Blind Rage

by Michael W. Sherer

  James waved a hand irritably. “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this is about. Maybe he wants to steal it and sell it to the Chinese.”

  “Not Jack. He’s a patriot. He’d never sell out his country.”

  “If you say so.” The furrows on James’s forehead smoothed, his anger gone like a passing cloud. “Tess got her SAT scores back. She did great. Sally and I wanted to celebrate by taking her up to the pass for the afternoon and go boarding.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Is that a problem?”

  Travis rubbed his chin. “Actually, it might give us exactly the opportunity we need. I’m not sure I can pull it together that fast. Can you give me a few hours before you decide?”

  “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

  Travis was already headed for a computer. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” he said over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 15

  “What?” I shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  I raced the rest of the way to the driver’s side door and leaped inside, expecting to find a crazed slasher in the backseat threatening Tess with a twelve-inch butcher’s knife. After the morning’s screw-ups, topped off by Carl’s stunt at lunch, I didn’t think the day could get any worse. But there was nothing like a girl’s scream to peg the needle on the fright-o-meter and send my adrenaline level soaring.

  I found no knife-wielding psycho, only Tess holding a cell phone.

  “What’s the problem?” I said, calmly now, though my heart was still attempting a prison break by slamming against the bars of my ribcage.

  “I got an e-mail,” she said, dazed.

  “Wait. How can you—?”

  “I can’t read them. Text-to-voice software. They’re read to me.”

  “And you speak your reply?”

  “I can touch-type, you know. But yes, it’ll convert speech to text, too.”

  “So, what does it say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why the he—?” I stopped myself and took a deep breath. “Why did you scream?”

  Her lower lip quivered, and a tear leaked from the corner of one eye and rolled slowly down her cheek.

  She spoke so softly I could barely hear her. “It says it’s from my dad.”

  “But you said he’s . . .”

  She nodded.

  “Someone’s sick idea of a prank. Don’t let it get to you.”

  She swallowed hard. “But what if it’s . . . ?”

  “Really him? That would be tough, Tess. Not if what you told me is true. Don’t know that anyone’s pulled that trick for two thousand years. Unless it’s a ghost.”

  “How can you joke about it?” She sobbed.

  “I’m sorry, Tess. Really. Please don’t cry.”

  She sniffed and toyed with the hands in her lap.

  “Maybe you should find out what it says,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? C’mon. You have to find out sometime. Besides, I want to know who sent it so I can kill the bastard.”

  She sniffed. “You’d do that? I mean, not kill somebody, but . . .”

  “Well, it’s probably not in my job description, but yeah.”

  “All right.”

  She pushed a button on the phone. A tinny, robotic voice said, “Seeing is believing, Tess. Zho, Dad.”

  “Oh, my god!” she cried.

  Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks again, but she squeezed her eyes shut and dammed them up.

  The sight of her crying, even almost crying, was my Kryptonite—it rendered me weak, indecisive, and nearly incapable of thought.

  “What’s ‘zho’?” I said.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Ex-oh, like hugs and kisses. He always signed his texts that way.”

  The text recognition software was smart enough to try to pronounce it, but apparently not smart enough to know XO wasn’t a word.

  “So, it really is from your dad?”

  “Who else would it be from?”

  “C’mon, Tess. How is that even possible? It’s gotta be someone’s idea of a joke.”

  “That’s so mean! I can’t see. Who would do that?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her, but I was willing to bet the building behind us held several candidates perfectly capable of such casual cruelty. Carl would have been at the top of my list, but I didn’t know if he had the brains to plan an attack this devious or if he only took advantage of spontaneous opportunities. Like sticking out his foot when I got close.

  “I’ll take you home,” I said.

  I pushed the starter button. Only then did I notice the slip of paper stuck under the windshield wipers.

  “Damn!” I muttered.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  I opened the door, put one foot out, and reached around the door frame for the ticket.

  “What are you doing?” Tess said.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Don’t tell me you parked in the handicap space.”

  “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I mean, doesn’t blindness count as a handicap anymore?”

  “Not without plates or a handicap card.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just figured . . . Never mind. I’ll take you home.”

  Tess was quiet on the way back to the house. An e-mail from my father would have shut me up just as fast, even if I figured he was still alive out there somewhere.

  I parked in the garage and walked Tess into the kitchen. Since she’d run out on lunch, I figured she might be hungry. Rosa was cooking something—dinner maybe. For such a small household, she seemed to spend a lot of time at the stove, but then I supposed some dishes and desserts took more time to make than others. Coming from a generation raised on microwave cooking, I expected meals in minutes, not hours. Judging from the smells—cumin, oregano, coriander, cinnamon, and more—Rosa’s food was worth waiting for.

  Rosa fussed over Tess and helped get her seated at the counter, then proceeded to shift gears and whip up lunch. Alice walked in from her office and raised an eyebrow.

  “Oliver,” she said, “a word, please.”

  I followed her into her office.

  “You’re home early,” she said without sitting down. “What happened?”

