Mind's Eye (29 page)

“No. Not that finding him won’t be challenging enough. But that wasn’t the problem I meant. When we do find him, have you considered how we go about killing him?”

“I have,” replied the colonel. “And you’re right. This could be . . . problematic. How do you sneak up on a guy, with intent to kill, who can read your thoughts from six miles out?”

“Exactly,” said Campbell.

“It’s a very good question,” said Colonel Justin Girdler. “I only wish I had a good answer for you.”

33

When the cab dropped them at the Vons parking lot, Nick Hall and Megan Emerson entered the store while Alex Altschuler waited for them in the parking lot in his black BMW. They quickly picked out sunglasses that covered much of their faces, and baseball hats, using a tiny fraction of the loot Hall had amassed cheating at poker, having decided not to steal these items from the poor Glandons.

They emerged five minutes later, and Hall insisted Megan take the front seat with Altschuler during the relatively quick drive back to Fresno. It had taken Altschuler ninety minutes to arrive, but it would take over two hours to return at a pace that was at least within shouting distance of the posted limits.

Megan and Alex Altschuler chatted and got to know each other while Hall remained silent behind them. He had announced at the outset he needed time to think. To get reacquainted with himself. And that he didn’t plan to be sociable during the early part of the drive.

As they pulled out into the street, Nick Hall allowed himself to face the full horror of the massacre that had taken place. Bad enough to contemplate the murder of twenty-six people when this was just a number. But with his memory restored, he now could run down an inventory of who was on the ship. He knew them all. While it was true that several were little more than strangers, many others he had known for years, and were colleagues and in some cases friends. People he had worked with and laughed with. People who shared his passion for oceanography. Tara Cohen, Ashok Patel, and Gavin Hirsch. Don McBride and Andy Chen. Latisha Lewis and Min-sue Ahn. The list went on and on. It was a tragic, senseless loss of a truly wonderful group of human beings. How could they all be gone?

He allowed himself to wallow in the misery of their loss for ten minutes and then forced himself to put this massacre out of his mind. For now. He would continue to mourn their loss in the days and weeks ahead.

So now he knew who he was again. And much of who he was, he liked. He had been hard-working, determined, and successful. He was a loyal friend and someone who set high moral and ethical standards for himself.

But there was much about himself he now didn’t like, even detested. He had been arrogant. Smug. He was an only child. Bright. Funny. Athletic. But his success had gone to his head. He had become selfish. In short, he had begun to think he was hot shit.

It was funny what waking up in a dumpster without a memory could do for your perspective. And reading minds could take anyone down a peg. He had thought when he walked into a room, everyone inside had been holding their breath, waiting to be dazzled by Nick Hall’s entrance. By his lean, athletic body and ruggedly handsome face.

What an arrogant, self-delusional fool he had been. He had now read the minds of dozens of women he had passed. While a few had reacted positively to his appearance, an equal number had been decidedly unimpressed.

How had he gotten so full of himself? And how had his friends put up with him?

And seven months ago he had been engaged to a woman named Alicia Green. Beautiful, but on the cold side. Okay to talk to, but not . . . Megan Emerson.

But seven months ago he would have never given Megan a second look. She had a cute face and appealing figure, but she wasn’t nearly hot enough for the great Nick Hall. She would never have made the first cut for the superficial asshole he had been.

When his parents had both died in a car accident two years previously, he had mourned for six months and then asked Alicia to marry him, more to get a feeling that he was moving forward with his life than out of a passion that couldn’t be denied. Alicia was a perfectly fine woman, with a spectacular appearance. He had thought he was her equal in the looks department, but given his new perspective, he knew he was not.

But so what? That shouldn’t have been so important anyway.

He had been about to settle. He hadn’t been passionately in love with Alicia Green. And while they mouthed the words, she hadn’t been in love with him either. Not really. Maybe it was telling that he had looked her up on Facebook while the cab was taking them to Vons, and she was already in another relationship.

And why was it that his mind and heart wanted to focus on Megan Emerson, even when his fiancée was now also part of his memory? Was it just proximity?

He didn’t think so. What Megan had brought him was contrast. She wasn’t as beautiful as Alicia, by any means, but she was more energetic. Warmer. More fun to be around. Without Megan he would never have known he was missing anything. He would have thought he had hit gold with Alicia Green.

And he couldn’t blame Alicia for moving on. She thought he had died seven months ago. And in a way, he
had
died. He was not the same man she had been in love with—if that’s truly what it had been.

Too much was going on for him to contact her now, but after his return from the dead became public, he would have no choice. He would call her. He would explain he had seen she had moved on, and that this was probably for the best.

He wouldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t pretend even for a second she had betrayed him by entering into a new relationship so quickly. He would wish her well and explain that he had been traumatized and changed.

Once he had become, temporarily at least, the most famous man on the planet, he suspected she might make a strong effort to hang on, but it wouldn’t work. If she knew the truth, she wouldn’t let him and his mutated psionic mind get within ten miles of her, anyway.

He wasn’t certain how this would play out with Alicia. But he
was
certain that he wasn’t the same man he had been seven months before. Even if Megan Emerson walked out of his life forever, she had already shown him there could be so much more to a relationship than he had known. And while looks deteriorated with time, a great personality and great chemistry only strengthened.

