“This room isn’t—that’s not the point,” he growls, fuming.
“I’ve never been in here before.” Victoria strolls past him, glancing at the shrouded furniture. At the piano, she runs a finger along the dusty top. “You play pretty well one-handed.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“I didn’t know this was here. I would’ve brought you. It’s a lot better exercise than what we’ve been doing.” She moves around the room, lifting covers and peering underneath. “We don’t use this part of the house much. But you know what our facility’s called, right? You know what we do?”
“Exactly my point,” Ian interjects. “You can’t just go sticking your nose wherever you feel like. It’s called Phoenix Research Lab for Highly Contagious Diseases for a reason. I don’t give a damn if you’re bored or whatever the hell drove you out here. What if something happened to you? Isn’t it enough that we saved you once already?”
“I’m not trying to cause trouble.”
His glare shifts to Victoria. “It was a mistake putting her in this chair. Who authorized it? You? Edward?”
“Calm down. There’s no harm done,” she says.
He flaps his arms. “Oh great. Really?”
“I want to go home,” I say. “Now. I’ve been enough of a burden. Call my Dad, and he can come get me.”
“You can’t.” Ian’s voice is flat.
“What do you mean?” I demand.
“It’s not safe,” Victoria says. “There’s no way you’re ready. You’re not recovered enough. You still need rehabilitation. And your drugs need monitoring.”
“What kind of drugs are they, anyway? I mean, why do I need drugs for broken bones?”
Ian starts to say something, but Victoria raises a slim hand. “It wasn’t just your bones. You were injured internally. You experienced near organ failure. You might feel fine, but you’re not. Not yet.”
I consider her words. Then I raise my eyes to Ian. “You said I was dead. I heard you say it.”
His mouth opens. Beneath his flaming red hair, his forehead puckers. “I said what?” He starts to laugh. “I said you were dead?”
“I heard you!”
“Look, I’m right in the middle of an experiment, and I don’t have time for this.” He’s laughing now.
“I know what I heard,” I say.
He scratches his head. “If you were dead, Aeris, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’m good at what I do, but I’m not that good. If I were, I sure as hell wouldn’t be slogging away in some lab. I’d be waving my magic wand over terminal cancer patients and getting rich.”
His outrage is so thick I can’t help wondering if he’s telling the truth. Emotions are not like words. They don’t carry the same information. Am I wrong? Did I dream what he said? I was unconscious for a long time. Three weeks.
Uncertain, I stare at the piano keys.
“Okay, are we done here?” Victoria asks.
“I know I am,” Ian says.
“I can make my own way back to my room.”
“I’ll take you,” Victoria says.
I sense Ian’s relief. “Make it quick. We need to get back to work.”
“Right-o, slave driver.”
He rolls his eyes.
We part ways in the hall.
“Ian gets his back up, but he’s not that bad when you get to know him. He’s just a little overprotective and he worries,” Victoria tells me.
I mull this over, not sure I agree with her assessment. “He looked pretty upset.”
“It’s good to shake him up. Keeps him on his toes.”
This is just the sort of comment I’ve come to expect from her.
I can’t help grinning. “He’s always so serious. Is he ever nice?”
“I’m not sure. No, I don’t think he is. Oh wait, there was that one time—on second thought, that may have been a mistake.”
“Are you serious?”
“Kidding. Stick around long enough and you’ll see he can be quite funny sometimes.”
I know in that moment I won’t get the chance. As kind as Victoria and Edward have been to me, and Lucy, too, with her short, friendly visits, I have to leave.
I recall what happened to me in Hunter’s study. I’m going mad cooped up in this place. Forget the questions—forget all of it. I want to get back to my life. I need to put this behind me. I’m getting out.
Twenty
As soon as I’m alone, I call Dad.
“Please,” I beg him. “You’ve got to take me home.”
“I don’t know, Peanut.”
“I’m fine. If anything happens, you could just take me to the hospital, couldn’t you?”
