Blind Instinct: A Tess Barrett Thriller

by Michael W. Sherer

  “A mobile game developed at my father’s company has been sabotaged with a program that makes people do crazy things,” she summed up.

  “This is nuts,” Hanson growled. “You listen to this kid, Barrett? I owe Tom a solid, but this crap is insane.”

  “Where’d you serve, Hanson?” Travis said.

  “In Virginia, not far from here. Naval Special Warfare Group Two, SEAL Team Ten.”

  “I was Special Forces,” Travis said. “You know the drill. How many times did you get orders that you figured must have come from a crazy person?”

  “A few,” Hanson mumbled. “Okay, a lot. We were deployed in the Mideast. Everything is crazy there.”

  Travis grinned. “Yeah, I was in Afghanistan. A whole ’nother kettle of fish over there.”

  “So, how do you want to play it?” Hanson said.

  “We go in, find the kid, and extract him before he can do any damage.”

  “Sounds simple enough.”

  “Only problem is he’ll likely have a Secret Service detail on him,” Travis said.

  Hanson’s eyes widened. “And you don’t think they’ll be able to keep a lid on him?”

  “They’ll be looking for threats to him, not from him,” I said. “He’s actually got the perfect cover. Which is where Tess and I come in.”

  “It’ll be easier for us to get close to him since we’re closer to his age,” Tess said. “He’ll definitely talk to us before he talks to adults.”

  Hanson’s mouth hung open. “Wait! You’re not bringing these two, are you?”

  “Well…” Travis said slowly. “I’d hoped they’d stay out of harm’s way.”

  “We’re coming, Uncle Travis. You can’t do this without us.”

  Travis shrugged. “You heard the lady. I suggest we mount up and plan our strategy over breakfast somewhere.”

  “I know just the place,” the driver said.

  “I’ll have the plane ready when you get back,” Tom said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m going to get some shut-eye for a few hours.”

  Hanson crooked a finger. “Barrett, I’ve got a few things in the trunk you can help me transfer. Or I can follow you. Your choice.”

  “I assume you’re talking about gear. Better we take care of it now than try to under the noses of all the security details in D.C.”

  “Uh, Tess and I will wait in the car,” I said. I didn’t think I’d be much help handling ordnance.

  Travis smiled. “Sounds like a great plan, Oliver.”

  Chapter 36

  Austin tramped down the stairs in a foul mood. He wasn’t sure where it had come from because he’d slept okay. At least he thought he had. The moods had been coming over him a lot lately, and he couldn’t really explain it. Okay, so yeah, he wasn’t all that happy about their move from what he considered home to Washington, D.C., when his father had gone from being a senator to vice president. And after three years of being under the constant watch of walking, talking mannequins in suits with Ray-Bans and two-way communicators, he was even less happy that the great Josiah Dunn had decided to run for president. But these black moods had gone way past his usual petulance. Hormones, maybe. He was still going through puberty, right? He only had to shave once a week, if that, so he must be. The only time he felt good, it seemed, was when he improved his mastery of Never Bitten.

  He saw his father sitting at the table in the formal dining room, reading the Washington Post and absent-mindedly drinking coffee from a delicate china cup. His father set the cup down and picked up a slice of toast from his plate, never taking his eyes off the paper. After taking a bite, he brushed crumbs from his silk tie and the front of the dress shirt with the monogrammed French cuffs. A suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. This on a Saturday morning, when most normal fathers had on jeans for yard work, or shorts for the golf course.

  Austin hated having to sit in the formal dining room and be waited on at breakfast. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just pour himself a bowl of cereal and eat in the kitchen, or grab a toaster pastry on the way out the door.

  His father glanced up as Austin slid into a chair. “Good morning, son.”

  “Good morning, father.”

  His father frowned. “Watch your tone.”

  “My name is Austin—a name you gave me, by the way.”

  “But you are my son. It wouldn’t hurt to show a little respect.”

