The Enclave

by Karen Hancock

  My grace is sufficient for you.

  Cam still liked the idea of running better. In fact, every time he let himself contemplate what might lie ahead of him if he stayed, he was overwhelmed with the compulsion to flee. Besides, he was going to Tucson tomorrow regardless, so he could always decide later. For now he needed to go down and check his frogs and gels since he wouldn’t be doing it in the morning.

  Five minutes later, he stepped out of the service elevator into the tomb-quiet animal facility. The floor lights were off, but a swath of illumination poured through the open prep-room door to the right of the elevator, falling in a distorted rectangle across the gleaming vinyl floor.

  Seeing it he stopped in dismay, realizing it had to be Manny. Cam had no desire to encounter his undoubtedly disgruntled former post-doc, especially not here in the middle of the night. And, really, he needn’t. His lab was at the end of the first corridor opening left off the main hall, well out of view of anyone in the prep room unless they came to the door, so no reason he couldn’t go about his business without drawing the other man’s attention.

  He started down the hall and had just reached the turn when a shadow occluded the rectangle of light and a man stepped out of the prep room.

  Though Cam intended to pass by as if he hadn’t noticed, a congruence of unnerving observations reversed that decision: the light on in the now-unused frog room, the fact he’ d be blocked from any escape route should he continue to the hall’s end, and the overwhelming oddness of the man who had emerged from the lighted prep room.

  A man who was obviously not Manny. This person was lean and tall, dressed in dirty jeans and a dark short-sleeve T-shirt. His fair hair had been shaved into a bristly Mohawk, the crest rippling like a bear’s pelt above a heavy brow marred by a huge red pimple, and half obscured by smears of dried mud.

  It was Lacey McHenry’s intruder.

  He was bigger than she’ d described him. As tall as Cam himself— maybe taller—and broad across the shoulders with a solid, muscular build. His face was flushed and he was sweating profusely. And the look in his pale eyes was not at all friendly.

  With Lacey the youth had always fled, so Cam was surprised when this time he attacked. Reacting with reflexes he’ d not used in years, Cam stepped aside and used the other man’s momentum to send him sprawling face forward. Cam didn’t stick around to continue the struggle but fled up the main corridor toward the stairwell door. The elevator—if the car was even still there—would never get him away fast enough.

  As it turned out neither did his own legs. He closed his hand on the door latch, only to be grabbed from behind and flung away. He hit the opposite wall some twenty feet down the hall and slid to the floor. Gasping back his lost breath, he scuttled backward as his assailant approached.

  The stranger was angry—red-faced, eyes flashing, the boil on his forehead glistening as if it had popped from the pressure of his rage. For a moment the corridor flickered and Cam smelled sulfur, saw a warrior’s bronzed face, eyes gleaming like gold orbs— Desperately he shook it off, readying himself for the imminent attack as he saw the other’s muscles tighten and heard the labored wheeze of his breathing. The sudden rattle of the elevator’s cables disturbed the silence and drew his assailant’s gaze. At the ping of the car’s arrival, the intruder whirled, bolting for the stairwell door Cam had just sought for his own escape. Yanking it open, he disappeared into the stairwell.

  Their roles reversed and Cam now raced after him, barely catching the closing door before it latched. As he heaved it open, he heard the security guards exiting the elevator. Confident they’d see the closing door and follow, he didn’t wait for them.

  Flying down the concrete steps after a rapid thudding of footfalls, Cam had barely reached the first landing when he heard the buzz of an electronic door lock somewhere below. Desperately he accelerated, taking the flights one leap at a time as he descended. Even so he heard the clatter and click of the door closing as he came around the last flight, arriving seconds after the final clack of the door’s steel-hardened lock latching.

  He jammed his thumb into the hooded print reader beside the door, but that only lit up the red Access Restricted sign over the pad. Sweeping his security clearance card through the accompanying card slot produced the same results. Vainly he tugged at the door’s handle. How could the intruder have hacked the Institute’s security so deeply he had access to areas Cameron himself was denied?

