Tempest (19 page)

“Aaron knows he hasn’t chosen an easy life, but it’s the one he wants. He’s determined to stick with it.”

Teresa rolled her eyes. “How nice for him. Most of us don’t have the luxury of changing identities when our current one gets to be too much trouble.”

The need to defend Aaron sent a sharp retort straight to my brain, but I beat it back. She wasn’t wrong, and she had no good reason to believe that King the Changeling wouldn’t leave Aaron Scott behind and become someone else. I knew better. Noah and Dahlia were physically bound to each other now, and Ace the Changeling could not shed Noah’s identity without killing Dahlia—and he would never do that. Aaron would not leave Noah behind.

“Would you?” I asked.

“Would I what?”

I looked her in the eye. “If you were able and it made your life easier, would you become someone else?”

Teresa held my gaze for a beat, then shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t. For better or worse, this is who I am, Ethan. My life is challenging and often life-threatening, but I have you guys. I have Gage, and I love him. I wouldn’t change any of that, even for guaranteed safety.” She paused, eyebrows furrowing. “Would you?”

I’d spent half of my life pretending to be someone I wasn’t, and now that I was getting comfortable in my own skin, there was no way I’d change it. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”

Not for anyone.

Not even if it meant diminished chances of getting blown up again in the near future.

Eighteen

High Pressure System

M
y bedroom window had a nice view of our massive backyard. The property originally came with an empty swimming pool, a tennis court, and a guesthouse. We kept the tennis court for the exercise potential, while the guesthouse was remodeled for training purposes. The pool’s Spanish tile foundation had been destroyed a long time ago as target practice for Teresa’s orbs, and the hole had yet to be repurposed. Various patches of open grass beyond the pool were torn up, and those marks were fresh, probably due to Denny’s powers. I’d lay even money that some of the tallest trees at the rear of the property had claw marks from Kate.

The two newbies were on my mind because they’d also invaded my line of sight. They were in the yard, just beyond the back patio, getting a self-defense lesson from Marco. Physical altercations would always be a possibility in our line of work, despite our powers, and those kids needed to know how to defend themselves. I wasn’t naïve enough to bother hoping they’d never use the skills Marco could teach them. They would.

Kate and Denny moved about ten feet apart, facing each other. Marco said something. Denny rushed his sister. She sidestepped him, grabbed his arm by the wrist and shoulder, and used his momentum to flip him ass over teakettle. He hit the ground on his back. Kate jumped up and pumped a fist in the air, her excited “whoop!” making it all the way through my closed window to my ears.

Marco nodded sagely, then gave Denny a get-your-ass-up gesture.

They repeated the exercise three more times, changing it up with each charge, and every time, Kate expertly avoided Denny’s attacks. Months ago, Marco’d given each of us a refresher course on hand-to-hand combat and self-defense tactics. It seemed an odd hobby for our resident computer expert and shapeshifter. Marco Mendoza might not say much, but he was a hell of a teacher.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door, and I jumped. “It’s open,” I said as I turned away from the window.

Aaron took a step inside, then paused. My heart sped up just a notch as he looked around my room.

“I just realized I’ve never seen your bedroom before,” he said.

Such as it was. My material possessions had once fit into a backpack, which had been destroyed during the journey from Arizona to California. The most I’d managed to accumulate in the last nine months was a collection of clothes, a tablet of books I liked, and a watercolor of the ocean that Alicia had painted for me a few weeks ago—an early birthday present, she’d said. I hadn’t even changed the paint on the walls from the original forest green.

The bed and a night table were the only pieces of furniture in the room. “There’s not much to it,” I said. “After I moved out on my own, I never really stayed in one place long enough to get attached to things.”

“It’s very green.”

Code for boring. “You can come in.”

Aaron blinked, then seemed to realize he’d paused halfway into the room. He came fully inside, then closed the door. “How’d it go with your friends?”

“Better than I expected, actually. I told them about McTaggert. Renee was more upset that I agree with the pardons than with the reveal of my parentage, but I think she’ll come around. She’s got a good heart. It’s just been broken a lot.”

“You didn’t tell them”—he seemed to struggle for the phrasing—“anything else?”

I closed the distance between us in a few long strides, stopping an arm’s reach from him. My skin warmed just from his proximity, and my pulse jumped. “One bombshell at a time. How about you? How did things go with your family?”

“Better than I expected, especially when I told them I want to go back to New York.”

My brain stumbled for a response to that one.

“Not right away,” he continued, when I didn’t speak. “But if Hudson is successful and the pardons are granted, I want to go back and help the Warren residents. Whether they stay in Manhattan or go elsewhere, I think I can be useful to them.”

