He made two more turns, entering a third, darker passage with no doors, and stopped at a narrow, rusting hatchlike door. There he waited until she came as close as she thought was safe.
“This is the way out. Go through, climb the stairs to the top, and you will be outside.” He watched her face. “The nearest police station is three streets to the south.”
She didn’t believe him. “You’re not just going to let me walk out of here.”
“I am not Lawson,” he said. “You are a free woman. Go.”
He didn’t move, and to get to the hatch she would have to stand within inches of him. “This is a trick.”
He held out his hand. “Touch me. If I am lying to you, you will know.”
“It doesn’t work like—” She stopped, appalled at how she had nearly given herself away. “All right. Thank you for … helping me.” She went to the hatch.
He made no move to stop her. “Do not return to Atlanta or contact those you know there. They are waiting for you to do that. When GenHance finds you, they will not attempt to take you alive. They have some of the police in their employ. If you are detained, they will see to it that you die in your cell, and then arrange to claim your body.”
It sounded like the plot for a bad techno-thriller movie. “How can you know that?”
“You are not the first they have tried to take.”
The cold, rusted steel of the hatch wheel bit into her palms as she gripped it. “You’re wrong. GenHance is a research-and-development firm. They’re working on cures for birth defects and genetic diseases. They have no reason to kill me.” She met his narrowed gaze. “I’m just a businesswoman.”
“You are Kyndred. Made from birth to be unique among humans. Your ability is genetic, Jessa. It was encoded in your cells deliberately. GenHance knows this, and that it can be taken from you and given to another.” He paused, and then said, “That is why it does not matter whether you are alive or dead. They need your cells, some of which they cannot retrieve without killing you. Your life is not important to them.”
The thought of deliberately cursing someone else with her ability made bile well up in her throat. “If I did have this ability, which I don’t, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“You think not? With a single touch you can know the darkest secrets any man possesses. Knowledge is power. You use it to bring justice to those who have eluded the law. Another would take those secrets and wield them like a weapon. No one in power anywhere would be safe.”
She was letting him talk her into believing his delusions. “Then I’ll have to be careful.”
“You were careful when you called the FBI,” he said. “You used different pay phones away from where you live and work. You kept the calls short, and gave them nothing they could use to identify you. Still I was able to find you. So did GenHance.”
He knew.
She released the hatch wheel and looked at the flecks of rust on her hands. “I was going to stop calling them. I promised myself this was the last time.”
“They would have found another way to identify you. The business you do. The people you expose. In time it would have led them to you.” His tone changed. “They will attack your resources, and they will not stop until you are penniless. Tomorrow they will file a lawsuit against your company and use it to close the business. Your bank accounts will be emptied and your credit cards canceled. Your loans will be terminated and your home will be repossessed.”
He was talking about everything she’d worked for, everything that mattered to her. Jessa wanted to hit him. “They can’t do that.”
“It has already begun.” He gestured toward the corridor. “Come and I will show you.”
Rowan switched off the tunnel monitor as soon as she saw Matthias escorting Jessa Bellamy into the security center. “No problems so far,” she told Drew on the phone. “He’s already got Queenie following him around like a groupie.”
“Queenie?”
“The boss thinks she looks like a queen.” That still rankled on more than one level. “I expect they’ll be tied up for a couple hours while he shows her the stuff and she has another why-me meltdown. You want to drive up and grab a couple of beers?”
Drew chuckled. “Sure. Right after I quit my job and set fire to my house.”
She let her voice drop a sultry octave. “After all this time talking to me on the phone but never once meeting in person, you know you want to see what I really look like. And, baby? I’m even better than I sound.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t seem impressed. “More like you want to check me out.”
“You give great phone,” she admitted. “I’ve got you figured for a six-five, two-twenty, blond ex-surfer dude.”
He choked on whatever he was drinking. “Try a five-nine, skinny, red-haired, pale-faced geek,” he said after he finished coughing.
“Shit.” She laughed. “That makes me a head taller.”
“See?” He sighed. “Better we stay phone buddies. With my delicate ego, I could never handle facing the real Rowan.”
