The Reckoning (Unbounded Series #4) (27 page)

I didn’t know what to say to that because she was right. I was going to need her if my plan to face Delia would have any chance of success, and I didn’t like that one bit. “Okay,” I said finally, “but you will leave my brother out of it.”

I looked back at the others to find Ritter staring at me, obviously aware that something was going on, and I clamped down on my shield. Thankfully, this didn’t require use of my ability.

I was going to have to be careful if I didn’t want to endanger Ritter with the plan I was beginning to formulate regarding my confrontation with Delia. No matter what, I wasn’t going to risk him.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, WE WERE
hunkered down outside the mansion where we hoped they were holding Habid. Though the stuccoed and tiled house was larger than its neighbors and set back from the road to make space for a massive stone archway that led to a courtyard in front of the house, there would be many casualties if something went wrong with the plutonium. I would have preferred a less inhabited location.

Cort and Jace were going in by way of the roof and then through some window, to Jace’s joy, and the rest of us were scattered around the house, connected by radio. I had vetoed the traditional Muslim robes, as had Mari, and instead we were outfitted in our black metamaterial bodysuits from wrists to ankles, nearly invisible in the night.

“Erin?” Ritter said in my ear. “What you got?”

“About a dozen life forces inside. They’re doubled near the entries. There are a couple upstairs. All of them are shielded.” The blue lights in my mind were bright again, and I didn’t dare exert too much more effort, not this far away. The pressure was beginning to build in my head, which meant the snake was pushing against the walls of the second box. “I need to get closer if I’m going to break through any shields.”

“Move in.”

I took the back door, channeling Ritter this time and not Jace, who was farther away. I took the first guard out with a single silenced shot, and the other with two quick punches.

Jeane stepped from the shadows. “I knew we’d make a good team.”

No wonder they hadn’t anticipated me. Most Emporium agents were combat Unbounded, bred to the ability because of long centuries of conflict, and I hadn’t expected them to fall to me with so little effort. I found a third guard by the door, but I took him out with another silenced bullet. All Unbounded. Still, it seemed a little
too
easy. They must not have known we were coming.

Maybe we would get out of this with both Habid and the plutonium. “Back is clear,” I said into my mic.

“Side clear,” Keene answered, who had gone in with Mari.

“Front clear,” Ritter said.

“We’re on the second level,” Jace said. “Three guards down. No sign of Habid.”

“Check all the rooms.” Shadrach’s voice was tight.

I sent out my thoughts, searching for life forces. Nothing standing except what belonged to us. “I don’t like this,” I murmured.

“Is there a basement?” This from Stella in the car. “He has to be somewhere.”

I crept along the corridor, checking each doorway as I passed. My feeling of anxiety ratcheted tighter. When Jeane bumped into me, I startled.

“Relax,” she said, switching off her mic. “We’ve done it. All we need now is to find the plutonium.”

I turned off my own mic. “Maybe. Or she could be here masking life forces. I can do it, and I know she can.”

“You mean Delia?” Jeane gave a snort in the darkness. “Believe me. If she were here, you’d know.”

“What do you mean?”

“The people I saw her experiment on always could tell, even if their ability wasn’t sensing. Maybe that light you talked about will get brighter if she’s close. Something.”

My breath rushed out in a single burst. “I saw her today. She was so real. So close.”

“Really?” Jeane’s voice was disconcerted, but I sensed an underlying excitement. “Then maybe she’s come to us.”

“That’s a good thing?” I asked. “Is that what you were trying to do with the cell phone? Contact her?”

“What if I was?” Jeane stepped closer. “Look, you know we have to face her. And I think seeing her like you did means you’re ready.”

“What it means is that she can get into my mind.”

“Then you can also get into hers, and if I can null her ability, even just partially, you can win.”

It
was
what I’d planned—I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit it—but that was before I’d felt the tremendous pull of the light. Delia might be stronger than I knew.

“Look at the light now,” Jeane urged. “See if she’s close. Even if she’s hiding her life force, you should be able to feel her.”

Leaving my eyes open to watch Jeane, I pushed out my thoughts until the light glowed. Then I reached out and touched the edge, ready to pull back if I was sucked inside. The tug was there, but this time I was ready. I followed slowly, not entering the full stream, but gliding along beside it in the same direction. I mentally traced the flow outside to the border of the property before pulling away. “She’s not here, either the building or the property.” I could almost feel Jeane grinning, but I added quickly, “But the tugging. It’s there.”

“She must not be far.”

“Then we have to get out of here. She won’t be alone.”

I turned back on my mic, but before I could alert the others, Mari’s voice came through my earbud. “Found it! The guys we jumped were guarding it. Keene’s running a check on it now.”

“My son?” Shadrach asked.

“Sorry. I don’t see him,” Mari said.

I pushed out my thoughts, again risking the blue light, searching for even the faintest signs of a life force I didn’t already know about. “I’m sorry, Shadrach. He’s not here. I’m not getting anyone except the guards.”

Mari’s voice came through the radio again. “The plutonium
is
in the cask. We really got it!”

“Everybody, pull out,” Ritter ordered. “We have to secure the plutonium.”

“But Habid has to be here!” Desperation laced Shadrach’s words.

“He’s not,” I said. “We’ll find him the next time he transmits.”

“They’ll know. They’ll find the transmitter. They’ll look for it once they realize what’s happened here.” He was right, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

“Pull out,” Ritter said again through our earbuds.

“He’s his mother’s only son,” Shadrach whispered. “She is the wife of my heart, and I’ve failed her.”

For a moment I thought about erasing the guards’ memories, filling the plutonium cask with something fake, and somehow healing them enough so they wouldn’t know we’d been here. But I knew my limitations. However much it might hurt Shadrach, there was nothing we could do but leave.

