Bliss (11 page)

The rain slowed for a brief moment and with the windshield wipers on battery power, she could see construction equipment ahead of her.

Directly
ahead of her.

And coming up fast!

Sailing out of the storm, she careened past several concrete barriers, barely missing them on the right. The water was still up to the window level outside and threatening to go higher. Her visibility, however, had improved significantly, and she could now see two bull dozers parked blade-to-blade, right in front of her. She resecured her seat belt.

The water slowed abruptly for a moment giving Lindsey a sudden surge of hope for a safe landing, but then the car mocked her by lifting up and gaining speed, accelerating toward the bulldozers like an out-of-control hydroplane.

As the Volvo’s undercarriage collided with the top of the dozier blades, the night erupted with the shriek of metal on metal. From the driver’s seat, Lindsey felt the underside of the Volvo shear off as if it was a plastic model.
Shit!
Lindsey closed her eyes. A blinding spray of sparks shot underneath her, and the Volvo stopped dead.

Inside the driver’s compartment, Lindsey Walsh sat paralyzed with fear, her body pressed against the dash. The impact had sent her head into the windshield; a move the safety belt checked by nearly choking her. But she avoided going through. Her chest took the brunt of the jolt and she gasped for the wind that it had knocked out of her lungs.

Miraculously, the windows all were intact. But the entire chassis was gone, upended, Lindsey could see, against the massive dozier blades. Somehow the blades had missed the upper portion of the car, but what remained of the body had slammed into the tracks of the giant machines. All Lindsey could think of at that point was escaping from the car as fast as she could. Water gurgled in around her. Lindsey’s ankles were numb and a new pain raged in her chest with every inhalation.
Broken ribs?

The hammering of rain suddenly stopped as quickly as it had begun and Lindsey found herself engulfed in blackness. She reached into the glove box and retrieved a flashlight she always kept. She flipped it on.

Her initial panic subsided, and she sat a few minutes, her thoughts muddled. She propped her feet on the bulging dashboard and flexed her toes in her saturated shoes. Lindsey was so tired.
How she would love to sleep.

A mild flickering of lighting still scarred the sky, but the storm was over.
Now to get out of here
. She rolled down the driver side window and shined the light out into the barren landscape.

I’ve landed on the moon.

She’d come to rest on a newly grated section of highway they were about to pave. Off in the distance, scalpels of light pierced the still blackened sky.
Downtown Phoenix?

Lindsey kicked at the driver’s window and it shattered into a sheet of tiny fragments. She threw her legs over the opening and then drew back and realized she’d better check the ground beneath her. She held the light down toward the ground. The heavy equipment had tamped it hard and it looked stable enough to walk on.

She clambered out of the Volvo and felt like a child coming out of the womb. Cold, wet darkness all around her. The mud rose up around her ankles. She surveyed the damage to the car and shuddered.

She was lucky to have survived.

Then almost dreamily, Lindsey heard it. In the distance, an engine was approaching. High pitched. The sound grew louder until a machine came into view. It was a huge multi-treaded construction tractor churning toward her up the muddy trough. Tall and spindly, it looked like a towering, futuristic insect grinding toward her on voracious spinning feet. Mounted high on the chassis was an enclosed Plexiglas cabin with a rack of floodlights illuminating its way.

The machine shuddered to a halt directly beside the Volvo. It blinked its lights twice, and Lindsey shined her flashlight toward it. The door on the cabin opened, and a figure climbed down a ladder onto the mud.

Then, Lindsey Walsh collapsed on the ground beside her totaled heap.

The sharp ring of his
phone caught Frank Deldeo off guard. He knocked his plate of spaghetti onto the floor and cursed under his breath as he fumbled for the receiver.

“We have a problem,” the caller said.

Deldeo recognized the voice. Stephen Vetter, his pain in the ass, recently acquired associate. He didn’t think of Vetter as a boss. Deldeo was his own boss. So everyone to him was an associate.

“I’m listening,” Deldeo responded.

“We’ve had some problems at the compound.”

A shiver of excitement passed through Deldeo. The fatigue he’d been feeling all day after a fitful night’s sleep vanished in a split second. Problems were all he knew. He handled them as easily as a turkey shoot.

