a quiet voice declared in English. He sat, hands linked over his stomach, leaning back against the wall in the same straight chair she’d used to break the window.
“Dammit, Tyndal! I almost shot you!” She lowered her weapon and shook her head. “How’d you get here before I did?”
“Shortcut,” he drawled. “What took you so long?”
“What do you mean? I flew!”
He rocked forward and got up. “Not fast enough, either of us. Our boy’s gone already. I just found this in the other room, though.” He held out a scrap of paper with a few words scribbled on it. “It’s in Dutch, I think.”
She examined the paper. “Yeah, it’s a supply list. So he’s probably either from the Netherlands or had Dutch parents. That must be his mother tongue. He used it to make a list, and I heard him curse in it. Not much of a clue to his whereabouts now, though.”
“It’s all we have so far.”
Marie looked up at him and grinned. “Did you just say we?”
He shrugged and nodded, looking resigned.
“Not your decision, I take it?”
He shook his head. “Mercier said to watch you. So, show me what you got. If it’s good enough, I guess you get the job.”
“I have a job right now—getting this guy. One thing bothers me. If he intended for me to escape, maybe he meant for the authorities to find that,” she said, staring at the paper as she spoke.
“You think he let you go?”
“Sure made it easy enough. And he let me overhear him speaking in Dutch.”
“Let you, huh? Maybe he thought you were still out from the drugs. I don’t think we can assume—”
Marie interrupted. “So what do you think? False leads?”
“I don’t know. I found the paper right before I heard you coming and haven’t had time to examine it. Give me a minute.” He turned away, holding the scrap between his palms.
It was a full minute before he answered. “No. He took something out of his pocket, dropped this accidentally.”
Marie didn’t appreciate the humor, but she laughed anyway. “Thanks, oh, great swami. Did you divine anything else?”
Oddly enough, he didn’t laugh with her. “I’m psychic.”
“Well, excuse me for not recognizing that. Your ears aren’t pointy like Mr. Spock’s.”
“A skeptic. Well, at least my luck’s consistent today.”
“You’re serious,” she guessed. “You really think you can…”
“I really know I can, and I don’t intend to debate it with you right now. I thought maybe since you have a photographic memory—something very few people possess and some consider strange—that you’d at least have an open mind about it.”
“That’s why COMPASS wants me? So all that stuff about the team having unique powers isn’t just some outlandish rumor?”
“Hardly. But it’s not up to me to convince you. Mercier can do that if you come on board. If not, it’s just as well you retain your disbelief. We don’t need it advertised.”
She cocked her head and pursed her lips. “So, how’s it work? Your gift, I mean. And how well does it work?”
If she expected defensiveness, she didn’t get it. He pocketed the paper and answered matter-of-factly, “Only works with touching things, not people, which we figure might be an early developed defense mechanism on my part. Or it could simply be a limitation. Accuracy’s about 80 percent in my case.”
“Oh, so you admit that sometimes it doesn’t work?” she asked politely.
He nodded. “It depends on how much energy was expended on the object that was held or used and for how long it was exposed. Our boy obviously put some thought into making the list. Got more than I figured from it.”
“Okay, let’s hear it. What did you get?” She asked, humoring him while trying not to view him as a crazy she ought to run from.
After a pause, Tyndal added almost reluctantly, “He’s working for somebody else.”
Marie avoided his eyes and gave a succinct nod, not wanting to make him angry by questioning this ability. Psychic mumbo jumbo aside, he had access to a number of enforcement agencies and therefore more resources for investigating this than she had.
She needed him, crazy or not. Now how could she make him need her?
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