Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(7)

Hu and Anabel exchanged glances. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Anabel said. “The boss is coming. We need results.”

Lara shrugged. “Can’t help you,” she murmured. “Sorry.”

“You will be, you stupid whore. Very sorry.”

Lara tried not to laugh, preferring not to get slapped again. Sorrier than she was now? Really? She’d been longing for death for months now.

Her jailors had lots theories on how to mine the benefits of her gift. Their current technique was to shoot her up with a hypnotic drug, and then force her to watch taped material on whatever subject they wanted her to focus her visions around. World events; wars, troop movements, weapons development. Then they hit her with the psi-max, and Anabel took her for a spin. But even before she’d found the Citadel, her visions had been frustratingly unpredictable for their purposes. Present, past, future, all over the map. She saw a duffel bag full of explosives on a commuter train in Tokyo almost every time they dosed her. Over four hundred people dead. She’d begged them to notify the Japanese police, but they didn’t care. She tried not to think about it.

And the other vision she had with maddening regularity. Empty-eyed, shuffling people wandering through a silent urban landscape. Quiet and morose, not particularly violent, but terrifying all the same.

She saw Hu’s and Anabel’s pasts and possible futures, too. It was uncomfortable, knowing so much about the intimate histories of the people she hated. She didn’t want to understand them, or to have compassion for them. Hell with that.

Anabel unstrapped the restraints. Hu steadied her before she fell off the table. They hauled her wobbling body toward the door. Back to the rat hole. She turned to Hu. “How’s Leah?”

Hu’s face twitched. “Shut up.”

“Did she get the medical tests I recommended?” Lara persisted.

The tension in Hu’s jaw said it all.

“It’s just like I said, isn’t it?” Lara asked. “She thought it was just a little gastritis, but it’s esophageal cancer, right?”

“I said, shut up. She’s none of your damn business.”

But Lara was too stoned to act in her own best interests. When things started coming, one thing pulled another until it was a tumbling avalanche. “She doesn’t know what you do here,” she said. “You tell her you’re just a researcher, and she buys it, or pretends to. On some level, she knows what you really are. It makes her uneasy, but she stuffs it. Because she’s a nice person, you know? She actually cares about you. She deserves better than a sadistic, lying—”

“Shut . . . up!” Whap. Hu didn’t hit as hard as Anabel, but the blow smashed her lip against her teeth, and once she tasted blood, there was no way to stop the words from flying out.

“You’re poisoning her, Hu. If she stays near you, she will die. It won’t take too long, either. Want to know exactly how long?”

Anabel slammed her against the rat hole door. The blow knocked the air from her lungs, left her gasping. Anabel’s face, which would have been beautiful if it had not been so tight and sunken, leaned into hers.

“Don’t f*ck with us,” she hissed. “Your life hangs by a thread.”

Then cut it, already. Set me free. But she had no air to speak.

Hu opened the many locks on the massive door. They muscled her through it. Anabel’s shove sent Lara stumbling to her knees.

Lara coughed. Licked blood away. “I saw you, too,” she said.

Anabel rolled her eyes. “Did you not hear what I said?”

“About my life hanging by a thread? Yeah. You threaten me with death every couple of minutes. I take it that’s a no, then?”

She looked up, and read both curiosity and dread in Anabel’s eyes. Kept her mind soft, as she felt the stabbing probe. Anabel was trying to read the memory for herself, but she couldn’t find the right tail unless Lara handed it to her. Not if she kept it soft and neutral.

“You’d just lie,” Anabel said. “Drugged-up sneak.”

“You’d know if I was,” Lara said calmly.

“I read you already. And I didn’t see anything about me.”

“I was shielded when I saw it,” Lara said.

Anabel made an impatient sound. “Fine. Enlighten me, you dumb twat, so we can go get some breakfast.”

“A man.” Lara rolled up onto her knees.

Anabel’s laughter was harsh. “Oh, what a shocker! I’ve never met one of those before! Who is he, my next lay?”

“A guy from your past. But I saw his present. Through his eyes.”

“There are a lot of men in my past,” Anabel said. “Most of them aren’t all that interesting. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“He wore plaid golfing pants.” Images tumbled in on her, one leading the next, like facts she’d always known. “Somewhere in the South. He was drinking a gin and tonic. Not his first.”

Anabel’s face went stiff. Hu’s eyes darted between them, nervous.

“It was a country club,” Lara went on. “Drooping, swampy trees. Louisiana, or Florida. He was watching the kids in the pool. One in particular. A blond girl in a yellow bathing suit, maybe nine or ten—”

“That’s enough,” Anabel warned.