She spotted Daniel’s silver Porsche in the parking lot. “I’ll wait for you by Daniel’s car.”
Daniel and Jake left to check out of their rooms. Allie shored herself up, then dialed home. Her mother answered. “Mom, Melissa’s in really serious trouble. I’ve got to go away with Jake for a couple of days and try to help her.”
“No! You’ve got to come home and finish out your school year!”
“I’ll try my best to get home by Monday.”
“I’ll call the police and have them stop Jake’s car!”
“We won’t be in Jake’s car, and you’d be making a false claim to the police, which is a crime.”
“Don’t do this, Allie. Please.”
“I have to. You know the police can’t possibly believe my bizarre story. They’ll want to send me to a psych ward.”
“Promise me you’ll keep in touch with us every day.”
She couldn’t make that promise. It was too easy to detect the location of cellphone callers, and the police were not on her side. “I’ll be as cautious as I can be, and I’ll come back as soon as I can. Tell Dad I said goodbye. I love you both.”
Her mother was crying too hard to answer, and Allie said, “Bye,” then hung up. Just then, she saw Fiona’s beat-up Toyota pull into the parking lot. To her dismay, Mike was in the passenger seat.
Fiona turned off the engine and got out of the car. “I can’t believe you’re here. And you brought Mike.”
“I was at his house, visiting, when you called.” She crossed her arms. “Listen, Allie, I know you think you have to do this, to go fight for good versus evil and all of that. But you really don’t need to. Let Jake and Daniel handle this. That’s all you have to do. Stay here. Don’t risk your life. Don’t get yourself killed. And I can see by that expression on your face that you’re not listening to a single word of this. I had to say it anyway.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Fiona. It’s not going to stop me, but I’ll never forget it.”
“You can always count on me,” Fiona said with a shrug. “Ineffective as I may be.”
Allie gave her a big hug, then went up to Mike’s window. “Thanks for coming to see me, in spite of your broken leg.”
“I figured I could at least manage to say goodbye.”
“Have a great time at the prom. You made a wonderful choice. Fiona’s the greatest.”
“Don’t do anything stupid. Not that you ever could.”
“I do stupid things all the time,” Allie said, her throat aching. “I never meant to hurt you, Mike.”
“I know you didn’t.” He rolled his eyes. “Matters of the heart. What are ya gonna do, right?”
“Right.” She looked at Fiona, who still looked tightly wound. “I called my mom and told her I was leaving.”
She nodded. “I’ll go visit her every day ‘til you return. I’ll encourage her to help me get dressed up for the prom tomorrow.”
“She’ll like that.”
Fiona started the car. “Don’t get yourself killed, Allie. Or else!”
“I’ll try my best,” she said to herself as she watched them drive away. She turned, and only then realized that both Jake and Daniel were staying a respectful distance away, allowing her to say her goodbyes in private. They both started walking toward her.
Jake said nothing, but put his arms around her and hugged her. Daniel, meanwhile, stashed his bag in his trunk, as well as the bag that Allie had packed for Mellie.
“Where to?” Daniel asked Jake. “Mark Jones’s lab in Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, that’s our best bet,” Jake said. His demeanor was grim. “I’ll pull off at a gas station before we get to the city, and I’ll give you a head’s up then. We’ll need to stick together until I’m properly wired for sound.”
Allie could see by the muscles in Jake’s neck that he was grinding his teeth. “Did you get the chance to talk to Chen about the pressure switch?” she asked. “That will reverse the way the device works?”
“I did, and he’s going to implement it. I’ve got my memory chip on me, and I’m planning on simply handing it over to her. But, obviously, Jennifer already has your memory chip. We’ve based the ‘switch’ circuitry on the notion that she’ll run just one test on one subject, then she’ll have me perform the procedure on her. I’m assuming I will be the likeliest person she’ll want to use to test the new device, but you’re a close second. The thing is, though, if she decides both of us need to act as guinea pigs, it’s all over for us. Guinea pig number two will be restored to their host’s memories only, and Jennifer won’t use the mind-shift procedure at all.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Allie said, her spirits sinking.
