CHAPTER TEN
Boston welcomed Miriya with a blast of frigid weather. She returned to her routine, her regular classes, and favorite restaurants.
Life, however, changed on her.
She had forgotten the difficulty of living with the persistent fear that she would be identified as an alpha mutant and subjected to the subtle injustices of a society afraid of mutants. Her head ached from the constant watchfulness over everything she said and everything she did.
The key, she reminded herself, was not to get caught.
Miriya resumed her life, except that it was now silent. Once again, she was a lone telepath flying under the radar, trying not to draw attention to herself.
The silence drained her, sucking the energy and delight out of each day. Each hour crawled, though the days passed inevitably and with excruciating slowness. She never imagined she would come to despise her own company.
Miriya slammed her book shut and slouched deeper into the chaise lounge. With a scowl, she surveyed her familiar living room. The bright and contrasting colors failed to cheer her as they usually did.
What the hell was wrong with her?
The problem wasn’t about being an enforcer; the council had not contacted her since the fiasco in New Orleans, though Jake had left his phone number on her voicemail. It was far more fundamental; it was about being a telepath, an alpha telepath.
Her life choices apparently came down to walling off her mind and drowning in silence or wading through the disgusting muck of someone else’s thoughts. Miriya scowled. Those were pathetic choices. Oh, wait, there was a third option: continue living in the web of deceit she had spun around herself, balancing on the fine line between the first two options.
Grinding her teeth, she picked up a pillow and flung it at the wall before releasing her breath in a sigh. Perhaps it wasn’t about picking one of the three equally unappetizing options, but finding a reason to make those options worthwhile. Someone special, perhaps—someone who would keep no secrets from her, someone whose psychic company was worth the price of raw intimacy.
Miriya’s mouth twisted into a grimace. If that person existed, he or she had likely been run over and killed by a truck. That kind of perfect connection could not possibly exist. It was just a stupid dream.
Her phone rang. She snatched it up and stared at the caller ID.
With a sigh, she accepted the call. “Hey, Charles.”
“I have two tickets to the Boston Philharmonic—”
“Not really up to it.”
“You haven’t been up for anything for two months now. Come on, Miriya. You need stimulation. I’ll even let you pick through my thoughts.”
Her shoulders sagged, relaxing with a sigh. She supposed there was no harm in a night out. “Only if you promise not to front any fake thoughts to throw me off track.”
“Would I do a thing like that? I’ll pick you up tonight at six. I found a lovely French bistro I think you’ll enjoy.”
Another soft sigh flowed out of her. “Sure. Why not?”
At 5:45 p.m., she took the elevator to the first floor to wait for Charles. The elevator stopped on the tenth floor to let in a couple that had obviously been fighting. No telepathic powers needed—just a pair of eyes. The man’s mouth was set in a grim line. The woman, her red-rimmed eyes puffy, gripped her clutch so tightly her knuckles were white.
Miriya’s telepathic powers reached out, brushing against their unshielded minds. She drew her breath in sharply as the unvarnished truth, ugly as hell, tumbled out.
Moments later, the man released his breath in a sigh and reached out, his hand closing over the woman’s. “It’ll be all right. We’ll be fine.”
Miriya rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to snort. She hesitated for a moment before throwing the words into his mind. She bought the positive pregnancy test off eBay.
He dropped the woman’s hands as if burned. “You bought a positive pregnancy test!” His confused gaze flicked briefly to Miriya before returning to the woman. “You—” He stepped back from her. “What the hell?”
The woman blanched. She reached for him. “Please, Henry, it’s not what you think. I just—”
The elevator door opened on the first floor. He turned his back on her and strode away.
The woman choked back a sob. Her sideway glance at Miriya sharpened into a glare. “You…you’re a telepath, aren’t you? You goddamned bitch! I’ll sue you; I swear to God.” She hurried out of the elevator and raced after the man. “Henry! Please, stop. Please let me explain.”
Miriya dragged a trembling hand through her hair. Should she have said nothing? If she hadn’t spoken up, the man would have walked into a marriage built on lies. When was it okay to interfere? When was it not?
She swallowed hard. She would have to live with either the blame for interfering or the guilt of not interfering, regardless of what she did.
And damn if she wasn’t surrounded by first-class liars and deceivers, even the non-mutants. When it came down to it, she was one of those liars too. After all, she had lied her way from Maria Durand into Miriya Templeton.
Her mind in turmoil, she waited by the front door. Charles, prompt as always, showed up at six in a silver Maserati. Forcing her mind away from the unpleasant incident in the elevator and her newly found dislike for herself, Miriya smiled as she slid onto the cream-colored leather seats and ran a finger across the butter-soft surface. “How long have you had this puppy?”
He flashed her a grin and pulled away from the curb. “About three days. You like it?”
“Very nice. What happened to your Porsche?”
“Sold it to a friend.” His voice tensed. “Actually, he got into an accident yesterday.”
Miriya sat up straight. “Really?”
“Someone rammed him, deliberately, and then drove off. He’s in intensive care—bad injuries—but the doctors think he’ll make it.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. The car’s totaled though. He hadn’t even gotten the title changed over to his name yet.” Maybe I should just give him the money back. At least half of it.
Miriya smiled. A warm feeling filled her. It was just like Charles to do something like that.
