“I don’t know. It’s…there’s a new thread.” Ariane cocked her head to one side, listening.
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. “What does that mean?” I asked finally.
She made a frustrated noise. “It’s hard to explain. It’s as if…something has changed. There was a certain feel to the area before, and now it’s altered.” She looked over at me. “Have you ever walked into a room right after an argument?”
Uh, yeah. I’d lived with my parents for years, after all.
“You can tell that something is wrong, that something’s happened even if no one is saying anything, right?” she continued.
She seemed to actually be asking—maybe she wasn’t sure what I could sense as a regular, nonspecial human—so I nodded.
“It’s like that. The tension is up. But I can’t hear anything specific. We’re too far away.” She frowned, her mouth tight. “And it’s not safe to go closer without knowing what’s going on.”
A car pulled up short behind me with an impatient squawk of tires. “Uh, Ariane? We’re about two seconds from getting honked at.”
“Keep going,” she said distantly, her attention focused once more on nothing I could see.
I straightened out of the turn and continued on slowly.
“Left here,” she directed, a block later. Not that she was even looking at the road. She’d moved to the edge of her seat and twisted to stare in the direction of my mom’s house. It was as if she’d tapped into something near my mom’s house and she was still connected, a cord stretching out between her and some distant point.
I took the turn as instructed and found we were on a large cul-de-sac of small houses and utilitarian brick duplexes just like my mom’s. A half dozen of them had real estate signs in front—for sale or rent—or they appeared dilapidated enough to perhaps be abandoned.
This was definitely not the best neighborhood. The good news, though, was that even at noon, not many people seemed to be out and about to notice us. Or, maybe that wasn’t so good—nobody watching meant that anything could happen. Lack of credible eyewitnesses was never something I’d thought much about before this week, and now it seemed an essential variable to consider in every situation.
Ariane was frowning out the window, her gaze searching the sky, first one direction and then another, as if she was calculating something.
“That one,” she said, pointing to a house with a REDUCED PRICE banner slapped across the real estate sign planted in the front yard. It was a two-story house, not particularly large, but taller than the others surrounding it.
“Okay, what about it?” I asked slowly.
She blinked, breaking her trance of concentration. “Park in the driveway. And then act like we belong.”
Oh. That sounded ominous. And possibly illegal.
I pulled in and put the van in park. Before I’d even shut the engine off, though, Ariane had pushed open her door and slid out.
I followed her hurriedly, taking an extra second to lock the van. Nothing like leaving thousands of dollars lying around, unattended.
“What are you doing?” I whispered when I caught up to Ariane on the front walk. She was heading to the door like she owned the place.
Ariane smiled at me, big and false, and then looped her arm through mine. “We’re very excited to see this house. Now smile at me in case the neighbors are watching.”
What? “We’re going in?” I asked through my own version of a fake smile, but I could feel the tension pulling at the corners of my mouth. I wasn’t as good at it as she was.
“Yes.” She tugged me forward and onto the sagging wooden porch. Then she pretended to fumble with the metal keybox hanging from the handle for a moment, as if she had to open it to get at the key.
Then she angled herself so that her body blocked the view of anyone who might be watching and lifted her hand. Inside, the dead bolt slid back with a solid thunk, and I watched as the doorknob, inches away from her outstretched fingertips, twisted slowly, as if it was being operated by an unseen presence.
The door popped free and swung open, revealing a dim and empty entryway. Cool air rushed out to greet us. The air-conditioning was on. I struggled momentarily between conflicting feelings: relief that it wasn’t sweltering inside and fear about what that might mean in terms of the occupants.
“You sure no one is home?” I asked.
She waved my words away. “Not here.” Then she stepped inside.
“As in, they’re not here right now or as in, people live in this area but not in this particular house?” I asked, shifting my weight uneasily at the threshold. Or, as in, Don’t ask me that here. There were any number of ways her statement could be interpreted, some of which might not exclude the possibility of some dude in his boxers, rounding the corner unexpectedly and catching us.
Ariane paused and glanced over her shoulder at me.
“You’re nervous,” she said with a curious lilt.
“Breaking and entering is kind of a new experience for me,” I said tightly. And yeah, okay, given the scope of everything we’d gone through in the last few days, it was nothing, but it was the first actual crime we’d committed. And I guess, after years of my dad lecturing me on all the dumb-ass things I could do that would jeopardize his good name and my future, some of it had actually sunk in, despite my best efforts.
Ariane crossed back to the door. “No one is here, I promise. It’s safe.” She paused, considering. “As safe as it is anywhere for us,” she added. “For now.”
Wow. That was reassuring.
She held out her hand, but I stepped inside of my own free will. If I was going to do it, then I would do it.
The dark interior left me half blind after the brightness outside; it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. The door swung shut as soon as I cleared it, courtesy of Ariane’s power, snapping closed with a loud click that echoed and made me jump.
“Come on, this way,” she said, heading deeper into the house.
