Powerhouse

by Rebecca York

  “I tried,” he said. “I tried to keep it from happening again.”

  She nodded, and he knew he had to tell her the rest of it.

  Still standing with his back to the fire, he said, “I may not remember what happened to me, but I know it changed me.”

  Lifting her gaze, she asked, “How?”

  He swallowed, because as bad as the first part of his revelation had been, he was just getting to the worst part.

  BIG BOYS don’t cry. Trevor Young knew that, but it was hard to keep tears from leaking down his cheeks.

  He was cold and hungry, and he wanted to go home. He wanted his mommy.

  With a trembling hand, he swiped the tears away.

  “Mommy,” he whispered so that the man named Blue wouldn’t hear him. “Mommy, please come get me out of here.” He didn’t think that she could hear him. But he couldn’t stop himself from talking to her because it made him feel a little better.

  He was in a cabin in the middle of a field—with trees all around the edges, except where the road cut through. He could look out the window, but he couldn’t see any other houses. Maybe there were some behind the trees. Or maybe not.

  He wanted to get away. But the window was locked. And so was the door. And sometimes Blue put a handcuff on Trevor like the police did on TV when they were taking the bad guys to the police station. The cuff was attached to a chain. And the chain was attached to the bed frame. So he couldn’t move very far.

  Only it was all backward now. The bad guy had the handcuffs. Not the police.

  He lay curled on the bed, hugging his knees. When he heard the doorknob turn, he burrowed under the covers, wishing he could hide.

  Footsteps crossed the wooden floor, and he knew Blue was looking down at him. If he pretended to be sleeping, would the man go away?

  Instead, he pulled down the blanket, and Trevor couldn’t stop himself from whimpering. “Please, let me go back to my mommy.”

  “Don’t give me a hard time, kid.”

  “Why are you so mean?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “What kind of job is that?”

  “Stop asking questions.”

  The hard look in the man’s eyes made Trevor clamp his lips together.

  Blue pulled his hand from behind his back, and Trevor saw that he was holding a hypodermic needle.

  Trevor cringed away. The man had already given him some shots that hurt a lot. In his back. “Please, please don’t do that to me again.”

  “Shut up. The sooner we do this, the sooner it will be over.”

  As the man grabbed his arm, Trevor started to cry.

  SHELLEY STARED at the harsh lines of Matt’s face. The way he said that being kidnapped had changed him scared her.

  “You have to tell me what you mean.”

  He looked as though he didn’t want to speak.

  “You’re the one who brought it up!” she threw at him.

  “Yeah. Because of the reason you came here.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then said, “Shelley, I’ve never told this to anyone. Well, I mean, my mom figured it out. But I never admitted anything—even to her. Especially to her.”

  She kept her gaze steady. “I’m still not following you.”

  “When I was kidnapped, I was just an ordinary kid. When I came back, I was different.”

  She wanted to scream at him. Whatever he was planning to say, he was dancing around it. “Spell it out,”

  “Okay. I can make people do things.”

  “That’s your terrible secret?” she shot back. “Well, what’s the big deal? I can make people do things, too. I can make Trevor go to bed at bedtime. I can make his nursery school teacher be more sensitive to his needs.” She bit her lip. “Well, I could do those things—before he disappeared. So what exactly do you mean?”

  He thrust his hands into his pockets. “I mean that I can suggest a course of action—and the person will follow it. I don’t mean I say or do anything. I just think about it—and they do it.”

  “That’s…nonsense.”

  His stance turned aggressive. “Oh, yeah? So you think it was all your idea to leave me?”

  “Of course it was!”

  “Not true. I put the idea in your mind—and you did it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t exactly know. I came back from those three missing months with the power to influence people.”

  She stared at him, trying to take that in, and trying to figure out what it meant to him. She’d driven here through a raging storm because she needed his help. Now it seemed as though he’d come unhinged. From the news that he had a son and that Trevor was missing? Or had it started earlier—when he’d walled himself off from the world?

  As she regarded him, she started putting a bunch of things together, a bunch of things that added up to very odd behavior. He’d given up raising horses. He had an alarm system to warn him if someone was sneaking up on him. He was holed up here in this house like a hermit. He had a bunch of guns, not just normal rancher’s hardware. And she was locked in here with him.

  Suddenly, she was wondering what Matt Whitlock might do if he thought he was cornered.

  When he started toward her, she cringed—giving away her fears.

  He stopped short, staring at her. “You’re afraid of me,” he said in a flat voice.

  “No.”

  He shook his head. “It’s written all over your face, but I don’t blame you.”

  “You say you have this talent—and you never told anyone about it,” she challenged.

  “That’s right.” He sighed.

  “Why not?”

  His expression turned glacial. “For starters, my mother tried to beat it out of me. I’ve told you what she was like. Strict. Absolutely certain of what was right and what was wrong. She used to talk about the neighbors. The people in town. She’d make judgments about them—and nobody ever came up to her standards. She even drove an extra fifty miles to a dry goods store because she didn’t like Mr. Mason, the guy who owned the mercantile in Yuma.” He took a breath.

