Blind Rage (23 page)

What could they do to me? I’d insist they bring my meals, a waterproof pillow for sleeping
.

She rubbed her thumb across her wrinkled, waterlogged fingertips and giggled as she imagined what the rest of her might look like if she didn’t get out—a big shar-pei. Reluctantly, she turned off the water, found her towel, and stepped out.

After drying off, she made her way to her dresser. She pulled open the top right drawer to find panties and a bra. The top left drawer held socks, sorted by color. She easily found jeans in the closet, then moved to the right and pulled a camisole top off a hanger. Choosing a sweater proved more difficult, but she found a cashmere V-neck that st was softer than anything else in her closet, so she knew it was the light blue one.

When she was dressed, she went back into the bathroom and brushed her hair and teeth. She couldn’t apply makeup, so she didn’t bother with anything except some pale lip gloss. Picking up the hairbrush again, she pulled her hair back and tied it into a ponytail. The rhythmic motions of her usual morning ritual calmed and relaxed her. She could hardly believe all that had happened in less than a day.

And Uncle Travis wants me to go to school? There’s no way I’ll be able to concentrate on schoolwork after what I’ve been through. It’s not fair
.

She sighed and set the brush down where she could find it again easily. Her mother had been a neatnik.
A place for everything, and everything in its place
. Tess heard her mother’s voice in her head. It used to drive her nuts. What was wrong with a little mess now and again? Who cared if her clothes were draped over a chair or dumped on the floor instead of hung in the closet? But Tess had gradually come around to her mother’s point of view during the past year. Organization made life simpler—at least her life, a blind person’s life. She still disliked the work involved in keeping her belongings so orderly, but knowing where they were certainly helped.

Her mouth opened in horror.

Am I turning into my mother? God, I hope not
.

Her face screwed up into a frown as she mimicked her mother’s nagging. The thought of what she must look like turned her grimace upside down, and she giggled again. An image of her mother at work in the studio over the garage popped into Tess’s head. The studio was the one place where her mother’s rules had gone out the window, at least when she’d been immersed in a project. Tess saw her mother, head bent over a pad on her drawing table, hair mussed into a rat’s nest, jeans and denim work shirt covered with splotches of color, oblivious to everything around her. No matter what the medium—oils, watercolors, charcoal, plaster, clay—her mother would manage to spread it everywhere. Sometimes it had seemed to cover every surface except the one that would ultimately reveal her inner vision. But, Tess remembered wryly, she’d always cleaned up at the end of her workday.

Tess strained to see her mother’s face in that imaginary scene. No matter how she tried to position herself, her mother’s face always seemed to be turned away, hidden. When at last Tess imagined seeing her face-on, her mother’s features refused to coalesce, leaving Tess with only a fuzzy recollection. Tess’s heart pounded and her chest tightened.

Is this what happens when people die? Their memories fade like old photographs until they’re left as only indistinct images in sepia tones?

Tess squelched the panic that threatened to rise up in her throat.

I will not forget!

To be unable to “see” her memories would be as unbearable as losing her sight all over again. She didn’t think she’d be able to live like that. At least normal people could fall back on photographs to remind them. She brushed away a tear, swallowed the lump in her throat, and found her way downstairs.

True to her word, Alice had made breakfast—pancakes—but Tess suspected they’d come out of the freezer. She chewed on one thoughtfully, smelling a hint of cardboard along with the syrup. Alice hadn’t cooked in years, not since Helen had taken over those duties. When Helen had left, Rosa had taken over.

The witch with the knife. All that time Rosa had been pretending to be nice, pretending to like me, just so she could get her hands on . . . what? What sort of software program is stored on all these electronic devices?

Tess’s hand involuntarily crept into her lap to check the slight bulge in her jeans, her fingers tracing the outline of the iPod her uncle had overlooked. Another thought pushed the memory aside.

“Alice?” Tess said. “Didn’t
Helen
recommend Rosa for her job when she quit?”

Silence prevailed for a moment, then Alice said, “You’re right, I believe she did.”

“Doesn’t that seem odd, considering how suddenly Helen left?”

“Who’s Helen?” Oliver said.

