Forbidden Touch

Chapter Sixteen

Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic!

Iris stared through the windshield of the shuttle van at the soggy gloom of the rain forest surrounding the base of Mount Stanley. On the tiny island of Mariposa, the drive to anywhere was a short trip. Iris needed more time to process the truth she was only now beginning to admit to herself. Her gift was gone.

She had felt nothing when Maddox approached her that morning at the window of her hotel room. Not a knee twinge, not a sting from his cuts and scrapes, not even a scintilla of whatever emotions he'd been feeling as he touched her shoulder. It was like being deaf and blind at the same time.

She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't aware of what other people were feeling. Around age seven, she'd come to understand that all those extra sensations swirling in and out of her weren't shared by other people. It had been a scary moment for her, realizing she wasn't like everyone else.

Sitting there in the shuttle van, completely insensate to all but her own mild aches and pains from her night with Maddox, she relived that same sense of fear. Only this time it was because she was just like everyone else. Don't think about it.

But how could she not? She was about to walk into a dangerous situation without the one weapon she'd thought she'd have at her disposal. The one thing that would keep her from being thrown into the ocean just like Celia Shore.

What had happened? Why had the gift left her now. When she needed it more than she ever had before? Could the answer be as simple as making love with Maddox? But she'd had sex before, and while no, it hadn't rocked her world, surely that couldn't be enough to strip her of a gift that had been a part of her life for as long as she remembered.

A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat. She swallowed it quickly, glancing at the van driver to see if he'd noticed. He was a burly, taciturn Creole with a perpetual grimace, the antithesis of the smiling, garrulous Mariposans she'd met during her brief stay.

If he'd heard her aborted laughter, he gave no sign of it. Iris settled back, closed her eyes and tried to feel something-anything-from the driver. But he was still a blank.

"We're here." The man's voice made her jump. She opened her eyes and took in the squat cinder block monstrosity ahead, sprawling over a large clearing hacked into the rain forest. It was only one story tall and painted the same deep emerald as the trees surrounding it, tan block letters spelling out TELARANA LABS the only break in the unrelenting expanse of green.

Nothing says incognito quite like an ugly green paint job, Iris thought as the van driver pulled to a stop in the narrow parking strip outside the front entrance. He motioned for her to get out and went around to the back to retrieve her bags. She was beginning to regret turning down Maddox's suggestion of a lazy day of lovemaking.

At least the rain had slowed for now, though misty clouds hung low overhead, promising more precipitation. It was ten degrees cooler here in the mountains than it had been back near the beach, and Iris was glad she'd thought to carry a light cardigan. She shrugged it on and followed the Mariposan driver as he carried her bags to the front door.

A small surveillance camera-also painted green- eyed them from the small awning over the front door. The driver set down her bags, pushed a small intercom button by the door and looked straight into the camera. Seconds later, a buzzer sounded, and the driver pushed open the door. He retrieved the bags and gave Iris a curt head gesture to go in first.

The driver set her bags down next to her and walked back outside without a word, leaving her standing alone in the barren lobby, which was little more than a narrow hallway with a table and chair set against one wall. It was unoccupied.

She waited a moment, her heart pounding, before she worked up the courage to speak. "Hello?"

Silence answered her. She stepped forward, looking down the hallway in both directions. Several doors, all closed, lined the corridor. She stood very still and again tried to feel something besides the tremble of her ragged nerves and the pounding of her heart in her chest.

A soft tapping sound to her left drew her attention. A man rounded the corner and stepped into the dim hallway. Backlit by the single dome light at the end of the hall, he was little more than a silhouette moving toward her at a steady, unhurried pace.

But as he drew closer, she recognized his too-slim frame, slumped shoulders and unruly straw-colored hair. He stepped into the circle of light cast by another dome lamp positioned in the center of the lobby area. His icy eyes met hers and he extended his hand.

"Welcome to the Telarana laboratory" Boris Grinkov said.

