CHAPTER NINETEEN
Andrew found Alice exactly as he’d left her, curled up and sound asleep on his bed. Moving quietly around the room so he wouldn’t disturb her, he’d pulled the last of the clean clothing provisions from a bureau drawer, then stripped off his soggy jeans and shirt for disposal. Then he stood under the heavy shower spray and scrubbed his skin, Suzette’s words of admonition still ringing in his ears.
The strain of streptococcus that can lead to rheumatic fever is contagious.
Just the thought of possibly contracting the same bacteria that had caused such debilitating and disfiguring illness in O’Malley left him damn near wearing a groove into the bar of soap as he rubbed it between his hands, lathering up again and again.
He got out of the shower stall and mopped at his head with a towel. I can’t believe I said that. With the smell of vomit off of him, his mind had wandered to other concerns besides potentially biohazardous contamination. Most specifically, he thought about Dani and his unintentional slip of the tongue.
She smiled at me, though, he thought, wrapping the towel around his waist, tucking the corner in to secure it loosely in place. She didn’t kick me in the balls or anything and she could have. She should have. So she couldn’t have been too pissed off about me saying it. Right?
Raking his fingers through his wet hair to comb it back from his face, he opened the bathroom door. At almost the exact same moment, he heard a quiet series of beeps from his doorway. It occurred to him dimly that someone was typing in a pass code and then the door burst open as Edward Moore shoved his way inside, Major Prendick less than a full step behind him.
“Where is she?” Moore demanded, his face twisted with barely tamped fury, his fists clenched as he charged forward.
Andrew backpedaled in surprise and alarm, but the ironic realization that this was the second time in as many days that Moore had barged into his room uninvited and caught him in nothing but a bath towel was short-lived. Moore’s hand shot out, clamping beneath the shelf of his chin, slamming him into the bathroom doorframe, cutting his startled yelp breathlessly short.
“Where is my daughter, you son of a bitch?” Moore shouted, his face inches away from Andrew’s own, peppering Andrew with spittle. “What have you done with her? Tell me right goddamn now!”
Andrew pawed at his hand, trying to wedge his fingers beneath Moore’s, to loosen that furious, powerful hold that had crushed his windpipe, leaving him straining futilely for any hint of air. “Let… go…!” he gasped.
“Dr. Moore.” Prendick clapped his hand on Moore’s shoulder, but made no immediate move to haul the other man away. “Let him go.”
“Please,” Andrew choked, pawing at Moore’s hand, staring desperately at Prendick. Help me, he wanted to cry, even though all he could manage to croak out was a feeble, “Help.” Get this crazy son of a bitch off of me!
“Moore.” Prendick’s voice sharpened. “Let him go.”
After a long moment, Moore at last drew his hand away. Andrew stumbled backwards, whooping for breath.
“You…” he gasped, staring at Moore. “You’re crazy.”
Moore paid him no attention, instead turning and stomping into Andrew’s bedroom. “Alice!” he shouted. “Alice, answer me. It’s Daddy.”
What the hell is he yelling for? Andrew thought, breathless and bewildered. She’s not deaf, for God’s sake.
Then he looked beyond the doorway into the bedroom and realized Alice was no longer lying on the bed. “What the…?” he whispered.
“Something wrong, Mister Braddock?” Prendick asked as Andrew brushed past him and limped into the bedroom, following Moore.
Where’d she go? he wondered in rising alarm, watching as Moore dropped onto his knees and flipped back the bedspread, looking underneath the bed.
“I said…” Prendick’s hand fell heavily against Andrew’s shoulder from behind. “Is something wrong?”
Andrew frowned, shrugging Prendick away. “Yeah, I’d say something’s wrong. Moore just about killed me. And you just about stood there and let him. What the hell’s your problem?”
“Dr. Moore’s daughter is missing,” Prendick said, seeming unfazed by Andrew’s hostile retort. “We were hoping maybe you had some idea of her whereabouts.”
“No. Why would I?”
“He’s lying,” Moore snapped.
“Like hell,” Andrew snapped back, balling his hands into fists.
