The Sleepless Stars (17 page)

He tried to grasp it and failed. No way would he be able to use the jagged sliver to turn the key that was stuck fast in the lock.

As he sagged against the metal wall of the cage, another scream pierced the blackness. The idea of giving up never occurred to Ryder. Instead, he quickly devised a plan B based on the variety of ways felons used to escape their restraints.

He wasn’t flexible enough to pull his cuffed wrists to the front of his body, but if he could fashion a shim, he could slip a cuff open. One cuff open was all he needed. But first, he needed a thin sliver of metal, long enough to slip past the ratcheted edge of the cuff’s jaws. If Rossi was here, he could use one of her barrette clips. Not that he wanted her anywhere near this hellhole.

He paced his cage in frustration, awkwardly skimming his hands along the metal supports and places where the wire mesh walls connected, searching for any hint of a metal spur he could break off. Nothing except a few useless flakes of rust. Despite its age, the cage was well constructed.

A sudden silence descended from above him. No more sounds of protests or cries of pain. Had they taken Grey away? Or worse?

The cage creaked and swung as it was raised. Ryder blinked to force his vision to adjust as light spilled down from above. The elevator stopped a few inches shy of the main floor. Before he could attempt to mount any resistance, two of Tyrone’s men hauled him out.

The first thing Ryder saw was Grey’s body, crumpled on the floor, dark blood slicking the rock wall above him. He wasn’t moving, except for the heaving of his chest as he took one wheezy gasp after another.

The second thing Ryder saw was Tyrone’s smiling face. Ryder focused on Tyrone.

“What do you want?” Ryder stalled for time as he scanned the area. They’d brought more lanterns, allowing him, for the first time, to make out details of his surroundings. A tarpaulin-covered stack of crates stood against the wall near where Grey was. Another of the makeshift tables had been placed a few feet in front of it. On it were more papers, pens and highlighters, rulers and staplers, the detritus of planning an op.

Including paper clips. Several sizes of the wire kind—one of those might be useful to pick a lock, but wouldn’t work to shim one. Difficult, but maybe doable. Then he spotted the laminating machine and stack of fake IDs alongside a small pile of plastic shavings. And the slim box cutter used to trim them. Its thin metal blade would work as a shim—and then as a weapon.

Plan beginning to form, he stumbled toward Grey as if he’d just spotted the federal agent. “You killed him!”

Tyrone’s men lunged for him, but he moved a fraction faster, spinning to the side. Just far enough to stagger into the table, brushing his coat sleeve over it, sending the pile of IDs spinning into space. While one of the men bent to pick up the scattered IDs—all from Good Samaritan, Ryder noted in dismay—Ryder palmed the box cutter and slid it up his sleeve. The other man pulled him back to face Tyrone.

“Idiot thought he could escape,” Tyrone said, wiping his hands on a rag as if Grey’s blood and sweat had contaminated him. “I’m sure you’re smarter than he was, right, Detective?”

“I don’t know anything.”

Tyrone nodded to the man nearest Grey. The man yanked Grey up by the hair with one sharp, vicious movement that made Ryder wince. Then he drew a semiautomatic pistol and held it at Grey’s temple. “Certain about that? Enough to bet your friend’s life?”

Ryder steadied himself. He couldn’t shim his cuffs, not without attracting attention with his movements, and the box cutter wasn’t much use as a weapon, not while his hands were cuffed behind his back. All he could do was try to stall until they gave him a few moments of privacy.

Grey’s eyes rolled toward Ryder as if he couldn’t focus. The blood and coal dust coating his face weren’t helping. His gasps grew louder, and one arm drooped—dislocated or broken, Ryder couldn’t tell.

“Don’t,” Grey managed to get out before the man holding him kneed him in the kidneys. He crumpled to the ground. The man yanked him back upright, again placed the pistol to his temple.

Ryder scrambled for something that might convince Tyrone to release Grey. “I’m sure if Special Agent Grey told you anything, he told you I have nothing to do with the warehouse explosion investigation. I wasn’t even on scene last night when it happened.”

Tyrone narrowed his eyes. “But he said you know Dr. Rossi.”

Easy enough for Tyrone to find with a quick Google search, so Grey had done no harm. “I do. What’s she to do with you?”

