Burden of Solace Page 14

  "No, it wasn't my power that protected me. It was Etienne's."

  Nate registered surprise. Of course, she hadn't told him about her second visit to the club.

  "I went to visit Etienne Leclair after the incident at the ER, when you first suspected what I had become. I needed to talk to another exo about the whole registration thing, and whether there were ways to get around it. "

  "And you didn't want to talk to me."

  He was hurt; she felt it. She'd have to deal with that later. She did find it interesting that he was more concerned with her choice of counsel than the revelation that Leclair was an unregistered exo.

  "No, because you're a Guardian, part of that system. Like you said, it would be trouble for you just knowing I was active and unregistered. Anyway, Etienne recognized that someone was messing with my head that night, the night of the performance. He told me later that he did something then, put something in my head to keep it from happening again. Shields, he called them. That must be what kept Martin from controlling me last night."

  Then it hit her.

  “You’re supposed to be taking your clothes off.”

  Martin’s words echoed in her mind. He was trying to control her when he said that. He had been trying to make her undress, against her will. Her mind raced down the path.

  He wanted to rape me. No. Worse. He wanted to make me participate in my own rape.

  Through her revulsion, one thought crystallized in her mind. She looked up at the Guardian, this good and honorable man who she now realized was only trying to help her. He had been serious about killing Martin for throwing her off a cliff. She doubted she would be able to hold him back if he knew what else Etienne's protection had prevented Martin from doing.

  Nate can never know about this.

  But suddenly Nate's idea about killing that SOB felt a little less repulsive.

  “I need a drink. Please tell me you have something around here with alcohol in it.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Nate watched Walsh grind the cigarette beneath his heel, indignation and anger fueling the detective’s attempt to drive the smoldering butt into the tar and gravel. The rooftop of the police headquarters building was becoming a regular meeting place for the two. Walsh used the excuse of sneaking a smoke as a cover for going up, even though he was supposedly trying to quit. After hearing what Nate had come to share, Walsh looked like he was regretting that decision.

  "That bastard looked me right in the eye,” Walsh said. “He wrung his hands and practically cried while he lied to me."

  Walsh hadn’t been assigned to investigate Cassie's death; he’d requested the case. Partly, it was to make sure her death received the thorough investigation she deserved, but Nate knew Walsh. His friend also needed to make some kind of sense of what seemed to be a senseless tragedy.

  "At least now we know Ballantine is the rogue exo we've been looking for,” Nate said. “Thanks to Cassie."

  Walsh's head bobbed in agreement. Nate had told him the entire tale, including Cassie's Emergence as the city's newest exohuman. Unlike Nate, Walsh wasn't terribly concerned with her registration status. Nate had learned to live with the restrictions the law placed on his kind, content to do his job as proscribed by the rules and regulations. In contrast, Walsh regularly ranted about the inequity of treating exohumans as resources, useful chattel, instead of people. He said it was no different than his great-grandparents being bought and sold as slaves. Between Cassie and Walsh, Nate was outvoted on the subject of getting her to the registration office.

  "She's gonna be our ace in the hole dealing with Ballantine,” Walsh said. “Her immunity - shields, whatever they're called - gives us an advantage. And the fact that he thinks she's dead is just gravy."

  "I don't think we can count on her for this," Nate said. "The whole exohuman thing has her pretty freaked out. She doesn't even want her powers at this point. She asked me if there was a way to take them away from her. I’m actually relieved that I don’t know how."

  Walsh rubbed his chin as he thought. It was a clichéd gesture, but Nate had noticed that without a cigarette, his friend often had trouble finding ways to occupy his hands.

  "Then we need that French guy,” Walsh said. “If he can implant those shield things in other people, then we have a fighting chance against this bastard.”

  Nate felt a twinge of annoyance that The Warlock was continuing to play a part in this. The fact that Cassie had turned to Leclair for advice instead of himself irked him in ways he didn’t fully comprehend. He couldn’t deny that the Frenchman had value, but he resented it, nonetheless.

