In His Keeping

If it had been capable of incapacitating her, then it should do the same for him.

Impatience simmered in her consciousness. Things she used to do with ease that felt natural now seemed like such a long time ago. A lifetime. She’d grown so used to not using her powers that they seemed alien to her, not an integral part of her, as they should have been.

It required every ounce of discipline her father had instilled in her to push her panic and terror down and focus only on that syringe. She began to recognize the pattern in which he danced his intricate path to avoid being stuck by the needle.

She plunged the syringe toward him but at the last moment pulled it up sharply and then thrust with speed and accuracy exactly where she anticipated he’d be.

It struck him in the throat and she gave the plunger a strong mental push so it emptied the contents of the syringe into his body.

His expression was murderous as he reached up and yanked the needle from his neck, tossing it away in fury. But already his eyes were glazed, his movements sluggish. He staggered and collapsed to his knees but in a last rush of strength, he lifted his head, looking at her with a mixture of hatred and . . . respect?

“Don’t think this is the end,” he said, his words slurring. “We’ll come after you. You aren’t safe anywhere. There is nowhere we can’t find you. I underestimated you this time. I won’t make that mistake again. And if you ever want to see your precious mommy and daddy you’ll do just what we want. Not that they’re really your parents.”

The last words slipped nearly unintelligibly from his lips as a goofy-looking smile that was completely incongruous given the situation curved one side of his mouth upward. There was a look of triumph in his glazed eyes, and then the sedative took full effect and he rocked over to the side, hitting the paved sidewalk with an indelicate thud.

“What?” she demanded. “What did you say?”

She ran over to him and kicked him in the side, trying to rouse him, though she knew he’d be out for quite a while. It was what he’d intended for her to be. Bastard.

Had she heard him correctly?

She shook her head and turned, pissed that she’d spent those extra precious few seconds worrying over something stupid her attacker had said when he was in the grip of a strong sedative. The whole thing was crazy and in a world where she couldn’t be certain about much, the one thing she did know with certainty was that her parents loved her. She was their only child. She’d seen her birth certificate and had dual nationality since she was born outside the United States.

She was not going to give in and react to his words, because that would be precisely what he wanted. He wanted to plant a seed of doubt. He wanted to scare her. Well, he’d certainly succeeded in scaring her, because it was obvious he knew where her parents were and that it was Ari they wanted.

As she fumbled through her key set looking for the telltale symbol on the key fob that told her what key went to which vehicle, she decided on taking the biggest, toughest vehicle in her father’s arsenal of vehicles.

She knew for a fact that the bulky SUV had a reinforced steel frame, was bulletproof with shatter-proof windows and would take a beating. And if another vehicle tangled with it, there was absolutely no way for her to come away the loser unless she was flattened by an eighteen-wheeler and even then it was a coin flip as to who would come out worse for the wear.

She unlocked the vehicle, slid behind the wheel and quickly revved the engine, leaving tire marks on the pavement as she began putting as much distance as was possible between her and the people she now knew couldn’t be trusted.

EIGHT

ARI pulled her oversized purse closer to her body and walked at a fast pace toward the entrance of the building that housed Devereaux Security Services. She was dressed in a manner to indicate wealth and elegance. Designer clothing, diamond earrings and designer sunglasses with an Hermès scarf covering her head as if to protect her hair from the wind when in fact the sunglasses and scarf were to hide her distinctive hair and eyes, not to mention the bruises that colorfully adorned her face.

The car she’d parked curbside where she wasn’t boxed in by cars front and back was a sleek BMW M6 convertible that comfortably fit the image she was trying to project. And it had the added benefit of being fast. Five hundred and eighty horses under the hood. She remembered every single detail her father had shared with her on every vehicle in his possession. The M6 was faster, more powerful, than a Mustang, a Camaro—even the ZL1—and the Corvette, though it would likely be a tight race with the latter.

While before she’d wanted an impenetrable moving fortress, now she wanted something easier to navigate and a vehicle capable of outrunning most others. If nothing else, her father had drummed into her the importance of advance thinking and planning.

She’d carefully considered her options when she’d gone to retrieve the contents of a safe-deposit box her father held at one of the local banks. He’d set it up so that if she were ever in trouble or need, she could access cash and alternate identity, including driver’s licenses and passports—three total in all.

It had never occurred to her to question her father as to why the thought had even crossed his mind that she’d need such things. She knew well how protective he was of her and so she’d shrugged off his actions as him being paranoid and overprotective. But perhaps he’d been all too right in preparing for the worst, because that was now what she was facing, and she was grateful for her father’s foresight. She’d lived her life in a protective bubble, and now, for the first time, she didn’t have her father to fall back on and have fix all her problems. It was up to her to get herself out of the mess she was in.