Langston rolled his eyes. “Mom…”
“I did not get you through a private adoption from a teenage mother.”
“How did you get me then?”
“When I was twenty years old, someone came to me and asked me to take you that very day. He said it was important, and he was running out of time.”
Langston propped a knee on the couch to more easily face his mother. “Why would you agree to take a random baby from a stranger at a moment’s notice?”
She looked at the purse in her lap. “I was alone, out of work, and only had rent for one more month. He offered me citizenship, a lot of money, and a place to live if I took you and moved here. So I did.” She looked up. “And he wasn’t a stranger.”
Langston was almost afraid to ask. “Who was he?”
“His name was Jake. Agent Jake Roswell.”
“Agent?”
“Homeland Security.”
Langston cocked his head to the side. “What was a federal agent doing soliciting an unemployed twenty year old?”
Khone nervously tapped her fingernail on the gold clasp on her purse. “When I was eighteen, I was kidnapped—along with other girls. We were brought to the U.S. and held prisoner in a man’s basement until Homeland Security came.”
Langston blinked several times. “I’m sorry. I must be having a stroke. I thought you said you were kidnapped and held prisoner.”
Khone looked resigned. “My father and I were having an argument. I wanted to see my boyfriend Noi and he wouldn’t let me. He said I had to help my little sister with her chores. I said she was old enough to do them herself, and that I didn’t have to listen to him.” Khone shook her head. “And I ran out. I never made it to Noi’s house. It was dark and I didn’t see them coming. I tried to scream, but,” she rubbed her arm, “as soon as I felt the needle go in I knew I’d never see my father again, or my mom or my sister.” She sighed heavily. “I thought Noi and I were going to get married, have children. I wonder what he thinks happened to me.” She smiled sadly. “He was very handsome. I’m sure he found someone else.”
“I’m sure,” Langston said. “Can we get back to the kidnapping part? Was this like a,” he forced the words out, “sex slave thing?”
“It’s not what you think.”
Langston wasn’t sure what he thought. “What was it then?”
Khone smiled sadly, but didn’t answer.
Langston stared at her, his mind racing. “Where was this?”
“North Carolina… near Winton-Salem. Jake helped us escape.” Khone sighed again. “Then two years later, he appeared out of nowhere, holding you. I don’t know why he chose me, but I couldn’t refuse him. He saved my life.”
“You took me because you owed this guy a favor.” Langston frowned. “You never wanted me?”
Khone grabbed his hands and squeezed. “Don’t ever, for one second, think that.”
“But that’s what happened, right?”
“Believe me, Langston, you have been the biggest blessing in my life. I have loved you since the second Jake placed you in my arms. I couldn’t love you more if I’d had you myself.” She scooted close, hugged his arm and kissed his shoulder.
Langston pressed his lips together, thinking. “Why was Agent Roswell in such a hurry to give me away? What’s he got to do with all of this?”
Khone’s smile was unsure, her face tense. “Remember the first time you studied Black History in school, and you said your favorite person was William Wiseman?”
Langston shrugged. “Yeah. So?”
Khone looked at him as if she were willing him to do something.
“So?” he repeated.
She unbuckled her purse and pulled out an old, yellowing newspaper clipping and placed it on his lap. It was soft and floppy in his hands as he carefully unfolded it. He skimmed the article quickly. It was one of many that had been printed following the tragic deaths of the Wiseman family. Nobel laureate William Wiseman had gotten caught in a freak lab explosion at Biltmore University on the same day that his wife had been murdered and one of their four children had been kidnapped. A few days later, the remaining three children died after their Social Services van had been struck by a tractor trailer. The entire scenario had been fodder for conspiracy theorists for years. It had been considered everything from a series of unfortunate events to a carefully constructed intervention by the government.
“I know about this already,” Langston said. “Everybody knows about this.”
Khone pointed to the list of children’s names, reading aloud. “Garvey, Billie, Langston, and Ella.”
Langston laughed. “Langston Hughes was kind of a big deal. Lots of guys have that name.”
She pointed to the name again. “That’s you, sweetheart.”
Langston’s smile faltered. “This can’t be me. This Langston is dead. See right here?” He pointed to each name singly. “Dead, dead, dead, kidnapped.”
Khone took the clipping and folded it. “I assure you, you are not dead.”
Langston blinked. “You sound crazy.”
“I know.” Khone placed the clipping back in her purse. “But I’m not.”
“There’s got to be a different explanation.”
Khone cupped his chin in her small hand. “There’s only this. The truth.”
Langston stared at her wide-eyed.
“When you’re ready, come to the house, okay?” Khone said. “We can talk more then.”
“I don’t… I can’t…”
She stood and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight.”
As soon as she left, Langston sprang off the couch and went to the computer. He scrolled past all the stuff he already knew: the details of Dr. Wiseman’s research, his accolades, and the wing of a medical center built in his honor. He tried to find more personal details of Dr. Wiseman’s life, but there were surprisingly few mentions.
