The Lost Rainbow Mage: Complete Trilogy Edition, page 7
“Don’t make me tase you.”
“Tase me?” I nearly shrieked. “Seriously?”
He didn’t react.
Finally, I shoved my hands toward him, and he returned the metal to its place. His hands grazed mine, and my shoulders ticked down an inch. The pain in my neck lessened slightly. Once again, I was doing the opposite of what was recommended in a kidnapped situation.
I scanned our surroundings as he refastened the cuffs. We still moved along a driveway within the strange, prison-like compound. Wordlessly, he leaned back in his seat.
“Where are we?” This time, I sounded curious, and I immediately revised my attempted civility. I wasn’t just curious. I was goddamned angry. “Where have you brought me? Why am I here?” I jerked the door handle, but it held firm. I then yanked on it with two hands for good measure, but still, neither man said anything. And the door remained closed.
My outburst hadn’t provoked them.
I sat back against the seat, glad to have my hands in front of me. “Do you often abduct people?”
Still silence, and to be honest, the answer was probably fucking yes. How else had they gotten under my skin and gotten me to follow along?
They were men in suits, they were slick, and the whole operation this morning had been seamless. They’d descended on Sweetwater and watched me, tracking my progress for most of the morning.
“You were in the coffee shop.” My tone this time was accusing as I spoke directly to Coop. My gaze narrowed.
He turned his head but only glanced at me before he faced forward again, giving me neither acknowledgment nor denial.
“And you stopped me from falling over in the street.” I spoke angrily to the back of Locke’s head, and he didn’t react, either. Just kept the car rolling forward at a constant, slow speed across a courtyard that seemed to keep on going forever.
“Where are we even going? You’ve brought me to an abandoned building with armed guards. Why not just let me out? Let me go.” I yanked at the door handle again. Even snapping it off would have provided a small degree of satisfaction. Fury-tears threatened to flood my eyes, and I clenched my mouth tight.
Coop sighed, and I swayed slightly as Locke made a wide turn, heading to the left of the warehouse building. Most of the windows were black and blank like soulless eyes, but I stared hard at them as we passed, almost willing movement in them.
A shadow fell over us as we passed close by the side of the building, and as we turned right to head to the back, Locke steered us onto a ramp leading downward, below ground.
I clutched the edge of the seat, hoping neither man would see my reaction. “Where are we going?” I spoke through gritted teeth. “Where?”
As we leveled off again, I took in a large parking lot, with row upon row of black cars—like the one we were traveling in. What was this place? Who were these men? Which letters did they work for? CIA? NSA?
“Oh. Wait.” I frowned at the fleet of vehicles, adding up the pieces of information I had. “So, then… We’re at HQ?”
Locke glanced at Coop in the rearview, but neither confirmed nor denied my guess.
It would make a kind of sense. Though, if it’s HQ of some secretive government organization, then I was back to being detained rather than arrested. I sighed. And they had the ability to kidnap people without repercussions.
Parked in a cluster to one side were normal looking cars—civilian ones. Perhaps this place wasn’t entirely deserted after all. Those cars probably belonged to commuting employees.
Locke slid us smoothly into a wide space and turned off the engine. “We’re here,” he said, unnecessarily.
“Where is ‘here’ exactly?” My words had an icy, bitter edge, and I yanked at the door handle one more time. Then I shoved my foot into the back of Locke’s seat for good measure.
When Coop reached for me, I lashed out toward him, kicking in his direction, and pushing my hands forward. “No. Don’t touch me again.” Every time he did that, my traitorous body relaxed, and I needed to be on alert here.
Locke opened his door, and I opened my mouth before letting loose a scream. Immediately, Locke’s door thunked closed.
He half turned his head so I’d hear his words over his shoulder, but he didn’t look at me. “What are you doing?” His tone was measured and entirely too reasonable.
“Calling for help.” I couldn’t stop the smugness when I spoke.
Coop barely smothered a chuckle, but Locke sighed.
