Powerhouse

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“Does he think we’re going to sit here all night?”

“I expect so.”

Savage reached into the back seat and retrieved the bag of food they’d picked up at a fast-food restaurant in Yuma. Turning on a small flashlight, he directed the beam into the bag, then pulled out a wrapped hamburger that had gone cold hours ago. With a grimace he set it on his lap, then reached for the thermos of coffee that he’d stuffed into the door pocket.

“You’re gonna have to get out and pee,” Campbell cautioned, the idea of unzipping his fly in this weather making him shiver.

His partner gave him a knowing look. “Yeah. And eventually so will you—if we’re gonna be here all night.”

Savage craned his neck toward the ranch road. “I say they’re not going anywhere until at least the morning.”

“And your point is?”

“We could get a room in that town we passed and come back in the morning.”

“You want to take a chance on losing them?”

Savage considered the question. He didn’t know much about the man who had hired them, but he suspected that failure would be bad for their health.

With a sigh, he settled down in his seat for a long night in the cold.

BESIDE Matt, Shelley made a low sound. “This isn’t doing any good.”

He glanced over at her and saw that her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. It looked as though she was trying desperately to hold herself together, and he didn’t blame her.

“Give me a little more time,” he muttered.

“Okay.”

Shelley leaned back and closed her eyes, and he knew she must be exhausted. She’d left Boulder early, then gotten caught in the storm, then come staggering up the road in snow up to her knees. He wanted to reach out and wrap her in his arms, but the rigid line of her jaw told him she didn’t want comfort. She wanted results, although she didn’t need to sit here while he tried to get them.

“Do you want to go to bed?”

Her eyes snapped open again. “No! I want to stay here in case you find something.”

He didn’t try to send her away again, because he knew that as long as he was sitting here, she was going to stay. She’d come to him for help, and he’d thought he could at least give them a start on the Web. He’d gone down a long list of sites, but he was losing faith in his ability to find anything. At least on this particular topic.

Still, he wasn’t going to give up. Not while Shelley was sitting next to him, counting on him.

The Google entries were getting repetitive. He’d seen a lot of them before, but as he scrolled down, he spotted a new one that looked interesting. It wasn’t from any organization. Instead it belonged to a man named Jack Maddox who was trying to find his missing brother, Jared.

Could this be the break he’d been looking for?

Matt clicked on the URL and waited with a sense of anticipation while the site loaded. Scrolling down, he saw something that made him gasp—a picture of an eight-pointed star.

Chapter Four

“What is it?” Shelley asked, her voice urgent.

Matt couldn’t speak. As he stared at the image of the star on the screen, dark visions swam in his mind, memories that had never been accessible to him. Seeing that eight-pointed symbol had been like a mental door opening. Suddenly he knew where he had been when he’d been kidnapped all those years ago.

Beside him, Shelley turned in her seat and clamped slender fingers onto his arm. “Matt, what is it?”

With a hand he couldn’t quite hold steady, he pointed to the strange-looking star.

“That.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure. A symbol. As soon as I saw it, something leaped into my mind.”

“Something like what?” she demanded.

The memory had been sharp and painful—and disturbing. If he told her, was she going to freak out like she had when he’d admitted his secret talent?

She wasn’t giving him a choice. Tightening her hold on him, she demanded, “You have to tell me! You can’t hold anything back because you think it’s going to frighten me—or disturb me.”

“I’m the one who’s freaking out,” he managed. “I told you that the time when I was kidnapped was a total blank. It was, but when I saw that star, I remembered … things.”

“Bad things?” she asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard, wondering how he was going to say the next part. “A holding cell. There were bright lights over my head. They kept me awake. I’m sure there was a camera high up on the wall. I was alone. And scared.”

She made a low sound. “That’s when you were twelve?”

“Yes.” Now that he’d told her that much, he found he needed to say the rest of it aloud—to make sure he wasn’t making it up. “There was a narrow bed in the cell. Men would come in and take me down the hall to a … I don’t know. It was like a doctor’s office, I guess. They gave me all kinds of physical exams.”

