Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(87)

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Move.”

He made a move to pick her up. That roused her right away.

She pulled out of his grasp, and followed along in a staggering run, with much stumbling and a terrifying amount of noise. Periodically Miles stopped, held her tight against him, listening around the racket of her panting breaths, and her thudding heart for Greaves and his team.

His perceptions kept spreading, wider and wider. He didn’t feel any limits to them. He was amped up to the max. Information organized itself into a topographical grid, with his attackers as bright moving points of energy. No self-doubt. No stressing about making some dumb-ass mistake and paying with Lara’s life. No time to play out the worst-case scenarios. He was in the zone. Everything was channeled into the algorithm that crunched data and churned out an array of continually shifting strategies. Taking their opponents out, doubling back down to the road, and hauling ass while Greaves still assumed they were on foot, that was their best bet, at this precise second.

He dragged Lara into a grove of young trees, pushing her down into the wild rose bushes. “You stay there,” he said. “And stay inside the shield. Got me?”

Her eyes looked haunted. “Where are you going?”

“To clear a path,” he said.

She gave him a short nod. b careful He moved silently down the hill. Maybe his shield had a component like Nina’s. They didn’t seem to sense him at all, but he could clearly feel the closest three opponents, moving steadily uphill. All enhanced up the wazoo, but in distinctly different ways. One was a telepath. Miles had enough experience with telepaths to recognize the vibe. The guy—somehow, he knew it was a guy—was scanning for Miles’ thought waves, but his probes just slid over his shield like it was oiled.

The other guy, a little further downhill and moving fast in Lara’s direction, was using a different part of his brain, a more animal part. Sniffing, feeling with instincts, using his brain stem. More like the cougar Miles had met up at the Forks than his fellow goon.

One more was farther down the hill. Coercion. Then there was Greaves himself, plus two more, near where the vehicles had stopped.

Greaves was the brightest spot on that topographical grid. A red, toxic throb of energy, battering Miles’ shield like hurricane wind.

Yesterday, he might have hesitated to use deadly force. Seeing Lara on the ground with blood running from her nose had burned that hesitation right out of him. Those evil scumsucking motherf*ckers had hurt her, and now they were going to die.

He pulled out his blade, and moved in on them.





“Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

“Get your hands off me!” Greaves’ blast of telekinetic energy flung Silva six meters through the air. He thudded to the ground, stunned.

Greaves put his hand on the door handle, dragging himself to his feet. The other hand touched the stream of blood that had burst in his nose, around his eyes, and probably on his sclera, as well, leaving what was sure to be unsightly red spotches in the whites of his eyes.

The sneaky little bitch! She had led him into a trap and suck-erpunched him! He was so angry, he almost squeezed Silva’s hiccuping lungs closed, but that would be wasteful.

Levine stood in the clearing, frozen still, eyes wide. Afraid to speak or move. God, was it always to be his fate to be surrounded by cowards who shit themselves at the faintest whiff of difficulty?

If she did not move or say something in five seconds, he would kill her, too, and never count the cost. Five, four, three— “A tissue, sir?” She dug in her purse, handed him a packet.

He plucked one out, pressed it sullenly to his bleeding nose.

Lara Kirk and her ogre were on foot. No way could they be outside his range. Which meant Kirk’s shield was fully as strong and impervious as Geoff’s, and that she could lower it and raise it at will.

Greaves did a telepathic check of his enhanced commandos, all drawn from his own elite security squad, the ones who traveled with himself and Geoff at all times. None of them had engaged yet.

He gestured impatiently toward Silva. “Get him up. Get out there and help look for those two. Both of you.”

Miranda’s eyelids fluttered, and her gaze dropped to her houndstooth pencil skirt, the sheer black hose, the costly four-inch heels. Vain, useless bitch. “Me, sir?”

“Of course, you,” he said, pitiless. “Both of you. There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Silva struggled to his feet. He wore dress shoes, and his Armani suit was somewhat the worse for wear, with mud on his knees and chest. He and Miranda headed into the forest with gingerly steps.

Greaves tried again to scan for Lara Kirk. The flat silence felt like Carol’s punishing silence. Like Geoff’s . . .

Like Geoff’s. Of course it did. Of course.

He composed himself to stillness, and brought the crazy-making quality of Geoff’s silence clearly to his mind. The heaviness of it, the feeling of constant rebuke. His son’s silence was a mirror, highlighting his father’s sins, flaws, crimes.

It was painful to dwell upon, but he kept grimly at it, until something like Geoff’s shield began to shimmer on the edge of his consciousness. Almost there . . . and he lost it again.

He tried again, making his mind soft . . .

Yes! He’d felt it. Not exactly like Geoff, but similar, and he— Sir? It was Miranda, pinging him telepathically. There’s a— I AM CONCENTRATING! He punched the sharply articulated thought back at her, together with a punishing stab of mental energy that was liable to affect her sleep and digestion for days. Stupid cow.