Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Gabe Bowman looked at the addresses Miss Wilder had given him. They were both in St. Stephens, about an hour and a half away. He wanted to begin the investigation. Maybe Carson’s house was a logical place to start.
He drove through the flat countryside where corn and soybean fields had once been. There was still some agriculture, but it was now interspersed with shopping centers and townhouse developments, which were the hallmarks of modern life.
Carson’s old clapboard house, sitting on a street that dead-ended at a wide creek, wasn’t one of them. It had probably been built early in the last century, long before the Bay Bridge made the Eastern Shore more accessible to vacationers and those seeking a slower lifestyle.
The creek thwarted Gabe’s plans. He had intended to drive past as though he were looking for another address.
But when the water stopped him, he was forced to turn around.
As he backed out of a driveway, he spotted a man sitting in a car across the street and several houses down from Carson’s place.
Gabe kept going, but he knew the guy had taken note of him.
It could have been curiosity at seeing a car on this seldom-traveled byway, but Gabe suspected that someone was staking out the house.
Interesting and disturbing. When he’d talked to Miss Wilder, he’d thought that there was going to be an innocuous explanation for Carson’s disappearance.
Now he wondered if he’d been too quick to make assumptions.
What if someone had killed or kidnapped Carson and wanted to make sure nobody found out about it?
Gabe had planned to check out the house and then head for the dock where Carson’s boat was moored. Now he decided he’d better take a more circumspect approach to his assignment. At the corner, he turned right and drove several blocks while deciding on how to proceed.
He didn’t think it was a coincidence that someone appeared to be watching the house. If he drove to the boat dock and encountered a similar situation, that might decide his next move. But one thing he did know, he was going to be a damn sight more cautious from now on.
* * *
Olivia looked out the window, surprised to see how light it was. Their conversation had so absorbed her that she’d lost track of time. She didn’t realize how much the night’s activities had drained her until she stood up and had to reach for the bedpost to steady herself.
Travis was instantly by her side, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m feeling a little dizzy. I think I’d better have something to eat.”
“Right.”
She gave him a long look, realizing she could see him quite clearly now. Their connection had changed him. He looked...
Like a living man?
His silent thought flashed into her mind, and some of the heady sense of accomplishment she’d been feeling drained away.
Don’t forget how all this started, he cautioned.
Right—with his reaching out to her after he’d been murdered, because she knew for sure now what had happened to him.
Feeling as though someone had landed a solid blow in the middle of her chest, she made a quick trip to the bathroom.
After using the facilities, she pulled on fresh underwear, sweatpants, and a loose T-shirt.
When she looked around for Travis, she didn’t see him.
Had he withdrawn to recharge or something?
Or was he giving her some space again? She decided not to call out to him as she headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, she began looking through the refrigerator.
She supposed most people had special foods they ate for breakfast. She preferred leftovers.
She’d brought home a creamed potato-and-sausage soup a few days earlier.
Now she pulled it out, ladled some into a mug, and set it in the microwave.
While it heated, she retrieved a caramel-flavored coffee pod and inserted it into the machine.
The microwave had just signaled that the soup was done when the doorbell rang.
After hearing about Travis’s horrendous encounter with Mr. Smith, she couldn’t help tensing. But when she peered out the front window, she saw a FedEx driver standing at the door. She’d been expecting a shipment of some acrylic paint, and this must be it.
When she opened the door, the guy said, “I need a signature.”
“Of course.” She reached for the pad and used the stylus to sign.
“Where are you going to put it?” a voice suddenly asked from behind her.
She whirled, not expecting that Travis had followed her downstairs. She could see him clearly standing in back of her.
“Something wrong?” the delivery man asked, as though he hadn’t heard Travis and couldn’t see him either.
“No,” she managed.
The driver kept his gaze on her. “Uh, you look like you saw a ghost or something.”
She made a choking sound. “I guess I’m not feeling well.” Quickly, she took the package and closed the door.
When she turned back toward the hall, Travis was still standing there.
“Did you do that on purpose?”
He sighed. “Okay, yeah, I wanted to find out if he could tell I was here.”
