A sick feeling had started in the pit of Mac's stomach when Lianne began describing Amanda's behavior. It grew worse with every detail. By the time she'd finished, he was sure something was horribly wrong with the child. He just didn't have any idea what.
They walked out of the hot hallways, redolent with chalk dust, ink, schoolgirl perfume, and sneakers, into baked-asphalt parking lot heat.
Mac held onto her elbow as she started towards her own car. "Let me drive you home," he urged. I have to find out more about this child—or better yet, get Lianne to take me to her.
But Lianne shook her head with a stubborn determination he was beginning to know well. "Mac, I appreciate it—but I'll be fine. I have to get some groceries, and I want to go home and just soak in the tub and think for a while." A bit of breeze touched the little tendrils of hair that had escaped from her French braid. Not enough breeze to cool, just enough to be annoying.
Azaleas, dogwoods, and a goddamned heat wave, all blooming at the same time. Welcome to April in North Carolina, he thought.
He persisted, in the forlorn hope that she had been worn down enough to give in to him. "Are you sure?"
This time her nod was quite determined. "I'm sure."
Mac shrugged. "Okay. I really guess I ought to stop by the track before D.D. sends out search teams, anyway." Try a different tactic. "May I see you tonight?"
She finally gave in to his persistence, yielding with a willing heart, if the smile that answered his was any indication. "I'd like that. But—how about just an evening in? I'm too tired for anything that involves going out in public."
He pretended to consider it. "Hmm. Never tried one of those before. . . ."
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow, and he laughed. "It's a date," he said, and gave Lianne a tight hug and a kiss. She returned the kiss with startling enthusiasm, and Mac caught his breath.
They are so warm, so bright . . . so enchanting—
And so fleeting—
He pulled away quickly and forced a grin. "Gotta run, babe. See you tonight," he told her, and turned away. He didn't want her to see the pain in his eyes.
—And they die so soon, he thought. So soon . . . and anyone who loves them dies a little bit with them. Not again. I won't ever let myself hurt that way again.
* * *
Redmond Something-or-other was pawing Mac's mother again, back in the corner behind the tire stacks. Mac heard D.D. giggling and whispering, and her young lover's erratic breathing. It was, he reflected, a hard life that gave a man a mother who looked ten years younger than he did—when she was nearly two hundred years older.
"Hey, D.D.," he yelled. "You're never going to get my car ready doing that. Chase your stud-muffin off with a nice big tire iron and get out here."
"There's more to life than cars," she yelled brightly, but she and the stud-muffin appeared. Redmond, looking flushed and flustered, was struggling with his buttons. Mac suspected he'd gotten the zipper back in place before he came out of hiding.
D.D., of course, was unfazed. "I didn't think you were going to join us poor peons today," she said, flaunting her pony-tail. "And Redmond and I didn't see any reason to waste a perfectly good day if you weren't even going to show up."
"Mmmm-hmmm." Mac looked over at the dark corner of the garage. "Fooling around on the cement behind the tires has got to be one of the more romantic ways I could think of to spend a day."
She laughed at him. "We pump grease our own way, we do. You're too stuffy, Mac. You wouldn't know a good time if it bit you on the ass."
Mac smiled agreeably and made a tsk-ing noise. "That's the difference between you and me, D.D. If it bit me on the ass, I wouldn't call it a good time."
D.D. laughed and flipped him the finger. "You'll never know what you're missing."
He cast his eyes up to heaven, as if asking for help. "Gods, I hope not. You're one short step above delinquent, and if you weren't such a good mechanic—"
"But I am," she replied impudently. "So you indulge me."
"So I do. Hey, D.D.—I just remembered. A friend of yours stopped over at my place this morning—she had a present for you, but she couldn't find you, so she left it with me." Mac fished the scrap of green silk out of the bag in his pocket, and started to hand it to D.D. . . .
But D.D. kept her hands shoved firmly into her pockets. :Bullshit, Maclyn, my love.: "What friend was that?" she asked out loud.
"Felouen," Mac said. He saw no point in lying. :I'd appreciate your help here, Mother.:
:No doubt—but I'm not going to interfere in your relationship with the Court. You have some responsibilities that you're evading—I won't force you to live up to them. I also won't help you get out of them.: Out loud, D.D. lied for Redmond's benefit. "Felouen and I can't stand each other. I wonder what she's up to."
:She stuck me with a Ring, Mother. Won't you please take it off my hands? Before it calls too much attention to me?: Mac proffered the silk again. "She wants to be friends, D.D. Why don't you just take her present? You can always give it back to her later if you don't change your mind about her."
:You deal with it, kiddo.: "If she wants to be friends, she can find me herself. If you see her again, give her present back to her. And tell her what I said. I'm sure she'll be seeing you again."
Mac muttered, "I'm sure she will."
He held the Ring in his fingers and wished that it would go away. It radiated warmth, power, assurance—and a broadcast beam that would tell every Unseleighe thing in the area that a Seleighe warrior was among them.
