Genesis (Extinction Book 1) (13 page)

She knew it was a transient comfort. Everything is eventual. Fleeting. If she lived through the night, she would have to face Eagle’s death. For the moment, she let the emptiness in, wrapped that cold around herself as she would a warm blanket in winter.

“Your disappearing act sixteen years ago may have been forgiven,” Bishop spoke softly, as if to a child as he knelt in front of her. “But it has not been forgotten. It is time for a new tour of duty, Melanie. One that can earn back his favor. Changes are coming; choices will have to be made. The question you need to ask yourself now, is do you have anything left to live for? If you do not give yourself over to him without hesitation, without holding back, you will not survive what’s coming. No matter how
special
he seems to think you are.”

Mittie Kate peeled out of her fur-lined winter gear and tossed it onto the foot of her hotel bed. She watched Ling pull out his pad and walk the room long enough to get the slight nod that meant his pad had picked up electronic signatures that shouldn’t have been there.

The bastards had bugged the room.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she told whoever was listening. Once in the bathroom, she cranked up the water. Pulling a cigarette from her bag on the counter, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and waited.

“I thought you quit smoking?” Ling asked as he flipped on the overhead fan and took a seat on the duvet across from her.

“Some days require a sedative,” she smiled and stood up long enough to toss the cigarette in the toilet. “Besides, at this point, I don’t think cigarettes are going to have time to kill me.”

“We’ve been in tighter places, my old friend,” Ling smiled and continued to work his pad. “There are two bugs. Audio only, but I have drawn the curtains just in case.”

“Might as well be ten. They know who we are, why didn’t they arrest us?”

“If they arrest us or kill us, Max and the others will go to ground. If that happens, they lose the upper hand.”

“Better to follow us until they have all their eggs gathered, eh?”

“That would be my assumption.”

Mittie leaned back on the commode and closed her eyes. “We have a safe house in Moscow.”

“I do not believe it would be wise to go there. If we can make it to Ulan Bator, I have contacts that can get us into Beijing and onto a flight back to the U.S.”

“Do you think China is the best option? Considering our agent has already been compromised. In that very city, I might add.”

Ling put his pad away and leaned forward. “They would expect us to head for Moscow. We have never shown the slightest interest in the Gobi Desert, that makes it safer than heading west. They severed the bio-readings from Nikoli’s monitor for a reason. They are pushing us. We cannot head in the direction that they push.”

“All right,” she sighed. “The Gobi it is. Let me know when you have a route planned.”

“It is already done. I have also purchased two tickets for the Trans-Siberian rail. It departs in one hour. We leave here in half an hour, on foot. Traveling light. Once I am sure we are not being followed, we will split off and take two separate entrances. Use your drop phone at the automated kiosk to check in and head for the cabin. If I tell you to put your hood up, keep it up until you are inside.”

“What would you have done if I had refused to go to Ulan?”

“I would have made you a cup of tea.”

“I’ve had your tea, Ling. Drugging me is not fair play.”

“As you are so fond of saying, all is fair in love and war.”

“And which is this?”

“There cannot be one without the other.”

“All right, Confucius,” she laughed, “show me the route, the entrances, all of it. If we get separated I want to know where I’m going.”

Ling showed her everything, including where to go if she got to Ulan Bator without him. She studied the map while he unbraided her hair and did a quick die and style job at the sink. When he was done, her grey hair was gone, auburn waves fell down her back and drifted over her shoulders. Adept fingers applied makeup to cover the truth of her age. Although it wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny, at first glance she looked twenty years younger.

“What costume do you get to wear?”

“Any attempt I make to conceal my Asian features will only draw eyes to me.” He led the way into the main room of the suite and pulled two vacuum bags from under the bed.

As soon as the seal was broken, the bags filled out, growing to four times their original size. New furs, silver instead of sable, puffed up to fill the space as air rushed inside. Once in their new clothes, Ling pulled out a second phone and set it up for background noise. “My turn for the shower.”

After cranking the water back up, they slipped into the hallway and down to a service stairwell. As long as they weren’t spotted leaving, the shower would buy them, at most, forty five minutes. Fifteen more than they needed.

They left the hotel through a back door that dumped them into an alley. With Ling concealed behind his hood and Mittie Kate letting the crisp Siberian wind blow through her hair, they remained in the labyrinth of alleys. Constant glances over their shoulders reassured them they weren’t followed until they were across the street from the Trans-Siberian station.

With a quick squeeze of her hand, Ling turned to head back to take a route that would lead him to another entrance of the station and Mittie Kate crossed the street with all the confidence she could muster. Ninety percent of getting away with something right under someone’s nose was to look as if you belonged where you were and acted like you knew what you were doing.

Pulling up the boarding pass on her phone, she flashed it in front of the screen on the kiosk and was surprised when it worked the first time. Slipping through the rails, she didn’t look back until she was boarding the train.

It took all the self-control she had not to trip over the step or slow down as she watched men in dark greatcoats file through the entrances, their eyes scanning the crowds. When one grabbed an old woman walking by and spun her around, to compare her face with something he held in his hand, she knew their shower ruse had been discovered.

Keeping her head down under the pretense of studying her boarding pass to find her cabin, she passed several soldiers without being molested. Inside their cabin compartment, she took a seat across from the door to wait for Ling.

When the train lurched forward and started crawling down the tracks, she cried out and moved for the door. Despite their talk, despite Ling’s instructions, she couldn’t leave without him. He had been such an intimate part of her life for too long. She had to get off the train, had to find him.