  Before he could begin to contemplate the answer, he was grabbed firmly from behind and shoved into the door, right arm twisted painfully up his back. Being seized like a criminal shocked him. The cold bite of a metal cuff as it was snapped around his wrist shocked him further. “What are you . . . ? Wait!”

  His right hand was dragged down and a second cuff snapped onto his left wrist. “We got ’im, Captain!” his captor called out, apparently to a superior who was waiting in the AnFac doorway above.

  “No!” Cam protested. “The man you want is getting away!”

  “Tell it to the captain,” the guard commanded, spinning him around. Cam recognized neither of the men standing before him.

  They were both well over six feet tall, broad as Goliaths across their chests, and all muscle. They wore black uniforms and each had a small crescent-shaped communications piece in his ear. The guard who’d cuffed him had coarse, broad features and dark hair bound in a six-inch braid at his nape. The other had a narrow face, with pale blue eyes under a heavy brow and fine blond hair cut closely to his scalp.

  They were stern-faced men, probably former Special Forces or SEALs. He knew Swain had recruited from one of the premier security agencies in the country—most of whose agents were former military— for his Institute guards.

  Realizing they couldn’t have seen the intruder—only Cam in flight—he saved his protests and let them escort him back up the stairs. Only then did he realize how far down he had come in pursuit of Ms. McHenry’s frog eater: at least three levels lower than the animal facility and possibly four. It was hard to tell because, although there were the correct number of doors—one for the auxiliary housing level and one for the physical resource plant—there were too many steps.

  As they ascended the last flight of steps, the captain awaiting them at the door got his first look at their captive. “Dr. Reinhardt?! We knew our intruder had to be someone on the inside. But you?”

  The fact he knew who Cam was, when Cam was pretty sure he’ d never seen the man before, unnerved him.

  “Definitely someone on the inside, Captain”—Cam glanced at the man’s name tag—“Jablonsky, but not me. I came down to check my gels and surprised him.”

  “At one in the morning?” Jablonsky stepped back as they entered the corridor and let the stairwell door shut with a clank. He was a tall, lean, well-muscled man with deep blue eyes, a weathered face, and short brown hair graying at the temples.

  “If you know me, Captain,” Cam said, “as you apparently do, you must know that’s not unusual for me.”

  Jablonsky frowned at him. “Then why did you run from us?”

  “I was chasing him.”

  Jablonsky glanced at the other two guards, then turned away as he touched a finger to his earpiece and said, “Yes, we’ve got him.” He paused, listening, then, “Yes, it’s Dr. Reinhardt. You can see us now? The video’s back online, then?”

  He paused, listening again, then nodded. “We’ll check it out, sir.” He looked up at the blond guard—Armstrong, according to his name tag. “Visual’s still out in the frog room. Go see what’s wrong.”

  As Armstrong moved down the corridor, Jablonsky looked at Cam and asked, “What’d he look like?”

  “Exactly as Ms. McHenry described him—tall, lean, pale blue eyes, his hair in a Mohawk, big pimple on his forehead, face covered with streaks of mud.”

  “Mud?” Jablonsky cocked a graying brow.

  “Sir!” Armstrong’s voice echoed from down the hall, sharp with sudden urgency. “I think you’d
better see this.”

  All three of them hurried down the corridor and around the corner to the frog room, where they stopped in the doorway, Jablonsky in the lead, Cam just behind him, the dark-haired guard bringing up the rear.

  The frog tank still stood in the empty room, two of its hinged lids shut. The third, farthest from the door, was open and propped back against the wall. Seated in the opening was Manuel Espinosa, face pale, dark eyes wide and staring, head cocked at an unnatural angle. Above his head, black jagged letters slashed across the freshly painted peach-colored wall at his back:

  SEND THE GIRL BACK. I WANT THE GIRL20

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cam stood in astonished rigidity. He didn’t need to check the young scientist’s pulse. The cocked head and unblinking eyes told it all. Nevertheless, Jablonsky stepped over the lip of the doorway and checked it anyway. He stepped back with a grim face, then pressed his earpiece and reported what they’d found. Cam heard his words without registering them, staring at the jagged, angry letters lurching behind Manny, their ramifications lifting the hairs on the back of his neck.

