A Million Shadows

by Janci Patterson

  “Maybe it would,” Kalif said. He shook his head like he really hated what he was going to say. “Or maybe you should really take her up on her offer.”

  Blood drained from my face.

  “Think about it,” he said quietly. “If your mom tried to kill herself, then she needs to stay in the hospital. I don’t know exactly what’s been going on, but I know you can’t handle that by yourself. No one could. How will you stop her from trying this again? And you’re right, because of the hospital records—"

  My hands shook. “They’re going to find her.” I hated him for being right. Besides, I had no idea what kind of medical problems she might have as a result of this. What if she couldn’t eat?

  What if she didn’t wake up?

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think that way. When my parents were kidnapped, Kalif had insisted that I tell myself we’d find them alive until I was proven wrong. That kind of thinking was the only way to keep my brain clear enough to keep working.

  The hospital could be a safe place for Mom, if someone was protecting her. Aida might have the resources to keep the Carmines from finding her medical records. She’d kept them from finding out about Kalif for years and years, after all. Mom could get the help she needed, the help I obviously couldn’t give her.

  Finding Mel would be a small price to pay if it kept Mom safe.

  The blip paused briefly, probably at a light, then continued on again.

  First things first. “She still has a tracker on you,” I said. “You need to find it. We need to scope her out first, in case she’s not alone.”

  Kalif opened his computer bag.

  I looked over at the wide glass windows surrounding the emergency room. As soon as Aida got close, she’d see us, and I looked way too close to my home face. She’d recognize me.

  “Not here,” I said. “The bathroom?”

  Kalif nodded, and we both ducked into the women’s room, which was thankfully empty. We went into the handicapped stall, where there was plenty of room for us both. Kalif searched his bag while I looked at his phone.

  Aida was moving toward the parking lot. “If her tracker has the same precision as yours,” I said, "she’ll know which section of the building we’re in, but not exactly where, or which floor.”

  Kalif cracked open the back of his laptop, scanning the contents.

  “Not here,” he said. “It’s too obvious, plus I found one here before. She’d pick something else.”

  I scooped up the bag itself and started running my nails over the seams, searching for lumps. “I’m not finding anything here.”

  Kalif ran his hands over the hems of his pants. “I trade my clothes out all the time,” he said. “None of these have been in the apartment. I wouldn’t risk my grandparents tracking me.”

  I finished with the bag and looked up at him. “But your mom? Has she had access to any of them?”

  He shook his head. “Not the clothes, but—" He swore, and pulled off his shoes.

  I looked them over as he lifted them. The leather seam lines all looked uniform and intact, but there was a scratch in the arch of the left one, a line so thin it might have been a scuff mark.

  “There,” I said, pointing. Kalif pulled, and the rubber separated, leaving behind a sticky residue, like it had been glued back together. There, tucked between the layers, was the black tip of a tracking bug.

  Kalif went pale. He swore again. “I missed it.”

  I shook my head. “Your mother’s good, and she missed the one you have on her, right? We can’t all catch everything all the time.”

  I pulled the tracker out with my fingernails.

  “We can plant it on someone,” Kalif said. “Lead her away from us, and tail her.”

  I looked at Kalif’s phone again. Aida’s tracker was in the building. She could be right outside the door for all we knew. If we moved with the thing, even as far as finding a mark to stick it on, she might be able to match our movements and figure out what personas we were using.

  Speaking of, I definitely needed a new one.

  “There’s no time,” I said. And, cliché though it was, I dropped the tracker into the toilet and flushed it.

  “It’ll take her thirty seconds to figure out you did that,” Kalif said. “Which will also pinpoint where we are. Let’s shift and get out of here.”

  I nodded, unlocked the stall, and checked the bathroom. There were still no witnesses, so I moved the garbage can in front of the door and then stood in front of the mirror. I aged my face twenty years, adding crow’s feet, forehead wrinkles, and a chin mole. I adjusted the angles of my face to look severe and unapproachable. That was as much for Aida’s benefit as the other people at the hospital. In all cases I wanted to look like the sort of woman who made others get out of her way.

  Kalif came out of the stall twenty years older and forty pounds heavier, straining the buttons on his shirt. I smiled.

  “Thought you’d like that,” he said. “I couldn’t go any heavier in these clothes.”

  He was getting better at moving naturally with the extra weight. He must have been practicing.

  I squinted at his clothes. “Those aren’t the clothes you were wearing when you were with your mom earlier, are they?”

  “I changed again before meeting you. But she must have had access to the shoes at some point. I must have mixed them up with another pair.”

  It would be easy to do that, with as often as he’d had to change clothes and as thoroughly as he’d been bugged.

  I hesitated by the door. If Aida knew what I’d done with the tracker, she could catch us in these personas. I needed some way to know I was looking at her before she knew she was looking at me.

  “What’s her number?” I asked.

  Kalif rattled off the digits.

