MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3) Read online

  As usual, these men and women were at the top of DHS’s list for a reason, and he most often confirmed Homeland’s suspicions—and more. The names, dates, terror networks, specific plots, passwords and other intel he was able to snatch from their minds in minutes would keep thousands of people busy at Homeland for months.

  Hall became more mentally exhausted by the minute, but he pressed on through the second group, and then the third, which turned out to be four suspects short. This wasn’t uncommon, as a few on the list typically couldn’t be found, or flights were delayed, or they didn’t make it for other reasons, which Girdler collectively defined as, shit happens.

  The man was a true poet.

  Finally, Hall blew out a long breath and slumped back in his last chair, done. He shuddered from the horrific memories and images he had forced himself to endure, the vitriol and the lust to rid the world of all but those with the most severe interpretation of Islam in an orgy of grotesque butchery that many of the suspects had harbored.

  As he exited the room, Megan Emerson handed him a grilled chicken Caesar wrap and a large bag of chocolate chip cookies, with a giant thirty-two-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew, his favorite, which he hungrily consumed as they left the base. The five members of his entourage knew better than to ask what thoughts he had read. They would read the report, hundreds of pages long, compiled at the speed of thought, like they did every time, and marvel at his speed, efficiency, and extraordinary value.

  They piled into the Yukon and before they had even exited the base Hall’s head had fallen forward and he was in a fugue state, not quite asleep, but not quite conscious either. This too, was expected, and something he had repeated five times now.

  Every time Megan saw him in this depleted state she wanted to storm into Girdler’s office and demand that this exercise be stopped, or the number of suspects dramatically reduced. She wanted to scream that it was all too much, that the toll taken on the man she loved was too high.

  But then she would read his report, and she would know that his sacrifice would save many thousands of lives, and that what he was able to accomplish was nothing short of a miracle.

  The SUV continued to hurtle along the leftmost lane of the I-15 South, heading back toward Salt Lake City. They had taken back roads to get to the base to avoid major population centers, which were never comfortable for Nick Hall, but he had insisted this wasn’t necessary on the drive back to headquarters. After six hours of mental interrogations, he knew he’d be brain-dead during most of the trip, anyway.

  Hall hadn’t moved a hair in almost ten minutes when his eyes suddenly shot open and he bolted upright, eliciting a gasp of surprise from his fiancée beside him. He took a deep breath and then shut his eyes again in concentration.

  “Nick . . . ?” said Megan worriedly, not wanting to say more and risk disturbing him, but unable to help herself from uttering a one word query.

  Hall kept his eyes closed for several seconds and then opened them again. “We have to turn around!” he insisted. He motioned toward an exit about a hundred yards distant. “Get off there!”

  “What’s going on, Nick?” said Briarwood, making no move to leave the highway.

  “Now!” said Hall. “We can’t afford to miss this exit!”

  9

  Floyd Briarwood muttered a curse and shot across three lanes and onto the off-ramp to comply with Hall’s heated demand.

  “Now get back on going north,” instructed Hall, blowing out a relieved breath, “while I tell you what this is about.”

  “We’re all ears,” said Briarwood, and Hall couldn’t help but pick up his thought of here we go again.

  The entire group was well aware that highly passionate, malicious thoughts sliced through even the heaviest background noise and hit the center of Hall’s awareness, lighting him up like a German Shepherd reacting to a piercing dog whistle. This was now the second time this had happened out of five trips, and all his protectors were thinking variations of the same thought: this had better be worth it.

  “Hurry!” said Hall, waiting until Briarwood sped onto the northbound on-ramp and shot to ninety before he continued. “This involves a woman named Sandra Girvan who lives about twenty miles north of here.”

  “Isn’t that well outside of your range?” asked Joey Plaskett from the third row of seats.

  “I read her ex-boyfriend when he was five miles to our south. He’s headed toward her. But now that we’ve turned around and the captain is nearing a hundred, we’ll get to her first.”

