“No, no.” He motioned to her to remain seated. “I’ll only be a moment.”
Anjali twisted in her chair as he left, closing the door.
Dismissing her strange fascination with his ring as some odd fluke, she put the jewelry out of her mind and glanced at the clock. How long was he going to be? Restless, she inspected the room, noticing the manila file folder open on Mr. Kincaid’s desk.
Jake’s original file.
A sleek cell phone sat on top of the file. Her employer had a Blackberry, so it wasn’t his.
She couldn’t resist examining the picture in the file. It was different from the one she had in the file he’d given her. She moved the phone to the side, and towed the folder toward her.
Two DVDs in paper sleeves slid out. One labeled like the one she already had, and another labeled ‘Part Two.’ Now she knew why Mr. Kincaid had used the plural.
She might as well use his absence to see the contents of the second disc.
A DVD player sat in a paneled cabinet beneath the TV. She swiveled her chair, inserted the disc, and picked up the remote control.
The menu came up. A frown tugged at her forehead. The other disc had been chronological, following Jake’s early years and then his most recent transfer here. This disc contained the missing years, but covered the earlier years as well. Why hadn’t Mr. Kincaid simply given her this disc?
She clicked on the first entry, the interview, and sped through it, confirming it was identical.
The next section covered a time missing from the first disc. The time/date stamp put Jake at fifteen. He was in a tiny room similar to the interview room she’d seen before, but it was set up like a cramped bedroom, with a chest of drawers, bookcase, and a tiny reading desk and chair. Jake sat on the bed reading. Anjali smiled at that. In that at least, he hadn’t changed much.
Physically, he was quite different. He displayed the reediness of a boy who’d gained a large amount of height without the weight to go with it. He was only starting to build muscle, but what he had was well defined.
His face had a softness missing from the adult Jake, and she ached at the pain that had hardened his features, put the wariness in his eyes.
A trim, suited man entered the room. A much younger, dark-haired Gareth Kincaid.
He hauled the chair out from the metal desk and straddled it, his arms on the plastic back. “I’m glad you’ve decided to talk with me, Jake.”
Jake slammed the book closed and stood up, the action so quick, Kincaid flinched almost imperceptibly in reaction. “I didn’t decide anything. I want to know why I’m here.”
“You know why you’re here, Jake.” Kincaid rapped a file folder on the back of the chair. “You killed a man. Did you think we wouldn’t track you down?”
“You a cop, then? I don’t see a badge.” A muscle flexed in Jake’s jaw, his hands balled into fists.
Even in black and white, Anjali could see the coiled tension in him, his frustration at being caged.
An atavistic instinct raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Even as young as he was, there was an air of deadly power around him. The feeling seemed to transmit through the monitor, infecting her, cranking her heart rate and respiration. She slid to the edge of chair, restraining the desire to stand.
“No, no. I’m not the police. But I have a court order to keep you under observation.”
Jake’s gaze was unfocused as he paced to the door and back, like a lion in a sideshow zoo. “For how long?”
“Indefinitely.” Kincaid stood, set something on the desk, then moved to the door. “You’ll have school work and other . . . tasks to do while you’re here. Work hard and perform well and you will be rewarded. Fight, and you will lose.”
A buzzer sounded as the door opened. An armed guard stood on the other side, a gun in his hand.
Kincaid strode through. When the mechanism clicked shut on the older man’s heels, Jake launched his body at it.
Anjali started at the sound of his lanky frame hitting the door.
He flung himself at it over and over, grunting with effort. Finally, he began beating the metal door until the thump of his fist on the steel sounded wet and dark smears marked the rigid surface.
It was horrible to watch, but Anjali was unable to tear her glance away, her cheeks cold with tears.
He stood and paced back and forth from the desk to the wall, his movement so swift and effortless Anjali found herself mesmerized. And then there was a blinding flash and a young lion paced the circuit.
