by CJ Lyons
“No. Please. Don’t.” Tommaso’s voice rose and broke.
Devon pierced his skin with the needle, his finger hovering over the syringe’s plunger. “Tell me what you did to my daughter. Tell me how to cure her and the others.”
Tommaso’s eyes went wide with fear. It wasn’t Devon or the syringe that he focused his gaze on, but me. “You’re a doctor. You can’t let him do this. You have to stop him. Please.”
He was right. But oh so wrong. I’d already killed. And now I was also trying to save twenty children from the horrendous death I faced. Twenty children facing that danger because of Tommaso and his partners.
Decision made, I straightened my spine as I stared down at Tommaso. “I’m not a doctor. Not anymore. Tell him what he wants to know and this is all over.”
His panicked expression softened at my words. He appeared calm, almost serene. “I can’t.”
“Then I’m sorry.” I’d barely said the words when Devon thrust the plunger down, injecting the man.
His gaze remained locked on me. “You look so much like him.”
I stepped toward him, confused. “Who?”
“Your father.”
There was no way Tommaso had known my father. He would have been a child when Dad died. “Tell me what you mean,” I urged. “Give us what we want, and we’ll treat you with the reversal agent. Now, before the drug takes effect.”
“Too late.” His tone was one of regret.
He arched up, his entire body straining. The restraints gave off the creaking noise of leather being stressed to its limits, but they held. Devon pushed away with the stool and stood.
“It’s barely even begun to take effect,” Devon said as the man writhed below him. “Tell me, how do we cure the fatal insomnia? Save my daughter. You know you can. Save all those other kids. Be a hero.” His voice was hypnotic, compelling.
Devon pulled a vial from his pocket, held it up for Tommaso to see. “I stole some of your reversal agent. Tell me what I need to know and this all stops.” He paused. “If you don’t, then Dr. Rossi is going to take the information from you. You know she can.”
Tommaso closed his eyes, jaws clenched tight, fighting the drug and the restraints. The sight made me sick, my stomach revolting at the idea that I was part of this…torture. The only word to describe it, no matter how good our intentions.
Suddenly, he began choking. His lips parted, releasing a gush of blood.
“What the hell?” Devon grabbed the man’s head, forcing his jaws apart.
I rushed forward, reaching for the instrument tray. The blood was burbling like a stream, spraying us both, covering Tommaso’s chest. Worse was the blood filling his airways, choking him to death.
“He bit off his tongue. Damn it. I need to clamp off the vessels.” A plume of arterial blood hit me in the eye as I strained to find the blood vessels in the pool of red. I clutched at the dental suction catheter, but the vacuum wasn’t engaged, so it was useless.
Tommaso stopped struggling. His eyes fluttered open, fixed on me. Fear filled them. I wasn’t touching him directly, so I had no idea what he was thinking in that last second, but I do know the last thing he saw was my face.
And then he was gone. Even if we’d been in my ER instead down here in the tunnels, I probably couldn’t have saved him. But still I tried. I turned the vacuum suction on high, jammed the catheter down his trachea, trying to clear it of blood. I rammed clamps into his mouth, blindly grasping at any piece of tissue that could have been a blood vessel. I did everything I could, but it was all useless.
Finally, Devon pulled me away from the man’s lifeless body. I whirled on him, both of us covered in blood. “What did you do? He was our last chance!”
Flynn stepped between us, separating us. “Dr. Rossi. He didn’t do anything.”
I frowned, shaking my head, not understanding.
“I didn’t give him any PXA,” Devon explained. “It was sterile water. I couldn’t risk accidentally killing him. But I figured since his people knew PXA overdoses opened a person’s mind to your gifts, then all I needed was you here and the threat of the PXA.”
Flynn threw a towel over Tommaso’s body. “Why didn’t he tell us what we want to know? Rather than go through the hell of both a PXA overdose and having a stranger invade your mind and steal your memories?”
“You used me,” I accused Devon. I hated it. It was logical and perverse and was something his father or half-brother would have done.
“To save Esme, damn right I did. But I didn’t kill him.”
I stared down at the corpse strapped to the chair. “He bit his tongue off. He killed himself rather than expose his secrets.”
“Rather than have you inside his head,” Devon said. “Which means this is a lot bigger than we thought. To instill that kind of loyalty in a foot soldier—”
“Foot soldier?” The term seemed odd. Especially for someone dedicated enough to attend medical school, go through years of rigorous post-grad training. For what? To throw away his gift of healing to keep a secret that endangered dozens of children?
Who the hell were these people? What did they want? And what did my father have to do with them?
“He was just a soldier. Disposable.” Devon turned to me, his face tightened into a determined mask. “Angela, don’t you get it? Things are only going to get worse. We’re at war. And we have no earthly idea who the enemy is or what they want.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Ryder unlocked the back door of his house and grabbed his brimming bags. “I’m home,” he called out in a jovial tone, feeling like Santa Claus. He’d texted Rossi while he was wrapping things up at the station, told her the danger was over, that he’d meet her here.