  I dialed the numbers into his phone, moved the garbage can aside, and stepped out into the hallway as the phone began to ring. No one was waiting in the hall, so I scanned the emergency waiting room. There were two new people: a black-haired woman in a muumuu filling out intake paperwork, and a redhead in a blue blazer and black slacks, hugging her stomach and toying with her phone. Aida could be either of them, or neither.

  Then the redhead frowned, reached into her pocket, and put a different phone to her ear. I could see her mouth moving, in sync with the voice in my ear. “Hello?” Aida said.

  She looked around, but turned first toward the windows. I slipped back into the bathroom. There was no second exit, and no windows, either.

  We were trapped.

  I pointed out the door and nodded, so Kalif would know what I’d found. Then I spoke in Kalif’s voice. “Mom?” I said. “I was running a job at a hospital in San Mateo. Do you think you could pick me up?”

  Kalif cringed next to me. He spoke in a whisper. “Is that really what I sound like?”

  He pressed his cheek against mine, listening to her response.

  “Please,” she said. “I know you’re with Jory. Why are you two at a hospital? And what the hell is she still doing in California? When we spoke earlier she was right here in San Jose.”

  I bit my lip. She was trying to get me to confirm information, and wanted us to believe she was still in San Jose, which meant she didn’t know about Kalif’s bug. “I’m not with her,” I said. “I was just—"

  “Looking for Dad,” Kalif whispered.

  "—running some surveillance, looking for Dad in the medical records. I’d been doing it for a while, but the conversation with Jory this morning reminded me to follow up. And since you wanted to find him—"

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” she said. “Is Jory hurt?”

  She was still fishing. She sounded sincere, but Aida always had, the scores of times she’d lied to me before.

  “I told you I was running a job,” I said.

  “Don’t play games with me,” Aida said. “I just want to talk to her in person. We got off on the wrong foot. You know I won’t hurt her.”

  I filled m
y voice with scorn. “I think you got off on the wrong foot when you tried to kill her family. She’ll never agree to that.”

  “Okay,” Kalif whispered. “That did sound like me.”

  “Convince her,” Aida said.

  I shivered. Something about the way she said that made me feel like a cornered mouse. This could all be a setup. My mom. The pills. Even Kalif. They knew I would call him when I found her like that, didn’t they?

  Kalif squeezed my arm, bringing me back to reality. If this was a setup, it was stupidly elaborate. It would be easier to take my mom hostage than it would be to shove pills down her throat. If they had my mom, they wouldn’t need to send her to the hospital to manipulate me.

  No, the simpler answer was that Mom was just a mess.

  My stomach dropped. Such a mess that she tried to kill herself, just to escape. And I knew about it. I should have helped her out of it. I should never have gotten her those pills. The edges of my vision went black, and if Kalif hadn’t been holding onto me, I might have slid to the floor. I hadn’t been back to talk to the doctor. I’d just disappeared, before they could tell me anything.

  My mother might already be dead.

  Aida continued. “I’m done playing games. I take it you called because you already know that I’m here. Congratulations, you found my tracker before I found yours. I’m going to go sit in the café near the main entrance and drink a coffee for my headache. I’ll see you soon.”

  Then she hung up.

  Either she had known about the tracker, or she’d guessed. I should have thought faster. Now if I wanted to meet her, we were on her terms.

  I looked at Kalif. “Convince me?”

  Kalif shrugged. “Do you want me to, or are you asking why she thinks that I can?”

  I hesitated. Too long.

  Kalif put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s not a setup. I’m not working with her.”

  I believed him. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate everything about this.” Because even I could see that I was backed into a corner, and bargaining with Aida was the best way out. “I can’t focus on her right now. I need to get back to see my mom, to find out if she’s even still alive. Because if she dies back there, we’re all in a hell of a lot more trouble than—"

  Kalif pulled out his laptop and motioned for me to follow him back into a stall. “I can check on her from here,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

  I stood outside the stall, in case anyone came in. “Please tell me the hospital security isn’t so bad that you can hack into the medical records in minutes.”

  “No,” he said. “But I can look at them because I’m already in the system.”

  “In the system,” I said, "at this hospital.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s part of what I’ve been doing for the last two months. My grandparents are tracking medical records, looking for someone with those scars they gave your mother so they can find you two. I’ve been trying to stay one step ahead of them, so I can try to cover anything that would lead them to you. If they’d gotten close, I could have warned you. But now that she’s been admitted . . . I won’t be able to fix all the records, and if even one gets by me, they’ll be on her before I can throw them off the trail, and you won’t be able to move her fast enough to stop them.”

  I gripped the stall door. “If you’re in the system, can you fix her record? Make it so they can’t see it?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But if I’m going to make it invisible only to them, so that the rest of the doctors can still access it . . . that would take time. Lots of it.”

  I nodded. Time was one thing it seemed we never had enough of.

  “Okay,” he said after a minute. “I found her record. She’s alive, and stabilizing. They’re starting the process to transfer her to the psych ward.”

  My knees went weak.

  She was stabilizing. Stable meant alive.

  “She’s okay,” I said.

