by Nancy Holder
“You can’t be the one to kill him, Vincent.” J.T. got to his feet; he still kept his distance. His throat hurt. Vincent could have collapsed his windpipe, but he hadn’t. He had stopped himself. He’d been in shock, and yes, he’d beasted out. But a year ago, in a tantrum, he had destroyed J.T.’s car. Tonight he’d only screwed up a wall. So he was doing better.
“Vincent.” J.T’s voice rose. “Are you hearing me? You cannot go near Reynolds.”
“Don’t you get it?” Vincent pushed away from the computer bank. “He will stop at nothing until I am in the ground. Nothing.”
He stomped across the room, disappearing into the darkness. The front door slammed open.
Slammed closed.
“Vincent!” J.T. shouted. “No! Do not do anything!”
Rising unsteadily, he shambled through the blackness, his shin connecting with the coffee table. He got to the front door and opened it. Swirling red lights bounced off the walls of the buildings on the other side of the street. For one horrible moment he thought Vincent had been arrested. Then he saw that a police cruiser was parked in the center of the street and police officers were lining up a barrier of sawhorses topped with the red lights. They were closing off his street.
He saw no sign of Vincent. Wiping his forehead with a shaking hand, he faced into the room, using the light to get the lay of the land. He shut the door for safety’s sake and counted off steps back to the computer. He emailed Tess and Cat, then tried to text and call them on his phone. He still couldn’t get through.
Then he refreshed the page with Reynolds’ APB to see if there had been any responses. So far, no one had seen or made contact with him. J.T.’s fury as he stared at the man’s face was equal to his fear. He touched his swollen neck and then he shuffled to the bar and fumbled around until he found a liquor bottle. Full, too, by the heft of it.
He opened it and drank it down.
CHAPTER TEN
Back in his loft after a thoughtful drive from Rikers, Gabe lit a large candle, pulled the stolen pin from his pocket and tilted the golden disk right and left in the light of the flame. The matte gold finish had been rubbed off along a section of the edge. He held it closer to his eyes and caught his breath.
Copper-colored circuits on a black plastic plate. As the implication hit home, Gabe’s mind began to race.
A computer chip.
Ever since they had learned of the pins, Gabe had wondered about their origin. He had been in possession of three pins and he had asked J.T. to examine them thoroughly before he had relinquished possession of them. If the other pins had contained chips, J.T. had been unable to detect them. So maybe this pin was unique. Maybe it belonged to the head of the society. If Gabe could crack it, maybe he could find out who the leader was and bust the rest of the group.
Surely someone wanted him to know that information. Him, or someone connected to Reynolds. But why leave it in his cell like that? What if the FBI ERU had simply admitted it into evidence, thus locking it away from examination by someone knowledgeable?
I’ve appropriated evidence before, he thought. Unless it was dropped for someone else to acquire. But I got to it first.
A sudden feeling of unease washed over him and raised the hair on the back of his neck. What if there was a tracker on it? Maybe any second, armed troops would invade his home, possibly even kill him. Except… he had been in possession of the pin for some time. He checked his watch. It was nearly five a.m. He’d had it for two hours. And no one had come.
He carried the candle and the pin to his dining room table. Case files lay in organized profusion. A jeweler’s magnifying glass was clamped to the edge of the table and he set the pin on the examination plate while he pulled up a chair. He sat down and adjusted the magnification to its highest value.
Gabe rooted through a box of items he had retrieved after J.T. had ruined his lab, back when he’d still been a beast, and selected a scalpel. An image of Tyler blossomed in his mind. She had been the beautiful scientist who had figured out that they could stabilize Gabe’s beast DNA, but only by extracting Vincent’s entire lymphatic system. It would have killed Vincent, but Gabe had been so desperate that he had agreed that Vincent’s life was a price he was willing to pay. He was about to fully beast out for the rest of his life.
