Wallace didn’t need any looking glass to realize that Dominic was completely unstable. Wallace saw his aura, saw the unsteady wavelengths as they shimmered around Dom. He was probably quite talented, but he’d crossed the line into something bizarre in the meantime, and that would be what took him down.

  Unfortunately Wallace didn’t want anything to do with hurting another psychic, but, if it came to that, there would be no choice. He watched and waited, and finally the boss man walked in, a disgruntled look on his face.

  “I guess that didn’t go the way you wanted it to,” Wallace noted.

  “No, it sure didn’t.” Burly glared at him. “Let’s hope the meeting with you goes better.”

  Wallace shrugged. “No guarantees.”

  “I’m totally serious and will beat the shit out of her,” Burly declared, “particularly on a day like today, when I’m not getting what I need from people all around.”

  “What is it that you need?” Wallace asked curiously. “I don’t quite understand the draw for a team like this in the first place. I could possibly see it—if a group of people were good friends with you, people you could trust—but psychics aren’t exactly anything you want to play around with.”

  “That’s exactly what I want to do,” he stated defiantly. “I want a team that’s solid and competent.”

  “It’s not as if you can just put out an advertisement …” Thinking about what Terk had done, he added, “Or set up an alert and have qualified people just show up.”

  Burly shrugged. “I’m not sure what other options there are because that’s what I need. Now, back to you. Do you have any talent or not?”

  “Some,” he admitted, “but not necessarily anything you can utilize.”

  “I can utilize anything,” Burly declared, staring at him with interest.

  “I can see auras, no big deal,” he shared, “and I’m a precog. In a way, I get some intuitive abilities when things are about to happen, but it’s not as if you can train for this or can rely on this. It’s not something where you can say, Do it now. It comes and goes.”

  Burly stared at him. “I did hear that happens sometimes.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t you think it’s something that would develop over time?”

  “Maybe, but I’m not exactly young anymore, so I highly doubt that my abilities will change at this point.”

  “Then why would MI6 consider you?”

  Wallace shrugged. “Hard to find people like us, qualified and gifted.”

  “So why do you think you didn’t make the cut for the MI6 team?”

  “Because frankly, I didn’t like the intrusive questions, and I generally don’t like leadership in the first place,” he said, smirking. “I don’t handle it well when people tell me what to do, and I definitely don’t handle threats well,” he added, giving Burly a hard look. “I have no intention of utilizing any ability for shit jobs. I’ve been asked to do that before, and the answer’s always been no.”

  “Interesting,” Burly murmured. “Why is it that the psychics I’m finding all seem to have some moral code?”

  “It goes along with the job,” Wallace stated, “which is more evidence that Dominic isn’t truly psychic and is unstable. He’ll do anything for a dollar, and, sure, you’ll always get people like that, but is that really who you want, or do you just want people out there because they can do shit? Dom may also be out for your job, if he sees that it suits him or pays better.”

  “Dominic, I can handle. As to your other question, I want both, people with gifts who can be bought,” he declared. “At least if they’re driven by money, I know how to control them, because if they’re not, it’s pretty hard to get them to do anything you want them to do.”

  “Exactly. That’s the problem with psychics, true psychics. You can get some who know some things some of the time, but it’s not as if it’s ever anything you can count on. Some psychics out there can predict an earthquake, but, just because they can predict it once, that doesn’t mean that they’ll predict it every other time. Other psychics have other areas where their predictions are focused. In other words, psychics are specialized. If it were that simple to find us, teams of people all over the world would be doing this shit.”

  At that, the boss man stared out into the distance.

  Wallace continued. “I understand that’s not what you want to hear,” he added, “but you also have to counter whatever we’re telling you with Dominic’s chatter.”

  “Dominic has been telling me a lot, but I have also done quite a bit of research. The CIA did a lot of remote viewing, and I’ve heard of healers who can do all kinds of stuff,” Burly shared. “We will need healers because, if we’ll be doing this work, then, chances are, we’ll need to have them on hand as well.”

  “Do you have anybody yet?”

  “I’ve just started this process,” Burly shared, “and I have to admit it’s not going the way I wanted it to.”

  “That’s because you’re using brute force. If you could find real psychics who want to do what you’re doing for large sums of money, that’s a different story, but to do it because they’re forced to? … I can’t imagine that their abilities would even work.”

  At that, the boss glared at him. “You need to explain that.”

  “Abilities are based on our senses being calm, centered, and balanced,” Wallace clarified. “So, threats won’t make them work at all. People will give you information, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be honest and real. It’s more likely to be whatever you need, based on your orders. So, they may sometimes give you bad info just to get you off their backs,” he added. “That’ll be your problem with Dominic.”

  “It already is a problem with Dominic,” he snapped. “I just don’t want to believe that he’s as unstable as you guys are making him out to be.”

  “I’m not sure how unstable he is, but definitely something is wrong there,” Wallace pointed out. “Something odd, something that I wouldn’t want to work with. Ever.”

  “If Dominic wasn’t in the picture, would you work with me?”

