The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series)

by Michael Siemsen

  He rested the scalpel on her thigh as he took a pair of latex gloves from a bulk supply box and pulled them on. Then, using a cotton ball, he rubbed alcohol on both her ankles. With the blue gloves and protective glasses, he could pass for a real doctor—or a nurse, perhaps. He picked up the scalpel again and gave her an apologetic smile. He could tell that, like the others, she wondered if he might actually be either.

  She held her head up, feeling the drugs, and watched with dizzy, shifting focus as he inspected the shiny blade. It was the kind that real doctors used.

  The sharp edge touched her skin.

  For a moment, she couldn’t look away—she would watch it happen. But at the last second, she let her head drop back and squeezed her eyes shut. He made the first incision, and if not for the slight sting of the alcohol in the cut, she might have thought he was just drawing a line on her skin with a ballpoint pen. She tilted her head up from the table again and looked. Now he wore a big, disturbing smile and appeared to be short of breath. The inside of her pale ankle had a thin red line about two inches long. He dabbed at the trickle of blood with a stack of gauze squares.

  “See? Not so bad, right?” he said, flipping the gauze over and dabbing some more. His small eyes held hers. “It’s because they are so sharp—much sharper than a razor blade. That’s so folks can get stitched up all nice and neat and without much scarring. Now, the next . . .”

  Against her better judgment, she watched him slice into the other ankle. He was going deep. Had he cut this deep last time? It probably didn’t hurt any worse, but her terror had multiplied, and she screamed into the gag. Her body seized beneath the chest and waist restraints, and she pulled wildly at the leather wrist and ankle straps.

  He rolled back on his little stool and watched impassively.

  “Oops, you must have peeked,” he said, but she didn’t hear. “Never a good idea—although I do, um, appreciate it.” Inhaling slowly and deeply, he waited. He reveled in the tingle that crawled up the back of his neck and spread over his shoulders. He felt himself stir and tighten down there, and then came the numbness at the tips of all his fingers and toes.

  She let out another small scream—more a growl of frustration than a shriek—and her body went limp. In all the frenzy, her thin hospital gown had climbed up her thighs, and she saw that he was looking. His little mouse eyes crossed just a bit.

  Standing up, he laid the cool scalpel on her thigh, pinched the hem of the gown with both hands, and pulled it down to cover her. He smiled kindly, his eyebrows scrunched like those of a wise old nanny. “That was quite a big tantrum for such little cuts!”

  She glared at him with seething rage. She wanted to trade places with him. She wanted to cut him into little pieces. She would make it last . . .

  “You should try to relax,” he said. “This is a long process, and I’ve got to keep you healthy until . . . Well, let’s get that second cut taken care of, hmmm?”

  She closed her eyes and felt him lift the cool metal off her leg.

  She opened her eyes, and the light was different. There were people around her. Policemen, one in a suit, the other in uniform, both staring at her. The uniformed one sipped from a coffee mug.

  “Report, Matty.” The suited man clapped his hands together and snapped his fingers next to her ear. The man’s face was blurry. “C’mon back, boy. It wasn’t even that long. Matty!”

  They found me . . . I’m alive . . .

  “Give him a minute, Rog,” the other policeman said.

  Him? Boy? Rog . . . Roger Turner—Dad . . . Uncle J . . . I’m me.

  She . . . she’s already dead . . . Where’s the . . . ?

  The little boy’s eyes rolled around the room until they found the scalpel. It lay on a plastic tray beside him. Dark, dry blood on it, tiny flakes on the tray beneath it. Her blood. From the “little cuts” that eventually went all the way up her legs and arms to other places he shouldn’t be thinking about. The bad man had done it before, many times. He was thinking about those other times while sitting there watching her flop around. He was thinking about everything he planned to do to her. It made the bad man buzz inside.

  “Matty, c’mon, now!” his dad said. “Everyone’s waiting on you.”

  “Um . . .” Matty Turner choked a little. “I saw his face as her . . . and, um . . . I know what the room looks like.”

  “Him, boy! You weren’t him at all?” Dad was getting frustrated.

