Shadowlight (4 page)

Lorraine propped her head on her arm and watched him take a clean, pressed black shirt from the supply he kept in the closet. “I thought you were going to stay awhile.”

“I have another appointment.” He picked up his wallet and watch from her vanity table. Twenty years ago he would have left a handful of bills behind, but today he preferred the convenience of a rechargeable credit card. “The next few weeks will be busy for me. I won’t have time to see you again until the end of November.”

“You can’t leave yet.” Lorraine climbed out of bed, wrapping herself in a yellow silk robe before she shook out her hair. She’d stopped bleaching six months ago, at Genaro’s request, and now had it dyed to match the dark roots as they grew out. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

Genaro knotted his tie. “I’ll call you next week and then we’ll talk.”

“This can’t wait that long.” She came around to stand in front of him, holding her hands together like a remorseful schoolgirl. “Jonah, I’ve been to see my doctor. He did some tests, and, well, we’re going to have a baby.”

Genaro’s hand went still for a second, and then slid the knot of his tie up under the edges of his collar. “You’re telling me that you’re pregnant?”

“I didn’t realize at first.” She released a pretty, helpless laugh. “I skip my periods all the time, and then I am on the pill, too, so it never occurred to me that I could be. I never miss them, but the doctor said sometimes in rare cases they don’t work.”

The schoolgirl quality of her confession didn’t diminish the relief Genaro felt. Lorraine had been enthusiastic, and even occasionally entertaining, but his desire for her had begun to fade. This extortion attempt would allow him to get rid of her without the usual tears, recriminations, and final lump-sum payoff. “I presume you don’t want to have an abortion.”

“I couldn’t do that, Jonah. I’m Catholic, remember?” She gave his arm a soft caress. “Besides, I love you. This is our
baby.”

“If your pregnancy is genuine,” he told her as he removed her hand, “I’m not the father.”

“Of course you are.” The hopeful, beseeching quality of her expression faded into something harder. “I haven’t been with anyone else.”

As Genaro retrieved his jacket, he considered taking her to the lab to be tested. If she had become pregnant by another man, her fetus could still prove useful. But Lorraine had an active social life, and her father was a prominent Atlanta attorney who thought the sun rose and set on his only child. She would be missed.

“Well?” she demanded.

“My dear, you’ve miscalculated. Your baby—if one really exists—isn’t mine.” He adjusted his sleeves. “I’m sterile.”

“You’re—” She stopped and stared before she began to bluster. “What are you talking about? You never told me you couldn’t have kids.”

“You never asked.” Genaro walked over to her. “Our arrangement is over. You have until the end of the month to pack your things and move out.” As she opened her mouth, he shut her up by backhanding her. The blow proved hard enough to knock her to the ground, but not enough to inflict permanent damage. He bent over her, caught her chin, and made her look at him. “The next time you resort to blackmail, first do the appropriate research.”

He left Lorraine on the floor and walked out of the apartment.

Genaro directed his driver to take him downtown before he picked up the phone and called his chief of security. “Void the credit balance left on Miss Lamar’s account.”

“Yes, Mr. Genaro.” Delaporte, who had been with him for thirty years and had taken many such calls, didn’t ask why. “The overseas shipment arrived about ten minutes ago.”

A great deal of money had changed hands over this particular shipment: much more than Genaro had originally wanted to invest. But he had been unable to resist the rarity and high quality of the product. Even if he had to store it for some time, he suspected that in a year or two he’d be in a position to make an enormous profit.

“See that Dr. Kirchner attends to it,” Genaro said.

He arrived on time for his two-o’clock appointment, and spent the next several hours going over the specs for the new lab with the architect and the foreman before he left to attend a charity dinner to benefit a local foundation for the prevention of neural-tube defects.

“Jonah, we’re so happy you could make it.” The hostess, a forty-something, brassy-haired socialite whose younger, less fortunate brother had been born with spina bifida, took his hands in hers as she gave air kisses on each side of his face. “Where’s Lorraine?”

