Out in the Dark Read online

  She slid into the booth and nodded to Jake to slide in next to her.

  Paul had picked a secluded booth in the back of the diner, where it was dark and nobody could hear them.

  “Can you get a ride from here or do I need to take you into town?” Jake asked from behind the large menu, keeping his voice free of the irritation he felt. He studied the options carefully and could almost hear his mother saying he should have at least a small salad with his meal for sustained energy. He shook off the intrusion. He did not want to think about his mother.

  “I should be able to get a cab into town and find a hotel for the night. My company will pick up the tab and I can call them in the morning to get instructions on where to go next and how to get there,” Paul explained, also from behind his menu, as if he were shielding himself from Jake somehow.

  Jake took a few slow, deep breaths and closed his eyes. He focused on the man across from him and on “reading” this man. What he saw startled him into dropping his menu. He gasped.

  “Shouldn’t go poking around like that, son,” Paul said, slowly lowering his menu.

  “But, you tried it earlier,” Jake stammered. ”That’s not cool.”

  “I had to be sure of who you were,” Paul said, as if that explained everything. He rubbed his eyes and sighed before continuing. Both Jake and Shelley sat silently waiting.

  “Y’all ready to order?” A perky waitress sidled up to the table with her pen poised over her pad, looking at each of them in turn with an almost overeager expression in her eyes.

  “Give us a minute longer, hon,” Paul said.

  “Sure thing.” And the waitress slid away as if she had never been there. Jake had the impression of a slithering reptile and could not figure out why she had impressed him in that way.

  “She’s mostly harmless,” Paul said when he noticed the look on Jake’s face. “Strictly small time.”

  Jake blinked and then narrowed his eyes at the older man. “Who are you?” Jake demanded to know. “For real.”

  “All in good time. First let’s decide what we want to eat, then we can talk,” Paul said. “Order anything you want.”

  Jake raised an eyebrow and looked at Shelley who grinned at him. But Paul was on to them. “Except alcohol, none of that, even if you are of age.”

  “Fair enough,” Shelley said, still grinning. She was enjoying herself. This was so much better than anything she had experienced in the last eight years.

  The waitress returned, and took their orders. With that out of the way, Jake was expecting some answers. He drummed his fingers nervously on the table wondering who Paul was. He had some idea, but it seemed too outrageous to be true.

  Paul waited and again rubbed his eyes. He was tired, and ran his fingers through his hair. Shelley observed the building tension with fascination. She was the first to speak.

  She nudged Jake and pointed at Paul. “So, you tried to read his mind?”

  “Not really. I can’t actually read minds. I can get images of who they are or of their life and impressions of them,” Jake explained. “I can probably show you how it works, but not right now.”

  “You have it right, son,” Paul started. “But you should know there are rules about poking around in people’s heads. Surely your father must have told you that?”

  “What if he did? You tried to get into my head; I could feel it,” Jake said defensively, his voice rising slightly before he realized others might overhear him in the nearly empty diner. Despite his proficiency in ESP skills, he still felt a little self-conscious talking about it, especially to strangers.

  “That’s true, but as I said, I needed to make sure,” Paul stated calmly. “You are Kevin and Lori Hanson’s son, right?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Good, then I can help you, or rather you can help me. I’ve been following you for a few days now, hoping to learn where your father might be.

  “You see, he did get called up for another remote viewing assignment, but he never showed up. At first we just thought he might have skipped out on us, but that’s not quite the Kevin I know. So, I asked for some leave and went to your house. You weren’t home, but you may have seen me as I was leaving. Your mother had no idea where your father was. She said he’d gone to do the assignment as agreed. She was terribly worried.

  “Then I had your communications monitored in case he called. By this time some of our other remote viewers had been able to determine that something had gone wrong. But they had trouble getting details, as if Kevin had shielded his mind.

  “From observing you I was able to discover that you might be getting more detailed information, but I didn’t know how best to approach you. Then when you ran away, I hoped that you were in fact out to find your father and would have more details to go on than I had.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?” Jake balled his hand into a fist and clenched his jaw, but suppressed his anger enough to hear the man out.

  “It was the only way I could think of to get the information I needed to help your dad.”

  “Why? What’s so important about him? Soldiers go AWOL all the time and the government doesn’t spy on their families to get them back. What’s so different about my dad?” Jake demanded.

  Paul shook his head and put a quick finger to his lips. The waitress was about to bring over their food and he did not want her to hear their conversation.

  “There you go. Hope you’re hungry!” The waitress cheerfully set heavily laden plates in front of them. “And your sodas. Anything else?” She stood there looking expectantly at Paul.

  “Ketchup for our fries?” Shelley asked.

  “Right, here you go.” The waitress pulled a bottle off a nearby table.

  “Thanks.” Shelley took the bottle and after unscrewing the cap, poured a liberal dose onto her plate.

  “Would you like some fries with that ketchup?” Jake teased when he saw how much she was putting on.

