by Anna Durand
"Hawaii. It's nice this time of year."
"Have it your way."
Tesler tapped the bubbles out of the syringe.
Let them drug him. He would never tell, never let them intimidate him the way they intimidated the others. Tesler should've known better. The drug might shackle his body, but never his spirit. He could wait. Grace had the flash drive but her enemies seemed unaware of that fact, so she would be safe for awhile longer. Once she found the flash drive, she might decide to come here, to confront them herself. She was far too determined to sit back and let events unfold around her. Too determined and too willful. She'd march into a nuclear reactor if she thought "the truth" awaited her inside its walls.
She thought she was meek. Lord, if only that were true.
No. He liked her willful and determined. Even if it made his self-appointed job next to impossible to complete. Most of the time she kept to herself and gave the world the impression she was … well, not exactly meek, but she certainly hid her true nature deep inside. He'd seen it. That intimate knowledge made it hard for him to reconcile the woman he knew with the suspicious, self-doubting persona she displayed now. Maybe if she remembered those eight months, she'd shed her insecure shell and reveal the powerhouse underneath.
Amnesia left her vulnerable, but she was safe — for now. He had time.
Tesler squirted a jet of liquid from the syringe. He jabbed the needle into David's arm and depressed the plunger.
Eventually, Tesler and his cronies would run out of options. Then they'd awaken him. And he'd have one more chance to save himself and Grace.
His eyelids fluttered shut.
Grace wandered the streets of Lassiter Falls in search of a telephone. She needed to call Senator Faulkner. Even if he couldn't help, she had an obligation to contact him. Her grandfather had asked one favor of her and she must do it. She owed him that much, after all he'd done for her.
Everyone wanted her to do things for them. Even her grandfather issued post-mortem orders. Andrew Haley wanted to babble at her. Waldron wanted her, though for what purpose, she couldn't say. She decided she probably didn't want to know anyway. The knowledge would just creep her out more than she already was.
Waldron could've killed her. He needed her alive. She possessed what he wanted. What everyone seemed to want.
The goddamn flash drive.
Gimme, gimme, gimme. Those seemed like the only syllables anyone knew how to speak anymore. That and "do what I say right now." Only one person behaved as if he cared about what happened to her.
David.
Her throat constricted. Oh God. She'd killed him. Hadn't she?
Everything whirled around her, as if the sidewalk had transformed into a carnival ride. Her stomach lurched. She staggered to the nearest tree and propped her shoulder against it until the dizziness faded. Pushing away from the tree, she stood there for a moment.
Was David dead? Could she kill someone with her thoughts?
She'd been so angry. Actually, she'd been terrified that everything he said was true, which made her angry. Her mind replayed the moment. David's pleading expression. The swirling wind.
Don't do this.
Don't do what?
Push me out.
At the time, she'd barely heard his words. One thought had ricocheted through her mind, drowning out everything else. Get out.
David claimed she had psychic abilities. But what had he meant when he begged her not to push him out? It made no sense. Push him out of what?
Her mind.
The truth hit her like a punch in the gut. He had been in her mind, or connected to her mind, through some kind of psychic channel. No, that was impossible.
Except …
It made a bizarre kind of sense. She'd pushed him out of her mind. Forced him to go away. Why shouldn't she? He had no right to invade her thoughts, to make her see him and speak to him whether she wanted to or not. It was rude.
A harsh bark of laughter burst out of her. She was criticizing a man for rudely invading her mind. It was utterly insane.
Her neck ached. She rubbed it, to no avail. The neck pain was only the precursor. Next would come the headache and the nausea and a new swell of dizziness. Soon she'd sink into the mire of a quicksand migraine, and no amount of struggling would pull her out of it. She needed to find a safe place to wait out the migraine. A relatively safe place. If one existed.
She still had time before the quicksand dragged her under, time she must use wisely.
Down the sidewalk she marched, squinting because she swore the streetlights had gotten brighter all of a sudden. It was just the migraine, of course, making light seem sharper and harder, as if it were composed of a thousand tiny knives that pierced her brain.
