Project 17 (10 page)

Caleb saw Lillian looking at him with both of her hands cupped under her chin. She looked curious. He looked at her, looked at the flowers beyond the door, looked at his hands.

“I feel like myself,” he said.

The adobo pasta was fantastic, but Lillian tasted bile at the back of her throat. Caleb might think he was getting better. He might think that the pills were making him feel better. They were
the cure, as far as he was concerned, and he would continue taking them until the end of his days. She was silent on the way back to the house. Caleb whistled a tune. She had never heard him
whistle before.

The moment they stepped into the house, Lillian said, “I tampered with your dosage.”

Caleb, who had entered the living room, stepped back out again to face her in the vestibule. “What?” he said. His expression was pleasant. The words hadn’t quite sunk in
yet.

“Senerex and Neuropro,” Lillian said. “What are they Caleb? Where did they come from? What do they do? Because I’ve removed both meds from your daily dosage and now
you’re doing better than ever.”

“You’ve removed them?” Caleb looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But every day I’ve taken six pills—”

“Four pills and two calcium pills,” Lillian said.

Caleb walked into the living room, paced around. “Why would you do that?” he said. It wasn’t an explosive anger. It was normal anger, the kind of anger you would display if you
have yet to understand everything.

“But you’re better now, right?” Lillian said. “I didn’t recognize those brands. Are they experimental?”

“You have no right,” Caleb said.

“Are they from Northpoint-Pascual?”

Caleb’s expression didn’t change, but he turned away.

“I think Neuropro makes you violent,” Lillian said, “and Senerex calms you down. Or they’re both engineered to make you focus on a certain task, and each of them is
deadly without the other. Or at least Neuropro is, because when I removed Senerex that was the day you—”

Caleb ran to the kitchen but the steel cupboard was locked.

“Give me the password, Lillian,” he said.

“You don’t need them, Caleb.”

“I need those fucking pills!”

“Is that what they told you?” she shouted. “When you thought you’d killed your family?”

Caleb held onto the kitchen island, steadying himself. He sat on a stool. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

“Ezekiel Ruiz, right?” Lillian said. “Zeke?”

Caleb was crying.

“I found your brother’s old Northpoint ID upstairs. It was just a matter of digging.” Lillian showed him her phone, the photos from Dexter. “You didn’t kill your
family. We have evidence. They were already dead when you got there.
Look.”

Caleb looked.

“Where did you get these photos?” he asked.

“Remember Dexter? He received an email from you after you supposedly died in a fire.”

“Dexter.” Caleb placed his elbows on the kitchen island, covered his face with his hands. “Jesus.”

“You didn’t kill them, Zeke,” Lillian said. “May I call you Zeke?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Zeke—”

He slammed a fist on the countertop. “Shut up!”

Silence. This was not the reaction Lillian had expected.

“I don’t know how you managed to do all this,” Caleb said, “but you have no right.”

It was her turn to explode. “I’m just trying to help, don’t you get that!”

“We don’t need your help.”

“Did you kill them?”

Anger left, and sadness stole in. “I don’t know,” Caleb said, squeezing his eyes shut.

“You didn’t, okay? The photos are—”

“What makes you so sure I wasn’t there earlier? You saw what happened to Mimsy, to you, and I remembered none of—”

Lillian showed him the photo again. “Those are Northpoint cars! They’re the ones who murdered your family!”

And once again, Caleb buried his face in his hands.

“Why in the world,” she said, “would you rather believe you murdered your wife and child than believe your own company is behind all this?” Caleb gave her a sharp look
when she said
your own company.
“They made you believe you killed them, or they’re threatening to frame you so now you’re under their control. They gave you drugs, and
you let them. They gave you new identities, and you let them. Why did they kill your family? What do you know? What are they making you do?”

It took Caleb a long time to answer.

“I can’t tell you,” he said, shaking his head.

Lillian was about to reply when she felt hands grabbing her upper arms. She heard his voice before she could turn her head to see.

“Go upstairs,” Paul said. “Someone’s coming.”

