Drew floored the accelerator as we exited the ramp and merged onto I-95 North.
Traffic was heavy as it always was in the afternoon.
Drew steered onto the shoulder, not slowing. Rumble strips vibrated the car. Pissed-off drivers honked at us as we sped past.
The cops had stopped chasing us before we got to the garage. They’d collapsed in the street, sobs racking their bodies. We hadn’t stopped to console them.
Thoughts from the people in the cars filled my head as we drove by. They flitted in and out as they skirted the edges of my telepathic range. My defenses were crumbling by the minute. Soon I would be little more than a blubbering pile in the passenger seat.
The bleeding from my hand had lessened. I inspected the gash. It was nearly two inches long, the bones of my knuckles exposed.
“You’ve got some serious fucking explaining to do.” Drew hammered on the horn to get cars out of the way. “Who the hell is this Murdock guy, and how did he almost make me kill you?”
“I’ll tell you everything, but you’ve got to get me away from all of these people first.” I put my thumbs against my temples and pushed, hoping to alleviate some of the building pressure.
“You’re hearing everyone’s thoughts? I thought that didn’t start until the evening?”
“It’s been a long day.”
Drew took the next exit. He drove through a red light at the end of the ramp and swerved onto a small, two-lane road. The buildings grew sparse after a few miles, and the thunder in my head abated.
“We need to find a hotel,” Drew said. “I could feel that crazy bastard poking around in my head. He knows where both of us live.”
“What was it like having him in the driver’s seat?”
A shiver ran through him. “Terrifying. Hopeless. Like someone holding you underwater, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He rubbed his forehead again. “I owe you for slamming my face off that bar.”
“You were going to shoot me. Suck it up.”
“Murdock was going to shoot you.”
“Same difference.”
Drew pulled into the parking lot of a hotel. Cars filled most of the spaces. He drove around the back and found a spot behind a dumpster, concealing his car from most of the building.
“There are too many people here. I won’t be able to keep them out of my head for long.” I eyed the windows wearily. The idea of fighting against several dozen people’s thoughts filled me with dread.
“Don’t worry about it, Ashley. I’ll get us a couple of brews to drink while we figure this whole thing out.”
I reached for the door handle when Drew grabbed my shoulder. He looked at his blood-covered suit.
“Thanks for dragging me out of there. For getting me away from him. He was going to make me do awful things.”
“I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this. I didn’t know who else to call when I was in the cemetery. Thanks for coming to get me.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, each thinking of the things we’d experienced.
“You aren’t going to kiss me, are you?” I asked. “I know how sexy I am, but I really feel that would dampen our friendship.”
“Aren’t you just hilarious?”
“I try.”
“Maybe you could try to take a goddamn shower when we get in the room. I can actually taste the stench coming off you.” His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Melissa.”
Drew had been dating a fourth grade teacher for the past two months. Things were more serious between them than he wanted to admit. He’d been staying overnight at her apartment for the past week, though he hadn’t told me that.
I tried my best not to see in his head, had promised him that I wouldn’t, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. Things just popped in there.
Melissa hated me. The resentment stemmed from several points of contention, not the least of which was the amount of time Drew spent with me. She also thought I was a cocky, abrasive mooch. Because my income consisted entirely of disability checks, she saw me as little more than a government leech. She didn’t seem to understand that I qualified for disability because I was injured while fighting in a war.
I also took issue with her labeling me as cocky and abrasive.
I preferred to think I was charming. If you didn’t like it, then you could kiss my ass. What was abrasive about that?
Drew had no idea that I knew she hated me. He probably should have figured it out, considering my telepathy.
“Not going to answer?” I asked.
“I can’t. Whatever it is that you’ve gotten me into, I can’t have her involved.” He slid his thumb across the screen and sent the call to voicemail. “I can’t call anyone. Murdock just wiped out an entire police department. If we go to my station, and he follows us…”
Drew let the sentence hang between us. He turned to me. “Tell me what happened. How did you wind up in a cemetery with that monster?”
I told him everything. Smith, Murdock, McArthur. By the time I finished, the reality of our situation sank in even more. We were in quicksand, and I had no idea how to dig us out.
“They drugged you in the middle of the street?”
“Yup. Right in front of Sammy too.”
“The feds are ballsy, but that’s taking it really far. I think you’re onto something with this Smith guy not being what he seems. You said you memorized the address of the building. What was it?”
