“Is this a joke?” she asked, waving the paper aside.
“Simultaneous investigations by the FBI, the SEC, the IRS, the Justice Department and Homeland Security. You might be able to influence your way out of some of them, but all at the same time? I suspect even Rothston’s resources will be stretched thin. And you know how the IRS just loves places like this.” I glanced around to make my point. “Very nice. They probably don’t even know about it. Try influencing one of those agents. And that doesn’t count the numerous private investigators who will be deployed. Men can be rather determined to get their way when motivated by a reward of a few million dollars, wouldn’t you say?” I tipped my head with the question, but didn’t wait for her to answer. “And it all begins automatically if I don’t check in at a predetermined time. And I won’t check in unless I have Kinzie and we are safely away from here.”
“You’re crazy,” Brenda sputtered at me. “This is a think-tank. We analyze global strategies. Nothing you’ve said in this letter is true – or even makes sense.”
“People believe in UFOs. You think they won’t believe in this? And crazy people with money still get attention. How much are you willing to stake on me being ignored? You’re going to have a thousand RVs parked outside your property. It will make Area 51 look like a theme park.” I said calmly, but she remained resolute.
“There is no one here named Kinzie Nicolosi,” she stated, drawing herself up. “Now either you leave the premises peacefully, or we will have you arrested.”
“Call the police,” I told her. “I will be released within an hour and you will have ensured even more investigations. And if you make me disappear, that will cause you considerably more problems,” I directed to the guard who’d been raising his taser. His hand dropped a bit. But this wasn’t working. Time for Plan B.
“A compromise,” I said. “Tell Bradley Jamison and Rex Brolie to assemble The Seven,” I stated pulling it off like it was normal conversation. “I will meet with them to resolve this matter.”
“They’re gone. They aren’t here,” Brenda replied.
She’d just admitted that this was not a think-tank at all, and it brought a smile to my lips. “Then I will have to do this the hard way. I will search for Kinzie, and I’m sure some of the people here can be motivated to help me to find her. Money works well that way.”
I stepped past her toward the library door, when Brenda called behind me. “You can’t do that! Why aren’t you listening?” she cried, sounding frantic.
I smiled again but didn’t look back. “I can do it, and I am. Watch me.”
I took another step and felt a hand grab my arm, spinning me around. I lashed out, landing a slug in the stomach of the guard as I turned. He buckled but recovered quickly, lunging at me. I held onto him like it was a wrestling match, keeping his body between me and the guy with the taser, while trying to get off more punches. I landed a good one to his face, and heard the crack of his nose, but it just made him mad. He pummeled me in the stomach, over and over, while his partner tried to get around. I pushed my attacker down and pounded my knee into his face and he fell. I tried to take a breath when I heard an electric click. Every muscle in my body spasmed as the taser made contact. The guard seemed to laugh in slow motion as I crumpled to the floor.
ψ
Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, an iron latch scraped open and I felt a swirl of cool air, but it was too hard to move. It was probably the guards again. Was it time to beat me or question me? They came in rapid succession, so I couldn’t remember which had happened last. I wasn’t even sure how long they’d been trying to get the code for my phone out of me. I’d never give it to them. It was the only card I had left.
“Greg Langston,” a woman’s voice whispered above me.
I burrowed further down into the corner of the filthy cell. The coolness of the stone felt good against my skin, even as its chill stiffened my joints. I wanted to sleep. I needed to get some sleep to figure out what to do next. If there was a next. I didn’t know where Kinzie was, or what they had planned for her, or when. Even if every force I could bring to bear came down on this place, it would be too late. I’d lost, but I would never let these monsters win.
“Greg,” the voice whispered, and a toe nudged me.
I opened my eyes to see a disheveled, silver-haired old woman in a flowered bathrobe with khaki pants sticking out the bottom. “Who are you?” I asked groggily.
“Shh. This is a jail-break,” she said with a devious twinkle in her eye.
