by Steve Hadden
“But only a few people would have the resources to pull this together. They’d still have to have a reason to stop the trials.”
“Or stop you.”
Those words burned through her. She hadn’t considered the possibility that this was personal. Immediately, she thought about the feedback she’d received throughout her career. She pushed too hard and didn’t take time to build relationships. She never thought she needed to. But she’d left more than a few angry bosses, subordinates and colleagues in her wake. For a moment, the tornado of possibilities swirled inside her. But she took a deep breath. This was her work. A discovery that would save millions—including her father. And in the process, it might just save her family. Whoever it was, she decided she wouldn’t let them take that away from her.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll meet with the reporter. She’ll get the truth out and then this nightmare will end. I can get to Emily and reconstruct the second treatment … or maybe the FBI can catch the real criminals and recover the treatments.”
She looked over at Harrison, whose flat expression said he didn’t seem convinced.
“What about the assassin?” he said.
CHAPTER 42
Kayla drove up the two-lane mountain road between Wofford Heights and Alta Sierra. Google had said the climb was from twenty-seven hundred feet to over fifty-six hundred feet. Giant snowflakes attacked the windshield as the wipers frantically swept them to the side. The snow was mounting as they gained elevation. The boughs of the snow-covered pines sagged as if choking the road. Looking ahead through the veil of thick flakes, she estimated the accumulation at over a foot and mounting with each switchback. From here on, if something went wrong, there would be no quick getaway.
Kayla and Harrison had taken the back way: up the Antelope Valley Freeway along the western edge of the Mojave Desert, then over the southern Sierras on Highway 178. It was less traveled than I-5, and heading into the desert communities north and east of L.A. would be unexpected. I-5 would be crawling with CHP cruisers and FBI agents. Their clandestine route had added an hour and a half to the trip, and with each mile closer, Kayla silently rehearsed every word she would tell the reporter. They accumulated in her mind until her head felt like it was about to burst. Looking down, the whites of her knuckles caught her eye as she gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter. One hand at a time, she let go of the wheel and shook out the tension in her hands. She didn’t used to think she was particularly afraid of dying, but the terror of doing so at the hands of the assassin had changed that, along with the idea that she didn’t want to go now. Not before RGR was helping the millions who needed it and saving her father, proving her worth to her daughter and the world. The young reporter could help her achieve that goal.
Ahead, Kayla spotted a large yellow sign along the roadside blanketed with snow. She leaned in toward the windshield and read it. Snow Not Removed At Night.
“No shit.”
Harrison looked up from the smartphone, saw the sign and chuckled for the first time since losing Sergio. “It’s up here on the right. Half a mile.”
She could see several streetlights spaced about a hundred yards apart along the road marking the beginning of Alta Sierra.
“Can you tell if you can see the cabin from the road?”
“Looks like a longer driveway. In this weather, I don’t think so. Just the same, let’s pull in lights off. I’ll get out and go in by foot. I’ll clear the perimeter, then I’ll let you know if it’s clear.”
“She should be here by now.”
“Right. She should. But that assassin has a way of showing up uninvited. I’ll clear the area first, then you and I can see who’s inside.”
Kayla looked down at Harrison’s Nikes. “Not exactly snow boots.”
Harrison just shrugged. He pulled out his Glock. “It’s right up here. See the mailbox?”
Through the curtain of heavy snow, she saw a miniature log cabin with a postal flag just beyond the last streetlight. The post was buried in snow to its midpoint. She killed the lights, opened her window and turned in to the drive. The wheels of the Trailblazer crunched to a stop in the deep snow. Kayla listened. It was unnaturally quiet, aside from the steady drone of the engine. In front of the SUV, she saw another set of tire tracks filled in by the falling snow. Based on the intensity of the storm, she guessed the vehicle had entered less than fifteen minutes ago. Snowflakes drifted inside and tickled her cheek.