“He’s done something to Alice. I know it.” Moore whirled to face Andrew. “Tell me where she is. She’s a very sick little girl and she needs medicine to—”
“Yeah, I know all about your medicine,” Andrew cut in. “The holes you drill in her head. Did he tell you about this?” He glared at Prendick. “He cuts holes into her skull to put this so-called ‘medicine’ into her.” Squaring off against Moore, he said, “You’re not a doctor. You’re a monster. A sick, fucking sadist who carves up his own kid, for Christ’s—”
Moore bellowed, an inarticulate, furious roar, and charged again like a pissed off rhinoceros or a linebacker with some kind of murderous vendetta. Shoulders hunched, head tucked, he plowed straight for Andrew, and when Andrew danced back, out of his path, he stumbled over a chair, knocked over a lamp and crashed with them to the floor in heap. After a long moment in which there were no sounds in the room except for the thick, sodden sounds of Moore’s labored breathing, he sat up.
“Dr. Moore,” Prendick said, speaking in a patronizingly patient tone of voice, as if addressing one of a pair of malcontent children. “She’s not here. I’ll put together a patrol and we’ll start combing the woods.”
Moore shambled to his feet, limping in a semi-circle to face Andrew, his hair wildly askew now, a thin trickle of blood seeping from his nose. Shoving one wavering forefinger at Andrew, he said hoarsely, “The only monster here is you. And if anything happens to Alice, I will hold you personally responsible. I will personally make you answer for it.”
* * *
“Jesus.” After Moore and Prendick had left the room, slamming the door behind them, Andrew lowered himself to the floor, sitting against the wall, and allowed himself a shaky, breathless laugh.
What the fuck just happened? he thought, massaging his neck with his hand, the area where Moore had pinned him still sore.
“You shouldn’t have said anything about my medicine,” he heard Alice say, and he jerked in surprise when she poked her head out from underneath the bed. “Daddy said it’s supposed to be a secret. That’s why he does it up in the apartment, not in the lab.”
“Where…?” Bewildered, Andrew watched her crawl out on her hands and knees, then stand up and dust off her hands. “Your dad checked under the bed.”
“I was in the box spring frame. I tore a hole in the liner, crawled up inside and lay across the wooden slats.”
Andrew blinked at her.
She blinked back. “Why are you wearing a towel?”
He glanced down, realized the way he was sitting, with his knees drawn up, gave her an unrestricted view past the hem of the towel all the way up to his balls and immediately clamped his knees together. “Uh. I had to take a shower. Someone puked on me.”
Her nose wrinkled. If memory served, it was the first time he’d ever seen her show any outward sign of emotion. “Ewww,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” he agreed.
* * *
He managed to smuggle her out to the garage, leading her across the darkened work bay to the back corner near Dani’s desk, to the bathroom. As he fished the key ring from his pocket, then fumbled to fit the right key in the lock in the shadows, Alice studied the pictures and drawings around Dani’s computer.
“She has kids,” she observed.
“Two of them, yeah.” While sifting through the four nearly identically sized and shaped keys on the key ring, Andrew noticed that rather than a plastic or metal tab, a goofy charm or even vehicle remote control, Dani had some kind of small folding tool at the end of he
r key chain. Gerber Clutch had been printed on the black exterior. Being the owner of a Gerber knife himself—said knife currently in his backpack, wherever that had wound up—Andrew smiled appreciatively. Clearly, Dani knew a good multi-tool.
“Here,” he said to Alice, as he found the right key and unlocked the door. “You’ll be safe in here.”
She didn’t immediately answer and curious, he turned to see her lingering in front of Dani’s desk. She’d taken one of the framed photos in hand, one of Dani in extreme close up, with Max tucked beneath one arm, Eme beneath the other, all three of them grinning goofily into the camera. He could have sworn Alice looked almost melancholy.
“I don’t have any pictures like this,” she said when Andrew went to stand beside her. He folded his legs beneath him, leaning over to look at the photo.
