by Anna Durand
He shrugged. "The files. And my remote reconnaissance of you and your associates. I needed to know as much as possible about you before I risked exposing myself to you."
She grunted. Yeah, his rationale made sense. She didn't like it, and sure as hell didn't trust him. At the moment, however, she needed him to think she might.
Forcing herself to relax, she said, "Thank you for sharing your information with me. But my relationship with David is off limits."
"As you wish. Nevertheless, I will help you find Tesler." He glanced down at her left hand, and the diamond ring on the third finger. "But in the process, you will learn things about your beloved that you may not like. Do you still wish to proceed?"
"Yes."
Amador settled back into his chair. "Then we shall find Tesler. I hope you are as prepared for the truth as you believe."
"I am."
Was she prepared? No clue. She had to proceed. For her, there was no choice anymore. To save David, she must risk losing him. To save the world from Tesler and his cohorts, she must risk everything — including her own life.
Tesler was coming. For her. Now.
Chapter Eight
Goose bumps prickled her skin. Tesler. She'd never met the man, yet she knew from David's reaction to the very mention of Tesler's name the man was a sociopath at best. He tortured people in the name of science. What Tesler practiced bore no resemblance to real science. It was a dark perversion of a scientific experiment.
Why did David call her on the phone? In emergencies, he relied on their telepathic line, not the cell phone network.
David's final words ricocheted in her mind. Your psychic firewall is —
Her throat tightened, and her mouth went dry. She knew why he used the phone, and what he'd been about to say in his message. Her psychic wall, the one he encouraged her to build, must've blocked him from contacting her. No one, not even David, could breach her defenses.
She must lower the barrier.
No, she couldn't. Not with Gabriel Amador scratching at the wall. He wanted in too, and she had no intention of admitting him. But David…
He hadn't asked her to lower the wall. He must not want her to, or else he would've asked. Unless the message cut off before he got the chance.
Dammit. For the time being, she must keep the barrier intact.
Where could she hide? Where would Tesler and his goons not think to look for her?
Her foot tapped the floor in a frenzied rhythm. This wouldn't be the first time she'd gone on the lam, but no. She refused to flee and cower in some dank hideout. Going home wasn't an option either. Even she wasn't pigheaded enough to waltz right into an ambush.
She pushed up off the chair, muttering a rapid string of curses under her breath. "If you'll give me that DVD, I should be on my way."
"Of course." Amador rose to his full height, a good six inches taller than she was. "You are welcome to stay the night here, of course. I have spacious guest quarters."
"Thank you, Mr. Amador, but I have to be going." Where to, dummy?
"You will never assent to calling me Biel, will you?"
"It's doubtful." Realizing the statement sounded rude, and wary of poking a dragon, she added, "Sorry. It's just that I don't know you."
"Not yet. But you will." Again, his utter certainty rankled. He picked up the phone on his desk, punched buttons, and waited for the other party to answer. "Yes, Wickham, please bring the DVD for Ms. Powell. She is ready to leave us. No, forget the snack. She has urgent business to attend to."
As he hung up the phone, she said, "Thank you sharing your information with me."
"It is a pleasure." He extended a hand to her, and she settled her palm onto his. He brushed a light kiss across the back of her hand. Weird. Without releasing her hand, he said, "We will see each other again very soon, Grace. I look forward to it."
His hand was warm and soft, like the skin of man who rarely deigned to perform manual labor. His gaze, locked on hers, sent an odd shiver through her. Not desire, like with David. Not fear either. Something else she couldn't place.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He laid his other hand atop hers. "Gabriel Ricardo Amador, president and founder of Catalan Enterprises." He encased her hand in his strong fingers. "And your friend, I hope."
"I need to go, but I may have questions later."
"Naturally. Call or stop by anytime. Wickham will provide you with a number where you can reach me." He lifted her hand to his lips again, his flesh skimming over hers. "I am at your service, always."
