She spotted Daniel’s Porsche. “But we’re still trespassing in someone else’s brain, and that’s wrong. And Jake’s miserable sharing a brain with Eric. But I have to stop myself from thinking about any of that. Things are hard enough as they are. We’re like David fighting Goliath, with David armed with a rubber band instead of a slingshot.
“Maybe so. But we’ve got one hell of a strong rubber band.”
Allie was so tired, she found Daniel’s statement humorous and laughed as she climbed into the front seat.
Thirty or forty minutes later, they were driving alongside the park, and Daniel pointed out the brown, rectangular building. They were having no luck finding a parking space, however.
“My kingdom for a legal parking space,” Daniel groaned. “I know how dumb that sounds, but if my car gets stolen or towed, we’ll lose all my surveillance equipment, and we’re screwed.”
He gave a darting glance at the glove compartment, which raised Allie’s inner red flag. She opened it and looked inside. “I knew it! You stashed a gun in here!”
“I bought it at a pawn shop. I have a permit. You know as well as I do that we’re going to need it in order to rescue Melissa.”
Allie’s phone rang. “It’s Melissa,” Allie said in surprise as she looked at the her phone’s screen.
“She happens to call right when we’re circling her building?” Daniel said. “I smell a trap.”
“Mellie?” Allie answered, holding the phone between them so that Daniel could overhear.
“Hi, Allie. Kathleen hasn’t been here all day. She tied me up. I finally got the rope and gag off, but I’m locked in a tiny room.”
“Along with your cellphone?” Allie asked.
“It was in my pocket. She probably wanted to torment me with having it so close at hand, but inaccessible. She’s had me bound and gagged ever since we got here. She only lets me eat and drink and use the john twice a day, and she’s right there with a gun aimed at me the whole time.”
Allie held up her hand and widened her eyes to signal to Daniel that she couldn’t tell if this was really Melissa or not. “Can you tell me the apartment number?”
“Four-oh-four. It’s on the fourth floor. At one-oh-seven 68th Avenue.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Are Jake and Daniel with you?”
She glanced at Daniel to see what he thought she should say. He shook his head. Just then she spotted someone pulling away from the curb, and Daniel gave her a thumbs up as he signaled and waited.
“No, but I’m close by. I’ll see you soon.” She hung up. “I’m pretty sure that was Melissa’s voice. But sisters often sound alike. She’s in apartment four-oh-four.”
They pulled into the space, which had a thirty-minute time limit. “Let’s go,” Daniel said, unfastening his seatbelt.
“No, wait,” Allie said, touching Daniel’s arm. “If that was Kathleen calling me, she’ll be able to trap both of us by holding a gun to my head unless you surrender your weapon. Our best bet is for me to go in alone and have you follow me a couple of minutes later.”
“You could instantly be in mortal danger that way!”
“If Jennifer was in a hurry to kill me, I’d be dead. She’s probably known for months that I’ve been living as Alexis Bixby in Albany. I haven’t kept my whereabouts a secret. For now, I’m more valuable if she can capture me. She’ll have a guinea pig for Jake’s new device, and more incentive to keep Jake in line. You can listen in on us and, hopefully, surprise her. Things might even work out better if this is a trap. We could capture Kathleen, tie her up, and maybe even free Melissa.”
“I guess we’ll give it a shot,” Daniel said. “I’ll listen in on what’s happening, and try to see if I can time my arrival at the apartment. But be really verbal from the instant you enter the apartment. Let me know precisely what’s going on, moment by moment. And if something goes wrong, tell me where to find you, and where Kathleen and Melissa are.”
Daniel helped her glue the tiny microphone onto her scalp. Then he scavenged through a dumpster to find a sturdy box to make it look as if she was carrying something heavy. The front door of the building was catty-corner to their parking space. Allie waited on the sidewalk with an almost-empty box in her arms until a resident was crossing the lobby. A Hispanic woman held the door for her, and Allie went in, thanking the woman.
