“What?”
“Dr. Oliver, are you wearing makeup?”
“He’s got a shiner the size of Rhode Island,” I said calmly, stirring milk into my tea. “I thought it better to cover it up.”
“Oh, right. Of course,” Justin returned, while Paul shot me a classic stink-eye. Well, I’d only been trying to help.
“As to the matter at hand,” Troy forged on, with the air of someone who’d spent a lot of time dealing with Justin’s digressions, “yes, it’s going to take a lot of people. We’ve got a decent-sized contingent here in Southern California, but—”
“How many?” Paul asked.
“Twenty, thirty I can really trust. A lot more hangers-on, people who like the excitement but who I wouldn’t want to rely on in a pinch, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Is Jeff Makowski one of your inner circle?”
Justin, who’d been pouring an extra dollop of milk into his latte, paused. “You know Jeff?”
Uh-oh.
“Yes,” Paul said evenly enough, but there was an edge to his tone that I’d begun to recognize. “Unfortunately, Jeff is compromised. Kara didn’t tell you that?”
“No. I don’t think she knew.” Justin set down the little ceramic pitcher of milk and frowned in my direction. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I was a little pressed for time,” I replied, and wished my stomach hadn’t knotted itself quite so badly. “Look, I told them the basics. We needed to get going and rescue Paul. If I’d known Jeff’s involvement was so important, I would’ve said something.”
No one likes a fallible psychic, but even psychics are only human. We make mistakes. We don’t know everything. If you meet a psychic who says she has all the answers, she’s lying. Yes, we have a better feel for the pulse of energy or knowledge or whatever you want to call it that drives human affairs. But even that heightened awareness doesn’t allow us to make all the right decisions all the time.
Paul reached under the table and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. Just a quick touch, so fast I might have imagined it, but enough to let me know he was there, and he understood.
“Piling on Persephone isn’t going to help,” he said. “She’s done an amazing job so far. I’d be dead if it weren’t for her. So let’s focus, all right?”
“Right.” Troy glinted the briefest of sideways looks at his partner, as if to let Justin know it was time to back off. “Anyway, Jeff was the core of the network here. If he’s compromised, then there’s a good chance the conspiracists know the identity of everyone in the Los Angeles group.”
For a few seconds everyone was silent. I swallowed some tea and said the words everyone was thinking and no one wanted to voice aloud. “Including you two.”
Troy’s voice was steady as he replied, “Including us two.”
I turned away from him to look out the window. Our table faced out on Ocean Avenue; I could see the dull gray of the Pacific, the swirl of the morning mists as they began to thin. And then, heading southbound on Ocean, a trio of black SUVs.
“Paul,” I said in warning tones, and stood, scooting my chair backward over the tile floor with an ear-piercing screech. All around us, diners stopped to see what had made the noise.
He looked over my shoulder and nodded, his expression grim. “Gentlemen, thanks for the coffee—and the information. But I think we’d better be going.”
“Here,” Troy said, and tossed a set of keys to Paul, who caught them neatly. “There’s an exit down the hall by the bathrooms that lets you right out in the parking lot.”
We didn’t bother with any thanks, but just moved as quickly as we could through the restaurant and out the back door Troy had described. Luckily it faced away from Ocean, with the bulk of the restaurant between us and the street. I had to hope the MIBs would pull up in front and not waste time with a parking lot. After all, they had no reason to believe we knew they were on to us.
Once we were out of the restaurant, Paul and I gave up any pretense of nonchalance and ran for the Lexus. He hit the remote when we were still yards away, and the doors unlocked, allowing us to jump inside and get moving without an appreciable pause. Since the vehicle had been parked at the far end of the lot, close to the side street that ran alongside it, we were able to pull out and head into the quiet residential district that lay in the blocks beyond Ocean.
I twisted in my seat and looked backward. Almost at once I saw a dark SUV, but I had to force my heart out of my throat as I realized it was dark blue, not black, and had very unMIB-like surfboard racks installed on the roof.
“Any sign of them?” Paul asked, turning down yet another side street.
“No.” I twisted in my seat so I was more or less facing forward. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Not really. Does it matter?”
“Well, if you want to get out of Santa Monica, turn right on Lincoln so you can head back to the freeway.”
He didn’t reply, but wrenched the Lexus around the right I had indicated. The little glow-in-the-dark alien head hanging from the rearview mirror dangled wildly.
“Paul?” I ventured. His jaw was set, his profile as he navigated down Lincoln Avenue grimmer than I had ever seen it. “Are you okay?”
Silence again. I held my tongue as he waited at the interminable light that would allow us to turn left to get on the eastbound freeway.
Once we were moving again, he finally spoke. “No, Persephone, I’m not okay. Every time we take one step forward, it’s two steps back. Now the network that was supposed to help us is all but useless. All we can hope is that our enemies are so bent on finding us that they won’t waste their time with people like Justin and Troy. Or Bettina Croft.”
I’d almost forgotten about Bettina. I tried to reassure myself that they wouldn’t bother with her, that her money and her obvious position in society would protect her, but I didn’t know that for sure. Nothing told me I was wrong, no twinging of my funny bone or odd ache in my gut. I didn’t find that terribly reassuring, though. My instincts had been off more than I cared to admit.