He freed her hand. She stepped out into the hallway, shutting the door.
Wickham rounded a corner ahead of her. He held a DVD, sheathed in a hard plastic case. Grace met him halfway, accepting the disk from him with a thank-you and a smile. He pointed out the business card tucked inside the DVD case, assuring her she could reach Biel at any time if she called the number on the card. Then he escorted her back to the front door, smiling and wishing her a good day as he opened the door for her. When the door closed behind her, she let out the breath she'd been holding.
She still had no idea what to think about Amador. Maybe it didn't matter, since she planned on avoiding him whenever possible. Contact only when necessary to glean more info from him. Simple. Clean.
Then why did razor-wire butterflies flap in her stomach?
First up, she needed to compare the information on his disk with the data on the flash drive. Viewing the DVD's contents on her own computer seemed ill advised. Sure, Amador presented himself as an amiable, if cautious, fellow. But she couldn't risk contaminating her computer, or the flash drive, if Amador's disk turned out to contain a virus or worm.
She pressed two fingers to the valley between her breasts, pinning the flash drive to her sternum. David thought it was silly to keep the flash drive there. Today, with her home compromised, she was damn happy about her paranoia. Before she could consider viewing Amador's DVD, she had to accomplish another feat.
Track down a safe place to stay while evading Tesler's goons. Piece of cake.
Steel-reinforced concrete cake. And all she had to cut it with was a plastic knife. Well then, she'd forge herself a new blade. No more running.
She marched to her car, each step buoyed by a renewed purpose.
Grace drove to the bank and withdrew the entire balance of her checking account. A visit to an electronics store netted her a new laptop, since she'd left her computer at home, and a clean cell phone, prepaid and untraceable to her. She stowed the Pontiac in a covered parking structure downtown, and then hitched a ride in a taxi, heading for an old house on the outskirts of town. A nice old lady sold her a beat-up, though well-maintained, Dodge Ram pickup. With her purse at her side, and the revolver berthed inside it, she drove along the interstate in search of a motel.
Maybe David was wrong about her developing a new ability, because if she could see the future, then she would've brought her computer with her. Then again, maybe not, since it might've been bugged or hacked or something. If she'd foreseen this trouble, she most definitely would not have let David run off to Montana.
Her vision of Tesler murdering him had been real, but for the vision to be true, she must've developed precognitive abilities. Maybe using her new power required a deliberate effort. Nice theory, except the first time she stumbled onto her precognition without any intent to do so. She rubbed her neck, squinting in the sunlight streaming through the windshield. She couldn't test the boundaries of her abilities right now. Too much risk. Too much unknown.
What if Gabriel Amador was stalking her again?
Calm down, you're safe. Her psychic barrier thwarted everyone, including David. If he couldn't break through, despite their telepathic bond, then Amador sure as hell couldn't tap into her brain.
Her thoughts circled back around to the dark presence clawing at her when she
built her firewall, and the freakish incident earlier, when for the second time in one day, she'd believed David was in mortal jeopardy. Something — whether a human mind or a presence beyond her comprehension, she didn't know — still wielded the strength to manipulate her mind, with more vigor than any psychic mentioned by David or in JT's files.
David found a way into her mind through their emotional union. Six months ago, JT forced a link with her by injecting himself with enough drugs to boost his latent powers into the stratosphere. What if another someone discovered a new way to tap into her brain? A method too strong for her firewall to withstand?
For the moment, she had to shove the possibility aside and keep moving.
The Ram carried her to a motel thirty miles outside of town, a dingy place with ten rooms and a heavily tattooed clerk with rings in his nose and lower lip. He wore a T-shirt that looked like a souvenir from a heavy-metal rock festival. A name tag pinned to his T-shirt identified him as Tag. She almost laughed, but suppressed it for the sake of politeness.
"Is that really your name?" she asked, in as un-sarcastic a tone as she could muster.
