I closed my hand around the keys and felt the flood.
I didn’t let it through. I had no choice. I touched, and it came, sure as death and taxes. I knew one much better than the other, but that’s why God made accountants.
I tightened my fist around the metal as wave after wave crashed over me. I could feel my body temperature dropping like a rock.
Great.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
I’d mentally called Thackery a sociopath more than once, but I hadn’t meant it. True sociopaths are rare. Assholes are common. I’d thought Thackery was more likely the second. I was wrong.
Stepping into the mind of a true sociopath was like locking yourself in a walk-in freezer, alone. All the warmth was immediately drained out of you. There was no physical reason it should happen—sociopaths weren’t walking Popsicles—but it happened just the same. And then there was the aloneness. There was no one else in the world but you. No one in the room, no one in the building, no one in the state … the country … across the ocean. Not a single speck of life anywhere, not even bacteria. You might as well be on the surface of the moon.
That was being a sociopath. The sole creature in their universe. People, animals—they weren’t the same as you. They weren’t alive. They didn’t have meaning beyond that of game pieces on a board. Usually less meaning than that, more like stupid, clunky furniture you had to rearrange to get a certain result. Boring, all that manipulation. So damn boring. Sometimes the result could be entertaining, depending on how you were hardwired. Some sociopaths killed, and some didn’t. It wasn’t that the ones who didn’t kill had a problem with it—other than risk. Manipulation was boring, but prison was even more so.
Thackery was smart. Little Julian hadn’t cut up Fluffy and Fido behind the shed. No, little Julian went to an advanced school and took many perfectly reputable biology and anatomy classes where you obtained your own cat for dissection from the local shelter.
Teenage Julian hadn’t strangled coeds at his college. He paid hookers, who took a little extra money for a lot of extra abuse.
Grown-up Julian hadn’t killed his widowed father for a hefty inheritance. He simply hadn’t reminded the forgetful man to take his heart medicine and made a bet with himself how many months it would take.
And Dr. Thackery hadn’t killed Charlie …
I hadn’t killed Charles Allgood, because I’d known there was a spy in the program who would do it for me. I’d seen subtle alien fingerprints in the computer codes. Witnessed the tiniest of glitches barely perceptible to me, much less the peons around me, and I told no one. I thought, “What would I do as a spy out to sabotage and steal a program?” and I’d been correct. Disrupt the equipment and kill the test subject. Now I was calculating that I was smart enough to identify the spy in time to fix blame, save the program, and become Charles’s successor.
There was the remaining Allgood to think about—and then the unbelievably improbable discovery of a real psychic. Someone who could find the spy before I did and snatch the spoils. I had to rethink my lifetime rule of doing the one thing that could potentially destroy my life. And it came down to the question: did the risk outweigh the benefit? I hadn’t been certain.
But then, as they most often did for me, things began to fall into place. I hadn’t targeted the spy yet, but the spy had targeted the worst problem for both of us.
Jackson Lee Eye.
And if I was very fortunate, Allgood, in a doomed attempt to save a scientifically perverse life, would be disposed of as well. Because that was Dr. Hector Allgood down to his DNA.
A “good man.”
A Boy Scout.
An idiot.
“Jackson, you’re turning blue, for Christ’s sake. Are you all right?”
I dropped the keys and gazed blankly at an unfamiliar hand, bloodless and white, with blue, cold-pinched fingers. Allgood was calling me by that troublemaker’s name. It was insulting, demeaning, debasing. I wasn’t a mutant. I was genetically perfect. “Shut up,” I ground out, fighting a tense jaw and numb lips. “And do not call me that.”
“Damn it. I can do nothing but fuck up with this shit. It’s a wonder Charlie lived as long as he did with my ass around.” A hand circled my arm. “We need to go to the infirmary. It’s where we should’ve done this to begin with.”