  Shelley turned to him and gave him a big sweet smile, but said nothing. Paul watched the exchange and a deep worry started to grow inside him. In the short time he had been around these two kids he had seen something unusual between them. There was almost an intuitive connection that he could sense, even if the kids were not aware of it yet.

  While they ate their oversized and overstuffed burgers, Paul tried to explain himself and his search for Jake’s father.

  “Your father,” he began, “worked closely with me in the remote viewing research, but we quickly figured out that his skills far exceeded any we could hope to achieve in our lifetimes. I’m good, but nothing like your father, who seems to be able to tap into the full gamut of psychic abilities. I’ve seen him make medical diagnoses that were verified as correct. I’ve seen him read names on doors and security badges from thousands of miles away. It’s very rare to be able to read words or numbers.” Here Paul paused and looked as if perhaps he had said something he should not have. Or perhaps it was the information that was on the tip of his tongue that he wished to swallow, rather than speak—that Kevin had at times been able to provide access codes to secured facilities or combinations to safes. He wondered how much Jake knew about his father’s ability, how much the boy himself had learned, or what kind of ability he possessed that he might not be aware of.

  Jake chewed slowly and stared at Paul, waiting for more information. He could sense there was more and Paul was holding back, but then even Shelley could see that. She had been quietly eating and observing. All this was not as new to her as she thought it would be.

  Deeply buried memories of Melvin surfaced. She had been quite young at the time, and what he told her had been difficult to comprehend as Melvin at times liked to use big words, but now something about what Paul was telling them about the physics of quantum particles and how they were all interconnected was starting to make sense. How everything in the world, in life, in the universe in fact, was made up of interconnected quantum particles. It was still a bit of a challenge to grasp the technical explanat
ions but Shelley now clearly understood that this ability Jake and his father had was available to everyone with training.

  Without being able to stop herself she asked, “You wouldn’t by chance have known a magician named Melvin the Magnificent?” It was the only name she remembered, though Melvin must have had a real last name.

  “Melvin?” Paul hesitated a long time before giving an evasive answer. “It’s possible there was a Melvin in our program in Palo Alto, but you must understand that I did not have contact with every one of the subjects.” He suddenly sounded like the official functionary that he was, instead of the concerned and fatherly friend he was trying to be.

  Shelley opened her mouth to call him on it, but Jake stopped her with a hand on her thigh. She turned to him about to let loose a sharp word or two, when she caught the guarded expression on his face.

  Chapter 10

  “Oh my God. I see it all now,” Jake gasped. He started to get up.

  “No, son, I don’t think you do,” Paul said, reaching across the table and grabbing Jake’s arm to prevent him from leaving.

  “Yes, I do. You want him back because he knows stuff that can’t be allowed out in the world,” Jake said, angrily. “You don’t have his best interests at heart at all.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, son,” Paul said. “Yes, he knows too much, and yes, he’s out there with an ability that could make him ‘go rogue,’ as we say, and do damage to our security. Or he could even use it to steal. But that’s not Kevin. He lives by a very strict code of honor, one that helped him rise in the Air Force and build a career. The same one that had him choose to step down from our program because he questioned the true value of what we were doing. I respected that about him.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why do you want him so badly and why can’t you find him?” Jake leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms. He had pushed his empty plate away. “Besides, I don’t like your methods. You spied on us, listened to our phone conversations and followed me. That doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “I can appreciate that.”

  The waitress came back to take the dishes and stood hovering with dessert menus while Jake continued to look daggers at the older man. Shelley reached out for a dessert menu, figuring this might well be her last good dinner for a few days and she was going to enjoy it to the last crumb. She had never suffered from a need or desire to eat like a bird.

  “Ooh, they have apple pie!” Shelley exclaimed, hoping to dispel the tension.

  “Baked fresh this morning,” the waitress said. She seemed quite determined that the other two should consider having dessert as well. What was it about her that made the hairs on the back of Jake’s neck stand up ever so slightly?

  She winked at him, which only increased his dislike and suspicion of her.

  “Fine, I’ll have apple pie and coffee,” Paul said, and waved away the menu.

  “Me too!” Shelley added.

  Jake glared up at the waitress, shrugged and nodded. “Same,” he managed to say.

  “I’m not the bad guy here, Jake.” Paul leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “The reason she,” he jerked his thumb in the general direction of the waitress, “gets your hackles up is because she’s a wash-out from our program. She let greed rule her viewings and started to use her new skills for criminal activities. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s out already. Her sentence was longer, if memory serves.”

  “I still don’t believe you,” Jake said, when his phone interrupted him. It was his mother. She might have let him go on this ‘rescue mission’ but she wasn’t exactly going to let him drop off the face of the earth.

  “Hey, how are you?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Jake replied tersely.

  “Where are you?”

  “Idaho, having dinner.”

  “A decent dinner, I hope?”

  “Yeah, it’s a decent dinner, Mom.” Jake felt something was wrong, but he wanted his mother to tell him; he didn’t want to ask.

