by Steven James
But for some reason she suddenly didn’t like the idea of being home alone and she hoped Daniel and Kyle would make it to her house before their six-thirty ETA.
Getting the spring off the cot was proving to be harder than Sheriff Byers had expected it would be.
The way the cot was designed, while his weight was on it, there was too much pressure on the spring, making it impossible to untwist it.
To get it off, he would need to sit up and lean off the edge of the cot.
And that was not going to feel good on his wounded side.
Steeling himself, he took a deep breath, swung his legs over, and slowly sat up.
Pain shot through him, but he did his best to block it out as he edged forward to get his weight off the spring, and then started uncurling it from the cot’s frame.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
The vibrating phone interrupted Daniel’s thoughts about the barn.
A text from Nicole. It included an address, 1594 West Creek Drive, and a note that it was the Bell’s property. Could Ty b the poacher? b safe, c u soon, she typed.
He told Kyle about the text and while they were discussing it, the phone rang.
Daniel picked up.
“Hello. It’s Malcolm.”
“How did you get this number?”
“I’ve been monitoring Nicole’s calls and she spoke to someone on this line before calling the forest service.”
“The forest service?”
“Yes. She also texted you a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah, I got it, but she could have been talking with anyone at this number. How’d you know it was me?”
“I’m good at what I do, Daniel. I connected the dots. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Through Kyle’s phone?”
“Yes.”
“Out of commission. We were looking into the Lost Cove Lighthouse. Someone tried to kill me.”
“What?”
“He lit the lighthouse on fire while I was inside it.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“No.”
Go ahead. Just ask him.
“Was it you?”
“No, of course not.” He paused as if he were waiting for Daniel to respond, but when that didn’t happen, he continued, “If I wanted you dead, I never would have helped you escape from the hospital. I’m on your side.”
“Yeah, that’s what you keep saying.”
“Trust me on this.”
“What’ve you been doing all day?”
“I was looking for your dad.”
“And?”
“I have a few ideas on where Brandon might have taken him.”
“Brandon?”
“Brandon Hollister. The inmate who escaped.”
“That’s the family who owns the barn,” Daniel muttered.
“What barn?” Mr. Zacharias asked.
“The one where we found the diary—but that doesn’t matter. You said you have ideas where my dad might be. Tell me.”
“In person. Meet me at the front gate outside the institute.”
“Why?”
“I don’t trust phones—it’s too easy to listen in on someone else’s calls. Meeting in person is always best.”
“But why there?”
“Dr. Waxford’s car is at the facility. He’s inside. We need to talk to him.”
Daniel weighed his options. Meeting with Mr. Zacharias might help, talking with Dr. Waxford might too, but it would mean canceling his plans with Nicole, which might not be that big of a deal, but—
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Daniel said. “You two have opposite goals? You’re trying to stop his research? Is Dr. Waxford working for the government too?”
“I never said I worked for the government.”
That caught Daniel off guard. “But you were wearing a Wisconsin state prison guard’s uniform, and then later, one from a Minnesota police officer.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But you don’t work for the government and Dr. Waxford does?”
“Yes.”
“Who do you work for then?”
“That’s something I can’t—”
“Who do you work for, Mr. Zacharias?”
“I’ll explain everything when we meet.”
“No. Enough of this. I want you to tell me what’s going on. Why were you waiting for me after the game on Friday night? And how did you just happen to go off the road into that snowbank right in front of our car after we left the party?”
“I wanted to meet you myself. To see if it was real.”
“If what was real?”
“What I heard about you.”
“About me being intuitive and good at piecing things together,” Daniel said, repeating what Mr. Zacharias had told him in the hospital in Duluth.
“That’s right.”
“Who told you that?”
“A source.”
Daniel was getting exasperated. “And I suppose you can’t share that name with me either?”
“Not over the phone, no.”
Of course not.
“Alright,” Daniel said, “one more thing: you told me you were trying to stop the chronobiology research. How?”
“How?”
“How are you trying to stop it? I mean, I saw you transport that prisoner to the Traybor Institute. If you’re trying to stop what they’re doing, then why were you a part of it?”
“I needed to get inside, have a look around, see if the intel my agency had about it was correct. Now, listen, I—”
“But . . .” Then it hit him. One of the puzzle pieces locked into place. “Oh.”
“What?”
Daniel hoped it wasn’t the case, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense, even though he didn’t want to believe that it could possibly be true. “You helped him.”
“Who?”
“The guy who escaped—Hollister. You helped him get out of the institute.”
“Why would I—?”
