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16

Eyes and Ears Everywhere

D espite our collective silence, I knew my friends were as freaked out as I was. We walked so closely together that we occasionally bumped arms as we made our way down the elegant, ample hallways of the science building with Bobo immediately behind us. Ordinarily, I might have considered leaving Bobo in the car while the rest of us headed into the labs—temperatures were in the low sixties, and in the shade with the windows open he’d be fine for what I hoped would be a brief stint inside—but no way was I letting Bobo out of my sight now.

Though neither I nor my friends had lowered our guard since arriving at the institute, which would have been more aptly named a prison , the outward civility of the place and everyone staffing it had lulled me into hoping things wouldn’t be so bad. After what we’d just witnessed, that hope fizzled and deflated like a sad, sad party balloon.

The sophisticated architectural details of the campus, which I’d previously admired, now only made me scowl. It was all a facade. A twisted, sick facade. Magnum was as villainous a villain as I’d ever found in any sort of fiction. He was, indeed, the worst kind. Handsome, charismatic, and used to getting his way. He wore his ugly villainy on the inside.

I was sandwiched between Griffin and Brady, and on my right, Brady sighed so heavily that I knew his thoughts were as burdened as mine. He scowled brutally. “Let’s just get this shit over with as fast as we possibly can.”

Griffin said, “Yep. But only ’cause we don’t have a better fucking choice.”

I sighed as we pushed through the double doors of the lab, then froze. On a large screen up on the wall was a full-color view of the hallway we’d just exited. The fuckers had been following our progress as if we were ants stuck in a glass farm. What could have possibly been so interesting about our approach?

Tobias (aka the former Orson Conway) pressed a button on a keyboard and the image vanished.

“Smooth, D—” Griffin said, catching himself. This man was no more his dad than mine was. What a total and absolute mindfuck.

But Tobias smiled triumphantly at Griffin’s near slip. “Good morning, kids,” he announced, a bit too bubbly for the tempered man I’d been around all my life.

The rest of our fake parents hovered nervously around the lab, along with Tracy and a few others I’d never seen before. All of them wore crisp white lab coats but no nametags. Apparently everyone knew each other and their roles. We, the supposed children, were the only ones who didn’t.

Unease pushed at my skin some more, making me want to scratch. I wouldn’t, not with all of them observing us like we were specimens.

Lynne—formerly Monica Bryson—drew closer with the click-clack of her high heels. “Bobo can’t be in here. Dogs aren’t allowed in the lab.”

“Well, Lynne ,” I said feeling the viciousness of my smile, “I don’t care. He’s staying.”

She tutted me as if I were still her twelve-year-old daughter giving her sass. “The work we do here is very important. We can’t have animals messing with the integrity of our data.”

“And we can’t have liars for parents keeping us trapped on this campus upon threat of death.” I shrugged, my smile only growing meaner. “I guess none of us are gonna get what we want today.”

She stared at me with a disapproving frown that I actually enjoyed, before snapping at the man I’d known as Reece Bryson, my father.

“Jude, will you talk some sense into her please? I won’t have—”

“ Jude ?” I interjected. “Jude?”

Layla was shaking her head, a look of incredulity twisting her features. “He so does not look like a Jude. No way. Not a Jude.”

Reece aka Jude sighed so that his shoulders slumped. “Judah Corlett, actually. Jude for short.”

“Jude for short,” I echoed as I tried to get this new reality to pierce through my shock. We’d not just been lied to, but our entire lives were nothing but lies.

I shook my head at myself. How was it that the truth could feel so wrong when it was the lie that should? How could we not have felt any of the hints there must have been along the way that nothing was as it seemed?

Worse, how could we ever trust our instincts again?

“Yeah,” Judah said softly. “Sorry about that, honey.”

Bobo rounded our legs to sit on my feet. Without looking away from the spread of traitors in the spacious lab, I ran my hand along his head. At least Bobo would never betray me. Dogs were so much better than people.

