Walker, page 4
“He doesn’t need to worry. You know that, right?”
“Sure, and I could tell him that until I’m blue in the face. It won’t make a damn bit of difference,” he replied cheerfully.
And that was something else that Walker knew was true. “Damn,” he muttered.
“No pressure, none at all,” Calum murmured but then chuckled. “I’m just telling you that, if you ever want to have a place to come in out of the cold, we have a spot for you.”
“Is that what it’ll be, a collective for misfits?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m not sure about the misfit part because it certainly seems like everybody there functions pretty highly and couldn’t be pegged as a misfit. Yet we all needed a home, a safe place, and, I think, in that sense, what we’re doing is very valuable.”
“Maybe so,” Walker conceded, “but it still sounds like a wayward house for lost and lonely psychics.”
Calum burst out laughing. “I can see how you could look at it that way and even get a little offended,” he admitted, with another chuckle, “but I’m sure you know very well how few people out there will even have anything to do with us because of the things we can do. I mean, if you know that somebody can read your mind, would you want them in your house?”
At that, Walker felt his own psychic doors slamming shut, and Calum burst out laughing again. “Hey, I don’t read minds,” he pointed out, “so you’re safe. For now.”
“Yeah, says you,” Walker muttered. “It’s still pretty unnerving to have Terkel walking through my brain all the time.”
“Yeah, until you realize why he’s doing it and how much faster and easier it is on all of us sometimes.”
“Yeah, in what way?”
“If anything is wrong with my son or my wife, wherever I am in the world, you can bet that I know Terkel’s got my back. Plus, he has healers there to help us get through whatever it is that needs to be gotten through. And, just like that, the rest of the team comes together. … I think of us as brothers in a way. Now brothers and sisters. We’ve all been to hell and back already, but we’re still there because we care. I give full kudos to Terkel for having us all live together there,” he stated. “Especially now that we have families. In the meantime, we have to find this young man. I think, in his own way, Frank may feel like the world has walked away from him and left him out in the cold.”
At the nearest small town, they stopped in at the local motel and booked a room for the night. As they were checking in, Calum pulled out a picture of Kim’s brother and asked the woman at the front desk if she’d seen him.
She looked at the photo, then shook her head. “No,” she said initially, but then she frowned and looked at the picture again. “Maybe, but he didn’t look that good.”
“He’s sick. He came here to see Ashley.”
Her eyes widened, and she drew a cross over her chest, but she nodded quickly. “Then that could have been him. He asked for a room, and I was getting it for him, but then he got called outside by somebody he seemed to know. As I recall, he went out and then came back to cancel the room because he already had a place to stay.” She shrugged. “The next thing I knew, he was gone.”
“Did you see who he talked to?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t see the man—or anyone for that matter. It was a black car, but that’s all I have for you,” she replied apologetically.
“Thank you,” Calum said, with a smile, and she relaxed at that. He quickly paid for their room for the night and got the key.
As they got up to the room, Walker nodded with relief that two big beds were there for them. “I was afraid that, in a small place like this motel, we would end up in the same bed.”
“If that’s what happened, we would have made it work,” Calum stated. “One of us could have hit the floor if it was a problem. We’ll probably wind up on different shifts anyway.”
“True enough,” Walker muttered. “What do you think about what the desk clerk said?”
“Sounds like Frank knew somebody, although he wasn’t expecting to meet anyone. I’m not sure whether that was a friend of his or what. Who knows? Maybe he did know somebody here.” Calum pulled out his phone. “I’m sending a text to Levi to have him grill Kim a little. We need to find out who Frank might have had for friends, here and elsewhere. And how did he find out about Ashley? The fact that he was willing to make the trip over here to see her is interesting in itself. His even knowing about her is also on the odd side.”
“Why is it odd?”
“She only accepts so many people, and the ones who make their way to her have heard from someone else she had already treated or knew. How does anybody find her?”
“I’m sure she would say that’s the psychic part again, and, if you were somebody she could help, you would get there, and, if you weren’t somebody she could help, then you wouldn’t.”
“That could be exactly what’s going on, but let’s find out if any friends of Frank had come here before him.” They quickly unpacked, and, just as they were heading out to find something to eat, Levi contacted them with the answers.
“No known friends in Finland.”
“Great,” Walker muttered.
Levi continued. “Nobody Kim knows of over there knew Frank was coming, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t tell people. That is a whole different story. Just because Kim knew nothing doesn’t mean Frank didn’t tell a half-dozen other people.”
“Exactly,” Walker agreed. “The question is, who would he have told? And even though he may well have told people, what difference does it make?”
“Would they have come over here to see him?” Calum asked. “Maybe they wanted to persuade him not to go see this crazy healer, you know? I mean, maybe they really loved and believed him but were terrified of what some backwoods healer might do. There could be all kinds of scenarios like that.”
