We walked to another one of the buildings in the compound—the largest one. The moment I passed through the door, I could hear the hum. I could feel it, too. It was everywhere—in the air, under my feet, throbbing behind my eyes. It wasn’t loud, but it was inescapable and annoying as—
“Shit.” I closed my eyes and ground the heel of my hand into my forehead.
Allgood turned from speaking in low tones to the guard at the door. “What … oh, the vibrations. It does take some getting used to, but eventually you learn to tune it out.”
Here was hoping I wasn’t around long enough to pick up that particular skill. “Jesus.” I gave up trying to rub the sound out of my head and set my teeth against yet another incipient headache. I opened my eyes when I felt something nudge my gloved hand. A familiar red and white bottle of painkillers was resting in my palm.
“Keep it,” he said with genuine apology. “We don’t exactly seem good for your health.” Hector was either softening up or he was more like Charlie than I wanted to admit.
I shook the bottle lightly and decided to hold off for the moment. If today were anything like yesterday, I would need them more later on. I followed silently as he led me down a hall and into a large, open lab area. The far wall was glass from ceiling to floor, and behind it squatted a mammoth machine, oval-shaped. It was encased in smooth white metal and almost looked vaguely medical in nature, but I had my doubts. Some fancy new X-ray machine wasn’t enough to justify the military presence or the blackmailing of an obscure psychic.
“Is this the one?”
The voice came from the side, and I turned to see a man approaching, followed by two more. The one in the lead had a laptop computer under one arm and a brusquely impatient expression. It sat with ease on his face, which was all sharp angles and planes. His hair, a little spiky and long from inattention, was blond streaked with gray. He had ferociously intelligent brown eyes behind silver-framed glasses and a pugnacious jaw. “Finally,” he muttered under his breath, not waiting for confirmation as to my “oneness.” He pushed up the sleeve of his lab coat to check his watch and shot Hector a barbed glance. “We’re behind schedule. Did you give him a tour first? Dinner and a show?”
Tall dark asshole versus short blond asshole. The reality was no improvement over the prediction.
“That’s precisely what I did, Julian. I’m sorry, did you want an invitation?” Hector answered smoothly, with a deliberate insult behind the first name. He was talking to a man who, unlike Hector, would shove his academic degrees down your throat in the first moment.
Eyes narrowed behind clear lenses. “It’s approximately forty-two hours until the next ether-rip, Dr. Allgood. Do you want to engage in this sparkling repartee or do something more useful with our time? Perhaps something along the lines of saving a few lives or so. Your decision entirely, of course. Shall the rest of us go for coffee and croissants while you think it over?”
Damn. I felt my status as ruling smart-mouthed bastard slip a fraction. I was curious about the phrase ether-rip, but I could wait to ask Hector later about that. I certainly wasn’t asking this guy. He was one razor-edged, cold son of a bitch; working with him was probably hell on earth. I didn’t have it in me to feel sorry for Hector, but surprisingly, I could feel sorry for Charlie’s brother. Hector was the one who had coerced me into being here; Charlie’s brother was the one who’d fed me before tossing me to the wolf in the lab coat. That meant, of course, the emotion passed, and I went back to feeling sorry for the one who really deserved it. Me.
Hector stretched out a hand and reappropriated the bottle in mine. Shaking out two capsules for himself, he said flatly, “Jackson, this is Dr. Julian Thackery. His entourage is Dr. Sloane and Dr. Fujiwara. Thackery, this is our ace in the hole, Jackson Eye. Or he will be, assuming we don’t starve him to death.” It was the barest minimum of an explanation and apparently all he was going to give.
Dr. Sloane had eyes that might as well come from a sci-fi cyborg—glass balls empty and hollow except for the cold fire of science. Dr. Fujiwara’s were human and mildly sympathetic, as if he were a researcher who knew that giving cute white mice cancer was necessary, but he regretted it. Did it all the same, though. C’est la vie or c’est la morte. Which was worse? Not to have a conscience or to ignore the one you had?
