by Anna Durand
Glancing at her watch, she saw the time was 6:42. The sun was up already, its light filtering through the bush's foliage to cast faint streamers of light into the room.
The sirens wailed closer.
She snatched up the gun and scrambled to her feet. At the window, she tried to peer through the branches to see beyond the foliage, but to no avail. She trotted through the house, unlocked the front door, and rushed outside. At the broken-down gate, she stopped.
The sirens had withdrawn into the distance again. Within fifteen or twenty seconds, the sound died out completely.
A mourning dove cooed in the treetops nearby. She listened to the song as she calmed herself with three long, slow breaths. The cops were not coming for her. Waldron might be searching for her at this very moment, but she seriously doubted he'd involve the authorities, despite his former ruse of pretending to work for the FBI.
She headed off down the sidewalk, back toward the center of town. She must've taken a different route from last night — not that she recalled much about her flight from the strip mall — because she wound up passing through a small park she'd never noticed before. Probably because she rarely ventured into this part of town. Not much out here except an elementary school and the industrial park. The park consisted of one city block covered with trees and manicured grass, plus a smattering of manicured bushes and flower beds. Two concrete paths led through the park. She chose one and walked at a brisk pace.
When she came upon a park bench situated alongside a drinking fountain, she realized just how parched she was. Bending over the fountain, she pressed the button. A thin stream of water jetted out of the nozzle. She guzzled the lukewarm, metallic liquid, quenching her thirst in an unbroken series of gulps. Despite its flavor, the water soothed her throat.
She dropped onto the park bench. A breeze cooled her face, ruffling her hair. Reston, California. She must get there. The answers awaited her there. She felt it.
David awaited her there.
Sean had given her directions to the facility, whatever the place was. Now she needed transportation.
An airplane would get her there quickest. Right. Fly and get killed like Grandpa. His death hadn't given her a fear of flying — until she heard the tape of his last moments. Though the idea of flying didn't scare her, the idea of locking herself in a tiny space, high in the atmosphere, did. Grandpa died because he couldn't escape. He underestimated his enemy. She must learn from his mistakes.
Ruling out air travel left cars, buses, trains, and feet. The invisible assailant had totaled her car. A bus would take days, as would a train. She needed a car.
Renting was out of the question. Rental agencies required a credit card and using her card announced her whereabouts as surely as painting the coordinates on a billboard. If her enemies could find her at the strip mall, probably using the GPS in her regular cell phone, they could definitely track her credit card purchases. Even if she told the rental agency she just wanted the car to drive in the local area, she had a feeling Waldron would guess her real destination. And he would know what kind of car she was driving. He'd know the license plate number too.
Waldron and his cabal had killed everyone who so much as considered helping her. They whittled down her options until she held nothing but a sliver in her hand. Her fate called to her from California.
Whatever she did, they would find out.
Hell.
She started off down the concrete path again. When it met the sidewalk along the street, she turned right toward the center of town. She passed by the elementary school, where children frolicked in a sandy playground. The scenery turned from vaguely industrial to residential as she made two turns in her route, hoping she was guessing correctly about which way to go. The houses looked old, but mostly well-kept. Cars were parked along the street here and there. As she passed a beige Ford Taurus, she noticed a sign, of the plastic kind bought in a store, taped to the inside of the windshield. It announced the car was for sale.
This might be her answer. If she paid cash for a used car, buying it from an individual rather than a dealership, the transaction might remain unknown to her enemies, at least for a time.
The sign on the window gave the price as four thousand dollars.
So much for that idea. Even if she emptied her bank account, she didn't have four thousand dollars. She rather doubted the seller would accept five hundred and some change. The car looked in good shape, which meant it was worth more than five hundred dollars. She needed a car. Most of all, though, she needed help.
She couldn't force Sean to help her again. The poor kid had looked seconds away from a nervous breakdown. David was … unavailable. She had to figure this out on her own.
A memory unreeled in her mind. The encounter with David last night, when she'd gotten so angry she pushed him away with the force of a tornado. A lump hardened in her throat. He wasn't dead. She believed it because she'd seen him, lying in a bed, limp and unresponsive. Oh no, he wasn't dead, just drugged into a coma.
She swallowed hard and focused on the memory of what happened before she pushed him away. He'd said something about how he managed to appear and disappear at will.
It's a combination of remote viewing, telekinesis, and thought projection.
What did that mean? Telekinesis meant moving things through the power of the mind, just by thinking about it. She didn't know what remote viewing meant. Thought projection, however, seemed self-evident. It must mean that a person could project their own thoughts into the mind of another person, to make the other believe the notion was their own. David used a combination of the three abilities to effect his disappearing acts, and he also said she was pushing him out — of her mind, she later realized. So he must've projected the thoughts into her mind that made her believe she could see him and talk to him, when in reality she was conversing with him through some kind of psychic ability.
It still made no sense. She'd done more than imagine him standing in front of her. She'd touched him. She'd laid her hands on a real, physical man.
Christ. She would never understand this psychic mumbo-jumbo.
