Edge of Black (23 page)

Xander and Reed shared a look that Sam couldn’t decipher.

“Careful up there,” Reed finally said. “Crawford’s all kinds of crazy. Dementia.”

“I know.”

Sam turned to Carly. “Thank you for the necropsy primer. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. I’ll check and see if those samples are still around the labs up there in Fort Collins.”

“Thanks.”

They all walked out together. The sun beat down, the blue sky close and watchful, and Sam couldn’t help but feel like they were one step closer.

Closer, and even farther away.

Chapter 43

It amazed him that an office building in Boulder could have better security than the Metro in D.C., but there you have it. It didn’t matter, really, he had the appropriate ID and equipment and uniform. No one would give him a second glance. But it was ironic.

He showed the badge at the front desk, grunted noncommittally when the guard asked him to sign in, scribbling something with the pen, careful to wipe it on his sleeve before he set it down, to smudge any possible prints. Going about in gloves at this point was too suspicious, but the minute he was in the elevator he slipped them on.

The higher the elevator rose, the more the bombs seemed to come alive in his bag, chittering to him, though he knew that was impossible. They were each swathed in the devil’s own Bubble Wrap, tucked tightly together without a chance for connection until he was ready to make them sing. They couldn’t clank or whisper, he’d made sure of that.

At the top floor, he got out and made his way to the end of the stairwell. He had a large fluorescent light in one hand, his bag in the other. He looked every bit the part of an electrician, replacing a specialized bulb.

He started at the top. He had five to place. Five tubes of life-ending hell, all ready to unleash their fury upon the heathens who created their horrors within these walls.

He worked his way down the stairs, tucking a bomb into the ventilation shafts every third floor. No cameras in the stairwells, the dummies. Though he assumed they made their devil deals out here, which was why it was the perfect spot, private, load bearing and the main escape route from the building in case of emergency. He’d be sure to capture everyone. When he was finished, all he had to do was pull the fire alarm and hightail it out of there. Count thirty to allow for maximum confusion, then hit Send on his cell. He’d already be a block away before anyone knew what hit them, and on his way back to the camp before the first responders arrived.

It was a shame he couldn’t stay to watch, but Ruth was waiting in the truck. She was a good girl, she was on the floor with her book and the windows were tinted so there was no way she could be seen from the outside. She’d happily play there for a good hour or so, more than enough time for him to set his trap.

He liked this “making a statement” work. Truth be told, in the beginning, he had been planning to stop after D.C., where things had gone so well, but he had the leftover abrin, and the material to make some serious boom-booms, so why not? He could get used to this—eliminating those who pissed him off. Obviously no one in D.C. had any idea of what was going on. They’d arrested some raghead, and he was happy to let them. It gave him more freedom, and that’s all he was trying to do, anyway, was fight for freedom. Damn government tried to interfere in everything now, and he was sick and tired of it.

They made laws that allowed the most terrible things to happen, from allowing children to die in their mothers’ wombs to the rape of the land to the secret stores of stem cells they were using behind the doors, twenty feet away, to build a genetically perfect army, clones who were unstoppable, things that would heal within minutes and rise to fight again. Like zombies. Once they’d figured out how to re-create a woman’s eggs from stem cells, it was all over. There was no more slippery slope: they’d all arrived at the bottom, and the only way to recover was to scrabble around in the mud and build their wall again, sailing to the top on the backs of the unborn, carefully crafted and modified children.

They would interfere with the people next. The evil-loving societies, and their desire to be sheep, led to the slaughter. They didn’t care. They wanted to be fattened and allowed to live their useless little lives, with their cars and electric toys and drugs and sex. They were an abomination. They epitomized sin. They reveled in their greed and sloth and envy. He’d fallen prey to one of the seven deadlies himself, been captured by the bonds of lust, and knew just how powerful that pull could be. And look where that got him.

Things went black, a rage he couldn’t control panting through him, taking him away. He had to fight for control. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. The injustice of it all overwhelmed him.

Not now. Not now
.

His breathing slowed infinitesimally, enough for him to catch some air.

He wouldn’t allow the sins of the father to be visited on his child, no matter that she was the direct result of those sins.

No one would ever hurt his Ruth.

And so he became wrath.

Because it is not a sin to be living proof of God’s will.

He realized he was standing stock-still in the hallway, and people were filing past, some in scrubs, all looking at him queerly. He carefully tucked his hands in his pockets and went to the elevator, the now empty backpack on his shoulder.

It was done. In fifteen minutes, they’d all be dead, and the ones who didn’t succumb in the blast would get a nice whiff of abrin and die later.

Die, mother...
fuckers
.

