Liandro arrived with a young, strong, sweaty man in tow. The first of the Group Two subjects. Liandro was sweating, too, and panting, but just from climbing the stairs—he could use some exercise.
“This is Juan,” Liandro said. “When you’re done with him, send him down and he’ll bring the next guy up for you.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Juan hiked himself up onto the exam table, biceps bulging beneath his T-shirt. She’d seen the training schedule in the research: three hours every other day in weight training; cardio and weapons training every single day. Strict diets, hypnosis sessions, hand-to-hand combat, and work details filled every waking moment, while subliminal messages and drugs filled their sleep.
Juan’s chart noted that he spoke English, so she sent Dani over to the computer to track her findings and interviewed him without a translator.
“How do you feel, Juan?”
“Good. I should be training.”
“I know. But this is part of the program, too.”
He shrugged.
“Tell me, what do you think of the training you’re getting?’
“It’s good.” He flexed his biceps. “I am getting more strong. Healthy. Not like Manny. He was weak.”
After a brief physical exam, Jane had to agree. He was strong. She drew blood, asked him to go into the bathroom and provide a urine sample, but it was stalling. He was a perfect physical specimen—she could see that much from his chart.
When he came back from the bathroom, they adjourned to the room across the hall, where four chairs were arranged in a tight circle next to a small desk with a laptop on it. Jane took one of the chairs while Dani sat behind the desk and booted up the computer.
“So tell me, Juan, do you know what the program here is about? What you’re training for?” The study documents showed that all the young men signed up being told very little beyond what they would be paid and that they would have to live in the compound and work hard.”
“I am going to be a top man among the Hijos. To guard Velasquez and help him expand.”
“And has anyone explained to you what that position entails? What you will do?”
He shrugged.
“Have you ever killed a man, Juan?”
“Yes.”
Interesting. Only one man’s application showed violent crime in his past, and it wasn’t Juan. Had he killed as part of the program already? “Can you tell me what that was like?”
He shrugged again. “What’s to tell? What’s it ever like?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Was it spontaneous, or did you plan it out? Were you alone, or part of a group? Did you shoot him, or stab him, or strangle him, or beat him to death? Give me some details.”
His eyes flicked back and forth several times, and he cracked his neck. Was it possible he didn’t even remember the killing? Then his expression cleared. “I shot him. I am good with a pistol.”
“And how did you feel afterward?”
“Feel? I did my job.”
Oh, yeah, the psychiatric aspect of this was going to be a cakewalk.
“So you wouldn’t mind doing it again if you had to? The blood, the gore, doesn’t bother you?”
Another shrug. “It is the world we live in.”
“Do you dream, Juan?”
“Dream?”
“¿Sueñas?” asked Dani.
“No. Or if I do, I do not remember.”
“Okay. Just a couple more things. If you were free to go anywhere, do anything, what would it be?”
Flat, affectless brown eyes stared at her. “I am where I am supposed to be.”
“I know, but that’s not what I asked. What if things could be different?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “They’re not.”
Yeah, okay. And there was a reason she hadn’t gone into clinical psych.
“Thanks, Juan. Go on down and ask Liandro to send up the next person in about ten minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
As soon as he was out of earshot, Jane turned to Dani. “What is this about a shooting? There was nothing like that in the records.”
“That’s because it didn’t happen.” Dani rubbed her forehead with two fingers. “After Group One suicided, Bryan thought the subjects should be proactively desensitized to killing. He’d assumed they could all handle it—part of the interview process was weeding out anyone with a noticeable moral center and finding the more calculating customers. The aggression from the constant combat training and steroids should have taken care of the rest. And it did, up to a point. That is, they all managed the actual takedown operation just fine. It wasn’t until later that it seems to have come back to haunt them.
“So he started adding false memories to hypnotherapy. Suggestions that they had killed before, that it didn’t bother them, that it was a run-of-the-mill activity. He’s got a couple of guys working on scent desensitization, too, so that no one breaks down smelling blood after their first kill.”
“It’s not in the notes.”
“You can find it, but you have to tunnel into each individual subject’s chart—it’s not in the overall project write-up you read yesterday. He set it up like that so they could alter individual bits and pieces.”
“Okay. I’ll read all the charts tonight, then.”
• • •
INTERVIEWING AND EXAMINING the men of Group Two took the rest of the day. In between subjects, Jane tried to sneak out and explore, but the number of guards inside the house had risen in Bryan’s absence and she didn’t dare do much beyond run down to the kitchen to fix herself a snack and peek into a couple of rooms along the way.
At a quarter to five, Bryan returned while Jane and Dani were talking through the last of the subjects, the project targets, and the various ways the individual men had been altered as they became more integrated into the group. Each revelation in the men’s charts sickened Jane further.
“How did it go today?” Bryan asked.
“It went fine. I didn’t realize you’d individualized treatments for the men, so I have more reading to do.”
“The drugs are the same. And most of the treatment is the same. We just compensate for individual weaknesses to keep them all on track.”
