Sweet Mercy Read online

  Champagne Books Presents

  Sweet Mercy

  By

  Naomi Stone

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Champagne Books

  www.champagnebooks.com

  Copyright 2012 by Naomi Stone

  ISBN 9781927454756

  December 2012

  Cover Art by Amanda Kelsey

  Produced in Canada

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Champagnebooks.com (or a retailer of your choice) and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To my fabulous critique partners, Nancy, Liz, and Ellen, without whose encouragement and diplomacy this story might never have been written.

  Prologue

  When a probability bomb exploded in the heartlands of the US, no one could have predicted the results. Chaos was the whole point of using a probability bomb. Everything and anything occurred that day, from rains of frogs to Red Sea-partings of local swimming pools to animals speaking in human tongues and some people turning to pillars of salt or fudge while others were gifted with strange powers. Thousands died. Scientists later speculated that, in keeping with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the observers influenced the effects. Ten years later the world had become a different place.

  One

  Rachel Connolly tried burying her head under her pillows, but it did no good. The beeping tone—the same made by trucks backing up—still pierced her skull from ear-to-ear—David’s ring tone. Why hadn’t she put the damn phone on vibrate before falling into bed so late last night?

  She swung her feet around, sat up on the edge of her bed, ran one hand through the tousled curls falling past her shoulders and grabbed her phone with the other, just in time to catch it before it rolled over to voice mail.

  “What is it?” she growled. Mornings sucked. Even when they arrived after noon she found it hard enough to maintain serenity before she’d had a chance to meditate and run through her yoga routine. She hoped no one else was home to be caught in her blast of grumpiness.

  “The team needs you.” Her brother, the one person she could trust to stay impervious to her moods, acted as coordinator for Team Guardian.

  “What’s up?” She stood, phone pressed to her ear while gathering clean underwear, loose slacks and a black top on her way to the bathroom.

  “Hostage situation.” David rattled off the pertinent points. “Bomber, main offices of Capital Financing Company in Edina. Beaming the address to your specs. Why aren’t you wearing them? I had to wait for you to answer your goddammed phone.”

  “Who wears their specs to bed?” Switching her phone to speaker, Rachel splashed water on her face, quickly washed up.

  “What are you doing? We need you here now.”

  “I won’t be effective if I don’t have a chance to center myself. And coffee—you’d better have a big one ready for me when I get there, and that means tons of cream and sugar. Now leave me alone so I can get some clothes on.”

  “Fine, Sis. Don’t waste time. Lives depend on it.”

  “Right.” He’d already rung off.

  It took her less than five minutes to pull on her clothes and shoes, grab her specs, drag her hair into a sloppy ponytail, and dash out the door. She must look like crap. Until she donned the specs. Their cool factor made up for a lot. To heck with flashy costumes. Team Guardian wore inconspicuous street clothes and the virtual-reality computer-communications systems that looked like sunglasses. In addition to their other virtues they even protected her eyes from UV rays. It seemed like the whole city sported shades these days, gloom or shine, the Team’s specs having revived a fashion trend that had never really died.

  She encountered no one on her way out. Good. Tamara would have given her a more-disappointed-than-angry look, at the very least, for broadcasting her peevishness at the phone earlier.

  She picked up David’s transmission and blinked at the flashing red icon to open the message. It included the address of Capital Financing’s office out in the burbs. If he wanted her there so fast, why hadn’t he sent transporta—

  Before she could open a channel to ask, Tom Stanton appeared at her side on the front steps of the huge old three-story house/ashram in South Minneapolis.

  He grinned, face boyish despite the gray showing at the temples of otherwise sandy hair. “Need a lift?” He opened his arms, spreading the wings of his gray trench coat wide to reveal the trim, gray-clad shape beneath.

  She returned the grin. “Hey. I guess they do need me—sending the world’s best teleporter.” Not only could he “lift” twice his own weight, but he also smelled nice. He must roll that coat of his in cinnamon toast, she thought, moving into his arms and clenching her eyes tight against the disorienting lurch of reality that sent them both miles across town in an instant. Lucky she hadn’t had time for breakfast—or lunch.

  Too bad they hadn’t found a teleporter yet who could move through walls. Be nice if they could just appear behind the fricking bomber and knock him on the head. The scientists who studied such things said their teleporters didn’t actually bypass distance, but crossed it at near light speed in some frictionless state. They didn’t understand the phenomenon yet, or how the travelers could avoid collisions with solid objects in their path but not be able to enter or exit closed spaces except by the same means as anyone else.

  Arriving outside a glass-and-steel building in a suburban office park, Rachel left Tom with a smile and wave. She spotted her tall, blond brother in his brown sports jacket, standing like a golden eagle among crows in the middle of a small group of police and SWAT members on the, presumably, safe side of a barricade of police cars.

  David handed her a large to-go cup of coffee as soon as she made it to his side. “Mmm.” She took a deep swig while he turned her to face the main entrance of the building. He pointed.

