Grace lay motionless on the bed for several minutes. Night had fallen, and the harsh glow of sodium-vapor lights leaked in between the curtains from the parking lot outside. A horn blared out on the interstate. The draft from the air conditioner rustled her hair.
David said awful things to her. Although she realized he'd spoken out of fear, his words hurt. One day soon, he would explain himself. What happened then…
She thrust the question aside. Drained in body and mind, she could spare no energy on fretting over the future. David could have his way, for the time being. She'd leave him alone.
But not for long.
Gabriel Amador offered to help her, and she might have to accept his offer. First, though, she wanted a little more information about the man. Since the DVD provided nothing of value, she must search elsewhere.
She called the front desk. Tag answered on the first ring. "How can I help you, Ms. Marcus?"
"Uh — " He was calling her Ms. Marcus, she realized just in time, before she told him he must've confused her with someone else. She almost forgot her own alias. "Does the motel have Wi-Fi access?"
"Sorry, no. We're still living in the Dark Ages here." He paused for a second, then said, "You could use the office computer if you want. It's got DSL."
"Won't you get in trouble for letting me use it?"
"Nah," he said, his tone utterly dismissive of the possibility. "Nobody'll find out, but even if they did they wouldn't care. This dog's leash is pretty loose, ya know. Come on down and I'll set you up."
"Thank you. I really appreciate this."
"Ain't nothing."
She hung up, grabbed her purse, and headed for the motel's lobby. The big neon sign at the edge of the parking lot declared "Stay-A-Night Motel — Vacancy." As the lobby's door swung shut behind her, Tag greeted her with a big smile and a sweeping gesture meant as an invitation for her to come around behind the desk. She returned his smile, ducking behind the desk. When she reached the computer, she saw he already had a web browser open on-screen.
"Have at it," he told her.
"Thanks."
She watched Tag pick up a pile of unopened mail and carry it to the far end of the desk, about six feet away from her. The computer monitor stood at an angle on the desk, which meant he couldn't see the screen from his position. Still, she must assume the computer had some kind of tracking software on it that let Tag's employers keep tabs on his activity — a keystroke logger or similar application. Maybe she was being paranoid again, but paranoia seemed prudent when she had Tesler's goons on her trail.
Okay. She'd keep this brief and vague.
Navigating to a search engine, she typed in two words: Gabriel Amador. The search results came up with links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for various individuals named Gabriel Amador. None of them matched the man she'd met. She tried Gabriel Ricardo Amador, with no better luck. Next, she typed in "Catalan Enterprises." The top results had nothing to do with Amador's company, but were instead links to informational pages about the Catalan people of northern Spain. She scrolled down to see more results.
Eureka.
She clicked on a link for "Catalan Enterprises: Venture Capital, Investment Services, and More." The website loaded in a few seconds. She skimmed the text on the home page, learning the company provided seed money for new businesses, ran an online stock-trading service, and owned a number of banks and other financial institutions around the world. The company was, predictably, based in the Catalonia region of Spain. She browsed the rest of the site but found no mention of Gabriel Amador. The site didn't name any of the company's officers or the board of directors, and it supplied nothing more exciting than gobbledygook-filled explanations of how venture capital worked and how to apply for it.
Maybe that was the point. Amador gave her his company's name because he knew it would lead her nowhere.
"You feel that?" Tag asked.
She glanced up at him. He surveyed the small lobby, which consisted of a coffee table and three chairs situated in front of the desk. He held an envelope in one hand, and a letter opener in the other, as if he'd frozen in the middle of slicing open the letter.
Grace shut her eyes, letting her paranormal senses kick in. She felt something too, though it was vague. The nape of her neck tingled.
Her pulse shifted into overdrive. Someone's watching. She scanned the room, trying to listen through the pounding of her own heart. No use. She couldn't hear anything else. The sharp scent of Tag's coffee wafted into her nostrils, and she could almost taste the bitter brew.
"What was it?" she asked Tag.
He shrugged. "Weird feeling. Like a ghost walked through me or something."
A ghost. She'd never heard of a traveler walking through someone, but she didn't know everything about psychic abilities. Since travelers didn't have physical bodies, she imagined they could walk through solid objects. She hadn't tried it herself, because the idea hadn't occurred to her. The thought of it made her queasy. Sure, in her astral form she was essentially a ghost, but still…
Walking through walls? Ew.
