Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (11 page)

“Uh, hello, reason we are gathered here today? You aren’t exactly my dearly beloved, but let’s bring it to order shall we?” Malcolm said. The exasperation in his voice was clear, and highly unusual.

“What blew up your skirt?” Keisha asked. “You’re usually a little ray of sunshine.”

“Nothing,” Malcolm said, mustering all of his dignity. “I just think with Tesla gone, and her mom supposed to die
tomorrow
back there, and Nilsen and maybe others looking to harm Dr. Abbott—maybe then as well as now—I don’t know, maybe we could focus?”

Beckett looked at Malcolm curiously. He was sitting in a wing chair across from the sofa she and Joley were on, indignant and a little red in the face. She approved.

“Alright then—well said. You’ve got the floor, Mal.”

Keisha glanced at Beckett, a puzzled frown on her face. “
Mal
?” she asked incredulously. “You’re on a nickname-basis with the young one here?”

Beckett shrugged, looking down at her hands and straightening the papers she held, though they seemed perfectly in order already. “We’ve been working on something today,” she said vaguely. “He had some good insights, and we need everyone’s help now to move quickly.”

“Huh,” was all Keisha could come up with as she looked at Malcolm again.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised, Keisha,” he said, trying to look hurt but failing miserably. “Becks and I made some real progress today.”

“Okay, whatever,” said Beckett testily.

“What now?” Malcolm asked.

“You always overdo, Mal,” said Keisha, plopping down onto the sofa on his other side and leaning over to ruffle his hair. “She can assume. You can’t.”

“I am so confused,” Malcolm said. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and closed his eyes, then snapped them open again and blushed when Bizzy giggled from the doorway where she and Finn had just arrived.

“Okay, now that we’re all here, can we do this?” Beckett said. “Jane is out, but who knows for how long.”

“Why don’t we just hang in your room?” asked Bizzy, plopping down on a silk hassock with tassels hanging all around it. “Plenty of room, plus privacy. Why risk Jane walking in?”

“Because no, and because not a chance,” said Beckett.

“Generous to a fault,” muttered Finn, who seemed weary, distracted, as he lowered himself into a brocade chair.

“I’ve never considered selflessness a virtue,” snapped Beckett, with more heat than seemed necessary. “In my experience, it’s merely another kind of egotism, selfish at its very core, but far more dangerous because it’s hidden—mostly from the one who insists that he’s selfless.”

Finn said nothing, merely raised both hands, palms outward, in surrender.

“Ah, it seems we’ve veered off point a bit,” said Joley agreeably, and the whole room seemed to exhale slightly in relief. “Shall we then?” He glanced at Malcolm, who cleared his throat loudly as if about to give a speech.

“Okay, Becket and I have been over the meager evidence that the Southern Poverty Law Center has on this fundamentalist group, One God, One Truth. We don’t know that much about them, because the Center doesn’t know that much about them, apparently.” He glanced at Beckett, and when she didn’t frown or correct him or tell him to shut up because he was an idiot, he continued, more confident.

“The group has only existed officially as a group—as a church, with tax-exempt status—for a little over three years. The Center is keeping their eyes open, but they apparently have not been classified as a hate group. Yet.”

Beckett continued, leaning forward on the sofa, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped together. “They don’t appear to focus on race, or even on a specific religion in terms of possible violent intentions. Rather, their focus is on science—any scientific work that in their estimation, based on their beliefs, is an abomination against God.”

Joley was turned toward her, listening intently. “So, they haven’t committed any violent acts yet?”

“No. Not yet—though they are suspected of some property damage in a couple of labs. But the language in some of their internal documents suggests an emergent pattern that other groups have followed, so it’s reasonable to assume they’re headed that way.”

Joley frowned. “Well, reasonable is not the same thing as legally sanctioned. Has the Center run into any legal challenges from this group?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” said Beckett. “Then again, we don’t know whether they’re aware that they’re under surveillance.”

“Hm,” mused Joley. “More than a little troubling in terms of due process.” He glanced up to find Malcolm, Keisha, and Bizzy somewhat confused, by the looks on their faces. “You know,” he explained. “Warrants. Reasonable cause. Search and seizure. Privacy.”

“Oh, those,” said Finn, waving them away like flies, which was of course his way of agreeing with Joley that this was, indeed, troubling.

“Isn’t that a little weird?” Bizzy asked suddenly. “This Southern-Poverty-whatever is concerned about the civil rights of people and they may be infringing on the civil rights of others in their efforts?”

