Meleah Guerrera showed up with a couple of medical technicians, and I was put into a cervical collar, strapped to a backboard, and lifted to be whisked off to medical. The gurney, liberally covered with fresh sheets that no one had died on, bounced out of the building and over mud that had dried to uncomfortable peaks and gullies. The sky was that unlikely Georgia summer blue, scorched to a pale denim by the blazing sun, and I watched it with unblinking eyes until we entered the comparative cool gloom of the building I’d left only ten minutes before. Allgood and Thackery followed, engaged in a low-voiced, heated exchange. If I’d
tried, I might have made out what they were saying. I didn’t try. I had enough to think about.
Charlie was the kind of person who, if given the opportunity, would have changed the world. Unfortunately, his opportunity ran out too soon, but he had been well on his way. He had big plans, great plans, and those plans had killed him. But if they hadn’t, what he would’ve accomplished … Charlie always was a dreamer. Eminently practical, blazingly intelligent, but he’d never been content to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. Charlie wanted to fly—in ways man had yet to accomplish. He’d apparently had a bigger budget than Icarus, though he’d ended up the same damn way … even if someone had helped him out with a big shove.
I’d missed him before. Yeah, I’d deny it to anyone, including myself, but I had. And now … I knew him. Knew every moment of Charlie’s life as if I’d lived it with him, side by side. His twin, his constant shadow. I saw myself through his eyes—sullen, smart-assed, and so transparently vulnerable it made a young, bighearted Charlie ache. I saw Hector as a child—responsible, straitlaced, and with braces so bright they could strike you blind. I celebrated every birthday and holiday. I was there when Charlie proposed to Meleah and she gently, wisely turned him down. When he got drunk with his brother over it, I tasted the beer on my tongue. And when he finally admitted to himself with a rueful laugh that it was for the best, that he was already
married to his work, I felt his relief and acceptance. I thought I’d missed Charlie before, now and again. God, I hadn’t had a clue.
I tried to push it aside to focus on the fact that not once did he have an enemy that he knew of. Everyone liked Charlie.
So who had killed him?
“Jackson, I need you to answer my questions. I need to evaluate you.”
I blinked and opened my eyes. I hadn’t realized that I’d closed them, lost in Charlie’s memories. Meleah was leaning over me, concern in her now wholly familiar gray eyes. Around her neck on a chain hung a ring. Silver, it was inscribed with a simple flowing pattern. I lifted a hand to capture it, the metal bright against the black silk. “You told Charlie you lost it.”
Her mouth opened and closed before she took the ring carefully from my hand. “I did. I found it a month after he died. It was in my car under the seat.”
“Smells like lemons.” I closed my eyes again. Her car had smelled like lemons every time Charlie rode in it. And although he hadn’t much liked lemony things—hated lemon meringue pie, found lemonade too tart—he’d liked the smell. Liked it because it was a Meleah smell. I found myself liking it for the same reason, which wasn’t good. I needed a little distance in time and space from all the “Charlie” whirling around in me. His death/murder
had been enough to sear the details of his life into me with more force than usual. It had happened before, and there was only one cure for it.
“I need to sleep.” I crossed my arms across my chest and tucked my hands protectively into my armpits. “Now.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Eye, but you’ve had a seizure, struck your head. We need to do X-rays and an EEG at the very least.” She said more, but I missed it. I didn’t need permission to sleep; I was only giving fair warning. I couldn’t have stayed awake if I’d wanted to. The only way to deal with such an abrupt and bruising onslaught of knowledge was to shut down temporarily. I’d learned that the hard way over the years. My body was calling the shots here, not me. I closed my eyes, and less than a second later, I was gone. Gone but not alone.
Charlie was with me.
When I woke up, it was to blue skies, green trees, and mellow sunlight drifting through a window. I blinked blurry eyes, and the warm image resolved itself into a mural painted on the wall. What a ripoff. Of course, classified was classified, but on the other hand, we wouldn’t want bed-bound patients to go stark raving mad, either. So let’s
paint
a window on the wall with a happy little outdoors scene. That’s as good, right?
