Under His Skin

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Lennon glanced at his schedule and grimaced. He had an interview scheduled with a French news network to talk about the biotech sector and investing. He’d rather have Rada do this interview. She was ten times as charismatic as he was, and a better public speaker to boot. Unfortunately, she couldn’t speak a word of French.

Lennon could admit that he wouldn’t be a bad interview. He knew the sector, and he knew how to speak to the media. He just didn’t like to talk about money, and he didn’t like to talk about himself all that much.

And he hated to dress up.

There was nothing else that he could do, though. It wasn’t as though he could show up in what he wore in the lab. He stretched out a little and sent a quick note to Rada, and then he headed for the exit.

The wind picked up a little as Lennon walked down Binney Street toward the river. It wasn’t raining, not yet, but it would soon enough. He guessed that they needed the rain after the hot, dry summer they’d had in Boston. The necessity of rain didn’t change the grimy feel of Kendall Square on a gray day. He quickened his pace and made it back to his condo by the river as the first drops fell.

He headed up to the sixth floor. Something about the place didn’t seem quite right, and for a second he considered calling security or the police. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong, though. He couldn’t see anything out of place, and he couldn’t see any signs of forced entry. He had to shake his head and laugh at himself. I’m just being paranoid. A little paranoia might be a reasonable response to having a bunch of intrusion attempts on his company’s systems, but it wasn’t a good enough reason to waste Cambridge PD’s time.

He headed into the bedroom and cast a longing glance at his bed. No, he couldn’t crawl into bed and pull the covers up. He headed over to the closet and glowered at it for a moment. Then he pulled out clothes. Slim, dark-gray trousers, stylish but not too formal, would be good enough. He grabbed a white dress shirt, a vest that matched the trousers, and a lighter gray jacket to go with them. A black silk tie and handkerchief completed the look.

He checked himself in the mirror. He could try slicking his hair back, but he hated the way that looked on him. He hated the way it felt even more—like a helmet. Instead, he settled for some product to keep his wavy blond hair from frizzing out and made sure that his earrings weren’t overpowering. He didn’t look awful. He looked good. If Greg was still out there somewhere, hopefully he’d see the interview and regret having left.

Except Greg couldn’t have been more bored by financial news and didn’t speak any more French than Rada did. Lennon hung his head for a second and sighed. Then he picked it up. He was a successful scientist and CEO. He wasn’t a lovesick teenager, for crying out loud.

Lennon found his phone and ordered a ride to the Boston hotel the French journalists were using as their studio. Apparently Jamal B would meet him in a black Jeep with tinted windows.

Lennon headed down to the building lobby to wait. It didn’t take Jamal B very long to arrive; he must have already been in the neighborhood. The black Jeep pulled up two minutes after Lennon got down to the lobby. He checked the license plate against what the ride share group had sent him. When they matched, he approached and knocked on the passenger side window. “Excuse me, are you Jamal?”

The driver lowered the window and gave Lennon an easy smile. “You bet, man. Hop in the back. Lennon P, right?”

Lennon slid into the back seat and buckled himself in. The interior was black, like the exterior, and the overall effect was a little bit like being in a cave. He flashed back for a moment to being in one of those old subway tunnels that he’d explored with Greg, with nothing but a couple of flashlights and a compass to guide them. “That’s me,” he said, chasing the cobwebs from his brain. “I’m heading over to the Long Wharf Marriott.” He put his briefcase onto his lap.

“Sure thing, man.” Jamal pulled out into traffic.

The drive started out fairly normal. No one in Boston knew how to drive in the rain, despite the fact that most of them had grown up and learned to drive right there in New England. Lennon knew that he’d have extra time to go over his materials as they inched their way down Memorial Drive. He had a few injectors, preloaded with nanobots, to show the journalists. He guessed that empties would have been as effective on camera, but they didn’t keep empties lying around the office. He had his tablet, which was more of a security blanket than anything else for him, and he had some tools.

He closed his briefcase and looked out the window. “Have you been doing the ride share thing for long?” he asked Jamal.

Jamal shook his head and gave a little grin. “Not really. Only a few days.” His light brown hands gripped the wheel a little tighter.

