Mindspeak (31 page)

“Puzzle boxes?”

“Yeah, you know. You have to figure
out the right piece of wood to move, or remove, in order to get the box to
open. The first one he ever sent me had a pewter starfish on top of it.” And
the last one he sent me was in the shape of a starfish. “With the first one, you
had to remove one of the arms before another section could be moved to reveal a
key hole.” I smiled at the memory. Dad was always so proud when I figured out
some of the early boxes.

Some of them even had more than one
compartment. That always threw me. “Oh, my gosh!” I gazed up at Jack. “I gotta
go.” I stood on my tippy toes and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for coming to my
rescue, but—”

Jack wrapped his fingers around my
arm just above my elbow. “Oh, no you don’t.”

“I think I figured something out!”
I pulled on my arm, but he didn’t loosen his grip.

“Figured what out?”

“The last puzzle box that Dad sent
me. I only found one compartment. The one with the starfish necklace and key.
There had to be another.” There had to be another clue hidden in what he had
sent me.

“Lexi, my parents are waiting in
Dean Fisher’s office. I told them you were in a study group. We have to go
straight there.”

~~~~

Cathy DeWeese’s back was to us when
we entered Dean Fisher’s office. “Seth sponsored the entire cost of the art
show for tomorrow night?” she asked the dean.

Dr. DeWeese glanced from me to his
son. He raised a finger to his lip, silencing his wife.

Cathy turned. “Oh.” She opened her
arms and walked toward me. “Oh, you poor dear.”

I stepped hesitantly into her
outstretched arms and turned my head in time to see Jack’s eyes roll heavenward.
Her bangle bracelets knocked against my shoulder when she released me, holding
me at arm’s length. “How are you feeling? Still a little shaky?”

Shaky? From the accident? “Um… my
shoulder still hurts a little, I guess.” I glanced at Jack again. He rubbed a
hand over his lips.
Is this woman for real?

Well, now you know she and I are
not related by blood. But she did raise me.
He shrugged.

“Have a seat, kids.” Dean Fisher
gestured toward the chairs on the other side of his desk. “John and I have
talked…”

Dr. DeWeese leaned against the desk
and faced us. “Neither of you are to leave this campus unless it’s with one of
us.” He pointed back and forth between his wife and himself.

Jack stood. “What? You can’t do
that.”

“We thought you might say that,”
Cathy said. “But it’s been decided.” She stared at her son, not blinking once. “You
decided to come to this school against my wishes. You get to obey school rules.”

“You don’t get to make rules for
me. I’m already eighteen.”

“You’re partially right, son,” Dr.
DeWeese said, his voice calm. “You are eighteen. If you don’t want to abide by
lame school rules, you can come back home and study there until it’s time to
leave for college next fall.” I think it hurt Dr. DeWeese to utter the word ‘lame.’
Still, he pulled it off okay.

Cathy’s cheeks lifted, like she’d won
some small battle. “Son, what’s it going to be? Stay at Wellington? Or return
home?”

I suddenly felt I was intruding on
a family conversation. Jack stood close to his mother, his expression alternating
between irritated and humiliated. He turned his head to me.

I lifted a brow.
Don’t look at
me. If you need to leave Wellington, by all means…

“I do have a bit of bad news,
though, son.”

“What bad news?” Jack asked.

“If you’ll excuse me…” Dean Fisher held
his phone up like he had just received a message. “Unless you need me, I need
to check on an issue with preparations for tomorrow night’s show.”

Without another word, the dean
breezed from the room. I turned back to the tension mounting between Jack and
his mom.

“It’s about Addison, darling. I’m
afraid the situation is dire.”

I sat up straighter. Dr. DeWeese frowned,
and even Cathy’s eyes filled with tears.

Jack cast a nervous look at me. “Lexi,
can you give me a moment alone with my mother and father?” Then he added,
I’m
sorry.

So much for trust. He didn’t want
me to hear about Addison. Why was he keeping her from me? Especially if he
thought I could heal her.

I stood. “Sure. I need to go… do
that thing—”

I am sorry. Meet me at the
stables in one hour.

It’ll be past curfew.
I
thought for a second. Could I get out and across campus without being noticed?
Would he tell me about Addison then?
I’ll be there.
