Ghost Key (16 page)

The one good thing about all this was that the events he’d seen through his sister had now changed. In that vision, Delaney had told Nicole he was flying to Cedar Key “tomorrow” and Sanchez was already there. In actuality, Delaney had flown his Cessna to the area first to meet with the agents investigating the bleed-outs and Sanchez hadn’t gotten to Cedar Key yet. Free will prevailed always. What a viewer saw at any given moment was only the most probable version of events. And since the version he’d seen hadn’t happened, perhaps the events that would prompt Nicole to demand answers from Delaney wouldn’t happen, either.

His BlackBerry jingled as a text message came through. From Nicole.

Hermano,
you said you’d stay in touch. What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you.

Typical, Sanchez thought, that she contacted him at the moment he was thinking about her. He quickly replied:

Sorry. Got caught up in stuff. Not on Cedar Key till later today. Promise to keep in touch.

You’d better. Don’t want to punch Delaney. Luv u.

He trotted after Jessie, surprised that the trail around the sinkhole was crowded with runners, hikers with dogs, couples with dogs, families with kids. But it was Sunday, after all, the weather crisp, the sky crystalline, and Gainesville was a college town. No one called him on breaking the leash law or gave him dirty looks. Live and let live.

Near the end of the trail, he saw Delaney and another man leaning against the railing, peering down the chasm, talking earnestly. Delaney was hard to miss anywhere—a black man nearly seven feet tall. But next to him stood a short white guy with sandy blond hair graying at the temples. They looked like characters in a sitcom.

Jessie reached them first, nudged Delaney’s leg with her snout, and he laughed and fussed over her. When Delaney introduced her to the fed and she raised her paw in greeting, the man didn’t react. The guy either didn’t like dogs or was humorless or both. It didn’t bode well for this meeting. Sanchez suspected he would end up, once again, defending his ability. The bureau boys he’d dealt with in the past regarded remote viewing as fringe science, a joke, and a waste of taxpayers’ money. But perhaps O’Donnell would be different because, as Delaney had said, he wanted results.

Sanchez walked over to them and the fed glanced from Jessie to Sanchez, gave a kind of gritted-teeth smile and stuck out his hand. “Tom O’Donnell. Bob’s been extolling your abilities, Mr. Sanchez.”

He didn’t want to grasp O’Donnell’s outstretched hand. But if he didn’t, he would be perceived as an unfriendly SOB. So before he gripped the man’s hand, he shut himself down psychically, the equivalent of hitting a circuit breaker. It hadn’t always been that easy, but it worked. He didn’t pick up squat. “My pleasure, Agent O’Donnell.”

O’Donnell looked to be in his late forties. Although he was at least a foot shorter than Delaney, he appeared to be fit, a gym rat with muscles as hard as granite, a solid handshake, and piercing eye contact learned at Quantico. “So tell me about this terrorist cell, Mr. Sanchez.”

They walked along the trail as Sanchez talked. He chose his words with great care, revealing enough so that O’Donnell didn’t interrupt with questions or clarifications. But when Sanchez finished, O’Donnell zeroed in on the one detail that mattered personally to Sanchez.

“The redhead. Tell me more about her.”

“There isn’t any more to tell.”

“But you think she’s the head of this cell?”

“We’re dealing with a nontraditional terrorist cell and she has been pulled into it inadvertently.”

“What do you mean by that? What’s a nontraditional terrorist cell?”

Prove yourself, Sanchez,
he seemed to be saying.
Show me you know what the hell you’re talking about.
Sanchez felt like a bug under a microscope and it pissed him off. “It means, Agent O’Donnell, that whatever profile you bureau boys have cooked up about terrorists is wrong in this instance.”

“Really. And you say she was pulled in inadvertently? How can that be? All terrorists have the same choices the rest of us do.”

“Terrorists are recruited for a variety of reasons—poverty, despair, hatred, cultural biases, religious beliefs. None of those things apply here. The redhead
didn’t have a choice
. That’s what the viewing revealed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“In his first viewing, Tom,” said Delaney, “he insisted this cell steals
bodies,
not identities. We aren’t sure what that means.”

