The Passion

by L. J. Smith

  "Frost, keep watching out. Renny, come with me."

  Kaitlyn felt sure Gabriel wanted her to keep watching, too, but couldn't bring himself to name her. She followed Renny into the dark office. Gabriel was pulling the shades, cutting out the night.

  "She said Mr. Z thought it would probably be in the file cabinet-I guess that's this." He went over to a wooden credenza with file drawers built in. "Locked."

  Renny took care of that, while Gabriel shone a penlight on the drawers. Kaitlyn's heart was thumping, quick and hard. She was watching a crime being committed-a serious, major crime. And if they got caught, she was as guilty as any of the others.

  Renny stepped back and Gabriel pulled the top file drawer out. Then he cursed softly, closed it, and pulled out the lower one.

  It was crammed with hanging files in green folders, each one neatly labeled. Kaitlyn watched the penlight illuminate labels: Taggart and Altshuld-Reorganization. Star Systematics-Merger. Slater Inc.- Liquidation. TCW-Refinancing.

  "Yes!" Gabriel whispered. He pulled out the thick hanging file that said TCW.

  Inside were a lot of manila folders. Gabriel began going through them deftly. It all seemed to be paper, mostly white paper covered with courier type, a few booklets with paper as thin as Bible pages.

  In a strange way, Kaitlyn felt relieved. It didn't seem so wrong to steal paper, even if it was important paper. It wasn't like taking money or jewels.

  Gabriel's breath hissed out.

  He was peering into a manila envelope. He pulled out the papers inside it, scattering them on the credenza's flat top, and shone the light on them.

  Kaitlyn squinted, trying to make out what they were. They looked like certificates or something, heavy blue-gray paper, with a fancy border around the edges.

  Then her eyes focused on tiny words Gabriel was tracing with his finger. Pay to Bearer . . .

  Oh, my God.

  Kaitlyn stood paralyzed, the print swimming before her eyes. She kept staring at the number on the bond, sure it couldn't be right, but it kept saying the same thing.

  U.S. $1,000,000.

  One million dollars.

  And there were lots of the things. A pile of them.

  Gabriel was flipping through, counting under his breath. "Twenty," he said at last. "That's right." He gathered the bonds up in his hands and caressed them. He was wearing the same expression Kaitlyn had seen when they toured Mr. Z's mansion. Like Scrooge counting his gold pieces.

  Kaitlyn forgot her vow not to speak. "We're stealing twenty million dollars?" she whispered.

  "A drop in the bucket," Gabriel said, and caressed the bonds again. Then he straightened up and began to briskly put the other folders back into the drawer, "We don't want a custodian or somebody to see anything's wrong tonight. Not until we get out of the building."

  When the drawer was shut, he put the manila envelope inside his jacket. "Let's go."

  Nobody was in the hall and they passed the first set of doors safely. From this side, the doors just pushed open. Kaitlyn didn't know whether to be nauseated or relieved. They were committing a felony. Gabriel was walking around with twenty million stolen dollars against his chest. And the horrible thing was that they were getting away with it.

  Of course, on the brighter side, they were getting away with it. Kaitlyn wasn't going to jail.

  That was when the two men stepped out of an office in front of them.

  Kaitlyn's heart jumped into her mouth and then burst. Her feet were rooted to the floor and her hands and arms were numb. Her chest was squeezed so tightly that there was no room for her lungs to breathe.

  Still, at first she thought the men wouldn't look her way. They did. Then she thought they wouldn't keep looking, wouldn't stare-because surely she was frightened enough, she'd been punished enough already. She wanted nothing to do with a life of crime.

  But the men kept looking, and then the men were walking toward Kaitlyn's group. And then their mouths were moving. That was all Kaitlyn could take in at first, that the mouths were moving. She couldn't hear what they were saying, everybody seemed to be underwater or in a dream.

  But a minute later her mind ran it all back for her, sharp and clear. "What are you doing here? You're not interns."

  And there was suspicion in the voices, or at least a sense of wrongness. And Kaitlyn knew that if somebody didn't come up with something quick, that suspicion was going to harden and gel and they'd be trapped like flies in amber.

  Think, girl. Think, think.

