The Gardener Read online

  Lucille stepped into the room. “Jack, your dad is meeting us at the hospital in Vancouver.” Lucille handed me a set of keys. “To the Dodge truck out back. It’s old, but it works.”

  Where was I supposed to go? I said, “If everyone is looking for her, shouldn’t we just stay here?”

  The girl spoke up. “They already found me once. We’re too close here. They’ll find me again.”

  Jack stabbed the newspaper with a finger. “Go to the book thing. See what you can find out.”

  I glanced at the photo of Dr. Emerson. “What makes you think she’ll tell us anything?”

  Jack looked at the girl and back to me. “It’s either that or go back to Melby Falls and find your mom.”

  The girl stiffened at the mention of going back, so I knew that wasn’t an option. Chasing down a former TroDyn scientist made no sense to me either. I just didn’t see what was wrong with staying at Lucille’s. For a while, anyway.

  And I said as much. “We’ll stay here for now, make sure you and Lucille get off okay.”

  The girl shook her head. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Just for a while. It’ll be okay.”

  She didn’t respond, but her forehead wrinkled as she turned and stared out the window.

  Lucille gathered her things while I carried Jack to her SUV and helped him spread out in the backseat. “Let me know you’re okay.”

  “I’m gonna be fine.” He patted his sling. “You be safe. And you know what I said before? Well, I’m kinda glad you were the hero. Thanks.” He pulled on my shirt and I leaned closer.

  He whispered, “Be careful. This may be one time when you don’t need to be the hero.”

  I started to stand back up, but he pulled me down. “I’m serious, man. Just take it as far as you have to. You don’t always have to see it through to the end. This girl is in something really frickin’ weird.”

  That was the understatement of the century.

  Jack shook his head. “You get the chance to hand her off to someone, just do it.”

  I nodded, even though I was certain I’d do just the opposite.

  Back inside, Lucille reached up to the top of the fridge and pulled down a coffee can. She extracted a couple of twenties and handed them to me.

  “I can’t.”

  Lucille nodded. “Yes, you can. Shorty will pay me back.” She jabbed a thumb toward the front door. She smiled. “You stay here as long as you need to.”

  I watched out the window as the SUV disappeared into the trees down the driveway.

  “Mason!”

  It was the first time the girl had called me by name, and it made me pause.

  She called me again, louder, and I found her curled up on the couch, clutching a blue throw pillow to her stomach. Her eyes were wide. “They’re coming.”

  EIGHT

  “NOW? HOW CLOSE ARE THEY?” I HOPED WE HADN’T LOST our window to get out of there, and I was already kicking myself for hesitating so long.

  She stood. “We have a few minutes. Hurry.”

  Out in the garage, the girl and I climbed into the light green Dodge. The engine rumbled, like it was old and tired, and the shocks were nonexistent as I drove as fast as I could out the driveway. I hit a bump and my head smacked the ceiling.

  At the road, I turned to go left, take the shortcut to hit the highway and go east, away from Jack’s place, away from Melby Falls. But the shortcut road had deep muddy ruts, and the truck was too old to have four-wheel drive. We’d end up sitting ducks.

  As I turned to go right, the girl pointed toward the shortcut. “We need to go that way.”

  “We can’t.”

  I gunned the engine and we headed west. She tried to crawl into the space under the dashboard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  And then I looked in front of me. Several vehicles were parked on either side of the blacktop road, and people in yellow slickers dotted the woods. “Stay down,” I said, as I speeded up slightly.

  As I passed the cars, a black one to my left looked familiar. In the backseat were the kids from the Haven, all three turning to look at the truck as I drove by, one meeting my gaze. The girl stayed hidden. But I doubted she could hide her mind, if that was what they saw. Or felt.

  My hands started to shake as I forced myself to not tromp on the gas. I watched in the rearview mirror until we rounded a corner, then stepped on it. I needed to get away, fast, and going south made the most sense, so I drove toward the Bridge of the Gods to hit I-84.

  The rain showed no signs of letting up, and actually turned into a downpour at times. Although I drove carefully, the slick curves in the road freaked me out.

  I pulled on the girl’s arm. “It’s okay. You can get up now.”

  Slowly, she got back up on the bench seat. “They knew I was there.”

  “Did they tell anyone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sighed. “We have a little head start, I think.”

  But as I neared the on-ramp, I saw a police car with flashing lights and a line of cars. Turning into a gas station just before the line started, I left the engine running and told the girl to stay put.

  The lady at the counter was jabbering with news, so I just listened. “A big rig jackknifed and hit a cattle truck. The semi is blocking both eastbound lanes and they’re trying to move dead cows and find the ones that ran away.”

  A guy asked, “Any idea when it’ll open back up?”

  The lady shook her head.

  Outside, I stood under the awning for a bit, watching the rain. East was no longer an option, not if I wanted to keep the distance between the girl and whoever those people in the woods were. I looked to my left. Maybe there were answers in Portland. Maybe this Dr. Emerson would know something, something that might jog the girl’s memory. Even if she didn’t, we couldn’t sit there all day, waiting for the road to open up.

  I turned the Dodge around and hopped on the westbound I-84.

