The Society - Hunter Healer Part 15

"Go." Yos.h.i.+ let go of him. "Think about it. She loves you."

"Fine, thank you." I don't know if you're right about that, kid. Someone like her isn't going to love someone like me. It's ridiculous. "Ammo?"

Yos.h.i.+ handed over five clips, and Del stashed them in his kitbag as Yos.h.i.+ said, "Call in if you need directions to a cache. Keep in contact. We'll send as many teams as we can-"

"No, you'll just get them killed. Just me." He slung the bag across his body, picked up his duffel and stepped past Yos.h.i.+ and out into the hall. "Tell Henderson not to worry. I'll bring her back safe and sound."

The other man didn't reply. Del hoped he was praying. He barely saw the rest of Headquarters on his way down to the garage. He was too busy trying to breathe through the ma.s.sive ball of panic in his chest.

Just stay alive, angel. Just stay alive until I can get to you.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Four days later the green slopes of the Santiago City Veteran's Cemetery lay drowsing under mist and the shadows of rain clouds. Dripping trees stood guard over the silence of the dead, fog sliding between slender boles of lamp posts and the thick green-clad lines of cedar and juniper. Rowan, safe in the shadow of a large cedar, scanned the cemetery once again. She'd parked on the east side, in the warren of back streets she knew from growing up, and jumped the fence. Her head was stuffed with pain and the persistent wrapping of cotton-wool. She'd barely slept, impelled by the sudden, irrational, but undeniable desire to see her father's grave, for maybe the first and last time.

I never even got to go to his funeral. Someone else took the flag draped over his coffin. Someone else was here, probably his friends from the VA and the Moose Lodge. Maybe Marta from the bridge club. I think Dad really liked her.

She breathed in the familiar wet air of Saint City-green and damp and smelling of vegetation and the salt breath of the bay, growth exploding from rain-soaked ground and held cupped in air full of humidity. And under that smell of saturated Nature lurked the other smells of cities: car exhaust, humanity, desperation, money, danger.

Tears lodged hard and unforgiving in her throat. Memory turned like a wheel, shattering inside her head.

Her father, grinning as he lifted a six-year-old Rowan into his arms. Teaching her how to change the oil filter in Tuna, Mom's old silver Volvo. Celebrating with a bottle of Dom Perignon when Rowan had graduated from college, and celebrating again with a supper at La Tourelle's in the University District when she graduated from nursing school. Dad's hands, veined and old, chopping garlic for chicken noodle soup, and his younger hands bandaging a sc.r.a.pe on Rowan's knee. And his hand solid and firm on Rowan's shoulder, as they watched her mother's coffin lower into the ground. Rowan had sobbed into a handkerchief, numb with grief and wondering guiltily why her talent hadn't warned her of her mother's death, while her father's weeping was done privately. How much had it cost him to be strong for her sake? She had never thought about it until now.

They were so in love, she thought. Her mother had been laughing and affectionate, a counter to her father's stalwart military rect.i.tude. Dad hadn't been distant or severe, just ... well, too martial to engage in spontaneous hugs or celebrations. Despite that, Rowan had never felt a moment's worth of uneasiness about her parents' love for her or for each other. It was the one thing that had saved her sanity in the face of her freakish talents and her inability to control them. The unconditional acceptance of both her mother and father had rea.s.sured her at every turn.

Her best friend, Hilary, was buried at Mount Hope. Much as she wanted to visit the grave, Rowan didn't think she could stand seeing Hil's name on a headstone. Although it was anybody's guess when she would have another chance to come back and visit.

Fury rose inside her again, rage and the weird twisting headache that seemed to burrow into her head, impelling her through the increasing haze of exhaustion. She decided it looked safe enough and slipped out from the shelter of the cedar, brus.h.i.+ng bark off her hands. Each step was a struggle. Even the slight hill up to the section housing her father's simple white marker seemed to steal the breath from her lungs and the strength from her legs. She was gasping by the time she fought her way up the slight rise, glad n.o.body was among the headstones to hear her.

