The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(158)

“Better. No pain. No visions. Whatever they gave me did the trick.”

Amanda looked to Melissa. “You must have gotten the results of his hospital tests by now.”

“I have them,” Melissa confirmed.

“Don’t you think he has a right to know what you found?”

Melissa fought the urge to withhold the information as leverage, but they had a long struggle ahead of them. She had to start building trust.

“The scanners discovered a foreign object in your thalamus,” she told Theo. “A perfect ring, no larger than a crumb. Any idea how it got there?”

Theo had every idea. His only surprise was that he shared it.

“The Pelletiers. Has to be.”

“Why?” Melissa asked. “What’s the purpose of the object?”

“I have no idea. I can’t imagine it’s there to kill me. There are easier ways.”

“Is there anything you’re willing to tell me about this Azral and Esis?”

“I know you’ll never find them unless they want to be found,” Theo responded. “You’ll never get them in an interrogation room. I just hope for your sake that you never become a problem to them. They slaughtered two dozen of their own employees by remote control. They wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

Howard’s leg bounced in anxiety, sending soft tapping echoes through the trailer. Melissa stroked her jaw in rumination.

“So what do they want from you? Why did they bring you here?”

Theo shrugged as best he could. “I don’t know. None of us know.”

“I hope we never find out,” Amanda said.

The truck veered to the left, then rolled to a quick halt. Melissa raised her radio.

“Carter, what’s going on? Why are we stopping?”

The receiver hissed loud static. “We got an accident up ahead. Overturned truck across both lanes.”

“Is anyone on scene yet?”

“Yeah. An ambulance and two local poes.”

Melissa muttered a curse. Something didn’t feel right. “Okay. Talk to them and see if you can get an estimate.”

She scrutinized Theo’s face for hints of canny awareness, finding none. Frustrated, she turned to Howard. “Call Michael with our coordinates. I want the rest of the team on standby.”

Amanda and Theo watched her closely as her thoughts once again bounced with mad leaps of logic. When it came to the fugitives, no assumption was too far-fetched. Nothing was out of the question. Melissa was living in their world now. She didn’t like it at all.

—

Carter Rutledge stepped out the driver’s door with a tired grunt. At five-foot-four, he rivaled Owen Nettles as the shortest man in the unit. He battled his stature with a ferociously overpumped build. Even his loose wool blazer flaunted the pneumatic bulges of his biceps.

Like Ross Daley—his colleague, gym partner, and current copilot—Carter did not like having an eccentric female foreigner as his supervisor. They certainly didn’t enjoy driving a tug through the sticks in the wee hours, all because their batty new boss was jumping at shadows.

They closed their doors and examined the fracas on the highway, a gaggle of emergency lights in the dark middle of nowhere. A fourteen-wheel bread truck had flipped onto its side, spilling across both lanes at a forty-five-degree angle. A young paramedic pushed the injured driver on a squeaky-wheeled stretcher while three doughy state troopers chatted beside their cruisers.

Ross smirked at his teammate. “I love flashing my badge at these country duffs.”

“Careful,” Carter teased, “I hear they shoot duskers on sight here.”

“In that case, maybe we should bring the boss out.”

They laughed and approached the policemen. Ross held up his ID. “Excuse me, gentlemen . . .”

The cops kept conversing, oblivious. Ross cleared his throat and raised his badge higher.

“Excuse me, gentlemen . . .”

Still no response. Ross looked to Carter in outrage. “Can you believe this?”

“I can understand why they wouldn’t see you in the dark . . .”

“This isn’t funny anymore.”

Ross moved to the nearest officer and reached for his shoulder. His hand passed right through it.

“Oh shit.”

The entire accident scene disappeared in a blink, leaving nothing on the road but a lone female figure. In the light of the moon and the tug’s distant high beams, they had no trouble recognizing Hannah Given and the deadly .44 she aimed at them.

Zack’s open sketchbook dangled in her left hand, a large message scribbled in thick marker ink.

ON YOUR KNEES.

HANDS ON YOUR HEADS.

NOW.

Though she had no way to measure it, Hannah was shifted a speed just shy of 22×. She had over a dozen prefabricated messages written out in Zack’s pad, one for nearly every anticipated occasion. She would not slow down for purposes of comprehension. She would not take her eyes off their hands. Though her weapon experience didn’t go beyond stage pistols, she was ready to fire a warning shot before they even touched their guns.

The Deps processed her ferocious expression, fueled as much by acting as it was by adrenaline. She impatiently shook the pad at them.

Carter raised his palms. “Okay, look, you don’t want to do this . . .”