by Anna Durand
Footsteps approached the door to his room and stopped.
Maybe his luck had run out.
He couldn't think like that. Unlike most people, he had the power to change his luck.
Willing his muscles to relax, he focused on the signals traveling down the wires into the monitoring equipment.
A key thunked in the lock. The hinge creaked as the door swung inward. Through his closed eyelids, he saw the room brighten thanks to the light spilling in from the corridor.
Someone tiptoed closer to the bed.
The man's breath wafted over David. It smelled of spearmint.
The visitor clucked his tongue. "Still napping, eh? I told Westcott you couldn't have been responsible for freeing the boy, and I was right. It must've been Grace."
David resisted the urge to reach out and grab the man by the throat. He recognized the voice. It belonged to Tesler.
The bastard laid a hand on David's arm. "And we'll have your girlfriend in custody by midday tomorrow."
His girlfriend. If Grace heard Tesler call her that, she'd shove a prickly pear cactus down his throat.
"I'm sure you're wondering," Tesler said, "how we know where she is. It wasn't hard to guess. She's coming for you, naturally."
It took every ounce of self-control David had not to lash out at Tesler. For the time being, however, he must convince everyone in this facility that he was still drugged. He had to just lie there and listen to Tesler's crowing — while simultaneously controlling the machines that monitored his vital signs.
Piece of cake.
"I doubt you can hear me," Tesler said, "judging by your EEG readings. But if you can hear me, listen closely. You can't save her, so don't even try." The bed creaked as Tesler leaned closer. "Even if you manage to fight off the drugs we've already given you, we have much stronger ones available to us. I have to warn you they have some nasty side effects. Cause any trouble and we can turn your brain to mush."
David struggled to keep his breathing regular. If he could've decked Tesler, he would've felt much more relaxed. As it was, he had trouble keeping his jaw from tensing. It took all his concentration and self-control to keep the monitors from alerting Tesler to his state of wakefulness.
Tesler leaned even closer. His breath washed over David's face. The man clucked his tongue.
"Your life would be so much easier," he said, "if you had done as we asked from the beginning. Deal with a few strangers. Why should that bother you? Too bad, you could've been the best on our team."
Tesler left. The door clicked shut. The lock thunked into place.
He'd hoped for more time. If they knew where Grace was headed, then he had hours at most, maybe just minutes, to reach her and warn her. If she would listen. If he could break through that wall of stubbornness. If he could make her trust him again. Tesler and his lackeys didn't know David had overcome the drugs, which gave him an advantage, however tenuous. Soon, they might realize he'd woken up. He shouldn't risk traveling right now.
Grace was alone. He had so little time.
To hell with it. He'd go to her. He'd convince her. And all the while, he would somehow maintain control of the monitoring devices attached to his body. No problem.
Grace might never understand how far he would travel to protect her, what obstacles he would surmount to find her, how many enemies he would battle to reach her when she needed help. Not that she would admit to needing help. But he knew she needed it today.
He must make her understand the danger.
Once her enemies located her, they'd bring her to the facility — and the unseen puppet master, the one who controlled Tesler and his goons, would take control of her. Once David had thought they intended to kill her. The truth he'd come to realize proved far worse. They wanted to keep her.
She couldn't grasp the implications of that. He knew all too well what it meant, and he would never let them get their hands on her. He must protect her, no matter the cost.
He would die for her.
Grace hurtled out of a dream, panting, clawing at the air. She was awake. Where? She rolled to the left, and nearly tumbled off the backseat onto the floor of the Taurus. Flinging her hands out, she braced herself against the back of the driver's seat, halting her fall. She rolled onto her back. The angle of the seat held her in place.
They're dead. Mom and Dad are dead.
Her throat constricted. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She took several deep breaths, fighting back the sobs that threatened to overtake her. She would not break down. Not now. Not with so much at stake. She didn't have the luxury.
The nightmare, a vision of the car accident that killed her parents, had felt like a memory. Yet she could not possibly remember the accident, because she had been in Texas at the time.
No accident.
A disembodied voice had murmured those words to her in the dream. What had the voice meant? Nothing, of course, because it had been a dream. A gut-wrenching nightmare, actually.
The voice that uttered the two words had sounded different from the voice of her invisible stalker. She didn't recognize the voice in her nightmare.
Sitting up, she examined her surroundings. The car was parked in front of an abandoned gas station along a desolate stretch of highway. Desert extended out around her on all sides.
Grace got out of the car, stretched, and strolled toward the edge of the road. A snake slithered across the two-lane highway — heading away from her, thank goodness. She watched the creature ooze off the pavement and onto the desert floor, where it swiftly vanished from sight.
The wind spit dust at her. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes. The sun was dipping low in the sky, a portent of the looming night. She would've preferred to make her foray into Hell in daylight, but she loathed waiting out another night. She wanted this over with.
