The Fourth Sense

by Kat Parrish

  Bottom line? He wasn’t on his way over.

  But how had Eliades known that?

  Kyle and I talked for a little longer and then he ended the call, leaving me feeling grumpy. I looked up at the guy in front of me, who at least wasn’t still smirking.

  “You can arrange last-minute auditions?” I asked.

  “We can move Wednesday,” the other guy said looking up from a display of beeswax wafers in the candle making supplies section. “These smell nice,” he said holding up a pale orange disk. “Blood orange with...” he sniffed deeply, “red grapefruit?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised. Most people just thought the wax smelled like some sort of generic citrus. He sniffed again and then put the wax back down on the table. “We really need your help,” he said, “and it’s kind of urgent.”

  I was about to ask for more information, but I could tell Eliades was just itching to say something that included the phrase, “need-to-know basis” and so could the other agent because he quickly continued, “We need to...extract...some information and we need to do it quickly.”

  I was horrified.

  “You want my help to torture someone?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Not at all.”

  “Because I am not—”

  “Here’s the deal, Ms. Quinn,” Eliades said with a hard look at his companion. “We need you to use your ‘Smello-vision’ to help us get into somebody’s head and we need you to do it before something bad happens.” He let that settle while I was still trying to work out how he knew the nickname my father had given to my peculiar skill.

  When I didn’t answer right away, he added, “And we’re on the clock.”

  Yeah, I got that. “Then let’s go,” I said, fighting an almost irresistible urge to say, “Let’s rock and roll.” Kyle had been in half a dozen bad action movies. I knew all the dialogue tropes by heart.

  The two men couldn’t quite hide their relief, which scared the hell out of me. Because I was pretty sure these guys didn’t break a sweat over an ordinary catastrophe.

  * * *

  “So where are we going?” I asked as we walked out to the parking lot after I’d closed the store.

  The two men glanced at each other.

  “Guys, I’m a native Angeleno. Unless you blindfold me, I’m going to figure it out soon enough.”

  “We’re headed for a facility we rent in Van Nuys,” the agent who probably wasn’t really named Eliades said. “By the airport,” he added, which wasn’t really that helpful because most of the city is in earshot of the airport, if not actually airport-adjacent.

  “Okay,” I said and turned to the other guy. “What’s your name?”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “I’m Paul Lund. Call me PJ.”

  I shook PJ’s hand as Eliades stopped next to a banged-up Toyota that looked more like a loss-leader at a used car lot than a G-ride.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  Eliades shrugged as he opened the passenger door and leaned the seat out of the way so I could get in the back. “Protective coloring,” he said and as I looked around at the other cars in the lot, I saw his point. My shop is in a Hollywood strip mall, sandwiched between Starbucks and a bail bondsman. The Toyota fit right in. I bent down and climbed into the back as gracefully as I could.

  PJ had the car moving before I was even buckled up.

  “Want to fill me in?” I asked, directing my question to the front seat in general rather than to one man in particular.

  Eliades twisted around in his seat to face me. His face was serious and when he spoke, so was his tone.

  “Customs flagged this guy when he crossed the border from Canada into Washington state. He had a U.K. passport that looked legit and he claimed he was just visiting family in Vancouver and decided to pay a visit to California as long as he was in the time zone.”

  “Long drive from Vancouver to Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Yeah,” PJ said. “He wasn’t on a watch list, but we decided he needed an escort. Took him three days to make the trip and he hit up every tourist trap between here and the Space Needle.”

  “And that’s suspicious?”

  “The trouble is his movements have been almost too well-documented,” PJ said. “He paid for everything with a credit card. Chatted up bartenders and waitstaff and left big tips so he’d be remembered. Turned in the rental car in L.A. when he checked into an Airbnb and has been taking an Uber around town. He told one of his drivers that L.A. drivers were crazy, and he didn’t fancy dying in a car accident.”

  “He gave the Uber driver a five-star rating,” PJ said, “and tipped him twenty percent, so there’s that.”

  “Generous,” I said.

