“She might be using a different name,” he replied in a genial voice. “She might be going by Jane now…” The man looked me square in the eye as he said this, gauging my reactions while telling me he knew exactly who I was.
It was only with the help of Mr. Fluffybutt, my hand clamping around one of his arms from inside my oversized bag, that I was able to tamp down my rising panic enough to answer, “I think I’ve heard of a few girls named Jane in town, but I couldn’t tell you where. Sorry!”
“No problem,” he assured me. “Say, if she happens to come in, would you mind giving her my card?” He laid a small business card on the counter in front of me and I eyed it the same way I would a ticking bomb.
“Sure!” I assured him, plastering on a jovial smile that was total theater.
The man took the keychain and left the store and I focused on paying for the keychain rather than the card he had left behind.
The man knew who I was, of that there could be no doubt! What was I going to do? Could I run? A year ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have grabbed a few clothes and taken the first bus going anywhere without so much as a note to Sarah, figuring I’d contact her later, after the immediate threat had passed. Not now, though… Now I had friends, I had people that counted on me, I had a foster mother that I actually liked!
I couldn’t give them up. I wouldn’t give them up.
But what could I do? The man knew who I really was! Nobody in town knew my name from before! Oh sure, they probably all knew that I had changed my name, but they didn’t know what it was before! How did this man find out? What did he want? How much danger or trouble was I in?
With shaking hands, I picked up the card and examined it. It was a plain white card with a handwritten phone number on it and nothing else. There wasn’t so much as a name on the card, which seemed odd. I considered calling the number on the card, but I rejected that idea almost immediately. For one thing, I didn’t want to call while I was working and there were people nearby. For another thing, I realized I had another way to gather information without his knowing, something he wouldn’t expect!
I put the card carefully away, having made my decision. I would use my ability tonight, when I was home with the kids, and see what kind of man he was and maybe find out what he wanted with me.
You ever notice that when you try not to think about something, your mind inevitably veers back to that thing you’re avoiding? Well, that’s what happened to me… The more I tried not to think about the mystery man and his damned card, the more I ended up obsessing over it!
Anne noticed my distracted state as well as my uneasiness after she got back from her successful raid of an estate sale. She asked me what was wrong, but I blew her off with something like, ‘it’s nothing’ or maybe a ‘don’t worry about it’ or even a ‘I’m fine.’ I don’t really remember, that’s how distracted I was!
It was hours later before the store finally, mercifully, closed and Anne gave me a ride home, her SUV managing the mostly cleared streets without a problem. She dropped me off in front of my gravel driveway, or where it should have been since we couldn’t see it under all the snow. She stayed parked in front of my house until I made my way inside, waving to her before closing the door.
I squirmed out of my winter outerwear amid happy cries of welcome from Wendy and Peter. I glanced around the living room and saw that they had done some redecorating while I had been away. A few of the smaller items had changed places from this morning and one of the chairs had moved to a corner. This is what poltergeists do when they’re bored… they rearrange the space they’re in.
Well, as long as they didn’t break anything…
I told Peter and Wendy what had happened and what I planned to do as I made some coffee. I don’t usually drink coffee so late in the evening, but I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble getting to sleep after what I was about to do, since it would likely exhaust me. The coffee should keep me awake long enough to get some food in me afterwards, as I was feeling too impatient to get this over with to do it after I ate. Besides, I was so distracted since I got that damned card, that I’d probably burn the bacon, which is an unforgivable sin in my book!
I set the card on the dining table next to my mug of coffee, already half-gone, and stared at it for a while. I was both anxious to do this and dreading it. I wanted to get it over with and stall for as long as possible.
In all my years since this fateful evening, I’ve learned a saying among skydivers. ‘You only have to be brave for a moment, the rest is freefall.’ Well, that’s what I did. I was brave for a moment, then fell to my fate!
I gulped the last of my coffee and grabbed the card, forcing my mind through the weak connection the card offered. What I saw was a man sitting at a cheap table in a cheap motel room drinking bad coffee. He was staring intently at a white card that looked identical to the one I was holding, aside from the phone number. The phone number on the card he was holding was different than the number on the card I was holding. I tried to get more information from his mind, but the connection was weak and I was straining as it was.
“Why are you staring at a business card?” I asked, pushing my voice into his head.
The man was startled so badly, the coffee spilled everywhere! Lucky for him, the coffee had gone cold, so he wasn’t burned, which was good news for me, since I was feeling what he felt, namely fear.
“Who are you?” he asked, jumping up and drawing a gun. “Where are you?” he demanded.
“I asked first!” I insisted, not liking that his first reaction was to draw a gun.
“I can’t answer your question until you answer mine!” he declared.
“You gave me your card,” I told him bluntly. “Except the phone number on the card is different than the number on the card you were staring at! Why?”
The man lowered his gun and I caught the fleeting thought ‘she’s not here!’ go through his head.
