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R eeni sat down on the toilet with the seat closed and buried her head in her hands. She wanted to bawl but she didn’t want Trevor to hear her. She didn’t want him out there at all. If he wasn’t here, she could do what she really wanted to do—curl up into a tiny ball and hide the fear that had hit her as soon as she found out her father had been informed of her location. That had changed everything. She didn’t even know how to leave the country now.

She had her paperwork. She had everything she needed, but her father was cagey, and he could quite possibly stop her from getting onto a plane. She needed to get a vehicle somehow and to drive like hell. Even at that, she stared down at her hands and watched as the shaking took over. How was she supposed to do this?

He shouldn’t have been here at all, and he shouldn’t have any idea that she was here either. Yet, due to the police, due to her attempt to help, this happened. Once the tears started, she couldn’t stop them. They just poured and poured. So she sat here, not sure how to handle it, desperately trying to quiet her crying so Trevor wouldn’t hear. When the door opened, she heard his muffled exclamation, and she was quickly picked up and carried out to the other room. When she was settled into his lap on the couch, he just held her.

She cried and cried and cried. She didn’t know whether it was just the stress of everything piling on together or something else, but she needed the release. By the time she finally ran down and went quiet in his arms, she didn’t have anything to say. She just let the last of the tears roll down her cheeks, as she contemplated having to make a run for it again. She thought that maybe Trevor would help her, but she didn’t want to put him in her father’s sights.

When she finally stopped crying, he just held her close, his hand gently rubbing her shoulders.

She whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever be sorry for that,” he said. “I’m just sorry your father brings out such an instant panic.”

She nodded. “Me too. No matter how much I try to deal with it, the minute I see him and hear him,… it just sets me off.”

“Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it? As long as he has paperwork to control what you do and how you do it, you’ll never have the freedom to do whatever you want with your life.”

She shook her head and leaned back slightly to look up at him. “I know. My grandmother didn’t like anything about the way my father handled me. I’m pretty sure she had the sight as well,” Reeni shared. “So she left me enough money that I’ll be okay for a long time.”

“Do you think your father’s after that too?”

She stared at him and then shrugged. “I guess when they say, the rich can never be rich enough , it’s possible, but I think it’s more about power. I think it’s also about not damaging his name, not doing anything to tarnish his reputation, whatever that means in this world.” She snorted. “It’s all just so damn sad, yet, because of who he is and what he’s done, I don’t really have the ability to fight him. I can’t ever get tested independently, and no one will ever buck him.”

“Because he has so much money?”

“I think he’s harsh to deal with in many ways,” she added. “I don’t even know if he’s on the up-and-up in business. I just know that he’s ruthless when it comes to me.” Trevor didn’t say anything. “You know you’re better off just letting me go, right?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m not very good at that. And the more I hold you, the more I realize I don’t really want to let you go at all.”

She shook her head. “And that’ll just take you down a pathway with absolutely no joy. My future is determined by him, and I don’t have any way to go against that.”

He pondered that, just holding her in his arms. “Not everybody is afraid of your father.”

“Everybody I know is,” she declared. “Nobody in my world is willing to buck him. I tried hard. I really did, but even my own grandmother couldn’t fight him, and that just made her really sad. When she passed, she left me a letter, telling me that I needed to find somebody somewhere to help me get out from under his control. I haven’t been able to do it, so I just keep running, trying to stay ahead of him and his long-arm reach, even here. I’m in Africa, for God’s sake,” she muttered, and her eyes had a sheen of tears again. “I thought for sure I would be safe here.”

“So, his home base is America?”

“Texas,” she clarified, “where everything’s bigger, badder, and better, as far as he’s concerned.”

Trevor just nodded and didn’t say anything.

She nestled against his arms, realizing that it was the first time she’d had anybody she could confide in. “It feels so strange to even tell you,” she murmured.

“That’s because you’ve been keeping it all bottled up this whole time. And that’s on top of the fact that we have bombers out there and somebody’s targeting Bullard.”

She nodded. “Yet Bullard isn’t anybody I want to deal with either.”