When Langston looked up Eve Wiseman, the same five photos kept coming up. Langston had hoped there’d be more, but it appeared that snapping a photo of her had been rare. In all the pictures, Eve stood next to her husband, smiling and diplomatic. Her hair had been coiffed and elegant, and her clothes looked expensive. She had been a beautiful woman. Langston leaned on his elbows, studying the screen, trying to take in every detail of her. He tried to imagine Eve bouncing him up and down as a baby, but stopped when an image of Khone came to his mind. The human trafficking scandal soon surfaced as Langston scrolled down. He’d known about the incident superficially. But Khone had been one of the victims. Langston couldn’t begin to absorb the weight of it.
Dr. Wiseman’s colleague, Fai Chang, had trafficked teenage girls from Laos, Thailand, and China to America. Burned body parts—adult and newborn—had been found in an incinerator at Dr. Chang’s home. Agent Jake Roswell had been called a hero for leading the rescue of five surviving girls from Dr. Chang’s basement, none of whom were ever identified to the public.
Langston looked back at the couch, at the cushion where his mom had been. He got up, grabbed a flash drive, and returned to the computer. He watched every video he could find about the trial and listened to the gruesome details of what occurred in Dr. Chang’s basement and the abandoned medical facility where he had taken the girls. The doctor had removed their eggs in order to fertilize them with his own sperm outside of the womb. His attempts at growing a viable fetus through ectogenesis failed.
Langston clicked on a thumbnail to enlarge Dr. Chang’s mug shot. He’d been a scowling, skeletal thin man with sallow skin. “Creep.”
It hurt Langston to know that his mother had actually been one of these girls. She seemed too well-adjusted and happy, instead of being the broken mess he would have expected anyone to be after that abuse. As he continued to listen to news anchor after news anchor, he opened two more windows on his computer, one to graph a timeline and one for notes.
When he couldn’t stomach any more of Dr. Chang, Langston went on to Agent Roswell. At the time of Dr. Chang’s arrest, h
e’d been with Homeland Security for fourteen years and was already known for his outstanding work in the agency. It was apparent from the one interview Langston could find that Agent Roswell was all business. He didn’t smile or mince words.
Langston tried to research the Wiseman children, but they were barely mentioned. The only photos of them were the paparazzi, through-the-bushes type that only caught a stray leg or a blanket-covered baby carrier. The most the children were ever talked about was after the kidnapping and the crash, and even then only their names and ages were given, never a photo.
He felt like he needed something more tangible, proof that he really was the son of William and Eve Wiseman. And how was he supposed to deal with the cautious elation he felt when his mother, the only one he’d ever known, had taken such precious care of him? He felt guilty about being hopeful.
When his back started aching, Langston got up and stretched, pacing in his living room and mentally processing his newly uncovered information. After his muscles relaxed he sat back down and scoured videos and news archives, adding to his timeline. He found an article on a woman, Penelope Patton, who had been suspected of being in a relationship with Dr. Wiseman. As Langston searched, he found that some people thought that the relationship was romantic, while others speculated that they were business partners.
Penelope Patton had been an OB/GYN whose research had been advanced, so much so that she had to go out of the country on a few occasions to test her theory on ectogenesis.
“Patton’s attempt to prove that embryos could thrive outside of the human body created such political backlash, that her experiments were soon shut down,” Langston read slowly.
He rubbed his eyes. It made sense. She dealt with conception, and Dr. Wiseman dealt with genetics. Langston could see them having a shared interest.
Dr. Patton had been tall and shapely, with long, jet black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and olive skin. Though she had been attractive, Langston couldn’t talk himself into believing that Dr. Wiseman had anything other than a professional affiliation with her.
In spite of the ectogenesis research failure, Dr. Patton went on to enjoy a successful career until it was discovered that she’d been embezzling money from a medical supply company, Goode Planet, where she had been a board member. Dr. Patton’s husband divorced her while she served her time, and when she was released, she went to stay with her sister. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Patton was reported missing, and hadn’t been seen for more than two decades.
Langston found a couple of pictures of Dr. Wiseman and Dr. Patton together at what seemed to be professional events, but couldn’t find any research in which they had both been involved. A mailman claimed he’d seen the two doctors in a private meeting shortly after Dr. Patton’s release, but he proved to be an unreliable witness after he was fired for being drunk on the job.
What a waste, Langston thought. If Dr. Patton had been able to continue her research, women with fertility issues could still have children without relying on adoption or surrogates. Langston briefly wondered if she and Dr. Chang had run off to the same place. After all, they both knew Dr. Wiseman, and they had both disappeared. In the grand scheme of things, the idea didn’t seem to be that far-fetched.
Several active windows lined the bottom of Langston’s screen as his fingers tapped across the keyboard. He tried to keep his eyes open as he waited for another article to load…
The alarm on Langston’s phone jolted him awake. He was slumped over the desk, his hand resting on the keyboard. He hit the snooze on the alarm, pushed the computer away, and laid his head on his forearm. Ten minutes later, the alarm went off again. Squinting sleepily, he unfolded himself from the seat and stumbled to the coffeemaker. He’d only slept for two hours. He was tired, overwhelmed, and grumpy. He already knew how this day was going to go.
