See No Evil (The PSI Trilogy Book 2)

by J. R. Rain

  Noah sidled up to me. “This is our safe house?”

  I nodded. “God’s safe house.”

  He grinned. “So how do you know the nun?”

  “It’s personal, but trust me, she’s got our backs.” I lowered my voice. “She’s one of us.”

  “PSI?” He raised his eyebrows.

  I shook my head. “She has the sight.”

  “Future?”

  “Right. Deep future.”

  We wound up in front of a thick, arched wooden door that Sister Marie-Luce next unlocked. Through it was a modest room with a small kitchenette, two twin beds, and a bathroom. A small wooden table was to the side of the kitchenette with two chairs. A window on the opposite wall of the door allowed light to come in, and for one to enjoy a sliver of a view of the gardens.

  Sister Marie-Luce took my hands as I set down my backpack. Truth was, I had no idea how old she was. Maybe she had the gift of healing, too. Of course, that thought led to a stabbing pain in my heart.

  Damn you, John.

  Anyway, her face lacked the deeper lines that might indicate age. Only her silver hair suggested her age, although it was pulled back and tucked under her white coif. My guess was that Sister Marie-Luce could be anywhere from sixty-five on. Or maybe she was younger. Or far older. Hard to tell.

  She said to me, “I have one more room like this. I imagine you and the girl will stay in this one, and the men in the other?”

  “That would be fine.” I wasn’t sure how the boys would enjoy sharing the same room, but that was not my problem. And they were professionals. Time to act like it.

  Sister Marie-Luce glanced at all of us, her crystal-green eyes held a light within them that I loved. It was as if she was always joyful and no one could break that, no matter how they might try. “You are all safe here, in God’s care. As long as you remain here, you will be safe. I have seen it.”

  “Seen what?” Ayden asked.

  “She can see the future,” Hope chimed in, then looked at me. “I heard you talking to Noah about it.”

  “Of course you did, you sneaky little audial.”

  “Lunch will be served at noon,” said Sister Marie-Luce. “For now, I suggest you rest.”

  A good suggestion. It was just after ten in the morning and, I think, we could all have slept the rest of the day...and into tomorrow, too.

  Before she left, Marie-Luce paused in the doorway. “If you need anything from me, Kylie knows how to get in touch.”

  I smiled at her knowingly. We had honed some telepathic skills together during my two stays. Her connection to all beings was through the Virgin Mother and I’d learned that if I needed Sister Marie-Luce that I could source Mother Mary to reach her and she would come calling. It seemed strange because I was not deeply religious, but so much of what I did—what we all did—-was a mystery to me. Kind of like God.

  Maybe it’s all connected, I thought, for perhaps the thousandth time in my life.

  She turned to the men and asked them to follow her. Neither looked pleased.

  Chapter Eight

  Orlenda wasn’t one to cry, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have any feelings. She traced her finger around the face in the photo.

  One woman. Two names. Echidna/Jacqueline.

  She sipped white wine and picked at the salad in front of her as she set the photo aside. And, of all the people to have killed her precious girl—Noah. It was in some ways incomprehensible. Her Echidna had done such a wonderful job convincing the man of her love for him, so good in fact that he’d married her and even wanted children with her. And, God knew that Noah was no ordinary man. He was one with gifts and psychic skills and could see past half-truths and lies much easier than most.

  Which was a testament to how good Echidna had been. She had produced such barriers and shields of protection that neither Noah nor any of the PSI team suspected her true intentions.

  Orlenda took another sip of the wine and turned the photo over. Her girl was gone. She’d hand-picked her, raised her and trained her from the time she was twelve-years-old. Grant Simms hadn’t gotten his hands on that one.

  But now she was gone. Orlenda took in some air, and then let it go, and with it all connection to Echidna, as well. She was dead, and it was time to move on to the next.

  So, who could replace her?

  The answer was obvious: Hope Mitchell.

  Indeed, if she could find Hope Mitchell and bring her back into her fold, she could utilize that special gift of hers—time travel. Orlenda felt herself smiling for the first time that day as her motivation—and direction—was once again cemented, especially when she imagined what a future would be like with some simple alterations of history.

  “Geryon!” she called.

  The tall, dark-eyed young man whom she knew Echidna had truly loved, stepped into the parlor of the grand apartment in Northern Tel Aviv overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. “I need an update,” she said.

  “We’re following all leads. So far, nothing.”

  Orlenda forced herself to be patient. After all, they were searching for seasoned spies. As such, who better to disappear in Israel? Still, she knew Geryon was good, too. One of the best, which is why he worked for her. She noted the sadness in his eyes, a rare expression of emotion for the trained hunter. She suspected she knew the source.

  “I understand what you’ve lost, Geryon. I know that you loved Echidna. But let me remind you: if we find Hope Mitchell, we may have a chance of bringing Echidna back. The child is the gateway to the past. She is the way to change...everything. Our present circumstances and our future. So, I suggest you get your head back in the game and find the child. And kill the others.”