“But you did, didn’t you? And then when he was free he went after my dad.”
“Right now isn’t the time to—”
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you responsible for Brandon Hollister getting out of that research center?”
Daniel waited him out and finally Mr. Zacharias replied, “I didn’t know he would go after your father.”
He felt his hand tighten around the phone. “I can’t believe this. What happened to my dad—it’s your fault.”
“When I found out what they were doing there, when I saw it for myself, I couldn’t just leave Hollister inside. Listen, we can talk more in person.”
“Where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I can tell you right now. Meet me at the institute. We need to discuss Hollister’s known associates and who might have driven him to your house on the night he attacked your father.”
The line went dead.
“Mr. Zacharias?”
Nothing.
“Are you there?”
No reply.
Daniel smacked the car door.
“So,” Kyle said, catching the gist of the phone call, “Mr. Zacharias is the one who helped the guy escape from the institute? Seriously?”
“Yeah. Brandon Hollister. But it sounds like someone else drove him to our house Saturday night. Did you hear the call?”
“Just your side of it.”
“Mr. Zacharias wants me to meet him at the institute, to talk to Dr. Waxford . . .” Daniel noticed where they were on the road. “Listen, my house isn’t too far. Swing by there so I can pick up my car.”
“You think there’ll be cops watching your place? I mean, considering you escaped
from the hospital and they’re looking for you?”
“There aren’t a lot of extra deputies in this county so I doubt it—I’m sure they’re busy enough looking for my dad. And with the roads this bad, I’m guessing the state troopers are spread pretty thin with helping people who’ve gone into ditches. But drive past my house and we’ll see. If there are any patrol cars around, we’ll just keep going.”
“So, then, split up: You meet with Mr. Zacharias and I head over to Nicole’s?”
“Yeah, that way if we figure out where my dad is, at least one of us will be able to follow up on it. Also, I need to untangle what happened on Saturday night and I’m thinking that if I walk through our kitchen maybe it’ll help jog my memory, like being in the barn did.”
“Makes sense.”
“Turn left up ahead,” he said. “We’ll take the shortcut.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FOUR
6:01 P.M.
30 MINUTES LEFT
Dr. Waxford learned that in addition to a few international terror groups, there were several government agencies here in the States and a few private firms who might have the technological capabilities to get past the Traybor Institute’s firewalls.
That didn’t really narrow things down as much as he’d hoped.
However, the NSA had intel that a freelance operative named Malcolm Zacharias who specialized in asset recovery had been seen in the Twin Cities area recently.
That was just a couple of hours from Beldon.
According to Dr. Waxford’s contact, Zacharias was the most likely actor.
He could’ve helped Hollister escape, might have doctored up the footage.
Find him.
He can lead you to Hollister.
It wasn’t clear to Dr. Waxford how he might locate Zacharias, but he might as well utilize all the resources available to him.
He called his Department of Defense contact again and asked her to gather whatever she could on Zacharias. “And alert the local authorities,” he said. “Get them looking for him.”
“Under what pretense?”
“Tell them that you suspect him of abducting Sheriff Byers. That’ll get their attention.”
In the meantime, he needed to take measures to ensure the integrity of his research. He hadn’t wanted to do so before, but if Zacharias was involved, he might’ve been the one who called law enforcement earlier and told them to look for the sheriff here at the facility.
If it is him, if he really did help Hollister escape, he knows more than he should. He might know enough to bring this research to a halt.
With that in mind, Dr. Waxford realized that if he couldn’t find Hollister or Zacharias, he might have to take other, more extreme measures to make sure no one would discover that any of his research had ever happened here.
There were systems in place for this eventuality.
The explosives were already wired into the walls. It would look like a gas leak explosion when it was over and it would seal up and cover the underground research rooms.
His staff would be relocated.
A clean start.
He took out his laptop and started to download the files he would need to take with him so he could carry on his research elsewhere if he did need to destroy the facility.
No one was staking out the house, but Daniel told Kyle to stay in the car and keep an eye out as he went into the kitchen.
It’s not law enforcement’s job to clean up after crimes occur, so there was still dried blood on the floor.
It was in the exact spot where, back when he was at the psych ward, Daniel had envisioned his dad being attacked. So apparently that part of his dream had been true, even if the part about his hand getting chewed up in the garbage disposal hadn’t been.
Seeing the bloodstains here, now, for real, was tough.
Man, he could not believe Mr. Zacharias was the one who’d helped Hollister escape.
But where does that leave you?
What happened to your dad?
He knelt beside the blood, placed his hand on the cool linoleum and then let his thoughts take him back to Saturday night.