  “When she realized what I could do, she was sure it was the work of the devil. None of that made for an idyllic childhood.”

  Her heart squeezed, and she tried to imagine what it must have been like for him—if he was telling the truth.

  He sighed. “I see you’re having a little trouble with the concept. Do you want me to prove it?”

  “How?”

  “We’ll call Ed Janey over from the bunkhouse, and I’ll get him to do something.”

  “Maybe it will be something he was going to do anyway.”

  He laughed. “I mean, you can choose what you want him to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything.”

  She thought for a minute, trying to come up with something Matt wouldn’t think of. Something that wasn’t obvious. “You used to keep cans of vegetable beef soup in the pantry. Do you still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him to get a can from the shelf—and take it home,” she tossed out, sure that would be the end of the experiment.

  To her surprise, Matt said, “Okay. Come back to the kitchen and we’ll call him.”

  He walked past her, and she could have refused to go along with this crazy plan. Instead she climbed off the couch and followed him down the hall.

  When she stepped through the door, he was holding the receiver of the wall phone and dialing.

  “Ed?” he said.

  She couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but she made sure Matt wasn’t giving his foreman any clues.

  “There’s somebody over here who wants to say hello to you. Would you mind coming over?”

  “Yeah. In this weather.”

  He hung up and turned to her. “He’ll be here as soon as he can get his coat and boots on.”

  “Okay.”

  She walked to the table and picked up the mug of chocolate. It wasn’t very hot anymore, but sip
ping it gave her something to do while she waited in the kitchen with a man who might be insane. She didn’t want to think about it that way, but she couldn’t stop herself from studying Matt’s blue eyes, his mouth, his big rugged hands. He’d left his gun in the mudroom. Did he have another one in a kitchen drawer?

  The clock on the wall ticked off the minutes, and she wondered if Ed was really coming. Or had Matt even spoken to Ed? Maybe this was all a sham. Like in a horror movie. She fought to get that notion out of her head.

  When Matt saw her watching him, he went to the window and looked out at the wide expanse of white. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the back door. She heard someone stamping snow off his boots. Then Ed Janey came into the kitchen. He’d hung his coat up and was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. His shoulders were a little stooped, his hair had gone completely gray, and his weathered face was more lined. But he had the same lean body that she remembered from when she’d lived at the ranch. They’d been friends back then.

  “Shelley?” he said as soon as he saw her. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes.”

  He crossed the kitchen and wrapped her in his arms. “It’s so good to see you.”

  She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “And you, too.”

  “What brings you here?”

  She glanced at Matt, then away. “I needed Matt’s help with something,” she said in a low voice.

  Ed stepped back and studied her. “You got troubles, honey?”

  “Nothing too bad,” she managed to say.

  He looked from her to the window and back again. “Heck of a day for a visit.”

  “I was passing by,” she murmured, wondering if he believed her.

  They chatted about old times for a few more minutes, and she heard regret in Ed’s voice. Obviously he wished that Matt was working the ranch. Did the foreman feel useless? Probably, and that was a shame, because he’d been such an important part of the work life of the spread. Now he probably felt that he was living here on Matt’s charity.

  She wanted to ask him what he did all day now, but she understood that was a topic better left untouched.

  When they came to the end of the conversation, he said, “Well, it’s good seeing you, but I’d better be getting back.”

  As she watched him take a step toward the door, she wondered what kind of farce they’d been acting out. Did Matt really think he was going to get away with this insane tactic?

  Maybe she’d be safer if she went back to the bunkhouse with Ed.

  Chapter Three

  Shelley’s breath turned shallow as she watched Ed hesitate where he stood in the middle of the kitchen. For a moment, he looked totally confused. Then he made a little burbling sound in his throat and walked past her and into the pantry. When he emerged again, he was clutching a can of vegetable beef soup.

  He stopped short, holding the can and looking at it as though it was a foreign object. “What am I doing?” he muttered. His expression changed to one of embarrassment as he glanced from the can to Matt. “This is yours. I should put this back.”

  “No. That’s fine,” Matt said. “I know you always liked it. Take it home and have it for dinner.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.”

  Still clutching the can, Ed hurried into the mudroom, and Shelley could hear his coat rustling.

  Moments later, the back door slammed, and she was left alone with Matt who was gazing at her with what she could only call a smug expression on his face.

  Her pulse was pounding as she looked back at him. She’d thought he was spinning a story—for some reason that she couldn’t figure out. She’d thought maybe he was coming unglued. But he’d told her to pick something to have Ed do—and the man had done it. It had been entirely her choice.

  Ed had hesitated at first, like he didn’t know why he was getting the soup, but in the end, he’d followed what must have been Matt’s silent directions.

  All at once she was unsteady on her feet. Weak-kneed, she dropped into the nearest chair and grasped the edge of the table in front of her.

