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Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author. "The Pretender" is a protected trademark of MTM Television and NBC and the characters of that series are used herein with no mean intent or desire for remuneration. It is, instead, a tribute to innovative television, that rare and welcome phenomenon.
The Third Highway Series Part 12:
Possession
Chapter 1
Witch1
St Mary Hospital
Queens, New York
The dead boy in the big hospital bed looked incredibly fragile and small. He had been a robust nine year old--a bit on the plump side, even--when the leukemia had showed it's first signs. The cancer--and the treatments--had taken their toll, however, and Jimmy Rollins had been little more than a skeleton covered in pale, stretched skin when he had finally died.
Megan McCoy watched his parents from just outside his room's door. Their grief had a ritualized quality to it, to her. She'd seen too much death not to stand a bit outside it. Even on the oncology floor, the routines of the hospital needed to go on. The family, the parents, sister, aunts and uncles and grandmother, had been at his bedside for nearly two hours. And Jimmy's bed was needed.
She turned to watch the approaching doctor with relief, his lab coat flapping around him as he strode up the hallway. He always seemed to be in a hurry, this one, she thought: young and still passionate about what he did. Also very good, both with treatments and with the families. And she knew she could count on him to comfort everyone. To reassure them that everything possible had been done for Jimmy, that he had died comfortably, surrounded by his loved ones--and to convince them all to go home.
He was new, but--she had heard on the grapevine--had amazing credentials. The younger nurses whispered about him continually--he was also single. Certainly Megan noticed he was very attractive, but her main concern was keeping her floor running smoothly, and he was an definitely an asset in that department. He did ask a lot of questions and she had twice caught him checking on records of long-since dead or discharged patients, but she was willing to overlook that. Jimmy's bed was already booked, and she needed to get him out of it as fast as possible.
"Doctor!" she said as he walked up to her, "I'm so glad you came in. We need the bed, Doctor."
"And his family," he told her, "needs to say good-bye."
"Of course they do. But they also need to go home," she reminded him.
He sighed and looked at her. She knew he understood.
He smiled slightly. "Patience," he advised her. "This all has it's own rhythm. And please, Megan: call me 'Jarod'."
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Blockbuster Entertainment Center
Camden, New Jersey
Laura was pacing backstage and growing more angry by the minute.
"What is it about the phrase 'I want more security' that you don't get?" she asked the burly man who stood watching her agitated motion. He crossed his massive arms over his chest.
"You've already got our maximum regular security presence," he replied impassively. "This is almost as much as we gave The Wallflowers."
"Fuck The Wallflowers!" Laura countered angrily. "What are you telling me: Bob Dylan's baby boy automatically gets your max efforts, and my girl--who's getting death threats--gets the usual rent-a-cops and an extra water pistol? Are you telling me there are no off duty cops in Camden or Philly you can call in? None?"
"Laura!" a male voice exclaimed. She turned to see Paul, her personal security expert, emerging from one of the tunnels that led to the dressing rooms. "I've got it covered--I've got twenty more cops and a dozen private badges on their way. Also two surveillance vans to cover the parking lot. And a five man swat team with full-auto weapons--"
"Jesus Christ!" the halls' security chief exclaimed. "You can't come in here with that kind of fire power--"
"We come in here with whatever we damned well please, or Little Wonder cancels the fucking show--you got it, pal?" Laura demanded.
"How's Jenn?" Paul asked, taking Laura by the arm and pulling her away from the big man in whose face she'd been glaring.
"OK," she answered. "Sort of wired. I don't blame her."
"The next step is to start canceling shows, Laura--if this keeps escalating at this rate. This perp is moving really fast--first trashing her hotel room in Chicago, then tossing the dead cat on-stage in Pittsburgh--he keeps getting closer. You do understand there's a limit to how much any of us can protect Jenn on-stage right? No matter how much heat we have in the hall."
"I know, Paul," she answered with a sigh. "And you know how much pressure we're getting from Warner Brothers to keep the tour on schedule. And you also know how stubborn Jenn is."
"I know how stubborn you are," he told her, and Laura glanced at him in surprise. There was a time he was almost obsequious toward her. She liked his candor a great deal more, but it still tended to astonish her sometimes. "You can't control everything," he told her. "We can lock down exits and cut off fields of fire, but, in the end, if this guy seriously wants to do this, he will."
"I thought everyone who entered this building was going to be searched," she answered weakly.
"We can't legally frisk someone unless we have reason to be suspicious. And we certainly can't frisk every one of the ticket holders--it would take days, Laura, to really check a crowd this size. In all honesty, there's no telling how many guns there might be out there--this is Camden, you know. And you should see some of the stuff we found in Pittsburgh--berettas and colts and knives like you would not believe. One girl had a stiletto in her boot. Face it--this is America." He shrugged. "Everyone has their weapon of choice."