Thackery exhaled and pulled off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “We’re wasting time we don’t have. Is it any wonder nerves are running high, including mine?” He replaced his glasses and added briskly, “Now, let’s see what your pet psychic can do.” A whole three seconds of forced humanity, and Dr. Dick was back.
Thackery moved off to a long table that was parked against one wall. Allgood and the other doctors followed, and after a beat, so did I. There were more whitecoats milling about, men and women. All of them seemed to share the same sense of urgency. Some stared at computer monitors, while others clustered by what looked like a clear Plexiglas partition. As I watched, a map was projected from within. Brilliant colors and exquisitely sharp details bloomed. Several locations were marked with a bloodred ring. One such circle was chosen and expanded into an aerial view of a lone house.
“Jackson.”
I turned away from the oddly ominous sight and joined the two at the table. As I was sitting, Thackery had picked up a file and was thumbing through it swiftly. It was my file, judging by his next comment. “Psychometry.” He frowned and tapped his fingers on the table as he read. “That’s all you can do?” Sloane and Fujiwara, positioned behind him, exchanged a glance.
“The things I can do are limited only by my imagination and the distance between my foot and your ass,” I replied matter-of-factly, as I slouched in the chair and held out a hand to Hector for the bottle. I’d made an about-face on my earlier decision. There was no time like the present.
Before Thackery could articulate his offense—and, trust me, you don’t turn that particular purple color if you’re not offended—Hector spoke up. “Considering that until yesterday, we didn’t have proof that psychic phenomena actually existed, Thackery, I believe we’re ahead of the game.”
“Allgood, we’re not even in the game,” he shot back, slapping the file shut. “And I think we know who we have to thank for that. Charles moved too fast with the project. You know it. I know it. The entire team knows it.”
The patches of skin over Hector’s cheekbones whitened. “Is this something you truly want to start, Dr. Thackery?” he asked, voice empty of the emotion clearly seen in the blanching of his skin and the setting of his jaw.
Yeah, this place ran like a well-oiled machine. I’d be out of here in no time. “Can we get this show on the road?” I demanded before the next volley. “I’m not exactly getting paid for this, you know, and as much as I love pro bono work, I have a dog to feed.”
“You are getting paid,” Hector corrected, his jaw relaxing minutely. “It probably won’t be your standard two hundred dollars an hour, but you’ll be compensated.”
I blinked. I liked to think … no, I knew that I could correctly read most people and situations down to their foundations and below, but I had to give it to Allgood. He took me by surprise; I had not seen that coming. Not a hint. I recovered enough to curl my lip in disdain. “It’s hard to make a living as a blackmailer if you pay your victims, Dr. Allgood.”
There was a knowing glint in his eye that indicated that I hadn’t fooled him with the weak sarcasm, but Hector only slipped a hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic cuff. It was of a size to fit a man’s wrist, but it was nothing like a hospital bracelet. This was actually solid, about three inches wide, and looked as if it would be heavy. “I think, Jackson, it’s time to show Dr. Thackery what you can do.” He slid the ring across the table toward me. “I need this man’s location. Where he is at this moment.”
Thackery leaned back, folded arms across his chest, and watched me with the cool skepticism of Dr. Frankenstein presented with a cocker spaniel’s brain. S
ure, it was a brain, but it wasn’t quite what he’d sent out for. And he had his doubts that it would be especially useful.
I ignored him and peeled off a glove. Any questions I might’ve had, whether the man they wanted me to find was an industrial spy or something similar, would be answered the second I touched the cuff. There was no need to voice them. I was almost eager in reaching for it. I was tired of being in the dark. Normally, I wouldn’t have given a shit what they were up to in this muddy prison, but being that it was affecting me rather personally, I wanted to know. Despite Hector’s occasional outburst of humanity, no one was going to watch my ass for me; I had to do what I could for myself. This piece of white plastic might be a start for that. Discarding my glove casually to the side, I picked up the bracelet.
The next thing I knew, someone was picking me up.
The hands had turned me over onto my side as I vomited miserably. Through bleary eyes, I could see it spread over ugly green tile. The floor—I was on the floor, and I hurt. The back of my head was aching fiercely, as were my forehead and my neck—hell, my whole body. As the heaving stopped, I could feel a warm rush of liquid at my hairline over my left eyebrow as someone snapped fiercely, “Where is Dr. Guerrera? Where the hell is Meleah?” Hector’s voice. Hector’s concern. Hector’s goddamn fault.
