by Rachel James
Intimidated by the command, Sonny dropped into the nearest chair and fixed her gaze on Foster.
“How much do you really know?” he asked.
The question was thrown at Logan, and Sonny wished it had been thrown at her. That way, she could’ve thrown it back in his face with an ugly “go to hell” rebuttal.
“That something catastrophic happened to Sonny when she was nine or ten.”
Floored, Sonny’s head whipped around. How had Logan deduced something so bizarre from such a simple question? Another silence descended, and then the wheelchair returned to its original position.
“I congratulate you, Detective. You’ve figured out in a few short days what no one has discovered in twenty years. How did you figure it out?”
“From Sonny. She’s been envisioning the same therapy session over and over in the last day. She can’t tell me whether the session is from the past or the present, but I’m guessing it’s a combination of both, since Sonny assures me that it’s possible for her to see both at the same time. Besides, criminals aren’t very original when it comes to committing crimes. They figure if it works once and they didn’t get caught, why not keep trying it.”
“What tipped you off to me?”
“Before he died, David Blake programmed the word ‘Pandora’ into his computer and left it for Sonny. Once we accessed the program, we found three clues linked to Pandora. You were second on the list.”
“And the first?
“A photo of a young girl, which, in my humble opinion, puts the time frame back when Sonny was ten—at the time her mother took her own life.”
“A lucky guess,” Foster stated.
“Hardly a guess, especially since the young girl’s photo bears a striking resemblance to Sonny. It made me wonder whether the puzzle could be that simple. Your sister was killed the same day, wasn’t she?”
The wheelchair rocked on its frame. “You’ve aroused my curiosity, Detective, but we both know that question isn’t the one that needs answering. So what do you really want to know?”
“Why David Blake had to be murdered.”
Foster gave a fractured snort. “Ask Sonny. She knows.”
“Me?” Sonny squeaked. “I don’t know a thing.”
“And you don’t have empathic powers, either, do you? Don’t use that Blake snobbery on me.”
“But I don’t know anything,” Sonny stressed. “I’m in the dark, I swear it.”
Foster snickered at Logan. “She pretends she doesn’t know who she really is, but she has to know. Her empathic powers are so unique that she must’ve caught a glimpse of the truth during one of her visions. She’s chosen to repress it—like all the others.”
“What others?” Logan asked.
“The first patients used in The Pandora Project. There were twelve in all.”
Sonny’s eyes suddenly welled with tears. “Dear God! That’s the link,” she said, glancing at Logan. “The twelve girls belong to the Tarot cards we’ve been looking at. They’re all dead—except for me.” Her glance returned to Foster. “I’ve never ‘seen’ anything at all from that time. What am I supposed to have seen?”
Seeing her tears, Logan crossed the small space between them and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Have a heart, Sykes. Can’t you see Sonny has no recollection of Pandora? Tell us what you know. Let me be the one to put the pieces together. If you help, I can find the person who really put you in that chair.”
The old man’s gaze flew to the wall over Sonny’s left shoulder, and she knew he was deciding whether to put his faith in Logan’s words. Could he be convinced her shock and dismay were real? She didn’t know. She only hoped he’d give her a chance to prove it.
His gaze finally swung her way, and Sonny felt her stomach do a rapid somersault. He was going to divulge the truth, and it was going to be bad. She bit her lower lip, trying to maintain a stoic face; however, she found herself glancing up at Logan with an anxious look instead. His return glance was as comforting as the hand that lightly squeezed her shoulder.
“Who’s your mother, girl?”
The question startled Sonny, and her gaze shot back to the wheelchair.
“M-m-marion Blake,” she stammered. “Everyone knows that.”
“Everyone knows the lie,” Foster corrected her. “You’ve been Sonny Blake only since you were ten.”
“Ten?”
He ignored her blackened scowl. “There is no Sonny Blake, at least not in human form. She exists only on paper.”
“Pa-paper?”
Logan ignored her stammer, focusing on Foster. “Why? And how?”
