Formula of Deception

by Carrie Stuart Parks

  Well, she wouldn’t let him. The burlap came off. She spit in his face.

  Ryan pulled away and wiped off the few drops she’d managed to get out. He reached over and placed headphones over her ears and adjusted the microphone. “That wasn’t nice. Here I go saving your life, and you spit on me.”

  Frantically she searched the tiny cabin. “Where’s Jake?”

  “Jake, I’m afraid, met the fate he’d planned for you.”

  “What do you mean?” She tried to keep her voice from squeaking.

  “I mean I’ve been keeping an eye on you.” Ryan returned to the pilot’s seat. “When Jake strolled down the trail with you thrown over his shoulder like a bag of flour, I figured I needed to step in. But if I hadn’t taken off in the plane, Denali would have known something was wrong. I just gave Jake a whack on his head, tossed him in the copilot’s seat, then took him skydiving. Without a parachute.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Oh yes.” He banked the plane sharply. Murphy braced herself on the floor.

  “But . . . why not just hand him over to the authorities?”

  “You have no idea what’s at stake. Suffice to say, in this case I am the authority.”

  “Can you fly this plane?”

  “Of course. It’s a bit tricky because it’s set up for someone who is crippled—”

  “You mean this is Denali’s plane? Not Jake’s?”

  Ryan came back to her. Her stomach flipped at the sight of the knife in his hand. “The man is perfectly capable of getting around. Now, if you’d turn around, I’ll cut the ropes and explain everything.”

  She rolled onto her side so he could reach her wrists. The pain of returning circulation in her hands made her eyes burn. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Here.” He handed the knife to her. “Cut the rope off your ankles, and if you can manage it, come up here.”

  After slicing the ropes, she massaged her legs and feet until the tingling passed, then gingerly felt the aching lump on her head. Her hand came away bloody.

  Blood. Her nightmare kept rearing up in her mind, but she was awake. She wiped her hand on her jeans and crawled to the copilot’s seat. “Just who are you? And don’t tell me that cockamamy story about being a journalist.” She reset her headphones over her jumbled hair, carefully avoiding the tender area. Her glasses were missing.

  “So you figured that out. I work for the government, an agency with a bunch of letters—”

  “CIA? NSA?”

  “Something like that. Denali’s dad, the man who called himself Leif Berg, was on our radar for years. He ‘retired’ in 1985 and came here.” His fingers made quotes around retired.

  Kodiak Island appeared in the distance, surrounded by fog. Ryan must have flown quite a way out into the Gulf of Alaska to make sure Jake’s body would never wash up on any shore. She rubbed her arms.

  “Are you cold? I can turn up the heat.”

  “Yes, please. Why did you say it like that? He didn’t really retire?”

  “He left under a bit of a cloud. He’d been working in biological weapons, one of the top scientists. Of course, our government would vehemently deny we had any such projects. After all, we signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty.”

  “But we continued to develop them.”

  “Of course, as did most countries. The Russians had massive stockpiles and were actively developing more. Think about it, Murphy. Disease is the perfect weapon. The origins can be concealed, so there’s no smoking gun. It’s efficient. During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, fifty million people died worldwide in two years. We can never predict how any given virus may mutate into something more virulent naturally—influenza, AIDS, Ebola, even Zika. So if we decide to, say, thin out a population, or to wipe out a town harboring terrorists, we can introduce a biological weapon and no one would have a clue.”

  He turned the plane to follow the coastline. The rain had stopped for the moment, but more fog was moving in. Below was Potatopatch Lake, then Mission Lake. Her landlady’s blackened remains of a home was a blight on the beautiful shoreline.

  “Do you want to know how easy biological weapons are to cover up?” Ryan glanced at her. “In July of 1975, in a town on the banks of the Connecticut River, thirty-nine children and twelve adults were diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Two years later, doctors traced the symptoms to the deer tick and named it Lyme disease after the town. Hardly anyone put the sudden outbreak of the previously unknown disease to the proximity of Plum Island.”

  “What was Plum Island?”

  “Home of biological warfare testing site Lab 257.”

  Despite her aching head, she felt chilled.

  “Anyway, back to Leif. He was always a loner, independent, and they thought he might have been working on his own projects. When he returned to Kodiak, we figured he might be looking for an investor or even someone interested in buying his work, like a foreign government. We believed he’d hidden his early research in the area. So we watched him. When he made contact with his son, we made it a point to put both him and the lodge under constant surveillance.”

  “Surveillance!”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you simply go in with a search warrant or something? Or go through all his things and search the lodge? Or the cemetery?”

  “Leif was known for keeping his work under the tightest security. He was pathological about it. His psychological profile indicated he’d go to great lengths to protect his work, including destroying it. We’d have to find his materials, figure out what security or code he used, and bypass them on the first try. Get anything wrong and, boom, nothing left.”

  Murphy almost commented on the inefficiency of the government but decided the timing was bad.

  “The surveillance told us where you’d hidden your notes. We knew you’d copied Denali’s photographs. And most of all, we knew about you, Dakota.”

  Her face grew warm. “Seems everybody knows who I am.”

