Chapter 11

There was no spark coming from the end of the cable. No telltale crackling sound, no light show. But all of us were staring at that damn thing like we’d just found a turd floating in the punch bowl. Eventually Jibben spoke, because the guy just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Pure water isn’t conductive,” he said in his know-it-all tone. “But the minerals suspended in it certainly can be. And this water has probably leached plenty of minerals from the concrete. Besides, it’s not as if any of us are capable of walking across the surface itself—”

I cut him off. “No one was thinking of stomping through that puddle.”

“But maybe we can jump,” Alisha said. I eyeballed the distance from the threshold to the stairs.

“It would be some jump,” I said. I do have a long stride. If circumstances were different—and if no one was watching me—I might even attempt it. But when failure meant death, I wasn’t about to put my jumping skills to the test. “Besides,” I glanced down at Jibben. “Not all of us can even walk. We need to stick together.”

The only one who hadn’t weighed in was Jacob. Which was odd. He tends to have an opinion, and that’s putting it lightly.

He was just staring at that hanging cable, though, as if it held some sort of secret he might unlock, if he just tried hard enough.

“Jacob,” I said, “it’s not worth the risk. Right?”

Reluctantly, he cut his eyes to me. “Agreed. If no one’s got any phone signal, it’s best to get back to the lab.”

“To containment,” Jibben amended. “So many unauthorized people. And all of our environmental controls down. It’s the best place to be to make sure your electromagnetic fields don’t contaminate anything.”

The scientists around here were obsessed with their work. I got it. But I was more concerned about staying alive than preserving their precious experiments.

Still, the containment room probably was our best bet. I might not give a rat’s ass about contaminating any psychic experiments, but I sure as hell didn’t want any of them contaminating me.

We trooped back up the long dark hall. Containment was exactly as we left it, with a bunch of haphazard crates piled in the middle. I said, “I’ll grab some chairs from the break room so we’re not just sitting on the floor.”

“And food,” Jibben said, “bring all the food you can find. We need to assess our situation and catalog our resources. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here, so we’ll need to take stock.”

I fully expected the power to come up any minute now, or at the very least, be found by a rescue crew. He made it sound like we were heading into a Donner party situation.

“I’ll get the chairs,” I said blandly, and headed for the door. “Come on, Jacob. I could use a hand.”

And I could use some moral support. The lab was creepy enough on a good day. Walking through the darkened halls by the light of my flashlight gave me the heebie-jeebies. Still, I knew the layout well enough to get to the break room without stumbling into any mysterious and uncontained psychic experiments. And it was a relief to finally be alone with Jacob.

The break room looked ransacked, with its couch cushions missing and a chair knocked askew. But when I opened the refrigerator door, at least all the contents were still cold. So hopefully, right down the hall, Jennifer Chance’s body wasn’t thawing too rapidly, either, and Jacob’s worst nightmare of wrangling her thrashing corpse wouldn’t come true…again.

Should I break the news that the body was back—or wait until we were far enough away from it that he wouldn’t have to freak out? I cut a glance in his direction, realizing he was still awfully quiet, and found him staring at the plug of the coffee maker.

“Okay,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

He sighed. “You saw that electrical cable.”

“I did.”

“It was just touching the surface of the water. Barely even skimming it.”

“Yeah….”

“Well, that’s exactly the type of situation telekinetics were bred for. Land mines, bomb triggers, anything too volatile to touch—”

“Whoa, hold on, mister. Are you saying you thought you should have been able to move the wire out of the way with your mind? You are, aren’t you? I’ll have you know, the strongest telekinetic I’ve ever encountered got a nosebleed from sliding a freaking penny across the table. Besides, that’s not how your abilities work, and you know it. If there was a habit demon floating around in the water, then yeah, I’d expect you to step up to the plate. But there wasn’t a damn thing you could have done different.”

Jacob clenched his jaw and looked away.

“Look,” I said, “I know it’s killing you to not be able to do much of anything right now. But we all saw what happened to Darnell when he tried to play the hero. So the safest thing to do is just hunker down and wait.”

