Storm Born Read online

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “Sorry,” he said immediately. “It’s just that ‘civilian’ is the word witch-kind uses to describe regular people who don’t have any magic. In that context, it’s Agent Lenz who’s the civilian, not either of us.”

  “Oh.” Adara mulled that explanation for a moment, then nodded slightly as she twisted the ring around on her finger, gaze drifting once more to the landscape outside the window. “I suppose there are a whole lot of things I’ll have to learn.”

  Jake wished he knew her better, wished he had the courage to reach out and pat her on the arm, or offer some other reassuring gesture. However, he got the impression she was just barely holding it together — which was completely understandable — and so might not react all that well to even a hint of intimacy.

  “There are,” he said. “But it’s okay. We’ll be there for you.”

  “All you Wilcoxes.”

  “Exactly.”

  She went quiet again, the bright sunlight catching a glint of tears in her eyes. Jake thought he’d better buy her some sunglasses when they stopped for gas. It was fiercely bright out there in the open desert, the sun just beginning to move toward the west, and the glare would only get worse as the afternoon wore on. He supposed he should be relieved that none of Adara’s storms had followed them here, that however roiled in spirit she must currently be, her inner torment hadn’t translated into thunder and lightning or gale-force winds.

  About all he could do was hope she’d be able to keep things under control until they were safely back in Flagstaff.

  Randall Lenz sat in the motel room he’d rented for himself, an ice pack pressed against his throbbing temple. His team had converged on the house and pulled him out of harm’s way just as the tornado Adara had called began to tear off pieces of the roof, and had tried to load him into their van before any of the neighbors ventured out to see what was going on. However, even with the considerable resources he had at his disposal, Lenz knew it would be difficult to completely cover up Lyssa Grant’s death, and so he’d ignored their offers of first aid and had run into the kitchen, turned on the gas in the stove, and lit one of the candles he’d spotted sitting on the small round table in the dining area. Sure enough, even as the van sped away and the tornado began to dissipate, the gas ignited, blowing the little house into splinters.

  They’d still find Lyssa Grant’s body, but there wouldn’t be enough left for them to ever discover her true cause of death. Nor would they have any reason to look beyond the obvious. Accidents like that happened every day.

  He did his best to push away the image of the sudden shock and pain on her face, pretty features contorting in terror. An accident, but he wasn’t supposed to make mistakes like that. It was clumsy, a rookie’s error.

  A breath, and he forced himself to focus on the here and now. What he really needed to do was figure out who the hell that stranger was, the man who had appeared so unexpectedly and ruined everything. He’d said his name was Jake, which gave them something to go on…but not much.

  Still holding the ice pack against his head, Lenz got his phone out of his jacket pocket and called HQ. A woman’s voice came through the speaker.

  “Agent Dawson.”

  “Dawson, it’s Agent Lenz. Things went sideways in Kanab.”

  “Sorry to hear that, sir.” A pause, and she said, “Satellite surveillance picked up an explosion. What happened?”

  “I’ll debrief you when I get there. For now, I need you to go over the satellite footage frame by frame, starting at roughly 13:35. A man came to the house. See what you can discover about what he was driving and where he went. He took the target with him.”

  “Yes, sir. Let me take a closer look and get back to you.”

  “Waiting.”

  He ended the call there and dropped the phone on the bed, then leaned against the padded headboard. His skull hurt like a bitch, throbbing like someone was banging a drum inside his temple, but he hadn’t wanted a medic to look at him, had only wanted to get himself hidden away in an anonymous motel at the edge of town so he could regroup and figure out what to do next. Heading back to Virginia had been out of the question; even though he’d lost Adara Grant for the moment, Lenz wasn’t about to admit defeat this early in the game. All he needed was for Agent Dawson to analyze the satellite footage and give him the make and model of the vehicle this “Jake” had been driving. After that, simple scans from traffic cams along the highway would provide the data he needed to figure out which direction they’d gone. Not that you had a lot of choices in that part of the world — they could have gone east toward Page, north into Utah, or west toward St. George and the interstate. Even so, going off half-cocked in the wrong direction would serve no purpose. It was better to sit and wait to see what Dawson had to tell him.

