Phoenix Rising Read online

  Dedication

  For the four minions, Erin, Joseph, Kyle and Cassandra, the best cheerleaders and supporters that a mother could ever have.

  Chapter One

  Beth Nakamora settled back into the cushions of the chair and put her notepad on her lap. She debated sliding forward to perch on the edge of the chair but decided that would make her appear too eager. She suspected her new client would come in literally breathing fire. Better to let whatever storm was brewing wash over her before trying to get through to him.

  And she needed desperately to reach him. His life depended on getting him to trust her, though he was unaware of it. Perhaps seeing her nearly lost among the oversized cushions of the chair would help. It emphasized her small—and hopefully unthreatening—stature.

  The door flew open, and Alec Farley strode into the room.

  He didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge her existence. Instead, he paced the temporary office, scowling, sizing her up in silence.

  Beth doodled on her pad and watched him watch her. Alec was taller, stronger and, well, far more grown-up than she’d imagined. Somehow, she’d mentally slotted him in with all the adolescent teens she counseled. No doubt because she thought of Alec as needing her help.

  But this was no boy.

  Alec was a full-grown man, every inch a soldier, and a very attractive one, or would be once he stopped scowling. If God reached down to create a superhero, he would look much like Alec Farley. His shoulders were wide and strong and his dark blue T-shirt hugged his flat stomach.

  She’d expected to be fascinated by him but not to be so impressed.

  He moved like a dancer, in perfect balance, and his wavy dark hair half-hid an unnerving gaze as his blue eyes seemed to notice everything all at once. She wondered if Alec was using his telekinesis to explore the room. From what she’d been told, he was capable of using TK to poke into corners, check under objects like the two chairs and even under the carpeting. Something beyond his pacing definitely seemed to be happening. She could practically feel power oozing out of him.

  If he’s like this now, what is he like when he’s calling fire?

  “Hello, Alec.”

  “You don’t belong to the Resource,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”

  Belong. An interesting word choice. “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re not armed. You’re not adhering to the dress code for the lab techs. And you’re so tiny. You almost like a little kid with that dark hair, except that, well, you’ve got nice bre—I mean, you have the shape of a grown woman. Just how old are you?”

  She pushed her dark hair out of her eyes. Well, score one for breasts, even small ones. At least he was convinced she was an adult. “I’m old enough to have a master’s degree in psychology.” And mature enough to sit still until he settled. And not so young that he could intimidate her.

  “Why did you take the desk and couch out of the room?”

  “They were both big and ugly. The chairs are more comfortable.”

  “So we’re supposed to sit down and have a nice little chat?”

  “If you like. You don’t have to sit.”

  There was fury in his question but also fear, if her years of experience of dealing with defensive patients were any indication. The fury she understood and was typical of many people forced into counseling.

  But Alec’s fear didn’t make sense. As far as he knew, she was here to help him learn how to work better with outsiders. She didn’t see why he perceived danger. Had he or someone else seen through her cover story?

  “Are you from outside?”

  He said “outside” like being from there made her an exotic. That was at least an interesting change from being considered exotic because of her Japanese ancestry.

  She put the pad down on the table, pencil neatly on top, and stood. “I’m Beth Nakamora.” She held out her hand. “What do you mean by ‘outside’?”

  He refused the handshake. “I meant will you be living here?”

  He lived at the complex, as did nearly everyone he knew. “I have my own home.” She took a step back. “So, yes, I guess I am from outside. Does that surprise you?”

  He paced the room again, putting his back to her. She matched his silence. It certainly was no hardship to watch him move. She tried to keep her professional detachment but couldn’t help noticing that his backside presented an awfully nice view, especially in the tight jeans.

  He finally turned and pointed a finger at the coffee table. Her notepad rose from the table into the air. The pencil rolled to the floor while the pad flew into his hand.

  She gasped. Argh. Focus. You know what he is. But seeing him in action was entirely different from hearing about it. Again, power seemed to crackle in the room. Did he suspect why she was really here?

  He narrowed his eyes and focused. “What are these? Some sort of Japanese language symbols?”

  “Why not just ask me what I was writing?” She crossed her arms over her chest. Was her voice shaky?

  Taking a deep breath, Alec pointed a finger again. He frowned, concentrating harder. The knot in her red patterned scarf unraveled. She tried to grab it, but his telekinesis was faster and the scarf flew to his hand.

  Her face grew warmer. She let her hand rest on the spot where the scarf had been. Her hair brushed against the back of her hand. She wanted to rush forward and grab the scarf out of his hand. No. He wanted her to get angry.

  Alec looked down at the scarf and fingered it. “It’s still warm from being around your neck.”

  “This is not a good way to prove that you don’t need help working with people outside the Resource.” She rubbed her neck.

  He clenched the scarf tighter and dropped his head. So that accusation had hit home.

  “Look, I don’t need you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve heard all about psychologists from Daz, about how they spin your head around, find ways to twist words and declare people unfit for duty.”

