Voice (26 page)

“Heidi?” Jemma said, watching as the woman leaned down and undid her straps one at a time.

Heidi nodded and moved to Jack. “I’ll explain when we’re in the car. Grab that notepad for me, will you?”

Jemma blinked, then let go of Jack so she could stand, pulling the sensors away from her neck with a wince as they caught on fine hairs. She picked up Josh’s notepad and held it to her chest as Jack joined her, wrapping his arms around Jemma. She closed her eyes and leaned against him, listening.

Heidi seemed in charge of the operation, giving orders with a relaxed confidence that conveyed she had no doubt they’d be followed immediately. The lab was quickly photographed, and then the agents began dismantling and gathering equipment, preparing it to be loaded into vans and transported as evidence. “Okay,” she said finally, in a warmer tone, and Jemma opened her eyes to see Heidi standing next to them. “Let’s get going, and I’ll explain everything.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:

Answers

For the first several minutes after they got into the black minivan, all three were silent. Jack and Jemma sat in the back while Heidi drove, and Jemma clutched Jack’s hand. Josh’s notepad rested on the seat next to her, a silent and unnecessary reminder of how they’d spent their morning.

“I know you have questions,” Heidi said, sounding more subdued than she had the last time they’d spoken. Her accent was a little less pronounced. “Do you want to start there, or do you want me to explain what I can first?”

Jemma tightened then relaxed her grip on Jack’s hand, and he ran his thumb across her skin. “Tell us what you’re going to first,” Jemma said finally. “That’ll give us a better idea of the questions to ask.” Heidi nodded, and Jemma saw her glance at them in the rear view mirror before returning her eyes to the road.

“You’ve figured out by now, of course, that I’m not just a bodyguard for hire.” Heidi paused, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “The various organizations in the government who do undercover work and the like, we had a suspicion about Tricorp’s activities and their involvement in the Event. It started before the Event actually happened, rumors of a new weapon they were working on. They wanted to sell it to the military, so why
wouldn’t
they let rumors leak to the federal government?”

She rubbed her neck, then put her hand back on the steering wheel and continued. “They didn’t do anything about it soon enough. There wasn’t enough information. We didn’t know whether it was a real threat, and we had no indications they planned to silence the world. That’s not exactly something anyone ever worried about before.

“Still, we started setting up identities, establishing ties to the company where we could. We knew they were running blood tests. We could have done something then, but that wouldn’t have helped if they were planning something bigger, not a serious enough offense, and Tricorp would’ve known we were watching them. I had patterns in my blood similar to those in the people they were flagging, so I was chosen as one of the lucky ones, in case my genetics helped at some point. Your Dr. Harris would’ve referred to me as a ‘potential,’ and it did get them interested when they looked through their options for guards, but my abilities were too weak, and I was of more use with my gun than my mind.”

Jemma remembered when Heidi had brushed against her in the hallway, when her overworked brain had revolted and gotten dizzy. Heidi must have tried to Talk to her and almost gotten through. How much easier would everything have been if that had worked? Then again, it may have pushed her over the edge instead, rendered her useless for even longer, making them miss their escape attempt.

Jack’s thumb had stilled while they listened, and Jemma loosened her grip once more.

“So when the Event finally happened,” Heidi continued, “I was already in place. I was on their list of preferred contacts for muscle, and they brought me in almost immediately. Transferred me to Naomi after a while, which is when we met.” She looked in the mirror again, just long enough to meet Jemma’s eyes. She fell silent, her eyes back on the road as they merged onto the highway.

Jemma spoke up, asking a question that she realized had been bothering her since she’d seen Heidi for the first time that day. “Why didn’t you step in when you saw everything they were doing? You let them torture us.”

“And I hate that.” Heidi was vehement, her voice regaining that hint of southern accent she must have lost for work. “I couldn’t get the approval to make a move. All I could do was stay as close as possible to the person they were mistreating the most, keep you safe as best I could.”