Yeah, I was all sorts of cheered. I shifted my gaze from a fat blue butterfly and a positively obese puff-chested robin to look at the room around me. I was still in the infirmary. A curtain pulled around my bed gave me the illusion of privacy without the actual benefits. There was the pull and tug of sticky pads and wires on my bare chest; apparently, I was hooked up to a heart monitor. In case I tried checking out of life early before they’d wrung me dry of whatever made me useful to them, the doc could pop in with a shot of adrenaline to get the old pump going. How’d that old Eagles song go? “
You can
check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”?
Hell, I couldn’t do either.
I sat up a few inches and took in more. The bedrails were padded with blankets and tape. I wasn’t sure if that was to protect my mind or my skull. A stray touch or seizures. Or both. I was covered with a sheet, and when I peered under it, I could see scrub pants and socked feet. At least I didn’t see the ultimate indignity: a catheter. It would have been hard to look into those calm gray eyes of Meleah again after that. I stripped the glove off my hand and raised it to touch a sore spot at my hairline. I could feel a low ridge of stitches. Didn’t seem like many. My hand moved to the back of my head, and I winced as I traced a large bump. Sighing, I combed a hand through tangled hair. Not a good day for yours truly. If it was still day. I looked back at the “window.” With that as the only thing to go by, who knew?
“You’re awake, Mr. Eye.”
A face peered around the curtain, and a smile bloomed across it as if I was Christmas and Easter and every birthday combined into one. It was Abby-nurse Eden. She came in and took my hand, the one that was still covered with a glove, as naturally as if she were my mother or sister sitting a bedside vigil. “You can’t read people through gloves, right? I’m not hurting you, am I?”
I shook my head slightly, not trusting my dry throat for speech yet.
“I’m so relieved you’re all right.” She tightened her grip reassuringly. “Some people here …” She scowled—Florence Nightingale outraged. “They aren’t careful with people. Only their precious
things
. Scientific bullshit.” Coloring as she said “bullshit.” Judging by the tiny cross hanging around her neck, she was a good Christian or Catholic girl, and cursing wasn’t her thing. “As if any machine could be worth a human being. They make me ashamed to be the smallest part of this stupid project and ashamed of the people in it. They honestly do.”
Her green eyes solemn, she squeezed my hand again. “I thought being a psychic was like a miracle. So amazing and wonderful. A gift from God. But I think I was wrong. It’s not, is it?”
“A gift?” This time I answered, my voice as hoarse as I expected. I wished for some water. “Not so much.”
I tried to ease my hand back. Except for Abby and Houdini, I wasn’t used to all this touching. Sincere and well meant or not. But she didn’t release her grip. Abby would’ve approved.
“Well, don’t you worry, sweetie.” She was my age, thirty, or a few years younger and calling me sweetie as if I were five. “God might test you, but he rewards you, too. There’s always a balance. For the burden you carry now, you’ll have equal joy. That’s a promise. Have faith that you have good things coming to you. And if you need to talk while you’re here, I’m
your nurse.
Your
advocate. My duty is to you first before anyone else, even your doctor. I’ll do anything to help you. I mean that.” Her green eyes were determined enough to show that when she was on your side, she was totally on your side, and ruthless in her credo and devotion if she had to be.
“Eden? Is he awake?” A ringless hand pushed the curtain back, and Meleah stepped through. It was hard to think of her as Dr. Guerrera now. Not when Charlie and I could remember her sitting on a lawn with a lap full of yapping puppies or stringing lights on a Christmas tree in an old, snug T-shirt and cheery pink pajama pants with a hole in the knee. And then there was another picture of her, watercolor soft, curled naked in simple cotton sheets the color of buttercups. She was round and full, with a crescent-shaped scar dark on her copper-colored hip.
“Just now, Dr. Guerrera.” Eden let go of my hand and patted it, just like my grandmother had always done. “I’ll see if I can find him something to eat.” Then she was gone, and I was alone with Meleah.
“How are you feeling?”
I thought about it for a moment, cataloguing my aches and pains. “Like shit,” I said honestly.
