“Did you hear me?” James’s voice goes up a notch. The kind of deep tone a father might use on his daughter.
“I did. I’m coming out. I’m coming. Please don’t shoot,” Hannah says shrilly.
She wriggles herself out of the tight space and pushes onto the passenger seat, her hands up in the air.
“Now, slowly, open the door and come around the car, hands where I can see them,” James instructs.
Hannah follows the instructions closely, keeping her hands above her ears as she rounds the front of the SUV. She stops about ten paces away from us and gives James a small nod as if saying: “See, I’m just a girl.”
“All right, now take off your jacket and throw it aside,” James says.
Hannah frowns at the request but does as she’s told. It is a puffy jacket. Much could be concealed under it. She’s left in a tight fitting t-shirt that barely hides her thin frame.
“Now both of you, move away from the car.” James gives me a slight push.
Hannah and I walk side by side down the middle of the road, James following but staying a fair distance away.
“All right, that’s good. Turn around.”
We stop and face him. James reaches into his back pocket and tosses me a pair of handcuffs. I catch them in midair. I get my first good glimpse of him since the attack at Elliot’s headquarters. James looks harried, the crow’s feet around his eyes more pronounced than before. His normally well-shaved head is sprouting a few hairs from the sides, and his shoulders appear narrower. He’s never been a big man, just average height and build, but he always looked fit. I guess this war is getting the best of him. I’m sure getting shot didn’t help either.
“Cuff her,” James says, his gray eyes as intense as ever.
“Is that necessary?” I ask, though I know it’s a stupid question. We can’t trust anyone.
“I’m taking no chances.”
I face Hannah. “I’m sorry. He has a lot to safeguard, but I promise he won’t hurt you if you don’t cause any trouble.”
She nods shakily and lowers her arms. I clamp one cuff to her right wrist, then walk behind her and secure the other at her lower back. As soon as I’m done, I put my hands up again.
“Sit on the sidewalk and stay put, Hannah,” James says in a voice that is sounding kinder by the minute. “Like Marci said, just do as I say and everything will be fine.”
“I will, Mister …” Hannah sits with some difficulty. She lowers her head and sniffles a few times, but quickly composes herself.
“You can call me James.”
“Thank you, Mister James.”
He smirks and shakes his head. After a pensive moment, he jerks his head and the gun to one side, signaling me to move away from Hannah. As we walk toward the opposite sidewalk, I notice James’s ultra-firm grip on the gun. It seems he’s taking no chances with my telekinetic powers either. Ha! Like I’ve learned to control them. I can only wish.
James’s gray eyes drill into mine. “So … still Marci?”
I cock my head to one side and nod.
He sighs. “It’s a damn thing. I want to trust you, but …”
“Don’t feel bad. I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to.”
An image of my bloody hands after I failed to stop Azrael from killing Oso flashes in front of my eyes. My heart tightens with the regret that assaults me every time I think of that kind man, and of the way that petty creature took his life. A wave of disgust runs through me as I imagine the parasitic agent lodged, seething, lurking, inside my brain.
“Report,” James says.
I take a deep breath, trying to remember everything that’s happened since the last time I met with Aydan—too long ago for comfort. After IgNiTe’s attack at Whitehouse headquarters and the eradication of his Spawners, things have been busy for the Seattle resistance. Without Spawners the Whitehouse faction can’t grow its base—an advantage IgNiTe must fight to maintain.
“Well, everyone’s still in turmoil,” I say. “Lyra says Elliot has been busy doing damage control. He has been meeting with his captains, making plans few are privy to. He’s being extremely paranoid. He had his tech people check the network, but I made sure they didn’t find any of my hacks. So I’ve been able to watch the security system closely and have seen very little going on in the building. Whatever meetings he’s holding, they must be happening elsewhere. I suspect he has gone low tech. He’s taking no chances. The bastard. I wish you would just let me put a bullet between his eyes.”
“Stick to your orders, Marci. Killing Elliot would make his faction unpredictable. I know you’ve sworn revenge but, take it from me, you should strive to live for more, find a worthy reason. Revenge will blind you to the things that truly matter.”
“I know. I know.” Maybe James is right, but, at the moment, nothing sounds better than making Elliot pay.
James grunts and casts a quick glance in Hannah’s direction, frowning.
I continue, “Anyway, Lyra suspects he’s planning a trip to England, something in the next couple of months. She thinks he’s going to get the Spawners who survived the attack in the Glasgow safe house. The one the London IgNiTe cell couldn’t destroy entirely.”
“Yeah, that was unfortunate. The Takeover was more effective there, and our IgNiTe cells are weakened. I wish they’d been strong enough to carry out the job.” He runs a hand over his bald head. “But I can’t blame them, I suppose. They did their best. I wonder how many Spawners survived.”
“Don’t know.”
“At least we’ve slowed down the rate at which they’re infecting people.” The way he says this lets me know he thinks it’s not enough. “I wish we could destroy Hailstone’s Spawners, too.” A muscle jumps in his jaw, showing his frustration. “Anymore on Whitehouse trying to reach out to Hailstone to form an alliance?”
“No. That’s not going to happen. Lyra killing Zara Hailstone took care of that possibility. I doubt Luke would be up to working with his mother’s murderer.” The bitterness I feel is obvious in my voice.
Zara was not Luke’s biological mother. Her faction kidnapped him right from the NICU the day he was born, sending my family into lifelong turmoil. Karen is his real mother. The woman who, in spite of raising me and supposedly giving birth to me, isn’t my genetic match. Talk about an identity crisis. I don’t even know where the hell I come from. It turns my head and stomach just to think about it, and something tells me I don’t want to find out.
God, what a freakin’ soap opera.
“Even if Luke was game, Elliot would rather destroy them for daring to attack him. He’s dying to find out where they are hiding. He even has a task force dedicated to it, a small one, but still.”
James rubs his chin. “Is that so?”
I nod.
“We definitely need to keep an eye on that situation in case we can take advantage of it. What else?”
I pull out a thumb drive from my jacket pocket. “I’ve found some info I’m sure you’ll find valuable. Every day there’s less and less going through the network, especially this type of stuff, but I caught this.”
James holsters his gun and takes the thumb drive. I give him raised eyebrows as if asking “so you trust me, now?” He shrugs. It’s not like he really has anything to fear from me. I don’t have a weapon, and he could run a million circles around me in the time it would take to make up my mind to attack him.
“So