Mind Slide (19 page)

Was it possible that somewhere a burglar was reading the same list Mason was?

Gabriel fell to one knee as he appeared in the middle of a parking lot. He tried to gather himself as he retched and gagged. That drug they called the Cocktail flowed through his system. He was having a particularly bad reaction to it for this mind slide.

It felt like he would be pulled back to his body, and the thought terrified him. A ten second mind slide was a very nasty thing. He would vomit and be left with a huge headache.

He felt cars and children on skateboards pass through him as he tried to pull himself together. It certainly didn't help his state of mind. Fabrics, car seats, a woman's stomach, a teen's testicles, all went right through his head.

He finally managed to stand up and look around. It looked like an apartment parking lot, maybe condos. There was a fenced-in pool off in the distance, as well as a fitness center.

He ran a hand over his bald head and tried to gauge the temperature. It felt warm, warmer than he thought it should be. He strolled over to the closest cars in front of the apartment building and looked at their license plates.

They all said Florida.

“
Ooh, the sunshine state.”

His hopes dwindled as he walked through the locked door leading to three floors of apartments. There were plenty of mailboxes, and not all of them were labeled. He looked them over for the magic name he was looking for.

Annie Freedman. Apartment 1-B.

She was the last name in Albert's Rierson's death book he was familiar with. She was a technician on the project,
his
project, but only for a year.

He didn't feel confident as he stood in front of apartment 1-B. Maryland was a long way from Florida. Gabriel guessed she flew up for Albert's funeral. There was no way he could have given anything to Annie.

He still didn't know exactly what he was looking for.

He was looking for information. That's all he knew. Was it in the form of a folder, a laptop, a secret decoder ring, a note written in lipstick, he had no idea.

He was running out of options.

Gabriel walked through the front door.

He tried to shove aside the bitterness as he looked at the tiny apartment. Annie wasn't exactly nice to him in the lab. She wasn't responsible for his torture, but she was the one who spent most of her time mixing up that damn Cocktail.

She deserved to die for that fact alone.

There was music coming from the bedroom. He passed a nice looking open kitchen and walked down the hall. He pushed his head through the bedroom door, leaving the rest of him in the hallway.

He recognized Annie Freedman. It had been a few years since he'd seen her, but it was definitely her. Very beautiful woman, and she used that beauty to have a string of relationships. She always talked about the men she was seeing in the lab.

She was apparently
seeing
one now.

Annie was handcuffed to her bed frame, but it didn't look like she was under arrest. A naked blond man pushed hard back and forth into her as she held on with her legs tightly around his hips. She cried with joy while he grunted. It was an odd contrast from the soft, romantic music that filled the room.

Gabriel's memory flashed back to that fateful day. It wasn't the same circumstances, but close enough to make his body start crying.

He didn't have a great memory, but that particular one would never leave him.

Coming home from work early, walking through the house, seeing his wife in their bed without him.

He pulled his head back into the hallway, and rested his hands on his knees while trying to catch his breath. A puppy came out of nowhere and scratched at the door. The bed stopped shaking for a moment as they laughed. Then they picked up their pace again.

Gabriel forced the memory out of his mind and searched the apartment. He knew this was a waste of time, but he had to try. He doubted Albert would trust any of the remaining project technicians with information that could change the world.

The only one he thought Albert would trust was Ronald Fuller, and the now deceased doctor didn't know anything.

Albert's daughter Kelly was another long shot, but he searched the place top to bottom. She had a computer, but there was nothing special on it. Gabriel had a feeling he would know what he was looking for when he saw it, and Kelly didn't have it.

He thought about the guy she was spending time with. Gabriel didn't know the man's name. They made a cute little couple, all nervous and shy around each other.

Kelly's new little toy was the only one besides her that went to Albert's funeral.

But he wasn't a doctor, wasn't a technician, knew nothing about the project. Albert wouldn't trust dangerous secrets to him.

Gabriel was trying to glance through a stack of papers on the dining room table when Annie and her sex-buddy emerged from the bedroom. They were laughing and touching. She bent down to pet the dog.

“
I'm gonna use your shower,” Annie said.

Sex-buddy smiled. “Hmm. You mind if I join you?”