Justin had given her the photos and the map of her father's gravesite, trying in his own way to help her deal with the shattering grief. The thought of Justin tore at her head. For some reason the headache got worse when she thought of him. No amount of pain medication or quiet meditation would make theheadache go away. It was as if her head was a large gla.s.s pumpkin balanced on her wobbling neck. It invaded her sleep, this harsh sucking pain, until she could barely think straight.

She checked the markers. No. No. No.

Oh, G.o.d. G.o.d help me. There it was.

Major Henry Price, US Marine Corps. His rank, his date of birth and death. The carved letters were rough under her fingers as she knelt, tracing her father's name.

"Oh, Dad," she whispered. "I miss you. G.o.d, how I miss you."

He'd liked Justin, liked him almost immediately. Of course, Justin had chased off that Sig in the parking lot. At the time, neither she nor her father had any idea that a government agency would be trying to kidnap or kill her. Now Rowan wondered how much of Dad's liking Justin had been a small push, nothing harmful, just enough to insert this seemingly innocent stranger into their lives.

Her head gave another sharp twist of pain. It hurt to think of Justin. But what else could she think of?

What else-and who else-did she have left?

n.o.body, that's who. Sigma had robbed her of everything.

"I'm going to make them pay." Her voice shook as her fingertips brushed the P, the R, and the I in Price.

Dad believed in honor and truthfulness. It would have hurt him to think that the government and country he'd fought for was responsible for the things Rowan had seen Sigma do. Broken bodies, battered minds, psions screaming as they suffered through Zed withdrawal-a whole parade of horror unreeling through her memory. If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, been shot at, lived with the suffocating fear, she might not have believed it. Probably wouldn't have believed it. It defied belief.

"Anton." That was the name of her enemy. Colonel Anton.

But if you want to know who's in charge of the program, it's Anton ... Sig Zero-Fifteen ... the worst Sig installation in the country.

Where's that?

New Mexico.

Henderson had cautioned her never to go near White Sands in New Mexico, or near Mount Shasta in California. "Big Sig installations, like Langley. Just isn't worth the risk," he'd said, and his face had been so grim she hadn't asked more. She should have asked more, maybe she could have done something sooner, maybe stopped this endless parade of pain and death.

The sight of her father's headstone blurred as tears slid down her cheeks, welling up hot and acid from the deepest part of her grief. Oh, Daddy. I'm going to do what I can. I'm so sorry.

It occurred to her that this was her fault too, this bare white stone with the bloodless carving on it-nothing to tell how her father was one of the greatest cooks alive, how he could turn anything into a feast, how he loved books on hauntings, the unexplained, psychic phenomena, all sorts of woo-woo, and how just the sound of his voice could make a little girl feel safe and special. There was nothing here but this chunk of rock, carved with birth, death, name, and rank. No color, no life, her father's comfortable old age in the house he'd paid for with the daughter he loved all cut short by the G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king Sigs.

Because his daughter was, to put it kindly, a freak.Rowan straightened. She scanned the cemetery again. No sign of any activity except herself, the fog, and the silent trees keeping watch over the brave dead.

"I love you, Daddy," she whispered, and wished she had time to visit her mother's grave. It suddenly didn't seem right that they were buried in separate cemeteries, her mother on Mount Hope with Grandma Parker, and Dad here. They should be together.

Yet another thing Sigma would pay for.

Rowan ghosted through the cemetery, found a handy spot and muscled herself over the high stone wall. If there were video cameras or the like, let them see her. She hadn't been here before because it was too dangerous, the one place Sigma could be sure of kidnapping her. It was anticlimactic to show up and have nothing happen. Of course, Sigma couldn't be watching all the time, and they probably were busy with the teams Henderson had sent out to cause havoc all over the US in order to cover the withdrawal to Headquarters.

She found the car-the faithful blue Subaru, this time with Missouri plates instead of Georgia-undisturbed and got in, resting her aching head against the steering wheel for a moment.

Justin.