  “I’m not one of your constituents, Dad. I’m not old enough to vote, so your political record doesn’t mean anything to me, only your record as a father.”

  “You know what I mean. Respecting your elders is common courtesy.”

  Austin felt his face flush as resentment bubbled up from deep inside. “What have you done to earn it? Your accomplishments as a parent bite.”

  “Austin, that’s enough!” His father’s voice was sharp. “What’s gotten into you lately?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled, turning his face away.

  A staff member—a college-age guy, not Rachel, Austin’s favorite—came through the door from the kitchen and approached him. “Something to eat this morning, sir?”

  “Just a bowl of cereal. Whatever you’ve got. As long as it’s not one of those boxes of wood chips that old folks eat to improve their regularity. And a glass of orange juice. Please.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Austin watched him go, wondering why a guy like that would want a job sucking up to people all day. He could be a lifeguard and get all the girls he wanted, or a valet parking attendant and get tips and girls. With a sigh, Austin got out his phone and turned it on.

  Hearing the sounds the phone made, his father lowered his paper. “Austin, I’ve told you no games at the table.”

  “Fine!” Austin placed the phone next to his spoon.

  His father began to raise the paper again, but hesitated. “I expect you to come to the rally this morning. Just so you know.”

  “Dad, come on! Why? I’ve heard your speech like a kazillion times. And it’s not like a reporter from Slate magazine is going to ask my opinion on foreign policy.”

  “You know why, Austin. Because we’re a family. That’s what America wants to see.”

  “Mom’s not going.”

  “She had a previous commitment.”

  “Her tennis lesson? Oh, come on. If she’s really taking tennis lessons, why isn’t she getting any better? She sucks.”

  “Watch yourself! You’re on thin ice.”

  Austin scowled, but held his tongue.

  “You’re going,” his father said. “That’s that.”

  “Fine, I’ll go, but I’m going to hang out with my friends. If you want photo ops, you better tell the cameras to get shots of me doing what other normal kids do.”

  His father drained his coffee cup and stood. “It’ll have to do. But this conversation isn’t over. We’re going to talk about what’s going on with you, young man.”

  Austin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

  His father glared at him and started to open his mouth, then looked at his watch and reconsidered. He hooked his coat off the back of the chair with a finger, shrugged it on, shot his cuffs and straightened his tie.

  “I’ll see you there,” his father said on his way out.

  Fuming, Austin could barely contain himself. The second his father was out of sight, he picked up his phone and booted up the game. Wolfsbane, his avatar, was at a critical junction in the game, about to meet the man rumored to be Wolfsbane’s father. It was a trap! Wolfsbane’s father had been turned into one of the undead and lay in ambush for Wolfsbane with a horde of zombies. Wolfsbane dispatched two of the grotesque creatures with shotgun blasts, cleanly sliced the head off a third with a single stroke of his broadsword, and rolled an incendiary bomb into the crowd, knocking several zombies over like bowling pins before the device exploded sending blood and body parts in all directions. When the screen cleared, Wolfsbane and his father were the only two left standing. They circled each other w
arily.

  Just as Wolfsbane readied himself to attack, a vampire swooped in on his blind side, mouth open, dripping fangs about to sink into his neck. Austin’s fingers moving at lightning speed across the controls on the screen. Wolfsbane whipped out a wooden stake and slashed the vampire open from groin to sternum. Screaming, the vampire stepped back, and Wolfsbane finished it off by plunging the stake into its black heart. Seeing an opening, the zombie moved in, arms stretched toward Wolfsbane’s throat. Wolfsbane felt the bony, slimy fingers wrapping around his throat. With a snarl, he brought one arm up and over the zombie’s and twisted his body, bringing his elbow down hard on the zombie’s forearms. They snapped like brittle twigs. Wolfsbane immediately followed up with a backhanded punch to the zombie’s face, nearly knocking his head off with the force of the blow. He reached in with his clawed fingers, ripped out the zombie’s throat and watched the lifeless body drop to the ground.