“The why should be obvious, but the how? The how was cleverly done.” Foster gave them his full attention. “Imagine twelve orphans, bought and paid for in the name of science—”
“This is nonsense,” Sonny interrupted. “I remember my childhood—where the family went on vacations, birthday parties … How could I remember all that and not have been born Sonny Blake?”
The wheelchair rolled closer to her, and Sonny pulled back in alarm. It took all her strength to keep a choking sob at bay as Foster muttered softly, “Enter Pandora—a hypnotherapy program so radical that to simply call it ‘brainwashing’ is to insult its very nature.”
Sonny studied the frail hands caressing the chair handles and marveled at how natural he made his explanation sound. As if altering the memories of children was a common, everyday occurrence.
“If I’m not Sonny Blake, who am I?”
“You’re Amanda King. Your real birth certificate was destroyed long ago.”
“I have a birth certificate in my vault—Sonia Blake is in my vault,” Sonny whispered. Foster’s lips pursed tighter. “Why destroy my birth certificate?” Sonny asked.
“To keep anyone from ever discovering that The Pandora Project worked. You see, the therapy was remarkable. It was done with nothing more than the use of a green-colored door.”
“Green door?” The question was uttered by Logan and Sonny simultaneously, and Foster gave them a suspicious squint.
“Yes. This small trigger sent the patient through the door and into a full-scale opening of the memory pathways. New memories were then laid inside, and when the patient woke, there was no memory of the shift. Each therapy session instilled more of the new memories and less of the old. By the time the shift was completed, the memory sensors were in place and could not be reversed. Or so we thought.”
“We?”
“You don’t think I thought this up all by myself?” Foster said. “I was hired. I hold degrees in psychiatry, psychology, and hypnotherapy, and, like those evil little sprites Pandora let loose in the world, I have the ability and know-how to reprogram the human mind and take it places it’s never been.”
“You learned the technique when you disappeared from The Sanctuary and remained off the grid for years,” Logan guessed. “That’s what got left off your resume when Lieutenant Cutter did a background check on you. He could never put his finger on why the background facts felt off, but I can. The Meta Corps Agency was built on the backs of an elite team of paranormal scientists called Para-Corps.”
“Three teams—to be exact,” Foster corrected him.
“Which were you?”
“Research.” He paused, and Sonny sensed he wasn’t going to divulge any more information to them without assurance that they would stay mum on what they heard.
“Come clean, Sykes,” Logan demanded. “This may be the only chance you get to tell your side of the story.”
Foster settled back against the chair and sighed. His gaze scoured Sonny’s face again. “I want you to know that I never guessed the memory switch would give birth to empathic talents. If I had, I would’ve fought like hell to decimate the project.”
Sonny shuddered, suppressing a wild desire to strip off her gloves and touch Foster’s gnarled fingers. She’d learn soon enough if he was lying about her heritage.
“So, you’re saying that David Blake ba
cked a reckless, mind-altering program and blackmailed you to keep you silent?” Logan asked.
“Hell, no. Blake had no idea of the project until a year ago. Seacoast Trust sent him notification of a languishing safe-deposit box. Curious, he had it opened and was floored to find adoption papers inside that named Amanda King as his adopted daughter.”
A pool of tears stained Sonny’s lower eyelashes. “You worked alongside me day after day, and you never said a word. You had plenty of chances to tell me my real identity. Don’t say you didn’t!”
“Blake Industries has eyes and ears everywhere. Not to mention hidden cameras. For all I knew, you were in on the deception.”
“Well, I wasn’t. And as for hidden cameras in my labs—that’s ridiculous.” Sonny shot him a quelling stare. If he thought she was going to believe someone had planted cameras to spy on her and her staff, he was mistaken. She opened her mouth to tell him so but found her words cut off by Logan’s dour tones.
“If your accident was meant to silence you permanently, why aren’t you dead?”
“I had a well-oiled backup plan—something that guaranteed my survival.”
“You filmed the sessions,” Logan said quickly. “That’s why David said the video was off-site.”
A sly smirk spread across Foster’s lips. “Of course, if I had to do it over again, I would’ve used a different plan. Survival wasn’t worth the loss of my legs.”