“I don’t understand,” said Jack. “You must’ve had proof by then. Hell, you eventually walked Jemma out entirely. What changed?”

Heidi nodded, acknowledging the question, but it took her a minute to respond. “We couldn’t reverse the Event ourselves. We had our own scientists working on it, but without the required knowledge of exactly how the Event was triggered in the first place, we didn’t have a chance. I was to remain in place, to keep an eye on what Tricorp was doing. I had to maintain my cover until there was a cure. And knowing what I know now about how it worked, the combination of tech and living contagion? I don’t think the cure was ever gonna come from anyone but Tricorp.”

“So you could help us escape,” said Jemma, “but you couldn’t blow your cover until it was over?”

“Well,” Heidi drawled, “I didn’t officially help you with your first escape. You were Tricorp’s fastest means to a cure, as far as we knew, so helping you get out, well, it was a little counterproductive.” She drummed her fingers on the wheel again. “It wasn’t right, though. If you’d been treated better, maybe I wouldn’t have, but that wasn’t the case.” She sighed. “And then you came back.”

“We thought she had to,” said Jack. “We finally figured out what was going on, and, like you said, they were doing their best to make it seem like they needed us in order to save everyone.” Jemma felt Jack tense, and she sent a wave of reassurance. “If we’d known how they’d treat Jemma when she got back, we never would have done it.”

“I didn’t expect it to be that bad, either,” said Heidi. “It was that creep. He was worse than anyone had guessed.” She slammed a hand against the steering wheel. “And then they let him
go
.” She shook her head and took a breath. “But that came later. As soon as you told me about the cure, Jemma, I wasn’t willing to wait to be told again that I couldn’t do anything that might blow my cover. I’m not an idiot, and I was aiming to maintain my cover beyond all this, if needed, but with Josh threatening to destroy what we needed, I couldn’t risk being told ‘no.’”

“So you didn’t ask,” Jemma said, remembering how little time they’d had between her telling Heidi about the cure and actually going to take care of it.

“I didn’t ask,” Heidi agreed. “Then afterward, my supervisor still wasn’t giving me the go-ahead to get you out of there. Said he wanted the remaining employees to trust me. It made sense, so I let it go as long as I could, but that wasn’t exactly long. Soon as I knew Josh was still running those kinds of tests, still doing things to hurt you? I got you all out.”

“And you didn’t get fired or anything, obviously,” Jack said.

Heidi shook her head again. “They’d waited too long to get everyone out, and they knew it. I’m sure I’ll get a slap on the wrist when this is all over, but they can’t really say that I disobeyed their orders, not when I did what was needed.”

“How’d you get here today?” Jemma asked. “I’m guessing you were either the agent who was supposed to keep an eye on us or you were called in when the agent lost us.”

Heidi huffed and exited the highway, following signs for the airport. “I was the one keeping an eye on you, and I never did lose you. After they screwed up and let Josh go—and I mean, they realized probably twenty minutes after he was released how much of a mistake they’d made—they were hoping to keep you two safe. At least, most of them were. We had too many agencies working together, and we’re not exactly used to that. Someone thought it would be a bright idea to leave your information where Josh would be able to find it. Use you as bait. Another was brilliant enough to place your safe house in the outskirts of the same city we thought Josh might set up in. They made it too easy, and we weren’t ready.

“I saw him and another man leaving with you. It was too late to stop them, but I was able to follow. Then it was a matter of waiting for backup, which took some time to scramble. Then there was another delay while we tried to figure out whether he had more than just the one accomplice. Finally, we were cleared to go in there and get you.”

“So he had help,” Jemma confirmed. “We already knew he was getting information from someone.”

“Just the person who helped him take you, a guy named Robert Maxwell. He owned the house Josh was holding you in, and apparently they went to college together. He’s a computer tech type who I guess was able to find information for Josh. He probably helped gather the lab equipment, too, without raising any flags. And the sedatives, which I’m sure you noticed. We arrested him upstairs, and he'll be tried as an accomplice.”

