“My appointment?”
“A follow-up on your admittance last night.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not here for that. I was hoping I could see my records from that admittance, though.”
“You want to look at your records?”
“Just from last night.”
“That’s a bit irregular. I’m not sure we can—”
“Lacey McHenry?” said the other receptionist. “I just gave that file to Dr. Reinhardt less than ten minutes ago.” She looked at Lacey. “He stood over there by the door for a while and read it. You must’ve passed him on your way in.”
Lacey was already turning away, for once appreciating the fact that Reinhardt was one of the few at Kendall-Jakes who did not rush around in a frenzy. She spotted him right off, some ways up the southernmost of the two paths leading to the Institute, walking slowly, reading as he went. It didn’t take her long to catch him.
“Dr. Reinhardt!” she gasped as she came abreast of him, breathless from climbing the hill.
He looked up, the small photo-gray lenses of his glasses turned dark by the sunlight. “Ah, the frog girl.”
“You do remember last night!” she cried.
When he said nothing, she added, “In the lab? You sutured my cut with butterfly bandages?” She showed him her arm, though of course there was only the mysterious scar. Behind her, a man called his name, but he seemed not to notice. She couldn’t see his eyes because of the dark glasses but thought they might be fixed upon her arm and that any moment he might exclaim with surprise.
Instead he shifted backward and closed the folder. “That looks like a well-healed scar to me, miss.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “It was bleeding all over the prep room floor. There was an intruder in Dr. Poe’s lab.” She paused. “Surely you remember, Doctor. Why else would you have asked for my records?”
Whoever was behind them called again, closer now. She began to feel hurried, even as Reinhardt grew stiff and tense.
He looked down at the folder in his hands. “I didn’t ask. Gen asked me to bring back your file when I picked up the results of the blood tests we ran for the A-7 Project.”
Gen? “You mean Dr. Viascola?” she guessed. “Why would she—”
“It says in here you have a history of mental illness in your family,” he cut in, opening the file and thumbing through the pages.
“What?”
“Your mother, I think it said, had a . . .” He fumbled with the folder.
“Nervous breakdown,” Lacey supplied. “Five years ago.”
“You have a brother in prison for drug dealing and assault. And you yourself have been the victim of an abusive marriage that ended in your husband’s death.”
“Ex-husband. We divorced before he died. And what is all that doing in there?”
“K-J researches all prospective staff members thoroughly before they’re hired. The security problem, you know.”
She frowned, realizing he’ d drawn her off the subject, and started anew. “Are you telling me, Dr. Reinhardt, that you remember nothing of the events from last night that I just described to you? The intruder, the bleeding glass cut on my arm, being locked in the prep room . . .” She heard the other man approaching behind them, huffing and puffing up the hill, his footsteps gritting on the path.
Suddenly Reinhardt grasped her forearm, rotated it palm upward, and rubbed the scar gently with his thumb. “This could hardly have healed overnight,” he pointed out.
“Sure it could have,” she countered. “If they used some sort of ATR process.”
He looked up at her as if she’ d startled him, then past her as the footsteps closed upon them. It was as if she had winked out of existence. Dropping her arm, he stepped around her to meet the man coming up the hill.
It was Frederick Slattery, carrying a folded, plastic-wrapped lab coat. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Doctor!” he said to Reinhardt as he seized the geneticist’s elbow and hurried him up the path. They fell at once into a discussion of administrative nature, leaving her beside a mesquite tree, the sun beating down on her bare head.
Chapter Five
Slattery dropped his talk of requisition protocols as soon as Lacey McHenry was out of sight and earshot and took Cam to task, first for talking to McHenry at all, and second, for having put on her lab coat last night instead of his own, then letting Slattery take Cam’s in the belief it was Lacey’s. Even worse, he’ d thrown what Slattery had really wanted into the biohazard bin.
Of course, Cam had done none of it with conscious intent, having been completely rattled by the events themselves and the resultant flashback they had triggered. But he could hardly explain that to Slattery, since his stint in the army was officially designated as administrative and not the sort of work that might produce post-traumatic-stress flashbacks. Besides, he was trying very hard to forget the flashback entirely.
