Touching Darkness (17 page)

Pope again.

Gerard's expression was grim as he walked over and knelt in front of Fonda. “Did you get burned?”

She shook her head. “He…screamed, and I thought I'd hurt him and jumped off. A second later…”

He gently took her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. “Listen to me. This was an accidental fire. If anyone asks, if you talk to his family, a candle fell onto the bed and caught the sheets on fire. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her face wet from tears.

Olivia couldn't believe it. “You're covering it up?”

“I can't disclose the truth without exposing the program.”

Fonda started crying again.

“What is the truth? Is it true, what she said? No, of course not. What is going on here?”

He took Fonda's wrists and pulled her to her feet. At first Olivia thought he might hug her, though he'd rarely done so to her. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Do you want to let them break you down? Or do you want to
take
them down?”

Anger transformed her grief. “I want them all to die. Especially Eric Aruda.”

Olivia shivered at her hatred.

“Good. Use your anger as fuel. Keep working on your skills, and you'll be able to take him out.”

Olivia asked, “What are her skills?”

“That's not important.” She had never seen that mask of controlled anger on his face. He looked at Olivia. “Take her down to the kitchen and get her something to drink.”

Olivia helped Fonda down the stairs. She led the girl to the table, where only days before she and Nicholas had shared a piece of cake—and more. She went to the sink and filled a teakettle. “You said Jerryl tried to kill Eric's sister. How?”

Fonda slumped in the chair, her gaze vacant. Her ears were pierced multiple times, each loop a different color. “He got into her head and tried to make her kill herself, but one of the Rogues saved her.”

The water spilled out over the spout. Fonda said it so matter-of-factly.
She
believed it. Olivia shut off the water and set the kettle on the gas stove, remembering something she'd overheard Jerryl say to Fonda:
I was too busy fighting to get into his head.
Olivia thought he'd meant psyching out the enemy.

No, this was crazy. But how could the Rogues set two fires without being anywhere near? Special skills, that was all she knew, skills Fonda, Jerryl, and Nicholas used while closed away in those missions rooms.

What if it was real? What if her father
was
doing something much more sinister than just spying? Like what Nicholas had suggested? “Fonda, tell me more about how Eric set…how he did this?”

“I don't know
how
this stuff works, it just does. We were born this way.”

Olivia's chest tightened. Impossible, her brain screamed, but she said, “Tell me about Jerryl, what he could do.”

Fonda's wet eyes glittered. “He…was…
was
so talented. He could remote-view.”

“What's that?”

“See other places without going there. Psychically spy.”

No way. “And the thing about getting into someone's head?”

“That was his most amazing talent. He could mind-control.” She looked at Olivia. “He could get into your head and make you do things.”

Olivia shivered. “Like…?”

“He tried to get Eric to kill the Rogues. But he was strong, too. He shot himself instead. He should have died! If he had, Jerryl would still be here!” A new wave of sobbing ensued.

Olivia tried to make sense of it, but it overwhelmed her.

“He was everything to me,” Fonda said to no one in particular a few minutes later. “For the first time in my life I felt complete. Jerryl made me complete.”

Olivia sat down at the table with her. “That's not true.”

Fonda looked at her through teary eyes, her liner dripping down in black streaks that reminded Olivia of Akill-eaze's makeup. “My mom died when I was a kid. She killed herself because I wasn't enough to live for. I was never enough, except with Jerryl. He loved me for who I was.”

Olivia's heart squeezed into a hard, small ball. “I do understand, Fonda. My mom took off when I was a baby. I've never heard from her, don't know if she's even alive.” Those words tightened her throat. She rarely spoke them aloud or let herself think them. That and Fonda's fear of never, ever being enough echoed in Olivia's soul.

It was hard to see Jerryl as someone who could care about someone, but maybe he had a different side that only Fonda had seen. Hadn't Nicholas made Olivia feel good about herself, before all his questions and doubts? He'd seen her as a person, not an expectation.

Fonda looked at her. “What about your dad?”

At first Olivia thought she knew Gerard was her father but realized the question was general. “I was lucky. He raised me. Loved me.”

“Yeah, well, I didn't have anyone to love me. My dad
married the first bimbo who would put up with his drinking after she got a whiff of the money the Army gave him for my mom's death. Connie once told me the money was barely worth putting up with me, and back then I was a quiet, sad little girl who tried to be good because she desperately wanted to be loved.”

