A Charmed Place (45 page)

And the rest of it was spent with Hawke. Thrown together in the lighthouse crisis, they'd become friends in the last twelve days. Despite his foul mood and his desire to get out of
Sandy
Point
, Hawke had ended up letting Norah talk him into pitching in to make the latest repairs to the keeper's house. One job led to another, and his mood began to improve. Soon he found himself going through his shoebox of business cards, looking for contacts that might be useful in the effort to speed up the relocation.

And now, after the last committee member piled into the car that Norah had waiting for them, she and Hawke settled back in plastic chaises for sundowners on the beach. It was their fourth or fifth evening in a row, a nice little ritual by now.

"They'll definitely come up with the cash," Norah told him with typical confidence. "We'll be able to sign the contract for the move this month."

Hawke lifted an icy Coors from the cooler she'd brought and popped the lid. "How long before the actual move, do you think?"

She shrugged her bare shoulders and said, "The contract will run for four months. The move itself will only take about a week. It's the preparation that's time-consuming. And everything will depend on the weather. Didn't I hear someone forecast half a dozen major hurricanes this summer?''

"Ah, what do they know?" Hawke asked, squinting into the evening sun. There were shadier places to set the chaises, but here they were out of sight of
Rosedale
. He didn't want to be reminded of it. Ever.

Norah stretched languidly, like a cat, then lay back and closed her eyes with a smile. "
I l
ove this time of day," she said. "The way everything winds down and people go home, but I don't have to. I always feel both self-indulged and sad, as if such a beautiful dream can't possibly go on."

He laughed and slugged his Coors. "I don't have a clue whether that makes you selfish or humble."

She rolled her head in his direction and batted her eyes once, slowly, at him. "Right now, I feel both."

He didn't back down from the look he saw there. Definitely, there was a scent in the air. Did she know about the breakup? He hadn't once alluded to it, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to know there'd been a change in his status.

She raked her red mane of hair over to one side; the setting sun danced and played over it, revealing a whole spectrum of russet tones. Spectacular, Hawke thought. He was startled to realize that he'd noticed.

Because he was genuinely curious, he said, "How is it that a gorgeous thing like you is sitting on plastic chairs with an unemployed bum like me?"

"Because you refuse to come lounge on the fancy chaises
around my pool," she said with a smile.

It was true. He'd stuck to washing himself from a barrel of rainwater rather than take advantage of her generator
-
equipped villa. Right about now, he was asking himself why.

He had hung around
Sandy
Point
for eleven days longer than he'd planned to do after he walked out of
Rosedale
. Not once had Maddie made an effort to contact him. No visits, no smoke signals. She meant what she said. Hell, he should've known that from the first time.

A wave came up a little higher than the rest, lapping around the legs of their chaises. Hawke felt a corner suck into the sand, setting him ever so slightly off balance. "Ask me again," he told her softly.

****

Michael Regan was in a well-earned rage. Two weeks had passed since he'd single-handedly secured new government funding for the remote viewing project—and he still hadn
'
t been paid. Woodbine was screwing him good, putting him off with all kinds of excuses about procurement procedures and black contracts and some kind of security inspection before the funding would be released. Enough was enough. Tonight he was going to physically shake the damned money out of Woodbine if he had to.

It didn't help Michael's mood that his daughter had come back more mopey than ever from a five-day visit to her grandmother. Despite all the attention, despite all the freedom—despite all the money!—he'd given Tracey, she missed her mother. She claimed not to, but he could see it coming; soon
she'd want to go home.

It infuriated him to know that there were now two people who preferred someone else's company to his: his wife—and his own daughter. He felt like a pariah. Him! The most sought-after guest at a party, the most popular teacher on campus.

He didn't let the aggravation show as he knocked on Tracey's bedroom door and said cheerfully, "All packed? The train's leavin' the station. Whooo-whoo!"

His daughter came out of her bedroom with a backpack over her shoulder and a glum look on her face.

''What's
this
all about?" he said, tucking a playful fist under her jaw.

She lifted her chin away as he did it and said, "Dad,
don't."

"Hey! I thought you were looking forwa
rd to this sleepover thing."
             

"It's not a sleepover; it's just a bun
ch of girls getting together."

"And yakking all night. Yeah. A sleepover."

"Have it your way," she said, walking ahead with her shoulders drooping.

Oh, yeah. 
She wanted her mommy, all right. Damn
.
Maddie must have made inroads during the
couple of phone calls she'
d managed to put through. What would happen when power was restored a
nd
Rosedale
was habitable again?

He dropped Tracey off at her friend's house, telling her he'd pick her up at noon the next day, and then he backtracked to
Brookline
, where Woodbine would be working late. The ve
r
y distinguished, very hard-working director invariably worked late at the Institute on Friday. It was quiet then, Woodbine liked to tell people. A man could hear himself think on a Friday night.

A man could also alter data on a Friday night. Michael had no illusions about what went on at the Brookline Institute
,
and he didn't care. If the project results were tweaked, what did it matter? It was all a gray area, anyway. He knew his powers were real. If the government wanted them to be more real, fine. That's where a Woodbine came in handy.

He arrived ten minutes early and sat in his car in the parking lot, waiting for the director to unlock the door for him
.
Exactly on time, Woodbine appeared in the lobby, glanced at the BMW, and walked up to the imposing double doors. By the time he had one of them unlocked, Michael was on the other side, glaring at him through the glass.

Woodbine said curtly, "Let's get this over with," and led the way to his office.