  “He’s got about a dozen people in there. The police are giving us this chance to go in before the SWAT. They’ve already had a negotiator on the phone with him. No luck.”

  Rachel took a long deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Okay. Give me a minute here.”

  “First, let me introduce your partner. He’ll be going in with you.”

  “I work alone.” Rachel’s attention stayed on her breathing, keeping any annoyance, any emotional reactions under control in accordance with her well-practiced routine for inducing a state of inner peace.

  “Not this time.” David understood her state. “Trust me. This guy will deal with the bomb—you deal with the bomber. This is Fluke. He’s a Probabilities Talent—just moved here from Chicago.”

  The tall, well-built guy at David’s elbow raised one eyebrow quizzically. He looked more accustomed to aggravation and confrontation than to the feelings of serene compassion Rachel currently generated and projected around herself. Not a bad face that… She tamped down the stirring of her interest in his chiseled features, the finely turned lips surrounded by five o’clock shadow, and the dark eyes under shaggy dark hair. He wore his specs shoved back on his hea
d.

  Rachel extended a hand and let her benevolent smile encompass him. “A pleasure.” As usual in this state, she sounded abstracted, only half in the world of the others, the bulk of her attention turned to generating a state of peaceful serenity, building it up to project outward in an increasingly wider sphere.

  Faced with this…interesting…man, it took some effort to stay focused on projecting waves of placidity like the laziest of all sleepy summer days wrapped in a dose of baby-curled-at-a-loving-mama’s-breast. She caught the spark of interest in the man’s eyes before David drew him aside.

  “You feel it?” David, immune, asked Fluke. “That’s what’ll get you close. She’s a reverse empath, projects her feelings. She’ll shut down the bomber’s fear response, and the hostages’ too. No one will panic or do anything rash. You’ll be able to get access to the bomb to defuse it.”

  ~ * ~

  Fluke—Franklin Luke Delano to his parents—stood pole-axed. He’d never experienced anything like this before. A man of intense passions—and he’d known everything from lust to fury to despair—he’d never known this. He felt perfectly at peace with himself for the first time in his life.

  He studied her face in wonder. The serene angel with the dark red curls cascading from an off-center ponytail. Could he have been mistaken about that momentary flash of interest he’d picked up from her? Eyes hidden behind her specs revealed nothing now.

  “Okay.” David spoke. “Time to move.”

  Fluke nearly jumped. He’d forgotten the man beside him. He’d forgotten the entire situation for a moment there. But, apparently, he wasn’t the only one. Even the SWAT personnel, while maintaining their positions, had taken more relaxed stances.

  Rachel stepped forward, ambling like a woman taking a relaxed

  evening stroll, out to enjoy the scenery—although in this case, the scenery consisted of a stretch of sidewalk, some square-pruned shrubbery and the narrow parking lot fronting the building’s main entrance.

  Fluke stayed at her side. “You handle a lot of these calls?” he asked.

  “I need to focus,” she told him, in tones of infinite compassion. “Talk later.”

  “Right.” Of course. Reverse empath, David had said. She needed to keep tight control over what she projected. Took a lot of concentration. What would it feel like to be with her when she wasn’t keeping it all under such tight control? Unbidden images rose.

  He was lucky, in more ways than one. He didn’t have to do anything particular to activate his power. It was as autonomic as the pumping of blood through his veins.

  They reached the main door without incident. David spoke through the specs. “I’m patching Rachel into the phone line we’ve been using to try to negotiate with the guy. We’ve pegged him as one Rick Longo. He’s been unresponsive, sounded agitated until Rachel got started, but still insists he’ll blow the place up, along with the hostages unless we meet his demands.”

  “What’s he want?” Fluke asked.

  “The CEO and other board members of the company in there with him.”

  He wouldn’t get that. The authorities saw no sense in exchanging one group of hostages for another.

  “Hello?” Rachel spoke. Fluke picked it up through the specs as well as first hand. “Will you let us in, please?”

  “I don’t know.” A man’s voice—must be Longo’s—sounded hesitant. “The police aren’t supposed to come in.”

  “We’re not police. It’s okay for me and my friend to come in,” she said, tones soothing as a balm on heat rash. “We just want to talk.”

  Good tack. Longo sounded like someone stumped by anything unexpected, the sort who didn’t know how to come up with alternate plans on his own. Good for her to reassure him about a new option.

  “What do we need to know about this guy?” Fluke sub-vocalized, using the specs to open a private channel to David. The reply came through the same channel.

  “He’s got some priors for breaking and entering, petty theft. Nothing violent, no known connection to Capital Financing Company—not even as a dissatisfied customer. No one can figure him for doing the mad bomber bit.”

  Rachel, meanwhile, made more encouraging and reassuring noises to the bomber. Her words accompanied the growing wash of peace and serenity, soothing all the hearts in her vicinity.