“I think that’s what Joley just said, Biz,” said Beckett.

“Well, not to be rude or anything—I’m sure this is all fascinating stuff,” said Bizzy a little huffily. “But what does this have to do with the current situation? With Tesla, with her mom’s death, the time travel technology?”

Malcolm and Beckett exchanged looks. “Well, we figured that the leader of this church, Josiah Doyle, must have left some kind of trail prior to starting his church in Indiana. We need to dig up everything we can find—as quickly as possible—just in case there’s any connection to the death of Tasya Petrova.”

“Seems like a big shot in the dark, to me,” said Keisha. “I mean, what can we do at this point anyway? Tesla is already gone, and we don’t expect her back until after the car accident takes place, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Finn said quietly. “We don’t know what to expect, either from Tesla or anyone in the past who had anything, however peripherally, to do with Tasya’s death. And I, for one, am not willing to risk the easy assumption that Sebastian Nilsen is the only bad guy out there, especially with this group calling the Abbotts’ work an abomination.”

Joley agreed. “It doesn’t cost us much but a little time and effort,” he said. “I’m in. I’ll head to the library and do database searches for Doyle in Indiana. See what his legal backstory is.”

Bizzy sighed. “I guess I can check popular scientific publications to see if Doyle or his organization has shown up in print at any point during the last decade.”

“Good. I’ll be on any media coverage of the One God, One Truth,” said Finn.

“So we’re set?” Malcolm said briskly, rising to indicate the meeting was over.

Beckett laughed. “Yes, your CEOship. We’re set.”

“Cool. I’ll head to Lydia’s—sorry, Jane’s library, and see what might be of use in there on religious fundamentalism and violence.” He started to walk out of the room with the others, but stopped and turned back around. “You know what would be really useful, though,” he said. “Somebody in deep cover. I saw an awesome movie about a former Neo Nazi white supremacist guy who goes back into the thick of it, under cover, to help prosecute the members of the group who were killing people. It was super effective, because he knew the mindset, the lifestyle, even had the tattoos. They never suspected him until it was too late.”

Malcolm turned back around. “Anyway,” his voice trailed along behind him as he headed toward the library room. “That’s certainly outside our skillset.”

Keisha and Beckett were the only ones left in the room—Beckett standing, oddly frozen in place since Malcolm’s comment, and Keisha still sitting in a red-and-gold print armchair with pleats sewn into the back.

“What’s wrong with you?” Keisha asked, looking at Beckett and frowning.

“What? Nothing,” Beckett replied quickly. “What are you going to do?”

“You know, I am getting tired of explaining that I don’t work here,” Keisha began, but Beckett put up a hand to stop her.

“Look, Keisha, I get it,” Beckett said in a suspiciously gentle voice.

“You get what?”

“We don’t always have the particular skills needed, or that are at least obvious, for any given operation. We’ve all been there, but you haven’t been trained, so you’re defensive.”

“Blondie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do,” said Beckett, taking a step nearer as Keisha rose from her chair. “It took me a long time to come to terms with my areas of expertise—I’m like you. I’m really competent, and used to taking charge and getting whatever the job is done. But when you’re part of a team, sometimes you can’t do much but help out the others, who are temporarily more important than you are.”

Keisha looked angry, and Beckett looked serene as they stood and stared at each other, neither of them blinking, only a few feet apart. Keisha was taller, certainly, and more powerfully built, but Beckett had a presence that made it hard to discount her. The tension was palpable until Keisha sighed, loudly.

“Yeah, well. There’s a lot of stuff I’m good at—namely school, and hoops. Between the two I fully expect a full ride at a top college, and lots and lots of travel in my future. There is no doubt that’s where I’m headed.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Beckett. “But you don’t have anything to prove here.”

Keisha sat back down on the edge of the chair she had just vacated, so that Beckett actually towered over her. “See, this is really about other stuff,” she said, so quietly that Beckett almost didn’t hear her.

Beckett pulled the coffee table over and sat on it, facing Keisha. “It almost always is.”

Keisha smiled, briefly. “True. It’s just that I get a lot of pressure at home to make final decisions—you know the whole what-do-I-wanna-be-when-I-grow-up thing, and at this point that means channeling all my electives and extra-curriculars into some narrow path that leads to my undergrad major, then to my graduate specialty, and then my career. And—well, I don’t know, you know? I like everything, or at least lots of things, and I practically have a panic attack when I think about having to choose now, and then live that life—I’m barely eighteen! And what if I make a mistake and have this horrible life, a miserable life, hating every day because I wish I was someplace else, somebody else?”