I looked away from my hand to my legs. Wrong clothes. Wrong body. What had happened? I didn’t panic. People like me did not panic. We took advantage of every situation. We were the puppet masters, controlling every movement of the deaf, dumb, and blind wood under our fingertips. We …
We …
My brain wrenched, and the colors in the room changed. No one saw colors exactly the same as the next person. No one saw the world the same as the next person. I inhaled air that felt almost searing to frozen lungs; pushed Thackery, his memories, and his thoughts to the side; and came home.
“It’s okay.” I resisted Hector’s grip, grateful for the thousandth time in my life that I wore nothing but long sleeves. I wasn’t ready for another reading yet, especially an accidental one. And I didn’t want to spend any more time in the infirmary. I was there so often now it may as well have been a Starbucks. “I kicked Thackery’s ass to the mental curb. I’m me again.”
“What happened? That can’t be how every reading goes for you. You wouldn’t survive it.” Hector was unconvinced about my claims to health, mental and otherwise, because he pulled the blanket off the top bunk and dumped it in my lap. “And wrap up. You look like a guy on an Arctic expedition who forgot his igloo key. Hell, I can even see your breath.”
I put my glove back on a chilled and shaking hand before cocooning myself. “Goddamn sociopaths. It happens every time. Lucky I don’t run into more than one or two every couple of years. And no, ninety-nine point nine percent of my readings don’t go like that. Thackery has an extremely strong personality and mind. Both are highly fucked up, yeah, but they’re strong.” Getting rid of Thackery’s keys had been more help than the blanket, but between the two, I did begin to warm up.
“Sociopath?” he said sharply. “He did kill Charlie, then?”
“No. Not exactly, but he let it happen. I guess it depends on how good your lawyer is as to whether that’s murder or not.” In my book, it was. He didn’t have absolute concrete knowledge that Charlie would die, but he had a good idea and hope in that black vacuum where a soul should’ve been. I used to play fast and loose with most of the moral code, but when it came to murder, no one was more black-and-white than I was. Losing my family in butchery and blood had made certain of that.
“How about we get the hell out of here? Out of this whole place. This is only the second time I’ve been in this room, and I’m already sick of it. It’s a combination of a Brady Bunch camp and a maximum-security cell.” I stood and dropped the blanket. The summer heat would do a better job of baking my bones, driving away the lingering cold. “I’ll tell you the whole thing.”
“Considering, that’s not a lot to ask for. There’s a Denny’s a half hour away.”
“Denny’s. You really know how to reward your friendly local psychic.” But it didn’t stop me from quickly reaching for the doorknob at the thought of some temporary freedom.
Hector beat me to it. “Bodyguard, remember?”
“If you think you’re fireproof, go ahead.” There was no smell of gasoline. I still needled him. I enjoyed having someone new to mock. Abby gave as good as she got, and Houdini’s dog brain didn’t quite grasp sarcasm.
Outside, for once, I didn’t complain about the searing sun or the heat. I enjoyed it. It helped chase the rest of Thackery back into that dark walk-in freezer where he belonged. I was bemused to see Hector get down on the red dirt and edge under his car before checking the engine.
“Homemade napalm is one thing. A car bomb is a damn sight more advanced than that.”
“There are many kinds of industrial spies, Eye. Some are as intelligent as the scientists they steal from. It’s not beyond po
ssibility if we have one—”
“You do,” I interrupted.
“Right, then they may be smart enough to start in the amateur realm, having us looking for amateur work should their first attempt fail.” He brushed red dust from his pants and shirt. “But I’m smart, too. Charlie always said that the Boy Scouts stole ‘always be prepared’ from me.”
“You boys care for some company?”
We both turned to see Meleah, an uncertain smile on the smooth oval of her face. Hector, for a moment, appeared as uncertain. He’d taken in more than he’d ever planned in the past few days. Where I was learning to trust, he was learning to distrust. A dead brother, backstabbing colleagues, unknown assassins—it would take the faith of any good man.
His eyes flicked to me, the man he’d known for a week, over a woman he’d known for years. Disillusion, whether it came to you as a child or as a grown man, it was a life-changing blow either way. I gave him the barest of nods. Meleah had touched me accidentally. I’d already read her. There was nothing bad there. She was that endless Christmas morning of lights, the curve and gleam of ornaments, the rich taste of eggnog, and the sweet smell of puppy breath from the soft ball of sleeping fur curled up in her lap. I often did my best to wipe my mind of all of my readings, but once in a while, I found a memory worth keeping. This was one of them. And if Hector ever pulled his head out of his ass, he could have Christmases like that for the rest of his life.
