

Index of Suspicion

## By Terry Andreasen

Dedicated to the ones I love

Copyright 2019 Terry Andreasen

Smashwords Edition

Cover art courtesy of Dreamstime.com

ID 130158071 Eestingnet and 77377766 MaximGaigul
Forward

_Index of Suspicion_ is meant to be a story that the reader can sink into and swim through with a smile, a furrowed brow, nodding at Aha moments, half-wondering if this could actually happen, half-convinced that it already has.

The story opens in the SF Bay Area, the heart of Silicon Valley, though centered on the biotech, not the high-tech world. The characters reflect the rich cultural diversity of this sparkling, vibrant, and sometimes crazy area. From there the action moves to northern California, along the Klamath River, an area steeped in the history of the Yurok and Karuk people. The last section of the book is set in the Amazon rainforest, where events escalate and finally explosively converge.

The locations and plot lines are drawn from my personal experience. With a background in biochemistry and pharmacology, I spent thirty years working with R&D teams in Bay Area biotech companies. I've also spent many months both as child and adult hiking and camping in northern California; and have traveled in the Amazon rainforest, where I swam with piranha in the black lagoon at tiny La Selva.

Telling stories has always been a joy for me; I hope you like this one.

If you have any observations, suggestions, or corrections, please send your comments to klamathrivergold@gmail.com. I welcome all feedback, both positive and negative.

Thank you
Prologue: Amazon Rain Forest

One Year Earlier

It was just after 4 AM; his eyes felt gritty and there was a faint ringing in his ears. He'd driven in early, hoping to do what needed to be done and get away before daylight.

But it wouldn't be easy, destroying a year's work, especially when it was a success. He was tempted to swing the jeep around and drive away... but where to?

There was a sour taste in his mouth, and he coughed and spat, but it didn't help. No, the only thing to do was to get this over with and disappear, and it was best to do it now, while he still had the nerve.

What a joke that was... his nerves had been strained to the breaking point all week. He eased the jeep up close to the old mansion and shut off the engine. In the sudden quiet hush he could hear the nuns singing an early morning hymn in their chapel. It was something old and in Latin, and hearing it calmed him, blunted the razor edges of the thoughts jostling his mind.

So he sat and listened, trying to slow his breathing and let his mind drift. It wasn't cold, but the fever had made him sweat and now that it had broken, he was shivering.

But it had been the feverish delirium that had let him put it all together. The whole damn plot, finally.

He laughed softly. A success? My work a success?

Yes, surely. It'd been proven. All too grimly, right?

Okay, time to shut up and get moving. He climbed out of the jeep, reached in the back, and picked up the shotgun. After slipping a box of cartridges into his jacket pocket he walked through the garden, stopping at the beautiful Rodin statue to look up at the great old house. It was easy to take for granted, working there every day, but if you took the time to look at it, really look at it, you realized how special and magnificent it was. Soft moonlight caressed the roof edges and the ornate windows, but the darkness around the wall recesses and balconies was spooky, mysterious.

How many secrets had those walls seen in their time? Plenty, probably. But were any as bizarre as the ones he'd been working on?

He started to laugh again, but his eye caught the little cairn of white stones under the tree, and the laugh turned into a long sigh.

"Panis angelicus..." the singing was clear now, the beautiful, haunting melody and the high, lilting voices. He'd sung that himself, a lifetime ago, as a lad in the choir.

The meaning of the words came back to him.

"Bread of Angels... lead us to where we must go...."

He bowed his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were moist, and he whispered, "Zane, I'm so sorry. Kelsey, Trinity, Shari, forgive me for... for everything."

The garden path seemed strange tonight, dappled in moonlight and shadows, and he moved slowly, trying to be both quiet and alert. Finally reaching the tall front doors, he slid the key into the lock, still listening for unusual sounds, especially the low rumble of a truck engine coming up the dirt road, or hinges creaking as the outer gate was unlatched, and especially for boots crunching on nearby gravel.

But there was nothing. Not that it really mattered anyway. They would be too late - there was no stopping him now.

With a grim smile, he pushed open the doors, slipped in, eased them closed and rammed home the steel dead bolts. Okay – that should keep everyone out, at least for a while, and he wouldn't need long to do what needed – needed! – to be done.

Most of the windows were shrouded with heavy drapes, making the inside gloomy during the day and dark as a deep cave at night... or maybe dark as a tomb? But he felt little need for light; the pencil-thin beam from a tiny flashlight was plenty. He knew the way well, and went up the wide staircase with sure steps.

Yes, he knew where everything was, what everything meant, and, most important, how to destroy it all.

What he didn't know was that he wasn't alone.
Chapter 1: Lake

Day 1: Monday Night Mid-December

I unfolded the camping chair and set it near the water's edge. Grant Lake is in the hills above San Jose, on the way to Mt. Hamilton. That's the highest point around, which is why they put Lick Observatory there in 1880. Good old James Lick - who donated the money for it - made one fortune building pianos in South America and another selling chocolate in early California, and is buried under the main telescope.

But none of that mattered right now. What I needed at the moment was a night to myself, with nothing to do but sit quietly in the dark, sip beer, and relax. My plan was to hang out here for a couple of hours, then head across the road to the nearby campground. It should be empty this time of year – mid-December, and the rainiest year we've had in a long, long while.

I drove up in my old Ford pickup, the one I call Atlas. It has a wooden canopy over the bed, not quite high enough to stand in, but plenty big to carry camping gear and sleep in, so I can get away from the crazy rush of the Bay Area at a moment's notice. Funny – as busy and frantic as life in general and traffic in particular are here, you can get away and find solitude and peace in a few minutes, if you know where and when to go.

For me, this is one of the places.

The ground was muddy and the air icy, but so was my beer. I popped off the top with a smile and felt a warm sense of peace.

It occurred to me that this was Monday night and I'd missed the football game again. The Niners were playing somebody, but I'd lost track of the season. Normally I follow them pretty closely, but this last month had been way too busy.

If you'd asked me ten years ago, I'd have told you I'd be playing pro sports myself now. It didn't turn out that way, though. But the days of pain, the weeks of self-pity, the months of sweaty, jaw-clenching rehab – those were long gone, thank God, and my life was ticking along okay.

Room for improvement? Sure, lots of it. But all in all, life was good.

I took in a deep breath and looked around. Although the air was crisp and clear, rainclouds made an opaque cover, blocking out any chance of stargazing. Well, that was okay; all I really wanted was some solitary time to depressurize.

So I felt a momentary pang of irritation when car doors slammed in the little parking area. Even though it was a quarter-mile away, sounds carry in the cold, still air if you listen carefully... which is one of the things I've been trained to do.

More about that later.

Maybe they'd stick around their car for a few minutes, whoever it was, and take off. Day time travelers through here are common, and, in the summer, common at night too. But this time of year – especially this year – when the curvy roads are slick with water and iced up at night - and there are zero street lights - then casual night travelers are rare.

Well, whatever. Their business, as long as they kept to themselves.

Which, from the new sounds, was exactly what they weren't doing. The scuffling of footsteps on the narrow sandy road grew louder, and a few seconds later flashlight beams were bobbing around. From where I was they wouldn't see me, but with my night vision binoculars they should show up dazzlingly bright. And... yep, there they were: two guys, one short, slender, and carrying a bottle, and the other, tall and heavily built, had a small knapsack on his back and carried an ice chest.

The short one was waving his hands and talking pretty much non-stop.

"You're sure about this, Marley? Sounds insane to me." The voice was slurred, like he'd been drinking, but also fast and high pitched, like he was on more than just booze. The other guy – Marley, I guess – didn't answer, and they passed by, their sounds diminishing but not quite fading away. There was a picnic table a hundred yards up the road. Most likely, that's where they stopped.

Things stayed fairly peaceful for the next ten minutes, but that didn't last. Breaking glass, cursing, nervous laughing... none of it really loud or bothersome, but noticeable.

None of my business, though, right?

Right. I finished the last of the beer, slipped the empty bottle into my pack, stood and yawned.

A rustling sound came from the bushes on the hillside above me, then the sound of something skidding down onto the gravelly road. Quail? Not likely; maybe a raccoon? I was still carrying the night vision binocs and trained them on the source of the noise.

Cougar. Small one. Young one. It must have been creeping along the edge of the hillside and slipped down to the road, and now it was scrambling back up. I watched it climb the fifteen or so feet, and waiting up there was its mama.

There was a light breeze coming from the direction of the picnic table, and it carried a strong smell of barbecuing steaks. The big cats, downwind like all good hunters, were heading that way.

Maybe in the dark the two guys hadn't seen the posters at the trail head kiosk, the ones about local wildlife. Cute pictures of squirrels, rabbits, and foxes, sure, but also wild boar, coyotes, and a major display case warning about mountain lions. In the last few years I've been up here at least every couple of months and I've seen them three or four times. Always in the distance, but under the right conditions that could change.

Cougars hunt at night at well as in the day; they can see better, run faster, and jump higher than you can, and weigh as much as two hundred pounds. This one wasn't quite that big – maybe more like a hundred-fifty - but was on the skinny side, which meant hungry.

And this time of year food is scarce for apex predators. Tempting them with fresh meat in their own back yard is not just dumb, it's damn dangerous.

I flashed back on the first time I'd seem cougars – hiking in the Siskiyou range in northern California. My grandpa Lincoln had taken me backpacking – probably I was no more than seven or eight. 'Yupthukirar' he called them... 'mountain lion' in Karuk, his native tongue. Quite a guy, gramps; I'll have more to tell you about him later.

I stood there, binocs in hand, considering: Turn right and go back to Atlas, drive to the campground and stretch out for a quiet night; or turn left and go warn the two bozos about putting themselves in peril. It was a close call, because I'd had my fill of intense human contact this last month and really wanted personal R&R time. And it was a very small chance that anything would happen; wild animals shy away from people, so the chances of a confrontation were slim.

Slim, small chance.

Yeah, but not zero.

With a sigh I turned left and started toward them, keeping to the lake edge, away from the sand and gravel road.

Thinking back on it now, that was one Hell of a pivotal moment. How different my life would be – many lives would be – if I'd turned right instead.

There was no trail near the water, but no boulders or bushes either, so it was easy walking. The laughter got steadily louder as I drew nearer, then suddenly stopped, followed by a shout.

"Holy Christ, Marley, what're you doin'?"

I picked up the pace, arrived at a spot just below them, then went up the little spur trail. The little guy was kneeling on the picnic table next to a lantern and a small grill. Two very large steaks were cooking, three or four more, still raw, were stacked on a plate, and the bigger guy had just tossed another one a short way toward the woods.

By now I'd reached them, and saw what had their attention: sure enough, the big female mountain lion. She was very slowly edging toward them in a crouch, poised to either spring forward or turn and run. There was another pair of eyes glinting in the lantern light, smaller and lurking in the shadows. That had to be the youngster, just partly-grown but still damn dangerous. Mom was looking for food for them both

"Marley, please," the little guy whispered, "this is crazy."

The bigger one - who must be Marley – was standing on the other side of the table holding a small jar. He spit something red and blue into it, screwed on the lid, and stood looking out into the darkness, swaying slightly, unsteady on his feet.

"Throw her the rest of the steaks," I said casually, "then everybody just slowly back away."

The guy kneeling on the table jerked at the sound of my voice and almost fell off. Marley turned and looked at me... or maybe through me; it was tough to tell. His pupils were enormous, his breathing slow and very deep. It was wet, windy, with temperature in the low forties, but all he had on was a gray tank-top, tight fitting, and dark gym shorts. I guessed him to be about six-three, maybe two hundred thirty, which gave him an inch-and-a-half and twenty-five pounds on me. Well-muscled; not like a weight lifter, more like a very fit gymnast. A wavy blue tattoo circled around his right bicep - two dark lines interwoven in a helical pattern, with different colored dots in-between them.

His metabolism must have been cranking at top speed; even in the cold air, his skin was flushed red and his feet were bare. And also bloody; he'd been walking over the broken glass on the ground, but it didn't seem to faze him.

Without looking away from me, he set the jar onto the table and said in a low growl, "You should go. No place for you here."

I walked slowly around the table to face him... slowly, because the situation was damn tense and I didn't want to trigger an attack response from the cougar with any sudden movements.

"You're absolutely right," I whispered. "This is no place for me, or you either. Your buddy's right too – this is crazy... and dangerous. Could easily turn tragic."

"Not dangerous. No worries... these are my... my," he hesitated, trying to think of the right words, then very seriously whispered, "spirit kin."

His eyes narrowed and he blinked three of four times, and then said louder, in kind of a snarl, "Didn't I tell you to go away?"

Part of me wanted to laugh, but this guy was seriously hopped up on something, so I had to play it cool. And also honest, I wanted him to know exactly what was going on and where I stood.

"It's not you I'm worried about," I said softly. "As far as I'm concerned you can dive into the lake right now. Water's ice cold and you'd probably freeze solid in ten minutes... and I wouldn't give a damn if you did. No, it's not you – it's the big cats I'm worried about. If they tear into you and rip your guts out – which they will if you keep teasing them – then they're gonna be labeled as ruthless killers and hunted down. Maybe even this place gets closed. I won't let that happen. So you two just back off, get to your car, leave, and let me clean this up."

"He's right Marley," the little guy whined. "That mountain lion's getting antsy... let's go now."

"Shut up, Lester," Marley said, then turned and picked up a beer bottle, a liter sized German brand. It was one I recognized and liked, and was also unopened. He held it up in his left hand for me to see, then wrapped his right hand around the bottle neck and with a quick twist snapped the neck cleanly off.

And made it look easy.

He was smiling now. "I'll do the same to you if you don't get out of my way."

"Marley," I said, trying to stay calm even though I was getting pretty pissed, "you may be a bad-ass to beer bottles, but the cougars think you're just another idiot standing between them and a meal."

And then all Hell broke loose.

He must've run out of things to say, because he came at me in a fast charge, with the broken end of the bottle pointing at my throat.

We'd been eyeballing each other for only a minute, but it was clear that he wasn't going to meekly back down and walk away. No - he was flying high on booze and bizarre drugs, incredibly strong, and brimming with self-confidence.

So the attack wasn't a surprise, but his ferocity was. As he lunged, I leaned to the side and knocked his arm up and away from my face... or tried to, but he was so damned strong that it didn't quite work: the sharp edges of the glass scraped across my forehead and I felt warm blood running down my cheek.

With the muddy ground and the cuts on his feet it was tough for him to keep his balance and he slipped down to one knee... but recovered quickly, and, breathing hard, launched himself at me again.

This time, instead of leaning sideways, I moved in fast to meet him, grabbing his right wrist in my left hand and catching his neck in my right. I pivoted quickly and, using his own momentum, threw him sideways and down, keeping my right elbow locked and leaning my weight into him, shoving hard.

It was just a little table anyway – really more decorative than functional, meant for casual hikers to stop at and pose for pictures. So when he crashed into it the wood splintered with a loud crack, scattering fragments into the air.

The barbecue grill spun across the gravel, dumping out glowing embers. The platter of steaks spun away too, and the lions didn't miss a beat on that. She and the cub were on them in a flash, scooping them into their jaws and disappearing into the bush.

Marley wasn't moving.

He'd hit the table with his shoulder, and had no obvious bumps, scrapes, or cuts on his head. But he was unconscious, totally inert. A quick check showed his breathing to be slow and steady, as was his pulse.

Lester hovered over him, an anguished look on his face . "My God... what'd you do to him? Who are you, anyway?"

"Lester," I said, "what I did to him was trivial. What'd he do to himself? Or was it something you gave him?"

"Me? No... I... I –"

"Forget it," I shook my head. "We'll talk later. Right now we need to get good ol' Marley to an Emergency Room. Bayview Memorial is close by. What kind of car are you driving?"

"Tesla," he whined. "Convertible. He'll never fit like this."

"Alright, relax," I said. "I've got a pickup. Four wheel drive. You stay with him and I'll go bring it up here. Be back in ten minutes. Meanwhile try to keep him warm."

My backpack, which held the truck keys, was on the ground nearby, and next to it was the jar holding whatever it was that Marley spit out of his mouth a minute ago. I picked it up, looked inside, then shoved it into the pack, wondering what the Hell was going on.

Because it wasn't a tomato. It wasn't a cherry or a pepper.

No, it was a brightly colored, big-eyed little frog.
Chapter 2: Morning Calls

Day 2: Tuesday Morning

At 8:30 the next morning I was sitting on the balcony outside of my apartment sipping coffee and working on a Sudoku. Normally I'd be up and out the door before this but today was officially a day off – hadn't had any in a month – and besides it was late when I got home last night.

Lester and I'd managed to get Marley loaded into the back of Atlas okay, and the drive to Bayview Memorial had been slow but uneventful. Getting away from there seemed like forever though. The emergency docs took him in right away but wanted to get paperwork and background info filled out. Lester was useless – just a bundle of hyperventilating nerves - so I'd signed all the admitting papers and written what I knew about Marley's condition. Eventually Lester calmed down enough to give them his credit card to cover the expenses, and even asked for a private room with a good view.

We left the hospital parking lot at way past midnight and he asked me to drive him home. His apartment building – as in _his_ apartment building – is twenty-two stories of modern glass and steel near Stanford in Palo Alto. He owns the whole thing and lives in the penthouse at the top floor. I dropped him off at the curb and waved good-bye as a gray uniformed night watchman was opening the door and ushering him in. He'd been quiet on the way there, which was fine with me 'cause I was tired too, but just as we arrived he asked if I could give him a ride to pick up his car in the morning.

"I'll pay you whatever you want," he said. "I don't really want other people to know about this, but need to get my car and go pick up Marley. He'll be awake and ready to leave tomorrow, won't he?"

"Depends," I shrugged. "Why did he pass out in the first place?"

Lester just grimaced and shook his head.

All of which meant that I spent the night at my apartment instead of camping at Grant Lake, and didn't get to bed till after 2 A.M.

So sitting on the balcony at 8:30 on my day off seemed pretty early, but sleep hadn't come easily last night. Probably my brain was still tussling with the Breadbasket Case. Too many days in a row, too much coffee, too much pacing and chasing around. Four weeks of long hours, no time off.

We called it that 'cuz a small but powerful bomb had been planted in a basket of bagels and muffins. Not hidden as one of the wheat rolls; no, the explosive had actually been embedded within the ceramic material of the basket itself. By somebody who knew the way around a demolition lab, a potter's wheel, and some pretty sophisticated electronics.

The basket was on a lunch cart. The cart had been wheeled into a board meeting at Z-Max. They're a player in high performance robotic systems, just off of Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale. They went public earlier this year, got a truck-load of money, and everyone was all smiles and high-fives.

Well, maybe not everyone.

The bomb went off after the board meeting broke up, but the Director of Product Development was still in the room and had been killed instantly. The timer for the bomb hadn't been faulty. No, the explosion had been carefully arranged when to go off. The Director stayed to take down notes from the white board after everyone else left, something he always did after these meetings. During the crowded rush to leave the room, someone had unobtrusively pushed the lunch cart next to him.

He probably never noticed.

Technically, it had been ingenious; the ignition signal had been sent wirelessly, immediately after the Director answered his phone. Of course, the phone call was a set-up, done by a remote robotic device. An automatic voice recognition tool at the other end of the line identified the "Hello" as his, and the signal had been transmitted to a receiver embedded in the basket. Result: One loud "Boom" and one dead executive, with no direct human involvement. It was bloody and messy, a crummy way to go, but quick and very effective.

The weeks of slogging away at the case had paid off; yesterday we got a confession and the police made the arrest. The victim had been the target of a very personal vendetta, and the murderer had been - surprise! - a disgruntled employee, who didn't get quite as many shares of stock as he thought he deserved. The grudge bearing baddie had been at the board meeting but had never been sitting near the cart, and at the time of the explosion was in the break room joking with his fellow engineers.

The reason for the grudge was a squabble over patent authorship. In the high-tech world, the companies who own the patents run the show. The others pay heavy royalties or else fade into the ether. And the employees who are the patent authors – the inventors - make big bucks. Infighting over authorship can get fierce. Very, very fierce. Even murderous.

Ingenious crime, though done for the usual pedestrian reasons—recognition, money, and power. It had taken good and thorough, but not dangerous or brilliant, detective work to get the answers.

Good, thorough, and too damn many long days.

My part in it? Well, I work for Halliday Inc, a special services outfit. We provide technical expertise, much of it unusual, for hire. It turns out that a lot of our work is in forensics, and we're sometimes called in to assist local police in investigating crimes, the more bizarre or challenging the better. Why do they work with us? Budget and convenience. It's cheaper to hire us occasionally than to keep a full time staff on the public payrolls to do the same thing. And it's much more convenient and fast to handle it locally instead of sending everything to a distant government lab. We've got credentials: our workplace and methods are approved by OSHA, the FDA, the CDC, the DOE, the Bureau of Standards, every scientific and policy making body everywhere.

We're normally hired by individuals, or by private companies, or even various governments. Maybe one job in 20 involves crime analysis. I usually get involved in those cases, and I provide... well, I provide whatever it is that Halliday Inc can do.

Which is a lot. We have state of the art labs or arranged contacts with other labs to analyze almost anything. We have some very smart, very dedicated, and sometimes very sleep-deprived people who are good at untangling evidence from shreds and whispers of clues.

Sammy Zoder is our ballistics/explosives expert. It was his job to reconstruct the lunch cart explosion in detail. He treats a crime scene like the most carefully catalogued archeology site: everything is digitally recorded in visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light; every scrap of anything is given an individual number and noted by location, condition, and relationship to every other scrap. Surfaces are swabbed with various solvents. Every fragment is investigated and analyzed.

Some of the fragments were bits of ceramic embedded with tiny electronic circuits. After eliminating all other sources, he decided that those bits must have come from the basket itself; that was a major breakthrough.

His team digitally reassembled everything – including the victim, and was able to show that he was holding his cell phone when the bomb went off. They put the results into a slow motion video; it showed pretty much exactly what had happened, correctly identifying the location, type, and chemical signal of the explosive, and tying it to the voice ID trigger. After that it was a matter of tracking down the source of the phone call, then accumulating enough ancillary evidence to establish motive and nail down the suspect.

Final result: Case closed.

You could say that Halliday Inc. is just damn good at solving puzzles, using acute insight and modern technology. And lots of head scratching, footwork, and time. That's actually where I come in. I'm the footwork and time guy. I've been trained to sniff out the potentially useful evidence, make sure it gets properly gathered and transported to the labs, and handle any problems that get in the way.