  “As long as you give me a heads-up if you read any cops along our path,” said Briarwood.

  “So now Nick’s a human radar detector?” said Megan wryly. “Is there anything a mind reader can’t do?”

  “Plenty,” said Hall with a tired smile. “At the moment, teleportation would be nice.”

  Megan returned the smile. “So what’s the deal with this guy?” she asked him.

  “His name is Daryl Poole. Sandra Girvan dated him for about nine months. Broke it off just last night, and he’s worked himself into a mindless rage, which is about to turn violent. As he’s driving he’s having some pretty graphic and powerful fantasies about beating her—and I’m not sure he’s content to stop with just unconsciousness.”

  Briarwood sighed. “Nick, you can’t be sure when he’ll stop beating her. Because you can’t be sure if he’ll even start. How many husbands have fantasized about killing their wives? How many kids while they’re being punished have wished their parents dead? Happens all the time. Most of the time it’s all bark and no bite.”

  “No one knows people’s dark inner thoughts better than I do,” snapped Hall. “And it’s true, most of the time people don’t act on them. But Poole’s thoughts are of a different quality. Stronger. More visceral than usual. I can’t put my finger on it, but this time I think they’ll translate into action. He has hit two women in the past. He managed to stop both times before they were seriously injured, but this time feels different to me.”

  “Even if you’re right, why do you need to be personally involved?” said Briarwood. “You know I can arrange to have the police stop him before he arrives. Charge him for speeding or something else.”

  “No,” said Hall, shaking his head. “That would just delay him. Or he’d return another day when I’m not here.” He sighed. “I know you’re worried about my safety. But trust me, I’ll be fine. I can fix this in a few minutes. We just have to beat him to her house.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “Why do I feel like you’re the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood?” she said in amusement. “Racing to beat Little Red to her grandmother’s house? I can see it now, he’ll see you and say, ‘My, what great big mind reading skills you have, Grandma.’”

  Briarwood laughed along with everyone else in the vehicle, but his mirth was short-lived. “Nick, we’ve been over this many times,” he said gravely. “I have strict orders not to let you go on any side trips unless it’s a matter of the utmost urgency. You’re the most important man in the world, one who can bring down a dozen mass casualty terrorist plots before breakfast. We can’t let you risk exposure or injury for something like this. You don’t send Superman to rescue a cat up a tree. We need you for the big stuff. You do get that, right?”

  “A cat up a tree?” said Hall. “We’re saving the life of an innocent woman here. One with two small children who rely on her. Hardly a cat up a tree.”

  “But you don’t know her life is in jeopardy,” replied Briarwood. “You have to admit you could be wrong. This could be just the typical spurned lover rage that never amounts to violence. Even if it does, she might not get more than a few bruises. Horrible, of course, but compared to the tens of thousands of lives you’ve saved, a cat up a tree. And I have my orders. We need to go back.”

  Hall shook his head and smiled. “Come on, Floyd. We don’t have time for this. We both know you’re going to disregard your orders out of respect for me. And because deep down, you couldn’t live with yourse
lf if something did happen to this woman, regardless of orders.”

  “I thought you promised not to read our thoughts, Nick. So much for that, I guess.”

  “I didn’t read your thoughts,” insisted Hall, shaking his head. “I just know you.”

  Hall had gotten better at ignoring the thoughts of those around him if he chose, which he promised to do with all of his colleagues. He deeply admired those who were willing to make the sacrifice of working with him, knowing what he was. Knowing he could access their entire past as easily as they could themselves. Every memory, every desire, every sexual fantasy, every prejudice, every secret, every regretted word or action made in the heat of the moment.

  His colleagues, who were willing to brave proximity to him for the greater good, demonstrated the ultimate in courage and heroism. Being friends with a mind reader took a special kind of man or woman.

