by Julia Derek
Nadja gasped, choking on the water she was currently sipping. I slapped her back lightly as she coughed to get the water out of the wrong pipe. She wiped her mouth with a napkin when she regained control of herself again.
“Human hybrid?” she said. “You’re telling me Burt’s not really human then?”
“Well, that depends on how you see it,” Ian said. “What your definition of a human being is. The scientists who have spent decades developing these hybrids would argue that they’re most definitely human. An improved version of the current humans living on earth. To create this improved version, the scientists have used a variety of animal genes. Introduced them in the genes of humans.”
Nadja brought a fist to her mouth and bit it the way she’d done on the train, shock written all over her face. “But how can you—or they—ever claim that these… hybrids or whatever you called them are as human as actual humans if they have animal genes in their system? That would make them part animal, wouldn’t it?”
“Again, it depends on how you choose to view it,” Ian said and had a swallow of the Coke the waiter had placed before him. “The human species is constantly evolving. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that we were all just a bunch of apes. Who knows what we’ll end up like in another ten thousand years?” He smiled. “That is, if we haven’t managed to make ourselves extinct through wars or natural disasters first. Anyway, the scientists and the people ordering them to produce these new humans would likely just argue that they’re speeding up natural evolution. Perfecting the human species by creating these super humans.”
“You really think Burt’s a hybrid?” I asked Ian while Nadja just sat there, looking like she was still trying to digest all the craziness that she’d just heard. I didn’t envy her position.
“Yes, don’t you?” Ian replied. “That would explain why he was with them in that room and why they wanted him to kill Nadja. When they found out that he was dating Nadja, they had reason to believe he was no longer faithful to their cause.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because he chose to date a woman with diabetes. According to their twisted worldview, dating someone with a serious disease like Nadja would be a huge no-no for a hybrid. They’re trying to weed out people with such genetic flaws, not help them to continue to exist.” Ian glanced at Nadja, who was becoming increasingly pale. “Sorry to be so blunt, Nadja. This is obviously not the way I think. I’m just trying to give you both a good idea of how these maniacs think.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she mumbled.
“Do you see what I’m getting at?” Ian asked me. “I definitely think Burt’s a hybrid now.”
“Yeah, I do,” I replied and poured some sugar into my coffee. As I stirred it, I thought of how Burt had those strange, snake-like eyes that I had always assumed was due to him having a penchant for wearing odd, different-colored contact lenses. He was in a rock band after all, or used to be. I think he told me they were contacts at one point.
Were those not actual contacts then?
If Ian was correct, they were likely his real eyes.
Chapter 6
None of us ate with much appetite when the food arrived. Not even Nadja, who hadn’t eaten anything in a long time. She just nibbled on her pasta, chewing each piece she stuck in her mouth slowly and thoroughly.
“So what’s your take on Burt’s phone being in the apartment?” I asked Ian. “It’s so odd the way it was placed under the couch.” I squeezed my lower lips together as I pictured Burt’s phone. “Though I guess it is possible that it just ended up in that position. You know, if it was dropped...”
Ian fixed his eyes on me, staring quietly for a moment. Then the corners of his mouth went up in a smile. “That’s exactly it, Gabi. It must have been placed under the couch, not dropped there.”
Nadja looked at me. “Gabi? Isn’t your name Jamie?”
I threw her a quick glance. “My real name is Gabi Longoria. Jamie is the name I use while undercover.” I faced Ian again, returning his smile. “I think you’re right, Ian. The phone was probably placed there at some point. And my guess is that Burt himself placed it there in that case.”
“Of course,” Ian said and had a sip of his Coke. “It’s his phone.”
“The question is, why would he do that?” I pointed out.
“To find his way back to the apartment and rescue Nadja,” Ian said. “Maybe he didn’t know where the place was located and wanted to be sure he’d be able to find it again. He could do that by tracking his own phone. There’s plenty of software out there that would allow you to do so fairly easily. All you need is a computer that you sync your phone with.”
I nodded slowly, liking what I was hearing. “Yes… That must be what he did. On his way out of the apartment, he somehow managed to hide the phone under the couch in the hopes of being able to get back there and save Nadja.” What I had just said sounded exactly like something the Burt I used to know would do, hybrid or no hybrid. He could never shoot an innocent woman to death if he could help it. I felt a pleased smile spread over my lips.
Nadja grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “Oh, God, I so hope you guys are right. That would mean Burt really didn’t want to kill me.”
“I’m sure Burt never wanted to kill you,” Ian said, taking the words out of my mouth. “He would never have dated you in the first place if he did. They just wanted to see him do it to be sure they could trust him.” Ian narrowed his eyes and cupped his chin, tapping his nose lightly with his index finger. “Which leads me to wonder just how many of the hybrids are having doubts about Adler’s plan… or are simply disagreeing with it. It sure seems that Burt does.”
“Adler?” Nadja inserted. “Are you talking about The Adler Group as in the one that’s the owners of Nikkei? The real estate company? You said something about The Adler Group before. That they were involved in this conspiracy.” She looked at me.