Tess refused to answer. Uncle Travis may have rehired the big jerk, but that didn’t mean Tess had to like it.

“She was the cook before Rosa,” Alice said. “She resigned due to an illness in the family.”

“That’s what she told us,” Tess said. “But what if it wasn’t true?”

“I’ll have Travis look into it,” Alice said.

“Is he always such a hard-ass?” Oliver said. “He didn’t even thank me for bringing Tess home—alive, I might add.”

“I’m sure he appreciates—” Alice began.

Tess swallowed another bite of pancakes and interrupted her. “Yeah, why does he have to go all Rambo on me all the time? I’m so tired of all the guns around here. Aren’t you afraid one of those guys is going to shoot you sometime? Just my luck, I’ll be raiding the fridge some night and get shot.”

“He’s SICC, Tess.” Alice said.

“What? Like, sick in the head?”

“No, as in
S
-
I
-
C
-
C
.”

Oliver’s voice chimed in at the same time as hers. “What’s that?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Alice said with a quick glance at the doorway, her voice barely above a whisper, “but given the circumstances, I suppose you’re old enough to know. Travis was in a secret branch of the Army Special Forces—the Strategic Intelligence Collection and Containment unit.”

“Intelligence? Like a spy?”

“More than that,” Alice said. “The ‘containment’ part was essentially code for ‘kill.’ Your uncle was a trained assassin.”

“Like Rosa and the men who tried to take my camera?”

“Well, not Rosa. She may have had some training, but her skills with a knife were better served chopping vegetables. She should have been able to kill me. But, yes, like the people who broke in and attacked us. Only your uncle was a whole lot better at his job than that team.”

“Maybe he would have been if he’d been here.” Tess tasted the bitterness in her words as they rolled over her tongue. “I can’t count on him like I can you and Yoshi. I don’t trust him.”

“He’s a good man, Tess,” Alice said quietly. “Give him a chance.”

“He’s had a year of chances.”

“That’s not really fair, Tess,” Alice said.

Tess didn’t care. She was sick of Uncle Travis telling her what to do. He wasn’t her father. “Well, it’s not fair he’s making me go to school, either.”

“No, probably not,” Alice said. “But since he is, you better get moving. Oliver, Kenny and Luis are waiting for you two out front. They’ll drive you and check in with the administration to alert school security. Since they’re armed, they won’t be allowed on campus, so don’t worry—they won’t be following you around all day. They’ll keep an eye on traffic in and out.”

“And if we have problems?” Oliver said.

“They’ll tell you what to do. Tess, don’t forget a coat on your way out.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do. Oliver, make sure she has a coat before she goes out.”

“Yes, ma’am. You ready, Tess?”

She felt Oliver’s hand on her shoulder and started to pull away. She sighed to indicate there was no sense fighting a losing battle. She stood.

“I haven’t even done my homework,” she grumbled. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

Oliver’s laugh rang out. She scowled in his direction.

“Compared to the ‘trouble’ we had yesterday, that’s nothing,” he said. “I think you can handle it.”

“You don’t know my teachers.” Tess shuddered.

She let Oliver guide her out of the kitchen and down the hall, and shrugged into the coat he held for her because she knew she’d never hear the end of it if she didn’t. Outside, Oliver helped her into the backseat of an SUV. Kenny and Luis had it warmed up, for which she was grateful. The little warmth the sun had provided was gone, replaced by the cold drizzle more typical of spring around Seattle. She heard Oliver get in the seat next to her, and as soon as his seatbelt was buckled the vehicle began to accelerate smoothly.

“Ms. Barrett, I’m Luis,” a voice in front of her said.

“How nice for you,” Tess said.

Luis went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I was here before. You know, last year. You probably don’t remember me.”

She thought she heard a note of regret in his voice, but she didn’t stop to wonder why. She didn’t care. “No, I don’t. You people didn’t exactly come out and introduce yourselves.”

He still seemed unfazed. “I’m really sorry we frightened you this morning. If we’d known it was you, we wouldn’t have rushed in like that, you know, with guns and shouting and all.”

