Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (25 page)

What is in there with him?
I wondered.

Emery, are you freaking out as much as I am?
I sent him. When I didn’t hear his response in my head, I glanced at where he leaned against the wall next to me. He watched the men, giving no indication that he’d received my transmission.

“Cassidy, honey, why don’t you wheel my desk chair back there?” Patrick suggested when he noticed Emery and me standing in the back, while Ben fitted him with a microphone. He and Dad sat in the identical leather chairs angled interview-style. “Emery, there’s a conference room a few doors down on the left. Grab a chair for yourself.”

“I will. Thank you, Mr. Grimm.”

“Patrick, young man.”

“Patrick,” Emery amended with a smile.

I didn’t need telepathy to know what he was thinking. Unbeknownst to Grimm, he’d given Emery permission to snoop around.

“Don’t get lost,” I teased Emery in a whisper as he pushed off the wall.

He winked a twinkling black eye at me.

As I fetched Patrick’s plush chair, I realized, with some surprise, that I hadn’t told my parents about the odd connection Emery and I shared. It had slipped my mind, in light of the aqua people. I wondered if Emery had told his parents. I somehow doubted it.

“By the way, Patrick, Josh gives your company a good first impression.” Dad fiddled with the microphone clipped to his collar. “He’s a nice young man. Is he also from your hometown?”

“Yep, as are half of my employees.”

Owen Wells’s scent curled up my nose. My muscles tensed. What was
he
doing here?

“Really? Then why did you start Luminous Water in Seattle, and not in Louisiana?”

I tucked a hair behind my ear, listening to his feet tread against the carpeted hall. They were quick, purposeful steps, as though he were in a hurry for a meeting. He greeted a woman named Samantha.

“I decided to launch Luminous here on the recommendation of a family friend, a snake of a lawyer who was a rotten kid, too. To this day, he can’t own up to being second-fiddle on the basketball court.” Patrick spoke more loudly as Mr. Wells drew near, as though he somehow knew he was in the hallway.

“That’s because you cheat,” Mr. Wells responded, strolling into the room. The addition of his voice startled Dad and Ben. He gave me a cursory glance and then redirected his attention toward the men.

Patrick hooted. “Speak of the Devil! Whatcha doing here, ya ol’
benchwarmer
?”

“To make sure you don’t discredit the Luminous Empire,” Mr. Wells teased. Sighing, he crossed his arms. “Of course, the only way to ensure that won’t happen will be to gag you.”

“Love ya, too, brother.” Patrick grinned at Jared’s dad.

Their bantering tangled my emotions further. It was so—human. They appeared to genuinely care for one another, and seemed in total control of their own minds. But then again, so had Constance and Josh.

“Actually, this is business, not pleasure, though I always take pleasure in watching Patrick stick his foot in his mouth. I have documents we need to go over,” Mr. Wells explained to Grimm. “But it can wait. Mind if I crash the party, in the meantime?”

“Crash away! Ya always do anyhow. Cassidy, could you get another chair? And maybe find Emery while you’re at it?
My
left must be
his
right.”

In other words, Emery was taking too long to get a chair. I had to agree.

“Okay.” I managed a fleeting smile for Mr. Wells. As I started around him to get out the door, he rocked back on his heels to block me, making it appear unintentional.

“You and Emery are both here?” he queried, looking at me squarely.

“We’re here for a c-class project.” I wanted to slap myself for stuttering. I was sure smooth. “Jared isn’t in our class.”

His eyes narrowed. I could feel my cheeks redden. Why did I mention Jared? He hadn’t even asked about him. “Jared is at school today?”

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Frankly, I’m surprised, after what happened yesterday. You must have been scared,” he baited.

I shrugged, glancing over my shoulder at the three men. Grimm watched us.

“I can’t believe his mother would let him go to school.”

I swung my eyes to Mr. Wells. “She isn’t in town.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. He heard it, too. I could see on his face that it shocked him.

Without responding, he moved aside so I could get by him. In the hallway, I bent over, clasped my kneecaps, and drew air deep into my lungs.

“What happened?” Emery whispered, pushing a chair toward me.

