Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller (27 page)

There. She got her elbow over the top.
Is good.
Her arm muscles worked pretty well. Once over the top, she’d just fall to the other side. That was okay, she could take it. She could roll under the car and hide.

She raised her leg and put her toe into the fence. One more push and she’d be over.

* * *

A garage door at the back of the house opened. I ducked behind a bush.

Once again, here I was trying to do everything myself. Well, Viviana and I were. She shared my lone-wolf instinct. Perhaps if we’d gone to the FBI and told them everything, they would have sent in a commando squad and grabbed Zaharia in his sleep. He wouldn’t have had a chance to destroy the device.

That was a good plan, and it was going to be our next step. After Viviana snatched the device. At least I had filled Peggy in; I was making some progress on my trust issues. Of course, if Viviana had returned after fifteen minutes with the energy ball, we’d be patting ourselves on the back. As it was, I wanted to kick myself in the butt.

I’d just finished a circuit of the house, figuring out how I’d get in, when the door opened.

Two men came out on their tracked Segway-type devices, stopping at the entrance and talking. Zaharia and Ferka. Holsters on the scooters held crossbows.

They were well within the range of my Taser rifle. I pulled it out and put the laser dot right in the center of Ferka’s mass. This was a piece of cake. With Ferka down I was sure I could handle Zaharia. He wouldn’t get a chance to trigger the corrosive cascade that would destroy the energy ball.

I had just begun squeezing the trigger when the pair took off. They traveled at the speed of a runner, but I was okay. No problem. I re-centered the dot on Ferka’s wide back and pulled the trigger. The darts would find their goal as long as I kept the laser dot on the target.

The two darts flew, making midcourse corrections like a pair of fighter jets. Once Ferka was down, I’d zip-tie his hands and deal with Zaharia. Right on target.

The rifle jerked forward, just enough to feel. The darts had reached the limit of their range and tugged on the wires. Failure.

Should I follow the pair or go into the house? Was Viviana inside? Perhaps I could load a new cartridge while running and get a closer shot. The garage door started closing. If it closed all the way, I might not be able to get in. Decision time.

I ran to the door and rolled under it just in time.

I pulled on my own pair of DMSO-resistant gloves and yelled, “Viviana! Where are you?”

No sounds. No thoughts. I searched the house, careful not to touch anything. Her backpack lay at the end of a hall. I ran to it. A pocket held her radio. Where was she?

One room was a mess. An overturned table with tools all over the place. And blood. A lot of blood. I screamed and kicked the wall.

Where was she? Either she was restrained here or she’d escaped and they were after her. If she was inside, where were they going at six o’clock in the morning? Okay, I’d made the wrong decision.

But I went through the house calling her name. If she was conscious, I’d have heard her thoughts, even if she was gagged.

I stepped into the power room. The case to the energy ball was still locked. If I had Viviana’s lock picking skills, I could get it. Or I could try breaking the case open.

I looked up at the tank of corrosive liquid. One mistake and that liquid would cascade down and dissolve the device.

It didn’t matter. The device may have been more important than Zaharia’s health, but it wasn’t more important than Viviana’s life. To the world, maybe. Not to me.

The picture of Ferka forcing his will on her popped back into my mind, and I charged out of the room.
Wait!

Something caught my eye. Something on the side of the chute from the acid tank to the device, something red. A countdown timer. A timed dead man’s switch. A self-destruct mechanism. It was a cliché, but it made sense, given Zaharia’s paranoia.

One and a half hours to go. I checked my watch. We had until 7:35.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Viviana’s toe slipped out of the chain-link fence. The jolt was too much for her aching forearm gripping the top, and she tumbled to the ground, still inside the compound. She had been so close.

Mind is working, but am so weak
. She looked at her watch while wiggling her fingers. They barely responded to her commands. 6:05.

Am tired like marathon
. The effect came and went. She stared westward toward the house. The bright lights from the scooters moved and stopped repeatedly. Were they looking for her trail?

Run or hide? She stood up. Run. Put some distance between her and them.

She’d made no attempt to hide her trail; they’d locate it soon enough. She did a few jumping jacks, anything to shake out her lethargy and clumsiness. She shuffled south for forty meters, disturbing the leaves as much as possible, then retraced her steps and headed north, stepping lightly. She checked behind her. They wouldn’t be able to follow that trail.

She settled into a strange lumbering trot, her arms hanging straight down. Like a running zombie. Occasionally she’d slow down, her body desperate to take a break.
Nu!
She pushed herself harder.

What range did Eric have? She had no idea.
Eric, help me. Am in forest!

The whine from the scooters changed. She stopped and turned her head, listening. The sound had been intermittent, but now two steady tones sang through the forest.

She zombied up a rise, and from behind the trunk of a tree, watched their progress. The headlights flickered through the branches of the trees. They’d found her trail, heading right to the fence where she and Eric had cut the barbed wire.

After a pause, they headed southward.
Good
. Her misdirection had worked. Maybe while they followed the false trail, the effects of the drug would wear off.

Without waiting to see how far they’d go before discovering their error, she took off again with her strange gait. She needed to put more distance between her and them.

Where was Eric? Since the car was there, he hadn’t left. He’d surely gone to the house.

Up another hill, she squinted and made out the lights from the residence. She leaned toward it and yelled with her mind.
ERIC HELP ME!
She shook her head.
So strange.

Back to running. This was a huge property. Would they figure out that she was following the fence line? Maybe she’d find a way to scale it. If only she could climb.

