She believes she’s telling the truth. And she’s got a powerful sense of loyalty to Everett. I could, if I wanted, drill down and find that it’s connected to the disappointment she feels in her own father, that she sees in him a better dad than the one fate and biology dealt her. I sympathize. I know the feeling.
But there’s no reason for me to unpack all that baggage. I don’t want to convince her or even waste time arguing with her. As far as I’m concerned, this job is over.
“Fine. Whatever. Believe what you want. I’m sure you’ll be safe if you make it back to Gaines. I don’t think Preston is dumb enough to come after you. But it’s clear that I’m not going to be able to do what I was hired to do. So I’m done here. We all go back to our lives. I keep the deposit.”
“You’re just going to walk away?”
“Until I can find a car.”
I don’t need to be psychic to see she doesn’t think that’s funny. The blast of anger coming from her nearly blows my hair back. “He tried to kill you.”
“It happens.”
“To you? I can see why. But he tried to kill me too, and surprisingly, I’m not okay with that.”
“He wanted to scare us off,” I say.
“And I guess it worked on you, didn’t it?”
I have to restrain a smile. She’s loaded for bear, ready to kick ass and take revenge. She’s got no idea what it actually means, but she’s brave. Not thinking very clearly, operating on rage instead of brains, but still brave.
I explain it to her in very patient tones. “Preston is the CEO of a company that’s going to go public soon. Whatever he thought I was doing there, he was willing to take the chance on killing us to protect himself. But he’s not dumb enough to carry it any further. He can’t be. There are too many risks. From a business perspective, it just doesn’t make sense.”
She’s skeptical, but at least she tamps down her anger.
“Then I’m calling the police. Maybe the FBI.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Oh, I won’t? Really? Why not?”
“Because as soon as the police are involved, your boss’s name will be mentioned. And that means, sooner or later, this gets into the media. He doesn’t want that, and neither do you.”
Then I lower my voice so the other customers don’t hear any more than they already have. “And finally, you’re not going to call the police because I shot a man back there.”
She recoils, both at the words and the memory of what I did. The image plays back in her head: body dropping, blood in the air. It takes her a second to regroup.
“If you know so much, then what am I supposed to do now? I don’t have any cash or my credit cards. I don’t even have my phone, for God’s sake.”
I’ve already considered this. I could just leave her here. I don’t have any obligation, contractual or otherwise, to her. But that seems like a real dick move. It’s not her fault this went Charlie Foxtrot, or that her boss has abandoned us both. Besides, maybe she’ll be in a position to hire me again someday.
“I’ll get you back to the hotel. You can pick up your stuff, and then I’ll even escort you to the airport.”
She’s instantly skeptical. “Why would you do that? You just said you don’t think Preston will take this any further.”
“I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
She makes a face. “Chivalry’s not dead yet, huh?”
“Recovering after a long illness, maybe.”
She thinks it over for another second or two, her suspicion fighting her basic desire to go home and forget all of this ever happened.
Suspicion loses. She makes her choice. She trusts me.
I hope, for both our sakes, that’s the right move.
[8]
We get a ride with a salesman driving back toward Philadelphia. He’s a middle-aged guy who gladly takes a hundred bucks for the trouble. He would have done it for free just to be in the same car as Kelsey. His mind’s like a swim in a sewer for the whole drive.
I sit in the front seat and try to block out the worst of it. I have to give him some credit; at least he makes the effort to picture Kelsey naked instead of using a placeholder image from some porn clip he downloaded. You’d be amazed how many guys have subcontracted their fantasy lives completely to the Internet. They don’t even bother to look at real women anymore. Still, I’d prefer he’d pay more attention to the road. He spends most of the trip watching her in the rearview mirror.
Kelsey watches the scenery go by. She’s not sure if she can believe what I told her about Preston. Which is smart, because I wouldn’t believe a word I said either.
It’s true that it would make sense for Preston to cut his losses and leave us alone. It’s true that a rational man in his position would try to hush the whole thing up and move on. He’d try to forget it, like a bad nightmare.
And Preston is a rational man. Nothing in the ball of impressions and memories and ideas I took from him suggests he has any psychotic tendencies. A little grandiose, a lot of narcissism, but nothing out of line for most people who get their face on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek before they’re twenty-five. There are no treasured thoughts of torturing puppies or the disturbing blank spaces a sociopath has in place of authentic emotions.
That’s what worries me. If he’s not a sociopath, he needs a hell of a good reason to order two people killed.
I spend the next hour in the passenger seat unkinking his memories, trying to figure out what it is.
It’s not easy. Everything I took from Preston’s mind is disorganized and hazy. It all got confusing when he went into full-tilt panic mode.
