The Talented by Steve Delaney

out. So what? We know that the rifle was a military style assault rifle. Is there any reason why the government might want you dead?”
    “No.” Stuart said, a little too quickly, as Travis and Ashley looked at each other a bit uncertainly. “Why would you suggest that?”
    “The Program!” I kind of shouted, “Don’t you see? You are the only survivors of the fire. Someone is trying to remove all remaining traces of the Program!”
    My brilliant exclamation drew only a lackluster reaction from the group. Sighs all around. Eye-rolls.
    “Possible,“ Kate conceded, “but we all considered that possibility, and found it unlikely. Why wait all this time?”
    I stood and gestured all around me, “Look at this place. It’s obvious now that the surviving children of the Program, you guys, have developed some serious Talents of your own. Someone decided that they didn’t want that to continue.” Taking a breath, I continued, “This is all guesswork, I know, but it feels very right, and we are psychic, after all.”
    “Psionic,” Stuart corrected.
    “Whatever,” I replied. “True or not, whoever is doing this knows about your abilities and apparently can block them. We have got to follow up on this angle.”
    “How about,” Tracy offered coolly, “you and Kate go do that. The rest of us will stay here and focus on the possibility that our corporate enemies are behind it,” and under her breath, added, “which is our prevailing theory, anyway.” That drew a few chuckles from the rest of them.
    That was fine to me. We were getting nowhere standing around doing nothing.
    As I walked out the front door into the amber light of dusk, Kate gently grabbed my arm and as I turned she took a step in so I could hear her whispering, “Adam, I’m so sorry for that. Tracy is…well, I guess we are just used to her. She is not that bad most of the time. It’s just that we are all so stressed out about this. To make matters worse, several clients have already found out and have dropped the company in order to distance themselves from scandal.”
    Giving her my most reassuring look, I soothed, “Don’t worry about me, it takes more than that to chase me away.” Taking a deep breath, I went back to what was really on my mind. “The Program, Kate, think. Did anyone survive the fire other than your friends?”
    Grimacing, Kate shook her head and replied, “We were kids, Adam. They told us no one survived, but it was a secret Program, so if anyone did survive, no one told us about it. It was a running joke how secretive and paranoid Dr. Kildare was.”
    Finally a name. “Who was Dr. Kildare?”
    “He was in charge of everything. I only saw him in the morning sometimes, driving up in his big, black Mercedes-Benz.”
    “Hey,” I blurted out, “Didn’t you say that the fire happened at night when everyone was asleep?”
    Kate saw where I was going with this and excitedly answered, “Yes, so why would he drive if he lived there with everyone else? So, he didn’t live there. He drove there in the morning from his home. It makes sense that some of the leadership would not live in the compound. I remember my daddy pointing out that the compound was like its own town, and that there was an entire wing just to house apartments for the families of staff members. It was hard for me to accept why I had to live in the boarding school while the children of the staff got to live with their parents.”
    “Right, but the big boss, Kildare…he didn’t have to live on campus because an important guy like that would have lived in a house. We can track that… um, right?”
    Kate took out her mobile and started tapping away at the screen. My thoughts began to drift to Alicia. She had been gone awhile on her shopping spree. Hope she didn’t get any bad ideas about skipping town.
    “Got it. Ocean View Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia. He still lives there, too. That’s less than ten miles from the former Program compound.”
    She looked