Magnum Force Man Read online

  “I’d know.”

  She picked up her wineglass. “But what about the butterfly effect? One tiny alteration and voilà! The whole course of history is changed.”

  “You’re assuming that today was never meant to happen. We were never supposed to see that car, get stopped by the police.” He shrugged. “Nothing’s changed.”

  Claudia sat back in her chair and stared at him in silence.

  “The boy will be taken at the monument,” Jack said. “That’s where we have to stop them.”

  “Them.”

  Maybe one, maybe many.

  Claudia gulped her wine. “It would be helpful if we had a little more to go on. You haven’t remembered anything?”

  He glanced back down at his plate, but not before Claudia had seen a look of revulsion flash across his features. He picked up his wineglass and drank deeply. His hand on the stem was rock steady, but she could tell that he was troubled.

  “You did remember something, didn’t you?”

  He drained the wine and she poured him some more.

  “Tell me,” she coaxed softly.

  “I remember looking through metal bars,” he said finally. “I remember being locked up.”

  The nerves in Claudia’s stomach clenched painfully. “You mean like…prison?”

  “Not the kind of prison you mean. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then…where were you?”

  He still didn’t look at her. “In a place called the Facility.”

  “That was the name of it, the Facility?”

  “That’s the only thing I ever knew it by.”

  “What kind of place is it?”

  “A very bad place.” An edge of anger crept into his voice, but he still didn’t look up.

  “Where is this place?” Claudia asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  He lifted a hand to his neck. Again, she saw a look of loathing in his eyes, along with a flare of rage. “I think we were part of an experiment.”

  A tiny bomb exploded in the room. Claudia sucked in her breath. Part of an experiment? Dear God…

  She waited for an explanation, but he said nothing else, just picked up his glass and drained it a second time.

  Claudia felt she should say something, reassure him somehow. But she was completely and utterly out of her depth here.

  “You were…experimented on,” she managed. “How?”

  “The needles.”

  Her gaze went to the bruises on his neck. “Yeah, I got that. But…what kind of experiments? Who performed them? And why?”

  “Our abilities were being maximized to the fullest,” he said.

  “What kind of abilities?”

  “Precognition, telepathy, telekinesis. I don’t know what else.”

  “Telepathy?” She leaned forward and put her hand on his arm. She almost expected him to jerk away, but he didn’t. For some reason, that made her very happy. “Then you really were in communication with someone earlier.”

  “Someone was in communication with me. I’m not a telepath.”

  “Meaning you can receive but not transmit?” When Claudia thought of the voice inside her head the night before, her scalp actually tingled. “Do you think it’s someone at the Facility?”

  His gaze shot to hers. “I hope not.”

  Her hand was still on his arm. She removed it and clasped her fingers in her lap. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think whoever it was means either of us any harm. The impression I got—” She stopped, searching for the right way to describe the sensation.

  “The thought transference,” he said.

  She thought about that for a moment and nodded. “Yes. That’s probably the best way to describe it. The feeling I had was one of concern. For you, actually. The impression I got was: help him.”

  Jack frowned. “Help him,” he murmured.

  “It was while you were sleeping. I was standing at the bedroom door. I distinctly had the feeling that this person—this entity—wanted me to help you.” She paused. “Do you have any idea who it could have been?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, let me ask you something else. If you came here to save me…if this is all preordained or even somehow arranged…where does that boy fit into all this? How is his kidnapping part of the equation? Or is that just some weird coincidence?”

  “It’s not a coincidence.” He held her gaze for a moment, then glanced away. “The boy’s abduction is tied to the Facility.”

  Claudia frowned. “Connected how? You mean that’s where the kidnappers will take him?”

  “It’s where they take all of them.”

  Claudia’s mind flashed to the picture of the missing child she’d seen online, and she gasped as the horror of his words swept over her. “Are you saying they take them there…to be experimented on? That’s why these children are disappearing? Someone is using them as human guinea pigs?”

  “Yes.”

  A cold chill pierced her spine, and she suddenly felt sick to her stomach. “What do they do with them?”

  “They maximize their abilities to the fullest.”

  “And when they’re finished?” she whispered.

  “They’re never finished.”

  She put a hand to her mouth. “Are you saying they keep them in this place forever?”

  “They can’t let them go. To allow them out of the Facility would be too risky.”

  “Oh, my God.” Even after all her work with Dr. Lasher, Claudia could hardly comprehend such a thing. Children held prisoner for years? Experimented on like lab rats? It was too horrendous to contemplate and yet she could tell from Jack’s eyes that it was true. It was all true.

  “This is like something…” She strove for a reference that he could comprehend. “It’s like something from the Twilight Zone.”

  “Imagine if you will,” he said, in an uncanny mimicry of Rod Serling’s voice.

  That freaked her out, and she got up and began clearing the table. This time she allowed Jack to help her. They worked in silence, and when they were finished with the dishes, they settled down in front of the fire with a fresh bottle of wine.