Bitterness tightened Fonda's expression. “It didn't matter. She hated me whether I was cleaning the apartment or acting up. She screwed him in more ways than one, running up so much debt they went bankrupt and moved into a shit-hole apartment. She also introduced him to her circle of friends, druggies who got him hooked on heroin. He was worthless after that.”

Olivia remembered hearing Fonda saying she'd had to deal with rapists and drug dealers, that she'd been taking care of herself for a long time. Now, with Fonda broken and vulnerable, Olivia saw beyond her cavalier façade. She saw the sad little girl who just wanted to be loved.

Then the little blonde Olivia was imagining morphed into a girl with long, brown hair and hazel eyes, trying ever so hard to be lovable.

“Can you top that?” Fonda said, covering pain with her bluster and need to have the worst story.

“No.” Olivia didn't want to imagine what Fonda might have gone through, a pretty girl among people like that, no one to protect her.

The bluster faded, though, and Fonda pulled up her bent legs and hugged them to her chest. The robe fell away, revealing fine scars crisscrossing her calves. “Jerryl was the first person ever to protect me. For the first time in my life, I felt loved. Like I was worth being loved. And now…he's gone. And I'm nothing again. He's gone…gone!” She descended into tears, burying her face against her knees.

Olivia reached out to touch Fonda's shoulder but hesitated. She was a rose, beautiful, delicate, but prickly with thorns. Olivia dropped her hand. She wanted to point out that it seemed their relationship was more about sex than
love, and that maybe Fonda was confusing the two, but she held her tongue. It wouldn't matter.

She sat in silence and watched the girl cry, her pain twining around Olivia's heart like a strangler vine. Olivia felt the same way. She hadn't attached her self-worth to a man's loving her. For her, it was her family. Without them, and their approval, she was nothing. So she toed the line, lived within their expectations out of fear, just as Nicholas had suggested. She only now understood why:
What were you worth if your own mother couldn't love you?

W
hile Amy, Petra, and Zoe were out getting supplies, Lucas asked Eric to take a walk in the tunnel with him.

Eric's shoulders were puffed with victory. “It feels so good not to have to worry about that son of a bitch anymore. A big weight's been lifted off my shoulders.” In the dim lights of the tunnel, he studied Lucas. “How come you look miserable?”

Lucas paused, jamming his fingers into his front pockets. “I've never been thrilled with the idea of your burning people alive. But I understand it with Jerryl. I'm relieved, too. That's not why I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“So, shoot, bro. What's up?”

“I lied about not seeing the face of the man who's going to kill Olivia.”

“You know I don't care if the enemy's daughter gets it. But Nicholas does, and that's a worry, too. I know how you guys are when you're in love. You go kind of crazy.”

“Eric, listen to me.” His voice echoed softly against the concrete walls. “I lied about seeing the guy's face.”

Eric's face paled. “It wasn't me, was it? I consider her an enemy, but killing her like that…that's sick stuff.”

“It was me. I saw my face.”

For a rare moment, Eric was speechless.

“I felt the guy's pleasure at killing her. It wasn't because
she was in the way or the enemy's daughter. It was just…pleasure. And then I saw his face. My face.”

“No way, man. That's not you.”

“I know. But with this stuff inside me, the blackouts, and shooting Robbins—”

“That was Jerryl.”

“I don't think it was. It was different than being mind-controlled. You and Nicholas hear his voice in your head. I lose control. I'm not even there. I doubt Zoe's dad was the kind of guy who'd shoot people. But he did.” Lucas put his hands on Eric's shoulders. “Somehow, I'm going to kill Olivia on Saturday. It's probably going to be psychically. That's how I killed those men who were going to hurt people. I strangled them in their dreams.”

“So we keep you awake Saturday. You don't leave the tomb.”

“It's not only Olivia. If I'm capable of doing that, of killing a man who was about to tell us something important, I'm capable of…killing you guys. Remember the promise you made.”

“That you made me make. I'm not going to kill you, Lucas. You're like my brother.”

They
were
like brothers. When Lucas's mother died, Petra and Eric's dad took him in. They'd just lost their mother, when she'd burned to death in a supposed lab experiment gone wrong. Except they knew it was Darkwell's experiment.

“I might kill you. Or Petra. Or Amy.” Lucas shuddered at the thought. “And if I did, I'd kill myself. I couldn't live with that. It's hard enough living with the fact that I killed Robbins. So if I'm going to end up dead anyway, take me out before I hurt someone else. Spare us the pain.”

“Does Amy know about any of this?”

“No. You can tell her afterward. I'll leave her a letter so she won't blame you.”

He slapped his hand to his chest. “Blame me? She'll friggin'
kill
me!”

