Page 11 of Empowereds

11

E nzo lay in his bunk and listened to the breathing of the men around him. The room had six bunk beds shoved inside. They weren’t pushed along the walls, as he’d first imagined. Shelves and pegs lined the walls to hold the men’s possessions. The beds stood in rows in the middle of the room. All in all, Enzo had seen more spacious prisons.

Headquarters expected him to check in and report whether he’d successfully embedded with the co-op, but he’d had no privacy during the day.

When he was sure all the men were asleep, he crept from his bed, making as little noise as possible. If anyone woke up, he’d claim he needed to use the bathroom.

Even with the excuse hovering on his lips, he did his best to be quiet. Stupid of him, really. He should embrace the bathroom excuse and swagger out of here like it didn’t matter whether he woke anyone up. Tiptoeing across the floor only made him look suspicious.

When he first came into the bunkhouse, he’d noticed the door creaked. Fortunately, one of the men snored. He timed opening the door and shutting it to the sound.

The night was darker than he’d expected. No lights shone from the other bunkhouses or farmhouse. No streetlights illuminated the area. The government had never replaced lighting in the outlying locations. No one could see him, but he also couldn’t see where he was going.

The bunkhouse for the single men sat near the end of the row of bunkhouses, with the women’s bunkhouse on the right, then the bathrooms, kitchen, and several small family ones after that.

If he walked straight north, he’d go by a tomato field and eventually come to another peach orchard. The trees there would hide him. He slowly headed that direction.

The air was still warm and moist, and the trill of the crickets sounded everywhere. A dog in one of the family bunkhouses barked. Enzo froze, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for heading in a different direction than the bathrooms, should the dog and owner come barreling outside.

But an angry voice silenced the dog. Which just showed that harvesters were as foolish as city dwellers. They bought dogs for protection and then yelled at the animals every time they made noise.

Enzo continued his slow trek toward the orchard. When he was sufficiently far away from the bunkhouses, he turned his phone’s flashlight setting on low to get his bearings. The dim shape of trees loomed like a fortress wall. He made his way down a row, turned off his flashlight, and called headquarters.

Perry, Mr. Schmitt’s assistant answered. Apparently, Schmitt wasn’t losing any sleep over Enzo’s safety. “Yes?” Perry asked sleepily. “Everything going well?”

Enzo decided not to give an account of his blunders today. “I’m at the co-op at Calhoun’s farming compound. They plan to be here for the next two weeks.”

“Good. Is there any indication they suspect you?”

Probably not or they would have sacked him when they caught him trying to break into Ben’s safe. Enzo had made a mistake telling Charity about Senator Hodges. If she checked the details of the senator’s death, she’d see a psychic had been behind that attack and would guess Enzo’s feelings were less than positive toward Empowereds.

Enzo’s family hadn’t been rich, at least not compared to the Hodges, but since his father had been the senator’s assistant, they’d had a car. Explaining why a person who had any means or connections would become a harvester was harder than coming up with the driver story.

At least for now, Charity didn’t suspect anything. That might change later.

“The co-op had me running after chickens, packing vehicles, and unpacking all day. Tomorrow I’ll be up at the crack of dawn picking crops. They either know the truth and are torturing me, or this is a really horrible job.”

Perry huffed. “You’ve had a cushy job for too long. You’ll be fine.”

Not many people would call chasing down criminals cushy, but Enzo didn’t argue the point. “Overall, the people are friendly.” Charity and Ben were so nice, in fact, that guilt already pulled at his conscience. It was hard to arrest nice people.

“Good. Were you able to talk to any of the three telekinetic suspects?”

Enzo’s gaze circled the area, even though he couldn’t see much beyond the glow of his watch. He hated feeling blind. “I talked to two of them. Milo is the son of the co-op leader. He’s married to Zia, the Latina woman. The blonde is his sister, Charity.”

“What else have you learned?”

He relayed Charity’s version of what happened at the market. “This mission may be a dead end. If Charity is telling the truth, the three just got lucky.”

“I put very little trust in luck,” Perry said as though Enzo should know better. “She’s not telling the truth. Empowereds rarely do.”

Perry might be right. Probably was. “Charity isn’t a telekinetic. She’s too tender-hearted and kind. If one of them has that power, my guess is on Milo. Although I’m not ruling out Zia.”

Perry made a scoffing noise. “What makes you think the blonde is innocent? Did she bat her big blue eyes and tell you how much she loves her country?”