Sometimes the problems are human. Occasionally they are rather passionate and driven to prevent me from getting evidence. Well, handling that's part of my job, too.

Anyway, there I was on my balcony sipping coffee when my phone went off. Caller ID said it came from Bayview Memorial, but didn't give a name.

"Good morning," I said. "Reid Durham here."

"Hello," the caller responded. "This is Don Lund – I'm a doctor at Bayview. I'm handling the case of Marley Granger. We've run a battery of tests and have some puzzling results. I'm hoping that you can provide me with some background info on him."

"I don't know a lot," I answered. "Just met him last night. The only reason I drove him to the ER was because Marley was unconscious and his partner's car was too small. Besides, the roads were dicey and I wasn't sure he could make it."

"Uh huh," the doc said. "And his partner is...?"

"Lester. Lester Clovis. He's the one you should talk to."

"Right," he went on, "well, we don't have any contact info for him. Your phone number was the only one on the admission records. So if you wouldn't mind... could you come by my office this morning? Mr. Granger is still deeply unconscious, and I'd like a better idea of how he got that way."

I blew out a long breath, then nodded.

"Alright, sure. How about 9:30?" I was curious about Marley too. He'd acted pretty damn strange last night and it would be interesting to hear what the doc knew.

"That's fine. My office is room 422 in the D-wing. Thanks for your help, Reid."

I was still holding my phone because I was about to give Lester a call, to tell him that I couldn't pick him up till around 11, when it rang again.

This time I recognized the number: Axel Karlsen, my sometime cop partner who is also my brother-in-law.

"Hey, Axel, what's up?"

"That's what I want to know. Slim Sanchez from DIU just called me. You know him, right?"

"Sanchez? Sure." DIU is the Drug Investigation Unit. I started getting a funny feeling about this.

"Yeah, well Slim says that he got a report this morning from a doc over at Bayview. There're some questions about a patient who was admitted last night, and your name is on the admission form. What's with that? I thought you were heading out to go camping by yourself."

"Didn't work out," I said, and gave him a brief rundown on what happened. Then I finished with "I got a call from the Bayview too. The doc who reported this to DIU - was it Don Lund?"

"That's right," Axel said. "Don's a good guy. We've worked with him a half-dozen times before. He's got a sharp eye and a lot of experience. What'd he want from you?"

"Uh... probably the same as you do. He wants to know more about Marley Granger. I do, too. So I'm meeting Lund in his office at 9:30."

"9:30?" I heard him groan, then "okay, I'm going along too."

"I thought your vacation started today, getting ready for tomorrow."

"I know, I know," he said, sounding a little exasperated. "Trina's been on my butt all week about getting packed, but if we fly off and leave her little brother in the middle of a DIU investigation, she'll be really pissed. So I told Slim that I'd look into this today and if he needs any follow-up then you and he could work on it together."

"Follow-up?" I said, "Look, I don't mind spending an hour talking to Lund, but I'm not volunteering for any follow-up."

"Reid, Slim did some scrounging into this Granger guy's background. Seems he's on the research staff at the Waxman Institute. He thinks there could be more to this, and his group is swamped with work now. So I might have, uh, sort of tossed your name out there as someone who could help."

"Axel..."

"Look Reid, let's go hear what the doc has to say. Then you have a quick chat with Slim. I'll pass on Lester Clovis's name to him. It sounds vaguely familiar to me, but Slim'll know more. He's not gonna ask you to do any heavy lifting on this, maybe just spend a day scouting around. Anyway, I'll see you at 9:30."

Well. So much for the personal R&R time, huh?

Alright, I'd gotten two unexpected calls. Now it was time to make one.

I punched in Lester's cell number.

He answered on the second ring, still sounding shaky. "Oh hi Reid, I was hoping it was you. I didn't sleep at all last night. Too upset about Marley. And my car... what about it? Is it safe up there? Do you think someone would break into it? Would it get towed, or-"

"Lester," I broke in, "that's what I'm calling about. Your car'll be fine, but I'm kinda busy this morning, so I won't be able to swing by your place until 11:00 or so."

"So late? But I should be at the hospital now, sitting in his room. He's a sensitive person - doesn't get along with most people. He'll need me there."

"Lester, the doctor who's taking care of him phoned me this morning. Marley is still zonked out. The mystery is why. When I pick you up later, have some answers ready, okay?"

He agreed, sounding stressed, and hung up.

I leaned back in the balcony chair, finishing the last of my coffee and looked at the jar sitting next to the Sudoku book. Inside of it was a bit of gravel, some mud, a few leaves, and the little red and blue frog, looking peaceful and content.

Well, I'm glad somebody was.

Chapter 3: Bayview

Day 2: Tuesday Morning

At 9:30 we were up at the fourth floor of Bayview, sitting in Dr. Lund's office. At 10:30 we were still there, still talking. We'd gone over the events at the lake and the doc had explained the meaning of the tests and told us what he could about Marley Granger's condition. It went something like this.

"Yes," Lund said, "Mr. Granger had alcohol in his blood, plenty to make him legally drunk, but not enough to put him into this hibernation state. He had some bad looking cuts on his feet, but only one was very deep. Minor bruising on the back right shoulder, probably from landing on the picnic table. No marks on his head and the scans don't show any brain damage. No evidence of any chronic disease, all organs intact and functioning. Altogether an impressive physical specimen... except that he's in a coma."

"His whole persona was pretty bizarre," I said, "very large pupils but he seemed to have trouble focusing. Speech was slow and deliberate. No sensitivity to the cold weather or pain from the broken glass. And strength... he's a fairly big guy, muscular, in good shape, but he snapped the top off that beer bottle like it was a pretzel. He claimed to have some sort of affinity with the lions, but they didn't seem to share that opinion. They were hungry and he was taunting them with raw meat. When I pointed out that that was going to end badly, he went berserk."

Lund nodded. "That sounds like he was on some sort of hallucinogen, but our tests don't show any. When you ingest a drug, it normally has an effect for a limited time because your body either inactivates or gets rid of it. It's excreted intact through the urine, or chemically modified by a system of enzymes. That usually turns the active drug into a relatively harmless non-entity, which is also excreted. We have tests to detect both the active drug and the metabolic products, as they're called. But we just didn't see any in Granger's saliva, urine, or blood."

"At least," he went on, "not any of the common ones; but we did find some uncommon ones – they show up as unidentified peaks in our chromatographic analyses."

He looked at Axel, "Could he have gotten hold of any strange, new hallucinogens? Maybe from this other person... Lester Clovis?"

Axel leaned forward. "Slim Sanchez in our Drug Unit knows about Lester. He's got plenty of money, likes to spend it, and is called the Candyman in the local bars. He hooks up with good looking young guys and shows them a fun time for free....a good source of very expensive, high quality recreational drugs. But I don't know about hallucinogens... you mean stuff like LSD or peyote?"

Lund shook his head. "We'd have found those if Granger had any in his blood. But he didn't. It must be something else. Something new."

He drummed his fingers on the desktop for a few seconds, then looked at me. "Reid, in the admission records you wrote about him being exposed to a frog. What'd you mean by that?"

I reached into my pack, took out the jar, and set it on Lund's desk. "When I got to the picnic table Lester was babbling away but Marley wasn't saying anything. Then I saw why – he had this little critter in his mouth."

"What the Hell?" Axel leaned forward, picked up the jar, and started tipping in sideways to dump the frog into his hand.

Lund leaned forward quickly, "Easy there, Axel. Don't be too quick to touch it?"

"What... this cute little guy?" Axel smiled and jiggled the jar slightly, spilling the frog into the palm of his left hand. "C'mon - he's no bigger than my thumbnail."

"Axel," I said a little too loud, "hang on a sec and listen to the doc, willya? I've hiked pretty much all over California and never seen a frog like that. We don't know what it is or where it came from, other than Marley's mouth... and look what happened to him."

He frowned, but put the frog back into the jar and set in down. Lund picked it up, slowly rotating it and peering inside for a close look.

"Unusual color and markings," he half muttered to himself. "You know, I've read about tropical frogs that secrete strange chemicals onto their skin."

He glanced at Axel and added, "Often poisonous. But where would you find something like this around here?"

I slipped the jar into my pack and looked at them both. "Maybe at the Waxman Institute?"

Lund leaned back in his chair, looking at me curiously. "Yeah, okay, that could be... but how would Marley Granger have gotten it?"

"Turns out he works there," Axel said. "Research scientist of some sort."

"The Waxman," Lund nodded, "that makes a lot of sense. Funny thing is - I was thinking of giving them a call this morning. We've worked with them three or four times in the last few years. They have experts in unusual drugs and toxins, and can test for a lot more than we can. They might be able to identify the mystery peaks we saw in Granger's samples."

"They've worked with us, too," I said. "Halliday's has a business relationship with them as one of our specialty testing facilities. Expensive, but world-class and unique."

"Sounds like we should pay them a visit," Axel said. "You ever been there?"

I shook my head. "No, but think Autumn Kool can arrange a visit."

"No doubt," he smiled, "that lady can arrange anything. But I'll ask Slim to give them a call too, just to ensure their cooperation."

"Good, good," Lund nodded. "And, if you come by here tomorrow morning, I'll give you samples of Granger's blood and urine to take over. If I'm not around, check with the staff at the nursing station. They'll know what to do. And, uh... don't forget to bring the frog."

We tossed around a few other ideas, but nothing useful came up, so we stood, shook hands, and said good-bye.

Axel and I took the stairs down to the parking lot. He hung back a few steps, talking on his phone the whole time. When we reached the cars he caught up and asked, "What's your next step on this, Reid?"

"Heading over to Lester's," I answered. "He needs a ride back to Grant Lake to get his car, and it'll give me a chance to find out more about what he and Marley were up to last night. That's it for today, though... I'm supposed to be off."

"Uh, yeah," he went on, sounding almost – but not quite – apologetic. "That was Captain Mills on the phone. He's worried about Granger's case being the start of a new wave of super-strong drug zombies who feel no pain. It turns out that we had a problem with the Waxman before, so when you're out there tomorrow the Captain would like you to nose around. Look for any chance that Granger is into any kind of drug scheme."

I laughed. "Axel, if it's that serious, the Captain probably wants Slim involved."

"Yeah, well, here's the thing, Reid. As far as we can tell, what Granger and Clovis were up to may have been stupid, but nothing criminal occurred. And Slim and the other guys in the DI unit already have their hands full... and I hate to bail on you, but we're leaving for Europe in the morning –"

"Right," I interrupted. "I haven't forgotten – I'm driving you to the airport."

"Yeah," he said again, "so the Waxman visit - It's gonna have to be just you. The Captain said he'd clear it with Ms. Kool to extend the contract for your services. Look, it'll be just one day... two max. Then you can kick back and relax."

I sighed, but had to smile. "Alright... one day, two max. Then, damn it, I'm getting away by myself to somewhere isolated and unknown."

Funny how a person can be so wrong, and so right at the same time....

Chapter 4: Penthouse

Day 2: Tuesday Afternoon

I rolled into the parking garage at Lester's apartment building – The Pax Turrim - and slid into one of the Guest Only slots. It was a short climb up a flight of steps to the lobby, a brightly lit, high ceilinged, marble floored space with fresh flowers in vases and artwork on the walls.

In the center was a small post office and around the periphery a magazine shop, hair salon, gym/dance studio, and coffee shop. For dinner and drinks there was the Skyview Lounge on the twentieth floor.

Impressive.

A uniformed attendant – not the same one who'd hurried out last night to meet us – approached with a smile and asked if I required any assistance. I returned the smile, said "No," and keyed Lester's number into my phone.

He answered on the second ring.

"Oh hi Reid, I was about to call you. A friend gave me a ride up to get my car – we just got back. So... thanks anyway, but guess I don't need your help."

"Ah, well that does save me some trouble," I said, "but I'm already here – down in your lobby. If you have a few minutes, I'd like to get together. I'm still curious about last night."

"Oh," he sounded hesitant. "Is that really necessary? I wanted to go to the hospital... to visit Marley. I'm worried about him."

"I was just there," I said, "talking to his doctor."

"Oh," he said again, "well then... yes, I'd like hear what he had to say. Use the elevator marked private. It's the only one that goes above the twentieth floor. You have to key in a code to get up here – it's *1017."

"Okay, Lester. See you in a couple minutes."

The private elevator was in a corner away from the shops. The doors slid open soundlessly, and as I stepped in I caught sight of the attendant watching, a frown on his face. The inside was round and completely enveloped by a smoothly curved mirror. Except for a small phone and keypad, that was it. I tapped in the code, the door whooshed shut and the ride up was quiet, fast, and vibration-free.

When the doors slid open, I stepped out into a smallish – maybe ten by ten feet – room, floor, walls, and ceilings a bright white. Two security cameras were pointed at me. A door at the other side clicked open and a lady stepped out, with Lester just behind her.

"Ah -Reid," he smiled, "thanks for coming by. This is Charlotte, my friend for the last twenty years."

As she and I shook hands, he added, "Careful what you say to her. She keeps notes on everything. Says she's going to write a book. Probably a dreadful expose of passion and vice."

"You better believe it," she nodded to me. "I've got enough dirt to sink a lot of ships... uh, if you don't mind the mixed metaphor... anyway, it's good to meet you, Reid."

"The pleasure's mine," I smiled. "So you took Lester up to Grant Lake for his car?"

"Yeah," she said. "We just got back and had a beer. Les has the best stock of imported stuff you'll find anywhere. He said that you and he got involved in an incident last night, but wouldn't give me any details."

I glanced at Lester, saw a flash of concern cross over his face, then turned back to Charlotte.

"Yes, that's right."

She looked at me expectantly, waiting to hear more. I looked back, still smiling, but not saying anything. After a few seconds she laughed, shook her head, and moved into the elevator. As the doors began to close, she leaned toward us and said, "Alright, try to keep it quiet. But I'll find out... no one keeps secrets from Charlotte."

As Lester and I moved through the outer door into his penthouse suite, he shook head. "For such a dear old friend, she can be a horrid busybody sometimes."

He led me through the foyer and past an ultra-modern kitchen into a cozy sitting room. It was small but lushly furnished, and had panoramic views of the Bay on one side and the hills on the other.

He plopped down into a plush armchair and motioned for me to take its matching one on the other side of a glass coffee table.

"Look," he said, all congeniality vanishing from his face, "just tell me – are you a cop?"

I shook my head. "Nope."

"Then why'd I get a call from Sergeant Sanchez this morning? How'd he know anything about what happened last night?"

Okay... I hadn't expected that, but it made a convenient opening for me to start him talking, so I went with it.

"The cops phoned me too," I shrugged. "Doctor Lund – he's the one taking care of Marley – called them early this morning."

Lester looked agitated. "Why would he do that?" .

"You tell me," I answered. "Maybe it's because he's got a patient who's in a coma and he's wondering why. Maybe you can tell me something about that?"

"Me? You're the one who threw him into the table, busting it and him, too. You probably fractured his skull... he's lucky to be alive."

"No, that wasn't it," I said, "The table was thin slats of pine with plastic supports. If it wasn't for the sandbags on the legs, a strong wind could have blown it over. The doc says that Marley has no fever, no signs of infection, no head trauma... oh, a few weird results on their drug tests though. Does that mean anything to you?"

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, then sighed and looked up. "Look, I don't know. We had dinner here and some whiskey, a few joints, nothing much. That was it... I mean, it was really light. I offered more. I've got almost anything you could want here - recreational only, you understand... nothing that'll fry your brain - and high quality, too. But he said no, that he had something better, way better. And then he brought out that box."

He pointed to a small wooden box sitting near the center of the table. Shiny, black enamel, and just big enough to hold a decks of cards. "It's empty now, but last night there was some weird-ass stuff in it. Marley slid the top off and took out a little pill, like a cold medicine capsule. The top half was pale blue, the bottom was clear. And there was a powder inside. He held it out, showing it off to me, grinning like he's got some cool secret. 'What's that?' I asked him, but he just smiles and said 'Doesn't do much by itself, but mix it with what else I brought and it makes the stars sing.'"

"Makes the stars sing?" I asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Lester shrugged. "I dunno... I'm just telling you what he said. Marley can get poetic sometimes, especially when he's a little high. He's really smart, you know. Really smart. Just doesn't get along with people very well. Anyway, he popped the pill in his mouth and swallowed it. Then he pulled a jar out of his backpack. You'll never believe what was in it."

"Hang on," I said, "let me guess." I reached in my own pack, took out the jar and set it on the table.

Little Mister Froggy was hopping around contentedly. "This little guy?"

Lester eyes widened in surprise. "Jesus! How'd you get that?"

"Last night, at the lake."

Lester rubbed the back of his sleeve over his mouth and coughed. "Yeah, that's it. Marley dumped the frog out of the jar into his hand and then popped it into his mouth. Grossed me out! Then after a few seconds he got this glazed look on his face and spat the frog back into the jar and said that he needed to get outside, needed space, someplace wild."

"So you went up to Grant Lake," I said.

"Yeah. That's the closest kind of wild place I could think of. We packed some food – he'd brought along big steaks in his backpack- and we drove up there. After we walked out to the picnic table he started complaining about being too hot, and he stripped down to shorts and tank top. I told him he was crazy, but he just laughed and was having so much fun I started laughing too. We got a little wild, drinking and breaking the bottles. And then he popped that friggin' little frog into his mouth again and kind of went into a trance... and those mountain lions showed up... and then you showed up...."

Lester grimaced, a look of near anguish on his face.

"When he crashed into that table and was just lying there, bleeding... hardly breathing... I was so worried. It still freaks me out, just thinking about it." Lester's eyes grew moist and he got quiet. I didn't say anything; just waited for him to continue when he was ready.

After a minute he did. "He's such a beautiful young man, but no one understands him."

"You do, though?"

"Well, he trusts me. Tells me things that he won't say to other people."

"Things about the Waxman Institute?" I asked.

Lester sat up. "You know about that... about Marley working there?"

I nodded.

"But - you said you're not a cop," he said, frowning.

"I'm not," I shook my head. "But I work for a place that does investigations, and some people are concerned that Marley might be using a new drug of some sort... something exotic and powerful... and they think maybe he got it from the Waxman labs. So they asked me to go there tomorrow and check it out."

"You're not going to make trouble for Marley, are you?" He sounded worried.

"I'm not making trouble for anybody," I said. "People make trouble for themselves."

"I can't afford to have this kind of story come out," he said, the worried sound ratcheting up to anguish. "If Marley... if this turns out bad... I could lose everything. My brother and sister are going to inherit the Clovis Chocolate empire, that's a given. I mean, they've got MBA's, love spreadsheets and stock portfolios. I'm just the freaky older brother. The family queer. So they gave me a 10 million dollar allowance and told me to stay off in a corner and keep quiet. And so far I have. But this would be a problem."

"Lester," I said softly, "relax. I won't bring your name up tomorrow. And the police aren't particularly interested in you. It's Marley they're looking at – because of his connection to the Waxman."

"But what if Marley dies?" Lester voice was a quiet wail.

I shrugged. "Dr. Lund didn't seem too worried about that happening. At least not yet; but I suppose the longer he stays unconscious the worse it is for him."

Lester clasped his hands together and pressed them against his forehead like he was praying. After ten or so seconds he looked up at me.

"That's a dangerous place," he said. "The Waxman. Marley got sucked into something there, and now he doesn't know how to get out."

"Uh huh," I smiled. "That could be important. Tell me more."

"I don't know much more," Lester shook his head. "No details. Just that something big is going on. Big enough that one of the other guys involved was killed. 'Executed', Marley said. They executed him before he could blow the deal."

"Someone on the outside, or one of the Waxman people?" I asked.

"One of the prof's at the Waxman," Lester nodded. "An important guy."

"You think this might be a drug scheme of some sort?"

Lester shook his head again. "No... Marley never said anything about drugs. I think he would've told me if it was."

I nodded, thinking that this story may not be totally factual, but it probably wasn't total BS either. Somewhere in between.

After a few more seconds Lester stood and fidgeted nervously. "Look, Reid, that's all I know. Marley was involved in something there at the Waxman. But he's just a player. Somebody else is running the show. And this someone else had one of the other players knocked off. And guess what – they covered it up by making it look like suicide... but it wasn't. Something big is going down. I swear, that's what he told me."

Ten minutes later we'd run out of things to talk about, but what I'd learned had been interesting. Tomorrow's visit to the Waxman should be even more interesting.

I rode back down the private elevator, thinking that the case was spiraling upward.

Where would it lead?

As it turned out for me – everywhere.

Chapter 5: Situation

Day 3: Wednesday Morning

Kelsey waved to the security cop in the lobby as she walked toward Victor's office. He'd phoned her at home earlier this morning, asking her to come by as soon as she got in. That was unusual. Sure, as Director of the Waxman, Victor Akino was accustomed to putting in late hours and sitting through marathon meetings at most times of the day or evening; but it was rare for him to arrive before 9:00 AM. It was even more rare for him to phone you at home; in fact, she couldn't remember him ever doing it before.

His office door was open, so she walked right in. Niles was already there, sitting at the small conference table next to the window. Victor was standing behind his desk, talking on the phone. He smiled when he saw Kelsey and motioned for her to close the door and take a chair.

She leaned across the table toward Niles and whispered "What's up?" but he just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. They waited in silence for another thirty seconds, when Victor hung up and ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. He walked to the table, flopped into the seat between them, slapped a notebook onto the table, and rubbed a hand over his chin.

' _He didn't shave this morning_ ,' Kelsey thought. ' _This must be serious._ '

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Victor said. "That was Bayview Memorial Hospital on the phone. We've, uh... got a situation."

"Again?" said Niles. "What – another poisoning problem they want us to figure out?"

"No, no," Victor shook his head. He looked agitated.

"Injury?" Kelsey asked. "Someone's hurt?"

"Please," Victor held out his hands to stop the questions. "It's not their problem, Niles, it's ours. And yes, Kelsey, someone is injured."

Before they could ask who, he said, "Marley Granger. He was admitted late Monday night – or early Tuesday morning, it's unclear."

Niles jerked slightly in his chair, then relaxed, leaned forward, and said, "No, not Marley.... Really?"

"'Fraid so," Victor nodded. "He was unconscious when he arrived at the emergency room, and still is. That was the doctor I was just talking to. He doesn't think it's life threatening, but has some questions about what Marley could have been exposed to... and I didn't know what to tell him."