“So you need to stay out of sight, for good,” Jake continued. “We just can’t take that risk. Li Chen told me he needs a couple of days to have the prototype ready. I’m going to stall Jennifer for as long as I can without risking that she’ll start torturing Mellie to hurry me along.”
“Right we’ll...try to stay out of sight. I hope she doesn’t use Mellie as her guinea pig.”
“She won’t. Her procedure was too recent for any changes in brain function to appear on the MEG scan. It’s got to be me or you. I want it to be me, so again, you’ve got to stay away. Okay?”
“I’m the better candidate, Jake. We’d be risking less. If anything goes wrong, you can figure out how to fix the design. You’re the only one who has the skills to rid the world of Jennifer.”
“No, Ellie! You can’t be the test case! Only I can!”
“Why not? I’m being completely logical.”
“Because erasing memories from the brain is physically painful. Maybe even excruciating. The test case has to be able to show no reaction, to endure it. Even if you could endure that kind of pain without letting on, I couldn’t take watching you.”
He pivoted and headed to his car.
Allie wrapped her arms around her chest, picturing poor Jake in agony, trying to dupe Jennifer into undergoing the procedure herself. “Oh, Jake,” she called after him. “This is all just so hideous.”
He got behind the wheel of his car and shut the door without acknowledging her.
Chapter 22
The drive was slow, which caught Allie off guard. It was so late, that she’d assumed they could make the drive in less than three hours. She felt too restless to talk, and Daniel seemed to be in the same frame of mind. All that Allie could think about was how they were unarmed and walking into a dragon’s lair.
They stopped at a gas station and rendezvoused briefly with Jake, only long enough to determine that Jake would make a circle of the area, then they’d meet at an intersection half a mile away. Jake left.
Daniel and Allie went into the shop to use the bathroom and buy some snacks. As they were waiting in line to pay for their protein bars, Daniel said, “I’m the one you’re really meant to be with.”
She turned around, startled, and thinking she’d misheard him. “What did you say?”
“You were right. What you said to Jake was spot on. We belong together. Jake and Melissa belong together. McBitch realizes that, too. That’s why she grabbed Melissa instead of you.”
“That’s simply because she was the easier target. She happened to walk out of the room for better reception. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You’re just dodging me. You don’t want to be disloyal to Jake. Would you rather deny that the true love of your life is standing right here, next to you?”
Her pulse started to race. Daniel sounded utterly sincere. He’d hadn’t even hedged his bets by putting on his usual sexy—but simultaneously teasing—grin. Allie turned around to face the clerk. The customer ahead of Allie paid for his cigarettes and gas.
“Aren’t you going to respond?” Daniel asked, stepping so close behind her that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
She paid for her small bag of salted peanuts with a five-dollar bill and told the ki
d to keep the change, simply because her hands were shaking so badly she was afraid she’d drop the coins.
She allowed her gaze to meet Daniel’s for just a moment as the clerk rang up his charges. “No, I’m not going to answer. I’m going to concentrate on staying alive. If I can. That’s what you should be worrying about now, too.”
It was nearly midnight by the time they arrived at their preselected intersection in Brooklyn. Allie and Daniel had driven slowly past the lab. The lab was part of a two-story building flanked by a shoe store and a drugstore. The door was conspicuously locked with a chain, and a sliding steel gate enclosed its entire store front. There was no sign out front, just a doorbell that Allie glimpsed as they drove past the building. She immediately wondered why Jennifer and Dr. Jones had chosen such a rough and inelegant street to set up shop. She was further surprised to see that the sign painted on the window read: Dermatology. Dr. Mark Jones, Suzanne Anderson-Jones, P.A.
“Did you notice Jennifer’s new title?” Allie asked Jake as they met on the sidewalk.