She surfed back to the search engine and typed in John Mendoza. A boatload of results popped up, and though she tried to sort through them for relevant information, she got bogged down by the myriad John Mendozas in cyberspace. Everyone had some kind of digital footprint these days. Everyone except Gabriel Amador.
Out of curiosity, she searched for David Ransom. The results numbered in the millions. A listing for a yellow pages website announced "268 David Ransoms in the United States." Oh jeez. Really? One David Ransom was all she could handle. Hundreds of them running around out there sounded like an awful lot of stoic, pigheaded men.
A ridiculous image unrolled in her mind. Hundreds of tiny Davids trotting around on a map of the United States. One little Grace struggling to herd them all with her lasso.
She couldn't help the chuckle that escaped from her lips.
"No fair," Tag said. "You gotta share the funny e-mails."
"Oh it's not an e-mail. I just had a weird thought, that's all."
Movement flashed in her peripheral vision. She glanced at Tag, but he held the same position as before, having moved only his head to look at her. The movement had seemed quicker than he would've moved his head. She must've imagined it. Or else it was a bird.
"Something wrong?" Tag asked.
"I thought — no no, it's fine."
Tag shrugged and went back to sorting the mail.
Grace stared out the glass doors of the lobby. A few cars occupied spaces in the parking lot, scattered along the length of the motel. Although the establishment sat next to the interstate, it lay on a side road at the end of an off-ramp. She couldn't see the traffic whizzing by on the interstate. The occasional car exited the off-ramp, driving past the motel.
The movement she swore she'd seen came from closer. Much closer.
If she could sense other travelers, then maybe she could sense normal people too.
Beyond the glass doors, the glow of the streetlights tinged everything a jaundiced yellow. Focused on the light outside, and the beat-up cars bathed in it, she relaxed and cleansed her mind of thoughts. The crossroads tugged at her, but she resisted. Instead, she expanded her mind to sweep the vicinity like radar. Nothing. Nothing. She hit a blip when she scanned over Tag. Then nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Blip.
She jerked. Was the blip a person? She locked onto the signal — a feeling really, impossible to define but definitely there — and aimed her remote viewing sense at it. The wall barred her view, of course. She was psychic, for crying out loud. Walls didn't matter to her. She itched to shut her eyes, to block out all other stimuli, but she couldn't afford to limit her natural vision. A voice in the back of her mind warned this might be a trap, set by a traveler in league with Tesler or Amador, or both. She must keep her natural vision available even as she switched over to remote viewing. Sure, piece of cake.
I can do this. Concentrate.
The walls faded into semi-transparency as she tracked the blip back to its source. Her inner vision zoomed in on the target, flying through the ghost image of the wall. She panned left, toward the junction of the lobby wall and the rest of the motel, which jutted out from the office and lobby section. There, in the shadows cast by the overhanging roof, she caught sight of a figure crouched against the wall. The person wore black military-style fatigues, black boots, black gloves, and a black full-face helmet. He had a radio clipped to his belt and gripped a big automatic weapon in both hands.
Her heart thudded in her chest. She swallowed against the lump in her throat as a wave of cold dread crested over her. A commando. The black-suited man was an ALI goon.
They were here.
She pulled back from the commando and resumed scanning the vicinity. Nothing. Nothing. Blip. Nothing. Blip, blip, blip. This time, she had no trouble peering through the walls to identify the blips. Four more commandos had spread out along the outside of the building. As she followed the contours of the structure, she found two more commandos inside a plain white van parked behind the lobby.
Oh shit.
How in the hell had they found her? She ditched her credit cards, her car, everything except her cash, her new computer, and her purse with the gun inside it. Even as she watched the commandos with her remote vision, she reached for her purse to pat the hard outline of the .357 revolver inside. Sliding her hand into the bag, she curled her fingers around the gun's grip.
"You okay?"
Tag's concerned voice broke her concentration. The walls snapped back into view. Her head spun a little. As she grasped the edge of the desk for support, she realized she'd stopped breathing. No wonder she was woozy. She sucked in a couple deep breaths and, steadier now, pushed away from the desk.
