At the Merest Glance Read online

  She shook herself. “My parents?”

  Isobel faced her. “I don’t think you understand what we are. What you are. To the best of our knowledge, you are the seventh person that the entire US government knows about—anywhere—with a verifiable psi power. The secrecy of this unit is such that there are only four other people, all on a ranch in Montana, who know of our existence. They’re our operational command. They take on missions and we accomplish them. We’re still in the trial stage, but we’re getting better. We’ve had to.”

  “But you’re telling this to a total stranger.”

  Isobel smiled. “First, many people underestimate my gift. I may know more about what kind of a person you are than perhaps even you do. And that would be before I called you in, and our command gave you a clean bill of health—a very detailed clean bill of health. This is an exceedingly elite team and we’re very careful. Mr. Brown sends his compliments, by the way, and no, he doesn’t know why he received a call from our colonel. Of course, he isn’t stupid either.”

  Tom, for all his quirks, was the closest thing she had to a real father. And he was very not stupid.

  “He asked us to ask if you’d ‘found your trail’ yet.”

  Have ta find your own trail, lass. How many hundred times had he said that to her? Yet each summer, with nowhere else to go, she’d gone back to his tracker school, still no closer to finding an answer to his question.

  The only reason she wasn’t planning to return this year was because she couldn’t afford the plane ticket without touching the allowance that her parents had been dumping into her bank account since the day she’d left for boarding school. It now constituted a small fortune, and she doubted they were even aware that it was still being augmented every month. Or that they cared one way or the other. It would be pocket change to them.

  “And what trail do you see that haven’t I found yet?” She tried to put heat into it, but it came out more like a child’s whisper. She was fairly sure she didn’t want to know.

  “You know what makes a great movie?”

  “A good script?”

  Isobel chuckled. “That helps. It’s the people. From the key grip to the stand-in to the star and director. I won’t do a film unless it’s with good people. That’s one of the reasons my career has been so exceptional, because I can tell ahead of time if they’re the kind of people I want to be working with.”

  Katie glanced back across the sheep’s meadow to where the SUV was still parked along the side of the country lane. Some were standing around. But Anton, no longer identifiable in the descending evening light except by his size, sat atop one of the stone walls with his head bowed.

  “But how do you know?”

  Isobel rested a hand on Katie’s arm. “Just one of the unexpected benefits of my gift. Emphasis on gift.” Then she walked up the path, leaving Katie to decide on her next action. If she’d missed the last coach to Mousehole, she had a couple friends in Bude. She could walk to her friends in under an hour and get her real life back.

  Whereas in the other direction…

  Chapter 10

  Anton’s hands ached from keeping them clenched as he sat on the stone wall, hunched with his elbows on his knees.

  Even Michelle had come over and tried being nice to him.

  “She didn’t mean it, Anton. She’s just hurt and scared.”

  When he’d bit back at her with, “Says the freak to the freak,” all she did was hug him long and hard.

  “Shit, Missy.” He’d managed not to cry on her shoulder, but it had been too fucking close.

  Now all he could do was sit and wait for Katie to walk away from him. The only woman for him was going to have to be another freak. But over the last forty-eight hours he’d finally learned what he wanted. It was someone a hell of a lot like Katie Whitfield, which experience had taught him was a very rare commodity.

  He didn’t give a goddamn if she chose to never sense another person, and demoted her gift to the category of a warped parlor trick.

  But he couldn’t turn his vision off. Not and be who he was.

  He’d loved having that since he was a little boy. Being bad and sitting in the corner was no real punishment because he could just leave and go look at things elsewhere. He couldn’t do things, like join in someone else’s game, but he could sneak up on a toad or a deer until they were practically touching noses. Even cats didn’t twig to him being there and so he’d figured he was truly invisible until he’d met Katie.

  If he ever needed a better view while he was flying, he could just go sit on the top of the helo and look around. The swing of the main rotors didn’t matter because he wasn’t there to be hit.

  Anton liked who he was and what he could do.

  But why did it have to drive every single woman he ever liked right out the door?

  Not that he was in love with Katie Whitfield. Because no matter what the storybooks said, it didn’t happen that fast. Well, Jesse and Hannah had. But that had been under fire in the Honduran jungle. Ricardo and Michelle had a ton of history before they got together. And they almost didn’t have a choice once they’d discovered how to link telepathically, yet it had still taken them most of a year.

  Now there was just himself and Isobel. And she wasn’t for him. He guessed that since he was such a damned mess, which she’d be able to sense, that he wasn’t for her either.

  For him there just had to be someone like—

  A pair of battered sneakers came to a stop where he’d been staring down at the grass until it was lost in the darkness.

  He didn’t even have to look ankle high to know it was her. Only Katie would stand right in front of him with her thoughts so clear that he could almost hear them like a Michelle-Ricardo telepath thing.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  He looked up at her face, as much as he could see of it in the descending darkness.

  “Can you do me a favor, Anton?”

  “If you’re asking me to forget that I’m a freak—”

  She shook her head.

