Chronic Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  She eased around the fire toward him, and Gundersson couldn’t move. Her body moved with an animal grace that mesmerized him, and he involuntarily tightened his grip on the Glock.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “Roland and me were separated at the time. So I could be with anybody I wanted, right?”

  “Wendy, we have reason to believe that there are powerful elements—”

  She reached out and placed a delicate finger on his lips, the touch of an artist. “Shh. I know.”

  She leaned closer, and her body heat was now rivaling the radiation of the flames. Her robe fell open wider and she let it.

  “But you and Roland are back together now, right?” he found himself saying.

  “Does it matter?”

  He wasn’t sure. He’d never been a cheater, but he’d never faced the opportunity before, either. And morality was a sliding scale based on current conditions and needs. He’d learned that particular lesson well in government service.

  “We’d better get you back to your cabin, before…”

  “Before what?” Her breath was on him, and the soft finger trailed from his lips to his cheek. The fire reflected in her black pupils, hell dancing against a deep, soulless night. Her Asian skin was radiant, and her frame, which had appeared skeletal beneath clothes, now seemed lush, soft, and rounded.

  She gently pushed him backward until he was on the ground, the soles of his feet pointed toward the fire as she climbed along his length. His Glock jabbed into his kidney but he was afraid to move.

  “You have to help me.” She unbuttoned his shirt as he held his breath, and then she rubbed her breasts against his bare skin.

  “I…I’ll try.”

  “Sebastian Briggs wanted me to save Seethe. I can’t count on Roland. So I need you.”

  “Is it Seethe that makes you this way?” he whispered, hoarse, feeling like a predator himself now, surging, hungry, utterly without remorse.

  “Does it matter?”

  It didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “I was worried,” Alexis said to Mark, who was peeking through the curtains.

  His sudden appearance had made her feel she’d done something wrong, that she was sneaking around behind his back. Of course, she was, but probably not in the way he thought.

  “You ought to be worried,” he said. “With your old pal Wallace Forsyth involved, it’s hitting close to home. But I can’t figure out what he wants. I mean, why would he have me kidnapped when he could have just killed me?”

  Alexis was uneasy because Mark not only was carrying his pistol in his hand as he paced from window to window, but he slung the assault rifle over his shoulder. Luckily, he hadn’t prowled through her backpack or she might have had to explain the bottles of “water.”

  “They obviously want something,” she said. “First they raid my lab and steal my assistant’s laptop, and now this. They won’t kill us until they get it.”

  “So, tell me some good news,” Mark said.

  “Anita’s dead.”

  “Anita? Your Anita?”

  “It’s been ruled a suicide, but it sounds suspicious. Especially with the timing.”

  “You don’t seem too upset about it.”

  “Damn it, Mark, I’m numb. I’ve got so much to worry about…” She let her voice trail to a whisper. “I’m worried about you.”

  He spun, wild-eyed, one side of his lips twisted into a sneer as he waved the gun wildly in the air. “Me? I think I’m the only normal one left.”

  “Honey, you haven’t been yourself lately. I think Seethe…I think what happened in the Monkey House…is still working on you.”

  “Is that so? Well, I happen to think it’s the other way around. You’ve changed.”

  What a fool I’ve been. He’s so far gone even Halcyon can’t save him.

  But she couldn’t give up yet. She’d trained all her life, and she’d dedicated so much of the past year to finding a cure. But she had to rely on people like Darrell Silver to do the dirty work. The real frustration was that she couldn’t do it alone. “Maybe if we—”

  “Stop it.” His face relaxed, and now he looked forlorn. “I can’t take another of your lies.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What you’ve been doing to me. The Seethe. Somehow, you smuggled a sample out of the Monkey House. Hell, for all I know, you were in with Briggs the whole time. He might have been your fall guy, while you kept right on cranking out the shit.”

  The words were like icicles driven into her heart. “Oh my God, Mark.”

  “Cute little story, about those guys raiding your lab. You knew Burchfield wouldn’t leave it alone. If you make me think you weren’t working on Seethe, then you can keep me as your guinea pig.”

