“We’re on the same page, then.”
Natalie studied her with a skeptical expression on her face. “But you only just got here.”
“There’s just something about the McGavins that gives me the creeps, though,” she said under her breath.
A pair of men wearing lab coats walked past them, involved in their own conversation. They had such a serious demeanor that Ellie assumed they were discussing a patient or lab results, but she overheard the words “Super Bowl” and “AFC.”
Natalie continued to eye Ellie, an inscrutable expression on her face. “Let’s go see McGeezer’s office,” Natalie said.
Ellie wondered if, in that fleeting moment, she’d passed or failed some sort of test from Natalie. In any case, Ellie forced a smile. “Sounds good.”
Chapter 17
The doors to a couple of the patient’s rooms were open, and Ellie peered past Natalie’s shoulder to get a glimpse of the small, neat interiors. They weren’t appreciably larger or more personalized than a standard hospital room. One of the rooms had a balding, frail occupant who appeared to be fast asleep, and Ellie was glad that he hadn’t turned out to be Roger Culpepper; she’d have hated to feel obligated to awaken someone just to “grill” him. With every step down the cheerless, ammonia-scented hallway, Ellie was trying to shut off the inner voice that was telling her this would be her fate—that Jake had shifted her into a girl’s body—and the McGavins would find out and shift her mind into an Alzheimer’s-ravaged brain.
“Room three-sixteen,” Natalie said, turning toward a half-open door. She knocked, and a bald man with a thin halo of wispy white hair craned his neck to peer at them from his hospital bed, its back raised to almost a fully inclined position.
“Come in,” he said with a smile, also gesturing at them to enter.
As she’d rehearsed in silence in the elevator, Ellie smiled and said, “Hi, Mr. Culpepper. I’m Elizabeth.”
At first glance at least, Roger Culpepper looked surprisingly alert. He’d been reading a thick book that he was about halfway through, which he shut and set down beside him. He appeared to be in his seventies—roughly the same age as Ethan McGavin.
“You’re new around here,” he said to Ellie.
Maybe that’s his standard opening line, Ellie thought. She gave a quick glance to Natalie, who was staring at him as if perplexed. “That’s right,” Ellie answered. “This is my first day.”
“Elizabeth, did you say?”
“Yes. Elizabeth Peterson.”
“I had a girlfriend named Elizabeth. She wasn’t as pretty as you are, though. She had skinny legs. Bird legs. She could wade through a lake without making the water ripple.” He shifted his gaze to Natalie, but said nothing.
“Do you remember me?” Natalie asked.
“No, but you have a name badge,” he said, eyeing the employee ID that hung around her neck. Ellie had yet to pick up her permanent ID card, which was supposed to be ready for her tomorrow.
“That’s . . . very observant of you, Mr. Culpepper,” Natalie said.
He grinned. “You sound surprised.”
“I am,” Natalie said. “Also impressed.”
“Me, too,” he said. “Have a seat.”
They both complied, Natalie widening her eyes at Ellie, which she took to mean that she was happily surprised at Mr. Culpepper’s alertness. “I see that you’re reading a book,” Natalie remarked. “I haven’t seen you with a book in your hand since the first time we met. Which was about five months ago.”
“Was it? I’ve forgotten your name.”
“I’m Natalie Stein.”
He looked from Natalie to Ellie and back. “You both look too young to be nurses or doctors or cleaning ladies. Are they hiring child laborers in this joint?”
“Not exactly,” Natalie said. “This is an after-school job. We’re here to ask you some questions that will test your memory.”
“Oh ho. Is that so you can cheat on a history exam in school?” Culpepper asked, his eyes merry, focusing on Ellie.
Ellie grinned and lifted her clipboard to indicate the form that she’d be filling out on his behalf. “No, it’s for your patient records so that we can keep track of your memory retention.”
“Fire away, Elizabeth. And Natalie. But, be forewarned, I don’t remember anything that happened to me in the last eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months?” Natalie asked. “You can pinpoint your memories that precisely?”