“Was that all?”
“What else?” he shot back.
“Maybe you wanted to remind me that...” Her voice trailed off when she found herself unwilling to complete the sentence.
He didn’t finish the thought for her. Brushing past him, she went back to the kitchen and retrieved the soup, wondering if she could eat it now.
“I’m sorry,” Travis said behind her.
“You want me to remember that this isn’t exactly a normal relationship.”
“I wish it were.”
She did too—with all her heart.
“I guess we have to...” She had started to say “settle,” but changed it to “be thankful for what we have.”
“I am,” he agreed. “But is it enough for you? I mean, you have a life. You interact with people who will never be able to see me.
“Are you trying to say this relationship isn’t good for me?”
He shrugged.
Wondering why he was suddenly looking on the negative side of things, she said, “Let me be the judge of that.”
After adding some half-and-half to her coffee, she brought the mug to the table and sat down.
He took the chair across from her. It was strange to see him sitting there. He should be eating breakfast, too.
I don’t need food.
I know, she answered as she sipped some soup.
She had brought her laptop to the table.
While she ate, she Googled the Solomon Clinic and found out some interesting information.
The place had burned down thirty years ago.
And then an explosion at a research facility the doctor was still running killed him and a nurse who had worked at the clinic with him.
Travis followed along as she read. “I’m betting the fire at the clinic wasn’t an accident.”
“Yeah.”
“And what about that later explosion?”
She shrugged. “Sounds like trouble followed him.”
“Maybe the government terminated his research—with prejudice.”
She winced. “You think they’d do that?”
“Maybe, if it was part of a cover-up.”
“Do you think Smith did it?”
“Don’t know. But I’m sure he knew what happened.”
Although Olivia tried to gather more information, there wasn’t much more to learn about Dr. Solomon and his clinic. Finally, she closed the laptop with a sigh. “Dead end.”
“But we should figure out what we can do.”
“A lot of choices.”
“We should start with something easy.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s probably better to go outside before we try hurling any thunderbolts.”
“Agreed. And begin by mastering something easier first.”
Her gaze fell on the napkin holder at the side of the tabletop. It was one of her own creations, an old wooden box painted with a garden scene. Taking out a napkin, she laid it on the table.
“It’s not heavy. Maybe we can make it move.”
“How?”
“If we both tried to move it, we’d be fighting each other. Maybe one of us should try to do it, and the other will add...power.”
“You do the moving,” he suggested.
As she focused on the napkin, she sensed Travis’s energy pushing into her. It felt strange, a little like a mild electric current. She kept her gaze on the napkin, willing it to lift from the table, putting her own energy into the attempt, although she wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.
For long moments, nothing happened, but she wasn’t going to give up so easily. Hadn’t Smith been sure they could do this kind of thing?
She felt her muscles tighten as she focused on the napkin, willing something to happen. And then, to her shock—it did. The thin paper lifted off the table, then fell back to the flat surface as though it had been hit by a fleeting air current.
She glanced up at Travis and saw a look of triumph in his eyes. “I’ll be damned.”
The small success made her redouble her efforts.
Now she had a little better idea of what she was doing.
As Travis gave her a kind of power assist, she raised the napkin a couple of inches off the table, making it ripple like the motion of a manta ray’s fins as it glides through the water.
The manta ray image caught Travis’s imagination.
He grinned at her, and she knew he had taken control of the experiment.
Now she was the one lending him energy as he made two edges of the napkin flutter more as it took flight and sailed off the table.
She watched in amazement as it flew around the room, picking up speed as it went, circling the table.
“My God,” she gasped.
The napkin executed one more circle before coming down for a landing where it had originally been lying.
You didn’t think we could do it.
I wanted it to work.
You were the one who suggested we try out some of those things Smith told me about.
I did. But I wasn’t sure.
What do you want to try next?
Something harder.
Before Olivia could say what that might be, the phone rang, and she jumped. She’d been so focused on what they were doing that the outside world had gone away. She didn’t want to answer, but when she got up and looked at the caller ID, guilt flooded over her, and she snatched up the receiver.