“What?” I tried to sit up, only to find my body stiff from bruises and the cold. The woman looked … peculiar. Misshapen somehow. But I wasn’t about to reject anyone who wanted to help me.
“If you want to save Kinzie, we need to get out of here now!” she hissed urgently, offering a slender hand to help me up. That’s what was off. Her hands and wrists didn’t match the rest of her. But then she reached inside the bathrobe, pulling out a pile of bulky gray fabric. Her ample midsection deflated, and the bathrobe draped loosely around her as the cloth unfolded into a sweatshirt. I pulled it on, reading the “YALE” emblazoned across the front. The woman motioned for me to pull the hood over my head and follow her.
“You’re Mel, aren’t you?” I said, guessing at her identity. “Kinzie’s told me about you.”
She stopped at the door and winked at me without answering, then her face went blank as she read ahead of us to make sure it was clear. “Come on,” she said motioning me forward. I stepped into the hall that had been carved from living rock, grimy and cold, just like the cell. The wooden plank door and its dark iron workings looked hundreds of years old. Five other doors, just like it, lined the left side of the hall, and a wire ran along the ceiling. Its dangling, naked bulbs provided the only light, casting stark shadows in the corners.
“Where is Kinzie?” I asked, but the woman didn’t answer. She just scurried along. I followed, my knees aching and the muscles of my stomach groaning from kicks and punches. Maybe she’d heard me in the library offering money to anyone who helped me find Kinzie. From what Kinzie had said, the two of them were close. Still, I couldn’t see a member of the Seven doing this – or even a former member. Something was going on.
A hallway branched to the left between the second and third cell doors and Mel held up her hand to stop again. She sucked in her breath quickly and stood perfectly still.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“There shouldn’t be anyone down there,” she said peering around the corner.
“Is it Kinzie?” I asked quickly, but could just make out scuffled footprints in the dirt on the floor and they were too large. “A guard?”
“No. Nothing like …” She turned down the hall, picking up her pace. I followed. This hall was shorter than the other, but had no light, and part of the ceiling had fallen a short way in. Despite her age, the woman scrambled over the debris and waited for me to join her. Her eyes were darting around in the near darkness, but I could tell it wasn’t her vision she was using.
“There is a blind spot,” she told me, and looked around again. “There.” She pointed at the stone wall four feet down from us.
“Blind spot?” I asked.
“A place I can’t see.”
“You mean with your …” I pointed at her forehead. “That’s not possible. The quantum foam always exists.”
“Oh, it exists,” she said and touched the wall, before nodding. “I just can’t see it.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she moved down to another wood and iron door. She tugged at its rusty latch, but it wouldn’t move. I edged her aside and squinted at it in the near darkness. It wasn’t frozen. Scratches in the rust showed it had been opened recently. I grabbed the latch and with some effort, it slid back and I pulled the heavy door open. The woman peered into the darkness.
“Hello?” she called softly.
A groan came from inside, then a soft blue glow, and for a moment, more silence until a voice
croaked out, “Mel?”
The woman beside me rushed in, and I stared after her. So this was Mel. Kinzie had told me before break that she had Alzheimer’s. I paused, wondering if she had any idea where Kinzie was or if this just a delusion.
“Mel, it’s them,” the voice croaked in the room again.
“Shh. I know, Curtis. I know,” Mel soothed him. “Greg, help me get him into the hall.”
The cell was rank with mold, sweat, and urine. Whoever this was he’d been in here for a while from the stench. I groped through the darkness toward the faint blue glow. As I got closer, it was a band of some sort, faintly illuminating the calf of the person – Curtis, Mel had called him – as he struggled to sit up. His arms were forced awkwardly behind his back, bound somehow, as were his feet. I grabbed him under the arms from behind and dragged him out.
In the dim light of the hallway, I knew this was the friend Kinzie had told me about. The curls of his dark hair were matted to his head, a pair of glasses rest cockeyed on his nose, and loose stubble dotted his chin, but he looked to be around eighteen. His eyes were dark and sunken, and dried blood ran tracks down his calf where it looked like he’d tried to scrape off whatever that blue thing was.
