Renegade's Run Page 3

  Jonas climbed down one of the maintenance ladders on the far side of the pier, grimacing at the smell of harbor water. If this got complicated, they’d smell him coming before he ever used talent.

  He winced at the cold water. If Jonas had any other options, he’d take one of them, but from what he garnered from his friends last night, he was running out of time. They’d be moving out of their little nest soon. Jonas either chanced losing his renegade or took the plunge.

  The sun was barely above the horizon and the day was darkly overcast. Storm coming in soon. Even so, Jonas stayed underwater as much as he could, following his sense of the shielded men to their vessel. It wasn’t impressive. It was a simple barge, but a big one with machine shops and tons of cargo room.

  Jonas hauled himself up the ladder on the side and rested atop one of the pier cushions designed to keep the vessel from hitting the pilings. His hands were shaking, and he considered backing out. He worked too much in getting here, used too many of his precious store of carbs in conventional means. He shouldn’t be considering this. Every ounce of Jonas’ training said he shouldn’t engage a renegade in this state, but it was now or never. He wished Markham was here to save the day.

  Small bursts of talent caught his attention. His renegade was inside, and if Dillon was inside and using talent, he had to have a source of carbs that Jonas could tap if he needed to. If he could make it to Dillon without incident, Jonas had a chance of completing his mission and living to tell about it.

  As he suspected, there were no guards topside. He had bypassed at least one and probably two checkpoints. Jonas padded down the deserted corridors inside, following his shielded buddies and the continuing bursts of talent.

  Jonas scowled as he examined those bursts. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The bursts—weren’t right. He pushed the thought away as he came out on a catwalk two stories above the floor of the cargo area.

  He sank into the deep shadows and performed a head count. Fourteen. Markham’s intel from the mission brief said there were only eight plus the renegade. Without accurate numbers, Jonas couldn’t be sure he had them all. Markham—

  Jonas froze. Markham’s shield was closing, not a neuro-mechanical Eseries but Evan himself, and four neuro-mechanical E-shields. Christ! Markham didn’t know where the checkpoints were, though he would be expecting them.

  All hell broke loose on the floor below. The checkpoint guards had raised the alarm before Markham barreled through them with his backup.

  The talent below started charging up for an assault. Jonas identified his focus—class eight telekinesis. He was after Markham.

  Jonas held his breath and stepped forward, firing up. He had never tried what he was doing now. No one ever had. This was desperation at work. Jonas fired off one class seven hold after another, feeling the 3000-series shields splintering under the force of his mind, until six of the men below were under his control.

  The renegade’s concentration faltered, and his head raised in slow motion, searching for Jonas.

  Jonas fired off commands to his human puppets. Kill the renegade. Kill the other men. Don’t stop shooting. The sound of gunfire echoing in the enclosed space was deafening.

  The renegade found Jonas with—her eyes. It wasn’t Dillon. It was a woman in sweats and a jacket with her hair tucked under a ballcap. Jonas felt his heart start pounding as she flew backward in a spray of blood. He backed away.

  His mind worked overtime as Jonas reviewed what he knew. That was what was wrong with the bursts. They were a different flavor of talent than he’d been reading while he’d been tracking.

  Not Dillon? Christ! There were two, and Jonas didn’t know it. The intel said one renegade. Was Dillon one of the men in the crossfire below? No. They were all dark-haired. Where the hell was he?

  The answer to that question came in the form of the tearing pain in his chest. Jonas hit the metal grating that had been under his feet moments before, the air rushing from his lungs. If he could have pulled air in again, Jonas would have screamed. He locked his hand to the source of the blood flowing down his chest. Cop-killers, his mind supplied numbly. The Kevlar silk helped some, but he still had shrapnel wounds.

  For a single moment, Jonas felt as if the metal bands of the restraints were cutting into his ribs again. He couldn’t breathe; the hum of the psi wave cut his consciousness away from the calming interaction with those around him. Only shields worked inside a psi wave, but Jonas felt even that flickering.

  The sensation eased, and Jonas found that he could manage a shallow breath. His mind dimly registered a class two calming being used on him. Jonas furrowed his brow. Markham couldn’t do that. He opened his eyes to the sight of Dillon squatting over him.