Maddox reached the Tropico within five minutes of Alexander Quinn's terse call and went inside, unsurprised to find the place doing a brisk business three hours before noon. He ordered a small beer to mollify Theodore, the burly Mariposan bartender, and left it untouched at his elbow while he waited for Quinn to arrive.

The CIA agent entered precisely at the appointed time, dressed in a faded blue T-shirt, a pair of well-worn jeans and a red bandanna wrapped pirate-style over his head. His snake skin boots thudded heavily on the plank flooring as he made his way to Maddox's table and straddled the chair across from him.

"Another body has shown up." he said without preamble.

Maddox frowned. "Someone else from the focus group?"

"Andrea Marquez. The second empath."

Maddox tried not to react, but his blood felt like ice in his veins. "Murdered?"

"That's not clear yet. I have an inside man on the lab's cleaning crew. He'll be going out this morning with the rest of the crew to makes sure Iris is okay."

"You have to get her out of there."

"She should be okay for now. As long as she can do what they need her to do. Which we both know she can."

Maddox frowned, something niggling at his brain. "I don't like it." be said aloud.

"If we move too soon, we'll lose this chance to find out what Mahmoud and Grinkov are up to."

"And if we move too late-"

"We won't."

"You can't know that. What if she gets in there and freezes up? Or what if she can't do what they expect-" The thought that had been lurking in the back of his brain rushed forward. "Oh, God. She didn't feel it."

Quinn frowned at him. "What?"

"This morning, before she left. My knee was killing me when I woke up, but she didn't feel it." Dread slithered through Maddox's gut.

Quinn's silence was scarier than anything he might have said. He looked down at the scuffed barroom table, avoiding Maddox's gaze.

"You've got to get her out. Today."

Quinn shook his head. "My man's not trained for extraction. He's only supposed to make contact to see if she needs anything."

"Then send in someone else."

"This isn't the States. I can't just call up an extraction team on a whim. It'll take time."

"She may not have time."

"And l don't want another hostage situation." Quinn added quietly, looking pointedly at Maddox.

Silence stretched between them a moment, then Quinn added. "There's another possibility."

A wave of cold nausea rippled through Maddox as he realized what the CIA agent had in mind. "No."

"You have the training. You've done it before."

Maddox shook his head. "You must have other people-"

"Not in place. And she trusts you."

Maddox pushed to his feet. "She shouldn't!"

The other bar patrons turned and stared at his outburst.

Quinn grabbed his arm and pushed him back toward his chair. "Sit down and get a grip."

Maddox was glad he'd skipped breakfast,

"We have a session planned in twenty minutes in the conference room." Grinkov said, setting her bags on the floor of the small, private dormitory room he'd led her to after greeting her at the entrance. "I'm afraid you'll have to unpack when you're finished."

"And we'll be working on an actual experiment this morning?" Iris asked, tamping down her rising panic. So far her empathic sensitivity was still out of commission, and her complete inability to read Grinkov's guarded body language wasn't doing much for her sense of confidence.

"I have one set up, yes. We shall see how it goes."

On the way to her room, Grinkov had briefly sketched for her the focus of his research. As she'd surmised, he was attempting to create a sort of psychic network, with the medium linking the clairvoyant and the telekinetic to see if it was possible for the group to affect objects at a distance.

Grinkov led her down another of the long, quiet corridors that seemed to characterize the lab, at least as far as she had seen. The conference room was at the end of the hallway. Grinkov opened the door, his gesture for her to enter ahead of him the picture of courtliness.

Inside, a rectangular table filled the center of the cramped room. Two women and a man sat at the table. Bottles of water sat in front of each of them, and there was a fourth, unopened bottle in front of the single empty chair at the table.

