The Delphi Resistance (The Delphi Trilogy Book 2)

by Rysa Walker

  He raises his eyebrows in a what-do-you-think-of-that expression. Then he relaxes back into the rocker, resting his folded hands on his stomach.

  Aaron shuffles through the papers in his lap. “Did you talk much with Mr. Hawkins about his time in the military?”

  “Occasionally. We’d shoot the breeze from time to time, usually about our tours in Iraq. We served in different wars, but it’s always the same . . .” Peck’s eyes flit toward me briefly. “Always the same stuff goin’ on.”

  “This class action suit is specifically for offspring from one particular military program. Did either of her parents ever mention a program called Delphi?”

  Aaron barely has the word out before Daniel comes speeding to the front.

  No! Damn it, Aaron. The program wasn’t called Delphi when it was at Bragg! That’s later. He should know—

  Come on, Daniel! Really? If you can’t keep quiet, I’ll have to put you behind the wall. Understood?

  Daniel has been pretty mellow since we left North Carolina last night. I think he wore himself out fighting against Grady. It felt like the inside of my head was bleeding after he shouted that the gun was a snake, and I still had remnants of that headache when I woke up this morning. Plus, he and Jaden have both been occupied with Hunter.

  But Daniel’s interruption wasn’t even necessary. Aaron’s already corrected himself by the time I tune back in, noting that it was called the Stargate Project at Bragg.

  “He didn’t mention any program by name, but this one time, Jasper had a few too many, and he starts talkin’ about this assignment back in the . . . I think it was the late 1990s. Before he met his wife, before he had kids. Claimed they were doin’ some freaky sh—stuff. Experiments to predict the future, find lost items, mess with the enemy’s head. Said one of the bigwigs over there swore it was possible to walk through walls if you meditated on it long enough. Anyway, Jasper told me he was part of this program. Said they gave him some sort of injections to amp up his psychic powers.” He does the thing with his eyebrows again to emphasize the last words.

  “You didn’t believe him?” Aaron asks.

  “Well, no. I never saw anything psychic about him. He was a bit on the crazy side, you ask me. Nicest guy in the world ’til he got worked up about somethin’, and then he had a temper like a bee-stung bear. Pretty sure he hit his wife on occasion. Them kids, too, although never hard enough to warrant us callin’ in the cops or anything.”

  Doreen snorts softly. It’s as close as I’ve heard her come to disagreeing with her husband. She seems to feel me watching her, because she pulls her gaze away from the jungle gym and gives me a long look I can’t quite decipher.

  “What about the other kid?” Aaron asks Peck. “TJ?”

  “Normal eight-year-old boy, far as I ever saw.”

  “He wasn’t Jasper’s,” Doreen adds. “TJ was Randa’s from her first marriage.”

  I jot this down as Aaron continues questioning Peck. “And you’re sure you don’t know where they moved to? You said there were grandparents at that party. Maybe you could dredge up a name?”

  Peck sighs and gives both of us an annoyed look, which I sort of understand. He stated at the very beginning of the interview, before he launched into the Treehouse of Horror story, that he had no idea where the Hawkins family is currently living.

  “Like I told you, we ain’t got a clue where they went. Cleared out in the middle of the night back in . . . July. Pretty sure it was July. The house finally went up for sale last month. Maybe you could track down the realtor on the sign out front, see what she knows.”

  Aaron glances over at me, and I give him a little shrug. It’s not like we can tell Peck that I know we’ll pull out of his driveway with this information scrawled on a piece of pale-green paper. Explaining that to Peck won’t change the outcome. We’ll still leave here with the info. The only difference is that Aaron and I will likely have the lead roles in Carl Peck’s next story at poker night if I tell him. And I’d really rather avoid that.

  Just let me move to the front for a minute, Anna. I’ll give him a little nudge, and—

  No.

  My response is automatic. With Grady it was necessary. Even with Pruitt, since she was a split second from calling the cops on us. But a case like this, where someone just isn’t cooperating, is different. It feels wrong to take someone’s free will without a damn good reason.

  It feels like the kind of thing Graham Cregg does.

