12
As bombshells went, it wasn’t what I expected. Hector didn’t move other than his eyes narrowing. There was rage there, searing and hot, but pain, too. The kick-in-the-gut kind, an agony that sucked the oxygen from your lungs and the hope from your soul. Then he blinked, and it faded.
“I know.”
It was my turn to blink. “You know?”
“I helped Charlie build the transplanar interface.” At my blank look, he elaborated. “That machine that looks like a giant CAT scanner. It, linked to the cuff, is what initiates the OOB. Bottom line, I’m not the engineer Charlie was, but I was still there every step of the way. I couldn’t make the leaps of intuition a brilliant engineer like him could, but I could follow the basics, and I know the machine didn’t malfunction. It wasn’t Charlie’s mistake. Charlie didn’t make mistakes, not when it came to science.” His hand balled into a fist-unconsciously, I thought. “Someone killed him, either to stop the project or to steal it.”
In his mind, that could be the only reason. His brother wouldn’t have had any enemies-none that didn’t covet his work. And hell, as cynical as I was about the human race in general, I wasn’t sure Hector was wrong about this or about Charlie.
“And you didn’t think dropping a psychic into the aftermath would be like tossing me into a shark tank with a hungry great white or onto the front yard of a Colombian drug lord with ‘snitch’ written on my forehead?” I demanded. “Line up the personnel in the project, and in a half hour I can tell you who the murderer is-and the murderer knows it. That’s why I didn’t say anything until now. Christ, I’m surprised there wasn’t cyanide in the crappy cafeteria food you served me. My life isn’t worth a dime now. What the hell, Hector?”
He shifted uncomfortably before saying, “It’s not like I expected to find a real psychic. It was a last-ditch effort based on an experiment Charlie planned but hadn’t gotten around to yet. I had all the faith in the world in my brother, but I admit”-he gave a wistful smile that sat oddly on his roughly carved face-“I thought it was his scientific Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus?”
“Every scientist has one. The theory you want to believe but you know either isn’t real or is beyond your ability to prove.” He shrugged. “It was Charlie’s one fault: he was never wrong. Never. There were times I was jealous. I’d feel guilty for saying it, but hell, Charlie would laugh.”
“Good. You can save that guilt for me, then.” There was one beer left on the desk. I went for it without offering it to Hector first. Faint of heart ne’er won fair beer.
He returned to the subject of my future survival. “I’ve assured everyone that there will be no readings on anyone, that I take violations of project members’ privacy very seriously. Most don’t believe you’re psychic anyway, and whoever killed Charlie doesn’t know I suspect murder. You’re as safe as I can make you.”
“Which would be not very.” I opened the beer and took two deep draughts. “You don’t know murderers.”
“And you do?”
“I’ve been in the business, really in the business, for twelve years. I know murderers. I know the ones who know what they are. And I know the ones who think leaving senile Grandpa Eddie under a tree in the woods in two feet of snow wearing nothing but his underwear is just a mercy. ‘Oh, Officer, he wanders off all the time. I’m so scared for him. I’ve been praying and praying.’ Whether it’s for fun or for convenience, killing to both kinds is like a good beer. One is never enough.” I shook my half-empty bottle to demonstrate. “And when one of them has a lot to lose, paranoia is like air to them.”
He took the hint of my wagging bottle and reached behind him for the bag to pull two more out. Now that was magic. Screw being a psychic. He handed me the second-to-last one, and took the last for himself. “Why would a murderer come to you to begin with?”
“They’re stupid, or they’re nonbelievers there with their boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands. Mostly they’re stupid.”
“Unfortunately, whoever killed Charlie isn’t stupid. Chances are, he’s one of the most intelligent men in the country. Which is why this.” Hector had come into the room wearing a lightweight black jacket. He stood, stripped it off, and tossed it onto the desk. Then he pulled out the gun he’d had tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. He held it out to me, butt first. “Wear the jacket. Keep it hidden. If someone makes a move…” He gave a grim flash of teeth. “Just make sure you put a hole in the right person.”
I made no move to take the gun, an automatic-ironically, the twin to the fake one I kept under my desk. “I don’t like guns.”
“You probably wouldn’t like a geek, as you label us, putting you down like a rabid dog. Only in a far more inventive and painful way. Take it.”
“Let me rephrase. I won’t use a gun.” Not again. No matter how deserving of a bullet someone might be.
He frowned. “This could be your life. I’ll do everything I can, but someone got to Charlie. They might be able to get to you. I’m going to get the bastard, don’t doubt that. Get him and make him pay, but until then, don’t you want to live?”
“What I want is to stay sane.” I cut my finger on a letter opener once, badly enough to gush blood and require a few stitches. When I smelled the blood, tasted it when I automatically put my finger into my mouth to suck it clean, I saw it all again. I lived it again. Screaming. Blood. Brains. Gobbets of fat spilling on the floor. A genuine posttraumatic flashback-so the used college psych textbook from my shelf said. If a little blood did that, what would shooting a man do?
Nothing good.
“Give me a stun gun or a Taser. Or I’ll keep this.” I hoisted the bottle in my hand and finished it off. “I’m good at improvising. But no guns. I guess an ex-soldier like you can’t understand that.”
“There’s no such thing as an ex-soldier, and no one who understands it better.” He returned the gun and shrugged back into the jacket, hiding it from sight. “I’d put someone outside your door, but I don’t know who I can trust now that I know you’re the real thing. I can’t be sure if they’re my men or someone else’s.”
“I hope Thackery is on your list.”
“Just because he’s a sociopath and an asshole? Or does a good imitation of both?” He moved to the door.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor. I know. People tell me that all the time.”
“Working with you makes it self-defense,” he said. “So, tomorrow at eight?”
Bemused, I leaned back on the bed, resting on my elbows. Good old Hector had asked this time. He hadn’t told me; he’d asked. Charlie would’ve been proud. That wasn’t my usual sarcasm, either. He honestly would’ve been. He’d raised Hector up right. The man had manners when he wasn’t too full of darkness over his brother to remember them, which put him one up on me. I’d never learned to have them at all.
Manners or not, eight was eight. “Nine,” I countered. I thought about adding that Meleah could bring me breakfast again, but Hector’s manners might end there. Charlie and Meleah had ended their relationship before he died, but I doubt that mattered to his brother. It shouldn’t have mattered to me, either, but it would have if I let it. I didn’t. It was another thing that floated through my Charlie memories, fading but still there. He wanted Meleah for Hector. He’d figured out that Meleah realized she had chosen the wrong brother, and Charlie being Charlie, he’d planned on making that right.
But then he died, and nothing can be made right by a dead man.
“Eight it is,” Hector said, ignoring my counter-offer. Ex-military trumped manners every time.
• • •
It was eight in the morning when we left, but this time it wasn’t just Hector and me. That son of a bitch Thackery came along for the ride. Not in the same car, of course. He didn’t want to be contaminated by something science couldn’t measure. Or he was the murderer and playing it safe. He had Dr. Fujiwara with him. Fujiwara, whose eyes were sadder than previously. After my seizure, I’d gone from a sympathetic little lab mouse to a damaged one. He looked down the one time I met his gaze, but not before I saw the lines of pained regret creasing
