Winds of Change Page 20

  But time softened all wounds, and now he thought it might be nice to have a companion in the house. Or not; his hours were so irregular, and he was gone so often, that he wouldn’t be much in the way of company for a dog. There were pet sitters and dog walkers, of course, but he’d never seen the point in having an animal if you weren’t going to care for it personally.

  Maybe it was simply that the house felt so empty and quiet. He didn’t like the sensation of being able to feel himself think…especially when his thoughts were less than pleasant.

  Why did his brain delight in torturing him, letting him see some of the events of his recent past but not others? Logically, he knew there was no actual torture involved; memory could be a tricky thing, and just because you wanted to recall something didn’t mean you’d be able to perform such a feat on demand.

  Still, he was annoyed that he could see Jake Wilcox’s house clearly in his mind and yet not remember the address. Somewhere in Flagstaff, obviously. The house was old…old enough to be registered with the local historical society?

  That prospect seemed like a distinct possibility. Since he was almost ready to leave anyway, Lenz decided to put off his search until he was back at the facility. Traffic at that hour was light — well, light for the greater D.C. area, at any rate — and he was in his office and seated at his desk in less than twenty minutes.

  To his relief, the Flagstaff Historical Society had an excellent and up-to-date website, one that gave a brief history of the town and called out its various points of interest. Also included on the site was a list of houses that had been designated as landmarks, with each entry on the list hyperlinked to a gallery of photos for the particular home in question.

  He dutifully clicked on each one, thinking it would have been more logical to have one photo for each house that served as the hyperlink, since he couldn’t tell from the street addresses which home might be the subject of his search. Midway down was an entry for 52 West Birch Street.

  And there it was — an imposing green-painted Victorian house with a turret in front and stained glass bordering the front-facing windows. The photo had been taken in the autumn, and so the grass out front had been yellowed by frost, and the sycamore tree planted in the yard blazed in gold and orange hues, but it was definitely the same house where Lenz had seen Jake Wilcox and Adara Grant standing on the front porch and sharing an embrace.

  The address seemed familiar, too, as if now that he’d been able to make the connection between the visuals in his mind and the concrete evidence of the street number attached to the place, his mind had finally decided to recognize they were one and the same. He wanted to shake his head at himself but didn’t see the point in wasting the energy. The important thing was that he knew exactly where to find his quarry.

  He’d arrived at the facility early enough that Dawson was just settling down at her workstation, covered mug of tea set carefully away from the computer, as he approached. However, her manner was brisk enough when she turned toward him and said, “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning, Dawson,” he replied. “I think I know where to find them. Can you pull up records for 52 West Birch Street, Flagstaff, Arizona?”

  A nod. “Of course, sir. Just give me a moment.”

  He waited off to one side as she allowed herself a sip of tea before focusing her attention on the screen before her. Some rapid typing, and then a page from the Coconino County Recorder’s website appeared. Dawson frowned slightly as she gazed at it.

  “This says the property has been owned by someone named Tyler Greene since 2016.”

  Who the hell was Tyler Greene? Was that Jake Wilcox’s real name?

  No. Lenz couldn’t say precisely how he knew, but something in his bones told him that Jake Wilcox was the real name, and Tyler Greene the alias. In a way, that made sense. If Wilcox had been doing his best to cover up his identity, then erasing his name from the property records for his residence would have been a necessary step. And if he was working with the same hacker who’d been causing so much trouble for Lenz and his team over the past several weeks, then it probably would have been easy enough for him to accomplish such a feat.

  “Before that?” he asked.

  A pause as she scrolled through the record. “Someone named Joseph Garnett. He owned the property for forty years. Before that…Thomas Wilcox.” Dawson glanced up at him. “The same Wilcoxes we’ve been talking about?”

  “Most likely,” Lenz replied. “They’ve been in the area for a long time. No doubt they did what they could to keep important pieces of real estate like that in the family.” That also answered the question as to how someone as young as Jake Wilcox could have afforded such an obviously expensive house. Lenz figured the man had been given a sweetheart deal by a relative who wanted to move to a smaller place with less upkeep. After seeing his parents spend vast sums of money to keep their brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in tiptop shape, he knew all too well that Victorian-era homes could often be money pits behind their charming exteriors.

  “And Tyler Greene…?” Dawson asked, although, judging by the way her brows drew together, Lenz thought she’d already drawn her own conclusions.

  “An alias. Jake Wilcox doing his best to throw us off the scent.”

  She nodded. “And you think Wilcox has Adara Grant with him?”

  “I’m almost positive of it. I’ll need you to order the jet.”

  “Your team?”

  “Just Tolliver and Ives. This needs to be quick and fast — because the Wilcoxes are such a prominent family in the area, we don’t want to attract too much attention.”

  “Of course, sir.” Dawson went to work, using the text interface on her computer to send the necessary messages to his team, asking them to assemble at Hyde Field. “You’ll be able to leave in one hour.”

