Another mysterious woman approaches me and says there’s a group of us—myself and the woman on the plane included—being targeted for some kind of… What did she say? Experiment. That Landis is not who he claims to be, and this bogus clinical trial could end in violence. That, in fact, two other participants in Landis’s program are already dead.
At a work meeting, my client tells me of his presence at one of the worst mass shootings in history. Immediately after telling me this, I black out and have a sudden memory from my childhood. A repressed memory. One of a brutal set of murders.
Finally, all this culminates in a sudden and inexplicable rage toward my client, one so powerful, I had to force myself from his apartment to keep from hurting him.
I shove the final bit of burger in my mouth and barely chew it before swallowing.
A name pops into my head.
Raymond.
Raymond.
The mysterious woman, Elle, mentioned the names of the two others in Landis’s program who died. Kate and Raymond.
Eaton told me this morning about being at the shooting. In the media, the shooter was referred to as Ray Higgins. But Eaton didn’t say that.
Eaton called him Raymond.
I don’t know how all this relates, but I feel an urge to continue. Continue with my Eaton project, because as bizarre as the man is, the work is necessary. And continue with figuring out what’s happening to me, to understand exactly what Landis’s intentions are.
I dial Eaton and get his voicemail, telling him I’m okay and apologizing for leaving abruptly. I end the message saying I’ll be ready to resume work in the morning.
Then I fish the cocktail napkin from last night out of my messenger bag and dial the number Elle scribbled down.
There’s an automated greeting, followed by a beep.
“This is Jake. I’m at the same place we met last night. I want to talk some more.”
So I wait.
Elle said we have to find Clara, but I’m not certain how we do that. Just drive to the Maroon Bells and look for a woman wandering around carrying a noose? Besides, I can’t just go up there now and forfeit my work with Eaton.
Besides…
Clara is probably dead.
I have no idea if Elle will even hear my voicemail, so I nurse a couple of drinks as I wait. It’s a slow stream of business tonight. A young couple at the bar. An exec on a laptop, the serious expression on his face washed in screen glow. An old man sits twenty feet away in an overstuffed lounge chair, a hardcover of a Lee Child book held firmly in his wrinkled hands. A glass of red wine rests on the table next to him, but he rarely reaches for it. Nor does he read much. Rather, he peers up from the pages and scans the room, and once in a while, his gaze simply rests on the window next to him. Maybe his wife has passed away, and they used to come here together, so now he continues the tradition and wonders how much longer he will have to endure a life of loneliness.
It’s not that I want to attach such a sad story to this man. For all I really know, he’s waiting for his wife to meet him here, and his life is full and complete.
But I don’t think so. I think he’s a desperate man wondering what’s left for him.
We lock eyes for a brief moment, and he offers a polite nod. I do the same, and then he looks away.
“Hey.”
I don’t know how she did it, but the woman appears so suddenly, it’s as if I’d lost time for a moment. But here she is.
She looks to the old man, and I follow suit. The man is giving her the faintest trace of a grin.
“We have to assume there are eyes on us,” she says. “Be better if we got out of here.”
“And go where?”
“My car. You okay with that?”
I don’t answer, and she starts walking away, forcing me to follow if I want answers.
We exit through the bar and out a side door of the hotel. When we reach the parking garage across the street, it hits me I didn’t even pay my bar bill. Third level of the garage. Gleaming black Lexus sedan.
“Never rent a boring car,” she says, chirping the car unlocked with the key fob. “That’s one of my rules for the job.”
“What job is that?”
She ignores this. “Also, never wear more than one-inch heels. Just in case you have to do some running.”
She eases into the driver’s seat, and I just stand on the other side of the car. She rolls down the passenger window and leans toward me.
“Are you going to get in or stand there like a lost child at a county fair?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if it’s a place I don’t want to go.”
“I’m not the one you need to be afraid of, Jake.”
“Yeah? How do I know that?”
She lets out an impatient sigh and lowers her head. “We can just sit in the car and talk, if that makes you feel better. I’d rather drive around a bit to make sure no one’s nearby, but if you want to sit here, we can.”
A vibration in my front pocket. Rather than getting in the car, I reach for my phone. A text from Abby’s phone, but the message is from Em.
New haircut!
The image loads, and I see my beautiful eight-year-old daughter staring at me. Her thick, chestnut hair is just a bit shorter than before, and her beaming smile pushes her dimples nearly to her eyes. Her scar is several shades lighter than the surrounding skin, seeming to glow on her face. She’s in the kitchen, the kitchen of the house I used to occupy. Behind Em, the framed photo of the three of us in Barbados hangs on the wall. That vacation was only three years ago, but that memory feels like it belongs to someone else entirely.
“Jake, get in the car.”
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
I call my girl.
“Hi,” she answers, a beautiful enthusiasm in that single word.
“I like your hair.” My voice sounds too loud in the concrete parking structure.
“I know, me too. It’s not that much shorter, but feels good.”
I hear a little slurring in the word shorter, but I’m still amazed at her progress. Her speech therapy sessions have really helped.