  Austin let out a cry of triumph, and looked around hurriedly to see if anyone had heard. The staff was too busy getting his father ready for departure to pay Austin any notice. Austin realized that this was his chance. He slipped upstairs and down the hall to his parents’ bedroom, though he was pretty sure that his father slept on the couch in his study these days. His father had installed a safe in the master bedroom closet. Austin had found the combination in a file on his father’s computer that also listed all his passwords, the first thing they taught you not to do when you learned to go online.

  Austin spun the dial with sure fingers, and within moments the locked clicked and the safe opened. Inside he found the aluminum case containing his father’s gun. He pulled it out and opened it. Nestled in a foam cutout lay a black Sig Sauer P229 and two magazines. His father had chosen it because it was the same service weapon that his Secret service details carried. The magazines were fully loaded. Austin slipped them into his jeans. He tucked the semiautomatic into his waistband at the small of his back and pulled his shirt over it. It felt heavy and cold against his skin.

  Now he was ready to go to the rally.

  Chapter 37

  Tess listened intently as the others around the table wrapped up the strategy session. She could hardly believe they were in the nation’s capital. The past few days had flown by in a blur, and she found it difficult to remember how it all had started. What was she doing here? What were any of them doing here? Chasing a possibility. Trying to find one kid in a sea of thousands of people on the chance that he’d been affected by a video game that might cause players to become overly aggressive. Austin Dunn might not even go to his father’s campaign rally. The game app might not have affected him the way it seemed to have affected Matt.

  She—they—were assuming a lot based on Derek’s evaluation of how his software code had been altered and what Matt had done in the school cafeteria. But what if there was no cause and effect? What if Matt had gone loony tunes for some other reason? What if Derek was wrong about what the code changes were doing to the game? They could be running a fool’s errand, the result of which would be looking like exactly that—fools. The board of directors would have Travis’s head on a pike. He could lose his job. The family could lose control of the company her father had worked so hard to build.

  But if there was even a chance that Derek was right and his altered game app might drive Austin to do something horrible, she had to try to help him. She couldn’t let what happened to Matt happen to anyone else. Not because the fallout might damage the company, or her family’s name, but because it was the right thing to do. She had to find a way to prove Derek’s contention and keep the game from being released worldwide. And with the help of Derek, Oliver and Travis she had to find the people behind the conspiracy and Travis’s kidnapping.

  Besides, something told her she was right. She’d been the first to notice the correlation between the game and the change in Matt’s behavior. She’d been the one to notice the connection between Marcus’s absences and the change in his scent. And with a little help from Oliver, she’d been the one to pinpoint the place where they’d imprisoned Travis. Call it intuition or whatever you want, this blind instinct of hers had been right all along, and maybe she needed to trust herself a little more.

  “Okay, bear with me here,” Oliver said, breaking into her thoughts. I’m going to help you rig this comm system. I’m going to hand you this earpiece. It’s attached to a throat mic that goes around your neck. If you drop the wire down your shirt and un-tuck your shirt, you can reconnect it to the transmitter and put that in your jeans pocket.”

  She put the earpiece in her ear and wound the mic around her throat like a necklace. Oliver’s fingers fumbled with her shirt collar as she dropped the wire down her shirt. She blushed and pushed his hands away. Pushing her chair back, she stood at the table.

  “I can follow directions,” she murmured. “Just let me know if I got it right.”

  In seconds, she threaded the wire, plugged it into the transmitter and put the device in her pocket. She pulled the hem of her shirt down over her jeans.

  “Look okay?” she said.

  “It’s fine,” Oliver said.

  “All set?” Travis said. “Let’s move out.”

  Tess reached behind her for the jacket hanging on the back of her chair. The weather report had promised a sunny day with a high temperature in the mid-60s, but the day hadn’t warmed up that much yet. Oliver plucked it out of her hand.

  “Here, let me,” he said.

  “I can do it,” she said. “I’m not completely helpless.”

  She held out her hand until he gave the jacket back.

