Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Bleak…

  Bleak was a good word, Emily thought. It applied quite well to her situation, and to her possible future with the Bureau. Or her future in general.

  “Emily…”

  She looked back to Frankie, the SAC from Los Angeles prodding her to decide.

  “All right,” Emily said. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  Frankie nodded, but there was no flourish of joy or relief on her face. Nor on Lomax’s. Emily noted their bland, almost sober reaction to her acceptance of the position. In a way, she thought it might mirror how both had reacted when watching Jefferson being lowered into the ground.

  It’s a dead end, Em. They know it. You know it.

  The realization wasn’t an epiphany for Emily. Anything the Bureau was going to offer her was going to be exactly that. She was being warehoused, filling a role even Jefferson wanted out of. But it was something. Something to fill some of her days. To occupy her mind and body. Maybe, at least, in those few days a month, she could leave her past behind. Bury it one shovelful of dirt at a time. Like the man she was replacing had been.

  * * *

  Francine Aguirre-Welsh rolled over, adjusting her pillow as she tried to get comfortable in the hotel bed.

  In ten hours she’d be on a plane, heading west. Flying home. To the house and the familiar bed. And to the husband and the little boy she couldn’t imagine her life without. All those good and wonderful things had come into her life while she was thousands of miles away from the friend she’d just lost.

  Art had met her husband, an attorney, and had hit it off with Ken. He’d been at their wedding. Had visited after their son, Brady, was born eight years ago. Soon after that joyous occasion, his wife fell ill. For the first time.

  That was the insidious thing about cancer, Frankie thought. You could beat it, which Anne had, only to have to climb in the ring with it again. That second bout she hadn’t been able to win. All during her illness, Art was devoted to her. But he was also devoted to another.

  Simon.

  Frankie was one of the few Bureau people aware of the arrangement Art had insisted upon to monitor Simon Lynch. In fact, her very presence at the cemetery had been orchestrated by her former partner long before he took his own life. He’d imagined a day when circumstances might have prevented him from keeping up with what was required to fulfill his role as liaison and had made the Bureau agree to have either her or Bob Lomax step in. Or, if that was not possible, to have them sign off on a successor chosen by the Bureau.

  Lomax, despite his towering linebacker presence, was not a well man. The years had taken a toll on his body. Arthritis. Back problems. Just walking across the cemetery to meet Emily, Frankie had seen the tightness in his jaw as he buried the pain he was experiencing. He was not a candidate to step in.

  Neither was Frankie. Her position heading the Los Angeles office did not allow time for the trips that would be required. Beyond that, she had a family. Art had never asked her to take the load off him. Not even when Anne became sick.

  She won’t let me stop…

  That’s what Art had told Frankie when she’d asked him how he was going to continue monitoring Simon when Anne was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment was going to be aggressive. She would be ill. Exhausted. But she had once been Simon’s doctor. She’d brought Art into his life. Or vice versa. And she was, in no way, going to allow her illness to prevent his wellbeing from being ensured.

  So Art kept making the trip to the undisclosed facility. The week before Anne died, he was there. And the week after she died, he was there.

  Why the hell did you do it?

  Frankie opened her eyes and stared at the thick drapes keeping the lights of nighttime Chicago at bay. She’d asked herself that question over and over since receiving the terrible word that her friend had killed himself. He had withdrawn from her. From everyone. She’d tried to reach out, but the phone calls were returned less and less. The emails never received replies.

  You should have gone to him.

  She’d beaten herself up over what had happened. Not in a sense that she was to blame, but she might have been able to intercede. To see up close how much he was hurting. To get him help. Instead of a flight to Chicago to attend his funeral, she might have taken a Friday night redeye from California to check in on him before anything bad happened.

  Her husband had reminded her, though, that she had no idea he would take such a drastic step, and that she couldn’t prevent from happening something that a man like Jefferson had decided upon. She had to admit that the man she loved was right. If Art wanted to die, he was going to see that through.

  But still the ‘why’ gnawed at her. That he was hurting from Anne’s loss, a pain that might have multiplied exponentially over time, was more than plausible. Maybe it simply became unbearable. Even with that, though, how could he have left Simon behind? With no concrete resolution as to who would take over for him in watching over the boy who was now a man.

  “It makes no sense,” Frankie said to the darkened room.

  It didn’t. And what she hated the most about that was that she was probably never going to be able to make sense of what the hell Art Jefferson had done.

  Five

  “You’ll be escorted off The Ranch when this meeting is complete,” Dr. Warren Michaels said. He sat at his desk, eyeing Leah Poole with a mix of pity and disgust. That she’d made such a foolish decision, and acted upon it, was both inconceivable and unforgivable. “I have no choice.”

  Leah didn’t bother trying to resist his decision. And it was his decision, despite what Michaels was implying. It was most certainly a choice he was making to terminate her from the project, when he could have just as easily opened his eyes and accepted that the approach she’d now forced upon them was viable, both for the success of the protocol, and for Simon Lynch.

  “He talked, Warren,” Leah said.

  “He’s talked before,” Dr. Michaels reminded her.