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Give up? Turn ourselves in?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Only one of the most condescending phrases in the English language…and one I’d heard often enough throughout my life that I’d come to heartily hate it. “Well, with you talking like that, I’m not sure what to think.”
He sighed then. “I’m sorry, Persephone. I don’t like feeling as if I don’t have the answers. But in this case, I truly don’t. And it seems we never get enough time to go anywhere and think.”
Well, that was true enough. The three days since I’d met Paul seemed to be a blur of traffic and streets and freeways. Moving, always moving, and yet we barely managed to stay a jump ahead.
“I know someplace,” I told him. “Keep heading east.”
Surrounded by the tranquillity of the Japanese gardens at the Huntington Library, it was hard to believe that such things as aliens and men in black and government conspiracies even existed. Paul and I found a garden bench near a wisteria arbor and sat down. Because it was a cool, pearly gray kind of Sunday, the gardens weren’t as crowded as they would be later in the year, when tourists would flock to see the roses and all the exotic plants. Right then, we could almost pretend we were the only two people there.
I wouldn’t say the weight had entirely gone from Paul’s shoulders, but some shadow of care seemed to lift from his expression as he sat down next to me and stared off into the distance at the graceful arching bridge and sorrowful shapes of the weeping willows.
“You could always take up a second profession as a tour guide if the whole psychic thing doesn’t work out,” he remarked.
“Are you saying I’m not good at it?”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying.” Again he reached out and gave my hand one of those reassuring little squeezes. “I just meant that you’ve done an amazing job of navigating us out of trouble.”
<
br /> “Well, I am a native,” I said, a bit mollified. “I just wish I could have done more to get us farther along. Thank you for being understanding, for realizing that just because I have some powers the general population doesn’t share, it doesn’t mean I’m the Great and Powerful Oz.”
“I’ve met my share of psychics.” He smiled then. “Almost impossible not to, in the circles I’ve been traveling in lately. The more sure they were of everything they said, the bigger charlatans they turned out to be. If you think I’m angry or disappointed, I’m not. Well, not with you, anyway.”
I nodded, a warmth that had nothing to do with the absent sun moving through me. At least Paul understood, and really, his was the only opinion I cared about at the moment.
“So what next?” I asked. “Storm the gates of Sony, Universal, Columbia, et al.?”
He smiled, but wearily, as if he wanted to acknowledge my quip but didn’t see all that much humor in the situation. “If I thought it would do any good. Unfortunately, I doubt we’d get past the security guards.”
“It’s pretty horrible, if you think about it.” I hugged my arms against myself and stared out at the misty vistas of the formal gardens. So much for sunny Southern California. “I mean, even if Troy and Justin had been able to rally the troops and somehow destroy all that film and all those digital files, it would have been ruinous for Hollywood. It would have taken years for the studios to recover financially.”
At that, he shifted toward me on the bench. The hazel eyes regarded me carefully for a few seconds. This close, I could see the faint layer of cosmetics in the one eye socket, with just the faintest smudge of bruise showing beneath it.
“I didn’t even stop to think about that,” he said.
I lifted my shoulders. “Well, I have a lot of clients who do the behind-the-scenes stuff. They’re always the ones who get hurt when there’s a strike or some kind of downturn in the business. People tend to think if you’re working in Hollywood you’re in clover, but it’s really not like that. Not for everyone, anyway.”
His expression was still pensive as he nodded. “And it’s a consideration I suppose we’ll have to keep in mind…whatever we end up doing next.”
“What about Kara and the rest of the gang in Sedona? I’m sure they’d come out here if we asked.”
“It’s a possibility, but I’m certain they’re being watched. If they headed out to California, they’d just lead the conspiracists here.”
I supposed he had a point. “There must be other groups—maybe up in the Bay Area—”
“I’m sure there are, but how are we supposed to contact them? I don’t—didn’t know anyone in the California network except Jeff. And he had reached out to me; I’m really not that active in those communities. It’s sort of frowned on, actually.”
“Frowned on?” I inquired, not sure what he was getting at.
Surprisingly, he smiled. “I’m sure the general public views the UFO community as one undifferentiated mass of nutcases, but, as in any other community, it has its own hierarchies. Those of us who are working to legitimize the field, who publish and do speaking engagements, tend not to get down in the trenches with the conspiracy theorists and the tinfoil-hat wearers. Jeff and I opened a dialogue awhile back because he had some interesting ideas, but, as I said, he sought me out. I didn’t know who any of his colleagues were. And even if I tried to locate some, I’m sure there are agents looking for just that sort of communication right now.”
“So basically we’re screwed, no matter what we do next.”
“In a nutshell.”
I wanted to say something, give him some reassuring words, but I found I had none. Instead I stood up, partly because the bench was beginning to feel a little damp, and partly because a restlessness had taken hold in me—born, I guessed, from the dead end in which we’d apparently found ourselves.
