Kiss of the Blue Dragon (8 page)

Our arms—ten inches apart—weren’t touching, but they felt connected. It was as if a magnetic force field bonded us. I resisted the urge to look over at him, but I could see his profile from the corner of my eye. God, those lips. I wanted to devour them.
Kiss me, Rick. Kiss me like it’s the last time
. Okay, I had to get that movie out of my mind. This was real life. There were no happily-ever-afters. There wasn’t even one in
Casablanca
.

Suddenly I felt flushed and hot all over. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. Sex with Bogie was safe, almost
athletic. This was something very different. I needed to maintain control. Somehow I had to douse the flames burning me up.

“I started smoking when I was seven.”

He whistled low. “Wow. Must have been a hard habit to break.”

“Not really. I stopped when I realized it was wrong, which was a lesson I obviously didn’t learn from Lola.”

“Sounds like Lola didn’t exactly have good parenting skills.”

I let out a sputtering laugh. “Understatement of the century.”

“So who were your role models?”

“Later, Henry and Sydney Bassett. My good foster family.”

“Tell me more.”

I took in a long breath. The air felt thick in my throat and I wondered how much of it was the intimacy that always seemed to creep up around me when I was with Marco. Why was I telling him this personal crud? It was my business, not his. And yet the words poured effortlessly from my mouth as if they’d been waiting for this opportunity.

“After Lola went to jail, I went to Schaumburg to live with a bill collector and his wife. Jack was his name. He weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, ate copious amounts of junk food, yelled a lot and told me I was worthless.”

“Great guy,” Marco said with just the right amount of sarcasm.

If he had sounded too empathetic, I would have
clammed up and he was smart enough to know that. I didn’t like to think of myself as someone who needed sympathy.

“In a way, I owe my good health to Jack. I started tae kwon do to deal with my frustrations that accrued during our time together. And he’s the one who really convinced me cigarettes were bad.”

“How did he do that?” Marco turned to face me. His expression was impassive, but I felt his caring. It lapped gently over me.

Lulled, I said, “He used to burn my back with lit cigarettes. I guess you read that in my Master Comp files. But Jack only did that when I was bad, which, according to him, was about every other day.”

I laughed, but it sounded weird. I didn’t dare open my mouth again. The silence drew out. He stared at my profile. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. But before I started talking about something inane like the weather, I simply had to ask him about last night.

“Marco, when I was in the hospital, I had the strangest dream.”

After a long pause, he said, “Yes?”

“I dreamed…someone…well, the devil, actually…kissed me when I was unconscious.”

“The devil, huh? Lucky guy.”

I turned sharply to read his expression. For the second time in as many days, I compared him to Clark Gable in
Gone With the Wind
. His eyes held devilment and he barely contained a smile that dim
pled one cheek, but he still kept his cocky distance. His expression admitted nothing.

“Baker,” he said, “I want to take you someplace that I think you’ll find very enlightening. Mike will stay here in case there is a ransom call. The phones are tapped. Hoskins is working full time on Lola’s case. You can spare a couple hours to do something that might, in the end, help break the case.”

“Okay,” I said. It felt good to have someone else make decisions for a while. Maybe, just maybe, I’d finally found a man I could trust.

The 13th Floor

I
grew queasy on the ride downtown—all five minutes of it. Marco had taken a police cruiser, so we hovered a few feet off the ground in one of the aerolanes on Lake Shore Drive. They’re faster than the land lanes, which were typically bumper to bumper with hydrocars and cabs. Only the rich could afford aero vehicles, so I felt hoity-toity.

In spite of the smooth ride, my stomach pitched as if I were riding the
Titanic
, and I didn’t have to be a shrink to know it was caused by anxiety. I had put myself entirely in Marco’s hands. In the past, just the thought of losing control was enough to make me break out in hives.

You could have stamped my trepidations “justified” when we arrived at the Lincoln Federal Center and got out on the thirteenth floor, I kid you not. Because thirteen wasn’t listed on the elevator touch pad, Marco had to get a special code from the first-floor security station to get the elevator to stop at that level. It wasn’t unusual for buildings to omit the thirteenth floor out of silly abeyance to medieval superstition. What was unusual was to have a thirteenth floor and keep it a secret from the general public.

“Here we are,” Marco said when the doors whisked open with a ding. We stepped out into a plush foyer and found ourselves in front of spotless glass doors etched with the acronym IPAC. Below that, etched in smaller letters, was: Investigative and Psychic Alternatives Consortium.

I froze on the spot, then looked at Marco as Caesar must have glared at Brutus. “What is this?”

“IPAC,” he said, casually putting his hands in his pockets and regarding me innocently. He’d pronounced it
eye-pack
. “It’s a quasi-governmental agency that works closely with university researchers and the Teaching Institute of Parapsychology to develop practical uses for ESP and other mental phenomenon. Some of the telepaths trained here work with police on cases that are hard to crack.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, which had broken out in a nervous sweat. “Marco, I don’t know what you had in mind bringing me here, but I already know that Lola is a crackpot. I don’t need a flash bulletin from an official source to convince me she’s a
fake. Her faults notwithstanding, I’m still going to find her.”

