The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (36 page)

Jill led Tarin up to her
mother’s study and reached at the door with her fist, about to give the same
gentle knock she had used to enter the study so many times over the years.

But Tarin pushed the door open
before Jill could knock.

“Oh, Tarin. That’s gonna make
her--”

Too late. Carolyn had spun
around in her chair to face them, her eyes wide, her face angry at the
interruption to her thoughts.

“What is this?” she said in an
angry voice. “Who is this?”

Tarin spoke immediately,
charging into the room with speed and purpose.

“Hello Carolyn,” he said. “I am
a friend.”

In that instant, two things
struck Jill as strange. The first was that Tarin called Jill’s mother by her
first name. Jill didn’t remember ever telling Tarin her mother’s name.

The second was that the anger in
Carolyn’s voice subsided immediately.

“You are a friend?” she said.

“I am a friend,” said Tarin. He
held out his hand. Carolyn shook it. He introduced himself, said he was a
friend of the family, and was here on her husband’s request.

It all moved so fast Jill barely
knew what was happening. Seventeen years of interactions with her mother had
conditioned her not to expect anything like this. Tarin was breaking all the
most sacred rules of the Wentworth family: do not interrupt Carolyn while she
works; do not enter her study without knocking; do not approach her desk
without being invited.

Do not take up her precious
time.

He had such command over the
room. The sheer force of his presence—it was astounding. Jill never would have
believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

Tarin was speaking to Jill’s
mother, and she was listening.

“Will that computer play a DVD?”
Tarin asked, pointing at Carolyn’s desktop.

Okay, now he was going too far.
He was going to show her the movie, mere minutes after barging into her study?
Jill needed to slow this down. She remembered how long it took Gordon to bring
about a hypnotic state. Layers upon layers of relaxation were required before
Carolyn was ready to talk. If Tarin showed her the movie now, she was sure to
freak out on him.

“Tarin, maybe we should all sit
down and talk for a bit,” Jill said. “You know, before you show the movie.”

Tarin turned to Jill and gave
her a huge, knee-weakening smile.

“Why don’t you go sit on the
couch downstairs?” he said. “Keep an eye on your father. Make sure he doesn’t
bother us.”

For one long second, Jill was
confused. On the one hand, there was her skepticism about the way Tarin had
charged into her mother’s room and already had the movie out. On the other
hand, well, checking on her father did sound like a good idea.

Better than a good idea. It was
a brilliant idea. Walter was down there on the couch asleep. Somebody needed to
check on him. Who better to do it than Jill?

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be
downstairs.”

“Close the door behind you, will
you?” Tarin said.

Jill was already closing it. The
suggestion to check on her father sounded so perfect to her, so spot-on, she
could hardly wait to do it, and she sprinted down all three flights of stairs,
leaping across half the final staircase like an acrobat. She bounded into the
parlor to find her father still sitting in his chair, his head cocked back, his
mouth wide open as he snored like a buzzsaw.

Jill took a seat next to him on
the couch.
I’m checking on you, Dad
, she thought
. And I’ll keep
checking on you until Tarin’s finished.

As Jill sat in the parlor,
watching her father snore, she thought about all the things that had been
weighing on her these past two months.

Three of her friends were dead,
having been murdered by a vampire on the night of the Date Auction.

Two more of her friends had been
kidnapped, and were now the prize at the end of a brutally difficult treasure
hunt. Her boyfriend was gone, brainwashed right out of her life. Her old
contacts in the Network were out of touch, so far away now she might as well
have never met them.

Let it go, Jill. Let it slip
out of your mind and float away on the breeze.

It was amazing how powerful it
was to have someone to talk to. After she watched that tragic video of her
mother and father’s wedding she felt so alone in the world she didn’t know if
she could continue. But then Tarin showed up. He listened. He understood.

He was helping her. Right now,
all Jill had to do was sit on the couch and make sure her dad stayed put. Tarin
was doing the rest.