Thanks to the contact with Red the other night, Sanchez now knew what it meant. But he wasn’t about to enlighten either man yet. O’Donnell was silent for a few minutes, walking quickly, deliberately, like a man who knew that aerobic exercise might extend his life, but who resented every step, every deep lungful of air, every muscle that tightened. He followed Jessie down the boardwalk stairs, away from the sinkhole rim and into the sinkhole itself. Sanchez had the distinct impression that O’Donnell didn’t even realize they were descending, that he was so wrapped up in his mental arguments that the downward spiral didn’t register.

Halfway down O’Donnell seemed to emerge from his trance. “Here’s the deal, Nick.” He stopped, hands clutching the railing so hard that the tendons in the backs of his hands resembled the roots of small trees, pressing against the skin as though it were earth. “A couple of days ago, a dog uncovered a body in a landfill in Ocala. So we’ve got fourteen bodies now, all of them exhibiting the same virus. And this virus, see, is curious.

“It apparently mutates, but we don’t know how. It’s like nothing the CDC has ever seen before. They aren’t sure how contagious it is, but are fairly certain it’s spread through body fluids, like AIDS. They also think it may be what caused these massive bleed-outs. One theory they’re looking at is that the virus is most dangerous when it mutates, and that’s probably when the bleed-outs occur. Frankly, all these highly paid scientists and outside consultants are clueless. So the CDC intends to quarantine the area. HDS, FEMA, the bureau all concur. Initially, we were going to ask you to be embedded, but it’s too dangerous. This virus is lethal and we don’t know enough about it to advise you on how to protect yourself. So we’d like you to do whatever the hell it is you do in our headquarters just outside the quarantine area.”

What the fuck
. He didn’t intend to be denied the opportunity to find Maddie. “Whatever I pick up outside the quarantine area won’t be nearly as accurate as what I can pick up in the town, Agent O’Donnell.”

O’Donnell looked irritated. “RV means
remote
viewing, right? I thought the whole point with RV is that you don’t have to be on site, that you can do it anywhere.”

“That’s true.” Delaney spoke up quickly. “But with some things, the closer to the target you are, the more accurate the information is.”

That was bullshit, Sanchez knew, and read between the lines: Delaney wanted him to be on Cedar Key. “Especially with something like this. There’re just too many variables that can get screwed up at any point along the line.”

O’Donnell kicked at a stone on the boardwalk and shook his head. “I can’t make the call on this one, guys. I have to ask my supervisor and he may have to go up the line to the CDC and DHS. In the meantime, you move into the headquarters and we’ll set you up in a comfortable spot and you do your thing, Sanchez.”

“Then you’ll have to move me in, too,” Delaney said. “I’m his monitor. That’s how we work, like different halves of the same brain.”

O’Donnell’s phone rang, he glanced at the number. “Excuse me, I need to take this call.”

He walked off and Delaney touched Sanchez’s arm and tilted his head toward the stairs. “Let’s talk.” They moved quickly down another flight of stairs, Jessie leading the way farther down into the sinkhole. “I think we should head back to Homestead and do the RV from there. The idea of being stuck in some makeshift headquarters outside the quarantine zone with O’Donnell breathing down our necks doesn’t appeal to me in the least.”

That explained why Delaney had supported Sanchez. It didn’t have anything to do with him thinking that Sanchez should head to Cedar Key. “I have to go to Cedar Key, Bob. The redhead contacted me the other night.”

“What?
How?
”

“Psychically.” He quickly told Delaney the rest of it, the truly weird stuff about Annie’s Café and the hungry ghosts who were the real terrorists. “My sense is that the ghost in her is so ancient we don’t have any context for understanding what’s really happening on the island.”

Delaney looked horrified. “Jesus, Sanchez. Are you sure that’s what she said? Hungry fucking
ghosts
?”

“I heard her as clearly as I hear you right now.”

“A terrorist cell of hungry ghosts. Holy shit. There’s no precedent for this. Anywhere.”

“Which is exactly why I’m going to Cedar Key.”

“No way. Too dangerous. O’Donnell is right about that much.”

Sanchez felt the rug being snatched out from under him. “I’m going, Bob, with or without your blessing.”

“For fuck’s sake, Sanchez, don’t put me in this position.”

“Hey,
I’m
the one going in,
I’ll
be at risk, not you.”

“You’re going rogue, amigo.”

“Tell O’Donnell I have to return to Gainesville to get our stuff. When will they impose the quarantine?”