  “It was all for show,” PJ said. “The groups we shadow have gotten very good at covering their tracks and creating legends.”

  He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “A legend is a cover identity.”

  “I know,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. “I watch Homeland.”

  “Okay,” Eliades said. “What we need is for you to do that thing you do. We need you to get a read on this guy. Something that we can use to unlock his real identity.”

  He didn’t add, “and we need it fast,” but the words hovered in the air between us anyway.

  “You have any sense of where I should start?” I asked.

  He sighed and ran one hand through his short hair. “We think he might have Chechen connections,” he said.

  “Like the Boston marathon bombers?” I asked. He nodded.

  “But we think he might be a little more ... ambitious...than those guys were,” PJ said. Eliades gave him a look. He gave it right back.

  “She needs to know Pete.”

  Yeah, Pete, I thought, she really does.

  Agent Eliades didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “Needs to know what?”

  “We think he might have brought a suitcase nuke into Los Angeles,” Eliades said quietly.

  Oh shit. No wonder they were in such a hurry. “I didn’t think anyone had actually developed that technology.”

  “Yeah, well some bad guys made developing one a priority,” PJ said.

  “But if you were watching him all the way down here—”

  “His car was searched at the border,” PJ said, “but then we lost track of him in Blaine right after he crossed into Washington. It was only for three minutes, but we think he got a handoff from a trucker coming up from Seattle. The truck driver’s in custody, but he’s useless. These operations are all compartmentalized and all the guy really knows is that he was paid to hand something off.”

  “Did you tell him what it was?”

  “Oh yeah,” PJ said. “It kind of freaked him out because it was under his seat the whole drive. Now he’s worried he’ll never have children again.”

  “That’s his biggest worry?”

  PJ shrugged. “It’s all fun and games until your ‘nads get radiated.”

  “Why didn’t you just grab it?” I asked.

  “It’s not that easy,” PJ said, deftly swerving around a slow-moving car in the fast lane with the finesse of a native. Clearly, he wasn’t worried about dying in a car accident. A suitcase nuke. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  “Anything else you want to tell me? Because I’d really like to hear it.”

  “You really don’t want to hear it Ms. Quinn, you really don’t,” Peter Eliades said, which pissed me off. But being pissed off was better than being scared shitless.

  “Well, Peter,” I said—deliberately emphasizing his first name, “that’s not how it works with civilians. You came to me, remember? I’m more than happy to help out bur I am not your bitch.” A stare-off ensued. Agent Eliades’ eyes had turned to stone—warm, sun-dappled stone—but stone, nonetheless. I felt a little twinge that he was directing that hard gaze at me, but I returned it without flinching.

  If they knew about my “Smello-vision,” they knew about my Aunt Leslie w
ho’d been on American Airlines flight 11 on September 11, 2001. She’d been on her way to Los Angeles, a surprise visit for my mother’s 35th birthday. I was in on the secret and she’d sent me an email just before she left her house for Logan airport. By the time I read the email, she was already dead.

  My mother hasn’t celebrated her birthday since.

  If something like 9/11 was in the works, I was all in to stop it.

  “Tell me what you know,” I repeated. He sighed and rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.

  “We really don’t know much. We got a tip a dirty bomb was on the move. We tracked it through Strasbourg and all the scenarios pointed to an attack in Paris.”

  “Not Los Angeles?” I said, wondering what part of the story he was leaving out.

  “Then we lost the trail,” PJ said.

  “How do you lose a nuke?” I said.

  Eliades looked pained. “Technically, we didn’t,” he said.

  “But somebody did,” I said. “And where does your guy come in?”

  “RCMP got a tip from the French, so that’s why he got stopped at the Canadian border instead of being waved through. They told him the car search was random.”

  “But wait,” I said. “You said he got the bomb here in America. So, what were you tracking in France?”

  “A false trail,” Eliades said grimly. “Like the way fighter pilots release metal chaff to fool incoming missiles. He was laying false trails to keep us off the real trail.”

  “And now the nuke is missing?” I said, trying not to sound like I blamed them personally for losing track of it. I knew I was repeating myself, but I still couldn’t quite process the concept.