  But for once, absolutely nothing came to her. Her quick brain was useless. All she could think of was the lump under Gabriel's black-flecked gray jacket, which was starting to look as big as an elephant inside a boa constrictor.

  That was when Frost stepped in.

  She moved forward in a slithery, silky way totally at odds with her brown suit. Kaitlyn saw her smile at the two men and take their hands.

  God, not now, Kaitlyn thought. Flirting won't stop them. But this passed in a flash, because Frost was talking, and not in a sexy way, but bright and cheerful.

  "You must be-Jim and Chris," she said, hanging on to their hands like somebody at a tea party. "My uncle told me about you. You're in the corporate group, right?"

  The two men looked at her, then at each other.

  "We're just looking around. I'm thinking of coming here in a few years, and these are my friends. My uncle said it would be all right, and he gave me his security pass."

  "Your uncle?" one of the men said, not as sharp as before, but bewildered.

  "Mr. Morshower. He's a senior partner-but you know him, because he knows you. Why don't you call him at home and check it out? He'll tell you everything's okay."

  "Oh, Sam," one of the young men said weakly. Funny that Kaitlyn had suddenly realized they were young. "I mean, Mr. Morshower." He threw a look at the other young man and said, "We won't bother him."

  "No, no. I insist," Frost said. "Please call him." She actually picked up a phone from one of the secretaries' desks.

  "That's all right," said the second young man. He looked unhappy. For the first time Kaitlyn was able to look at them as people. One had brown hair and one had black hair, but they were both wearing white shirts and striped ties knotted all the way up, even at this hour, and they both looked pale and somewhat harassed.

  "Are you sure?" Frost asked, sounding disappointed. She put the phone back. The young men gave wry, watery smiles.

  "Can you find your way out?" they asked, and Frost said of course, they could. Kaitlyn hardly dared to say anything, but she managed to smile at them as she walked past, and back down the hall, and toward the elevators.

  Her chest was squeezed again, but this time the pressure was from inside. She was so bursting with laughter that she could hardly contain it until they were in the elevator.

  Then they were all laughing, howling, shrieking, almost falling down. Renny did fall down, drumming his heels on the elevator floor. They were insane. Kaitlyn very nearly kissed Frost.

  "But how did you know?" she said. "Did Joyce tell you?"

  "No, no." Frost tossed her ash blond head impatiently. "I got it from them. I could've done it just from a piece of their clothing or one of those stupid fat silver pens they had in their pockets."

  "Those were Montblanc pens. And they weren't silver, they were platinum," Gabriel said quietly, and then they all had to be quiet because they'd reached the lobby. Frost swerved toward the red-coated guard to sign out, but Gabriel pushed her past him and into the street. The guard looked after them, came to the door.

  "Step on it," Kait said to Gabriel as they scrambled into Joyce's car.

  "It's called psychometry," Frost said to Kait after another period of hilarity. Gabriel was driving wildly through the streets of San Francisco.

  Kaitlyn had heard of psychometry. You could tell a person's whole history by handling a personal object. "But why did you pick Mr. Morshower?"

  "Because I could tell they were afraid of him.
They were supposed to have something-a merger agreement?-sent to his client by the FedEx deadline today and they haven't done it."

  Frost reeled the words off glibly, but Kaitlyn could tell she wasn't really interested anymore. And the resourcefulness and sanity that seemed to have taken her over during the crisis was fading. The inner fogginess was coming back. It was as if intelligence were a tool this girl used, and then threw away when it wasn't needed anymore.

  That put a damper on Kaitlyn's excitement. For a while it had made her breathless, but now . . .

  We really are crooks, she thought with a mental sigh.

  And she was afraid of Frost's powers. Anybody who could find out that much about you with a touch was dangerous. Frost had already touched Kait when they were in the backseat of Joyce's car. Had she found anything out?

  Must not have, Kaitlyn concluded, or Joyce wouldn't have sent me. Maybe it helps that I've developed shields in the web. But I'll have to be careful-one false step and . . .

  "Just try not to get a ticket," she said to Gabriel, who was rounding a corner wildly.

  He didn't answer. Great. He wasn't speaking to her again.

  "Did I pass?" Kait asked Joyce.

