Shatter (17 page)

 

Mitch pressed his elbow into the leather armrest and rubbed his eyes as Seth’s cell rang in his ear. He had a hundred more questions for Halina, but he needed to get ahold of his emotions and gather his temper before he continued. This was too important to blow over a seven-year-old hurt.

“Chief Masters,” Seth answered, all business.

“That sounds like a porn name,” Mitch said. “You make the ladies call you that?”

“I might . . . if my divorce was final.”

“Shit.” Mitch scraped a hand through his hair. “Is that still hung up? Those papers should have arrived two weeks ago. Did you call my office?”

“I’m on a first-name basis with Megan. She says they’re sitting on Tara’s attorney’s desk.”

Mitch’s secretary was the best in the business at follow-up. But it was Mitch who would need to call to light a fire under the attorney who was pulling a new trick from under the carpet every other week to stall the divorce—at the direction of his client, Tara Masters. A woman who’d committed murder to send Teague to prison in an effort to hold on to custody of Kat Creek. Of course, Schaeffer had been the one to manipulate Tara’s already twisted mind.

“Sorry about that, Seth,” Mitch said. He felt for the guy. “I’ll call today.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m exactly eager to get back on that playing field again. When I am, I’ll be on your doorstep. Right now, this is more important. Keep your focus right where it is.”

Mitch had one hell of a lot of respect for the guy. He hadn’t cheated on Tara during their marriage, even though she’d stopped sleeping with him a year before he initiated the divorce. Remained faithful even after Tara had been found guilty of murder and kidnapping, declared mentally unstable, and sent to the state mental hospital.

“Are you on duty? I thought you were—”

“No, I’ve got another two weeks of vacation and it’s weird going from twenty-four-seven for months at a time to nothing. Habit,” Seth said. “Listen, something bad is going down here.”

Mitch refocused. Seth had diverted his search for information on the electronic chips used in the testing of both Cash’s son, Mateo, and Quaid to gather information from the employees of the Castle who hadn’t died in the explosion. “Where are you now?”

“Bishop, California,” he said. “A few of the people on my list have homes here. Neighbors tell me they commuted into Nevada to work, stayed there for weeks at a time before coming back again. But that’s not the weird part.”

“Can’t wait to hear this.” Mitch crossed one arm over his chest in preparation for more bizarre news. He could tell by the tone of Seth’s voice the guy was unnerved.

“The people,” Seth said. “They’re all gone. Not just the ones who worked at the Castle, but their families too. Spouses, kids, they’re all gone. Their homes are abandoned. The neighbors said they were there one day and gone the next.”

Mitch’s hand closed around his bicep, his mind going dark with the implications.

“Most of the houses are locked up, blinds drawn,” Seth continued. “But I found one with . . . a door ajar.”

“Right.” Mitch scoffed. “Dude, don’t go getting yourself in any more trouble than we’ve already made.”

“The houses are still mostly intact,” Seth went on with an uneasy urgency in his voice. “Like the people living there made a grab for essentials and bolted. It’s fucking eerie, man. And what’s even freakier—”

“Seth”—foreboding weighted Mitch’s gut—“you said
one
door was ajar—”

“Most of the houses have some kind of bloodstains.” Seth’s voice dropped, filled with fear and insinuation. “And I’m talking streaks, pools, dude, not a few drops. I’ve been to my share of accident scenes and suicides, have hauled dozens of gunshot and knifing victims to the hospital, and the amount of blood in these places . . . People don’t survive that kind of blood loss, man.”

Nothing but Seth’s breathing filled the line for a moment. Mitch’s shoulders were cold. He rubbed the back of his neck and found all the hair prickled on end.

“Any similarities between the employees missing? Did they all work in the same department? Did they all perform a certain job?”

“I’ve been focused on the lab employees. I figured the guards and those with military background would be less willing to talk.”