  Matt stood across from her, his face turned to a mask of tension. “You still think I’m crazy?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what was dancing through your head.”

  She felt her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. You’ve got to admit, it sounded…off the wall when you told me about it.”

  “Yeah. It takes some getting used to, all right. I sort of came to the realization gradually when I was a kid. At first I couldn’t believe it myself.”

  “How did you discover something like that?”

  He laughed. “I guess the first time was when I wanted to watch a TV program, and my mom wanted to make sure I’d done my homework first. It was a really important program. At least for a twelve-year old. A Bonanza rerun, I think. I silently asked her to let me watch instead, and she amazed me by doing it.

  “Remember, I told you she was pretty strict. So her changing her mind was…unusual. The next time I tried it, I wanted chili for dinner. And I told her to make it—without saying anything out loud. She did.”

  “That must have given you a feeling of power.”

  “Yeah, but not for long. My mom was the kind of mother who watches for you to do something wrong so she can punish you.”

  Shelley winced, wondering what it would be like to grow up like that. Her own parents had always been warm and loving and supportive. They’d raised her to believe in herself and to take responsibility for her own decisions. They’d died before she knew she was going to have a baby, but their confidence in her had given her the courage to raise a child on her own. Sometimes it made her sad that Trevor would never know his grandparents. He’d never make cookies with her mom the way she had, or go fishing with her dad. And every holiday had had its traditions—like fun stocking stuffers at Christmas. She’d made sure to do all those things with her own son.

  Matt was still speaking.

  “Mom was smart. She caught on pretty fast—and started beating the crap out of me when she thought I was—she called it ‘pushing’ her. I guess that’s as good a name as any for what I can do.”

  She nodded.

  “And then she would go around talking to teachers and other people I knew, finding out if I’d ‘pushed’ them. So I had to be careful if I wanted to use it.” He laughed. “Like once when I should have gotten detention, and I persuaded the teacher to let me off. Mom found out about it and made sure it never happened again.”

  Shelley’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe. “I’m sorry. I had no idea about any of that.”

  “Of course not, because I never let on. It got stronger the older I got, but I used it less and less.” He made a dismissive sound. “I think it’s one of the reasons I’m good at training horses. I can get into their minds, too.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “I decided it was weird.”

  Shelley was still taking everything in. Now that Matt was talking to her so openly, it seemed that she had missed so many opportunities to connect with him on a meaningful level when they’d been together.

  “What did your mom think of your being kidnapped—and showing up again?” she asked.

  “She never could explain it. And she acted like she thought I was lying about not remembering what had happened to me.”

  “She sounds…like a real gem.”

  He shrugged. “She died ten years ago.” He grimaced. “I was sad, but I was relieved, too. Relieved to be free of the pressure of not antagonizing her.”

  Shelley winced. “When you were kidnapped, she told the authorities?”

  “No. She thought I’d run away.”

  “A twelve-year-old?”

  He shrugged again. “And she was determined not to have anyone think ill of her because of it. So she told folks I was visiting my uncle.”

  “That’s child abuse.”

  He
shrugged again.

  “I don’t dwell on my relationship with her.” Switching back to the previous topic, he said, “I don’t know how I got the talent. But I thought it had something to do with those missing months. I figured they’d done something to me. Something that—” he swallowed “—something that changed my DNA.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Maybe because I read a lot of science fiction novels. Then, when I got older, I read scientific literature on the subject. Anyway, I didn’t want to pass it on to any child of mine. That was why I vowed never to marry and never to have children.”

  Shelley looked out into the darkness, then back at Matt. “That’s why you walled yourself off here?”

  “Yeah. And…because I could never stop thinking that since I’d been taken away once, it could happen again. Now it has happened—but not to me.”

  “Oh, Matt.”

  He sounded so lost and defeated that she sprang out of the chair, crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him.

  As he stood rigidly in her embrace, she started speaking quickly. “It’s not your fault. None of it is your fault. It’s just something that happened to you.”

  “And to my son.”

  “But you came back.”

  “I was twelve. He’s only…four.”

  When she pressed her face against his chest to muffle a sob, his arms came up to clasp her to him. “Shelley, I’m so sorry that I brought this on you—and Trevor.”

  “I’m sorry too,” she whispered. “I should have told you about your son. I should have made you part of his life. He missed knowing my parents, and he missed knowing you.”

  “And you worked hard to make up for that.”

  “Yes. We could have had more money, if I’d taken more clients. But I spent time with him instead.” She flapped her arm. “I felt guilty about that, too. I kept thinking that if I could have afforded a more expensive nursery school, he wouldn’t have gotten stolen.”

  “Don’t! They would have gotten to him some other way.”

  She went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I thought I was doing the right thing, but I know now that I was fooling myself. I was being selfish. I didn’t want to get into a fight with you about my getting pregnant. So I just avoided the issue and kept Trevor all to myself.”