“Let me help,” Mel said soothingly, and bent over the blue band. It was held closed by a thin but stout section of steel with several buttons on it like for a combination. She touched them in sequence. “Hopefully, they haven’t changed any codes yet,” she said as she pushed a last button and the device sprang open. Curtis’s entire body deflated with relief and he passed out. Mel dropped the band to catch his head before it hit the floor.
I picked up the device and studied it. “This is?” I prodded Mel, who was now fumbling in her pocket.
“The blank spot. A quantum interference transmitter. Disrupts the turbula. Like saturating a bloodhound’s nose.” I stuffed it in my pants pocket so I could examine it later, perhaps figure out how it worked. Mel retrieved a Swiss army knife from her robe. “Always be prepared,” she said, handing it to me to cut Curtis’s bindings. “Only the Guards are supposed to have QITs. But if I had to guess, I’d say this is the one I’ve heard rumors about. The one that Rex Brolie was said to have.”
“Brolie,” I growled, snapping the plastic straps on Curtis’s wrists. “He’s behind this, isn’t he.”
“I believe so,” Mel answered gravely. “I cannot figure out how he could have accomplished it, but Rex is very ambitious. And I have been perfectly lucid for the first time in months since he left last night with the others. George Alphonse sent me an email before they left, explaining where they were going and why. He thought I would want to know, even though he didn’t expect I would fully understand. Sweet man. And a good friend. In the email he said they believed Kinzie was responsible for Curtis’s disappearance, but the QIT indicates otherwise. I don’t know how Rex has done all this, but I fear a greater injustice is about to be done than just me losing my seat.”
The undead specter in the stained-glass window popped into my head. “Will they actually kill Kinzie?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Yes, Greg. The only way to stop it will be to get to the others and get them to understand that Rex orchestrated his ascension and may have somehow affected their decision to execute Kinzie. Without further proof, or knowing why he is doing this, they may carry out her sentence anyway. But it may buy us some time.”
“I’ll take it over nothing,” I grumbled. “Who do we talk to?”
The teen lying between us began to move, mumbling something. Mel watched him for a moment. “That is a good question,” she said with a scowl. “I suggest we start with someone with whom I do not see eye-to-eye, but is quite fond of Kinzie. Yes, that should work,” she continued half to herself. “If Bradley Jamison agrees to delay the execution, no one will oppose it.
Her words acted like a bolt of lightning to Curtis who shot up between us. “No!” he yelled. “He’s after you, Mel! You can’t …” His sunken eyes were pools of terror.
“Shh.” Mel placed her hand on Curtis’s grimy face to soothe him. “I know, Curtis. It will be alright. We’re going to get you out of here. Rex won’t hurt either of us anymore.” She began to rise.
“No, not Rex,” Curtis pleaded, as he shook his head, nearly knocking his glasses off. “It’s Jamison.”
“What?” She dropped back down to her knees beside him.
“He did this. Mr. Jamison,” Curtis croaked, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he collapsed back to the floor. “To me. To you. He did it for Rex. I heard them,” he said in a fading voice.
Mel shook her head, “What do you mean Jamison did this?”
“I was spying on Rex. Me and Kinzie decided to do it … wait. Who are you?” he asked, finally focusing on me.
I glanced at Mel, not sure how much to tell Curtis who didn’t look in any condition for a long conversation. “This is Greg Langston,” Mel answered. “Kinzie’s boyfriend.”
Curtis bolted up between us again. “Kinzie! She isn’t safe!” he urged.