“Please don’t tell him,” Caleb said. “Please.”

Lillian was in his room, peering out of a window overlooking the street. There was a black car parked outside. She saw a woman come out earlier. A woman in a gray business suit, carrying a black
briefcase.

She remembered the woman who came to the brothers’ door, that night they were having spaghetti, that night she made the phone call that connected her to Laura.

“Is that woman from Northpoint?” she asked. “She is, isn’t she? Why is she here?”

A beep from her phone.

“Your brother’s asking me to come down,” she said. Caleb glanced at her. Was it a look of warning? Fear? Lillian went downstairs.

The woman was young and pretty, with subtle make-up and perfectly coifed hair. They were sitting in the living room. The tabletop computer was on. They stood up when Lillian got there.

“Miss Lillian,” the woman said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. Lillian took it. “How are you? My name is Alice, and I take care of Mr. Caleb Dolores’s medication
needs.”

“You’re a pharmacist?” Lillian asked. They sat down. Paul said nothing.

“I’m employed by Caleb’s former institution.”

Mediatrix of All Graces.

This woman was a liar.

The woman asked her questions like a job interviewer and made it very clear, by the way she phrased them, that she knew where Lillian went to school, what her course was, and where she
lived.

Paul could have told the woman the other details, but Paul didn’t know her address. He never asked, and she never told.

Lillian felt fear like a bug creeping up her legs.

“How has Caleb been, so far?”

“The same,” Lillian said. “Quiet. Withdrawn.”

“Has he ever tried to leave the house?”

Lillian tried not to waver. “Just for his daily walks. To help with his anxiety.”

“Violent episodes?”

“None,” Lillian said.

“Do you like working here?”

“Yes,” Lillian said. “They’re like brothers to me now.”

The woman smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She turned to Paul.

“Can you ask Caleb to come down please, Lillian?” Paul asked. Lillian couldn’t read the expression on his face.

She stood up. On the tabletop computer was a list:

Senerex and Neuropro, up by 0.5 milligrams. They were increasing his dosage.

But why? Why now?

Because they saw him leave the house and enter a restaurant, happy and talkative. Because they saw him act normally.

Because we were followed.

“She wants to see you,” Lillian said when she got to his room. Caleb’s hair was ruffled and his eyes swollen from crying, and Lillian was glad. He looked like his old self.

Twenty minutes later, Lillian looked out the window and saw the woman leave, stepping into the back of the car. She had a driver. The car drove away.

“Lillian.”

They had entered the room. Caleb was sitting on his bed. Paul stayed by the door.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, “but I’ll have to let you go.”

Silence. She looked at him, shocked and openmouthed.

“It’s not you,” Paul said. “We’ve discerned—”

“Discerned?”
Lillian spat out the word.

“—that Caleb needs professional help.” Her anger seemed to surprise him. “Alice will be finding us a nurse.”

She tried to calm herself. “Why is that necessary?” she said.

“Because I attacked you,” Caleb said.

She failed. She raised her voice again. “And why would you tell her that?”

“Lillian,” Paul said.

“Damn it, Caleb!” She wanted to shake him. “What is wrong with you?”

“Lillian!” Paul, angry now.

She turned to him. “Do you know why that woman came here, today of all days?”

Caleb looked at her. That plea in his eyes.
Please don’t tell him.
Lillian looked at him and felt suddenly tired, the weariness seeping into her bones.

Lillian looked away and fell silent.

“It’s for the best,” Paul said.

Of course it is.

“Lillian,” Paul said, “just because you don’t work here anymore doesn’t mean you’re no longer welcome.”

Not true,
Lillian thought. Alice, who was really from Northpoint-Pascual, would bring a Northpoint-approved nurse and if Lillian ever set foot in the door, she would be watched, closely
and mercilessly, and the circle would become smaller and smaller until it became a noose that would strangle them all.

“I have to go,” Lillian said, and they didn’t stop her.

