SEELEY FOLLOWED DIRECTOR Hammon as he pushed through the double doors that led into the central communications office at Xerox. There was news. A possible connection that may give them a viable lead on Lucy’s location.
There was a new sense of urgency as Krum had let on that there was now a deadline, an unknown date that they had to beat. Otherwise the world would know about Grantham and what they had done. And that couldn’t happen.
“Talk to me,” Hammon said. His voice drew the attention of the room. It was a large oval space filled with screens that displayed images of ongoing operations, data streams, and the site’s security feeds. In the center was a long comms central, four operators working its switches and buttons.
Dave McCoy, data pad in hand, took several steps from his position to greet Hammon and Seeley. With a swipe of three fingers across the data pad’s surface, he took over a large screen that hung on the left wall before them. A profile appeared, the face of a middle-aged woman and her details displayed.
“This is Robin Hester, an old classmate of Olivia’s while she was getting her graduate degree at Cornell University. Robin was a structural biologist, and she and Olivia were both employed by Corp Tech for nearly a decade.”
Seeley studied the woman’s photo. She had kind blue eyes and light blonde hair that brushed the tops of her slender shoulders. Pretty and unassuming.
“It seems Olivia and Robin were close through their school days,” McCoy continued, “as well as while they worked together at Corp Tech. We spoke with several of their colleagues. It seems Olivia and Robin were always talking about changing the face of science by merging structural biology and genetics in a groundbreaking way.”
“This Robin Hester is helping them then?” Hammon asked.
“No,” McCoy answered. “She was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2001 and passed away eighteen months later. But she had a stepsister who served in the US military from 2004 to 2007. She was honorably discharged after failing a psych evaluation. Apparently, she’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist.” He smiled at Hammon, who didn’t return his sentiment. McCoy cleared his throat. “Anyway, we scoured all the communications coming and going from Xerox and turned up nothing, but when we widened the search to the surrounding cities, a landline in Jasper turned up several phone calls to a pay phone on the outskirts of Corpus Christi. The landline belongs to a Melissa Glass, a known associate of Olivia.”
“So, you think Olivia was making the calls?” Seeley asked.
“Scanning security cameras shows Olivia wasn’t on campus when the phone calls were made, so if she wasn’t here . . .” McCoy said.
“Then she could have been there,” Seeley said. “We need to talk with Melissa.”
“We sent a couple agents, but no new information came from it,” McCoy continued. “Meanwhile, I’ve been looking for a connection to Corpus Christi.”
“I’m assuming this ties back to Robin Hester?” Hammon said.
“That’s what we think.” McCoy swiped the data pad again, and the profile on the screen changed. Another blonde woman replaced Robin’s photo. She was stockier with mean, dark eyes. Troubled.
“Meet Summer Wallace,” McCoy said. “Robin’s stepsister. She took possession of her ex-husband’s junkyard back in 2015 after their divorce. It sits on the outskirts of Corpus Christi, only six miles from the pay phone where Olivia’s calls were going.”
“Couldn’t she just have been checking up on an old friend?” Hammon asked.
“Maybe, but we can’t find any evidence that Summer and Olivia had any contact since the death of Robin back in 2003, other than the phone calls that have been taking place over the last few months. And that alone may not be enough to draw conclusions, but it turns out Summer worked for Port Authority on the Corpus Christi coast for a brief period last year, and her access card was used for the first time in nine months last week.”
“She could just be working there again,” Seeley said.
“I checked. She isn’t on their current employee records,” McCoy said.
Seeley and Hammon shared a look.
“Trying to get her out of the country,” Hammon said.
“Somewhere they could start a new life,” Seeley answered.
“All of this so Olivia could play mommy,” Hammon huffed.
“Love is the most dangerous kind of motivation.”
“Then why copy our files?”
“Insurance?” McCoy speculated.
“Any leads on this elusive deadline or source that Krum mentioned?” Hammon asked.
McCoy swallowed, signaling bad news before he delivered it. “Nothing. I mean, Olivia had dozens of contacts, abroad and locally—any one of them could be the source. We’re re-scouring her files and records, looking for any clue.”
