Stolen Thoughts

by Tim Tigner

  “Right. And?”

  “They’ll also come to the conclusion that they can’t share their discovery.”

  “Keep going,” Vicky prompted.

  “He or she or they won’t only restrain themselves, they’ll also police other researchers, to ensure that nobody else starts the plague, so to speak.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Would that be difficult? The policing?”

  “No. It’s a relatively small field, and the serious players are concentrated at a handful of universities like Caltech and MIT.”

  “So you would have been easy to identify and monitor.”

  “Very. When I suddenly abandoned my research, my peers thought I’d given up. But anyone who’d previously succeeded would have suspected the truth—and investigated. I told no one except my mother, and I kept all my notes encrypted, so they would not have been able to confirm my success.”

  “Okay. Good,” Chewie said, nodding along, enjoying the creative meeting of minds.

  “Then I opened Cassandra.”

  Chewie froze as the last two dots connected. “Which both confirms your success and appears reckless if you don’t really think about it and realize that fortune telling is actually one of the few places where mind reading can be used without raising suspicion.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. I buy your logic. How does that conclusion drive what you’ll do next?”

  Vicky rose and began wandering about the room. “I have no way of knowing if he, she, or they were two months or two decades ahead of me in making the discovery, so identifying them is going to be difficult. And even if I could find them, given that they chose to hire an assassin rather than reach out, attempting to make my case would be an exceedingly risky proposition. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Meanwhile, Vance’s failure changes nothing. They remain convinced that I’m Typhoid Mary—and therefore will keep sending assassins until one succeeds.”

  Chewie’s face dropped, but he said nothing.

  Vicky stopped directly before him. “I’ve decided to run. To leave Las Vegas, abandon Cassandra, and start a new life in hiding overseas.”

  She watched Chewie’s face as his mind raced the course she’d run a few hours earlier. “I’m sure the Bellagio would offer me security as long as my show’s making them money, but I don’t want to live that way. A gilded cage is still a cage. And I’d never be able to relax. I know some politicians and executives are content to live that way, but the bodyguard lifestyle wouldn’t work for me.”

  “What are you thinking?” Chewie said, his voice reduced to a whisper.

  Vicky took his hands. “I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in Pasadena, which, like Malibu and Santa Monica and Long Beach, is a suburb of Los Angeles—albeit inland. While I loved my life, I occasionally fantasized about sailing off on one of the beautiful yachts I saw when we went to the beach. Now’s my opportunity. I don’t have a ton of money, but it’s been a really good few months. I have enough to buy a nice used yacht and live a modest life aboard it, exploring distant islands while my trail goes cold and I figure out my next act in life.”

  “You’re leaving?” Chewie said, his voice cracking.

  “Vanishing, with a bag full of cash and a burner phone.”

  Chewie’s face grew ever more desperate during a long silence. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s okay,” Vicky said, taking his hands. “I know what you can say. Tell me you’ll go with me.”

  10

  Dark Lord

  TRENT KELLER SAID, “Please!” to the empty hotel suite before logging into the private chat room at the appointed hour. Security wasn’t his concern. He had complete confidence in his ability to remain untraceable on the dark web. He was praying for success. For good news.

  That news would be in the form of photographs. All of them would have an original 1977 Darth Vader action figure in the bottom left corner. The toy served both as a signature and as proof of authenticity. The rest of the frame would show Victoria Pixler’s body in enough detail that there could be no mistaking the fact that she was dead.

  Trent appreciated the clever confirmation system designed by Dark Lord 89109. Hiring a hitman online was difficult and dangerous. You needed some way of verifying that you weren’t actually dealing with a cop or a conman. The action figure photo system adequately addressed that concern.

  After his experience with Vance Panzer, however, Trent hadn’t taken anything for granted. He’d gone the extra mile. He had used facial recognition software to identify the victims in the Dark Lord’s résumé photos, and then match their murders to central Las Vegas zip code 89109. While that corroboration wasn’t airtight, it was sufficiently solid to leave Trent feeling optimistic when transferring the cryptocurrency down payment.

  The chat room updated while he watched—but not with photos. He got text instead. “She’s gone.”

  Trent sighed with relief. He’d been dreading the possibility of reporting a second screwup. He’d already decided to personally cover the fee for the next guy, if the Dark Lord didn’t deliver. That would be far less painful than reporting another failure. He typed an equally brief reply. “Excellent! Photos?”

  Three image files appeared. Trent clicked on the first. It showed the action figure outside the door to Pixler’s apartment. Trent hadn’t been there, but the number was right. Getting addresses was easy when you were wearing the right glasses. All you had to do was ask.

  The second Darth Vader photo showed an empty living room. The third an empty bedroom. Only as he began typing an angry reply did Trent understand. “She’s gone” meant moved, not dead.

  But moved where? To the Bellagio was his best guess. The casino would want to protect their cash cow, and had the means to do so.