  “We think the guy we have in custody knows where it is,” Eliades finally said. “It wasn’t on him when we picked him up, but the radiation reading on him was so high it almost broke the machine.”

  I shuddered. If his body was throwing off that much radiation, it meant he was …

  “A dead man walking,” I said.

  “Yep,” PJ said. “This was definitely a suicide mission.”

  “That’s scary,” I said inanely.

  Eliades nodded. “We don’t get much sleep,” he said, and although he said it lightly, I could sense the truth behind the words.

  “Who else knows?” I asked, thinking about how hard it would be to keep such an enormous secret contained, and the kind of discipline it would take to keep someone from calling every person he knew in California and telling them to run.

  “The president,” Eliades said. “The governor. So far we’ve kept it out of the news.” His mouth pressed together grimly. “So far.”

  “Rachel Maddow’s called twice,” PJ said.

  “Herself?” Eliades asked, momentarily distracted. PJ nodded.

  “Damn, I wish we had her sources.”

  I almost asked if anyone local had been alerted, if there were any evacuation plans in motion but even as the thought entered my mind, PJ was pulling off the freeway and coming to a dead stop almost immediately as traffic choked the surface streets. In the middle of an ordinary day, hours before rush hour was due to start, no one was moving faster than a crawl.

  As if reading my mind, Eliades said, “There’s no way we could even begin to evacuate the city.”

  I blew out a breath. I got it. “Okay,” I said and thought of my parents, where they’d be at this time of day.

  Nobody said anything else for the rest of the ride.

  CHAPTER 2: Making new friends

  PJ pulled up to the gate-controlled entrance of what looked like a self-service storage facility. He punched in a code and the gate slid open. I was surprised that it looked so mundane. I guess I expected a laser net and high-tech locks. Maybe missile-equipped drones patrolling the space.

  Maybe you just can’t see the drones, I thought.

  The interior was a lot more high-tech. There were biometric scanners on the doors, not just eyeball scanners but little laser pinprick devices that sampled blood and cauterized at the same time. Eliades and PJ both offered up their index fingers before the door to one unit unlatched.

  “Are those things sanitary?” I asked.

  “Yes,” PJ said. “Your finger never actually touches a surface.”

  “It looks like it hurts, though.”

  He shrugged. “The trick is not minding that it hurts.”

  “Lawrence of Arabia,” I said. When you date an actor, you get used to him quoting memorable lines from great movies. To Kyle’s credit, his repertoire was more inclusive than the usual Star Wars references (“These are not the droids you are looking for”) and cheesy Tony Montana imitations (“Say hello to my little friend”).

  PJ nodded in appreciation and then pushed open a door into what looked like the most boring corporate office in America.

  Industrial gray carpeting so new it still smelled of chemicals.

  Walls painted institutional pink that looked sickly in the fluorescent light.

  Mass-produced, Jackson Pollock-inspired abstract art hanging on the pink walls.

  The smell of paranoia hit me immediately, so strong I nearly gagged. I could tell it was just me sensing it though, because neither PJ nor Eliades so much as wrinkled their noses.

  You know how scent will trigger a memory? The scent of madeleine cookies famously inspired the writer Marcel Proust to craft his monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past, but a memory-retrieving smell doesn’t have to be that coherent. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a whiff of cologne that reminds you of an old boyfriend, or a scrap of scent that brings you back to a particular day or time. The smell of fresh-mown grass in the summer, or the way a concrete sidewalk smells after the rain. Or even the scent of fresh-popped popcorn with that warm fake butter on it.

  Some people can see a person’s aura as a halo of colored light; I experience it as a complex blend of smells that unlocks a picture of all the experiences that have made up that person’s life. And when I smell their aura, I can see what it is they need or lack or want. And so, when I craft custom scents for them, I can add a touch of what they’re missing. When I was little my parents asked me if I wanted to know how I could do what I do, offering to have me tested. I’d said “no,” because I’d seen enough Marvel movies by then to know that testing never ended well for people with “special abilities.” My parents had respected my wishes and kept my secret. Only a few people knew about my “fourth power” and none of them had learned about it from my parents.

