Hyper Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 6) by Fiona Quinn (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

Spyder had asked me to hold the umbrella over my mom’s head as we left Dad’s internment. As I did, Spyder scooped up mom and made it over to the car. Stan drove the vehicle. Who took mom’s wheelchair? Who put it in the trunk? I could swear it was this guy.

“Mrs. Reuben? I’m sorry, I…”

“Mrs. Rueben was my mother. I’m Mrs. Sobado.”

He lifted his briefcase and walked toward me, his eyes unblinking.

“Lexi,” I said, reaching out my hand, hoping he’d mention his name.

“Seth Toone.” When his hand touched mine, a buzz radiated up my arm into my neck and jaw. It was like I’d whacked my elbow on a door frame. Painful and odd. How did he do that?

“You look just like your mother. It’s shocking, almost.” He was obviously flustered.

I wondered if he got the same zap I did.

“The last time I saw you, you were just a teenager.” He pressed his fingers onto his tie. “It was at your dad’s funeral.” He swallowed hard enough that I heard the phlegm galumph down the back of his throat. “I worked with your dad. He was an amazing man. It’s a stretch for a stranger to say this, but he would have been so incredibly proud.”

I smiled. Proud of what exactly?

“You are the spitting image of your mother. Crazy. How is she?”

“Dead.” But as I was saying that, my stomach clenched. It was a knowing. London Bridges Falling down. Falling down…

“I’m so sorry to hear. My condolences. Forgive me for intruding.” He gave me an odd little bow and walked away.

“Chica?” Striker’s voice sounded far away.

“Hmmm?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t look okay.”

Oliver was watching the scene unfold with curiosity.

“Yeah, I just had a thought. Something I should research a bit.” It was an obfuscation, not a lie.

I could feel them, my parents, hovering there over my shoulder.

Their angst felt like handwringing. They were anxious.

My PTSD psychiatrist cautioned that I might have developed an enhanced knee-jerk reaction. Where I have a hyper response to a small stimulus. It’s relatively common for survivors of physical assault to flinch larger, cry out sooner, act as if the thing that’s happening to them is bigger, badder than it might have been perceived before the abuse.

I was in danger of becoming a hyper Lynx.

I smiled briefly at that thought.

Well, all that made good sense.

If my attacker wanted to hear my scream, and I held back to not offer the reward, it would be that much more pain that I’d have to endure, and he’d get the scream anyway. Why not just scream at first touch?

She said that was one way that survivors coped.

Another was that I might see everything through the lens of a survivor, hoping not to get caught up in another horrible event. My body was primed for anxiety. Anxiety might have no rhyme or reason. But as a thinking, puzzling person, I would try to find the source of concern to squash it. The problem with that strategy was that often there was no concrete reason.

She suggested that when anxiety percolated up like it had when I shook Seth Toone’s hand, that I not try to adjust my antennae to a station to understand it.

Anxiety could just be anxiety.

Anxiety could have been triggered by something I didn’t necessarily see on the conscious level as a threat.

The problem, she said, might come when anxiety brightened my electrical system. Needing to know why I experienced the physical reaction might lead me to search out a reason like, “Did I leave the stove on? Is my house burning down?” Doing that could lead to more profound anxiety issues.

Okay. I got that.

I have a friend under medical intervention for OCD where if she didn’t check, double-check, triple-check every light, every appliance, and every lock, she was too anxious to leave the house. Her issues started after a house fire in which their beloved cat died of smoke inhalation.

But that wasn’t this. I didn’t think so anyway. I meant…it could possibly be that I was lit up from the bad dream, the potential kidnapping and fight, my terrible interactions here at the CIA today, and the upcoming party filled with Assemblymen.

It was a lot for even the most even-keeled of people.

Was this me creating a story to explain my anxiety? Or was this truly my ESP warning system?

Chapter Sixteen

Striker and I were hand in hand, making our way across the expanse of Langley’s parking lot. “Give Finley a call, Chica. Put off the FBI until after you’ve seen Dr. Carlon and had a good night’s sleep.”

“Spyder wouldn’t have contacted me before five this morning if this situation could wait. I have to assume they have a small window.”

He fobbed the car unlocked. “I get it, but Lexi, you’re not superhuman.” He opened my door for me.

“No?” I piled into the passenger seat and looked up at him.

Striker leaned in and kissed my nose. “Sorry. But no.” He shut my door and rounded to his side of the car, where he climbed under the steering wheel.

“Are you afraid I’ll have a freak out at the FBI like I did when I saw Black, and you won’t be there to stop the scene from turning bloody?”

“Angry, violent outbursts can be caused by head trauma.” Striker pressed the button to start the engine.

“I was neither.” I pulled on my safety belt. “Okay, I was angry that John Black walked away. But I wasn’t violent. It’s completely rational that I would want to talk to him.”

“You need to tell Dr. Carlon.”

I posted my elbow on the armrest and planted my head in my palm. “Fine,” I whispered.

“What’s fine?”

“Fine, I’ll bring it up when I go see Dr. Carlon.