Vacant

by Alex Hughes

  “That’s right. Who is this?”

  “You have to be a few hundred miles from where you’re supposed to be.” He laughed, but the sound was ugly. “What a coincidence. Well, you were next on my list in any case.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked slowly, looking at Jarrod.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” the man said, still in that familiar voice that made me feel like a mouse in a trap. “Now put the judge on the phone.”

  It was Sibley, the man who’d nearly killed me. The man who was threatening Tommy in the vision. He was out of jail, obviously, and focused on the judge, exactly like I’d feared. Adrenaline dumped into my system.

  “Put the phone down,” Special Agent Jarrod hissed.

  “I can’t do that,” I said to them both. My heart beat too quickly.

  “Fine,” Sibley said. “But be aware, if you’re tangled up in this I will treat you accordingly. Tell the judge if she doesn’t do what my boss has told her to do, and soon, we will follow through on his threat.”

  “What threat was that?” I asked quickly. Around me the agents were scrambling, turning on the electronics, but I knew it would be too late. My stomach was sinking. None of this would be recorded, would it?

  “It’s simple. He’ll destroy the thing she loves the most if she doesn’t do what was agreed.”

  Crap. That sounded ominous. But I had to keep pushing, had to keep getting more information. “That attack on her son today, that was you, wasn’t it?”

  “What an idiotic question. You’ll have to get smarter if you want to survive this game with my boss. And by the way, he’s not forgotten your trip to his home. Don’t think you’ll be able to forget it either.”

  Across the room, the red light on the electronics setup finally went on.

  Jarrod held out his hand for the receiver, and I handed it over. But I could hear the dial tone even as I did so.

  I sat down, the pit in my stomach vacant, painfully vacant.

  Mendez looked up from the electronics panel with a burst of frustration I could feel. “No,” she said to Jarrod. He hung up the phone.

  “What just happened?” he asked both of us in an intense tone. Loyola sat down in a chair with a frown.

  “Sibley just called,” I told the floor. “He just called, and it looks like my vision will come true.”

  “Nonsense,” Jarrod said. “You said yourself we can head this off. We’ll do just that. Stay close, take steps, and we’ll do the same.”

  Loyola shifted. “At least we know the major threat now.”

  “But we can’t prove it,” Mendez said quietly. “We still have to make the connections.”

  Jarrod straightened his posture and looked directly at me. “I expect a detailed report. Go find yourself some paper and pencil and write down the conversation word for word. I expect it done in the next ten minutes.”

  “Um, okay,” I said. The adrenaline was still coursing through my system, my hands shaking, my body wanting to run. I wanted my drug, or at least a cigarette. I wanted to lock myself into a small closet and call Cherabino.

  But I didn’t get to do that today. Today I had to make sure Tommy was safe, and that the vision didn’t happen. Right now that seemed an incredibly tall order.

  “And you,” Jarrod said to Loyola. “Make sure Tommy is ready to leave on time. Mendez and I will be figuring out why we didn’t record this. Ward?” he prompted when I didn’t respond.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and stood. “I’ll get you the information.” But inside, I was shaking.

  * * *

  Tommy finally came outside to the car, bringing four different bags. I accepted the rebellion, carried the stupid bags, and loaded the car. My Ability to defend myself wasn’t dependent on me having hands free, and that wasn’t true of anyone else here. Since I was still jumping at the smallest sounds, the smallest changes in Mindspace, it was probably good to give me something to do. Too much adrenaline was as bad for focus as too little.

  When I noticed Tommy looking at me funny, I sat down hard on the roiling emotions. I had to be in control. I had to. Otherwise it would scare him, and I’d done that one too many times already for comfort. Control, Adam. Control. You’re a highly trained telepath—you can do this.

  We piled into an armored limousine, the only car Loyola could find on short notice, and went. Jarrod sat in the back with Tommy, me next to him. The boy had his arms crossed, and he was looking at me like he knew I was holding something back.