"Are we safe enough for tonight?" she asked. "I can pull the plug right now, if that's what you want."
"Safe enough," he responded slowly. "But I think it's time. I think we need Jarod."
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The Rose Hotel
Queens, New York
He stretched out across the bed, still fully dressed, and closed his eyes. He saw little Jimmy Rollins emaciated face, of course, and heard his whimper when his frail body was moved. Jarod understood death and knew he truly could not save them all--he'd known from his first examination that, barring a miracle, Jimmy was dying. But it still hurt. It still hurt terribly.
And he knew that the chemotherapy had hurt Jimmy, too: he'd given it to himself, to understand what it was like. And been so sick he'd wished he could die, quite literally.
Part of him wondered about what it would be like to stop. To say that enough was enough, that he was only one human being, and the world was full of injustice, and walk away. It wasn't simply Jimmy's inevitable and relatively gentle death that was weighing on him--it was all of it, all the greed and selfishness and horror he uncovered, wherever he went.
Oddly enough, he found that the satisfaction he got from a successful sting was becoming, increasingly, diluted by a sense of repetitiousness and ritualized effort. He went different places, he was different people, yet in the end it was all remarkably the same: his righteous wrath, the passing pleasure it gave him, and then his moving on. It was all starting to blend together.
He rolled over onto his stomach and tugged the laptop closer: he still needed a few more details resolved before this particular pretend would be over. There was an administrator at St. Mary Hospital who had bilked the government out of untold amounts of Medicaid funds for services billed and not provided, all while withholding actual treatment from indigent patients. All he needed was a bit more proof, and to set up appropriate punishment. More greed, more selfishness, more innocent people suffering so that one guilty son of a bitch could have a nice house and a nicer car. It made Jarod feel literally sick. But also tired.
He suddenly shut down the program he was running and went to email.
Laura was out there somewhere, running Jenn's road trip and being seductive and sexy and responsive. He needed that. He needed her.
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The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
"Just cut to the chase, Syd: can a psychic actually pick up a communication directed at them, or not?"
"Miss Parker, I don't think you appreciate the full complexity of your question," Sydney patiently explained. "Saying 'a psychic', for example--implying that all people who have these capabilities are in some way the same, generic--"
"Are you trying to tell me you don't know?" Parker asked. "Because you could save us both several years of our lives if you would just spit it out."
He sighed. She was refusing to see his point. Again. "My best guess--based on over thirty-five years of clinical research--would be that, yes, some persons with psychic abilities could, indeed, 'pick up' a communication, much as you or I would 'pick up' a phone."
"Well, I'm impressed, Syd: that's an actual answer. Still hedged, but, an answer." She turned to leave.
"But," he interjected, "I believe what would be required more than psychic ability, per se, would be psychic skills. A trained and focused psychic mind. The person on the receiving end would need to either be alerted that a message would be sent, and therefore be prepared and ready for it, or else have some previous, established connection with the sender."
"'Previous and established connection'," she mused. "Do you mean that, if these two people had previously sent and received messages that way, it creates some sort of link--and that link could then be used later?"
Sydney nodded. "That is the theory," he told her. "Miss Parker: does this have to do with Jarod?"
"What doesn't 'have to do with' Jarod?" she asked venomously. "Is there anything left in either of our pathetic little lives that he doesn't effect or control?"
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Blockbuster Entertainment Center
Camden, New Jersey
Paul had taken over one of the dressing rooms and turned it into his own command center, running the security and monitoring all the teams from there. Laura had been in and out throughout Little Wonder's set--she seemed literally unable to stay still for more than a few moments. Paul understood: she loved her niece, Jenn, like a daughter, he assumed, and was terrified for her. But he still wished Laura would do what he told her to: she would be most helpful out in the hall, watching the crowd.
He'd quickly discovered that was not a job for him. The decibel level of the music hurt his ears, and if he wore earplugs he felt cut off and out of touch. Plus he didn't understand it, the dynamics of the crowd--it all seemed threatening to him. He wanted to keep shouting at kids to sit down and stay in their seats. It horrified and repelled him to be part of this moving mass of bodies that developed it's own flow and rhythm. Even though he was taller and bigger than almost anyone else in any crowd, he still felt hugely claustrophobic and lost inside one. Whereas Laura seemed to blend into it--the entity that was the crowd--perfectly.
She could sense real dangers in it and tune out its normal pulsation's. She instinctively recognized when someone was in trouble and when someone WAS trouble. She watched it from a distance, while at the same time being an organic part of it. He needed her out there, hovering behind the mosh pit, with headphones on and actively tuned into the group dynamic.
