Mindsiege (Mindspeak #2)(72)

I smell it, too. I’m the only one who might be affected by it because of the tracker, but my device has never been programmed to react to the gas before, so we’ll just have to be careful. He glanced over his shoulder. “Does everyone remember the plan?” We all nodded. Jonas zeroed in on Briana. “You up for this?”

Is she up for what? Strange time to be asking her that.

Briana nodded. The features of her face were tight; her eyes were deer-in-the-headlights big. “I’m already one step ahead of you.”

What does that mean? What is she doing?

She’s already altering what someone would see if they saw us.

I looked behind me at Kyle. Only it wasn’t Kyle. It was Jack. Okay, that’s weird. When I turned back around, Jonas’s tattoos were gone. He was Ty. Briana looked like herself, I supposed, but she and Dia were identical. Who do I look like?

You look like an older version of yourself.

“What?” I asked in a loud whisper. “She made me look like Sandra?”

Will you keep it down? It had to be someone Briana’s seen before and who’s supposed to be here. She couldn’t very well make you look like Dia, now could she?

I sighed. I guess not. But what if Sandra sees us?

Jonas closed his eyes for a moment. We’re only in disguise in case guards or agents see us. Hopefully, it will throw them off. If Sandra sees us, it won’t matter what we look like. She’ll know it’s us.

Well, especially if she sees her twin. Shit!

Jonas furrowed his brows at me. Can we continue?

I gestured with my hand for him to lead the way. The overhead lights hummed—the only other sound besides our light footsteps.

Jonas led us down two halls, each one dark until our motion was detected and lights above flickered on. I suspected armed agents would jump out any minute. I couldn’t imagine how it was possible that we were wandering these halls undetected. Jonas stopped in front of one of the gray doors. The window at the top—at Jonas’s eye level, but not mine—was dark. He reached down, turned the knob, and pushed it open. I raised a brow, surprised that it was unlocked. After looking both ways down the hallway, he ushered us in.

He flipped a light switch. Instead of an overhead fluorescent, two lamps glowed—one beside a full-sized bed, and another on a small black dresser on the other side of the room.

I turned in a circle. Besides a bed and a dresser, there was just a small desk with a laptop and a desk lamp. A couple of textbooks were spread across the end of the bed. A guitar stood in the corner of the room on a stand. This was a teenager’s room. I jerked my head toward Jonas. “This is your room, isn’t it?”

“You lived here?” Briana asked, a little taken aback.

“Of course. Well… until I got my tracker and was allowed to leave the facility. But that was after we moved here to Kentucky. Where did you think I lived before I moved in with Georgia and Fred?”

“I assumed you lived with Sandra. Just not inside some laboratory.”

“I’ve lived with Sandra most of my life. Usually at some research facility.” He sat at his desk and opened the laptop. His lips tugged downward in a look of sadness I’d never seen on him before. “She lived wherever the work was. I was just part of that work.”

Kyle stood watch at the window.

It was too quiet. Why hadn’t agents descended upon us? Standing over Jonas, I watched him click around on his laptop at what appeared to be some sort of floor plan. “Is that this building?”

“Yes.” He continued to click.

Then, suddenly, a video image popped up on the screen.

“Holy crap!” I leaned in closer.

Briana joined me. “Who is that?”

“That’s Addison,” I said. Addison sat in the middle of a bed, hugging her knees and staring straight ahead. Nothing like the little girl that had jumped on her bed like a monkey back at Wellington. “What is she doing?”

“Watching TV, maybe?” Jonas answered, unsure. He clicked some more and was able to show us a panoramic view. She was watching TV, and she wasn’t moving. At all.

“How are you able to tap into this camera?” Briana asked.

He smiled up at her. “I’m a man of many talents.”

She slapped at his shoulder playfully. I rolled my eyes.

“So, you’ve somehow hacked into their security system? How did you know where she’d be?”

“There were only a few rooms I thought they’d place her in. The residential wing of this facility isn’t that big. And it’s fairly full.”

Addison remained motionless while I continued to study her. She was not the energetic eight-year-old that I remembered. She looked… sad. Even more childlike and innocent than I recalled. I had to get her out of here. A woman walked into her room, her back to the camera. Addison didn’t even look up.

Why was someone walking into her room at this hour? Normal people slept at this late hour.

Then I realized what was bothering me. It was something Jonas had said after I healed Sandra, after Addison had been taken. “Jonas, why is Addison in the residential wing?”

Jonas wouldn’t even look at me. I drilled holes into the woman in the video. Turn around. Let me see your face. As if she could hear me, she turned, walked back toward the camera, and, I assumed, out the door. It was Anita, Addison’s mother and the DeWeese’s housekeeper. She was here.