  Finally, halfway there, Jarrod told him about Tanya’s death. But he told him like you’d tell a cop—all matter-of-fact and I’m sorry—and it didn’t go over well at all.

  Overwhelming anger and grief poured out of that child like water from a faucet, flooding the Mindspace all around. I braced myself against it. Holy crap, that kid could be strong as a telepath in a few years. But he just sat there, controlled. His eyes watered, and he stared, shocked, but nothing happened for a long moment.

  Then he broke down, and yelled, and screamed, and Mendez almost drove off the road it was so sudden.

  “You said she would be okay!” he yelled at me. “You said! You said!”

  “I know,” I said, it killing me. “I know. I’m sorry.” I said it over and over again.

  But it was like the relief of pressure from a valve; I rode it out, knowing that he needed this moment. Hell, I needed this moment. Jarrod seemed discomfited.

  Then the emotion got weaker, and weaker, until a general low sense of despair passed between us.

  Tommy turned around and buried his head in my armpit, and I held him, awkwardly. His small back shook as he reached out mentally—and asked if it was all true. I confirmed that to him, mind to mind, with regret, and patted his back. He cried, and he cried. I might have joined him, a little, in the backlash of all that emotion. Coming down from all that adrenaline was hard enough on its own, and I got it. I really did.

  Death was horrible. And it didn’t get better with time; it got worse, especially as you got older. Death made you feel small, and helpless, and aching with the unfairness of it all. I hadn’t known Tanya well, so her death was an abstract still, though it would hit me later. But there were other deaths. Dane had died, my best friend at the Guild. My mother had died, in a slow, horrible slide through illness to death, until at last the death was a relief and her absence a piece forever missing. Last year, Bellury had died because I’d been an idiot to go in without backup. Death was horrible, and if Tommy was crashing into it, I crashed too.

  I held him, and I was there, but that was all I could do. I felt helpless. I had nothing to offer him, except the kinds of things Swartz said about heaven and justice in the next life, things I wanted to believe, and on my best days, kinda did. I had nothing to offer him, except that I was there. He and I, ten and forty, both caught in the grief and railing against the unfairness of it all. I got it. I got it all too well.

  Jarrod, like a cop, had kept his eyes averted. After maybe ten minutes he couldn’t take the silence, and so he spoke. “None of us thought this would happen. Sometimes you just . . . sometimes things happen. I’m sorry.”

  Tommy sniffed and pulled away from me. “You didn’t even care about her at all,” he said to Jarrod. “I want my mom.”

  “It was her job,” Jarrod said. “It was her job and she did a good job.” He regretted all of this messiness.

  Now I was on Tommy’s side. A good woman had died today, had died because we were too stupid to get her to the hospital earlier. Had died because . . . because someone had attacked Tommy, and it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right.

  And I was here to make sure this kid lived. It was a huge responsibility, a nearly impossible weight on my shoulders. I wondered how I’d pull it off. I worried I wouldn’t be able to.

  “Be angry,” Loyola said to Tommy from the front seat, after being silent the w
hole trip. “You be angry. You cry and be angry and do what you have to do. But you don’t forget, she chose this. She chose to do her job and keep you safe over everything else. Remember she chose you. Remember her for doing that.”

  Something Swartz had said to me during his God moments kept echoed in my head, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Tanya had done what all bodyguards hope they never have to, literally had given up her life to protect her charge. Maybe that was the key. Maybe Loyola was right; we should remember her for this and nothing else. Maybe she’d earned the right.

  But it was terrifying, because if things went badly these next few days, this next week, maybe that could be me too. I’d have to find a way to wrestle with that. I’d have to find a way to deal with it, or at least to push through like the cops did, and look into the face of death and assume I was immortal despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite seeing and hearing Sibley, the face of my almost-death. Because I couldn’t give up, I couldn’t leave. I had committed and I had to stop what would happen, or die trying. Maybe literally, as terrifying as that was.

