CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max turned the key in the ignition of the Land Rover and in his peripheral vision caught sight of his Ferrari parked beside him. Man, how long had it been since he last drove that monster?
Once upon a time, his Ferrari had been his baby. His pride and joy. Cruising along the mountain pass or speeding down the streets of long-forgotten logging towns had been his release, his reason for going out into the world and clearing his mind. And now?
He didn’t miss it one bit.
A wiry grin curled his lips as he adjusted his earpiece. “Audio up and ready?”
“Go ahead and commence with audio test,” Addison replied from the comm room.
He nodded at Chase, who was waiting in the second Rover with Doc Kelly behind the driver’s wheel. “Max, standing by,” he began.
“You mean ‘Maestro’?” Chase snickered into their earpieces. “The talent in command.”
Max rolled his eyes. He wished that nickname hadn’t stuck. It didn’t sound near menacing enough. “Knock it off, Twilight.”
“Doc standing by.”
Chase replied, followed by Crystal, who sat in the backseat behind Max.
“Red leader, standing by,” Ripley piped from the front passenger seat and shared a laughing glance with Max as the ladies responded with a groan that reverberated in their earpieces.
“Beta Team, ready to head out?” Max asked, still chuckling over Ripley’s quip.
“Ready,” Doc answered.
“Why do we have to be called ‘Beta Team’?” Chase asked.
“Would you rather be ‘Number Two’?” Max mocked as he pulled out of the cave and into the dark forest.
“I’d rather be ‘Team Intrepid.’ And why does Doc always get to drive?”
“Because she’s older and has years of experience.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she gasped.
“Of course,” Ripley agreed with a laugh. “With age comes wisdom and all of that.”
“Watch it, beast man. I control the access to your flea dip.”
“I don’t have fleas,” he grumbled with an absentminded scratch behind his ear.
Max smiled at the banter. It reminded him of the smack talk he used to engage in while playing online games. However, it was ten times better to witness the snickering grins in person. Who would have guessed he’d prefer conversing with a group of real people over avatars?
Crystal had. She’d known from day one he was meant to do greater things than to hide out on his mountain, twirling rocks and sticks around with his mind. She saw in him what he refused to acknowledge: a man desperate to belong.
Years of being treated like a freak had contributed to his “fuck-you” attitude against the world. Now that he was working on being a part of something special with others who were also considered outsiders, he recognized the life of a loner was just that, damn lonely.
Plus, there was no denying that having these specific people beside him was definitely an advantage in the fight against his father, although he did find value in them beyond their powers. Their enthusiasm, their integrity, the willingness to just try made him proud to be included in their circle.
And what of the future?
There would come a day when Madden would be no more. What then? Could he walk away from his team? Return to the solitary existence he led before?
He glanced in the rearview mirror and observed Crystal sitting in the backseat with her face turned to the window. Her thick curls were knotted in a bun and tucked neatly under a knit cap. The black uniform made her pale skin appear translucent and gave her an air of vulnerability that hid the fierce warrior who had nicked him with a blade earlier that evening. Dark Jackie-Os covered her eyes, denying him access to what she might be thinking. Were they topaz in worry? Green with stress?
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and returned his focus on the twisting trail to the freeway.
When it came to Crystal, there was no doubt in his mind, walking away was not an option.
It hadn’t taken him long to figure out she was extraordinary. Her passion and ability to soak up knowledge like a flower absorbed the sun was both a turn-on and impressive as hell. This wasn’t a game to her, it was a calling. And she pushed herself until exhaustion claimed her and there was nothing left to give. Crystal inspired him, inspired all of them, to never lose faith. At least until the Monroe incident.
Before that day, she looked at him as if he had all the answers. As if he were a savior. Now, there was doubt in her gaze. The loss of her faith was a blow he didn’t expect to cut so deep.
She never tried to use him for his talent. And his money never impressed her. All Crystal had asked of him was his best, and he wanted to give that to her and then some. She made him want to be the leader she had believed him to be.
