Gather the Sentient (15 page)

CHAPTER

26

JOSE

Saturday, September 24

Baltimore

Without giving it a second thought, Jose emptied what little remained in the savings account he opened when he was eleven and bought a ticket for the first direct flight out of Phoenix into Baltimore.  After assuring him she would destroy her phone, Andrea and his aunt booked a room at a nearby motel and went immediately to the police.   They were still at the BPD headquarters on Fayette Street when Jose arrived later that afternoon.

He’d never been so happy to see two people before in his life.

“Hi,” Andrea said meekly, rising to greet him as he rushed into the waiting room.

He gathered her into his arms, shuddering when he realized just how desperate he’d been to see her with his own eyes.  Alive and well.

“Hi, Aunt Carla,” he said, leaving Andrea’s side to embrace the woman he hadn’t seen in over a decade.  “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you,” she replied, holding him at arm’s length to give him a once over.  “Look how you’ve grown.  Into an honest to goodness man.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he smiled.  His eyes cut to Andrea and then back to his aunt.  “Sorry I got you into all this mess.”

She shook her head, resigned, and slouched back into the metal folding chair.  “Ni modo, así es la vida.  I just hope they find the bastard before he finds us.”

He lowered himself into the empty seat beside Andrea to wait with them for the officers assigned to their case.  “How long have you been here?”

Carla glanced at the clock on the opposite wall above the reception window.  “About an hour.  Apparently they already assigned officers to our case before we got here.  The guys searching for Alejandro in Phoenix must have already gotten up with the people here.  That’s why they wouldn’t let us just talk to the next available cops.  We have to wait for the ones who’ve already been assigned to the case.  At least that’s what they told us.”

“That makes sense.”  He turned to Andrea.  “What about you?  How’re you holding up?”

She looked small.  Smaller than she’d ever seemed before.  There was no doubt she was genuinely fearful.

“I’m okay,” she muttered, chin in her chest.  “I feel like an idiot.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders because it seemed like the right thing to do.  He was relieved when instead of pulling away, her muscles relaxed and she sunk into him.  “Don’t beat yourself up.  You’re safe now.  And according to the guys I’ve been talking to in Phoenix, when he turns up, they’ve got enough evidence against him to make sure he never has a chance to hurt you again.”

“
If
he turns up,” she said.

He didn’t like thinking about the possibility that Alejandro would find Andrea before the cops found him.  As he sat stewing about it, two officers, a man and a woman approached them from the interior of the station.

“Andrea Morillo?” the man asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m Officer Anderson and this is Officer Rosetti.  We were contacted by the PPD and have been assigned to your case.”  He nodded toward the hallway which led further into the building.  “Let’s have a chat about what’s been going on back in our office.  Meanwhile, can I get you all some waters?  Or a cup of coffee?”

Everyone agreed they were fine as they followed the officers through the snaking corridors of the precinct.  Jose noted how much the chaos of the station reminded him of his emergency room – the woefully desperate interspersed between the manically harried.

Anderson and Rosetti’s heads were bent together in quiet conversation as Jose and the others filed into their office behind them.

“Have a seat,” Rosetti told them, settling herself behind one of the two small desks taking up a majority of the room.  She shuffled through a stack of papers and came up with a spiral notebook.  Smiling, she turned her attention to Andrea.  “We’re glad you came in,” she said.

Andrea sighed.  “I didn’t have much of a choice.”

The resignation in her voice disappointed Jose.  After all she’d been through, the idea that she still felt remorse for speaking out against her abuser seemed absurd.  But the intensity of her guilt was unmistakable.  It was written all over her face.

The female officer leaned in then, close to Andrea.  The space around them became intimate, effectively shutting the rest of them out.  “There’s not much worse than betraying someone you love.  And I’m speaking as someone who’s done just what we’re asking you to do here today.  But before you can help us, you’ve got to be willing to help yourself.  You have to believe you are valuable.  You are important.  You are worthy of happiness that doesn’t come with the cost of fear.”  She stopped then and fingered a small picture frame, hidden behind the laptop on the corner of her desk.  Jose expected to see a photograph of someone smiling brightly or maybe the officer’s child, but instead there was a memorial prayer card from a funeral pressed beneath the glass.  She turned to Andrea and said, “You aren’t the first woman who’s been taken advantage of by a man.  And you won’t be the last.  But as I sit here today, I promise you it’s going to get better.  All you have to do is put your faith in me and the people in this room who care about you.  We’re not leaving.  No matter what.”

