Hans and Helga remained behind her solid office door; they couldn’t see me. Launching myself towards the door of the main room, I tried to do like Coach always said and channel my nervous energy into speed. Silently, I opened the door into the hallway. I eased it shut, cringing as it squeaked and clicked, and then I started down the hall searching for a bathroom to hide in and calm myself enough so I could ripple. This time I snuck a look before turning any corners. Around the second corner, I located a ladies’ room and let myself inside.
The door closed, leaving me in darkness, safe and alone. I had way more questions than answers at this point, but of one thing I felt certain. I would not be hanging out here for Dr. Evil to strip–search me or finger–print me or pull out my teeth. I took several slow breaths to calm myself down.
As my eyes adjusted, I realized I could see enough from the exit–sign lighting to make out a sink. Water! I felt hope increasing. Slipping my running shoes back on, I then crossed to the water source and turned it on, letting the soothing sound relax me. I eased an injured hand into the stream of water. I thought of Will. Of his lips inching towards mine, of the bliss of the moment I’d thought he loved me. But then reality intruded; Will wanted friendship. Just friends.
I returned my focus to the steady rush of water, clear, lovely water, until I realized I couldn’t feel the wetness or temperature or anything else. I looked down for my hands and found they were gone. So was all the pain I’d been feeling. Bonus!
I passed invisibly through the screech of the bathroom wall—cinder block—and into the lighted hallway. My eyes didn’t need to adjust, I noted. Of course not. You don’t have eyes at the moment. The thought made me smile. Well, think of smiling anyway. At both ends of the long hall, I saw signs indicating exits. While I considered which to try, I heard the voices of Hans and Helga once more. I stood to one side as they strode past me, speaking together about journals.
“I shouldn’t have left them in the car,” Hans said.
“My brother does have careless moments, after all,” Helga said.
Brother? I followed them.
She continued. “Father will forgive you anything, you know. He’ll probably say it was divine intervention that kept the girl alive.”
“Perhaps he’s right, in a manner of speaking. Her genetic material is invaluable.”
“No more than mine,” she said, sulky.
“Father does not see it that way.”
“He risks a great deal, letting her live. I can dispose of her anytime, you know. I am so much closer in location than the rest of you.”
“No!” Her brother’s voice sounded angry and harsh. “Don’t even jest about it. You survived your last action of this sort only because I pleaded for you myself. I persuaded him you saw the error of your ways, Helga.”
“There was no error. I did what you were all too afraid to do. I did what needed to be done!”
“Your actions have raised public awareness of the disease at a time when Father wishes to suppress this awareness.” He spoke calmly, as though to a child.
“We need to suppress the gene, Hans, not the public’s knowledge of it.”
“Father now questions the wisdom of eliminating all carriers of the chameleon gene. Fritz advises him that the genetic advances we had hoped to have in place by now are still a decade away. He will be very glad to learn that the daughter of Elisabeth’s line has survived after all.”
“I say our father doesn’t know what’s in his own best interest,” said Helga. She lowered her voice, smiling. “You know I am right, Hansi. I could do it and make it look like an accident. No one but you would ever know.”
“No!” he said sharply. “He’s forgiven your other murders, but you wouldn’t survive killing her. Do I have your word you will not harm her?”
Helga glared and then sighed. “You have my word.”
The siblings approached the car.
“If there is an accident, I will not forget our conversation.” Hans stared at his sister. “Do you understand?”
“You think he is right about her value?” she asked.
Her brother nodded.
“And he would truly kill me?” she asked quietly.
He spoke gravely. “We leave the girl until such time as Father is ready to act.”
“Phhht. That could be decades.”
The man shrugged. “Years, decades, it is not your concern. Or mine.”
“Very well.” Helga didn’t look pleased as she agreed.
The man unlocked his car and retrieved the black books from the back seat. Helga took them carefully.
He stared at her, his head tipped to one side. “As for the intruder in your laboratory—nothing messy, sister dear. Be discreet. Pin the blame on one of your thugs. Allow one of them to defile her; it will look more convincing. Then kill him afterwards. Nothing flashy.”
Helga smirked, not meeting her brother’s eye.
“Your position here is no laughing matter. Do nothing further to draw Father’s wrath. He is still very angry with you for causing such an uproar last August. We were flooded with media attention.”
“He’s forgotten I exist. I’ll go mad if he leaves me here longer. Hans, you must convince him to forgive me and let me return to headquarters.”
“He will forgive you—as long as you do nothing more to upset him. I’ll speak up for you when I’m sure he’s in a good mood.”
“He’ll be in a very good mood today. When you admit to him that you ran over the wrong girl nine years ago. You do admit I was right? You will tell Father that I was the one who said that Samantha survived?”
Me! The thought ricocheted through my brain.
The man gave a single quick nod.
“Ha!” she said. “I was right!”
“And I will listen to you more carefully in the future because you were right. But now you must listen to me. Do not harm this descendent of Elisabeth.”
Helga frowned as Hans climbed in the car and drove away.
Did they mean Kathryn Elisabeth? Who were these two: Helga and Hans?
