Brain Storm (A Taylor Morrison Novel Book 1) (36 page)

“They’re on us,” Bryan announced as I careened into traffic, ignoring the stop sign, and swung over to a highway entrance ramp, praying I could loose them in traffic. “There’s a second car. They’re right on our tail.”

I sped up the entrance ramp and merged in with traffic, which was heavier, but still moving. We had either turned around or were on a different Highway altogether but it appeared we were heading back into Denver.
 

“Where are we?” I demanded. “Where do I go?” I glanced in the rear view and saw nothing but headlights behind me. “ Bryan, do you still see them?”

“They’re still behind us.”

I looked over at Mac in frustration. “Why am I driving?” I ground out at him as traffic around me began to slow. I would have much preferred him or Bryan to be behind the wheel.
 

“Taylor.” My head snapped around at the sound of Brown’s voice, and I found myself looking into a pair of calm gray eyes. “You can handle this. You can stop them. You just need to relax and do what I tell you.”
 

I jerked my head back around, ignoring him, to watch the traffic around me.
 

“Bryan, find him something to put on. I refuse to be run to ground with a naked man in the car.”
 

I heard Bryan rummaging around behind the back seat and glanced back in time to see him toss some clothes in Brown’s direction. I was cutting through traffic, moving forward as much as possible. Looking down at the dash clock, I saw it wasn’t even five yet. This was only going to get worse with time. I needed to get off the highway.

“Taylor,” Mac said, grabbing my shoulder. “You need to listen to him. He said you can stop this.”

I felt an instant drop in my anxiety levels and realized Mac was bleeding off the worst of my panic. Traffic around us was slowly but surely grinding to a halt. The lanes going in the opposite direction were flowing smoothly with a lot less traffic. I looked forward again only to be greeted with sight of brake lights flowing in a ribbon of red straight toward us. Apparently there’d been an accident up ahead. In my panic to escape, I had chosen the worst possible route. Great. Just fantastic. Where was all that psychic stuff when you really needed it?

“Fine.” I was resigned. We hadn’t come to a complete stop, but we might as well have. Considering the options, I didn’t have much choice but to listen to Brown. “What do you want me to do?”

“Change seats with Sean. You’re going to need to concentrate.”
 

I was blank for a second, before I realized he was talking about Mac. Apparently he was Sean when Brown met him at the Agency. He’d forgotten to mention that little fact.
 

“Okay, Sean,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him. “Slide it over here.”

He had the decency to look somewhat chagrined as we managed to change seats without too much difficulty in the slow moving traffic.

“Where are they, Bryan?” I asked, buckling into my seat, ignoring Brown for the moment. “Can you see them?”

“Yeah. Black sedan, far right lane about 5 cars back. Three guys inside from what I can see. The other one is a little further back coming up in the fast lane though. It’s a light color, can’t tell too much in the dark, but there’ s couple of guys in there.”

I felt the skin crawl up the back of my neck. They’d been ready for us. I didn’t know how, but they’d been ready. We’d hit them at 4 in the morning and they had two cars and at least five men, dressed, gassed up and ready to go. They’d been expecting us and there was only one way they could have known.

He’s one of them!
I concentrated on Mac and sent the words of warning over to him. From the way his jaw clenched, I knew he had heard me. So two of us knew now. Problem was, what to do about it. Brown seemed willing to help us for the time being. That was our next step. Get rid of the tail. Then we’d see about Brown.

“So tell me,” I asked him. “How exactly do I stop them?”

Brown was quiet for a beat or two watching me before he answered and I wondered if he had heard my mental warning to Mac.

“Get a visual on the car. You won’t need it in the future, but it will be easier for you to do if you can see your target the first few times.”

See the target? What was I going to do?
 
Blow it up? I rolled down the window and reached out to adjust the side mirror until I had the car Bryan described in view. They wouldn’t stay there for long, the way traffic was moving, but for the time being I could see them.
 

“Okay. I see them.”
 

“Good. Now focus on the car. Get it in your mind. What it looks like.”
 

I stared at the car’s reflection in the glass, memorizing the details as much as possible. They were slowly passing under a street lamp and I could see the figures inside as the light glinted off the dark paint.
 

“Now keep the image fixed in your head and close your eyes.” His voice was quiet and soft. “Open the hood and look at the engine. Picture it in your mind. See the wires running into it, the hoses. Reach out and wrap your hands around them. Feel them.”

“Are you kidding me?” My eyes popped open and I turned to glare at him. “Who do you think you are? Yoda?” I jerked back around to check on the car only to see it had managed to close the gap between us by another car length.
 

“Taylor, he’s saying you can disable the car with your mind.” Mac checked his mirrors as he forced his way into the next lane, giving us a little breathing room. “Focus on it in your head and lay waste.”

“I can’t lay waste!” I snapped at him as irritated at his second use of my former name as I was frustrated with what they were asking me to do. “I don’t know where the wires are. Or the hoses! This isn’t magic, boys. I can’t just blink my eyes and it happens.”

Brown let out a heavy sigh from the back and I barely managed to stop myself from turning around and throwing him out onto the highway. It wouldn’t hurt him much. We were barely moving after all.

“Do you think you know where the gas pedal is?” He was clearly as put out with me as I was with him. Ingrate. We had rescued him after all. Or had we? Suspicious and angry, it was everything I could do to listen to him. At this point though, what did I have to lose, except the two cars following us. I unclenched my jaw and nodded and heard him lean back into his seat, satisfied.

“Okay then. Wait until you see him start moving forward and tromp down on the gas. Just picture his foot on the gas pedal and press it down. Hard.”
 

