Seven Psychics Read online

  Changing into khaki cargo pants and my military style jacket, I placed extra ammo in my pockets just in case and shouldered my backpack. I highly doubted I’d ever be called on to use my sniper rifle after seeing how easily Garrett had tracked down and then subdued his target. The squad’s name was highly fitting. All three of the agents seemed to have heightened senses that enabled them to hunt and kill whatever they were sent to find.

  Opening my door, I stepped into the hall without checking for oncoming traffic and crashed into Garrett. He rolled his eyes when I bounced off him and hit the floor with a startled sound. Shaking his head, he glared down at me. “Try to watch where you’re going.”

  He offered me his hand and I took it with great reluctance, mortified that I’d literally fallen at his feet. “Sorry,” I mumbled as he effortlessly hauled me upright. His palm was calloused and his grip was very strong. His touch electrified my heart into beating much faster than usual. His expression made it oh so clear that he didn’t want me around. Ignoring my apology, he stepped around me without a word and jogged down the hall.

  Walker emerged from her room beside mine with a sympathetic grin. She was aware of just how bad my infatuation was. We both knew I was out of Reece’s league and that he’d never see me as anything other than an annoying kid. “Race you to the garage!” she challenged.

  “You’re on!” I appreciated her effort at trying to take my mind off my woes. Even without the heavy backpack weighing me down, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of beating the agent to the stairs let alone all the way to the garage. I broke into a sprint anyway and was right behind her when she reached the stairs.

  Unwisely, I took them the stairs two at a time. Thundering down the staircase much more clumsily, not to mention loudly than Kala, I lost my balance and let out a scream as my feet tangled together near the bottom rung. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see the ground that was rushing up at me. They sprang open again a moment later when strong arms caught me.

  Garrett set me on my feet as if I weighed no more than the backpack that I carried. “I thought I told you to watch where you’re going,” he growled.

  “Sorry,” I said again, mentally dying beneath his glare. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen at his feet twice in less than a minute.

  Shaking his head again at my clumsiness, Garrett jogged over to the door where Walker and Bailey were waiting for us. Both were unsuccessfully trying to hide their sniggers. I sent them a scowl every bit as fierce as Reece’s, which had no effect on them at all except possibly to heighten their amusement.

  Trembling at my close call, I could have sworn that Garrett hadn’t been anywhere near the stairs when I’d tripped. It was lucky for me that he had been, otherwise I might have cracked my head open on the concrete floor.

  “Is everything alright?” Mark asked when he joined us in the garage. His gaze flicked from face to face suspiciously. He knew that something had happened, but he was unsure about what it was.

  “Sure,” Walker replied. “Lexi almost killed herself falling down the stairs, but her hero saved her.”

  My face flushed bright red and I tried to fade into the background when Reece rolled his eyes and headed for the SUV.

  “I’m fine,” I said when Agent Steel sent me a concerned look. “Just dying of shame,” I muttered beneath my breath. Flynn elbowed Kala in the side when she laughed. I constantly had to remind myself just how good their hearing was. It was bordering on spooky at times.

  Again, I sat between Walker and Bailey with my backpack on my lap. I wondered why they even bothered to bring me along. Even with my thousands of hours of practice, it took a couple of minutes to assemble my rifle. The more I thought about it during the drive to Denver, the more I realized they wouldn’t expect me to whip my rifle together at superhuman speed. They’d most likely drive their quarry to a location where I could shoot them at my leisure. It would be all too easy to lie in wait somewhere out of sight, preferably from above and to take aim and fire at the bad guy or girl. Now that I’d had practice shooting at moving targets, I was confident that I could hit someone even if they were on the run.

  It was verging on dusk when we reached the city. The GPS led us straight to the office building where the unconscious people had been found.

  Mark turned to speak to us before we disembarked from the car. “The victims have apparently been unconscious since this morning, so the trail will have faded by now. Check in with me every ten minutes. I want to hear from each of you whether you’ve found anything or not,” he ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Kala said and saluted him. He sent her an unamused stare that she returned with a cheeky grin. They’d been a family long enough to know each other’s foibles and to have learnt to deal with them. Or to ignore them in this instance.

  “Lexi and I will remain in the SUV. Be careful,” Agent Steel admonished and his three agents exited from the vehicle.

  Mark left the car long enough to shift to the driver’s seat and then gestured for me to join him. I climbed out and moved to the front, taking my backpack with me rather than leaving it sitting on the backseat. This area of the city was far from affluent and I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone tried to steal our ride. We’d passed several alleys where homeless people had made cardboard boxes and sheets of wood and pieces of roofing tin their temporary dwellings. To them, we probably looked wealthy and privileged. Compared to them, we were. My rifle alone had cost over ten thousand dollars and it would fetch a pretty price on the black market. That kind of money would buy a lot of cheap wine and recreational drugs.

  Fiddling with the earbud that Mark handed me, I didn’t insert it just yet. “How do they do it?” I blurted. If the trail was several hours old, how could they follow it anywhere? More importantly, how could they even know that a trail existed in the first place? They were humans, not bloodhounds.

  “How does who do what?” Mark asked.

  “How can your team track the bad guys down?”