  With a slight groan, he got up from the bed and went into the bathroom. A splash of cold water on his face helped slightly, but he knew it was going to take more than a few minutes’ rest to recover from that blow to the head. How had it even happened? He supposed the winds Adara had summoned were strong enough to pull that flowerpot free from the nail where it had hung, and yet it almost felt as though the thing had been flung at him on purpose.

  Well, maybe her powers were stronger than he’d thought, although manipulating physical objects seemed to be an entirely different talent than conjuring storms. None of the other subjects they’d tested seemed to possess more than one supernatural ability, although several of them could unlock doors and summon fire with their minds — a modest flame, though, enough to light a candle and no more. Why some of the subjects should have those particular gifts in common, he didn’t know…and neither did any of the people involved. They’d always had those powers, they claimed…or at least, had possessed them since the time they were ten or so years old.

  Yet another puzzle. For the moment, though, Randall Lenz wanted to force his aching brain to focus on Adara Grant. She was by far the most powerful of all the gifted individuals he’d brought into the program, and he refused to admit that some stranger had managed to tear her from his grasp. Eventually, he’d find her again.

  And this time, he’d make sure there weren’t any more mistakes.

  5

  We pulled into Las Vegas a little before five. The sun still blazed down, bright and unrelenting, and at that time of year, it would be hours before full dark arrived…if it arrived there at all. Even in full daylight, the town’s neon signs and marquees blazed away, advertising the million and one ways to keep yourself entertained in that faux oasis in the desert.

  The whole place made my brain hurt. No, actually, I realized that all of me hurt, muscles and mind alike aching in the aftermath of what had happened in Kanab just a few short hours earlier. I didn’t want to think about it, but it seemed as soon as I shut my eyes, I could see that horrible scene all over again — the raised pistol, the billow of smoke from the barrel…the shocked flare of my mother’s blue eyes as the bullet hit her, shattering her ribcage, knocking her backward under the force of the impact.

  No, I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever be able to forget that sight, no matter how long I lived.

  “I thought we’d stop at a drugstore or something, get you some stuff before we check in at a hotel,” Jake said as he shot a concerned glance in my direction. I hadn’t said much since we’d stopped in St. George for some gas, where he’d bought me a pair of sunglasses and some bottled water at the convenience store. His was an off-hand sort of kindness, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to handle me.

  Not that I could blame him. I wasn’t sure how to handle me, either.

  “Sure,” I said drearily. It wasn’t until we’d made our stop in St. George that I realized I’d run out of the house with absolutely nothing — no purse, no phone, no I.D. I literally had the clothes on my back and nothing else. Considering what had happened, it was probably a good thing that I hadn’t already changed into my waitress uniform. The situation was bad eno
ugh already, but it would have been even worse if I’d been wearing that damn thing instead of the jeans and T-shirt I currently had on.

  Jake pressed a button on the steering column and said in a distinct voice, enunciating clearly, “Drugstores.”

  For a second, I wondered what the heck he was doing. But then a crisp female voice came out of the truck’s speakers. “CVS, 3300 South Las Vegas Boulevard,” it said, even as the display on the nav centered on the address in question.

  Talk about the future. Sure, I knew car navigation systems were a thing, but this was the first time I’d actually seen one in use. My mother’s beat-up Subaru certainly didn’t have that kind of technology.

  “I don’t have any money,” I blurted. “I left my purse behind at the house.”

  Jake shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of it.”

  “But — ”

  “It’s fine,” he said. A pause, and then he went on, “I know you’ve been through a lot, Adara — ”

  “Addie.”

  He blinked.