  “No, because the work that you want to do isn’t work that I want to do,” Wallace stated.

  “You don’t know anything about the work I’m doing.”

  “No, but you used force to get me here. You kidnapped and threatened my girlfriend’s life in order to keep me in line. So already I know you don’t care about human life and free will. So there is absolutely no work that you will be doing that will fit into my ethical and moral code.”

  “If ethics weren’t involved?” he asked, staring at him intently.

  “That’s a problem for me. Ethics are always involved.”

  “So then why is the thought that I might just kill her not enough to keep you in line?” he asked, puzzled. And it seemed as if he was sincerely asking.

  “Because, at some point in time, every prisoner revolts,” Wallace replied. “Everyone. They can only handle so much, and there always—and I mean always—comes a point where they will break. That’s exactly what will happen,” he stated. “So, you’re better off to find willing psychics, maybe someone over in Russia or in third-world countries, where people don’t have as many opportunities to go out in the world and won’t have a clue about true freedom, maybe are used to having somebody like you as their leader.”

  “How do you find people like that?” Burly asked, a curious note in his tone.

  Wallace stared at him, nonplussed. “A bunch of gangs are out there in the world. I don’t know that they’re worth contacting, but it would be a place to start.”

  He nodded absentmindedly. “I’ll think about it.” He got up and headed to the doorway. “Don’t make any plans to leave anytime soon.”

  Wallace frowned at him. “At the moment, you’ve got all your henchmen here, all that I know about anyway. Five of you to guard the four of us. You’ve already threatened to kill a man you put in the hospital, who did absolutely nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Plus, you’ve threatened to kill my girlfriend. What is it you think I’ll do?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ll have to give this some more thought.”

  And, with that, he turned and walked out.

  Chapter 9

  Once again, Amy was caught by the arm and dragged out into the larger room. There she saw Terk and Wallace. She shrugged off the arm holding her and glared at her guard, then walked over to sit down beside Wallace. “You guys get a better welcome than I did?”

  “I did,” Wallace replied cheerfully.

  “Of course,” she muttered. “I’m just the bait.”

  He leaned over, wrapped an arm around her, and gave her a hug. “But one hell of a cute bait,” he muttered, chuckling slightly at her frustration.

  She groaned. “Glad you’re in a cheerful mood.” He just smiled and kept his arm around her. She could tell that the atmosphere was crackling, and that something had shifted, but she didn’t know what for sure. She looked over at Terk curiously, but he had a bland look on his face, not giving away a thing, but it was easy to see that something was afoot. She wanted to ask if their plan to plant seeds in the minds of these bad guys had taken root. Yet she had to remember that a receiver could be among those very bad guys.

  Just then Wallace, as if realizing that she was struggling to keep her mouth shut, gave her a gentle squeeze, and whispered, “It’s all fine.”

  And it felt fine; she just didn’t know why or how. She glanced around in confusion, wondering what had changed. Her guard joined the other two guards here, who seemed cheerful, laughing even. They made coffee and sat here, presumably waiting for the boss to show up again. She noted that Dom was missing, probably getting in trouble with the big boss again. That made her smile.

  When the boss did show up, he looked over at everybody and nodded. “Now we can begin.”

  She wasn’t sure what they would begin, but she looked over at Wallace to see him studying the boss curiously. Maybe Wallace didn’t know what they were about to begin either. That concerned her a little more than she cared to admit. She waited, watching the boss curiously.

  He walked over to Wallace and asked, “Remember what you said?”

  “Which part?” he asked, with a note of humor.

  “About finding others like you.”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “I think I’ll take some of your advice,” he muttered. “I don’t really want to be watching everybody twenty-four hours a day, and that seems to be what I’m heading for.”

  “It is exactly what you’re heading for,” Wallace declared, with a nod.

  At that, Dominic walked in, the last bully to join the group. When he saw everybody sitting down and settled, almost in a friendly state, he snorted. “Who started the party and forgot to invite me?”

  The boss shrugged. “Sometimes you’re not welcome at the party.”

  Dominic glared at him. “Just remember that I am the party.”

  “You are, until we find somebody to replace you.”

  At that, Dominic glared at his boss. “You’re talking about replacing me?” he asked. Such a note of incredulity filled his tone that it was obvious such a travesty had never occurred to him. He turned and pointed a finger at Wallace. “Is this your doing?”

  Wallace stared at him. “What have I got to do with any of this?” he asked, motioning around the room. “This is your game, not mine.”

  “Yeah, you better believe it,” Dom declared, with a sneer. He then turned to the boss. “Forget it. You’re not replacing me.”

  “I’ll decide,” the boss replied mildly, but his gaze was watchful.

  Suddenly an odd thickening of the air filled the room.

  Amy had heard that idiom used before and had never really understood what it meant, but now she did. She actually felt emotions were alive and well in this room. She felt feelings, as if tangible objects. Wow. She actually sensed this humanlike change in the atmosphere itself. She wondered if Terk had caused this shift. At that thought, she frowned. She hoped it was a good change, but she feared it was something ominous. She shifted ever-so-slightly closer to Wallace, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  It was akin to watching men rattle sabers or something similar; another phrase she had heard and hadn’t ever seen or thought about much before, but now understood exactly what that meant too. She watched as Dominic and the boss man stared at each other, and then the boss laughed.

