Crosstalk (48 page)

Stop it,
she told herself.
Trent'll hear you.
She switched to “Teen Angel,” wondering why lovers always came to such bad ends in songs. And in poems. In “The Highwayman” the king's soldiers had tied up Bess, the landlord's daughter, with a booby-trapped musket pointed at her heart, and she'd had to shoot herself to warn the highwayman. If they'd been telepathic, Bess wouldn't have had to sacrifice herself to warn him, and the girl in “Ode to Billie Joe” would have known he was going to jump and come to stop him.

And both songs would have been a lot shorter,
Briddey thought. But she didn't need short. She needed something long that wouldn't make her think about C.B. or telepathy. Which let out
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. And
Far from the Madding Crowd
. She downloaded
The Secret Garden
and settled herself into a corner of the couch to read it.

Mistake. Mary Lennox's uncle heard a “far clear voice” calling to him, talked about thoughts being “as powerful as electric batteries,” and wondered if he was “losing his reason and thinking he heard things which were not for human ears.”
No wonder Maeve was so wrapped up in it,
Briddey thought, and went back to memorizing song lyrics.

At midnight Trent called again. “Did you find C.B. Schwartz?” she asked him.

“No, but I found Dr. Verrick. Or at least I found out what city he's in. It turns out he wasn't in Morocco. He's in Hong Kong.”

Which meant it would take him a couple of days to get back here. She was so relieved that she dozed off almost immediately after the call and didn't wake up till the phone rang again. She groped for it, knocking her tablet off the couch in the process, and heard C.B. say,
Dawn Patrol to Night Fighter, come in, Night Fighter.

Shh,
she ordered him.
Trent might hear you. I think he's calling me on the phone right now.

No, he isn't,
C.B. said.
I am. Or I was,
and the ringing promptly stopped.
And don't worry, Trent can't hear us. He's asleep.

He was looking for you,
she said.

I know. He didn't find me.

Good,
she said drowsily.
What time is it?

A little before three
.

In the
morning
?

Afraid so. I kept hoping Trent would give up and go to sleep, but he was still talking to IT till half an hour ago, trying to locate Dr. Verrick.

He's in Hong Kong
.

I know. IT's calling hotels, so it's just a matter of time till they find him, and when they do, they'll call Trent, which'll wake him up. So we need to take advantage of the time we've got.

Of course.
I'm sorry,
she said, sitting up.
I'm awake now
.

It'll be better if we talk out loud in case Trent happens to wake up. So if you'll get dressed—

I'm already dressed,
she said, slipping on her shoes.
Where do you want me to meet you?

Downstairs.

You mean you're here? Do you want to come up
?

No. You come down. I've got something I want to show you
.

I'll be right there,
she said, pulling on her sweater. She debated getting her coat, too, but she wouldn't need it for the short dash to C.B.'s car. She grabbed her keys, turned off the lights, and ran silently downstairs and outside into the dark.

She couldn't see C.B.'s car anywhere. She walked out to the sidewalk and looked up the street in both directions, wondering if Trent had woken up and C.B. had decided it wasn't safe to meet after all.

“Nope, he's still asleep,” C.B. said, stepping out of the shadows. “And Hong Kong has a
lot
of hotels, so I figure we're good for at least an hour or two. Come on.”

They set off up the dark street. “Listen,” he said as they walked. “About Trent and the telepathy-phone thing. I'm really sorry. I should have told you about it before, but I didn't want—”

“—me to fly off the handle again and accuse you of trying to keep us apart, like I did when you tried to warn me about the telepathy?”

“No, that isn't—”

“It's okay. I don't blame you. I probably wouldn't have believed you if I hadn't heard it from his own mouth—I mean, mind.”

“It was still a lousy way to find out.” He stopped and turned to face her. “Are you okay?”

“I thought you could read my mind.”

“I can.”

“Then you know I'm furious that he lied to me—and used me. And furious with myself for not seeing through him. But there's something I don't understand. Why did he think the EED would work?”

“You don't actually need to be emotionally bonded to—”

“
I
know that, and
you
know that, but Trent didn't. He thought you had to be, and he knew he wasn't—”

“I'm not so sure about that,” C.B. said. “From what I've picked up of his thoughts, he thinks he is.”

“He wouldn't know love if it smacked him in the face.”

“True, but he'd hardly be the first person to mistake the trappings of romance for love.”

Like me, you mean,
Briddey thought.

“Plus, he needed the EED to work for his phone, and he needed to be ‘emotionally committed' for the EED to work, so he had every reason to convince himself he was. I told you, people are masters of self-deception.”

“You're right, you did,” she said, and realized all that talk about people not knowing what they felt and thinking Hitler was a nice guy hadn't just been to talk her out of having the EED. He'd been trying to warn her about Trent, and she'd been too stupid to understand. And too stupid to see through Trent and his camellias and combed hair and candlelit dinners.

“Don't beat yourself up,” C.B. said. “Joan of Arc believed in the Dauphin, who was a lying, spineless, traitorous little creep, too. But how was she supposed to have known? And saving France was a good idea,” he said, looking down at her. “She just put her faith in the wrong person,” and she was suddenly aware of how close C.B. was standing and how dark it was.

Time to change the subject,
she thought, and said, “I still don't understand how he could connect with me without being Irish. I know you said there was a servant girl in his family tree—”

“Or more than one, plus a couple of stableboys.”

“But isn't it more likely that your theory about genes causing telepathy is wrong?”

“No.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. He started walking again.

Now look who's changing the subject,
she thought, and decided not to allow him to. “But you said the English had inhibitors,” she said, keeping pace with him, “so how—?”

