What She Saw

by Sheila Lowe

  “Are you going to be much longer? I need to use one of those computers.”

  Startled, Jessica glanced up at a woman in a loud striped beach coverup standing behind her. “You’ve been here over an hour,” the woman said pointedly. “I’ve come by several times and I didn’t say anything, but—”

  “Of course, sure. I’m so sorry.” Jessica selected Print, closed the file she was reading, and disconnected the drive. She collected the printouts of the emails she had thought worth saving and edged past the woman, her head whirling from what she’d read.

  Leaving behind the relative safety of the hotel, Jessica began to walk up the strand along the beach, sorting through the facts she had accumulated from reading Simon’s emails.

  If she’d got it right, Project 42 was intended to be used on unsuspecting members of Congress—but for what purpose?

  She thought about it for a while. The microchip they had implanted in Jenna’s brain had caused a literal brainstorm that resulted in her setting a fire, leaving no memory of doing so. Matt Casey had admitted that he had been violent without being aware of it. The other people who had left the study had ended up dead.

  What good did any of that do Raisa Polzin and Dr. Kapur and whomever they were working for? Were these intended consequences, or were they just playing with their guinea pigs to see what would happen? And were they sending direct messages, or just randomly scrambling their emotions?

  As she walked, Jessica tried phoning Detective Jovanic again, leaving another message when he did not pick up, then trying Zebediah Gold, who did.

  She told him about the fire, about her meeting with Matthew Casey, about what she had discovered in the unauthorized files, and her suspicions about the potential uses of the microchip.

  “I know it sounds far-fetched, Dr. Gold, but can you think of anything else that hangs together?”

  “I’m perfectly willing to entertain the idea of a conspiracy to control the minds of politicians, Jess. God knows, most of them could use a better direction. The question is what you should do with this information; who you should turn it over to.

  I can’t imagine that phoning the FBI or the CIA and telling them that a presidential candidate is plotting against Congress would get you very far, though with the files you have on that flash drive....”

  “Simon Lawrie was killed because he was coming to talk to me. From his wife’s emails it sounds like he suspected that Project 42 was something other than it appeared to be.”

  Simon Lawrie’s shocking brutal death hit her again and she stopped in her tracks, her breath coming in sharp little gasps.

  “Jessica?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “If you mean am I going to drift into another fugue? No, Dr. G., I’m still here. It might be easier if I could, but Jen needs me. I need me.”

  Thanks to his wife’s status as a US Senator, Simon Lawrie’s untimely death was splashed across the six o’clock news. Sitting on the edge of the bed in her hotel room, Jessica watched video of a grim-faced Senator Christine Palmer being driven through the gates of their estate in upscale Montecito near Santa Barbara.

  According to the reporter covering the story, Palmer had flown home from DC in a private jet as soon as word had reached her.

  Eyewitnesses described a big black SUV, but no one was able to provide a description of the driver, leaving police with few leads. Anyone with information was requested to contact the Oxnard Police Department.

  Jessica had a sinking feeling that she knew who had driven the SUV—Bagshot. But the police weren’t going to take her “feeling” as evidence.

  “Just plowed right into him, man,” one witness said to the reporter. “Didn’t stand a chance. Poor fellow just went right up in the air and came down, boom.”

  Another: “That guy never even slowed down.”

  “Are you sure the driver was male?” the reporter asked.

  “Nuh uh, couldn’t see a thing. I just figured, you know? That’s cold. A woman wouldn’t do something like that.”

  t h i r t y – s i x

  “I haven’t seen her yet,” the charge nurse said, consulting her computer monitor. “I just came on shift. But from the notes, it looks like she’s doing just fine this morning. Once the doctor comes by for rounds and gives the okay, you’ll be able to take her home. She’s in room 432. Go on and wait with her.”

  Jessica thanked her and navigated the warren of hallways to Jenna’s room. It took less than the flick of an eyelash to register the empty bed, the swing-arm table cleared of personal items. An IV line on the crumpled bed sheet, the adhesive tape that had fastened the needle to Jenna’s hand still attached.

  The clean street clothes Jessica had placed on the chair the previous afternoon were gone and a blue and white hospital gown lay in a small heap on the floor beside the bed.

  Jessica rushed back to the nurse’s station. “My sister isn’t in her room. Where is she?”

  The nurse stared at her. “What?”

  “Was she moved to another room? Jenna Marcott. You’ve got to find her.”

  “Let me check....No, she should be in 432. Are you sure that’s where you went?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Her clothes are gone—”

  “What would she be wearing?”

  “Levis, yellow T-shirt, running shoes. You’ve got to find her!”

  “You need to calm down, honey,” the nurse said. “I bet she got herself dressed and she’s taking a walk around the floor, or she’s gone down to the cafeteria for coffee.” She consulted her watch. “She was here before shift change because they noted her meds.

  “That was about forty minutes ago. She can’t have gone far.”

  “You don’t get it, she may have been kidnapped!”

  “Kidnapped? What are you talking about?” The nurse, still unruffled, picked up the desk phone and paged Security.

