by Leigh Tudor
Think. Think. Think.
“Shoot,” Ava said with her bottom lip pulled out, “Uncle Jasper has the darned pass.” She put the car in reverse. “Just let me go back to the gravesite and tell him the sexy security guard needs it. He won’t like it, but rules are rules.”
The hapless guard, encouraged by the compliment and perpetually smitten with the points protruding from her shirt, appeared conflicted. Recognizing opportunity, Ava put the gear back into drive. “When do you get off work, Mr. . .?”
“Walker,” he replied. “Jake Walker. I’m off at nine.”
“Well, Mr. Jake Walker, I plan on having a late-night swim.” She leaned closer to him with her chin on her arm, batting her eyelashes. “Why don’t you meet me at the hotel pool when you get off work?”
Ava could barely hear Mara’s low, biting voice. “Jesus H. Christ. You’ve got the acting skills of a D-minus celebrity. This shit’s never going to fly. Fucking go!”
“I tell you what,” Jake Walker said with promise in his eyes, “it’d be improper to interrupt Dr. Bancroft during such a solemn time. Why don’t you ladies go on to the hotel.”
Ava exhaled. Ahh, Jakey-boy was so losing his job.
He scratched the back of his head. “By the way, which hotel are you ladies staying at?”
Fuck.
. . . the name of a local hotel.
“Umm, the one up Highway 47,” Ava said, impressed she remembered the highway but legitimately struggled with a hotel name. She and Mara were never allowed outside of the facility unless escorted, all while getting briefed on their upcoming job as their driver drove them to the airport. She and Mara had traveled the world but knew nothing of the local town. “What’s the name . . .?”
“The Hotel Pompano?” Jake offered. “That’s where some of the other mourners are staying.”
Ava smiled wide and snapped her fingers. “That’s it, the Hotel Pompano. I guess I’ll see you at the pool a little after nine, Mr. Jake Walker. Oh, and if I don’t show up right away, it’s because I’m waiting for Uncle Jasper to fall asleep.”
He winked. “I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.”
The security arm began to rise. Ava couldn’t believe their good luck. And then Lady Luck just as quickly kicked them in the balls.
“Wait a second.”
Jake Walker reappeared at the window as Ava’s heart all but beat out of her chest. She pressed the brake to the floor, her other foot ready to mash down on the gas pedal.
“I fuckin’ told you,” Mara griped.
The young guard leaned back down on his arms in the window. “What’s your name?”
Ava exhaled again, and slowly eased her left foot off the brake.
“Ellie,” Ava said with a wink. And just to irritate Mara a tad bit more, she added, “But my friends call me Ellie May.”
Mara suggested a zigzagging, backtracking, and then moving forward approach to their route as well as changing out vehicles along the way. All in the hopes of confusing anyone who might be tracking them.
After a couple days of driving, they finally reached Albuquerque and decided it was safe to find a room and get some real sleep. And with the cash Ava lifted from the wallet of the still unconscious Jasper before closing the trunk on him one last time, they were able to snag a used laptop at a nearby pawn shop, and to pay for the night at a rundown roadside motel.
Ava sat at a small table while Charlotte and Mara slept on the one double bed. She stared at her computer screen, making some last-minute inputs until the screen began to blur.
She was too tired to continue her work and too weak to keep the memories of that fateful day at bay, when she’d followed the doctor out of the padded room, and he’d led her to Charlotte, who was recovering from surgery. Ava didn’t want to believe it—it was her worst-case scenario realized. A high-risk brain surgery where the soulless bastard, Dr. Vile, had created lesions in sections of her sister’s young brain that Halstead had hoped would trigger certain skill sets, or levels of genius.
Similar to the surgery he’d performed on Mara just a year prior. Surgery he’d promised Ava he would never perform on Charlotte as long as Ava and Mara remained “cooperative.”
