Finding Fiona (12 page)

She tried to remember what Sarah looked like…
could the Alarias mistake Fiona for her? She wasn’t sure why, but
she had a strong feeling Sarah didn’t have red hair. Maybe red hair
was too obvious. If a girl with bright red hair came out of the
house, who would they assume it was?

She jumped when James opened the
door.

“
We’re good,” he told her. “Come on
out.”

They went in Troy’s car, which was full of
trash from fast food runs. Fiona pushed an old cup off the front
seat before getting in. “Riding in style, I see,” she said. She
pulled on her seatbelt and was surprised to see it actually
worked.

Troy pulled out of the parking lot and turned
the radio on. They didn’t talk for a few minutes. Fiona knew they
were only indulging her, but she had to see the records for herself
if she was going to believe human replication was possible. She had
to believe the Alarias had a real reason to pursue her if she was
going to try to protect herself from them. She absentmindedly
stroked the burn on her arm as they moved through the streets of
Manhattan.

“
Oh, shit,” James said
suddenly.

“
What?” Fiona asked.

“
Black Mercedes behind us,” James
said. “I can’t see the license plate, but it looks like
Greg’s.”

Fiona turned in her seat, looking behind
them.

“
What are you doing? They could see
you!” Troy hissed.

Directly behind them was a small white sedan,
but behind it, Fiona saw the Mercedes SUV. She couldn’t see the
driver in detail–a man, definitely, with short hair. She wanted to
see Greg Alaria; she wanted that spark of recognition, even though
it would mean much different things than it had meant with James or
Keith. It would mean she might be able to use her testimony against
his.

“
Get down,” James said, pushing on
Fiona’s shoulder.

She leaned forward in the seat, her heart
pounding. “Is he following us?”

“
We’ll take the long way,” Troy
said, putting his left turn signal on.

“
Can you see the license plate
number?” Fiona asked James, trying to keep her voice still. He
couldn’t kidnap her in the middle of traffic.

“
It’s… S… Y… yes, it’s him.” He
swore again, and Fiona looked up, just for a moment. “Fiona, don’t,
he’s closer.”

She caught a glimpse of the black SUV before
crouching down again. She put her chin on her knees, forcing
herself to take deep breaths. She squeezed her eyes shut, and she
thought of that car again. Bleeding from the stomach, the
disorienting pain, the scent of cinnamon. Looking over to the
driver’s seat and seeing the girl with brown hair. Trying to make
sense of everything. Words tumbling out of her mouth that made no
sense.

Fiona put her hands over her head, trying to
block out the memory so she could stay in the present. It didn’t
work: she was in the back of the van struggling to untie herself,
finally freeing her hands, her wrists nearly bleeding, looping the
rope around the neck of the driver, bracing herself for the impact
of the median in front of them… then she was in the fire,
screaming, coughing, running, fighting the two men… and still
gaping holes in it all…

“
Fiona? Hey, are you
okay?”

A soft shake of her shoulder brought her back
to the present. She peered up at James, who was leaning forward
from the back.

“
Hey, are you okay?” he asked
quietly. “Troy’s going to get rid of him. Don’t worry, okay? I’m
here with you.”

She grabbed his hand and held on tightly. Troy
took a sharp left turn, knocking James into Fiona. She ignored the
pain from their heads bumping and tightened her grip on his
hand.

She sneaked a look up; the SUV was on the road
they’d just been on. The driver tried to get over into the left
lane but nearly ran into a minivan that honked at him. The SUV was
forced to follow the road, passing the intersection. She let out a
breath of relief.

“
You lost him,” James
exclaimed.

Troy took long, winding roads after that,
often doubling back. The SUV was gone, though. Fiona’s hand was
sweaty as she took it from James. She laughed breathlessly.
“Sorry.”

“
It’s okay, mine’s sweaty, too.”
James wiped his palm on his jeans.

The main office of the Chief Medical Examiner
was in a beige, nondescript building. Troy parked, glanced around,
and said, “We do this quickly, okay? They could be going to the
house after this.”

He led them inside to a clean lobby with gray
tile. A woman with curly hair sat behind a large desk, typing on
her computer. “Can I help you?”

“
Hello,” Troy said. “I’m looking
for some records from my niece’s death. She died this
May.”

The woman turned to her computer. “What was
her name?”

“
Elizabeth Normans.”

“
Her birthday?”

“
4/3/91.”

The woman’s fingers shot across the keyboard,
and a moment later, she asked, “And what’s your name?”

“
Walter Montgomery.” So, he’d kept
his last name when he lied to them.

The receptionist nodded. “You’re listed here
as next-of-kin. Can I see some ID?”

After checking his ID, she asked what
specifically he wanted. He asked for any pictures, the autopsy
report, the death certificate, and any other records he had access
to. She slipped him an address where he could get the death
certificate and asked them to wait for the other papers.

They sat on the stiff black couches, and Troy
took out his phone. He called Keith, and Fiona listened to the
one-sided conversation telling them about Greg following them. She
worried about Hannah, hoping everything would be okay. Keith worked
security, though, and they were both smart.

“
Was there a police report?” Fiona
asked.

“
There should be,” James replied.
“They interviewed the Alarias the day after the fire when I told
them I thought they were responsible.”

Fiona wanted to ask what their relationship
had been like. The journal made it clear she’d been in love with
him. What it must have been like for him, chasing after her based
on a couple entries in a journal, then finding out she didn’t even
remember him.

They waited about twenty minutes. Troy kept
checking around outside, and James called Keith to check up on
things. The receptionist finally called Troy up to the desk, and
Fiona watched him speak with her, his smile going from friendly to
flirty. She shook her head.