There’s a heavy pause.
“All right. Tomorrow night after I take care of Blaze, I’ll come for you.”
“You can’t let them know.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll do it quiet-like.”
“I love you, Dad.”
It takes a long time for me to fall asleep. When I do, I slip into a nightmare. I’m in the apple orchard, crouched behind Iron-fist’s black SUV. I know he sees me. Horrified, I play dead. His feet crunch through the grass toward me. He kneels and puts his face up to mine to see if I’m breathing.
I can’t hold my breath. I need air. I suck in a mouthful.
He seizes me and shakes me hard.
“I knew you were alive,” he shouts.
I wake in a sweat. My eyes fly open and I see I’m not alone. Victoria’s lean silhouette is parked near the window. She opens the heavy drapes. Dawn light filters onto my face. I squint against the brightness.
“You look like hell,” Victoria informs me.
“Thanks.”
She shrugs one narrow shoulder. “Just saying.”
I groan. “I had the worst dream.”
“Let me guess. Ian turned into a dragon and burned up the piano.”
I laugh. “No.”
“Too bad. He’d be kind of cute with a snout.” She goes to a stainless-steel cart just inside the door and selects a syringe, several blood-collection tubes, and some packets of alcohol swabs. Needles still make me woozy. Better to stare out the window and watch the dawn’s bruised clouds scud by.
“Did you know the whole town is scared of this place?” I ask.
“Are they?” She peels off the syringe wrapper. “No one’s ever told me that.”
“You probably don’t talk to them.”
“That’s not fair. I go dancing at the Zenith Club. As I recall, you saw me there.”
“Should people be worried?” I ask. “Is it possible someone could get infected by what you’re studying?”
She wipes her right hand on one leather-clad thigh. “Anything is possible. Not in the way you’re thinking, though.”
“What is it you’re researching?”
“It’s not something I’m at liberty to talk about.”
My frustration makes me bolder. “Why have I never seen anyone besides you, Ian, Edward, Lucy, and Hunter? How can this be a research lab with no staff here?”
“There are others.”
“How many?”
Her stony eyes level me with a long, piercing gaze. There’s a wall between us, between me and everyone here.
“Thirteen.” She says it casually.
There’s nothing casual about it, though. The air is thick with tension, and it’s as though a brick has tumbled clear. I press on, urgent to tear out another.
“Thirteen people? They must be really quiet.”
Victoria smirks. “Yes, well, they’re not here at the moment.”
“Where are they?”
She raises one brow and inserts the needle. “As it happens, we have a sister facility. Overseas.”
I wince away from the thrusting syringe that’s lodged deep in my vein. “Overseas? Whereabouts?”
She switches the full vial of blood for an empty one. “Switzerland, actually.”
Switzerland? I feel suddenly dizzy. Switzer
land is where my mother died. I stare at Victoria, whose gaze is trained on my arm.
“Have you been there?” she asks. Her voice is nonchalant as she extracts the needle. Still, there’s a curious quality to her doe eyes when they meet mine.
My heart is pounding. “Once,” I manage through dry lips.
“When?”
“I was little.”
She goes to the stainless-steel cart. “Never again?”
“No.” My tongue is parched. “Never again.”
Does she know what happened to us in Switzerland? She couldn’t. I was only five. Victoria could have been at most eight or nine years old. And it was barely in the news. The authorities said we’d suffered an unfortunate accident on the winding roads. They insisted my mother’s driving was at fault, even though I knew better.
A man clears his throat.
I catch sight of Ian in the doorway. Fear makes my stomach lurch.
“Giving away classified information?” he drawls. “Aren’t we chummy.”
“Don’t be a bore, Ian. It doesn’t suit you.” Victoria’s impenetrable expression has snapped firmly back into place. “Neither does oozing around as though I can’t hear you.”
He crosses his arms over his broad chest.
“Toddle off and leave us to it, darling.”
“You’re infuriating, you know that?”
