... and, as the captain had suggested, he had been one hell of a pain in the ass every step of the way.
So far, he hadn’t crossed the line as he had in the Army, but he verbally abused everyone from the secretaries to the commanders, and the PCA had fielded two sexual-harassment suits against him, both of them settled out of court.
And now he was
Michael’s
partner.
Swell.
"Another hit already?"
Michael looked up at Christine. "Pardon?"
"Of coffee? Another hit?"
Michael didn’t even remember drinking the last cup. "Better not. I don’t want to be up
all
night. Maybe just some ice water."
"Sure thing." She left and quickly returned with a tall glass. "Doing some homework?"
"Not exactly. I graduated this past spring."
Christine smiled, and for the first time, Michael evaluated her as more than just
cute
. "What’s your degree?"
Michael hesitated for a moment, then decided that there was no reason to lie about it. After all, he wasn’t exactly an undercover agent. "I was going to be an engineering major, but I ended up going to the PCA academy."
Christine’s eyes widened. "You’re in the Paranormal Control Agency?"
"Yep."
"
Really
." To his pleasant surprise, she slid into the booth across from him. "So you’re an agent now?"
Michael smirked. "They call me ‘ensign’ — we follow Naval nomenclature — but yeah, I’m an agent."
"That’s so
cool
. Have you met any paranormals?"
"A few."
"Would you believe that I haven’t met a
single person
who got changed by the Paranormal Effect? Not one! I didn’t even get to see the White Flash when it—"
"Christine!" the supervisor called from the other end of the restaurant. "Order up!"
Christine grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Back to work." As she stood, she glanced down and seemed to notice the burn scars on Michael’s hands for the first time. "Ouch. Did that happen at the Academy?"
Michael scooped the cards back into the deck and started shuffling them again. "Uh, no. It happened ... earlier."
Christine didn’t have time to press for details as the supervisor cleared her throat viciously. "Later," she whispered, and hurried up to the counter.
As she walked away, Michael slowly stopped shuffling and set the cards down. He hadn’t meant to be
rude
to her, but, thankfully, she didn’t seem to take it that way. The Academy psychologist had helped him work through most of it — his therapy sessions had been a condition of his admittance and continued attendance — but his hands were still a reminder, and occasionally proved to be a soft spot.
Not that he would
ever
want to be completely over the ordeal — far from it. Michael had always believed in the philosophy that what did not
kill
us only made us
stronger
...
and he beat at the flames beat at them as quickly as he could and Jason screamed and he tried but
Michael’s hands tightened into fists. He took several deep breaths, counting to five each time before releasing the air. Then, almost of their own accord, his hands sought and found the deck of cards, and began dealing.
Ace of Diamonds, Nine of Spades ...
POWERHOUSE
"Lincoln!
Liincooln!
"
Lincoln sat bolt upright on the couch, completely disoriented and feeling like he had just jumped out of his own skin.
"
Liiinncooolnn!
"
Sarah
, he realized.
Shoulda known right off
. He threw the blanket back and hurried down the hall to his half-sister’s room.
"Lincoln!" she cried in relief when she saw him in the glow of the night light. She reached out to him with both arms, desperate for his embrace. Tears streamed in twin rivers down her face, and her lower lip quivered vehemently.
His heart aching at her distress — and all of it made worse by the fact that this happened at least once a week — Lincoln sat on the side of her bed and took her into his muscular, encompassing arms. The seven-year-old buried her face in his chest and sobbed uncontrollably. He knew of no words to truly comfort her, so he merely stroked her hair — hair the same exact dark shade as his own, and which complimented their mutually dark skin — and rocked her gently back and forth.
"Linc," came a drowsy voice from across the small room, "she okay?"
"Yeah, Tommy," he said softly. "Go back to sleep."
Tommy stared at the scene a second longer, then collapsed back into his own bed covers as if his sister hadn’t just screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night five feet from him.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s weeping showed no signs of slowing down. If she repeated her usual pattern, she would keep going at it hard for at least another few minutes. Then she should start wearing herself out and he could start the motions of getting her back to sleep.
Of course, Lincoln realized that what she
really
needed was some kind of therapist. The only problem was that, even if he could
afford
one, he couldn’t take the chance of the authorities finding out that he had Sarah and Tommy living with him in his one-bedroom apartment. If they did, they would take them and put them back into foster care ...
... and
that
was something Lincoln simply could not allow.
Lincoln Roberts hadn’t even known he
had
two younger half-siblings until a year ago. Their father had left Lincoln and his mother when he was five years old. The man had been a violent, raging alcoholic, and neither of them had been sorry to see him go. Then dear Mom went and got herself killed in a car accident, and Lincoln spent the remaining years of his childhood bouncing from foster home to foster home, never adopted and always dejected and alone.