David was not dead. She knew it, she thought. Maybe she just hoped. For the moment, she must assume whatever she'd done to him had caused no permanent damage.
She halted in front of a pay phone. It was bolted to the brick wall of a convenience store. No privacy whatsoever. An inconstant but ever-present stream of people strolled into and out of the store, some clutching monstrously large fountain drinks, others twirling their car keys, and still more munching on fried foods that looked full of enough preservatives to outlast the mummies of the Egyptian pharaohs.
Someone might overhear her phone conversation.
Waldron's buddies might've bugged the phones.
They could not possibly have bugged every public phone in Lassiter Falls. No one could. The thought failed to comfort her. She couldn't know for certain, not anymore. Anything goes, that was the new order of the universe. If David and his network of psychic friends and enemies vanished, invaded her thoughts, and took control of her body, then surely Waldron's friends could tap the public phone system.
The phones were hooked up to computers, weren't they? Waldron's pals had tracked an Internet connection back to the motel and seized control of her laptop.
The pay phone was too risky. She'd endured enough danger to satiate an adrenaline junkie for a lifetime. Minimize the risk. She must adopt those words as her new motto.
Not that her enemies gave a fig about her wishes. Or her sanity.
As she continued down the street, the trees on either side thinned. The buildings segued from businesses to houses. Ahead, the street intersected the main highway. Cars on the highway roared across the intersection at full speed, their headlights slashing through the night. The traffic signal burned red. The eye of death glowering at her.
Get a grip, girl.
She paused at the corner to rest and think.
On the opposite side of the highway sat Mesquite Hill Center. The strip mall housed a health club, a restaurant, a dollar store, and an electronics outlet. The dollar store was closed for the day, but the other establishment stayed open late, as evidenced by their glaring open signs and interior lights. A poster taped to the window of Bronco Electronics announced "dirt-cheap rate plans" for mobile phones. Sign up today, the sign urged, and get a free phone. Another sign in the store's window advertised prepaid cell phones. "No contract, total freedom," the sign declared.
A prepaid phone. Unconnected to the local system. Unconnected with her.
She jogged across the highway into the parking lot of the shopping center. Five vehicles occupied parking spots. The center's restaurant, Ruth's Tex-Mex Grill, had curtained windows. Through the picture windows of the health club, she saw two elderly men lifting weights and a woman riding an exercise bicycle as if a rabid pit bull were pursuing her. She tromped down the sidewalk, past the restaurant and health club, to the doors of Bronco Electronics. A bell jangled as she pushed through the doors into the store.
A salesman in a Hawaiian shirt scurried out of a back room.
"May I help you, ma'am?" he asked in his Texas drawl.
She pointed toward the display of prepaid ph
ones. "I want one of those. Please."
"You sure? We got some real fine deals on full-service plans — "
"Just the prepaid phone. Now please."
Fifteen minutes later, she departed the store with a prepaid flip phone in her hand. The device weighed a few ounces at most and, when folded shut, fit in the palm of her hand with room to spare. The casing was gray and nondescript, which suited her fine. She'd paid cash, and the phone required no contract or account sign-up, so she felt reasonably sure no one would know she had the phone. To know if the phone was really safe, however, she'd have to use it. The thought sent a chill up her spine.
Before she could use the phone, she needed a number to dial.
She chewed her lower lip for a minute, then shoved the phone in her jeans pocket. She turned around and strode back into the store.
The same salesman approached her. "There a problem, ma'am?"
He looked genuinely concerned. Maybe he'd get in trouble if a customer returned a phone five minutes after purchasing it.
She smiled and said, "No no, it's fine. But I was wondering if I could try out one of your computers. I'm thinking about replacing mine, and I'd like to see how good the newest models are."
