The Empath (The Above and Beyond Series Book 1) Read Free Page B

came. Diligence at all times.
    She took nearly half an hour to navigate the rabbit warren of corridors to take me back to my cell. Not that I minded, I needed the time to calm down.
    I didn’t say a word the entire time but listened to her feelings, her worries and I owed the woman. “Piece of advice. In these places it’s you or us . . . outsiders or insiders. If they think you aren’t completely one of them, you won’t last long.”
    “I appreciate the honesty,” the guard said.
    I smiled. “It’s an ear infection by the way . . . she needs to go to the doctors.”
    The guard tilted her head. “Excuse me?”
    “Your daughter, she’s not ignoring you, she has hearing problems. Right now, it’s an infection.”
    The guard looked down the corridor and back to me as if to say, “Did I speak aloud?”
    “You don’t have to believe me but just think of it as me returning the favor. Oh, and stick her in front of a piano.”
    The guard looked at me in disbelief. I was used to it. “Maybe I’ll try that.”
    “I would. Don’t forget that you think I’m a troublemaker. They’ll like that.”
    The guard smiled. “Noted.”
    I walked back into my cell and lay flat out on my bed. My friendly guard would be gone in six months, she was pregnant. I wanted to tell her but realized she already knew. She was working in this place to get enough money to see her through to the birth.
    I wasn’t sure how she was going to cope with life in here. It was hard enough when you lived in it day after day but to leave the world outside and spend time in the gloom of the institution, who the hell would want that?
    They were more desperate than us.
     
    Chapter 5
     
    I FELL ASLEEP in my cell after my rescue. It was one of those odd siestas that left me feeling groggy and confused. I lay there between full sleep and awareness and tried to lift my consciousness. In that state, as an Empath, I’m in danger of visions and if there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s visions.
    A simple person falls into sleep and processes the day before. Occasionally they have an odd dream where their husband becomes a monkey and dances the samba . . . but all in all, safe, sweet dreams, right?
    For me, a person’s odd dreams are my vision-time. I get wonderfully horrific glimpses of events that haven’t yet happened. It never works on a simple level either. If, for instance, someone was going to find the love of their lives, I would see smashing heat and fire crushing everything in its path. Their passion, my inferno.
    None of it even remotely pleasant.
    Unable to drag myself from a doze, the dream began, only it was not future but past replayed.
    I had always liked Jake. He was Sam’s brother. Sam was my best friend and we were joined at the hip from the age of eleven. He had been the guy who every girl loved. I loved him but not in a cuddly way. Empath’s have a bit of trouble in that area. We don’t know if what we feel is us or simply a projection of someone else’s emotions. At a very young age, I decided that it would be better for the world if I never attempted to find out.
    So, Sam and I were as close as you could get. Jake, his junior by two years, followed us everywhere. I doted on him. Sam put up with him. Wherever one was, the others were.
    A trio of terrors, that’s what his mother called us. She was right. If we weren’t breaking into the old soda pop factory to steal glass bottles to shoot at, then we were raking the floor under the machines in the arcade.
    Coming from a small town in the middle of the Ozarks, prime tourist country, we had more than a few tricks to earn money. Some of them a little more light-fingered than I like to remember but then I did end up a murderer so no use sweating the small stuff, I guess.
    That night, the one I have replayed a thousand times, we were out by the old rail crossing on the far edge of town. Sam and I had come up with the brilliant idea to strip the copper from the signal