Читать книгу Strangers of the Night - Меган Харт - Страница 16

Chapter 7

Samantha could not stop thinking about him.

After escaping from the hospital that was a prison, she went home only long enough to change into her workout gear. She hit the street as dawn pinked the sky, and though her body cried for sleep, the only way she’d get any was to exhaust herself. She set off on a route that would take her through the park, where she could test herself on soft dirt paths and boulders, then along the riverfront and back home before the early-morning-rush traffic started.

Since starting at Wyrmwood, she’d shared perhaps a couple dozen conversations with Jed that weren’t related to his medication or treatment. The training and rules had been explicit and strict about having as little contact with the patients as possible. She’d rarely bent the rules and never enough to get any disciplinary action. There was no denying that she felt closer to him than she did any of the others, but she’d always chalked it up to the fact she’d been hired to save his life when the time came. Something like that would naturally lead her to be more...affectionate was not the right word, not even close. Concerned. Protective. Aware?

She ran harder, leaping a park bench with one foot on the seat and pushing off with the other on the back, then hitting the grass with her fingertips digging into the soft earth before she leaped again. It was ridiculous to think Jed had done anything to the guard. Though there’d been plenty of documentation about what he’d been capable of when he was younger, all the reports Vadim had given her said that Jed’s abilities had begun fading in late adolescence, becoming completely extinct over time.

It had happened with other members of the commune where he’d been born. Children born with psychokinetic or telepathic talents had been taken away from the Collins Creek farm under the guise of child protective services, but they’d been sent to places like Wyrmwood, not foster care. They’d been held, tested. Of those that had been released in adulthood, none of them had been reported as maintaining their abilities. Most of the ones the Crew had been able to track had suffered from the years of institutionalization. High rates of suicide and crime had followed. Jed was one of the last of the Collins Creek kids the Crew had been able to find.

She jumped up to grab a low-hanging tree limb and swung out, arching her back. Landing hard. She no longer smelled lavender, but the memory of it wouldn’t leave her. There’d been more than a few times when she’d thought she sensed Jed’s presence while she was at the desk, always looking up, expecting to see him there but finding only empty space. Sometimes, a joke would tickle its way into her head until she laughed aloud.

Maybe all of that had been Jed. He had come to her defense, not that she’d needed him to, with that moron Clement. Which meant that despite all the information Wyrmwood had been collecting on him, he wasn’t telekinetically dead.

But he was going to be physically dead if he didn’t reveal that truth to the Wyrmwood team, or if Samantha wasn’t able to get him out of there when Vadim gave the go-ahead. It would have to be soon, she thought, thinking of how drained Jed had looked when they’d brought him back to the room.

On the way home, she picked up a burner phone and sent off a text to the number she’d memorized.

How long?

Then she tossed the phone into a Dumpster and continued on home. She didn’t worry about how Vadim was going to answer her. He always found a way.