When my base reactions were captured, the real questions began. “I’m holding up a card,” came the first. “Is it blue?”
Je-sus. Trapped and subjected to this deadly dull crap. Not a fate worse than death but close. Damn close. “I don’t know,” I said flatly.
“Yes-or-no answers, Mr. Eye,” Allgood corrected firmly at my shoulder.
“It’s not a yes-or-no question,” I shot back, irritated. Too bad it wouldn’t keep on in this vein, but Hector knew about my gloves. Knew about me. He wouldn’t be fooled.
“Then how about we rephrase,” he said, taking over for the moment. “Do you know the color of the card?”
“No.” Smooth and unbroken, the line recorded my truth.
“Would you know the color of any of the cards your tester held up?”
As it stood now? “No.” Indifferently, I ran a short thumbnail along the fake wood beneath my hands.
“Then let’s try something different.” Allgood moved around to the other side of the testing area. When he returned, he had a watch in his hand. It was older, the metal worn and brimming with all sorts of goodies. Fatalistically, I watched as Hector let it fall into the palm of my hand. There was no way out of it now.
“Let’s start with his name.” Folding his arms, he put a foot on the metal frame of my chair and moved it and me a few inches so he could see my face… my eyes. I had the feeling Allgood’s instincts were as reliable as any lie detector. “Is it Marcus?”
And here we were.
“You know what? You have me.” Now, there was a truth you didn’t need a machine to register. He did have me, and I might as well face up to it. Between Glory, the machine, and Hector’s innate savvy, I didn’t have any recourse. No fucking recourse at all. “You own my balls, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, so why don’t we speed this up.” I tossed the watch up, caught it, then slapped it down. “His name is Thomas Jerome Hickman. He went to Columbia University. He has a master’s in psychology, a wife named Beverly, a leaky toilet, an overweight cat called Alexander the Great with a leaky bladder to match, a mortgage that is eating him alive, and, oh
…” I smiled, a dark and curdled motion. “He’s wearing a pair of women’s underwear. Yellow panties with pink rosebuds. Big-girl undies, size fourteen. Too much sitting behind a desk, eh, Tommy?”
Hearing the faint sound of choking from behind the partition, it was almost worth it. Yeah, almost.
“Sir.” The voice wasn’t so blandly vanilla now. “That is absolutely not true, I swear. I can show you.” There was more choking, this time more pronounced. “I mean… no. Let me…”
I took pity, more on myself than on the invisible jackass. “Tighty whiteys,” I admitted with a snort. “But the rest is true.”
“It looks like Charlie was right about you.” Hector shook his head ruefully. There was still a healthy dose of skepticism in his eyes, but it was colored by a reluctant amazement. It was one thing to be open-minded, more for your brother than for yourself, but it was another altogether to actually see proof before your eyes. “I should’ve known. Charlie was right about everything.” The cautious wonder disappeared so quickly it should’ve qualified as a magic trick. “Ordinarily.”
And just like that, the almost-human Hector was gone, replaced once again by the embodiment of a true military man. Stiff upper lip, an even stiffer spine, and eyes empty and neutral. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Eye. You have a long day ahead of you.”
He wasn’t lying. For hours, I read person after person, all in lab coats and all with the most boring personal objects money could buy. Watches or wedding rings were the usual currency passed my way. Not one yo-yo or good-luck charm or whimsical key chain. Nope, it was a singularly mundane crowd here at Alcatraz. No flash, no pizzazz, no sense of personal style, not an ounce of showmanship. Abby would’ve been appalled and certain it was nothing a few sequins and rhinestones couldn’t have fixed. Sparkling lab coats for one and all. Step right up.
Hopelessly bland my testers may have been, but to give credit where it’s due, they were fairly quick-witted… once they finally got in gear. Almost immediately, they wanted to know why I couldn’t simply read people instead of their belongings. And thanks to the polygraph and the silently looming presence of Allgood, I was forced to admit that I could. Hell, it wouldn’t have made any sense if I couldn’t have. But the difference between reading a person and reading something that belonged to him was the difference between IMAX and a nineteen-inch television. It was simply too much. Coming at you from all sides with a voice louder than an arsonist God at the burning bush. It soaked every molecule, pounded every neuron in your brain. There was no distance, no taking a breather. Every time I took someone’s hand, it was a guaranteed skull-crushing headache and the taste of blood and tin in my mouth. Believe it or not, that wasn’t my idea of a good time.
