“You can’t do this.”
Holden evaded Nate’s grasping hand. “Yes, I can.”
“No, you fucking can’t.” Chase attempted to draw himself up to his full height but only succeeded in leaning more heavily on Elijah. As physically weak as Chase was, he was still powerful enough to have used his telepathy to get rid of the guard—apparently planting a thought in his head to leave his position and check the cottages. “You didn’t drag my raggedy ass out of that silo just to get caught up by yourself.”
“I won’t get caught, but thank you for that vote of confidence.” Holden glanced in the direction of the guest house. “Run south until you hit the lake. There should be a boat you can take to get to the road where Six’s bike is, instead of running the whole way with Chase. Leave us the bike and go back up north until you get to my car.”
Trent didn’t disagree with the plan and quickly swapped keys. His usual jokes and retorts had dried up as the sense of imminent danger cloaked them all. The only thing he exuded was a sense of urgency to get Nate to safety.
“Holden, I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Elijah said. “Please just—”
“No,” he said sharply. “You wouldn’t leave Chase. And Nate would never leave Trent. There’s no goddamn difference here. I’m not walking away without knowing if he’s okay.”
Holden could see the questions in Elijah’s face, the doubts and surprise that he felt this strongly for a man who had started out as a handler and an assumed spy. But there was no time left to pacify them or explain. And for Holden there were no other options. He would go back, and he would make sure Six was safe. Regardless of the outcome.
“We’ll wait for you by the lake for as long as we can,” Nate whispered. “Be careful.”
Holden nodded once before sprinting away. His speed was reckless, but the urgency he’d felt in Trent was mirrored in himself. Not knowing what was happening was creating an inferno of doubt and terror that churned in his stomach until he felt sick.
He slowed only to duck behind a structure or slink through the shadows when he got too close to guards, but he made it to the guest house in less than a third of the time it’d originally taken them to carefully pick their way to the silo.
There were more people in the area around the main and guest houses, but Holden’s senses pinpointed on only two. The commanding force of his father’s icy veins, and the wavering blankness of Six. He’d drawn his mental shield up tight. Even Holden had trouble penetrating it, and he could only hope that his father wasn’t able to move past it at all.
With the house full of and surrounded by additional security, there was no way to stealthily sneak inside. Barging in the front door would put him in the same position he worried Six was in. Interrogated and holed up with a man who was willing to kill and torture to gain the kind of control he wanted over the Community.
Ignoring the building dread and the doubts that he would be able to save Six if it came down to it, Holden crouched by the side of the house and examined the exterior. There was a balcony on the second level that he could attempt to pull himself up to, but he’d have to access athleticism that had long since been buried in years of drinking, sex, and brisk walks to Broadway to catch cabs. Maybe those months of doing Pilates would come in handy.
Holden uncoiled from his crouch, channeled Six’s measured graceful movements, and pulled himself onto the edge of the railing. After a second of wobbling, he pressed his palms against the side of the house and finger-walked them upward until he could grip the bottom rail. Once his hands were securely wrapped around the rails, he pulled himself up with a pained grunt. To hell with Pilates. He needed to go back to upper-body strength training a few times a week.
Sweat trickled down his face and the back of his neck as he awkwardly hauled himself up onto the balcony, nearly falling as he swung himself over the side. He sucked in several deep breaths and prayed no one had heard the clatter of his feet slamming against the floor. The surface of his relief shattered once he realized there was nowhere to go if he was spotted.
Holden hunkered down and crept across the balcony. The sliding door was surprisingly unlocked. It made sense once he realized he was in a room nearly identical to his mother’s prison in the cottage—white and pastel colors, floral designs, and the stink of some kind of perfumed spray. If this room belonged to the woman who’d gazed placidly out the window downstairs, Richard likely expected her to be too far gone to attempt a daring escape off the balcony.
The room was empty, and the hallway outside of it was equally deserted. Voices carried from somewhere nearby, but he hesitated to charge toward them without knowing what he would find. Holden searched his memory of the property, and his own time spent in this guest house, and his gaze fell on the double shutters of the closet.
It’d been years since he’d thought about the interconnecting doorway hidden inside, and only his conversations with Six about the property had brought it to the surface of his mind. The interconnecting door opened to a short hallway leading to a matching doorway in the guest house’s master suite—the one that had been locked on their first go round.
