| |
The name was a dead end. It took some time, but the team was able to verify no Meshadrack’s were missing.
“Maybe the prisoner has a connection to him,” she guessed. “If he has a common name, it would be much harder to find anything using it. If he’s alone in the world, it’s possible he wasn’t reported missing.”
“So we should look for a missing person with a relative or friend named Meshadrack. I supposed it’s too much to hope we found a report filed by him?” Jack asked.
Mason clicked something on his screen. “No, but there is one by a Meshach Stone. He reported his son Quinn missing two years ago. He lives about an hour from here.”
“I’ll go talk to him,” she volunteered. “Elias should probably come, too.”
Elias would be better able to explain the Elect to a newcomer than her, and he was one of the highest ranking members in the compound. Even Brax deferred to his grandfather and Brax was their leader.
“I’ll call him,” Brax said.
“I’m going with you,” Jack said. “Don’t say no. You remember how well we work together.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Besides, Jack had always been fun to work with. The operation was put in motion quickly, and she wasn’t surprised when Mason invited himself along as well. On the front porch, the guys argued about whose vehicle they were going to drive. Elias arrived and settled the matter by inviting her to ride shotgun with him, which made her day because she wouldn’t get stuck in the back and much too close to Jack right now. She needed some damned space to think about them, to sort out how she felt about him and what she wanted.
She wouldn’t get that for a while though. Mason and Jack piled into the backseat, still bickering. Mason still didn’t really trust Jack, and in turn, Jack seemed to enjoy irritating the shit out of Mason. By the time they reached Stone’s town, she was ready to strangle them both. Elias seemed oblivious to the drama. He followed the directions the car’s navigation system gave him through a pretty little town that boasted a handful of stop lights. It wasn’t long before they were off the beaten path, however, and eventually on a narrow dirt drive that didn’t appear to end anytime soon. When they passed the third set of no trespassing signs, the combatants in the back quit sniping at each other.
“Cameras,” she said, pointing to the trees on her side of the road. It was the fourth one she’d seen.
“What kind of weapons do you have in here, Elias?” Mason asked, twisting to look into the back. They all carried a sidearm. Jack had more than one. Mason too, probably.
“We’re not gonna need extra weapons, but keep your eyes open and brains working,” Elias said, in a tone that dared Mason to argue.
Did Elias know something he hadn’t told them about these people? Other than telepathy, she didn’t know what skills he had, but she had that creepy feeling on the back of her neck that said they had an unseen audience. The lane finally ended in front of a two-story farmhouse. She’d expected to be met with shotguns at the very least, but other than a cat lazing on the porch there was no other visible sign of life. Her senses were screaming they weren’t alone, however. Jack stopped her when she reached for the door handle.
“Not yet, Olivia,” he said softly.
It always unnerved her a little how fast he could go from charmer to deadly operator. Since she didn’t know nearly as many ways to kill someone as he did, she waited until he stood in front of the car with Mason. When he turned back to her with a small single nod, she joined him. Elias, meanwhile, had moved to the bottom of the porch steps, watching the front door, which finally opened with the expected shotgun.
“You must be some very stupid folks to miss all the posted signs. Unless you’re bringing me a long lost inheritance, you have about five seconds to get lost.”
Jack shifted a bit in front of her and Stone scowled.
“Your woman’s safe from me, kid. I’m sure she can drive herself home when I’m finished with the rest of you,” he said sarcastically.
She doubted Stone saw or sensed the way Jack and Mason relaxed when threatening her was apparently off the table. Elias didn’t seem fazed one way or the other.
“I’m Elias,” he said. “This is Mason, Olivia, and Jack. We came to ask you about your son.”
Stone’s grip tightened on his weapon, and she swore she saw his finger twitch on the trigger. It took her a minute to figure out why she didn’t feel threatened. It didn’t have anything to do with her skills or abilities, or the men with her. Stone was one of them. He realized it about two seconds after her. There was a quick widening of his eyes before he hid it.
“Who are you people?”
“Think of us as long lost relatives. The inheritance is harder to explain,” Elias said dryly.
He snorted. “I’m gonna need more than that.”
“It’s okay, Dad. I told you they’d come. That one at least.”
The speaker jerked his chin towards Mason. Quinn Stone, alive and looking like a POW camp survivor, stared out at them. Dangerously thin, bruised and cut up, with angry black eyes. She wanted to tell him to sit before he fell down.
