Page 89 of Ringer
“And what?”
He shook his head. She noticed then how tightly he was holding the wheel.
“Dr. Saperstein and the Ives family have history. A long history.”
“Because of Haven,” Lyra said.
“Okay.” He exhaled. “Okay. Because of Haven.” He didn’t believe her, not totally, not all the way. But he didn’t disbelieve her, either. “Dr. Saperstein was found not far away from where the victims were discovered. And the Iveses are there, now, in Lancaster. They drove straight from Nashville. Look, like I said, I’m flying blind.” He held up a hand as if Lyra had argued with him. “But where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“But Gemma wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Lyra said. “She couldn’t.”
He shook his head. “Sometimes people can do a good job of hiding who they really are,” he said, as if Lyra didn’t know that. “Some people put on their faces the way you and I put on clothes.”
“Exactly.” She was growing impatient. “The faces don’t mean anything.” But when he glanced at her, puzzled, she could tell she’d misread him. Hedidn’tunderstand. He had listened to her without really absorbing it. Maybe he thought she was making it up. “It’s like you said—peoplecan wear different faces. And different people can wear the same face, too. It’s not Gemma,” she repeated, a little louder. “So it must be one of the others.”
“One of the others?” Detective Reinhardt’s voice cracked.
“Yeah. I already told you.” She pivoted in her seat to look at Caelum. “At CASECS, Dr. O’Donnell said some of the other replicas might have escaped. Wherever Dr. Saperstein was, they couldn’t have been far off.”
Detective Reinhardt was quiet for a bit. “So you’re saying that Gemma Ives has—has replicas? That she was... cloned?”
“Of course.” Lyra was too tired to be polite. “Were you even listening?”
“I was, I just—” He broke off. “Bear with me, okay? It’s a lot.” He took a hand off the wheel to rub his temples. “So you think—you think one of Gemma’s replicas is responsible?”
“I know it,” she said. She leaned back against the headrest. She thought of Calliope, number 7, squatting to nudge the broken bird with a knuckle before straightening up to smash it beneath her shoe. Lyra had thought at first she intended to help it fly again. “I bet I know which one, too.”
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 24 of Gemma’s story.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE DAWN CAME, WEAK AND watery, bringing a patter of light rain. Lancaster was long spools of dark green, fields and forests: at any other time, Lyra thought, it would be peaceful.
But now, helicopters motored down over the nature preserve and hovered there like giant mosquitoes. Unmarked, but obviously military grade. There were snipers wearing camouflage visible inside.
“You’re sure you want to be here?” Detective Reinhardt asked, and Lyra realized she’d been clenching her fists so hard she’d left marks.
She nodded. “I want to help Gemma,” she said. “Gemma helped me.” But she was afraid. She was afraid she would not be able to help. She was afraid of the Suits, afraid Detective Reinhardt wouldn’t be able to protect her, afraid that he would try.
But she could no longer be invisible.
Detective Reinhardt drove slowly, showing his badge whenever they were stopped, which was often. The interstate was completely blocked off between the exits to Loag and Middletown, as were all the local roads bordering the Sequoia Falls Nature Preserve. Police had come from all over the state, some of them on their days off.
Detective Reinhardt had said little since they’d reached Lancaster, and had ordered Lyra and Caelum to stay in the car with the doors locked when he climbed out briefly to speak with a cluster of police officers. But she had picked up rumors, whispers, words carried back to the car like a kind of contamination.
There werekids, dozens of them, maybe even more than that, running loose.
Not normal kids, either. Twins, triplets, even quadruplets. Skinny. Feral. Covered with blood.
“Creepy as shit,” she heard one cop say, when Reinhardt swung open the door. “Everyone’s saying that guy Saperstein must have had them in juvenile lockup, but I never seen a juvenile lockup makes kids like these. It’s like something from a horror movie. You can’t make this shit up.”
You can make up anything you want,Lyra felt like calling out to him.Even horror.
But of course, she stayed quiet. She imagined thewhispers blowing like tiny seeds from one person to the next. Words were little things, of no substance at all. But they were curiously stubborn. They rooted.
They grew.
It was easy enough for Reinhardt to get through the various cordons. All he had to do was show his badge. Only one trooper seemed interested in Lyra and Caelum, and leaned down to stare at them in the backseat.