“Well, I can narrow down my recollections to the summer before last,” he replied. “My daughter’s been helping me fill in the blanks.” He chuckled and winked at Ellie. “You’re not the only ones who’ve been cheating on their history exam.”
“What’s your most recent memory?” Ellie asked out of sheer curiosity.
“Well, my most recent memory is of you asking me that question just now. And now of my answering it.” He pointed at her with a slightly shaky finger. “And now of you blushing.”
Ellie laughed at herself. “Touché, Mr. Culpepper. What was your oldest memory after your memory gap?”
“Talking to that tall fellow. That doctor with the white hair.”
“Dr. McGavin?” Ellie asked.
“Asking me what my name was and if I knew where I was. But my favorite memory was the next day. When I woke up that morning, my daughter, Laura, was sitting right in that chair where you are, and she smiled at me and said, ‘Happy New Year’s, Dad.’”
“How old is Laura?” Natalie asked.
“Thirty years younger than me. Forty-two.” Ellie looked at the top line of the chart affixed to the railing at the foot of his bed. He was actually seventy-four, not seventy-two, having lost the better part of two years. It sounded as if Ethan had tested Jake’s memory flash-drive procedure on Culpepper, which would, indeed, leave a memory gap from the time between the memories being captured till they were restored. Judging by the “Happy New Year,” Dr. McGavin had apparently performed the procedure shortly after Jake had escaped from the premises.
“Go ahead, Elizabeth,” Natalie said, nodding at Ellie’s clipboard.
#
At the close of Mr. Culpepper’s interview, Natalie told him that she was amazed.
“Maybe she’s my lucky charm,” he’d replied, grinning at Elizabeth.
Ellie hoped his significant memory improvement was much more than luck—that Jake’s invention was being used as he’d intended after all.
Neither of the female patients on Ellie’s list of interviewees was available. Jennifer McGavin’s assistant, Ms. Beyers, told them to go home early. The trouble was: Ellie wasn’t going home; she was rendezvousing with Daniel, who was nearby, hooking up surveillance equipment to listen in on the bugs that Ellie had planted.
Natalie suggested they ride the Metro together, and so Ellie fibbed about having a dentist appointment. Then she gathered her things from the locker room and took off with a hasty “bye.” As further insurance that she wasn’t being watched, Ellie rode the Metro for one stop and then walked back, thinking about Mr. Culpepper’s interview.
Ellie ducked into the building across the street from ABTC. She tried the door marked 105 as Daniel had instructed this morning. It was locked. She knocked, and a moment later, Daniel let her inside.
“Great news, Ellie,” Daniel told her, locking the door behind her.
“The bugs are working?” she guessed.
“Yeah. Although two of the rooms seem to be unoccupied ever since you planted them. But this is bigger news than that: I finally figured out how to hack into ABTC’s data base. Jake’s home, poring through their files even as we speak.”
“That’s excellent news,” Ellie said, although she was a little disappointed that her hard-won achievements today were far less significant than Daniel’s. “I’m not sure how good I am at this surveillance stuff.”
“Sounded to me like you did just fine.” He grinned at her. “So you think I wouldn’t want to date your high school friends, huh?�
�
“I’d only just gotten the bug installed. You were already listening in?”
“I got things set up pretty quickly.”
She had to admit that Daniel’s equipment against the one wall of the small office looked pretty basic. She’d seen much more complicated control panels operating a high-school auditorium stage.
“Since we have a maximum of three channels we can listen to,” Ellie said, “I’ve been thinking that I might have made a mistake putting one in the break room. I think the locker room might have been better. Or one of the operating rooms. Moving one of them means doubling my chances of getting caught red-handed.”
Daniel shrugged. “Let’s see how these locations pan out for at least a couple of days.” He flashed her one of his beautiful smiles. “You did great, Ellie.”
She felt her heart swell with pride and was glad he couldn’t read her thoughts. He returned his attention to his equipment. “You don’t have to camp out here to listen in twenty-four seven, do you?” she asked.
