Lost Girls Read Free Page B

captain that had convinced him to meet her? Men like Metcalf would not be happy chauffeuring civilians around in times of crisis. They were far more likely to put faith in training and experience rather than some paranormal exercise. Metcalf just had to be thinking this was a waste of precious time, but then why was he doing it? Was it in deference to his father or the admiral’s rank? Had the senator called Brigham or was it the other way around?
    Sherry’s ability to “see” dated back to an incident in her childhood, an inadvertent gesture of tenderness that linked Sherry to a dead girl’s mind, flooding her with images of things that she had never known and could not possibly have seen. For all the skeptics who would follow, none were more critical of her interpretations than Sherry herself, and it wasn’t until many years later that she realized she was actually seeing glimpses of memory, the final seconds of a person’s life.
    Much could be said about Sherry’s documented experiences with corpses since then. The press had labeled her paranormal, but Sherry’s ability was gaining credibility in the medical community and an impressive list of neurosurgeons and scientists around the world were beginning to draw parallels between Sherry and new research on how human memory is stored.
    Each year researchers inched closer to the possibility that Sherry’s ability to link short-term memory was based in science, not metaphysics. On paper it made sense. Millions of skin receptors and nerve cells were wired directly through the deceased’s central nervous system to the cortex of the brain. If memory was but an encoding of the body’s sensory experiences, then why couldn’t the right kind of electrical stimulus tap into it? The wiring was in place. The brain was still there, and brains were computers.
    She was curious about Metcalf, but not at the expense of alienating him, so she decided to let it lie. The day was half gone. The Alaskan sun would set before midnight. She would do what she came to do and then she would be back on the jet and heading for home. All of this would be behind them.
    She heard Metcalf clear his throat. His head was near. He seemed to be leaning in toward her. He surprised her by speaking and this time it was with inflection.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
    She hesitated a second. She wanted to get this right. For some unfathomable reason she wanted this man to trust her, to like her, even if he could not believe in her. She couldn’t explain why that was. She usually didn’t dwell on the misgivings of others, but Metcalf somehow mattered; she wanted to reach him on a personal level and it wasn’t going to be easy. It was a little like trying to approach a wild animal, she guessed. It would require the use of round, harmless-sounding words. Say the wrong thing, use the wrong tone, and it was over. But she really wanted to understand Metcalf’s relationship with Brigham.
    “We met in the Pentagon once and several times at my father’s home in Boston. I actually remember him from my teenage years. How about you? Have you known him long?”
    “Ten years, a little more,” she decided to say.
    “So you’re close then,” Metcalf said. “Friends?”
    Sherry smiled. “I can honestly say he has become my best friend, Captain.”
    Metcalf took a moment to digest that, seeming uncertain about the ground in front of him. When he finally decided to speak, he turned to face Sherry, covered the mike on his headphones so the pilots couldn’t hear, and spoke loudly over the din of the engines. “A lot of people would go to hell and back for that man. Myself included.”
    Sherry was surprised by the emotion in his voice. It clearly wasn’t an idle declaration. He really meant it. But what did that mean? Metcalf didn’t sound old enough to have served with Brigham; by her estimation he couldn’t possibly have been a peer, so what would he know about Brigham to qualify