Surely somebody would be aware that they were missing and would pick up on any signal she sent. At least that was her hope.

  The trouble was, right now, every time she sent a signal, it bounced right back. And her skill wasn’t the same as a phone signal or something of that nature. So even being deep underground didn’t make a difference, at least it never had before. She’d tested it with friends way back when she was in college, when it was all just a big game—until she realized just how dangerous it was and how having this ability was getting her some attention that she didn’t want.

  Back then she could send messages, even underground, although they weren’t of any consequence. She didn’t know what, if anything, made a difference now. Somebody could receive them back then too, and that might have made the difference. Maybe it wasn’t about her ability to send as much as it had been about his ability to receive. And it wasn’t the first time she’d thought about Reid in the midst of this nightmare. Or at other times in her life.

  She’d wondered about getting his help to secret her out of Russia, but, having no way to contact him, outside of sending telepathic messages, she had held back, just in case somebody else might intercept them. As it was, MI6 had been more than happy to help her and her mother get back to England.

  Even now she wondered about Reid. Was he out there? Could she send him a message? Again it might be more about the receiver than the sender. If that were true, he was her best bet. But would he even know what to do or how to contact anybody, assuming he even received her messages? When she finished eating, the door opened, making her suspicious that a camera was in this room, just one that she hadn’t seen, since the timing was just too damn exact.

  She waited until the dish was pulled away, then asked in a low tone, “May I see my mother?”

  Immediately came a headshake. “Nope, you no longer have that privilege.” And giving that curt response, her guard left and closed the door.

  She didn’t want to cry, but it was pretty hard not to because she knew that her mother would be suffering even more than Veni was. These guys would make her mother suffer, as punishment for trying to take Veni away from them. That wasn’t fair, since Veni wanted to leave, particularly after she’d been coerced into joining up with them in the first place. And, for that, she blamed her father.

  Even at that thought, she still didn’t know if he was involved. It would break her heart to confirm it, but she wasn’t sure there was any other culpable person in her world. Veni’s abilities had always bothered her father terribly, and that, in itself, made him one of the most likely people to have been involved in finding her again. Not that she and her mother had told her father what their plans were, so that was a bit of a mystery. Yet somebody had obviously known.

  Their workplace may have been bugged, though no plans had ever been made or discussed there. So, when Veni had heard rumors that she would be removed from the area where her mother worked, Veni knew that the time element surrounding their escape would be even more of a crunch. Still, she just couldn’t make this change. The news of their taking her away from her mother created a need to speed up their escape plan and to get out of there sooner, which had apparently cost them dearly. Veni found this turn of events to be very hard to live with—until she could find another way out.

  And she would find another way out, she vowed. No way she wouldn’t. She had to because this was not living. Being forced to work with the Russian government, with whom she didn’t agree, a government holding her against her will, was definitely not her thing. Not that anybody here cared.

  That was the part that was so hard to understand. She was shocked at how little anybody cared what happened to her, or whether she wanted to do this or not. She had always believed that people had free will, and that was true, until you came up against a government that ensured you didn’t, unless your ideas aligned with theirs.

  And her kidnapping was too much like her government job. Her day became this unending waiting period, as she anticipated the arrival of her keepers to come back for whatever purpose they had at the time.

  Yet it seemed nobody ever came today. She waited and waited, until finally the door opened again, and she was given more food by a different delivery person. She ate quickly, never arguing, never complaining. It didn’t matter what it tasted like. It was just food. Once again, she asked the same question. “May I see my mother?”

  Another headshake came, and this person left.

  Veni knew this guard was more or less just a lackey, somebody to deliver food and to take away food. That was heartbreaking in itself because where were the rest of the people out there, and what were they doing?

  Were they all just enjoying watching her squirm and wait, knowing there would be no end to the pain for her because the answers they were giving her were not what she wanted to hear? She closed her eyes yet again and sent out a message to anybody who could hear her. Silent on the ethers, she transmitted an SOS, hoping that somebody would receive her message. She didn’t get any response once again, not that she really expected it, but she wouldn’t give up hope. Transmissions were like that for her. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn’t. She’d never really had a chance to work out the how or the why of her gift, but, given the opportunity now, she would do things very differently.

  Finding the limits of what she could do appealed way more than it ever had before. She’d never been in danger before. Now that her captors had changed things to this point of incarceration, she really wanted to know exactly what she could do, when she could do it, and who could help her. Suddenly her complacent, innocent world was not so complacent at all. Although she desperately wanted to find out exactly the same things that the government wanted to find out about her abilities, she didn’t want it to be with them, and definitely not when they had plans to utilize it against others.

  That would never happen. Yet she didn’t know how to stop it because, as long as these people held her and her mother, they would just use her mother against her. And that was something she could never let them do. Hurting her mother wasn’t an option, and that meant either Veni had to get herself and her mother out of here fast or she had to find a way to make everybody cooperate, so they didn’t hurt her mother. To protect her mother, Veni would have to do what these people wanted, whether Veni liked it or not. The only good thing, as far as she could tell, was that this would not be the final location. Nobody had shown her to a lab or had set any protocols for them to do the testing and the work that these people obviously wanted Veni to do, which meant she would be moved again. And that would be her one and only chance to get out of here—if only she could come up with a plan.