  “Yes. A long time ago.”

  Simon Lynch, before the incident that brought him under their purview and protection, had been a functioning autistic. He could verbalize most needs and wants. Respond to many questions. But once they began their long-term examination of him, and his abilities, he’d rarely voiced anything above an occasional, unintelligible whisper. His responses to questions and problems posed to him as part of the project were written, penned on single sheets of paper, the answers and solutions then relayed to any of the myriad of scientists whom Michaels had doled out access to like programmers seeking time on a mainframe supercomputer.

  But Simon was not that. He wasn’t some machine, even though his brain often allowed him to crunch through formulae and numbers and mathematical concepts which had vexed the world’s most brilliant minds for years, or longer. Inside that magnificent, isolated person, was a being with emotion, and fears. The connection that Leah had demonstrated with him, using something from his past as a catalyst, had proved that.

  But not to Dr. Michaels.

  “He’s breaking out of that prison his mind had him trapped in,” Leah said, almost pleading with Michaels. “The real person in there is coming out.”

  Michaels sniffed a laugh and shook his head. He reached to his desk and picked up the ringbound stack of cards that lay there.

  “You have no idea what your stunt may have done,” he told her.

  “I know exactly what it may have done. I was there to see him collapse, and cry, and say my name, and—”

  “You idiot!” Michaels exploded, launching the notecards at Leah. She ducked sideways and the object struck the door behind her, rings opening, cards that had once delineated Simon Lynch’s life spilling to the floor, unbound. “This is a setback! Not a breakthrough! Do you not understand the protocol?!”

  “Warren…”

  Michaels stood now, fists planted on his desk blotter, his gaze raging at Leah.

  “Bringing his past into his present was forbidden for a reason, Leah. There was
every reason to believe that emotion would be introduced into the equation if we did that. Emotion! He can’t function like that. Not for our purposes.”

  Dr. Leah Poole regarded the man she’d once seen as a mentor, as a great mind, with sudden distaste. Whatever motives he harbored, he’d very clearly stated that his hope was not that Simon Lynch might be understood as he was drawn out of the condition that virtually crippled him. Instead, Michaels wanted access to the mind within, greater access, without hindrance by existing barriers to communication, or by the very human characteristics which might emerge.

  “Warren, give him the next two injections,” Leah said, openly pleading now.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Michaels responded, shaking his head. He sat and glared at Leah. “We can still recover from what you’ve done. We can get him focused.”

  “Fifty-three, Warren,” Leah said. “You have the power to do it.”

  “No,” Michaels said. “I’m not risking what we’ve achieved. Guards!”

  The door opened and two armed security officers stepped in. Leah eyed them for a moment before facing Michaels again.

  “I hope you remember the penalties for disclosure of what we have here,” Michaels cautioned her. “SuperMax would be interesting with its first female prisoner.”

  His warning wasn’t hollow. If she were to openly share, or anonymously leak, anything even remotely related to Simon Lynch and the project to open his mind, she’d be locked away after a secret trial by an intelligence court. Whatever lawyer they’d afford her would offer only a token defense.

  “Hopefully you can find work, Leah,” Michaels said. “I’m sure there are openings at the VA.”

  He nodded and the guards escorted her out. In a few minutes she’d be on a helicopter, gone from The Ranch for good.

  “Wonderful,” Michaels said to himself once she was gone, the mess he’d made on his office floor distracting. He came around his desk and gathered the cards and snapped rings, shoving them into a pocket in his lab coat. It had been years since he’d looked through the cards. Their potential usefulness had been dismissed quickly. The protocol demanded that once opened to a stable communication regimen, Simon Lynch’s mind needed to be kept free of distractions.

  “Isolation,” Michaels said.

  Isolation would do it. Remove responses from outside sources, clinical or emotive, and he would revert. Not all the way, but enough. The 51st injection had been the key. The door was open. What Leah had done threatened to free not only the mind, but the man himself. Michaels had to walk that back.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Come in.”

  It opened and an older woman stepped in, an air of authority about her. Her glasses were small and the collar of her blouse was buttoned high. A tasteful belt circled her impressively thin waist, and a patterned skirt hung just below her knees, sensible flats with low heels rounding out her choice of wardrobe.

  “General,” Dr. Warren Michaels greeted her, half sitting against the edge of his desk.

  General Karen Vance, United States Air Force, retired, closed the door behind and stood facing the project leader. Its scientific leader. True authority did not rest in the man recruited nearly twenty years ago from an obscure lab in the Northeast. It rested where it belonged—in her.

  “Dr. Poole is not going to be a problem?” Vance asked.

  Michaels shook his head and stared at the floor. He was tired. Maybe exhausted. Both in body and mind. But not spirit. That was where his determination lived. And he had no qualms about driving forward, regardless of any temporary setback, now that they’d tasted their first true success.

  “If she is, she’ll be dealt with,” Michaels said. “I mean, that’s your side of this thing. Summon the intelligence gods down on her if she tries to scream into the wind.”