“Is it?” he asked. “What if no one knows we’re down here? Most of the staff is out in Nantucket. And Laura Kim is probably stuck on the expressway in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Is it really safe for us in the lab? We don’t know what they’re working on—and we don’t know what it would mean if any of their safety devices lost power. Besides, someone needs to let rescue workers know where we are.”

“That someone being you,” I said dryly.

“There’s got to be a way to get through that safety glass. It’s resin, right? This is a lab. I’m sure there’s a tool here capable of cutting through it. We’ll cut through the glass, and I can climb up into the elevator—”

“Are you serious, Jacob?”

“There’s a hatch in the ceiling. I can make my way up the shaft—”

“That’s an even shittier plan than jumping over the electrified puddle. We’re at least three stories underground, so even a stuntman would think twice about making that climb. Plus, the entire shaft is made of metal, so another lightning strike could fry you. I know that sitting on your hands is making you nuts. But seriously, I’d never in a million years let you risk your neck like that.” I turned Jacob to face me, pulled us both together, and carded my fingers through his hair. “Got it?”

With a long sigh, Jacob pressed his forehead to mine. “You’re right. I know you are. I just need to do something.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing to be done.” Yeah, it was definitely for the best that he didn’t know about the body.

I held Jacob for a moment, wishing there was any way at all for me to make him feel better. Watching someone you love suffer is so much worse than suffering yourself. But if there’s any way to ease the burden by taking on someone else’s pain, I’ve never figured it out.

“What’s really eating you?” I said softly.

Jacob turned away. “I keep looping back to the sight of Agent Thompson lying there on the floor with his eyes half-open. And me, hoping he was just unconscious…but then seeing the look on your face, knowing you’d seen something…and realizing he was never getting up again.”

“It’s just his repeater,” I said. “He’s not haunting us.”

“That’s not it.” Jacob huffed in frustration. “The last thing I said to him…I was such an asshole. And now there’s no way to make it right.”

“Sometimes, when you do what you gotta do, you make some enemies.” Jacob had been a cop even longer than I had, so that should come as no surprise to him. But it was the only comfort I could offer.

“I didn’t have to take that tone. I was the ranking agent. Full stop. He would have respected my authority. No reason for me to act like a dick.”

“You were stressed. We all were.”

Jacob shook his head. “I was being reactive. And the worst part? It wasn’t even Agent Thompson I was reacting to. It was Barbara.”

Oh boy.

“If only I’d stood up to her last night—if only I’d told her not to loop us into this standoff she was having with Clayton—”

“Stop.” I stepped in front of Jacob again and took him by the shoulders. “Just…don’t. You can’t change your sister any more than you can change the weather—and good luck trying to control either one. Second-guessing the choices you made won’t help us now.”

I pressed a kiss to his temple, hoping to drive my point home. That I loved him. That I supported him. And that I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let him blame himself for Clayton being stuck at the cannery alone.

People have certain smells to them, and the scent of his hair—which was the smell of his pillow, our bed, the cannery, us—made me realize exactly how much I’d come to rely on him. Maybe, before, I’d been ticked off at him for checking up on me. But now I wasn’t just okay with the decision he’d made earlier today to ride that shuttle back to HQ. I was beyond relieved he’d done it.

I nudged Jacob’s jaw. He put up a token resistance, but eventually he let me turn his head so my kiss skimmed along his cheekbone. He angled his mouth toward mine, and my lips found his.

And kissing him was like coming home.

Tension drained from both of us as we sank into the kiss. Such a simple thing—something we’d done a million times before. But the kiss was a powerful reminder that the two of us were solid. A true partnership. So much stronger together than either of us could ever be on our own.

The kiss deepened. I cupped his face while his hands found their way to my hips, pulling me closer as we lost ourselves in the moment. It was oddly poignant finding comfort in Jacob, yet not knowing when we’d manage to get back to the cannery…and if it would even be standing by the time we got there.

Time went funny in that way it sometimes does, and the stolen moment felt both extravagantly long and pitifully short. I was debating whether I should let myself linger with my husband for just a few more seconds…when the sound of distant squabbling made us jerk apart.

