Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (13 page)

CHAPTER
13

By dinnertime Tesla was back at Lydia’s house to unpack the bag she had hurriedly thrown together. Bizzy had taken her and Max upstairs to show them two small bedrooms on the third floor and an adjacent bathroom they could use before she left them to get settled.

“Can I come in?” asked Max from the doorway.

“Yeah,” Tesla said. She did not look up as she shoved two tanks and a pair of khakis into the open dresser drawer.

Max came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you mad?”

Tesla didn’t answer.
She zipped up her now empty duffle bag and tossed it onto the floor in a corner.

“Are you mad at me?” Max asked.
He picked at the bedspread and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose with the other hand.

Tesla closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.
Then she sat down on the bed, too. “No, Max, I’m not mad at you. I’m not very happy at the moment, but of course I’m not mad at you.”

“Who are you mad at?”

“No one. Everyone. I don’t know,” Tesla said. “I’m worried about Dad. And I don’t want to be here. And I’m not sure why we have to do what any of these people say.”

Max took his usual time to think the situation through, unlike his sister, who seemed to prefer to fly off the handle at the least provocation.
“Well, since you’re only seventeen, we probably can’t be totally in charge of ourselves,” he reasoned. “And if Dad was here, don’t you think he’d say we have to listen to Aunt Jane?”

Tesla’s scowl didn’t diminish, but she had to admit he was right.
“Yeah, probably. But I want to be at home, in our house. We don’t really even know these people, and they’ve all ganged up on us.”

Things had not gone well back at the Abbott house after Joley came outside and announced that Lydia’s team had found additional writing on the back of the note her father had written, the one he’d left for Tesla underneath the pizza box.
One of Lydia’s people had gone through the trash and found Dr. Abbott’s note to his daughter and turned it over. The words, handwritten just as the other side had been, read, simply,
Don’t be afraid—keep trying
.

The note was a puzzle they had yet to decipher, and the afternoon waned as they had discussed it endlessly.
Tesla’s arm had begun to throb painfully. They asked her the same questions, over and over again, maybe because they didn’t like her answers, but she didn’t know what she could do about that.
No, she hadn’t thought to turn the paper over when she’d found her father’s note. No, she didn’t know what he meant by it
. Finally, she’d had enough. She needed some down time and a chance to talk all this craziness over with Max.

“Um, not to kick you guys out, but maybe we could pick this up tomorrow? Max and I will come over to Lydia’s as soon as we wake up, but right now I’d kind of like to order some Chinese and go to bed.
I’m wiped out.”

“You can’t stay here,” Finn had said matter-of-factly.

“Of course I can,” Tesla responded.

“Tesla, we don’t know who was in your house yesterday—remember the guy who attacked you?
We don’t know if and when he’ll be back. It would be stupid to let you and Max stay here.”

“Well then it’s a good thing you’re not in charge, isn’t it?” She snapped back.
“This is where we live. We’ll lock the doors. End of discussion.”
How dare he tell her what to do, like she was Max’s age, like he was her father
, she thought, and was immediately swamped with guilt.

“Sorry, Tesla, but Finn’s right,” Aunt Jane had said, the regret plain in her voice.
“I’ve got to follow up some leads on your dad, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. When I get back, I can stay here with you, but for now I need you and Max to stay at Lydia’s. You’ll be safe there.”

“Don’t worry, Jane,” Beckett said.
She stood up and brushed the grass and whatever off her skin-tight jeans. “We’ll protect the kids while you’re gone.”

Tesla looked daggers at her.
She was so angry she couldn’t trust herself to speak, and she felt the flush of helplessness suffuse her face—she would not concede.

Jane glanced at Tesla and sighed. She knew her well enough to recognize the signs of imminent battle. “Tesla,” she said in her low, deep voice.
“What’s important right now is that we work together to find your father. We all have to do what we can to make sure we get him back quickly and unharmed. Which means you and Max need to stay with Lydia—I need you to work with them as much as I need for you to be safe, so I don’t have to worry about you while I’m gone. You’ll get more accomplished if you stay there. For now, Lydia’s house is command central.”

And now here she was for an indefinite stay with these spies who’d watched her do and heard her say God knows what.
Half of them didn’t even like her, and the jury was out on the other half. And they all made her feel like a little kid, a burden. She tried to let it go so she could focus on her dad, on the ill-defined work that lay ahead of her to figure out what it all meant while the clock ticked away.

When Max left, clearly excited to explore the house a bit, Tesla realized that she should go downstairs as well, so they could all work out a plan for how to proceed from this point.
Jane had said she would be over, briefly, before she left town, as soon as she’d made travel arrangements. Tesla took one of the pain pills Bizzy had brought up with them, picked up the long, green cotton scarf that she’d brought with her from home, and tossed it onto the bed. With her right hand she folded the scarf so it was narrow and long, and then sat down on the bed to try to rig some sort of sling for her broken arm. She put one end of the scarf in her mouth, and wound the thicker mid-section of the fabric underneath her cast. Then she picked up the other end, and brought it up toward her shoulder from the other side—and stopped, the scarf in place, but with one end in her mouth and the other end in her uninjured hand. She had no idea how she could even begin to tie it with only one hand.

“Want some help?” asked Finn, who had appeared silently in the doorway.

She dropped the end that she held between her teeth and spoke in the coldest voice she could manage. “No thanks.”

“Could you possibly be more of a pain in the ass?” he asked conversationally as he walked into the room anyway.
He sat down where Max had sat, on the edge of the bed next to Tesla, and got to work. He watched his hands, not Tesla’s face, and talked while he settled her cast, at exactly the right angle, into the scarf and tied the soft fabric in a square knot at the back of her neck.

