“You’re smart,” he’d said. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. If I lose focus, you can put me back on the right path. And with all that’s been going on, I feel better knowing where you are. At least you’re not going to disappear on me.” After a pause, he’d added, “And you’re good company.”
So, after lunch, Miles and Chloe were in the back of the limo, Charise behind the wheel.
“Mr. Cookson, Ms. Swanson,” she had said, opening the door for them. Charise had quietly asked Miles what Chloe’s last name was so that she could address her appropriately.
“I think she’d be okay with Chloe,” he said. “And you can call me Miles.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Cookson.”
Once they were on their way, Miles shifted in his seat so he could look at Chloe more directly. He reached into his pocket for his phone. “When we get to the clinic, I’m going to have a few questions for Dr. Gold. I’m going to asking him specifically about these people.”
He opened a document on the phone’s screen and handed it to her. She looked at it and said, “Who are these people? I see my name and Todd’s and...” She looked at him. “Holy shit. This is them.”
“Yeah.”
“These are my half brothers and sisters.”
“It’s time for you to know everything.”
“Who are the missing ones?”
“Katie Gleave, Jason Hamlin, Dixon Hawley. You recognize any of those names?”
Chloe read through the list twice. “No.”
“None of them have been in touch?”
She shook her head. “Maybe Todd and me are the only ones who used WhatsMyStory. But this is for real? These are, like, these are your kids?”
“Sounds funny putting it that way, but yes.”
“So this clinic we’re going to, that’s the one you went to, way back when?”
Miles nodded. “I went to see him once before, since I got my diagnosis. He wasn’t very helpful. I’m hoping he’ll be more so, this time.”
Chloe grinned. “We’re going to rattle his cage.”
“Something like that.”
When they reached the clinic, Miles wondered if it had gone out of business. The waiting room was empty.
But the receptionist Miles had seen here on his previous visit, the one who’d provided the list of names, was at her desk behind an open sliding-glass panel. Julie Harkin did a double take when she looked up and saw Miles standing there, Chloe just behind him.
“I’m here to see Dr. Gold,” he said.
“He’s not in today,” she said quietly. “He’s canceled all his appointments for the rest of the week.” Her eyes narrowed. “You were here before. You’re Mr. Cookson.”
“Yes.”
She glanced about, as though checking to make sure there really were no other people in the room, and when she looked back at Miles she spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “You sent that woman.”
Miles nodded. “I did. Thank you for helping.”
Julie did not look like she was going to say, You’re welcome. She asked, “What did you get me into?”
“Nothing,” Miles said. “I haven’t said anything about where we got the information.”
“But things have started happening,” she whispered accusingly. “Bad things. And the doctor’s freaking out about something. And it’s all happened since you were here. What have you done?”
Then Julie looked past him, as if noticing Chloe for the first time. “Who are you?”
“Chloe Swanson,” she said, offering up a small wave. Then she looked about the room and glanced down the hallway at the doors to various visitation rooms. “So it all began for me here, huh?” She nudged Miles with her elbow, trying to lighten the mood. “Which room did you do it in?”
“Stop,” he said.
Chloe stopped.
Miles said to Julie, “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe at home, maybe out drinking somewhere. I have no idea.”
“I really need to talk to Dr. Gold. Please.”
Julie bowed her head briefly, as though reluctant to look him in the eye. “You know, I looked you up. I know who you are. I wondered who’d have that kind of money, to pay for confidential information. Your name was on all those files. You’re trying to find your biological children.”
Miles nodded. “I had different... motivations in the beginning. But now they’ve changed. You said bad things are happening, and you’re right. Those children I fathered, they’re in danger. I don’t know exactly why. That’s why I want to speak to Dr. Gold again.”
Julie studied him for a moment before she made a decision to pick up the phone and enter a number. After about ten seconds, she said, “Dr. Gold? It’s Julie. I know, I know you didn’t — something has come up and I need to know — I can’t really say what it is, but if you—”
Julie looked at Miles and Chloe. “He hung up.”
“Shit,” Miles said.
“But there was an echo,” she said. “Like the walls were metal. I’m betting he’s at his storage unit.”
Julie wrote down the address on a piece of paper, then two other numbers. One was three digits, the other four. “That first one is the unit number,” she said, “and the second is for the keypad at the gate.” She looked defeated. “I was going to ask you not to tell him where you got the names, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m finished here.”
The storage facility was not far, and Charise had them there in less than ten minutes. She drove the limo right up to the gate, powered down the window, entered the four-digit code into the keypad, and waited while the gate retracted.
Once in the compound, she drove up to a drab, windowless, two-story structure. There were access doors at each end, both equipped with keypads.
“If you need me, sir, I’m available,” Charise said as she held the back door open for Miles. She stood there, taking a stance. “One thing in my work history I didn’t mention was bouncer.”
Miles couldn’t help but grin. “Good to know, but I think we’ll be okay.”
Once they were inside the building, Chloe asked Miles to read off the unit number from the slip of paper Julie had given him.
“It’s two-oh-four.”
“Upstairs,” she said, checking the signs.
They found a stairwell around the corner from a freight elevator, reached the second floor, and started looking for numbers.
“This way,” Chloe said, grabbing Miles’s sleeve and taking him down a corridor in the opposite direction he’d been headed.
About thirty feet ahead, a storage unit door was raised to the open position. Someone could be heard moving things around. There was a buzzing sound that lasted several seconds, then a pause, then the sound of more buzzing.
They closed the distance and saw Martin Gold, in a blue suit and tie, feeding papers into a shredder that had been set up on the edge of a box, the spaghetti-like strips of paper being fed into a green plastic garbage can.
“Dr. Gold,” Miles said loud enough to be heard over the buzzing of the shredder.
Gold looked up, startled. He stopped feeding paper into the machine and the buzzing stopped.
“How did you get in here?” he said.
“We—”
But before Miles could say another word, the cell phone tucked away inside his jacket started to ring. He dug it out and saw DORIAN.
“Hang on.” He tapped the screen and put the phone to his ear. “Look, Dorian, let me call you back in—”
“We got the results already,” she said.
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
Miles turned away from Chloe and the doctor and took a few steps away from them. “Is she okay? Does Chloe show any signs?”
“Chloe doesn’t have Huntington’s.”