BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy (29 page)

He closed the door and joined her on the edge of the bed. The springs squeaked under the added weight. He appeared tired, but there was also a sense of purpose to the set of his jaw. The intensity of his gaze set her nerves on alert. She opened her empathic senses to him and was immediately disappointed—but not surprised—to find his emotions shielded. It bothered her that he’d learned to do that; he was one of the few who could. She wished he hadn’t found it necessary.

She recalled the depth of the unguarded feelings that had emanated from him on the day they’d first met in the Redondo Beach Library. At the time, she’d been overwhelmed by the connection. The attraction she’d felt for the man was unlike anything she’d experienced before. And it wasn’t just a physical draw, though she felt that as well. It was something far different. There was a unique emotional quality about Jake that was indefinable. She’d tried to shrug it off, especially in light of his rude manner at the time. But it had been no use. The bond had been forged. Could she find the strength to break it now? Did she have any choice?

“Feeling a little better?” he asked. His tone felt a bit too casual.

“Much.” She sat up and propped her back against the headboard. It was hand-painted with a wreath of colorful flowers. She wore a white cotton beach dress that she’d borrowed from Papa’s wife, Carmen. The scoop neck was more revealing than she would have liked, so she adjusted the straps self-consciously, guarding herself for whatever was coming.

“It’s amazing what a few hours of sleep can do,” she said.

He nodded absently, as if he were trying to find the right words. After a moment he said, “I love you, Francesca…more than you could ever know.”

The words tore at her heart. She checked herself.

“Ever since that night in Venice…” His eyes softened, and his voice trailed off as they silently shared the memory.

“You’ve been there for me,” he continued. “Unconditionally. Right down to uprooting yourself from your home and family to come to California.”

He waited a beat. She squeezed his hand.

“That meant the world to me. It still does. But…”

Her stomach twisted.

“I haven’t been honest with you.” He shook his head. “Hell, I haven’t been completely honest with
anyone
since I launched that damn Armageddon magnet into space.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, I keep telling myself that. But it doesn’t do much good. Regardless, the time for secrets is over.”

“Secrets?”

His lips tightened. He nodded sheepishly.

“The thing is,” he said, “the entire obelisk didn’t make it into space. A small part of it—a pyramid about the size of a baseball—was left behind. I took it.”

This conversation had taken a confusing twist. Francesca folded her knees up to her chest, linking her hands around them. “What about it?”

“Okay, here’s the deal. That miniature pyramid—I call it the mini—has a sort of life of its own. When I first triggered the object, it created a link with my brain. In the blink of an eye, it exchanged a mass of information with me. That’s how I learned its purpose. At first I thought it was just a scanning device, a way for the object to determine whether or not man’s mental abilities had breached the threshold they’d established.”

“So you kept the…mini?”

“I didn’t just keep it. I never let it out of my sight.” He hesitated. “The link got stronger every day. It strengthened my abilities beyond what they were after the MRI accident. I couldn’t take in data fast enough. My brain gorged on it. The library, the Web, TV, you name it. I wasn’t satisfied unless I was streaming info into my head. I learned four new languages in less than a week.”

She recalled the time. He’d vanished from his friends’ lives. Everyone had been worried, especially her.

“After a couple weeks, I stopped sleeping altogether. My brain wouldn’t slow down enough to let me doze off. The only thing that seemed to distract me was running full bore on the beach. I’d do it late at night so no one would notice, because with the mini in my pocket, even a racehorse would have trouble keeping up.”

The news alarmed her. “That’s not natural.”

“At the time, a small part of me suspected as much. But it was a like a drug. The more I got, the more I wanted. Nothing could stop me.”

“But something did. You came back to us.”

“Yeah, that’s because what goes up must come down. One day I simply…collapsed.”

Francesca held her breath.

“My mind went blank,” he said. “Like a hard-drive crash. It was three in morning. One second I was sprinting and then…nothing. Two days later I woke up in a bed at Little Company of Mary hospital. They had me listed as a John Doe because I hadn’t been carrying ID. The nurse told me I’d been in a coma. She said my heart stopped twice. When she rushed off to tell the doctor I was awake, I hightailed out of there.”

She felt her eyes moisten. He embraced her. It felt good. “I could have lost you,” she whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Besides, I locked the mini away in my apartment. It’s more than my body can handle. Despite the fact that the MRI accident caused some sort of evolutionary leap in my brain structure, the rest of my body is still stuck in the twenty-first century.”

He hesitated before adding, “According to the doctor I saw last week, it’s taken a toll.”

Francesca remembered the panic she’d felt when his heart failed in the schoolyard. The memory sent a legion of spiders up her back. She squeezed him tighter. For a moment, the rest of the world faded away.

Finally, Jake pulled back. His eyes seemed to take in the room for the first time. She followed his gaze. The room was a study in the contrast between boys and girls. Two finely dressed dolls framed a row of children’s books on the dresser beside the girl’s bed. A sparkly hairbrush rested beside a small table mirror, a dish of multi-colored barrettes at its side. Everything in its place, even the line of stuffed animals that stared up at Francesca from the base of the bed.

The other side of the room was a different matter. The dresser drawers were partially open, a sock hanging over one lip, the top surface all but invisible under an army of toy soldiers and action figures. A few of them had found their way to the floor. The Spider-Man bedspread was pulled back, revealing a homemade sock puppet that she imagined was the little boy’s last holdout from his nursery days.

Jake’s features softened as he took it all in. She felt him struggle with whatever it was he wanted to say next.  

“So,” he said, taking her hand. “We’re going to have a baby.” 

