Stone Undercover Read online

  Stone Undercover

  By

  Bob Blanton

  Copyright © 2019 by Robert D. Blanton

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to

  actual persons living or dead, or actual events

  is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Fresh Start

  Clouds in Paradise

  A Dark Day

  A Break In The Clouds

  Hawaiian Interlude

  Spring Fever

  Prom Week

  Road Trip

  Lunch, Oh My

  New York Skyline

  New Haven Retreat

  This is it

  The Event

  After Glow

  Epilogue

  A Fresh Start

  “Hi, Matt, I didn’t know you had an appointment today,” Emily said, as she walked into the reception area after her appointment with her therapist. She and Matthew had both been ordered into therapy by their parents after they had been caught up in the terrorist incident at the La Jolla Playhouse in January.

  Little did anyone know how involved they had been. Matthew had used his gift to help thwart the terrorists, notifying the FBI about the incident when it had started, giving recon info to the FBI Terrorist Response Team. Then they had worked with the SEAL Team Captain and two marine colonels who were trapped in the theater with them to disable the bombs and machine guns when things finally went down. But all that was a secret that he didn’t dare share with anyone, not even his therapist. How could he explain that he could open a portal to anywhere in the world and see and hear through it. He could even manipulate things on the other side of it. They’d lock him up for being crazy, or use him as a weapon.

  “I had to move my appointment this week,” Matthew replied. “I still have six weeks to go.”

  “Me, too,” Emily said. “I think I’m okay now, but there’s no arguing with my mom.”

  “Mine either.”

  “My therapist says I’m supposed to hug three people a day, so come on, we can both get one out of the way,” Emily said, holding her arms out.

  “It’s kind of hokey if you ask me,” Matthew replied. He stood up and gave Emily a hug. “One down, two to go.”

  Matthew was half a head taller than Emily. When they first started spending time together last summer he was about an inch shorter than she, but at fifteen he was in the peak growth period for boys, while Emily at seventeen wasn’t likely to get much taller. Both teenagers looked and moved like athletes. Matthew still had some growth ahead of him, especially in filling out his tall, lanky frame. His dark, mussed hair contrasted with Emily’s blond, perfectly coiffed hair.

  “Are we still on for our study session tomorrow?” Emily asked.

  “Of course, we only have two more months before the SAT,” Matthew replied. “We can’t afford to lose any study time. And guess what, I have a new trick to show you.”

  “A new trick,” Emily said, looking puzzled. “Oh, you mean a new trick.”

  “Yes, not sure what good it is, but it’s pretty cool.”

  “Okay, I can’t wait until tomorrow. Have a good session.”

  “I’ll try. See ya.”

  Matthew spent the next forty minutes talking with his therapist. He was still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that so many people had been killed. All of the outside security guards and the caterers had been killed, but to everyone’s surprise, only one of the theater patrons had been killed. Captain Walker was one of the guys whom Matthew had been told to recruit for the rescue mission.

  He and his therapist discussed how one deals with loss, especially of someone close to you. The therapist said that he had developed a special bond with Captain Walker, so he was feeling his loss more deeply than that of the people outside the theater. They even talked about how Matthew was dealing with the loss of his father who had died of brain cancer about two years ago. She told him that the loss of a parent was especially traumatic. You had spent your entire life with your parents as one of the few constants in the world, so when one of them was taken away, it was especially disruptive to your psyche. She told him that some of his stress was because he felt he had to step in and assume the role his father had played in providing for and protecting his family. When things like the incident at the Playhouse happened, it was natural to extend that feeling to protecting everyone around him.

  It made sense to Matthew and explained why he felt that he should have been able to use his gift to protect him. Captain Walker had been killed protecting all the rest of the patrons, standing out front so he could see and take out the terrorists as they tried to kill the people gathered on the stage. Even though Captain Walker had told him just before he died, “No plan goes off without a hitch. You just take what God gives you,” Matthew felt guilty, and he didn’t think any amount of therapy would relieve the guilt. He couldn’t exactly tell his therapist why he felt so guilty, why he thought he should have been able to save Captain Walker.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The next afternoon, Matthew finished up his homework and then went downstairs to the family room to wait for Emily. It was nice and quiet at home since his five-year-old sister was across the street playing at the neighbor’s house and his mother was still at work. He grabbed his book and sat down to read while he waited for Emily. She would just be finishing up her tennis practice and would be on her way by now. Since he didn’t have a driver’s license yet, she was swinging by to pick him up after tennis practice. She had to shower and change, which she preferred to do at home, so this was the compromise they came up with to save time. His mother would pick him up from Emily’s house around 6:00 on her way home from work.

  Matthew heard Emily drive up and went outside to greet her, “How was practice?”

  “Great, Brea and I had a good practice set against Karin and Aneesa so we should be ready for the tournament next week. We didn’t lose a point.”

