Chapter 63: Trouble

Author’s note.

Once again, I can’t thank all of you enough for sticking with me through this journey. Life has a way of sticking it’s nose into things, and that has been happening, making devoting time to writing a much more precious commodity.

As always my thanks go to Dr Mark for his editing skills and to TheSwiss for managing the server.

Stay happy.

PM

Melanie was already awake, being the lightest sleeper of all the girls, as I slid gently out of bed. The beep of the gun safe opening woke the rest of the girls.

“What’s going on?” asked Melanie.

“Someone is messing with the cars again,” I said. “Someone, go wake Gracie please.”

“Why are you taking a gun?” asked Amanda.

“Cover,” I said, as I loaded the weapon.

It took a matter of moments to pull on a pair of shorts, and then I moved through the house, meeting Gracie coming out of her room, her service weapon in hand. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.

“Call 911,” she said to Mary, who’d been the one to wake her. “Tell them what is happening and that there is an armed federal agent on scene.”

We moved swiftly to the door.

I’d been keeping an eye on the feed while I prepared. The perpetrator had seemingly finished with what they were doing on one of the vehicles and had moved to the other side. This time, it seemed, they weren’t content with simply damaging tires; they seemed to be scratching something onto the side of the car.

I opened the door silently, Gracie indicated that she would go one way, and I was to go in the opposite direction. “Watch for other perps,” she said. “He might not be alone.”

We slid out, ducked down, and quickly circled around the cars. I’d scanned for other minds in the vicinity and found that there was someone sitting in a vehicle about fifty yards up the street. That surprised me since I’d assumed that it was Pricktard doing the damage. Why would he need either a vehicle or an accomplice?

I reached out and froze the person sitting in the car before emerging behind the person who was currently carving something into the door of Gracie’s vehicle.

“FBI, don’t move,” Gracie yelled stepping between the vehicles and pointing her weapon at the guy kneeling there.

I guess instinct made him react, although he wasn’t exactly quick. He turned as if to bolt, only then seeing me standing, weapon in hand, blocking his exit.

“Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head,” Gracie ordered him as he stood. The implement he was holding clattered to the floor.

It was only then that I heard the distant wail of a siren. It appeared that the cavalry were coming.

Gracie moved to the perp who was starting to look familiar. She pulled one, then the other, hand behind his back, cuffing him. I wasn’t sure where she’d secreted her cuffs.

Then she pulled off his hood and we got our first look at the vandal.

“Trevor?” I said surprised. “What the fuck?”

Trevor stood there, shaking slightly, his face pale with a look of fear on his face. Given his attitude the other night, I would have expected him to have been aggressive or belligerent, but he merely stood there trembling, his hands behind his back.

A police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the house. Both Gracie and I had lowered our weapons by now. I placed my weapon on the roof of Gracie’s car and stepped away a little way from it, keeping my hands visible. Gracie had her credentials held up and open.

The officers approached with their weapons drawn since they could see our weapons in view.

“Agent Gracie Jordan, FBI,” Gracie announced as they approached. One officer approached her and the other came towards me. He spotted the weapon on the roof of the car. I had my hands out to my sides, visibly empty.

“Whose is that weapon?” the officer approaching me asked.

“Mine.” I said.

“You have a permit?” he asked, and I nodded.

“In the house,” I said.

“Mind if I secure it for now?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“Go ahead,” I said. He picked up my Glock.

“It has a magazine in, but nothing in the chamber,” I said. He slid the slide back a little to confirm what I’d said.

“What happened?” he asked.

I explained that our cars had been vandalized a couple of nights before, and how I’d set the security system to alert me if someone came onto the driveway in the night. I told him how I’d been woken by the security system, woken Gracie, and then seeing that there was someone on the drive apparently doing something to the cars, we’d come out to confront them.

I also told him that I’d noticed a car down the block, which I didn’t think should be there.

