“Cameras.”
Logan leaned back on the desk and watched me for a while more. “What's a cage lab?”
I paused and met his eyes. “It's where the scientists cage a subject, either alone or with some—some rabid or venomous animal to see how they'll react.”
Logan's jaw clenched, his eyes darkened, but he didn't say anything else.
I drew four prints while Logan stood there, leaning against the desk and watching me. Occasionally, he'd ask me about a particular square or a level, and I'd pause to go through the print with him, explain what was what and where.
Because Building A was construed of large rooms on the first two floors, coexisting in the same area square as the room below, and the top two contained the bedrooms—or locked cages—for the preternaturals, there wasn't much detail to draw.
Logan touched a lock of my still damp hair and twirled it around his finger. “I like your hair.”
I gave him a sideways glance, then returned my attention to the drawing, but my focus had been broken, and Logan was still twirling my hair around his finger.
“Why'd you dye it red?”
“A girl I met once thought it'd be fun.”
“Black suits you better.” He brushed a finger softly over the dark roots.
I nodded once, then added, “Blonde didn't suit you either.”
He chuckled, his eyes twinkling, then bent down, kissed the top of my head and returned to bed.
I didn't even get a chance to dodge or protest.
Once I was able to focus again, I closed my eyes and concentrated on clearing my mind. I wanted to see the prints in a different light, to make sure I wasn't missing anything vital. I picked first the page where I had drawn the top two levels of Building A. If Logan went late enough in the afternoon, he'd find his friend in Building A, but at night the guards tightened security, adding more Elites to the third and fourth floors. I remembered sometimes there would be eight to ten guards on each floor, depending on the number of preternaturals present.
Building C might be the better option, I considered as I spread all four prints on the desk. I tapped the magic marker twice, studying the prints of the sub-levels. They were full of mazes and closet-sized rooms that served as small onsite offices for the most privileged scientists. These rooms were connected to private labs by inner doors or by a two-way mirror. Plus, foot traffic was heavy in that building, and if he disguised himself as a scientist or a guard, he might be overlooked long enough for him to come and go. All in all, there were more places to hide, if need be.
Except for the one tiny detail: it was also the one underground. If an alarm sounded while he was still in one of the sub-levels, he'd never get out of there.
After heaving a long, tired sigh, I checked, then double-checked all the prints and references again. If Logan failed in this suicidal mission, it was not going to be because I missed something.
In a sudden burst of inspiration, I wrote “Mission Suicidal” in bold red letters on top of the print with the outline of the three buildings. Because I knew Logan wouldn't be able to do it. He might get in and even get as far as his friend, but he wouldn't make it out of there alive. Not on his own.
I yawned—finally, oh thank you God—and looked out the window at the brightening sky. Another sunrise, another day. Where would I be this time tomorrow? Would I even be alive? Time was so precious, and it just kept ticking away.
After I rolled everything up, I secured it with a rubber band.
I crawled into bed and fell asleep instantly.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I awoke sprawled on top of Logan. Well, not really. Only half my body was. My head was cradled on his shoulder, one arm around his broad chest and one leg over his. Before I could quietly extricate myself, I realized Logan was very much awake.
In fact, he was stroking my hair in a whispery, soothing motion.
My heart skipped a beat, then went haywire, suddenly out of control. Sensing it, or just the change in my breathing, he paused.
I began to move away, and his arm tightened around my shoulder. Not the one stroking my hair, but the other one that had been hugging me to him.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” he murmured, resuming his gentle stroke. From the top of my head, to the middle of my back. “Relax.”
I did the exact opposite. I stiffened.
Pausing, he asked, “Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes,” I answered instantly, my voice breathy.
“Why? Am I hurting you?” he asked in a reasonable tone.
My automatic yes was on the tip of my tongue. But it was a lie. I knew it, he knew it.
His body felt warm and solid and smelled faintly of soap.
I knew that if I moved away, he wasn't going to try to stop me again. Besides, maybe my heartbeat wasn't racing entirely out of fear.
I relaxed partially, and that was all the permission he needed.
I closed my eyes and tried to push away my instinctive fear.
* * *
When I awoke, Logan was no longer in bed. I stretched, yawned, then curled up again. I felt relaxed, contented. I burrowed into my pillow and glanced casually at the alarm clock, bouncing out of bed in one leap.
It was half past three in the afternoon!
Shit, why did Logan let me sleep this late? Why didn't he wake me? Where the hell was he?
Had this been the purpose? Let me sleep so he could… what?
I padded to the half-closed closet and noted Logan's bag was still there, but that didn't mean shit.
With calmness I didn't feel, I checked the bag with the JCPenny logo.
The blueprints were still there. All seven of them.
Alright, I exhaled softly.
Hello there, paranoia.
He hadn't bailed on me. I left the bag with the prints inside the closet and, just then, noticed the laptop on the desk.
He wouldn't leave that behind.
I recognized relief when I felt it.
I didn't want it.
Sooner or later, certainly within the next couple days, either he or I would leave. Getting attached was not in the plans.