“That’s a crock,” Jake said as they looked at the sign. “Jennifer switched from plastic surgery to brain surgery during her residency. No way is she licensed as a physician’s assistant. And Mark was an ER surgeon at District General.”
“He probably liked the forty-hour weeks of dermatology,” Daniel replied, sounding half asleep. They decided to ditch one of the cars and spotted a couple of empty spaces near a currently deserted construction site around the corner.
Jake parked, locked his car, and Daniel grabbed his backpack. “I knew this was coming,” Daniel said as Jake joined him and Allie in Jake’s car. “So in the last few days, I procured state-of-the-art listening equipment for us. The bugs are so tiny and effective that we can glue them to our scalps, underneath our hair, where they won’t be noticeable.”
“What about when we wash our hair?” Allie asked.
“They’re water resistant, but my advice is to wear a shower cap. The glue will dissolve. They have a remarkable three-mile radius for the tuner to pick up their signal.”
“Doesn’t that make the signal susceptible to being picked up by other tuners?” Allie asked.
“Yes, unfortunately, that’s the tradeoff. But it gives us a lot of flexibility. We can keep the tuner in the car that’s parked three miles away.”
“Did you get earpieces so we can converse with each other?” Jake asked.
“No. I figured they’d be too easy for Jennifer to spot.” Daniel handed Allie and Jake the two bugs, which were approximately the size of cardboard hole punch for a loose-leaf binder. “I’m also giving you both a key to my car.” While speaking, he put a dot of glue on his bug and fastened it to the back of his head. “The tuner has a twelve-hour battery life and can be recharged in the car, and it’s small enough to be hidden under the front seat. As long as the car doesn’t get stolen or towed, we’re good to go.” He handed them the spare keys. Allie realized that he must have made the spares around the time that he was wiring up his dashboard with a receiver. “I need to drive down the alley behind the lab to see what kind of security the place has,” Daniel added.
“Other than the security cameras that they had out front, and probably have on the alley, you mean?” Jake asked.
“Jennifer knows we’re coming,” Daniel replied. “If she’s in there with Melissa, she probably already spotted us casing the place.”
“True, so let’s drive around back like you said,” Jake replied.
The alley was dark until a motion-detector light triggered. Even so, the building seemed to be completely deserted. Again, there was a metal gate in addition to the very sturdy-looking door. They circled the block, then pulled into a space near the alley.
“I vote we take turns sleeping and being on the lookout for McBitch,” Daniel said.
“Makes sense,” Jake said.
“Also,” Allie said, already sleepy but also probably too keyed-up to sleep, “we should all get into the habit of calling Jennifer two ‘Kathleen,’ so we can keep the Jennifers straight.”
Allie buried her head under a jacket that Jake gave her. She hadn’t even realized she’d truly nodded off until she jerked awake when she heard Jake say to Daniel, “That’s her. That’s Jennifer. Suzanne, rather.”
“Did she spot us?” Allie asked, a little groggy.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Jake replied. “We need to keep things that way. I’m going in alone. I’ll tell her I took a bus by myself, because I wasn’t willing to put either of you in harm’s way. Li Chen and I already discussed it, and he told her that it would take him forty-eight hours to build a prototype from whenever she sends him the design.”
“Which, in reality, he already built, right? Or was that just the first design, before he built the dual-purpose one with the pressure switch?”
“In reality, we’re already good to go. But I’ve got to go over the design with her, circuit by circuit, so she doesn’t get suspicious that Chen’s on our side.” He looked at Daniel. “Which gives you two days to find Melissa and get her away from Kathleen.”
“I’ll try my best,” Daniel said. “McBitch is going to have to contact Kathleen to keep her up to speed, so I might be able to get a reading on cellphone signals.”
Jake looked at Allie. “While Daniel’s doing that, I need you to try to dig up some more evidence to use against Jennifer.”
“How?” Allie asked.
“There is still one person who, combined with the information on Mark Jones’s flash drive we already gave the police, could have enough evidence to get Jennifer—both of them—locked up for good.”
