Paula Graves - Forbidden Touch

"And we'll be working on an actual experiment this morning?" Iris asked, tamping down her rising panic. So far her empathic sensitivity was still out of commission, and her complete inability to read Grinkov's guarded body language wasn't doing much for her sense of confidence.

"I have one set up, yes. We shall see how it goes."

On the way to her room, Grinkov had briefly sketched for her the focus of his research. As she'd surmised, he was attempting to create a sort of psychic network, with the medium linking the clairvoyant and the telekinetic to see if it was possible for the group to affect objects at a distance.

Grinkov led her down another of the long, quiet corridors that seemed to characterize the lab, at least as far as she had seen. The conference room was at the end of the hallway. Grinkov opened the door, his gesture for her to enter ahead of him the picture of courtliness.

Inside, a rectangular table filled the center of the cramped room. Two women and a man sat at the table. Bottles of water sat in front of each of them, and there was a fourth, unopened bottle in front of the single empty chair at the table.

All three sets of eyes turned toward her as she and Grinkov entered. Self-conscious, she walked slowly to the empty chair and sat, closing her fingers around the water bottle, focusing on the cold, wet feel of the condensation beading on the plastic to distract her from her growing panic,

Grinkov made quick introductions-the man was Tom Stanton, the women Hildi Jennings and Bailev Floyd- then went to a small desk near the corner of the room, where a video monitor and a stack of papers filled most of the battered wood surface.

The other group members looked at Iris silently for an uncomfortable moment. Even without herempathic gift, she couldn't miss the suspicion and curiosity radiating from them.

Hildi broke the silence. "You must be the new empath."

Iris nodded. "And you're-?"

"Clairvoyant." She nodded at Tom. "Medium."

"And I move things" Bailey interjected dryly in a flat Texas drawl.

"I hope you're a better empath than the last one " Torn said, his voice as dry as Bailey's.

"Who was the last one?"

"That crazy TV psychic wannabe. Celia Shore." Bailey poked at her water bottle. "She was useless."

And now she's dead. Iris thought. But her "teammates" probably didn't get much in the way of news here. "What about the other group? Do you ever mix with them?"

"Not since the first day." Hildi said. "Why do you ask?"

She glanced toward Grinkov. He seemed preoccupied by the papers he was shuffling through. She lowered her voice. "The medium is a friend of mine. Maybe you met her-Sandrine Beck?"

The other three exchanged looks. Hildi shrugged, "We barely had time to exchange hellos before Dr.Grinkov split us up into two groups. I think they don't want us mingling- something about maintaining the integrity of the study"

Bailey gestured toward Iris's water bottle. "Drink while you can. They take everything away when the session starts."

Iris opened the bottle and made herself drink, hoping it might settle her rumbling stomach. She downed the whole bottle while she listened to the others discuss the upcoming experiment. Apparently today, with Iris added to the mix, they were going to try an experiment involving a small power plant located at the edge of the laboratory grounds.

Iris forced herself to focus on the conversation, taking mental notes to share with Quinn's contact person whenever he arrived. But crowding the edge of her mind was her growing concern about Sandrine. Was she okay? And where exactly, was she?

Maddox grabbed the roll of plastic trash bags the maintenance crew foreman handed him and rolled out of the back of the Subaru pickup behind the others, falling into line at the lab's back entrance. He had been assigned to the east wing of the building, along with a merry faced Dutchman named Piet, who'd been there before and seemed happy to take the lead.

In his clipped, accented English, Piet kept up a running commentary about which rooms they could enter and which rooms were off-limits. If he was curious about what lay hidden behind the doors of the forbidden rooms, he showed no sign of it.

"What's that?" Maddox asked as they started past a room with a glass window set into the door. Pale green curtains covered the window from the inside.

"That is the-what is the word? Sick room?"

"Infirmary?"

"Ya, infirmary." Piet kept going.

Maddox stayed where he was. "They don't have any trash for us to pick up?"

"It is one of the rooms we do not enter." Piet said. "If there were rubbish, it would be waiting out here for us."

Maddox frowned. "Maybe they just forgot to put their trash out today. Shouldn't we at least check? It can't be good for an infirmary to have a bunch of garbage sitting around " Maddox reached for the door handle.

"Wait, you cannot-" Piet started, but Maddox had already opened the door and stepped inside.

The infirmary was a small room with only six beds visible. It looked like an emergency room, with retractable curtains set up in an oval around each bed to afford privacy. Only one bed was occupied. A woman with sandy blond hair lay pale and still against the light green sheets on the bed. An IV drip hung from a portable bedside monitor charting the patient's vital signs, Maddox didn't see anyone else in the room, though a door near the back was marked Authorized Personnel Only.

"You cannot be in here!" Piet tugged at Maddox's sleeve.

"Look, there's a full garbage can." Maddox ignored Piet's anxious tugging and crossed to the occupied bed. He bent to retrieve the plastic garbage sack, taking the opportunity to get a good look at the woman in the bed. His heart squeezed.

It was Iris's missing friend, Sandrine.

The monitor by Sandrine Beck's bed beeped steadily, red numbers showing heart rate, oxygen saturation and blood pressure. Maddox was no doctor, but from what he could tell, her vitals were in the normal range.

Was she just sleeping? Or was she unconscious?

"We should not be in here!" Piet grabbed Maddox's arm.

Maddox looked over his shoulder at the other man. "What do you suppose is wrong with her?"

"If you stay here much longer, you will have a chance to ask the doctor himself." Piet grimaced. "Come, before we both lose our jobs."

Maddox reluctantly followed Piet out of the infirmary, slipping through the door even as he heard the latch engage on the door at the back of the sick bay. He glanced back through the narrow space between the curtains on the infirmary door and spotted a white-clad female-a nurse?- approach Sandrine's bed.

He turned to look at Piet. "Why don't we split up? It'll speed up the process."

"I am supposed to stay with you and train you."

"How much training does it take to empty a trash can? You take the rest of this section and I'll go on around the corner and work my way back up from there. We make it back out to the truck first and the boss man loves us. Maybe he'll even toss us a few extra bucks for the effort. What do you say?"

Piet frowned as he considered Maddox's proposal. He finally nodded, "We will meet at the end of the hall."

Maddox nodded. "Sure, Piet."

Not that he had any intention of meeting back up with Piet. He had to warn Iris about the second murder and coax her out of this place before she was the next victim.

"A little help here!" Tom Stanton grated.

Sweat beaded his broad forehead and the veins in his neck bulged. Iris tightened her grip on Tom's arm, trying to clear her mind of everything but the feel of Tom's sweat-dampened skin beneath her fingers. She listened to the sound of his breathing and concentrated on matching her pulse to his.