  Not perfect, but he reminded himself that it was still very early in Arizona, and he should have no problem catching up with the two fugitives before they headed out for the day. “Thank you, Dawson,” he said. “While I’m gone, keep digging through the Wilcox family history. I still can’t see the connection between Adara Grant and this man, but that’s only because we haven’t found the right piece of evidence yet.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her expression was already somewhat distracted, telling Lenz that his assistant’s agile mind had begun to pick at the problem in an attempt to determine whether they’d overlooked any important pieces of evidence, anything that might illuminate the reason behind Jake Wilcox’s connection to Adara Grant.

  “Stay in touch,” he said — an unnecessary admonition, since he knew Dawson would reach out immediately the moment she found anything of value. Still, those words served well enough as a goodbye, and so he left her workstation and returned to his office so he could retrieve the duffle he always left packed there in case of urgent business that necessitated a speedy departure.

  However, all that speed seemed to be for naught. When he arrived at the airport, Ives, who functioned as both pilot and backup muscle when necessary, informed Lenz that there was a problem with one of the jet’s fuel pumps and that they’d have to wait while a mechanic made the necessary repairs.

  “I could try to order another jet,” Ives said, “but we’d probably have to wait just as long for another one to be available, and it would involve a lot of paperwork.”

  Neither of those options was at all desirable, and so Lenz said they’d wait, which seemed to be the lesser of two evils. If he hadn’t just suffered the indignity of trying to defend himself and the program to Wallace Bryant in the aftermath of Adara Grant’s disappearance, he might have opted for chartering another jet, and the hell with the extra expense. But the last thing he wanted was anyone looking too closely at his expenditures, and so prudence seemed to be the order of the day.

  They ended up leaving two hours behind schedule, which, while not optimal, wasn’t the end of the world, either. Lenz was fairly certain that neither Jake Wilcox nor Adara could have any idea that he�
��d figured out where they’d gone to ground. After all, Jake had expended a good deal of effort to make sure he would be extremely hard to find. He couldn’t know that Lenz’s memories had come flooding back, providing enough information for him to track them all the way to Flagstaff.

  Because they’d done this drill multiple times before, once they were in the air, Lenz pulled out his laptop, sent a short message to Dawson letting her know he was en route to Flagstaff, and then opened up a report from Dr. Richards about her plans to parallel-test some of the subjects.

  We’ve thoroughly explored their individual abilities, Richards wrote, and so now it is time to study whether their gifts affect one another, creating a so-called “stacking” effect, or whether those abilities exist in isolation and can’t be altered in any way.

  Her report made no mention of Adara Grant’s disappearance, for which Lenz was grateful. If Adara had remained at the facility, Dr. Richards and Dr. Woodrow probably would have spent another week or so on further preliminary tests with her. As matters stood, they had no option but to move on to the next phase of testing. Lenz would not allow himself to be annoyed by the subtext to Michelle Richards’ words. After all, she’d been planning this next step for some time, and if Adara had never been brought to the facility at all, her absence wouldn’t have even been a factor.

  He made a few quick notes on the report, sent a reply to Dr. Richards, and glanced up from his laptop. As he’d expected, Tolliver was power-napping in his seat across the aisle. The man’s ability to sleep anywhere and at any time, no matter what the circumstances, was still somewhat boggling to Lenz, who viewed slumber as an uneasy ally at best, but at least he knew the other man would be rested and ready to face any contingency once they reached Flagstaff.

  Not that he was expecting any huge confrontations. Jake Wilcox couldn’t possibly be expecting him to show up on his doorstep, and so Lenz’s plan was to keep Tolliver and Ives close enough where they could come to his aid if necessary, but also far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to overhear any of what might pass between Lenz and his quarry once they came face to face. The two men only knew that Project Daedalus involved acquiring subjects for testing and nothing more; they had no idea the people involved possessed talents that the more credulous might call supernatural.

  But they weren’t supernatural. No, it was only that they’d somehow managed to tap into portions of the mind that most ordinary people didn’t even know existed. Dr. Richards and her team had managed to isolate subtle differences in EEG readings in the test subjects’ brain waves from those of regular people, but they still hadn’t been able to adequately explain why those slight differences in their EEG patterns translated to the ability to move objects with their mind, or alter their appearance.

  Or make the wind and the weather obey their commands.

  However, he had every reason to believe that — hopefully, sooner rather than later — the doctor and her team would find that elusive connection. Once they’d established that baseline, then they should also be able to determine whether those gifts slept in every individual, and all that was required to awaken a person’s extrasensory talents was a subtle manipulation of their brain waves to achieve the desired result.

  At least, that was Dr. Richards’ hypothesis, and the main reason why she’d been brought on board as the head of research with Project Daedalus. It was one thing to seek out gifted individuals and bring them into the fold; that work was useful, but also haphazard and unreliable. No, the really important work would involve awakening latent gifts in those who already possessed the training and knowledge to make them an invaluable tool in homeland defense.

  Midway through the flight, Dawson messaged him.