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure exactly what Eliades wanted, but I knew that neither of the two men in the room was the person I’d been brought to read.

  One was a fit man in his late 40s with brush-cut salt and pepper hair and a sneer in his voice that said, ‘Show me what you got” as clearly as if he’d been wearing the words on a T-shirt. He was wearing civilian clothes like PJ and Eliades, but everything about him screamed “military.”

  The other guy was younger and had been shackled and seated at a table in the middle of the room. He had very dark hair and very pale skin. His ice-blue eyes were fringed with black lashes. He looked very young but there was a toughness in him.

  He looked at us with defiance but no fear.

  “Thank you for coming Ms. Quinn,” the man with the brush-cut said.

  I nodded at him, but I was already distracted by the separate auras overlapping in the room.

  There had been a lot of people in and out of this room and their spectral smells were crashing against each other like winds in an unpredictable weather system. I could sense PJ, who smelled of argan oil and neoprene and Marlboros, scents that were all associated with other people in his life, masking his own aura. I could sense Eliades’ presence but except for those few brief impressions I’d had when he first entered my shop, I couldn’t read him at all, which was odd. I’d never met anyone I couldn’t sense at least somewhat.

  The men in the room were quiet, waiting to see what I was going to do. I wanted to tell them to stop loo
king at me, that I was having performance anxiety, but I had the feeling that if I said anything like that, Brush-cut would throw me out and Eliades would have to find another way to get the information he needed so desperately. I felt my heart begin to speed up.

  I noticed I could smell myself.

  Most of the time I’m not really aware of my own olfactory signature. Most people aren’t, unless they’ve let their hair get really dirty and then suddenly catch a whiff of it or they’ve been at Burning Man and haven’t showered and on the way back realize that if they don’t open their car windows, they’re going to choke on body odor.

  I pulled my focus back to the men in front of me. The man with the brush-cut was getting impatient. I could smell the impatience radiating from him. And other things.

  And he smelled bad.

  Really, really bad.

  His aura smelled like water that broccoli has been boiled in, like the water in a vase after the flowers it was holding have died.

  His scent was something swampy and yellow-green. It also carried a base note of decayed meat. It was not pleasant.

  Beside me, sensing the other man’s impatience, Eliades said, “Vetiver?” I ignored him and turned to the handcuffed man. He looked beaten and bloody, but I wasn’t getting a sense of pain from him. I realized the blood was fake. The bruises might have been real, but this was L.A., the right makeup artist can make someone look like the half-gnawed victim of a cannibal zombie.

  I concentrated, tried to read him.

  I got a sense of the ocean. Of clean salt air. I saw the waves crashing on rock-strewn beaches covered in razor-sharp fragments of clam shells.

  “You’re from the East Coast,” I said. “New England. Up near Canada.”

  The man’s body remained in the dejected, submissive posture and he gave no sign that he’d even heard what I’d said. Now it was my turn to sigh.

  This was clearly a test of some kind, arranged by the guy with the brush-cut, something intended to demonstrate that what I could do was more than a carnival act.

  I concentrated harder. I got the smell of...beets. Fat red beets with hairy roots being pulled from cold soil.

  So, his background wasn’t Chechen but Russian. And that Russian was only a few generations back. The scent of beets grew stronger, the vegetal smell now tempered with something else. A floral note. Not the lush perfume of wine-red Bulgarian roses but the delicate blush of an English tea rose. His mother had been English. An Englishwoman and a Russian man. Interesting. I wondered how they’d met and how they’d ended up in New England. And then I caught the scent of curried wurst. And that scent took me right back to a trip I’d made to Berlin with my college boyfriend. We’d lived for two weeks on curried wurst, the cheap, ubiquitous street snack found all over the city. There’d been an unfortunate incident one night after I drank too much beer and one too many forkfuls of curried wurst. I hadn’t eaten wurst since. Concentrate, Vetiver, I told myself.