Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Elizabeth Forester, Matt said into her mind.
Thank you for that—and the rest of it.
But you still don’t know why those men are after you?
I wish I did.
We’ll figure it out.
He clasped her to him, holding her in place, and she was content to lie on top of him, still marveling at how they had traveled together to an undiscovered country.
“This is what we were meant for,” he murmured, absolute conviction in his voice.
She understood what he was saying.
Always incomplete.
Until now.
Why did it happen?
The loneliness or what happened when we touched?
Both.
“We have to find out,” he said aloud as he stroked her arm.
She gave a short laugh. “You’re saying we can’t just enjoy it.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
She considered the question. “No. I want to understand. And, of course, we still have to figure out why those men want to question me—then kill me.”
“There’s that.”
She raised her head, looking around the room. She had barely noticed it when they’d come in. Now, it had taken on meaning. It might be a typical motel room, but it was a magical place—where she and Matthew Delano had forged a connection neither one of them had ever dreamed of.
When she shifted off him, he sat up and looked around, and she knew he was following her thoughts. But he was thinking about something else as well.
Naked, he got out of bed and reached for the remote beside the television set. Then he slipped back under the covers and began flipping through the channels.
It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. The afternoon news was on several of the local channels. When he stopped at one, a reporter was standing in front of the house where they had recently escaped from Polly’s killer.
“Polly Kramer, a local woman who worked as a nurse at Memorial Hospital, was found dead in her laundry room. Responding to a 911 call, police arrived to find the victim alone in the house. Wanted for questioning are Doctor Matthew Delano and a woman known only as Jane Doe, who was admitted to the hospital with amnesia. Ms. Kramer volunteered to take the discharged patient home while she tried to regain her memory. Apparently, the Good Samaritan gesture led to her death.”
Elizabeth stared at the television screen in shocked silence.
Matt reached to comfort her. “It’s not your fault.”
“You said that before, but of course it is. She’d be alive if she hadn’t volunteered to help me out.”
“Don’t blame yourself. You had no idea what was going to happen.”
“But I knew I was in some kind of danger.”
He rocked her as she shivered in his arms. “If you want to assign blame, think about how they knew where to find you. It wasn’t through Polly, and it wasn’t through me. It must have come from one of the other nurses.”
“But why?”
“Maybe she thought she was being helpful.”
Elizabeth wanted to believe she wasn’t to blame, but she couldn’t stop her overwhelming reaction.
“We have to find out what’s going on. We have to find the guy who killed her and turn him over to the police.”
“Is he the same guy who pulled you out of the car?”
She brought up the face of the first thug. “No.”
“If I had to guess, the I’d say they are both working for someone else. In fact, I think you stumbled onto a criminal conspiracy.”
She dragged in a sharp breath.
“I think you knew that already,” he went on. “I think you figured the cops were in on it.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because I’ve seen a lot of government corruption in my travels.”
“Your diagnosis is that it would be unhealthy to go to the cops, doctor?”
He laughed at her turn of phrase, then sobered. “I think we might end up dead in a jail cell. But even if we didn’t, if they took us into custody, we wouldn’t be free to figure out what’s going on.”
Not too far away, in the Dulaney Valley mansion of Derek Lang, Gary Southwell and his boss were watching the same newscast.
Lang was sitting in a comfortable chair in his TV room. Southwell was standing a few feet away, shifting his weight from foot to foot and keeping his hands at his sides—away from his battered face.
“Tell me again how she got away?” Lang asked.
Gary cleared his throat, hoping his nerves didn’t show. “I had a gun on her. Then she threw herself to the ground, and a guy jumped me from behind.”
“Curious that she knew to get out of the line of fire.”
Gary had thought about that. “He must have given her some kind of signal.”
“Which would mean they had something prearranged.”
Gary nodded.
“And you weren’t aware of him in back of you?”
“No, sir. I killed the old lady, and I didn’t expect anyone else besides Forester.”
He could see Lang thinking about the answer. He was wondering if Gary had made a mistake—or they were dealing with someone very clever. From experience, he knew there was no use trying to persuade his employer either way. He’d make up his own mind.
“The police still don’t know who she is, or they’re not saying, which gives us an advantage,” Lang mused.
“And I think she still doesn’t know, either. At least I got that impression from talking to her.”
“Why?”
“The look in her eyes,” Gary answered promptly.
“Okay.”
With anyone else, Gary might have asked a question like, “What’s our next move?” But he kept silent because he knew Lang would give him further orders when he had a plan in place.
He watched his boss thinking about his options before he said, “Stake out her house. If she figures out who she is, she’ll go back there.”
“Yes, sir,” Gary answered, relieved to have a new assignment. One he wasn’t going to screw up.
