Haunted (19 page)

There was no way she could climb it. Why was she such a total, pathetic weakling?

Rae’s eyes darted along the fence. Maybe there was a place she could squeeze through, or…

Her gaze fell on the large padlock holding the gate together. When people opened combination locks, they usually
thought about the numbers as they did it. “Let this work. Let this work,” Rae muttered as she ran her fingers over
the lock’s dial.
thirteen
twenty-seven/five/ With shaking fingers Rae dialed in the numbers she’d gotten from the
fingerprints. The lock didn’t open. And Anthony and Jesse were inside with who knew what happening to them.

Panicking isn’t going to help, she told herself. Focus. Maybe you got the numbers right but the order wrong. She
shook out her hand, then tried again. Twenty-seven. Five. Thirteen.

Rae yanked down on the lock. It didn’t open.

Five. Thirteen. Twenty-seven. “Please, please, please.” Yank. And the lock opened with a well-oiled click. Rae
pulled it off the chain, dropped it on the ground, and shoved open the gates. She didn’t care who saw her. She
hoped somebody did. Maybe it would create enough of a diversion to give Anthony a chance to do… something.

Rae raced toward the factory. She grabbed the long metal handle of the front door with both hands and tugged
with all her strength. /no one’s ever gonna find me/ But it was locked. Of course it was locked. “Don’t worry, Jesse,”

she said as she ran to the closest window. “Somebody’s gonna find you right now.”

There was no point in trying to be quiet anymore, so Rae jerked off her cashmere sweater, wrapped it tightly
around her fist, then slammed her fist through the window. One of her fingers started to bleed, but she ignored it.

She used her sweater-wrapped hand to knock away as much glass from the frame as she could.

Then she climbed into the factory.

Anthony slowly sat up, clenching his teeth so he wouldn’t cry out. It felt like someone was stomping across his
back in baseball cleats.

He did a quick scan of the dark room, ignoring the little explosions of light in front of his eyes. The room was huge,
clearly running the length of the building.

It was also empty.

But I had to make a hell of a lot of noise falling down here, Anthony thought. He wondered how long he’d been
knocked out. It could have been less than a minute. But a minute was long enough for somebody to be practically
on top of him. He pushed himself to his feet and listened hard. Yeah, someone was coming up the stairs. They were
trying to be quiet, but he could hear the creak of the treads.

Weapon. He needed some kind of weapon. There wasn’t going to be a spare gun lying around, but there had to be
something he could use. Anthony spotted a pile of construction materials against the back wall.

He crept over. A bunch of boards. And some bricks.

He grabbed a couple of bricks as quickly as he thought he could without alerting whoever was coming for him,
then he tiptoed back across the room and positioned himself just inside the doorway. He raised the bricks over his
head.

Come and get me. You’re going to be the one who goes down, he thought.

Rae crept up the last flight of stairs. Her footsteps echoed as if she was the only one in the factory. But she knew
that there had to be others in here.

She took another step. Hesitated. She held her breath, hoping to hear the tiny sound again. But the factory stayed
silent. You’ve got to keep going, she told herself. The hair on her arms began to prickle, and she got that familiar
feeling, the feeling of being watched.

Oh God. Who was in here? Did they have a gun pointed at her right now? Were they waiting for her to move into
the right position so they could shoot her through the head?

Rae’s heart pounded so hard that the sound filled her ears.

She had only two choices. Up or down. She chose up. Took a step. Hesitated. Tried to listen. But all she could hear
was the thud of her heartbeat.

Rae took another step. She peered at the open doorway at the top of the stairs. It was too dark up there to see
anything. She hurled herself up the last few steps. If someone was there with a gun, at least she’d be harder to hit,
she thought as she plunged through the open doorway.

Something moved in the darkness to her left. A man. She dropped to the floor and rolled. But he was too quick for
her. A second later he had her shoulders pinned to the floor.

“I told you to wait in the car,” he whispered furiously. Rae opened her eyes and saw it was Anthony kneeling over
her. The rush of relief made her dizzy.

“I almost brained you with one of these things,”

Anthony said, holding up a brick. “What is the matter with you?”

“I would have waited in the car if you hadn’t fallen through the roof,” Rae shot back. “And you don’t have to
whisper. The place is deserted.”

Anthony dropped both bricks. “Crap,” he exploded.

“They must have moved him.”

Rae hadn’t even thought of that. She’d been so relieved to find Anthony alive-without getting killed herself-that
she’d forgotten all about Jesse for a second.

“Now we have nothing to go on. All the info you got from the knife was about this place. It’s useless to us now,”

Anthony burst out. He slammed his fist into the wall.

Rae winced, imagining the pain. She wanted to say something reassuring, something comforting. But he was
right. They were back to square one. And the more time that passed… she didn’t let herself complete the thought.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” She wrapped her fingers around the sleeve of his jacket, not wanting to
accidentally invade his thoughts by touching his fingers, and led him down the first flight of stairs, through the next
level of the factory, also empty, and down to the main level, which still had rows of meat hooks hanging from the
ceiling. “Quite the decor, huh?” she muttered.

“Yeah. I-” Anthony was interrupted by a faint, rhythmic knocking. “It’s coming from over there.”

