Brain Storm (A Taylor Morrison Novel Book 1)

by Cat Gilbert

  “Say we come along with you,” she asked, “what do you see us doing? What’s our part in this whole thing?”

  Ah. I stared at the pot willing the coffee to brew faster. I was on thin ice here and without the benefit of a fully functioning brain. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes stalling for time for the coffee to finish. Suddenly, the stream of coffee slowed to a drip and I snatched the pot out and quickly poured a cup. I took the time to add some sweetener and cream, before I went over to sit on the bed facing them.

  “First off, you don’t just come along,” I started, pausing to take a long sip of coffee, letting the smooth taste slide down my throat. “You’ll be part of a team. Our team.”

  I was a little confused about the question here. We had talked about this last night before the meeting. Candice was the one who’d said she wanted to stay, that we were a better team together. In fact, she’d yelled it at me, if I recalled correctly.

  I stood up, taking another drink, my brain finally starting to click. Trinity wanted to stay, but she didn’t want to just come along for the ride. I’d been worried about Jonas having a role, feeling needed. Candice and Mama D both needed the same thing. To know their place. To be needed.

  “We all have different abilities and experience that we’ll bring to the table. You aren’t going to be out there fighting gun battles, creeping around spying,” I assured her. “We need your brains. You know the law and we’re gonna be walking a fine line there. Probably stepping over it more often than not. We’re going to need information that you’ll know how to find, if you don’t know it already. We’re breaking new ground here, going where no man has gone before. There’s going to be legal ramifications and we’re going to need you to fight those battles.”

  She nodded agreement, relief evident in her face. I felt bad. I should have foreseen this and told her last night.

  “Mama D, you are every bit as important to the team. You have a wisdom and a peace that we need, but even more importantly you represent something that we desperately need and that’s a sense of home. Don’t think that we haven’t noticed that you’re making sure we’re fed and taken care of. You’re both important and of value to the team. That’s why I gave you the option of coming.” I wanted them to realize they were wanted and needed, but I also needed them to understand the risk involved.

  “Look, I have no intention of involving you in a gun battle or putting you in dangerous positions, but you have to understand, I can’t guarantee anything. They’ve already come after you in surprise attacks and they probably will again. I can’t make any promises.”

  Candice looked at me and I could see the doubt and indecision written on her face. Mama D saw it too and took the choice away from her.

  “Trinity, I’m going with her. I’ve lost everything and all I have left is you and Taylor. Samantha, I mean.” Mama D looked over at me with an apologetic look that nearly broke my heart. “Candice, I may not be able to fight them, but like Sam said, there’s other things I can do that will help.” She reached over and took Candice’s hand in hers. “Baby, they’ll find us whether we’re with her or not. You can’t protect me forever. I say let’s stick together and fight them.”

  Candice wrapped her arms around Mama D and looked over at me, tears running down her face. “Okay. We’re in,” she announced, with a laugh. “What do we do now?”

  “Now,” I said, not exactly dry-eyed myself, “We turn me into Samantha White.” I grabbed up the bag of stuff I had gotten at Wal-Mart the previous night and headed into the bathroom with a grin. They were right on my heels.

  TWENTY-SIX

  BY 7:40 THE transformation was complete. One of the few advantages of being poor was learning how to do things for yourself that people with money pay to have done. As a result, Mama D was a whiz with a pair of scissors. I had a short, breezy new cut and had gone from my medium brown hair to a dark rich brunette with red tipped spikes on the crown. I’d plucked my eyebrows into a thin high arch, added a few rings to my fingers and pair of racy dark shades to finish off the new look and the results had been dramatic.

  “Well, Samantha. Um Sam,” Candice corrected as I gave her a look over the top of my lowered sunglasses, “I hate to say it, but your new look suits you.”

  “I should have taken shears to you ages ago,” Mama D agreed, going through my clothes.