Their personal relationship, however, was about as passionate as potato soup.
With everyone else she was their sister, their friend, their confidante. She laughed and joked and engaged. With him she was cold, clinical, all business, and it frustrated him to no end. The few times she let her guard drop made him hungry for more. He wanted that warmth. He wanted her smile.
He wanted her.
Sweeping his tongue over his lower lip, he relived that scorching kiss and knew that his passion was not one-sided. He saw desire in her yearning expression, in the shaking of her hands, the scent of her skin. She ached too.
His parents’ marriage had been perfection on paper and ended a nightmarish failure. It tainted love for him for what he thought would be forever. Until Crystal.
Somewhere between reconnaissance missions, strategy meetings, and plotting to kill his father, she became his light, his purpose. All the things he thought he never wanted, a family and a partner, she made him long for.
And if she stayed in the same room as him for longer than two seconds, he’d tell her that he wanted to give her more. He was ready for more.
Sure, his track record with women ran on the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am side. A fact she probably knew about and saw first-hand in his memories, he acknowledged with a wince. But that was then. Crystal was his future.
All he had to do was convince her.
Ripley’s low whistle snapped his attention back to the task at hand. “Damn. Looks like the entire town is out.”
“Now would be a good time to shift,” Max suggested.
The tinted windows shielded them from prying eyes as Ripley pulled off his shirt and handed it to Crystal, who folded it into a neat square and placed it on the seat beside her. The Velcro along the seams of his pants ripped as his bulky frame morphed into the large German shepherd.
He turned back in his seat to playfully lick her face. “Ugh, Ripley,” she gagged. “I’ve told you before that’s gross.”
Max guided the Land Rover through the crush of people to the temporary police barricade. Upon their approach, officers pulled aside the sawhorses, allowing them entrance without checking to see who rode inside. The Rovers were outfitted specifically to blend in as law enforcement, and Max got a kick every time they were waved through without issue. As if the local authorities could afford these rigs. His vehicles contained gadgets and security measures the regular police didn’t know existed. It was times like these that he enjoyed being a wealthy genius.
“Everyone stay back while I talk to Lancaster,” Max instructed when they climbed out of the vehicles. “I’ll see if I can appeal to his righteous nature. Network, turn up the volume a bit so you all can hear what he says.”
“On it,” she replied through the earpiece.
Sheriff Lancaster cut an imposing figure, being half a head taller than the men surrounding him as he stood behind the barricade of a SWAT van. Despite the chilly night air, he was coatless and had his hands braced on his hips above his gun belt. The louder the crowd chanted, the tighter his lips pinched. The stress of the day deepened the lines around his mouth, aging him beyond his thirty-eight years.
He was a good man. Honest, fair, and willing to find solutions some would consider outrageous.
Max bit back a smile. They didn’t get more outrageous than his squad.
Lancaster’s gaze skittered over him once then back again in surprise. “Garan, what are you doing here? Who let you through?”
Garan. Maestro. The code names were a necessity to protect their identities, just as the slicked-back hair and wraparound glasses made it more difficult to recognize them. The fewer people who knew who they were, the better, because once word got out as to what they were, all types of hell were destined to rain down upon them. Especially if the night went as he planned.
Their disguises weren’t much, he knew that, but it was better than the spandex one-piece and mask that Ripley had tried to push on them. Man, at times the beast man was a weird dude.
“Sheriff.” Max nodded. “We heard what was going on and thought you might need our services.”
“Did you now?” he drawled. His tired blue eyes narrowed as if he were trying to see through the dark lenses of Max’s glasses. With a jerk of his head, he led Max away from his men. “I appreciate the offer, but this isn’t a missing person or lost hiker. Civilians don’t belong here.”