Voices emanated from that room now, one of which unlocked fight-or-flight instincts in Holden. The sound of his father almost sent Holden spinning away from the doorway because he was too close, and maintaining this proximity was like jumping into a dark pool of water without being able to swim, but he fought the urge to flee.
Six was in there, and that mattered more than his fear.
“—the truth, Sixtus.”
“I’ve told you the truth. I have no desire to keep playing babysitter in Manhattan. The club is fine. Your son is up to nothing. I want my job back, or the equivalent to the one I had here. Maybe a position at the CW location in DC.”
Holden knelt on the floor and marveled at the calm in Six’s voice.
“You requested to go to the city,” Richard said. “You said you wanted off the Farm for a while.”
“And I do. But not to waste my time keeping an eye on your son. My talents would be more suited elsewhere considering the most suspicious thing Holden has done in the past month was hole up in his office out of depression when his friend disappeared.”
The silence that followed was pointed. Holden wondered why the hell Six would dredge that up, and whether this was a part of his invulnerability. Could he not feel the menace rolling off Richard? Or was his lack of filter the way they’d always gotten along? Either way, Holden inched closer and put his hand next to the doorknob.
“I have reason to believe Elijah Estrella, my son’s friend as you put it, is communicating with individuals from Ex-Comm.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I see that, which makes me wonder what you’ve been doing at Evolution if not noticing the goings-on of individuals at the club.”
Six scoffed softly. “All right, Dick. I see where you’re going with this, and I’ll tell you two things right now. First—Elijah Estrella was barely at the club, and I was never assigned to follow all of Holden’s friends. And second—you clearly have this job triple stacked with guys from your security team if you have insight I myself haven’t gleaned, so what is the reason for keeping me there?”
“You’re right. There’s none. But I suspected you’d want to since you’ve begun fucking my son.”
The air rushed out of Holden’s lungs so abruptly, he thought they must have heard him gasp. Richard knew. And now Holden had no doubts that this was all fucked. He closed his eyes and prayed for Six not to lie, because that would crush this already crumbling plan to dust.
“How is that relevant?” Six asked dryly. “I still don’t want the job.”
At that point, Richard did something Holden had never expected—he laughed. “My, oh my, and to think I expected an invulnerable to be immune to his goddamn charms and persuasion. Foolish of me, considering you’d been holed up on the Farm since hitting puberty. And believe me, Six, I know how my son loves to throw himself at men of your stature.”
“Men of my stature.”
“Yes. I’ve made an ardent attempt to keep track of my son’s many lovers over the years to see if there were any Ex-Comm members taking advantage of his promiscuity. It didn’t take long to realize he had a type. Big men who were just discovering their queerness or else who didn’t identify as queer at all until Holden unlocked it inside of them with his talent.” There was cold amusement behind the words, but Richard’s entire aura was throbbing anger. Holden felt it like a thousand white-hot needles flying through his connection and embedding into his soul, and he knew this was a setup. “Would you say that’s what happened with you?”
Don’t answer, Holden thought at Six, trying hard to project it to him. Don’t let him goad you.
But it was too late because, unlike him, Six didn’t pick up on the cues. He didn’t feel the menace.
“Your son doesn’t need to influence people to get them to sleep with him.”
“No?”
“No,” Six said flatly. “I think your son is loyal and incredible, and you’d be better suited treating him as a valuable part of your family than like a brainless idiot who you can use as a scapegoat for your mistakes.”
There was a pause in the conversation that prompted Holden to push the door open just a bit so he could peer into the room. The closet was situated in the far corner, and was behind Richard’s desk. Holden could see him sitting straight as an iron rod with his hands gripping the arms of his chair. Across the desk from him, Six stared back dispassionately.
“What mistakes would those be, Sixtus?”
“The mistakes you made while trying to find a purpose for the club. Do you remember saying that? That everyone and everything in the Community should have a purpose, and you didn’t think a club catering only to queer psychics had enough of one to remain open. But then you heard chatter that the club was attracting psychics from walks of life that didn’t usually lead to you and yours, and you sent Beck.”
“I sent her to scout untapped talent.”
“Yeah, and you took her off a torturing detail here to do it. You knew she was power hungry, and you knew she would gag Chase because he’d recognize her from this place, but you still let her go. Holden didn’t have a chance in hell of realizing what she was until it was too late. All because you wanted to use his club as a hunting ground to cherry-pick psychics for your new project. And now you’re making him bear your cross and take the blame for letting it all go down.”