“Where is the tape?” Logan asked.
“Safely tucked away.”
“I want that tape,” Sonny declared, swiveling in her chair. “I’m not about to believe any of this absurd story without proof. And if you refuse to give it to me, I will sue you for extortion, defamation of character, and any other damaging charge I can think of.”
He looked up at her with a sideways squint, and Sonny knew he wasn’t intimidated by her threats. However, in the next instant, the whistle of a speeding bullet sizzled past her ear, and the man before her pitched forward and slammed back, pummeled by the blow of a gunshot.
A spray of blood showered Sonny’s blouse, freezing her in place. Lightning-quick, Logan snatched her out of her chair and slammed her to the ground. She gripped the chest hovering over hers, an uncanny sense of déjà vu stealing over her. Once again, their sniper had found them, and once again, her face was inches from a raised pistol.
“Are you hit?”
“N-no. It’s Foster.” She tried to take a peek around Logan’s chest but found her gaze blurring. She mustn’t cry. Not now, not ever. Her mind and body couldn’t take it. A few more bouts of abuse and she’d fall into a mind fugue she’d be unable to bounce back from.
She blinked back the tears and saw Foster’s slumped figure in the chair. No sign of life was apparent in his broken body. “I th-think he’s dead,” she stuttered. Logan shifted sideways, and Sonny clutched his shirt. “Don’t leave me!” His chest came back into view, along with a pat on her shoulder.
“Relax. I have no intention of leaving you. The sniper got what he came for, and it wasn’t us.”
“Foster?”
“Yes.” He gripped her shoulder. “I need to examine him. You’re not going to space out on me, are you?” His gaze impaled hers, searching for signs of a breakdown. Sonny shook her head, and he gave her shoulder a reassuring pat as he holstered his gun. “Good girl.” Seconds later, he was crawling along the stucco tiles to the wheelchair.
Not about to be left alone, Sonny crawled after him, stripping off her gloves as she went. It might not be too late. She might be able to touch Foster and secure the truth of his words. When she reached the left side of the chair, she heard a stuttered wheeze and forgot about getting answers.
Scooting to his haunches, Logan assessed Foster’s bloodied shirtfront. He lifted the shirt up and studied the gaping wound. Sonny winced as she spotted the trail of seeping blood. The bullet had been dead on.
Sonny saw a scowl appear in the middle of Logan’s brow and knew the news was bad. A gnarled hand batted at his probing.
“I’m ... beyond help.”
Ignoring Foster’s words, Logan reached into his pocket and withdrew a hankie. He stuffed it over the red stain. “It’s never over till the fat lady sings,” he declared.
Foster gave a muffled laugh, stilling Logan’s fingers. “Get the bas ... tard.”
“You can count on it.”
Foster seemed buoyed by the answer, and then suddenly, his body went limp. Without thinking, Sonny grasped his wrist and wrapped her fingers around it. She was immediately jolted into a white vortex and out the other side. When the vortex stabilized, she was shocked to see Logan standing beside her on the edge of a small chasm. She studied the space in front of them, spotting Foster standing on the other side.
He seemed jarred by the empty space around him, until he spotted the pair. He judged the distance between them and, realizing he couldn’t brook the expanse, withdrew a chain from his shirtfront. With a small jerk, he tore it from his neck and tossed the chain to Sonny. It floated up and across the space in slow motion, as if time had dared to defy gravity and set its own speed.
As the chain floated in her mind’s eye, Sonny’s breathing also slowed, followed by a disturbing quake that shattered her serenity. Her skin began to prickle pleasurably, and she realized her sensory receptors were in tumult. A second vision was coming on top of the first one, and this new web of images wasn’t so new. She had seen and felt them before. They were waves of sexual ecstasy, a flood tide of two bodies exploding in a downpour of fiery sensations.
Disoriented by the explicit images, Sonny struggled to keep the two visions from colliding. The effort took every ounce of her willpower, but she managed to deflect the sensual images and throw them back through the vortex.