As a result of her surgery, Mara had begun to show an aptitude for art. It began as a mild interest and then expanded into a full-blown obsession. The doctor was beyond ecstatic at the outcome, proving out his hypothesis and earning him international attention. And then the doctor brought in an art mentor for Mara, and that’s when her work morphed into something truly special.
Ava would check on Mara throughout the day, between studies with her own mentor, and noticed her sister looking pale and drained of energy.
After long artistic frenzies which could last days, Mara would spend the same amount of time, if not more, sleeping. When Ava approached the doctor about her concerns, he’d wave it off as just “catching up on her sleep.”
Leaning on the flimsy tabletop, she covered her face with her hands. She could recall standing over Charlotte in the recovery room, grasping her hair and shaking her head in disbelief. History had repeated itself. Despite everything she and Mara did to comply with his demands, he’d cut into their little sister’s brain.
The twelve-hour days of study and endless testing of their progress, a never-ending series of events that left them stumbling to their beds at night was all for nothing. Yet, at the time, completely worth every minute to protect their younger sister from a surgery fraught with risk.
When Ava confronted Halstead regarding his broken promise, she realized the true level of duplicity and betrayal from the man who’d promised her otherwise.
He told her she was a selfish and immature child, incapable of appreciating the sacrifice Charlotte had made for the greater good of science. That her selfless act would allow for scientists all over the world to help others like her, below average in intelligence and without any worthwhile defining characteristics, to reach their true potential.
As if Charlotte had had a say in the matter.
As if Charlotte were somehow lacking before the surgery.
If she were honest with herself, deep down, Ava knew it was imminent. With Mara’s continued success, more questions and theories were hypothesized that could only be verified by conducting yet another experiment that required another surgery. And again, one of Ava’s sisters became a human guinea pig at the express pleasure of one fucking mad scientist. Three, if you count Bancroft and Vielle.
Ava later discovered that Mara had been isolated in another room and under sedation during Charlotte’s surgery on standby in the event they needed her for a blood transfusion, as she and Charlotte shared the same blood type. Post-surgery, Halstead gave orders to keep her sedated in light of the issues they were having with Ava.
Ava closed her laptop, extinguishing the only light in the room with the exception of the streetlights that peeked through the metal blinds. Charlotte’s small frame was plastered against Mara, which gave Ava a sliver of the bed to settle into.
Tomorrow was a big day, quite literally the culmination of years of planning. Planning her sisters were virtually unaware of. And although unexpected, Jasper’s interference had worked out to their benefit.
She smiled, wondering if he’d managed to find the trunk release on the S550. Mara had wanted to disable the glowing green button, but Charlotte wouldn’t allow for it, saying that he might not survive otherwise. And despite him being a lowlife scumbag, she would not be a party to murder.
Pulling more covers over herself, she snuggled down, knowing she’d done everything she could to protect herself and her sisters. First thing in the morning, they’d work on disguising themselves in the likely event that authorities were looking for them. And then she would take her sisters home.
She only hoped that Wilder, Texas was the right choice.
She’d made that last-minute decision while sleep-deprived and time-restricted, the name of the town eliciting a warm feeling in her solar plexus. W
ilder, Texas reminded her of those series of books she’d loved as a child. Ava used to read them to Mara and Charlotte, assuring them that one day they would leave the Center and have a father like Mr. Ingalls to care for them.
She was years older now and knew there was no one to look out for them except her. As she told herself a million times, she’d got them into this mess and she’d get them out.
Ava fell asleep to dreams of an idyllic home. A home where new memories would be made and where they were safe. She prayed that would be the case.
Chapter Four
“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.”
—Sofia Kovalevskaya
First woman to obtain a doctorate in mathematics, to be appointed a full professorship in Northern Europe, and to work for a scientific journal as an editor
* * *
“Oh, hell no,” Mara said, white-knuckling the dashboard of the Ford Escort Sedan, her eyes wide. “Tell me this isn’t it, Ava.”
