Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(18)

Miles snorted. “When the damsel starts texting my brain directly, it’s time for the f*cking meds.”

“You think she’s a psychotic delusion?” Nina asked.

“Matilda wouldn’t have thought so,” he replied, and then he had to explain all about Matilda, her cryptic voicemail, and her subsequent murder. Those grim details quelled even Edie’s scribbling for a while.

“This is creeping me out,” Aaro muttered.

“You’re not the only one obsessing about Lara,” Nina said. “She was like my little sister. Aaro and I have turned this thing inside out.”

“Me, too,” Miles said bleakly. “I followed them—every clue. Roy Lester’s dead. Dimitri Arbatov, too. Anabel’s disappeared. Rudd got splattered. There’s no such place as Karstow, as far as I can tell. And Thaddeus Greaves is a dead end.”

Flat silence followed this litany of dead leads. After Nina and Aaro’s adventure, no one was left alive to ask where Lara Kirk might be, except of course for Greaves himself, Rudd’s billionaire boss. Who had insisted that he was as innocent as the dawn. According to Greaves, his minions had gone tragically rogue. So shocking. And embarrassing.

“I couldn’t read him, when I was close to him,” Nina mused. “His shield was like a force field that swallowed anything it touched. Yours feels kind of like that, too. Remember when you came up with the encrypted computer as your analog for a shield? And I made you write down the password? I remember it. All caps LARA, hashtag—”

“Stop, Nina,” he warned, but it was too late. The questing tickle in his mind intensified as she dredged up the rest of it, picking up speed.

“Star, exclamation point, your aunt in California’s zip code—nine two six one nine, hashtag, all caps KIRK, and two question marks!”

Crack, she breached it—and his world collapsed inward.

Rudd hung over him, his demonic face purple, screaming. Ear-splitting noise, nerves screaming, searing heat . . . a flash of light . . .

. . . nothing.

His eyes fluttered open, later. Flagstones, cool against his cheek. Wrought iron table legs. Human legs, in hose and heels, dress shoes.

He turned his head. Leaves against a white sky. Anxious faces swam in his vision. He struggled to put names to them, to himself.

They jolted heavily into place, like train cars coupling. The blur of rust-colored chiffon beside him was Nina. She clutched a bloody napkin to her nose, shaking with sobs. His nose bled, too. Edie passed him a napkin. He plugged the leak, glad for an excuse not to speak.

Oh, man. And he thought his head had hurt before.

“Would somebody please tell me what the f*ck is going on?” Aaro snarled, as Kev and Davy hoisted Miles up into a sitting position.

“Oh, God,” Nina whispered, her voice thick. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Miles said. Though of course, it wasn’t.

“What didn’t you know?” Aaro bellowed.

“Shhh.” Nina soothed, patting Aaro’s cheek. “I didn’t know how bad it was,” she said to Miles. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. I don’t know how you’re walking around, with all that going on in your head.”

“Think I should go for the padded cell, then?”

He’d meant it as a joke, but surprise, surprise—no one laughed.

Nina shuddered. “That’s where I’d be,” she said.

“You had a seizure,” Kev told him. “You were yelling. Looked bad.”

“Stress flashback,” Sean said. “Rudd?”

“That’s what happens if I drop the shield. The shield holds it all together.” He glanced pointedly at Nina. “If nobody f*cks with it.”

“Sorry,” Nina whispered, abjectly. “Really. Just trying to help.”

He started to shake his head. Stopped, with a hiss of pain. “I’m past help. When you start getting text messages from dead girls in your head, it’s time to call the guys in the white coats with the little van.”

“No,” Nina said. “You’re not crazy, Miles.”

The murmuring stilled. Miles’ mouth was dangling. He closed it with a snap. “Ah . . . how do you figure?”

“I saw a little in there, before the seizures,” Nina said. “I felt some of your memories. You never met Lara, but I did. I know her vibe. And I felt it. I felt her. She’s not dead.”

Miles felt that drum roll starting up. Part dread, part compulsion, rumbling ominously inside him. “Nina. Please. Don’t do this to me.”

“She got through the shield, just like I did,” Nina insisted.

“You got through it because I told you the password!” he shouted. “How could she get through? I never told it to her. I don’t know her!”

“You didn’t have to tell her,” she said. “She is your password.”

Miles struggled to his feet, batting their hands hands away. Batting the whole thought away. Too crazy. Too weird. Blood roared in his ears. His heart thudded, a swift, panicked gallop, even as it slipped into place, with a soft, inevitable “click.”

This explained so much. He clutched his head in his hands, on the verge of total brain meltdown. Trying to process it.

She is your password. Holy freaking shit. Could she really . . . ?