Filing cabinets.
Computers.
Papers covering every available surface.
Bingo.
I started with his desk and looked for anything with Chimera letterhead. Nada. I looked through every scrap of paper, every Post-it note, the passwords taped to the bottom of one of his drawers. After committing that last one to memory, I moved on.
All I needed was a lead—the location of the main lab, the name of the project, Davis’s contact at Chimera … anything.
A light flickered somewhere in the distance, and I glanced out through the thick, opaque window separating the office from the hallway on the other side.
Someone was coming.
I pressed myself back against a wall, willing my body flat, hiding my face in the shadows. I waited—and whoever it was walked right by. As the sound of footsteps became softer, more distant, I set back to work, all too aware that the next time, I might not be so lucky.
It didn’t take me long to find the keys to the filing cabinet, but the files they contained weren’t exactly what I would call helpful—more protocols, long printouts of data, medical information for the graduate assistants who worked in the Davis lab. Next, I turned my attention to the desk drawers, the credenza, the cushions in his black IKEA sofa.
And that’s when I hit pay dirt: a cell phone, presumably Professor Davis’s, was wedged in the crack between the cushions and the back of the sofa. I pried it loose and started scrolling through the recent calls.
BETHANY.
BETHANY.
BETHANY.
I tried not to feel guilty, seeing Beth’s name, and forced myself onward.
ADELAIDE.
HOME.
And then, finally, a number that wasn’t in his contacts. Two numbers. A third.
There had to be a way to trace the phone numbers to a location—and if I was lucky, that location might give me something: if not the actual lab where they were holding Zev, at least another name, another person whose office I could rifle through, more laws to break.
This time, the sound of footsteps treading through the exterior hallway was crisp and pert, and it stopped right outside the door. Pocketing the cell phone, I leapt for the door to the lab space, squeezing back through it and shutting it behind me an instant before the door to the hallway opened.
“Honestly, Paul, that’s the third phone this month. You can hardly complain about Bethany’s overage fees when you can’t keep track of a BlackBerry to save your life.”
In the time it took me to recognize that voice as belonging to Bethany’s mother, her father was already speaking in reply. “What our daughter doesn’t know won’t hurt her—and the phone isn’t lost. It’s in here somewhere. Here, give me your phone.”
It took me a second too long to realize why a person trying to locate their phone would ask to borrow one from someone else—and in that second, Paul Davis called his own cell.
It lit up a second before it rang. I didn’t have time to figure out how to silence it, how to turn it off. Moving on instinct, I did the only thing a person like me knew how to do.
I killed it.
Snapped it in half like a twig, held my breath, waited.
“Did you hear something?” Through the thick metal door, Paul Davis’s voice was muted, but I had no way of knowing how soft it would have sounded to a human. Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to make out the words at all; maybe, on the other side of that metal door, the Davises wouldn’t have heard that half of a ring, the crunching of plastic and metal, at all.
Or maybe this time, I’d get caught.
I thought of all the laws I’d ever broken: the trespassing, the slaughter, obstruction of justice, cruelty to creatures who’d died choking on my blood. I thought of Zev, caged in concrete, and of my father, lecturing in the building next door.
And then the door to the lab space opened, and a familiar woman with strawberry blonde hair peeked in. She met my eyes, and for a moment, hers glossed over, and I wondered if Bethany’s mother was seeing things again: the boy her son had been, ghosts of everything he wouldn’t ever be. For a moment, that faraway glint in her eye gave way to focus, clarity.
She saw me.
And then she closed the door. “Not so much as a ring,” she said. “Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the lecture hall?”
This time, I couldn’t make out her husband’s response, but a second later, it was punctuated with the sound of another door opening, closing. I started breathing again, a tightness in my chest reminding me that I’d stopped. I should have headed for the other exit—the one I’d entered through in the first place, but I didn’t. Instead, I waited, and after a long moment, the door to Davis’s office opened again.
“I know you,” Bethany’s mother said in a tone that would have been more appropriate if we’d run into each other at some kind of country club soiree. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember your name. I’m afraid I’m not much of a morning person.”
I tried to form a connection between this polite woman, put together from head to toe and fully coherent, and the woman I’d met that morning, but came up blank. The difference was night and day, like there were two people occupying the same body—neither of whom was 100 percent there.
“And when I say I’m not a morning person, what I mean is that I don’t know what you saw this morning. I can guess what you must think of me, but I love my children, and I love my husband, and I think it would be best if we both agreed that whatever you saw this morning never happened, and whatever I saw—here, with you—well, that never happened, either.”
I had no response, no words. She was supposed to be crazy. She wasn’t supposed to be bargaining with me.
“You learn,” she said. “After a while, you learn how to pretend—to see what you want to see, and ignore everything else.”
Listening to her speak, her cadence and tone an exact match for Bethany at her oh-so-popular iciest, I wondered which Adelaide Davis was the real one, and which was pretend. Was she crazy? Sane? Did she know her son was gone? Was what I’d seen this morning just an elaborate game? Or was this Adelaide—calm and cool, negotiating with me to keep her secret—just a cover, a mask constructed to hide the broken, jagged mind that lurked underneath?
“You’re a very pretty girl,” the woman in question said, tilting her head to the side. “Did you know that? Once upon a time, I had a pretty, pretty boy.” She reached forward and touched my cheek with one manicured hand.
And just like that, it was like I wasn’t even standing there anymore. She took her own cell phone out of her purse and started tapping impatiently on its keys.
“Mrs. Davis?” I said her name, unsure if I should leave her here, if I should call Bethany to bring her home.
She looked up. “Don’t slouch, Kali. It’s unbecoming.”
Her use of my given name nailed me to the floor. She turned her attention back to the phone, and finally, I coerced my feet into moving, made my way to the door.
“Don’t let them hurt her.” This time, Adelaide Davis’s voice was quiet, steady. “It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.”
She might as well have been rattling off a cookie recipe, for all the emphasis she placed on those words. I waited to see if she’d say anything else, but she didn’t.
I opened the door.
I slipped back into the hallway.
And as the door closed behind me, I heard a light and airy sigh.
I’d come here with a lead, and I was leaving with a broken cell phone and a ball of nausea expanding in my stomach. Leaving Bethany’s mother there, with her father, felt wrong—and it made me wonder. If Adelaide was here—alone—where was Bethany?
Why had Bethany just placed three calls to her father’s cell phone?
And what did Adelaide mean about it never being safe in their house?
20
It’s not safe in that house. It’s never safe.
I couldn’t shake those words, no matter how hard I tried, so instead of slipping back into my father’s classroom and returning his ID card, I dropped it in the hallway outside his class—someone would find it, and I had bigger fish to fry. Ducking out of the building, it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden change in brightness. The sunlight felt like a pinprick in the center of each of my eyes, but I was only vaguely aware of the discomfort as it spread outward, leaving them bloodshot and dry.