  “Good, that means she should be in a good mood tomorrow,” Matthew said, as he slid into the passenger seat of Emily’s Porsche Boxter. Brianna was Matthew’s girlfriend and the new star of the tennis team. Even though she was not quite fifteen, she was the dominant player on the team, having been coached by her mother from the time she could hold a tennis racket; plus she had obviously inherited good genes from her mother who had played on the pro circuit for a few years. Brianna and Emily made a great pair, Emily tall and slender, Brianna shorter, with a compact build. They had been unbeatable as a doubles pair since they started playing as a team before Thanksgiving.

  “I’m sure she will be. Now what’s this new trick you’ve been teasing me about?”

  “You have to wait until we’re alone.”

  “We’re alone now.”

  “I can’t do it on the side of the road, and I’m afraid we’ll need a little more room than this,” Matthew said indicating the limited space in Emily’s car.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Okay, I’ll be ten minutes,” Emily said as she unlocked the door and they entered the Stevensons’ house. “Do you need anything first?”

  “No. I’m good, I have my book, see you in ten,” Matthew replied, as he went into the study.

  Emily showed up ahead of schedule, her hair still wet from the shower. She was wearing blue sweatpants and
a white tee shirt with socks on her feet, her long blond hair was held back in a ponytail. She closed the door behind her, “Now let’s see this new trick you’ve been teasing me with all day.”

  “Okay, okay. Do you remember how I slid my cellphone over to the stage at the Playhouse?” Matthew asked, as he stood up and moved to the open space in the room.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I realized that I could do the same thing with myself,” Matthew said.

  “Huh?” Emily said, looking puzzled.

  “Just watch.”

  Matthew went to the door of the study, and did a few quick steps and sat down. It looked like he had sat down in the air, but he was resting on his portal which he’d opened about three feet above the ground. His momentum took him and his portal to the other side of the room.

  “Wow!” Emily gasped. “That’s amazing. You could cross Escondido Creek that way.”

  “I could if I built up enough momentum,” Matthew said. “It would be a bit of a problem if I stopped right over the water.”

  “Oh, you’d figure a way to finish getting across.”

  “Probably. Now watch this.” Matthew did a quick, standing jump, bringing his knees up to his waist, but instead of his feet dropping back to the ground, they just stayed about 1½ feet off the floor. Matthew stood up and looked at Emily while he hovered. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “That is a neat trick,” Emily said. “You’ll never need a ladder to reach the upper shelves.”

  “Yeah, and I can keep doing it,” Matthew said, as he did another hop and wound up hovering about three feet in the air.

  Emily laughed, “You’re going to hit your head on the ceiling.”

  Matthew floated down to the floor, “Not sure what it’s good for, but I guess I can rescue cats from trees.”

  “Hey, how did you do that?” Emily asked.

  “What?”

  “Float down to the floor? I thought you couldn’t change heights.”

  “Oh, I can let it float down with me on it, I just can’t make it push me up. I guess it’s because when I’m going down, there’s no increase in potential energy, so it works. I assume the floor is absorbing the energy as I drift down, but spread out in time instead of all at once, so no thump.”

  “Nice trick. It should come in handy in case of a fire. You won’t need a fire escape.”

  “Yes, it’s easy going down, but a lot of work going up.”

  “You need to hitch a ride on an elevator going up,” Emily joked.

  Matthew paused and thought deeply.

  “What did I say?”

  “Hitch a ride on an elevator,” Matthew said. “You know what, I could probably do that. Just find an elevator close by and use it to push me up.”

  “But then you really have to worry about hitting your head on the ceiling,” Emily laughed. “What if it’s going up twenty floors?”

  Matthew laughed with her. “Yeah, I’d really have to watch out for that.”

  “And they move fast,” Emily added. “Still, it’s a cool trick.”

  “I keep looking for things I can do with it. It’s complicated to figure out what will work.”

  “I guess it would be,” Emily said. “Anyway we’d better start studying.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “You missed one,” Emily said.

  “No way,” Matthew replied.

  “Yes, number thirty-two, the answer should have been C, no change.”

  “Un-uh, that was your answer. The real answer is B; change the semicolon to a comma. See, here it is in the answer key.”

  “Darn it, I was sure about that one,” Emily said. “Did I miss any others?”

  “No, just that one.”

  Emily sighed, “Well at least it was only one. Of course, now that you get thirty-two right, you got a perfect score.”

  Matthew just smiled. “How did your therapy session go yesterday?” he asked.

  “It was okay, we just talked about post-traumatic stress again. I guess that’s why I wake up crying sometimes. I just feel so bad about all the deaths, especially Captain Walker’s.”

  “Me, too. I get so angry sometimes and for no reason at all. But it seems to be getting better,” Matthew said.

  “Well, they say time heals all wounds,” Emily said. “I just wish it would heal faster.”