  “If you’re asking me to forget you, that’s not gonna be any more likely.”

  She shook her head again.

  “If you’re—”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’ll never get the nerve to say what I’m trying to say.”

  Anton almost laughed. “Okay, right. Shutting up. Not good at that when I’m nervous.”

  She touched his arm briefly, but drew it back before he could think whether or not he was supposed to take her hand.

  He resisted the urge to shift over to his vision—it was much better than normal sight at night—but checking out her expression, when she couldn’t see him back, didn’t seem very fair.

  “I’m really new to this.” He could hear her take a deep breath. “I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

  Because he couldn’t think of what to say, he prompted her with a grunt when she paused.

  “Just know…that…I’m looking for my path. I have no idea what it looks like or where it leads, but the fact that there might actually be one for me is more than I ever knew before.”

  “Katie, do you want to walk the, uh, start of that path with…” he couldn’t quite say “me” so he asked, “…us?”

  He could just make out her nod.

  Anton wanted to get up and dance. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and just hold on. Instead, he spoke as softly as the night.

  “I’d like that, Katie. I’d like that a lot.”

  When she nodded again, he rose slowly and side by side they headed over to the SUV.

  A trail begins, Katie reminded herself. It progresses. The important task isn’t to interpret the trail’s intent. The important task is to follow it in the moment and see where it leads. It was the closest thing she had to a mantra.

  But in all of her years of training and working as a guide, she hadn’t expected it to lead to a highly secure government site.

  Once she and Anton climbed bac
k into the SUV, they’d finished the short drive to the Bude antenna site.

  Compared to the Skewjack building, GCHQ Bude was intensely secure. It was one of the signal-gathering stations of the Government Communications Headquarters—the equivalent of America’s NSA.

  Ever since the First World War they’d been the codebreaking arm of the United Kingdom. They’d run Bletchley Park where Germany’s Enigma Code had been broken, significantly changing the course of World War II for the better.

  And in 2013, Edward Snowden had revealed that they were listening to all of the trans-Atlantic cable traffic right here—though she still didn’t know why everyone had acted so surprised.

  The UK’s center for processing the signals from undersea cables lay just five klicks north of Bude itself, maybe seven by the winding country lane that passed the gate. Perched a hundred meters back from the coastal cliffs, GCHQ’s installation covered a half-kilometer square. Twenty-one giant radio dish antennas were pointed toward different portions of the sky. Were they listening to Russian satellite transmissions or sending coded messages to the Americans because they knew better than to trust the undersea cables?

  There was little evidence of the cables reaching here. Except for the patched slice in the one-lane country road. For kilometer after kilometer, the half-meter wide patch stretched along the road. It was broken only occasionally by securely locked, square manhole covers. Some bore the markings of some phone company or Internet provider. But some had acronyms she didn’t recognize. It made her wonder what else she’d driven across over the years without realizing.

  She’d never really had reason to think about the undersea cables beyond the occasional naming contest in a Cornish pub. It was a whole layer of her world that she’d never thought to track before.

  The road ran close beside the eastern double fence, four meters high with razor wire along the top and a ten-meter-wide no-man’s-land between them.

  “I don’t think you’ll be slipping in there,” she teased Hannah. Hannah spoke the least of the team’s women. Michelle was overwhelming, and Anton was right, Isobel was a little scary. Hannah’s silence actually made her the easiest for Katie to be comfortable around.

  Ricardo, in the back with Michelle and Isobel, must have overheard her. He grunted noncommittally, as if maybe it was possible for a Delta Force operator to penetrate even the antenna farm’s security.

  Hannah drove a few long moments more, then cricked her neck before answering. “It would depend a lot on whether there are cut-sensors in the fence, or if it’s just a mesh. I’d bet on the former, though probably just for the inner line. It takes a lot of effort to bypass. Also, knowing the types of ground sensors buried in the no man’s land, mapping the camera sweeps and patrol timings… That sort of thing.”

  That sort of thing.

  Katie decided she’d be better off tracking various wildlife and lost dogs (her other major source of minor income). This was the first time in a long time she’d agreed to track anything human.

  She’d joined Tom on a few lost-kid hunts. Once they’d found the kid lost in the woods. A second kid’s trail had ended in a set of car tracks that had disappeared untraceably onto a highway. The final one had ended with a daughter-mother murder-suicide. She’d been the tracker on point for that search, making her the first to see them. She’d sworn to never track people again.

  Yet here she was. Sodding Chas Thorstad!

  Anton’s leg had brushed against hers as they came near the station. It was their first contact since she’d raged at him. It was a nice peace offering. She appreciated its thoughtfulness and left her knee brushing against his.

  They were well past the station when she felt it. Not like an electric shock, but rather like she’d been walking on solid ground one instant and was suddenly knee deep in a peat bog without warning.

  She pulled back instinctively. Getting mired in a peat bog could be a deadly mistake.

  But they were past it and the feeling was gone.

  “Chas. We just crossed his path. Turn around. Back up. Something.”

