Brain Storm (A Taylor Morrison Novel Book 1) (34 page)

“You still getting him?” Mac asked finally, picking up that I was feeling well enough to be getting antsy.

I nodded at him, making a funny face while I was at it. The sound of Brown in my head was weird to say the least, like having a fly trapped in your brain. I seriously didn’t know how Mac stood it all the time.

He pulled out and drove around to an isolated spot, where he parked the car and turned off the key.

“Try talking to him like you did to me in the bank. If he can’t talk back, maybe he can signal you somehow, but tell him to take it easy, not like last time.”

“Yes, by all means tell him to keep it under control. I can’t take that again. Nearly gave me a heart attack,” Bryan added, winking at me.

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to add that.” I felt like three kinds of an idiot, sitting there in the car, trying to communicate with Brown. Mac and Bryan were turned around watching me like a pair of hawks and I closed my eyes, shutting them out.

Can you hear me?
 

I put it out there and waited, getting nothing but the constant buzz sounding in my head. Frustrated, I opened my eyes, only to find Mac giving me a look.
 

“Sam, we’re desperate here. You’re not even trying,” he snapped at me.

Bryan looked at him for a second and then turned on me too.

“He’s right. You’re just playing at this. This is the only chance we’ve got. If you don’t care enough to do this for yourself or us, think about Candice. You supposedly care about her, so start acting like it.”

I stared at them in absolute disbelief. Did they think this was easy? I’d just been through hell and now here, questioning me? Anger rose up lightening fast, radiating through the car.

“Do it now,” Mac ordered.

Can you hear me?
I snapped out the words in my mind, thinking of Brown, but glaring at Mac as I did it.

The surge inside my head was immediate and I looked at Mac in shock as it died back to its former level.

“You were right, Mac,” Bryan said, realizing instantly what had happened. “It’s linked to emotion for her.”

I watched as Mac nodded agreement, watching me in the rear view mirror. He’d told me this thing was linked to emotion, but I’d thought he meant when it went haywire and I threw things around. My mind instantly skipped back over the past, searching for the common thread. I’d been frantic about the keys, wet and cold when I dropped them. Absolutely desperate for that coffee, I remembered, bringing a smile to my lips. Scared to death when the gun was pointed at Bryan. Terrified when we were attacked. No wonder the experiments hadn’t worked.
 

I couldn’t just talk to Brown in my mind. I had to put some force, some intensity, behind it and push it out there. Excitement rose inside me, as things began to click inside my head. This was how it worked. If I could get a handle on it, if I could talk to Brown, we could find him and get him away from Hughes. The thought of Hughes instantly sobered me, fear replacing the growing excitement. What if Brown wasn’t the only one who heard me?

I fixed my mind on mind on Mac -
Can you hear me?

“Say it again,” he ordered from the front seat and I all but screamed it in my head.

“Yes. I can,” he assured me, feeling the fear running through me. Bryan looked at him in confusion, not understanding what was happening. “I think maybe you can direct it.”

He had heard me and I’d gotten no response from Brown. In fact, the buzzing had quieted some, more like background noise now.
 

“Is she talking to you? What do you mean you think she can direct it? Oh, that’s just great.” Bryan moaned, finally catching on. “You think Hughes can hear her?”

“Only if she talks to him,” Mac answered. “And maybe not even then.

“Well, don’t risk it! Don’t talk to him,” Bryan ordered. “In fact, ask Brown if Hughes is there now.”

Yeah, good idea. But I needed to clear up a couple of other things first.

Caleb?
Getting nothing in response, I closed my eyes, remembering his photo and what he looked like. Focus on him, I told myself. Reach out and find him.

Caleb!
I heard a quick spike in the buzz and knew I had reached him.
Caleb Brown?
Another fast surge, like the blip on a radar screen.
 

“It’s him. It’s Brown,” I told them. ”I can’t hear him talk to me, but there’s a surge from him, sort of like a ping when I ask him questions, Mac,did you pick up on any of that?” He shook his head and encouraged I went back to work.
 

One ping, yes. Two means no.
Got it?
Ping. I smiled. Finally we were getting somewhere.

Hughes bad?
I got a single ping.
Hughes there?
Three pings. What was that supposed to mean? Would have been nice if he could talk to me. I just had to assume at this point what he was trying to tell me.

“Okay, he says Hughes is our guy, but I don’t think he knows if Hughes is there or not.” I said, catching the guys up.

“Does he know where they’re holding him?” asked Bryan.
 

I checked. Brown had no idea where he was at.

“Great. How are we supposed to find him?” Bryan asked, not expecting an answer. “Maybe we should drive around, scope things out. Obviously he’s in the area since this is where Sam picked him up before.”

It seemed as good a plan as any. Mac pulled out from the parking lot and headed down the road in the direction of the airport, while Bryan called in to Candice to let her know everything was okay.

It was thirty minutes later that the buzzing stopped. I had lost Brown. I had Mac turn around and within minutes, I had him back. At the next intersection, Mac took a right and within minutes, I lost Brown again. Having Mac go back the other way, I picked him up again a few minutes after we passed the intersection where we had turned right. Incredible as it seemed, a pattern was emerging.

Hot or Cold?
I asked. All I got in reply was a single ping.
 

Twenty minutes later, we had it narrowed down to three buildings. Warehouses filled with cargo and services companies, close to the main terminals. As Mac drove slowly up and down the rows between them, Bryan pulled his gun out and laid it softly in his lap, ready for action in case we blundered into something. Five minutes more and we were there.

“That’s it,” I told them. “He’s in there.” I pointed to an end unit on the third building of the complex. “That has to be it, but it looks deserted.”