  Still no clear connection between Jake Wilcox and Adara Grant, she wrote. Discovered some records indicating that Lyssa Grant spent a few days in Flagstaff in mid-December 1995 for a skiing trip that was cut short when her friend was injured. Will send more info as I find it.

  Interesting. So, it seemed there was one small connection between Adara Grant and Flagstaff, tenuous as it seemed at first look.

  However….

  Adara Grant’s birthday was in mid-September. Her mother’s ill-fated skiing trip had taken place exactly nine months earlier.

  Coincidence?

  Not likely. While the spaces for the father’s information on Adara’s birth certificate had been left conspicuously blank, Lenz was finding it more and more likely that the man in question probably belonged to the Wilcox family.

  Was, in fact, Connor Wilcox’s father.

  Of course. That was why Adara’s eyes had haunted him…why he’d seen those same eyes staring at him from Connor’s face. No wonder Connor had wanted to find her, although Lenz still couldn’t speculate as to why he’d enlisted Jake Wilcox to search for her rather than taking on that task himself.

  He typed a quick message back to Dawson. Research Connor Wilcox’s father. I think he’s the connection.

  Immediately, he got a response.

  Working, was all Dawson said, but that was enough.

  And he was gratified to see a follow-up message appear less than ten minutes later.

  Jackson Samuel Wilcox, his assistant wrote. Deceased March 10, 1999. Survived by his son Connor; another son, Damon, died eight years ago. Estate valued at approximately five million dollars at the time of his death.

  Interesting. Lenz already knew the Wilcoxes were prosperous, but for some reason, he hadn’t expected them to be millionaires. Any other immediate family? he wrote back in response.

  No, Dawson responded. Jackson was an only child. Wife passed away more than thirty years ago. No children other than Connor and Damon.

  So, Connor was an orphan…just like Adara herself. No wonder the man had wanted to locate his long-lost sibling. How had he learned about her? Deathbed confession from his father?

  Probably not. Otherwise, Adara would have been found much earlier. Lenz decided it was probably better not to speculate as to the “whys” behind the events that had been so recently set in motion. What mattered was that they’d all been inadvertently put on a collision course, one they couldn’t seem to escape.

  Which was fine by him. While Randall Lenz wasn’t the sort of person to believe in fate, he also understood that sometimes you couldn’t escape the circumstances you found yourself in. No, you could only go along for the ride and plan for the best possible outcome.

  In this case, that meant confronting Jake Wilcox and Adara Grant, and returning her to the program. If it turned out that Jake possessed peculiar talents of his own, then he would also be added to the Daedalus Project as its newest test subject. In addition to the service pistol in its shoulder holster, Lenz carried with him a gun loaded with the same tranquilizer he’d used to knock out Adara in her rented home in Riverton, Wyoming.

  They’d be coming with him…like it or not.

  18

  Beside me, Jake stiffened. Before I could even blink, he raised his hand in a jerky, reflexive motion, and the gun Randall Lenz held went flying. It hit the polished wooden floor and skidded to a stop against the far wall.

  Wow. Apparently, Jake could perform all sorts of feats with his telekinetic powers, and I murmured a thank-you under my breath to the universe for his quick thinking.

  However, my gratitude evaporated in the next second, because, without missing a beat, Agent Lenz pulled another gun from his pocket and aimed it right at Jake. Even as a terrified denial burst from my lips, he pulled the trigger.

  Not the explosive bang I was expecting. No, instead, the projectile that shot from the gun’s muzzle emerged with a strange, evil hiss, and a small red dart buried itself in Jake’s neck. For a single, horrifying second, his eyes met mine, wide with shock, and then he slumped to the ground.

  “No worries,” Lenz said, coming toward me, gun pointed at my throat. “A simple tranquilizer. I can do the same to you, Ms. Grant…or you can come with me willingly. I think you must remember that the drug
does have a few side effects, even if they wear off quickly.”

  Oh, yes, I remembered the headache that had pulsed behind my temples when I awoke the last time he’d drugged me. I would have preferred to avoid revisiting that sensation if at all possible.

  And although I knew I wasn’t entirely defenseless, that I could have summoned a bolt of lightning to strike him a second time, I had the uneasy realization that I wasn’t sure I could do so before he pulled the trigger and the tranquilizer dart took me out of commission anyway.

  My entire body ached with thwarted fury, but I forced myself to put up my hands. “I’m not willing,” I said slowly, “but I’ll come with you.”

  “Very good,” he said. Someone else might have sent me a gloating smile at that point, but his expression remained brisk and almost businesslike. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and drew out a compact walkie-talkie. “I have them. Meet me here for pickup and extraction.”

  I didn’t know who he was talking to. Probably the same goons who’d knocked out the men Carson Archuleta had left guarding my house in Riverton. Only this time, Jake and I didn’t have anyone protecting us. We’d thought we would be safe, that we could just come back here and wait until it was time to visit Randall Lenz at his house and try to talk some sense into him.

  Irony could be a real bitch.