He stopped himself from giggling. He didn’t use bad words often. Just thinking one was tantamount to shouting it at the top of his lungs, but that thought felt very, very good.

The elevator dinged and the doors slipped open. He kept his gaze averted and entered, ignoring the two nurses inside. He counted it down.

Thirty.

Twenty.

Ten.

Ding.

He walked straight out and made a beeline for the doors.

“Hey! Hey! Electrician dude.”

Stop walking. Turn around slowly. Don’t look anxious
.

He followed his own advice. The security guard was on his feet, pointing his long finger right at his...oh, the badge. They wanted their badge back.

He allowed himself half a breath, and detached it from his pocket, walked it back to the security guard, who grunted thanks and took it.

He turned and hightailed it out of there. At the door he hesitated for a second, looking over his shoulder. The fire alarm was on the wall to the right of the glass door. No one was looking.

He pulled the white bar, and the sirens sang out. Quicker than a breeze, he stepped out the doors and began a quick march away from the building.

The previous glee returned. He was golden.

The truck was parked five hundred yards away, and he glanced at the gorgeous, sunny summer sky, wondering what the people inside the four walls of perdition were thinking.

Panic.

Fire.

Apocalypse
.

He bet they’d been looking outside their windows, gloating about their advances, cheering each other with their test tubes full of the abominations they created, reveling in the sun, thinking it signified God’s pleasure at their interference with his plan, and yet they had no idea that they were staring into the brimstone sky of their real creator. And then the warning system kicked in, and they’d have to abandon their work, scramble into the stairwells, where his vengeance lay in wait.

He would show them.
Breathe your last, hellspawn.

He counted the steps to the truck. Reached the door. Opened it, and swung his big body into the cab.

“Ruthie, my darling...”

The truck was empty.

“Ruth? Where are you? Ruth?”

No answer.

And the cell phone, stashed so carefully behind the gearshift, was gone, too.

Terror filled him, bleeding into his blood, and he went ice-cold before breaking out into a flop sweat. His breath came fast, and he couldn’t see. The blackness was coming, it was going to take him.

Breathe, man. She can’t be far.

Ruth was going to be in some serious trouble. She had strict instructions not to move. She had defied him, and stolen the phone from him, as well. He would tan her hide the minute he found her.

Think.
Think!

He got out of the cab of the truck and scanned the street, up and down. The office building was the only one on the street, and people were actually starting to stream out of the doors, white lab coats flapping in their hurry to escape.

Oh, God, where was she?

He searched up the west side of the street, saw nothing, then turned and scoured the east side. Half a block away on either side were some of the college’s classrooms. The University of Colorado campus was extensive, stretching all over Boulder, their octopus-like tentacles spreading through the streets and into the businesses. She could be anywhere, in any direction.

And she had the detonator.

Chapter 44

Washington, D.C.
Detective Darren Fletcher

Fletcher had to coax the story out of Loa, a little bit at a time. It wasn’t terrible, by any means, but he could see how much it hurt her to relive.

“You can’t know what love is when you’re thirteen. My mother kept trying to tell me that, and I kept trying to make her see that of course you can. But she was right. She was almost always right.”

Loa was calm again, settled in. She had leaned her head on her right hand, was idly playing with the ends of her hair. She seemed strangely disconnected from the story as she told it, clearly a self-protecting device. Either she’d told this story a hundred times, or she’d rehearsed how she would relay the details.

Fletcher wasn’t so bad as an ethnographic researcher himself. He pulled the pieces from her, slowly at first, as if he’d been digging for days in the desert, and the shovelfuls of information hit the screens, and the sand sifted out, leaving the remnants to expose themselves.

He let her talk, gave her a push here and there, and the rest of the story flowed from her mouth. She seemed almost relieved in the telling, unburdening herself. She had nothing to lose anymore.

“You know they found out she wasn’t really a survivalist, but a researcher, right? They actually shut her up in the cabin for a few hours to discuss things. When they let her out, she raised all kinds of holy hell, trying to explain herself, but it wasn’t working. They were pissed. They told her to get out, and stay out.

“When she told me it was time to move on, I balked. I wanted to stay. I liked the group, they liked me. They treated me as an equal, not as a child. Mother never understood that—she thought that just because she let me stay up late and try champagne and travel the world that she was giving me equal status, but she would flip between friend and mother in a flash. If I didn’t do as she asked immediately, she treated me like a petulant child. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be grounded in front of a crown prince?”

Fletcher just shook his head.