“Were you …” I started before having to stop to begin anew. “Were you two ever even together?” I waved my free hand at him and Lynne, unwilling to release the connection to Bobo, whose warm, familiar presence was soothing my jagged edges. “I mean, was there ever anything even romantic between you guys? Or was Lynne just boning the sheriff while she played at being your wife?”

Jude spun atop the stool he perched on to look at her, so fast that I knew.

“‘Boning the sheriff’?” he repeated in a shrill tone that told me and my friends everything we needed to hear. I didn’t even get reprimanded like usual for my choice of language.

“We were supposed to be working on things between us!” he accused. “No wonder things weren’t getting better.”

Lynne winced but otherwise didn’t show what I’d consider an appropriate level of remorse. “What did you expect? Our entire lives were about Joss! About the rest of the kids. I’m a woman , and I have needs.”

“I could’ve satisfied those needs! I was showing up and trying. Xander Jones? Really, Lynne? Fucking really ?”

“What? He gave me what I wanted and didn’t ask too many questions. Plus, he’s a great lay.”

Layla whispered to us, “I’d say this is awesome, but not sure anything’s gonna feel truly awesome again.”

“I know the feeling,” Brady added with a sour frown.

Then, since I owed Lynne the Liar zero allegiance, I added, “Oh, and, Jude? Xander got her pregnant. She had an abortion.”

Jude whipped his head around to glare at her all over again. This time, though, he silently seethed.

Finally, Porter-who-wasn’t-Porter rose from his stool to pat Jude awkwardly on the shoulder. “Sorry, man. We can talk it through later. But this isn’t the place for this right now.” So softly that I had to strain to hear, he added, “Eyes and ears everywhere, remember.”

Jude only continued to glare venom at Lynne. When Porter patted him on the back some more, Jude finally rubbed a hand along his face and nodded. “Okay, yeah, okay.”

Slowly, he spun the stool to face us again. His devastation at Lynne’s betrayal etched years onto his face.

I almost felt sorry for him—almost.

“What you’re feeling right now? Imagine that a thousandfold. Then maybe you’ll begin to have an inkling of what we’ve been going through,” I said.

Lynne shot to her feet to glower at me before finally crossing her arms over her chest as if she didn’t know what else to do. “Are you pleased with yourself now, Joss? For causing havoc, something you do so well?”

Griffin went rigid beside me. Even Brady huffed in shared offense.

“No, Lynne,” I said, “I’m not fucking pleased. You guys, all of you”—I gestured around to encompass all of them, even those we didn’t know—“you’re fucking assholes . You treated us like your stupid pawns in your little lab experiment game when we—” I had to stop to swallow the sudden tears rising up my throat and stinging my eyes. “We loved you,” I added, a thready admission I didn’t even know why I was fucking making. It only felt like yet another point of vulnerability I had no desire to flaunt in their ugly, stupid faces.

Faux Celia’s eyes misted over, as did faux Porter’s. “Oh, Joss,” she said, “all of you, we promise, we swear , we did it all because we thought it was the only way to protect you. We did it for you . We did it because we grew to love you, every single one of you, and we wanted to offer you a chance at a real life.”

As one, all the pretend-parents nodded. Even Lynne.

A single tear tracked down my cheek before I swiped it away angrily. The very last thing I wanted to do was cry for these people. But my heart obviously hadn’t gotten the memo in time.

“Yeah, yeah,” Layla muttered with enough snark to make up for my temporary sappiness. I was so fucking glad for it. Not a single one of them deserved to see how much they’d hurt us.

“We’ve heard the whole sob story before,” Layla continued. “Save your breath. It still doesn’t excuse your behavior, not even close. What I want to know is what are all your real names? ’Cause I do not wanna keep thinking of you as the people you pretended to be. It’ll make me puke in my mouth. You so aren’t our parents.”

Before any of them answered, Tracy edged forward. “Um, I hate to interrupt—”

Layla pegged her with that angry stare. “Then don’t.”

“Well, we do have a lot of work to get started on, and I know you’re supposed to be elsewhere at ten.” She glanced at the watch on her slender wrist. Shiny gold with a smattering of diamonds to catch the light. Magnum clearly rewarded them well for their work and fuck-all for scruples.

