Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

I got used to it.

Shrugging again on the subject, I gave her an answer similar to the one I’d given Hector. “He was about eighty percent sure it would happen, so it depends on how you look at it. A normal nonpsycho wouldn’t have automatically thought an industrial spy would rig the machine to kill Charlie. A normal person would just assume they’d screw up the machine so it didn’t work at all. But Thackery is thinking from the view of a sociopath, and I’d say your spy is a fellow sociopath to do what he did. So Thackery did know, better than anyone else would have. To me, it’s murder. To someone else, I don’t know.”

“I know,” Hector said grimly. He hadn’t bothered to order anything to eat. “He saw someone about to push Charlie off a cliff and just let them. He’s a murderer. The trouble is, we have another, more proactive murderer out there and no idea who they are. And they’re brilliant. We never did find out who caused the transplanar to malfunction. We can’t find anything wrong with it-besides that it killed my brother-not in the programming and nothing suspicious on the security footage.”

That was odd, but I was a psychic, not an expert in industrial espionage.

I gave them the rest of it: the fact that Thackery was repeating his sociopathic ways with Hector and me. Someone wanted to push us over that same cliff, and he was pleased as hell to let them do it.

“Couldn’t you read everyone at the facility to find the spy?” Meleah asked.

I gave an internal twitch. “And how many people do you have staffing the base?”

“Approximately one hundred and twenty or so,” she answered. “Is that too many?”

After one of nature’s nightmares like Thackery, even one more today would be too many. “I can do a max of twenty a day, but I don’t know how many days I could keep that up. Two. Maybe three. Ten is a better number. That’s doable, and I don’t need to sleep fifteen hours after. But it doesn’t matter how many I can read, right, Hector?”

Hector had taken the bill, folding it neatly. “He’s right, Meleah. Our assassin isn’t going to take a chance on Jackson taking a look inside him. He’d cut his losses and destroy the entire base whether he had all the transplanar designs or not. Self-survival over a paycheck.”

After the meal, Hector paid. I didn’t offer to chip in. I wasn’t being blackmailed anymore, but I liked to think that a history of it meant free meals for the duration. Outside, we had walked to the corner of the building when Hector stopped us, his hand held up by his shoulder. He’d wanted to park out front where he could keep an eye on the car from one of the plate-glass windows, but no spaces had been available.

“Let me take a look first.”

“I’ve never seen a spy or assassin blow anyone up at a Denny’s in the movies,” I said dryly.

“How many actual spies and assassins have you done readings on?” Meleah took up for Hector. He might not have to take his head out of his ass after all. Meleah could grab a handy crowbar and do it for him.

“You’ve got me there,” I admitted. “Sociopaths, yes. Spies and paid assassins, no.”

As Hector took a step around the corner, I leaned out for a look myself. Hector stopped after the one step and crouched down low, tilting his head to scan the undercarriage of the car. It was four spaces down, but the cars that had been parked between the corner and our ride were now gone. Hector had a clear range of vision. From the stiffening of his shoulders, I could tell he didn’t like what he saw.

I didn’t wait for him to straighten or yell a warning. I grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back around the corner just as the car exploded. One second I was standing, and the next I was flat, half on concrete, half in cedar chips that nestled scrubby bushes struggling against the wicked summer. There was nothing but ringing in my ears, although I knew everyone in the restaurant would be screaming. Everyone alive. I rolled over, window glass cascading off of me, and saw flames above the roof. An explosion that big, the car bumper only a few feet from the building, anyone sitting on the other side of that wall would be lucky to be breathing. Or unlucky, depending on their condition.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Hector. He was trying to sit up. Meleah had been behind me. I turned my head to see her echoing Hector’s motions. Good for them both. I was staying flat until I was sure my head was still attached to my body. Then again, whoever had planted that bomb was here. Or close. They’d seen Hector spot it and stop. They’d chosen to go ahead and blow it by remote control, hoping at least to get one of us. If Charlie’s brother was gone, Thackery would be in complete control and have me thrown off base before they’d finished picking up all of Hector’s pieces. I’d be alive, but I wouldn’t be a threat anymore, not to Thackery or the spy. A win-win for both bad sides.

I remembered being a kid-little, maybe five-and I’d thought in those days that there was a good side and a bad side. Then I grew up and learned that there can be multiple bad sides and sometimes not a single good one to fight them all. But that was not the case here. Hector had dragged me into this, yet he was the good side with more on his plate than he could handle.

I sat up, my gloves protecting me from the glass on the shattered windows that littered the concrete. A moment later, I crouched and was on my feet. I was swaying, mildly nauseated, deaf as a fence post, but it didn’t stop me from thinking.

When you were watching your prey, waiting to flip a switch, press a button, or dial a number on a cell phone to set things in motion, a bomb was a trick. A simple trick but a trick all the same. You didn’t want to be detected ahead of time, and you didn’t want to be seen. What to do? Denny’s was in a row of three restaurants, and beyond that was nothing for miles. Someone sitting in a car by themselves, not in the restaurant eating, that was noticeable. So what did you do? What someone like me would do. What an ex-con man would do.

Misdirection. Misdirection. Misdirection.

I ran to the far edge of the parking lot. The restaurants were spaced far enough apart to get a view of their fronts and sides and a partial view of the backs. Denny’s was at the end, with Hector’s car burning between it and the next eatery. That next one in the middle was an Italian place, and beyond that was a steak place. I saw running people who were screaming in all of the parking lots. I couldn’t hear them, but their mouths were open wide with terror. Screaming was a logical guess. I didn’t see anyone sitting in a car alone. I did see a refrigerated meat truck parked in front of the steak joint. Steak places did need steak, but you delivered your frozen dead cow through the back. You didn’t ruin the customer’s appetite by carrying it through the front door. But the back of the meat lover’s delight didn’t have a view of the Denny’s side lot. That was blocked by the middle restaurant.

As misdirections went, it was pretty shitty, but out in the middle of nowhere as we were, options were limited, and sometimes the best of us have to make do with less than the best of plans.

I started running again, this time through the next parking lot and headed for the one where the meat truck sat. I doubted that the windows had been tinted in the cab when the truck was stolen, but they were now. I saw a shade, the horror-movie creepy-phantom kind, move inside as the window began to roll down. Ghosts I didn’t have to worry about. This son of a bitch, he was the deadly one.

Already through the next parking lot, I was on the verge of passing over a concrete curb to enter the one with the truck. I was close when I saw the gun, but not too close to imagine a bullet exiting the back of my head in a spray of blood and brains. I should’ve dropped to the ground behind a car. It was the smart, staying-alive-to-bitch-another-day thing to do-except…