Ava curled one finger around her newly minted, shoulder-length platinum-blond hair. The wood-shingled house looked straight out of a scene from The Walking Dead.
“What? It’s perfect.” She swallowed. The only perfect thing about the house was the fractal patterns and elegant geometric lines she alone could see.
“The house is secluded, so you can paint, and Charlotte can play the piano without anyone the wiser.” A crow lit on the splintered rail of the front porch. An omen. Her smile faltered. “And it’s the best I could find in forty-eight hours.”
“I love it!” Charlotte said, bouncing in the back seat, the fourteen-year-old sprite of a sister forever the optimist. “It’s home. I can feel it in my bones. We can start over and build a real family.”
“It’s an abomination,” Mara grumbled, turning to her sister in accusation. “Tell me this is temporary. As in one night, two tops.”
“Six months.”
Charlotte clapped her hands. “What’s the name of the town? Where do we live?”
Ava clenched her eyes shut. “Wilder.” She turned her head toward the driver’s window, ignoring Mara’s head jerk and open-mouthed expression.
“Seriously? Wilder? Texas?” As expected, Mara dropped her head to the dashboard, repeatedly, as Charlotte bounced out the car door, humming with delirious joy, skipping up the porch steps.
Ava began to second-guess herself. Maybe Wilder, Texas wasn’t such a good idea? There were those still at the Center who remembered her obsession with the series, for one. And just lately, she’d been reading them to Charlotte.
Ava quickly followed Charlotte, partly to distance herself from Mara. “Be careful. The realtor said the place has been empty for eighteen months. The key should be under the concrete troll next to the front door.”
Charlotte held up the key as if she’d found a hidden treasure, and Mara sided stealthily up next to her older sister. Just as Charlotte skipped through the front door, Mara had Ava in a headlock.
“What the fuck, Mara,” Ava gasped, her fingers wrapped around her sister’s solid forearm.
“Wilder-fucking-Texas? Are you serious?” The pressure increased.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, pray tell, what could I be thinking? That you picked our new home, aka hideout, based on your obsession with a TV show set in the godforsaken prairie in the eighteen-hundreds?”
“Of course not,” Ava said weakly, her face reddening with the increasing pressure, “that would be . . . crazy.” She weakened alongside the lie, Mara’s hold relaxing slightly. Recognizing a window of opportunity, she grabbed her sister’s thigh, bringing them both to land in a pile of dust.
“Jesus, Mara, shave much?”
Mara gasped, finding her head in her sister’s armpit. “Please, your deodorant quit back in fucking Abilene, you delusional shrew.” She flipped Ava over, gaining the advantage. “This has got to stop, Ava. Get your head out of Michael Landon’s ass, and get a grip on reality. We’re running from some really sick criminal shitholes and your head is in the clouds, searching for fucking Pine Nut Grove.”
“It’s Walnut Grove, you illiterate. And all I’m trying to do is bring some normalcy to Charlotte’s life.”
Mara pushed Ava’s cheek into the dirt, making her spit and cough. “Normal is not a fucking TV show,” she panted. “A TV show that people at the Center know you’re obsessed with.”
“A TV show based on a series of books.” Not sure of the significance of that, but by God Ava wasn’t going to be labeled crazy.
When they’d first arrived at the Center, those contraband books were the only link she had to an idyllic childhood. After spending tireless days working on mathematical formulas, graphing tangents, and reading through hundreds of financials searching for anomalies on behalf of Doctor Halstead, she’d pull the books from under her plastic-sheathed mattress and dream about a life she desperately craved for herself and, more importantly, her sisters. It wasn’t crazy. It was . . . a coping mechanism.
Because in truth, their jacked-up life was her fault and her responsibility to make it right. She had to fix it. Fix them.
What better place to do that than a small prairie town in Texas?
