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David’s body and informed the police. They were very skeptical at first, but at least they followed up on the information I gave them. As you know, they found David’s remains.”
    “Did you ever meet David’s parents?” asked Max.
    “I met Jonathan Dexter briefly at the police station,” Deanna replied, “and he thanked me for my help. Yet there was much more that I wanted to tell him, so I phoned him that evening. I told him that I’d not only known where David had been buried. I’d also had a strong feeling that he was murdered and that it was somehow linked to the secret government project. Dexter confided to me that they shut the project down after David disappeared. Yet once David’s body had come to light, Dexter had his own reasons for being suspicious. He wanted to meet with me, but said that first he had to see a private detective, a man who’d always expressed an interest in his son’s case.”
    “Carrington,” said Max.
    “I assumed so,” Deanna nodded. “However, the next day Dexter was dead, and I was terrified that he’d been silenced. I kept quiet and hoped that no one suspected that I’d ever been in contact with him. Then a few weeks ago, John Carrington contacted me. I was reluctant to talk to him at first, but then I figured it was safe enough after all these years. I arranged to meet him for coffee, but as we both know, he never made it.”
    “Did he mention what he was working on?” said Max.
    “Not specifically,” replied Deanna, “but from what you’ve told me about his office and that mailbox, Carrington was investigating links between those suspicious deaths and the experiments I was subjected to as a young girl, plus all the unsolved missing persons cases. It looks like the project never really stopped. The military might finally have developed a weapon from their work with psychics. I think the project simply went further underground after that and Kovac was still working on it, right up until his recent retirement. Someone called Kane was part of it all back then too. The guy you met at the police station has to be the same man.”
    “He seemed to know so much about me,” said Max.
    “Did you experience any strange sensations when Kane was interviewing you?” Deanna asked.
    “I had a headache,” Max confessed, “and I even blacked out.”
    “Blacked out?” Deanna repeated. “For how long?”
    “I’m not sure, to be honest,” replied Max. “Is it important?”
    “What did Kane say to the other guys, when he’d finished with you?” Deanna inquired.
    “I think he said I was pretty mixed up, or something like that,” Max replied. “I don’t exactly remember. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.”
    “Hmm, it sounds like he was probing your mind,” said Deanna. “That’s why you passed out.”
    “Probing my mind?” said Max. “What are you talking about?”
    “Kane is like me, Max,” Deanna explained, “but his psychic abilities have always been much more developed. However, it sounds like he couldn’t make sense of these images you’ve been seeing, the ones that he would have been able to access. Your connection to Carrington and Vanessa Dexter, no matter how innocent it might turn out to be, means they’ll be watching you, for a while at least.”
    “So where do I fit into all this?” Max asked.
    “Have you ever seen or even dreamt about David before?” Deanna asked. “Or perhaps about someone you didn’t recognize at the time, but who you now realize was him?”
    Max shivered even though the room wasn’t especially cold.
    “My imaginary friend,” he replied. “When I was four years old, it seemed as though he’d been around for as long as I could remember. I didn’t see him all the time, only when I was alone in my room, either playing or just before I fell asleep. Then on my fifth birthday, I was playing with my new toys in my room after the party guests had left. My imaginary friend was there, but this time it