‘Immortals can recover from most injuries and human illnesses,’ Ethan explained at Olivia’s confused look. ‘They would rarely seek medical advice, so the chances of their blood ending up in a lab would be slim at best. They’d have to be comatose or seriously wounded. In the ten years since Jonah’s spyware has been in place, they’ve analyzed a few hundred suspect samples but only confirmed one hit. The man turned out to be a noble who’d been living under the radar of the immortal societies for centuries. He was involved in an accident where he almost lost his leg. He was unconscious when they took him to the hospital.’ He paused. ‘We got to him an hour before Jonah’s soldiers descended on his ranch.’
‘Two days ago, the tracking software I installed in Jonah’s medical database activated a warning for the second time,’ said Howard. ‘They’d gotten another hit.’
He looked pointedly at Olivia.
She clutched her chest. ‘You mean me?’
‘Yes,’ said Ethan. His tone turned cool once more. ‘So, the question is, how did your blood end up in Salt Lake City?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t—’
Olivia broke off and raised a hand to her lips, horror dawning in her green eyes.
‘The outbreak,’ she whispered.
The three men shared tense looks.
‘What outbreak?’ said Asgard.
‘Six weeks ago, half the abbey came down with measles,’ Olivia explained shakily. ‘Someone from the Salt Lake City Health Department and a doctor from the CDC came up and collected swabs and blood samples from everybody. The source was a novice who had transferred in from another state.’
‘There’s no way you could have known this was going to happen, child,’ murmured Asgard in the silence that ensued.
He squeezed her shoulder gently.
‘It still doesn’t excuse the fact that Mother Edwards and the nuns died because of me,’ said Olivia bitterly. She looked down at her hand and hesitated. ‘There’s something I don’t understand. The men who attacked the abbey seemed to recognize my birthmark.’
Asgard froze. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t register it at the time, but the man you shot in my room knew about the symbol,’ said Olivia.
Asgard’s stunned gaze shifted to Ethan. ‘Jonah was also aware of your birthmark. This cannot be a coincidence. Where the devil did he get that information?’
Unease filled Ethan at the Bastian noble’s anxious expression. Had the men who attacked his family also known about the symbols? If so, was he also indirectly responsible for the deaths of his parents and sister?
He looked at Olivia then. Anger replaced the guilt filling his heart when he saw the self-reproach darkening her eyes.
No, none of this is our fault. The one responsible for this madness is Jonah Krondike.
Ethan clenched his teeth and turned to Howard. ‘You said you had something to show us.’
‘I’ve been looking at the log in more detail. There was something odd about it when it came up two days ago. I decided to do some digging.’ A mocking smile danced across Howard’s lips. ‘Turns out this is our lucky day. Someone left a back door open in the operating system. I discovered a hidden digital link and traced it to an address in San Diego.’
A satellite image of the city appeared on the monitor. He zoomed in on a built-up valley to the north and angled the view until a nest of large, white buildings with glittering facades appeared in the middle of an extensive parking lot.
‘The company’s name is AuGenD,’ said Howard. ‘Their main area of research is genetics, specifically genomic engineering.’ He glanced at them. ‘AuGenD invented the test Jonah’s been using to identify purebloods. It took my team and I most of the night to infiltrate their network and find the guy who was in charge of the project.’ He hesitated. ‘I haven’t seen such extensive firewalls and encryption software since I broke into the Pentagon.’
A photograph flashed up on a screen to the left. An intelligence file appeared next to it.
‘His name is Professor Ian Serle,’ Howard continued. ‘He’s a distinguished visiting lecturer at the University of California, San Diego. The guy’s a genius in his field. He’s been awarded plenty of top-notch prizes over his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship and even a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Science.’
Ethan studied the gray-haired man in the picture. Serle’s face was heavily lined and a permanent scowl seemed to hover above his deep-set eyes. The creases fanning his thin lips and nose added to his severe expression.
‘Divorced. A son who died while serving in the US Armed Forces at age twenty. An estranged daughter living in Japan.’ He scanned the rest of the data Howard had gathered on the man. ‘There’s nothing there that looks suspicious.’
Howard nodded. ‘I thought so too until I found his Swiss bank account. It has over fifteen million dollars in credit. I traced the electronic deposits through a series of routers and fake servers to a DoD account in Baltimore.’ He grimaced. ‘Looks like Serle is definitely in the employ of a branch of the United States government. My spidey sense tells me it’s the group working with Krondike. ’
Asgard scrutinized the buildings on the live satellite feed. ‘You said this company’s information system was heavily guarded?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Howard. ‘I only managed to breach part of it. I suspect they have an equally well-guarded virtual private network.’
He rose from the workstation and strolled inside the glass room in the middle of the stage. They followed him and watched while he worked the digital display table.
The light on the laser projector came on. A three-dimensional structural plan of the AuGenD complex appeared above the table. Howard raised a hand and worked the floating images, his fingers spinning and enlarging various sections.
‘I traced the link to this room.’
They studied the space he indicated. It was inside the main building.
‘Is that Serle’s office?’ said Asgard.
‘Probably,’ said Howard.
