“You’d better go before someone comes along and sees us together,” she told him. “But thank you for talking to me.”
“Keep that card with the number on it for emergencies. If you call it, someone will answer and help you.” Harvey lifted a hand, turned away from her and walked up the trail leading toward the lake.
Rory watched him go until he disappeared around a bend. She turned back toward the parking lot, sliding the knife back into the small sheath inside her jacket. She had a long walk and a lot to think about.
Taking out her phone, she permanently deleted the screenshot of the message Gideon had taken that Tinsdale had sent to Harvey. Maybe she should have told Harvey about unsealing the message and how Gideon had taken a screenshot. She didn’t know if he had duplicated the message before he had deleted it or sent it to someone else. He could have. She didn’t trust him anymore. But she wasn’t taking any chances with Harvey going from being nice to pulling out a gun and shooting her.
She took her time walking back, turning over the things Gideon had told her about GhostWalkers. She realized her nightmares fit with everything he’d said. Or maybe he’d taken her nightmares into account so she would have reason to recognize pieces of what he told her. As much as she wanted that to be the truth, in her gut, she knew it wasn’t.
By the time she reached her car, she’d concluded that Gideon had been telling her the truth, and she most likely had been bought by Dr.Peter Whitney from an orphanage to be experimented on. Whatthat meant in terms of what she was now, she had no idea, but she wasn’t going to take any chances with anyone’s life. She was the same person she’d always been before she came to San Francisco. She was intelligent. Self-reliant. She could manage even with the new knowledge she had. It was frightening to think that Whitney—and she kept repeating the name in the hopes she’d stop having such a visceral reaction to it—planted something in her that might harm others.
She drove back to the apartment building and parked in her usual spot. Each tenant had a parking place specifically for them. She was grateful no one had taken hers, which was sometimes the case. She didn’t want to drive around the parking garage looking for a new parking place. She was exhausted. Part of her problem was she needed to use her regular nebulizer. It was in Lydia’s apartment.
The moment she entered, Lydia jumped up, ran to her, threw her arms around her and hugged her tight. “I was worried.”
“Didn’t you get my note?”
“Yes. But you didn’t sleep all night. Something clearly went wrong. You didn’t stay at Gideon’s, and you didn’t stay here. You should have woken me up, Rory.”
“You have a three-year-old and you work long hours, Lydia.”
“That doesn’t matter. You matter more to me than sleep. Seriously, Rory, tell me what you need right now.”
“My nebulizer first. I can barely breathe. It’s in the guest room by the bed.”
“You sit down and I’ll get it for you.” Lydia rushed off.
Rory sank into one of the two nice chairs Lydia had in her living room. Ellen was playing with her dolls on the floor, and she immediately crawled up on Rory’s lap and pressed a kiss onto her cheek. Rory kissed her back.
“Good morning, Miss Ellie May Rider.”
“Morning.”
Rory’s heart melted. That was the first time Ellen had spoken without an elaborate go-between. She kissed her several more times, making her squeal the way her momma did, grateful she’d made such good friends. Gideon might have made her feel broken and shattered, but friends went a long way to comfort her.
13
Gideon stood on the very edge of his rooftop, facing the bar. “There’s no recovery from this one, Javier. I sold her out and she called me on it. I told her she could tell me anything and she’d be safe. I meant it too. I had no idea she was a GhostWalker. I knew she was afraid of a relationship, but I didn’t have a clue why. I wanted her to know she was safe with me.”
“I heard the resolve in her voice,” Javier confirmed.
“I can’t blame her. Everything she said was true. I didn’t tell any of you the things she said to me in confidence to save her. I told them to you to save you.”
“Gideon. You had no choice.”
“There’s always another choice. I should have thought it through. Taken a couple more days. I could have kept her away from all of you and then talked it over with her.”
“You know better.”
“She’s in trouble, Javier. I know she is. I can feel it. She’s cut herself off from me, but I can still feel the danger to her, and thatmeans it’s growing, getting worse. It’s bad. I don’t know where it’s coming from. She won’t let me in.”
“She doesn’t know all of us.”
Gideon turned to look at Javier over his shoulder. “Rory isn’t going to be so easy to fool now. She’ll be looking. And now she’ll think about the things I told her, and she’ll be afraid she might harm someone. That’s going to be uppermost in her mind. I didn’t blow my chance with the only woman I’ll ever want to be with so Whitney can run his program on one of you.”
“You’re not killing yourself over this, Gideon. Sending out your spies to watch over her is too dangerous for you.”
Gideon turned back to look at the building several blocks down where the bar was located. With his superior eyesight and hearing, he could see the strobing colored lights and hear the music and conversations flowing. He zeroed in on Rory’s voice immediately. She wasn’t laughing the way she normally did. She talked with customers. He was certain no one would notice the difference in her voice but him.