  Salmon Run Lodge appeared on the horizon. “Duck down for a moment. I’m pretty sure we’re too far away for anyone to see who’s flying, but the presence of two people might raise alarms.”

  She ducked. He wagged the wings of the plane.

  She grimaced. Ryan, pretending to be Jake, had just sent the signal to Denali that he was successful in killing her. She stayed low until they landed and taxied to a stop.

  “Why did we land here? Couldn’t we have flown to the mainland?”

  “Not enough fuel. Help me get the plane into the hangar.”

  They quickly moved the plane and closed the hangar doors.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Is your rig over there?” He indicated the small road she’d parked on.

  “Elin’s SUV is.”

  “Let’s go.” He quickly trotted across the airfield and into the trees. She raced after him and unlocked the SUV. Ryan took the key from her and got behind the steering wheel. She slipped into the passenger side. After the roar of the plane, the silence was almost a vacuum.

  He stared forward for a few moments, tapping his lip with his finger. She remained silent and watched him. He finally looked at her, then did a double take. “You look quite different without your glasses.”

  “Yes.” She made eye contact. “What’s going on?”

  He blinked. “Here’s the deal. You need help, and I can help you, but I need some information from you first.”

  “I’ve given you information.”

  “You’ve learned more about Denali’s father than you let on. I want to know everything.”

  Her mind scrambled. More? As far as she could tell, he knew everything about Paul Stewart that she knew. “Um, if I did that, what can you do for me?”

  “I can get you identification so you can get off Kodiak. And money.” He noted her expression. “Oh yes, I know about your stolen purse.”

  “Well—”

  “I’ll get you a plane ticket to anywhere you want to
go.”

  “So—”

  “And I know where you can find your sister and her escaped convict boyfriend, Clinton Hunter.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Murphy caught her breath. “Where? Where!”

  “They’re both here on Kodiak.”

  “Dallas is alive.” The words were an exhale of air. Murphy’s vision blurred. Her nose burned. Alive!

  “They’ve been hiding out, but finding and keeping an eye on people is what I do.”

  “Wait. Wait a minute. She’s been hiding here?”

  “Of course.”

  “But she wouldn’t do that. She would have contacted me—”

  “You’ve been a hard person to find. Maybe she tried.”

  Murphy shook her head violently, then immediately regretted it. “And Hunter—”

  “Is with her. The two lovers reunited.”

  She tried to speak, but nothing came out for a moment. “No! That can’t be true. Dallas wouldn’t fall in love with a murderer.”

  “Maybe he brainwashed her. Did you ever think about that?” His voice was soft.

  She continued to shake her head, though slowly. “No. No. No. Wait! If you knew where he was, why didn’t you turn him in?”

  “Murphy, listen carefully. If I turned him in, your sister would still be under his spell. She’s waited for him all these years. She’ll wait forever to be with him. She isolated herself from you. There is only one way to set your sister free. And only you can do it.”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  Murphy shivered in spite of the blasting heat. “You’re saying . . .”

  “Do you want your sister home? Do you want to see Dallas’s face again, hear her voice? Do you want to be with her? Think about how close you were, how much you’ve missed her. She must be freed from the demon who has her ensnared. She is powerless on her own. Only you, Murphy—it’s all up to you.”

  She closed her eyes. All around her, everything was empty, hollow. It hurt to breathe. “Me?” She looked at Ryan.

  Ryan nodded. “You have to kill him.”

  Murphy brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I have to kill Clinton Hunter?”

  Save me, her sister murmured in her brain.

  “Yes. You have to save your sister by killing Clinton Hunter. Do you have a gun?”

  “Elin’s Glock.”

  “When I give you their address, what are you going to do?”

  She hesitated. “Save my sister by killing Clinton Hunter?”

  “Say it again.”

  “Save my sister by killing Clinton Hunter.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Good. Then after you tell me everything, and you take care of Hunter, both you and your sister will have plane tickets to leave Kodiak and money to live on. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes.”

  The SUV was parked in front of a small bungalow.

  She blinked. She didn’t remember Ryan starting the SUV, or moving, but they were no longer at the airfield. “Who lives here?”

  “I do.”

  “Is this where you watch people?”

  He turned in his seat and looked at her. “Tell me what you learned, Murphy.”

  “You heard all that I told Denali, right?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s still a missing part. I know I’m close, but I’d like a little time to put it together.”

  “Well then, come inside my humble abode. We need to do something for that bump on your head.” They got out of the SUV, and he led the way to a wooden door painted dark green. He unlocked it, then immediately moved to an alarm system and deactivated it. The living room was ordinary, devoid of any personal items, and spotless. It felt like a stark motel room.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Something to write with and on. And some aspirin.”

  While he went into the kitchen, she wandered around looking for listening devices, cameras, any kind of sleuthing equipment. Not even a television set.

  Just a bloody white sheet.

  She shook her head clear. There was no sheet. She needed to stay with the present, not the past. Not the nightmare. She’d tell him whatever she could. Then finish her mission. Her sister was waiting for her.