  Joyce looked at her, going through all the signs of being startled.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It was a test, wasn't it? So, did I pass or fail? I didn't do much."

  They were sitting up in Joyce's room, drinking herbal tea in the wee hours of the morning. Renny and Frost had gone upstairs to drink something stronger, and Gabriel had gone with them, never glancing at Kait.

  "Yes, it was a test," Joyce said at last. "The money will come in handy, but mostly I had to make sure that you were really one of us. Now you're a full member of the team-and if you ever think of crossing us, remember that you've participated in a felony. The police take a dim view of that."

  She took a sip of tea and mused briefly. "You and Gabriel passed," she added. "As for Frost and Renny ..."

  "They did most of the work."

  "But from what you've said, they also did a lot of stupid things." For a moment Kait thought Joyce was going to go on, to confide in her. But then Joyce stood up and said shortly, "We'll stick to other kinds of jobs from now on. Long distance, maybe. Mac is good at that."

  "Is he?" Kait asked innocently. "What's his power? I don't know what he or Bri do."

  She held her breath, sure Joyce wouldn't tell her. But Joyce shrugged and said, "His specialty is astral projection, actually."

  Let your mind do the walking, Kait thought. It was Lewis's phrase. So Mac was responsible for the astral projections and psychic attacks against them on the way to Canada. "But we saw at least four figures," she blurted before she thought. "And one of them was Bri-I recognized her."

  Joyce was setting the clock radio by the bedside and answered impatiently and almost absently. "Mac used to guide them, help them get away and then help them get back into their bodies. But anybody can do astral projection if they have the power of the crys-" She broke off so quickly her little white teeth actually snapped shut. Then she said, "Bed, Kaitlyn. It's way past time."

  I knew they used the crystal to project themselves, Kait thought. I saw it beside their astral forms. But she didn't tell Joyce. She said, "Okay, but are you going to tell me what Bri does?"

  "No. I'm going to go to bed."

  And that was all Kaitlyn could get out of her.

  Upstairs, Kaitlyn could hear the voices in Gabriel's room. Gabriel and Frost and Renny? Gabriel and Frost? There was no way to find out.

  "Too bad I can't do astral projection," she muttered.

  Lydia was asleep, of course, so there was no chance to talk to her. And no way to try out the secret panel downstairs-it was directly across from Joyce's room.

  Nothing to do, then, but go to sleep ... but it took her a long time to relax, and when she did, she had nightmares.

  The next morning she saw Frost coming out of Gabriel's room.

  Gabriel came out a moment later, while Kaitlyn was still standing motionless by the stairs. He was shrugging into his T-shirt. He looked particularly handsome in a just-roused, early morning way. His hair was very wavy, as if someone had run fingers through it to release the curl, his eyes were hooded and lazy and there was a faint smile of satisfaction on his lips.

  Kaitlyn discovered that she wanted to kill him. The image that came to her mind was of hitting him with a rolling pin, but not in an amusing, comic-book sort of way. In a way that would make splinters of bone fly and splatter the walls with blood.

  His expression changed very slightly when he saw her standing there. His eyes narrowed and his mouth soured. But he held her gaze stonily and walked by her without speaking.

  "Today you'll do some testing," Joyce said to Kaitlyn after breakfast.

  But before starting with Kait, Joyce settled the other psychics in. Testing had changed since the old days, Kaitlyn thought. Then, Joyce's experiments had been scientific, the kind of thing you could report in a journal article. Now, everything seemed oriented toward crime.

  Jackal Mac, wearing swim trunks full of holes, was led toward the back lab with the isolation tank, and Kait heard Joyce saying, "Just take a look inside that safe in the city, see if the papers are there. Then try the long-distance job, check out that furnace."

  Astral projection for felons, Kait thought. Is that how they knew the twenty million was in that filing cabinet? But how did they know to look in a filing cabinet in the first place?

  Renny was practicing his PK, but not on a random event generator as Lewis had done. He had a collection of locks in front of him, as well as diagrams that looked like the insides of locks. Without touching anything, he was making the locks open and close.

  Aha, Kait thought. Well, that makes sense. He needs to know what part of the lock to push with his mind to open it. PK doesn't give you magical knowledge about locks, just the power to poke around inside them.