“You know, you’re not here because anybody is trying to punish you,” he said.
“This is dangerous stuff, and you’d be here if you were ninety years old.” His hands were behind her neck as he tied the knot, while Tesla held her long hair up with her good right hand. She could feel his fingers, warm and sure, on her skin and see, for the first time, that the light brown of his irises were shot through with flecks of gold.

“Well, if I was ninety, I hope you wouldn’t put me on the third floor,” she said lightly.
“That would just be mean. You know, with my walker and all.”

Finn stopped and their eyes met.
They sat close together, and he had leaned in toward her to fix the sling. “I’d still put you up here.” He finished off the knot, slowly and deliberately. “It would take you awhile to get up and down the stairs, but we’d know where you were. It’s probably the only way we could keep you out of trouble.”

Tesla felt her heart beat loudly, certain he could hear it, too. Finn wasn’t looking at her anymore, he was focused entirely on tying her sling, but all she could think was that his mouth was six and a quarter inches from her own. It was all such a mess—she was angry and resentful, sick of everyone telling her what to do, she’d been attacked and spied on and Finn treated her like a child, she was nothing but a pain in the ass to him, and she wanted to be—she didn’t know what she wanted to be.

“All this is not my fault, you know,” she began, her face hot and her voice unsteady. “I don’t
mean
to get in trouble, but I—”

Finn suddenly moved forward those last few inches and pressed his lips, softly, to hers.

The very air she breathed tipped Tesla toward him—the weight and pull and curve of it led, inexorably, to his warm mouth, and the points of contact where they touched became all that was left of her physical self: her mouth against his, the tender skin of her neck under his fingers. Her body flooded with heat as he paused, his mouth on hers, as if he were surprised. Both his hands were now behind her head and he pulled her in closer, deepening their kiss.

It lasted a second, maybe two, a month, a year.
And then he moved away and left her with lips slightly parted, eyes wide open. He smiled and stood up, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.
“You just can’t help it. See you downstairs.”

Lydia poured freshly steeped black tea into the bone china cup, then looked over at Tesla. “Milk? Lemon?”

Tesla looked up, puzzled, as if she’d forgotten where she was. “Um, lemon, I guess.
Thanks.”

Finn watched her from his customary position in front of the fireplace as he drank his tea—black and hot enough to scald. It had taken them all awhile to get used to this little quirk of Lydia’s, her insistence that they have afternoon tea, but he now looked forward to it, and not just because it meant a decent snack in the middle of the day. It was a chance to sit and chat, to catch up, in addition to whatever business related to the Abbott case they might all have to discuss. Everyone in the house knew each other a little better because of these teas, and that meant they functioned more efficiently as a unit.

Lydia picked up a fresh slice of lemon with little silver tongs, placed it carefully on the saucer, and then handed it to Tesla, who sat in a chair by the coffee table. Tesla seemed unsure what to do. Her eyes darted around the room—landed on Finn then hastened away again—until she scooted out to the edge of her chair so she could set her cup and saucer on the corner of the table, just inches away from where Lydia was doing the honors.

After she’d served everyone else, Lydia proceeded to make her own cup which gave Finn a moment longer to watch Tesla from beneath his hooded eyes. He stood casually, lazily, his legs crossed at the ankles and his shoulders slouched as he leaned up against the fireplace—a deliberate contrast to his silent anger.
He was furious with himself for that kiss—he circled back to it again and again. He could still feel her soft mouth, the faint scent of soap on her skin, the inevitability of the way she had moved toward him. The memory was a scourge with which he lashed himself, without pity.

Lydia sat back, took a sip of her tea, and closed her eyes for a brief moment, a relaxed smile on her face.
And then she opened her eyes and spoke, and everyone remembered what she did for a living.

“Tesla, we have new information on your father,” she began without preamble.
“His credit cards have not been used since he disappeared, his car is parked on campus near his office, and we have a team there now to gather any forensic evidence.”

Tesla glanced at Max, who swallowed visibly.
Neither of them responded.

“His cell phone records indicate that he made only one call that night, to your house phone—and he left a voicemail message.
He called the house—importantly, a few minutes
after
the explosion at his office. Which of course is excellent news.”

Tesla sat up very straight.
“What did the message say?”

“It’s very brief, and we have a copy here.”
Lydia turned to Joley. “Can you play it for Tesla, please?”

Joley didn’t answer, but held up his iPhone and played an MP3 file, the volume up high enough for everyone to hear.

“I had to go out, kids, so do me a favor and clean up the kitchen from our pizza party.
Oh, and DVR that TV show we want to watch, the one with the really high ratings. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“What does it mean?” asked Tesla. Like everyone else, she had already learned to look to Lydia for answers. Her father’s voice had sounded normal, she thought, maybe a little excited. Surely that was a good sign?

“There is still some question about what he might have meant, but we’ve got some ideas,” Lydia said, then looked to Finn with a slight nod.

“First, he sounds good: strong, lucid.” Finn watched Tesla’s face as he spoke. Her expression reflected quite clearly what she thought and felt—he couldn’t remember what it was like to be that open to life—that open to being hurt—if, indeed, he had ever been.

“I think so, too,” she said quickly.
“He doesn’t sound like he’s scared or—or hurt.”

Finn nodded once.
He would not allow himself to smile at her, encourage her—about her father’s situation or about that kiss. He didn’t think either was good for her, and didn’t want to be responsible for where either might lead. “And let’s assume that his voicemail is supposed to send you, and us, a message that no one else would understand,” he continued smoothly. “First, his voicemail tells us that he’s alive and well. He didn’t text, he wanted you to hear his voice. It also tells us that he was able, at least, to make that phone call—he is not gagged, and his hands aren’t tied.”