  Mama D and Candice were having a ball trashing my old look. The clothes Mac had for me at cabin had been along the lines of what I normally wore. Clothes that were meant to blend in. Bright, bold colors didn’t mesh with the low profile I needed to keep and I avoided them like the plague. With my red tipped hair, I needed some color in my clothes to balance it out. People would see my hair and my clothes. Not me. Which was exactly what I wanted.

  “You have some good basics here, but you need a few things to snazz it up a bit, otherwise that cool new hair is just a waste,” Candice said as she pawed through my luggage. “We ought to stop at the Dillards Clearance Center and pick up a few things before we leave Dallas.”

  My eyes glazed over at the thought of shopping, but before I could say anything, we were interrupted by a knock on the door. I opened it to find Mac standing there, Bryan right behind him.

  “Wow!” Mac exclaimed. “ You look fab. Absolutely fab!” He rushed into the room, grabbing my hands and swinging them back and forth.

  “I gonna be sick,” Bryan informed us, as he strode into the room, slamming the door behind him. I cringed, hoping the neighbors were already up and about.

  “Everyone else on this floor is gone,” Mac said, reading my mind. “We have it all to ourselves.”

  “Which begs the question, why are you still prancing around like that?” Bryan flopped down on the sofa, in disgust.

  I looked over at Mac. I wasn’t the only one who had transformed this morning. Mac had obviously brought along some of his other disguises and was now wearing an ensemble I definitely remembered seeing before.

  “Julian?” I ventured.

  “Troy, actually,” he corrected. “Bryan is having a little trouble getting used to it, but I think it works. Especially now that I’ve seen your new look.”

  “You looked in the bag last night didn’t you, nosy?” I asked him. accusingly.

  “Yup, I did. I confess, you caught me! I thought since you were changing your look, I’d do the same and fem up a bit.” At Bryan’s mocking laugh, he conceded maybe he’d fem’ed up more than a bit. “Laugh all you want Bryan, but it gives us an out for staying in different rooms and explains why I let her boss me around. Plus, and this is a big PLUS,” he added dramatically, making Bryan roll his eyes, “It’s a persona that no one in the agency has seen. It’s a good cover.”

  “Oh, I’ll give you that,” Bryan said, shaking his head in amazement. “I got worried when Candice wasn’t in her room and went to find Mac. When he opened the door, I was sure I had the wrong room. I’m a cop and I had to do a double take. We figured you were here with Sam since you weren’t downstairs in the dining room.”

  At his words, Candice stopped packing the clothes back up. “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I wanted to see if you’d decided on what you were doing before we were all back together,” he said, casting a withering look at Troy, who had gone to sort through the clothes with Mama D. “But apparently I arrived a little late for that.”

  “Mama D and I came over early this morning,” Candice explained to him, which for me was as hard to believe as Mac’s transformation into Troy. Trinity didn’t explain her business to anyone, most especially to a man, but maybe Candice did. “We had some questions for Sam I needed answered before making any decision.”

  “I take it you decided to throw caution to the wind and throw in with her.”

  At his words, Mac’s hands froze and the room stilled, waiting for the shoe to drop. Of everyone in the room, Bryan had the least connection to the group. The least reason to risk his life.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Candice’s
voice dripped ice. “We’re throwing in with her, as you put it, but we’re not throwing caution to the wind. I happen to think our odds of coming out of this alive are substantially higher working with Samantha, than running off to hide somewhere, waiting for them to find us.”

  Ohhh. I could be wrong, but I was pretty sure she just insulted him by insinuating he was going to run. I waited to see if Bryan would rise to the bait. It was a small room for the five of us and when he stood up, his 6’5 inch frame made it small substantially smaller.

  “You’re sure?” Bryan snapped at her. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?”

  “Yes. I’m sure,” She snapped it right back at him.

  “Okay.” Bryan put up his hands in surrender. “ I just needed to know what you had decided to do.” He turned to me, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “I’m in, if the offer’s still open.”

