Speechless Read Online Free Page B

a
very expressive face.” He shrugged, as if to throw off his growing knowledge of
their connection.
    You weren’t looking at me.
    “Coincidence. I could tell you were watching me and I know
women find me attractive.”
    Elephant .
    “What?” He’d heard her, she knew. The random word made him
give a sharp head shake. He wanted to knock her voice out of his head, deny the
reality of what was happening.
    What did I just think?
    “Elephant.”
    Ornithorhynchus anatinus.
    “Ornithorhynchus something.”
    Anatinus. It’s the scientific name of the duck-billed
platypus. Still think it was coincidence?
    “Then you’re throwing your voice somehow.”
    That would require that I both open my mouth and possess
a voice.
    “A recording. There’s some rational explanation to this
practical joke.” His voice deepened, became commanding. “End it, Eva. Now.”
    Stone. The single word halted his growing suspicion
of her, that she could somehow fake this, stopped his gaze from darting around
the cabin’s single room. She wished she could slow her heart as easily. Listen.
Let me explain. I don’t know why it has happened here and now, but with some
people, I can communicate like this. You’re hearing my words, the voice I don’t
have, in your head. My mother was the first. She could hear my thoughts almost
as soon as I had coherent thoughts. I’ve worked with the same assistant for six
years. She started hearing me a year and a half ago. My best friend can hear
me—we’ve been friends since college. With her, it took a year. I don’t know how
my mother reacted, but the others had the same questions and response you’re
having now. I am a scientist. Science tells me that this should be
impossible—thoughts traveling on some type of wave from me to you. But it
happens. Elephants and Ornithorhynchus prove it. The way you’re watching me
now, with that look of listening on your face, the concentration, the interest.
How can you doubt it?
    “Why me? And how?” Stone pushed himself away from the sink
and took two steps toward her. “Will I hear everything you’re thinking?”
    There’s obviously a connection between us. You felt it
last night. You answered my every thought. Maybe this had already started and
we were both too asleep to notice. Until now, I thought familiarity and
affection were required, but now I don’t know. Maybe it’s just …connection.
Trust. Or the trauma of my fall. The others can only hear what I direct to
them, nothing more. I don’t know if it’s safe to assume that pattern will hold
or not. None of the others have.
    “Your mother, your friend, your assistant. Not your father
or lovers?”
    Eva shook her head. She knew he’d realized the truth—that he
was the only man who could hear her this way. He just stood there and watched
her. She let him look, let the silence drag out, let him consider and then
discard the thought that one or the other of them had gone insane.
    “Last night…“
    I’ve been meaning to apologize for that. I don’t know
what happened. I don’t normally…
    “You were frightened. Eva, this connection between us— Yes,
I’ve felt it. Almost from the beginning. But it can’t go anywhere. We can’t let
it strengthen.”
    What you said last night, that I was right to be afraid
of you, it has something to do with that, doesn’t it?
    Stone ran a hand down his face and came over to the bed,
bringing a chair from the table with him. He sat on it backward, his hands on
the uprights of the back, his legs spread around it. Again he allowed a long
minute of silence, as if gathering himself for this conversation. Finally, Eva
gave in and addressed him.
    Who are you?
    Stone sighed. “I can’t tell you. I won’t hurt you. Not
purposefully. I’m not a criminal or a conspiracy theorist or an anti-government
militiaman. I just need to be off the grid for a while. It’s important that
certain people don’t find me.”
    So it’s a witness protection program kind of