Ricks road, p.7
Rick's Road, page 7
“Oh.” Lorelei sat back and stared at her. “So, you can do a lot of what they do?”
“I can do a lot of things,” Cara admitted calmly, “but it’s not something that I actually cultivate, only in terms of the patients I work with.”
“Could you explain that?”
She shrugged. “I can, if we need to.”
Just then came a terrible noise, an alarm, coming from one of the computers. Instantly the focus shifted from getting to know Cara to complete attention on the alarm system. Tasha had joined Sophia at the computers, and they were intently working at something. Rick watched in understanding, then leaned over when he saw the confusion and panic on Cara’s face. “It’s an alarm system they have set up.”
“I get that,” she murmured, “but is it a good thing or a bad thing?”
He laughed. “I’m saying both because nobody is in a panic yet.”
At the word yet, she winced.
He nodded. “We do have a lot of systems in place, so we’ll get to a full explanation as time moves on.”
“We don’t have to do all the explanations right now,” she agreed calmly, “but, if nobody is running and bolting, what are we doing for food?”
They’d forgotten all about it in the midst of their discussion. “There was talk of starting a stir fry, but I’m not sure.”
Just then, Mariana walked into the room, carrying a little boy. Cara stopped and stared. The little boy looked at her, and a smile crossed his face, and he wiggled from his mother’s grasp and opened his arms. Wordless, Cara walked over, picked him up, and he threw his arms around her and held her close.
Rick whispered, “What the hell?”
At that, Cara looked back at him. “Children. Their energy is pure. He has no judgment. He comes from heart.” She murmured, “They are the best things possible for healing.” She looked over at the woman who joined them.
Mariana nodded, a bemused look on her face. “I am surprised. Little Calum has never reacted like that to anybody that I know of. He is typically a little more reticent with new people. I’m Mariana, by the way.”
“And he might be again,” she agreed gently. “It’s literally just a case of him recognizing energy—good healthy healing energy—and knowing that I’m not an enemy. I’m Cara,” she added, with a smile, as she cuddled the boy.
“It’s a hard thing to think that my son doesn’t already judge people because he has seen enemies everywhere,” she noted, frowning.
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s the case, as much as just the fact, in that moment, he recognized a kindred soul,” Cara explained.
At that, the woman nodded in relief. “I hope that’s the explanation. I’ve never seen him respond like that. The alarm woke us up, but thankfully that’s been shut down.” She looked over at the others. “Is it anything to worry about?”
“I had set up a series of tripwires on people searching for us online,” Sophia replied, sitting at the computer. “Somebody tripped them.”
“Well, good. You tend to that, while I’ll head into the big kitchen and get some food going,” Mariana stated. “But I’ll see if I need anything from our makeshift kitchen first.”
“Perfect.” Sophia snorted. “I suspect you’re a hell of a lot better at cooking than I am.”
At that, everybody seemed to find a job to do. Cara walked over with the little boy in her arms, and Rick watched in amazement as the two of them carried on a conversation that nobody else seemed to even follow. He looked at Terk. “Did you know about this?” he asked, motioning at the two of them.
“No, but I’m not surprised,” Terk noted. “Children are like that.”
“Everybody keeps saying children are like that. But like what? What does that mean?” Rick asked. “I guess I don’t have any experience with children to understand.”
Mariana laughed. “Well, this is Little Calum,” she said, as she introduced them. “And, yes, Cal is his father. My son is four years old and quite a handful. He also seems extremely intelligent.”
“Well, if he’s Calum’s, of course he is.” Rick immediately defended his friend. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually met this little guy.”
“No, it’s the first that we’ve been together around your team,” she shared. “Somebody was trying to get at Calum and kidnapped the two of us. That’s one of the things you missed out on while you were unconscious.”
“Right.” He frowned, hating to hear what she’d been through. “I’m sorry that happened. It doesn’t sound like an easy time for you.”
“It wasn’t easy for any of us,” she agreed, “but much harder for this little guy.” She nodded toward where Little Calum was curled up, listening to Cara talk to him about food. “She’s pretty special if she has that kind of effect on kids,” Mariana murmured to Rick.
He nodded. “She’s had a pretty special effect on me too. I just wasn’t sure whether it was energy or reality.”
Mariana laughed. “Honestly I think they’re the same thing at this point in time.”
He stared at her in confusion.
She shrugged. “I only ever learned to communicate because of my link to Cal,” she explained. “When he went down, Terk told me that he was dying and that he needed every bit of thought, positive thinking, prayer, whatever I could offer, to help keep him on this planet. Well, I wasn’t about to let go in any way, shape, or form, so I fought for him, and maybe it wasn’t a methodology that anybody else would agree with or something I even knew how to do,” she added. “Yet something was pushing me, and suddenly I knew what to do and how to do it. I basically just stopped in my tracks, dropped, closed my eyes, and started to contact him, telling them how important he was to us and that we needed him.”
Rick hadn’t realized that everyone was listening in, but it seemed like little was private here.