All three sets of eyes turned toward her as she and Grinkov entered. Self-conscious, she walked slowly to the empty chair and sat, closing her fingers around the water bottle, focusing on the cold, wet feel of the condensation beading on the plastic to distract her from her growing panic,

Grinkov made quick introductions-the man was Tom Stanton, the women Hildi Jennings and Bailev Floyd- then went to a small desk near the corner of the room, where a video monitor and a stack of papers filled most of the battered wood surface.

The other group members looked at Iris silently for an uncomfortable moment. Even without herempathic gift, she couldn't miss the suspicion and curiosity radiating from them.

Hildi broke the silence. "You must be the new empath."

Iris nodded. "And you're-?"

"Clairvoyant." She nodded at Tom. "Medium."

"And I move things" Bailey interjected dryly in a flat Texas drawl.

"I hope you're a better empath than the last one " Torn said, his voice as dry as Bailey's.

"Who was the last one?"

"That crazy TV psychic wannabe. Celia Shore." Bailey poked at her water bottle. "She was useless."

And now she's dead. Iris thought. But her "teammates" probably didn't get much in the way of news here. "What about the other group? Do you ever mix with them?"

"Not since the first day." Hildi said. "Why do you ask?"

She glanced toward Grinkov. He seemed preoccupied by the papers he was shuffling through. She lowered her voice. "The medium is a friend of mine. Maybe you met her-Sandrine Beck?"

The other three exchanged looks. Hildi shrugged, "We barely had time to exchange hellos before Dr.Grinkov split us up into two groups. I think they don't want us mingling- something about maintaining the integrity of the study"

Bailey gestured toward Iris's water bottle. "Drink while you can. They take everything away when the session starts."

Iris opened the bottle and made herself drink, hoping it might settle her rumbling stomach. She downed the whole bottle while she listened to the others discuss the upcoming experiment. Apparently today, with Iris added to the mix, they were going to try an experiment involving a small power plant located at the edge of the laboratory grounds.

Iris forced herself to focus on the conversation, taking mental notes to share with Quinn's contact person whenever he arrived. But crowding the edge of her mind was her growing concern about Sandrine. Was she okay? And where exactly, was she?

Maddox grabbed the roll of plastic trash bags the maintenance crew foreman handed him and rolled out of the back of the Subaru pickup behind the others, falling into line at the lab's back entrance. He had been assigned to the east wing of the building, along with a merry faced Dutchman named Piet, who'd been there before and seemed happy to take the lead.

In his clipped, accented English, Piet kept up a running commentary about which rooms they could enter and which rooms were off-limits. If he was curious about what lay hidden behind the doors of the forbidden rooms, he showed no sign of it.

"What's that?" Maddox asked as they started past a room with a glass window set into the door. Pale green curtains covered the window from the inside.

"That is the-what is the word? Sick room?"

"Infirmary?"

"Ya, infirmary." Piet kept going.

Maddox stayed where he was. "They don't have any trash for us to pick up?"

"It is one of the rooms we do not enter." Piet said. "If there were rubbish, it would be waiting out here for us."

Maddox frowned. "Maybe they just forgot to put their trash out today. Shouldn't we at least check? It can't be good for an infirmary to have a bunch of garbage sitting around " Maddox reached for the door handle.

"Wait, you cannot-" Piet started, but Maddox had already opened the door and stepped inside.

The infirmary was a small room with only six beds visible. It looked like an emergency room, with retractable curtains set up in an oval around each bed to afford privacy. Only one bed was occupied. A woman with sandy blond hair lay pale and still against the light green sheets on the bed. An IV drip hung from a portable bedside monitor charting the patient's vital signs, Maddox didn't see anyone else in the room, though a door near the back was marked Authorized Personnel Only.

"You cannot be in here!" Piet tugged at Maddox's sleeve.

"Look, there's a full garbage can." Maddox ignored Piet's anxious tugging and crossed to the occupied bed. He bent to retrieve the plastic garbage sack, taking the opportunity to get a good look at the woman in the bed. His heart squeezed.

It was Iris's missing friend, Sandrine.