Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (34 page)

“One, two…three,” he said and grunted with the force he applied to his door.

I put my shoulder into it and between the two of us, the doors opened. Behind them there was a second set of doors, about three feet up from the floor of the elevator.

We repeated our maneuver on the outer doors, which was much harder this time since the doors were at hip level. After much grunting and swearing the doors retracted.

I stared down the corridor into a wall of flames.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Come on,” Jamie said. “This is the way out.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He looked at me, and the ghost of a smile crossed his features, an echo of the one he’d given me before he jumped out the window at the camp.

“As serious as I’ve ever been in my life,” he said. “Unless, you know, you’d rather bake in the elevator car like a muffin in a tin.”

I swore under my breath. “Help me with Eric,” I said.

We each put an arm around Eric and helped him to his feet. He grunted, swayed a little and then straightened himself up.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

The taut set of his jaw and the paleness of his face suggested otherwise, but arguing wouldn’t get us anywhere.

Jamie sat on the edge of the hallway floor and swung his legs up, then offered a hand to my brother. After Eric climbed up, breathing in sharply in pain, Jamie held the same hand out to me.

I looked up at him, and our gazes connected. His eyes were dark and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Reaching out, I grabbed his hand and pulled myself up.

“This way,” he said, heading toward the flames.

My feet slowed as we approached the inferno.

Jamie, shoeless and shirtless, strode down the corridor, his steps getting bigger the closer he got to the flames.

“There,” he shouted over the roar of the fire, waving a hand toward it. “We want that door, on the right.”

The door was not yet alight, but the carpet in front of it smoldered. The open flames were twenty feet away, less.

I glanced at Jamie’s unprotected skin, and pushed past him. Sucking in a breath of superheated air, shielding my eyes with one arm, I wrapped my other hand in my shirt and grasped the door handle. I fought the pain that seared my fingers and shoved the door open.

Eric jogged through it, followed by Jamie, who took a leap over the smoking carpet. The acrid scent of it made my throat burn, and I followed them through the door and slammed it shut.

With the door closed the temperature dropped noticeably. We were in some kind of break room with a small kitchen at the back. Lockers lined one wall.

“There’s no exit,” I said, beginning to panic.

“There is,” Jamie said, and pointed to a half man-height maintenance hatch. Screws held it closed.

“How do we get in there?” I said.

“Take a look in the kitchen,” he said, heading for the lockers. With the point of his elbow, he rapped the door of the end locker hard and it popped open. He stuck his head in and moments later emerged with a triumphant smile, and a pair of bright pink rubber clogs.

“They’re not really me,” he said, sitting down to put them on. “But they’ll do. Did you find anything?”

Eric, who’d been busy in the kitchen, held up a knife. “No tools, but this might work.” He went to the hatch and began painfully turning the screws with the end of the blunt blade.

I went into the kitchen, looking for another knife, when Jamie pulled a screwdriver out from under the sink.

He must have seen the disbelief in my eyes. “What?”

“How did you do that?”

My heart nearly fractured as one of those lightning-wicked grins lit up his face. “Finding is an odd and unreliable Talent. You can’t control it, but if you go with the flow everything will work out most of the time. Now, let’s get out of here.”

In moments, the boys had the hatch off and we were through it. The crawlspace on the other side amounted to little more than a tunnel. Pipes ran along one side and wiring along the other. We were among the veins and bones of the building.

We came to an intersection and Jamie, leading, paused and then turned right.

“Talent, again?”

“No,” he said. “There’s smoke down that way.”

At that moment a metallic groan filled the tunnel, sending terror all the way to my toes.

“We should probably hurry,” he said.

The tunnel ended in a maintenance room, with a regular door on the other side. It opened easily into a hallway. The air here was clear.

A glowing green exit sign pointed us toward the stairs. Jamie hesitated with his hand on the door.

“We might run into people on the stairs. Be prepared,” he said and swung the fire door open.

The stairwell—brightly lit and at least temporarily empty—held a hint of the smell of smoke. I assumed it had come through the doors as people exited, since nothing here seemed to be burning.

We went up the stairs as quickly as we could, ten flights to ground level. Eric’s steps slowed as we went higher. I offered him my arm but he shook his head and gripped the stair rail harder.

 
Because the building lay partly above ground and partly below, the stairs continued on above ground level. The ground level floor was painted in bright red stripes—whoever built this place had wanted you to know where the way to safety lay.

Jamie took a deep breath and shoved the fire door open. It took us straight outside, into the manicured grounds of the Institute. The fresh air had never tasted sweeter.

The night was moonless and I realized I’d had no comprehension of what time it was, or of how much time had passed.

“Thank God,” I said. “Let’s get as far away from here as fast as we can.”

That wasn’t particularly fast, with Jamie limping and Eric moving like an old man. We’d slowed as we exited the building, the adrenaline that had pushed us on and out draining away, leaving me with weak rubbery legs.

We followed a concrete path around the corner of the building. At least ten fire engines stood in attendance, bathing the scene in red strobe lights. Institute staff in clusters filled the parking lot, some holding blankets around themselves, some sitting on the curb. We blended right in.

I glanced up at the building. Smoke drifted from some broken windows. Most of the fire was underground, I assumed, and I didn’t envy the firefighters who had to go down there to fight it.

“I vote,” Jamie said, “that we go to the far end of the lot and steal a car.”

