Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

  These thoughts, this recognition that the long dead and the brand new are colliding in her mind, are bringing her dangerously close to waking, and she doesn’t want to yet.

  Because Luanne is here.

  “I wouldn’t try getting inside their heads, sweet pea,” her grandmother says.

  Charlotte thinks she’s talking about the resort. About Cole. His massive company. But her grandmother’s not finished. She keeps talking as she sinks her hands into the tide pool between them. “Sure, they’ll have a story, but that’s all it is. A story. A story they made up. If you really want to know evil, it’s not enough to just look evil in the eye. You’ve got to bash its head up against the wall and see what comes spilling out. That’s messy, girl. Real messy. You sure you have what it takes for that, Trina?”

  Luanne gives her an inquisitive look, even as she keeps digging into the tide pool.

  “I’m sorry,” she hears herself say, but what she really wants to say is, My name’s Charlotte now, Grandma. Will you call me Charlotte, please? It will make me feel like you’re alive again.

  “What are you sorry for, honey?”

  “I let him trick me. There wasn’t anyone there.”

  “I know, honey. You wanted to set her free, but she wasn’t there, and she’ll never be there. Because she’s here.”

  The skull Luanne pulls from the tide pool is clean and perfectly preserved. Salt water pours from its empty eye sockets. With the certainty Charlotte only possesses in dreams, she knows it’s her mother’s, and for some reason, it makes perfect sense that Luanne’s been keeping it here all this time, waiting for the right moment to present it to Charlotte like a gift.

  She takes it in her hands and studies it and waits for the bone to transmute memories of her mother—memories she was never granted—into the flesh of her bare, dripping hands. The part of her that’s close to wakefulness feels she should be horrified, but inside the logic of this dream, there’s no greater gift her grandmother could have given her in this moment, and it fills Charlotte with something like warmth.

  “But that’s not the only reason you ran, sweet pea,” Luanne says with a gentle smile.

  Charlotte just stares into her eyes.

  “You let him trick you. You let him give you something to run to. Because if you hadn’t turned your back on him, you were going to break his neck.”

  18

  Charlotte wakes with the sense that her mother’s skull is resting somewhere in bed with her. She reaches for where she thinks it might be and ends up grabbing a handful of bedsheets. Not quite as thin and scratchy as hospital issue, but close.

  The bed’s edges are surrounded by some kind of zipper, the lower part of a plastic biohazard tent. The rest of the tent’s nowhere in sight.

  A shadow steps forward.

  Several bars of soft light—one at floor level, the other about waist-high, and the third close to the ceiling—start to fill the room, transforming it from a cube of darkness into something closer to a private room in a nightclub, then something a little brighter but still classy looking, like a waiting room in a high-end spa. The institutional blandness all around her is revealed to be a design scheme of the kind you find inside those celebrity-built mansions featured in magazines. Everything is clean and white, the stainless steel fixtures gleaming and polished. The walls, she sees, are upholstered.

  It’s a padded cell, she corrects herself. The padding’s just really pricey.

  Cole steps through the door between a viewing area and the rest of the room, dressed in one of his typical long-sleeved collared shirts and black slacks. As usual, the shirt’s blue. The shirt’s always some shade of blue. The one time he wore green, she commented on it and he actually cracked what seemed like a genuine smile.

  He’s not smiling now. In the tense silence, she notices the window across the room is actually an LCD screen, its view of snowy mountains computer generated.

  “How long since . . .”

  “Eight hours,” he says quietly.

  She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d told her it had been a week, but maybe that’s due to whatever drugs they’re pumping into her. She’s got two IV ports feeding into her right arm.

  “What are you giving me?”

  “Antibiotics mostly.”

  “For what?”

  “You had wounds when the medics got to you, and they were bad. You just didn’t have them for very long. So our primary concern was infection. As for pain, we didn’t know if we should be treating any. You weren’t responsive, but we didn’t know how you’d wake up so we socked you full of the good stuff. How are you feeling?”

  “Weird dreams.”

  “Pain?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’ll start pulling you off.” He turns in the direction of what must be a hidden camera and makes a slicing motion across his throat. Since he doesn’t explain himself any further to whoever might be watching, she assumes the person’s listening in as well.

  There’s something she’s never seen before in his expression. Maybe it’s just concern, or maybe it’s fear. But the past eight hours have rattled the typically unflappable Cole Graydon down to his bones. Parental concern. That’s what’s suggested by his furrowed brow and the way he occasionally chews his lower lip. The way he’s studying her with uncharacteristically wide eyes.

  He’s a numbers guy, she thinks, and I am his most expensive project. That’s what I’m seeing on his face right now. Concern for an investment.

  “How’d you get me to California so fast?” she asks.

  “I didn’t.”

  “So I’m not in California?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sometimes I have trouble wrapping my head around how rich you are.”

  “My company, you mean.”

  “You do all right. I’ve seen your spread in La Jolla.”

  “When?”