I started toward the
door, straining to hear what Cathy said to her son. But heard nothing.

“I’ll walk you out dear.” Dr.
DeWeese followed me.

I exited the dean’s office and
stood at his secretary’s desk. It was late in the evening. The offices were
empty except for us.

He clicked the door shut behind us.
“How are you really doing, Lexi?”

I shrugged. I missed Dad. “Fine, I
guess?” No, that was a lie. “Actually, Dr. DeWeese—”

“Please, call me John.”

“Did you find my father’s journals
in Sicily?”

“No.” The disappointment on his
face was genuine.

“What did you hope to find in these
journals?”

He glanced over his shoulder to the
office door behind him. “Jack told me that you now know how you were… created.”

I nodded. Why couldn’t he just
answer the question?

“What Jack didn’t tell you, because
he didn’t know, was that your father didn’t know you were implanted in your
mother’s womb until well after you were born.”

“What?” The room started a slow
spin. “Dad didn’t know?”

“He knew about the clonings and the
gene alterations, but your dad thought the embryos had been destroyed, like
they were supposed to be. Before they became viable. Then the fire happened,
and everyone scattered. Your parents were tricked.”

“Tricked? By whom? What do you
mean?”

“Your mom went in for a routine in
vitro fertilization because she had struggled to conceive. She came out
pregnant. With you. Cathy and I have many theories on who was behind making
sure the embryos reached hosts.”

Hosts? That made me sound like an
alien. A parasite.

I walked slowly over to a chair and
clung to the arm. My father wasn’t directly responsible for the freak that I
was? Still, he was very much involved. “What are your theories? You think
Sandra was responsible?”

“Maybe. Or the International Intelligence
Agency. Maybe Sandra’s entire experiment got away from her. She could be mostly
innocent in this. No one has talked to her since before the fire. Hell, I hadn’t
spoken to your father since then.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose.

John continued. “Your dad told me
the night of the dinner. He planned to tell you the truth. About everything. But…”

“He was killed.”

He nodded.

“Why all the secrets? Why not tell
Jack and me the truth sooner?”

“It was too risky. Your dad and I were
very much involved with Sandra’s wild theories that she could enhance the
genetic makeup of certain parts of the brain, and then with proper training,
create human beings capable of… well… healing incurable diseases and injuries.
We were on board with everything Sandra wanted to do. Until…”

“Until what?”

John rubbed his hand back and forth
across his five o’clock shadow. He shifted his weight from one foot to the
other. “Until Sandra made a deal with the IIA. Your dad discovered
correspondence between Sandra and an IIA agent. He was outraged. She had agreed
to sell her research to them. And she secretly copied your dad and me on all
correspondence, implicating us.”

“But you didn’t know what she was
doing?” John shook his head. “What happened? What did the IIA do with this
information?”

“I don’t know. Our labs were
destroyed in a fire. Jack had just been born. Everyone went their separate ways
in order to protect themselves. Cathy and I vowed to protect Jack at all costs.
Your dad kept you hidden from me. From everyone. Not until I saw a picture of a
young Sandra Whitmeyer in a newspaper…” John narrowed his gaze at me. “…that
was actually you. That’s when I started to put things together. That’s how I
found Wellington.”

Deep inside, I knew Dad loved me.
He showed me over and over. So why had he kept everything from me? “Why are you
telling me all of this now?”

“Your dad wanted you to live a
long, healthy life and never have to come face to face with the future laid out
before you now. Unfortunately, he also knew that was not the way it would be.
That’s why he enrolled you here at Wellington, where there were enough people
around you who knew the truth and could be trusted at the same time.”

“He was planning to move me. Do you
know why?”

“No. Who told you that?” he asked,
unable to hide his surprise.

I studied his face, a face so
similar to Jack’s, only older. Mostly the eyes. The same electric blue that
made you want to reveal your deepest secrets. However, John’s baldness kept me
grounded in reality. This was not Jack. Though what he divulged to me made