Out the corner of her eye, she noticed Tag take a step toward her.
She held up a hand to stop him. "Um, I can't explain this but some very bad people are trying to kidnap me. They're in the parking lot. I imagine they're about to storm in here and take me by force. I don't want you to get hurt."
"I can handle myself."
His expression had turned hard, and suddenly he reminded her of a hitman in one of those mafia movies Hollywood loved to make. He probably could handle himself. But against seven armed commandos?
Dammit. She hadn't intended for Tag to get caught in the middle of her nightmare. She didn't want him to suffer or die because of her, and yet she could not let Tesler capture her. Remaining free offered the sole hope of stopping the mad scientist.
"There's a back way out," Tag said, hooking a thumb toward the door behind her.
"Bad guys have a van out back."
Tag frowned, working his lips as if thinking hard. Finally, he said, "Take the side door. It opens off the back of the office, onto the sidewalk on the far side of the building."
"Okay. Thanks."
"I'll keep 'em occupied while you beat it."
He waved toward the office door.
She tugged her purse tight against her, the bulk of her gun jostling inside it. If she let this man cover for her while she fled, Tesler's minions would hurt him — or worse, if he failed to cooperate to their satisfaction. Tag's blood would stain her hands too.
No more deaths because of her. Stand and fight.
Trouble was, Tag wouldn't back down. Despite meeting him a few hours ago, she understood a basic truth about him, about men of his ilk — the noble warriors. They fought for what was right, without fail. She knew this, because she loved just such a man.
David wouldn't abandon her in these circumstances. Neither would Tag.
Unless he urged him into it.
When she set out on a cross-country odyssey to free David from the California facility, he'd knocked her unconscious to slow down her progress, in the vain belief she might give up when she woke. Fat chance. If she could replicate his technique, then she might keep Tag out of harm's way without hurting him.
Much later, she'd asked David how he gave her psychic mickey. He said, "With a small, controlled burst of telepathic energy empowered by my fervent need for you to sleep. The subject must be willing on some level to succumb. That's how thought projection works. Desire coupled with power."
But if she employed too much power, she could damage Tag's mind.
Did Tag want to submit to her will? She'd given in to David because, though it chagrined her to admit it, deep down she liked surrendering to him. A little bit. On occasion.
Tag was a stranger. This might not work at all on him.
She'd once tricked an old man into believing a twenty-dollar bill was five thousands bucks. Putting a guy to sleep should be easy.
Tag urged her toward the door with a large, but gentle, hand on her arm.
Another door, behind him, caught her attention. "What's that?"
He looked where she pointed. "Closet."
Three, two, one…
Gaze glued to his, she summoned a ball of psychic energy and blew it into Tag. His eyes widened. She beamed a fervent wish into his mind. Get in the closet, sit down, sleep. She repeated the command over and over, until she felt his will softening.
He shuffled to the closet, swung the door open, and tromped inside. She kept up her inner chant, afraid he might snap out of it if she stopped. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the closet, leaned against the wall, and promptly fell asleep.
Thank heavens.
She kicked the closet door shut. The latch clicked into place.
A quick telepathic pass confirmed he was undamaged. If she interpreted things right.
She whipped the revolver out of her purse and peeked into the office. A door on the left must open onto the rear area. Another door led out the back of the office. The stale smell of dust drifted out of the air conditioning vents. She wiped her clammy hands on her pants.
Tag had told her to take the side door. She hustled over to check it was unlocked, then retreated to the lobby, closing the office door.
From her position behind the reception desk, she reached out again with her psychic senses. The walls turned semi-transparent once more. It was strange, peering through the ghost image of the walls, seeing through the solid matter but knowing she couldn't walk through it, not in her corporeal state. She spotted the commandos outside the lobby doors. As she observed them, they surged forward and headed straight for the doors, storming through them with guns raised. The doors banged open and the commandos' boots thundered across the floor.
Her vision reeled back to the normal, and the seven helmeted, armed men arrayed in front of the desk. She held the revolver muzzle down, her arm slack, the weapon hidden behind the desk. Her finger hovered over the trigger, separated from it by millimeters of air.
One commando, apparently the leader, detached from the group to approach the desk.