‘Could they be storing more data locally?’ said Ethan.
He recognized the light dawning in Asgard’s eyes. The same nervous anticipation was building inside him.
Howard grinned. ‘I’d bet money on it.’
Part Two: Crush
Chapter Thirteen
Madeleine Black pulled up to the security barrier and rolled down the window of her ten-year-old Toyota Corolla. She showed her ID to the armed guard in the booth and watched impassively while he logged into the security system. The artificial illumination from the computer screen cast a ghostly glow on the man’s face and highlighted the lines that furrowed his brow a moment later.
‘You’re not supposed to be in this evening, Dr. Black.’
Madeleine grimaced. ‘Sorry—Hank, isn’t it?’
The guard nodded curtly.
‘I forgot to warn security admin that I was coming in,’ Madeleine continued in a brisk tone. ‘Here’s the thing, Hank. I have an important meeting on Monday and remembered something I’d missed for the presentation.’
The guard’s expression remained cautious.
Madeleine cocked an eyebrow. ‘You can check my calendar for next week.’
The guard tapped on the keyboard. Light flickered across his face as another window opened on the screen.
‘Seriously, you’ll be saving my ass. I’ll only be a couple hours, tops.’ Madeleine paused. ‘You can ring my boss at home if you want to run it past him.’
The guard’s frown deepened. He picked up the handset next to him, hesitated, and lowered it slowly onto its cradle.
‘Okay,’ he grumbled. ‘Just make sure you stick to protocol next time.’
She grinned. ‘Will do. Thanks, Hank.’
Madeleine knew only too well that her immediate superior, Dr. John Barlowe, was in Vegas for the weekend. He was the lucky recipient of a surprise giveaway she had carefully orchestrated and paid for a month ago. Had the guard rang Barlowe’s home, he
would have gotten the man’s answering service. As for the scientist’s cell phone, it was turned off and at the bottom of Madeleine’s bag, where it had been since she stole it from Barlowe’s jacket earlier that day when she dropped him off at the airport.
The steel barrier rose. Metal bollards dropped ahead of the car. Madeleine drove into the grounds of AuGenD, crossed the empty parking lot, and rolled to a stop in her allocated spot around the side of the main building. Her hands trembled slightly when she slung her bag on her shoulder. She stepped out of the vehicle, looked up at the brightly-lit glass frontage ahead, and took a deep breath.
Get your act together, Black. You can do this.
She smoothed the lines from her face, squared her shoulders, and headed inside.
‘Hey Kevin,’ she said breezily to the night watchman seated behind the curved, marble security desk to the left of the main reception.
The man blinked. ‘Oh. Hello, Dr. Black.’ He glanced at the computer in front of him. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.’
Madeleine repeated the story she’d given to the guard at the main entrance.
Kevin acknowledged her account with a hesitant nod. ‘Well, don’t stay back too late, ’kay?’
‘I’ll be gone before you know it,’ said Madeleine.
She headed to a bank of lifts and called one, still feeling the guard’s watchful gaze as she got in. She exited the cabin on the fourth floor. Fluorescent strips bathed the corridor ahead of her in a harsh light. She navigated several empty passages, turned a corner, and stopped in front of her lab. She ignored the security cameras observing her every move from both ends of the corridor, swiped her ID badge in the security box in the wall, and punched a code on the keypad. The light turned green on the panel. She walked in the room and closed the door behind her.
It took a few seconds for her to clamp down on the sudden surge of panic flooding her mind. She stared unseeingly at the research facility around her and reminded herself once more why she was doing this. Angry resolve filled her veins and erased all traces of fear from her mind.
Tonight was the culmination of years of hard work in her attempt to solve the mystery that was her mother’s murder and the enigma of her own existence.
Madeleine shrugged off her jacket and opened her bag. She removed a second ID card, a flash drive, her phone, and a small flashlight from an internal compartment and slipped them all inside the pockets of her jeans. Next, she checked the Sig Sauer P230 tucked in her rear waistband. The familiar weight of the handgun felt reassuring against her skin when she jammed it back in place.
She logged onto her computer, opened the fake presentation she had put together a couple of days before, and loaded up a software that would deliver typed content at a regular interval over the following hour. To anyone who might later scrutinize her presence in the building, it would look as if she had never left her desk.
Madeleine headed for a workstation at the south end of the lab, climbed onto the tabletop, and carefully lifted one of the tiles in the dropped ceiling. She pushed it to the side, jumped up, and hooked her forearms over the edge of the square opening. It took but seconds for her to hoist herself into the access space above. She put the tile back in its place, leaving the smallest of gaps to reveal its position from the light shining below.
She would need to know its exact location if she wanted to make a quick exit.
She removed the flashlight from her pocket and switched it on. The beam cut through the musty gloom and danced off pipes, wires, and ductworks. She gripped the torch between her teeth and started to crawl, taking care to keep close to the joists. The last thing she wanted to do was accidentally fall into one of the rooms below.
Forty feet later, she stopped above a ventilation grille and peered into a dimly-lit space below. A sleek, curved, glass-and-metal desk occupied the floor immediately beneath her. It was dominated by a large computer monitor, an ergonomic keyboard, and an external hard drive with an ID card slot.