“Are you listening?” Vetter questioned when Deldeo hadn’t immediately responded.

“Yea, I heard you. What do you want me to do?”

“Come to the compound. I’ll meet you at the gate. And bring some large garbage bags and duct tape.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Deldeo disconnected. A smile spread across his face. The evening that had started out so bleak, with a horrendous storm, had suddenly become rosy again. Within the hour he would be in the compound and possibly close to the woman who had haunted him for the past week.

Now he would find out if she were who he thought she was.

When Lindsey awoke, she was
lying on her back and could feel cold mud beneath her body. She looked up to see a pair of white eyes and a set of teeth staring down at her.

“You all right, ma’am?” a man’s voice asked. The accent was southern.

Lindsey’s eyes began to focus and take in the harsh light of the construction machine that had pulled alongside her. She squinted to improve her bleary vision and could now see that the eyes and teeth belonged to the darkest face she’d ever seen.

“I think so,” Lindsey said. Her voice was a whisper. “How’d you find me?”

“I saw the whole thing,” the man said. “I was trying to leave the site when the storm hit. Had to ride it out in that dumper there. I watched your little car come flying down the culvert, and thought for sure anyone in there would be dead. You’re sure lucky.”

Lindsey sat up on her elbows. “You’re telling me. Where exactly are we.”

“Bout four miles this side of Scottsdale. You’re not from around here are you?” the man asked.

Lindsey sat all the way up now. “No.”

“I’d guess New York.”

“You’d be right,” she said.

“Anyway, we better get you outta this mud. Can you walk?”

The pain that had racked Lindsey’s chest after the impact had subsided, and surprisingly, she realized she’d not sustained any injury at all. At least none she was aware of. Lindsey got to her feet, bracing herself on the man’s massive arms. He was so huge, she felt as though Paul Bunyan himself had rescued her.

“By the way, my name’s Silas Bailey.”

“Lindsey Walsh. You’re not from around here either are you, Silas?”

“Nope. Killwalk, Mississippi. No work down there, though. So I came out to Phoenix till the work runs out here.”

Silas walked Lindsey to the huge construction vehicle he’d driven over to her. Lindsey stood transfixed in the illumination of its lights.
How could they build any thing so big?
She felt like an ant next to it.

“It’s a doozy isn’t it?” Silas asked.

“Unbelievable. How do you drive it?”

“Not much different from your little car over there. Cept this doesn’t float.” Silas Bailey grinned and his teeth seemed to take up two-thirds of his face.

Lindsey gave herself a final assessment and decided her ordeal had mainly left her a little cold and mostly
muddy.
The pain in her chest had not returned. She attributed her passing out to sheer exhaustion after commandeering her car down a torrent of water as tough as any white water rafting trip imaginable.
What a nightmare,
Lindsey thought.

“Listen, Silas, I really appreciate you helping me like this, but there is somewhere I really need to get to. It could be a matter of life and death. Do you happen to have a car nearby?”

“Yes ma’am. I got a truck on the other side of the site. We can get to it in the dumper. I can take you where you need to go.”

Lindsey pushed her hair back. “I’d be happy to pay you.”

“No need for that ma’am. I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”

“Have you ever heard of a place called Fairfield Square?” Lindsey asked. “It’s somewhere in Scottsdale.”

“Hear of it? Yeah, I sure have. We did some paving up there a couple months ago. That’s some place. Real fancy.”

“That sounds like the place. I need to get there as soon as possible.”

As Silas helped Lindsey into the Plexiglas enclosure atop the tractor, she felt grateful for the heat pouring out of the tractor’s vents. Silas climbed into the cabin and cranked the loud engine to life.

The ride to his truck was like an excursion over a lunar landscape; the huge wheels bouncing Lindsey around like a rag doll. A few minutes later they pulled to a stop and Lindsey climbed down. Silas handed her a blanket from behind the seat of his truck.

“Don’t worry, it’s clean. I keep it for emergencies. My wife is scared of travelin. I got every kind of gadget there is for safety in that truck.”