Which is where she was, finally. He literally pushed her out of the tiny, cramped room and demanded she go do what he told her to. She was his boss, after all, and he'd never before dared to speak to her that way. But she'd gulped, looking startled, and then adjusted her headset and gone back out into the crowd.
Paul smiled to himself a bit smugly. He couldn't wait to tell Jarod about it, about how he'd stood up to her, for once, and made her see things the right way. Jarod had always told him not to let Laura fuck with him, that she was too headstrong for her own good.
And it was she who alerted him first to the danger. "Paul," she said, "I've got something here--some kind of bad vibe. Stage right. I'm maybe six rows back, I'm thinking our boy is right out on the lip of the stage. Do you have a guy front and center?"
"Negative," he responded. "I did but he had to pull some jackass off the stage and hasn't come back to position yet. Can you cover that?"
"I'm moving in, " Laura told him, trying to elbow her way through the mass of kids. The problem was that the aisle and all the front rows were by this point jammed with bodies. Even though she was big and strong, Laura was having problems shoving her way through. "We need some serious meat up here," she told Paul.
I hear you," he reassured her. "You keep moving--I've got big beef on the way, packing serious shit."
Jenn was way too close to the front of the stage--she'd been warned about that but couldn't seem to resist the hypnotic lure of the crowd. She was singing directly at the kids pressed up against the stage, leaning down toward them, a slower song that Jarod had written, about wanting to be lost inside love.
Laura winced as an elbow caught her in the ribs and she roughly shoved a guy out of her way--she was nearly at the stage, trying to worm her way through bodies that were still writhing furiously in spite of the slower tempo song. And it was right at that instant, just a she was about to reach the stage itself, that she felt his presence.
He turned and stared at her. Tall and wiry, with lank hair, very dark eyes. Laura tried to move closer but got jostled rudely to the side and lost sight of him for a moment. She felt his malevolence and passion. She tasted his raw pain--he wanted Jenn. Wanted her or wanted her dead: it was all the same to him. By the time she got herself oriented and scanned the crowd in front of the stage, he was gone.
She saw the three hulking giants Paul had called in, but it was too late. Infuriatingly, the stalker had vanished.
On-stage, Jenn had shifted gears, moving effortlessly into an aggressive wail over the harsh slash of guitars and feedback. The crowd jerked spasmodically, as one, into a faster rhythm. Laura felt it around her, felt the swirl of humanity and their collective need. But mostly she felt fear.
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The Rose Hotel
Queens, New York
He smiled instantly when he saw that she had left him email. He wasn't sure exactly when it had started to matter to him so much that he hear from her everyday. It never used to. He'd traveled and been alone and, frankly, forgotten entirely about Laura for long stretches at a time. Even when they had not actually had a fight, there had been times he'd very seriously considered simply disappearing from her life. It complicated things--she complicated things. He knew she didn't expect him to be constantly in touch, but he also knew she wanted him to eventually show up again.
He had other priorities: Finding his family. His own personal quest for justice. Laura's needs and hopes seemed pretty insignificant in comparison. He still remembered leaving her house after the first time they'd made love: he'd honestly believed he'd never see her again. And it was fine with him.
And then they'd wound up back together--and broken up and made up too many times to keep track of. He'd needed her and she'd let him down. And then vice versa. The thing--the relationship--had slowly grown and developed a life of it's own, almost without either one of them being aware of it. But he'd always felt in control of it, that he could, if he needed to, walk away. That if it became too much of a distraction, he would simply leave Laura behind him as he had so many other things.
And then something had changed. He thought it had to do with the time he'd spent in the monastery in Mexico--with the peace that had eluded him there, which he had sought and failed to find. He hadn't found it until he'd gone back out into the world, until he'd confronted his nightmares and his grief and fought his way through them. It was as if he'd been led, somehow, to the right place, the right pretend, the right time and place and circumstance to show him what he needed to know. Which was a concept Laura kept trying to make him accept: that what was needed would be provided. He'd always thought her belief in that idea vaguely foolish. Until it had happened for him. And the first thing he'd wanted after he'd gone back to his missions had been to talk to Laura. He hadn't even told her what had happened, why he had been silent--and she hadn't asked. Instead he'd asked her to take off her clothes and meet him in a chat room. And they'd been off and running.
So he was expecting something provocative from Laura, something wonderfully erotic and fun. Which is perhaps why her actual message hit him so hard.
