by Rachel Caine
Patrick finished up and handed the phone back. It was Pansy again. “Well, this is just getting cheerier,” Pansy said. “I’m starting to think Manny has the right idea about living in a perpetual state of paranoia. Gotta love a man who sticks to his principles. How are you feeling?”
“Good,” Bryn said. It wasn’t a lie. Physically, she was fine—better than she had been in a while. Mentally . . . well. Better to avoid that topic. “I need to take more cruises.”
“Words to live by, lady. The driver’s one of Joe’s guys; he’ll take care of you. He’s also got supplies for you. Um . . . can I ask where you’re heading? Because Anchorage isn’t on our radar as a Fountain Group hotbed of activity.”
“We’re not staying here,” Bryn said. “We’re going to Barrow.”
“Wow. Barrow. As in . . . are you renting a dogsled, too?”
“I have no idea,” Bryn said. “But I need to get there and get back, and fast. We have to make it to San Francisco in time for a meeting of the Trigon board of directors.”
“I—wow. Okay. So, you need one puddle jumper to Barrow. Let me . . . get on that. Bryn? Are you sure you’re—”
“I’m sure,” she said. “Thanks, Pansy. Tell my sister I love her.”
“I will. Be careful.”
“Am I ever?”
Pansy laughed, but it sounded hollow. Bryn missed her voice on the line when it was gone, and for a moment she just sat, hand gripping Patrick’s. Then she said, “You were serious? About Joe’s family?”
“Yes,” Patrick said. “Jane won’t flinch.”
No. Jane wouldn’t. Bryn knew that from terrifying close experience. “And . . . my family . . .”
He was quiet for a few seconds, then lifted her hand to press a kiss on the back of it. “Brick’s people are watching them.”
“It was just a precaution before. Now it might save their lives,” she finished. She wasn’t really close to her other brothers and sister; they’d all gone very different ways in their lives. Her mother . . . Well. They’d never been exactly Norman Rockwell portrait material. But that didn’t mean she didn’t love them, didn’t worry.
And her nieces and nephews didn’t deserve any part of this horror. If I’d known what was coming, she thought with a wave of dull, black despair, I’d have let Jane feed me to the incinerator. Except that would not have saved anyone else, ultimately.
The only thing that would save people, really save them, would be the destruction of the Fountain Group itself.
But first, she had to finish Jane. And for that . . . for that, she needed to get to the unlikely place of Barrow, Alaska.
The driver turned and rolled down the window up front. “Ma’am? I’ve been told to take you and Mr. McCallister to the airport. Your friend there . . . He doesn’t look so good. What would you like me to do with him?”
Reynolds. Bryn looked at the man; he was silent, eyes shut. His skin was starting to lose its elasticity now, and take on that muddy color of decomposition. Still days away from dissolution, but he was going.
“Once we’re in the air, take him somewhere nice,” she said. “He’s dying. When I come back—when I come back, we’ll figure something out.”
Reynolds roused at that, and looked at her. His lips moved in what might have been intended as a smile. It looked ghastly. “Something fast,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”
He settled back with a sigh, and closed those cloudy eyes again.
“You should stay with him,” she said to Patrick. “They might still try to get him back, although I doubt it. They probably considered him a lost cause when we took him. One thing these people don’t seem big on is loyalty.”
“I’m coming with you,” Patrick said.
“I don’t need you for—”
“I’m coming,” he said. It was flat, and hard as steel, and she smiled, a little.
“I love it when you get all forceful,” she said. “All right. But don’t blame me if you get eaten by polar bears. It’s already snow season there.”
“I love the cold,” he said, and gave her a crooked smile that warmed her nicely. “And I trust you to take care of the polar bears.”
Chapter 21
Bryn expected the driver to take them to the main terminal, where Alaska Airlines was, not surprisingly, the biggest business, but the driver went a different way . . . to an access gate that led to the extensive private plane section. “I thought we were taking a commercial flight,” she said. “Where are we going?”
“The supplies I brought are something you don’t want to carry in through security,” he said. “My instructions are to take you this way.”