Chapter Fourteen
Even though he rushed through his morning routine, Langston arrived at Bronze Leaf twenty minutes late. Just as he jogged to the stairwell door in the parking deck, it burst open, and he had to veer to the side to avoid being hit. Dana stalked out of the stairwell, eyes tearing up, and skirt swishing around her stocking-clad legs.
“Dana?”
He heard her sharp intake of breath as she snapped her head around and stopped walking.
“Are you okay?” Langston asked. “Where are you going?”
“Oh!” She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when she saw him. “It’s just you. I needed a minute away from my desk.”
“What happened?”
“That… that,” Dana screwed up her face, “man infuriates me.” She balled up her fist and shook it.
“Dr. Pillay?”
“Isn’t it always?” Her cheeks were flushed, and she was perspiring. “I told him my husband would be having hip surgery this spring, and do you know what he did? He sent me a condescending email telling me to not let my husband’s issues derail my attention. I already told him Marie would cover for me, but he still said he was concerned about my upcoming absence.”
Langston had never met Marie in person, but he knew that she worked on another floor and filled in for Dana when she was out.
“I’ve worked here for eight years and not one ounce of sympathy for my husband’s condition,” Dana continued. “If I didn’t need the medical insurance, I’d quit.” She made a sound like a wounded bear cub.
“I’m sorry,” Langston said.
She took a deep breath and tugged on the hem of her sweater. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about this with you. I’m going to take a lap around the deck and go back in. You have a good day, okay?”
Langston nodded. “Hey, Dana?”
“Hmm?”
He closed the gap between them and lowered his voice. “Do you know what’s going on with Dr. Pillay and that new lady who keeps coming around? Is she joining the faculty?”
“Who? Antoinette?” Dana rolled her eyes. “God, I’d really quit then.”
“So she’s not interviewing?”
“No.” Dana looked over her shoulder and leaned closer to Langston.
Yes! Langston thought, also leaning in.
“She started showing up here back in October,” Dana said. “She said she wanted to talk to Dr. Pillay about starting a company.”
Langston raised his eyebrows. “You don’t believe that?”
“From some of the stuff I’ve heard? No, I don’t believe that at all.”
“Why not?”
“Well, from what I can tell, she seems to already have a company, or her husband has a company—”
“She’s married?”
Dana nodded, waving off his question. “Or maybe she and her husband have it together. I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as she came into the picture, he had me set up a bunch of calls with LifeCorp.”
Langston frowned. That was the company that funded his nanobot research. “He did?”
She nodded. “And I found a company check on his desk from her. You’d think with all that money, she could afford a better plastic surgeon. Did you see her eyebrows? Yikes.”
Langston hadn’t noticed anything awry about Antoinette’s eyebrows. “What’s her company’s name?”
“Eve, Lane, and Pope… ELP.”
“What kind of company is it?”
“No clue.” Dana checked her watch. “I need to get going. You didn’t hear any of this from me.”
Langston straightened up. “Hear what?”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
Everett swiveled around in his chair when Langston returned. “Glad to see you finally decided to come in.”
Langston tossed his bag on the floor. “Antoinette paid off Dr. Pillay to stop the nano research.”
“Who told you that?”
“Can’t say.” Langston relayed the information he’d just received. “So, I think ELP does nano research and is trying to undermine LifeCorp.”
Everett swiveled back around to his computer and started typing. �
��I can’t find ELP. Do you think it’s a parent company of something else?”
“I don’t know.”
Still typing, Everett asked, “How do you think Dr. Pillay got involved?”
“I’m thinking Antoinette paid him to give LifeCorp a bogus reason why we couldn’t continue the research. Then he lied to us and blamed it on finances.”
“I’m not finding anything about her or ELP anywhere.”
“We can look later,” Langston said. “I have to stop by my mom’s house this afternoon. Can you come to my place around nine?”
“Yeah.” Everett closed his search windows. “Did Dana say how much the check was for?”
“I never said it was Dana.”
“Please.” Everett rolled his eyes. “Of course, it’s Dana.”
Langston shrugged. “She didn’t, but I got the impression it was a lot.”
Everett nodded. “Yeah, Dr. Pillay doesn’t seem like the type to sell out cheap, huh?” They both laughed. “So tell me what was up with you yesterday.”
“Jade and I decided to play hooky. Best. Decision. Ever.”
“For you maybe. I got stuck working on your simulation.”
“Shut up, Everett. I do twice as much work as you every day.”
“You wish,” Everett scoffed. “What’s up with you and Jade? Did you get a chance to break open that box I gave you?”
“Right. Like I would tell you.”
Everett returned his attention to his computer. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
Langston shook his head, amused. The room fell silent and they started to work.
“Hey, Everett?” Langston said, not looking away from his computer.
“Yeah?”
“You know that geneticist, William Wiseman?”
“Yeah.”
“And you know about his family, right?”
“Most of it, I think.”
“I was reading about them. Do you think the government had something to do with that?”
“Hell, yeah. You know the feds are always covering stuff up. Trying to keep the black man down.”
The Wiseman Revelation (The Wiseman Series Book 2) Page 12