  “I wasn’t suggesting that,” Oliver said, frustration in his voice. “I just… It’s just the way I was brought up. Where I come from it’s called manners.”

  “Problems you two?” Travis said.

  “No problem,” Tess said between gritted teeth, shrugging the jacket on. Trust Oliver to make her feel stupid and petty. So much for intuition. She was giving him a hard time for trying to help her with the easy stuff, and here he was just trying to be nice.

  “Then let’s go,” Travis said.

  They filed out of the restaurant, Tess reluctantly hanging on to Oliver’s shoulder. In the SUV, Oliver volunteered to get in back, leaving the middle row to Tess and Hanson. Fine with her.

  On the way into the center of the capital, Travis made them all test their communications gear. Unlike cell phones, the equipment enabled all of them to hear and talk to each other at the same time.

  “Third and Fourth Streets are closed in front of the Capitol,” Bergstrom told them. “The closest I can get you, I think, is the corner of Independence and Seventh.”

  “That’s fine,” Travis said. “That’ll give us a chance to work the crowds on the south side of the mall. We can work our way across and up toward the Capitol from there.”

  “We’re coming up on the intersection in about two minutes,” Bergstrom said. “Get ready to jump. Security won’t let me sit there for long. Miss Barrett, the mall will be on our right, so your door will be at the curb.”

  “Oliver,” Travis said loudly from the front, “are you sure you want to go in unarmed?”

  “Damn it, Barrett!” Hanson interjected. “We talked about this. You’re licensed to carry. The kid isn’t. If he’s caught with a weapon, he’s in deep doo-doo. If he discharges the thing and doesn’t kill someone, he’ll spend what’s left of his youth as some con’s plaything. Lord help us, if he did kill someone we’d all go to jail as accomplices to felony murder.”

  “All right, all right,” Travis said. “I’m just worried about Tess and Oliver being out there with no way to protect themselves.”

  “It’s okay,” Oliver said. “It’s just one kid. It’s not like we’re going up against an army.”

  Bergstrom interrupted the conversation. “Get ready to bail in ten, nine, eight…”

  Tess felt the SUV swerve and come to a sudden stop. She yanked on the door handle and tumbled out, waiting by the ope
n door until Oliver could guide her away. A moment later the doors slammed and the engine revved and faded away as Bergstrom pulled the SUV back into traffic. The air hummed with the conversation of hundreds of people all around, and from a distance, Tess heard the amplified echo of a man’s voice over a PA system.

  “The warm-up act,” Hanson said gruffly. “Should give us time to find this kid before his daddy takes the stage.”

  “We’ll work our way across the mall and then up toward the Capitol,” Travis said. “Why don’t you two take this side?”

  “Let’s go,” Oliver murmured in her ear.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and followed him into the crowd. The presence of so many people pressing in around her felt almost claustrophobic, and the drone of voices from all sides distracted her. She focused her thoughts on other things—the heat of the sun on her face, the soft tread of the grass under her feet, the scent of cherry blossoms. Despite the day’s warmth, she shuddered involuntarily.

  “Are you okay?” Oliver said.

  “Don’t lose me in this crowd,” she murmured.

  “Just hang on to me. You’ll be fine.” After a pause, he said, “Don’t like crowds?”

  “Not anymore. Too unpredictable.”

  “This isn’t bad. Not like being at a concert or something, packed in like sardines. It isn’t shoulder-to-shoulder until you get a lot closer to the stage.”

  “Whatever. Just don’t lose me.”

  “I won’t. You know we’re never going to find him with all these people here.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, we will.” She got her phone, pulled the earpiece out of her ear, and said, “Call Derek.”

  “It’s your dime,” Derek answered.

  “You’re tracking Austin, right?” Tess said.

  “I’m getting a lot of background noise. I can barely hear you. But, yeah, I’m watching his location.

  Tess spoke up. “Can you track my phone, too?”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Derek spoke faster as excitement gripped him. “And tell you where you are relative to his position.”