  I didn’t even time to nod before Candice was on him. “Wait a minute! You’re happy about this! You wanted to go after them all along. Why didn’t you just tell her that last night instead of dragging this out?”

  “Because I wasn’t going to let you and Mama D go off by yourselves and wait for those guys to find you. If you decided to leave, I was going with you. There was no way I was going to leave you alone to fend for yourselves.”

  Candice stared at him for an instant and then turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door closed behind her. All eyes turned to Bryan, who hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Well?” demanded Mama D, snapping him out of it. Within seconds, he was out the door after her.

  “This could complicate things,” Mac said, turning his attention back to the clothes as Mama D stood there chuckling to herself.

  Personally I didn’t see how things could get anymore complicated than they already were.

  TWO DAYS LATER, I was ready to concede how wrong I’d been. We’d gotten through the banking in Dallas without incident and even made a stop at the Dillards outlet, where we all managed to fill out our wardrobes with surprisingly little damage to our wallets.

  Bryan and Candice had managed to carve out an uneasy truce and Mama D was having the time of her life between watching the two of them trying to avoid each other and discovering the joys of being on the road.

  Things were going smoother than anyone had a right to expect with one big exception. After spending the past 24 hours looking for Mac’s contact at the Agency, we’d come up empty handed. Not only could we not find him. It was like he’d never even existed.

  We’d pulled up in Wichita Falls, a town about two hours northwest of Dallas. Off the beaten track, but close enough to the major highways to get on the way quickly once we knew where to go. It wasn’t bad as towns go, but after being there for two days straight, I was getting antsy to get on the road.

  “We’ve got to be missing something here.” Bryan threw the pen he’d been using to jot down notes with onto the desk in disgust. “You sure you’re not forgetting something?”

  It had to be the sixth time he had asked Mac the same question and I was somewhat surprised that Mac hadn’t hit him by now. I know I was ready to.

  I watched as the pen rolled off the desk and went back to reading the Dallas newspaper that I had picked up in the hotel lobby earlier, ignoring them both. I had bought a notebook computer in Dallas before we left town so I could research in private. I hadn’t realized at the time that my room would become our home base of operations. When Bryan and Mac arrived at 9:00 a.m. bearing breakfast and coffee, I’d already been on line for most of the night with absolutely no reward for my scratchy, blood shot eyes. Candice had popped in around 10:00 leaving Mama D watching Price is Right in their room. She had stretched out on the bed, and proceeded to stare at the ceiling. I didn’t blame her a bit.

  I listened now with half an ear as Mac went over it again. We were looking for Caleb Brown PhD, a white caucasian male, age somewhere between 40 and 50, with black hair and gray eyes. At 6 ft. 2 and weighing in at about 180 pounds, he wouldn’t be that hard to find in a crowd, but he was definitely proving to be something of an enigma on the computer.

  Apart from knowing that Brown was a Handler that had recently retired, he hadn’t been able to supply any additional information other than that Brown had been recruited into the Agency because he was so highly respected in his field. His research into Parapsychology was cutting edge. Papers had been published, awards had been won and there wasn’t a scrap of evidence that I could find to prove it. I hadn’t logged into my usual search programs, in case they were being monitored, but even so, if he was half the brain that Mac was claiming, I should have gotten some hits on him.

  I had a bad feeling that it didn’t matter how many times Bryan asked him to go over it, it wasn’t going to help. If Mac hadn’t remembered something by now, he wasn’t going to and it probably wouldn’t matter even if he did. We were beating a dead horse. I needed to face the fact that Caleb Brown had disappeared just as thoroughly as Denzel.

  As soon as his name popped into my brain, my pulse quickened and the exhaustion that had clouded my thinking was gone in an instant. Bryan had said that Denzel’s name was Marcus. Marcus Adams from Omaha and that’s all they had been able to find out. A name and a place. Everything else had been wiped or didn’t exist. Perhaps they’d done the same thing with Brown and that’s why we couldn’t find him.