  “Rog,” Jess Canter—Uncle J to Matty—said as he laid a hand on his partner’s shoulder.

  “I was,” Matty sniffed. “Like, back and forth, between them . . . He . . . he’s done it a bunch of times, too. He killed her, right? She’s already dead?”

  Roger’s nostrils flared as he inhaled. “We need a name, Matty. Name, age, place. Name, age, place. That’s how we do it, right? First priority. So do you have it? Name, age, place?

  Matty’s eyes turned up as he searched the ceiling for the answer. He didn’t know it—had been too distracted by what he saw and felt. He thought of a name that sounded right.

  “I . . . I think maybe . . . Gary?”

  “Gary, Matthew?” Dad wasn’t holding in his frustration any longer. “The cat’s name? C’mon, boy, this is bull! These are people’s lives. You can’t just make stuff up!”

  “Can . . . can I have some water? She was real thirsty.”

  “Exactly, Matty. She was thirsty, not you. She got hurt, not you. You have to do better, kid. Take control of it. Tell it what you want. It’s not a movie, right? We practiced this how many times now?”

  “Uh, a bunch?” Matty sat up and rubbed the insides of his ankles. His dad brushed his hands away.

  “Yeah, a bunch. Now, we gotta get you back in there, okay? Five more minutes.”

  “Uh, Rog, I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet,” Jess said. Other people could be heard chatting outside the closed door.

  “He’s my son, J,” Roger said. “I know what he can handle.”

  Matty felt the panic coming on, saw the scalpel lifted from the tray. More tiny flakes of blood fell from it, drifting down like dark little snowflakes of rust. He swallowed, shook his head, and defiantly tucked his bare hands into his armpits.

  “Stop messing around, boy. We don’t have time for this nonsense. Gimme your hand.”

  His father’s body bent over him, the scalpel in one hand.

  “I don’t want to, Daddy. Please. Just . . . just give me a minute!” All at once, Matty became aware of every bit of exposed skin: his neck, cheeks, ears, the little bit of unprotected wrist in front of his armpits. His socks came up past his calves, but he felt as if his ankles were out in the open, too. “No, please, Daddy. No . . .”

  Uncle J cupped a hand in front of his eyes as he turned away.

  His dad spoke softly. “Just a few more minutes, Matty. You need to be tougher than this, though. Lotta people depending on you. Name, age, place, yeah?”

  Matty’s dad pulled one of his son’s hands free, held it open, and brought the scalpel to the palm.

  “Little cuts, dear . . .”

  Matty woke up in the back of his father’s car. He felt the hum of the road, the cushioned bounce of overrun potholes. He opened his eyes and saw the back of the driver’s headrest. It was fine, brown leather.

  Not Dad’s car. Just a dream. One of the investigations. “Dr. Hoboken,” the news called him. How old was I—eleven? Whoa, woozy head. This is how she felt. Altitude . . .

  Twenty-six-year-old Matthew Turner looked around him. But he wasn’t in a car. It was his own plane, the Gulfstream G150 that he bought just a few months ago—well, half bought. He would pay it off within a year. He had wanted to pay cash in one transaction, but he didn’t have fifteen million available to spend just yet, and he couldn’t abide the thought of a used plane, with all those imprints. “New or nothing”—that was his mantra.

  He peered out the window and saw puffs of cloud, with ocean peeking through between.

  Ho
w the hell did I get here? His memory was foggy, and his eyes had trouble staying focused. He felt an odd sensation in the back of his head, near the neck. It reminded him of the muddled high of some of the stronger pain meds he had taken during physical therapy. Yeah, this was a very druggy feeling.

  The seat in front of him rocked back a little. Someone was in front of him, and someone next to him. He glanced right and saw the glow of a tablet screen in somebody’s lap. Nubby, wrinkled fingers, Cambridge ring, canvas coat, bald head. Dr. Rheese, the man behind his two-month coma last year. The doctor had since grown a thick, gray mustache and a paunch.

  Shit! Rheese . . . right. Oh, God . . . Tuni!

  “Where’s Tuni?” Matt demanded, sitting up. But his gloved hands were behind his back, the cuffs around the seatbelt coupling.