He made it sound so clinical, so abstract and uncomplicated, as if they weren’t dealing with people, with emotions and psyches and altering the very stuff that made up the human soul.
“Don’t spend too long catching up, Jane. Velasquez is losing patience. I saw him this afternoon, and he expects results, especially since he’s going to be shelling out for two sets of recruits at once.”
“What happened to the American investor? I thought it was his money? Why should Velasquez care how much he spends?”
If Bryan was surprised that she knew about the American, it didn’t show. So more than likely he was listening to her and Dani at night. “That’s none of your business. Did you discover anything useful today, or did you just waste the entire day?”
“For God’s sake, Bryan, it’s science; it doesn’t keep to a deadline.”
“You managed Project Calm under a deadline.”
“Not really. We thought we had it under control, which was why Clive went into negotiations. The problem cropped up later, and we almost didn’t make it. This is a much bigger project. I hope you didn’t make promises about a timetable, or you’ll get us all in trouble.”
“We’re close enough. We almost had it with Group One.”
“But you didn’t. That’s precisely what I mean. We won’t know what is going on with Group Two until we get them at least past their first trials, and I wouldn’t recommend that for another several days at the very soonest.”
“Really? Why is that? I had plans for them for tomorrow.”
Oh, fuck. What to say?
/> “Well, you can do whatever you like, of course. But I didn’t realize what you’d been fiddling with in those men’s heads, so I’d layer in a few more days of hypnotherapy first. My questions about the histories you’ve given them to replace their real pasts could have shaken something loose, left them vulnerable to emotional injury.”
“They’re not supposed to have emotions at all by this point.” He frowned. “But I take your meaning. I’ll wait a couple of days before sending them out. In the meantime, I want you to take what you found out today and use it to reinforce their training. This batch will not fail, or there will be hell to pay. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Since they had more than two hours before dinner when Bryan left the interview room, Jane decided to take the opportunity to snoop.
“I need to get some air,” she said for the benefit of the recorders keeping track of all subject interaction. “I don’t think well cooped up all day like this. You want to come?”
“Sure, I guess,” Dani replied.
They went down the stairs, past a guard stationed at the bottom, a machine gun of some sort slung casually across his shoulder. He watched them, but his hands didn’t move, even when they approached the door. Jane’s shoulders twitched, and the back of her neck developed a sudden itch as she reached for the door handle. Would he stop them, or was escape so impossible that no one cared if they left the house?
The warmth of the wrought-iron door handle shocked her bloodless fingers. No one yelled; the guard didn’t point his weapon; even the heavy hinges on the elaborately carved door remained silent as she swung it open and walked out into a large courtyard. A high wall encircled the grounds. The gate lay about a hundred yards directly in front of the door, no longer than a New York City block. She could run the distance in seconds if not for the armed men hanging about.
A heavy iron gate blocked access to the wide road Dani had described to her. The bars were set about four inches apart, from what she could see—definitely not wide enough to squeeze through, even if she could sneak out in the middle of the night when the men weren’t running and shooting and wrestling on the grounds. Two vehicles were parked next to the house on a patio in front of a three-car garage. One was a standard-issue Jeep, a bare-bones, beat-up model, while the other one looked like some kind of oversized pickup, the kind the landscape companies at home used to carry their equipment, only with a set of tall posts running up the side that rounded over at the top. Perhaps to hold a canopy? To protect equipment from rain? Neither of the vehicles looked particularly fast, and both were bulky. If she made it off the property and into the woods, she might have a chance.
Of course, if she made it off the property and into the woods, she’d be . . . in the woods. With snakes. And spiders. And all kinds of poisonous critters. And that was without considering the various Hijos men sent in after her. So maybe it didn’t matter whether she could get away.
Still, she had to try. She refused to simply give up. She led Dani along the curving gravel path that branched away from the driveway and around the side of the house. A few small buildings originally intended as guesthouses dotted the property. On the third floor, where she slept with Dani, she had seen no other bedrooms in use, which was borne out by the plan to use the space for a dormitory. And while she knew that Bryan slept on the floor below hers, farther down the hall from the clinic and interview area, she had no idea where the guards had their quarters. Probably at least some of them were housed in the bungalows.
And how many of them were there, anyway? She was going to have to start counting. If—when—Eric came for her, she wanted to be useful, and he’d probably want a head count.
On what appeared to have been a tennis court in a former life, a group of men practiced some sort of martial arts. Kicking, punching, throwing each other to the ground, they paid no attention as Jane and Dani passed. Christ, there were a lot of them. Way more than she’d seen around the house. Around the back of the house, they passed a drained pool fronted by a structure larger than the bungalows. Just as they walked by, two men came out dressed in fatigues with guns in shoulder holsters. So the former pool house was in active use. That meant the north, west, and south faces of the house had serious guard action. The path stopped at the pool, and the east side of the yard seemed to be grass and overgrown garden, not currently in use. That would be where Eric would be forced to sneak through the defenses if he wanted to get onto the property. Her bedroom, of course, was on the front corner, the northwest, in easy view of the guards. That had to be deliberate. Not that she could exactly rappel down the building from her window anyway, not without hoarding sheets for months to rip up and make a rope.