“Ah.” Lennon toyed with his seat belt. “Just something to pick up a little extra cash or is it a change in careers for you?”

Jamal chuckled. “Oh, it’s definitely a side gig. Why not, you know? I mean, I’m young, I’ve got the time, why not use it to make money? Someday I might meet a woman and settle down, raise a family. I’ll stop then, and I’ll have a nice little nest egg to start out with too.”

“I hear that.” Lennon grinned. “I always had the same kind of mindset, I guess. I was still waiting tables at night until the company got too big for me to be able to balance both.”

“Nice.” Jamal gave an approving nod and guided the Jeep onto the O’Brien Highway, heading toward I-93.

Things opened up a little bit on 93, so Lennon sat back and let Jamal focus on driving instead of on small talk as they drove toward the expressway. He was paying enough attention, therefore, to notice that Jamal got onto the onramp for 93 North instead of 93 South.

“Jamal, buddy, I think you took a wrong turn there.” Lennon tried not to sound annoyed. Jamal was new at this, and Lennon had left plenty of extra time in case of traffic or whatever. This shouldn’t be a major hassle.

“Oh, sorry, my bad.” Jamal winced. “I guess I can turn around at that first exit coming up here.”

Lennon bit down on the inside of his cheek. “Sounds good.” The next exit was Medford, and Medford had probably been a traffic nightmare back when it was founded, but he couldn’t exactly be choosy right now. “No big deal.” He sat up a little straighter, not quite as relaxed as he’d been before. Hopefully they wouldn’t get too tied up to get to the interview.

Jamal missed the next exit. He changed lanes, too, sliding into the third lane and picking up speed.

Lennon’s mouth went dry. “You don’t actually drive for the company.”

Jamal chuckled. “Well, I did get a job with them. I had to make it look real. If I never have to drive another drunk secretary from Landsdowne Street to Allston, though, it will be too soon. The things I’ll do for a job.” He shook his head. “I mean really. When’s the last time you tried to scrub puke out of carpet?”

Lennon fumbled for his phone. His hands trembled, but he forced himself to move. “So you’re working for someone else.”

“Well yeah.” Jamal met Lennon’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Look, Lennon, you’re a smart guy. I hope you’ve got some fun solitaire games on that thing, because otherwise it’s a brick. You don’t really think I wouldn’t have a cell phone jammer in this thing?”

Lennon checked his phone. The words No Signal mocked him from the upper left corner of the screen. “Why?”

“Well, I can’t have you calling for help now, can I?” Jamal shook his head. “Don’t worry, your virtue is perfectly safe with me. I’m not a queer.” He sniffed. “You seem like a nice enough guy for all that. Let me tell you how this is going to go. You and me, we’re going to take a little trip. If you’re cooperative, I won’t have to restrain you, and you can be nice and comfortable in the back seat just like you’ve been this whole time. Right? We’ll get to where we’re going, make the transfer, and everything will be as easy as riding a bike.”

Lennon forced himself to breathe. His chest hurt, although he didn’t know if that was from forgetting to breathe or from the way his heart was rattling its cage. “And if I resist?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. For starters, I’m the one driving the car, right?” Jamal smirked. “A fist fight in a moving car isn’t going to work out well for either of us.” He glanced back at Lennon. “You want some music? I can put something on for you. You guys like dance music, right?”

Lennon kept very still. “I’m afraid my club days are long behind me. I’m more of an alt-rock guy.”

Jamal laughed a little. “Ah, I should have guessed, with those earrings and stuff.” He put the radio on. Apparently kidnappers equipped their cars with satellite radio. Who knew?

“So who is it that’s paying you to drag me off into the Great White North?” Lennon’s mind raced. He tried to think of everything that he’d ever read about kidnappings and came up with nothing but equations. He could remember everything that there was to know about how the human brain processed pain, but nothing about how to keep a kidnapper from putting a bullet into that same organ.

“Oh come on, I’m not going to tell you that.” Jamal scoffed. “I’m a professional. Besides, man, it’s not like the name she gave me is likely to be her real name. Right?”

