Time Spent (12 page)

"Thanks for your time, Rebecca Miller."

______________________

Faceless men stood on the other side of the
opening in the sky. The one in front looked familiar. Becca began
to cry, and the crying turned to sobs.

The faceless man was suddenly there before
her. He leaned over her, reaching for her.

WHOOOOO'S THAT GIRLLLL? The faceless man
said in her mind.

Becca wanted to scream, but she did not.

"You're not my Daddy...you're not."

The faceless man leaned over her, reaching
for her.

______________________

"What happened?" Zachary asked.

"I got her," Becca said. "I'm controlling
her." She could hear Tiffany's thoughts in her head:
Help I
can't move I can't move!

"I don't know what that means."

"It's my power! I can contol - never mind,
I'm not explaining it to you."

"Okay," he said.

"Go ahead and do it. The message thing."

"I can't do it when she's like this," he
said.

"Why not?"

"It's a message from God. I can't make her
listen. She has to accept it."

Becca released an exasperated breath. "You
never said that before!"

He looked puzzled. "Did we talk before?"

"Ughhhhh! I fucking hate you...." Becca
clenched her fists.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not letting her go, she'll just attack
us again."

Zachary moved closer to her. "You do this to
people? Hold them against their will?"

"When they're whipping me with their
electric fists or whatever? Fuck yes I do."

He considered. "Only her, then."

Becca rolled her eyes. "No, not only her.
I've done it lots of times."

"That's bad," he said.

Becca looked him dead in the eye. "Don't
even think about it, Blondie."

"God has a message for you," he said.

______________________

Her instructor stood beside her as the
target whirred up the line from the back of the practice range.

"Miller, this is not good enough. Not good
enough by half."

Becca removed her protective goggles and
stared at the target, unscathed. Several bullets had perforated the
paper around the edges, but none had actually struck inside the
black human outline.

"Damn it," she said.

"We're gonna have to schedule you additional
hours at the range," he said.

Becca sighed.

"Damn right you are," said Hal Shepherd from
behind them. "A lot of them."

"Agent Shepherd," her instructor said.
"Didn't see you come in. Good to see you." They shook hands.

Becca had known Shep was there. She had
sensed him come in, just as she had all the other times he had
shown up unexpectedly to watch her classes and practices. He was
making a habit of it.

Shep took note of Becca's look of annoyance.
"Nice to see you too, Rebecca. Leppert, you mind if I borrow your
student for a bit?"

"Have at it, maybe you can get through to
her," the instructor said.

"I'm gonna borrow this, too." Shep yanked
the target off the backboard and rolled it up.

They left the gun range and stepped out onto
the grounds. Shep slipped on a pair of sunglasses in the bright
sun.

"So," he said, "we finally found a test you
can't fool, huh?"

Becca side-eyed him. "What does that
mean?"

"You know what it means."

Becca was silent.

"Your forensics instructor thinks you're one
of the smartest students he's ever had. You contribute in class,
answer every question, fly by every test."

"Yeah, well, what can I say?"

He looked down at her. "Your combat classes
are the same way. Take down after take down. Easy peasy."

"Instructor took me down quick enough," she
said.

"Because you let him," Shep said.

"I let him? Please."

"Please yourself, girl. I was there. I've
been doing this for a hell of a long time, Rebecca Miller, and I've
seen that look on your face. You let him take you down, just to
make sure you didn't look
too
good."

Again, Becca didn't answer.

"I've seen people who can do what you
do."

Becca looked at him. "Do what?"

"Whatever it is you do to get in their
heads. Hypnotize them, mesmerize them. You tell me."

"Hypnotizing them?" She laughed. "Okay, go
home, Shep, you're drunk."

He stopped walking and stood in front of
her. "Rebecca, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. You
can go on breezing through all your classes just like you have
been. But I'm warning you, pretty soon now you're going to get a
big juicy assignment, probably an anti-terrorism task force or the
like. A plum, the kind of thing only the very best agents get. And
when that happens, this target is going to come back to haunt you."
He shook the rolled up paper in his hand.

