Discovered (18 page)

When Layla opened
her eyes, she felt much too rested for just a catnap. She sat up quickly,
trying to take in the unfamiliar surroundings and saw Jay sitting at the far
end of the couch, staring in her direction. “How long was I asleep?” she
questioned.

“All night,” he
replied, gazing sadly in her direction. “It’s after ten o’clock in the
morning.”

She rubbed sleep
from her eyes and yawned. “Did you get the cigarette?” she asked.

“Thankfully, yes,”
Jay answered. “The police were already there when we arrived, so of course we
had to pretend that we had just arrived home and had no idea what happened. I
was being questioned by the police when Joey purposely dropped his wallet next
to the cigarette butt and bent down to pick both up unnoticed. Luckily, the
police didn’t see him picking up the butt with a plastic baggy attached to his
hand.”

“What happens now?”
Layla questioned.

“I’m not sure if he’s
up yet, but Joey was going to run the diagnostics after he’d slept for a
while,” Jay answered. “I wish Issy had brought you to a room to sleep,” he
added.

“There are rooms
down here?”

“A couple, and
nothing very fancy. We spend the night if we’re working late sometimes.”

“This was
comfortable enough,” Layla said. “In fact, it’s the best sleep I’ve had in
days. Did
you
sleep?”

Jay shook his head.
“I came here to see if you were alright and decided to stay with you in case
you woke up and didn’t know where you were. I didn’t want you stumbling in the
dark looking for a way out of here or anything.”

Layla suddenly had
a sneaking suspicion that Jay had watched her sleep all night. “So you just sat
here?” she pushed.

“My priority is to
make sure that you’re safe,” he replied.

“Your priority is
to find out who’s after you and to do something to end it,” she argued.

“True, but none of
that seems important anymore if you’re not with me,” he answered shyly. “Are
you hungry?” he asked, suddenly shaking his head as if he was debating whether
or not to say something else on the subject of her whereabouts.

“Yes,” she said. “A
little.”

“Okay, then, let’s
get you something to eat.”

They walked out of
the door that Issy, Ben and Joey had entered the room through the previous
night, into a long, dark-gray hallway with lockers on one side and four doors
on the other. It was a dingy looking place that Layla assumed was similar to a
morgue in a hospital.

Jay pushed open the
furthest door, next to a freight elevator, and gestured for Layla to enter
before him. The inside of the room looked like a typical cafeteria with four
small plastic tables and a few vending machines up against the far wall. Issy,
Ben and Joey sat around one of the tables, eating food from Styrofoam cartons.

“What would you
like?” Jay asked, walking over to one of the vending machines.

Layla sat down with
the others and shrugged her shoulders.

“The French toast
is good,” Ben said.

“Is that fresh?”
she questioned, wondering how a hot breakfast could possibly come out of one of
the machines.

“The food is put in
there every morning at around eight o’clock,” Ben explained. “The vending
machine is equipped with special heaters. Whatever is not eaten by eleven is
taken out and brought to the closest homeless shelter, which is a good thing
since we’re hardly ever here.”

“Amazing,” Layla
said in wonder. “I’ll have the French toast then, I guess.”

Jay placed the
styrofoam package in front of her. “So what’s the plan?” she asked, ripping
open the plastic wrap that packaged a disposable knife and fork.

“Coffee?” Jay
called over.

“Yes, please,”
Layla replied.

“We’re going to
head up to the lab in a little while to see if we can get a face behind the DNA
on the cigarette butt,” Joey explained.

“How does that
work?” she pushed.

“It’s pretty
simple,” he answered. “I’ll get the DNA off the butt then run it through a
special computer I have that has listings of many DNA samples. If we’re lucky,
we should have a picture with complete personal details in no time.”

“Why am I thinking
that’s illegal?” Layla said, smirking in Joey’s direction. “Sounds like some
kind of FBI technology or something else that you probably shouldn’t have
access to.”

“We have DNA samples
of every employee we have
or have ever
had,” Joey explained. “And we
have them with their complete consent.”

“But what if this
person has never worked here?” she asked.

“Ah, well, see,
that’s where I might just bend the rules slightly,” Joey answered smugly. “You
don’t really want to know the full details, do you?”

Layla shook her
head. “Nope, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” she responded, tucking into her
breakfast.

“How did you
sleep?” Issy questioned.

“Good,” Layla
replied.

“You couldn’t bring
her to one of the rooms?” Jay asked in an annoyed voice.

“She was asleep in
seconds,” Issy answered defensively.

“Leave her alone,”
Layla butted in. “I was alright where I was.”

Issy stuck her
tongue out at Jay and sneered.

When she was
finished eating, Issy escorted Layla to a bathroom where she could clean up,
and handed her a fresh pair of scrubs. It was a basic looking shower, but did
the trick, and the shampoo and conditioner were to die for. Layla pulled her
wet hair into a ponytail and walked out of the tiny room to meet the other’s
back in the cafeteria. She flattened down the front of the top and frowned.

“You look
beautiful,” Jay said.

“Yeah, right,”
Layla replied, rolling her eyes.

“Think what you
want,” Jay stated. “But as far as I’m concerned, you could wear a black hefty
garbage bag and still be the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Layla smiled at him
and mouthed a silent ‘thank you’.

 Issy glared at Jay
with eyes wide. “Wow, Jay, I never figured you for the romantic type before,”
she said.

“I’ve taught him
well,” Ben piped in, blowing on his nails and then rubbing them on his shirt in
a smug gesture.

“That was me being
honest, not romantic,” Jay claimed. “Would you disagree?”