“I’d be very careful, if I were you, Meira,” he said.
I stilled at his use of my name. Neither of them had referred to me by name yet. The only thing Coop had called me was Rainbowlocks. I lifted my chin. “I’ll scream if I want to. Get as much attention as I need.”
Locke shrugged like he didn’t care. “And that much noise won’t bother either Coop or me. But you still need to be careful. There are other guards who like noise like that, and not all of them are friendly. You don’t want to make any enemies here if you can help it.”
His words chilled me, and my thoughts immediately jumped to Paulson and his excessive show of power. Perhaps he was the kind of guy who’d like to hear me scream. I shuddered. Of course Paulson was. And Locke and Coop were trying to warn me.
Sadly, Locke was right. Since I couldn’t predict the behavior of any of the others here, I’d need to be careful. Above all, I had to avoid Paulson like the plague.
nine
We sat in silence for the next ten minutes, remaining in the car until Coop and Locke seemed content that my shrieking outburst was over. I flipped through my thoughts, trying to conjure a plan B, but I hadn’t come up with anything yet. I needed to get the lay of the land, work out how to escape. It obviously wasn’t by screaming and drawing unnecessary attention to myself. The handcuffs glinted on my wrists. Maybe I could focus on getting somebody to take them off again. Two free hands might make the difference in a successful escape.
“Door.” Coop was first to speak, and I looked at him in surprise, but the instruction wasn’t for me.
Locke leaned forward and pressed a button, releasing Coop’s door so he could climb out of the car.
I had half a thought to lunge after him, but the man was quick and wormed his way through a tiny gap to ensure I had no way to follow. The door closed before I could make use of the exit, and Locke had pressed his control button again before I even moved.
“Door’s locked again.” He had a helluva gift for saying unnecessary things.
I slid over to the window to watch as Coop walked away. He stopped in front of a silver portion of the nearest wall for a moment. When Coop glanced up, the silver area slid open, and he stepped inside.
“Is that an elevator? Where’s he going?” I pressed my hand against the window briefly, trying to see inside, before the door in the wall closed again.
Locke shook his head and for a moment it seemed he might tell me. “He’s a busy man,” was all he said. Then he tipped his shades to the rearview mirror again. “You’re going to need to locate those glasses you kicked under my seat earlier. We can’t get out of this car until you have them on.”
“What? But they make it so I can barely see.” Losing my vision in this place—by any means—wasn’t an option but least of all by those stupid glasses.
He shook his head again. “They’re not so bad. I wear them all the time.”
“But I can’t see.” I tried to insist, but he remained seated.
“Then we’re not getting out.”
I sighed and bent to search the floor and reached under the seat, two-handed since I was still freaking cuffed. I had no choice. There was no lesser of two evils here. I could either sit in this car with Locke, and we wouldn’t go anywhere, or I could put the sunglasses back on and he’d take me somewhere I didn’t want to go. Though, I still didn’t know where we were. My hand closed around the glasses, and I pulled them out from under the seat.
Dammit. The crunching sound hadn’t been them. I sighed and straightened in the seat.
“Will you take me home if I don’t put the glasses on?” It couldn’t hurt to try, right?
But he laughed, although not unkindly. “Those aren’t my orders,” he said. “You need the glasses because I’ve been told to keep all lights dimmed around you, and the glasses are the easiest way to achieve that.”
“You need to dim the lights? What the hell are you even talking about?” None of this made any sense. “You have the wrong person. Whoever you’re looking for, it’s not me. When will you figure that out?”
But Locke’s face was as expressionless as it had been for the whole ride, and he didn’t say anything. He waited.
And I caved. Because who wanted to spend the whole night in the car with a crick in the neck and a pain in the ass like Locke?
So I placed the glasses on my face anyway. Compliance had never really been my thing—people only needed to look at my hair to know that—but here I was, doing everything anyone asked of me. I stomped the floorboard.
“Good.” He nodded his approval. “I need to check you into the facility now.”