  He nodded once, and turned and left.

  Chapter Nine

  Ayden flopped down on one of the twin beds in their room. “I’m crashing for a while.”

  Noah nodded. “I need to think.”

  “Think away, my man. I’m getting some shut eye.”

  Noah left the room quietly and headed to the sanctuary. He kneeled and crossed himself. He’d been raised by his mother in the Catholic Church. If the leaders of the church had known of his father’s agnostic beliefs and conspiracy theories concerning religion, they likely would’ve gotten him excommunicated from the church. Noah had always felt at home in the church, as he did now.

  He spoke a brief prayer, quietly asking that God would show him anything he’d missed and anything that would help them now about who Jacqueline had really been, or what she may have known.

  A spy who prayed. Go figure. Noah knew the others didn’t understand his faith, but that was their problem, not his. He liked to believe that he had a higher calling, and what he did he did for the good of the world, and for God.

  Noah then settled into his breathing and brought himself back to the night he had asked Jacqueline to marry him. His mind led him to the snow-capped mountain at the ski resort they were at in Utah. It was beautiful as a light splatter of snow flurries fluttered down around them. He’d gotten down on one knee—but then the scene switched to a totally different location—one Noah didn’t recognize.

  He saw himself...and he saw Jacqueline. They were in a funhouse of sorts, filled with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Everywhere he looked, he saw a multitude of Jacquelines and a multitude of himself. God, she looked so beautiful...and there were hundreds of her...thousands.

  “Oh my, Noah,” she said, and he couldn’t help but note the sinister tone in her voice. A tone he’d never heard before. “You don’t know what is coming.”

  Now everything appeared blurry, distorted. Had she drugged him? Was this how she searched for information? “What’s coming?” he heard himself ask. Was he reliving the past? Did this scene really happen? If so, he had no memory of it...until now.

  “A war, of course. There is a child that you will help bring to us. Her name is Hope Mitchell.”

  “Who...is she?” His voice was slurred. Yes, he had been drugged. By his own damn wife.
The bitch.

  “Because she has a gift that Grant Simms and her teachers have been cultivating. When the time is right, she will lead us to the information we need to begin this war.”

  “Let me guess: the one you will win?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Of course. It’s in the scrolls and Hope Mitchell will lead us to them and change history—or make it, depending on how you look at it. Now, it’s your job to bring her here with the help of Simms.”

  The imagery blurred again and Noah was no longer in the room, but in front of a drawing board with a group of four men watching him. It was another scene he didn’t recognize. He didn’t know the men either, but he could tell by the way they were dressed in fatigues that they were soldiers of sorts. He was giving them details of locations, details about Hope Mitchell, details about GEPSI—details that he didn’t know he held within him, and why didn’t he know?

  He opened his eyes with the sick realization that he had detailed out for a team of soldiers how to kidnap Hope when she lived within the compound. He’d then flown to Mexico with the PSI team to catch Rodrigo Dominguez, who had almost killed Kylie—and it had been his fault! He’d made excuses to her at the time and ultimately, he’d saved her, but Noah knew that somehow, some way, that Jacqueline had been causing him to blur the lines. He’d been working as a double agent without even knowing it. His “wife” had been able to create a separate reality where he worked for her and Orlenda while still working for the PSI. Talk about being duped.

  And, what about Grant Simms? Who was Grant even working for? Was he also working for Orlenda? Was that how Noah had been able to find the compound, find the plans?

  He needed to find Grant Simms. But first he needed to make things right with his team. He had to tell them the truth, but how could he? They’d never trust him. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could trust himself.

  He stood and kneeled again as he left the pew, focusing on the Christ on the Cross.

  As he was about to stand, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun. It was Sister Marie-Luce. He exhaled. After all, his old instincts had kicked in, his survival instincts.

  “You should never sneak—”

  “You need to find the leather-bound journal.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Do you know the journal of which I speak?”

  “I...maybe.”

  The old nun was full of surprises. She had seen the future...and perhaps even the past.

  “It will provide you with the information you seek.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  The old nun smiled at him and winked. “I would suggest you be more discerning with the next woman you give your heart to. Do not be lured by a pretty face.” With that she winked and turned and left.

  He stared after her, admittedly stunned. What just happened?

  The journal. Yeah, he knew it well. It had been the same journal he bought Jacqueline back at the Louvre. During their first meeting.

  A meeting, he now suspected, was anything but a coincidence.

  Chapter Ten

  Hope flopped down on the bed.

  “I heard you on the plane, Ky,” she said. “I woke up and heard you guys talking. You were talking about the scrolls.”

  I sat next to her. “It’s not nice to listen to adults talking.”

  “But that’s all I do is listen, Ky. That’s what I’m trained to do.”

  My kid sister was right. I nearly said: Welcome to my world. Except, of course, I didn’t want my kid sister anywhere near my world.

  Too late, I thought.

  “Okay, so you heard us. What do you know about the scrolls?”