  If she were really lucky, she would have somebody to help her and her mother.

  *

  Reid and Anders sat at a coffee shop, something Reid felt terribly guilty about, while Veni remained in captivity. However, until they had a lead, a direction to go in, they had no choice but to wait. They were going through all the files that they’d been sent by Jonas, and frustration mounted on all sides. Apparently Jonas had already called Terk several times, looking for progress. Of course MI6 was especially anxious to get these two women back. Reid just hoped that MI6 wanted them safe and not just for their own nefarious reasons. Reid didn’t have much faith in governments at this point, no matter which one. He looked over at Anders. “Surely, once we get them both to the British government, they will treat them okay, right?”

  Anders nodded. “We would like to think so. At least that is the plan. Now, if the UK is on the wrong side of the line, Terk can help them, at least Veni, and Veni will look after her mother. That’s what I’m assuming will happen.” He frowned at him, saw his frustration. “You’re looking really agitated. What’s going on?”

  Reid nodded. “Yeah, I’m … I’m feeling something, but I can’t get a lock on it.”

  “Is it Veni?” Anders asked, staring at him intently.

  “I think so. I think she’s trying to send messages, but she seems restricted somehow,” he replied. “I don’t know whether it’s just that or what. I haven’t heard from her in a really long time, so I’m having trouble picking up on her signal.”

  “Okay. I’m not exactly sure how that works, but can you get any kind of location?”

  “It feels like it’s coming from some distance. It’s pretty faint.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Generally signals like that don’t get faint based on distance,” he explained. “So I presume it has to do more with her inability to connect right now, due to some obstruction,” he muttered. “I’m getting this weird feeling from …” He stopped, pondered it for a moment, then shrugged and added, “I’ll say almost Kazakhstan.”

  “Almost Kazakhstan?” Anders repeated, fascinated.

  At that, Reid glared at him. “I get it, and you should know that I don’t have any real reason to say it’s Kazakhstan over even Germany, but”—he shrugged—“Kazakhstan it is.”

  “Okay,” Anders replied. “I’m willing to go with that. I mean, it’s not as if I have any other place to go. Still, I highly doubt going hell-bent for leather off to Kazakhstan, with no direction or particular place to go, will be all that helpful.”

  “No, probably not,” Reid admitted, feeling frustrated. “We need more than just that feeling.” Almost immediately his phone rang.

  “No, we don’t,” Terk declared, on the other end. “We’re looking at Kazakhstan as a possible location.”

  “Sure,” Reid noted, “but a possible location isn’t the same thing as an actual destination. If we’re seriously going to Kazakhstan, we need to be on the move now because, by the time we get there, they could have moved Veni and her mom again.”

  “We’re trying to get it locked down,” Terk explained. “We have somebody close by who might get boots on the ground for us. Levi is hooked into the satellite, getting us some better information. We can get intel out of Kazakhstan, so that’s not an issue. Give us twenty minutes.”

  “We need to be on the move,” Reid reminded him, “so twenty minutes is about all you’ve got.”

  With that, Terk disconnected.

  Reid looked over at Anders, noting his raised eyebrows, and shrugged. “Yes, Terk can read my thoughts even from here. It’s fine. Terk and I understand each other, and sometimes he needs to read my mind.”

  “Apparently,” Anders muttered. “So, he agrees with Kazakhstan?”

  “He does, but he’s waiting on some confirming intel to let us know if it’s viable.”

  Anders looked around the restaurant. “It’s pretty hard to accept that, just because of a feeling, we’ll move multiple countries away on the off-chance that Veni’s there, when she was last seen right around the corner of this block.”

  “I know. But short of us finding anybody who has anything to do with that warehouse and who is still in this part of the world, we might as well start looking ahead, instead of back. Levi’s team has already checked the satellite feeds, and nobody has come in or out any of the entrances or exits of either building here in the last couple days.”

  “Which gives us a big fat lot of nothing.” Anders frowned at Reid. “You picked up her energy in that empty warehouse, right?”

  “Yes,” Reid replied. “I did.”

  “And that energy doesn’t give you anything other than the possibility that she’s been here?”

  “It gave us that she had definitely been here, but it doesn’t give me anything on where she’s going. I didn’t pick up any of her energy outside of that warehouse.”

  Anders nodded, his fingers thrumming on the table. They’d both been frustrated, having searched inside the building, plus the back and the front of it, with absolutely nothing popping.

  “You know what we need?” Anders suggested. “We need Terk to come up with some information out of Kazakhstan. Surely they’ve got some contacts.”

  “It sounded like that’s what they were working on,” Reid reminded him.

  “Maybe, but it seems we should have some contacts there too.” He pulled out his phone and started texting.