  She passed an open bedroom door. Maybe Ryan wasn’t with the CIA or FBI. Maybe he was a dirty old man who had saved her and was now planning on collecting a reward . . .

  “Ryan, do you happen to have any identification on you . . . like government ID or a badge?”

  He came back into the living room. “Starting to doubt me already? No, obviously I wouldn’t carry official identification saying I’m a secret agent of some kind.”

  She stepped closer to the door. “How do I know—”

  “You don’t.” He placed a glass of water and two white tablets on the table. “But remember, I found Hunter and your sister, something the police, sheriffs, FBI, you name it, haven’t been able to do. And I assume you want that information.”

  “Yes, I want to know where she is. And I want to kill Clinton Hunter and set her free.” Her voice sounded flat.

  “Good girl. Here’s your aspirin.” He opened a drawer in a side table and took out paper and a pen, placing them next to the glass of water. “Sit here and let me look at your injury. You keep shaking your head.”

  She sat. “I think the bashing I took knocked a screw loose. I keep having mini flashbacks of my last encounter with Hunter. They usually come in a dream.”

  He stood above her and gently parted her hair. “Ouch. That looks painful.” He moved to the kitchen, pulled out some paper towels, then wet them at the tap. Once again he moved her hair, then dabbed at the wound.

  She winced.

  “Sorry. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.” He finished cleaning up her head.

  She tossed back the aspirin and washed them down with a gulp of water. Hopefully the pain would go away soon.

  She looked at the blank paper. What did she really know that no one, at least not Ryan or Denali, knew? Rats. The dead rat story. Okay, follow the rats.

  She wrote Ruuwaq laboratory rats → dead rats in box.

  She pictured the rat on the island, the one she’d hit with a rock. Current rats on island.

  One other reference to rats nagged at her. What was it? She clicked the retractable pen. It was on the edge of her mind. From visiting the island? The lodge? Rat . . . dog! Rat terrier. The identified victim, Eddie, was going to breed “rat killers.” He must have had a terrier with him. She’d found part of the collar.

  She wrote Dog killed rat.

  “Ryan, can some animals, say a rat, carry a disease and not die from it?”

  “I believe so. Why?”

  “Just thinking out loud.” If the rats from the experiments performed in the 1940s were turned loose, or got loose, and stayed on the island . . .

  But how did those men die? Vasily hadn’t died there. Nor had she and Bertie. So the disease wasn’t airborne, or transferred by anything that was contaminated. Think, Murphy. But if a rat had been bitten or consumed by a host, and the host had caught the disease . . .

  She pictured Denali staring at the family photo wall. The photo of his daughter and son-in-law on their boat . . . with a cat.

  Her pen slid across the paper. That meant . . .

  “Ryan, I think I know what happened.”

  He pulled a chair up to the table. “I’m waiting.”

  “As you know, more than ten years ago, Paul Stewart returned to Kodiak under his assumed name of Leif Berg. He made friends with his son, Denali, although Denali didn’t know right away that Leif was his own father.”

  “We knew Leif was discreetly making inquiries about some of his work,” Ryan said dryly. “Looking for buyers. He was also getting up in years. He was eighty-seven ten years ago. I suspect he didn’t want to end up in a VA hospital.”

  She thought of the spotless, pleasant elder-c
are home he’d gone to. “His last days were more than comfortable. So now let’s go back to 1942. Leif and Paul sent infected rats from Ruuwaq to Kiska in order to transmit a disease to the Japanese occupiers. Why not just bomb them?”

  “Part of the reason for that was the extensive underground tunnel system the Japanese had dug. Bombing would be only so effective.” Ryan leaned forward.

  “I didn’t know that, but it makes sense. So I think the plan was to kill or make as many of the enemy sick as possible, bomb the remaining soldiers, then invade.”

  “Right.” He tapped the table. “But it was their first big failure. The rats didn’t infect anyone. When Leif and Paul found out, they continued to work on biological warfare until they closed the lab down in 1946.”

  “The government closed it down before the earthquake and tsunami?”

  “The two events happened almost simultaneously.” He glanced at his watch again. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “You have to get back to your surveillance and I need to get to the point.”

  He gave a motion for her to continue.

  “Everyone thought the experiment was a failure because that’s what they were told. But the rats died in transit. An accident.”

  He sat up straighter. “What? So the experiment could have been a success?”

  “Apparently it was.”

  “That changes everything,” he said slowly.

  “Now fast-forward to ten years ago, and let’s look at what happened. Five men with a half-baked plan to get rich quick are shipwrecked on the island along with a dog. A rat-killing dog.” She said that last part deliberately to be sure he got it. “They die horribly. Shortly, and I mean within a day, another man, Vasily, arrives there. He is unharmed.”

  “Right.”

  “If those rodents were left over from the lab, maybe turned loose or got loose, allowed to breed, living without predators, but infected . . .”

  Ryan ran his hand through his hair. “Maybe they’d been specifically bred to be immune. They passed on this trait. They were carriers. And along comes a dog that kills one or two. I see where this is going. Everyone dies because the dog infects them, then the dog dies, but not anyone who comes later because there is no intermediary host.”