“Not when she understands. She knows about our pact, so it won't be a complete shock.” He met Eric's gaze. “You can handle Amy. I'm calling in my promise. You and I will go down to the shooting range. The girls don't like being down there anyway, and if anyone else wants to tag along, we'll tell them we want to do some male bonding.”

“Oh, great, they'll think we're gay lovers.”

Lucas laughed despite himself. “You all like those sordid reality shows. It'll give them something to talk about.”

Eric took a deep breath, planting his hand against the wall. “Until I tell them I shot you.”

“You have to do it. It's getting worse. The other night I woke up in the storage room.
Where the guns are kept.
Amy didn't know, and I didn't tell her. I didn't want to worry her.”

“And she
is
worried.”

Lucas rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I know. It's going to hurt her.”

“It's going to devastate her. That woman loves you like nothing I've ever seen.”

The thought of leaving her, of hurting her, made his chest ache. “It would be even worse if I hurt one of you. Especially if I'm aiming a gun at her. This is no different from when Jerryl was in your head, trying to get you to shoot Zoe, Amy, and me. You shot yourself instead. That's what I'm doing here. You have to take me out first. Promise me.”

Eric hesitated at that bit of logic.

“Dammit, promise me. I'd do it myself if I didn't think I'd either chicken out or just maim myself. Or that Amy or one of the girls would find me first.”

“Okay, okay.” He released a sigh. “I promise.”

Lucas's shoulders relaxed. “Thank you. I know what I'm asking is hard.”

“Hell, that's what it is. You're putting me in hell.”

“No, Eric. For once, you're an angel.”

 

It was afternoon before Olivia could go into the business wing to her office. All the windows had been opened, but the horrid smell lingered. The door to Jerryl's suite was closed, and construction and scrubbing sounds floated from within. Could you really clean away that kind of horror? Would she ever get it out of her mind or her nostrils?

She emerged from her office and came face-to-face with…Lucas.

The bizarreness of it stole away her breath. The armed guard who'd been stationed at the end of the hallway since Wednesday accompanied Lucas, who wore wrist and ankle chains. Had her father captured him again? Her stomach twisted at the thought.

Seeing him brought back the nightmare, especially when a smile broke out on his face. “Well, well, who do we have here?”

“Keep moving,” the guard said, pushing him along, though Lucas kept looking at her.

“Wait.” She caught up to them. “Lucas?”

“No, darlin'.” He bowed, his chains clinking. “Sayre Andrus, at your service.”

His Southern accent wrapped around those words, adding sensual undertones that were emphasized by the gleam in his blue-gray eyes. He took her in, not exactly leering, but with such intensity…it sounded crazy, but it made her feel like he was touching her. “Mm mm, you are like a dream.”

She was dumbstruck. His hair was shorter than Lucas's, but he had the same lean build, same slightly exotic features.

“Olivia.”

She turned to see her father standing in his doorway. She recognized the order in his tone and broke out of her spell to walk to his office.

He closed the door behind her. “He's not Lucas Vanderwyck.”

“But it…he looks…”

“It's his identical twin. The prisoner I warned you about.”

The one he'd told her not to get taken in by. She bristled at his suggestion that she'd fall for a prisoner. What had he said? He'd be charming until he got his hands around her neck.

“You didn't warn me that he looked like Lucas.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You weren't even supposed to know about Lucas.”

She'd wandered over to the east wing of the asylum and discovered the prisoner. It had bothered her that he'd been burning with fever, no plans to get him help other than some mysterious injection her father had ordered Harry Peterson to give him.

“Andrus is being temporarily moved into Nicholas's suite while his quarters are being repaired from the fire. It was so hot it burned up into the floorboards. He'll be back to his secured quarters soon.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“He's got too much to lose to try anything. He'd go back to prison, and right now he's hoping to get transferred out of the country once his assignment here is finished. He's been a model prisoner. I expect nothing less here.”

“He obviously has some…skill for you to go to the trouble and expense of bringing him here. Something you're going to use against the Rogues.”

He smiled. “Yes. But the specifics aren't your concern.”

“Yes, they are my concern.”

His eyes widened. She hadn't allowed him to dismiss her this time.

She continued. “If I'm in danger, if what happened last night…if this touches me, my life, I'm entitled to know what's going on here. You said I was the only one you could trust. Prove it.”

His eyes narrowed, and his voice was low. “What do you want to know?”

She couldn't believe she was asking, “Do Fonda, Nicholas…the Rogues, do they have…psychic powers?”

