Jaden Baker (51 page)

A few nurses scrutinized him as he strode down the hall, trying to place his face. He walked faster, as if heading toward an emergency, preventing questions.

He turned a corner, hoping it led to the lobby, then stopped suddenly as someone nearly crashed into him.

It was her. The woman from the drugstore, auburn and brown hair bouncing, stared at him with wide eyes, her mouth slightly open.

She whipped her head around her, staring. What was she looking for?

For a moment he goggled at her, heat rising to his cheeks. Then he caught activity in his peripheral vision, reminding him to get the hell out of here.

Before he could act, the woman took his hand in hers and hitched her purse up her opposite shoulder. Eyes locked on his, she walked toward the glass doors of the hospital, leading him out.

They barely paused for the valet traffic, then walked briskly to the sidewalk and down the street, the noise of cars braking and engines humming filling his ears. Jaden wanted to ask who she was and where they were going, but for some reason he stayed silent.

After a couple of blocks, they jogged across the street to a small electric blue car, a two-seater Honda convertible. It was not his ideal get-away vehicle, but Jaden jumped inside anyway, strapping on his seatbelt as the woman buckled up and revved the engine to life.

“We’ve gotta go,” she said, her voice urgent.

“Agreed,” he said, and only after hearing his own voice did he realize how crazy he sounded. He had no idea who the woman beside him was and had no reason to trust her.

“Wait,” he said, but she had already shifted into third and sped toward a green light, the little car throwing him back into his seat. “I don’t know who you are.”

Surprisingly, the woman grinned. “Heck, I don’t know who
you
are. But you’re not a murderer or a crazy person escaped from the local insane asylum like I thought. And I really hope you’re not a rapist because, like an idiot, I forgot my gun at home. Yet here we are, speeding away like Thelma and Louise.”

Jaden did not know who those women were, and he still didn’t know who she was, and, as she just mentioned, she didn’t know him either. Nothing had been clarified.

“You thought I was a murderer or a rapist and you let me in your car?” he said.

“Yeah, this decision falls under the ‘risky’ column of my life’s checklist. I saw the tattoo on your arm,” she said, glancing at him as she kicked it into fourth gear and ran a yellow light. “I know what Archcroft is.”

Jaden pulled his eyes away from the traffic they bobbed and weaved through, the woman not taking her foot off the gas pedal, and looked at her.

Archcroft.

Finally it had a name, the place which had kept him prisoner for six years, in hiding for ten more. Archcroft. The upside down tri-colored pyramid on his arm, etched into his skin when he was nine years old. SUVs and helicopters. Chad Dalton, Joseph Madrid. Misery.

“You know?” Jaden asked.

“I know it’s not what it’s pretending to be,” she said, and nodded toward him, “and you’re proof of that. Gosh I hate being right.”

“What do you mean?” he half yelled, as the wind roared through the car.

She rolled up the windows, making it easier to hear.

“Archcroft parades around as a charity, proclaiming all that clichéd shit like making the world a better place one person at a time, and ‘looking to the future’ and ‘research today, a better world tomorrow,’ blah blah blah.” The car jerked and squealed to a sudden stop at a red light.

“A charity?” he asked. “A
charity
?”

She laughed but not out of humor. “Yeah. Ballsy, right? I always knew it was a stinking sack of lies.” She drummed her hands on the steering wheel and looked at him.

“How do you know about them?” he asked her.

“I knew some people involved. None of them were the giving type,” she said. “They all got together every once in a while to talk about how great they were, toasting to their brilliance and advancements in science. They never got real specific about what they were doing, though. That’s the shifty part.”

“How big are they?” Jaden asked her.

“International,” she said, lunging the car forward at the green light. “Mostly scientists, but a lot of politicians, like U.S. senators and representatives, big time executives, that’s where the funding comes from. They must have legit projects to get away with the stuff they do.”

Even though she wore sunglasses, Jaden saw her looking at his hands. He sat on them. He didn’t know where she was driving to, and for the immediate moment he didn’t care. They’d already put a few miles between them and the hospital, and Jaden’s mind spun with the information she gave.

An international charitable organization, that made sense. Archcroft had resources, funding, and it wasn’t secretive. From what this woman told him, Archcroft was out in the open for the world to see. A legitimate operation.

“Where do you want me to take you?” she asked, her tone calm.

“South,” he mumbled. He kept quiet for most of the journey, only speaking to give her instructions on how to get home. It didn’t matter if she saw where he lived. He would have to leave it forever, never to return. Thankfully, shockingly, she didn’t ask any questions of him, she drove in silence, letting reality wash over him.

When they entered the business district, she slowed the car and faced him, pushing her sunglasses into her hair.

“You don’t live here.”

He saw her panicked face and nodded. “Yes.”

“But...”

“I’m not a murderer,” he said. “I won’t hurt you,” he promised, staring into her intense blue eyes.

“Great, but...there are no houses here. Where do you live?” she asked.

Jaden felt foolish for jumping to conclusions. He gave the remaining instructions and they pulled up to his brick building. “I live here.”

“The whole building?” she asked, engaging the parking brake.

“Yes,” he said, unbuckling and climbing out of the car. “The whole building.” He closed the car door and looked at her, a pang of what felt like regret in his gut. Leaving the car meant leaving a life of stability for the old one. The life of running. At least now he was prepared. He had a surplus of cash, knowledge of the world and of the people who hunted him, but it didn’t make the reality of it easier. He had established routines and connections, albeit frail. Jaden had built a kitchen, a home actually, all on his own. He had fought for this building. He had a boss, people who recognized him, even if they knew him by a different name. He had a cat.

Cat. What about Cat?

Before sliding the door open, Jaden turned to the woman in the car. “Can I ask you a favor?” he said.

