The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Robin pressed her palms over her face and sank to the floor. This couldn’t be the end, not for Ana, not for her.

  ***

  Jordan pushed through the crowd churning through the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He rushed to the airport’s ground transportation pickup. Chris followed, his face stuck in a grimace.

  “We’ve got to drop by my place before we can hit the lab,” Jordan said.

  Chris scowled. “No way. We don’t have time for a detour.”

  “What do you want to do?” Jordan lowered his voice as they jogged. “Show up to a gunfight with nothing but our suitcases?”

  “Call Hugh. Tell him to meet us. It’ll take long enough for us to get into the city.”

  Dashing out the sliding doors to the pickup lane, Jordan squeezed past a family sharing hugs and stepped out near the line of waiting taxis. He called Hugh as they slid into a cab.

  The lab tech had once been entangled in Tallicor’s snares and was no stranger to the biotech underworld. Despite having been used as a pawn against Jordan and Chris, the man had paid his penance by once saving Jordan’s life.

  “Jordan?” Hugh’s voice sounded as enthusiastic as ever. “Back from vacation so soon?”

  “I need you to retrieve a couple pistols from my place.”

  “Pistols? What’s going on? I don’t even have access to—”

  Jordan tapped a button on his comm card. “You do now. I need you to hurry. There’s a safe in my library, under the desk. Can’t miss it. Okay?”

  “All right, understood, boss.”

  “Time is critical. Meet us outside the Equest Advantage building. Take my car. Got it?”

  “No problem. Will do.”

  Jordan hung up, happy the tech was now loyal as a Labrador. Didn’t ask too many questions and did as he was told. The cab wound through airport traffic until they hit the interstate. Chris chewed his bottom lip.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Jordan said. “She’s going to be safe.”

  “I hope to God you’re right. Can you call them? Message them? See what’s going on.”

  Jordan did so, but several minutes passed with no response.

  His comm card buzzed. His heart leapt, and he scrambled to see Robin’s and Ana’s update.

  Instead, a single message projected above the card’s holodisplay: David Reed.

  It came from an unknown source, but Jordan knew who had sent it. Vincent had made good on his promise. He’d provided them the culprit behind their mysteries.

  He fought to appear calm, knowing Chris worried enough for the both of them. Too much anxiousness might fog their minds and prevent them from acting rationally.

  But despite his conscious efforts to retain a confident demeanor, images flashed through his mind of the lab torn apart, of Robin and Ana gone...or worse.

  The name, David Reed, sparked something familiar. A nagging thought pierced through the fog.

  He opened his mouth, ready to ask Chris about the name. Chris stared out the window, his foot tapping ceaselessly. He appeared pale, almost physically ill from worry.

  Then it hit Jordan. David Reed was the name of the doctor—anesthesiologist, yes—that had helped Chris and Robin with their application to the IRB.

  Jordan tapped out a message to Vincent demanding to know more.

  But his card reported it could not be sent. There was no return Net address.

  Maybe he was right, though. If Vincent had bugged his card, then the man wouldn’t need a return address to receive a message. He’d be able to monitor Jordan’s every activity through and choose if and when he wanted to communicate.

  Soon enough, he received a response. You’ll have to talk to him yourself.

  Where is he? Jordan typed back.

  His comm card’s geoposition is unavailable. Sadly, he’s smart enough to have chosen a card without such a feature.

  Can’t you get us anything else?

  No response.

  The cab took a right through a neighborhood full of dilapidated row houses. They were drawing closer to the former Equest Advantage facility. His pulse quickened in anticipation of what they’d find.

  His card buzzed again. Maybe Vincent had read his message.

  But it was Hugh. “I’m here. Ready.”

  Chris drummed his fingers on the window.

  Jordan debated telling him about Reed. Adding another pressing concern to Chris’s mind might cause his friend to snap.

