Jaden Baker

by Courtney Kirchoff

  “What about that file?” she asked, her eyes on it.

  “I’ll get to it. Answer my question, please.”

  She studied his hands. Both were scarred, just like Jaden’s, only these were older. He noticed her looking, but didn’t move them.

  “Psychokinesis,” she answered. “He’s PK.”

  Gates didn’t break the stare as he removed his reading glasses and set them on the table. “He moves things with his mind?” Gates asked, his voice steady.

  Libby nodded. When would he open the file, she wondered.

  “Like a Jedi knight,” she said, thinking the comparison would amuse him, but he didn’t smile. She wondered if he ever did. With his left hand, which had no wedding ring, he picked up his glasses, put them back on his face, and opened the manila folder, but stared at her.

  “How old is he?”

  He knows. How many PK people were out there? Not many. She’d met three, at least that’s what she thought. Special Agent Gates had to be one as well, if both Christine and Jaden had the ability.

  She tried to see the first page inside the folder, but it was text, and she couldn’t read it upside down. In the movies, folders like that always opened up to a headshot of the person it was about, but no such luck here.

  “He’s twenty-five,” she said.

  “Mmm,” Gates mumbled as he studied the document in the folder, scanned it, then flipped the page. Here was a Xeroxed copy of a birth certificate. Not all the boxes were filled in. The next page was another legal document, then another. Finally he flipped and found what she had looked for on page one: a photo of a boy, younger than ten, autumn trees in the fake background. It was probably shot at Wal-Mart in the hopes of making him look appealing to anyone who wanted a child.

  The boy Jaden had a sad face, too, like his older self. The smile was small, probably asked for, a condition of him leaving the photo studio. You can’t go until you smile. He was eight or nine. So little.

  Without meaning to, Libby reached for the photo, and Special Agent Gates gave it to her, his face was blank, emotionless. He continued reading the contents of the file, flipping pages periodically, until he got the information he needed.

  Gates shut the file, put it in the box, and went back to his notes. He didn’t ask any more questions. What else was there left to clarify? He tossed his glasses to the table, and rubbed his face and put his chin on his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Libby said, and she slid the photo across the table. “Big day for you, huh?” she said, a shaky smirk on her lips.

  “How much do you know about his stay with Madrid?”

  Libby noted the omission of Jaden’s name. She thought it was cold, but then what did she know about this sort of thing. It was beyond her comprehension and always would be.

  Based on the little she knew about Gates, Libby thought no matter what she said, he would not be surprised. Now that Gates knew who Jaden was, the severity of the truth might be too much to handle. Or not.

  “Jaden was with Dalton, my father,” she said, “I don’t know how long. Then he was with Madrid. It was a total of six years.”

  “It was two years,” Gates said. “The file said Madrid had him for two years. That’s a long time. Any time with him is long.”

  “Yes,” she said, watching his face, looking for signs of sorrow. There were none. His whole face was sad, like his voice. Now she knew why. “He’s a cruel man. I’m glad he’s rotting in Hell.”

  Gates got up, went to the mirror and knocked his knuckle on it. “Privacy please,” he said, and waited. “Everyone out,” he said again, and then he came and sat down.

  “Madrid is still alive,” he muttered.

  Libby’s eyes popped. “I shot him five times. Four to the abdomen. Who survives something like that?”

  “He’s at the same hospital,” Gates answered.

  “How did he survive?” she whined.

  “Five times?” he asked.

  “Yes! My God. I bet it was that 9mm. This would’ve never happened with my .45,” she said, and she thought she saw amusement from Gates, but it was so subtle she might have imagined it. “Well, you’re going to prosecute him, right? Kidnapping, child endangerment, abuse, and a myriad of other crimes I can’t remember the names of.”

  Finally an emotion broke out of him, a leering smile spread on his face. “We’ll see.”

  “Is he in critical condition? Maybe he won’t survive?” she asked.