  I ran down the morning’s events for her, doing my best to report factually and not embellish them with overt emotion, especially mine. I summed up with, “She had a rough go. I figured she’d had enough.”

  Alice managed to look down her nose at me, making me feel small even though I towered over her.

  “All right,” she said slowly. “Perhaps this once. I don’t want you to coddle her, Oliver. She needs to regain her confidence.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

  “How’s her homework load?”

  “Not bad. Pretty light.”

  “Well, after she’s eaten you can help her with that. Depending on what time you finish, you can leave for the day or stay for dinner, if you wish.”

  “Thank you, Alice.”

  She rounded the desk and sat down, dismissing me. I turned for the door and nearly jumped out of my socks when Tess screamed—again.

  CHAPTER 16

  “¡Ay, Dios mío!” Rosa cried.

  Footsteps clattered into the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” Alice said. “What’s the matter?”

  “El fantasma de su padre,” Rosa whispered. “Dios mío.”

  “English, Rosa, please!” Alice said shortly. “Tess, what happened?”

  Tess held up her phone and sobbed. “I got another e-mail message. From Dad.”

  “You must be mistaken, Tess,” Alice said.

  “I told her it’s somebody’s sick idea of a joke,” Oliver said.

  Tess swung her head wildly from voice to voice. “Stop it, all of you! You think I don’t know an e-mail from my own father?”

  She jumped up and fled from the room, arms flailing in front of he
r face to ward off onrushing walls. She cracked her knee against a stool, rapped her knuckles against a doorframe, and bruised a shoulder on a wall, but succeeded in getting away.

  Behind her, Tess heard Alice say, “Oliver!” She stepped up her pace. Feeling her way down the hall, Tess grabbed the banister and bolted up the stairs.

  “Tess!” Oliver called. “Wait!”

  His footsteps pounded up after her, and she felt his hand on her arm before she reached the top. Oliver’s breathing was heavy and ragged, and Tess took some small comfort in knowing she’d made him work to catch up.

  “What do you want?” She wrenched her arm away and took another stair.

  “Hold up. C’mon, Tess. Wait a minute. Look, I get it. I know what it’s like.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know what this is like.”

  “Yes, I do. My mom died when I was little, and my dad ran out on me. I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. If I got an e-mail from him, I’d freak.”

  Tess digested that slowly, momentarily confounded. “You’re probably just telling me that to make me feel sorry for you.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s no big deal for me because it happened so long ago. For you, it’s fresher, so it hurts more. I just wanted you to know I understand what you’re going through.”

  Thoughts blazed through her mind, leaving trails of sparks.

  No one could possibly understand what I’m going through.

  She said nothing.

  “It has to be a prank, Tess. Someone’s messing with you.”

  “But why? What have I done to anyone?”

  “I don’t know. That kid Toby, maybe? Or Carl. He’s a big enough asshole.”

  “Not smart enough. And I can’t believe Toby would do something like that. Not to me.”

  “What about your friend? Adrienne? Not a lot of love lost between you two, I’m guessing.”

  Tess couldn’t stop the tears that started running down her cheeks again.

  Oliver groaned. “Jeez, not again. Everything’s spinning, fading. I feel so weak. Kryptonite, I’m telling you. Got—to—shield—myself—from—”

  Tess felt a tissue being pressed into her hand, and she laughed in spite of herself.

  “Come on, let’s get you something to eat. We’ll figure this out.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Okay, so let’s go somewhere quiet and think this through.”

  “The library,” she said.

  “Which way?” Oliver said.

  “I’ll show you. Take my arm.”

  Tess turned. With one hand on the banister, she led Oliver down the stairs. She put her hand out and lightly touched the wall at the bottom of the stairs, but she could find the library easily without feeling her way or counting steps. When she reached the door, she stopped.

  “This is it?” he said. “How did you do that?”

  “I know my way around my own home.”

  She heard Oliver open the door. He guided her through the opening.

  “Wow!” he said. “Nice.”

  “It’s my favorite room.”

  She could picture it perfectly—the walls of shelves, two of which were bifurcated by a catwalk accessible from a spiral staircase. A pair of big, stuffed wing chairs flanked a leather couch in front of the fireplace. A reading table with four straight-backed chairs around it anchored the middle of the room under a hanging lampshade of green glass. It was exactly how a library in an old English manor should look. The rest of the house was contemporary, which may have been why she loved the library so much. It felt cozy, and much more inviting and warm than the other rooms, no matter how comfortable they were.

  “My dad used to say this library was bigger than the library of Alexandria.”

  “Alexandria probably had nearly four hundred thousand scrolls.”

  “It took several scrolls to make a book,” she said, “so it still didn’t have that many books.”

  “How many do you have here? A few thousand?”

  Tess nodded. “Around five thousand. But we sort of cheat. The Internet, you know.”

  She pointed in the direction of a study carrel in a corner. The nook was equipped with a computer and high-speed broadband connection.

  “How do you do that?” Oliver said.

