Page 60 of One Step Sideways

A second grunt was the reply, but I was pretty sure this had something to do with it. He glanced at the clock, then heaved himself out of his chair and left without another word. I went to the locker room, which was through another two security doors, because I wasn’t allowed to carry my cell phone anywhere there might be prisoners.

But all sorts of mental alarms were going off about O’Connell and I needed to do some research. I had fifteen minutes left before I had to be back and would need every one of them. My cell looked like everyone else’s, but the special programs on it meant I could get as much info from it as any of my other devices.

Although, only having fifteen minutes to trawl through what might be tons of information would be problematic, and I cursed the fact that I’d never looked into this guy properly.

I didn’t dare make a call because I didn’t trust someone not to hear me, but I could text with astonishing speed and knew exactly who to ask.

Gael Peterson was thirty-one, enhanced, and one of the FBI agents that O’Connell seemed to resent so much. He had two startling abilities. He could read and understand every known language, including the extinct ones, but what completely fascinated me, and why we had gotten on so well, was that his gift for communication wasn’t just with human languages. I was a good hacker, a great one by human standards, but Gael took it to a whole other level. Computers, street-cams, electronic devices of many sorts, actuallycommunicatedwith him, as if they had an independent brain. He could input a search command and while most computers would come up first with sponsored results unless you were incredibly specific, any computer immediately understood what Gael needed and worked with him. I’d seen him actually “talk,” for want of a better word, to street cams once they understood what he needed, but even more mind-blowing,they made suggestions. It was like they became his best buddy. I’d never seen anything like it, and I texted asking for help, hoping he was available to look.

It must have been my lucky day because Gael was just coming out of a meeting and had time before he met Jake and they collected their disabled son.

Jake says hi and you owe him a beer.

I chuckled.Maybe.

I quickly texted that I needed to know why O’Connell was such a douche, and my concern that something else was going on.

It took Gael three minutes as a conservative estimate. Reading through the ton of information he sent, I wished I hadn’t eaten even the few bites I’d had, because I could easily throw up.

Gary O’Connell had likely been on the take as a cop. He was a lazy good-for-nothing asshole disliked by his police colleagues, and the FBI wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-foot pole. He had left the force before any sort of lengthy investigation could begin, which explained the change in career. On paper it was a good fit, and because nobody could prove anything, he’d gotten away with it. I thanked Gael and mentioned I hoped to see them soon.

Wait. Eric’s telling me something.

Eric? I knew that wasn’t the name of any of the Tampa team, so I waited, then grinned imagining that was the name of one of the computers Gael was talking to.

You had a run in with a guy named Patrick Saunders.I confirmed that to Gael, but to be honest, I’d just about forgotten the first case Kane worked on for us. Saunders was locked up.

O’Connell was a friend of his. He was a subscriber to the fucked-up kiddy porn Saunders posted.

Everything in me went cold.

He got moved to Ware Correctional. O’Connell works on the wing he’s housed in, and no-one’s put it together.

It looks like he’s helped Saunders stay under the radar for a lot of years.

Then came the worst part.

He had a brother die in a school shooting.I knew that. Even I had managed to find that out.

The authorities were still in the denial stage then, and there was a shooter, but the teacher got the kids locked down. They would have all gotten out if it wasn’t for another student. He was enhanced. The kid panicked at the gunshots and transformed then and there, as he definitely didn’t have a mark that morning when he went to school. He had a weird ability similar to Talon, where he could stop certain body systems. Every person in his reading group, including the teacher, just seized.All their bodily systems froze.

It was covered up.

And it was why O’Connell’s brother had died.

And while it explained what had led O’Connell down this path, it wasn’t that knowledge that made my guts clutch. Kane had been there in that house with the teen and the grandmother. And if O’Connell didn’t know yet, there was a really good chance that he would know soon, and the whole mission and Kane’s safety would be worth shit.

And I knew which of those two possibilities I cared about the most.

Chapter Twenty-six

Kane

I could barely breathe through whatever the fuck was happening to my eyesight. I’d gone back to my cell and taken in both sides as usual, concerned when Shae’s was still empty. Instead of focusing as I had before, I’d let my mind empty and thought about Danny. Not that he was ever far from any thought I had and for what might be the first time, instead of feeling like such a fucking liability, I wondered if in fact I might be good for him.

Danny sometimes needed a wall. Yeah, he was wicked clever, far more than me, but I could stand there for him. Protect him. I opened my eyes and then just froze.

What the fuck?

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