The truck left the small compound behind, and the crisp December night didn’t bother her with the cold, as she might have expected.
The beast within comforted her, and she mentally promised the others that she’d return to free them and bring the authorities. If it was the last thing she ever did, she’d make sure Dr. Lang and his crazy scientists paid for all the lives they’d ruined. But first she had to find this Alex guy.
******
Charlie didn’t like lying to her cousin, but for Kennedy to be safe, she’d had to leave right now. Despite knowing what lay in wait for herself, she knew she’d done the right thing. Especially when Nivia returned, looking frail and upset. A clever front for a bitch without a conscience.
The guards spotted Nivia, and one of them guided the four other girls from the dining room. When Charlie went to follow, the remaining guard ordered her to stay.
“She’s gone,” Nivia informed him. To Charlie’s surprise, he didn’t seem upset at all. “She’ll bring him back, I’m sure. Her cousin,” she said, motioning to Charlie, “told her exactly who to go to for help.”
Damn. Charlie had missed that. Great. Now Smith and Lang would know she had ties to Kennedy if they hadn’t known already. She had tried to minimize the risk to her and her cousin by pretending none of the women meant much to her. Then no one would try to use their love for each other against them. But Kennedy had escaped—so far. So good news on that front, at least.
She didn’t know much about this Alex person, only that he had no love for Dr. Lang. And that he had as much reason as any of them to shut down the labs for good. He was dangerous, she sensed, but he could be trusted. The question remained, though, would he bring danger to Kennedy’s door, or would he save her from the fate Charlie had unfortunately foreseen?
Then one of the guards dragged her to Duane Smith, and her thoughts went instead to survival. After just a few minutes acting as Smith’s punching bag, she caught a psychic wave and rode it, seeing her bleak, impending future.
“Hate…you…” she managed before Dr. Lang showed up with that freakin’ needle. It hurt, so much. And it hurt so much more when they let Nivia show Dr. Lang how good she’d gotten at using her telekinesis to break things…like bones.
******
Alex guided Eli to the building he’d seen in Sheer’s memories. They’d waited a day to get a better layout, and he’d been curious to see how the authorities responded to monsters eating humans in a public park.
As expected, nothing made the news. Lang had sent in a cleanup crew. The dead bodies disappeared, as did the mutant threat.
But Alex knew nothing would be over until they put Lang and Smith away for good.
After another hour of waiting around in silence while Eli caught up on his sleep, Alex noticed a food truck leaving the gated parking lot. To his surprise, a woman lay flat on top of the vehicle as it drove away from the secured area.
“Eli, wake up.”
Eli opened his eyes, going from asleep to fully awake.
“Follow her,” Alex ordered, excitement filling him. He’d found Lang’s new lair, and if he was reading the situation correctly, the woman was on the way to escaping. The mission, according to Gideon, was to wait and see what happened around the place. But Alex had a feeling grabbing the woman would be paramount to a successful takedown. She’d know things that would help them nail Lang. And she’d possibly know more about the inside of the building than Carter had found online, which wasn’t much.
That way, Gideon, Carter, and Bailey could work out a plan to get inside that lab with minimum casualties.
While part of him wanted to storm inside, a bigger part wanted to know what the woman could tell him about Myers and Yates. About Sheer.
He still wanted to rage at Eli for not allowing him to kill the pyromaniac. But he was smart enough to know he had no immunity to fire, and Sheer loved nothing more than to burn things.
What Alex hadn’t gotten from Katie’s vision he’d learned from Carter’s notes on Lang and his crew. They had detailed information on all the known scientists and Circs in Lang’s group. Myers and Yates were little more than hired muscle, but Alex had known that from working with them for months before leaving U-Ground behind.
They hated authority, thought women were good for nothing but sex, and had no respect for anything but themselves.
Sheer was a monster, almost as bad as Caldane, that psychopath.
It wasn’t bad enough that Lang experimented on the unwilling. He wanted to see how a demented mind would take to the serum, so he’d chosen Caldane and Sheer.
With any luck Lang would farm Caldane off to the island where he imprisoned his mutants and rogue experiments, taking him out of play.
But Sheer would stay here, working for Lang. As would Myers and Yates. Giving Alex the perfect opportunity to rid the world of real monsters—and give his sister the justice she deserved.
“What the hell is she doing up there, do you think?” Eli asked as they tailed the food truck.
“Um, escaping? What the hell do you think she’s doing? Joyriding?”
“Ass.” Eli paused. “Bet it would be fun to ride up there though. What a blast.”