I straightened up and looked at him, afraid to speak.

Someone could be listening.

These aqua people might have enhanced hearing, for all we knew. Grimm had known Mr. Wells was coming down the hall.

“We need to get another chair,” I said.

Concentrating on me, Emery nodded. He set the chair against the wall and motioned for me to follow, leading me to the conference room. Once inside, he pulled me into an embrace.

“In case you’re right and the offices are bugged, or they can hear us,” he explained. “There’s a security camera behind me. It’s live.”

I peeked at the camera over his shoulder. The little red light was on. How weird was that?

“There was a camera in each office I wandered into looking for the conference room,” Emery continued. “The camera in the reception room came on when Josh announced our arrival. Grimm must have turned them on then. I’m sorry for hugging you like this. But standing around whispering would heighten their suspicion. Sneaking off to snuggle won’t. What upset you, aside from the majority of this staff trying to drown us?”

“The majority?”

“I recognized three other employees, in addition to Constance and Josh.”

“You said ‘heighten their suspicion.’ You think they’re suspicious?”

“I think they are wary, and for good reason. They are trying to hijack human bodies. What happened in Grimm’s office?”

“Jared’s dad is here, and he
is
suspicious. He asked why Jared was at school today.”

“He was feeling around to see if Jared suspects he murdered Vilvary,” Emery concluded. “He knows Jared wouldn’t go to school unless he believed the threat was gone. Did you sense he knows about the yacht?”

My breath caught. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Don’t worry, Cassidy. If he does, he’ll believe the cover story.”

The cover story was that Jared had met a college girl at Cherry Street Coffeehouse and took her for a joyride in the yacht. In my opinion, it was a weak story.

“
Don’t worry
?” I repeated. “Look where we are, and who or
what
we are surrounded by.”

“It’ll work out. It always does,” Emery reassured. “We’d better get back in there.”

As we each lugged a chair into Grimm’s office, where the interview was in full swing, I couldn’t come up with a single scenario in which this particular situation would work out.

We left the Luminous Water offices and headed toward the company plant so Ben could get footage for the segment. Patrick Grimm had bowed out from accompanying us, citing a meeting he couldn’t miss. He appeared quite disappointed by this, and assured us that his plant manager, another friend from his hometown, would take good care of us.

Once we had piled into Dad’s Volvo, Ben said, “Patrick and Constance are over-the-top, but I didn’t pick up any bad vibes.”

I made a mental note not to trust Ben’s “vibe” barometer.

“They may not be aware of the parasite,” Dad granted.

I glanced at Emery. Was it possible that my dad had fallen for their act? After all, he was missing critical information: Constance and most of her staff had tried to drown us.

Emery shook his head.

I shrugged, flipping my palms up. Was he saying, “No, your dad is savvy,” or, “No, your dad doesn’t get it”?

He grinned and looked out his window, leaving interpretation up to me.

I huffed.
A lot of help you are
.

Emery kept staring out the window.

Did you catch me ogling you on the yacht?
I dared.

Emery didn’t even flinch.

