Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online Page A

seconds with that focus got rid of my shakes but I
came out of that feeling very agitated and disturbed about
Jennifer Harrel. Nothing specific, just a hazy sort of
apprehension.
    I had been gone for about fifteen minutes
when I nosed the Maserati into the small shopping center; for some
reason, feeling more like Greg Souza every second, I did a quick
recon of the parking lot, checking out the dozen or so cars that
were parked there before I pulled up in front of the boutique. A
couple of browsers were inside, both women, but no sign of
Jennifer.
    I went in, caught the clerk's attention and
jerked a thumb toward the dressing room. "She still in there?"
    The clerk replied, "Why, no, she left quite
awhile ago."
    I observed, with some irritation, "I've only
been gone fifteen minutes."
    The woman told me, "Well I'm sorry. She
wasn't here more than five."
    I said, "Look, this is serious. The lady may
be suffering a bit of shock. Did she go out of here on her own
steam?"
    "I certainly did not kick her out, if that's
what you mean," she replied huffily. "After all..."
    I said, "No no, I'm not implying—I'm just
worried about her. Did she leave here by herself?"
    But I was already on this lady's list. She
said, icily, "I have more to do than try to keep track of
quarreling lovers. Stolen clothes, indeed."
    So much for that. A small
diner and a bar were the only other businesses still open in that
center. I checked them both; negative. Then I saw the phone booth,
out near the street, and felt drawn to it. She'd been there, in
there, yes. No visible evidence, but the traces she'd left behind
for me were as palpable as a perfumed scent. As I stood there, my
hand on that telephone, one of the things did me and I knew I had a
lock on her. It was not a voice or a vision or anything like that;
I just "knew" where she'd gone, and I knew why, as though suddenly
remembering something that I had done myself.
    She had called "Jack," at the Hughes
Laboratories, and asked to borrow a car. She had done that in a
mental frenzy approaching full panic, and the subject of that panic
was Isaac Donaldson. Then she had paced around that phone booth for
several minutes, agitation growing, eyes flaring to identify each
vehicle that turned into the shopping center. That was all I had.
It was enough.
    I returned to the Maserati
and sent her back up the coast highway, across Malibu Creek and up
the hill inland past the Pepperdine campus. The controlled-access
drive leading into the Hughes complex was, yes, just a three-minute
trip. Plenty enough time to dispatch a car down the hill and beat
me to the shopping center. I wondered, then, however idly, if that
had been about the time I was playing with my alphas.
    I was parked in the shadows just below the
Hughes entrance when the small silver sedan made its cautious exit
and poised there for a moment before turning out onto the
northbound lane. I could not see the occupant of that car but I
knew that it was her. I had a lock, so I did not even have to
follow too closely.
    She was heading north along Malibu Canyon
Road, streaking toward the Ventura Freeway, no doubt. She would
not go west from there. She would go east. I knew it, could almost
feel the map spreading through her mind.
    Jennifer was going to Isaac.
    And so, about damn time, was I.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Seven: Eyes Up
     
    I was running about a half-mile off
Jennifer's rear bumper, surging closer for visual contact at each
freeway interchange just for damn sure, as we crossed the entire
Los Angeles basin from northwest to southeast—and that is a hell of
a run. The Ventura Freeway merged into the Foothill at Pasadena,
that one into the Corona Freeway near Pomona, streaking south by
southeast from that point on Interstate 15 to join I-15E at
Murietta Hot Springs—and, by now, we are rolling due south through
minimally populated countryside, dairy farms and horse ranches,
climbing into a high valley with the Santa Ana Mountains to the
west and the