“No, I talked to her while we drove here. She doesn’t like to eat beef because she thinks cows are cute.”

“Cute?” Another scoffing sound. “Has she ever seen a cow?”

“Intimately.” More intimately than he ever hoped to be with the animals.

“Well, don’t rule her out yet. Sometimes the innocent ones surprise you.”

The wind picked up and the branches rustled, sounding like they were scolding him.

“What about the psychic?” Perry asked. “Any thoughts on that?”

Enzo’s mind flashed to the memory of Charity holding out the water bottle to him. Had she known they would need it or was she just the precautious type? He probably should mention the incident and yet couldn’t bring himself to.

“No. Nobody wore a name tag that read Hello, my name is psychic so you don’t have to tell me yours. I already know.”

There was a pause. “That mouth of yours will get you in trouble one day.”

“I thought it already had. Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“No, you’re there because you let a telekinetic get out of hand, and we had to shoot one of our own vehicles out of the sky. Do you know what a squad car runs these days?”

There was no point arguing about that either. Enzo swatted at a passing mosquito. “If I find out anything, I’ll call again. In the meantime, I need a favor. There’s a seventeen-year-old kid out here named Callum Newman who’s waiting for the Slavery Recovery Department to find his parents. Can you lean on them to speed up the process?”

“How will that help your mission?”

Enzo had expected the question. “I planned to call you earlier, but the kid saw me fiddling with my watch and asked what I was doing. I don’t know if he suspects me, but I’d feel safer if he was back home with Mom and Dad.”

“Fine,” Perry said. Enzo could almost hear his martyred intake of breath because Enzo had given him more work to do. “Anything else?”

“No.” More mosquitos returned, buzzing hungrily. The things would probably eat him alive before he finished this mission.

“Good. Keep working and observing. In a few weeks, we’ll have someone bring you supplies.”

“What sort of supplies? My backpack isn’t exactly secure out here, and I share a room with nine other men.”

Perry sighed. “We’ve taken that into consideration. We don’t want to tell you anything that a psychic could pluck from your mind. At some point, a contact will reach out. You’ll know what the mission requires when you see them.”

It didn’t take much imagination to know what the mission required. The only question was did headquarters want the Empowereds brought in dead or alive.

Another memory filled his mind—Charity sitting next to him in the Jeep, with one hand pushing away strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Her expression was bright, and her voice soft as she told him about bottle-feeding a calf.

For her sake, he hoped headquarters wanted the Empowereds alive.

For the next week, Enzo spent his time picking raspberries, tomatoes, and peaches, as well as planting seedlings for the fall crop. He had met all twenty-six of the harvesters on the first day of the job. The group consisted of five married couples, two with young children, ten single men, and six single women.

On the second day, he’d hardly recognized most of the single women. Their ponytails were gone, replaced by shiny, curl-swept hair. They wore makeup and clean clothes. Four of them—the ones not already in relationships with other men—went out of their way to smile and talk to him.

The other men noticed this and resented Enzo for it.

Which just went to show that despite what Schmitt said, Enzo hadn’t been the right one to send on this mission. Too many people were watching him.

Fortunately, Charity was also one of the women who smiled and talked to him. At mealtimes, Gregor always invited Enzo to sit with him, and Charity usually joined them. She was always friendly, sometimes flirty, and every morning when Enzo first saw her at breakfast, he found his eyes lingering on her longer than they should.

During the day while he worked, he was constantly aware of where she was, and even though he knew Milo and Zia were more likely to have empowered abilities, he spent most of his time talking to her. She was more approachable, and he reasoned, still a good source of information.

Enzo couldn’t quite put his finger on why he found her so attractive. Yes, she was pretty, but he’d met plenty of beautiful women, many of whom were more striking than Charity and yet not nearly as compelling.

He found himself trying to analyze her charm, the things that made her so likable, as a way to immunize himself against it. She smiled easily. She was nice to everyone and always seemed cheerful, even when doing hour after hour of manual labor. Animals naturally took to her. She had a gentle, reassuring way with them. She also had an innocence and utter lack of cynicism about her. The innocence, he supposed, came from living a sheltered life in the country with her family looking out for her.

The way the sun lit up her long blonde hair was also a bit mesmerizing. Did the buildings in the city shade the women’s hair there so that he’d never noticed the effect of sunshine on blonde hair before? He found his gaze drawn to it over and over again.