Time passed slowly for her, but
she wasn’t bored. She was at peace. She felt like the horrible, frightening
world she had lived in for months would stay away from her so long as she sat
on this couch, doing what Tarin told her to do.

And then he came into the parlor.

“We are finished,” Tarin said.

“Finished? Do you mean--”

Tarin held his hand up to his
lips. “Let’s not wake your father,” he said. “Carolyn is waiting for you in
your bedroom.”

“My bedroom?” Jill said.

“Come find me outside when
you’re done talking to her,” Tarin said.

Jill nodded her head once, then
ran for the stairs. She entered her room to find a very familiar sight. Her
mother, sitting at a computer, her back to the door.

“One second please,” she said.
“I’m onto something here.”

Was this the new Carolyn
Wentworth? It seemed just like the old one. The only difference was that
Carolyn was typing on a laptop on Jill’s desk, rather than the computer in her
study.

“Mom? What are you doing?”

Carolyn held up one finger. It
was the gesture she had always used when Jill wanted to talk to her and she
wanted to work.

Jill got a sinking feeling in
her stomach. It looked like the deprogramming hadn’t worked at all.

“Okay, that will do it,” Carolyn
said. She took her hands off the computer and stood from the chair. What she
did next was so unexpected and beautiful it took Jill’s breath away.

Carolyn Wentworth walked across
the bedroom with open arms, and embraced her daughter.

It took Jill a second to hug her
back. When she did, she let out a laugh. “Mom?” she said. “Mom, are you okay?”

Carolyn took a step back and put
her arms on Jill’s shoulders. “I’m okay,” she said. “And I need to get back to
work. I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Back to work? Mom, that laptop
you’re working on--”

“I know all about the laptop,”
she said. “Your friend told me.”

“My friend? You mean Tarin?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Carolyn said,
returning to the desk and putting her hands back on the keyboard. “Through this
laptop you have full access to Renata Sullivan’s phone,” Carolyn said. “But
Tarin tells me you haven’t seen anything you can use yet.”

“No, we haven’t,” Jill said.
“But Mom. Did Tarin tell you why we have access to the phone? Do you understand
what you’re doing?”

“You are part of the Network,”
Carolyn said, her fingers clattering across the keys as she spoke. “I know all
about the Network. I’ve written lots of software over the years to seek out
members of the Network. I’ve always wondered why Daciana was unhappy with the
software and wanted me to write more. Now I know. There was an equally talented
programmer working for the Network all this time. You and I were playing cat
and mouse all over the Internet.”

It was startling to hear her
mother speak of the Network, so much so that Jill had to sit down. A part of
her wondered if this was really happening. For months, she had imagined what
her mother would be like when she was free of the commands that held her
hostage.

She had never expected her to be
like this.

“I really don’t know if this is
the best use of your time right now,” Jill said.

“Nonsense. Renata is masking her
important work somehow. When you hacked into her phone, you only got past the
first layer of security. I think I know how to get past the second.”

“Mom, please. Could you stop
typing for a second and talk to me? I want to know how you feel. You’ve had
these commands in your mind your whole life.”

“And now they’re gone,” Carolyn
said. “Believe me, Jill. It’s not something I can begin to describe. But for
the first time in my life, I am doing what I truly want to do.”

Carolyn was smacking away at the
laptop with the same focus and vigor she brought to all her other computing.

“This?” Jill said. “What you’re
doing now is what you truly want to do?”

“I am helping you, Jill. I am
helping you and Tarin complete your mission. And when I’m done, I’m looking
forward to helping you complete another task, whatever it may be.”

“I appreciate the help,” Jill
said. “I’m sure Tarin does too. Did he put you up to this? What did you guys
talk about up there?”

“Tarin helped me see the truth
about my situation,” Carolyn said, absently. She typed for a time without
speaking, then added, “I am glad to know the truth.”

