Free A Gift of Thought by Sarah Wynde

do this one for you. No ticket, no record, everybody’s cool. But Chesney’s got half the senate in his back pocket. You mess with him and you’re going to find yourself legislated into a black hole. Or worse.” The cop started the car and pulled out onto the road.
    “Worse?”
    “The IRS. The SEC. OSHA. Chesney’s got connections everywhere. If he decides to destroy you, you’re already dead. He could probably get the CDC to investigate you for potential zombie outbreaks if he wanted to.”
    Dillon’s smile disappeared. That didn’t sound good. Not the zombies, he was cool with them, but all those other initials. Was his dad in trouble? Was that why he’d been using a fake name?
    Lucas shook his head. “The guy is corrupt as hell.”
    “Not the point, my friend.”
    “I’m serious. He’s selling guns to the Mexican drug cartels. I know he is. God knows how many deaths he’s responsible for.”
    The driver sighed. “Proof?” he asked, as he turned onto the highway.
    Lucas let his head fall back against the head rest of his seat. From the back seat, Dillon winced. He recognized that look. His dad was not a happy camper.
    “Look, you know I believe in you and what you can do. You guys at GD have been invaluable for me. That little blonde—”
    “She’d probably kill you if she heard you call her that,” Lucas interrupted.
    “Yeah, whatever,” the driver said. “Tell me she’s not married yet.”
    Lucas chuckled. “Still engaged.”
    Dillon frowned, trying to think of who his dad meant, then said, “Oh, you’re talking about Serena!”
    He’d met Serena a couple of times. She was a clairvoyant. She could touch an object and tell you its entire history: the last place it had been, who had held it, what it had been used for. None of the information was admissible in court, of course, but he could see that a cop might like working with her. And yeah, she might murder a guy who called her a little blonde, even if it was technically true. Despite her name, Serena was not the serene type.
    “Is she ever gonna dump him?” The cop’s voice was plaintive.
    “Nope.” Lucas sounded sympathetic.
    The cop heaved a sigh, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel before returning to the subject. “Still, compared to Chesney, you’re small potatoes. The dude has an inside track on everything that happens in DC.”
    “Yeah,” Lucas replied, sympathy gone and voice grim. “And he’s selling guns to the cartels, Andy.”
    “But why?” protested Andy. “He’s got more money than God, more power than the devil. Why would he take that sort of risk?”
    Dillon didn’t care about that. He wanted to know the important stuff, like why was his mom working for a bad guy?
    Lucas shook his head. “Zane did a job last year. With Maia out of the Orlando office, you remember her?”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Andy nodded, taking one hand off the wheel and gesturing as if trying to hurry Lucas’s story along.
    “It was a local job. He found a stash of drugs, guns and cash. No big deal. Completely unimportant. But they’d built a tunnel.”
    Dillon remembered that tunnel. It had been right after Akira moved to Florida. His Uncle Zane had taken her with him that day and she’d come back muttering things about quantum entanglement and paradoxes.
    “A tunnel in Florida?” Andy glanced at Lucas. “What were they gonna try? Digging under the Gulf?”
    Lucas chuckled. “Exactly. Total overkill for the location. Florida’s not prime territory for border crossings. So why a tunnel?”
    The cop scowled as he smoothly navigated the heavy traffic on the roadway. “The Sinaloas do the tunnels. They’re West Coast.”
    “Yeah. So two possibilities—”
    Andy shook his head. “One,” he said, voice grim. “The Sinaloas shouldn’t be challenging the Zetas. Not after the BLO in 2008 and the AFO situation. It’s gotta be the Zetas, planning to expand their operations into Sinaloa territory.”
    Dillon scowled. He had no