Fractured (12 page)

I wondered if this was going to be the last daylight I'd see. If they were going to lock me up, or maybe just kill me off.

I'd failed miserably and only succeeded in stirring up trouble for everyone.

I gnashed my teeth in frustration. I should have sent Gabe home when I had the chance. It was selfish of me to let her linger while I prowled the sidewalks. And now she was caught up in this ridiculous mess. I didn't even want to think about what had become of Jeremy and Marisa.

I thought back to what had happened just before Agent Strauss had scooped us off the street in Harlem. I'd dipped a finger into Ella Wavestone's fresh blood—blood shed at a crime scene.

I should have been able to learn
something
about her from that blood. Yet it was as if I'd been blocked from entering the vision. As if Ella Wavestone's mind was an empty room furnished only with shadows. I wondered if Agent Reston's so-called treatment had anything to do with that.

Clutching Agent Strauss's arm, she sashayed like a prom queen past the guards to an elevator bank.

The elevator shot silently up to the 35th floor. We entered a huge carpeted space surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. A prim young woman with a headset sat behind a horseshoe-shaped desk. She waved us by and we were led through featureless white halls to a blank-walled conference room, completely dominated by the massive glass table at its center.

After he'd helped Agent Reston to her seat, Strauss motioned for us to sit, then took his place of the head of table. Occasionally his gaze would wander to Agent Reston, who had so far failed to knock the smug grin from her face.

I cleared my throat and drummed my fingers on the glass. Gabe looked at me, eyes wide, and clamped her hand on mine, pressing it to the table. “Stay calm, baby,” she whispered. “We can do this.”

But I wasn't having it. “Where the hell are we?” I blurted, rising from my chair. “You can't just snatch us off the street and spirit us away. People will notice we're gone! We've got families!”

“Bear with us, Bobby,” Agent Strauss said wearily. Agent Reston's eyebrow lifted slightly, but the smile remained. It felt like they were planning some kind of sick surprise party in my honor. “Everything will be explained. But first, we want you to meet someone.”

A panel in the bare wall slid open sideways. Dressed in a cream-colored suit, Brendan Waveston walked in alongside a woman with extravagant copper curls piled high atop her head. Her tight black sequined gown looked like it had been painted onto her.

I turned to Gabe, about to ask who the floozy was, but she had already shot out of her chair and was halfway around the table.

“Mother!”

With the scent of her expensive perfume filling my nostrils, I should have recognized Isabella Sorensen the minute she waltzed into the room as if she was walking onstage. She looked like an older, nip-tucked version of Gabe.

Both Agent Strauss and Agent Reston stood to shake hands with the new arrivals.

Isabella Sorensen settled next to Gabe and began talking at a furious clip in hushed tones, totally ignoring me.

“Thank you so much for taking care of my darling,” she looked up and said to the agents breathily. Then she turned her gaze on me. From the way her black eyes flashed and her lips pursed, I could tell she believed I was the chief danger her daughter needed protection from.

She placed a protective hand on Gabe's arm. “I've got a room in the best hotel in this horrid city. I'll have your bags retrieved from campus. I think it's best we leave directly from here for the house in Vienna for a bit of peace and quiet before you go back to the academy.”

“Mother!” Gabe said, wrenching her arm free. “I'm not going. I want to be with Bobby!”

“
Bobb
y,” Isabella Sorensen said coldly, pronouncing my name as if it was a variety of poisonous spider. “Let's have a chat, honey. The agents need a little private time with
Bobby
and Brendan.”

Mrs. Sorensen was on a first-name basis with him, I thought. I glanced over at Wavestone, who was in an animated conversation with Agent Strauss.

Gabe cast me a desperate glance as her mother tugged her out of the room.

“Bobby Pendell,” Agent Strauss said, “I'm sure you've heard of Brendan Wavestone. Mr. Wavestone, meet Bobby.”

“Pleasure is all mine,” said Wavestone, leaning over to grip my hand. I was shocked by the momentary tingle that shot through my palm when our skin touched. A cloud swept across Wavestone's high-voltage smile, but vanished so quickly that I had to wonder if I'd seen it at all. “Agent Strauss tells me you've recovered my ring,” he said smoothly, giving no sign that we'd already given it back to him.