It wasn't entirely a lie. She did need a new computer, but lacking any funds beyond the ten bucks and change in her wallet, she couldn't exactly pick up a new laptop today. A computer might come in handy, though. Maybe if she ran to the nearest ATM and withdrew —
No, ATMs had a limit of $200. Besides, if she accessed her bank account then Waldron and company might notice it.
"Sure thing," the salesman said, his expression brightening. "Let me show you the one we just got in this week."
He led her to a display table that housed a desktop computer with a huge wide-screen monitor attached. Using the mouse, he opened programs and chattered about the computer's built-in features.
"Um," Grace said, "could I just play around with it for a few minutes?"
"You bet."
He released the mouse and stepped back.
Grace walked up the computer. Glancing at the salesman, she asked, "Can this get online?"
"Oh yeah. We have broadband."
He stood there watching as she opened the web browser. She hesitated. The salesman folded his arms over his chest and kept on smiling and watching.
Grace plastered her best smile on her face and said, "I don't want to take up all your time. You must have other things to do and I can fiddle with this on my own."
"You sure?"
"Positive." She broadened her smile. "Thank you so much for all your help. It's nice to know chivalry isn't dead after all."
The salesman blushed.
Then the phone rang and he trotted to the sales counter to answer it.
Grace's smile evaporated. Jeez, being cheerful had turned into an endurance sport. It used to come so easily.
In the web browser, she navigated to a search engine, typed in Faulkner's name, and hit enter. The results popped up within seconds. Oh, she coveted the store's broadband connection. Her Internet was glacially slow in comparison. Not that it mattered much, since she'd probably get bumped off by an invisible villain without ever seeing her home again.
She glanced at the search results. And froze.
The first link was titled "Senator Dies in Auto Accident."
Below the title, the search results printed the first couple lines of the news article. "Senator Elias Faulkner," the text said, "was killed early this morning when a drunk driver struck his car in a head-on collision."
Dead. Another person involved in this mess was dead.
She'd intended to look up the phone number for Faulkner's office. No point in that now. Her grandfather said to contact Faulkner, and mentioned no one else as trustworthy. She wouldn't know who else, if anyone, she could trust at Faulkner's office.
Closing the web browser, she hurried out of the store, past the health club, toward the opposite end of the building from where she'd entered the property. On the corner, a newspaper vending machine squatted at the edge of the sidewalk. Its front side faced her. She stopped there, her gaze inexorably drawn to the words printed on the paper, which was pressed against the machine's clear door. The headlines meant nothing to her. Something about local politics followed by mention of a fund raiser at the hospital. The rest of the text was below the fold, out of sight.
Some instinct made her fish three quarters out of her purse, drop them into the slot, and extract a newspaper from the machine. She flipped it over to see the stories on the lower half of the front page. Her skimming ended when she spotted the one-paragraph story at the very bottom of the page.
"Inmate Dies in County Jail," the headline said. The story began, "Andrew Haley died overnight of self-inflicted wounds while being held in connection with the death of Brian Kellogg, a tourist who was found dead at the Bed & Bath Inn yesterday."
Self-inflicted wounds. Sure. Andrew was nuts, but given recent events, she doubted he'd offed himself. The same invisible villain who'd attacked her and strangled Brian Kellogg most likely took care of Andrew as well. And Senator Faulkner.
And her grandfather.
She let the newspaper slip out of her hands. It fluttered to the concrete at her feet.
So many deaths. All over what? The results of secret research into psychic phenomena? Anyone who would kill for that information must be either insane or evil or both.
David.
His face flashed in her mind. Would he be the next victim? Her chest tightened, as if an invisible hand squeezed her heart. She felt tears pooling in her eyes, hot and stinging. She did not want David to die. She didn't want anyone else to die, but especially not him.
Maybe he'd told her the truth. Maybe she felt this sickening dread at the thought of him falling prey to her enemies because they had known each other before. If she could remember those missing months, she might understand her own feelings better.
Her cell phone rang.
It wasn't the new phone she'd just bought. The old one warbled from deep inside her purse.