  The girl asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Powell’s.” In Portland, the name Powell’s meant only one thing: a bookstore. Not just any bookstore, but a bookstore that took up an entire city block. Sometimes my mom took me there on Saturday afternoons. Suddenly, it made sense to go to such a busy place. A busy place was better than an isolated cabin. I had to believe if someone was looking for us, the last place they’d look would be a bookstore.

  The girl fell asleep with her head on the back of the seat. The girl. It was driving me crazy to keep referring to her that way, not knowing her name. I wanted to call her something, anything. But she hadn’t suggested any such thing and it might be rude to just start calling her Blondie or whatever. It seemed like something that orderly at the Haven would have done. But did I really even want to know her name? Because if she remembered her name, then she’d remember where she belonged, and it might mean she’d go back to wherever she was from. That she’d go back to whatever life she had led before. And chances were, that life would not include me. Even though I’d known her less than twenty-four hours, I wanted to know her more. Even if that meant getting myself in more trouble.

  As I drove, the gas gauge needle started dancing, then suddenly dropped from over a half tank to just above empty. “Oh, man.” My mom had an old car once that did something similar; she never knew when the gauge was reliable or not. I did not want to take the chance of running out of gas halfway through Portland, possibly getting stranded on the side of the road, so I decided to head for the airport. We could take the light rail from there into the city.

  Traffic was light as we turned north on 205. Once we got to the airport, I followed the signs to the short-term parking. I chose a parking spot far away from the terminal.

  “Grab your coat.”

  She looked at me. “I didn’t bring it.”

  As I frowned, she leaned back a little. I set a hand on her arm. “That’s okay. It’s a little warmer here than Glenwood.” I didn’t have a coat either.

  “
Are you hungry? We could get something on our way to the MAX?”

  Inside the terminal I realized I was starving. The coffee and donuts of that morning seemed days removed. We went to the closest Coffee People kiosk, and I bought coffee and a muffin, then found a bench behind the door for international arrivals.

  The girl didn’t want anything to eat or drink. She people-watched, staring at one person until they were out of her sight, then picking another to study. She said, “The MAX is the light rail system in Portland.”

  Her statement sounded kind of like a recording. “How did you know that?”

  “It came to me,” she said, sounding more human. “Like it was there all along.” A corner of her mouth turned up. “I just couldn’t get to it at first.”

  Talk about confused. One minute it seemed she didn’t know anything, the next it was as if she knew everything and just had to access it. I can’t say the mystery made her less attractive.

  She kept watching people walk by. “When does it leave?”

  “They leave every fifteen minutes or so. It’ll take about thirty minutes to get to the closest stop to the bookstore.” I finished my muffin and brushed the crumbs off my hands. Walking past all the baggage carousels, it felt like we were travelers ourselves, just waiting to head on out into the world. At the end of the building, the MAX ticket machine sucked up my twenty, then pooped out two tickets and change.

  We waited outside in a covered area. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. Not too many people were waiting for the train, but I couldn’t help looking surreptitiously at the ones who were, wondering if anyone was following us, which was the tip of the iceberg as far as my worries were concerned. My mom knew Jack and I had gone to Glenwood. And even if she did suspect we had the girl, would she have told anyone? Maybe she didn’t have to. If the girl was important enough to have people following her, she probably had someone watching her. Someone besides my mom.

  My eyes slowly drifted to the girl, who was running a finger up and down an advertisement for fresh produce. Could she be bugged somehow? She had said she was communicating with someone, and she had known someone was out front at the cabin before I even saw them through the scope.

  Without thinking about it, I took a step back, away from her. Her eyes immediately met mine. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Her voice kind of shot right through whatever suspicions I had about her, and I stepped back beside her, itching to put my arm around her, hold her hand, anything, just to feel closer to her. “How’s your head?”

  She looked at me. “It’s fine.”

  It wasn’t easy to figure out how to ask what I needed to know. “Still … empty?”

  Pausing before she spoke, she finally said, “No, not so much.”

  I didn’t want to alarm her, make her think we should be worried about being followed. I tried to sound casual. “So, can you hear them?”

  Her forehead creased and she didn’t answer at first. Then she said, “It’s comfortable again.”

  Was it possible that whoever was behind her condition could hear everything she heard? And was that how they managed to find us at the cabin?

  The train arrived and we went to the very back so that we could face forward and see all the other passengers, including anyone who got on. Someone had left a few sections of newspaper on the seat and I opened one, holding it up in front of us, so that we were seated anonymously behind it. We were in our own cozy little cubicle made of newsprint. Might have even been romantic in other circumstances.

  The rocking of the train eventually lulled her to sleep, her chin dropping down to rest on her chest. After a while, I folded the paper. I needed to see what was going on around us and was grateful for the gazillion milligrams of caffeine coursing through my body, keeping me awake.

  A guy got on, older than me, probably college age from the looks of it. He studied his video iPod and wore an Oregon Ducks hat.

  The headline of the sports section I’d been holding jumped out at me. It was the day of the Civil War game, when the Ducks played the Oregon State Beavers, pretty much dividing the state for a few hours.