“You mean with your mom?” he asked. With a sick bastard like Moore for her father, he found he wasn’t the least bit surprised to realize she missed her mother, despite the fact the woman hadn’t sounded much better than Moore, to have heard tell of her.
Alice shook her head. “Smiling.”
It took him a moment to understand. “You mean, you don’t have any pictures where you’re smiling?” he asked and she nodded. “Oh. Well, uh…” If he’d had his iPhone, he could have taken one for her right there on the spot, with its built-in digital camera. “I’ll take one for you someday. How about that?”
“No.” She shook her head again. “I mean, I don’t smile.”
“Of course you can smile. It’s not like your face doesn’t work.”
“No, but my brain doesn’t,” she replied. “It mixes things up, so I want to smile but I don’t remember how. Or I want to cry, but the tears won’t come out. I didn’t say I can’t. I said I don’t. You’re doing it again, hearing not listening.”
Once he’d settled her safely into the little store room, Andrew made several clandestine trips between the barracks and the garage, stealing through the shadows, bringing her pillows, blankets, some snacks and drinks. He made a cozy little pallet on the floor for her while she stood aside and watched. The glimpses of uncharacteristic emotion she’d shared with him earlier seemed gone now and her face had turned impassive again, her gaze detached and aloof.
“It won’t be long,” he promised her. “Just for tonight, maybe tomorrow.” He stroked his hand against her hair, then led her toward the nest he’d made for her on the floor. “I know it’s not much, but you’ll be safe here. No one can get in without the key, see?”
Holding up his hand, he let the key dangle in her view, then curled his fingers around it and tucked it into his pocket. “As long as you stay quiet, no one will even know you’re here.”
After she’d curled up on the pallet, he drew the blankets snugly over her shoulders, kneeling down to tuck them beneath her chin. “You hungry?” he asked, but she shook her head. “Thirsty?” Another head shake. “I brought you some crackers, a couple of bottles of 7-Up. They’re right over there, see?”
When he pointed, she followed the line of his finger with her gaze, then nodded.
“I’ll come back tomorrow as much as I can and check on you,” he promised as he stood again.
“I’m sorry Daddy hurt you,” she said, looking up at him, the overhead fluorescent glistening in her eyes.
Andrew smiled. “He didn’t too bad. And it wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was. He’s worried.”
“Alice.” He squatted again. “Listen to me.”
How could he explain to her? Moore was her father, someone she obviously loved and held in high, adulating esteem, if only because in Alice’s young, idealistic and impressionable regard, he’d rescued her from the mental institution in which her mother had placed her.
“Your dad…” he said, then paused, sighed, ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, your dad loves you. But what he’s doing to you is wrong. He’s hurting you.”
“No, he’s not.” She shook her head. “He uses local anesthetic before he starts to drill. All I ever feel is pressure. Like a finger digging in really hard. Here. I’ll show you.”
Stricken, Andrew caught her hand, stopping her. “Alice, your father is sick. There’s something wrong with his mind.”
“No, there’s not. It’s my mind doesn’t work right. I told you. Daddy said it has something to do with neural pathways. The electrical signals don’t go from one place in my brain to another like they do for other people. Sometimes my signals get mixed up, sent to the wrong place. And sometimes they just dead end. It’s like the map in my head doesn’t work right, he said.”
“And cutting holes in your head fixes that?”
“No. But the medicine he puts in the holes does. It goes into my cerebral sinuses. They’re sort of like big blood vessels surrounding your brain. He goes through the fontanels. The bone is newer there, thinner.”
Tilting her head slightly, she pulled back her hair, revealing the stitches he’d noticed earlier near her temple. He must have looked disgusted, horrified, because she reached out, catching his hand.
“I’m better now.”
“But Alice,” he said, helplessly. “Your dad didn’t do that by cutting holes in your head.”
“Yes, he did. The medicine makes new nerves grow. It fills in the missing places in my brain. It makes the electrical signals get to the right places. Daddy said that one day, it will all be fixed. I’ll be just like you are.” She looked at him earnestly, nearly pleading. “I’ll be just like everyone else.”
