Mind's Eye (39 page)

“You know you should really use the one with bullets,” said Girdler wearily. “I’m sure you can read that if you let me live, I’ll still have to try to kill you. The stakes are too high to do anything else.”

“I know,” said Hall. “But I’m not a murderer. And I like you, Colonel Girdler. I even agree with you.” He pulled the trigger and a dart imbedded itself into Girdler’s stomach.

“But you’ll have to forgive me for not wishing you luck,” he added, and then turned to embrace the remarkable woman standing beside him.

47

To say that the past few days had been the most incredible of Alex Altschuler’s eventful life was an understatement. He had worn a wire to entrap his boss, had been on the verge of being killed, had lost his hearing temporarily from a gunshot that had blown away much of Kelvin Gray’s face, and had been shown unequivocal evidence of perfect ESP.

And now, standing in a secret basement room at Theia’s Madera facility, he was able to surf the web with his thoughts alone!

Heather Zambrana had been so excited by the success of the surgery she had hugged him, and he sensed that she considered this a positive experience, something he would have to explore further another time.

He would have to explore this further, of course,
because he could not read her mind
.

Cybersurfing and ESP were not linked! You could have one without the other.

The experiment had been a stunning success in every regard.

He didn’t even feel that bad physically. Blood loss had been minimal, and there were no pain receptors in the brain, which was why surgeons could perform brain surgery on patients who were fully awake, ensuring the procedure wasn’t adversely affecting vision, speech, or motor control functions. And while the skull
did
contain pain receptors, the pain hadn’t seemed that bad, even before Heather had given him a potent pain reliever.

Heather cleared her throat loudly, but Altschuler was so engrossed in putting his Internet connection through its paces he was completely oblivious. He had been experimenting at a furious pace for forty-five minutes. Hall was bright, but Altschuler was in a league of his own, and was an expert with computers and the Internet. So he became more adept at manipulating the system than Hall after less than an hour, and page after page flashed into his mind’s eye like they were being fired from a machine gun.

Heather cleared her throat a second time, with equal lack of effect. “Um . . . Alex. If you’re feeling okay, I’d like to leave. You can continue experimenting in the car. And I think, um . . . well, you know, we could be more comfortable at my place.”

Altschuler froze. What did
that
mean? God, what he wouldn’t give to be able to read her mind for just a few seconds.

They had always had a great working relationship, and maybe she had sensed how he felt about her, despite how hard he tried to conceal it. But now he had blown her mind with revelations about Gray, about the
Explorer
, about a fully functioning personal, thought-controlled Internet, and about a man named Nick Hall. He had taken her from the realm of the ordinary and routine to the stratosphere of extraordinary and incredible. The fact that he had chosen her to be the fourth member of an exclusive club safeguarding the most astonishing secret in history couldn’t help but enhance his appeal to her. Now they not only shared an incredible secret, but also an incredible
purpose
. How could this not bring them closer together?

But just
how
close would it bring them? And how quickly?

Altschuler was pretty sure Heather wasn’t in a relationship. And her condo
would
be far more comfortable than the basement lab. But was she innocently pointing out the accurate fact that it would be more comfortable? Or was this her way of making the sexual innuendo that it would be more
comfortable?

“Alex?” said Heather after he had stared at her, blinking, for several seconds without a response. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m feeling great,” he replied finally. “Thanks to you. And you’re right. Let’s get out of here. We have a lot to do.”

They made their way to the ground floor and exited the building. Heather’s car was the first and only one in the lot. “And you’re positive you can’t read my mind?” she asked for the second time as they walked the few feet to her car in the cool night air.

“Positive,” he said again. He couldn’t blame her for being nervous at the prospect of him having access to her innermost, private thoughts. “Believe me, I know how relieved you must feel.”

Just the hint of a smile came over her down-to-earth face, which glowed against the faint light at the front of the facility that was kept on throughout the night. “I’m
mostly
relieved,” she admitted. She tapped her head with her index finger. “But there might be a few things in there I wouldn’t mind you reading.”

It didn’t take a genius, which Altschuler was, to know this was a statement worth following up on.

He opened his mouth to explore what this meant when he heard his name from ten feet away in the darkness. “Dr. Altschuler?” said a deep, gravelly voice.

There were two men approaching.

In an empty parking lot at three in the morning, below a dark, moonless sky, being approached by an elderly woman with a cane would be alarming. But being approached by two men who exuded menace froze both scientists in place and sent their hearts racing.

“What do you want?” asked Altschuler, noting that neither man was carrying a weapon. At least for the time being.

The man who had spoken reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it to reveal a government ID. He was a member of a three-letter organization with which Altschuler was not familiar. What was even more troubling was that even when he used his internal Internet to search for it, he still came up empty. Which meant the agency didn’t exist and these men were frauds, or it did exist and was so secret it wasn’t mentioned a single time on the trillions of pages of cyberinformation available. Either way, this was a bad sign.

Were they working for John Delamater?

“Sorry to bother you this late,” said the man, pocketing his wallet. “But we need to ask you and Miss Zambrana a few questions. If you could come with us, our car is parked around the corner.”

“And if we don’t?” asked Altschuler, certain his face was now as pale as the light surrounding them.

“I’m afraid that really isn’t an option,” said the man, while his partner remained silent.

“Freeze!” said a male voice from the opposite side of the parking lot. While the two scientists and the two men near them were illuminated by the light of the building, this voice seemed to be coming from the heart of a black hole.