  So he could do no less than swear a solemn oath to make his own heroic efforts to stay out of their heads, even though this wasn’t entirely possible. He could stop himself from taking a deep dive, but it was an enormous challenge to tune out all surface thoughts. You could try to ignore a loud conversation being held in front of you, try not to pick up any meaning, but this wasn’t always possible.

  Briarwood frowned deeply. “Girdler’s going to have my ass in a sling,” he said, as Hall motioned for him to take the next exit.

  “I’ll take care of him,” said Hall. “I promise. He’s a good man, and he knows he’d disregard these same orders in your shoes. He once disregarded a direct order to bring me in. Instead, he went off the reservation and tried to kill me for what he thought were good reasons.”

  This caught the attention of the entire special forces contingent in the vehicle. “Now that’s a story you’ll have to share with us when we’re done here,” said Sergeant Wellman enthusiastically, a request that elicited hearty nods of agreement all around.

  “You got it,” said Hall as they neared to within minutes of their destination.

  This was the second time Hall had disobeyed orders and taken an unscheduled detour. Months earlier, he had read of an imminent liquor store robbery less than a half mile from where they had been driving. Not enough time for cops to arrive on the scene, so Briarwood had dropped Wellman and Plaskett off near the store so they could look like customers when the robbery occurred. Minutes later they managed to put down two armed men without drawing a weapon and without any shots being fired.

  Hall loved these guys. Bright, personable, and total bad-asses.

  They entered a residential area thick with streets and homes, and three minutes later Briarwood stopped the SUV a block away from where Sandra Girvan lived.

  “You can referee this domestic dispute, Nick,” he said, “but only if you keep it on her front lawn. That’s the deal. We’ll set up so if this gets out of hand we can put Poole down. If you go inside her house, though, we won’t let him in also, no matter what we have to do to prevent it. This is non-negotiable. Read my mind if you don’t believe me.”

  “No need,” said Hall, exiting the Yukon with a nervous smile. “Front lawn it is.”

  He was confident he could handle this, but if not, he knew the men backing him up were good enough marksmen to use non-lethal force on Poole. He winced in pain for just a moment and rubbed his temple. If he were a computer, his fan would be going non-stop, trying to cool a processor that was overused and overheating.

  Briarwood drove to the next street over, where his three colleagues exited. He would park out of sight and stay with Megan. Protecting her was as important as protecting Hall, since she was his one major vulnerability. Those tasked with protecting a president would never neglect to also cover the First Lady.

  The three commandos fanned out from the SUV with a purpose, taking up positions behind cars and shrubs and homes, each hidden from view, and each with a line of sight to Sandra Girvan’s front lawn.

  When the team was in place, Hall quickly made his way to the residence and pushed the intercom button to the left of the front door, which caused a chime to ring inside.

  “Ms. Girvan,” he said into the intercom when she answered, “my name is John Barber. You don’t know me, but a friend of mine overheard Daryl Poole a few hours ago talking about you, and he sounded pretty violent.”

  Hall paused for a moment to let this sink in. “I’m an ex-Navy SEAL who only lives a few miles away, so he called me.”

  The truth was he was a civilian marine biologist who had been kidnapped and turned into a helpless experimental subject, but Navy SEAL had a much nicer ring to it.

  “What?” said Sandra Girvan in disbelief, a sentiment closely echoed by her confused and anxious thoughts.

  “Turns out Poole has a bit of a history of violence, and he’s coming here now. Be here in a minute or two, actually. So I thought I’d stop by to make sure he doesn’t try to hurt you.”

  This struck a nerve. While Poole had never hit her, Hall could read that she sensed something in her ex that had troubled her. It wasn’t difficult for her to imagine him turning to violence. But she was afraid to let a stranger with such a strange story come inside her home.

  Good. He had promised Briarwood not to do so, anyway.

  “Can you come outside for a few minutes?” he asked. “It’s better if we deal with him out here. More public. If he starts yelling he’ll draw attention to himself. And this way your kids won’t have to be exposed to him.”