Max lowered his shoulders and widened his stance. “I understand, Sheriff, and we are aware of the risks, but I believe we can be of some use to you. From what I’ve heard, you have a trigger-happy gunman who gets a little antsy when police start intruding on his territory. But you see, I am not the police.” He nodded to the others. “With your permission, I can send my dog in to do surveillance. He’s wired with some extraordinary equipment.” He ignored Chase’s snort of laughter in his ear. “And is highly trained, as you’ve seen. We might be able to gather the information you need to proceed, such as is Eggers packing C-4 in the couch cushions. I’m sure you want to finish this before this crowd becomes more vocal and dangerous.”
“How did you know—” Lancaster’s nostrils flared as he looked from Ripley to the crowd then back to Max as his upper lip curled. “Who told you?”
Max held out his hands and shrugged. “We all have our talents.”
Lancaster took another look at the unruly crowd. The muscles in his throat worked as if he were swallowing bile. “Just the dog?”
Max’s smile stretched as slow as warm taffy. “For now. Therian, come here, boy.”
Ripley growled low in his throat before trotting to Max’s side. The big man hated being treated like a pet, which was why Max did so at every opportunity. Especially when the shifter couldn’t do anything about it except piss on his leg. “Monkey it up, my friend. See what you can find.”
With a yip, Ripley tore off, becoming a gray streak in the night.
“Sheriff, Sheriff.” A voice rose above the noise. “What’s your strategy to having the hostages released? Who are those people in black? Hey, you, why are you wearing sunglasses at night?”
Max turned his head and spied a man leaning over the police barricade. He looked like a rumpled extra from the TV series Mad Men in his wrinkled charcoal suit and loosened necktie. In the crush of the crowd, his black pompadour didn’t move a hair out of place. Max blew a stray lock of his own hair out of his eyes and wondered what hair product the man used.
“Carrigan,” Lancaster growled. “Get back with the other newshounds.”
“Why should I? This is where the real action is.” He kept his digital camera held high. “Who are these people, Sheriff?”
“Network? Intel, please,” Max murmured and shut off the man’s camera with a thought. If any video of them was to be made public, he wanted it on his own terms.
“What the hell?” Carrigan looked at the camera and turned it back on with his thumb. Max turned it off again and popped the battery compartment open, sending the batteries tumbling to the ground.
The sheriff choked on his laughter as the man dropped to the concrete to rescue his batteries from under the feet of the protesters.
“Here you go, boss,” Addison answered as Carrigan’s driver’s license photo appeared on Max’s right lens. “Clancy Carrigan. AP reporter and blogger. Last piece he wrote was on the misappropriation of funds in law enforcement. Needless to say, he is not Lancaster’s favorite person.”
“You know, perhaps now would be a good time to limit the size of the viewing public.”
“Already on it. Newsfeed coming down in three, two, one.”
A chorus of disappointment and frustration rose from the conglomerate of news vans the next block over.
“What is it now?” Lancaster shouted at one of his deputies.
“It appears that there’s a problem with their equipment. They can’t broadcast. A satellite must be down or something.”
“Really?” A please smiled flirted with his lips. “Well, that’s…that’s their problem.”
Max turned away from the sheriff and asked Network under his breath, “Is the face recognition software finding anyone else here of note?”
“Jeff and Kevin Eggers, the brothers, are a few yards north of you.” A circle drawn on the inside lens of his glasses highlighted the two men. “Both have rap sheets that include drug dealing, burglary, and weapons charges.”
“And they are the ones enticing the crowd?” He considered the situation. “Seems odd for ex-cons to be so concerned about the welfare of their sibling’s children.”
“That’s an ugly stereotype, Maestro,” Doc said and frowned at him from across the blacktop.
“Ugly but true.”
Sure, he was cynical. Came with the territory when every time the government hired him to track down a hacker, he found confirmation that a person who walked on the wrong side of the law rarely looked out for anyone other than themselves. Hell, selfishness was not confined to criminals. He could count on one hand the people he knew who genuinely cared about the welfare of others. “What’s going on with Therian?”
“He’s around the back now.”
“Show me.”
Max’s stomach rolled a bit as the image in his glasses changed to the view from the camera swinging from Ripley’s neck as he crept up behind the house.
