Into the Mist

Chapter Nine

It wasn’t easy to pick a time when either Mad Dog or Jonah wasn’t skulking about. Tyana sometimes wondered if they slept at all.

She picked an hour before dawn, typically when Mad Dog had just gone to sleep and Jonah was holed up in his office doing what he did best. Brood.

She put on a muscle shirt, a pair of shorts and her running shoes then walked out of her room, prepared with a story that she couldn’t sleep and was going on a run. Something that, as it happened, occurred frequently.

First she’d swing by and check on D.

When she found two guards posted outside his door, she frowned. When she tried to move past them and open the door, they moved to block her.

“Sorry, Jonah’s orders. No one goes in without his say so.”

Anger exploded within her. She wanted to kick their asses and then go tear a strip off Jonah’s hide, but she had to remember her objective.

She glared at them both before she stalked down the hall to the stairs. When she was stopped by another of Jonah’s security team, she let out a hiss of impatience.

“I’m going running. Or is that allowed?”

“Let her go,” Jonah called from his office door where he stood watching Tyana.

She turned her resentful stare at him and had to make herself forget about the fact he’d barred her from Damiano’s room. Otherwise they’d be in each other’s faces again, and she wouldn’t get anything accomplished.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked calmly down the stairs and headed for the French doors leading to the back patio. She stepped outside into the cool morning air and jogged down the path that led to the beach.

She knew despite Jonah’s acquiescence that she was being closely watched. She’d have to be fast.

As she rounded the northwest corner of the island, she slipped between two large rock outcroppings, inaccessible when the tide rolled in. She dropped to one knee to fiddle with her shoelace and carefully looked around to see how visible she’d be from the house or other lookout points.

Feeling that she was as obscure as she was going to get while on the island, she reached into her shorts, slid the earpiece into her ear and palmed the tiny receiver, bringing it to her mouth in a casual gesture.

“Tits, you there?”

There was a long moment as she waited for a response.

“Tyana, my girl. What brings you knocking?”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “How much would it be worth to you to annoy the piss out of Jonah?”

Tits chuckled. “For that pleasure? Consider whatever it is you need on the house.”

“I need a boat on the east side of the lesser island. Tonight. Oh two hundred. Arrange for a helicopter exchange five miles out. I need cash, a fake passport and the first flight you can get me on to Paris.”

“You got it.” There was a slight pause. “You can catch me up on the whys and wherefores later.”

“Will do,” she said before removing the earpiece and tucking it back into her shorts.

She set back out on her run, and just to make it look good, she circled the island twice before she headed back up to the house.

When she walked in, she saw Mad Dog standing at the breakfast bar, rummaging through the M&M bowl.

“You better not be eating my orange ones,” she grumbled as she walked over. “I saved the green ones for you.”

“And I appreciate it,” he said around a mouthful of chocolate as he turned in her direction. “All oranges are accounted for, see?” He pointed at the bowl that now only housed the brown and orange M&Ms.

She reached for a handful and plopped on a barstool to stare at him. “Don’t you ever sleep? I could swear you just went to bed.”

He grunted in response and dug back in the bowl, looking for another green one. He gave a disgruntled sigh and snagged a brown one instead. “I got an hour. That’ll do for now. What about you? What’s got your panties in a knot this morning?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t I go for a run without you and Jonah on my ass?”

His eyes widened and then narrowed as he looked her over suspiciously. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

“I’m pissed because I tried to go see D and got blocked by two of Jonah’s henchmen.”

“Ahh.” Mad Dog turned back to the M&M bowl and fingered one of the orange ones.

She shot him a quelling glare, and he picked a brown one instead. “Ahh? Is that all you can say? This sucks, Mad Dog, and you damn well know it. Locking him up like a fucking animal? Forbidding me to see D like I’m some kind of goddamn child he has to babysit?”

Mad Dog stared pointedly at her.

She blew out her breath in frustration. “Okay, forget the babysitting part. I know I fucked up, but the keeping D locked up and me away from him bites, and you know it.”

He reached out and chucked her lightly on the chin. “I know it sucks, baby. But in this…this time I support Jonah’s decision.”

Tyana looked away, trying hard not to be angry with him. It wouldn’t change anything, and she really didn’t want there to be bad feelings between them. Or with Jonah for that matter, though after tonight, she knew there wasn’t a lot she could do about that.

“I want to see him today, Mad Dog,” she said softly. “I need to see him and make sure he’s okay. If I have to fight my way through that goddamn door, I will.”

He sighed. “I’ll make sure you see him after Marcus has been through to check things out, okay?”

She nodded.

“Did you and Jonah make up last night?” he asked in an abrupt change of subject.

She made a face and hoped to hell Mad Dog hadn’t seen her and Jonah get all mushy. “Yeah, we’re cool. That is until he pissed me off again this morning.”

He laughed. “Yeah, well him pissing you off is nothing new and vice versa. When you two start being nice to each other is when I’m gonna start looking for a new job.”

She grinned. Their relationship…well, it just worked. It always had. She had a deep and abiding respect for Jonah that had started as hero worship and evolved as she’d grown older. Which made it so difficult for her to disregard his orders for the first time.

Mad Dog cocked his head to the side. “I think I hear the chopper now. That must be Marcus.”