The sincerity of Rosetti’s words resonated with the obvious suffering she’d experienced in her own life.  This realization wasn’t lost on Andrea, who responded to the officer by throwing her arms around her neck in an unprecedented display of vulnerability.  Carla reached for Jose’s hand.

“I don’t want to die,” Andrea wept into the officer’s shoulder.

“We’re doing our best to find him,” Anderson said, “but we’re going to need you to tell us everything.  From the beginning.”

Andrea found her voice then, explaining to the officers how she’d met Alejandro at a party, a friend of a friend.  How he’d taken her in when she needed a home.  How he’d loved her and protected her. She explained how several months into the relationship, jealousy over presumed infidelity resulted in her being kept under lock and key, unable to leave without an escort, ‘for her own safety.’  She described the first time he’d hit her over the head with a dinner plate, and how he’d promised her he’d never hurt her again.  She told them everything, tears streaming down her face, until Jose couldn’t stand to listen to another word.

“How is rehashing the past helping you to find him now?” he demanded, cutting Andrea off mid-sentence.

The others stared at him, stunned by his disruption.

“Well?”

“We need to understand Alejandro’s mindset.  What motivates him.  What makes him tick.  Knowing more about him and the actions he’s taken in the past will help us predict what he’s going to do now,” Anderson explained.

“We already know what he’s going to do!” Jose exclaimed, exasperated.  “He’s already come to Baltimore to find her.  And when he does, he’s going to kill her.”

The seriousness of his statement sliced through the air.  Rosetti glanced toward her partner and then at him.  “A moment outside, if you don’t mind?”

He followed her out of the office where she shut the door behind them and began strolling down the hall.

“How do you two know each other?”  Her tone wasn’t accusatory; she was asking out of curiosity.

“I work at the hospital where she’s been treated a bunch of times.”  He concentrated on placing his shoes directly inside the linoleum tiles, careful not to step on any cracks.  It was an old habit from his youth, something he did to occupy his mind when he was afraid of thinking too much.  “I only wish I’d tried to help her sooner.  I should have notified someone the first time she came in.  I just knew something was wrong.”

“Been there,” Rosetti told him.  She worked her hands into her pants pockets.  “The girl on the memorial card back in my office died because of a decision I made.  Because I thought she was safe when she wasn’t.”  She stopped then to look at him, and he could see the pain in her eyes.  “I know about regrets, but let me assure you, you’ve done everything right when it comes to this case.”

With Alejandro still at large, he wasn’t ready to pat himself on the back just yet.  Still, it was nice hearing he hadn’t botched the entire operation.  “You think so?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she agreed, and began walking again.  “So, do you love her?”

Jose lost track of his footfalls and misstepped onto a crack.  “Andrea?”

She grinned.  “Yes.  Of course, Andrea.  You seem pretty vested in her.”

For months he’d convinced himself it was simply his nature to feel compassion toward others.  That what he felt for Andrea was platonic and benign, just one person caring for the well-being of another.  However, in light of the officer’s observations, he considered the true depth of his emotions.  And in that moment he couldn’t deny the truth, as obvious to the officer as it should have been to him.

“Yeah.  I guess I do.  And I don’t know why.  I don’t know much about her really, except that she has supremely crappy taste in men and horrible self-esteem.  There’s just something about her I like.  Something that makes me want to be around her.”  He looked up at Rosetti, feeling like a wuss.  “Should I turn in my man card to you or Officer Anderson when we get back?”

She laughed and patted him on the back.  “You don’t have to turn it in.  Your secret’s safe with me.  I actually had a point in asking though.”

“Which is?”

Rosetti abruptly did an about face, doubling back to return to her office.  Jose followed suit.

“Which is I think you need to be as careful as Andrea and Carla when it comes to Alejandro.  If he finds out you’ve been helping her or thinks you’re involved with her romantically, even if you’re not, he might come after you too.”  She chewed at the corner of her thumbnail.  “Actually, he might come after you first.”

He hadn’t even considered the potential danger associated with helping Andrea.  It hadn’t even crossed his mind.  His sole focus was on her, and now that it was brought to his attention, it did nothing to deter him.  He wasn’t afraid of Alejandro finding him.  In fact, he almost welcomed it.

