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DR. KAPOOR DIDN’T HAVE a smile for Zander as he usually did. His face was grim, almost angry. He motioned for him to sit at the table while he finished up whatever he was doing on one of the computer terminals.
Zander sat down and leaned back on the legs of the chair. He didn’t want to be here, but his dad was right. He couldn’t quit without serious repercussions. He might use the Howard name, but he was no Howard. He had to find out what was really going on, and the only way to do that was to play along.
“How are you today, Alexander?” the doctor inquired, slipping into the chair across from him. “No ill effects from the accident last month?”
He shook his head.
“Good.” He picked up the cards they sometimes used to practice mind reading. “I hope you brought along your thinking cap because I have been informed that you are not performing adequately.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “I know you are holding back, my son. And you have good reason. No one likes to feel as though they are being controlled. But you must prove them wrong. For all of us.”
Zander felt tension connecting his words as thick as rope. The doctor was afraid, and he was asking for help the only way he knew how. He nodded and closed his eyes.
“What am I looking at?”
He swallowed. “A picture of a woman holding a baby.”
“You are correct. It is the Madonna with the Christ child.”
He opened his eyes. “Is someone threatening your family?” he asked. “Your heart accelerated when you looked at the picture.”
The doctor stared, eyes wide with wonder. He glanced toward the back office where Devlin hid like a bat in a cave, coming out periodically to suck the life from whoever happened to be around. He held up another card. “Now what do I see?”
“You see death staring you in the face.”
“Once again, you are correct.” He turned the card toward Zander. The grim reaper stared back at him, his scythe lifted and ready.
“Some collection of cards you got there.”
“It is not the cards that matter, but the mind that sees them.” He flipped to another card in the deck and looked up expectantly.
“What’s the point? Am I to be used to further science, or to increase the power of a few? I know you don’t condone whatever they have in mind. Why are you helping them?”
“The card, Alexander.” The doctor’s voice hardened. “Keep your mind on the business at hand.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, seeking a look into the heart of Dr. Kapoor. Why did everyone hide themselves behind walls of lies and deception? He was tired of playing the pawn. It was time to take out the knights and move forward.
His concentration zoomed in like a camera lens. He saw the card in the doctor’s hand as clearly as if he held it himself. But what he really wanted to see was deeper, deeper...
“Stop, Alexander!”
He opened his eyes.
The doctor dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief. It was bleeding. His hand shook as though he had Parkinson’s. “What did you do?” he demanded.
“Nothing. I was just trying to see the card.”
Dr. Kapoor pointed at the card, now face down on the table. Well?”
“I don’t know. I’m tired,” he lied. Zander was sure the doctor suspected what happened. But he knew for sure. He’d inflicted pain on someone with his mind and he felt sick about it. The gift he’d been cursed with just grew worse.
*****
“ALEXANDER IS MUCH STRONGER than you think. He is only beginning to understand his full potential.”
Devlin raised his brows, his lips twisting derisively. “Do I care? The little experiment has not lived up to his side of the bargain. He has a chip on his shoulder, thinks he can do whatever he likes, and refuses to cooperate. It’s time to put an end to this charade. He will never be the tool we’ve been grooming him for. Maybe if his sister had survived, they might have worked together to our advantage. But that’s water under the bridge.”
“I do not think Frank Howard will agree. He wants the boy to succeed. He is counting on it.” He put the rest of the papers in his briefcase and clicked it shut. He never left his research notes behind. There was much Devlin did not know and would never know about Alexander if he could help it.
“Of course, he does. But Howard has a bad heart and won’t be in control much longer. I have a feeling those cigars of his are going to be the death of him. And whoever takes over his position will side with me. You’d be wise to follow suit. I am in charge of this program, after all. My twins are superior in every way to the orphan boy. They manage to use the emotions around them to their advantage, not soak them up and ferment in them. They are actually learning to manipulate thought direction. Working together they can do anything.” He leaned back in the desk chair with his hands behind his head and chuckled. “You can’t even imagine the plans I have for those two.”