Paul tried calling several times that night. She didn’t answer. Not because she was angry—though she was—but because she didn’t know what to say. She imagined his
reaction to the statement, “I tampered with your brother’s dosage,” and realized that she wouldn’t go very far in explaining what she did and why.

Jamie PM’d around eight, inviting her to dinner, but Lillian declined, saying she could feel a headache coming. And a headache did come, after she shut down every gadget that she had and
slipped under the covers.

What would happen to Paul and Caleb, Abe and Zeke? If Northpoint-Pascual already got what they needed from them, why keep them alive?

Would they harm her? Jamie and Max? Lester?

If Northpoint-Pascual could kill a toddler in cold blood—

Lillian swallowed a painkiller and went to sleep.

*

She woke up the next day at 10 am, but the clouds outside looked like they belonged to 6pm—black and heartless, swirling across the gray sky. She put on her rain boots, a jacket, and
carried her sturdiest umbrella as she walked to the grocery store. The wind felt like ice to her face.

She still had Paul’s Titanium card, but she didn’t have the heart to use it. And he had most probably already blocked it anyway, so what the hell. She walked around the aisles with
the other bundled-up shoppers, throwing a bag of Candy Stripe and several cans of Coke into her cart.

Margaret Morales was hovering in front of a low shelf filled with bags of potato chips.

Lillian nearly ducked. She was standing three aisles away, looking at instant coffee, when she looked up and saw a woman in big black sunglasses looking at the merchandise. The woman already
looked vaguely familiar, even with the sunglasses. She took them off, revealing tired eyes. Margaret Morales. It was her. She looked older and she wasn’t wearing her pearls and her expensive
watch and her hair was a mess but it was her.

“Lillian,” Max said, answering her phone on the first ring.

“Guess what.”

“What. Why are you whispering?”

“Margaret Morales. In the grocery store.”

“Our town’s grocery store?”

Margaret Morales put her sunglasses on again and moved to another section.

“Yes,” Lillian said, keeping Margaret in her sight.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting for this to happen.”

“What?”

“For you to start hallucinating,” Max said. “The woman’s running a company in the city, sweetheart. She won’t travel to this hole. See you later.”

“But it’s her!” Lillian said, but Max had already cut her off.

Lillian moved closer. Margaret was now just on the other side of a shelf filled with dried fruits. Lillian pretended to inspect a bag of dried mangoes.

A woman in her 20s—wearing sunglasses, she looked like an athlete in her leggings and black jacket, hair pulled up in a tight ponytail—walked up to Margaret. The stupid music was too
loud. The woman spoke right into her ear. Lillian couldn’t hear anything.

Margaret turned her head without saying a word to the woman. She took off her sunglasses and put them in her purse. She walked slowly to the exit. The woman followed. Lillian followed them with
her eyes until they stepped out of the glass doors, at which point she abandoned her cart and ran outside.

“Thank you for coming!” the Sentry said, cheerful as always.

“Stay away!” Margaret screamed at him, fumbling for something in her purse. The people outside the grocery turned to look. Lillian stayed under the grocery awning. A gust of wind
blew and died.

Lillian saw the woman with the ponytail put her hand inside her jacket pocket.

“Ma’am?” the Sentry said. “I will have to ask you to calm down.”

“Stay away!” Margaret told the crowd before turning to face the woman with the ponytail. A muffled explosion, a scream. Lillian ran. She could hear the Sentry radioing what happened
to SentryServ. Some customers whipped out their phones and took photos. Others stepped away and made gagging noises. Lillian covered her mouth with her hands.

Margaret lay on the ground, the woman on top of her like a lover. On their torsos was a hole, still smoking. Lillian was reminded of the cartoons she loved as a child, a cartoon cannon ball
going through cartoon bodies, leaving a clean hole. But this was real. Margaret probably had her right hand on her belly, because her forearm, from her hand to her elbow, was blown clean away.

Lillian took a photo of the gaping wound. The intestines, the torn muscles, the steel machinery. She knelt before the bodies in that split-second before the Sentries came and pulled the curious
civilians away. The force had knocked the sunglasses off the woman’s face.