The Defender (The Carrier Series Book 2)

by Diana Ryan

  I pocketed the paper just as Drew said, “There’s nothing here.” He had emptied all the books off the shelf onto the floor and was checking for a false back.

  “It’s gotta be here.” I shone my flashlight around the room, and Drew got down on his hands and knees to examine the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It is not absurd to hypothesize that the good doctor had a hidden room built into his office.” Drew pulled a tiny, flat, black gadget out of his pocket and scanned the floorboards. “Panic rooms and secret chambers date back to ancient Egyptian times.” The machine displayed a series of colored lights, but Drew kept scanning. “In the seventeenth century, cathedrals built priest holes to hide their leaders from the persecution of Catholics.”

  Drew stood and scanned the walls deliberately. “I suspect Dr. Alec knew he was discovering something monumentally important.” Different colored lights began to flash, and he stopped scanning. Drew quietly knocked on the wall and listened carefully. Then he used his little device to scan higher up. “Especially if the public began to rise up against him.” He let out a grunt as he pulled down on a stubborn light sconce apparently not screwed into the wall. “And protest his methods.” The sconce shifted down, revealing a lever.

  “Ta-da!” he announced proudly. “Would you like to do the honors, Agent Hill?”

  I walked over to the lever, excited nerves rumbling in my stomach, and I forced it up, half expecting to set off some kind of intruder alarm. Instantly, a section of the wall in front of me slid sideways, unsettling a ton of dust and making a loud metallic squeaking noise.

  A smile grew on my lips—a secret room.

  “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.” Drew led the way through the doorway, shining his flashlight.

  Inside, the room wasn’t much bigger than the bathroom back at the hotel. There was a desk covered in untidy papers, another ancient medicine cabinet, and a small shelf of books. Drew searched the bookshelf while I looked through the medicine cabinet. I rummaged through some antique medical supplies. Something under a piece of medical gauze caught my eye—a familiar blue rock about the size of a potato. I picked it up and turned it in my hands for a moment. Here I held the wretched reason for Ava’s loss of memory. I tossed it to my other hand. It was also the reason I met Ava. This little blue rock was our beginning and could very well be our end.

  “Harper told me these rocks blow up after exactly twenty years on earth,” I said, partially to myself. “Apparently he was lying. This one has been here well over a hundred years.”

  “Found it. I found it!”

  My heart picked up as I turned to look at Drew. He was holding a brown leather-bound journal. The cover had little gold foil letters spelling out the name Dr. Alec Ó Meidhir.

  “Yes!” I jumped up and swiped the book out of his hands.

  Suddenly something moved above our heads. It sounded like furniture being scraped across the second floor.

  “Someone else is in the house!” Drew whispered urgently. “We gotta get outta here!”

  I threw the blue rock down as we jumped through the secret room’s entrance. Drew pulled on the lever and replaced the sconce.

  Then we heard more footsteps, scraping, and a muffled female voice. She was walking slowly toward the stairs, no doubt. With hearts in our throats, we bolted out of the office, gracefully jumping over furniture and carefully running on our toes toward the back of the house. The stairs from the second floor came out in the kitchen near the back door. We had to beat the woman to the stairs, or she’d see us for sure.

  “Who’s there? You fluthered fools! Get out of my house!” Her screechy old voice sounded like it was at the top of the stairs. Drew reached the back door first and pushed it open just as I tripped on a wooden kitchen chair and stumbled to the ground right at the foot of the stairs, crashing into the wall with my shoulder.

  “You knackered gouger…manky sleeveen!” I could see her ugly old face at the top of the long staircase, staring down at me sprawled out at the bottom. She was clearly drunk, speaking gibberish, and about to topple down the stairs on her own accord.

  “Nolan!” Drew yelled from the backyard, “Come on!”

  Shoot! The journal! It slipped out of my hands when I fell!

  With my shoulder still throbbing from the fall, I groped around the dark kitchen floor while the old woman wailed at the top of the stairs.

