Shatter (26 page)

“I’m getting sick and fucking tired of these assholes,” Kai muttered, grimacing. “The whole lot of them.”

With the adrenaline wearing off, every inch of Mitch’s skin burned. He looked down at his arms and found his white shirt covered in blood. Had that been the reason for Halina’s frantic response to his white shirts?

The memory sent a shiver through his body.

Mitch wandered over to the table and dropped into a chair. He pulled his arm slowly out of his shirt. The action tugged glass from his skin and made it feel as if he were being ripped apart. He swore and paused a few times to breathe through the pain. And to thank God over and over that he’d gotten the brunt of the glass, not Kat. Not Mateo. Not Dex. Not Halina.

Luke sat in front of Keira, cleaning a cut on her temple, while Keira complained over his fussing, but never moved away. Mitch wished Halina had let him fuss over her. At the other end of the table, Teague started on Mitch’s remaining projectiles with long-handled tweezers.

Mitch’s mind and heart needed relief. Just a few moments of relief. He tried to let his mind go while Teague tugged and tore at his skin. Tried to keep it bent away from the life-altering moment they’d all just shared. Keep it from drifting toward what everyone could have lost. It wasn’t easy. Especially with Teague reminding him.

“Thanks for covering Kat, man,” Teague said. “I . . . don’t know . . .” He shook his head, his normally bright blue eyes deep gray with the almost-terror of what could have happened to his daughter.

“That was all Halina,” he murmured, letting the thought swirl in his mind until it found a place to land. “Halina and Dex.”

Quaid came in the front door, shaking off snow in the foyer, but kept his parka on. “Where’s Jess?”

His presence made Mitch realize how fucking cold he was in the house.

“Downstairs with the kids,” Teague said.

“Oh, sure.” Cash swabbed at Kai’s cuts with hydrogen peroxide. “She lets Jess stay, but I
hover
.”

Quaid’s mouth turned up in a half grin as he sat at the table in front of his project. A small knife, leather cord, and other supplies were laid out, and Quaid picked up a round piece that had been carved of material the same deep russet and bone color as the rest. But this had been honed into a circle, with another circle removed from the center so it was basically a flat ring.

“The guys split up,” Quaid said. “A few went to search the sniper’s location for evidence. The others are reinforcing and securing the plywood and checking the perimeter. They called in another half dozen for duty. With dogs.”

“Thanks, bud,” Teague said, tone flat, exhausted.

Mitch pointed at the shattered mess in front of Quaid. “What’s—?”

He flinched, cutting off his words, and darted a scowl over his shoulder at Teague. “Perfect opportunity to get back at me for all those jailbird comments, huh?”

Teague lifted his brows. “Hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it . . .”

He tugged another shard of glass from Mitch’s shoulder blade and pain sliced down Mitch’s spine. He swore and turned his gaze back to the ring-shaped thing Quaid was messing with. “What’s that?”

“I’m hoping,” Quaid said, wrapping copper wire around one third of the piece, “this will become a haven for Halina.”

“How?”

“This,” Quaid said, touching the material of the ring, then gesturing toward the mess of pieces beside it, “is part of that ferrite bead. It’s one of those ceramic things you see on top of telephone poles that wires run through.”

Teague worked at a particular deep piece of glass in the back of Mitch’s arm and Mitch kept flinching every time it hit a nerve. “Where’d you get that?”

“He climbed up the damn pole with that fucking hammer,” Kai said. “Dumbshit. I had visions of that metal head hitting those charged lines. I told him to let Ransom do it. Was hoping we could finally find a way to tap out a few of his snarky brain cells. But noooo,” he sang toward Quaid. “You never did listen to me.”

Quaid grinned, tying a black leather cord to the ring, and looked at Mitch. “The ceramic material acts as a damper or a choke for electromagnetic signals, absorbing them to some degree, which is why they use them on the telephone lines, to limit interference. This wire,” he pointed to the copper, “is a conduit. A way for her—when she develops the skill—to direct the stored energy, to either dissipate the heat or send it.”

