MILA 2.0: Redemption (8 page)

I might be paranoid, but that feeling of apprehension had proven useful in many situations.

So my android sensors performed a discreet survey.

Blood pressure, pulse, body language—all in normal range. No reason to believe she was lying.

Maggie scowled out at the street. “He told me he’d already checked it out, and the stranger was just a serviceman. Checking the pipes, or some such. Rubbish. Never once seen a serviceman wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead
of some type of uniform. And where was his company van or truck? Plus, he was twitchy. Kept jerking his head around like he expected someone to bust him at any minute.”

Holland, in jeans and a T-shirt? Acting twitchy? Possible, but not likely. Holland was the kind of man who believed his own hype. He’d have no problem explaining his presence, no matter where he was.

Still. “Do you remember anything about what this man looked like? Anything at all?”

Maggie caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I wish I did, but he wore a baseball cap on his head and I never did get a good look at his face. He was tall, though, at least six feet, and plenty scrawny. I remember thinking no one had cooked him a good meal in a long time.”

My fingers curled under the edges of the chair. These details definitely didn’t match up with Holland. And they weren’t much to go on.

“Do you by chance remember either of the detectives’ names?” Lucas asked. “I’d love to know if they ever found that guy.”

She pursed her lips and frowned. “No, I can’t say that I do. But I would imagine you could find all the information in the police reports. As a family member, I’m sure they’d be happy to make you a copy, down at the local station.”

I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be happy at all, but I just nodded.

Maggie sighed. “I wish that I could see your cousin again. I still miss her. She’d come by on the weekends and keep me company. Made this house feel alive again. Sometimes she’d even bring friends.”

“She’d bring friends with her? Really?”

“Well, mostly just one. Chloe Nivens. She and Sarah were practically attached at the hip. They did everything together.”

Lucas leaned forward, seemingly excited by this new lead.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t move. The instant Maggie uttered that name, my memory sparked.

A girl with long brown hair, laughing and falling back into the snow, still stuck to her snowboard.

Chloe.

When I’d had the memory back at the cabin, I hadn’t realized that other girl had been my—I mean, Sarah’s—best friend.

“Did you know her at all?” Maggie’s question drew me back into the moment. She watched me quizzically from behind her bifocals.

I formed my expression into a false smile.

“No. But Sarah always talked about her. You wouldn’t happen to have her number, by chance?” Now that the initial shock had dissipated, some of Lucas’s excitement trickled into me. A lead was a lead.

“Chloe’s number? Why?”

I searched my mind for a good reason to contact Sarah’s friend if I didn’t even know her.

But Lucas was quick on his feet again. “She might have some opinions on the schools Mona’s looking at. Since she’s from this area and everything.”

“Not a bad idea. Chloe is very smart. Has a good head on her shoulders,” Maggie said before going off on a tangent. “I do think I have her mother’s number—Daphne Nivens. Daphne’s mom, Opal—that would be Chloe’s grandma, god rest her soul—and I used to play gin rummy together. Daphne still checks in on me every now and then, the dear. I hear all about Chloe and her soccer team—she’s goalie, you know—their family vacations to go skiing or whatever that newfangled thing is, you know, the skateboard on snow. Seems crazy to me, in the winter, why go somewhere even colder? Arizona, now that’s a winter vacation. Anyway, what we were talking about? Oh, right. Daphne’s phone number. You want me to find that for you?”

“Yes, that would be great,” I said, trying not to let on that her rambling had set off a flood of strange feelings inside me. A powerful emotional connection.

Some deep, hidden part of me remembered what it was like to be her friend.

When Maggie returned from the other room, she held out a pink Post-it note, along with a small business card. “I
decided I should check my file folder in the kitchen, where I stash names and numbers. I confess, I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to paper—you never know when you might need to call someone. Though I’m nothing like those families on TV. Have you seen that show? Isn’t it something else? Those poor people! And that one lady with all those dogs! Now, where was I? Oh, right. So, I got to thinking that I probably wouldn’t have thrown away a detective’s card, and sure enough, there it was. I wish they had kept him on the case. He seemed like a good egg.”

I swallowed hard, barely daring to hope. Talking to this detective could be huge. There seemed reason to believe there was something suspicious about the fire. But why would anyone be targeting Sarah’s family?

