Jaden Baker

by Courtney Kirchoff

  Though Jaden had not lived with anyone for sixteen years, the thought of staying with Libby didn’t sucker punch him. She didn’t ask questions, and while that was odd, maybe what she knew about Archcroft filled in the blanks. Maybe she had more information that would help him.

  An unsettling idea crept into his mind. Was Libby an angel of good, or Archcroft’s messenger demon sent to retrieve him? Would she press a button, make an urgent call telling Joseph Madrid that Jaden was in Washington, and would detain him until Madrid arrived? Was the speedy getaway all part of her ruse, and now the offer of her home the next act in the play?

  He watched her move: the way she smiled crookedly when she spoke, how her calves flattened when she crossed one over the other. She looked directly into his eyes, her stare steady and sure. Jaden doubted Libby had anything to do with Archcroft. When he bumped into her at the drugstore this morning, she was there to shop, not to spy. Hadn’t he found her, not the other way around?

  If she was an extension of Joseph Madrid, wouldn’t he have told her exactly how to control Jaden, rendering this conversation unnecessary? Nothing stopped Jaden from walking away, and he would know if she followed. If he did go with her (a thought that caused his stomach to flutter nervously) and something went wrong, he could easily get away.

  Her plan made sense. Archcroft knew Jaden was in Seattle. The first thing he did when he’d escaped was flee the city, and they’d found him, sent a helicopter and two cars to retrieve him. How many other SUVs and helicopters had been dispatched around San Francisco at that time, covering all likely exits?

  Joseph would predict Jaden’s next move based on what he did ten years ago: run. But if Jaden did as Libby suggested, hiding until he thought of an actual escape plan other than Leave The City, it gave him a fighting chance. One of Seattle’s appeals was its many avenues of departure. North to Canada, west into the Pacific, east to the rest of the United States. Like resting in the church in San Francisco, staying with Libby was something unexpected. Joseph Madrid would not expect to find Jaden staying—hiding—with a young woman. Jaden was a loner. Waiting a few days, confusing Archcroft, disappearing without a real trace...

  “Are you sure?” Jaden asked Libby.

  Libby’s crooked smirk transformed into a beaming smile. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  Jaden nodded and scratched the top of Cat’s head, who purred again. “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

  He put his backpack in the trunk of the car.

  When he sat in the passenger’s seat, Libby took out her phone.

  “Who are you calling?” he asked, panicking.

  “No one. I’m checking the ferry schedule. If it’s soon, we’ll just take it across. If not we’ll drive around. But it would take forever, and I think it’s best if we get you out of the public eye as quickly as possible.”

  Jaden nodded.

  “There’s a boat leaving in twenty minutes,” Libby said, tossing her phone into her purse and revving the engine to life, shifting from first to second, third and jumping into fifth.

  Cat’s eyes were wide and his body stiff as he looked outside. He slithered out of Jaden’s grasp to the floor by Jaden’s feet, his whiskers low, ears flat, staring around with petrified eyes.

  “It’s okay Cat, we’ll slow down once we hit the ferry,” Libby cooed.

  Libby weaved through traffic in her small car with little effort. When Jaden chanced a glance at her, he saw her lips were trying not to inch up into a smile. She liked driving like a crazy person.

  The line at the ferry terminal was short. Libby handed her credit card to the attendant, and Jaden watched out the opposite window, keeping his eyes away from the ticket booth. Once she paid the toll, she cruised to the ferry line, and both were delighted to see cars already boarding the large white and green boat. She pulled in behind a black Cadillac Escalade and followed it onto the ferry. A man wearing an orange mesh vest pointed them to the starboard side, and Libby followed the Escalade and parked.

  She turned off her car and leaned her head back into the seat, removing her sunglasses. It was quiet then. Libby did not fill the silence with questions or comments. Instead she looked at Cat, still frozen with fear around Jaden’s feet.