  Thirty minutes of pacing the waiting room while they searched the hospital was enough. When Jessica could bear it no longer she extracted a promise from the nurse to call her if they found any trace of her sister, then got back on the highway. The invisible antenna that kept her connected to her twin was drawing her back to Ventura.

  A ripple of fear had started in her chest and was swelling toward full blown panic. Was Jenna experiencing it, too? Is that where this throat-choking anxiety came from? Identical twins shared DNA, were two halves of the same person. How could they not know what the other was thinking, experiencing? If you stubbed your toe, your whole body knew it.

  So, where are you Jenna?

  As she drove, Jessica checked her phone, furious with herself when she saw that she had missed a call from Jenna’s number at eight o’clock that morning. No message. She had been in the shower and failed to hear the phone. She should have checked before leaving the hotel, damn it. She should have called Jen.

  Her return call went straight through to voicemail. Either her twin was on the phone or her phone was turned off. She prayed it was the former and left an urgent message: Call me!

  Five minutes later when Jessica’s phone rang, but it was not Jenna, but Detective Jovanic on the line. Dr. Gold had brought him up to date. Jessica added the information that Jenna was missing from the hospital.

  The detective made no bones about his opinion. “Listen to me, Jessica, I strongly advise you to stop playing investigator and stay away from Ventura. Chances are, she left under her own steam, but if she didn’t, it’s too big a risk for you to involve yourself in finding her.”

  “But I am involved. And how could she have left under her own steam? I’ve got her car.”

  “Call Venice PD and report her missing. Let them do their job.”

  “You can’t believe they’d take me seriously?” Jessica pulled into a gas station, arguing with Detective Jovanic while she filled the tank. “Could you get anyone at the FBI to listen?”

  “Better than you’re listening, Jessica. You’re asking for my help; you need
to take my advice.”

  She replaced the nozzle on the gas pump, screwed on the cap, and got back on the road. “I’m sorry, Detective, but if I didn’t follow my intuition and something else happened to her I would never forgive myself.” Her voice cracked. “She doesn’t even know that Simon is dead.”

  Jessica heard him release an irritated sigh. He said, “I’ll meet you after I get off work. Where will you be?”

  “Jenna’s apartment to see if she’s there.”

  “Text me if you find her.”

  “Of course. And, thank you.” Jessica knew he was annoyed with her failure to heed his warning, but it couldn’t be helped. She knew in every cell of her body that her twin had returned to Ventura. She just didn’t know how.

  Her cell phone rang again fifteen minutes later. The hospital.

  “There’s a bunch of blonde hair in the trash can in her room,” said the security manager.

  t h i r t y – seven

  Jenna Marcott climbed into the black truck and pulled the door shut behind her. She dumped her bundle of soiled clothes onto the floorboard and turned to the driver. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come after the other night—the fire—”

  Zach Smith gave her a wink. “You think I’d leave you stranded, chicklet?” He checked for traffic, then pulled into the flow on Venice Boulevard. He had not quizzed her when she’d asked him to drive the sixty-five miles to come get her, just wanted to know where she would be. And just over an hour later, there he was in his pickup.

  She had seen the curiosity in his face when she flagged him down on the street instead of having him come to the front of the hospital, but he had not asked why about that, either. Jenna felt a warm rush of gratitude toward her neighbor. When Zach had phoned right after she’d unsuccessfully tried to reach Jess, it seemed providential. He had not known Jenna was in the hospital, of course, and she told him she was there for a minor procedure. If he wondered why she needed to drive down to Santa Monica for a minor procedure, he refrained from asking that, too.

  “You really did cut your hair,” Zach observed as Jenna buckled herself in. “Or don’t tell me, you’re Jessica?”

  She allowed herself a smile. “No, it’s me. They weren’t going to release me until Jess got here and she wasn’t answering her phone. I figured if I looked like her, I could just walk out the front door. I found some surgical scissors on a cart in the hallway.”

  She didn’t tell him that she had another reason for the new hairstyle.

  Zach threw her an admiring glance. “That was pretty resourceful.”

  “Pretty desperate,” she corrected.

  “I have to admit, it was a surprise to find out you had an identical twin.”

  “I’m sorry I never told you, Zach. Jess has been going through a rough time the last few months. There wasn’t any reason to mention it before, and now...” The fear that had shadowed her all morning slammed back. “I wish I knew why she didn’t answer the phone.”

  “Did you leave voicemail?”

  “I was afraid to.” Realizing that she was wringing her hands as she always did when she was anxious, Jenna made herself stop and hold still them in her lap.

  “I know this is going to be hard to believe, but...the other night—the fire—I don’t remember anything. All I know is what Jess told me.”

  She hesitated, unsure of how much she ought to share with him. “At the lab where I work, they’re doing research on—on behavior control. I know this is going to sound crazy, but they kidnapped me and implanted a microchip in my brain. And then, when they thought Jess was me, they kidnapped her, too....” Jenna broke off, realizing just how deranged her story sounded.

