Hunted (Talented Saga # 3) (24 page)

“Natalia, please.
Donavon said that you’re a good person,” Kandice begged. “You know this is wrong. I can see that you do. Please help him.”

“The place is surrounded, Kandice,” Erik said sadly.
“There isn’t much we can do. They know you’re in here.”

“NO!” Kandice screamed, jumping to her feet and running to the small window at the back of the room.
She pounded her fist against the glass, shouting obscenities at her unseen pursuers.

I never heard the shot.
The window splintered as one bullet tore a perfect hole through the glass and landed in Kandice’s chest. Blood soaked through her white sleep-shirt. She fell in slow motion, her body contorting almost gracefully as she floated to land on one of the beds. At first, shock paralyzed me. My body felt numb, my mind detached. I just stared, convinced that any moment, I would wake up and this would have all been a terrible dream. Surely, surely this was not really happening. Mac promised me no one would get hurt. The whole point in sending me on this mission was to prevent anyone from getting hurt.

Slowly, feeling crept back into my limbs. My brain caught up with my eyes and I knew all of it was real.
Screams tore from my throat, shattering the remaining pane of glass. I struggled against Erik, finally breaking free from his grasp. Kandice was only feet away, but the distance felt like miles. Kneeling beside her on the bed, I pressed my hands over the bullet wound in her chest. Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding, I chanted silently. I might hate her, but she didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this.

Kandice’s
face had gone ashen. Her body trembled. I didn’t know what to do. Toxic had trained me how to take a life, not save one. “No, no, don’t die!” I shouted, believing I could make her hold out through sheer will alone.

She covered my now crimson hands with her pale white one.
“Natalia, please don’t let them have him, please,” she mumbled. Bloody foam formed around her mouth. “I’m so sorry we hurt you.”

“No, you won’t die.
Just hang on. We’ll get help,” I urged her, my tears adding to the liquid rapidly spreading across her chest.

“Take care of him, please,” she rasped.

Kandice’s lungs rattled beneath my fingers. Her body gave one last horrible shudder. Her warm brown eyes rolled towards the ceiling, and the last spark of life and fight left her.

Her death wasn’t the first I’d witnessed or the most personal.
It wasn’t even the most gruesome. But it tore me apart all the same. The world I lived in, the life I’d chosen, was violent. Not until just then, holding Kandice’s cold, cold hand, did I truly grasp that. The Agency said they protected people, helped people, but at what cost? How many people died needlessly so Toxic could take their children? How many times had this same scene been played out? How many more lives would be lost for the greater good?

Bile burned the walls of my throat.
I welcomed the sickness fighting its way out of me. I wanted to expel what I’d just seen in any way possible. I turned my head just in time for the vomit to land on the wooden floor instead of Kandice. Even when there was nothing left in my stomach, I continued to dry heave.

Erik’s hand was warm on my back.
He rubbed up and down my spine as I continued to cry for Kandice. An odd urge to laugh bubbled up inside of me because of all the crying I’d done lately, Kandice dying was the first time the waterworks made any sense.

When I finally mustered the courage to meet his gaze, Erik’s eyes mirrored the pain in my heart.
Perched on one hip was Alexander. The boy had his face buried in Erik’s shoulder and one small thumb shoved in his mouth. The sight brought on a fresh wave of tears; no child should see their mother murdered.

“He didn’t see it, at least,”
Erik sent, trying to make me feel better.
“He’s blind, Tals. It’s common in Viewers.”

Of course, I thought.
That’s why his eyes were out of focus and why he’d been wearing sunglasses in the picture that I saw. Erik offered me his free hand. At first, I didn’t take it. In life, I’d hated Kandice from the moment I first glimpsed her in Donavon’s bed until the last breath she took. In death, I wanted to mourn her, stay with her in that cabin forever. I didn’t want her to be alone.

“There isn’t anything more we can do for her,” Erik said quietly, following my gaze to
Kandice’s lifeless eyes.

I said nothing, remaining next to her body on the bed.
Using two fingers, I eased her eyelids closed. I wasn’t religious, but I prayed for Kandice. I prayed that in death, she would find a peace she hadn’t known in life. I asked whoever was listening to tell her I would grant her dying wish. Toxic would not keep Alexander. Mac would not hurt his grandson. I would find a way to keep him safe.

When I was finally finished, I took Erik’s outstretched hand.
I clung to his fingers as we made our way from the destroyed room. Neither of us spoke. Alexander whimpered softly. Erik stopped abruptly at the bottom of the porch. He released my hand, shifting Alex’s small body on his hip.

“Take him for a second,” he said, disentangling Alex’s grip on his neck.
I hesitated, reluctant to touch the boy. “Just for a second, Tal.”

I reached for Alex, wrapping my hands around his waist.
I cuddled him to my chest, his warm body thawing the iceberg surrounding my heart.

Erik withdrew a blade from his pocket.
My eyes widened when I realized what he was about to do. Erik rolled back his sleeve and quickly sliced through the skin of his forearm. He winced slightly as droplets of his blood colored the gravel red. He pulled his shirt back down, the blood from his wound soaking through the fabric. He held out his arms to me, offering to take over the burden of carrying Alex. While I’d been reluctant to hold the boy at first, now I was reluctant to give him up. After a brief moment of internal debate, I handed Alex over. Erik settled the boy back on his hip, took my hand, and led me back down the drive.

Graham was waiting for us by the SUVs.

“Why did you shoot?” Erik demanded.

“I got worried.
You were taking too long. And from what we could see through the window, she didn’t seem to be agreeing to give up without a fight,” Graham responded matter-of-factly.

I was about to scream obscenities at him, but the increased pressure from Erik’s hand stopped me.