"We need you, Jarod--Jenn and I. She seems to have acquired this psycho-stalker, obsessed fan whacko. It's been going on the whole tour, but escalating. Paul thinks this guy is close to losing all control and hurting her. You should see the disgusting email he sends--and he's put up a website, believe it or not, full of edited photos (Jenn's head pasted on some porn star's body) and filth--the URL is below. Be prepared--it's way disgusting. How do we stop this no-life son of a bitch?
"Where are you?" the email had continued. "We're in Camden but done here--will be leaving for NYC tomorrow. Next show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Relatively small venue, but I hear it's a security nightmare. Not sure whether to cancel now or what. Let me know what you think ASAP. Miss you.
"Oh--Jenn says 'hi'. When I told her I was e'ing you about this she instantly said, 'Jarod will take care of it.'
"We both love you, you know."
Jarod set his jaw. He had experience with stalkers, he'd even pretended to be one to understand how their minds' worked. It had been a deeply disturbing sting--very satisfying once resolved, but tremendously upsetting to research. They weren't normal people with normal motives: as disgusting as he found greed and ambition, he could see how they could dominate an otherwise sane person and motivate them to do terrible things. But this was different, it notched the level of injustice up to have Jenn be targeted by someone like this guy just as she was starting a career. She had done absolutely nothing to bring it on--Jenn was still the very definition of innocence to him--and he felt rage building up inside him.
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Parker Residence
Blue Cove, Delaware
She was sitting quite still, trying to relax. Sydney had told her repeatedly that the relaxing part was crucial, but she found the more she thought about relaxing the more tense she got. She opened her eyes and cursed softly.
He'd told her to use an image to start the message, and to choose a simple, easy-to-visualize shape. But she'd done that already and wanted more this time. So she closed her eyes again and imagined being a little girl. It was Christmas time and she was on a rare trip with her father to New York. They'd been to Macy's and he had watched proudly from the sidelines as she had ice skated on the rink at Madison Square Gardens under the huge Christmas tree--she hadn't fallen even once, not even when she was jostled rudely by that big, nasty boy. She'd even done a few turns--she'd had lessons when she'd been littler and could still remember most of it.
They had lunch together--just her and her father--at a really fancy restaurant where the waiter had addressed her as "Little Miss". She had strawberry shortcake for dessert and the strawberries had been huge. There had been some movie star or something at another table and he'd come over and said hello to her father--everyone had turned to stare and she'd felt very special that this famous person knew her father and got up to say hello to him. The man had been nice but kind of scary because he'd kissed the back of her hand in a funny way. But he had nice, kind eyes, so then she wasn't scared but blushed and felt happy about it.
And then they'd gone up a really, really long elevator ride that had made her ears pop so that she had giggled and looked out over the whole city from the top of the Empire State Building. She'd crept to the edge and tried to peer straight down but wasn't tall enough to lean that far over the edge. It had been very cold, but she had a new wool coat--red, with black velvet collar and cuffs and big, loopy black fasteners in the front. Her father was wearing a huge gray coat, and when she got really cold he'd hugged her into his legs and she could still remember how scratchy the fabric was against her wind-reddened cheeks. She'd had tears in her eyes from the cold but hadn't wanted to leave. Because then they would go home, and the perfect day with her father all to herself would be over.
Miss Parker smiled to herself. She felt quite relaxed, quite at peace. She sent the image of that day--of that building--as strongly as she could, thinking: there, go, I release you. Find the one I wish to speak to.
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63 East 92nd Street
Manhattan, New York
"But can't you just hack into the server and get a billing address for the little weasel?" Laura asked.
"No," Jarod answered, "his tracks are covered."
"So--what?--we're looking for some freaking computer genius?"
Jarod frowned. "Hardly. He's sending email through a free server. His address is 'funboy@wildmail.com'. That's one of the most notoriously spammed free email servers out there. And the web site is also on a free server: 'cyberanarchy'. Which is why there are ads all over his site, of course. Neither of these servers will be sending him a bill, so there is no mailing address on record--I already checked. I'm sure he's doing it to protect himself, but it's hardly an act of genius."
Laura shook her head in disgust. "So what the hell do we do?"
Jarod stood up, shutting his lap top down, and took her into his arms. "The first thing I need to do, " he told her, "is remember how this feels when it's real."
"Burned out on cybersex?" she asked. "Look, Jarod: I'm sort of distracted . . . "
"This is a safe place," he said. "I rented it because of the security system. Jenn is in the room right next door. You can relax here."
"Maybe you can. " she said. "I'm still majorly creeped out that this whacked out asshole is out there looking for Jenn--"
"And will never find her, here," Jarod reminded her. "And I think I know a way to catch him. Trust me. Just let me do what I do best, OK?"
"'Do best'?" Laura asked with a laugh. "Is that catch the bad guys, or do me?"