  “Who’re you texting?” Reid asked cautiously.

  “Levi, just to see if they have anyone over there because, if that’s where we think Veni is, she’s way too close to Russia, to her final destination, and we need to get there fast.”

  “Which is something we need to do now.” Reid stood up.

  At that, Anders eyed him. “You got a way to get us there?”

  “No, but we’ll get one pretty quickly lined up,” he muttered. “We have to. Her time is running out. Once she gets into the Eastern Bloc, we’ll have a hell of a time getting her out of there.”

  “Hey, Kazakhstan will already cause us some trouble,” he muttered.

  Reid gave him a ghost of a smile. “That’s true, but we can get in and out of there in a heartbeat, and nobody, literally nobody, will be the wiser. But once we start hitting the Russian borders? … That’s kind of the Wild West.”

  Anders finished sending the text to Levi, then got up and walked over to the counter, where he changed their orders to take-out. While he waited, he picked up an assortment of snacks from the front counter.

  By the time he was done over there, Reid had locked down their transport, then joined Anders and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Yeah? How’re we traveling?”

  “It’ll be a little bit different,” he replied hesitantly, looking over at him. “I understand you fly helicopters, right?”

  “I have a license,” he clarified. “I’ve been working on it at Levi’s place. One of the things I plan to do is stay and be a replacement pilot.”

  “Not a bad idea,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’re flying by helicopter from a small landing strip nearby, and apparently Jonas set us up with a trip into Kazakhstan. Not sure what we’ll owe MI6 for this though, or what Veni will want.”

  “That’s tomorrow’s issue,” Anders said. “I wonder if MI6 can get us in without raising any alarms, considering they already lost their people.”

  “Not only did they lose Veni and her mother, they also lost their own team members,” he reminded him.

  “It’s a constant reminder of the world we live in,” Anders noted. “Let’s get going. We don’t have much time to sit and debate the merits of MI6.”

  And, with that, a hired car pulled right up in front of the café. They hopped inside, headed to a small helipad, owned by a private corporation. They were airborne within minutes, and, just under an hour later, they landed, quickly boarded a private plane, and were airborne again.

  At the smooth moves and shifts, Anders smiled. “Sure glad some people can organize transports like this,” he stated, with a laugh. “It’s frustrating when you have to spend too much time waiting on commercial travel.”

  “We don’t have the time or the inclination for commercial travel,” Reid commented. “I mean, as far as I can tell, we’ve got …” Then he hesitated, unsure of whether to say it or not.

  “We’ve got what?” Anders asked him. “If you know something, you need to tell me.”

  “It’s not that I know something. All I can do is tell you that something out there is coming toward us, that’s not very fun.”

  “It never is,” he conceded. “I would still rather know ahead of time, than after the fact, even if I don’t know the details.”

  “Got it. I’m just getting this horrible pressure, and I don’t know whether it’s her mother or Veni, but I think she’s sending messages, and I think she’s sending them almost in a panic.”

  “Yes, but how else would she send messages?” Anders asked.

  His calm reasoning, critical thinking, and accepting nature was something Reid appreciated. “If she were running an experiment, or if she were calm, then her messages would go out at a much greater distance and much quicker. She’s quite a strong transmitter, but she’s not trained, and that could be hindering her right now.”

  “When you say, not trained—”

  “Meaning that she’s never put any time or effort into seeing what she could do. Back when I knew her, it was little more than a joke to her. Yet she is very powerful. I told her that she should look into it, but she just laughed and said it was a one-off, not for her. I suspect she meant that, right up until it came down to something happening to her mother. At that point in time, all bets were off.”

  “If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Veni didn’t see any value in developing her skills, having no logical pathway ahead of her. So she probably couldn’t see any point in pursuing it.”

  “Exactly. I think that’s spot on. She was also starting to work with her mother in microbiology and potentially put it to use there.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Anders replied, turning to look at him. “How the hell do you put a gifted transmitter to work in some science or medical lab?”

  He gave his partner a ghost of a smile. “She was doing stem cell work, regenerative stem cells, and that is all about sending signals.”

  Anders blinked several times. “Hang on a minute. Are you telling me there’s a scientific application for telepathy?”

  “It’s possible, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m out to lunch,” Reid said. “I haven’t talked to her and don’t know anything about it. However, it occurred to me that somebody who can send signals in a very different way may very well generate interest from a government that is working hard on cutting-edge stem cell research. There are people in a race all over the world,” he explained, “looking for a way to live forever and all that, and a lot of people think the key to that is coming from stem cells. In particular, if you can get specific stem cells to regenerate or to turn back the clock, which is definitely not my expertise, or cup of tea,” he admitted, “then you think about something or somebody who can send signals, potentially at a deeper level than done before. That scenario could be a recipe for disaster for Veni, yet a recipe for incredible success for the government involved.”

  “Sounds like a nightmare,” Anders muttered. “Whatever happened to growing old gracefully? I was kind of looking forward to it.”