The anger in Richard had increased to a constant pulse so strong it was starting to become Holden’s as well. His own helplessness and fear fell away to great bursts of rage that he’d ever felt helpless or afraid to begin with, and that he was hiding in a closet while this all went on. It was that thought that sent Holden shifting out of the closet in a trench-crawl and brought him closer to Richard’s desk. He thought it must be possible for his father to feel him there, present and leeching anger that twined with his own to become an unstoppable magma burst, but then the cool calming shroud of Six’s shield enveloped him. And he was free of that concern as well.
“You really have been compromised,” Richard said with some astonishment but even more disgust. “My god, my son really knows how to sink his hooks in.”
Holden rose to his feet and grabbed the iron disk displayed on Richard’s bookcase like a plaque. The same disk his mother had hurled at the wall in a fit of rage so many years ago.
“Are we done with this conversation?” Six asked, fathomless eyes never once shifting behind Richard’s shoulder. “Or can we move on to my next assignment?”
“That won’t be possible, Six. Not until you receive realignment.”
Fear strangled Holden then, because he’d expected this. No matter how Six had believed that Richard had trusted him, it all came down to utility. And once someone stopped being useful to him, or he lost faith in them, it was over. He severed the connection and moved on.
But Holden wasn’t going to let him lock Six in a cell. Even if it meant hurting his own father. He’d do what he had to do to get out of here with Six. Alive.
Holden cracked the disk against Richard’s temple with enough force to send the man flying from his chair. Immediately after the impact, Holden froze. The disk had been very heavy, and Richard was lying very still. Panic exploded inside of Holden, and he dropped the disk.
“He’s fine,” Six said. “We need to go before someone finds him or he wakes up and alerts his security team and the guards.”
Holden stared down at his father’s sprawled body, limp hands, and slack mouth. It was the first time he’d ever seen him vulnerable. The first time his presence hadn’t set off a domino effect of anxiety and fear until Holden was flailing to calm himself and cope.
All at once, Holden was a kid again, and he was seeing the fallout of something he’d later repress and put away even though this awful tightness in his chest would sometimes rear up when there were loud sounds or shouting, and he wouldn’t remember why.
Or maybe he would remember this moment, because this time, he wasn’t going through it alone.
Holden looked up at Six.
“Do you think he’ll wake up?”
Six knelt to take Richard’s pulse. “Yes.”
Holden nodded jerkily and started for the closet again, needing not only to rejoin the others and escape but to get away from his father slumped and sluggishly bleeding on the floor. He thought he should have felt something at the sight, but he didn’t. He felt nothing at all. As though all of Richard’s rage had burned through him in that one violent motion and left a husk.
“They’re waiting for us at the lake.”
The Farm was quiet and full of secrets Holden wasn’t sure he’d ever learn. He told himself it didn’t matter, that he had time to find out more about the drugged children and woman living in the guest house, or why any of that was happening, and ran alongside Six. To safety.
He thought they would make it unmolested, but as they reached the very edge of the property, light flooded everything.
Undoubtedly, Richard had woken up. He might have been a low-rate psychic just like his useless gay son, but he had a presence that whipped out across the acres like silent thunder. The shrill scream of an alarm shattered the stillness of the night.
“Run,” Six shouted. “They’ll be on bikes!”
On bikes with guns. Just the thought of the two people from the road with their dirt bikes and dark leathers propelled Holden forward. He didn’t feel his feet or the breath ripping out of him in whoosh after painful whoosh until their pounding footsteps came to a halt at the edge of the lake. Nate, Trent, Elijah, and the hunched-over figure of Chase were still there, but they’d jumped into action and were pushing one of the boats into the water.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Trent yelled over the alarms and the distant roar of dirt bikes. “We disabled the other boats!”
They clambered over the side just as Nate started the motor, but it was too late. The two guards from the road skidded to a stop on the embankment in a blur of dark leather and whipping hair. They were eerily similar and both had intense psy-kid eyes.
The boat barely bounced a yard away before one of the guards raised his pistol and fired. The sound boomed through the night like a cannon, deafening and more terrible than anything Holden had ever heard. He expected to be hit, for pain or blood to explode out of his chest, but it was Elijah who cried out and fell backward out of the boat.
A chorus of screamed no’s echoed wildly, followed closely by Nate shouting, “Chase, wait—”
It was too late. Chase dove into the water as more shots rang out. He disappeared beneath the freezing-cold water.