“You son of a bitch,” I slurred through lips that felt numb, then swallowed against another rise of bile. “Charlie.”
“I know, Jackson. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.” I felt my head lifted carefully as something soft was placed beneath it. It was a towel, brand new and telling me nothing. Thank God. “Someone give me some rubber gloves,” he rapped out, and seconds later, I could feel cool latex fingers pull my own glove onto my limp hand. Still lying on my side, I tried to focus as Hector swam into view. He tossed another towel over the vomit and knelt beside me. There was a folded washcloth in his hand, and he pressed it against my forehead. “Tell me if you get anything off this, and I’ll get another one, but we need to stop the bleeding.”
I must have looked as confused as my sluggish mind felt, and he added, “You hit your head on the table when you fell.” He hesitated. “You had a seizure.” Judging by the gray cast to his face, it must have been a bad one. A real doozy. Maybe I’d get a bonus for the show. Watch the psychic as he flops like a fish out of water, pukes like a frat boy, and hopefully doesn’t piss himself. Good clean family fun; come one, come all.
I closed my eyes and muttered thickly, “Bastard. You knew.”
“No.” That was the esteemed Dr. Thackery pitching in. From the sound of it, he was behind me, probably giving a wide berth to the vomit. He didn’t strike me as having a God-like compassion for his fellow man. Like old times. He was another Lewis Sugarman out of Cane Lake. He had more regard for keeping his shoes clean. “Charles died painlessly. There was no reason for us to suspect you would react this way. I’m sure you perform … what is the terminology? Readings. Yes, you perform readings with the objects of the dead all the time.” There’s nothing quite like someone making supercilious excuses for their behavior while you’re lying near a pool of your own sick.
“Painless.” I choked out a laugh, stark and humorless. Rolling onto my back, I folded my arms tightly across my chest. It was an instinctive gesture I thought I’d outgrown. Don’t touch. It was from the early Cane Lake days when I’d had less control over my so-called gift. I closed my eyes as Charlie’s last moments squeezed my brain in a fistlike vise. “Wasn’t painless.” In fact, it was as far from painless as you could possibly get. The seizure I’d once suffered at the hospital had been caused by touching the metal railing of the gurney I had been lying on. I’d picked up the death of a man who’d been shot numerous times in the torso with a semiautomatic. Acid had boiled free from a perforated stomach to burn everything in its path. Tattered lungs had filled with suffocating blood. Bones had been shattered, tearing the flesh around them with calcium shrapnel. He’d bled and cried for his mother and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Apparently, so had I. Charlie’s death had been right up there with that. I’d touched that curved piece of plastic and felt it all. Normally, an object has to be with someone a long time to build up their personal signature, to contain a summary of their life. But there are exceptions. A violent death is the one that tops the list. I didn’t know exactly how Charlie had died, because he himself hadn’t known, but I felt it … every god-awful, agonizing second.
“What are you saying?” Hector’s voice was hoarse, but his hand retained firm pressure on my forehead.
Despite his efforts, I still could feel the blood trickling back into my hair. He had known but couldn’t resist one last test. Never mind if he and the others genuinely, if stupidly, had assumed that Charlie had gone easily into that good night. Hector had played his game without thinking that he hadn’t known, couldn’t know what Charlie had actually felt, and I was the one who’d gotten burned.
He also didn’t know the worst. Charlie hadn’t known exactly how it had been done, but he’d known what had been done.
He’d been murdered.
“Nothing. I’m not saying a damn thing.”
And I didn’t. From that moment on, I didn’t say another word. Charlie had known that someone had killed him, but he didn’t know who, and then he didn’t know anything but pain. That meant I didn’t know, either, and I wasn’t about to let a murderer catch on and put me next on his list. I’d say things had gone from sugar to shit in no time, but there hadn’t been any sugar to begin with. From the frying pan into the fire, maybe. Charlie, damn it, what the hell did you get your old roommate into?
