Touching Smoke (33 page)

I snatched the book from him and scowled. “And she says Garrison killed him!”

“She thinks!” he scrubbed his hands over his face. “He locked her in her room. She didn’t even know what happened to me.”

“To Isaiah!” I corrected, unconvinced, not until we had more proof. “Look, we’ll figure this out. We’ll ask Garrison about it.”

“He’ll lie.”

I touched his arm. “Then we’ll find the answer ourselves! Once we get the hell out of here!”

A loud bang-bang-bang shook the room. I dove for the picture still lying face up on the bed and hastily stuffed it into the book. Then I shoved the book back in its safe place in my waistband. I was tugging my shirt down over it when the door flew open and Maia charged in.

“What the hell are you two doing? The boss is waiting!”

“We were just about to head down,” I said, taking Isaiah’s hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“We’re getting out of here… tonight,” Isaiah murmured into my ear as we followed Maia to the door.

“How?”

“I don’t know, but be ready.”

He had no idea how ready I was to get the hell out of there. I was born ready.

Garrison was in the parlor, sitting in the same chair as the day before a cup of tea in hand when we found him. The soft harmony of a piano tinkled through the room. There was no piano or pianist physically there, yet the sound was sad, as if the pianist was pouring his or her own sorrow into every note. I wasn’t a lover of classical music, but even I felt the sway as if drawn to it.

“This was the last piece Amalie played before…” Garrison trailed off. He snapped his fingers and the music quickly went off. I would have thought magic, but Maia stood in the corner, next to an old style reel-to-reel recorder. She’d somehow slinked over there without me noticing.

“She was very talented,” I whispered, meaning it.

Garrison nodded, eyes staring off into the distance, lost in whatever world he’d been in before we walked in. “Amalie was… very talented in many things.”

“Is that why you used her DNA to make me?” I’d forgotten to tell Isaiah that part, but he was looking at me now as stunned as Maia was on the other end of the room. Evidently, she hadn’t known either. I stared unwaveringly at Garrison, daring him to deny it. “Were you hoping some of her powers would rub off on me?”

He shook his head side-to-side sadly. “I didn’t know what it was at the time. Superpowers, superhuman abilities… these things didn’t exist when I went to school. When Amalie started showing signs…”

“You had her confined to her room.”

“I didn’t know,” he insisted. “I thought I was going mad.”

“I look like her.” I felt rather than saw Isaiah stiffen.

Garrison nodded slowly. “Right down to the way she used to scowl at me.” He raised his eyes to mine. “Have you spoken to her?”

I frowned. “How would I speak to her?”

He set aside his teacup and steepled his fingers. “Well, how else would you know so much about her?”

The journal seemed to radiate its own heat, burning a hole into my spine. But I kept my face blank. “Who was Isaiah?”

Garrison’s eyes flickered to my Isaiah, dancing with shadows of hate, bitterness, grief, anger, so much anger, and it all suddenly made perfect sense.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” I murmured.

“Yes,” Garrison said, the muscle in his jaw bunched. “Far too quickly I’m afraid.”

“So, why did you bring him back?” But I didn’t need an answer. I knew why. “To kill him again,” I said for him. “After Amalie died, you needed someone to blame.”

Garrison raised an eyebrow. “Is that so wrong? He took my daughter from me, turned her against me. He deserved to be punished.”

I didn’t answer that. “But I don’t understand why you brought me—Amalie back.”

His eyes lifted and pinned mine. “Isn’t it obvious?”

It wasn’t and if it was, then I was missing it.

“To immortalize her,” he answered when I continued to watch him with confusion. “I want to give her what I couldn’t when she was alive! The Amalie Project will go down in history.”

A chill seeped down my spine. “What’s the Amalie Project?”

He smiled, slow, sadistic, cold… crazy. “You are.”

I didn’t realize I’d taken a step back until I came up against Isaiah and his hands came down on my arms, steadying me.