“Yes,” she replied tentatively. She searched his eyes.

“There’s something I have to ask you,” he said.

He blew out a breath.

And another.

Francesca tensed.

Time stretched.

Maintaining a grip on her hand, he shifted off the bed and onto one knee.

Dio mio!

Jake’s shoulders dropped and the walls surrounding his soul crumbled. Francesca felt his warmth. She reveled in the rare glimpse of the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with. A smile threatened to replace her open-mouthed look of shock. She knew she should stop him, but her voice failed her.

“Francesca,” he began, “I don’t know if I’ll be alive tomorrow, or next year, or twenty years from now. But I do know that I don’t want another minute to go by without—”

The bedroom door flew open and banged against its backstop. Marshall stood there, his face ashen. “Battista…” he said breathlessly. “He’s on the friggin’ house phone!”

Jake rushed out the door.

Francesca wept.

Chapter 51

South Central Los Angeles, California

J
ake raced down the hallway on Marshall’s heels. “Dammit, Marsh. How in the hell did Battista get Papa’s home phone number?”

“You got me, man. The dude has been one step ahead of us the whole time.”

Skirting past the oversized table in the breakfast nook, they ran through the kitchen and past Carmen—Papa’s stout wife—and her young niece, Ophelia. The two women wore colorful aprons and from the steaming pots on the stove, it was apparent they were elbow-deep in prepping dinner. The aroma of refried beans and grilled chicken filled the air.

Carmen had a white-knuckled grip on the wooden spoon she used to stir the beans, never missing a beat in spite of the sudden excitement that invaded her home. This wasn’t the first dance for the former gang leader’s wife. She glanced over her shoulder as Jake rushed past. Her tight-lipped nod said it all. It was likely the same expression Papa received from her on similar occasions. It said, “Whatever it takes,
jefe
, get this threat away from our home.”

Jake returned her nod.

He and Marshall entered the converted garage. A curved, soft-pillowed couch centered the room, facing an immense rear-projection TV. The bar that hugged the opposite wall was framed beneath mirrored shelves filled with at least two dozen different bottles of tequila. Papa had bragged about the collection many times, though Jake had never seen it in person. A ceiling fan turned overhead, softening the stale pall of cigar smoke that hung in the air. There was a round game table with six chairs in a corner of the room. From the two juice sippers on the table, it appeared as if Sarafina and Josh had been sitting there. Bradley must have escorted the children and Max from the room when Battista’s call came in.

 Tony, Becker, Marshall, and Lacey hovered around a furious-looking Papa at the far end of the room. The hardened Latino swiveled his chair around to face Jake. His back was to a cluttered desk. He wore a white muscle tee over jeans. The exposed olive skin on his shoulders and arms rippled with tattoos. His shaved head and angry expression reminded Jake of a bullmastiff poised for attack. He held a cordless phone in one hand, while his other palm covered the mouthpiece.

“The son of a
puto
called my home,” he growled. “He’ll only talk to you.”

 Jake maneuvered around the couch and accepted the phone from Papa’s outstretched hand.

“You bastard,” Jake said into the phone. He noticed that Francesca had followed him into the room.

“Now, now, Mr. Bronson,” Battista’s raspy voice said over the phone. “Is that any way to inaugurate our reunion?”

“What the hell do you want?” Jake said.

“No pleasantries at all? Shame on you. Don’t you want to know how I’m doing? Do you feel no remorse? After all, the last time we saw each other, you dropped a grenade in my lap.”

“A lot of good that did. Next time—and believe me, there
will
be a next time—I’ll stick around until it’s finished.”

“Ha! Such drama. I’m sure you’ll try, but not today. No, today you and your friends are going to do exactly as I say.”
Jake sensed the smile behind the voice.

“Go to hell.”

“Let me ask you,” Battista said calmly. “Is your friend Tony nearby?”

 Jake’s breath caught in his throat.

“Your silence speaks volumes. Put the phone on speaker. I want you both to hear this.”

Jake muted the mouthpiece against his chest. He absorbed the anxious faces of his friends.

Locking eyes with Tony, he said, “Brace yourself. The bastard asked for you.” Jake caught a rare flicker of fear behind his friend’s eyes. “Everyone one else, stay quiet.”

He placed the phone on Papa’s desk and pressed the speaker button.

“You’re on speaker.”

“Excellent. There’s someone here who would like to say hello.”

There was a shuffling noise over the phone. A young voice said, “P—Pops?”

It was Tony’s son, Tyler.

Tony’s face drained of color. He picked up the phone, grasping it in both hands, as if by doing so he could pull his child closer to him. “Tyler?” he said. His voice trembled.

“Pops!” Tyler said, the fear in his voice palpable. “They came during dinner. A bunch of ’em. They shot Papa’s friends and…I—I think they hurt Grams, too.”

Tony’s face shut down faster than a slammed door. The ferocity emanating from him seemed to squeeze the air out of the room. Beside him, Papa lurched to his feet, his eyes on fire.

“Tyler,” Tony said, “are your sister and Mom okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. They’re locked upstairs. Mom hit one of them with a frying pan and she wouldn’t stop yelling at ’em so they tied a scarf around her mouth.” The boy hesitated a moment before adding, “Pop…at least they let me keep my PSP and—”

He was cut off and Battista’s voice sounded through the speaker. “I believe you’ve heard enough.”

“You sick bastard,” Jake said. “What the hell do you want?”

“What do I want?” Battista replied. “You mean besides the ultimate conversion or death of every infidel on the planet?”

“Yeah, asshole. Besides that.”