  “I heard someone called Geryon and Echidna talking.” Echidna was, of course, the traitor Jacqueline. Except little Hope only knew her by the name, Echidna, which was fine by me. “They were talking about needing me to retrieve the missing pages of the book.”

  “The book? What book?”

  “Of Enoch. Those pieces or pages were in Israel at the Dead Sea.”

  “In the caves?”

  “Yes. They want me to go back in time and find the pages.”

  My head hurt. I mean, really hurt. “Is there anything else you can remember?”

  “No, that was it. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie.”

  “Ky, what do you know about my mother?”

  The million dollar question. I asked if she would mind if I took a shower first before we spoke. She said no problem, and the sweetness in her voice broke my heart.

  Now, as I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, I considered what to tell Hope about her mother. What we’d thought we’d learned was that Simms was basically imprisoning these gifted kids—kids like Hope who displayed various psychic powers. The program was called GEPSI—genetically engineered psychic sensory intelligence. To me, the name said it all. My father had been a sperm donor and this was how Hope had become my sister. My father had had his own psychic abilities and my best guess was that a maternal donor was also found for Hope, and probably for many of the other children, too—a mother who had abilities as well. I believed that Hope and the other children were test-tube babies, and that the “mothers” at the school/prison they lived in were not biological mothers at all, which did leave the question hanging—did I have other siblings out there?

  Yeah, probably.

  Simms would have utilized these women to play the parts of the kids’ mothers. I figured that the women were possibly troubled, possibly in need. The guys and I had come to this conclusion because of the way Hope’s “mother” had acted when we’d questioned her after Hope’s disappearance. We’d all agreed that something wasn’t right, and we’d all agreed that the woman was terrified of Simms.

  Anyway, my best guess was that the woman probably cared for Hope, but possibly not in the maternal way that Hope wanted. I really didn’t know. It was also possible that some of the kids didn’t have “mothers” at the school. When Noah did his best to tune into the school itself, he sensed that only a few of the kids did indeed have a maternal influence in their lives. Why some, and not others, I didn’t know.

  What I did know was that I owed what I thought to be the truth to Hope. She might be only eleven years old, but she was a girl far beyond her years and lying was not my style. Besides, she was my sister, for better or worse. I also knew that lying to a psychic of any sort would backfire, big time. The kid needed to hear the truth.

  I dried off, and dressed, brushed out my hair and took a step out of the bathroom as ready as I thought I could be to have this talk with Hope.

  Except she was gone. The room was empty.

  Chapter Eleven

  John checked into a hostel in Jerusalem.

  He didn’t know where he might find the team. He did know that Kylie had been able to secure some place for them. That was about as much information as he could get through his substandard psychic ability.

  He had been able to get in tune with Orlenda’s whereabouts, though, and that was a good place to start because he knew that she would be on the hunt for Kylie and the team. If he could track her goons, could he warn and protect the team who thought he’d betrayed them before? Possibly.

  He set his bag in the corner of the small room and opened up his computer. He checked his e-mail, where he’d received what he’d asked for—security details and plans of the apartment where Orlenda was holed up while she lay in wait for her team to find the PSI team and take them out. They all wanted the little girl. That was the main objective.

  John needed to think about the best method of getting to the team and specifically, Kylie, without anyone knowing it was him.

  He opened up his backpack and took out the photo of Kylie that he carried around with him. They were in Maui on a quick weekend away. She was at the water’s edge, looking sun-kissed and happy with a wide smile on her face. She was wet from head to toe as the two of them had just had a splashing contest with one another.


  He remembered taking the photo, and then picking her up, twirling her around and kissing her hard.

  John could almost still feel her lips on his. He closed his eyes recalling the weekend. They had been “secretly” dating for a few months at that point. But they figured everyone knew. It was hard for them to not show their feelings around each other, and that weekend made it only that much more difficult.

  As the sun had set that evening, splashing a myriad of burnt orange and sienna colors across the sky, they sipped mai tais. John set down his drink and took Kylie’s hand. “I love you,” he said. “I love you more than anything in this world, Kylie Cain.”

  Her eyes widened and a smile spread across her face. “I love you, too,” she replied.

  At the time, John had thought it was only the beginning. He knew he’d marry her. He couldn’t imagine his life without her. That was the beginning of the end, though.

  It wouldn’t be long after that when John had learned things about Grant Simms, and once Simms knew what John knew, he had decided to remove John from the team permanently.

  And that was exactly what he had done.

  Chapter Twelve

  There she was, sitting with Noah.

  I had been about to panic. No, I had panicked. I slowed my pace and took a few deep breaths, calming myself, and approached the two of them. They were sitting at a small table next to the tranquil central pond.

  “You had me worried, young lady.”

  “I’m sorry, Ky.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Noah. “I swung by but you were in the shower, so I asked Hope if she wanted to walk through the gardens.”

  “Where’s Ayden?”

  “He crashed as soon as we got into our room. He said not to wake him until lunch. How’s your leg?” he asked, referring to the injury I’d gotten when the sailboat we’d been on had blown up.