  They needed to focus. Without any idea of who or what awaited them, every ounce of concentration was necessary, and apprehension for Robin’s welfare clearly haunted Chris’s thoughts.

  Did it matter that Reed was responsible? Would knowing that help Chris keep his head screwed on straight when they crept into the lab to see what had become of Robin and Ana?

  Or would Chris be too caught up in the betrayal?

  The taxi rolled to a stop behind a scarlet Audi parked on the side of the road. His Audi.

  Hugh leapt out of the car and popped the trunk. He opened a black hard-shell briefcase to reveal four handguns. “What else do you need from me?”

  Jordan tucked one of the pistols into his waistband. He held one out to Chris. “You good, my man?”

  “I can handle it.” Chris took the gun and unclipped the magazine, counted the rounds, and pressed it back in. “Any extra mags? Or is this it?”

  “Jordan didn’t tell me where he kept his ammunition, so I took what I found.”

  “If what we have in here isn’t enough, we’re in more trouble than we can deal with anyway.” Jordan handed the last weapon to Hugh. “You want to come along?”

  Hugh hesitated, gulped, and then took the gun. He nodded. “I still feel like I owe you one.”

  “Let’s go.” Jordan led them through an alley cutting behind the industrial warehouses. He scanned the errant trash bags piled around dumpsters. Yellow, hazy lights hanging off the rear of the buildings offered scanty patches of illumination as they ran. He hadn’t made up his mind whether the darkness helped or hindered them.

  But when they arrived at the back of the Equest facility without being fired upon, he thanked the night for its shadows. He pressed his body against the building, inching toward the exit door. He pulled the handle, but it didn’t open.

  Light shimmering off glass shards on the asphalt caught his eye. A window had been broken. Shards still protruded from the frame. He flicked out his comm card and held it up to the door handle.

  Pressing his palm to the door, he pushed it open enough to lead with the barrel of his gun. No lights shone. No voices called. No gunfire exploded.

  He slipped in, motioning for Chris and Hugh to follow. Peering into empty offices, they snaked through the hallway until they reached the ground-floor laboratory. Jordan had once run his first legitimate business here, developing genetic enhancements for racing horses.

  Now he doubted any business could be conducted in the carnage the intruders had left. Fragments of glassware lay across the floor. Shelves, upended, spilled their drawers across broken stools and chairs. The remaining holodisplays were in smoking ruins.

  Jordan stepped over the wreckage. Careful as he tried to be, glass still crunched under his feet. He headed for the walk-in cooler near the rear of the lab. He stopped at the hefty metal door and listened. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart and the heavy breathing of Chris and Hugh.

  He opened the door, training his handgun on the shadows.

  Still, nothing moved.

  Light escaped through the gap in the trap door at the rear of the freezer. He pulled back on the door.

  There was no cover on the stairs into the underground lab.

  Nothing would hide their descent—they’d be vulnerable to any gunmen waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He held up his fingers for Chris and Hugh to see. He counted them off, one, two, three.

  Jordan sprinted down, eyes and gun muzzle whipping back and forth.

  Again, he met no resistance,
no fired shots. But his heart didn’t settle.

  Instead, a deep pit formed in his stomach, and he lost the confident demeanor he had fought so hard to maintain.

  Blood. All over the bottom of the stairs, the lab benches.

  “Robin!” Chris ran through the lab, neck twisting wildly as he searched for the doctor.

  Hugh stood at the stairs’ exit, his face turning yellow, gagging.

  No voices called. Blood everywhere.

  But no bodies.

  Chapter 30

  Robin cowered behind the barred door. At the end of the passageway, the iron bars wouldn’t protect her against whoever entered, but it still felt safer to have something between herself and the intruders. The gunshots had lasted for longer than she had anticipated.

  Or maybe it had only felt that way. She wondered how many bullets had found their home in Ana’s body. The thought sent her lurching over, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.

  But there was still hope. Maybe Chris and Jordan would show up in time. They’d landed outside of Baltimore after she and Ana had heard the breaking glass and the ominous footsteps above.