  Mark covered his earbud with his hand before he replied, probably so he didn’t distract his team while we talked. “You might have noticed that my agents have heightened skills.”

  Nodding, I counted them off on my fingers. “They have excellent hearing, their sense of smell seems to be a lot better than normal, they’re strong and they can move really fast when they want to.” I toyed with the idea that they might be government made super agents, but it was too farfetched to be believed. This wasn’t a movie about superheroes and villains. It was real life and there had to be a logical explanation.

  He was quiet for a few moments as he sorted through his thoughts. “Kala told you that they’re more than just my employees.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “She said that you’re their guardian.” I’d been dying of curiosity ever since she’d divulged this to me, but I hadn’t plucked up the courage to ask how this had come about. I had a feeling the story would be tragic and that they rarely told anyone the truth about their origins.

  “I found them when they were very young,” he said quietly. “They’d been experimented on by a team of rogue scientists who were trying to create drugs that would enhance human senses.”

  Perhaps my harebrained theory about them being government made super agents hadn’t been that far off the mark then. He made it sound plausible enough, but something told me he wasn’t telling me the entire truth. There was something very strange about the members of the TAK Squad and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Drug experimentation could explain their much stronger than usual senses, so I merely nodded my understanding. “What happened to the scientists?”

  His lips thinned into a grim line. “I happened to them. I take exception to children being mistreated.”

  He’d just all but admitted that he’d killed whoever had kidnapped the three children that he’d taken under his wing. Picturing Garrett, Walker and Bailey as helpless toddlers being experimented on by their emotionless captors, I couldn’
t blame Mark for taking action. “They got what they deserved,” I decided.

  “I thought so at the time.” Uncovering his earbud, he returned his attention to the action that he could hear but not see.

  Fixing my earbud in place, I heard nothing for a couple of minutes. Garrett was the first to check in.

  “I’ve still got nothing,” he said, sounding disappointed and frustrated.

  “Patience, Rex,” Kala admonished. “The trail is here, we just have to find it.”

  “I hate that nickname,” Reece muttered.

  “I know,” Kala said with a nasty snigger. “That’s why I use it.” I could actually hear her smirking with pleasure that she’d managed to annoy him.

  “Rex?” I mouthed to Mark with a raised eyebrow.

  “It’s a nickname she gave him when they were kids,” he whispered back. “I can’t remember where it originated from.” His shrug was uncomfortable, so I let it drop. There were many things that I didn’t understand about the team and this was just one more piece to add to the puzzle.

  Flynn spoke before the snide comments could escalate into an argument. “I just picked up something.” Everyone went silent and I could have sworn I heard him sucking in a deep breath. “He was here. The trail is faint, but it’s detectable.”

  Mark started the SUV and it came to life with a quiet purr that was very different from the painful belches that my father’s truck had given before it had died. “What is your location?” he asked.

  “I’m five blocks to your east,” Bailey replied. “I’m about to turn north.”

  “We’re on our way,” Agent Steel said and took off. He didn’t drive maniacally like Reece tended to, but kept to the limit to avoid being pulled over by the cops. We followed Flynn’s updates and I marveled at how fast he was able to move on foot.

  “He’s somewhere close,” Kala muttered. “I can smell him all over the place.” Her curious statement was followed by a short pause. “Figuratively speaking, of course,” she added.

  A weird thought hit me that maybe they could smell the target. How else could they be picking up on his trail? I tried to dismiss the thought as being crazy, but I couldn’t quite manage it. Mark had told me that their senses were enhanced, but he’d neatly avoided telling me exactly how they found their quarry. Maybe they were more like bloodhounds than I’d imagined.

  “Garrett?” Mark prompted.

  “We’re getting close,” Reece replied. “I think he’s holed up in a row of houses two blocks to the east of your current location.”

  “I can hear deep breathing,” Walker said a few seconds later. “It sounds a lot like someone is in a really deep sleep inside one of these houses.” I knew her hearing was extraordinary, but it had to be almost supernatural if she could hear someone breathing from inside a building.

  Mark pulled up half a block away from a rundown set of houses. Full darkness had fallen a few minutes ago and I couldn’t tell which house our target was using as a hideout. A dark form stepped out into a streetlight just ahead and pointed at a house roughly in the middle of the street. The figure melted back into the darkness before I could make out which agent it had been. I was pretty sure it had been either Bailey or Garrett. They were too tall and muscular to have been Walker.

  “Which one of us is going in, boss?” Reece asked. It was difficult to put an emotion to his words when I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded tense and eager to me. The psychics had proven that they were dangerous, yet none of the agents had shown any signs of fear at the prospect of coming face to face with them so far.

  “This one is yours, Kala,” Mark replied.

  “Yes!” she hissed with pleased satisfaction. A dark form darted across the road and disappeared into the shadows between two of the houses.

  Straining to hear what was going on, I gripped the edge of my seat tightly with both hands. I knew Walker could take care of herself, but I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t anxious for her. She was a lone female going against a psychotic man who was able to take control of people with his mind as well as some other dark power that I wasn’t sure of yet. Mark showed no concern on his face, but his hands were tense on the wheel. He might not be their biological father, yet it was obvious to me that he loved them all as if they were his own.