Could they be the actual children from the black book?
Hans and Helga.
They looked too young. Or did they? What if they had Rippler’s Syndrome: then, could they be the same Hans and Helga?
The idea terrified me.
What do you know for sure? I asked myself.
The angel from my childhood memory had vanished before my eyes, like a rippler might do. And whatever Hans might be, he had definitely not been an angel come to gather Mom and Maggie’s souls. It hadn’t been drunken Harold who killed my mother and best friend: it had been murder. It had been Helga’s brother: Hans.
The truth seared through me, more painful than anything I’d received in Dr. Gottlieb’s laboratory. Instinctively, I found myself running down the road as I fled this new reality.
My mother was murdered. My best friend was killed in my place.
These truths tasted like something bitter in my mouth, something I couldn’t spit out or swallow away. My legs carried me down the road and I did the only thing my body knew how to do.
I ran.
I needed a long run, and I had one ahead of me. But the crazy–fast glide of running invisibly didn’t feel right. I slowed myself along the long, flat stretch out of Merced and beyond Planada. Cars flew past me at a regular speed again. Familiar. Comforting.
My brain retrieved images from childhood. Maggie. Mom. Blood–marked asphalt. Things I didn’t want to remember. I tried to refocus on my surroundings. A last pistachio orchard flew past and I reached the grassy–brown beginnings of the foothills. I ghosted past the rows of up–ended slate, tousled to earth’s surface in some primeval earthquake. Leaning at drunken angles and covered with red lichen, they resembled blood–smeared tombstones. Something shiver–y ran through my invisible form; I could focus on the outside world all I wanted, but death grinned at me there as well.
Running slowly wasn’t soothing me, but I wasn�
��t ready to solidify and try conventional running. Ahead, the road twisted and cars slowed. I tried one last distraction: how fast could I move? I passed a mini–van on a hairpin curve. I set my sights on a BMW driving way too fast and found myself flying past. A sense of calm grew inside me as I focused on passing every car, every truck. I had no idea how fast I was going, but it felt right. I felt like Sam again.
Like Sam.
But who was I? Who was Samantha Ruiz, daughter of Kathryn Elisabeth? Why was I important to Helga and Hans’s father, and who was he? Would Mickie know? Helga was getting Dr. Pfeffer’s mail now—that was an important connection, surely.
I knew this much: I wasn’t the same girl I’d been at the beginning of the day. I’d followed the flashlight man for one simple reason: because I wanted to know the truth.
Well, I knew it now.
Hans and Helga’s Father had wanted me dead once. That was bad. Now he wanted me alive. Was that better or worse?
As I flew along the narrow highway back to my home, I knew this much: never again would I be a passive observer of my own life. Today changed everything. I would figure out the connection between Pfeffer and the black book and Hans and Helga and my mother’s death.
I reveled in my speed, laughing to myself. Catch me now! I thought. Then I sobered, recalling how I’d been unable to calm enough to ripple back at the lab.
That couldn’t happen again.
I would learn to control this ability and use it whenever and under whatever circumstances I might need in the future: for the day when Hans and Helga’s father “chose to act,” whatever that meant.
And Will would help me.
A rush of warmth and gratitude flooded through me.
Gathering the thought of my friend tight to myself, I pulled down the stretch of road leading to my home.
Chapter Seventeen
CONFESSION
I showered fast, not even taking the time to apply cover–up to the ugly bruise on my cheek; the cut I ignored as well. It could wait. I threw on a fresh pair of sweats and my running shoes to run to Will’s. I could have driven, but I knew that running would help me feel strong enough to do what I needed to do.
I needed to tell Mickie and Will what I’d just learned. But as I ran, a fresh thought overtook me.
This new information could drive Will out of my life forever. Whatever Mickie made of it, how could she fail to see this as a threat to Will’s safety, and to her own?
Tears pricked the back of my eyes. It’s not fair!
If I didn’t tell them, Will would stay and life would continue as normal. That was all I wanted: for things to be normal.
But nothing could be normal for me ever again. And hiding the truth from Will and Mickie could prove deadly. Hans and Helga’s father might want me alive, but how would he feel about Dr. Pfeffer’s former assistant?
Either Hans or Helga could have participated in Pfeffer’s death. Hiding what I knew? It could be a death sentence for Will and Mickie.
Telling what I knew?
I couldn’t breathe. How could I live without Will?
I pulled off to the side of the road, stuck between nausea and tears, and crumpled to the ground, digging my fingers into the cold, dry dust. My breath came in short starts as the sobbing began. I let the day wash through me, tears stinging the cuts on my face, a chill wind gusting past. The crying came as a relief; I didn’t think, didn’t plan, just grieved. And then the time for crying passed, and I knew what I had to do.
I rose and turned to the Baker’s cabin. No more hiding from the truth, no matter how dark. If I loved Will, I had to let him know. If he wanted to leave, I had to let him go.
I pounded on the door.
“Sam?” Mickie greeted me like I was an extra phonebook that just showed up on the front porch.
