Twice as Hot (Tales of an Extraordinary Girl #2)(3)

"Okay. I've got a visual on her now. Continue."

"One of Rome's contacts intercepted a communication between her and some as yet unknown man and learned some stuff we didn't know. Like how Pretty Boy, her former boss - you know, the evil guy Rome and I had to kill during our courtship - had several warehouses filled with people he'd locked up and experimented on. Desert Gall moved them to a central location to test them and weed out the weaklings, and Rome went to save them. But knowing Pretty Boy, and having studied Desert Gal, there were a few booby traps along the way." Just saying those two words - Pretty Boy - caused me to shudder. And I'd said them twice. Double shudder.

He'd been the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, lushly sensual, darkly erotic, yet he'd possessed a black, monstrous heart. He'd tried to experiment on me, too, as well as attempting to kill Rome. He had experimented on others - the ones we'd known about before his death - replacing their skin with impenetrable metal, adding animal glands to their brains so they'd have beastlike instincts. He'd done other stuff, too. Stuff I couldn't even consider without gagging. All to build an army. An army that would bring him money and (more) power.

Tres cliche if you asked me.

Sherridan leaned forward, clearly intrigued. The book fell to her feet, a warrior's bright eyes staring up at me. "There were survivors?" she asked. "I thought all the people Pretty Boy tampered with ended up dying. Even the ones you guys rescued from those cages."

"They did. Well, those did. Like I said, he had other warehouses, more people. Apparently these groups not only survived, they've begun to thrive. Rome was to bring them to PSI for questioning and testing.

John wants to do a little recruiting of his own, I'm sure."

"Wow, experiments that actually worked," she said reverently, her blue eyes glazing over. Then her features softened, and her mouth parted on a dreamy sigh.

Her mind was wandering.

What, she wanted to be experimented on? I shook my head and had to hook several strands of my honey-colored hair behind my ears to keep them from slapping my cheeks. "Sherridan." No response.

I rubbed my temples and closed my eyes for a moment. If I knew my friend, and I think I did, since we'd been friends for years, she'd just entered her Happy Place. She would be there for half an hour, at least. Trying to engage her now would be pointless.

Ever since Sherridan had learned about my abilities, she'd been acting strangely, retreating more and more into her mind. Oh, she still loved me. That wasn't in question. And I knew she didn't fear me. If she asked me to blow-dry her hair from fifty paces one more time, I was going to strangle her. But there was something almost...depressed about her, as though her life now lacked excitement and adventure.

I knew that feeling.

There were people in the world with beauty, riches, power. Their every step seemed blessed; failure and rejection were not things they'd ever experienced. Excitement greeted them everywhere they went, danger was something to be laughed at and anything they desired, they could have. In their hands, they held the power to change the world. At one time, I would have killed for such a life. Now, I have killed for it, but it wasn't the charmed existence I'd once thought it would be.

Perhaps I should have known such gifts would come with a price. But all I'd seen was the glitz, the glamour. The exhilaration. I hadn't known that there would always be a thousand others willing to rip me apart to possess what I have.

I prayed Sherridan didn't desire what I had desired - what I had gotten. This power beyond imagining. I prayed she was smarter.

Behind me, I heard a door creak open. Close. Footsteps.

I twisted. A slump-shouldered Tanner was strolling down the hall. I worried over the change in his appearance. He wore black as usual, but in the past his clothes had always been clean. Now his dark attire was dirty and wrinkled, his azure hair unwashed and in spikes around his head. He looked terrible.

There were bruises under his eyes and lines of tension around his mouth. He'd even taken out his signature eyebrow ring and Eight Ball contacts.

I'd known and loved him for several months, and I hated seeing him like this. He was tall and when I'd first met him he'd been extremely lean, more boy than man. But he'd begun to fill out and muscle up, coming into his own in both command and confidence. This past week, though, he'd started to slim down again, as if he didn't have the will to eat.

"Hey, Crazy Bones," I said. It was my pet name for him.

Usually he grinned. Now he stopped a few feet away from me and peered down at Sherridan as if I hadn't spoken. "Happy Place?" he asked.

I nodded, my heart lurching at the sadness in his tone.

"She's weird."

"Tanner," I said, then stopped when he faced me. My heart gave another lurch. God, his eyes. Once a bright blue (when he didn't disguise them with those crazily patterned contact lenses), they were now dull and listless and swimming with misery. They were dark and dismal. Hopeless.

In that moment, I hated Lexis. Tanner was the brother I'd never had, hadn't known I'd wanted and needed, and couldn't live without. I couldn't stand seeing him like this.

"Don't," he said. His jaw tightened. "Just don't."

"Don't what?" I asked, even though I knew what he meant. I just wanted to draw him out of his miserable shell.