“I’m not the safest person to be around right now, but if you like living life on the edge …” I got into the car, leaving the door open. “But you’d better ask Hector. He’s willing to throw himself between me and certain death, but he might not want you to do the same.” I closed the door and let them sort it out.
• • •
The end result was that Meleah ended up in a booth at Denny’s, tapping her fingers on a greasy menu with a confident smile now replacing her hesitant one. Hector didn’t look happy. It could’ve been from wanting to protect Meleah or dread at hearing how Thackery had played a part in Charlie’s death. Could be both. I didn’t guess. There was nothing I could do about either one. I concentrated on telling the story, resulting in no one looking happy, and making my way through my vegetarian scramble. I didn’t mind eating breakfast twice. I had nothing bad to say about cheese.
“Thackery let Charlie die?” Meleah didn’t touch her food, while I managed bites between words. She was a doctor. She’d seen death before, but there wasn’t a doctor alive who’d seen as much as I had. Everyone I read had known someone who had died, and on average, I read ten people a day. The Black Death could’ve lurked inside my skull by this point. You got used to it, or you went crazy.
I got used to it.
Shrugging again on the subject, I gave her an answer similar to the one I’d given Hector. “He was about eighty percent sure it would happen, so it depends on how you look at it. A normal nonpsycho wouldn’t have automatically thought an industrial spy would rig the machine to kill Charlie. A normal person would just assume they’d screw up the machine so it didn’t work at all. But Thackery is thinking from the view of a sociopath, and I’d say your spy is a fellow sociopath to do what he did. So Thackery did know, better than anyone else would have. To me, it’s murder. To someone else, I don’t know.”
“I know,” Hector said grimly. He hadn’t bothered to order anything to eat. “He saw someone about to push Charlie off a cliff and just let them. He’s a murderer. The trouble is, we have another, more proactive murderer out there and no idea who they are. And they’re brilliant. We never did find out who caused the transplanar to malfunction. We can’t find anything wrong with it—besides that it killed my brother—not in the programming and nothing suspicious on the security footage.”
That was odd, but I was a psychic, not an expert in industrial espionage.
I gave them the rest of it: the fact that Thackery was repeating his sociopathic ways with Hector and me. Someone wanted to push us over that same cliff, and he was pleased as hell to let them do it.
“Couldn’t you read everyone at the facility to find the spy?” Meleah asked.
I gave an internal twitch. “And how many people do you have staffing the base?”
“Approximately one hundred and twenty or so,” she answered. “Is that too many?”
After one of nature’s nightmares like Thackery, even one more today would be too many. “I can do a max of twenty a day, but I don’t know how many days I could keep that up. Two. Maybe three. Ten is a better number. That’s doable, and I don’t need to sleep fifteen hours after. But it doesn’t matter how many I can read, right, Hector?”
Hector had taken the bill, folding it neatly. “He’s right, Meleah. Our assassin isn’t going to take a chance on Jackson taking a look inside him. He’d cut his losses and destroy the entire base whether he had all the transplanar designs or not. Self-survival over a paycheck.”
After the meal, Hector paid. I didn’t offer to chip in. I wasn’t being blackmailed anymore, but I liked to think that a history of it meant free meals for the duration. Outside, we had walked to the corner of the building when Hector stopped us, his hand held up by his shoulder. He’d wanted to park out front where he could keep an eye on the car from one of the plate-glass windows, but no spaces had been available.
“Let me take a look first.”
“I’ve never seen a spy or assassin blow anyone up at a Denny’s in the movies,” I said dryly.
“How many actual spies and assassins have you done readings on?” Meleah took up for Hector. He might not have to take his head out of his ass after all. Meleah could grab a handy crowbar and do it for him.
