by Rebecca York
“Do you think they’ll be looking for us?”
“Hard to say. Since you returned to your house, you could have your memory back. But they smashed your computer, so they may assume you can’t find this location again.”
“Let’s hope that’s what they think.”
He pulled onto a dirt track and under some low-hanging trees that hid the car, then turned to Elizabeth.
“We need to make sure it’s business as usual there. And we need to make sure nobody sees us, because if they do, they may well move the women.”
“Yes.”
It was getting dark, as it had been the first time Elizabeth had come here. This time they walked cautiously through the woods, being careful to make as little noise as possible.
Matt looked back the way they’d come, thinking that they might be in a hurry on the return trip.
When they got to the edge of the trees, he squeezed Elizabeth’s hand.
“How far is the range of the cameras?” she asked.
“Probably not far, since they want to concentrate on the grounds near the house.”
They were about fifty yards away, and they both stayed in the shadows under the trees as they looked toward the well-maintained structure.
“Quite a setup,” Matt murmured.
“Nothing but the best for Lang’s guests. Do you think he’s actually here?” she asked.
“Probably not. He may steer clear of this place. I’m going to have a look. You stay here.”
“Okay.”
He caught the ambivalence in her mind. She hated sending him closer, yet she didn’t want to get near the house herself.
Lamps were on all over the first floor. As in Elizabeth’s earlier memory, light jazz drifted toward them. As he moved toward the house, he looked up and saw the nearest camera. Focusing on it, he sent a burst of energy toward it. When he heard a zapping sound, he knew he’d taken care of that problem.
Still he waited for any sign that he’d been spotted. Like on Elizabeth’s previous trip, he had a good view in through the windows. He saw casually dressed men looking like they were at a party, a well-dressed older woman who must be the hostess, and women in nightwear who looked out of place in the expensively furnished rooms.
Having confirmed that this was the right location, he was about to turn around and head back to the woods when he heard Elizabeth crying out a warning inside his mind.
Watch out.
But it was already too late. In the next moment, a rough voice ordered, “Hold it right there and raise your hands above your head.”
With a silent curse, Matt stopped in his tracks, upbraiding himself for being too focused on the view inside the building.
“Turn around,” the rough voice ordered.
There was no real choice, since running for it would only get him a bullet in the back. He turned and found himself facing a bald man dressed in a dark shirt and slacks. It wasn’t anyone he recognized from his previous brushes with Lang’s thugs.
“We’re going inside,” Baldy said.
Matt eyed him, thinking that he could send a bolt of power at the guy, but that was dangerous with the man’s finger on the trigger of a gun pointed at Matt.
And then he heard Elizabeth’s voice in his head, telling him what he’d told her back at Polly Kramer’s house.
Drop to the ground.
She was fifteen yards away, and he didn’t know if she could reach the guy from there. But he did what she said, watching the man with the gun gasp and topple over. And luckily, he didn’t alert anyone else by pulling the trigger as he went down.
Elizabeth sprinted out of the woods. Matt clicked the safety on the gun and set it on the man’s abdomen. Together they dragged the guy across the lawn and under the trees.
Matt turned to look back the way they’d come. As far as he could see, no one else had noticed the capture.
Thanks, he said to Elizabeth.
I should have seen him sooner, but I was focused on you. She looked down at the guy, who was about Matt’s height, with bulging muscles and a swarthy complexion. What are we going to do? You said that if anyone saw us, they might shut down the operation out here.
Yeah. I’m thinking.
Can we...zap his brain or something?
It might do him permanent damage.
Do you care?
He considered the question. He was a doctor, dedicated to treating illness and injury. But in Africa he’d gotten used to the truth that if someone was trying to do you harm, you might have to beat him to the punch.
No, he answered.
How do we do it?
Aim a blast at his head, he said, then considered the answer more carefully.
“We don’t want him to come out of this like a vegetable.”
“Why not?”
“Better if he just has a memory gap. If it looks like he had a stroke, they might take him to the hospital and find something...off.”
“Then what do we do instead?”
“Blast his hippocampus.”
“Which is?”
“One of the areas of the brain that governs short-term memory. The other is the subiculum, which is next to it, but that’s only for very short term.”
He knew that they didn’t have time for a medical-school lecture, but he sent her a picture of the brain, showing her the hippocampi, which were actually two horseshoe-shaped structures, one in the left-brain hemisphere and the other in the right.
“It takes in memories and sends them out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere where they are retrieved when necessary.”
He knew she was studying the picture he’d sent.
The hippocampus. It’s kind of at the bottom.
Yeah. He pulled at the limp body of the unconscious man, arranging him so that his knees were under him, his butt was in the air, and the back of his head was facing upward at an angle.