“The card was a test,” he answered, a little awed. “If you had called the number on the card I gave you, you would have failed. I was hoping you would call the number on the card I was holding, but this!” he cried jubilantly. “This is better than I could have hoped for!”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, putting some anger into my voice.
“My source had told me you might be a strong sensitive,” he told me. I could feel his eyes going wide as he got more and more excited. “But your voice is coming through crystal clear! That means that you’re also a strong broadcaster!”
“Sensitive? Broadcaster?” I asked, trying desperately to follow his train of thought.
“I’ll explain everything if you meet with me!” he told me in a non-answer.
“What makes you think I should trust you?” I sneered. “I don’t even know your name!”
“My name,” he told me, walking to the bathroom mirror, confirming he was the same man that had come into the store and given me the card, “is Earl. Earl E. Mansplainer, and I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA!”
Even I, homeschooled bumpkin that I was, knew about the CIA… I also knew that I had suddenly found myself to be in more trouble than I thought was possible for me… I was in way over my head and I knew it!
I didn’t see any other choice. He knew who I was, where I worked, and probably knew where I lived! Running was no longer an option if he was telling me the truth, and I could feel that he was, as he could use agency resources to find me no matter where I ran!
“Where do you want to meet?” I asked him.
I saw as well as felt his smile grow wider and a gleam came into his eyes. He had me and he knew it!
Chapter 20
Recruitment
After setting up the meeting for the next day, the first thing I did was have a great big dinner with a lovely aged steak, sautéed potatoes, a side of oven-baked bacon, and… a small salad with rendered bacon fat as a key part of actual salad dressing. See? Bacon is so magical that its
fat can even redeem salads! Salads, people!
After the meal, I was feeling better, less out of breath, and less lightheaded. I figured now was a good time to call for help from the only person I could think of that might have a clue about how much trouble I was in and possible ways I might get out of such trouble, namely Sarah.
I dug out the bracelet she had given me for this exact purpose. At this point, I didn’t trust using any kind of phone, since this was the CIA I was dealing with. There have been lots of stories of them tapping phones of people of interest. I was pretty certain I qualified as a person of interest. Plus, I had had many people coming and going from the house as I worked to make it livable, so there had been ample opportunity to plant any number of bugs throughout any of the rooms!
The connection from the bracelet was still weak, but at least it was stronger than the business card. I sent my mind through the connection and into Sarah’s head. She seemed to be watching a late show, without paying much attention to it, while sipping some wine. Satisfied that I wouldn’t be interrupting anything important, I made my presence known.
“Ring, ring!” I said into her head.
“Jane?” she asked, a little startled, but recovering quickly.
“Know anyone else able to talk to you in your head?” I asked, halfway joking.
“Well, before I met you,” Sarah returned in the same halfway joking manner, “I didn’t think anyone could talk to me directly into my head!”
“Fair enough,” I conceded, using one of her favorite phrases. “Sorry for interrupting your show.”
“I wasn’t really paying attention to the show,” Sarah admitted. “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I confessed. “Sarah, I think I might be in some trouble…” I told her, plunging into the reason for the call.
“What kind of trouble?” Sarah asked, growing concerned.
“A man came into the shop,” I started. “He was looking for Gloria Lujah, then said she might have changed her name to Jane.”
At this, Sarah set down her glass of wine and shut off the TV, concentrating her attention completely on me. “What did he want?” she asked, her concern sharp in my head.
“He was testing me,” I told her, trying to ease into this gently. “He gave me a card with a phone number, but he wanted me to call a different number, one that he was staring at later, in a motel room…”
“He knew what you could do?” she asked, growing alarmed.
“Some of it,” I answered, “at first…”
“At first?” she asked, already considering the possibilities.
“I spoke to him, like I’m speaking to you now,” I confessed.
“I see…” Sarah paused, considering. “How did he react to that?”
“Startled at first, but then he was thrilled!” I told her, growing nervous. “He said that I was a strong ‘sensitive’ and ‘broadcaster’ but wouldn’t tell me what he meant…”
“Who is this man?” Sarah asked, grabbing a laptop, ready to start searching for him.
“He said he was with the CIA…” I admitted, suppressing some panic.
Sarah stopped what she was doing with the laptop, her eyes going wide, before shouting in a harsh whisper, “Shit!”
This took me by surprise! Sarah does not swear! This was the very first time I had ever heard her use a word harsher than ‘heck’!
“Do you know how he might have found out about me?” I asked her, worried about who else might know about me beyond the few I’ve already told.
Sarah let out a large sigh before answering. “There have always been rumors that the CIA sought informants within the foundation. We’ve tried to investigate them, but nobody has ever admitted to anything, so there was little we could do.”
“So, you think it was someone at the foundation that told them?” I asked, somewhat surprised. I had thought of all people, it would have been Beth or Anne or maybe even Sheriff Carter. I thought that if anyone at the foundation had told anyone about me, I would have heard about it before, not years later.
“If they knew about your name from before,” Sarah reasoned, “then that seems more likely than anyone else, unless you told anyone else about your name change?”