“I’m asking the questions. Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.” It was the truth, but Ryder still sold it with everything he had, keeping his voice level, his gaze focused on Tyrone, his breathing steady.

Tyrone jerked his chin at the man with the pistol. Ryder tried to ignore the muzzle digging into the flesh beside Grey’s eye. But he couldn’t avoid Grey’s sharp cry of pain, despite Grey’s efforts to squelch it.

“Where. Is. Dr. Rossi?” Tyrone asked, making it clear it would be the final time.

Ryder didn’t flinch, kept his entire body still. He wouldn’t betray Rossi. Couldn’t condemn Grey by not answering. Either way, Tyrone would kill them both.

“I don’t know. Killing us won’t change that. Neither will anything else.” Like torture, he didn’t add—not wanting to put any ideas in the heads of men willing to murder a federal agent. He kept his gaze locked on Tyrone’s, the rest of the cavern blurring around the other man’s face.

Tyrone stepped toward Ryder, blocking his view of Grey. Tyrone’s scowl cleared, and he jerked his chin to his man holding the pistol. Ryder relaxed and dared a breath—Tyrone believed him.

The crack of a gunshot split the silence.

Tyrone stepped aside, giving Ryder a clear view of Grey’s body as it slumped to the floor, the side of his head covered in blood. Ryder’s breath caught, but then his training took over, and he forced himself to exhale slowly and breathe in again.

No one in the cavern moved or said anything—not even the other men gathered in the shadows at the front. All eyes were on Tyrone, including Ryder’s.

“That was Grey’s last chance. Now it’s yours.” Across the cavern, the man with the pistol stepped away from Grey’s body and aimed his weapon at Ryder. “Where is she?”

Ryder ignored the man with the gun to stare at Tyrone. “I don’t know.”

Tyrone pursed his lips. The man with the pistol waited, his face expressionless. Ryder felt strangely calm—maybe because he was certain that even if he did know where Rossi was, he would never tell them. Not because he was any kind of hero, not even because of his military training, but because she meant that much to him. He only wished he’d had a chance to let her know exactly how much.

Finally, Tyrone smiled and patted Ryder’s cheek with a move straight from
The Godfather.

“Good for you, brother?” Tyrone called over his shoulder.

Ryder watched in amazement as Grey climbed to his feet and walked into the light. He knifed the side of one hand against his head, slaking blood, mud, and coal dust from his miraculously uninjured face. One of the men handed him a wad of napkins to finish the job. “Took you long enough.”

“Had to make sure he wouldn’t give us anything else of value.”

“Told you I already got everything. But, as usual, I do all the hard work so you can have your fun and games.”

Grey smeared one of his “wounds” with the back of his hand across his mouth and licked his lips. “Ketchup and barbecue sauce. Nice combo.”

The two men now stood side by side. Same deep-set eyes, same mouth. Literal brothers?

“Who are you?” Ryder asked. He would have preferred to remain silent, less risk of further betrayal, however good intentioned, that way. But he needed to stall them, give him time to come up with a plan to stop them before they could go after Rossi and the children. Thank God, Grey didn’t know more than Price’s name—something he would have found anyway as soon as he looked deeper into Rossi’s history.

Pretending to be an ally, gaining your confidence, faked torture and execution—it was a manipulation that went back to the ancient Greeks, had been finely honed by the Gestapo, and yet still he’d fallen for it. He’d been so desperate for any chance to save Rossi.

This was exactly why she’d left. To protect them both. And still, he’d betrayed her.

“Kill him now?” Tyrone asked, raising his own pistol.

“No. Wait, you imbecile. He’ll make a useful hostage to compel Rossi.”

Tyrone looked disappointed as he holstered his weapon.

“Why do you want Rossi? What do you want? Why target her and the children?” Ryder peppered them with questions. If they stopped to answer even one, it would buy him time. Not that he was going to break free any time soon, but maybe, if he could get one of them close enough to use the box cutter...even with his hands restrained behind his back, he could swipe at their groin or femoral artery.

Tyrone tossed Grey the phone he’d taken from Ryder. “He got a text verifying Grey’s ID. I couldn’t trace the number, but it’s probably Price’s.”

“Of course you couldn’t trace it. Let me.” Grey removed a tarp from a stack of crates. A laptop waited for him. While he worked, Tyrone paced in front of Ryder, a smirk filling his face.