  “DoPT?” the renegade asked in a ragged voice.

  Jonas nodded, still trying to regulate his breathing.

  “Who are you?”

  He tried to answer, but Jonas found that he couldn’t maintain his breathing yet. Worse, he overextended. The shaking set in, and he groaned as it jarred his wound.

  Every operative reacted to the shock-state differently. Some went catatonic. Some fell into a deep sleep that was impossible or near impossible to rouse them from. For Jonas, there was the shaking. Sleep would come next, if he didn’t recarb first, but the shaking would continue until he recarbed or died.

  Dillon muttered something then pulled out the vial holding the remaining two cane cubes. “Two? Only two? You deserve to die.”

  He popped both of them into Jonas’ mouth. It wouldn’t stop the shaking, but it would keep Jonas from passing out for a few minutes.

  Dillon dragged Jonas’ wallet out of his front pocket and flipped it open to his driver’s license. Jonas would have to tell Markham so his quarters could be moved—if he survived that long.

  The sound of gunfire echoing down the open passageways let Jonas know that Markham had reached the second checkpoint. He hoped Evan made it through all right. Jonas was in no shape to help him.

  Dillon uttered a string of curses that made Markham’s outburst from that morning seem like a walk in the park. “Alpha Two? I couldn’t just shoot any old DoPT operative. I had to shoot the boy wonder.”

  Jonas looked at him in surprise. How could he know that without a DoPT shield?

  Dillon started to pace, keeping a wary eye on the downed man and issuing his speech. “You’re on the wrong side, boy. Don’t trust Baker as far as you can throw him. If you ever catch him without that damn shield of his, take a peek for yourself.” He stopped abruptly and tossed the wallet back on Jonas’ chest. “They’ve broken through. You’ll be fine. Trust me.” Dillon sprinted away, leaving Jonas gasping for breath under the force of the pressure on his chest.

  Trust a renegade? Oh, what fun today is turning out to be!

  Markham thundered over the metal flooring and out of the darkness. He dropped to his knees beside Jonas, peeling back his jacket and shirt to survey the damage. Over his shoulder, Jonas could hear Peterson calling in a life flight for him, while Goulden pulled a telescoping backboard from his medical kit and readied it.

  “No,” Jonas protested, eyeing the device.

  “Pressure bandage.” Markham met Jonas’ eyes as he caught the bandage Goulden threw him. “Only until we get you to the hospital. You have my word.”

  Jonas whimpered, as Markham applied enough pressure to make it feel as if he’d been shot again. His shaking intensified, and Goulden grabbed one blood-soaked hand to get a reading on his Porta-meter.

  The older man’s face hardened. “Jeez! We need to recarb, but we don’t want to fill his stomach. Any suggestions?”

  Markham glanced up at him. “Cane. Most punch for the least amount of pukable material.”

  Jonas managed a strangled laugh.

  Goulden crouched over him. “We saw the evidence of your carb-up on the way in. Are you completely empty?”

  Jonas raised the vial with its payload of two crumpled gold wrappers for hi
s inspection.

  Goulden nodded then turned to Markham. “You carrying?”

  “My pouch.”

  Peterson took over feeding Jonas the cane cubes, while Goulden and another agent Jonas didn’t recognize strapped him to the backboard. They moved him to the deck to wait for the helo.

  Jonas sucked down all twelve of Markham’s cubes, and the shaking receded to a mild shivering.

  Markham nodded. “Glucose IV in the helo. Call that in, Peterson.” He met Jonas’ eyes as the other agents backed off. “Want to explain this?”

  “Two renegades. Got one. Dillon got me—got away.”

  Markham grumbled a curse. “Damn intel. Full name?”

  “Martin Dillon.” Jonas managed a weak smile. “Prints on my stuff—wallet and cane.” He sobered. “Need to move.”

  “I’ll take care of that.” With four buildings available, hiding Jonas out somewhere else wouldn’t be too hard to arrange. Markham met his eyes again. “Any other pressing details I should be aware of?”