Layla sneered at Tracy as if she were as culpable as the rest of them. “Then stop delaying us. We’re gonna get our answers one way or another.”

Porter exhaled so loudly that Bobo jerked his head in his direction. “My real name is Mark Malone.”

Layla’s jaw ground back and forth a few times. “And yours?” she asked not-Celia.

The woman cleared her throat and fiddled with the lapels of her lab coat. “Jacqueline Pawlyn. I go by Jackie.”

“And your real last name?” I asked Lynne.

She didn’t avoid my accusatory stare as she answered.

“Hopper.”

“Got it,” I bit out.

Layla, Brady, Griffin, and I looked at Hunt.

Our friend’s serious expression had turned morose. He waggled his lips to one side and then the other before finally nodding to himself and casting a look at Alexis .

“What is it?” he asked.

The woman who I might have once described as being adoring of her son smiled sadly, as morose as Hunt. “Marisa Dominguéz.” She pronounced the name melodically, with a perfect Spanish accent.

“So you really are originally from Spain?”

“Yes, my son.”

Hunt tensed his jaw and neck until tendon outlines strained his skin. “Don’t call me that.”

“But …”

He shook his head, and I looked for his usual turquoise to be swinging from his earring. He wasn’t wearing it. “You made me believe my dad died. I mourned him. Every day, I wished he were still alive.”

I glanced at Griffin, whose jaw was just as tight as Hunt’s as his gaze flicked to Tracy.

“Did you ever even meet the man whose sperm was used to create me?” Hunt pressed.

“Not in person then, no,” Marisa replied so softly I realized that never in our shared time together had I heard her be this timid. I’d always thought of her as at least a little bit fierce.

“You know who he is though?”

After a quick look at the others, Marisa nodded. “Yes, but he, along with the other sperm and egg donors, requested his information be kept private. He’s not looking to be contacted.”

“Of course he’s not,” Hunt said, working to eradicate any hint of emotion from his voice. Then he looked over at us, a silent request to divert the attention away from him.

Right away, Layla, never one to do anything halfway, clapped her hands, and Bobo barked once; I patted his head to calm him. “Now that all that fun is under our belts, and we know what names to use when we cuss you the hell out later, what do you need us to do for dear, dear Magnum?”

A few of the adults cringed at Layla’s thick sarcasm, but for the most part they seemed relieved to get on track. They beckoned us over, and Jude called out, “Joss, you’re with me.”

With Bobo at my side, his claws clacking against the tile floor, I sat gingerly on the stool Jude extended for me. This close to the man I’d so long believed to be my loving father, I couldn’t wait to get away.

He turned to his workstation to pull up on his computer what was very evidently my file—thanks to the large color photo of me—and then stood to lift my sleeve and attach a blood pressure cuff around my arm. While he waited for it to inflate, he stared at me and petted Bobo’s head.

When his attention heated to feel like a brand against my skin, I said, “Do ya mind, Jude?”

He startled, but I couldn’t figure out if it was because I’d called him by his given name or just that he’d been lost in thought.

“You’re all up in my business,” I added.

He jerked his head as if to clear it, studied the readout on the cuff, then made notes into his computer before removing the cuff.

When he waved a thermometer across my forehead, my nose scrunched. “Isn’t this a bit … basic? I thought you’d be, well, I dunno. But not this.”

“Your vitals tell us a lot about how your body’s reacting to new situations and stimuli. But yes, we’ll quickly advance to other, let’s say, measurements .”

The way he enunciated the word so carefully felt ominous.

When he was flashing a penlight onto my eyeballs, he lowered his voice. “I know you don’t want to hear this”—I tensed—“but I truly allowed myself to believe you were my daughter. I-I love you, Joss.”

I love you too, Dad sat on my tongue, so very ready to slip out, until I tugged it back. Stupid . This man was not my father, never had been.

That didn’t stop my heart from feeling what it felt.

