Psych:Mind-Altering Murder by William Rabkin Read Free Book Online

still didn't know when Gus was going to fly. But since the trip meant Gus was going to be away for most of a day, Shawn just had to wait until he announced he needed to attend an all-day sales meeting at his other job.
    As for the flight, that was the easy part. He knew how Gus' mind worked and he knew how Gus would think about how Shawn's mind worked. This was the one that Gus would assume Shawn would find least likely. Which meant it was the one he would pick.
    Unless, of course, Gus had taken his logic a step further and realized that Shawn would have figured out what he was thinking, and so changed to a direct flight from Santa Barbara. But Shawn knew that Gus had a strong dislike of that kind of circular thinking. As a child he'd seen too many science fiction movies and TV shows where the hero was able to make an evil supercomputer explode simply by offering it an example of a logical feedback loop, and he was always careful to protect his own brain from that particular danger. So unless Gus had just given up on the whole project, he was going to be on this flight.
    As he finished off the plate of fried food Shawn looked over at the gate and saw that the doors were open and passengers were coming out. The first few were middle-aged businessmen in suits and ties. They were followed by what looked like either a start-up's software-development team or a group of escapees from a juvenile mental institution. They were all talking to the air in front of them, but since Shawn couldn't confirm they had Bluetooth headsets attached to their ears he couldn't decide which they were. Most of the remaining passengers were clearly tourists, ambling out of the Jetway with looks on their faces that said, This airport is already something to see and I'm going to take my time about it . At the end of the line was one more middle-aged man in a suit and tie. He walked slowly and kept glancing back over his shoulder. Shawn assumed he'd spent the trip flirting with one of the flight attendants, and he was still hoping she might come running after him to thrust her phone number into his hand.
    And then the Jetway doors were empty. One of the gate agents peered in to see if anyone else would be deplaning, but that seemed to be it. There was a rush of movement around the gate as passengers waiting to board the plane started to jockey for position.
    Shawn was surprised to discover how relieved he felt. After all, the mere fact that Gus wasn't on this plane didn't mean there wasn't something seriously wrong. He could have used a different calculus to choose his flight. Or Shawn could have been completely wrong and Gus could be hailing a cab outside the Las Vegas airport right now. Or Gus could have gotten sick of trying to outgame Shawn's thought process and driven up north.
    Whatever the explanation for Gus' failure to deplane from this flight, the underlying problem, whatever it might be, would still be there once Shawn got home. And worse, Shawn would have blown his best shot to figure out what it was.
    Intellectually he knew that was all true. But he didn't care. Gus wasn't here, which meant that Gus was not betraying him. At least not in the manner that he'd suspected. There would probably be plenty of things to feel terrible about, but they would come later. For the moment he could relax.
    Shawn scrawled his name across the bottom of the credit card slip the waitress must have placed on the table while he was staring across the terminal and stood up. He was going to make that flight home after all.
    He was halfway out of the restaurant when he noticed one of the gate agents rushing down gate one's Jetway. He didn't want to wait to find out what was going on. His departure gate was at least half a mile away and it was going to start boarding soon. But something made him stay, frozen, staring at the doors.
    For a long moment, the doorway was empty. And then Shawn saw a flash of chrome and he relaxed again. There was a wheelchair coming up the