“That was my mother. Hot and cold. I don’t think she ever really wanted to have children, I was most definitely an accident. One she gamely tried to stuff into a backpack and take along just like she did her camera and fresh underwear and toothbrush. And when I was little, that worked. But as I got older, started having my own opinions, wanted to play with my friends, go to school...well, we were destined to clash. She was used to getting her way. I was used to having a lot of freedom. When she laid down the law on me, for the longest time I would acquiesce. But in Colorado, that all changed. I didn’t want to let her bully me anymore. And I had my special friend, and when she tried to force me into something I didn’t want, he would take me aside and explain why I didn’t have to listen. That I was an adult in the eyes of the group, and should anything ever happen, I’d be expected to pull my weight accordingly, so she needed to start treating me as a real equal, like the rest of them did.”

“And that ‘special friend’ was the one you ran away with?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t the group kick you out along with your mother?”

“Because I was thirteen, and they knew I was just along for the ride, not playing a part in the charade. They left the choice to stay up to me. And I wanted to stay. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged. Remember, this sort of continual assimilation was par for the course for me. I normally just melded into whatever situation we found ourselves in. But the group was different. They wanted me for me, and I had found a place where I could be comfortable, be myself.”

“Who was your friend?”

“I’d rather not say.”

He let that ride for now. He would come back to it in a bit.

“Your mother posited that the survivalists are all cults.”

“And in many cases, she’d be right. Especially when you look at the groups that are promoting violence, or hate wars, or finding some way to exclude people should the end of days come. But the Blue and Gray were just a bunch of normal people who decided to live life their way. They had no charismatic leader, didn’t have church services and stuff like that. They were totally normal.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So you ran away, they threw your mother out, and then what happened?”

She was growing visibly uncomfortable.

“Let’s just say things didn’t work out according to plan.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, my goodness. I am so late. I really must be going, Detective.” She stood again, this time determined. She was finished talking. He couldn’t make her stay, really; it wasn’t like she was a suspect.

Then again, twenty million was enough to lay the suspect carpet in front of anyone’s door.

He shrugged and rose himself.

“If you think of anything more, I would really appreciate it if you could call.”

There was a knock on the conference room door. Fletcher looked over Loa’s shoulder to see Inez. She had thick white art pages with her. He assumed it was the Identi-Kit.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Detective. The artist rendering you asked for has come in.”

“That’s fine, Inez. Ms. Ledbetter was just leaving. Would you mind showing her out? Thank you.”

“Of course. Ma’am, if you’ll just follow me.” Inez handed the drawing over, and he glanced down at it. It was a man. Just a man. He didn’t know if he was expecting horns and a forked tail, or a sign that blinked neon and screamed:
I did it.
This was just another run-of-the-mill schmo with a square jaw, short hair and shaded cheekbones. Caucasian features. It could be anyone.

Then he had a thought.

“Wait a minute. Loa, will you give this a quick once-over, see if it’s anyone you might recognize?”

She squared her shoulders. “Is it a picture of the man who killed my mother?”

“Possibly. We’re looking at every angle, and this man had contact with Marc Conlon recently. It’s worth a shot, just in case.”

He handed the paper to Ledbetter and watched her eyes grow wide, and her face drain of color like someone dropped a black-and-white screen over her. Two seconds later her eyes rolled back in her head and she started to fall.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Fletcher tried to catch her and missed, and she hit the floor, surprisingly hard for such a small woman. Inez hurried back to them.

“Wow. That gives a whole new meaning to fainting dead away. I have never seen anyone go down like that before. What did you do?”

“What did
I
do? Thanks for the vote of confidence, Inez.”

Fletcher knelt down next to her, felt for a pulse. It was just a faint, she was already starting to come to. Inez got on her knees and pulled Ledbetter’s head into her lap.

“Little help here,” Fletcher called out. One of the young guns appeared in the door.

“Holy crap, is she okay?”

“Just fainted. Get her some water, will you?”

He looked at Inez, who was smoothing Loa’s hair back from her forehead with one hand and fanning her with the other, all while shushing her like she was a scared puppy.

“I think it’s safe to say she knows him,” Fletcher said drily.

* * *

Ledbetter was back among the living in a few minutes. They got her seated at the conference table, and she clutched the bottle of water, pale as a ghost, a look of sheer, unadulterated fright on her face.

Fletcher sat down next to her.

“Loa, who is he?”

She shook her head like a child who doesn’t want to rat on her friend, quick and with her eyes closed.

“Loa. You obviously know this man. That in and of itself makes him more than just another pretty face. Come on. Who is he?”

She kept her eyes closed and whispered, “He told me his name was Ryan. Ryan Carter.”

“How do you know him?”

She took a big, deep breath before she spoke again, then finally opened her eyes.

“He was my husband.”