Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (10 page)

“Ho—
lee
shit,” Sam said again.

“Yeah, it’s weird,” she said.

“No, it’s
awesome
.”

“I guess,” she said, fearing she’d said too much. She’d never talked so much, in such detail, about this—thing. This part of herself…her ‘gifts,’ as Finn called them, and the sudden thought of him made her pulse, which had just slowed back to normal, race again.

Sam was looking at her intently, his brow furrowed. “So you’re this math savant or something, and it’s like, if you understand a principle or a theory or a law or whatever of physics, you can just
do
it.”

“I’ve actually tried not to think about it much, but yeah, that sort of sounds right. Except for the savant part—don’t exaggerate. But yeah, if I understand the concept, or the formula, my body can do exactly what my mind knows will work, within the realm of what’s physically possible for me, of course.”

“So you can’t, like, fly or anything.”

Tesla snorted. “No, Sam, I can’t fly.”

“And this is new?”

“Not entirely new, though I’m doing things I wouldn’t necessarily have thought I could do before. But maybe that’s because the context had never come up, I’d never thought to do them earlier. But I think it’s stronger, or better, or something lately. I certainly have been feeling—different.”

“How come? What’s changed?”

Tesla thought about that. “I’m older—maybe it’s as simple as that. Like other sorts of talents or abilities that people have, maybe this just gets better as I get older.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, that could be it. But you think there’s more?”

“Well, I have traveled in time, several times, over the last few months. Who knows what that means? Maybe it, I don’t know, changes you.” Tesla blushed, saying things out loud that she had barely acknowledged to herself that she was considering possible.

Sam said, no longer smiling. “That could be cool—you know, turning you into, like, Storm, or even Rogue or something. But it could also suck.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, shivering once as the wind picked up and the sun was obliterated behind a steel-gray cloud.

“Well, nobody wants to be Jean Gray. She’s the strongest, she has incredible powers that keep increasing in strength, but they ruin her life, her relationships and everything else and—well, of course, she dies in the end.” Sam shrugged. “It’s inevitable.”

CHAPTER 12

When Beckett Isley opened the front door and saw Malcolm standing there on the stoop, looking all young and eager and earnest, she was first confused and then, remembering she had (in a moment of weakness) agreed to let him in on her call to the Southern Poverty Law Center, totally annoyed.

She walked away from the door without a word, leaving it open in a gesture that said
come in
, sort of. It was hardly welcoming, but Malcolm didn’t hesitate to follow her into the room, his eyes on her lithe form encased in yoga pants and a baggy sweat shirt, thick wool socks on her feet.

Beckett returned to her seat in the parlor, where she had camped out on a red velvet sofa of unknown vintage that spoke more of history and aesthetic than it did of any semblance of functional comfort.

Which was why she liked it as a workspace.

She settled back in, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sofa, feet resting easily, lotus-fashion, on her thighs, ash-blonde hair swinging forward as she resumed reading from the stack of email print-outs Malcolm’s knock had interrupted.

“So, what’s our plan?” Malcolm asked cheerfully.

Beckett raised her index finger without looking up, finished the paragraph she was reading, and then replaced the page on top of the stack next to her and turned to Malcolm.

“Our plan?” she repeated.

“Yeah, you know. Our strategy. Figuring out what’s going on with this wacko group that doesn’t like Dr. Abbott.”

Beckett closed her eyes for a moment, wondering what in the world either Keisha or Tesla saw in this kid. Sighing loudly—not even attempting to hide her conviction that he was a pain in the ass and she regretted inviting him at all, Beckett finally answered.

“The plan is, I’m going to make a phone call and see if there is any additional information about the One God, One Truth organization that might be relevant to Dr. Abbott. That’s the plan.”

“Cool. What do you want me to do?”

Beckett blinked. “Nothing.”

Malcolm looked confused. “Um, I thought I was part of this assignment…has there been some development I’m not aware of? Am I needed elsewhere?”

Beckett’s lips twitched, but before she could laugh, admittedly surprised by his sense of humor and spot-on self-assessment, she realized he wasn’t joking and pulled her face back to its original, somewhat deadpan expression.

“Nooo, I don’t think there’s been any development that requires you elsewhere,” she said.

Malcolm looked back at her with a complete absence of guile. “Then what gives?”

Several retorts came to Beckett’s mind, but really, why crush his little spirit? “Nothing, I guess. I suppose I could fill you in before the scheduled call, bring you…up to speed. Then I’ll make the call. And…we can discuss it afterwards?”