  “Whatever,” he said, with a wave of his hand to Dom. “You can stay as long as you cooperate.”

  Amy frowned. She wanted to glance at Terk and Wallace without anyone noticing but decided against it right now. Had Dom changed the atmosphere in the room with his anger, his fear? She would have to ask Wallace and Terk about that later. Then she backtracked, trying hard not to shake her head for all to see. No way in hell was Dom this good at energy work. No, this had Terk’s name written all over it. And, if the boss man thought Dom was doing this, all the better. Could be just woo-woo enough to give the boss man even more reasons to not trust Dom.

  “Since when have I not cooperated?” Dominic asked, his gaze narrowing at the boss man.

  “Damn near every day,” the boss stated, with a long-suffering sigh. “Constantly bothering me with petty issues that really aren’t worth my time.”

  “Like what?” Dom asked in astonishment.

  She wasn’t sure what had just happened. She couldn’t help but glance from Terk to Wallace, and that glance gave her insight that they were doing something on an energy level, probably nonstop. She knew by that weird expression of concentration on both their faces, yet almost a blandness to their gazes. Not wanting to draw any attention to them, she made sure to avoid looking directly at them but studied the kidnappers in front of her instead. If Terk and Wallace were doing something, would it blow up in their faces or would it get them out of here?

  She knew that they were obviously attempting to do something that would free them, but that didn’t mean it would be quite as successful as they hoped. Dealing with bad men like this didn’t ever turn out exactly the way they wanted it to. These power-hungry, money-hungry assholes always waited for the next opportunity to take charge and to be in control.

  Amy watched for the ensuing fireworks, and they weren’t long in coming.

  The boss looked around at everybody and announced, “Here’s the deal. Nothing’s to change for the next couple days,” he murmured. “I want them kept here, kept quiet, and you better feed and look after them. Do not injure any of them,” he added, with a note of warning.

  The men looked at each other, frowned, then over at Dominic, who was barely holding back the sneer from his face.

  She wondered what the hell was going on, but some power play was happening here that she didn’t quite understand.

  The boss walked over to Dominic, speaking directly to him. “You especially. Leave them alone.”

  “What’s this? They’re your pets now?” Dominic asked in a taunting voice. “You trust them over me? Even though I’ve been working with you all this time, suddenly you don’t trust me?”

  “I didn’t say I don’t trust you,” he clarified. “I’m just telling you, very specifically, to leave them alone. Whether I trust you or not, I do know what you can be like, and I don’t want them hurt.” And, with that, the boss man turned and strode out again.

  Dominic turned to them. “What the hell did you do to him?”

  Wallace stared at him. “What do you think we did? Nothing, of course.”

  Dominic snorted. “I’m not as gullible as he is. I don’t quite understand what you might have been able to do, but I do know that some people can do all kinds of shit, and right now it seems to me as if you’re trying to shuffle the deck.”

  “Even if we were,” Wallace suggested, with unexpected humor, “what would you expect us to do? We are your prisoners, after all.”

  Dom nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t think the boss thought of that. He doesn’t really understand just what can be done in this world.”

  “And you do?” Terk asked curiously.

  Dom again nodded, a smirk on his face. “I do. I’ve certainly seen a lot of psychics and what they can do, and I’ve certainly heard about even more,” he declared in a controlled fury. “Some crazy dude worked for the US government who could do all kinds of shit. He would be awesome to work with, but you could never trust him.”

  “Why is that?” Terk asked, his voice lowering softly.

  At that point, she realized it must be Terk himself who Dom was talking about.

  Dominic sneered. “Think about it. Do you want to work for somebody you can’t trust?”

  “Why couldn’t you trust him?” Wallace asked in the same confused tone. “This guy, what did he ever do to you?”

  “He didn’t do anything, but I wouldn’t let him do anything either. You couldn’t trust somebody like that, couldn’t let him into your inner circle, because you don’t know what he can do. If you don’t know what people can do, they’re dangerous.”

  “Ah, well, that is a good point,” Terk agreed, with a nod of his head. “Such an interesting concept.”

  “Not a concept at all,” Dom argued, with a sneer. “It’s a simple fact.”

  “So, can we go back to our rooms now or have a cup of coffee at least?” Amy asked the guards, who were standing around, looking as if they were wondering what they were supposed to do next.

  “You don’t need coffee,” Dominic declared.

  “And yet that would hardly be considered looking after us, now would it?” she asked, with a wry tone. “So, who’ll be the first one the boss man fires—or shoots—when I tell him that we couldn’t even get a cup of coffee because Dom said so?” At that, Dominic strode to her, glaring down on her, trying to intimidate her possibly. She shrugged. “You think you can scare me by standing over me?” She shook her head. “I heard what the boss man said myself, as did you guys.”