“Send it?”

“Yeah, as in shoot it, move it, transfer it, whatever. Or she could also use it to give the energy somewhere to travel where it can dissipate as heat.”

Mitch rested his forehead on his hand. “And how is that supposed to help?”

One of Quaid’s dark brows lowered. His mouth quirked. Definitely a
use-your-brain
look. “It should absorb at least some of the electromagnetic energy that’s tormenting her with glimpses into alternate universes.”

Mitch sat back and got poked with tweezers. “Sonofa—”

“Hold still,” Teague said. “I can’t even think about healing you when you’ve got glass in there.”

“Alternate
what
?” Mitch looked back at Quaid. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t think Halina’s seeing the future—as in the concrete future. The ultimate future. Whatever you want to call it. From what she describes, from what I feel in her, and from what I know, I think she’s seeing possibilities of the future. I think she’s seeing into alternate universes which are serving up the most probable positive outcome based on the most probable choices available and the most probable negative outcome based on the most probable choices available.” Quaid grinned. “I know how much you love the topic of probability. Want me to explain how that works in the universe and alternate planes of reality?”

“Hell no.” A shiver slid down Mitch’s spine. “You’re saying she told you that when she has these visions, there are two sides, a good and a bad?”

“That’s how she explains it. They play side by side like mini-movies. That’s straight out of the alternate universe playbook.”

“Like there is such a thing,” Mitch grumbled.

“And hopefully,” Quaid said, ignoring him and holding up the ceramic ring, “until she can control her power better, this little gem is going to control it for her. Or at least help. Small alterations in the amount of material used, possibly even the placement on her body, could allow her an incredible amount of control over what information she receives. Who knows, maybe she can even send information. Hell, Jessica didn’t know she could transport until she found me. Imagine how information like Halina’s could be utilized.”

It was the first thought that came to Mitch’s mind. The second was whether or not Schaeffer knew about her powers.

The ring came flying at Mitch while he was deep in thought. He barely caught it before it knocked him in the forehead.

“Have her try it.” Quaid started cleaning up the mess in front of him.

Across the table Luke made a derogatory sound in his throat and shot Mitch a narrow-eyed scowl.

“You might want to think about starting out with one O, dude,” Luke said, his voice lowered to a fake confidential level. “Don’t try to live up to me in this situation. Who knows what multiples would do to her. Just relax and embrace your ordinary place among humans. We can’t all be above average.”

Keira snorted a laugh.

“The day you’re above average, Ransom—” Mitch started.

His cell rang. He looked at the display, which read GI JOE, and shot one more glare at Luke. “Oh, look. Someone I want to talk to even more than I want to talk to you. It’s the IRS.”

He stood from the table and jabbed at the phone to answer. “Young,” he bit out, walking toward the foyer for some privacy—something that was impossible to get within five hundred miles of these people. “What the hell are you doing, sitting on your hands? Abernathy just shot the hell out of Creek’s house and nearly blew my brains out the back of my skull.”

A second of silence followed and a trickle of fear slid down Mitch’s spine. “Owen?”

“He’s either desperate . . . or off his meds.”

“Off his
what
?”

“Conjecture on my part. I think the guy’s bipolar or manic or something.”

Mitch slapped a hand against his forehead, then winced. “And you didn’t think I’d want to know this?”

“It’s not a diagnosis,” Owen said, “it’s just my . . . feelings about him.”

“I’m so sick of
feelings
and
intuition
and
vibes
.”

“You sound like you need a vacation as bad as I do.”

Mitch rubbed his eyes. When he dropped his hand, everyone at the dining room table was staring at him. He turned and wandered across the foyer and into Teague’s office. Mitch pulled at his hair and turned to stare down the hall where Halina had disappeared.

The sound of the shower drifted to him, making him ache in the pit of his stomach and throb all through his pelvis. She was naked. Wet. Her hair dark. Her skin shiny. And, God, he not only wanted her, he needed her.