“No!” I almost shouted into her head. “I haven’t told anyone about my name from before.”
I had told Sarah about the people I had met, including Beth, Anne, and Sheriff Carter, but I hadn’t told her anything beyond that I had some friends and allies that were looking out for me, and then mostly to reassure her that I was okay on my own.
“I thought as much,” Sarah admitted, thinking I had always been touchy about the matter of my birth name, which I confess is accurate. “What do your friends know about what you can do?”
It was my turn to sigh before answering, “Beth is a gossip, and seems to think I have a way with haunted houses. She’s had me investigate a few of them. Anne and the sheriff know that I can see through people’s eyes, but I’ve kept my ability to talk back a secret from everyone but you… and Tommy…”
“Did Tommy know your real name?” Sarah asked, a note of compassion in her voice. She knows that I regret not being able to find Tommy again to tell him about how he saved me. He’s another sore subject with me…
“He didn’t,” I told her. “He knew that Jane wasn’t my real name, but he never pressed me on it too much.”
“What about your parents? Billi and Jack?” she asked.
“I’d never dream of telling them I could do anything like this,” I scoffed. “If they knew I could do this, I would have been dead and buried a long time ago!”
“Then it seems most likely someone at the foundation leaked the information,” Sarah admitted, both angry and depressed.
“So, what do I do?” I asked her, coming to the heart of the matter. “What can I do?”
“Legally,” Sarah started, slowly at first, but speeding up, “there’s nothing they can do to make you work for them, since you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I observed.
“However,” Sarah half-chided, deliberately choosing a different word than the one she was first going to use, “they will likely offer you a deal that you’ll find difficult to turn down.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, getting a little more nervous.
“I mean that I think they’re going to offer you a job!” Sarah almost giggled.
“A job?” I asked, a little startled. “Doing what?”
Okay, I confess that I was still incredibly naïve at this point. I knew of the CIA, but mostly from a few procedurals on TV, but little about what they actually did.
Being in Sarah’s head, I know she didn’t mean to laugh at me, but she did, which made me feel bad.
“Jane,” Sarah told me after she had calmed down from her chuckle, “you have the ability to covertly observe what a person sees or hears just by holding something that used to belong to them. Such an object could easily be stolen by people trained in sleight of hand, which agents are! Hell, they have a handbook that was written by a magician that teaches them how to pick pockets and other tricks! You are untraceable and unstoppable! You’re basically the perfect spy.”
The implications of what Sarah told me took a while to seep into my head. I mean, yes, I’ve used this ability to spy on one or two people without their knowledge at the time, but I always told them afterwards! Well, except for Billi… but you can hardly blame me for that! There was also Carter’s ex-husband… but that was not my fault! Okay, fine, there was also little Jessy, but that was to save her! The thought of being paid to spy on random people in other countries was unsettling to me. It’s one thing to do it to find someone, but it’s something else to invade some stranger’s privacy to get information that could hurt them…
I didn’t like it…
“What do you think I should do?” I asked Sarah, feeling a looming cliff rapidly approaching me.
Sarah leaned back i
n her chair, looking at the ceiling and closing her eyes. I could feel her thoughts racing, but I tried not to pay attention to them, turning a blind eye, so to speak, to them… After maybe a minute, she finally answered, “That will, ultimately, have to be your decision. I think that, if you choose to take their offer, you should do it on your terms. Remember, if you don’t feel completely comfortable with what they ask of you, you don’t have to do it, however I should warn you that they may try to blackmail you if you don’t go along.”
I considered her advice for a moment, before feeling the toll of using this ability so much in one day. I told her I had to stop and promised to let her know what happened, if I was allowed, and let go of the bracelet, a new wave of exhaustion coming over me.
I made a snack of some pork rinds (don’t judge, they’re puffy, salty, protein goodness) before going to bed early.
The next day was a Sunday, when Anne kept the store closed, so I had no real obstacles to making the meeting with the mysterious Earl, aside from getting there. Turns out, Earl had that part figured out, too!
Wendy alerted me that a man was walking up the drive I hadn’t bothered to clear. I peeked out a front window and saw that Earl was slowly making his way through the ankle-deep snow, likely cursing the whole way, since he was still wearing his formal-looking shoes. In my defense, I didn’t try to clear out the snow because my mailbox is right at the street, I do not have a car, and I figured it would be difficult to shovel a gravel drive. Maybe I should hire someone to do it for me? I’d consider that another time, since my immediate concern was the man from the federal agency.
I was already dressed in my winter garb, including a thick pair of winter boots, when I opened the door as he was still trudging up the path. I stood there, resolutely silent, as he made his way up the porch steps. I held out my ungloved hand to him offering to shake his hand. I confess I had an ulterior motive for doing this. So far, I only had his word he was who he said he was. I wanted some confirmation before leaving with him. I had come up with this last night and I figured that even if he was wearing gloves, I’d still be able to get into his head.
Call Me Jane Page 16