by Gwen Hunter
“Officers at the Scene.”
“They think he’s lying, don’t they?”
“Yeah. They do. But they don’t know why he’d lie. And they say they can’t trace the phone call you got today. It was rerouted. Through Washington, D.C.”
My pleasure was gone in an instant. “The people who took Davie didn’t wait for the deadline. My brother was cut this afternoon. Jane saw it. So did I.”
Evan half smiled from across the room. “You really are one of the weird St. Claires, aren’t you?”
I considered him, feeling safe having this conversation when he was far enough away that I couldn’t touch him but close enough to see his expression. “I don’t know what I am. I went through the onset of the gift alone. I wasn’t trained. I was always afraid of it. I built a wall between the world and my mind and I built it fast. Aunt Matilda never even noticed that it had happened. Being a St. Claire isn’t something I can talk about with people. They get weirded out.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Jane is coming into her gift, and I don’t know what to do. I called Aunt Matilda for advice. I called her three times today, and all I get is a machine.”
“Aunt Matty doesn’t use a machine. She doesn’t use any machines.”
“I know. And she never, ever leaves Durbinton. She should be there. It scares me. I don’t know why she hasn’t called me back. And I don’t know what to do for Jane.”
“Is David still alive?”
“Yes. I know he is.” I swallowed, remembering all the things I had caught in the brief glimpse of Davie, before I had to close it down in order to protect Jane from the images. “But he’s hurt bad.” I slid from the counter to the floor, landing with a soft thud of slippered feet. “He needs medical help.” Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them away, feeling the pain that built below my breastbone. “He’s got an infection. Probably early-onset pneumonia. He’s been beaten. He doesn’t know where he is.” I sucked in a breath. My lungs hurt as they moved, an ache deep inside me. “I saw a room with a window that faced just like that one does.” I pointed to the loft window. “But there’s nothing in the window, no frame of reference. Only sky. He could be high up or the window could face down a valley.”
“Can you sketch the room for me, and what you know about the place he’s being held?”
I nodded and located a pencil and a pad. Drawing the outline of the room, I noted the placement of the door, the window. “It feels like an office. Davie’s being kept in back, in a small room. It’s got an iron-framed single bed here, table here. He’s been beaten and there are blood splatters on the wall.” I shook my head to erase the thought.
“In the next room, there’s a desk here—” I indicated it with a square “—and a chair that squeaks.” I drew in a chair behind the desk, but it was a guess whether that was the one that squeaked. There might have been others. “There are papers all over, maybe building plans, dozens of them, all with curled edges like they’ve been rolled up. And there’s a four-drawer filing cabinet here. Davie can hear a man talk at odd times. That’s all I remember.”
Evan bent over my drawing, his body close. I wanted to touch him but resisted. “Not much to go on,” he said.
“Yeah. That’s the way it is with the St. Claire gift. Gives you just enough to not help at all. I want an address, I get one numeral out of four. I want to read someone to make a sale, I get that they have indigestion. I want—”
Evan’s lips pressed to the back of my neck, heated, gentle.
“Okay. That I get.” I turned in his arms and kissed him back, a slow, lingering kiss.
“I guess wild passionate sex is out,” he whispered against my mouth, “what with a kid not twenty feet away.”
“Oh, yeah. And I never have sex before the first date. Not even before the first six months.”
“There’s that.” He pulled me closer. “Six months? Bet that’s one of your rules that I break.”
I figured it might be, not that I was going to admit that to Evan Bartlock.
“So how about we curl up on the couch and go through the papers your brother sent,” he suggested.
I sighed into his mouth. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all night.”
“Liar.”
“So sue me.” I disentangled myself from his arms and nodded to the door. “Downstairs in the storeroom. Crate beside the door, on the right, on top.”
“Back in a flash.”
“Hope you don’t do everything in a flash.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Evan chuckled, a low, masculine sound that irritated even as it sent waves of heat coursing through me. “Not even. You’ll see.”