  “Libby’s short for Elizabeth?” Jaden asked. His voice seemed loud.

  “It is. One of many shortenings.”

  “What’s your full name?” he asked, painfully aware of his scratchy voice in the small car, so savage compared to her quiet, low voice.

  “Elizabeth Ann James,” she answered, eyes crinkling as she looked at him.

  “It’s pretty,” he said, but felt ridiculous saying it. Elizabeth James. It had a pleasant sound.

  “Thanks,” she beamed. “I like it,” she said. She bit her lip then asked: “Are you going to tell me yours, or are you not ready yet? Shall I just call you ‘Bob’?”

  He swallowed, and wasps, not butterflies, buzzed in his gut. Libby was the first person he actually wanted to tell his real name. She knew about Archcroft, she understood his need for secrecy and privacy. Any of the made up names he’d scrawled last night would have sufficed; she wouldn’t know any different. But she was opening her home to him, wanting to keep him safe. Refusing to give his real name would be a betrayal.

  “Jaden,” he said, his own name strange on his tongue. The only time he heard it anymore was from Seth. “My name is Jaden Baker.” Even stranger, the last with the first. His full name.

  Libby grinned, her smile sedating the wasps in his stomach. “Jaden,” she said, her voice soft. “That’s a nice name.”

  “I don’t have a middle name,” he said. He watched the city sky line fall further behind him as the ferry churned forward. A freighter and cruise ship were coming into the Puget Sound, floating toward the ferry.

  “You want to go outside?” Libby asked. “Have you been on the ferry before?”

  “No, actually,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a boat.”

  Libby unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped outside, Jaden followed. Cat showed no interest in moving, opting to stay in the lowest part of the car. Jaden stood beside Libby, the wind whipping hair around her face.

  Maybe it was because the boat was so large, Jaden felt little movement at all, no swaying. Seattle, set against a clear blue sky, was beautiful, the tall buildings massive even from the water. The signature Space Needle gleamed white in the fresh morning.

  West of them, coming closer, Bainbridge Island.

  “You want to go up front?” Libby asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to go up top.”

  “Understood,” she said, and they headed to the bow of the ship, passing parked cars, to watch the shore come closer. The towering snowcapped Olympic Mountains rose above the densely wooded, rolling hills of Bainbridge Island.

  “What do you do for a living?” he asked.

  “I’m a freelance web designer,” she said.

  “You don’t work for anyone else?” he asked.

  “I do, I work for different businesses, but I don’t have a boss, if that’s what you mean,” she said. She used her sunglasses to keep her hair in place, pinning them to the top of her head.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” She said, nodding again, her arms crossed in the wind. “What about you, how do you make money?”

  “I help out at a freight company,” he said, wishing it sounded more glorious.

  “You don’t carry ID with you,” she said.

  “I don’t have ID,” he said. “They can’t find me.”

  “So you can’t work full time anywhere?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” he said. “I’m not on the books, but I work ten hours a day, five days a week, lifting and unloading boxes. I get paid under the table.”

  “No income tax?” she asked, squinting into the light, her nose crinkled.

  “No income tax,” he said.

  “And did you pay rent for that building?”

  “No.
Homeless people lived there when I found it. But I...acquired it.”

  “No taxes, no rent. Wow. Well, that doesn’t suck, I guess.”

  Jaden kept silent on those points. He didn’t know what it was like to be a fully integrated member of society, paying taxes and belonging to country clubs, tennis on the weekends. Libby drove a car, she accessed the ferry with a credit card, lived in a three bedroom house across from Seattle, had a job that paid her, worked from the comfort of home. She could never fully understand where he came from, and that was one of many reasons he kept to the outside, avoiding people. They always asked questions.

  “I guess compared to what you have, my little life isn’t so bad, huh?” she asked after a moment, as if reading his mind.

  He smirked. “Probably not.”