Even if Maggie was wrong about what she saw, one fact remained. The fire was the unofficial start of the MILA project. Because without Sarah, Holland wouldn’t have had the basis for his experiments.

Lucas took the card in his hand and read the name out loud. “Edgar Blythe?”

Maggie nodded. “That’s him. A nice-looking man, blond hair, nice brown eyes, though he looked like he could use a good shave. I didn’t get the impression he was married—his dress shirt was too wrinkled.” Then she suddenly leaned toward Lucas, staring at his forehead with pursed lips. “Before you go, I should get you a new bandage
for that cut of yours. It’s looking a little . . . gnarly.”

Lucas reached up and touched it, a look of embarrassment floating across his face. I was a little mortified too. I hadn’t even noticed how old and gray the Band-Aid had become over the last couple days.

“Oh, that’s nice of you. Thanks,” he said.

Maggie turned to me with a shaking finger. “You two better take care of each other, okay? If it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that bad things can happen, even to the best of people.”

A
fter a promising start, the next hour was a disappointment.

We called both the numbers that Maggie gave us from a pay phone outside the local library. The one on Edgar Blythe’s business card was disconnected, and Chloe’s mother’s cell delivered an automated message that said her mailbox was currently full. I suggested to Lucas that we pick up a burner phone, so that we could at least try Daphne again later, but instead he grabbed his laptop from the Caprice and motioned for me to follow him into the building.

A white-and-blue sign above the sliding glass doors bragged:
WHERE DETERMINATION MEETS KNOWLEDGE.

Hopefully that came with a money-back guarantee.

The sliding doors slid open with a
whisk whisk
of moving air. Inside, four middle-aged women juggled toddlers and cell phones while waiting in line to scan their books. A young dad brushed past us toward the exit carrying a beaming little boy who clutched a book about trains. His round baby eyes met mine, and he chortled, releasing the book with one hand to wave.

His innocent little face prompted a new bout of dread, which spilled across my neck and back like a dark, viscous sludge. Beneath the heavy cotton of my sweatshirt, my stomach throbbed.

Could he be in danger? Could this be the place?

I scanned my system for the tiniest hint that another step forward might ignite a storm inside me. But there was nothing, just the sound of my faux heartbeat thumping in my ears. My relief was short-lived when I noticed the security system looming ahead. Did it scan for weapons? If so, we were completely screwed.

Analyzing capabilities . . .

Limited to the detection of registered property leaving the premises without permission.

Lucas glanced at me and noticed my intense interest in the electronic arch we needed to walk through. Casually, he put his hand on the small of my back and escorted me to the welcome desk, where a librarian was perched on a stool, immersed in her work.

No alarms sounded. But I still felt vulnerable here, in Sarah’s town. Even though my appearance had changed, I recognized so many things through Sarah’s memories that I felt like everyone could see right through me. And I didn’t want to hurt anyone here.

“So I was thinking we could try Blythe’s email address, just in case it’s operational. If not, there’s a chance it’s being forwarded to a personal account, which we can try and track down, of course,” Lucas said, leading us around some shelving units toward two unoccupied desks in a back corner.

“Good idea,” I said. “Maybe in the meantime we could hack into the case files somehow? Like through the police network?”

Lucas dug his laptop out of the bag and popped it open on the desk, making sure the monitor faced the back wall, away from any curious eyes.

I dropped into a chair while Lucas logged on, examining the rest of the library. I noted the number of people in our section—thirteen; the closest escape routes—emergency exit, far left corner, another one through the librarian offices to the right of the front door, worst-case scenario, picture window, ten feet away; and the furnishings, backpacks, and decorations, all in one swift stream.

Across the way, my gaze froze on a poster of two teen girls, reading on a beach. The sign planted in the sand
beside them read
PENN’S LANDING
.

My mind expanded the landscape of the sign, following the beach to a boardwalk. I saw a man, walking hand in hand with a child. A puff of pink cotton candy waved from her other hand.

No, wait. I felt the warm strength of the man’s hand, tasted the crunch of spun sugar on my tongue.

A hot wave pulsed through my head, and everything dimmed. The next instant, I saw the man throw his head back and howl with laughter, and then that image fizzled, revealing a blur of others that made my stomach churn.

Blissful emptiness as I held the gun steady, aiming at Peyton’s head.

Hunter thrashing against his restraints, his screams muffled by the gag in his mouth.