  Maybe, maybe the silence was a good thing. Maybe Jordan and Chris had come down the stairs, caught the intruders unaware, and saved Ana. The woman was a detective, after all, trained in firearms, cool under pressure. She could’ve outwitted a group of witless criminals. Right?

  But she shuddered as she recalled how three thugs had taken Ana hostage in Robin’s home.

  The door hissed open and panting, she ducked around the corner. The room didn’t look much different than she imagined a prison cell did. Maybe it was fitting. This was where her life would end.

  A drab prison cell in an underground lab.

  She almost laughed aloud. She’d devoted her existence to helping people, children.

  This is what it had all come to.

  “Robin!”

  Her jaw dropped, and she whipped around the corner at the familiar voice echoing toward her. She sprinted, her vision blurred by tears.

  His arms wrapped around her, and she clung to him, burying her head into the crook of his neck. Chris.

  He squeezed her tighter. She soaked in his scent along with the hint of sweat. Another familiar odor assaulted her.

  A ferrous aroma drifted through the doorway, and she pulled back from Chris. Her mouth gaped again.

  Crimson liquid pooled on the floor. Was that where Ana had been? It dripped from the stairs. Splashes of the red fluid on lab benches.

  Blood.

  She trembled with fear. “Is Ana—”

  “There’s no one here.” Jordan clasped one hand on her shoulder and the other on Chris’s. “She’s gone. They’re all gone. Do you know what happened? Where they went?”

  Robin shook her head. She had heard nothing but gunfire. It had sounded like a vehement argument. Back and forth. Yelling, muddled voices. She hadn’t made sense of any of it. Then silence.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about.” Chris dropped one arm to his side and grabbed her hand with the other. His face went still. “We’ve got to find Ana.”

  Jordan nodded, but even his mahogany skin appeared a shade paler. “What happened?”

  “Ana made me hide. She sacrificed herself for me.”

  “She’s still out there,” Chris said. “She’s got to be.”

  Robin hoped he was right. She wanted to believe him, but the scene before them made blindly accepting his statement difficult. “Where would they have taken her?”

  “And why?” Jordan rubbed his hands over his face. “They didn’t mind leaving a mess, but they didn’t want to leave a body behind.”

  Toying with her stunner, Robin willed herself to focus on the task at hand. She pushed her emotions out of her thoughts. She’d done it before. She’d had plenty of practice.

  Each time she treated aggressive cancers in her patients, she persevered, ignoring the overwhelming statistics and survival rates that bore down on her. If she didn’t push through, if she allowed herself to drink in the poison of pessimism, she would stand no chance of saving her patients.

  And some chance, no matter how small, was always better than none.

  “Before those assholes broke in,” she said, standing straighter. “Ana and I found what could be the tip of a potentially large iceberg. Blackbird Organics—”

  “The company that made that pill?” Jordan asked.

  “Right. Blackbird is owned by Advance Industries. Advance also owns Protiomics, which makes the only FDA–approved cure for prion disease.” She explained how she and Ana had confirmed the infectious prions originated from the Blackbird supplement pills.

  Wrinkles formed across Chris’s brow. “You don’t think...”

  Robin thought the whole setup sounded like a crackpot conspiracy theory. She might’ve dismissed it if any other doctor at her hospital suggested the connection. But everything that had happened to her in the past couple days convinced her such a preposterous idea might hold merit. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t?”

  Hugh held out his hands in an imploring gesture. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  “The good doctor,” Jordan said, his voice calm and measured, “if I understand this correctly, is suggesting someone has purposefully contaminated Blackbird supplements to spread a disease to bring in a little extra cash to Protiomics.”

  “Right.” Robin motioned to the now-destroyed stack of lab-on-a-chips. “And the delivery vector they packaged those prions in can prevent standard contamination detection procedures from identifying the misfolded proteins.”