  The guy had taken off his dripping coat and set it beside him. He took off the Ducks hat, shook it, then set it back on his head. He had a big bag looped over one arm, which he kept the other arm securely around, and it covered the orange-and-black beaver on his sweatshirt. I smiled. Who would be stupid enough to wear both colleges’ attire at the same time on the day of the Civil War game?

  Then I froze.

  No one, and I mean no one with half a brain, would be that stupid.

  NINE

  WITH A SIDEWAYS GLANCE, I COULD SEE THE GIRL WAS STILL asleep.

  That guy in the conflicting sports getup could have sat anywhere on the train, but he chose a place near us. Not so near as to be obvious, but near enough to keep an eye on us. But he hadn’t once looked our way. Had he? His eyes were glued to his iPod. I looked more closely at his bag. Particularly at a small tear near the seam. After rubbing my weary eyes, I looked again, trying to focus more on that hole. Could he have a hidden camera and be watching us that way?

  Talk about paranoid.

  Still.

  Opening up the newspaper, I used it to hide us from the rest of the car again. I had an idea. We were getting off.

  I woke the girl.

  She asked, “Are we there?”

  “Kind of.” I got her to stand in front of me as we headed toward the doors. The guy stood up. He was closer to the door than we were. The guy was on my left, the girl on my right. I didn’t dare look at him, but it was pretty obvious I had the size and weight advantage.

  Gradually slowing, the train came to a stop. When the doors opened, I held the girl back. The guy hesitated. The chimes sounded, signaling the doors were going to close, and in a flash, I whirled, grabbed the iPod, and shoved the guy out the doors just as they closed. As the train started to move, he glared at me and reached into his bag, yelling into a phone before we had gone fifty yards.

  My hands were trembling as I peered at the iPod’s screen. A song was playing. Some pop-star girl. I flipped through everything. Other than a few lousy movies and more girl songs, there was nothing to suggest anything amiss. “Oops. Guess I was a little paranoid.”

  The girl placed a hand on my shoulder. “You think he was watching me.”

  “They found you once. They can find you again.” We took our seats. Great. I was just trying to help a girl and I stole some poor college kid’s iPod. I turned around to look at the map and see how many stops we had left. If we stayed on the train for long, we might get hassled for stealing the iPod if the guy had called the cops. “We could get off at the next stop. It would just mean a longer walk.”

  She smiled. “That’s fine. I like to walk.” She sucked on her lower lip for a second. “I mean, so far, the walking we’ve done? I liked it. I’m not sure if I liked walking before.”

  A few minutes later, the automated voice announced the next stop and the train slowed.

  I stood up. “Let’s go.” The doors opened. Dropping the iPod where the guy had sat, I held out my hand and the girl reached out and took it, and I had a feeling that was beginning to seem very familiar.

  The drizzle was just enough to annoy and soak anyone out walking. With one arm, I held a section of the newspaper over our heads, while the other lay around her shoulders. We tried to stay under the awnings, but there weren’t that many. Kind of stupid, in my opinion, given Portland is probably one of the rainiest cities in the country. Awnings should be mandatory. We’d gone about ten blocks when I felt her shiver under my arm. With the newspaper, I pointed at a Starbucks, then led her down a set of steps into the café, which was connected to an old hotel that looked new on the inside. A big fireplace sat in one corner. I motioned to a couch in front of it and told the girl, “You can sit here and get warmed up.”

  I shoved my wet newspaper into the garbage, then went to order coffee. The barista had a thick, silver ring, bu
ll-like through his nostrils, a green streak in his purple hair. He didn’t give me more than a token glance. I imagine he knew what it was like to be stared at.

  The girl took the coffee and held it. We sat there in front of the fire, warming up and drying off.

  The girl asked, “How much farther?”

  “Not far at all.” I jabbed my thumb to the right. “Just two blocks down there.” I looked up as a couple walked in, but they were too busy looking at their kid in a stroller to notice us.

  Was I crazy, looking for bad guys? What would the guy at the cabin have done if we’d let him in? Steal the girl?

  She sat near the blazing fire, but still shivered.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Just chilly. A little.”

  I took off my flannel shirt and gave it to her, though I kind of shivered in my T-shirt. So far, I’d let her be. Maybe it was high time to push it a little bit.

  I thought about the story she’d told me, about the place where she sat, where the gardener came. “Can you tell me more about those visions you were having?”

  She nodded. “They’re more like memories, only kind of foggy. Like, when they are in my head, I feel a little removed. I’m not actually sure it was an experience or just something I dreamed up.”

  “When you remember the place, do you feel…?” I wasn’t sure how to ask what I wanted, so I came right out with it. “Were you a prisoner?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. When I’m upset, I feel it here.” She touched her stomach. “But I don’t get upset when I have these memories. I don’t really feel anything.”

  “Is it possible they didn’t happen?” I asked, trying to keep my tone gentle. The story she’d told me at the cabin about being in a place before the Haven was just too odd. I had to face the idea that she might really have a brain injury, like my mom had said.

  She looked at me for a moment. “Maybe. But if that’s true, why am I like this? Walking around in a fog, not knowing who I am?”

  I had no answer for her.