She had shopped here herself, buying a lamp and rug and three prints for her walls recently. She had even bought used clothes once from the place on the corner when money was particularly tight, the smell of mothballs and dust mixing with her general discomfort at wearing other people's things.
Okay, the Crown i still there. What to do?
Two cars back. She was being paranoid. Let's just see. When it was her turn, she stopped dead at the green light on Commonwealth. The car behind her began to blow its horn. She heard someone shouting out the window. Hold on, girl, easy. She drummed her fingers on the wheel. People were suddenly paying attention. A couple stared from the doorway of the McDonald's. The man smiled at the crazy woman sitting in the middle of the street, with the line of cars behind her all honking now.
The light turned yellow, then red. She floored the gas. Charlie's car shot out across the T-tracks and into oncoming traffic. Brakes squealed. She swerved right onto Commonwealth and missed clipping the bumper of an oil truck by inches. More horns and shouting; she ignored them, corrected the car into the proper lane, and risked a glance back.
The Crown had tried to swerve around the cars in front of it by bouncing over the right-hand sidewalk, but it was blocked by the flow of pedestrians. The man in the passenger seat threw his door open and yelled at them to move, move out of the way now. He wore a white shirt and a tie and something black and threatening was clipped to his belt.
Jess turned back to the road and kept her foot on the gas. She swung the wheel hard, swerving around cars that were moving much more slowly. A light up ahead, but it was green, thank God, and she swept around a car in the left-turn lane and through the intersection.
Here the street turned steep, running up the crest of the hill and down the other side. A glance in the rearview told her that the Crown had not yet managed to catch up. She swung a hard left onto Washington, shuddered over the T-tracks, and flew past the Whole Foods Market. Another green light, someone looking down on me right now, yes, sir.
She forced herself to slow as she approached the playground and the Washington Square intersection. Red light this time. A short distance down Beacon on her left was her graduate school, and her apartment. She could not go home now, she did not know what might be waiting for her there. Another glance in the rearview told her that the Crown was nowhere in sight.
The library had an underground garage. When she reached it she pulled down into the lower reaches and switched off the engine. Metal ticked in silence. She heard the echo of a car door slam, the sound of footsteps moving away from her. A man's voice speaking to someone else in unconcerned tones, both of them drifting away. She sat and caught her breath.
Inside the library she made her way back down into the stacks to a far corner of the lower level. A quick scan told her the area was deserted. She pulled out her cell phone.
A woman answered on the third ring. Jess could hear another voice in the background, a child's high, clear, breathless laughter. She closed her eyes and leaned against the cool wood of the study cubicle.
"This is Patrick"
"It's Jess Chambers."
Suddenly his voice was attentive, crisp. "Hold on." The phone, muffled by a hand; muttered voices, then silence. "Tell me."
"I found something in Wasserman's desk, a bunch of PET scans of Sarah's brain. They've circled what looks like an area of heightened activity in the parietal lobe. Does that make any sense to you?"
"Sure, sure it does. The parietal lobe deals with the sensations of touch and pain, as well as a feeling of where the body is in space and what surrounds it. Sensations in general, so that if a person has damage to the parietal lobe they lose the ability to feel."
"Would it follow that a person with an enhanced parietal lobe would have increased sensation? Perhaps a heightened sense altogether?"
"We don't know that. But it sounds to me like your hospital director sure thinks so."
"It's not just him. There are others involved in this." She told him about the man in the blue suit, everything Shelley had said just minutes earlier. "I think they're following me, Patrick. I saw a car full of men and I managed to lose them, but they were after me from Shelley's house. She's sick, but she's lucid. I think she was telling the truth. I don't know what we're up against here. Patrick, what do we do now? What the hell do we do?"
"I've done a little digging," Patrick said. "Called in some favors. I want you to understand that this is coming through several sources, and I have no way to know if it's accurate."
"What is it?"
"A little background first. Just bear with me here. The human genome was entirely sequenced a few years back by the NIH and a private company called Celera Genomics. Scientists found that the genome contains less than thirty thousand genes. The function of the majority of these genes is unknown. Only a fraction of the human DNA sequence codes for a protein. The rest is dormant, and some people think it is vestigial or may have some future use."
"English, please, Patrick."
"There are rumors of genetic experiments by a pharmaceutical firm," he said. "My sources say they've been working on isolating a particular protein produced by one of these normally dormant genes. It's supposed to produce a psi effect, Jess. And these same sources tell me they're testing it right now."
"You think this has to do with Sarah?"
"I think you've gotten yourself tangled up in the middle of something very bad. Put it this way. The men in that car following you weren't looking to deliver a Publishers Clearing House check."
"Why would they do this to her?"
"Think about it. If they were able to isolate this protein, they might be able to reproduce the same effects in anyone. Imagine the possibilities here. Scientists able to wake up a long-dormant portion of the human DNA strand and induce psi capabilities whenever and wherever they choose. The military, hell, the business implications are enormous. It's cutting-edge genetics, Jess. Billions of dollars are at stake.''
"This is crazy. She's just a little girl, Patrick."
"I know. I know she is."
"I won't let them hurt her."
"I talked to my people and they're ready to go," Patrick said. "She can disappear, I swear. Just say the word."
Jess smelled the dust of old books and coffee and she drifted through shades of memory. The window glass here was gray and sticky, like the glass of a phone booth, smeared with children's fingerprints. Eating a chocolate bar while her mother talked on the phone, talked forever on the phone, hurry up, Mama, we're late for school.
Professor Shelley's face drifted into her mind. Her mother's face too. Jess felt the sting of betrayal once again. She opened her eyes, allowed herself a moment to grieve for something lost, a connection grasped at and missed. A fleeting recognition of a turning point, and a decision that had already been made.
There might still be time, before they figured out what she was planning to do. But she had to move, and move fast.
"Let's get her out of there, Patrick. Get her the fuck out. Let's give her a chance."
--32--
Professor Jean Shelley sat upright in a straight-backed cane chair in front of the table and the window that looked out upon her garden. Jess Chambers was gone. The house was empty.