Logic suggests he also can modify the power flowing along the psychic
wire. By imagining the psychic control is a dimmer switch–a
rheostat–he should be able to adjust downward the amperage of the
current in the circuit, making the contact more subtle than it has been
to date. After all, by using a rheostatic switch, the light of a
chandelier can be reduced smoothly by degrees until there is barely a
visible glow. Likewise, imagining the psychic switch as another
rheostat, he might be able to open the connection at such a low amperage
that he can track the false father without that adversary being alerted
to the fact he’s being sought.
Stopping at a red traffic light in the heart of Mission Viejo, he
imagines a dial-type dimmer switch with a three-hundred-sixty-degree
brightness range. He turns it only ninety degrees, and at once feels
the pull of the false father, slightly farther east and now some what to
the north.
Outside of the bank, halfway to the BMW, Marty suddenly felt another
wave of pressure and behind it, the crushing Juggernaut of his dreams.
The sensation was not as strong as the experiences in the bank, but it
caught him in mid-step and threw him off balance. He staggered,
stumbled, and fell. The two manila envelopes full of cash flew out of
his hands and slid across the blacktop.
Charlotte and Emily scampered after the envelopes, and Paige helped
Marty to his feet.
As the wave passed and Marty stood shakily, he said, “Here, take my
keys, you better drive. He’s hunting me. He’s coming.”
She looked around the bank lot in panic.
Marty said, “No, he’s not here yet. It’s like before. This sense of
being in the path of something very powerful and fast.
shaken again by contact with The Other. Although the impact of the
probe was less disturbing than ever before, he took no solace from the
diminishment of its power.
“Get us the hell out of here,” he urged Paige, as he retrieved the
loaded Beretta from under the seat.
Paige started the engine, and Marty turned to the kids. They were
buckling their seatbelts.
As Paige slammed the BMW into reverse and backed out of the parking
space, the girls met Marty’s eyes. They were scared.
He had too much respect for their perceptiveness to lie to them.
Rather than pretend everything was going to be all right, he said, “Hang
on. Your Mom’s gonna try to drive like I do.”
Popping the car out of reverse, Paige asked, “Where’s he coming from?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t go out the same way we came in. I feel
uneasy about that. Use the other street.”
Two blocks. Maybe not that far.
Driving slowly. Scanning the street ahead, left and right.
Looking for them.
A car horn toots behind him. The driver is impatient.
Slow, slow, squinting left and right, checking people on the sidewalks
as well as in passing cars.
The horn behind him. He gestures obscenely, which seems to spook the
guy into silence.
Slow, slow.
No sight of them.
Try the mental rheostat again. A sixty-degree turn this time.
Still a strong contact, an urgent and irresistible pull.
Ahead. On the left. Shopping center.
As Marty got into the front passenger seat and shut the door, holding
the envelopes of cash that the kids had retrieved for him, he was He is
drawn to the bank rather than the shopping center itself, and he parks
near the east entrance.
As he switches the engine off, he hears a brief shriek of tires.
From the corner of his eye, he is aware of a car driving away fast from
the south end of the building. Turning, he sees a white BMW eighty to a
hundred feet away. It streaks toward the shopping center, past him in a
flash.
He catches sight of only a portion of the driver’s face–one cheekbone,
jaw line, curve of chin. And a shimmer of golden hair.
Sometimes it’s possible to identify a favorite song by only three notes,
because the melody has left an indelible impression on the mind.
Likewise, from that partial profile, glimpsed in a flicker of shadow and