Max was watching her with a frown. 'Who was that?' he said.
'A telemarketer,' Isabel lied. 'Nobody important.'
'Bye, Mom!' Maria called as she bustled through the kitchen of the DeLuca house. She wore a long, loose skirt and a spaghetti-strap tank top and she was pulling her hair into a ponytail as she went. 'I'll be back around ten.'
Sadie could hear pretty well from her hiding spot in the bushes outside the DeLuca house, and she managed to duck beneath the window just as Maria passed by inside. The bush she was hiding in had a few thorns, but nothing she couldn't handle. The only thing that mattered was that she get to watch Maria. She began to gather her things together so that she could follow Maria when she left the house.
'Maria!' Amy DeLucas voice called from inside. 'Where are you going?'
Sadie slowly peered over the edge of the window again. Maria now stood near the front door, looking exasperated. Amy faced her from the other side of the kitchen.
'I'm meeting Michael,' Maria said. 'We're going to the movies.'
'From one o'clock in the afternoon until ten at night?' Amy demanded.
Maria rolled her eyes. 'What's with the inquisition?' she asked.
Sadie grinned. 'What's with the inquisition?' she whispered. She loved the way Maria talked… always so sure of herself.
'I have to go to Hondo for the afternoon flea market,' Amy was saying. 'I wanted you to come with me and man the booth today.'
Maria's mouth dropped open in astonishment. 'Excuse me?' she said. 'It's my one day off from the Crashdown.'
'That's the point,' Amy replied. 'You have time to help me today.' She tossed Maria a glow-in-the-dark alien puppet. 'I just got a whole shipment in, so it will be a busy day. I can't handle it alone.'
Maria held the puppet up by its webbed foot. 'Look, selling this alien crap is your thing, not mine,' she told her mother. 'I have a job. And today is my vacation day, so that means I get to spend it doing what I want to do.'
Sadie's legs were getting tired from squatting underneath the windowsill. This argument seemed like it might go on for a while, so she slid down the wall of the house until she was sitting directly under the window. This way, she could still hear every word Maria said, and she could add to her logbook at the same time.
'This 'alien crap' is what puts food on the table, young lady,' Amy cried.
Sadie tuned her out for a moment while she flipped to a fresh page in the notebook on her lap. She took a pencil from her backpack and began drawing a picture of Maria, quickly filling in the details… the pattern on the skirt she was wearing, the way Maria's ponytail sat high up on her head.
'… this is a family business and you're part of the family,' Amy was saying.
'You call this a family?' Maria replied. 'There are two of us, you and me. You sell alien stuff at flea markets, I work at the Crashdown. That's it. We have no family business. We barely have a family!'
Sadie flipped to another blank page and began to write. Mom sells alien toys and stuff, she scribbled quickly. Maria doesn't like to help.
'… enough of Michael?' Amy's voice broke Sadie's
concentration. Was Michael Maria's boyfriend? Sadie got up and peered through the window again. Maria was standing with her hand on the doorknob, ready to leave the house.
'No, Mom, I haven't seen enough of Michael,' Maria was saying. 'I like to see him as much as I can. You might not remember this, but when you have a boyfriend, you actually like to hang out with him.' She turned and pulled the door open so quickly that Sadie barely had time to duck out of sight behind the bushes.
Maria stomped down the driveway and opened the door of her car.
'There's more to life than Michael Guerin, you know!' Amy shouted after her.
Maria didn't answer; she just climbed into the car and peeled out.
Sadie sighed. So much for trying to follow Maria. She looked back down at the notebook in her lap and wrote some more. Maria drives a reddish Volkswagen. Her boyfriend's name is Michael. Michael Geerin.
That would do for now. Sadie closed the notebook and stared at the cover for a moment. Glued carefully to the front of the book was a large, glossy school picture. A picture of Maria.
'Soon I'll know everything about you,' Sadie whispered to the picture. 'Everything.'
3
Maris sat behind her huge cherry wood desk, poring over her file on the Healer. She had a photograph from the incident at the hospital in Phoenix last December. The Healer had cured an entire cancer ward full of children, and there was a security photo of a teenage boy with long hair. The FBI Special Unit… from whom Maris had bought this file… had thought this boy was the Healer. But Maris wasn't so sure.
'It's worth investigating, I guess,' she murmured, writing a note to herself to have a private investigator find out who the guy in the photo was.
Dr. Sosa's thin, reedy voice interrupted her thoughts. 'You told me to report at the end of the day.'
Without looking up, Maris said, 'Come in and shut the door.'
Alan entered her office and closed the thick metal door behind him. 'Liz Parker left about ten minutes ago,' he said.
'And?' Maris asked. 'Did you give her the serum?'
Alan snorted. 'Of course not. I had to have some control samples.'
'Like what?' Maris asked.
'I have the old samples of the Healer's cells, and now I have samples of Liz Parker's. I managed to get a piece of her hair without her noticing.'
'I'm bored by this, Alan,' Maris said.
'If you want me to track the changes in her after I give her the serum, we need to have a baseline sample from before she has the serum,' Alan said petulantly. 'And besides, I found out something very interesting.'
'What?'
'Her DNA is odd.'
Maris frowned. 'Odd how?'
'It has some similarities with the DNA from the Healer's cells.'
Maris sat back in her chair. 'That is interesting,' she said. 'Are you suggesting that when he heals, he actually changes the structure of the patient's DNA?'
'It would appear so,' Alan said.
'So if he heals my husband, he'll be turning Clayton into some sort of superman,' Maris said, more to herself than him.
'No, not at all,' Alan corrected her. 'Liz Parker isn't superhuman. She's simply… different. There's no reason to think the mutated DNA has any effect on her daily life. It may just be a tag left behind by the healing process. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose.'
'Oh, please, Alan,' Maris snorted. 'You scientists can't. figure out the purpose of most of our genetic material. Don't pretend you know what this DNA does.'
Alan sat down in one of her guest chairs without even
asking. 'I think we need to reconsider using Liz to test the serum,' he said.
Maris stared at him with contempt. 'No.'
'Maris… Ms. Wheeler. Liz already has compromised DNA. We won't be able to tell how the serum works on a regular person, a person who's never been healed by the Healer. She isn't a good test subject.'
'Didn't you just say that you think the mutated DNA has no effect on her?' Maris asked.
Alan looked confused. Got him! Maris thought with satisfaction. She could always tell when Dr. Sosa was trying to worm his way out of doing something unpleasant.
'Be sure to give Liz the serum tomorrow,' Maris instructed him. 'Now get out of my office.'
Kyle opened the front door and walked wearily inside. He tossed the keys onto the table beside the door and wiped his sweaty palms on the dark blue jumpsuit that was his uniform at Toby's Garage. Then he wrinkled his