My reaction seemed to satisfy him. Garrison rose from his seat and glided a hand down the front of his eggshell-white suit with the look of a cat about to tear the throat off a bird. “All this would have ended years ago had Ashton not cut me off as a partner. After everything I did for him and your mother, to have them turn their backs on me when I was in the middle of a revolutionary breakthrough…” he exhaled loudly, his nostrils flaring in anger. “I had no choice but to let Ashton take Isaiah. I knew I would need him in position for when it was time to take you back. All I had to do was bid my time and then use the boy to find you.”

I unglued my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “What are you going to do with us?” 

He rocked a little on the balls of his feet, swinging his arms around to clasp at his back. “I am not going to do anything to you that you won’t do yourselves, eventually.”

“Stop with the riddles! What’s the Amalie Project?” It burst from my lips before I could stop it. Isaiah flexed his fingers around my arms, silently warning me to be careful.

But Garrison merely smiled. “The idea came to me while Isaiah-9241-01—”

“Isaiah-9241-01?” I blurted. “Those are the numbers on Isaiah’s arm!”

Garrison shook his head. “No, his number is 9241-12.”

Isaiah’s grip was bruising, but I ignored it. “01? 12? How many are there?”

“That survived?” Garrison shrugged with all the air of someone being asked the time. “Isaiah-12 was the only one I allowed full term.” Isaiah inhaled sharply behind me. Garrison went on. “But as I was saying, the idea came to me while I was recreating the first Isaiah. What better way to slowly destroy the man who killed my daughter and immortalize her then to build the perfect weapon? Which would be you, Fallon.”

“I’m not a weapon!” Was I?

“Of course you are,” he said. “I should know. I made you, and now that I’ve seen you and seen what you can do…” he exhaled with glee. “You are perfect.”

“Stop it!” Isaiah pushed me behind him and stood like a fierce wolf facing the enemy.

The smile melted from Garrison’s face. His lips curled back into loathing as he observed Isaiah. “This is all your fault! You were like my son! I trusted you. If you had left my daughter alone, she would never have left me!”

“You tortured her!” Isaiah shot back, hands balling into fists at his sides.

“I loved her! I was trying to help her!” Garrison roared, looking nothing like the calm, polished man he portrayed normally. “What was I supposed to do when she claimed to be able to speak to the dead? What was I supposed to do when she would tell me she saw her mother? Abigail was
dead!
She was dead! I thought it was grief. I tried medication, but it was so limited back then. I didn’t know what else to do and then
you!”
he jabbed a finger at Isaiah. “You made it worse. You were my best soldier, yet you filled my daughter’s head with idiotic notions of a normal life, and she believed you.”

“I loved her!” The absolute certainty in Isaiah’s voice had me looking up at him, wondering how he would know that, or if he was saying what he thought was true.

“She was sick!” Garrison growled. “And you took advantage of that. You killed her, not me.”

“Is that why you took my memories away, because I remembered her?”

Garrison’s nostrils flared against the molten shade of his face. A fat, purple vein beat at his temple as he scrutinized Isaiah. “It was the one thing I couldn’t extract. The one thing I couldn’t change. Each time you were brought back, she was there and we had to start over. But I couldn’t wait any longer. Removing the memory was easier than having to start over.”

“What are you going to do to Fallon?”

“Nothing.” Garrison spat the words out as if they were toxic. “You will. Your tainted blood will. You will kill her just like you killed my daughter.”

I grabbed Isaiah’s arm before he could charge at the man.

Garrison laughed, the sound chilling. “Every time she drinks from you, the pheromones in your blood will drug her, and like any drug, she will crave more of it. And each time she drinks from you, she’ll inject her own special brand of pheromones into your blood system and the attraction between you will intensify, become stronger, become impossible to ignore until you give in to the temptation and that’s when the world will see The Amalie Project as it goes up in smoke.”

