“It must be the hacker,” the computer nerd muttered. “He put himself physically into the VR.”
“And who are you?” Mack asked.
“Sidney Landon, the designer.”
“And putting us in a hotel in India was your clever idea?”
“I was there last year. I liked it. It’s the most luxurious place I’ve ever visited,” the guy said defensively. “And they have a really good Web site with a virtual tour of the interior and exterior. That made my work a lot easier.”
Mack snorted. “Nice for you.”
“What about the hacker?” Landon asked. “You said you saw him in there?”
“I saw him—but not in the hotel. He’s in the woods outside the grounds. I don’t think he can actually get in here.”
“Why not?” Landon asked.
“Because I’m pretty sure he wants to. The best he can do is create weird effects in the clouds and in the woods.” When Mack described the strange clouds and recounted some of what happened in the woods, the designer whistled.
“He’s talented,” Landon muttered. “Too talented. But at least some of my protections are holding.” He tipped his head to the side as he looked at Mack. “Do you think the girl was who she said she was? Or did he create her?”
Mack considered the answer. “I don’t think he created her. First, if he’d made her, he’d need to have a lot of information to do it right. She was expecting to talk to Lily, not me. And Lily could ask her questions, just the way I quizzed Grant before I believed it was really him. Second, I don’t think she would have talked about him if he’d created her.”
“Fair points.”
“And the next question is—why is he trying to invade your video game? For the challenge of getting in? Or does he want something specific? Or someone?” Mack added.
“We need to find out,” Landon answered.
Lily, who had been absent for several minutes, crowded into the group around the computer screen again. “I called the facility where my sister is being cared for. She’s still there.”
“You said the accident was years ago,” Mack said. “What about her body? I mean, she can’t still be a little girl, can she?”
“No. Her body has grown up.”
“Not in the VR. I guess that’s how she still thinks of herself.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “You mean, she could have some kind of life—inside her mind—inside the VR.”
Mack caught the hope in her voice and answered softly, “I think so.”
Hamilton jumped back into the conversation, a triumphant note in his voice. “That proves my point. The VR is functioning the way it’s supposed to. She was there, and she was enjoying her ice cream. Didn’t she say it was the best thing she had tasted in years? Maybe she should be brought here and hooked into the project.”
Mack focused on the look of repressed joy on Lily’s face, thinking the guy was clever. If he offered her hope for her sister, maybe she’d give him what he wanted.
In the real world, Mack saw Hamilton slip into the background and pull a mobile phone out of his pocket and make a call. A moment ago he’d looked elated. Now he looked worried.
Mack made eye contact with Lily, then shifted his gaze toward Hamilton. She gave a little nod and edged toward the doctor, who was talking in a low voice.
oOo
Grant was watching the byplay between the two doctors, Mack and the VR designer when the orderly who had been in the room earlier burst through the door and addressed Hamilton.
“Doc, those guys downstairs are doing a very thorough search of the first floor. When they finish, they’ll be on their way up here.”
Hamilton’s head jerked up, and he said something to whoever was on the other end of the line. Apparently he didn’t like the answer he’d gotten.
Grant strode toward the doctor. “He’s talking about the men who tried to kill me at the Roosevelt Memorial. They’re the reason I found this place.”
“What?” Hamilton gasped. “Someone tried to kill you?”
“That wasn’t your idea?” Grant shot back
The doctor’s wide-eyed expression told Grant that he hadn’t hatched the murder plan.
“And if they find me here, they’re going to finish the job,” Grant said. “Is there another way out?”
Chapter Nineteen
Hamilton looked wildly around the room like he had just gotten there and didn’t know the lay of the land.
It was Lily who answered. “The only other exit leads into the hall. Can we hold them off some way?” she asked, her voice rising in panic.
“They seem pretty goal oriented,” Grant answered. “Do you have weapons up here? I mean besides my gun.”
“I don’t think so.” She looked toward Hamilton. “What are we going to do?”
The doctor must have been already thinking about the problem. “We can hide him in the VR, using Jay Douglas’s bed. They won’t know he died.”
Her expression was doubtful. “With no physical exam and no preparation?”
“How safe is it?” Grant asked.
“I wouldn’t . . . advise it,” she answered. “We haven’t done any tests on you to make sure you’re compatible.”
Hamilton was speaking to Durant, the orderly. “If they come up here, try to buy us a few minutes. Tell them we’re having a crisis with one of the patients and we need to focus on stabilizing him.”
Grant looked at his brother’s image on the TV screen, then turned back to Hamilton. “Let’s do it. I think I’m in better health than your average patient.”
“You’re coming in here?” Mack shouted from the terminal.
“Yeah,” Grant answered. “It’s the only place I can hide.”
Lily made a strangled sound, then snapped into medical mode. “Take off your clothes.”