Gabriel sighed. This wasn't even Annie's place.

“
That depends. You can't get in with me unless you have something to offer.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes as Annie grabbed her buddy's hardening penis.

“
Ah, new love,” he said. “Fucking, eating, then fucking some more.”

He leaned against the wall next to the bathroom door while they went for round two in the shower. He weighed his options. He could slide back to his body, try to research her address. But if he failed, he would basically have wasted some Cocktail, and he didn't like that. He had plenty of Cocktail, for now, but every mind slide had to count.

He had a good lunch, and felt rested. The best thing to do was simply follow Annie around for a while. She had to go home eventually. He was almost certain she didn't have Albert's secret, but almost certain wasn't good enough.

“
When are you gonna tell your husband about us?”

Gabriel's eyebrows went up. He stepped into the bathroom. Annie and sex-buddy were drying off in the shower.

“
Mike, we've talked about this. We've got a good thing here. We said in the beginning we wouldn't bring Donnie into this.”

“
Well, things change. I love you.”

“
Please. You just love pounding me.”

Gabriel watched as they continued their argument. They took it from the bathroom to the bedroom as they dressed. He barely heard anything they said. He was too busy trying to control the rage inside him.

Annie Freedman, assuming that was still her official last name, was cheating on her husband Donnie, with a man named Mike.

He wanted to kill Annie and Mike.

Thoughts started to roll through his mind. He couldn't fly to Florida. He could drive, although that would be a huge detour and time gone he couldn't get back.

It would be so worth it.

Annie and Mike settled their fight with a kiss at the door. Gabriel followed Annie out of the apartment and into her car. He climbed in next to her.

He watched Annie carefully. She never walked within twenty feet of him in the lab. All she did was sit in the corner and mix batch after batch of Cocktail. Gabriel had moments of violence in the lab, times when he lashed out at anyone around him. He gave Albert a black eye once, had his hands around Ronald's throat.

If he knew then what he knew now, Annie would have been a target.

He tried to shake free of the violent thoughts taking control. He had killed people, and there were people left to kill. Annie wasn't one of them.

There was a bigger picture here.

He knew what people would call him. Psychotic. Serial killer. Disturbed. Delusional.

Gabriel knew the truth. He had to save the world.

But he now had a second goal for the day. Make sure Annie didn't carry Albert's secret.

And contact her husband Donnie.

He slid back to his body as Annie stopped at a red light. He needed to get some distance from her, before the murderous thoughts returned. It was a waste of Cocktail, but he would just have to live with it.

He lived with a lot of bad things. Wasting Cocktail was at the bottom of the list.

He stayed still in his motel bed until the nausea passed.

He grabbed the book from the nightstand he'd taken from Kelly's house. There were four names crossed off, people he'd already killed.

More blood needed to be shed.

But he had to find Albert's secret, his information.

He ran a finger over Kelly Rierson's name. He wondered if he was truly done with her. Maybe he needed to keep an eye on her.

So many goals, so little time.

Mason stirred the Hamburger Helper on the stove and went back to the living room. The documentary on World War II still played on the television, while Lucy ran laps around the apartment.

He poured a glass of iced tea and stared at the calendar on the refrigerator door. It was Wednesday, and he still had no idea what to do for a date with Kelly. He didn't even have the day and time planned out yet.

She had to work Friday, so that day was out of the question. He didn't understand why she continued to work.

Maybe for the same reason he did.

He stared at Saturday. That seemed like a good day. He wrote a question mark on the calendar and ran through ideas in his head.

Dinner and a movie? Traditional, but perhaps not a bad idea. Shoot some pool? He definitely wouldn't mind seeing her leaned over a pool table.

He shook his head in frustration. Over the past few weeks they spent time together and learned more about each other. They even hugged and slept together. Now that he decided to put a label on it, a date, his nervousness was coming back.

“
Relax. She's in to you,” he told the calendar. “Be yourself.”

The phone rang in the living room. It was Brian.

“
Hey, give me some good ideas for a date.”

“
I need you to come to me. Right now.”

Mason gripped the phone a little tighter. There was no humor in Brian's voice. He was all business.

“
I'm guessing you don't mean in my Jeep?”