The Eyes of Darkness

cover-up."
    "I'm with you that far," Elliot said. "That's logical. But how do you figure Danny's alive? That doesn't necessarily follow."
    "I'm only telling you what I know, what I feel," she said. "A tremendous sense of peace, of reassurance, came over me in the diner, just before you finally managed to shut off the jukebox. It wasn't just an inner feeling of peace. It came from outside of me. Like a wave. Oh, hell, I can't really explain it. I only know what I felt. Danny was trying to reassure me, trying to tell me that he was still alive. I know it. Danny survived the accident, but they couldn't let him come home because he'd tell everyone the government was responsible for the deaths of the others, and that would blow their secret military installation wide open."
    "You're reaching, grasping for straws."
    "I'm not, I'm not," she insisted.
    "So where is Danny?"
    "They're keeping him somewhere. I don't know why they didn't kill him. I don't know how long they think they can keep him bottled up like this. But that's what they're doing. That's what's going on. Those might not be the precise circumstances, but they're pretty damn close to the truth."
    "Tina—"
    She wouldn't let him interrupt. "This secret police force, these people behind Kennebeck . . . they think someone involved with Project Pandora has turned on them and told me what really happened to Danny. They're wrong, of course. It wasn't one of them. It's Danny. Somehow . . . I don't know how . . . but he's reaching out to me." She struggled to explain the understanding that had come to her in the diner. "Somehow . . . some way . . . he's reaching out . . . with his mind, I guess. Danny was the one who wrote those words on the chalkboard. With his mind. "
    "The only proof of this is what you say you feel . . . this vision you've had."
    "Not a vision—"
    "Whatever. Anyway, that's no proof at all."
    "It's proof enough for me," she said. "And it would be proof enough for you, if you'd had the same experience back there in the diner, if you'd felt what I felt. It was Danny who reached out for me when I was at work . . . found me in the office . . . tried to use the hotel computer to send his message to me. And now the jukebox. He must be ... psychic. That's it! That's what he is. He's psychic. He has some power, and he's reaching out, trying to tell me he's alive, asking me to find him and save him. And the people who're holding him don't know he's doing it! They're blaming the leak on one of their own, on someone from Project Pandora."
    "Tina, this is a very imaginative theory, but—"
    "It might be imaginative, but it's not a theory. It's true. It's fact. I feel it deep in my bones. Can you shoot boles through it? Can you prove I'm wrong?"
    "First of all," Elliot said, "before he went into the mountains with Jaborski, in all the years you knew him and lived in the same house with him, did Danny ever show any signs of being psychic?"
    She frowned. "No."
    "Then how come he suddenly has all these amazing powers?"
    "Wait. Yeah, I do remember some little things he did that were sort of odd."
    "Like what?"
    "Like the time he wanted to know exactly what his daddy did for a living. He was eight or nine years old, and he was curious about the details of a dealer's job. Michael sat at the kitchen table with him and dealt blackjack. Danny was barely old enough to understand the rules, but he'd never played before. He certainly wasn't old enough to remember all the cards that were dealt and calculate his chances from that, like some of the very best players can do. Yet he won steadily. Michael used a jar full of peanuts to represent casino chips, and Danny won every nut in the jar."
    "The game must have been rigged," Elliot said. "Michael was letting him win."
    "That's what I thought at first. But Michael swore he wasn't doing that. And he seemed genuinely astonished by Danny's streak of luck. Besides, Michael isn't a card mechanic. He can't handle a deck well enough to stack it while he's shuffling. And then there was Elmer."
    "Who's Elmer?"
    "He was our dog. A cute little mutt. One day, about two years ago, I was in the kitchen, making an apple pie, and Danny came in to tell me Elmer wasn't anywhere to be found in the yard. Apparently, the pooch slipped out of the gate when the gardeners came around. Danny said he was sure Elmer wasn't going to come back because he'd been hit and killed by a truck. I told him not to worry. I said we'd find Elmer safe and sound. But