Hell, if you really thought about it, the gift was nothing more than a hypersensitivity to the needs of others. And that was a good thing.
That was what Robert told himself.
And he stayed with Virginia.
He assumed Virginia had used her gift to find “Dr. Jones.” He assumed she had experienced one of her strange “brain movies” when somewhere near him, maybe at the gas station or while in line at the bank, had uncovered his disgraced standing in the medical community in her mind and then had approached him to deliver her baby.
Virginia had adamantly refused to give birth in the hospital. Her fear of the place was something Robert did not quite understand—he found it illogical and senseless—but his wife would not be dissuaded from her insistence that the delivery occur at home.
Now, with the woman he loved suffering greatly, contractions wracking her body and “Dr. Jones” flippantly unconcerned, Robert began to feel the tug of panic in his gut. Virginia could die in childbirth; it was a very real possibility here in this nonsterile bedroom equipped with only the most rudimentary medical equipment.
Or her baby could die.
Or, God forbid, both things could happen.
CHAPTER 4
The tenement was ancient, probably over one hundred fifty years old. Its red brick construction had been worn down by decades of extreme Boston weather until it now sagged and buckled as if the act of defying gravity was becoming simply too much to bear.
The building had been condemned years ago, deemed unfit for human habitation and then ignored, never renovated but never demolished, either. Now it sat, hulking and silent, its interior stripped, everything of value removed, either legally by owners who had long-since disappeared, or illegally by everyone else. Smashed-out windows had been hastily boarded over with sheets of plywood, and the building’s exterior doors drooped in proportion with the rest of the structure. The entrances had been secured with locks that were broken off within days, likely within hours, of their installation and the tenement now formed a convenient gathering place for vagrants, drug dealers, users, and the occasional hooker performing a fifty-dollar quickie.
And one other man.
Milo Cain was the only resident of the top floor, having carved rudimentary living quarters out of the empty shell of one of the apartments. In one corner of what at some time in the past had been a living room, Milo had placed an air mattress, which represented a massive improvement over sleeping on the buckling floor. A ratty wool blanket lay over the mattress, one side eaten raggedly away by moths.
In the opposite corner, Milo had placed a Coleman cookstove, offering a way to heat coffee and soup and the occasional canned spaghetti dinner. There was no oven in the kitchen; that appliance had disappeared decades ago along with everything else of value.
Milo sat unmoving, butt on the floor, back against the wall. He stared across the room at nothing in particular. The electricity had been turned off years ago, and candles placed inside grimy old drinking glasses provided uneven lighting, splashing flickering shadows across the wall. A gigantic spider moved slowly and clumsily across the floor in front of Milo, its movements jerky and insectile. He barely noticed and didn’t care.
His head lolled, striking the wall behind him as he was assaulted by a series of vivid images, all different but uniformly dark and disturbing. In the first, a man dressed in a stained wifebeater undershirt screamed at a woman, consumed by a white-hot rage that Milo could feel but which was meaningless to him because the vision provided no context. It was simply a scene, picked up at random by his subconscious mind.
The next involved a drug deal going down somewhere near the tenement. Milo watched through his mind’s eye, floating high above the illicit meeting, silent and unseen. The participants were nervous, both sides tense and fearful of a double-cross and the potential for deadly violence.
That image seared itself into Milo’s brain in an instant, only to be replaced by another, and another. Finally the images came to an end—for now—disappearing as if with the flick of a switch, and Milo sagged against the wall, spent. How long the break would last he had no way of knowing. It might be a precious few minutes, or maybe even a couple of hours if he was extremely lucky, which most of the time he was not. The only thing he knew for certain was that before long the images would return and when they did, they would be uniformly dark and disturbing and exhausting.
But there was one silver lining. When the images returned, maybe they would provide him with information he could use for his own purposes; there was always that possibility.
In the meantime, he would rest while he could. Milo considered crawling to his air mattress and napping while he had the chance, but he was too fucking tired to move. The visions were so goddamned draining.
Instead, he bent down, head hanging between his spread knees, and closed his eyes. God, he was tired. Maybe he would just lie down on his side right there on the floor and nap.
Then the visions exploded into his brain, beginning anew. Milo Cain’s head snapped up, smashing against the wall, and once again he stared off into space, lost and dazed.
CHAPTER 5
Cait sipped her wine, enjoying the last of the pot roast dinner and reveling in the nearly continuous stream of compliments being lobbed her way by her boyfriend. Kevin Dalton was not a hard guy to please when it came to food, but Cait wasn’t about to let that minor detail lessen her appreciation of the moment.
Both worked long hours in the hopes of building their careers, Cait as a real estate attorney and Kevin as a Tampa police officer. But their long-standing tradition was a home-cooked meal every Thursday night, and tonight it had been Cait’s turn to cook. She had purchased everything she needed at the Super-K and then spent the next couple hours peeling potatoes and carrots, tossing a salad and cooking the roast, before Kevin’s arrival.