“Yes, ah,” I said, baffled. “But I, uh, don't have it with me.”

“Not a problem,” Wavestone said. “Its value is only sentimental. Which is why Ella stole it from me. My apologies for the trouble she and her brother Ellis caused. They were always…difficult children.”

I pressed my lips together, unsure how to respond. When Wave-stone had called his children “troubled,” it had never occurred to me they were the ones behind the recent crime spree. Though I was certain Brendan Wavestone would leap to their defense, that they'd be back on the streets in no time, I allowed a small measure of hope to bloom in my chest. If the Wavestones were at least arraigned for the crime, then maybe I was free. For now. Still, the thing I couldn't figure is why the Wavestone twins hadn't killed Marisa.

“I just wanted to thank you for your service,” Wavestone said. “I hear you
find
things.” His eyes gleamed and the emphasis on the word “find” sent a sharp chill up my spine. Brendan Wavestone
knew
things, but just what wasn't clear to me. “If the law is just, then my children will be incarcerated for life. Unfortunately, my ex-wife is wealthy enough to hire the finest legal counsel money can buy, so there's a good chance they will beat the rap.”

Wavestone was still smiling, but his eyes had gone hard. “Therefore, my advice is for you to take care. They know you played a part in turning them in, and they have long memories.”

I gaped at him. Any attempt at language was pointless. I had no idea what to say to this man who reminded me of a shark dressed in a suit. I shuddered. There was so much behind his smile, but like sun glinting on water, I could not see below the surface.

Wavestone presented me with his business card. “If you should ever need anything, I'm just a call away. Small world that you should be dating my friend Isabella Sorensen's daughter.” He smiled and added, “She was livid, by the way, so you best beware of her, too.”

With a quick nod of his head, Brendan Wavestone strode out the door.

“Pleasant, isn't he?” Agent Reston wore a vague scowl and waved a hand in front of her as if clearing the air of a foul odor. “I wonder if he bathes in his cologne. I'm certain he does that for my benefit.”

I felt the heat creep up the back of my neck. “Will someone explain what the hell's going on here? I feel like I'm a ball of yarn and you're the cats. What do you want with me?”

Agent Reston clasped her hands and smiled. “Relax, Bobby. Just delight in the fact that you solved the crime. And passed the test.”

Then the doors swished opened again, and in walked Jeremy Glass.

33

Jeremy

Sunday: 2:40 AM

W
hen they helped me hop over to the police cruiser, I expected to be taken directly to jail, do not pass go. Instead, I was deposited in a clinic that seemed to be a high-end spa for the rich recovering from plastic surgery. Giant chandeliers dripped from the ceiling, the lights kept low to play down the swollen and bruised flesh of the clinic's constituents. Young men and women in black uniforms padded the floor pushing champagne, coffee, or tea.

The procedure took less than an hour, but by the time it was over, the doctors had fixed whatever was out of whack with the stump and shot me up with painkillers and steroids. A team of technicians had fitted me with a sleek black plastic leg I named Veronique. They'd also cleaned Veronica so I could take her back home with me.

Veronique was so high-tech, I could bend, lunge, and even do the Harlem Shake with her. I was reunited with Marisa. She'd been cleared of any wrongdoing and no one asked her to testify about her attack.

We fell into each other's arms and hugged like we meant it.

Maybe this might not be the breakup weekend after all, but we both knew it was coming soon.

◆

When the two agents, Fray and Kramer, had presented me with the paper to sign, at first I had to peer closer to make sure I'd read correctly. My college tuition paid in full, free housing for life, and a yearly salary that made my dad's look like a joke. I wouldn't have to

do much, they said, just be available for occasional missions.

They'd asked me if I needed time to think.

I asked them if they were joking and did they have a pen.

◆

When I was led into the nondescript conference room, Bobby was sitting there staring at his knuckles. He looked like he hadn't slept since the night we'd met. I didn't think he had.