  It explained Gabriel's comment about Lewis not being able to open the combination lock on the crystal-wherever the crystal was. Kaitlyn would bet her last dime that Mr. Z had some sort of fiendishly complicated locking device, something that Lewis couldn't get a diagram for. Which meant the only way to open the lock would be to somehow figure out the eight numbers in the combination.

  Whoa, girl. Take it easy. You've got to find that crystal first.

  As soon as she'd thought it, Kaitlyn shifted nervously. Gabriel and Frost were sitting across the room by the stereo. But he was studying a pile of CDs and she couldn't tell anything unless she touched a person. Besides, she seemed to be studying Gabriel. She was looking more sleazy than grungy today, in an orange top cut so low that you could ski down the bare skin in front. Her hair had returned to its usual uncombed state and her lips were vivid tangerine.

  "What are you doing?" Kait asked Bri, as a diversion.

  Bri glanced up. "Can't you tell?"

  She was holding a plumb bob on its line above a map. The plumb bob and line looked just like what Kaitlyn's father had used to determine if a surface was vertical, just a small weight hanging freely from a cord. The map was upside down to Kaitlyn and she could only make out "-Charlotte Islands."

  "I'm dowsing," Bri said. She gave a boyish grin at Kait's surprise.

  "I thought you used a forked stick for dowsing."

  "No, stupid. That's for dowsing for water or gold or something. This kind is to find things that are far away, and you can do it for anything."

  "Oh." As Kaitlyn watched, the plumb bob began to swing in circles over a section of the map.

  "See? All you got to do is think of what you're looking for. Sasha used to do the other kind of dowsing, only he didn't use a stick. He used coat hangers shaped like Is."

  "Sasha?"

  "Oh, yeah. You never met him." Bri snorted laughter. "He was blond and pretty cute, critty pute. Cute."

  "Was he one of Mr. Z's first students?" Kaitlyn asked quickly. "Part of the pilot study, like you?" Bri se
emed to be on the verge of one of those bizarre attacks which always ended in her repeating nonsense words until it drove everyone crazy.

  "Yeah, him and Parte King. Not his real name. Parte King was a bike messenger in the city, a real skinny guy. Both terrific psychics."

  "But what happened to them? Are they dead?"

  "Huh? They-" Suddenly Bri's face turned cold, as if someone had turned off a light switch inside her. She looked up at Kait and her face was hard. "Yeah, they're dead," she said. "Sasha and Parte King. You wanna make something of it?"

  Joyce was coming out of the back lab. Kaitlyn moved away from Bri's carrel feeling depressed.

  The dark psychics were nicer to her now, sure, but it was like a geyser pool bubbling between eruptions. Ready to go off in her face at any minute.

  The doorbell rang.

  "That's the volunteers-would you get them, Gabriel?" Joyce said bustling around with her clipboard. "Frost, I'm going to have you do some psychometry with them; Kait, I'm going to start you with some remote viewing."

  She sat Kaitlyn in a carrel with a photograph in front of her. It was an eight-by-ten glossy of a wall safe.

  "I want you to concentrate on the picture and draw anything that comes into your mind," she said. "Try to imagine what might be in the safe, okay?"

  "Okay," Kaitlyn said, concealing a surge of rebellion. This was not legitimate research, and she was losing her taste for larceny.

  "I'm going to put this on your forehead," Joyce added, producing a piece of masking tape.

  This time the surge was one of alarm, and Kait couldn't hide it. "An electrode over my third eye?" she asked as lightly as she could.

  "You know what it is. Since you haven't been exposed to the big crystal, we'll use this to enhance your powers."

  "Well, why don't you expose me to the big crystal, then?" Kait asked recklessly. "Those little chips give me a headache, and-"

  "Sorry, that's up to Mr. Zetes, and he doesn't want you anywhere near it. Now, hold still." Joyce's tone said she'd had enough. Her eyes had gone as hard as gems and she barely pushed aside Kaitlyn's bangs before slapping the tape on Kait's forehead.

  Kait felt the piece of crystal cold against her skin. It was bigger than the piece Joyce had used in the old days, maybe because now Joyce wasn't trying to conceal it. This one felt the size of a quarter.