Niles frowned and ticked off questions in rapid fire. "That explains why he wasn't around here yesterday. So where was he when this happened? Who brought him in? Did somebody bash him in the head? Is he in a coma?"

Victor held out his hands again. "Hold on, will you? I don't have any details yet – but we'll be getting a visitor in an hour or so. That's why I asked the two of you to come by this morning."

"A cop?" Niles said, "Why? What was Marley up to?"

"Please," Victor said, "just wait. The first I heard about it was last night when the police phoned me at home. It was a Sergeant Sanchez, calling to let me know that one of our employees was in Bayview. He said there weren't any criminal charges yet, but they did want to do a, uh... I think he said 'a thorough check on the situation'. I asked what he meant by that, and he said it would all be clear today when we met our visitor. Then he patched me into a call from a contact of mine over at a place called Halliday's. Either of you ever heard of it?"

Kelsey and Niles both shook their heads.

"We've worked with them a few times before, helping each other to identify unusual materials. We can do some things that they can't, and they can do some things that we can't. Last year, Kelsey – you remember that little tube of oily gunk that I asked you to analyze?"

"Oily gunk? Mmm...ohh –sure. It looked like thin grease, but was full of snake toxins, right?"

"Yeah, that's the one. Apparently it was used in a series of murders. That was something they asked us to do. Paid nicely for it, too."

"That was an odd mix," she said. "Not normal stuff. Where'd they get it?"

"They didn't tell me, and I didn't ask. Not really our business where it came from; just what was in it, and how much they'd pay us to find out."

Niles cleared his throat impatiently. "I think we're straying off the point here, Vic. What's all this got to do with Marley?"

"Oh, sorry. Well, my contact at Halliday's wants us to meet with one of their operatives. His name is, uh..." He checked his notebook. "Okay here it is - Reid Durham. Apparently Marley was high on something and ran into trouble. Exactly what, she didn't say. The police think that whatever it is came from here, and asked Durham to come over and talk to us. That's not all, though. He has something else to show us, and another issue to discuss."

"Sounds pretty strange," Kelsey said, "and vague, too. Any idea what he means?"

"No. She didn't say any more about it, just asked when a good time would be to come by. I suggested 10 AM. We can talk for a while and then have sandwiches brought in for lunch. I want to make it a relaxed atmosphere."

"So Vic - is this guy a cop?" Niles asked. "Sounds like you're not sure."

"No, he's not. But we need to treat this as an official investigation. Be clear and honest, but careful. If he finds that Marley was stealing drugs from our labs and selling them on the street, we could be in serious trouble."

"We don't have drugs here," said Kelsey. "I mean, not the recreational kind, anyway, not the kind people would buy to get high on."

"Maybe not. But we have some pretty bizarre stuff in our freezers. Phil certainly does, and you used to, Niles; probably you do, too, Kelsey, and we still haven't cleared out whatever Julian had stored away."

"All of that's locked up," Kelsey said. "Marley's got a key to Phil's lab, but not to the others. And Phil mostly has just poisons."

"Well, whatever," Victor shrugged. "In any case, this fellow is coming over here this morning, and I want the three of us, and only the three of us, to talk things over with him. He may want to look around, and I don't want him wandering by himself - one of us needs to escort him. Probably you're the best one for that, Kelsey. Is that okay with you?"

She nodded. "Sure."

"Okay, good. Once he gets here he'll fill us in on everything, so it doesn't make much sense for us to sit around and speculate now."

"Yeah, but – still," Niles sounded uneasy. "You say Marley's unconscious in the hospital? Shouldn't one of us go visit him? See what kind of shape he's in?"

"Well, yes, but let's wait to hear what Durham says. If the police are involved, visiting Marley may be... mmm, restricted. We just don't know."

Victor looked at each of them. Niles frowned and nodded; Kelsey also nodded, then asked, "Okay, sounds good. Meet in the lobby conference room?"

"Right, the blue room. It's big enough for us to talk or use the white boards, but small enough to be private. Please don't be telling other staff about Marley yet. Let's wait until we know more."

He glanced at the clock on the wall; it read 8:30. "Okay," he said, "thanks for coming by. I'll see you in an hour and a half."

He stood up and added, "It may turn out to be nothing. Let's hope so."

Kelsey waved good-bye and went upstairs to her lab.

Niles walked quickly to his office, quietly shut the door, then sat down and slammed his fist onto the desk.

"God damn it!" he whispered. "What a damned piss-headed idiot!"

He slammed his fist on the desk again.

And again.

Chapter 6: To the Airport

Day 3: Wednesday, Early Morning

Wednesday dawned clear but with a cold bite to the morning air. I had gotten up before the sun and gone for a short run. After a shower and a light breakfast I checked my phone for messages. There were two.

Message One was from Autumn Kool at Halliday. I'd been waiting for her call, but didn't expect it to come so early.

"Good morning, Reid. It's almost 6:00 AM. I have confirmed your arrangement to meet with Dr. Akino and several of his staff at the Waxman Institute today at 10 AM. Check your email for background info on how we've worked with them in the past. If you have any questions, call me, but use my cell number. I won't be in the office today; Kirk and I are going to Vegas to meet Mr. Mars."

Ahh yes. Autumn and the big boss, Mr. Kirk Halliday himself. Gone to Las Vegas to see Mr. Mars again. Of course, Mars might be just a cover name for a high profile, high roller who happened to be in a spot of trouble. Probably needed some fast, discrete, unusual service, with price no object: the kind of situation that Halliday Inc. thrives on.

I moved on Message Two.

"Hi Reid, it's Trina. Axel's not feeling so great today - he was awake and dizzy a lot of the night. No fever, though, so we're still heading off to the airport - the big lug can sleep on the plane. Please be here by seven so that we can get an early start. Okay, seeya then."

Alright – time to get moving.

Trina and Axel live nearby, so I made it there right at 6:50. They had a late morning flight on SAS to Copenhagen, where they'd be visiting the Danish side of our family for a week, then connect to Sweden to see Axel's folks for another two weeks.

Did I mention that Trina is my sister? Yeah, two years older than I am, self-assured, settled, very family involved. Very loving and caring, but sometimes a bit of a pain. She thinks I'm drifting in my life, not being serious enough about my future. I tell her that I'm plenty serious about my life, but that the present is all I can handle. The future will just have to wait.

Among other efficient qualities, she's also good at keeping contact with our family branches. I'll get into the details later, but here's a quick outline: Many years ago our great-grandfather came over from Denmark and settled on land he bought along the Klamath River in Northern California. Some years later his daughter Collete married a young Native American man (his father was Yurok and his mother was Karuk). Their son, our father, moved to the Bay Area to go to college, married a local Irish gal, had Trina and me, and then died in a car wreck when we were kids.

Trina and mom used to go to Ireland and Denmark during summer break from school, so she got to know that side of the family really well. I went along the first time, but after that spent my summers with our grandparents on the Klamath.

And I loved it.

Now Trina and Axel are taking their two kids – Erik, age 8, and Laura, age 5, off for a winter holiday to Europe.

"We should be back on the 28th," Trina said, "so we'll have a late Christmas dinner this year. Be sure to give Grandpa Lincoln a call. I sent a card already, inviting him, but you know he loves to hear from you."

"Right," I agreed. I always agree with Trina; it makes life easier, and besides, she's usually right, anyway.

They wanted to get to the airport around 8:00, and I had to be at the Waxman Institute at 10 AM. I needed to stop at the hospital first, so the time could get a little tight; which meant that we needed to leave soon because we might hit some slow commuter traffic.

Their suitcases were stacked on the lawn next to the driveway. Erik and I started loading them into Atlas while Axel was giving the house a final check. When we opened the tailgate a jacket and pair of shoes fell onto the ground.

They had to be Marley's. It hadn't been easy getting him into the truck Monday night –he's pretty big and Lester wasn't much help. Remember, Marley was only wearing a tank top and gym shorts at Grant Lake. Lester must have tossed these in right before climbing in himself, then forgotten them in all the activity at Bayview.

As I picked them up a ring of keys slid half-way out of the jacket pocket. I caught it in my left hand, pushed the jacket and shoes to the front of the truck bed, then spread the keys out for a closer look.

And there was a bunch – maybe twenty – a lot of them stamped with a large W-I monogram, followed by an ID number and the words '"Do Not Copy". They must be Waxman Institute keys; but why would he have so many?

Good question, and maybe I'd find the answer later today.

I shoved the keys into my back pack.

So now we had everything loaded and were ready to climb in – just waiting for Axel to lock up the house. I'd be driving, with him in the front passenger seat. Trina and the kids would fit comfortably in the back; it's a full sized pickup with a crew cab, but Axel's long legs would have been a little cramped if he'd ridden back there.

Trina was reminding me to pick up their mail and send cards to Aunt Rosa and Uncle Lars and cousin blah and blah blah... I was nodding but not really listening. I was still thinking about that little red and blue frog; still wondering what made Marley Granger act so strange.

And then there was sudden shout from Erik: "Damn it, Laura, I told you to keep your fuckin' hands off my watch!"

It was like a whip-crack, or better a whip-CRACK had just split the air. Trina stopped talking in mid-sentence and just stared at me. I looked over at Erik, who was standing very still, hands over his mouth. Laura was jumping up and down and pointing at him, with a big grin on her face.

Nobody said anything for a few seconds; Axel finished locking the front door, walked over to us and stood there, looking puzzled. Still without turning around, Trina said in a calm voice, "Axel honey, have you been taking our son to the police station lately?"

"Sure," he said. "On Fridays after I pick him up from school – you know, they have minimum day schedule on Fridays."

"And what does he do there?"

"Sits in the rec room and does his homework."

"And are there other people in the rec room?"

"Sure, all the cops take breaks there, you know, get a Coke, play a little Eight Ball or Cribbage, or just joke around."

"Uh-huh," she said. "Well, he's getting plenty of education there. Maybe he should sit in your office from now on."

Axel looked at me; I just shrugged.

So we all climbed into the truck and got moving. Trina was behind me, and Erik, still red-cheeked and silent, sat next to the passenger side window. Laura, still grinning, was in the middle, casually playing with Erik's watch.

Traffic was light, luckily, and the drive was uneventful. Axel and I chatted a bit about Lester and Lund and the Waxman.

"Trina said you didn't sleep so well last night."

"Uh huh, I had some wild dreams, too, and still feel a little dizzy. You think there's a connection to that frog?"

"I dunno; you didn't think you were talking to mountain lions, did you?

"Nah – just a lot of colors flashing around. It was pretty strange."

Trina leaned forward. "You said you heard things too."

"Yeah, random sounds. Bells, wind, rain... that kind of stuff. Sounded really clear. Weird."

I nodded. "You better keep a closer eye on him, Trina."

"Ha!" she said. "He's gonna do whatever he wants – always has, always will. I don't have time for that, anyway. I've gotta keep an eye on my son now." She shot Erik a narrow-eyed glance.

He looked back. "Sorry mom," he said.

"That's alright. Just don't say that in front of the family, okay?"

"I won't. Can I have my watch back now?"

Trina looked down at Laura and seemed to notice the watch for the first time. "Give him his watch back, Laurie."

She plopped the watch into her brother's hand, then slumped back with her arms folded across her chest. "I wanna watch too!" she said.

"Don't worry, I told Uncle Anders what you want for Christmas. If you're good, you'll probably get one."

In the rear-view mirror I saw her glance quickly at Erik. Her tongue shot out in the briefest of flickers, and she sat up with a triumphant look on her face.

I had to smile. I really do love kids. Someday I'll have some. Not yet, though; not yet. A few miles farther on, Axel broke the silence. "About the Waxman - Slim knows a bit about them from before, some trouble a few years ago. He's pretty busy for the next few days, but will try to call you soon."

"No rush," I shrugged. "The whole thing may be nothing. Probably by the time you get back, it'll be all forgotten."

Trina leaned forward again. "I hope so. You've been working too much lately. Take some time off. Go see Grandpa – I still feel guilty about being gone over Christmas. Ever since Grandma died, I worry about him being lonely."

"I'm sure he misses Grandma," I nodded, "but he's got a lot of friends, a lot of interests, and enough money to do what he wants."

"But he doesn't have family there! You should go see him!"

"Right," I agreed. "You're right. I'll try to find some time."

And eventually we got to the Departure Terminal for International Flights. Axel rustled up a cart and piled the luggage onto it. Then it was hugs all around, and they were off.

Just as they were going, Trina had a few last words. "See you in three weeks! Don't go falling in love till we get back, Reid. I might be bringing along our third- cousin Lisa, who looks like a centerfold and can cook, too."

"Okay," I nodded, then kissed her cheek, told her to say "Hi" to everybody for me, and watched them trundle away toward the airport entrance.

By the time I slid into the driver's seat, it was just past eight. Good – going back would mostly be against the main flow of traffic, so I should make it in less than an hour. That would let me stop by Bayview for Marley's blood samples, pick up a Starbuck's, and still get over to the Waxman by 10:00.

A little tight, but time crunches are part of life, right? Part of my life, anyway.

With smiles and a final wave, they disappeared through the revolving doors, and I pulled away from the curb. It was going to be a great three weeks for them - they were sure to have a lot of fun, and I felt a pang of regret to not be going along with them.

But I'm so, so glad I didn't.

Chapter 7: The Waxman

Day 3: Wednesday Morning

By 9:00 I was at Bayview asking for Dr. Lund. A nurse near his office said that he wasn't in, but that he'd left a package for me at the upstairs lab. I took the stairs to the 5th floor, found the right room, and asked a lab tech about it. She was friendly enough, but asked for my ID, as she should have. I gave her my name, she checked a chart, nodded, and handed me a Styrofoam container about the size of a shoe box. I peeked inside and saw three packs of blue ice, frozen, and a small test tube rack. In it were two tubes of blood, two tubes of urine, and two others containing cotton swabs and labeled 'saliva'. Each tube also had a sticker with 'Marley Granger' and the date written in blue ink.

I thanked her and turned to go. It still wasn't quite 9:10 yet, so I thought... "What the Hell", and asked where Granger's room was. She checked a log book and said, "Up two floors, room 764 in the security wing."

The security wing looked like any other part of the ward, except that there was a desk in the middle of the hallway blocking access the rooms beyond it. A burly looking guard sat at the desk reading a newspaper.

I identified myself, signed the visitor's book, and he waved me on with a nod.

Room 764 was at the far end of the hall. There was only one bed, and Granger was in it. An IV stand on the left side held a bag of dextrose solution. A thin plastic tube snaked down from the bottom of the bag and ended at a needle stuck into his left arm. On the shelf at the back of the bed were two more monitors of some sort displaying softly glowing green numbers.

The room lights were low and it was very quiet.

His eyes were open. Yes, wide open, but he didn't seem to be looking at anything. I watched for a while; he blinked every few seconds, but didn't move other than that... just stared up toward the ceiling. I moved closer and stared back. No response, no sign of recognition. I picked up the bedside light, pulled it close to his head and flicked the switch. Bright light flooded his face and his big pupils narrowed. OK, at least he was still alive. There were no bandages that I could see, no head lumps or bruises. Like Dr. Lund said – no obvious injuries... so why the odd trance-like condition?

I flicked off the light and turned to go. At the door, I looked back. It was dim again, so I couldn't be sure, but I had the feeling that he was looking at me.

Weird. Eerie.

"Marley" I barked. It cut through the silence in the room like a minor thunderclap, sounding louder than I'd meant it to. But - no response; no movement, no twitch, nothing.

So I left.

************

The dashboard clock said 9:47 AM when I reached the Waxman Institute.

It was a beautiful drive getting there. The main building is located near the edge of the SF Bay, surrounded by a wildlife sanctuary. A half-dozen sail boats glided offshore in the light wind. Hiking and biking trails meander through the area, and people were strolling around, taking advantage of the break in the rainy weather. I've been near here a few times, with a camera, and have good shots of pelicans with fish in their beaks, of fog banks rolling in from the west, of the orange tinted full moon rising over the hills on the east side – that kind of stuff.

In the springtime, it would be a good spot for a romantic picnic with a pretty lady friend... not that I have any just now.

The access road to the Institute wound along the shoreline and ended at a parking lot. It was hard-packed dirt and gravel, no pavement, lined with low trees and shrubs, with enough room for maybe 50 or 60 cars. Another lot, slightly larger was farther down the road, but this one had a sign for Visitor Parking. I pulled into one of the empty spots, shut off the engine, and looked around.

At the far end a wide path led to a four story building, looking just like the pictures in the info pack that Autumn Kool had emailed. The Institute was designed to 'be in harmony' with the natural scenery, and sported large balconies on all four sides. I did a brief scan with my binoculars: some of the balconies had shrubs, small trees, and pools of water, probably for the benefit of wild birds. Several pairs seemed to be nesting up there, though I'm no expert and wasn't sure. Dark glass windows - lots of them - gave anyone inside the building an intimate view of the action outside without disturbing the wildlife.

Okay – time to go. I picked up the frog jar and the Styrofoam box and started off, passing by a large tool shed and two greenhouses. Up ahead, one of the maintenance guys had parked a cart just off the path and was looking up at the side of the building. Someone on one of the upper floors shouted "Okay Jose!" and tossed a bag off the side. Whatever it was spun slowly down and landed with a puff of dust.

After a short walk I came to the front steps, went up, and through the glass doors into the main building. The lobby was cool and smelled of disinfectant; the ceiling was very high, and there were large potted plants here and there around the room. In the middle of the floor, in an island of clear space, a uniformed guard sat at a large elevated desk.

I walked over, set my load on the desk, pulled out my wallet, and showed him my Halliday ID card. He checked a clipboard and nodded. "OK, right, I got an appointment for you and possibly also a Sergeant Sanchez to see Dr. Akino in the blue conference room at ten AM."

"Sergeant Sanchez couldn't make it. Just me and my buddy here," I said, pointing to the jar.

The guard peeked in and smiled. "Yeah, we got some of those things around here. In fact, a few of them look just like that little guy."

"Oh really? Do they grow wild around here?"

"Hell no," he snorted. "Those little fellas stay up in the labs. They're from a jungle somewhere."

"Are the labs easy to get into?" I asked.

"Noooo, absolutely not. Locked up at night and security cams all over. Usually the scientists keep us informed about whatever they have here, so that we'll recognize any that get loose. Part of our job is to see that that doesn't happen. We're supposed to keep track of 'em but not touch 'em. Which raises the interesting point: How'd you end up with this little bugger?"

"That's one of the reasons I'm here. To see if this guy came from here, and, if so, how exactly he went missing."

He nodded and I asked, "So where's the blue conference room?"

"Dr. Akino will show you. I'll give him a call while you sign the visitor log book."

Three minutes later I was shaking hands with a grey haired Asian man who wore a business suit and exuded an air of quiet authority.

"Nice to meet you," he smiled. "I'm Victor Akino. How are Ms. Kool and Mr. Halliday?"

"Oh, they're both fine. Gout bothers him sometimes, but he still usually gets in his weekend tennis. Even in his late seventies, he's in better shape than most of us."

We continued the chit-chat as we made our way down the hall to the conference room.

"Yes," he said, "I think that the fountain of youth is actually a pool of sweat. The sweat you get from good, hard exercise."

I smiled. "I'd like to get more of that, but it seems that most of mine is the cold-sweat variety, the kind you get from too much tension, too much being on edge."

"Sounds like you could use a vacation."

"Maybe after I figure out this latest puzzle."

"Mmm - right. Don Lund called me from Bayview. He was wondering about odd results they'd found on some blood tests. At the time, I didn't know he was talking about Marley Granger. He didn't mention any names, or anything about a police investigation. I only found out about that when Sergeant Sanchez phoned."

"This isn't a criminal investigation – at least, not yet," I said. "Think of it more as a fact-finding mission. But a serious one. An official one. We want to know more about what's going on. Anytime there are new – and maybe dangerous \- drugs floating around, the authorities want to know about them."

"Of course," he agreed smoothly, "that makes sense, and we'll do whatever we can to help. Don and I've worked together a few times over the years. They have a good pathology group at Bayview, but when it comes to identifying really unusual stuff, especially toxins, they come to us."

"By unusual, you mean not native to California?"

"Mostly. I guess I should have said unusual and exotic biochemical agents, not necessarily 'toxins'. Some are used as narcotics or stimulants by young people; others are used as medicines by older immigrants. Many are used in, uh, research, both academic and corporate. We try to keep ahead of the field, but still get surprised every now and then. Nature has had a few billion years head start on us at making bizarre chemicals. There's no way we can know all of them."

He escorted me through a blue door into a blue room. Two people sitting at the long wooden table rose. The first was a slender, sandy-haired lady of medium height who held out her hand. "Glad to meet you. I'm Kelsey Theroux." She looked to be about my age – late twenties – had a bright, warm smile, and - now I'm no half-baked kid, but I swear that I felt an electric buzz when we shook hands. Even thinking about it now, I can remember the tingle.

The second person was moderately tall, with thinning hair, mostly gray. I guessed him to be early to mid-fifties. Dr. Akino introduced him as Niles Stratton, the chairman of the Toxicology Group.

Niles said something like "How do you do", but I was still thinking about the firm handshake and clear brown eyes of Kelsey. It had been a long time since I'd been so immediately attracted to someone, and it put me off balance. I realized that Dr. Akino was speaking again and turned to face him.

"I briefed Dr. Theroux and Dr. Stratton about your visit. They're ready to provide you with any assistance they can. They're the experts; I'm more of an administrator these days, and, alas, duty calls. I'll leave things in their hands for now, but I'll be back later with some lunch. Take a look at the menu and put a check mark next to what you want, and Joanie will collect it. "

A quick parting handshake and he was gone. I slid two business cards across the table and then picked up the menu. It was a single sheet of paper listing sandwiches available from a nearby shop. I put a check next to the pesto chicken on toasted ciabatta and started to pass it on to Kelsey, but stopped when I noticed her staring at my card with an odd look on her face. After a few seconds, she nodded and a little smile crept across her lips. She looked over at me and took the menu from my outstretched hand, but didn't say anything.

She'd noticed something, but what? I decided to tuck that question away for later.

After Niles finished marking his decision on the menu, he left it on the front corner of the table and we all sat down. They were both quiet, waiting for me to start.

It had all been formal and proper up to now – too formal for my blood. Maybe Mr. Froggy could loosen things up. So far he'd been hidden by my hand covering the lower part of the mayonnaise jar. I set the Styrofoam box on the floor next to my chair and pushed the jar out to the middle of the table.

"This little fellow a friend of yours?" I asked.