“Maybe something made Trent more receptive. Do you know if he's been taking that antianxiety med that Verrick prescribed?”

“No. You think that—?”

“Combined with a heightened emotional state, which the pressure of needing to come up with the EED data for his boss would certainly produce, yeah, that could have triggered it.”

“Plus, my calling out, ‘Where are you?' ” Briddey said glumly, remembering standing in the bus shelter and calling to C.B. “If I'd called you by name—”

“He'd know we were connected, which means we'd be in even more trouble than we are now.”

He stopped walking again, and she looked around, surprised at how far they'd come. They were three blocks from her apartment building, and there was still no sign of C.B.'s Honda. “Where did you park?”

“Next to your car,” he said, pointing back the way they'd come.

“Then where are we going? I thought you said you had something to show me.”

“I do,” he said. “This.” He waved his arm to indicate the empty street and darkened buildings. “Listen to how quiet it is.”

It
was
quiet. No breeze ruffled his tangled hair as she looked at him, and there was no sound of traffic, not even a car passing on the main thoroughfare two blocks up.

“That's not what I'm talking about,” C.B. said. “I'm talking about the voices. Listen.”

He was right. The distant roar beyond the brick wall of her perimeter had faded to the merest whisper. “Is everyone asleep?” she asked wonderingly.

“No. Unfortunately, that never happens. There are always long-distance truckers up, and insomniacs and people working the graveyard shift, but three
A.M
.'s as good as it gets. The bars have been closed for an hour, the mothers have gotten their babies back to sleep, the wife beaters have passed out, and the delivery people and paper-route kids and nurses who go on duty at five aren't up yet.”

“But aren't there people lying awake squirrel caging?” Briddey asked, thinking about her own 3
A.M
.s since this whole thing had started.

“Yeah, they're worrying about the mortgage and that mole on their back and all the things they wish they hadn't said and done. Three o'clock's when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. ‘The dark night of the soul,' F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.”

But that wasn't what she was hearing. The voices were a peaceful, placid murmur.

“That's because it's also the time when those same insomniacs read or count sheep or watch old movies on TV to put themselves back to sleep, which turns the whole world into a library reading room. I love this time of night.”

She could imagine. C.B. had to spend all day every day trying to shut the voices out. This was the only time when he didn't have to, when he could be almost like other people.

“Exactly,” he said, looking happily around. “It's my time of day, as Sky Masterson would say.”

“Sky Masterson?”

“From
Guys and Dolls
. Remember the movie I told you about with all the good screening songs in it? ‘Luck Be a Lady' and ‘Adelaide's Lament'—”

“The song about catching cold?” Briddey asked, thinking,
She probably caught cold because she didn't wear her coat
. She wished she'd worn hers. It was freezing out here.

“Umm-hmm, that's the one,” C.B. said, taking off his jacket and draping it over her shoulders.

“You're always loaning me your jacket,” she said. “
Thank
you.”

“It's my pleasure. So, anyway, Sky Masterson's this gambler. He's bringing Sister Sarah back—”

“Sister Sarah?”

“Yeah, she's a Salvation Army missionary. Another case of a girl who's hooked up with a guy she's way too good for. Anyway, Sky and Sister Sarah are coming back from Havana just before dawn, and he tells her it's his favorite time of day, with the traffic stopped and nobody else around, and—” He stopped walking and stood still, listening.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously. “Is Trent awake?”

“No, it's Darrell in IT. They got a line on Verrick. They think he's in Hong Kong to do EEDs on a high-up Chinese official and his mistress, which is great news. His location'll be classified, and Trent'll have a hard time reaching him. And even if he succeeds, Verrick'll have a perfect excuse for not coming back.”

“But why wouldn't he want to come back?”

“Because Trent's going to tell him his EED has made the two of you start hearing voices. Like I told you, Verrick can't afford to get mixed up with anything crazy-sounding and have his career go down the drain like Bridey Murphy's hypnotherapist or Dr. Rhine.”

“But what if he's already mixed up with telepathy? What if he and Trent are in it together?”

“They aren't. I haven't picked up anything at all that indicates Trent's told Verrick about his phone idea. He was waiting till you two connected to broach the idea of doing scans, and he was genuinely surprised that Verrick moved your appointment up.”

“Oh, good. I've been worried about that. But if Dr. Verrick had proof telepathy existed—”

“He won't. All Trent's got is you, and if Verrick asks you to demonstrate your telepathic ability, you can do what you did this morning and write down different words from the ones he sends, and Verrick will decide it was just a case of over-active imagination.”

“But what about Trent? He talked to me. He heard my voice. He'll tell Dr. Verrick that.”

“And you can tell Verrick you have no idea what he's talking about. It'll be your word against his.”

I wish I could believe it was that simple,
Briddey thought, clutching C.B.'s jacket to her against the late-night chill. “But what if Trent improves to where he can read my mind like you can, and knows that I
did
hear it and I'm lying?”

“It'd still be his word against yours. Anyway, he won't get to that point, though I'm a little disturbed that you were able to overhear him thinking about the phone—”

“But I didn't overhear him,” Briddey said. “I was intentionally auditing him.”

He stopped and looked down at her. “But I didn't teach you—”

“I know. I taught myself.”

“But the voices…how did you keep from being overwhelmed when you—?”

“Opened the door? I didn't. I was too afraid to. I figured out a way to listen to them in the courtyard. On the radio.”

“The
radio
?”

“Yes, like the one in your lab.” She told him what she'd done.

“Wow,” he said. “Very impressive! You're almost—” He stopped short.

Trent must be awake,
she thought, and felt a pang that they'd have to put an end to this. It was so nice being out here together. She pulled C.B.'s jacket closer around her. “Did they find Dr. Verrick?”