Soon they headed into a small café, sat down, then ordered dinner while they discussed the case. By the time the food arrived, they were more than ready to eat and tucked into it quickly. As they sat here afterward, sipping coffee, Walker murmured, “Ashley’s very unique.”
Calum looked at him and smiled. “She is, indeed. She’s also fairly gifted.”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to Terkel about what she mentioned about the two healer women.”
“I’m sure they’re all discussing it right now.” Calum laughed. “Particularly if the twins knew she was there in prior healings but hadn’t really been aware of her presence.”
“Ashley didn’t seem all that unusual when we were there,” Walker noted, “so I’m not really sure how I feel about that. But I also presume some energy was flying around that room that we couldn’t really see or feel. Not me at least. Did you feel it?”
“No, I didn’t,” Calum replied, “but I think she had everything pulled in tight against her, that protectiveness again.”
“Of course all that does is make you want to find out what happened to her.”
“Exactly.”
Just then a bent-over old man walked up to their table, looking at them with a sharp eye. “You were at Ashley’s.”
They both nodded. “We were,” Calum replied, with a smile, and he motioned at the empty seat. “Did you want to join us?”
The other man hesitated. “What do you want with her?”
Walker realized that concern for Ashley had brought him over. He smiled at the older gentleman and shared, “She was due to have somebody come to … her. He made the appointment but didn’t show up. That young man is the brother of a friend of ours, and we believe he’s gone missing.”
At that, the older man’s eyes widened, and he stared at them for a very long time. Finally he nodded. “Weird things happen here,” he shared cautiously.
“They can happen anywhere,” Walker stated, “but that weirdness comes from people, not from just places.”
The old man chuckled. “Isn’t that the truth,” he muttered. “I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“I get it,” Walker confirmed. “We’re not here to hurt her.”
Again came that same intense look, and then he nodded. “See that you don’t.” With that, he slowly moved off to the door.
Walker wanted to run after him and ask for details on Ashley, but knowing that the man was here to support Ashley and to look after her also meant that he wouldn’t likely spill the private details Walker was curious to know about. Better that he asked her directly. Whether she answered him or not would be a different story, but at least he would have made an honest attempt to get to the truth.
They paid for their dinner, got up, and walked outside, but no sooner had they headed in the direction of the motel, Calum spoke up. “We’ve got a tail.”
“Yeah, on the left, two men,” Walker muttered.
“I see just one,” Calum admitted, glancing at Walker.
Walker added, “The other one is farther behind. If you see the energy trail, a thread connects the two of them.”
Calum pondered that for a minute. “Interesting. I can’t see the energy trail at all.”
“Trust me. They’re both there, and they’re connected.”
“I thought you were a precog?”
“I am, though I don’t generally tell people because the whole business of precogs tends to be kind of a crap show,” he muttered. “I might be right today, and I might be wrong tomorrow.”
“You were right about Frank.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Walker muttered. “It’s really too early to tell.”
“No, not at all. We can tell already that we have a problem on our hands. So now it’s just a matter of figuring out the details.”
“Well,” Walker added, “I hope Kim’s okay with the details being a bit sketchy at the moment because I highly suspect that this tail will want to talk to us but probably has no knowledge to share.”
“Yeah, you think?”
“Yep, considering the way they’re moving up on us. Plus, they’ll just be the local hired thugs.”
“How do you want to play it?” Calum asked.
“Good question.” Walker sighed. “Personally, I’m all about just busting it wide open and asking what the hell they want.”
“Sounds good to me.” Calum laughed. “If nothing else it would give us a good idea who they are. By the time we brace them, they’ll either be aggressive as hell or proclaiming their innocence. My vote is they’ll pretend to be innocent.”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Walker asked. “We’ll just confront them then and see what we’ve got.” With that he looked over at Calum and added, “I’ll grab this closest guy in three, two, one.” With that, Walker turned on the spot and quickly snatched the man behind him and pinned him against the wall around the corner.
The stranger didn’t even have a chance to open his mouth, and he stood, glaring at him.
“Why are you following us?” Walker asked, his tone hard.
The man looked at him and in guttural English tried to play it cool. “Not following.”
“Yes, you are,” Walker stated.
The man shook his head several times.
Walker stepped back to study him and decided to go all-in. “Did you have something to do with that young man’s disappearance?”
The stranger glared at him, starting to lose some of that innocence, but again shook his head.
At that giveaway, Walker smiled. “We’ll just see what your partner has to say about that.”
“No partner,” he said.
“Yeah? I don’t believe you,” Walker replied.
Just then Calum came around the corner, pushing a second man, who was protesting at the rough handling. When he saw his partner, he subsided. “Now that we have both of you here,” Calum announced, his tone threatening, “I suggest you start talking.”
The second man sneered at him. “Why should we?”
“Because we’re looking for that young man,” Walker replied, raising his voice, “and we’re not going anywhere until we find him.”
At that, the first man started to get nervous and mumbled something. The second one turned to him and yelled, “Shut up.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” the first guy wailed. “Honest.”
