“Except for one.”
Bailey’s eyes light up. The only thing he loves more than discovering secrets on hard drives is sharing them, apparently.
“At your first organic opportunity, I want you to find a way to tell Luke that we think the end destination’s Amarillo,” Cole says.
“Organic?”
“All our communications tonight are being monitored by The Consortium, and Julia Crispin’s paying especially close attention because you hacked her network last year and I still haven’t fired you over it.”
“You haven’t fired me because I’m really good.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t want her knowing we’ve got Amarillo in our sights, either, but I want Luke to have fair warning. So if it looks like the operation’s moving in that direction, find a way to tell him without broadcasting it to the entire team.”
“On one condition.”
“Could the people who work for me please stop acting like I’m a used car salesman? These are orders, Bailey!”
“Bring Noah in on this.”
“That’s insane.”
“You need him. If he’s your ally, make him one.”
“Noah Turlington jeopardized my entire company by conducting a rogue experiment on an unsuspecting private citizen.”
“A year ago and now that poor, unsuspecting citizen is getting ready to throttle another serial killer’s ass. Let bygones be bygones already. The dude’s a genius.”
“And he has no conscience or loyalty to anyone besides himself.”
“He made Zypraxon so the weak could defend themselves.”
“He made Zypraxon because his mother was murdered by a serial killer and he’s still not over it. Why are you on Team Noah all of a sudden?”
“My brother’s alive because of him.”
Bailey doesn’t have to polish the flip side of that coin to make it visible: Luke’s alive because Noah took action after a massive security oversight on Cole’s part put Luke in danger, and Bailey helped Noah do it.
“I’m not telling him about this. He needs to earn it.”
“You know, Cole. You dress nice but you’re pretty weird.”
“How so?”
“Well, I mean here you are, this like shadow government, secret billionaire type, making morally questionable decisions like it’s nothing. Then Noah Turlington walks in and you act like you’re a nun getting pawed by a werewolf.”
“Two orders of business here. One, less caffeine. Two, less focus on my personal relationships.”
“You need him, Cole,” Bailey says with a surprising lack of sarcasm. “You do. You’re running a secret wing of this operation because you’re afraid your business partners are setting Charley up to fail. And I’ve never heard you say a kind word about your own mother, and she’s the only family you have. And honestly, I can’t take the pressure of being your only friend. This little face-to-face has already been more human contact than I usually do in a month.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Good, ’cause I was starting to worry.”
“And if things escalate we can’t meet outside again,” Cole says. “Keep updating me on the Amarillo team, but text my phone and go to the bathroom.”
“You just want me to pee all over the floor or on my phone?”
“Meet me in the bathroom, you little cretin. Whatever the update is, write it down on something I can tear up.”
Bailey gives him a thumbs-up and heads back toward the house, seemingly relieved to be freed of direct human contact. For the time being.
Cole’s relieved, that’s for sure.
Footsteps approach again, and for a second, Cole thinks Scott must have been eavesdropping. But instead, he walks right up to Cole and says, “Video call.”
“How much time left in the movie?” Cole asks.
“Twenty minutes.”
“I don’t have time for a call right now. Who is it?”
“It’s them.”
The Consortium. Cole tries not to grimace. He fails.
“Which one?”
“All of them,” Scott says.
This is not good, Cole thinks, not good at all.
A few minutes later Cole’s sitting at the head of his eight-top glass conference table in the office-slash-conference room underneath the main house. It will only take a swipe of one finger across the control panel next to him to put the faces of his three business partners on the flat screen hanging on the far wall. But his finger’s frozen above the touch pad.
“God help me,” he whispers, longing for that simpler time when the prospect of not being able to put The Consortium back together kept him awake at night. The adage be careful what you wish for is popular for a reason. But he’s come up with his own version—be careful of what you say you can’t live without.
And there they are.
At bottom left, Julia Crispin, with her never-a-hair-out-of-place silver bob, whose idea of casual at-home wear is a pearlescent silk blouse and several gold bracelets. She makes cameras and surveillance devices that are mostly invisible to the naked eye. Maybe that’s why she always dresses as if she’s got an audience.
Just to her right, Philip Strahan, former marine, six-term US senator, now the CEO of Force Bolt, one of the largest private security contractors in the world. He wears his baldness like a shiny crown, and there are so many antlers in the frame it’s impossible to tell how many animal skulls are hanging on the wall behind his desk. Cole’s only paid one visit to the man’s sprawling ranch in Whitefish, Montana. What he remembers most is how the living room furniture looked like it might be pretty tasty after a few minutes of being turned over an open flame.
Stephen Drucker fills the top half of the screen thanks to some random decision made by their videoconferencing program. As usual, he’s staring suspiciously at his laptop’s camera as if it’s his first videoconference. When you take into account that his company develops weapons that use the latest technology to kill people as quickly and cleanly as possible, it’s possible Cole’s the one being stared at suspiciously during these calls and not Stephen’s computer. Stephen’s the group’s only international member, as evidenced by his paisley-patterned silk bathrobe and mussed salt-and-pepper hair. It’s late in London.