“Yep,” I said, “that’s exactly what we’re talking about. They are the masterminds behind all of this. Well, their CEO. It’s complicated.”
Nadja shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, my God… This is so crazy. Do you think lots of the trainers are hybrids then? A lot of the new ones seem way too perfect for it to be normal.”
Nadja was part of the old crew of membership sales advisors, having worked at Nikkei during my first stint undercover.
“Yes, we do,” I said. “And I also think that at least Rolf, the fitness manager, is involved in the conspiracy. Who knows who else in management is? It wouldn’t surprise me if Richard is, too.”
“Is Richard the tall, olive-skinned, black-haired man who always dresses in dark suits with bright-colored ties?” Ian wanted to know. “Loves black dress shirts?”
“Yes, that’s him,” I said. “He’s either Arab or Latino. I can’t tell.”
Ian raised his chicken sandwich to his mouth. “He’s definitely in on it. As good-looking as he is, he might even be a hybrid.”
“Yes, maybe.” My smartphone vibrated with an incoming text then. I reached for it in my pocket and lost whatever appetite I had when I saw who had contacted me. Jonah.
“Jonah?” Ian asked, one brow arched inquisitively.
I grimaced. “Yes, of course. He wants to know how the studying is going.” I sighed and typed Jonah a quick response, saying I was super immersed in it. Which I hoped should be enough of a hint even for someone like him to figure out that he needed to leave me alone for a while.
“So what do we do now?” Nadja asked. “You said they were going to kill me now because I know too much. What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re going to have to go into hiding,” Ian said.
“You mean the FBI or something will put me in the Witness Protection Program then?” she asked.
Ian exhaled and shook his head. “No, it’s best we don’t involve the FBI at this time.”
Nadja stared at him. “Really? Why not? I’m not that familiar with how law enforcement works, b
ut it sure seems this conspiracy thing is big enough to be a federal issue.”
“You’re absolutely correct that it’s big enough,” Ian said, his voice bitter. “Like I told you, it’s worldwide. Unfortunately, parts of the FBI are involved in the conspiracy, too. I’m not sure how big the parts are, nor do I know exactly who’s dirty and who’s not. I used to be a federal agent up until discovering what The Adler Group was up to. I was undercover in Europe at the time. I told my supervisor at the D.C. Bureau about stumbling upon strange labs and people in Switzerland.”
“Then what happened?” Nadja looked part horrified, part spellbound by what Ian was telling her.
Ian smiled sadly. “It’s a long, long story. Suffice to say that I’m no longer a special agent, and I’ve also been blacklisted by the very government I used to work for. No one in the U.S.—or anywhere else in the world for that matter—will take anything I have to say seriously because I’m believed to be an ex-con with severe drug problems.”
“How can they get away with saying that about you if it’s not true?” Nadja asked, not looking convinced. I knew just how she must be feeling, having been in her shoes only months ago.
I patted her hand. “It’s not as difficult as it seems to discredit someone to the world.” I wasn’t about to launch into the planted fake articles and corrupt prison officials, however; there was no time for that. Instead I just added, “I, too, thought Ian was full of it when he first told me about what Adler was up to. But the more I learned about what was going on, the more I realized he’d been telling me the truth all along. Emma, the trainer who committed suicide recently, remember her?”
Nadja nodded mutely.
“She confirmed all that Ian had been trying to tell me for months in a letter that she mailed me. And I heard with my own ears the senator and the governor discuss with a bunch of other politicians over dinner how they’re planning to overthrow the governments in several countries this coming New Year’s Eve. It’s bad. Really bad.”
Stiffening in her seat, Nadja blinked a couple of times as she appeared to digest my words. “So what are you going to do about it?” she asked finally.
Not wanting to upset her unnecessarily, I patted her hand again. “We have a plan that’s foolproof. Besides, we have six months till New Year’s Eve. Don’t worry about the conspiracy. For now, all we need to worry about is your safety.”
Nadja put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then lowered them to her chin. She gave an embarrassed smile. “Sorry… This is all just so overwhelming. If I’m not going into a Witness Protection Program, then what am I going to do? I can’t go on living my life as usual, can I?”
“No, you cannot,” Ian said. “But you can still go into a Witness Protection Program.”
Nadja looked at him, confused. “I can?”
A mischievous glint appeared in Ian’s eyes then, one that I had become very familiar with. “Yes,” he confirmed. “The Ian Armory Witness Protection Program. I can assure you that it’ll be a lot safer than the one the FBI would provide you with were you to go there.”
“Okay,” Nadja said. “And what exactly does it mean to be in your protection program?”
I glanced at Ian, eager to find out what he’d meant, too, and how he could sound so confident about its success. Because I didn’t think keeping Nadja safe from these maniacs would be an easy task. We already had our hands full with trying to stop them from putting their masterplan into play.
“I have a house in the outskirts of Philly where you can stay,” Ian explained. “No one knows it belongs to me. Well, it doesn’t really belong to me. It belongs to the son of a friend of my dead father. The son happens to be on tour in the Middle East most of them time, so before my father’s friend passed, he gave me the keys to the house and told me I was welcome to use it whenever I wanted to. His son wouldn’t ever go there. We should go there tonight. You’ll have everything you need there. No one will find you there.”