“John Deere, you mean?” Allie asked, incredulous. That was their nickname for the gunman who had shot Allie and her family members.
“Yes. We’ve got to cover all our bases as quickly as possible,” Jake explained. “He is the only living person who can actually testify to who Suzanne really is. And he could be harboring evidence that proves it.”
“We have no idea whatsoever if he has any evidence,” Daniel added.
“I spoke to him over the phone in his prison, a few weeks ago,” Jake said. “Deere said he had evidence, but refused to give me it.”
“So, why would we expect different results this time?” Allie asked, suspecting that Jake was merely trying to send her on a mission hundreds of miles from Jennifer’s reach.
“It stands to reason that he might be more inclined to help you than he would to help Jake,” Daniel interjected.
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Yes, and because this time, Jennifer might be getting away with pulling a trigger herself. That might rankle him—when he’s the only one paying for her first husband’s murder. Plus we’ll agree on your telling him a story that puts him in jeopardy.”
“Can you handle seeing the gunman again?” Daniel asked gently. “Speaking to Aaron Croft, face to face?”
Allie shuddered. Just the thought of being in the general vicinity of John Deere—as she always thought of him—was repulsive. “I think so.”
“You can tell him a story to motivate him to help us out,” Jake said, “that Jennifer is arranging for a fellow inmate to kill him. I wish I didn’t have to ask you to do this, but with Mellie under Jennifer’s control, we have to throw everything we’ve got at the Jennifers, right away.”
“Yes, we do,” Allie said. She meant that, but the images of John Deere shooting her father in the head, chasing after her and shooting her in the back were sending waves of terror through her entire body.
“Daniel, help me get one of those mini-microphones glued in place,” Jake said to Daniel. “I need to barge into Jennifer’s office now.”
“Oh, Jake” Allie said. “This is so dangerous.”
“She’s not going to lay a finger on me for another couple of days. Kathleen’s preoccupied with watching Mellie. All we can do is keep pressing forward as hard as we can, and hope that we can all get out of this alive.”
Chapter 2
3
Daniel attached the listening device to Jake’s scalp and tested it. He’d jerry-rigged it to his sound system such that his dashboard radio now worked strictly as a tuner with three channels. Once Allie returned from her trip to visit Aaron Croft in prison, Daniel would hook up his own and Allie’s wires to the remaining two channels.
She and Daniel listened with bated breath as Jake leaned on Jennifer’s buzzer until she finally opened the door. They had found a parking spot in a lot that was a mile away, yet they could hear the disgust in Jake’s voice as he said, “Hey, Jennifer. Or Suzanne, rather. Kathleen, your equally crappy other half, said to come here to meet with the two of you.”
She smugly replied, “It appears that you’ve brought enough luggage for an extended stay.”
“I’m only planning on staying as long as it takes to get you to release Melissa. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have to spend another second in your presence for the rest of your miserable life.”
“Fine. Redesign the memory shifter to rid me of Suzanne Anderson, and you’ll both be on your way. You and I will have no reason to cross paths ever again.”
“Up until you and Kathleen go on trial for murdering Mark Jones,” Jake scoffed. “You aren’t going to want me to testify.”
“All kinds of things have to happen first, including charges being brought against one or both of us. And I have a foolproof plan to leave the country.” “Regardless of whether or not that’s true, you’re not going to kill me. You need me around until you’re dead certain Suzanne’s memories are no longer returning. And, by the way, you don’t want Melissa Cooper to die, either. Now that, thanks to you, the police know your late husband put her up in an apartment, her death would only make it obvious that that you were a jealous wife who killed her husband and his girlfriend after he jilted you.”
“You want to get Eric out of your brain every bit as badly as I want Suzanne out of mine. And while he’s busily killing off your brain cells, I’m here to assist you. I’ll show you where to put your things. My husband’s demise means that you can bunk down on the sofa in his office.”
Mind Echoes (Book 2 in the Body Shifters Trilogy) Page 16