He jotted it down as I told him.
“I’ll see what I can find on him. I can remotely log into our system at work, but if anyone is looking for us, they’ll be able to track us to the computer.” He drummed his hands on the steering wheel. “Why isn’t the government turning over every stone as they search for Murdock? The guy killed a senator, his family, wiped out a police department, and murdered an entire floor of computer hackers. You’d think the country would be under martial law by now.”
I shrugged. “Why did they only send six guys after Murdock in the cemetery? The whole thing stinks to me. They said I was the only one who could help them find him, yet they let me sit in a jail cell. What sense does that make?”
A couple walked out of the back of the hotel, hand in hand. They strolled to their car in the carefree afterglow of sex. Their thoughts floated to me as they lazily drove away. I hadn’t intended to eavesdrop.
My mind was even more fatigued than I’d realized.
“I need some alcohol.”
“You need a shower too.”
“Fine. Just get me a room, and I’ll take a shower while you get me some beer.”
Drew got out of the car. Said, “I can’t believe I’m on the run from a mind-controlling spy with a guy who plans on getting shitfaced tonight.”
I gave him a dismissive gesture. “Talk to me about my problems when you spend an entire night listening to a guy fantasize about his stepdaughter, all right?”
We walked around to the front of the hotel and into the lobby. The concierge did a double take when he watched us stroll over to the front desk. He was tall and thin. His hair was parted on the right side, covering the balding top of his head in a comb over the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Bill Murray in Kingpin.
His eyes roamed over the blood on Drew’s suit, the cut on my hand, and the tear in my shirt.
“What? Is my fly open?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
Drew nudged me in the ribs. They were still sore, and it hurt like hell. I tried to play it off like everything was cool, but I felt like crying.
“We need a room.” Drew pulled his wallet from his back pocket.
“On the top floor, if you can,” I said.
Drew looked at me. “Why?”
“So I can’t hear the people going in and out of the lobby.” I opened my eyes as wide as I could, trying to give him an ‘Are you dense?’ kind of look.
“Our hotel is very solidly built, sir. You won’t be able to hear—”
“Just give us a room on the top floor.”
He huffed and typed into the keyboard in front of him, looking down at a monitor. He paused a few seconds later. His nostrils flared a few times.
“Smells, doesn’t he?” Drew asked.
The concierge kept typing as if he hadn’t heard anything, but the corner of his mouth curled slightly. I bit my tongue. It was taking a lot of concentration to keep the thoughts of the residents above us at bay.
Drew paid in cash. We had our keycards and were in the elevator a few minutes later. Our room was on the sixth floor, at the end of the hall. A cart with a few bags in it sat outside a room three doors down from ours.
—the hell is she doing in there, anyway? I swear to God, if we get stuck in traffic again, because she—
I focused on blocking the voice out as we passed by the room.
Because it was still relatively early in the day for hotel check-ins, there were only a couple of occupants on our floor and the one beneath us. The lower floors had more people, but the majority of them were out of my range. The weight pressing in on me lessened a bit.
Drew stood at the door. “I’m going to look for a liquor store. You need to wash the stank off your ass.”
I peeled my shirt off. And I did mean peeled. It clung to my skin like Saran wrap. I probably could have stood it against the wall. “Hooah. Don’t use your credit card, or they’ll be able to find us.”
“I’m the detective, remember? You focus on soap and shampoo, and I’ll take care of the rest.” He stepped into the hall and looked back at me. “I’m going to make a few calls to people I can trust. See if they can find out more about this Smith character.”
“Bring me the alcohol before you get into anything too deep. My head is going to explode Scanners style if too many more people check in here.”
Drew left.
I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I wasn’t a pretty sight.
Dried blood dotted my checks. A yellowing bruise covered most of my chest. My hand looked like I’d stuck it in a wood chipper. My hair stood on end.
It took all I had not to scream when I stepped into the hot shower. The pain in my hand was almost more than I could bear. I was no stranger to taking a beating, but this was over the top.
The agony abated as I stood there for several minutes. Steam filled the room. The heat worked its way into my muscles, loosening them. I stayed under the spray until my skin turned red. The water swirling in the bottom of the tub had a pink tinge.
I scrubbed my lacerated knuckles with soap, biting back more screams.