“That was easy,” she said quietly for Daniel’s sake. There was no elevator. She climbed up to the fourth floor—the top level—ignoring the pungent smell of sauerkraut that seemed to permeate the air. The hallway walls were an ugly okra color with brown-painted doors. She quickly found Apartment 404, and set the box beside the door. She didn’t know if she should knock, but decided to go ahead. There was no answer. Allie tested the doorknob. It was unlocked.
Allie let herself in. “Is anybody here?” she asked in a quiet speaking voice, shutting the door behind her.
“In here,” a muffled Melissa-like voice cried. She opened the door. Mellie was sitting on the bed, and stood up as Allie entered.
“Oh, Mellie, thank goodness it’s you! I was afraid it was really—” She froze as she drew closer. She realized too late that she’d made a mistake. The likeness was uncanny. Kathleen, though, was taller and had slightly more angular features. More significantly, Kathleen was aiming a shiny handgun at her.
Kathleen laughed. “You were about to say: that it was really Jennifer utilizing Kathleen’s body?”
“You’re a miserable excuse of a human being, Jennifer,” Allie said, wanting to make absolutely certain that Daniel knew she had indeed stepped into a trap.
“So much for trying to suck up to me. That’s an interesting choice, Elony, considering I’m the one with the loaded twenty-two. Is that any way to rekindle our friendship?”
“We were never friends. I was pretending to be a star-struck high-school student when I worked for you. All I wanted was for you to die and spare other young women from becoming your victims. Now you’ve killed Melissa and Kathleen Cooper, too.”
“They were white trash. And, incidentally, so was Alexis Bixby. Furthermore, I didn’t ‘kill’ them. I hastened the process of donating their bodies to science, which is the only worthwhile achievement they could possibly have managed in their puny little brains and putrid little lives. If it weren’t for me, all three of them would have been working as store clerks and pigging out on potato chip and Cheese-Wiz casseroles for the rest of their lives.”
“Where’s Melissa? Is she here?”
“No.”
Allie needed to feed Daniel some information before he left the car. “So you’re going to tie me up and lock me in this bedroom?” She needed to reposition Jennifer so that she’d set down the gun or stand with her back to the doorway. “I need to sit down,” Allie said, promptly sitting on the floor, calculating that, if she dropped down, Jennifer might have to lift her to her feet.
Jennifer came toward her. “Stand up, or I’ll shoot you right now.”
Feigning wooziness, Allie swayed as she got to her feet. In reality, her heart was pounding, but her certainty that Jennifer didn’t want to kill her just yet gave her strength and courage. “Creating two of you was the worst mistake you could possibly make,” Allie said, thinking she needed to stall for a minute while Daniel raced to her rescue. “The two of you are going to hate each other. All you’ve succeeded in doing is to create your own worst enemy.”
Jennifer grinned. “We’re united in the goal of getting rid of you, Jake, and your flunky, Daniel.”
“And the minute that goal of yours ends, whether you succeed or fail, you’ll need to kill the first Jennifer-McGavin clone before she can kill you. Did you notice that you didn’t even include Suzanne Anderson-Jones in your own list of white trash? You obviously consider her the superior host body, which makes her superior to you in comparison. You’ll always be her subordinate. Once she gets what she wants from Jake, she’ll never allow you to continue to live.”
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“Nice try at turning the tables,” Jennifer said with a sneer. “I am smarter and more devious than you will ever be. I can assure you that Jennifer the First and I are not going to simultaneously shoot each other.”
“But one of you will kill the other. My hunch is it’ll be Suzanne who pulls the trigger first. You are Jennifer. You know precisely what she will do about you. She either kills you, or she lets you gradually return to your white-trash roots, as sixteen-year-old Kathleen Cooper.” Allie shook her head. “Maybe it’s just me, but that strikes me as a losing ticket.”
“Says the prisoner to her captor.” She leaned closer. “In other words, Miss Bixby, you are not in any position to advise me, or to pretend to be concerned about me.” Gesturing with the gun, Kathleen demanded, “Turn around.”
“You’re going to shoot me in the back?” Allie asked, keeping her voice as steady as she could, hoping Daniel would burst into the apartment in time to save her.