  “Get your banjaxed, minkin—” and then she let out a wail of surprise as her foot slipped off the top stair and she came tumbling down. Clouds of dust filled the air as her heavy body crashed into each wooden stair, cracking and breaking several in the process.

  Drew yanked on my injured arm, pulling me out of the door just before the old woman hit the landing of the staircase. A sharp pain hit the back of my shoulder like a knife shoved into the muscle. I screamed as I got to my feet and ran like hell through the backyard, around to the front, and into the car waiting at the curb.

  Drew had already gotten in and started the engine. I opened the door and stuck my head in. “No! We’ve gotta go back, I lost the journal!

  “Get in the car, Nolan!” He screamed at me.

  I reluctantly jumped into the front seat as Drew peeled out of there as fast as he could. I pulled the door shut, and then banged the fist of my good arm on the dash. “Dammit!”

  “Calm down, Nol. The journal flew out the open back door when you fell. It practically smacked me in the face!” He pulled the leather book off of his lap and passed it to me.

  I took it, excited. I knew I’d be up all night reading but didn’t care about lost sleep if it took me one step closer to solving this mystery. I kissed the cover. “Yes!”

  I tried to catch my breath for a second, and then became cognizant of the hot pain radiating through my arm. “I think I dislocated my shoulder.” I felt around with my hand. Something was not right.

  “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ll pop that sucker back in when we get to the hotel.” Drew honked the horn twice in celebration. “Wooo! That was so much fun! I thought the old goat had us for a moment!” Then he laughed a wonderful laugh and I had to smile—we had Dr. Alec’s journal.

  * * * *

  Thursday, October 23rd

  I felt a line of drool flowing down my cheek, and I woke with a snort. A crack of sunlight shone through the pulled drapes, revealing the fact that I still had my clothes on from the day before. I was awkwardly sprawled in an armchair in my hotel room, the small leather journal sitting open on my chest. It took me a second to figure out where I was.

  I shifted to move out of the chair and soreness spread from my right shoulder and into my upper back.

  You fell on your shoulder in Dr. Ó Meidhir’s kitchen like an uncoordinated doofus, my brain reminded me.

  A painful grunt escaped my mouth as I rubbed my muscles for relief, replaying the scene in my head.

  My phone buzzed on the dresser, interrupting my thoughts. I carefully stood up and checked the display: Drew calling.

  “Hey there, buddy.” I wiped some sleep from my eyes and let out a loud yawn.

  “Morning, sleepy. So are you coming down here or what?”

  “Down where?”

  “You said you’d meet me down at The Court Restaurant for breakfast! Did you just wake up?”

  “Yeah. What time is it?” I looked around the room for a clock.

  “8:30. Hurry up! The eggs are getting cold and soon all the blood sausage will be gone!”

  “Oh, what a tragedy,” I said facetiously. “Just make sure there is a cup of coffee left for me.” I hung up, changed clothes, and brushed my teeth. Then I grabbed the leather journal and my tablet on the way out.

  There weren’t many people in the restaurant. Drew was sitting at a table by the window eating from a full plate. “Morning,” he greeted me with his mouthful.

  I sat down and took out my tablet to check over my notes from the night before. It took me a second to notice the other plate and steami
ng coffee cup next to Drew. “Who’s sitting there?” I pointed to the mysterious guest’s chair.

  “Well—” Drew smiled as I heard a female voice behind me.

  “Agent Hill. Good morning.” Darcy walked around the table and took her place next to Drew.

  Drew. That sneak.

  “Agent McCombe? What are you doing here?”

  “I talked Kane into letting me chaperone you two fools.” She picked up her fork and popped a piece of sausage in her mouth.

  “What? Look, we don’t need—”

  But Drew interrupted, his eyes wide, eyebrows high. “Ah ah ah, Nolan! Of course we could use the IIA’s help.” He gave a pleading look.

  Of course Drew wanted Darcy with us. Something told me perhaps we shouldn’t allow her on this quest, but Drew was practically begging. “Fine,” I allowed, pointing an empty fork at her, “but you better be helpful.”