  Kalif scanned the record. “She is. For the moment. No notes about shifting faces, or calls to the police, or anything. They’ve noted the scars, but hopefully my grandparents haven’t picked up on it yet. Their trace will hopefully take some time.” He cringed. “But we don’t know how much.”

  “And not as long as it would take you to cover it up.” We needed to act fast, which meant it was time to make a decision.

  “You want me to talk to your mother,” I said.

  Kalif stepped out of the stall and put a hand on my shoulder. “Think about it. Security is tighter here than most places. She’s not going to be able to kidnap you, and she may be able to help. I think we should hear her out.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if this backfires, I’m going to punch you.”

  Kalif nodded somberly. “If this backfires, I’ll deserve it. Right in the face, okay?”

  My whole body ached. “Okay,” I said. “You’d better believe that I will.”

  Seven

  Together Kalif and I walked around to the main doors of the hospital, him with his gained weight, me with my no-nonsense persona I’d cooked up just for Aida. I didn’t want to reuse it in case she’d seen me from the waiting room, but I couldn’t hide from her and work with her at the same time. That was the thing about cooperation. Some level of risk was unavoidable.

  This will be fine, I told myself. But I didn’t believe me. The best of bad options was still a bad option.

  Kalif took my hand in his. It wasn’t until then that I realized my fingers were shaking.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him, either. And even now that I was aware of it, even with all of my practice at muscle control, I couldn’t get the trembling to stop.

  Logically I knew I should feel at least a little bit better, knowing Mom was stable enough to be transferred out of emergency. But I felt instead like I’d tipped face-first over a cliff. What if I’d stayed to watch that whole movie with Kalif? What if I’d run a job before going home? Would Mom have come to on the kitchen floor, safer and better off than she was now?

  Or would I have found her body, cold and faceless?

  My mouth watered. I was going to puke.

  Kalif jerked on my arm, pulling me to a stop. There, through the glass doors of the main entrance, sitting at the café in the hospital lobby, was Aida, still wearing the redhead persona. She sat at a two-person table, but had already dragged over a third chair. She didn’t appear to be watching for us, focusing instead on her phone. As if she didn’t have to be nervous.

  As if she was in complete and total control.

  Through the glass, I scanned the exits. There were the doors we were looking through. There was an elevator, and a stairwell near it, and four hallways stretching out of the lobby like spokes on a wheel.

  Kalif was right. The hospital had security. Aida wasn’t dressed as law enforcement, and even if she had a hidden badge, I would have plenty of opportunity to undermine her persona. If she wanted to nab me, there were easier places to do it. But she’d come here, probably to help me feel safe.

  And no doubt also to find out what we were doing here.

  Kalif held his grip on my hand as we approached. When we arrived, Aida looked casually up, and put out her hand.

  I hadn’t used my signal with her in a while, but I remembered it. I’d remember it until the day I died—my body became so familiar with patterns it shifted often that it could recall them from muscle memory.

  I pulled my hand away from Aida as quickly as I could and took the seat across from her, leaving the one next to her for Kalif.

  Aida’s eyes flicked back to her phone. “Your mother is stable,” she said. “That’s good news.”

  My stomach dropped. “You’re in the system, too. You have access to her records.”

  Aida looked straight at me. “We’re in all the systems. Your mother’s medical condition is the easiest way to identify you.”

  I shoved my hands under the table so Aida wouldn’t notice the shaking. “H
ave your parents seen them?” Kalif had said that they hadn’t. But that could change in a heartbeat, and once they knew where Mom was—

  “Not yet,” Aida said.

  I stared at her, and she stared back with a calm, even gaze. The message was clear. If I didn’t cooperate with her, she’d lead them right to us. I wouldn’t even have time to run a con to get my mother out.

  They’d be on us immediately.

  “Can you stop them from finding her?” I asked.

  Aida nodded. “I’m the one they have looking for you. I can control what they see; even if they do find the lead, I can show them evidence that they’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “They trust you to do that?” I asked. “They won’t come themselves to check up on you? Or send someone else who works for them?”

  Aida shook her head. “My parents may be tracking our every move,” she said, "but they have no reason to believe that I won’t lead them right to you. I did it before.”

  My hands tightened on my knees. I didn’t miss the threat.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  Aida smiled. “I already told you what I want. I want to help you hide from my parents long enough for you to find Mel. Maybe longer, if you show me you’re willing to work with me.”

  I looked down at the table. We were no longer talking about a bargain, and I didn’t have leverage to negotiate the terms. Unless I could do something about it quick, my mother was her hostage.

  But Kalif was right. She was a hostage currently getting the medical care that she needed—the help I could never give her. I could fight against Aida, I could try to get my mother away before she brought the Carmines down on us.

  And maybe find her on the floor tomorrow. Dead. Or, just as bad, get her killed in the escape plan.

  Like my father.

  I tried to keep my face from betraying emotion, but Aida must have known her threats were working. She gave me a look of practiced sympathy. “I’m sorry about your mother. But in a way this is good news. Security in the psychiatric ward will be the tightest in the hospital.”

  I wanted to punch her right in the throat. In no way was my mother’s hospitalization good news.