by Rebecca York
“Maybe we should find out,” he answered, slipping his hand inside her robe, caressing her breasts.
She knew he wasn’t going to keep questioning her now, and she welcomed her response to him again, silently thanking him for the chance to spend a little more quality time together.
Chapter Three
More than once, Carlos Mardano had thought about leaving Rambo’s employment—not with a formal two weeks’ notice but by sneaking away late some evening. He could pretend he was going out to get a pack of cigarettes, leave all his clothes and possessions here, and just keep driving. But he knew it was a mistake to simply walk out on a man like his boss. The man was a hard case. And he held grudges. He’d kept searching for guys who had dissed him years ago—and made them pay for the insult. That knowledge had kept Carlos digging for information about Jenny Seaver long after he would have given up.
Now he stood in front of Rambo’s desk, trying not to shift his weight from foot to foot or slide his damp palms along his hips. He’d been hired as a muscle man, for shit’s sake, not a researcher. Yet he’d been beating the bushes for any news of the girl. And maybe finally he’d found an opening they could use.
“I think I have something for you,” he said.
He watched his boss lean forward expectantly, watched his hooded eyes narrow.
Carlos cleared his throat. “Jenny Seaver was admitted to St. Luke’s hospital in a coma. It was going to be expensive to take care of her. Plus they were doubtful about her chances of waking up. So they were thinking about pulling the plug.”
Anger flashed in Rambo’s eyes. “You’re not telling me she’s dead?”
“No.” Carlos was quick to correct that impression. “After she’d been there a couple of days, a guy named Dr. Philip Hamilton showed up and said he could take her off their hands.”
“For what reason?”
“He said he had a research project aimed at improving the lives of comatose patients.”
“How do you do that?”
“I didn’t get any details. Apparently the Hamilton guy was desperate for subjects to use in his project. He came back in a fancy-ass ambulance and took her away.”
“To another hospital?”
“No. A lab—the Hamilton Lab.”
“Where?”
“In Bethesda, Maryland.”
Rambo kept his laser gaze on Carlos. “And you know all this how?”
“I got it from one of the orderlies working in the unit. He heard the conversation.”
“He’s reliable?”
“He didn’t have any reason to lie. And I paid him for the information.”
“Okay. Then we know where the little bitch is.”
Carlos cleared his throat, bracing for his boss’s displeasure. “Not exactly.”
A dangerous anger flashed in Rambo’s eyes. “What the hell does that mean—exactly?”
“Apparently, it wasn’t a strictly legit operation. Or at least, the doctor was getting patients—like Jenny—illegally. There was some kind of dustup, and the FBI put the lab out of business.”
“You’re saying there were other patients involved besides Jenny?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t hide a bunch of people whose brains are whacked up. Find out what the hell happened to them—to her.”
“You want me to go down to DC and poke around?”
“Of course. What do you think, you idiot?”
Carlos left, thanking his luck that he’d escaped Rambo’s wrath once more. Too bad the lab had been illegal. Too bad it had been closed—with no official forwarding address. But how could they have shut it down when there were a bunch of zombies involved?
Well, he knew the previous location. That was a start. And maybe the patients were still in the local area. Were they still all together? Or had they been scattered around like furniture from an apartment where the tenant had been evicted?
He guessed the first place to start was with the staff. Hamilton couldn’t have been running an operation like that on his own. He needed orderlies, nurses, maybe even another doctor. Were they still in the Bethesda area? Had they moved away, and were they working at the new lab?
He clenched his fists, hating this whole situation.
Rambo had called Jenny Seaver a little bitch. Carlos wished the crash had killed her. Then he’d be off the hook. Like the old lady who used to lurk around the place. She was Rambo’s sister, and she’d loved lording it over the staff. But she’d vanished around the same time Jenny had escaped. Or that was the official story.
Maybe it hadn’t been as smooth a departure as Rambo had intimated.
Carlos shuddered, thinking that you couldn’t take anything for granted around this place.
Chapter Four
Because Jenny felt weird about the other residents of the VR knowing she might have been intimate with Grant, she asked him to return to the hotel ahead of her. She hadn’t wanted to send him away, but she had things to do. And one good point about living in this place was that you could really operate twenty-hour hours a day, if you wanted.
After finding her clothing in the next cabana, she showered, dressed and blew her hair dry, thinking how strange it was that she could do everything here that she could in the real world.
When she came back up the path, Paula Rendell, who had been a travel agent before ending up in the VR, was outside sitting in front of an easel and painting the bougainvillea on the wall. Jenny waited for her to make a comment about Grant, but if she’d noticed him returning from the pool, she kept the observation to herself.
Jenny felt a pang as she stopped to admire the woman’s work. Paula was one of the residents who was never getting out of the VR because her brain injury was too serious. But here she could have a reasonable life. Since both of them were artists, they’d talked about their work. Paula had come to Jenny’s pottery studio, and Jenny went out of her way to comment on Paula’s work.
