Bloodshot (16 page)

Then a lightbulb popped brightly over my head. Metaphorically, you know.

The only people who knew about Holzter Point were the folks involved in the military projects that were documented and destroyed there.
Somebody
has to sign off on all that stuff, and the military is nothing if not fond of its paper trails. It might shred all the paper in the end, but everything gets written down
someplace
.

By someone.

Therefore it struck me as a strong chance that The Other Thief was someone who’d been party to the experiments at Jordan Roe in Florida.

I jotted this thought down in my trusty notebook, reminding myself that I was looking for a wayward military man … but military men come in many flavors. Maybe he wasn’t a soldier. Call it a hunch, but something told me I was looking for a former researcher or scientist collaborator—maybe someone with a conscience, or someone with an ax to grind.

The prospect of a grinding ax gave me another option that hadn’t dawned on me yet: The Other Thief could have a connection to a victim of the program, maybe one of the other vampires (or other creatures) who were held and tested. I already knew that the military’s suspect wasn’t a victim of the program because of his serial number. But he could’ve been a friend or lover.

Lots of possibilities there.

I gathered the paperwork together. There wasn’t much to hold, and there was even less to call important or helpful. But I had
enough to find my way inside a place that was every bit as secretive as the spot where Top Government Officials told Indiana Jones they were “examining” the Ark of the Covenant.

I didn’t know what I’d find when I got inside—maybe nothing—but I didn’t have any better ideas and I didn’t dare try to contact Ian for further brainstorming. Not yet.

I checked my email, though, on the off chance he might’ve sent me something. I didn’t recall having ever sent him my digital address, but then again I never sent him my bricks-and-mortar address either, and he’d turned that up no problem. A girl can dream, can’t she?

A girl can be disappointed, too. Nothing new or important.

Then I remembered I had a Hotmail address, and I’d even handed it out recently. I hopped online and went to my inbox, where lo and behold I had an email from EABruner via gmail. That struck me as funny. I had to assume the guy had an official email through a work account, but he shoots me a note from something as fake as the addy I’d given him. Nice.

It read:

Boy. The charm just never stopped with that guy, but I couldn’t pretend the email wasn’t useful. It didn’t tell me much, but I’m good at reading between the lines, and what I saw between the lines told me I really, really didn’t like this douchebag.

It also told me that “Major” was more of a nickname than a title, if he was retired. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, except that plenty of people retire from the military and go on to other careers—and just because my new client had been a victim of military manipulation and mutilation, that didn’t mean anything. Could be a perfectly meaningless coincidence.

Only I hate coincidences. So I wrote him back:

My mother’s name was Abigail. Perhaps I’m desecrating her memory or something, but I doubt she would’ve cared.

If I was lucky, he’d respond in an open, honest fashion—informing me of what his precise plans were, where exactly he was located, and freely volunteering the identity of his financial backers. I didn’t ask any of this stuff because I couldn’t think of a credible way to work it in without giving myself away as someone with a way-too-personal interest.

I closed the laptop and settled in for the evening.

The next night was supposed to be clear and cold and moonless, so that made it as good a night as any to take my life and sanity into my own hands. And God help me, but they weren’t kidding about the cold. What amounted to a chilly, damp mid-fall in Seattle was more like a deep freeze in Minnesota. Maybe I ought to have expected it, but I’d never been there before and the shock of the air outside was enough to stun me. It was like breathing liquid nitrogen; it went straight down my throat and chilled me from the inside out.

I shook it off as I kept moving, down to the car I’d bought off a used lot an afternoon or two previously. Yes, I can go out in the afternoons, if I stay in the northern latitudes. I love it when the sun sets at three thirty—everything is still open for a while after I wake up, and I can go shopping for anything I need. Summers are more of a trick, I admit. But most of the year the night is long, and it belongs to
me
.

My new vehicle was a very shiny Nissan with fully a hundred thousand miles on it, but somebody loved it once, and it was in
good shape. I think its original color was white, but it’d been painted over with a dark green that looked like pond slime at midnight, so I liked it, and I bought it, and voilà. New wheels.

I rolled these new wheels out through the maze of neighborhoods and across roads that had been scraped so clean of ice, they couldn’t have chilled a can of Diet Coke.

I gave three quiet cheers for Minnesota. In Seattle a dusty inch of anything white and chilly means the city lapses into full-on panic mode, as if each falling flake crashes to earth with its own individual baggie of used hypodermic needles. It’s ridiculous.

But the city before me was shiny and dark, hard-frozen around its edges and glinting from the ice that coated the corners of buildings like cake frosting made of crushed glass. The streets were empty since the wee hours were approaching and hey, for all that I’d cheered, St. Paul was no Seattle, and there didn’t appear to be much in the way of nightlife—at least not through the places where I was driving.

I had a printout of directions from the Internet sitting on the passenger seat beside me. They weren’t directions to Holtzer Point exactly, but they were maps of the rough location where I figured Holtzer Point could be found. I already knew I was going to be relegated to foot patrol at some point, so I didn’t mind playing it a little fuzzy.