  “Good.” A long silence followed and then he heard her breath catch, as if she was trying to hold back tears. “Um, Jake, a man came to the house looking for you today. He wasn’t very nice and said I’d better tell him where you were or things could get ugly.”

  “He didn’t hurt you did he?” Jake glared at Paul again, but realized the timing was off. It couldn’t have been him.

  “No…not really…not much. Coach arrived before he could.”

  “Thank God for that, Mom. Dad’s in more trouble than I thought. Do you know a guy named Paul Thomson?”

  “Why, yes, I do. He’s a very nice guy and was a good friend of your father’s. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s here, also looking for Dad,” Jake said. He saw the waitress returning and rushed his mother off the phone. “Can’t talk now, Mom, gotta go. Tell Coach not to send the troopers. I’m safe. I love you. Bye.” He didn’t wait for her reply, knowing it would be too hard on her. He had heard the stifled sobs on the other end, but couldn’t allow himself to feel her pain. At least she had Mr. Caruthers there. He would keep her safe.

  “How is Lori?” Paul asked.

  Jake shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about his mom, and looked down at his phone. He wanted to text James but couldn’t think of what to say.

  The waitress set down three plates with pie and went back for three mugs and a carafe of coffee. She set down the mugs very slowly and deliberately, and in an instant Jake knew she meant to pour hot coffee over his phone. He pulled it away a second or two before she did, the coffee instead hitting only the table. The hot coffee dribbled down onto the seat and Shelley quickly put her napkin on it while Paul attended to the spill on the table.

  “Oops, clumsy me,” the waitress said, cheerfully.

  “That’ll do, Kate,” Paul said sternly, as if he was addressing a mischievous child. “Just bring us the check and leave us alone.”

  Gone was the cheerful attitude, replaced by a fierce scowl. If she thought she could have gotten away with it she might well have poured coffee in Paul’s lap.

  “Wow, some fierce bitch, that one,” Shelley said.

  “You can say that again,” Paul said, and started to laugh.

  It broke the tension and had all three of them laughing.

  Paul paid the bill in cash. He knew not to leave a credit card number lying around where Kate was concerned. She was not the kind who’d change her stripes. It was too bad; she could have been very useful, if she had been trustworthy.

  Outside in the parking lot they found the weather had changed. It was cold and the threat of snow hung in the air. Jake did not like the look of it. He was sure chains were in the trunk, but he would rather not have to deal with them.

  “Jake, we fear your father is being held by a rogue element of the military, a secret group with off-the-books funding. These people operate like terrorists and we suspect they want information your father can obtain through his remote viewing. They’re ruthless.” Paul grabbed Jake by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Ruthless, Jake, completely without morals or scruples. They won’t hesitate to use you or your mother as a way to get your father to cooperate. If you have any idea where he is, let me know. I can have people on the ground in a matter of hours, anywhere in the country.”

  “All I know is that he’s somewhere in Nevada. Once I get there I’ll be able to locate him, I’m sure of it,” Jake said. He found the older man’s concern intrusive and unsettling, even though the man obviously meant well. Jake couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things, important things, that Paul wasn’t telling him.

  “Call me, day or night.” Paul pulled a business card from his inside pocket and handed it to Jake. Then he thought a moment and handed Shelley one too. “That goes for you, too, young lady. Melvin was one of the good guys.”

  Before either Jake or Shelley could say anything more, Paul walked away and was quickly swallowed up by the shadows. Jake stood for a moment longer, hugging hims
elf against the cold and absorbing some late impressions he was getting from Paul.

  Suddenly he lunged forward and cried, “NO!” There was a sickening thud of a car hitting a body, followed by screeching tires. A dark sedan sped past the parking lot, the window rolled down. Jake thought he saw something flash, but didn’t have time to register what it was because Shelley had thrown herself at him.

  The asphalt was hard underneath his body and Jake was about to let loose some choice words when he recognized the pop-pop of gunfire and realized Shelley had saved his life.

  Chapter 11

  “Get in the car, now!” Shelley screamed in his ear as he scrambled to his feet. Everything was happening so fast. His phone rang in his pocket but he ignored it and fumbled in his jeans pocket for his keys. He managed to unlock the driver’s side door and Shelley dove in ahead of him. He climbed in as fast as his shaking limbs would let him and he slammed the door shut.

  The key just would not go into the ignition and Jake felt panic rising in his chest as his breathing got shallow, but he pushed the feeling aside, took a deep breath and started the car.

  “Go! Just go!” Shelley screamed. She sat huddled down in the seat, clutching the seat belt as if it were a life raft on a stormy ocean.

  Jake looked around briefly and noted their waitress standing on the front porch of the restaurant, laughing. She must have seen the whole thing; why didn’t she go for help? But Jake did not have the luxury of thinking about one person’s motives when he had just been shot at by another. His mind raced around in a tight circle, wondering over and over if these people who’d hit Paul and shot at him and Shelley had anything to do with his father’s predicament.

  With screeching tires he pulled onto the road and found his way back to I-90. It would not be far to Route 95; he just had to backtrack a few miles.