His partner, meanwhile, had placed Trevor in the back of the patrol car. The officer I’d been speaking to walked down the block to where Trevor’s ‘friend’ was sitting in his car. I released him just as the officer reached his car.

He too was arrested.

“Do you know the perp?” asked the officer.

I nodded. “His name is Trevor,” I said. “My half-sister’s ex-boyfriend. He was here on Wednesday for dinner, he helped himself to our beer, without permission, and then left in a bad mood when I said that Sarah wasn’t getting into a car with him after he’d been drinking. He failed to stop for a patrol car on his way home, totalled his car, and got arrested for DUI too.

“His father is some kind of financial big shot who appears to have got him out of jail pretty quick. He must have a good lawyer I guess. My sister dumped him after that. I guess he didn’t like that.”

Gracie was standing looking at her car, which had been the one Trevor had been vandalizing. He’d flattened all her tires and scratched something on the door. He’d also started on Ness’ car, flattening two of her tires, but we’d interrupted him before he could do anything else.

It took nearly an hour for the police to take our statements, meanwhile Gracie had called the damage to her car in and was told that there would be a replacement car delivered the later that morning. Once again, they would collect her car and fix the damage.

Trevor and his ‘accomplice’ were taken away by the police, and we were given yet another report number should we decide to go through the insurance company. I decided to simply pay for the tires to be replaced. The deductible would be more than the cost anyway and it would probably increase Ness’ premium which, given her age, was already astronomical.

We all went back to bed for a couple of hours. I started my day, as usual, at four.

The tire guy came to replace Ness’ tires. He joked that his truck knew the way to our road by heart now and he hardly had to steer on the way. He must have made quite a lot of money from our neighbourhood in the time we’d been around although he didn’t know that a good portion of that money was thanks to me. I saw Pricktard watching out of his window as the tire guy worked on Ness’ car. He looked conflicted.

After the tires were fixed, I delivered Ness’ car to her again at her school, dropping her keys to her at lunchtime, before jogging home to shower and get ready for my afternoon hypnotherapy appointment at the range.

My client that afternoon was the singer with the coke habit.

“How have you been getting on?” I asked him.

“It’s not been easy,” he said. “But I’ve managed to stay off the stuff. I didn’t think I had the willpower to do it, but I have.”

I didn’t mention that it wasn’t his willpower that was responsible.

“Davey’s been pestering me though,” he said. “He keeps trying to get me to take some stuff, saying things like I’m looking tired, or I need a pick-me-up.”

“You should fire him,” I said. “He’s just going to make life more difficult for you the longer you go without taking the stuff. He’ll use every trick he can to get you back on it. You’re his meal ticket.”

“It’s not that simple,” he replied. “If I fire him, he’ll go straight to the newspapers, or my label, and tell them.”

“Would they take his word for it?” I asked.

“Mud sticks,” he said. “If anyone were to make that sort of accusation in the press, no matter whether I had or hadn’t, some people would believe it. People are always looking to find the flaws in others ... it helps them to ignore their own.”

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked. “You’re not going to be taking drugs any more so, at some point, Davey is going to figure out his gravy train has left the station without him. What then?”

He sighed. “I have no idea,” he said. “But first things first, I need to get off the drugs.”

I sent him into his trance and checked out the Compulsions I had placed. They were still strongly in place as I’d expected. I did reduce the cravings he would feel, to make life easier for him. I also checked his body out with my healing. There were no traces of any drugs in his system. I’d done some research about cocaine and had determined that it was only detectable in the saliva or urine for up to about 4 days, but could be detected in the hair for up to ninety days after last using it. My client had very short hair and I suspected, given that, it would only be a matter of a couple of weeks before it was all gone from there too.

I wondered if I should do anything about Davey but, once again, realised that it was nothing to do with me. My job was to help my client stop taking the drugs. I’d done that already although he didn’t know that - yet. Anything more was his own responsibility.

After he left I went home. I had spent about an hour working on the paper I’d been writing when Sarah had interrupted me to ask for help with her memory. I figured I could finish it off before it was time to go for my flying lesson.