His eyes zeroed in on me like cold blue lasers. He knew at first glance that I'd sold out.

Did I really have any choice? When they fit me with the most advanced prosthetic leg in the known world for nothing if I signed on the dotted line, how could I refuse? It was either that or a life on crutches.

Bobby could afford to play the diva. He could see—sort of. He could walk. He had actual talent besides being a psychic detective. All I had was a big mouth and the ability to run, and now, thanks to bone spurs, my running days, the doctors had told me, were over.

But a new kind of life was just about to begin.

34

Bobby

Sunday: 11:25 AM

“Y
ou fucking bastard,” I said.

Jeremy Glass shrugged. When he'd glided in like a ballroom dancer, I knew something was up. They'd bought him off with a new leg, and who knew what else.

“Jeremy made the best decision for his future, Bobby,” Agent Reston said. “Psychic phenomena often occur after physical trauma. Jeremy's abilities manifested after his accident. The agency finds them quite useful for our purposes.”

“But not,” she added, turning to face me straight on, “as useful as yours.”

“You've proven yourself to be a highly valuable operative, Bobby,” Agent Strauss said. “One we can't let slip out of our hands.”

His last sentence rang like an organ chord in my ears.

“You can walk away, Bobby,” Agent Reston said, “and take your chances that another event won't materialize. But keep in mind that without our treatment, you'd currently be hospitalized, most likely locked inside your own body in a minimally aware vegetative state. You'd deteriorate rapidly, your vitals failing. Until it would be lights out. Forever.”

Jeremy looked at the floor, cheeks flushed, unable to meet my gaze.

“You've got a flair for the dramatic, Maura,” I said.

Her brows lifted above her dark glasses, but she only smiled.

“I like the fire in you, kid,” Agent Strauss said. “I like that you think for yourself.”

“Once you sign with us, we'll implant a monitoring device that will permanently allow you to manage your visions,” Maura Reston said. “But you won't be permitted to sign until your eighteenth birthday next month.”

“And if I don't agree to sign?”

“As a kindness, we'll administer enough treatment to get you to your eighteenth birthday. After that, you'd better hope like hell your life will be perfectly ordinary.”

I balled my hands into fists and banged the glass tabletop. “So you're saying that if I don't sign, once I turn eighteen I'll have no way to survive these visions without your help?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

I swallowed and then looked at Jeremy, who still stared down at his feet. Memories of the horrors I'd faced when I'd tracked down a serial killer in my hometown swirled in my head. Of the memories of the enormous warehouse filled with crime evidence I could barely see, and mostly feel. There was no end in sight.

If I signed, I'd be their tool for life. They'd own me, body and soul.

“Then I think I'll take my chances on ordinary,” I said.

35

Ella

Sunday: 7:48 PM

I
couldn't believe my good luck that the hospital guards had left their posts.

This was it. My only chance to make a statement. Show him who, in the end, was really the boss of my life.

My life. What life? I didn't remember a life, only snippets of moments when I was allowed to feel joy, before the cold hard hand squeezed the happiness out of me.

Paranoid schizophrenia was the diagnosis. They'd tried every treatment under the sun, but none of the meds worked on me. I'd be fine for a while, but then the crazy violent urges would come back to enslave me.

Yet my mind worked clearly now. And I knew I wanted to live. To explain why and how I'm innocent. That I'm not a killer.

Instead, my fingers continued to deftly tear the bed sheet into thin strips and secure them with strong knots. I tried to think of Ellis. And hoped he was having a better time of it.

I doubted it. I'd always been the stronger one.

The occurrence of fraternal twins with the same mental illness was extremely rare. I was the darling of the psychiatric researchers who'd all published papers at her expense.

I'd fought as hard as I could.

But there was no fight left in me.

I looked up to where I thought the monitor might be, and hoped maybe it was just a ruse. But I knew. I'd tried to escape, tried to fight, and lost. It was over.

I sorted through the few precious memories I possessed, like treasures—the two of us scampering along the beach, the salt wind in Ellis's long hair. A few paces behind, Mother smiled at Daddy.