Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

Another burst of echolocation confirms there aren’t any cops near us. I can feel one – or rather, his gun – walking the perimeter over to our left, his back to us. Another two on our right, behind the corner of the building. Watching the doors, just liked I figured.

Annie and Africa don’t have firearms of their own. Wherever they are, it isn’t this side of the building. Somewhere close, there’s the whup-whup of a police chopper. I send my PK upwards, hunting for it, but even on a good day, it’d be too far away.

But I was also right about the fence. It’s no more than ten feet from the wall.

I reach out and in one movement, rip the links up from where they’re buried in the dirt, bending them outwards. Several of them snap with a loud pang, but fortunately, the chopper is still close enough to mask the sound.

The skin on my neck prickles. Suddenly, I’m dead sure that either Annie or Africa is going to step into view, demanding to know what in the fuck I’m doing.

And what the fuck am I doing? Exactly? It’s all very well to say I’m saving Leo’s life, keeping him out of Tanner’s clutches, but let’s be real. This whole plan is all sizzle, no steak.

Annie and Africa don’t appear. Nobody does.

It’s not too late. You could just find the crew. Claim you meant to do it all along.

And then I’ll never find out about where Leo came from. Or who the hell is using my parents’ research to create kids with abilities. And Leo will vanish, swallowed by the same government system that held onto me for so long.

I turn to him. “Ready?”

Before I’ve even said the words, he bolts. Sprinting towards the gap.

“Oh, fuck.” I scuttle after him. “Leo. Leo!”

He ducks his head as he shoots through the fence, heading into the scrubland beyond. I’m a little bigger than him – obviously – and when I try to go through, a broken piece of metal nearly skewers me in the eye. Another catches at my jacket collar, nearly yanking me off my feet. My stomach notices these things, and decides it wants in on the action too, lurching uncomfortably.

The scrubland is a strip, maybe fifty feet wide: dirt and bushes and trash, with a rough, unpaved track cutting down the middle. Up ahead, the ground drops off abruptly. There’s a very distant peal of thunder from the north. Even now, when the heat of the day has started to drain off, the clouds are still there, hunkering on the horizon. When that storm finally breaks, it’s going to be a monster.

Hopefully we’re not around when it does.

Leo is crouched down a few feet away, squatting next to a spiky bush. I stumble over, doing everything I can to stay upright. “Dude, stop. You can’t just run off like that.”

He ignores me. I drop to my knees next to him, breathing hard.

“Where’s my dad?” he says.

“Look—”

“You,” says a voice. “Stop right there.”

THIRTEENReggie

It’s been a long time since Reggie felt angry about her accident.

There have been some tough times, to be sure. Learning how to breathe again was only the start – getting out of her own head was much harder, and Reggie spent plenty of time with an Air Force-appointed psych working things out. But she got hurt serving her country, and in Regina McCormick’s book, that meant she didn’t get hurt for nothing.

She has never been angrier than she is now. She has never felt more stuck, or helpless, or frustrated. Crammed into this crappy chair in this crappy office in this crappy part of a crappy city, when an entire mission is coming to pieces and she can’t do a single thing about it.

Moira still hasn’t managed to resolve her connection issues with the team’s feeds, and is in an even more foul mood than usual. And that was before Reggie told her that Teagan had gone into the storage unit.

“She’s not here,” Africa growls over the comms. “No contact, nothing.” He and Annie are in the front parking lot now, their cameras facing towards a line of frustrated cops. Flickering red-and-blue distort the image. Reggie’s hands fly across her trackballs, her eyes darting left and right across the screens as she uses every trick she has to hone in on Teagan’s comms unit. No video, no audio. Nothing.

Teagan has dropped off the face of the planet.

At least whoever has intruded on their network hasn’t managed to torch all their comms, just a few elements. Reggie has checked and rechecked her system, looking for any evidence of intrusion. But there’s nothing. No failed logins, no port scans, no malware or trojans. No one but she and Moira have accessed any of their files. It’s the same in Washington, where they’ve been unable to find evidence of an intrusion.

It’s very possible that all of this is just poor timing. A horrible coincidence, their comms going screwy right when the team needs them the most. Except: it’s coming right after an anonymous phone call nearly torpedoed a job for them. Reggie hates coincidences.

“Electricity must be interfering,” Annie says, exhaustion edging her words.

“Have you checked the perimeter?” Reggie asks.

“Ya,” Africa replies. Annie’s turned towards him on the pinhole camera feed, and there’s no escaping how frustrated he looks. The desperate worry in his eyes. “And we are checking again. She did not come out anywhere. We not see her.”

Annie says, “Reggie: the cops are starting to ask questions. I don’t know how long we can keep this whole FBI thing going…”

“Leave that to Moira. She’ll handle it. Just find Teagan.”

“And we keep telling you,” Africa bellows. “She is—”

Abruptly, he goes silent.

Reggie isn’t usually one to allow someone to take that kind of tone with her. This time, she barely notices. “Check again. The whole perimeter.”

“Reggie,” Annie says. “You don’t think…”

She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t have to. The horrified, hesitant note in her voice says