“I don’t expect much in the way of honesty from scum like you,” Walker stated, glaring at him. “Now tell me what happened to that young man.”
“Nothing,” the first guy said, “at least, nothing I know about.” He turned and looked at his partner, who was now openly glaring at him.
“Sounds like you two are on a different venture here,” Walker noted.
“No, no, not at all,” the talkative first guy argued. “I don’t know what the problem is.”
But his partner still glared at him.
Walker pointed to his partner. “Apparently he does, and he’s just not willing to talk.”
The first man started to say something but then fell silent.
Calum looked over at Walker. “Sounds like we need the local authorities.”
“Yep,” he muttered. He stepped back to pull out his phone.
The first man wailed, “Wait. You don’t understand. I can’t have the law involved.”
“What do I care?” Walker asked. “You’re following strangers in town, so you obviously knew you were heading for this. What difference does it make to me if the law picks you up and takes you in for a little talk?”
“Of course we’ll want to find someone who’s honest and clear in this town, which will take a little bit, I would guess,” Calum noted. “We’ll probably talk to a few of them, but we are bound to find at least one, right?”
At that, the first man, his Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing up and down nervously, muttered, “I didn’t have anything to do with the guy disappearing.”
“So why are you following us?” Walker asked.
He shrugged. “I was hired. They gave me a couple hundred dollar bills to keep track of where you went.”
“Now we need to know who that was, how they contacted you, and how I can contact them,” Calum declared in a less-than-pleasant tone.
The talkative first guy shook his head. “No, no, no, it doesn’t work that way. I won’t get paid if you contact them.”
“Sounds to me as if you won’t get paid at all if your partner here has his say because he’ll just turn you in for giving him up to the law.” Walker turned and looked at the second man, who was still glaring, and then Walker laughed. “Yeah, he knows the score. The missing guy is young, and he doesn’t really understand what this is all about. But you do, don’t you?” Walker asked the silent guy.
Now the second guy spoke. “That’s interesting news to me. You don’t know what you’re talking about. None of this is a problem.”
Walker frowned. “Maybe not for you, but it might be for somebody else, particularly if people are looking for somebody who’s gone missing.”
“I don’t know anything about the young man,” the second guy repeated. “We were just hired to watch you guys. You’re strangers, and nobody trusts strangers around these parts.”
“Now nobody will hire the two of you to watch strangers for no reason either,” Walker stated, glaring at him. “I really don’t give a shit, so we can just call the local LEOs and let them deal with it.”
“Go ahead,” the second guy prodded, “as if anybody will care.”
“Right, because we’re strangers,” Walker repeated.
“Absolutely.”
Just then a voice filled his head. Tell him McClintock would care. Walker shuffled that around for a moment and then received a hard poke from inside. He glared, yet followed through with the suggestion. “I’m thinking McClintock would care,” he murmured, and the response was electric.
The second guy turned nervously toward the first one. “Well, shit,” he muttered. The two hired local thugs both looked slightly sick.
“So, will you talk now?” Walker asked, curious as shit now and wondering who this McClintock guy was, given their reaction to his name.
“Look. They just wanted to know what you were up to. Nobody here likes strangers in town.”
“I don’t believe you,” Walker said.
“That’s all I’ve got for you,” the second guy replied in exasperation. “We got a phone call, telling us it was worth a couple hundred bucks to find out what you were up to because they’d heard about strangers lurking in town.”
“So, that’s how you guys treat visitors, is it?” Calum asked curiously. “I saw a lot of tourists when we came into town, and two men like us will hardly cause all kinds of headaches for you, unless you deserve them.”
“But we don’t know that,” the second man argued smoothly. “And obviously our bosses didn’t know that.”
“Right,” Walker quipped in disgust. “I’ve got a message for you and your bosses. We’re here, and we’ll do whatever we want to do, and nothing they can do will stop us. Now, with that out of the way, if we see you on our tails again, we’ll haul you to jail. How’s that?”
“You didn’t haul us to jail now, so I highly doubt that threat held any water.”
“Maybe not but McClintock will be informed.”
At that, they both looked at each other nervously.
“I suggest you get lost,” Calum stated, releasing the second man. “Remember to take that message back to your bosses.”
“We also want the young man returned to us,” Walker added, “and, if we find out you had anything to do with the kidnapping, believe me, this little meeting tonight will be the easiest of the things you’ll face in the next ten years.”
And, with that, both men took off and raced around the corner.
Walker looked over at Calum. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” Calum admitted, then looked over at him. “Where did you get that name from?”
Walker snorted. “I would have said Terkel, but there was an extra feminine push, like an impatient poke when I didn’t fork over the name, so I’m pretty sure that was Ashley in my head. And what the hell is that about, when people can just turn up in your head and start talking? You know, for somebody who’s very antisocial, Ashley sure got pushy in a hurry.”