There. A tree with a branch that extended over the fence. With her normal abilities, she’d be over and out in seconds. They wouldn’t be able to follow on their scooters.

No point in thinking about it. She couldn’t climb the tree. Would exertion get the drug out of her blood faster? Didn’t matter. She was already running as fast as she could.

Her foot splashed into a stream. Little more than a trickle. She stopped and kneeled down. Maybe water would help flush the drug from her system. She found a depression where the water had pooled and sucked in as much as possible. Sure, she might get giardia later. If she lived past tonight.

Back up and running, she flexed her arms to get the blood flowing. She swung them a little more. Did they feel better? Yes. Too soon for the water to help, maybe, but definitely better. She repeatedly made fists and released them. She was also coughing less. If she’d gotten the full dose, she’d have been in trouble.

She kept her ears tuned to the sound of the scooters. One was louder than the other. They once again seemed to be hunting for her trail. Starting and stopping. An image of Uncle Zaharia showing her the carcass of a wild boar when she was young appeared in her mind. He’d loved hunting. He must have been a talented tracker.

Her arms had regained about half their strength.

There. The perfect tree. She must have some cat in her—she instinctively wanted to gain height. She needed to rest. Could she fool them? Time to hide.

She ran farther on, then doubled back. The trunk leaned over and the bark was easy to grip. Getting to the first branch was the hardest part. She fell once, scraping her shoulder. The scooters were silent. With the next try, she reached the first branch, and it was easier from there. She climbed to a height of about five meters.

She lay facedown on a wide branch, her arms dangling like the paws of a sleeping leopard. After fifteen minutes of glorious rest, the whine from the scooters resumed. They were coming toward her, but not fast. Probably keeping an eye on her trail. She pulled her arms up, trying to blend in with the branches. In the summer, she would have been completely hidden by the leaves.

They passed below her and continued on. Maybe she could stay hidden here forever. Or until the drug wore off.

They passed five meters along her latest false trail and stopped. Ferka got off his scooter and squatted down looking at the ground. So, he was the tracker. Zaharia stood frozen on his machine. Silence.

What if she coughed? With that thought, a tickle in her throat caught her attention. No problem. She only had to hold off until they continued along her track.

Ferka pointed north along the false trail, and Zaharia nodded.

Viviana nodded.
Da! Du te, du te!
When relief seemed imminent, the urge to cough built. Ridiculous. How hard could it be to simply not cough for twenty seconds? Her body had other ideas. She dedicated her entire mind and will to not coughing.

Ferka stood and gripped the handlebars of his machine.

She couldn’t deny the cough. It was going to happen. Perhaps she could just clear her throat a tiny bit to keep the cough at bay for, what, ten seconds more? She tried to do a tiny rumble in her throat, like making a “K” sound with closed lips, but it escaped her lips. It wasn’t loud, but it was a cough.

Ferka froze and whipped his head around, looking at the base of the tree. Her tree.

Eric! Eric! Help!

Ferka’s gaze climbed the trunk toward her.

* * *

My own name flashed into my head. What was that? It wasn’t like hearing someone’s thoughts; it was more like my own thought.

I’d come out the front of the house, convinced Viviana wasn’t inside. I’d have heard her thoughts. Even if she’d been knocked out I might have gotten something. She must have escaped, and they were chasing her. I’d wasted too much time trying to get into some locked rooms.

I tilted my head and lowered my jaw to clear my eustachian tubes, making my ears as sensitive as possible. No sound from the scooters, only a squirrel chattering and some birds chirping. The sun would rise soon.

Could my name have been Viviana calling to me with her mind? Normally I could sense the direction to the thinker, but if this was her thought, it was too faint for that.

Maybe she was indeed tied up inside, and she’d just regained consciousness. Perhaps her thoughts were muffled by the rock walls.

I turned to go back inside but then caught more thoughts. Jumbled thoughts. It was like hearing someone’s conversation from another room. I climbed up the angled rock wall of the house and stood on the roof, concentrating. I couldn’t understand a single word. Was it Zaharia, Ferka? Couldn’t even tell if it was Romanian or English, but the manner of the thoughts was familiar. Someone I’d encountered briefly?

Was it someone new? I checked for Egyptian hieroglyphics. None. I wasn’t hallucinating.

I climbed down and went back inside. Back to those locked rooms.

* * *

Ferka’s gaze started up the tree, but he stopped and smiled. That leering, evil smile again. He heard her, yes? He might have even seen her although he didn’t look directly at her branch.

He stepped onto his scooter. He gestured down her false trail and yelled, “
Du te.
” They whined away without looking back.

The terrible conclusion was obvious. He wanted her for himself. He’d be back without Zaharia.

She fluttered her fingers. Much better. The water or the exertion or the rest had helped.

She climbed down the tree with her former grace and sprinted off to the house. Eric must be there. It was probably about two kilometers away.
Eric, where are you?

Running felt good now. With the drug, she’d had to consciously direct her feet, but now they flew along automatically, even avoiding the exposed roots she barely noticed with her eyes.

She kept her ears focused on the sound of the scooters. She burst out of the forest, into the wide field that stretched between her and the residence. Nowhere to hide now.

The sounds of the scooters changed. She stopped and turned her head. Both scooters went silent. After a pause, they started again, but the two sounds were diverging. Was Ferka heading back to the tree?

She resumed running, and the sound from one of the scooters suddenly became louder. She turned her head and looked back. There it was. It had just rounded a hill and was headed directly for her. It came at an angle to her path.