And found that he’d been right.
Being here did jar his memory.
He closed his eyes as one image after another wisped through his mind, each becoming clearer, each nudging him back closer to the truth.
You go to your room, planning to read through the diaries, but then decide to grab a soda from the kitchen, so you put the box containing the journals on your desk beside your phone and head down the hall.
Halfway to the living room, the lights cut off.
Your dad’s not home and there’s no storm outside, so you figure it must be a fuse.
You know where the fuse box is, over by the washing machine in the basement. You find a flashlight in the junk drawer in the kitchen and descend the stairs.
You’re on your way to the panel when the garage door opens.
A moment later, your dad calls out to you and you think that’s odd because, with things as dark as they are, he wouldn’t have any idea that you’re down here. Besides, it doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be heard down the steps, but instead like he’s speaking to someone in the kitchen: “Daniel? Are you alright?”
And then: “What’s going on, Dan?”
All at once there’s a pained cry and a thud.
Silence.
You shout to him, asking if he’s okay, but there’s no reply.
Hurrying up the stairs into the kitchen, you swipe your flashlight’s beam across the room and see him lying on the floor near the fridge.
“Dad!”
He isn’t moving.
You rush to him.
A knife is sticking out of his side and it quivers slightly with each labored breath that he takes.
You try to decide whether to go for your phone to call for help or to stay here and try to stop the bleeding, but then realize that if you don’t get an ambulance here soon, your dad is going to die.
But whoever did this is probably still—
You scan the kitchen, see no one.
Quickly returning to your bedroom, you find your cell and punch in 911 as you hurry back to help your dad.
You set down the flashlight and try to control the bleeding, but there’s a lot of blood.
So much blood.
On your hands.
All over.
As you wait for dispatch to pick up, you hear movement behind you—the slight creak in the floor that tells you someone is there.
Whipping around, you see a figure emerge. He swings something toward your head.
There’s a splinter of stars and then you see nothing, feel nothing, except for the weight of a wide, sweeping darkness that’s quickly overtaking you.
But right before you pass out, you hear someone calling from the basement steps. “That’s Daniel,” the person says. “This changes everything.”
Daniel blinked, then stared at the door to the basement.
His heart was racing.
There were two people here, not just one.
Whose voice did you hear?
He closed his eyes again and concentrated, but he wasn’t able to recall any more details about who might have knocked him out or who’d been in the stairwell. However, even though he couldn’t identify the voice, he had the sense that he’d heard it before.
So.
Was it one of Hollister’s past associates?
Mr. Zacharias helped Hollister escape. Could it have been him?
Now there was a thought.
Go. Get moving. Meet with him. See what he has to say.
While Kyle left for Nicole’s house, Daniel kept Larry’s phone with him and, after tracking down a set of keys, he took off in his own car to meet up with the man wh
o might very well have been there at the house when his dad was stabbed.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
6:11 P.M.
20 MINUTES LEFT
Sheriff Byers managed to pull the spring free, but as it popped off the cot, it shot across the room and ricocheted off the wall.
Rolling.
Rolling.
And finally stopping, out of reach.
But it might just be close enough for you to get with your heel.
With the cot’s legs fastened to the floor, he couldn’t scoot it closer, so instead, he swung his leg out and stretched out as far as the handcuffs would allow him.
After two tries, he was able to nudge the spring back toward him with his foot.
A little more work, and he managed to roll it close enough to grab.
Then, spring in hand, he slipped the tip into the lock mechanism of the handcuffs, trying to free himself.
Daniel wasn’t far from the institute. As he drove toward it, he let his mind flip through the facts, the blurs.
What he knew.
What he didn’t.
Malcolm Zacharias wanted to talk to him about past associates that Hollister had who might’ve helped him, and one of those people was certainly Ty Bell, who used to party with him before his arrest.
Was it him?
Could Ty be working with Hollister?
Is he the one who attacked your dad? Or, could he have been the person you heard coming up from the basement right before you blacked out?
Nicole had sent him the address of the property the Bells owned: 1594 West Creek Drive.
It was on Waunakee Lake, near the institute, and right in the center of the sites where the poached wolves had been found.
Could Ty be the one who tried to kill you at the island? He’s pulled a knife on you before. He’s capable of—
Larry’s cell phone rang, jarring Daniel out of his thoughts.
The caller ID simply said “business” and Daniel anticipated that it was probably Larry calling from his landline. Talking on the phone while driving in a snowstorm wasn’t easy or smart, but Daniel wasn’t about to take the time to pull over to take the call.
He answered. “Larry?”