“Here is your coat,” Slattery said, shoving the packaged garment into Cam’s chest as they stopped together on the path. “Thanks to you we now have nothing with which to prove there was no intruder.”
Cam looked at him in surprise. “I would think Ms. McHenry’s alleged wee-hour hysteria and hallucination has removed all need for any such proof. Not to mention the near instantaneous healing of her cut,” he added dryly.
Slattery’s dark bushy brows drew together and he seemed momentarily at a loss for words. Then he harrumphed and leaned forward to pluck Lacey McHenry’s file folder from Cam’s grasp. “The director wants you in his office at your earliest convenience. I’ll take this up to Gen for you.” He continued on toward the ziggurat without further explanation, leaving Cam to stand with the packaged lab coat and a growing uneasiness in his gut.
Being head of the Department of Applied Genetics shielded him from the general stream of gossip and rumor, so he’ d not heard of Ms. McHenry’s late-night self-admission for hallucinatory paranoia until fifteen minutes ago, when the clinic receptionist had told him. That information had prompted him to open her file, which had shown him not only the false diagnosis but a notation in her physical evaluation that she had an existing hairline scar on her left inner forearm sustained during one of her berserk ex-husband’s beatings. Barely had he read the fraudulent notation when McHenry had caught up with him and shown him the scar herself.
He’d recognized at once what they had done to her, for he’ d worked on the ATR project a bit when he’d first arrived at K-J and had seen it in action. What he couldn’t understand was why they’d done it.
The grit of her approaching footfalls on the graveled path behind him now intruded into his musings, and mindful of the AD’s warning not to speak to her further, he hurried away before she could stop him.
Since “at your convenience” meant “immediately” in Swain-speak, Cam headed straight for the main elevators in the ziggurat’s huge central atrium, stepping through a pair of sliding glass doors into the warm, moist, loam-scented air of the kidney-shaped atrium’s artificial jungle. Seventy-foot-tall trees soared above him, encircled by nine stories of vine-cloaked balconies. More vines linked balcony to balcony, balcony to tree, and tree to tree in a riot of foliage that supported a collection of exotic birds, butterflies, reptiles, and small monkeys. Where once he’ d gawked in amazement, Cam now strode briskly along the artificial stream, past the thirty-foot-tall man-made waterfall to the bank of six glass-walled elevators that served the upper floors. One of them had just arrived, its passengers disembarking, and shortly he was ascending toward the ninth floor.
Watching the atrium’s vine-cloaked balconies and tree trunks slide downward as the car glided up, he continued to chew on the rationale behind using what was certainly an unapproved medical procedure in their attempt to cover up the break-in. In light of Swain’s past procedural indiscretions, it seemed a foolish action indeed.
Though it had been thirty years since the FDA had barred him from receiving federal research money, it had all come about because
he’d dared to perform unauthorized experiments on human subjects, one of whom had died. Shame and exile had been Swain’s reward, and he’d spent a decade working in various privately funded international research facilities. He’ d returned to a mostly permanent residence in Arizona some nine years ago, living on-site to direct the last stages of the Institute’s construction as he began recruiting staff and funding for its operation. It had only been five years, however, since he’d been fully exonerated by the FDA for his earlier crimes.
After all of that, why would he repeat his original sin now, when there was no need?
As the elevator stopped at the ninth floor, Cam turned from the view of the atrium, now plunging to dizzying depths below him, and stepped through the opening doors. He crossed the spacious common area and passed through another pair of glass doors into the foyer where the receptionist nodded him through. He strode past her and turned right into a busy, curving corridor.
Swain’s office stood on the opposite side of the building. He had a private express elevator for his own use, but everyone else had to walk around from the main elevators, allowing visitors—and subordinates— the opportunity to appreciate the richly paneled walls, thick carpeting, sparkling chandeliers, and expensive paintings and replicas of the ancient artifacts that were Swain’s passion—all of it a not-so-subtle reminder of the fabulous amounts of money and power it had taken to establish the Institute and to keep it running.