  I WANT THE GIRL22

  “The camera lens is fine,” Armstrong announced, glancing over his shoulder at Jablonsky from where he stood under the mount in the corner. “He must’ve jammed its transmission with a remote.”

  Both of them turned to Cam, expressions grim. Jablonsky nodded to the dark-haired guard, Herke, who gave Cam yet another patting down. He found no remote. “Must’ve dropped it in the stairwell before we caught him.”

  Jablonsky sent Armstrong to find it.

  “You think I did this?” Cam exclaimed, nodding at Manny. “I didn’t even know he was down here!”

  “You had him transferred here,” Jablonsky pointed out.

  “With Dr. Viascola’s and Director Swain’s approval.”

  “Still, you asked for his reassignment last night and now he’s dead. And your relationship wasn’t the best. For all I know he jumped you and it was self-defense.”

  “I had nothing to do with him. I never saw him, only the guy with the Mohawk.” Who had, he realized now, seemed vaguely familiar.

  “You can give us your full testimony in the briefing room.” Jablonsky turned away and informed whoever was on the other end of his earpiece that he and Herke were bringing the suspect down, and would they send up a team to deal with the body? He said nothing about searching for the man Cam had chased.

  In the elevator, Jablonsky slid a keycard through the slot above the floor number buttons, and a small panel slid aside to reveal a thumbprint pad, which activated a grid of lighted keys beside it. Cam couldn’t see which keys Jablonsky pressed, but suddenly the elevator floor dropped beneath their feet.

  Alarm was thick in Cam’s throat by then. He’ d assumed they’d take him to the security center on the first floor, not some area of restricted access deep beneath the Institute. And he couldn’t believe they really thought he’ d murdered Manny. Had they seen his meeting with Rudy and guessed the worst? And if they had, could he possibly convince them that he’ d come to K-J innocently, with the best of intentions, and had no intention of doing what Rudy had asked of him?

  The car slowed to a stop, and they stepped into a bare-walled lobby, then turned left through a set of glass doors. Beyond lay a shadowed, sunken room filled with glowing computer monitors. They ringed the walls and sat on long banks of consoles, attended by at least fifty people. Though some of the screens displayed data in graph and table form, most showed visual images of empty corridors, doors, lobbies, and deserted semi-darkened labs. All of them changed on a regular basis, flipping from camera to camera so that one screen might show the views relayed by twelve different cameras. Each attendant appeared to have at least two such screens to monitor and sometimes double that.

  Cam was steered leftward along the upper level, away from the well of monitors to a second set of glass doors. These led into a baffle-walled corridor lined with knobless panels, one of which Jablonsky opened to reveal a small briefing room with a table, two chairs, and a long window of darkened glass on the inner wall.

  Herke pushed Cam down into the chair on the table’s far side. Shortly they were joined by Assistant Director Slattery and Colonel

  Paul Nevins, head of security. Slattery set his laptop on the table across from Cam, and sat down before him. As he opened it and set up a small microphone, Colonel Nevins dismissed Jablonsky and Herke. When the door had shut and locked itself in their wake, Slattery asked Cam to state his full name and security clearance code for the record, then tell them what had happened.

  Cam did so as simply, clearly, and unemotionally as he could. From time to time Slattery interrupted him, pressing for more detail than the guards had, particularly with regard to the intruder’s appearance. When he was finished the AD leaned back in his chair and scowled. “So tell me, why in the world were you down there at one in the morning?”

  “I often go down late. And you know I was at the presentation.”

  “The presentation ended at ten.”

  Cam told him how he’ d listened to a sermon in his room, and then gone down to the AnFac to check on his projects, seeing as he wouldn’t be doing it in the morning.

  If anything, Slattery’s scowl deepened. “Or perhaps you were just waiting for a good time to confront Espinosa.”

  “Actually, I hoped not to see him at all.”

  “So that you might eliminate him and try to blame it on our intruder. If there is one at all.”