He kissed her and held her closer. "Give me half an hour and I'll let you decide on that one, OK?"
Possession
Chapter 1
Witch1
St Mary Hospital
Queens, New York
The dead boy in the big hospital bed looked incredibly fragile and small. He had been a robust nine year old--a bit on the plump side, even--when the leukemia had showed it's first signs. The cancer--and the treatments--had taken their toll, however, and Jimmy Rollins had been little more than a skeleton covered in pale, stretched skin when he had finally died.
Megan McCoy watched his parents from just outside his room's door. Their grief had a ritualized quality to it, to her. She'd seen too much death not to stand a bit outside it. Even on the oncology floor, the routines of the hospital needed to go on. The family, the parents, sister, aunts and uncles and grandmother, had been at his bedside for nearly two hours. And Jimmy's bed was needed.
She turned to watch the approaching doctor with relief, his lab coat flapping around him as he strode up the hallway. He always seemed to be in a hurry, this one, she thought: young and still passionate about what he did. Also very good, both with treatments and with the families. And she knew she could count on him to comfort everyone. To reassure them that everything possible had been done for Jimmy, that he had died comfortably, surrounded by his loved ones--and to convince them all to go home.
He was new, but--she had heard on the grapevine--had amazing credentials. The younger nurses whispered about him continually--he was also single. Certainly Megan noticed he was very attractive, but her main concern was keeping her floor running smoothly, and he was an definitely an asset in that department. He did ask a lot of questions and she had twice caught him checking on records of long-since dead or discharged patients, but she was willing to overlook that. Jimmy's bed was already booked, and she needed to get him out of it as fast as possible.
"Doctor!" she said as he walked up to her, "I'm so glad you came in. We need the bed, Doctor."
"And his family," he told her, "needs to say good-bye."
"Of course they do. But they also need to go home," she reminded him.
He sighed and looked at her. She knew he understood.
He smiled slightly. "Patience," he advised her. "This all has it's own rhythm. And please, Megan: call me 'Jarod'."
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Blockbuster Entertainment Center
Camden, New Jersey
Laura was pacing backstage and growing more angry by the minute.
"What is it about the phrase 'I want more security' that you don't get?" she asked the burly man who stood watching her agitated motion. He crossed his massive arms over his chest.
"You've already got our maximum regular security presence," he replied impassively. "This is almost as much as we gave The Wallflowers."
"Fuck The Wallflowers!" Laura countered angrily. "What are you telling me: Bob Dylan's baby boy automatically gets your max efforts, and my girl--who's getting death threats--gets the usual rent-a-cops and an extra water pistol? Are you telling me there are no off duty cops in Camden or Philly you can call in? None?"
"Laura!" a male voice exclaimed. She turned to see Paul, her personal security expert, emerging from one of the tunnels that led to the dressing rooms. "I've got it covered--I've got twenty more cops and a dozen private badges on their way. Also two surveillance vans to cover the parking lot. And a five man swat team with full-auto weapons--"
"Jesus Christ!" the halls' security chief exclaimed. "You can't come in here with that kind of fire power--"
"We come in here with whatever we damned well please, or Little Wonder cancels the fucking show--you got it, pal?" Laura demanded.
"How's Jenn?" Paul asked, taking Laura by the arm and pulling her away from the big man in whose face she'd been glaring.
"OK," she answered. "Sort of wired. I don't blame her."
"The next step is to start canceling shows, Laura--if this keeps escalating at this rate. This perp is moving really fast--first trashing her hotel room in Chicago, then tossing the dead cat on-stage in Pittsburgh--he keeps getting closer. You do understand there's a limit to how much any of us can protect Jenn on-stage right? No matter how much heat we have in the hall."
"I know, Paul," she answered with a sigh. "And you know how much pressure we're getting from Warner Brothers to keep the tour on schedule. And you also know how stubborn Jenn is."
"I know how stubborn you are," he told her, and Laura glanced at him in surprise. There was a time he was almost obsequious toward her. She liked his candor a great deal more, but it still tended to astonish her sometimes. "You can't control everything," he told her. "We can lock down exits and cut off fields of fire, but, in the end, if this guy seriously wants to do this, he will."
"I thought everyone who entered this building was going to be searched," she answered weakly.
"We can't legally frisk someone unless we have reason to be suspicious. And we certainly can't frisk every one of the ticket holders--it would take days, Laura, to really check a crowd this size. In all honesty, there's no telling how many guns there might be out there--this is Camden, you know. And you should see some of the stuff we found in Pittsburgh--berettas and colts and knives like you would not believe. One girl had a stiletto in her boot. Face it--this is America." He shrugged. "Everyone has their weapon of choice."
