A Loner Mentalist Pt. 08

"I'm allowed to know things?"

He shot her a look. She raised a hand in apology. He cleared his throat and said, "I've made a slave." She stared at him incredulously. "He, uh, he was scum, quite frankly. He enjoyed causing and spreading misery and he even killed a man once. He has some mad skills that I need, so I've changed his personality and deepest beliefs and he's going to," he paused to choose his next word, "aid me to the best of his abilities from now on."

Mia looked at him for a long time before saying, "Ok."

He nodded with relief that she wasn't disgusted by him. "I'm not going to keep him, or anything like that. This isn't permanent. As soon as he's done helping me with what I need, I'm going to have him call the police and confess his many crimes."

"So, what are these mad skills you need from him?"

"He's a hacker. He's going to gather some information for me."

"What kind of information?" Mia asked.

"He's going to track Jacobs' movements for me and he's going to try and figure out how Jacobs had talked with his master. If I could get my hands on their communications...I could restore some minds and heal some suffering families. Plus, it would, obviously, lead me to Patrick and the evil puppetmaster cunt."

Mia didn't ask further and he took a shower while she ordered breakfast. After breakfast, Jack drove them to a downtown coffee house, where they met with George Henderson. George had thinning auburn hair and stood an inch shorter than Mia. He also looked to be about three times as wide as she. He was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, both of which bore multiple stains. Mia hoped the stains were from food. The large stains under his armpits clearly weren't.

They ordered their beverages and moved to a table. George immediately pulled a thin, metal necklace from his sweatshirt. "I got it, Boss," he said in his nasal voice. "I also got a spare. I'll never take it off for any reason, don't worry."

"I know you won't," Jack said and put his laptop on the table.

George wasted no time in booting it up. He clicked through some of the menus and shook his head in disdain before picking up his backpack. While he rummaged through it, the barista called that their order was ready. Mia brought the drinks to the table. George had a bunch of flash drives on the table and was plugging them into the laptop, one by one, to copy some programs and run them before moving on to the next. It took ten minutes, but then he happily declared, "There! No one can ever get into this laptop without you giving them your password, Boss. I've also taken the liberty of making sure your web surfing will be virtually untraceable."

"Good," Jack said. "Did you copy the lists I've made?"

George nodded. "Of course, Boss."

Jack closed his eyes and looked within. He felt confident that he could use his power without incurring a major headache. "I have it on good authority that you could do a whole lot more for me if you had administrator access to the internet service provider's mainframe. Who has the codes that can grant you that?"

"Seventeen people," George said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. He showed it to Jack. "This is a payroll from the service provider, listing the mainframe administrators. These people have the power to erase any online traces. Like, actually erase, not just reroute it randomly. If I had their codes, just one of their codes, I'd be unstoppable!"

Jack raised a bemused eyebrow at the comment and peered again at the list. "Can you call any one of these people on the phone?"

George looked almost offended by the question. "Of course, Boss."

"Ok, then," Jack said. "Pick one and call them up on the phone. You'll tell them that they won a free trip to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan."

George tapped his phone a few dozen times in two seconds and then held it up to his ear. "What do I say after that?"

"Nothing," Jack said. "That will be more than enough." He focused on a hole in his cloak in the shape of the name of the Canadian town and state. He felt the woman's mind and made a new hole to look for her administrator's password. He wrote it down on a napkin and handed it to George. "This is the code you're looking for. Use it wisely."

George held the napkin with reverence. "Yes, Boss."

Jack gestured at his laptop. "Are we done here?"

"Yes, Boss. I'll call you as soon as I find anything about their communication."

"I know you will," Jack said. He sipped at his drink and got up. Mia followed, while George stayed seated and looked like he wanted to make love to the writing on the napkin.

From Minneapolis Jack saw the memories of thirty-seven mentalists, only seven of whom were still alive. After sending warning letters to the seven, he decided to go south the next day. He suspected that he might need more than a day at each stop he made in Arizona and California and he decided to get those out of the way first. Canada and the Northwest could wait a week, or two. The way south led through Nebraska and Kansas. Neither place left much of an impression on Mia.

They drove through Colorado and stopped in Greendale again. Jack paid a visit to the graves. He felt a shortness of breath as he stood over each of the five recent graves. Mia squinted over one of them. "Jamie Jacobs," she read from the marker. "That's the bad guy, right?" Jack didn't trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. He lay fresh flowers on each grave and said a little prayer. Mia tried to make small talk, but he could hardly hear her.

While he was praying over one of the goons' graves, he heard the click of the tiny pistol behind him and spun into a fighting stance. His dogs pricked up in confused alarm. He searched the area behind himself, but there was nothing there. Nothing but graves all around. Mia stepped closer and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Babe? You okay?"

He shrugged the hand away, almost by reflex, and said, "Fine. I am fine. Perfectly fine." He left the graveyard feeling sick to his stomach. The drive to Santa Fe was a quiet one. He found thirteen dead mentalists there and three living ones. He didn't think to look at George RR Martin's mind while he was one with the aether. After his high ended, he also passed on the chance to go visit the man's movie theater, opting to stay shut up in their hotel room. Mia tried to get him to talk, but he didn't even comment when she mentioned that there was another Las Vegas, just miles to the east of them. All she got from him was a no, which cancelled her arousal from being leered at by strangers.

He spent the night waking up from nightmares every few hours. He felt glad that he couldn't remember what they were. He suspected they were about Jacobs and the confrontation in the alley they had, but the fact that he couldn't recall them gave him hope.Maybe they'll stop altogether. He didn't feel certain that he should look forward to the day he no longer felt guilty over what had happened. In the morning, he got in the RV and sat heavily in the back. Mia asked him where they were going, but he was too tired to give clear instructions.