After the first few days he’d spent working alongside Charity, several of the single men told him, with both resentment and surprise, that Ben flat-out ordered the rest of them to leave her alone. Usually, Milo and Gregor enforced that rule. If a man paid too much attention to the boss’s daughter, he found himself out of work.

Despite that warning, Charity’s parents were still welcoming toward Enzo. Apparently, he hadn’t crossed the line where they were concerned. Milo, however, continued to regard Enzo with suspicion. Callum acted protective of her as well.

The Huntingtons had made Callum an honorary member of their family, and he hung around them as though he took the title seriously. Some hero worship was going on, no doubt. A natural consequence of three of them rescuing him from slavers.

But Callum took to Charity the most. She mothered him as much as Maretta did, always giving him extra food and attention. Charity helped him with chores, teased him, and tried to stump him with math problems—giving him an opportunity to show off his skills to the men on the crew, many of whom razzed him for being a young, muscle-less, lightweight.

At first, Enzo wondered if Callum had a crush on Charity. She was only four years older. But Callum didn’t seem to mind Charity’s interest in Enzo. In fact, after Enzo had been with the group for a little over two weeks, he found himself alone with Callum in a corner of an orchard picking peaches.

With hardly a preamble, Callum said, “Hey, I’ve noticed the way you look at Charity. If you ever hurt her, you won’t just have Milo and Gregor to deal with. I’m the one you should worry about. I’ve got hacking skills. I can mess with your credit, cancel your accounts, or give your contact information to every spam bot in the country.”

“Really?” Enzo asked, unsure whether to be impressed or amused. “They taught that in tech school?”

Callum’s chin notched up. “Tech school isn’t the only place I’ve learned things.”

The kid was serious. Enzo was being threatened by a skinny, seventeen-year-old techno-nerd, and this after he had mistakenly tried to free him from the clutches of the harvesters. Well, that was gratitude for you.

Enzo wanted to say, “I have no intention of hurting Charity,” but couldn’t bring himself to lie. If she was an Empowered, he’d have to take her in. He plucked a peach from the tree branch. “Sorry, I don’t have any credit or accounts for you to mess with. I’m a harvester now. Off the grid, like the rest of them.”

Callum huffed. “You’ve got city written all over you. I can tell you hate picking crops as much as I do. You’ll probably be out of here before I am.”

“How can you tell I hate picking crops?” It was a legitimate question. Whatever Enzo’s tell was, he needed to fix it.

“When the Huntingtons aren’t around, you check your watch a lot.”

Oh. Guilty. That was because Enzo wanted to know if headquarters had sent him any messages. They hadn’t. They’d been serious about leaving him embedded for a while without any communication.

“I like to know what time it is,” Enzo said. “That means I’m punctual, not dissatisfied.”

“Right. If you plan on leaving soon, you need to let her know. She’s not the sort who wants a fling.”

Enzo put another peach in his bag. “You seem to know a lot about Charity.”

“No, I just know a lot about guys like you.”

Enzo laughed. He hadn’t meant to, but it seemed funny that everyone pegged him as some sort of Casanova. As a rule, he stayed away from women. He was only making an exception now because the mission required him to talk to Charity.

And okay, maybe he smiled at her a lot. At mealtimes, he frequently leaned closer to her so they could talk without everybody hearing what they said. But Enzo had never gone off alone with her, he’d never touched her, and he’d never implied he wanted a relationship with her. He wasn’t using her that way. And hopefully, he wouldn’t have to.

Enzo fixed the kid with a gaze. “First off, on behalf of all the guys like me, we’re offended at your insinuations. Second, you’re jumping the gun. Nothing is going on, so you don’t need to destroy my life with your evil techno-genius skills just yet.”

“Just yet…” Callum repeated menacingly.

Enzo hadn’t heard Charity heading down the row behind them until she spoke. “Why is Callum using his evil techno-genius skills to destroy you?” Her words were light. She thought she’d caught the last part of a joke between them.

Or at least she did until Callum whirled to face her. He flushed bright red, wouldn’t hold her gaze, and mumbled, “I’m not doing anything. We were just talking about guy stuff.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know guy stuff was so violent.”

“I’ve got to…” Callum gestured vaguely down the row, “um, I’m assigned to a different row. I’ve got to go.”

Charity watched him stalk off. She wore a long-sleeved shirt, open and tied in the front over a pink tank top. Her blonde hair hung down her back in waves. She smelled of vanilla, and her lips were glossy. The only thing that marred the picture was a small leaf that clung, unnoticed, to a strand of her hair.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Guy stuff. I’m not allowed to tell you. It’s part of the guy code.”

