The Sleepless Stars (11 page)

Daniel sipped at his tea, watching me. He knew exactly what I was thinking. “You have his memories. Why not search them?”

“Because it would mean reliving every murder he committed,” I snapped. “Besides, maybe the Lazarettos didn’t tell him what they wanted it for.”

“Leo had vision. Understood the power behind possibilities.”

“No more fortune-cookie truisms. Tell me.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you.”

<<<>>>

RYDER AND GREY
drove slowly up the mountain. Ryder craned his head, looking up through the windshield. “Stop. I see lights above us. Could be Tyrone and his men.”

Grey turned off the headlights and pulled over. He hopped out and headed to the SUV’s rear. Ryder opened his door, ice-covered branches scraping against the metal, and stepped into a snowdrift. He barely noticed the snow slipping into the tops of his Rockports, he was so focused on the mission. First thing, they needed backup. Along with weapons and better outerwear. A little aerial recon might help as well.

He joined Grey at the back of the Tahoe. Grey had a Remington 870 and a box of slugs for it.

“How many men do you have?” Ryder asked as he pulled his gloves off so he could dial.

“Who are you calling?” Grey snapped, frowning at Ryder.

“The sheriff’s department. It’s their jurisdiction.” Then he glanced at his cell. No service. Of course not, damn mountain. He’d forgotten how the iron ore interfered with what limited cell coverage there was on this side of the river.

“We can’t call anyone, not yet.”

“We sure as hell aren’t going in there alone.” Ryder glanced at Grey’s fancy leather shoes.

“First of all, we don’t even know where
there
is. Or who’s waiting for us. Those lights could be some kids partying or hunters or some other civilians. And if it is Tyrone and the Sons, we can’t risk spooking them.”

“What’s your plan?” Ryder asked, already certain he wouldn’t like it.

“I put a tracker on Tyrone’s vehicle. But I don’t know if he’s alone. And I’ve lost the signal.” He reached into the Tahoe and pulled out a camouflage parka and a pair of boots. “We’ll take a quick look—keep our distance, surveillance only. Got it? I don’t want you playing hero. You’re just here to observe and advise.”

Grey stepped away from the car and exchanged his overcoat for the parka. He was at the corner of the SUV, bent over to tie his boots, when the noise of ice cracking snapped through the air. Ryder spun, drawing his weapon, aiming into the darkness surrounding them.

“Drop the gun and keep your hands where I can see them,” a man’s voice came from the trees to his right.

Three men stepped out of the shadows, dressed in full winter camouflage down to the balaclavas covering their heads, each holding an assault rifle aimed at Grey and Ryder. Grey had been in the process of redressing, his SIG and shotgun behind them on the Tahoe’s rear gate, out of reach. Leaving them only Ryder’s pistol as a weapon.

The crunch of boots on the snow told Ryder that there were at least two more behind them as well. Grey raised his hands in surrender. The man nearest him grabbed him, aiming a pistol at Grey’s head.

“Your turn,” one of the men said. Ryder couldn’t tell which one, since the voice had come from behind him.

Outgunned, surrounded, no backup, an FBI agent as a hostage. Ryder’s lips twisted tight as he slowly lowered his weapon and set it on the Tahoe’s rear bumper. Another masked man pulled him away from the vehicle, and frisked him, taking his cell phone and wallet.

Grey was receiving similar treatment a few yards away from Ryder. “Clear!” one of the men shouted.

A final man, this one dressed in regular civilian hiking clothing, his face uncovered, stepped forward. He was a little shorter than Ryder, with dark brown hair and an otherwise unremarkable face. Except for the gleam in his eyes when he caught sight of Grey.

“Special Agent Grey, so nice to finally meet you in person,” the man—Brother Tyrone, Ryder assumed—drawled. He pulled a small black box, a vehicle tracker, from his pocket. “I believe this belongs to you?”

OZZIE GAVE A
single bark, then sank to his haunches and backed up until he was well outside the door to the room filled with decapitated heads.

“Good boy,” Devon told him. “You’re a damn sight smarter than me.” He knew he was going to regret this, but he had to investigate. Not because of morbid curiosity, but because he thought he recognized one of those faces floating in a jar. Maybe more than one. “Stay.”