It all came out in a rush, and as surprised as Beckett was, she was nowhere near as shocked as Keisha. She even played this down with Tesla, who was her best friend, but for Keisha, not talking about it was a way to avoid thinking about it as well, so she never said much to anybody. Somehow, this moment, with these people, talking about what each of their contributions would be to this vague effort to gather information to help out one of their own had taken on all the weight and anxiety of this problem she’d been shoving down and clamping a lid on for at least a year. They were all just so…well-defined, so known, to themselves and each other, in terms of what they had to offer.

Beckett was nodding. “I am very—very—familiar with the pressures of family expectations and conformity. Of wanting to take your own time to figure out who and what you are, and what kind of a life you want. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure your parents just want you to be safe—you know financially, socially, all of it. It’s the later version of making sure you’ve had all your kiddie vaccines and dental check-ups. But, of course, it’s nothing like that once you take two seconds to think about it.”

“Well, I appreciate it, but frankly I doubt you know what I’m talking about,” said Keisha. “I mean, look at you—nobody is more independent than you. It’s obvious you call all your own shots. I wish I could. You know exactly who you are and where you’re going.”

Beckett thought for a moment, watching Keisha the whole while, and then she seemed to come to some sort of decision. “I have an idea,” she said. “I certainly can’t get your parents off your back, but I have a new direction I’m going to go in with this investigation, I think—I’ve just now decided, but I see now that things have been heading in this direction for a while. And I could use your help. You’ll see that you can move forward, make progress, simply because you’re taking some action, living your life, and not necessarily in a way that defines you irrevocably.”

Keisha frowned. “Well, that sounds good—if bizarrely vague—but I can’t imagine what you think I can do in some sort of investigation.”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Beckett, standing up and putting her hand out, whether to help Keisha to her feet or to shake on some sort of pact they seemed to be making, Keisha wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, she took the other girl’s hand, and they maintained their grasp for a moment after they were both standing. “Right now all I’m looking for is someone who is smart, quick on her feet, and gives a shit what happens to the Abbotts.”

Keisha grinned. “I guess I’m your girl, then.”

CHAPTER 13

After Tesla dropped Sam at Angelo’s, she rode to the university and parked near the physics building. She felt nervous about walking around in broad daylight and had to keep reminding herself that she was thoroughly disguised—her bright hair and unusual eyes could not be seen by anyone. She slung her messenger bag over Sam’s leather jacket and started walking toward the building, her confidence growing as no one even glanced her way. It was Sunday, so there was far less pedestrian traffic on campus, but this late in the semester, with final projects and exams coming up, many students were working through the weekend and all the labs, libraries, and study areas were open twenty-four-seven.

The first thing Tesla did when she entered the building was head straight for the women’s bathroom, unable to shake the feeling that anyone who looked at her would somehow
know
. She needed the reassurance that her mask was, indeed, effective. One look in the mirror—which reflected back at her a complete stranger, pale with long, curly dark hair and chocolate-brown eyes—made her grin, and she walked right back out, head held high.

She walked purposefully toward the student resource room that the upper level undergrads and grad students in physics, astronomy, and chemistry shared, hoping it still existed. As she paused in the doorway, taking in the packed book shelves that lined the walls of the spacious room, the tables and chairs and computer monitors, the students working hard, some with heads bent over notes, others staring at their screens, a few talking quietly in study groups, Tesla noted with relief that universities were slow to change, if ever. Even the geeky Einstein poster with some inspirational quote on the wall would still be in the same spot eight years from now.

She made her way over to a table that was empty, where her back would be to the wall, and she could map out her strategy for the day. On her way, a cute blonde guy looked up from a textbook and nodded to her, going back to his reading before she’d even fully passed him. She settled into her chair, pulled a spiral pad and a pen out of her bag, and sat down to figure out her next steps.

Pen poised, she tucked her dark hair behind her ear with the other hand and was just about to make a list of the places where she might be able to get close to her mother without being obvious—what kinds of public places did her mom go? Did she grocery shop, take Max to the park? Tesla felt strange asking the questions, and even stranger that she had no idea of the answers. Before she could start the tentative list, however, she was distracted by a conversation between three young women at the next table.

“Have you decided yet?” asked the one whose back was toward Tesla, the one with a blond, swingy pageboy haircut that hovered just above her shoulders.