My finger, releasing the trigger.

And me, feeling nothing . . .

“I just sent a test email to Blythe and it bounced back, so hacking into the police network it is,” Lucas said, glancing up at me.

His words plucked me from my self-inflicted horror. I started, but couldn’t expel any sound through a suddenly dry mouth.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice concerned. “Are your sensors picking something up?”

“No, I . . .” I swallowed, wet my lips. Tried to decide
what I should tell him. “It’s just . . . I need to know if Hunter is okay.”

“Right,” Lucas said, nodding. “Not knowing must be hard.”

Hard? Try unbearable.

“Once we do this case-file search, I can try tracking Hunter’s cell phone again,” Lucas offered. “I wasn’t able to turn anything up at the cabin, but maybe things have changed.”

He was just being nice. Odds were we wouldn’t be able to locate Hunter, or even Daniel for that matter. Every cell, every chip, every atom of my body froze when I considered the possibility that Hunter was still in danger. He’d only ended up at Quinn’s through my subterfuge. If anything happened to him . . .

Then again, if Hunter was fine and we located him, would he speak to me again? And even if he did, what would I say? How could he forgive me? During our last interaction, I’d been a monster.

Inside me, despair warred with hope. Together, maybe, we could all make our way back from the brink of darkness.

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” I managed to say, despite the growing lump in my throat.

Lucas nodded and started to
click-click-click
his way into the police database. As I watched his fingers, saw the code flow across the screen, I once again marveled at his skill.
His eyes burned with determination.

In less than ten minutes, he was in.

Case numbers flitted across the screen, and Lucas performed a search.

Sarah Laurent Lusk

Her case number was 4220.

Lucas quickly found the docs associated with her case, numbered one through fifty-four.

Numbers thirty-one and thirty-two were missing. Deleted by an anonymous user. Which might not mean anything at all.

Our heads together, we scanned the existing files, Lucas downloading them onto a flash drive so we could peruse them in a more private location later.

As I read over his shoulder, a phrase in an early report by Edgar Blythe made me freeze.

. . . possibility of arson . . .

Lucas pointed at the line on the screen, making sure I caught it. But I’d already moved on, and a shadow rippled over me. Apparently Blythe had reason to believe this theory. But we weren’t going to find out what that reason was . . . because the evidence that suggested arson was
located in the two missing files.

A coincidence? That seemed impossible.

I continued to scan files while the shadow thickened into a storm cloud.

“Evidence tampering. It has to be,” I said to Lucas.

I slumped in my chair. We needed that information, and the fastest way to retrieve it was if I tapped into the database myself and attempted to reconstruct the files internally. But Lucas still hadn’t found a way to fix my security issue, so any internet connection left me vulnerable to detection.

Unless . . .

“This is going to sound like a really weird suggestion,” I whispered.

Lucas raised an eyebrow and for some reason, that simple gesture sent a surge of heat into my cheeks.

“What I mean is, if you hook me up to your laptop, the old-fashioned way—”

“You mean, by using a USB?”

I nodded. “Exactly. Would you be able to mask my IP address then?”

“You want to try to reconstruct the files.” Lucas nodded. “It could work.”

“Well, should we try it?”

“Here, in the library?”

A quick scan revealed a discreet spot for me to hook up to his computer undetected.

Private reading rooms: 4.

Availability: 2.

Reservation required; ID necessary.

“We can sign up for a closed reading room. All you’d need is Tim’s ID,” I said.

Lucas sat there, considering. “Well, once we connect you, your IP address would be difficult—but not impossible—to trace. I removed all the geolocation information from my laptop and obfuscated the routing information, so you’d be protected. But not for long.”

“What are we talking about? Ten minutes?” I asked.

“More like sixty seconds.”

“Wow. So generous,” I mocked, rolling my shoulders back like I was prepping for battle. To most people, sixty seconds wasn’t much time. But in my world, a lot could happen in a fraction of an instant.

The reading room was small, even smaller than my tiny loft at the cabin, and the space was sparsely furnished with a table and two benches. I sat with my back to the door, but the narrow rectangular window in its center had me worried. If we weren’t careful, someone could walk by and catch a young computer scientist linking his laptop into the brain of a teenage android. Not your typical study room shenanigans.