He gulped. “And they strapped me down and stuck needles into my back. Then into my arm.”

She gasped. “Oh Lord. That must have been so awful. Do … do you think the same people have Trevor?”

“I don’t know.” I hope not, he silently added, knowing that she was probably thinking the same thing.

It was all he could do to stop himself from shaking. He wanted to be alone, to deal with this in private, but Shelley was sitting beside him, and he couldn’t duck away from her. Not now.

“Why did they let you go?”

“I … I think I used my power to … give them a push. I mean, I put the suggestion into their minds, and they took me home.”

“And you didn’t have the power to do that—before they captured you?”

“Not hardly.”

“So what they did to you—with those shots and all—caused it?”

“I think that must be true.”

She ran a shaky hand through her hair as she took that in, then made a strangled exclamation. “Will … Trevor … be able to do that?” “I don’t know!”

“If he could, they’d let him go.” “We hope.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and he forced himself not to look away. Finally, she turned back to the computer screen.

“Don’t you think that guy, Jack Maddox, was probably captured by the same people? I mean if he has that star on his Web site—and it made you remember what happened to you.”

He nodded. The memories had excited him at first. Now they dug painful claws into the cells of his brain.

Shelley scrolled through the Web site. “Look. There’s a phone number. We can call him and find out what he knows.”

Matt felt desperation warring with hope. Maybe this man had some information that would lead them to Trevor, but he knew that they had to be cautious. “We can’t call,” he said.

Her instant disappointment tore at him. “Why not?”

“For starters, my phone might be tapped.”

“Even your cell phone?”

“Yeah. And if they’re listening in on me, they’ll go right to Jack Maddox’s house. Or—it could be a trap. Suppose it’s not really a guy looking for his brother. Suppose the bad guys put up this site to find people they’d kidnapped when they were kids.”

She winced. “Why would they do that?”

“Hell, I don’t know. To get us back. Or to find out who remembers what. Maybe when somebody remembers they wipe out his memory again.”

She gave a little nod. “I didn’t think of that. It sounds so diabolical.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve rolled it around in my mind for years.”

“That’s what you were doing when I’d wake up and find you lying there, and I’d know you hadn’t been sleeping?” “Yes.”

“I wish I’d known what you were going through.” “I was hiding it from you—and everybody else. I wanted to seem normal.” “Oh, Matt.” “Don’t pity me.”

“I …” she stopped and started again. “You think someone is listening to your phone calls?”

“I don’t know!” he answered, managing not to shout but knowing that he was going to lose control if he wasn’t careful. He turned back to the screen. “Look at how this Web site is set up. Let’s assume Maddox is for real. He’s being cautious, too. He’s not saying a lot. If I hadn’t seen that star, I wouldn’t have remembered anything. I wouldn’t have thought about contacting the guy.”

She scrolled through the material again and turned back to him. “I … guess you’re right. We can’t call, but what are we going to do?”

“Tomorrow, we go see the guy.”

She looked from him to the screen and back again. “But he’s in Rapid City, South Dakota.”

Matt checked the mileage on Google. It’s about 365 miles. We can be there in two hours.”

She gave him a questioning look. “How?”

“We’ll fly.”

“But if we’re trying to—” she stopped and gestured with her hand “—trying to hide our plans, won’t there be a record of our reservations?”

“We’re not making reservations. I have a Cessna at the Yuma Municipal Airport.”

“A Colorado town of three thousand has an airport?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. And why do you have a plane there?”

He turned his hand palm up, thinking that they’d cut through a lot of his barriers in the short time she’d been here. He’d never discussed his feelings with anyone, but he was doing it now. “The ranch is my home. But sometimes I feel the place closing in on me, and I need to get away. When I do, I take off and fly somewhere I haven’t been before—where I can lose myself for a while.”

“It’s because of that holding cell,” she whispered. “I guess so.”

Because he was too restless to sit, he stood and walked to the window, where he stared out into the darkness, wishing he could blot out the scenes playing through his head.

He knew why he had wiped away the memories of his time in captivity. They were too awful for a twelve-year-old boy to remember and too awful for him now.