Eye of the Sh*t Storm Jackson Ford (detective books to read txt) 📖

the fact that I cannot let Tanner get to whoever is doing this before I do. She’ll spirit them away, maybe even to the same facility she held me in before deploying me in Los Angeles, and she’ll tell us nothing. I’ll never find out about how these people are using my parents’ research.

Worse: what if she just decides, fuck it? Decides not to risk a second Matthew Schenke situation, and just nukes the building with a Hellfire missile? If you don’t think she’d deploy a weapon of war on US soil, you don’t know Moira Tanner.

I straighten up, still on my knees. Annie’s sort of right – echolocating through an entire building is probably more than I can handle right now, demands more concentration than I can spare. But vomiting my guts out has cleared my head, just a little, and I still have some PK left. I can feel it, feel the objects around me, fuzzy but distinct.

I think about Tanner. About Waco. About Hellfire missiles. About Matthew Schenke and Paul Marino. About what’s at stake if I don’t knuckle up.

“Hey, guys,” I say carefully. “I’ve got a wild idea…”

TENTeagan

Nobody liked my wild idea.

Annie got so angry I thought she was about to punch me. Africa called me crazy, a dëma, a mad woman. “I forbid it,” he kept saying. Reggie was about as enthusiastic, telling me to back off, observation only.

I told them that unless we actually got inside, we were observing dick. We were standing there staring stupidly at a building, waiting for something to happen.

These facts are all true. But they’re feeling very academic now that I’m actually in here.

How am I inside? Without being electrocuted? Glad you asked.

Back when Paul was still around, he and I had to get onto the roof of a hangar at Van Nuys Airport this one time. We stood on a thick sheet of metal – the kind they use for roofing – which I then floated upwards with my PK, like a magic carpet ride.

It’s a good trick. And if you want to navigate an electrified building, where the walls and floor and ceiling will kill you, a PK-powered hoverboard is the way to go.

Whoever is doing this hasn’t electrified the air itself, or the drone the cops sent in wouldn’t have gotten through the front door. I’m guessing it’s possible – if we’re talking electrons here, there’s really no difference between air molecules and the molecules in the walls or ceiling – but it hasn’t happened. We don’t know why. The only thing I can think of is that if it is a person doing this, they might not want to electrify things they have to breathe.

I’m not actually on a metal sheet right now. There wasn’t one handy. I’m on a car door, one that I ripped off a little Prius we found in the back lot. It made my idea seem even more dodgy than it was already, and did not, shall we say, inspire confidence in Annie and Africa.

They agreed – under protest – to keep the cops at bay, making sure they didn’t get near the rear of the building. They’re FBI, after all. While they were doing that. I got in through one of the storage unit’s back roller doors, opening it with my PK. And yes, before you ask, it’s a lot harder right now. I am not exactly operating at peak capacity. Which Annie and Africa reminded me of, multiple times. Annie kept telling me that my pupils were so big, she couldn’t see my irises any more.

But I did it. I’m inside. Heading down one of the corridors, hunkered down on the car door, two feet off the floor. Trying very, very hard not to touch anything. You know that game, The Floor is Lava? This is the grown-up version. And in keeping with all things adult, the consequences of fucking up here are so much worse.

Well, maybe. The receptionist didn’t die – he just said touching anything hurt a lot. But he managed to escape, and there’s no telling what would happen if I touched a surface and had nowhere to run. Still, right now, nobody’s dead. Hopefully we can keep it that way.

“Teggan.” Africa’s voice is hella staticky in my ear – the electricity must be causing some interference. “What do you see?”

“Nothing so far,” I murmur. Shit, even the act of talking makes it harder to stay balanced.

It doesn’t help that it’s like a horror movie in here. The lights are burned out, as you’d expect. I’m wearing chunky night vision goggles – Annie retrieved them from the van. They give everything a sickly green tint, which does not make the dank, concrete corridors any more appealing. Normally, I’d fall over myself for the chance to use night vision goggles. But right now, I’d kill for actual light.

Crappy linoleum floor panels. Concrete walls, with big metal roller doors every few feet, huge padlocks on each one. A low ceiling, also concrete, with lines of dead fluorescent lights. That’s it. This place is a maze – there’s not even an exit sign anywhere, which I’m sure has to violate a few laws. Would an exit sign keep working through all this? They use radioactive gas for their light, don’t they? How would electricity…

The burst of adrenaline and clear-headedness I got from puking has almost gone. I’m paranoid again, twitchy, my stomach and my head aching. I can’t keep a thought in my head. I’m desperate for more meth one second, then recoiling in horror from the idea a moment later. The air stinks of smoke – not an intense smell, but definitely there. Most probably from the fires Reggie mentioned. I’m still struggling to understand how the entire building isn’t on fire, but then again, what do I know about electricity?

And the storage unit feels… wrong. There’s a taste to the air, metallic and oily. The air feels thick, too – the kind