“He feels very out of control. He’s got someone in the back of his mind. I can’t get a clear picture of who it is though. But someone else is in charge, I’m sure of it. He’s not comfortable with this feeling. He hates it. Hates feeling powerless.”
“Do you have any sense of what he looks like?”
“No.” Val opened her eyes and looked at Drew. “People rarely think about how they look. Unless I have a memory of someone else looking at him or I can get a flash of memory near a mirror, I don’t usually get looks.”
“Okay.” Drew was nodding. “Keep going.”
Val sat silently in the driver’s seat for a few more minutes. “He jarred his ankle when they were driving off-road. It’s aching. Not a break or anything like that, but he feels it.”
“How do you jar your ankle driving?” Drew asked.
“If you were going over a lot of bumps,” Megan offered. “Maybe?”
Katherine said, “I still have a weak ankle from our attack at the gym. Sometimes if I just walk on it funny, it’ll twist.”
Drew raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Oh!” Megan blinked at the realization. “He must be older. You can’t relate to this. You’re in your midthirties. He’s older; probably closer to fifty than thirty.”
Val nodded. “That feels right. He’s older.”
“Okay…” Drew wrote more notes. “Anything else you’re getting?”
“Not from the cab. It wasn’t his vehicle. They stole it, so I’m mostly getting his memories in the moment of the crime. He’s not comfortable with any of it. He’s really nervous. I don’t think he’s done anything like this before.”
“New criminal,” Drew said. “Okay. That’s helpful.” He glanced at the back. “There’s a lot of blood in the back. Are you sure you want to look at it?”
Val’s face was set as she climbed out of the truck cab. “Trust me, I’ve seen shit off corpses that would make you run screaming. Blood is not the worst of it.”
Megan suddenly felt like a kid at the grown-ups’ party. “Val, let us know if you need help with anything.”
“Yeah.” She walked to the back of the truck and climbed up on the stepladder leading to the tailgate. “Maybe one of you can get back here with me. I have fallen before if the feelings or images are too violent.”
Megan ran up the steps and stood next to Val. “I can use my telekinesis as an extra boost when I’m holding something. I’ll catch you if you fall.”
Val started on the edges of the truck. “They put the vines back here, but they had some kind of…” She motioned to the corners. “There was a frame or something.”
“A truck rack?” Drew asked.
“Yes.” Val pointed to him. “That’s what it was. Tarps were strung up along the sides.” She reached down and grabbed a short piece of string. “They had it all tied down, but he was still going too fast. They tied tarps around the frame to shield the vines from the wind, but that idiot was driving too fast.”
“What happened then?”
Val bent down and ran her hands along the sides of the truck bed. “He was clutching on here. Sitting in the back of the bed with the vines. The vines were tied down, but he was going to kill the driver for going so fast. Stupid city boy. That’s what he was thinking. Stupid city boy didn’t know how to drive worth a shit.”
“When did they stop?”
Val shook her head. “I can hear water. Like a creek or a little stream or something.”
“What else are you getting, Val?”
Megan watched the woman get progressively more agitated. Her hands ran along the sides of the truck, feeling for more memories. There were ropes and tie-downs in a small pile. There was a cardboard box full of miscellaneous hardware, and a wrench was sticking out from the corner.
Val’s hand landed on the wrench, and a flurry of things happened all at once. She doubled over and cried out. Her hand gripped the wrench and Megan moved to catch her, only to have Val swing her head back and try to headbutt Megan.
“Whoa!” Drew jumped into the back of the pickup. “Val! Chill out! Val!”
Megan moved to Val’s side and saw the woman’s face was pale as a sheet and her lips were nearly blue. She slapped Val on her cheek and shouted at her. “Wake up!”
Val took in a violent breath and opened her eyes. “Oh fuck, they shot me!”
“No one shot you.” Megan gripped her hand. “Val, you’re safe. No one shot you.” Megan pried the wrench from Val’s grip and carefully set it back in the box with the extra hardware. It was only when she was returning it that she noticed the dark black spray of what had to be blood on the side of the box.
“I need to get out of here,” Val said. “I’m going to throw up.”
Sully had warned Megan and Katherine about this, so they’d come prepared.
“Katherine!” Megan shouted at her friend. “Need the puke bag.”
Katherine grabbed the plastic bag from her purse and handed it to Megan as she and Drew helped Val from the back of the truck bed. Val grabbed the bag, wandered a few feet away from them, and vomited into the bag.
Megan rubbed her back. “Deep breaths. As deep as you can.”
“Is Katherine getting some water?”
Megan looked around and didn’t see Katherine in the warehouse. “I think she went to get some from the truck.” She spotted an old weight lifting bench near the warehouse doors. “Let’s go sit over here.”
Drew was following at a distance, but Megan could practically see the questions jumping over his head.
Val must have felt them too. She sat down and looked for Drew. “He was shot in the back. He must have sensed something was wrong though, because he grabbed for that wrench before he was shot. He was holding it when he heard them open the back of the truck.”
“After that?” Drew asked.
“Nothing. The truck stopped. They walked around to the back, and he heard the tailgate go down. He grabbed the wrench and… bang.”
“Okay.” Drew nodded. “That explains the blood. They must have dumped the body somewhere back in the hills. We may never find out where.”
“It was near a creek,” Megan said. “You know that part.”
“Do you know how many creeks and seasonal waterways there are in this county?”
Katherine frowned. “Roughly two hundred and fifty, I think?”
“Of course you’d know that,” Drew muttered. “I’m just saying it’s not a lot to go on.”
Val’s eyes shot open. “There was something else.”
“What is it?” Drew asked. “More about the location?”
“I’m pretty sure I heard a woman.” She looked up. “The voices before the shot. I’m pretty sure that one was a woman and the other was a man.”
Chapter 21
Megan walked through her front door a little after five o’clock and braced herself for a flurry of questions. Strangely, the torrent at the front door never arrived. In fact…