course, the emotion passed, and I went back to feeling sorry for the one who really deserved it. Me.
Hector stretched out a hand and reappropriated the bottle in mine. Shaking out two capsules for himself, he said flatly, “Jackson, this is Dr. Julian Thackery. His entourage is Dr. Sloane and Dr. Fujiwara. Thackery, this is our ace in the hole, Jackson Eye. Or he will be, assuming we don’t starve him to death.” It was the barest minimum of an explanation and apparently all he was going to give.
Dr. Sloane had eyes that might as well come from a sci-fi cyborg-glass balls empty and hollow except for the cold fire of science. Dr. Fujiwara’s were human and mildly sympathetic, as if he were a researcher who knew that giving cute white mice cancer was necessary, but he regretted it. Did it all the same, though. C’est la vie or c’est la morte. Which was worse? Not to have a conscience or to ignore the one you had?
Thackery exhaled and pulled off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “We’re wasting time we don’t have. Is it any wonder nerves are running high, including mine?” He replaced his glasses and added briskly, “Now, let’s see what your pet psychic can do.” A whole three seconds of forced humanity, and Dr. Dick was back.
Thackery moved off to a long table that was parked against one wall. Allgood and the other doctors followed, and after a beat, so did I. There were more whitecoats milling about, men and women. All of them seemed to share the same sense of urgency. Some stared at computer monitors, while others clustered by what looked like a clear Plexiglas partition. As I watched, a map was projected from within. Brilliant colors and exquisitely sharp details bloomed. Several locations were marked with a bloodred ring. One such circle was chosen and expanded into an aerial view of a lone house.
“Jackson.”
I turned away from the oddly ominous sight and joined the two at the table. As I was sitting, Thackery had picked up a file and was thumbing through it swiftly. It was my file, judging by his next comment. “Psychometry.” He frowned and tapped his fingers on the table as he read. “That’s all you can do?” Sloane and Fujiwara, positioned behind him, exchanged a glance.
“The things I can do are limited only by my imagination and the distance between my foot and your ass,” I replied matter-of-factly, as I slouched in the chair and held out a hand to Hector for the bottle. I’d made an about- face on my earlier decision. There was no time like the present.
Before Thackery could articulate his offense-and, trust me, you don’t turn that particular purple color if you’re not offended-Hector spoke up. “Considering that until yesterday, we didn’t have proof that psychic phenomena actually existed, Thackery, I believe we’re ahead of the game.”
“Allgood, we’re not even in the game,” he shot back, slapping the file shut. “And I think we know who we have to thank for that. Charles moved too fast with the project. You know it. I know it. The entire team knows it.”
The patches of skin over Hector’s cheekbones whitened. “Is this something you truly want to start, Dr. Thackery?” he asked, voice empty of the emotion clearly seen in the blanching of his skin and the setting of his jaw.
Yeah, this place ran like a well-oiled machine. I’d be out of here in no time. “Can we get this show on the road?” I demanded before the next volley. “I’m not exactly getting paid for this, you know, and as much as I love pro bono work, I have a dog to feed.”
“You are getting paid,” Hector corrected, his jaw relaxing minutely. “It probably won’t be your standard two hundred dollars an hour, but you’ll be compensated.”
I blinked. I liked to think… no, I knew that I could correctly read most people and situations down to their foundations and below, but I had to give it to Allgood. He took me by surprise; I had not seen that coming. Not a hint. I recovered enough to curl my lip in disdain. “It’s hard to make a living as a blackmailer if you pay your victims, Dr. Allgood.”
There was a knowing glint in his eye that indicated that I hadn’t fooled him with the weak sarcasm, but Hector only slipped a hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic cuff. It was of a size to fit a man’s wrist, but it was nothing like a hospital bracelet. This was actually solid, about three inches wide, and looked as if it would be heavy. “I think, Jackson, it’s time to show Dr. Thackery what you can do.” He slid the ring across the table toward me. “I need this man’s location. Where he is at this moment.”
Thackery leaned back, folded arms across his chest, and watched me with the cool skepticism of Dr. Frankenstein presented with a cocker spaniel’s brain. Sure, it was a brain, but it wasn’t quite what he’d sent out for. And he had his doubts that it would be especially useful.
