“If you say so,” Cara says, studying her manicure. “I don’t see what this has to do with me. What does he have to do with anything? Federal agents came to our house and seized all his research. It was in the news. Go get yourself a copy of the newspaper if you’re so curious.”
The truth is I know exactly who went to their house—an Aquarathi cleanup crew. Having that hybrid research lying around was a liability that had to be taken care of. Disguised as feds, they’d had a comically easy time performing a complete sweep of all Cano’s known residences. However, it seems we missed one...in Imperial Beach.
“I’m trying to find him,” I say.
“Why?”
“I’m doing an...independent study on genetics, and I wanted to see if you were still in touch with him.”
Cara’s eyes narrow, and, once more, I realize that I’ve underestimated her intelligence. My reasoning sounds lame even to my ears. Her eyes glint icily. “Either you tell me what’s really up or I’m out of here. We used to be friends, remember? I can still tell when you’re lying through your teeth. You guys can turn around and take me back right now.”
“Wait a second.” I take a deep breath. I’m about to go out on a really shaky, unstable limb with a girl I wouldn’t trust with a ten-foot pole. Yet here I am, doing exactly that. I don’t have much choice, not with Jenna MIA. “You have to promise not to say anything to anyone. I’m not kidding, Cara. This is FBI serious. You, too, Sawyer.” He nods, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Got it,” Cara says. “Lips sealed. Moving on.”
“There’s a warrant out for your uncle’s arrest,” I begin.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“He was working with Lo’s family on a project, like some kind of supersecret DNA experiments. Lo’s mother was funding it all. It was all under the radar because they didn’t want it to be flagged by the California state laws that prohibit reproductive genetic cloning. There isn’t much federal regulation on human biotechnologies, but what your uncle and Emma Seavon were working on had to do with more specific human-animal hybrid exploration.”
“You mean like chimeras?” Cara interjects.
“What?”
“Mythical creature? Lion head, goat body, snake tail?”
“Sorry, I know what you mean. I just...”
“You didn’t expect me to have a brain or eyes. I saw what was going on. I used to sneak into his lab all the time. He never spent any time with me, so I wanted to see what he was working on and what was so important that he’d disappear for entire weekends. That’s what he used to call them. Chimeras.” She turns to stare out of the passenger window, words flowing out of her mouth as if she can’t stop them. After all, it’s not something she could ever talk about with her entourage at Dover. It must have been eating her up inside for years. “I saw one once when I was a kid. It was hideous, like a monster, a half-human thing in a metal cage. All I can remember are the eyes...like slitted, glowing lizard eyes. They were so...knowing.
“I even asked him about it once.” She smiles sadly. “About the one I saw. He was so enraged. He grounded me for weeks and threatened to send me back into foster care in L.A. I was so scared that he’d do exactly that that I convinced myself I’d imagined it. But I never forgot.” She half smiles to herself. “That was the day I got into advocating for animals. They don’t have a voice, so I became theirs.”
That’s another thing I didn’t know about Cara, or maybe I did know but never really thought about it. She’s always raising money at school for PETA and the SPCA.
Cara pauses, turning clouded eyes to me. “So, is that why he left? They found out about his research? The chimeras?”
“Yes,” I say with a shiver. I don’t even want to imagine the half-human, half-Aquarathi creature Cara had seen, but I can’t help wondering whether it looked anything like the one that attacked me on the beach last semester.
“What about Lo?” Cara asks. “What does this have to do with him?”
I inhale another breath, formulating the pieces of the story in my head and taking a huge gamble on how much to tell her, as well as Sawyer, who is listening intently. “So you know that Lo has acute memory loss.”
Cara nods. “Some kind of trauma thing after his mom died.”
“Yes. The thing is, Lo’s mother went missing shortly before your uncle did. When Lo realized she was dead, he was a mess. He wanted answers that he didn’t get. And then I left, and everything went to shit.” I pause for a beat, seeing hurt flash across her face. “Look, I know you care about Lo a lot, and thanks for being there for him over the summer. I don’t think he would have made it without you.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know, Cara. I know how you feel about him. And I wish things could be different, but Lo and I...” I trail off with a choked sob. Are a pair, I want to say, but the words refuse to come.
“I get it, Nerissa. And I know how he feels about you, but I’ll always be his friend no matter what. So just tell me what I need to do or what you need to know.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “I think Lo went looking for your uncle. For maybe some...closure. And I think Jenna saw something and followed Lo wherever he went. And now they’re both missing.”
“Missing?” Cara says. “Have you tried calling or texting?”
“No answer.”
Cara shrugs. “Lo takes off for days on end. It’s just something he does. You know that. He’ll come back.”
“But Jenna doesn’t. And she left some weird texts for Sawyer.” He nods in the rearview mirror, confirming what I’ve said. “About Lo and your uncle.”
“And you think Lo went looking for him?”
“I think there are a lot of people looking for your uncle, and I’m worried that something may have happened to Lo. I know Lo doesn’t remember who I am, but everything inside me is telling me that something’s wrong. And now with Jenna gone, too, it just doesn’t feel right. Look, Cara, I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need to know if you’re in or out. Sawyer can take you back to school and we’ll forget any of this ever happened.”