“Mom, could you please quit
typing and look at me?”

“Not now. I’m too close to
figuring this out.”

She was hunched over the
computer, her fingertips flying across the keys. It was the same view of her
mother that she’d always had.

“How about when you’re done?
Could we talk then?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Carolyn said. Jill
shook her head. The classic, Carolyn Wentworth
mmmhmm
. It was a sound
she’d heard thousands of times. It meant
I’m done listening to you now
.

“I’ll be outside with Tarin,”
Jill said. “I’m excited to talk to you later.”

Carolyn said nothing as Jill
left the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Jill found Tarin downstairs.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Tarin held his finger to his
lips. “Not here,” he whispered, pointing at Walter. “Let’s go outside.”

Tarin led her to the back porch.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Jill said, “She seems a little
different, but--”

“I can see that you’re confused,
Jill. Let me tell you how this works” Tarin said. “I found the commands in your
mother’s mind. We watched the DVD together. I helped her recognize the commands
that were holding her hostage. I taught her to reject them.”

“But it’s like she’s still not
in control,” Jill said. “She couldn’t bring herself to stop working.”

“You must lower your
expectations,” Tarin said. “You desire that this poor woman transforms herself
into the mother you’ve always wanted. But that’s not who she is. She has spent
her life working as a computer programmer all day, every day. That is her
identity.”

“Her identity?” Jill said. “I
thought the point of deprogramming her--”

“Deprogramming is exactly that.
Nothing more, nothing less. I removed the programming from her subconscious
mind. She is no longer a slave to her wedding vows. And, over time, with those
commands gone, she will rebuild her mind in whatever way she sees fit. But
right now, she has decades of neural pathways built that tell her she likes to
work. She has created the mind of someone who wants to program computers all
day, every day.”

“And that’s what I wanted to
free her of.”

“No, Jill. You wanted to free
her of the commands to make your father happy. And that is done. There is a big
difference between the woman working in her bedroom and the woman we found in
her study.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“It was there. Right now, she is
doing something she chose to do. She is doing what she wants, not what Walter
wants.”

Jill looked up at the sky. The
glow from DC was so strong that the stars were mostly invisible. For weeks, she
had imagined that someday soon, she and her mother would drive far away from
here. They would get in a car and leave Washington in the rearview mirror,
setting up a new life for them both in a place where they could see the stars
at night.

“I’m disappointed,” Jill said.
“I thought that, given the choice to do what she wanted to do, she might choose
to get out of here with me. Instead she’s chosen to work on the hack I
started.”

“I guided her in that
direction,” Tarin said. “As soon as the commands were gone from her mind, it
was clear that your mother was lost. She is a woman who must have a computing
project to work on, and she’s never once chosen the project herself. She was
desperate for someone to give her something to do. For a few seconds there, I
thought she might have a nervous breakdown. So I told her about the Network. I
told her it was important to you and she could join us if she wants. I told her
she has a skillset that we value and she could get started right away,
if
that was what she wanted to do
. There is the big difference Jill. Your
mother knows the truth now and had the choice to do anything she wanted. She
immediately chose to get to work.”

“It’s a frustrating project to
start on,” said Jill. “I don’t think there’s anything there for her to do. The
hack is complete. We have access to Renata’s phone. It’s not our fault she’s so
boring.”

“No, Jill. On this one, you’re
wrong. Renata is hiding something. I’m sure of it. Let’s give your mother a
chance. A challenging problem like this is good for her.”

“If you say so.”

“You know, I didn’t come here
tonight to reprogram your mother. I came here to talk about the second clue.”

“What’s is there to talk about?
It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Tarin had a grin on his face.

“No. Don’t tell me you….no way!
There’s no way you solved it.”

“What have I told you? The key
to these clues is thinking like Renata Sullivan, and it just so happens that I
know exactly how she thinks.”

“What is it? What’s the answer?”