Chapter 8: Blue Room

Day 3: Wednesday, Late Morning

They both leaned forward to see inside. Kelsey started with a curious smile, but then sat back with a slightly puzzled frown. Niles pulled the jar closer and rotated it slowly, peering in from several angles. After maybe ten seconds he muttered "Damn" and set it down.

"Does that mean 'Yes'," I asked.

They exchanged glances, then Niles spoke up. "We heard that Marley Granger is in the hospital. Is that true? Is that what you're here about?"

"Well, that's what led me here, but I'm interested in more than that." I went over Marley's odd behavior at Grant Lake, the concern about unknown drugs, the inconclusive hospital tests. Then I nodded toward the jar.

"Now about our little buddy here: I've done a lot of hiking around mountains and camping along rivers, but don't remember ever seeing a frog that looked like this."

Kelsey smile returned, and she asked, "How many of those rivers go through tropical rainforest?"

"Well, those are on my list," I nodded. "But so far a lot of North America, some of Europe and a bit of Asia, but no jungles – yet."

While we were talking, Niles went to a cabinet on the far wall, opened the doors, rummaged around for a few seconds, said "Aha", and pulled out a box of plastic lab gloves. He put one on his right hand, picked up the jar, and tilted it sideways. The frog hopped onto his gloved hand and sat there peacefully. The same as it did for Axel, except he hadn't been wearing a glove.

Niles brought his hand up to his nose, sniffed the frog, then nodded and looked at Kelsey. "Yes, unmistakable," he said, then turned toward me.

"Outside of a zoo or a lab, the rivers that feed into the western Amazon are the only places where you'd find this particular species. There are similar types in parts of Central America and also on a few Pacific islands, but this one has a distinctive color pattern and foot shape. And at certain seasons of the year, a characteristic smell." He studied the red and blue splotches on the frog's back, then turned it over and examined the stomach and the toes on the hind feet.

"Yes, there's no doubt," he said, and rattled off the Latin genus and species names. I jotted them down in my notebook, and couldn't help noticing that he spoke with a kind of stilted formality. Not really affected or supercilious... more like he was making a presentation to an audience, rather than just having a casual chat.

"What would you say about this one?" I asked. "Toxins present or not?"

"Mmmm... yes, but with a greatly reduced amount," he said. "In any case," he added, pointing to the glove, "it's not worth chancing. Phil Poley has been away doing field work for the past six months, and sent back at least two shipments of specimens – plants, insects, and some frogs like this one. What do you think, Kelsey?"

"We received a box from him in early July and another in late November," she said. "This little guy looks too young to be from the first one."

She looked at me and added, "We can check the receiving records to be sure. They should have a detailed list of exactly what arrived."

"Who would the box've been addressed to?" I asked. "And who would have been in charge of opening it and dealing with everything inside?".

"Why...mmm... it would have to have been Marley, I think," said Niles. "Phil hasn't had any other assistants for a while now." He raised an eyebrow at Kelsey, as if asking her opinion.

"No, none," she agreed. "The two Santa Clara students finished their projects before he left, so yeah, it would have to be Marley. He would enter the contents of the box into the lab logbook, then deliver anything dangerous it to the Specimen Facility for safe maintenance and storage."

I jotted down some notes, then looked up. "Tell me more about Marley. What exactly is his position here?'

"He was hired a little over two years ago," answered Niles. "Phil received a modest grant from a private investment group to develop new sources for pharmaceuticals." He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat again. "How familiar are you with molecular biology?"

"A bit. I took some bio-science classes in college, but it's been a few years. But we have people at Halliday's – where I work – who do forensic DNA work, and I've watched them. So, try me."

"Well," continued Niles slowly, "most of the tests done in crime labs are rather routine now. When I was a young man, they weren't - they were slow and tedious... but now it's like following a recipe in a cookbook. But for the kind of project Phil had in mind, the work would be much more difficult, more, mmm... ground-breaking. He needed a first-class expert. No one at the Waxman who was qualified was available, so we looked outside for a suitable candidate."

"It took a while, but eventually we found Marley. He came with cautious recommendations from a colleague, a friend we'd worked with before. Cautious, because although Marley is very good in the lab, he has some... uh... tendencies to get into conflicts. So, he works better alone rather in a group. But for our needs that was perfect. We didn't want a group leader; we wanted a technical wizard who could work with minimal help and get results quickly. He has his name on a string of publications and patents and he spent nearly fifteen years doing genetic transformation, both at a nearby university and at several bioengineering companies. And he had a great range of experience – he's worked with viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals."

"Some of his work with crop plants was very well done, but never went to market... that whole area is a touchy. People worry about genetically modified food. But at one time it was seen as the next great savior of mankind. How are we going to feed everybody if the population keeps doubling every generation? First it was better irrigation to create more croplands. But we've run out of good places to put dams and reservoirs. Then it was better crop management through chemicals to increase yields. But who wants more pesticides and fertilizers? For a long time crop yields were increased yield through classical breeding and hybridization. That still holds some promise, but is largely tapped out and can take a long time. So the idea was to speed up breeding by directly inserting genes."

It seemed like Niles was straying way off the topic. Was he was just a pedantic yakker or was he trying to divert my attention away from Marley's work? Hard to tell, but he was on a roll now and I was curious as to where it would lead. So I just nodded and let him continue.

"Suppose you study the genes in a close relative of commercial sweet corn. And suppose you find genes that endow the plant with increased vigor or drought resistance or pest resistance or that give the fruit increased shelf life or better taste? But maybe that wild relative has other traits that make it is a poor crop plant. So the idea was to take the good wild genes and put them into the good crop plant. A lot of money was spent for projects like this on corn, soybeans, rice, and major crop plants worth billions of dollars."

"Okay, interesting..." I said, "but how does that tie in with what Marley was hired to do?"

"Well, it started with Phil, actually. Several years ago, our grants committee was looking into additional funding sources and he suggested this project. It wasn't a new idea, of course, not by a longshot, but he thought we had a good chance of securing financial backing. The idea was to use common crop plants to make exotic medicines. Many plant's seeds are similar, but let's keep using corn as an example. The corn kernel is packed with nutrients that the seed needs to germinate. A large percentage of these nutrients are stored as special carbohydrates, oils, or proteins. They're not present in other parts of the corn plant because they don't really do anything; their purpose is just to be a reservoir of amino acids and energy. Once they're made in the corn kernel, they're are stored away, stable and unused for years - until the seed is planted and starts to grow."

"You may have heard of the idea of putting the gene for a high value protein like insulin into plants, then let the plants pack their seeds with insulin instead of their normal storage protein. Then you just harvest the seeds – like the corn kernels – and bingo – you've got the world's supply of insulin grown on one farm. That's already been done successfully on a small scale. The point of Phil's grant was to do the same type of thing, but instead of insulin, he would use genes for medicinals that are expensive or in short supply."

"Are there any?" I asked.

"Why certainly. That's where I came in, as an advisor for the project. I was to identify useful drug candidates available only in tropical plants - or perhaps animals - and Phil would obtain them and send specimens back here. We had other collaborators who would do a biochemical characterization of them, to identify the number of genes required for their synthesis."

"And Marley would do the rest?"

"Well, yes, up to a point. You see, getting the gene or genes of interest out of the wild plant is a challenge, but it's only the start. Packaging the gene into the right new DNA construction and getting it properly inserted into the new host species is a bigger challenge. You see, in order to ensure that your genes of interest are expressed only in the kernel, you need to link the gene to the right controlling elements - other DNA sequences that tell the cell when and where to make the gene product. Most natural drugs are way more complicated than a storage protein. They require enzymes to make them, and it is the genes for these enzymes that we need to have expressed in the kernel. With his connections at previous companies, Marley could get the right gene promoters. At least for the simple drugs we were targeting."

I jotted down more notes. It all sounded fairly clear, but I really didn't get everything he said, and would need to check with a few braniacs back at Halliday to be sure. "So was it you or Phil who hired Marley?"

"Phil was in charge of the project, so he did the hiring. Marley was a lucky find for us – once we brought him on, the grant was funded right away. For big money."

"And was Marley as good as you hoped?"

"Well... I didn't keep close tabs on their work, so I can't give you a lot of details. He kept Phil updated on his progress, and Phil would tell me if he was satisfied or not. He almost always said that he was."

"And Marley worked alone? It sounds like a lot for one person to do."

"We brought in helpers on several occasions. Those Santa Clara students were two of them. But Marley... um..." He glanced over at Kelsey, as if asking for help.

"Marley could be a real jerk," she said. "One week a lab tech would tell me how much they were learning, and the next week they'd quit. One of them mentioned sexual harassment, but nothing ever came of it."

"So," Niles interrupted, "we finally did what our friend recommended, and had Marley work by himself, mostly at night. He's rather an unorthodox character; likes odd working hours, not much for conversation... moody. Really, he's an abrasive loner. Damned bright, though... we occasionally chatted about the project, and he would tell me what he was doing, but it always got heavy with technical jargon. He had a few plants he'd transformed with some of the gene sequences, and he would show me an occasional sheet of data proving this or that, but I was just taking his word for things. I didn't have the expertise to check on the details of what he was doing, but Kelsey, you could have followed it. Did he or Phil ever approach you about discussing their work?"

"Hah!" she snorted. "Actually, they kept me out of it. Intentional or not, I don't know, but they never asked me for any input. If I ever asked them about it, Phil was evasive and Marley would either clam up or get antagonistic. So I kept away from them," She thought for a second, then added, "Julian, though – didn't Marley used to talk things over with Julian?"

"I think so, yes," Niles said. "Marley seemed to trust him. Julian was of the few people around here he actually liked."

"Is Julian available to speak to?" I asked.

"Oh no, no," Niles said quickly. "Julian is... no longer here."

I nodded, then wrote notes for a minute or two.

Finally, looking up, I asked "OK, do you have anything else to add, anything more about Marley Granger's personality or friends, or what he likes to do away from work?"

"Well," Niles said slowly, "As we told you, he keeps unusual hours, and isn't particularly talkative or friendly. He has some very definite personal regimens: works out in the gym regularly, and seems proud of his physique; very particular about his food - stays away from anything fattening... no donuts for instance. He prefers only certain varieties of organic fruit. He grew some of it on his own for a while... he had some trees in pots on the balcony outside of his lab."

"On the way in, I noticed a lot of big plants on the ledges around the outside," I said. "Is that what you mean?"

"Yes," Niles nodded. "It's a convenient spot, but attracts a lot of birds. He had to put special netting around his little trees to keep them away."

He stopped for a few seconds, then went on. "Um... but about his personal life - I know very little. In fact, given his strict exercise and eating habits, I'm amazed that he would be involved with drugs."

"I used to be surprised all the time by people's inconsistencies," I said. "Not any more, though. Would you have a copy of his resume?"

"Me - no, but I think Human Resources could get you one."

"That would be Trinity," Kelsey said.

I checked my notes. "Is that the same Trinity that left last month to join Phil Poley?"

"Yes, but she should be back soon. If you need it right away, Dr. Akino's secretary can probably get a copy for you."

"Okay, good. I'd like to look over his work history and references. Maybe I can find something from previous employers."

Niles leaned forward and cleared his throat again. "You seem very concerned about checking Marley's background. Is this something that you don't think you can get just by asking him? I mean... do you think you won't be able to ask him... um... I guess I mean – do you think he won't come out of his coma? That he's going to... die?"

I looked up from my notes. "I'm no medic. Dr. Lund thinks he'll come out of it okay, but he's puzzled by what put him there in the first place. The little altercation we had could have made him dizzy, but wouldn't knock him out for two days. I'm curious, too, and want to get as much info on him as possible."

Niles leaned back, nodded, then said, "Victor didn't mention an altercation. In fact, we don't know much of anything about what happened to Marley. Maybe you could tell us?"

"Right," I said. "I was going there next, anyway." I gave them a pretty detailed rundown on what had happened at Grant Lake, leaving out Lester's name. At the end I asked about the frog again.

"You say that this frog has toxic secretions on its skin. Why would anyone put it in his mouth? Especially someone who knew about them?"

"Why? Yes, why indeed...." Niles shrugged and exhaled. "Ahhh, probably started as a search for enlightenment. Maybe a search that took an unfortunate twist."

"Okay," I said. "A common enough desire – don't we all search for enlightenment? But how does that tie in here?"

Niles looked at Kelsey, then at me, then cleared his throat. "You see, this type of frog is special. The Amatuapo people call it Nai Kalana, which roughly translates to 'spirit passage' or 'spirit door'. I've also heard it referred to by other groups as Uxi Chi'i, which means approximately 'Fire of the Moon'. As you might guess, the frog's diet changes during the year, depending on the availability of certain insects. During the Amazon spring and summer- our autumn and winter- this frog displays a mixture of powerful mind altering alkaloids and relatively harmless semi-toxic compounds on its skin. I say 'relatively' because they're much less dangerous than those present at other times of the year. Still, they can be fatal if you overdose, and that does happen occasionally; mostly to inexperienced, younger members of the tribes. The undiluted exudate is pretty powerful; normally it's mixed with other plant extracts to prolong and dampen the effect. The secretions are usually wiped off of the frogs back with a gummy resin that is then chewed. Or the frog may be briefly licked."

"Briefly," he emphasized. "But you said that Marley was holding it in his mouth? That's crazy... I've never seen that."

"Yeah, we thought it was pretty crazy too." I said with a smile. "But about the frog - you're saying that its skin slime is hallucinogenic this time of year? And that's why people might use it – to get high?"

"No, no," he shook his head. "Not just to get high, not like people use street drugs here. I'm talking about important ceremonies... mind altering states for spiritual growth. It's believed to sensitize the user to primeval forces, to the spirits in the forests. They claim to be able to see through the eyes of a jaguar or crocodile, for instance."

"Or a mountain lion?" I asked.

"Yes, like that! It's really remarkable stuff."

"Okay," I nodded, "and you think that the frog came from a Waxman lab?"

"Oh - undoubtedly yes," Niles said. "Dr. Poley is a specialist in tropical fauna, particularly those which secrete toxins."

"And these little guys secrete a bundle of 'em." added Kelsey with a big grin. "Most are not of their making, though. They get them from what they eat - poisonous plants or insects. It turns out that the toxins don't hurt the frogs, and the frogs don't hurt the poisons."

"Which means what, exactly?" I thought I knew what she meant, but I wanted to hear what she had to say.

"Well, just that the frogs are pretty much resistant to the poisons. They ingest them but don't suffer any ill effects. When most animals ingest a poison, their livers work like crazy to inactivate it, either by breaking it down or chemically modifying it."

That reminded me of what Dr. Lund said. "You mean using their enzymes to break them down to, um... metabolic byproducts and excreting them?"

"Yes!" she smiled and clapped her hands. "Great! So you've taken biochemistry?"

"No," I confessed with a laugh, "I just picked that up yesterday from Dr. Lund at Bayview."

"Don Lund?" Niles seemed surprised. "Is he treating Marley?"

"He is, yes," I agreed. "But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First I'd like to learn more about this frog. Kelsey, you were telling me that it's special?

She nodded. "Instead of inactivating the toxins, these tiny colorful frogs transport them to special glands that slowly ooze them out onto their own skin. It's a great defense. Any animal that tries to gobble up the frog is in for a very fast and very nasty shock. Word gets around among the predators, and they leave the frogs alone. Except for devious predators - like people."

Niles cleared his throat and spoke up. "After a while in captivity, with a change in diet to less dangerous food, they no longer exhibit the toxic secretion on their skin."

"You sound as though you've tried it," I said.

"Well, I did, many years ago." He glanced at Kelsey. "That was on a field trip with your father." Before I could ask how Kelsey's father fit into this, Niles went on, "I studied the social phenomenology, but Kelsey knows much more about the biochemistry than I do."

"Good," I said, smiling at Kelsey. I'd rather hear her talking than Niles, anyway. "I'd definitely like you to tell me about that, but I brought along another package – besides the frog - that we should talk about first."

I picked up the Styrofoam box, placed it on the table, and pulled off the lid. We all stood and looked inside. "Dr. Lund sent samples of Marley's blood, urine, and saliva. He said you could run tests to find out what strange stuff might be in there. The Bayview lab found unusual results that they couldn't identify. Are they right? Can you run different tests?"

"Oh, sure," Kelsey said. "I mean, maybe sure. We have assays for a lot of bio reagents, but I can't promise that we can identify everything."

"But the type of stuff Marley may have gotten \- you could identify that, right?"

"From the frog - yes. But if he took unusual street drugs, we might not be able to help."

I nodded. "Right now, I'm just interested in what he may have gotten from here, especially if it can account for his strange behavior. I'd also like to take a look around his laboratory. Would there be any problem with that?"

"No, that would be fine," she said. "Let's go to my lab first, though, and get the tests started. Then we can go over to Phil's lab – that's where Marley was working."

"Okay, sounds good." I picked up the box of Marley's samples, Kelsey took the jar with the little frog, and after a wave to Niles, we took off down the hall.

"There's an elevator and a stairway just ahead. We need to go to the fourth floor." She glanced sideways at me. I could see her lips curl into a smile, and she asked, "Are you okay with walking up instead?"

"Absolutely," I said, smiling back.

We didn't exactly run up the stairs, but we didn't dawdle, either. She set a pretty good pace, and when we hit the door to the fourth floor I was breathing harder than she was.

I told myself it was 'cuz I was carrying the box with the ice and the test tubes.

Chapter 9: Lab

Day 3: Wednesday, Late Morning

We went through the door at the top of the stairs and turned right into a long hallway. There were tall windows along the right side, facing the hills off to the west. The glass in the windows was coated to appear clear from this side, but were dark from the outside. That gave easy viewing out to the balcony. I could see large potted plants – some the size of trees - randomly placed here and there, with benches and tables hidden in the foliage, and a few birds flitting around.

Kelsey's lab was on the left side of the corridor, on the interior side of the floor. The doors were open; it was a good-sized room, maybe twenty-five feet wide and twenty feet deep, with high ceilings. Lab benches ran along the sides and back, with another one in the center. There was a smaller room on the left, closed off from the rest of the lab by a glass door. It held a table, a few desks, and a long white board with chemical structures drawn on it. One had a red colored streak across it and the word "NO" scrawled below it. Another was circled in green and had two exclamation points next to it.

There were two people working in the main room, both wearing light blue lab coats. One was standing at a fume hood, wearing safety glasses and pouring something from one beaker to another. The other was sitting at one of the benches writing in a notebook. Both seemed totally oblivious to us.

Kelsey walked to the back wall and set down the jar with the frog; I put the Styrofoam box next to it. By now the young lady with the notebook had noticed us and waved. Kelsey waved back and called out, "Hey JZ, when you have a sec, could you come over, please?"

"Sure thing," JZ answered. She slipped her pen into the breast pocket of her lab coat and walked around the bench to our side.

"What's up?" she asked, but her eyes were looking at the jar with the frog. She was medium height and thin, with mostly light red hair. I say mostly, because she had a bright purple streak running down the center. It was quite striking - looked great.

By then the second person had finished what he was doing in the hood. When he turned around Kelsey waved to him. He nodded, set down the flask and walked over. When he reached us, Kelsey did the introductions: "Reid, this is JZ; she's a local, graduated from UC Berkeley two years ago and started with us just after that. Chaka is a visiting post-doc from Kenya. He's been here about six months, and has another six left before he goes back home."

They were both wearing thin plastic gloves so we didn't shake hands, but I smiled and said "Hello", JZ smiled and said "Hi"; and Chaka smiled and said "Happy to meet you." He was also of medium height and slender build, but had a rich, resonant voice with a British accent.

Kelsey said that we were going to be running a few assays, and asked if they had any plans to use the equipment next to us. They both said no, not today, and she said good, she'd need it for a while.

Then she asked JZ to moisten two swabs with saline and rub them onto the back and stomach of the little frog. "Drop the swabs into test tubes and add two milliliters of Butanol to each one. Then add one milliliter of 0.1 Molar Hydrochloric Acid to first and 1 milliliter of 0.1 Molar Sodium Hydroxide to the other. I'll take it from there. After that, if you could, please take Mr. Frog down to the animal room and give him to Petra."

JZ nodded, said "OK, got it," and grabbed box of sterile swabs and a bottle of saline. Chaka nodded again, said "Have fun," and went back to his work in the hood.

"Okay," Kelsey said to me, "I'll need a few minutes to get the samples ready, and then the machine will run on automatic to do the analyses. To finish all five samples – Marley's blood, his urine, his saliva, whatever we rub off of the frog skin, and a control blood sample - figure a little over an hour total counting prep time. That'll give us a good idea of whether or not Marley got any nasty stuff from the frog, and if he did, how much. We'll need to do some follow-up tests to nail down the exact ID's of whatever we find, but I can ask JZ to do those later."

"Okay, sounds good....What's the analysis you're doing first?" I asked.

"Two types. One is a separation method using this HPLC." She pointed toward the machine next to us.

"That stands for High Performance Liquid Chromatography. Blood has lots of different stuff in it – proteins, lipids, sugars, hormones, salts - and measuring every different component would be a long process. But I'm not planning on doing a complete analysis – we just want to know if Marley's blood contains chemicals from the frog. So first we mix his samples with the different solvents, just like we did with the frog's skin swabs. A lot of the stuff in the blood will precipitate out, but the ones we're interested in – the ones from the frog – will dissolve in either the butanol:acid or the butanol: alkali."

Kelsey had put on one of the blue lab coats, a pair of gloves, and safety glasses while she talked, looking up at me every few seconds to see if I was following.

I nodded and said "Uh-huh."

She smiled. "Good. Okay then – next we'll use the HPLC to separate out whatever chemicals were extracted into the solvent mixtures. The HPLC detector will see them as separate peaks in a continuously flowing stream of signals. There's also an inbuilt math calculator to measure the area of each peak. The amount of each chemical is proportional to the area of its peak, so the machine can tell us not only if something in particular if present, but also how much of it there is."

She spoke in an easy, conversational way, reading my face to see if I was getting it. So far, I was, mostly.

"Okay..."I said, "so you skip looking at most of the stuff, and just focus on what Marley might have picked up by sucking the frog."

She laughed. "Umm, yeah, that's right. We've run a lot of these kinds of tests before, so we know what the peaks from normal blood are. If we see any extra ones, then... yeah, they could be from lickin' the froggie." She laughed again and I had to smile, too. JZ glanced over, a quizzical look on her face.