“But that’s the thing, Bullard has a lot of influence,” he noted. “He’s a guy who could do something for you.”

She laughed. “He might if he wanted to, but he won’t want to. Even if he did, there would be a price to pay, and it’s probably something I couldn’t pay anyway,” she grumbled. “Everybody wants something. Regardless, what Bullard could do, even in this country, won’t clear me anywhere else.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean Terk couldn’t help out.”

She stared at him. “What could Terk even do, and why would he do anything?”

“If you worked with him—hell, even if you didn’t, just being an energy worker makes you eligible—you would be under that umbrella, which includes Levi’s team in the US, Texas no less, and Bullard’s here in Africa. You would have powerful help on three continents that have worldwide reaches as well.”

“I think you put way too much stock in that umbrella of Terk’s,” she muttered. “He would need one hell of a lot of pull with all those governments to make that happen.”

He looked at her with surprise and then grinned. “Sweetheart, he has a hell of a lot of pull with a lot of governments, the US included. Last I checked, he is best buds with MI6 these days too.”

She frowned at that. “But so does my father. He has a lot of pull in a lot of places.”

“With governments or just with business?”

“Business for sure,” she said. “I don’t know about governments, but, if he can bribe them, he will.” At that he stiffened beneath her, and she frowned. “Isn’t that how business is done?” she asked in a mocking tone.

“Do you know of anybody he’s bribed?”

She pondered that and then shrugged. “I have a few names. I know he’s done some pretty shitty deals in the past, but I don’t think he’s done anything criminal, like murdering anyone,” she noted. “And that’s unfortunate in a way because, boy, if I could bring down that house of cards, I would be more than happy to.”

He didn’t reply right away, and she knew that nobody could really do anything to help.

“Let me talk to Terk about it.”

“Yeah? No time to talk. I’ll stay here while I figure out what my next move is, and then go from there,” she said.

“What would be your next move ideally?” he asked. “I mean, where will you go?”

“If I can find out where he is and stay one step ahead of him, he’ll get tired eventually. He’ll probably leave a keeper behind, somebody to continue to look for me, but he’ll be pissed that he was disturbed enough to personally come over here.”

“God, I just love your father,” he muttered.

“Nobody does, that’s the thing. He’s got a lot of enemies, but it’s that way on a personal level too, just because he—” She ran out of words, shrugged. “He is who he is. Growing up with him was brutal, but, once my abilities started to develop, he became a threat in ways that I couldn’t even begin to imagine. That made my life very difficult and him very dangerous for me.”

“I get that, but we can come up with some answers,” Trevor offered. “I won’t let this happen to you anymore.”

“It’s too late,” she declared, staring at him. “He’s here. Whether I can stay ahead of him or not, I don’t know, but he’s here, and he won’t go away on a permanent basis. He’s been looking for me for too long to just give up now.”

“How long?”

She winced. “It’s been four years this time.”

“Well, hell.” He grinned at her in admiration. “Good for you.”

She laughed. “Sure, but then again I have a different name on my passport, so that helps. That was something my grandmother set up before she passed away.”

“Wow, I really like your grandmother, but seriously, you travel under a different name?”

“Sure.” She chuckled. “So far, I haven’t had anybody question it. I have IDs to go with it, so that’s what I show. Once she got me the passport, which apparently she got from some shady dealer for an awful lot of money, it’s made my life a whole lot easier. I think she did it because of what my father did to her, and she didn’t want him to do the same to me.”

“Did he hurt her?” he asked, staring at her.

“I don’t think so, but she was kept isolated at the end of her life. I’m not sure she ever had any visitors or anything. She had all the best care, of course,” she added in a mocking tone, “but she lived completely alone in one room where he controlled everything.”

“Was it his mother or his stepmother?”

“His biological mother, and I think that’s one of the reasons why he did what he did and why she did what she did. She knew what he was like, inside and out. Plus, he knew what she would have done if she’d had the chance. He never could figure out how I was traveling, and that’ll be my biggest problem if I lose that,” she admitted, “I’m… I’m done for then, and I might as well just walk in there and surrender.”