“The guy who owns the health store owes me one. I got him to open up.” He plopped the bags onto the counter and began unpacking them. “I’ve got you the best tryptophan and melatonin they make, plus organic protein powder, high-dose stress vitamins, this great berry called acai—turns everything purple but tastes good, so no more yucky green-seaweed-grass shakes. They even had vegan doggy biscuits for when Ozzie visits.”
That’s when it hit him. The house was silent.
Not the sleeping in on Christmas Day kind of silent. The empty, nobody lives here kind of silence.
No Ozzie racing across the hardwood floors, his claws making that funny clacking noise.
No Rossi.
He abandoned the bags and prowled through his house as if it belonged to a stranger. Finally reached the bedroom. She’d left her note on his pillow. Had she even seen the irony in that?
* * *
Ryder. We both know I suck at good-byes, but I promised you I wouldn’t go without one. So here it is.
Don’t try to find me. It’d break my heart—there’s no way in hell I could ever give up the fight if there was any hope of salvaging one more moment with you.
Either way we both lose.
I don’t regret a single moment, only that I can’t give you more. But I warned you, this story can’t ever have a happy ending.
Take care of yourself, stay safe, don’t give up the fight—there are too many innocents who need a soldier like you keeping watch over them.
Love,
Rossi
* * *
He crumpled the paper in his fist. Sank onto the bed and ran the palm of his free hand over his face. What had she done? Where had she gone?
Was she even still alive? Was this a goodbye or a suicide note?
He smoothed the paper over his knee and read it again. And again. Until tears blurred his vision, and all he could see was her face, head thrown back, hair flying loose, fiddle tucked under her chin, her entire being suffused with joy.
The moment he had first fallen in love with her.
He set the note back on his pillow, then moved it across the bed to her side. He stood, shrugging off the heavy feeling that weighed on his shoulders like a corpse’s shroud.
He prowled through the room,
searching for anything she’d left behind. Nothing. Except the spare toothbrush leaning up against his on the bathroom sink. He ended up at his dresser, hoping to find a hair clip, a comb, anything valuable enough that she’d return for. Nothing.
He looked in the mirror, saw a haggard man who’d clocked too many miles and witnessed too much heartache. Nothing there, either. Fury and frustration blossomed, billowing through his chest with each breath, racing through his veins until he could no longer contain it. He swept his arm across the dresser, sending the random detritus of his life flying to the floor, the crash of breaking glass the only sound except for his ragged breathing.
Turning back to the bed, he stared down at the note, the blue ink scrawled across white paper going in and out of focus like an abstract painting.
The morning light danced through the curtains, reminding him of a child’s delight, opening presents on Christmas morning, crystalizing every pen stroke into clarity. And he realized what she hadn’t left behind.
She’d left the note, but kept his pendant. That had to mean something.
She’d made her choice, and he respected that.
But it didn’t mean he was going to let her go alone into the dark. Not without a fight. Definitely not without hope.
This wasn’t over. They weren’t over. Their story had just begun…
* * *
It was the hardest note I’d ever written. Even harder was waiting for Flynn to return after delivering it.
Devon and I were huddled in what appeared to be a classroom inside the underground bunker, my new home for the time being. A map of the city, including the tunnels, was spread out on the desk between us.
“I’ve got good news and bad.” Flynn’s voice startled both of us.
Devon hid it well, barely a flinch as he raised his head casually, as if he’d known she was in the room before she spoke.
Me, not so casual. After everything that had happened tonight and not having taken my meds in hours, my nerves were so brittle they felt as if they’d shatter at a high-pitched mouse squeak. I whirled and jumped, fists raised.
Flynn merely grinned. She tossed a backpack—mine—to the floor, followed it by skidding a bag of my meds across the desk to me. Then, gently, she set down my violin case.
“No one’s left watching your place,” she said, “except cops. There was some kind of bomb scare or something. Your family’s safe. Your uncle got your message, said he’d take care of getting your mom and sister out of town.”
I slumped in relief, leaning my weight on my palms braced against the desktop. It took all my strength to ask, “And Ryder?”
“Left your note. No one is watching him, not yet anyway.”
My breath escaped so fast my knees buckled. I tried to hide it by sliding into one of the student desks, but knew I was fooling no one.
“What’s the bad news?” Devon asked impatiently. He was coordinating his men to secure all the tunnel entrances.
“The hazmat emergency at the abandoned warehouse down at the wharf is all over the police scanner. They called in all the off-duty cops and firemen to respond.”
“We expected that,” I said. “It’s not bad news.”
“It is when I found two men watching the front and back of your doctor friend’s house. And one of them was a cop. Who should have been anywhere but there.”
“Louise’s house?” I turned to Devon. “We need to get her and her family down here where we can protect them.”
He frowned in thought. “No. She’ll be safe enough for now. I’ll send some men to keep an eye out. But if they’re watching her, there’s a good chance Tommaso had time to tell his people about the children. They come first.”
“How are we going to convince nineteen families to abandon their lives and move down here? And how are we going to treat them once they are here?” They both looked at me. “I’m not a researcher. We need Louise. Her husband can help as well. He’s a biostatistician, consults for the CDC.”