Thinking of him hurt, but it paradoxically made the pain easier to bear. She was used to missing him, true, but the brief period of being near him again drove home just how much she missed him. It would have been just as true to call her Delgado's shadow. She had never felt very comfortable away from him for very long. He was the only stability in her fragmented world.

Her fault, again, that he'd been taken and tortured, suffered G.o.d-knew-what that he didn't want to talk about, not even to her. Self-loathing crawled over Rowan's skin like the soft maggot fingers that had squirmed inside her brain.

When she surfaced, staring at the world outside the car, the fog had thickened. She twisted the key in the ignition and was rewarded with a softly-purring engine. She switched on the headlights and spent a few minutes driving aimlessly down the hills. When she found herself on the very north end of Smyrna Avenue, she knew miserably what she was about to do, and couldn't stop herself. It was like a train wreck or an automobile accident. She simply could not look away. She drove down Smyrna, stopping at stop signs and creeping through uncontrolled intersections, pa.s.sing the laurel hedge that blocked the sight of the dilapidated old Taylor house. She didn't want to look. Gooseflesh stood out hard and k.n.o.bbed on her arms. A right on Ninth Street, two blocks ... and she brought the car to a halt, her heart rising in her throat.

The neat, well-kept two-story house they had worked so hard on was now a shambles. Rowan made a small, hurt sound in the back of her throat as she stared at the broken windows, and the lawn rank with weeds. n.o.body had bought the house. Had it stood abandoned since that night? Yellow crime scene tape fluttered on the porch where Rowan had sat so many summer evenings, where her mother had almost fallen off while watering the roses-and oh, the roses themselves were dead or dying, brown rot all over their lovely leaves and stems. Dead leaves cl.u.s.tered under the old oak trees, and a fallen branch lay buried in weeds and leaves. The door was broken down, barred only by the yellow crime scene tape.

She wondered if anyone had cleaned out the fridge, if her books were still upstairs swelling with moisture from the damp coming in through the front door and broken windows. And if there were still stains on the kitchen floor. Big, dark, b.l.o.o.d.y stains.

There were no cars behind her, but Rowan started violently as if hearing the blast of a horn. She sat upright, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. More tears spilled down her cheeks.Got to get going. She checked over her shoulder for nonexistent traffic and pulled out, hoping she wasn't weaving. Her vision ran and blurred with both pain and tears. She navigated with ease through familiar streets, each new change-the Martin's house was repainted, and yards were redone, businesses had gone up and others had faded-slamming into her stomach like a badly taken punch. Each time she lost a little more air.

Oh, Justin, she thought, ignoring the spike of pain his name sent through her. I need you. I'm sorry.

Then she hit the freeway heading south. She would cut east past the state line and start wending her way into the land of desert, rattlesnakes, Four Corners, and White Sands. She just had to get close enough to Sig Zero-Fifteen and get herself arrested or caught, and Sigma would take care of the rest.

And then, Rowan could get her revenge.

Four days later she woke in the middle of the night, her breath coming short and harsh in her chest, the soft maggot-writhing voice whispering inside her head. Sweat cooled on her skin as Rowan sat up, gasping, reaching blindly for a light, any light. The lamp on the two-drawer nightstand next to the bed toppled alarmingly before she could catch it and find the b.u.t.ton to turn it on. When it finally clicked, the hotel room resolved itself into horrid pink and beige around her.

She let out a coughing breath as her head twisted with pain. Justin? Instinctively, she had reached for him again on waking. Why did thinking about him hurt her head so much? What was wrong with her?

Rowan found herself clutching the phone, her fingers poised above the keypad. She laid the phone back in its cradle, hoping she hadn't dialed. Who would she call? There was n.o.body to call. If she called in, Henderson would have a fit and probably officially throw her out of the Society. And Justin ... What did he think? Did he think she had betrayed them?

Never. I never would.

But if they started to torture her or injected her with Zed, how long would she be able to hold out? She had no illusions about her capacity to deal with torture. Justin might be able to endure the unspeakable, but Rowan knew very well she couldn't. Though she had, since joining the Society, done some amazing things when forced to. If they tortured her before she could get her revenge, she would just have to see how strong she truly was.

