Chapter 1

Sloan saw the limousine pull up and block her path, she saw the Bit---Ice Queen in the car. Sloan pounded on the car. "Why did you take him? He was helping us."

The window came down. She looked at Sloan, cold as ice, appropriately. She said "Dear Dr. Parker, I need him for a while. Don’t look for him. Don’t interfere with me in any and I’ll give him back to you…alive. If you don’t, the next time you see him will be at his autopsy. I’ll make sure you’re there." She rolled up the window and the car pulled away.

Sloan looked after her stunned. What would she do without Tom? Ed was, Ed, what had happened to Ed? Did they take him too?

Sloan raced up stairs and into her apartment. The door was still open and she saw Ed lying on the floor. She ran over to him and shook him. He didn’t move. Was he dead?

She placed her fingers aside his neck and felt a strong pulse. Probably drugged in some way she thought. She looked around and shuddered. The ice queen may come back after me and Ed. She grabbed her backpack from her closet and started to stuff some clothes into it. She went to the closet to get some more things and looked around.

What was that? The black bag Tom had dumped there when he moved in. Well, practically moved in. She picked it up and brought it to the bed. Perhaps there was something that could help her find him. She didn’t know what. She opened it up and was shocked. Bundles of money. Dozens of them. Bundles of 100’s and 20’s then it hit her. This must be his chameleon money. Money to use when he was supposed to be someone else.

She looked around the apartment and decided that she better go and leave everything. She went over to Ed and shook him again. He mumbled at her. "Listen here, if we don’t go now she will get us and I am not ready to die." She slapped his face to get his attention. "Come on." She pulled him up and propped him on the counter as she did she saw the pictures of her family. She shook her head. Those stay too. She looked around again to make sure. Her new laptop was on the counter. She had not even gotten to use it yet. She picked it up and stuffed it into the bag. Zipping it up she felt Ed start to slip and fall.

"Oh, no you don’t" she says as she grabs hold of an arm. She slings his arm over her shoulder and maneuvers him out the door. God, he is heavy, she thought as she struggled to get him down the stairs and into her car. Thank God it was unlocked. She opens the door to the back seat and pushed him into the car. Wow, she had left the keys in as well as her purse and both were still here. Will wonders never cease?

She starts her car and looks at the gas gauge. Lots of gas. I won’t need to stop for a while. She heads for the freeway. Wondering where should she go? Out of town and somewhere no one would be looking and hopefully no one could find her. Or Ed. She shakes her head I will worry about Tom later. He’s alive. She promised me that at least.

Where can I go? Driving north on the freeway. She thought about it for a long time. That place up in the mountains. That cabiny place. It was so long ago. Where was it. She drove the back ways to a small town that she had been to seven or eight years ago. Right out of college, it had been loads of fun. She hoped it was open this time of year. Not warm enough for the summer traveler yet. Wait a minute, there it was.

It looked like a motel except there were about a dozen individual cabins. Exactly what she was looking for. The lights are on and the sign says vacancy. Maybe there was someone here so she could get a cabin. She looks at her watch. Almost 3 AM. Damn Probably no one there.

She turns on the overhead light and grabs her purse, pauses, and grabs a bundle of 20’s and puts it in her purse. Just to be safe she opens her glove box and looks to see if her emergency flashlight is there. Aha, gotcha.she grabs the flashlight and hopes she doesn’t need it.

Brrr! It’s really cold. She goes up to the door and reads the sign on it "If no one is inside take a key and find a room. We’ll settle up in the morning." She smiled thinking that maybe she went back in time.

She opens the box and sees a diagram of the park with keys on the cabins. She takes the one the furthest in the back. Number7. Well maybe it will be lucky seven for her and Ed.

She gets back into her car and slowly drives back to the back cabin. She parks her car as close to the door as she can. Ed is heavy. She gets out of the car and opens the cabin door. Still cold in here. With the lights on she can see a wall heater on the far wall. She throws the bag and her purse on the table in the room. And crosses to the heater. A few minutes later she has it on. It should be warmer in here soon. She looks around. Shit only one bed, well, nothing can be done about that now. She pulls back the covers on the bed and goes to get Ed. She maneuvers him onto the bed and reaches down and pulls off his shoes. After a few moments though she pulls off his pants and shoves his legs under the covers. She checks his pulse again. Strong and regular. He appears to be sleeping a natural sleep. She goes outside and makes sure the car is locked. She probably shouldn’t worry but she does.