“She’s here,” Kayla said.
“Someone’s here. We’ll see who it is,” Harrison said, looking at his phone again. “There’s a road down the hill behind the cabin. Leads to the ski area. It’s your next left up the mountain. There’s some kind of hut alongside the road. I’ll meet you there if something is wrong.” Harrison put his phone away and shrugged on the windbreaker he’d taken from the house in Dana Point.
His warning about something going wrong ramped up the adrenaline supercharging every one of her senses. She could hear the snowflakes hitting the ground. A gust rustled through the thick pines and stirred the flakes. She smelled burning pine from someone’s fireplace and could see a dull glow through the snow and the trees in front of them. She assumed it was the cabin.
Harrison grabbed another burner and keyed its number into his phone. He handed the first phone to Kayla. “I’ll text you once I clear the perimeter.” He opened the glove box and pulled out an old flashlight. He tested the dim beam against his hand. “Good enough.” He raised the Glock and cocked it. “If it goes bad, get out of here.”
The thought of leaving him unleashed a determination that shattered the fear gnawing at her nerves. Kayla grabbed her Glock from the console and cocked it. “Bullshit. There’s no way I’m ever leaving you again. Not in this life. If it goes bad, I’m coming for you.” She disabled the dome light and waited for Harrison to get out. He wagged his head, but then leaned over and kissed her. He locked his eyes on hers and nodded, smiling before he left the car.
“Be careful,” she said as he left the car.
He slipped to the right and disappeared into the tree line. She felt the dampness of the melted snow on her thigh and rolled up the window, leaving it cracked. Harrison had disappeared into the darkness. Another gust of wind turned the snow horizontal. Kayla was a sitting duck in the SUV if indeed the assassin was already here. That thought sent a tremor through her. She could see only through the windshield. Anyone could approach from the sides or the back and take her out with one shot. She’d never know what hit her. She pulled her hood over her head, grabbed her Glock and quietly opened the door. After stepping from the vehicle, she pushed the door closed. Slowing her breathing, she carefully scanned the area. She yanked down the hood to improve her peripheral vision and hearing.
The deep snow covered the bottom of her jeans and numbed her bare ankles. She scanned the woods and the road behind the SUV. The silence seemed muffled and it reminded her of the winter days spent snowshoeing in the Cascades with her father. The area looked deserted. No one in their right mind would be out in this. She turned back to the cabin and eyed the yellow-tinted aura radiating from the home. Brushing the snow from her sweatshirt, she opened the door and stepped back inside. She blew on her hands to regain the feeling. She needed to be able to feel the trigger. Then her phone vibrated. Pulling it from her pocket, she read the text.
Perimeter clear. Vehicle in garage, door closed. Can’t see it. One person inside. Roll in lights on. I’ll cover you.
She texted back, Copy that.
She flipped the lights on, moved the Glock to her left hand and shifted the Trailblazer into gear. Slowly, she crept down the driveway. Looking for Harrison or a mercenary, she oscillated her attention between the cabin ahead and out the side windows of the SUV. She reminded herself not to shoot Harrison. As she rolled up to the cabin, she spotted the two large lamps on either side of a garage ahead. The ground-level structure looked like it was only the garage and storage. Thick wooden stairs led to an upper deck tha
t surrounded the second floor. At the top of the steps Kayla could see a window and door. A small carriage light illuminated the door. She stopped short of the stairs and shifted into park. A figure emerged from the shadows to her left and she swung the Glock and took aim. Harrison stopped and held his hands up. She opened the door.
“Glad you still like me,” he whispered. She pulled back her Glock and smiled, taking a beat to settle herself. She nodded toward the steps and he walked with her to the base of the stairs.
“I’ll go up. You cover me,” Harrison said and started up the stairway.
Kayla cut him off and pushed him back. “This is my mess. You cover me.”
