Echoes at Dawn (KGI #5)(28)

“And you? You have the ability to focus your telepathy?”

Grace looked down at her hands, and Rio very much wanted to touch her. To somehow make contact. Pull her into his arms and just hold on to her until she knew she was safe.

“I could. I’m not sure about now. It’s all a mess really. I’m not sure how what they did to me will affect me in the long run. I severed my link to Shea because I wanted to protect her. But when I tried to reach out to her again, I couldn’t. It feels random to me now. I heard the man in the mountains. He was broadcasting so much anger, I could literally feel him as well as hear him. But everything is silent around me now. I learned to focus my talent better than Shea did. But I don’t have the same control now that I’ve always had. Maybe I never will.”

Her lips were turned down into an unhappy frown that made his chest ache. There was so much despair and fatigue in her voice.

“So this soldier Shea saved…You know him?”

Rio nodded. “I work with his brothers. They’re all ex-military. They run a special ops group that takes on dangerous jobs no one else can or is willing to do. Sometimes we contract with the government and take military assignments that the government can’t officially get involved in. Other times we do private sector jobs, like hostage retrieval, tracking kidnap victims, protection, basically anything that takes a lot of muscle and stealth.”

Grace’s eyes widened. Her hands twisted nervously in front of her, and he could tell her unease had just shot through the roof. It didn’t take a rocket scientist or being telepathic to figure out what was going on in her head.

“Grace, listen to me. The people after you may well be backed by a government group. We may all be on the same team on paper, but there are any number of shadow groups with their own agenda and each serves a different master. We don’t work for the government. We aren’t government owned. We contract with Uncle Sam on certain assignments. We don’t prey on innocent civilians.”

“Where is Shea now?” she asked nervously.

Rio smiled. “If I had to guess, she’s with Nathan and he’s keeping very close watch over her. She couldn’t be in safer hands. He loves her. They’ve been through hell together.”

“But she’s all right?” Grace demanded.

“Yes, she’s safe with Nathan and the rest of KGI.”

“KGI? Is that the name of your…organization?”

Again he nodded.

“Do you know who’s after me and Shea?”

Rio’s lips tightened. “That’s the thing. I’m not convinced that there isn’t more than one faction after you. I saw the video surveillance when you went to your parents’ house. Shea saw it too. She went there looking for you with Nathan. I promised her then that I’d bring you home.”

Grace closed her eyes and leaned her head onto her upturned palm for support. “How are we supposed to live when every moment of our lives someone is after us, wants to destroy us for their own purposes.”

When she reopened her eyes, to Rio’s dismay, they were glossy with tears. Oh hell. If she started crying, he was so f**ked.

“What happened after you went to your parents’ house, Grace?” he asked, hoping to distract her. “Were you taken then? Did you manage to escape?”

She sighed. “Shea was right. It was probably stupid of me to try to look for answers. I was just so frustrated with our lives. Or lack of one. We’d been running for an entire year. Never seeing each other. Always scared out of our minds that whoever killed our parents would catch up to us. Jumping at my own shadow. Never trusting anyone. Someone smiled at me, I was immediately suspicious and couldn’t get away fast enough. Someone says hello, I freeze up. Someone looks at me too long and I’m convinced that they’re following me. It was no way to live. I missed my sister. I wanted a normal life for both of us. So I went looking for answers. I found my mother’s journal, or rather who I always thought was my mother,” she said bitterly.

“She was just a scientist who created me and Shea in a lab and then felt sorry for us and took us away to raise as her own.”

“Shea told us,” Rio said quietly. “She found the journal you dropped in the escape tunnel.”

Grace’s mouth drooped. “So she knows the truth now.”

He nodded. “What happened when you left? Did you manage to escape?”

“I did, that time. But they were close and I was panicked and stupid. I didn’t cover my trail as well as I should have and they picked me off a few weeks later. I can’t even tell you where I was. I was drugged for most of the time. Until they started bringing in their test subjects for me to heal. Then they wanted me alert and able to do their bidding.”

Rio felt sick. He could only imagine what she’d been forced to do and experience. The toll it had taken on her was something she may never fully recover from. The stupid bastards didn’t even realize the precious gift they had. They were too busy trying to destroy her without even knowing what they were doing.

She frowned. “You said there could be more than one group after me.”

Rio nodded. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible from what I know.”

“The day I escaped, the facility I was being held at was bombed. I remember hearing gunshots. It was chaos. The cell I was in collapsed and I was able to crawl out and escape, but many of the researchers were dead and I don’t think it was from the explosions I heard. There was blood everywhere, like they’d been slaughtered.”