I had three more sessions of instruction before I would be able to do my solo flights. Starting those would mark about the halfway point of the course, and I was looking forward to getting my PPL. There was still going to be a lot of work to do after that, before I was ready to fly the G500, but it was certainly a start and I couldn’t wait.

Once again Arnie was waiting for me when I arrived. He looked nervous as I approached.

“Dad won’t be long,” he said. “He said to do the walk around.”

As had become our normal I began to do the external checks while Arnie looked on.

“It’s my birthday Friday,” he said.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“I’m having a party,” he continued. “Do you want to come?”

I looked at him. His aura looked both nervous and hopeful. I wondered how to handle him.

“You can bring your girls too,” he added hastily.

“And my sisters?” I asked.

“Sisters?” he queried.

“I have two sisters living with me.” I explained. “Sarah and Melanie.”

“Sure,” he said grinning. “The more the merrier.”

I quickly checked in with the girls, they seemed amused, but up for the party.

“Okay then,” I said, “What time and where?”

“I’ll leave a note, with our address, on your car,” he said. “Friday night, seven o’clock.”

I nodded at him, and continued the checks as Danny strode up to the plane.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready to go!” I confirmed.

We were just climbing into the plane, and my phone rang. Dianna.

I considered not answering but, with a look of apology to Danny, I pressed the answer button.

“Dianna,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Just about to start my flying lesson,” I said. “Why?”

“You’re at the airport?” she clarified.

I bit back my sarcasm and just answered simply “Yes.”

“We have a situation,” she said, “that you are uniquely qualified to deal with.”

“Oh?”

“A bank robbery gone wrong,” she explained. “But the perp is a user.”

“If he’s a user, why is he robbing a bank?” I said surprised.

“I didn’t say he was bright,” she said. “He seems quite strong, but seems to be struggling with his powers. Sometimes they work and other times they don’t. He’s now holed up in the bank with several hostages, some of whom are under his control and some who are not. He is armed too and claims that he has an explosive device as well as a weapon.”

“Where?” I asked.

“It’s not too far from you,” she said, “about two hundred miles away. We were going to send a helicopter for you, but if you’re already in an aircraft. There’s an airstrip, Oakridge State Airport, ten minutes out of town.”

I looked across at Danny. “Do you know Oakridge State Airport?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Can we go there?” I asked. “Now?”

He raised his eyebrows but then nodded. “It’ll take about an hour,” he said.

“I can be in Oakridge State in an hour or so,” I said to Dianna.

“Good job,” she said. “It would take longer to get a chopper to you and then fly you down here. Get to the airport and I’ll have a car waiting for you.”

While I was talking to Dianna, Danny was doing something on his tablet computer, I presumed plotting a course.

“Why are we going to Oakridge state?” he asked as I hung up the phone and we started the pre-flight cockpit check.

“You know I consult for the FBI?” I said. It had come up in conversation before.

“Yes,” he answered.

“They need a consult.” I replied. “Urgently.”

We finished the check and were in the air in less than ten minutes. Danny gave me a heading and an altitude to fly, and we set out.

This was probably the most boring flying lesson I’d had to date, or would have been had it not been for the fact I was wondering what was waiting for me when I landed.

“This is going to mean that you don’t get quite so much flight time this lesson,” Danny said. “You’ll only get an hour each way.”

“You don’t have to wait for me,” I said. “I’ll find my own way back.”

“You think it’s going to take that long?” he queried.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“You booked four hours, and you’re paying for four hours,” he grinned. “I’ll wait until eight. If you’re not on your way back by then, then I’ll head back. Maybe you can get another hour of flight time on the return.”

I shrugged.

We settled into silence for the rest of the flight, until Danny started to brief me on the approach to Oakridge.

“Oakridge is an unattended airport,” he said, and then proceeded to talk me through the procedure for landing there. Of course I already knew that but I said nothing, letting him explain in detail what I needed to do. I realized that he was flustered by the change in plans for the lesson and was dealing with that by relying on what he knew.

