Replica (Replica #1)(101)

For a long minute, she heard no sounds of movement. She began to feel not just nervous but truly afraid. She jabbed a finger on the bell again and at the same time tried the knob. Locked. Finally she heard footsteps. In the window next to the door, she saw Jake twitch open the blinds, and his dark eyes peer between them. Then the sound of the lock releasing. Relief felt like something physical, like something she could lie down in.

“God,” she said, when he opened the door. “I was afraid something had happened. I was afraid . . .” But she trailed off, seeing that he had only opened the door a crack and he was angling his body so they couldn’t come inside.

“What are you doing here?” He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before in his life. He looked furious.

It wasn’t exactly the welcome she’d been expecting. Next to her, Pete pivoted, staring back toward the street as though considering a quick getaway.

“You weren’t picking up your phone,” Gemma said. “I called a dozen times.”

“Can’t find my phone,” he said. “Don’t know what happened to it.” His eyes swept the street behind them. “You should really go.” He started to close the door.

“Wait.” Gemma got a hand in the door. For a second he looked like he was considering closing it on her fingers, but then he thought better of it. “You don’t understand. The replicas—they’re gone.”

“Quiet.” Jake hushed her as though she’d cursed in church. She was close enough to see that he was sweating. Fear. Jake Witz, she realized, wasn’t angry. He was terrified. “Keep your voice down.”

“We came here for your help—” Pete started to say, but Gemma cut him off. She felt wild and reckless and dizzyingly confused.

“Didn’t you hear me? They’re gone,” she said. “They must have left in the middle of the night. They took my money. Maybe they took your phone, too—”

“I heard you.” Once again, Jake’s eyes went to the street. “It’s not my problem. Not yours, either. Now get out of here. You shouldn’t have come. I don’t know you, okay?” He raised his voice. He was practically shouting. “I don’t even know you.”

Once again Gemma stopped Jake from closing the door, just barely, on her fingers. She kept her hand in the doorjamb so he couldn’t. She had that hard-throat feeling of trying not to cry. “What happened?” she said. “Are you in trouble with the cops?”

“The cops.” Jake let out a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. “Not the cops.” He took a step forward, startling Gemma and forcing her to release the doorjamb. “My lights are working just fine,” he added almost angrily, leaning so close that Gemma could feel his breath on her face. Before she could ask him what he meant, he closed the door, and the lock slid back into place.

For a second Gemma just stood there, stunned. Even with Pete standing next to her, she had never felt so alone in her life. She was too embarrassed to look at Pete. She’d dragged him all the way here, promising that Jake would help, and he hadn’t even let them inside. “Something must have happened. He wasn’t like this yesterday.” She thought of the way he’d looked, with sweat standing on his skin, and what he’d said to her: My lights are working just fine.

“Gemma.” There was a warning in Pete’s voice, but she was too upset to listen to it.

“Someone must have gotten to him—yesterday he was practically begging me for information—”

“Gemma.” This time, Pete seized her hand, and she was surprised into silence by the sudden contact. Her palms were sweaty, but his were dry and cool and large. “Funny they need so many guys to work the wires, don’t you think?” he said in a low voice, as he piloted her off the porch and back toward the van. He didn’t look at the Florida Energy men a little ways down the road, but she could tell by the way he was staring straight ahead that he was trying not to look.

Instinctively, she glanced over to where the six or seven workers in their hard hats and vests were still standing—doing nothing—and had the sense that they had only avoided meeting her eyes by a fraction of a second. And then she understood what Jake had said about the lights.

Not nonsense. A code. My lights are working just fine. Meaning: no reason for the Florida Energy truck, and the people gathered across the street with their van spiky with antennae. Although Gemma had looked away as quickly as possible, she had caught the eye of one of the men down the road: clean-shaven, hard-eyed, pale as paper. Not the complexion of someone who spent every day working outside.

Jake was being watched. Which meant: they were now being watched, too. No wonder Jake had practically shoved them off his doorstep, had shouted that he didn’t know them. He’d been trying to protect them. She had the overwhelming urge to turn around, to hurtle back up to the door and pound to be let in and to thank him. But that would be beyond stupid. Instead she walked stiff-backed to the minivan and climbed in, trying to appear unconcerned, as if maybe the whole thing really had been a mistake. Maybe the men—whoever they were—would believe that they were just casual acquaintances of Jake’s, there to return something or say hello.

In the car, Pete wiped his hands on his jeans before grabbing hold of the steering wheel. They didn’t speak. Pete kept glancing in the rearview mirror as he backed out of the driveway. Please don’t follow us, Gemma thought. She pressed the desire through her fists. Don’t follow us. But a moment later, a maroon Volvo pulled out of another hard-packed dirt driveway and crept up behind them. Could it be a coincidence? She didn’t think so.