* * *
Back inside the compound, Andrew stopped at the infirmary to see if Dani was there and had any news on O’Malley’s condition. He also decided he needed to make her aware of Moore’s increasingly erratic and violent behavior, and poor Alice’s delusions that his abuse was somehow helping to cure her autism.
Maybe Dani can talk to her, he thought. She’s got kids. She can relate better. Maybe she can make Alice understand.
His footsteps faltered as he approached the infirmary doorway and Major Prendick walked out, flanked on either side by a pair of armed soldiers. All three wore bright yellow hooded jumpsuits over their uniforms, with plastic shields covering their faces and blue latex gloves over heir hands.
“Mister Braddock,” Prendick called out. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop where you are.”
“What?” Bewildered, Andrew raised his hands hesitantly, a reflexive gesture even though no one had demanded it of him. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come with these men,” Prendick replied. The two armed soldiers forked out, each keeping wary distances from Andrew as they moved to either side of them.
“Where? What’s going on?” Andrew asked again.
“You’ve been exposed to a highly virulent strain of contagion. By military protocol, I’m to confine you to your quarters until I’m able to determine whether or not you’ve been infected.”
“What protocol? You mean like quarantine?” Andrew asked. “You’re placing me in quarantine? You can’t do that. Suzette said all I had to do was take a shower. Hey!” When one of the soldiers reached for him, he jerked away, brows furrowed. “Where’s Dani? Where’s Specialist Santoro?”
“She’s been restricted to her personal quarters until further notice, as well,” Prendick said.
“I want to talk to her. I want to see her right now.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mister Braddock. It’s for her own good and yours. We need to make sure no one else gets sick.”
The soldiers stepped forward, grabbing him roughly, with enough force to prevent him from breaking free.
“Hey,” Andrew exclaimed, struggling. “Get your hands off me!”
“I’d prefer that you do this voluntarily, Mister Braddock,” Prendick said. “But I’m authorized to confine you by force, if needed.”
“I said get your fucking hands off me,” Andrew yelled as the soldiers began to haul him down the corridor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As he was shoved unceremoniously into his room, Andrew stumbled and crashed to the floor, barking his knees. “Hey,” he began, frowning, his fists bared as he scrambled up again, but it was too late. The soldiers slammed the door in his face and he heard the tell-tale beep-beep-beep-beep as they locked it.
It was a moot point and he knew it, but he tried punching in his own pass code anyway. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when it didn’t work. There was no way they’d have been that stupid,
With an angry, frustrated cry, he struck the door. “Damn it!”
Spinning around, he shoved his back against the door, then folded his legs, sliding his spine down until his ass met the floor. Shoving his fingers through his hair, he closed his eyes, tilted his head back.
Great, he thought. This is just great. Now what the hell am I going to do? I can’t just sit here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting to see if I’m going to get sick. I can’t leave Alice alone in that closet or Dani locked in her room downstairs. There’s got to be a way out of this mess.
He’d felt something in his pocket poking him in the hip when he’d sat down, and shifted his weight now as that uncomfortable pressure continued digging into his skin. With a frown, he raised his hips, cramming his hand down his pocket, meaning to take out whatever was in there and hurl it across the room. Instead, when he pulled out Dani’s key ring—with her Gerber multi-tool attached to the chain—he paused, cradling it against his palm.
Less than three inches long, the Clutch had a little heft to it nonetheless and curious, he slipped his fingertip into the little grooves and notches, unfolding each of the miniature blades and implements in turn: needlenose pliers, a small knife, emery board, tweezers, flat head and Phillips head screwdrivers.
“I love you, Dani Santoro,” he murmured even though she wasn’t around to hear. Standing, he walked across the room to his window, shoving back the drapes to either side. The top three-quarters were unblemished glass, a picture pane designed more for aesthetics than any sort of practicality. But at the bottom, side by side, was a pair of casement windows. Like pop-out quarter windows in older model cars, these were designed to open only as far as the hinge would extend when fully unfolded, roughly six inches. It was a security feature Andrew had seen in both his college dormitory and hotel rooms, designed to prevent people from falling out.
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