Still, if thought projection was possible, then maybe she could use it to her advantage. After all, she had lured Sean to her merely by willing him to come.
An idea occurred to her. Her sense of common decency balked at the prospect, but at this moment she saw no alternatives. She'd atone for her sin later.
She marched to the door of the house and punched the doorbell button. The muted tones of an electronic bell sounded inside the home. A moment later, the lock clicked and the door swung inward just enough to reveal the wrinkled face and bleary eyes of a man in his seventies.
In a voice that sounded as sleepy as the gentleman looked, he asked, "May I help you?"
"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," she said, trying for a nonchalant tone, "but I saw the for-sale sign and I'd like to buy your car."
The man rubbed his eyes, yawned, and straightened. "What?"
"I want to buy your car. I'll pay the full asking price if you'll accept cash."
He perked up at the mention of cash. A faint smile brightened his face as he stepped aside and swung the door wide, gesturing for her to enter.
"Cash'll be fine, missy," he said.
Now came the awful part.
Grace strolled into the house. The man shut the door.
He proffered a hand to her. "I'm Leroy Bevins."
She took his hand and dived straight into the lies. "I'm J — Janet Austen."
The lump reemerged in her throat. She'd almost said Jane Austen, then caught herself just in time to avoid becoming the worst liar in the entire universe. Janet Austen sounded slightly less deceitful, or maybe she was rationalizing. Either way, her mind could come up with no better pseudonym on the fly.
Leroy squeezed her hand and let go.
Grace extracted h
er wallet from her purse. Flipping it open, she fingered the bills stashed inside the wallet. Two fives and a ten. Not exactly four thousand dollars.
Steeling herself against what she must do, she whipped out the bills and offered them to Leroy. He started to take them.
And then he noticed the denominations. His brow furrowed. His lips puckered.
She focused all her willpower on one thought that she repeated in her mind.
This is four thousand dollars. This is four thousand dollars.
Fixing her gaze on Leroy's she pictured the thought as a laser connecting her pupils to his. The imaginary beam shot directly into his brain, delivering the thought she needed him to believe.
This is four thousand dollars.
She concentrated with such force that her jaw trembled. Her eyes burned, because she no longer blinked. A drop of sweat beaded on her forehead, dribbling down the bridge of her nose. She envisioned the laser growing brighter and narrower, intensifying.
Leroy's brow smoothed out. His puckered lips relaxed into a loose smile.
Taking the bills, he said, "I sure appreciate this, Miss Austen. Cash is a might easier to handle than a check. I hate just hate goin' to the bank. Do you know they charge me if I wanna talk to a real, live person instead of a machine?"
Grace relaxed a bit. Though she felt a tad woozy, she didn't dare let up too much on whatever she was doing to this poor man, at least not until she drove away in her new used car. She had no clue how long the effect might linger after she stopped actively forcing the man to believe her lie.
A knot cinched tight in her gut. She hated herself right now. Really, really hated herself.
Leroy stuffed the twenty bucks in his pants pocket. He walked to a nearby table, opened a drawer, and plucked a key chain out of the tangle of objects inside the drawer. Approaching her again, he handed her the key chain. A tag emblazoned with the Ford logo dangled from the silver ring, along with a single key.
Grace took the key chain.
"I need to sign the title over to you," Leroy said, heading for the door.
As he opened the door open, Grace laid a hand on his arm to stop him from stepping outside. Leroy furrowed his brow once again.
You already signed it over.
She fired the thought into his brain through the imaginary laser. A headache was blossoming behind her eyes, but she ignored it and concentrated as hard as she could.
Leroy unfurrowed his brow and chuckled. "Guess I already did that, didn't I? Forgetfulness seems to come with gettin' older."
Oh God. She absolutely despised herself.
Holding out his hand to her, Leroy said, "Well, you enjoy the car, missy. I sure enjoyed meetin' such a pretty little thing as you."
She shook his hand and rushed out the door. When she heard the door click shut behind her, she risked a glance backward. Only the scummiest scum on earth would do what she had just done to that poor man. She had no choice, she told herself. There was no other way to get a car without alerting Waldron to her intentions.
When this was over, if she survived it, she would return the car to Leroy Bevins — with a big wad of cash stuffed into the glove compartment.
Never again would she use her powers to manipulate an innocent person. Never.
Unless she hit another roadblock on the way to California.
Inside the car, she jammed the key into the ignition and jerked it. The engine started up. She buckled the seat belt, released the parking brake, shifted the car into drive, and headed off down the street in her new ride. The car she'd tricked an old man into selling to her for twenty bucks.
Oh yeah. She was the scummiest scum on earth.
The interstate was deserted. Grace drove west at eighty miles an hour, seated comfortably in the Taurus with the air conditioning blowing a constant stream of cool air at her. The headache had faded as soon as she stopped concentrating on laser-beaming her thoughts into Leroy's mind. As for her speeding, if a cop pulled her over, she'd accept the ticket. For now, she concentrated on a single goal.
Get to California.
