Seduced by the Storm (20 page)

The
man was crazy. They settled into their seats. He started up the helicopter, the
low drone of the engine sounding as beautiful as anything.

"Faster
would be good." She pointed to the men running toward them on the outer
catwalk. "They’re almost here."

"I
can see that."

The
helicopter rose, the fluid sensation of catching air giving her a moment of
relief. Until a shudder shook it, sent it crashing back down to the pad. The
jolt nearly knocked her out of her seat.

"Fuck."
Wyatt pulled back on the stick, and the bird lifted, shuddered again.
"Someone’s holding her down!"

Bullets
smashed into the windshield, which, thankfully, was bullet-resistant. Tiny
spiderwebbed cracks formed, but the glass held. For now. Faith scanned the
area. One man, dressed in black coveralls, stood to the side, no weapons,
concentrating on the helo.

Wyatt
saw him at the same time. "Bingo."

Faith’s
blood pumped faster in anticipation. "I got it. You fly."

She
opened herself up, feeling the seductive buzz of power, the rush that normal
hand-to-hand combat never provided. The I-Agent’s aura became visible, his
protective shield flaring and waning the way it did when a person was using their
own psychic power.

Heart
beating wildly, veins shot full of adrenaline, she probed for a weak spot.
Found it, near his abdomen. Instantly, she pierced his body, used her energy to
wrap around his heart and squeeze.

His
mouth fell open. He clutched his chest. The helo launched upward with a sharp
spin that threw her into the side window.

"Shit.
Sorry," Wyatt said. "Oh, hey, we’re free!"

Bullets
punched holes in the helo’s skin, and the acrid scent of fuel filled the cabin.

"Fuckers."
Wyatt flipped the guys below a middle-finger salute, then sent a cargo
container smashing down on top of them. The gunfire stopped.

He
smiled, and they were out of there.

Exhaling
a long sigh of relief, Faith closed her eyes and sank back in her seat. Her
adrenaline crash turned her into a noodle, and her hands shook so badly she had
to dig her fingers into her legs.

"You
okay?" Wyatt’s voice, deep and soothing, rumbled through her, and she knew
he wasn’t asking about her health. Not her physical health anyway. She’d killed
a man she’d known for almost twenty years. A man she’d loved.

A man
who had turned irreversibly evil.

She
could no longer deny that fact, and today had been a long time coming. She
mourned for the boy Sean had been, but amazingly, she found that she couldn’t
regret what she’d done to the man he’d become.

She
opened her eyes and studied Wyatt’s rugged profile, his intelligent eyes, his
talented mouth. He was tall, lean and sinewy, his very presence so commanding
that he seemed larger than what the cockpit could hold. He was one of the good
guys, one of the rare humans people called heroes.

And
for now, he was hers.

"I’m
okay," she said. "I’m really okay."

HALEY
WATCHED the satellite loop one more time, hoping the result would be different.
But no matter how many times she witnessed the hurricane spin across the
screen, nothing changed.

The
atmosphere in ACRO’s weather station was a strange blend of tension and
excitement. Only meteorologists would get hard-ons about the destructive power
of a hurricane.

Well,
Remy did too, but that was different. He was, at that very moment, inside the
observation tower, trying to force the cold front to advance in order to push
the hurricane away from the coast. So far, his efforts had been in vain. The
Bermuda High was too strong, effectively holding off the front no matter what
Remy did.

"Haley?"
Jeremy waved his hand in front of her face. "We have the latest
projections."

She
rubbed her eyes, exhausted and not wanting to look. When she finally did, she
wished she hadn’t.

Stomach
aching and hands shaking, she silently went to her office, closed the door and
dialed Dev.

"Give
me good news, Haley," he said in his usual clipped, businesslike tone.

"I
wish I could."

There
was a long silence. "What’s the situation?"

"Hurricane
Lily hit bingo. She’s self-sustaining."

"Which
means she’s a threat even without the weather machine."