“What the . . .?” Anjali left her chair, then stooped in front of the screen for a closer view.
Had someone accidentally burned a nature show onto the disc? She examined the scene. She could clearly see the bed in the background. The lion was in the same room Jake had been in only seconds before. A pile of rags she hadn’t noticed before lay near the desk.
Had someone let a lion in with Jake? She scrutinized the shadowed corners of the room, but Jake was nowhere to be seen. Why would someone take Jake from the room and put a half-grown lion in his place? She shook her head in wonder, while her mind sorted through the possible explanations for the animal’s presence and came up empty.
The lion padded back and forth several times and collapsed, panting on the concrete floor. He glared up at the camera as if he knew it was there, then rested his chin on one enormous paw. Soon his eyes blinked sleepily, then drifted shut, until finally the rise and fall of his massive chest gave evidence that he slept.
After a minute, another brilliant flash made Anjali turn away from the screen and when she refocused on the monitor, Jake lay naked on the floor.
Her hand quickly swept through the heavy strands of hair that’d escaped from her braid, brushing them out of her face. What kind of bizarre hoax was this?
She quickly scanned through the rest of the clips. Aside from frequent arguments between Jake and Kincaid, which often ended with Jake being restrained, and scenes of him studying or exercising, the main body of the clips showed Jake and then the lion. Or a creature that appeared to be some sort of massive lizard, a dragon?, and that she believed even less than the lion.
Anjali rubbed the crease between her eyebrows and sank into the chair, the top of her fist touching her lips. What the hell was Kincaid trying to pull?
She glanced at the door. But then, he hadn’t given her this DVD, had he? If he were trying to fool her for some reason—and she couldn’t figure what—why hadn’t he given her the disc?
Kincaid was a wealthy man. What agenda could he have for fooling one insignificant researcher? What did he have to gain by convincing her a man could change into an animal?
Maybe she was being punked? She scanned the room for a hidden camera, then shook her head. The set-up was too elaborate. No normal TV show could go to these lengths and still make a profit. A movie? She almost snorted. No one could confuse her with Angelina Jolie.
Anjali ejected the disc from the player and placed it back on Kincaid’s desk, slipping it where it’d been in the file, her mind tossing through more outlandish possibilities, none with any rational motive she could discern.
She straightened the folder, then picked up the cell phone to put it back on top. The cell rang in her hand.
Not a clever ring tone or a song, just a simple old-fashioned ring. She stared at the device, a flip phone with a window for caller ID.
Kyle Mara.
Heart hammering, she flipped it open and put it to her ear. “Hello?”
A voice with the same rough timbre as Jake’s answered. “Who is this? Is Jake there?”
“Well . . .” Anjali’s lips and mouth were suddenly parched. “This is his phone, but—” She scrambled for something to say. “I’m afraid he’s all locked up at the moment.”
Chapter 6
Anjali pasted the phone to her ear and glanced at the door. She didn’t know what was going on here, but suddenly she didn’t want to be caught on this phone. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Jake’s brother, Kyle. Who’s this?”
She froze. What to say? Despite the caller ID, he could be anyone. Jake hadn’t mentioned a brother. But his voice was so similar to Jake’s. “My name is Anjali Mehta. I’m Jake’s . . . doctor.”
“He’s sick—injured?” Something about the way Kyle Mara asked the question made Anjali think he didn’t believe his brother could be either of those things.
She was about to explain her role when something made her stop. “Jake said he’s alone—he has no family.”
The voice on the other end grew rougher. “He probably thinks that. But it’s not true. My brothers and I were separated when my mother died. Jake is the youngest. I’ve been trying to find him for years.”
The pain in his voice struck a chord in Anjali. What would she give to have her family back?
Drumming the fingers of her free hand on the desk, she sorted through the ethical concerns at a million kilometers a second.
Though she was a medical doctor, Jake wasn’t her patient, and if the man on the phone was who he claimed to be, what right did she have to keep a sick man from his only family?
