Predator One (39 page)

Even now, with nothing more than the sound of his name on the air, Toys felt filthy, diseased, leprous—as if that name could taint the hearer.

Toys suddenly felt something, and it pulled him out of his terrified musings. It was more of a sensation rather than a noise. It was a something. A feeling, or an awareness. He straightened and looked around and immediately
understood what it was.

A disturbance in the bloody Force, he mused, getting to his feet.

A big man came out of the elevator, flanked by soldiers with weapons in their hands and grim faces. The big man carried no obvious weapon and wore a dark suit of the best quality. His face was equally grim, though. His eyes were hidden behind the lenses of tinted glasses.

Mr. Church.

Behind him was an
even bigger man. Brick. When Toys encountered Brick in the past, he’d tried—and failed—to strike up casual conversation.

Toys scrambled to his feet but stayed where he was, uncertain what to do.

As he approached, Church glanced at Rudy Sanchez’s room and nodded to the soldier who stood by the door but walked directly toward Circe’s room. Junie came out to meet him, and she gave him a powerful
hug that the big man—after only a slight hesitation—returned. Then he gently pushed her to arm’s length and looked past her to where Toys stood.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. There was no reproach, no accusation, no hostility. But there was also no room to sidestep or evade the question, even if Toys had wanted to.

“I came to talk to Junie, and stuck around after things started happening.”

“He’s been keeping me company and—” began Junie, but Church cut her off.

“Has he been in here alone at any point?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Toys. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Church’s mouth was a hard, unsmiling line. “If I thought I should worry about you, Mr. Chismer, you would not be here.”

From the way he said it, Toys chose to take it as a threat to his general existence rather than
merely to his being present at the hospital. He nodded, accepting any meaning Church wanted to imply.

“Toys is a friend,” said Junie, shifting her body as if wanting to put herself between the young Brit and the head of the DMS.

There was a movement, and they all turned to see Banshee come and stand in the doorway. The massive dog looked at Church.

“Violin brought her,” said Junie. “She wanted
to stay but couldn’t. She left Banshee here for Circe.”

“I know,” Church told her. He walked toward the dog, which held her ground and watched him. Church stopped and held out his hand to be sniffed. Banshee paused for a moment and then took his scent. Then Church bent close to the dog and spoke rapidly but softly to it in a language Toys did not recognize. The dog licked his hand, turned, and
went back into the room. Everyone stared at her and then slowly shifted their eyes to Church. To Junie, Church said, “I’ll be a few minutes.”

Church entered the room, closed the door, and drew the heavy curtains.

Chapter Eighty-six

Tanglewood Island

Pierce County, Washington

March 31, 5:46
P.M.

Doctor Aaron Davidovich opened his bedroom door and walked into the hall. There was a guard stationed ten feet away, and he turned toward the scientist with crisp military precision and natural suspicion.

“Sir,” he said, “may I help you?”

Davidovich smiled. “I want to take a walk. Get some air. Am I allowed?”

The guard hesitated, and Davidovich watched several emotions flicker on the man’s hard face. Davidovich was sure he could catalog them. He was sure that the man had been given what would feel like conflicting orders. Until today, Davidovich had been a prisoner; after all, he’d been brought to the island with a black bag over his head. This guard might even have been part of the escort detail.
At first Davidovich had been locked in his room with strict orders to stay there. The guards would know about that restriction. Then were was Pharos’s big speech about how Davidovich was now part of the family. An equal. Blah, blah, blah. All bullshit. Manipulative and clumsy. The guards would know some of that, too. Being allowed to spend so much time in the bathroom before had been a test of the
supposed tolerance and freedom. Everyone would know that. Pharos, the Gentleman, all the guards.

Exactly as they should have.

Just as Pharos would probably expect Davidovich to further test that freedom in some way. A stroll around the building would be one predictable way. A stroll on the grounds would be another.

How would the guard react? How were the orders phrased?

The guard took a step
back, thereby increasing the subjective control that a guard would have over a prisoner.

“Of course, sir.”