“What did Dr. Kinsey and Noah say?”

“They were surprised. But Ethan, the more I told them about the people there and what they wanted to create, the more they understood. Dad knows they need a good doctor. He could be really useful there.”

“He’s useful here.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but it slipped through anyway.

Aaron smiled sadly. “But I’m not. Noah’s only useful when Dahlia’s out working with your team, and even then he’s secondary to what she’s doing. They get why I want to do this.” He lifted his right hand, like he wanted to touch me, then put his hand back down. “Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Things are still pretty uncertain right now, but if it works out that I can go back and work with Simon . . .” He paused as his eyes searched my face, eyes vividly green while mine were pale, looking for something. “Will you go with me?”

My heart slammed against my ribs. I was both scared and thrilled by the question. Could I leave my friends, my teammates behind, and follow Aaron to Manhattan? Maybe. The entire thing was hypothetical, but could still potentially happen in the near future. And what if this thing between us was no more than a briefly passing fancy? I couldn’t make a decision like that based on unfocused and very new feelings for someone I’d basically ignored up until a week ago.

I had no answer for him.

“I guess it’s not fair to ask you that now,” Aaron said when my wide-eyed silence had gone on too long. “How about I leave it as an open invitation, dependent upon future events?”

“That’s reasonable,” I said.

“Good.”

My gaze dropped to his mouth, his bobbing Adam’s apple, then back up to his eyes. “So how about spending a little time being unreasonable?”

He grinned and in a whip-fast move, had me spun around with my back against the door, hands pinned above my head. He pressed his hips against mine and worked a thigh between my legs, and blood rushed to all points south. His kiss left me dizzy in a fantastic, don’t-you-dare-stop kind of way. I ground against his thigh and kissed him back until we were both half hard and breathless. I tugged against his grip on my wrists, both anxious and turned on by the restraint, and by being less than ten feet from a bed—

The house’s intercom system buzzed its urgent alarm, and I groaned against Aaron’s throat. We froze.

“Lounge, right now.” Teresa’s voice bellowed over the intercom with a disturbing mix of anger and fear.

Aaron and I pulled apart. I didn’t spare any time wondering if anyone would be able to tell we’d just been making out. The urgency in Teresa’s call worried me. We left my room and nearly ran over Renee, who was leaving her own room one door down and across the hall.

The television was on in the lounge, tuned to a national news station broadcasting footage of a building that seemed familiar, with a wet, gaping hole in the exterior wall. Teresa was pacing in front of the sofa, a cell phone to her ear, her skin oddly pale. Gage watched from behind the sofa, his face stuck between concern and fury. Dr. Kinsey and Dahlia came in just behind our trio.

“We’ve got a huge problem,” Gage said, looking right at me. “Ten minutes ago, while Freddy McTaggert was at Hackensack visiting his son, someone attacked the hospital.”

My heart nearly stopped. “What? Are they all right?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I took two steps toward Gage, hands balled into fists, before stopping myself. Gage wasn’t my enemy.

“They’re missing. Freddy and Andrew either left willingly with the hostiles, or they were taken. All we know for sure is that one prison guard is dead, three are injured, and four members of the hospital staff are wounded, as well.”

Logical follow-up questions eluded me and I just stared blankly at him.

Aaron—who’d thought clearly enough to put on Scott’s mask—picked up the slack. “What about Simon? He was supposed to have escorted McTaggert today.”

“We don’t know that, either,” Gage said. “Teresa’s trying to get more information, but Simon isn’t answering his phone, and the local police on-scene are not being helpful.”

I turned to the television, finally recognizing the building on-screen as the hospital I’d visited several times. The hole was visible one floor below the Children’s Ward where Andrew had been. Emergency vehicles and personnel cluttered the scene. The scroll at the bottom of the television screen read “Jail Break: Dangerous Meta At Large.”

The image shifted to an on-the-scene reporter. Someone unmuted the television.

“Information is still coming out about the terrifying events that occurred here less than fifteen minutes ago, while police try to sort out just what happened when three unknown Metas descended on this small metropolitan hospital. We do know that there has been one fatality, multiple injuries, and that former Bane and federal prisoner Frederick “Jinx” McTaggert is missing, along with his eight-year-old son, who was a patient here at Hackensack University Medical Center.