“This isn’t about Lola.” His gaze softened as they roved over my face, then settled, twinkling, on my eyes. “This is about you.”

“Me?”
I looked back at the cloudy letters etched in glass, my narrowed eyes focusing on one word. Psychic. “Uh-uh. No way.”

“Angel, be reasonable.”

I scowled. “What did I tell you about using that name?”

“Baker, stop being a stubborn brat. You are in complete denial, do you know that?”

“This is a bunch of crap, Marco. Taxpayer-funded C.R.A.P Figure out
that
acronym in your spare time.”

“Think about it. This is a place where you can find out once and for all if you have psychic abilities. If you do, then you can use your skills to find Lola. If you don’t, then the subject will be closed.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but couldn’t. He was right. I wasn’t one to hide from the truth. And this subject bugged me just enough to want answers. “All right. But let’s it make it quick. I already know how this is going to turn out, and I don’t want to waste any more time than I already have.”

After waiting only a moment in the lobby, we were greeted by a fast-walking, meticulously dressed man named Robert Steele. He had a pencil-thin black mustache, thinning hair and precise enunciation. He introduced himself as the site manager, shook hands briskly, and gave us a quick tour.

I was astonished to see how many people and apparent resources were dedicated to exploring the use of what Steele called “alternative intelligence.” This was a double entendre, he explained, since the government considered psychic powers and telepathy a form of mental capability, for want of any better explanation.

“So human intelligence,” Steele said in his clipped manner, “is being exploited to assist human intelligence, the latter, of course, referring to criminal investigative and international information-gathering work.”

“Spying, you mean,” I bluntly observed.

His sharp eyes turned my way and he gave me a crisp smile. “Precisely. Our purpose here at IPAC is to find ways to help law enforcement agencies—federal, local and international—do a better job fighting crime. Our goal is not to prove that extrasensory capabilities exist. If you spend more than a day here you’ll know they do. We simply want to strengthen our trainees’ natural capacities to help the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security and local police.”

“If you’re so certain alternative intelligence exists, Mr. Steele, then why isn’t this floor labeled?” I asked. “Why haven’t I heard about IPAC before?”

He smiled patiently. It was obviously a question he’d received before. “There are many reasons, Ms. Baker. Until the genetic and biological source of alternative intelligence is pinpointed, the public will not consider this consortium an appropriate recipient of tax dollars. But the agencies we assist consider our work crucial, and we can’t continue
without funding. So we work quietly, trying to bring little notice to our efforts.

“Another consideration is safety. Ethnic mob leaders tend to come from mystogogic cultures, rife with religion, myths and superstitions. They are less inclined to doubt our crime-fighting capabilities than the average citizen. If they knew where we were, this building would doubtless be blown to bits.”

Steele continued around the circular pattern of labs, rooms and cubicles. He showed us a testing area, where potential psychic operatives were tested at partitioned cubicles with picture cards and other devices. We then passed a comfortable room where someone who looked like a Gypsy was giving a lecture on séances. She didn’t look all that different from Lola and I fought the urge to scoff.

We passed another large room, labeled the Psychometry Lab, filled with rocks and artifacts that trainees practiced touching in order to see scenes from the past. It reminded me of a former acquaintance who used to tap into her so-called past lives with hypnosis. When I asked her why, in her previous lives, she was always a queen or a princess and never a servant, she stopped talking to me.

“Don’t tell me they’re getting paid for this,” I muttered to Marco as we continued on and ignored his look of warning.

Steele spoke and walked so rapidly that I could hardly take it all in. Finally we found ourselves back at the testing area.

“So,” Steele said, finally getting a good look at us. “Why don’t we begin testing, Ms. Baker? Unless you have questions…”

Again, I gave Marco my “Et tu, Brute?” look. “Marco, is there something you need to tell me?”

“Excuse us, Mr. Steele. This will take only a moment,” he said with irritating confidence. Then he pulled me aside. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I didn’t agree to take any tests.”

“You agreed to find out whether you have psychic abilities. How else can you find out?”

“I’ve taken a look around,” I spat. “I saw those people touching rocks and imaging the past. I see evidence of a lot of money being spent. These people have too much invested in this project to be objective.”

“They’re scientists, Baker. They have to be objective.”

I thrust my hands into my pockets and looked away. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to put my fate in someone else’s hands. What if these tests proved I was psychic? Granted, we could stop debating the topic, but then what? Life as I knew it would be over. I’d be at the mercy of a talent I not only didn’t understand but didn’t want.

“The only reason you want me to take this test,” I hissed at him, “is so you can find out whether or not I let your brother down.”

For once, he was speechless.

“That’s right, Marco. If I’m psychic, then you can prove that I could have saved Danny but didn’t. And
if it’s all my fault, then you can stop feeling guilty about his death.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Is it?”

He raked his fingers through the loose strands of his dark hair and appeared to be counting to ten. “Suppose you’re right, which you aren’t. What do you care? Last time I noticed you didn’t give a damn what I thought about you.”