  As the pieces began to come together in my head, I didn’t know whether to be happy about it or frustrated that it had taken so long for me to figure it out. Relief poured through me at the knowledge that we were finally making some progress. I still didn’t know where Caleb Brown was, but I was 99% sure I could guarantee where he wasn’t.

  I turned to get Mac’s attention only to find I already had it. At some point they had stopped talking and were now sitting quietly, watching me.

  “What is it? What did you think of?” Mac asked, apparently sensing my excitement.

  “We’re not going to find him this way. It’s a dead end.” I dropped the paper and stood up, crossing the room to the computer desk. “Tell me about the Agency. Who did Brown report to? Who else works there? I need some names here.”

  He thought for a minute and began jotting names on the note pad. “I don’t know many. There’s only a few people I know of besides Brown and that’s only because I meet them when they recruited me or I reported to them at some time. Everything’s very hush-hush. They operate on a strictly need to know basis, to protect the Clients. I have a feeling about this one here,” Mac underlined one of the names he had just written down for me, “and no, I’m not going to tell you why until you do your thing. Then we’ll compare.”

  I shooed Bryan out of the way and slipped into the vacated chair. My mind was spinning as I pulled up a search engine and typed in the first name on the list.

  “How do you know Brown? Why’d you choose him?” I asked Mac, as I waited for information to start popping up on the screen. “What made you think you could trust him?”

  “He’s the string I pulled to get assigned to you.” He sat down on the bed behind me and continued to explain at Bryan’s bewildered look. “There are Handlers in the agency and Watchers. Guys like me. The Watchers, do exactly that. We watch and we send in reports. The Handlers evaluate the reports and give advice or whatever. Clients are assigned to Handlers according to their abilities. Brown was your Handler, Sam. He’s the one who sent me to check on you in the first place.”

  “What do you mean he’s the string you pulled?” Bryan’s question had me sending Mac a warning look over my shoulder. I didn’t like keeping secrets from the others, but the Empath connection between us was something I wanted to keep quiet a while longer.

  “Normally Watchers are randomly assigned to Clients. Some Clients progress into their abilities and others never do. From what I saw, Sam here, was going to be one of the former and I figured as long as I was looking at long a term assignment, it might as well be one with some potential. I convinced Brown that
I was the right man for the job and viola. Here I am.”

  “Yeah, here you are,” Bryan snorted in amusement. “Bet you never figured on this.”

  “No, can’t say that I did, but you have to admit, it’s certainly not boring.” He turned his attention back to me. “To answer your question, Sam, I don’t know that we can trust him. He’s what you said you wanted. He’s someone who can train you and there’s the added bonus that he’s familiar with you. He’s the one I sent my reports to, or at least that’s who I used to send them to. When I was called back to the Agency, he was gone. I was told he’d retired but no one ever contacted me with new instructions or a new Handler for you.”

  “You mean when you were unexpectedly called back just before Marcus showed up. When did you send in your last report?” I asked. “Did you say anything that would alert them?

  “It was just before I got called back and yes, my report would have alerted them of a change in the situation.”

  I was most of the way through his list already, crossing off names as I went. Knowing what I was looking for made it easy. I had saved the name Mac had underlined for the last, my gut telling me that he was right and this was the guy I was looking for. Finally I typed it in, hit the enter key and waited for the results to come in.

  “Why didn’t they kill him?” The voice came from across the room and I looked behind me to see Candice rise up on one elbow on the bed. “Why didn’t they just kill Mac when they had the chance? He’s been nothing but trouble for them since this whole thing started.”

  Excellent question, I thought as I turned back to the screen. If we’d thought to ask that 24 hours ago, I could have gotten some sleep. Then again, maybe I’d needed the time to figure it out. If necessity was the mother of invention, maybe exhaustion was the mother of thinking outside the box.

  “They didn’t kill him,” I said over my shoulder as I scanned through the results. and smiled in satisfaction as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “for the same reason they didn’t kill our missing Dr. Brown.”