  His grin broadened. “It’s too early to say.” Now that he was grinning, it looked hard to stop, and his sharing of feeling with her appeared to liberate him. “So the four of you went to his house with the intention of killing him?” The question was not entrapment, it was congratulatory.

  “Yeah,” Libby said. “Me, Alan, Jaden and Christine, that stupid bitch who left us.”

  “Who’s Christine?”

  “Jaden’s half-sist—” she stopped herself but it was too late, “er. Sister. Shit,” she said, regretting her words as the smile melted off Gates’ face.

  Two things could happen now: she could pretend she hadn’t made the slip, push past it and continue with the story, or resort to wit and humor.

  “Well,” she said, “me and my big mouth. But it’s not my fault you were a horny young man. So instead of one child, you’ve got two. I’d say congratulations, but considering they’re both twenty-five and have no idea who you are, there’s no point,” she said in one breath.

  She was surprised when he smiled at her, a genuine one this time. “He got shot protecting you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” she said, somewhat hurt by the question, though based on his next statement it wasn’t meant to offend her.

  “He likes you. Trying to connect with someone after that kind of life is challenging.”

  It wasn’t coincidence, then. Madrid had Gates when he was younger. Libby wanted to ask more about it, but she knew it would be prying. If he was anything like Jaden, and the similarities were strong, then he would decide if and when he told her anything.

  “You want to ask, don’t you?” he said. “I saw you looking at my hands. It’s okay to be curious. We have some things in common. You did me a favor by shooting him. I was just at his house,” he pulled the box back on the table but didn’t open it. “Madrid set something up, some kind of emitter, that suppressed the mental processes of PK. It was disabled when we found it at the crime scene. He kept it on his roof, it made him hard to get to. I think he’s had it for years.”

  Libby remembered both Christine and Jaden being unable to use PK, a fact that unsettled Christine so much that she ran off.

  “It’s flattering,” Gates said. “You see, I got away from him many, many years ago. I suspect that once I read through this box, I’ll find that Jaden,” he said, and cleared his throat, “was probably more cautious than I was. It took a lot of careful planning for me to escape. At that time it was just Madrid, there was no Archcroft.”

  Libby interrupted him. “He started it after you.”

  Gates nodded. “Because of me, maybe as a way to find me, or more people like me. He keeps notes, I’ll figure it out soon.”

  Libby released a breath she hadn’t realized she held. “You’re Severus Snape!” she said.

  The pronouncement was met with confusion. “Who?” Gates asked.

  Unbelievable. Libby shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Does no one read?” she asked. Then, waving her hand dismissively: “It’s not important.” It was. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

  “Anyway,” he said, in a manner that reminded her so much of Jaden she smiled. “I was reckless. It started out as fear, then anger. Madrid had done things so unthinkable I couldn’t escape them. I kept having nightmares, so I stopped sleeping. I was afraid to go back to my parents because of the lies he’d told me, so I was alone. I was seventeen when I escaped, but I think I looked older. It doesn’t make me proud, but I stole a lot of things to survive. When I was too tired to stay awake, I lost control, and my
PK manifested itself in enormous ways. At first I was sickened by the idea of what I had to do, it was the same thing Madrid had done to me to keep me under control when he wasn’t there, but I had to do something.”

  Was he waiting for her to guess? She was afraid to say anything, what if he stopped explaining. But it was only a momentary pause, he was thinking about how much to tell her.

  “Drugs made me feel better,” Gates said. “It was easier to talk with people. It was easier to do a lot of things. I can’t remember how many girls I was with, I just knew how good it felt to physically connect, and I desperately wanted to belong. It was easy. I knew then what I was, what sort of person I looked like. I walked into so many parties, high school and college, they’re all a blur now. I’m not proud of it. I didn’t stop to consider anything other than filling my own needs. It’s difficult to say this,” he said, glancing at her before continuing on. “It took me ten years, and it doesn’t get easier with the retelling. But you have to understand, you have to know, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.