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Mara, but Jake is very ill. He’s schizophrenic.”
“Damn.” Silence crackled on the line for a moment. “When you said he’s locked up . . . he’s in a mental institution, isn’t he?”
“It’s more of a private research facility, but yes, he is restrained for the safety of himself and others.”
“Fuck.”
Anjali grimaced at the crudity of the swear word, but she sympathized. She could hardly imagine what it must be like to track down a brother after all these years and discover he could never be a part of your life.
A heavy sigh gusted over the line. “Look, give me the address. I’m coming there. Something urgent is going on here, but I can be there by Friday—”
A sound out in the hall made Anjali cut him off. Whatever was going on, she suddenly didn’t want to be caught on the phone. “I’ll contact you later. Someone is coming.”
She heard “Wha—” but she flipped the phone closed and laid it back where it had been.
Kincaid entered. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Anjali jumped to her feet. “That’s all right. I haven’t actually finished the DVD, so I’ll have to get back to you with my questions.”
She gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile and breezed out, her mind shuffling through the strange events of the day.
Back at her office, she found herself staring at her computer screen for minutes at a time. Why hadn’t she asked Kincaid about the video? The footage was weird, but sinister? Why was her ‘spidey’ sense tingling?
Ugh! The castors on her chair protested as she shoved back from her desk hard. There was no way she could concentrate on blood chemistry and questionnaires while her brain buzzed with questions and her body hummed with only one urge—to go and see Jake.
As she made her way down the hall, Anjali marveled at how quickly things could change.
Two days ago, her life had been normal, even dull. And the Kincaid building had seemed like any run-of-the-mill medical research facility.
Now, the walls of the corridor—their caramel color had always reminded her of an Indian sweet called ladoo—seemed oddly proportioned, skewed like in a nightmare.
In the blink of an eye, the whole atmosphere of the facility had gone from benign to ominous.
Anders was behind the desk in the antechamber. She gave him a half-hearted smile and snuck a peek at the monitor by his desk. Jake reclined on the bed, apparently asleep.
She paused, hating to disturb him, but her desire to see him up close was too intense. She nodded at Anders. He strode to the heavy door and unlocked it.
With Jake asleep, she went up to the bars. He shifted, turning to face her and she could see his eyes moving beneath the tissue-thin lids. He dreamed.
He flew in the dream. His body cut through the air like a shark through water. Behind his back, massive wings beat the night air. He twisted into a barrel roll, peering through his legs at the space behind him, and saw the moonlight playing off the iridescent midnight-blue scales on his tail. A dragon’s tail.
He wasn’t surprised he was a dragon in his dream; he was often enough. What surprised him was the compact white dragon flying beneath and slightly in back of him.
She—and he knew it was a she—soared up closer and he admired the opalescent traces of blue, gold, purple, teal, and red reflecting off her armored hide and sheer ivory wings in the moonlight.
He descended to fly beside her. She turned her head and her amethyst gaze met his. Even in dragon form he recognized her. Anjali.
The dragon knew what the man did not. They were mates. Fated to be together.
They flew over water, their reflections gliding along beneath them. The joy of flying free made him twist and spiral in the air. His chest was full to bursting.
He was meant to be here, free in the open air.
Beside him, Anjali matched his movements, keeping pace.
He delighted in the synchronization of their acrobatics, the sensation of flying as one. Finally, she dropped lower, skimming the surface of the waves with her belly. He could see she tired and turned to lead the way back to a cove guarded by towering evergreens, where a crescent of silver sand beckoned.
He landed on the beach. Anjali settled next to him, then twined her long neck with his in a tender caress.
A sudden, sharp pain exploded through him. He glanced down to see dark blood running down his leg. He’d been shot in one of his few vulnerable areas, a thinning of the scales on his underside where his powerful leg joined his body.