She turns on the bed lamp and turns off the overhead light. She locks the door and puts a chair in front of it. It won’t stop anyone but maybe it’ll slow him down. She checks out the small cabin and sees that it has a back door. And secures that too.

She goes over to the table and pulls her phone out of the bag and tries Attwood again. Damn. Still not in service. She shrugs and goes over to the bed she needs some sleep. She slips out of her dress and lays down in her slip. If Ed says something I’ll bust his chops.

Sloan lays down and finally sleeps. She jerks awake, what was that? Something had awakened her. A sound, the wind? Leaves blowing? She wasn’t sure what it was. Slipping out of bed she went to the window lifts the edge of the curtain with her finger and peers out. Someone, she couldn’t see who, was painting her car. Strange. At least, it looked as if someone was painting her car. She moistened her lips, something was not right. Pulling the other chair over, she sits by the window, to see if anything else happens.

Sunlight streams through the curtain and awakens her. She reminds herself not to sleep in a chair again. How had Tom done it for so long? With that thought she felt crushed again and went to check on Ed. Still sleeping but she had to go pay for the room. Slipping her dress on she wrapped the spare blanket around her took her purse and headed out.

She came to the small office and went in. Hitting her hand on the bell she waits until a matronly woman appears. "How are you, dearie? I see you came in sometime last night."

"Yes, we were traveling north when my boyfriend came down sick. I don’t know how long we’ll be staying." Sloan said.

"Well, its $30 dollars a night or $175 for the week. "

"Well, I’ll pay for the week. I hope he’ll feel better by then. Do you know of a drugstore where I can get some things?"

Sloan gets the 20’s out of her purse and passes them to the lady. She hopes she doesn’t sound too suspicious.

The lady made her change and asked her to fill out a register sheet. Sloan bit her lip thinking about what name to put on it. The lady touched her hand and Sloan jumped. "Don’t worry," she said with a twinkle in her eye "just put down ‘Mr. And Mrs. Jones’, Somebody has to be named Jones."

Sloan grinned at her and wrote it down.

"Now don’t worry. My husband will be down in a little while to give you some dishes. We haven’t got them outfitted for summer yet. Now you listen here. I don’t know what your running from but no one will know that you’re here. If you go about 5 miles down the road back the way you come there is a kinda general store. They have a little bit of everything there for the fishermen. They come here both summer and winter. This time of year Jim don’t usually open ‘til noon or there abouts. I reckon he’s out fishing too." She patted Sloans hand and said, "Now off with you. You got a fella to care for."

She wraps the blanket tighter around her to get back to the cabin. When she opens the door she sees that Ed is still asleep. She looks at her watch. It’s after 10. Time for sleepyhead to get up.

After dropping her purse on the table she goes over to him and gently shakes him. "Ed, Ed wake up." She goes to the bathroom and gets a washcloth from a drawer. At least some things are kept in the cabin. She wets it and brings it and a towel over to Ed. She didn’t want to awaken him this way but she was going to need his help.

She put the wet cloth over his face while saying "Ed. Wake up."

Ed jerked awake. "Ohhh!! My head! What hit me?"

"The ice queen that’s what hit you." Sloan says.

Ed looks at her and says, "What are you doing here?"

He looks around and says, "Where is here?"

"Listen we don’t have time to play 20 questions. What happened? Do you know where they took Tom?"

"What do you mean ‘where they took Tom?’ What happened Sloan and where are we?"

"Think, what is the last thing that you remember?"

Ed closed his eyes and tried to think through the pounding in his head. He hoped it wasn’t a hangover. He’ll never drink again. He’d given Tom the Genogenesis serum and he was reverting. Sloan was going to go back to the lab for more serum. "They came crashing through the door. They hit me with something. And grabbed Tom. What do you mean the Ice Queen hit me?"

"I saw her in her limousine outside the apartment" Said Sloan. "She told me not to look for him or the else. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and booked, taking you with me. I can’t get hold of Attwood, so now we’re on our own."

There was a soft knock at the door. Sloan answered it. There was an elderly man at the door. His blue eyes twinkled when she answered.

"Hattie said you’d be needing some things." he said, as he passed her a box. Sloan put it on the table. "We also figured you’d need a few groceries. They’ll last you ‘til you get to the store" he passed her a cloth carryall bag with a few groceries in it.

"Thank you", Sloan stammered.

"Glad to help. By the way my name is Billy. And don’t worry, I’ll have your phone hooked up in a couple of hours. By the way, there’s towels and such in the drawers in the bathroom. If you need any thing, let me know."

