Javier shook his head and then looked directly at Gideon with his black, fathomless eyes, two dark pits of relentless agony. “Am I a psychopath? Tell me the fucking truth, brother. Should I put a bullet in my head? You’ve pulled me back more than once. What if you couldn’t get me back? What if I just stayed in that state? I would have killed everyone. All of them. Every single fucking one of them.”
“Don’t you think every single one of us would have killed them, Javier? You weren’t feeling anything different than the rest of us. Those intense emotions were triggered by the needless slaughter of infants, of children, of young and old women. What we saw was so wrong, and we weren’t prepared. We walked blindly into that nightmare without considering it would be there. Our minds weren’t in the right frame to accept it. You weren’t the only one struggling to keep it together and not take out the entire unit of...” He broke off for a moment, searching for a word to describe who would do such a thing.
“They aren’t soldiers. They aren’t even mercenaries.Butchers.Something is wrong with them.” Gideon tried not to see the images of the babies and toddlers strewn in the streets and playgrounds—hackedto pieces. Not shot,hacked. What kind of men did that? “Mack says we’ll find them. If he says that, you know we will. We’ll do it right, brother. As for you being a psychopath, Whitney put that shit in your head. He’s the fucking psychopath, not you. We volunteered to have our psychic abilities enhanced in order to better serve our country. Dr.Peter Whitney thought he was a god. Hell, he still thinks it.”
Gideon breathed deep to push other images crowding in away. “Javier, think about it with a clear head. You were reacting to what you saw. What we all saw. You weren’t the one chopping up children. You would never do such a thing for any reason. And before you object and talk to me about children with guns and bombs, I’llremind you there’s a difference between saving the life of a brother with a single well-placed bullet and chopping up a child for some kind of sick amusement.”
Gideon prayed there was. He had so many real sins on his soul. Too many. Javier was his brother from the streets and from his unit. “Don’t let Whitney do that to you. He fucked us up by giving us animal and reptile DNA, or whatever the hell he decided he wanted to play around with. We were already jacked up enough and didn’t need his added aggressive DNA, but we had no say in that. Worse, he didn’t tell us. He just let us discover what he’d done. We’re still discovering it.”
Gideon felt the burn of Javier’s black eyes. They could appear like two dark holes in that handsome face. Flames could flicker there. Right now, there was intensity as only Javier could give him. Sometimes Javier looked at him as if Gideon were leading the way to water after being lost in the desert for a long, long time. Gideon wanted to tell him he was no hero. He sure as hell wasn’t the man to look up to. He was lost himself.
“I tell Whitney to go fuck himself every day, Javier. He isn’t going to win. Not ever. He isn’t going to know one thing about any gifts or curses I have. He won’t ever take a child from one of the women we protect here in our compound. He isn’t going to prevent me from living whatever kind of life I choose to live. I choose to serve my country because that’s my choice. When Mack decides he’s had enough, I’ll most likely bow out as well. We’ve always stood together. We’re family. We always will be. Stop thinking you’re on the outside looking in. Here’s a little news flash for you, brother. Every single one of us feels that way. Whitney made sure of that. For all that, knowing that, I refuse to allow him to take my family from me.”
Gideon didn’t like talking. He never had. But this was Javier, and Javier was important, and he was one fucked-up brother. Heneeded help. He wouldn’t go to Mack because he was afraid Mack would decide to force him to stop working with their team. It was Gideon or no one. Gideon didn’t want Javier eating a bullet. Just the fact that he’d mentioned the idea made Gideon very aware that Javier had contemplated it. So that meant talking until Javier could get off his rooftop before discovering that Gideon was in worse mental shape than he was.
“You with me on this, brother? Because I need you to be. I need you to know Whitney’s the psychopath and you’re just fucked up like the rest of us.”
Javier held his eyes for a long time. Gideon didn’t so much as blink. He had eagle in him. Harpy Eagle. He could hold that gaze until the cows came home.
Finally, Javier nodded slowly. “I’m with you, Gideon. Tell me what Doc says about the bullet holes.”
“Says I don’t see action for a while, which is fine by me. Needed a vacation and I’m taking it.”
“That isn’t what I meant. You do know I have computer skills.”
Gideon flicked him a quick, forbidding glance. Pure steel.
Javier gave him a faint grin. “I get it. Don’t eat your spinach chips all in one sitting. You might actually get an ounce of fat on you.” He stood up with his usual fluid grace and made his way to the trapdoor. He stood there, his back to Gideon, looking up at the stars while the clouds drifted across the sky.
“Don’t know why you saved my ass when I was a kid or even how you found me, brother, but I know I can always count on you. I just need to say thanks, and you need to let me.”
