Tainted (27 page)

Cupping the picture to my chest, I skip the squeaky stair second from the bottom on my way to my room. After closing the door and waiting to make sure my grandparents don’t wake, I jimmy the loose floor boards up and pull out the leather satchel with my father’s file and the vials I’m keeping as an emergency supply. I should add more now, because of Em. Not that they would be of much use without the energy needed to activate them.

The pages look the same, nothing new popping up when I thumb through. Then I notice something about the folder. The back is thick; a fine slit runs nearly the length of the edge where the thick paper folds in half.

What the hell?

I pry the edges apart with the blade of my pocket knife. Inside, folded and wedged into the bottom of the pocket sits a sheet of paper. Why would my father keep it hidden?

Orderly brackets of test results line one side, divided by the boys who were killed in my father’s efforts to revive me. Minute, high-peaked, skinny-looped handwritten notes correspond on the other side. Each boy’s maternity and paternity tests, all blood tests, tissue sample results, even their grades. All the victims, diminished to dry, clinical strings of numbers and surgeon’s notes.

The last box of results belongs to Daniel. His shredded consciousness gives a weak, sullen stir, like he knows what I’m going to read and doesn’t want to see it.

We have the same blood type. Each aspect of his physical and mental makeup has check marks, or my father’s script,
Perfect!
beside it. The only difference is in the paternity test. The first result?
Not Nathan Hughes’ progeny
.
The second?
SUCCESS! Stanton’s illegitimate son found
.

And at the very bottom of Daniel Hughes bracket of test results my father scrawled:

Paul Stanton’s son. Alex’s donor. Recompense collected
.

Scientific evidence is impossible to refute. Paul was his father. My father considered Paul’s son to be compensation, for what I now know happened between my mother and my father’s right-hand man.

I tuck the paper back where I found it and entomb the leather case beneath the floor boards again. Fully clothed, I drop to my bed and drag my cell phone from my pocket. Renfield leaps onto the bed when I open the message thread with Emma. The white cat paces along my body, then lies by my chest as I type:
The truth is, the best thing my dad ever taught me was how to handle disappointment
.

Then I follow it with another text:
The truth is, no matter what happens, this heart will always be yours
.

The four of us sit in the Ransoms’ sunken family room the next morning, each wearing a different shell-shocked expression. Bree lies on her back, feet propped on Jason’s legs. Em’s cuddled next to me, her head in my lap, blond hair spilling over my thigh and the cushion. Jason stares at me, disbelief the last recognizable emotion to hit his face, and the one still hanging around.

“So, wait,” he says, rubbing a hand down his face. “Your mother didn’t die of an illness, and Daniel’s dad wasn’t his dad?”

“Yeah,” I yawn and toy with Emma’s hair, coiling it around my finger. “My father’s file had tests results of all the stolen boys wedged under a secondary flap. Daniel’s, too. His dad was not his biological father. Paul was.”

“And this Katrina chick,” Jason continues, “has gone missing with stuff you need for your formula?”

“Along with chemicals people shouldn’t come into contact with.” Which still puzzles me. I lay awake for hours after finding the DNA results, watching morning rise through the frost on my bedroom window, trying to force the pieces of the puzzle together. I’m sure Hailey intended what Paul told me to be a distraction, and that it has no connection to Katrina’s disappearance and the things she took with her. “Everything but the experimental drugs can be replaced. The question is
what
are the drugs for and
why
did she take them?”

Bree tosses a pillow up, catches it, then stuffs it under her head. “Well, the Reindeer Games victims were poisoned, right?”

“Yeah,” I answer, and run my fingers down Em’s side. “But Paul didn’t specify what drugs, or if they were the same.”

“OK,” Bree turns her head to look at us. Her eyebrows pinch. Tension rises in the air. “So we don’t know what drugs, or why. You need to get on that, Alex.”

“Been kind of busy lately,” I grump.

“I know,” Bree says. “Sorry. We do know Hailey took Em, though, and tried to frame her for the house fire. Is that bitch in league with Katrina? I mean, you smelled an odd chemical smell, right? Maybe Katrina took it for Hailey.”