“Yes.”

She sucked in a breath, hearing the word from her father, a man of logic.

He picked up a piece of paper. “If that's all—”

“It's not. I want to hear you confirm it. Jerryl could get into someone's head and control them? Eric Aruda can set fires with his mind?”

“Yes.”

She put her hand to her chest. “You believe in this stuff?”

“I not only believe it, I've put everything on the line for it. And I'm not the only one. Our government has dabbled in psychic experiments for decades. During the Cold War, the U.S. thought the Russians were way ahead of us in using psychic powers to spy. We had to protect ourselves, or at least those who were in high positions. A program ultimately called STAR GATE was bandied from agency to agency through the 1970s and 1980s before being dismantled. I started my own program.”

“The one Nicholas's father was in.”

“Yes.”

The secrecy, the reason the CIA director couldn't know, why her father was spending his own money…she could hardly wrap her head around it. “And Nicholas, what is his special skill?”

“Nothing deadly. He can find you anywhere. Are you wearing the crest pendant?”

“Always, just as you told me to.” She automatically touched the pendant and felt the familiar grooves.

“It's not just a pendant. It has protective powers. A man who worked on the original project with me created it. Richard Wallace knew copper had protective properties against psychic energy.

“I gave Wallace pennies that were minted in your birth year and mine. He melted them down and took them to a special place out West. He charged the metal in one of the energy vortexes of the earth and, using his own spectacular powers, imbued the metal with super-protective properties. I had them molded into the family crest and added the quartz crystal, also for personal psychic protection. It's protected me over all the years I've worked with these people. It blocks them from remote-viewing me. Or you.”

She squeezed the pendant in her hand. “What is DARK MATTER's purpose?”

“We find terrorists and we take them out.”

“What about Sayre?”

“That's enough. I've got arrangements to make.”

She walked to the door but stopped and turned back. If this stuff was real, Nicholas's warning took on a whole new meaning. “What about Lucas? Can he see the future?”

“That wasn't his skill. So no, the premonition was a hoax, just as we suspected.”

She left. The sound of hammering filled the air. Back in her office, she did an Internet search on Sayre Andrus's name, trying two different spellings until she found newspaper articles on his trial.

He had been convicted of strangling a woman to death. Just like in the nightmare. She got the creepy-crawlies as she read. Her hand went to her throat. He'd been described as charming, pleasant, a psychopath, evil…even by his own parents. She found articles written after the trial about both their deaths. Their claim to fame was their murderous adopted son, something cited in both stories. His mother had drowned in the tub, his father died in a car accident, both in the middle of the night.

She closed the screen, unable to read any more. Yes, he was dangerous. Physically. But psychically as well?

She went down to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. At a sound, she turned to find Arturo Esteban, one of the
guards, walking in. He nodded and took out a frozen entrée from the freezer.

She nodded toward the box. “The Kashi ones are better.”

He gave her a smile. “It's for the prisoner.”

“Oh.” She lingered long enough for the guard to set a bottle of Dr Pepper alongside the entrée on a tray and head out. She followed.

When they turned the corner, she saw that her father's office door was closed. This was the only chance she'd get to talk to Sayre Andrus before he was put back in the attic.

Pressure squeezed her chest. Dare she disobey her father? Risk his wrath? She thought of the realization that had hit her when she was talking to Fonda. What was she without Daddy's approval?

She was still Olivia Darkwell but not the meek, obedient girl Nicholas had taken to task in the kitchen. She took a fortifying breath and stepped forward.

Arturo paused when he saw her standing by the door. “No visitors.”

“I'm not visiting. I need to ask him something. It's business.”

His eyebrows screwed up. “The guy's weird. A woman shouldn't be talking to a guy like that.”

“Right now I'm a CIA employee, not a woman.” She gave him a forced smile. “You'll be there, with your big, bad gun.”

He glanced at her father's door. She wasn't about to let him check with his boss. She stepped into the room. Arturo followed and set the tray on a desk. Sayre's gaze, however, was on her. He smiled broadly. “A visitor. Well, ain't that sweet?”

She walked up to him. “I wanted to meet the most dangerous man Darkwell's ever brought aboard.”

His hand sprang out so fast, Arturo pulled his gun. Sayre wasn't the least bit bothered, giving the guard a recalcitrant look. “I was only being a gentleman.” He jangled the chain. “Like I could do anything.”

“Put your hand down.”

Sayre gave her a sad look. “Sorry, can't show my manners.” His frown morphed into a smile. “So, I'm the most dangerous, eh?”