“What would he do?”

“Fly me back home again, probably lock me up in an institution, arrange for more of his special testing ,” she replied, emphasizing the word with air quotes. “Of course that would say, once again, that I’m most definitely not capable of being out in the world on my own, then boom . Just like that, he controls my inheritance and everything else.”

“Yet, if he has power of attorney over you, can’t he do that now?”

“Except not with my grandmother’s money. She set that up privately, so it’s under a different name, and he has no idea what that name is.”

“Now I really like your grandmother. I may love her,” he said, with a grin.

She smiled, tears in her eyes. “I loved her too. She’s the only one who really ever got me, the only one who understood just what my life was like with my father.”

“Probably because she knew herself.”

“I think so, and I think she knew better than I did, certainly earlier than I did, and yet keeping quiet had definitely taken its toll. As Dad got older, he got uglier and more powerful, more driven by power. I think seeing what was happening to me caused my grandmother to start making plans on her own.”

“That shows an awful lot of love and care that we don’t always see from family members. You got lucky there. She realized what you were up against and did an awful lot to keep you safe during these years with that money, the passport, and ID.”

She nodded. “That’s part of the problem, and something I’m acutely aware of. Without that, I don’t have anything,” she said, tearing up again. “So, if he can ever figure out how I’m doing this and what name I’m traveling under, you can bet he’ll put a stop to it.”

“So, we have to do something about it quickly, before he finds out.”

When a knock came on the door, she buried her fist into her mouth, holding back her scream. He gave her a reassuring hug and whispered, “It’s just Damon.”

She stared at him wide-eyed, as he hopped up, opened the door, and let Damon in. As soon as the door closed behind him, Damon looked at her. “How are you?”

She just shrugged and didn’t say anything. She knew the tear tracks on her face would be hard to hide anyway, so no point in trying to avoid the obvious. The truth was, she was still panicked. but at least it had gotten down to a level where she could almost think again. “Did anybody see my father?” The fear was evident in her tone.

“He’s at the hotel, raising complete hell, and the police are all over it, trying to figure out a way to handle him. Meanwhile Bullard is raising no small amount of hell on his own,” he shared, with a satisfied smile. “It seems he has found the right way to let out all his bottled-up energy.”

She winced at that. “I’m sure that’s fun to watch.”

“I don’t think fun is the right word, but Bullard’s definitely on your side,” he stated, “so don’t you ever doubt that.”

She stared at him. “What? Why would he be on my side, when he already made it abundantly clear what he thought of me?”

“No, he had a lapse in judgment. He reacted out of frustration, fury, and fear for his own family,” Damon explained. “Keep that in mind too.”

She frowned, not willing to let Bullard off the hook so easily.

“Bullard would like you to come back to his place.”

She shook her head. “Nope, not happening.”

Damon sighed. “It’s the safest place for you.”

“It’s a prison,” she snapped, “and he made that very clear the last time I was there. So the answer is no. I can’t run if Dad has any way to stop me from running, like my father paying Bullard enough money to keep me prisoner.”

At that, Damon’s eyebrows shot up. “Bullard won’t bite, but is your father likely to do that crap?”

Just then energy slammed into her, and she shuddered, bending over, her head between her knees.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Trevor muttered, as he sat down beside her again. “What was that?”

She gasped. “Something, something to do with Bullard. No, not Bullard, Bullard’s place.” She stared at him in shock, then bolted to her feet. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s major.”

Damon already had his phone out, making a call. He talked to someone quickly, then turned to her and nodded. “A bomb just went off at the front door.”

She nodded. “Yeah, and a second one is in the compound.”

He stared at her. “Do you know where?”

“No, I don’t know where, at least not from here, but it’s electrical again. Our bad guy’s using some electrical device to set it off.”

“Bullard’s on his way there, so, if he’s not already there by now, believe me that his team’s on it.”

“Yeah, his team’s on it, but—” She frowned, looking far off into the distance. “There’s something odd about it.”

