Hideaway

his fame. He didn't want it. He hadn't fought his way out of death; Lindsey, Nyebern, and the resuscitation team had dragged him back. He was a private person, content with just the quiet respect of the better antique dealers who knew his shop and traded with him sometimes. In fact, if the only respect he had was Lindsey's, if he was famous only in her eyes and only for being a good husband, that would be enough for him. By steadfastly refusing to talk to the press, he had finally convinced them to leave him alone and chase after whatever newly born two-headed goat—or its equivalent—was available to fill newspaper space or a minute of the airwaves between deodorant commercials.
    Now, if he revealed that he had come back from the dead with some strange power to connect with the mind of a psycho killer, swarms of newspeople would descend on him again. He could not tolerate even the prospect of it. He would find it easier to endure a plague of killer bees or a hive of Hare Krishna solicitors with collection cups and eyes glazed by spiritual transcendence.
    “If it's not some psychic ability,” Lindsey persisted, “then what is it?”
    “I don't know.”
    “That's not good enough.”
    “It could pass, never happen again. It could be a fluke.”
    “You don't believe that.”
    “Well … I want to believe it.”
    “We have to deal with this.”
    “Why?”
    “We have to try to understand it.”
    “Why?”
    “Don't 'why' me like a five-year-old child.”
    “Why?”
    “Be serious, Hatch. A woman's dead. She may not be the first. She may not be the last.”
    He put his fork on his half-empty plate, and swallowed some orange juice to wash down the homefries. “Okay, all right, it's like a psychic vision, yeah, just the way they show it in the movies. But it's more than that. Creepier.”
    He closed his eyes, trying to think of an analogy. When he had it, he opened his eyes and looked around the restaurant again to be sure no new diners had entered and sat near them.
    He looked regretfully at his plate. His eggs were getting cold. He sighed.
    “You know,” he said, “how they say identical twins, separated at birth and raised a thousand miles apart by utterly different adopted families, will still grow up to live similar lives?”
    “Sure, I've heard of that. So?”
    “Even raised apart, with totally different backgrounds, they'll choose similar careers, achieve the same income levels, marry women who resemble each other, even give their kids the same names. It's uncanny. And even if they don't know they're twins, even if each of them was told he was an only child when he was adopted, they'll sense each other out there, across the miles, even if they don't know who or what they're sensing. They have a bond that no one can explain, not even geneticists.”
    “So how does this apply to you?”
    He hesitated, then picked up his fork. He wanted to eat instead of talk. Eating was safe. But she wouldn't let him get away with that. His eggs were congealing. His tranquilizers. He put the fork down again.
    “Sometimes,” he said, “I see through this guy's eyes when I'm sleeping, and now sometimes I can even feel him out there when I'm awake, and it's like the psychic crap in movies, yeah. But I also feel this … this bond with him that I really can't explain or describe to you, no matter how much you prod me about it.”
    “You're not saying you think he's your twin or something?”
    “No, not at all. I think he's a lot younger than me, maybe only twenty or twenty-one. And no blood relation. But it's that kind of bond, that mystical twin crap, as if this guy and I share something, have some fundamental quality in common.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don't know. I wish I did.” He paused. He decided to be entirely truthful. “Or maybe I don't.”
     
    ----
     
    Later, after the waitress had cleared away their empty dishes and brought them strong black coffee, Hatch said, “There's no way I'm going to go to the cops and offer to help them, if that's what you're thinking.”
    “There is a duty here—”
    “I don't know anything that could help them anyway.”
    She blew on her hot coffee. “You know he was driving a Pontiac.”
    “I don't even think it was his.”
    “Whose then?”
    “Stolen, maybe.”
    “That was something else you sensed?”
    “Yeah. But I don't know what he looks like, his name, where he lives, anything useful.”
    “What if something like that comes to you? What if you see