He began shedding clothing as she crossed to a cabinet and pulled out one of the gowns the other patients were wearing.
“Put this on.”
Already shirtless, Grant pulled his arms through the sleeves of the gown. Then he took off his pants.
Lily swept up his clothing and stuffed it into the bottom of a laundry basket.
It was all happening so fast that Grant hardly had time to decide if he’d made a fatal mistake by agreeing to this.
Hamilton had also swung into action, issuing orders as he ushered Grant to the bed.
“Lie down,” he said to Grant, then to Landon, “And turn off the hookup to the VR. I don’t want them to think we’re in communication with anyone there.”
“In a minute,” Lily said, then spoke to Landon. “If he’s going in there, I want him to arrive in the business center where Mack will be waiting for him.”
“On the couch?” Landon asked.
“Yes,” Hamilton answered. He turned back to Grant who was already lying on the bed.
“And we should start the process but not send him in until we’re sure everything’s okay,” Lily added.
Hamilton gave her a look that said he didn’t like taking orders from his second in command, but he continued working.
Lily kept her focus on Grant as she attached an IV line to his arm with impressive speed and efficiency then pulled a heavy plastic cap with electrodes down on his head.
Hamilton had a hypodermic in his hand, which he jammed into Grant’s other arm and said, “Count backwards from one hundred.”
He got as far as ninety-seven before the world around him faded out of existence.
oOo
The breath froze in Lily’s lungs as the door to the lab burst open and three hard-faced men stepped in, all of them with handguns raised. They looked like they were ready to shoot first and ask questions later. She hadn’t quite believed Grant when he’d said they’d tried to kill him. Now she understood how dangerous they were.
She wanted to look away, but it was impossible not to keep her gaze on them.
Were they going to start mowing everyone down? From the corner of her eye, she watched H
amilton straighten and turn to face the intruders.
“You can’t simply burst into the laboratory.”
“We didn’t find the guy we were looking for downstairs. Where is he?”
The orderly, who was behind the intruders, gave the researchers a panicked look. Lily was thankful that they couldn’t see his face.
Hamilton shook his head. “I have no idea. We haven’t seen anyone who’s not supposed to be in the building. And you have no call to hold us at gunpoint.”
“Not if you’re being straight with us. Mind if we have a look around?”
Hamilton swept his hand to the side, “Be my guest.”
“All of you, over there,” the man ordered.
The staff huddled together in the corner while the men moved around the patient area, looking under beds and glancing at the patients.
Lily’s heart was pounding so hard that she thought it might crash through the wall of her chest. Her breath froze in her lungs as the searchers walked between the beds, looking under each, ignoring the patients.
When the three men finished in the room, the leader turned to Hamilton.
“I hope for your sake you’re not lying to us.”
“Why would I?”
“To double cross Mr. Sterling.”
Lily heard genuine outrage in Hamilton’s voice. “That’s ridiculous. He and I have a good working relationship.”
“Let’s hope so.”
The doctor had put on a good show of bravado. But as soon as the search team had disappeared into the elevator, he pulled out one of the desk chairs and sat down heavily.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked, taking in his paper-white skin.
“Yes.”
She looked toward the bed where Grant was lying. “Thank God they didn’t find him.”
“Did you finish hooking him up?”
“I hope so.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head.
Hamilton heaved himself up, walked back to the new patient, and checked the monitor. “So far, he’s stable.”
So far. Great.
She looked toward Landon. “Don’t send him in yet.”
“Fine.”
Swinging back toward Hamilton, she watched him fiddle with the equipment, thinking that he was doing it to keep from looking at her. “Those men work for Avery Sterling, the man who came in with money when you needed it to keep the project going?”
“Yes.”
“You knew he had thugs on his payroll?”
“They’re not thugs. They’re his private security force.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Who hold their employer’s associates at gunpoint?’
“I never saw them in action.”
“Why does he need guys like that working for him?”
“He’s rich. I assume he has enemies.”
She recalled the way Sterling had come into the building a few months ago and taken over Hamilton’s office like he owned the place.
“And you investigated him before taking the money?”
He looked down at his hands. “Somewhat.”
She wanted to scream that “somewhat” wasn’t good enough. But she remembered her boss’s panic when expected government funding hadn’t come through, and he’d thought they were going to have to give up on the program. And to be honest, she remembered her own panic. They’d already accepted half their patients. What would have happened to those poor people if the project had been canceled before it started?
Still she was shocked at how things were shaking out—starting with Grant’s revelation that he hadn’t given permission for his brother to be part of the experiment. And then the information that someone had tried to kill him to keep him quiet—presumably these same men.
“What do you actually know about Sterling?” she asked.
“He’s a respectable business man. He has a company that produces industrial chemicals that sell all over the world.”
“That’s all?”
“I know he gives generously to charities. He asked about the program and was excited by our work. He offered to provide us with funding.”