“Of course.” Lennon forced a weak smile to his lips. “Had to try.”

“I get it.” Jamal rolled his shoulders as the strains of some singer-songwriter crap came tinkling out of the speakers. “I do. I mean, this is probably pretty far outside your area of expertise. You’ve spent your whole life in safety. You’ve lived in suburbs and cities, and in labs. You’ve never been in real danger before.”

Lennon frowned. “I’ve never been in a war zone.” He squeezed his briefcase. There wasn’t much else for him to hold onto right now. “If you think that a guy like me’s never been in danger, though…”

Jamal waved one hand, keeping the other one on the wheel. “You’ve never been in danger that you didn’t bring on yourself, I guess. I mean sure, it’s kind of shady to go around attacking people for who they sleep with, but at the same time you all go waving it in people’s faces. I guess it’s not for me to judge.” He shrugged. “My point is you’ve never played at this level before. You’ve never put your hat in the ring and put yourself at the level with these kinds of players.”

These kinds of players. “This is work related.” Lennon slumped down in his seat and looked at the rain-spattered cars around him. “Does this have anything to do with the intrusion attempts against Interior I found out about this week?”

Jamal chortled. “Intrusion attempts? Sounds like fun, man!” He slapped his knee. “Sorry. I think my sense of humor owes a lot to the locker room.”

Lennon only had to encourage his own grin a little bit. “Yeah, well, I’ve known a few guys like that. Seriously, though, does this…experience…have anything to do with the hacking attempts?”

Jamal tilted his head to the side. “Huh. I don’t know anything about that. I wouldn’t tell you if I did, probably, but I honestly don’t know. My clients tell me what I need to know and not much more. I’m a freelancer. I get hired to do a job. If I get caught, the last thing my clients need is for me to go spilling the beans about things I have no business with.”

Lennon nodded and loosened his tie. He didn’t need the stupid thing anymore, and the last thing he needed was to feel like he was being strangled. “That makes sense.”

“Just lie back and relax, genius boy. I know this isn’t what you wanted, and I’m sorry about that, but you don’t have a lot of control over the situation. Rest and we’ll get you to where you need to go. You look kind of tired anyway; might as well get your shuteye while you can. Learned that in the army.”

“Gotcha.” Lennon closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his briefcase.

He didn’t sleep. He didn’t know how much time he had. He didn’t want to spend time sleeping when he should be spending it planning his getaway.

He didn’t know much. He knew he had no way of reaching out to his friends in Boston. He knew he was heading north, and he knew Jamal was being paid by someone else to bring him there. Beyond that, everything was a mystery.

He thought he could be fairly certain the kidnapping and the hacking were connected. Sure, these could be two separate incidents, but that would be an awfully big coincidence. Lennon knew coincidences did happen sometimes, but they didn’t happen very often.

Since he knew the two crimes were connected, he could assume they were related to his new bullet. He didn’t have any proof of that, but it wasn’t hard to extrapolate from the facts. No one had ever tried to kidnap him for the nanobots that healed people. No one had ever tried to kidnap him for the nanobots that could temporarily paralyze people.

He could make the intuitive leap to the future. The best-case scenario was that Jamal’s client held him hostage for the plans for the bullet. Rada would never give those up. She couldn’t. They’d written that into Interior’s corporate bylaws. The worst-case scenario was that Jamal’s client killed him outright, but Lennon didn’t think the worst case was the most likely case. They’d have done it back in Cambridge if that were what they wanted.

The kind of person who hired someone else to abduct a scientist wasn’t likely to have great intentions. Jamal might be personable, and even friendly, but he was still a mercenary. He would do what he was being paid to do. Lennon had to do whatever he could to get away from Jamal, before he was “transferred” to the client.

He wouldn’t allow himself to be forced to serve some other regime or be compelled to harm others. He’d worked too hard, for too long, to find ways to save and improve lives. Lennon had some injectors and some tools. His friends had no idea where he was. They might not even realize he’d been taken. He was on his own.

There was no use fretting about it. The only thing he could do was to stay alert until he could find a way to escape. No one was going to do it for him.