"Are we safe enough for tonight?" she asked. "I can pull the plug right now, if that's what you want."
"Safe enough," he responded slowly. "But I think it's time. I think we need Jarod."
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The Rose Hotel
Queens, New York
He stretched out across the bed, still fully dressed, and closed his eyes. He saw little Jimmy Rollins emaciated face, of course, and heard his whimper when his frail body was moved. Jarod understood death and knew he truly could not save them all--he'd known from his first examination that, barring a miracle, Jimmy was dying. But it still hurt. It still hurt terribly.
And he knew that the chemotherapy had hurt Jimmy, too: he'd given it to himself, to understand what it was like. And been so sick he'd wished he could die, quite literally.
Part of him wondered about what it would be like to stop. To say that enough was enough, that he was only one human being, and the world was full of injustice, and walk away. It wasn't simply Jimmy's inevitable and relatively gentle death that was weighing on him--it was all of it, all the greed and selfishness and horror he uncovered, wherever he went.
Oddly enough, he found that the satisfaction he got from a successful sting was becoming, increasingly, diluted by a sense of repetitiousness and ritualized effort. He went different places, he was different people, yet in the end it was all remarkably the same: his righteous wrath, the passing pleasure it gave him, and then his moving on. It was all starting to blend together.
He rolled over onto his stomach and tugged the laptop closer: he still needed a few more details resolved before this particular pretend would be over. There was an administrator at St. Mary Hospital who had bilked the government out of untold amounts of Medicaid funds for services billed and not provided, all while withholding actual treatment from indigent patients. All he needed was a bit more proof, and to set up appropriate punishment. More greed, more selfishness, more innocent people suffering so that one guilty son of a bitch could have a nice house and a nicer car. It made Jarod feel literally sick. But also tired.
He suddenly shut down the program he was running and went to email.
Laura was out there somewhere, running Jenn's road trip and being seductive and sexy and responsive. He needed that. He needed her.
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The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
"Just cut to the chase, Syd: can a psychic actually pick up a communication directed at them, or not?"
"Miss Parker, I don't think you appreciate the full complexity of your question," Sydney patiently explained. "Saying 'a psychic', for example--implying that all people who have these capabilities are in some way the same, generic--"
"Are you trying to tell me you don't know?" Parker asked. "Because you could save us both several years of our lives if you would just spit it out."
He sighed. She was refusing to see his point. Again. "My best guess--based on over thirty-five years of clinical research--would be that, yes, some persons with psychic abilities could, indeed, 'pick up' a communication, much as you or I would 'pick up' a phone."
"Well, I'm impressed, Syd: that's an actual answer. Still hedged, but, an answer." She turned to leave.
"But," he interjected, "I believe what would be required more than psychic ability, per se, would be psychic skills. A trained and focused psychic mind. The person on the receiving end would need to either be alerted that a message would be sent, and therefore be prepared and ready for it, or else have some previous, established connection with the sender."
"'Previous and established connection'," she mused. "Do you mean that, if these two people had previously sent and received messages that way, it creates some sort of link--and that link could then be used later?"
Sydney nodded. "That is the theory," he told her. "Miss Parker: does this have to do with Jarod?"
"What doesn't 'have to do with' Jarod?" she asked venomously. "Is there anything left in either of our pathetic little lives that he doesn't effect or control?"
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Blockbuster Entertainment Center
Camden, New Jersey
Paul had taken over one of the dressing rooms and turned it into his own command center, running the security and monitoring all the teams from there. Laura had been in and out throughout Little Wonder's set--she seemed literally unable to stay still for more than a few moments. Paul understood: she loved her niece, Jenn, like a daughter, he assumed, and was terrified for her. But he still wished Laura would do what he told her to: she would be most helpful out in the hall, watching the crowd.
He'd quickly discovered that was not a job for him. The decibel level of the music hurt his ears, and if he wore earplugs he felt cut off and out of touch. Plus he didn't understand it, the dynamics of the crowd--it all seemed threatening to him. He wanted to keep shouting at kids to sit down and stay in their seats. It horrified and repelled him to be part of this moving mass of bodies that developed it's own flow and rhythm. Even though he was taller and bigger than almost anyone else in any crowd, he still felt hugely claustrophobic and lost inside one. Whereas Laura seemed to blend into it--the entity that was the crowd--perfectly.
She could sense real dangers in it and tune out its normal pulsation's. She instinctively recognized when someone was in trouble and when someone WAS trouble. She watched it from a distance, while at the same time being an organic part of it. He needed her out there, hovering behind the mosh pit, with headphones on and actively tuned into the group dynamic.
