The Listener

by Christopher Carrolli

  “Nope, those guards were the only ones that I saw. No one ever came there, but Hadley did speak on the phone several times. It was after one of his conversations that...” She took a deep breath as she broke off, then her voice began to quiver. “I heard bits of a whispered conversation, remotely, that is. It was Hadley’s voice, and another man’s; they were talking about me, about how I would have to be dealt with. I got away from there, as fast as possible, and that’s when I came here and had Ed call you. I saw a maroon-colored Sedan following me before I even got out of that part of town. It was close behind when I turned into the lot, but now it’s not out there.”

  Then Ursula pointed out the location on the blueprints that he showed her.

  “Ursula, you did great, and I assure you, with your help in finding Ryan, no one is going to charge you. You’re a victim here; we know that.”

  She looked as though at least a half a ton of weight had been lifted from her shoulders, leaving an uncertain other half to remain.

  Just then, Ed opened the door, showing Leah, Brett, and Dylan into his office.

  * * * *

  Wiley introduced them though no introductions were needed for her benefit; Ursula was well familiar with who they were.

  “There isn’t time to discuss details, not now,” Wiley said. “But Ursula knows where Ryan is, as well as Hadley. She’s going to lead me and my backup there.”

  “I know where he is also,” Leah said, describing in detail the incident in Susan’s office and confirming the description of Hadley that Ursula gave.

  “Okay,” Wiley said. “I want you two girls to stick together, so you both can ride with me. Guys, this could be dangerous, so I want you to stay safe and some distance behind my backup when we’re on the road.

  “From what Ursula has told me, there were only two guards at all times in the compound. My backup is going to storm the place as soon as Ursula directs them where to go. Then, I want you girls to stay as close to me as possible—got it? Like I said, this could be dangerous; we are unsure what to expect. I want you all to remain alert, and guys, I want you parked behind the backup vehicles when we get there, waiting for the girls when I send them back out.

  “By the way,” Wiley said, looking around, having missed a certain absence. “Where is Dr. Logan, I thought she was going to be here?”

  “She needed to stay behind with Sidney,” Dylan said. “We aren’t sure what the issue was, but he wanted to see her.”

  “Just as well,” Wiley said. “Let’s just hope that issue wasn’t about Ryan.”

  Then he rolled out the blueprints and pointed to the spot that Ursula had shown him, going over quick instructions and order of procedure.

  “Let’s do this quickly, silently, and pray no one gets hurt. Remember, the FBI is in charge here. When I tell you to stay close, or move away, or get back to your vehicles, you do it, understand?”

  Issuing his final instruction, Wiley radioed his backup before leaving the office, and then the four of them calmly walked out of the diner, careful not to rouse attention.

  * * * *

  The maroon-colored Sedan sat in an alleyway a hundred yards north of the small diner, perched high atop a winding hill that provided a bird’s eye view of the location. The well-trained eye of the unknown driver noticed two distinct cars park in two different directions of the diner, conspicuously, as neither driver exited the vehicles.

  “Unmarked?” The equally mysterious passenger asked.

  “Definitely unmarked,” the driver replied.

  “The agent is now leaving with the girl. We must leave here, quickly but casually. It is over; our time at this location is up. If Hadley is to survive, he must evacuate now.”

  The passenger retrieved a cell phone from the inner jacket pocket of his black suit, and pressed a single speed-dial button.

  * * * *

  Hadley was becoming antsy, pacing and fidgeting at the feeling that stirred inside him, like time was running out. He felt like there was no need to go through the same cycle over again with the boy, poking and prodding, hoping to extract the tiniest piece of information that would satisfy the others. His only intention now was to obtain the information from Ryan that was vital to his plan; where was Susan Logan, right now? Hadley had searched, listened with his own clairaudient ear, and failed.

