One Wrong Move by Shannon McKenna Read Free Book Online

her mouth was dry as sand. Had she just heard . . . no, that was absurd. The train roared into the station. Her heart thudded, fluttered. She was hallucinating again. Yes, that had to be it. That was all it was.
    Even so, she kept as much distance as humanly possible between herself and everyone else as she boarded the train.

Chapter 4
    “Lost her?” Rudd’s voice over the cell phone was glacial.
    “You lost this one, too? ”
    “I don’t know what happened! We were taking her into the stairwell, and suddenly she freaks and bolts—”
    “And you just let her run away?”
    “We were in a crowded hospital corridor! It’s not like I could tackle her! I was grabbing her, and she ducks into an elevator!”
    “And your tracking skills? Why do you think I wasted eighteen hits of our precious dwindling store of psi-max on you?”
    Roy spun, staring up and down Ocean Parkway, groping for the woman’s elusive frequency. “I don’t know what happened!
    She winked out of existence! She was in the fucking building! I should have felt her! I should feel her now, anywhere in Brooklyn! She winked out on me!”
    “You’re slipping, Roy.”
    Rudd’s gentle tone was the most chilling thing Roy had ever heard, and after six years of working for the guy, that was saying a lot. “No, boss. Kasyanov shot her up with Psi-Max 48. The drug made her strong, and she blocked me, that’s all. I’m not slipping!”
    “Two hours after initial dose?” Rudd snorted. “Get real. She has no idea what’s happening to her. She can’t control the psi at this point. She’s on the roller coaster, remember? The spikes, the hallucinations? You were a maniac yourself, as I recall. We had to confine you physically. You wore restraints for twelve hours.”
    “That was normal psi-max! This is the new stuff, and it’s—”
    “Even stronger, yes. So the spikes should be stronger, too.
    She’ll be experiencing all kinds of phenomenon before she settles, and it will be even harder for her to control them than it was for us. You know how long that learning curve is, Roy. It takes years. She doesn’t even have the benefit of knowing what’s happening to her. Even normal psi-max drives most people batshit.
    Before they die.”
    Roy bit his fist to keep from screaming as he cast his feelers wide, wider, wider than he’d ever tried to feel. Still. Nothing.
    “It’s that bitch’s trick,” he snarled. “I’m not slipping. She’s blocking me.”
    “Come on, Roy, just accept it.” That gentle voice made his guts loosen. “There’s a point of diminishing returns with this stuff. You need to start thinking about retirement, my friend.
    You’ve had a good run.”
    The image formed in Roy’s mind, as if Rudd had sent it there telepathically. Himself, with a bullet hole between his eyebrows.
    “No way. I’m in great form,” he said hastily. “I’ll find her, boss. I’ll get her. It’s not me. Who knows what this bitch will be able to do, if Kasyanov dosed her with the new shit? Could be anything!”
    “The real question is, Roy, who else will soon know what she can do if she isn’t stopped? I don’t have time to listen to your excuses. Was Anabel with you when you spoke to her? What did she get?”
    “Nothing, boss!” he burst out eagerly. “She blocked Anabel, too! She said it was like getting whapped in the face! It pissed her off.”
    “I can well imagine. A double failure, then. Where is Anabel now?”
    “She went to the ICU to see what she could get out of Kasyanov.”
    “You’ve covered her workplace ? Her house? Nina Christie’s andering the streets of Brooklyn somewhere, Roy. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her, so she’ll probably end up in a psych ward, and once she’s in an institution, it will be more complicated to do what needs to be done.”
    Roy felt compulsion flailing his mind, though he knew it was just conditioning. Rudd couldn’t do his badass juju over the phone, only in person. “You want