  Claudia wasn’t normally that much of a drinker, but tonight she needed a little extra fortification. After what Jack had just told her…she could still barely comprehend such a thing. No wonder he was willing to risk so much to save that boy. Suddenly, she had a whole new perspective on his mission.

  Leaning back against the sofa, she studied Jack’s profile as he watched the flames. She tried to imagine what he’d been through at the Facility, but there was no way she could ever know. Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t remember.

  I don’t like memories.

  She set her wine aside and hugged her knees. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from him. Such a complicated man. There was always something new to discover, some new mystery to unravel. He was endlessly fascinating.

  He turned and caught her staring, but she didn’t look away. Instead, she lifted her glass and gazed at him over the rim.

  “Tell me more about your work in Chicago,” he said.

  The request caught her off guard because her thoughts had been a million miles away from her old life in the Windy City. For the first time in two years, she really didn’t miss that life.

  “There’s not much more I can tell you without getting into a lot of technical stuff. Basically, my job was to analyze the number sequences generated by the REGs.”

  “Random Event Generators.”

  “That’s right. They’re basically small computers that generate an endless stream of ones and zeros. The law of randomness would dictate that the number of each would be fairly uniform, but outside forces can skew the sequences, creating spikes and anomalies. For example, if you put someone in a room with an REG, their thoughts can actually influence the number sequence. So researchers and scientists began studying the correlation between large fluctuations to
world events. And in some cases, the spikes and anomalies were observed before the event happened. That’s where Dr. Lasher came in. He believed the REGs could be interfaced with a human pre-cog so that catastrophic events could be pinpointed and in some cases prevented before they occurred.”

  Claudia paused to see if Jack’s eyes had glazed over yet, but to her surprise, he seemed to be following along without any difficulty. So strange. Here was a man who had expressed unfamiliarity with chamomile tea and wine, and yet was unfazed by her rather convoluted description of a random event generator.

  “Shall I go on?”

  He nodded.

  “After Dr. Lasher left the Global Consciousness Project, he needed backing for his own private research. And that’s when he got in over his head. He contacted a colleague he’d worked with in the past who was involved in some of the same kind of research. I never met or even knew the man’s name, which looking back, probably should have set off some alarm bells for me. All I ever knew was that he was well-connected and well-financed by an international conglomerate of businessmen. And I suspect there may have been some high-level government officials who were also looking to exploit the findings. When Dr. Lasher found out what they were up to, he refused to cooperate. Or at least, that’s what I think. He didn’t confide in me, but it’s not hard to figure out what happened. He threatened to go public with their intent and so they had to kill him.”

  Jack’s eyes tracked her as she reached for her wine. “And then they came after you.”

  She nodded. “I saw the killer. Briefly, but I did see him. That alone would have made me a target, but they also may think that I know more about Dr. Lasher’s colleague and their organization than I actually do. Like I said, he never confided in me about any of this, and looking back, I think that’s because he was trying to protect me. But they wouldn’t know that. To them, I’m just a loose end.”

  “What were you working on when Dr. Lasher was killed?”

  “Me specifically? I analyzed the spikes and anomalies created by the pre-cog and tried to correlate them to real-time and future events. You know,” she said slowly, “it’s funny you should ask me about that because something strange happened during those last few days before Dr. Lasher died. He’d been muttering these vague warnings for quite some time, but I never really understood what he meant. I guess I just thought he was stressed and getting a little senile. But then the number sequences on the graphs began to get really screwy. I’d never seen anything like it. It was almost as if the pre-cog was using the REG to communicate with me.” She shivered. “To warn me that I was in danger.”

  “He was.”

  The wineglass slipped from her fingers, but Jack’s hand had already shot out to catch it. He set the glass aside without spilling a drop.

  Claudia couldn’t breathe, and the tension inside her chest became almost unbearable. “How do you know the pre-cog was trying to warn me?”

  His gaze deepened but he said nothing.

  She put a hand to her throat. “Are you saying…it was you?”

  More silence.

  “There’s a reason why I ended up here, isn’t there?” she whispered. Something had compelled her to drive north by northwest the night she fled Chicago. Something had guided her to this cabin where she had been waiting for two long years. “There’s a reason why you’re here now.”

  She reached out, touched his cheek tentatively with her fingertips. When he didn’t resist, she cupped his face in her hands and stroked a finger across one eyebrow, down his nose, over his lips.

  “You know me,” he said.

  Yes, she did know him and she understood why now. Call it destiny or whatever, but the notion that this was all meant to be both frightened and excited her even as she closed her eyes and accepted it.

  Never one to shy away from her natural urges, Claudia moved in closer and brought her lips to his, lightly, tenderly. No pressure or expectations. Just an experimental brush.

  Her heart started to beat so fast she could scarcely breathe. She pulled away, startled by her reaction.

  “I liked that,” he said and ran his fingers through her hair. He lifted a strand to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Flowers.”

