Mark felt his face redden. “Sorry, he didn’t ask, and I thought he might be suspicious if I asked for two beds. After all, we’re supposed to be married.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll lie on the floor if you want.”
When Heather paused to consider it, Mark continued. “Even though it looks pretty darn uncomfortable.”
“Hey, wait a minute. You don’t even sleep.”
“No, but I rest and I meditate.”
Finally, she shrugged. “Oh, all right. Just make sure you stay on your side.”
“I can’t believe you even think I wouldn’t.”
“Right.”
Mark let Heather shower first before taking his turn. By the time he’d put on a fresh set of clothes and returned to the bedroom, Heather was fast asleep beneath the covers. Mark lay down atop the covers on the other side of the bed, rolling onto his side. As much as he knew he should be thinking about the next steps in their search for Jennifer, he just lay there watching Heather sleep beside him, her gentle breathing the most wonderful sound he could imagine. It was another of those moments he intended to record in his memory, down to the last perfect detail.
111
Garfield Kromly stared at the report on his desk. The brown double wrapping still lay on the floor where it had fallen as he removed the outer covering of the classified package. This was just one more piece in the puzzle, a jigsaw picture that had begun to resolve itself from the information on the disk he had gotten at Union Station. And as badly as he wanted to believe something else, anything else, it was looking more and more like Jack Gregory was right.
At this point, Kromly was sure that someone at the top level in the White House had assisted in the assassination of President Harris; he just didn’t yet know who that someone was. As for the connections to the Rho Project and the upcoming release of the alien nanotechnology, he had come up with little more than a string of very odd coincidences. He was going to need something much stronger than that to break this thing open.
Kromly glanced down at the computer disk that lay beside the package he had just received. Along with a host of circumstantial evidence, it contained the digital recording of a phone call from the White House, made just minutes before the president had been killed. It might just be the break he had been looking for. Unfortunately, the recording was encrypted using some of the most sophisticated hardware and software available to the United States government. Without the STU encryption key, his chances of deciphering it were practically nonexistent.
His hopes of at least getting a voiceprint from the scrambled data had proven fruitless. Perhaps the folks at the NSA could do it, but everyone who had gone that route had found themselves very, very dead. And although Kromly didn’t fear death, he had no intention of rushing to embrace it either. There was too much at stake for the country for him to get himself killed just yet.
Already, he’d been lucky. The man who had been killed at Union Station, not far from where Kromly had entered the parking garage, had turned out to be a mob hit man named Pauly Farentino. A more thorough check into Farentino had revealed that he had been seen following Natalie Simpson before she reached Union Station. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that he had seen the exchange outside Auntie Anne’s and had switched targets on the fly.
The public story that Farentino was killed by an angry vagrant was laughable. While Farentino wasn’t the smartest guy on the block, the man had earned a reputation as a vicious and dangerous killer. Unfortunately for him, in the middle of the crowd at Union Station, he had crossed paths with a much more dangerous predator. The knife work was too precise. Two quick cuts severing each side of the throat in a manner designed to produce the maximum spray of blood, something to shock the surrounding crowd, drawing their focus away from his face.
But it was the third and final wound that left no doubt in Kromly’s mind as to the identity of the killer. The long knife had punched straight up, entering Farentino’s head just beneath the chin, punching its way up through his mouth and into his cranial cavity with enough force to drive the blade and several splinters of bone deep into the hit man’s brain. The person who had killed Farentino had wanted to make sure that he could not survive his injuries, even if he had been treated with the nanite serum.
Kromly shook his head. So now he owed Jack his life, twice if you counted the fact that Jack hadn’t killed him when he could have. Apparently, Jack wanted to make sure he lived long enough to complete the task he had agreed to.
Maybe he’d have to put Jack back on his Christmas card list after all.
112
From her barred window, she watched the back-slapping, laughing men below, several carrying rifles slung loosely across the crook of an arm. From the look of the activity, preparations for some sort of celebration were well underway. Heavily laden workers moved back and forth, dropping off supplies and setting up tables and chairs beneath a large awning that had been erected between the wings of the hacienda-style mansion. A glance at the sky gave reason to their hurry. Rain was coming, and from the look of the thick clouds creeping down from the peaks of the surrounding mountains, it was going to be a gully washer.
Jennifer’s face pulled back from the bars, the tears that had dripped from her cheeks leaving damp spots on the stone window sill, precursors of the coming storm. She lingered for several moments, then stepped down from her perch atop the single bed, her eyes making a circuit of the room. It was tiny, barely large enough to hold the bed. A foul-smelling bucket occupied the farthest corner at the foot of the bed, across from a heavy wooden door. Moving across the space separating the bed from the door, her small hands twisted and pulled on the handle, but it was useless.
Backing into the corner furthest from the stinking chamber pot, Jennifer slid to the floor, her hands rising to cover her face as sobs shook her body.
~ ~ ~
With a flash like an electric shock, Heather sat straight up in bed.
“Mark!”
Almost before the word was out of her mouth, he was on his feet beside her, his hands clenched into twin fists.
