CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Crystal stepped out of the shower and onto the fluffiest carpet imaginable. Her skin pebbled in the cool air as she briskly dried her skin with a thick cotton towel. The ends of the fabric snapped with her rough movement like flags in a storm. If only her self-disgust was so easy to remove.
She passed by the mirror, not even bothering to look at her reflection. She knew what she’d see. Bright sparkly eyes, flushed cheeks, swollen pouty lips. Basically the face of a woman who had been well and thoroughly kissed.
And dear God, she wanted to kiss him again.
She jerked a purple T-shirt decorated with dragonflies over her head. Denim clung to her still-damp legs as she awkwardly twisted and wriggled to pull her jeans on with her one good hand.
Damn the man.
“Why does he have to be so damn…male?” she grumbled aloud and reached for the pot of rouge on her dresser.
A touch of color disguised the heat in her cheeks. A bit of mascara and a smattering of lip gloss finished her primping. The fuss with her appearance was not to attract Max; she just didn’t want to walk around looking like a slob. They were living in the same house, so of course she was going to run into him again. For some reason, she felt better able to hold on to her convictions when she wore a layer of makeup. It was weak armor, but armor nonetheless.
The sooner she showed Max she meant what she said, the sooner he should get it through that supposedly genius brain of his that it wasn’t going to happen between them.
Which is what you want, right?
The tube of lip gloss slipped out of her hand with the thought.
No. She shook her head to clear away the doubt. Of course that was what she wanted. Even though it felt at times as if the urge to say “Fuck it all” and jump into his arms was locked in an epic battle with her determination to maintain her professionalism. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to go out of her mind.
She tossed the gloss onto the dresser and took a step toward the door, and her convictions.
Soft lighting embedded into the rock floor guided her along the long hallway. Her fingertips brushed along the wall, using the rough texture of basalt and layers of volcanic rock as a balm for her ragged nerves. The sensation rippled out in waves of tranquility to the bundle of distress she carried in her heart.
The team had made a home in the fortress deep in the earth. It was cozy, impenetrable, and at times she swore the rock pulsed with energy. It was the perfect place to provide them with the security to hone their skills. In the few short months since the team had first assembled, their hard work was already paying off and the calls for assistance were coming in.
Two days after the discovery of Jeremy Monroe, they received the first call from Sheriff Lancaster concerning a newborn that had been abducted from a hospital. His deputies had hit a wall in their investigation, and the sheriff had wanted the baby found before the media got hold of the story. More accurately, the hospital’s chief of staff wanted the baby found and was riding the sheriff to get the job done, post-haste.
Fortunately for the sheriff, it had taken all of five minutes for Crystal to use her unique “interrogation” skills on the staff and narrowed the suspects down to a nurse who had absconded with the baby. While she had sat chit-chatting with the suspect, the rest of the team had gone to the location Crystal pulled from the nurse’s memories. Parents and baby had been reunited a short time later to many hugs and congratulations.
Despite their hush-hush involvement with the police, over the last week word had spread about their success at being able to find anyone, anywhere. Private citizens were seeking them out to help find their loved ones. A few cases they were considering, others they turned down. Money was never a factor in their decision. The work was for practice and to help those who genuinely needed assistance. Watching families become happily reunited convinced Crystal she had been right in choosing this path. This was what she was meant to do.
And she wasn’t going to let Max screw it up with sex.
She restrained the frustrated growl climbing up her throat and stomped into the kitchen.
The light and cheery room seemed better suited in a multimillion-dollar home instead of where it lay beneath the bedrock. Max had expanded the kitchen once they all moved in, so it now boasted a multi-surface cooktop range and a ginormous refrigerator that held enough food to feed three ravenous men for a week. White cabinets and quartz countertops contrasted with the cobalt blue island and drawers and helped brighten the cave.
Sun and wind power generated the equipment on the mountain. The complex system of windmills and panels was an environmentalist’s wet dream as it allowed them to live completely self-contained and off the grid.
“Hey,” Doc Kelly greeted as Crystal entered. She and her assistant, Alisia, were busy putting away dishes.
As a trusted friend of Doc’s, Alisia had been brought in to provide medical support and assist Doc with her research. After an extensive interrogation by Max, of course. The young nurse had taken the existence of superhumans with a nod of her head and an “Ah, that explains it.”
It was that unflappable character trait and her self-proclaimed title of misfit who didn’t mind being cut away from most of society that made her such a good fit for the team.
“Hey.” Crystal nodded and reached for a wine glass. Using the utmost care, she gently set the glass down instead of slamming it onto the countertop like she wanted to.
Doc smiled knowingly. “What did he do?”
“Who?” She popped the stopper on her favorite bottle of Syrah. With her one good hand, the action was more difficult than necessary, which just made her curse Max even more.
“Max.”