"Exactly."
She spread the projections across her desk. "Every forecast model,
including those from the National Hurricane Center, are bringing Lily in
somewhere between New Jersey and Connecticut."

"They
can’t be more specific?"

"
They
can’t, but Dev, a strike anywhere in that zone will be devastating. Lily is a
category five storm, and she’s strengthening." She cleared her throat.
"Since we know what was going on with the machine, we were able to make a
more specific storm-track projection. I think Itor knew what they were doing.
I’d stake my reputation on the fact that even without the weather machine’s
help, Lily is going to make a direct strike on New York City. We need to step
up preparations, and we need to do it now."

Dev
hated showing weakness or fear, refused to in front of anyone beyond a select
group of psychics at ACRO, and to Oz, who understood. Now that he was back from
what the majority of the ACRO agents and workers assumed was a vacation, he
needed to be in complete control, to reassure the staff that even though Itor
had allowed the hurricane to gain the upper hand, ACRO was still going to win
the war.

They
had no choice—if New York City was destroyed, tens of thousands could die, and
the entire U.S. economy would suffer for years, leaving the country vulnerable
to any low-life terrorist with a few million dollars and a burr up his ass. And
if another natural disaster followed on the heels of the first…Jesus. He just
prayed that Wyatt had destroyed the machine, because it was too late for Lily,
but Itor could follow up with more hurricanes, blizzards, droughts.

Sick
bastards.

And
what the fuck had they done with Ryan? That still bothered Dev, gave him
nightmares, since he was solely responsible for compromising the undercover
agent. Because ACRO had been dealing with a mole, Dev had taken precautions to
make sure he alone knew about Ryan’s insertion into Itor. When it turned out
that Dev had been the unwitting mole, that Alek had been sifting through his
mind, Ryan had been found out, and his unknown fate was something that would
haunt Dev for the rest of his life.

"You’re
ready, Devlin. I know you are."

Dev
looked up to see Oz standing in the doorway of his office. Oz had been his rock
through so much of Dev’s life—starting when Dev was just seventeen years old
and still discovering that he was inherently bisexual. Oz had always been so
sure of his own sexuality—everything about the man with the jet black hair and
dark eyes screamed sex, especially the way his long, muscular body always
seemed to be in motion.

"You
saved my life," Dev said softly, felt as though he could say it over and
over—and he had—and it would never be enough.

Oz
closed the distance between them and hugged Dev, murmuring, "I did what
you needed, Devlin. That’s what I’ve always done, that’s what I’ll always
do."

"And
what about what you need?"

"That’s
all part of the same package."

"Darius
is gone—right, Oz?"
he
remembered whispering to Oz right before Oz brought him to the psychics for the
mind blocks.

"You’re
safe, Devlin. Now it’s time for you to save the world again. You’re
ready."

Yes,
Dev was ready. With Oz by his side, he could take on anything.

WYATT
MADE infinitesimal corrections on what he called the cyclic, and for the
millionth time in the last ten minutes, Faith thanked God that he was a trained
pilot. This was so much better than holding a gun to one of Sean’s pilots.

"Where
are we headed?" she asked as she stripped out of the orange jumpsuit that
was a size too big for her.

"Florida.
A buddy of mine will take us in."

She
wadded up the jumpsuit and tossed it behind her seat. "And this buddy…you
trust him?"

"Mostly."

Mostly.
Perfect. Maybe dealing with Sean’s pilot and leaving
Wyatt behind would have been easier. Not that she could have done that. Faith
gazed out the side window at the rough ocean, the cloudy skies, reminders that
Itor’s weather machine might have been destroyed, but the damage had already
been done. The hurricane they’d nurtured could yet strike a blow.

Wyatt
glanced at his gauges. "So why was Sean surprised to hear your sister was
alive?"

Faith
turned to him, her first instinct to lie. But after all Wyatt had done for her,
and after all he’d continue to do for her as she dealt with whoever had taken
Liberty, she owed him.