I sucked up my shoulders, content that my facade had fooled him. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I don’t give a damn what you think.”

“Then take the test! Lola needs you, Baker.”

I turned to him as if he’d just spoken in a Martian language. “What did you say?”

“She needs you. That’s what family is all about.”

I swallowed hard as my chest deflated. He was right. She did need me. And that, more than anything, was why I didn’t want to take the test. Because if I was psychic, then that meant she probably was, too. And I’d have to forgive her.

“What are you so afraid of?”

I looked at his penetrating frown and knew he had me cornered, though I would never admit defeat. “Fine. I’ll do it. And when the test shows you that you’re wrong, I don’t want you to ever bring up this topic again. And then I never want to see you again. And I don’t want you to ever see Mike again, because he conspired with you, and—”

“Save it, Baker.”

And I did. I shook my head lightly to clear it and
walked over to the site director. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Steele. What do I need to do?”

I started out by looking at the backs of a series of cards portraying various objects. The woman who tested me would look at the card, think about it, and then slide it toward me facedown. I had to guess what the object was without turning the card over. The tests began quite simply with four different colors, then moved on to more complicated objects such as dogs and cats, then numbers.

I had trouble concentrating at first. Just before the lights surrounding our testing booth went dark, I could see Marco and Robert Steele watching me through the glass observatory window. I felt a little self-conscious and realized I was feeling testing anxiety. Pretty silly since I suspected most people failed this test. But something else was bothering me. I kept thinking about the woman on the other side of the partition.

Dr. Roz Hunter was an attractive brunette who looked to be in her thirties. It was hard to tell because her long hair was pulled back in a braid and she had big glasses that distanced her periwinkle-blue eyes. Steele said she was a parapsychology expert, so I assumed she was a Ph.D. and not an M.D. In any event, I couldn’t help but feel we had met before.

Finally I tuned out all distractions and completed the tests, which concluded with a series of questions I had to answer on a computer. My answers, I knew, were being projected on a monitor in the observatory booth, just as my verbal responses to the cards had been piped in earlier. Very high-tech. I could
understand why Steele was afraid of losing taxpayer funding.

When I finished the last test, Dr. Hunter came to the computer table where I’d been working and touched my shoulder. “That’s it, Ms. Baker. You can go out to the observatory room now.”

I stood and squeezed the bridge of my nose. My eyes were burning. I felt like a fool and wished that somehow I hadn’t gotten roped into this. “How did I do?”

“Fine.” She smiled reassuringly. “Mr. Steele will tell you about your results.”

When she walked away, I had the feeling I’d been a disappointment to her. Even though I always found it hard to fail at things, doing so in this case would be good. It would mean I wasn’t psychic and I could get Marco off my back.

Dr. Hunter hit a switch and the track lights in the ceiling slowly brightened. I could once again see outside of the testing lab. I looked for Marco, eager to gloat over my “failure.” Then I did a double take. Where once there had been just Marco and Mr. Steele, now there were perhaps fifteen others crowded in front of the glass panel. They all stared at me with dumbfounded expressions.

What had I done wrong? Then I focused on Marco. He broke into a smug grin and arched one brow in a look I would have recognized a mile away.
I told you so
.

Steele, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, leaned toward a microphone and broke the silence.
“Ms. Baker, your score is off the charts. We’re, uh, we’re going to want to do further testing on you.”

On the ride home, I didn’t say anything and Marco wisely focused on driving. I’d politely turned down Steele’s offer of further testing but gave him my name and number and said I’d be in touch. I was so shaken by the test results that I didn’t even think to ask if there was anyone at IPAC who could help me find Lola. Then again, if the test results were accurate, I wouldn’t need any help.

I watched the high-rise apartment buildings lining Lake Shore Drive zoom by as we sped north out of the city. The further we went, the more downtown looked like one of the tourist snow globes you could buy at O’Hare Airport—compact and dazzling.

The Chicago area, or Chicagoland as it’s called, is a sprawling grid of endless suburbs. Downtown, though, is a majestic cluster of looming skyscrapers that cast long shadows on a lake so big it might as well be an ocean. It was all an architect’s dream. In spite of its problems, Chicago truly was one of the great cities of the world—and one of the most expensive.

Thinking about my town always brought me out of myself, and right now I wanted to be anywhere but trapped inside of me. I barely noticed when Marco took a detour at the Lincoln Park exit and tooled down to the sandy public beach. He parked the cruiser and went around to my side of the vehicle, opened the door and offered a hand. I released it as soon as I was on solid footing.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s take a walk.”

We strolled near the shoreline, which lapped gently with water that I always found surprisingly cold. Sunbathers dotted the beach, kids rollicked with beach balls and Frisbees, and bicyclists cruised by on the nearby bike path. When we fell into an easy rhythm, Marco began his pitch.

“The way I see it, Baker, is this. Regardless of Lola’s occupation as a fake psychic, it just so happens that you are genuinely gifted in that area.”