“Why would you think that?” Maybe another inch, she thought, and filled the glass to the rim.
“Because every time you two have a confrontation, you hit a bottle of wine.” She nodded to Alisia. “Just like she hits the whiskey after speaking with Ripley.”
“I do not,” the blonde gasped, affronted.
Doc hummed and strolled to the other side of the kitchen and picked up a highball glass. The melting ice cubes tinkled with the jiggle.
“It was cheap whiskey and mostly soda,” Alisia said in defense.
Crystal popped her head over the open refrigerator door, juggling an armful of fruit and cheese, closing the door with her shoulder. “Yeah, what is it with you and Ripley?”
Alisia shot back, “What’s with you and Max?”
“Never mind.” Crystal scowled and dumped the food on the island counter.
Doc snickered and shook her head. “I’m so glad I’m not either one of you.” Her laughing gaze landed on Crystal’s swollen hand and quickly turned to concern. “How did you break your fingers?”
“They’re broken? Damn. No wonder it hurts so bad. I took a hit with a clay disk.”
“Ouch. Bring it here.” Doc held out her hands.
Crystal allowed Doc to take her hand between her palms. Warmth spread through her fingers, easing the ache.
“All fixed.” Doc sighed and swayed a bit on her feet before dropping Crystal’s hand. “Well, at least I can fix your broken bodies, just not your minds.”
“There’s nothing wrong with us, right, Alisia?”
“Right. Absolutely nothing.” The young nurse snatched her glass with a tight smile and downed the dregs.
“That’s healthy.” Doc hopped up on the counter and leaned back on her hands to address Crystal. “I see how you look at Max. And I see how he looks at you. Sparks, baby girl, sparks. So what’s the matter?”
“Seriously?” she snorted. “This is Matthew Maxwell Madden III. One of the smartest people on the planet, rich, and more beautiful than any man has a right to be. And every person in his life has used him in one way or another.” She kept her gaze on the fruit she sliced as she repeated every argument she fought with herself over the last few months. “He doesn’t trust anyone. You know that the only reason he tolerates us being here is because we’ll help avenge Anthony’s death. I don’t want to be a fling because I’m handy. And Max has never had anything close to a serious relationship. The two of us as an item are doomed for failure.”
“And you’re sure about that.”
She cocked her head and pursed her lips. “Don’t need to be a psychic to see it.”
Doc gestured to the smooth rock walls and the line of narrow windows that ran near the ceiling, letting in the last of the sun’s rays into the room. “This doesn’t appear to be the work of a man who is merely tolerating us. Crystal, look at where we are. Do you think any of us has a chance at a normal relationship if we’re living here, doing this work? If you’re positive that things with Max won’t work out, why stay? Why torture yourself with what you can’t have?”
“Kaitlyn Summerset,” she answered instantly.
“The runaway we found last week?” Alisia asked.
Crystal nodded. “At first it looked like a typical runaway case, until I used my powers and saw that her uncle was abusing her. We saved that girl’s life. Think of how many more people we can help. I don’t want to ruin this opportunity because I couldn’t keep my knees together.”
Doc leaned forward and clasped her hands on her lap. “And what happens when Max gives up and finds solace in another woman’s arms?”
The knife skidded off the top of the apple and scraped against the cutting board. “Solace? That’s a charming euphemism.” Crystal tried to make it a joke when the thought absolutely sickened her and made her want to crawl into a hole. “I…uh—I can’t stop him. I wouldn’t stop him. I’d just have to remind myself that what we’re doing is more important.”
The disbelieving shake of Doc’s head only confirmed she was being delusional. “Good luck with that.”
She’d need it.
“Crystal!” Ripley’s voice boomed down the hall.
“Crap.” Alisia jumped and raced out of the room in the opposite direction.
Crystal frowned. “What is up with them?”
“Who knows.” Doc sighed. “She refuses to talk about it, but I think it has to do with her past.”
Out of respect for her friendship with Doc, Crystal had always refrained from reading Alisia’s memories. Any demons the young woman fought appeared to be of the internal kind, and Crystal never saw a reason to use her powers to dig deeper. She liked the girl and hoped that Alisia would come to think of her as a friend as well.
Ripley’s shaggy blond head appeared in the doorway. “Hey, there you are.” He paused and inhaled deep. He frowned and turned to look down the hall in the direction Alisia had run off. His lips turned down at the corners for a second before he blinked and looked back at Crystal. “I need you.”
“To do what?”
He swiped a cluster of grapes from her plate. “I need next week’s lottery numbers.”
“No. Besides, I was only able to do that once.”
“Come on, please.”
“No.” She picked up her plate and wine and strode past him toward the great room.
He followed. “And that one time you only gave me four of the numbers. Not cool.”
Yeah, she did. She held back a telling grin. “You still won some money.”
