INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Kelly would have preferred to have stayed away
from the meeting. Hide in fact, but her folks hadn’t raised her that way. Good people don’t disappear when the hard things need to be done, her pops would say. Her mother would have nodded, lips pressed together, sad eyes downcast.

So Kelly was here, in Ling Mai’s very nice hotel room. Probably the nicest place Kelly had ever been. Well, not since she’d been an IR
agent. They’d passed through a number of very nice places, hotels, the estate in Maryland, even the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., but passing through was different than cooling your heels, waiting to meet with the director and Stone.

She’d left the new girl in the lobby, which worked out for both of them. It wasn’t like there was a lot of small talk to share.

Here Kelly was glad Jaylene was sitting shoulder to shoulder with her. That helped spunk up her backbone as Kelly’s sister, Carrie, would say. She did say, quite a bit as the two of them grew up.

Buck up, spunk up, live life
, Kels.

You only have one, don’t squander it.

Never show your fear because the bad people will smell it and use it against you.

Sounded more like something Alex would have said
, but it was Carrie who had been talking about Mary Jane Snodgross, the biggest bully in grade school. And middle school. And high school. If Kelly had stayed in Dubuque, Iowa, then no doubt, Mary Jane Snodgross, who was now Mary Jane Fender, would still be bullying her.

“You okay?” Jaylene nudged Kelly’s shoulder, yanking Kelly back to the room with a start.

“Yeah,” she lied. It wasn’t a real lie, more a white lie because Jaylene couldn’t fix what was bothering Kelly. None of them could. She knew that from first hand experience. Grief could only be buried, deep, so it didn’t bring you to your knees when you least expected it. She’d learned that when Carrie died. Now she was relearning the lessons all over again.

Rubbing her crossed arms as if she w
as cold, when the hotel room was a perfect temperature, Kelly reached for a shaky smile to offer Jaylene. That’s what friends did, and now that Alex was gone, Jaylene felt like Kelly’s only friend and ally. Mandy and Vaughn were peers but not sister-friends, not like Alex had been.

A
fter a faint knock, the hotel room door opened and Vaughn strolled in.

Kelly jumped to her feet. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” she tsked their team leader
, even as she toned down her rebuke with an ear-to-ear grin. It was so good to see Vaughn moving around again.

“Y
ou try more than two days in any hospital and tell me how well that goes.” Vaughn meant the comment as a chide, but Kelly could see it took the other woman too much effort to really be light and casual.

Vaughn always looked like the former debutante she was; tall, dark auburn hair, like a
fairytale princess, which is why Stone still called her that. But now it wasn’t with the edge he’d once used. Not since they’d gotten together as a couple. Kelly loved happy endings. Not that their relationship was ended. Or that they were really happy, happy all the time, but she could believe in them anyway.

Vaughn crossed to one of the plush silk chairs angled on either side of the fireplace. A real fireplace only with green ferns in it now instead of a fire.

“Stone’s going to be pissed with you,” Jaylene remarked from her place on the huge couch, one that dwarfed even the six-foot black beauty. Kelly always felt like the plain duckling around these women.

Vaughn eased herself int
o the chair, trying not to wince. She failed but her voice sounded more like leader Vaughn than hurt Vaughn as she waved one hand and said, “If I listened only to Stone, I’d be spending all my time in the Maryland compound, watching computer monitors.”

“Which is where you should be,” Stone growled.

Kelly jumped, never hearing the door opening again. Their instructor always moved like that. Quietly, like a big, dangerous, predator cat. Not a housecat stalking mice kind of cat.

Stone moved to where Vaughn sat. He acknowledged Kelly with a raised brow, Jaylene with a nod, but when he reached Vaughn
, he lifted one hand to her shoulder and let his fingers brush against her. A move so quick it should have meant nothing. But Kelly wanted to sigh.

For a man who showed so little emotion, unless it was to kick behinds in training, that subtle action spoke volumes.

Vaughn must have thought so too as her eyes softened, her lips curled in a half smile. “I’m fine. I promise.”

Isn’t that what they’d all been saying since they’d limped back from the brawl they’d had at the Palace of Versailles
? One that wasn’t even a team mission. Just helping a friend. Alex. Lot of good that did.

“Where’s everyone else?” Stone asked, looking at his watch as if he didn’t know to the second what time it was already. Patient was not what Kelly would call their instructor.

“They still have five minutes,” Kelly said, earning an eye roll from Jaylene. “What? They’re not really late. Not yet.”

“I’d have thought you’d have learned by now that there’s relative time and then there’s Stone time. The min
ute he walked through that door,” she jerked a thumb toward the exit leading to the hallway, “we’ve been running on Stone time.”

Kelly shrugged
as she eased back down on the couch. As far as she was concerned, she could use the extra minute or two to pull her shawl of composure around her. Better that than to have another hissy fit in public. Her folks would have been appalled.

Just as it looked like Sto
ne was going to say something, a loud knock pounded on the door. Kelly jumped up to open it.

Mandy, the last of the original team was standing there giving a who-invited-you look to the new woman who’d been at the gym and the young man who looked like he should be a
junior in high school, but had stopped the two shifters.

It was the new woman who stepped forward first, brushing past Kelly as she said, “
Nice to see you again, Barbie.”

Kelly had introduced herself once, even managed to get the woman to
the hotel, so what was up with her tone? On the other hand, some people didn’t catch names as easily.

“My name’s Kelly
.” But Kelly was speaking to her back.

“Whatever.”
New Girl snagged one of the empty chairs, leaving the remainder of the couch for Mandy and the young man. Wasn’t he named after a Greek warrior? Hercules, that was it. What a strange name to give a child, but after teaching kindergarten for years, Kelly shouldn’t be surprised by names anymore. Some of them were actually very fun.

