arm. One wall was lined with boxes of MREs, bottled water, and bags of dog food. Someone had piggybacked electrical off the lights and Halina had a radio, a television, a mini refrigerator, and a space heater set up around the room.

“What the hell is this?” Mitch asked, hands on hips. This was extreme, even for someone in hiding. “Are you one of those freaky Doomsday preppers?”

Halina peeked out from beneath the hand that covered her eyes. “Yeah. Today is my Doomsday. Can you get me my medication? In the box on top of the refrigerator? And a bottle of water, please?”

Mitch did as she asked, but didn’t try to hide his jerky, angry movements. After he handed those items to Halina, he pushed some of her hair away from the injury on her head and said, “Hold still.”

“What are you doing?”

It looked worse in the light and Mitch was glad he hadn’t seen it before. He didn’t need anything more to worry about or to make him feel sorry for her. He opened a new text message to his twin sister, Alyssa, who was a radiologist, attached the photo, and typed a quick note. “I’m going to ask Alyssa if she thinks you should go to the hospital, but she may not be awake.”

“Of course she won’t be awake,” Halina said with too much attitude for Mitch’s irritable mood. Halina and Alyssa had been friends while she and Mitch had been dating. “Why would she be?”

“Because she just had a baby.” Mitch shot a scowl at Halina while pacing in front of the sofa. “My first nephew, whose birth I missed because I was in the middle of that damn lake watching
you
.”

Halina swallowed both a migraine pill and a muscle relaxer according the bottles they’d come from. She also had the decency to look apologetic. “Sorry,” she said, voice soft with regret. “But it was your choice to float around in the dark like a psychotic serial killer.”

He turned on her and Dex tensed, but maintained his hold position. Mitch wanted to order her to talk. To shake her until the truth spilled from her mouth, replacing the lies she’d told him that had haunted him all this time. But the transition from the car to the unit and the cold air had given Mitch a sliver more rationality and patience and he managed to stop himself before he erected another wall between them.

“Get what you came for and let’s get out of here,” he said, stalking toward flats of water piled high against one wall. He pulled one from the top and returned to drop it near the trunk of the white BMW.

She eyed him from beneath the shade of her hand. “Can you not see that I’ve suffered a head injury, or do you seriously just not give a flying fuck?”

His jaw tightened. He straightened. “That guy is going to regain consciousness and I can guarantee
his
head injury won’t stop him from coming after us.”

“Well,
Hooyah!
for him.” She covered her eyes again. “He won’t find us here, so cool your jets and stop talking. My head is killing me.”

“He may not find us
in here,
Halina, but he’ll be calling in buddies to help him now. And they’ll find us the minute we go
out there
. So we can’t wait for your head to feel better before we move.”

She put a hand up, arm straight, palm out in an aggressive gesture.
“Stop talking.”
Her face scrunched in pain. “You’re right, okay. I just . . . need a few minutes.”

She covered her face again, shoulders slumping. Mitch collected dog food, blankets, MREs, and two small suitcases Halina already had packed.