  “Checking with the realtor is a good idea, sir,” Aaron says. “We’ll get the number off the sign before we go.”

  “Let’s go now. I’ll walk you over,” Peck says, giving us a conspiratorial grin as he pushes himself up from the rocker. “While we’re at it, we can sneak around back. There’s a couple of interestin’ little . . . artifacts from that birthday party.”

  The side of Doreen’s mouth twitches downward as she watches Carl slowly descend the porch steps. She gives me another enigmatic look, then retreats into the dark of the house, closing the door behind her.

  Doreen knows something. And since I doubt that Carl has a pen and the piece of oddly shaped pale green paper that I saw in my vision tucked into the pocket of his Levis, I need to stick with Doreen.

  “Is it okay if I use your restroom? It’s a long drive back to Atlanta.”

  “Sure thing,” Peck says. “That iced tea’ll run straight through you on a day like this. Don’t know where Doreen got off to, but it’s the third door down the hall on the right. Can’t miss it.”

  Peck heads off across the lawn. “Hard to believe it’s November, ain’t it? Not nearly as hot as November 1958, though, when I was in junior high over in Macon. I tell you, it was nearly a hundred degrees in the middle of the month. So don’t get started on that global warming crap, ’cause it’s just plain ol’ nature bein’ her usual contrary self, not carbon deposits or whatever.”

  Aaron shoots me an imploring look as they round the corner of the house, clearly wishing I wasn’t abandoning him to the crazy person.

  I push the door open and step inside. The cool air is a welcome change, but the hallway is so dark after the midday sun outside that I can barely see.

  “Come on into the kitchen.” Doreen’s voice startles me, even though she’s barely speaking above a whisper.

  I follow her down the hallway into the kitchen. It’s painted a pale yellow, and there’s a large butcher-block island in the middle, with deep knife grooves that suggest it’s not merely there for aesthetic purposes. The shelves along the back of the island are filled with cookbooks, cooking gadgets, and . . . frogs. Lots and lots of frogs. There are at least a hundred of them. A mug shaped like Kermit the Frog sits next to the coffeepot. All of the refrigerator magnets are frogs of one variety or another, and ceramic frogs are scattered about on shelves and countertops. Even the salt and pepper shakers are frogs.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  I pull my gaze away from the amphibian menagerie and take the bogus work badge out of my pocket. “Elizabeth Bennet, with Bingley, Darcy, and—”

  Doreen cuts me off with a wave of her hand. “I don’t care what company you’re with. How old are you?”

  I open my mouth, fully prepared to tell the cover story. I’m twenty-two, just finished college. But something about the searching look in her eyes stops me. I think she’ll know if I keep lying. And I think she’ll stop talking, too.

  “Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in two weeks. This is an internship.”

  Rookie move, Anna. Always stick to the cover story.

  Without a word, I push him as hard as I can to the back of my head and stack the mental bricks to block him. It’s a quick process, thanks to twelve years of practice, but my speed has probably doubled in the past sixteen days, thanks to Daniel’s complete inability to keep his mouth shut.

  “You okay?” Doreen asks.

  “Yeah. Just . . . a little woozy from the heat, I guess.”

  “You got any other identif
ication on you?”

  “Not on me. But I think my school ID’s out in the car.” Which will have a different name, so I really hope she doesn’t want me to go get it.

  Doreen shoots a nervous glance toward the kitchen door. “No. Don’t bother. I can tell you’re too young to be with the group that came snoopin’ around before asking questions. I’m pretty sure they’re the same folks who tried to snatch Peyton from her mama when they were at the grocery store, which is why her family had to take off like they did. Miranda thought maybe they were government. I don’t wanna believe our government would be behind somethin’ like that, although these days . . .” She trails off, shaking her head, and then her eyes sharpen again. “But I’m not stupid. I don’t buy your story about a class action suit. Why are you really here?”

  “You’re right,” I say, again going with the instinct to be honest with her, and making a mental note to come up with a better cover story next time we talk to Magda. “But we are trying to help.”

  “Why?”