Just exactly what I needed for Christmas.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elementary school. The racetrack. Penney's at the mall. Barnes' Motor and Parts. Three—count 'em, three—fast food joints. No—she thought, watching with disbelief as Mac pulled into a Kentucky Fried Chicken, Make that four fast food joints.
"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, fella," Belinda muttered. "If this is how hot-dog race-drivers spend their days, I'll pass."
She'd never tailed anyone duller in her life. She'd spent her entire afternoon driving in circles around Fayetteville, watching Mac gorge on junk food and run apparently pointless errands. It was getting dark, she'd put monster miles on her little silver Sunbird, she had to go to the bathroom, and she was, for the second time, almost out of gas. Mac hadn't taken a potty break or fueled up his accursed Chevy once. Belinda would have given anything to know how he'd accomplished that second trick. Those beasts were supposed to guzzle gas, everyone knew that. His gas tank couldn't be that big.
He hadn't spotted her. She knew he hadn't spotted her. Except a suspicion kept nagging that nobody, absolutely nobody, could or would spend a day in such a boring manner unless he was trying to mislead a tail.
But finally, at about seven-thirty, Mac's aimless wandering ceased, replaced by apparent commitment to a single direction and increased speed. Now we're getting somewhere, Belinda rejoiced.
She had to fall further and further back as they left the center of Fayetteville and traffic thinned. For twenty minutes, they sped along roads that became increasingly deserted. Suddenly, on a narrow country lane, Mac left the pavement entirely, bounced along a sand two-rut through a fallow field, and screeched to a halt in front of a stand of stunted hardwoods along the field's back perimeter. There were no buildings anywhere around. There were no cars passing by.
This is going to be good, Belinda gloated. If he has something going on back there, I'll make sure he finds a nice little surprise waiting for him the next time he drops by.
Belinda saw him creep out of the Chevy and sneak into the woods. She turned off her headlights, drove in as close as she dared, then rolled down her window. She left the keys hanging from the ignition in case she needed to get out fast, crawled out of the window to keep from making any unnecessary noise, then trailed him on foot.
Bless him for wearing light colors, she thought. His white windbreaker nearly glowed in the dark. She edged past the Chevy—cautiously—she
still couldn't explain the incident with Stevens and Peterkin—and slipped into the trees. She moved quietly. She'd had plenty of woods experience. Mac apparently hadn't. He sounded like a buffalo dancing on potato chips—she'd never heard such a racket from one person. She could have followed him blindfolded.
He worked his way up a rise and into a clearing. She saw him plainly. He stopped, illuminated by the light of the half-moon riding almost overhead. Then he turned. Fifteen yards behind him, she froze.
With preternatural clearness, she saw him look right at her. She saw him grin. His eyes fixed on hers, he mouthed the words "Hi, babe," and he waved at her—
Then he vanished. Poof. He didn't hide, he didn't move, he just—plain—vanished.
For one stunned moment, she couldn't think at all.
Then her mind started working again, beginning with a long list of things she'd like to call the sonuvabitch.
The boss, Belinda thought with some bitterness, ought to be thrilled by this.
From back where she'd parked, she heard a whinny and the sound of horse's hooves on dirt. She heard the "ding, ding" sound that could only be caused by someone opening her car door with the keys in the ignition. Still in a state of shock, she listened as a motor—her motor—kicked over.
What?
Mac had vanished and now someone was stealing her car!
Released from her trance, she turned and broke into a full-out gallop, screaming, "Get the hell away from my car, you thief!" as she ran. Branches slapped her face and tore at her clothes. Thorns ripped at her hands and tangled in her braid. Full-sized trees seemed to jump in front of her. She arrived in the field in time to see her car, headlights on, back out into the highway. The driver flipped the interior light on for a moment, just so she would be sure to recognize him. It was Mac. He waved, and tooted her horn, and drove off.
There was a light-colored horse running behind him. Pacing him, she'd have said.
"Give my car back, you bastard!" she shrieked. She pulled her gun out of her shoulder holster and fired one shot in sheer frustration. She heard the crack of shattering glass, and a laugh. Red tail lights disappeared in the distance.
Now her nice little rental car had a bullet hole in it. And a broken window. For which, no doubt, she'd be charged the worth of the entire car.
Shit! But, no—it doesn't matter. He stole my car, he didn't have anyone with him—therefore, he had to leave his. The Chevy. He'll have taken the keys—but I learned a lot from the P.D. I'll just hot-wire his damned Chevy.
She turned to walk back to Mac's car—and found hoof-prints and emptiness.
There was no car.
* * *
Mel Tanbridge grinned and fished out a pen and a yellow legal pad from his desk. He'd just mined a new sure-thing cash-crop angle out of his latest issue of Science News, and he wanted to get it down on paper while the idea was still fresh. The members of Nostradamus Project's auxiliary organization, Nostradamus Foundation International, paid well to get their pseudo-science delivered to their doorstep, and he worked hard to make sure it arrived full of juicy tidbits that would keep the money rolling in.