Harrison shot her a scowl but took up a firing stance and swept his aim from the window to the door and back again. The snow had intensified. Kayla brushed the flakes from her eyelids and climbed the stairs, leading with her gun. With every step, the intensifying sound of her heartbeat reminded her of the danger ahead. At the top, she turned sideways to give a thinner target to anyone inside. She moved to the left of the redwood door and looked down at Harrison. She motioned for him to come up. He slipped past her and stopped on the other side of the door, holding his Glock up and ready. He bobbed his head up and Kayla knocked on the door.
Kayla heard the floorboard of the cabin squeak under the weight of footfalls. She thought heavier might mean the assassin. She stepped back, targeted the door and braced to fire. When the door opened, the young woman inside ducked and raised her hands. “Whoa, whoa!”
Kayla dropped her aim and pulled her hood back.
The young woman rose, staring at Kayla with her mouth hanging open. “My God.”
CHAPTER 43
Kayla examined the young reporter’s face while still pointing her gun at the woman’s midsection. Based on Harrison’s comment in the SUV, Kayla knew she looked more than ten years younger than any of the recent photos the reporter would have pulled. Kayla’s looks alone told the reporter what Kayla was working on—and that it worked.
“Sorry, Miss Covington. Please come in.”
Harrison stepped into the light from the shadows.
The reporter looked startled. “Oh, Mr. Clarke. Please come in, too.”
Kayla stowed her gun and walked inside. She immediately felt the warmth of the crackling fire in the river-rock fireplace on the far wall. The cabin was made of redwood. Thick beams and poles were spread throughout the first floor. Railings glazed with clear lacquer lined the stairway to the loft above the living area. Earth-tone rugs, brown leather furniture, rough-cut wooden tables and copper lamps set a homey, welcoming tone. Harrison closed the door behind him.
The reporter extended her hand. “Sienna Fuller, with the San Diego Union-Tribune. Please call me Sienna.”
Kayla shook it. “Nice to finally meet you, Sienna.” All Kayla could think was that this young woman was her best chance to live. She summoned her best social skills. “This is Harrison Clarke.”
Harrison touched two fingers to his forehead and gave a casual salute. He turned and began watching out the large window to the left of the door. He’d be their sentry.
Sienna didn’t look nervous, but her eyes darted to Harrison and back to Kayla as Harrison moved from window to window, still carrying his Glock.
“You must have been freezing out there. Can I get you some tea?” Sienna walked toward the island separating the large den from the kitchen. Stainless appliances and redwood cabinets continued the theme from the den.
Kayla viewed the tea as the first bonding opportunity. “That would be nice.”
“Mr. Clarke?” By now Harrison had made it to the large double doors at the back of the room that opened on to the back deck.
“No, thank you.” He pulled back the side of the shades and peered out.
While Sienna made tea, Kayla surveyed the cabin. Family pictures covered the walls. Sienna was the only child of a white father and Hispanic mother. The pictures progressed through her childhood activities: skiing, hiking, fishing, hunting. A very close family, Kayla concluded. Her eyes stopped on a picture of an older woman with Sienna’s mother and young Sienna, standing in a commercial kitchen.
“That’s my grandmother’s restaurant,” Sienna said as she approached Kayla from behind.
“Nice.”
Sienna handed Kayla the tea and stood beside her, admiring the picture. “It was nice. I worked there for most of my youth.”
Kayla relaxed a bit, recognizing Sienna’s openness. She sipped her tea. “I need your help.”
“I need yours, too. Let’s sit.” Sienna led Kayla to two chairs facing the raging fire.
Kayla sat down and took another sip of the tea. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
Sienna reached to the side table and an iPhone under the copper lamp. She picked it up. “You mind if I record this?”
The idea of recording their conversation gave Kayla an uneasy flutter in her stomach, but she figured it was part of the deal. “Go ahead.”
“Okay. You look much younger than you did just a few months ago?”