  “Because those same people who tried to snatch Peyton snatched me. I got away, but I know what they’re up to. I don’t want it happening to anyone else.”

  Technically, that’s not true. They snatched Deo. I turned myself over to Graham Cregg of my own accord, even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t honor his agreement to let Deo go. But the underlying sentiment is true. We want to keep Cregg’s people from getting their hands on these kids. And that truth must show on my face, because Doreen’s eyes soften.

  But then she reaches behind her and pulls a cookbook—something by Paul Prudhomme—from one of the shelves and begins thumbing through it, ignoring me. Just as I’m about to try again, to ask her if there’s anything at all that she can tell me, she pulls a pale-green piece of paper from the cookbook. It’s shaped like a frog, and there’s a phone number and address written across its belly.

  Doreen clutches the paper tightly, and her words begin to spew out at a rapid clip. “Carl don’t know half as much as he thinks he does. He was sleeping like a dead thing when I went over that night to help Miranda pack up. She was scared half to death. No surprise there—someone tried to snatch her baby in the middle of the damn Piggly Wiggly. As soon as they were done with the police, Jasper left town with the kids in one car, and Miranda started throwing food, clothes, whatever she could lay her hands on, into the back of their truck. Jasper told her not to let anyone know where they were heading, but . . . she was worried they might need something they’d left behind. Randa was a lot younger than me, but me and her, we were friends. She’d cried on my shoulder more than once about Jasper’s damn temper. I even taped up her finger once when the jackass broke it. She always said it wasn’t his fault, but . . . I don’t know how much of that was her thinking his temper was due to that Army program and how much was just the typical garbage women say when they’re married to a man who likes to beat up on them. I also knew about Peyton long before Carl saw her take apart that tree house. That was the biggest stunt she pulled, but it wasn’t the first. Randa had her hands full. Hard enough to control a normal toddler, but one who can do stuff like that?”

  Doreen shakes her head. She glances back down at the paper, then folds it in half, still not handing it to me. I’m scared to reach for it, scared she’ll change her mind. Which is stupid, since I know she doesn’t change her mind, but . . .

  “Why did they snatch you?” she asks. “Can you move things with your mind like Peyton does—what do they call it? Telekinesis?”

  “No. I don’t have telekinesis.”

  This is true, although I can’t help flashing back to our escape from the place Jaden and the others called The Warren. One of the hitchers who was briefly in my head, the ones I think of as the Furies, tweaked something in Lucas’s body to give him a sneezing fit so violent that his nose was pouring blood. Another was thinking, Throw him through the glass wall, and she definitely wasn’t planning to use her hands. That wasn’t me, and those hitchers are gone now, but it still feels a bit like a selective truth, and I hope Doreen doesn’t catch it.

  “But I do have some other abilities that they’d like to . . . exploit,” I tell her. “We want to prevent that. Our goal is to get these kids to a safe place and, eventually, find a way to reverse or at least control what was done to them.”

  Doreen looks down at the paper and sighs. “Miranda trusted me with this. I guess now I’m trusting you. If I ever find out you betrayed that trust . . .” Her eyes narrow, and she gives a bitter laugh. “Who am I kidding? There won’t be a damned thing I can do except send nasty thoughts your way. You just remember, though, God’s watchin’ you. And like they say, what goes ’round, comes ’round.”

  I take the frog-shaped note. “And you think they’re still at this address?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it’s the fishing cabin that her great-uncle owned. And as of last night, Miranda was there. With TJ. We usually e-mail back and forth . . . but she actually called this time. Sounded scared. Needed to hear a friendly voice, I guess.”

  “So . . . just Miranda and her son? Where are Peyton and Jasper?”

  “That’s why Miranda called. Said Peyton had lost control again. This time it was Randa who ended up in the emergency room . . . six stitches and a concussion. She said Jasper has Peyton over on the island, whatever that means, ’cause he couldn’t get her to calm down. I’ll tell you straight up that the main reason I decided to trust you is that Miranda sounded like she was at her wit’s end. She needs help. The whole family needs help.”

