Of course, for the moment, Manny’s death remained officially a disappearance and the whole matter seemed to have fallen off the radar. Swain had returned in the wee hours of Friday morning from his meeting with the disgruntled postdoc in Guadalajara, and they’d heard nary a word from anyone about it. Which wasn’t surprising given Swain had already warned everyone against discussing the matter with the public, and with the public currently inundating the campus, there was precious little opportunity to say anything. Besides, everyone was more interested in the events related to the open house and expo.
But she couldn’t help wondering if, when Monday came and all the booths and important people had gone away, Manny’s body would show up somewhere and Cameron Reinhardt end up the chief murder suspect again.
“Ms. McHenry?”
The unfamiliar voice drew her around to find a campus deliveryman standing in the doorway of her office holding a large, flat brown box. “That’s me,” she said.
“This came for you,” he said, handing over the box. “I have another.”
She set the package on the desk and used her letter opener to slit the packing tape. Meantime the deliveryman came in with the second box. At her direction, he set it on her chair.
Inside the first package, she found a white dress box with an embossed Ann Taylor logo on it. Inside was a sleeveless, knee-length cocktail dress of dark blue silk georgette. A deep V neckline plunged to the satin band at its empire waist, the skirt a wonderful fall of draping silken folds. Subtle gathers at the bust and shoulders added interest and a soft femininity. She drew it out of the box with a feeling of awe. When she’d heard Swain was having a dress sent, she’ d been annoyed. She hadn’t expected to like it, much less love it at first sight.
Never in her life had she worn anything so . . .
“Ah,” said Gen, who had once again snuck up on her. “I see it’s come.” She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. “Well, try it on. Let’s see how it fits.”
And so Lacey did. It fit perfectly. And except for the neckline, which was deeper than anything she’ d worn in her life, it felt wonderful. Cool and light and swirling, it was the perfect weight and style for a party that would be held outside in mid-June.
Though there was no mirror in her office for Lacey to see for herself, Gen pronounced it lovely. “He got it right the very first time,” she said. “As always, it seems.”
The other box held a pair of metallic sandals with crisscross straps over the toes and three-inch heels. Also a perfect fit and a perfect complement to the dress. “There’ll be jewelry, as well,” Gen informed her. “We’ll have that for you tomorrow.” She smiled, and then offered Lacey use of her own apartment on the seventh floor as a place to dress before the reception. “That way we won’t worry about theft, and you won’t have to traipse all the way up from the basement, risking snags or a broken heel or what have you.” Though her suggestion was perfectly reasonable, it also reminded Lacey of the low station from which she was being raised—as she suspected it was supposed to.
In any case, when Lacey didn’t object, Gen packed dress and shoes back in their boxes and took them up to her apartment, leaving Lacey in a state of disquiet once again. She really didn’t want to spend any time with Gen Viascola at all, much less prepare for tomorrow night’s festivities with her. There was something creepy about being primped and prepared by the former mistress of the man who was to be her escort.
It was late afternoon when the front desk called to tell her that Dr. Reinhardt’s insurance adjuster was in the main lobby, wanting to talk to her about the accident last night involving Reinhardt’s Jeep Cherokee. Uneasy with knowing she was probably going to have to lie, Lacey went down to meet him.
A disheveled man with horn-rimmed glasses and stringy black hair, Mr. Mallory shook her hand as he introduced himself, and immediately wanted to know how much Cameron had had to drink before he’d crashed the Jeep.
“A bottle of cherry-pomegranate juice,” she replied, instantly annoyed. “He wasn’t drunk.”
“So why did the Jeep run off the road?”
Suddenly she had to avert her gaze, unnerved at how the truth was going to sound. “There were a bunch of boulders on the road. A rockslide, I guess.”
He asked her to describe the boulders, then asked where she thought they might have come from, seeing as there weren’t any cliffs or even steep slopes near that stretch of the road. She said she didn’t know.
Frowning, he made a few more notes, then asked how the fire had started. She had no idea what he was talking about, and when he explained, assured him there was no fire and that the Jeep had been fine when they’d left it, except for its crumpled front end and the fact it wouldn’t run.
“Could Dr. Reinhardt have come back later and—”
“No!” She cut him off, more annoyed than ever, and explained that Reinhardt had walked her back to the expo, where they’d roamed around until closing—during which time he’ d called the garage about getting it towed back in the morning. Still, Mallory pressed her—had she heard an explosion, perhaps, after they’d left the vehicle? Seen a light flaring in the sky behind them?
Which of course they had. “That was more to the southwest, though,” she said. “Where the fireworks went off. We assumed it was one of them, firing early.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t the Jeep? It was dark, after all. And you were in the middle of the desert.”
Bristling, she assured him she hadn’t been the least bit confused as to where everything was, and the boom they’d heard was not from the Jeep. He made some more notes on his pad, then thanked her for her time and gave her his card. “In case you remember something more about it all.”
