Speechless Excerpt 2

This scene is a continuation from Excerpt 1. Read it first.

Dead silence for a moment. They stared at each other, Eva stunned at his direct response, Stone clearly suspicious.

"What just happened?" he asked. "You didn't speak."

No. Sometimes certain people can hear my thoughts. "But never this fast," Eva didn't add, "and never men." Not even her father or brother, a source of endless frustration for her father especially, since they were so close. How would he react when he discovered that it had taken less than a day for this stranger to begin hearing her?

"Not possible." He braced himself against the edge of the sink, his certainty of impossibility clear on his face.

It just happened. How do you explain it? How did she explain it? She couldn't.

"I've been able to read you from the beginning. You have 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 duckbilled 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 backwards, 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 thing?

"You could call it that. When you fly out on that supply plane in a week and a half, you have to forget you ever met me, my name, what I look like, that I even exist. You can't try to find me again or tell anyone about me. Not your assistant, not your friends, not your family. My life and possibly yours, depends on it. Do you understand me?"

Not really. Stone. Is that even your real name? The name fit him, this man whose expression rarely changed, whose voice never carried a hint of emotion, except occasional amusement or concern. And it was doubly hard-the name Peters came from the Greek word for "stone."

Stone didn't answer, just shrugged and shook his head as if to say, "It doesn't really matter, does it?" And that fit, too, the perfect addition to everything she didn't know about him.