“Okay,” Nadja said. “What about work? Am I not supposed to go back there ever?”
“No, you cannot go back to work or anywhere else where people know you until we’ve straightened this out,” Ian said. “Not unless you want to die, which I assume you don’t. These people may not be aware of all that you know, but I can assure you, they won’t take any chances. They’ve killed people for just trying to damage The Adler Group’s solid reputation.”
I immediately thought of my client Eve, the skinny blonde who’d wanted to sue Adler.
“No, I don’t want to die,” Nadja muttered right as our waiter returned and asked if he could bring us anything else. Ian told him that the check would do.
“What about Burt?” Nadja said as Ian pulled out his credit card to pay.
“What about Burt?” Ian asked.
“What’s going to happen to him now that I’m not in that room when they return with him?” she asked. “What if they think the reason I’m gone is because he came back to rescue me? Or sent someone to rescue me if he couldn’t go in person. Oh, God, that’s what they’ll think…” Gazing off into the distance for a moment, Nadja grasped her napkin so firmly her knuckles went white. Then her eyes found us again, big and round with fear. “Who else would have come to rescue me but him? No one but him knew I was there. Not someone who cared about me at least. So they’ll kill him then, won’t they?”
Ian and I looked at each other. Unfortunately, Nadja was making a very good point; surely they’d suspect he was somehow involved in her disappearance.
Ian broke the tense silence first. “They might, yes, as he’ll be a traitor in their eyes. Though I’m thinking that someone smart enough to plant his own phone without his companions noticing would also figure out how to get to you before it’s time for all of them to return to you.”
Nadja relaxed a little, letting go of the napkin. “Yes, you’re right. He probably would.” She smiled at us, sweetly and openly. “Burt’s a very, very smart and capable man, you know. So incredibly nice and caring. One of a kind, really.” That dreamy smile on her face withered then, and instead she scowled slightly. “Maybe that’s because he’s not really human.”
“He’s still very much a human even though he’s had his genes manipulated,” I said, hoping to make her feel better. I wasn’t really sure I agreed with that myself, but it sounded good. Plus, what Ian had mentioned earlier about human evolution made a lot of sense. We, humans, were all a work in progress.
“I hope you’re right,” Nadja said darkly.
Ian got to his feet. “Shall we?”
A few minutes later we were in a cab that would take us to a twenty-four-hour parking garage where Ian kept a car he owned. From there, he and Nadja would get into the car and drive straight to the house in Philly. I needed to stay in New York, go to bed and prepare for my clients tomorrow.
Nadja wanted to swing by her house on the way to the parking garage to pick up some of her stuff, but Ian instantly shut down her request. Not only was it possible that people from Adler were waiting for her there, having discovered that she’d escaped, but the sooner we could get her into hiding, the better. Ian promised to buy her everything she needed in Philly. When Nadja kept telling him how expensive that would be what with all the insulin she needed that would have to be bought without using her insurance since that would leave a trace, Ian told her not to worry about money. Money was not a problem. Clothes, food, everything she needed would be provided for her. Besides, someone could always go get more insulin from her house in a few days when the Adler people had left, as well as other things she’d want.
I, if anyone, knew that, in Ian’s case, all that talk about not worrying about money was true, so I assured Nadja that she would be fine.
“Well, but you won’t be able to buy me any clothes tonight,” Nadja insisted. “I would really love it if I could get out of these sweaty, disgusting, blood-stained clothes and put on some fresh ones. Clothes that don’t belong to an old man I don’t
know. If his clothes are still in the house, they must be full of moths,” she added pointedly before Ian could challenge her.
“I totally understand that feeling,” I said, feeling gross and sweaty myself due to the humidity so prevalent in NYC during the summer. And I had only been wearing the clothes on my body since I left the club earlier that same evening. Nadja, on the other hand, must have been wearing her clothes for a day and a half and had slept in them too. It was a miracle that she hadn’t soiled herself given all that she’d been through, especially having had that gun pointed at her face. The parking garage was only a few blocks from my house and I had lots of clean clothes. I could always run upstairs and get her clean stuff to wear until she found a clothing store in Philly. We were roughly the same size, so it should fit her well.
“How about we swing by my house and I get her some clean stuff to wear?” I suggested to Ian. “It’s close to the garage.”
“Really?” she said before Ian could say anything. “That would be so great. Please, let’s go to her house first,” Nadja begged, looking at Ian.
“Fine,” Ian said and told the cab driver to make another stop before we reached the parking house.
“Do you prefer sweatpants or tights or jeans?” I asked Nadja.
“A pair of tights and a sweater would be great. Maybe a T-shirt if you have it.”
“I’ll get you all of that and more,” I replied.
Within short we reached my street and I left the cab, took the elevator up to my apartment and entered. I found an old duffel bag that I filled up with stuff that I thought Nadja could use in the next two or three days, the time I expected it would take her until she got settled in the house and had time to go shopping. Looping the duffel bag around my shoulder, I ran down the stairs to the bottom floor of my building, not having the patience to wait for the elevator to come.