She frowned after him, then dropped his card into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out her cell phone to call Reinhardt. He didn’t pick up, so she left a voice mail, telling him she’d just talked to his agent and that she hoped she hadn’t caused him too much trouble. “I don’t lie well,” she admitted. “I don’t think he believed me.”
By then it was 4:30, and her late night having finally caught up with her, she went over to the Madrona Lounge to get an iced mocha from the coffee bar. There she was surprised to find Reinhardt sitting alone at a table by the window, reading from a fat file of documents. A cardboard cup of coffee sat on the table beside it.
As she approached, he ignored her, his attention fixed on the documents.
“That must be mighty interesting reading,” she commented as she sat in the empty plastic chair across from him.
He looked up with an attentiveness that told her he’ d been feigning his preoccupation. “The DNA and prints came back on Frogeater,” he said without preamble. “They’re a match for Parker Swain.”
The words were so far from what she’ d expected him to say, it took her a moment to make sense of them. And when she did, she struggled to get her mind around their implications.
He helped her along: “I think he’s Swain’s clone.”
Then he looked back down at the paper he’ d been reading while she stared at him. “He’s got to be close to twenty years old,” she protested. “How could they have kept him secret for so long?”
“I don’t know. But from what I heard last night, I fear he’s not the only one. And there is a secret lab. They caught him and have taken him there.”
He fell silent, allowing her to digest that information, then said, still keeping his eyes on his reading material, “Swain’s ordered me to stay away from you, so I’ll have to go soon. We’d like to chip you before the reception, though. Are you game?”
“Chip me?!”
“Insert a radio frequency ID chip. It looks like a grain of rice and goes in under your skin—on your arm, hand, back. You won’t even notice it’s there. That way we can keep track of you wherever he takes you.”
She stared at the table, choking on the sudden horror of being wholly in Swain’s hands to be taken wherever he wanted.
“It shouldn’t take long,” he went on, eyes still on his reading material. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon—”
“I’ll be at the resort salon most of tomorrow afternoon, getting my hair and nails done.”
“That could work.” He paused, as if he sensed her disquiet. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“I’m not sure I want a radio-whatever-you-said chip under my skin.” And I’m really not sure I want to do any of this.
“It’s harmless. We’ll extract it when this is over.” Finally he looked up at her, his expression grim. “Well?”
She met his gaze. “I’m a geneticist, you know. Not a policewoman.”
“I know.” He didn’t press her.
She knew she could back out right now if she wished. He’ d offered to extract her from the situation last night, so surely he could do it tonight. And yet nothing had happened since then to make the situation any different than when she’d agreed to help. In fact, his news made Swain’s machinations seem even more diabolical.
Frogeater was indeed a clone, and human clones needed a surrogate to be born. The girls were still missing. If they were being held against their will, Lacey’s choice could buy them their freedom. Did she really want to live the rest of her life knowing she’ d refused to help them?
“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll do it.”
Exhaling softly, he gave her a sober nod, then closed his file folder, picked up his coffee, and left her sitting there dazed and irrationally hurt by his cool, businesslike attitude.
Of course he had said Swain had ordered him to stay away from her, and she didn’t doubt that was true. Gen had essentially mirrored it in warning Lacey to stay away from Cam so as not to provoke the director’s jealousy.
“Now that he’s chosen you, he’ll do very well by you.”
Oh yes. Promise me everything I’ve ever wanted, and reel me right in under his spell.
Anger swelled within her, eclipsing the fear, and her determination to stand up to him—however she might do that best—solidified.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
New Eden
Zowan was right to fear that Enclave authorities had guessed his route to the surface lay in the physical plant. On Saturday night, when he, Terra, and Parthos arrived as planned in their respective disguises at the small court just below the plant’s entrance, they found two black-robed Enforcers guarding its doors.
It was Terra in her gray Elder’s robe who took the lead, turning from the plant and heading back down the narrow corridor she’ d just come up. Stopping at the third door they came to, she slapped its lock plate with practiced authority, and Zowan held his breath, half-expecting to hear the blare of a restricted access alarm. Instead, the locking mechanism clacked, the green admittance light blinked on, and they stepped into a dusty tunnel so narrow Zowan’s shoulders brushed its sides. The door swung shut behind them, and Terra’s hand lamp chased off the utter darkness as she switched it on.
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Parthos whispered.
“I took some of the older children to the library today,” she said softly over her shoulder. “While we were there I studied a map of the physical plant.” Her smile was sly. “My thumbprint gave me unlimited access to the computer files. . . . Anyway, I figured the front door might be guarded, so I looked for alternate entries. I checked out this route on the way to meet you, just to be sure it works.”
She led them along the dark, dusty access tunnel, where thick bundles of wires garlanded the too-low ceiling, and heavy cables snaked along the floor. Soon the tunnel dead-ended, and the cables left the floor to join the bundled wires as they fed through a hole in the wall. Reaching over a small ledge in the back wall, she pushed away a panel beside the hole, an opening just large enough to wriggle through.
On the other side was a small rough-walled chamber filled with humming cabinets. Varicolored lights blinked on the front of them and bundles of colored wire snaked here and there. He had no idea what the cabinets did, nor what the great bulbous machines in the adjoining room did, but it didn’t matter—Terra was just passing through.