That just proves what beast DNA can do to a person, he thought. Fully human, I would never have condoned killing Vincent to save my own skin. I wouldn’t have harmed him for any reason except to protect Catherine. And now I have no choice.
Someone had killed Tyler and Gabe didn’t know who. He wished she were here now. She might have been able to hack this chip. He was an attorney, not a scientist, and the best hacker he knew was unavailable to him. J.T. Forbes wasn’t speaking to him. Gabe wondered if one day he and J.T. would have a meeting of the minds. Of all the people who knew Vincent, J.T. had to know that one day eventually, Vincent’s beast side would burst free and he would once more become the killing machine he had been designed to be. It was inevitable.
Seated at the table, he gently scraped at the finish. More channels of shiny copper and were revealed. He almost accidentally cut into one of the threads with the ultra-sharp blade and stopped, alarmed. He needed help with this. But who could he go to?
A name appeared in his mind.
His lips parted in shock.
“No way,” he said aloud.
Still, he pushed back his chair, found a small padded mailer to put the pin in for safekeeping, and grabbed his coat. About then he realized that it wasn’t yet five in the morning. He laughed mirthlessly and put back his coat. His interview would have to wait. He tapped his fingers on the mailer, wondering if even now, someone was on the way to retrieve it.
Then he opened up his computer to see if there had been any updates about Reynolds’ disappearance. There was an APB out, but so far, no hits. However he was traveling, whoever he was with, Cat’s father had not been seen.
He queried IA about their investigation into Cat’s alleged complicity in her father’s escape. No one replied to his email. Apparently no one else was working by pre-dawn’s early light.
He got up and paced. As he looked out over the cityscape, lights began to wink on. Outside his loft, cheers rose. Crossing to his flat-screen TV, he experimentally pressed the power key. It turned on.
Power had been restored. The Big Apple was back in business. The part of Gabe that was still a protector rejoiced that fewer crimes would be committed now that the perpetrators would be deprived of the cover of darkness. He fidgeted with the curtain pull as he observed increasingly greater sections of the city coming back to life. It was almost as if he could feel the electricity surging through the soles of his shoes and up into his brain.
Things are going to change, he promised himself. I’m going to change them.
He was going to penetrate the layers of secrecy surrounding those in the upper echelons of world power who knew about beasts. He was going to know who they were. How they had conducted their research. What they had found.
And then something… shifted… in Gabriel Lowan’s psyche. He could almost see the shiny thought bubble over his head.
Once he had this information, he was going to do something with it. Something he would never have dreamed of doing.
Yes. It is. Down deep, you’ve been thinking about doing this for quite some time, he told himself. You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself.
He had said he would do anything to protect her. But that?
That?
“Oh my God,” he said aloud, because he was so stunned. It ran counter to everything he claimed to believe. But he wasn’t going to argue with himself or attempt to justify what he was going to do. Somehow the decision had already been made below the surface of his consciousness. How long ago, he had no idea. All that was left was to act. With any luck, he had been given the means to accomplish his new plan.
His path was clear.
His conscience, on the other hand…
His conscience didn’t live here any more.
Gabe waited for morning, and the bright sunshine was a welcome sight. The restored lights of the city winked back out one by one. Then he headed back to Rikers.
By the time he arrived, the inmates in gen pop had also eaten breakfast. Some were milling in the yard; others had jobs or were attending classes. Outsiders complained that prisoners had too many privileges. But when you were trying to control a population of over eleven thousand incarcerated individuals, you filled their hours with activities and goals beyond returning to the lives that had landed them at Rikers in the first place.
And one of those individuals had been pulled off laundry duty and escorted back to his cell, because the ADA wanted to have a private word with him. Away from prison phones, and security cameras, which made sense because the District Attorney’s office occasionally met with prisoners to discuss plea deals, solicit cooperation, nail down confessions.
Gabe decided that the reason for his visit could theoretically be termed “soliciting cooperation.” But as soon as the prisoner saw who it was he had been fetched to meet with, his face went purple with rage and despair.