He stopped in the middle of the hallway but stepped aside to let several officers pass through.  He leaned against the wall.  “So what if he did?”

She turned to face him, hands on her hips.  “I already know what you’re thinking and the answer is no.  We’ll get to him some other way.”

“We could use me as bait.  Put me in front of the news media.  I’ll give some speech about how she’s missing, and I’m looking for her.  He won’t be able to resist.”

“No.”

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.  “Please, Officer Rosetti.  I want to help.  I trust you all to keep me safe.”

He saw something akin to excitement flicker across her face, but a second later, it was gone.  “The thing is, we don’t typically involve unauthorized personnel in this sort of thing.  We have protocols to adhere to and using civilians as bait just isn’t something we do.”

“Just because you don’t
typically
do something doesn’t mean you never have.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“I know I’m right.  I watch
Law and Order
reruns just like everybody else.”

She took a deep breath, which she held for a beat, before slowly releasing it through clenched teeth.

“TV is not real life,” she explained calmly.  “We follow procedures.  Real procedures that aren’t mandated by the need to tie up loose ends in a beautiful bow at the end of an hour.  And besides, this case is in its infancy.  We’ve got lots of leads to follow before we start doing stuff like that.”

“Stuff like using the Mexican boyfriend/not boyfriend to lure in the fugitive gang-banger?”

She rolled her eyes but beckoned him to follow her to into the office.

“Just consider the possibility,” he called from behind.  “I don’t want them to get hurt.”

Rosetti thrust her chin over her shoulder but didn’t slow.  “Neither do I,” she said.  “Neither do I.”

CHAPTER

27

PATRICK

Sunday, September 25

London

“I don’t understand why we all had to race here to London,” Wesley groaned from his seat beside Lillian at Patrick’s mahogany dining room table.  He was picking at his lobster tail, sulking, the way a small child would when he was told to finish his homework or turn off the TV.  “We have lives, you know.”

Patrick was at his wits end.  After the hassle he’d gone through to deliver Eshanti’s landscape drawings to France, only to have Wesley fail miserably in his attempts to glean anything from them, bringing them all together was the only move that felt like progress.

“From here on out, until the prophecy is fulfilled, we must all stay together in one place.  No exceptions.”

“Why now?” Javier asked, taking a bite of asparagus.  “What’s changed?”

Patrick hadn’t told anyone about his latest premonition, not even Javier.  That the light psychics were gaining strength so quickly while they remained stalled frustrated him to no end.  He didn’t like having to admit they were losing ground.

“I’ve called you all here because the fifth light psychic joined the others yesterday.  I wanted to alert each of you when I felt the shift but thought it more prudent to bring you all here today instead.  With their numbers growing in such rapid succession, we need to remain vigilant, which means remaining together, all in one place.”

“Here in London?” Eshanti asked.

“Or here in your house?” Lillian grinned, taking a suggestive swallow of wine.

Early in their relationship, he and Lillian spent many nights, and mornings, together.  He chalked up his initial attraction to her as weakness of the flesh, and had subsequently fallen into her web of alluring propositions.  But as tempting as it was to allow himself to fall back into their old affair, he knew better now than to distract himself with matters outside the prophecy.  There would be plenty of time for frivolity after the seventh psychic was found.

To that end, he ignored Lillian’s remark and addressed the others.  “You are welcome to stay here at my Compton Avenue estate, or I’m happy to put you up at one of my other properties for the duration.  As you know, Akantha is staying here, locked safely away in the east wing under my watchful eye.  I certainly would never expect to place all of you under the same level of restriction, but I would ask that you not leave the city for any reason, business or otherwise, until Number Seven is found.  The worst case scenario would be for any of you to be out of reach when the discovery is made, allowing the light psychics a window of opportunity to gain the upper hand.  I simply won’t allow it.”

Eshanti set her fork down beside her plate and removed her linen napkin from her lap.  “And what exactly are we to do here while we’re being kept under lock and key?” she asked, visibly offended by Patrick’s request.  “You don’t control us, Patrick.  We are free to do as we please.”

He hadn’t anticipated the Indian woman’s defiance.  How could she be so short sighted in light of their current situation?

“What I expect is for all of you to use the abilities you’ve been given to locate the seventh dark psychic.”

