Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(28)

She reached for the mouse, moving it down toward the Windows Start button, ready to navigate directly to Shutdown mode, when a new window popped up on her desktop. It displayed a short, simple message.

“Hi, Momma! It’s me, Jennifer. Mark and Heather are here too. I love you. I miss you. So does Mark. Ow! Heather says she loves you too.”

Linda froze, staring at the cruel joke on her screen, so shocked she found herself unable to respond to the little blinking cursor that invited her to type a reply into the chat window.

“Momma, it’s really us. Although it’s been difficult to contact you, we couldn’t bear the separation any longer. So we made this happen. I’m so sorry it’s taken us so long to break through to you!”

The cursor blinked at her, then began to type again.

“Mom, this is Mark. I love you. We’ve all been going crazy wanting to contact you, Dad, and the McFarlands. Things are complicated, more than you can know, but now we’ve found you again. I even miss your cooking.”

Suddenly Linda found herself shaking. Sobs bubbled up out of her throat, making her nose run.

Her fingers moved to the keyboard. “Damn you, whoever you are! How could you be so cruel?”

The cursor blinked. Blinked again. Then it blitzed across the screen.

“I’m so sorry, Momma. We’re so sorry. But this is real and we can prove it. You can ask us anything. Remember the Lab picnic last year? How I tripped and fell toward the grill? How Mark tossed me away from it? How Heather accidentally stabbed that damned Stephenson? Remember what Dad said after he left? ‘It’s all right. You didn’t hurt the mean old bastard. The fork missed him.’ Remember?”

The blood drained from Linda’s face, leaving behind a coolness that left her wondering if she would pass out. Her fingers moved of their own volition.

“Jen? Is that really you?”

“It’s me, Momma.”

“And Mark?”

“I’m here too, Mom. I love you too.”

Desperately scraping together the scraps of her composure, Linda Smythe pulled herself together, joy hammering at the door of her consciousness, only her caution keeping it from barging through. Still, despite her fear of disappointment, it was the best she had felt since Jennifer had run away.

“My God! How can this be real? I’ve been so desperate.”

“We know, Mom. We know.”

“Where are you?”

“Momma, you’re going to have to trust us. We can’t tell you that. Some bad things have happened.”

“Has anyone hurt you? Because if they have, I swear to God I’ll find them and hurt them even worse. And what your father and Gil would do to them...They just better not have hurt you!”

“Mom. It’s OK.”

“Yes, Mrs. Smythe, it is.”

“Heather?”

“Hi. I’m here. Just wish my folks were on the line too.”

Linda gulped. The anguish in that simple line of text washed away the last shred of doubt that lingered at the corners of her mind.

“Mom. I know you’ve got doubts. But we’ve hacked your laptop. We can see you through the webcam. We’re going to activate your speaker now so you can hear our voices.”

Suddenly the laptop speaker crackled to life.

“Hi, Momma.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Mrs. McFarland.”

“Oh God!” Linda Smythe gasped.

“We hear you, Mom,” Mark’s clear voice sounded deeper than last she’d heard it, but it was surely Mark’s voice coming from her laptop’s speaker. And Jen’s. And Heather’s. Impossible to stifle, her sobs broke from her chest, gurgling from her mouth in loud, shuddering gasps. The dike she’d kept her fingers in burst into a million fragments, loosing her emotions in a torrent that left her bent over her keyboard, unable to breathe, unable to speak.

After several moments of no response from her children, Linda wiped her eyes, her mind filled with the sudden fear that the connection had been lost while she wept. As she raised her head, she saw another window appear at the upper right corner of her computer display. Centered in that window, a tearful Jennifer smiled and waved at her, flanked left and right by Mark and Heather, all of them leaning in close so they could be captured by their computer cam.

Linda took a breath, reasserting a degree of composure. Her conversation lasted exactly twenty-three minutes, a session filled with loving assurances.

Yes, they were fine.

Their situation was complicated, some trouble with the law, but it had been handled.

No, not in a way that would let them come home. At least not anytime soon.

No, they couldn’t tell her where they were right now, but nobody had hurt or abused them. Couldn’t she tell?

Linda mixed her probing questions with answers to theirs. When it became clear that they would have to break the connection, she begged them to stay on until she could walk next door and get Anna. At this point, Heather looked particularly distressed and asked Linda to give her mom and dad all her love. After extracting Linda’s vow not to contact any authorities and to keep this entirely within the immediate family, Mark, Jennifer, and Heather agreed to make contact again, at the same time the next night. Then, with one last smiley-sad group wave, they were gone.