“Burn the house,” Erik ordered in the same tone I used when I controlled people.

Graham appeared skeptical at first, but then nodded to one of his nearby men. “You heard him.
Burn the house,” Graham called.

Erik dragged me to where Cadence was leaning against the car door, nervously tapping her foot.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she exclaimed when she saw us. “Here, I’ll take him,” she offered, holding her arms out to Alexander. Erik seemed oddly disinclined to let the boy go and I thought he might refuse her. Turned out he didn’t have to. Alex gripped the collar of Erik’s jacket and whined in protest when Cadence put her hand on his small back.

“It’s fine.
I’ll hold him. He’s scared,” Erik said, waving her off. “Tal, why don’t you get in the car?” Erik suggested, softly prodding me in the direction of the open door.

I stared at him blankly like I couldn’t believe he wanted to pretend everything was okay.
Everything was NOT okay. He pushed more forcefully and against my better judgment, I complied.

“You okay?” Cadence asked me, ducking her head inside the SUV.
She actually seemed concerned. She reached over and pulled at my bloody hands that were now clasped tightly in my lap.

“She’s fine,” Erik said curtly, all the tenderness that he’d shown me in the cabin gone.
“It’s not her blood. It’s mine. I cut myself.” I gave him a questioning look because, after all, it was Kandice’s blood. But I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it because an enormous explosion erupted and the wooden cabin went up in a giant orange ball.

Erik slid across the seat, careful not to jostle Alex.
When he was situated close enough our legs touched, the boy shifted his head, so it rested on my shoulder. I rubbed his back awkwardly, not sure if that was what I was supposed to do.

“We can’t take him back there, Erik,”
I sent.

“We don’t have a choice,
Tals. If we run now, they will kill us and him,”
he sent back. He refused to look over at me, but he did reach for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

“There is more going on than we know.
You heard her. And Donavon wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of hiding him if he didn’t have a good reason,”
I argued.

“I know.
I know. Just give me some time to think. We’ll figure this out. I bought us some time by having them burn the house. It will take at least a couple days for Toxic to work out who he is without Kandice’s body. Hopefully, by then, we’ll have a plan,”
he replied.

“What will happen when they realize he’s Donavon’s?”
I asked, scared that I already knew the answer.

“I don’t know,”
Erik lied. But I could tell that he was just sparing my already fraying nerves.

“Will they arrest him?”
I pressed.

Graham and his men were already making their way down the hill.

“If he’s lucky,”
Erik said gravely.

Graham climbed into the front seat and brought the engine to life.
The remainder of his men piled in and we set off for the plane.

“Did you find out the boy’s name?” Graham called over his shoulder.

I tightened my grip on Erik’s hand, urging him to think of something fast.

“Alexander Kraft,” Erik answered smoothly.
“The mother didn’t get a chance to tell us too much more.” I relaxed slightly at his quick thinking. “We might have learned more if your men hadn’t shot her.”

“What’s his Talent?” Graham asked, seemingly oblivious to Erik’s harsh tone.

“He’s a Viewer, hard to tell how strong he is because he’s so young,” Erik replied, squeezing my hand to warn me not to disagree.

I had no intention of contradicting him; I didn’t want to give them a reason to want this boy any more than they already did.
It had been apparent to both me and Erik the moment we got close to Alexander that he was incredibly powerful, which meant Mac would feel it, too.

“Good.
Toxic hasn’t seen one of those in a long time,” Graham declared, smiling at us in the rear view mirror.

I recoiled in my seat.
Graham might not feel Alex the way that Erik and I could, but the hunger in his eyes unnerved me.

Alex kept his small body glued to Erik, refusing to sit in his own seat once we boarded the plane.
Cadence talked to the boy in a soothing tone, trying to convince him to let her buckle him into a separate chair. Alex shook his small blonde head back and forth and grunted in frustration, but he never actually spoke. Erik waved off any further attempts to take the boy from him.

I sat in my own chair chewing my lower lip nervously.
Kandice’s words kept replaying in my head:
“Part of the reason he doesn’t want them to have Alexander is because of you. He said the way they used you, that’s the way they would use him. Something about your blood.”

My blood?
What was wrong with my blood? Then another memory surfaced. When I’d been injured on my first mission as a Pledge, Henri had burned everything that had been contaminated with my blood. At the time, he’d said it was protocol. I hadn’t really understood what that meant, but Toxic had a lot of regulations and “protocols” that made no sense.

“Why did you cut yourself?”
I sent to Erik.

“Explains why I had the cabin burned.
I can say I was just following protocol,”
he sent back.

“Why is it protocol?”
I insisted.
“What’s so dangerous about leaving an Operative’s blood lying around?”

“I really don’t know.
That’s just how it works,”
he replied.

I mulled this over for a while and finally decided to ask Anya when we saw her later.

After we’d been in the air for several minutes, Alex crawled off Erik’s lap and moved unsteadily across the small aisle that separated our seats. His tiny fingers curled around my thumb, yanking insistently.

“Up,” he grunted in a child-like voice.

I looked at Erik uncertainly. He shrugged and gestured for me to pick the kid up. I tentatively reached down and grabbed Alex under his armpits, lifting him into my lap. He curled his chubby legs around my waist and buried his face in my hair, gripping a fistful in the process. The dampness from his milky eyes made my neck slick and I had to blink back my own tears.

“It’s okay.
Everything will be okay,” I whispered softly, rubbing his back. The delicate curve of his spine shook under my hand. With all the uncertainty in my life, there was one thing I knew for sure - I was not letting Toxic have him. Donavon and Kandice had risked their lives – Kandice had given hers – to protect him. Her sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.