  Tommy sniffed, his anger turning to confusion, and he slouched in the seat. “I want to go home,” he said. He wanted to be alone, and play with the toys that were his and not be caught up in all of this.

  “I know,” I said. I also wanted this to be over. But, unlike him, I had the perspective to know it wouldn’t be over for a good long time. I was worried, all over again, about us, about me, about him. About Cherabino.

  “We’re about to arrive at the courthouse,” Jarrod said, and found a box of tissues from some unknown spot. “We’ll need to walk in.” He handed me the tissues.

  The clear subtext was that we needed to pull it together. I closed off as much as I could, but I was furious, honestly. A bit of human decency wouldn’t be uncalled for.

  I scrubbed at my face, handing the tissues to Tommy to do it himself.

  Mendez met my eyes in the rearview mirror while she was driving. I dipped into her head. She’d gotten permission for us to set up in the judge’s chambers, and for her and Jarrod to end up in a file room, where they could set up and give the kid some space. She had information about the investigation from the home office that everyone would need to talk about, though, and if I wasn’t at the meeting, she’d catch me up.

  Thanks, I dropped in her head, cautiously. She nodded slowly and returned her attention to the road.

  It bothered me, oddly, that the people in this unit were so accepting of telepaths.

  It bothered me more that Jarrod was pushing all of this through so quickly—it was like he had threat information I didn’t.

  * * *

  The courthouse was a squarish building made of concrete with thin blocks of windows cutting through in horizontal stripes that reminded me of the old black-and-white prison garb you saw in the movies. Two palm trees sat like crows overlooking the walkway in front of the building, and to the left of the two double doors in front burned a memorial torch. The front had a looping driveway thing, to give space, and a grass divider in front of the regular street. Other large buildings of several stories boxed in the courthouse on several sides.

  Mendez pulled the car around the building to a large parking deck, spiraling up narrow paths, up and up to the highest floor. The concrete was ancient, and the narrow paths up creaked as we drove over them. Mendez went on high alert, ready to turn on the anti-grav at any moment. But it held. We parked in a small space out of the way, maybe a hundred feet from the elevator.

  We all moved out of the car as a unit, to protect Tommy. As we moved, though, I noticed his anger and disgust. Disgust in particular was a red flag; disgust was the emotion most often preceding actual violence, and while he was ten, under this kind of pressure cooker he might explode.

  As we got to the elevator he pushed the button five times, emotions going crazy in him, and waited impatiently. When the elevator got there, he was the first in, fidgeting madly with the button panel as everyone got in.

  As soon as the doors were open on the ground floor, he made a dash for it.

  “Hold up,” I yelled, huffing as I fast-walked in his direction. He was already on the crosswalk, moving toward the guard on the front door. My cigarette-poached lungs were never very happy with running, and running and talking at the same time just wasn’t going to happen. Hold up, I said in his mind, much more insistently.

  Loyola outpaced me, loping past to catch up with Tommy. He flashed his badge just in time to keep the security guard from going for his gun. “FBI,” he said, in explanation, as he walked.

  Tommy just kept going. The movement was freeing for him—he wanted out—but he hadn’t taken any of his bags with him. At least he was moving toward the side entrance for the courthouse, but there was another armed guard there. Fortunately Loyola was a runner. I doubted the kid could outpace him.

  In the meantime, I slowed, watching the world and minds around me for trouble, opening my eyes and all my senses as wide as they would go. The bodyguard dying made all of this real somehow. I was responsible to make sure nothing happened to Tommy. Would I be able to do it?

  Mendez was behind me, with Jarrod, in that tone of mind I associate with a conversation about details. Loyola was very aware of his surroundings, and Tommy’s running was helping him. No one else in the area seemed to be paying overt attention.

  The armed guard to the courthouse wasn’t taking Tommy as a threat, even at a fast pace, and he’d heard the edge of Loyola’s loud declaration.