  “It didn’t even occur to me until ten minutes ago that my actions could’ve resulted in all of this. My countless indiscretions lead to other lives. Lives Madrid took.”

  But that couldn’t be the end of the story. She got the impression that Special Agent Gates, despite what he said about it being difficult with every retelling, wanted her to know how it all began. It was similar to how Jaden told his stories. Each man trusted her with the truth and felt a need to fill her in on the details. Why they both felt it, she didn’t know.

  “And the FBI?” she asked.

  Gates gave a little nod. “My addictions needed to be filled. On drugs I couldn’t perform PK, which is how I stole things so easily. I got caught. I was put in prison, and when I couldn’t get more drugs, and I went through withdrawals, eventually the PK came back. It came back in a big way.

  “Fortunately there was someone. He came in this room and gave me the box a minute ago,” he said, motioning with his hand to the door. “He convinced me to tell him what really happened. After a long time, I did. He believed me. I detoxed, got my life together, got my GED. Shep took me under his wing, and for that I’ll always owe him my life. He was with the FBI, and he got me a job as a clerk. Over the years I moved up.

  “The emitter Madrid erected. He was afraid I’d find him. When I was well enough I got the nerve to go back to where I escaped from. I was going to kill him. But he was gone. I looked for him but couldn’t find him. I didn’t want people to know what I was up to, so my resources were limited. When Archcroft formed, and I learned he was behind it, I redoubled my efforts, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find him.”

  It explained so much, the reason Madrid kept Jaden under such shackling control and fear. He was afraid it would happen again.

  “I think you saved him, Miss James,” he said. “A few more years of being alone would have done him in. He would’ve cracked eventually.”

  She wouldn’t tell him about Seth. That was Jaden’s business.

  “How did the emitter break?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It was hidden on the roof. Someone destroyed it.”

  Libby smirked. “Christine. Not such a bitch after all.”

  While he was waiting for the phone to ring with news on Jaden’s status, Special Agent Gates perused the box of information Madrid had kept. Not to either of their surprise, he’d been actively pursuing Jaden for ten years, investigating any possibility of PK activity. Gates was right, Jaden had been cautious and smart.

  The reason for the active pursuit was not for the advancement of science, or so Madrid could exercise more power over Jaden: Gates found a bank statement.

  “He wired you money,” Gates said.

  Libby had forgotten. “Yeah, he did. I hope he dies of lead poisoning,” she commented as she looked through newspaper articles Madrid had cut, thinking it was Jaden behind the incidents. She didn’t want to read anything about his childhood, or when Madrid had him. It was a violation of his privacy.

  “He wired it from his personal account,” Gates said. “As of two months ago, Madrid was flush with over half a billion dollars.”

  Libby dropped an article reporting a strange incident of twisted metal in Florida, and gave her attention to Gates. “Half a billion dollars?”

  Gates nodded as he filtered through other papers in the file, looking for something else. “Here it is. Archcroft received a large sum, two point two billion dollars, two months ago. It was transferred from an offshore account. There’s no name on it. The only note on the transaction is JB002300. That’s the same number on all of these documents.”

  “Oh my God,” Libby said, shaking her head, wishing she could throttle Madrid right now, squeeze all the life out of him.

  “Archcroft sold him,” Gates said, following his finger down more documents, the table was full of them. “They held an auction ten years ago,” he said, licking his fingers, turning a page. “But he escaped. It looks like his value went up over the years; they sold him for more the second time.”

  Libby thought she might be sick.

  “To who?” she asked, looking at her reflection in the mirror. She was gray.

  “So far I’m not seeing any one person or group identified. Everything is just numbers. It will take a while to decipher. Anyone willing to spend that kind of money to buy a person can’t have good intentions.”

  “Jaden could walk into any country, any building, and just look at it and make it explode. He could kill effortlessly. He told me he was a weapon in their hands, that’s why he couldn’t go back,” she said mechanically, recalling the conversation. “I guess I never thought about how destructive he could be.”