"My
parents sent Liberty away when she was five. They were afraid of her."

"Afraid
of her why?"

God,
she hated talking about this. "My biokinesis didn’t develop until I was
eight, but Liberty was born with it." Hazy images filled her head, of
Liberty healing their cat after it had been struck by a car, of Liberty sealing
the cut on Faith’s skinned knee, of Liberty choking a man who had abducted
Faith out of their yard and tried to drag her into his car. "She couldn’t
control it, and…"

"She
hurt people."

"Yes.
She didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, but the fact that she
could…
it scared people." Her heart thundered in her chest as she remembered the
day she heard the knock on the door, so clear amongst the fuzzier memories.
"Some strange men came for her one day—now I know they were from a
psychiatric hospital." Faith felt more than saw the tension that made
Wyatt’s body go taut, but he quickly relaxed, did something with the foot
pedals.

"And?"

"And
I never saw her again. I searched, but the trail went cold several years
ago."

"Until
the ransom call." He flipped a series of switches on the control panel.
"What about your parents? Sean said they were dead."

"Yeah."
She gripped the satchel containing the motherboard and Mr. Wiggums to her
chest. Both represented family—the ratty stuffed rabbit was all she had left of
her family, and the motherboard…well, now that it was out of Itor’s hands, it
couldn’t be used as a weapon to kill other families.

Wyatt
reached across the space between them and took her hand, prying it away from
the leather case. "You don’t have to talk about it."

"It’s
okay," she said, even though she wasn’t sure it
was
okay. She’d
worshipped her parents, her dad especially, who had played with her endlessly,
filling a void left by Liberty’s absence. "I was eight. England was hit by
the Great October Storm." She remembered the roar of the wind, the crash
of thunder, the sounds of metal groaning and glass breaking. "My mum, she
went after an elderly neighbor who had gone outside to find her pup. My dad ran
to help, and as they were coming inside…" She drew in a long, calming
breath, surprised that the old memory still had so much power. "The side
of our house collapsed. Right on top of them. I heard my dad shout at me to
stay back, and my mum cried out my name…" She paused before saying,
"It’s the last time I heard their voices."

Wyatt’s
thumb made long, soothing passes over the skin of her hand. It amazed her that
a man who had cut through enemies like butter with such cold, brutal efficiency
could be so tender and caring. It also amazed her that she’d opened up to him
in a way she’d never done to anyone else. Not Paula, or even Sean.

"What
happened to you?" he asked softly.

She
shrugged, because mercifully much of what happened next was a blur. She’d run
out into the storm, calling for help, then watching as her parents’ mangled
bodies were dug out of the rubble. She’d screamed until she lost her voice, had
tried to use her powers to bring them back to life, but her parents were far
beyond help.

"I
wandered around for days, healing injured people and animals where I could.
That’s when the men who took my sister came for me."

Faith
had asked later how they’d known about her skills, and the truth was that they
hadn’t. When SIS learned about her parents’ deaths, they’d seized the
opportunity to snatch Faith in hopes that any potential powers could be
developed.

"They
took you to a mental hospital?" Wyatt’s voice sounded a little strained,
and his thumb froze mid-stroke.

"Only
for a few days. It was the same one Liberty had been taken to, but I didn’t
know that at the time. I learned later that she’d been kidnapped a few months
before."

After
an assessment at the mental facility, Faith had been moved to a private school
where other kids like her were being raised. She’d still been in shock, and it
had taken weeks before she could function in a school setting. Her parents had
been everything to her, and without them and her sister, she’d been a lost soul
for months. It had taken even longer for her to recover from her fear of
storms. The sound of thunder would send her scrambling beneath the nearest bed,
desk or table, where she’d cower, crying and trembling, until it was over. The
pain of that time still wrenched her gut when she thought about it, and dammit,
if she could prevent someone else from going through that kind of pain, no
matter her own personal cost, she would.