They passed rows of small single-engine planes and moved on to glossier, more advanced models . . . and then to the private jets. The limo parked near something that had to be worth a million or more, a sleek needle of a plane that looked as if it might be equipped to go not to Barrow, but to Mars. The ladder was down, and as the driver opened the door for them, Bryn saw a familiar friend coming down to greet them.
“Joe?” she said blankly. “How—I just—”
It didn’t matter, suddenly. She flew at him and got a great big warm hug in response, one that lifted her right off her feet. When he let her go, Patrick was next—back slapping included, as per the Man Code. “Inside,” Joe said as he stepped back. After the limo driver opened the trunk, Joe grabbed a couple of olive-drab duffels and tossed them to Bryn and Patrick. She was surprised at the weight of them. “We probably don’t have too long. You know what to do?” He directed that last at the driver, who nodded and helped Reynolds out of the limo and into his wheelchair. That wheelchair was loaded on a standard handicap-accessible lift on what was, to Bryn’s eyes, a standard, well-used airport vehicle—something no one would glance at twice here. The limo driver exchanged jackets and hats with another man waiting on the tarmac. The limo quickly cruised on, heading somewhere . . . else, and the airport van moved off to blend in with the general flow of secured traffic.
“All aboard,” Joe said. “We’re ready to roll.”
It was . . . quite the plane. Bryn had never been in anything like it—rich wood paneling, thick carpets, plush seats, and tables. Like an upper-class social club, only in the air.
And on the plane were Manny, Pansy, Liam, Riley, and Annie. The full complement from the supposedly impenetrable missile base.
Annie practically leaped on Bryn, all babbles and hugs and more hugs, and Bryn clung to her, tears burning and breaking loose as she buried her face in her sister’s hair. She didn’t even hear what was said. It didn’t matter. She understood. And she never wanted to let go, except that Joe touched her shoulder and said, apologetically, “Strapping in time, ladies.”
“Right,” Bryn said, and pulled back with a deep breath. She held on to Annie’s hand a moment more, then went to the empty seat next to Patrick and secured the safety belt. “Somebody want to tell me exactly what’s going on here? Because I’m a little—”
“Confused? Good,” Manny said. He was sitting calmly, working a crossword puzzle and wearing square reading glasses, which looked oddly delicate on him. “If you are, then I’m hoping the Fountain Group is a whole lot more baffled.”
“I—how did you—”
“You don’t really think that I ever stay someplace that doesn’t have a secret way out, do you? And when I say secret, I mean not even Pansy knows, until we’re ready to use it. Sorry, sweetheart. But you know.”
“I do,” Pansy said, and put her head on his shoulder. “Long story short, the Fountain Group’s hired guns are still watching the complex, and there’s enough activity going on to keep them very interested. They’ve made at least a dozen attempts at cracking it, but they’re still—what’s that word we like so much, Manny?”
“Stymied,” he said with more than a little relish. “Stymied, exactly.” He filled in another word on his puzzle. In ink, of course. “Everybody knows I’m a paranoid
freakazoid who likes to hole up in bunkers against the end of the world. It’s useful.”
“You are a paranoid freakazoid who likes to hole up in bunkers. I’ve been to your . . . houses,” Joe said.
“I’m perfectly capable of adapting when I need to,” Manny said. “We routed all the communications back through the bunker, of course. Everything’s programmed to make them believe we’re still in place there. We even made it look as if Riley and Joe fought their way into the bunker.”
“You didn’t?” Bryn asked. Joe, seated across from her, shook his head.
“Never got that far,” he said. “We got a message on paper to wait in a parking lot for a ride. Next thing I knew, we were on this plane headed somewhere completely new.”
“And . . . where was that?”
“You don’t need to know,” Manny said, “because we won’t be going back. I just needed the lab for a while.”
“Did you synthesize the shutdown drug?” Bryn asked.
“I have the analysis under way,” he said. “I think there’s another way to take it than what Thorpe did. If it works, it could change everything.”
“You think it’ll be ready in time?”
“That,” he said without taking his attention from his crossword, “is a good question. No idea.”