Will called from the kitchen sink, his back to me. “What’s going on? Need help polishing off your birthday cake?”
“Um, no,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” said Mickie, as she reached to open the door wider. “Sorry, Sam, I had to get up way too early. I’m not at my best today.”
“You don’t have a best,” said Will, drying his hands on a worn towel.
“Shut up,” replied his sister. “Let Sam talk.”
“Oh, man! What happened to your face?” Will looked at my bruises and the tiny cut along my cheek. “You lose a fight with the road?”
“Not exactly,” I said. I took an extra deep breath and started talking before I had time to change my mind. “Um, okay. So I want to know, what would you do if you found out that the researcher in Pfeffer’s old lab had been party to the deaths of my mom and Maggie?”
“Come again?” said Will.
“What are you talking about?” asked Mickie.
I described encountering the “flashlight man” and how I’d hitched a ride to U.C. Merced. I smoothed some of the details about Helga’s blood–thirsty games, but I had to admit my story sounded bad even without those details.
Mickie got quiet and let Will ask all the questions before I had even gotten to the part where they strapped me down. I hoped it was a good sign that she wasn’t walking around packing things into boxes.
“Let me see if I got this straight,” said Will. “Pfeffer’s replacement at the University has a brother who tried to kill you, Sam, and knows that you’re alive after all, and this same dude has a Dad who wants your genes?”
I nodded. Mick’s face looked paler than I’d ever seen it. I started wishing she’d do something, even haul out the boxes, instead of just sitting there with no expression on her face, staring out the back window.
We were all silent for a couple of minutes.
“Pfeffer said Las Abuelitas was safe,” whispered Mickie, at last.
“No, Mick, he said to try Las Abs. He didn’t say what we should try it for. He never said it was safe here,” said Will.
“I’m not going to argue the point with you. Pfeffer meant for us to live here,” said Mickie. “That’s why he paid our rent. Why would he send us somewhere that wasn’t safe?”
Will shrugged. “Maybe he meant for us to find Sam here. Maybe he knew about her.”
“Okay, I don’t even want to think about the implications of what you just said.” Mickie shook her head slowly. “Everything I’ve done to keep Will safe …”
I’d seen Mickie angry before. I knew Will considered her volatility humorous at times. But this wasn’t funny. She had a look I’d seen before at the zoo, the look of a caged animal desperate to escape.
“I’m taking Sam home,” said Will to his distressed sister. He looked at the cut on my face again. “And you need to get that looked at.”
“No!” said Mickie. She pulled one hand through her hair like she wanted to tear it all out. “No, Sam, no doctors. No records. Whoever’s down there at UCM still thinks you were just some random student, but the first place they’ll check to discover your true identity will be urgent care facilities, emergency rooms.”
Her logic was impressive, especially considering she looked half–crazed at the moment.
“You are sure they didn’t guess your true identity?” asked Mickie.
“I’m sure,” I said. “I told them I was a student. They believed that, at least.”
Mickie came closer, looking at the injuries on my face. “A butterfly bandage,” she murmured, turning to rummage through a kitchen drawer. She carefully applied ointment and an odd–shaped bandage to the gash on my cheek.
I winced but held still.
“Leave that on for the next week,” said Mickie.
I nodded.
“Come on,” said Will. “I’m getting you home.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye, Mickie. I’m sorry for all this.”
“What?” she asked. “No, no it’s not your fault. Better to know where we stand. Much better. You can’t protect yourself from the enemy you don’t know exists.”
She crossed to her computer and began mutt
ering and typing, seeming to forget me.
“Let’s go,” said Will.
I followed him out to his sister’s Jeep.
“What will you do?” I asked, miserable.
Will shook his head. “Don’t honestly know.”
My heart sank. I tried to speak, but the words caught as my throat constricted. I blinked back tears.
“Hey, you know my sister. She’s all smoke and steam. She’ll get used to the idea.”
I forced myself to talk as we drove down the highway. “What if she doesn’t? What if she wants you to move?”
“I’ll just say no.” Will laughed, but it sounded hollow, like he was trying to convince me of something he wasn’t sure of at all.
“What if she convinces you?”
Will down–shifted to bring the Jeep into my driveway. “We’ll cross that bridge when it … does whatever bridges do. Geez, Sam, I don’t know what to tell you. You know my sister. I just have to convince her that it’s safe here.”
“If you can,” I said, my voice a whisper.
He smiled, reached over to touch the back of my hand, then pulled back like he changed his mind. “I’ll be in touch, Sam.”
He put the car into reverse, and I reached for the door handle. He smiled at me, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He looked a million miles away already and I wanted to reach over and grab him and not let go and tell him how I didn’t think I could live without him even though I knew he just wanted to be friends and didn’t that count for something and couldn’t he pick me over his sister since I needed him more than she did?
But I just said, “Bye, then,” and got out of the car.
A thin drizzle began. My feet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each as I shuffled to my front door. Upon reaching it, I heard a squeal of brakes and turned to see my Dad slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting Will. I shuddered and ran inside to lick my wounds.
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