Anthony spun to the left and ran between a row of the hooks, Rae still clinging to him. The knocking grew louder
and louder. Anthony veered toward a door and yanked it open to find a small supply closet. Jesse was huddled in
the back, a sponge duct taped into his mouth, wrists and ankles bound.

Rae let out a horrified cry. Anthony reached Jesse in two long strides and had him free in seconds. Then his arms
were around Jesse, his cheek pressed against Jesse’s head. Rae hung back, her heart aching with a mix of joy and
relief and leftover fear.

Anthony and Jesse broke apart. Rae didn’t know if Jesse’d want her hugging him. But she couldn’t help herself. It
was too good to see him. Jesse hugged her back hard, for a second, then gave her a little push away.

“What happened?” Anthony asked him. “Just start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

Jesse’s wide grin faded. He started to sway on his feet, and Anthony reached out and steadied him. “I don’t
remember,” Jesse said. His voice was husky, and for the first time Rae noticed how large his pupils were. What did
they do to him? she wondered.

Rae knelt and picked up a piece of the duct tape, ran her fingers down it, and got-nothing. She checked the other
pieces-nothing. “They must have been wearing gloves,” she murmured. She checked the skin of Jesse’s arms, the
doorknob of the closet, the roll of duct tape she spotted on a shelf. “I’m not getting anything at all.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” Anthony said.

Jesse took a step toward the door, and his knees buckled. “My legs are kind of numb.”

Anthony didn’t say anything. He just looped one arm around Jesse’s shoulders. Rae positioned herself on Jesse’s
other side and wrapped one arm around his waist. Together she and Anthony half carried Jesse out of the
warehouse and down to the car. They eased him into the backseat, and Rae climbed in beside him. “There’s some
soda in my backpack,” she told Anthony.

He pulled out a can, popped the top, and handed it to Jesse. Jesse took a long pull, then started to choke. “Easy,
easy,” Rae said.

“It was a test. A test for you,” Jesse blurted out.

“Who told you that?” Anthony asked, and Rae could tell he was struggling to keep his voice calm.

“I don’t remember,” Jesse answered. He rubbed his forehead with both hands. “My head feels like it’s getting
stabbed with ice picks.”

Anthony started the car. “We’re going to get you home to your mom. Then we’ll call a doctor.”

“Can I touch your fingertips?” Rae asked. “I know you’re still shaky, but maybe you still have some memories
there that I can reach, and we can find out who did this to you.”

Jesse held out his hands, and Rae took them in her own, carefully matching up their fingertips. The emotions and
memories hit her like a punch. Fury over a woman-Jesse’s mother-being beaten.

Exhilaration at making an impossible skateboard jump. An oily mix of pleasure and guilt as a fire spread out of
control. Faster and faster the memories came. Thoughts and emotions almost too quick to connect to each other,
overlapping as they sped through her brain. Then clear as an announcement over a loudspeaker, she got a thought
all by itself-a test for Rae.

She dropped Jesse’s hands. “He’s right,” she whispered. “It was a test for me. But I don’t know what kind of test,
or why, or who was doing the testing.” She shook her head. “At least it wasn’t a trap.

Or not the kind we thought.”

“This is screwed up,” Anthony exploded. “I don’t understand it.”

“It was all about me,” Rae told them. “That much is very clear. It had nothing to do with Jesse.

Whoever did this was just using him to find out something about me.” Hot bile splashed against the back of her
throat. She swallowed hard and felt it burn all the way down.

“It’s okay,” Jesse said.

“No, it’s not okay!” Rae burst out. “You both have to stay away from me. Somebody was willing to risk Jesse’s life
to find out something about me.

Somebody else-or maybe the same person-tried to kill me. This has nothing to do with the two of you.

Just drop me off. I’ll find my own way home.”

“You didn’t have any problem putting yourself at risk to get Jesse back,” Anthony snapped, glaring at her in the
rearview mirror. “We wouldn’t do any less for you. If you think we would, you’re the friggin’ moron.”

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “This isn’t over until we find the creeps who did it. All three of us.”

“All three of us,” Anthony repeated.

Rae looked from Anthony to Jesse. They meant it.

She nodded. “All three of us,” she agreed.

*

*

*

Our game is over, Rae, at least the first round. And I won. I found out what I wanted to know. If you touch
something, you can get the thoughts of the person who held it. That’s how you found the factory. You got the
thoughts I implanted in Jesse’s brain when you touched the knife I sent.

Jesse knows who I am. He knows everything. At least he used to. But I can extract thoughts as well as implant
them, and I cleaned your friend’s mind before I left him in the factory.

Now what to do? Your power isn’t dangerous-unless you have an ability that I haven’t discovered. But you’re an
interesting girl, Rae. I think I’ll watch you a little longer, maybe play another round or two. Especially if it means I can
find out who else is interested in you. I know about him, Rae-the person following you, taking pictures of you. I don’t
know who he is, but I know he’s out there. And before you and I play again, I need to learn more about your other
enemy-the one who must have been responsible for that pitiful pipe bomb attempt.

But you will have to pay eventually. Don’t think I’ll forget about my revenge. You don’t deserve your perfect little
life.

And you aren’t going to get to keep it.

THE END

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9/20/2009

LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/