  Online, her show and consultations were simply marked “unavailable,” just like anything else that wasn’t playing on a particular day in Vegas. Taking a break was a normal reaction to a trauma, so Trent hadn’t panicked when he saw the notices. But now he was nervous. What if she’d gone into hiding? Run away? In that case, his mistake with Vance would become a catastrophe rather than something soon forgotten.

  He had to get to the Bellagio and ask around.

  But first, he had to deal with Vader. He needed to keep the ball rolling. Hopefully without renegotiating. A simple reply ought to do it—so long as it was accurate. “I’ll get you a new location ASAP.”

  11

  Collateral Damage

  St. Croix, the Caribbean

  AS DAWN BROKE over the Isle of St. Croix, Zachary Chase and Skylar Fawkes were running—in two senses of the word. Their feet were pounding out a synchronized cadence on the warming pavement of East End Road, and they were running from their past.

  While their jogging routes changed as frequently as the islands beneath their feet, sunrise runs had become one of the couple’s daily routines. Their ritual for bringing order to what could be considered a chaotic life.

  Skylar, once a world-ranked triathlete, was the faster of the two despite being four inches shorter at 5’8”. While Chase had always been athletic, their relationship had greatly improved both his strength and stamina. By his count, those were just two of the many ways in which she was making him a better man.

  They had been living together aboard their 62-foot yacht for eight months. The Sea La Vie had been christened the C’est La Vie, but they’d changed it before learning that renaming boats was considered bad luck. Apparently, Poseidon punished people who attempted to fool him. Chase had momentarily considered undoing his handiwork when he heard the folklore, but he was more concerned about the danger of retaining a link to his past life than he was fearful of the Greek god’s wrath. And as Skylar noted, Sea Life was both more fitting and more deferential than That’s Life.

  The marina where the couple had berthed their floating home was about three miles behind them when they passed their first fellow jogger of the mornin
g, a teenage girl whose determined look made Chase think she had her eye on a track and field scholarship. “Bet she has the soundtrack from some motivational movie blaring from her earbuds,” he said.

  Skylar glanced over with a knowing smile. “You’re probably right.”

  Chase was in the habit of cataloguing and analyzing people they passed, not just on runs, but everywhere they went. It was a skill he’d picked up during his decade with the CIA and then perfected over the last eight months as a man on the run.

  He and Skylar weren’t running from anyone in particular. In fact, he didn’t believe they were being actively pursued. But making off with sixteen million dollars of a deceased drug dealer’s money had made him a cautious man.

  Chase gave the determined young jogger a friendly nod as they passed, then shifted his focus to an approaching automobile. It was far from typical for the Caribbean, where cars tended to be older, economy models. The speeding vehicle was a sparkling new sapphire-blue metallic Porsche Macan with matching rims. It appeared as energized as the jogging girl—but a lot less controlled.

  Chase used his left hand and a quick “Careful!” to guide Skylar well off the road while his eyes locked on the Porsche’s driver. His concern was that the blonde woman’s aggressive style might be caused by the adrenaline surge that strikes right before battle, a rush that tends to make amateur operatives reckless. While the odds were long that she was an assassin sent to mow them down, the ounce-of-prevention policy applied.

  Taking him and Skylar out with a car accident and then making off with their yacht would be an efficient way to reclaim the purloined loot. Furthermore, a flashy Porsche was the kind of car a drug dealer might choose to use.

  The blonde did not return his stare. In fact, she didn’t appear to have her attention focused on anything at all, including the road.

  Recognizing the situation for what it was, Chase turned and yelled back at the girl. “Look out! Look out! A car!”

  She didn’t react.

  She couldn’t hear him.

  She was focused on pumping out the miles to the pounding of a soundtrack beat.

  Everything was over in a flash. A tick. A blink. The collision, the escape, and the girl’s life.

  Chase had covered half the distance to the runner before she crash-landed atop the oceanside rocks. Skylar was closer still. But it was obvious before either reached her side that the girl was already gone. Living bodies didn’t lie that way. Not still, in any case.

  At least it had been quick. Quick as a flash of sapphire-blue metallic paint.

  Chase felt for a pulse anyway as Skylar whipped out her phone. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Calling 911.”

  “Skylar, we can’t,” he said with a swallowed sob. “We’re lying low, living under false identities. We can’t call the police and then run from the scene. And we sure can’t stick around to give a statement that will land us under oath on a witness stand.”

  Skylar’s face contorted this way and that as her better angels and bitter demons collided. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the battle to conclude—with the angels victorious. “We also can’t let that drunk blonde bimbo get away with murdering this girl. She didn’t even look back. We have to call an ambulance, and we have to inform the police. We simply must.”

  12

  Tipped Scales

  ZACHARY CHASE was not a fan of courtrooms and courthouses. They usually left him feeling down. While their architecture tended to be grand and the ideals behind them lofty, in his experience they did not showcase the best of civilization. Rather, modern courts frequently demonstrated that civilized life—like Thomas Hobbes’ famous uncivilized one—was all too often solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

  Nonetheless, he and Skylar were voluntarily visiting St. Croix’s courthouse, hoping to help render justice—without ending up in jail.

