The Entity Game: An Aurora Donati Novel

by Lisa Shearin

  I knew what he’d done, and it was scary as hell.

  My parents were psychiatrists who ran a private clinic in Sedona where they specialized in helping people cope with any unique abilities they had, meaning they convinced those with psychic abilities that they weren’t insane. My parents had a network of contacts at psychiatric hospitals and clinics across the country who let them know if they had any new patients who they suspected had an ability and not a problem.

  Some of their patients had both.

  Whenever I’d visited the clinic as a child, I’d been restricted to Mom and Dad’s offices and the administrative section. But I was a curious kid, and more than once I went exploring. I was ten years old on the day I encountered way more than I was prepared to deal with.

  Eleanor Franklin was an elderly lady with dementia. She was also psychokinetic, meaning she could move things with her mind. On the day when I was where I wasn’t supposed to be, Miss Eleanor was letting everyone in the solarium know that the things she could move included people.

  Treating dementia was difficult enough in normal patients. Those with psychic abilities at Eleanor Franklin’s level increased the factor of difficulty to nearly impossible. Psychics—and their abilities—responded differently to drugs. My parents had to start from square one when she’d first arrived at their clinic.

  Miss Eleanor was allowed to go for walks outside only under the watchful eye of a senior staff doctor and two orderlies—and when no other patients were on the grounds. She wasn’t usually violent, she simply wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. On that particular day, she wanted to go outside, and there wasn’t a senior staff doctor available to go with her.

  When she was told she’d have to wait, the situation deteriorated rapidly.

  I arrived in the solarium just in time to see an orderly the size of a linebacker go flying across the room. Fortunately, he landed on a sofa. The orderly was fine. The sofa and the end tables on either side, not so much. Mom arrived soon after and calmly explained to Miss Eleanor that throwing people was rude. I never knew how she did it, but Mom had a way with Eleanor Franklin.

  Miss Eleanor apologized to the orderly and asked Mom when she might expect an escort to go on a walk with her. Mom replied that she would be able to go with her in less than an hour, and that she should go back to her room to wait. In the meantime, Mom promised to send tea.

  My presence did not go unnoticed. Mom had a way with me, too.

  I never wandered around the clinic alone again.

  Tonight, the intruder had taken a page from Miss Eleanor’s book. He’d wanted to leave, and I was preventing him from doing so.

  That earned me a tossing.

  Believe me, watching someone go flying through the air is entirely different when that someone is you.

  A suit-wearing representative of the security company arrived soon after three of the guards returned from trying to track the intruder. No luck. It was as if he’d never been here, though my bruised backside knew different. I wasn’t happy, but the commandos were pissed. It’d been one man against six, and he’d gotten away after incapacitating two of them. One was still unconscious. The other said the man never pulled a weapon, and he didn’t remember being struck, just regaining consciousness.

  It sounded like I wasn’t the only one to experience the intruder’s hands-off style of self-defense.

  The police arrived once the alarm had alerted everyone within two miles that all was not well in our little slice of Georgetown. I answered their questions for the report, but had no description other than tall, cocky, and annoyingly limber.

  “Looks like none of us have gotten any sleep tonight,” Berta said from the foyer. Samuel Rees was talking to the security-company suit, who’d introduced himself to me as Edward Simmons. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Just bruises—ass and ego,” I told her. “Other than that, I’m good.” I caught Rees’s attention and gestured for him to join us. “Let’s go in the kitchen. The forensics people are still in the office.”

  I went to the side of the kitchen farthest from the door. I didn’t want anyone else to hear what I was about to say.

  I told them about the presence I’d sensed in the Russell Building rotunda, and that the intruder was the same man.

  Rees was not happy with my omission. “You didn’t tell us.”

  “I had a lot on my mind then. I’m telling you now.”

  He settled against the fridge. “Go on.”

  “He had to be on the second-floor balcony, though I never spotted him. He knew who and what I was, and most importantly, why I was there. A couple hours later, he breaks into the house to steal something from our office. The security company people are still in there, so I haven’t had a chance to go over the room the way I want to.”

  A raspy meow came from the corner of the kitchen.

  “Is that Pablo?” Berta asked.

  “Yep, that’s him. Totally stoned.”

  Pablo the Attack Cat was happily rolling in a small pile of catnip that’d been dumped in his bed. Soaking wet, he closed in on thirty pounds, though God help anyone who tried to introduce Pablo to water, either falling from the sky or out of a faucet.

  “Our intruder came bearing gifts.” I said. “In addition to our password, he apparently knew Pablo doesn’t like strangers.” I knelt and ruffled the cat’s big belly, my hand instantly engulfed in four paws like a furry Venus flytrap. All gentle, of course. Pablo was a mellow stoner. “He was worthless. Though I’m glad he didn’t go after the guy and get himself hurt. I’ll be giving Grandad enough bad news as it is.”

  Simmons tapped twice on the kitchen door, then opened it enough to stick his head inside. “We’re finished, Ms. Donati.”

  “What did you find?”

  He held the door open for us. “No fingerprints. He was wearing gloves. They were thin, the kind you wear when you don’t want to leave prints, but need dexterity. We don’t think he was here to steal art. We’ve done an inventory of your grandfather’s entire collection. Every piece is accounted for.”