  Rheese didn’t turn or look up from the screen in his lap.

  “Your lanky black tart is fine, Turner. Just relax.” The familiar aristocratic British accent. “Much travel lies ahead.”

  Matt peered down at the iPad in his captor’s lap. A map filled the screen. Rheese was dragging the image of the map across the surface, waiting for more segments to load in the vacant areas. The device was protected within a navy blue suede case. Matt’s navy blue suede case. Matt’s iPad, connected to Matt’s enormously expensive satellite-based in-flight Wi-Fi. Rheese glanced at him, frowned, and turned the screen away.

  “Mind your manners, lad. You’ll know what you need to know, when you need to know it.”

  “Tell me where she is—now!”

  “You want me to knock his ass out again, Doc?” the man in front of Matt said without turning around. He had a faint Hispanic accent. “We got more of that juice.”

  Matt leaned into the aisle and saw a thick, tan neck and a black buzz cut.

  Rheese considered a moment, then simply passed the question on to Matt with a raise of his eyebrow and a smug smile. Matt shook his head and turned away in silence.

  “Not necessary, it seems,” Rheese replied.

  Matt squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember what had happened. He and Tuni were in Tahiti at the resort. She had gone in to take a shower. That’s when he had heard that obnoxious, pompous voice behind him. The shock of that moment had felt like a bucket of ice water being dumped on him. He had looked up to see Rheese and two other guys—one of whom, presumably, now sat in front of him—and he was out before he could do anything.

  He must have put some artifact on me. Where was I in the imprint? Right, Austria! Rich guy pissing and moaning about his wife taking off. Curled up in his bed with a giant, fancy Bible, talking to himself for hours. The Bible—that’s what he dropped on my stomach! But I didn’t come out of it when the imprint went to dark space, or when they took the thing off me . . . The “juice” that guy talked about—that must be why I was dreaming about . . .

  Matt looked out the window again, noting that the sun was behind them and had either just risen or was about to set. They had drugged him, clearly. But how did they manage to get him on the plane? He had worn only swim trunks on the hotel room balcony, so someone had to have dressed him. All these thoughts put a sour twist in his stomach, and he repressed a panic attack with self-soothing thoughts that those things had already happened. It was done. His skin was appropriately covered.

  Since discovering his “specialness” (as Mom called it) at age nine, Matt had obsessively protected his bare skin from contact with foreign objects. Turtleneck shirts, high socks under long pants, gloves, and knit beanies remained a daily necessity. Not every object or surface in the world possessed emotional imprints from other people, but most did, and he never knew which would or wouldn’t. A brand-new jacket, ordered over the Internet and shipped inside plastic wrapping? Most likely safe. A door handle at the local coffee shop? Guaranteed imprints—some of them scary. And as a child, he learned that bare skin touching imprinted object meant instant sleepy time—his head went fuzzy, his eyes rolled back, his legs gave out, and his face said hello to the ground.

  To others, it looked like some chronic form of narcolepsy: he was just falling asleep at random times and locations. But in Matt’s head, he was reliving the experience of someone (or many someones) who had, at some point, touched that same object, whether two centuries or two hours ago. The order in which he experienced the imprints depended on the power of the imprinters’ emotions at the time of contact. Door handles were more an embarrassment than a real threat, since he would typically break skin contact as he fell—sometimes even catching himself before any real damage was done. But even just sitting down on a subway seat, your shirt could sometimes ride up and expose the small of your back . . .

  Matt had once ended up riding the train for seven hours, trapped in an endless loop of misery and joy unknowingly deposited over the years into a shiny orange plastic seat back: a teenage girl just dumped by her boyfriend, a drunken stockbroker having the night of his life, a schizophrenic homeless man dreaming of suited men hiding inside old metal garbage cans to spy on him, a baby with a full diaper wailing up at a blurry ceiling as Mom tried repeatedly to shove the pacifier back in its screaming mouth. To passersby, the young guy slouched by the window appeared to be just another sleeping student. He wasn’t freed until a custodian came through and, fearing he had “another cold one,” pushed over the comatose passenger, breaking the contact between Matt’s skin and the seat.

