Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(101)

Brenner choked out the name one last time.

Mark sighed in frustration, switched the wand’s setting to knock-out, and zapped him unconscious. Best to power him down. Let them both chill. It was impractical to flush a thirty million dollar investment down the toilet for nothing. There were cheaper necks to squeeze if he felt the urge.

Talk terms, his ass. He’d teach the Keyholder all about terms before he was done. That arrogant shithead was going to get a special, intensive private lesson.

While Mark gouged his eyes out with his thumbs.



*



The ride back to the Kirkland house was weirdly silent. Sisko slid behind the wheel and took over the driving, as if by prior arrangement. Noah sat in the back with her, but would not respond to anything she said. After a few frustrating minutes, he put out his hand and pressed his finger gently against her lips, without meeting her eyes.

“Not now,” he said. “Sorry. I can’t.”

“Caro. Let him be,” Sisko said.

“Do I have a choice?” she asked bitterly.

“He’s doing an ASP management thing,” Sisko explained, keeping his eyes on the road. “Self-imposed sensory deprivation. You isolate yourself and blank out all sensory input. It’s problematic, because you have to lower your guard, but when analog diving isn’t working, it’s an emergency time-out, so you don’t blow something up. Or hurt somebody.”

“I see,” she whispered, even though she didn’t.

“He’ll be back soon,” Sisko assured her. “Just be patient.”

Patient, hell. She wanted to blow something up herself. It was not freaking fair.

Sisko parked outside the Kirkland house, and held up his hand when she opened her mouth to speak. They sat in utter silence for a couple of minutes, just waiting.

Finally, Noah opened his eyes and looked at Caro. “Sorry,” he said.

The raw pain in his eyes made something clutch in her throat. She knew how that felt. Painful memories were hard to control. Seeing his brother Asa after so long must have triggered a torrent of them.

Once inside the house, Sisko looked Noah over keenly. “You OK?”

“I’m good.” Noah’s voice was flat.

“Call if you need me. I’ll be down in the basement tech room.” Sisko nodded at Caro, and headed for staircase.

Caro took Noah’s hand and tugged it. “Let’s go up and rest.”

“No,” he said. “I’m going out for a while.”

She was bewildered, and alarmed. “Out where?”

“Just outside. I need space.”

Ouch. Her whole body contracted. “Well. That’s a classic.”

“Caro, please,” he said wearily. “Don’t get your feelings hurt. It’s not you.”

“Oh, just shut up,” she snapped. “If you need to blow off steam, I know just how that might be accomplished. Without isolating yourself.”

The room charged instantly with sex. His eyes flashed, right through the lenses. She could feel the hot magical light on some level other than just sight, and her body answered, softening and melting. Preparing for him.

He swallowed, hard. Hands flexing, clenching. “Not now,” he said thickly. “My AVP is bugf*ck. Happens, after half a lifetime of getting f*cked over and pissed off. You do not want me naked on top of you while I’m metabolizing it.”

“Stop carrying on,” she said. “I trust you completely. AVP or no AVP. You just need to trust yourself.”

He shook his head, and walked out the door.

She forced herself to breathe down the hurt. Suck it up. This issue was bigger than her tender feelings, and nobody could criticize the man for not trying hard enough on her behalf. She had to grow up. Go upstairs. Wait patiently for him to work through his crap. He was entitled to his weird strategies. Whatever worked for him was fine.

Her mind raced too frantically for sleep, so she sat down in the living room for a while, and leafed through a stack of files Sisko had left there.

One caught her attention. A list Sisko had compiled of the people who had been reported missing the past week in Utah and Wyoming, the states Mark had mentioned in the video they had found in Luke Ryan’s lake house.

It wasn’t hard to winnow the list. The supersoldiers had to be young, physically powerful, and without family connections to fit the supersoldier profile. In the past few days, ten had met the criteria. Seven men. Three women.

Caro studied them for a while, staring at the photographs. She opened one of Noah’s laptops, which lay on the coffee table, and did internet searches on each one. Not much to be found. No missing-person alerts either, statewide or national.

She lingered over Sierra Horst, a waitress who’d disappeared from a restaurant during her shift. Blood found in the parking lot. Active investigation.

While searching one of the names, she found a video clip from a local news channel covering the disappearance of Brenner Jameson from Cheyenne, Wyoming. The attractive blonde reporter gazed earnestly into the camera, her lips not quite in sync with the audio. Caro listened closely.

“Brenner Jameson left his two-year-old daughter Callie with his mother-in-law at seven AM, just like he always did, for his daily ten mile run. Every other day, he’d come back, have breakfast with his daughter, and take her to day care on his way to work. But the day he disappeared was not like every other day . . .”