Finding Fiona (13 page)

The three of them talked about the trip.
Sarah, James, and Keith came with her family to visit Disneyworld
and the other attractions in Orlando. Keith brought up his laptop
and showed her pictures of the trip. The constant sense of déjà vu
was beginning to give her a headache.

Fiona felt her mind getting stronger. Some
memories that before were nonexistent were now fuzzy skeletons. She
could almost recall the inn where she worked a year ago. She could
see a purple and gold carpet and the outline of a lobby. She wished
she remembered more important things, such as her parents or her
relationship with James or, of course, the day of the
fire.

She returned to the lab late in the afternoon,
reading through incomplete notebooks and torn, smoke-stained
blueprints. She tried the keypad by the vault numerous times. The
beep and red light that told her she was putting in the wrong code
started to infuriate her.

In the back of her mind was the uncertainty of
her future. They again piled up their evidence against the Alarias,
but without Fiona’s testimony, it seemed weak. Going to the police
with someone who was supposed to be dead would make things more
complicated, not less. They saw the black SUV roll by the Elmscott
house a few times through the security cameras, but it never
lingered.

Fiona was grateful Hannah had her work to
distract her; a few moments, she seemed ready to flee from the
house, especially when Troy returned from his errands. The
atmosphere of a room with both Troy and Hannah was tense. Fiona
demanded for her journal back; Troy had given to her grumpily, as
though she was taking something that was rightfully his.

She read through the journal again at the
kitchen table as Hannah cooked dinner. Suddenly the buzzer rang.
Fiona jumped at the unexpected sound and put a hand on her chest.
She could actually feel her heart beating. She realized she knew
the sound, though, and wondered how many times she’d heard it
before.

“
Who could that be?” Troy said, his
voice tight. He walked to the kitchen and moved to the intercom on
the wall next to the light switch. “Yeah?”

“
Walter?” a feminine voice came
through the intercom. Keith sat up, muting the TV. “It’s Sarah. Can
I come in?”

Fiona stood up, her eyes wide. Sarah had
worked in the lab; she knew about the Remus project. She’d be able
to help Fiona piece together the machine.

“
Where are you going?” Troy
asked.

“
I’m going to meet her,” she said,
walking toward the stairs. Keith fell into step behind
her.

“
You really think that’s a good
idea?”

She hesitated before walking downstairs. “Why
wouldn’t it be a good idea?” She turned to Keith and James, who had
joined her at the top of the steps. “You guys trust her,
right?”

“
Of course,” Keith said.

“
It’s not safe,” Troy
said.

Fiona scoffed as she took the first couple
stairs. “If we did everything your way, I’d still be in Boston
looking for a Social Security card.”

“
Maybe I should let her in,” Keith
said. “I mean, seeing you is going to be kind of a
shock.”

“
Right,” Fiona said, jogging to the
bottom of the steps. “Go ahead.”

James stood by Fiona as Keith went to the
door. Fiona wiped her palms on her jeans, trying to calm her
anxiety. Another person from her past. Another person who could
help her with answers.

Keith took a deep breath and smoothed his
blond hair down before opening the door. Fiona only saw Sarah’s
silhouette, the evening sun behind her blocking the details of her
face, but then she stepped inside, and the light settled. She had
long, wavy brown hair and she wore slim jeans and knee-high boots.
The heels added inches to her height and brought her to eye level
with Keith’s six-foot frame. She looked at Fiona, and her mouth
fell open in shock.

The two of them stared at each other for a
moment. Fiona took in her narrow face and dark eyes. This was
another one of her best friends. A month ago, she’d felt so alone,
and now she was surrounded by three people she actually had faint
memories of, people she knew she’d loved at one point.

“
Elizabeth?”
Sarah said. She weakly held up the newspaper in her hand:
the
Boston Herald.
Yesterday’s paper with Fiona’s article folded to the
front.

“
It’s Fiona, actually,” Fiona said,
her voice unsteady. “You’re Sarah?”

“
Yeah… I don’t…” She put a hand to
her forehead, momentarily closing her eyes. “The Remus
project?”

Fiona nodded. “That’s what we
think.”

Sarah looked at Keith, her eyes still wide.
“How long have you known?”

“
She just showed up with James
yesterday,” Keith said.

“
I found her a week ago,” James
said.

“
A week?” Sarah repeated. “Why
didn’t you tell us?”

“
It wasn’t safe.” James motioned to
the newspaper. “After that ran, I had to try to keep her safe from
the Alarias.”

“
So you brought her
here?”

“
You have a better
idea?”

Sarah waved an arm toward the door with a
sound of exasperation. “They could be watching the building right
now.” She glanced up at the balcony. “Hey, Walter. Who’s your
friend?”

“
This is Hannah,” Troy said,
motioning to Hannah, who stood nearly ten feet from him. “She’s
been watching over Fiona this summer.”

“
Yeah, he posed as her boyfriend
for three months,” Fiona told Sarah. “Didn’t know he was my uncle
until yesterday.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows. “You don’t
remember… anything at all?”

“
Well, there are some things.”
Fiona motioned to the lab. “Let’s sit down.”

The three of them sat around a desk, and Troy
and Hannah joined them. Sarah introduced herself to Hannah and
turned back to Fiona. “So, what do you remember?”

Fiona told her some of her early memories:
Christmas, Night of the Living Dead, McDonald’s. She then told her
as much as she could remember about the day of the fire: running
down the steps trying to escape the fire, being grabbed, waking up
in the van, crashing it, and being in the car with the girl. As she
watched Sarah’s face, she looked more and more worried. She wrung
the newspaper in her hands during Fiona’s story, slumping in her
chair.