I ignored him and peeled off a glove. Any questions I might’ve had, whether the man they wanted me to find was an industrial spy or something similar, would be answered the second I touched the cuff. There was no need to voice them. I was almost eager in reaching for it. I was tired of being in the dark. Normally, I wouldn’t have given a shit what they were up to in this muddy prison, but being that it was affecting me rather personally, I wanted to know. Despite Hector’s occasional outburst of humanity, no one was going to watch my ass for me; I had to do what I could for myself. This piece of white plastic might be a start for that. Discarding my glove casually to the side, I picked up the bracelet.
The next thing I knew, someone was picking me up.
The hands had turned me over onto my side as I vomited miserably. Through bleary eyes, I could see it spread over ugly green tile. The floor-I was on the floor, and I hurt. The back of my head was aching fiercely, as were my forehead and my neck-hell, my whole body. As the heaving stopped, I could feel a warm rush of liquid at my hairline over my left eyebrow as someone snapped fiercely, “Where is Dr. Guerrera? Where the hell is Meleah?” Hector’s voice. Hector’s concern. Hector’s goddamn fault.
“You son of a bitch,” I slurred through lips that felt numb, then swallowed against another rise of bile. “Charlie.”
“I know, Jackson. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.” I felt my head lifted carefully as something soft was placed beneath it. It was a towel, brand new and telling me nothing. Thank God. “Someone give me some rubber gloves,” he rapped out, and seconds later, I could feel cool latex fingers pull my own glove onto my limp hand. Still lying on my side, I tried to focus as Hector swam into view. He tossed another towel over the vomit and knelt beside me. There was a folded washcloth in his hand, and he pressed it against my forehead. “Tell me if you get anything off this, and I’ll get another one, but we need to stop the bleeding.”
I must have looked as confused as my sluggish mind felt, and he added, “You hit your head on the table when you fell.” He hesitated. “You had a seizure.” Judging by the gray cast to his face, it must have been a bad one. A real doozy. Maybe I’d get a bonus for the show. Watch the psychic as he flops like a fish out of water, pukes like a frat boy, and hopefully doesn’t piss himself. Good clean family fun; come one, come all.
I closed my eyes and muttered thickly, “Bastard. You knew.”
“No.” That was the esteemed Dr. Thackery pitching in. From the sound of it, he was behind me, probably giving a wide berth to the vomit. He didn’t strike me as having a God-like compassion for his fellow man. Like old times. He was another Lewis Sugarman out of Cane Lake. He had more regard for keeping his shoes clean. “Charles died painlessly. There was no reason for us to suspect you would react this way. I’m sure you perform… what is the terminology? Readings. Yes, you perform readings with the objects of the dead all the time.” There’s nothing quite like someone making supercilious excuses for their behavior while you’re lying near a pool of your own sick.
“Painless.” I choked out a laugh, stark and humorless. Rolling onto my back, I folded my arms tightly across my chest. It was an instinctive gesture I thought I’d outgrown. Don’t touch. It was from the early Cane Lake days when I’d had less control over my so-called gift. I closed my eyes as Charlie’s last moments squeezed my brain in a fistlike vise. “Wasn’t painless.” In fact, it was as far from painless as you could possibly get. The seizure I’d once suffered at the hospital had been caused by touching the metal railing of the gurney I had been lying on. I’d picked up the death of a man who’d been shot numerous times in the torso with a semiautomatic. Acid had boiled free from a perforated stomach to burn everything in its path. Tattered lungs had filled with suffocating blood. Bones had been shattered, tearing the flesh around them with calcium shrapnel. He’d bled and cried for his mother and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Apparently, so had I. Charlie’s death had been right up there with that. I’d touched that curved piece of plastic and felt it all. Normally, an object has to be with someone a long time to build up their personal signature, to contain a summary of their life. But there are exceptions. A violent death is the one that tops the list. I didn’t know exactly how Charlie had died, because he himself hadn’t known, but I felt it… every god-awful, agonizing second.
