As Cold As Ice (13 page)

“
May I ask what this is
about?”

“
You may,” Markus replied,
sitting in his black leather chair and pulling a thick cigar from a
wooden box. He did that thing some men did where they casually
sniffed it, as though he was some sort of cigar connoisseur,
clipped off one of the ends, lit it, and puffed on it.

A heavy cloud of smoke gathered around his
face. His smile when he looked at her wasn’t exactly the cartoon
villain type of creepy, but the vibe she got from it was enough. He
thought he had something on her.

Her immediate thoughts went to Soren, and
she feared for him, for herself, and everything Markus would do to
them if he ever realized Soren was trying to help her get out of
here in any small way.

When he didn’t offer her anything else,
Jessica had to clench her teeth and bite back something nasty.

“
Why did you call for me?”
Jessica asked.

“
I’m so glad you asked,”
Markus said then tapped some icons on his glass desk. There was a
nearly silent whirring noise as one of the tiles in the floor, just
before the rug, opened in front of her. A cylinder popped out of
it, and the pointed top started to glow as the projector worked,
flashing a flat image right into the thin air.

Rich people.

She wasn’t so much in the mood for making
fun of anyone, however, when she realized what she was looking
at.

A man was standing there, walking around a
nearly barren room, one that was identical to the cell Jessica had
been kept in, which gave her an idea of where the man was.

At first, she wasn’t aware of just who she
was looking at, though pity for anyone to be locked up in one of
those god-awful cells was alive inside of her. She hated that for
anyone.

It wasn’t just anyone, though. When the man
turned and paced the other side of the cell, allowing the camera to
see his bruised and swollen face, she recognized who it was. Ethan.
Her brother.

Rage, a live, wild monster, rose inside her
and took complete control as she stormed forward. “You son of a
bitch!”

Guns were immediately pointed at her face,
halting her. The stormtrooper guards. Fuck. She hadn’t even noticed
they were in the room, hiding in the back corners; she’d been that
focused on Markus.

Jessica looked to Charles, and though she
tried not to look at Soren, she did that, too. She searched their
eyes for any sign that what she was seeing was real, not some
hologram. “What is this? Is he really here?”

Their faces gave no indication one way or
another. There was only pity.

Markus started talking. “We found him on the
outskirts of the city. A couple of hunters came across a lone man,
hiding in the southwest woods, acting suspicious, so they
approached him. He ran but they caught him, scanned him, realized
who he was and brought him in.”

Jessica’s gut churned harder than a
hurricane. She looked back at the vid feed. Ethan seemed calm
enough on the outside, which was a normal trait for him, though his
fists were clenched as he paced around that small room like an
agitated cat. His face didn’t show any emotion; it was his body
language that gave it all away.

Not that she needed body language to know
how he must feel. He had two swollen black eyes. The color on the
vid screen in front of her wasn’t the most amazing thing ever, even
though a multimillionaire had paid for it. The technology of
creating a screen on thin air was still too new.

That didn’t matter, though. His busted lip
was clear, as were the marks and scratches that littered his arms.
His clothes looked old and dirty, and there were rips and tears in
them. She wondered what sort of paranormal he’d been made to
fight.

“
I can assure you that your
brother is in this building. We’ve been trying to determine what
his ability is, but have yet to find anything. He hasn’t been very
forthcoming.”

“
I figured that out for
myself,” Jessica said, not in the mood to even pretend she
respected this man. “Ethan is not a paranormal.”

“
He is related to one, and
he did run away from home with one,” Markus said, as if that was
his checkmate answer. “You understand our need to make sure for
ourselves.”

Jessica turned her eyes back to the screen.
She didn’t see a point in not looking. Markus already knew her
brother was a weakness of hers, that she cared about him, didn’t
want anything bad to happen to him. Regardless of whether or not he
believed Ethan was a paranormal, Markus could keep on with the
tests he was performing on him and get away with it.

Normal people were accused of being
paranormal all the time. They were brought in, they were watched,
and even when they were let go, there was still surveillance on
them.

The people who were deemed normal, who were
able to walk out of Head Office, spoke a lot about their treatment,
their lack of rights, privacy, dignity, as they were studied.

Those complaints fell on deaf ears, or
uncaring ears, for the most part. Markus had no reason to treat
Ethan any better.

“
I promise you,” Jessica
said, watching the stormtroopers out of the corner of her eye.
“Ethan is not a paranormal. I swear, he’s got no powers, nothing to
attack anyone with, and he’s not going to stir up trouble in the
city.”

“
There are reports that the
day he went missing, power went out in several city blocks. How do
I know for sure he had nothing to do with it? How would the people
be expected to know for sure?”

Jessica clenched her fists,
but her voice came out with a tone of begging she hadn’t intended.
“
Please
. I swear
to God he’s normal.”

Markus drummed his fingers on his fancy
desk. He watched her with eyes that spoke of amusement, with a hint
of curiosity. He didn’t care if Ethan was normal one way or
another; he just wanted to see Jessica come undone. He was trying
to make her weak, which meant he wanted something from her.

“
What do you want to know?
What do you expect me to tell you to prove he’s normal? That you
can let him go?”

Markus leaned forward. “Before I put you on
the Proxy Project, I want to make sure you don’t already know where
a safe house is. One of these hidden places where paranormals like
to gather.”

Jessica’s heart sank to floor-level. She
steeled herself immediately, summoning the anger. Being angry was a
lot better than showing any cracks in her defenses.

“
If I knew where to look to
find a safe house, then the hunters wouldn’t have found me. It
would’ve been the first place I went when I blasted those
pencil-pushers and the collectors back at Jack’s house. So no, I
don’t know where any safe houses are, or where Jack took his
fire-starting paranormal girlfriend.”

