[Ganzfield 2] Adversary (14 page)

“You coming, Sean?” I asked, as though I didn’t already know the answer.

Hannah got two vials of dodecamine and a bunch of syringes before we left. Drew and I would finish off the first one before the week was out. We now had a deadline. If we didn’t replenish our supplies quickly, we’d start losing our abilities.

And then we’d be powerless against Isaiah when he came for us. 

CHAPTER 7

It took over three hours to reach New York City. A quick internet search at a Connecticut rest stop had located the law offices of Nicholas Coleman on Seventh Avenue in midtown. We arrived just after noon on a damp, grey, New York day and left the van in a garage two blocks from the address. The parking fee used up most of the remaining cash Dr. Williamson had given us.

The City
.

Thoughts from thousands of people simultaneously bombarded me. My mind was a stadium when everyone cheers, on and on in a never-ending barrage. I couldn’t block it out. I kept talking too loudly, like someone wearing earphones.

Buzzing.

I wanted to swat away the confusion, as though swarms of insects filled my head. I’d had no idea it’d be so much more intense, being around so many people, hearing the rumble of all of their thoughts. The world pulled at me dizzily, like a carnival ride, making everything too intense.

Spinning.

I shook my head, as though the motion might clear the ache out of it. Okay, I
really
wasn’t going to be able to spend a lot of time in cities from now on. I’d overload if I had to put up with this for long.

Ah, New York.
Fast-moving people crowded the sidewalks. I heard the mental use of the F-word as a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb in the time it took us to walk the two blocks to Coleman’s office. I also felt the swirling, chaotic intensity in the minds of not one, but two, drug addicts. I found the experience nauseating and confusing, without the euphoria I thought might be part of it.

Just like visiting New York as a telepath.

At Zack’s suggestion, the guard at the security desk issued us passes instantly, without even checking our IDs. The elevators bustled with people going to or coming from lunch, so it took a while for us to get up to Coleman’s office on the thirty-third floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to hone in on the mind of a single individual, the way I’d sometimes tried to focus on the horizon when I’d felt carsick as a child. But I kept flipping from one person to another, feeling the frenzied thoughts of overly-busy people at every turn. I couldn’t stand it.

Trevor took my hand.
Are you okay?

So many minds. It’s overwhelming—making me dizzy.

He winced. Either I was too loud in his head or he could feel the overwhelming sensation secondhand.

Crap.
I decided not to connect to his mind again while we were in the City, if I could avoid it.

Next to me on the crowded elevator, my arm pressed against that of a sleek-looking man in an expensive suit. The contact made his thoughts especially clear and loud, and he hummed with excitement.
How can I ask that lawyer about investing this way? Am I incriminating myself if I just ask the question? Would that be considered conspiracy to obstruct the SEC?

My mental antennae pricked but I kept from turning my head toward him. This was the sort of thing Dr. Williamson had been training me to do, although he’d never mentioned how intensely the city must affect him when he did it.

Is it really insider trading if I’m acting on unofficial approval? I can’t believe we got such a huge government contract—we just took Locus Two public two years ago! Is there a way I can buy more stock before the public announcement without reporting it to the SEC? Can I buy it in Cassandra’s name? She’s only four.

Locus Two?
I’d have to get online access soon to do some research on it. Hey, my mom was only an hour from here and she had my college fund, which I no longer needed for tuition. If this Locus Two thing checked out, I’d have a chance to start putting this ability to practical use.

Whoa—
how crazy would that idea have seemed only a year ago? I shook my head as a little breath of laughter escaped me.

My life is surreal.

Locus Two guy got off the elevator on the twenty-ninth floor. We made it up to the thirty-third. I put on my game face as the doors slid open.
Pretend to be normal.
I concentrated on using a regular speaking voice with the receptionist.

“Please inform Nick Coleman that Maddie Dunn, Jon Williamson’s god-daughter, is here to see him.” I’d come up with the idea of identifying myself like this in the van. If we were meeting a strange charm, I was going to be “point,” since I’d be immune if he used his ability.

This had seemed like a good idea in Connecticut. But now, with the mental energy of what felt like half the City passing through my head, I could barely think.

The receptionist looked at us through narrowed eyes. We’d tried to clean up as much as possible, but compared to the refined and polished denizens of the fancy law office, we still looked like scruffy teenagers who’d been sleeping in the woods. Disapproval seemed to leak from each of her perfect, red nails. “Do you have an appointment?” Her mouth had moved, but I couldn’t make out the words. At least her mind had echoed them loudly enough to make them understandable to me.

I smiled with what I hoped looked like confidence. “Just tell him we’re here. I’m sure he’ll want to speak with us.”

Her face and her mind both clearly stated that she didn’t share this view. However, she picked up the phone and spoke with Coleman’s assistant. From down the hall, I felt an assistant’s prick in recognition of Dr. Williamson’s name.
Jon Williamson? Important client.
The assistant popped her head in the door.

I heard Nick Coleman’s thoughts as he processed the assistant’s words. His mind was slightly clearer than most others against the telepathic background noise. I again had the thought that G-positives might provide a stronger telepathic read.

I risked a quick connection and felt him startle at the contact.
We need your help.

The assistant escorted us back and Coleman locked the door behind us. He was in his early thirties, athletically built and powerfully dressed in a ludicrously expensive suit. He looked handsomely lethal with a predatory gaze in his dark eyes. He wasn’t wild about having the Ganzfield world intruding on the one he had here.
Did they raise anyone’s suspicions? Who am I going to have to charm later?