“It wasn’t enough. I need some work done to my truck and it’s not like we’re raking in the dough working these cases for free. I don’t want to ask Max for money.”
“So instead you are going to steal it from the state.”
“I go to a legitimate store with legitimate money and buy a legitimate ticket that has not been tampered with. That’s not stealing.” One of her strawberries disappeared between his lips.
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”
“You’re no fun,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, Crystal,” Max chimed in when she entered the great room. She had to tilt her chin way up to meet his icy gaze that narrowed in challenge. “You’re no fun. Why is that?”
She took a moment to calm her racing heart. Oh, she wanted to give in to the desire. Craved to feel the flames, but that path only led to disaster. “I’m loads of fun.” She lifted her plate. “Gouda?”
The muscles in his jaw flexed. “No, thank you.”
She flashed him a tight smile and sat down in an overstuffed chair clear across the room. “What’s the score?” she asked Chase, who sat on the couch facing the large-screen TV.
“Mariners are losing. Enough said. A crappy end to a crappy season.”
“They have to,” Addison replied, her gaze fixed on the tiny laptop in front of her as her fingers flew across the keys. “Owners want to sell. If the team does too well, the price ramps up higher than anyone wants to buy them for. If they lose too much, then the owners lose out. So the plan is to end the season with a nice and tidy slightly above-average win percentage.”
Only the hum of the television broke the silence of the room as they all stared at the young woman. You’d think by now they’d be used to her relaying an obscure bit of information.
“And you know this how?” Chase ventured to ask.
“It was in private emails between the owners and management. If they agreed to let the team fail on occasion, they were guaranteed positions with the prospective new owners. They have a formula of which games they’ll lose.” She shook her head with a smirk, eyes still on her monitor. “Their network security is really outdated. You’d think they would be more careful with that kind of information.”
“Addison,” Crystal whispered. “You’re not telling anyone which games to make bets on? Like Ripley?”
“I can hear you over here,” he called from his seat across the room. “Exceptional hearing. Remember?”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Addison glanced up with a secret smile and pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her pert nose. With her freshly scrubbed face and long, blonde braids, Addison looked like an innocent teenager but the girl was pushing thirty. Definitely not a woman to underestimate. “He knows that I wouldn’t hesitate to mess with him. I could be giving him the answers, or not, then he’d run around in circles trying to decide which it was.”
Crystal smiled back and nibbled on a water cracker.
The weight of Max’s gaze from thirty feet away weighed on her, dared her to look him in the eye and acknowledge the heat between them. Instead, she lifted her glass and took a healthy swallow of wine. The spicy fluid filled her mouth, a poor substitution for the salt of his skin and the heat of his mouth. Nothing erased the taste of him. She was beginning to think nothing would.
Tears of frustration threatened to spill as she realized that ignoring him was going to be next to impossible.
“Hey, guys. Look at this.” Chase broke into her maudlin thoughts by turning up the volume on the television.
“Good evening.” A male reporter stood under a bright light on a residential street corner. “This is breaking news. We have just gotten word that police have closed down 128th St. in the Coal Field neighborhood, where an earlier drug bust turned into a hostage situation.” The reporter continued to talk over footage of a ranch house bathed in flashing red and blue lights. Behind the police and SWAT vehicles, a mob of locals had gathered and were shouting with their fists raised.
“The house was rumored to be a hub of heroin distribution and was targeted by law enforcement to be shut down. But when officers arrived on the scene this evening to enforce the warrant, they discovered small children were inside the home.
“According to sources, the accused, William Eggers, drew a gun when he spotted the police. He has shut himself inside and is threatening to open fire if they come any closer. It is also rumored that he has explosives in the house. Adding to the tense situation are neighbors who have gathered to protest the police presence. They believe that it is law enforcement who are endangering the children by not complying with Eggers’s wishes.”
Crystal’s eyes flew open as her pupils widened like a lens of a camera.
In her vision, she saw what appeared to be a tall, thin man wearing a gray T-shirt with large sweat stains under his arms standing by the window and peering through the slit in the blinds. A pistol was gripped in one hand, a near-catatonic six-year-old boy in the other. Tied back to back in banged-up wooden dining chairs were two women, both gagged, with tears streaking their cheeks. A little girl of two sat on the floor under one of the women. Her faded pink shirt was stained in red Popsicle and matched the color of the rubber bands holding her pigtails high on her head.
Outside the dilapidated house, Max stood talking with Sheriff Lancaster with Chase by their side, preparing to rush the front door.
“No!” Crystal shouted and jumped to her feet, sending strawberries and bits of cheese flying. “No, no, no, no.”
This time she was the recipient of the wide-eyed stare.
Max looked back and forth between her and the television before understanding suddenly glittered in his eyes. “What did you see?”