Michael fell in beside him. "You took your sweet time returning my calls. I'd be surprised if your secretary isn't on to us."

"There's no 'us' to be on to, Michael," Woodbine said with icy reserve.

"Yeah, right. Just give me my money. I've waited long enough."

"Obviously you have absolutely no idea how long it takes for government funding to make its way through channels."

"So hire a channeler; you must have a few on your staff," Michael quipped.

Woodbine declined to respond.

They went into his office. Woodbine didn't offer him a seat and Michael didn't avail himself of one. As always when he was there, he felt edgy and angry. As if on cue, the first sharp stab of a headache appeared, reminding him that he hated the Institute, hated the Director, and wanted no more part of their program.

Woodbine opened the top drawer of his elegant mahogany desk, took out a clasp envelope, and tossed it on the desktop. Pleased to see that it had a satisfying bulge to it, Michael reached for it and said, "For a job well done. You never did tell me how well I scored, Geoffrey."

"In a word? You sucked."

Michael's hand froze on the envelope where it lay. "The hell I did," he said, flushing with anger.

The director shrugged and said, "A mailman could've done better. A nurse. A janitor. Anyone who could tell the time and follow a few simple directions. A buzzer sounds, and all you had to do was look at the clock on the wall, determine which ten-second sector the buzzer sounded in, and correlate that sector to a room of a house. We agreed beforehand. One to ten seconds: the kitchen. Ten to twenty seconds: the bath. Twenty to thirty: the garden. And so on. Your chances of guessing the object—or a thematically related one, which is nearly as good—would skyrocket. Was that so hard, Michael? Apparently it was."

"I did do that!"

"Half of the time. The other half you ignored the clock and guessed the object based on—what? Your intuition? Don't make me laugh."

"What did you expect?" Michael shouted, feeling humiliated. "I was in a
zone,
Geoff! I couldn't just pull out of it and focus on some dumb-ass clock. I was focused! Ask Michael Jordan if he
could
turn it off just like that; ask Mike Tyson."

Woodbine leaned over his desk, palms flat on the surface. "Those are hardly compatible zones, either with one another or with yours, Michael. Quite simply: you're a deluded fool. You drew a bed when I signaled the garden; you drew a teapot when I signaled the bathroom. You're a fool and an idiot. The only reason we got that funding was because I was able to capitalize on the few times you did manage to follow the plan. Next time, I'll buy myself an engineer; at least they can follow instructions."

"You son of a bitch!" Michael shouted.

Woodbine reached into the top drawer of his desk. Michael threw himself across it, slamming the wide drawer hard and catching Woodbine's left hand in it. With a cry of pain Woodbine yanked it out, holding it hard against his chest with his other hand.

"Sonovabitch—you've got a gun in there, haven't you?" Michael cried. He vaulted over the desk and pulled the drawer all the way out, revealing a revolver at the back of it. Snatching it up, he felt his first real surge of power over his despised mentor.

"This is the one, isn't it?" he said to Woodbine, hardly containing his glee at having the upper hand. "This is the gun you used to blow away my father-in-law."

Woodbine's breath was still coming fast. "I don't
... know what you're
... talking about, you freak."

"April 6. You agreed to see him April 6," Michael said, pointing the gun at him. "You thought I didn't know that? I knew that. And not because I'm psychic.
Because he told me, you moron.
He found out that you were interested in testing Tracey, that you'd been asking me about her. Okay, he found out because I told him you had—but that's me all over, isn't it? Dedicated to the pursuit of parapsychological truth. And am I appreciated? No. Not by you, not by my family—well, screw you all."

Without taking his eyes from Woodbine, Michael groped the top of the desk for the envelope and dragged it closer to him. "How come you never told me about your colorful past, hmm? How come I had to hear it from Edward Timmons instead? I thought we were better friends than that, Geoffrey—or should I say, Clive?"

"You're more prone to fantasy than I thought," the director said, eyeing him warily.

"Uh-huh. Y'know, I don't much care what you did or did not do. All I really want at this point is the money. I'm mad, I'm tired, I need a vacation. Besides, it's the principle of the thing."

Michael struggled to open the clasped flap of the envelope with one hand, then jiggled it lightly so that some of the money eased part of the way out.

He glanced down. "Twenties?" he said, stunned. "
Twenties
?" He dumped the rest of the envelope on the desk: all twenties, no more than a few thousand dollars' worth.

"Money's tight right now.  I told you:  it takes a while for the funding to come through."

Woodbine took advantage of the distraction to make a lunge for him, knocking him back into a bookcase. They locked in an uneven struggle over the gun; Michael was younger, stronger, uninjured. The gun went off with a deafening sound and the director staggered back, his eyes wide with shock. He grabbed his stomach, then fell to the floor.

Michael stood there, paralyzed by the sight of the blood oozing from the wound. He dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse. If there was one, he couldn't find it. He stood up. His mind went blank. Then he seized the gun and he ran.

Heart hammering, head pounding, he tore down the hall through the lobby and grabbed at the handle of the glass entry door. Locked! He turned and ran down the nearest aisle, looking for another door. He found a fire exit, then pushed the door open, setting off a shrill, mind-bending alarm. His pace was frantic now, his breath exploding in his chest. He circled back to the parking lot, dropped into the front seat of his car, and with violently shaking hands, got the key into the ignition slot. He sped out of the lot and down quiet residential streets and didn't look back until he was merged into the Friday night metro mess on Route 9.