I focused my attention on the car in the right hand lane and thought hard about that gas pedal, waiting for an opening. Suddenly it was there. The two cars in front of them peeled off onto an exit, giving them a big opening and a chance to gain ground on us. The moment he started moving forward, I mentally pushed his right foot to the floor. The resulting crash into the light pole as he tried to avoid the car suddenly in front of him was more than I could have hoped for.

“Whoa,” Bryan whistled from the back seat. “That did it. Hood’s up and steam is pouring out.” He leaned forward in his seat to pat my shoulder. “Way to feel the force. Now how about the other one?”

It took two tries. Apparently the driver had caught on to what was happening and was riding the brake, but I could picture a steering wheel as easily as the gas pedal and before he knew it he’d driven into the median. It wasn’t great, but good enough. We were still tied up in traffic, but now there was a bigger jam building behind us and our tails were going nowhere fast.
 

I nodded to Mac as he inched his way closer to the accident up ahead and leaned back in the seat to rest. The pain was back behind my eyes, and my vision was starting to blur. The constant buzz that had been in my head since I woke Brown up was quickly becoming annoying and my mind was swimming with the fact that there was an excellent chance that he was working against us.

The nudge on my shoulder woke me and I glanced over to see Mac bob his head, motioning me to look out my window. We’d reached the accident. Traffic had necked down to a single lane and we had a front row seat.
 

 
A semi had hit a car, pinning it under it’s wheels. Rescue teams had arrived and were working to get the car door open. As we drew alongside I could see a body pinned to the steering wheel and I watched in horror as a small hand fluttered deep inside the car.
 

We’d been struck in traffic for over 20 minutes and I had to assume they’d been working the whole time, trying to extricate the people trapped inside the wreck. I sat up in my seat, as I watched them move the pry bars to make another attempt, my mind frantic to find a way to help.

“Don’t do it Taylor. You’re not ready for this.” I heard Brown’s warning from a distance, a dim echo in my head and chose to ignore it. Ready or not, they needed help and they needed it now.
 

I focused my mind on the crumpled door, grabbed hold and pulled. The door flew open like it had been blown off and just as fast, I was inside the car, struggling to help free the child trapped in the back. I heard the creak of metal above me and knew it was too late. The weight was too much, we’d never get them out in time. I froze as I watched the metal around me begin to crumble and braced my mind against it.

“Sean, you need to move, you’re holding up traffic,” Bryan shouted. “The police are heading this way.”

The car suddenly shot forward as pain pierced through my brain, taking my breath away. I wrapped my arms around my head, trying to cushion the pain, even as I rocked in my seat in an effort to escape. I heard the sobs coming from my own throat and struggled to gain some form of control.
 

“Her nose is bleeding. Bad.” Mac’s voice echoed through the car.

“Get her back here.” It was Brown’s voice I heard, as hands fumbled at the belt buckle and drug me out of the seat into the back of the van.

Instantly, hands clamped onto the bridge of my nose, pressing the veins, trying to slow the flow of blood. It was Brown.
 

“No!” I yelled, as I knocked his hands away, scrambling to escape him.

“Taylor, stop it.” He grabbed my flailing hands, pinning them between us. “I’m on your side.” I managed to get a hand free and brought it up in a fist, intent on doing damage.
 

“Stop it!” He caught my fist again and I was trapped, pinned to the back seat, helpless against him. I stopped fighting and gathering my thoughts, pushed out with what little strength I had left.

THIRTY-TWO

IT WAS PITCH black when I came to and I laid still for a minute, trying to take in my surroundings. Drawing in a deep breath, I inhaled the scent of clean linen and instantly recognized the signature aroma of Mama D’s laundry soap. I sat up slowly and waited patiently for the room to quit spinning.
 

“Welcome back Sam. How’s your head?” The question came through the darkness and I jumped before recognizing it was Mac who was in the room with me.
 

“So it’s back to Sam now, is it,
Sean
?” I was mumbling and groggy and not in a good mood. “My heads fine. I’m good. Except for you scaring me half to death lurking over there in the dark. I wish you’d quit sneaking up on me.” It sounded whiney even to me and his snort of disbelief didn’t help. I threw a glare in his direction resentful that he was right, even though I knew he couldn’t see it in the dark. I wasn’t fine. My head felt like it was filled with cotton batting instead of brain tissue and threatened to fly off with every move I made.

“Wait. You’re serious, aren’t you?” He may not have been able to see me, but being able to sense my emotions was a dead giveaway. “You really don’t know when I’m around.”

“No. I don’t.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and waited for the room to quit spinning. “Just why is that anyway? You can sense me. I can sense Brown. I can communicate with both of you, but you can’t communicate with me and I can’t sense you.” I could hear my voice going up in volume with each word, escalating quickly from merely whiney to near hysterics. I really needed to calm down.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was right next to me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my face before he laid his hand on my arm, instantly lowering my nerves to a manageable level. “I made an assumption and I shouldn’t have. I don’t know why you can’t sense me. Can you sense anyone else?” I knew he was asking about Bryan and Candice and I shook my head. I didn’t get anything from them, but then I hadn’t really tried. Just assumed, like he had. “You should ask Brown.”

“I’m not asking Brown anything. I don’t like him.” I grimaced at that. Sad that being back to whiney was an improvement. “Why does he call you Sean?”

 
“That’s the name I go by at the Agency. I forgot to warn you about that.” He at least had the good grace to sound contrite. “It’s better that he keeps thinking of me that way and of you as Taylor. That’s the name he knows you by, and we should keep it that way until we know where he stands. You’ve established the Samantha White alias now. No reason to have to start a new one if we don’t have to. I’ve talked to the others and they understand. When Brown’s around it’s Sean and Taylor. Bryan and Candice stay with their alias. Their names don’t matter. We’ll probably be changing them anyway. Candice hates hers.”