“Not yet. I have to keep you alive for a little while. I might need you for an experiment in another day or two. Start walking.”
Allie entered a room that had a hospital bed in it. Her heart racing, she glanced around, afraid that Kathleen was going to inject her with a sedative to keep her in a coma. The room seemed to be devoid of any medical equipment, just a couple of suitcases. She started to walk past a narrow, closet-like door with a deadbolt affixed to it. “Stop right there.”
Kathleen opened the door, then grabbed Allie’s arm. She pulled her toward the doorway, then shoved her inside. Allie was sent sprawling. The room went dark as Kathleen shut the door behind her. As Allie got to her feet, she heard the door bolt slide into place.
“Don’t bother screaming for help,” Jennifer called at her through the door. This is Queens. Nobody’s going to give a shit.”
Chapter 25
Allie rushed toward the door and groped along the surface of the wall until she found a light switch. She flipped on the light. She could see that Jennifer had it set up as a small cell. It was well-suited for that purpose. Probably designed as a walk-in closet, the space was windowless and illuminated with a single overhead light fixture. A rolled-up sleeping bag was in one corner and two large Tupperware bowls with lids were in another. She examined the bowls. One was empty, and the other was filled with water. She assumed Jennifer had provided the empty bowl as a toilet.
“This looks like a walk-in closet,” Allie said, for Daniel’s benefit. “The door is bolted shut, but the apartment door was open, so I walked right in.”
She pulled the sleeping bag out of its pouch, then unrolled it, but found nothing of interest. She had a few dollars, a credit card, and her driver’s license in the pockets of her khakis. The deadbolt that Kathleen must have fastened to this closet door meant Alexis couldn’t use a card to jimmy the lock.
Allie sighed. “Something must be keeping you, Daniel. I doubt you can even hear me. I’m guessing that Kathleen had already left by the back door, and you can’t get through the front door, for some reason.” She was not going to sit in this tiny room like a caged animal until Daniel came to rescue her. Her only option was to kick through the Sheetrock walls. This was just an indoor closet and was unlikely to be well-built.
By tapping on the wall, Allie quickly found a spot that was midway between studs. She lay down on her back and managed to put a large hole in the wall between two studs with just a few satisfying heel thrusts. She had an easy time repeating the feat with the next layer of sheetrock that formed a wall whatever room was adjacent to this closet.
She tore off the drywall in chunks until she’d made a large enough hole to climb through, and she rested for a few seconds periodically as she caught her breath and listened to insure that nobody else was in the apartment.
Soon she could see that she was going to emerge in a bedroom. She needed a weapon in case one of the Jennifer McGavins was waiting on the other side of the door to greet her. A shard of glass from the dome on the light fixture would have to do.
After a few attempts, Allie managed to keep her balance on the rolled-up sleeping bag well enough to remove the dome light fixture. She put the dome underneath the sleeping bag, then jumped on it until it shattered. She found a suitably sharp shard that she could use as a weapon if she needed one.
Holding her shard in front of her, she squeezed through the hole in the drywall and tiptoed through the bedroom and into the hallway. She felt foolish, thinking that if Kathleen hadn’t heard her kicking in the wall, she was not going to give herself away with her sneakered footfalls. Even so, she didn’t want to plod her way in front of a loaded gun.
She entered the kitchen and searched through the drawers and cabinets. There was only one pot, one pan, and two sets of dishes and silverware. She exchanged her shard for the one sharp knife she could find. Something must have gone dreadfully wrong with Daniel. She listened at the front door, then threw the bolts and opened it. There was no sign of him. The box she’d carried was still by the door. “Daniel? If you can hear me, I’m really worried.”
She realized she was more scared now than she was when she’d been face-to-face with Kathleen and her gun. She went back into the apartment, used the bathroom, and, not wanting to attract passersby notice, cleaned off the white dust from the drywall from her hair, skin, and clothing as best she could.
She kept hoping Daniel would come through the door. He didn’t. She let herself out. The hallway was deserted. She didn’t want to give too much away, in case Kathleen or Suzanne was somehow sitting in Daniel’s car, listening to her every word.