Meleah Guerrera showed up with a couple of medical technicians, and I was put into a cervical collar, strapped to a backboard, and lifted to be whisked off to medical. The gurney, liberally covered with fresh sheets that no one had died on, bounced out of the building and over mud that had dried to uncomfortable peaks and gullies. The sky was that unlikely Georgia summer blue, scorched to a pale denim by the blazing sun, and I watched it with unblinking eyes until we entered the comparative cool gloom of the building I’d left only ten minutes before. Allgood and Thackery followed, engaged in a low-voiced, heated exchange. If I’d tried, I might have made out what they were saying. I didn’t try. I had enough to think about.
Charlie was the kind of person who, if given the opportunity, would have changed the world. Unfortunately, his opportunity ran out too soon, but he had been well on his way. He had big plans, great plans, and those plans had killed him. But if they hadn’t, what he would’ve accomplished … Charlie always was a dreamer. Eminently practical, blazingly intelligent, but he’d never been content to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. Charlie wanted to fly—in ways man had yet to accomplish. He’d apparently had a bigger budget than Icarus, though he’d ended up the same damn way … even if someone had helped him out with a big shove.
I’d missed him before. Yeah, I’d deny it to anyone, including myself, but I had. And now … I knew him. Knew every moment of Charlie’s life as if I’d lived it with him, side by side. His twin, his constant shadow. I saw myself through his eyes—sullen, smart-assed, and so transparently vulnerable it made a young, bighearted Charlie ache. I saw Hector as a child—responsible, straitlaced, and with braces so bright they could strike you blind. I celebrated every birthday and holiday. I was there when Charlie proposed to Meleah and she gently, wisely turned him down. When he got drunk with his brother over it, I tasted the beer on my tongue. And when he finally admitted to himself with a rueful laugh that it was for the best, that he was already married to his work, I felt his relief and acceptance. I thought I’d missed Charlie before, now and again. God, I hadn’t had a clue.
I tried to push it aside to focus on the fact that not once did he have an enemy that he knew of. Everyone liked Charlie.
So who had killed him?
“Jackson, I need you to answer my questions. I need to evaluate you.”
I blinked and opened my eye
s. I hadn’t realized that I’d closed them, lost in Charlie’s memories. Meleah was leaning over me, concern in her now wholly familiar gray eyes. Around her neck on a chain hung a ring. Silver, it was inscribed with a simple flowing pattern. I lifted a hand to capture it, the metal bright against the black silk. “You told Charlie you lost it.”
Her mouth opened and closed before she took the ring carefully from my hand. “I did. I found it a month after he died. It was in my car under the seat.”
“Smells like lemons.” I closed my eyes again. Her car had smelled like lemons every time Charlie rode in it. And although he hadn’t much liked lemony things—hated lemon meringue pie, found lemonade too tart—he’d liked the smell. Liked it because it was a Meleah smell. I found myself liking it for the same reason, which wasn’t good. I needed a little distance in time and space from all the “Charlie” whirling around in me. His death/murder had been enough to sear the details of his life into me with more force than usual. It had happened before, and there was only one cure for it.
“I need to sleep.” I crossed my arms across my chest and tucked my hands protectively into my armpits. “Now.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Eye, but you’ve had a seizure, struck your head. We need to do X-rays and an EEG at the very least.” She said more, but I missed it. I didn’t need permission to sleep; I was only giving fair warning. I couldn’t have stayed awake if I’d wanted to. The only way to deal with such an abrupt and bruising onslaught of knowledge was to shut down temporarily. I’d learned that the hard way over the years. My body was calling the shots here, not me. I closed my eyes, and less than a second later, I was gone. Gone but not alone.
Charlie was with me.
9
When I woke up, it was to blue skies, green trees, and mellow sunlight drifting through a window. I blinked blurry eyes, and the warm image resolved itself into a mural painted on the wall. What a ripoff. Of course, classified was classified, but on the other hand, we wouldn’t want bed-bound patients to go stark raving mad, either. So let’s paint a window on the wall with a happy little outdoors scene. That’s as good, right?