Intuition (eBook)

Chapter One

San Diego

1

When the bell rang on her next to last day at Oakview High School, Libby Amanda Anderson slung the backpack over her shoulder and hurried out of the classroom. She didn’t want to give Ms. Carter the chance to go on about her Shakespeare essay. It was just a paper, after all, but her teacher had acted like defending Lady Macbeth was a mortal sin. And she didn’t want to run into someone from chemistry class. The homework assignment had looked pretty tough, and a couple of the future Cal-Techers might want to pick her brain. She didn’t mind that much, but today was the last day of March, and she wondered if the eggs had hatched. She had been waiting impatiently for school to end so she could find out.

She had spied a pair of peregrine falcons over three weeks earlier, as part of her goal to see all the bird species in San Diego. The falcons had now produced a nest of eggs, which she had been visiting every day. She still didn’t know how many eggs there were. Four maybe? She would have climbed out on the old hotel’s balcony for a closer look, but she suspected the female would react badly.

She was almost to the end of hall when Henry Waggoner, from fourth period math, stepped in front of her. He was taller than she, and three years older. Actually, he wasn’t that much taller, as she had added two inches just the past year. But he also had the build of an all-state pitcher who was odds-on to get a full scholarship. She had noticed him hanging around a lot lately, always making jokes and talking about yesterday’s game. But there were no jokes now. He looked upset.

“Did you tell Price you helped me with that swimming pool problem?” he asked in a low voice. Their homework had asked them to calculate the volume of water in an asymmetrical swimming pool. To Henry, the problem was written in ancient Greek.

“I would never do that,” she said, continuing to walk. “Wouldn’t that be admitting I was wrong, too?”

“Well, when she handed me back the paper, she looked at me funny and asked if I’d had help.”

Libby could have kicked herself. Henry’s answer should have had some mistakes. “Miss Price isn’t so bad,” she said. She was thinking Henry was lucky a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball didn’t require talent in math.

As they approached main door, she gave him a quick glance. “You pitching tomorrow?”

He looked surprised. “I didn’t think you were into baseball.”

Libby thought about all the games she had watched with Aunt Ruth. “I know a little,” she said. “What if a lowly freshman came to cheer?” The Senior Prom was two months away. If he asked her, would Ruth let her go? Probably not, but it was worth a try.

He suddenly looked nervous. “I hope I have good stuff.”

“You’ll hardly need it against the Lions,” she said. “They’ve won, what, two games so far?”

He stared at her blankly.

“And speaking of baseball,” she added, “isn’t your practice about to start?”

He gave his watch a startled glance. “Oh, man,” he said, “the coach will kill me.” He started to leave and then turned back.

“Could I call you tonight?” he asked. “Price gave me an extra credit problem to boost my grade. I was hoping you’d look at it.”

“What is it?”

“Well, in the spring this pond starts to get covered with water lilies. Every day the lilies cover twice as much of the pond as they did the day before. After thirty days all of the pond is covered. The pond is, let’s see, one hundred feet in diameter.”

“So what’s the question?” Libby asked, opening the door to leave.

“Uh, how many days will it take before the pond is half-covered with lilies?”

Libby stepped through the door and started down the stairs.

“Twenty-nine days,” she said over her shoulder.

“What!” he called out.

“The pond will be half-covered in twenty-nine days.”

2

Sitting in a dark town car across the street, the man calling himself Harvey Blunt watched the girl leave the school. He was wearing a corduroy blazer and could have passed for an over-sized English teacher. The woman with him carried a Homeland Security ID in the name of Autumn Gray. She was six feet tall, looked like a fitness instructor, and specialized in martial arts. Blunt had seen her put five rounds into a two-inch circle at thirty feet. Her face could have qualified for a magazine cover--except for the wine stain birthmark that extended from her left ear to below her jaw. Once people saw the birthmark’s spidery tendrils, which looked like claw marks, they usually forgot about her features and physique.

