Stolen Thoughts

by Tim Tigner

  What was he doing? Despite her insistence to the contrary, Chewie was certain that Vicky had brought him rather than Chase to soothe his ego. He should have resisted, but he’d wanted to prove himself. That was selfish and foolish, he now realized. Looking up at the bright Southern California moon, he recalled a line from the movie Top Gun about his ego writing a check that his body couldn’t cash.

  “It’s okay,” Vicky said, reading his mind without the aid of her glasses. “We got this.”

  Punching out the glass took more force than Chewie had expected, but once it popped, the rest was a breeze. He reached in, released the lock, and they climbed into the upstairs landing without causing significant damage.

  The house smelled of still air with a background layer of floral-scented disinfectant. It made Chewie think of Vicky’s quadriplegic mother, and all the effort that must have gone into maintaining her health. He’d heard a few stories while they cruised the Caribbean, but being there really completed the picture.

  They avoided both bedrooms and went straight to the basement, which lit up automatically as they walked in. An accommodation for mom, Chewie was certain.

  “I’m going to need a few hours here, then we’ll head over to campus to use a machine I don’t have. Feel free to take a nap,” Vicky said.

  “Not much chance of that.”

  He watched with fascination while Vicky went about her magic, consulting encrypted computer files and lab notebooks at first, then moving on to the mice. She’d brought three dozen with them, all pure white and labeled with leg bands. All obtained from a specialty supplier, The Jackson Laboratory in Maine.

  To examine the rodents, she was using a small transparent harness positioned at the focal point of multiple sensors. The setup looked like the opening scene of a cartoon where a mouse was about to be transformed into something else. But these mice didn’t visibly react to her electronic activities.

  An hour or so later, once Vicky had cycled through the first half-dozen test subjects, making adjustments and maintaining focus with robotic precision, she turned Chewie’s way. “Time to hit the big lab.”

  They grabbed the six mice, a special tray, and Vicky’s passkeys, then reversed course upstairs, out the window, down the ladder, and across the street onto the central block of the Caltech campus. The labs were long colonnaded buildings that exuded timeless grandeur. Chewie could virtually feel the 130-year accumulation of big brainwaves emanating from their limestone walls.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fMRI. I’ll be sedating the mice with etomidate to keep them still, and then watching how their brains perform after being exposed to various—” she paused there to smile, “brain EMPs.”

  “What will you be looking for?”

  “Severely reduced activity at a specific point on the spectrum, combined with normal activity on the surrounding ranges.”

  Sounded to Chewie like she was describing a neurological smart bomb, but he didn’t want to get into it at the moment, so he kept the observation to himself. They were tiring, but facing a long road ahead. It was just a quarter past midnight.

  She anesthetized the six mice and precisely positioned them in numeric order on the slotted tray they’d brought from her lab. She placed the tray on the bed before the big doughnut of a machine and they retreated to the control room.

  “How long will this take?” he asked.

  “I already have a program in the machine’s memory and their brains are tiny, so just a few minutes.”

  “Why just six mice?” he asked, once the machine was humming.

  “We’ll need multiple iterations as I try to focus in on the most precise settings. If their brain is a country, this will give me the state. Then we’ll go for the city, and finally the street we need.”

  “But aren’t mouse brains a lot different from human brains?”

  “They’re a lot more similar than you’d think. Not as close as primates, but much easier to use in tests for the obvious reasons. Alzheimer’s-related experiments, for example, are usually done on mice. And they’re a good fit for what I do as well, thank goodness.”

  “But they’re so small.”

  “Size doesn’t matter nearly as much as common sense would make you believe,” Vicky said, studying the live image feed. “You can even use fruit flies for some neurological experiments. Where size is an issue, in cardiovascular implant research and training for example, swine models tend to be used. We always try to work as far down the food chain as possible.” She stopped there as the machine completed its routine.

  “How’s it look?”