The flash drive Grandpa had left her contained sixty gigabytes of data. A lot of information, though not an extraordinary amount these days. Edward McLean must've chosen the data carefully, copying only what he deemed most important. But what did it all mean? Why did strangers want the data so badly that they'd kill her for the flash drive? Why had Brian Kellogg said the data would change humanity forever? If David were here, she could ask him.
Butterflies awakened in her stomach. She wanted to see David and she wanted to avoid seeing him. Everything had changed between them last night. She didn't know exactly how or what it meant. Though she trusted him, she didn't know if she should. He'd knocked her out cold, simply because she refused to do what he wanted. Good intentions notwithstanding, his actions had cost her precious time.
She gazed across the desert. In the distance, a pair of vultures circled over a Joshua tree. An animal must've died there. Now its carcass would feed the coyotes and their leftovers would nourish the vultures. She felt a kindred bond with the deceased animal. Carnivores of another ilk were stalking her too. When she fell — if she fell — they'd pounce.
Back in the car, she started off down the road again. An hour later, she found a real gas station and pulled in to fill up the tank. The station was small, with just two pumps, but everything looked clean and well maintained. No option to pay at the pump, though. The pump was locked too. She waved at the attendant, who stood inside the tiny store holding a phone to his ear. The middle-aged man waved in response and then dropped his hand as if doing something below the counter. Grace tried the pump again, and gas flowed into the car's tank.
While she waited for the tank to fill, she surveyed the area. No other customers were in sight, but a van sat parked alongside the building. A little further down the road, a smattering of buildings clung to the two-lane artery. The tiny berg probably survived on the dribble of traffic that flowed down the highway — and the money from people buying gas, food, and lodging. No sign had announced the town's name. She did remember driving past a dilapidated billboard that advertised
a motel located somewhere nearby. The establishment boasted free HBO and in-room microwaves.
Oh lord, a bed sounded wonderful. Sleep sounded heavenly.
No. She straightened, realizing she'd slumped against the car while entranced by her daydream about a passable mattress and a nice, long nap. No sleep. She must keep going. Her enemies would not declare a time-out so she could catch up on her sleep.
The pump stopped with a click. Grace replaced the handle and wandered into the store to pay her tab. Not feeling hungry, she grabbed a bottle of water and headed for the cash register.
Her cell phone warbled.
She jumped. From inside her purse, the phone warbled again.
The middle-aged attendant squinted at her. "You okay, lady?"
Swallowing the hard lump in her throat, she nodded.
The phone rang a third time. No one knew the number. The prepaid phone had no tie to her. Yet someone was calling.
Digging the phone out of her purse, she flipped it open and gingerly held it to her ear. She had the ridiculous thought that the phone might explode or send an electric shock into her brain. After everything she'd seen lately, nothing seemed impossible anymore.
"Hello?" she said into the phone.
"I've missed you."
The voice. The man who invaded her thoughts, who spoke to her in her dreams. The man who, she felt certain, had done his damndest to terrify her by ramming her car backward into a full-size pickup truck at top speed. It had worked too.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I know where you are."
"How exciting for you." Through the window, she scanned the area around the gas pumps, the road in front of the station, and the empty desert beyond. "I'm not cringing."
"You will."
"No way."
In a surfer-dude voice, he said, "Way."
"What's your name?"
"God."
She rolled her eyes. "I'll assume you're dyslexic and you mean Dog."
"You can call me JT."
She mulled that for a half second, then said, "What do you want?"
His voice changed, deepening into an almost-supernatural timbre that made the hairs at the nape of her neck stand up. "Your golden light, of course. Give it to me now and I just might kill you quickly. Fight me and you'll suffer. A lot."
"I'm not afraid of you," she lied, injecting her voice with what she hoped sounded like confidence.
"David will suffer more. You'll watch him die in the slowest and most painful way I can imagine — and trust me, I've got a vivid imagination."
A wave of nausea crested inside her. She gulped against it. This man meant what he said. She knew it. She felt it. What he'd done to her so far had been nothing but a teaser.
Oh God. David.
She clenched her teeth and hissed, "If you know where I am, then come and get me, you coward. Stop hiding behind remote viewing and telekinesis."
He chuckled, and his voice changed back to surfer dude. "So you remember the lingo. Cool. Won't help you, though."
She fought the urge to spew a host of obscenities at him. He'd probably like it.
"Soon you'll be mine," he told her in a matter-of-fact tone. "And then we'll really play. Can't wait to see ya, babe."
Her lip curled. Babe? Was he kidding? This guy either had a split personality or he thought this was foreplay.
"I will stop you," she said.
"Come on, baby — "
She hung up and started to slide the phone into her purse.
He knew the number now. He might be able to track her through the phone. She couldn't risk it. She tossed the phone into a nearby wastebasket. If he wanted to torment her, he'd have to find another method of communication. She wouldn't stand here and absorb his crap through the airwaves. She had no time for it. Of course, he knew other ways to torment her, ways that required no phones or computers.
The attendant whistled to get her attention. "You paying cash or credit?"