Thank heavens that failed
, I thought, slowly exhaling and sinking into my seat. Why would I take a risk like that? Was I completely nuts?

~~~

The tour of the plant revealed nothing, other than more friendly aqua people. If I hadn’t recognized a couple of faces from the previous night, I would have thought they were just normal human beings.

The whole way home, I fidgeted in my seat, anxious to enlighten Dad about
what
had been entertaining us for the past three hours. If only Ben hadn’t been with us.

Relax
, Emery would mouth to me periodically during the drive—to which I’d roll my eyes to and readjust my backside on the seat. How could I relax? Grimm aimed to take over the human race.

“Finally,” I muttered under my breath when Dad turned down our street. Ben had been rambling for ten minutes about alien parasites being studied in top-secret military labs.

“I’ll put down a hundred bucks,
right now
, that within a week Luminous Water is shut down and you never hear another peep from Serena about parasites again,” he predicted passionately. He looked back at Emery. “No disrespect to your mom, dude. She’d only be following the orders of the powers that be.”

“None taken,” Emery assured. “And you’re probably right.”

I was out of the car before Dad had come to a complete stop. Instantly, my eyes were drawn to Emery’s front door, which was opening. There were no Marathon workers that day, so I knew it was Gavin. He was home now, and had seen us drive up on his monitor.

“Gavin!” I hollered. I shot across the street, up his front walk and porch steps, and lunged into his arms, not caring one iota how odd my actions would appear to Ben. I was so relieved he was back. He’d know what to do.

“That bad, huh?” he asked.

“You have no idea,” I said, my feet dangling over the ground. Gavin was a mountain of a man.

He set me down and watched Emery say goodbye to Ben. “I’m taking it my son hasn’t told me everything about last night?”

“I don’t know what he told you.”

“Only what he
thought
I needed to know,” Gavin replied, his eyes fixed on Emery crossing the street. “That boy is too much like me.”

“Hey, Gavin!” Ben shouted from his Explorer, waving.

Gavin smiled at him and lifted his hand, then locked his eyes on Emery again.

Ben drove off and Dad headed our way, cell phone to his ear. I assumed he was calling Mom. She had told us that morning she had an auction meeting and would take Chazz with her. Weird how normal life continued on, despite it all.

“How much time do we have?” Emery inquired.

“Plenty. I won’t brief SPD until the morning.” Gavin’s gaze shifted to Dad. “How are you, Drake?”

“Puzzled,” Dad answered, climbing steps. He looked at me. “It was the Grimms, wasn’t it? They attacked you last night.”

My dad was sharper than I’d given him credit for. “Patrick wasn’t there, but Constance was,” I told him. “She was the woman who shot whirlpools from her arm sockets.”

Emery considered this thoughtfully. Gavin watched him.

“You didn’t see this, did you?” Gavin deduced. His eyes narrowed on his son. “Why is that?”

“I was unconscious,” Emery admitted, then walked into the house.

Gavin gave Dad an exasperated look, and Dad responded with a sympathetic one. I was glad they had one another to commiserate with. Having kids like Emery and me couldn’t be easy.

~~~

We sat around the kitchen table, joined by Serena on Skype. Emery and I discussed which of the Luminous employees we’d encountered at the bottom of Lake Washington the previous night.

“Guess this clears up the Lake Washington Monster sightings,” Gavin surmised.

“Yeah, there are no mermaids,” I agreed, picturing Constance’s caramel hair being battered by air bubbles from my regulator. Would I ever forget that image, or the one of Emery convulsing in the water?

Gavin studied me. “Cassidy, why don’t you tell us what happened last night from your perspective, since we’ve only received a secondhand report.” He gave Emery a pointed look.

“What is this?” Serena asked with alarm. She tried to move around on her end to see her son through the camera. Gavin aided her by angling his laptop at Emery.

A grin twitched at Emery’s mouth. What was wrong with him? His parents were going to be furious with us.

“Emery got knocked out and Jared had to give him CPR,” I blurted.

Serena gasped in horror. “Underwater?”

“Yes,
underwater
. I didn’t see how. I found him caught under some branches. He had a seizure on the way up, then stopped breathing about twenty feet from the surface. Jared brought him up slowly so he wouldn’t get more injured than he already was, and started CPR on him as soon as we got to the top. He kept it up as we swam Emery to the yacht. I got him on board, and he still wasn’t breathing, so Jared did chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth—” I stopped talking to wipe away a tear. I hadn’t realized I was still so shaken up.

Serena grew pale on the screen, and Gavin didn’t move. Emery wore a humble expression. This was the first time he’d heard the details of his rescue. I don’t think he’d fully appreciated how traumatizing the event had been for Jared and me.

“We owe Cassidy and Jared a great debt,” Gavin said quietly.

“And I owe an apology,” Emery added, meeting the eyes of everyone at the table. “I’m sorry for taking matters into my own hands and risking our lives. It was foolish.”

A sob escaped Serena. She turned from the screen, covering her face with her hands. Emery appeared shocked by her anguish. But what did he expect? She was his mother.

“Sweetheart,” Gavin said in a pained voice, his fingertips touching his wife’s weeping image on the screen.