In His Keeping

The gun went off and the man went down, holding his left shoulder as blood rapidly spread, seeping through his fingers, coating them red.

She flipped the goon off and then sprinted from the room, knowing she had a hell of a lot more to do before she could call it a day. She squared the ceiling goon away, compartmentalizing him in a section of her mind, issuing a firm command for him to stay.

Then she realized, to her utter horror, that she’d been thinking she was having to split her focus on three things when, in fact, she had four things going on simultaneously.

Her parents!

Oh God. What if the barrier had slipped? What if she’d killed them because she’d spent too much time focusing on not killing someone who actually deserved it? She and her conscience were going to have a serious come-to-Jesus meeting when this was all over. Because clearly, having a conscience didn’t get one ahead in life. If anything it put her at a major disadvantage in the evolutionary chain.

Her plan would have to change on the fly. She couldn’t very well bring the building down and reduce it and everyone in it to rubble if her parents were vulnerable. Damn it all. She wasn’t an on-her-feet thinker!

She’d committed the winding passageways to memory—again, thank you, eidetic memory—on her way out today with the guard dogs because her first trip through them wasn’t exactly under the best circumstances.

It took her three of the longest minutes of her life before she finally entered the long hallway that housed the ancient jail cells. Where the hell were they, anyway? What kind of creepy place had a lab and prison cells?

She was at full sprint, counting the cells, until she skidded to a halt outside the one that housed her parents. The door was wide open and not only was there no invisible protective bubble. There was absolutely no sign of her parents.

What she did see froze her heart to the very core and fear blazed like a wildfire through her veins.

There were multiple puddles of blood—a mortal amount of scarlet liquid pooled on the floor exactly where she’d instructed her parents to stand. Fresh blood. Worse, there were smears of blood that ran from the spot in front of the cot all the way to the door, and as she looked down, she realized it had continued into the hallway. What the hell had they done to her parents? Had they shot them and then dragged them off to parts unknown?

While she was being snarky and sarcastic, indulging in taunts with her enemies, her parents had been left unprotected because she wasn’t adept at multitasking with her newly tapped powers.

Utter despair, grief and . . . rage flooded her mind, swamping her in wave upon wave of agony. She’d failed. She’d vowed to them she could do this. Had made them swear they’d trust her.

And she’d failed.

Desolation and vast emptiness invading her soul, she slowly turned, her eyes glowing so that she felt the warmth emanating from them. Robotically, she stalked back through the passageways, the twists and turns that would take her back to the center.

God help whoever crossed her path. Gone was her conscience, her squeamishness over killing quickly and efficiently. Revenge and retribution consumed her. She could taste it, feel it. Wrapped herself in its cold and soulless embrace.

A sound alerted her to the presence of men in the passageway with her. They stepped in front of her, an ambush.

She lifted her frigid gaze, completely unruffled by the fact that they were spraying the entire hallway with bullets. They bounced off her, off the barrier that had formed without her even needing to focus on its construction. She saw fear in their eyes, the realization that she was untouchable. It was the last cognizant thought they’d have.

She simply snapped their necks—a quick mental flick of her powers and they collapsed onto the floor. She kicked one aside as she pushed past them, not giving them any more attention than they deserved.

They would pay. They would all pay. Starting with the bastard still suspended from the ceiling where she’d left him minutes before.

THIRTY-FOUR

“WE’RE going in hot,” Beau said grimly as the highly classified stealth chopper prototype that did not officially exist zoomed over the land, hugging the treetops and traveling at a dizzying rate of speed. “This has to be fast, as clean as possible, until we retrieve Ari and her parents. Once they’re accounted for and safe then I vote we level the entire goddamn place.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Zack muttered.

“That gets my vote,” Eliza said, a scowl darkening her pretty features.

Dane simply nodded his own agreement while the other two operatives, Isaac and Capshaw, gave a thumbs-up, something that amounted to eagerness reflected in their eyes.

They were all looking forward to some serious payback after the breach that resulted in Ari’s abduction. It was a black mark and a blow to their pride that they’d been fucked on their own turf. For a second time.

When this was all over with, Beau was going to take great satisfaction in leveling the fucking house that had proved nothing more than a means of hurting the people he loved. And if he was lucky enough to have a future that included Ari—God he hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for major disappointment—then he’d build a fucking fortress that would make security at Fort Knox look like child’s play.

Ari would always need protection from the public eye and fanatics wanting to harness and use her powers for their own twisted agenda. Oh hell no. Not while he breathed.

Just as Caleb had closed ranks around Ramie and was ruthless in his protection of her, so too would Beau do the exact same with Ari. He may not have understood his brother’s overzealousness when it came to Ramie in the past, but he damn well understood it now. Identified with it. He’d spend the rest of his life keeping Ari safe, no matter the cost.