“So,” pushed Davidovich, “I’m allowed to go outside?”

The little muscles at the corners of the guard’s face tightened, but otherwise his face showed exactly zero emotion. It was a very “soldierly” thing for him to do.

“Absolutely, sir,” said the guard.

Davidovich smiled, but he exhaled,
too. To show relief. Everything here was theater, so he felt it important to run with that. To play his role.

“Which way is it?” asked Davidovich. “Can’t seem to remember the way.”

He laughed as he said that. Reminding the guard about the black hood. Making a joke of it. Sharing the joke.

There was the slightest flicker on the guard’s lips. “Let me show you.”

No “sir” this time. A more human
response.

Good, thought Davidovich coldly. That will make it easier.

The guard led him to a closed door, unlocked it with a keycard, pushed it open, and held it for him. There was a set of stairs, and the guard followed him up, through another door, along a corridor that looked identical to the one downstairs, and then out into the humid, misty day.

The sound was covered by a writhing layer
of mist that flowed like pale snakes under a thin blanket. High above them, pelicans glided in formation. Boats swung at anchor across the water, and, far out toward the horizon line, an oil tanker lumbered its relentless way from Alaska to some port in California.

Davidovich did not know which island he was on, but during the trip he’d overheard enough bits and pieces to know they were in Washington
State and that this was very likely Puget Sound. Collecting disparate data and assembling them into cohesive information were nothing to him. And since being in captivity, his survival depended on observing and assessing every fragment of data. About everything.

Every single thing.

There was a wide wooden porch with a slat rail built completely around the hotel. It was painted a rather bland
tan color. Artless. Darker brown benches were bolted to the deck against the wall at regular intervals. Beyond the rail the terrain varied. In some spots there were lush flowerbeds, in others patches of neatly mowed grass. They passed another guard, who stood watch at the entrance to a finger pier. Davidovich nodded to him. The sentry didn’t even look at him but instead cocked an eyebrow at Davidovich’s
guard.

“Taking a walk, Max,” said the guard.

The sentry responded with a single curt nod.

They walked on. In a few places, the rail overlooked stretches of a rock shoreline, where boulders were continually splashed with foamy seawater. Crabs scuttled over them. The rocks were patterned with overlapping splashes of new and old gull droppings.

“Can we go down to the water?” asked Davidovich.
“God, it’s been so long since I smelled the ocean.”

From the guard’s expression, he clearly wanted to say no. His smile was entirely plastic. “Sure. But you have to be careful.”

“Oh, I’m not going in,” laughed Davidovich.

There was a latched waist-high gate nearby, and Davidovich waited while the guard opened it. The scientist nodded thanks as he stepped through and then followed a short, winding
path down to the soft, muddy sand. Davidovich stood for a moment and took several long, deep breaths of sea air.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, grinning.

The guard nodded. “I guess.”

Davidovich squatted down. “Oh, look. Those stones look just like dinosaur eggs.”

The beach was strewn with many fist-sized black and charcoal-gray rocks that had been polished to smoothness by ten million waves as
they rolled and tumbled through the Pacific. Davidovich picked up a couple of them and studied the pores and curves.

“They really do look like eggs,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

“I guess,” repeated the guard. The man was already deeply bored.

“You know,” said Davidovich, “I almost went into paleontology. Loved dinosaurs when I was a kid. Well, when I say I almost went into it, I mean I thought
about it.
Jurassic Park
came out when I was in high school. Great flick, even thought Michael Crichton got most of his science wrong. You can’t really clone a dinosaur from blood in a mosquito. Everyone knows that. And using frog genes to patch gaps in dinosaur DNA? Don’t get me started on that.” He weighed one of the stones and then pitched it out into the surf. “Most people don’t really understand
dinosaurs. They didn’t evolve into crocodiles or Komodo dragons. No, the chicken has a lot more in common with velociraptors. Think about that next time you’re eating Chicken McNuggets.”