He nodded at Ed. And said, "You know, you’re the prettiest stray that Hattie ever found."

He turned and walked away. Sloan shut and locked the door.

She looks in the bag and the box. She has some instant oatmeal, tea, soup, sugar, and crackers. In the box is some basic cooking equipment. She walks over to the cupboard and looks in and sees some dishes.

"Well, well. Do you want to eat oatmeal or soup for breakfast?"

Ed looks at her and rubs his head. "I think I’ll have soup. I don’t think that I could take oatmeal. It looks too much like how I feel."

Sloan grinned. "Well, then soup it is."

She put the soup on the small stove and washed up some dishes for them to use. After giving Ed a bowl of soup and getting one for herself, she sat at the small table. She picked up the cell phone that she had and tried to call Attwood again. Well, well, well, it was ringing.

"Dr. Attwood, this is Sloan Parker."

"Sloan, stop and punch in 5-4-9. Do it now"

She gasped and did as he asked. "What was that about?"

"That was a scrambler code. Why do you think I gave you that phone?"

"Were you expecting something like this? Do you know where Tom is? Where did she take him?

"Sloan, start at the beginning. If I know what’s going on maybe I can help you. What happened?"

She took a deep breath and said, " I’ll give you the short version. That Bit…the Ice Queen took Tom. She had the lab sealed and everything removed. She said if I did anything to find him, she would kill him. Her men drugged Ed. I decided that we could be next so I took off. I’m hiding out in a cabin off highway 58 north of Tehachapi.

"How are you paying for everything? Leave no paper trail".

"Everything is in cash. Ed and I are registered as ‘Mr. & Mrs. Jones’. As good a name as anything."

"Well, officially, I’m dead. I’ll arrange a way for you to get to a safe house. Now, can you remember anything unusual or strange? It could be important."

She hesitated, "Well the strangest thing happened last night. I couldn’t sleep and I looked out and saw someone doing something to my car. It looked like it was being spray painted but I couldn’t see anything."

"Probably it was UV spray. With it you can be followed at night with special glasses. And sometimes tracking satellites. They probably didn’t want to use a tracking device because they weren’t able to put it inside the car. I’ll call you back this evening. You probably are in no immediate danger so just act normally under the circumstances but, don’t leave your room empty. They are likely to plant a microphone. If you want to talk to Ed about anything private, do like they do in spy movies, go in the bathroom and have the water running. It works as white noise. They may have a parabolic microphone and can use it to tell what is being said through glass. Assume anything that you say is being overheard."

"I" she swallowed, how did my life become a bad spy movie, "I understand. What about you? I said your name." she said in a whisper.

"We will have to hope that they are not set up yet. However from now on no names. And the first thing I will tell you is the code for the scrambler circuits."

"They are probably following you hoping that you will lead them to me or to the Dominant peace faction. Don’t worry, I will call you. And we will get Tom back." He hung up."

She looked over at Ed with the phone to her ear. She got up and put her hand over his mouth. "Don’t say anything." she whispered into his ear. "Go into the bathroom."

He nodded and got up. "Where’s my pants?" he mouthed at her. She smiled and pointed at the end of the bed. They had fallen to the floor. She walked to the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower and the sink. Ed followed her.

"What’s going on?"

Sloan whispers, in a voice barely above the sound of the water, "Attwood said to act as if each word we said was being overheard. Anything that we don’t want someone watching to hear we should say in here with the water running. Just like a spy movie. He also said not to leave the cabin. If we do than they can put a microphone in the room."

"How do you know that there isn’t one here already?"

"No one knew where I was going. What were they going to do, bug every motel room in Southern California?

Ed nods in agreement.

"I have to ask," Ed said, with a shake of his head, "Did you undress me?"

"I’ve seen you in bed a hundred times. What of it? I slept in the bed, too. What little sleep I could get."

"Oh, no." he groans as he sinks to his knees. "You know-Tom’s going to kill me."

"Ed, we did what was necessary. You know that. What makes you think he won’t see it the same way."

"Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you. I don’t know, its like the sun rises and sets in you. He may not be able to forgive me. Would you forgive him under the same circumstances?"

"Ed, I think I would forgive anything that would get him back to me. Come on lets start giving a performance."

She turns the water off and leaves the bathroom. "Now, Ed, I’m going to get us something to eat and something to wear. I’ll be back soon."

She picks up her purse. "Now you rest. I’m not going to be gone long. And lock the door."

Ed looks a little dazed as he locks the door and looks out the window and watches as she leaves.

He sits down on the bed and waits.