  Motion alerted Fluke to the figure approaching the glass door from within the building, a stocky young guy with a blond buzz-cut, dressed in baggy slacks, t-shirt, and a vest of dynamite sticks. Though young, his face showed lines of a habitual sullenness presently softened into a bemused wonder. Fluke could sympathize with that state. One of Longo’s hands clutched what must be the trigger device for the bomb.

  “Uh-oh. Dead man’s switch,” Fluke whispered to Rachel. “Don’t let him get too relaxed.”

  “Thank you.” Rachel beamed at Longo as he opened the door, stepping back to let them in.

  “You lock it now.” Longo handed her the key, stepping back, keeping Rachel and Fluke between him and any potential snipers.

  “Can my friend do it? I want to talk to you.” Rachel smiled at Longo—beaming the gentle regard of a Madonna on the lucky creep.

  What would he give to have her look at him that way? Probably not strap a bomb to his chest, Fluke speculated. Probably.

  “Sure.” Longo’s lips quirked, making a valiant effort to produce the pleasant expression that must be completely alien to his features.

  Fluke took the key ring from Rachel and turned to the door, inserting one in the lock, turning the ring with a jangle, and then silently turning the inserted key back as he withdrew it. He made a show of pushing on the door to prove it locked.

  Longo paid no attention. He moved back into a lobby area, Rachel at his side.

  “Aren’t you tired of all this nonsense?” she asked the bomber in sympathetic tones and waved a hand to encompass all the people sitting around on the floor, hands tied, backs to the walls and to a massive modern reception desk. Some of the women showed signs of recent weeping—reddened eyes, smeared eyeliner—but everyone seemed calm now, with Rachel there radiating her soothing aura.

  “Why don’t you just disarm that old bomb and we can all go home?”

  Longo’s face clouded, brows knitting with some inner effort. “I don’t know how,” he said. “I have to stay until it’s done.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked in a tone of friendly interest.

  “He said.” It appeared to cost Longo some effort to say that much.

  “Who said?”

  Longo’s face twisted, as if fighting some internal battle. He groaned.

  “There, there. It’s okay.” Rachel soothed, turning a bit so that, in order to continue facing her, Longo must turn too, leaving Fluke at his back.

  Fluke slipped the wire cutters from his pocket and, on silent feet, moved in. This was why he’d climbed aboard for this ride. He’d had enough instruction in disarming bombs like this that he knew the risks of cutting the wrong wire—but he also knew it had to be one of the two connected to the trigger device in the man’s hand. The rest was up to Lady Luck.

  ~ * ~

  Rachel might have lost her focus in the next instant if Fluke’s heads-up hadn’t come through her specs’ link. “Stay cool. I’m moving now.”

  She lowered her eyes to keep from starting at Fluke’s sudden motion, exerting all her focus to maintain the placid serenity flowing from her to the hostages and bomber. “Who said you have to stay here?” She kept talking, keeping Longo’s attention on her.

  By the time Longo or anyone else could react, Fluke dove under the bomber’s guard, clipping a wire in passing and rolling through a summersault and back to his feet.

  Longo’s thumb jabbed at his trigger device. When nothing happened, he jabbed it again, and again. The bomb vest remained inert. Thank God. Apparently Fluke knew his business.

  “What did you do?” Longo shouted.

  Rachel’s concentration broke as the hostages exclaimed a
nd clambered up or helped each other to their feet, most running for the door. She relaxed her control, feeling only relief now the danger had past.

  David spoke at the same moment, his voice clear and loud through her earpiece connection. “What’s going on?”

  “I disarmed the bomb,” Fluke answered aloud, and her earpiece picked it up too.

  “No.” Longo’s face twisted with distress. “No, no, no, no.” He continued vainly punching at his trigger.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Fluke asked.

  “I don’t know.” Something seemed more than strange about the man’s reactions, but bombers were strange by definition, right?

  The hostages left the lobby while police entered, spreading out, surrounding Longo. David entered on their heels.

  “Flat on the floor, arms spread.” A tall, burly man wearing a buzz-cut and SWAT jacket shouted, approaching Longo.

  Longo stood oblivious to everyone and everything else, punching his device and muttering to himself.

  The SWAT guy kicked Longo’s feet out from under him. Longo never let go of his device, not even to catch himself, and his elbows hit the marble tile flooring with a crack that made Rachel—and everyone around her—wince. Oops. She’d better shield herself now she’d completed her part in the operation.

  Within minutes, police had wrestled the bomb-vest off Longo and secured his wrists behind him in cuffs. He only fought when they pulled the useless trigger device from his fist, at which point he began banging his head against the floor.

  Rachel couldn’t prevent her distress at that and no one else could tolerate her broadcast of it. Several donated jackets soon pillowed his head.

  “This guy’s even more damaged than your ordinary suicide bomber,” Fluke commented.

  “Yeah.” Rachel turned from the distressing sight. “I don’t see how he could even have managed to create the bomb and take the hostages in the first place.” That took at least the ability to persevere through setbacks without disintegrating this way. She felt half-inclined to pat him on the shoulder and encourage the guy to get back on that horse…