"We'll know for sure when we test the swabs that JZ wiped on the frog's skin. There are three in particular that can have strong effects on people – a pain-dulling factor, a toxin, and the hallucinogen. If those are in both the frog sample and the blood sample, then – yeah – that's might start to explain Marley's behavior."

"Really... that's interesting," I nodded. "How do those, uh, frog chemicals work?"

"I'm no expert, but I know that they've been used for ...mmm - hundreds of years, at least. The pain duller is a wonderful natural anesthetic; Niles actually published a paper on it a few years ago. The second one messes with your metabolism, slows it way down. That's the real toxic one, the one that can kill you if you overdose."

"Ahh," I said. "And the third one?"

"Yeah, the third froggie chemical is kind of magic. It's used in rituals like Niles was talking about... funerals, or rite of passage into adulthood, sometimes marriage ceremonies. It opens your mind... give you visions of alternate reality, or gives you a deeper connection with nature, or with the powers of wild animals."

"Well, that sounds like what I saw in Marley. He was definitely not feeling any pain; his speech and reactions were very slow, and he was ridiculously strong."

She kept working and I kept quiet for a few minutes. Then I asked, "What about if Marley took other drugs at the same time; could that change the effects?"

"Oh sure, it absolutely could. Why - do you think he did?"

"For sure. I talked to his buddy yesterday, the one he was with at the lake. He said that Marley swallowed some sort of capsule, one that was supposed to 'make the stars sing' when it was mixed with the frog juice."

Kelsey stopped what she was doing and stared at me. She had that far-away gaze, like she was looking at me but thinking about something else. I looked back, not wanting to break her concentration, and in the silence noticed how pretty her eyes were. Hazel, with green and gold flecks.

After maybe ten seconds she asked, "What did this capsule look like?"

"Kind of a light blue plastic, with pink powder inside."

Her lips compressed into a thin line and those pretty eyes narrowed. Not a happy look.

"Okay," I said. "That means something to you... what?"

She shook her head, "Mmm – It could be nothing, but...."

Then she whispered, "Son of a bitch."

"Excuse me?" I said.

Her attention snapped back to the present. "Oh," she said, starting to laugh, "sorry, I didn't mean you!"

"Oh – good; then who?"

"I'll show you later," she said. "Let's get these tests started, then we can talk more on the way up to Phil's lab. The first thing I need to do is spin the blood to separate the plasma from the cells."

She placed the tubes containing the blood into a small, desk-top centrifuge and closed the lid. "Then I'll mix the plasma with solvents like we did with the frog swabs, give the tubes a good shake, and then another spin. The mixture will separate into two liquid phases: the upper one will contain stuff we don't care about. The lower one – the Butanol - will contain the frog chemicals, if any are there. I'll treat the swabs that JZ took from the frog the same way. When it's all done, I'll put the final sample solutions into these little glass vials, put those into the sample rack, and the machine will do the rest."

She opened a drawer in the lab bench and took out a box labeled 'Blood Collection', and looked over at me.

"So tell me," she said with a sly grin, "did you touch the frog yourself?"

"No," I answered, not sure where this was going.

"That's good, because to do this right, we need to run a normal blood control at the same time – you know, one that we're sure doesn't have anything from the frog in it. We'll subtract out those normal peaks from what we see from Marley's blood, and also subtract out the peaks from the frog skin. Any others that are left might have come from something else that Marley took – like that pink powder you were talking about."

"Okay, yeah," I nodded. "That makes good sense."

"Right," she said, still grinning. "Are you feeling brave?"

"Ahh – I get it now. I'm gonna be your normal control."

"Uh –huh. It'll only take a second. I just need a few drops of blood."

"Okay Doc," I said, holding out my hand. "Bleed me."

She took my left hand, palm up, in her left hand and pointed to my ring finger. "This one okay?"

I nodded "Sure."

She studied it a few seconds longer, then said without looking up. "No ring, huh? And no tan line – so you haven't had a ring on here for a long time."

I laughed. "Nope – no ring. No reason to have one."

"Good," she murmured kind of quietly. I noticed that she had one though, a plain gold band. "Me neither," she said. "At least, not for a couple of years. I wear this just to discourage creeps from hitting on me."

I didn't know what to say about that, so I did the smart thing and said nothing.

She tore open a small paper packet and pulled out a flat piece of cotton. When she wiped my finger with it I could smell the alcohol on the cotton. She set it aside and held a plastic cylinder, about half the length of a pen, to my finger. I heard a faint click and felt a slight sting on my finger tip. After dropping the cylinder into a red plastic bag that had a biohazard symbol on it, she gently squeezed my finger to get ten drops of blood to fall into a little glass test tube.

"Great," she said, then dabbed my finger with a second piece of cotton – this one was dry - and put a small, round Band-Aid onto the spot where she'd poked me.

I stepped back and kept quiet for the next few minutes, letting her do the sample prep without being distracted by questions. When all the little glass vials were capped and slotted them into the auto-sampler, she turned to me and asked, "Did you get all that?"

"More or less," I said, but actually I'd been watching her more than watching what she was doing. She moved with ease and grace, smoothly gliding from one step to the next. Every minute or so, she'd glance over at me with that same sly smile, like she knew something but wasn't telling me what.

"Uh huh," she laughed, "I noticed what you were looking at, and it wasn't the test tubes."

Busted....

She punched a few buttons on the machine, waited to see that it was running correctly, then took off her safety glasses, peeled off her gloves, and hung her lab coat over the back of a chair. After washing her hands in the sink at the end of the bench, she dried them on a paper towel and said "Okay, everything looks good. Ready to take a look at Phil Poley's lab now?"

JZ had gotten back by then, and as we walked over to the door Kelsey asked her if she'd gotten the frog taken care of.

"Oh yeah," JZ said. "Petra was really surprised when I walked in with that jar. She asked where it came from and I didn't know what to say. She'll probably call you later with some questions."

"Okay, thanks. Reid and I are going to look around a bit. We should be back in an hour. I left the HPLC running \- could you check on it every now and then?"

"Alright, sure. Seeya later."

Poley's lab was up one story and around the other side of the building, so it took us a few minutes to get there. Once we were in the hallway Kelsey glanced over at me and asked "What should I tell Petra about that frog? You want me to keep Marley's name out of this, right?"

"How about just saying that you saw it hopping around outside on the balcony and picked it up?"

"I don't think she'll believe that, but I'll give it a try."

We went on in silence for another five or six seconds, then I asked, "You look really comfortable working in the lab. Is that your degree, in biochemistry?"

"My bachelor's, yeah," she answered with an easy smile. "I went on to grad school in toxicology. My thesis was on trying to figure out how small differences in chemical structures change the way toxins interact with enzymes and nerve receptors."

"Sounds complicated and exciting."

"Well, it can be, but sometimes, when you can't figure things out, it's a big stomach ache. When it comes together and makes sense, then it's fun – same with any job, though, right? You must feel the same way about yours, don't you?"

"Well, yeah. Mine's kind of an unusual job – move around a bit, get sent here and there."

"You go where the action is, huh?" she asked.

"Mmm...kinda. Right now it seems to be pointing here."

"Well, don't expect too much excitement here; it's really – oh, not exactly boring, but not wild and crazy either."

"It's gotta be interesting, though, surrounded by flashy stuff and smart people."

"Okay, that's true. But when you work at someplace every day, doing the same sort of stuff, you get used to it, and maybe get a bit jaded. It's easy to forget that it seems really cool to someone on the outside. For instance, your job might seem routine to you, but it seems really interesting to me. You must face a lot of challenges, like dealing with Marley when he was all crazed up."

"Yeah, challenges, and puzzles, I do get those."

"And danger?"

"Sometimes, but not a lot."

"So how'd you get into it? What made you feel confident about doing that kind of work?"

I stopped walking and looked at her. Was she really curious, or just making idle chit-chat. Or was she trying to hide something, to throw me off track?

She looked back with clear, open eyes and an honest face. I didn't say anything for a few seconds while I judged... and decided that I was being way too suspicious. But I'd had to check. It would have been careless not to, and being careless was not in a Halliday agent's job description.

So I smiled and said, "Kelsey, that's a long story. Maybe some other time, over a beer or a glass of wine. Thanks for asking, though."

"You mean that?" she said.

"The glass of wine?" I asked.

She nodded. She really did have the prettiest eyes....

I had to laugh. "Yes, absolutely."

"Good," she said, and we started walking again.

"Anyway," I went on, "I'm supposed to be the one doing the investigating, and I was going to ask you that same question: How'd you get into doing this?"

"Well, that's a long story too. A really long one."

We turned a corner of the hallway and headed down toward the Poley lab. This hallway was wider, with people in light blue lab coats bustling around. Some were carrying racks of test tubes or rolls of printer paper; one was pushing a small cart stacked with freshly washed glassware. They all smiled and waved at Kelsey as we passed.

"Maybe you can give me a snapshot now," I said, "then give me the full-length version later?"

"Okay. Big picture: It all stemmed from a childhood interest - I grew up in a rainforest Mission, surrounded by strange animals and, you know, wonderful plants and...um, native people that knew them and used them for everything you could imagine."

"So - a sheltered life in a religious Mission?"

"Sheltered? Not a bit. The Mission wasn't religious at all. At one time it was, but it'd had been abandoned for fifty years until my dad bought it when I was a baby. He was kind of a jack-of- all trades - anthropologist, engineer, architect \- who loved the area. As I got older he started a very small school for native kids and, of course, for me. Our teachers were a mix of locals and visiting specialists of one kind or another. The Mission provided free room and board, to any academic type who wanted to study in the region. In return, they had to teach classes, maybe just for a day, or maybe for a month in some cases. So we got first-rate teaching from experts, with amazing field trips. There wasn't much emphasis on subjects like history and writing, but in ecology, biology, practical chemistry and even some areas of medicine and astronomy it was top notch. We got hands-on learning about carpentry, plumbing, and electrical generators by doing the maintenance around the Mission. Dad drilled fundamentals like reading and math into me early on. Native culture, cooking, and jungle lore we picked up first-hand from the people around us."

"Sounds intense and amazing."

"Actually not intense... it was very self-paced. Since the number of students was so small, there was a lot of interaction. Kids who liked it would study together and do OK. Others wouldn't. There were no tests, no grades, and no pressure. The purpose of the school wasn't to get a diploma, it was just an opportunity to learn about the world. After all, most kids got field jobs when they got older. A few went on to regular schools, but not many."

"I got afternoon and summer work at the local medical clinic, doing anything from washing bedding to delivering babies and helping in the emergency room. While I was there I met visitors from the Waxman Institute. Niles and my dad were friends from way long ago, before I was born, so he and some of his buddies used to go down there for field trips. I went along sometimes and loved it, and got the idea that it'd be really cool to have that for my career."

She shook he head and smiled. "Teenage idealism. When you're that age you don't realize how tough it's actually going to be. Anyway, they inspired me to come to California to go to college."

"So you were one of the few," I said. "Where did you go?"

"UC Davis. They do a lot of collaboration with the Waxman, and Niles has good connections there."

She said this slowly, watching me carefully.

"UCD - huh, - I went there for a while... not long, just a few months."

"I know," she said with a sparkle in her eyes. "When I heard your name it sounded familiar. Then when we shook hands and I saw your card it came to me - you're the jock that got in the motorcycle crash, right?"

Chapter 10: Capsules

Day 3: Wednesday, Late Morning

That one came right out of the blue - like if you're idly chatting then suddenly get hit with a bucket of ice water. Snaps your attention back real fast.

I stopped in mid-step and turned sharply to look at her, but she just stood there innocently, laughing softly, eyes happy.

So I had to smile, too. It explained why she'd been acting a bit coy, the sly glances, the comments about the ring and the glass of wine. Suddenly, instead of being just another investigation, this shifted into something...what - personal? No, not exactly that, but there was a connection; she knew something about me that I didn't share with many people.

The timing made sense, though - she looked about my age, maybe a couple of years younger. I guess she could read the surprise on my face, because she squeezed my arm and said, "Sorry – was that a bad thing to say?"

"No, just caught me a bit off-guard. It's so unexpected... that you could possibly remember me from seven years ago."

"Hey, you were big news back there. And my room-mates were big baseball fans. Used to go to the games, and dragged me along sometimes. One of them kept a laminated picture of you next to the bathroom mirror."

"Wha...?"

"Hey, don't go getting a big head about it. She kept probably fifty other pictures there, too. But the deal is, whenever I brushed my teeth, there was your face looking at me. So when Victor told us your name and I saw you in the conference room... well, it just all clicked."

I wasn't sure what to say about that. This was getting weirder all the time. Turns out I didn't need to say anything, though, because we stopped at the next door.

"Maybe we should catch up on old times later." Kelsey said, still half smiling. "This is the door to Phil Poley's lab."

Unlike her lab, the Poley's lab was against the outer side of the hallway, so he would have windows looking onto the balcony.

She reached into her pocket. "We don't carry keys to each other's labs, but Victor gave me a pass key."

My thoughts were still fragmented by the resurfacing of things long since put away. Buried away, actually.

I shoved them back down and refocused.

Kelsey was twisting the key in the door lock and frowning. "Hmm – strange; it doesn't seem to work."

She jiggled it again. "Damn! I don't know what the problem is. I'll have to call Security."

"Wait," I said, and pulled a large ring of keys out of my jacket pocket. "Let's check these first. They're from Marley's stuff."

She looked at the size of the ring and raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, I know," I smiled. "A lot of keys, and most of them have the same W-I stamp that yours does... so they must open Waxman doors."

I chose one at random and tried it.

No luck.

OK... found another matching key and tried it.

No luck again.

Same for the third, but the fourth one slid into the lock easily. With a quick turn the lock clicked, the handle turned, and the door slid open.

As we went through I glanced sideways at Kelsey and asked, "Any idea why he'd have so many Waxman keys? Is that usual?"

"Well, he'd need one to this lab, and at night, when he liked to work, a lot of the common use rooms would be locked. So he'd need a key to the freezer room, the shared equipment room and one to the balcony doors. Probably a greenhouse key, too.... So that's what – five?"

"Right – five."

"Yeah, well I don't know about the others," she frowned, "but I'm getting a bad feeling about it."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Because of that pink powder you mentioned. If it's what I think it is, he shouldn't have had access to it."

"Meaning...what?"

"I'll show you later," she said, "after we get done here."

"Okay," I nodded. The list of things we needed to discuss later was getting longer and longer.

Well, that was okay with me.

Each key had an ID number on it; the one on the key that opened the lab door was 4647. I took out my pocket notebook and jotted down the number and wrote 'Poley lab' next to it, and wondered how many more we could identify in the next hour.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open. As we walked in, Kelsey reached over to the left and flicked two toggle switches. A bank of overhead fluorescent lights came on, dim at first but growing bright after a few seconds.

The room was about the same size as Kelsey's lab, but much emptier. Only one bench, the one against the right side wall, looked used. Where the back of her lab had a long bench loaded with equipment, this one had a bank of tinted windows.

We walked over close and looked out. Kelsey said the glass was treated to give a one-way kind of window; anyone on the inside could see everything on the outside, but from the outside the glass was nearly opaque - anyone out there couldn't see what was going on inside the lab.

"Do all the labs have this kind of glass?" I asked.

"They all have tinted windows, but only a few have this special one-way glass. This used to be an observation room for studying animal behavior, and there were falcon nests on the balcony. People sat in here making notes and taking videos of their daily life."

"There was an article about that in the Mercury," I said. "You were raising the chicks and releasing them to the wild, right?"

"Exactly – it's a great program for endangered birds."

"Why'd you stop?"

"We didn't. Just moved it up to the next floor. Phil decided that he wanted this lab, so he moved in about...mmm - maybe a year and a half ago."

"A year and a half... that would be around the time that Marley started, right?"

"Right about then, yeah."

I looked out the windows again. They must have given a great view of falcon life; from in here you were unobtrusive and invisible, but you could see everything out there.

The view now, though, was a cluster of small trees in very large pots covered with netting.

"Are those Marley's fruit trees? The ones Niles mentioned?"

"Maybe," Kelsey shrugged. "But I don't know for sure. Like we were saying before, he and Phil are pretty tight-lipped about what they're doing."

"Uh huh," I nodded, and turned to look around the inside of the room. There was a chemical fume hood at one corner of the front wall. It had fans inside that sucked air in and blew out through vents in the roof, just like the one Chaka was using in Kelsey's lab. In the middle of the same wall was a biological safety hood, used when working with infectious agents. This one had fans inside that sucked air in and then passed it through a HEPA filter system before venting it. On the far wall was a third hood, one that I didn't recognize.

"That's a culture hood," Kelsey said. "The air flows the other way with that one. It gets sucked in at the top, passes through a HEPA filter to clean it up, then it vents out through the front of the hood. The idea is to keep the inside as clean as possible. That way you don't contaminate the cell cultures you're growing."

The fume hood was empty, but the bio-hood and culture hood had small bits of equipment in them. Around the rest of the wall space were a three-drawer file cabinet, a refrigerator, a centrifuge, and a large sink next to shelves holding chemicals, glassware, and books.

"Would all this be stuff that Marley's using?"

She nodded. "He'd probably need all three of the hoods for one thing or another. But I haven't been in here since they converted it from the observation deck to the lab; this is all new... a really nice set-up."

"Expensive?" I asked.

"Well, not outrageously," she said, "but for a one-man show, yeah. I don't know how much grant money Phil's getting from whoever is doing the funding, but...this must'a cost a few bucks."

Another lab bench – smaller - was cleared off except for a single large instrument of some kind. The side panels were off, showing a mess of wires and metallic innards. Tools and electrical connectors were scattered around the bench, next to a large radio and a stack of papers.

I looked at Kelsey and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"Most of this is just standard biochem equipment: mixers, water bath, power supply, the usual pipettes and stuff," she said. "But this big machine – I don't recognize."

"You think it's important?"

"I really don't know. You could ask Niles, but he's not exactly the mechanical type. You'll probably need to talk to Phil to get anything useful."

"How about these papers?"

"Let's see." She flipped through them quickly. "Okay, these are journal articles, uh, probably something to do with Marley's work."

"Would you be able to check on that? I mean, could you take a look at them and let me know if they're not that? If they contain anything... unexpected?"

"Unexpected?" Her eyes narrowed a bit and she looked serious. "You mean, drug-related, as in 'Was he making his own'?"

I nodded.

"Alright, I'll give it a shot," she said, scooping up the papers, "but no promises."

"Thanks," I said, then leaned over and switched on the radio. Soft jazz flooded the lab.

"Does that sound like Granger's music?"

Kelsey moved closer, listening and swaying her head and shoulders to the rhythm. "It sounds nice, but I hardly ever see him, and have no clue what he listens to."

"Right.... Is it unusual for someone to work nights around here?"

"Maybe not for the younger or the unattached," she said, "but those with families try to work 8 to 5. I'm a single mom with a four-year-old son, so by 6 o'clock I'm not Dr. Theroux anymore. I'm mommy."

A single mom...I held her eyes for a second. Two seconds. Three. That's right – she'd said that the ring on her finger was mostly bogus.

I turned off the radio and began opening the drawers under the bench top. They didn't contain much: an apple, two pens, a few dollars in change, a Kit Kat candy bar, a small green circuit board wrapped in plastic, and a dog-eared copy of last month's issue of Circuit Breakers – a kind of electronic hobbyist magazine. The name on the subscription sticker was Lester Clovis.

"Huh," I muttered to myself, "interesting."

"Sorry," she said, "what was that you said?"

"Oh nothing much... it's just that this magazine is addressed to the guy Marley was hanging out with at Grant Lake."

"Oh," she said, moving closer to look in the drawer. "Looking for anything in particular?"

"No, not really. Just anything that might tie in to Monday night, like... maybe more of those capsules with the pink powder."

I opened the refrigerator door and searched the shelves, then checked the trays in the overhead freezer. "Nope, nothing much here," I said. "Just some tiny plums... don't look ripe yet, though."

While I was doing that, Kelsey went over to a rack of lab coats hanging from the hooks on the wall and started patting the pockets. After a few seconds I heard a small gasp, and saw her holding a small plastic container, like a pill bottle.

She flipped the cover off and turned it over onto the bench top. A dozen capsules poured out; six of them were half blue, half transparent, containing pink powder; the other six were half white, half transparent, and contained yellow powder.

Kelsey stood there with a puzzled, almost angry look on her face. "OK, that's what I was afraid of. Those are mine. I mean - I made them."

She looked up and went on, "No, I haven't used them, and I haven't licked any frogs. At least not for a lot of years." She made her eyes big and innocent looking and they momentarily flashed with humor. "Well, I told you we weren't all that sheltered back on the Mission."

She looked back down at the scattered capsules and her humor faded. "JZ weighs out 25 milligrams of powder into the clear bottom part of the capsules, then we have a little gizmo for sliding them together with the top half, either blue or white. I bought it at a natural foods store; people use them for making their own vitamin pills at home, but it's a handy gadget for the lab, too."

"Oh, right – my sister has one," I said, "for making her own vitamin supplements. But what are these powders? Why would Marley want them?"

"The pink powder is an extract from a tropical root... kind of like wild ginger, but with a whole different chemical makeup. I purified this powder from plants that Niles brought back from the field years ago. He kept a big bag of it in his lab. Tribal shamans use it... it's supposed to have an evening out effect for neuro-stimulatory drugs."

"Like the stuff that Marley might get from the frog?" I asked.

"Yes, exactly," she nodded.

"And what does 'evening-out' mean?"

"Well, those reagents can have really powerful effects, maybe lethal in some cases. By 'evening-out' I mean that the active chemicals in this pink powder decrease the intense highs, prolong the overall effect, and prevent the crash at the end."

I thought about Marley, picturing him with that odd reddish tint to his skin and his feet bleeding from the broken glass. I asked her about that.

"Yeah, a side effect of this stuff is that it dilates peripheral blood vessels – it's like your whole body is blushing. But about the insensitivity to pain... that would probably have come from some of the, um, alkaloids on the frog skin. They have very bizarre narcotic effects... dampening outside stimulation, but opening you up to internal perceptions. Emotions run very high."

"Okay," I said, "that sounds like what was going on with Marley."

"Right," she nodded. "If the users are skilled and get the dose just right, they feel removed from the physical world, and at the same time have heightened 'intuition' or 'awareness'. Desensitized to the physical and hypersensitive to the spiritual. Add in hallucinogenic properties from the other chemicals, and you get a very powerful combination. That's what Niles means by it being a 'spirit door'."

"Sounds pretty wild. How do you study all that?" I asked.