Though our mission had been a success, we were a quiet group driving back to Basilio’s. There, we parked in the underground garage he kept for his family, in case our vehicle had been identified. After debating awhile, we decided against taking the plutonium inside our host’s living quarters and hid the cask in a storage bin he kept in the garage.

“Keene, you and Jace take the first watch, okay?” Ritter said. “We’ll go upstairs and get things arranged with Ava in DC. We aren’t letting this thing out of our sight until we hand it off, and that might not be for another ten or twelve hours. Keep the door locked and your mics on.”

“Piece of cake.” Jace sat on the hood of our rental car, his rifle ready. I smiled in spite of my own regret where Habid was concerned.

We left them and made our way up the stairs to the main apartments. Basilio answered his door with a smile and no questions. Stella, Ritter, and Cort hurried to call Ava on the computer, and Walker and Mari went to their rooms, leaving me alone in the hallway with Jeane and a morose Shadrach.

“He’s just a boy.” Deep furrows etched into Shadrach’s brow. “He wanted to prove himself to me. I told his mother I would bring him home.”

“We’re not giving up,” I said.

“They’ll kill him.” Without meeting my eyes, Shadrach stumbled down the hall and out of our sight.

He was probably right. Unless . . . “Look, Jeane, I have an idea.” I glanced at the doorway to the sitting room and back at Jeane to make sure we were alone. “If Delia really is in town, and we find her, maybe we can get Habid back.”

A smile crossed her face. “Let’s do it.”

“First thing in the morning.” Because as anxious as I was to finally challenge Delia and get her snake out of my head, there was something I had to do first, something I wouldn’t share with Jeane in a million years. I started toward the sitting room but hesitated, turning again toward her. “Don’t tell the others.”

She made a motion of sealing her lips. “Wake me up when the time comes.”

“Do you really think we can do it?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Maybe I was stupid to believe her. Maybe all she wanted was to get back to the Emporium herself. Or maybe she planned to sacrifice me to make her own move on Delia. It really didn’t matter—I had to go through with it. I’d known from the first moment I’d met Delia that only one of us would eventually survive. Two weeks ago I was sure it would be me. Now, I wasn’t as confident, but Ritter still thought I could do it, and I believed in him. I would face Delia here and now.

As if thinking of him called his attention, Ritter emerged from the sitting room. “Erin, I need to talk to you. Jeane, give us a moment.” Jeane studied him with languid eyes before she turned and swayed toward her room without a word.

“What is it?” I asked Ritter, my stomach clenching. I felt the knot of torment he tried to hide from me, and I almost expected him to tell me he knew my plan. His next words shocked me.

“It’s your grandmother. I’m sorry, but she’s been taken by the Emporium.”

For a moment, I thought he meant Ava, but Ritter had never referred to our leader—even when talking about her to me—as anything but Ava, so that meant he was talking about my actual grandmother. My gloriously independent mortal grandmother who had refused Renegade protection in order to maintain her normal life.

“No,” I whispered.

Ritter reached out and took my hand, which I grabbed like a lifeline. “They’re demanding the return of the plutonium,” he said. “The plutonium we took in Venezuela.”

“Jonny,” I whispered. “He must have identified me, so they acted against her.”

“We don’t know how it happened.” He tugged at my hand gently, and I went with him into the sitting room where Cort and Stella perched on a couch in stunned silence.

I hurried toward the computer, dropping onto the couch between Stella and Cort. Ava stared at me from the screen of Stella’s laptop, her features tight and drawn. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

Ava’s head swung back and forth slowly, her image distorting slightly on the screen. “Unfortunately, there’s really nothing we can do. They’ll find out soon enough from their own channels that we no longer have the plutonium from Venezuela. We might be able to negotiate with the shipment you just secured, but how can we do that? You know what’s at stake. We’re talking about millions of lives.”

Only moments earlier I’d been sympathizing with Shadrach, but now it was my loved one’s life on the line, and everything had changed. What did I care about eight million people I didn’t know and would never meet? I loved my grandmother. We had always been close. I would give my life for hers.

“We have to do something,” I said, tears burning my eyes.

Ava’s chin lifted slightly. “We will. We’ll make sure the Emporium doesn’t succeed.” Her face softened. “Look, Erin, I feel exactly the way you do. She’s family. I watched her grow from a baby. But she would never want us to value her life more than so many others. Even if I believed we’d be successful in getting her back, I know what her position is on this, and I respect that. When it’s all over, we can attempt a rescue, if we believe she’s still alive, but there is no way we can trade nuclear war for her life.”

I’d feared from the beginning that something like this might happen. That my work against the Emporium would destroy the lives of the mortals I loved. Everything inside me screamed to save my grandmother. I knew Delia well enough to know that if I didn’t give her what she wanted, she’d kill my grandmother without a second thought. Tears fell down my cheeks. Next to me, Stella grabbed my hand and held it tightly, her face reflecting my pain.

For a moment I was tempted to grab the cask from Jace and Keene and contact Delia myself. My mind conjured up all sorts of scenarios where I would single-handedly best Delia and her guards, drag her back to America to save my grandmother, and somehow retain the plutonium as well.

I wasn’t deluded enough to believe I could do it all. There was too much risk.
I nodded at Ava. “You’re right.”

“I’m leaving DC on the flight with the CIA to collect the cask,” Ava said, “so I’ll be in Casablanca soon.”

She disconnected, and I sat there for a moment staring at the black screen, still feeling as if I’d fallen from a cliff. My grandmother was dead, or as good as. The Emporium would know that we couldn’t give in to their demands, and she was too old to be useful for their breeding program, which meant they wouldn’t waste time ending her life.