Which is where she was, finally. He literally pushed her out of the tiny, cramped room and demanded she go do what he told her to. She was his boss, after all, and he'd never before dared to speak to her that way. But she'd gulped, looking startled, and then adjusted her headset and gone back out into the crowd.
Paul smiled to himself a bit smugly. He couldn't wait to tell Jarod about it, about how he'd stood up to her, for once, and made her see things the right way. Jarod had always told him not to let Laura fuck with him, that she was too headstrong for her own good.
And it was she who alerted him first to the danger. "Paul," she said, "I've got something here--some kind of bad vibe. Stage right. I'm maybe six rows back, I'm thinking our boy is right out on the lip of the stage. Do you have a guy front and center?"
"Negative," he responded. "I did but he had to pull some jackass off the stage and hasn't come back to position yet. Can you cover that?"
"I'm moving in, " Laura told him, trying to elbow her way through the mass of kids. The problem was that the aisle and all the front rows were by this point jammed with bodies. Even though she was big and strong, Laura was having problems shoving her way through. "We need some serious meat up here," she told Paul.
I hear you," he reassured her. "You keep moving--I've got big beef on the way, packing serious shit."
Jenn was way too close to the front of the stage--she'd been warned about that but couldn't seem to resist the hypnotic lure of the crowd. She was singing directly at the kids pressed up against the stage, leaning down toward them, a slower song that Jarod had written, about wanting to be lost inside love.
Laura winced as an elbow caught her in the ribs and she roughly shoved a guy out of her way--she was nearly at the stage, trying to worm her way through bodies that were still writhing furiously in spite of the slower tempo song. And it was right at that instant, just a she was about to reach the stage itself, that she felt his presence.
He turned and stared at her. Tall and wiry, with lank hair, very dark eyes. Laura tried to move closer but got jostled rudely to the side and lost sight of him for a moment. She felt his malevolence and passion. She tasted his raw pain--he wanted Jenn. Wanted her or wanted her dead: it was all the same to him. By the time she got herself oriented and scanned the crowd in front of the stage, he was gone.
She saw the three hulking giants Paul had called in, but it was too late. Infuriatingly, the stalker had vanished.
On-stage, Jenn had shifted gears, moving effortlessly into an aggressive wail over the harsh slash of guitars and feedback. The crowd jerked spasmodically, as one, into a faster rhythm. Laura felt it around her, felt the swirl of humanity and their collective need. But mostly she felt fear.
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The Rose Hotel
Queens, New York
He smiled instantly when he saw that she had left him email. He wasn't sure exactly when it had started to matter to him so much that he hear from her everyday. It never used to. He'd traveled and been alone and, frankly, forgotten entirely about Laura for long stretches at a time. Even when they had not actually had a fight, there had been times he'd very seriously considered simply disappearing from her life. It complicated things--she complicated things. He knew she didn't expect him to be constantly in touch, but he also knew she wanted him to eventually show up again.
He had other priorities: Finding his family. His own personal quest for justice. Laura's needs and hopes seemed pretty insignificant in comparison. He still remembered leaving her house after the first time they'd made love: he'd honestly believed he'd never see her again. And it was fine with him.
And then they'd wound up back together--and broken up and made up too many times to keep track of. He'd needed her and she'd let him down. And then vice versa. The thing--the relationship--had slowly grown and developed a life of it's own, almost without either one of them being aware of it. But he'd always felt in control of it, that he could, if he needed to, walk away. That if it became too much of a distraction, he would simply leave Laura behind him as he had so many other things.
And then something had changed. He thought it had to do with the time he'd spent in the monastery in Mexico--with the peace that had eluded him there, which he had sought and failed to find. He hadn't found it until he'd gone back out into the world, until he'd confronted his nightmares and his grief and fought his way through them. It was as if he'd been led, somehow, to the right place, the right pretend, the right time and place and circumstance to show him what he needed to know. Which was a concept Laura kept trying to make him accept: that what was needed would be provided. He'd always thought her belief in that idea vaguely foolish. Until it had happened for him. And the first thing he'd wanted after he'd gone back to his missions had been to talk to Laura. He hadn't even told her what had happened, why he had been silent--and she hadn't asked. Instead he'd asked her to take off her clothes and meet him in a chat room. And they'd been off and running.
So he was expecting something provocative from Laura, something wonderfully erotic and fun. Which is perhaps why her actual message hit him so hard.
"We need you, Jarod--Jenn and I. She seems to have acquired this psycho-stalker, obsessed fan whacko. It's been going on the whole tour, but escalating. Paul thinks this guy is close to losing all control and hurting her. You should see the disgusting email he sends--and he's put up a website, believe it or not, full of edited photos (Jenn's head pasted on some porn star's body) and filth--the URL is below. Be prepared--it's way disgusting. How do we stop this no-life son of a bitch?