  “Nolan!” Drew shamed me.

  Darcy put a hand on Drew’s arm to calm him. “I’ll be nothing but helpful. Now, fill me in on what’s new. Drew tells me you were able to find an important journal?”

  I placed the leather-bound book on the table. Darcy picked it up and flipped quickly through the pages, unable to hide her excitement.

  “The journal belonged to Dr. Alec Ó Meidhir, Myers’s grandfather,” I said. “He was a doctor in Killarney from 1923-1933.”

  Drew continued the story where I left off. “During this time he began to see bizarre symptoms in his patients—momentarily painful, intense headaches, wild mood changes, severe pain behind the eyes, memory loss, and abnormal lethargy.”

  “Interesting. Does the journal mention what he suspects are the causes of these symptoms?” Darcy set the book back down on the table. She apparently would rather hear the abridged version from us.

  I began to recount what I had read the night before. “The entries at the beginning of the journal seem to have no hypotheses, but rather a list of symptoms for each patient he saw. In the middle of his writing, Dr. Alec began expressing his theories on DNA, genetics, and mutations, often referring to some type of family symbol passed down through the years.”

  “Family symbol?”

  Drew continued our findings. “He calls it a replicator, but there’s not much of an explanation. What we found the most interesting were the pages near the end of the journal where he mentions that he, himself, was suffering from the same symptoms as his patients.”

  “I see,” Darcy commented. “Do we know how he died?”

  “We can only guess his death had something to do with these strange symptoms. Dr. Ó Meidhir noted that several of his patients died while he was treating them.” I looked around the room. It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps this wasn’t the best place to discuss our findings.

  Drew must have read my mind because he lowered his voice and leaned into the table a little. “Near the end of the doctor’s journal, he begins to refer to the patient’s disease as Caducuspetra Morbus. It sounds like Latin to me.” He looked at Darcy, “Do you have any idea what that might be translated to?”

  “It sounds—” she thought for a moment. “—something like—”

  “Fallen rock disease,” she and I said in tandem.

  Drew looked at me quizzically. “I know Latin, too,” I reminded him.

  Darcy scrunched up her eyebrows and took a sip from her coffee cup. “Fallen rock disease. Would that make sense?”

  “Actually that makes perfect sense.” I typed into my tablet, feeling satisfied.

  “The meteor shower of 1901.” Drew thought outloud. “Those suffering from Caducuspetra Morbus must have been keeping meteors in their homes.”

  Darcy put her two cents in. “I’d be willing to make a bet that Dr. Ó Meidhir had one of those rocks in his possession. He must have been suffering from Caducuspetra himself.”

  “He did! I found one in his secret office yesterday.” Something didn’t make sense to me. “But if the doctor knew what was causing the disease, why would he keep the rock in his house?”

  “That is a good question.” Darcy picked up her coffee cup and let the sides warm her fingers as she searched for a reason.

  “Maybe he was already infected and didn’t care.” Drew pointed a finger at me. “Didn’t you say Ava’s symptoms didn’t start showing until she had been exposed to the rock almost twenty years, anyway?”

  “Ava?” Darcy asked.

  Drew looked at Darcy, “Nolan’s girlfriend. The one I was telling you about last night.”

  Last night? Drew had stayed up with me reading the journal for a while, but then retired to his room where I had thought he was going to get some sleep.

  “Oh, right,” Darcy replied.

  “Would it be possible that Dr. Ó Meidhir’s family kept a rock in their house when he was growing up? What do we know about Alec’s parents?”

  Darcy took out her tablet from her purse. “The IIA knows that Dr. Ó Meidhir grew up in Cornwall, England. He moved to Ireland in 1916 when his father, Declan, died at age thirty-eight.”

  “Okay! Now we’re getting somewhere!” Drew commented.

  We all sat back with satisfaction on our faces. But my smile faded as it dawned on me—what actually had we discovered? Were we at all closer to figuring out Myers’s agenda?

  “Wait. How does this all help us?” I questioned.