  “Used a woman for cover last night while I was picking thoughts of the terrorists in another room. Used protection. No vis—” He grimaced, as Markham increased pressure on his wound.

  “Enough of that.”

  Jonas managed a weak laugh. “Two times.”

  *

  April 3rd

  Jonas yawned then grimaced as pain ripped through his chest. He panted off the spasm and scanned the room until he found Markham. He knew Markham would wait for him to wake before leaving him in the care of other agents. Jonas wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Markham gowned up and stood guard over him in the OR.

  “Feeling okay?” Markham asked.

  “Okay is a subjective term. I’m not dead. I suppose, I’ll heal.”

  Markham nodded. “Yeah. Those two layers of Kevlar silk minimized the damage.”

  “Good. How bad will the scar be?”

  “Not bad. They had the plastic surgeons in there.”

  There was a long, awkward silence. Jonas tried to read Markham’s expression, but he kept it as guarded as his mind.

  Finally, Jonas looked away. “I wouldn’t have gone in if I’d known. You know that.”

  “I know it. Even with this screw-up, the brass is impressed. One of the renegades skipped, but the rest was beyond anything they’ve ever seen before.” He sighed. “Our intel was at fault. If we were right—”

  Jonas nodded. “I realized that when I counted heads. I was trying to hatch a better plan, when the renegade I took down fired up to take you out. I should have realized the rest could be wrong, too. I reacted. When I realized the renegade I took down was a woman—”

  “You knew you were looking for a man?”

  “Yeah. My brain picking the night before gave me a name and description to work from. And, I was running out of time. All I needed was a place, so I tailed them.”

  “Well, Baker will be here later to do the debrief on you.”

  “Baker?” Baker didn’t do debriefs. Markham was his detail boss as well as his keeper. “Why Baker?”

  “This is big news. We kept the renegade out of it, but the whole world knows that an unnamed DoPT operative took out a terrorist enclave.”

  “And?”

  Markham shrugged. “You know Baker. He wants his face in the news. He’s a politician at heart. If the talent rights groups keep gaining momentum, he may have a shot at the presidency in another twenty-five years or so when he’s a respectable age to hold it.”

  Jonas swallowed a sour lump at the thought.

  Dillon’s words danced in his mind. “Don’t trust Baker as far as you can throw him. If you ever catch him without that damn shield of his, take a peek for yourself.”

  He furrowed his brow. Dillon knew Baker? “Markham, was Dillon ever DoPT?”

  “Not according to the file on him. Why would you ask that?”

  Jonas grasped at any excuse. It wouldn’t do to admit that he didn’t trust Baker. He never had, but that was beside the point. “If he’s not DoPT, he has a friend on the inside. He knew I was Alpha Two by my name. I wasn’t carrying my ID and badge—just my driver’s license. How did he know I was Alpha Two?”

  Markham’s face darkened, and Jonas sucked in his breath in surprise. His keeper was scared shitless. Jonas could see it in his expression. More surprising, Jonas could feel it from him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” he demanded.

  Jonas rubbed the bandage while he considered it. “I was injured, Markham. It slipped my mind until now.”

  “That was damned important, Paige.”

  “Look, Ev—” He met his keeper’s eyes and felt his cheeks heat. No first names. Don’t get involved. That was the first rule of an operative.

  Don’t get involved with renegades for the obvious reasons. Don’t get involved with co-workers. It was a dangerous business, and people died. Don’t get involved with victims. That makes a lost one harder to deal with. Don’t get attached to your family. They can be used against you. Well, Jonas didn’t have to worry about that one.

  Markham raised an eyebrow. “If you slip like that in front of Baker, he’ll have your head. Worse, it will all be over. I’ll be reassigned, and they’ll find a keeper you can’t ever hope to get attached to.”

  “Sorry.” It was his weakness. People were his weakness. Jonas hid it as best as he could, and Markham didn’t turn him over to Baker like he should.

  “All right. We’ll tighten up while we try to trace his source.”

  Another awkward silence descended on them. Jonas wondered at that. They didn’t spend a lot of time talking. Considering the circumstances, that made sense. Still, Jonas never found the silence between them awkward before. Well, he hadn’t since he was still at Clinton and he was first introduced to his future keeper.