  He also planned to discover whether or not Ryan was capable of that same strange ability that he, himself, had stumbled upon while in Foster’s captivity, the act of telepathic intrusion. He remembered well how he gazed into Caleb’s mind, picturing his thoughts and stealing his mental images while the Herculean brute fought hard against the invisible intruder. Caleb lacked the mental capacity to fight what he knew was happening, and so a seizure caused his hemorrhaging brain to collapse and expire. Sidney Pratt had been unaware that he was fighting such an intruder, therefore escaping the same fate as Caleb.

  Now he sat across from Ryan at a small table in one of the rooms. Ryan was smart and capable for his age and fully aware of what he possessed; Hadley felt sure that it could be done this time, successfully.

  As soon as he had a fixed location on Susan, he would flee here, abandon this place, and end this wretched identity. He would leave the boy here, safely, and then he would find her. After all these years, he would find her. He couldn’t allow any distractions now, especially from the sinister ship from which he was about to mutiny. Now, he was in charge. He turned his cell phone off, as well as the satellite phone and video monitors, the quick alternatives since cell usage became limited throughout this vast underground.

  “Ryan, I want you to look directly at me and focus with your telepathic mind when I speak to you,” he said.

  Ryan’s face was hard, insolent, but he complied.

  “Where is Susan Logan, right at this moment? Can you hear her?”

  Ryan continued to stare bitterly at him then lifted his head up, his eyes casting a fixed gaze, his clairaudient ear searching through the silence. No sounds came to him.

  “I can’t hear her; I’m not hearing anything, right now.”

  “Ryan, try to focus; this is important. I’m asking you to search with your telepathic mind and utilize your clairaudient ear to hear any sounds. Try to merge your abilities, make them one.”

  Hadley’s voice was urgent, impatient.

  “Try again, Ryan. What about the others, the team? Where are they?”

  At this point, Ryan failed to budge at the slightest hint of intimidation or pressure, his stare now protesting in apathetic abandonment.

  “I told you; I don’t hear anything, right now.”

  Hadley fixed an intense gaze into Ryan’s eyes. He pictured his own mind and the boy’s mind co-existing together, his intuition merging with the boy’s thoughts and mental images. He closed his eyes and saw the smaller brain, and then something quick like a camera flash showed him a mental picture of the underground itself, then the room where Ryan had been kept. Another flash changed the scene, and he saw the image of them both at the table where they sat.

  The next instant flash brought with it a bright, magnificent light, a pure painful whiteness that made his eyes wince. Then an image of a young man filled his mind. He tried to open his eyes, to react, to shake himself from the telepathic reverie, but could not.

  The young man with the greenest eyes he’d ever seen encapsulated the vision, his reddish-brown hair and blustering shoulders seemed menacing even from the distance of another world. The threatening upward glare of the deep, sage green eyes stared as though they were pointing at Hadley, who now wriggled in the chair, trying to wrestle himself away from the frozen hold.

  That same intuition he’d often felt, especially today, told him that the young man was Ryan’s father; he kept coming closer and closer with those eyes that never blinked and pupils that grew larger and larger, enough to swallow his mind. Hadley let out a cry of pain that roused him out of the telepathic trance that had subdued him.

  He felt numbness all over, and h
e steadied himself not to fall out of the chair as sleeping muscles sought to awaken. The daze of a dizzying spell left him aware, but out of touch, and he glanced up to see Ryan’s expression change to one of surprise and automatic concern.

  The boy was staring at his face, and through the numbness that began to lessen, Hadley felt a hot, wet stream trickle down his nose and settle upon the edge of his upper lip. He touched it with his fingers then pulled them away—blood.

  “No,” he said, placing all of his weight upon the chair to slowly rise. The chair slightly slid from under him, nearly dropping him to the floor, but he balanced it and steadied himself upright. He wiped the blood from his nose with his sleeve and looked around, disoriented.

  Ryan watched as Hadley slowly shuffled his feet in an uncertain direction, searching around, as though he was missing something.

  “Mr. Hadley?” Ryan addressed him in question mode. The only response that Hadley gave was a brief exhale of fatigue, and then he murmured a name...Susan.