Mia checked the navigation system and extrapolated their course. She veered a little bit to choose Phoenix, Arizona as their next destination. The distance between Santa Fe and Phoenix was 324 miles, so she knew that wouldn't leave Jack with big gaps or overlaps between his search circles. She listened to music as she drove, but Jack rebuffed all attempts at conversation with single-syllable words. He picked at his food during their lunch break and that nearly put her off her appetite as well. She muttered about how mature and reasonable he was acting, right behind his back, but even that failed to get a rise out of him.

Jack only spoke when they crossed the Phoenix city limits. "This will leave a gap," he said, almost startling Mia as he moved to the shotgun seat. "From Truth or consequences to El Paso. Uncovered."

Mia screwed her lips up tight and said, "Well, you shoulda thought of that sooner, babe. It's not like I didn't ask you where we were going. You just sat there like a log."

"Sorry."

"Look, babe, I wanna help you. Ican help you, you just gotta let me in, you know? You gotta tell me what's going on inside that head of yours. You gotta share, babe."

"I will."

She could tell from his tone of voice that he was just saying that. She shook her head in disapproval.Men. They think they're so tough, but they're all just big babies.

Jack's vision quest showed him five living and twenty-four deceased mentalists. He spent the time in the theater exploring which levels of government were impervious to mind reading. He learned it was federal agents, members of state and federal legislature, as well as the top tiers of executive and judicial branches of state government. He took a long shower after posting the warning letters.

A routine check into the dogs' minds for a trace of Patrick, or the puppetmaster, snapped Jack out of his misery. An FBI Hostage Rescue Team was deploying covertly in the hotel's underground parking lot, watched by Aramis and Athos from the RV. He sent the dogs the order to leave the RV and sneak up on the Feds, but they showed him that the Feds were searching the parking lot. He sent his dogs out to hide under a nearby car and see if the Feds were looking for the RV. Aramis worked the latch on the door and they hid under a nearby station wagon.

As expected, no combination of thoughts gave him insight into the minds of the agents sweeping the parking lot and the hotel. Looking through his cloak for people holding automatic weapons and searching for targets yielded hundreds of results from dozens of firing ranges. He tried to tell himself that the Feds were there for someone else, a drug kingpin, or something like that, but his gut told him different. He turned off the shower and ran out of the bathroom, dripping water everywhere.

Porthos was with Mia, and Jack took a peek through his eyes. Mia was talking with some people in a coffee shop. Jack listened in and snuck into the minds of those people. They were just normal people politely answering her questions. No one but Mia was wearing a necklace in that cafe. He sighed with relief. His dogs told him the Feds found and surrounded the RV and he knew the shit was on a collision course with the fan.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed another, which he put over his shoulder. He grabbed all his bags and felt grateful that he had been too down in the dumps to unpack that day. He had only booted up his laptop to make new entries to his lists. He looked out his window and felt a mind watching pretty much the same view. It was a young woman on her honeymoon. He found out which room she was staying in and gave her the order to let him in when he got there and not object to helping him in any way she could.

He ran out of the room with Spot leading the way. They ran two floors down the stairs. Neither Jack nor Spot could hear any boots stomping up the stairwell. Jack got off on the right floor and got to the woman's room, just as the husband did. The sight of a wet young man wearing only a towel was enough of a crib for Jack to come inside the man's mind. He made the man feel very helpful and that got him expressly invited into the room.

Once inside the room, Jack stopped, unsure of how to proceed. His heart was pounding in his throat. Getting out of his room seemed so obvious to him that he had done it on autopilot. Aramis and Athos reported the FBI tearing the RV apart. "Fuck!" He had no clue why the FBI was after him. The why didn't matter much. His first priority was to evade capture and get the hell out of the hotel. He sent the dogs the order to sneak out of the parking lot and stake out the exits.

Mia!

He sent her the text message, "drop phone follow porthos to find me avoid fbi go now" He looked through Porthos' eyes as she ignored her phone and continued with her relaxed chat. He had the Great Dane jump on her and paw at her front pocket until she pulled out her phone and saw then message. Then he had Porthos lead her out of the cafe.

"Where, where, where do I send them?" Jack paced the room. Mia looked scared through Porthos' eyes. He needed to establish two way communication with her and that meant public phones. He ordered Porthos to go west and lead her to a public phone that was at least three blocks away from the cafe. "Great. Now I just have to find a public phone for myself." As he thought about calling from this couple's room phone, he came up with an idea.

He said, "Beetlejuice," three times and slipped back into the husband's mind. He had the man call down and ask to be connected to security. When he was refused, Jack made him be insistent. Once he was finally connected, Jack had the man claim his wife had gone missing. Using the husband's words as a template for his cloak holes, Jack slipped into the mind of the security officer on the other end of the line.

There were several FBI agents at the security station, using the internal surveillance feeds. They were watching their breach team get into position outside the room Jack was supposed to be in. They were waiting for the agent in charge to give them the go ahead to breach, making all the hotel security personnel nervous. Jack was astounded as he expanded the holes in his cloak and learned that the FBI told hotel security that they considered Jack the most dangerous homegrown terrorist of all times. He lost the connection to the security man, who also hung up on the husband, but not before seeing that the FBI agent in charge was waiting on the phone for someone else to givehim the go ahead to breach.

His laptop made the noise which indicated an incoming Skype call. Jack frowned at it.Could this be whoever is behind the FBI raid, calling to gloat?