"Yeah," he said, with a Chicago accent. "It's actually Taggert, but I go by Tag most of the time. 'Specially when I'm at work. It makes the customers wonder."
"About what?"
"Whether I'm too high on drugs to remember my own name."
And then he smiled. A wide, welcoming smile that she couldn't help but reciprocate.
Tag chuckled. "I ain't, by the way. High, that is."
He tapped a small round button pinned to his shirt. She hadn't noticed it before, and she leaned forward a little to read it. The button, rusty and scratched, featured the slogan "Just say no."
"I got this when I was a kid," Tag said. "Kept it ever since. A motto to live by."
"It sure is."
He sighed. "You didn't come here for my anti-drugs lecture, though. What can I do ya for?"
"A room."
"Just you?"
"Yes." Just her. Alone. On the run.
Life sucked. Life as a fugitive amnesiac sucked like a Godzilla-size vacuum cleaner.
He nodded and turned to the PC on the counter. "Name?"
"What?"
"Your name. I need to enter it into the computer."
"Oh." She hesitated, wringing her brain for an alias. "Christine Marcus."
Combining her parents' first names was all she could think of at the moment. Tag seemed satisfied, and pecked at the computer keys with both index fingers.
Five minutes later, he handed her the key to room 8 and she walked out of the office. Room 8 lay at the far end of the one-story building, on the side facing the road. At least that meant she'd have a clear view of the office and the parking lot, to keep watch for any suspicious characters. These days, she didn't know exactly how to differentiate suspicious types from regular people. The clerk, Tag, had seemed threatening until he spoke and smiled. Gabriel Amador seemed friendly and upstanding, yet he kept secrets and spied on her. Damn, she really wished the bad guys would don black hats so she could tell them apart from everyone else. It was rude of them to blend in so cunningly.
Inside the room, she shut the door and moseyed over to the bed, dropping her purse and her new computer on the table situated beside the double bed. The outside of the motel looked dingy. Here, though, she found a clean room with the usual amenities.
She returned to the bed, flopping onto it with all the delicacy of a dog jumping into a pond. Her eyes were gritty, her tongue cottony. A heaviness overwhelmed her, as if she gained fifty pounds in the past hour. Her brain ached from the pressure of thinking. She needed a plan. She needed information too. She needed help, dammit, but instead she got more trouble. Would Tesler himself show up to bag-and-tag her, or would he send his goons?
A memory snapped into focus in her mind. A man in a black outfit reminiscent of military fatigues. His head shielded by a black, full-face helmet. A large gun in his hand, aimed at her. The sound of his sneering laugh echoed in her mind.
The man had been called Battaglia. He neglected to share his first name when he captured her during her attempt to break into the Mojave Desert facility. He'd treated her like an animal. To Battaglia, psychics were nothing more than freaks of nature, not human beings, just wild beasts in need of putting down — or at least containing. Battaglia was nasty, but nowhere near as bad as Tesler because, underneath the bravado, he was a coward. She remembered his choked voice when he begged her not to shoot him. Since he'd been tied up at the time, and no longer a threat to her, she let him live. His commando buddies must've rescued him later on, after she and David fled the ruins of the facility.
Battaglia was still alive. Had he stuck with Tesler? Would he show up to hunt her down?
She wiped her slick palms on her pants. Sucking in a deep breath, she shut her eyes and exhaled slowly. No more fear. She must not let Battaglia or Tesler spiral her into a full-blown panic over the mere possibility of running into either of them. She stopped them before. She could do it again.
This time for good.
Rubbing her eyes, she yawned and stretched. She dragged her new computer off the bedside table, down onto the mattress beside her. The brief look she got at the files earlier, while Amador kept an eye on her, revealed nothing she didn't already know from the data on the flash drive. She popped Amador's DVD into the computer's disk drive and browsed the list of files it contained. The data was organized into dozens of folders, each of which contained multiple subfolders. She clicked on a folder called "Profiles." Within it, she found subfolders identified with abbreviations that she recognized. They were codes for the various types of psychic abilities — RV for remote viewing, AP for astral projection, TK for telekinesis, and on and on. The list included abbreviations she'd never seen before, like PRC and PTC. The letters TP undoubtedly referred to thought projection, and MR must indicate mind reading. Despite the dangers of mind reading, the scientists employed at ALI after the takeover by JT and his minions coerced some psychics into attempting to use the ability.