  She breathed an inward sigh of relief. He objected to her being a psychologist. He didn’t suspect what else she was. “Who’s Daz?”

  “F-Team’s leader, my commander.” Alec stepped closer, tapping the notebook against his hip.

  She backpedaled automatically, then wished she hadn’t given ground. Still, avoiding confrontation was right until she had the full story behind his hostility. No surprise that Alec’s assault team commander didn’t like psychologists. Few soldiers did.

  “Ah. And does Daz approve of trying to bully people who are shorter and obviously less gifted than you?”

  Alec backed up, giving her space again.

  “You don’t look too concerned.”

  “Why would you want to intimidate me? Obviously, I can’t hurt you.” She rubbed her neck again.

  “Yeah, you can. You write a bad report and recommend me out of F-Team, then I’m out.”

  He thought she had the power to do that? No wonder he was hostile. “Who told you that would happen?”

  “I was ordered here. I can read between the lines.” He covered her scarf with the notebook in his other hand. “Besides, you’re a shrink.”

  “So I’m going to make your head smaller?”

  He smiled, despite himself. It was a charming smile. “No, I just—”

  “Have an aversion to psychologists? Or to small women?” She pointed at his hand. “Or to silk scarves?”

  “How about people who manipulate me? Like you’re doing with all these questions. Like—” He shook his head and let the sentence hang in the air.

  Had he been about to say “like Richard Lansing”? Lansing was the head of the Resource, and Beth guessed he was behind Alec’s hostility. Lansing had been furious that the CIA had used its l
everage with the Resource to order Alec into counseling. What would be the best way to sabotage that counseling? Exactly this, by making Alec too angry to listen to her.

  No wonder Alec had a thing against people who manipulated him.

  Alec tossed the notebook back onto the coffee table. It hit with a clunk and slid several inches. He kept the scarf wrapped around his hand. She kept her chair between them.

  “You’re operating under a false impression,” she said. “I can’t force you to work with me. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Of course I have to do this.” He leaned over the back of the other chair.

  “Why?”

  “Lansing thinks it’s necessary.”

  She’d guessed right. Lansing had set her up. “Your foster father? He can force you into things?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, sorta.”

  “What things can he force you into?” Good, Alec resented his situation. As well he should.

  “Look, he’s got my best interests at heart.”

  Beth was sure that Lansing had Lansing’s best interests at heart. But Alec needed to find that out for himself. “What makes you believe that?”

  “He raised me. He taught me to use my fire as a child, when it was out of control. He made me what I am.”

  She nodded, hoping to encourage more conversation.

  But Alec broke eye contact and stared at the bowl of M&Ms on the coffee table between the two chairs.

  “So you’re saying that I can just ask and you’ll leave and I’ll never see you again?”

  She nodded again. “You’re my client. I can’t treat you without your consent, no matter what Director Lansing wants. If you decide that you don’t want my help, this will be our only session, as much as that would disappoint me.”

  Disappoint didn’t begin to cover it. She needed to help Alec get out of his lifelong prison. But she couldn’t force this on him. That would be exchanging one prison for another.

  “We’ll see.” He flopped into the chair and tore a piece of paper from her notepad. “I was just fooling with the scarf.” He held up his hand. “Watch.”

  He crumpled the paper in his hand and concentrated. It erupted in flames. Power seemed to burst outward from him. Her face flushed. A second later, the fire went out. He opened his palm and let the paper’s ashes fall on the table.

  My God. Beth was reminded of the original meaning of “awesome”. The inspiration of awe. During that demonstration, Alec had looked like a god come down from Mount Olympus, smiling as he showed off to lesser mortals.

  “The power you have is frightening to a lot of people, I imagine. I can see why their reactions would bother you.” Did everyone sense that burst of power when Alec used his fire? Philip hadn’t mentioned it. He wouldn’t let her walk in blind. That meant he didn’t sense it.

  So why did she feel it?

  “The idiot CIA liaison on the last mission freaked about my fire,” Alec said.

  “And you didn’t handle that well, which is why I’m here.”

  “You didn’t freak.”

  “Why should I? Your fire seemed perfectly under control.”

  “It was.” He frowned. “You’re not being straight with me. You have orders from Lansing to treat me, no matter what. So you have to do that, no matter what.”

  She shrugged. “Orders or no, Lansing already knows that I can’t treat you without your consent. I only wish—”

  “Wish what?”

  She glanced away from him, just for a second, to the camera hidden near the window, cursing again that this couldn’t be a real session. But there had been no choice. No cameras, no getting to Alec at all.

  “Um, I’m a little out of my element,” she said. “As you said, I’m from outside. I’m used to working in my own office.”

  “We have to meet here. I need security around me for my protection.”

  “So I understand. The security procedures to get inside this complex are impressive.” They’d done everything but body-search her.

  “Where’s your office?”

  “Not far. About forty minutes away, in Montclair.”

  “That’s a little south of here? Closer to New York?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Alec?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you decided if you want to work with me?”