Ava gained a foothold, twisting her torso, pinning her knee on Mara’s chest. “I had forty-eight hours to find a town with a secluded house for rent. I created new identities for us . . . and hacked half a dozen government agencies to embed them online.” She moved her knees over Mara’s biceps, putting as much pressure on them as possible. “I did this, by the way, at night after driving all the way from the Center while you snored and drooled on my pillow. Here’s a tip: You may want to wash off your dime store mascara before sleeping on other people’s pillows. Jesus, where were you raised, a fucking barn?”
Mara lifted her head. “No, a medical facility, where our laptops were blocked from online stores like Sephora.”
“How many times have I told you that for every night you sleep with your makeup on, you age seven years?” All of Ava’s body weight was digging into her sister’s arms, and one of Mara’s legs was attempting to wrap itself around her neck for leverage. “How many times, Mar?”
“That’s enough.”
The entangled sisters froze instantly. Ava looked up sheepishly at their little sister, standing on the front porch, her hands where her hips might be in a couple of years. Ava pulled away, slowly dusting herself off as Mara did the same.
“You both promised.”
She was right. They did promise. While driving along winding rural roads, and then backtracking those same routes to confuse any potential trackers, there was plenty of time to talk. Ava and Mara answered as many of Charlotte’s questions as honestly as they could without providing too many graphic details. This included a high-level explanation of the contracted jobs the doctor had coerced them into executing.
Quick wit and their so-called individual gifts were oftentimes the edges they needed to crack a safe, replace a priceless painting with one of Mara’s replicas or scale the side of a twenty-story building only to be greeted by an enemy with a Glock 26 or a SOG Bowie knife.
Some were military-type assignments that involved intel gathering or hacking into high-security databases. After some time, the sisters questioned whether they were the good guys or the bad guys. The longer they were in the field, the blurrier the lines of morality became and the more they began to rebel.
When they forced the doctor’s hand, he threatened them with Charlotte’s future, stating that if they found their assignments questionable from a moral perspective, then it was time to indoctrinate Charlotte into the fold: discontinue her concert performances and begin combat training.
And then he dangled the idea of submitting Charlotte to more brain lesions to uncover levels of genius that were more lucrative than being a piano prodigy. That freaked them out and shut them up quick.
There was nothing more frightening than the experimental shit that went on behind closed doors
at the Center. And she vowed to do whatever it took to protect Charlotte from another of the doctor’s “trans-cranial” procedures.
“What?” Ava shrugged her shoulders. “We’re just joking around. You know how sisters are.”
“No.” Charlotte shook her head. “That’s not how sisters are. Wrestling and throwing each other in the dirt is what brothers do. Sisters support and love one another, share their clothes, and paint each other’s toenails.”
Ava doubted the truth in that statement but she’d be damned if she was going to be the one to break her sister’s idyllic bubble.
Charlotte remained undeterred. “You both promised. You promised we could start over and have a normal family.”
“It’s okay, Char, really,” Ava said, jogging up the steps. “We’re just letting off steam. But we’re going to stop. Right, Mar?” She turned to her sister, widening her eyes, compelling her to chime in.
Thankfully, Mara complied. “All good, li’l bit.” Mara shook the dust from her newly cropped pixie cut. “But you may want to cut us some slack as we figure out what normal is. We’ve been living in a rather sterile, nonstandard living environment for the last eight years.”
“You were cursing,” Charlotte added, refusing to cut them any sisterly slack.
Mara coughed, both her and Ava looking everywhere but at their sister. Freak of nature that she was, it was as if she’d been born from an entirely different gene pool.
Ava confessed, “You’re right. Mara and I were cursing. Which is a bad habit and one we promise to break. Right, Mara?”
“Fuck, no.”
Ava turned her head slightly and Mara rolled her eyes and recanted. “I meant, heck, yeah.”
Ava continued, “So your call. You want to start a ‘swear jar’ where we have to put money in it every time we cuss?”
“Or you could make us do hours of calisthenics as punishment,” Mara offered enthusiastically, which to her would have been anything but.