“Fuck.”
Mitch closed his eyes. “Get the hell out of there, Seth. Go back to Alyssa and Teague’s. Whoever’s doing this will be watching for us. If they suspect you’ve figured out that much, you could be in a really nasty spot.”

“I’ve already checked out everyone who lived in Bishop. I’m on my way out of town. There’s one more guy I need to check out. A Chuck Torrent. His home here was one of the few undisturbed and without blood. But he’s got two other homes.”

“Seth,” Mitch argued. “You’re obviously not the only guy who’s going to be looking for him. I don’t need anything happening to you—”

“This Torrent guy was Abrute’s lab assistant. They own homes in the same place. Their wives are friends. If I find Torrent, I might find Abrute.”

Mitch hissed out a breath. If Seth could find Abrute, the man could be an absolute gold mine of information. “Promise me, Seth, you’ll get out at the first hint of trouble.”

“You don’t realize how much fun I’m having, do you?”

“You don’t realize how hellish the rest of my life would be if something happened to you, do you?”

Seth laughed, but the sound didn’t hold any of his natural, deep good humor. The others would tear him to pieces if something happened to Seth because Mitch sent him on a mission. “True. I wouldn’t wish their wrath on even you, buddy.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Las Vegas,” Seth said, “then Palm Springs.”

“Joe’s flying you?” Joe Marquez, a former Air Force pilot and client, had become a trusted friend.

“Marquez is the bomb, man. Can I keep him?”

“No, he’s mine.”

Seth laughed again. Lighter. “He’ll get a big head if he knew we were fighting over him.”

“He’s good, Seth, with things other than planes. Like weapons. And tactical shit. Smart, savvy. Make sure he backs you up.”

“Oh, man,” Seth whined like a kid who’d been called away from his friends for dinner. “He’s not the backup kind of guy. He’s going to take all my fun.”

“Not as fast as Ryder would,” Mitch said. “I mean it, Seth. I don’t like you being alone out there.”

“Heh,” he huffed a laugh. “I’ll take Marquez over Ryder any day.”

Mitch got a couple of promises out of Seth before they disconnected, but his mind remained steeped in trouble.

And he still had to face some very dark corners with Halina.

Mitch stood, stretched, and returned to his seat. Halina’s eyes were closed, but her hand moved on Dex’s head where the dog still had it settled on her thigh.

He sat, twisted the top off a beer, and drank half the bottle before he took a breath. Hopefully that would kick in soon. He’d wait until the alcohol took his edge off before he tackled Schaeffer’s tie with Classified in more depth.

“Tell me how your ability works.” This would be far easier to start with. “It would be nice to be able to use it to get ahead of Abernathy instead of reacting to him. And if you can see the future, why didn’t you know I was coming to Washington?”

Her eyes opened, and she looked as exhausted as he felt. “It doesn’t work like that,” she said with irritation tightening her voice. “I can’t just
see
the future. I get flashes of the futures of others, but only people I’m close to and never my own.

“Everyone thinks it would be great to be able to see the future, but it’s not. I’m tortured with things I don’t want to see, things I don’t want to know. Like a girl at work who’s got a cheating boyfriend, or the child of a neighbor having a terrible accident, or a lover contracting cancer—” She stopped and her eyes widened at the same time the words sank into Mitch’s brain. Fear sizzled along his spine as she clarified, “Not you.”

Relief trickled in. “Good to know.”

“I don’t know how or why they come and I don’t have any control over them. If I did, I’d make them stop.”

“Why did you separate friends from lovers? Do you see their futures differently?”

She leaned her elbow against the arm of the chair and rested her temple against her fingers. “I don’t like talking about this with you, and I don’t see how that matters.”

“It’s not a freaking day in the park for me, either, Hali, but we won’t know if or how it matters until we put it with all the other pieces of the puzzle.”

She hesitated. “With friends, the visions come after spending a great day together, or after bonding over something, like a shared experience. With lovers, they come after sex.”

