The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(60)

“They’re set at around the same time every month—some kind of experiment, maybe?” That would fit with what we knew about her. Maybe Dr. Kells’s first test subject had been herself.

“Maybe.”

“We should bring them with us.”

“All of them?”

I gestured to the room. “Well, we can’t watch them here.”

Jamie stood and opened the door, then turned to me. “Should we go look for more?”

We should. “I want to see how many there are. And if there are any from this year.” She might have talked about us. She might have talked about me.

Just as we gathered up some of the files and left the stuffy little room, we ran into Daniel and Stella.

Daniel took a dramatic step back. “What’s up?”

“We found something,” I said, and then Jamie began to talk.





40


WOW,” DANIEL SAID AS HE walked into the brownstone. “What does your aunt do?”

“Teacher,” Jamie said. “She made intelligent real estate decisions.”

“That she did.”

“I’m hungry,” Stella announced. “Anyone else?”

“Starving,” I said, realizing it just then. We hadn’t eaten anything the whole day.

“Should we order in?” she asked.

Daniel shook his head.“The less attention we attract, the better.”

He was right, so we managed to scrounge together a meal out of the junk we’d bought at the bodega down the street. Daniel divvied up the file folders between us and, taskmaster that he was, told us to get reading. But I wanted to watch the videos first.

Daniel dug his heels in. “We’ll get more done if we split up the work.”

“Split it up however you want,” I told him. “But I’m calling the interviews.”

“I want to watch too,” Jamie said.

Daniel looked at Stella, who held up her hands in defeat. “We bought popcorn,” she said. “Should I make popcorn?”

“This isn’t movie night,” Daniel grumbled.

I couldn’t help my smile. “Yes,” I told Stella. And then, to complete the picture, Jamie fetched blankets and tossed them at us. “Where do you want to start?” Jamie asked me as Stella walked in with a bowl of popcorn.

“What’s the first one we’ve got?”

Jamie shuffled the little DVD envelopes and announced, “January eighth, 1994.”

“That one, then.”

Jamie dutifully popped the DVD into his aunt’s Xbox (I very much wanted to meet this aunt), turned out the lights, and plopped down in an armchair.

There was static at first, and then it cleared to reveal a very young-looking Dr. Kells sitting at a small card table in front of a pea-green-and-off-white-striped wall. It looked familiar. After a moment I realized why.

It was the room from the video of her I’d seen in the Horizons Testing Facility, the one she’d used to trick me into searching for her, so she could lure me into the containment room. It had been there since 1994.

“State your name for the record,” a male voice said. I didn’t recognize it.

“Is this a deposition?” Daniel asked. I shushed him.

“Deborah Susan Kells.”

“Have you ever gone by any other name?”

“My maiden name,” Dr. Kells said.

“And what is that?”

“Lowe.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“No f*cking way,” Jamie said.

It wasn’t possible. I’d met Jude and Claire’s parents. I’d seen them at the funeral and memorial service. I’d— “What is your date of birth?”

“Wait, someone pause this, we must discuss,” Jamie said as Dr. Kells started to recite what sounded like addresses.

“Where’s the remote? Fuck!”

“Degrees conferred?”

“I was awarded a PhD in genetics from Harvard, and my first postdoc appointment was at—”

Dr. Kells paused midword. Jamie left his hand extended while pointing at the television. “So okay,” he said. “Deborah Susan Lowe. As in—”

“Jude Lowe,” Daniel said.

“What the f*ck, guys,” I said. “What. The. Fuck.”

Jamie looked taken aback. “Who would marry that bitch?”

“I’ve met Jude and Claire’s mother, though,” I said thinly. “I’ve met her and their dad. And I went to their house.” ?Then I remembered something—something Noah had said. “But . . . it wasn’t their house.”

Daniel cocked his head. “What are you talking about?”

“Noah went there before Horizons,” I said. “Before . . .” I held up my wrists. Daniel flinched as if I’d hit him.

“To Laurelton? Seriously?”

I nodded. “To try to find Jude’s parents, to see if they knew anything, when we thought he was hunting me. But they weren’t there,” I said. “Jude’s parents, I mean. The people who answered the door said they’d owned the house for the past eighteen years. Noah thought I’d given him the wrong address.”

“So okay.” Stella held up a finger. “If the people you thought were his parents weren’t really his parents,” Stella said, “who were they?”