“You’re getting really good,” she said as she studied the lifelike rendering of the vivid magenta flowers. Jenny had also done a lot of painting herself before focusing on pottery. But that was in another life—like all of the other activities she’d thrown herself into.
“Thanks.”
Jenny couldn’t stop from asking, “Do you wish that other people could see your paintings? I mean have a gallery show or something.”
Paula laughed. “I’m not that good.”
“I think you will be,” Jenny answered. In her previous life, she’d been exposed to lots of good art, and she was confident of her judgment.
“Thanks so much. But I’m just grateful to be able to do it at all.”
Jenny nodded, glad she had more options than Paula but at the same time worried about her choices. If she made the wrong one, it wouldn’t only affect her.
“The scenery’s limited, though,” Jenny said.
Paula nodded. “But Art is willing to expand the environment. I asked him to set up some views for me. I mean, like he did with your shooting scenario room and Chris’s ski slopes. I’m starting with a villa I visited in Tuscany. I can click a button and have a virtual tour.”
“Clever idea.”
“I got it from you.”
Jenny grinned. “Glad I could help.”
Paula gave her a considering look. “You’ve changed since you’ve been here. I remember when you didn’t even want to tell us your name—or where you came from.”
Jenny swallowed. Really, it was still true. But apparently she’d talked enough about herself to fit in to this little makeshift community.
After a few more minutes, Jenny headed for the hotel again. When she stepped into the lobby, she glanced at the clock over the front desk. It said, 5:00 PM, which meant very little here. But most of the residents did note the hours, to maintain a normal tenor to their days.
The sari-clad woman at the desk looked up. “Did you have a nice workout?”
Jenny flushed. She’d had a very nice workout, but she wasn�
�t going to talk about it. Of course, the woman wasn’t real. She was just part of the computer program, and Jenny told herself it was silly to be embarrassed by a question asked by a simulacrum.
“Um hum,” she answered, then headed for one of the offices off the lobby. Inside was a desk with a communications terminal that had several purposes. Hotel residents could use the Web, send and receive e-mail, contact the outside staff, or just look in on the patient area—which is what Jenny chose to do now.
Most of the patients at the hotel, like Paula, seemed content to live here without worrying about the environment. That made sense because most of them had injuries that would keep them from functioning in the real world. Their best option was to relax and enjoy the Mirador.
But Jenny was different. After Lily had taken over running the lab, she’d spoken to each of the residents about their prognosis. She’d told Jenny she had a good chance of waking up, and Jenny had been preparing herself for that eventuality ever since.
Because of that, she’d been keeping track of the VR project. Now as she switched to a view of the lab, she saw Lily talking to one of the Bradley brothers. To most people, they were hard to tell apart. But she knew it was Grant.
There were subtle differences between the two of them. Like the way their hair was cut. Grant’s was a little longer than Mack’s. And she knew that Grant, who’d taken over their dad’s outfitter business, was more likely to be wearing blue jeans than his brother who still had a more military style of dress, even though he was now out of the Navy. She couldn’t suppress a little laugh. Out of the Navy because he was officially dead.
There were several settings for the monitor. At the moment, the sound was off, and her end of the connection was blank. She kept herself from being seen as she turned up the sound so she could hear what was going on.
Since she’d arrived in the middle of a conversation, it took a moment to orient herself.
“When is he coming?” Grant asked.
“Tomorrow. And I want you on hand to help out.”
Mack stepped into the picture. “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t think there’s necessarily going to be one, but I want to take precautions when we introduce a new patient to the VR,” Lily answered.
“Agreed,” both men said.
“Who is he?” Mack asked.
“A guy named Jonas Corker. He was injured in a warehouse accident.”
“And why are you taking him on?”
Lily turned to her husband, her facial expression controlled. But Jenny knew she was good at hiding her real emotions. She’d been in the VR, pretending to be a patient when everyone had awakened here for the first time. Back then, Dr. Hamilton had wanted to see how they’d react to waking up in a strange environment, which had led to a lot of speculation and stress in the group. Jenny was pretty sure Lily wasn’t going to hide the purpose of the VR from someone new coming in. But that didn’t mean that introducing him was necessarily going to go smoothly.
“We’re a Decorah Security operation now, and my mandate from Frank Decorah is to admit new patients who would significantly improve the quality of their lives by having access to the VR.”
“How do you know he’ll fit in?” Mack pressed.
“I can’t know for sure, but I’ve studied his medical records and his background. From what I can gather, he was a normal, stable guy before he had some bad luck at work.”
“Okay.”
“You’re worried about letting him in?” Lily asked her husband.
“I’m remembering that Jay Douglas attacked you when he first woke up in there. He would have hurt you if I hadn’t shown up. He was unstable. Hamilton never should have acquired him for the program,”
Lily winced at the word acquired.
“In fact, Hamilton wasn’t doing much vetting of anybody, as I remember,” Mack continued. “He stole me and tried to pretend I was dead.”
Lily sighed. “I’m trying to be a lot more ethical—and a lot more cautious, but I can’t guarantee a hundred percent that there won’t be problems. Which is why I want one of you to be present when I tell him what’s going on.”