  “I got a clean hit on mouse three, which is a very good sign. Middle of the anticipated range. Time for iteration two.”

  The campus looked beautiful in the moonlight, with the gently swaying hundred-year-old magnolia trees and the twinkling water features. Chewie was enjoying the connection to Vicky’s past. She seemed to be feeling it too, as she reached to take hold of his hand.

  It almost felt like a first date as they returned to her house, the only two people out at that hour. Would they ever live there, he wondered? It was a beautiful place. A special place. Majestic at night and no doubt magical when infused with the energy of a thousand of the world’s brightest student minds.

  He got so caught up in the moment that he didn’t realize their mistake until it was almost too late. But something about seeing Vicky reach for her keys flipped a switch and he pulled her back a second before her hand closed on the front doorknob.

  Vicky started to voice the obvious question when the answer struck and her face dropped. “Habit,” was all she said.

  They quickly skirted around to the side of the house where the ladder stood concealed between two cypress trees. They paused there to scan for a reaction while their pulses returned to normal. Nothing appeared to have changed, but then it wouldn’t, would it? “I’m going to stand watch on the roof during the next round, if that’s all right with you?”

  “Better to lie watch,” Vicky replied. “We don’t want anyone calling the police.” She kissed him, climbed the ladder, and disappeared inside.

  43

  Stairway to Heaven

  FREDO BLANCO was a homeless millionaire. It made no sense for him to maintain a residence. He was always on the road in pursuit of people in flight. He had no family, and his friendships were of the short-term, superficial variety, primarily with the concierges and bartenders at the four- and five-star hotels where he hung up his weapons at night.

  His weapons, Fredo mused.

  Theoretically, he owned them, controlled them, but like big dogs with small masters it wasn’t entirely clear from the observable activity who was truly in charge.

  Fredo had built his arsenal and honed his skills to utilize objects that could pass airport carry-on inspections one hundred percent of the time. Thus his predilection for stilettos that could sever arteries or pass through rib cages with stealth and speed. The thin ceramic blades allowed him to kill silently without spraying blood and then leave the scene before anyone but the victim was even aware of his crime.

  As for firearms, Fredo stuck with elegant .22s, which he bought by the case. They were just as deadly as their bigger brothers when wielded by masterful hands, and they created much less mess, staying within the body rather than blasting out the back. He wouldn’t want to take them into a gunfight, but Fredo hadn’t been in one of those since leaving the cartel. He relied on stealth and surprise rather than superior firepower.

  Despite their diminutive size, you still couldn’t carry a .22 onto a plane, of course. Therefore, in situations like these, when it was likely that an electronic alert would launch a race against the clock, Fredo would open a convenient P.O. box during a reconnaissance trip and store a pair there.

  Today, the 4:04 a.m. alert that sent him scrambling to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight from Miami to Los Angeles made him very glad he had.

  Before tracking his quarry
to Miami, Fredo had installed electronic surveillance in the locations to which Victoria Pixler was likely to return. Namely, her home/laboratory in Pasadena and her apartment in Las Vegas.

  The facial recognition system hidden in the lamp beside the front door of her home got a hit at 1:04 a.m. local time. The hour indicated either that she’d arrived on a late flight, good, or that she was actively attempting to avoid surveillance, bad.

  The video showing that she and Quinten had retreated without opening the door indicated the bad option, avoiding surveillance. The related puzzle, one which had occupied Fredo during his flight, was figuring out what had caused their last-second abort. It was hard to explain without factoring in the psychic powers that his employers insisted she enjoyed, given that his hidden camera was virtually invisible.

  In any case, whether Vicky was spooked or not, gone, or not, Fredo considered the sighting to be a big breakthrough. It put him on a hot trail and gave him the cool comfort of knowing that she wasn’t camping in Costa Rica or hiking the Himalayas.

  Ironically, her wariness also made him hopeful. People on the run didn’t return to their homes without a compelling reason. An urgent need. With luck, hers would require no less than nine hours.