“And one more thing. The cops are also looking for the doctor who treated her, the one on shift the morning she was released. Unless we have contradictory information, we have to assume that he’s the guy who came up behind you. And we have to assume the two of them are together. Keep a man on his place, too, in case he’s dumb enough to go home.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll check his credit card records and his background. Where was he before he was in Baltimore? We may get a lead on where he’s gone.”
Gary left the room, feeling like he’d made a lucky escape. Other men who had worked for Derek Lang had disappeared. They might have moved on to other jobs, but Gary didn’t think so.
Matt kept his arm around Elizabeth. At the same time, he sent her soothing thoughts. It was a strange way to communicate, but he knew it was working as he felt her shivering subside.
“Let’s think this through. Make some plans.”
She caught a thought sliding through his head. “And you want to have a hamburger while we’re doing it.”
He laughed. “I can’t help it. I haven’t had anything to eat since that wonderful chili of yours, and I think we both need to keep our strength up.”
“You like my cooking?”
“It’ll be a nice bonus—when we get out of this mess. But for now, fast food.”
“Okay.”
Her agreement came with what she was really thinking—that after seeing the news report, she wasn’t sure she could eat.
“Inconvenient to be getting so many of your stray thoughts,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“There are a ton of fast-food chains around here. I can go out and bring the burgers back.”
“Okay,” she answered, and again he picked up more than she was saying. She didn’t love the idea of being left alone, but under the circumstances, it was safer.
“I know,” she murmured aloud.
He nodded and got dressed. “Back in a flash.”
When he stopped short, she gave him a questioning look, then said, “You’re worried that the cops could be looking for your car.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
He knew she was following all the options running through his head. He couldn’t just rent a car because he’d have to use his credit card. And stealing a car wasn’t in his skill set—or his ethics set, either.
He finally said, “I read a spy novel where the hero changed a letter on his license plate with electrical tape. I’ll see if I can pick some up. Will you be okay with staying here alone?”
“Yes.”
Wishing her answer was closer to the truth, he stepped outside and looked around to make sure nobody was paying him any particular attention, then drove at a moderate pace to one of the fast-food chains that were clustered in the same area as the motel complex. He bought double burgers, fries, and milkshakes because he figured both of them could use the calories.
When he returned to the room twenty minutes later, Elizabeth had dressed and made the bed. She was watching the news again.
“Anything new?”
“No. I guess that’s good.”
“Yeah. Let’s turn it off.”
After setting the food on the table, he clicked the TV off with the remote and sat down. She took the seat opposite.
When he’d taken a few bites of his burger, he said, “I was thinking about why we’re the way we are.”
“So was I.”
“I wonder if there’s something similar in our backgrounds.”
She laughed. “That would be easier if I knew my background.”
“Yeah. About all we can tell is that we both felt cut off from other people.” He chewed and swallowed. “Well, I’m from New Orleans. And you said you remember being there.”
She nodded. “That’s not much to go on. But I was thinking the reason could be genetic. Or we could both have been exposed to some chemical—or radiation.”
“Before or after we were born.”
“Did you have any major illnesses?” she asked.
“Nothing special. Only the usual.”
She looked at him. “You said your mom went to a lot of trouble getting pregnant and that she went to a fertility clinic. Do you know where it was?”
“Houma, Louisiana, I think.”
“IVF wasn’t so common thirty years ago. I wonder if her going to the clinic had something to do with it. Which leads to the question, what about me?”
“I don’t know. But I can do some research in the medical databases.”
“Looking for what? I don’t think you’re going to find telepathic abilities. Or more precisely—telepathic abilities triggered by …”
“Physical contact. With sexual relations cementing the final breakthrough.”
“Very scientific.”
He grinned. “I guess a medical background doesn’t hurt.” Sobering again, he added, “Of course, figuring out how we got telepathic powers is not our immediate problem. The way I see it, there are three things we need to do right away. Since we know your name, we can go to your house. That would help you get your memory back. But I wouldn’t suggest doing it until we have a better idea how to protect ourselves.”
“With a gun?”
“With our minds. When that guy was holding a weapon on you, I told you to duck, and you did it. We need to find out if we can do more stuff like that. Not just talk to each other.”
“What else?”
He turned his palm up. “Did you read many science fiction stories when you were younger? Or movies? There are a lot of paranormal abilities we can explore.”
“I do remember Star Trek reruns.”
“Another blast from your past.”
He saw that she “heard” what that thought had triggered.
“You think we can use our minds to—blast someone?”
“I don’t know. But if we can, it’s much more convenient than having to pack a six-shooter. And stealthier, too. Who would suspect an innocent-looking woman like you of being the Terminator?”