“No,” said the tall girl with a dark, short boys’ cut over her ears, very full lips, and heavy-lidded brown eyes. The girl frowned and Tesla was struck by how sexy she was, the eyes and mouth accentuated by her androgynous haircut. “I have to declare by Wednesday, or I won’t graduate on time unless I take an overload during the summer, which I can’t do. I have to work.”

“I don’t know why you’re even considering a double major,” said the third girl, whose light brown hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and whose thick, black-framed glasses dwarfed everything else about her face. “Besides, don’t you think philosophy and physics is a weird combo?”

The girl with the sultry face turned stormy eyes on her companion. “No, I don’t. Just the opposite, in fact. Physics is about real frontiers, about our place in the universe, about how it all functions. You don’t think there ought to be a philosophical component to that?”

The blonde laughed, and from behind her, Tesla saw her shoulders move up and down in concert with the sound. She couldn’t imagine what the blonde had found funny in the remark—until she spoke.

“You totally have a crush on Dr. Abbott—that sounds like a direct quote!”

“I do not!” protested Boy Haircut, but she had blushed a bit, and was now laughing, too.

“Yeah, I don’t get that,” said Ponytail. “I mean, I liked his class just fine, but I’ll take Petrova’s classes over her hubby’s any day.”

Tesla’s hand, which she realized still held her pen poised over the still-blank first page of her notebook, shook, and she quickly dropped her pen and put her hand in her lap, out of sight.

“We should go,” said Ponytail, looking at the time on her phone. “Petrova’s talk is in five minutes. You coming?” she said to Blondie.

The blonde girl hesitated. “I’m a chem major.”

They were all standing now, the chairs scraping back on the tile floor. Ponytail shrugged. “Doesn’t matter—apparently, Gina’s a philosophy major! It’s open to anybody. Just a general talk about the major, grad school, careers in physics. They like Petrova to do the recruiting, especially of females. You know, she’s brilliant, passionate about the work, a good spokesperson. Too few women in the hard sciences, all that.”

“C’mon, Sherry, come with us,” said Boy Haircut—Gina, apparently—with a smile. “I haven’t had a class with her yet, but I hear good things.”

As the girls turned and began walking out of the room, Tesla quickly shoved her notebook and pen back in her bag and followed them out.

Me
? she thought.
Oh, nothing. Just headed to hear a lecture by my mom. You know, the one who’s dead. No big deal.

With legs that trembled and a choked up feeling in her throat, she hung back just enough that the three girls wouldn’t feel her presence, and followed them into a stadium-style classroom that was already filling up with students interested to hear what Dr. Tasya Petrova Abbot had to say about the field of physics.

The woman who walked out to the lectern wore a white coat over a slim green skirt, black leather heels and opaque tights, and a fitted black turtleneck. Her dark auburn hair swung softly, creating a silky curtain that parted for the stage of her face, which was breathtakingly beautiful. It occurred to Tesla, staring at the woman from the anonymity of her eighth row center seat, exactly thirteen and a half yards from the stage on which her mother stood, organizing her notes, that one did not usually remember that human faces are generally asymmetrical until one encountered the rare person whose face is perfectly, flawlessly, balanced.

Tasya Petrova was fair, but with the faintest olive hue to her skin. When she looked up once, to note that students were still filing into the room, Tesla caught a glimpse of the deep moss-green of her eyes, the ruler-straight perfection of her slim nose, the cut of high cheekbones whose planes caught and reflected the light, creating shadow just below. Her mouth was wide and well-shaped, and when a student near the front said something to her that Tesla could not make out, the woman leaned forward a little, smiled, her white teeth flashing for a brief instant when she replied before turning back to her notes.

Tesla thought she would die then and there.

To be this close—it was unfathomable. How could she ever leave, ever go back to her own time? She had a quick succession of fanciful thoughts, none of them coherent, more like images, really, of herself staying here, in disguise, taking classes, becoming her mother’s star pupil, then her best friend. They’d be close, they’d laugh and talk. Tesla would have everything she’d ever wanted.

Leave
said a voice in her head that she recognized as her saner self.
Leave now
. She had assumed the only danger would come from being recognized, and the spiral of disastrous realizations and confrontations that recognition would spark, and which could quickly escalate beyond anyone’s control. This was, indeed, a very dangerous thing to do, but not in the way she had imagined. What a fool she’d been! The real danger lay in her own desire to have her mother in her life, and the lengths she might be willing to go to make that happen.

Leave!