Hammon swore under his breath. “We’re flying blind.”
Before anyone could respond, a petite, graying woman in a white lab coat interrupted. “Director.”
Hammon turned and nodded to the woman. “Gina Loveless,” Hammon started as she approached, “this is Tom Seeley and Dave McCoy.” The woman stepped forward and offered a handshake to both as Hammon continued. “Dr. Loveless is a cognitive neuroscientist brought in to run diagnostics on what was done to the subject’s memory.” Then to Dr. Loveless: “Did you find something?”
She gave a nod as sharp as the angle of her jaw. As she opened her mouth, Hammon said, “And skip the science crap. Just give me the results.”
She blinked and adjusted the thin-rimmed glasses on her nose. “Memory is a tricky thing. It isn’t fully understood. It’s created and stored by the brain, so her level of memory loss is complicated to say the least.”
With the data pad in her hand, Dr. Loveless took over the large screen where McCoy had been displaying profiles. A brain scan appeared in black, white, and grays, different parts smudged and highlighted.
“This is your patient’s final scan. You can see the entirety of the brain was exposed to the memory wipe, which originally seemed to have removed all short-term, long-term, and sensory memory. That’s close to the truth, but”—Dr. Loveless enlarged one section of the brain—“a closer look at this image here around the temporal lobe shows something out of place. See this distortion? My theory is that the memories weren’t removed, so to speak, they were just moved to places where they shouldn’t be.”
“They were relocated?” Seeley asked.
“Yes. Imagine someone came into your house, took all your things, and put them in places you’d never kept them before. You wouldn’t be able to find anything. Memories are like things you need to access in order to use, but if that thing you are trying to find isn’t where it should be—”
“Then you won’t be able to use it,” Seeley finished.
“If my theory is correct, then your patient has all her memories, but they just aren’t where they should be, so she doesn’t know she has them,” Dr. Loveless said.
“Olivia had the skills to pull that off?” Seeley asked.
“I would guess not. With the limited knowledge Dr. Rivener was working with, and the time constraints, I hypothesize it was an error. The intention was to fully remove the memories. Good thing for you, because completely removed would be much more difficult.”
“But can we put them back?” Hammon asked.
“Potentially.”
“What do you need?”
“I need her to be in a lab setting where I have access to the proper equipment—”
“Do you have all of that here?”
“Yes, but—”
“Get a team,” Hammon said to Seeley. “Head to Corpus Christi and find the patient.”
“It’s not that simple,” Dr. Loveless interjected.
“Why not?” Hammon asked.
“To explain without the ‘science crap,’” she bit off, “memories are unpredictable and believed to be highly connected to our emotional and mental state. You can’t force someone to remember something. You need her to be a willing participant.”
Hammon looked as if he might bark back at the small doctor, so Seeley intervened. “If we could convince her to participate, is there a chance it would work?”
Dr. Loveless considered that and nodded. “A chance. Even then, we may not be able to get everything back in order. There are no guarantees. But the more she trusts you, the better her conditions for recovery will be.”
Seeley turned back to Hammon. “She’s never going to cooperate here. We need a different approach.”
Hammon nodded. “Do you have one?”
Seeley’s mind started to formulate an idea. “Maybe.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Dr. Loveless flipped to another part of the brain image and illuminated a small section. “This is the cerebellum—it’s associated with our motor function, or physical skills. Hers hasn’t been touched. It’s one of the only places that remains intact.”
“Her training wasn’t affected by the memory wipe,” McCoy said, drawing the others’ attention.
“Well, it wasn’t misplaced,” Dr. Loveless said. “I imagine in the chaos that is now her mind she probably doesn’t understand what she is capable of, but that won’t stop her from being able to access her skills.”
A moment of silence passed between the men before she continued. “She’s still as dangerous as you made her to be.”
Seeley was already starting toward the door.
“Go with him,” Hammon said to McCoy, and the young analyst responded, his shoes slapping on the hard ground as he rushed to follow.
“What now?” McCoy asked as Seeley pushed open the double doors and stepped into the hallway.
Seeley squared his jaw, his body tensing as his mind prepared to execute its plan. “We get her to trust us.”