Inexplicably, as he neared the director’s office, Cam’s heartbeat began to accelerate. His hands went cold and damp, and the underarms of his flannel shirt grew clammy—and he had no idea why. He’ d done nothing wrong and had nothing to fear. Besides, Swain liked him and he knew it. He’ d all but begged Cam to join his team.
“Good morning, Dr. Reinhardt,” said Deena Flynn, Director Swain’s senior secretary, as Cam drew up to her desk. “And congratulations.” Curly black hair framed her pretty porcelain-pale face, wide blue eyes, and fetching dimples.
Cameron blinked at her. “Congratulations?”
“On the Black Box Citation.” She regarded him with amusement. “Forgotten already?”
“Oh.” He smiled sheepishly. “Thank you. And good morning to you, too.”
She gestured toward the dark-paneled door in the dark-paneled wall behind her. “Go on in. He’s waiting for you.”
Cam rounded her desk and started toward the door. Suddenly a searing light exploded in his face and a thundering boom slammed him backward as it drove the breath from his chest. White heat flashed around him in the narrow, rough-walled tunnel and was gone. He stood reeling in the smoke that drifted before him, shifting ethereally in the beam of his head lamp. Sulfurous fumes stung his throat and nostrils, and he tried desperately not to breathe it in, but finally could not help himself.
As he gasped in the air his lungs demanded, the tunnel vanished and he was back in Swain’s reception area, heart pounding. Sweat drenched him, and his knees trembled so violently he feared they might give way at any moment.
“Are you all right, Doctor?” asked Deena from behind him.
He swallowed hard, drew another breath, and felt the trembling subside. “Yes,” he said as her chair squeaked and rolled back. He turned to give her a reassuring smile. “Must have been the elevator ride or something.”
A slim brow arched. “Or perhaps you are working yourself too hard again?”
He ducked his head in a combination nod and shrug, then turned to close the gap still between himself and Swain’s door. But as he grasped the pewter latch, he saw his hand still trembling and hesitated. Lifting his gaze to the dark, gleaming panels, he stood breathing softly, letting his pulse settle as he came to grips with the fact he’ d just had another flashback. His second in less than twenty-four hours.
What is going on?! He’ d suffered post-traumatic stress disorder during and after his deployment twelve years ago, and for a time it had ruined his life. But God had found him in the mess he’ d made and pulled him out of it. Oh, Father in heaven, please don’t let me go back to that!
He heard Deena’s chair squeak behind him. She must have turned to look at him in renewed concern. Before she could speak, he drew himself together and pressed the latch.
Director Swain’s huge corner office, with its sweeping, high-–ceilinged expanse and odd dimensions, always gave him a sense of disorientation upon entry. Tinted floor-to-ceiling windows formed the two outer walls, providing a spectacular view of the Catalina Mountains looming to the south. Freestanding sculptures, replicas of ancient tomb decorations, and Canopic jars stood about the room, and the curving interior walls were lined with glass cases holding more artifacts than the state museum down in Tucson.
At first Cam thought Swain had stepped out, for the padded captain’s chair at his massive mahogany desk in the midst of the archeological assemblage stood empty.
Then a voice called, “I’m over here,” and Cam shifted position enough to see the director around the tomb panel that had obscured him. Swain stood at the south window peering through a telescope aimed at the grounds.
Wending his way through the artifacts and replicas, Cam felt his trembling increase and his chest grow tight. Thankfully he drew up beside the director without falling into another flashback, and his tension subsided. It helped to have the openness of the mountain view now spread before him.
Immediately below, the ziggurat’s two lower sections stairstepped down and away from them, their flat rooftops glaring in the midmorning sun. Beyond them sprawled the Institute’s desert campus, its inner mesquite park cradled between the long, curving berms formed of the earth that had been removed from what was now the ziggurat’s multilevel basement. Paved and graveled paths wandered throughout the park, past several ramadas, a central bricked plaza, and a small lake as they linked the various outbuildings and maintenance buildings with each other and the zig.