“Something odd?”

“Yeah, something odd,” she snapped. “But, if you’re asking me what, I can’t tell you, not from here.”

“Then that’s the answer,” Damon declared. “Let’s go.” As she sank onto the couch, Damon frowned. “You’re really that scared of going back to Bullard’s place?”

She bit her bottom lip and looked over at Trevor.

Trevor explained, “She spent a lot of years locked up in a sanatorium because of her father, and whatever Bullard said to her triggered the same unpleasant memories and power-control fights,” he murmured. “So, yeah, she’s definitely that worried.”

Damon crouched in front of her. “Look. I promise that I will personally ensure you can leave any time you want to leave.”

She shook her head. “You can’t go up against him.”

“Bullard? Or your dad?”

“Both.”

“Absolutely I can. I’ve been friends with Bullard for a long time,” he added.

“So, that just means you’ll take his side. And my father will just bribe you or threaten you to join his side.”

“There is no side,” Damon declared. “And I can’t be bought or threatened. We stand up to asshole bullies. Plus, when Bullard’s wrong, he knows how to make it up to someone,” he shared. “And it does happen. We all make mistakes. We all get triggered, particularly when our own family is being threatened—which isn’t something Bullard’s really had to deal with before. I wouldn’t react that way under any other circumstance. I can understand his saying something like that, but I don’t think he meant it, at least not the way that you took it.”

“There is only one way to take that,” she snapped, staring at him.

“Given what you’ve been through, yes. For you, that makes sense, but not for everybody else.”

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked cautiously.

“I want you to help us find the second bomb.”

“They should be able to find it without me,” she replied. “They have detectors for bugs and things. Right? I mean—”

“You tell me. Will that cut it?” Damon asked her, his phone out again.

“Yes, and he should check the north quarter of the property. Somewhere around… a big power box, maybe on the street side. Something is wrong with it.”

He smiled. “I really love your something’s wrong with it description.”

She shrugged. “If I knew anything more about it, maybe I could help, but I don’t,” she stated, “and that doesn’t appear to be something my mind wraps around very easily. I just see the power and the electrical currents, but I don’t see the hardware.”

“Good enough,” Damon noted, with a cheerful tone. He stepped back and made a phone call, then turned and looked at her. “They all want to see you back there.”

“Sure, they do,” she muttered, with a shrug. “But why would I walk into a place wired for bombs?” He stared at her, and she sighed. “Fine, but, if anything bad happens”—she glared at Damon—“I won’t be responsible for what I do.”

At that, he stared at her for a long moment, as if contemplating the gate that she had exploded already. Then he nodded. “That’s fair, and everybody is aware of that, and we’ll do our best to ensure it’s as peaceful as possible.”

She frowned. “If Bullard’s returning, it won’t be peaceful. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”

He grinned at her. “Oh, he does. He’s just a little bit like a bull in a china shop, that’s all. He’s used to getting his way.”

“And that’s my father,” she snapped.

“Except Bullard doesn’t hurt people.”

“Sure he does, if it’s warranted.”

He sighed, then nodded. “Okay, so you got me there. If it’s warranted, yes, he does, and, if it means keeping his family safe, yes, he will. With the jobs that we do, the nature of our work,” he shared, “unfortunately it’s what we have to do. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.” He added, “The bottom line is, this is the world we live in, and, just like he’s trying to protect his family, you need somebody to help protect you.”

She laughed bitterly. “There’s never been anybody to do that since my grandmother died.”

He looked from her over to Trevor, who quickly explained what her grandmother had done. Damon’s eyebrows shot up, and he whistled. “Man, I wish we all had grandparents like her.”

Trevor nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

“I wish I could have done something to help her toward the end of her life, but I couldn’t,” Reeni admitted. “She suffered for what she did for me.… She sent me a letter, smuggled it out privately through a nurse. It probably cost her one thousand dollars to get that damn letter out,” she muttered. “She warned me that my father was determined to control me, more determined than ever, and that I needed to get the hell out of there. So, once I escaped, that was it. I was done and gone, and I haven’t been back since. He found me about four years ago, but I managed to escape again, and that was it. He hasn’t seen me since.”