Over the past year, it’s become a game of Russian roulette to see which one of his newly reinstalled business partners is going to be the biggest pain in the ass. For a while, it was just him and Julia. Which seemed fitting. They’ve known each other the longest, thanks to the allegedly passionate affair Julia had with Cole’s late father. Now it’s the four of them again, the same group Cole abruptly dissolved when their first experiments with Zypraxon killed all the test subjects. They were all traumatized by the initial tests; it’s why Cole shut them down so abruptly and also why it was a struggle to get The Consortium back together even after he’d circulated mind-blowing footage of Charlotte’s early accomplishments—one original member refused to return for a second round. But now that the band’s back together, Stephen and Philip have been acting like Charlotte’s latest field test is some unacceptable security risk and not their reason for existence. It’s not just infuriating; it’s downright suspicious.
“As I’m sure you can see on your feeds, we’re underway here, folks,” Cole says. “Can we make this quick?”
“Of course. I only have one question,” Stephen says. “How is it possible that with all of our resources we have no bloody idea where Cyrus Mattingly plans to go with that truck?”
One question with several answers I’m not about to give.
“The purpose of the report was to address that question,” Cole says.
Philip Strahan guffaws and slaps the side of his desk.
The report is over two hundred pages long. For the most part, it’s a raft of details about the planned operation, sent two hours ago and for one reason—to give the illusion of transparency while distracting them with irrelevancies. He’d hoped they’d brush it aside with a groan and just be content
to watch the action unfold. They’d already objected when Cole promised them after-action reports and demanded instead to be cut in on the live feeds. He’d conceded, figuring it would buy him some operational latitude. But no such luck, apparently.
“The purpose of the report,” Philip manages once he catches his breath, “was to drown us in bullshit while you maintained a distinctly go it alone attitude on this, my friend.”
“Not that I disagree,” Stephen cuts in, “but my question stands . . .”
“The answer’s in the report,” Cole says, “and I worry about insulting your intelligence by repeating it now.”
“Indulge me,” Stephen says.
“Every internet map search he’s done since we began surveillance has been for an official run he’s made on behalf of a licensed cargo company. No searches that can’t be explained by legitimate business. In other words, he hasn’t tried to figure out where he’s going tonight, because he already knows, and he’s known for some time. He’s probably been there before, a lot. It’s the only logical explanation. All that said, the fact that we may be on the verge of stopping a serial predator potentially responsible for scores of unexplained disappearances in the state of Texas is a cause for celebration, my friends.”
Julia Crispin breaks the silence, sounding more thoughtful than he expected. “And those other runs, those were in trucks he doesn’t own, right? Then all of a sudden he bought a box truck for himself using cash, and that’s what you cite here as the escalation that justified greater surveillance.”
That and the letter, but I’m not telling you about it until I’m convinced you’re not trying to sabotage this operation with bureaucratic nonsense. And maybe not even then.
“Constant surveillance,” Cole adds. “For four solid months, yes.”
“You included his ‘regular’ mail in that surveillance?” Philip asks, sounding like the term makes him nostalgic for a bygone era.
Cole feels a prickle under his skin; thankfully it’s on the back of his neck. Although he doubts it would be visible to the callers even if it were on his cheeks.
“We did. He’s got a combined internet and cable package that saves him a bit every month, if anyone’s curious.”
Don’t steer them off the topic of his paper mail, he thinks. That will look too obvious. Let them get bored with it and move on.
“All right, these truckers, they talk on the CB all the time, right?” Philip asks. “I mean, is that still a thing? Did you guys monitor all that? Maybe when he was out on those official runs he was using that as cover to coordinate with accomplices in code or something.”
“We did and found nothing of note,” Cole lies.
“Well, color me impressed,” Philip says, “if it’s true.”
“It is,” Cole lies again.
Sounding as if he thinks he’s being ignored, Stephen says, “And meanwhile this guy’s outfitting his own truck into a traveling horror show, but he’s not talking to anyone about where he plans to take it or the person he’s presumably going to put in it.”
“That’s correct, Stephen. In my experience, serial killers can be very tight-lipped.”
The door to the conference room opens so quietly Cole doesn’t hear it. Doesn’t notice a freshly showered Noah until he sees him scooting along the wall, taking care to stay out of the camera’s view as he makes his way to the far corner out of the room. The room’s designed to let people enter and exit undetected during a videoconference, so there’s no reacting to Noah without making this already tense call even worse.
Cole’s not sure what angers him more: Noah’s arrival, or the casual manner in which he’s arrived, all wide-eyed curiosity as he studies the faces on-screen. Like he was invited to attend and will later be asked to share his insights on the participants.
“If he even is a serial killer,” Stephen says.
Cole summons enough appropriate self-righteousness before he says, “You’ve seen what’s in the cargo bay of that truck. If that’s your idea of a fun road trip, remind me never to travel with you. And we didn’t pick him at random. He’s one of a select group of people who buys the chemicals you need to completely dispose of a human body, more than once a year. And he lacks any legitimate professional reason to do so.”