But by the time we arrive at the hotel where we dropped our bags, I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening.
Now I just have to test my theory. And hope we survive the result.
KELSEY WANTS TO go up to her room to get her luggage, but I ask her to stay with me while I take care of a few things at the business center.
I use one of the hotel’s computers to make reservations. Next flight out of Philadelphia. Boston for her, back to L.A. for me. Then I arrange a wire transfer from my bank account to the nearest Western Union. Ten grand. I tell Kelsey that it’s to pay for any incidentals until she can get in touch with Sloan. She protests. She doesn’t think she needs anything close to that much. I remind her that she doesn’t have credit cards or anything else that was in her wallet, and it might take a while to get the whole mess resolved with her bank.
I click through the transfer. It’s not really for her, anyway.
Then I call for a car service to come pick us up. We’ll get the cash, ride to the airport, and hopefully put the whole thing behind us.
We get a drink in the hotel bar. I have whiskey. Kelsey has a Diet Coke. She’s tense and nervous, teetering on the edge of the barstool, but I take my time. After my last sip, she decides she’s waited long enough.
“Now can I go to my room and get my stuff? Please?” she asks.
I’ve been watching the lobby. I check my watch. The car service is maybe five minutes away.
The ice rattles against the glass as I put my drink down. “All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
KELSEY HAS HER replacement key from the hotel’s front desk out and ready before the elevator doors open. My room is right next to hers. She steps into the hallway quickly, but I still get in front of her.
Her room number is 2312. It’s made to look like an address plate on an actual home. One of those small touches recommended by some industrial designer employed by the hotel chain.
As soon as we’re in range, I know I’m right.
Two men. Waiting inside. Anot
her two, inside my room.
Sometimes I hate being right.
I grab Kelsey’s arm and reverse course, pulling her along with me.
“Hey!” she snaps. But then, because she hasn’t been asleep all day, she realizes what’s going on.
I don’t want to stand around exposed or get stuck in a confined space, so I hustle Kelsey away from the elevators and toward the fire stairs. We’re halfway there when I hear the door open behind us.
I don’t have to turn my head to know they’re following, but I take a quick glance anyway. They’re dressed in the TV-standard costume for federal agents: black suits, sunglasses, wires leading to earpieces, which is a nice touch. That’s how they got into the room; they badged the desk clerk and got a key.
OmniVore security again.
They quicken their pace. They don’t want witnesses. The stairwell is perfect for them.
“Run,” I tell Kelsey quietly as soon as the heavy door slams behind us. “Get to the lobby. Stay there.”
She doesn’t argue, doesn’t question. She runs.
I wait by the door. I feel them coming fast. They’re confident and secure in the knowledge that we’re both fleeing. It only makes sense. We’re outnumbered and in danger. They’re professional soldiers, highly trained mercenaries. They’re the predators. We’re the prey. We’re supposed to run.
The limits of that kind of thinking are about to become painfully obvious. This isn’t like the office at the hunting lodge. I’m ready for them. Their quick jog down the hallway gives me all the time I need to get inside their heads.
They might have training. They might be tough. They might have the numbers.
But honestly, they don’t stand a chance.
The first guy charging down the hall has three tours in Iraq behind him and incipient PTSD. He opens the stairwell door and I’ve got a nice warm memory waiting for him of the time he walked into a room in Mosul and it exploded with gunfire. For a moment, it’s so real it’s like he’s there. He knows it’s impossible, but he immediately drops to the floor, just like he did in Iraq, reflexes taking over.
That turns him into a speed bump for the three guys behind him. The first guy stumbles and trips and pitches forward. I grab his collar and his belt in a modified judo throw and he achieves takeoff. For a second, he thinks he’s falling from an airplane, like he did back in Airborne training, only this time he knows he has no chute. His arms pinwheel out and he flails wildly. He lands badly on the concrete stairs and I feel something break in one leg and one arm.
I bite down on the pain, remind myself it’s worse for him, and move on to the next guy. He can’t understand why he’s looking at a brick wall where the open door of the stairwell was a second before. It stops him cold as he desperately tries to process it.
I hit him hard, side of my palm to his left temple, just above his eye.
He collapses on top of the speed bump just as that guy begins to rise, and then they’re tangled together in a mess of arms and legs.
The fourth guy doesn’t know what’s happening. To him, his fellow goons have suddenly turned crazy or stupid. It makes no sense. He’s scared and confused, and that makes him angry.
So he pulls his gun.
But when he lifts it to aim at me, I’m not there anymore. He’s looking at his mother.
There are some cold-blooded bastards who would fire anyway, but thankfully, he’s not one of them.
