Chimera

right now? Unite all Metas so that humans stop fearing us? Stop murdering us?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“So what are you going to do with the Metas who don’t want to be on the cheerleading team?”

“It’s a choice, not a requirement.”

“Some choice, when the alternative is being hunted.”

“You’re only being hunted because you’re a thief,” I said. “You’ve broken into a dozen warehouses and stolen goods that don’t belong to you. Meta or not, that’s a crime.”

Landon rolled his eyes. “Blah, blah, thief, blah, blah, crime. You have no idea why we do what we do.”

“So explain it to me. I am all ears.”

His gaze flickered down to my breasts. “I’d say you’re all—”

“Watch it, junior.”

“All talk.” Landon blinked innocently. “I hear your powers are on the fritz. That why you carry a gun?”

“Partly.” I put my hands on my hips. “I also really like having something long and hard in my hands.”

His eyes widened briefly. He didn’t move, but he mentally backed down. Landon was obviously used to being the big dog on campus, unchallenged. I may have lost my sex appeal when I lost a good amount of my skin, but my sharp tongue hadn’t gone anywhere. Some men were so easy to take down a few pegs.

Thatcher, for his part, looked momentarily impressed. “Leaving you and your mother was the hardest decision I ever had to make,” he said to Landon. Bless him for getting the conversation back on track. “The War was coming to a head. I thought distancing myself was the best way to protect you both from my enemies.”

“From the Rangers, you mean,” Landon said.

“Them, and the human police, the National Guard, everyone who was fighting us. And from Specter.” He swallowed hard. “When they told me you’d both died . . . it almost killed me, Landon, thinking I’d failed you both.”

“You failed us when you left us behind to go murder children.”

My entire body jerked at that cold accusation.

Thatcher flinched. “We never wanted to hurt those kids. We didn’t have a choice. Specter could have killed any one of us with a thought, at any time, if we disobeyed him. All I wanted was to survive and come home to you and your mother.”

Landon took a step toward Thatcher, one hand clenched into a fist, lips curled back in a sneer. “Could you really have come home and given me a hug, knowing you’d murdered someone else’s child in order to be there?”

“I’d have held you tighter because of it. I have spent every single day these last fifteen years regretting every life I took, every person I hurt. I can’t take any of it back, Landon, but I can try to be a better man.”

“A better man? Being a better man is trying to put your son in prison?” This time Landon’s glare landed on me.

“I’m not helping them arrest you,” Thatcher said. “But you sent me a personal invitation to this little party, so here I am.”

“I wish I could say the vintage Father’s Day card was my idea. It did get your attention, though.”

“It got the attention of the whole prison.”

“Look,” I said. “Landon, you said I have no idea why you do what you do. Why don’t you explain it to me? That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Besides giving your father a verbal ass-kicking for everything you think he’s done wrong?”

Landon gave me a poisonous look that I met with my own hard stare. “Equal distribution of goods,” he said.

“You’re going to have to explain that one.”

“Come on, Flex, you’ve been around. You see how bad things are in the rural areas. One chain controls over eighty percent of the manufactured food distribution in this country, and that food goes only where the company’s shareholders say it goes. Independent grocers are struggling to feed their communities at insanely jacked-up prices. We’re keeping people from starving.”

Well, this was certainly new. “So you’re, what? Modern-day Robin Hoods? Robbing from the rich grocers and giving to the poor ones?”

Landon smiled. “Something like that. We’re heroes to the people we feed.”

“Robin Hood was a hero, too, but he was still hunted by the authorities.”

“We aren’t the bad guys.”

“Then who are you? Because you sure as hell aren’t the good guys. Breaking-and-entering, destruction of property, theft, not to mention you’ve recently added assault and kidnapping to your growing list of crimes.”

“Your friend is fine.”

“Oh, he’s fine, so that makes it okay?” This kid was tweaking my last nerve, so absolutely positive that his actions were justified no matter who got hurt along the way.

“You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Junior, the depth of what I know that you couldn’t possibly understand would have you curled in a fetal position for a month.”

Landon’s hand moved like he wanted to take a swing at me. Thatcher took a step sideways toward us, raising both his hands in a gesture of peace. “Look,” he said, “this kind of arguing is pointless. Landon, I have to ask you something.”

“She’s dead,” Landon said.

Thatcher blinked. “How—”

“Oh, come on. You’ve wanted to ask since the moment I got here. Sorry, Dad, but Mom died in that fire for real.”

“Why?”

“Why didn’t the people who took me save her, too? She was human.”

Thatcher looked sick. “They killed her. And they stole you.”

“They freed me.”

“From your mother?”

“From an ordinary life. From being shunned and hated if anyone ever found out who my father was, or that I was a Meta, too.”

“Who took you?” I asked.

Landon paused, considering his words. “We knew him as Uncle.”

“We?”

“Bethany and me. Uncle raised us together. He educated us, trained us to survive, gave us the skills we needed to help others.”

“He made you both professional thieves.”

Landon shrugged. “Call it what you want.”

“Were you trained in a facility?”

“No, we moved every couple of months. It wasn’t safe to get attached to one place, or for people to remember us.”

“Did this Uncle train any other kids?”

“No idea. We left his care when we turned eighteen, and we’ve only had occasional phone contact for the last eight months or so.”

Since all of our powers returned.

“And you can save your breath asking,” Landon added. “I won’t give you a description or help you find Uncle. I’d never betray him, and neither will Bethany.”

Challenge accepted.

“What happens now?” Thatcher asked.

“To be honest, I’d entertained ideas of killing you in this parking lot and ridding the world of one more child killer.”

My fingers twitched as my heart rate sped up. I mentally calculated the time it would take to reach into my coat, grab my Coltson, and shoot.

Thatcher, on the other hand, looked perfectly at ease. “And now?”