  A first-class ticket with no bags put him in an Uber at LAX at 9:20 a.m. local time. A forty-four-minute drive dropped him at his Caltech P.O. box just after 10:00. Whether or not he would convert the electronic sighting and subsequent transcontinental dash into an immediate kill or just a hot lead remained to be seen.

  The Caltech campus was quiet, as places tended to be on Sunday mornings. Her home showed absolutely no sign of activity. He spent a few minutes studying it from afar with a monocular before circling around the block to appraise it from the back. That vantage also yielded no signs of life. No lights or shadows. No open curtains or stuffed trashcans.

  Rather than risk tramping through the backing neighbor’s yard, Fredo opted for a much more innocent-looking approach. He waited until the sidewalks on both sides of her road were clear, then went straight up the front walk—triggering his own surveillance system, no doubt, but hopefully attracting no human attention. Just shy of the door he turned right and began circling the house, searching for signs that couldn’t be observed from the front or rear.

  His heart leapt as he completed three quarters of the circle. Propped between two cypress trees, he spotted a ladder leading to an open window.

  44

  Soul Concern

  AFTER LYING WATCH on the roof through Vicky’s second round with the mice, and then again with the third, the light of dawn forced Chewie back inside for the remaining tests. He’d expected a maximum of six iterations, given that she’d started with six mice and had brought thirty-six, but apparently that wasn’t how it worked. She was dialing in her settings using three rodents per round, then spending a lot of time studying the fMRI images and perfecting her calculations.

  They’d made the last three trips to the Caltech lab without the cover of darkness. Since it was a Sunday morning during summer break, the campus was relatively quiet. Still, climbing in and out of the window was becoming increasingly perilous as the morning dragged on.

  At the moment, Chewie was sipping coffee and studying his fiancée. When they first met, he’d been attracted to her beauty and impressed by her charm. Then he got to know her mind and had fallen head over heels. Even after learning her secret, Chewie remained thoroughly impressed. Yes, she had a magical tool, but she also had an incredible gift. She knew how to use it, like Da Vinci did a paintbrush, or Michelangelo a chisel.

  Furthermore, Vicky had chosen to use her invention to entertain and counsel. She’d wielded it for good, in stark contrast to her justice-thwarting adversaries.

  Now that Chewie was observing a whole new array of Vicky Pixler’s skills, his love, already in full bloom, was positively bursting. His admiration was hitting levels he’d never known before.

  Watching her press on despite the weariness and stress, he felt deeply honored that she’d selected him, truly perplexed that she’d done so, and profoundly committed to ensuring her safety. Plus, he had to admit as he brewed a fresh pot of coffee on her laboratory machine, he felt a bit frightened that she’d wake up one day and realize that she could probably replace him with a billionaire or luminary.

  Instead of dwelling on that uncomfortable thought and allowing doubt to take root, he resolved to work hard to make himself worthy. To earn the coveted spot by that remarkable woman’s side.

  “Coffee’s ready,” he called as she shifted her focus from her laptop to a notebook.

  “Good. I’m going to need it,” she said, stretching. “I’m not getting the results I’d expected and we’re running out of mice.”

  “What’s the hitch?” he asked, pouring.

  “I’m targeting a minute area on a specific type of receptor, and—.” She paused to collect her thoughts and steal a sip. “You’ve burned things using a magnifying glass and the sun before, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, this is analogous to working with two friends to combine your three magnifying glass beams to brown individual needles on a pine tree without damaging any non-targeted needles or twigs or branches or bugs or bark or sap. You get the picture. Anyway, either the needles aren’t getting brown enough or different anatomies are also burning. The challenge is determining which of the lenses needs adjusting and by how much. There are sophisticated models for optimizing experiments like this, but they’re not perfect and luck plays a part.”

  Chewie could only imagine. “How many more rounds do you anticipate?”

  “Minimum of one, maximum of five. We should grab breakfast.”