Akhilesh inwardly cringed. Devlin would make good on his threats against the boy. The twins had been raised like trained animals without love or care. Certainly, they performed well, because if they didn’t, they were deprived of the necessities of life. He felt sorry for them, but there was nothing he could do.
Frank assured him everything would turn out right in the end, and with his continued cooperation his family would become American citizens. They would no longer feel threatened by the possibility of government authorities sending them back. He could even bring his sister over from India when everything was settled. Such promises were beginning to feel very empty.
He slipped out of his lab coat and hung it on the back of a chair, picked up his briefcase and turned toward the door. He was eager to be gone before the twins showed up. Devlin always had them come after hours so nobody saw them enter or leave. He was very particular about the routine, insisting that Alexander not be allowed to fraternize with the boys or have anything to do with them. Devlin said it would ruin the viability of the experiment.
Akhilesh rarely worked with them himself and was glad. They were strange young men, taught to obey Devlin implicitly. As they mirrored one another, they also mirrored the world around them to some extent, soaking up emotion like a sponge, but unable to elicit any of their own. They were psychologically skewed like children in third world countries left in overcrowded orphanages at birth without human connection or touch. People lacking a sense of right and wrong were ultimately doomed to destroy themselves and those around them. He often thought Devlin was purposely grooming these boys as sociopaths.
“In a hurry to be gone, Akhilesh? I thought you’d stay and say hello to the boys. I want to show you their new mind game.”
He shook his head and pulled open the door. “I’m very tired. Perhaps some other time. Good night.”
“If you’re so tired why are you taking your work home with you?”
Devlin never made small talk. He was obviously suspicious.
His grip tightened on the handle of the briefcase as he paused in the open door. “Sometimes I cannot sleep, and the mind is clearer at night when it’s quiet.”
Devlin didn’t reply.
He hurried down the hall and took the elevator to the ground level. The doors opened and one of the twins stood there waiting. Akhilesh said hello as he stepped out, but the young man did not respond or acknowledge his presence.
He exited the building and breathed deep, filling his lungs with crisp, clean air. The desire to dispel the heaviness he felt each evening after a day in the lab was almost compulsive. The night sky was dark with cloud cover, the moon a mere sliver of light. An early morning forecast had promised three to four inches of snow, but so far nothing. He fished in the pocket of his coat for his car fob and pressed the button. The lights came on and the door unlocked. He slid into the front seat and set the briefcase beside him.
His cell phone rang, and he flipped it open. “This is Dr. Kapoor.”
Nobody answered.
He flipped it closed and started the car.
The cell phone rang again. He looked down at the lighted face. No name came up in the I.D. just an unidentified number. He ignored it, put the car into reverse, and carefully backed out of the space
He pulled the gearshift back into drive and looked up. One of Devlin’s twins stood in the beam of the car’s headlights. He suddenly charged the car and slammed his hands down on the hood, shaking the vehicle and rattling Akhilesh to the core.
Akhilesh opened the window a crack. “What are you doing? Get out of the way, son. Dr. Devlin is waiting for you in the lab.”
The twin sneered, his face twisted with hatred. He stared through the windshield as though he could melt glass with his eyes.
Akhilesh quickly threw the car into reverse and moved backward through the parking lot. The boy was obviously deranged. No matter what Devlin said, it was time to speak with Frank. There was something far from normal about those two. They needed to be dealt with, and soon. Before they hurt someone.
Using mentally unstable women for the Sensiline project was not the wisest of decisions. Thankfully, he could say with a clear conscience he had nothing to do with that.
He reached the end of the parking lot and stopped. The boy was nowhere to be seen. He turned down the next aisle and drove toward the exit. His phone rang again, and he glanced down. The same unidentified number.
When he looked back up the boy stood directly in his path, a phone to his ear. He swerved hard to the left, to avoid hitting him. The car smashed into the cement barrier with shocking force, metal screeching as it ground against itself. He thought he’d hit the brake, but the engine gunned loudly even as the steering wheel pinned him to the seat. No airbag deployed.