“It must have been a beautiful property once,” she said to Dani, more to hear her own voice than for any other reason.
“Absolutely. Look at that garden.” Dani walked over to the edge of the pool surround. “If this were a place for actual therapy, the men would be working in there. And playing tennis on those courts.”
It was true. Jane could almost imagine the property as a high-end rehab center. If it weren’t in the middle of land owned by a drug cartel.
“It’s too bad the pool’s dry,” Dani said. “If we’re stuck here, I’d like to swim.”
Jane stared at her.
“Okay, look. I know I sound crazy. I’m just trying to make this a little bit normal, okay? I . . . It’s been . . . hard.”
Of course it had. Much harder on Dani than on Jane. She put an arm across her friend’s shoulders. “Swimming would be good. Tanning would be good, too, but they don’t seem to have any lounge chairs for our use. What kind of low-class establishment is this?”
Dani choked out a laugh. “Well, you can’t have everything. At least the sheets are clean.”
“And the food is good.”
“Yeah. And it’s cheap.”
“It sure is.” Jane squeezed Dani’s shoulders, and the other woman let out a little sigh.
“I guess we should go back inside.”
“Probably.” Jane glanced around. They were alone. And outside, where they were not likely to be overheard. “Don’t give up hope, Dani. Help may be coming.”
“What?” Dani stopped, almost tripping over her own feet. “What kind of help?”
“I have a friend. He was protecting me because Clive thought you’d been kidnapped to prevent Project Calm from being completed. They kidnapped me after he left, but he’ll know I am gone. We were supposed to go on a date. He won’t believe I stood him up.”
“But how would he figure out where you were?”
Should she explain telling him about Bryan and Dani dating? What if Bryan threatened Alvaro? Would Dani spill the beans? She hated mistrusting her friend, but she couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
“He might not. I mean, he probably can’t figure it out. But if you can’t have a swimming pool, you have to hang on to hope.”
• • •
WHEN NASH CALLED him in, the last thing Eric expected to find was a conference room full of people. After five agonizing days during which he questioned everyone Bryan Axlerod had ever known, followed up on every lead, and spent hours a day in the company gym taking out his frustrations on the heavy bag, he was pretty sure Nash was going to cut him loose. Or at least tell him he had to work on something else.
But an assignment would mean Nash, Lexie, and whoever he was partnering with would be at the table, not Jake and Tara, Marco, Jimmy and LeRon from research, and Jake’s friend Kevin from up at the farm.
“What is it?” he asked without even sitting down.
Lexie got up, took him by the hand, and led him to an empty seat. Obeying the unspoken command, he sat, but his body remained on full alert. “We have information,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders, “but we don’t know where she is yet. So relax. . . . We have a l
ot of work to do.”
When Lexie was back in her own spot, Nash gave LeRon the nod.
“Once we had new search parameters,” he said, “we started from the beginning. What did Daniela Peralta and Jane have in common aside from the schizophrenia research? Who did they know in common? Obviously, there were the people at AHI. Jimmy focused on Bryan Axlerod, and he’s going to talk about that in a sec. But in addition, in relation, we started to think about what someone might want with a pair if biochemists, one who was particularly versed in psychopharmacology. The obvious answer there is designer drugs.”
“Who the fuck kidnaps two chemists to create a disco drug?”
“Things go in cycles,” Nash said. “Right now, the most popular and problematic drugs on the street are prescriptions. Both uppers and downers. But heroin is on the rise again. Ecstasy has never entirely gone away. Meth users tend to be lower on the socioeconomic spectrum, so if you want to make big bucks, you do it with party drugs like cocaine.”
Eric ran a hand around the back of his neck. Okay. They were the experts. When it came right down to it, he was just muscle. Smarter than your average thug, but nothing like the brainiacs sitting around the table. And clearly this line of research had led to an answer, or they wouldn’t be here.
“So what did you find?”
Jimmy answered. “Last month, Bryan Axlerod sent flowers to his mother for her birthday. Doesn’t matter what kind of asshole you are, I guess, you still have a soft spot for mom. Anyway, the flowers were sent via FTD and paid for with a debit card in the name of Bryan Dominguez drawn on a bank in Mexico.”
“She’s in Mexico?”
“It seemed likely,” Nash said, “so we focused our resources there. Kevin is former DEA, like Lexie, and they both worked their contacts hard. We have a pretty good idea who has Dr. Evans, but we haven’t been able to track down where yet.”
“Who?” He could barely force the word out past the combination of rage, fear, and excitement tensing the muscles of his neck and throat.
“Los Hijos,” said Jake.
Oh, fucking hell. Not what he wanted to hear at all. But it explained Jake and Tara’s presence—they’d taken out the cartel’s leader, but not before Tara had almost died.
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