Willpower

by Anna Durand

  Lightning burst in the sky, silhouetting the bush outside the window. In the same instant, a gust of wind swirled past the house, shaking the bush. The shadows inside the room undulated.

  Grace dunked her hand into her purse and curled her fingers around the grip of her gun.

  Another stroke of lightning lit the room. She saw the closet was empty, then the darkness reclaimed the space.

  She scuffled to the corner farthest from the door, where she could still keep an eye on the doorway but maintain a buffer zone between herself and the opening. The window was at the opposite end of the wall. She leaned back against the wall and let her body slide down until she was sitting on the floor. Although the carpet had lost its bounce, it provided enough cushioning to ease some of the aches in her body. Each flash of lightning stabbed into her eyes like a large-bore needle. She turned her head into the corner, to shield her eyes as much as possible, which wasn't much at all. She shut her eyes and tried to relax. Though the muscles in her thighs and abdomen no longer twanged when she moved, the tightness lingered.

  Thunder rumbled, distant but resonant. The window glass rattled.

  Big, empty houses gave her the creeps. As a child, she had been convinced that monsters lived in the shadows. According to her childhood theory then, an abandoned house must harbor hordes of demons. Like the ones pursuing her now. Those childhood fears might not have been so silly after all.

  The floor creaked.

  Just the house settling. The thought failed to alleviate the churning in her stomach or the slight quickening of her pulse. She slid the gun out of her purse. She laid it on her lap, one hand resting on the grip with her index finger over the trigger guard.

  Fatigue settled over her once again. Her muscles felt heavy and limp. Her eyelids refused to stay open. Her pulse slowed, her breathing grew shallower, and she sank into sleep.

  Grace woke with a jerk that thumped her head against the wall. She grunted, massaging the back of her head. She felt … weird.

  An odd sense of pressure made her feel as if a very heavy sack rested atop her head, sinking down around her, first pressing down on her shoulders and then over her chest. She resisted the panic welling inside her. Somehow she knew that staying calm was the only option that would leave her intact. She took a very slow, deep breath.

  Intact? What the hell did that mean?

  The sensation of pressure oozed down her body, over her hips and legs. Within a few seconds, the sensation passed through and out of her.

  She swallowed, straightened her back, and glanced around the room.

  Lightning flashed, dimmer than before. The storm must've slipped around to the south.

  The room was still empty, except for her. The weird feeling of pressure was completely gone now. The dreams were nothing new, but it had been different this time. Never before had she remembered the dream so vividly after waking. Never before had she remembered what happened after entering the locked room. Never before had she woken to feel an invisible weight pressing down on her, almost as if she were being shoved back into her body. Normally during the dreams — if she could call the bizarre episodes normal — she felt as if she inhabited someone else's body or mind, as if she were merely an observer rather than a participant. This time, however, she had felt completely herself. Yet the most disturbing part had been the sense of …

  Traveling.

  She sat forward. Travelers. Excursions. She had read those words in the research data on the flash drive. According to the data, David was a traveler. He claimed to have psychic abilities, and he claimed she had them too. If the term traveler referred to a psychic, then she had just been on an excursion.

  She'd been traveling for quite some time without knowing it. Traveling while she slept. Taking excursions to see David. And she could only think of one reason why she might do that.

  Everything David said was true. They had been … involved.

  She closed her eyes. The memory came back to her, unbidden and unwanted. David lying in that bed, unconscious. Still as death. The only sign of life had been the almost imperceptible rising and falling of his chest. She remembered feeling for his pulse, and being rewarded with the slow-but-insistent surging of blood through his veins. He was alive. Comatose, or at least unconscious, but alive.

  He could do nothing to help her anymore. It was up to her now.

  She must save him this time.

  Everyone remotely connected with the flash drive had not only died, but had been murdered by unknown villains. Her grandfather, Andrew Haley, Brian Kellogg, Senator Faulkner. They were murdered. She needed no evidence to tell her that. Whoever pulled Waldron's strings also killed anyone who came near the secrets contained on the flash drive.

  Anyone who came near her.

  She knew this. Actually, she felt it — and she no longer questioned her instincts. Lately, she'd doubted her intuition, her motives, her feelings, afraid those instincts would lead her into oblivion. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was paranoid. Maybe she was narcissistic. Those doubts had governed her life.

  No more.

  Drawing her knees up to her chest, she rested her arms on her knees. The thunder had faded into silence, and lightning no longer pulsated in the sky outside the abandoned house. With her back pressed to the wall, she felt a little safer than she had out on the street. Yet she realized she couldn't stay cocooned here forever.

  She needed answers. She could wait for one of her pursuers to hand her those answers, or she could dig them out of the ground herself. The answers lay deep. She'd need a backhoe to excavate them.