Rowan lifted her hands and examined them in the warm, forgiving light of the bedside lamp. They shook, her fingers almost blurring. "Look at that," she said. "I'm so brave. What am I doing?"

Revenge, the persistent little voice whispered in her head. Revenge. Revenge.

She settled cross-legged into the creaking mattress, pain cresting inside her fragile, aching head again.

Something's wrong. Something's very, very wrong. I'm not thinking clearly.

Just then, the sensitive fringes of her mind registered a touch. It was light and fleeting, simply a brush against the very outer borders of her awareness, as if someone had stepped into a room and hastily stepped back.

All uncertainty faded. Rowan reached under her pillow for the knife. She wasn't close enough to be sure she would be taken to Zero-Fifteen. There was another installation just thirty miles from here they would probably drag her to. She wasn't even under dampers, was she? She couldn't remember turning any dampers on, and the funny, naked feeling she always had under dampers was gone.The knife blade gleamed in the bright electric light. She jammed her feet quickly into her boots and slid out of bed, her jeans rasping against the bleached sheets, then ghosted on silent feet to one side of the door, knife held low and reversed along her forearm. She was sleeping in her clothes, only taking her shoes off and sometimes not even that. She might have to move quickly and couldn't afford the time it would take to get dressed if she was attacked. Adrenaline washed the pain from her head and narrowed her concentration.

Now she could hear someone fiddling with the doork.n.o.b. Air-conditioning washed chill over her skin, and the unit in the window made a racket that would cover any noise she made. Rowan slowly sank down, crouching, wis.h.i.+ng she hadn't turned on the light. A dark room for eyes adapted to the light outside in the hall would have given her an advantage.

The cheap deadbolt was eased open. Someone was very good with a set of lock picks, not everyone could tickle a deadbolt. The chain on the door was almost useless, held only by one flimsy screw. She had left it open. Why? That was a violation of procedure. Even a flimsy chain was better than no chain at all.

Now the doork.n.o.b began to turn, a millimeter at a time.

Whoever this is, they're going to get a big f.u.c.king surprise.

If it was a Sig, she intended to do some damage before letting them catch her. If it was anyone else...

The doork.n.o.b turned. The adrenaline freeze poured over Rowan's vision, everything standing out sharp and clear-the nap of the cheap bedspread, the horrid beige carpet, the print of a fruit-basket over the useless television, the individual scratches left on the painted wall from other people banging their luggage carelessly around. Rowan's pulse slowed. She was still and quiet as an adder under a rock, b.u.t.toned down tightly, not daring to scan outside the door in case the attacker was a psion.

The door released. The attacker waited a moment before opening it an inch at a time. Chill industrial-filtered air swept across Rowan's body as she slashed, her legs turning into coiled springs, driving a shoulder into the attacker's hard-muscled midriff and spilling them both to the cheap harsh carpet out in the hall. She struggled wildly, her right wrist caught in a bruising grip and locked, twisted mercilessly until the knife dropped. Then he grabbed her other wrist and rolled, effectively trapping her.

A sharp twisting psychic attack smashed into her already bruised and vulnerable head.

She shunted the force of the attack aside, not even bothering to turn it back on him. Rowan found her mouth near his shoulder, so she did the only thing she could, training suddenly shoving aside fear. She bit him as hard as she could, thras.h.i.+ng wildly.

He let out a short barking cry. She brought her knee up swiftly and rolled free as his arm loosened, scooping up the knife as she made it to her feet. She threw a kick, catching the man squarely in the face, and catching a glimpse of blond hair as he collapsed backward. Then Rowan was on him again, the knife sinking into flesh with a solid sound.

Memory cascaded inside her head. She seemed to remember a blond man clutching her arm as Justin, b.l.o.o.d.y and battered, raised his hands slowly, one full of a knife blade that glittered through the drugged haze of sedation.

