The Countdown (The Taking #3)(46)

I counted his steps.

Then, I heard his voice. “Hello again.” He said it like he had everything under control, and something inside me unleashed.

The door to the bathroom flew wide—I didn’t even touch it . . . it just . . . happened.

I was ready for it; Agent Truman never saw it coming.

He had his gun drawn on Thom—not at his head, which was a true kill shot, but at his chest. I wondered if a bullet through his heart would heal, or if that was as fatal.

Either way, Agent Truman never had the chance to shoot. I saw surprise register on his face at the moment I launched the bedside phone at him simply by looking at it.

The old rotary dial was heavy . . . clunky, but it was also still attached to the cord in the wall. The cord only seized for a second before detaching with a sharp snap, and then it hurtled at his head.

Agent Truman was forced to lift his arm—and the gun in his hand—to shield himself from the phone. Thom used the split-second distraction to slam his shoulder into Agent Truman’s midsection.

Agent Truman went down hard, with a gusty Oomph! His gun slid somewhere across the shag carpeting, maybe beneath one of the twin beds. But he wasn’t giving up that easily, and from out of nowhere he had a pen, a cheap ballpoint. He jammed it into Thom’s thigh.

“Son of a—” Thom howled.

Then Agent Truman rolled him over and was shoving his face down into the carpet.

I don’t know why, but I became fixated on the blood. It was everywhere, Thom’s blood. All over his pants, on the shag carpeting, and on Agent Truman.

Agent Truman punched Thom in the jaw then, and I tightened my grip around my gun. But before I could squeeze the trigger, I hesitated. What if I missed Agent Truman and hit Thom instead? What if I accidentally shot him in the head and there was no coming back from it?

The door to the outside was open, and maybe it shouldn’t matter but I kept thinking, What if someone walked past and saw what was happening in here? What if they were exposed to Thom’s blood and died because of what we were doing?

If I had better control over my abilities, I would have used them to close the door. But when I concentrated nothing happened, so I hurled myself at it instead. Agent Truman grabbed my ankle as I ran by, and I tripped just as the fingertips of my outstretched hand brushed the edge of it.

I kicked out, trying to dislodge his grip on me, and the heel of my boot connected with something solid. I hoped desperately I’d struck bone—jaw or nose or skull. Nothing in this world would make me happier.

Whatever I’d hit, the impact had been enough to loosen his grip on my ankle, and I was able to move those last few inches to reach the door. I shoved it closed with a solid, satisfying bang.

I rolled over, collapsing onto my back, at the same time Agent Truman, with blood streaming from his nose—blood that was also poisonous—swept his arm underneath the bed. When he came back up onto his knees, I saw the gun.

My heart bloated with fear. This time, he pointed it directly where it would do maximum damage: directly at Thom’s head.

“Don’t,” I begged. I still had a gun in one hand and a supernatural ability I tried to call on, but it was useless. He had me right where he wanted me—I couldn’t risk Thom’s life. I was lying on the floor, on my back, and I raised my hands over my head to show I gave up.

Then, without giving him time to gloat over the fact that he’d managed to capture us, I whispered, “Ochmeel abayal dai,” because those words were maybe our only hope at this point.

He was one of us, like it or not.

I’d tried to make them sound the way Tyler had, giving them the same inflection, but like before, they sounded strange coming out of my mouth—a foreigner testing the feel of a new and unfamiliar language.

Because it was a new language, I reminded myself. These were not words I was ever meant to speak.

Thom didn’t flinch. My hands trembled as I forced myself to stay focused on him.

When Agent Truman finally reacted, it wasn’t at all like I’d expected, although how was one supposed to behave when they heard an alien language?

Maybe not by reaching down and waving his hand back and forth in front of my face.

“What . . . are you doing?” I asked.

“Just making sure you’re still in there.” It wasn’t a question, he was simply stating a fact, and I knew what he meant: that my body—this body—hadn’t been hacked into the way Chuck’s had.

“It’s still me.”

Bonelessly, like this was all suddenly way too much, he fell to his knees, his gun dropping to the floor with a dull thud. He ran his hands through his hair.

I stayed where I was, my eyes darting to Thom, while Agent Truman processed it all.

Finally, he asked, “What about them?” Only he, unlike everyone else I’d ever talked to, didn’t look upward. “Are they here yet?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, not yet anyway. But I think they’re close.”

He nodded, as if pulling himself together at last. “We better get a move on then.”

Agent Truman locked the motel room’s door, then slid the security chain in place, and wedged the back of one of the metal chairs beneath the knob, testing it twice before he was sure it would hold.

And I thought my dad was paranoid.

“We’ll have to work fast,” he said while he pointed at one of the twin beds. “You lay down there,” he told Thom. “We need to get that GPS chip outta you, before they realize I’m not comin’ back and decide to send someone else after the signal.”