She turned off the ignition and nodded.

“Um.” He’d found Cat ten years ago, huddled behind a dumpster, small and wet. Cat didn’t know anyone but Jaden. Cat slept on his bed, greeted him when he came home, purred and head-butted him when he wanted something. Cat was his pet, and if he had been a dog, Jaden would’ve taken him.

“I uh,” he started, finding it difficult to say. He’d never thought that one day he might have to give Cat away. Jaden hated that idea, and he was furious at himself for abandoning Cat to a stranger.

“What is it?” she asked, getting out of the car but not coming toward him.

“I have to leave Seattle,” he said. “But I have a cat and I can’t take him with me.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“He’s a cat. They’re not good with change.” If he had a car and a way to transport Cat, it might be different. But Jaden would have to travel across roads on foot, and Cat would be scared and might get killed trying to run. He wouldn’t keep Cat zipped in a backpack, it was cruel. “Can you take him?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it almost immediately, and nodded.

Jaden mirrored her, then slid open his building door and went inside.

Walking through it this time, the last time, left a bruise in him. He edged through his barrier and stepped up his ladder to his flat.

Kitchen cabinets, a project that had taken four months of building and transporting, three months of planning and sketching, just to be left behind. Learning how to create them had required several trips to the library, wasted and broken wood, and so much sneaking.

His bookshelves, filled with years of tedious collecting; custom dresser and desk, headboard and the mattress he’d saved for so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore, all to be left. Once again he faced the unknown.

Jaden grabbed a hiking bag filled with supplies, which he kept in a corner of his bedroom. Though he had dreaded the prospect of picking up and going again, he always knew it was a possibility and had prepared for it long ago. Jaden stuffed as much food as he could into his bag, then he took the tin from the top of a bookshelf, wrapped the cash in it with rubber bands, and stuffed it away.

“You live here?” the woman asked, appearing on the top floor with him.

“Yes,” he said, rifling through the drawers of his desk and taking his notebooks filled with sketches of prospective carpentry projects, notes of formulas, once blank books filled with facts and data he had memorized, but he wanted to take with him.

Jaden saw that the woman, who’s name he still hadn’t asked for, was running her hands over the kitchen cabinets.

“Did you do this?” she asked.

“Uh, yes.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Wow,” she said. “They’re beautiful. And the bookshelves?”

“Everything,” he said, stuffing clothes into his backpack, realizing he needed to get out of the scrubs and into his own clothes. “I have to change clothes.” He grabbed a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans and went into his bathroom. His reflection caught his eye: long hair and beard. He’d have to cut it, alter his appearance. Maybe dye it this time.

“What’s your cat’s name?” she asked.

“Cat,” Jaden said, pulling off his shoes then pants.

“Yeah, the cat. What’s his name?” she asked again.

“His name is Cat,” he said, raising his voice.

“Oh. Naturally,” she said then started calling for him. “Here...Cat. Here Cat, Cat, Catty. Well, it’s original!”

Once changed, he strapped on his backpack and came out of the bathroom. “Cat!” he called, hoping his pet would come running so he could say goodbye. “C’mere Cat.”

“Does he come to ‘kitty’?” she asked.

“No, he’s a boy,” Jaden said.

“Well of course,” she said, smirking, then kept calling for Cat.

“Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said. “I have two dogs, so I get the whole pet thing.”

“Two dogs?” Jaden said, surprised at his concern. “What kind?”

“Oh, the vicious cat-ripping kind,” she said casually.

Jaden watched her as she kept calling for Cat. “You are joking, right?”

“Most definitely,” she said.

Cat clawed his way up the beam Jaden built for him and meowed at both of them, tail in the air, as he padded toward them.

“Hey kitty, I mean Cat. Hi baby,” she said, kneeling to greet him.

“He doesn’t know anyone else,” Jaden said, thinking of how Cat would react to being abandoned. The person you’ve grown up with leaving you was a hardship. Jaden hated doing it to Cat.

Cat walked right to her, rubbing himself on her legs, like he’d known her his whole life, too.

“Aw, hi little one.” Cat let her pick him up. She cradled him to her chest, Cat purring and kneading his claws, his eyes closed in contentment. She scratched the top of his head and smiled.

“Thank you...” he said, watching them together, his words hanging on the air.

“It’s Libby,” she said, a coy smile on her lips.

“Libby,” he said. “Thanks, Libby. Take good care of him.”

“Sure,” she said, her voice soft. “You want to hold him and say goodbye?” She didn’t wait for him to respond, offering Cat to him. Jaden held him, feeling Cat’s purr, that comforting vibration of happiness against his chest. Cat: his friend.

Jaden had a hard time letting Cat go. Memories of things Cat had done, even the bad things like ripping upholstery on the couch, or scratching the surface of the coffee table after Jaden applied a finish to it, came back to him. He was a terrible mouser. One time Jaden watched as a mouse chased Cat into a corner.

“How long have you had him?” Libby asked.

“Ten years,” he mumbled, almost wishing he could cry for his furry friend, understanding just how silly that seemed.

“You took good care of him.”

“I guess I did,” Jaden said, and reluctantly handed him to Libby. “I have to go now.”

“Okay,” she said.

Jaden took to the ladder and climbed down, making sure Libby and Cat made it safely. He pointed them out of the building, watching them go.

He was alone for the last time in his home. Em House. Jaden put the ladder back on the second floor, and remembered his final preparations for the building, the one’s made a few years ago. Making sure Libby and Cat were still outside, Jaden eased under the second floor and felt for a switch, flipping it on.

Psychokinesis. A handy thing.

With a deep breath, Jaden stormed out of his home, his bottled anger rising to the surface. He slid the door shut, padlocked it from the inside. He felt the crates move to block the door.