“I don’t want you to ever doubt that,” he continued. “I understand you’re angry now and feel betrayed. I get that, I really do.”

As soon as he clicked the light off, I shut my eyes to put whatever barrier I could between him and my raw emotions.

“But just … later, if you ever can, please know that I truly do love you, so very much.”

I cleared the thickness gathering in my throat but refused to open my eyes.

Even more softly now, a hint of defeat in his words, he said, “If you ever want to talk or, I don’t know, whatever, I’ll always be here for you. Even if it’s years from now, and even if you don’t exactly love the idea right now, in my heart I’ll always think of you as my daughter. And … and …”

When he only trailed off, I eventually peered up at him, my eyes glistening in a way I didn’t want him to notice. He never got to see me vulnerable again—never.

“I—we—all want to help you,” he whispered as he tucked his mouth toward his chest and reached for my wrist to take my pulse.

It sped up.

He barely breathed: “We’re being watched even more closely than you are.”

Probably in response to my distress and Jude’s, Bobo inserted his head between us and planted it on my lap.

Jude glanced this way and that, then up to the corners of the room, and finally to his computer, which he frowned at. Magnum could definitely be listening in through his computer.

Jude cleared his throat loudly before announcing, “I’m going to draw blood next, and after that we’ll see how those bullet wounds are healing. Oh wait. I forgot to check your ears first.”

He grabbed an otoscope and flicked on its light, then rolled his stool as far away from the computer as he could get while still being at his workstation. As he pretended to study the inner workings of my ear, he mumbled so faintly I felt myself straining to pick up what he was saying.

“When I take your blood”—he tilted his head this way and that, but it was all for show—“I’m going to roll up your sleeves”—my shirt’s sleeves reached to just below my elbows—“and leave them up.”

Next, apparently for our hidden audience, he said, “Looking good, Joss. Now turn the other way.”

Obediently, I did.

He went on, “I’ll tuck a note in the rolled-up sleeve. Wait till you’re somewhere outside and in private to read it. Where there’ll be no surveillance. That’s really important, okay?”

He rolled his stool back to the counter of his workstation, ejected the scope’s speculum into the trash can beneath the desk, and began gathering an alcohol swab, a tourniquet, a syringe, and vials.

Even as the needle drove into my vein, all I could think about was the note’s content, and whether it would actually offer us any useful information.

Halfway through our collective poking and prodding, Fanny arrived, looking calm, collected, and together. No sign that she’d been in the middle of a takedown of one of their latest kidnap victims. Seeing we were where we were supposed to be, she took off to meet with Magnum, grumbling about how she was going to be so late.

I didn’t dare make eye contact with any of my friends. It seemed we’d finally gotten away with something, after Magnum had continually had the upper hand. Though it wasn’t much, we had one new piece of information no one knew we had. We knew about the earth shaker.

It wasn’t much. It most certainly wasn’t enough.

But it was something. A start.

By the time my crew, Bobo, and I finally walked out of the lab, on our way to the training center, the note my dad— Jude —had tucked into my sleeve was practically all I could think about.

There wouldn’t be any privacy for us for a while still. Not so long as we were in the heart of campus, and certainly not later at the mansion. And Fanny had made it abundantly clear we didn’t want to make our new instructors wait at the training center.

But I just had to tell my friends. I needed to share the secret that seemed to have its own pulse as it beat against my arm.

As soon as we were outside, the sun shining brightly above the hills that surrounded us, I told them, “I know we’re in a hurry, but let’s give Bobo a quick walk. Just back there around those trees for a few. Then we can head to training.”

Without protest, they all followed, and the very moment we were hopefully out of earshot—assuming no one had succeeded in chipping our actual persons as Hunt believed was possible—I whispered, just in case, “Jude said he wants to help and he hid a note on me. I can’t read it till it’s safe.”

As I met the eyes of each of my friends, I found them wide and surprised.

“Shit,” Layla said. “Me too.”

The guys nodded with silent us too s.

Brady whistled. “Damn. Maybe we’ve got a better shot than we thought.”

Yeah, maybe.

Just fucking maybe.