  “Addie,” I repeated. “That was what my mother always called me. ‘Adara’ is for job applications and interviews with my high school counselor.”

  That comment made him smile, and I realized once again how really good-looking he was. Maybe I shouldn’t have been noticing such a thing when I’d just lost my mother to unexpected violence earlier that afternoon, but at the same time, it sort of helped for me to focus on the fine shape of his jaw, the friendly crinkles at the corners of his dark eyes, the bright blaze of his grin. If I was thinking about all those things, then I wasn’t thinking about the way my life had changed in the flash of a second as Agent Lenz’s gun went off.

  “Okay, Addie,” Jake said. “Money really isn’t going to be an issue. Every member of the Wilcox clan gets a stipend, a sort of monthly allowance to supplement whatever we make from our jobs.”

  “How much of a stipend?” I asked. Possibly, that was a crass question, but it just sort of slipped out. Right then, I didn’t have much of a filter.

  However, Jake didn’t look offended by my query. “Six grand a month.”

  Six…. Holy hell. Even pooling our incomes, my mother and I had never earned even half that much. It hadn’t mattered most of the time, because she was a genius at locating inexpensive houses to rent and clipping coupons and doing whatever it took to make a dollar stretch around the block, so to speak, but still. And now, just because I’d turned out to be a Wilcox witch, I’d get six thousand dollars every month without doing anything at all?

  “That’s…a lot of money.”

  His shoulders lifted. Without responding, he followed the instructions on the nav, moving to the right so we could get off the freeway at a street called Spring Mountain.

  “We’re getting close,” Jake said, eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses as he glanced over at the display on the dashboard. “We’ll go to the CVS, buy a few things for you, and then see about finding a hotel room.”

  Well, that particular task shouldn’t be too hard in a place that appeared to be wall-to-wall hotels. But even though the logistics of getting a place to crash for the night probably weren’t going to be difficult, part of me still shivered a little at the thought of sharing a hotel room with Jake Wilcox. I’d never been alone with a guy in a hotel before. Hell, I’d barely been alone with a guy, period. A few dates here and there, and that was it.

  I tried to reassure myself that Jake wasn’t going to put any moves on me. Not when tragedy had just descended on my life, not when we were on the run from a government agent who apparently didn’t give a shit who got in the way of his mission. Besides, Jake and I were cousins.

  Distant cousins. Very, very distant cousins. When shared blood got that attenuated, I was pretty sure it really didn’t count anymore…at least not in terms of making sure you didn’t end up like the Hapsburgs or something.

  The CVS turned out to be right on the corner by the Treasure Island Hotel. Jake somehow managed to maneuver into the parking garage at the last minute, where we ended up on a lower level.

  “We can check for a room here,” he said, sounding a little too matter-of-fact. “It would simplify things. Sound okay?”

  “Sure,” I replied, also knowing that my tone was probably too casual. “It’s not like we’re here on vacation or something.”

  At once, his expression sobered. “I know. I’m sorry. And we’ll be in Flagstaff tomorrow. But it would have been a long haul to try to get there today, and with everything that happened, I didn’t want to be driving at night.”

  I supposed I could see his reasoning — I didn’t think I’d want to be out on the interstate somewhere in the dark, not knowing whether Agent Lenz or his minions were hot on my trail. At least in daylight, we’d be able to see him coming…hopefully.

  “No, I get it,” I said. “So, let’s see about that room, and then we can head over to the CVS.”

  “And maybe the mall,” he added. “I noticed there was one across the street.”

  “Sure,” I responded. I’d seen the mall on the map as well, but I hadn’t wanted to presume that Jake might want to take me there. Yes, I was supposedly entitled to some Wilcox money, and yet none of that seemed real at the moment.

