smile, he started to toss the soldier.
But Hector got there first. With an arm around Bob’s windpipe, he choked him out, quickly and ruthlessly. With his other hand, he caught the soldier before he tumbled over the edge of the roof. Which was good for me. It saved the awkward decision of do you try to catch the poor bastard or do your damnedest to avoid being hit by his falling body. Instead, I was able to check the guy already on the ground. Both of his legs were bent at brutally ugly angles, but he was still breathing, and, considering, that definitely put him in the “came out ahead” column for the day.
Then I went into the mill to look for geek number one. I found him in seconds. The blood on Jacob’s mouth hadn’t been from the screaming after all.
Christ.
It took several minutes for us to get the geek and the goon off the roof, our feet slipping and sliding on dangerously decayed wood. As we grunted and yanked at the limp bodies, Hector said, “Charlie?”
“Jesus, I’ve been busy, okay?” I muttered, but I dug my still-naked hand in my pocket and closed them around metal. Dogs, Elvis, rain…
Nothing else.
“He’s gone,” I answered. “Sorry.” And I was.
Although, truthfully, the rest of us seemed to do much better when Charlie wasn’t around.
11
“Do you drink?”
Hector stood in the doorway of my “room” with a six-pack in his hand. “I wasn’t sure if it would affect your…” He circled a finger to finish the sentence.
“My mojo? My happy hoodoo?” I indicated the desk chair. “Screw it, and bring it on. Tonight I’d drink paint thinner if it was in a nice enough bottle.” I did have the occasional beer while Houdini snuffled around my feet for a sip. It didn’t affect my abilities. I could drink myself deaf, dumb, and blind, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. I’d done it once or twice before, when I was young, stupid, and a little less able to deal. All it did was make the psychic movie a little fuzzy around the edges. It didn’t dull it enough to make drinking a hobby or a necessity. And I wasn’t going to be like those drunken losers who’d hung around the house when I was a kid. The old man included. Mom had tried, but if there was an asshole in the tristate area, she’d fall head over heels for the bastard.
But there are always exceptions, and with what I’d seen today, I was all about exceptions. I accepted an already opened beer from Hector as he twisted off the cap to his own. “Isn’t drinking on duty against the rules?” I took a cool swallow.
“That’s the advantage of being ex-military. If I get caught, the worse they can do is fire me.” He took a long swallow of his own before rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “So… what did we learn today?”
“That reruns are for shit.” And that I missed my dog, my home, my nonhomicidal secretary. Abby had never once tried to throw anyone off a roof for God. Okay, there was the Bible-thumper or two who regularly vandalized my poster. Jacob gave me bad ideas. It would be ironic, considering this situation: toss a man of God off a roof because absolutely no one told you to. I was sure God’s hand would ease him to the ground as gently as a feather.
“And that Charlie isn’t necessarily going to be drawn to the places with the most violence. Maybe he can sense things only so far, geographically speaking. Maybe he’s just drifting here and there, and wherever he happens to pass…” I shrugged and took another drink.
“Does he know?” The question was as abrupt as Hector’s thumb was methodical in peeling off his bottle label. “Does Charlie know what he’s doing? Does he know what’s happening?”
I could finish the rest of that without his words. Because he couldn’t. Charlie couldn’t know, because Charlie wouldn’t cause death and terror. His brother wouldn’t believe that of him. Couldn’t. And Hector was right.
“No.” I shook my head. “He doesn’t know. I’m not sure he even knows he’s Charlie anymore. All he knows is being lost. He’s lost, and he can’t find his way, but I’m not sure there’s any reason behind what he does. Where he goes. What spot he chooses. There’s just lost and a sense of banging futilely at a closed door.” I rested the bottle against my knee. “I’m sure you see the downside to that.”
“We can’t predict where he’ll go. We can’t have the equipment waiting. If… when we finally catch him, it will be a matter of sheer luck.” Hector leaned back in his chair. It wasn’t relaxation, which I wasn’t sure the man was capable of, it was exhaustion. “But the timing is still within parameters. We can’t predict where, but we can predict when. And now we know: evacuate all possible locations for the ETE except one. Eventually we’ll catch him.”
“And the people who live there or are plodding through their favorite cannibal vacation spot?” I raised eyebrows in question.
“Chlorine leak. Anthrax scare. Terrorists.” He shifted his shoulders and gave a humorless smile. “We have a thousand of them.”
“I thought I was supposed to be the con man.” My lips twitched despite myself. Maybe I was getting Stockholm syndrome or maybe just a good buzz. Either way, I felt for Hector. Every which way you looked at it, his pooch was screwed but good. It wasn’t only Charlie’s memories that had me seeing that. For the first time, I let myself see it, too. I let myself feel an empathy that I didn’t try to shove down. I was getting soft in my old age.
“Actually, Eye, you’re one of the more honest men I’ve met.”
A compliment. If this was a made-for-TV movie, I would’ve been touched… right up to the moment he added, “You’re too much of a lazy son of a bitch to bother to lie.”
I actually grinned this time. I wholeheartedly blamed the alcohol for that. Or it could’ve been the relief that I hadn’t been thrown off a roof. Take your pick.
“Who’s the psychic around here, anyway?” I finished off the beer. “And I’m not that lazy. You saw my house. Neat enough. God knows I don’t have a housekeeper touching my things”-contaminating my things-“and Houdini still can’t figure out how to use a mop.”
“You’re right. And from the intel I gathered on you, you work seven days a week. That’s not the sign of a lazy man.” He opened another beer. “So then you’re simply a son of a bitch. A hardworking bastard of the highest order.”
“I’d argue, but I worked too hard to be a bastard to give up the title now.” I held out a hand for the next Bud. It went down as smoothly as the first. “Since I’m obviously in this for the goddamn long haul, why don’t you tell me about Thackery? He doesn’t seem to be in this for the betterment of humanity. Flying around the universe seeing pretty lights sounds enlightening and all, but where’s the money in it? Where’s the glory? Thackery seems the type to want both of those things.”
“Therein lies the military involvement.” Hector’s pale eyes were tired. I wasn’t sure if it was that or the alcohol that made him more forthcoming. Or maybe he thought I deserved to know. Having observed him for the past few days, I was thinking it was the latter. He was very much like his brother. “Imagine the benefit if you could go anywhere, see anything, but no one could see or detect you. In the seventies, the CIA had remote viewers working for them with some success. Imagine what they could do if astral projection was available. An operative could travel along the ether, like a skater on a sheet of ice. There would be no secrets any longer… not to our side, anyway.”
I’d suspected that was what was going on, but it didn’t stop the sour curdle of my stomach. “Yeah, funny how I’m never on ‘our’ side. In school or now, I’m an outsider, always will be.” That was the thing about sides. The one in the know, the one with power, it tended to get smaller and smaller, and more and more of us got tossed over the line to the unpopular side. The loser side. The side that ended up looking up at the bottom of a boot on its way down.
“He made a mistake.” Hector looked blindly at his empty bottle. “Charlie always trusted people. He brought me into the project halfway through, and by then…” He exhaled. “It was too late. The money was spent. The deal was done.”
“Signed in blood on the dotted line.” I shook my head. “Charlie was always too good for his own good.”
“I know.” He sat still for another moment, then carefully set his bottle on the desk. “But he took care of me,
