Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

except the fact that Jillian had been right.

 

Whatever the hell she had seen, truth or not, David corroborated it.

 

She had seen him start to wake up, and bolted from his tent, fetching Jordan. Telling him to ask all his questions, her eyes gleaming with the promise of vindication.

 

Well, she had it.

 

Jordan had checked the EEG readings several times and found the only conclusive thing he could have found. David showed no markers of dreams at all - which meant that the creepy explanation that he and Jillian had shared a dream wasn’t going to fly. Instead they had as conclusive of evidence as they would ever find that the even creepier explanation Jillian had proposed would hold.

 

The toes of small, very familiar sneakers entered his line of sight, and he fought to stand upright and look less shaken than he felt. Jillian’s voice reached him before his eyes made it to her face. “It all matches.”

 

She didn’t ask. She didn’t have to. Jordan knew it was obvious from how he was reeling from his interview with David. But he forced himself to stand erect and look her in the eyes. “He needs Percocet. Then come back and talk to me, please.” He heard the begging quality in his tone. Recognized that it was in response to the instant her eyes had fled elsewhere worrying about David.

 

“He doesn’t even know why he’s in casts; why he isn’t healed.” It was a statement, in a faraway voice, deep concern about the only patient he hadn’t seen Jillian treat as a scientific subject. He told himself the rolling in his gut was from the fact that David’s story had smacked him around and upended his world.

 

Jillian scampered off, fetching meds for David and disappearing into the tent.

 

She had woken up on the other side, wherever the hell that was. And so had David. He had talked to Becky, less than an hour ago. He had chatted with Lucy Whitman’s dad long after the man had died.

 

Jordan started. For a moment he didn’t care about Jillian and David. Was his mother there? Eddie? Was it just the land of the dead? Had it always existed and Jillian and David had simply been thrown there by the reversal? His breathing picked up pace again and he sprinted into the tent, to ask her.

 

But he pulled up short when he saw her standing beside the bed. Talking. Telling David about the two parts, how they were passing back and forth. Jordan held himself in tight check waiting for a spot to interrupt, until Jillian shifted revealing her hand held softly in David’s. His voice found itself, putting the setting to rights.

 

He had no claim, and wondered where the hell all this was popping out from. He had sat across a desk from her, finding her cold and impersonal. And now … well, intense attraction was a normal outcome to a shared traumatic stress.

 

Armed with this explanation, his brain worked again, and he pushed out the words. “Was it just a place that has always existed? Were other people there? Grandparents who died a long time ago?”

 

He shook his head in frustration, wondering how to explain what he meant. But Jillian gave him a sympathetic ‘no’, needing no further background, knowing instantly what he was trying to ask. “There were still a whole slew of people who actually died in the reversal. Remember, Leon isn’t anywhere. I didn’t find any evidence of anyone’s long departed ancestors, and no one seemed to think they were in heaven, which I’m sure would have come to mind if suddenly all your dead relatives were around.”

 

Jordan nodded. And admitted to himself what he had only briefly hoped: his mother wasn’t there.

 

Until that moment, he had simply accepted her loss. That a long round with cancer slowly ate her. That it had destroyed his father as well, even though it didn’t kill him. Only in the glimmer of chance did he realize how much he missed her. But he re-packaged it into its small neat box and shoved it back into the recesses of his brain.

 

Jordan stepped out of the tent, knowing Jillian would follow, soon. And steeling himself to the reality of it all: that Jillian had wandered across unbreachable barriers and hadn’t even known it.

 

With far more force than necessary, startling Landerly from his now almost permanent spot in the straight chair, he shoved his way into the records tent. Jordan made a note to get a recliner. He thought he’d seen one in the faculty lounge. Landerly’s brows went up, silently asking what Jordan knew was coming.

 

He nodded. “It all matches. I-” He shrugged. “I guess it’s all correct. Hers is now the only theory that makes sense.”

 

“What about all the dead? People deceased from a long time ago?”

 

That creeped him out - the fact that it was now his brain working like Landerly’s. “I already asked. And no.”

 

Jillian came into the tent behind him, her sneakers so soft on the now worn grass that she didn’t make a sound, but he felt the cool night air follow her, and he smelled her. “So, you two believe me now.”

 

Both men turned to face her and nodded. Jordan knew what was coming next.

 

“There’s not much option is there?”

 

The two men simply stared at her.

 

Jillian knew.

 

They wanted to believe she was crazy. That she simply believed it was true.

 

But it was.

 

“I’m right aren’t I?” For some feminine reason, it wasn’t enough to feel vindicated. They would actually have to say the words. Their acceptance meant everything.

 

Jordan looked at her through suddenly narrowed eyes. “Until we come up with a better explanation.”

 

She felt her mouth form into a shocked ‘o’. He would just keep looking until he found a way to discredit her. “What better explanation is there?”

 

“Well, maybe this one: you and David share a psychosis, nothing more.”

 

“Psychosis!?” She could have thrown something at him, and wished she had something solid and heavy at hand. Something better than the stethoscope she had casually tossed around her neck upon standing upright.

 

If her boss hadn’t been watching, she just might have slugged him, then slugged him again for being right.