  “I agree, but if you’re thinking five is as likely as one, let’s plan to eat at the hotel. We can come back after dark when it’s safer and you’ve got some sleep in you.”

  Chewie watched her weigh his words, then set down her coffee cup. “Good idea.”

  As they ascended in the elevator, he asked, “Do you think it’s safe to hide the ladder behind a tree, or should we take it with us?”

  “To the hotel?”

  “We’ll leave it in the rental car.”

  “No, the tree’s—” She stopped mid-sentence as the opening elevator door revealed closed curtains. Then Chewie heard a bang and saw a double-flash as a breathtaking blow hit the center of his chest and Vicky toppled backward into the elevator as if struck by an invisible boxer.

  His lizard brain grasped the essence of the situation. It drove the focus of his eyes even as his heart screamed and his mind hastened to react. Standing before the big mirror in the corner, as casual as one could be while raising two guns, was an assassin.

  This man was much smaller and paler than the one from Las Vegas. Obviously much smarter, as well. He’d waited for them to come to him. He hadn’t given Vicky the opportunity to read his mind. He hadn’t initiated a brief “say your prayers” or “the lawyers of RRS&S send their regards” conversation. He’d simply pulled two triggers and put two bullets in their chests, center mass.

  But Chewie hadn’t died.

  Two more bullets struck Chewie’s chest as he launched himself toward the threat, the small assassin, the evil man determined to end the remarkable life of Victoria Pixler. While he registered the impacts, he paid them no heed. There might be bullet holes in the windshield, but the plane was still flying. He might be a kamikaze, but that hardly mattered. All he cared about, his sole concern, was keeping his size XXL bulletproof vest between the killer and Vicky, long enough for her to escape. He met her eye for the final time in the mirror, and yelled “Run!”

  45

  Tenacity

  FREDO COULD NOT have been happier, although you wouldn’t have known it by looking at him. He wasn’t one to wear his emotions. In fact, his natural range was pretty narrow.

  His creator had cut the tops off his emotional peaks and used them to plug the valleys, benevolently shielding the white elf from the worst o
f what waited in life. That made it possible for Fredo to survive soul-wrenching experiences without lasting damage. For that saving numbness, he was willing to trade his peak highs—like the euphoria he’d have enjoyed while silently waiting in Vicky’s chair, savoring the knowledge that his targets were already as good as dead.

  Everybody knows not to use an elevator if there’s a fire. Signs warn that they can be deadly traps. What people tend to forget is that there’s more than one kind of fire—and more than one type of trap.

  Sitting comfortably in the dark as Pixler’s elevator began humming, his relaxed hands holding a matched pair of .22s rather than a teacup and box of bonbons, he thought about the second million that was but seconds away.

  Case durations were unpredictable, but given his average record, he lived like a guy earning a hundred grand a month. One who might not live to see Christmas. First-class travel, five-star hotels, the finest food, and escorts so hot that all observers assumed he was a rock star.

  This job would net him two million in just one month. Time to buy the beachfront bungalow with live-in housekeeper and chef. Or maybe a hilltop estate. While waiting for the next just-right job to come along, he’d spend his time talking to real estate agents.

  But first…

  Fredo stood and raised both .22s as the elevator drew closer. The angles at which he held his arms were quite different. His left pointed straight out, given that Victoria’s height matched his own. His right angled upward toward her mammoth companion’s center of mass.

  The elevator door slid open.

  The oblivious couple emerged.

  Fredo fired. Two simultaneous trigger squeezes.

  The woman toppled backward.

  The man remained standing.

  That was predictable, given the size of the slug that had hit him.

  While there were many reasons that Fredo favored .22 caliber handguns, the drawback to his selection was bullet mass. Stopping power. The F in F = ma. Even though he used a heavy 55-grain .22 caliber bullet, that only gave him about half the mass of a .38, a third the mass of a 9mm, and a quarter the mass of a .45.