“Hrm,” I said with a weak smile. “I may have killed most of his telepaths, but he’s still got Claire, who hates me.” I frowned. “Or Century still has Claire, anyway, depending on the status of their breakup. Not to mention the fact that he’s a pretty powerful telepath himself.” I gave him a sad smile. “We may have granted a temporary reprieve to the metas of the U.S. by taking shotguns into that Vegas safe house, but we didn’t end Sovereign’s ability to kill us all if he’s still of a mind to.”
Scott let his eyes go a little unfocused, and I could tell something was on his mind. He caught me looking and faked a smile. “Hey, so—”
“What were you thinking just then?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, and it was so obvious he was lying he might as well have had stamped it on his forehead. He knew I knew, and he hesitated again. “Not a big deal.”
“It’s something,” I said. “Just say it.”
He tensed up. “All right, fine. About … Sovereign … and what he wants. Have you thought about …” He stopped, as if he couldn’t even complete the sentence.
“Giving him what he wants?” I spread my arms wide. “Offering myself or pretending to do so in order to get him to stop?” I shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.”
Scott made a face, and not a sexy one. “I should have guessed that you’d have considered all options.”
“It wouldn’t work,” I said. “He is a telepath, after all, and while Zollers can block him to some extent, I can pretty well guarantee that the old ‘Surrender while you pull a fast one on the enemy’ trick won’t work with him. He’s not much of an evil overlord, but he’s not a total idiot. Anything I do that sends me lovingly in his direction without real sincerity will provoke enough of his suspicion that he’ll use his powers to sniff out my intentions.” I clapped my hands together lightly and Scott jumped as though I’d fired a shot at him. “Game over. Because I’ll always think of him as a mass murderer first.”
Scott nodded slowly. “Nice to know I don’t have any competition from him, at least.”
I smiled, but weakly. “That’s safe to say.”
Scott lapsed into thought. “But if he doesn’t have any hope of ever winning you over—”
I was fortunate because my phone rang at that exact moment, sparing me from having to go down the path that question would inevitably lead me to. “Yes?” I asked, grateful for the interruption.
“Heyyyyy,” J.J. said from the other end. “I think I’ve got something here.”
“As long as it’s not a rash, I’m interested,” I said, and shrugged at Scott when he gave me a WTF look.
“Well, it looks like our old friends at the Wise Men’s Consortium have just made an investment in real estate in the Minneapolis area,” J.J. said, ignoring my wisecrack.
I stood there, looking blankly ahead. “I don’t … have any friends at that corporation. I don’t even know who they are—”
“Sure you do,” J.J. said. “They’re the ones who rented the Century safe houses around the country. They’re the ones who chartered that cargo plane that was taking you out of the city.”
Right. I let out a sharp gasp. “And they bought something here?”
“Money transfer just showed up, but it probably happened a few days ago,” J.J. said. “I’m kind of a little behind in what I can do, you know, working with a staff of one—”
“You can have whatever staff you want,” I said then realized the awkward entendre I’d inadvertently just handed him. “Uhm, or hire people, I mean, if you think it will help you. But about this purchase—”
“Righto,” he said. “It’s a warehouse in St. Louis Park, about half an hour away—”
“I know where St. Louis Park is,” I said, hiding my impatience.
“—just outside Minneapolis, first ring suburb, brushing up against Eden Prairie—”
I rolled my eyes. “Address?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, and I scrambled for a pen as he gave it to me. “Now, about this staff thing … who do I talk to about—”
“You can talk to Ariadne about your staf—” I cut myself off again and just hung up the phone instead of bothering to try and dig myself out of that verbal mess. “We’ve got something,” I said to Scott, holding up the piece of paper with the address scrawled on it.
“What are we going to do?” he asked, and I thought I caught a little excitement in his gaze. “Go in, shotguns-a-blazin’?”