The Caledonian Inheritance (The Athena Effect) (30 page)

“Sure,” she smiled, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table. She watched him move about the kitchen, realizing she was as curious about him as she was about his sister.

“Where did you say you grew up
again?” she asked.

His eyes clouded over with a barely perceptible
wariness, “I didn’t.”

“Oh… I thought you might be from LA too.”

“No, San Francisco,” he replied. He brought their cups to the table and sat facing her. He knew what she was after, but she was looking so cute he decided to enjoy watching her squirm.

“Thanks,” she said
, taking a sip.

“Are
your roommates home?” she asked casually.

“The
two Cals went down to Santa Rosa for the day,” he said, crossing his arms.

The two of them were eyeballing each other in a standoff when Layla came down the stairs, a bag slung over her arm. Agent Kim looked up with a
predatory aura and a false smile, “Hello.”

“Hey there,” Layla replied, in too good a mood to be
bothered by it.

“Where are you going?”
Michael asked her.

“
To meet Ramon,” she replied.

“I thought we agreed that he
’d pick you up here.”

Layla rolled her eyes with annoyance. “What… I can’t drive
anymore?”

Michael glanced at Mina, keeping his irritation in check.
“Just call me when you get there…” he said meaningfully. “Okay?”

“Don’t worry about
me.”

“I promised Cali,” he
added firmly.

She sighed
heavily. Along with Ramon, her housemates had made a pact to keep a close watch on her, but now that an entire uneventful week had passed she was starting to chafe at the constant supervision. Besides, she had special plans for tonight.

“I’ll
call you… alright?”

Agent Kim watched the
tension between the siblings, fascinated. She wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip through her fingers, and it was in her nature to be direct, “Hey Layla– I was hoping I’d have a chance to ask you a few questions about the night you got that confession.”

Layla
paused. It was in her nature to manipulate, and she thought that she might as well get it over with. “Sure thing,” she said, putting down her bag and taking a seat at the table to look closely into Mina’s sloe eyes. “Ask away.”

“Layla…” Michael
’s voice was pleading.

By the time Layla had grabbed
her bag from the counter and made for the door Mina was smiling placidly, her sense of urgency completely dissolved. She thought Michael seemed unnecessarily anxious, and after they watched Layla leave she smiled at him warmly.

“Wanna go play a game?”

They ended up having a wonderful time, lying across his bed with their controllers, working as a team and getting further in the game than they ever had before. Her formidable intellect was obvious, but Michael found himself gradually getting over his intimidation and growing increasingly comfortable around her.

It was easy to see the girls at Max’s
place as sex objects, because that’s how they saw themselves, but Mina was an equal… a superior in fact. She was more accomplished than any girl he’d ever met, and as much experience as he’d had with females, he’d never had one as a real friend, much less been so attracted to one he actually respected.

He couldn’t stop casting surreptitious glances her way,
admiring all the little details about her. He was charmed by everything about her, from her glossy black hair to her one crooked tooth, from the cute way she wrinkled her nose when she was frustrated to the duck lips she made when she focused on the game. He was sorely tempted to lean over and kiss those lips more than once, but there was his sense of fair play– Would Mina be feeling so friendly if his sister hadn’t just worked her mojo on her?

When it
started to get late she looked at her watch, “Oh! I better get going.”

Michael walked her out to her car, watching her pull away with a wistful look on his face.
He wondered if he’d ever see her again. Halfway on her drive home she pulled over, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t gotten one answer out of Layla. It had happened again, and she turned the car around, her anger flaring as she drove. Michael answered the door, and from the look in her eye he knew that she was going to demand some answers.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He opened the door wider, “Come in.”

Now he felt like he owed her an explanation
, and he sat her down and tried his best to explain Layla’s strange ability without going into too much incriminating detail. She looked at him skeptically, goading him into telling her more than he knew he should.

Truth is stranger than fiction, she thought, but
his story was unbelievable on so many levels.

Given their relatively recent appearance on the radar, s
he’d expected to hear that Michael and Layla were raised by Gypsies, carnival people or traveling grifters, but the story he told about them being taken from their mother by a renegade research scientist was more improbable than anything she’d conjured up in her wildest imaginings.

When she asked what
had happened to his sister the other night he told her about the abduction. When she pressed him for details his story got harder and harder to swallow. She scoffed, getting Michael more and more frustrated until he blurted out a name, wishing he could take it back the moment he spoke it.

~

The next day Mina did some digging around, making a few phone calls and checking databases. She was surprised to find that Senator Blackwell had indeed been in town that night, attending a fund-raiser for battered women.

She
talked to her local police contact, who told her an off-the-record story about officers being called to a downtown hotel to investigate a reported kidnapping. Rumor had it that a prostitute had declined to press charges against a man visiting from out of town, but somehow major strings had been pulled in order to get all records of the incident wiped clean, including the unprecedented deletion of the maid’s emergency call.

It was disturbing, to say the least.

Mina went to the scene of the supposed crime, speaking to the hotel manager to discover that all of the hallway security cameras had malfunctioned that night, and the elevator cameras that would have recorded any visitors to the floor were “down for maintenance”.