He didn’t have to tell Elizabeth to give him power. She simply did it, and he felt it gathering inside himself—before he directed a thin stream of lightning at the back of the man’s head. The guy’s body jerked, and he fell over on his side.
Did that do it? Elizabeth asked.
Let’s hope so. And there’s one more thing we’d better do.
He picked up the gun, wiped it off with his shirttail, and put it into the man’s hand.
Elizabeth tugged at Matt’s arm. Come on. Let’s make tracks.
Right.
They both headed back the way they’d come, making a wide circle around the man they’d left lying on the ground.
When they reached their car, he wanted to stop and pull her close, but he knew that the first thing they had to do was get away—before more of Lang’s thugs came after them.
They both got into the car, and Matt drove off, thankful that nobody was shooting at them.
I’m hoping life isn’t going to be a series of narrow escapes, she whispered in his mind.
We’ll be a lot safer when Lang is out of the picture.
Chapter Eleven
Tony Verrazano rolled to his back trying to figure out where he was and what had happened to him.
He was outside. Yeah. He’d been on patrol at The Mansion.
But now he was lying on the hard ground with his head aching like a son of a bitch. His gun was in his hand, and he didn’t remember drawing it. In fact, he couldn’t call up any memories from the past few minutes.
How had he gotten here?
He struggled to pull anything recent into his mind, but nothing would come to him. In a panic, he sat up too quickly and winced at the stab of pain. After checking the safety on the gun, he stuffed it into his shoulder holster, then pulled up his knees and clasped his hands around his legs. P
ressing his cheek to his knees, he ordered himself not to start shaking.
Something frightening had happened, and he didn’t know what it was. Worse, he didn’t even know how he’d gotten here. Yeah, he’d thought that before, hadn’t he?
Still clenching his hands around his legs—he carefully went back to the last thing he did remember. He’d had a meal in the kitchen of the whorehouse where Lang kept the girls he’d imported from Eastern Europe. Then he’d gone out on patrol.
He’d been walking the ground, and something must have happened to him.
But what?
Had he seen something in the woods? Gone in here to have a look? And then what?
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and he struggled to tamp down the fear coursing through him.
Should he tell someone? What if an intruder had invaded the property? Like the woman who had been here a week ago. She was still on the loose, and the boss had ordered all the guards to be extravigilant.
But he didn’t think she was here now. Or at least he didn’t want it to be true. He got up and brushed off his clothing, feeling a lot of dirt on the back of his pants, like he’d been dragged into the trees. Could that be true?
Fear trickled down the back of his spine as he scrambled to come up with an alternative scenario. Maybe he’d been investigating something in the woods, tripped over a tree root in the dark, fallen down, hit his head and knocked himself out.
Clumsy of him.
Well, he wasn’t going to say anything about it and risk getting fired from what he considered a very good job.
* * *
“NOW WHAT?” ELIZABETH asked as they put distance between themselves and The Mansion.
“We shut the place down.”
“I hate the idea of letting that house of horrors operate for even the rest of today, but there’s another reason we can’t just go to the police. Those women are in the U.S. illegally. Probably they’ll all be deported if we just call the cops.”
“Yeah, even if they were brought here under false pretenses, they could be caught in the system.”
She sighed. “I wish I knew more about it. I don’t want to get them deported because I’m trying to help them.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe my best bet is going back to Sabrina and seeing if there’s some way her friends in Baltimore can shelter them.”
He made a rough sound. “We’re getting ourselves in deeper every time we turn around.”
“I know. But I want those women out of there—then to find a way to destroy Lang’s whole operation.”
“That’s a tall order. How long has he been in business?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She gave him a pleading look. “I realize this whole thing is a mess, but I want to see it through. Not just for me. Polly died because I was stalking Lang.”
Relief flooded through her when he said, “Okay.”
“I think we have to go find Sabrina.”
He tightened his hands on the wheel.
She put her fingers on his arm, and she knew she didn’t have to speak out loud for him to pick up what was in her mind. He turned off onto a two-lane road and slowed, finding a clearing where he could pull off the blacktop.
“You want to talk about how we’re going to work it when we go back to the house?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What was your original plan?”
She flung her arm in frustration. “I wish I knew. Probably I hadn’t come up with anything definite, which was why I hadn’t acted.”
“But you’re thinking about something that might help.”
She grinned. “You read me so well.”
When he’d cut the engine, she unbuckled her seat belt and leaned toward him. Reaching for her, he pulled her close. They clung together, both of them thankful that they’d gotten away from The Mansion.
She pulled away so she could look at him. What if we have a technique we can use?