He was Sam Landon, the archeologist-turned-beast-maker who had kidnapped J.T. Forbes and forced him to make a beast serum. Landon had even tried to use that serum to turn Gabe back into a beast, but Catherine had intervened.
“What are you doing here?” Landon demanded. “Have you come to gloat?”
“Hello, Sam,” Gabe said amiably. “How are they treating you in here?”
“What do you want?” Landon said.
Gabe stayed loose and relaxed. Sam was facing a thirty-year sentence. For Gabe, that was a fortunate thing. Sam could be persuaded to take risks he might not have otherwise even contemplated. That gave Gabe leverage.
“I asked you what you wanted,” Sam repeated. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll call for the guard to throw you out.”
As if a prison guard would lay hands on an ADA, Gabe thought, amused. Poor Sam. When he had still possessed control over his life, he had lashed out because he had felt powerless. Now he truly was powerless, but he had yet to grasp that.
This won’t happen to me. Ever. Gabe was flush with excitement over his new plan—the decision he had made last night that would alter his life forever.
“I’ve come here because I want to continue the work you began, Sam,” Gabe told him. “I was only able to convict two people, but so many of the guilty remain at large. I know that’s not your idea of justice and it’s not mine, either. And I promised you justice.”
“I told you that they’re above the law,” Sam flung at him. There were deep rings under his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping. He was suffering.
“But they aren’t above the law,” Gabe replied. “We obtained two convictions. And those two would have exchanged information for plea deals if they had known anything. I want to get convictions for every single member of that society. So give me something to work with.”
“I don’t have anything,” Landon insisted. “You people took my database.”
And we lost it, Gabe thought. They wiped it clean. But Sam didn’t need to know that.
“You should have let my beast kill them all when it had a chance. They would all be dead now!” Sam cried. “It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” Gabe said.
“You’re useless. Incompetent.” Tears welled in Sam’s eyes. “You ruined everything. All my years of planning, waiting. They killed my son. They killed thousands of people and ruined their lives. They ruined your life.”
“No. I’m still standing,” Gabe said.
“Go away,” Sam muttered.
“Landon, look at me. Look.”
Gabe turned back the lapel of his suit jacket, to reveal the pin attached to the underside. He made sure Sam zeroed in on it.
“A pin, so what,” Sam said, but he was clearly on alert. “That night you had what, three of those?”
“Yes. But this is a fourth. Notice anything unusual about it?”
Gabe unfastened it and held it toward Sam’s cell bars, turning it left and right so that Landon would catch sight of the circuitry. Success; Sam’s mouth dropped open in an expression of astonishment. The man’s hand shot out but Gabe pulled the pin back. The prisoner rose from his cot, transfixed.
“Where did you get that? What is that?”
“Data, I’m willing to bet,” Gabe said. “Looks like a chip.”
“Let me see that.” Sam eagerly stretched both his hands through the bar.
Gabe shook his head. “Oh, I’m not letting go of this for a second.” He paused dramatically. “What if this contains more information than your flash drive? Names and addresses of all the members of the society, sure, but what if it’s the key to completely gutting the organization?”
“You don’t know how to access the information.” Sam couldn’t tear his gaze away.
“You’re a smart man.” Gabe put the pin in his pocket. “But smart doesn’t mean all-knowing. Smart means admitting when you need ask for help. And whom to ask.”
When Sam looked at him in confusion, Gabe explained, “When you began your revenge plot, you were an archeologist, not a hacker. So who helped you connect the dots? The society’s secret server was hidden away, and all of the files were encrypted. How did an archeologist figure out what to do with them?”
Gabe patted his pocket. “How would you know what to do with this?”
Sam’s eyes gleamed as he realized that he, too, had leverage. He folded his arms and pursed his lips, the very model of small-minded petulance, although his excitement was impossible to conceal.