Mitch’s gut clenched, like he’d been hit. Stupid. He knew she’d had sex. With other guys. Probably great guys. Probably guys who treated her a hell of a lot better than he had over the last fifteen hours. Probably guys who didn’t slam her up against the wall and fuck her until she begged them to make her come.

His body ignited. Mitch poured the rest of the beer down his throat to keep himself from catching fire. But that didn’t help a million questions from bombarding him.

“And I have two different kinds of visions,” she said. “I have the kind I had in the car last night—quick flashes of danger involving someone”—she looked away—“someone I care about, and longer complex visions I have with lovers after sex.”

“How did you handle the boyfriend with cancer?” he asked. “Did you tell him about your ability?”

“No,” she said with an inflection that insinuated he was ridiculous. “I just found a different way to get him to see the doctor, where I knew he’d be diagnosed.”

“Well, you’re obviously not together anymore. Why? Did you leave him too?”

And as soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew he’d lost control again.

She sat straight and looked him directly in the eye. “No, I didn’t
leave
him. I went to every doctor’s appointment with him, every chemo appointment, stayed with him while he puked all night; then I got up and worked all day, went grocery shopping, and cooked for him when he was too weak. When he finally found remission, our relationship had changed so drastically we both agreed to just stay friends.”

Okay, he was an ass. He was worse than an ass. He rubbed his eyes.

“Another man I was seeing was a bicyclist,” she said, rage burning in her words, “and I saw an accident on a bridge he always crossed with his team that crippled him. Instead of letting him go on the ride, I made love to him so he’d be late and miss their meeting point. He took a different route that day and stayed safe. Two of his buddies died on that ride.”

Oh, the words were so close to slipping out. He twisted the top off another beer and took a long drink to drown them.

His mind turned to the freeway accident. “Did you see the gray SUV last night? The one that caused the accident?”

“I just saw the accident. I saw—” Her gaze went dark and dropped away.

“Saw what?”

She picked up her empty juice glass and rolled it between her palms. “I saw us in the accident.”

“I thought you didn’t see your own future.”

“Essentially, it was
your
future. I just happened to be there.”

His stomach went cold with the sudden realization of how horrifying that had to be. “What . . . happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” her voice softened.

“Did we die?”

“It didn’t happen,” she murmured, “there’s no point—”

“
Did we die?
”

She set the glass down with a hard
click
and met his eyes. “
You
died. Okay?”

The horror in her bright eyes, the glaze of tears filling them halfway, made Mitch’s throat close. His mind grew curious about exactly what she’d seen, but he doubted he could stomach the answer. Wasn’t so sure she could handle giving it.

He let a moment of silence pass. Let her wipe the tears out of her eyes and her breathing settle before he asked, “So what about this bicyclist guy? How did you stop seeing his future?”

“I stopped seeing
him
.”

“You must have found some way of dealing with these visions, Hali.” His frustration came to a boiling point. “Or, what? Did you just go through a series of short relationships? Sleep with a guy, realize you saw his future like the others, and then break up? And what about friends? Do your friendships end this way too? Is it different with different guys, different friends? Does it happen with some guys and not others? I mean . . . how does your power
work
?”

She was shaking her head before he even stopped talking. His frustration finally boiled over. He pushed to his feet, pacing toward the back of the plane, hands laced behind his head.

“I don’t know how my visions work because I don’t get close enough to anyone to figure it out. It’s less painful to live alone than it is to see the futures of the people I care about, then feel responsible for keeping them safe or worrying that the great break or happiness that was coming their way could be changed by some decision they made in the meantime.

“I don’t have friends, Mitch. Not like your friends. I don’t have boyfriends. Or lovers. I tried it twice. That was enough to know I couldn’t do it.”

Mitch stopped walking. He stared at the wall, absorbing her words. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t fathom such an isolated existence. Yet, he didn’t doubt her words. The research confirmed that information. Making love to her—correction, fucking her . . . he ground his teeth . . . had confirmed her sexual inactivity, but . . .