She laughed. “Didn’t the Terminator use brute force?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s finish eating and try some target practice.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere secluded.” He waited for a beat to see if she’d come up with something. Then he said, “We might drive out toward Frederick. There should be plenty of open space out there.”
She took small bites of her hamburger.
“If you’re not hungry, drink the milkshake.”
“That’s strange nutritional advice from a doctor.”
He shrugged. “If we’re going to try blasting something, we’ll probably use up some calories.”
“I guess that’s right.” She took off the top of the bun and ate some of the meat and bottom bun, then picked up the milkshake. “I can drink this while we drive.”
“Do you often multitask?”
“Apparently.”
“Well, eat more of your burger in the car, too.”
He bundled up the trash and threw it in the wastebasket, then hesitated as he walked to the door.
“You’re thinking that maybe we shouldn’t come back here?”
“That could be right.”
“But you’re going to run out of cash if you keep renting rooms for a few hours.”
“Yeah. I guess we can decide later.”
He looked through the blinds before opening the door and ushering her to follow. They both got into the car, and he drove to the closest shopping center, which happened to have a home improvement store.
Inside, he bought electrical tape and a pair of scissors, then found a secluded part of the lot and looked at his license plate. One of the letters was an “L,” which he was able to change into an “E.” Stepping back, he looked at his handiwork. Not too bad unless you got on top of it. But on the highway it should work. And he’d better not call attention to them by speeding.
They headed northwest and got off Route 70 in a rural area. He found a state park where nobody else seemed to be taking advantage of nature, and they both climbed out.
“How are we going to do it?”
“Let’s start with some mind-to-mind communication experiments.”
“Like what?”
“When I called out to you to drop to the ground, I was about ten feet away.”
“But now we’ve got a stronger link.”
“Right,” he said, and they both knew he was thinking about their lovemaking. “Let’s see how far away we can do it.”
“I think we have to be touching to do it,” She teased.
“You know what I meant.”
She nodded, and they first stood on opposite sides of the car.
Do you know the names of the trees? he asked.
She looked around. I see maples, oaks, and white pine.
Good that you know them. Let’s try it a little farther apart.
They each walked a few feet from the car and tried the communication again. It seemed to work until they were about twenty yards away, the limit of their mind-to-mind communication skills.
At least for now, he said.
What do you mean?
As you pointed out, our abilities got stronger after we made love. I think that we can make everything we do stronger—if we practice.
Practice making love? she teased again, and he knew she was making an effort to lighten the situation.
That, too.
They joined up again and walked down a trail through the woods.
“It’s so peaceful here. I hate the idea of destroying anything.”
They came to a footbridge across a stream, where large rocks poked up through the water.
“Let’s just see if we can do something to a rock,” he suggested.
“How?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”
She leaned on the rail, looking downstream, then pointed to a large boulder sticking up above the water line. “We can aim for that one. And we don’t want to work against each other. I think it might be best if one of us focuses on the rock and the other one tries to—uh— add power to the focus.”
“That sounds right.”
Over a thousand miles away in New Orleans, a man named Harold Goddard hunched over his computer. He was retired now, but once he’d worked for the Howell Institute, a DC think tank that had funded some very interesting projects over the years—like undetectable chemical weapons and torture methods which left no marks on those being interrogated.
Bill Wellington had been the director of the institute, and Harold had worked closely with him. Wellington had died in an explosion at a secret research lab in Houma, Louisiana, and that had raised Harold’s interest.
The lab had been owned by Dr. Douglas Solomon, who’d run one of Wellington’s pet projectsthirty-some years ago. Only it hadn’t quite panned out the way they’d hoped. Never one to double down on a bet, Wellington had pulled the doctor’s funding, and Solomon had gone underground with a bunch of different experiments. Had the two men kept in contact over the years? Or did Wellington find out something about the doctor’s most recent activities? Harold might never find the answer to that question because Solomon and Wellington had both been killed when the doctor’s hidden research facility blew up. The authorities had concluded that the cause was a gas leak. Harold had his doubts—especially considering subsequent events.
The incident had gotten him interested in Solomon again.
He’d gone poking into old records from the clinic and come up with a list of very interesting people—all whose mothers had had the doctor’s special treatments.
Over the past few months, Harold had brought several of them together. Several men and women had ended up dead in bed together—apparently from cerebral vascular accidents. Then two of them, Craig Branson and Stephanie Swift, had vanished into thin air—after some very alarming incidents. Incidents that had made Harold cautious about approaching other people on the list.
Now here was one of the names—Matthew Delano, currently AWOL from his job as a house physician at Memorial Hospital in Baltimore and wanted for questioning in a murder investigation.