  I feel a rush of annoyance at Magda for making us postpone this trip. If we’d come straight here, the MPs would almost certainly have found the kids during their training. There would be fewer dead bodies at Overhills, although I find it hard to work up much sympathy about Grady. And maybe we could have prevented Miranda Hawkins’s trip to the emergency room. I can only imagine how guilty that little girl is feeling, after causing her mom to need stitches.

  I’d have one less hitcher in my head too, although my feelings on that are bit more mixed. It would be easier on me, but hopefully Hunter will find peace faster this way.

  “Listen,” Doreen says, “I’d appreciate it if you kept everything I told you between you and me. Carl certainly don’t need to know. That old fool can’t keep a secret to save his life. Wish Miranda didn’t have to find out I told you, either . . . but I don’t see much way around her knowing. Hopefully she’ll understand I’m trying to help.”

  “I’ll make sure she does. And we’ll do our best to help Peyton. To help her family. I promise.”

  “You’d better.” Doreen levels me with a stare as she says the words. It feels like her entire battalion of kitchen frogs is staring me down as well. If I was inclined to break that promise, which I’m not, those frogs would haunt me.

  Aaron is waiting by the truck. Peck is still talking, something about bulldogs and a rambling wreck, as Aaron nods, a frozen smile on his face. He perks up, however, when I flash the little piece of notepaper.

  “My money’s on the dogs,” Peck says. “But then I’ve never much cared for tech—”

  “Hey, um . . . we need to be going,” Aaron says to Peck. “But we do appreciate your help, sir. And tell your wife thanks for the iced tea.”

  “Sure thing. Y’all drive safe goin’ back to Atlanta, hear?”

  “What was he talking about?” I ask Aaron once we’re backing out of the driveway.

  Aaron shrugs. “Football, I think. I was just trying to nod in the right places by that point. So . . . that’s the paper you saw?”

  I’ve been a little cryptic about the specifics of the vision. I can’t avoid it, but there’s no need for everyone else to have that weird sense of déjà vu.

  “Yeah. I knew it was green but didn’t realize it was frog shaped. Doreen’s kitchen is teeming with frogs. Not real ones,” I add, in response to his expression. “But it was still kind of creepy.”

  “So you don’t like mice and you don’t
like frogs,” he says with a little grin. “Not exactly a nature girl, are you?”

  “I’m fine with frogs that are actually in nature. But frogs staring at you from every square inch of space in a kitchen is freaky. And get this . . . the address she has written here is in North Carolina.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “Not kidding. But luckily, we won’t be going back to Fort Bragg. The place is called Carova. Must be near the coast, or maybe a big lake. Doreen mentioned an island and said they might be staying in a fishing cabin.”

  “Okay,” Aaron says. “That’s better. Hopefully we won’t have to go too close to Bragg. The media hasn’t mentioned any bodies being discovered. I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time, though. And I’d rather not be nosing around there until things calm down.”

  I fill Aaron in on the rest of what Doreen told me, including Peyton’s recent rampage. “She’s not even four. Kids that age don’t have a lot of self-control. Can you imagine knowing that your preschooler might literally tear the house apart if she misses her nap or just has a bad day?”

  Aaron sighs. “She sounds like the kid you mentioned back at The Warren.”

  Daniel is lurking just behind my wall, following the conversation. I get the sense he doesn’t agree with Aaron, so I reluctantly pull down the bricks. As nice as it is to have my head mostly to myself, I can’t keep him penned up all day.

  So . . . you disagree?

  Absolutely. Unless this Peyton kid is way more powerful than she sounds, she’s minor league compared to The Kid back at The Warren.

  Those are the words that Daniel forms into sentences and consciously delivers to me. But Daniel and I have been doing this little mind dance for over a week now, and it’s getting much easier for me to pick up the thoughts that hover just below the surface, the undercurrent he’s trying to hide from me. These aren’t always words. Sometimes, they are colors and images that reflect his emotions, little flashes of fear and anger like the ones that I saw the other day. This time, however, what comes through subconsciously are the words he chose not to use. The words he edited out but couldn’t entirely block. When he thought The Kid, he was picturing the door to Room 81, but he was also thinking, Sariah’s boy.