  Kala forced the backdoor open and it gave way with a small screech that made me jump. There was silence as she searched the house for her prey. I felt a stab of dread when a light was switched on inside and gravelly male voice spoke.

  “Well, well, look at the juicy bug that just stepped into my web.” I hadn’t been given access to the dossiers the team had on the targets, but he sounded like he was somewhere over forty. His tone reflected his pleasure that a fresh victim had made herself available to him. “You and I are going to have a very good time together,” Sloth said with an audible smirk. “Not that you’ll be able to remember any of it.” His chuckle was pure evil and my flesh instantly tried to crawl off my bones. “Go to sleep,” he ordered in a deep, commanding tone.

  “Screw you,” Walker replied.

  “No one can defy me!” Sloth declared with a hint of panic. He was flabbergasted that she hadn’t instantly fallen asleep. “Wait! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Mark hadn’t allowed any of his team to carry a gun during their mission so far. I was certain it was to avoid them from being forced to put a bullet in their own heads as had happened to some of the guards at the facility where the psychics had been kept.

  Just because Walker didn’t have a weapon didn’t mean that she wasn’t dangerous. “I’m going to kill you,” she replied calmly and launched herself at him. He gave a shout of alarm then it sounded like furniture was being thrown around inside the house. I guessed this psychic also had telekinetic powers. Walker hissed in pain then I heard a final crash and a snarling noise that made the hairs on the back of my head rise.

  “What was that?” I whispered to Mark.

  “It sounded like a very angry cat,” he said blandly. If so, then it had to be the biggest cat on the planet. It had almost sounded like an enraged lioness. I’d hate to meet that particular feline in a dark alley at night.

  “Sloth is down,” Kala advised and my tense muscles finally relaxed.

  “Stay in the SUV this time,” Mark told me. His expression was firm and I obeyed him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see whatever was inside that house anyway.

  Agents Steel, Garrett and Bailey trooped between the two houses and out of sight. Flynn uttered a harsh curse a short while later as they presumably reached the psychic. “Sick bastard,” he muttered, sounding slightly ill.

  “He’s dead?” Mark asked.

  “As a doornail,” Walker said flatly. There was no satisfaction in her tone now, just anger. It made me wonder what I didn’t know about Sloth and his fellow psychics. Mark had only told me the bare basics so far, no doubt to shield my youthful mind from harm.

  “Well done,” he said to Kala. “I’ll call in the Crew.”

  Flynn spoke, forgetting that I was listening in. “I’m glad Alexis didn’t see this. She’d probably be scarred for life.”

  “I wish I hadn’t seen it,” Kala responded. “I need a bath.”

  “This is why I don’t want the kid coming along on our mission,” Garrett said flatly. “She’s too young to be subjected to this kind of twisted depravity.”

  Sitting all alone in the van, my hand crept to the gun that was holstered beneath my left arm. I was tempted to draw it, but I didn’t want to look like a scared little girl when the others returned, even if that was exactly what I felt like. I took the earbud out and slipped it into my pocket so I didn’t have to hear any more of their discussion. It wasn’t much fun to listen to them talking about me as if I was a five year old.

  Again, it took the Cleanup Crew only a few minutes to turn up. They had to be based somewhere in the center of the city to have arrived so quickly. I caught a quick glimpse of the same two men that had been at the last crime sc
ene.

  It took around ten minutes for them to remove every trace of whatever had happened inside the house. They eventually carried a body out and deposited it into the back of their van. Instead of driving away, they returned to the house and carried a second person out a few moments later. The person was wrapped in a blanket, but their face was uncovered. Long hair and delicate features hinted that it was a woman. I hoped she was still alive and would be taken to the closest hospital for treatment. Kala had said she heard someone breathing deeply in apparent sleep. She hadn’t mentioned coming across any corpses.

  The team was grim when they returned to the SUV a short time later. Walker looked especially moody. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and her fists were clenched in anger. She seemed to be favoring her left arm a little. The agents might be able to resist mind control, but they clearly weren’t impervious to projectiles being thrown at them.

  “What didn’t you want me to see in there?” I asked her after Garrett drove away from the house.

  Kala looked at Mark for approval before answering my question. He reluctantly nodded his permission and she explained what I’d missed. “Sloth didn’t just make people go to sleep. He also used their bodies for his sexual entertainment. He didn’t care if his victims were men or women. He was an equal opportunity rapist, not to mention a despicable coward and a sadist.”

  Suddenly feeling lightheaded, I swallowed down bile. “Eww.” Now I wished I hadn’t asked. At times like this it was obvious that I’d led a very sheltered life. “Did you make him suffer?” I asked Walker softly.

  “Yes, but not nearly enough to make him pay for what he did to that poor woman,” was the agent’s morose reply. “Or for all of the others that he abused.”

  ₪₪₪

  Chapter Eleven

  When a couple of days passed without any further incidents, it became apparent that the remaining five telepaths were trying to remain under the radar. Sitting beside Kala on the couch watching TV, I was doing my best to ignore Reece and Flynn as they sparred in the boxing ring.