“I gotta tell ya,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied sigh, “this might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
Cait smiled. “Like I’ve never heard that before. I think it may have had more to do with the fact that all you had to eat today was half a cheese sandwich for lunch.”
“Duly stipulated. Whew, that was quite the vigorous cross-examination, counselor. You’re really getting this lawyer thing down.”
Cait laughed and shook her head. “I do real estate law, remember? We don’t cross-examine people.”
“That’s a shame,” Kevin answered, “because you’d be really good at it. Anyway, I’ll admit it, I was beyond hungry. But I’m still not backing off my testimony. Everything was delicious. I’m stuffed.” He patted his belly and grinned.
“If you unbuckle your belt and unsnap the top button of your jeans, you’re out of here. And you better have saved a little room for dessert and coffee.”
“Note to self,” Kevin replied. “No belt unbuckling. At least not until later.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and Cait laughed. “And as far as dessert is concerned, I’ve never passed it up yet, and I’m not about to start now. What’s on the menu?”
“Nothing. At least, for now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I’m withholding dessert—it’s your favorite, by the way, homemade strawberry shortcake—until I get what I want.”
“Ooh, kinky,” Kevin said, nodding in appreciation. “If it involves a seductive striptease and grapes being hand-fed to me by a certain sexy young woman, count me in.”
“You wish. It involves you letting me in on this big surprise you claimed to have in store for me. No dessert, of the food or sexual kind, until you spill the beans.”
“Wow, that’s cold. Lawyering’s changing you, sweetheart.” Kevin’s eyes narrowed and Cait smacked him on the arm with a laugh.
“Come on,” she said. “Give it up.”
“All right, all right, I can’t take any more. You’ve worn me down.”
“Was there ever any doubt I would?”
“Good point. Okay, you kn
ow how you always say you’d like to learn more about your past—the identity of your birth parents, where they live, why they gave you up for adoption, all of that?”
“Sure. I just don’t know where to begin. I have no idea where I was born, no idea what my parents’ names might be, no clue what agency may have handled the adoption. There’s nothing to go on.”
“Exactly,” Kevin said. “There’s nothing for you to go on. But a professional could probably handle the job.”
“Maybe,” Cait answered. “But I don’t have the money to hire a professional, you know that.”
“You don’t have to hire a professional.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I already did.”
“Uh, Kevin, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“You don’t have the money for that, either.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. It just so happens I’ve been saving up for a while, waiting to surprise you. I have enough cash put aside to at least get started, so I went out yesterday and hired an investigator.”
Cait paused at the kitchen sink where she had been rinsing dishes. She stared at Kevin, saying nothing.
“Well?” he prompted.
“Well, what?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Surprised would be an understatement.”
Kevin frowned. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be excited.”
Cait rinsed her hands under the warm water and dried them on a towel. “It’s not that I’m not happy, I am. I guess I just never really thought I would have the opportunity to discover my heritage. It’s going to take a little while to get used to the idea that I might be able to learn something after all these years.”
“Well,” Kevin said, “the guy has a great reputation and all of his references check out. But he told me not to get my hopes up, that it’s a long shot at best. He may not be able to find out anything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cait said, hanging the dishtowel on a rack. She walked across the kitchen and sat in Kevin’s lap.
“It doesn’t?”
“No. What matters is that you cared enough to do such a thoughtful thing for me. That was really, really sweet. It’s just one more reason why I love you.” She put her arms around his neck and nibbled his ear. “Now, about that dessert. Still hungry?”
“I’m suddenly ravenous.”
The strawberry shortcake went uneaten.
CHAPTER 6
Thirty years ago
Everett, Massachusetts
Virginia moaned and thrashed as another contraction struck and Robert’s panic bubbled closer to the surface. He decided he could no longer stand the agony of inaction. He had to do something. He just had to. He mopped his wife’s forehead with the cool cloth—Christ, she was sweating so much!—and caressed her cheek. Her eyes remained closed.
“That’s it,” he announced. “I’ve had it. This insanity has to end.”
“Dr. Jones” gave no response. It was as if he hadn’t even heard Robert speak. He seemed preoccupied and Robert wondered if perhaps he was high on some medication. “She’s going to the hospital,” Robert continued. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
He strode across the room.
Made it to the open door.
And Virginia screamed, her voice jagged and high-pitched, intense now with anger, not pain. “NO! You will not call an ambulance! I’m having this baby right here. You agreed to this and you will NOT BACK OUT NOW!”
Robert stopped in his tracks, confused, the certainty of a moment ago gone. At the foot of the bed, he thought he saw a smile flit across “Dr. Jones’s” face and disappear.
Then Virginia screamed again as another contraction struck. She sounded like she was being beaten with a baseball bat. The contractions were coming more rapidly now and increasing in intensity.
Robert rushed back to her bedside. He realized it was probably too late for an ambulance now, anyway. Something was going to happen soon, he could feel it. The baby was going to be born in the next few minutes or…well…Robert refused to consider the alternative.