  “I’m not sure…if we should be doing this,” she said, completely taken aback by her response to him.

  “We aren’t doing anything.”

  “Not yet, we’re not.” She gave into the temptation once again and ran her hand across his shoulder, down his arm, entangling her fingers with his.

  He stared down at their interlocked hands for the longest time. Then his gaze lifted and Claudia caught her breath. His eyes…so blue, so deep.

  Those eyes killed her every time.

  She moved in again, this time wrapping her arms around his neck, drawing her to him as she placed her mouth on his. He didn’t resist, nor did he respond. For maybe a half second. Then his lips opened and Claudia intensified the kiss. She pressed harder, searched deeper, and then suddenly their roles reversed as he plowed his fingers through her hair. He drew away, murmured something she didn’t understand, and then he kissed her again.

  It seemed to go on forever and yet it was over in the space of a heartbeat. Jack wrenched himself free, stared at her for a moment then slid away from her.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  Pulling his knees to his chest, he sat with his fingertips pressed tightly to his temples as he rocked back and forth.

  Claudia was instantly beside him. “Jack, are you okay?”

  His face had gone pale. “I can hear him screaming again.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get out. The cage is locked…”

  Cage? Dear God.

  She put a hand on his shoulder but he flinched away. Helpless to know what to do, she sat back on her heels and watched him.

  “It’s all my fault,” he said in anguish. “I caused this.”

  “What did you cause?”

  “The escape. It was my idea. But when they caught us, he took the blame.”

  “Who took the blame?”

  It was as if he didn’t even hear her. “We’ll see how you like it at the Facility,” he said in a strange voice. “No one has ever escaped from there.”

  “Jack.” Tentatively, she placed her hand on his arm. This time he didn’t move away. “Your memory is coming back, isn’t it?”

  He groaned.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  He dug his fingertips into his temples. “Make them stop.”

  “I wish I could.” She squeezed his arm in reassurance. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He drew himself up even tighter and shivered. “I’m cold.”

  She fetched a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then she put her arms around him and drew him close.

  After a while, he slid down to the floor and laid his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and he let her. She hummed softly and he closed his eyes.

  They stayed that way for a long time, hours and hours, until the fire died down and the cold light of dawn crept into the room.

  Chapter Twenty

  Just after daybreak, Claudia, eased away from Jack and stretched her cramped muscles. Then she padded off to the bedroom, climbed into bed and promptly fell asleep. She woke up a few hours later to another gray day. From the window she could see the distant hills peeping through the haze.

  No sunlight meant no kidnapping.

  It was an odd thought with which to start the day, but Claudia’s life hadn’t been normal for a very long time.

  She lay for a moment, luxuriating in the warmth of the blankets and wishing she could just tuck her head under and stay for a while. But it was already midmorning and she needed to get a start on the day. She had things to do, and as Jack was fond of saying, time was of the essence.

  Throwing off the covers, she rose. Still sleepy-eyed, she crossed the room and poked her head out the door. The fire had died out and
the room was chilly. Empty.

  She stepped through the door and glanced around. The blanket from the night before was neatly folded on the end of the sofa, but Jack was nowhere to be seen.

  “Jack?”

  He was gone, but Claudia didn’t panic, nor did she bother looking for him out the window. She had a feeling she knew where he was. He’d probably headed out first thing to have another look around the cabin. To reconnoiter the terrain.

  To be honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She supposed his diligence should have reassured her, but his attention to such matters kept her a little unnerved because it hammered home his assertion that she was in danger. That the only way he could save her was to change her destiny.

  Well, he’d already done that, hadn’t he? Just by showing up.

  With a tingling sense of new discovery, Claudia thought about the kiss they’d shared the night before, and her fingertips crept to her lips.

  There had been something both a little chaste and completely erotic about his response, and she couldn’t help remembering what he’d told her about the Facility. The kidnapped boys were taken there and held indefinitely for experimentation. So how long had he been there? Since childhood?

  That would explain some of his stranger reactions to commonplace things, such as the taste of chamomile tea and the wine. And yet he wasn’t wholly naive because he seemed pretty familiar with her computer, the television, even the police yesterday.

  He was an enigma in every sense of the word, and Claudia wondered if she would ever know much more about him than she did at that moment. Was that enough?

  She found herself at the window after all, although she wasn’t really looking for Jack. Instead she watched the haze lift over the mountains, as though some great veil had been stripped away. The sun didn’t come out, but the day lightened and a mild breeze stirred the wind chimes on her front porch.

  A leaf hung suspended in a draft for a split second before winnowing down to the ground. Then the wind died away and all was calm.

  Turning away from the window, Claudia padded back to the bedroom and grabbing some clothes, headed for the bathroom. Since she had the cabin to herself, she used the opportunity to take a leisurely shower and wash her hair. By the time she came out a little while later, Jack had returned and was planted in front of the television watching an episode of Charlie’s Angels.