“She looks pretty ordinary,” Blunt said. “You sure she’s the one?”

“Never seen her before. But that’s the girl in the photo.”

“Think she’ll talk to us?”

“We’ve sent three letters and phoned the aunt twice. No response to the letters, even the one with the scholarship offer. And the aunt hung up as soon as the calls mentioned the girl. It was a little surprising. Usually money works. But sooner or later we’ll get to her.”

Blunt watched the tall, slim, sandy-haired girl walking away. “This is getting old. How many is this, anyway? Twenty?”

“Seventeen. Four left.”

“Where’s the next one?”

She looked at a sheet. “Pack for cold weather. Montana.”

He made a face. “We’ll, at least it’s in this country. But it’s so damn boring, not to mention a waste of time.”

Gray shrugged. “Probably. But you’re getting paid, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but this isn’t what we trained for.” He started the car’s engine. “I’ve always preferred the direct approach. You okay with that?”

“Was that thing in Chicago direct enough for you?” Gray said. She had been assigned to visit a troublesome inventor who had rejected three generous buyout offers for a patent Quantum Industries needed for its new computer system. He had been arriving home late one evening when she intercepted him as he was getting out of his car. She had slapped duct tape over his eyes and taped his hands behind his back before he knew what was happening or could see her face. She took him to a secluded park, broke two of his fingers, and convinced him he needed to exercise better professional judgment. He had sold the patent to Quantum two weeks later.

“Not that direct,” Blunt said.

“Well,” she said, “let’s see how you do.”

3

Libby headed down Central Avenue, the spring sun warm on her face, and turned right on Fifth. She kept to the main streets, avoiding the alley she had once taken as a shortcut. That time she had been surprised by two guys in a doorway. When they started toward her, she quickly retreated, taunts following. She’d never told Ruth about it. Ruth already worried about her too much.

After two more blocks, and a left down Upas, Libby came to the old Helix Hotel. She squinted up, a hand blocking the sun’s glare, and finally saw the nest in a crevice beneath the third-floor balcony. It was about thirty feet up. The female’s white head, with its curved beak, was barely visible over the ring of twigs. Libby listened carefully, just making out a faint chorus of high peeps. So, the babies had finally come.

Libby looked around, scanning the sky, and saw the smaller male circling overhead. The first time she had seen the bird was three weeks earlier, when it had swooped down on several crows that had been flying around, obviously watching something. The falcon had dove into the crows at great speed, talons slashing. After the crows had scattered, Libby looked for what they had been after. She finally located the female falcon guarding a nest.

Libby had visited the nest every day since, careful not to alarm the birds. She had no doubt that if she had climbed out onto the hotel balcony to get a better look, the male would have dove at her face, if the female didn’t get to her first.

She scanned the railing that ran along the balcony’s perimeter, looking for the gray tomcat she had seen a week earlier. She worried that the female falcon hadn’t seen it. The question was whether the cat could get down to the crevice that housed the nest. If it could, the birds wouldn’t have a chance. But the tomcat didn’t seem to be around.

“Do you like birds?”

Libby jumped and whirled around. The man was only five feet away. How had he gotten so close? She took an involuntary step back.

“Sorry,” Harvey Blunt said, “didn’t mean to startle you. I like birds, too.”

The man was smiling, and he wasn’t bad looking. But Libby’s heart was already pounding and her palms were starting to perspire. The man’s eyes were wrong, and his smile reminded her of a crocodile. She took in his corduroy jacket. It looked a lot more expensive than anything she’d seen in the high school.

“The babies,” she said, feeling stupid. “The babies came.” Was that a bulge under the jacket, beneath his armpit? She backed away.

He stepped toward her. “No need to leave. I’m a bird-watcher, too. How many eggs were in the batch?”

“A clutch,” she said. “Eggs are called a clutch.” If he’d really been a birder, he would have known that. She turned and started to walk away as fast as she could. Her ears strained for the sound of his...