The man swore in a vicious whisper and Rowan stabbed again, the knife sinking in just as Justin had taught her, the shock of blade meeting bone jarring up to her shoulder. Twist it, break the suction of muscle on the blade, good girl. Just like that.The man gurgled on the floor under her. Rowan got one foot on the floor, her knee in his midriff. She let out a short, sharp breath. The man was in Sigma gear. They'd found her, all right.

A small psshht! sound jerked her halfway around, but not before a spear of ice buried itself in her shoulder. Ow! What the h.e.l.l- Comprehension burst inside her head just as the compulsion broke, shattered by its consummation, and Rowan's entire body turned to lead. The drug was quick, the tranquilizer dart loaded with something icy and p.r.i.c.kling that flooded her. For one agonized moment before her head hit the floor she understood that she had been trapped like an idiot, and she was very, very grateful Justin was safe back at Headquarters.

Sigma had her now.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Del watched from the screen of thick bushes at the side of the parking lot as the Sigs carried down two limp forms. One was Rowan, her pale sheaf of ash-blond hair rising on the faint, chill night breeze. Two Sigs carried her to the black van and bundled her in.

Del's hands turned to ice.

The second person they carried was a man with familiar blond hair. Andrews. I'd bet anything that's him. A hard, satisfied agony burst in Del's chest, and his arms and legs turned to ice. He drew back into the shadows, but they weren't scanning for him. They had what they'd come for. If he'd been a little quicker he might have saved her, but now it was too late. She wouldn't be served by him getting himself caught too.

Oh, Rowan.

The limp male body was Andrews, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d recognizable even in death. They bundled his body into the second black van, and more of them carried her duffel and kitbag. It was the off season and the parking lot was empty of everything except a smattering of cars. Not many people came down south in spring or summer when the heat got unbearable. By tomorrow her hotel room would be empty and wiped, no trace left of the woman who had stayed there.

He had narrowly escaped the Sigs himself in Saint City while following her. She had taken suicidal chances by operating without dampers and doing everything but getting arrested and shouting, "Here I am, boys!" It was a wonder she hadn't been picked up until now.

Too late, too late, I'm too f.u.c.king late. Where are they taking her?

She'd accessed an old map from the intranet at Headquarters. He could have told her it was out of date.

There was an old Sig installation near here, but it had been closed for a good five years. That made the closest installation Zero-Fifteen.

The belly of the beast itself.

Are you crazy, Delgado? You just escaped from there. There's no way you can go back in. Christ, they'll eat her alive and there'll be nothing left but a husk. They'll break her. Anton will break her.

Don't do it. Please don't do what you're contemplating. It's insanity. You won't make it out alive.

He reached out blindly, his hand closing over a juniper branch. He squeezed, hearing the crackle of dry wood under his fingers, strangely removed. Besides, she doesn't love you. She couldn't. She's not that type. She's good, and you're not. What the h.e.l.l are you thinking?

The vans roused themselves, purring like beasts. The one carrying Rowan made a short, sharp half-circle in the parking lot, its headlights splas.h.i.+ng wetly against other cars. Del ducked instinctively, even though his cover was good and he was sure they couldn't see or sense him. The invisible man, Justin Delgado.

The receding fire of Zed withdrawal burned under his skin. He felt cold. His legs had turned to solid blocks of ice.

If they caught him, he was done for. He was finished. There was no way he could penetrate Zero-Fifteen and get her out. None.

I'll just have to be careful then, won't I? I escaped once. But escaping was not the same as penetrating a high-security installation without backup and bringing out a potentially broken psion. It just wasn't.

He fumbled for his cell phone. Then he shut his eyes and breathed in the smell of dust and junipers. Here he was crouching in the bushes, looking for a snakebite or worse, dithering. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was that van, carrying Rowan away to a fate she probably couldn't imagine but Del could picture all too well.

The vision of the empty room, Rowan's room, rose again. Drenched in sunlight, he could almost feel his pupils contract against the force of that light. The scarves thrown across the bedstead glowed in rich blues and greens. The plants grew green and lush, healthy, and the bookshelves were jammed full. The French door to the small balcony was open a little, wind stirring the curtains as they hung. He took a deep breath, smelling Rowan's skin.