Emma makes an uncomfortable noise, rolls over and hides her face from them. The first hints of the fade show on her, gray shades under her eyes, paler skin. Or maybe it’s a side-effect from her flipping personalities and being up half the night. Does it matter? It’s my fault. I forced her to become this when I brought her back for my own selfish needs. If the rest of the world finds out, like Hailey’s threatened, I will truly have ruined Emma. Keeping that secret is getting harder and harder.

“Katrina wasn’t there,” I say. “I have a picture of Emma and Hailey, thanks to the neighbor lady. It has the timestamp and everything. But, when I got there, Em was holding the gas can and kept saying she did it and needed to tell them.”

“Well, that’s bullshit,” Bree huffs. She sits up and pins me with a narrow glance. “Emma would never do something like that.”

“I know.” Yes, my voice is hard. “We also never thought she would run off into a snowstorm and… do what she did at my dad’s property, either.”

Em claps a hand over her ear and presses her head into my lap. We keep going around and around with this and the pieces don’t hold together. Em’s reactions get worse every time we rehash it. At this rate, she’s going to get mad and flip personalities like she did in the car.

“Guys, I think we should leave what happened alone for a while.”

Before anyone can respond, the front door bell rings.

“I don’t care,” Bree says, rising to answer the door. “Emma is not an arsonist. My Chick Senses are tingling, and I say your ex is in this up to her designer glasses.” Bree disappears into the living room, then a moment later she calls, “Um. Guys? The police are here to see Emma.”

Em’s head pops up, her eyes huge blue pools of terror. A tremor runs through her. Her fingers curl to knots in my sweater.

“They want to
interview
her,” Bree clarifies, in a tone that says those aren’t her words.

“Run out the back,” Jason suggests. Despite his muscles and joints stiffening with his disease, he makes a graceful, silent leap up to the main level. I cinch my arms tighter around Emma, drag her onto my lap. She’s more than my girlfriend, she’s my everything. They can’t take her away. She could turn into that dark, vicious Hyde side we saw dispatching the animals on the video.

Another shiver runs down her spine, then something shifts in Em. I feel it, not just in the change in her posture and tension in her muscles, but in the air between us. She places the palm of her healed right hand against my chest, only a ghost of the broken heart remaining on her skin. My lap, my arms feel empty when she stands.

“What’re you doing?” Jason asks. He holds the backdoor ajar, motioning to it.

“Em?” I say. She knows what’s at stake if they lock her up. “No. You can’t.”

“I have to.” She doesn’t leave arguing room in her tone, or her expression. “If we run, I look guilty and so do you. You’ve got too many secrets for them to go prying.” She casts a look at the front door, the snow flitting in around the edge, because Bree won’t let the officers in. “If I talk to them, it gives you time to try and figure out what’s really going on. And hey,” she gives a half-hearted shrug, “we might find out I’m nuts and belong in a cage after all.”

But you’ll die without the formula,
hangs on my tongue, blocked by Emma’s finger on my lips.

“Let me do this, Alex.” The corners of her mouth turn down, tugging her freckles in the wrong direction when she frowns at me. How can I turn her over?

“They can’t keep her,” Jason’s voice comes over my shoulder, “Not if she goes in willingly. If they had enough evidence, they would be here to arrest her.”

“How do you know?” Em asks.

“My cousin’s had a couple of run-ins with the cops,” Jason admits with a shrug

“See?” Emma puts a finger under my chin, and then swipes a kiss over my lips. With that, she turns and walks away. It opens a rift, a sudden cutting ache, the kind that wakes what’s left of Daniel. The need to grab her, pull her back, burns double-strength through my nerves. She can’t leave. There’s nothing in my hands to keep me from reaching for her. I bury the compulsion, though, stuff my hands in my jeans pockets and follow close behind.

Bree finally allows the officers into the house after I stand behind Em and rest a hand on her shoulder. She wants to be brave, but I’m feeling weak. The prospect of losing Emma is terrifying, spilling hot and poisonous through me. She shifts her weight back, leaning on me, and I’m not sure if it’s for her comfort or mine.

The lead, older officer has a lived-in face, deep creases by his eyes like he smiles a lot, and graying hair shorn in a buzz cut. Officer Duncan, by his badge. The younger cop – Officer Herschel – despite his uniform looks like he studied law enforcement from the wrong side of the badge first.

“Emma Gentry?” the lead officer asks.

“Yes.” She squares her shoulders.

