Her frown deepened. “All right. I’ll throw it away. But can you at least tell me how it’s so dangerous?”
“It’s . . .” He paused, seeming reluctant. “It’s some sort of mind control device.”
“A mind control device?”
“Just promise me you’ll get rid of it.”
“I’ll throw it in the dumpster as soon as I get back tonight.”
He accepted that, and they fell silent—his sudden fanaticism about the box leaving them adrift in a sea of awkwardness. She wanted to return to the subject of his flashbacks. What was he seeing? Was he remembering what had happened in Afghanistan? And why now? What could some military extraction mission in the Middle East twelve years ago have to do with Swain and Kendall-Jakes?
She had just worked up the nerve to reopen the subject when he suddenly stiffened, eyes narrowing as they fixed on something in the parking lot. She turned to see a shuttle disgorging yet another load of visitors, among whom he’ d apparently seen someone who interested him. Indeed, he now picked up the binoculars that he’ d set aside on the table and focused them toward the milling group.
“I think I’ve seen that guy down there in the red hat back at the zig.
In a security guard’s uniform. You ready for a little hike?” He lowered the binocs from his eyes and slid the carry strap over his head, then stood and stepped over the bench, reaching for his day pack.
“As long as it’s not too far,” she said. “I meant it about the blisters.”
“We’ll just go up the ridge a bit. There’s a rock formation there that’ll give us a good view of the sunset.” He pulled a dark blue ball cap and a dark denim shirt from the day pack and told her to put them on. As she did, he zipped up the pack and swung it onto his shoulders, in the process of which she was shocked to glimpse a pistol grip protruding from the back waistband of his jeans.
They gathered up their trash, threw it in the garbage can, and then he led her south along a dirt path up the ridge. She followed him with acute uneasiness, trying to convince herself that the pistol wasn’t what it had looked like, when she knew very well that it was.
Chapter Thirty
After a few minutes, the trail ran out, and Reinhardt led Lacey down the ridge-side, then up along its western face, climbing steadily until they reached an outcropping of rocks where they could sit out of sight of both the ziggurat and the picnic area. Below them, rolling grasslands dotted with stands of brush and trees stretched off to the west, where the sun was dipping behind a fringe of clouds hovering over the horizon.
As he swung off the pack and settled beside her, she said, almost accusingly, “You have a pistol stuck in the back of your pants!”
“Yes.”
She stared at him, openly horrified.
“Snakes,” he explained. “They like to come out this time of day.”
Which was reasonable, she supposed, but she didn’t believe that was the only reason he’ d brought the gun. She thought she should feel worried, out here alone with a man who was carrying a gun, and whom her employer told her was borderline psychotic and dangerous. But they’d been through enough together, she trusted him, despite Swain’s efforts to prevent that, and recalled from his file that he’ d kept up his practice with firearms over the years.
They sat in silence, watching as the sun dropped behind the clouds, rays of light spearing across the pale mauve sky. From their position she could see the asphalt service road below them, arcing around the property. A red Jeep Cherokee sat to the near side of it, facing their way. She asked if it was his and he nodded. Except for that, the road lay deserted. As they sat there the rays of light faded, grayness returned, and then the red orb of the sun slid past the gap between the thunderheads and horizon. Suddenly the clouds were turned to blood and the rumpled grasslands at their feet looked as if they were on fire.
It was breathtaking, but ephemeral. All too soon red and gold gave way to gray and purple again, highlighting the slice of moon that hung high in the western sky, attended by a single bright star. As a slight breeze kicked up around them, she finally turned her mind to the reason she was sitting here alone with her former boss, a man she barely knew.
“So what is this all about?” she asked. “You said you had something to suggest to me that the articles would give me context for. Do you want me to play spy for you, then? Serve as bait in another possible abduction?”
“I’m not sure ‘bait’ is the right word, but yes.”
“What if he just kills the girls after he abducts them?”
“We don’t think that’s what he’s doing. We don’t even think the girls who supposedly died are dead.”
“So what do you think?”
“Twenty-five years ago Parker Swain was obsessed with human cloning, which he saw as a means of attaining eternal life. There are reports he achieved viable cloned human embryos well into the third trimester, but could never bring the fetuses to term. That was twenty years ago, though, and if he’ d had any real success you’d think we’d have heard of it. On the other hand, given the controversial nature of such a project—not to mention the potential profits to be made— maybe not.”
A horrible, stomach-curdling suspicion bloomed in Lacey’s mind.
“To the third trimester means he had to implant his embryo into a surrogate.”
“Exactly.”
She gaped at him in equal measures of disbelief and horror. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? You could go online right now and sign up to be a surrogate with some fertility clinic. Women do it all the time.”
“Then why abduct them? Why not just pay them?”
He sighed as if in frustration and shook his head. “I don’t know.
The secrecy of the project? The fact he’s a megalomaniac? Maybe he didn’t abduct them. Maybe they went willingly. He certainly has a way with women.”
She thought of Parker Swain’s charisma, the way all her discernment seemed to leave when she was in his presence.
“It’s only a theory,” he added.