  The answers awaited her in California. David and Sean were in California, somewhere in the Mojave Desert. Her grandfather had worked for a company in California. Her parents moved to California two years before their deaths. In her mind, the dots connected, though the picture they formed remained unclear, because she couldn't see many of the dots. Revealing them demanded a trip to California. A trip from which she might not return.

  She would return. She had to. Either way, she must go. David needed her.

  Okay, so she didn't even remember the guy. That fact had made her leery of him before, but her latest dream — mental excursion — convinced her that he told the truth. The feelings stirring inside her, once frightening, now felt almost comforting. Someone cared about her. Someone needed her. She could not leave him to rot in a drug-induced coma inside a windowless facility hidden out in the desert.

  What if the coma wasn't drug induced? What if she had caused it? She used her powers on him, to make him go away, though she'd had no concept of what she was doing at the time. What if she'd hurt him by doing so?

  No. She was not to blame. It was them. And she needed to know who they were.

  Grandpa had worked for a company called ALI, Advanced Laboratories Inc. He kept the details of his work, and the location of ALI's facility, a secret. Knowing the details hadn't mattered to her back then. Now, she cursed herself for accepting the secrecy, the evasion, the lies. Grandpa had lied to her — about more than his job. She understood the secrecy of his work, since ALI probably made him sign a confidentiality agreement, but lying to her about own life …

  She didn't know if she could forgive him for that.

  He must've known David. He must've known about her relationship with him. She could no longer deny the deception. Edward McLean insisted everything was fine and convinced her they both led normal lives, when obviously neither one of them did. How long had he known he was in trouble? Months, she'd guess. He should've confided in her. They might've solved his problems together. Instead, he slipped a bag over her head and plugged her ears.

  Worst of all, he let her believe nothing of import happened during the eight months she'd lost to amnesia. Getting engaged was hardly nothing.

  And what about her psychic abilities? How long had she had them? Since she remembered everything outside of
those eight months last year, she knew she'd had no such powers at any other time in her life. They must've emerged during those eight months. How had it happened? Who wanted to capture her now? Grandpa must've known the answers to those questions and many more, yet he kept the information from her. Even at the end, when he must've known she was in danger too, he said nothing. Instead, he gave her a flash drive that every bad guy in the western hemisphere wanted to possess.

  If she discovered her grandfather had a good reason for lying, her unease might lessen. But if peeling back the skin of lies revealed a tumor beneath, then it just might kill her.

  Nothing could undo the past, not for her, not for anyone. She must live with the truth.

  She grabbed the prepaid mobile phone and dialed directory assistance. Two minutes later, she scribbled the number for ALI's job hotline on a scrap of paper she'd found in her purse. The company listed no other numbers and no address. She punched in the digits.

  The call was picked up. A recorded voice intoned, "The ALI employment hotline is available twenty-four hours a day for your convenience. To hear the latest job openings, press one. To hear all job openings, press two. To search by category, press three. To speak with an ALI human resources specialist, press four."

  Grace pressed four.

  The same recorded voice said, "We're sorry, ALI human resources specialists are available during normal business hours only, seven AM to seven PM Pacific time."

  She punched the zero key, hoping to get an operator. The recorded voice began reading off the initial menu options again. She kept punching zero.

  Silence. Then, the voice announced, "Thank you for calling ALI. Goodbye."

  Click. The damn machine had hung up on her.

  She'd have to call back in the morning — after nine AM, since Pacific time was two hours earlier. She checked her watch. It was 12:48 AM. More than eight hours to go before ALI's employees arrived at work. Too much time. Waldron seemed unlikely to allow her an eight-hour hiatus before he resumed hunting for her.

  Though she hadn't expected to get all the answers she needed from a jobs hotline, she had hoped for a little more luck than this. Something had to go right once in awhile.

  She might have to accept that she wouldn't find the facility. Accept defeat.

  Never. There must be a way.

  Sean might help her. He seemed like a good kid, kind of like an abused puppy who craved affection while fearing it at the same time. She might talk him into disclosing the location of the facility. Though the plan nibbled at her conscience and she had no experience in enticing information from people anyway, she had no other options left. She had to try.

  If she knew how to contact him.

  Sure, no problem. She'd just call him on the phone and ask him to pop in for a visit. Even better, she could stand on the roof and shout over the Rocky Mountains to him.

  She had forced David out by thinking about it, by wishing for it with every iota of willpower she retained. By concentrating. Through psychic power. The tactic might work for conjuring Sean, or at least sending him an SOS.

  Just yesterday, the notion would've made her laugh. Tonight, she prayed not only that psychic powers existed, but that she knew how to tap into them. Right now.