“She couldn’t make it.” He scanned the crowded tables. “It looks like an excellent turnout this year, Jackie.”

“We’re very pleased, although—as usual—we have a last-minute glitch. Bad weather grounded our guest speaker’s flight.” Jackie sidled closer. “Can I do a terrible, presumptuous thing and impose on you to fill in?”

As much as he begrudged the time he wasted engaging in the practices of a prosperous, influential businessman, there was no other way to maintain the respectable facade. He agreed with a smile, and thirty minutes later stood before the dinner guests and spoke about the tragedy of genetic defects and the cures made possible by biotech research.

“Earlier this year researchers in Texas published their discovery of a link between variants in three genes that regulate glucose metabolism in children born with spina bifida,” he told the guests. “Our geneticists are now working with that data in order to create a specific gene therapy that will correct these variants in utero. Once we have the cure, we can develop treatments for the other neural-tube defects, like anencephaly and encephalocele. No more children will have to spend their lives in wheelchairs. No more infants will be stillborn or doomed to die within a few hours after their birth. We will avert these tragedies long before they ever happen.”

As he continued, Jonah noted that Jackie had hung several tasteful pictures of bravely smiling, wheelchair-bound children on the walls surrounding the dinner tables. Not one showed an image of a newborn with a severe NTD.

When Genaro left the dinner and returned to GenHance, Delaporte met him in the lobby.

“Our man reported in this afternoon,” he said as he followed Jonah onto the elevator. When the doors closed, he reached up and switched off the small security camera in one corner. “He’s finally identified the woman who’s been tipping off the feds. This is everything we have on her.” He handed over an envelope. “She fits the profile.”

Genaro took out and skimmed the report. “So she does. Have Lawson meet me in the lab.”

A short time later Bradford Lawson stood for a moment under the UV unit before he placed his palm on the print scanner. As another public face of GenHance, he cultivated the image of geniality and prosperity, from the immaculate styling of his fair hair to the supple gleam of his hand-stitched leather shoes. Genaro didn’t care for the color or the trendy cut of Lawson’s cobalt blue suit, but the younger man carried it off as if he’d been born in a three-piece.

“Delaporte said we have an ID for the federal tipster who’s been catching the uncatchable,” Lawson said as he joined Genaro at the viewing panel. “Is this psychic informant anyone we know?”

“Not yet.” Genaro handed him the photos and the report. “Clear your schedule. I want her verified and brought in by the end of the week.”

“Yes, sir.” Lawson read the top page. “I’ve heard of Phoenix. Small company, but they have an excellent reputation.” He shook his head. “You’d think if she wanted to hide what she was, she would have done something else for a living.”

Genaro didn’t answer. He watched as two lab techs wheeled in a long, sheet-draped box on a gurney, followed by Elliot Kirchner, his chief geneticist. He switched on the intercom. “Dr. Kirchner, did you perform the initial micro-cellular tests?”

“As soon as it arrived.” Kirchner, a tall, cranelike man with iron gray hair, glanced at the viewer. “Life support has sustained cellular integrity so far, but there is only negligible brain activity.” He pulled the sheet away, revealing the body inside the glass coffin.

Genaro studied his investment. Bandages encased the head, but the rest of the specimen appeared to be in superb condition. “It looks better than it did in the photographs.”

“It’s close to physically perfect.” The geneticist took some readings from the preservation unit’s LED display. “BP and heart rate are strong. Once I’ve completed the physical and neurological exams, we can begin the preparation work.”

“Cut off the bandages,” Genaro said. “I want to see the head.”

Kirchner nodded to one of the techs, who produced a pair of scissors and cut through the layers of gauze. He peeled them away, exposing a battered, unrecognizable face and a gaping, horrific head wound.

“Looks like someone blew away about a quarter of the skull,” Lawson commented.

“Someone did.” Genaro studied the wound. “You’re sure the injury will affect only higher brain function, Doctor?”