  Outside the plane’s window, he could see the clouds growing paler. That meant the sun was rising, which told him they were headed west. West of Tahiti, so Asia . . . or Europe, or back to his favorite: Africa. Not that it mattered, but knowing that he was getting farther from home rather than closer just sank him deeper into despair.

  “That’s the Pacific,” Rheese said. “We’re headed to Australia, where we’ll transfer to a commercial aircraft, then off to Ukraine.”

  Rheese had opened the door to further dialogue.

  “Why are we going to Ukraine, and where is Tuni?”

  Rheese sighed. “She’s still in Tahiti, still in the hotel room where last you saw her. She will remain there—under supervision, of course—until I’m done with you.”

  “Done with me? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Rheese gave a weary sigh. “Yes, done with you. I spent a bit of time investigating your background this past year. Little of interest to find at first glance, however . . .” He paused and tilted his head toward Matt, “. . . I must say that if I possessed an ability such as yours, I would probably avoid the public eye when using it for financial gain.”

  Matt chided himself. The goddamn newspaper! He had operated under the radar for seven years while working for the museum. Only a few select people there knew of his talent, and—in everyone’s interest—they kept quiet his role in artifact tracing. Since they couldn’t very well disclose Matt’s findings, they primarily used the information as a guide or fact-checker for existing theories and measurements. He had started with the museum at 17, referred there by his Uncle J on the theory that he needed something that would keep him busy and use his talent for something positive. “It can’t be that everything out there has a traumatic story, right?” Uncle J had said. Well, maybe.

  They had paid him well for his age. Not having much of a social life, he could save most of his wages, and got himself a car after a year and a half. A VW Jetta. Not new, as he would have preferred, but the previous owner hadn’t left any imprints lying around, so he was happy with it. No more subway, no more crowded sidewalks. Four years later, he got an idea. And within two short years after that, he was a multimillionaire. The Jetta now sat in his driveway, parked in front of the gleaming Porsche and gathering layers of dust.

  “You traced a single piece of Spanish silver to the scuttled galleon where the rest had lain for over three hundred years,” Rheese said in a slightly bewildered tone. “That company C-Trex—they must adore you. I was actually tickled as I read the article and saw your smiling face among all those elated men and women. Si
xteen tons of silver—good Lord! Personally, I think they took you to the bank on the profit sharing there, but I suppose you could work out a better deal next time, eh?”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.”

  “Nor they without you,” Rheese smirked. “And you could have worked with anyone, but there is only one Matthew Turner. We may work out a similar arrangement, you and I.”

  Yeah, that’s gonna happen, asshole.

  “As for Ukraine, well, I suppose I should have you get started on that. But first, let us discuss airport protocol and interactions with officials.”

  “Yeah, whatever—I get it. Alert anyone that I’m a hostage, and Tuni gets it, right? I still have trouble believing just what a steaming heap of shit you are.”

  Rheese didn’t bat an eye. “A classic dramaturgical arrangement, I’m aware, but no less effective for it. The difference here is that I am not some archetypal villain, nor are you the hero. On the contrary, I was smeared and robbed—admittedly indirectly—by you and am simply recouping losses. I’m not threatening your life or limbs, nor is the colored lass in any danger. That said, to ensure that things remain so, you are to behave like a good little boy.”

  “Uh, let me see—what part of that wasn’t a threat just then?”

  “Interpret it as you will,” Rheese said breezily. “Will you conduct yourself with some decorum, or do we need to have a different conversation?”

  “I don’t know what ‘decorum’ means, but I’ll act normal. How long will this take?”

  “We’ll be there tomorrow morning,” Rheese replied. “Our meeting shouldn’t last beyond noon, local time.”

  “Uh-huh, and then what?”

  “Oh, right. Well, we’ll have to see how it goes, I suppose. Assume you’ll be back on vacation within a few short days.”

  “Oh, only a few days? Is that all? And Tuni? She’s a hostage! Do you even get that? What about my pilots? Are they up there? I . . . I’m not doing anything until I talk to Tuni.”