Brain Storm by Cat Gilbert (detective books to read .TXT) 📖

“SO WHAT YOU’RE saying, after spending all night researching, is that you still don’t know the answer? Have I got that right?”

Trinity forked up a chunk of pork along with some lettuce. We had both gotten pulled pork salads. Honestly, I don’t know why we bother with the salad part, or rather, why I did. Trinity was into eating healthy, and she wore it well. On the occasion that she did drop off the healthy wagon, she tried to counteract it with eating something nourishing along with it. Like salads with pizza. Salad with pulled pork. I just didn’t see the point. Lettuce was just more calories and a waste of space in this case. The smoked pork was spiced perfectly and so tender it was hard to keep on your fork. Unlike Trinity, I had eaten most of mine off the top and left the lettuce sitting there.

“That pretty much sums it up.” I had managed to pull up quite a bit of information on the internet. My first discovery being that my possible ‘mind moving’ skill was technically called telekinesis, a form of psychokinesis. Although I feel my label was more descriptive, I found the term psycho was appropriate or at least in my case I thought it was.

Uri Geller was perhaps the best known person who appeared to have the ability. He was the guy I remembered seeing on television. He did indeed bend spoons with his mind, but he wasn’t from Tibet, and he could never replicate his ability in a scientific setting. Science fiction literature and movies were rife with talented people who threw things around at will, but whether or not it was a real ability, remained to be proven. Many claim to have it, and there’re even videos of them passing the ‘spinning the pencil on the bottle’ test on the web, but I found just as much information refuting the test results, saying air movement from heating and cooling systems does the same thing. After hours of combing the far reaches of the internet, all I had to show for it was the name, some history and the fact that there is no proof telekinesis exists. But there was no proof it didn’t exist either.

“I’m in the same boat as yesterday,” I confirmed, rooting around in the lettuce hunting for more pork. “Either I have telekinesis, or I’m crazy.”

“Or the guy threw the coffee on you. The keys could be just coincidence.” Her comment brought my gaze up in disbelief, distracting me from my pork search, but she was completely serious.

I wished he had thrown the coffee at me. How neat and tidy would that be? But that’s not what happened. I hadn’t imagined the look of horror on his face when it happened or the anger that followed when he was blamed. I also hadn’t imagined the calculating gaze he’d leveled at me or the feeling I’d had that he knew what was going on. I wasn’t sure where or if he fit into the picture, but I knew he hadn’t thrown the coffee. I had so totally crossed that possibility off the list that it never even occurred to me that Trinity was still hanging onto it.

“That’s not what happened. Why would some guy I’ve never seen before, throw coffee at me?” It wasn’t so much the words as the tone of my voice that set her off. Even to me, I had sounded incredulous that she would even think such a thing, and I winced as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

“I have no idea,” she shot back, obviously offended, “but what’s the likelihood of you suddenly developing telekinesis? You’re good, Taylor, but you are not infallible. You may have read the whole thing wrong. I’m just saying, there could be something there. It is the most likely explanation.”

Snap and ow! Where had that come from? In all the years I had worked with and known Trinity, she had never doubted my judgement. Oh, we have more than our share of disagreements, but where my work is concerned, she has always trusted me. Now, not only was she questioning my judgement, she was downright insulting me. I know I’m not infallible, but really, who needs their best friend pointing it out. I may have been out of things yesterday, but I was back on top today. Okay, maybe not on top, but way better than I had been.

Confused, I just sat there staring at her, nursing my wounded pride, while she glared back at me. She was more than offended. She was downright angry. There was something more going on, and I racked my brain trying to sort through the possible excuses that were rushing through my mind, when suddenly, comprehension dawned. I snapped my mouth shut and sat back, finally understanding.

She might have said it was the most likely explanation, but what she really meant was it was the explanation she could accept. Good friend that she was, she’d rather think the coffee incident was the result of a vindictive stalker than think that I was losing my mind, or had developed some sort of weird super power that there was no proof actually even existed. It did sound pretty far out there, even to me and I had experienced it firsthand. She hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen what happened. As hard as this was for me to contemplate, it had to be nearly impossible for her. She was desperate for a logical explanation, and I was usually the one to give it to her. I felt my heart sink because I was fairly certain that this time,