“You bastard!” Isaiah lunged. I wasn’t quick enough to stop him, nor was I fast enough to stop Maia when she pulled her gun from its holster in a flash and fired.

“No!” I tore forward just as Isaiah jerked back. My hands grabbed him, wrinkling his shirt as I yanked him to me. We stumbled. He steadied us with one hand on the back of the sofa, his other arm securely around my waist. “Are you shot?” I shoved him back to search.

“I’m okay,” he muttered, breathing hard.

“Ingenious, isn’t it?” Garrison finished as though nothing out of the ordinary just happened, as if people were shot daily in his parlor — maybe they were. “But all this isn’t why I called you here,” he pinned us with steely eyes. “I want you both to come with me to the lab. I would like to run some tests.”

Isaiah stiffened against me. “What sort of tests?”

“Nothing drastic, just a few minor blood samples and x-rays.”

I didn’t believe him anymore than Isaiah did.

“And if we refuse?” I really shouldn’t have asked.

The blood chilling cock of a gun answered even before he did. Maia smirked, silently daring us to make her day. “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” she purred sadistically.

Sweet-talk us why don’t you, I thought, but said, “I guess you leave us no choice.”

Garrison beamed. “I knew you would see it my way.”

The diary made my skin itch where the sweat had pooled between the leather and my lower spine. I tried not to shift too much in fear of jostling the book free of my waistband, but sitting squished between Isaiah and Johnson, I had very little choice. No matter which way I leaned, I came up against muscle, and whilst one side made my skin crawl, I was already half in the other one’s lap.

Wherever Garrison’s lab was, it wasn’t anywhere near a city. We had yet to come across any sort of residence. Nothing but vast wilderness greeted us from all sides.

“Aren’t you even a little upset about what you’re doing?” I blurted suddenly, startling myself.

Looking up from the nails he was polishing on the sleeve of his suit, Garrison stared. “Science is never easy, Fallon.”

“You mean playing God isn’t easy,” I muttered.

He didn’t seem fazed by the venom in my words. “Some say playing God, I say improving humanity.”

“You honestly don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong.” I was amazed.

He visibly stiffened. “I have cured hundreds of children of fatal diseases. I have changed the world of science. I have done the impossible.”

“Yet your laboratory is hidden in the middle of nowhere instead of splashed across every paper and magazine,” Isaiah smirked coldly. “If what you’re doing was legal, why has no one heard of you? Why are you hiding from the government?”

All traces of the calm, kind man was gone. An aura of pure hatred crackled around Garrison like a heat wave. “People don’t understand genius. They fear it and will do anything to stop progress.”

“No, they will do anything to stop a madman on a power trip.”

I grabbed Isaiah’s wrist, silently warning him to stop pushing. Too far and we could both wind up dead. Garrison had already made it clear that he could make more if he wanted. We were completely expendable.

“You are so much like Ashton,” Garrison spat the name as though it were something foul. “Too afraid to push barriers, always staying a safe distance from anything that might get his hands dirty. He never understood what it took to be great. Look at him now. What does he have? A house full of useless castoffs.”

“Your castoffs!” The heat that wafted off Isaiah nearly singed me. “Ashton Reaghan is a great man!”

“He is predictable!” Garrison shot back. “Did he honestly think I didn’t know what he was doing? Did you really think I would leave my most valuable pieces just loitering around unguarded?” he smirked when Isaiah stiffened. “He thinks himself such a hero, rescuing all those poor, helpless children from my evil clutches. I knew all along what he was doing. He’s not the only one with a snake in the hen house. Every move he makes, my contacts in that pathetic sanctuary of his alert me, and I am one-step ahead of him. Every time he
‘breaks
’ into my lab and takes a child, I am in my office laughing. So forgive me if I don’t share your sentiments about him being
a great man.”

“Ashton will stop you!” Isaiah vowed, each word punctured through his tightly set teeth.