  “Unfortunately, Leclair left town yesterday,” Walsh continued. “Once we cleared him and I returned his passport, he told me that he was headed out, some personal business he said. I'll post a lookout bulletin, but until we get him on board, you and I need to keep our distance from Ballantine. The danger of him taking control of either of us is too great. Hell, if he gets control of you, we’re all screwed.”

  Nate shook his head and flicked aside a loose piece of gravel with a twist of his boot. After hearing Cassie’s account of last night, he didn’t like the idea of Ballantine running around loose. Without Cassie - and now Walsh - urging restraint, he would probably have rushed into action, with disastrous results. Walsh continued to lay out the reasons for that caution.

  “Even without the danger of this bastard puppeteering you, Ballantine’s non-exo power is a major problem. Arresting him, and keeping him arrested, is going to be tough. He’s rich - influence, power, lawyers... The case against him will have to be airtight.”

  Nate hadn’t considered that side of the problem, focused as he was on punching the living shit out of little Richie Rich.

  “Yeah, but we’re still gonna need a way to neutralize his power before we let him anywhere near a judge and jury. Even if Leclair can repeat his shield trick, we can’t shield everyone he’ll ever come in contact with.”

  Walsh nodded. His hands reached inside his wrinkled jacket for another cigarette before he stifled the impulse.

  “That’s the rub, ain’t it? We gotta be smart about how we take this guy down."

  Nate let all that sink in, turning the problem over in his mind like a mechanical design. That brought up the unanswered questions that had started them down this path in the first place.

  "So, what’s the deal with the murder-suicides? How do Acosta and the rest of his victims relate to him?"

  Walsh took out his phone and pulled up a document, offering it to Nate for transfer.

  "That's my news for you. I found a key drive hidden at Acosta's home. As they say - follow the money. Apparently, Ballantine isn’t as wealthy as he pretends to be. He’s blown through most of his inheritance and now depends on some shady financial manipulations to maintain his lifestyle. He’s even found a way to dip into the trust fund his parents left specifically for Memorial Hospital. Acosta had begun unraveling it but didn't have enough to go public when he was killed. That last victim, Denise Rogers, must have been part of a scheme involving the Federal Reserve. I've requested a warrant to get a list of everything she's worked on for the past few months. Hopefully that'll point us in the right direction. I'll send you the info as soon as I get it."

  Nate flashed the document into his helmet system. Acosta had carefully documented everything, including the connections between Ballantine and the previous victims. All were tied to inter-bank transfers. Nate was no financial expert, but it was clear that Acosta had been. Before his death, the reporter had deduced that everything done so far was leading to something big, something that had yet to happen. The only thing Acosta hadn't been able to nail down exactly was Ballantine’s end game.

  "If he's willing to kill for money,” Nate said, “then it must be a butt-load of it."

  Walsh shrugged. "I don't know. From what you've told me he was willing to kill Cassie just because she wouldn't dance to his tune anymore. This guy's a total psycho, so who knows what this is really about
."

  "Good point. I'll run an analysis when we get the info from the Fed. For now, I'll keep working with Cassie on dealing with her Emergence, starting with controlling her energy blasts."

  “How long do you think she’ll be content to hide in The Lair before she goes stir crazy?”

  Walsh had long made a game of naming Nate’s hidden home base, ‘The Lair’ being his current favorite. Despite the villainous overtone, it was better than some of his past attempts, like ‘the Exo Cave’ and ‘NateBase.’

  “Good question,” Nate shrugged. “She really just wants this whole thing to go away. She misses her grandfather and her work. Which reminds me - can you pay a visit to him? He’s apparently in poor health and Cassie’s worried about how her ‘death’ might affect him. She thinks he can be trusted to keep her secret.

  “But, yeah, she’s getting pretty antsy back there. It doesn’t help that we’re cramped for space. There’s just the one bedroom, so I’m sleeping on the couch until we come up with a better arrangement. Most of the space in my building is labs and workshops, so we’re constantly bumping into each other in the living space.”