She hesitates for the briefest of seconds. “Fine. I’m in. But this doesn’t make us BFFs or anything. I’m doing this for Lo.”
I almost grin at the snarky flash of the old Cara I used to know. “Deal.”
“So, I guess we’re not going to the Marine Center,” Cara remarks as we drive past the entrance toward the freeway.
I show her Jenna’s texts on Sawyer’s phone, scrolling down to the last one with Cano’s name and the note on Imperial Beach. “Do you remember anything about a house or a lab in this area? Anything at all?”
“My uncle has a lot of property all over California.”
“So it doesn’t ring a bell?” I ask. Cara shakes her head. My heart sinks—all this for nothing, and now she’s a loose end that I’m going to have to figure out how to tie up. I slump back in my seat and try to come up with a new plan. We’re already on Interstate 5 heading south. Other than driving around randomly or waiting for Jenna to turn on her phone so we can track her GPS, we have nothing. I hinged everything on Cara at least knowing something about her uncle’s whereabouts.
Cara leans forward, tentative. “But I think I might have a way to find out.”
“How?”
“Every single house my uncle owned was gutted and renovated. Not a lot of basements in California because of the fault line, so he built custom-fitted labs in each and every one of them. I bet we could pull the construction permits in Imperial Beach at the town office.”
“Whoa,” Sawyer says with a fist pump. “That’s brilliant.”
“That is brilliant,” I agree, my brain firing with hope.
“I do have my moments,” Cara says, thumbing through a website on her smart phone. “It sh
ould all be a matter of public record. We just need to get there by eleven a.m. That’s the end of the morning counter hours. If my uncle is at his house, that’s where Lo will be. Jenna, too.”
“I could kiss you right now,” I say.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cara retorts, but I can see the tiniest smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. “I really hope my uncle is there. I have a few things I need to say to him myself.”
We get to Imperial Beach in thirty minutes flat, and head toward Imperial Beach Boulevard where the City Hall is located. Sawyer pulls into the building parking lot with five minutes to spare before the counter closes. We race in breathless, nearly colliding with each other at the last window.
“Look in the online records over there,” a bored-looking clerk tells us. “Building-permit lookup by owner name. If you can’t find it, come back this afternoon between three-thirty and five.”
“Wait—” But before I can finish, she slams the window shut and pulls the blinds closed.
“Come on,” Sawyer says. “She said over here.” We hover together across a terminal as he starts to type in Cano’s name in the search bar. “Wait, what’s his last name again?”
“Cano is his last name,” I say. “George is his first.”
“His name is George?” Sawyer snorts. “That’s so normal.”
We watch with bated breath as Sawyer hits Enter after typing it in. The computer terminal ticks over for a few seconds before a message comes up on-screen: Your search returned no results. Please try another search.
“Try it again, Sawyer,” I say. The same message comes up. I glance at Cara. “Any ideas?”
She purses her lips and leans over the keyboard. “Let’s try the correct Albanian spelling for his first name. It’s the Albanian version of George. Type in Jorgji. I saw it on one of his old diplomas at home.”
Sawyer complies, but the search comes up the same. He shrugs. “Maybe he wouldn’t use Cano if he was trying to hide something.”
“Good point,” I say. “The question is, what would he use?”
Cara’s eyes light up. “Try Jorgji again, but instead of Cano, type in Agron. It’s his middle name,” she clarifies at my look, and rolls her eyes. “Years of teenage spying, what can I say?”
The counter ticks over and then brings up a screen full of results, all under a Mr. Agron. “There are at least ten of them as far as I can tell,” Sawyer says, scrolling through the permit list. “Six P.O. boxes, and five separate properties.” He clicks on one of the line items with a quarter-million-dollar permit price tag. Cano must have been doing some major renovations for one of his secret labs.
“There,” I say, jabbing at a blue line of text on the pop-up window. “Click on Property Map. Let’s see where they all are.”
Oddly enough, the properties run in a straight line, nearly identical to the Mexican border, just on the edge of the state park. “Which one is it?” Sawyer says, glancing at his phone. “We have two hours before we have to head back, before Speio does what he’s going to do at last bell.”
“Wait? What’s Speio going to do?” Cara says.
“Call my...guardian,” I say. “Which means I’ll be in a boatload of trouble if we’re not back before then.”
“You really don’t like authority, do you?” Cara says, smirking.
“As I recall, neither do you,” I shoot back. We share an unexpected grin.
“So, which one do you think it is?” Sawyer asks again, tapping his finger along the five dots on the map.
“Follow the money,” I guess. “That’s our best bet. Big permits mean big installations.”
“What if we’re wrong?” Sawyer says.
“Then we’re wrong,” I say. “It’s all we’ve got.” Sawyer’s phone buzzes in his hand and he opens an incoming text. “Is it Jenna?” I ask.
“No, it’s Speio checking in.” He texts back a quick response and then taps on a blinking icon on his phone, his eyes going wide.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I think I know which house we should go to.”