“We have to prioritize,” Devon said, sounding like a general at war. Or an ER doctor performing triage during a mass-casualty event.
“And Esme?” Flynn asked.
Devon cleared his throat, focusing on the map for a long moment. His hand tightened into a fist. “She’ll move down here as well. I’ll have to stay up top, keep an eye on Kingston Enterprises. Plus, that way they won’t know we know they’re behind the children’s illness.”
“They’ll know someone knows,” Flynn said. “Nineteen families are going to go missing.”
“Not if they aren’t the only ones,” I said. “We can create some kind of emergency, have the Tower evacuated. Insert our people to talk to families as they leave, see if they or their children have symptoms. The ones who do can come down here.”
“Merry Christmas for them,” Flynn said wryly. “What do you think, Devon? Gas leak?”
“Good idea. If they’re stretched thin, watching the families in the Tower, a mass evacuation will tie up their resources. Who do we have that we can trust to interview the families? My guys, they aren’t equipped for that. Plus, I don’t want anyone to know we’re hiding people down here. Right now, all my guys know is that I’m expecting some valuable cargo I don’t want the cops or the Russians to know about.”
“Father Vance and the other nuns at St. Tim’s,” I suggested. “They can stage the evacuation area through the church. It makes sense the Tower residents would go there. And the nuns who worked with Sister Patrice have medical training, enough to interview the families and send the possible patients down into the tunnels.”
He shook his head. Not naysaying my idea. There wasn’t any better plan, given our limited resources and need for secrecy. More like wondering exactly how much crazier our lives were about to become. “I can get a few of my mother’s old friends from the Tower involved. No one ever notices little old ladies, and they are all wizards at logistics, feeding, sheets and beds, shit like that.”
“You already have all that down here, right?”
“Yep. Thanks to Daniel and his paranoia, we have supplies to last us years. It’s maintaining secrecy that will be the difficult part. I’ll have to think on that. Meantime, doc, here’s a list of everything Tommaso’s people ordered from Kingston Enterprises.” He slid a sheaf of papers over to me. “I figure you can tell what was for research and what they might have used to make a cure.”
“How can you be so certain there is a cure?” Flynn challenged him. “Tommaso never said.”
“There’s no way in hell anyone would let this disease loose without a treatment,” I told her with more certainty than I actually possessed. But what was the use of fighting if we didn’t have something to fight for? “Not unless they were trying to end the world. Prions are the closest thing we have to a zombie apocalypse scenario. There’s no protection against them.”
“And these guys are not madmen,” Devon said. “This is an expensive operation. If they wanted to turn fatal insomnia into some kind of pandemic, they didn’t need to invest so much. No, trust me, there’s a profit motive here.”
“How the hell can anyone profit from making a bunch of kids sick?” Flynn asked.
“Once we figure that out, we’ll be halfway to figuring out who the hell these people are. In the meantime, we need to get those kids to safety, secure this facility, set up surveillance on the men watching Louise, set up a research lab and a treatment area—”
“Do you have all this equipment down here?” I tapped the list.
“Just about everything. I can get you anything else you need from up top.” He took a deep breath, gathering his strength. The list of what we needed to do right away was overwhelming. “The kids come first. Guess it’s time for a gas leak. Maybe a broken water main instead? More dramatic and will take longer to fix. Yeah, I like that.”
He glanced at each of us in turn. Our little war council of three. Only, we had no clue who we were at war with, where they were, or what they wanted.
�
��I’ll liaise with Father Vance and handle the families,” he continued. “They’ll listen to me. In the meantime, Flynn, you’re in charge of securing things down here.” He turned to leave. I followed him to the door.
“How can I help?” I asked. My words dragged. I needed my meds.
“I’d tell you to get some sleep, but—”
“That’s not going to happen.” I tried a smile, but it faltered and died. His expression turned doubtful. I was more a burden than an asset, I realized. Except for my fugues and what they could do. “Daniel,” I said. “Maybe—”
I couldn’t finish. The thought of having Daniel’s entire life inside my head made my stomach revolt.
Devon laid his hand on my shoulder, a general acknowledging a soldier’s sacrifice. “Maybe. But not until we have Louise here to monitor you. We can’t risk losing you, Angela. If they want you so badly they would kill just to observe your abilities, then you’re our—”
“Best bet for a hostage exchange. Trade me for the cure.”
“No. It won’t come to that. I won’t let it.”
“I’ll do it. You know I will. Like you said. I’m dying anyway. What do I have to lose?” Except Ryder. But I couldn’t be with him, not now when Tommaso’s people could use him like they did Jacob. For the first time, I was glad we’d kept our relationship secret.
“No.” Devon gripped both of my arms. Tight. I met his gaze. “What I was going to say was that you’re our best hope to fight them. As soon as we have our people protected, it’s our turn to go on the offensive. We find out who they are, what they want, and then you and me, doc, we’re going to end them. Whatever it takes. Can you live with that?”
I didn’t answer right away. Whatever it took included using me as a weapon. Like what he’d threatened Tommaso with, what I offered to do to Daniel.