She tried for a smile. It faltered, so she gave up and sighed, "Cash."
Wiping sweat from his face, the attendant accepted the bills she offered him. A patch sewn onto his shirt identified him as Earl. His cash register looked surprisingly modern. He punched buttons, eliciting beeps from the machine, and the cash drawer popped open.
"By the way," Grace said, "where am I?"
Without looking up, Earl replied, "Middle of nowhere."
"But which town is it?"
Earl pushed the cash drawer shut and met her gaze. "Welcome to Reston, California."
Chapter Twenty
Grace tried not to look stunned. She was within fifty miles of the facility, or at least the road that led into the facility. Her journey was almost over. The battle, she knew, was just about to begin.
How had JT found her? The prepaid phone should've been untraceable.
Waldron had tracked her to the shopping center, using the signal from her regular cell phone. He could've easily canvassed the businesses in the shopping center to inquire if anyone had seen a woman matching her description. If Waldron had put on his FBI airs, the guy in the electronics store probably would've answered any questions, just to avoid running afoul of the government. Waldron definitely knew how to intimidate people.
Even if JT didn't know exactly where she was, he had her number, literally. She didn't know if the prepaid phone had the same tracking capability as a regular cell phone, but she couldn't take the chance.
She tossed the phone into the wastebasket.
Handing over her change, Earl raised an eyebrow.
This time she managed a genuine, if strained, smile. "Do you have a computer I could borrow?"
His eyebrow lifted a little higher. His eyes darted sideways to glance at the wastebasket. He was wondering, no doubt, why she didn't use her cell phone to get on the Internet. Practically everybody did that these days. Her prepaid phone, however, lacked the bells and whistles.
Rather than try to explain that to Earl, she said, "My phone's dead and I really need to check my e-mail."
He just stared at her.
She bit the inside of her lip. Thought projection might work again. Oh hell, she might as well call it what it was — brainwashing. She was loath to employ the technique again, and not only because it made her feel like scum. It also left her exhausted. She needed every iota of energy.
Time to try the old-fashioned way.
"I'll pay you," she said. "To rent your computer for half an hour. How does a hundred bucks sound?"
"Um … " He eyed her with a narrowed gaze. "You look okay, I guess. But don't plug anything into the computer, like CDs or external hard drives. Stuff that might infect it with viruses or worms or what have you."
"Whatever you say."
"And don't download anything either."
She nodded. "Deal."
He waited until she handed over two fifty-dollar bills, then he trotted into a back room.
She hadn't lied … exactly. He said don't plug in CDs or external hard drives. The flash drive wasn't technically an external hard drive. At least, that's what she told herself. Besides, a white lie was far better than hijacking the guy's mind.
Earl returned a couple minutes later, carrying a laptop computer under one arm. As he held out the computer to her, he waved his free hand toward a table at the opposite side of the store, next to the self-service beverage dispenser.
"You can take it over there," Earl said.
Grace thanked him and took the laptop. She marched down the candy aisle, aiming for the table. Once there, she set the computer on the tabletop and settled into one of two plastic-and-metal chairs. When she flipped the computer's lid up, she discovered the laptop was already booted up and waiting for her commands.
Slipping a hand into her jeans pocket, she felt the flash dr
ive.
Earl had left the counter. He was sweeping the floor in front of it, casting an occasional glance in her direction.
Damn. She needed privacy.
She refused to manipulate him psychically. Her conscience couldn't take it. But maybe she could manipulate the situation in another way.
Glancing around the store, she spotted a door marked restroom. It was located in the corner farthest from her. Hmm.
She closed her eyes and visualized a toilet. Water swirling inside it. Rising, rising. Spilling over the rim, pooling on the floor. She needed more. Something to attract Earl's attention to the restroom. She opened her eyes and stared at the restroom door, imagining a fist poised to rap on the wood. And then …
Bam.
Earl jumped. He twisted around to look at the restroom door. His expression turned befuddled. Dropping the broom, he trotted around the aisles to the doorway at the back of the store, which now hung ajar. His attention dropped to the floor.
"Crap," he blurted as he peeked into the restroom. "What in tarnation?"
Grace whipped the flash drive out of her pocket. She plugged it into a USB port on the side of the laptop just as Earl tiptoed into the restroom grumbling curses. If she had any luck at all, the toilet would keep him busy for a good while.
Turning back to the computer, she opened the list of files on the flash drive. Now that she knew something about the project, the files might make a little more sense to her. That was her hope anyway. She opened the "test sites" file that she'd looked at before. The spreadsheet contained the names of cities paired with abbreviations — RV, AP, TK, PC, GP. The first three abbreviations matched terms David had told her. Remote viewing was RV, astral projection would be AP, and telekinesis was TK. The letters PC and GP still meant nothing to her. Interestingly, GP was not paired with the name of a particular city, but rather with the designation "Universal." Unless it referred to the Universal Studios theme park, she had no idea what the designation meant.