“They probably have the cars inside, behind the bay door,” Bryan said. “It’s a good set-up. They can come and go and not be seen out in the open.”

“You’re sure this is it?” Mac asked, as we circled around the back of the building.

 
I nodded. Brown had been so enthusiastic in his pinging, I’d had to tell him to back off several times, but he’d reached a new pitch each time we’d come close to the unit. The effort of communicating with him was taking its toll on me. My head was pounding and I was physically exhausted.

“Tell him to sit tight. We’ll be back for him.” Bryan looked over at Mac. “She’s wiped and we need time to plan how to get him and what to do after we have him.”

I could almost feel Brown’s disappointment when I told him we were leaving, but I was too tired to care. He was safe and we knew where he was. It would have to do for now. Unable to keep my eyes open any longer, I laid my head against the seat back and let sleep take me.

I WOKE UP with blurry vision and a knifing pain behind my eyes. I stayed still until things came somewhat back into focus, hoping the pain would recede as well, but that wasn’t to be the case. Groggy, I sat up and swung my feet over the side of the bed.
 

“Welcome back.” Squinting, I saw Candice sitting in the corner of the room, nearly hidden in the shadows.
 

“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes, willing the pain away without success.
 

“Ten in the morning,” she replied, switching on a lamp, which actually caused me to tear up. “You’ve been out nearly 18 hours. Mac and Bryan had to carry you in.”

Blinking, I let my brain try to process the fact that I’d lost nearly a day, but it wasn’t up to the task. I felt like I’d been drugged, and I was having a heck of a time not rolling back into bed and pulling the covers up over my head.
 

“Take these.” She thrust a glass of water into my free hand, and shook a bottle of aspirin at me. I eyed the bottle with it’s child proof cap in disbelief. I’d never be able to get that off. I held out my other hand instead, palm up, waiting.

“Baby,” Candice said, sounding amazingly put upon, as she twisted off the lid and threw the pills into my outstretched hand. I closed one eye and watched her through the other one as she wretched the lid back on the bottle. Someone was in a bad mood.

“Are you getting up or are you just going to sit there?” Lucky for her I couldn’t stand up yet, or I would have punched her a good one. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck and Candice was standing here giving me grief.
 

“Where is everyone?” I asked instead, choosing to ignore her.
 

“Mac and Bryan are out. Working,” she snapped it out, obviously displeased. “Grams is getting some rest. We’ve all been taking turns watching you.” She flopped back down into her chair. “I thought you were dead when they drug you back in here and then you wouldn’t wake up. Mac wouldn’t let us take you to the hospital, so we all just sat here, watching you, waiting to see what happened next.”

She was scared, I realized, as she reached over and picked up the phone. Bad enough to want to risk a hospital and Mac had overridden her. I was sure that hadn’t gone over well.

“She’s awake,” she said into the phone. She listened in silence for a beat and slammed it back into the receiver. “They’re on their way back. Mac said to get some food into you.”

My stomach recoiled at the thought, but it had been a long time since my last meal, which if I recalled had been french fries. I needed to eat. And I needed to move.
 

I nodded agreement, and getting to my feet, shuffled to the bathroom and closed the door.
 

Hot showers and pain killers were wonderful things. Thirty minutes later, the pain behind my eyes was down to a dull ache and my brain, while still not 100%, was at least functioning.

I opened the door to find Mac and Bryan had joined Candice in the room. Room service had arrived and a covered tray sat on the table. Now that my head felt better, my stomach was thrilled to see food had arrived. I gave a nod to the guys and headed straight to the tray, happy to discover a steak with the all the trimmings hidden under the cover.
 

“Fill me in,” I ordered as I pulled up a chair and picked up the steak knife. Candice had ordered mushrooms to go with it and I gave her a grateful smile as I dug in. She must have decided I was going to live, because she managed a smile back, which completely disappeared from her face when she turned back to Bryan. Oops. Mac must not have been the only one to side against her.

“We’ve gotten a lot done while you were napping,” Mac started up. “We rented another car, and a van, which we’ve been using for surveillance on Brown. As far as we can tell, he’s still in there.”

“He had a visitor last night, though,” Bryan chimed in. “Hughes showed up for a while, which verifies that you had the right location.”

I nodded as I forked up a particularly nice bit of steak. I had been pretty certain, but it was good to know for sure. Nothing like breaking in to
 
rescue someone and finding the place empty.

“Candice and I went house hunting this morning. Found a really nice cabin, up in the mountains, fully furnished. Nicely isolated, two ways into the property and a place to park the RV. We took it for a month.”

“Realtor?” I asked, pausing in my assault on the baked potato.

“Nope. Private classifieds,” he answered me, smiling at my nod of approval.

I’d found a lot of people through real estate companies. Not that they talked, but all you had to do was pull the comps of rentals and sales for the time period you were interested in. Then it was just a process of elimination until you had your answer. Private rentals were another matter all together. Once the ad was pulled from the paper, it was tough to find someone who didn’t want to be found.
 

Once we had Brown, we needed someplace to take him. We couldn’t very well bring him to the hotel and I didn’t want to leave the immediate area until we figured out our next move.

”I’ve made a list of things we need to get in order to hole up there for a while,” Candice put in. “The utilities, internet, phone, etc, are in the owners name, so we’re good there.”

“Good work, guys.” I said, pushing my plate away, amazed at the amount of food I’d devoured. Mac had been right. I’d needed it.
 

“What about you?” Bryan asked. “You okay now?”
 

I nodded. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but I was feeling better by the minute and was anxious to get underway.
 

“If everyone’s ready, why don’t we get started on the move. Candice, Mama D and I can take the van to get supplies and Mac, you and Bryan can move the RV and take one of the other cars. We’ll come back for the extra one later.”