“No.” She shook her head. Her mouth opened to protest again then snapped shut.
He was by her side in an instant. His hands were warm on her elbow as he pulled her closer. “Crystal, what did you see?” His tone was soft, but firm.
“We can’t.” Her voice trembled. “We’re not ready. We haven’t trained for anything like that.”
Chase dropped his feet from where they had been propped up on the coffee table. “Do you see us there? I am so in.”
“What did you see?” Max asked again. His blue eyes danced as an anticipatory grin curled up one corner of his mouth.
Her heart lodged in her throat made it difficult to speak. “Two women tied back to back. A little girl sitting at their feet. Eggers using a young boy as a human shield. Outside the house, you’re talking to Sheriff Lancaster.”
“Yes.” His smile widened as he pointed a finger at her, then the others, then back at her. “Now it begins.” He turned to Ripley, excitement high in his voice. “Call in Doc and Alisia. Addison, hack into the police network and get all of the information of what exactly is going down.” His hand tightened on her arm. “This is the test, right, sweetheart?”
As much as it curdled her stomach to admit it, he was right. This was what they’d been building toward. Putting themselves in harm’s way so others wouldn’t have to. It was another step in preparation of taking on Madden. If they succeeded, they were ready to go after the big man himself.
“What’s going on?” Doc asked as she entered the room, Alisia close behind.
“Have you heard about the standoff in Coal Field?”
“Yeah. We just saw it on the news.”
Max nodded at Crystal. “Crystal saw us there. Addison, what do you have?”
Her fingers blurred across the keyboard, her superhuman powers downloading, sorting, and arranging the information faster than any processor. A few keystrokes sent the images she collected to the television for everyone to see.
“William Eggers. Age twenty-six. Black male, six feet, one hundred-eighty pounds. At least according to his last driver’s license. Out on parole three months now after doing four years for drug smuggling, dealing, and possession of illegal firearms. Warrant was issued for his arrest today after intel was received that he’s dealing heroin from his home. The house belongs to his mother Roberta, age forty-five and one of the hostages. Also living there is his girlfriend Anita, age twenty-four.”
As she spoke a mug shot of the young Hispanic woman and her statistics scrolled across the screen. “Served six months for prostitution a few years ago. They have one child together, Lucia, age two. A boy, Zach, is his child from a previous relationship. He’s six.”
The photos zipped off the screen and were replaced with blueprints of the house and an aerial map of the neighborhood. As Addison continued to speak, different graphics expanded into 3-D images.
“The two-story house is roughly twelve hundred square feet. Two bedroom, two bath. Entrances are here and here.” She indicated with her cursor. “According to the chatter, police arrived at six p.m. with information that Eggers would be home alone with two other associates. Before police entered, they heard children crying inside. They called off the bust, but Eggers saw them and fired shots out the window.
“The standoff began then. It’s not confirmed, but it’s reported that he has C-4 on the premises, hence why the bomb squad is on the scene. Word spread throughout the neighborhood and brought out the crowds. It appears the biggest protesters are Eggers’s brothers. They’re the ones enciting the crowd and pushing for the police to leave. Of course, with explosives present, the bomb squad isn’t going anywhere.”
“Thank you, Addison.” Max resumed his position front and center and clapped his hands together. “Right. This is how we’ll do this. Two teams. Chase and Doc are in one Rover, with Ripley, Crystal, and me in the other. Alisia, stay here with Addison in the comm room to assist her. Guys, this is our moment. Now is the time we make our mark and let it be known that justice is going to be handled a little differently from now on. If we do this, it will send a message and maybe Madden will hear and it will rattle him into reacting. Now, Sheriff Lancaster is not going to take our assistance easily. We’ll go in, make him see reason,” he said with a smirk. “And end it quickly, with as little bloodshed as possible. Meet in the garage in fifteen minutes. Any questions?”
They all agreed as he looked each person in the eye. When his gaze met Crystal’s, she nodded. Fight the good fight and save the day. Despite her nerves, she knew this moment had been on the horizon. Now that it had dawned, she’d be ready.
As soon as he dismissed them, she took off for her room.
“Crystal.”
She should have known Max wasn’t finished with her.
Turning to face him, she lifted her chin. Right now, he wasn’t a man she cared for. He was her commander, and she would treat him as such. “Yes, sir?”
His footsteps slowed as he neared, his brows drawn with wariness and concern. “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Crystal. Will you be all right? You don’t have to go if you’re worried or afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” she snapped then regained her composure. “You were right. This is what we’ve been working toward. What we are meant to do. The vision just surprised me, and I don’t want you—anyone—to get hurt. Don’t worry. I can do this.”
His gaze softened as he nodded. He reached out with one finger and stroked the curl resting along her cheek. When he opened his mouth to speak, she pulled away.
“Twelve minutes, right? I’ll be ready.”