"Several labs approach it from different angles, then we share our results and Niles puts it all together. He's spent a lot of time trekking through jungles and living with the people who use these medicines for religious ceremonies, so he's seen these effects first-hand. I come at it more from the chemistry side; other groups study the physiological effects, or the actions on the neural circuitry – and how that relates to right-brain and left-brain differences. It's a pretty intriguing area. If we can connect all the dots we'll probably get some real understanding of how our minds work."

"Oookay...right... I'd like to hear more about it sometime." I said, and meant it. I saw the question in her eyes and said, "Seriously - it really does sound interesting."

She smiled. "Some people think it's kind of geeky."

I laughed. "Yeah, you gotta expect that. So anyway, - what's in the other capsule?"

"Oh that," she grinned. "Well, the yellow powder is an aphrodisiac, and a good one, or so I hear."

I wasn't sure what to say to that, so just smiled and shut up, or meant to, but then I heard myself saying, "Is that the voice of personal experience?"

\- And then wanted to kick myself.

But she took it in stride, even laughed. "We make the capsules for sale to other labs studying the biochemistry of sexual function and fertility. You'd be surprised how much they pay. This amount here would fetch us several thousand dollars. But to answer your question, we don't work with them here, so I haven't tried one myself"

Then she arched an eyebrow and her eyes sparkled. "Yet."

She pushed the capsules back into the container and snapped the cap on, and looked up at me. "I hope you don't want these for evidence. I'd like to put them back in storage."

"Okay, that's fine, as long as we can get them if we need them. Speaking of that, how do you store them? And how easy would it be for Marley to get into it?"

"That's what bothers me," Kelsey said, turning serious. "I don't care about the money – that doesn't mean much. The problem is: How did Marley get access? How did he even know about them?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're kept in my lab," she said, "packed in desiccated jars, in a freezer. And the freezer's in a locked room. They're not at all obvious. You'd have to know about them, and I haven't said a word about either the yellow or the pink powder to Marley, ever."

"Anyone else who might know?"

She shrugged. "There isn't anything secret about the capsules; they're just nothing I would have had any reason to talk over with Marley. A few other people know about them \- Niles and Victor, um, JZ... and... well, Julian, of course, and –"

She stopped in mid-sentence, frowning.

I waited a few seconds, then said "Yes?"

It really wasn't much: a slight tightening around the sides of her eyes, a slight clinching of her jaw; very slight. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Her voice faded to a whisper and I couldn't catch all the words: "Trinity, yeah. Julian might've... and then Phil could've found out... and...."

She got silent again. After another five seconds I gently prodded.

"Kelsey – what is it?"

She looked up at me and shook her head, then smiled. "Ooh, nothing... just a bunch of maybes and a pile of tired old crap that doesn't mean anything to anybody anymore."

Now, part of my job is sifting through bunches of maybes and piles of old crap - it's surprising what you can find out that way. But I didn't want to push her on what was obviously a sensitive subject, so I just nodded and said, "Sure, I understand."

And made a mental note to have a chat with Trinity.

After that, we did another circuit around the room, checking drawers and file cabinets, but didn't find anything else useful.

"Okay," I said, "looks like we're done here."

She nodded and glanced at the clock on the wall. "The HPLC runs won't be finished yet – we've got probably another half hour. How about if we go try the rest of those keys on some other doors?"

Chapter 11: More Blue Room

Day 3: Wednesday, Late Morning

An hour later we were sitting in the Blue conference room again. We'd managed to find out which doors were opened by six of the nine Waxman keys on Marley's ring, and Kelsey was pretty sure that one of the others was to the greenhouse. That still left two as 'unknown'.

After that, we'd just had time to go back to her lab, collect the HPLC printouts, and get down here.

Victor and Niles were sitting across from each other at the conference table, chatting about cameras. There was a tray on the table between them, holding four small white bags, a platter of cookies, bottles of fruit juice and cans of soft drinks.

"Help yourself," Victor said as we slid onto chairs, me next to him and Kelsey next to Niles. One of the bags had a capital 'K' printed on it; I passed that one to Kelsey, then took the one with the 'R", along with a macadamia cookie and a cranberry juice. It was icy cold, with beads of condensed moisture coating the label; I wiped the bottle with a couple of paper towels and unscrewed the cap.

"So how was the tour?" Victor asked.

"Good. Real good," I answered. "We stopped in Kelsey's lab to test the hospital samples, got the little frog returned to his brothers and sisters, walked through Phil Poley's lab, and checked out Marley's keys on a few doors."

Victor Akino had stopped in mid-bite and was looking at me curiously. "Little frog...?"

"Oh, you didn't see it, did you Vic," Niles said. "Reid brought a little pyronicus with him this morning. Cute fellow; looked to be in summer display mode to me."

"Umm... pyronicus.... Aren't they poisonous?"

"Can be, yeah, but I don't think this one is real bad. In summer display they have neuro-active secretions on their skin, but not much of the cardio-toxin. It can still kill you if you overdose, but... you'd need a lot."

Victor turned to me. "And how did you happen to get this frog? Was it from Marley?"

I nodded. "He spit it out of his mouth into a jar, right before taking a swing at me with a broken beer bottle."

Victor eyes grew wide and he turned back to Niles. "And Marley took the frog from here? From Room 360?"

Kelsey leaned toward me and whispered, "That's Petra's animal care lab, where we keep strange and exotic critters."

I whispered back "Thanks."

Niles shrugged. "I don't know, Vic. We'll need to ask Petra; maybe Marley checked it out for his project work."

"I don't think Petra was involved," said Kelsey. "She was surprised when JZ brought the frog back. She asked how we got it, but I haven't told her anything yet. I think Marley just went into her lab Monday night and took it."

"How could he do that?" Victor sounded puzzled. "That room's locked up tight at night. Not even the janitors have keys. You remember, ever since those iguanas got loose...."

"He might have his own key," I said, and held up Marley's ring.

Niles and Victor both looked at it, then at me. Kelsey said, "Reid and I've been checking. Some of those keys open doors that Marley shouldn't have access to. We didn't figure out all of them yet, but one of them could be to Room 360."

"And the other, uh... unauthorized doors?" Victor asked her.

"One to my lab," she said, "one to Julian's lab, and -"

"Let me guess," Niles said. "One to my lab, too, even though it's pretty empty these days."

"No." Kelsey looked at him and shook her head. "Not your lab. Actually, the other key is to your office."

Niles opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He face went from surprised to angry, then guardedly blank.

"My office... why would he want to get in there?"

"Yes, Niles," Victor asked, half smiling, "what scarlet secrets are you hiding?"

"None!" He said it quickly, emphatically, but his eyes looked nervous. "Just dusty old files. What would he want with budget records and grant applications? I can't imagine what else he'd expect to find."

He sounded a bit too defensive. Was sweet old Niles hiding something?

There were probably a thousand secrets and scandals wafting through the halls of the Waxman, just like at any other place. And probably none of them relevant to my investigation.

Probably none... but maybe, just maybe, something useful was lurking behind a locked door. A locked door that opened to one of Marley's keys.

"So Reid," Victor said, turning to me, "you said something about hospital samples? Anything useful turn up there?"

I glanced over at Kelsey, and she leaned forward, pushing the chromatography printouts to the center of the table.

"We got some good results. We started with a reverse phase column, then JZ followed it up with ion exchange. It's pretty conclusive."

She tapped on the graphs as she talked. "These three peaks in Marley's blood are the key ones. You can see that they're not present in the control blood sample. These two come from the frog, but this third one is from the Vaka-nai root. You remember, Niles, the stuff you brought back a few years ago? You gave us a couple of kilos and JZ and I purified the pink crystals?"

Niles seemed interested again, and stood to lean over the printouts for a closer look. "Uh-huh, yes." He looked over at Victor. "Last year – or maybe the year before - when we had our annual Waxman progress meeting – remember Kelsey presenting on this? She purified the active chemical from Vaka-nai."

"Um," Victor grimaced. "I recall something about it, but not much. What's it do?"

Niles explained about how it was used moderate the actions of the frog's neuroactive secretion – the hallucinogen – to generate the "spirit door" effect, the same story Kelsey had told me an hour ago.

Victor was nodding. "Okay... but how does Marley happen to know about this? And how did he get these pink Vaka-nai crystals?"

"The keys," Kelsey reminded him, "He has a key to my lab."

Victor finished his diet Coke and stood up, walked to the recycling bin and tossed in the empty can. He paced along the wall next to the white board, turned, paced back, and flopped into his chair. He looked over at me and shook his head. "So it looks like Marley was removing stuff from Waxman labs for his personal use, which is serious but might not be criminal. But if he was making it available – or selling it - to other people, then...?"

"Then bad news," I finished for him. "Bad news for Marley and bad news for the Waxman, especially if someone freaks out and jumps through a window, or maybe has a heart attack."

Victor looked at Kelsey. "Can you tell from the tests what the blood concentrations of the, uh, the dangerous chemicals are? I mean, the guy's in a coma. Could the concentrations be lethal?"

Kelsey wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "Look Vic, we can calculate his blood concentrations, in micrograms per deciliter, but we don't have a good baseline of comparison to know if it's lethal or not. We haven't run more than maybe ten other blood samples from native users... it's not something we can easily get."

"Okay. But compared to those ten other bloods. How does Marley fit in?"

"High," she said. "Not the highest, but on the high side. You collected those samples, didn't you, Niles?"

"Yes, it was actually nine blood specimens, taken during three funeral ceremonies over a period of two years. We tested them down there at the Layard clinic. They don't have the best equipment for this kind of thing, but we got some results. Let's see if I can pull them up."

He took out his phone and tapped the keypad, waited a few seconds, tapped again, pursed his lips, tapped some more, then nodded. He showed the screen to Kelsey, who studied it briefly, then pointed to her HPLC data. After a short whispered conversation, Niles looked up at Victor and me.

"Okay, then. It turns out that two of those young men died during the ceremonies, and they actually had lower blood concentrations than Marley's. But there's an awful lot of individual tolerance that comes into play. One man's lethal dose is another man's routine high."

"Sounds like trouble," I said. "If he was sharing this with a few buddies in a group turn-on, some might just get buzzed while others could end up dead."

Kelsey nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what it means."

"We can't be certain, though," Niles said. "The ones who died were going through rituals that involve fasting and sleep deprivation. It's difficult to make realistic comparisons."

We sat in silence, looking at the printouts, at each other, at the food. Nobody seemed to have much to say.

My macadamia nut cookie was excellent, so I had a second one.

Finally Victor spoke up. "As far as we know, Marley was using this by himself, right? I mean, we don't know that he was spreading it around to anyone else, do we?"

"Right," I agreed, "as far as we know. He was with a friend Monday night, and apparently they shared a little alcohol and grass, but Marley did the frog-pink powder bit by himself."

Victor set his glasses on the table and rubbed his forehead. "Well, thank God for that. At least he didn't endanger his friend."

Another ten seconds slipped by with no one else adding anything, so I said, "Maybe that's a good lead-in to another matter I wanted to bring up. It turns out that Marley's friend had an interesting story, something that Marley told him during an, mmm... intimate moment."

I had their attention now. Three pairs of eyes watched intently as I set a little voice recorder on the table and flicked the Play button. They all leaned forward, looking the recorder, but I sat back, looking at them.

Lester's voice came through, high pitched but crystal clear.

"That's a dangerous place, the Waxman. Marley got sucked into something there, and now he doesn't know how to get out."

(My voice) "Tell me more."

(Lester again) "I don't know much more. No details. Just that something big is going on. Big enough that one of the other guys involved was killed. 'Executed', Marley said. They executed him before he could blow the deal. One of the prof's at the Waxman, an important guy."

"Look, Reid, that's all I know. Marley was involved in something there at the Waxman. But he's just a player. Somebody else is running the show. And this someone else had one of the other players knocked off. And guess what – they covered it up by making it look like suicide... but it wasn't. I swear, that's what he told me."

Victor was still watching the recorder, waiting for more. Niles had been looking first at Victor, and then at Kelsey as Lester's story unfolded. Kelsey sat with her head bowed, blinking rapidly. There were little pink spots on her cheeks and she had an unfocussed look, like she was thinking hard about something.

I switched off the recorder and said, "So, were there any deaths among the staff in the last year or so?"

Victor looked concerned. "Yes, two. Both sudden. There was John Arvin, one of our security guards. He was overweight and smoked. Um, he had high blood pressure, so a coronary problem with him was no surprise." He paused and took off his glasses again, idly tapping them on the table three or four times, then went on, "And the other was -"

"- was Julian" said Kelsey, finishing the sentence. She stood up and rubbed her temples. "Please excuse me. I've got a bit of a headache. Vic, Niles – I'll see you tomorrow. As she went toward the door she stopped at my chair and rested her hand on my shoulder. Reid... I'd like to see you again, too... we've got more to discuss, I think."

I reached up to squeeze her hand, but she was already going out the door.

"Damn it," Niles muttered. He looked upset, but didn't say more.

Victor put his glasses back on and grimaced. "That was tough. You see, Reid, Julian Chambers was Kelsey's husband. He was on the staff here for 15 years... a molecular epidemiologist, and a damned good one. He died just over a year ago while away on a field trip. And yes, it was ruled a suicide."

"He was in the field a lot," Niles added. "That's a really challenging line of work, chasing down the disease transmission in small populations who may live near each other but are separated by cultural boundaries. What makes one group susceptible, another resistant... how that's influenced by intermarriage and social interactions; how the diseases mutate to change their virulence and increase their target range."

"As you can imagine," Victor said, "he picked up his share of problems. Chronic malaria; several bouts of severe pneumonia. He even got attacked by a jaguar once and carried the scars on his shoulder. On top of that, he had some minor psychological issues."

"Not minor," Niles erupted. "Severe bipolar, and hated taking his medicine. Kelsey divorced him a few months before that last trip. He would sink into the damnest pits of depression, and in one of them, he just... took a pistol and shot himself in the head. A God-awful tragedy, but almost inevitable."

I waited a few seconds, and when they didn't say any more, I spoke up.

"You say he was out in the field. Do you mean, like, in a tent? At the edge of a river...out in a jungle... or what?"

They looked at each other, both seeming uncomfortable.

Finally Niles said, "On a field trip, yes, but not in a remote wilderness. Actually he was working at a clinic near a tributary of the Amazon River. He was found dead in a house at an old mission. It's mostly run by an order of Catholic nuns, now."

Kelsey had told me earlier that she'd been raised on an old mission. Was there a connection?

"So," I said, "did he leave a note?"

"A suicide note? Yes," Niles nodded slowly. " But I didn't see it myself... just heard it was vague personal stuff. None of my business."

"By personal, you mean for Kelsey?"

Niles glanced at Victor. "Well, maybe; um - yes, it could have been for Kelsey."

Victor chimed in, "Or maybe for..." he stopped, looking embarrassed, then shrugged and looked at Niles. "I think it's best if we be open about this, as long as it's confidential.... It is, isn't it, Reid?"

"Absolutely," I said. I neglected to mention that I'd turned the voice recorder back on.

"Okay, then," he continued. "I didn't see the note either, but it could have been for Kelsey, or it could have been for Trinity, or for both. Um, you see, after Julian and Kelsey separated, he became involved with Trinity. Or rather, re-involved... it's complicated."

"Who has the note now?" I asked.

They both shrugged. "No idea," said Victor.

"Okay," I went on, "so he was working in the field, but it wasn't out in the wilderness - he was at a mission, near a clinic. So - who was he working with? Who discovered the body? Was there a police investigation? Was there a report filed? Was a coroner involved? How did they decide on suicide? Was there an autopsy?"

Niles frowned and shook his head. "I think you're jumping too far ahead here, Reid. No, he wasn't exactly out in the wilderness, but conditions there are still primitive. The people there are as intelligent, and competent as anyone else, but are mostly untouched by the electronic age. Their populations are few and scattered; there are no actual police, just their tribal guardians. There is one government agent, a local military man – but he's there more to keep out poachers than to enforce any laws. He did a cursory investigation and reported that Julian's body was found by a caretaker at the mission. Apparently he heard a shot, went to look, and there was the body in a chair, slumped over a table, with the note under his arm. At least, that's what we were told."

I turned to Victor. "Do you have a copy of the investigation report?"

He looked thoughtful. "Hmm – we did, yes. It would have been in Julian's personnel file. When one of our employees dies, we keep thorough records of the events, to handle any insurance claims, pension plan payouts... anything like that, properly. But after all issues are closed, and a year has passed with no further action, the records are usually destroyed to preserve confidentiality. That may have already happened. You'd need to check."

"And where are the files kept?"

He glanced at Niles, then back at me. "In Trinity Garret's office – she keeps all the employee records. She should be back from vacation soon... can it wait for a few days?"

I nodded. "If there's no alternative, then that'd be okay."

He looked relieved.

"As far as an autopsy," Niles said, "there was only a very brief one. Julian's body was taken to the clinic and the doctors looked him over. They concluded that he'd died by a gunshot wound. And then they cremated him, the same day."

"You see," he went on, "there're no facilities for keeping cadavers in cold storage down there. It's a good clinic, a good field hospital, run by really dedicated people. But they don't have a morgue, don't have a funeral parlor. When someone dies, they have to process them quickly."

"Do they have a freezer for storing tissue samples?" I asked. "I mean, they must have medicines that need to be kept frozen."

"Oh sure - small freezers for storing small containers; not for storing an entire body. Remember, their goal is to give assistance to the living, and to prevent dangerous situations from getting out of control. That means stopping diseases from spreading. And one way to do that is to cremate dead bodies quickly."

Well, I had to agree with that; a good way to stop the spread of disease.

Also a great way to get rid of evidence.

We sat looking at each other for another ten seconds. Victor was the first to crack.

"So Reid, can I get you another cup of coffee, or a juice? Or maybe a cookie?"

I smiled and shook my head. "No – no, I'll be taking off now. Thanks for your help though, it's been... enlightening for me. And I hope I've given you something to think about too. I'll nose around a bit more and, if anything comes up, get back to you in a day or so. If something occurs to you, please give me a call. I'm open for business twenty-four hours a day, so no need to hesitate."

As we stood I slipped the recorder back into my pocket. We shook hands and walked out of the Blue room together; Niles turned left and headed down the hall while Victor and I went to the guard kiosk to sign me out.

On the way to the door he said, "You know, I was pretty skeptical when I first heard about you coming over. But now – well, there are some points that concern me. Please let me know if you learn anymore."

"Absolutely, you can count on it," I smiled. "The good name of the Waxman Institute is important, isn't it?"

He didn't smile back. "You're goddamn right it is, and I won't let any twisted son of a bitch like Marley Granger screw it up."

I nodded, we shook hands again, and I left.

***************

It was still just mid-afternoon; shafts of sunlight streamed down through breaks in the clouds, making a dancing pattern of glistening bright patches in the slate-gray water of the Bay. I walked down the path toward the parking lot thinking of what to do next. I'd need to see Phil Poley when he got back; same with Trinity Garret. Kelsey – I'd call her tomorrow.

A beautiful and smart lady she was, for sure. But what was her involvement – if any – in all this? Was her ex-husband the one Marley was talking about? It looked like it, presuming that Lester was telling the truth. What about newspaper accounts of Julian Chambers' death? I would have to check, and also gather more background info on all parties concerned.

There were a couple of dead birds lying in the dirt just off the path. They looked like red-wing blackbirds, common enough around here. I stepped over them and noticed a squirrel lying nearby – also dead. Victims of the weather?

Unlikely, but what else? I looked back at the Waxman building: Imposing, modern, high-tech, packed with brainy people.

But watch out for brainy people with brainy secrets.

When I got to my truck I saw a sheet of paper on the windshield - and on all of the other cars in the parking lot, too. It was a flyer with a picture of a smiling elephant on the front and laughing kids on the back: "The Circus is here! New, updated, and animal friendly! See us at the Arena!"

I tossed it onto the passenger seat, started the engine, and drove away toward Halliday's.

Chapter 12: Niles

Day 3: Wednesday afternoon

Niles got out of the elevator at about the same time as Reid was signing out at the guard kiosk. He tried to look casual as he made his way down the corridor to his corner office, but inside he was seething.

The door was oak, heavy and solid. The gold lettering shined, even in the muted fluorescent hall lights:

Niles Stratton, Ph.D.

Director of Toxicology

As he slid his key into the lock and opened the latch, he thought about what Reid and Kelsey had said, that Marley - Goddam - Granger had a key too.

Not good. NOT good! NOT GOOD!!

He snatched up his desk phone and punched in the number for the facilities manager.

"Yo, this is Petrov. What's up?"

"Dylan, this is Niles Stratton. I have a bit of a problem. I need you to re-key the lock on my office door."

"Oh hi, Dr. Stratton – sure, we can do that. How urgent?"

"Very. I need it right away – this afternoon."

"Whoa- what do we got? – Security breach? Something serious? Any other problems I need to know about?"

Niles did not want to alarm Dylan Petrov. The facilities manager was very thorough, and if he thought that there was a security problem, he'd be all over asking questions.

The last thing Niles wanted was more questions.

"No, it not a big deal, Dylan. Just lost my key."

"Are ya locked out?"

"No, I'm in my office... um... I think I must have dropped the key into the mud by the Bay when I was taking a walk at lunchtime. Luckily, though, I'd left the door unlocked before I went out."

Petrov was quiet for a moment, then said, "Left your office door unlocked? Dr. Stratton, that doesn't sound like you. Are you feeling OK?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fine. I was a little distracted... lots going on in the lab, you know."

Niles could almost feel Dylan Petrov smirking and rolling his eyes. It galled him to play the absent-minded professor, or the pedantic blabber like he'd acted in the meeting just now with Reid. But it was easy to do and an effective way to sidestep suspicion.

No one suspects the likeable but slightly dim professor of anything.

"Ok, sure doc," Petrov said with a soft chuckle. "No sweat. I'll have somebody there in less than thirty minutes."

"Thanks. I'll be waiting." Niles checked the wall clock: 2:40 PM.

He set down the phone, calmer now, and let his eyes slowly scan the room. If Marley had snuck in, what could he have found?

Basically – nothing. Unless he got into the safe. But that hadn't happened - or at least the silent alarm system hadn't registered a break-in.

Niles had thought about keeping a video cam in his office, but rejected the idea. It might be an effective way to see who was creeping around, but video cams were way too insecure. Too many smart people could hack into them and view whatever they'd recorded, and he didn't want anyone – especially smart people - viewing anything that he did in there.