“What’s this?” Evan asked.
I took the purple folder from his hand and fanned the sheaf of papers inside. They were poor-quality photocopies, the kind one got when the toner was almost out or when making a copy from a copy of a copy. Across at the top of each was a header with a seal, a ring with the words Department of Defense, United States of America, and an inner picture of a bald eagle, wings outspread, a striped shield over its breast, all rendered in shades of gray. The dates, the names of the sender and recipient, and much of the content had all been blacked out. Large portions of each document were useless.
When I looked at Evan his face was hard, the same kind of expression I had noted when he talked on the phone to his contact at the police department about Quinn. I shook my head and shrugged all at once. I had no idea what the papers were, but I could tell he did.
“These are parts of declassified material from the DOD,” he said. He flicked the pages with a nail. “But the paper is old and yellowed. I’d say David has had them a long time, maybe since they were first released under the Freedom of Information Act. They look like papers that might have come from Military Intelligence to an oversight group in Congress.” He pointed to a series of numbers at the bottom corner.
It hit me what he was saying and I couldn’t help my expression. “My brother is a spy? A Double-Oh-Seven?” I mimicked shooting a gun and blowing on the barrel. “Bond. James Bond.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. I know Davie. He can’t be a spy. He doesn’t have it in him.”
“But he has money. A lot of money. And if he got it from some other side by selling secrets…”
I rolled my eyes.
“You said he disappeared for years.”
I decided the best defense here was to ignore the accusation. It was too stupid to suffer to live, but that wasn’t something I could actually say to a man without hurting his delicate ego. “What’s the Quantum Corp?” I turned to another page. “Here it’s called Q Corp. I mean, Q Core.” I flipped back. “It’s Quantum Core, not corp. Not a corporation. You ever heard of it?”
“No.”
Guess I’d hurt him anyway. Rather than massage the injured male pride, I uncurled from the couch, where my feet rested in Evan’s lap, and padded to the PC. It was my latest hand-built toy from Davie. Always on, it had a powerful backup battery, a twenty-one-inch flat screen, and more memory than the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and Google put together, as well as nearly enough computing power to replace NASA’s system on launch day. Its firewall could defeat any automated or human-guided invasion; its protective software could isolate and defeat any spider, worm, virus, Trojan Horse or other attack. If you believed Davie, it was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and could leap tall buildings in a single bound. For all I knew, it had X-ray vision, too.
I jiggled the mouse, typed in google.com, and went searching for Q Core. When that came up mostly empty, I tried Quantum Core. I got nothing with that, too. Google asked me if I had misspelled the phrase and offered me a computer company and a software company, among other sites. I clicked my way through several more screens of listings. I was about to stop when I spotted a note in the body of text under a search result. A government site. The text read only “Q Co
re…psychic emanations, visions…”
I clicked on the site and found myself in a Department of Defense site. My system’s red warning icon—the Death card in the Waite Tarot, a skeleton knight on a white horse, wearing black armor and a carrying lance—appeared on the top right of the screen. It meant that someone had noted my interest in the site or the information on the page, and launched a probe to see who I was. As I watched, Death lowered its lance and started galloping. A moment later, Death looked at me and said, “I am unable to stop the incursion. I am removing you from the site. Sorry, Brat.”
The screen went dark for an instant, then the screensaver came on. But it wasn’t my usual golden fish swimming along a coral reef. It was Death, poised against a rich blue background, his black armor gleaming, his lance at the ready. With a kick, he sent the white horse galloping. As I watched, his lance speared something small and tossed it off the screen. Death grinned at us, his skull showing perfect teeth. To his side, other images appeared—ugly pit bulls with horns, saber teeth and tiny red wings. Davie was imaginative with his software. This was an automated visual of my firewall fighting off a probe.
“Wow. Talk about the blue screen of death,” Evan said.
I propped my chin on one fist and laughed softly through my nose as the knight unleashed murder and mayhem on the vibrant screen.