“We know, Curtis. She isn’t safe. Now I need you to tell me why.” The old woman’s eyes grew distant, and I assumed she was influencing Curtis to tell us everything he knew. Words began to stream out of his mouth, telling us of a plan to catch Rex doing something to prove he was behind Mel’s apparent Alzheimer’s. He’d been texting Kinzie as he went, but deleted the texts after sending them in case he got caught. On Saturday evening, Curtis had broken into Rex’s room so he could search for anything incriminating. He was going through his desk drawers, when Rex returned, this time with Brad Jamison. Curtis hid under the bed and listened as they coordinated continuing to confuse Mel so that her Alzheimer’s didn’t suddenly go away. It sounded like others were helping them, but he didn’t hear any names. He’d been part way through texting Kinzie the new information, when Rex hopped onto his bed. The puff of air raised an eddy of dust under the bed, and after trying to hold it back, Curtis sneezed. With his hands trembling with fear, he didn’t get the text either sent or deleted before they’d hauled him from his hiding place and took his phone away from him. From the partial text on the screen, Jamison knew there had been others to Kinzie, and wanted to know how much Curtis and Kinzie knew. When Curtis refused to tell him anything, Jamison had taken Rex’s QIT, dragged Curtis down here, and tried to beat the information out of him.
“Familiar tactic,” I muttered, still feeling the bruises along my sides.
Mel shook her head in dismay, and gave me a somber look. “That is not how we operate.”
“Tell my ribs that,” I replied. “Maybe it’s not how you think this place operates, but what’s happened to Curtis and me proves otherwise.”
“This just can’t be,” she murmured like she was having trouble accepting what was obvious to me. “Jamison’s behind it? It can’t be.”
“Why not? Makes sense to me,” I said, looking at Curtis on the floor between us. The guy looked like hell. Anybody that would do this to another human being was evil, and that fit with everything else I knew. “Brolie nearly killed my frat brother a couple months ago just to show up Kinzie. Jamison didn’t think that was a problem. And there was that Congressman on her mission to D.C. – I guess that didn’t …”
Mel held up her hand to stop me. “What mission?” she asked. “Kinzie said something to me about a mission too, but we never even considered sending her on one. She has far too much to learn still.”
“She did go on a mission. She told me Rothston sent her. She went to stop additional military intervention somewhere.”
The old woman stared through me, and I began to wonder if, perhaps, she really did have Alzheimer’s. After a moment, she cocked her head. “Are you certain about this?” she asked.
“Kinzie told me too,” Curtis confirmed, straining to prop himself up on his elbows. I lifted his shoulders to help him. “A lot of people were jealous that she got to go.”
“No one should have been in Washington
,” Mel said vaguely.
“Well Kinzie was, and Brolie was with her,” I told her. “And from what I heard him say a while back – he was going there all the time. What was it he said?” I asked myself out loud. “He was complaining to someone on the phone that he was being shipped off to work in DC or military bases every couple weeks. I’d bet he was talking to Jamison.”
“To work?” Mel questioned. She sank back from her knees for a moment before a determined look swept over her face. “We need to get moving. We have to stop them.”
We stood, hauling Curtis up between us, but I didn’t see how we were going to sneak out of this complex this way. Mel’s determination grew with the question. “I’ll get us out,” she assured me. “Members of The Seven are selected largely for the strength of their attributes. And I have more than a few tricks up my sleeves. No one will ever see us.”
We mostly carried Curtis through the halls, stopping at the surprisingly empty guard office to retrieve my keys. Mel said we had a long drive ahead of us, and I offered Mr. Heisenberg’s speed. She remained in silent thought most of the time, other than pointing which way to head in the maze-like halls. But as we reached the large slate vestibule inside the doors I’d entered, she stopped us for a moment.
“I hope I am incorrect about this,” she started. “But the two of you need to understand what we are up against. With the information you have provided, I fear the situation is far worse than I could have imagined.”
Curtis lifted his head to join me in watching the old woman carefully. “What’s going on, Mel?”
She shook her head. “We’ve suspected for some time that someone at Rothston had influenced the SEC into inaction on a clear investment scheme in order to protect and enhance our own assets,” she said sternly.
Foreseen (The Rothston Series) Page 30