He glanced at her. “So, how are you doing?”
She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
“Jake calls me at least once a week.”
Miriya straightened in her seat, her heart thumping hard in her chest. “Really?”
“Keeps asking what you’re up to. I think he’s still hoping you’ll join the council.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hope he’s not holding his breath.”
“No one understands why you said no.”
“What part of ‘I want to control my own life’ is so hard for you to understand?”
Charles shook his head. “Control is an illusion. Pete had control of the Porsche, but none over the SUV that rammed him.” He flashed her a lopsided grin. “All my social connections and money couldn’t get me out of trouble at the Mistick Krewe party. I needed an ex-girlfriend to come save me. Seems to me, the best control anyone can hope for is to surround yourself with good friends and hope they care enough to help you out every now and again.”
Miriya smiled. “Friends like you?”
Charles laughed. “I was thinking of friends like you.”
Her smile widened as she relaxed in her seat. Out of habit, her telepathic powers swept out, scanning the minds in the cars around her. “So, you were telling me about this bistro.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “You’re being followed, Charles.”
He cast her an alarmed glance. “What? Who?”
“His name is David Seward.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells. Why is he following me?”
Miriya zeroed in on the unshielded mind in the large SUV several cars behind the Maserati. David’s thoughts and memories flashed through her mind, like pieces of a storyboard. She wrenched them into cohesion.
She blinked hard, sucked in a deep b
reath, and glanced around sharply. “Pull into that parking garage.”
Charles gave her a hard look, swung the steering wheel, and directed his car into the garage.
“Park as close to the mall entrance as possible. We’re going in.”
“Miriya—”
“He rammed your Porsche, believing you were in it. He’s going to ram your Maserati too. We have to get off the streets.”
“And into the mall?”
“There are security guards at mall entrances. He has a gun.”
“What?” He slid the Maserati into a parking lot, and they quickly got out of the car.
The SUV, only twenty feet away, accelerated. Its headlights brightened into a blinding glare as Charles ran toward the mall entrance.
“No!” Miriya shouted. He would never make it.
Her telepathic powers lashed out, wrapped around David Seward’s mind, and squeezed consciousness from it. Dive right, she screamed at Charles.
He dove to the right, tumbling between parked cars. The out-of-control SUV twisted into a spin before rear-ending the guardrails at the mall entrance. Alarmed security guards rushed forward to surround the vehicle.
Miriya ran to Charles as he pushed slowly to his feet. She grasped his arm, steadying him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he murmured, brushing down his clothes. He looked over his shoulder. “What the hell was that?”
“It was hard to figure out. He’s at least borderline crazy, but does the name Dataflex, Inc. mean anything to you?”
Awareness gleamed in Charles’s eyes. “I acquired Dataflex…or rather, my company acquired Dataflex. The regulators okayed the deal about a year ago, and we finally closed on it last month.”
Miriya glanced at the security guards swarming around the crashed SUV and sighed. “He lost his job.”
“Damn it.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I own Brandon Industries, but I don’t make the management decisions. Hell, I even left Dataflex’s management team in place to keep running the shop.”
“The job loss tipped him over the edge. He had a divorce a year ago and lost both his kids in the custody battle. He’s just gone to court to try to get them back, but without a job—”
“He has no shot at it,” Charles finished.
Miriya nodded.
“And you got all that from scanning his mind?”
She sighed. “I picked up lots of bad habits after New Orleans, including scanning minds around me, just in case. New Orleans turned me into a paranoid bitch.”
“Who possibly saved both our lives today.” Charles managed a weak grin. “Paranoia is a good color on you.” He glanced at his watch. “Can we take a rain check on the dinner and the opera? I need to handle this.”
“Sure.” Miriya waved him away. She did not need to scan Charles’s mind to know that he was probably going to use his wealth and influence to minimize the amount of trouble David Seward was in.
What she did not expect was the security guard who approached her minutes later. “Excuse me, miss?” His manner was polite, his tone deferential. “Mr. Brandon says you were the alpha telepath who warned him of Mr. Seward’s intentions. We need to get a statement from you, please.”
Damn it. She was in a world of trouble. She would be arrested, charged with God-knows-what, sued for damages. Miriya squeezed her eyes shut. “Sure.” Her voice trembled.
The statement part was simple. The lack of challenge from the security guard though was surprising. He took everything she said at face value. It did not make sense until he wrapped up his questions ten minutes later. “Thank you, Miss Templeton. I’m sorry to take time away from your enforcer duties, but we needed this statement.”
Enforcer. He thought she was an enforcer with the Mutant Affairs Council. Perhaps Charles had told the security guard as much to make the questioning simpler.
She leaned against the car and watched as David, still unconscious, was transferred to an ambulance. Charles was smoothing things over with the authorities, but her presence and her contribution were not among those things that needed smoothing over. No one had challenged her decision to knock out David, or questioned the resulting near-accident as his SUV spun into the guardrails.
It drove home the difference between being an unfettered alpha mutant, always under suspicion of wrongdoing, or being an authority figure, a trusted representative of the government. The change would not resolve all her self-doubt over how she used her telepathic powers, but it would buy her breathing room and the luxury to help her friends without being hassled.
She pursed her lips. She could do “different,” at least for a while.
Perhaps it was time for another chat with Jake Hansen.