Page 23 of Morrison (Terk’s Guardians #13)

He burst out laughing at that. “Good point.” He sat down next to Sadie, trying to pass the time by watching a movie.

“Feeling better?” he asked her, during a commercial break.

She nodded. “Not quite there yet, but better.” Just then she stiffened.

He looked at her carefully and asked, “Pinging, by any chance?”

She frowned and nodded. “It’s almost as if somebody is calling.”

“Okay.”

She stared at him in shock. “You know how I feel about all this.”

“How you feel about it now, versus how you’ll feel about it once you have a handle on it, is a whole different story. Maybe your siblings got a handle on it a long time ago.”

“Maybe,” she whispered, but an off expression took over her face.

“Are you trying to contact the sender?”

She immediately switched her gaze to Morrison. “Should I?”

He shook his head. “No, not right now. I would advise you not to, since we don’t know who is calling. Maybe it’s your other brother. What would be nice to know is whether he’s calling for Don in the hospital.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Speaking of Don, maybe it’s him calling out.”

“That’s possible too,” he noted. “Did you make any contact with him prior to this?”

“No. I wanted to, but, when I realized that he was involved in this nightmare, I just didn’t know how.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” Morrison said. “It keeps you separate from this whole thing, just in case the police wanted to look at you as being involved.”

She winced at that. “I certainly don’t want them to see me as being involved, but I highly doubt that they haven’t already considered that.”

He smiled, then gave her a casual shrug. “That’s quite true. The government is the government. As long as they think something might be going on, they will be all over it.”

“Even if I didn’t do anything, right?”

“Even if you didn’t do anything,” he confirmed. “Not to mention that they need to rule you out, whatever that takes. You all are related, and that can only be hidden for so long.”

Her face twisted again.

“Is the pinging hurting?”

“No, but I want to jump in. I want to respond or something. Something is very compelling about it.”

He gripped her hand and shook his head. “Please don’t, not now.”

She stared at him. “But what if it’s my sister? What if it’s Tammy calling out to me?” She had a longing expression on her face. “I mean, maybe she’s involved in all this energy stuff.”

“Maybe she’s also involved in these jewelry heists.”

Sadie shook her head. “No, she wouldn’t,” she muttered, with such a positive note that he had to stare at her.

“Is that wishful thinking?” he asked.

She flushed. “I don’t know,… maybe. I just feel as if, us girls, we probably got the lucky deal out of this, and the boys didn’t.”

“Girls are definitely adopted more often than boys,” he noted, “right or wrong. Boys tend to be a little bit of a handful, particularly when they come out of some of these rough situations.”

She nodded. “I don’t know what it is, but…” She turned to him. “Please let me answer.”

He hesitated, then said, “Let me talk to Terkel first.” And, with that, he quickly picked up his phone, thankful when it was answered right away. “Terkel, we’ve got a situation.” Then he went on to explain it, on Speaker, so she could participate.

Terkel asked Sadie, “What is it you’re receiving?”

“Somebody calling out,” she replied. “Not so much that they’re calling out for help but almost as if they’re sending out a blanket signal.”

“It could be a transmitter,” he muttered, “sending out a message to see if a receiver is out there.”

“Yet, if I’m picking it up—”

“It just means that you are a receiver,” Terk stated, “but we already knew that because you’re receiving energy.”

“You mean, there’s a name for what I am?”

There was a smile in his tone as he confirmed, “Absolutely. You have a bit of training to go through to understand what you can do and what you can’t do with this.

” They both heard the smile in his tone as Terk went on.

“We don’t even know what all you can do yet.

So far, you’ve been fairly enterprising, but the fact that you’re picking up what somebody else is sending means that there is a good chance you can do a lot more. ”

“Yet this person…” She hesitated.

“Doesn’t sound distressed, right?” Terk spoke in a totally neutral tone. “It doesn’t seem to be somebody calling out for help.”

“No, I don’t get that impression at all.”

“And that’s a good thing,” Terk noted, thinking out loud.

“In this case, it would be a good thing to not respond, particularly as we don’t know where it’s coming from.

Can you pinpoint a location at all? Is it coming from the hospital?

Is it coming from an apartment building?

Is it coming from a place you have been to before? ”

“How do I tell that?” she whispered, shutting her eyelids as she considered the sound. “It doesn’t sound like a voice.”

“No, it’ll be almost like a seek beacon,” Terk explained. “Somebody out there is trying to connect with anybody—or at least somebody out on the ethers.”