For once, I was not inclined to argue with him. We made our way along the edge of the lot. In the poor light, no one would recognize us, and with all the police and firefighters around I didn’t expect anyone would try to recapture us.

At the end of the lot, Jamie picked out an older Japanese compact, and opened a door.

“Crappy car, but it’s not locked.” He crouched down and started fiddling about, his head under the steering wheel.

Eric climbed into the back seat and lay down the best he could, being a little tall to fit.

Jamie straightened and turned to me, smiling. Then the smile dropped from his face, his expression filled with horror.

“Turn around slowly,” the Major said from behind me.

Due more to the fear on Jamie’s face than the Major’s instructions, I rotated slowly and came face to face with him and his sleek little gun.

Next to him stood Justine, her gaze locked on Eric.

“It’s odd that you managed to escape,” Major Hudson said. “Even with that flake Murphy and his gypsy Talent. How did you get the door open?”

He mused for a moment, stroking the gun. “I assume someone must have let you out. Fortunately for us, you had the poor luck to be trying to steal Justine’s car when she and I were planning on leaving in it.”

“What are you going to do?” Jamie said. “You have no cells available to lock us in. You aren’t going to shoot us in cold blood with all those police over there.”

“Murphy,” the Major said. “It appears that someone has told them I’ve been…detaining some Talents against their wills. Right now the police are looking for me to have some discussions. That makes me less concerned about what they may think of me.”

He took a step forward, and I took an involuntary step back.

“Step away from the car, both of you, and I won’t shoot you.”

I stepped away instantly. Today, I wanted to get out of here and find somewhere quiet where I could talk to Jamie, tell him I was sorry, and hug him, if he’d let me. The Major could drive straight to hell for all I cared.

The Major didn’t move and I followed his gaze to where Jamie still stood in front of the car, dark eyes glittering.

“Screw you,” he said. “If you want this car, you’re going to have to go through me.”

The Major moved fast, turning the gun from me toward Jamie.

As the shot rang out I reacted, throwing myself across in front of him. Pain blossomed from the side of my head and I hit the ground, a second slap of pain.

Jamie fell to his knees beside me. “Holy Christ.” His face paled as he looked at me, and he pressed a hand to the side of my head. It hurt.

Groaning, I rolled onto my back into a spreading puddle of warm wetness and watched as the Major raised the gun again.
 

“I said, step away from the car, Murphy.”

Afterward, I thought long and hard about what happened next, and in retrospect it felt like a dream. A bad one.

Instinct took over and I reached for the Talent that had lain dormant inside me all these years, waiting for me to relax my mind enough to understand myself and see what I truly was—a chameleon, a catalyst for trouble.

“Put that gun down, Major,” I said, raising my right hand, even though it cost me.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to argue with me, Wilson.”

My hand was my avatar. I took Eric’s power that I’d carried all day and channeled it down through my arm, through my hand, until in my palm a small yellow flame burst to life. It was warm, welcoming, like a candle, and made the stabbing pain in my head seem much smaller.

“What are you going to do with that,” he sneered. “Light my cigar?”

I opened my mind, closed my hand, and unleashed hell.

Chapter Thirty-Four

A blast of fire sprayed out from my hand and I threw it down the line of parked cars behind the Major. Heat blasted out from the cars as they burst into flames. Windshields popped, alarms blared, upholstery crackled.

The Major stumbled forward onto one knee.

Unsated and rich with power, I had to let it out somewhere. Turning my head, my gaze came to rest on the Institute building. Lifting my hand, I reached out toward it.

Jamie’s hand came around my wrist, stopping my impulse.

“There may still be people inside,” he said.

I nodded, incapable of speech at that moment, and rolled my head back to regard the Major.

He’d gained his feet again and now had the gun trained directly on me.

“You won’t burn me,” he said confidently.

“She won’t have to.” The voice came from behind me. Eric stepped forward, into my field of vision. “You fucking bastard.”

The Major looked surprised, and a little disgusted, as if he’d been confronted by a homeless man on the subway.

“You made me a murderer. You set me up.”

“I didn’t make you do anything that wasn’t inside you already, Mr. Wilson.”

“You set up Justine to break my heart. And you fucking shot my sister.”

“What are you going to do?” Major Hudson sneered. “You’re still under the influence of the suppressors.”

“Amazing what adrenaline can do, isn’t it?”

The Major opened his mouth, but stopped, his face filled with doubt.

Eric didn’t have to raise a hand, his power an old friend to him. The Major began to smolder, as if he’d sat down way too close to the fire.

He screamed when his shirt burst into flames, and then he turned and ran from us through the parking lot, his body and head immersed in fire as he ran. The smell of singed fabric and scorched meat filled the air.

His screams tumbled over the top of one another as he disappeared around the corner. Those screams will stay with me forever—high pitched, like a child’s.

One of the cars exploded with an echoing boom, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air.

“Let’s go,” Eric said. “I’ve wasted enough of my life in this place.”

“She needs a doctor,” Jamie said. “Let’s go back to the Order. I don’t want to explain these injuries in a regular hospital.”

“Where did Justine go?” I croaked, finding my voice.

“Shit,” Jamie said. “Don’t worry about her now. You need help.”

He had one hand pressed to my temple, a little too strongly for a caress, I thought dimly. He picked me up and bundled me into the car. As he carried me, I rested my head against his shoulder. He smelled like home.