  “Like camouflage,” Chris said, nodding. “Back when Jordan and I...” He stopped for a moment and collected himself. “Back when we manufactured enhancements, we used delivery vectors undetectable by most normal blood tests for a similar purpose.” He exhaled. “And while this is all good detective work, I want to know how this helps us find our missing detective. Who at Protiomics would benefit from a ploy like this? And where would they have taken Ana? Vincent was supposed to supply us with that information.”

  “And he has, I think,” Jordan said. “David Reed.”

  Robin arched an eyebrow, nonplussed at Vincent accusing Reed of having anything to do with the Blackbird scandal and all the troubles they’d been plagued with since she discovered the disease in the Wrights. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “I’m not sure, but Vincent gave that name to me. He seems to suspect Reed is somehow responsible for everything bad that has happened to us after Vincent fled the country.”

  “How the hell can Reed possibly be the one we’re after?” Chris asked, incredulous.

  Robin too couldn’t fathom the anesthesiologist moonlighting as a criminal mastermind behind the repeated attacks on her and Ana, the assassination of the senator, or the sabotaging of the lab data. But she recalled Jordan’s words. “It’s like the tattoo parlor supporting dermatologists’ tattoo removal services, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe...” Chris nodded. “Someone involved in genetic enhancements would want to eliminate any mental barriers their potential customers might have...and if a prospective enhancer could buy a genie with the promise that a certified medical clinic could later reverse the effects of the genie, wouldn’t they be more likely to buy an enhancement?”

  “And Reed was the most vocal supporter of our enhancement reversal therapy on the IRB,” Robin said. The puzzle pieces started to fit together as she recalled the delivery vectors she’d found in the Blackbird pills. Those vectors had sparked her curiosity because she recognized them as being similar to the same ones she’d seen used to deliver enhancements. Had David Reed been using her and Chris, maintaining a secret association with an illegal biotech group? Had he been the one to supply the vectors for the prion contaminations?

  But most importantly, one question remained. Robin ran a hand through her hair. “Will fi
guring out how Reed is tied into this help us find Ana?”

  “I would suspect so,” Jordan said, “but I, of course, have no way of knowing. Unless anyone else has any idea what they might’ve done with Ana, I suggest we go after your old friend, Dr. Reed.”

  “I agree,” Chris said, walking toward the exit. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Robin took a deep breath. She followed, escaping the coppery scent of the blood. But as fast as she trudged forward, the haunting memories of gunshots and screams echoing in her ears would not fade. We’re coming for you, Ana.

  ***

  Chris squeezed Robin’s knee. They sat in the back of Jordan’s car. “We’re going to find her. We’re going to take down Reed.”

  She nodded but said nothing. Her face was painted in straight-lipped stolidity. But her brown eyes gleamed with a hint of dejection and utter sadness he’d seen when she’d talked of losing a patient.

  “We haven’t lost her yet,” he said, hoping he’d read her right.

  She offered a weak smile in return. “I know.”

  Jordan held his comm card to his ear and spoke to a representative at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “Okay. Thank you.” He hung up, and the others looked at him expectantly. “No dice. Dr. Reed isn’t on call, and they wouldn’t forward me to his personal line.”

  “Damn.” Chris scrunched his brow. He realized, despite working with the anesthesiologist for the IRB application, he knew little of the man’s activities outside of his work at the hospital. “Any ideas, Robin?”

  She shook her head, her matted hair waving over her shoulders. The car’s motor hummed, the cursor on the holodisplay in the dashboard still requesting a destination. “Maybe we can make a house call?”

  “What are we going to do? Run up to this guy’s home, knock on his door, and ask him why he assassinated a congressman and where he took this detective lady?” Hugh asked, his voice shrill. “How the hell do you think that’s going to work out?”

  Chris gritted his teeth. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.” He clenched his fists, and his nostrils flared. “If Ana’s still out there, we don’t know how much time we’ve got.”