“It’s all a lie?” Ryder asked. Not because he cared about the answer, but because he needed to keep them talking, engage them while he figured out a new way out of here. Now that he knew they wanted Rossi, he had to make it out alive in order to warn her. The only thing he’d given Grey was Devon Price’s name, and Price was smart, could take care of himself—and he’d never give up Rossi, not with his own daughter’s life on the line.

“No,” Tyrone answered. “Special Agent Michael Grey is real enough. Assigned to a secret task force overseas in the Philippines, so it was easy enough to assume his identity here in the States.”

“That story about the Somalis, West Virginia?”

“Oh, West Virginia was also real. One of our brothers managed to lose part of his cohort in Atlanta. We,” he gestured to Grey, “tracked them to West Virginia. But there was no church burning, nothing like that. Mother prefers us to operate under the radar, so to speak.”

“West Virginia,” Grey grinned as he typed, “best place in the entire country for body disposal.”

“I disagree,” Tyrone countered. “Everglades.”

“No, no. Some buffoon kills the wrong alligator and finds body parts inside? But that slurry pond at the mine in West Virginia? We didn’t even need to weigh them down, sucked them right in like quicksand. Acid had them dissolved to nothing before we made it out of the state.”

“Why kill them at all?” Ryder asked.

“We have to,” Tyrone said in a tone that sounded as if Ryder was the one being unreasonable. What did he expect from two homicidal psychopaths? “Can you imagine the risk if they died under uncontrolled circumstances and some hillbilly doctor did the autopsy? Even if the experiment failed, those brains in the wrong hands—”

“Because of the prions, right? That’s how it spreads, through brain tissue. Like mad cow disease.”

“Or by being born into the right family.” He and Grey exchanged a glance at that. “Our job is to prevent any prions from escaping our control.”

“Who are you, the prion police? Do you know who infected the children with fatal insomnia?”

Neither man answered Ryder. Instead, Tyrone moved to peer over Grey’s shoulder at the computer. “Any luck tracking Devon Price?”

“Not yet. Number’s a burner, untraceable. Ideas?”

Ryder needed to distract them. If they found Price, they’d find Rossi, and it was clear that was their true agenda. He wished he understood why. “Tommaso Lazaretto? He was working with you? Or against you?” More silence. “What if I told you where to find him?”

That got their attention, Grey’s more than Tyrone’s. “What do you know?”

Ryder stuck to the truth—or rather, a well-educated guess. He wasn’t certain of the reality. Devon Price never told him everything. Best way to preserve their quasi-friendship. “He’s at Good Samaritan Medical Center.”

He left out the small part where Lazaretto was already dead.

FLYNN AND LOUISE
both stared at me. Flynn was the first to react, no surprise. “What did you say her name was? Francesca Lazaretto? Let me see what I can find out.” And she was gone.

I climbed to my feet, more than weary or exhausted, feeling as if my limbs were ready to dissolve into puddles, taking me down with them.

“I’m going to clean up,” I told Louise, heading for the bathroom.

“Leave the cap on. I want to keep monitoring your EEG, especially if you have another fugue.”

The wireless brain readings would go directly to her tablet, but I hated the thought of wearing the cap. It was tight and tugged at my hair and itched. My expression must have said it all, because Louise sighed with one of her “you’re acting like my toddler” sighs and grabbed a knit cap from the sleeve of a parka draped on one of the chairs.

It was black and bore the Steelers’ logo. “Devon’s idea of a disguise when he snuck me into his car,” she said, gesturing to the oversize parka.

“Wish I had a picture to send Geoff and Tiffi,” I said, a smile forcing its way past my exhaustion.

Louise shuddered. “Don’t you dare.” And she wondered where little Tiffany got her fashionista attitude.

I pulled the cap over the wireless EEG monitor. “How’s it look?” I turned to the mirror to answer my own question. The cap actually covered the ugly electrodes and their wire mesh filaments. Made me look normal—except for the purple bruises sagging beneath my eyes and my pale, cavernous cheeks. Too bad it wasn’t Halloween, I could easily have passed as undead.

I washed my face and patted the sweat from my body using one of Daniel’s ultra-fluffy towels. Poor Patsy. All those years, the distance between us...now I understood. How agonizing it must have been, losing the love of her life, raising his child by another woman, always fearful that her real mother would someday come steal her away.