Digging out the phone, she answered the call on the fifth ring, one ring before her voice mail would've taken the call.
"Hello," she muttered.
"Grace."
That voice. She recognized it. One word provided all the evidence she needed, because she'd heard the same voice before, whispering in her ear, too close.
Waldron.
"You may have scared Lopez," Waldron said in a calm tone laced with a malice that triggered ice-cold tremors inside her. "I don't frighten so easily. You look rather upset, though."
The tremors stopped. Everything around her seemed to have frozen, as if time had paused. The sole evidence of life was the thudding of her own heart. He was watching her. She felt it, an inexplicable sensation of his gaze on her, as tangible as the feel of his hand around her neck. Waldron's voice murmured into her ear.
"Gotcha."
She dropped the phone and ran.
Chapter Sixteen
Grace ran as fast as her legs would move. Maybe Waldron didn't really know where she was, as his one-word message implied. He might've lied just to torment her. She couldn't risk it, so on and on she ran. She didn't stop moving until the shopping center was out of view behind her, over the rise of a hill, and she'd passed from the commercial zone into a region of town filled with vacant lots. Abandoned homes slouched on a few of the lots. They looked as bedraggled as she must look — as she felt.
When she realized no one was following her, she stumbled to a halt.
No car engines grumbled. No footsteps pounded behind her. The only sound was an owl hooting in a nearby tree. The mournful sound made the desolation around her feel even more desolate.
Rubbing her arms against a sudden chill, she turned in a circle to survey the area. Not a single human
being was in sight. No animals either. Nothing but dying grass, a handful of trees, and empty shells that had once been homes. The streetlights washed the landscape in shades of jaundiced yellow.
She stood there for several minutes, her mind blank. A deep weariness settled over her. She fought the urge to lie down on the cracked sidewalk. The throbbing in her head had joined forces with the pain in her neck that stabbed up into the base of her skull. The combined misery left her weak and exhausted and nauseous. Her knees began to quiver. If she didn't find a safe place to collapse, and find it very soon, her body would make the decision for her. Waldron and company would find her here, a human puddle on the concrete.
She considered each of the abandoned houses in turn. One looked about ready to collapse itself. Two others had boarded-up windows. No way could she break down the doors or the window boards, not in her current condition. The last house looked relatively intact, though in need of a paint job. The windows weren't boarded.
Summoning the last of her strength, she crossed the street to the little stucco house. The chain link fence was falling down, the gate halfway off its hinges. She sidestepped the gate and shuffled up the concrete walkway toward the front door. Fault lines as deep as the San Andreas cleaved the concrete. She hopped over the gaps, and the knee-high weeds that jutted up through them, reaching the closed door. She grasped the knob and turned. Locked. Damn.
The window beside the door was cracked, but not broken. Under the window, bricks that had once formed a border for a flower bed lay jumbled and half swallowed by the weeds. She picked up one of the bricks and used it to smash out the glass. Once she'd knocked out the last shards, she swung one leg through the window, braced herself against the inside wall, and swung her other leg inside.
The room she found herself in was dark, except for the light coming through the window. She stepped away from the wall, crunching glass under her boots. She cursed herself for not keeping a small flashlight in her purse. The one in her car's glove compartment was of no use now.
The house smelled of mildew and dust. The floor creaked as she tiptoed further into the room. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the darker environment and recognizable shapes emerged from the gloom. A ramshackle easy chair, tucked into the corner. A blanket or sheet mounded in the center of the room. She kicked at the fabric heap, just to make sure it didn't hide anything living. The front door was behind and to the right of her, while straight ahead two more windows offered a view of the lifeless backyard. She slunk across the room and through a doorway on the left side, into what looked like a combined kitchen and dining room. A couple of wooden chairs lay toppled on their sides, refugees from a dining room set. Another doorway took her into a large, empty room replete with shadows. An overgrown bush blocked the view from the only window. Even in the gloom, she could make out a pair of bifold doors at stood half open, revealing the pitch-darkness inside the closet.