“Jon Williamson sent you? What happened at Ganzfield? I got a call last night that people were killed.”

I shook my head. “Dr. Williamson didn’t send us. He’s in trouble and we thought you could help. He’s in a holding cell of some kind. We think it’s official—police or FBI.”

“He’s south of here. I think near D.C.,” added Rachel. She’d RVed him again and he was still in the same cell. Dr. Williamson looked atypically scruffy, like he needed a shave. “They’re probably federal.”

“RV?” he said to Rachel, although I could hear in his thoughts that he’d already guessed. I remembered hearing somewhere that good lawyers don’t ask questions unless they already know the answer.

Rachel nodded.

“I’m a corporate attorney; I don’t handle a lot of criminal cases, but I’ll see what I can do for Jon.” Good. He was on the case.

I wondered if he could do one more thing for me. “You’re a corporate lawyer. Can you also help me set up an investment account?”

“You’re the new minder, aren’t you? Jon’s protégée?”

I nodded. Again, he already knew I was, and he knew how I intended to use that account. This was one of the main things he handled for Dr. Williamson. “You’re Maddie.”

I nodded, glad I could make out his words over the stadium-roar.

“He’s mentioned you. I’ll get one of my associates to set it up and make it look like a trust fund.” He grabbed paper and an expensively-heavy metal pen, handing them to me. “I’ll need your full legal name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, phone, and e-mail contact info. Give me a sample signature, too. I’ll get the notary here to verify the papers after I sign for you. I’ll give you a line of credit on one of the Ganzfield accounts. Jon said he wanted to do that when you started out.”

Wow.
The dollar amount in his head…
Wow!
Yeah, that’d do it. The college fund could stay where it was. Good. My mom would’ve been reluctant to let me use it. She still thought college was a possibility. I jotted down the info and handed the paper back to him.

“So, what happened at Ganzfield?” he asked again. I focused carefully, closing my eyes and bracing against the background noise, and then sent him a series of brief mental flashes of the helicopters, the shootings, and the bodies.

Coleman turned grey. His hands shook as he lowered himself into his chair. Was my mental signal still too strong?

“Who did this?” His voice was no more than a whisper.

“Isaiah Lerner.”

“But Isaiah’s dead.” Coleman had been at Ganzfield the last time Isaiah had targeted us. My words had just brought one of his personal demons roaring back into existence for him. He dropped his hands behind the desk to hide their tremors from us.

“He faked it to keep the RVs from looking for him,” I said. “He’s now going by the name Jonas Pike.”

“The new head of the Sons of Adam?” Coleman’s eyes went wide.

I nodded. Nick Coleman was well-informed.

“Geez,” Coleman said aloud, although his mental word choices were more explicit.

“My thoughts exactly,” I said, drawing a shaky laugh from him.

*   *   *

Back in the van, we headed toward the Lincoln Tunnel. The pressure from the mental voices lessened significantly while we were within it. I could only hear the minds of those in the cars around us, and they only numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands. I drew a deep breath of relief then regretted it; the air stank of car exhaust and something like pretzels. Once we were in New Jersey, Rachel RVed Matilda and Morris. Her golden thread trailed somewhere west of us.

The world outside the van looked grey and uninviting—typical for this part of north Jersey. But it was also warmer than New England, and there was almost no snow this far south. Both were welcome observations to people who couldn’t always find appropriate shelter from the elements.

“Take Route 78,” I said to Sean.

Rachel gave me a questioning frown. I knew she didn’t know the roads around here and was at a loss to give directions, but she didn’t like that I was in her head so much when she used her ability.

“Sorry,” I said to her.

“You always follow along when I do that, don’t you?” Her voice held a note of accusation.

“Can’t help it.”

She flushed hotly.
Oh, God. Maddie probably knows all about Sean and me—and what we did last night.
She felt her privacy had been violated. There was nothing I could say to that—she was right. The best I could do was to keep her secrets.

The highway took us past Newark Airport and through densely-populated, mentally-loud areas for several miles. We grabbed a late lunch at a drive-thru, filled the gas tank again, and then got back on the road.

After another ten miles, the population density dropped off and I could feel the pressure on my mind ease, as well. Unfortunately, the loss of those other minds just made Rachel’s mortified, pink-grey fuming more noticeable.

At least I could connect with Trevor now without hurting him. I leaned my head against his shoulder.
Hi again.

You’re exhausted.

Too many minds. It feels like thousands of people have walked across my brain today.

You didn’t tell me.

When I connected last time, I was too loud.

I don’t care. When you’re hurting, you come to me, okay?
He put his arms around me, protective and loving.

I felt the tension easing from me as our thoughts touched. He planted a tender kiss in my hair, hugging me closer.

We overshot our exit. Rachel’s mental thread trailed north behind us, so we turned around and took 287 for a short bit, and then a smaller road, Route 206, ending up in Peapack.

Ka-ching!
These houses were mansions. I had a vague memory of someone telling me that Jackie Onassis used to keep her horses around here. That could very well be true; the estates in this exclusive community were huge, secluded, and fancy enough for it.

We drove through the streets, honing in on Rachel’s gradually-shifting golden thread and finally focusing in on one of the properties—tall brick wall, plenty of security, and a camera that followed us as we passed the gate. Drew noted the address.