“What’s the matter?”
Heather scrambled out of bed, grabbed her backpack, and pulled the laptop out onto the table.
“We’re going to be leaving. Jennifer’s in trouble.”
113
The wireless Internet connection at the Day’s Inn on Macon Cove was the best Janet had been able to get since she had left New Mexico headed east on I-40. Not being an Elvis fan, she’d never actually stopped in Memphis before tonight, but she was dead tired and damn glad to see the hotel room.
Janet stared down at the news story front and center on her laptop screen, stunned by the realization that hammered her. She had been checking news out of Los Alamos when she saw the article on the disappearance of three Los Alamos High School students, Mark Smythe, Jennifer Smythe, and Heather McFarland. Apparently, Jennifer had run away several days ago, followed shortly by Mark and Heather, the conjecture being that those two had gone in search of Jennifer. Both sets of parents were horribly distraught, begging the public to come forward with any information on their missing children.
As disconcerting as was the news, it was the date of Mark and Heather’s disappearance that slapped Janet in the face. November 13. The exact day her connection to her secret Los Alamos source had gone off-line.
Everything snapped together in her head. All this time she had been looking for a person she had assumed to be a scientist working on the Rho Project. Instead, it was one or more of those kids, operating right under her nose all along. Hard as it was to believe those three wonderful young people were capable of hacking into the world’s most secure computer networks, that they had somehow managed to gain access to highly classified Rho Project information, suddenly it all made sense.
All those times Heather McFarland had been in the middle of deadly situations had always struck Janet as odd. What had Jack said about the psycho who called himsel
f The Rag Man? Something about the way his speed and strength seemed supernatural. Then there was Heather’s involvement with the family of Raul Rodriguez, whose father had been a top scientist on the Rho Project. Dr. Rodriguez was dead, Raul Rodriguez missing, Raul’s mother insane.
Then there was Mark Smythe, an abnormally gifted young athlete. Mark had been at Janet’s house the day when Priest had attacked her. Somehow, he had survived his encounter with that killer. As far as she knew, Priest had only kidnapped women for his sick pleasures. Why hadn’t he killed the boy? Something about his encounter with Mark must have raised Priest’s curiosity to a level that he couldn’t ignore.
Another thing Janet had never understood was why Heather, Mark, and Jennifer would plagiarize a top scientific team in their entry in the national science contest. Everyone had just assumed that three kids could do work that advanced on their own. Apparently, that was another in a long chain of bad assumptions, the type of assumptions Janet would never have made if she had been observing adults.
No. There was something very, very special about those kids, something that Jack had to know about. Janet had already posted the encrypted information Jack needed about the Colombian assassin known as El Chupacabra onto the Internet. But the identity of their secret Rho Project source was too sensitive and important to be posted on the net, no matter how good her encryption and data hiding. This was something that had to be delivered to her partner in person.
Janet looked over at the bed, thinking back to a dingy youth hostel outside of Paris, another time she and Jack had been on the run. When she had asked Jack why they didn’t keep moving, he had laughed and thrown himself down on the bed, eliciting a puff of dust and an angry squeak from the worn box springs.
“Even sleep is a weapon.”
As she made her way to bed with the image of Jack burning brightly in her mind, Janet smiled. It was a weapon she intended to put to good use.
D.C. could wait for one more day.
114
Marine Captain Josh McFadden fingered his sidearm and stared out across the mass of humanity that snaked between the warehouses and along the loading docks of Durban Port. In all his life, all the combat missions across Southwest Asia and Africa, he’d never seen anything like it. An entire Marine Expeditionary Force deployed alongside the South African police and military, just to keep order in a line of waiting people. Three times he had been in charge of units distributing food to starving masses, and yet he had never felt this naked, as exposed as the rangers trying to protect that downed Blackhawk pilot in Somalia.
Amazingly, the order of the lines was holding, in part due to the massive police and military presence, but mostly due to the loudspeakers continuously broadcasting threats that distribution would be halted if order was not maintained. The sheer numbers in the crowd were incredible. How many? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? The logistics of sanitation alone boggled the mind. All were desperate to reach the inoculation pavilions, anxious to have their own screams mingle with the others receiving The Treatment. And this was only one of the distribution sites set up around Africa.
Captain McFadden turned to look out toward the fleet and the merchant ships they escorted. He couldn’t imagine the top-secret production effort that must have been running at full capacity for months in order to fill those holds with the cargo. He only prayed it would be enough. God help them if they ran short.
As he stepped off the platform toward the nearest of the marine checkpoints, he stumbled and would have fallen face-first if he had not managed to grab the concertina razor wire with his left hand.
“Shit!”
One of his marines stepped forward, but McFadden waved him back to his post. Right now it was far more important that every marine kept a laser focus on the task at hand rather than act as nursemaid to a commanding officer.
As orderly as they were at the moment, the hunger of the crowd for the juice in the IV bags threatened to explode into a riot at the slightest opportunity. As Captain McFadden stared down at the wound in his hand, watching the skin knit itself back together before his eyes, he fully understood the depths of that hunger.