Not that my new pals would’ve given a shit. So why bother to tell them? Like a trained monkey, I did what I was told. Read objects, read people, and finally laughed grimly when they wanted to know if I could “see” the future, move things with my mind, or, even better, start fires.
“Jesus,” I said with some disdain. “You guys watched too much X-Files in your day. Read too many trashy books. Even I don’t believe in that crap.”
“What about life after death?”
With head resting in my hands and a death grip on my skull, I looked up at Hector’s studiously blank face. Charlie was gone, and I knew what he wanted to hear. Maybe I would’ve been kinder if I weren’t being blackmailed. Maybe I wouldn’t, as I’d faced the truth about Tess long ago. I didn’t know for sure. But I did know that at this moment, I didn’t feel kind. My head hurt, my jaw hurt, I was tired and hungry, and I was mad. Yeah, I was pissed as hell, and that did not lead to the path of gentle kindness.
“Grow up, Hector,” I drawled. “There’s no great beyond. No fluffy clouds and halos. No tunnel with a big family reunion at the end. Not once have I ever picked up anything beyond the death of someone when touching an object. Gone is gone. Dead is dead.” I closed my eyes as the headache swelled, and as I so often did, I saw a lonely pink shoe. The clearest memory of my life, so bright and diamond-sharp that I almost believed I could put out a hand and pick it up. I never tried. I’d already done that once, and from that moment, nothing had ever been completely right or good in my life again.
“Dead is dead,” I repeated with a tightness that thrummed behind my voice like an overly taut guitar string.
I wouldn’t have been too surprised if Allgood had hauled off and popped me one or at the very least walked away. It was his brother I was talking about. Then again, he’d already locked up the one guy who’d beat him to the punch, so to speak. It was my second guess that hit the jackpot. He did walk away, but not before startling me with a hand that rested for the briefest of moments on my shoulder. He knew about Tess and the others. He could guess I’d give anything to believe different… but it wasn’t different. I was literal proof of that.
“Not always,” he countered with a trace of bleakness he either couldn’t hide or didn’t try to. Then he did walk away to herd the last of the “psychics” out. Hours had passed, although it seemed like days, and it didn’t look like anyone else had made the cut. Didn’t I feel special? Shit.
I dropped my gaze back to the desk surface and tried to ignore Hickman’s endless chatter at my elbow. Good old TJ Hickman had finally come from around the partition. And as always, I was dead on the money. If he had worn women’s panties, they would’ve been big-girl for sure. Pear-shaped, stammering, and cheerfully harmless as a puppy, he regarded me with moon-pie eyes. Round and wide, they had the recaptured belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Merlin’s magic all swimming around in there. I’d seen it before. Show people something slightly askew from their normal world, and they’d use it as an excuse to put a bright and shiny glow on their whole damn life. It turned them into kids again. Why, I didn’t know. What kind of miracle was it that I knew his wife made a buckwheat and soy casserole that kept him constipated for days and that he had a box of Twinkies hidden in his garage? Or that his ever-loving mama had sent him to a fat camp every summer he was in high school? Dull, boring, and kind of pitiful, yes. Miracle? No.
“Tylenol,” I muttered between clenched teeth, ruthlessly interrupting his words raining like bright coins.
“Oh. You have a headache?” The stuttering kid on Christmas morning disappeared under the thirty-five-year- old professional. “Is that often a side effect of what you do? How intense a headache do you get? Do you have visual disturbances with them?”
I ignored the questions and repeated with a limp snarl, “Tylenol. I could spell it, but I’d think a guy with a master’s could figure it out on his own.”
The wide mouth snapped shut, and hazel eyes blinked. Nodding, he disappeared in search of the almighty
