Jaden Baker (50 page)

It was silent. His daily running sessions hadn’t been for naught.

After he had jogged a mile or so the headache returned, and made up for lost time.

Every step was painful. This was the worst headache of his life, an immense pressure in his brain, a splintering of his nerves, making his stomach sick and his eyes tear. He retched twice before reaching home as the bright sky turned to dusk. He leaned on the door, warmed from the sun, closing his eyes.

Here was a new problem. How was he to get inside with such a headache? In his justified paranoia, Jaden chained the door and blocked it with heavy obstacles, ensuring only he could enter. With the pain, he couldn’t focus properly, making entrance difficult. Why hadn’t he thought of a backup plan should PK be compromised? For an emergency just like now.

The ground floor windows were bricked in, an added precaution. The roof access was sealed. The only way in was through the front door, exactly as he’d engineered it.

Psychokinesis was a part of him like anything else. Headache or not, his mind couldn’t fail him. Clarity was blackened out with pain, but he had worked around that before. He had to focus to get inside his building for the night. There were no other options.

Mentally fumbling for the lock, Jaden found it behind the door. Strangely when he focused, the pain abated. Without a pause, the boxes scraped the floor and moved aside; when the door slid open, he had a small path.

Once inside, he slid the door shut and secured it by hand. The gap between the boxes was minimal, but he managed to squeeze through. Getting to his floor would be difficult, as the ladder was tucked neatly behind the bookshelves.

It clacked as it slid across the top story, then dropped with a clatter to the cement floor. Jaden stood it upright and climbed to his floor, then pulled the ladder up to him.

Cat stood on the arm of the couch, tail whipping.

He didn’t keep drugs in the house. His high and mighty attitude toward drugs, legal or not, was an annoying principle to have when dealing with pain. It was deep in his head, so he couldn’t disconnect from it.

He would take a shower. Showering always made him feel better, it relaxed his muscles and calmed him from a laborious or stressful day. Stripping off his clothes, Jaden went into the bathroom, remembering he had to heat the water. He focused painfully to boil the ice. He drenched his head in hot water, wishing the heat would massage away the pain.

The water felt great on the back of his neck and shoulders, but it didn’t assuage the splintering in his brain. As he toweled dry, Jaden thought of the police, how they had his vague description. They did not know his name. He had not touched anything, didn’t leave fingerprints. If the two other men had priors, and Jaden assumed they did, maybe the cops would overlook the vigilante.

Eating made the headache worse. He drank as much water as he could before hurling into the bathtub. Lying in bed, he tossed and turned, desperately tying to get to sleep. But how could he? The pain was oppressive.

He tried rubbing his neck, applying pressure to certain areas, massaging his temples, taking deep breaths, nothing worked.

He got out of bed and sat at his desk, grabbing a notebook and sketching an elaborate gym for Cat. There would be a tower for him to climb, maybe several towers. Then a tunnel. He’d need to drill rubber mats and staple carpet to it so Cat could grip as he played.

After the cat gym, Jaden drafted a fancy table he may one day build, with lion paws for feet, and a grand round surface, something King Arthur might have commissioned in his day. It may be unique enough to sell. That could be his career. Carpenter, furniture maker.

Rocking chairs, a gourmet kitchen, bathroom cabinets and shelves, a wardrobe, he drew them all, listing the materials, calculating the costs. A stack of sketches sat on his hand-crafted desk. Then monikers, a whole list of names, identities he could assume: Alonzo McFaydon, Gerard Cooper, Kaleb Jones, Tristan Bruen, Devin Smith. He penned as many as he could, until he was named out.

Verbs, he listed as many he could think of, then adjectives and nouns. He tested himself on the fifty states, drew out a map of America, then tried capitals. Geography was something he had studied extensively, second to languages. How many countries within the continent of South America? He listed all he could remember.

It was eight in the morning when he noticed the sun. He had been in the middle of translating the verbs he’d written hours before into German. Distracting his mind from the pain had worked.

When he dropped the pen and massaged his hand, the pain ebbed back. He needed painkillers, he couldn’t write or draw forever. Maybe all he needed was an anti-inflammatory for a few days and then everything would be back to normal. He could return to the warehouse, lifting boxes, until he was ready to take on a new name and profession.

Jaden rushed to his shelf and pulled down his tin of cash, depositing his week’s wages, then replaced the tin on top of the shelf. He grabbed his wallet, which he only carried to make purchases, and opened it, counting the cash: twenty-two dollars and fourteen cents, more than enough for drugs.

The ladder wobbled as he climbed down, but he didn’t worry, he was on the ground in seconds. He mumbled the amendments of the Constitution as he wedged himself through the barricade and unlocked the chain to the massive door, trying to remember Section Three of Article One. Outside he slid the door shut, remembering it: there would be two senators from each state that served six years. Within the article were the rules for the senator’s age, length of citizenship, and so forth. There was nothing in the section about term limits, a sore subject for much of the population, or so he had heard as he passed irritated people lunching.

As it had been last night, walking was painful. Every step stabbed him in the head. Step stab, step stab.