She wasn’t sure that she should believe him; Manny’s paranoia might be a convenient disguise some of the time, but it was also a fundamental truth about who he really was. It was important to never forget that if he thought it was prudent to lie to her, he’d lie without a qualm. He’d want a holdback weapon against her.
And he was probably right about that, given what she’d become on this trip. What she’d done. What she was capable of doing.
She didn’t press him, just nodded and settled back for takeoff.
That was when she heard a bark and a scrabble of claws, and her gorgeous pet bulldog Mr. French appeared at her feet, panting and gazing up at her with big, dark, adoring eyes. She picked him up and cuddled him as he wiggled and whined and licked tears from her face. “How—?”
“You keep asking that question,” Manny said. He sounded amused. “Ask the butler.”
“I am not a butler,” Liam said, but he sounded more resigned than offended. “I thought you might want to see him, Bryn. And I was a bit afraid that Jane . . . Well, you understand. The rest of the estate dogs were moved to a new kennel, but Mr. French seemed to be missing you quite a bit. I thought it was worth bringing him. He’ll stay on the plane, of course.”
“Did you have to put down a pet deposit?” she asked, and laughed through her tears. “Oh God, thank you, Liam. Thank you. I—I really needed him.” Because Mr. French’s unwavering love was one thing that hadn’t become complicated, although she knew that he could tell she was . . . different. But he was sensitive to her, and she knew that he was an excellent judge of character—her character. If she found him looking at her with doubt, she would need to check herself.
And if he growled . . . she’d need to stop.
“Stupid dog,” she whispered, and rubbed his ears. He made a contented sound in the back of his throat, almost like a purr, and flopped limply across her lap. “God, I missed you, mutt.”
He opened one eye to look at her, as if to say that he hadn’t missed her at all.
Liar.
The takeoff was bumpy, but once the plane was in the air the ride was smooth as glass. Below, the late-summer landscape of Anchorage still looked clear, but as the plane moved north, snow appeared—patchy at first, and then solid, then hardpacked. Not winter yet, but winter was coming fast, and in this part of the world, coming with an iron, icy fist to smash all the unprepared fools who tried to cross it.
Like her.
This will be fast, she told herself. We land; I find this scientist; I grab the stored sample; we’re gone and headed for San Francisco. She had no doubt that Manny was right that his trail was clear—he was a past master of evasion and misinformation—but they’d left Reynolds behind, and Reynolds could be a fatal problem.
“Patrick,” she said, “Dr. Reynolds . . . we should have brought him with us. Just in case. He’s a liability.”
He gave her a long, unreadable look, and then put his head back against the seat and sighed. “Do you want me to say it?” he asked. “All right. I gave the order. I didn’t want you to be responsible for it. You . . . bonded with him; I could see that. You felt sorry for him, and I understand that. But I couldn’t leave him there, with all the knowledge he’d gained from us along the way.”
She sat upright, pulling against the seat belt. Mr. French huffed in agitation and had to adjust his comfortable slouch on her lap. “What did you do? Patrick?”
“What you would have done if you’d been thinking straight,” he said. “The driver has what he needs.”
“You had him killed?” She didn’t know why that felt so wrong, or like such a betrayal; it shouldn’t have, really. She’d meant to do the same on returning; it was exactly what she knew Reynolds wanted. What he’d asked for. But somehow, having it taken out of her hands enraged her, and she glared at him with so much fury that she felt Mr. French stir in her lap and put his paw on her hand, clearly trying to get her attention. She patted him, and felt some of the fury recede. “Patrick, why didn’t you—”
“You think I had him killed? Why would you think that?” he asked her, and gave her a very strange look. “I made sure the driver had a supply of Returné and took him to a secured lockdown. Nobody’s going to hurt him. We might need his information about the San Francisco meeting. What I meant was that I arranged for him to live.”
He was right, of course, and in retrospect she couldn’t understand why she’d thought so intensely about ending his pain, instead of getting him a palliative treatment—another shot of Returné. It wasn’t a cure, but it would stop his suffering.
But she knew that just delayed it, and that was the problem. It felt . . . futile. Useless. Another day of staving off the inevitable.