Lily kept the questions coming. “What’s his motivation for getting involved with the Phoenix Project?”
“He said he had a relative who had been in a car crash and ended up in a coma. He was desperate to give him a new life and wanted him in the program. He did some research, learned about the early papers I’d written, and decided to see what I was doing now.”
“And after that he sends a hit squad after a man who was trying to find out what had happened to his brother?” she challenged.
“We don’t know that was Sterling’s men. And perhaps Bradley was mistaken about their intentions.”
“They looked like they were prepared to wipe us out,” she said.
“They wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?”
He gave her a smug look that she would have ignored when she was excited about joining his program. Now it made her insides clench. “Because if we’re dead, there’s no one to keep his relative alive.”
“Okay,” she said, understanding that logic and understanding that he had no doubt about who had sent the gunmen. “Which one of the patients is his relative?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Is it a man or woman?”
“Like I said, confidential.”
She thought over the people she’d met in the VR. No one seemed more likely than any of the others. Well, she silently amended, it wasn’t Mack Bradley.
“And how did Sterling find out about the project?” she asked, switching her thoughts back to the man who had seen his goon squad in here looking for Grant.
“As I said, he researched me.”
She threw out another question she would have asked before taking Sterling’s money. “Did he tell you the project had to stay secret?”
Hamilton swallowed. “For the time being.”
She nodded. She had a lot more questions, but there was no time to press Dr. Hamilton now. In the past hour, he’d gone down a lot of notches in her estimation, but she couldn’t simply walk away from him—not when Grant was hooked up to the equipment and about to go into the VR. And not when Mack and the others were in there and at the mercy of the Phoenix Project.
“And trying to kill the brother of one of the patients is a legitimate way to keep our project confidential?”
“No.” The researcher looked toward the door, then looked at the other people who’d just been held at gunpoint. “I had no idea he would order tactics like that. If it was him.”
“If it’s him, what are we going to do?” she challenged.
“It goes without saying that we’re all staying here until this thing is resolved.” He looked at each of them in turn. Everyone nodded, but Lily wondered if Durant was going to bail out, since he had the least investment here.
Maybe Hamilton was thinking the same thing because he said to the orderly, “And I’ll be paying you double your hourly wage.”
“Yes, sir. Thanks.”
“The phone call you got while we were talking to Mack was from Sterling?” she asked.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes.”
“Maybe you’d better tell him we need a safe working environment.”
“Right.”
She clenched and unclenched her hands, wondering if she was making a foolish decision. “But before you do, I want to go back into the VR.”
She wasn’t sure if Hamilton would put up objections, but his quick agreement unsettled her. Did he think that sending her into the VR was a good way to get rid of her?
She glanced toward Landon, who looked like he was going to throw up whatever it was he’d had for lunch. She knew from office conversations with him that he’d seen the Phoenix Project as an exciting challenge, a chance to take Virtual Reality into a whole new realm.
“Is it stable in there?” she asked.
“At the moment, yes.�
�
“Keep trying to get rid of the hacker.”
“Of course,” he bit out.
“My sister said his name was Preston. Does that mean anything to you?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe you can get a line on him—find out something that might be useful.”
“Yeah.”
“Keep the computer hookup open in the business center so we can talk if we have to.”
“Okay.”
She thought for a moment. “And can you have me return directly there instead of to my room?”
“I’d have to fiddle with some stuff.”
“Why can you send Grant there?”
“He’s a new subject. I set up his entry point there. Yours is in your bedroom.”
“Okay. Wait a couple of minutes, and send him in. As soon as I arrive, I’ll head downstairs.”
“Yeah. You might need some stuff from your room.”
“Uh huh,” she answered, wondering if Grant was going to need medical attention.
She went to the storage cabinet where the gowns were kept and took one out. As Grant had done, she pulled the top on, then shucked out of her slacks. When she was dressed like one of the patients, she lay down in the bed she’d occupied before.
Hamilton came over and began attaching the necessary equipment. Like Grant, she wasn’t in a coma, which meant she needed to be sedated.
She’d been excited when Hamilton had initially suggested sending her into the environment Landon had created. Now she couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. There were too many ways to die in there—but she wasn’t going to leave Mack and Grant to face them alone, starting with her conviction that Grant might not survive the transition without help.
She hung on to that conviction as Hamilton got her ready to leave reality. She didn’t know what she was going to find when she went back to the Mirador Hotel—either on a professional level or a personal one.
Probably Mack would never trust her again, and that conclusion made her insides knot. But she cared about him, and she knew he and his brother might need her in that dangerous and unpredictable environment.
Chapter Twenty
A gagging sound behind Mack made him whirl. His eyes bugged out when he saw a man wearing the standard hotel running outfit lying on the couch, his body jerking. The man’s face was red and scrunched up as he coughed.
Rx Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #10): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel Page 12