“Would you be willing to come down to the station and answer a few questions?” If these were police officers in a movie with a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, Officer Duncan would be the Good Cop.

“What is this about?” Bree asks. She’s inched her way to standing beside Emma and holding her hand.

“That’s for us to discuss with Ms Gentry,” the young cop gives a brusque answer.

“Jarrod,” Officer Duncan says, his voice weighty with reproach. Then he turns to face us. “We received an anonymous tip involving Emma and we have to follow up on it.”

“Can someone go with her?” Jason asks.

“No one else in the interview,” Officer Herschel answers. Then quickly adds, “Sorry.”

“But someone can go with,” Jason insists, “And wait for her?”

“Of course,” says Officer Duncan.

“I’ll go,” Bree says.

“It might be better if you stay here in case your parents get back,” Jason reminds her. Someone has to be here with a cover story. “I’ll go, if Emma wants.”

A tear shines in Em’s eye when she nods. Bree unwinds her fingers from Em’s and Jason moves in to fill her vacated spot at Em’s side. He’s my wingman, even if we’re breaking formation.

“You’ve got your cellphone, right?” My girlfriend, and my best friend nod. “Keep in touch, OK.”

“Yep,” Jason says. Em answers with a nod, her bottom lip trembling. I can read her thoughts in her eyes when she flicks me a glance. She trusts me to figure this mess out even when she can’t trust herself not to cry.

My throat tightens, and I swallow at a lump obstructing my breath. The police officers walk out and flank the door, waiting for Emma. She pauses at the threshold after donning a jacket and gives me a sad smile. Her tear falls, and she reaches for Jason’s hand. He doesn’t hesitate. He folds her small hand in his and follows her out into the frigid air.

Bree watches through the window until the car doors slam. “I’m going to be strong,” she says, a quaver in her voice. “And you don’t have time to fall apart, either.”

Something in her words hits home. She referenced me and falling apart. I am
a part
of all this. And certain aspects of my life are given: loving Emma, needing weekly shots and shocks, Ascension labs, and Hailey.

A whimper sneaks past Bree’s defenses when I bury her in a quick hug. I kiss the top of her head, and promise, “Don’t worry, Jason’s with her now. And I think I have an idea where to look.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

My mind runs over shards of memories, fractured by what my father did and my need to put distance between me and the girl in them. Hailey recently made a very pointed comment about our old haunts. We were the talk of Sadony Academy once, for more reasons than I ever wanted to dredge back up and remember. One thing we never shared with anyone else – her loft apartment near DarkHouse.

She dressed up like a ghost the Halloween before Emma and I met. I wasn’t the same person then, I was one of Sadony’s elite and acted like it. Last year, on Halloween, Hailey was naked under her “ghost” sheet. And she only wore it at the loft. She promised me that night would haunt me.

I guess it has. I still remember that night: a different kind of trick-or-treat game – the silky sheet, Hailey’s warm legs, the demanding feeling of her kiss.

Why are those memories so damn clear, when others are gone, black holes in my mind?

The rear end of the Acura slides when I hit a patch of ice on the way downtown. Ice and salt and sand make a treacherous mess of the roads. It’s as much of a ghost town here as White River was on the way through town hunting Hailey yesterday. The spirits then were in my imagination. I’m not sure I’m ready to face the ghost in my memory.

The factory-turned-loft apartments materialize a few blocks ahead, a giant light-speckled void in the snowfall. Hailey’s loft, bankrolled by Ascension, sat on the closest lakeside corner of the fourth floor. That was before my father had her relocated to the lake house, closer to Ascension. I roll to a stop in the parking lot. For having moved months ago, her parking space looks very well used. Maybe the owners rented her loft to a new tenant, but I doubt it. She said, “You remember our old haunts, right?” like it meant something more.

It’s time to find out why she said it.

I park at the far edge of the Visitors’ Parking section, grab my flashlight from my glove box, check my pockets to verify my phone, wallet and knife are there. Thankful I don’t feel the cold the way I should, I duck out into the frozen air.

Still, the arctic chill steals into my lungs, clouds my breath when I hike around the lot to avoid leaving prints. At the side entrance, I pull out my wallet and thumb through the cards until I find the key card she once gave me. “Keep it,” she’d said when I broke up with her, “you’ll be back.” Self-fulfilling prophecy?