Apparently, that was exactly what Waid was counting on, too. Lincoln was startled when a dazzling light burst from her silver eyes. It was very swift and very bright, like a camera flash. Even though she was facing away from him, the backwash off the glossy wooden door was enough to send spots scurrying across his vision.
"Open the door, Lincoln," she ordered, stepping back.
Taking his turn at the lead, Lincoln grumbled, "That’s ‘Powerhouse,’ please," as he gave the door a casual shove. It cracked on either side of his hand, but it also snapped right off the doorframe. It struck whoever was on the other side harder than he would have preferred, but it got the job done.
Waid rolled her eyes as Graham gave a mean-spirited chuckle. "Sure, kiddo," she purred as she moved past him and into the house. "Whatever you say."
Once inside, Lincoln quickly realized that the man underneath the unfettered door wasn’t moving. Fearful that he’d hurt him more than he’d thought, Lincoln reached down and tossed the heavy wood to one side.
"Jesus!" he cried, jumping back when he spotted the PCA badge.
But the man still wasn’t moving. His eyes were open, and he was posed as he had probably been when he’d peered through the peephole — he hadn’t moved a muscle, even when Lincoln knocked him down. A high-tech looking firearm rested in the man’s left hand, but it was now a useless trinket in his paralyzed fingers.
Well,
he thought,
now I know what those silver eyes of hers can do
.
Another pop-flash, followed closely by a woman’s scream, echoed from deeper inside the house — Lincoln’s partners had not waited for him. He rushed forward into the living room just as the smell of ozone and a horrendously loud
crack
of lightning assailed his senses.
There were two more P C Agents present in the house, but Waid and Graham had already dealt with them, each in their characteristic, paranormal fashion. Linda Nolan, a fifty-something woman wearing nothing but her nightgown and an open robe, cowered in the corner. The television continued to offer the late-evening news until Graham silenced it with another miniature lightning bolt. Nolan screamed again.
"Shut up," Waid muttered, annoyed. Her eyes flashed once more, and Nolan froze solid, like a DVD on Pause. Her eyes wide, her hands splayed, her mouth open ... so far as Lincoln could tell, she was barely
breathing.
"Any others?" Graham asked, peering carefully around a corner. "Don’t the PCA usually work in pairs?"
"Not this time, I guess," Waid answered with a shrug. "McLane said there would only be three. But we should expect company soon."
"Then we’d better hurry," Lincoln pitched in. As the others looked on in surprise, Lincoln stepped forward and knelt before their frozen target. "Can she hear me?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Yyeeeeaaaahhhh," Waid drawled, as though she were uncertain where he was going with this.
"All right, Ms. Nolan," Lincoln barked in a ludicrous tough-guy voice. Nolan, of course, did not react. "We understand you’ve got a court appointment coming up pretty soon. You’re going to forget about that, get it? You’re going to tell the DA that you won’t be testifying, see? You’re going to—"
"I don’t
believe
this guy!" Graham suddenly interrupted with an all-new burst of his trademark laughter.
"
Powerhouse
," Waid asked, his codename dripping with sarcasm, "just what do you think you’re doing?"
Lincoln was baffled. "I’m ... I’m doing what we were sent here to do ..."
"Oh,
please
!" Graham bellowed, stepping around him so that he was standing directly over Nolan. "You’re
killing
me!" Raising his hand, he shot one of his electrical bolts directly into the woman’s face. Her hair stood on end, her flesh immediately welted ... and her eyes burst from her head. Then her hair caught fire.
Screaming, Lincoln fell over backward and scrambled away from the ghastly sight. "
What are you doing
?!" he cried, gasping in shock.
"What do you
think
, you moron!" Graham yelled back. No more simple mockery — he was sincerely disgusted by Lincoln this time. "Is this some
TV show
to you?! Huh?! You really thought we’d just tell her to keep her mouth shut and she actually
would
?! She already agreed to testify
once
, stupid! You really gonna trust her to just roll over
now
?!" He glared at his masked partner a moment later, then shook his hands as though to brush something filthy away. "Waid, how much juice did you give’em?"
"The usual. They’re not moving for at least another ten minutes or more."
"All right. Go bring the car up front — take
stupid
here with you. I’ll finish up."
Waid, who was slightly more sympathetic than Graham, gently touched Lincoln’s shoulder. "Come on, kiddo. You won’t want to stick around for this." That was the end of her coddling, though, as she left him where he was — sitting on his ass, his heart thundering in his chest so fiercely that he could barely breathe.
Graham gave Nolan one more bolt, this one aimed at her chest. He glanced around and sent another small one into the drapes, which caught fire even quicker than Nolan’s hair and robe. The next one leaped into the bookcase ...
Now, as Lincoln slowly grasped the true nature of his situation, he was able to figure out what Graham was up to.
He’s going to burn the house down. Burn it down with the P C Agents still inside, alive and conscious, but paralyzed.
Graham was zapping the couch now, his back to Lincoln. Gagging from the stench of Nolan’s charred flesh and hair, Lincoln slowly climbed to his feet ...