The abbreviation on one folder stopped her: "GP."
She'd seen the abbreviation before. At the time, she hadn't understood what it meant. Since then, she learned the letters GP referred to the Golden Power.
Biting her lip, overcome by a dark sense of dread, she opened the GP folder. It contained two files, each labeled with a name. The first file was called "Janet Austen." Finding her alias listed in these files didn't surprise her. The second file was called "John Mendoza." Okay, so the name Amador claimed was his alias appeared in these files. He could've altered the data, though, to make her think he spent time in an ALI facility, or John Mendoza might not be his alias after all, but rather the name of another man interned at the Siberian facility. This proved nothing.
She opened the Mendoza file. It gave his basic description in bullet points — height, weight, hair color, eye color — and listed his psychic abilities as "high level." His powers included remote viewing and astral projection. This meant he could spy on anyone he liked and project an image of himself to whomever he liked as well. Manifestation was not listed as one of his gifts, but then she hadn't yet seen that ability listed as a separate power in any of the ALI files. Creating a physical body while astral projecting involved, from what David had told her, a combination of other abilities, including thought projection and telekinesis. Maybe ALI hadn't considered that to be a separate power. In common terms, astral projection was manifesting. In reality, however, manifesting a physical form required a massive amount of psychic energy as well as a connection with another person who could serve as a kind of conduit for the process. David could manifest only with Grace's help. Their combined power made it possible.
And he assured her no one else possessed the ability.
She searched her brain for the memory of what David told her when he explained psychic a
bilities to her six months ago. She'd learned a little more on her own, by experimenting with her own powers, but what his lessons still formed the basis of everything she knew about paranormal abilities. The truth according to David. She trusted him, and yet she wondered sometimes if he disclosed everything to her. Amnesia surely affected their relationship, but he might have other reasons for holding back with her. More immediate reasons. Things he kept to himself because…
What? He didn't trust her? No way. What else might explain his reticence? She must figure out the reason. She couldn't accept the man she admitted into her life and her heart — not once, but twice — didn't trust her. Their faith in each other had saved their lives.
She browsed the remainder of Amador's profile. Nothing of much interest there. A listing of excursions he'd taken under Tesler's direction, or that of another scientist. During an excursion, a traveler remote viewed a target location to demonstrate the extent of his or her powers, while the scientists measured their accuracy in describing the target. Her perusal of the files on the flash drive hadn't yet turned up a description of Tesler's methodology. Grace didn't know the specifics of how the experiments worked. She ought to find out. To do that, she would need to ask David or Sean.
Or Gabriel Amador.
She closed Amador's profile, if indeed the profile belonged to him. The Mendoze file omitted any physical description of the individual. He might've been Amador, or he might've been a child. The data left her to assume Mendoza and Amador were the same person.
Next, she opened her own file. A knot tightened in her stomach as she looked at the profile. No photo in this file either. She hadn't really expected to see one, since her parents had done everything they could to shield her from Tesler and JT. The profile described Janet Austen in the vaguest terms, though it included her height, weight, eye color, and hair color. Strangely, it gave her hair color as blonde and her eye color as blue. The height and weight were correct. Had she worn a wig? Or bleached her hair blonde? She would've noticed the roots growing out even after she dyed it auburn again, because matching her natural hair color precisely would've proved difficult and time consuming. She must've worn a wig, and colored contact lenses. Why? To confuse anyone trying to find her, she guessed. Hiding her weight and height would've proved next to impossible, but masking her hair and eye color wouldn't take much effort.