Harold scanned the new site, noting that Dr. Delano had treated a woman patient with amnesia. One of the nurses on the unit had volunteered to take Jane Doe home and gotten shot to death in her own kitchen. By Delano and the woman? Or by someone else?
That was an interesting question and one that gave Harold pause. His men had gotten caught in the crossfire when Branson had kidnapped Swift from the fortified plantation of her fiancé, John Reynard, just before the wedding ceremony.
Now here were two more products of the clinic, involved in a dangerous situation. Harold was tempted to send someone up to Baltimore to investigate, but perhaps it was prudent to stay away from the couple. Maybe it was best to keep tabs on developments and make a decision at a later time.
Yet it was hard to simply drop the chance for another experiment. He thought back over what had happened at the Reynard estate. Was there some way to protect yourself from Delano and the woman—to prevent what had happened before?
Elizabeth turned to Matt. “Let me try to do the focusing.”
“Because you still have a lot of memory gaps, and you want to be effective at something?”
“You read me so well.”
“We already know you’re effective at cooking.”
“I’m not going to batter our enemies with a soufflé.”
“You can make a soufflé?”
She considered the question. “Maybe not. I think I’m into more prosaic dishes—like last night’s dinner.”
The statement stopped her. “A lot has happened since last night,” she murmured.
“Yes. And I also think we’re stalling about trying out our powers.”
“Right.”
Cutting off the extraneous conversation, she looked at the rock she’d picked, thinking of a laser beam.
Or maybe lightning. And I’ll try to lend a power assist.
She narrowed her eyes, concentrating—trying to do something that she had no idea how to accomplish.
Matt moved behind her, pressing close and clasping his hands around her waist, making himself part of her.
She could feel theenergy flowing between them, gathering strength. It was a wonderful sensation if she could only figure out how to use it.
Raising her hand, she stretched it toward the rock, imagining beams of power coming out of her fingers.
And suddenly, to her surprise, there was a flash of light that streaked out toward the rock. Lightning crawled across the surface, and the water around it crackled and boiled.
She heard Matt make a strangled exclamation.
“You didn’t think we could do it,” she accused, “and you hid that from me.”
“You think it was the wrong thing to do?” he challenged.
“No. I might not have tried if I’d known you were waffling.”
“Right.” He stroked his hand along her arm. “Hiding our thoughts is another skill we need to practice.”
“Um, hum.” For a whole lot of reasons , she thought, and knew he’d caught the silent comment.
She turned back to the rock, focusing on delivering another blast. This time it was easier, and the damage was more severe. She saw small chips of stone fly up into the air and land in the water. But she noticed that Matt’s earlier observation was right. Blasting something took energy.
“Let’s switch roles,” she suggested.
He agreed, and they changed places, with her behind him, clasping his waist and peeking around him to watch the rock. At the same time, she tried to send him the kind of energy that he’d sent her.
She was tired, and it wasn’t so easy to do, but she finally felt the flow of power from her to him.
A stream of fire shot from his hand, and the rock blasted apart. She pulled him down, ducking behind the bridge rail as shards of stone flew into the air.
“Nice,” she approved.
“But dangerous. We need to figure out how to regulate the power,” he answered.
“Can we bring it down to a little sizzle?” She pointed to another target, a tree stump that had gotten lodged in the water between two boulders. “Try to just tap it,” she said. “Maybe you don’t need me to do that.”
Matt focused on the stump, and she felt him concentrating. After a few seconds, she saw sparks striking the bark.
“Nice,” she approved. “If it were a person, I wonder how it would feel.”
“Discomfort? Disorientation?”
They stayed on the bridge, leaning against the rail, both marveling at what they’d been doing. A few days ago, such an ability would have been unthinkable. It was empowering to realize what they could do together, but it didn’t solve Elizabeth’s basic problem.
“Let’s go back to where we started,” she said. Memories.
She turned so that she faced him. He wrapped her in an embrace, and she leaned into him, closing her eyes as she tried to grab on to something from her past.
She knew Matt was keeping the exchange directed away from himself, trying to help her dig out nuggets from her past.
The easiest memories to reach were from her childhood. And not all of them were bad. She remembered being enchanted by a trip to the zoo with her parents. She remembered a trip to Disney World where she’d insisted on riding the Space Mountain roller coaster. She remembered being the best girl basketball player in her high school class. And then she remembered the time she had missed a shot and lost a playoff game for the team.
Matt rubbed her arm. “Don’t focus on that.”
“I felt horrible. I had finally found something that made me valuable to the other kids, and I blew it.”
“We all have stuff like that. ”
The next picture that came to her knocked the breath from her lungs. It was like when Matt had hypnotized her. She saw young women huddled together. Only now, she felt their fear and knew that she was the only one who could save them from a horrible fate.