"Grace Powell." He sounded far too pleased with himself. "Gotcha, sweetheart."
A glacier hardened in her chest, expanding to scour out her soul. That voice. The way he said "sweetheart" with a slight snarl. Holy shit. "Battaglia."
He removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. The sneer was familiar too, and it triggered a flashback of him tackling her, threatening to stab a syringe into her neck. Her trigger finger itched to pull.
Six bullets. Seven men. Bad odds, even for a crack shot. Which she wasn't.
Battaglia sniggered. "I'm tickled pink you remember me, honey. Maybe this time you'll show me why so many guys are after your sweet little ass."
"Tesler wants me undamaged." She hoped.
"Yeah," Battaglia said, his leering gaze traveling down to her breasts and back up to her face, "but I can do lotsa things without causing permanent harm."
A legion of phantom insects skittered over her skin. She muttered, "You're just as crazy as JT."
"What was that, sweetheart? Didn't quite catch it."
She raised her voice. "Go to hell, you sick son of a bitch."
His guffaw echoed in the small space. He slashed one hand through the air, gesturing toward her. "Cuff her, boys."
Oh hell no.
She must lead them away from the motel, away from Tag. How long he'd slumber, she couldn't gauge. If Battaglia decided to check the closet…
No one else died for her.
Raising her gun, directing it at Battaglia, she aimed a nasty smile at him. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Battaglia shook his head and sighed heavily. "You really are a dumb bitch."
"So come and get me."
She bolted into the office, thwacked the door shut, and locked it.
The knob jiggled.
Battaglia bellowed, "Unlock it or I'll blow it open."
With her inner radar, she did a quick check of the motel's vicinity. The two commandos in the van had not moved, and no others had shown up to join the operation. She withdrew her psychic senses, snapping the walls back into solid form, and ran for the door at the back of the office. Twisting the knob, she flung the door inward and fled outside. Her footfalls clapped on the sidewalk and echoed off the building as she tore down the pathway, past the closed doors and curtained windows of the motel rooms. Someone must've heard the gunshot, yet no one so much as peeked out between the curtains. She couldn't blame them, she supposed. They feared for their own lives.
The air whooshed over her. A gust of wind snatched up gravel and dirt, flinging it into her face. Grit stung her eyes, pebbles pinged her skin, and the earthy taste of dirt infiltrated her mouth. Her leg muscles burned hotter and hotter with each step she took, screaming for a rest. She pushed her body to run faster.
A gunshot boomed behind her, inside the motel office. Voices shouted, but she couldn't make out the words. The rushing of her own blood in her ears, the huffing of her breaths, and the smacking of her footsteps obscured the words of the commandos.
Just short of the end of the building, she swerved left to race across the parking lot toward the scrubby woods beyond it. The sickly light from the parking lot streetlights petered out at the edge of the woods. Her heart pounded so hard and fast it made her head swim, but she couldn't stop. Her feet left the pavement, landing on dry, rock-hard ground and parched grass. She kept running.
The shouting resonated closer. She glanced back.
Commandos streamed out of the office.
Run. The thought spurred her body into more speed. In the instant she refocused her attention on the woods ahead, a shot detonated behind her. A projectile sliced across her arm, setting off a scorching pain that lanced through her, knocking her off balance. She stumbled, nearly fell, and caught herself a second before she hit dirt. Her arm burned, but she refused to look at it. Not now. Not yet.
She pushed her legs to pump harder. The muscles cramped in protest. She ignored the pain, the sweat stinging her eyes, the scrambling and thumping of boot-clad feet behind her. Another gunshot boomed. She ducked into the trees. Bark exploded from the tree she'd just passed. On and on she raced, panting so hard her chest ached, fighting for each breath.
Her toe caught on a tree root. She tripped, sailing face-first onto the ground. Her body struck the earth with such force it knocked the sense out of her. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't think.
Branches cracked. Dry grass rustled. Boots clomped.
They were coming.
Snap out of it.
She sucked in a breath, pushed onto her knees, and glanced over her shoulder. Black silhouettes, distant but moving closer each second, headed straight for her. No time. She must do something. The only thing she think of would come with a hefty cost.
No choice.