“What are you doing up so late on a school night?”
“I dunno. Mom didn’t tell me to go to bed yet. When are you coming home?”
Home feels so distant.
“A couple more days.”
I look down at Elle, who gives me a frustrated wrap-it-up motion with her hands.
Em asks me the one question I usually ask of her. “What’s the most interesting thing that happened to you today?”
Christ, where to even begin? The naked truth would probably not be a good bet in this instance.
“I saw snow on the mountains,” I manage. “I have a good view from the hotel. They’re far away, but pretty cool.”
“Sounds like a boring day.”
“I suppose, Em. It’s late. Time for you to get to sleep.”
“I will.”
“I miss you,” I say.
She sighs with a heaviness no kid her age should have to carry. “I miss you too, Daddy. I just want things back the way they were.”
I don’t tell her there’s no going back in life, only forward. Instead, I tell her the one thing I always do whenever she has a worry or fear.
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I hope so. Good night.”
“Good night, Em.”
I hang up and feel myself smiling, because no matter what happens, my daughter exists.
I look up from my phone.
Elle is staring at me, and for a second, I float out of my body and look down at this scene, almost smiling at how little sense any of it makes.
Almost.
I get in
the car. I’m not totally convinced Elle is here solely to help me, but I can’t deny I want to know more—need to know more—about what she said earlier. About Raymond and Kate, and how I am part of some select group, apparently destined for death.
She starts the car, and we pull out of the garage and onto Fifteenth Street, each of us remaining silent. I catch the scent of her perfume for the first time. I can’t pinpoint what the smell is, but it makes me think of the ocean. Elle checks the rearview mirror every few seconds.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” I ask.
“Can never be too careful,” she says.
“Here, get on the interstate.” I point to the sign for I-25 North. She eases the car onto the highway, where traffic is still heavy despite the later hour. A few minutes later, I suggest taking the exit for I-70 West, toward the mountains.
“Why?” she asks.
“I don’t really know.” Which is the truth, though I feel a pull toward the west, toward the Rockies. Maybe I’m being lured toward Clara.
On I-70, traffic is lighter, and we head west as night descends. I don’t know how far we’ll drive, but I suppose far enough for me to get some answers.
“My first question,” I say. “If you were me, would you trust a stranger swooping into your life and telling you she wanted to help you?”
“Fair point,” she says. “My answer is I’d trust that person more than a fake doctor promising me memories.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
Elle looks over. “You really think I’m trying to fuck up your life more than it already is? Because that’d be hard to do.”
“Jesus, can you just… I don’t know. Give me something, Elle. I don’t know anything about you, and you’re telling me I’m in danger. Why do you want to help?”
Her jaw muscle twitches. Teeth clench, and the tightness seems to spread down, tensing her whole body. Finally, her shoulders slump a half inch, and then she leans back into the seat.
“I’m a glorified PI. I’m thirty-seven years old,” she says. “I’m strong, independent. I’m good at my job, and that means a lot to me. I take pride in my work. But, shit, who cares? What am I actually doing besides taking orders for lots of money? Tell me, can you picture me going to the movies on a Saturday night with friends, drinking and bitching about life?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “I’ve known you for maybe a collective thirty minutes, and I can’t picture that at all. I also would’ve pegged you to be ten years younger.”
A small laugh comes out, the short, barking kind that’s usually followed by tears. “I don’t go out with friends because I have no friends. I travel all the time. I don’t get close to anyone. I live what I’ve convinced myself is some sexy life of intrigue, but it’s shit, Jake. It’s complete shit. You know what my last gig was before Landis came into my life? I had to follow the wife of some tech company guru because he was convinced she was cheating on him.”
“Was she?”
“Damn right she was. And there I was, setting up surveillance. Getting pictures. Recording audio. All so I could give it to him.”
“Well, maybe you helped them. Got them out of a bad marriage.”
“Or maybe he was an abusive husband and she found someone she really loved, but then the husband used my handiwork to leave her without any claim to their assets. Divorced her and didn’t have to pay a dime.”
I’m tempted to tell her the husband would have found someone else to do the surveillance work if Elle hadn’t, but she already knows this.
“Few people ever find great satisfaction in their work,” I say. “I mean, I write other people’s memoirs. Not even interesting people. How sad is that?”
“Sad,” she says. “But not harmful.” She exhales, and I get the feeling this is the most she’s shared with another person in a long time. “Last year, I adopted a dog just to have some kind of companionship. You know how that went? I had him a month and then had to take him back to the Humane Society because I think the thing was dying from boredom. You ever hear of a dog that actually doesn’t care when you get home at night? Like, he just lay there. I thought he was sick, so I took him back to the clinic at the Humane Society, and as soon as this animal was back in dog prison, he perked right up. He just didn’t want to be around me.”
“All right, I’m sure it wasn’t because—”
“So when you ask why I want to help you,” she interrupts, “the only answer is I have to do something different. You need to understand, Landis hired me to find all of you. You, Clara, Kate, Raymond. Two are now dead, and I didn’t expect that. I certainly didn’t want that. I can’t just sit back and do nothing, because I know the pattern. The pattern ends in violence.”