There was a dark SUV waiting on the apron, blue and red lights flashing, as I taxied off the runway at Oakridge.

I shut the engine down.

“You go,” Danny said to me. “I’ll secure the aircraft. You have my mobile number. I’ll wait here until eight. If you are going to be a few minutes later then let me know and I’ll wait. If I’ve not heard from you by then, I’ll head back and you’ll have to make your own way home.”

“Thanks,” I said. I climbed out of the plane and walked over to the SUV where Dianna was standing waiting.

She gave me a brief hug then we got in the car. She sat in the back with me and there was an agent I didn’t recognise in the driver’s seat. We set off as soon as the doors closed.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “We could go in with a team, but we have no idea what we’d be going in to nor how any of the people inside would react. Also drugging up all our team to make them immune to powers doesn’t really leave them in the best condition.”

“Are we talking to the people inside?” I asked.

She nodded. “He’s demanding the usual. Car, helicopter, the whole nine.”

“Do we know anything about him?”

She shook her head.

“From what we can see on the security footage we downloaded,” she explained, “he walked into the bank and tried to Compel a teller to hand over a stack of money. He failed, so he pulled a gun on her. She’d already hit the alarm by this time, but then things got strange. He managed to Compel the security guard and two customers just doing their banking to back him up. That’s as far as we got before the security guard shut down the system and we lost visibility on the inside.

“He’s moved everyone into the back offices of the bank, but the armed security guard is still in the front and guarding the door. He took a shot at an officer who tried to enter so they backed off. There are snipers in place that could take the guard down but obviously we don’t want to do that, if he really is Compelled.”

“You think he might be an accomplice?” I asked.

“It’s unlikely,” she said. “But we’ve not really had time enough to thoroughly rule it out.”

The journey to the bank took fifteen minutes and when we arrived it was like a movie scene. I wondered if the entire local PD were at the bank. There were more police cars parked in the road outside the bank than I’d seen in one place for a long time. There were also three other dark SUVs as well as a SWAT van behind which our SUV parked.

I got out of the car and walked around to where Dianna was standing waiting for me. She took me over to introduce me to the leader of the SWAT team.

“Sergeant,” she said as we approached. “This is Caleb Stott. He’s the one I spoke to you about. He can deal with the guard and the perp.”

The sergeant looked me up and down. “He’s a kid,” he said.

“I’m twenty-one,” I said.

“You done anything like this before, son?” he asked.

I glanced at Dianna. I was not sure if I was allowed to talk about the white supremacist compound. She nodded.

“I was involved in taking down a white supremacist compound in Montana,” I said.

The sergeants eyes widened “Seriously?” he asked in a surprised voice.

“Caleb was first in,” Dianna said. “He was responsible for the capture of the leader and the disarming of the boobytrap bombs.”

“I didn’t disarm them,” I said. “I just stopped the guy with his finger on the trigger. It was bomb disposal that did the heavy lifting on that one.”

“And we will do the same here,” said another man who was standing off to the side. “If there is even a bomb. We didn’t see any device, but he claims to have one.”

I looked across the street at the bank. It was a single storey building with a flat roof. I noted that there were already officers on adjacent roofs but none on the bank itself. I suspected that that was due to the threat of a bomb inside.

“There are two entries,” said the sergeant. “The main door on the front, and a fire exit at the back, which is a heavy gauge steel security door. We could get through that without too much trouble, but it wouldn’t be quiet.”

“Where is the perp?” I said, smiling to myself slightly at the use of the lingo. I saw Dianna grinning at me. I knew I’d get some stick for that later.

“The whole frontage of the bank is open plan, then the tellers’ desks which are separated by a desk and bullet proof glass partition. There is one door through the partition into three offices behind the tellers’ desks. We think they are in the managers office, which is on the south west corner of the building.

“Are there windows in the managers office?” I asked.

