“Then what hit me?”
Without answering, she said, “I’ve got some NSAIDs. Let me get you a couple of pills and a glass of water.”
“So you can think up a good story?”
“So I can figure out how to tell you the truth so you’ll believe it.”
When he scowled at her, she turned toward the kitchen. She was back in a few minutes with a bottle of pills and a glass of water.
She took a seat in a chair opposite the sofa, and Travis sat on the other end of the couch where she could see both him and Bowman.
“Spit it out,” he ordered.
She and Travis had been silently conferring while she got the water and the analgesic.
“I’m going to back up a little,” she began.
Bowman watched her closely.
“You know how scientific experiments can go off the rails.” Without waiting for an answer, she went on. “About thirty years ago there was a doctor in Louisiana who’d convinced some government special projects agency that he could create super-intelligent children by manipulating blastocytes soon after fertilization. He was running a fertility clinic, which was where he got the genetic material to work on.”
The detective pulled out a notebook and ballpoint. “What was his name?”
“Douglas Solomon. His contract with the mothers specified that they bring the children back for IQ testing periodically. Not all of them complied. When he did the tests, the kids had a normal intelligence spread, and the think tank that had paid for the program shut down the clinic. Right after that, it burned. And more recently, a lab Solomon was running exploded. Sounds suspicious, right?”
The detective winced.
Olivia hurried on. “We can talk about the clinic later. The important point right now is that there was something unusual about the children after all.”
Her gaze flitted to Travis before she looked down at her hands. “None of them was able to form close relationships with anyone—until they came in contact with another child who was born out of Dr. Solomon’s experiments.” She looked up again. “When they did, one of two things happened. Either they formed a psychic connection, or their brains couldn’t take the strain, and they died of cerebral hemorrhage.”
Bowman shifted in his seat. “A psychic connection? Like what?”
“They could do things like read each other’s minds—or, uh, make fireballs and use them as weapons.”
There was dead silence in the room while Bowman processed that information.
“You don’t believe me?” Olivia asked.
“I...”
“You got hit by one. Luckily, we’re not too good at it yet.”
“We? I only saw you. Doing...something.” He stopped short and fixed her with a steady gaze. “Wait a minute. You and who else? Travis Carson? You said he was murdered.”
“Unfortunately. But somehow he found me and came back.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
She shrugged. “Can you give me another explanation for what happened to you? Maybe I’m up here developing a death ray when I’m not painting furniture?”
Bowman kept his gaze steady. “You’re saying that Travis is dead and you brought him back?”
“No—he was drawn to me, and he came back. Because we’re both children from the Solomon clinic.”
“So he’s a ghost.”
“I wouldn’t use that term.”
