John Locke - Lethal Experiment

“Lou…” I said, warily.

“Donovan, you may want to brace yourself,” Lou said. He handed me Nadine’s compact. I looked at both of them carefully before opening it, but none of us said anything. I closed my eyes a second, shook my head.

“This sucks,” I said.

Lou nodded.

“I’m so very sorry,” Dr. Crouch said.

I opened the compact and looked into the mirror.

Chapter 42

They’d given me a new face.

Not a normal face, like I’d had before, but a Hollywood, movie star-type face.

Without the scar.

I closed the compact and handed it back to Nadine.

“I need a drink,” I said.

Lou hesitated. “That’s probably a bad idea.”

“Bottom left-hand drawer of my desk,” I said.

“I can ask the doctor, if you want,” Lou said.

“Next to the bourbon you’ll find four Glencairn glasses. Feel free to join me.”

“Twenty-year Pappy?”

“It was when I bought it.”

“I’ll join you,” he said.

We looked at Nadine.

“I’ll pass,” she said.

Lou called his assistant and placed the order.

While waiting, I touched my fingers to my face. Nadine handed me back the compact. I snuck up on the mirror this time, peering at myself from different angles. In every case it was like I was looking at someone else.

“Nice work,” I said. “But it’s too nice.”

“I know it’s quite a shock,” Nadine said, “But you’re gorgeous—not that I place a lot of value on a person’s exterior.”

“Lou? This is crazy. I mean, I know our guys are good, but I’ve seen their work before, lots of times. No one comes out of surgery looking better than they started.”

“You did.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Our guys never had this much time before, or such a perfect environment for healing. We knew our surgeons were exceptional, but none of us knew they were this good. You know who you look like?” Lou said, getting into it.

I held up a hand. “Please. Don’t tell me.”

Lou nodded. His assistant showed up with a bottle of Pappy and two glasses.

“Mr. Creed!” she yelped. “I thought we’d never see you again. You look great!”

“Thanks, Linda. Nice to see you, too. Want a drink?”

She looked at Lou hopefully. He shook his head. “Another time, perhaps,” Linda said.

Nadine moved some things off the end table to accommodate the glasses. As Linda placed them on the table, she said, “What’s it like, waking up after all this time?”

“Surreal. For you it’s been years. But in my mind, I saw you less than two weeks ago.”

“That is so weird,” she said.

Linda left the room, Lou poured the drinks.

“You sure you don’t want a pull, Nadine?”

She gave me a world-class frown. “I think it’s a dreadful idea. As for you, Mr. Kelly…”

Nadine abandoned the rest of the sentence, but shook her head with disgust, leaving no doubt where she stood on the subject of Lou’s behavior.

I held up my glass as if making a toast. “Bourbon,” I said, “Is cheaper than therapy.”

Lou grinned. We clinked glasses and began sipping.

“Like heaven in a bottle,” I said.

We were quiet awhile before I broke the silence.

“Why’d they do it, Lou?”

He sipped again, took a deep breath, let it out very slowly. He bit the side of his lip before speaking.

“A lot of decisions had to be made in a short period of time.”

I wasn’t going to second-guess at this point. These decisions had been made years ago, so there was nothing I could do about the time I’d lost or the new face. There was only one thing that mattered.

“Has Kathleen seen me…like this?”

They looked at each other, silently trying to decide who should do the talking. Lou took the lead.

“There’s a lot I need to tell you. But before I say anything, keep in mind, I’m the messenger. I was involved in the discussions, but I didn’t make the decisions.”

“Noted. So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying everything that happened was done because it made the most sense at the time.”

I passed my glass to Nadine. Two sips of whiskey had left my head swimming.

“Serves you right,” she sniffed.

Like all the rooms at Sensory Resources, the one that held me was windowless. It could have been noon outside, or midnight, I’d have never known the difference. A person could be wide awake in here for two weeks and not be able to give a proper accounting of the time he’d spent, so it made sense there would be a period of disorientation. But I was more than disoriented, I was in shock. Based on my timeline, in a handful of minutes I’d lost the face I was born with, and more than three years of my life! There were no instruction books to tell me how I was supposed to react.

But it’s not what I’d seen and heard that led me to the bourbon. Bad as it was, I knew things were about to get much worse. Th e proof was in Nadine’s eyes and Lou Kelly’s voice. And the fact that Darwin kept Nadine working here at Sensory all these years just to prepare me for what Lou was about to say.

Chapter 43

“ You died,” Lou said.

I paused a moment. “You mean I died on the table and they brought me back to life?”

He shook his head. “No, I mean we killed Harry.”

Harry Weathers had been my body double.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Lou said.

I said nothing.

He continued, “You were here, completely unresponsive, barely alive. Days went by. The doctors hoped you’d be okay, but stopped believing it.”

A thousand thoughts raced through my brain, competing to make sense.

Lou continued: “Tara Siegel had a lot of friends who heard you came to Boston looking for her. A few hours later she went missing, and no one ever heard from her again.”

I shouldn’t have had the drink. Or maybe I should have had more. I had to force my mind not to get too far ahead of his words. Otherwise it would take longer to find out what I needed to know about Kathleen and Addie, and where things stood in the present.

“Go on,” I finally heard myself say.

“Well, there were two problems. First, Tara’s friends—picture what Callie and Quinn would do if Tara showed up and you’d gone missing. Anyway, her friends demanded answers from Darwin, said if he didn’t tell them, they’d beat the truth out of Kathleen.”

I set my new jaw, clenched my fists, but said nothing.

“The second problem, quite frankly, was Kathleen.”

“How so?”

“When she didn’t hear from you, didn’t get her calls returned, she went into a panic. She knew just enough to be dangerous.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “She knows— knew nothing.”

“She knew Sal Bonadello,” Lou said, “and Victor.”

“So?”

“She also knew—or thought she knew—that you worked for Homeland Security.”

“She started making calls?”

“She did.”

“And?”

“She got stonewalled. And didn’t like it.”

I let a small, proud smile play around the corners of my mouth.

Lou saw it, said, “Yeah, I know. But she contacted the press, started demanding an inquiry.”

“Oh shit.”

“Exactly. So Darwin created a phony mission and produced enough of Harry’s body to convince everyone you’d been killed.”

My heart sank.

I said, “And this was more than three years ago, and no one ever told Kathleen any different.”

Lou remained silent.

“And Kimberly and Addie—they watched my burial.”

“I’m sorry, Donovan,” Lou said.

Nadine moved to my side, placed a reassuring hand on my arm. She said, “As they explained it to me, it was the only way to protect Kathleen and Addie.”