  “He’ll be glad to hear that.”

  “However, there are scratches on the locks of both your desk and Mr. Donati’s, and we believe the safe was opened as well. I’ll need you to confirm if anything was taken.”

  “If he did get anything, it’d have to have been small enough to fit in a pocket. He didn’t have any kind of backpack with him.”

  From the frustration I’d sensed when I’d grabbed him, I knew he didn’t get what he came for, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t taken anything.

  Simmons paused outside the office. “We discovered how he got the new password.”

  “The landline was tapped?”

  “No, but we found four bugs, tiny and well hidden. NSA-quality stuff. I’d say your visitor has intelligence-agency connections. We’ll take them back to the lab to see if we can get any identifying marks that’ll help us trace their source.” He motioned us inside. “I’ll show you what we found, and where.”

  Our office looked like a Victorian gentleman’s study. Grandad had an antique oak desk, and I had a smaller version to the side. The arrangement was kind of like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, except Grandad was tall and lean and had absolutely zero interest in growing orchids. Like Archie, I did a lot of Grandad’s legwork. As he liked to say, he wasn’t as nimble as he used to be back in the day.

  Rees glanced around. “Tidy, wasn’t he?”

  Simmons nodded. “The only outward indication he was here are the bootprints he left in the carpet.”

  “They were big,” I said. “I got up close and personal with them.”

  “Size twelve,” Simmons confirmed. “From the depth of the depression in the carpet, we think he’s around two hundred pounds. And from your description in relation to the height of the back wall, we estimate he’s about six two.”

  “We can thank Gerald for the ease of spotting the footprints,” I told
him. “He said he was going to clean the house after we left. When he vacuums, he always begins in the farthest corner of a room and works his way to the door, so he doesn’t leave prints. This guy had some unusual tricks up his sleeve, but thankfully levitation wasn’t one of them. I’m almost glad he took on two of your guys on his way out, otherwise I’d have had trouble convincing the police we’d even had a break-in.”

  Simmons went to the big oak desk that Grandad had cleared before we left. The company’s two forensics techs were using it as their worktable. He picked up what looked like a square petri dish. “Step over to the light. These are hard to see.”

  Inside were what looked like four computer chips. All four of them would’ve fit on top of a pencil eraser without overlapping.

  “So, he’s been listening to us?” I asked.

  “Someone has, and they’ve been able to access information on any device used in this room.”

  “Phones and computers.”

  Simmons nodded. “Both compromised. You’ll want to change all your passwords, and alert your credit card—”

  I waved him off. This intruder didn’t want to hack my Ikea account, and I couldn’t think of anyone else we’d dealt with recently who would’ve gained anything from bugging our office. “Noted. How about the rest of the house? Is it secure?”

  “Unknown. We’re scanning it now.”

  “Thank you. I’d like you to check my apartment over the carriage house as well.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “And you should probably go over Grandad’s car, too. Let’s cover all the bases while you’re here.”

  “Agreed.”

  An hour later, Simmons and his people had found three more bugs in the town house and two in my apartment. There was also one in the car, which in addition to listening, allowed whoever planted it to track where we went. Surprisingly, they’d left my Harley alone. Simmons installed jamming devices in the town house, my apartment, and the car that would prevent any future bugs from transmitting, plus gave me a portable version to use in whatever room I happened to be in when I didn’t want to be listened to or followed. Simmons changed the password for my apartment directly on the control panel and did the same in the town house. Pablo had been the password for less than an hour. Yes, it was paranoid, but I felt more than entitled. Someone had come into our home, planted bugs, and had been listening to us, day and night. Violated was only the beginning of what I felt.

  I locked the apartment, armed the alarm, and returned to the town house, where Berta and Rees were waiting in the office.

  The security-company reps had finished their work and gone. For the next few days, our house would be under constant surveillance. Now it was my turn to investigate. They hadn’t found much, but I wasn’t looking for the same things.

  Berta started to speak, and I quickly put a finger to my lips.

  Yep, paranoia and I were going to be besties until further notice.

  The intruder had left plenty of other footprints in the room, so I didn’t feel bad messing up two of them. I stood next to the prints and removed my boots and socks. I put a glove on my left hand, leaving my right bare. A wood panel that blended with the rest of the wall concealed the safe. I pushed aside the panel with my gloved hand. I wanted my first contact to be with the safe’s keypad and the bootprints. I knew the safe’s seven-digit code. I stilled my mind, stepped into the prints and placed two of my fingertips on the keys that were repeated, since the intruder would’ve touched them more than once.

  The impressions were fresh and immediate.

  He’d known I was in the carriage house and was unconcerned about being caught. On the contrary, he hoped I’d sense he was there and come looking for him. I didn’t get a sense of what he was looking for. It was almost as if he wouldn’t allow himself to think of it. I felt his frustration here as I had when I’d grabbed his ankle outside. He knew time was running out. He was being forced to react rather than being the one in control. This was a game to them, and it had turned deadly. I didn’t know who the intruder was referring to by “them,” but I knew that “turned deadly” had to mean Julian and Alan.