“I’ll verify it once I perform the necessary scans, but yes.” Kirchner sounded confident. “For all intents and purposes, the body is mindless.”

After he’d acquired a rare DNA sample from the biotech black market in Europe, it had taken Genaro another ten years to research and put into place the resources needed for GenHance’s latest and most important phase of development. This final acquisition would initiate the last step toward his goal of creating, customizing, and selling the ultimate in human enhancement.

He turned to Lawson. “Where are we with the transerum?”

“The last series of human blood trials were quite promising,” his director told him. “None of the primate test animals survived vaccination, of course, but you anticipated that.” He glanced through the view panel at the shrouded body. “Once the subject is cleared by Dr. Kirchner, the lab is fully prepared to begin testing.”

If the transerum developed by his microbiologists worked, it would bestow increased strength and enhanced senses, and make inviolate the immune system of the test subject. If it did not, and it killed humans as quickly as it did chimps and gorillas, they would still learn from it. The transerum had already undergone several hundred modifications; Genaro expected it would require many more before it was perfected enough to sell. Then nothing else would stop him from acquiring enough wealth and power to do whatever he pleased anywhere in the world.

Genaro noticed that Kirchner was bent over the body and studying the head wound closely. He switched on the intercom and asked, “What is it?”

“I thought I saw the eyelids moving,” the geneticist said, and straightened. “My mistake.”

“Give her a heads-up so Farley doesn’t get back into the building, but tell her we’ll verify the information before we turn over our official report.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You sound upset.”

“Headache. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jessa switched off her cell phone and leaned forward. “Would you drop me off here, at the corner?”

“Sure.” The cabbie pulled over to the curb and accepted her fare before glancing out at the deserted park. “You meeting someone out here, lady?”

“My boyfriend,” she lied, smiled, and got out.

No one except Jessa knew who had bought the four acres of prime Atlanta real estate and turned it into a public park, or that it had been modeled on a more famous square in the northern part of the state. Jessa had arranged it all through a local city beautification group, and donated the property to the city under the condition that it be given the name she had chosen for it, and that the land never be used for any other purpose than a park. It was her small piece of home away from home, and walking along the cobbled brick paths lined with magnolias and azaleas, she could almost imagine herself there again.

The fountain, a masterpiece of copper alloy sculpted to resemble a phoenix rising from the flames of the basin, was so new it still gleamed rosy red in the sunlight, but in time the weather and air would turn the bright metal green. As Jessa sat down on the bench before the fountain, she felt the weight of old grief and the sharp twist of new fear.

She couldn’t keep doing this; she knew that. No matter how careful she was, eventually someone in authority would come looking for her. Then there would be the inevitable questions:
How did you know? Who told you? What evidence do you have?

If she lied, they would know. If she told them the truth, they would have her committed.

Jessa knew she could stop reporting what she discovered when she went into the shadowlight. At most Ellen Farley would have been turned in as an identity thief to the police by North and Company. On that charge she probably could have made bail, left the city with her partner, Max, and started a new con somewhere else. In this era of electronic everything, high-tech grifters like Ellen and her boyfriend were becoming a common class of criminal. Corporations wrote off their losses and tightened their security measures. No one really got hurt by embezzlement, and often the crimes resulted in better business practices.

What no one but Max and now Jessa knew was that someone would die this time: Ellen.

Because Ellen had been having sex with Max when Jessa had looked into her soul through the shadowlight, the connection of their bodies had also allowed Jessa to see into his. As soon as Ellen finished this last job, her boyfriend planned to kill her, frame her for all the crimes they committed together, and then leave the country for the islands, just as he had seven times in the past. There he would transfer the stolen money into a fat numbered bank account, where he kept another $20 million from his past crimes before moving on to find and groom and teach the game to his next victim.

“I can stop doing it,” Jessa told the fountain as if it were listening. “Step back and let my people do their jobs. They have the talent and the resources. They don’t need me.”

The water splashed, merrily indifferent to her quandary. But there was something else there, an unseen presence, like a lost soul hovering somewhere just out of sight.

