Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(82)

Tam’s face looked like a marble statue. Val’s mouth was flat.

“Same with Stone Island,” Miles pressed grimly on. “The security there is useless for our purposes. Who’s there, Seth and Raine, their security staff, plus Jesse, and the twins, who are, what, eighteen months old? Same problem. All of you guys with kids, you’re already too exposed. He’ll be looking at everyone I’ve ever had social or professional dealings with, and you guys are smeared all over my life.”

“Excuse us for that,” Aaro muttered.

“Don’t be a snotty bitch,” Miles said sharply. “That’s not what I meant. I appreciate the help you’ve given me already, and you know it.”

“What you’re saying is that we can’t help you?” Kev asked slowly. “You’re saying that you and Lara are better off alone?”

Miles grimaced. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I don’t mean to sound like an arrogant *. We wouldn’t have made it out without your help this far. But look at the facts. These people are all enhanced. Nina and Aaro and Edie are the only ones of you all with any practical experience at all in blocking invasive telepathy, and Greaves would smash them like bugs. You felt him, Aaro. You know it’s true.”

Aaro stared back, stonefaced. Unable to deny it, but too angry and proud to say that Miles was right.

“You can’t help us now,” Miles went on. “None of you can. You can’t even know where we run. It’s come to that.”

Lara could feel the anger and resistance vibrating in the air. She broke the silence, pulling out the cell. “I’ve got to call Keiko.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Miles flared. “Have you been listening?”

“Yes,” she said. “The upshot is, we run like hell to someplace no one on earth knows about. Isn’t that the plan?”

Miles shrugged. “Such as it is.”

“I have to know Keiko is okay first, and I might as well call from this place, since I appear to have already burned it for us. Right?”

A tense silence followed.

“She has a point, at that,” Davy said heavily. “Call, then. We all want to know. But hurry. We need to get out of here.”

Lara got the number wrong twice, with her shaking, rubbery finger. The phone buzzed and buzzed. Then a recorded voice, telling her the client was unavailable, and to try later.

She met Miles’ eyes. Shook her head. The dread got heavier.

“I’ll call the magazine he works for,” she said. “Can you find the number for me on your smartphone? It’s Beat Street Style magazine.”

Miles’ finger tapped, teasing the number out of the database. He held up the display for her to see. She tapped it in, and waited.

“Beat Street Style,” answered a young, male voice.

“Hi. I’m looking for Keiko Yamada,” she said. “Is he there?”

“Um . . . um, no. I’m sorry, but he’s not here right . . . oh, God.” The guy’s voice wobbled. “I can’t do this, Kim. You do it.”

The phone rattled, clunked, as someone dropped the headset, and a couple seconds later, a woman spoke, in an overloud, professional tone. “Hi, this is Kim of Beat Street Style! Can I help you?”

“I was looking for Keiko,” Lara repeated. “Is he—”

“He’s not here right now! May I take your number?”

Lara tried to speak, but her voice cracked, blocked. She coughed. “Please,” she forced out. “Please, just tell me. Is he okay?”

The woman hesitated. “Are you the press?”

Fear ballooned, dark and sickening. “No. Just a friend.”

The woman’s voice went up in pitch, quivering. “I’m sorry to tell you this, then. He’s not okay. He’s dead. Both of them. Him and his boyfriend, Franz. Bill went up . . . he found them, and they were . . .”

The voice continued, but Lara no longer heard her words.

Cold swallowed her up. She had been an idiot, an *.

The phone bounced on her feet. Her fantasy bubble had popped, and now she was naked in the cold. Outside the Citadel. The connection between her and Miles had broken. She hadn’t done it consciously.

People all around her, their mouths moving, but she was a million miles away. Keiko was dead. Franz, too. She’d killed them both, as if she’d mowed them down with a car, or pushed them off a cliff.

Just like she was going to kill all these people in the room with her, who were trying so hard to help her. All their kids, orphaned at best. If Greaves didn’t decide to punish their kids, too.

And Miles. He was talking, shaking her, his dark eyes full of love and concern. She could not hear his voice over the roar in her ears. He was so beautiful and gentle and brave. She was deflating, the world disintegrating as the vortex sucked her down . . .

Keiko on the ground, the contents of his head spattered out in a broad red and pink fan, over a beige and brown patterned rug. Franz, naked, in a noose. Mouth taped, eyes bulging.

Miles lay on the ground, someplace colorless and gray and barren. Eyes empty, face white and stiff in death. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and pooled behind his head.

She recoiled with such violence, she jolted back into her body. She was on the floor, wedged between the couch and the coffee table.