  Cam frowned at him. “Why would I want to eliminate Manuel Espinosa? And with your security cameras and microphones, you must know I didn’t.”

  “Our cameras have been going in and out all night, not just on the animal floor but everywhere. We have the audio of what we believe to be Espinosa’s death, but no visual. Here. Have a look.”

  He spun the laptop around so Cam could see the screen where Manny stepped out of the elevator into the animal facility’s main corridor and headed for the prep room. As he entered, the screen shifted to view him heading across the room to where Harvey the Hamster ran madly on his squeaky hamster wheel in his Lucite cage. At that point the screen went solid blue, but as Slattery had said, the audio continued. They listened to the sounds of water running and splashing, the squeak of the handle as it was cranked off, a rustling of paper toweling, more squeaks of doors and drawers, implements rattling, glass clinking. Then a deep, harsh voice, surprised and a bit imperious: “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The words were followed by a bang, a curse, and an extended rustling attended by thumps and grunts. There was a loud cartilage-cracking sound, then a few moments of labored wheezing. A drawer rolled open, then closed again, and all went quiet. Presently the faint thump-slap of footfalls sounded, faded to silence, then returned in sudden loudness as new microphones picked them up. Cam heard the familiar squeal of the frog tank’s metal lid being lifted and finally a great gonging thud as the intruder apparently dropped Manny’s body into the empty tank.

  More silence, then a faint erratic squeaking that Cam finally identified as a marker being used to write on the wall. Again the footfalls faded and sharply increased as the spinning hamster wheel became loud again—the intruder had returned to the prep room. Various unidentifiable sounds ensued, then the ping of the elevator and the shouts of the guards. At the same moment the screen flickered from blue back to imagery, showing Cam racing for the stairwell doorway as the guards shouted behind him. He vanished through the door, and moments later the guards followed—except Jablonsky, who stood at the doorway. At that point the image froze.

  “Now what do you have to say?” Slattery asked smugly, turning the laptop back to face himself.

  “I’d say you have a big problem on your hands,” Cam replied. “Because it wasn’t me, and the man you’re after is not only still out there but has somehow acquired clearance to enter places even I can’t.”

  Slattery’s dark brows drew together. “You were right
there, obviously running from the guards. There was only one ping of the elevator—that which sounded when Captain Jablonsky and his men arrived.”

  Cam stared at him. “No doubt because the microphones were focused on the action in the prep room.” Or perhaps because some audio technician had taken it out?

  “I was still on the fifth floor when this happened,” he added. “You must have surveillance footage from the corridor and elevator lobby showing me there. Compare the time on those to that on the audio and you’ll see I wasn’t there.” He paused. “Besides, why would I ask Manny who he was, if it was me coming through the door?”

  Slattery and Nevins exchanged a glance.

  Cam frowned at them. “You both know it wasn’t me. I could never have turned that tank over the other night, and don’t pretend you know nothing of that. He was very strong, very fast, and he had a wild look in his eyes. Not quite sane, I’d say. Which his actions confirm.”

  “And yet,” Slattery said, “you survived. Why did your mysterious intruder kill Espinosa for no apparent reason other than a chance encounter with him, and not you?”

  “He killed Espinosa because Espinosa was there instead of Lacey McHenry. Which is obvious from the words on the wall.”

  “Well, you were there, too, instead of Ms. McHenry.” Slattery poked at the keys on his laptop. “And you said that he did, in fact, attack you. A man as strong and fast as you say he is—”

  “He wasn’t that adept at fighting,” Cam cut in.

  “And you are?” Slattery asked sarcastically.

  Cam said nothing.

  Slattery frowned at his computer, typed something briefly into it, and pushed Enter. “It seems to me that if he’s as strong and fast as you say, your intruder should have easily overpowered you regardless of the level of his fighting skills.” He looked up from the screen. “I don’t think there was any intruder. I think you are the one who’s been staging all of this. I think you are the one who has disrupted our surveillance network, and that you are responsible for Manuel Espinosa’s death. Out of jealousy and fear that he would supplant you, given his superior credentials.”