He stops and says, “Mom?”
And then, unfortunately, his mother lays him out with a hard right cross.
The speed bump has almost gotten up again. I kick him twice: once in the gut to double him over, and once in the head to put him down for the count.
All four of them are safely off the board, and I’m already on my way down the stairs, vaulting over the guy with the broken bones on the landing. I need to catch up to Kelsey. Those four were out of the room way too fast. They knew when we were coming, and they knew when we walked away.
That means there’s at least one observer, probably in a room across the courtyard, too far away for me to get a lock on him. And probably on his way to cover the lobby.
Sure enough, there he is, just as I open the stairway door. He’s confronting Kelsey.
He wears the same kind of suit as the others, and he’s showing her his fake badge. She’s at war with herself. She was raised a polite, law-abiding young woman. In grade school, they told her to wave at the police cars as they passed.
But she also knows that this guy is probably going to kill her, and she can clearly see his hand on the Glock in the holster attached to his waistband.
I recognize him. I would know his mind even if I didn’t see the top of that tattoo under the collar of his white no-iron shirt. He’s moving pretty well for taking three rounds to a Kevlar vest less than two hours ago. Snake Eater.
I want him down and I want him quiet and I especially do not want him to pull that Glock. So I load an old, bad dream I still remember from childhood. That might not sound like much, but the kind of upbringing I had means we’re talking about something a little more frightening than a rerun of Scooby-Doo. This is like seeing your parents help the bogeyman tie you down on an altar made of children’s bones.
I throw it at him and it hits his mind like a brick through a window. Snake Eater is suddenly so terrified that he can’t breathe, let alone scream.
He’s frozen in place and stuttering when I reach him and Kelsey. Behind the sunglasses, his face is etched with pure horror. He’s trying desperately to shake it off, but it’s not working.
My nightmares have teeth.
I smile and laugh as if he’s just told us that we’re free to go—
Everything is normal. Everything is all right now.
Snake Eater stands there, still trembling, struggling not to piss himself.
Kelsey walks alongside me as the automatic lobby doors slide open and we step out.
A little ahead of schedule, the car service pulls up, a big black Ford Escalade.
The driver is more than willing to go inside and get our bags.
And while he’s doing that, I put Kelsey in the passenger seat, get behind the wheel, and we drive away.
The great advantage a psychic has against a rational man: the rational man doesn’t really believe the psychic can do what he says.
But I can. Preston either doesn’t know what I am or doesn’t believe it yet. He tried to ambush me. It doesn’t work. No matter what strategy, what double cross he and his hired guns plan, I will know it as soon as they are in range. There is no way to surprise me.
Nice try, Eli.
AS WE DRIVE away, Kelsey is a small black cloud of worry and fear in the passenger seat next to me.
She finds the words eventually.
“You said Preston was going to give up.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And?”
“He didn’t.”
She looks out the window again, struggling to contain her anger.
I’m not sure what to tell her. Our situation is worse than she thinks. I gave Preston every chance to end this before it went any further. I made the airline reservations with my own credit card, because of course he would be monitoring that. That was practically telling him I was giving up, taking my ball and going home. Kelsey would go back to her job, I’d move on to another client, and we could all live our lives in peace.
But it didn’t work. He came after us.
> “Listen,” I say, projecting as much calm as I can manage. “I wasn’t lying. I hoped Preston would back down. It does not make sense for him to seek revenge.”
“But you thought he would.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“Clearly. You ever stop to think that you were using me as bait too?”
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.”
“Yeah, I can see how well that worked out.”
“Preston would have to have a very good reason to suddenly attempt to murder two people. Think about it. It’s not a smart move for a guy like him. He needs a reason.”
“How about the fact that his whole business is based on the theft of intellectual property?” Kelsey asks. “That’s not enough of a threat?”
“He didn’t know who I was,” I remind her. “Even when he found out, he had no idea what I could do. He’d have no reason to assume I was there to bring him down. His response was completely insane. It doesn’t make any sense, even if he had stolen anything from your boss. Which he didn’t.”
That snaps her out of her anger. “What?”
“He didn’t take the algorithm.”
“I grabbed a bunch of stuff from his head when I saw him. It’s all a jumble, but there’s one thing that came through. I asked him directly about stealing from Sloan. He didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”
“You’re wrong,” she says. “You’ve got to be wrong.”
“I wish I was,” I tell her.
Preston wasn’t prepared for me. He wasn’t ready to lie. He had no defenses. He couldn’t fake it or fool me. I caught him by surprise, and got an honest look inside his head.
He was genuinely baffled when I asked him about Sloan. There was no guilt, no inside knowledge. He didn’t steal anything.
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