Imagining he was there brought Jessa’s emotions out of the tight, small place where she kept them secreted away. They were mirror twins, the desperate regret and yearning grief, born in agony, nurtured in silence. She protected them from the world, and in return they had grown to become her oldest friends, her closest companions.

Jessa felt tired of it, all of it. She’d done her best to save the Ellen Farleys of the world, and prevent the Max Grodans from hurting anyone else. If by now she hadn’t paid for her mistakes, she never would. There would always be an endless supply of Ellens and Maxes in the world, and they would never stop, so maybe it was time she did.

“I’m not spending the rest of my life in this park. I don’t have the nightmares anymore. I was glad when they went away.” She glanced down at her hands. “There has to be someone else. Someone I can touch. Someone you’d like. If I’d died that day, and you had lived, I know I’d want the same for you.”

Talking to a man who wasn’t there, who could never be there, made little sense. Jessa didn’t believe in an afterlife. She knew he was gone forever. A therapist would have told her she was talking to herself, nothing more. But if by slim chance she was wrong, and the souls of the dead lingered around the living, she wanted him to know. He had always been the love of her life—and he would understand.

Her wireless chimed in her pocket, and she tasted something salty on her tongue. Jessa reached up to wipe away the tears that had trickled unnoticed down her cheeks before she checked the sender ID:
Aphrodite.

The text, as always, was short and unsweetened:
You fucking off in the park again, Jez?

Jessa popped out the tiny keyboard and thumbed a brief reply:
Not now, Di.

Talk to me.
The woman she knew only as Aphrodite sent a small graphic of a smiley face brandishing a bouquet of virtual roses between the lines she typed.
Or I’ll start texting you about the last episode of
Grey’s Anatomy.
Scene by scene.

The joke threat tugged a smile out of her.
Oh, God, anything but that. Bad day here, but I won’t whine. What’s up?

She forwarded an e-mail from Vulcan, tagged with the words,
Vulcan thinks he’s found another Takyn. Wants to sched a group chat.

The man they knew as Vulcan served as their chief scout. In the three years since Jessa, Aphrodite, and the other members had formed the Takyn, their very private online support group, he had been searching for others like them. Vulcan wouldn’t kid about something like this; the unique problem they all shared was too dangerous.

I told you,
Aphrodite wrote when Jessa didn’t reply.
There are more out there. A LOT more. At least forty or fifty.

I’ll read the e-mail.
That was as far as Jessa was willing to commit herself.
Don’t get crazy about this.

I’ve been crazy,
Aphrodite wrote back.
Now it’s starting to make sense.

Jessa felt a pang of shame. Di had been through all seven levels of hell, and Jessa had no business spitting on her friend’s hopes.
Your lips, God’s ears. Got to go.

Immel8tr.

Jessa ended the connection, switched off the power to her phone, and popped out the rechargeable battery pack and the SIM card. Vulcan had taught her to do that; anyone trying to trace their wireless communications would lose the signal.

Who would want to find us?
she’d asked him once.

With what we can do?
he wrote back.
Who wouldn’t?

In the very beginning, when Jessa had formed the private network with Aphrodite, the others they had found online had treated them and one another with guarded, suspicious reluctance. It had taken more than a year of cautious communications before they’d opened up to one another. That had been an enormous comfort to the entire group, but it had made them even more paranoid. To protect everyone, they’d agreed to remain anonymous to one another. No one used their real names, ages, addresses, or referred to any detail that might be used to identify them, even within the group.

To Aphrodite and the others, Jessa was the founder of the Takyn, a woman they knew only as Jezebel.

Vulcan wouldn’t have made a mistake about this prospect; the criteria for joining the Takyn were too exact. The person would have to be between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-four, adopted from a specific list of placement agencies run by the Catholic church in only a handful of cities. There would be no records of the person’s birth parents, and few official documents filed with state welfare agencies. The adoptive parents would have to be wealthy or well-to-do orthodox Catholics with no biological children of their own or other adopted children.