No doubt about it. The job of killing his fellow man had just gotten one hell of a lot harder.
115
Jorge Esteban Espeñosa’s arrival at his compound brought about a change as radical as Jennifer’s sudden departure from the Bellagio. Suddenly, she was moved from her tiny cell to a huge bedroom on the upper level of the hacienda, and although the door was still locked and guarded, the bedroom and the attached bathroom were even more elegantly furnished than her Bellagio suite.
A maid brought her an entire wardrobe of beautiful dresses, some of which hinted at a long-lost Spanish court, others soft and elegant peasant dresses. The maid spread an assortment of matching shoes and accoutrements alongside them on the bed, then looked Jennifer up and down with eyes that showed no hint of sympathy. It appeared that the Goth look would no longer be an option.
In heavily accented but clearly distinguishable English, the dark, matronly woman spoke.
“Señorita, my name is Gloria. I am here to make you presentable for your dinner with Don Espeñosa. Please, follow me.”
Unable to get her bearings quickly enough to form a question, Jennifer followed the maid into the bathroom where steam wafted gently upward from the huge, freestanding bathtub.
“Undress, throw your dirty things in the waste bin, and then bathe yourself, thoroughly. Call me when you are done and I will assist you with your clothes and hair.” A frown spread across Gloria’s face as she studied Jennifer’s short black hair. “I will be in the next room.”
For several seconds after Gloria’s departure, Jennifer stared after her. Then a glance at the tub set her into motion. There was no telling how long she would be given, but if this was her last night of comfort in her short life, Jennifer was determined to indulge in the bath for as long as possible. It was remarkable how little emotion remained within her as she tossed her filthy clothes into the trash bin. She felt as if she had been wrung out and hung over a line to dry in the wind.
That changed the moment her small right foot slid into the water. A wave of ecstasy sent a shudder through her body as her naked torso slipped slowly into water hot enough to pink her skin. Jennifer continued to slide down into the tub until her entire head sank beneath the surface, the ripples distorting her view of the beamed ceiling twelve feet overhead.
She didn’t know what the sick old drug lord might have in mind for her, but at least for the moment, she could block out those thoughts and the discomfort and fear that had gripped her so tightly these last few days. In her present world there was only room enough for her and this wonderful tub of liquid bliss.
Perhaps a half hour passed before a knock on the door and Gloria’s voice brought her back to reality.
“Señorita? Are you ready, or do you need me to help with that too?”
“Just a minute.”
The implied threat that the maid would come help her finish her bath brought forth an annoyance that bubbled into her voice. Something about her sudden anger felt really good. How long had it been since she had shown the least bit of spirit? Christ. One second she had been at the Bellagio, so full of herself and her mental superiority, and in the next she had turned into a sniveling, helpless child.
If she was going to survive, she had to get her shit together and use some of the gifts she had been granted. Most of all she had to use her head.
Jennifer stepped out of the tub and toweled herself dry. Without bothering to wrap herself in the towel, she took a deep breath and stepped out into the bedroom.
“Well, it took you long enough!”
The maid’s eyes swept her body before locking with Jennifer’s. As they did, Jennifer centered, letting her mind attune to what she saw behind those dark orbs.
Despite the number of times she had experienced the sensation, the experience of feeling another person’s mind gave her a rush. It wasn�
��t that she could hear the other person’s thoughts. It was more like a jazzed-up version of what some twins reportedly experienced, a sharing of feelings, an exchange of desires, longings, fears. Only this exchange was entirely under Jennifer’s control.
Like everyone Jennifer had tried this on, the feelings in Gloria’s head were a complicated mixture at the conscious and subconscious level. The woman was certainly nobody that Jennifer would ever want to establish a friendship with, a burned-out shell filled with frustrations, fears, and petty jealousies that crowded out any of the finer emotions that might have once been there.
Fine. If she couldn’t accentuate the positive, there was always the other side of the coin. Jennifer focused, selecting the maid’s fear of authority, twisting and amplifying it as she held the woman’s gaze.
The change in Gloria’s expression was instantaneous.
“Perdón, señorita.”
The woman lowered her head, almost as if she expected to be struck across the face, but having just glimpsed the woman’s soul, Jennifer felt no sympathy.
Turning toward the vanity, Jennifer glanced back over her shoulder. “Help me with my hair. Then we will try on some clothes.”
Exactly fifty-eight minutes later, the maid knocked on the door to Don Espeñosa’s private terrace.
“Yes?”
Opening the door, the maid curtsied, a sight that almost brought a smile to Jennifer’s lips as she waited just behind and to the left of the massive, hand-carved teak door.
“Well, bring her in.”
Jennifer stepped forward, pausing when she was just across the threshold, her breath catching in her throat. The terrace opened out onto a spectacular view over the city of Medellín. It and the surrounding mountains formed the most beautiful sight Jennifer had ever seen, its grandeur dwarfing the Spanish opulence of this private dining area and the elegantly dressed man who had just arisen from his chair.
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