Men rushed the clearing. They cast a net over Anjali, poking her through the links with long poles. She screamed in pain and fear. He trumpeted his anger to the moonlit, cloud-studded skies and attacked.
Anjali watched Jake’s muscled chest fill and empty as he slept. Guilt rode her. Observing him while he was so vulnerable felt wrong, but she couldn’t make her hungry eyes turn away.
Her gaze traced the sleek contours of his chest down the ridges of his abdomen past his navel to the tiny sprinkling of hairs above the drawstring of his pants. She rubbed her collarbone.
She was despicable, lusting over a man she didn’t really know, a man who, though physically the strongest she had ever met, was in an extremely vulnerable position. Setting her shoulders, she swiveled to go. And her feeble brain had managed to forget why he was here. He wasn’t just some random subject—he’d earned his captivity with blood.
Jake moaned in his sleep. Turning back toward him, her gaze found his face. He seemed to be snared deep in the tentacles of a nightmare. He thrashed on the long, narrow bed. A low mutter followed the moan. She strained to make out his words. “No,” she made out, and then a flash of light stunned her eyes. And when the spots cleared from her vision, a huge sleeping dragon filled the space where Jake had been, head and forelimbs on the bed, hindquarters on the ground.
What the—? She rubbed her stunned eyes. How could this be?
She scrutinized the floor for a hidden trapdoor, anywhere Jake could have slipped away, but the vast creature covered the sealed concrete.
Whoever had created the dragon had been a master. The giant creature was a dark, midnight blue. Thousands of scales scattered the fluorescent light overhead in a rhapsody of purples, greens, and blues, all shifting with each lift and lower of the dragon’s massive chest.
Though its eyes never opened, it breathed and moved and—spoke. “Anjali,” it said, the voice low and layered, like multiple keys struck on an organ. “No, Anjali!”
And though it violated every logical, sensible idea Anjali had ever entertained, she replied, her mouth dry, “Jake?” She licked her lips. What are you doing, Anjali? This is nothing but an illusion, some magician’s trick. She brushed away the reasonable thoughts and leaped into the fantastic. “Wake up, Jake. You’re having a nightmare.
Everything is fine.”
Chapter 7
The heavy mantle of sleep parted and Jake opened his eyes. Anjali stood near his cell, eyes dark and wide with something he couldn’t name.
“Jake?” she said, her voice trembling.
He shifted to stand and realized something was very wrong. He wasn’t viewing her from the normal level of the bed. And his eyesight was sharp, far sharper than normal, with a far different field of vision.
The dream had triggered his psychosis.
Damn.
Why was she staring at him that way? She clearly knew something was wrong, but how?
He turned his head, burning with shame, feeling as he always did the bitter slap of his brain’s betrayal. “Get out.” His voice sounded distorted to his ears, as if it came from the depths of a bass drum.
Anjali’s eyes widened further. “But . . .”
“Get out!” He bared his teeth and charged the bars.
Anjali jumped back, then ran, her low heels tapping a distress signal on the polished concrete floor.
Anjali focused on calming her tripping heart, propping herself against the cool blocks lining the hallway, and letting the solid surface ground her. What the hell had just happened?
Suddenly an idea occurred to her. She sniffed the dry, institutional air. Maybe someone was using some sort of gas on Jake to cause hallucinations and it was affecting her. But why?
And what about the discs? She hadn’t hallucinated them. Ay, Bhagwan!
Was it possible she had just seen a man turn into a dragon? Had heard a dragon speak to her?
Confusion drove her past Anders without acknowledging him. She pressed frigid fingers to her overheated cheeks. She was a scientist. She believed in only what she saw, tasted, touched. How could she believe this impossible event?
But you did see it, Anjali, she reminded herself. What had happened had no rational explanation, no grounding in the world she knew, but she had seen it.
As a scientist she had to accept the evidence, no matter how improbable.
In Like a Lion (The Chimera Chronicles) Page 6