But when he thought of her face, he couldn’t envision her eyes hot and heavy-lidded. They still appeared wide with icy fear, and he longed to pull her into him and hold her.

“So what’s up?” Mitch asked.

“I’ve been watching more of the videos.”

Innuendo lay heavy in Owen’s voice, painting a thick line of dread down Mitch’s spine. “And?”

“And Halina has a hell of a lot more information than she’s admitting to. She’s the one who stole the tapes I told you were missing from the labs—”

“How can you know that?” Mitch’s protective response was immediate, fierce, and completely uncontrollable.

“That
backup footage
I was watching . . .” Young said. “You know, it’s called backup because the ones in front of it, usually called the originals, were stolen. Besides that . . . the backups recorded her
stealing the originals
. Are we clear there?”

“Got you’re an asshole.”

“Thanks. It’s always nice to have hard work acknowledged,” he said cheerfully, before his voice dipped back to serious. “And tapes aren’t the only thing she stole. About two weeks before she left, she began gathering information. To what end, I couldn’t tell you, though I could guess. I’ve been tossing blackmail and evidence back and forth. Haven’t decided which I like better yet. But she has
everything
.”

Mitch’s stomach squeezed with excitement and sickness. “What do you mean
everything
?”

“I mean she took digital images of every page of every file in Rostov’s lab. Then moved on to Gorin’s lab. Then did the same in her own lab. One night, she went into the refrigeration room they shared and pulled out a tray of test tubes. Started working with them. I couldn’t tell what she was trying to do—sabotage or investigate or what—but her hands were shaking so bad when she tried to put them away, she dropped a few.

“Whatever was inside them—which we know now was the chemical that your team was exposed to—hit the floor and splashed all over her. And right before my eyes, she burned. I watched as her skin bubbled and boiled on her body.”

Mitch’s stomach sank and he backed against a wall. His knees went out. He slid to the floor, his hand on his forehead.

“It was horrible,” Young said softly, true sympathy in his voice. “I’ll spare you the details and just tell you that she did her best to give herself first aid and eventually passed out on the sofa in her office. In the morning, every burn, every mark created by the chemicals was gone.”

He paused. The line went quiet. Ninety percent of Mitch’s mind was seven years behind him, pulling out nuances of Halina’s behavior he’d considered erratic at the time, but which he’d chalked up to stress or overlooked because of his own stress. He’d always told himself it would get better. That it was only temporary. He’d always believed they loved each other enough to weather anything.

But he hadn’t even known what the hell had been going on. Now he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it all.

“Are you going to tell me?” Young asked.

Mitch’s mind returned to the foyer. To the heavy, carved entry doors. To the chill coating his skin with gooseflesh. “What?”

“Her power,” he said, irritation stretching his voice. “What’s her power?”

Mitch blew out a breath, the shock in his belly slowly transforming to anger. She’d had all this information all this time and she’d held it back. Kept it secret. Risking everything that was important to him. Risking his
family
.

“We’re not clear on that yet.” His voice sounded cool, like it did in court when he was detached. “She seems to see pieces of the future, but when and how is sketchy. Quaid thinks she’s seeing alternate realities, not concrete futures. All these brainiacs keep talking quantum physics and probability schematics and electromagnetic energy gradients and shit. It’s all just . . . guesstimates at this point.”

“Don’t tell me, after taking down dozens of military top brass, cutting through the most secretive levels of espionage and conspiracy for the little enlisted guy, that you can’t figure out one fucking woman. One goddamned paranormal power when you’re surrounded by them.”

Young’s cut-through-the-bullshit approach stunned Mitch right back to stark reality.

“Get on your game, Foster. I’ve given you a hell of a lot to work with here. Maybe even everything you need to tie a big bow around Schaeffer’s fat neck and walk him into the AG’s office. All you have to do is get Beloi to cooperate.”

Young’s voice was the darkest, the most serious Mitch had ever heard it.

“What’s going on, Owen? You’re tweaked beyond capacity tonight.”