The Replaced(22)

Dread rippled through me.

Agent Truman started toward me when the explosion happened. It wasn’t the ground-shaking explosion of pyrotechnics, but a sudden-unexpected-out-of-nowhere burst that sent glass torpedoing in all directions.

I ducked my head instinctively. Shards of glass sprayed across the tile floor. When I glanced up again, I saw that it had been one of the human-sized canisters. It had spontaneously exploded.

No, not spontaneously, I realized, when I caught Agent Truman’s incredulous eyes shoot my way.

Me. I’d done that.

My ability.

“My suit!” one of the soldiers shouted. “It’s been compromised.”

He’d been caught by a piece of flying glass.

Agent Truman crossed the floor, his feet grinding through crushed glass, almost meeting me but not quite. I eyed his cast. I imagined myself on the pitching mound. This was it, my clutch play.

Fast, like the wind-up release of a pitch, I reached behind my back and closed my fingers around the grip of the gun hidden in the waist of my jeans, just beneath my T-shirt. Even before my shoulder had whipped back around, my thumb found that sweet spot, the safety, and released it.

I studied him, waiting to see what his game plan was, because everyone—pitcher, batter, coach, NSA agent—had some sort of plan. I did. Agent Truman did.

But my dad used to tell me, Whoever blinks first loses, so I waited for it.

“Shoot me, and your friends here all die.”

That was his blink. He was threatening me, letting me know I should give up because he didn’t want to die.

I had him. “Who said anything about shooting you?” I pointed the gun at my thigh, and because I couldn’t stomach the idea of killing everyone in the room, I said, “This isn’t a bluff. This whole place is about to go Code Red in three . . . two . . .”

And that was it. I had them. Not all of them, maybe. There would be two left, but two in uncompromised hazmat suits were better than a dozen. They knew it and we knew it too.

Soldiers scrambled for exits as if we’d set the place on fire. Thom was released and grabbed for Willow, who wobbled slightly but kept her balance.

I’d planned to say “I told you so” to that SOB Agent Truman when I pulled the trigger, but the last thing I remembered was the sensation of my leg being ripped wide open, and then everything going black.





CHAPTER SEVEN


Day Twenty-Seven

Somewhere Along the I-5 Corridor


THE INCESSANT TAPPING SOUND WOKE ME, BUT there was something else too. Something soothing and warm, like skin, fingertips, grazed my jaw.

Nice, I thought. This is nice.

I was curled on my side in the back of the SUV, and I blinked, trying to determine the sound in the darkness. It didn’t take long, though. It was Jett’s keyboard, a sound I’d grown more than accustomed to over the past few weeks. He might as well be dating that laptop of his.

“Hey,” Simon said from above me, his voice hushed. And when he ran his hand through my hair, I realized those had been his fingers touching my jaw, and it was his lap my head was cradled on. “You’re back,” he said softly.

I shot up, glancing out the windows into the night. “How long was I out?” I rubbed my head, then my face, doing a quick inventory as I tried to put the pieces together. My memory was still fuzzy. Everything was fuzzy.

When I reached my leg, and my fingers traced the bloody opening where my jeans were shredded, I paused, everything clicking neatly into place. “Crap,” I whispered, my fingers diving into the opening to test the skin beneath.

“Yeah,” Simon agreed, from right beside me, still using that too-soft voice he’d adopted, like I was in a delicate state. “You had us scared there for a while. You were out a good forty-five minutes.”

My eyes flew wide. “Forty-five minutes?” That was forever. More sleep than I’d had since I’d been returned, at least in one stretch. Up ’til now, all I’d managed were half-hour naps, and those had been major victories, considering how few and far between they’d been. “What happened? How’d we get outta there?”

“You definitely didn’t make it easy on us. It was bad enough she could hardly walk a straight line,” Thom explained from the driver’s seat, lifting his chin to indicate the way back, behind where Simon and I were. I twisted in my seat and Willow was there, sprawled in the third row, arms and legs spread wide as she snored away, sleeping off whatever Agent Truman and his Daylighters had used to sedate her. I envied that—her ability to sleep—even if it was drug-induced. “Good thing you’re not heavy,” Thom added.

Jett, who was in the passenger seat now, stopped working on his computer. “All I saw was a rush of guys getting the hell outta the building, like it was about to explode or something. And then a few seconds later, Willow came out . . . carrying you.”

I frowned, turning a skeptical eye on the snoring beast draped on the seat behind me. “This Willow? Bu—I thought you said she couldn’t walk a straight line.”

From the other side of Simon, Natty leaned forward and shook her head. She wore a huge knowing grin as she, too, surveyed the slumbering giant. “Didn’t stop her. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch you.” Her smile widened. “I think you have a new admirer.”