“He has paperwork?” Damon asked.

“Yes, but then he had that paperwork made well before I was an adult, and I didn’t have any standing in the matter,” she explained. “But I can’t fight it because good luck if anybody has that mental-health paperwork against you. Even if I did get a chance to fight it, he’s got money, and he’s got power, and he’s threatening, and he doesn’t hesitate to use all that.”

“That’s a bad deal,” Damon agreed, “but there are ways. We’ll look into it. You helped sort out Bullard’s mess, and we’ll help you navigate this one.”

She frowned at him.

Trevor watched her closely. “It’s a good deal.… As I mentioned earlier, between Terk and Levi and Bullard, they have an awful lot of connections, and an awful lot of abilities.”

“Abilities, yeah. Abilities that didn’t get you guys locked up. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Maybe not that part,” Damon agreed, “but it did get us targeted by our own government.”

She winced. “And here I thought you guys had pull with the government. I don’t need that kind of pull,” she declared, staring at him. “I’ve got my own damn father after me, so I sure don’t need the government on my ass too.”

At that, Damon chuckled. “I hear you there.” He gave her a wide grin. “That’s not the kind of pull we have, yet just surviving that attack on us, we do have extra leverage when we need it. We will use it when we have to,” he pointed out. “This seems to be one of those times that we might need it.”

“But you can’t say that,” she declared, frowning at him. “You aren’t Terk—or Levi or Bullard.”

“No, I’m not, but Terk would know what our odds are when it comes to getting this resolved,” he stated. “So why don’t we put a little bit of faith into the process, just like people put some faith in you and what you can do. And we’ll all go from there.” And he stepped forward and held out his hand to help her up.

She hesitated, looked up at Trevor, and frowned.

Trevor smiled at her, then turned to Damon. “The thing about her is, if you give her a choice, she’ll always say no.” So Trevor walked over, grabbed her hand, and gently lifted her to her feet. “Damon’s just trying to help you,” Trevor said. “And, right now, help is what you need. Let somebody help you for a change.”

She nodded. “I do need help, but you guys make me very nervous sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” Damon asked.

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll go help Bullard, but, if he says one more thing to me about holding me there, I’m out of there.”

“He’s likely to say a lot of things, and any one of them could set you off, depending on how you interpret them,” Damon explained. “But, aside from those verbal slipups, we won’t let anything bad happen to you. Bullard won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

She shuddered. “You don’t give me a whole lot of choice, and I’m out of options right now. If I did have a choice, believe me that I wouldn’t be here, and that you guys would never find me.”

“I don’t know about that.” Damon smirked. “I’m pretty sure Trevor has got your number.”

She groaned and turned to Trevor. “How the hell is it you even knew how to find me here?”

“I followed your energy,” he said. “And, yes, if you were to run to ground and hide away on me, I could do it again. So why don’t we just stop that whole running away thing and see if we can find a solution that’s a bit more permanent?”

“That’s what I really want more than anything. I want to sleep at night and to not be afraid of waking up with my father standing over my head, threatening to lock me back up again,” she admitted. “If you can find a way to make that happen, that would be amazing.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and nodded. “I will. Now come on. Let’s go deal with one issue at a time.”

“If my father sees you helping me, it will make you a target as well,” she warned.

“Oh, I wasn’t planning on letting your father see us.” He turned to Damon. “Can you run camouflage?”

“I can long enough to get you both to the compound, yep.”

He seemed confident and secure in his element, and that was enough for Reeni.

Damon pointed to the door. “Let’s go then. Once we’re at Bullard’s place, your father can’t touch you.”

“Yeah, he might not, but someone is already trying.” At that, both men stiffened, and she shrugged. “They’re not in yet, but they’re trying. I can feel the intruder’s electrical current coursing through the system. Bullard’s people have no internet, no phones, no lights. Nothing’s working, so your team is working blind.” she explained. “If you want to save them, we need to get there fast.”

*