“Get back here! You are not authorized to leave containment—”

“Keep your pants on—I said I would just be a minute!”

Jacob and I locked eyes, then hustled back to see what the problem was now.

We found Jibben one-leg scooting his way down the hall, on his office chair, in the dark. Up ahead and around a corner, light shone—the big emergency lantern, judging by the size of the glow.

“This is a nightmare,” Jibben sputtered. “While the two of you were gone, the civilian decided to go on a treasure hunt!”

I told him, “Calm down, there’s nothing to see but a bunch of dark, empty rooms with blank monitors. And even if she did glance in, it’s not like she’d even know what any of the equipment was.” I traipsed through there all the time, and I sure as hell had no clue what they were doing.

“She’s got a phone,” Jibben whispered. “In other words, a camera. If she were to document the lab, do you know what she’d get for those photos on the black market?”

Alisha had expressed zero interest in the workings of the lab, so I doubted any scientific espionage was taking place. But I jogged out to see what she was up to, anyhow, figuring she probably just had to use the can.

I followed the light—but soon discovered Alisha wasn’t going through anyone’s office. Instead, she stood there in the lobby, with a jumble of couch cushions at her feet and Jacob’s box of granola bars in her hand. She’d gone still, staring out through the safety glass, transfixed at the sight of Darnell’s body out in the elevator bay.

When I paused beside her, she said, “I almost didn’t take a shift today. But someone called in sick, and my son wants a new gaming computer—have you seen how much those things cost?—so I said, sure. I’ll cover it.” She shook her head sadly. “Maybe if I hadn’t, Darnell would still be alive. If it was just the folks who work here trapped inside, maybe he wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on busting down that door. Maybe he would’ve just let y’all wait this whole thing out.”

I shook my head. “I think Darnell would’ve gone into rescue mode for anyone. That’s just the kind of person he was.” Mind you, I hadn’t known the guy since we were both seven. But given the amount of guilt everyone was wallowing in, I figured it was something she needed to hear.

Alisha finally tore her gaze away from Darnell’s body and spared me a wistful smile. She shook the box of granola bars at me and said, “You might wanna take some now. That twitchy guy’s gonna start rationing soon.”

If Jibben were a normal person, I would’ve assured her it wouldn’t come to that. But given what a control freak he was, Alisha might’ve been onto something. I stashed one in my jacket and she shoved a couple in her pocket, then we gathered up the couch cushions and headed back to containment.

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Jacob was in the midst of saying.

Alisha gave me a meaningful glance as if to say, This oughta be good.

We found Jacob beside Jibben at one of the stainless steel lab tables with the formerly frozen lasagna between them. Jibben was scrawling stuff on a clipboard. “The meal contains 320 calories. The average man needs 2500 calories a day, but the average woman only needs 2000. And with your frame, you probably need more. So if we divide it off-center—”

“I’m not eating something that was strapped to your leg,” I said. Those things were so small, a quarter of a lasagna would barely be a mouthful, anyhow.

Jibben said, “If you don’t consume your share of the calories, your cognitive abilities might be compromised.”

“Fine, I’ll eat a granola bar.” I snatched one out of the box.

“Not now,” Jibben said in horror. “We need to take a thorough inventory first.”

“No one needs to do inventory,” I said. “Even if it took them ’till tomorrow to dig us out—”

What I’d intended to say was that I doubted anyone would starve. But Alisha grabbed my arm and said, “You think we’re gonna be here all night?”

I already regretted saying anything at all. “Worst case scenario.”

Jibben “helpfully” added, “Actually, there’s no telling how long it’ll be.”

“Storms don’t last forever,” Jacob said—thankfully, he’d recovered his uber-calm “everything’s fine” voice. And the sound of it made me feel better, even though I knew it was total bullshit. “Maybe we can’t see or hear what’s going on from down here, but when the larger strikes hit, we felt them. We haven’t felt any rumbling for a while, though. So it stands to reason—”

I think whatever Jacob was planning to say might’ve been a pretty good closing argument, had Jibben’s pen not chosen that particular moment to roll slowly across the countertop of its own accord….

And clatter to the floor.