“Okay,” I say, trying not to focus all my fear on the word violence. “What happened to Kate and Raymond? Who are they?”
She edges up the speed a bit more, as if we have somewhere to go.
“We’ll get to them,” she says. “But let me start from the beginning.”
Twenty-Seven
The Book of Clara
10/11/2018
I’ve traveled all this way with a singular purpose, yet I don’t know how I’m going to kill myself. Seems odd, doesn’t it? But while the idea of death is inescapably luring, the thought of dying is horrifying. So that would lend itself to something simple and painless. An overdose of prescription pills, perhaps. Clean. Or a gunshot to the head or chest. Grisly, but fast. But I have neither a gun nor pills, so I will have to be more resourceful.
I need to keep reminding myself none of this is romantic. That what I’m doing is, by conventional standards, an awful thing. Someone will have to deal with my body, which may be badly decomposed by the time I’m found. Perhaps even ravaged by wild animals. So I apologize to whomever is the unlucky soul making the ghoulish discovery, and I hope I didn’t ruin more than your day. But you are also likely the one to find this journal, and perhaps that discovery will make everything at the very least intriguing.
I’m getting toward the end, which means I’m going back to the beginning. Or, at least, as far back as a beginning exists for me.
In my twenties, my adoptive father told me I was damaged. In my teens, my adoptive parents never dared say anything so directly, but their every action supported his eventual declaration. They handled me with kid gloves, ensuring I was always protected, always shielded from any situation that could be adventurous. The thing of it is, I never rebelled. Not really. Never threw a tantrum. Never snuck out at night. Never yelled back or insisted they were ruining my life. I can’t even tell you they were wrong, because I think they knew me better than I knew myself. Back then, I liked being protected. I wanted to grow up inside a cocoon. I think I knew I had been damaged, but didn’t know the extent of it.
Since recently having the flashback of the two people horribly murdered in that bedroom, I now believe my adoptive parents must have known I’d witnessed such a thing, and also knew my brain was suppressing the memory. So they handled me like ancient, sweaty dynamite: gingerly. They didn’t want me to explode. Turns out, three decades later, what I’m actually doing is imploding.
Forgive me if I skip what, for me, were uneventful and dull teen years, time spent reading escapist fiction and being unrelentingly committed to achieving good grades. I don’t remember most of it. Most years are a blur, or even a blank, as if I’ve suffered so many concussions, I’ve simply lost time. I have memories of having memories, meaning I have a distant sense I used to remember my past, but even that has eased away from my consciousness. All I’m left with from my teen years are snippets, flashes, and general impressions, and all of those tell a story of a very boring and sheltered girl who was less raised than kept.
But there is one memory that stands out. I was about ten, and this is the clearest remembrance I have of my second decade. It was October in Maine, the trees sti
ll on fire with brilliant-colored leaves before shedding them to wind and winter. A beautiful day to be spent outside, unseasonably warm that close to Halloween, yet I was home from school, sick. I have vague memories of being sick often in those years. Strep throat, nagging colds, ear infections.
This time, it was strep, and every time I swallowed, razor blades sliced new grooves inside my tender throat. We had just returned from the doctor with antibiotics. My mother told me to go upstairs and make myself a bath. Soak your bones, she told me, making me feel like I was some kind of stew ingredient to be tenderized.
I went to my bathroom and drew a bath, adding in an excessive amount of bubbles, which grew into a city of clouds rising atop the water. I slid in, the cool of the bubbles quickly replaced by the nearly unbearable heat of the water. I loved to make the baths as hot as I could, to test my limits, force myself to bear extremes. Inch by inch, I disappeared beneath the cloud city, thousands of tiny bubbles popping faintly in my ears, my skin flushing with the heat. Finally, I was fully submerged with the exception of my face, which poked through a pocket of foam that tickled and teased my cheeks.
Eyes closed. Deep breaths. I avoided swallowing as much as I could, not wanting to spoil the moment with pain. I imagined the bubbles would soak in and somehow cure me. Not just my throat, but me. Because even at that age, or maybe especially at that age, I felt I wasn’t right. That I was broken.
I imagined these magical, healing bubbles making me normal. As I did, the water temperature and my body temperature began to converge until everything was the same. I became part of the water, and the water became part of me. Then I had this thought. No, not a thought. An impulse.
Go under, Clara. Everything is safe beneath the surface. In the beneath, you are protected.
Hidden.
Slowly, I lowered myself, the edge of the water creeping up my chin, over my lips, into my nostrils, until finally my entire face was beneath. I didn’t even take a deep breath as I went under. I didn’t have to. I would be fine.
In the beneath, an ease at first, followed by the familiar pangs for air. I counted. Ten seconds. Twenty. My lungs tightened, legs twitched. Thirty seconds, and my body became seemingly hotter than the water. All I needed was to breach the surface two inches away and I could breathe, but something, somewhere deep in my mind and perhaps my past, told me to stay.
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