After serving a brief two years in the National Guard, Lincoln wandered from job to job until he finally found something steady in construction work. He’d grown into quite a large boy — something that kept a lot of the nastier foster kids at bay during the dark years — and his size helped make up for what he lacked in quality education. Soon, he had a few pretty decent work buddies, and he thought that maybe life wasn’t so bad after all.
Then the old man died, drinking himself into unconsciousness and choking on his own vomit in the bathroom of some bar. And, by sheer chance, Lincoln found out about it.
A streak of morbid curiosity prompted him to check out what Pop had been up to over the last twenty years. One thing led to another, and Lincoln eventually found out that the bastard had gone off and spawned two more miserable children to trounce as he saw fit. What was worse, now that he had a little girl, Pop had discovered a knack for
pedophilia
. According to Lincoln’s humble research, the mother had even known about it, but as long as the old man worked just enough to keep her stocked with her own Vodka, she hadn’t been too concerned.
By the time Lincoln had learned all of this, the kids had been in foster care for over a year. Desperate to keep them from the same endless Purgatory that he had suffered, Lincoln feigned a distinct lack of interest in their welfare ...
... and then he found them, and he kidnaped them.
It hadn’t taken much effort. The System, backlogged, red-taped, and understaffed — and thinking the two were probably runaways, not abductees — continued to search for them, but without much resolve. And the kids, once they got over their initial fright and learned who he was and why he’d snatched them, quickly came to appreciate and love the caring, tender, older brother they’d never known.
Lincoln even learned that one of the other kids in their home had been trying to "play doctor" with
both
of them right before their departure, and
that
quelled any guilty doubts he had left. The authorities even stopped by to question him about Sarah and Tommy one afternoon, and he played it straighter than he would have thought himself capable of — with the kids hiding in the closet the whole time, no less.
For the last nine months, he had been caring for them to the best of his ability, giving them his room, keeping decent food on the table, and even doing his best to tutor them through home schooling.
Lincoln didn’t pretend to know how long he could keep this up. Even if Sarah
wasn’t
having chronic nightmares, sooner or later, one of them was bound to get
physically
sick — something store-bought Tylenol couldn’t handle — and he obviously had not been able to claim them on his medical insurance.
So he just took things one day at a time.
With a start, Lincoln realized that as he had reflected on the events that led him to this moment, Sarah had almost stopped crying altogether. Pulling her gently from his brawny chest, he looked down and whispered, "How you feelin’?"
"Better," she answered quietly.
"Bad one?"
She nodded.
"Same as always?"
Shrug.
"Want some hot chocolate?"
A brief pause, and then a nod.
"You be okay while I go make it?"
"... yeah." Brave sentiment, but he noted that her thumb had found its way to her mouth.
Rushing to the kitchen, Lincoln threw on a gas burner and filled the kettle with water. Giving Sarah a stimulant when she had to get back to sleep might not have been the wisest choice in the world, but his first priority was to comfort her any way he could. Then ... whatever the moment decided.
As Lincoln whirled back around, he reached to place the kettle on the back burner. At the last moment, he realized that in his rush, he had turned on a completely different jet, and that his left hand was an instant away from getting fried. He jerked back a moment too late...
... and then realized that he must have been wrong. He
wasn’t
too late, because his hand was fine. He’d felt just a second of uncomfortable warmth, then nothing.
Huh. He must have been a lot sleepier than he thought, because he could have
sworn
that his hand had brushed right into the blue flames.
Go figure.
PCA
Sarah eventually fell back to sleep that night, but Lincoln couldn’t. Between the time spent awake, and his own share of the hot chocolate, his body had decided that he was up for the day.
He arrived at the construction site early that morning. The new high-rise was just beginning to take shape, and there was plenty to do. After lunch, the foreman asked Lincoln to collect a few bags of cement to work into the mix. Lincoln smiled his easy smile and headed to the storage shed.
It would be his last easy smile for some time to come.
Entering, Lincoln evaluated in a glance that some jerk (or jerks) had been in a big hurry to clear out yesterday, because several pieces of equipment had been piled haphazardly on top of the cement bags. Such laziness was not looked upon highly by the foreman, but rather than start an issue, Lincoln decided to take the extra time to just clear the crap by himself. If the boss asked what took so long, he’d just say that he had to visit the john.
As he cleared the random tools, his mind wandered back to Sarah’s nightmares. He was worn out from lack of sleep, and this also contributed to his lack of attention. He had noticed the mess on top of the cement bags — he had not, however, spotted the jackhammer that had been carelessly leaned against the bags themselves. When he cleared things, he grabbed the first bag, and the shifting jarred the heavy article. Lincoln caught movement from the corner of his eye, but he was helpless to react in time to grab the machine, or to move his foot out of the way.