Issy eyed Layla
from head to toe. “Not at all, she’s lovely. But I’ve been telling you that all
along.”

Layla put up both
hands. “Okay, that’s enough. While I’m flattered and all, I think there’s more
pressing things to consider rather than how cute I look in an oversized pair of
scrubs.”

Joey laughed.
“Layla’s right. We should head upstairs now.”

They took the
freight elevator up one flight into a marbled, brightly lit, white corridor.
“This is lovely,” Layla commented, walking past rows and rows of large windows
that looked into clean rooms with many modern-looking machines and computers.
“So this is what Vallen Enterprises looks like. I was beginning to have my
doubts judging by the floor we just left.”

“Actually, this
isn’t technically part of the main corporation,” Joey explained. “Very few of
our employees ever see this part of the complex. These are our own personal
labs. We’re still beneath ground level.”

“So only you four
ever come down here?” she assumed.

“Basically,” Ben
said, nodding, “apart from the occasional cleaner or electrician or whatnot.
And those people are chosen very carefully to ensure that the public never
finds out what we’re working on down here.”

“How do you manage
that?” she asked.

“We choose laborers
who do their job well but have very little interest or knowledge in science.
And we make sure that none are ever associated with our regular employees.”

“Let me guess,”
Layla said. “Joey’s computer files.”

“Yep,” Joey
replied, winking at her. He pushed open the door to one of the rooms and
marched in ahead of the others.

“How long will this
take?” Layla questioned quietly, as though it was somehow not polite to speak
at a normal volume inside the lab.

“If all goes well,”
Joey shouted over, making her assumption seem silly, “less than ten minutes.”

Joey slipped on a
pair of latex gloves and placed a small glass slide, two inches by four inches,
on the middle of the far counter in front of a telescope. Layla watched with fascination
as he took the baggy out of his pocket and turned it inside out so that the
cigarette butt slid effortlessly onto the clean marble table. He dabbed a
cotton swab in some kind of fluid and wiped it over the tip of the butt, then
rubbed it against the slide. Seeming satisfied with his progress so far, he
took another piece of glass and placed it over the original, then slid the
little package into a slot in the microscope. Looking through the eyepiece of
the telescope, he nodded. “Look’s good,” he said aloud. He slid the glass back
out and carried it over to a large, white computer at the far end of the room.
Once again, he slid the glass into a slot in the computer that had a small
round nozzle on top. Layla understood that this was some kind of camera.

Joey punched a few
keys on the computer, bringing it to life, then typed frantically at the
keyboards. When a bright light emanated from the little nozzle above the slide,
he turned his back to the computer and folded his arms over his chest. “Now we
wait,” he said.

They stood around
in silence while the computer did its thing.

Within less than
two minutes, a bleep from the computer had them all moving forward.

“So our cancer courting
friend is none other than Robert Schroder of Jackson Heights, Queens,” Joey
stated, reading from the screen.

Layla looked over
Joey’s shoulder and gasped, putting her hand over her mouth.

“What?” Ben asked,
looking suspiciously in her direction.

“I know him,” she
stated. “He is an associate of James.”

“Are you sure it’s
the same Robert?” Jay questioned.

“I’m positive,”
Layla replied, dumbstruck.

The other four
looked around each other, then Ben nodded slightly in Jay’s direction.

Jay let out a loud
sigh. “Layla, there’s something I have to tell you,” he said, looking suddenly
guilty.

“What?” she
demanded, feeling dread well up.

Jay rubbed his palm
against his forehead. “I know James,” he said. “It’s the reason I’ve never
wanted to go to your house.”

“How?” she
demanded.

“James used to work
here some years back,” he admitted. “I avoided him because he would have known
who I was in a heartbeat.”

Layla quickly
replayed every scene in her mind where James was obsessed with the story of
Arthur Vallen. And then the words she’d heard him say the day she overheard him
and Robert talking in the kitchen, “
If I got my hands on Orton, I
could use him as a bargaining chip.”
She turned to Ben. “Is your last name
Orton?” she questioned.

Ben bit on his lip and nodded with a strange,
unreadable expression on his face.

“Is James behind this?” she asked, turning to
Jay. “Is James one of those masked men?”

Jay shrugged his shoulders. “I have no way of
knowing for sure, but I really don’t think so?”

“Did James know what you were working on here?”
she pushed.

“James is one of the very few people who
figured out the basic concept behind our research,” Ben said. “But if I had to
wager a guess, I would say that while he may have been behind the initial
attempt to grab Jay, I don’t think he’s still in control.”

“What do you mean?” Layla demanded.

“It’s possible that James originally hired
those four men to find out where Jay was keeping the research, so to speak, but
once they found out what it was that James was after, they may have decided to
take things into their own hands for their personal gain. Remember, James was
in North Carolina when the first attempt to snatch Jay occurred. I think it’s
more than likely that they were just supposed to trail Jay, to try to uncover
what James wanted without violence.”

Joey, who was bent over the computer, suddenly
turned around. “The other three men are most likely Manuel Castillez, Samuel
‘Sam’ Sheevers and Jason Shepard.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Issy
asked.

“By cross-referencing phone calls and whatnot,”
Joey replied. “Those are the three people Schroder has had the most contact
with in the last six months or so.”

“I never would have guessed that Manuel was
behind this,” Ben said quietly.

“You know him?” Layla asked.

 “Yes, he used to work here also,” Ben
admitted. “I had a reason to fire him. He was far too fond of snooping around”

“Really?” Layla questioned, remembering the
business card that her mother showed her at dinner a week ago. “I’ve heard of
him before.”