“You’ve got me there,” I admitted. “Sociopaths, yes. Spies and paid assassins, no.”
As Hector took a step around the corner, I leaned out for a look myself. Hector stopped after the one step and crouched down low, tilting his head to scan the undercarriage of the car. It was four spaces down, but the cars that had been parked between the corner and our ride were now gone. Hector had a clear range of vision. From the stiffening of his shoulders, I could tell he didn’t like what he saw.
I didn’t wait for him to straighten or yell a warning. I grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back around the corner just as the car exploded. One second I was standing, and the next I was flat, half on concrete, half in cedar chips that nestled scrubby bushes struggling against the wicked summer. There was nothing but ringing in my ears, although I knew everyone in the restaurant would be screaming. Everyone alive. I rolled over, window glass cascading off of me, and saw flames above the roof. An explosion that big, the car bumper only a few feet from the building, anyone sitting on the other side of that wall would be lucky to be breathing. Or unlucky, depending on their condition.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Hector. He was trying to sit up. Meleah had been behind me. I turned my head to see her echoing Hector’s motions. Good for them both. I was staying flat until I was sure my head was still attached to my body. Then again, whoever had planted that bomb was here. Or close. They’d seen Hector spot it and stop. They’d chosen to go ahead and blow it by remote control, hoping at least to get one of us. If Charlie’s brother was gone, Thackery would be in complete control and have me thrown off base before they’d finished picking up all of Hector’s pieces. I’d be alive, but I wouldn’t be a threat anymore, not to Thackery or the spy. A win-win for both bad sides.
I remembered being a kid—little, maybe five—and I’d thought in those days that there was a good side and a bad side. Then I grew up and learned that there can be multiple bad sides and sometimes not a single good one to fight them all. But that was not the case here. Hector had dragged me into this, yet he was the good side with more on his plate than he could handle.
I sat up, my gloves protecting me from the glass on the shattered windows that littered the concrete. A moment later, I crouched and was on my feet. I was swaying, mildly nauseated, deaf as a fence post, but it didn’t st
op me from thinking.
When you were watching your prey, waiting to flip a switch, press a button, or dial a number on a cell phone to set things in motion, a bomb was a trick. A simple trick but a trick all the same. You didn’t want to be detected ahead of time, and you didn’t want to be seen. What to do? Denny’s was in a row of three restaurants, and beyond that was nothing for miles. Someone sitting in a car by themselves, not in the restaurant eating, that was noticeable. So what did you do? What someone like me would do. What an ex–con man would do.
Misdirection. Misdirection. Misdirection.
I ran to the far edge of the parking lot. The restaurants were spaced far enough apart to get a view of their fronts and sides and a partial view of the backs. Denny’s was at the end, with Hector’s car burning between it and the next eatery. That next one in the middle was an Italian place, and beyond that was a steak place. I saw running people who were screaming in all of the parking lots. I couldn’t hear them, but their mouths were open wide with terror. Screaming was a logical guess. I didn’t see anyone sitting in a car alone. I did see a refrigerated meat truck parked in front of the steak joint. Steak places did need steak, but you delivered your frozen dead cow through the back. You didn’t ruin the customer’s appetite by carrying it through the front door. But the back of the meat lover’s delight didn’t have a view of the Denny’s side lot. That was blocked by the middle restaurant.
As misdirections went, it was pretty shitty, but out in the middle of nowhere as we were, options were limited, and sometimes the best of us have to make do with less than the best of plans.
I started running again, this time through the next parking lot and headed for the one where the meat truck sat. I doubted that the windows had been tinted in the cab when the truck was stolen, but they were now. I saw a shade, the horror-movie creepy-phantom kind, move inside as the window began to roll down. Ghosts I didn’t have to worry about. This son of a bitch, he was the deadly one.
Already through the next parking lot, I was on the verge of passing over a concrete curb to enter the one with the truck. I was close when I saw the gun, but not too close to imagine a bullet exiting the back of my head in a spray of blood and brains. I should’ve dropped to the ground behind a car. It was the smart, staying-alive-to-bitch-another-day thing to do—except …