That single need branched out into others — stop whatever was happening, free David from his captors, help Sean if she could — but everything else depended on her achieving the topmost objective. She must find the Mojave Desert facility. Then and only then could she move on to the number two goal.
Stop them.
She still had no clue who they were. But she must stop them, her enemies, from doing whatever the hell they were trying to do. Although she didn't know their ultimate goal, she sensed nothing good would come of it. Anything that involved bad guys, of the visible and invisible variety, experimenting on people with psychic abilities could not result in a smiley, happy ending for the world at large.
Before leaving Lassiter Falls, she'd stopped at the bank to withdraw the entire balance of her checking account — about five hundred dollars. It should give her enough to make it to her final destination. She did not want to use her credit card to pay for gas or food, because that would leave a digital trail. Her enemies might've guessed her destination, but they didn't know her exact route or the timing of her arrival. Total surprise was impossible, she figured. Partial surprise was the best element available to her.
The scenery, revealed in the glare of headlights, became lonely stretches of wooded hills, not a house in sight, not a light to signal other life existed in the universe. She was alone. Really alone. She'd gotten used to the isolation of having no family, no friends, not another soul in her life who cared what became of her. But this new isolation — alone in the world and hunted like an animal, isolated in spirit and in reality — affected her like an injection of liquid nitrogen into her bloodstream. Every cell in her body had turned to ice, it seemed. The only part of her that felt anything other than icy fear was the metaphysical heart of her being, the unseeable place inside her where emotions and instinct overruled everything else.
The part of her that felt … something for David.
She drove for hours, stopping occasionally to stretch her legs or grab a bite to eat. Caffeine from pop coupled with the urgent sense of danger nipping at her heels kept her going through the miles. By nightfall , she'd crossed the border into New Mexico and passed by Las Cruces. During the hours of cruising down the mind-numbing interstate, weariness had seeped into her at an ever-increasing pace until she knew she must stop for the night, despite the looming threat. The act of using powers she hadn't realized she possessed sapped her energy more than seemed possible. It depleted her at a level so deep within that she wondered if she'd drained away her very soul.
Half an hour outside Las Cruces, she pulled off the interstate into the parking lot of an independent motel. She spotted three other cars in the parking lot. After paying cash in advance for a single room, she relocated her car to the slot directly in front of her assigned room. Thick curtains concealed the interiors of all the rooms, but around the edges of the curtains the light from a TV flickered inside one room, three doors down from hers. All the other rooms were dark.
Inside her tiny room, she found a small TV so ancient it belonged in a museum, a dated but clean bathroom, a small bedside table equipped with a lamp and a worn-out alarm clock, and a bed fitted with sheets that looked surprisingly fresh and clean. A floral pattern decorated the white sheets, while a plain brown bedspread covered the whole thing. The lamplight washed the room in a pinkish glow.
Peeling off the bedspread, she slumped down onto the bed in a pseudo-sitting position. She was too exhausted to hold herself upright. She untied her the laces of her boots and kicked them free of her feet, then stripped off her coat, which she tossed over the foot of the bed. It landed half on the bed, half hanging over the edge. She took the gun out of her purse before dumping the bag on the floor. The weapon she set on the bedside table.
Expending her last bit of energy, she laid down on her
side with her head on the pillow and hugged herself. She was alone. Like an astronaut marooned in space. Cold. Hopeless.
Tears stung her eyes. She swiped them away with back of her hand. More tears welled in the corners of her eyes. They came faster and faster, as her eyes burned and her nose began to run. Her body trembled with half-suppressed sobs.
Crying. Like a wuss. She'd turned into a puddle of weakness and self-pity. She hated crying, but no matter how hard she fought it, she couldn't stem the flow of tears.
The air temperature plummeted. A draft ruffled her hair.
Goose bumps raised all over her body. She rubbed her arms for warmth. Her heartbeat quickened. She pushed up onto one elbow and scanned the shadows.
"David?" she said.
A figure detached from the shadows in the corner.
Sean halted by the TV. "It's me."
Slumping back onto the bed, she mumbled, "What are you doing here?"
"David said you needed help but he couldn't come. So he sent me. Are you mad?"
He gazed at her, forehead wrinkled, wringing his hands and chewing the inside of his cheek.
"I'm not mad," she said. "I was surprised to see you, that's all."
He shuffled closer to the bed.
Though her arms shook from the modest effort, she pushed up into a sitting position, with her back braced against the headboard. She patted the mattress. "Sit down. It's okay."
He perched on the end of the bed, touching the mattress as little as possible while still counting as sitting on it. He averted his gaze to the floor.
She wanted to hug him, which was strange because she had never been the hugging type. Sean looked in need of comfort, though, and she felt something akin to maternal instinct urging her to give him that comfort. She didn't dare touch him. The kid would probably scream.
"David told you I needed help?" she asked. "I thought he was drugged. How could he tell you anything?"
The kid shrugged. "He told me, ya know, in our heads. I think it took a whole lot of energy to do it, but somehow he broke through the drugs enough to tell me you needed help."