Lindsey wrapped herself up in the blanket and slid into the front seat of Silas’s truck. Out the windshield she could see other large construction machines, sitting like museum dinosaurs against the empty landscape of the surrounding desert. The moon had come out now, hanging low in the night sky. Stars seemed to pop out every few seconds.

Silas drove them out of the construction site and onto the main road heading down Highway 100 toward Scottsdale. Except for some occasional muddy spots, there was no sign of the storm that had just rolled through. The ground had soaked up the rain as if it were a giant sponge that had been dry for decades.

The road took them past enclaves of large upscale homes. This was the new Phoenix, yuppies and baby boomers that’d made it big and were following their companies to the newest growth belt in the Southwest. Some of the homes reminded Lindsey of Indian Springs, which sent a surge of terror through her. Her mind went into overdrive.

They’d gone several miles when they crested a hill and she saw another new development. As they neared, she could see the sign: Fairfield Square. A mammoth iron fence surrounded the gated community. Silas stopped the car at the entrance. On the gate were a security monitor and a keypad. They had a camera mounted atop the fence.

This is it.

But now, what should she do about it.

The community looked like a fortress. Although she saw no guards, there was no way in without pushing a security code on the keypad.

Lindsey looked over at Silas. “I don’t want you to get involved in any trouble, Silas. You can just let me out here. I’ll find the person I’m looking for.”

“You sure ma’am? I hate to see you stranded.”

“I can always get a cab.”

“Okay. Good luck to you.”

Lindsey reached over and gave Silas a hug. Thank you again. I owe my life to you. I’ll find a way to repay you.”

“Don’t worry bout it, ma’am. Just be careful.”

Stepping out of the truck, Lindsey surveyed the landscape, then waved to Silas Bailey one last time. An occasional flash of distant lightening brightened the sky somewhere far off. There was no thunder, only silence so strong it hummed in Lindsey’s ears. She worked her way along the fence, heading directly for the row of villas in front of her. Other than a nondescript three-foot-high pole bearing the numbers 6500-6650 on the other side of the fence, there were no markings at all to identify the individual streets. She remembered Katherine telling her, that her place faced the mountains and her view was unobstructed.

It was
that
fact alone, which convinced Lindsey she had the right place. When she looked out to the desert, she could see the outline of the mountains against the backdrop of the moonlit sky. It meant Katherine’s villa had to be in the front. Now it was just a matter of finding the right one, out of about twenty. They grouped the villas together in sets of two. Large southwestern style Tudors with classic Spanish tile roof and stucco finish on the walls. Each with its own garage and outside deck.

Lindsey couldn’t ever remember experiencing such silence. The only thing punctuating it was the drumming of blood coursing through her temples.

She looked up.
Now to get in.

Despite her initial impression of the fence, it stood only eight feet tall. Just a wrought iron rail–the kind she’d scaled as a kid–nothing more. If she could do it back then, as an overweight klutz, why not now? Before she even had time to consider it, she was up and over it and brushing herself off on the other side.

Inside the perimeter, the dark, colorless desert gave way to lush greenery, beautifully landscaped grounds, and towering palm trees. An oasis. She wound her way along the greenery and toward the sprawling townhomes. Vapor lamps in the parking lot allowed a clear view of the villas and Lindsey eased her way behind a stand of palms and gazed at the windows, hoping Katherine might appear in one of them.

After waiting long enough to establish no one home at the first set of villas, she moved down toward the second two. A sidewalk led from a group of mailboxes then wound around the building paralleling the paved drive. Getting her nerve, Lindsey retrieved her flashlight from her purse. Crouching low, she slipped across the street to the mailboxes and trained her light on them. She took a couple of steps forward, then froze.

“That’s far enough,” a voice behind her said.

Hans Grovel had boarded
Zern Pharmeceutical’s Lear 260 at Zurich International at 2:00 P.M. Swiss time. After verifying the email he’d received, he called a hasty meeting of his top brass and announced he was going to Phoenix to tour the Imec facility. Something had come up and they needed his expertise. What he didn’t tell them was that the new CEO, the man he’d appointed to Imec, Stephen Vetter, was about to bury not only Imec, but also Zern itself if he didn’t stop what amounted to insanity. Grovel considered calling the FBI, but the potential backlash to Zern would be irrepairable.