She disengaged from her physical body. Her mind soared upward, a balloon cut loose in the wind. Her mind flew into the dark tunnel, up and up. Bursting out into the crossroads, she halted with an abruptness that would've snapped her neck if she had a body. Pain radiated from the base of her skull, down into her neck. Floating there, she extended all her psychic faculties and reaped as much juice as she could from the energy matrix around her. The stars pulsed and swelled. Power, searing and molten, cascaded into her.
She plummeted downward, bursting out into the world and back into her body with a suddenness that stunned her. Every nerve in her body twanged, the psychic pain as sharp and real as the throbbing in her neck and the stinging in her arm. She focused her newly acquired power on one objective.
Destroy the commandos.
Wind erupted in front of her. In a wall of swirling current as strong as a hurricane, the wind swept out away from her toward the commandos. The gale uprooted small trees, drawing them into its eddies. Chunks of dirt and rocks twirled up from the ground, swirling on the currents of the wind.
The commandos ran straight into the maelstrom.
Someone shouted, "Jesus Christ!"
Male voices screamed in pain as rocks and airborne trees socked into them. Still the wind spun, traveling forward at breakneck speed. The maelstrom hefted the commandos off the ground and hurled them through the air. The bodies smacked down with wet thuds.
Nausea swelled inside her. She choked back the bile rising in her throat, tasting the bitter acid.
The screams ended.
She released the air. Saplings, rocks, and dirt rained down onto the ground. As the ruckus settled into silence, she bent forward and vomited.
Wiping her mouth on her shirt, she finally looked at her arm. Blood trickled over her elbow and down her forearm. It originated from a wound on her upper arm, a couple inches below the shoulder. It looked like a deep scrape. A bullet must've grazed her. The wound still smarted, and she dabbed at it with her fingertip. Pain shot out from the wound. She gasped.
Her stomach hurt. Her head pounded as if a metal spike had been shoved straight up her spine into her skull. Every muscle trembled. She struggled to stand, but her knees buckled. She flopped onto her butt on the ground. Tears spilled down her cheeks, driven by sobs that racked her body, triggering sharp pains in so many places she lost count.
Hot shards pierced the backs of her eyes. The first signs of a migraine.
Shit. Considering how much power she'd funneled through her mind and body, she wouldn't have much time to get to safety before the migraine disabled her. She rose onto all fours.
Her right hand crunched an object.
With two fingers, she picked it up. Her cell phone. Demolished by a large and heavy booted foot.
Tossing it aside, she stashed her gun in her purse and crawled through the debris from her whirlwind. When she discovered the first body, she halted. The commando lay motionless, eyes wide and dead. She checked his neck for a pulse anyway. Nothing. She noticed the radio clipped to his belt, but that wouldn't help her. Not unless she wanted to chat with the buddies of the men she'd killed.
She ducked her head. She'd killed… how many men?
Don't think about it. They would've killed you in a heartbeat.
With trembling hands, she searched the man's jacket pockets for something, anything, that might help her. What dragged like hours, but probably had been seconds, ticked by before her unsteady fingers closed around a hard object in the man's hip pocket. She jiggled the thing until it popped free of the pocket.
A cell phone.
Relief flooded through her. Tears flowed anew, streaking down her cheeks as she dug in her purse for the card Roland Wickham gave her. Finding it, she held the card up to read the text. Tears fogged her vision. She sniffled and wiped them away. In the few seconds before new tears emerged, she read the number on the card and dialed it. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
"Hello?"
She almost burst into sobs again at the sound of Gabriel Amador's voice. Her own voice rasped when she said, "It's Grace. I need your help."
"What happened?"
"I'll explain later. I'm pinned down behind the Stay-A-Night Motel, just off the interstate."
"I know where it is. Stay out of sight until I arrive."
"Okay." Despite her best efforts not to, she sniffled.
"Hold on, Grace," Amador said, his tone authoritative. "I am on my way."
He hung up.
She dropped the phone. He hadn't even asked what she meant by pinned down. He didn't seem surprised at all she needed help. In fact, she could've sworn she detected a note of triumph in his voice — faint, but there. Probably her paranoia rearing its head again.
Either way, some kind of help was coming. If she could evade the remaining commandos until then.
A twig cracked.
She pulled the gun out of her purse. Hold them off, that was all she had to do.
For how long?