“I just wanted it to be over,” she confessed, and concentrated on petting Mr. French’s warm, short fur. “For him.”
“Don’t you mean for you?” Patrick’s voice had turned gentle and soft, and was almost lost in the sound of the plane’s engines. He took her other hand. “Bryn . . .”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe I did mean that. I just—it’s so much. At first it’s adrenaline; it’s determination; then it just becomes adaptation, I suppose. But then you get this moment, this moment where you see it all clearly, your future, what you’re going to become, and . . . I don’t want to be that. I love you, but I can’t be that. We’re fooling ourselves that this is some kind of . . . disease that can be managed. Death isn’t a disease, Pat. It’s what cures it.”
He’d paled during that short speech, and his hand had tightened on hers. “Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t.”
“I’m not going to get better, Pat,” she said. “I wish I could, but we both know how this will end. It isn’t just the PTSD that accumulates from all this . . . resurrection. It’s more. It’s worse. It . . . twists what I am, inside. Like it did Jane. Promise me—”
“No.”
“Promise me that if—”
“I said no, Bryn. I mean it.” He did. She could see the haunted look even in her peripheral vision, feel his distress like heat against her skin.
She never, ever wanted to hurt him, but she knew . . . she knew that she would. Eventually. Just like Jane. She could remember that cold, detached feeling inside her—the sense that she was standing apart from the world, from people. That none of it really meant anything.
That detachment wasn’t distance, it was sociopathy, and she was slowly, surely contracting it. What would happen when she couldn’t connect anymore? When Patrick’s feelings didn’t matter? When even the trusting sweetness of Mr. French no longer had any impact? It would mean the end of her as a person. Worse, it would be the beginning of her as a monster. She already ate flesh,
when desperate. If she tipped over the edge, lost everything that had ever mattered . . . then hunger would be all that was left. Not Bryn.
He didn’t understand that being that . . . being so empty . . . would be worse than dying.
Fine. She couldn’t ask Patrick to do it, then, but Manny wouldn’t hesitate. He was ruthless enough, and he’d understand why she asked. He’d seen all this as an abomination from the beginning—a great scientific achievement, but nonetheless, something to be feared, not praised. Pansy might object, but in the end . . . in the end, she’d understand, too. Even Joe would.
Not Annie, though. Even now, not her sister.
Bryn closed her eyes against a sudden shudder of turbulence, and concentrated on the gentle, warm weight of Mr. French in her lap until she drifted off to sleep.
She woke up with the extremely sharp-edged alertness that comes with too many crises, and found, to her shock, that what she’d felt was the plane touching down on the icy runway.
They’d made it to Barrow.
And now she had to find Thorpe’s mysterious scientist and grab that last sample of the cure . . . before Jane got it first.
Chapter 22
A public access computer terminal in the airport’s private lounge turned up a Kiera Johannsen’s blog. She had about fifty followers, and she generally talked about dense science that Bryn didn’t even attempt to follow. The photo on the blog showed a fortysomething woman with close-cropped red hair and a ready smile; she had the tan of someone who enjoyed the outdoors, and a hiker’s lean build. Not pretty, but she had an attractive strength in her face. Compelling, Bryn thought.
She didn’t look like someone who’d give up without a fight.
Kiera Johannsen’s research station was more of a cabin, and global positioning showed it was pretty much out on the fringes of everything . . . which was evidently where she liked to live. Getting out there was going to be a challenge; roads weren’t a priority out that far, though there must have been some kind of rudimentary trail leading up to the research station. Johannsen did come into town from time to time, according to the blog; she had an addiction to mint chocolate chip ice cream, and the store in town ordered it special for her by the gallon. Couldn’t be lucky enough to be a day the woman made an ice-cream run, though—and sure enough, when Bryn dropped into the small shop, asking casually after Kiera yielded a fountain of mostly useless info about the woman’s habits and schedules. Mostly useless because she’d been in four days before to pick up her monthly order, and wasn’t due back for a while. The clerk did point out the best way to get to the research station, though, and marked it on the map.