So he'd installed the alarm system - an expensive one. He'd put it in himself – no need for Victor Akino or Dylan Petrov or anyone else to know about it.

"Marley's one smart son-of-a-bitch," he thought, "but I don't think he knows how to disable this alarm and crack my safe."

Still... better check. He went to the wall behind his desk, lifted off the picture, and carefully set it down against the bookcase. The picture was a poster-sized blowup of a photo that he'd taken many years ago, one he was quite proud of. A monkey was gliding through the air, leaping from one tree to another. One arm was stretching out toward the tree in front, the other arm gracefully arching toward the tree behind. An arrow was passing by his right shoulder, having just barely grazed him. He was looking back and down at the humans, a look of amusement on his face; he almost seemed to be laughing. Niles had caught the action in razor sharp focus with the lighting perfect.

The combination wasn't particularly long – a four number sequence, with twisting the dial clockwise or counterclockwise various amounts of turns – and he ran through the steps in just a few seconds, then grabbed the recessed handle and pulled.

The small but heavy door swung open noiselessly.

Inside were two laminated wooden boxes about the size of a school binder, and a small ceramic bowl. He took the binders out, set them on the desk, and pulled off he tops. The first one was packed with personal papers – diplomas, awards, account statements, health records, copies of his patents – that sort of stuff; important to him but not overly confidential.

Her leafed through the pile rapidly but carefully, and couldn't detect anything missing.

The second box contained a stack of photos, each one 8x10 inches, many in color, but some in black and white. He riffled these more slowly, stopping every now and then and nodding appreciatively, admiring his work.

Okay – it didn't look like anyone had been poking around in either of the boxes, so he slid the lids back on and placed them back in the safe.

Now – the ceramic bowl: a gift from a friend in the Cambridge Archeology department. It was light blue, very old, and held an array of decorative disks, most the size of dimes, a few as large as a silver dollar. Some were made out of wood, others ivory, and still others of a dark resin. Their surfaces were carved in delicate patterns, and most of them had been hand-made by Pacific Islanders. But three of them, indistinguishable from the rest, were not; they were flash memory buttons, each one good for a tera-byte of data.

And on them Niles had recorded the entire plan - all of it, right from day one, including photos taken at the Lodge meetings. If the Consortium knew he had this, it would get very ugly... but he'd decided early on that he needed some insurance.

The relationship between him and the Consortium had so far been cordial and professional, though not warm and friendly. As long as he stayed productive and on schedule, it should stay that way. But they were absolute sticklers about secrecy, and once the project was complete and the product was delivered, then what?

So he needed a safety net. And the recordings, videos, and notes, all carefully identifying each of the major players, made that net. Copies would be provided to them, and he would make it clear that the originals would stay carefully stored away, unless something unfortunate happened to him.

Niles poured the disks onto a clean sheet of paper and counted them; yes, thirteen, including the three special ones.

Relieved, he put the disks back into the bowl and placed it into the safe, then shut the door, spun the dial, and hung the print back up.

Alright then – the contents of the safe were secure. What about the two file cabinets? They were always left unlocked.

Instead of checking, he sat down, closed his eyes, and thought about what – if any – sensitive material might be in there.

After a minute he shook his head and gave a satisfied grunt. "Nah – there's nothing." Reams of publications, seminar notes, patent drafts, hundreds of graphs and data tables, annual reports, budgets, facilities notes and other grist of twenty-five years work – but nothing – not one item – about The Project.

The Project that was consuming him, mind, body, and... yes, soul.

He leaned back and propped his feet on the desk top, trying to slow his heart rate and relax. But it was tough – they'd come so far and were so close to the finish, so bloody close; it was impossible not to be at least a little on edge.

A masterpiece – yes, a tour de force; sure, there were plenty of road bumps and challenges on the way, but they'd all been faced, all been dealt with. Even the very uncomfortable ones. Almost all, anyway....

The Project set-up was impeccable, arranged with his usual precision and attention to detail:

• Phase 1 included laying out product specs, defining issues, gathering background info, and devising the basic strategies

• Phase 2 included bringing on staff, making detailed plans, and gathering resources

• Phase 3 involved completing R&D to the point of making working prototype systems

• Phase 4 involved performance optimization, scale-up, and delivery of finished goods to the clients

• Phase 5 was the final use of the product. It would start quietly, but soon become a world-changing event.

Normally a project of this scope would involve reports to regulatory agencies, oversight committees, independent quality control checks, and reviews and approvals by various boards. Not this time.

For this Project, all of that was tossed out.

There would be no reports to anyone outside of the Consortium. No independent checks, no approvals beyond his own. Staff would be kept to a bare minimum. That meant bringing on the best people available - experts who could get results with a little or no help, and who would keep their mouths firmly shut.

Maybe not the best people; but the best available, and that meant accepting the bad with the good.

Marley, damn him, was a perfect example of that. Brilliant when he was focused, incredibly fast at bringing in results. But a loose cannon if there ever was one. A volatile, ego-driven loner....

And Phil – smart and careful, with a prodigious knowledge of exotic toxins, especially where to find them and how to handle them; but insecure and too talkative, not to be trusted with sensitive information.

Julian? Phenomenal work ethic, driven to succeed, near the top in his field, but spiraling down emotionally and psychologically – mood swings shifting week to week. And one of those swings ended up costing him his life.

God, what a group to have for his key players. Brilliant? Yes; but edgy, odd, and unpredictable. Still, they'd done a bang-up good job;

But how to control them? How to keep those edgy geniuses from slipping over the brink, from disintegrating emotionally? That was a helluva challenge. He needed someone who could smooth those rough edges, dampen the odd quirks, throw warmth and light into their shadowy personas. How to keep away their inner demons? How to give them the courage to feel worthy of greatness?

The answer? - All you need is love, baby.

Or a close approximation, anyway.

And he'd found the perfect person for that: Trinity. Okay, she had her issues too, but who didn't?

It'd worked out. He'd taken care of Phase 1 himself, early on, back at the Lodge, selling it to Mr. Greene and the General – God, that had been one Hell of a time....

Phase 2 had taken careful scheming. Recruiting Phil had been easy enough; finding Marley had been lucky – thanks to Jim Hillen at Stanford. Getting Julian on-board had been tricky, though, but Trinity had helped with that. The money from the Consortium was plenty to secure lab space and equipment without a raising a peep from the other faculty. It was surprising how fast doors opened when you tossed a few hundred thousand dollars onto the conference table.

Phase 3 wasn't easy, but it went well - really well. Phil supplied the raw materials and Marley lived up to his reputation as a wonder worker. Together they churned out results at breakneck speed. Julian's part was a hard nut to crack, but with Hillen's help he got within a heartbeat of finishing, when something happened.

According to Mr. Greene, Julian snapped... slipped over the edge, and action had to be taken. _Had_ to be taken. Regrettable but necessary. There was no alternative... or so Mr. Greene said, and there was no contradicting him.

That story never seemed right to Niles, though, and the memory still gave him a sick stomach. But what could he do about it? - Nothing.

And with Julian gone, it meant sending Phil down to the jungle to try to put the pieces back together. Not the best use of Phil's talents, and he took longer than expected to get results. But even so, last week he'd finally finished the field testing, and they were about ready to deliver the goods.

Yes, they were so close, so goddamn close to the end of Phase 4... and then this.

Niles slammed his fist on the desk and yelled "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING, MARLEY?" He whacked the desk again, wondering if the janitors were nearby. Probably not, probably no one could hear him.

Still, he had to be careful. He couldn't lose it like Julian had, like Marley had, and like Phil will when Reid gets a hold of him.

That thought made him sit up straight. Yes, Phil is nearly done with the testing. He could be back here as early as next week. But I can't let him come back, not until this blows over.

The trouble was that Niles had no quick way to contact Phil directly, and even if he did, it could be tough to convince him to stay down there for another month or two - or more. Maybe the best way was to have Mr. Greene talk to him directly; offer him a little more money to take a vacation down there.

Yes, that might work. He needed to make the call anyway, to let Mr. Greene know about Marley. It wouldn't be a pleasant call; Niles wished he had more time to think of exactly what to say and how to say it, but....

He keyed a number into his cell and waited. It was a secure connection and was answered on the second ring.

"Dr. Stratton - an unscheduled call?" The voice was smooth and mellow, as always. But not warm, not welcoming, not lighthearted; never that.

"Yes, hello, Mr. Greene. I have some important information...."

Twenty minutes later he set the phone down. His palms were sweaty, so he wiped them on his pants and took a few deep, slow breaths to calm his pulse. Mr. Greene had not been happy; well, no surprise there. He reminded Niles that the Consortium required – demanded – complete secrecy. Niles needed no reminding though; he'd seen enough before, back at the Lodge, back at the beginning.

Mr. Greene was in favor of removing Marley. "No - not yet, we still need him," Niles said. "We're very close to clean-up and delivery, but I need Marley for that."

There was a moment of silence while Mr. Greene considered, then said, "We read your last report, and we're all very impressed, Dr. Stratton. You've lived up to your promises so far. We value your services, and will pay generously. But there can be no leaks, you know that. However, if Mr. Granger is still required for the success of the Project, you may keep him for a short while."

Niles started to say "Thanks," but Mr. Greene kept talking.

"As far as Dr. Poley... I have visited him at the Mission on two occasions. A smart man, but a weak one. He's been talking to the nuns, even showing some of them the inside of his lab. I think it makes him feel important to impress them. And he lacks courage; I agree that it would be a mistake to let him return home and face questioning. We will discuss his situation and take appropriate action. It would be a very good idea for you and Mr. Granger to come down here within the next two weeks. You can make that?"

"Yes, one week should be enough time to finish up. I can be there in two."

"Very good. Make arrangements as you see fit. Do not contact me directly until you are leaving, unless there are further difficulties."

And that was that.

Chapter 13: Kelsey

Day 3: Wednesday Mid-afternoon

Kelsey had just poured a cup of tea when her phone chimed. She'd gotten home about a half-hour before and wanted some alone time to sit and think. Laila and Stevie would be back soon – they were out grocery shopping or at the dog park with Kashiri – so wasting precious minutes on the phone was at the bottom of her priority list just now.

Her regular routine after getting home from the lab was to change clothes and take a shower before starting to rustle up dinner – a habit she'd gotten into in grad school, when working with neurotoxins and radioactive isotopes. Now that she had Stevie, it made good sense to be extra careful.

So she'd changed into her robe and slippers, but wanted to relax with this cup of tea before hitting the shower. That meeting today with Reid got her wondering about Julian again, something she'd avoided for a while.

The last year before he died had been an emotional roller coaster, rising to fits of anger and sinking to valleys of resentment. But this year, since his death last December, had been pretty peaceful overall. Not exactly relaxing – between work and Stevie there wasn't much free time; but the anxiety had dropped to a manageable level.

Instead she was emotionally flat... but felt safe, and that was important. Still, it was um... what? – Empty ?. "Yes," she nodded to herself, "too empty."

She sighed. Reid was cute, and the UC Davis connection was crazy. More than cute – he was damn good looking. And that was something else she hadn't thought about for a while.

She wanted to see him again, soon.

The phone rang a fourth and then a fifth time. She grimaced and went to check the caller ID. Could be anything.... Another survey for water rationing? Another sales call for installing solar? A reminder from the dentist?

But it wasn't. The calling number looked familiar, but no name was displayed. Local area code, though, so it probably wasn't a random telemarketer.

"Hello?"

"Kelsey – Jeez, I'm glad you picked up. I rang Marley, got no answer, then tried Niles and got no answer. Sorry to bother you, but you're my last hope."

Trinity? Definitely sounded like her silky voice.

"Hey Trinity – What's up? Aren't you were down at the clinic with Phil?"

"No – I left yesterday morning. Caught the boat to Salvata. Thought maybe I could hop one of those shaky prop planes and go to a real airport and fly home right away. But no luck – I was stuck in that garbage pit overnight."

"Garbage pit?" Kelsey could feel her pulse rising. She'd never thought much of Salvata, either, but she didn't like outsiders like Trinity running it down. But then, it wasn't so far wrong - Salvata always was a dingy little squat of a place.

"Yeah, even worse than that," Trinity went on. "You left here years ago, right? And haven't been back more than once or twice, huh? Well, it's not much bigger now than it used to be, but the military took over the old airstrip. Civilians can't fly in or out and nobody knows why they're here. But there're a hundred soldiers with nothing to do but gamble and get drunk and piss in the streets. Two of them drove a jeep into the river last week and drowned. And there were gunshots in the hallway outside my room last night. I stuck a chair against the door and couldn't sleep. So yeah, 'garbage pit' is a compliment."

Military? In Salvata? That was a new one for Kelsey. The region was one of the most primitive – but peaceful - in the country, maybe even the world: few people, no political turmoil, no border disputes with neighboring areas, just mile after mile after mile of unbroken forest.

Probably it was just one more pointless government exercise.

But Trinity had to be calling for something besides just giving an update on Salvata, so Kelsey let those thoughts fade away and asked, "Okay, what's up, then? Why're you trying to reach Marley and Niles?"

"I'm hoping one of them can pick me up at the SF airport. I couldn't call before – phone service is down, and I wanted to let someone know when my plane gets in."

The connection was only fair at best, and there was a crackle of background static that rose and fell randomly. It had gotten louder just then, so Kelsey asked Trinity to repeat that last part.

When she got it, she had to think about what to answer... it wasn't a good time to get into a long explanation about everything that was going on with Marley, and anyway, she hardly understood it herself. So all she said was, "I'll try to pass your message along, Trinity, but I can't tell who's going to be able to meet you. Try calling Niles again; if you reach him, he can give you more info about Marley. But be ready to hire a ride, just in case."

"I'll try Marley again first," Trinity said. "He's usually up and around at night, so driving to the airport should be okay for him. But he hasn't answered any calls or texts. Is he working in the daytime now? Do you have numbers for the labs? Maybe I can reach him there."

Kelsey mentally tossed a coin, then sighed and said, "Okay look - that's not going to work. He's in the hospital."

"Whaaat?"

"Yeah. Apparently he bunged himself up on drugs. That's about all I know. Look, Trinity... I'll call Niles for you – he's probably in his office at the Waxman. But what about Phil? Is he coming back with you?"

"Him? No way! I'm done with that loser. He can stay down here and suck eggs for all I care. I can only pretend for so long. No more – I'm comin' home alone."

"Pretend what?" Kelsey asked. "We all thought you two liked each other."

"Ohhh – what the Hell," Trinity said, exasperation in her voice. "Just forget I said that. Bottom line is that I'm leaving and he's stayin'. That's all anyone needs to know."

' _It's more than I want to know'_ , thought Kelsey to herself. ' _What's going on between you and Phil means less than zero to me._ '

But she put some concern into her voice – concern she didn't really feel – and said, "Sorry, Trinity. After the gunfire and lack of sleep last night, you must've had a tough travel day today."

"God, you know it! I caught the morning west-bound mail plane out of Salvata at 4 AM. Not a good time, but I was glad to get away, and lucky too – it took me all the way to Quito. Then three more flights, with layovers of an hour or two each time. Pretty miserable, but I finally got into Miami about an hour ago. Just finished going through customs. No time to relax just yet, though - we're taking off on United in a few minutes. It's a direct flight to San Francisco, supposed to arrive around 7:40 PM Pacific Coast time."

"Got it," Kelsey said. "Okay then, don't worry - I'll make sure someone's there to meet you. If I can't get hold of Niles, then I'll ask Harolde. And Trinity..." Kelsey was about to ask something about Julian, but then thought better of it.

"Yeah?"

"Ohh... nothing. Have a good night."

"Thanks, and Kelsey... um - I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Oh, it's OK, it's still early – I haven't even made dinner yet."

"No, I don't mean that, not for calling late. It's just that... mmm, I've been down here for the last two weeks. Phil's really into his work, and we're not getting along, so I've had a lot of time to just wander around and think about stuff. It's been a tough couple of years for all of us, and what I mean is - I'm sorry for, you know... everything. For how life worked out."

Trinity apologizing? Kelsey was caught off guard and took a few seconds before answering. Then she shook her head and said, "No need for that. I should apologize, too. You're right - life does have strange twists, and sometimes we don't have much control over them. But everything is cool now.... So, look – just relax and have a good trip."

"Thanks, Kel - I'll probably see you late tomorrow at the Waxman."

Kelsey set down the phone, sat on the bed, and took a sip of tea. It was only luke-warm now, but still tasty. That was one surprising phone call. She and Trinity had talked almost like friends. Not quite, but almost. Sure, they saw each other at work and talked about job stuff, but they hadn't had a real conversation in... well, maybe ever.

Alright. Now, Niles's number should be somewhere in her contacts list. Okay...yes, there it was: She keyed it in and he answered on the third ring.

It was a short conversation, no more than two minutes. Niles seemed distracted, like he was involved in something else, so Kelsey just gave him the info about Trinity, and, after chatting very briefly, hung up.

Okay – job done. Good ol' Niles - the last thing she wanted to do now was drive to the airport to pick up Trinity. And the next to last thing was to answer the phone again.

Just let me have a few minutes to myself, please.

She slumped back against the pillows and lay there, staring at the ceiling. After a few seconds of blank reverie, her mind started replaying what Reid had said earlier....

Julian's death – was it really possible that someone had murdered him?

Why would anyone do that?

What had he been working on? Kelsey closed her eyes, trying to remember....

Then gave up, realizing that she had no idea. "God!" she exploded, "What the Hell was he up to?"

Julian had been acting strange before they split up, staying late at the lab instead of coming home – if he even did came home, which half the time he didn't. Then about two years ago he moved out and she mostly lost track of him. Sometimes she'd see him in the hallway between their labs – and he'd mumble something about going away on business – "I need to see so-and-so; be back in a while, say Hi to Stevie."

And then there was that final trip, the one he never did come back from.

But their marriage had withered long before that. It seemed odd somehow; during those last years – while he was alive – it had been very tough for her to think about their relationship clearly; too much stress, pressure, angst, regret... or whatever.

But in the time since his death – just over a year ago – most of that turmoil had dissolved away, and she'd been able to think about their relationship with honesty and clarity.

And what was most clear to her now was that they never had a solid romance to begin with.

For her, it had started off as something like hero worship, an infatuation after meeting him at the jungle clinic. He was a smart, handsome professor from California, and she was a starry-eyed teenager who had never been as much as fifty miles from the Mission since she was a year old.

That had exploded into a whirlwind of exciting trysts and romantic interludes... or had it? Looking back now, it seemed that the excitement and romance was mostly on her part. He was always a little... what? Reluctant? No, not exactly that. Reserved? Yes, more like that... almost like he was looking over his shoulder, not wanting to be seen.

He said he loved her though, and two years later, after he and Niles had helped get her into the university, they started talking about marriage. But that meant a long engagement... time for her to finish undergrad work and start grad school. Their idea was that she could complete her PhD thesis by working in Niles' lab at the Waxman, and that would be when they would get married. But at least five yawned ahead of them.

Too much time for what was in reality a just shallow relationship.

That seemed obvious now, but back then life was too busy and involved to think about it. At first he drove up to Davis to see her most weekends, but halfway through the first semester it was every other week... then once a month... then, if she wanted to see him, it was her taking the train or bus to the Bay Area, and that didn't happen much. During the last year they saw each other at most four or five times.

So when they finally did go to the altar to say their vows, the romance was essentially over.

"Why did we go through with it?" She whispered to herself, but already knew the answer. "Because people expected us to.... Everyone talked about it so much that the marriage event took on a life of its own." All the hoopla, throwing showers, buying dresses, tasting cakes, planning bachelor parties... Ugh!

She realized now that they didn't have the wedding in order to be married; no, they'd gotten married in order to have the wedding. A rotten reason, and many times since, she had thought, "We should never have gone through with it."

And not everybody was happy about it. Julian's parents – especially his mother, Marge – never liked Kelsey. She'd always been against the wedding, but even her formidable scowl couldn't derail it.

And, of course, Trinity.

And... now that she really thought about it, really honestly thought about it – Julian himself hadn't been happy.

He'd been nervous at the ceremony. Everyone had joked about it at the time – the glib Julian Chambers, who was at ease speaking to an audience of a thousand scientists, and here he was stumbling over his words at the wedding altar.

"How cute!" people said, and chuckled.

But he wasn't being cute. He was distracted, anxious, looking for a way out and not finding one. He probably knew by then that it was a mistake.

"It took me a bit longer," Kelsey whispered, "but I found out."

Yeah, a damn sorry mistake... shouldn't have done it... except -

Except – if there had been no marriage, then there would be no Stevie, and she couldn't bear the thought of that.

Right from the start Julian never made any secret that his career came first and everything else was a poor second. Even the honeymoon was rushed, and they cut it short to get back to his lab. Still, for the first three or four months when his grants were funded and work was going well, the marriage hummed along just fine. But when the grant money suddenly dried up and his work hit the rocks, the marriage floundered. Not that it had ever been really great – family time wasn't important to Julian. Lovemaking, conversation, morning coffee, shopping together, chats about the future, play time with Stevie, everything - the whole relationship - just kind of drizzled out.

He would be here sometimes, gone other times, but mostly – gone. And even when he was here, his mind was somewhere else. Then it got worse – she called them the dark days – when he got angry, abusive, and she'd made him move out. That's when she bought Kashiri. Like most Golden Retrievers, Kashiri was friendly and even tempered, but she was almost a hundred pounds, had a ferocious bark, and didn't tolerate strangers getting near Stevie.

And then something strange happened. A few months after moving out, Julian perked up, excited about work for the first time a long while. He seemed to be charged with energy; when she saw him in the hallway at the Waxman, he actually smiled and said "Hello".

Why? - Because he had a new project, with plenty of funding. It was mystery funding though – he wouldn't say where it was coming from, or what he was working on, just that this was 'The Big One'.

And then she heard the rumors that he had gone back to Trinity. She was long past caring, though. Way, way past. She just didn't give a damn about how he was living his life.

Except sometimes late at night, lying in bed before sleeping, she would toss uneasily and wonder whether Julian was happier now because of a new project or because of Trinity.

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity... one of the most beautiful people Kelsey had ever seen. What man wouldn't want to be with her? Except that Trinity and Julian had been together before... years ago... and he'd left her to be with Kelsey.

And now they were back together again. And he was happy.

But then came the phone call from Wayne - yes, just exactly a year ago this week - saying that Julian had committed suicide... had shot himself. How did that fit in with his newly happy life?

It didn't... unless he wasn't so damn happy after all.