Madeleine shifted one of the ceiling tiles to the side and lowered herself soundlessly through the opening. She swung her body to and fro and dropped onto the cream carpet next to the desk with the lightest of thuds, knees bent slightly to absorb the shock of her landing.
She was at the computer in a flash and opened up the AuGenD login screen. A fine sheen of sweat coated her forehead as she connected the flash drive to one of the ports at the back of the monitor. One false move and she’d be toast.
AuGenD’s online security was second to none. It had cost her several months’ salary to get a hacker to design the programs she needed to break through the system’s firewall and encryption software from within the company. She loaded up the password finder and was startled to hear it beep barely thirty seconds later. Madeleine raised an eyebrow at the word and numbers that flashed up on the screen.
It seemed Professor Ian Serle was a sentimental man at heart. She had not expected the password to be so simple. He had used his dead son’s first name and the date of his funeral.
She opened up the main drive and scrutinized the folders that appeared on the screen. She uploaded another software that would scan for hidden files and was unsurprised when a list populated by eight classified folders appeared under a separate disk after several minutes. They required a further layer of security for access. She clenched her jaw and stared at the secondary external drive sitting on the desk. Her gut instinct had been right.
She took out the other ID card from her pocket, started to insert it in the slot in the hard drive, and hesitated.
The card was an identical copy of the one belonging to Professor Serle’s right-hand man and assistant, Dr. Larry Gotenberg. Madeleine had been aware of Gotenberg’s interest in her since her first day on the job five years previously. A fortnight ago, she finally took him up on his offer of dinner and drinks. They had gone to the restaurant straight from work. Halfway through the meal, she knocked her wine glass onto his lap. She took his ID from his jacket when he went to the bathroom to clean up and made a duplicate on the digital card copier she had brought in her bag.
Madeleine mentally recited a short prayer, closed her eyes briefly, and slid the pass inside the hard drive slot.
A command prompt sprang open on the screen. She typed in the exact sequence of codes the hacker had taught her and sagged with relief when the prompt disappeared. The classified folders were now accessible. Although she was itching to take a look at their contents to see if they contained any clues about her mother’s death, time was not on her side; she had been in Serle’s office for just over ten minutes. She selected the folders and copied them to the flash drive. Her heart sank as she watched the bar move ponderously across the download box. The folders contained a lot of data; it would take a few minutes to transfer them across.
She was drumming her fingers beside the computer when a man fell through the ceiling and landed heavily on the floor on the other side of the desk.
‘Son of a—’ he muttered with a groan.
He crawled onto his knees, winced, and looked up into the barrel of Madeleine’s gun.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she snapped.
Her hands were steady on the weapon while her heart slammed a rapid tempo against her ribs.
The stranger’s steel-blue gaze met hers unflinchingly.
She was wondering at his evident lack of apprehension in the face of her loaded pistol when something sharp and cold touched her neck. Madeleine froze. She glanced down and carefully followed the glinting edge of the sword kissing the skin of her throat to a pair of aquamarine eyes that stole her breath away.
‘Lower the gun please or my companion will be forced to destroy it,’ said the bearded man holding the blade.
His voice sent a shiver down her spine. Madeleine stared, her pulse fluttering with alarm and an entirely unexpected emotion. The man’s pupils flared slightly. She licked her suddenly dry lips and saw his eyes drop briefly to her mouth. A hot feeling bloomed low in her belly.<
br />
What in the name of God is going on here?
She ignored the hammering of her heart, carefully pointed the Sig toward the carpet, and looked past the man’s shoulder at the drapes fluttering slightly in the balmy breeze.
And how the hell did he get in through that window? We’re on the fourth floor!
It was at that moment that a beep sounded from the door. Before she could make a single move, it opened to reveal Serle and four armed guards. Madeleine recognized Kevin, the watchman, just as she registered the Glock in the professor’s hand. She had never seen the other night watchmen.
The men stepped inside the room.
‘As luck would have it, I was returning home from visiting a friend when the alarm went off on my phone,’ said Serle in a conversational tone. He raised his gun and aimed it squarely at Madeleine’s chest while the four guards covered the man rising slowly from the floor and the one holding a sword to her throat. ‘It only took me ten minutes to get here.’
Madeleine’s stomach lurched. She glanced at the computer. Serle had obviously installed a security program to alert him of any unauthorized access to his hard drives.
Dammit! I should have anticipated this.
‘And I had such high hopes for you, Madeleine,’ Serle continued in the same steady voice. ‘Unfortunately, it seems you’ve inherited your mother’s inquisitive nature. Diana was always too curious for her own good.’
Madeleine stiffened. She was out of the chair with her next breath and heard a low hiss of air as the bearded stranger dropped his sword half a second before she decapitated herself on his blade. She glared at Serle. Although her instincts were yelling at her to cool it, years of pent-up fury drowned out the voice of reason.
‘What do you know about my mother’s death?’ she spat out.
The professor smiled faintly and moved to the desk. Madeleine resisted the urge to punch his smug face.
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