  He stood as still as a statue, and that was more unnerving than his previous pacing. She leaned forward on the sofa, the backpack resting against her legs. She thought of Wendy’s address scribbled on the back of the photograph. Their mountain cabin might as well be another planet.

  “I never worked on Seethe,” she said. “In the original trials, I didn’t even know what it was. Sebastian Briggs tricked me just like he did the others. We didn’t know we’d been exposed to it.”

  He wiped his chin with his Glock. He’d carried the gun for so long it had become just another appendage, a part of him.

  “The worst part is that I can’t kill you,” he said. “I still need you.”

  “Don’t you see? You’d never say something like that if you weren’t Seething.” She was talking fast, looking for a way out, but all the lies had chased her into a corner of the labyrinth she’d built.

  He pointed the gun at her. “Where are you hiding it?”

  “I don’t have it,” she said. She considered telling him about the Halcyon in the water bottles, but that would just prove she was a liar. If only she could remember all that had happened in the Monkey House, especially at the last, when she was collecting the pills. Had she somehow gotten Seethe from Briggs and didn’t remember it?

  And couldn’t Seethe have worked inside her like a possessive demon, driving her to propagate it and spread it across the world? Didn’t Seethe want to live, just like any organism? And wouldn’t it do whatever it took to survive?

  No. It’s just a molecular compound. It’s not alive in any real sense.

  His gun hand was steadier than she’d seen it in days. “You hid the Halcyon after I thought it was all destroyed. I can’t see you passing up your chance to change the world. You and Briggs had that in common.”

  “I swear,” she whispered.

  Then her cell rang and she flinched against the sudden noise, expecting Mark to pull the trigger. It rang four times, neither of them moving. Mark finally waved to her purse with the pistol.

  “Get it,” he said. “Might be one of your friends.” He said the last word with a sneer.

  Alexis dug into her purse and came out with the phone. The caller ID was blocked. “Hello?”

  “Dr. Morgan.”

  No. It couldn’t be. Darrell Silver’s in…

  Darrell Silver was in federal custody. That meant the U.S. government. And the government meant all bets were off.

  “Mr. Silver,” she said, trying to keep it on a formal footing. Maybe she could fool Mark into thinking it was a business call.

  “I’ve got something for you.”

  Mark approached her, obviously wanting to listen in. She was tempted to terminate the call, but she had to find out. Silver had hinted he’d been refining the Halcyon, and if he’d synthesized a better version before being arrested, she needed to know. It might save Mark.

  “I’m a little busy at the moment,” she said, feigning calm. “Can we talk tomorrow? Maybe call me at my office?”

  Mark was at the phone now, and she rushed out, “Okay, then. Fine. Bye,” before clicking off.

  “Who is ‘Mr. Silver’?” Mark asked. “One of your secret government friends?”

&
nbsp; “He’s a former student who is doing some graduate research. We worked on some brain imaging together.”

  The phone rang again. Their eyes met. Mark smiled. He didn’t even have to issue the command.

  “Hu-hello?” Alexis said.

  Mark put his ear near the phone. Alexis tried to pull away but he grabbed her by the hair and held her in place.

  “Dr. Morgan,” Darrell Silver said. “I have something for you.”

  “Tomorrow, like I said,” Alexis said, but she couldn’t keep her composure. The charade didn’t sell, because Mark mouthed, “What?”

  “You need to come pick up your groceries,” Silver said, using the code name they’d developed for phone conversations to avoid mentioning Halcyon.

  Mark jabbed the gun into her ribs. A small yelp burst from her lips before she could suppress it.

  “What was that, Dr. Morgan?” Silver said.

  “Is it…is it what we talked about last month?”

  “Yes. The groceries have been delivered. Tonight.”

  Mark’s lips pursed and curled as if he had all the proof he needed of her duplicity. He cupped a hand around the phone and whispered in her ear. “Tell him we’ll be there right away.”

  He twisted the barrel of the gun deeper into her flesh as a motivator.

  “Are you in the same place?” she asked after Mark removed his hand.