Gideon wasn’t entirely mobile. He couldn’t surge to his feet and wrap the kid up in a hug, not that Javier would have gone for it. More than likely, he’d shove a knife in Gideon’s ribs. They really were a fucked-up lot, the entire urban team. Poor Mack. He was stuck with them.
Gideon had excellent hearing, and he caught the whisper of emotion in Javier’s voice—sentiment his brother didn’t often let slip. That got to him whether he wanted it to or not.
“I hear you, Javier.” Gideon gave his brother what he needed to hear, and he was sincere. He watched Javier nod, although he didn’t turn around. He just disappeared into the abyss that was the dark hole where the opening to the stairs led into his home. The trapdoor closed.
Gideon stared at it for a long minute before he allowed his body to begin to relax again. He hurt like a mother—everywhere. They’d given him pain pills, but he wasn’t taking them. Now he was going to have to start putting himself in a meditative state once more. To do that, he was going to have to clear his mind. To dothat, he was going to have to face those images all over again. He pressed the heel of his hand to his pounding forehead. He didn’t want to go there again.
Javier thought he was the only one who wanted to rip those sick bastards into little pieces? What did he think happened to the men who murdered Javier’s family? Did he ever wonder how Gideon had gotten to him before those butchers had finished hacking into him when he’d been just a little boy? Probably not. That was a nightmare Javier relived in his dreams but couldn’t examine in the light of day.
A groan escaped. Not one of regret. How could he ever regret saving Javier’s life? Despite the kid believing Whitney’s armchair assessment of him, Javier was invaluable and had saved countless lives. That wasn’t even counting the times he’d saved team members’ lives. The groan was for the images of their recent mission along with those of the past, pouring into his mind when he’d fought so hard to get rid of them. It wasn’t easy to force himself to breathe in and out and allow his mind to accept the horrors it had lived through, but he did it.
He built his lake in his mind, the deep, fathomless water a turquoise, the shores wide. Overhead, the skies were blue, and the clouds were light and drifted on a cool breeze. The images, when they came, tumbled into the lake and were carried away from him. He let them go, giving them up to the deep water.
A sound penetrated his concentrated breathing, that steady rhythm that brought images into the pool in his mind and allowed the ripples to carry them away. Laughter, sounding like beautifully tuned chimes skipping over water, didn’t belong in his carefully built setting. Those chimes were faint and far away, but they invaded and sent the images away faster than any meditation he’d ever done. Each individual note blew up an effigy of one of his memories. The explosion over the lake appeared as multicolored fireworks.
As far as Gideon was concerned, there was only one thing for him to do, and he did it. The psychic talent he used he’d been born with. Since Whitney had enhanced all psychic talents whether he’d known what they were or not, Gideon had discovered it was stronger than ever. He closed his eyes, blocking out everything but the sound of that far-off laughter. Even after the notes had faded away, he still had the direction, and he had the exact pitch and rhythm he was looking for. He was ready for the sound to repeat itself, and it would. He was already casting his lure, sending it out into the night like a fishing line in the direction of that enticing laugh.
Minutes crept by. Gideon would have much preferred to be on the hunt in person, but his body wasn’t in any kind of shape. He would have to rely on his considerable skills with his talent—using an invisible line with an anchor to find his prey, much like a spider might. He’d been honing this one since he was a child. It didn’t always work. Sometimes, whoever he sought was too far away, but this was worth the try. Minutes turned to a quarter of an hour. He was patient. He’d learned patience a long, long time ago. On thehalf-hour mark, it occurred to him he hadn’t been visited once by his past.
He opened a bag of the contraband spinach chips Javier had brought him, popped the top off a can of beer and allowed himself to indulge. Beer and chips. Not everyday fare for him. He ate the chips slowly, savored the salty seasoning on them and then washed them down with beer.
Another fifteen minutes. A whisper. Far off. A barely there thread of sound. He knew it was that same laughter. The same pitch. His hearing was acute and he was not mistaken. Those little chimes, not quite as loud this time, but he had homed in on them. Feminine for certain. Taking his time, Gideon carefully attached his thread, an anchor, much like a spider might, casting it into the air, right off the roof, sending it back along that same path to find the owner of that laughter.
Now it was another waiting game. This one wouldn’t be quite as long. Gideon changed position carefully. Moving hurt. Still, with this new intrigue, he didn’t feel it quite so much.
He felt the bump as the anchor attached itself to something solid. He found himself smiling. He was in San Francisco, and it was night. He didn’t need the Harpy Eagle or any of the large raptors for this purpose. He wanted a small bird no one would notice. The field sparrow was prevalent across Northern California. A beautiful little bird with a gray head and rust-colored crown. Small, very slender, with a pink bill and white eye-ring; the long tail was forked.