  “So I’ll never win that ‘Who has it worse’ game with you, will I?” she said sighing.

  “There’s a game?”

  “You haven’t heard it? Oh yeah. So if I were to say I broke my elbow once, someone might say they shattered their knee in a skiing accident. Then I could complain about my electricity bill, and someone else might say they had no electricity for a whole month. You haven’t heard that game?”

  “I know it. I haven’t played it in a while,” he said. “But I haven’t had electricity for ten years.”

  “Damn. See? I knew I’d lose,” she laughed.

  He shrugged. “It’s not that you’re losing the game, I just always win.”

  “Yeah we’ll see about that,” she said. “Did you have thick glasses, bad hair, and walk around high school in giant clown shoes?”

  “No,” Jaden said.

  “Ha!” she said. “Round two goes to me, then.”

  “I didn’t make it to fourth grade,” he said.

  Libby’s forehead creased, her mouth open in an O. Then she shook her head. “Dammit,” she muttered. “Fine, you win round two, but I’ll get the next one.”

  Jaden almost felt like laughing, but he didn’t. They watched as the terminal came closer and the ferry slowed, churning massive amounts of water as the engines reversed.

  “We need to get back to the car,” Libby said, and Jaden followed her to the blue Honda. He made sure Cat was still there before getting in.

  Bainbridge Island was covered in trees, at least it looked that way from the roads. Libby steered them onto the main highway after going through a small section of town made up of shops. It was on the highway, once they were clear of traffic, that the questions he’d been expecting finally came.

  “You didn’t make it to fourth grade?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “So...” she watched her speedometer, staying just above the posted speed limit. “So can I ask what happened?”

  Jaden had always lied to anyone who asked who he was, and likewise lied about where he came from, infusing bits of the truth to make it somewhat believable to his own ears.

  Now though, with his real identity in the open, and to a person who knew about Archcroft, his real history flowed naturally. It would lead to more questions, which concerned him, but he was also curious about how the truth would sit with someone who may believe him.

  “I was taken when I was nine,” Jaden said, the memory coming back to him, replaying before his eyes. Going downstairs, being grabbed from behind, the struggle to scream, being injected with a drug, watching as hooded figures overtook him—he was paralyzed and useless against them. He remembered it well.

  “Taken?” she asked.

  “Kidnapped. Abducted,” he said, watching the trees zoom past him.

  “Taken where?” she asked, her eyebrows drawn down, mouth twisted open, eyes alert. “And why?”

  Jaden chewed on the answer before spitting. Joseph’s lab was in San Francisco, but he didn’t know where Dalton’s was, except it was under a house, presumably Dalton’s own home.

  “San Francisco,” he answered, for the sake of simplicity. “Underground. Well, I’m not sure where I was taken at first,” he said, clarifying, not comfortable with the omission. “But it was also underground.”

  Libby kept whipping her head to his face and back to the road, her shocked expression more pronounced with each word spoken.

  “Oh my gosh, for how long?” she asked.

  “Six years,” he said, surprised at how easily the truth came.

  “Six years?” she repeated. “Six years underground? Oh jeez. How many people were down there with you?” Her voice had become high-pitched.

  “What do you mean, ‘with me’?” he asked.

  “How many others like you? Were there a bunch of kids down there? Oh this is sick. So there’s a lab in San Francisco, underground, where they do weird experiments on children? I knew Archcroft was twisted, but my God!”

  Jaden waited before answering, watching her shake her head in disgust.

  “Just me,” he said quietly. “And the staff.”

  She slammed the brakes to keep from hitting a water truck, then stared at him.

  “Just you?”

  “Just me,” he said. The wasps returned, because the truth was coming. Why take Jaden, why take him down below for six years. What was so special about him? He wasn’t ready to tell her yet. It wasn’t something he told. How would that conversation go?

  “I’m sure you want to know why,” Jaden said, heading her off, “and I’ll tell you, but not yet.” It was a lot to think about, a lot to explain. As he considered how he would tell her, he decided it was better if it was shown.