Stephen’s messing with him. He’s heard the qualifications that land an individual on the Hunt List countless times, and he also knows that the more frequent the purchases, the higher up on the list they appear. The top fifteen names Bailey Prescott’s extensive hacks have uncovered now occupy what they’ve come to call the Red Tier; Mattingly’s currently number six.
To say nothing of Mattingly’s personal history. No living family members, no close friends. A loner from a home so broken he’d landed at a boy’s ranch outside Lubbock when he was a teenager, a ranch that later closed amid widespread accusations of abuse. He’s also a fan of such violent pornography Cole directed his tech team to investigate whether some of the more upsetting images they found on Mattingly’s hard drive had been made with consenting models. So far, they’d only matched three of seven images to a known porn company.
Stephen chews his bottom lip, like he’s debating whether to defend himself. When he takes in the silence from his other business partners, he seems to decide against it.
“Why aren’t you giving her the first dose remotely? You say in here the blood trackers are equipped to re-dose her remotely if her abduction period takes her outside the trigger window. Give her the first dose remotely. What’s she doing out there carrying around one of these pills in her back pocket?”
“It’s tradition.”
“Tradition?” Stephen snaps. “You’ve done this twice.”
Julia waggles one hand and says, “Once when we were actually involved and not just watching. The first time was . . . highly improvised.”
“Hence, my question,” Stephen continues. “What’s the tradition here? She’s literally states away from you. What happens if she loses the pill or someone tries to take it from her?”
“Luke Prescott is trained to respond to a dozen worst-case scenarios. And no one knows she has the pill, so how is that a risk?”
“But what’s the point?” Stephen whines. “I mean, why give up control over the first dose?”
“It’s part of my understanding with her.”
“I see. So not a contract, but an understanding,” Stephen says.
“Yeah, because we’re swimming in contracts and lawyers with this operation, Stephen. Come on. I allow her to start the process so she can feel a certain sense of control right before she gives up all of it for the sake of our research. How’s that?”
“So, you’re setting our drug loose in the world like a feather on the wind because of a social justice issue. Well, that’s just . . . quaint.”
At the words our drug, Noah, Zypraxon’s inventor, bows his head suddenly, which tells Cole the man almost talked back to the screen.
“There are risks to remote dosing,” Cole tries, even though he knows it’s a weak argument. “If she’s still inside the trigger window and we remote dose her by mistake, the results could be catastrophic.”
Waving his hand at the screen, Stephen says, “We’ve got trackers in her bloodstream telling us when it’s full of paradrenaline. There’s no risk of overdose unless someone on your end sits on the remote dosing button by mistake.”
“It would be quite a mistake. I can show you the picture of what happened to the animal test subjects we dosed when their bloodstreams were already full of—”
Julia says, “Gentlemen, I’d like to point out that Cole’s time does appear to be limited, which is probably why he’s being more unpleasant than usual.”
Bitch.
“Thank you, Julia. Allow me to add that remote dosing is physically unpleasant and accompanied by nausea and dizziness, so we reserve it as a backup plan only.”
There’s a brief silence as they all stare at him.
Stephen finally says, “She can tear the
arms off serial killers and she’s going to complain about a bit of the spins?”
The comment’s innocuous enough, but Cole can feel his anger boiling. The fire under it is the fact that Stephen’s being the most difficult one here.
So far, he’s the only one to derive any personal benefit from their research. What initially looked like a seismic victory for the lab in Iceland—the ability of paradrenaline to wipe out cancer cells—took a dramatic left turn when a catastrophically more virulent strain of the same cancer appeared in the test subjects two days later, a strain that condensed the devastating months-long progression of the disease into a horrifying two hours that practically liquefied the subjects.
The development was so disappointing that both Cole and Kelley Chen, the director of the Iceland lab, took to their beds for days. As soon as The Consortium was reactivated, however, Stephen immediately saw the weapons potential in the supercharged cancer strain that had been created by exposing cancer cells to paradrenaline, and now his people were hard at work mining this by-product, which they’ve nicknamed “paradron.”
Handing over this newly created poison to Stephen was Cole’s obligation under the agreement that binds The Consortium. By collectively funding the operation at levels that won’t raise red flags on their company’s books, each member is allowed to reap those individual benefits that contribute to their specific industry.
To date, Stephen’s poison is the only significant advance Project Bluebird 2.0 has been able to make. Injecting samples of stable paradrenaline, the miracle chemical Zypraxon unleashes in Charlotte’s bloodstream, into animal subjects has yielded mixed to befuddling results, far less reliable than simply dosing the animals with Zypraxon directly and triggering them the old-fashioned way—by scaring the crap out of them. As for Charlotte, they’re no closer to determining why she is the only human test subject who hasn’t torn her own head off minutes after Zypraxon unleashes paradrenaline in her bloodstream.
If Charlotte’s body continues to yield no clues as to why the drug works so successfully in her and her alone, they’ll have to consider the terrifying scenario of testing Zypraxon on more human subjects who might die horrible, gruesome, self-inflicted deaths.
Blood Victory: A Burning Girl Thriller (The Burning Girl) Page 5