One that made a kind of appalling sense, unfortunately. She considered for a moment; then, tucking a windblown lock of hair behind one ear, she said, “So if you’re right, and I agree, there’s the potential I could be impregnated with a cloned embryo.” She spoke quietly, and kept her voice even, though horror churned in her stomach until she thought she might vomit.
“Ideally, we’d extract you before it got that far.”
“Ideally.” The breeze swirled around them again, carrying errant snatches of voices from the picnic area and even the brief distant sound of a steel band playing down in the campus bowl. She blew out her breath. “I’m sorry, Dr. Reinhardt, but this is just too . . .” She trailed off, overwhelmed with aversion. “It’s too weird. Kendall-Jakes is a respectable institute. What you’re talking about sounds like a bad science fiction movie.”
“I told you it would sound worse before it sounded better.”
“When is it going to sound better?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t think I want to be your bait.”
He nodded but said nothing, turning his face toward the west, where darkness swathed the land, broken here and there by the distant twinkle of isolated lights. Overhead, a nighthawk wheeled in the air beneath the partial moon and star.
She frowned, kicking at a knob of rock near her feet. “I really don’t have a choice, though, do I? Since he means to take me anyway.” It was very hard to swallow the notion that this had never been about her researching ability or her aptitude for science.
He shifted beside her. “We can extract you right now and put you under government witness protection if that’s what you want.”
Government protection. That would mean she’ d have to change her name, never see her mother again, and forget about a genetics career or anything high profile. “I wouldn’t have to pay back my debts, though, would I?”
He smiled slightly. “I wou
ldn’t think so, no.”
Again they fell into silence. She didn’t want to disappear. But then, she didn’t want any of this. “Wouldn’t Swain think it terribly odd if I just disappeared?”
“It would impact our operation here, certainly.”
“But you have similar investigations going on at the other sites, right?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at her. “Given the way I was recruited, I doubt it. One of the reasons they approached me was because Swain was already after me, and they hoped as a respected and well-known geneticist I might break through barriers that so far had been closed to them.”
“Getting onto the Inner Circle, you mean.”
He nodded. “You’d do us one better, though.”
She tucked the errant lock of hair behind her ear again. “What would I have to do?”
“Mostly just be our eyes and ears. Keep in contact. Let me know what’s going on. We might wire you if it starts to look like he’s going to move.”
“Which would be before the U of A Genetics department returns from their vacations next week, no doubt.”
He nodded.
She gazed blindly across the twilight-cloaked landscape, sick with fear. The moon and star had dropped behind the pile of clouds by then, a rough marker of the length of time they’d been out here. Probably too long . . .
Again the wind shifted, and they heard voices from the picnic area, then car doors slamming and engines roaring to life.
When she’ d said nothing for a time, he pulled a head lamp from his pack’s external pocket and suggested she should probably get back to the zig. He’ d see her back to the picnic area so she could take the shuttle, then go back to his car and drive around. When she agreed, he stood, slid on the pack, and offered a hand to help her up.
She took it, then stood staring up at him, her hand still resting in his. “I’m scared,” she said softly.
“You should be,” he said. He’ d put his hat on backward and positioned the head lamp, but had not yet switched it on, which made it easier for her to see his face, softened and shadowed in the dim light. “We both should be. But I think God brought us both here for a reason. Put us both in the position we’re in. For a reason. We have to believe He’ll take care of us through it.”
She looked at the ground, embarrassed and suddenly uncomfortable. “I don’t think I have enough faith for that anymore. God’s done so very little for me over the years.”
After a moment of silence, he lifted her chin with a finger, forcing her to meet his eyes. “He might not have given you everything you want, but He’s given you life. You’re healthy and whole—” he paused, his eyes roving her face—“beautiful and brainy, and a pretty nice girl, too. I don’t think you can fault Him. Especially when you consider He’s done all that knowing you’d turn your back on Him.”
She frowned at him, not sure she liked his assumption that she’ d turned her back on God. Even if it was true.
He seemed to read her thoughts, for he smiled slightly. “He’s given you the opportunity to make choices, as well. And the time to change your mind, if some of those choices don’t turn out to be very good ones.”
“You mean like bad marriages?”
“Actually, I was thinking more of bad attitudes. The way we ignore God and run off after our own plans, then blame Him when they don’t work out.” He said it with such irony, she thought he must be speaking from experience.
Even so the words burrowed like arrows into her heart. For she had run after her own plans. But after the debacle with Erik, after all those years of trying so hard to do the things she was supposed to as a good Christian girl, only to fail so miserably, in both her marriage and in her personal life, why should she not go her own way? Why should she trust Him to work things out when He never had before? Especially now, when once again everything was falling to pieces around her—in the most bizarre manner possible.
Unwilling to say any of that to his face, though, she averted her eyes and said nothing.
Finally he stepped back and released her hand, was just starting to speak when a head-sized rock sailed through the air where he had been, cracking loudly into the cliff behind them. It was so close, the wind of its passage whooshed into her face. She blinked at him in surprise and the next moment he’ d pulled her to the ground with him, hunkering behind a mound of rock.