  Now that he was away from Seattle, out of immediate danger, his body reminded him it was time to refuel. He had not eaten at all last night due to nausea, and before doing anything else he needed calories. Then he would show her.

  “So there is a reason?” Libby asked.

  “Yes,” Jaden replied. “There’s a reason.”

  “You don’t have some kind of rare disease, do you?”

  Jaden looked at her incredulous face. “No. I don’t have any disease. It’s nothing like that.” He tried remembering the reactions of Derek and Jenny sixteen years ago when items slid across the table into his hand. They spent so little time together, remembering their faces was difficult.

  Libby lived in the country, on the outskirts of a small Norwegian town. She drove her little car up a hill and through thick trees until coming to a gravel driveway which was almost invisible to the road, a mailbox painted with horses and hounds the only marker. After scaling a slight hill, they came to a small, wood-stained house with a pitched dark green roof, and large windows. There was no garage, only a carport. A horse trailer and old Ford pickup were parked on a cement slab off the carport. Libby parked inside.

  “We’re here!” she said, then got out.

  Jaden reached for Cat, who was stiff and did not move when Jaden collected him. He held Cat to his chest as he got out of the car, then grabbed his backpack from the trunk.

  “This is yours?” he asked. There was small yard, which ran to the back of the property, where two horses grazed in an open field.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You want to come in?”

  He followed her, feeling uneasy. Before he could get a good look, two small dogs with long hair came bounding from upstairs, barking loudly and running at both of them. Cat leapt from Jaden’s arms and skittered as fast as possible through the hall, both dogs giving chase. When Libby called them off they returned to Jaden, jumping on his legs, tails wagging, their ears back, their lack of proper muscles making it impossible for them to smile.

  Jaden kneeled to pet the dogs, who pushed each other to get to him. Their long hair was soft to the touch. One was mostly black with white and tan on its nose, tan patches above the eyes. The other was reddish brown with a white mane. They were both the same breed, like Lassie only smaller.

  “What kind of dogs?” Jaden asked, scratching the chest of the black dog.

  “Shetland Sheepdogs. They are not miniature collies. That one is Trinity, and this one is Tucker,” she said, ru
bbing the brown dog. “Shelties, they’re called. Trinity is a tri-black, and Tucker here is a sable. The classic look. They like cats, so I’m hoping Cat will come out when he’s ready.”

  After the dogs had enough loving, they took off down the hall, chasing each other around the house, still excited about the new person. Libby’s home had polished wood floors, green walls, and cathedral ceilings. Libby opened a door to what was obviously her office: a converted bedroom. Inside was an L-desk with two large computer monitors. The walls were decorated with artwork and movie posters, and a skinny bookshelf stood in a corner. She set a folder on a table. Then she led him into the living room. It had a massive and colorful rug on the floor, bright paintings on the walls, and obviously squishy and comfortable furniture. Best of all were the expansive windows looking over the horse pasture and the wooded hills, to the majestic Olympic Mountain range.

  “My view kicks ass,” Libby said. “Here’s the kitchen,” she said, pointing to the room off the side, “and the dining room.” Upstairs were the two extra bedrooms. Libby led him into the first room. The room was stuffed with boxes and books, but it was perfect. He tossed his backpack on the bed then sat down, looking through the window to the mountains.

  “Are you hungry?” Libby asked.

  Jaden took a deep breath as he turned to see her. “Yes,” he said. Was she going to make him lunch? They were strangers and knew so little about each other, yet she was going to make him lunch, like they were what, acquaintances? “I have money,” he said, fumbling in his pack for rolls of cash. “I don’t want to take from you.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, waving her hands.

  “Well, I eat a lot. Let me help.”

  “If you eat me out of house and home I’ll let you buy my groceries. But please let me make you lunch. Sandwiches all right?”