I should kill him. Right now. Even if he sees me coming, I might be able to survive long enough to get my hands on him. It wouldn’t take much. Hit him in the head, the back, the neck, the gut. I could break him like a twig, then run. Get Sarah and Tommy. Call the police, the PCA. Somebody ...
But what if he didn’t run fast enough? What if he
did
? What would happen to Sarah and Tommy once the authorities found out about them?
Never in his life had Lincoln so truly, completely understood the notion of being between a
rock
and a
hard place
. To let this continue was to participate in
murder
...
oh, you’ve already done that much, "Powerhouse"
... but to stop it might condemn his brother and sister to the purgatory of the foster system, if McLane didn’t get them first.
Graham finished his electrical arson, then turned and saw Lincoln staring at him. "Still here, stupid? You gonna wait for the cops or what?"
It would be so easy. As strong as I am now, just punching him in the face would do it.
Lincoln’s hands balled into fists.
Suddenly, Graham began to sense that perhaps he wasn’t as in control of the situation as he thought. He glanced down at Lincoln’s clenched hands, then at the growing walls of flames around them. "Hey, uh, Powerhouse, it might not be a bad idea for us to
vamoose
, you think?"
When Lincoln spoke, in spite of the spreading fire and thickening smoke, his words came out very slowly. "Linda Nolan is dead. I can’t do anything about that now. Either way, our job is done, right?"
Graham was very nervous now — whether it was due to the heat of the room or the chill in Lincoln’s voice was uncertain. The fact that Lincoln stood between him and the exit probably had an effect, too. "Yeah ... sure."
"Fine. I don’t recall Mister McLane saying
anything
about torching this place. So I’m going to pull these Agents out of here. And
you
are going to help me. Understood?"
"Listen—"
"
Understood?
"
Graham coughed. "Yeah. But—"
"
What?
"
Very
nervous now, Graham coughed again. "I, uh, I think the guy I zapped’s probably dead, too."
It was another blow, but Lincoln didn’t have time to acknowledge it now. "Fine. We’ll save the other two. I’ll grab this one, you grab the one by the front door. We’ll take them out and leave them on the lawn. If you don’t help me, I’ll kill you."
Graham helped.
PCA
The silence of their initial car trip was nothing compared to the absolute
vacuum
that now held sway within the vehicle. On the way to the Nolan residence, Lincoln had sat in the backseat behind Waid, trying to put as much distance between himself and Graham as possible. Now he again sat in the backseat, but this time he moved over directly behind the cowed redhead, reminding him without words that Lincoln was now the master of their relationship — a swift kick, or even a casual swat, and Lincoln could end Graham’s life just as easily as the electrical paranormal ended Linda Nolan’s.
The same people were still in the faux recording studio when they returned. As before, McLane and Scar Face were talking, while the other two merely listened.
"... strike
Davison’s
very soon," McLane was saying, and he didn’t sound pleased. "Leaving that little brat for dead was a mistake, I see that now. Besides, we need to find out more about this ... ah, our team has returned. I trust all went as planned." He waited patiently for their report. When none of them said anything, McLane’s brow furrowed. "Well?"
Lincoln stood a step behind Graham, his arms folded casually. Waid stared at the floor. That left it up to Graham to offer, "Yeah, for the most part."
McLane clearly did not like what he heard. " ‘For the most part?’ What exactly does
that
mean, Graham?"
Graham tried to shrug it off. "Nolan’s out of the picture. Like you said, the DA’s case will fall apart without her testimony, so our people will go free. It’s all taken care of."
McLane fumed, "You’re not telling me something, Graham. I find that very irksome. Perhaps
you
would like to explain, Ms. Waid?"
Waid glanced up at her boss, then gestured over her shoulder at Lincoln as she skulked over to her previous chair. "Ask
him
."
Now McLane looked to Lincoln, and for the first time appeared to absorb the change in the masked man’s bearing and the new strength in his eyes, the only part of his face available for inspection. "I see ..." He stood, sauntering around the table and over to the water cooler. Filling a paper cup with deliberate calm, he prompted without turning around, "So, ‘Powerhouse.’ It seems that perhaps you have some news for me?"
Stepping forward, Lincoln shouldered Graham aside. The electrical man stole the opportunity to fade into the background to the best of his ability. "Yes, sir," Lincoln admitted, "I do."
McLane downed his water and performed an about-face. "And?"
"We need to get one thing straight, Mister McLane. You’re paying me to perform certain duties for you. Fine. I can go along with that. You know I need the money."
"Indeed," McLane interjected with a small touch of that cold smile.
Lincoln pressed on, "But what happened tonight is going to be
off-limits
for me. Do you understand? You want me to steal? Fine. You want me to break something? Fine. But I will
not
kill anyone for you, Mister McLane. I won’t go that far for you, no matter
how
much money you pay me."
"Ah," McLane noted, as though he had not a care in the world. "Well, I appreciate your candor, Lincoln. It’s very helpful to know exactly where you stand."
Lincoln almost thanked the man, but instead held on to his current front and remained silent.