He knew she was thinking about a book she’d read—about a girl whose parents had been part of a government drug experiment in college. The people who survived came away with superpowers. For example, the girl’s father had been able to influence the actions of others.
Did you read it? she asked.
Yes. It’s by Stephen King.
In the book, the father called his power “giving people a push”—influencing their actions and perceptions.
And you think we can do that? Isn’t that a little grandiose? he asked.
We won’t know until we try it.
“We’d have to practice to make sure we could do it,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Who do we practice on?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He switched topics and asked, “Do you know the part of Baltimore where you met with Sabrina?”
“Yes. I think that’s where I was going when I crashed my car.” She gave him directions, and they drove back to the city.
“But you don’t know exactly where to find Sabrina,” he said as they got closer to the right part of town.
“I think I only knew her through Wendy—the woman who adopted a child and was one of my clients.”
“Then we’ll start there.”
They drove to a neighborhood of typical Baltimore row houses, some with brick fronts and some faced with a man-made material that was supposed to resemble stone but looked more like something from a kid’s construction set. Elizabeth had always wondered why anyone would want to put that stuff on a home.
“You know which house?” he asked.
“No. But I think I’ll recognize it when I see it.”
He drove up and down several blocks, and she scanned the facades, looking for some kind of clue.
Finally she saw a house with a planter full of geraniums beside the marble steps. “That’s it!”
Matt found a parking space around the corner, and they walked back, then climbed the steps.
After ringing the bell, Elizabeth waited with her heart pounding because she didn’t know what the woman inside looked like, but she was pretty sure she’d recognize her when she saw her.
The door opened, and Wendy stood on the other side of the storm door, an expression on her face that was a mixture of astonishment and anger.
“You said you’d come back days ago,” she accused. “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting and worrying. I called social services, and they said you had...disappeared.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. Can we come in?”
Wendy looked like she was about to refuse.
Matt pressed his shoulder to Elizabeth’s, and she suddenly knew that he was going to use the technique they’d discussed. Don’t turn Elizabeth away. She had a good reason for not coming.
Elizabeth fought to keep her gaze on Wendy. They’d only speculated about trying this, and Matt doing it now had taken her completely by surprise. But had it worked? Especially since she hadn’t even thought about giving him extra power.
“Is there a good reason why you didn’t come back?” Wendy asked.
“She was in the hospital. I’m her doctor.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wendy said. “You’d better come in.”
They both stepped directly into a small living room with a bay window that looked onto the street. The room was cluttered with toys. When Wendy knelt to sweep some blocks into a pile, Elizabeth bent down also to help her, remembering the little girl who was so lucky to be living here.
“How’s Olivia?” she asked.
“She’s doing great. She’s already in bed.”
Elizabeth picked up a floppy stuffed rabbit from the sofa and stroked it. “I remember this room,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Wendy asked.
“I had amnesia. That’s why I didn’t come back. Matt—Dr. Delano is helping me recover my memories.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Wendy said. “Where are my manners? Please sit down.”
Elizabeth and Matt sat together on the couch. Wendy looked at Matt, then Elizabeth, then back again. “You look more like her lover than her doctor.”
Elizabeth flushed at the directness of the statement.
“We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well,” Matt said. “Elizabeth was on the way here, to your meeting, when she was in an automobile accident.”
“I didn’t know.”
“She was banged up, but the main problem was the amnesia. It took a while for us to put you and your friend Sabrina back into the picture.”
Wendy nodded.
“We’ve been working on her memories, and she finally recalled enough to come here.”
Again Wendy nodded cautiously.
“But there are things we can’t piece together.”
“Like what?”
“Sabrina said that friends of hers are being held at a house owned by....”
Wendy glanced toward the door, like she expected thugs to come charging in. “Derek Lang,” she whispered.
“Yes. I didn’t know how much I’d told you,” Elizabeth said.
“A lot of it. Not everything.”
“We need to talk to Sabrina.”
Once again, they met resistance.
“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “It was hard enough for her to come here the first time. That Lang man is dangerous.”
“Believe me, I know,” Elizabeth murmured as she gripped the floppy rabbit she was still holding.
Beside her, Elizabeth heard Matt’s silent suggestion. Why don’t we try again to influence her?
All right.
She looked at Wendy. “I’m really sorry that I couldn’t get back here sooner. Just now, Matt and I went out to the property and confirmed that the women are there. We need Sabrina’s help to get them somewhere safe.”
“You mean to the shelter where she is now?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth had forgotten that Sabrina had hooked up with a secret welfare organization that was willing to take in illegal aliens. Thankful that problem had been solved, she silently urged Wendy, Get up and call Sabrina. Tell her that I’ve come back, that I was in an accident, that I had amnesia and couldn’t make it here sooner.