“Let me guess. David is a compu-geek, too.”
“Yeah. He’s pretty good.”
Death speared one dog. Two replaced it.
“You ever seen this before?” he asked. “Or anything like it?”
“No. My system is still under attack, even though we left the site. It means something followed us through the Internet and Death is still fighting it.”
“Sounds like a computer game. Looks like one, too.”
“Davie’s written some game programs.” But the battle on the screen had me worried. Fights like these never lasted long. Never. Death, which normally won with a single lance toss or two, wasn’t winning hands-down like usual. Not even by half a hand down. The icon was suddenly equipped with a shield and a sword, the galloping horse encased in black armor like his rider. Spikes grew from the horse’s hooves, and his nostrils blew steam in curling white clouds.
The dogs morphed into gargoyles, replete with black-scaled wings, snarling faces and claws that dripped blood. One gargoyle slipped in under Death’s guard and tore through his armor, four long rips that drew blood. Evan put a hand on my shoulder as if to offer comfort.
Death’s blood dripped onto the fighting field and seemed to sizzle. As we watched, the vapor from each drop of lost blood rose and coalesced into a hand. Seven of the transformed drops emerged and began attacking the gargoyles, beating and slashing with cupped hands. Very kung fu. Though it was only a representation of a computer fighting off some sort of invader, the battle made my skin crawl.
Suddenly, a shaped-stone, medieval castle wall appeared, growing with amazing speed, curving around the fight, isolating it. The wall met itself and closed. It looked remarkably like the wall in my mind when I shut myself away from the world.
The screen went black again. “I have disconnected you from the Internet, Brat. The incursion was more than I expected. I have isolated it, but can’t maintain the quarantine. Please call David and inform him of this situation. Until he arrives, I am shutting down your system.” The PC went through a fast shutdown and the screen went black a final time.
“Well,” I said. “That sucks a great big ostrich egg.”
At midnight, I closed the shop door, locking it and switching on the security system. Evan Bartlock loped up the street, a jerky, uneven gait over the melting-freezing ice. Before he made the left toward his hotel, he swiveled. I wasn’t sure he could see me, as the lights were off, but he waved anyway. Just in case. I opened a hand and placed my palm on the glass.
Back in the loft, I showered fast and pulled on footsie pajamas, pink-and-white striped, the fabric stretchy, which showed every curve. They had a slit across the top of the butt, so I could pull the back down and go to the bathroom if needed, but otherwise, the pj’s were one solid, very warm unit. I turned off the lights and slid into the bed beside Jane. I snuggled against her warm body, shivering slightly. My cell rang.
I almost ignored the untimely summons, but it could be Aunt Matilda, so I rolled over, found the unit in the dark and opened it. “Yeah.”
“Love the jammies, honeybunch. And the kiss was perfectly sizzling.”
“Good night, Jubal.”
“Details in the morning. We’ll cook again. Isaac and I were mesmerized.”
“Stalker.”
He just laughed and we hung up. I’d have to remember to start drawing the blinds.
9
Wednesday, 4:12 a.m.
Are you there?
Go away.
Listen to me, Brat.
My eyes opened on the night. Shuddering agony filled me. Davie’s pain. My body clenched with reaction.
There’s a negotiation taking place. Someone else wants me. And another party is looking for me, someone very dangerous. You have to stay out of this. Stop looking for me. You have to take Jane and go to Aunt Matilda.
I’ll never stop looking for you, Davie. Besides, Aunt Matilda is missing. I can’t—
Missing? No! I—
The contact stopped. He was gone. All I caught was a sense of Davie’s utter pain and rising panic. Unable to sleep, I got up, wrapped myself in a blanket and curled on the couch with Davie’s papers. The ones about the land he owned I stacked on one side, and the papers from the purple folder on the other. I was looking for patterns, indications of…I didn’t know what I was looking for. At about five-thirty in the morning I fell asleep, my head on the purple folder.