“No,” said the sergeant. “The only windows are at the front. You can see the guard standing in front of the door through the partition. He has his gun drawn. So far, he’s fired two rounds at a patrolman who attempted to enter. He didn’t hit anything other than the door.”

“Can you show me around the back please?” I asked.

“We can’t get in that way,” said the sergeant.

“I know,” I said. “I just want to listen in. The closer I get the better.”

The sergeant looked at Dianna and then shrugged.

I thought at first that he was going to detail one of the other members of his team to take me around the back, but he didn’t, nodding his head at me to follow him. He walked down the block a little way before cutting through an alley which led behind the row of shops. The bank occupied the middle lot of the row. We walked down the alley, stepping over some muddy puddles as we went. I was surprised at the lack of garbage in the alley. Aside from the puddles it was neat and reasonably clean.

We walked past the fire door to the southwest corner of the bank. I leaned my back against the wall and let my mind roam over the inside of the bank, looking to see how many people were in there, and what I could learn.

There were twelve people in the manager’s office. The manager apparently was sitting in his own chair at his desk. He had shown the robber where the safe was and explained that, although he would normally be able to open it during the day, since the alarm had been triggered, the electronic locking system had kicked in and could only be released remotely by the alarm company. I felt the remnants of a Compulsion on him to open the safe, although he was no longer under the control of the power user.

There were two other people in the office that were under his control though, both of whom had been customers in the bank. One of them was standing outside the office, keeping an eye on the security guard, and the other was standing over the eight other people who were sitting on the floor against the wall. He seemed to have a weapon of sorts, maybe a baseball bat, with which he was keeping the other hostages cowed.

The power user himself had a very strange feel to him. I decided that he was mentally ill. His thoughts were disjointed and erratic. He was pacing back and forward in the manager’s office talking to himself. From time to time he’d attempt to Compel one or other of the other hostages to do something but his mind was so fragmented he couldn’t make it stick. I was surprised that he’d managed to Compel anyone given his current mental state. I reasoned that he’d probably been less agitated at the beginning, but things going wrong had led to his agitation, and therefore his loss of control. The guard and the two other customers must have been particularly susceptible for him to have managed to take, and keep, control of them. The manager had apparently broken free of the compulsion and the user had been unable to Compel anyone else in the building.

I couldn’t tell if he had any kind of explosive device or other weaponry. I could simply send them all to sleep, but if I did that, and he had some kind of ‘dead man’s switch’ then I could cause the device, if there was one, to go off.

Ideally, I’d like to get in there and see for myself what the situation was. I didn’t know how possible that would be.

“There are twelve people in the office,” I told the sergeant. “The manager and eight hostages sitting on the floor. The perp has two other people under his control one of which is watching the hostages. He apparently has something like a baseball bat. The other is standing by the door, watching the guard.

“The perp is mentally unstable. He’s struggling now, and may be unpredictable. I can’t tell if he has an explosive device, but we do know he’s armed.”

The sergeant looked at me. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

“Did Special Agent Everson not read you in?” I asked.

“She said something about mental powers,” he said. “But I was sceptical. Has he really taken charge of that guard and two of the customers? I thought they were accomplices.”

I shook my head. “Not willing ones, although you should treat them as hostiles just now. They will fight with everything they have while he has control of them. I can break his control but he’ll know about it and, if he does have a bomb, he may set it off.”

“How long have they been in there?” I asked.

“Five hours so far,” he said.

“You think he’s hungry?” I grinned at him.

“We have a hostage negotiator talking to him,” he said. “You think he’ll be thinking about food just now?”

I grinned at him again. “Give me a minute.”

As gently as I could, I sent a thread into the user’s mind. He was completely unshielded. I suggested that he was hungry, very hungry in fact. He wanted pizza, and he wanted it now.

“Let’s go back out,” I said to the sergeant.

The sergeant nodded, but then put pressed the PTT on his jacket to activate his radio. I couldn’t hear what he’d heard since he had an earpiece in and I didn’t, but he shook his head, and said “We’re coming back now.”