“According to prison officials, McTaggert had received a brief, conditional release to visit his son, and was doing so when the attack occurred. Eyewitnesses are reporting that the attackers used powers that are being described as Meta in nature, and that McTaggert seemed to be their primary objective. One hostile is said to have been extremely fast, another to have manipulated a jet of water. Members of the former Ranger Corps who currently reside in Los Angeles were apparently in New Jersey as recently as this morning. However, witnesses say the attackers did not match the descriptions of the former Rangers team led by Teresa “Trance” West.”

A loud feline snarl announced that Marco and the twins had arrived. He hadn’t shifted, but that did not stop his angry growling as he glared at the television. I agreed—so nice of the reporter to tell us we weren’t involved in the attack/possible kidnapping.

A male voice-over asked, “Lori, what are the chances that this former Bane called Jinx used the opportunity of visiting a public hospital to break himself out of prison?”

I bristled and made a jerking move toward the television. Aaron grabbed my elbow and tugged me back, which was probably a good thing. What was I going to do? Punch the screen?

Lori the reporter replied, “Police haven’t speculated yet on Jinx’s potential involvement in the attack and his subsequent disappearance. However, the possibility has not been ruled out.”

“She’ll have people convinced McTaggert’s guilty before anyone can prove otherwise,” I snapped.

“What are the odds she’s actually wrong?” Renee asked. “Or do you suddenly believe in coincidences now?”

I glared at her, frustrated by her need to believe the worst in McTaggert. “It’s no coincidence that this happened while McTaggert was at the hospital, but what possible reason does he have for dragging his wounded eight-year-old son out of the place where he’s receiving treatment? None.”

“Just freedom.”

“Freedom to do what, Renee? Live as fugitives for the rest of their lives? Never mind the fact that McTaggert didn’t have access to anyone off the island. He had no way of setting up the breakout.”

“So a man as powerful as Jinx just allows three Metas half his age to kidnap him?”

“If compelled, yes. He’d walk through fire to save Andrew. And we don’t even know if they were Metas at all!”

“Who else? Recombinants?”

“Maybe.”

“Guys,” Gage said, his voice one octave from shouting level. My argument with Renee had gotten embarrassingly loud, and I realized she’d let the R-word slip in front of the Lowrys.

“Speculation should wait until we’ve received more facts,” Dr. Kinsey said, stepping in as the voice of reason. “The entire situation has created the exact sort of chaos that was intended by the hostiles. Don’t allow it to turn you against each other.”

He was right. I was fighting mad—not at Renee, specifically, but she made a convenient target for my worry and rage. My little brother was in the hands of three dangerous, possibly unstable, definitely unknown people, and he was recovering from serious injuries. He was my priority.

“I never should have left,” I said quietly and mostly to myself.

Aaron was close enough to hear me over the droning of the talking heads on TV. “This probably would have happened whether we’d been there or not,” he replied.

“If I’d escorted McTaggert, maybe—”

“Maybe you’d be dead or kidnapped, too. Don’t what-if this, Ethan.”

I couldn’t help it. I’d failed to protect so many people in my life, and if Andrew and McTaggert really were in danger, then I’d failed them, too. Par for the damned course, really.

Teresa made a frustrated noise, then hung up her current call attempt. She started scrolling, probably looking for someone else to try, and her phone rang. She yelped in surprise, then answered it. “Trance . . . yes, has there been any—?”

She listened for half a minute while the rest of us stared at her. She scowled, then flushed bright red. Not an embarrassed flush, either. She was pissed. “I understand your situation, Warden, but if these were really Metas, then we have the best chance—” Hudson must have cut her off again, because she balled her free hand into a tight fist and knocked it against the nearest wall. “I understand. Thank you for the warning.”

I exchanged a concerned look with Gage, whose eyebrows had gone up at the word
warning
. Teresa hung up, then stared at her phone like she wanted to break it into tiny bits.

“What warning?” Renee asked.

“At this time,” Teresa said, her voice tight and angry, “we are not welcome to assist in the investigation or apprehension of the unknown hostiles. We are, in fact, not currently welcome in New York or New Jersey, and we will be arrested on sight if we attempt to interfere.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

My insides twisted up, and I thought I might be sick. “After everything we’ve done to help him,” I said, “that bastard Hudson is treating us like a bunch of conspirators.”

“I didn’t get the impression it was his decision,” Teresa said. “It’s likely his superiors ordered the blackout.”

“So we just sit here and do nothing because Hudson says so?”

She scowled and folded her arms over her chest—usually a clear sign to shut up, but I was ripping mad. “I didn’t say that, but we have to be careful. The timing sucks. We leave and a few hours later, this happens. The media would love nothing better than to cover a jail break with a dangerous Meta on the loose, and I have no doubt the government is ready and willing to throw us under the bus.”