  * * * *

  The passenger in the maroon Sedan had tried several times to reach Hadley on his cell phone; he was not answering the calls. The mysterious passenger had no luck with the satellite phone either. One of them had to be answered at all times.

  “Perhaps he’s already vacated,” the driver said in a lifeless monotone.

  “Those were not his instructions,” the passenger said. “Besides, he is unaware of what is taking place. We must leave immediately; we cannot save Hadley or the boy now, if they’re still there.”

  The passenger retrieved a small gadget, much like a cell phone in appearance, from the opposite inner pocket of his black suit and touched a few buttons.

  “The computer systems will initiate the explosive self destruction sequence.” The eerie voice of the passenger was similar in tone to that of the driver, yet older. “In exactly thirty minutes, the entire compound will be annihilated to bits and pieces, whether Hadley and the boy are there or not. Hadley has finally become a weak link; we must cut our losses...”

  * * * *

  Hadley was pacing back and forth, lost in minor confusion that was just enough to make him lose time. He pulled his cell phone out, turned it back on, and fumbled trying to close the screen that showed two missed calls, not that it mattered anymore. He attempted to place a call but only stared at the screen in confusion, then looked around him, his eyes gazing agog into the distance. Who would he call?

  Suzy Q.

  The nickname he remembered well, but he didn’t have her number. He knew that—the fog was making him forget. He looked over at the boy, whose concern was now tinged with growing fear, seeing the blood from his nose spotting the floor in droplets. Hadley looked down at it and remembered Caleb.

  So, he was now the aggressor; how did this happen? He wished he would have died in an effort to get out of here, but he didn’t. The money was fantastic; he had never wanted for anything. His every need, every whim, was served to him on a platter. There had also been the fear, the fear of returning home with the realization that he was not the same person anymore, one way or another. Their continuous threats to his family, and also to Susan, became overwhelming. His life would have been over if anything had happened to them because of him.

  He looked back at Ryan. How could he have wanted the same thing for this innocent child, to suffer the same existence as he had? His ability was a curse, and no one knew better than he did, right now. The boy was too young to realize it yet.

  “You must leave here, Ryan,” he said. “You must go.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  She missed nearly broad siding a parked car in her haste and insurmountable shock, a stupor so great that she felt herself trying to move her lips to say something, but some strange paralysis only allowed her to make minimal moans of distress during the failed attempts. Her mind became incapable of sustaining the slightest thought of anything other than what she’d just been told: Mark, Hadley, the same person—impossible. How could this be? She felt the bitter disappointment at not waking in her bed and discovering it all to be a nightmare.

  She had stopped at Ed’s Diner, only to be told that Wiley and the team had left minutes before. Susan turned and left without saying a word; she knew where they had gone, to the old mining section of town. Leah saw the vision in her office, and the girl described everything to perfection. If she didn’t find them, she was going alone to hunt for Hadley; if Sidney was right, he would be holding Ryan in that old, renovated mining facility.

  She would go there and prove that Sidney was wrong; he had to be, but then she thought back to the day when she first met Ryan, and she’d been reading his file in her office. When she read of the boy’s abilities, she was overcome with the memories of Mark and how similar their psychic abilities were, more so than Sidney’s.

  Roman Hadley was suspected of belonging to the same psychic ilk.

  Every time she held out hope that it wasn’t true, that thought came back to her, draping a dark curtain over her pounding heart. Her attention to the road in front of her waned, and she drove on, oblivious to the rural scenes that passed her by, bringing her closer to her destination.

  It had been over forty years, forty-two, to be exact, since she last saw Mark. The day that his number was called at the draft office rally was the day it had ended for them. They spent the next few days together before he’d left on the bus for boot camp. Those last moments were taking place in her mind all over again: the rush to leave, the promises of hope they’d exchanged, while unspoken premonitions of dread danced on their lips, the tears before he’d boarded the bus, and the way he’d squeezed her hard. She still recalled the familiar song that played on the car radio as she drove him to the station...

