Vengeful (Villains #2)(63)

The world went silent, and heavy, and gray, all the sound and movement leached out of the room. Dom made his way to the front door, fighting against the drag of frozen time.

Back when every step was pain, Dom couldn’t bear to spend more than a few moments in this heavy, dark place. But after months of training, his limbs and lungs moved steadily—if not easily—against the resistance.

He descended the stairs, his steps soundless when earlier they had echoed. Through the front doors and onto the curb. Dom paused beside the unfamiliar car and bent to examine the figure in the driver’s seat, a cell half raised to their ear. The man had the look of ex-mil, and the file on the seat beside him was printed with Dominic’s name.

He looked back and up at his apartment, the glow of the TV a splash of light against the curtains. Then he turned and walked two blocks to the nearest subway. Halfway down the stairs, he stepped back out of the shadows and into the world, into light and color and time, and vanished into the evening commute.

*

“THEY’RE watching my place,” he said when Victor answered the phone.

He was jogging through a small park, his breath coming in short, even beats.

“I’d expect as much,” said Victor, unfazed.

Dom slowed to a walk. “Why am I doing this?”

“Because ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught.”

With that, Victor hung up.

Dominic returned to EON the next day, via the black van, to find the initial group of six reduced to five. No Klinberg. By the third day, Matthews was gone too. Rios led them through exercises, drills, tests, and Dom did exactly as he was told. Tried to keep his head down and his expression blank. And still he expected to be cut.

Wanted to be cut.

He was heading back to the van on the third day when he was stopped by Rios.

“Director Stell would like a word.”

Dominic stiffened. He’d never met the man, but he knew Stell’s reputation. Knew he was the detective who sent Victor to prison back in college. The man who tracked Eli to Merit. And, of course, the man who’d started EON.

Run, said a voice in Dom’s head.

He looked from Rios to the compound’s entrance, the sliding doors hissing closed.

Run before they shut.

But if he did, that would be the end of it. His identity would be known, his cover blown. And then Dom would have to keep running. Always.

He forced himself to fall in line.

Rios led him to an office at the end of a long white hall. She knocked once, and opened the door.

Director Stell sat in a high-backed chair on the opposite side of a broad steel desk. He had black hair just starting to silver, his face reduced to angles as he stared down at a tablet.

“Mr. Rusher. Please sit down.”

“Sir.” Dominic sat.

The door closed behind him with a click.

“Something has been bothering me,” said Stell without looking up. “You ever forget something, and you can’t remember what it is? It’s a vicious little mind game. Distracting, too. Like an itch you can’t scratch.” Stell set the tablet down, and Dominic saw his own face staring up from the screen. Not the photo taken in the security scan, or one pulled from hall surveillance. No, the photo was a few years old, from his time in the service. “It was your name,” continued Stell. “I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where.” Stell turned the tablet and nudged it across the steel table. “Do you know what that is?”

Dominic scanned the screen. Beside his photo was a kind of profile, basic details—age, birthday, parents—along with facts about his life—address, schooling, etc.—but there was an error.

Dominic’s middle name was listed here as Eliston.

His real middle name was Alexander.

“Have you heard of Eli Ever?” asked Stell.

Dom stilled, searching for the right answer, the right amount of knowledge. It had been public news—but how much of it, and which pieces? He’d only met Eli once, and only for an instant, the breath it took to step into the Falcon Price and pull Sydney—and her dog—out.

“The serial killer?” ventured Dom.

Stell nodded. “Eliot Cardale—known as Eli Ever in the press—was one of the most dangerous ExtraOrdinaries in existence. He killed nearly forty people, and briefly used the Merit police databases—and the police force, for that matter—to create a list of targets, profiles of those he suspected to be EOs. This,” said Stell slowly, “is one of those profiles.”

Once, when Dominic was overseas, he’d walked into a room and found a live bomb. Not like the IED he’d stepped on. No, he’d never had time to see that explosion coming. But the bomb in this room had been as big as a steel drum, and the whole place was booby-trapped around it. He remembered looking down, seeing the trigger wire, barely an inch in front of his left boot.

Dom had wanted nothing more than to run away, as far as possible, but he hadn’t known where the other wires were, or even how he’d made it that far without triggering them. He’d had to pick his way out, one agonizing step at a time.

And here he was again, his footing precarious—one wrong move, and everything would blow.

“You’re asking if I’m an EO.”

Stell’s gaze was steady, unflinching. “We have no way of knowing if every person Eli targeted was actually—”