  Strange that she'd stopped wondering how Sean and David materialized out of air and disintegrated into it again. The question, once vital, lingered in the recesses of her mind, but she now rated other questions above it. Questions like who wanted the disk, who tormented her, who murdered all those people. Another question held within it the power to reveal all the answers.

  What did "they" protect and why?

  At this particular moment, however, she needed the answer to another, more mundane question. Where was the Mojave Desert facility?

  She closed her eyes, focusing her thoughts on Sean. His face filled her mind's eye.

  Come on, kid. Come out and play. I need your help.

  Squeezing her eyelids tightly shut, she took in a deep breath. As she released it one milliliter at a time, she let her muscles slacken and her mind open. She didn't really know how to do the last part, but she gave it her best shot.

  Come on, damn it. This has to work. Please, Sean, I need you.

  A chill washed over her. She opened her eyes.

  "How'd you do that?" whispered a voice from the opposite corner of the room.

  Sean huddled there, kneeling, hands on the stained carpet. He kept his back to the wall, his head turned toward the doorway.

  He looked at her sideways. "Normal people aren't supposed to do that."

  "I'm not normal."

  "Are you like me?" He lowered gaze and picked at the carpeting with one fingernail.

  She shrugged one shoulder. "Doesn't matter how I did it. I need to talk to you."

  "I'm not supposed to. David'll get mad."

  A knot cinched tight in her gut. The first sting of tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and she bit the inside of her lip to stave off the flow. No crying. Not now. Too much was at stake. David would be okay, because she would find him.

  David had hidden the truth from her too, at first. When he finally shared the truth wither her, or at least part of the truth, she shoved him away with so much force it kicked up a small tornado. She could apologize to him later. When she rescued him. Then he would need to thank her.

  Actually, she didn't care if he was grateful. She just wanted him alive and conscious. She just wanted him. Here. With her. Annoying the hell out of her as usual.

  She scuttled across the carpet toward Sean.

  His eyes bulged. "Don't touch me."

  She froze. A couple yards separated them.

  "I won't touch you," she said. "I didn't mean to scare you."

  He hugged himself, biting his lower lip. His gaze he fixed on the carpet.

  She sat down cross-legged and rested her hands on her knees. Sean wouldn't help her if she scared him. The kid had sore nerves.

  "Listen," she said, her tone soft, "I need your help."

  "Me?" He lifted his head to look at her.

  "David's in trouble, isn't he?"

  Sean shrugged one shoulder, averting his eyes again. "Can't talk about that stuff."

  "I can help him. If I know where he is."

  "Nobody can help us."

  "I can."

  A lock of hair drooped over his eyes. He sketched invisible lines on the carpet.

  "I can help you," she said. "But you have to tell me where you are."

  "Why would you wanna help us?"

  "I know what it's like to be alone."

  He turned away from her, facing the wall.

  She needed his cooperation, but her stomach burned at the thought of tricking him into telling her the location. Deceptions would make her no better than the people who sought her. She preferred that he volunteer the information. That was why she hadn't lied to him. She did know how it felt to be alone, powerless, plummeting from a precipice without a parachute. The people with the power — the kind of power money granted — enjoyed watching others flail and clutch at any handhold, however narrow or weak. She had been that victim once. Not anymore. Since her days on that precipice, she had learned one basic truth.

  Power could shift hands.

  Besides, not all power came from money or privilege. Some power originated deep inside the mind. No one could take away that power. They might suppress it temporarily with drugs, as she somehow knew they'd done with David, but the power always surfaced again.

  She had the power. In more ways than one.

  Sean stood. "I didn't tell."

  He vanished.

  Her one chance had just disintegrated. Dammit, one break wouldn't upset the balance of the universe. One lousy break.

  She thumped her fist on the carpet.

  A shape on the wall drew her at
tention. She scuttled closer to the wall, examining the baseboard.

  She smiled.

  There, in the dust that coated the baseboard, Sean had scrawled a message.

  50 miles NE of Reston on Dry Lake Rd. Dirt road to left. Eyes and ears everywhere.

  He had given her the location without saying the words. He could assure David that he hadn't told her. Clever kid. He gave what she asked for, and the rest was up to her. For the first time in more days than she could keep track of, she knew exactly where she was headed.

  Reston, California.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer. The shrill sound woke Grace in increments — first her ears awakened to the noise, then her mind surfaced into consciousness, and finally she eased her eyelids apart to take in her surroundings.

  Dingy carpeting. Dusty, mold-stained walls. A window blocked by an overzealous shrub.

  The memory of last night returned to her just as gradually as wakefulness had. Her stop at the electronics store. Waldron's phone call. Running.

  She rubbed her eyes. At least the migraine had left. Her brief nap before Sean came had taken care of that problem. Her mouth felt cottony, her neck ached a bit, and she felt as if she'd slept on a gravel road, but otherwise she was just peachy.