Lucas fed a wire into my finger port beneath the table
while I worked on not freaking out and keeping my mind clear of stray thoughts. Wisps of memories threatened to make that difficult, but once I connected to Lucas’s laptop and began the mental merge, I drifted into this semitrance, to a land where strings of undecipherable codes formed a language that not only made sense, but was actually a part of me.

Just like Sarah.

“You’re fully synched and cloaked, Mila,” I heard Lucas say. “Sixty seconds starts . . .” He punched a key on his laptop. “Now.”

It only took me three seconds to hack into the database.

Attempt/reconstruct files? *.*

Search original file locations.

Resolve sequence ID.

In less than five seconds, a flood of information poured in, around, through me, but I held my breath when the search stuttered, disrupting the flow of energy.

File reformatted . . . continue recovery attempt?

My bubble of hope burst as if stabbed by a sharp tack. The files had been reformatted. They were probably worthless now.

Continue.

I answered, even though I didn’t expect anything to come of it. Four long seconds ticked by before I received a response.

Hexadecimal code recovery: 98.2% undecipherable.

Not especially promising. But still . . .

I extracted the recovered bytes, manipulated them, and eased them into shape, which took longer than I’d wanted—at least fifteen more seconds.

In less than thirty seconds, I’d be unmasked. My whereabouts available to whoever chose to look. But I couldn’t stop yet.

A document appeared. Well, only tiny pieces of one. Much of the information was useless—a partial street address for Sarah, a few words about fire containment.

But there was a tiny bit more, and that part made my heart pound.

. . . fire pattern and spread consistent with . . .

With what? An accidental fire? Or arson?

A familiar darkness tore through my body, curling my hands into fists and tightening my jaw. Not only might someone have set the fire that had taken Sarah’s life, but someone might have tried to cover it up. That fit in with Maggie’s story too, about how she felt like the case had been mishandled.

“I got something,” I whispered to Lucas.

“Only fifteen more seconds left, Mila,” he urged.

I scrolled through the files, noting that many of Blythe’s reports were co-signed by a woman. Sonja Lopez. And that, three days after he filed that broken-up report, a new name replaced Edgar Blythe’s on the case. Scott Pacelli.

Something slithered down my spine. Three days. Coincidence? Surely not. “Ten . . .” Lucas whispered, starting the final countdown.

Physical evidence: SL11-25, SL11-26, SL11-27, SL11-28.

The numbers continued up to SL11-40.

“Nine . . .”

I loaded them and got more than I bargained for.

“Eight . . .”

Photographs spilled forth. Images of Sarah’s house, burned to the ground, charred and blackened almost beyond recognition. Descriptions of mangled objects—a melted family portrait. Fingernail scrapings.

Nothing helpful. And nothing about the possibility of an accelerant, which would prove arson for certain.

“Mila, hurry. Five . . .” The pitch of Lucas’s voice deepened.

I double-checked, and then swore. “Three of the physical evidence descriptions are missing,” I whispered.

SL11-27, 11-28, and 11-29. Blank.

Before I could dive back in to try to find them, something wrenched free of my finger. For a panicky second, my mind went blank, as empty as those barren files. Then I noticed Lucas dangling the end of disconnected wire.
Thank god he’d disabled the connection. But not before I’d committed every bit of information to my own personal data banks.

“What did you find?” Lucas asked.

I felt the burn of tears behind my eyes. “It’s all pointing to a cover-up. I wish we could go to Blythe and get some more answers.”

Lucas turned back to his laptop. “Let’s just search his name, see what it turns up.”

His fingers flew over the keyboard while I watched the screen. I closed the tip of my finger port, but the sizzle of energy remained in my disrupted skin cells.

He pulled up an article from the local paper on the monitor. The headline revealed yet another dead end. Literally.

Forty-nine-year-old police detective Edgar Blythe’s body was found at the bottom of a valley on a popular hiking trail. The medical examiner found that a head contusion was the likely culprit, the result of slipping on the trail and hitting his head on a rock. A park official reports that the trail, while usually safe, was treacherous after a prolonged rain, rendering it muddy and slippery.

Lucas pointed at the date. Two days after Blythe logged in his report. The day before Scott Pacelli took over the case.

Was Holland behind all of this somehow, taking one innocent life after another in order to hide his true motives and plans? Or were we going down the wrong road, developing a false conspiracy theory? What did we really have except for shards of information and suspicions from an old woman?