Triggered Response Page 12

  But the men ignored her. They were too focused on each other. Claire noted their hard expressions and aggressive stances.

  So who was more macho?

  Rand stepped closer to Bray, saying, “You and I need to have a serious conversation, Sloane, starting with that boat blowing up last night.”

  “What boat?” Echo asked, her panic spreading to Zoe, who started to cry.

  Bray turned away, saying, “Talking isn’t going to get us anywhere.” But Rand grabbed him by the arm to stop him.

  Big mistake.

  One look at Bray’s expression made Claire go cold as ice.

  “Why don’t we go back inside?” she said. “Have some more coffee.”

  Bray shrugged off the detective’s hold and continued moving toward the CRV.

  “Stop, Sloane. Now.”

  “The hell I will. C’mon, Claire.”

  “Don’t walk away from me, Sloane,” Rand warned, reaching out and grabbing Bray’s elbow with one hand, his wrist with the other.

  Before Rand could use the leverage to trap him, Bray reacted. He turned and slashed the side of his hand at Rand’s, the sharp jolt making the detective let go. Then Bray was on him, shoving him hard with both hands and not looking as though he was going to back down.

  Claire nearly panicked when she saw Rand reach for his holster.

  “Rand, no!” Echo cried. Zoe screamed in response until her mother picked her up out of the stroller.

  Claire couldn’t believe this was happening.

  Moving fast as Rand pulled his gun, Bray shifted, whirled and kicked out. His foot connected with Rand’s hand and kicked away the weapon before he lunged for the man, who stormed, “Don’t be a damn fool, Sloane!”

  Hearing Bray mumble something about the enemy, Claire felt her pulse lurch. He was in military mode and, in his mind, engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Rand had a few good moves, but he wasn’t driven by nightmares and desperation. God forbid Bray should actually hurt a police officer, not to mention the man his sister loved.

  “Bray, stop. Calm down, please.”

  Her words did nothing.

  “Stop, both of you,” Echo pleaded, clinging to her baby as the men traded punches. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  The men got into a body hold and danced in a circle. Rand was fit and trained as a police officer, but Claire feared he was no match for a half-deranged, ex-Special Ops soldier who was all muscle.

  Realizing that Bray didn’t seem connected with the present, she was reminded of the night before on the pier, when something inside Bray’s mind gave way to the past.

  She tried to get between them. Bray threw out his arm and swept her away with no more trouble than he would a fly. She landed on her butt on the ground. And when Bray’s sharp elbow caught Rand in the solar plexis, the detective landed almost next to her, gasping for air. Bray was immediately on top of him, arm raised, knuckles poised toward Rand’s throat.

  “Rand’s not the enemy!” Claire screamed at him. “Bray, stop now before you kill him!”

  Bray’s arm froze in midair.

  “It’s all right, Bray. Back off. You have to back off.”

  Claire wrapped a hand around that arm and pulled it out of striking position.

  Bray seemed confused as he came back to the present. Blinking, he looked from Rand to his sister, then got to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, wait,” Echo said. “At least talk to Rand, please.”

  “It’s too late for talking.”

  Bray was already pushing Claire into the vehicle. He kept pushing until she crossed into the passenger seat. The engine was still running from when she’d connected the computer. He didn’t even close the driver’s door until after he drove off.

  Claire looked out the back window. Rand was getting to his feet. Thankfully, the detective seemed to be all right, though she was certain Bray had made no new friend or supporter on this day.

  FEELING AS IF A STORM cloud were wrapped around his head, he strolled through the exhibit building of the St. Stephens Maritime Museum. He’d thought the excursion might provide some distraction, a way to get his dark mood under control. When he’d seen the morning newspaper, he’d almost gone ballistic, had almost given himself away.

  Instead of being a soothing experience, the screams and shrieks of the little kids in the museum had exacerbated his headache—and therefore his anger—until both threatened to spin out of control. He needed to learn to channel his anger, to subdue it when he didn’t require it.

  When two kids running through the hall to the toilets collided with his legs, he thought he might explode.

  “A sea dragon’s going to eat you both,” he snarled, already thinking about it after checking to make certain there was no one else close by.

  The little girl sticking out her tongue did it, made him lose his temper. His brain flared with heat and he could feel the pulse rushing through him. Suddenly a sea dragon rose up out of the mists rising from the floor. Both kids ran away screaming.

  He let out his breath and let go of the image, and the sea dragon dissipated. Let the little harridan tell her mommy what she saw. Her mother would put it to a child’s imagination. The kid was lucky he hadn’t done worse to her.

  He’d been practicing. A lot. He enjoyed freaking people out. His sense of power grew with each incident, and he wondered, given enough time, what he could do with the power.

  Money was no longer enough for him. He didn’t care what the hell happened to the project. He wasn’t interested in sharing his power. He didn’t even have to get angry for the images to appear anymore. He merely needed to concentrate and he could make anyone see anything he conjured up.

  As far as he could tell, the only flies in the ointment were Sloane and Darnell. And Claire Fanshaw. What the hell was her involvement? He’d been pondering it but hadn’t been able to figure it out.