  “Some magazine. I can’t remember which one. Architectural Digest?”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in magazines.”

  “I don’t. But pictures don’t lie.”

  “Sure they do. If you pass them through the right hands first.” Cole smiles. “What happened, Charley? Did he tell you he had someone in the tannery?”

  Maybe. Or maybe I ran because my grandmother’s ghost is right—I was about to break his neck.

  “If you’d worn the earpiece, we could have told you he was lying. We weren’t picking up any heat signatures.”

  “It’s not like you picked up on the trap, either.”

  “The bear traps?”

  “No. The one that blew up.”

  “There was some disagreement about how deeply we should risk penetrating his property before . . .”

  “Before I was on it?”

  Cole nods, but he’s looking at the floor.

  “Because you thought there was a chance he wasn’t really a killer, and you didn’t want to invade his privacy?”

  “We’d already invaded his privacy and then some. And I never thought he wasn’t a killer. Next time, we’ll do more groundwork first.”

  “I’m confused, though.”

  “Call it a draw. You made a bad call by running into the tannery. I made a bad call by not having it inspected more closely by a ground team.”

  “That’s not what confuses me.”

  “What, then?”

  “Who has the power to disagree with you? Aren’t you running the show?”

  He studies her for a few seconds, but she figures he’s not seeing her, only the words he’s going to say next. Or not say next. “I was swayed by a strident voice. I won’t make that mistake again. I’m sorry.”

  Because it’s the first time she’s ever heard him say the last two words, it takes her a minute to swallow them.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she whispers, “for running. It was . . . thoughtless.”

  Cole nods, looks to the floor. He’s not going to rub her nose in it. That’s good.

  So
this is what a draw feels like.

  “Next time you wear the earpiece,” he says.

  “So there’s going to be a next time?”

  He’s clearly startled. Does he think she’s threatening to quit?

  “It was our first time doing this. Together. I didn’t expect things to go perfectly.”

  She nods, but she’s wondering how he’d react if she tried to back out now.

  Five months ago, he’d made her an offer—she could walk away from this forever, ensuring the total destruction of Project Bluebird once and for all, but on one condition: Dylan Cody a.k.a. Noah Turlington would have to die. Occasionally she lies awake at night wondering if she only chose option B to spare Noah’s life. But it’s just a nagging fear that usually passes after a moment or two of self-reflection.

  Shayla Brown. Deborah Clover. Maryanne Breck. Patrice LaVon. Janelle Cropper.

  That’s why she’s doing this.

  And don’t forget Joyce Pierce.

  Thinking these names brings another to her lips. “Richard Davies?” she asks.

  “Dead. We were a little too concerned with you. He bled out.”

  “From what I did to him, or did the explosion—”

  “You stopped him, Charley. That’s all that matters. I’m not going to indulge any sort of misguided guilt around any of this.”

  Because you got the vials of paradrenaline you expected, and whatever else you took from my body while I was sleeping.

  “So you just scrubbed the whole place and nobody’s going to know what he did?”

  “If anyone does try looking for him, which given the way he lived, I doubt they will, he will have gone missing and his farm will have burned to the ground. That’s correct.”

  “So the families don’t get . . . anything.”

  “Most of those girls’ families were hotbeds of abuse. What do you think they deserve exactly?”

  “Someone cared. Someone always cares. Just because they couldn’t work miracles doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to know what happened to those women. My grandmother went over a decade without knowing what happened to me and my mom. It almost killed her.”

  “If that’s how you want to describe getting sober and becoming one of the pillars of her community, then fine.”

  “Someone deserves to know what happened to those women. Someone deserves to know that maybe they would have gotten off the streets one day, but Richard Davies took that chance from them.”

  “Well, next time let’s do a better job of wrapping things up, then. My plan was to send him to a nuthouse or prison, just like Pemberton. But you had other ideas.”

  She wants to argue with him, but all things considered, he’s being charitable. If he wanted to, he could put Richard Davies’s death squarely on her shoulders. Instead, he’s sort of loosely tying it to her left ankle. And his.

  “Speaking of next time,” she finally says.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I knew too much. About the operation. That’s why I had to stick my foot in the trap. I couldn’t get triggered.”

  “OK. Next time we’ll keep you in the dark.”

  “No. Next time there needs to be actual dark. I need to know that I’m . . . not safe.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “It isn’t going to work any other way, Cole. You can’t take the fear away and expect me to be afraid.”

  “Fear is in the mind. We’ll find a way to train your mind to be afraid again.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “Well, it didn’t take much for Davies to send you running straight into a trap. Maybe you’re equally suggestible in other ways.”

  His patience is thinning. She can hear it. And so can he, apparently, because his shoulders sag and he takes a deep breath that might just be for show. But she wouldn’t be surprised if he actually needs it.

  “Besides, we don’t have trouble triggering you in the lab,” he says.

  “We can’t count on every serial killer we target to play with my phobias the way you do in a completely controlled environment. And that’ll probably stop working after a while, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when we started lab testing I was afraid of you, too.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  She smiles.