He came back with a folder. “You can look at
it on the way back,” he said as he walked to the door.

In the car, Fiona opened the folder and the
first thing she saw was a picture of what had been a human being at
one point. She gasped. “Thanks for the warning,” she told
Troy.

“
Oh,” Troy said, “the first picture
is your clone burnt to a crisp.”

“
Replica,” Fiona said under her
breath. She wasn’t quite burnt to a crisp, part of her face was
distinguishable. Only part of an ear, half of her mouth, and a
portion of her chin.

“
Oh, god,” James said, looking over
her shoulder. His fingers brushed her arm, tickling her skin. “I’m
glad you never showed me these.”

“
Me, too,” Troy said.

Fiona turned to the next picture, which showed
the face from a different angle. The third picture was a close-up
of the chicken pox scar next to her top lip. Fiona raised a finger
to feel the scar on her own face.

“
That was one of the only
distinguishable parts of her,” Troy said. “It’s what convinced me
it was you… or so I thought.”

That was the end of the pictures.
The folder also held a comparison of dental records with the
coroner’s
signature confirming a match and
a few sheets of complicated codes Fiona assumed was DNA analysis of
her blood. The autopsy report stated that the cause of death was
asphyxiation by
smoke inhalation
and that the coroner couldn’t run some standard
tests because of the state of the body.

The Remus project had
worked
. Whatever she and
her parents had done, they’d created another human being. It made
her breathless. How did the machine work? She stared at the
pictures, her mind racing. It almost made sense the Alarias had
done so much to find this information. She would never condone the
murder, but their ambition made sense now. It was real.

Fiona closed the folder. “It worked,” she
whispered. “There were two of me at one point.”

“
Yep,” Troy said. She was surprised
he didn’t yell, ‘I told you so!’

They stopped at a red light. Fiona gazed
outside, watching the pedestrians pass in front of them. This
wouldn’t make exposing the Alarias’s guilt easy. “We need to find
that girl.”

“
What girl?” Troy asked.

Fiona glanced at him, realizing he didn’t know
about the girl in the car. She hadn’t ever felt comfortable
speaking about her strange memories with him. She explained the
memory to him.

“
Why do you want to find her?” he
asked.

“
Maybe she can help us turn in the
Alarias,” she said.

“
Why would she do that?”

“
Something had to happen in between
me crashing the car and then being in her car…” Fiona trailed
off.

“
Yeah, she probably stabbed you
twice and left you for dead,” Troy said.

“
But then what happened to Greg
Alaria?” she asked. “I was with her and not him, and she took me to
the harbor where there were people and I think she started
screaming for help. Hannah said she heard screaming, but she said I
probably wasn’t strong enough.”

“
But who could she be?” James
asked.

That was one of many questions Fiona had, but
she had to focus on just one for now. They had to find the
Alarias’s assistants, coworkers, daughters, sisters. Women
connected to her parents. Anyone that may want to help
her.

* * *

Chapter Eight

Troy took a long way home from the Chief
Medical Examiner’s office, but the Mercedes SUV from earlier didn’t
reappear. Fiona wondered what the driver would have done had he
kept following them. Did they just want to know where they were
going? Or did they have plans to capture Fiona and use her? If they
didn’t find her at Hannah’s house, how long would it take them to
find her at the Elmscott house?

The thoughts made her leery. She felt like
someone was going to jump out at her as she jogged from Troy’s car
to the backdoor of the house. As soon as she was inside, she
called, “Hannah?”

Hannah’s voice came from the second level.
“Yeah, I’m up here.”

Fiona breathed a sigh of relief, walking
upstairs. Keith sat on the couch, watching TV, and Hannah was
working at the dining room table directly behind the
couch.

“
Hey, how’d it go?” Hannah asked as
they came upstairs. “Did you see his car again?”

Fiona shook her head as she sat down, putting
the folder on the table. “No, we lost him halfway there, and he
wasn’t there on our way home.”

Hannah pulled the folder toward her. “I can’t
believe he was following you.”

“
Careful, there are some graphic
pictures,” Fiona warned her. “She was definitely a
replica.”

“
Are you serious?” Hannah asked,
her eyes wide. She opened the folder and grimaced at the first
photo. Her mouth hanging open, she ran her fingers over the chicken
pox scar. “I can’t believe it… it was real… I thought this was all
crazy. But if this is really you… well, it’s not you.”

“
No, but it was a genetic copy,”
Fiona said quietly. It was a amazing to think of a device with that
kind of power. “I’m going to look around in the lab,
actually.”

Fiona spent most of the next few
hours in the lab, trying to piece together what remained of the
Remus project.
Keith and James came in and
out, trying to help, but neither of them were much use. It was
pretty advanced physics.

A few hours later, when she was tired of
equations that didn’t have answers, she explored the bins and boxes
in her old bedroom, poring over pictures and books and knickknacks
and paintings. Some of the things had a faint gray residue that
came off on her fingers, a weak smell of smoke.

She, James and Keith played memory
games. She started out asking them questions about her life, but
eventually, the boys took over. Keith fired questions at
her.
What were our school colors? What’s
your middle name? When was the first time you drank alcohol?
He told her to just answer without thinking, and
if five seconds passed, he’d tell her the answer and move on to the
next question.

She blurted out things, usually wrong, but
they were all surprised when she answered some of them correctly.
She knew the color of her prom dress: green. The shape and form of
it hovered in her mind, the details just out of reach. She also
knew what position James was on the football team: wide receiver.
When Keith asked where they visited with her parents after she
graduated, she answered, “Florida” without a beat.