Not a branch snapped or a leaf rustled in Max’s earpiece as Ripley padded to the lone elm tree that grew next to the house. A soft pop of bones preceded the shift to a chimpanzee. He swiftly scaled the branches and leapt for the house. With his rubbery fingertips, Ripley hung from the eaves as he tested the lock on the second-story window.
Bingo. It slid a few inches before it stuck in the tracks.
Another teeth-grating pop of bones echoed in Max’s ear as Ripley shifted into the shape of a squirrel and eased through the narrow slit before transforming back into the chimp.
Holy shit. Max winced. That much shifting in a short span was going to be rough on the big man.
Ripley picked his way over the toy-strewn floor and eased down the stairs.
In the living room two women sat tied to chairs and a little girl played with a wooden puzzle on the floor, just as Crystal described. Eggers stood to the side of the window, peering through the edge of the blinds. Sweat bathed his brow as the muscles in his arms trembled from holding a boy who appeared to be about five or six years old in front of him while balancing the weight of the gun at the same time.
“Hurry up, man, just hurry up,” he begged into the Bluetooth attached to his ear. “They’re planning something, I know it. Just get it done.”
Max would bet his left nut that Eggers wasn’t talking to the hostage negotiator.
The cold dead look in the boy’s eyes worried Max. It was a look of hopelessness and betrayal. It was the death knell of a child’s innocence wrought by the hand he most trusted. A feeling with which Max was all too familiar.
He was half tempted to tell Ripley to take Eggers out with a swift bite to the jugular, but it wasn’t his call to ask Ripley to take a life in an act of vigilante justice.
The image in his glasses swung again as Ripley searched the rest of the house before he retraced his steps and left the same way he entered. Under the pitch dark of an elm tree, he took his human form.
“Not sure how much you were able to see, but the living room looks exactly as Prism described. The little girl appears oblivious to what’s going on, but the boy is shell-shocked right now and reeks of piss and fear. Odd thing was I didn’t find or smell explosives anywhere. Eggers is on a Bluetooth and he was talking to someone about hurrying up and getting something done. Network, did you catch any of that that?”
“Yep, Shadow is tracing the call now,” she replied, referring to Alisia.
Max motioned to Lancaster. “Sheriff, who is Eggers talking to on his Bluetooth?”
“What?”
“My equipment is picking up phone calls to a number that is not associated to the police or the hostage negotiator you have in that van over there. Who is it?”
Lancaster’s eyes bulged as his face reddened until his blond eyebrows stood out like pale caterpillars on his brow. Apparently, the sheriff wasn’t as dialed in on the situation as he believed.
While Lancaster fired off terse questions at his deputies, Max glanced over at Crystal and frowned. Her lips were pressed into a thin white line and her arms hugged her middle, a reaction he suspected was caused by the footage of the children they had all seen in their dark glasses.
With Crystal, first and foremost was the safety of children. When anyone questioned her fervent determination as to why, she skirted the topic. But he more than anyone understood the scars someone could carry when terrorized by their parents’ actions. If his superpower was mind reading, he’d bet his every dollar that she was reflecting on her childhood at that moment.
For some people, such wounds made them shut themselves off from society, but not Crystal. This compassion she gave to the world without pause stirred within him an empathy he didn’t know he possessed. If Max was the brains of their group, Crystal was the heart.
She caught his gaze and offered him a weak smile. A heartbeat later she jerked with a gasp, her color fading as she fell back against the Rover.
“Cry—Prism?” he called out and dashed to her side, his stomach tied in knots. He rested his hands on her upper arms. “Prism. Sweetheart?” he whispered and curled his fingers, preparing to shake her awake when she jerked and filled her lungs with a huge breath.
“What. The. Fuck,” she gasped and looked about in confusion.
Doc placed a hand on her back. “Sweetie, are you okay?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she mumbled.
“Prism?” Max squeezed her arms.
Through the dark lenses of her glasses he could see her lashes flutter like hummingbird wings. “This isn’t it. It’s a decoy.”
“What?”
“This. This whole thing is a setup.”