  Hannah did as she was told.

  But it wasn’t there.

  “It was so strong just a moment ago.”

  Anton reached out a hand, found her thigh in the dark inside the car, which was surprisingly forward.

  But she felt…something.

  Then he tugged lightly sideways bringing their knees back together.

  Her initial reaction had pulled her knee away from Anton’s—and the feeling had instantly disappeared.

  Now, Katie brushed her knee back against his and the feeling returned.

  And there it was again.

  When she tried to see his face by the dashboard lights and the spillover from the antenna farm’s security lights, he appeared to be studying the back of Jesse’s passenger-seat headrest.

  “Talk to me, Katie.” She’d think later how she felt about those being his first words to her since the stone wall.

  “Where are you?”

  “The southeast corner of the security fence. There’s a coastal walking path that runs close along this side of the fence.”

  “He was there.” Anton’s vision must have “gotten out” earlier and started walking the fence line.

  “I’m gonna take me a stroll along the path. Let me know if he fades away,” Anton spoke softly. “You can keep driving, Hannah. Won’t bother me none.”

  Hannah drove until all except the largest ten-meter antenna dishes were out of sight behind them before finding a narrow pullout along the lane.

  “Are you sure it’s him?” Isobel asked from the back seat.

  “He feels like…a slime mold. Why didn’t I notice that before?” Then she answered her own question. “Because I didn’t think the feeling was associated with anything outside my own head. I was— Right there, Anton! It just got weaker, so back up a step.” He must have because the feeling was back again.

  “That’s the end of his path.”

  “Okay, I’m going to walk in a circle. Let me know if he pops back up.”

  Katie sat there in the seat beside Anton, her knee brushing his, and wished she didn’t feel.

  Wait!

  When had Anton placed his knee against hers? No contact since she’d run off into the fields and found the second badger sett.

  Then just as they came up to the antenna farm, he’d put his knee up against hers—to go on one of his vision-walk things.

  “You bloody bastard!” Katie tried to just say it only to Anton but the stopped car was too quiet.

  Hannah and Jesse twisted around to look at her and she could feel the other three behind, studying her intently.

  “What?” “Why?” “Who?”

  Unsure who to answer, she targeted Anton, shoving against his arm as if she could push him away inside the confines of the car.

  “You’re just using me!”

  “What? No. I wasn’t.”

  “Up your blooming arse!”

  “Katie! What are you talking about?”

  Just then she felt Chas-the-bog again, rather than Anton-the-arsehole. “There. You just crossed his path again.” She couldn’t believe she was still helping him.

  But when she tried to yank her knee away, his hand still held her in position. He wasn’t restraining her; it was just that his strength was so massive even a casual touch pinned her leg in place.

  “Anton!”

  “Wait! Just wait! I don’t know what’s going on.”

  She yanked her knee free of his clasp and the Chas feeling disappeared again.

  Anton blinked hard and turned to actually look at her.

  “You were just using me, arsehole!” She felt it was necessary to repeat herself now that all of him was here.

  The others in the car were dead silent. If Isobel tried to mediate, Katie might just turn around and smack her at this moment—international film star or not.

  “No, I wasn’t. Well yes. But… What are you talking about?”


  “I’m talking about this,” she batted her knee against his and then pulled away.

  No blink feeling of Chas-the-bog when their knees touched, but then Anton was no longer out there; he was here.

  “I thought you—” Katie thought about all of the others listening in and decided that she didn’t give a good goddamn. “—were showing that you liked me. Leaning your knee against mine.”

  “Sounds cozy to me,” Jesse made it a mollifying statement.

  “Shut up, cowboy!” Katie snapped at him.

  “But I do like you,” Anton protested.

  “Yet still you were using me to find Chas!” She scrabbled for the door handle in the dark, when his hand landed heavily on her shoulder pinning her butt to the seat.

  “Katie,” he leaned over until their noses were close enough together that she’d have bit his if she was a different woman. “I like you a great deal. I brushed my knee against yours because I like you. I did it before I went lookabout because I like feeling you beside me when I can’t see you.”

  Katie took a deep breath, which didn’t help much. “You swear that it wasn’t on the off chance that I’d feel Chas through you?”

  “Can’t say that I thought about it until you called out that you felt him. I was just going out to see what I could see.”

  Michelle leaned forward and whispered by Katie’s ear, “As much as I hate to say anything in support of my semi-demi-dram-brother, Anton is a real be-here-now kind of guy. Doesn’t think ahead a whole lot. If he had more than half a brain… Well, he doesn’t, so you’ll never have to worry much about ulterior motives with him.”

  Katie wanted to ask Isobel to use her empathic ability to verify what Anton was saying. Her own attempts at relationships never lasted long, so trusting her own judgement was hard. She’d long ago decided that she was simply better off alone.

  “Really, Anton?”

  For a moment, she thought she saw his smile flash in the darkness, then he leaned in and kissed her.

  It wasn’t like the first time in the dark at Skewjack Farm—all heat and fun. Now it was soft and filled with questions.