When I stepped out, I felt quite a bit better. The aches and pains of the multiple fights I’d slogged through had dulled, and I felt refreshed.
A first-aid kit was under the sink. Three butterfly bandages closed the wound on my hand. I wrapped it with a few layers of gauze to keep it clean. Brushed my teeth with my finger and a bit of toothpaste.
I didn’t have any clean clothes to change into, so I tied a towel around my waist and poked my head into the hall. It was still clear. The cart full of bags hadn’t moved.
I sneaked down the hall, tiptoeing on the worn carpet. Because of my height and relatively small waist, it was hard to find clothes in a store that fit me perfectly. Everything long enough usually had a wide waist. Damned fat-ass Americans.
The zipper on the top bag was stuck, so I moved it aside and worked on the next one. Inside were a couple of pairs of khakis and golf shirts. I took one of each and moved onto the third bag. It was full of women’s clothing.
A pen fell from the last bag and rolled under the cart. I didn’t bother fetching it.
Quietly, I closed everything back up and went back to my room. I didn’t have fresh underwear or socks, but I would have to make do. Going commando in another man’s pants didn’t particularly appeal to me.
Wearing shoes without socks wasn’t the most pleasant experience either.
I smirked at myself as I closed the door to the room behind me. Weird things bothered me. I’d shot someone today. Fought the Brady Bunch. Ran from a murdering monster. Been arrested and escaped. But a needle in my shoulder and a lack of underwear really irked me.
Maybe I should see a therapist.
I dropped the towel and pulled the pants on.
“Son of a bitch.”
The pants had an extra foot around the waist. The cuffs on the bottom of the khakis stopped a few inches above my ankles. Who had I stolen these clothes from, Danny DeVito?
I grabbed the blue shirt and pulled it on. My pants fell down around my ankles when I let go of the waist.
The shirt was extremely tight around my chest and arms and loose around my stomach. It stopped at my belly button.
“This guy has a build like a pear.” I bent down and grabbed the pants again.
I went out in the hallway again to search the bags for a belt, but the cart was gone. Standing in front of the door, the bottom part of my stomach exposed, I held my pants up with one hand. If anyone walked by, they’d think they were on a hidden camera show.
The first-aid kit had a small pair of scissors in it. I used them to cut a strip from my towel. The fabric went through the loops in my pants, acting as a makeshift belt. I tied it in a knot in the front like a shoestring.
Fabric from the pants bunched together against my hips.
My appearance in the mirror was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but chuckle. Laughing hurt my ribs and face, but I did it anyway. I looked like some kind of strip-club reject. The way the clothing fit reminded me of Tom Hanks in Big.
Drew would never let me live this one down.
There was no refrigerator in the room, so I took a long drink from the faucet. It tasted like water from a swimming pool, but I needed to rehydrate, especially if I was going to chug beer soon.
I collapsed into the bed. Grabbed the television remote.
My face was plastered all over the news. Great.
The talking heads were going apeshit. An entire police department had turned on one another. The headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen promised that the president would give an address on the issue soon. Two of the commentators squared off, shouting over one another. The man on the left, a sour-faced, bald-headed man of seventy slammed his hand on the table.
“—question no one is asking is whether this event is tied to the mass suicide that happened at the Cyber Crimes Center! What about the suicide of Senator McArthur? Are you going to sit there and tell me that these are unrelated? How could so many massive, catastrophic events happen in one day?”
Another man, much younger with dark hair and the thick-rimmed glasses that were the current rage, pointed back at Sour Face.
“How could these possibly be related? They have nothing to do with each other. What does a shooting at a police station have to do with people committing suicide? You’re a conspiracy-theory nut job. It’s an embarrassment that I even have to sit here and listen to this garbage.”
I switched to another station. Drew’s bald mug popped up, overlaying video from the police station.
It was a long shot of the hallway we’d escaped from. The video showed me dragging Drew along. It cut away before I shot the cop.
“We believe that the man being abducted is Detective Andrew Lloyd. A statewide manhunt has ensued for Detective Lloyd and Asher Benson. If you have any information on the whereabouts of—”
I looked up at the ceiling. “I’m so screwed.”
Then I felt the presence of someone coming down the hallway, heading toward my door.
It was a mind that I couldn’t read.
A mind protected against my ability.
One of Smith’s men.