That restlessness turned abruptly to icy fear, as I took in the landscape around us and saw three sets of men in dark suits converging on our location. No one wore a suit to the Huntington, not even on a cooler-than-normal March day.
“Paul,” I said.
Something in my voice must have alerted him, because he stood up immediately, his face paling beneath its tan as he took in the ominous shapes of those black-suited men. “Back toward the museum. Now.”
And he grabbed my hand and dragged me after him as he took off at a run, those long legs propelling him forward along the gravel path. I didn’t look back, didn’t do anything except pour every ounce of strength I possessed into forcing my own feet to keep up, to will myself to a speed I didn’t know I could manage.
In fact, I was so busy concentrating on following Paul that I didn’t notice the one agent until the last minute. A heavy hand wrapped around my upper arm, and something brutally heavy crashed into the side of my skull.
The world went black.
Chapter Fourteen
At first all I noticed was the sick taste in my mouth, and a dull thudding behind my right ear. Then harsh white light invaded my world as I opened my eyes.
An unfamiliar voice said, “Ms. O’Brien.”
I blinked, and saw a man wearing one of the familiar black suits standing a few feet away from me. We were in a room very similar to the cell I’d rescued Paul from—rock walls and floor, narrow little cot. I lay on the cot now, although I had no recollection of how I’d gotten there. A hybrid soldier stood guard at the door.
“Ms. O’Brien,” the man said again.
He had the sort of face you might pass in a crowd and never notice—not young, not old, not ugly, not handsome. His eyes were pale, his hair dark.
I struggled to sit up, and nausea swirled through me. Digging my fingers into the edge of the cot, I managed to say, “I think I’m going to be sick,” before I was, right on the floor of the cell.
Some of it splashed against the man’s wingtips. He gestured, and the soldier came over, pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his uniform, and wiped down my face. These ministrations were oddly gentle, all things considered, although his touch made me want to go take a bath. Once he was done with me, he left me more or less propped up on the cot while he bent down to clean away the specks of vomit from the agent’s shiny black shoes.
“Get her some water,” the agent said, sounding more than a little irritated. In a way, I couldn’t really blame him. I probably would have felt the same way if I’d been in his shoes. So to speak.
The hybrid went over to a table I hadn’t noticed before and poured some water into a cup from a plastic pitcher, the kind they use in hospitals. He came back and handed me the cup. I took it and allowed myself a cautious sip. It tasted like water.
“There’s nothing in it, I assure you,” the agent said, as the guard resumed his position by the door. “There are far easier ways to drug you.”
“What do you want?” I asked, since I couldn’t really think of how to reply to that statement. “Where’s Paul?”
“He’s safe…for now.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I think, Ms. O’Brien, that you don’t fully appreciate your situation. I’ll ask the questions…not you.”
Oh, I appreciated my situation, all right. Now that I was slightly more awake and aware, my instincts told me the agents had brought me right back to their base outside Sedona, which meant I had to have been out for several hours—a good deal more than that, if they’d driven me here.
Us, I thought then. Somehow I knew Paul was here as well, that he hadn’t managed to escape. That he hadn’t even tried, I realized with one of those flashes of intuition so clear I might as well have seen it myself. That he’d stopped and turned to see me knocked out by the one agent, that he’d gone down swinging until they’d administered some kind of knockout drug to him.
And he was here, very close. Possibly even in the next cell, although I couldn’t be entirely certain of that.
Somehow the thought cheered me, even though I knew things had gone from bad t
o just about as worse as they could possibly be.
“Ask away,” I told the agent blithely. “Although I’m guessing there isn’t much I can tell you that you don’t already know.”
He frowned at that statement, the pale eyes narrowing. “All right, Ms. O’Brien. What exactly did you think you were going to accomplish with all these cloak-and-dagger activities?”
“Were they cloak and dagger?” I asked, all innocence. “I just thought of it as trying to not attract attention.”
His expression didn’t change. “How did you manage to free Paul Oliver?”
Ah, so I had stumped them with that little trick. I found the realization perversely pleasing, even though I guessed I wouldn’t be able to pull off the same maneuver again. “Your little clones aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box. It wasn’t that hard.”
Lips compressed, he regarded me in silence for a moment before asking, “Why do you think they’re clones?”
“Well, unless women have started having babies in litters, it’s kind of hard to come up with a dozen men who all look exactly the same.”
An odd noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a throat-clearing, seemed to emanate from the hybrid guarding the door. The agent shot him a glare of extreme annoyance, while I filed that one away for future reference. Maybe the clones weren’t quite as one-size-fits-all as I had thought.
“Moving on,” the agent said, now sounding distinctly testy. “How did you find this facility?”
Perversely, I was almost beginning to enjoy myself. “You mean, besides the phrases ‘Boynton Canyon’ and ‘secret underground base’ being scattered all over the Internet?”
“Yes,” he ground out. “Besides that.”
“Well, I am psychic.”
Another one of those long pauses. He crossed his arms—a sure sign I was beginning to get under his skin. “You don’t really expect me to believe you’re truly a psychic, do you? Save that for the rubes you bilk out of their life savings.”
Bad Vibrations: Book 1 of the Sedona Files Page 20
