Vengeful

If you don’t kill her, you’ll wish you had.

His fingers brushed the safety.

But Marcella only laughed. “Come on, Joseph,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed, weapons don’t really work on me.”

Stell had seen the footage, of course—Marcella on the shattered balcony, the sniper’s shots skating off the air around her. He’d also seen the image of the thin man in the dark suit. The one, he realized, who was now sitting several tables over, wearing sunglasses, despite the restaurant’s low light. The set of the man’s shoulders, the angle of his face, suggested he was staring directly at them.

Another EO, Stell wagered.

“Don’t mind Jonathan,” said Marcella. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Joseph,” she added congenially. “But, well, we’re still getting to know each other.”

A fresh whiskey appeared at Stell’s elbow. He didn’t remember finishing his first, but the glass was empty. He lifted the new tumbler, took a sip, and stopped, recognizing the taste.

It was a brand Stell kept in his apartment. One that he only poured when he had something in particular to celebrate.

Marcella smiled, knowingly. Her long legs uncrossed and recrossed, high heels glinting like knives at the edge of his sight.

“Tell me,” she said, twirling the wineglass stem between her fingers. “Do you have the place surrounded?”

“No,” said Stell. “Believe it or not, I’m not eager for anyone to know I’m sitting down with a terrorist.”

Marcella pursed her lips. “It will take more than harsh words to wound me, Joseph.”

The way she used his name, as if he were the wineglass between her fingers, something to be toyed with. “You wanted to meet,” he said curtly. “Tell me why.”

“EON,” she said simply.

“What about it?”

“You seem to target us because of what we are, not who. That kind of indiscriminate attack is shortsighted, to say the least.” Marcella leaned back in her seat. “Why make another enemy, when you could have an ally?”

“An ally,” echoed Stell. “What could you possibly offer me?”

A slow, crimson smile. “What do you want? Less violence? Safer streets? Organized crime really has gotten out of hand lately.”

Stell raised a brow. “You think you can change the course of the mob?”

Marcella’s smile shone. “Haven’t you heard? I am the mob now.” She rapped her nails on the linen tablecloth. “No, you want to deal in kind, don’t you? A more relevant currency? You want . . . EOs.”

“You would hand over your own?”

“My own what?” Marcella scoffed. “Who are they to me?” Stell looked past her again to the man in the dark suit. Marcella read his expression. “I’m afraid June and Jonathan are not up for trade. They belong to me. But surely there are others, ones that have eluded your grasp?”

Stell hesitated. Of course, some EOs were harder to catch than others, but there was only one that had proved, so far, impossible.

“There is an EO,” he said slowly, “one who seems to be targeting their own kind.” He didn’t elaborate, didn’t share Eli’s theory regarding their motivations. “So far they’ve killed seven other EOs.”

Marcella’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Isn’t that your job?”

“I don’t approve of needless death,” said Stell. “Regardless of whether the victim was human, or not.”

“Ah, a man with morals.”

“My morals are the only reason I agreed to this meeting. Because I’m tired of burying good soldiers—”

“And because you haven’t figured out how to stop me,” said Marcella. Stell swallowed, but she waved him away. “This is a last resort. Why else would you sit down with a terrorist?”

“Do you want a ceasefire, or not?” asked Stell tightly.

Marcella considered her wine. “This EO—am I to search in the dark, or will you give me a starting mark?”

Stell drew a notepad from his pocket and scribbled down a list. He tore the sheet off. “The last five cities where the killer struck,” he explained, sliding the paper across the table.

Marcella slipped the sheet into her purse without reading it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You have two weeks,” countered Stell.

It was long enough to produce results, but not long enough for Marcella to waste time. She was right—and she was wrong—this wasn’t the last resort. Stell did have a way to stop her. But it wasn’t the one he wanted. Two weeks would give him time to think, to plan, and if he couldn’t find another option, then two weeks was how long he had to decide which was worse—letting Marcella walk free, or Eli.

“Two weeks,” mused Marcella.

“That’s how long this service buys you,” said Stell. “If you succeed in producing the killer, then perhaps we can continue to find common ground. If you fail, then I’m afraid your value to EON will not merit your continued freedom.”

“A man who knows what he wants,” said Marcella with a feline smile.

“There is another term—you will stop drawing so much attention to yourself.”

“That’s going to be hard,” she teased.

“Then stop drawing attention to your power,” clarified Stell. “No more public demonstrations. No more grand displays. The last thing this city needs is a reason to fall apart.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want that,” said Marcella coyly. “I’ll find your target for you, Joseph. And in exchange, you will stay out of my business, and out of my way.” She lifted her glass. “Do we have a deal?”

XVIII

TWO WEEKS AGO

EON

ELI studied the footage again, and again.

The mission at the National should have been simple.

But nothing about Marcella Riggins was proving simple.

“You should be celebrating,” said Victor’s ghost. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Eli didn’t answer. He focused on the footage from the scene, advanced the surveillance one frame at a time, watching as the glass shattered, the bullet—which should have taken Marcella in the back of the head—ricocheted, sparking off an invisible shield.

Eli paused the footage there, rapping his fingers thoughtfully on the table.

The odds of a single EO possessing more than one power were slim to none. No, it was far more likely, he surmised, that this particular skill belonged to the third, as yet unidentified EO, the one lurking like a shadow at the very back of the room.

Three EOs, working together—that itself was unusual. The vast majority were loners, isolated by either necessity or choice. Few looked for others, let alone found them.

“We did,” observed Victor.

It was true. Both Eli and Victor had arrived at the same conclusion—that there was strength in numbers, potential in the complementary pairing of powers.

Now, apparently, so had Marcella.

Eli rolled the footage forward and watched her step through the hail of bullets onto the balcony. Watched as every single shot ricocheted. Watched as she raised her own gun in the general direction of the sniper.

There was something so brazen about the gesture . . .

EOs ran.

EOs hid.

Under pressure, an EO might fight back.

But they didn’t do this.

Didn’t perform.

Didn’t use their powers with such obvious relish.

EOs were broken by definition, made reckless by the absence, the emptiness, the knowledge that their lives were over. It drove them to steal, to ruin, to self-destruct.

Marcella wasn’t self-destructing.

She was preening. Baiting them. Daring them to try again, try harder.

She had taken out her husband—and that made sense, an act of revenge. Of closure. But then, she’d taken out his competition. That wasn’t the mark of someone with nothing to lose. No, that was the mark of someone with something to gain. That was ambition. And ambition plus power was a very dangerous combination.

What would she do, if left unchecked?

The phantom in his head was right—he’d asked for a sign that he was needed, that this was right.

Marcella couldn’t be allowed to continue in this manner.

And soon Stell would realize, if he hadn’t already, that Eli was the only one who could put her down.

Footsteps sounded from beyond the fiberglass, and he looked up from the computer as Stell appeared on the other side of the wall.

“There you are,” said Eli, rising to his feet. “I’ve gone through all the footage from the failed execution, and we’re obviously going to need a much more tailored approach, especially considering there are . . .” Eli trailed off as Stell set a new case file in the tray.

“What’s that?”

“We got a hit on a suspected EO two hours south of Merit.”

Eli frowned. “And Marcella?”

“She isn’t the only target we’re tracking.”

“But she’s the most dangerous,” said Eli. “And in the last three days she’s collected two more. What are we going to do about—”

“We aren’t going to do anything,” said Stell shortly. “Your job is to analyze the files I give you. Or have you forgotten that you exist at the mercy of EON?”