“No, I’m listening live right now, just to make certain the equipment’s working, but all three channels are set up to record automatically. Then I can play them back on fast-forward and watch for the indicator to jump when there’s any sound.”
“Both of the doctors have been in some kind of monthly meeting most of the afternoon, so their offices are vacant.”
“Till now,” Daniel said, watching the monitor; the third line was now spiking. Foregoing the headphones, he pressed a couple of buttons on his control panel, and an instant later, he and Ellie were listening on a speaker to Jennifer McGavin complaining that something was “dull as dirt.” Ellie assumed she was talking about the meeting she’d been in earlier.
“I’m just glad we don’t have to suck up to those morons any more frequently than once a month,” Ellie heard Ethan grumble in reply.
“Now we get to deal with staff meetings and scheduling crises and whatever fundraiser or award ceremony we can’t get out of.”
“You look like you’re in pain,” Ethan said.
“So do you,” Jennifer retorted. There was a pause, followed by some rustling noises over the loudspeaker, as if one of the McGavins had sat down on the sofa. “The device that supposedly malfunctioned on the girl passed all its tests in the lab without a single hitch. Croft could be lying to us. Or he just didn’t realize he’d screwed up.”
The girl? Did Jennifer mean Ellie? Was “Croft” the masked gunman?
There was a silence. Ellie could barely breathe. Maybe there was a second explanation, but all she could think of was that Jennifer was ruminating about why Jake’s flash-drive had failed to implant Ellie’s memories into Jane Doe’s brain, and that Jennifer was blaming the gunman for failing to extract Ellie’s digitized brain contents.
“I can’t believe that idiot still hasn’t found Greyland,” Ethan muttered.
Ellie caught her breath. They were talking about Jake and his device. In the corner of her vision, she could see that, beside her, Daniel had paled. Jennifer, however, gave no verbal response.
“I asked Croft to come in for a face-to-face,” Ethan continued. “It could have been an intermittent glitch that the circuitry testers just haven’t been able to reproduce, you realize.”
“I’m aware of that, Ethan. My gut instincts are telling me otherwise, though.”
“Women’s intuition?”
“Women’s perceptiveness. Jake was playing us for fools. Otherwise, he never could have slipped out of here.”
“It wasn’t like we were running a hardcore prison,” Ethan said.
“We should have been.”
“He simply regained his cognitive functions and ran like hell.”
“Within twenty-four hours of our first-ever functional failure of a brainwave digitizer on Jane Doe,” she added. Ellie could hear the sneer in Jennifer’s every word.
“We put her back under too soon, Jen. Until we test her while she’s conscious, we can’t assess—”
“Ethan,” Jennifer snarled. “We have been through this a hundred times already.” Her tone sounded icy on the loudspeaker. “I’ve got an intern assigned to do the research for us. I’m having him track all the female coma patients in the country who recovered during the months of December and January.”
“Oh, God,” Ellie moaned to Daniel.
“Good idea. It’s a reasonable precaution,” Ethan said over the speaker. “Doesn’t cost us anything just to make sure that all our bases—” There was a thud as if the door had closed.
Ellie stared at the floor, trying to quiet her pounding her heart. “They’re going to find out that I’m still alive. Once that happens . . .”
She didn’t want to complete her statement. She knew, though, that the McGavins would send their goon after her and hunt her down. He’d shoot her again, and they’d steal her mind again. She’d awaken in Jane Doe’s body. Jake had already used the gambit of pretending to be mentally impaired, so they’d figure out a way to prevent her from doing the same thing. They could threaten to kill her mom—or Alexis’s mom—unless she aced her IQ tests.
Or maybe they wouldn’t even stop there. Maybe they’d just test this process over and over again. She’d die again and again, then she would wake up in body after body—in the brain-trauma and Alzheimer’s wings.
Chapter 18
Daniel grabbed his cellphone. Ellie knew without asking that he was calling Jake. “They’ve got some intern checking into the records of all the female coma patients throughout the country,” Daniel said to Jake with no preamble. “They’re searching for young women who’ve recovered within the last two months.”
