Brain Storm, Cat Gilbert [read books for money TXT] 📗
- Author: Cat Gilbert
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Book online «Brain Storm, Cat Gilbert [read books for money TXT] 📗». Author Cat Gilbert
We had been in the middle of a severe weather alert. Tornado watches were in effect, and violent storms were passing through the area. Keith was heading back into town when a monster weather cell broke loose with a torrential downpour. He had lost control of the car on the bridge, a fact I still had trouble reconciling, and had crashed over the guardrail. With the storms, the Arkansas River was swollen and the current deadly. A witness reported the car had gone over, but with the flooding waters, rescue attempts were delayed and before I could begin to contemplate the possibility that he might be gone, the rescue mission status was changed to one of recovery. The search went on for weeks, the banks and river combed for miles down river. Neither the car nor Keith’s body had ever been recovered. The river had taken them. If not for the witness who saw the accident and the marks on the guard rail, I would have never known what had happened. He would have just vanished.
I had a hard time not breaking down every time I saw a BMW for months after that. The black BMW 325i is a very popular car in Little Rock, and they seemed to be everywhere. I knew Keith was gone, but still, each time I saw the car, my breath caught and I looked, searching for the driver’s face. Now, over a year after his death, I had quit searching, but still... I always noticed the car, and I always remembered, the car a constant reminder. This was the second or third one I’d seen this morning and the day was still early.
Maybe it was because of that and the emotional roller coaster yesterday, but I found myself slipping into the past. The feeling of loss and loneliness that assaults you when your guard is down. Keith and I hadn’t been together for that long, but we had been so close. I had been working hard, minding my own business and suddenly, one day, there he was, right out of the blue. I had my career, good friends, dated when I felt like it or had time, which truthfully wasn’t often. I was happy, and things were going great.
If he hadn’t happened into the picture, I would have never known the difference. But he had. It’s amazing how everything changes. How, although hard, life gets easier. Dreams become bigger, and the routine of life takes on new meaning when you find someone to share it with. Oh, I had Trinity, and she was and is so important, but it’s not the same as the person you know you’ll be with for life. The person you work with to accomplish something together. Keith understood my need to help people, to stick up for the little guy, to stop the bullies in life. To the outside world, I was cool, confident, logical. Keith knew me better than that. He held me when I failed, and cried for the child I was too late to save. Rejoiced with me in the little victories like discovering a clue that reopened a case that had been considered hopeless. He knew how I doubted myself, my ability to make sense of the mess, my fear of being too late to make a difference. He knew the Taylor that I kept hidden from the world and loved me anyway. My dreams, my fears, my needs. Things even Trinity didn’t know about. Now he was gone. Ripped out of my life almost as fast as he appeared in it.
I was left to pick up the pieces.That meant dealing with yesterday on my own, and I had to admit, I hadn’t done a very good job of it. I had fallen apart, badly, and scared Trinity in the process. Keith was gone, and I had to handle this one on my own. Trinity would be there to help. No, she wasn’t Keith. No one was, but at least, I wasn’t alone in this.
Resolved, I pushed the pedal down and took a last glance in the rear view at the BMW as I sped down 430 to the I-30 interchange and my first appointment.
“SO WHAT YOU’RE saying, after spending all night researching, is that you still don’t know the answer? Have I got that right?”
Trinity forked up a chunk of pork along with some lettuce. We had both gotten pulled pork salads. Honestly, I don’t know why we bother with the salad part, or rather, why I did. Trinity was into eating healthy, and she wore it well. On the occasion that she did drop off the healthy wagon, she tried to counteract it with eating something nourishing along with it. Like salads with pizza. Salad with pulled pork. I just didn’t see the point. Lettuce was just more calories and a waste of space in this case. The smoked pork was spiced perfectly and so tender it was hard to keep on your fork. Unlike Trinity, I had eaten most of mine off the top and left the lettuce sitting there.
“That pretty much sums it up.” I had managed to pull up quite a bit of information on the internet. My first discovery being that my possible ‘mind moving’ skill was technically called telekinesis, a form of psychokinesis. Although I feel my label was more descriptive, I found the term psycho was appropriate or at least in my case I thought it was.
Uri Geller was perhaps the best known person who appeared to have the ability. He was the guy I remembered seeing on television. He did indeed bend spoons with his mind, but he wasn’t from Tibet, and he could never replicate his ability in a scientific setting. Science fiction literature and movies were rife with talented people who threw things around at will, but whether or not it was a real ability, remained to be proven. Many claim to have it, and there’re even videos of them passing the ‘spinning the pencil on the bottle’ test on the web, but I found just as much information refuting the test results, saying air movement from heating and cooling systems does the same thing. After hours of combing the far reaches of the internet, all I had to show for it was the name, some history and the fact that there is no proof telekinesis exists. But there was no proof it didn’t exist either.
“I’m in the same boat as yesterday,” I confirmed, rooting around in the lettuce hunting for more pork. “Either I have telekinesis, or I’m crazy.”
“Or the guy threw the coffee on you. The keys could be just coincidence.” Her comment brought my gaze up in disbelief, distracting me from my pork search, but she was completely serious.
I wished he had thrown the coffee at me. How neat and tidy would that be? But that’s not what happened. I hadn’t imagined the look of horror on his face when it happened or the anger that followed when he was blamed. I also hadn’t imagined the calculating gaze he’d leveled at me or the feeling I’d had that he knew what was going on. I wasn’t sure where or if he fit into the picture, but I knew he hadn’t thrown the coffee. I had so totally crossed that possibility off the list that it never even occurred to me that Trinity was still hanging onto it.
“That’s not what happened. Why would some guy I’ve never seen before, throw coffee at me?” It wasn’t so much the words as the tone of my voice that set her off. Even to me, I had sounded incredulous that she would even think such a thing, and I winced as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
“I have no idea,” she shot back, obviously offended, “but what’s the likelihood of you suddenly developing telekinesis? You’re good, Taylor, but you are not infallible. You may have read the whole thing wrong. I’m just saying, there could be something there. It is the most likely explanation.”
Snap and ow! Where had that come from? In all the years I had worked with and known Trinity, she had never doubted my judgement. Oh, we have more than our share of disagreements, but where my work is concerned, she has always trusted me. Now, not only was she questioning my judgement, she was downright insulting me. I know I’m not infallible, but really, who needs their best friend pointing it out. I may have been out of things yesterday, but I was back on top today. Okay, maybe not on top, but way better than I had been.
Confused, I just sat there staring at her, nursing my wounded pride, while she glared back at me. She was more than offended. She was downright angry. There was something more going on, and I racked my brain trying to sort through the possible excuses that were rushing through my mind, when suddenly, comprehension dawned. I snapped my mouth shut and sat back, finally understanding.
She might have said it was the most likely explanation, but what she really meant was it was the explanation she could accept. Good friend that she was, she’d rather think the coffee incident was the result of a vindictive stalker than think that I was losing my mind, or had developed some sort of weird super power that there was no proof actually even existed. It did sound pretty far out there, even to me and I had experienced it firsthand. She hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen what happened. As hard as this was for me to contemplate, it had to be nearly impossible for her. She was desperate for a logical explanation, and I was usually the one to give it to her. I felt my heart sink because I was fairly certain that this time,
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