“
That’s unfortunate,”
Markus said, leaning forward, his hands brushing against papers on
his desk, as if he was going to arrange them and ask for Jessica to
be escorted out.

She wasn’t done yet, though. She was still
angry, severely fucking pissed off, and she let that show in her
voice. “I would hand them over in a second if it meant getting my
brother out of here.”

The conviction in her voice must’ve been,
well, convincing, because Markus turned his eyes back up to look at
her.

Jessica glared at him with all the satanic
demon fire she could summon inside her. She wished that was her
power. Something so super evil, really give Markus and the other
normal people who hunted her and every other paranormal a reason to
fear her.

Markus folded his hands together. She had
his full attention. “You would give up your friends?”

“
Jack wasn’t my friend. He
was an ex-boyfriend, and I have no idea who his girlfriend was. I
met her once, so yeah, it’s not too hard to figure out that I would
hand them over on a plate to get Ethan out. I don’t want him in a
cell in your basement, and I don’t want him in a cell in prison.
Stop wasting my time with all this training and buddying up to the
other inmates here, put me on your new project, and let me work so
I can make it so.”

Markus smiled at her, as if that was exactly
what he’d been hoping to hear. “Very well. I knew I could count on
you. We’ll keep an eye on your brother for now.”

“
Don’t put anymore
paranormals in his cell with him.”

One of the stormtroopers beside her pushed
his gun against her shoulder, reminding her he was there, with a
gun, and that she didn’t get to make demands about anything.

She glared at the man.

Markus came to a decision. “I have yet to
find anything that would suggest he’s hiding some unnatural power,
so yes, for the moment, no more paranormals will be put into his
cell. He did still harbor a fugitive, however. If you want that off
his record, you’re going to have to find me a safe house. Not just
one, either.”

“
How many?” Jessica
asked.

“
As many as it
takes.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jessica was quickly dismissed from Markus’s
office. She wasn’t brought back down to the training area with the
other recruits. Instead, she was taken to her living quarters.

So stupid. It was more comfortable than
where Ethan was staying, but it was still a cell. She didn’t have
the luxury of coming or going whenever she wanted, and she didn’t
want to be there.

The decor was drab and plain, the furniture
cheap, but it looked like a palace compared to that cell in the
basement. For a while, she’d forgotten about how utterly pissed off
she was to have to be in there at all.

Jessica circled the room like an animal,
something that wanted out, wanted to destroy anything in its path.
She did want to. With a yell, she grabbed a lamp, yanked the cord
out of the wall, and nearly launched it at the stupid flower
painting above her bed.

Her arm stopped before she could send the
lamp flying.

Not only would breaking the damned thing
accomplish nothing, but she’d have more of those ridiculous-looking
stormtroopers in there with their guns pointed at her.

Maybe that was what she wanted. Maybe they’d
throw her downstairs and she could at least make sure Ethan was all
right. If it was even him at all.

It had better not be him.

Shortly after she put the lamp back down on
the nightstand, there was a soft knock at her door.

She already had an idea of who it was
because no one ever knocked. There was only one person she could
think of to give her that courtesy.

“
Come in,” she said. Her
chest was heaving harder than she thought it was.

The door opened, and Soren stepped inside of
her room.

She glared at him, but he hadn’t even shut
the door. He didn’t approach her, either. “Come with me,” he
ordered.

Jessica followed, but only because she had
no choice, and no reason to deny him.

Soren brought her back down to the arena.
Jessica looked around, noted how all the ice and water was gone,
how the leather seats had been replaced with something new,
fancier, and probably a lot more comfortable and expensive. She
shook her head.

Soren shut the door, and when he turned to
her, the questions Jessica really wanted to ask spilled out of her
before she could stop them, angry and fast. “Was that real? Did you
know about it?”

Soren had his hands up, shaking his head as
he approached her. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she let
him.

“
That’s not him. It’s just
a program. I didn’t know that was about to happen, but I promise
it’s not him.”

The instant relief was soothing. She felt
like she could breathe again. “You’ve been down into the cells
then?”

Soren shook his head. “No, but he’s not down
there,” he said quickly at the look on Jessica’s face. “He’s not.
Okay? I know he’s not.”

“
How do you know?” Jessica
asked. “How do you know for sure?”

Soren’s lips thinned. He seemed to be
struggling with something inside of himself, and his grip on
Jessica’s shoulders became almost painfully tight before he spoke.
“There’s a reason why I stay working here, even though I’m a
paranormal,” he told her.

He didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t step away
from her.

He just stared at her, and through the haze
of anger and panic that had been rushing through her, like
boiling-hot and freezing-cold water combing all at once and too
damned fast, Jessica started to get it.

She didn’t say anything, either. She just
nodded, which caused Soren to release some of the insane pressure
he had on her shoulders. He visibly relaxed.

Jessica just felt like something of an
idiot.

Why hadn’t she seen this coming from about
ten thousand miles away? Sure, she’d sort of suspected, but she’d
brushed off the suspicion mostly because Soren was…he was
Soren.

He didn’t look like the kind of guy who
would be working with people on the outside, secretly handing over
information and other weaknesses Head Office had, but he was. That
was the only explanation for why he claimed to know so much about
Ethan.

There was so much more she wanted to know.
If Soren was working with paranormals on the outside, did that mean
Ethan was at a safe house? Was that why Soren knew the image on the
vid screen in Markus’s office wasn’t real? Was he in contact with
Ethan? And did he know where the safe houses were?

Was he warning them about the Proxy
Project?

There was a chance, a very big chance, that
Jessica was taking this the wrong way. That what Soren was really
trying to say without actually saying it was that Markus had let
him in on a joke that was designed to make Jessica go nuts and
reveal everything she knew to him.