Tesla got up quickly, slung her bag over her head and across her body, and walked silently up the aisle, toward the doors, just as she heard her mother say, with a slight eastern European accent whose unexpected familiarity hit her like a concrete block slamming into her skull, “Welcome, and thank you all for coming. Today I’m going to talk a little bit about what it means to be a physicist.”

Tesla walked across campus, not really thinking about where she was going, until she looked up and realized she’d left the classroom and dorm buildings behind and was in town, where the first few bars and sandwich places that catered mostly to students gave way to other, non-university businesses. She was right in front of a pharmacy, and because she’d suddenly stopped short on what had become a crowded sidewalk, someone bumped into her shoulder and she was nudged over just enough to find herself in a deep shop doorway, out of the flow of human traffic. She paused to catch her breath, unsure of herself in these uncharted waters. She needed to shake it off, she told herself sternly, and get back to trying to figure out what had happened to her mom eight years ago.

She was just about to step back onto the sidewalk, to move with the people heading back toward campus, where she’d parked Sam’s motorcycle, when she checked herself, because a man had stopped right in front of the doorway where she stood in shadow. She shrank back a little just as he turned and grabbed the upper arm of a skinny little girl with light brown hair and yanked her toward him.

The man’s face was so filled with menace, the white knuckles clenched around the little girl’s arm such clear indicators of rage and violence that Tesla gasped and pressed her back into the rough bricks at the side of the shop door, whose
closed
sign now seemed to mean
no escape
. The little girl didn’t fight back, didn’t blink, didn’t say a word. Tesla watched as her pinched face went blank, her big, doe-like eyes lost focus, her hand, whose circulation had been cut off so brutally by the man’s ham-sized fist, turned purplish-red. Tesla could almost feel its desperate pulse in her own hand.

The man pressed his face into the girl’s, their noses almost touching, and hissed, “You’ll get only what I give you—and you like what I give you, don’t you?”

There was only one way Tesla could understand that question, though the words themselves, the arrangement of them, could mean different things in different contexts. It was the way he said them, the disgusting, lascivious,
horrifying
sound of his voice that told her everything she needed to know. She had never, in her whole life, had to grapple with that kind of terror, and she—older and physically stronger—trembled uncontrollably as her fight-or-flight reflex kicked in and adrenaline pumped through her body. She only realized that her eyes were closed when she opened them again, and the man and girl were gone.

Tesla raced out of the doorway and looked frantically down the street, but they were gone. She looked the other way, and saw, thirty feet ahead of her, the man, pulling the little girl by the hand, her spindly legs trying to keep up as she dodged the people he plowed around on the sidewalk. Tesla followed them, getting closer but staying back ten feet, always leaving at least one other person between them in case he looked back.

She had no idea what she was going to do, but nothing—not a single goddamn person or event on the planet could have made her stop.

The man turned down a side street, where a few cars were parked, the sidewalks empty. He reached awkwardly into his pants pocket with his other hand, keeping a tight hold on the little girl who still said nothing, whose face was still blank, and Tesla wondered for a moment if there was something wrong with her. She didn’t seem all there in some way that Tesla couldn’t define. The man pulled out his keys, unlocked the car door, and shoved the girl inside. She crawled quickly to the passenger side, moving as far away from the man as she could, but he got in, too, and closed the door behind him. Tesla could see him talking angrily, the little girl squished into the door away from him, and when he glanced up and saw Tesla she instinctively kept her face expressionless as she walked toward the car, and past it, just another pedestrian on the sidewalk.

She knew without thinking that she could stop on the sidewalk exactly five feet past the rear fender of the car, if she was thirty-six inches from the side of it, and she would be in the man’s blind spot—he would not be able to see her in either of his mirrors, though he could if he took the trouble to turn around and look over his shoulder. She had already fished inside her messenger bag and pulled out her pen when she reached that spot, and she turned, wrote the license plate number onto the back of her hand, and stared hard into the car interior, trying to make out what was happening. The man was still in the driver’s seat, and she could just see the little girl’s head, below the passenger headrest and leaning into the window of the passenger side door. Tesla ducked down and moved toward the car until she was behind it, crouched down by the rear bumper, then crept around the other side, toward the passenger door whose window was lowered three and a half inches. Just as she reached the back door on the little girl’s side of the car, she heard the man say in a low growl, “I said get over here.”

Tesla heard a whimper, and then the man said, “Take these off—here, I’ll do it.” His voice had softened, but was no less terrifying for its wheedling tone. “Be a good girl. That’s right.”