  Walsh grinned. "Poor you. Is she really lounging around barefoot and wearing nothing but a hockey jersey?"

  Nate looked down, the flush in his cheeks so strong he thought it might even be evident through his helmet.

  "Yeah. I ordered her some things online - clothes, toiletries, makeup. I had no idea the sheer amount of stuff it takes to be a woman. And wine – dear God, that girl drinks a lot of wine. As a matter of fact, there’s a delivery scheduled there shortly, so I should get back. Better to have a guy with a bandaged face answering the door than the dead girl that’s plastered all over the news."

  Walsh nodded his understanding and headed for the rooftop access door. Nate lifted off, floating up slowly. In his mind's eye, he saw Cassie as she had looked when he left, curled up on his couch sipping a mug of coffee. She was fresh from the shower - her hair wrapped up turban-style in a towel and her face pink from scrubbing away last night’s makeup. She’d been picking absentmindedly at her chipped nail polish. The memory brought a smile. Yeah, he could definitely get used to having her around.

  *

  Cassie shook her head and threw up her hands. "Seriously?"

  Nate wore the age-old expression of a man who has no clue what he’s done wrong. "What?"

  She had to remind herself that Nate didn't know the extent of Martin's depravity. If he did know, then he wouldn't have taped up a photo of the man who had tried to rape her as a target for testing her blasts. At least she hoped he would have thought better of it. She was learning that even though he was a certified genius about scientific and technical stuff, he could be a little dense about people. His heart was in the right place, but the guy was a classic nerd.

  "You said your blasts happened because you were threatened,” he said. “What could be more threatening than a murderous psychopath?"

  "Whatever. Let's get this over with."

  She walked to the opposite side of the granite chamber that Nate had decided to use for their first test. They were almost two hundred feet beneath the city, surrounded by granite bedrock. Nate said he had created the place a year earlier to test some experimental weaponry he’d designed. It would serve the dual purpose of containing any possible 'spillage' from her power, while also preserving secrecy.

  The space was damp and chilly. Condensation glistened on the rock face and the room echoed with the sound of water dripping. The coolness explained why he had instructed her to wear something warm - long sleeves and pants. She had begun to think that Atlanta's Guardian was a bit of a prude. Then she caught him giving her black exercise outfit an appreciative 'up and down' look. Between the grin he tried to hide and the decidedly happy feelings she detected, she wondered if he was really as tightly controlled as he seemed. Or maybe his uniform was just reinforced to conceal an erection.

  At the moment, Nate was directing a trio of small robots to arrange his test equipment. He’d said the bots were his own design, but it was obvious they needed more work.

  "Number 12, move the particle sensor grid two feet west."

  The robot honked a deep tone. Nate sighed and pointed toward the end of the room where the target stood.

  "West is that way. Is your inertial guidance malfunctioning?"

  The little bot spun on its tracked base to face him and produced another series of beeps and honks.

  "Oh, for the love of... All A.S.S. units, add directive. Begin. Always calibrate inertial guidance against GPS before descending underground. End directive. Save and commit."

  The three machines responded with a chorus of dings. Nate gave her a sheepish look, anticipating her response.

  "Ass units?" she laughed.

  "Yeah, it stands for 'Autonomous Service Systems' but, honestly, I named them that because they screw up a lot. It's not their fault, of course. I programmed them. But, I swear, sometimes it feels like they act stupid on purpose."

  After a few more adjustments, they were finally ready for Cassie to do her awful thing. Behind the photo of Martin was a massive metallic slab comprised of complex layers Nate had assembled to absorb and dampen both kinetic and electromagnetic energies. The idea was to keep her blasts from ricocheting back and making a mess of things, including her and Nate. No matter his insistence that she was incapable of harming him, she still worried.

  "All set," Nate declared after the last of his ass-bots had retreated to the back of the cavern. "Fire when ready, Gridley."

