Weavers (20 page)

CHAPTER 43

“Just put the fucking thing down!” Jessica screamed into the cockpit at the two pilots.
They’d already missed the landing the first time due to wind, and she wanted off of the plane. Darryl and Terry were loose somewhere in Michigan, and if the FBI reports that she’d been given in transit were even half-correct, they’d killed a lot of people to stay that way. She blamed herself for not being there, though she’d done everything she could to try and see the capture through.
They’re out there, though, and now bringing them in is going to be impossible.

“At least three dead cops,” was what the FBI agent had told her, and Jessica expected the number to rise. Darryl and Terry were in pure survival mode, just like the story Dad had told her years earlier when Frank had tried to kill him, even though that meant Frank was likely to die, too. The way Dad had told it, Frank would have happily risked his own life for just the slimmest chance of escape.
Frank was right, too
,
thought Jessica bitterly.
Look at what happened to him after he was caught.
The man had been locked up ever since, through president after president, through three directors and nearly fifty years.

The thought hit her like a brick to the head:
Frank.
She needed Frank. He had been the key to Pat’s plan before any of this shit had ever gotten stirred up, and he still could be. She needed to go back to the TRC, convince Frank by whatever means necessary to help with the sting, and then put things into play. Looking through the windshield in the cockpit of the Learjet, Jessica could see green fields as the plane finished the wide turn needed to right itself for the approach to the little airfield. The wind had died enough for them to land, now that it was too fucking late.

“How much fuel do we have?” Jessica asked no one in particular, and the copilot responded.

“About three-quarters of a tank.”

“We’re going back to Hartford immediately,” said Jessica. “Radio the tower.”

Neither member of the flight crew said anything. They just began to follow orders, both of them well aware of the ridiculous power this woman’s station afforded her, even when it came to the FAA.

“When you’re done with that, get on the horn with the tower there. I want the company chopper ready to get me to the TRC.”

The copilot nodded as the captain swore under his breath. Jessica didn’t begrudge the man his frustration. The two pilots had been mustered at a moment’s notice, been forced to scramble a jet in an impossibly brief time, and then had attempted to land at an airport so small that both of them had tried to talk Jessica out of the maneuver.

All of that was moot now, and she didn’t care, she couldn’t care. Frank was all that mattered.

Jessica walked off of the helicopter on the lawn of the TRC feeling like she’d been put in a bottle and shaken up. The trip had been a blur, a waking nightmare that was still going. She walked into the TRC, saw Westley working the desk at the front, and casually said, “Gun,” before drawing the Glock and dropping it in the lockbox that he made appear on the counter. Jessica left before the box was even closed, passed the dioramas without a glance, and ran her fingertip on the scanner. It wouldn’t be long now.

She collected herself as she walked through the steel hallway, used the retinal scanner, and took the elevator to the TK floor. Time was of the essence for them, and Frank would know it and want to take advantage of it. He couldn’t read her like he could anyone else, but he was a genius, and he’d know from the most basic body language cues that she needed him more than he needed her.

Jessica swallowed thickly, wishing she had a glass of water but not wanting to waste even a minute before seeing him. The elevator dropped, plunging her past the floor that housed her research team and then finally stopping at the TK floor. She slid through the doors as they opened, waved at the receptionist as she passed the desk, and then ran to Frank’s room.

She was breathing hard when she got there, decided it didn’t matter, then used another retinal scanner and punched the keys to get inside.

“Well, there you are,” said Frank as she entered, her prediction of his ability to read her becoming true in an instant. “What took you so long?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Of course you have,” said Frank. Was it possible he was bigger yet since the last time that she’d been to see him? “Why are you so flushed?”

“I need your help.”

“That goes without saying,” said Frank in his thick, wet rasp. “Why else spend time with the freak?”

“Frank, I don’t think you’re a freak. I’m sorry that it’s been so long, but I’ve honestly been busy, and—”

“You’ve finally found one?”

Jessica raised an eyebrow.
He’s just guessing. He can’t get to you like that, you know this. Don’t let him throw you.

“Yes and no,” said Jessica. “We’ve been hunting two men—two bad men—but they managed to get away.” She paused and then said, “That’s where you come in. I need you to help me catch them.”

“Where am I going?”