“That’s probably to be expected, considering what you’ve been through.” She picked up a clipboard that had been hanging off the foot of my bed and began jotting things down. “Could you be a shade more specific? It might make the difference
between Tylenol and brain surgery.” There was a hint of a smile on her lips.
With that motivation, I became a little more verbal. “My head hurts, and I’m stiff pretty much all over.”
She nodded. “That’s to be expected. You gave your head a good knock, front and back, and you’re bound to have muscle soreness from the seizure. I’ll give you a mild painkiller and a muscle relaxant. You’ll feel better.” Finishing with my chart, she added soberly, “I’ll tell Hector you’re awake. He’s been worried.”
“I’ll bet.” The words didn’t have the same acid burn that they would’ve before I’d touched that bracelet. It was harder to hate him when I’d seen him grow up through Charlie’s eyes. Harder but not impossible. “You can tell him his guinea pig is alive and kicking. He’ll be thrilled.” More resigned than cutting, but at the moment, off-balance and out of sorts in my body, it was the best I could do.
She sighed and ran absent fingers along the long braid that trailed across her breast. “He’s a good man, like Charlie was. A good man in an extremely bad situation. I wish you could see that.”
I could see that, if I looked through Charlie’s eyes. But I could look through my eyes, too. The picture there was different. Sharper-edged, less forgiving. Like me. And oddly enough, despite having read Charlie now, having collected his life … I still didn’t know what Hector and Thackery wanted with me.
What Charlie and his project—and it had been his brainchild—had been trying to achieve had a superficial resemblance to a psychic event … or in my book, so-called event. But that was it, superficial. It was science, crazy and out there but science nonetheless. What the hell could I do to further the project now that Charlie was gone? And someone had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to make sure it hadn’t worked to begin with. Murder in this kind of closed-doors facility was a high-risk investment and definitely a lot of trouble.
“I see all sorts of things,” I replied matter-of-factly as I slipped my glove back on. “When Hector gets over here, maybe he can explain to me what some of those things are.” Hector couldn’t have killed Charlie, I was pretty sure of that. Blackmail for a higher cause, one I still didn’t know about, yes, but murder his own brother? Hard to believe. Then again, I’d seen worse come in and out of my shop, and you’d never suspect it from their smiles or sweet little-old-lady faces.
“Beyond stubborn, the both of you.” She shook her head. “I’ll have Eden bring you the pills with breakfast if you’re feeling up for it.”
That answered one question. I’d been out of it for nearly twenty-four hours. More than half the time Thackery said they had left. I was surprised that guy wasn’t in here slapping my face ruthlessly until I woke up. Hector did what had to be done, in his mind, without hesitation, but he did have regrets.
The esteemed Dr. Thackery wouldn’t waste a second on regret and probably wouldn’t actually recognize the emotion if it bit him in his cold, uptight ass.
“Breakfast will be …” I checked with my stomach. Dubious, but game. “Okay … I think.”
Fifteen minutes later, Hector showed up with it himself. The tray held a banana, a sealed container of blueberry yogurt, a carton of milk, and a bowl of oatmeal. “Eden called the cafeteria for this. She said to keep it simple and easily digestible. This is the best I could do,” he said quietly.
I watched as he set the tray on the wheeled table beside the bed and expertly pulled the table over my lap. He was back in his lab coat and was sporting sleepless lines and bloodshot eyes. “What, Hector?” I asked. “Long night? Too bad. I slept like a baby.” I opened the milk. “Or someone who was put in a coma by an asshole. Take your pick.” Considering that Hector, as far as I could tell, didn’t know that his brother had died in agony, much less had been murdered, I wasn’t being fair. I felt a pang over that before I remembered where being fair had gotten me in life.
Here.
Hector was more than aware of who said asshole was, but he didn’t bother to put up a defense. Pulling up a chair, he sat heavily, much of his natural grace in abeyance. “I thought I’d killed you, Jackson,” he said wearily. “Believe it or not, there’s not
much you can say to make me feel worse. I’m right there in the moment: Callous Bastard of the Year.”