Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

I’d seen it on an episode of goddamn Cops.

“Remotely deployable spike strips,” I repeated, sitting on the bank of the deep ditch and rubbing my chest. A seatbelt can save your life, but it hurts like a bitch. “Don’t tell me you didn’t use them in the Army.”

“I spent most of my time in military intelligence as a glorified gofer. I had the Mensa-level IQ, but I didn’t have Stanford and Cal Tech on my curriculum vitae yet. I enlisted to pay for that, but yes, we have spike strips, just not ‘remotely deployable spike strips.’”

The thing had been flat and smooth until we drove over it and the guy in the truck triggered the spikes to open. He had planned his escape in case the explosion didn’t work. This guy was good, sneaky, and better at distractions than the former con man I was.

“It’s the Army. The food could double as concrete for housing developments. The remote ones are news to me.” Hector had ripped free a strip of his sleeve and was wiping a trickle of blood from Meleah’s forehead. It wasn’t from the wreck; her seatbelt example saved us all. No, her blood was from the flying glass in the explosion. Although Meleah was better trained to take care of it herself, Hector was finally stepping up to the plate. Meleah might not need that crowbar after all.

Not that newfound love was going to do him any good. Police sirens were wailing like an F8 tornado warning, and the flashing lights were moving fast toward us. We would be off to jail and facing everyone’s dream come true: a body-cavity search and a neckless cell mate wrapped in three hundred pounds of steroid-rage-enhanced muscle.

“You had to steal a car,” I grumbled. “I hope they find Jimmy Hoffa up there when they snap on the gloves and bend you over at the station.”

“You misjudge the situation. Our project is funded by the government-the kind of government the majority of the country knows nothing about-the ones who do know are living in a bunker with tinfoil hats.”

He’d made a call before wiping at the blood on Meleah’s copper-brown skin. Maybe he was calling in the X-Files guys to back us up, vouch for us. I crossed my fingers. I could take care of myself, but I’d rather not have to bruise my foot or both fists doing it. I’d spent my teenage years kicking ass to survive. I didn’t miss it. Sometimes it was necessary, but I’d take cheese pizza with my dog over inflicting blood and broken bones. Maybe I’d gotten lazy when I hit the big three-O, or I’d simply had enough violence in my life.

“Fine. You get us out of this, and I’ll tell you what women really think about men. Not Cosmo shit, either. The real deal. It’ll help your dating life”-I finished under my breath-“or ruin it completely.”

Meleah heard the last part. The woman had the ears of a bat. “Shhh,” she said with annoyance. “It would give him a stroke. Men aren’t meant to know. You’re not meant to know.”

“And don’t you think I wish I didn’t? It’s a burden no guy should have to bear or live up to.” A state police car braked beside us. It hadn’t come to a complete halt before one cop had jumped out, screaming with gun pointed. “Ah, shit.”

Hector started to stand up and reason with him. Mensa, my ass. The one person you don’t ever try to reason with is a state cop on an adrenaline high. He spends most of his day giving tickets and reading gun magazines. When something exciting comes along-like a Denny’s explosion and people fleeing the scene in a carjacked Lexus-he or she is going to make the most of it. Not obeying commands while trying to talk your way out of it-especially while stepping toward the cop-that’s only going to get you pepper-sprayed, Tasered, or shot.

I snagged Hector’s arm and pulled him down beside me.

“Monkey see, monkey do.” I grunted at him. I rolled on my stomach in the dirt and laced my fingers at the small of my back. Meleah was doing the same. Luckily, Hector’s gun had flown out the window, ripped from his hand, when the car started to roll, or Hector would already be pepper-sprayed, Tasered, and shot.

Hector landed in the dirt and copied my position. “It’ll be all right. I made the call. They’ll pull us out.”

I was roughly handcuffed. “I hope so. Since it was self-defense, my juvenile files aren’t sealed. All I need is some DA trying to get reelected changing his mind, deciding I was a fourteen-year-old Bundy at the start to my life of crime. I’ve been to jail before, Hector.” Only for a day, only before it was all sorted out and I had a cell to myself, but a day even in a podunk country jail makes an impression on a kid. I dreamed of iron bars for weeks afterward. What my life would’ve been like if they hadn’t believed me and the evidence. “I didn’t much like it.”

• • •

Fortunately, Hector’s government muscle came through after we were fingerprinted but before we made it to the mug shots. Ten minutes later, men in dark suits and sunglasses came in, flashed badges, and ushered the three of us to a black car out front. We left mystified and furious cops in our wake, which almost made the whole day worthwhile. Before I’d found the carnival and lived on the streets picking pockets, I’d had to bust my ass to outrun a cop or three. They couldn’t just let a kid make a living.

“Don’t say a word until we get back,” Hector said at my ear in a whisper so low, lips barely moving, that the Men in Black didn’t notice. It looked like, same as always, the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing-even in secret government organizations. I had a feeling that when all was said and done and this entire project was finally written up, the amazing All Seeing Eye, psychic Jackson Lee, was not going to be featured anywhere.

Thank God.

On the other hand, there were bound to be many uses the government could find for a psychic, enough uses to last until I was old and gray, then dust in the ground. If that happened, I would’ve been better off staying in jail.

Once we were back at the base, we were dropped off without a word. Meleah headed back to the infirmary, Hector and I to the main science building. Thackery was waiting for us. He appeared unhappy and, well, thwarted, rather like a zoo veterinarian who’d just lost his shoulder-length rubber glove, speculum, and favorite watch inside a pregnant elephant.

“What now?” he demanded. “First your psychic’s room is napalmed, and then the car he was riding in was apparently blown up. Are you sure he’s a psychic and not a sadomasochistic pyromaniac instead?”

That’s why he was feeling frustrated. He was disappointed that I hadn’t been in the car when it had exploded. “I’m psychic enough to know you did double the dissections of the other students in your anatomy class because you just loved picking out cats at the pound and cutting them up. And no matter what you told the teacher, it damn sure had nothing to do with extra credit.”

He stared at me, the color leeching out of his eyes to match the chunk of ice that masqueraded as his brain. He was a Bundy, a Dahmer, a Gacy who hadn’t crossed the line to killing people-letting it happen, yes, but not doing it with his own hands. But someone knowing what he was, exactly what he was, down to his last sociopathic cell-it could push him over that edge. At least when it came to me. But I was tired of tiptoeing around this shit. In the week and a half since I’d been there, nothing had been done. Not one damn thing. Charlie hadn’t been saved. A spy hadn’t been caught. The only thing that had been accomplished was that I got to take a tour of several very nasty places and “see” many even nastier murders take place. If I had to take a tour, I’d have chosen a goddamn cruise, not this. The sooner we could wrap this up, the sooner people would stop dying, and the sooner I could go home.