She stood eagerly, but Mad Dog pushed her back down. “Let Jonah handle it. You’ll only get in the way, start butting heads, and D doesn’t need that right now. Be patient. I promise you’ll get to see him afterward.”

With a resigned sigh, she settled back on her seat and stuffed more orange M&Ms in her mouth. When Jonah rounded the corner, their gazes connected for a moment before he walked out to the helipad to greet Marcus.

“Down, girl,” Mad Dog murmured.

She threw an M&M at him which he caught and promptly popped into his mouth.

A few moments later, Jonah returned with Marcus, along with two men carrying a whole host of medical bags and equipment.

Her panicked gaze found Mad Dog’s, and he reached out and covered her hand with his.

“He’ll be all right, baby. Trust in that.”

She closed her eyes against the pain and fear that threatened to slice her in two. Damiano had to be all right. She simply wouldn’t accept anything less.

“Come on, let’s go shoot some pool. It’ll get your mind off D for a while.”

She reluctantly followed Mad Dog into the game room, but her attention was focused on what was happening upstairs.

After three frustrating rounds in which Mad Dog kicked her ass, Tyana was ready to concede defeat. She was solidly on edge, and with every minute that passed, she was more tempted to charge upstairs.

Then Jonah appeared, standing in the doorway, his expression giving nothing away.

“You can go up and see him, Ty.”

She tossed aside the pool cue and shouldered by Jonah without a word. When she reached the stairs, she vaulted up two at a time. Marcus was just walking out of Damiano’s room with his assistants in tow.

Though she wanted nothing more than to see D for herself, she stopped and grabbed Marcus’s arm.

“How is he?” she demanded.

Marcus regarded her steadily. “I’ve upped his dosage of the serum, though I’m not sure how much good it will do. I’ve taken more blood samples to bring back to the lab for further testing. His instability doesn’t seem to be physiological. I have a suspicion that it’s psychological and that his triggers stem from his brain activity.”

She frowned. “What does all of that mean? Is there a way to help him?”

“I’m working on it, Ty. I’m adding a regimen of mild sedatives. If he remains calm, I think there’s a better chance he can control the random shifting.” He paused for a moment then stared intently at her. “I think more and more that this is something he’s going to have to beat on his own. From the beginning, I’ve approached this as a medical condition and treated it as such, but despite the manner in which he contracted his abilities, they fall in the realm of the supernatural, and as such, the key to conquering or controlling them is going to manifest itself within him. Basically he’s been given powers that he’s going to have to learn to use.”

She shook her head. “That’s not logical, Marcus. There has to be a scientific cure, some explanation, some way to fix what happened. It was a chemical agent, not some act of a supernatural being. God didn’t come down and gift him with superpowers. Science did this to him, so science has to be able to fix him.”

Marcus’s expression grew grim. “This wasn’t science, Tyana. It was men playing at being God, and maybe they succeeded to a degree. Whatever was in that chemical agent altered his DNA. I can’t fix that. I can only bandage it.”

She fell back against the wall, tears stinging her eyes. She scrubbed angrily at her face with her sleeve. “I won’t accept that. I won’t accept that there isn’t something we can do.”

Marcus reached out and lightly touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Ty. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I won’t lie to you. You have to accept that Damiano may always be this way, and if he can’t learn to harness his powers, they might destroy him.”

She pushed past Marcus and into D’s room. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his gaze directed out the window. He looked up when he heard her enter, and she could see the haunted shadows in his eyes.

She fell to her knees in front of him and gathered him tightly in her arms. His arms came around her and held on just as tightly.

“We’ll beat this,” she said fiercely. “Goddamn it, D, we’ll beat this. Do you hear me?”

He slowly pulled away, and his gaze flickered over her face. His expression tightened in pain when his hand brushed over the bruise on her cheek. “I hurt you,” he said hoarsely.

She kissed his hand and shook her head adamantly. “You didn’t hurt me, D. You would never hurt me. It wasn’t you.”

“You should probably stay away from me,” he said in a low voice. “It’s for the best.”

She framed his face in both her hands and forced him to look at her. “I’m never leaving you, D. Never. You don’t have to do this alone. I’m going to find a way to help you. I swear it. We’ll do this together, just like we’ve done everything else. You and me against the world.”

He smiled then, his brown eyes warming with love and affection. “How is it you turned into my fiercest protector when I spent so many years looking out for you?”

“Because now it’s you who needs protecting. It’s time I took care of you.”

He yawned and frowned. “Marcus gave me a sedative. It’s making me a little woozy.”

“Then rest,” she said softly. “And know that you’ll always have me with you. No matter what.”

“I know, little sister, I know.”

She hugged him once more then heard Jonah at the door.

“He needs to rest, Ty.”

She rounded furiously. “Back off, Jonah.”

He stared hard at her but didn’t leave. She slowly turned back to Damiano and hugged him tightly. “I love you,” she said fiercely.

“Love you more,” he said with a soft laugh. “Now go before Jonah has a coronary.”

She touched his cheek one last time, knowing this would be the last time she’d see him for a while, longer if Jonah tossed her out of FMG after she pulled off her latest plan.

Then she turned, her eyes burning, and walked past Jonah and down the stairs. She needed air. She needed to be alone to grieve.