Free Brute Justice (Justice Series) by Kim Jewell

this pain because a doctor injected us with drugs?” Jade asked. “Did he do it on purpose? Why would he do that?”
    “We don’t know all of the reasons yet,” Lexi answered, “but we do know he gave us drugs that were designed to change our bodies. Give us extra abilities.”
    “What do you mean extra abilities?” Hank was not generally one to overreact, but this all sounded a little sci-fi to him.
    Uh-oh. Freak out mode, closing in.
    “Leesha can move things with her mind – telekinesis. Sam’s senses are heightened. Clint’s muscles are stronger and I can make my body transparent,” Lexi said matter-of-factly.
    The quiet in the room was awkward as Hank tried to wrap his brain around all he was just told.
    “But…” Jade finally broke the silence, “I don’t have an ability.”
    “You,” Leesha turned toward her, “are our mystery. We can’t figure it out. Are you sure there’s nothing special you can do? Anything out of the ordinary?”
    “No. I’m not special,” she looked down at the hands in her lap.
    “Yet you felt the pull – the signal in your forehead – when Clint’s flash started last night, yes?” Leesha asked.
    “I did. That was kind of strange. It was a signal?”
    “I think it is. We all feel it when we’re close to another that has a flash. It’s how I found Sam. I’m not sure how close we have to be to each other – I’ve not felt it from across town, when we’re apart. But I believe it connects us, which is why I think you’re affected by this just as much as we are.”
    “So you think I’ve got a power?”
    Leesha sighed and paused. “You have to… We just need to figure out what it is. Once we do, we can work on making it stronger.”

Chapter Eleven
     
    He’d thought about it over and over, wondering what he should do about the tracking devices he found. Thanks to Neal’s help, another had been located, embedded into the handle of his laptop case.
    Neal had proven himself very useful in the past few years. Though now he was a private detective, it was his ballistics expertise and investigative training with the police force that were equally as valuable as the technology he packed. After he found the devices, he ran a check for fingerprints on them and found two – one belonging to Clint McKay, the other to Lexi Dixon.
    “So they are working together,” he mused out loud, reading the report. “Yet they’ve made no attempt to contact me. Curious…”
    After weeks of trying to locate Charlie, his former assistant who suddenly disappeared, he figured the kids were helping protect his location. He wondered if Charlie was still feeding them information about his experiments, and if so, how much he had divulged.
    “If I ever get my hands on that no-good piece of shit, I’ll kill him myself. It will be my pleasure.” He had no sympathy for people who betrayed his confidence.
    As for the kids, well they were still a mystery to him. He knew they probably had a good idea of his whereabouts, for now. He could change his residence – it might throw them off his trail – but his office was another story. It wouldn’t be easy to change the location of his already-established family planning clinic. He put a lot of thought and effort into creating this business – one which counseled pregnant teenagers against abortion and paired them with parents who yearned to adopt.
    It was perfect, really. He delivered the babies in his own office, with just a very small staff. They were never around when he injected his experimental mixtures into the babies…
    The novel part of the operation is he was able to gather all the necessary information on the parents who took the babies home. He created a new alias and his own secret laboratory. There was no one in his present who knew about his past – that was all dead and buried – and no one on his staff knew what he was doing now. It couldn’t have been planned any better.
    That is, until he figured out the kids were