  He smiles back, brow raised. “Between the lab testing and last night, we’ve got a lot to work through. A lot to process, both in terms of data and . . . procedure. I’m not going to rush you into the field again until we do a full accounting of everything.”

  “Fair enough. How much longer do I have to stay here?”

  “Another twenty-four hours at least. If you show any signs of infection, longer.”

  “OK. And what about Luke?”

  Cole just stares at her. “What about Luke?”

  “Has anyone been in touch with him? Just to let him know I’m OK.”

  “Your boyfriend is not our priority right now.”

  “I told him I’d be gone three weeks. It’s been five.”

  “Then stop giving your boyfriend arbitrary timelines about our top-secret operations.”

  “A condition of our deal was that you would allow me to have my life when I wasn’t working for you. Luke is part of my life. I’m not kidding myself that we’re not under constant surveillance every minute I’m in Altamira; I’m just saying that after what I’ve done for you in the past twenty-four hours, maybe somebody in this billion-dollar fortress of I don’t know what in the middle of I don’t know where can send a text message to my boyfriend telling him I’m alive.”

  Cole approaches the bed. In his expression, she sees the same man who ushered her into his own private helicopter five months earlier and issued a series of proclamations that changed her life forever.

  “You can act like the hapless victim of my big, bad, terrible, heartless company as much as you want, Charley. But let’s not forget that what we’ve built here, together, is a system that allows you to systematically execute human monsters like the ones who killed your mother.”

  “It’s not my plan to execute them.”

  “Fine. Torture them, then.”

  “Stop them. And if we built this system together, then tell me how you found him.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me how you found Richard Davies.”

  “Get some rest, Charley. We’ll talk about this when you’re more . . . together.”

  Cole’s almost to the door to the viewing area when she says, “It’s Bailey, isn’t it?”

  Cole goes still before his hand can reach the doorknob.

  A few years earlier, Luke’s younger brother, one of the most wanted cybercriminals in the United States, went into foreign exile, severing all ties with his brother after using his considerable skills to track down a slimeball who’d defrauded Bailey and his fellow classmates out of the tuition they’d paid to a small community college.

  To find the bastard, Bailey hacked a satellite.

  An actual satellite that circled somewhere above the earth.

  His only mistake?

  Believing the FBI would be grateful for his assistance.

  When Luke and Charley reconnected after her return to Altamira, Bailey, who had apparently been monitoring his big brother’s conversations for months, decided to make his presence known to them. Digitally, of course. The help he offered led Charlotte and Luke right to the front door of a madman. Meanwhile, Graydon Pharmaceuticals had been impressed by his work. When all was said and done, they offered to use their powerful connections so that Bailey could return home without the FBI on his back.

  But Bailey had refused, and Luke’s feelings had been hurt all over again.

  Now Charlotte can’t help but wonder what will happen to Luke’s feelings if he finds out that Cole made a different offer to Bailey than the one he conveyed to them.

  And Bailey accepted it.

  “Sounds like Luke should be more of a priority to you tha
n you realize,” she says.

  “No.” Cole turns to face her but stays rooted near the door. “In fact, his brother’s condition for working with us is that we don’t involve Luke at all.”

  “I doubt he’s concerned for Luke’s safety. He just doesn’t want to take orders from him.”

  “He won’t have to. And neither will you.”

  “I’m not taking orders from Luke.”

  “That’s correct. You’re taking them from me.”

  She’s not quite sure what to say to this, or if she should say anything at all. It feels like he’s baiting her into a fight to distract from these revelations about Luke’s brother.

  “Meanwhile,” Cole says, “I don’t actually take orders from Bailey, so I’m going to ignore his demand that you not discuss his new position with his brother. However, I’d like to strongly suggest some wording you can use when you do.”

  “OK.”

  “Put it like this. Would Luke rather his brother be safe, in an undisclosed location, answering to me? Or would he prefer him to have stayed on a Russian troll farm working alongside people who may or may not have swayed a United States presidential election?”

  Jesus Christ, she thinks.

  “You still haven’t told me how Bailey found Davies.”

  “He doesn’t discuss procedure.”

  “I’ve heard. But still . . .”

  “Still what?”

  “Given how well you probably pay him, I figure he probably runs the broad strokes by you, at least.”

  “I am ordering you not to discuss this part with Luke.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’m serious, Charley.”

  “So am I.”

  Cole clears his throat and approaches the bed again. “Bailey is a genius. Where the rest of us see endless strings of code, he sees a world without walls, and he’s willing to look into just about any corner of it provided he’s searching for someone he deems morally suspect enough.”

  “That’s a pretty good description of what he did for us with Pemberton.”

  “But what he lacked then was raw computing power. I’ve given it to him. In spades. And he’s used it to put the full force of his highly sophisticated mind to use. For us. For you.”

  “This is going to be one of those conversations that uses the word algorithm and I’m going to have to pretend I know what it means.”