  I stepped out of the prints, cleared my mind, then stepped back into them for a second try. I didn’t get anything new. The same visceral emotions, frustration and anger at an unknown person or persons.

  Berta and Rees were waiting patiently for my findings.

  I gave them a grim thumbs-up, then moved on to Grandad’s desk. I pulled out his chair and sat.

  Damn. One of the techs from the security company had been the last to sit here. The intruder hadn’t used it at all. The tech had been impressed by the sophistication of the devices that’d been planted here and wondered what Grandad and I really did for a living. I had news for him: it wasn’t anything that would attract the kind of man who’d been here tonight. The intruder hadn’t needed to sit to go through our desks. If I’d been breaking into an office, I wouldn’t have made myself at home while I ransacked the place. Get in, get what I came for, and get out.

  I pushed the chair back and scanned the floor. There were more bootprints that matched the ones in front of the safe. I stood and put my bare feet in them, getting nothing more than what I already knew, just a sense of searching for something; but again, no indication of what.

  I went from drawer to drawer in Grandad’s desk, running my hand just above the contents.

  Nothing.

  I moved to my desk and did the same, sliding out the big drawer under the top of the desk. I didn’t touch anything at first. I simply let my eyes roam over the contents, remembering what should be there, versus what might be missing now. Everything appeared to be in order, but then neither Grandad nor I kept neat desk drawers, so it wasn’t exactly easy to tell.

  I stood where the intruder had stood and held my right hand just above the desk contents, moving it from right to left, working my way through the drawer, trying to get a feel for whether anything had been—

  My flash drives.

  I kept them in a box in the front left corner. He’d stood here and picked up each and every one—and he’d put them back in the box. He hadn’t been in the office long enough to have opened the files, and Grandad and I had both taken our laptops with us. He could’ve copied the contents onto a phone. He’d bugged us with the latest spy tech. Quickly copying the contents of my flash drives would’ve been a piece of cake. He was going to be disappointed. I hadn’t used any of them in years.

  I finished scanning the top drawer and moved to the other three.

  He’d only been interested in the flash drives.

  Data. Files. Of course, I had absolutely no clue what was on the files he was looking for, but I was all but certain he’d been barking up the wrong tree. If he’d been the one who had planted those bugs, he’d already had access to our laptops and probably our cloud accounts. When he hadn’t found what he was looking for there, that would be when he’d decided to come here. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing he’d struck out again.

  Perhaps that had been the cause of his frustration and anger.

  I smiled. I hadn’t been able to pull him down from that wall, but I’d take what I could get. For now.

  I glanced at Rees and Berta, then pointed toward the door behind my desk. The narrow hallway would take us to the kitchen. Simmons hadn’t found any bugs in that room, so I felt relatively safe talking there while using the portable jammer.

  Time for that coffee I still hadn’t had.

  It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER 10

  Gerald kept emergency muffins in the freezer. Grandad and I defined any time Gerald wasn’t home as a gastronomic emergency. The events of the past few hours had broadened that definition considerably, so I felt entirely justified thawing three of them.

  While the microwave worked its magic and Pablo snored happily from his corner bed, I started a pot of coffee and told Rees and Berta what I’d sensed i
n the office.

  “He wouldn’t even let himself think of what he was looking for,” I said. “That’s tough to do, so I can add ‘extreme mental discipline’ to ‘annoyingly limber,’ and he had to know I’d be literally following in his footsteps. This guy’s a professional who can get his hands on intelligence-agency tech, plus he was in the Russell Building and recognized me.”

  “In all likelihood, if he’s not with an agency, he’s got contacts with one,” Rees told me.

  “Not the kind of person I want to know about me,” I said. “I’m not accusing you, but who else in the FBI, other than Roger Hudson, knows what I do?”

  “No one. And Hudson knows how vital it is that your secret stays that way.”

  “I know you’re careful,” Berta said, “but it wouldn’t really take that much to do the math. Where you go, cases get solved quickly, and most of the time there’s not any kind of physical evidence trail to go on. Bear in mind that the ‘intelligence’ in ‘intelligence community’ also means smart. There’s a lot of scary-smart IC people in this town.”

  I held up both hands. “Well aware. No reminder needed.”

  The microwave beeped, and I plated and served the muffins. I knew scary-smart people were out there. And if some of those people found a man like our intruder with a high level of psychokinetic skill, they’d latch on to him with every hand they had and never let go. That was the main reason Grandad and I were very careful of what we did in public and in front of whom. He’d made it clear to me that there were dark depths to the intelligence community that were best left unexplored. Grandad had been in government work since his early twenties, skirting the edges of its occasional forays into psychic research without revealing himself to have any talents of his own. He’d discovered that true PK skills were incredibly rare, and of those who held them, less than one percent had any ability past the spoon-bending level. Rolling a pencil across a desk was the limit for most, much to our government’s disappointment. Party tricks wouldn’t give you a leg up on the latest terrorist threat.

  As a result, any work I did with Rees and Berta involved me keeping my head down and trying to blend in with the drapes. I thought I’d been successful. Apparently, I’d thought wrong.