Soon the bare but civilized streets of St. Paul gave way to emptier places with shorter buildings and fewer streetlights … and then no buildings, and no streetlights, and after a few turns I was urging the Nissan along a two-lane road in the middle of what could best be described as the geographic center of Godforsaken, Bumblefuck. The roads out there in Bumblefuck weren’t quite as pristine as the ones in town, and the Nissan struggled with the curves. I should’ve put new tires on it before taking it out. I’m sure I had some good reason for not doing so at the time, but I kicked
myself about it as the back wheels spun and I clenched my teeth. I wasn’t desperately worried about getting stuck; I’m strong enough to shove my own car out of a mushy ditch. I just didn’t want to do it if I didn’t have to.

At the tail end of my flippant prayer to the gods of winter, the car lurched forward and carried me another mile before any farther distance would be an ill-advised pressing of luck. I pulled the car as far off the road as I dared and backed into an improvised spot between two trees. Then I took all my paperwork pertaining to Holtzer Point and stuck it into my Useful Things Bag, which I slung over my shoulder. There was no sense in leaving a treasure map to my intended location lying out in the open, in case anyone
did
find the car and deem it suspicious enough to open.

I got out, wished that the car had still been painted white so it’d be harder to see, and made sure my boots were laced tightly. I didn’t want any snow down my ankles and I didn’t want to stop and tie anything at a crucial moment of reconnaissance.

As I stood there, already half frozen solid and breathing pale puffs of air across the hood of my car, I hated myself for thinking of that word again.

Reconnaissance
. Then I thought of the major and his audible sneer, and I told myself that turnabout was fair play.

I stomped off alongside the two-lane road, following it rather than walking it because I didn’t know if it was being watched—but I might as well assume the worst. The snow made progress an exhausting sort of slog, and no amount of lacing could keep all the icy slush out of my socks. I wished for rooftops to jump between, but didn’t get anything for my wishing except for a knee-deep drop through a crackling crust. I hoisted my legs up, one after another, and forced myself to remember that I was making noise, and that I was on dangerous ground. But it was a hard job to convince myself, out there in the astonishing no-place-ness of the frigid forest.

Until I hit the fence.

Chain link all around with razor wire at the top, the fence was maybe nine feet high. I didn’t see any signs right away, but as I trudged along its length I eventually encountered an admonition to
KEEP OUT. PROPERTY MONITORED AND MAINTAINED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
.

It might as well have said,
WELCOME, RAYLENE. LET YOURSELF INSIDE, BUT KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN, M’KAY?

That’s how I read it anyway, and that’s what I did. I figured if the military really wanted to keep people out, it could spring for something more off-putting than a chain-link fence because, seriously—any idiot with a bolt cutter could slink on through in under a minute. I’m no idiot, and I had a bolt cutter. I made myself a pet door, bent the clipped oval up, and slid underneath. Then I drew it down behind me for appearance’s sake, on the off chance that the property really
was
being monitored.

Again I found it peculiar how little security had been detailed or visible. I’d made my excuses, but surely following a break-in tighter measures might be instituted? Or was I just overestimating the commitment of the armed forces to keeping its secrets?

I didn’t have a map of Holtzer Point because the place practically doesn’t exist, except in tinfoil-hat-land. Even my handydandy PDF of useful stuff didn’t give me any good idea about the joint’s layout, so I was going to have to wing it.

I was wearing white, of course. I even had a white hat to cover my dark hair. No sense in taking chances. And while the fence’s perimeter was handy, it probably wasn’t the best thing to follow in the long term. People don’t put buildings on fences. They put fences around buildings, and often they aim cameras at fences. Ergo, I’d have to venture out into the semi-open.

Inside the fence there were still plenty of trees, and inside those trees I could not spy any hint of hardware. If I was being
watched, I was being watched discreetly. No matter how hard I sniffed, I couldn’t pick up even the faintest traces of warmth from small lights or the funny ozone and metal stink of electronics.

I kept low and kept to the largest trunks I could find, and trusted them to hide me. And eventually, after an ass-numbing hour of swearing my way through the snow, I found five buildings clustered together, as if for warmth. One was quite large—easily the size of a big barn—and the others were much smaller. In the tiniest of the five, an ill yellow light was burning within, and the one lone window marked a pitiful square of occupancy.

I felt sorry for whoever was home. I’d been in cemeteries that saw more action.

By my best guess, the tiny shack with the square yellow window was a guard’s hut or something. One of the other small buildings looked like a storage shed, perhaps, and the big barn must be where pay dirt was housed. The other two structures were inscrutable. If there were windows, I couldn’t see them, and if there was any sign of life inside, it didn’t leak out into the open where I could detect it.

I could’ve just bopped into the guard’s hut and cold-cocked the occupant, sure; but if I could possibly manage it, I wanted to get in and out without anyone knowing I’d ever been there.

I sidled around to the back of the nearest building first, just trying to get the lay of the land. And anyway, it was less visible from the guard’s hut. While I was there, I may as well be thorough, and may as well tackle the easiest targets first.