The first vision shored up with a vengeance, and Sonny caught a glimpse of the floating chain once more. She opened her hand, palm up, to catch the metal. Moments later, the chain—and the key attached to it—landed in the center of her palm. She closed her fingers around the metal tightly, hoping the touch would kick-start her exit out of the maelstrom. It worked. Like a tornado gone haywire, she was shot back through turbulence and the vapid, endless clatter of bawling winds.
She slammed back into reality, like lightning cracking the skies. When she got her bearings, the New Mexico sky glared hot and blue above her head once more. She immediately heard a series of hacking coughs, followed by painful gasps. Following the sound, she saw Logan’s fingers wrapped around her exposed wrist. Idiot! He had thrown himself into the vision with her, and he had scrambled the images. Why had he done such a foolish thing? It was bad enough she had dared to initiate a vision so close to a dying spirit, but for him to jeopardize his health was insane.
Blood drops spattered the tiles around her knees, and Sonny knew she had to don her gloves as quickly as possible. Her nose was leaking like a sieve, and unless she found a way to block the seepage, it would turn into a gushing river. Her body would suffer the consequences quickly after that. It would hurl her through fantasies and trances, two at the same time, and leave her delusional.
Sonny heard movement, and when she glanced up, she saw Logan fumbling through Foster’s shirtfront. In seconds, he was hauling a key embedded with an emerald from around the man’s neck. A stuttered wheeze permeated the air.
“Don’t waste your breath talking, Foster,” Logan cautioned, patting his chest. “We’ll get you medical help.”
A dab of red oozed from between Foster’s slim lips, and Sonny panicked.
“Foster ... ” She shook his lifeless legs. “Where’s the DVD?” His chest rose as if he would answer, and then she heard a long exhalation of breath … and then only silence. Mesmerized, Sonny stared at the lifeless face inches from hers. He was gone without answering her question.
Tears surged, and she rested her head against the side of the chair. How could she be so unfeeling as to put a DVD above a man’s life? Her blurred vision caught the jagged edge of the key peeping from Lo
gan’s palm, and she burst into tears. It was despicable to care more about a key than a human life.
A siren wailed in the distance, bringing her attention back to the blood-spattered tiles around her knees. A neighbor had obviously called the security gate, frightened by the sound of the gunshot.
A hankie swam in front of her face, and Sonny took it. She wiped her drenched cheeks, smearing blood from her seeping nose. Alarmed, she held the cloth tight against the bottom of her nose, willing the blood to stop. Her sobs quickly turned to hiccups, and from hiccups to small sniffs.
“Not a word, do you hear?” Logan said, sliding the key into his shirt pocket and buttoning it. “Let me do all the talking when the police get here.”
Sonny nodded, the fingers reaching for hers. In seconds, she was on her feet and dumped in a nearby lounge chair. She continued holding the hankie to squelch the blood flow.
“Let me hold the key,” she muttered. “You’ll be frisked by security; I won’t.”
“The key stays with me. It goes where I go.” He saw her sudden scowl. “And don’t even bother trying to sweet-talk me into giving it to you because there is no way in hell you are going to touch this key. Even I felt the twisted energy of that last vision. It about took me down. From here on out, you are going to keep your gloves on, twenty-four seven.”
Blind anger singed Sonny’s voice. “Don’t you dare give me orders, and don’t deny that you flung yourself into my vision on purpose.”
“We needed answers.”
“You could’ve killed us both with such a reckless act. And for your information, if I want to touch the key, I will. If you don’t like it, you can go straight to hell.”
A cheeky grin came her way, but he held his tongue.
“What? No sarcastic comeback?” she railed.
“And have you damn me to hell again? I think not.”
A siren wailed close by, cutting off Sonny’s choked reply. Obnoxious toad! He was making her think he wasn’t manipulating her, when in fact he had just done so by not arguing with her.
Hearing the echo of door slams, she whirled towards the doorway. A second later, two strapping security guards charged out of the shadowed hallway and onto the back patio. Their guns were drawn, and Sonny had never seen anything so frightening in her life. They won’t shoot you, Sonny. They can’t. They don’t have the whole story. Just do as Logan says. Let him do all the talking.