Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Tommy returned to Eugene via Las Vegas, where he handed pictures of Sam and the girls to a man Sam claimed made the best passports outside the State Department. It remained to be seen whether these were worth the 7,500 dollars Tommy slipped the guy, but they didn't have to be perfect. The documents merely needed to pass muster once, at the border crossing near Vancouver three days hence. If push came to shove, Tommy fully intended to grab the three and fly them over the border himself.

While in Vegas, he took a cab to a street on which he knew a regional SSA office was located. It took very little watching to convince him that the place was more-or-less abandoned. Not satisfied, he visited the neighborhoods of several agents and staff members who he knew worked at the office. It consumed precious hours, but he felt good after catching snatches of conversations at two households, each suggesting that the SSA personnel were either uncertain of their job status or were seeking transfers to other federal agencies.

He repeated the process in San Francisco the next morning. The offices where Philly had been detained were closed. (He'd resisted the urge to destroy the lovely old building the day of Philly's abduction, fearing it might send too strong a message.)

Afterward, it took him about an hour to find Cynthia Welty, as she shopped at a bookstore near her home. His new face must have appealed to her, because she let the new stranger, Martin, buy her a cup of coffee at a local cafe, and they spent several hours talking. The topic shortly turned to her transfer and reassignment, the closing of her department, and, eventually, to the paranormal.

Beyond the confirmation of her changing job status, there was little real information to be had from the obviously still unsettled woman, but Cynthia was a good person and an honest public servant, and Tommy didn't begrudge her a small bit of time and a few kind and comforting words.

There was no doubt some new government entity soon would supplant the SSA, but until then, he felt a little more comfortable about Rhonda's safety.

He chatted on the phone with his girl while he waited to fly to Eugene that evening. His initial instinct had been to fly straight back home after he'd discovered Jeff knew the name Tommy Haas—why hadn't the fool known that making that veiled threat was his death warrant?—but he'd soon relented. After he'd told Rhonda everything that had transpired around Philly's abduction, she'd flat-out refused to stay with her sister. "This is my home ... our home," she'd said, "and no one is driving us out of it."

But much to his surprise, she had agreed to allow an old acquaintance of Tommy's, Cecil Dykstra, to keep regular tabs on her. Cecil was one of Tommy's few Gifted friends from the old days and now kept a weather eye on Rhonda. Tommy trusted the man and was deeply grateful for his assistance.

Upon his return to Eugene, Tommy engaged in a cyclone of work, reaching out to people who might arrange an initial meeting with Meeker, seeking likely places to engage the CEO after drawing him out, and brain-storming other ways they might collect information on The Farm, in case their plans for Meeker went belly-up.

Multiple impromptu encounters with Valhalla employees at local watering holes showed that movement to and from The Farm had stopped. The place was in lockdown. It was not clear whether this was a permanent phenomenon or, as Tommy suspected, a short-term reaction to the disaster at The Range.

Either way, security among Valhalla employees had grown tight in recent days. Few people were talking, and most were circumspect when they did.

That night Tommy came back to the lodgings and workspace he'd been sharing with Philly to find the young woman sobbing pitifully. The kidnap attempt had shaken her, and for a time he was convinced that she intended to abandon their enterprise. His young friend was made of sterner stuff, though, and she'd stayed on.