  A bitter laugh came from the speaker. She couldn’t tell if he was stoned, but knowing Silver, it was likely. “Home sweet home,” he said. “Home on the range.”

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “Nothing. Some guy I met used to sing that all the time. Gets in your head, know what I mean?”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” she said.

  “Come alone, like usual.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  “‘Like usual’?” Mark said after she hung up. “So, this is a habit.”

  She looked at the gun, which he’d forgotten to keep pointing. He smelled metallic, as if the corrosion in his brain had leaked out through his pores. Mark’s grin made the scar on his lip stretch.

  “I did it all for you,” she said.

  “That’s what they all say.” He motioned her to the door with the gun. “Let’s roll.”

  She reached for the backpack, but he snatched it away from her and slung it over his shoulder with the assault rifle. He looked through her purse, evidently finding nothing suspicious.

  He gave her the car keys and then the purse. “I’m in no condition to drive.”

  She didn’t argue.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Scagnelli loved this kind of job, even if he’d rather be taking out the Cheese Guy.

  The two CIA agents who had raided Dr. Morgan’s lab were relatively fresh-faced. Or, at least, clean-shaven. They’d finished off their food at Bella Bistro on Franklin Street, each with pasta dishes, a plate of sloppy bruschetta between them. They were drinking a deep burgundy wine that probably cost ten bucks a glass.

  They were dark-skinned, and besides the alcohol consumption, they could easily be taken for Middle Easterners. Azim, the one on the left, had been an overseas operative until he’d been made, at which point he’d been reassigned to the States. Of course, his stereotypical appearance aroused suspicion and thus he could only work in major metropolitan areas where his ethnicity wouldn’t raise red flags.

  Fortunately for him—at least up until tonight, when his fortune would go bad—Chapel Hill was one of the most international communities in the world.

  Adrianus, the Greek sitting opposite, was also dark-skinned, and his radiant black hair and eyes also marked him as a foreigner. Scagnelli had actually met Adrianus once and had taken an instant dislike. Maybe it was genetic memory, dating all the way back to the Roman Empire, but Scagnelli had privately hung the nickname “Goatbreeder” on him.

  Goatbreeder and Baby bin Laden symbolized all that was wrong with the nation’s security forces. It was part of the reason Scagnelli had abandoned agency work. He wasn’t a racist, naturally, but he saw the inherent flaw in using foreigners to preserve domestic policy.

  “More water, sir,” the waiter said. He was a college kid with sleepy eyes who carried himself with a sense of insouciant entitlement.

  Scagnelli felt like dashing the remaining half of his water in the kid’s face, but that most definitely would draw attention. Instead, he said, “What sort of wines are you serving tonight?”

  The kid grinned, sensing a bigger tip, and hustled off to get a drink menu. Scagnelli, sitting outside on the patio at a small wrought-iron table, chanced another peek through the window to the restaurant’s interior. Goatbreeder was laughing, swirling his wine around and taking a sniff of it before sipping.

  Scagnelli wanted to kill him just for that irritating, pompous gesture if nothing else.

  But he realized he was getting too emotional. This was just a job.

  When the waiter brought his wine, he imitated Goatbreeder’s gesture, trying to blend in with the well-to-do intellectual class that was sucking on the university tit and drawing taxpayer milk. He’d taken a second dose of amphetamines, and the speed was making his skin itch. He couldn’t afford to get wired just before the job, so he gulped the wine instead of sipped, intending to mellow out the speed buzz.

  A woman at the next table curled her lip at his performance as though he’d farted. Scagnelli toasted her and took another gulp. Her husband, a miserable-looking man who probably faced a dozen more years of ball-busting before mustering up the nerve to get divorced, caught her gaze, glanced over, and turned his attention back to his salad.

  Inside, Baby bin Laden waved for the check, the agents apparently deciding to skip dessert. Goatbreeder took a last messy bite of the bruschetta, causing them both to laugh when a chunk of tomato tumbled free and plopped into his wine glass. Baby bin Laden paid with his credit card, scrawling his tip with a flourish when the water brought the receipt.

