Toxic (Denazen #2)(48)

Man, she was good. Even though she’d spent the last seventeen years locked away at Denazen, she knew Dad better than I did. She had his mannerisms and tone nailed perfectly. Even his movements and the way he held himself. If I didn’t know it was her, I would have never seen the difference.

“He’s wounded,” the one by the window piped up.

The man by the door was quick to respond. “Bieder shot him, sir. We don’t know how serious it is, but he’s been in there for a while now.”

The suit by the window—Bieder, if I had to guess—cringed.

“You use a deadly weapon to take down a Six we can use and then can’t even move in and capture him?”

“In my defense, he is a telekinetic,” Bieder said. “He’d already taken out Barnes and Farber.” He stepped up to Dad, holding out his cell phone. “Take a look at this, sir.”

Mom-as-Dad reached for the phone. Her mimics weren’t the same as mine. Where I changed the structure of things on a molecular level, hers were illusions and nothing more. All it would take was the tiniest brush of his hands to undo the whole thing.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened.

“What the—”

Mom swung as Kale jumped up and exploded from the brush. He charged forward like a speeding Mack truck and crossed the field to where she was. The guy by the door saw him coming and tried to take off, but one well-placed kick from Mom had him grounded. Dax made a beeline for the guy that had been on the cell as he tackled Mom to the dirt from behind.

With everyone’s attention elsewhere, I ran like hell for the building and slipped inside. The air was musty, and there was a faint odor of chlorine.

“Alex?” I called, poking my head around a tall stack of boxes. The building was more of an oversized shed and was dimly lit by the moonlight shining through the single, grime-covered window. Hard pressed for space, the park had stuffed an ungodly amount of junk inside, and the whole place was cluttered as hell. Three steps inside, I had to maneuver between two large shelving units covered in dusty boxes and sidestep a lawn mower that looked like it’d been sitting there since the sixties. Once past, I noticed dark puddles on the floor trailing to the back. “Crap. Alex?”

I followed the trail and found him hunched in the corner, wedged behind a stack of plywood, eyes closed. He was bare-chested, having tied his T-shirt in a knot around his upper thigh to stanch the blood flow. I dove forward, grabbing the sides of his face.

“Alex!” I snapped. “Open your eyes. If anyone is going to kill you, it’s going to be me!”

The little voice in the back of my head was at war with the sick, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. This was Alex, my stomach said. Alex. While the little voice reminded me of what he’d done to Kale at Sumrun.

What he’d done to me at Roudey’s.

A groan and a flash of hazel. “Dez?”

The sound of his voice lifted the two-ton weight that had settled on my shoulders. “What happened?”

“Was worried they got you,” he said, eyes closing. “I saw—saw you and Kiernan go in. Backtracked to find you and…”

“Is he okay?” Kale came up behind me. Jade was right on his tail—as usual.

“I dunno,” I said. “It looks really bad.”

Blood pooled beneath his leg, creeping outward in a small semicircle around him. His right side was covered, jeans and T-shirt soaked through.

With clinical interest, Kale moved Alex’s hand—without vaporizing him since Ms. Annoying was present—from where it clutched his thigh. “The human body can lose much more blood before it begins to shut down. It appears the bullet missed the femoral artery. He’ll live.”

“Don’t sound so excited,” Alex mumbled. His head lolled to the side as he opened his eyes a slit.

Kale shrugged. “Disappointed. This would have been a convenient resolution to the problem.”

Alex tilted his head, a tiny smirk on his face. “Problem?”

Kale’s expression was stony. “You.”

“Let’s get out of here before anyone else shows up,” Dax said, charging through the door. He brushed me aside and grabbed both Alex’s hands, hauling him to his feet. “Can you walk?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex glanced my way. Taking a deep breath, he nodded. “I can walk.”

…

By the time we made it back to the hotel and got Alex patched up and situated, it was Saturday morning. While everyone had been busy fussing over Alex—the bullet passed clean through, and the bleeding was finally under control—I’d slipped into the lobby and looked up Daun’s room number on Rosie’s computer. Coffee in hand, I went to find her.

“Deznee,” she said with a smile. Stepping aside, she held the door open and waved me in. “It’s very early. Is everything okay?”

“Oh.” Wow. I felt like an ass. With all the chaos and lingering adrenaline of the night’s activities, it had totally slipped my mind that it wasn’t even seven a.m. yet. Normal people were still sleeping. “I totally spaced on the time. I’m so, so sorry!”

Daun only smiled and held the door open a bit wider. “Come in. Please.”

This was a huge risk, but I was out of options. “I need to ask you something. A favor. But first I need to be sure what I say stays between us. No matter what.”