She turned back to him, her eyebrows dipping. “Did the two of you have a fight?”

“You clearly have no respect for the secrecy of the guy code.”

“One of my many failings.”

Enzo should’ve gone to the crates to empty his bag, but he stayed where he was. He didn’t want to end their conversation yet. “I haven’t noticed many failings in you.” He shot her a smile. “What are the others?”

“Well, today, one might be worrying when I shouldn’t. Do I need to act as a conflict arbitrator for you and Callum?”

Enzo vaguely remembered Ben telling him that harvesters settled differences that way. “No, it was nothing. The kid just warned me to behave myself.”

“Why would he think you weren’t?”

Enzo nearly said, “It’s a mystery. I’m hardworking and punctual. That’s why I occasionally glance at my watch.” But saying something like that would encourage Charity to talk to Callum. The kid would tell her about his suspicions, and Enzo didn’t want him planting any of those in her mind.

He vetoed several more responses for the same reason until the pause grew too long, and she stared at him questioningly. He had to say something. He was only left with the truth. “He’s concerned about the way I look at you.”

Her head jerked in surprise. “The way you look at me?”

“That was my reaction too.” Best to feign innocence. “I haven’t noticed anything odd in the way I look at you. Have you?”

She blinked, flustered. “No.” A blush crept into her cheeks.

He took a step closer, enjoying her discomfort more than he should have. Her blush felt like a compliment. “People look at each other when they talk. That’s normal, right?” His eyes never left hers. He took in each nervous flutter of those lashes.

“Right,” she said.

He took another step toward her. “Although you do have pretty blue eyes, and I suppose when I’m near enough, I can’t help noticing the white starburst pattern that runs through them. Maybe I’ve gotten distracted by that and stared at them for too long.”

She swallowed. “If you have, I never noticed.”

Oh, she’d noticed, and she was staying here with him, alone, instead of making curt excuses to hurry off somewhere else.

They stood close enough that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted. He found, suddenly, that he did want to. Did her hair feel as smooth and shiny as it looked? It would be so easy to lift his hand and sweep the errant leaf from her hair. His fingers could graze against her cheek, and if she didn’t shy away from that touch…

“You have pretty eyes too,” she said. “They’re so dark. I’ve probably stared at them a time or two.”

Neither of them broke the gaze. Any other man in this situation would either ask if he could touch her or do the bold thing and reach out and put his hands on her shoulders, then pull her closer.

“I never noticed you staring,” he said. A lie. He’d totally noticed. And somehow, he found himself, without planning to, taking the leaf from her hair. He barely refrained from grazing his fingers across her cheek. He showed the leaf to her before dropping it to the ground. “You had a stowaway.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She flicked her hair. “Do I have any others?”

She didn’t. “Let me check.” He ran his hand over her hair, feeling the silky tendrils beneath his fingers. Then he ran his hand over it again. Thoroughness was a virtue.

There was no excuse for the third time, but he did it anyway, watching her face instead of her hair. Maybe Callum was right about the way Enzo looked at her. He couldn’t drag his eyes away. And she watched him just as intently, her eyes wide and welcoming, waiting for him to make the next move.

His hand returned to her hair a fourth time. He would pull her closer and kiss her.

As his hands made their way to her shoulders, a noise sounded on the other side of the tree. Two men were coming closer, talking as they approached the row.

Enzo stepped away from Charity, guilt pinging through him like a thief caught in the act. She turned toward the sound of the men, and the break from her blue eyes allowed him a moment of sanity.

What had he almost just done? How had he forgotten that the two of them weren’t alone?

He took a deep breath and put even more space between them. By the time the men passed by, he was nearly himself again. His voice sounded normal as he said, “I’d better go unload these peaches and stop keeping you from your work.”

He left before she could protest that decision, before he could change his mind and decide he wanted that kiss after all.

He derided himself all the way to the crates. He was undercover, a trained agent here to find Empowereds. He was supposed to be making informed, conscious decisions. Brutal decisions, if necessary. Above all, he needed to stay impartial.

Charity had shown him that with very little thought on her part, she could make him forget his job, his purpose, and the fact that other people existed.

He couldn’t let that happen again. His feelings for her needed to be nipped in the bud. He needed to change his focus to Milo and Zia and limit the time he spent with her.