Five
The next morning at half-past six, the distant sound of sirens shook me out of slumber. I sat up and listened to the noise, trying to figure out where and why . . . Manhattan. Ethan had described the sirens once. The prison was going into lockdown.
I threw my uniform on and joined a small cluster of people heading for the War Room. I nearly stumbled over Alexia and Sebastian. My heart was pounding in my ears. Our own HQ alarms hadn’t sounded, but everyone seemed to want to know what was happening.
“Attention, please,” Gage’s voice boomed over the intercom system, and most of us stopped moving to listen. “The Manhattan facility is currently under emergency lockdown, and we are trying to get information on why. As far as we are aware, there is no immediate danger, so everyone can calm down. Alpha leaders, report to the War Room. Everyone else? It’s way too early on a Sunday.”
The intercom clicked off. Me and Sebastian kept moving toward the War Room.
Once all eight of us were in the War Room, mostly bed-rumpled and yawning despite our adrenaline, Teresa clapped her hands to shut us up. No one sat, but we listened.
“We don’t have a lot of information on the lockdown yet,” she said. “All I do know is that at exactly six- twenty, an object went over the prison wall and landed in Central Park near the Warren.”
“What kind of object?” Aaron asked.
Good question. Security around that island was tighter than a miser’s asshole. Not even small birds made it through without being detected from five hundred feet out.
“No one is telling me yet, but it was extremely small and, so far, nonexplosive.”
Ethan shuddered, and Aaron slipped an arm around his waist. Last month, both of them had been in Central Park when an explosion nearly killed them—an explosion caused by a flying object that breached security. Granted, that time it was a telekinetically controlled helicopter which was exploded by the prison’s antiaircraft measures, but still. Bad memories.
“Are the Warren residents safe?” Ethan asked.
“So far, yes,” Teresa replied. “Once the lockdown went into place, everyone who was out reported back to the Warren.”
The timing of this didn’t feel right. We settled in to wait, no one saying much in the way of speculation. Ethan left and came back a few minutes later with coffee for everyone. Teresa ignored her mug. I sipped at mine before it was properly cooled, too eager for the caffeine jolt to care that I burned my tongue.
Ten minutes passed before Teresa’s cell rang. I split my attention between her expressions and Gage’s, whose enhanced senses allowed him to eavesdrop. They both looked confused.
“All right, we’ll be there,” she said, then hung up. She looked first at Ethan, then at me, before saying, “Someone took it upon him- or herself to send a letter over the prison wall, addressed to Mr. Derek Thatcher.”
“Shit,” I said, looking over at Ethan. His wide eyes told me he was thinking the same as me: Landon. Thatcher’s son was an incredibly powerful telekinetic. He certainly had the ability to send a paper-thin letter all those miles over the harbor and into Manhattan.
“Does Thatcher know?” I asked.
Teresa nodded. “He and the letter are being brought to the observation tower, and Warden Hudson wants us there.”
“Who’s us?”
“You, me, and Ethan. Simon’s being called, too.”
“In case Thatcher goes ballistic when he reads the letter?”
She flinched. “Probably.”
“Joy.”
Our trio arrived at the observation tower at the same time as Simon. He looked more rumpled than usual and a lot less awake than the rest of us, and we rode the elevator up to the fourth floor in silence. Warden Hudson was waiting for us outside of the interrogation room with a yellow envelope in his hands. The man was an intimidating presence at the best of times, and right now he looked more like a snorting bull waiting for permission to charge.
“Warden,” Teresa said as we approached.
“Trance,” he said, then nodded in the general direction of the rest of us. “This situation may be more volatile than we thought.”
“Why is that, Warden?”
“Fifteen years ago, just after the end of the War, we had to inform Thatcher that his son and his son’s mother were killed. He didn’t take the news well.”
Teresa’s expression didn’t change, but I bet she was thinking along the lines of
Hudson held up the letter. The envelope had a ragged edge—he’d opened it. “This is a Father’s Day card, dated sixteen years ago, from a boy named Landon. The same name as Thatcher’s son.”
“Sixteen years ago?” I said. “The postal service around here sucks.”
Teresa glared at me. “Do you believe someone sent this to get a rise out of Thatcher?” she asked Hudson.
“It’s possible. We’ve already called the printing company, and they confirmed that they sold this particular card sixteen years ago. The signature inside looks like that of a small child. It seems authentic, but the question is, who had it all these years, and why? Why rile Thatcher up now?” He pinned her with a hard stare. “Unless you have a theory?”
My best theory was that Landon himself had sent that letter, but we didn’t have proof. And Hudson still seemed to believe that Landon was dead, and I wasn’t about to clue him in. That was Teresa’s call, not mine.
“Not at the moment,” Teresa replied. “Has Thatcher seen the card?”
“No.” The part he left unsaid was,
“Renee and I will go in,” Ethan said. “We were here with him yesterday.”
Thatcher hadn’t seemed willing to buy our evidence that Landon was alive, and now we were delivering a card from his supposedly dead son. Sometimes my job sucked serious ass.
As we did for our previous visit, we went into one side of the interrogation room. Thatcher was waiting on the other, pacing like a caged lion, all intense energy and anger. He paused long enough to glare in our general direction, then approached the glass.
“Is someone going to explain why I’m here again?” he asked.
“The perimeter breach this morning was a letter addressed to you,” Ethan replied.
“A . . . what? A letter?” He shook his head, his angry glare softening into something full of confusion. “How?”
“Telekinetically, is our best guess.”
Thatcher’s eyes flickered with annoyance. “Where is this letter?”
The door on his side opened. A uniformed guard stepped inside and held out the envelope. Thatcher stared at it a moment, then snatched it. The guard left. Thatcher rolled his eyes at the jagged tear where his mail had been opened, then turned it over in his hands, studying it.
“It feels like a greeting card,” he said, more to himself than to us.
I swallowed hard, a little nervous about his reaction once he saw who the card was from. He tugged the card out and let the envelope flutter to the floor. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a sneer as he read the front.