Her smile faded. “Honey, no one can.”
After she finished the call. Rowan went to retrieve the tray from the library. Queenie hadn’t touched a crumb, so she picked up the cold grilled cheese and ate it on the way to the kitchen. There she reheated the soup and sipped it from a mug as she prepared dinner. Matthias wouldn’t care, but she could never bring herself to throw away perfectly good food.
Especially not sandwiches.
Rowan knew what it was to be hungry; she’d lived on the street for almost three years. Back in the day she’d gotten used to the cold, the wet, the filth, and the dark. She’d found the places where she could hide and rest, in the parks and the alleys and the doorways. In time she’d learned how to make a shelter out of a couple of crates or a cardboard box. During the winter she’d discovered which abandoned buildings were the warmest and safest, and how to barricade herself in a musty old closet for a blissful eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
It was hunger that she feared. That grinning death-headed motherfucker had taken a liking to her, thanks to her screwed-up metabolism that kept her perpetually skinny, and once she’d run away from her last foster home he’d stalked her every day. Even after she’d quieted her belly with a handout or a church meal, he’d waited and watched just out of sight, knowing he’d soon get another chance to sink his dull tombstone teeth into her again.
Living on the street, Rowan discovered she could do a lot of repulsive things, like go two weeks without bathing, wear clothes that were little more than bundles of rags, or bat away a rat with her bare hand. She’d grown wise and tough and strong during those years, fighting to survive. But she’d never been able to shake her obsession with food. When she wasn’t spare-changing or standing in a line outside a soup kitchen, she’d haunt hot-dog stands and pizza joints and burger palaces so she could breathe in the delicious scents. A walk through an open-air food market was for her like cruising through Tiffany & Co. had been for Holly Golightly. She couldn’t even pass a Coke or gumball machine without checking the slot to see if someone had left something behind.
On the bad days when she couldn’t stop herself, she’d take the subway to Manhattan and walk the rows of restaurants there. She’d pace back and forth in front of the windows, stopping occasionally to look in at the rich people stuffing their faces. She didn’t care about the people; they were no better than her, but the food they ate was so beautiful and elegant that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes. Usually a waiter or busboy would be sent out by the manager to chase her off, but that hadn’t been the worst.
People coming out of the restaurant would sometimes notice her there, and come over to offer her their take-home containers and doggie bags.
Then she’d feel the shame of it, of what she was, crawling over her dirty skin, and she’d cringe inside her ragged clothes and stumble away. But first she’d snatch the doggie bag of scraps or the plastic bowl of leftover soup. Because as much as every mouthful shredded her dignity, it held off the specter of hunger for another day.
Rowan hadn’t wanted to live like a stray dog. She’d tried to get work, even going to stand with the illegals on certain corners where they were picked up every morning and were paid twenty bucks for ten hours of backbreaking labor unloading trucks or clearing out debris from demolition sites. The labor bosses never picked her to join their crews, even when they thought she was a boy—she was too skinny and pale. One told her that he didn’t hire junkies.
Unwilling to become a thief or a whore, Rowan had tried collecting discarded cans and bottles out of the trash, but it took hours and she burned up too much energy hunting for them. Then she could take only as much as she could carry to turn in at the recycling center, and that amounted to only a dollar here and there. She remembered with perfect clarity the first time she’d been desperate enough to eat a piece of half-eaten fried chicken she’d taken out of a garbage can, and being so sickened by the spoiled meat that minutes later she’d puked until she dry-heaved.
To this day she couldn’t stand the smell of fried chicken.
During her last year as a homeless kid she began to think of nothing but food, daydreaming about it, planning elaborate meals she would make someday when things were better. If she saw a TV in an electronics store window tuned to a cooking show, she’d stop and watch it through to the end. She’d go into the public library to get warm on a cold day, and end up spending the afternoon reading cookbooks.
The fear of starvation followed her into her sleep, swallowing her up in nightmares where she watched her body shrink down to skin over a skeleton in a matter of seconds. When she woke, she would huddle, touching herself with her hands to make sure it hadn’t happened while she’d slept and there was still a little flesh under her cold, clammy skin.