Again Virginia screamed, her voice like a buzz saw ripping through a stubborn plank. She was panting and sweating, screaming constantly now, thrashing on her blood- and sweat-soaked bed. The unlicensed doctor bent down over Virginia, somehow deciding now was the time to act. “You need to push,” he announced softly.
“I can’t,” she screamed.
“PUSH,” Dr. Jones said again, more forcefully this time, grabbing her by the shoulders, and she pushed. She screamed and cried and sweated and swore, but she pushed, and then pushed again, continued pushing when she swore she could not, and then it was over and Virginia Ayers had given birth to a baby girl.
And then to a baby boy.
CHAPTER 7
Milo Cain wandered down Washington Street toward Roxbury, moving slowly, randomly. The night was still young, so he was forced to share the sidewalk with plenty of other people. Few took direct notice of him, but, as always, the majority of pedestrians gave him a wide berth, somehow unconsciously sensing menace. Mothers tightened their grips on their children, adults averted their eyes at his approach.
His face was nearly invisible, sunken deep inside the shadows of a hooded grey New England Patriots sweatshirt. Baggy jeans, desperately in need of a washing they would not receive, threatened to slip down his narrow hips, somehow defying the laws of gravity and staying up. Tattered Chuck Taylors flopped on his feet.
A group of three young black males approached, flat-brimmed baseball caps askew, sauntering shoulder-to-shoulder, forcing Milo off the sidewalk and into the gutter. One of them shot him a glance, silent and resentful. They passed and Milo waited for a sign and received nothing, so he continued on.
A small hole-in-the-wall tavern appeared on the right, flickering neon Coors sign illuminating a plate-glass window that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the Bush administration. The first one. Inside the bar, a tired-looking middle-aged waitress schlepped glasses of beer clustered atop a small round tray. As Milo watched, a heavyset drunk lost his footing and stumbled into the waitress, sloshing beer over the sides of the glasses and off the edge of the tray in a golden mini-tsunami. No one paid any attention and the waitress soldiered on.
Two girls, white and young, blonde, clearly college students, too ignorant to realize they had no business being in this area—Milo’s favorite kind of girl—rounded the corner and turned in his direction. They chatted quietly, unaware of their surroundings, oblivious to the potential for danger.
The girls passed on his left, quickening their strides, and his head snapped back like he had been struck in the face as an image seared itself into his mind. The girls were students at Northeastern University. Juniors. The one passing closest to Milo was named Angela and she was cheating on her boyfriend, sleeping with her married Philosophy professor for no reason other than it seemed exciting and daring. She had told no one, not even her best friend.
As quickly as it had slammed into his brain, the vision vanished. The two clueless college girls continued on, moving away from Milo, and he paused, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, analyzing what he had just learned, trying to decide if the information was in any way useful. He glanced at his feet and saw sickly looking weeds struggling through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Then he raised his head and the Northeastern students were instantly forgotten as he locked in on what he now knew he had been waiting for. Across Washington Street, a young Hispanic boy ambled along the sidewalk. The kid was perhaps ten years old, wearing gang colors, MP3 listening buds sprouting from his ears like cancerous growths.
Milo didn’t even need a vision to tell him what he needed to know. The kid was a runner, a middleman employed by local gang members to deliver product to customers and cash back to the dealers. It was the oldest scam going. As a minor, if apprehended with illegal drugs, the kid would face nothing more than a slap on the wrist, whereas
the older gangbangers could be put away for years, even for life, depending on their arrest records.
What Milo didn’t know was whether the kid was carrying drugs or cash; whether he had already made a delivery or was on his way to do so. Milo had no need or desire for drugs, his reality was warped enough from the nearly unending stream of visions he experienced. Cash, however, was another matter entirely. For a man living on the farthest outskirts of society, cash was indispensable.
Milo crossed Washington Street at a jog, moving quickly enough to gain ground on the kid but not so fast he might draw unwanted attention. In this neighborhood, a sprinting young man most often suggested a felony in progress. Behind Milo a cab slammed on its brakes, nearly clipping him as it slewed to the side of the street. The furious cabdriver unleashed a string of broken-English epithets into the muggy night, his anger unacknowledged by Milo or anyone else.
When he reached the opposite sidewalk, Milo slowed. Now roughly twenty feet behind the kid, he maintained his distance. And waited expectantly.
He didn’t have to wait long. In seconds a vision sizzled into his fevered brain like a lightning bolt. It’s money, he thought. The kid is carrying the proceeds from a drug deal. It wasn’t much, only a couple of hundred bucks, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially when you took the expression literally. Two hundred dollars would go a long way when you had nothing but a little spare change rattling around in your pocket.
Milo picked up his pace slightly, staying attuned to his surroundings as much as possible while still absorbing the vision. The money was in the right thigh pocket of the kid’s cargo shorts, nine twenty dollar bills and two crumpled tens stuffed next to a throwaway cell phone. Milo could see it in his mind as clear as day. In the left pocket the kid carried a knife, a weapon that would wind up being completely useless to him.
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