He stood up with several stones in his hands and spent a few minutes throwing them out to sea, scooping up more, throwing them. One of the stones clanged off a buoy and rebounded, skipped along the top of an
incoming wave, and then plopped down out of sight.

“Whoohooo!” shouted Davidovich. “You see that?”

“Nice throw, sir.”

Davidovich held a stone out to the guard. “How’s your arm?”

The guard shook his head. “That’s okay, sir.”

“Oh, come on. Have a little fun. See if you can hit that buoy?”

“Really, I’m not supposed to—”

“Not supposed to have a little fun? I don’t believe it. I will not believe
your orders specified that you can’t lighten up and fuck around a little. What’s your name?”

“Steve.”

“Come on, Steve. Just throw one. You’re not going to tell me that you can’t outthrow a computer geek, for God’s sake.”

“It’s not that,” said Steve.

Davidovich held out the stone, still grinning. “Won’t take no for an answer. Just one throw.”

“I—”

“Steve…”

The guard looked up and down the
shoreline as if expecting to see his fellow mercenaries or maybe Doctor Pharos standing there watching. He shook his head.

But after a moment he took the stone.

“Just one,” he said.

“You have to hit the buoy.”

Steve managed a small smile. A real one. “No problem.”

He tossed the stone up and caught it, fitted his fingers around it like a ballplayer, raised his arm, and threw.

It was a good
throw, but at the instant he threw it, a wave picked the buoy up and canted it to the left. The stone missed by an inch.

“Ha!” cried Davidovich. “You missed.”

“It moved.”

“Doesn’t count. My turn.” He picked up three more stones, switched two to his left hand, and with his right threw the other. It whistled through the mist and caught the buoy on the rise. The clang echoed back to them. “Got
it!”

“That was a lucky shot,” said Steve.

“Talk’s cheap. Money where your mouth is,” said Davidovich as he held one of the remaining stones out.

“I got this,” said Steve, taking the stone. He was grinning, too, as he set himself for the throw. “I fucking got this.”

He put a lot into the throw. Raising his left leg and stepping into the throw to put body weight behind a fastball pitch, he whipped
the stone above the waves, and it hit the buoy dead center mass. It struck a massive clang from the metal that was three times as loud as the sound Davidovich’s rock had made.

Steve laughed out loud and spun around, delighted that he’d won.

His broad, happy grin broke apart as Davidovich smashed the remaining stone into his face. The guard’s head snapped back, and he immediately fell backward.
Davidovich followed with desperate speed, hammering over and over with the rock as the man collapsed back onto the beach.

Over and over and over again until there was no trace of the smile, or the face, or the man. Only red horror. Blood leaped up around Davidovich as he continued to hammer at the man until there was no longer even a head shape.

Davidovich heard a sound. A high, shrill whimpering
noise. When he realized that it was coming from his own throat, he reeled back from what he was doing. The rock fell from his hand, and for a moment he stared at the intense red that was smeared all over his it.

He could feel the warmth of it. Smell it.

Drops of it burned on his face.

It was the first time he had been this close to real blood since that day when Boy had strapped him to a chair
and made him watch Mason and Jacob as they systematically dismembered and dehumanized a stranger back in Ashdod.

He fell backward and then scuttled away from the corpse like an upside-down crab.

Then a word exploded inside his head.

A name.

Matthew.

He stopped whimpering, stopped retreating.

Matthew.

Davidovich made himself look at Steve. Once upon a time, Boy had threatened to have Matthew
picked up. Threatened to have his testicles and eyes mailed to where they were keeping him. So Davidovich could see the proof of his son’s dismemberment. There was no way to know if Steve would have been part of that, but he worked for the Seven Kings. He might have participated. Maybe he would have held the boy down. Or handled the knife. Or shipped the package.

It didn’t matter.

“Matthew,”
he said aloud. Then he summoned the rage that was almost drowned beneath the ocean of fear. He used it the way it should be used. He pumped it into his muscles. Into his tendons and bones.

Get the fuck up,
he told himself.

And he got up.

Beyond the dead man were the waters of the Puget Sound.