 

It was possible. The world didn’t turn on her wishes.

 

She sniffed in and tried to put the pieces of a calm expression back into place. To let her clenched lips relax. It was much harder than it ought to be.

 

“Children?” Landerly’s condescension made it happen much faster than her will did.

 

She looked over and saw that Jordan, too, had been distracted from their fight.

 

Dr. Landerly held up his cell phone, “I have a Doctor Melanie Sorenson on the line…”

 

Jillian felt her brows pull together. But it was Jordan who filled in the blanks. “That’s Becky’s sister’s name, but I thought she was a child …”

 

Landerly smiled. “That explains a lot.” He turned back to the conversation he had muted with a well placed thumb. “Yes, Dr. Sorenson, what do you have for us?”

 

While they stood there, hovering, he had a conversation with the small girl. Jillian could make out a high-pitched but well-modulated voice because Landerly had his volume up so loud.

 

“notebooks, huh? … Becky’s field notes… . Thank you. We’ll come and get them.”

 

In a few more sentences he signed off and looked at the two of them. “You guys get a fetch job. I want those notebooks.”

 

Jillian didn’t object, but she was curious, “How did she get your cell number? No one has that.”

Landerly grinned. “I think she talked her way through.”

 

“She’s seven!” Jordan looked incredulous.

 

Landerly laughed. “We’ll have to keep her in the CDC’s sights… . Now go get a map and get out to Dr. Sorenson’s house.”

 

Jillian turned to go, her jacket still around her even in the warm tent, she really just hadn’t thought to take it off. Jordan’s hand on her shoulder stilled her, but it was Landerly he spoke to.

 

“Jillian’s not going.”

 

Anger exploded through her in a wash. “Excuse me!?”

 

Still he didn’t face her, simply made his case to the man sitting and watching with a bemused expression. “What if she slides back under?”

 

“I won’t!”

 

When his eyes found hers, dark lights burned in his gaze. “You don’t seem to have any control over it.”

“I’m up and around!”

 

“Yeah, and we thought that last time, too!” His fingers gripped her arm, in that one sure way letting her know she wasn’t calling the shots here.

 

“Well, you could slip back under at any time, too, you know.”

 

“No! I’ve been out here doing research. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the world that slipped back under. No other fantastical tales of the ‘other side’. Just you and David.”

 

“Fantastical!” He was still trying to undermine her. Bastard.

 

“She can go.” Landerly’s cool calm rode over them, radiated out from his seated position, where he clearly still commanded the respect he was due.

 

“But-”

 

Jillian resisted the urge to stick out her tongue when he cut Jordan off. “You’ll be with her. She’ll be fine even if she does go back under.” With that said, he turned his attention away.

 

Jillian knew where her bread was buttered, and she started off toward the operations tent.

 

Jordan didn’t follow her, just seemed inclined to stay behind and stew, so she let him. Five minutes later she emerged from the tent with the keys and quick printed map, thinking she’d just go by herself, until Jordan turned the corner and smacked into her. “Ready?”

 

His voice was tight and clipped, and he yanked the keys from her fingers even as he asked.

 

“I don’t trust you to drive. You might slip away and kill us both.”

 

Her mouth hung open but she followed him out, through the rows of mostly stationary cars and trucks, until he seated himself in the driver’s seat of one and expected her to slide into the passenger spot.

 

Fine. Two can play at that game.

 

And she managed to stay silent for about half the trip. Then finally it just burbled out of her. “Why are you so upset about me coming?”

 

His hands visibly clenched on the steering wheel, but he explained. “The last time you went under, your vital signs started dropping.”

“That isn’t uncommon.”

“Yes, but yours kept slipping. That isn’t uncommon either, in patients who die in their comas. So no, I’m not real comfortable having you in the car and driving you further away from medical care.”

 

She kept her mouth shut and waited out the rest of the ride. They finally arrived at the old farmhouse, where the front door opened even before they put the car in park on the gravel driveway.

 

A small redhead with her hair flowing down past her shoulders came out the front door. She was in typical kid clothes, but no pigtails. And she walked with an air of intelligence and introduced herself in perfect little belle form before handing over a pile of black and white, well-worn composition books. “These were Becky’s. She left them here, because she did a lot of the frog research here. Y’all should have them.”

 

It was Jordan who thanked her by name, took the books and shook hands with the hunky blond older brother, took a few minutes to learn what they did.

 

Aaron was a lawyer. And Jillian resisted the urge to point out that fit the profiles of those who had survived. The lawyers were over here. Of course, one lawyer didn’t prove anything.

 

Melanie sniffed and ignored her. That made sense. Jillian didn’t think she’d ever had a way with kids. Even when she’d been one. But the little girl spoke a mile a minute to Jordan. Didn’tthey all?

 

“Becky told me to go to the magnet school in Knoxville. I didn’t want to, but-”

 

“Why not?” He was down on one knee, just below Melanie’s eye level, and Jillian watched, fascinated. She just wanted to see how it happened, because a real conversation with a child was so far out of her own scope.

 

“I didn’t want to ride the short bus. I didn’t want to be different.” She sniffled again. “But now I think maybe