It looked like Mack wanted to say something, but Lily held up her hand and plowed ahead. “Plus, I’ve taken an additional precaution. For the safety of the patient population already living in the hotel, I’ve set up a safe room—one of the offices off the lobby, only I’ve had Art arrange it like a small living room. Jonas will wake up on the sofa. You’ll be on another sofa when I wake him up.”
“Okay,” Mack said, but Jenny could tell that he still wasn’t entirely happy with the arrangement.
“And I’ll be monitoring the situation out here,” Grant said.
“Along with Art,” Lily added. “I can stay in constant communication with him, and if we need to, Art can bring Jonas back to his bed in the lab.”
The conversation about the new patient went on for several more minutes, with each of the twins making additional suggestions. But finally the matter was settled. After the men had left, Jenny continued to view the scene, this time focusing on the layout of the lab.
She could see her own bed, the other patients, the exit—and the desk that Lily used plus the door to the dressing room where they changed clothes when they were going into the VR. It was like watching a security camera with a continuous feed.
As Jenny clicked off, she was thinking that she was never going to have a better chance to get away from this environment without Dr. Wardman’s knowing about it for several hours.
One thing Lily had told her was that there was a correlation between the physical training Jenny was doing in the VR and her physical condition in the real world. The special bed she was lying in was toning her body. But her own efforts to up her fitness level were adding to the effect.
Even with all the effort Jenny was putting in, Lily had cautioned her that she wasn’t going to be back to her old self until she’d done a lot of physical therapy. But she knew that Mack had made himself function quickly when he’d had to do it. And she wasn’t going to let any man show her up.
She smiled to herself. If she could think something like that, she had come a long way from the passive woman who had fled unexpected captivity. Then she’d felt like she had no choice. Now she was about to take a step that scared her. But not in the old, helpless way. She might be scared, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.
She opened the door to the computer room and looked out. The lobby was empty except for the woman attendant, and Jenny was glad not to see Tom Wright. A used car salesman with a personality to match, he was the Mirador resident she liked the least. She knew from some of the things she’d overheard him say to Chris Morgan that he had asked for some simulacra of his own—women like the one behind the desk, only designed to function best in a horizontal position.
The idea made her queasy, but at the same time she was glad that Tom was leaving her alone. Apparently he had a high sex drive, and he’d tried a couple of times to get something going with her. When she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested, he’d pouted for a few days before thinking up his plan to have the hotel fulfill any fantasy. Of course he’d had to ask Art Landon to design the women for him. She wondered what that conversation had been like. Probably Landon had been embarrassed—but not Tom.
She went up to her room where she’d have some privacy—not in the absolute sense, but at least she’d be out of view of the other patients. A kind of electric anticipation coursed through her as she dressed in the casual running suit she’d woken up wearing the first time she’d found herself in the hotel. Knowing she was stalling, she finally lay down on her bed, keeping her breath even as she closed her eyes and tried to send her mind away from the virtual reality.
Mack had been a patient here and left this place, but he’d been able to use Lily’s interface with the computer in the lab. Jenny couldn’t do that because if she asked to use it, Lily would know that something was up. Plus, she might say it was the
wrong time for Jenny to change her status.
But she had been thinking for days that she didn’t need an interface—if her will was strong enough to do the trick.
As she lay on her bed, she tried a trick that she’d used several times. She slitted her eyes, staring at the familiar room, her gaze not quite in focus. Feeling her heart pound, she lowered her lids, and kept her eyes closed for almost a minute, trying to relax and also trying to project her consciousness into her body. She thought she felt a change, but waited a few more seconds before peering out from below her lashes. This time she saw another scene—the lab where her body was really sleeping in its special bed. Well, not sleeping, she supposed, if she was seeing the lab.
Lying very still, she looked around, past other beds toward a figure in a white coat at the far end of the room. It was Lily, checking computer readouts. Did she see something on Jenny’s chart? As though to confirm the supposition, Lily turned, and Jenny closed her eyes quickly. She strained her ears, hearing Lily coming closer, then imagined her standing over her bed.
“Jenny?”
She didn’t answer.
“Jenny, can you hear me? I thought I saw indications of consciousness in your brain waves.”
Again she pretended that she was oblivious to the other woman.
Lily touched her hand. “Grant is hoping you’ll wake up.”
Her expression must have changed.
“You heard that, didn’t you? You want to see Grant, don’t you?”
She’d just seen Grant. And she wanted to see him now, but she couldn’t afford that luxury.
Lily was speaking again. “I know you’re near the surface. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s all right to wake up.”
Nothing to be afraid of? If only that were true. Too many bad things had happened to her to believe in the fairy tale of safety.
oOo
Carlos did some research before he left the well-guarded compound where Rambo lived.
Using one of the private databases available to the staff, he called up a master list of medical workers in the Bethesda area. To his annoyance, there was no specific category for personnel who had worked at the Hamilton Lab. Taking another approach, he went to a job search board Hamilton had used when he’d been looking for a doctor who had worked with coma patients.