She wanted to ask eight million questions. How was he here? Had he escaped? Been released? When? And if Quinn knew who they were—Mason at least—why hadn’t he reached out? And those were just the easy questions. Was he under Stine’s control? Brainwashed? He’d clearly been tortured and starved. Hell, this could be a set-up beginning with them discovering that damned house to finding the name carved in the door. Meshach looked at his son, then back at them.
“Come on up,” he said.
He stepped aside and gestured to a sitting area at the far end of the porch. A couple of wicker chairs and loveseats surrounded a low table. He lowered the shotgun but didn’t put it away. No one missed that little fact. He watched like a hawk, eyes glittering with suspicion, as the four of them moved. Jack and she sat on the farthest loveseat, backs to the wall, with Mason on Jack’s left and Elias on her right. Quinn moved gingerly, his father staying close without actually hovering, and sat in the chair next to Elias. Meshach took the final seat next to him, shotgun over his knees, but at least it wasn’t pointed at anyone.
“I’m sure we’ve never met,” Mason said. “So how do you know me?”
“Before we get to that,” Elias interrupted. “Why don’t you bring the rest of your people in? We don’t mean them any harm.”
Meshach and Elias were sitting across from each other, and after a tense study, Meshach finally nodded. He didn’t make a sound or signal that Livie noticed, but two young men exited the tree line from opposite sides of the yard. She was certain there was at least one more somewhere but Elias let it go. The newcomers came close enough to be included but stayed off the porch, just on the other side of the rail, and were introduced as Quinn’s older brothers, Bryant and Nate. They were as hard edged as their father and all the other Elect males she knew.
“I imagine you all have some questions, and we’ll answer what we can, but we do need to know how you know Mason,” Elias said. “Actually, you should probably start with your disappearance.”
Quinn waited until his father nodded approval.
“I went to a concert in Tampa with a group of friends for my twenty-first birthday. I remember getting there, getting separated, and then nothing until the next morning.” He stared into space for several long moments. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be held captive? To think you’re going to die every day?”
“I do,” Jack said, and her head whipped around.
“What the fuck?” She wasn’t sure if the telepathic volley worked until he squeezed her hand.
“It’s classified, darlin’,” he explained softly to her, but didn’t break eye contact with Quinn. “It wasn’t for as long, but I know. I know about the nightmares and the paranoia and the shakes that come out of nowhere for no good damned reason.”
Quinn’s focus turned intense and he nodded once. “It didn’t start right away. The crackpot—the doctor I mean—was actually nice at first, except for the keeping me prisoner part. They fed me, let me move around the house, even let me outside every now and then.”
He fished a bottle of water out of a cargo pocket and took a long swallow before continuing. “You’re wondering why I didn’t try to escape. At first, I thought they’d taken me for ransom, so there was no point. My family would have paid it. Within a few days, it became clear it wasn’t about money. The doctor kept asking me about my family members, but not income or how we made it. He wanted to know who was psychic and what they could do. I denied every guess he made, acted like the very idea was crazy, and the nice guy act slipped. He ordered his men to beat me.”
He lifted the edge of his shirt to reveal an old bullet scar on his side. “I tried to sneak out one night after that—there were always at least four guards around—but that didn’t work out so well. I was lucky the bullet went straight through and didn’t hit anything major. They started locking me up after that, and it got a hell of a lot worse. Drugs, torture. Stine, the batshit doctor, stopped asking about my family so much and started asking about my species.
“I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about. Sure as hell went a long way to convince me I was being kept captive by a man who was completely unhinged, but the guards didn’t seem to think so. I tried to escape again. I can move things with my mind, but it took awhile to figure out how to undo the shackles.” He snorted. “I’d been locked in the room so long I didn’t know they’d put cameras and alarms everywhere.”
Interesting. There hadn’t been any alarms when they’d searched the house. When and why had Stine removed them?
“Damned near went deaf when I opened the backdoor. After that they kept me drugged up most of the time.”
He took another drink. Livie held onto Jack’s hand, hard, and tried to focus on the story, not the horror of what he’d gone through. Hell. What had Jack gone through and why had she never heard about it? Classified or not, some rumors should have reached her.
“A few weeks ago, the other doctor showed up and the questions changed. They wanted to know about a group calling itself the Elect, and they had photos. His for one,” Quinn said, indicating Mason with the water bottle, but she focused on what else he’d said.
“Who was the doctor?” Elias asked.
“They called the crazy one Stine. He was there from the beginning. The other guy seemed pretty normal, but he was only around for a few days. Lingstrom was his name. I heard them arguing outside my door one day. Lingstrom insisted neither me nor my family had anything to do with the group they wanted to know about. I didn’t see him after that.”