A friend would be nice to have, but this slight crush, toppled with the mistrust we each felt towards the other would never help a friendship flourish. Besides, just because he stroked my hair until la-la land didn't mean he wanted a friend.
Back in the PSS, I had a book called “The Internal Wolf” written by this famous psychiatrist who mentioned that emotionally-starved people tend to cling, and build an illusion on the first person who offered them a little bit of compassion.
Was that who I was becoming?
Had I become so starved for compassion that I'd take it from a werewolf/vampire whom I didn't even trust?
The ding of the elevator and approach of light footsteps intruded on my thoughts.
It was Logan.
I just knew it was.
I ducked inside the bathroom, aware—yet denying furiously—that I wanted to be groomed before Logan saw me. It was a primitive instinct, born thousands and thousands of years ago, passed on from female generation to female generation.
Vanity.
Something I thought I had lost a long time ago. It looked like it had been dormant though, waiting for the perfect moment to wake up, I thought while I carefully shaved, then generously slathered the left-over lotion from the motel in Reno over my legs.
Fuck it, Roxanne; this isn't the time, the reasonable voice inside me chastised. I scowled at the mirror.
Why not? Because I was bruised and patched with stitches? Or because it was Logan? Because I was still trying to run and hide?
Probably all the above, plus timing, I told myself, examining the stitches along my hairline. From a certain distance, they could be mistaken for hair, but the faint green bruise surrounding it was another matter.
I closed the bathrobe tight, making sure there was nothing exposed that shouldn't be and left the bathroom to gather some clothes.
/>
My eyes zeroed in on Logan at once without my consent, lingering on his broad shoulders. He sat at the desk, clicking and typing on his laptop.
I'm not sure if I felt relief or disappointment when he made no move to acknowledge my presence. Perhaps a little of both. What the hell is the matter with me? Get a grip, Roxanne, and do it fast.
I grabbed the first pair of jeans and a black sweater, some matching underwear—the new ones I got from the mall the day before—and crossed back to the bathroom to get dressed. As I passed, I took one last glance at Logan and caught a glimpse of an image on the screen.
What was that?
I dressed in a hurry and returned to the desk. I came forward to get a better look, and he changed the image to another one before I could make sense of it.
“What's that? Where were you?” I asked, looking at him.
He hadn't shaved today and was dressed all in black. Black long sleeve cotton t-shirt and black jeans. It gave him an appealing, dangerous look.
Ugh, what was I doing? I looked away. I didn't want to be caught staring. Again. He clicked on some folders and began downloading thumbnails without answering, as if he hadn't even heard.
I looked at the screen again.
The first image he showed me was of a blonde girl, wearing some kind of school uniform. She might have been seven or eight, and she was smiling at someone who didn't show in the picture. Logan clicked, enlarging the image, then turned to watch me.
“What?” I asked curiously and took another closer look at the girl, then shook my head. Something about her nagged at me, but… nothing.
“Should I know her?”
Instead of answering, he showed me another photo. This one was of a blonde man in a black business suit.
Again, I found Logan watching me expectantly. I shook my head again. Whatever it was he wanted me to recognize, I wasn't.
The third picture was of a forest-green BMW. The next two were closer pictures of the vehicle, showing the driver—a blonde woman—and the passenger—the blonde girl from the previous photo.
Even before Logan clicked and enlarged the image, recognition jarred in me so painfully, for a moment that felt like an eternity, I felt numb. Empty.
A second passed. Two seconds. Feeling slammed into me so suddenly, so hard, I had trouble breathing.
Hers was the image that haunted my nightmares and my dreams. An image I could draw with my eyes closed.
That woman was my mother. The same blonde hair tied in a high pony tail, the same straight nose. She hadn't changed much… except for the hair. Where it once bounced off her shoulders, it now seemed to be as long as mine. From this angle though, it was hard to tell for sure. If she'd aged, it didn't show.
Logan clicked, and a closer image appeared, taken from another angle. This close… yet so far… there was a tightness in my chest, a heavy ball that pressed against my lungs.
Gone was all the anger and resentment of the past decade, leaving behind the joy, the longing. The love.
Along with a tiny bit of doubt.
Who was that child? Wheels began turning inside my head, and without my asking so, Logan returned to the first image, the one where the child was smiling off the camera to the side.
Now that I knew where to look, I could see the resemblance. The same pale complexion, the same large, almond-shaped eyes. Although her eyes could be a dark brown instead of black like mine. Like hers.
The little girl was my sister. I had a sister.
Then came the implications of what that really meant.
I had been replaced. The girl looked like an average seven or eight, but she could easily pass as small nine or even ten. My mother had moved on.
And the child looked like a miniature of her. That was the familiar thing my subconscious had caught. I might have gotten Mother's black eyes, but that's where the resemblance ended. The rest was all my father's. The dark hair, the height, and even—she had told me once—the bone structure.
Was that it? I resembled too much of the man she had once loved and lost? Or was it because I had inherited his other nature? Or both?