  He tapped his fingertips on the armrest. “Assuming I agree to be your client, what exactly would we be doing?”

  She came around from the back of the chair, sat and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. Now, they were getting somewhere.

  “My plan is practical application. Role playing, anticipating future situations, like how to defuse personal issues without violence.” Such as finding a better way to show annoyance than burning paper to intimidate a psychologist half his size.

  “For a start, we can go over the situations where you’ve had trouble in the past and sort out where you could have made different choices.” She crossed her legs, relaxing back in the chair, trying to appear more in control than she felt. “But before that, you need to give me back my scarf.” She put out her hand.

  “Don’t you want to probe my confused psyche? Ask me a bunch of how-do-I-feel questions?”

  “Would you like me to do that, Alec?”

  He narrowed his eyes, then smiled as he realized she was kidding.

  “Role playing sounds like simulated training. That’s okay. But I want to know more about you.”

  “I’m close to my doctorate in psychology and I mostly work with gifted teens and young adults.” And I’m here to help you, even if you wouldn’t think of it as help yet.

  “You don’t look old enough to have a doctorate,” he said.

  She smiled. “I’m two years older than you are.”

  “I’d have pegged you as twenty, not twenty-five.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “Can I call you Beth?”

  “Beth is too informal.”

  “You’ve been calling me by my first name.”

  He noticed everything. “You have a point. All right, try ‘counselor’. It’s close enough.”

  “Okay, then, counselor.”

  He unwrapped the scarf from his hand and held it out to her. His larger, stronger fingers brushed against her shorter, more delicate fingertips as the silk slid from his hand into hers.

  The nerves at the base of her skull exploded, sending what felt like an electric current through her spine and down to her toes. It enveloped her like a living thing, a concentrated stream of the same power she’d sensed from him the entire session.

  Save that this power aroused her. Every nerve seemed blown wide open, raw with longing.

  More, please. No, wait…

  Alec jerked back abruptly into his chair, his shoes scraping against the carpet, and rubbed his palm.

  She froze and wasn’t entirely sure she could have moved if she wanted. She tried to breathe normally. What the hell had he done? Judging by his reaction, Alec didn’t know either.

  “Is something wrong?” The scarf still dangled from her hand. Her voice worked. Surprising, especially since the rest of her felt completely stunned.

  He darted a glance at the camera. “No, nothing’s wrong, other than that I didn’t expect you to have such soft hands.” He grinned. “And you’re very pretty. Such a cute little button nose. Nice eyes too.”

  She got the message. Play this down for Lansing and his watchers. “Thank you.” She sat back in the chair, the energy from their touch fading. Good. Being aroused by a client was right up there on the list of things that shouldn’t happen. Ever.

  But she’d never felt that alive before.

  “I bet you compliment all the girls.”

  “You’ve got nice legs too.”

  She tied the scarf back around her neck with trembling fingers, her flush fading.

  “So, are you ready to start now?”

  “Sure.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s go.”

  “
Good.” She picked up her notebook.

  He popped a few of the dark chocolate M&Ms in his mouth, perhaps to cover his own discomfort. She’d brought them here to make herself feel less nervous. They’d been her mother’s favorite candy. Silly, but it was like part of her mother was there because of the candy’s presence.

  Alec wiped his palm on his jeans. Some of the candy coating must have melted in his hands.

  “What’s first, counselor?”

  She outlined the problem that he’d had with the CIA liaison on his last mission with F-Team. Throwing someone across the street with telekinesis was not a good response to verbal insults.

  He listened intently, as if he was memorizing every word. He soaked up everything, she suspected. Which made it more of a tragedy that he was locked here, only let out to use his gifts as a weapon.

  Alec, I’ll help you see the bars of the prison, I’ll help you see what is possible beyond this. Trust me.

  The video on her laptop started, the camera angle canted to the right. Beth tilted her head to see better and tightened her hand on her foster father’s shoulder.

  She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the peppermint tea that she’d brewed, comforted by the familiar surroundings of her home, especially the Buddha cabinet in the corner. She’d tried to add some warmth to that lifeless Resource office for Alec but that had been almost impossible. At least he’d liked the M&Ms.

  Most of all, she was grateful for Philip’s presence. Nothing could ever harm her while he was around. She was aware they were mismatched, with Philip tall, broad-shouldered and gray-haired, while she looked very much like her native Japanese mother: short, small-boned and with dark hair. But they’d always understood each other perfectly.

  He was her father, in every way that mattered.

  He reached up and patted her hand. His large, muscular fingers engulfed her smaller, thinner ones. He adjusted the video controls with the mouse. “This is about five years old,” Philip said. “Your firestarter would be eighteen, then.”

  At first, there was only a fuzzy impression of a clearing in some rural area, with a stand of evergreens surrounding it. There was no sound. The blurriness cleared, the film focused and soldiers appeared, rushing across a field to an entrenched position. Though she knew it was a training exercise, it looked real.