She scoffed.  “What abilities?  Javier can move objects with his mind.  Akantha can set things on fire.  Lillian can be in two places at once.  But just how are
they
supposed to track down Number Seven?”  She looked around the table to each of her fellow psychics, finally settling on Patrick.  “The truth is Wesley and I are the only ones who can actually provide the insight you seek, but my gift cannot be forced.  It requires patience.  Serenity.  The more you force me to concentrate solely on the prophecy, the less focused my art becomes.  So to require me to stay here with you would be counterproductive, and I cannot allow it.”

“But what if Number Seven appears on his or her own here in London?  The only prudent thing is for us to stay together, especially given the rapid speed with which the light seems to be gathering,” Patrick reiterated.

The others eyed him skeptically from around the table.  They had all stopped eating and it was as if he was suddenly the one on trial for a crime he did not commit.

“She speaks the truth, Patrick,” Wesley said.  “I’ve looked into the future for you hundreds of times, searching the horizon for signs of the world to come.  But as you know, the future is a fluid, changing entity.  We’ve followed dozens of leads based on images I’ve seen but none have ever panned out.  I am powerful, yes, but I can only do what I can do.  Perhaps instead of cramming this down our throats, what we all need now is a break.  Some time away to recharge and concentrate on something else for a while.  By your own admission, you’ve only felt five connections, so there are still two more to be made.  Certainly we have a little bit of time.” 

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, that in the face of losing everything they had worked for, his fellow dark psychics were choosing to be passive rather than press on, guns drawn, to the finish.

Lillian batted her eyelashes and although he couldn’t feel it, he saw her hand making its way up his thigh.  “I think you should listen to them, Patrick, darling,” she said, eyes sparkling.  “You’re not infallible yourself and you know it.  Because the truth is, if you were as strong as you claim to be, you’d have reached out across the plane and found Number Seven yourself months ago.  You wouldn’t need any of us.”  She looked at him then as if he was a wounded animal, with pity and disappointment, before continuing.  “But here we are.  Maybe it’s time to admit you need a break as well.”

Her words sliced through him, severing the tightrope of confidence upon which he was balanced.  His gut reaction was to lash out, deny her declaration, but before he could form a cohesive argument in defense of his contributions, Eshanti stood.

“While you may have amassed a great empire using your ability to sense the unspoken emotional shifts in the world around you, your power has proven ineffective in the search for the remaining dark psychics.  You’ve sensed only the light psychic’s assemblage, nothing more.  Why haven’t you been able to sense more about who they are or what they’re doing?  Why haven’t you been able to use this spectacular ability of yours to bring an end to the prophecy, once and for all?  Perhaps it’s because you want it too badly.  Because you’re too close to the prophecy to see the bigger picture, and it’s forced you into a box.”  She slid her chair beneath the table, scraping the feet noisily against the polished floor.  “I won’t allow myself to be imprisoned alongside you.”

She glided out of the room, a wash of ornamental fabric, while the others gawked speechlessly after her.  Patrick’s face reddened in both embarrassment and anger, a combination of emotions to which he was unaccustomed.

“The rest of you feel the same, that I am worthless to the cause?”

He watched as they fumbled with their napkins in their laps and stared at their hands, unable to meet his gaze.

“Perhaps a week, maybe two, wouldn’t be too much to ask,” Javier ventured.  “We’ve been at this for a very long time.  It could be a short holiday is just what we all need.  Even you, Patrick.”

The others nodded in agreement, murmuring to one another.

He couldn’t stand the thought of losing everything.  Even now it was all he could do to keep his mind from reaching out into the astral plane in search of something.  Anything.  He was grabbing at straws.

“What of Akantha?  Certainly you don’t expect me to leave her here, unattended?  What if she were to escape?  To unleash her on the world at this point would be suicide.  The authorities would kill her and that would be the end for us.  Is that what you want?”

“I’ll take her to Butron,” Javier offered.  “Put her in the castle’s dungeon.  She’ll be safe there until it’s time to regroup.”

“She won’t go willingly.”

“We’ll slip her something.  A horse tranquilizer if necessary.  And I’ll see to her safe transport myself.”  He paused, wiping the corners of his mouth with his linen napkin.  “I believe our minds are set, Patrick.  The rest of us need a break.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  They weren’t making any sense.  Fury rose within him and he pushed back from the table, knocking his chair to the floor.

“If the light gather while we rest,” he spat, “it will be you who is to blame.”