  The woman was still hesitant. Her kids were glued to the television, so she would be able to leave them alone for a few minutes. But she still thought Hall’s story was too fishy to believe. He couldn’t blame her.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

  Hall sped through her mind, searching for something that would have the desired effect, ignoring complaints from his own mind that it desperately needed to rest. He found the person she trusted the most and ran with this immediately.

  “I’m going to level with you, Ms. Girvan,” he said. “I’m actually a private detective. Your sister Kimberly hired me a week ago to watch this guy, but made me promise not to tell you. She sensed Poole was a bit off and was worried about you, but thought you’d be pissed if you knew. Says you still haven’t fully forgiven her for chasing off Michael Fleischut in high school.”

  “How’s it going, Nick?” asked Megan telepathically from the SUV, several blocks away.

  “Good,” he sent back. “She’s just about to come outside, which is good, since Poole is about thirty seconds away.”

  “Be careful. You do know that if this guy even flinches, Briarwood and the boys will turn this into a firing squad.”

  “Yep,” Hall shot back quickly. “Gotta go.”

  “Look, Ms. Girvan,” he said aloud into the intercom. “I need you to come outside so we can meet him together when he arrives. If you follow my lead, I promise you’ll never have to worry about Daryl Poole again.”

  There was no answer, but Hall knew this had pushed her past the finish line even before he heard the deadbolt turn and the door spring open. The Michael Fleischut reference had sealed the deal, as only she and her sister could possibly know about this incident, so he must be telling her the truth.

  She had just come out and closed the door behind her when a red sports car streaked into her driveway and her ex-boyfriend jumped out, almost before it stopped moving.

  Hall had been monitoring Poole’s progress and the closer he got, the more certain Hall was that the man’s violent thoughts were not just idle fantasies, but that he fully intended to act. Until now the man had managed to mostly cage his inner beast, but the cage door had been flung wide open and the snarling beast would no longer be denied.

  Poole marched over to the duo on Girvan’s lawn in a hot rage. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded of Hall.

  He turned to his ex with a predatory gleam in his eye, while she backed away in terror. “Is this why you broke up with me?” he shouted. “Were you fucking this guy behind my
back? You think you can play me for a fool and get away with it!”

  “You need to leave her alone right now!” insisted Hall, “or I’ll make you regret it!”

  Poole sized him up in a hurry and shot him a look of disdain. “You’ll make me?” he said incredulously. “You can’t stop me from doing whatever the fuck I want! Now tell me who you are!”

  Hall produced a predatory smile of his own. “Who I am isn’t important. What is important is that I’m the best hacker there is, and I’ve hacked your computer and every device you have. I know your every last secret.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Sandra never cheated on you, with me or anyone else. But you—you self-righteous piece of shit—did cheat on her. Twice. Once with Jeannie Glasscock at your high school reunion, and once with Lisa Hines Hutchison at your health club.”

  Sandra Girvan gasped, shocked to learn of these betrayals despite having broken up with him.

  How the fuck does this guy know about Jeannie and Lisa? thought Poole in disbelief.

  “I know plenty more,” continued Hall, as though Poole had spoken this thought out loud. “You’ve cheated on your taxes for years. Three months ago you keyed your boss’s new car. I know the sick type of porn you like. You want me to leak footage of you with your pants around your ankles watching it? Because I’ve got it.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Poole for the third time, but his surface thoughts screamed at Hall even more loudly. How does this fucker know so much? Why does he have such a hard-on for Sandra?

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” said Hall. “You’re going to leave Sandra completely alone. Forever. You’ll find other women. Ever raise a hand to her and I’ll know it. Ever raise a hand to any woman and I’ll know it. Because I’m keeping you on my radar. Think your computer and phone are private? Not from me they aren’t.”

  “Megan,” Hall sent urgently while Poole’s thoughts were reeling, “I’m going to goad him into taking a swing at me. He’s not armed and I’ll see it coming. Have Briarwood tell the team not to shoot when he does.”