The entryway, with its battered wooden floor, was empty except for a few dust bunnies. To the left, it opened up to a room with dingy carpeting—and cleaner spaces where the furniture had been—and nothing else.
No one was living here. I let out a breath of relief. Ariane could have told me that.
“I didn’t know for sure,” she said. “Not until now.”
“Stop making me feel better,” I muttered.
Following the sound of her voice, I turned the corner out of the entryway and into an actual hall with stairs on the right, leading up. Ariane was already halfway to the next floor.
She moved without hesitation to the second floor and then straight to a partially closed door on the landing, as if she were on the trail of something I couldn’t see.
The door led to a bathroom, small and kind of rank, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She went immediately for the window, which was set high up in the rear wall. She stepped up on the closed lid of the toilet and pulled at the closed metal blinds, which gave with a twanging sound, to look out.
“There,” she said with an air of satisfaction.
Moving to stand next to her—I didn’t need the assistance of the toilet to see out—I peered out to find a view of the dead backyard with a rusted swing set and the rear side of an equally despondent-looking house. “What…”
Ariane reached up and gently turned my chin to the right slightly, and I realized if I looked between the neighboring houses at an angle, I could see my mom’s place.
And the large black SUVs parked on the street out front.
I pulled back instinctively, as though they could see us up here. “Laughlin?” I asked.
“Probably,” Ariane said.
“Did she call him on us?” I struggled with a rush of anger at the idea.
“I don’t think so,” Ariane said thoughtfully, her tone one of someone contemplating an academic problem. “If they were here for us, it would look different.”
I shook my head. “Mea
ning?”
“Either there would be a lot more of them, or we wouldn’t see them at all,” she said.
Great. I really needed to stop asking questions. The answers only made things worse. Problem was, I didn’t have anything but questions.
“And that wouldn’t explain him,” she added.
“Who?” I leaned closer, and she pointed to the house directly behind us. In an upstairs window, bare of curtains or blinds, I could see a silhouette of a man standing at the front of the house. He held what appeared to be binoculars, watching the goings-on at my mom’s house. Or maybe even inside her house, depending on how powerful those binoculars were.
“One of Laughlin’s guys?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Why would he be hiding?”
Good point. But he definitely wasn’t just a neighbor, not with the binoculars and what appeared to be a complete lack of furniture inside the house. It was evidently another empty one for sale.
“Then who?”
She shrugged. “Someone from GTX maybe? Or Emerson St. John? Just because Laughlin and Jacobs aren’t interested in what he’s doing doesn’t mean he’s not interested in them.”
God, when did these people have time to actually accomplish scientific breakthroughs with all the time they allotted for espionage? Or maybe that’s how they accomplished those scientific breakthroughs. I wasn’t sure.
“Okay, so now what?” I backed away from the window to lean against the sink. The sight of the dude spying and the SUVs had shaken me. Ariane had sounded casual, unconcerned, during our discussion, but I was beginning to think that flat, unaffected tone was how she reacted to unexpected stress.
She hesitated. “I don’t know. Mara is our best lead on the hybrids.”
But we couldn’t wait here forever. Our van was parked in the driveway. The owners of this house might not live here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come by and check on the place. Plus, the neighbors would eventually get curious, wouldn’t they? In Wingate, someone would have already been knocking at the door.
“We could come back later,” I offered, though oddly that idea made me uneasy. We couldn’t do anything from here, but it felt, somehow, like everything would escalate even further out of control if we weren’t watching.
She shook her head, her gaze fixed on the view outside. “That’ll just attract more attention.”
She was the expert at being just this side of invisible, I suppose.
“We could try to track down another Laughlin employee,” I said, but even before the words were out, the sheer impossibility of that idea washed over me. Because it wasn’t just finding any employee that would do; we needed one who had knowledge of a top secret project and access to details. We, at the moment, didn’t even have a connection to the Internet. The basic Laughlin Integrated Web site was out of our reach, let alone a confidential employee directory of some kind, assuming one existed.
“Do you think they’re hurting her?” The question popped out before I could stop it. I grimaced. “Sorry…I’m sorry.”
Ariane looked away from the window to me, startled. “Why are you apologizing?”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “She worked in the lab. She…hurt you.” And she lied to me about it. It wasn’t that I felt she should have told me, as a kid, about her work on a secret project, but more that her work on that project irrevocably changed who I thought she was. And I didn’t like this new version of my mom.
“It was her job. And I told you she was kinder to me than any of the others,” Ariane said evenly.
“Yeah, but that’s not saying much,” I pointed out. I paused, trying to figure out how to say what was churning inside me. “My dad spent years telling me I was just like my mom, and I hated him for that.”
“And now you’re afraid he’s right?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Yeah,” I admitted, more of an exhale than a word. I mean, I’d always thought he was right, but about stuff like lacking in ambition, being soft, or lazy (by his definition). Not like this, though. Nothing like this. When my understanding of my mom changed, so did my view of myself. And yeah, now I was scared as hell that my dad was still right. Would I do what she’d done? Would I somehow find myself in a situation where I’d ignore my conscience because I thought I had no choice or because it somehow felt like the right thing to do, the tiny space between the proverbial rock and a hard place?