“Tonight at the earliest, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“Good. Then I’ll be on Cedar Key by the time the quarantine’s in place. When I don’t come back, you tell him I must’ve gone in on my own. That exonerates you.”

“What’s to prevent you from being taken by one of these mutants?”

“Nothing. I’m as vulnerable as anyone on the island. But she did say they’re terrified of fire. Apparently they can be annihilated if the human host is killed and the ghost can’t escape before the host dies.”

Delaney rested his elbows against the boardwalk railing and stared off below, his expression inscrutable. “Christ, Sanchez. Be honest with yourself, okay? You want to go in because of this redhead.”

“I want to understand what’s going on.”

“And the woman doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Delaney said and laughed. “Yeah, right.”

She has everything to do with it. We connected, she and I
. “If I’m there, I get answers more quickly.”

“One condition. I’ll give you a weapon and one of the cells that will be connected to the DHS communication system, and in return, you contact me immediately if she gets in touch with you again. And you keep me in the loop every step of the way.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“And before we leave, see what you pick up on O’Donnell.”

Sanchez made a face. “I was trying to avoid that, but okay. What’d you pick up from him?”

“See what you get, then I’ll tell you.”

Sanchez glanced back and saw O’Donnell trotting down the stairs toward them. “We need some time alone so I can get the weapon and cell,” he said softly, and Delaney nodded.

“Sorry about that,” O’Donnell said as he joined them. “It was my supervisor. Since I had him on the line, I ran your suggestion by him. He nixed it.”

Sanchez shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ve got to return to Gainesville to pick up my stuff and Delaney’s. Where’s the headquarters going to be?”

“Just north of the fourth bridge,” O’Donnell said.

“I’ll get back to your headquarters by late afternoon,” Sanchez said. “How’s that sound?”

O’Donnell offered his gritted-teeth grin and extended his hand. “Then we have a deal. Excellent.”

Shit, here goes
. Sanchez flipped on his psychic switch and his senses suddenly loomed like a gaping hole just begging to be filled with the detritus of someone else’s psyche. When he grasped O’Donnell’s hand, a rushing stream of images poured into him. Then the stream froze on a single image: O’Donnell, his face crayon red, demanding to know where the prisoner was and when Delaney had last visited her and had there been any word from that rogue Sanchez?

O’Donnell withdrew his hand, and the images dried up. “I suppose your dog will be joining us, Sanchez?”

“Always.”

Once they were in the parking lot, they went to their respective vehicles and Sanchez and Delaney managed to get a few moments alone. Sanchez quickly related what he’d seen and Delaney’s eyes widened. He blurted, “Okay, when I read him, I saw myself and O’Donnell interrogating a woman—I don’t know about what—but she’d been brought into custody. And then I saw myself alone with this woman, a tall blonde, unusual face, and I was asking her about a note that a hawk had dropped at my feet. And then I helped her escape.”

“Escape to where?”

“Beats the shit outta me.”

“What’d the note say?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it. But we both picked up something that relates to a prisoner, and it’s got to be the blonde.”

And that meant it was more likely to happen, Sanchez thought. “You have that weapon and cell?”

“Yeah.” Delaney opened his trunk, unzipped a small leather bag. “Keep in mind that four bridges connect Cedar Key to the mainland, all of them on State Road 24, the only way on or off the island. Bridge number four will be blocked and everything south of it will be quarantined. The Coast Guard will patrol the shorelines. A curfew will be in effect. It could get ugly, Sanchez.”

“I’ll be in touch regularly.”

“Use your BlackBerry to videotape anything I should see. Send it to my personal e-mail address.”

“You got it.”

Delaney handed him the satchel. “Now get the hell outta here so O’Donnell won’t see in which direction you’re headed.”

When Sanchez hit the road again, headed for the island and the mysterious redhead, his heart was on fire.

Eight

In the afternoon light, Cedar Key looked normal to Maddie—as normal, anyway, as anything could be to her these days. Long, narrow shadows crossed the road, the gulf waters reached outward toward the horizon, infinitely blue, as flat as a book cover. The temperature had climbed to a perfect 72 today, but the brisk wind blowing off the water promised a much cooler night. On her way across the bridge to Dock Street, she passed bikers, Rollerbladers, runners, lovers holding hands, people walking their dogs. Normal; it all looked so beautifully, wonderfully normal.