“The perp has just told the negotiator he wants pizza,” he said.

“Of course he does,” I said. “Did I mention I freelanced as a pizza delivery boy?”

“You?” he asked.

“Me,” I said. “I’m just a kid remember. Who would be suspicious of a kid delivering pizza?”

We walked back out front and I brought Dianna up to speed, while the sergeant called the local pizza joint and ordered.

It took just under twenty minutes for the pizza’s to arrive. The police stopped the delivery at the corner and the young girl driving the car looked at us all with frightened eyes as she got out.

I went over and smiled at her.

“May I borrow your ball cap?” I asked. I was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, which I found comfortable to fly in. The pizza delivery girl wasn’t wearing any particular uniform other than a ball cap with the pizza parlours name on the front. She took it off and handed it to me.

The sergeant paid her for the pizzas and gave her a hefty tip.

“I’ll expense it,” he said when I raised my eyebrows at him. I laughed.

The negotiator called the bank and told them that the pizzas were here.

“Get the delivery driver to bring them in,” the perp ordered. “No police.”

The negotiator made a token resistance but allowed himself to be bullied into complying with the demand. I picked up the pizzas, put on the ball cap, and headed for the door of the bank.

The guard eyed me as I approached.

“Just a kid,” I sent into his mind gently. “Looks like he’s still in school,”

He walked to the door and unlocked it, then waved me in with his revolver. I feigned reluctance.

“I was told not to go inside,” I said. “Just to hand you the pizzas.”

He pointed his gun at me. “Inside now!” he snarled.

Trying to look like I was trying not to look scared, I entered the bank. The door was closed and locked behind me.

The guard walked me over to the partition door and keyed in a number on the keypad. The door buzzed and he pulled it open.

“Go on through,” he said. “Office to the right.”

I went to step through but then he put his hand on my shoulder, stopping me. I looked round at him.

“Leave me one,” he said, and took the top box from the stack I was carrying.

I passed through the partition door and went down the short hall, past the man holding the office door open, and into the manager’s office.

Inside it was exactly as I expected. There were eight people, a mix of bank employees and customers, sitting on the floor against the wall. A young man in his mid twenties was standing over them holding a bat in his hands. He had his back to me. The manager was sitting at his desk, both his hands laid flat on his desk, while the power user was pacing back and forth. I couldn’t see any evidence of an explosive, but I found the manager’s pose a little weird.

I walked over to the desk and placed the boxes of pizza on it.

Now I could see what was going on, I could see the threads of Compulsion leading from the power user to the guard, the man at the door, and the man with the bat. Normally those threads were thin and uniform but these threads pulsed and writhed, almost pulsating. I also saw a thread going to the manager. From the outside of the building, I’d thought that he’d thrown off the compulsion but I could see now that he was still controlled, although, again, the thread was wildly fluctuating. I must have looked at him just as the power had failed for a second or two. Now, however, it was back and seemed solid.

I looked at the manager’s hands and noticed that a wire went from beneath one of them and snaked over the edge of his desk. The explosive I presumed. The perp had nothing in his hands and since he was dressed as I was, in nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt. I could tell that his only weapon was a revolver that he had currently, for reasons best known to him, stuffed down the front of his pants.

Now I knew the situation, I could take control.

First, I made sure that the bank manager would not be able to move so much as a single muscle. Then I sent everyone in the office to sleep. The perp and the two men falling to the floor. The guard in the front office was also sent to sleep. He fell to the floor still munching on his pizza.

Once I was satisfied that everyone was sleeping soundly, I disarmed the perp and took the bat from the man by the hostages. I used the bat to prop open the partition door and walked over to the guard, turning him onto his side to make sure he didn’t choke on the pizza in his mouth. Then I took his gun and walked to the front door of the bank, unlocked it and walked outside.

I was met by the sergeant, who had watched me through the bank window as I walked across the lobby.

“What’s the situation?” he asked.