The funny thing was that the last seven months were still completely absent from his memory, even though everything prior had returned. He had done some research into amnesia and learned this wasn’t impossible.

He remembered the Scripps
Explorer
exactly, and all the colleagues with whom he had embarked. He remembered beginning to feel woozy. And hearing what sounded like multiple helicopters off in the distance.

Was he getting seasick? Hallucinating? He had never been prone to seasickness, so he was very confused.

Then several people around him fell to the deck. His mind was too far gone to realize he had been drugged, which was obvious in retrospect. Whether by gas in the air or by something in the food or drink was unclear. His last memory of the ship was falling to the deck, closing his eyes, and noting in the back of his mind that the helicopter sounds were coming closer.

Next he remembered a small room with a small bed, locked from the outside. And a television that could only play movies and wasn’t connected to the Internet. And then a man had come by with a clipboard, asking about his health but refusing to answer any questions. A man he now knew to be Kelvin Gray.

And then he awoke in the dumpster.

But it wasn’t as though the events on the
Explorer
seemed to have happened only days before. The memories felt old. Felt like there had been a seven-month gap since he had experienced them.

He had no idea how he had escaped, but after having experienced using his psi ability to good effect, it wasn’t a surprise that he had. His escape must have gone horribly wrong, though, for him to have needed to hide in a dumpster.

He thought about Megan once again. He had to tell her. About what a jackass he had been. And about Alicia. He needed to get this off his chest. And he owed it to her.

He had thought he might have been drawn to Megan because she was the only person he really knew. She had anchored him. Kept him sane. She was his only friend in an entire world of strangers. But now that his full memory was back, he felt just as dependent on her. Maybe more.

So he would tell Megan of his past, and pledge to her that he was a changed man forever. He didn’t need to tell her what a jackass the old Nick Hall often was, he knew, but it was something he refused to hide from her.

The black BMW continued to glide quietly along California 99, eating up the miles with effortless power and grace. The conversation up front had died down temporarily, and the absolute quiet within the luxury car, even at highway speeds, spoke of some impressive automotive engineering.

“Are you okay back there, Nick?”
thought Megan at him after several minutes of silence.
“I know you wanted some time to think. And I know you’ll tell me what’s bothering you when you’re ready. But can you give me a hint? I mean, you’re an innocent oceanographer, right? It’s not like you remembered you really are a supervillain with minions somewhere, right?”

Hall smiled.
“I’m sorry, Megan. Didn’t mean to worry you.”

He thought about what else he might tell her right now. He knew they had a conference call scheduled for the moment they arrived at the Homestead Inn, to include the three of them, Cameron Fyfe, and Ed Cowan. So he wasn’t sure when he would have time to really tell Megan what was on his mind, and about Alicia. As great as telepathy was, when he had this discussion, he wanted to be alone with her. And to be able to read her body language. And to be able to hold her.

“Everything is okay,”
he continued.
“Just needed to sort out a few things. I’ll tell you all about it when we get some time alone. But for now, just know that, if anything, I’ve come to appreciate you even more than I did when I had no identity. Which is saying a lot.”

“Great,”
thought Megan, but in such a way that Hall sensed part of her was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I look forward to being alone together.”

“Me too,”
thought Hall.

But with his past and Alicia Green as the primary agenda, he knew he didn’t really mean it.

34

They arrived at the Homestead Inn, and it was as nice as Altschuler had advertised. A fairly large number of people resided there, but while Hall would have still given his right arm to get rid of the constant background chatter in his brain, he was becoming ever more adept at ignoring it.

They walked straight through the lobby, having no need to check in, keeping their heads down to avoid the cameras there, and onto the grounds. Ed Cowan had assured them there were no cameras covering the grounds or the rooms themselves, so once they were through the lobby they didn’t have to look down at their shoes anymore.

They located the keycards Cowan had hidden for them—so they wouldn’t have to use their own names to rent a suite, and were soon inside. A bowl of fresh red apples sat on a table to welcome them, along with a plate of home-baked chocolate chip cookies, which sent a schizophrenic message about the Homestead’s position on the health of its guests.

 Within minutes they were in the small living room section between bedrooms, and Cameron Fyfe and Ed Cowan were displayed in split screen on the TV hanging on the wall, in full three-dimensional splendor.

Cowan and Fyfe began by peppering Hall with questions about his ordeal. He told them he remembered a first meeting with Gray and then nothing else. With respect to his escape, and how Megan Emerson had ended up joining him on the run, he answered as truthfully as he could. But given he didn’t want to disclose his psionic ability, he had to fabricate more of the story than he would have liked. He left the events at the mini-mart out of the narrative entirely.

When he had finished describing a somewhat fictionalized version of events in Megan’s office, Fyfe and Cowan both looked skeptical.

“Just to be absolutely sure I’m not missing anything,” said Fyfe, “let me try to recap. The first guy, the guy at the Shell, got distracted by some kids setting off a firecracker. And when he turned, you were able to slam a door handle into his skull.”

“Right.”

“And then two men were threatening Megan in her office, but they left the door open a hair.”

Hall nodded.

“And you were able to slip behind them quietly while they were concentrating on Megan.”

“Exactly,” said Hall.

The venture capitalist’s face remained impassive, but Cowan’s eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh,” he said. “So two trained killers, who were stupid enough not to close the door all the way, didn’t hear you sneaking up on them? And you were able to take
both
of them out?”