“It’s why you adore me.” It’s the lighthearted armor she uses to fend off the world.
Ian snorts and leaves.
My heart is still pounding at the mention of Switzerland. I look up to see that everything about Victoria is now clammed up tight. Her shoulders, her tense fingers. Her clipped movements as she clears away my blood work and wheels the metal cart toward the door.
There, she pauses.
When she turns, her eyes are different. There’s caring. Real, honest caring.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” I reply quickly.
Her eyes go to her hands, which are clutched around the cart handle. I sense she’s about to tell me something. Her mouth opens. Words seem to hang there. Finally, all that comes out is, “Okay. Good.”
Her heels echo into the distance and disappear.
Maybe it was the concern in her tightly drawn brows. Maybe it was her unexpected kindness. Whatever the cause, I can’t hold the childhood memory at bay a second longer.
It slides over me, tasting of tears and blood.
Mountains and pine trees. The car, with Mom behind the wheel. Me riding in the front like a big girl. Our happy singsong dying on her lips. The paleness of her cheeks when she looks in the rearview mirror.
“Mommy? What’s the matter?” I hear my five-year-old voice ask.
“Make sure your seat belt’s fastened, okay, honey?”
I press on the metal buckle, doing as she asks. Pine trees whip by my window. So fast they start to blur. The high alpine road is narrow and twisty with hairpin turns. There are no guardrails. Far below, a river cascades over jagged rocks.
“Mommy, you’re going too fast!”
I see a car move up behind us in the side mirror. It’s almost attached to our bumper.
I’m frightened.
Mommy’s eyes go to the rearview mirror. Her usually comforting voice makes a tiny, “Oh!”
And then our car does the unthinkable. It tumbles sideways, right over the edge, and I’m screaming and the river is coming closer, and we’re flipping in slow motion, and somehow Mommy rips off her seat belt with the strength only a mother could have and throws her body over mine, and we slam and roll, slam and roll.
The sound. The awful sound.
Explosions of shattering glass.
Squeals of grinding metal.
The blaring of a horn. Our horn.
The jarring halt.
The warm wetness of Mommy against me.
Long stunned moments pass.
I start to cry.
“My baby,” she whispers, her voice so weak I’m frightened. “I got you. You’re okay. You’re okay. I love you so much.”
I put my small hands on her cheeks. “Mommy, are you hurt?” I’m scared for her.
She doesn’t answer.
My heart starts beating fast like a bunny rabbit’s. Pitter-pattering out of control.
Something clinks and pings off the side of the car. Then come several pairs of footsteps crunching and sliding down the sheer embankment toward us.
“Shh,” Mommy tells me, her voice thick with pain and fear. “Quiet as a mouse.”
I nod.
She shifts over me so I’m hidden completely. There’s a volley of kicking and angry voices as the crushed trunk of our car is wrestled open. I hear our suitcases being dragged out. Men wedge open the back door. From my position, I can just peer between the driver and passenger seats. Mommy’s purse is lying on the backseat. A muscular hand comes into view and picks it up. The image is burned into my mind. Those thick pale fingers. The tattooed initials on his forearm that read WB.
He bends over us and I hear the glove box open. His cologne makes me want to gag.
“I wish you’d behaved more professionally, Julia,” he says.
He knows Mommy. He called her by name. Why isn’t he helping us?
“Move out,” he tells the others.
They’re leaving us trapped in the ravine, in the wreckage. Mommy keeps silent until their scrabbling footsteps have died away.
I smell smoke.
“Honey, I need you to be brave. Can you be brave for me?”
I nod. Anything, anything. “Yes,” I say, clinging more tightly to her.
Mommy coughs. “You need to get out of the car, okay? You need to crawl out the back.”
“No!”
“I’m coming right after. I’ll be right with you.” With great effort, she rolls sideways. Blood runs from her scalp, down her soft cheeks.
“Please, hurry,” she whispers.