Daniel paused to listen.
Ellie’s thoughts raced. When Jennifer sees that Alexis Bixby recently emerged from a coma, she’ll find an on-line photo of Alexis and put everything together! They’re going to track me down and murder me!
“There’s no way to know,” Daniel said into the phone. “They could have started their search just today. Or maybe it’s been underway for some time, but McBitch only just now told her husband about it.” He paused again, then said, “Yeah.” He glanced at Ellie. “She’s here with me. Keep us posted.” He hung up.
Trying to mask her panic, Ellie cleared her throat. “Can he expunge Alexis’s name from ABTC’s records?”
“Probably. But he’ll have to be careful. If this intern has already made a printout of the names, they’ll see that there’s one less name on the softcopy now, so they’ll know someone tampered with their records.”
Ellie was having a hard time breathing. She felt as though a noose had tightened around her neck. “Would they be able to trace the tampering back to your computer?”
“Yeah. After a day or two of navigating through the various smoke screens and detours I’ve built to hide my IP address.”
Nauseated with fear, Ellie buried her face in her hands.
“Dr. McBitch is just being cautious. The brain flash drives are still in the beta phase of testing. Jake told me they’ve only manufactured twenty of them to date. A one-in-twenty failure ratio is plausible. And, remember, Ellie . . . we only need to be able to stall for a month or two till we can gather enough evidence to nail them.”
Ellie had the feeling that Daniel was putting on a brave face—like someone telling his friend that a positive biopsy for cancer is no big deal. “If they check the compiled names alphabetically,” she said, struggling against the tremor in her voice, “we’ll get caught inside a day or two. Alexis’s last name was ‘Bixby.’ And Jennifer or Ethan will call the hospital in Albany as soon as they see Alexis’s name. Then that jackass doctor I had in Albany will tell them all about how I kept insisting I was somebody else.”
Daniel crouched down in front of her, his brilliant blue eyes meeting her gaze. He touched her arm. “If Jennifer already had a list of names in hand, she’d have said so to Ethan. Since she didn’t say that, we’ve still got time to cover our tracks.”
His reassurances made h
er feel a little better. “It did sound as though Jennifer hasn’t gotten any information back from the intern yet,” she said. “Jake told me that they intentionally hire clueless employees who won’t catch on to what they’re doing with his invention. So, maybe this intern will be clueless.”
“Exactly.” His voice was calm and convincing, but Ellie suspected that Daniel could sound cool and collected with his clothing on fire. He rose and grabbed his keys. “Let’s get out of here.”
#
“I’ve already fixed everything,” Jake announced the moment Ellie and Daniel stepped through the door. Jake was standing in the middle of the living room, as if their arrival had caught him midway during his typical pacing route—an elongated oval between the kitchen and the doorway of his office-cum-bedroom. “I altered Alexis Bixby’s data record. Now, according to ABTC’s database, the patient’s name was ‘Alexis Baxter,’ and she’d died from her injuries in early December. The timestamp on the data file was this morning, and it hasn’t been opened since then. The intern only spent five minutes looking at the information this morning.” Jake gave Ellie a reassuring smile. “We dodged a bullet by the skin of our teeth.”
Ellie was so relieved she thought about hugging him and suddenly realized that, at some point after she had left for school today, Jake had shaved. A week had passed since he’d tailed her in the park near the Bixbys’ house, and this was the first time she’d seen him clean-shaven since then. On those rare occasions when he smiled, he was great looking and sort of appealing.
“Damn it, Jake!” Daniel growled. “The intern could have made a printout in five seconds, let alone five minutes! You should have changed the name of the hospital and the city! Now it’s too late. Altering the record yet again is too big of a gamble.”
“He won’t have made a printout . . . he’d made too broad of a search. It was for all female coma patients across the country.” Jake’s voice was condescending, and all traces of the smile that had lit up his face vanished, as did his physical appeal. “He’ll do a second search on recovered patients; he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. He won’t give Alexis’s record a second glance; patients die from brain injuries all the time. That’s why helmets were invented.”
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