Malcolm nodded. “Sounds about right,” he concurred.

Beckett struggled for a moment, caught between being annoyed and amused. Finally, she settled on amused and got down to business.

“Have you ever heard of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama?” she asked.

Malcolm frowned. “It sounds slightly familiar, but I have no idea what it is.”

“Well, it’s a nonprofit organization that does essentially two things: in the courts, it sues hate groups for civil rights violations, and wins damages for people victimized by those groups. And in terms of data, it gathers information on hate groups, classifies them, and shares that data with law enforcement, like the FBI.”

“Cool,” Malcolm said.

“Yes,” Beckett agreed, trying not to roll her eyes. “They focus largely on white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but they track any organization that targets an identifiable group or class of people with hate speech or physical violence.”

“So,” Malcolm said slowly, a deep line etched between his brows at the bridge of his nose, his light gray eyes looking smokier than usual. “This Law Center, besides tracking racist groups, might be tracking a religious group that is itself victimizing a religious group.”

Beckett allowed her surprise to show. “Well, yes, that is certainly possible. They track organized groups of people who target others for, in many cases, identifying characteristics that are physical, such as skin color. But the groups they track may also be targeting others for not adhering to the group’s own belief system: fundamentalism, by definition, is not exactly tolerant. And that’s the category the One God, One Truth fits into.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that. Dr. A has caught their attention and they see him and his work in experimental physics as ‘an abomination.’ Do they know he’s working on time travel specifically?”

Beckett paused before she answered. “That’s one of the questions we want answered. It could very well be his field in general—certainly that’s where it started. But it doesn’t take much to dig through Dr. Abbott’s publications, as well as his late wife’s, of course, to figure out that they were primarily interested in the kinds of questions and technologies that are generally associated with time travel research. It’s not exactly a hard puzzle to solve if you’re looking for it.”

“What do you know about this group so far?” Malcolm asked, and Beckett forgot for a moment that he was an annoying adolescent.

“First, we know that they are based in rural Indiana, but initially through family ties with people who moved away about a decade ago, they do have cells in north Georgia, in the Atlanta-metro area, and southern Ohio as well. Members appear to number between twenty and forty—which is a pretty vague count, but this group is not out in the open as much as others, and small enough at any rate not to merit much in the way of the Center’s resources. To date, they haven’t been linked to any specific violence against people, and only suspected, not convicted, of property damage at a couple of university labs.”

Malcolm flipped his pale blonde hair out of his eyes. “Has this One God, One Truth done anything to suggest they’re after Dr. Abbott?”

Beckett said nothing, merely handed Mal the printed email she’d been reading when he first arrived. Rereading, she corrected herself. The Center had forwarded this email to her a couple days ago in response to her official request that they share any communiqués by any group that mentioned Greg Abbott by name.

This email had been one of several, and was dated most recently, but unlike the others, which had generally informed members of One God, One Truth that a list of scientists, in various fields, were working on research and application that flew directly in the face of church teachings, this one had only mentioned Dr. Abbott, and used the word ‘abomination,’ always a red flag.

Malcolm looked up from the paper he held, clearly concerned. “They don’t actually make a threat, but it’s alarming, isn’t it?”

Beckett nodded, her loose hair, so similar to Malcolm’s in texture and color, swinging with the motion of her head. “It is. Dr. Abbott being the only subject of the email is disturbing enough, but it seems clear they’re watching him, and are well aware that his research is bearing fruit of some kind. The phrases ‘speed up the time table,’ and ‘a clear abomination,’ seem threatening, as well as immanent.”

Beckett’s phone alarm sounded, softly insistent.

“Time to make the call. Ready?”

Malcolm nodded. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”

Beckett nodded, her relief clear.

“Unless of course I realize something that might break this whole case wide open—obviously you wouldn’t want me to keep quiet in that event.”

“Obviously,” she replied.

Beckett finished her touchscreen dialing and put the phone up to her ear, just as Malcolm whispered loudly, “Beckett—speaker phone would probably be better.”

Un. Believable. But she put it on speaker and set the phone down on the sofa between them.

Unfortunately, the call was over in less than five minutes, and Beckett didn’t even try to hide her disappointment. She was up and pacing in front of the sofa, while Malcolm sat there still, slouched down and leaning against the very upright back of the overstuffed piece, looking more than a little uncomfortable with his chin tucked into his chest.