  Goatbreeder fished the tomato chunk out of his wine with his finger. Scagnelli looked over at the scowling woman, hoping she would notice and launch into a fit of apoplexy. But she was griping at her husband, who gave his bobblehead “Yes, dear” nod, a motion so rehearsed it had created wrinkles in his neck.

  At last, the CIA duo stood, and Scagnelli hurriedly downed the dregs of his wine. He stood, dug into his wallet, and slipped a ten on the table. He was hurrying around to the front, where the two agents would emerge, when the waiter called to him.

  “Sir? Sir?”

  Scagnelli frowned, with several diners now watching him. “I left my tab on the table.”

  “You left a ten, sir. Our Pinot Grigio is twelve dollars per glass.”

  Scagnelli dug into his wallet again. He wanted to shove the five in the kid’s mouth, but instead made a small flourish of sticking the five in his vest pocket. He gave the kid’s red bow tie a tug and said, “Keep the change.”

  By the time he got to the entrance, the two agents were gone. Scagnelli didn’t want them to separate. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have preferred to divide and conquer, but the job had to be finished tonight.

  He hurried to the parking lot, a dimly lit patch of cracked asphalt that was hidden from the restaurant by high tangled shrubs and a Dumpster enclosure that didn’t smell any fancier than the garbage from a fast-food joint, Pinot Grigio or not. One of the agents was laughing, obviously in a good mood and secure in the belief that here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, danger didn’t dwell in every shadow and gutter.

  Scagnelli kept his head down and marched purposefully in their general direction, but not straight toward them. Goatbreeder was talking about the Tar Heels, the university’s basketball team that had apparently lost in something called “The Sweet Sixteen.”

  As Baby bin Laden mimed taking a hook shot, Scagnelli veered toward them and extended a friendly hand in a wave. “Adrianus? Is that you?”

  Baby bin Laden froze in mid-motion, awkwardly standing with his
arm curved in the air. The Greek turned with narrowed eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s me. Dominic Scagnelli. We had that seminar together in the Pentagon.”

  “Scagnelli.” Goatbreeder puckered his olive lips, his accent blowing any cover he might have used. “Maybe.”

  “Called ‘Decoding the Obvious.’ Remember that fat bastard telling us that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a pigeon?”

  Goatbreeder gave an uneasy laugh. “Yes, yes. Now I do. Are you still with the Bureau?”

  “Yeah, you know how it is. This gig, we’re like monks, we’re in for life.” Scagnelli smiled to include Baby bin Laden in their brotherhood of government ineptitude, good guys trying to get through the day in a system that made no sense.

  “Who’s your partner?” Scagnelli said.

  “Azim.”

  They shook hands. Baby bin Laden’s was greasy, probably from the butter rolls. “So, what brings you to Chapel Hill?” Goatbreeder asked, clearly expecting Scagnelli to deliver the kind of lie typical for the profession—visiting an aunt, business conference, medical tests.

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Neither of them laughed. The joke was too old. Scagnelli continued. “I’m on this thing, some crazy shit. A researcher here is playing with a drug that opens people’s brains like stripping away the layers of an onion, getting down there to the primitive impulses. Sounds like horseshit to me, but you know how the Puzzle Palace gets when they smell a chance at mind control.”

  Scagnelli knew he’d breached protocol. Even if they were all on the same case, a good agent never acknowledged that fact. The culture of subterfuge meant they all had to overlook the obvious.

  “We’re actually on vacation,” Goatbreeder said.

  “Golfing.” Baby bin Laden gave an awkward swing, clearly revealing he’d never held a nine-iron in his life.

  “Lucky bastards. Me, I got this intercepted e-mail from this researcher, she’s working with a big-time drug dealer who cooks up his own poison. I don’t know where the e-mail came from. May have been leaked from another agency. The CIA does shit like that all the time, right?” Scagnelli gave Goatbreeder a conspiratorial nudge to the elbow, glancing around. The parking lot was empty except for a man sitting in a Lexus with a cell phone clamped to his ear.