“How do you know?”
He raises shocked eyes to mine and stabs his phone in my face. “Because Jenna’s GPS just came on.”
17
Chimeras
The Spanish-style house with flashy terra-cotta trim on Seacoast Drive bordering the ocean is on a gorgeous piece of property, albeit deserted, as far as we can tell from our vantage point hunkered down in our car on the other side of the street. I shake my head. My family has a ton of money, but Cano must have obscene amounts hidden away to be able to afford so many million-dollar homes. This one is no exception, resting right at the feet of the ocean, with its manicured lawn and intricate brickwork...along with a multimillion-dollar lab beneath it, if the public records are any indication.
“Nice digs,” I say to Cara, nodding at the house.
“Wish I’d known it existed,” she says. “So you think Jenna’s there?”
“That’s what the GPS says,” Sawyer says. “What’s the plan?” He is still clutching his phone as if he’s expecting it to ring any moment. I had to restrain him from calling Jenna immediately—if she happens to be in a precarious situation, we don’t want to put her in any more danger by calling her. He finally relented and listened to reason, but I’m watching him like a hawk.
“We can’t just go walking in,” I say. “We don’t know what’s in there.”
Cara frowns. “Why not? We’re just seeing if Lo came to find him here. That’s not a crime, is it?”
I deliberate explaining more to Cara, but I don’t know how much to reveal. It’s too risky for all of us. The less she knows the better. Then again, she knows about her uncle’s experiments. I haul a hot breath into my lungs. “Cara, there’s something else. The reason we can’t go barging in there is that...your uncle may not be himself. It’s too dangerous.”
“What do you mean? Dangerous how?”
I don’t have a gentle way to put it, so I just blurt it out. “If he’s creating these chimeras, we don’t know how many of them are in there. Or what we’re going to find....” I trail off. “Or if he’s even still...there.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Cara says. “This is California. My uncle may be crazy, but he’s not that crazy. You’re acting like he’s got a chimera army hidden in there or something.” She steps out of the car and stretches. “We’ll be fine. Let’s go see if Uncle George is home.”
“Cara, wait!” But it’s too late. She’s already on the other side of the street and walking up the flagstone path.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter, watching as Cara rings the doorbell before peering into the side window.
“What do we do?” Sawyer says, wide-eyed.
“Nothing,” I say. “We wait. Hopefully no one will be home, and we can find Jenna and get the hell out of Dodge.”
Desperately willing Cara to turn around and come back to the car, we watch as she rings the doorbell once more before twisting to shrug in our direction.
No answer, she mouths. I wave her over, but she ignores me, instead tugging on the handle. The door swings inward. I’m halfway out of my seat, mentally screaming at Cara not to go in there, but of course she pays me no attention and ducks her head into the opening.
“Cara,” I stage-whisper. “No.”
“It’s okay,” she says over her shoulder. “No one’s home. Just going to have a peek.” Before I can shout another warning, she disappears from view around the doorjamb, the door closing behind her with a click.
“Nothing like a little breaking and entering,” Sawyer says, making me jump after several minutes of silence. I’m trying to figure out what to do—leave Cara and hope for the best, or follow her and risk all of us getting caught. Especially me. I heave out a breath. Kno
wing what we know about Cano, there’s no way I can abandon Cara in there on her own.
“Technically, it’s her uncle’s house, but yeah, we could be in big trouble if someone calls the cops.” I pocket my car keys and sigh. “Let’s go get her.”
Sawyer and I make our way to the house a lot less confidently than Cara did, hunched over and skulking. I can’t help feeling we’re being watched, although no one is around apart from the occasional car driving down the street. I’m probably just being paranoid. Maybe Cara’s right—this is California in the middle of the day. It’s not like a swarm of flying monkey-men are going to fly out of the bushes.
At the house, we peek in one of the side windows, but the interior is shrouded in extra-creepy darkness. Once more, Cara seems to be right. It does seem to be empty, but if I’ve learned anything over the past few months, it’s not to underestimate Cano. Sawyer moves to walk up the front stoop and I stop him. We have no idea what happened to Cara once she went inside and it’s been radio silent for the five minutes that she’s been in there.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Maybe we should check if there’s another entrance just in case.”
We walk with quiet, careful steps, our bodies flattened along the back wall. Suddenly all the hairs on the back of my neck stand at nervous attention, and my pulse beats a shade faster. We’re no longer alone.
“What the hell are you doing here?” a harsh voice whispers from behind us.
Sawyer and I turn in slow motion. Jenna. She looks no worse for wear, after obviously spending the night awake doing who knows what. Her hair is tangled, and her clothes are rumpled as if she slept in her car. Sawyer immediately swoops her up into a silent, frantic embrace, hugging her as if he never expected to see her again.
“Hey, babe,” he says into her temple. I stare at him incredulously. That’s it? Hey, babe? I can feel my face turning purple. Unlike Sawyer, I want to throttle her for putting me through the last few hours.
“What are you doing here, Jenna?” I nearly screech. “You scared the hell out of me with those texts. What were you thinking?”
Oceanborn Page 21