Cara nodded. “And often that’s all it is. You find out over time that people are listening, on a spirit level, and that they don’t want to be lost to whatever nightmare they’re caught up in. So, good for you for helping him to come back out of it again.”
Mariana smiled. “And we’re back together. And hopefully Cal has come to his senses about staying apart to keep us safe, and now we can move forward from this as a family. It is strange to think that, if all this hadn’t happened, we would still be apart.”
“Well, clearly it was intended to happen.” Cara gave Mariana a big smile.
“Are we really thinking the government attacked our team, at least initially?” Rick asked, still struggling to get his mind wrapped around everything.
“It’s definitely a consideration,” Terk replied.
Rick looked around him at the ever-growing group. “And you guys have been here ever since you woke up?” A part of him was insanely jealous. He’d missed out on so much. Not just the work they’d done but watching the family grow.
“Yes,” Terk replied, “though we started in only a tiny part of this building. But, as we expanded into having more and more people here, we needed more space, better facilities, and better capability in terms of keeping the food and all that is required to keep everybody safe.”
“And how are we handling deliveries, if nobody is to know that we’re here?” Rick asked.
“Well, that’s the trick,” Wade replied. “On paper, this whole property is rented to a few different companies. We do have to go out every once in a while, and, when we do, it takes quite a bit of planning and preparation to keep everybody safe.”
Rick nodded. “Well, it would be good for me to test my abilities in that area. So the next time somebody needs to do something, let me know, so I can try out the grounding.”
“Will do,” Terk noted.
At that, Damon walked over. “He says that, but he doesn’t mean it.”
Rick looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?”
“He won’t put you to a test until he thinks that you’re much stronger.” Damon looked over at Terk in time to see his lips twitch. “You know, Terk? You’re the product of your own problem. You don’t want to let us go,” Damon murmured.
“No, I sure don’t,” Terk agreed. “You’re all way too valuable to me to lose you over something so simple.”
“It’s not simple if I can help keep these guys alive,” Rick argued. “Why won’t you let me try?”
“Because you’re not strong enough.”
And there, once again, was a blunt assessment of Rick’s abilities, without even giving him a chance to prove otherwise. He felt his temper rising. “You don’t know that,” he replied stiffly.
Terk looked at him flatly for a long moment. “Yes, I do. And, as soon as you’re ready, believe me. We’ll put you to work. But, in the meantime, no.”
And, of course, Terk wasn’t used to being argued with or ignored, and, when he put his foot down, almost nobody ever went against him. It was pretty hard to since he always had logic and reason on his side. Still, right now, it was all about something completely different.
“I don’t get it,” Rick admitted. “What are you afraid of?”
“That something will take you out that you’re not quite ready for.”
“And what is that?” he asked. “If there’s something going on here that I don’t understand, you guys need to fill me in. Otherwise I’m just out here in the dark.”
Terk shook his head. “We’ve brought you up to speed. Now rest.” This time, he wouldn’t hear any arguments.
Rick collapsed in a chair and glared, and then caught sight of the grin on Cara’s face. He upped the wattage of his scowl.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t work on me. I’m immune.”
“Immune to what?” he asked in astonishment.
“To your antics. I’ve seen them all.”
And with that stunning announcement, she handed off Little Calum. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Chapter 5
Cara was probably saying more than she should, but it was hard when she saw the interactions going on around her. These men had been through so much and still had so much to offer; yet it was fascinating to see the team dynamics and to see how Terk still ruled everything, as if he had no need to explain to anyone the whys of what he was doing. And maybe he didn’t.
Maybe the team was good with that, but she wasn’t so sure. The more she saw the reactions of some of the men, silently questioning Terk’s lack of explanation, she could understand that. Everybody wanted to know why they were doing something, even if they didn’t actually have a particular reason. She went to use the washroom and wandered around the large warehouse complex, looking out the window every once in a while. As she slowly returned, some of her restlessness eased inside.
Terk looked at her and asked, “Better?”
She nodded. “Yes, thanks.”
He nodded. Nobody else really seemed to know what to say.
Cara felt their silent questions overwhelming her. “Terk and I have known each other for a long time,” she stated quietly. “He just knew I was feeling restless.”
“No wonder,” Tasha agreed. “Sorry about all the problems.”
“Me too,” she murmured. “I’d like to be on my way home and not have to worry about any of this, but obviously that won’t be a part of the plan. At least not today.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Terk confirmed.
And the women all turned from their computers and smiled. “But that doesn’t mean staying here will be all that terrible.”
“I hope not.” Cara walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. Almost immediately Little Calum was there beside her. She smiled at him. “What would you like?” And he just reached up his arms. She picked him up and held him close. She looked over at Mariana. “You’re truly blessed to have him.”
Mariana nodded. “I am, although he’s definitely been surprising me lately.”
“And that’s okay,” Cara noted comfortably. “He’s his own person and will have his own unique spirit come and go throughout his lifetime.”