After a time, when no more rocks came flying, he drew her down along the cracks and gaps in the outcropping until they reached the grassy slope at the bottom. Then, without a word, and without turning on his head lamp, he led her at an almost run across the open ground, heading for a nearby copse of trees and brush. Dashing from cover to cover, they reached his Jeep without further incident.
He jammed the key into the door, unlocking it, and she scrambled in as he went around to the driver’s side. There he tossed his pack and binoculars into the back and got in beside her.
“Why were we running like that?” Lacey said as he switched on the engine and lights.
“You think that rock just hurled itself into the cliff on its own?” he asked grimly, throwing the SUV into gear and pulling onto the blacktop.
“What? Are you saying it was thrown?” Now that she had time to think it through, she realized that was the only way to explain its trajectory.
“I’m guessing it was Frogeater, though it surprises me he’d come all the way out here.”
“Oh no!” she cried in sudden chagrin. “I meant to tell you earlier— there was a note attached to the frog he left me. He wanted me to meet him tonight at the Vault.”
“He wanted you to meet him?” Reinhardt took his eyes off the road for a moment to flash her a horrified glance.
“Well, it wasn’t like I was going to. But, yeah. I didn’t tell you in the office because I was afraid we’d be overheard.”
He faced the road again, one hand on the steering wheel, the other still covering the stick shift. “Well, no wonder he’s—”
A basketball-sized rock slammed into the hood, rolled into the windshield and off as Reinhardt stomped on the brakes and cranked the wheel leftward. As the SUV went into a tight, leaning U-turn, Lacey screamed and gripped the armrest in terror, certain they were going to roll. . . .
But they didn’t. As they straightened out, heading back the way Cameron had originally come, he up-shifted as rapidly as the transmission would allow. As the minutes slid by along with the roadside vegetation, she began to catch her breath, shaken, but unhurt.
And then a boulder the size of a small chair slammed into the pavement directly ahead of them. Reinhardt swerved hard right to miss it, then left to stay on the road. Again the Jeep tilted precariously, its right wheels clipping the dirt shoulder. Barely were they square on the pavement, when a small uprooted tree fell into their way. Again, Reinhardt swerved around it and kept going.
“How could he have caught up with us so fast?” Lacey cried.
Cameron didn’t answer as boulders now rained upon them. Like a race-car driver, he dodged and swerved between them. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the assault ended, and for a moment the road lay clear. She was just daring to hope it was over, when a man in a green hooded sweatshirt appeared square in their path. Cameron wrenched the wheel to the right; they swerved again onto the shoulder—
And the engine died, the lights with it. Lacey was aware of Reinhardt struggling with the steering wheel as the Jeep fishtailed; then the ground dropped out from under the right front tire and a dark wall of vegetation reared up before them. She slammed hard into her shoulder harness, the force of impact snapping her head back against the headrest and driving the breath from her chest.
Stunned and disoriented, she was fighting to drag some air into her breathless lungs when her passenger door vanished in a deafening squeal, and a horrible smell engulfed her. Then her seat belt was torn away and she was yanked out of the car. She heard Cam shout as she was hurled over her abductor’s shoulder and carried away.
It’s Frog
eater!
He ran, twisting and jumping through the grass and spotty woods, Lacey bouncing over his shoulder. Where his bare hand gripped the backs of her upper legs, it felt like hot coals pressed against her skin. The wop-wop-wop of a helicopter somewhere in the distance ahead of them brought him up short. He stood listening a moment, then turned and fled back the other way. By then she’ d regained enough of her senses to fight him—twisting, hitting, and struggling futilely to get free.
Suddenly a deafening boom-boom thundered in the night, and he stumbled badly, losing his grip on her. She slid off his shoulder and slammed into the hard, prickly ground. Urgency screamed at her to get up and run, but her lungs had locked up again, refusing to take in air, despite the fact she was close to passing out.
When she was finally able to breathe, Cameron was kneeling over her. “Are you all right? Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere,” she gasped, pushing herself up on one elbow. “Where did he go?”
“Off into the darkness.” Reinhardt gestured vaguely in the direction Frogeater had fled. He seemed disoriented. Blood ran from a cut on his brow and she noted that the bulb of his head lamp had been crushed.
“Did you hear those two booms?” she asked. “Right before he stumbled? It was almost as if someone . . .” She trailed off as thought caught up with words and she remembered he had a gun.
“Shot him?” Cameron supplied. “Yeah. That was me.”
“You shot him?!” She sat upright, outraged. “I was hanging over his shoulder! You could’ve hit me.”
“I was aiming at his legs. I’m pretty sure I hit him, too, ’cause that was right when he stumbled.”
She realized he was right, but before she could say any more, the formerly distant chop of the helicopter’s blades grew loud and immediate. In milliseconds the aircraft came whooshing over the ridge, its spotlight slicing the darkness before it. For a moment it bathed them in blinding brilliance, then flashed on as the helicopter swooped past, buffeting them with the wind of its rotors.
They scrambled to their feet, dust and debris settling around them as the sound faded—only to be replaced by the roar of several SUVs speeding down the service road just to their west. The vehicles turned off about where Lacey and Cam were standing, heading further westward over the rough terrain, searchlights spearing wildly through the night.
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