It was a question more than an observation. Kayla knew where it was headed and decided she had to trust the reporter. “It’s the gene-editing treatment. I had to inject myself. It was the only sample that survived the attack, and doing so was the only way to preserve it.”
“So you’re telling me your trial was for a treatment that reverses aging?”
“It does much more than that. It does reverse aging, but it also reverses the diseases of aging.”
“And you’ve injected yourself and now you look at least ten years younger than the picture I have of you from earlier this year.”
Kayla noticed Harrison looking at her, then locked her eyes on Sienna. “That’s correct.”
“How? How did you do it?”
“We studied the genome of Turritopsis, the only immortal animal on Earth.”
“There’s an immortal animal already?”
“A jellyfish, actually. A hydrozoan. It uses a process called transdifferentiation. It can go from a full adult medusa to stem cells and back again.”
“Transdifferentiation?”
“The direct conversion of one cell type to another. In this case, somatic medusa cells to undifferentiated stem cells. We identified the mechanisms and identified the reprogramming proteins, called transcription factors.”
“And you were able to develop a treatment for humans?”
“Yes. It’s not that simple, but yes, that’s the effect. We modified the process, so we didn’t have to take it that far. We start with an array of viral vectors, each specifically designed to carry genetic-editing tools to specific locations of the human genome in specific cells.”
“Using CRISPR?”
Kayla smiled. “You have done your research. Yes. Using CRISPR. We then have to stop the process with a second injection to freeze those changes.”
“What happens if you don’t freeze the changes?”
“The process keeps working, trying to take the cells to a stem cell. A complex organism can’t handle that and dies.”
“Did you freeze the changes in yourself?”
Kayla swallowed hard when she envisioned the painful end she faced if she failed to get the second dose. “The second doses were stolen in the attack.”
Sienna’s expression darkened. “So you’re going to die?”
Kayla looked across the room at Harrison, who turned away from the window. He dipped his head and forced a smile. “If you can’t help me—maybe,” Kayla said.
Sienna stopped and Kayla saw tears welling in her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll figure this out. My main goal is to save this treatment.”
Sienna wiped her eyes and settled herself. “Other experts say that the process is dangerous. That it risks unintended changes in the patients and future generations of humans.”
“We’ve enhanced the safety and efficacy of the process. We’ve developed a predictive model that looks at
the implied changes in the human germline for ten generations. The ‘unintended’ change rate in the subjects in the primate case was far less than the normal mutations that happen every day in humans.”
“Mutations?”
“Yes. We have thirty-seven trillion cells in our body that divide to create new cells every day. That process sometimes introduces mistakes in the arrangement nucleotides, represented by letters A, C, G and T that make up our DNA. Those mistakes are like spelling errors in the instructions of life. But our cells and immune system are geared to deal with most of them. Sometimes mutations get through those defenses and create cancers and other diseases. We’ve developed the process where the changes we introduce will be done without error and reverse those negative changes of aging.”
“That’s remarkable. Why didn’t you go public with it?”
“I couldn’t. The government wanted to keep it secret until they were sure it worked and they had a plan to deal with the fallout.”
“What fallout?”
“All of the ethical, political and economic impacts that would follow.”
Sienna paused and reached for a tablet on the table. She scanned it, then set it in her lap. “You said you didn’t kill your team?”
“No,” Kayla said. She then gave a detailed description of the attack at the lab.
“So why did you run?” Sienna asked, her tone more pointed.
“They were coming for me. What would you do if you saw your entire team executed and the killers were heading toward you?”
Sienna didn’t answer the question. “And you say you saw FBI agents who were part of the attack?”
“Yes. They were at the front entrance and then they fired on me.”
“You sure they weren’t responding?”
“Yes. The attack was still happening. No way the FBI wasn’t part of it.”
“Or someone dressed like the FBI,” Harrison said from the kitchen window.
“So, who do you think it was?”
“I think it’s someone with ties or access to government sources.”