To the right, about halfway down the bowl’s slope, stood the white-walled clinic Cam had left some fifteen minutes ago. Beyond it, scattered across the northwestern berm and continuing up the surrounding hillsides beyond were the guest casitas, meeting rooms, and office buildings of the Fountains of Eternal Life Health Resort—adobe walls a warm contrast with the oak and cottonwood trees surrounding them. Between it and the ziggurat, the red-granite slabs of Swain’s avant-garde Black Box Theater lifted from the side of the berm like a hatching pterodactyl.
The director, a wireless headset clipped to his right ear, had focused his telescope toward the southeastern boundary of the Institute’s property, where a dissipating dust cloud rose off the distant draw that Cam knew lay just inside of the perimeter fence. He glimpsed a bit of the eight-foot-tall chain link, in fact, but only because he knew where to look.
Face still pressed to the eyepiece of his scope, Swain said, “Where is it exactly that you run on these morning jaunts of yours?”
Cam blinked. “Where do I run?”
Swain straightened from the scope to regard him blandly. “I was up early this morning—well, I’m up early every morning—and I saw you coming out of the desert down there by that ramada.” He gestured toward the freestanding porchlike structure southeast of the park. “About half an hour after dawn. So where exactly do you go?”
Cam eyed the telescope, unnerved to think that Swain had been watching him at 5:30 in the morning. He turned his gaze to the wooded hillsides, taking comfort in the fact he’ d done most of his run in the dark.
“I just go over the east berm, up the draw, and loop back on the trail there,” he said, forcing himself to meet Swain’s gaze. “Why?”
“Did you see anyone or anything unusual?”
“Just one of our vans. It was parked near one of those abandoned mine shafts. I assumed it had something to do with the search for last night’s intruder.” He paused. “I take it you haven’t found him?”
“No.” Swain returned to his scope. “Do you run every day, then?”
“Except Sunday.” Cam was certain Swain kne
w the answers to these questions.
“Of course, not Sunday,” Swain said, giving him a sidelong smirk. “Well, I suppose given the level of dedication you devote to other areas of your life, that’s hardly surprising. Still, I must warn you—it’s dangerous out there, especially in the dark. You could stumble into a mine shaft or step on a snake. . . . How long does it take you?”
Shrugging, Cam turned his gaze toward the view. “About an hour.” He traced his route with his eyes. “I have a head lamp. And I like to be outside. Like to see the sunrise and be alone to think.” Though Swain’s questions were superficially innocuous, Cam always had the sense that the man was playing with him, leading him to places he didn’t realize he was going until it was too late. The director’s personal magnetism was undeniable, and every time Cam was with him he felt its power— an assurance of affection, an invitation to relax and let down his guard with a kindred spirit, a benevolent authority. Yet the eyes, the mind, missed nothing.
“I thought you used the time to listen to those Bible lessons you download from the Internet every night,” said Swain as he straightened and picked up the beige polishing cloth hanging from the telescope’s tripod.
“Well. Yes. I do.” So he knows about those, does he?
“I’ll bet you use the time to pray, as well.”
“Sometimes.”
“My father used to pray at dawn,” Swain said, carefully wiping down the telescope’s eyepiece and knobs where he’ d touched them.
Okay. So that’s where this is going. . . .
Swain had declared months ago that his parents, both deceased, had been devout Christians, a failure for which he’ d never forgiven them. Despite their increasingly desperate methods of evangelization, he’d refused to believe in Jesus. The whole idea of God demanding a blood sacrifice for the sins of the world, he said, was simply bizarre and barbaric. What kind of God would find red corpuscles and plasma a satisfactory payment for man’s supposed transgressions? Swain’s father, a pastor, had never been able to answer the question to his satisfaction. In fact, he’ d apparently never tried, furious at his son’s audacity for asking it at all.
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