  Even though it was a Friday night, the hotel still had a few rooms with two queen beds available. Jake paid cash, sliding a couple of hundred-dollar bills across the counter to the girl at the reception desk. She didn’t bat an eyelash, which told me that it wasn’t too unusual for someone to be flashing around that kind of cash in Vegas. But I could see why he was being careful; although I didn’t think he’d given his last name when he introduced himself to me, Agent Lenz had been standing there and would have heard everything. No point in advertising our presence in Las Vegas by using credit cards.

  After we checked in, we took the elevator to the twentieth floor, where the room was located. I’d never been that high up in my life, and found the view outside the plate-glass windows to be positively vertigo-inducing.

  Turning away from the window, I went and picked up one of the complimentary bottles of water that had been placed on the dresser. My mouth felt dry, and I took a long swallow.

  “I need to make a call,” Jake said as he set down the duffle bag he’d scrounged out of the back seat of his fancy Jeep pickup. “We’ll go out after that.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Do you need some privacy?”

  At once, he shook his head. “No, I’m just calling my brother to check in.”

  He got a heavy, odd-looking device out of the duffle bag and sat down on the bed. I realized as he lifted the thing to his ear that it must be a satellite phone, although I’d never seen one in real life before. A good way to stay off the grid, I supposed; I’d watched enough TV to know that the government could track people through cell phone usage, but I didn’t know whether satellite phones could be policed the same way.

  “Jeremy,” he said as I sat down in the chair near the foot of one of the beds and sipped again from my bottle of water. A pause, and he added, “Yeah, I know. Things got crazy. I — ” Jake broke off there, brows drawing together as he listened to his brother’s interruption. “No. No, we’re fine. We got away clean, as far as I can tell. But you need to check on this Agent Lenz. I don’t know where the hell he came from, but he definitely had an interest in Adara’s abilities. Um….” He stopped again and looked over at me. “Do you know Lenz’s full name?”

  “Randall Alan Lenz,” I supplied. “I saw his I.D.”

  Jake gave me an approving smile and relayed that information to his brother, then said, “We’ll be in Flagstaff midday tomorrow. Then we can start to figure all this out. Just get back to me with anything you discover — and let me know right away if there’s even a hint that they’re headed in this direction. Okay. Yes. Got it. Okay.”

  He ended the call, and I lifted an inquiring eyebrow, thinking that Jake would fill me in.

  However, his expression was heavy, and he r
eplaced the phone in the duffle bag without saying anything. “Are you hungry?”

  Food had been just about the last thing on my mind. I’d had a salad for lunch, and figured that would hold me until dinner. And it was barely five.

  Besides, how was I supposed to eat when I’d just witnessed my mother’s murder less than four hours earlier? Right then, I was more numb than anything, as if my brain had deliberately pushed my grief somewhere in the background because it knew I had to keep functioning.

  “I’d rather shop first,” I said frankly.

  “Okay,” Jake replied. His expression was one of relief, as if he’d been worried that I wasn’t going to agree to shopping until he’d told me what he and his brother had discussed.

  However, I could see that he didn’t want to talk, and honestly, I was okay with that. I’d been hit with enough blows that day that it would feel good to just focus on purchasing a few necessities. Once we were done with that, well, maybe Jake would feel more like talking…and I’d feel more like eating.

  We went back down in the elevator and headed outside. The heat felt like a blast furnace even late in the afternoon, so much hotter than Kanab, which at least had the leavening influence of lots of mature trees. Here, everything was concrete and asphalt and glass, and the glare made me squint behind the cheap sunglasses we’d gotten at the gas station in St. George.

  But it wasn’t too far to the CVS, where I loaded a shopping basket with a toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, travel sizes of shampoo and moisturizer. Thank God I’d had my period a week earlier, so at least I didn’t have to ask Jake to pay for tampons, and I avoided buying any makeup except for some tinted lip balm. I also picked up an oversized “I <3 Las Vegas” T-shirt, figuring it would be good to sleep in.

  “That should do it,” I said after Jake had paid for my purchases and we were headed back outside.