As completely insane as
the entire story was, the more Mina dug around, the more evidence she found to support it. She shook her head in disbelief, scarcely able to come to grips with it.

Could
Michael possibly be telling the truth?

~

Layla was head over heels in love, but she refused to admit it. She adopted a fatalistic attitude, living one day at a time and following her every whim. Her brush with the senator had shaken her to the core, making her question everything she’d been doing. She’d thrown all of her carefully made plans out the window, deciding that it was enough to simply be happy in the moment.

The m
inute she pulled up in front of Ramon’s apartment the phone in her purse rang.

“
Michael just called me looking for you… Where are you?” Ramon sounded panicked.

“I
went to pick up some take-out. I’m waiting right outside your apartment.”

“
Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right there.”

Ramon
hustled out of his office and jogged over from the nearby station, smiling at the thought of her. They’d spent nearly every night together since the day he’d brought her home, and he still couldn’t get enough of her.

Outwardly, she
seemed as demure and ladylike as ever, and he never would have guessed what a demon she’d turn out to be in bed. She was eager, playful and insatiable, and Ramon felt like she was unleashing years of pent-up desire onto him. He laughed out loud, wondering how he’d gotten so lucky.

The only thing that bothered him was her
sudden refusal to talk about the future. It was as if she was afraid to let herself believe in her own happy ending, and she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She would do just about anything for him, but the one thing he wanted the most she would not give him.

He rounded the corner to find her leaning against her convertible holding a couple of paper bags
and wearing a bright smile.

“What
have you got there?” he asked.

“Sushi,” she cocked her head playfully. “You said you’ve never tried it, so I thought I’d surprise you.”

“Where’d you get it?” he asked, catching his breath.

“There’s a new place
just outside of Hopland. Right off the freeway… It’s supposed to be pretty good.”

He frowned, “Layla, you
shouldn’t be driving that far by yourself.”

“I was careful,” she said reassuringly.

“You know you shouldn’t be taking chances like that.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Are you going to let me in or not?”

They walked to his apartment door together and he opened it, standing back. “After you.”

She set the sacks down on his kitchen counter,
pulling out a bottle. “I brought some champagne… Let’s have a toast.”

“
Oh… Do we have something to celebrate?” he asked. “Have you decided to move in with me?”

She shook her head no.
“Please stop. It’s not a good idea. Besides… I don’t want you to get sick of me.”

He came closer to wrap himself around her. “
Never,” he whispered in her ear. “And I’d feel better if you were here in town, closer to the station.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked
, changing the subject.

He kissed her freckled nose.
“It’s cold, right? It can wait.”

“Yes,” she smiled
, answering his kiss with a lingering one on his lips. “Why don’t you grab some glasses?”

He heard a cork pop while
he rinsed out a couple of wine glasses in the sink, rounding the corner to find her and the bottle gone, replaced by her discarded blouse draped across the couch. Shoes and a bra made a path that led down the hallway, followed by her skirt and stockings. A pair of lacy underwear hung on the doorknob of his bedroom.

With a
glass in each hand and a grin on his face, he followed the trail of clothes leading him to his beautiful, amazing, damaged girl.

~

E
PILOGUE

~

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bleary eyed, he squinted to focus on the dial of his bedside clock. Who in the hell could it be this early in the morning?
He yawned and stretched, thinking it was probably some jealous wife whose husband never made it home last night. He sat up with a grunt and swung both feet onto the cold wooden floor.

Bang! Bang! Bang! A fist pounded the door again.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming!” he called.

The private eye groped for a robe draped over the lone chair in his tiny studio apartment, slipping it on and shuffling for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt and opened it as far as the chain would allow, peering out through the crack. “
Yeah? Whatta you want?”

“You Joe Stewart?” a man asked.

“Who wants to know?”

With one
well placed kick the door came flying open, tearing the flimsy lock right out of the frame. Two men barged into the room, a big one and a little one, both of them brandishing guns. One of them held him at gunpoint while the other closed the door behind them, checked inside his bathroom, and went to the lone window to pull the drapes closed tight.

Hands raised, he backed up as far as he could go, finally sitting back down onto his bed. “What do you want?”

“You found a redheaded broad for Senator Blackwell. We want to know where the girl is.”

“I have no idea,” he said.

The little man drew his gun back and swung, answering him with a smack across his face that opened up a gash across the bridge of his nose. The private eye raised his hand to his face, lowering it to see blood. He held both palms up again in a gesture of supplication. “Okay… okay… Take it easy! Who sent you?”

“Where’s the girl?” the little one asked again.

“Listen,” he tried to reason, “You tell Blackwell he can deal with that creepy professor dude on his own. I don’t wanna work for him anymore.”

The big man came closer to press the muzzle of his gun to the man’s head. “What professor?”

The now frightened man gestured to the end table beside the bed, “His address is in there…”

“Get it,” the little man barked, watching him scramble to retrieve his address book, pulling out a piece of paper.