She threw the door open, intent on finding the nearest exit when a hand grabbed the back of her coat, hair and all, and shoved her back inside the private room. With the curtains drawn, Ling dropped the hood on his parka and turned. His eyes were ablaze, and he looked like it took a sheer act of will to keep from chewing her a new one.

Mittie Kate ignored both and threw herself into his arms. After a moment, he softened against her and pulled her tighter to him. Whispering into her hair, he asked, “How can I protect you when you have such poor impulse control?”

“I thought they had you.”

“Almost, but if you would have left the train, they would certainly have had you. Do you have any idea how many men I would have had to kill to get you back?”

“No more than you could handle.”

“True,” he laughed. “But we would have missed our train.”

“This feels like a guilty pleasure.” Eve grinned over the top of a fully loaded slice of New York’s finest deep dish pizza. “The semester’s just started and we’re already skipping homework.”

Ryan rubbed the top of her head and left the living room to replace his beer. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell Eve about the doom and gloom discussion he’d had with Adam and Cedric. Nor could he lie to her face. It was easier to do it from the kitchen. “Well, Peanut, some days just require a little recharge, that’s all.”

In the doorway he leaned against the jamb, sipping his beer and watching her. They had already worked their way through all of the Laurel and Hardy episodes. On the TV, Abbott and Costello were working hard to give the Wolfman the slip. Eve giggled, just as she had the first time they pulled a marathon when she was a little girl.

When she looked up, her smile faded. “Is there anything you want to talk about, Dad?”

Shaking his head, not trusting himself to speak, he made the pretense of taking another drink. “Just enjoying an evening with my best gal. I’ll be right back.”

Before she could respond, he headed for the hallway and his bedroom. Another glance at the hidden cell phone showed Mel had remained silent. He sent the next picture of Eve and slipped it back into his drawer.

Eve trusted him. That was the rub of it. She trusted him and he was lying to her. Trusting her with the information wasn’t the issue. She didn’t talk to anyone enough to spill it, nor was she so childish as to use it as gossip to make herself look cooler with her new friends.

Fragile, vulnerable. When he looked at her, sitting on the couch in her jammies, scarfing pizza and watching black and white slapstick, that’s what he saw. She would be furious if he said so. The fact that she still looked like a little kid at sixteen was the one thing in her self-image that even a father’s love couldn’t fix. Especially now that she was old enough to start thinking about boys.

No matter how he looked at it, she was still his little girl. Protecting her, cherishing her, that was his job. Telling her about the satellite images felt as if it would be soiling that somehow. He didn’t want her feeling the way he did, all knotted up inside. Terrified and helpless.

He needed to talk to
someone
.

“Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Mel.”

Grabbing his personal cell phone off the nightstand, he punched in Marcus’ number. Since leaving the lab, he’d been torn on whether or not to call the old man. Now, he was convinced if he didn’t talk to someone, keeping the knowledge in would eat him alive.

“Any luck with little Lolita?” he asked when Marcus picked up.

“Hey, you remembered the small talk,” Marcus laughed, but to Ryan he sounded distant, distracted. “You do listen.”

“Just enough to get by.”

“I told her what you said.”

“Is she going to at least lead you on and offer you false hope?”

“She said since it’s you asking, she’d think about it. I’m pretty sure she’d rather it was you chasing her.”

The pizza in Ryan’s stomach turned sour. Everything about Lolita was perfect. Her smile, her intelligence… the way her dresses hugged her hips. Despite his resentment toward Mel, he still loved her. Despite her abandoning them, she still held his heart captive.

Sixteen years
. He was a fool. “Keep playing cat and mouse with her and I just might start.”

“Alright, alright. No need to threaten. It’s late, what’s up?”

Ryan wasn’t sure how much to tell him, or where to start. In the end, he told him everything. When he was finished, silence filled the line. “Marcus? You still there?”

“Yeah.” A heavy sigh traveled the airwaves. “Damn, Ryan. I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

“You and me, both. They’re working on getting more data from previous images. Going back to the data packets that were the most reliable and working their way forward. We need to find a way to prove it, to let people know.”

“Let me think on it, kid.” Another sigh was emitted by his friend and Ryan hated himself for burdening Marcus with their doomsday conspiracy before they had more evidence. “Don’t talk to anyone else about this, Ryan. Promise me.”

“And become the monster-crier I see on my way to work every morning? Not a chance.”

“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Checking Mel’s cell one last time – still nothing – he sent the next picture and hid the phone. He was up to Eve’s sixth year. He had taken the pictures over the years with the hopes he’d be able to share them with Mel someday. Now, he wasn’t so sure he wasn’t sending them just to get her to make contact again, guilt-trip her into opening a dialogue.

In the living room, half of the pizza has been demolished. “Where did you put it all?”

“It takes an awful lot of fuel to keep this brain awesome,” she grinned. “You look better.”

“I feel better, Peanut.” He expected another wave of guilt over the lie and was surprised to find he meant it. A weight had been lifted off his shoulders in the telling. Marcus had connections. He was a respected environmental scientist. If anyone could figure out a way to tell the world what they had found without landing them all in the loony bin, it would be him.

“I think we should celebrate with ice cream and the Frankenstein episode.”

“Why stop there? Let’s pull out the stops and have sundaes.”

They stared at each other, both beginning to grin. There was only enough of their favorite flavor left for one person and they both knew it. As if a starter pistol had been fired, Eve launched herself off the couch and the race was on for the last bowl of mint chocolate chip.