“I only explored this far,” she said, “but I think my recollection of the floor plan will get us the rest of the way.”
She led them up a narrow tube on a metal ladder, through an unlocked metal door, and into a larger chamber full of aluminum boxes some twenty feet high, whose metal sides rattled with the constant rush of moving air. Ducts snaked away across the ceiling and down into the floor. They seemed to be sucking air from somewhere above—the surface, maybe, as Neos had claimed?—and channeling it below.
More narrow passages led them to a chamber filled with tanks of swirling water, the stench so bad they ran across the suspended platform that traversed it. More tunnels greeted them on the other side, but eventually they came to a room full of pipes, the smaller branching from the larger and each running off into the darkness.
Though they’d obviously reached the pump room, the intersecting pipes all looked the same, and for a while Zowan led them aimlessly, hoping to stumble onto an arrangement that looked familiar.
Doubts battered him. It could take all night and half the day to find the crawl tube this way. Worse, what if there was no crawl tube to find? The longer they wandered, the worse it got, until he was on the verge of abandoning the plan altogether.
And then, after a seeming eternity, they followed yet another pipe to where it dove into the ground by a wall, and this time found the metal drum not far away, with the metal sheet behind it. Quickly Zowan and Parthos moved both; then they all stood staring at the revealed opening in shared amazement.“It really is here,” Terra breathed.
After a moment Parthos gestured at the drum and metal plate and asked Zowan, “Was all this pretty much how you left it?”
“I think so.”
“Shall we go on, then?” Parthos asked.
But now Zowan stepped in front of the hole and turned to face them, frowning. “I told you it doesn’t look very hospitable up there.”
“We’ve been through this, Zowan,” Terra said.
“Not quite. They found me in the physical plant, remember? The guards at the door prove they know the exit is here somewhere. Even if this isn’t a trap, once they find out we’re all three gone, they’ll come here immediately and search. And since no one will have stayed behind to push back the plate and the drum, they’ll see where we went and be on us before the day is over.”
He paused. “It’s still night. You can both go back without being missed. Let me go up alone now and see what’s there.”
“You’ve been up there and lived,” Terra said. “That’s all we need to know.”
“That doesn’t mean the surface isn’t dangerous. You’ve seen the histories. There could be wild beasts . . . even Enforcers.”
“I’m not going back,” Terra said firmly. “I told you Gaias has asked for me—”
“Yes, but he’ll be busy the next few days searching for me, and by that time you’ll be out.” He looked from one to the other. “All I’m asking for is a day or two. They’re sending me to New Babel. So if I disappear they’ll think I fled because of that. They can even tell everyone I left early in the morning with Father and no one would think anything of it. If we all go through now, with no one to cover our tracks, and three gone instead of one, we’ll stir them into a frenzy. We may find ourselves with our backs against a wall we don’t even know is there.”
His words fell into silence as his friends considered.
Finally, Parthos said gruffly, “I don’t like it.”
“No,” Zowan agreed. “But we need more than just an escape hatch. We need a place to go that’s safe once we’re out.”
“This is crazy!” Terra protested. “We already agreed all three of us would go! I’m not staying behind, Zowan! Stop trying to protect me! We’ll meet the new world together.”
“I’ll stay,” Parthos said, drawing Terra’s angry glare. “He’s right.
Someone needs to cover the hole.”
She scowled at him. “Do you remember how to go back the way we came?”
Parthos looked stricken. His gaze turned from Zowan to Terra.
She exhaled in exasperation. “Then I guess you’ll just have to go with us.”
“Terra—” Zowan began.
“You two are acting like old crèche mothers! When we get to the top, let’s just keep walking!”
Seeing see she would not be swayed, Zowan gave in. They crawled through the tube and emerged in the small room where he’ d waited for Neos to return. But now a new worry assailed him: What if he couldn’t remember the way up? After all, the first time he’d followed I Am’s mysterious light, and that wasn’t here now.
His concern turned out to be baseless, for at first there was only one way to go. Then even when the other passages began to intersect the main one, many of them angled back and downward, away from the path to the surface, obviously not the right choice. And with the few that were not clear, there was always, stuck to the wall of the right path, one of the oblong glowstones he’ d unconsciously followed in his panicked trip back down. Glowstones like the ones he’ d seen in the spy passages outside the Star Garden, which Neos must have placed to mark the trail.
Confidence began to build in him, and when they found the gray-striped mattress on the metal bed frame, with its folded blanket and empty bucket, he had to stop and take a deep breath. Excitement warred with trepidation.
“Are we almost there?” Terra whispered.
With a nod, Zowan moved on. Soon he felt the draft of warm, dry air, fragrant with the tang he now firmly associated with the outside. He turned a corner and the passage leveled off before bending into the final series of doglegs. Then, just like that, they strode into the small chamber before the exit hole. Zowan switched off his hand lamp in triumph, then frowned in confusion, wondering why the room was so dim.
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