  Being thwarted didn’t sit well with him. His plan had been perfect. Get rid of both Sloane and the woman with one little explosion. So why hadn’t they been there, back at the boat, by midnight?

  His anger surged.

  As he left the museum and walked out into the sunlight, a homeless guy came right up to him, hand out.

  “Spare change, mister?”

  “Get out of my way.” He shouldered past the piece of human excrement, nearly knocking the man to the ground.

  With a loud yell, the man lunged forward, grabbed his shoulder and whipped him around. “Hey, who do you think you are?”

  “Someone you don’t mess with.”

  Knowing the homeless guy would be afraid of the police rounding him up and throwing him in the tank, he conjured one of St. Stephens’ boys in blue.

  “Officer!” he called, waving the vision over.

  The “cop” came running, reaching for his gun.

  The homeless guy freaked and ran straight into the street where a car coming from the parking lot plowed into him with a thud and a screech of brakes.

  “Hey, that guy got hit!” someone said.

  Suddenly people were rushing out from everywhere, clustering around the fallen man.

  One woman said, “I just saw a cop. Where’d he go?”

  Smiling as a plan of action to take care of Sloane and the woman came to him, he turned his back on the accident and left the scene.

  BRAY DROVE UNTIL the anger wore off, though it took a while considering his own sister had set a trap for him. He got almost all the way to Route 50 before pulling off at some creek at the outskirts of Easton, the next town up from St. Stephens.

  As if she could read his still-disturbed thoughts, Claire murmured, “You know Echo was just trying to help, right? She’s afraid for you.”

  “Great way she has of showing it. I could have been shot.”

  Throwing himself from the car, he walked down to the water’s edge. A white-tailed deer that had been drinking ran for a stand of trees, and a small flock of black ducks swam a safe distance away bef
ore stopping to sun themselves.

  Claire caught up to him and stood quietly for a moment before saying, “Detective McClellan wouldn’t have drawn his gun if you had just talked to him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And you don’t know that he would have.” Claire seemed hesitant, then asked, “Have you always had trouble controlling your anger?”

  “It’s the situation.”

  “Are you sure of that? You were pretty intense before the accident. I saw you go off a couple of times at Cranesbrook Associates.”

  Bray thought about it. He had been having trouble keeping his temper for a while now. He’d been walking around all tight inside, a situation that he thought had developed a few months back. And then something came to him.

  “There was a break-in at an apartment complex that Five Star covers in St. Stephens,” he said. “The office called it in and since I was so close, I went to investigate. I caught the guy red-handed. He had a weapon. But that’s where my memory of what happened ends. I vaguely remember later the guy threatening to sue me for injuries. I must have lost it.”

  “A trigger,” Claire mused.

  “As in a gun?”

  “As in an incident that brought back a trauma you buried long ago.”

  “You’re talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

  “Afghanistan made you a ripe candidate, don’t you think? Maybe the guy at the apartment complex attacked you and on some level reminded you of the unspeakable things you saw when you were in the military.”

  “That was five years ago.”

  “It happens. You could be better than most at burying what you don’t want to face.”

  Bray had heard of guys who seemed okay suddenly going off half-cocked. Is that what had happened to him?

  Claire went on. “And then there was the lab accident at Cranesbrook—an explosion—and all of a sudden your memory is gone.”

  “Are you saying you think my amnesia is self-induced?”

  “Not self-induced, but related. What happened in the lab could have triggered earlier memories. You’re going to have to deal with it all sometime, Bray. You should get professional help.”

  “I fight my battles alone.”

  “That’s the problem. You’ve gone against everything you learned in the military, haven’t you? Didn’t you depend on the men who watched your back?”

  “What good does that do someone who steps on a land mine?”

  Claire moved in close to him, as though giving him her support. Her mere touch took him from anger to wanting to take her in his arms. Wife or not, she could be irresistible; he couldn’t get enough of her. It took all his willpower not to do what he wanted this time.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said softly. “Your buddy didn’t die because of you.”

  On one level, Bray knew that. But on another…

  “Morgan. His name was Taureen Morgan.”

  “You remembered,” she murmured.

  “I’m remembering a lot of things.”

  He stared down into Claire’s beautiful green eyes, willing her to open up to him the way he just had to her, willing her to tell him the truth. Something in her face told him she wanted to, but in the end, her expression clouded and a purposeful smile curved her lips.

  Bray’s gut went tight.

  “The question is, what do we do next?” she asked. “The most important thing we need to make happen is to clear your name.”

  “Which means learning more about Project Cypress.”

  He stepped away from her, but even distance didn’t settle him down inside.

  “It’s probably all there, in those computer files,” Claire mused. “You should have gotten me that security clearance when I asked for it.”

  Why had she wanted that clearance anyway? Bray wondered. Apparently not for legitimate work purposes. He suspected she’d had some reason for working at Cranesbrook other than a paycheck. The name Mac Ellroy came to mind and he pushed down the foreign emotion surging through him.

  He asked, “How could I have given security clearance on Project Cypress to you, when Gage and I were denied that particular clearance ourselves?”