“What do I get?” he asked. “If I put you in touch with someone who can help you?”
I’m in, Gabe thought excitedly. I’m going to make this happen.
“What do you want?” Gabe asked, deliberately keeping his own tone of voice far more casual. As if all he wanted was to identify more criminals and lock them up.
Oh, no, I want something far more incredible.
“What I want is out. I heard someone else left Rikers last night,” Sam said slyly. “I want a ‘get out of jail free’ card too.”
“You don’t know how he left,” Gabe retorted, but his interest was piqued. What had Sam heard about Bob Reynolds’ escape? “You want to leave here alive, am I right?”
“Don’t bluster. I know very well that Reynolds was alive when he escaped,” Sam sneered.
Gabe kept a poker face. “Really.”
Sam smiled. “But you didn’t.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Sam’s smile grew and his eyes took a faraway gleam, as if imagining all the things he would do once he was a free man again. Gabe would support his pathetic little fantasy. He might promise Sam his freedom, but in truth, Sam wouldn’t set foot out of here until he needed a walker to do it.
“I want something in writing,” Sam said. “Tell the DA I want a reduced sentence and credit for time served. And I want out of gen pop. These people are animals. Worse than beasts.”
Gabe almost sighed at Sam’s naiveté. Vincent had also demanded something in writing—his pardon—but Gabe had succeeded in ripping it up anyway.
“Give me a name and I’ll see what I can do,” Gabe said. He arched a brow as if to say, Your move. As if they were playing chess. Or poker.
The game that was life.
“Agree first,” Sam said.
“I’m not taking this to anyone until I know what I’ve got,” Gabe insisted. “And until then…” He lifted his shoulders. “I’ve really got nothing to lose if this doesn’t work out.”
“I do know your past, you know. You were a beast. A first-gen,” Sam said fiercely. “I’ll tell everyone. I’ll blow it wide open.”
Gabe said, “And when they come for you in the middle of the night? What then?”
Sam paced. He stopped and wrapped his hands around the bars. “I hate this, I hate being caged,” he whined.
&nb
sp; Been there. Done that, Gabe thought. Never going to let it happen again.
“No promises,” Gabe said. “If I can’t get you out any sooner, maybe I can get you a nicer, bigger cage. In a minimum security facility.”
Sam gestured for Gabe to come closer. His eyes were shining in an almost predatory way, and Gabe grew wary. Sam had operated on hatred and rage for six years. His revenge had not been complete and, in his despair, he had attempted to jump off a skyscraper. That kind of energy didn’t dissipate. It simmered and steamed, and waited for another change to boil over.
Gabe stayed light on his feet as he approached. For one terrifying moment he thought Sam was going to bite off his ear as he urged Gabe’s head against the bars.
Then Sam grabbed Gabe’s shoulder, pressed his lips against his ear and whispered very softly, “Cavanaugh Ellison.”
“Helped you,” Gabe murmured.
Sam said nothing more. He released Gabe and Gabe would have stumbled if he hadn’t grabbed onto one of the prison bars. Sam snickered.
“Helped you,” Gabe said again.
Shaking his head, Sam crossed his arms. “Never met him. Don’t know him.”
“Then—”
His smile was slow and lazy, and perhaps a little mad after all.
“That’s his pin.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blessed dawn.
Cat leaned her weary forehead against the door of her apartment and took deep breaths to keep herself from bolting back into the streets to search the city, New York state, the world for Bob Reynolds. She cared nothing for him, felt no bond with him, although there would always be a connection: he had done terrible things to Vincent and would continue to do them until either he killed Vincent or was stopped.
Or if people finally saw Vincent the way I see him—strong, compassionate, fighting against a terrible curse and winning—then my father couldn’t hurt him.
When. I almost lost him, I lost part of myself. I didn’t know who I was. And then I realized that I am the woman who is in love with Vincent Keller, and whom he is hopelessly in love with. And there is nothing on this earth that my father can do to change that.