  He’d made the threat about consequences, but Karen Vance was the one who could, and would, make such things happen. Thirty years in uniform, a stint at the White House, attachments to both the CIA and NSA, not to mention the favors she’d done and those she was owed by those in positions of power, all were facts relevant to her stature in the government community which spanned military, intelligence, executive, and legislative bodies. If it had been possible, Michaels was certain that Vance would have clerked for a Supreme Court Justice just to have all her bases of influence covered.

  “How soon until we can proceed?” Vance asked. “I have a backlog of requests for access to him.”

  Michaels drew a breath and nodded, more pressure to deal with. But this was what he had not only signed up for—it was what he had conceived. Opening the mind of Simon Lynch, so that it might be used for higher purposes, was a worthy endeavor. And if it could be done without harming the man, all the better.

  “I imagine he’ll be in a better place to serve in six to seven days,” Michaels told her.

  The access to him, which was arranged after careful vetting of the requesters, none of whom knew precisely where the solutions to their problems were coming from, was a challenge to manage. If he were simply a massive parallel supercomputer, which most requesters suspected their solutions came from, he could simply be run 24/7. But he had to eat, and sleep, and be cared for. Or cared for to a degree, now that the surly liaison had exited the picture. Michaels wondered what it was that pushed the man over the edge. Not that he was complaining. Jefferson’s continual questioning of their care of Simon, which had intensified as the injection protocol moved along and side effects began to appear, threatened, in a very real way, to derail progress. Michaels had been truly concerned about the retired agent voicing his opinion to someone in power who might listen. Or worse, someone in power who might do something.

  But that worry was in the past. At least it was until Vance spoke again.

  “You’d better look sharp. There’s a new liaison inbound day after tomorrow.”

  Michaels let that sink in. It might have brought his stress level fully back to where it had been, but it didn’t. No liaison could be as annoying as Art Jefferson had been.

  “Do you have any good news, General?” Michaels asked.

  Vance reached for the door, answering before opening it.

  “Your payroll numbers just dropped by one. The auditors are gonna love you.”

  She didn’t offer the joke with any smile. It was simply a humorless jab to remind Dr. Warren Michaels that he was now short staffed, necessary as that might be.

  “Keep the liaison out of our hair and get him back on task,” Vance added, then opened and closed the door crisply as she left.

  When she was gone, Michaels brought his hand up and tossed her a mocking salute.

  “Crap,” he said.

  But he couldn’t simply stay in his office and curse. Nor could he wallow in the knowledge that he was not yet free of outsiders who were incapable of comprehending the full scope of what they were pursuing here. No, he had to keep moving forward. Had to advance the protocol and get it back on track.

  He left his office a minute after the general and made his way to the unit. It had always been called that, from the first moment that blueprints for the facility were created. It was the section of The Ranch, which split off the main building like the foot of stubby T, where they kept him. Where his constant minders stayed. Where examination and interaction rooms were located. Thousands of square feet of government construction dedicated to housing and exploiting Simon Lynch.

  A guard outside the single entrance to the expansive wing allowed Michaels to pass on recognition. There were few enough on staff who had access to the unit that no sophisticated iris or face scanners were required. The dozen armed security who were always on duty, along with technical means that Michaels had not bothered to concern himself with, made the isolated facility virtually impenetrable. But before anyone could even attempt penetration, they would have to know The Ranch existed.

  Michaels moved down the long central hallway, past another guard and through a locked door that let him
into what was the residential area of the wing. He was approached immediately by one of the three technicians on duty, Carlton Lee, some concern plain on his face.

  “He’s asking for Dr. Poole,” Carlton said.

  “She’s no longer with us,” Michaels informed the man.

  “I know that, but—”

  “LEAH POOLE!”

  The yell, Simon’s yell, was followed by the sound of fists pounding on a door. On his door.

  “How long has he been agitated?” Michaels asked as he hurried toward the sound of the commotion, waving over the other two technicians, Audra Lamb and Gary Emmett. They came quickly from their monitoring stations, arrays of video screens and instrument readouts feeding data constantly to them.

  “Since the guards pulled Dr. Poole out,” Carlton answered.

  “A half an hour?” Michaels asked, his tone on the lowest rungs of fury. “And no one thought to notify me?”

  The technicians looked among each other. The classification of their employment was purely government-speak. None held anything less than multiple Masters degrees in neuroscience disciplines. Lamb had two, plus a doctorate in biochemistry as it related to the blood brain barrier. Michaels had handpicked every single one of them, and, at the moment, he wanted to strangle them all.

  “We thought we could manage it,” Gary told his superior.

  The pounding increased, the door ahead shaking, a man-shaped silhouette pressed against the thick glass set into its upper half, screaming.

  “With what, a tranquilizer gun?” Michaels challenged them.

  He reached the door and stood close to the glass, the technicians behind him. A foot away, beyond the bulletproof transparent barrier, Simon Lynch slammed his bruised hands against the door again and again, his eyes closed, tears streaming.

  “LEAH POOLE! LEAH POOLE!”

  “He hasn’t responded to any of us,” Carlton told Michaels.

  “You used the intercom?”