"What, because I'm not a great shot?" She
snorted.

"Rebecca, you're a lot of things, but you're
not stupid. So stop acting like it. This target represents
something, because it has a power no one else you've come across
has had. You can't get into its head. You can't trick it. And so,
the target wins. I promise you, there will be people in the field
who you can't trick, and when you come across them, God help you,
because they can do a lot worse to you than this paper can."

He shoved the paper into her hands. Becca
held it, thinking of all the people she had been unable to control:
Kevin, Zachary...Brock. She could hear Shep's thoughts, feel the
worry behind them:
She's going to get herself killed.

"I'm worried about you, Rebecca.  You
don't care about your classes, that seems obvious.  But these
classes are going to determine what happens to you in the field,
and if you don't care about what can happen to you in the field,
then I have to wonder: is there anything you care about?"

Becca looked down at the paper for a time.
 Finally, she inhaled a deep breath and let it out. 
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

He smiled. "First, more hours at the gun
range."

"A lot more," she said with a grimace.

"That's my girl."

______________________

WHO ARRRRRE YOOOU? the faceless man's voice
spoke in her head. WHOO'S THISS LITTLE GIRLLL?

"You're NOT my DADDY."

DDADDY'S LITTLE... His voice stopped.

Becca heard a woman's voice in her head:
PPRINCESSSS.

Suddenly the faceless man fell to his knees.
Beyond him, Becca saw a woman framed by the aperture in the sky: a
woman with long red hair and red eyes set in a blank faceless
expression.

The woman stepped forth.

______________________

The ballpark. Sun shining on her face. Her
hand warm, touching the harsher dry hand of the man who was her
whole life.

"Daddy?" she said, looking up at him. She
was a little girl again, standing by his side, with her hand in
his.

He didn't hear her, he was staring
ahead.

"What are we doing here, Miller?"

Becca was startled. Tiffany was there,
standing there, but not a little girl; this was Tiffany as she had
been on the military base, eighteen years old.

"Why are you here?" Becca said. "You don't
belong here."

"Last thing I remember you did something to
my head. I couldn't move."

Becca shook her head. "No, that's not right.
That's years from now. I'm still a little girl here." They were
standing outside the main gate of the ballpark, in front of the
main ticket window, with the long walk to the parking lot
ahead.

"That was a few seconds ago!" Tiffany said.
"Where the hell are we?"

Becca struggled to remember. Zachary had
done something to her.

"Princess," her father said.

Becca looked up at him with a smile. "Yeah,
Daddy?"

He kneeled down in front of her, a wan
expression on his face. "I have to go do something. Real
quick."

A cold dread seized Becca's chest. She knew
this moment. She had been here before, a long long time ago.

"No, Daddy...no..."

"What's wrong with you?" Tiffany asked.

"It's okay, honey. You just stay right here.
Can you do that for me?"

"No Daddy no, no Daddy, no no."

"That's my girl. Daddy's little princess.
I'll be right back."

He stood and turned, walking in the
direction of the parking lot.

Becca stood there and waited.

"Hey," Tiffany said. "You can't leave her
waiting here."

Becca's father continued walking as if he
hadn't heard.

Tiffany took a few steps toward him. "Hey.
HEY! You can't leave a little girl alone here like that!"

He kept walking until he had disappeared
from view. Tiffany turned back to Becca.

"But that's exactly what he did." Becca
said. "And he never came back."

"This is why you started acting so weird.
This is why you kept acting mean to everyone all the time." Tiffany
sat down beside her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I don't care."

"You don't care?"

Becca stabbed a child's finger into
Tiffany's face. "I don't CARE. I don't need HIM. I don't need YOU.
I don't need ANYONE."

The scene shifted around them. They were in
the hallway of Becca's old house. She was standing in front of her
mother's bedroom, the door open. Becca was her eighteen-year old
self again, dressed for school. She staggered back two steps and
sagged against the door to her own bedroom.