Ozzie didn’t argue the point as Devon stepped back inside the room. Closet was more like it, about ten feet square, three walls filled floor to ceiling with metal shelving. He counted fourteen heads. Beside each one was a large plastic tub the size of a dishpan, sealed with an airtight lid.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” He reached for the nearest tub and snapped the lid off. Inside, arranged in sheets of plastic, resembling frozen hamburger patties sealed to stay fresh, were slices of brain. Except they didn’t look right. Weird holes honeycombed through them.

Devon yanked his hand back and reached for his phone. “Louise? I could use a pair of expert eyes over here.”

“All right, as soon as I’m done monitoring Angela. It’s really quite fascinating—more than the theta spindles, the brain activity in the speech and auditory areas of the brain are synchronizing as if they’re having an actual conversation. And your father’s stroke destroyed most of that area, so—”

“Wait. Angela is still with Daniel?” He glanced at the time; it’d been over two hours.

“Yes. Why? Is that unusual?” She spoke as if he was some kind of expert. Guess since he was the only person who’d watched Angela enter a mind, he was.

“I’m not sure. When I saw her do it, it only lasted a few minutes. But the person she was inside was—”

“Dying. If their brain function deteriorated while they were communicating with Angela, perhaps that broke the bond. Which means she’s wrong and it wasn’t her reaching out to them that killed them.”

“And so Daniel might not die after she leaves him?” Damn, he was rather looking forward to the old devil finally getting his due.

“Perhaps not. At any rate, both of their vitals are stable, no signs of any distress from either of them.”

“Still. If it lasts much longer. or if you see any change at all, you might want to pull her out.”

“What if that does more harm?”

He remembered when Angela entered his mother’s mind. Her brain had been too damaged for even Angela to reach, and it had been difficult to wake Angela back up—but she’d also shown “distress,” as Louise put it, enough so that even a layperson like Devon had known she was in trouble.

“No. She’ll be fine,” he reassured Louise, inserting a measure of confidence in his voice to hide the fact that he was half-ass guessing.

Speaking of freaky events... “Is there any chance Tommaso was working with Leo?”

“Leo Kingston? Your half-brother?”

“My half-brother, the sadistic serial killer, yeah.”

“Whyever would you—”

“Because the police never found most of his victims. Before he died, Angela pulled their identities from his memories, and I’ve been using the Kingston money to help the families. Angela told me Leo burned their bodies in the hospital incinerator, so we had no hope of ever finding any proof.”

“Devon. What did you find?”

“Their heads. Decapitated. Stored inside a special locked room at Good Sam’s that Tommaso kept hidden. Each one had their brains dissected, all sealed up in little plastic-wrap pouches. All with holes like Angela’s brain scan—but a lot more and bigger.”

Her inhalation was sharp enough to echo over the phone. “Don’t touch anything. Can you send me photos? But without—”

“Touching. Yeah, I got it.” He’d already taken photos of the faces to compare with the ones on the missing-persons fliers. Now he shot more of the slices of brain in the open container. “Sending them to you now. Each head has a container filled like this one. These are just from one of the tubs.”

“Yes, I see. Definite spongiform encephalopathy. And from the concentration in the thalamic area, probably the same disease Angela is suffering from.”

Devon stepped farther back, away from the room. “So, prions? He has brains infected with prions just sitting around? Why didn’t he keep them in the Almanac lab with all those special biohazard pods?”

“You mean the portable Level Three labs? That certainly would have been the proper procedure, at the very least. Technically, prions require Level Four containment protocols.”

“What do we do? I can’t just let these sit around for some clueless janitor to stumble on.”

“Don’t try to move them yourself. From the photos, it appears that Tommaso at least took some precautions. Still, it begs the question—”

“What the hell was he hiding from his own guys at Almanac?”

“Exactly. Otherwise, he would have been working in their lab with proper equipment.”

“Wait. Maybe he was using proper equipment. Just not here at Good Sam’s and not in the Almanac lab. Leo had several labs of his own set up in the tunnels. Where he perfected his PXA.”

“And probably synthesized the reversal agent for Almanac Care.”

“Exactly. Plus, Leo had access to any medical equipment he wanted. I’ll bet somewhere down in those tunnels there’s a Level Three biohazard lab set up, and that’s where Tommaso was working.”