Akhilesh slowly opened his eyes. He struggled for breath, his lungs bursting with force. The twins stood staring in at him, mirrored faces of evil. One reached through the shattered window past his pinned and crumpled body and snatched the briefcase from his side. The other spoke into a cell phone. “It’s done.”
A bag covered his face and he gasped, sucking the plastic tightly against his nose and mouth.
*****
FRANK WAS BACK AT THE office and already regretted it. He should have listened to Marion and his doctor and stayed home another week. His blood pressure was up, and he had a blinding headache. But duty called, and someone had to make sure the company ran smoothly. Steven already dropped the ball on a number of things in his absence. The only person he could trust to do things right was himself. So now, he would do what he did best–clean up the mess.
Dr. Kapoor’s accident the other night was certainly a mess. Phones were ringing off the hook. Reporters wanted to know how someone could accidentally run headlong, foot on the gas, into a cement barrier while driving out of a parking lot. And why didn’t his airbag deploy? He drove a brand-new Capri. It didn’t make sense.
The good doctor didn’t strike Frank as suicidal, but Devlin said he found a note in his lab desk that said otherwise and without consulting him, eagerly released it to the police. Allegedly, the doctor wrote that he was depressed after harboring his family illegally for so long. His wife wanted to return to India, and he felt they would be better off without him.
Frank leaned back in his chair and puffed on his cigar. The first part he understood, having spoken with the doctor a couple of weeks back. Akhilesh was concerned that their green cards had not yet come through and suspicious that Frank wasn’t doing all he could, as promised. The second part was nigh impossible to believe. Akhilesh would never desert his family that way, and the last place his wife would want to be was back in India. She was a medical doctor in Amgam until the Hindu religious party broke into her clinic, set it on fire, and threatened their family’s lives if they didn’t recant Christianity. He didn’t go in for all that religious jargon. One religious nut ball was the same as another to him, but he’d met the Kapoor family. They were different. They were real, not putting on an act, but trusting their God even when things didn’t turn out the way they’d envisioned. Like Douglas. And Marion.
Frank rubbed the back of his neck, a tingle of apprehension running down his spine. Devlin was up to something. He didn’t know what, but it couldn’t be good. The man was brilliant; not to be trusted. Akhilesh had been his only true source of information from the lab. Without him, Devlin would manipulate things to his own twisted outcome. And his outcome didn’t include Zander. Those crazy twins of his were his dream team. He’d told Marcus they were nearly ready.
Where did that leave Zander? He was terribly afraid his great-nephew would soon be the victim in an accident of his own. Zander was the only failsafe to the project. Without him around, the twins would be unstoppable, playing mind games for Devlin’s purposes rather than for the company. And if his suspicions were accurate, they were as ruthless and unfeeling as a couple of jackals.
He tamped his cigar out in the ashtray. The air was thick with smoke and he waved it away, coughing. That boy might not be blood, but he was as close as he was ever going to come to having a grandson. He wouldn’t let Devlin, or anyone, take that from him. He pushed the hidden button under the lip of his desktop. A tiny drawer popped open, revealing the memory card he kept there. He slipped it into his dress shirt pocket and pushed the drawer back in.
“Theresa, I need Steven on the line,” he demanded through the intercom.
Pressure built in his chest and he gasped for air. He shouldn’t have smoked this morning. Marion said cigars would kill him one day. He thought about lying on the couch for a few minutes, but the line lit up with Steven’s call. He picked up.
“I need you in here right now,” he managed to say before the phone slipped from his hand and he fell sideways off the chair.
He felt as though he was penned between a rock and a two-hundred-pound anvil. He struggled to breath, panting like a woman in labor and thought his head would explode. With eyes closed, he called out to his brother’s God, to the God Akhilesh trusted in. He wasn’t sure if he’d be heard at this point and time, but it was the only time he had. “God forgive me,” he breathed. “Please save me.”
The door opened, and Steven rushed over. “Uncle Frank! Theresa–call 911!” he yelled over his shoulder and knelt beside him. “Frank, can you hear me? Frank!”
The sound of his nephew’s voice faded into the background and he thought he heard water gurgling, splashing down, running over him. A cleansing flood.