sense with everything I’d learned so far, I barely knew this person in front of
me.

I thought of Marci. How scared she
was the last time I saw her. “I can’t tell you that.” He nodded again. He was
so different from his wife. A level of understanding passed over his face. “You
knew about Jack from the beginning?” I asked.

“Yes and I knew you would turn up
sooner or later. I just didn’t know where.”

I cocked my head. “What do you
mean?”

“Well, I knew you’d been created,
just like the others. I just didn’t know whose child you had become.”

I gasped. “What others? What do you
mean?” This must be what Marci was talking about. “How many?” My body tensed.
How many clones were out there? Did they know? I thought of the person who’d
gotten inside my head when I slept.

And of Briana. She didn’t know. She
couldn’t.

“I’m not sure how many survived.
And I don’t know what the IIA knows.” He rubbed his head, very similar to how
Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “But your dad figured it out. And he
documented everything he knew.”

“The journals,” I whispered.

John nodded. “That’s why finding
these journals is so important. The journals contain the information your dad
never got the chance to tell me. Including, hopefully, information that will
lead to whoever killed him.”

“But why kill Dad?” I whispered,
mostly to myself. Then realization hit. “Someone doesn’t want this information
revealed. Maybe Dad had the journals with him.”

“The originals. Possibly.”

I cocked my head. Stared at the man
before me with the same eyes as the boy on the other side of the door.

“Does Jack know all of this?”

“He does now. Unfortunately, what
Sandra, your father, and I did all those years ago is who you are now. Only you
can decide if you’re willing to accept it.”

“There are people who would have
Jack and me use the powers Sandra gave us.”

“They’re amazing powers, Lexi. You
and Jack have the ability to cure people of things no other person on earth can.”

But not without consequences,
unfortunately.

John added, “There are also people
who would stop at nothing to destroy you and all evidence of your existence. Whoever
killed your dad probably thought he… or she… was destroying the original
journals and, of course, the information living inside your dad’s head would be
gone forever.”

The information wasn’t gone
forever. I now knew exactly where Dad had duplicated that information. Could I
stay alive long enough to access it?

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

I raced into my dorm room and
tossed my bag on my bed. Dani, Kyle and Bree all looked up from their spots, deep
into some sort of study session.

“Oh. Hi,” I said, stopping to
analyze the three of them.

Dani sat in some strange yoga
position, a book on the floor in front of her. Bree leaned against Dani’s bed,
her legs stretched out in front with a laptop across her thighs. Kyle lay on
top of Dani’s bed and tossed a Nerf football overhead.

Why couldn’t they’ve studied
anywhere else but my room tonight?

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes
earlier that day, I would never have suspected he knew about Dad’s journals. Or
that he was keeping secrets from us.

“Hi, yourself,” Dani said. “Where’ve
you been?”

I shifted from one foot to the
other. I just wanted to find the puzzle box and a private spot to access Dad’s
website. “Um… talking to my new guardians.”

Kyle stopped tossing the ball and
swung his legs over the side of the bed. “You get in trouble?”

“No, you?” I answered, though being
reprimanded for leaving campus should have been the least of my concerns right
then.

“Why would either of you get in
trouble?” Briana asked.

My body tensed. My eyes pleaded
with Kyle. Briana would rat me out for sure, and I’d have an ankle bracelet by
nine a.m. Being lectured was one thing, but having that metal clamped around my
leg would not be pleasant.

“Oh, it was nothing. Don’t worry
that pretty little head.” Kyle tickled her ear, then tossed the ball in the air
again.

I let out a breath. “I’d love to
chat, but you guys look like you’re in the middle of a study session. And I
really need to do something before curfew.”

Briana narrowed her gaze at me,
then glanced over her shoulder at Kyle.

Let it go, Briana. Kyle and I are
not in trouble. You have studying to do. You better get back to it.

Briana went back to making notes on
her computer.