“The what?” I glanced around this strange underground parking lot, visions of the warehouse above filling my mind. I was at a facility? “What the hell does that even mean, Locke? Is that synonymous with prison?” I clenched my hands together and squeezed to keep from screaming again. “Are all of you this insane?”
But he chuckled softly. “If only it were so simple.” He leaned forward and pressed a button, and the door at my side made a thunking sound. “It’s unlocked now.” Another unnecessary statement.
I tugged on the handle, and the door popped open, allowing me to climb out. I glanced at the ramp, mentally calculating the distance.
“I wouldn’t.” Locke stopped next to me. “Even if you outrun me, there’s Paulson to contend with out there. You think you want to take him on?”
I shook my head, and my shoulders drooped. That man was clearly very proud of his machine gun. And I already believed he liked screaming. I had no desire to face him or be shot in the back by him as I tried to escape. It wasn’t a smart risk.
Letting loose a sigh, my mouth twisted. “Take me to check in, I guess.” I lifted my hands and rattled the cuffs. “Not like I can run very far with my new bracelets on, anyway.”
He smiled sadly before leading the way to the same elevator Coop had stepped into. “This will take us upstairs into the building.”
I nodded. I’d surmised that much for myself.
The motion was the smoothest I’d ever felt, barely like we were moving at all, but the doors slid open again to reveal a long corridor in front of us. I stepped forward, uncertainty making me stumble as I groped at the wall to regain my balance in the dim light. I reached up to remove the glasses, instinct driving me to see, but Locke clamped his hand over them.
“They must stay on,” he muttered. He grasped my elbow and righted me. Then he drew me forward, never making me walk faster than I could manage.
When we slowed, I twisted my head. The corridor opened out into a waiting room with chairs, some of them occupied.
“Hey.” Locke approached a desk, already talking to the lady sitting behind it. “Got a new transfer for ya.”
I snorted. A transfer? Really? “Yeah, right, Locke,” I murmured, and he half-looked at me over his shoulder.
“There.” The woman behind the desk might have nodded in a direction or even pointed, but either the sunglasses worked extra-great in here, or the lights were already dim.
“What time is it?” I whispered, tiredness suddenly making my head foggy.
A guy in one of the chairs yawned. “Late enough that I’m missing my beauty sleep.”
Locke led me to sit down, and I settled onto a hard, plastic seat. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t designed to be. The only plus side of these glasses was the ability to be able to study people as best I could from around them without anyone knowing that I was actually staring. Though, it didn’t work so well in this dimly-lit whatever-it-was-called room.
I squinted through the gloom the glasses created, but as I got used to the vision they left me with, I started to make out details of the people in the strange waiting room with me. Almost like the more I focused on it, the more my eyes were able to adjust to the light level. Locke sat to my right, alert and tense, like he expected me to bolt for the door any moment. Or perhaps he was worried I’d take the glasses off again.
But I wouldn’t. Running through unfamiliar corridors wouldn’t get me out of here. I scanned the other figures. None of them paid any attention to me. Would anyone but Locke care if I knocked the shades to the floor?
“Can’t she see?” The guy across from us looked at me. He was so pale, his skin almost seemed to glow. Like he was made of ivory or something.
“She’s wearing sunglasses, Jude.”
“It’s night.” The guy sounded belligerent now.
But Locke wasn’t explaining himself to the stranger, either. “I know.”
The guy—Jude—laughed suddenly. “Oh, I get it. Procedure.”
Locke chuckled too. “Well, whaddya know. You finally do got it. It’s always about procedure.”
Jude stood up, and he turned toward the attendant at the front desk. “Welp, it’s been nice chatting to you as always, Mona, but I have other people to inflict myself on tonight. Lots of time to kill before dawn.” He grinned, but nothing about the expression made him seem friendly.
I drew away from him, and he chuckled. Had he meant lots of time to kill, as in killing time? Or had he meant lots of time to kill… a lot of people? My brain went twisty. Based on the guy, it could be either.