“
The last thing I remember is the
girl pulling me out of the car,” Fiona said. “Then Hannah was
there, and she took me to the hospital.”

Sarah smoothed the newspaper on the table,
staring at Fiona. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’re
here.”

“
You worked in the lab, right?”
Fiona asked. “Do you know the number to the vault?”

Sarah shook her head. “Only the three of you
knew the combination.” She nodded to James and Keith. “I already
tried everything with them.”

“
But you worked on the Remus
project?”

“
Sort of,” Sarah said. “I was an
assistant, but I didn’t agree with it.”

Fiona nodded. “I read the journal that said we
fought about it. Do you know how it worked? Could you explain it to
me?”

Sarah averted her eyes. “I didn’t know the
details.”

“
But could you look at the notes
and just help me fill in the blanks?”

“
I’d be no help. I just did little
things for your parents. I told them I didn’t agree with it, and
they didn’t force me to do anything. You didn’t even tell me when
you made it work.”

“
But you had to have done
something–”

“
I didn’t.”

“
What about the theory of
it?”

Sarah sat up, groaning in annoyance. “I told
you I don’t know.”

Fiona raised her voice. “You’re
telling me you helped around here for more than a year, but you
can’t even explain the
theory
of how it would work?”

“
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m
telling you,” Sarah snapped, meeting her eyes.

Fiona gritted her teeth. If she was lying,
Fiona had no way of knowing, and Sarah knew it. “Fine,” Fiona said,
“I’ll figure it out myself.”

Sarah slammed her hand on the table, making
Keith jump. “Why do you even want to? You still think it’s a good
idea? After it killed your family?”

“
The Alarias killed them, not the
machine,” Fiona said, raising her voice.

Sarah crossed her arms. “Well, you’re still
the same.”

Fiona had nothing to say in response. She
turned to James. “Let’s look at all the evidence we have against
the Alarias.”

The security tape, Fiona’s memory of the van
and Daniel’s crash so close to where she’d been found.

“
Maybe we could get the phone
records,” James suggested. “They were calling all the
time.”

“
I could show them the journal
entry about Greg barging in here… they wanted to sue my parents,
right? We could ask their lawyer… but that probably wouldn’t get us
anywhere.” Fiona paused. “Why didn’t they sue?”

James shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have a very
strong case.”

“
Or maybe they just decided to burn
the place to the ground instead,” Troy said. Always the helpful
one.

“
But they were after the Remus
project, not our lives.” Fiona eyed the inside of the house, the
old bank, gazing at the reconstructed areas of the wall to her
left. “When they burned this place, they were burning Remus with
it.”

“
Well, there’s enough of it left
they could probably duplicate it,” Troy said.

“
But they have no way to access
it.”

“
They wanted you,” James said.
“They were taking you somewhere when you woke up in the back of
that van.”

“
Then you crashed it,” Keith said.
He paused. “And something happened, and then you were with that
girl… maybe I was wrong, maybe she was trying to kill you, and the
Alarias were the ones who were going to save your life. The only
question is, who was she?”

“
Well, not the only question,”
Fiona said, smirking.

Sarah suddenly sat up. “The Alarias have a
sister.”

Fiona stared at her. “They do?”

James gasped. “Oh, my god, I can’t believe I
forgot about her.” He stood up and moved to where a laptop sat.
“She works for Fillerton and Company, right?”

“
Right,” Sarah said, standing up to
watch over his shoulder.

Fiona joined her on his other side. “How old
is she?”

Sarah paused as her gaze floated to the
ceiling in thought. “At least thirty.”

Fiona frowned, twirling a lock of hair in her
fingers. “I didn’t see her very well, but I have a feeling she
wasn’t over thirty.”

“
A feeling,” Sarah
repeated.

“
Yes, a feeling,” Fiona said,
defensive.

“
Well, do you really think that’s
enough?”

Fiona narrowed her eyes, but before she could
say anything, James spoke up. “Give her a break,” he said. “She was
there, you weren’t.”

Rolling her eyes, Sarah dropped the newspaper
on the table next to James’s laptop. It was worn out from how much
she’d played with it.

“
Did you find anything on her?”
Keith asked James from across the table.

A few minutes of research turned up Mary
Alaria, the first female engineer at Fillerton and Company, a
company in Boston that specialized in DNA testing and insulin
development. The small picture of her on their company website
showed a severe-looking woman, her brown hair pulled back into a
bun. Fiona didn’t think she was the one, but she did only catch a
flash of hair of the brunette driver.

“
Maybe that’s where they were
taking you,” Hannah said quietly.

The thought made Fiona shudder. What if she
hadn’t crashed the van? What would have happened to her? What if
that girl hadn’t left her at the harbor?

“
Maybe we should call Mary,” Fiona
said.

“
And say what?” Troy
asked.

Fiona grimaced; he’d been so quiet the last
few minutes. She should have known he wouldn’t be able to stay out
of the conversation forever. She wished he’d go back to Boston. It
was easy to forget he legally owned this house, though. Maybe he
was only staying out there because she was there. “I don’t know,”
she said. “Something. Anything.”

“
And you’ll let her brothers know
exactly where you are,” Troy said.

“
What do you propose, Troy?” She
clenched her fists. “I can’t go back. I can’t be on house arrest.
We should go to the police.”

“
I thought you were going to call
her and try to work it out yourself,” Troy said with a mocking
smile.

“
Why are you even here?” she
snapped. “You’re not helping, you’re–”

“
I showed you the file, didn’t I?
And don’t forget this is my house, Fiona–”