Eye of the Sh*t Storm Jackson Ford (detective books to read txt) 📖

a different sensation from before – there’s no nausea this time, no hollow feeling. It’s like someone reaches down my throat, grabs hold of my guts and squeezes. I close my eyes, trying to breathe.

I have to keep it together if I’m going to get this kid out of here. I’ll get him to turn off his ability, and we can just walk out. No harm, no foul.

What the fuck do I do now?

Let’s say I do convince him to walk out with me – which is about as likely as 2Pac and Biggie suddenly bursting in to save the day. I hand him over to the team, and I know exactly what happens then. He vanishes. Tanner whisks him away to a secure facility – maybe even the one I was kept in, after Wyoming went to shit. After my brother killed my whole family, burned everything down, and the government found me.

Thinking of the facility is the exact worst thing I could possibly do right now. The anxiety and paranoia bubbling around my brain amplifies the memories, twisting and distorting them.

Waco.

A cluster of shitty, prefab buildings in the middle of a Texan nowhere. Shitty and prefab on the outside, anyway. Inside, they housed one of the most secure holding facilities on the planet. A facility built just for me. Teenage me, ripped away from everything she knew and loved, locked in a cell with no windows.

I can smell it all over again: the disinfectant, the shitty meatloaf and overcooked chicken legs they brought me for my meals, the sweet, cloying scent of the gas they used to knock me out when I went nuts. The psychiatrists, never the same person, none of them looking at me as anything but a freak. The tests. The constant, grinding, unending tests. The hours alone, knowing I’d never leave, so deep in the hole that I went beyond crying. The memories are so potent I nearly choke. On a good day, they stay firmly locked away in the back of mind. Not today. Today, the demons are in charge.

I was in the facility for four years before Tanner presented me with her deal: work for her, outside the walls.

Leo won’t just be there for four years. They’ll keep him there for much, much longer. His entire childhood. He’ll never see another boy or girl his age, never speak to anybody who doesn’t want something from him.

Jesus Christ.

Could I get him into the cops? Get him into… fuck, I don’t know, child witness protection? But that doesn’t stop Tanner – it just makes it harder for her.

And what about the Zigzag Man? He makes you see things – that’s what Leo said. Does that mean he has abilities? How safe would Leo be?

My mind runs away with itself, unable to stop. Maybe the Zigzag Man wants to hurt Leo and his dad – that’s one thing. But what if it’s more than that? Leo came from the same place Matthew did. Who’s to say that they don’t want to use his ability? He’s already able to electrify a massive building without breaking a sweat. What would happen if they plugged him into the power grid? Or a water source – the LA Aqueduct, for instance, the big channel out of the Owens River to the north, the one that supplies the whole city?

I’ll tell you what happens. A lot of people die. Instantly. Hundreds, maybe thousands.

Why the hell would anybody do that? What’s the endgame here?

I have no idea how to answer that.

China Shop. I get Annie and Africa to help me—

I grimace. They won’t help me – not on this. It sticks in my gut to say it, but we are not going to be on the same wavelength at the moment. We haven’t been for a while. Maybe Annie might have been on my side with this, but for whatever damn reason, she despises me right now. And Africa? He’ll point-blank refuse to keep Tanner out of the loop, especially since he thinks I’m not in my right mind. Reggie might help… but it’s a big might.

I’ve already been here way too long. The whole team will be going nuts, trying to contact me. And by now, Tanner’s probably considering contingencies. She might not send a missile into the building with me inside it – in her own twisted way, she values my life, and she doesn’t actually want to hurt me. But if she thinks I’m dead, she won’t hesitate.

Worse: even if she thinks I’m alive, someone above her might make the call. Tanner might be pretty high up in the intelligence community, but she’s not number one. She reports to people, too. People who don’t know me, or care if I make it through this.

“Hey,” I say. Keeping him talking won’t solve the problem, but it might buy me some time to come up with a plan that doesn’t completely suck. “Can you tell me about the School? Anything you remember.” Well, OK, he never actually said he knew what the School was… but if he knew Matthew – Lucas – then they were probably there at the same time. Right?

“I want my dad.”

“I know. We’ll go find him in a minute. But if you could just—”

He looks at me then, and it’s like he’s seeing me for the first time.

“I want my dad,” he says again. “I gotta stay here until he comes back.”

Which is crazy all on its own, because how is dear old dad going to get back inside if Leo’s electrified the place? It’s little kid logic at work. Jesus, this whole situation is nuts.

“OK, that’s fine, that’s totally fine, we can just wait here. I just want to find out about the School you were at. Who was the boss there? Was there like a teacher, or—?”

But he’s hunkered down into himself, head almost tucked into his armpit. “I can’t talk to people without, without my dad,” he says again. And this time, there’s