“You’re hurt, Mommy,” I sob. Her arms and legs bleed from awful red gashes. She’s turning pale.
Smoke billows over us, making us cough.
“Hurry!” She lifts me, and we both slip over into the backseat. She’s strong; she’s going to be all right. “I love you,” she tells me, kissing my forehead. “I’ll always be with you, Aeris. Never forget that.” She thrusts me out the back door, hard.
At the same time, the car explodes. A ball of fire roars skyward. I’m thrown across the hillside. I hit rocks.
The world goes black.
A man is holding me in his arms and walking fast. I cry out and struggle against his flannel-clad chest.
He soothes me with gentle words. “It’s safe, you’re safe.”
“Mommy! Help my mommy!”
He holds me closer. “She’s with angels now.”
“No!” I scream, sobbing and fighting hard.
He lets me punch and kick him until I’m exhausted, never letting me go. His neck is bristly, and finally I burrow into it, crying until his warm skin is drenched with my tears. We walk for hours like that, his big arms cradling me tight. It’s pitch black and he never stumbles once, not once down the rocky, steep mountain.
I must have fallen asleep. When I wake, I’m in a bustling police station. A uniformed man with a big mustache tells me I’m safe.
“You’re lucky that hiker found you,” he tells me. “He carried you more than thirty miles.”
Lucky? How can I be lucky when Mommy’s gone?
Still, I wish I could have thanked him.
Now, in this old house, in this room, I cry like I did then. I cry for the man who saved me, who comforted me, who left before I got to see his face. I cry for the little girl who lost her mommy. But most of all, I cry for my mother.
I sob knowing I couldn’t get her out of the car. I sob until I’m choking. I drown in the unbearable truth that she died for me. Mom, I didn’t want you to go.
My throat is swollen tight and my chest aches, and still I cry some more.
>
Twenty-One
I wake to the sound of someone in my room.
My eyelids are swollen as I glance up and start in surprise. “Dad.”
He raises a finger to his lips and bends to lift me. One arm under my legs, the other under my shoulder blades, he moves me swiftly to the wheelchair. Moonlight streaks the windowsill.
“Hold tight.”
I do, gripping the chair as he whisks me down the long, brilliantly lit corridors. I feel terrible, escaping with no good-bye. Or thanks. They saved my life. I’m grateful. Yet I have to go. We hurry past half-open doors as nervousness ping-pongs in my chest.
“Almost there,” Dad says.
Just let us get out undetected. I can see the front door. My fingers turn clammy.
Then we’re on the broad gravel drive. Damp, misty air creeps under my fiberglass casts. The breeze snatches at the hem of my nightgown as we hurry to Dad’s Range Rover, which is parked under a clump of pine trees. He helps me into the front passenger seat.
Then I remember something.
“My meds,” I blurt out. “I forgot.”
“Where are they?”
“In my room, on the side table. Three bottles.”
“I’ll be back.”
The moon emerges from beneath a cloud, casting eerie yellow light over the dashboard. Hurry, please hurry. I hear footsteps and wrench around.
“Got them.” He hops in the driver’s seat.
“Good work, Dad.”
He puts the car in drive, and the big house shrinks behind us. Guilt twists through me. I’m sure Ian will be glad to hear I’ve left, though. And now Hunter can come back because I won’t be here to bother him.
“I missed you, Peanut,” Dad says.
“Thanks for coming to get me. I really missed you, too, Dad.”
We’re nearing the barn, which gleams silver in the darkness. Its doors are fastened shut. Blaze’s presence pulls at me. She’ll be bigger now. I want to wrap my arms around her neck and kiss the white star on her forehead and apologize because I have abandoned her these past weeks.
Would she even know me?
I’m silent as we pass the gravel lot. Here and there, tires have dug permanent tracks in its surface. Are any of them mine, remnants from the day I snuck into the barn? The day Hunter caught me from behind, engulfed me in his arms, and pulled me close to ask who the hell was trespassing on his property.
The Butterfly Code Page 16