  “So do I,” Matthew said. “Hey, I’ve started to study Arabic.”

  “What, why?”

  “I figure it’ll come in handy sometime. We’re going to be fighting this terrorist war for awhile, a lot of the bad guys speak Arabic and besides it’s interesting.”

  “Are you taking a class?”

  “No, I bought this web app,” Matthew replied. “It teaches you a new language without translating. It uses image-word association so you only hear the word. Later it teaches you how to read, kind of like how you learned to talk and then read as a kid.”

  “Sounds interesting, but how do you find the time?”

  “A lesson only takes ten minutes or so, at least right now, so I do a new one each day and two or three reviews during the day. So it’s easy to fit in. It works on my phone or my computer.”

  “So, how well do you speak it?” Emily asked.

  “Hardly at all, I’m up to about a hundred words, and I can count.”

  “Well that sounds like you’re making good progress. Although I can’t believe you have the spare brain power to study anything you don’t have to right now.”

  “You know I get bored easily. I’ve also taken over Alex’s job of keeping an eye on Sayid, which is another reason to study Arabic.”

  Sayid Al Jabar was suspected of being an arms dealer with ties to various terrorist organizations. There were suspicions that he was somehow involved in the incident at the La Jolla Playhouse, but no proof. The FBI was keeping him under surveillance but had yet to make any real connection between him and any illegal activity.

  “That’s crazy, you know that FBI Agent Caruthers will blow a gasket if she catches you.”

  “She won’t, I just use my portal and check in on him once in awhile. There doesn’t seem to be anything interesting going on right now, but I figure it can’t hurt to keep tabs on him. I’d really like to take him down. I’m convinced he had something to do with the Playhouse thing. So I owe it to Captain Walker to help the FBI get him.”

  “Just be careful,” Emily said. “You can’t let anything slip that will lead him or Caruthers back to you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

  There was a light rap on the door to the study. Mrs. Stevenson opened the door. “Matt, your mother just drove up.”

  “Thanks, Elizabeth, I’m ready,” Matthew said. “Emily, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  On Saturday, Matthew headed over to the Winthrops. He and Brea were going to the movies with Brea’s brother, Jason, and his girlfriend, Alex.

  “Hi, Alex,” Matthew said, as he came down the stairs in the Winthrops’ house. “Where are Jason and Brea?”

  “They were still playing tennis when I got here,” Alex said, “but here they come now.”

  “It was out,” yelled Jason, as he and Brianna walked into the house.

  “It was in, you big baby. You just can’t stand it that you lost; besides I was up fifteen-forty anyway.”

  “What’s with all the yelling?” Alex asked, “and how come you two aren’t ready to go? We’re supposed to be leaving for the movie theater about now.”

  “I finally beat him and he can’t stand it,” Brianna said in a huff, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “Oh, give it a rest, you’re now, what, one out of ten thousand against me?” Jason scoffed.

  “But it’s the last one that counts,” Brianna shot back.

  “Calm down, you’re upsetting Hanna,” Mrs. Winthrop said, as she came down the stairs.

  “Sorry!” Jason and Brianna said together.

  “What’s all the commotion about?�
��

  “I finally beat him!” Brianna said, pumping her fist again.

  “On a questionable call,” Jason countered.

  “Oh I’m so proud of you, Brea,” Mrs. Winthrop said. “And, Jason, it was bound to happen; you haven’t been working on your tennis very hard, and Brea has been so dedicated.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Brea stuck her tongue out at Jason. “I’m going to take my shower. I’ll see you guys in twenty minutes.”

  “Bye, Martina,” Jason called after her.

  “You kids have fun,” Mrs. Winthrop said, as she headed back upstairs.

  “Who’s Martina?” asked Matthew.

  “Oh, Martina Hingis; she won the Australian open when she was sixteen. Brea likes to think of herself as the next Martina. Their playing style is similar.”

  “At sixteen? You don’t hear about sixteen-year-olds winning on the pro-tour.”

  “That’s because they changed the rules. The Women’s Tennis Association limits your playing until you’re eighteen, so you really can’t play in enough pro events to get your form up to speed.”

  “Why did they change the rules?”

  “Burnout, at least that’s what they say. Also physical maturity; too many young superstars were falling apart either mentally or physically.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t want Brea to suffer any bad injuries, she already had the foot fracture.”

  “She actually got that when we were sailing. She got her foot caught under the railing.”

  “Anyway, she’d be devastated if she got hurt again and couldn’t play.”

  “Mom won’t let that happen. You know, she controls Brea’s playing time pretty tightly. But she’s going to let miss smarty britches play in two junior grand slams this year, the Junior US Open in September, then the Junior Australian Open in January. We’ll see how she does against the top players in the world.”

  “Do you think she’ll do okay?”

  “Probably,” Jason said. “I can’t believe she beat me.”