How could a mother, no matter how freakish the child, dispose of her like it was nothing? How a mother could carry a child for nine months, care for her for twelve years then just let her go? Didn't I mean anything to her at all? Couldn't she just have fought for me, then left me to the streets to deal on my own? Anything was better than the torture…
Whoa, what if she didn't know? Didn't know where I was, how to find me, what was happening to me?
“She served them custody papers…” Tommy's words came back to me.
But my father was dead. Wasn't he? Could he still be alive out there somewhere, gained guardianship and, without mother knowing, sold me to the PSS? After all, he was a monster.
He'd send postcards of exotic places in my name to her. She'd have no reason to think about all the horrors I'd been through. Especially if she knew nothing about the world of the preternaturals.
But my father was dead. Otherwise, Logan would have said something. Wouldn't he? I glanced at him, at his watchful expression and looked away. He hadn't denied anything, but he hadn't confirmed either. He'd told me he was going to check his information, nothing else. Should I pressure him? What if what he told me was wrong? What if he suspected my father was alive, but wasn't sure?
Ugh, I had to talk to my mother. I had to hear it from her.
I was aware of Logan's eyes on me, reading the slide show of emotions in my face. I blanked my expression as much as I could and straightened my shoulders.
“Don't do that,” he said. “Let it out. You don't have to hide from me.”
“What do you know? Your mother didn't throw you away like yesterday's garbage and moved away to start a new life.” Inwardly, I was shocked at my own words. Where did that come from?
“I never met my mother. The woman who raised me died when I was… incapacitated,”
“That's not the same, so don't patronize me.”
“Ok.”
“And don't look at me with sympathy and pity in your eyes,” I snapped, ready to strangle him. “Even you are holding back information that's important to me.”
“I don't want to. Would you rather I tell you something and find out later on, after you build your own conclusions, that I had been wrong?” I didn't answer, and he went on, “I know how it feels to be unwanted. My mother,” he smiled thinly, his eyes suddenly cold, “literally threw me out like yesterday's garbage. Archer found me with the rats, wrapped in blankets beside a garbage bin, in mid-December in New York. I learned at a young age that I was better off without her.”
“You're lying,” I said, but it didn't carry much conviction.
Logan turned back to the laptop and logged out. I had a feeling this wasn't a topic he usually spoke about and that he wasn't going to talk about again.
“Is he the man you're going after? This Archer, the person you're risking your life for?”
Logan jerked his head in a nod.
We didn't talk about our pasts after that. Logan ordered food and we discussed our next steps while we ate.
The plan was that Logan would drive me to the Sierra Oaks Vista address later that night and take me to a spot in the back of the house where we'd be concealed and security would be easier to disarm. He'd then create a distraction for the PSS guards' stakeout parked a few blocks away. They had, by the way, cleverly rigged the house's security to their monitor's feed.
From there on, I was on my own. I had around forty-five minutes before the PSS realized they had been duped and returned to their station to re-rig the cameras.
It was a simple plan, but I was suddenly full of doubts.
Chapter Thirty-Four
We left at ten thirty that night, after I allowed Logan to kiss me. It was a kiss goodbye, and I wanted it. For closure, so I wouldn't keep looking back and wondering what if.
I didn't have much to compare it with, but even if I had, I knew I'd neve
r forget it.
My first true kiss.
Now I wondered if I'd have been better off without knowing such a thing existed.
Such a tender, compassionate, sweet kiss. There was no sexual charge in the mix, nor did he try to feel me up. One hand cupped the base of my head, the other rested lightly on my waist.
Then it was over, and we were on our way to our last minutes before the final goodbye.
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye and noticed his white-knuckled grip on the steering, the clenched jaw.
Was he regretting our bargain?
On the backseat were the rolled-up prints I'd given him, along with his laptop and a few belongings. After we parted, we wouldn't be seeing each other again. He had paid for three more nights in the hotel to give me some time to figure out things after I had spoken with my mother.
He'd also given me ten-thousand dollars in cash and promised to FedEx a new driver's license, passport, and a bank account number to the Plaza Hotel in a week from then.
Flashing to the incomprehensible child-like drawings I had handed him in exchange for the exorbitant payment, I knew he was coming out on the losing end of our deal, regardless of his repeated assurance that the prints had been legible.
I had first explained to him the layouts, quizzed him about locations of specific facilities and labs before going over the prints with him one by one. I'd shown him possible places his friend could be found in different hours of the day, then quizzed him about that too. Though he had answered everything correctly, I still wondered if it was enough.
We parked a good fifteen-minute walk away from the Sierra estate and tracked on foot to the back of the house where Logan went to work on the cameras with a wireless hand-held device. He explained to me about scramblers, image freeze, and satellite interference as he worked, but I wasn't really listening.
The night was cold and quiet; no animals were about. The trees rustled occasionally with stray winds and the dark night was made even darker by the clouded sky. To our left was the ten-foot wall, to our right a shallow ditch full of decaying leaves, a few dozen semi-skeletal trees beyond that.
It was the perfect horror movie set before everything went horribly wrong and shifted down to Hell.
Heir of Ashes Page 19