  Looking across the table, Chase shifted his gaze from prosecutor McKay to the parents of the victim. He’d initially thought it odd that Mr. and Mrs. Mead were present for their update with McKay, but after hearing her news he understood. “You really need us to testify?” he asked. “Affidavits definitely won’t be enough?”

  Elisa McKay turned slowly to both Glenn and Cora Mead before responding, taking Chase’s gaze with her. The couple looked exactly like you’d expect the proud parents of a promising only child to look after her homicide. They were clearly living in purgatory, experiencing endless torment while waiting for the slow wheels of justice to deliver an appropriate verdict.

  The trial offered false hope, Chase knew. The Meads would continue to suffer long after Guilty rang loud from the jury foreman’s lips. But he and Skylar were committed to giving them that moment of satisfaction all the same.

  “Your affidavits would likely be enough under normal circumstances if we had more to work with,” McKay replied after meeting their eyes. “But the Porters successfully eliminated all the physical evidence, to the extent that there ever was any. You’d be surprised by how little damage cars sometimes sustain when colliding with something as soft as flesh.”

  Chase risked another glance at the grieving parents. The assumptions he’d made when he first saw their daughter were accurate. Maria had been the star of her high school track team. And she was hoping to receive an athletic scholarship. One that would have made her the first member of the Mead family to attend a mainland university.

  She was Glenn and Cora’s only child.

  Chase and Skylar didn’t have children yet, but they planned to someday. Since both were in their early thirties, the biological clock wasn’t yet putting the pressure on. Mrs. Mead, however, might well be beyond childbearing years. She and Glenn couldn’t start over, even if they found the energy.

  “We know it’s an imposition for you to remain on the island,” her father said. “We hope you’ll consider justice to be a sufficiently compelling reason.”

  “Of course we will,” Skylar said.

  “What did you mean when you said ‘under normal circumstances’?” Chase asked McKay.

  The prosecutor shrugged. “The defendant is very wealthy. Court systems, like all others, can be manipulated by people with money. It’s safe to anticipate some, shall we say, distasteful tricks.”

  Chase found that a surprisingly candid admission. The prosecutor’s honesty increased his desire to help. “I see. Speaking of anticipation, when do you expect that the trial will start?”

  “One week from today,” McKay replied. “Kitty Porter’s counsel, a named partner from a prestigious New York City law firm, has pressed hard for swift justice and we’re happy to oblige.”

  “I see,” Chase said. “Do my wife and I need to remain on the island in the meantime, or can we just come back for the trial?”

  “I’d prefer that you stay. In any case, Ms. Porter’s attorney will need to depose you.”

  “We won’t run out on you,” Skylar said, running a nervous hand through her short blonde hair. “When can we expect to be deposed?”

  “Three o’clock this afternoon. We’ll prep you in the meantime. I’ve ordered sandwiches.”

  “Is prep-work really necessary?” Chase asked. “The facts are pretty cut and dried.”

  The prosecutor squared the stack of papers before her. “The facts won’t be considered cut and dried until the defendants rest their case. Bear in mind, there are still millions of people who believe that the Holocaust wasn’t real. That the moon landing was faked. That the Earth is flat. All despite the indisputable existence of mass graves, video footage, and circumnavigation.”

  “No attorney can tell us what we did or did not see,” Skylar said.

  “Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But a talented attorney can tell the jury how to interpret what you say. She can spin all kinds of narratives.”

  “What do you mean, perhaps no?” Chase asked.

  “The lawyer we’re up against, Scarlett Slate, never loses. Her criminal defense record is literally pe
rfect. And she works primarily in New York City, where the prosecutors have considerably more experience with homicide cases than I do, and where the prosecutorial resources dwarf those at my disposal.”

  “I see,” Chase said.

  “To be blunt, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes,” McKay said, using the phony names they’d supplied, “Given the lack of compelling physical evidence, the only hope we have of getting justice for Maria is you.”

  13

  Off the Record

  CHASE HAD SEEN plenty of lawyers on television, both actors in dramatic roles and true attorneys using commercials to chase ambulances. But his personal experience with them had been minimal. A few briefings by CIA in-house counsel was about it. He’d considered that a good thing—until now.

  When Scarlett Slate walked into the courthouse conference room to depose him and Skylar, Chase got the distinct sensation that he was out of his league. With her flowing blonde hair, dangerously high heels, haute couture caramel suit, and stylish glasses, Slate was polite, polished, businesslike, and attractive. Only her bright red nails hinted at the blood and fire she supposedly brought to the courtroom.

  That and the way she walked. Something about Scarlett’s stride made Chase feel like he and Skylar were rabbits in a wolf den. Were she to shout, he’d half expect to see both top and bottom incisors—polished white, of course.

  After cursory introductions, Slate set her large designer handbag down on one chair and then took the seat directly across from them. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I believe we’ll be able to keep this brief, so you can get back to your fascinating lives.”

  “You’re not going to record the deposition?” Skylar asked across the empty table.

  “Not at this time. If that should become necessary, I have the required equipment in my bag. Please tell me about the accident you witnessed.”