“Her name’s Kelly. Get it right.” Mandy jumped to Kelly’s defense, which surprised Kelly. Except for Carrie, and Alex, she wasn’t used to that, especially from the Latina beauty
who had butted heads with Alex constantly. And that sharp, the pain of loss returned.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kelly said, wanting to soothe ruffled feathers and move beyond the grief. If this was to be their new teammate
, they needed to work together. At least if they were going to continue to be a team.

She was just in the process of closing the door when Ling Mai arrived. It seemed strange that the director entered her own hotel room after
everyone else. Sort of like the Queen entering the palace after all the footmen and guards. And Ling Mai was regal. Not tall, not even as tall as Kelly who was barely five feet five inches, but Ling Mai carried herself in that royal way, as if born to power and prestige.

“Good to see
everyone here,” the director said, after casting a smile at Kelly. A look Kelly was used to as the school principal used to have that same expression: a combination of surprised to see you but not expecting to see you around look.

Kelly closed the door
, then returned to her seat beside Jaylene as Ling Mai settled into the room’s remaining chair. The one facing everyone else—Kelly, Jaylene, Mandy and the boy on the couch. New Girl and Vaughn in the two chairs at an angle to the couch, directly in front of Ling Mai. Stone perched on the arm of Vaughn’s chair. No doubt ready to protect, as he hadn’t been able to at Versailles because he wasn’t there.

“Let us get down to business, s
hall we?” Ling Mai said with a faint lyricism to her words, as if an accent that had never quite been lost. Kelly had noticed the director never used contractions in her speech pattern either, which made her always sound a bit formal and standoffish. But it suited her.

“Introductions first.
” Ling Mai nodded toward the new girl. “Please?”

“Nicki Yarblanski,” came the response, followed quickly by, “like I told you all in the gym before Barbie huffed off.”

Kelly had never huffed in her life. She felt Jaylene stiffen next to her and saw Vaughn raise one perfectly arched brow.

Ling Mai continued as if nothing was out of the ordinary
, “Tell us where you’re from, Miss Yarblanski.”

Oh, oh, that wasn’t a good sign. The director only called a recruit by her formal name when there was trouble. Too bad
New Girl didn’t know that.

“West Virginia,” came the bitten
-off words, as if she was daring someone to say something about them.

“I’ve never been there,” Kelly jumped in, wanting to kick herself for being such a
lightweight, but she recognized that tone, and the way the new girl sat pulled in as if hunched for a blow. Self esteem issues most likely. Or she’d been hurt in the past. Hurt badly. “What part of West Virginia?”

“Mason City, Mason County.” Nicki looked at her with a what’s-it-to-you twist to her lips. “Not that it matters.”

“That where all the football players are able to rape underage girls and post the pictures on Facebook?” Mandy asked, her tone deceptively calm. Ouch!

“Nah.” Nicki shot Mandy a smile that didn’t climb all the way to her eyes. “We don’t have enough computers in my town to be all that effective. If you’re going to be debased we
post it on telephone poles or in store windows.”

This wasn’t going well. Not at all. If Alex
were here, she’d be able to stop this Yarblanski woman from digging herself into a deeper hole. But Alex wasn’t here. And that was part of the problem.

“My name’s Hercules,” the young man jumped in, either knowing what it felt like to be the new kid in school
, or nice enough to help diffuse the tension. “Hercules O’Brian. But everyone calls me Herc.”

“O’Brian?” Jaylene snagged the lifeline the boy offered. “Why not call you Finnegan or Taranis? At least they’re Celtic deities.”

“Guess my old woman didn’t think I looked much like a god of thunder, and my da knew all the words to the ballad.”

“What ballad?” Kelly found herself asking.

“There once was a man named Finnegan.

He had some whiskers on his chinnigan
.

The wind blew them off
.

And they grew in again
.

Poor old Finnegan
.”

The boy actually had quite a nice voice. Plus
, Nicki Yarblanski wasn’t scowling anymore, and both Jaylene and Mandy’s shoulders had eased.

Nice job, Herc.

“Hercules here will be working closely with the team to create offensive and defensive weapons for us,” Ling Mai said.

“You made whatever stopped those shifters?” Mandy asked, disbelief staining every word. This time it was Nicki who suddenly went still and tense,
more than she had been, which is why it snagged Kelly’s attention.

“Sure did.” Either Herc was a natural at deflection or self-preservation, which given the way he looked
had probably kept him alive on school grounds. “And I have more devices I’ve been working on.”

“Before we get into that
,” Ling Mai pulled back control of the conversation again, “why don’t you tell us where you’re from?”

“Here and there,” came the evasive reply, combined with a head duck that had his soft blond hair falling across his forehead. An effective hiding technique.

“Where were you born then?” Stone asked. More demanded, but then that was just Stone’s way. Like a bulldozer.

“I was born in Ankara,”
the boy said, his voice low. “Lived in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Texas, North Dakota. All over really.”

“Air Force?” Stone asked. Leave it to a former Special Force member to pick up on the meaning of the locations.

“Yeah. My dad was Air Force.” The way he said it meant don’t ask a lot of questions.

Kelly jumped in
, “I thought what you did at the gym was very impressive. But I couldn’t really see how you stopped those two.”

Herc cast her a grateful smile. “I got the idea from Spiderman,” he said, his smoky-
gray eyes lighting up. Oh, he was going to be a heartbreaker this one, once he grew out of his geeky, gangly stage.
Mamma, don’t let your girls off a very short leash.