  Another memory.

  They were flooding back to him now in fits and starts. There were still gaps. Too many. But certainly not as many as there had been even the day before. All it had taken was putting him back in familiar surroundings for him to regain his past.

  Claire looked at him closely, as if she had a plan. “The answer lies with one of three men—Kelso, Ulrich or Riddell. Maybe if you could call up their memories…”

  “Unless you have a Project Cypress collection for me to play with, that doesn’t sound like it would be easy. We’d have to get back inside the compound, and that might be tricky, at least for you. Your clearances might already be wiped out.”

  Claire shook her head. “It’s still the weekend, so it’s not as though I haven’t shown up for work. And while the boat blew up, they didn’t find my remains. So people would assume I’m still alive.”

  “People who want you dead.”

  “Someone wants me dead. That doesn’t mean everyone associated with Cranesbrook does. And the mastermind behind all this mayhem might not be a person with the power to change my clearances. I’m thinking Hank Riddell.” Claire’s voice hardened as she ticked off her points on her fingers. One… “He showed up at Beech Grove Clinic after the accident.” Two… “I found him searching my desk.” Three… “And now we learn he turned over to the authorities that DVD with footage edited to place you in Lab 7 when you weren’t there.”

  “Riddell does seem a likely candidate. But isn’t he a little green behind the ears to pull this off himself? Didn’t you say he was friends with Martin Kelso?”

  “I think Kelso is the one who got him hired.”

  “If Kelso’s involved, we’re screwed.”

  “Maybe. Even if he is, my thought is he wouldn’t do anything to make himself look suspicious. The boat I’m living on blows up and then he pulls my clearance… I don’t think so. We should do it, get back into Cranesbrook. If you touch the right objects, you might remember what happened in Lab 7.”

  “And recapture memories of whoever was responsible for the accident.” He thought about it for a moment. “Tonight. Late. And backup wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You don’t think Detective McClellan is going to be doing you any favors after your last encounter.”

  “Not McClellan. Gage. I need to find my partner for a face-to-face, tell him in person what I know…and what I don’t.”

  “How, when we don’t have any idea where he is?”

  “Actually, we do. I do. He’s got Lily stashed in a bed-and-breakfast at Rehoboth Beach.”

  “How do you know that? One of your visions?”

  He nodded. “At Five Star.”

  “And you didn’t say anything? Nice, Bray.”

  He caught her gaze. “Omission isn’t as bad as lying.”

  She looked away first and started back toward the vehicle. “We’d better get going. Looks like we have another day of driving in front of us.”

  But at the end of that day, Bray hoped they would have their answers, along with a way to clear his name and proof to bring the villain responsible to justice.

  And then what for him?

  Back to Baltimore and Five Star?

  Without Claire?

  Chapter Fourteen

  “It’s okay, my little sweetheart, we’re home now,” Echo whispered in Zoe’s ear.

  Tired beyond fussy, the baby was sucking on her thumb and pulling on a hank of her mother’s hair. Echo held Zoe close and removed a bag of groceries from the trunk of her car. She’d retrieved the junker from the garage, then had done some minimal grocery shopping.

  Quickly heading for the house, she nearly tripped when she heard a familiar voice say, “Echo, you’re finally home.”

  Whirling around, she came face-to-face with her brother’s business partne
r. Where in the world had he come from? Glancing over his shoulder, she noticed a car with darkened windows parked at the curb.

  “Gage, what are you doing here? Where’s Lily?”

  Gage Darnell’s dark eyes bored into her intently, and his military-cut hair seemed to bristle with his tension. “I saw the news about the boat blowing up and Bray being suspected of doing it. He needs my help to clear his name.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Echo breathed a sigh of relief. After the fight that morning, she couldn’t count on Rand looking kindly at her brother, no matter his promise to try to clear Bray. “He can’t do this alone. He doesn’t even have his memory back.”

  “His memory… So that’s why he went missing for so long.”

  Echo unlocked the door. “Let’s go inside. I need to put Zoe down for her nap.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Echo set the groceries on the hall table and took Zoe straight to her bedroom with its yellow walls and equally colorful pictures of balloons. The baby was already asleep, so Echo put her directly in her crib and covered her. She smoothed the fine hair from the little face and felt her chest tighten the same way she did every time she realized she could have lost her daughter for good.

  Taking a shaky breath, Echo refused to believe she would lose anyone she loved. Not Zoe, not Rand—he would get over the fight they’d had when she’d held him back from going after her brother—and not Bray himself. Her brother had always been there for her. Surely she could do something to help clear his name.

  She rushed out of Zoe’s room to find Gage still standing in the entrance to the house. “Come in. Sit.”

  “I wish I had the time to be sociable, but I need to get a move on. I have some things I want to check out, so I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  “About Bray…do you have a plan to clear him?”

  “Not yet, but I have a lead. And I want to see what he knows.”

  Echo shook her head. “Like I said, not much. He hasn’t remembered anything to help himself. Well, other than what he got through his power.”

  “Power? So he does have one.”

  “Not telekinesis or anything to do with emotions.”