  She turned to the sound of his voice. “Do what?”

  “You pointed right at that computer.”

  “I told you, I know my way around the house.”

  “And that. What about that? You’re looking right at me, Tess.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “But you’re not looking at me the way a blind person would. You know, sort of unfocused and off to the side. You look at people when they speak.”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I guess I’m still trying to see you talk. I just ‘look’ at the sound of your voice.”

  “If there’s nothing wrong with your eyes, why can’t you see?”

  “They told me the accident probably caused a brain injury.”

  “I’m sorry.” Oliver paused. “Is there . . . ? I mean, can they—?”

  “No. There’s nothing they can do. I don’t want to talk about it.” Tess swallowed hard. “I want to show you something.”

  She turned and took two steps before banging her hip into the back of a chair. Oliver’s hand was on her arm in a flash.

  “Let me help,” he said. “Where to?”

  She bit her lower lip and pulled her arm away. “I have to learn how to do this on my own.”

  Oliver didn’t reply, so she put her hands out and felt her way around the table, oriented herself, and gingerly stepped to the bookshelf. Her hands worked out in both directions until they found the edge of a section. She moved books to the side and thrust her hand to the back of the shelf. Her fingers discovered the outline of a keypad. Tracing the keys lightly, she put her fingers in position and pressed in a ten-digit code from memory. She heard a satisfying click, and pulled. The entire shelf swung into the library, exposing an opening into a room beyond.

  “Holy smoke!” Oliver said. “A secret panel? What’s back there?”

  “Come on,” Tess said as she stepped through. “Help me. I haven’t been in here in a while.”

  Oliver took her arm and walked her a few paces inside the room. They stopped. She imagined what he saw—a functional but still comfortable office. A large flat-screen monitor topped a teak desk. A couch ran part of the length of one wall.

  “What is this?”

  “My dad’s private study,” Tess said. “Specially designed and constructed to serve as a panic room if necessary. He used to come in here when he was working on a problem and didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “What sort of problem? What did he do?”

  “Designed video games.”

  Tess wished she could watch him working at his desk, intense concentration on his face. Even though she was blind and he was gone, she could feel him in the room.

  “They’re not a prank,” she said. “The e-mails. They’re from him. From my dad.”

  “Tess,” Oliver said, “maybe you should let your parents go.”

  She blinked back the tears welling up in her eyes. “How can you say that? Just forget they ever existed?”

  “No, of course not. Love them. Cherish your memories of them. But let go, Tess. You’ll go crazy, otherwise.”

  “He wanted me to know something. I’m sure of it. He’s trying to tell me something.”

  “What did the e-mail say this time?” Oliver’s voice was still soft, calm.

  “‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’”

  “That’s it? You can’t see, but ‘seeing is believing.’ You depend on hearing more than ever, but you’re not supposed to believe everything you hear. Either that’s the worst advice your dad ever gave you, or someone’s punking you. Come on, Tess. What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know!”

  She wanted to scream and stamp her feet�
��or hit something. But it had slowly begun to dawn on her that this was her life now. Standing here in her father’s study, she knew that if her parents were still alive, they’d both be telling her in their own ways to get over herself. To move on.

  “But I know how we can find out,” she said.

  CHAPTER 17

  One year earlier. . .

  An op of this magnitude required time to plan carefully, and but Travis had had less than twenty-four hours. A shiver of excitement ran through him, and his stomach flip-flopped the way it always did before a mission. A hundred things could go wrong, but if everything went right, this op just might solve their problems.

  He gazed out the darkened windows of the big snowcat, slowly panning in a wide arc. He had a surprisingly clear view of the terrain on almost all sides, but that meant he was visible, too—if someone knew where to look. The black highway snaked through the snowy pass below him, stretching nearly two miles in each direction before disappearing around the shoulders of mountains. The bright lights of the ski resort glowed on the other side of the highway. White ski trails climbed the side of the mountain above the resort, dotted with bright pools of light. Tiny black dots zigzagged down the mountain, dipping in and out of the pools.

  He turned to the mountainside stretching away from the snowcat. The snow that had fallen steadily all day had nearly stopped. Cold air seeped into the cabin. Without the heater running, Travis could already see his breath. He rubbed his hands together. The conditions could not have been better. A wet, cold winter had dragged on into spring, resulting in one of the deepest snowpacks in years. Skiers and snowboarders would be happy to see the season extend to late May or early June.

  He keyed his radio. “All units check in.”

  One by one, the men in the field responded, letting him know they were in position.

  “Status, Red?” Travis said.

  Red’s reply crackled through his headset. “The package just reached the top. Headed down the chute now.”

  “Heads up, Fred,” Travis said. “Could be the last run of the day. If so, you’ll have to pick up the package at the bottom. Red, head out for the rendezvous. Everyone else—on your toes.”

  Marcus had objected to using first names in their radio communication, but they used mostly military-spec hardware, including tactical radio gear with encryption. The frequency they were on was a little-used military band that wouldn’t interfere with the state highway department’s radio equipment.