“Nowhere, Frank,” said Jessica slowly. “I need you to help me catch them from here.”

“Not possible,” said Frank after a moment. He almost looked as though he was affirming that Jessica wasn’t making fun of him. “I am very powerful, but I cannot reach someone from down here. Even if you shut off all of your little tricks—your walls and hats and everything else—I would have a hard time seeing aboveground, much less to wherever your little runner is.”

“There’s a young man here with an idea about that,” said Jessica. “He’s a computer expert, and he has a theory that someone like you could connect with a person through the lines that electronically connect computers.”

“We tried phones, tried that trick forever ago—Edith and I both did,” said Frank. “It didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Tell your boy that he’s wrong, it won’t work. He needs a new tree to bark up.”

“It will work,” said Jessica, knowing it didn’t matter, because if they failed then there wouldn’t even be a TRC. “We’ve done the testing, Frank, but we need a high-level TK to make this work. We need you.”

Frank just looked at her for a long moment, then said, “Say I believe you, what’s the point? Why do you want to get in someone’s head through a wire?”

“As I’ve said, there are two very bad men on the loose,” said Jessica. “Neither is as powerful as you, and what they’ve been up to is nowhere near as smooth as your Ham and Egger routine, but they’re young TKs, and I need them.”

“The last time you needed a favor, you promised me Katarina,” said Frank. “You promised that you were going to catch her and bring her to me.”

“I still am, Frank. This is the start of bringing in a lot more TKs. I just need your help to get the program rolling. Katarina is the next step, but I can’t get there without this.”

“And what if I’m a fool and say that I’ll help? How does your computer expert think this will work?”

“It will work,” said Jessica. “It’s really pretty simple. Our expert goes into a chat room—a place on the Internet where people can speak to strangers—and you go in with him. You lie back, leave him the ability to do his thing. He’ll be making a spectacle of himself, making himself a big, fat worm on our hook. He’ll be a blowhard kid, maybe the son of a banker or the son of a CFO. When our targets start working the kid to access daddy’s cash, you’ll save Pat—my computer expert—from any push that tells him to commit suicide to cover up the illegal acts, or anything else of that nature. While you do that, we trace the account that our marks are using to talk to the pair of you.”

“What if I say I’ll help but instead I warn your fish away?”

“Then I lose, Frank,” said Jessica, feeling the same triumph she had moments before the rug was yanked from beneath her in the skies above Michigan. “I lose, and Darryl and Terry—our marks—win. But you lose, too.”

“How do I lose?” Frank asked. “I get to pull the wool over your eyes, I get to enjoy a nice belly laugh for throwing a monkey wrench into the system that keeps me in a cage, and I get the satisfaction of a job well done.”

“Trust me, Frank, you would lose,” said Jessica. “I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that whoever has been feeding you is fired before I am, and I guarantee that whoever takes this place over after Howard and I are forced out will be given a pretty simple mandate. And I doubt that order will involve keeping any of the lions alive.”

Frank nodded, a grotesque maneuver that sent ripples shifting down the loose skin that covered his face and neck. “All right,” he said. “I’m in. When do we start?”

“Today,” said Jessica, and Frank nodded. If he was surprised, it wasn’t showing. “One more thing,” she said. “We’re going to get you out of this room for a day or two, get you on up to the unsecured floor. Can you play nice?”

“Just so long as I can play,” said Frank with a smile.

CHAPTER 44

Cynthia sat at the table in Mrs. Martin’s apartment.
The two dogs slept on the couch, having already received their ration of pets.

“Ready?” Mrs. Martin asked, and Cynthia nodded, and the two of them linked hands.

Cynthia closed her eyes, and when she opened them a fraction of a second later, she was above North Harbor again. The colors were exactly as they’d been before, and Cynthia would have smiled at the familiar sight if she’d been able to. Instead, she zipped down to street level and began to take in the world around her.

When she was weaving, Cynthia felt like she was as strong as any adult and just as smart. This was her world, even though she wasn’t even really here at all. Next, Cynthia did as Mrs. Martin had said and zipped back out into the sky. All it took was a little push, the desire to be there, and she was. Cynthia had only ever sparingly played video games, but couldn’t help but compare the two things. She was tethered to that odd version of her in the sky, only it was her mind and not her fingers on a controller that were providing the instructions.