“So they really had nothing besides the emails you already have,” Malcolm summed up unnecessarily.

Beckett stopped and glared at him. “Yes. Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

Malcolm, unperturbed, went on. “Seems like they don’t have ongoing surveillance on this group, just whatever they ‘catch’ in broader digital sweeps.”

“Correct,” said Beckett testily, resuming her pacing.

“The key members are mostly related, and the leader is known: The Reverend Josiah Doyle. He’s the head of the extended family, and the one who preaches, or tells the others what God thinks, or whatever it is they do.”

“Yes,” said Beckett, making a turn and heading right back in the other direction, again, passing back and forth in front of Malcolm who appeared to have no skeletal frame at all, as if he might just pour off of the sofa altogether and form a little puddle on the floor. She kept talking as she paced, never stopping to look at him.

“It might be wise, however, to curb your impulse to dismiss or make fun of religious groups, their ceremonies, and their beliefs. They play an important role in the world whether you like it or not, and millions of people are motivated to act and react in the world based on those things you seem to think are pretty silly.”

Malcolm sat up straight. “No, yeah, I totally get that. Sorry. I was trying to be cool, you know, impress you by saying something I thought you thought. I’m kind of an idiot sometimes.”

Beckett stopped right in front of the sofa and looked down into his clear eyes, completely open face, and angelic, baby-soft hair. “That’s, um, sort of shockingly insightful and honest of you,” she said.

Malcom shrugged. “I guess.”

Beckett looked at him a moment longer, then resumed her pacing. “So any additional thoughts?” she asked.

“Well, for our purposes right now, what we really want to know is if there’s any connection between One God, One Truth and Tesla’s parents, back before her mother died, right?”

“Yes, right,” said Beckett, stopping in front of him with her hands on her hips. “But we’ve got no other leads to follow; the group didn’t even exist back then. They’re only a little over three years old, so we’re stuck in the here and now—which isn’t nothing, I mean we need to keep an eye on Dr. A’s security now, of course, and this email is very recent—but I was hoping for more.”

Beckett’s irritation seemed to have drained away, and Malcolm saw her shoulders visibly slump with failure. He was used to people letting him really see them, used to people trusting him with their vulnerabilities, though it never occurred to him that this was a direct response to his own openness.

“Well, the group might not have a past,” Malcolm said slowly. “But this Doyle character does, right? I mean, that kind of organized group doesn’t spring out of nowhere, it had to have started with a person, or a few people who actually think a certain way, and they find and develop like-minded individuals, I’d think. I mean it’s—it’s organic, it would have to be, wouldn’t it? It’s a thing that grows. It’s been around longer than three years, it just looked like something else at first.”

Beckett had stopped again and was staring at Malcolm.

He grinned, having no doubts whatsoever that he was a natural for this spy gig they all had going on. “How ya like me now?”

Beckett grinned back. “More than a little bit, actually. C’mon—and bring your phone. We need to call a meeting.”

“Nice of you to show,” said Beckett, frowning as Keisha walked through the front door to find that Joley and Sam were already in the parlor, seated in the worn and faded opulence of wingback chairs covered in silk, velvet, and brocade.

Keisha’s eyes sparked as she glanced at Beckett dismissively. “Maybe you forgot—I don’t work here. I have a life, and things to do.”

Beckett rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Joley, sitting for a change instead of standing and leaning against the wall as if he were only pausing for a moment to amuse himself, sat next to Beckett on the red sofa. His smile lit the room as his eyes narrowed good-humoredly on Keisha in skinny jeans tucked into black, high-heeled boots, and a cropped black wool peacoat belted at the waist.

“Busy daydreaming about me, love, weren’t you?” Joley asked. “Don’t be embarrassed, it happens.”

“Seriously?” asked Keisha. “Your brand of flirting, where you compliment yourself, is unbelievably charming and effective. I hope someone has told you that.” It was a little brutal, but the smile she was trying to control took some of the sting out of her words.

“There’s cruelty,” muttered Joley, but Beckett actually laughed, much to Keisha’s surprise.

“I’ve been trying to tell him that forever,” Beckett said. “Nothing is hotter than a guy who keeps telling you how hot he is.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sam, who usually didn’t enter into the group’s banter. “Somebody should mention that little gem to Ford.”

“This is hardly a fair fight—I’m getting pummeled from all sides!” Joley protested.