  Jonas scanned his eyes over Markham. The man was tense, and he didn’t meet Jonas’ eyes. “What’s going on with you?”

  Markham sighed. “The Supreme Court ruled for the talents. They’ve been ordered set free immediately. They put out the bare bones of the decision today with the full draft to follow later.”

  “That’s good news, Markham.” It was, wasn’t it?

  “Since the case dealt with talent rights in general, they’ve made several rulings about past practices.”

  “Please, tell me they made the restraints illegal.”

  “No. They were deemed a necessary step in avoiding harm to self or others, though the chest bands will be web or leather now.”

  Jonas nodded. “Figures,” he grumbled.

  “They ruled that selling talent children is illegal, though people will just bypass that with private adoptions. Abandonment was always illegal. They ruled signing your child away like—It’s illegal now. Parents have to go through a legal process. There will be case studies and keepers to help children stay with their families. There will be social workers and psych tests. Only when there is no workable solution will children be remanded to the training academies. You can seek reparations under the ruling.”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from them.” Markham would know the ‘them’ he meant. Jonas wanted nothing from his former family. “The ruling is enough.”

  Markham nodded and stood. Jonas thought he’d leave, but he set up a debrief recorder.

  Jonas felt that tightening in his chest again. “I thought you said Baker was doing the debrief.”

  “He is.”

  “Then, what is this?”

  Markham sighed. “You’ll see.” He stepped back to Jonas’ side to get them both in the frame. “Markham, Evan. DoPT, Kappa Two. Date April third, twenty-fifteen. As required by the Supreme Court ruling of same date, I am informing DoPT operative Jonas Paige of his legal standing.”

  He motioned for Jonas to sign in officially on the recorder. “Paige, Jonas. DoPT, Alpha Two. Date April third, twenty-fifteen.”

  Markham nodded. “By ruling of the Supreme Court, I am required by law to inform you that the
ruling assumes some training academy students have been coerced into entering service when they would not have chosen to serve in the DoPT otherwise. By the ruling, if you so choose, you may dissolve your DoPT contract immediately with no penalty and no loss of benefits or bonus. Do you wish to exercise that option at this time, defer decision to a later date, or refuse?”

  Jonas felt his head spin. Free from his contract with benefits and no thirty-day notice? But, where would he go? He could make good money in security—if anyone would hire him in the current uproar and at his age. No keeper, but no one at his back either? A stab of fear shot through him.

  “Paige?”

  He met Markham’s eyes and rubbed his hand over his chest. “Refuse. I’ll keep my contract.”

  “You have the right to defer. If you refuse outright, you have to give notice and your benefits will be based on the twenty-year chart as agreed.”

  “I understand. I refuse. I’ll keep my contract.”

  “Understood.”

  *

  April 6th

  Drew Baker sat behind his desk, rolling a glass of scotch back and forth between his fingertips and looking at the files on his desk. Quinn Bryant of the NSA and Roger Childress of the DoD sat across from him. Of the two, Baker knew to fear Bryant. He was a dangerous man, and he was talent, something Childress didn’t know and didn’t need to know.

  “What do we do, now?” Childress demanded. “Dillon is still out there, and now he knows we’re onto him.”

  Baker sipped his drink. “We keep him away from Paige. Dillon on the loose is infinitely preferable to him convincing Paige to join him.”

  Bryant’s icy blue eyes seemed to glow in the gloom of the dimmed office. “You think Paige isn’t telling us the whole truth?”

  Baker shrugged. “There may have been more said than a threat that he was on the wrong side, but whatever it was, he’s not buying. Paige refused giving up his contract outright. If he had doubts, he wouldn’t have done that. He’d’ve deferred.”

  Childress scowled. “Damn Supreme Court is screwing up everything. With the Randalls and Thompson on our side—”

  “Can it,” Bryant barked. “You can’t force talent to comply. All we could do would be to hold them. We might have convinced Thompson and the younger boy eventually, but Katheryn and Steven were a lost cause. Of all of them, Steven is the one we want most.”