  Nights in white satin, never reaching the end...

  Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send.

  Beauty I’d always missed with these eyes before.

  Just what the truth is. I can’t say anymore.

  ‘Cos I love you... Yes, I love you. Oh how I love you.

  The song played on in her mind, perfectly recorded, and she lived the moment over again with carbon copy clarity, as though that moment, and this moment in the car all these years later, were two connected points in time and space. Why did that song feel so damn relevant right now? Her heart felt as though the past forty-two years had never taken place.

  Tears cascaded down her face, coaching the silent, sequestered sobs into a full, audible symphony. The unthinkable had consumed her, but through the windshield, she recognized the rural route winding out in front of her. She was so much closer to discovering the truth—once and for all.

  * * * *

  The old, desolate, rural valley that once served as a substantial mining district was home to only a handful of houses sparsely spread throughout. Lifeless, except for the few who lived there, the small territory could fit the definition of “ghost town” with its vast, vacated, and barren appearance, devoid of businesses, structures or vehicles. Street after street displayed defunct and abandoned remnants of old machinery that once roared and hissed.

  Wiley pulled up alongside the old railroad tracks, his backup steadily but silently following behind. Ursula was pointing in a direction just north of where she, Leah, and Wiley sat in the car.

  “There is an entranceway in that direction,” she said. “It’s hidden by some brush and foliage, but the entranceway leads to a tunnel, the tunnel leads to the compound.”

  “Okay, girls,” Wiley said. “Now, I want you to stay calm, and stick with me at all times. You do and go what and when I tell you, understand?” They nodded. “I want us to quietly step out of the car so I can issue some last few instructions to my backup.”

  They exited the car as quietly and nonchalantly as did the small following procession that arrived behind them. Wiley had insisted that Brett bring his car because the group’s van was out of the question; it would draw too much attention. The last thing Wiley wanted was for the inhabitants inside to b
ecome aware of the small cavalry outside. He walked over to them, instructing them to be waiting to get the girls away from the scene when the time came.

  Wiley ordered his backup team to follow closely behind him and the girls, and after Ursula took them to the entranceway, they were to storm the tunnel. He supplied the blueprints to his team, unsure of any exit routes within the tunnel; Ursula hadn’t noticed any, but Wiley stationed some of his team around the area, just in case.

  He and the girls made it to the brush that covered a small, rectangular shaped, cave entrance that loomed a little over five feet in height, the team silently ready behind them. Once the brush was pulled away, Wiley could see that the width of the entrance was sizable, but the height was cramped, causing anyone over five feet, seven inches to duck when entering. He turned to them, and Ursula confirmed it as the entrance to the tunnel, while Leah identified it as the one in her vision.

  “Walk about ten feet into the entrance,” Ursula said, “turn right, and there is a tunnel. From there, after you walk about a hundred yards, an outside light will automatically turn on; it is initiated by movement.” She had explained all of this to Wiley in the car, and now she repeated it as the FBI team listened intently.

  “All right,” Wiley said. “Team—remain on standby. I want you girls to go back to Brett’s car, quickly but quietly.”

  The girls began to walk away as the team crouched into position, when a familiar Ford Taurus thundered into the location, leaving Brett’s car in the dust that spun from its wheels. It kept coming closer, then noisily and carelessly pulled up over the old railroad tracks, bouncing its tires and banging its front end, landing with a smashing stop.

  Susan Logan jumped out of her car and screamed...

  “Wait! Wait!”

  * * * *

  The moment was a bittersweet one for Ryan, mixed with relief, joy, but concern as he watched the man now strangely stricken and bleeding from the nose. Hadley stumbled trying to get up then sat back down again, as though standing was too great an effort. Ryan couldn’t be sure if it had been four or five days that he’d spent here, but it seemed like forever, and the man who had kidnapped him had just told him to leave.