Tess stiffened. She hadn’t expected an apology, but she still couldn’t help resenting his presence—
their
presence. All of them.

“Shut up, Luis,” Kenny said. “We were just doing our job back there.”

“Our job is to protect this girl,” Luis said, his tone indignant. More gently, he told Tess, “Let me have your phone, please. I’m going to program our cell numbers into it so you can reach us.”

Tess dug into her pocket and held out her phone. A warm hand took it from hers.

“You’ve got VR on this phone, right?” Luis said. “Oh, yeah, here it is. Okay, so say my name on the count of three. One, two, three . . .”

“Luis,” Tess said.

“Great,” Luis said. “Now say ‘Kenny.’ Just a sec. Okay, one, two, three . . .”

“Kenny,” Tess said.

Luis pressed the phone back into her hand. “Okay, you’re set. Kenny and I are on speed dial. Just say either of our names, and you’ll get one of us.”

“What about me?” Oliver said.

“I was getting to you,” Luis said. “Give me your phone.”

Tess bounced and swayed with the car’s movement in silence for several moments.

Luis spoke again. “I put our numbers on your speed dial. It’s faster than voice recognition. So here’s the deal: both of you, any hint of trouble, you call. You don’t wait to see if there
might
be a threat. If someone you don’t know approaches you for any reason, you call. If you get a substitute teacher in one of your classes, call.”

“Aren’t you being a little paranoid?” Tess said. “What could possibly happen at school?”

“Look, we’d rather be a lot closer to you for this kind of detail, but since we’re not allowed, it’ll take us longer to get to you if you have a problem. So you need to be alert.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Oliver said softly.

Tess turned on him. “I don’t
want
you to take care of me. I don’t want
any
of you to take care of me. I just want to be normal!”

Her tantrum bounced off a wall of silence and echoed in her own ears. She turned her head away so none of them could see the heat shimmer off her cheeks.

“We’re here,” Kenny said as the SUV came to a gentle stop.

Tess immediately opened the door, grabbed the backpack off the seat next to her, and got out without waiting for Oliver. She homed in on a babble of voices off to her right.

“Tess, wait!” Oliver called. “Come on, wait up!”

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and kept going. She was sick of the whole thing. She wished she was anywhere else but here. She was sick of them telling her what to do, sick of school, sick of this game her father was playing with her.

How dare he? I’m not a kid anymore with dreams of becoming a forensic anthropologist or psychological profiler like some character on TV. Sure, it was fun to pretend I was following clues to unearth some ancient and priceless treasure, or solving some horrific crime. But this is real life, my life, and this treasure hunt Dad set us on has already gotten people killed
.

She couldn’t reconcile the thought of what he’d done with the man she’d known, and the horror of it nearly crushed her, blotting out all the good in her world.

She sniffled and suddenly stumbled, throwing her arms out as she pitched forward.

“Whoa!” Oliver grabbed her arm, slid a hand around her waist, and pulled her upright.

She struggled to free herself from his grasp. “Let me go!”

“Stop, Tess! Please. I’ll let you go, I promise! But don’t move!”

Somehow his words penetrated the anger and desperation that cloaked her like armor, and she went slack in his arms. True to his word, he released her.

“Now can I go?” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “But just so you know, you’re at the top of the steps down to the courtyard in front of the commons. Two flights, eight steps each.”

Tess hesitated. “Like, right at the top?”

“Right at the top,” he said. “Two feet away. One more step and you’d have gone over.”

“Um, the railing . . . ?”

“Just to your left. A little farther. Almost. There.”

Tess gripped the cold steel tightly to keep from shaking. She might have killed herself falling down the stairs if Oliver hadn’t been there to stop her. She turned her head and swiped at her eyes.

Damn it, this is exactly what I hate about what happened. I can’t even walk from the curb to school without someone’s help. But it’s about time I started trying
.

She sighed and descended the stairs carefully.

At the bottom, she raised her elbow. “Oliver, would you help me? Please?”

“That’s what you pay me for.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. “Look, I don’t
want
your help. I
want
to be able to do things on my own, find my way around by myself—be who I was before the accident. I’ve had enough. But I can’t learn without help. So, I need you.”