"This is your house," Tiffany said.

"I don't care," Becca said. "I don't care.
I'm not doing this."

"Doing what?" Tiffany asked.

"I'm not fucking doing this anymore. DO YOU
HEAR ME?" She screamed at the ceiling. "Zachary? Or God? Or who the
fuck EVER? I am officially done with this shit! I'm not playing
anymore!"

"What are you on about? Is there something
in here?" Tiffany had wandered toward her mother's room.

"I don't care," Becca said. "I'm not doing
this."

Tiffany stepped into her mother's room. Her
gaze fell on the bed, and she gasped. "Oh...oh no..." She covered
her mouth with her hands and looked back at Becca.

"I don't care," Becca said.

"It's your mother..." Tiffany said.

"No it's not! It's not! My mother's fucking
dead. She killed herself. She killed herself while I was..." She
choked. "I was asleep in my room and she fucking killed
herself."

Tiffany ran to her and tried to put her arms
around her but Becca shoved her away.

"Get off of me! You think I care? You think
I give a rat's ass about them?"

"Yes," Tiffany said. "You have to care." She
fought against Becca's resistance and finally succeeded in
embracing her. "You have to care. This is what's been wrong with
you and you never told anyone. You have to care. You have to start
trusting people. You have to."

______________________

The road to graduation was not easy for
Becca. She spent endless hours at the gun range, took endless
lessons, until her marks were adequate. Countless late nights
hitting the books, studying for her classes. Tremendous amounts of
self-discipline, keeping herself from reading the thoughts of her
instructors and fellow students. Bruises, sore neck, sore back,
sore arms and legs, one fall after another, climbing off the mat
again and again and again and again. Gradually, things began to
turn. One shot hit the target, then another. One test passed, then
two, then three. She hit the mat less and less, nursed her injuries
fewer and farther between. And always Shep was there, in the back
of class, out on the grounds, waiting for her at the gun range. He
went over her results with her, gave her tips, coaching points,
made her think when she wanted to give up, made her laugh when she
wanted to cry, and annoyed the living shit out of her all the
way.

After the graduation ceremony, Becca had
asked Shep to meet her at his office. She closed the door behind
her. He leaned against his desk and folded his arms.

"Okay, what's all this about, Rebecca?"

"There's something I want to tell you. Show
you, really," Becca said.

"Okay."

"You remember you said you thought I had
some kind of talent? Almost like mesmerizing people?"

Shepherd nodded. "Yeah? As I recall you said
I was imagining things."

Becca winced. "Yeah. Well...I lied."

Shepherd laughed. "I know that, Rebecca. You
think I didn't know that?"

"It's more though," she said. "A lot
more."

"Okay?" He crossed his arms and looked at
her hard. "What does that mean exactly?"

"I can, like, read people's minds. Really
read them. What they call telepathy? I can do that."

"Okay," he said, "playtime's over. I'm not
buying it."

"No, I'm not kidding. I'm not. I can read
people's minds, and control them even."

"Miller! Not. Buying it." He laughed.

"Okay," Becca rubbed her hands together.
"Okay...I'm going to send thoughts into your head. Okay? It's
pretty weird."

He rolled his eyes. "Okay,
sure
. Go
for it."

BBELIEVE ME NOWW?

"Holy SHIT!" he fell backward, stumbling
into the wall. "Holy...oh my God..."

II TOLD YOU. IT'S MY POWERR

"This is crazy, this is crazy!" He got up
and turned to run for the door.

WWAITT

Becca reached her mind out and grabbed him,
freezing him in place.

DDON'T RUN! I'M NOT TRYING TO HURT YOUU

His thoughts reached a fever pitch, just
like all the others had:
Help me help me I can't move help
someone help me I can't move I can't move!

II'M GOING TO LET YOU GO, JUST CALM
DOWNN

Help me help me help help help!

SSTOP IT! STOP IT GOD DAMN IT! CALM THE FUCK
DOWNN