Cynthia dove back down to the blacktop and then winked back up a second later. It would have been disorienting if she’d actually been moving, but there was no flying involved. “You start in one place and then wind up in another,” Mrs. Martin had said, and there really was nothing more to it than that.

Cynthia blinked herself back to the sky and the overview of the apartment complex, then shot back to ground level before returning once more to the sky. Could other aspects of weaving be this simple? She doubted it, and yet, amazing as all of this was, Cynthia still felt like she was playing at a level far below her actual abilities.

She counted the apartments marked with color. Just over half of the complex’s apartments were occupied, assuming that the dots left by Mrs. Martin were only visible when their occupants were actually home. Cynthia winked back to the ground, then back to the sky, and then fired herself into an apartment. Mrs. Martin had told her that this was just practice and not to engage people, but all Cynthia could think about was her drawing. She wanted to be the girl she’d drawn, minus all of the black lines, of course. Mrs. Martin had needed her help to deal with four people at once, but Cynthia hadn’t felt the reins strain even once as she wove her thoughts into those two men.

Cynthia went from apartment to apartment, weaving for just seconds in each of them before moving on again, weaving in and then winking back out to the sky. Cynthia could feel Mrs. Martin trying to keep up, trying to figure out what she was doing, but her teacher’s stride was simply too short. Cynthia blasted herself back and forth from the sky to the various abodes of the North Harbor residents, weaving herself into all of them, and when she was done she threw herself back to the earth.

Feeling out of breath even though she wasn’t breathing, Cynthia tugged against the strings of her neighbors, an act for her that was no more difficult than blinking her eyes. Without exception, the people of North Harbor opened their doors simultaneously and at the same time all said, “Hi, Cynthia,” before closing their doors. Cynthia released them at the same time, firing back to the sky and yanking her threads cleanly from theirs. Cynthia knew reflexively that she hadn’t hurt any of them. She’d been careful with her weaving, hadn’t bludgeoned her way through it.

Cynthia gazed down at North Harbor, pleased and more than a little proud of herself—and then there was a sound like nothing she had ever heard, and the world went black.

When Cynthia opened her eyes, she was sitting across from Mrs. Martin. Both of the dogs were barking, and Cynthia could hear the mad wail of multiple car alarms going off outside. Mrs. Martin slammed her fists onto the tabletop, making the dogs go from barking to diving for hiding places. Cynthia could see Mrs. Martin’s threads, and they were glowing red and pink.

“What were you thinking?” Mrs. Martin asked, and Cynthia burst into tears. She hadn’t been thinking; she’d been having fun. All she wanted to do was see how far she could push her new talent, and even the most difficult thing that she could think of had come easily.

“I was just trying—” sobbed Cynthia, but Mrs. Martin cut her off with a violent shake of her head.

“No, no more trying,” said Mrs. Martin. “No more anything like that, not unless I tell you it’s OK, do you understand?”

Cynthia nodded, but she still didn’t know why. All she’d been trying to do was to see how far she could push herself, not to make Mrs. Martin upset.

“You could have hurt those people,” said Mrs. Martin as Cynthia got her sobbing under control. “I know you don’t see how, but you could have hurt them very badly.”

Cynthia nodded again, though she knew Mrs. Martin was wrong. Just because her teacher couldn’t do what Cynthia could didn’t make it dangerous, and Cynthia knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d been in control the entire time.

“I won’t do it again, I promise,” lied Cynthia. She wanted to tell the truth, and she wanted Mrs. Martin to be happy, just like she wanted her parents to be happy, but there was too much joy in weaving. At that moment, Cynthia realized that, as much as she could learn from Mrs. Martin, she was going to need to be her own teacher as well.

“Good,” said Mrs. Martin. “I’ll get us some sandwiches. Does that sound good?”

Cynthia nodded, then leaned over to pet the dogs as they sauntered back to the table. Food did sound good, but not as good as every person in North Harbor greeting her had sounded. Stanley and Libby ran around her hands and chair while Mrs. Martin hummed in the kitchen, and Cynthia silently told the dogs to sit in front of her. The pair did it at once, sitting with wagging tails before her, and Cynthia sent them yellow warmth in thanks for their obedience.