“I think it’s just a panic attack, Ms. St. Claire. It’s not uncommon when young girls first enter their menses.” Dr. Sharpton was in his early fifties, balding, with pudgy fingers and a spare tire that would fit around a tractor wheel. When he bent over his desk to write on a prescription pad, he huffed for breath. “I’ll write a prescription for a mild sedative. Just keep her quiet, let her lie around the house for a few days since she’s out of school already.”
“I am not having a panic attack and I am not crazy,” Jane said. Her tear-streaked face was red and swollen. Suddenly her expression changed, becoming ugly, furious as she looked at her pediatrician. “I want another doctor. This one thinks all women are weak and whiny. That we stink.”
Dr. Sharpton’s pen lurched once on the pad, but he didn’t look up.
“Jane,” I said, warning, wanting to stop her but knowing I wouldn’t be able to.
Spitefully she added, “And he has a smoking problem, and he’s addicted to Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The cream-filled ones.” Wiping her face once, her eyes bored into the unfortunate man’s back. He hunched as if he felt her eyes.
Sharpton quickly finished his prescription, stood and thrust it at me. “If she has more problems, we can send her to mental health.”
“I’ll go to mental health if you’ll go to Weight Watchers.”
I spluttered with laughter. “Jane. Really.” And the doctor was gone. I had a feeling this was the last time Jane would see the physician who had attended her since she was a kid. “Oh, well. Maybe it’s time we got a grown-up doctor for you. There’s a homeopathic practitioner in Asheville we can use.”
Jane slid from the examining table to the floor and pulled on her T-shirt, her movements jerky with anger. She zipped up her jeans, her face hidden by a cascade of uncombed hair. “You know what they did to my daddy.”
I closed myself off behind my wall of stone, shutting myself away from the fearful little girl. Once again, we had shared an early-morning vision of her father. A moment of dream-clogged misery. Of Davie and his pain. His rattling breath. His crusty bandage. “Yes,” I said, my voice low. “I know.”
“When we find them, I’m going to kill them.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn�
��t know how to help Jane. Once again, I had called Aunt Matilda. The phone at her house just rang uselessly, followed by the stupid message. Dr Sharpton seemed incapable of helping my niece. If I took Jane to a mental-health person, they’d never believe she was empathetic until after she told them what they had for breakfast and what they hated most about themselves. Not a good way to build trust and get her help. And even if we did get over that hurdle, no shrink would have a way to treat her. How did you treat an emerging psychic? Drugs? I fingered the small sheet of paper. Drugs, or an outlet for Jane’s fury and helplessness.
“You ever fired a gun?”
Jane’s head lifted. Her red-rimmed eyes were fierce. “No. Daddy was going to teach me when I turned thirteen. Next month. Can you teach me?”
“Sure, if you want to miss your target.” Jane almost smiled and I knew I had hit on a treatment that might work. “There’s a shooting range not far from here. We could take lessons. If you agreed to the ground rules.”
“I know, I know. Daddy told me. No touching the gun for any reason if you aren’t around. No showing it to friends, not that I have any left. They’re all pretty weird when you can see inside their heads.”
“All people are weird when you can see inside their heads.”
“Not you.”
A spurt of pleasure shot through me and I grinned. Jane didn’t need to be a nutty St. Claire to know how happy her words made me. She grinned back at me and I stood and opened the door.
“Those rules will do for now. And after we practice shooting a bit, we’ll work on your wall, see if we can sustain the image for longer periods and still keep you breathing. If all else fails we’ll try the sedative, at least when you go to sleep at night. It might help you get through without the dreams.”
“No drugs. Daddy can’t scan for us if I get all loopy.”
That was my hope, but I managed to keep the thought away from her perceptive mind.
Noe cocked her head to one side, a tuft of bright blue hair standing up through the strap that held her ear protectors in place. “Not bad. Better than your aunt.” She looked at me. “You, my friend, stink. I wouldn’t trust you with a gun if my life depended on it.”