  “And he wouldn’t leave a trace,” Gates said. “It’s not just a magic trick,” he said. “The level of control you have over people, things, it’s unfathomable.”

  “I wonder who it was,” Libby said, her mind roving the countless possibilities.

  The cell phone vibrated on the table, making her jump. Gates picked it up and exchanged a look with Libby. It was the hospital. Her insides twisted, her hands were shaky. She started on a barrage of prayers, begging God to spare him. Please let him be okay. There would be no justice in the world if Madrid was allowed to live and Jaden died.

  “Special Agent Gates,” he said into the phone. “Yes,” he said, and Libby studied his face, but he’d gone stoic on her again. He nodded into the phone. Was that a good nod, or bad? Was it yes, I understand you did everything you could, or yes, thank you? “We’re on our way,” he said then ended the call.

  Libby’s hands were folded on the table. “Did he make it?” she asked, taking a tissue to prepare herself for either answer.

  Special Agent Gates heaved a sigh. “Yes.”

  They should have taken the stairs, she thought, as the elevator stopped to admit more people. But she had the impression that Gates was stalling. He was about to see his son for the first time. That had to do a number on someone’s head. She was shocked to see him so composed.

  Libby didn’t wait for the doors to finish opening, she shoved her way past and darted into the lobby, Gates following her. He grabbed her by the elbow to slow her.

  “He’s probably not even awake yet,” he said. “You can wait a second.”

  She regarded his facial expression; he had a strong poker face.

  “You’re not going in with me?”

  “No,” he said, stepping back a little, watching the people milling about, though there wasn’t too much going on. “No, I’m not.”

  “But don’t you want to meet him?” Libby asked.

  “Maybe someday, if that’s what he wants.” Special Agent Gates felt his pockets, then took out a business card. He scribbled something on the back. “If he asks about me, give me a call.”

  “But you’re his—”

  “Genetically, yes, but he doesn’t know me,” Gates said, offering a smile to her frown. “I didn’t know he existed unti
l a few hours ago.”

  Libby wasn’t going to let him go that easily. Everyone wanted to know where they came from, it was only natural. Jaden wasn’t so different. “But he knows that. It would mean so much to him if you came in.”

  “That’s what you want,” Gates said, “that’s not what he wants. He’s just been shot and he almost died. He doesn’t want to see me, he wants to see you. Like I said, if he brings me up in conversation, then I’ll come out and meet him. But otherwise, what’s the point?”

  She couldn’t believe this. He had a son and daughter and he was just going to leave them? Maybe she didn’t understand the reasoning behind his decision, perhaps she wasn’t equipped with it, but she knew how it felt if a parent wasn’t interested in their child.

  “You have so much in common with him,” Libby said.

  “What do you think we’d do? Sit around, share a beer, swap stories? I was twenty-six when he was taken in by the Kauffmans. Old enough to have taken him and raised him myself. I would have if I’d known about him. My point is,” Gates said, putting one hand over hers, “I’m just an idea to him, and not a very good one. Now is not the time for me. You don’t have to understand.” He held out the card for her to take. She plucked it from his fingers and slipped it into her back pocket.

  When he put it that way, it made sense. Being shot was a traumatic experience, and having a dramatic family reunion after surgery probably wasn’t the right time. She nodded her understanding at him and they proceeded down to the front desk.

  “We’re here to see Jaden Baker, I’m with the FBI,” he said, flashing his badge at the nurse. “Could you tell us what room he’s in, please?”

  The nurse looked up the room number and gave it to them, but Gates held Libby back.

  “May I speak to the surgeon who worked on Joseph Madrid? I understand he’s out of surgery as well?”

  So they waited a few minutes, Libby wearing a hole in the floor with her nervous jittering. She wanted to see Jaden so badly she could hardly wait here for a stupid doctor to show up.