“What do you mean, come and go?”
“Sometimes, they check in and check out, depending on what their previous lifetimes have been.”
At that, everybody stopped.
Terk chuckled. “You’re pushing their belief systems again.”
She stared at him, frowning. “Are you telling me that you guys haven’t dealt with past lives?”
“No. We haven’t dealt with anything along that line at all.” Sophia stared at her in fascination.
Cara shrugged. “We tend to come back in groups,” she explained, “because we learn the best from those we love. Because nobody can hurt us in quite the same way as those we care about,” she murmured. “Anyway I’m not saying that you’ve all been in past lives together. I’m just saying that children, if they’ll release any information about their past life to you, will do so in the first four to six years. In most cases, they don’t start until around the fourth year,” she noted. “And that’s because they haven’t really had the necessary diction to even communicate at that level.”
“That makes sense,” Mariana noted, as Little Calum headed back to her.
Cara stood up, not sure she wanted to get into a heavy discussion on the subject. “I saw the commercial kitchen on my walkabout. Shall we go in and see about dinner?” She nodded to Rick, as she headed off. Mariana and Little Calum followed. “Rick, you want to set the table?”
He immediately headed toward a big box of cutlery in their kitchenette.
“Wow,” Cara said. “You guys really haven’t been here long, have you?”
“No.” Mariana laughed. “Last trip out is when we picked up the extra cutlery and a bunch of the staples. We haven’t had access to the big kitchen before, so we needed to get some basics.”
“How did you manage to avoid detection or raising any alarms with that?” Cara asked curiously.
“We didn’t actually. We knew the bad guys had spies who would likely be onto us, so we just stocked up and went for it. We did okay, until we stopped by my sublet apartment to try to get some of our things, hoping to avoid more stops. Yet going there triggered a response. Still we made it back in one piece, losing our tails. We bought a lot of food, though typically it would make sense to try to keep anyone from understanding how many we’re trying to feed.”
“Are you a cook?”
“She’s a damn good chef,” Cal said with pride, beaming at his wife and child, as he joined everyone.
“I am a caterer actually,” she muttered, “but I haven’t done a whole lot of work outside the home since Little Calum arrived. So I ran a business from my home, but not nearly what I did before.”
“By choice?
“By choice, and my circumstances just changed,” she said, looking over at Cal.
He walked closer, put an arm around her. “We’re grateful to put your skills to use now.”
She laughed. “That’s just because, for you, it’s all about your stomach.”
“Not just for me,” he replied, with mock humor. “Everybody here cares about their stomachs.”
“I think we all do, no matter who we are,” Cara agreed. “Especially in stressful times.”
*
Mariana set about the work of cooking for the team in their big kitchen, and, by assigning tasks to her helpers, had a meal ready in no time. They all carried in dishes to the main room, setting up the food at the big table off the little kitchenette, yet near all their computers.
Everybody had arrived for dinner and were gathered around the table, when Cara looked at Tasha and Sophia. “Did you guys find anything about those alarms?”
Sophia nodded. “We had set an alarm up to see if anybody was searching for you. Unfortunately we got two hits.” Sophia looked over at Terk. “We’ve got the names for you, but they’re not likely to be the real names.”
He nodded. “Not likely.”
“And why would somebody be searching for me?” Cara asked.
“We wondered that ourselves, thinking their energy would be better served looking for any of the rest of us.”
Cara shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. What you guys are involved in is really none of my business.”
“Unfortunately we did have to do some digging into your personal life,” Tasha shared gently.
At that, Cara stiffened, and then slowly relaxed again. “Good thing I’ve led such a blameless life then, isn’t it? Kind of a bore really.”
“Well, you certainly have on paper,” she murmured, “and there was no mention of your brother.”
“Nope,” she agreed. “He didn’t make it.”
After a moment of silence, Tasha continued. “I didn’t find a death certificate.”
“No, you won’t,” Cara noted smoothly. “He didn’t die in the country of his birth, and he wouldn’t necessarily make it through any efforts to transport him home.” She looked over at Terk and shrugged. “That’s up to you to discuss, if you want to.”
“It’s your brother,” he said.
“It is, but, at the same time, nobody can do anything for him anymore.”
“So how about we just get it all out in the open, so we’re not all sitting here trying to figure out what you guys are talking about,” Tasha suggested, a note of humor in her voice.
“I don’t know about anybody else, but my mind is all over the place,” Sophia admitted, with a chuckle.
Cara shrugged. “My brother was in the military, stationed in Iraq. When he got injured, he sent me a telepathic message. We’ve always been able to communicate, and I knew the moment he got hit. I desperately reached out, trying to find anybody who could help him. The only person who responded was Terk.”
At that, all heads swiveled toward Terk.
She laughed. “But Terk was in, I think, China at the time.” She frowned at him.
He nodded. “I think it was China, and we hadn’t started this team yet.”
“Anyway, we did get somebody out to my brother, but he didn’t make it, and I stayed connected until he passed,” she shared.