"Where are you?" the email had continued. "We're in Camden but done here--will be leaving for NYC tomorrow. Next show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Relatively small venue, but I hear it's a security nightmare. Not sure whether to cancel now or what. Let me know what you think ASAP. Miss you.
"Oh--Jenn says 'hi'. When I told her I was e'ing you about this she instantly said, 'Jarod will take care of it.'
"We both love you, you know."
Jarod set his jaw. He had experience with stalkers, he'd even pretended to be one to understand how their minds' worked. It had been a deeply disturbing sting--very satisfying once resolved, but tremendously upsetting to research. They weren't normal people with normal motives: as disgusting as he found greed and ambition, he could see how they could dominate an otherwise sane person and motivate them to do terrible things. But this was different, it notched the level of injustice up to have Jenn be targeted by someone like this guy just as she was starting a career. She had done absolutely nothing to bring it on--Jenn was still the very definition of innocence to him--and he felt rage building up inside him.
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Parker Residence
Blue Cove, Delaware
She was sitting quite still, trying to relax. Sydney had told her repeatedly that the relaxing part was crucial, but she found the more she thought about relaxing the more tense she got. She opened her eyes and cursed softly.
He'd told her to use an image to start the message, and to choose a simple, easy-to-visualize shape. But she'd done that already and wanted more this time. So she closed her eyes again and imagined being a little girl. It was Christmas time and she was on a rare trip with her father to New York. They'd been to Macy's and he had watched proudly from the sidelines as she had ice skated on the rink at Madison Square Gardens under the huge Christmas tree--she hadn't fallen even once, not even when she was jostled rudely by that big, nasty boy. She'd even done a few turns--she'd had lessons when she'd been littler and could still remember most of it.
They had lunch together--just her and her father--at a really fancy restaurant where the waiter had addressed her as "Little Miss". She had strawberry shortcake for dessert and the strawberries had been huge. There had been some movie star or something at another table and he'd come over and said hello to her father--everyone had turned to stare and she'd felt very special that this famous person knew her father and got up to say hello to him. The man had been nice but kind of scary because he'd kissed the back of her hand in a funny way. But he had nice, kind eyes, so then she wasn't scared but blushed and felt happy about it.
And then they'd gone up a really, really long elevator ride that had made her ears pop so that she had giggled and looked out over the whole city from the top of the Empire State Building. She'd crept to the edge and tried to peer straight down but wasn't tall enough to lean that far over the edge. It had been very cold, but she had a new wool coat--red, with black velvet collar and cuffs and big, loopy black fasteners in the front. Her father was wearing a huge gray coat, and when she got really cold he'd hugged her into his legs and she could still remember how scratchy the fabric was against her wind-reddened cheeks. She'd had tears in her eyes from the cold but hadn't wanted to leave. Because then they would go home, and the perfect day with her father all to herself would be over.
Miss Parker smiled to herself. She felt quite relaxed, quite at peace. She sent the image of that day--of that building--as strongly as she could, thinking: there, go, I release you. Find the one I wish to speak to.
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63 East 92nd Street
Manhattan, New York
"But can't you just hack into the server and get a billing address for the little weasel?" Laura asked.
"No," Jarod answered, "his tracks are covered."
"So--what?--we're looking for some freaking computer genius?"
Jarod frowned. "Hardly. He's sending email through a free server. His address is 'funboy@wildmail.com'. That's one of the most notoriously spammed free email servers out there. And the web site is also on a free server: 'cyberanarchy'. Which is why there are ads all over his site, of course. Neither of these servers will be sending him a bill, so there is no mailing address on record--I already checked. I'm sure he's doing it to protect himself, but it's hardly an act of genius."
Laura shook her head in disgust. "So what the hell do we do?"
Jarod stood up, shutting his lap top down, and took her into his arms. "The first thing I need to do, " he told her, "is remember how this feels when it's real."
"Burned out on cybersex?" she asked. "Look, Jarod: I'm sort of distracted . . . "
"This is a safe place," he said. "I rented it because of the security system. Jenn is in the room right next door. You can relax here."
"Maybe you can. " she said. "I'm still majorly creeped out that this whacked out asshole is out there looking for Jenn--"
"And will never find her, here," Jarod reminded her. "And I think I know a way to catch him. Trust me. Just let me do what I do best, OK?"
"'Do best'?" Laura asked with a laugh. "Is that catch the bad guys, or do me?"
He kissed her and held her closer. "Give me half an hour and I'll let you decide on that one, OK?"