He looked over the SN article, which, in very careful terms noted a variance in the ability of rhesus monkeys to pick symbols shown on a computer screen when the symbols were chosen by a human researcher compared to random assignment of the symbols by the computer. The article, "High-Level Pattern Recognition in Rhesus Monkeys," noted that the monkeys picked the correct symbol from a random stream about 13 to 17 percent more often when the human researcher was choosing the symbols. The article noted that this happened even when the monkey was not able to see the researcher, eliminating the chance of visual cues from the human. The article suggested that the human researchers' attempts at randomness displayed a subconscious choice pattern picked up by the monkeys, and noted that the rhesus monkeys had a strong affinity for pattern recognition.
Mel snorted.
"Telepathic Contact Between Humans and Monkeys Confirmed In Independent Studies," he scratched down on the legal pad. "Rhesus monkeys are the first non-human species to demonstrate telepathic abilities—reading the minds of researchers in carefully controlled double-blind experiments conducted by—" He paused. One wanted to be very careful about naming names in these things. Some of his pet flakes, he suspected, also read Science News. "—by an independent simian research facility in Florida." He carefully copied in the statistics and a few, slanted quotes, referred to Science News as a "professional journal for scientists," and hit his pitch.
"Nostradamus Foundation International must raise—" He thought about it. How much did he want to raise this time? A couple million dollars would be nice. A couple million dollars would permit him to put out glossy four-color fliers and advertise in all his favorite magazines and expand his carefully cultivated list of fools who could be parted from their money. It would also permit him some breathing room to continue with his covert and highly illegal, but real, search to acquire a stable of TK's and other psi talents. "—two point four million dollars to continue its exciting research into projects like this." "Like" was an important word in Mel's vocabulary. He used it a lot. With that one little word, he could infer, without actually stating, that his foundation was involved in simian psychic research. My ass! Simian psychic research. What an angle. God, I love it.
"Finally, paranormal phenomena have become a legitimate domain of scientific exploration, and NFI is spearheading that exploration. Your participation has been essential to NFI's research in the past. We need your help now."
He drafted out a series of boxes, starting with twenty dollars and ending with a thousand, and noted that he wanted a place at the bottom of the fund sheet for "participants" to check "current areas of research" they would particularly like to see expanded, with a write-in line for "other." Those little mini-surveys were great. He'd been on the lookout for an animal project ever since some lady had written requesting that NFI expand into "telepathic research with other life forms." She'd added a long, handwritten letter (on pink cat stationery), with her check for twenty dollars, stating that she firmly believed her cats could read minds. Mel made sure she got a nice note back stating that NFI thought psychic cats were a good subject for research. He'd added "non-human psychic research" to his list immediately.
Mel loved New Agers.
He spun the soft leather executive chair to face out the window, leaned back, and laced his fingers behind his head. The taste of success was sweet. The last letter, scavenged from a National Geographic article on Eskimo shamans, had netted him about a million-five. This one, his instincts told him, was good for easily that much.
"Fran!" he yelled.
His secretary leaned in the door. "Yes?"
He indicated the legal pad. "Get Janny to set that up in bulletin format—yellow paper and black ink, a line drawing of a telepathic monkey—tell her to keep it understated and scientific-looking. Make sure the drawing is of a rhesus monkey," he added. He closed his eyes and sighed. "Some of these people might notice."
"Okay. Mel, do you want to look at your mail? You have a FedEx package, some bills, some junk, and a few responses from the last mailer."
"Bring 'em in." The bills would wait, the responses he loved to open personally—money in the mail was a wonderful thing. And the FedEx package ought to be Belinda's TK film. He felt a rush of adrenalin. There might be nothing to what she had—but Belinda wasn't one of the true believers. She thought the whole Nostradamus Project was a dodge. If she was convinced she had something real—
He suppressed that line of thought. No sense setting himself up for a disappointment. "Bring in the VCR from the conference room while you're at it."
* * *
Lianne opened the door, wearing an oversized pink t-shirt with Garfield on it and a pair of tight blue jeans, minus knees. Her deafeningly pink socks bagged around her ankles, and her hair was tucked behind her ears and held in place by barrettes. She looked about twelve. Mac had really been
hoping she'd be wearing something from Victoria's Secret—or maybe nothing—but he hid his disappointment bravely.
"Hey'ya!" She looked him over and grinned. "You look like a man who expected to be greeted by a woman wearing Saran Wrap." She winked. "I don't go to the door that way, you know. If I did, my mom would be on the other side."
Mac squeezed her to his chest and kissed her passionately. "That wasn't what I was thinking at all," he lied. "I was just thinking you were the prettiest bag lady I'd ever seen."
He followed her into her apartment, admiring the way she walked, and kept close as she led him to her television set.
"I went for comfort, I'll have you know. I had a very bad day." Lianne gave him a wan little smile and a tight hug. "I'm glad you're here. I rented a couple of movies, got a huge bag of popcorn, and I've got all the makings for daiquiris—unless you'd rather have diet soft drinks—?"
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