  Cassie stepped to the spot Nate had marked with an X in duct tape. She shook out her arms, like a competitive swimmer taking the starting block.

  "Okay,” she said after a deep breath. “Now what?"

  "Do it. Blast the target."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. I'm not a blaster. What did you do at the hospital?"

  She thought back. The gun, the woman's terror, and then the crack of the pistol.

  "I had my hands up," she said, raising hers in a warding gesture. "Like this."

  "Okay, go with whatever feels right."

  "What feels right is not having white-hot beams shooting out of my body and hurting people. But I doubt that's what you meant."

  He kept his mouth shut after that. Maybe he could learn to be more sensitive after all.

  She squared off against the target again, focusing on the photo and her last memory of that face. His words, his sudden anger. This time when the scene replayed in her head, it was with the knowledge of what he really intended to do with her, to her. His emotions, which had confused her at the time, now made perfect sense. What she had mistaken for attraction and affection she now knew were lust and manipulation. Rather than waiting until she was ready to give herself freely, he had decided to take. It disgusted her that she actually might have slept with him eventually. If not for his loss of control, his desire for instant gratification, she had been well on her way to maybe even falling for him. That thought was particularly galling. He had lied to her, tricked her, all to get her alone so he could pin her mind against the wall while he used her body. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his stupid, cultured, rich-boy face.

  She didn't feel her fists clench, or her lips pull back from her teeth. She didn't sense the glow of white fire building up in her palms. She definitely didn't hear herself scream.

  *

  "That was totally cool," Nate said as he struggled to stand.

  Reading his sense of wonder was both comforting and disturbing. The big grin plastered on his face was reassuring, but his reaction to being knocked down was… unusual. Cassie tried to help him stand, although it was a bit like David assisting Goliath. Even though her healing senses told her that he was unharmed, the rest of her was having trouble believing it. Her first instinct was to heal him, to save him. Her hands rested on his chest, ready to pump her healing energy into it. She willed her eyes to remain locked with his.

  Don’t look down. Don’t l
ook down. Do Not Look Down.

  "I’m so sorry. Are you okay?"

  His disarming grin stole her worry.

  "Of course. I'm kind of invulnerable, remember?"

  "Yeah, but... uh..." Her head tilted to one side as she produced a series of facial contortions and tics intended to point with her eyebrows while her eyes stayed with his.

  Finally, he picked up on her signals. He looked down.

  He was, for all intents and purposes, naked. The backwash from her blast had disintegrated most of his uniform. Pretty much everything he was wearing when she “went off” was now gone. Now, his… excitement was firmly evident.

  "Crap. Sorry."

  He grabbed a clipboard to hold in front of him. It didn't hide much, which only added to the redness on his face.

  She felt his embarrassment. She also felt the deep attraction that had been building in him since their first encounter. But there was something else – a kind of fascination and… respect. That was it. Getting knocked on his impervious butt had impressed him. Unlike Martin's twisted carnality, Nate’s hard-on wasn’t for her body. Well, not exclusively anyway. He was excited by her - all of her, who she was and what she could do.

  In that moment, all her problems faded into the background. She'd never met a man like Nate. Maybe if she had then she wouldn't have spent so much time alone, mistrusting every guy she dated. Then again, would she have recognized these qualities without her new empathic sense?

  Cassie felt a brick fall away from the wall she had built up around her own heart.

  In the few days since her Emergence, she’d grown more experienced with her empathy powers, but somehow his emotions were harder to separate. Maybe it was because her own feelings mirrored his. Was this what poets meant when they wrote about two hearts beating as one?

  Then she remembered that she wasn't like him. Nate had surrendered his life, without complaint, for one of helping others, using his abilities to serve and protect those in need. All she wanted was to throw away the gifts she had been given for the questionable comfort of a 'normal' life. In the face of his selflessness, she was being selfish. Even knowing those failings hadn’t knocked her from her narcissistic track.