As she left the building, she quickly spotted the car, still in its short-term parking space. There was nobody sitting inside, unless they were hiding from view on the floorboards. She held her breath and trotted to the car. As she let herself into Daniel’s car, there were no strange scents that would hint at someone else having been in the car recently. She opened the glove box and searched for Daniel’s gun, to no avail. He must have taken it with him when he tried to rescue her.
Daniel had left the sound system running. It was tuned to her channel. “Hello,” she said and could hear the feedback through the speakers. She switched to Daniel’s channel. Nothing. She switched to Jake’s, but heard nothing and realized they were beyond the three-mile radius of his listening device. She immediately switched back to Daniel’s channel.
“Think!” she demanded of herself. Could Kathleen have spotted Daniel in the car after she left her dingy apartment and nabbed him?
Why wasn’t he already on his way to reach her as soon as he’d heard her argue with Kathleen? She grabbed the extra cellphone under the seat and called him. No answer. Panicked and desperate, Allie called Fiona.
“Hello?” Fiona answered, not recognizing whatever number this phone used.
“It’s me, Allie. I’m in New York. I’m freaking out.”
“Are you okay? Physically?”
“Yeah, and so is Jake. But I don’t know where Daniel is. I’m in his car, and he’s supposed to be here.”
“Do you need me to come down? I can tell my parents I’m meeting Mike for an after-prom event or something. I can be there in three hours.”
“No, I don’t want you to come down. I just need you to talk to me. We’re all wearing bugs, so I can tell that Jake’s still with Suzanne. But Kathleen must have captured Daniel and knocked him out. He isn’t saying a word.”
“He’s a big strong guy. Couldn’t he outfight whoever this ‘Kathleen’ is?”
“Yeah, but Kathleen is really Jennifer, who’s a doctor. She could have jabbed him with a needle and given him a strong sedative. She always outthinks us and knows what we’ll do next. She was probably waiting for—” She broke off. “Of course! He’s still in the apartment building! She wouldn’t have the strength to move him to another building on her own!”
“Allie. Listen to me. I am begging you, begging you, “ she cried, “to call the police!”
“I only want to do that as a last reso
rt. Once we call in the police, Jake’s plan to trick Jennifer into erasing herself from Suzanne’s brain is ruined. I have to find Daniel,” Allie said, looking at the building. She’d have to trick someone into opening the door again. She’d left the box in the hallway. Having to wait for someone to open the front door must have been what slowed Daniel’s arrival. “I’m so sorry to have called you like this and worried you for nothing.”
“You call this nothing?!” Fiona said. “Good God. Just get out of there. Promise me.”
Allie opened the car door and started to rise. “I have to—”
“Allie,” a weak male voice said over the intercom. Allie froze, just an instant away from slamming the car door shut.
“Daniel?” Allie said, though she knew he couldn’t hear her.
“He’s there?” Fiona asked over the phone, although Allie’s attention was now riveted to the speakers that were picking up Daniel’s voice.
“If you’re in the car, stay there,” Daniel said. I don’t...” His voice drifted off.
“Fiona? Everything’s fine,” she lied. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I hope you had a wonderful time at the prom. Or that you’ll have a great time if it’s tonight. I lost track of days.”
“Um. Could you do me a favor? When you get back, can you take up a safer lifestyle? Such as, I don’t know, diving off cliffs?!”
“I’m sorry, Fiona. I was panicking and really needed to hear your voice. Got to go. Bye.” She hung up. If she did indeed get back to Albany in one piece, she promised herself that she’d find some way to make up for being such an awful best friend to the consistently fabulous Fiona. But she had to put that out of her mind for now.
Daniel had likely fallen back asleep from whatever sedative Jennifer had injected him with. Allie weighed her two possible courses of action. She could follow his instructions and stay put, or she could return to the building and call his name until he answered. Meanwhile, his car could get towed while they were both in the building. What if Jennifer returned? Why hadn’t she simply locked Daniel in the apartment with Allie when she had the chance?
Mind Echoes (Book 2 in the Body Shifters Trilogy) Page 18