Ariane stepped down from her perch on the toilet and grabbed my hands. “First of all, no. I don’t think they’re hurting her. I’m not sensing anything like that.” She nodded in the direction of my mom’s house. “Fear, anxiety, yes, but not pain. If anything, she’s angry. And that’s a good thing.” Her mouth twitched. “Most likely someone was dispatched to follow up on her call this morning. She’s not making it easy for them, and she definitely hasn’t said anything to them about us.”
Yet. But I nodded, feeling something tight in my chest easing slightly at Ariane’s words, even as I hated myself for it.
“Second, consider my background. One of my parents was an alien. Maybe he or she was simply the envoy of a curious race. But given the advanced technology and abilities he or she evidently possessed, the more likely scenario is that of an advance scout from a superior species, which likely would not have ended well for the humans. Domination, at best. At worst, a careless disregard for life here, like a child stepping on an anthill,” she said calmly. “On the other side, my human mother was probably bribed or blackmailed into allowing my existence, which doesn’t say a whole lot for her character.” She rolled her eyes with a sad smile. “And one has to assume a petri dish played a healthy role in all of it.”
I choked on an unexpected laugh.
“So, generally speaking, when it comes to predicting future dysfunction, I think we ought to leave the ‘you are where you come from’ theory off the table, or else I so have you beat.” She stepped up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, her skin smooth against mine. “We make our own choices,” she whispered.
Tears stung my eyes unexpectedly, and I wrapped my arms around her, warmth and gratitude filling my chest. “I love you.” The words came out before I could stop them, riding that wave of emotion. I wasn’t even sure how I meant them, like “I love you for saying that” or “I love you.” Both, maybe. But it was too late to think more about it; the words were already out.
Ariane stiffened immediately, her whole body going tense as if under attack.
I froze. “I’m sorry.…I didn’t…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“It’s fine,” she said, and pulled away so quickly I might as well have been on fire. So, clearly it wasn’t fine.
Stupid, Zane.
“If we’re going to stay here, we should take shifts watching,” she said, carefully avoiding my gaze. “That way we can get some rest. As soon as they leave, we’ll need to be ready to get over there to talk to Mara.” She sounded almost normal but for the faint strain in her voice, as though it took effort to maintain that front.
“Right, okay, sure,” I said, my face hot. “I’ve got first watch.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, but it was perfunctory, as if she were already itching to get away.
“Yep,” I said too brightly. It was as if we were following some entirely different script than a few moments ago. In this one we were pretending to be cordial strangers.
“Okay,” she said, and then she moved to the left at the same time I moved to my right, and we did that awkward back-and-forth dance while we tried to get out of each other’s way.
“Sorry,” we said at the same time.
Then I pulled myself against the far wall, and she took off as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
Great. I leaned my head against the yellowed wallpaper, the peeling strands rough against my forehead. Because things weren’t complicated enough already. You had to go and drop an ambiguous “I love you” into the mix. Nice, man. Very smooth.
It wasn??
?t that I expected her to say it back—hell, I hadn’t even expected to say it all. I mean, the last few days had been intense, and that made a big difference, but still, we’d only known each other, really known each other, for a week? Less? And maybe love wasn’t even something she wanted from me. Or from anyone. It was such a loaded and dangerous word, emotion, whatever. After all, the last person who’d claimed to love her, her adoptive father, had betrayed her completely. And with my parents, I wasn’t sure I had any better examples to follow.
I sighed, suddenly longing for my earlier worries about being arrested for breaking and entering. That seemed so much simpler.
TWO-HOUR SHIFTS, I DECIDED ON my way down the stairs, my hand clinging to the railing so tightly my knuckles throbbed. That made the most sense. Enough time for the person resting to get some decent sleep but not so much that the one on watch duty would get overwhelmed and too tired.
Yes, two hours. I nodded decisively, even though absolutely no one was around to see me. If I just kept myself focused on the task at hand, everything would be okay. Except…
I love you. Zane’s voice echoed in my head. Half surprised, half relieved, as if it hadn’t been a conscious decision to speak the sentiment aloud.
My heart ached at the instant replay.
Don’t do this, Ariane. Don’t do this to yourself.
But he said, “I love you.” Words I’d never imagined hearing from anyone. Ever.
I should have been elated. I’d never felt anything like the warmth and affection that had accompanied his words. I wanted to wrap those feelings around me and live in them forever.
He loved me. The mix of exhilaration and adrenaline was like carbonated bubbles in my bloodstream, a physical representation of joy. This is what joy felt like. No wonder people lived and died for this feeling.
I’d known days ago that I loved him. I’d felt it before we’d even left Wingate, before he’d known who and what I was. I’d broken the rule expressly against falling in love, #5, for Zane.