Finally, the person being considered would have had to miraculously survive a fatal accident or illness, and come out of it with a very specific side effect, one they were subsequently compelled by necessity to hide from everyone in their life.

Aphrodite had been the first Takyn Jessa had ever encountered. They’d met on a discussion board for adult adoptees seeking their biological parents, and then had begun exchanging e-mails. What Di had told her had at first enraged Jessa, but then they had begun comparing personal histories and discovering just how alike they were.

Jessa had set up and named The Adopted Kids of Yesterday Network Web site, but it had been Aphrodite who dubbed their private group with the site’s acronym.

We were taken from our real parents and families. We all remember bits and pieces of the rest in our nightmares. The doctors. The treatments. The pain. The goddamn tattoos. Whatever they did to us, they took away our chance of a normal life. Why not call us what we are?

Jessa knew her friend had every right to be bitter. Aphrodite had terrible memories of what had been done to her, and when a nearly fatal illness had caused her ability to manifest, she had been forced to leave home and live in hiding. Virtually the same thing had happened to her when a brush with death had transformed what had been a pleasant, helpful ability into something much darker, uncontrollable and ultimately inescapable. Still, Jessa refused to believe as Di did that they had been used as lab rats when they were children and then simply abandoned.

There had to be more reasons for what they were, and why they had been experimented on in the first place. If Vulcan was right and he had found another one like them, then the new member of the group might know more than they did. Every childhood memory, every ability, and even their individual theories illuminated another shadow of the past.

She would have sat there by the fountain until dark, but the park’s sprinklers came on and the breeze rolled over the automatic sprayers, stealing some of the water and surrounding her in a fine mist. She stood and went to the edge of the basin, where she dug a penny out of her pocket and dropped it in. It sank and settled atop the hundreds of others at the bottom of the basin. A penny for her thoughts, which she paid every time she came to Price Park.

Her last thought before leaving was usually,
I miss you. I love you.
But tonight she was ready to say something else.

“It’s time.” Jessa looked around the beautiful place she’d created. “Good-bye, Allen.”

She walked through the square to the small lot beside it where she had left her car. As the sweet perfume of the flowers grew distant, she breathed in and noticed another, almost familiar scent. She felt sure she’d smelled the same thing earlier today, downtown. As before it frustrated her; she couldn’t identify it as anything except something very warm, nearly hot. It had been easy to dismiss it this afternoon as a trick played by the last of the summer heat, but now …

Jessa glanced over at the darkening horizon, and felt the coolness of twilight on her skin. The temperature had probably dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour.

Someone was here. Someone who had heard her.

She made a sharp turn and faced the park. It appeared as empty as when she’d arrived, but it didn’t feel the same. Tiny nerves under her skin flared, sending confusing signals to the rest of her senses. She couldn’t see or hear anyone, but someone was there. Someone who stood just out of sight.

Someone who had been watching her.

Running to the car and driving off would have been the safest option, but this was her place, her personal haven. Whoever had been eavesdropping on her had violated her most private moment.

She took out the illegal Taser she carried in her purse as anger propelled her forward toward the fountain and then around the base of every tree. She didn’t find anyone, but wherever she picked up a trace of the scent, she stopped and scanned the area. The sprinklers had left the ground wet and soft, but she found no footprints or any signs that she’d been followed or observed.

If someone had come into the park after her, they’d left before she’d discovered the scent.

Slowly she put away the weapon and scanned the park one final time before she went to her car. She didn’t make the mistake of going near it or unlocking it until she had checked the space beneath the undercarriage and looked into the windows to ensure that no one had broken in and hidden himself in the backseat.

Jessa glanced back at the park a final time, waited, and then disengaged the car alarm before getting in. She sat for another minute and watched the rearview mirror before she started the engine and backed out of the space.

She never took the same route home from the park twice, but now she drove in circles and made a half-dozen U-turns while she watched for a tail. No cars followed her, and after an hour of aimless driving she admitted to herself that she might have overreacted.