“Raise your hands! Now!”

The two men who were supposedly from the government glanced at each other, and the one who had been speaking shook his head the slightest bit, a gesture that even Altschuler knew meant that he had calculated the odds and decided firing into darkness wasn’t a great option. The men raised their hands above their heads with their jaws clenched.

“Alex and Heather,” instructed the man giving orders, “quickly backpedal away from them, toward my voice.”

While the two scientists, who had both also thrown their hands above their heads, lowered them and did as they were told, a second man emerged from the void and began walking toward the two prisoners, reminding them his colleague still had a gun trained on them. He tossed them each a pair of plastic handcuffs and instructed them to slip them around their wrists and pull them tight with their teeth. Soon both men’s wrists were bound.

The man who had yelled for them to freeze emerged from the darkness and approached the two scientists. “I’m Eric Trout,” he whispered softly, so the men they had just captured couldn’t hear. “Ed Cowan sent me. Stay here, and I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

Both men marched off with their prisoners. But while four men left, only Trout returned.

“Where are the others?” asked Altschuler.

“I helped my colleague secure them in an SUV. He’s taking them somewhere else for . . . um . . . questioning.” He turned toward Heather. “Give me your car keys. I’m driving.”

As they pulled out of the lot, with Trout driving and the two scientists in the back seat, Altschuler said, “Thanks for saving our necks. But how did you find us? And how did you know we might be in trouble?”

“Nick Hall’s suite at the Homestead Inn was raided three or four hours ago. Two men Ed Cowan had posted for security were killed.”

Altschuler shrank back as if he had seen a ghost. “And Nick and Megan?” he asked, terrified of the answer he might get.

“We don’t know. Hopefully, my colleague can learn more from the two men we captured. Once Cowan discovered what happened, he pulled out all the stops to find you. He didn’t know who was behind it, or if they would make a play for you as well. My guess is that they were waiting for you to come out of the building. Who knows for how long.”

“Where are we going?” asked Heather.

“To a safe house outside of Sacramento. But not directly. We’ll need to switch cars a few times at certain parking garages in a certain way to shake any possible satellite surveillance. Although I doubt anyone wasted satellite time on this operation once they knew your location. They expected gathering you up to be a walk in the park. They didn’t draw any weapons and remained in the light. I’d bet no one else will learn what happened here for hours. But we like to be on the safe side.”

Trout instructed his PDA to contact Ed Cowan and Cameron Fyfe. “They’ve been awake since the attack on the Homestead Inn,” he explained as the call went through. “I need to report in.”

Trout was three minutes into his report when Altschuler’s phone vibrated.

“Alex, it’s me,” came the breathless voice of Nick Hall when he answered. “Be careful! Someone was able to track us to Theia Labs, which means they could have tracked you to Madera. Get out of there now! And watch your back!”

“Are you and Megan okay?” said Altschuler anxiously, noting the irony of the timing of Hall’s warning as he did.

Hall assured him that they were fine and that Megan was in on the call as well.

“Is that Nick and Megan?” asked Trout from the front seat, having overheard Altschuler while delivering his report. “What’s their condition?” he asked before Altschuler could respond.

“They’re both unharmed.”

“Great. I’m going to conference us all together,” said Trout, and then instructed his PDA to perform the magic necessary to tie Megan Emerson, Nick Hall, Ed Cowan, and Cameron Fyfe all together on the speaker phone of Heather’s Toyota.

Altschuler brought Megan and Hall up to speed on recent events. He explained that Hall’s warning had come too late, but that Trout had intervened. And that the three of them were now in Heather’s car.

Next it was Hall’s turn, who explained that he and Megan had been kidnapped by the military, and brought to a safe house.

“If they were military,” said Cowan, “why didn’t they take you to Edwards?”

“I have no idea. Nor do I have any idea who they were. Or what they wanted.”

“They didn’t tell you what they wanted?” repeated Fyfe in disbelief. “They went to all this trouble and they just let you go? Didn’t ask any questions?”

“No, they
didn’t
just let us go. I was coming to how we escaped. There was one guy in the room with me, who was about to begin an interrogation, when Megan came to the rescue. The man guarding Megan in another room underestimated her. She managed to clock him in the head with a lamp and spring me. Both men will be out for a long while.”

“You do seem to lead a charmed life,” said Fyfe, and his tone suggested he found it difficult to believe anyone could be as lucky as Hall continued to be. “Great job, Megan. I had no idea you were so . . . formidable.”

“Me either,” said Megan.

“But why would the military be after you?” pressed Fyfe. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I have no idea,” said Hall. “But whatever the guy in charge wanted, he didn’t seem like the type to give up easily.”

“Where are you right now?” asked Cowan.

Hall explained they had taken a car from their abductors and gave him their location.

Cowan left the call for several minutes. When he returned, he instructed Hall to ditch his phone, drive to a nearby shopping center, and wait to be picked up in front of the Macy’s at the southeast corner of the mall.

“The men I send will switch cars and do other stunts to be sure we lose any eyes in the sky,” said Cowan. “After that, you’ll be joining Alex and Heather at a safe house in Sacramento—a little over a hundred miles from where you are now.”

“Great,” said Megan sarcastically. “I’ve gone my whole life without ever being inside a safe house—whatever the hell a safe house really is, anyway. And now I get to be in two of them in the same day. What are the odds?”