  “I need to see ID,” he said as Tommy slowed. I heard him through Tommy’s mind, a weird kaleidoscope effect that I’d only had happen previously with Kara and Cherabino, legitimate Links between our minds. It was strange, and even stranger, I felt a . . . pull as he got farther away. I’d have to stay close; I had no idea what would happen if I did not. Nothing good, I was sure.

  My formal shoes clattered against the concrete walkway as I got closer. People at the front of the building had stopped, all in the formal wear of people going for a day at court. One lone journalist carried a camera with a ridiculously large flashbulb, but his regard was more about curiosity than anything else.

  “I’m Tommy Parson,” the kid said, pulling out a school ID. “Judge Parson is my mom. I’ve been here before. This dweeb is following me for the FBI.”

  The guard took the ID, glanced at it, and handed it back. “Sorry. No one told me to expect you.” He was a tall guy, and bored, and his wife had just left him; all information readily available to my senses on first meeting.

  He handed the ID back and spent more time on Loyola, who handed over an FBI badge. I caught up and waited behind Loyola, scanning the surroundings. There were plenty of minds in the hallway just inside, but none were paying attention in this direction. I was already beginning to get a headache behind my eyes from all of the emotion earlier; combined with the relentless information from all the minds around me—and the need to pay attention—the headache was only going to get worse.

  “Who are you?” the guard said, in the tone of voice of someone repeating himself and very irritated about it.

  “He’s with us,” Loyola said in a firm tone of voice before I could say anything. “Also, my colleagues behind us—the woman, and the thin guy in the suit. Now, are you going to let us in or not?”

  The guard stared at me and tried to figure out how far he could push this. He didn’t like me, and I suspected it was because he had just enough Ability to detect another telepath, without any additional information. He knew I was a big fish and wanted to watch me.

  This was both gratifying and frustrating, of course.

  “Now, please,” Loyola said.

  Tommy read the guard’s decision before he acted, and the kid was already pushing through the door. Fortunately I’d read the same decision and was moving myself.

  He was goin
g to be a handful, wasn’t he?

  In the crowded hallway beyond, Tommy stopped in front of a fortysomething man with a small scar on his right eyebrow and a pair of wire-framed glasses, currently standing in the security screening line. Next to the man, another guy, clearly a lawyer, stood.

  “Did you send the bad guys to kill me yesterday?” Tommy asked. “Tell me to my face.”

  “You can’t . . . ,” the lawyer said, then trailed off.

  “Who are you?” the man asked—but he asked me.

  “This is Tommy Parson and entourage,” I said, coming up behind him, still puffing.

  Something about the man read like a shark to me, a predator, someone used to being the top thing in the ecosystem, able to do whatever the hell he wanted, whenever the hell he wanted it. I moved up behind Tommy, just in case, ready to move if anything were to happen.

  “You shouldn’t be talking to Pappadakis,” Loyola said, now right there as well. “Come on, let’s wait for them to move through.” The entire hallway had quieted, and everyone was now looking at us. Jarrod was still talking to the guard outside, and Mendez was torn between. We were on our own.

  “This is Pappadakis?” I asked quietly.

  “Did you?” Tommy demanded, angry and grief-stricken.

  The lawyer glanced at the screening guards, just to make sure they were paying attention. “My client will not answer any of your questions.”

  “No,” Pappadakis said anyway. “No, I didn’t,” he said, and I believed him. His mind had the ring of settled fact, but he was not surprised. Either he was the world’s best liar—which I would not put beyond him—or he’d known about the attack from other sources.

  “You’ll leave my client alone,” the lawyer said.

  “Seriously, Tommy, let’s go back outside for a second,” Loyola said. “Excuse us.”

  I followed, watching the minds around us for disgust, for strong decisions, for anything that felt threatening or personal. It was like three music tapes played all too loud, all at once, so that you couldn’t quite sort everything out, much less enjoy it. I vaguely saw the back of Loyola’s suit, saw his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, steering him, saw the door again.