  Drew stared into his coffee cup and Darcy looked out the window, both apparently deep in thought. Their silence is bad news, my brain explained.

  “Myers sent someone to block us from getting information from Eneclann. If he knew we were here I bet he’d have someone shooting bullets at our heads to keep us away from this journal. There has to be a reason Myers doesn’t want us to find this information.” Drew joined Darcy’s gaze out the window. “There has to be something in here that is linked to what he is doing now.”

  “Or maybe he wanted you to find the journal,” Darcy suggested. “Perhaps he couldn’t get to it himself.”

  I let out a loud sigh and picked the book up off the middle of the table. If that was the truth, then I couldn’t let it out of my sight. I thumbed through it quickly and landed on a random page near the back. I read the entry. The doctor was writing on his theory of gene mutation caused by Caducuspetra Morbus. Darcy and Drew had begun conversing quietly but I ignored them, reading the journal page.

  “Hey guys. Listen to this.” They stopped talking as I read quietly from the page.

  Nearly twenty percent of Killarney now suffer from Caducuspetra Morbus. Several members have become violent threats to the community and two more were arrested this week. They will all find death unless I discover a treatment for this malignant disease. Through my research I have come to the hypothesis that the cure lies within the DNA of the affected.

  Drew cut me off. “That’s it, Nolan! The cure lies within the DNA of the affected. Myers needs the DNA of the people who suffer from fallen rock disease.”

  I excitedly turned the page to continue reading, but the next page was blank.

  “Are there no more entries?” Darcy asked as I flipped through the rest of the journal.

  “None,” I said, disappointed. “The rest of the book is blank.”

  Drew took a sip of coffee. “I wonder if he died right after he wrote that last entry.”

  Feeling like we had hit another dead end, we all let out a slow breath and continued picking at our breakfast.

  Drew offered to continue the investigation. “What do we know about Myers’s parents? Are they still alive? If his grandfather was onto something, don’t you think his father might have continued his research?”

  “It’s worth a try. I’m going up to my room to call Agent Bowman. Maybe it’s about time we head back to the US.” With the joyful prospects of returning home in my heart, I stood up, holding tight to the journal.

  Drew held his hand up to caution me. “That sounds great, buckaroo, except it’s the middle of the night back home right now. You better sit your butt bac
k down and finish your breakfast before you call the big boss.”

  He was right. As much as I wanted to move forward with what we had discovered, I knew Agent Bowman would not appreciate a call at 3:30 a.m. So I lowered myself back into the chair, and wondered what Ava would be doing today.

  * * * *

  At noon it was seven in the morning in Wisconsin. I dialed the agency’s number, went through the proper protocol, and finally got Agent Bowman on the phone.

  “Greetings, Agent Hill. I assume you have a good reason for calling so early?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve made a wonderful finding.” I explained the journal and our discovery of Caducuspetra Morbus.

  “This sounds like an encouraging advance in this mission. I congratulate you and Agent Smith.”

  “Thank you, sir. Please advise our next step.” I paced across the hotel room.

  “Intel suggests Myers is still hiding somewhere out of reach of our surveillance. However, we have reason to believe he is not an immediate threat to Ava at this time. I must warn you, however, that Miss Gardner wouldn’t be too hard to find when he wants to. We are watching her carefully, of course, but our office is sure Myers needs her alive at this point.”

  My stomach felt uneasy. Was she really safe at school?

  “What else can we do to discover what Myers’s agenda is?”

  There was a short pause, and I thought I had heard a pencil tapping on the desk. “I’ve been debating. Yes, I’d like you and Agent Smith to head over to St. Ives, Cornwall.”

  I wasn’t going home? A wave of disappointment and then confusion washed over me.

  “Cornwall, sir?”

  “Yes, Cornwall. The westernmost part of the southwest peninsula of England. Just across the channel from your location right now. Myers’s great-grandparents lived in Cornwall, and I believe it might be worth a trip abroad. Discover everything you can about Charlotte and Declan Mayers—who they were, where they lived, and what they did. Any miniscule factoid could help.”