“Until you and Angela discovered Leo and you took over the tunnels, cleared them out. Forcing Tommaso to move.” She paused. “If that’s the case, and he was hiding this second avenue of research from his partners at Almanac, then he would have kept a record of his findings. Probably video recordings as well as written notes.”

“Separate from the laptop he used here for his legitimate research, I hope. Because there wasn’t any in his lab near your office.”

“Don’t you think a phone would be more likely? One used only for this project? He couldn’t risk his partners in crime learning he was pursuing another agenda separate from theirs.”

“Maybe the same agenda.” Hell of a euphemism for infecting almost two dozen children with a lethal disease. “Only, Tommaso wanted to get there first.” Why the hell would they be competing to be the first to perfect an artificially transmitted prion disease?

“It would help if we had an idea what their objective was.”

“Is it safe for me to search the room if I don’t disturb any of the brain tissue?” He wasn’t actually asking for permission—he was going to find Tommaso’s research notes and didn’t care if in the process he exposed himself to the prions that were already killing Esme.

If he lost her, he lost everything.

TYRONE’S MEN RESTRAINED
Ryder and Grey, handcuffing their hands behind their backs. The cuffs appeared regulation, which gave Ryder hope. Ever since last month, when he’d been held by a serial killer, he’d resumed using an old patrol officer’s trick of secreting an emergency handcuff key inside his rear belt loop. All he needed now was a little time and privacy.

They crowded into the Tahoe’s rear seat, Tyrone in the front and one of his men driving, while another guarded Ryder and Grey.

“Who’s your friend, Agent Grey?” Tyrone asked once they were under way. He twisted in his seat, holding Ryder’s identification up and squinting as if doubting what he saw. “Detective Matthew Ryder. I know you. You got shot by that serial killer last month.”

Leo Kingston. The twisted genius who’d created the perfect chemical to torture his victims with. Ryder blinked, kept his expression neutral as pieces snapped together in his brain. Leo was hired to work on the PXA drug compound...and one of the uses of PXA was to temper the effects of fatal insomnia. Couldn’t be a coincidence.

Which meant these men knew Leo. Probably blamed Ryder for his death. Maybe Lazaretto and the others in the lab had been completing Leo’s work? Only one way to find out. He just hoped that he lived long enough to pass on any intel he might gain. “I know about the PXA and Leo Kingston.”

Grey jerked from where he sat on the other side of Ryder. Stared at him with a “What the hell are you thinking?” glare. But if Tyrone was working with Leo, then Ryder wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. The potential to gain useful information far outweighed any risks.

Tyrone merely chuckled. “Oh, you do, do you?”

“He was working for you. Was he also involved in the fatal insomnia distribution mechanism? Research genius like that, must have set you back when he died.”

“Maybe,” Tyrone conceded. “But not for long.”

Tyrone’s driver followed the twisting lane as it switchbacked through the forest, taking a virtually invisible turn onto an even more rutted and narrow trail. A lonely beam of light from above them teased through the thick trees as they headed up the mountain.

“I’ll give you this,” Ryder continued, trying to maneuver Tyrone into divulging something useful. “You guys definitely know how to play the long game. You infected those kids when? June? July? What was it like, sitting and waiting for their symptoms to appear, not knowing if it worked or not?”

“Easier than you think. We had other business to occupy us.”

“Pretty genius. A disease that works so slowly, you’re long gone before anyone even thinks to consider a terrorist attack. Not to mention there’s no known cure.” He paused, wishing he could see Tyrone’s face more clearly in the dim light. There was a spark of something there. He hoped. “At least not known publicly. But you have a cure, don’t you? You must. You’d never risk releasing prions without one. Did Leo come up with it? Or are you working with someone else? Like Tommaso Lazaretto?”

Tyrone’s mouth quirked, and Ryder was sure he was about to respond, but the SUV slipped and fishtailed. It was enough to divert his attention from Ryder to the driver. “Slow down, there’s no rush,” he snapped.

The driver nodded and obeyed. The trees thinned, and a clearing with several trucks and SUVs parked in it appeared. The lone light came from a lantern beyond them. The guard jumped out then hauled Ryder from the rear seat. While they waited for the others, Ryder had a chance to get his bearings. The mountain jutted up directly in front of him, a stone face broken by a squared-off opening bordered by heavy timbers and guarded by a chain-link fence. In the light of the lantern, he made out a sign above the entrance:
NO. 7 CAMBRIA COAL.