“What did they want to know about the Elect?”
He snorted. “Who they are, how they’re organized, how many there are, what their plans are. Nothing I knew.”
“Did you make anything up? That would be perfectly understandable under the circumstances,” Elias said softly.
“I might have if I thought it would do any good. It wouldn’t have changed my treatment though, would probably have made it worse. Stine wanted an excuse to hurt me.”
“You’re a telepath too?”
“Not really. I can sense intent sometimes. The more intense the emotion behind it, the easier it is.”
“How did you escape?” Mason asked.
He scratched his chin, his gaze turning speculative. “I didn’t exactly, not like you’re thinking. Several days ago, something happened. All the guards freaked out and left the house. They’d drugged me up about an hour beforehand, which they expected to knock me out for a while. The thing is, they’ve been doing it so long my body has adjusted. I burn it off a lot faster, but I hid that from them. I hoped eventually they’d let their guard down and I could finally get away. So when they checked on me before they left, I pretended I was still unconscious. I was still trying to get the damned shackles off when someone returned.
“He got me out of the chains and helped me to his car. Then he took me to a truck stop outside Tampa and paid some trucker he knew five hundred bucks to drive me home and not ask questions. It took me a while to remember why the guy was so familiar. He was one of the early guards, had tried to stop that first beating. He told me before I got in the truck if the Elect came looking for me y’all could be trusted. He said it would be even better if we contacted y’all. Strength in numbers, you know.”
“Do you know his name?” Livie asked. They needed someone on the inside of Stirling. This stranger sounded like a damned good candidate.
“Evans. Toby Evans.”
Jack half snorted, half laughed. “I’ll be damned.”
“If you reach out to him—and I’m pretty sure he expects you to—there will be a price, but it isn’t money. He wants something, though. I’m positive about that.”
“Any idea what?” Mason asked.
Quinn shook his head. “I don’t know. Some people are hard to impossible to read. I’m not getting a damned thing from y’all.”
They could all shield, even Jack who didn’t seem aware of it.
“Could Evans be a telepath?” she asked Jack. Or hoped she did. He met her gaze, and she saw his answer in his eyes. Maybe she heard it? The gist was, yeah, it’s possible. Jack would want to go find him later, and she wanted to tag along. Quinn seemed to guess as much and so did his father.
“We owe that man a debt,” Meshach said. “We’ll get between you if you try to harm him.”
“He’s ex-military. I speak his language,” Jack said. “We just want to talk to him and he’s obviously willing to get involved.”
“Involved with what exactly?” Meshach asked.
Jack looked at Mason, then Elias who took over. “We aren’t human. Neither are you. You sensed that when you met us. The three doctors who own The Stirling Institute believe that we’re out to destroy the human race.” He snorted. “They’ve spent the last decade looking for members of the Elect who don’t know what they are, most of them without family to look for them or people with the resources we have.”
Meshach didn’t even blink. They’d probably figured out most of this on their own.
“How did they find my son?”
“Most people are discovered through a DNA test, usually blood. We own the largest lab in the world, so we intercept most of those. Unfortunately, there are smaller labs, and Stine and his cohorts are exploiting one or more of them. We’re working on that.”
Meshach shook his head. “We’re careful about that kind of thing. They stumbled on us some other way.”
Elias shrugged. “We may never figure it out in that case. Your family isn’t safe here. We have plenty of room in our compound. You’re one of us. You’re more than welcome.”
Meshach’s expression didn’t change. “We’ll consider it. How do we contact you?”
Elias stood and pulled a card out of his wallet. “That’s our main line and my home and cell numbers.”
“I’ll let you know our decision.”
She finished that statement in her head—now get the hell off my property. She couldn’t blame him for being suspicious. She would be too, if their positions were reversed.
“We’ll be waiting,” Elias said softly.
He didn’t offer his hand, just nodded and left the porch. The rest of them followed, but no one spoke until they were back on the highway.
“He’s not going to call, is he?” Mason asked, sounding frustrated.
“No, he isn’t,” Elias said. “We need to find out more about them, but I’m pretty sure their plan is to quietly disappear. There are a lot more of them than what we saw. They’ll be safe enough until then. Hopefully, sometime down the line they’ll get in touch.”
“Brax is not going to be happy about leaving a family of Elect on their own.”
“He’ll get over it. We can’t force the Stones to join us. We aren’t the monsters.”