  Apparently Zach thought so, too. “Do you get messages from your radio, too?” he joked. “Where’s your aluminum hat?”?

  “It’s all true, Zach, I promise. After they let us both go, they made me start the fire and...”

  Seeing that she was serious he looked over at her with a troubled frown. “Wait, you said you were kidnapped?”

  “Two men broke into my apartment and took me. When I woke up it was ten days later and Jess was there.” She expelled a long huff of frustration. “It’s a complicated story, and believe me, you’re better off not knowing the details. You don’t need to be involved.”

  Zach’s eyebrows shot up. “It kinda feels like I’m already involved.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s okay, Jen, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have asked. I’m just trying to understand what the hell’s going on here.”

  “I need you to take me to the lab, Zach. I think they might have taken Jess again. I’m afraid they’re going to implant the microchip in her, too. You can just drop me at the door. I’ll get myself home from there. Please?”

  “And you’re going to do what—rush in on your white charger and rescue her?”

  “I have to find out if they’ve got her. I’ll call my—my boss, and make him...what are you doing?”

  Zach had pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine.

  Jenna felt a nasty little frisson of fear. “Why are we stopping? I need to get to Oxnard.”

  At first, he would not look at her. Staring straight ahead through the windshield, his hands wound tight around the steering wheel. She could feel his reluctance as strongly as if it were something physical between them in the truck. “What is it Zach?”

  “There’s something I have to tell you, Jen. It’s pretty severe.”

  Jenna’s heart stopped. “About Jess?”

  “No, I haven’t seen your sister since the fire. It’s about the lab—your boss.”

  He shifted in his seat and looked at her with eyes softened with sympathy. “The thing is, there was an accident yesterday afternoon.”

  Jenna’ pulse roared in her ears. “An accident at the lab? Is he okay? Is Simon okay?”

  “No, chicklet, he’s not okay. I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was crossing the street. He was hit by a car. Hit and run.”

  “He’s not—” Jenna shook her head, refusing to believe what she knew Zach was telling her. She wanted to scream out that it wasn’t true. She wrapped her arms around herself and held tight, shaking her head as if her denial would change the facts. “You have to say it, Zach! I won’t believe it unless you say it.”

  Zach reached across her into the glove box, plucked a paper napkin from a stack and pushed it into her hand. “Ah, hell, chicklet, I’m sorry.”

  “Say it! You have to say it.”

  “Okay, I’ll say it. Simon Lawrie is dead.”

  She tried to absorb what Zach had said, but all she could think of was the last night they had spent in each other’s arms. For all his arrogance and his chauvinistic ways, Simon made her feel safe. She had innocently believed the sweet words he poured into her ear. Until she found that memo and realized that he knew what was going on in Project 42.

  “He was your mystery guy, wasn’t he?” said Zach, breaking the spell.

  Unable to speak, Jenna nodded. What did it matter now if Zach, or anyone else knew the truth?

  “It’s okay, Jenna, I’m here for you.”

  “He wouldn’t leave her, he—”she leaned against him, sobbing on his chest. “It was his wife. She did this.”

  “What are you talking about, Jen?”

  Her voice hardened and she sat up. “It was no accident. Christine Palmer wants to rule the whole damn world and the Mortons are going to help her do it.”

  “Okay, chicklet, now you’re starting to scare me. This is beginning to sound way crazy. You’re in shock.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Zach. She’s a power-hungry, ambitious bitch. She’d do anything to get what she wants, and what she wants is the White House. If Simon was standing in her way, she wouldn’t hesitate for—oh God. Simon is dead!”

  The BioNeutronics parking lot was empty when they arrived in the midd
le of the morning. No security guard on duty. Zach wanted to go inside with her, but Jenna asked him to wait for her in the truck. If she got caught, he would have deniability and he could go for help.

  A handwritten sign had been taped to the glass door: Due to the Director’s sudden tragic death, the building will remain closed until Monday.

  Reading those words sent a chill over her—as if a ghost had walked through her. She wondered where Simon was now, whether he had suffered on his way there. She’d never had strong opinions about an afterlife, and Jess had pretty much stopped believing in God after the death of little Justin. But Jenna decided right then that if she survived her attempts to expose the evil that was being perpetrated at BioNeutronics, she was going to have to give the afterlife some serious consideration.

  Catching sight of herself in the glass as she entered, for a weird moment Jenna thought she was looking at her twin. She had done a fairly decent job of chopping off her long hair with the surgical scissors.

  Good enough to pass for Jessica, but the sacrifice of her hair had been for nothing. There was no one at BioNeutronics to fool.

  Emptiness echoed through the lobby as she cut across to the elevator. She took out her cell phone and listened to her twin’s terse voicemail, “Call me.”

  Jessica answered her return call so fast she must have had the phone in her hand. “Where the hell are you? Are you okay?”

  As okay as I can be after a miscarriage and the bombshell Zach just dropped.

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  “I went to the hospital—why didn’t you wait for me? You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Jess, I’m sorry. Zach called—he came and picked me up.”

  “Zach picked you up?”