Shit. I’d thought the only people I’d need to look out for were the guards. This guy didn’t seem like a guard, and he wasn’t a suit. He was a transfer just like me.
After Jude left, I looked around the room again. There was a delicate looking woman sitting diagonally behind me. She was harder to observe, but her skin seemed to almost glow, too, only not like Jude’s. His had been cold and hard looking. The woman had an ethereal feel about her, like moonlight or even sunlight itself lived within her.
Metal bands encircled both of her wrists, reminding me of my cuffs.
“Can we take these off?” I leaned toward Locke and spoke as I lifted my hands toward him.
He sighed and rooted in his pocket before producing a key. “Don’t make me regret this.” But his warning was pointless. I had no plans to do anything rash. Especially not when I could barely see and Jude was roaming around the facility somewhere “inflicting himself” on people. Not to mention Paulson outside.
The woman at the desk glanced up. “Lexi, they’re ready for you.”
“Thank you, Mona.” The ethereal female behind me stood and approached a door I hadn’t noticed previously—probably because my ability to see wasn’t dependable.
I watched her walk away from me and blinked hard, leaving my eyes closed for a couple of seconds before I looked again. From this angle, the woman almost had wings. They were delicate and gossamer, like spiders had created them, but they seemed real. Not there in physical form, but there, nonetheless. I rubbed my fingers over the lenses of the glasses.
“Whoa. What are you doing? You’ll make them smeary.” Locke clutched my forearm, stopping my movement.
“I think they already are,” I muttered. “They’re making me see things.” I switched tactics and began to lift the glasses from my face, but Locke gently pressed them back down.
“Don’t worry about it.” He spoke softly. “It’s very late. You’re tired. Our eyes play tricks on us when we’re tired.
At his mention of my being tired, I yawned.
Locke smothered his own yawn. “Don’t do that,” he grumbled. “My shift isn’t over yet.”
I glanced at him. He’d been one of the first suits I’d seen this morning. “How long is your workday?”
He shrugged. “Until you’re processed, I guess.”
“Makes me sound like mechanically reclaimed ham, Locke.” I almost couldn’t believe I was comfortable enough to joke with this guy, but it had been a very strange day. And maybe I was a little loopy from all the stress of it.
Someone coughed at the back of the room, and I turned. I hadn’t even known someone was sitting there. I wrinkled my nose as I faced the guy. His hair was freshly washed, but all I got from him was the odor of wet dog. His lumberjack beard probably didn’t help, though. Those things always smelled musty in my experience—and I considered myself very experienced in facial hair when most Minnesota men pretty much cultivated beards to keep their faces warm back home. Though, the level of musty wet dog seemed excessive, and I frowned at him.
He snarled at me when he saw me turned in his direction, and something that sounded suspiciously like a growl ripped through his chest and thudded through mine.
I faced the front again. Something was wrong with most of these people. I didn’t belong here at all. What the hell was the pattern, and why couldn’t Locke see they had the wrong person?
“Easy, Gus.” Locke’s tone held laughter as he spoke. “Down, boy.”
The growl rumbled from the man again, and I tensed.
Locke nudged me. “Calm down, Meira. If I can smell your fear, Gus definitely can. He’s just a big softy, really, but sitting in a room with Jude has probably put him in a bad mood.”
“Smell my fear?” I scowled. “You smell me?”
The corner of Locke’s mouth twitched. “Something like that.”
“And Gus can, too?”
“Sure. Would you expect anything different?”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I nodded. Nothing Locke had just said made sense—except the idea that Gus and Jude didn’t like each other a whole lot. That, I could get behind because neither of them seemed like guys I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Where were we?
“It’s okay,” Locke assured me. “It really is.”
I glanced at him and clenched my fists. “Do you get to go home after this is all over, Locke?”
He nodded. “Sure do.”
“Then don’t try to tell me this is okay. Against my will, you’ve taken me from my work and my home, and nothing about this is okay at all. Nothing.” Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I pressed my lips together to keep from crying out in public.