Heidi pulled into the short-term parking lot, stopping in a space not too far from what looked like the main door for departures.

“Do we get to go home?” Jemma asked, swallowing when she realized how badly she wanted to. The easy back-and-forth of Jack’s thumb resumed.

“There’s still a little while before your flight, and we’ve got a few more things to go over,” Heidi answered. “It’s easier to talk here than inside, if you don’t mind; it gives us more privacy. First, did you have any more questions?” Jack nodded, and Heidi unbuckled, reclining her seat and twisting around so she could see them better.

“Josh will be kept in jail this time?” Jack asked.

“Oh, yes.” Heidi grinned, but there was nothing soft in the expression. “He’s racked up all new charges to keep him there. That’s on top of everything we can throw at him for the Event and for what he did while you were in his care. He won’t get any immunity for being ‘just an employee taking orders’ this time. Also,” she continued, her mouth pulled down to one side, “you heard about the handful of people who the cure didn’t work for?” She waited for them to nod. “Tricorp’s scientists finally modified the cure enough to help the people whose buggies—ah, that is, nanocreatures—had mutated, but they didn’t do it quickly enough. Some died, and believe me, we are pinning that on Josh, just as equally as we are on the company heads. More, if we can get away with it.”

Jemma’s stomach churned. Maybe if she’d found the cure sooner, nobody would’ve died. Maybe—

Jack’s mental voice broke into her thoughts. “You saved people, Jemma. You had nothing to do with the few who died. You couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”

She swallowed, sending hesitant acknowledgment before focusing back on Heidi, pushing away the guilt so she could talk. She needed to ask a question in a way that didn’t give anything away she didn’t want to. “Do you know why he went after us again?”

Heidi looked between them. “Officially, he was trying to find a way to recreate the Event even though the cure made it so that most should be completely immune to any attempt to recreate it. It’s sort of like being vaccinated against the flu; the right strain might still infect you, but you’re a lot safer than you were.”

“And unofficially?” Jack challenged, having apparently heard the same undercurrent in her tone as Jemma had.

Heidi took a breath. “You two can still Talk, can’t you? Don’t answer that. It makes sense if anyone thinks it through hard enough, but there won’t be any proof.” She nodded at the notepad next to Jemma. “You’ll take that with you and lose any pages at various points in your trip home, after ripping them as small as possible.”

Jemma looked down at the notepad and swallowed. “And the monitors he had us hooked up to? I’m sure those were recording.”

“Those,” Heidi said, “will meet an unfortunate end. My partner is making sure that by the time they show up in evidence, they won’t have any recordings left. Nobody will have any reason to go after the two of you if they want to take up the experiments in Josh’s absence.”

She was still fighting remnants of guilt, but a large portion of Jemma’s worry was lifted at Heidi’s reassurance.

“All right,” she said.

Heidi grinned again, this smile a little more genuine but seeming colored by regret. “We’ll be meeting someone inside. Myles Pratt. I believe you know him. He was being held in the building, too.” She tapped at an earpiece. “I got word shortly after we got in the van.”

“Is he okay?” Jack asked before Jemma could.

“He’s well enough to travel,” Heidi answered. “He was kept sedated fairly regularly, but his last dose had worn off when we showed up. He’ll need medical attention once he’s home, but he can fly commercial. He’ll take the first flight with you, and you’ll split up in Atlanta.”

“Are you coming with us?” Jemma asked.

Heidi shook her head. “No. I’ll need to go back to headquarters to debrief, and then I actually get to go home for the first time since before the Event. My brother’s been watching my house and dog while I’ve been gone.” She laughed. “Lord, I’ve missed that dog.” She was still smiling when she looked between them again, then reached for a recording device. “Okay, last thing before we head in: I need you two to tell me your version of today’s events, everything that you want on the official record.” After they nodded in understanding of her caution, she pressed record.