Section Four, Elections for Senators and Representatives. Section Five, Congress’ compensation plan. Section Seven had something to do with bills and money, but he couldn’t remember the whole thing. Section Eight was taxes, duties, imposts and something else to pay for debts and defense and something else he couldn’t remember. Section Nine was a blank, as was section ten. The pain was getting worse, it was harder to focus. He abandoned the Constitution.

Counting, that would be easier. He counted as high as he could in Italian, and had just reached fifty-six when he came to the drugstore. It was one of those cheap places with the annoying—especially with this headache—drowning door chimes, informing people behind the cash register that someone had entered the store, making it harder for Jaden to sneak up and rob them. He stumbled down the first aisle to find chips and cookies, not drugs. In the next aisle were flip-flops and other cheap shoes.

The door chimed again, Jaden grabbed his head. He hated that stupid chime, and next time he came in here with an ailment and needed drugs, he’d rip it from the damn door.

He looked toward the entrance and the signs above each aisle, trying to find the drugs. How could it be so hard if he was in a drugstore? The signs led him to the far corner. He saw his pale reflection in the slanted mirrors as he passed more aisles. He looked like crap. Finally he came to the painkillers.

Jaden stopped.

A woman stood in front of the shelves, examining a box. For a moment the headache left him—he didn’t notice its sudden vanishing.

She was tall, slender in the waist with a shapely backside, wearing a long denim skirt with slits past her knee, exposing her muscular legs. He walked toward her and stopped when he was less than two feet from her. Auburn hair, with deliberate streaks of dark brown, fell just past her shoulders, curling onto her brown sweater. She had a perky, button nose, and freckles dotted her clear skin. She gracefully brushed a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She smelled of sea shells and hot chocolate.

Her lips twitched, as if she wanted to smile but thought better of it. She turned her eyes to him. They were vibrant blue, brighter than the summer sky after a morning of cleansing rain.

She raised her eyebrows once, then her blue eyes crinkled as her lips pulled up into an inquisitive smirk.

“Hi,” he said. Then, as his own smirk turned into a small smile, he realized why she’d raised her brows. He was staring at her. “Sorry,” he mumbled and turned away, feeling hot.

Jaden studied the drugs on the shelf without seeing them, and the woman beside him turned toward him. He tried looking at her without looking, but couldn’t. He wished he had dark sunglasses...

“You’re bleeding,” she said to him. She pointed at her own nose, a visual clue.

Jaden touched his nose and saw his fingers. Indeed he was bleeding.

One thousand one.

The pain sliced his head like a helicopter’s rotor blades though a watermelon. Both he and the woman fell to the floor. He crumbled in spasms, his head exploding with pain. He blacked out for a moment, then his chest constricted—he couldn’t breathe!

“Hang on,” the woman said, grabbing his hand in hers. They were warm. “We’re going to take you to the hospital.”

Even though he felt himself drifting into unconsciousness, the severity of what she said gave him a small burst of urgent energy. He had to communicate how horrible that would be.

All he managed was a feeble: “No.”

“You had, or are having, a seizure,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

Body tingling, pain subsiding, Jaden shook his head, a plea for her to leave him alone, or take him away, anywhere but to a hospital. Everything he worked for would be gone if they found him, unconscious.

“No, I can’t,” he said, trying but failing to get up. The pain returned, this time bringing exhaustion with it, paralyzing his whole body, blanketing him with a drugging stupor.

The hospital was the end of him, he couldn’t go there. Joseph would find him, take him back, and his life was over. Jaden wouldn’t have a chance to kill himself.

“You’re bleeding out of your nose and ears and you fell down shaking. That’s not a symptom of a migraine.”

This wasn’t about his headache. It had caused it, but it was more than a stupid migraine. This was the end. If he was unconscious and had no way to fight, he’d be taken.

Using the last of his energy, Jaden gasped: “Don’t let them take me!” shaking his head, locking his eyes with hers, reiterating his point.

The last thing he saw before blacking out was the woman’s face, her stunning blue eyes staring in horror.

The steady pulses of the nurse and doctor were returning. Jaden undressed himself, exchanging his clothes for the doctor’s scrubs and white coat. Dr. Clarkson. Jaden pulled the ID badge from the coat and put it in his pocket, as his long hair and beard proved he was no Dr. Clarkson.

The headache he experienced last night and this morning was completely gone, and in its absence his sense of focus and hyperawareness returned; a comfort considering what had to come next.

Joseph Madrid.

Madrid would surely be notified that Jaden was in Seattle.

Ten years was a long time to stay in one place, he was lucky not to have been found earlier.

Out in the hallway, filled with gurneys and busy hospital staff, a creeping claustrophobia loomed over him, like gathering storm clouds. He pushed down his frustration, rage, and panic. He would deal with them later. Leaving the hospital came first.

Jaden wandered through the labyrinth of halls, searching for an evacuation plan. He found one by an elevator, choosing the stairs instead—they would be sparsely populated.

Taking them two and three at a time, Jaden reached the ground floor in minutes. He didn’t have long before the doctor and nurse regained consciousness.

He cracked open the door, surveyed the hallway. Going through the front door of the hospital was the wisest plan. People came and exited hospitals with regularity. It was the best way out of here. Just act casual.