There was a rapid fire of mixed emotions: initial shock at the news, followed by a flash of satisfaction that life with Trinity instead of her wasn't so damned fine after all; then a stab of guilt for feeling that.

There was no deep grief, but there was genuine sadness. That faded too, replaced by a different, more vague sense of guilt. Suicide is such a lonely path – Could she have stopped him from taking it? After all, Julian was the father of her son, and she had loved him, once.

She told herself that that chapter of her life was done, that the relationship had reached a final closure... time to turn the page and move on. But it wouldn't quite go away. How often had she visualized him sitting at that table, holding a pistol to his head, thinking of her as he pulled the trigger?

Too often. It would come at random times: over a cup of coffee, or while sitting at her computer, sometimes while driving... there would be the image of Julian with a look of desperation on his face. Then would come a blast of fire and hot lead splintering bone and brain....

And she would wonder: "What could I have done differently?"

But if what Reid said today was true, then Julian was mixed up in something, and had been murdered because of it. And that meant that someone else's hand was holding the gun, someone else pulled the trigger.

Did that change things? For him, no; but for her, yes, it changed everything. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift...then suddenly sat up and looked across the room at her reflection in the long mirror leaning against the wall.

"Okay," she said out loud, "What if all that is true? And what if I can finally slam the lid on the past and just look to the future – what does that really hold for me? What do I really have in my life?"

Well, she had a good job - a great job in lot of ways - and she knew that she was lucky to have it. She liked going to the lab, liked the ins and outs of the daily work, liked the mental challenges of designing experiments, analyzing data and ferreting out meaning. It filled up her time and gave her... what? - Professional satisfaction? Yes, sure, it did that. But what about joy? Did it bring joy to her life? Did it uplift her spirits?

To be honest, the answer had to be 'No, not really.' Or not enough, anyway.

What about family? Well, she was a single mom with a 4 year old son, and she loved him more than anything on the planet. But in time he would grow up and go off to a life of his own. Leaving her with...mmm, her job, and a few friends, but that seemed vague and unfulfilling.

"I'm lonely," she whispered softly. It just popped out of her mouth, but as soon as she said it, she knew that it was true.

She stood up. "I'm lonely!" she said louder.

She walked into the bathroom, shrugged off her robe, and stepped onto the scale. "113" it read. Not bad for 5 feet 3 inches. She turned slowly, checking out her reflection in the mirror. Yes, not bad. But not great, either.

She remembered being sleek and hard muscled as a teenager, scrambling up trees chasing monkeys, swimming through dark lagoons, running barefoot over miles of dirt trails. God, how she longed to be doing that again!

But she'd left all of that, certain of finding a happy marriage and a hotshot career.

Well, the marriage had been a bust and the career was – not a bust, but not exactly a hotshot either.

With a sigh she stepped into the shower and breathed in the steam as the hot water splashed over her face and shoulders.

"I'm lonely and I need to get away", she burbled through the running water. It felt good, really good, to say.

And it was about to happen – next week, only a few more days to wait.

It was thanks to a chance that popped up suddenly, just two months ago. The Waxman has close ties to a dozen similar research organizations around the world. They get together each year for open discussions on their work – at least as open as possible, considering intellectual property restrictions – and occasionally these meetings result in collaborative projects of one sort or another.

At the last meeting, Victor had been approached by Anji Ankora from the West African Institute and Lem Washburn from Australia. They were putting together a book on the comparative phylogeny of hot climate toxins, and wanted someone who not only had extensive first-hand knowledge, but also knew the techniques for doing structure-activity comparisons.

That sort of project wouldn't have been too popular a few years ago, when activity at the Waxman was often done in secret, but after Victor Akino took over as General Director the climate at the institute changed. Yes, he had a degree in science, but he also had an MBA and a knack for public relations. He pushed for a more public presence for the Waxman, and now the staff appeared on Science Channel programs, gave lectures at local high schools and colleges, chatted to reporters on evening news segments, and the Waxman logo was showing up at community fundraisers.

The result was a jump in venture capital investment, and the Waxman Board members were very pleased

So when Victor called a staff meeting to discuss who might be best suited to collaborate on the new book, many of the younger staff were enthusiastic. There were several names put forward, but Kelsey was the near unanimous first choice. There was only one dissenting voter.

Oddly enough, that was Niles. He argued that James Corello, who was an expert on Pacific Island fauna, would be the better choice. But even James voted for Kelsey, and politely withdrew his name from consideration.

Later, Niles told Kelsey that he had voted "No" because he was concerned about her going back to the jungle. "Times have changed since you were a kid. It's dangerous down there now – not a friendly place."

She'd laughed at that, but, just to be safe, exchanged a few emails with Wayne Gresham about it. He had been running the Layard Clinic down there for thirty years. If anyone knew the area, it was Wayne.

"Dangerous?" He'd written back. "Changed – yes; but dangerous? For you? – No."

Then Niles suggested that she wait until next summer to go down there, but that seemed pointless to her; in fact, the more she thought about it, the more anxious she was to get moving.

Niles.... She had known him most of her life. "Maybe he still thinks of me as a kid; doesn't he realize that I'll be 27 next May?" He was a dear, though a bit of a stodgy bore, a friend of her father's from the jungle years.

"The jungle years," she said out loud, smiling. That's what Julian used to call them. "I can't believe that it's been eight years since I left to come here." For the first three years she'd gone back to the Mission in the summer. But after her graduation Grant took off for parts unknown. Why he left and where he went she never knew, but with him no longer at the Mission, she'd stayed in the Bay Area that summer... and hadn't gone back since.

But now the idea of returning to her roots filled her with deep warmth. It would take at least six months to gather the data and write up the results for the project, so Stevie and Laila would need to come along.

She stepped out of the shower, rubbing dry with a large, dark blue towel, the same color as the sapphire that dangled from her thin gold necklace chain.

"If only" she sighed to the mirror, "I was going back with someone special to share it with... that'd be perfect."

For the first couple of months after she and Julian split, a few of the single guys at the Waxman asked her out, but she always found an excuse to turn them down. She wasn't sure why – something about being burnt out on relationships, probably.

To make it worse, after Julian shot himself the whole dating scene seemed pointless, even repulsive.

But something strange happened today... how she responded to Reid - she'd felt it emotionally and physically. It wasn't like her to be flirty and forward, but being with him, talking to him, wandering through the hallways with him, was fun, interesting... stimulating. She felt so natural and at ease with him.

Yes, she wanted to see him again. Soon.

"Wouldn't you know it," she whispered, "I finally connect with somebody a week before I'm going away. And then I blow it by charging off without saying good-bye. Why did I have to do that! Why?"

But she knew why. It came down to Julian again. Julian and the suicide.

She kicked at the bed. "Damn it! Won't that ever go away?"

"Little Stevie is just four," she thought, "but someday I'll have to look him in the eye and tell him how his father died." She'd played out the scene a hundred times in her head:

"Why would daddy shoot himself?" he would ask. "Was it because of me, mommy?"

And she would say, "No, darling of course not."

And then he would ask, "Was it because of you, mommy?"

And - what would she say? What would she tell him?

If she could just be sure, really sure, that it wasn't suicide, wasn't anything to do with her....

She knew then that she didn't just want to see Reid again; she needed to see him again.

For Stevie.

For her.

And - maybe for him, too. He'd had a rough time back there in college. Maybe he needed someone, too.

She closed her eyes and groaned, "God, why does everything have to be sooo complicated?"

After a dozen or so heartbeats, she smiled and opened her eyes, feeling better. Much better, really, better than she'd felt in a long time.

Five minutes later, she'd just finished dressing when the front door burst open with voices babbling, followed by the lop-lop-lop of Kashiri finding her water bowl.

When Kelsey reached the living room there was Laila standing in front of Harolde, her older brother. Laila barely came up to Harolde's chin, but she was shaking her finger in front of his nose and giving him a rapid fire lecture. The words were in their native tongue, a tribal dialect used in the inner jungle region. Kelsey had learned them as a kid, but Laila was going way too fast for her to follow.

Harolde was grinning, though looking slightly embarrassed. He peeked over at Kelsey, his eyes pleading for a little help, and said to Laila in English. "It'll all wash off, little sis, they're just temporary!"

Kelsey knelt down next to Stevie, who was on his tip-toes with a fierce look on his face. Along with the fierce look, his face was decorated with a pattern of dark blue stripes, dots, and whorls. It looked very much like the tattoos given to hill tribe boys in their initiation rites. Harolde bore an abbreviated version on his own forehead and chin, with more extensive markings on his shoulders and wrists. His were permanent, and had been earned years ago. Earned for various things, not all of them pleasant.

Kelsey scooped up the little warrior and swung him around. "Aiyeee! It's the jaguar boy!"

Stevie growled and laughed. "I'm cool, huh, Mom? Uncle Harolde painted me!"

"Very cool; ultra-mega cool." As she hugged him she glanced at Harolde. "You're sure these are temporary? He's got pre-school tomorrow."

"Yes, yes," assured Harolde, nodding his head. "Just charcoal and butter, mostly; a little food color for the blue and red. You must remember- I used the same recipe on you twenty years ago."

"Different!" huffed Laila. "That was back home. It's different here; four-year old boys don't go around with faces painted like this!"

"Yeah, it's different," Harolde shrugged, shaking his head. "When I was four I was wrestling snakes and hunting birds for dinner. And you were making jewelry out of parrot feathers and turtle shells."

Laila opened her mouth, ready with a retort, but Kelsey waved her hand. "Laila, I think Harolde has a point. We're going back home next week. I want Stevie to see what we saw, do what we did. I want him to learn to love the life down there, like we did."

"Kelsey," Laila said, "you haven't been back for a long while. It's not the same, not like it was."

"It's close enough," said Harolde.

"And how would you know that?" Laila demanded. "You haven't been back either."

He looked at her, then at Kelsey, without saying anything. Then he smiled and said, "Dinner time, right? Didn't anyone else notice that it's starting to get hungry in here?"

And so the evening went by. Dinner was simple – left over lasagna from the night before, a green salad, and broccoli. Laila mixed the broccoli with a little butter and garlic salt for Stevie. After dinner, Harolde helped Laila with the dishes while Kelsey gave the little jaguar boy a hot bath and washed off the tattoos. By eight o'clock Harolde had left, Laila was in her bedroom watching TV, and Stevie was asleep.

Kelsey lay on her bed, thinking back to her own young life at the Mission, surrounded by sky, water, and dirt, with everything Nature could think of tossed into the mix. What a great way to grow up: climbing trees, hiding in the mazes of vines and giant leaves, racing around the immense lawns and gardens, plutching through creeks and swimming in lakes. Sure, there were lots of weird bugs and spooky noises at night, but everything just seemed so alive.

There were a dozen or so kids of various ages from nearby communities that came to the Mission school. Some came three times a week, some once a week, others less – at any one time there were never more than seven or eight. But all of them, native and foreign born, played together, and all of them had painted faces. Harolde had been the chief handyman, and, for the kids, was the tattoo master.

He grew up in the forests and mountains, and went through tattooing initiation at puberty. Hard muscled and heavy limbed, he hunted and fought against rival tribes and modern invaders. A pattern of diamond shaped scars ran along his biceps, given to him by his chief to honor his prowess; other scars, like the small jagged cross on his right shoulder, came from the sharp points of enemy weapons.

When he was a teenager, civilization came to his valley in the form of public aid workers and anthropology students. That would have been OK, but, along with them, the muddy roads let in anyone with a 4-wheel drive truck. It was a protected area – in theory – but also a virgin paradise for poachers.

Harolde killed two of them who were hunting for monkeys. Not with any malice; it was just the proper thing to do. "The snakes were on our land, killing our animals. So I stopped them."

Animal trafficking was a capital crime, but when he tossed the poachers' bodies into the back of the truck and drove them ("Very slowly! Never driven before!") to the local police constable, he was arrested. One of the "snakes" had connections to the territorial governor; not strong connections, but enough to land Harolde in hot water.

Grant Theroux had bought the run-down Mission at about that time. He was well known by most people in the area, and had connections of his own; he interceded on Harolde's behalf. "Let him come to the Mission; he's young and strong, and I'll find him work."

And so it happened. Justice was swift and flexible in those days. Personally, the judge had no problem with Harolde eliminating poachers ("The bastards were lucky" he said, "I'd have fed their balls to the monkeys."), but couldn't officially condone it. So a "working exile to a rehabilitation center" was decided on.

Within a month, Harolde's sister Laila joined him. They shared cooking and maintenance chores and quickly became friends and confidants to the children. Harolde even took the older ones on treks into the jungle, sometimes lasting a week or more. Laila became a surrogate big sister to Kelsey.

Time flowed, Kelsey grew up and moved away to college. When she started graduate school, Grant decided that his need for the Mission had ended... for a while, anyway. Before leaving he leased he land and most of the buildings to a group of Catholic nuns, and Kelsey hadn't been back since.

It wasn't long before Harolde and Laila left, also. Working their way across the Pacific and ending up in California, where they opened a restaurant specializing in tropical dishes. Some were pretty bizarre, but that seemed to go over big with the Bay Area crowd, and the restaurant became a trendy success. Three years later they sold it for a huge profit and now Harolde spent his time doing pretty much whatever he pleased – which involved a lot of beating around remote spots and isolated forest areas up and down the west coast with Bianca, a sweet lady who shared his interests in both good eating and the outdoors.

It had been a harder adjustment for Laila, who never really got used to the hectic pace of urban life . She planned to go back home and work with the nuns after selling the restaurant, but then Kelsey and Julian split up and she stayed to help with Stevie. Then came the phone call from Wayne about Julian's death, and she stayed longer to help them through the tough times; and now... well, maybe she'd never leave.

"They're such a large part of my life," Kelsey thought. "I guess they always have been, but now I don't know what I'd do without them."

She sighed, sat up and checked the time; too early to go to bed, but she didn't have enough energy to do any more packing. She was just picking up the TV remote when her eye caught the card next to her purse. It was small and mostly bare, a white card with simple black lettering: just a name – Reid Durham – and a telephone number. That was it; no title, no email address, no business logo, no gilding or decoration.

She held it in her hand for a minute, thinking... then nodded, smiled, and reached for her phone.
Chapter 14: Backpack

Day 3: Wednesday late afternoon

After leaving the Waxman I was on my way over to Halliday's HQ when my phone went off. It's a fairly low key ring tone – a snippet of classical music, which keeps my nerves from being too jangled when it goes off at midnight or later.

Lester Clovis's name popped up in the caller ID. I'd been thinking about calling good ol' Les anyway, so this worked out well.

"Hey Lester – what's up?"

"Oh, Hi, Reid... remember you asked me to call if I came across anything useful?"

"Right. So you found something?"

"Yes. I don't know if you want it, but, um, anyway, I was straightening up my bedroom, and came across Marley's backpack. It looks like his work stuff. Do you want to see it, or should I just go to the hospital and leave it in his room?"

I was already turning the wheel to head over his way.

"Just hang on to it, Lester. Give me, fifteen minutes."

It was more like twenty-five. Traffic was lousy, like it gets sometimes, but I managed to get there without incident. The private elevator code was the same as before, so I had no trouble reaching the penthouse.

He answered the door right away, but didn't invite me in - just stood there holding out his right hand, with a worried look on his face.

The backpack dangled from his fingers.

"Here," he said, his voice a little shaky, "take it. I don't feel real good about giving you his stuff, but I don't want to get caught up in any more of a legal mess. My lawyer says that I could be liable for a major suit if Marley has permanent brain damage... maybe even get caught up in a criminal investigation. So I'm just trying to cooperate with everybody, trying to end of my involvement in this."

"Sounds like a good idea," I smiled.

"I hope so." Lester's voice was strained and he looked worried. "I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't caught my toe on the shoulder strap while making the bed. I looked under there and then saw it. At first I didn't recognize it, then I remembered how Marley used to write things down in green notebooks after we were, um... comfortable. I used to fall asleep, but he was a night owl, said he always worked late."

"Uh-huh," I nodded, "and what did he say he was working on?"

"You mean, like, was he doing anything with drugs?"

"Exactly. What was he writing about in his notebooks?"

"As far as I know, just fruit – really. He was working on some kind of weird-ass fruit trees. I asked him to bring some over so we could try it. I'm big on fruit diets, especially tropical kinds. But he laughed and said 'No way," and called it 'the fruit from Hell', and laughed some more. I don't know why it seemed so funny to him, but it did. Anyway, he never said anything about working with drugs. Nothing at all like that. It was just, you know... fruit."

I nodded and said Okay, and asked him if he could remember any more about the murder/suicide story, but he said that he couldn't.

"If you want to know about that, you gotta ask him yourself... but for Christ's sake, don't tell him that you heard any of this from me, okay? You gotta leave me out of it. Please!"

"You sound scared, Les. Why's that? Are you saying Marley's more than just a mild mannered fruit scientist?"

"Well, he, um..." Lester looked off in the distance, searching for words. He tapped his foot against the door jamb a few times, and then cleared his throat. "We have fun together, but he can play rough sometimes. Like, you know, when he's high, he gets wild. That's why he's had a tough time keeping friends. Other people don't understand him."

"And you do?"

"I try to, but things haven't been so good lately. He's worried about some deadline coming up. Anyway, don't let him know that I said anything about the fruit or the murder stuff. Okay?"

"Okay, Lester. If he asks me, I'll tell him I got the info over at the Waxman. Maybe that'll get him to name some of the other people involved."

He smiled, looking genuinely relieved.

There wasn't much else to talk about, so I thanked him for the backpack, said "Good-bye" and "Keep in touch" – all the usual stuff, and went back to my truck.

Once there, I slowly emptied the pack, looking over each item:

Four hard-bound lab notebooks

This month's issue of Circuit Breakers

Three 20-dollar bills and some loose change

Two pens, one black ink and one red

A tube of sunscreen – SPF 50

Toothbrush, toothpaste

A pair of gloves

A hunting knife in a leather sheath

And three maps, the large folding kind you buy on-line or at a special outdoor supply store. One was of New Guinea, the second was of Borneo, and the third was the Amazon rain forest. Each one had several areas circled in red ink with numbers jotted in the margins, but I had no clue what any of that meant.

There was a small zippered compartment in the front of the pack. Inside was a calculator, a magnifying glass, a pair of sunglasses, and a stopwatch.

That was it.

No phone, no laptop, no memory chips. Too bad, those could have been great to find.

No phone? Really? That was unusual.

Could good ol' Les be holding out on me? Maybe. So I looked up his number and called him, but it went straight to his messages. I rang off without leaving one; I'd check with him later. Texts, email, and phone messages are fine a lot of times, but with Lester I wanted to hear his voice. It's a lot easier to tell if someone is lying by listening to them talk instead of reading what they've written.

The notebooks had 'Waxman' stamped in small gold letters on the cover and looked like standard lab issue, each one a hundred pages. Most were almost completely filled in, but the handwriting was tough to decipher. Not only was his penmanship a loose scrawl, but he also used a lot of abbreviations and jargon, and didn't write in full sentences. This didn't seem like an experimental record meant for someone else to follow; more likely he was just keeping track of the work for his own personal use.

In other words, I couldn't make much sense out of it. We have people at Halliday's who are good at this kind of work, though, and I could ask them to go through the books. But a better idea popped into my head: Kelsey.

Why not ask her to take a look? She would be closer to the sources – maybe she'd be able to connect Marley's notes to something that Julian had been working on, if he really was involved in this mystery project after all.

Probably the best way to do it would be to make a copy of each page for Kelsey, and give the original notebooks to Victor Akino. I wasn't sure about the legality of copying Waxman notebooks, but –what the Hell – I've treaded on thin ice plenty of times before.

With luck I might be able to get Chypp to help me make the copies. I called his number at work and he answered on the first ring.

"Hi Boss, what's up?"

"Hey Chypper, I know it's kind of late in the work day, but I'm wondering if you might have time help me with a little copying."

"Yeah, sure. Oh wait – how much copying are you talking about?"

"Four notebooks, each one a hundred pages, and I need a copy of every page. Then we need to punch holes and get them into binders."

"Mmm... that'll take at least a couple of hours, maybe longer. When do you need it by?"

"Not until tomorrow morning, but this is sensitive stuff so I'd like to go slow and be sure we get a good clear image of each page. If I bring them around now, maybe we can each take a copier and get it done."

"Okay – but you're in luck. Chyll just called and is on her way over to see me. She finished her finals for the Fall Quarter, and wants to help out around here during her break. How about if she and I do the copying and you punch holes and assemble the binders?"

"Excellent, Chypp. Good thinking, as always. So - what kind of Starbucks do you two want?"

He had a pleasant laugh – mellow, but genuine sounding. "Double chocolate chip Frap, double blended, with extra whip for each of us, please."

"Size?"

"Venti, of course."

"Okay, you got it. I'll see you in a half-hour or so."

There was a Starbucks just down the street, so it was easy to get the Frappuccino's for the twins and vanilla latte for me – triple shot, also venti.

Chypp and Chyll are twins, though they don't know which was born first. Their dad, Mr. Nguyen, our self-defense and conditioning instructor at Halliday, says he never told them. "This way, they're big brother and little sister, and also little brother and big sister at the same time. Get along much better."

Chypp's Vietnamese name is Thien; Chyll's is Trang Mai. Their grandma gave them American names of Champion and Charity, but somehow those morphed into Chypp and Chyll, which they pronounce as 'Chip' and 'Chill'. How that all happened is a mystery.

They were pretty inseparable until a year and a half ago, just before their freshman year of college. They both had scholarships to Duke, and were supposed to fly back east the next week. But first - off to Santa Cruz for a blow-out beach party.

On the way, Chypp stopped at gas station mini-mart to buy snacks, and walked right into a holdup going on. Just a matter of the wrong place at the wrong time.

When he came in, the door sensor beeped and the robber, already jumpy and nervous, swung around waving his pistol. The guy at the cash register saw his chance, reached under the counter and came up with a .45 automatic. Both robber and cashier opened fire. Shots zinged and zanged around, but neither of them got hit. The front window, yes; the cigarette case, yes; the beer cooler, yes.

And Chypp's right leg, yes. Twice.

The robber, empty handed and freaked, ran out and disappeared (Not for long, though; when Halliday Inc. focusses full attention on someone, they usually get caught pretty fast. I tracked him down and... – but that's another story.)

So the store didn't lose any money, but Chypp's leg was shattered.

Now it's sixteen months and two dozen trips to Stanford Hospital later, and he's wearing a brace and walks with a cane. Progress is good, and everyone hopes for a near complete recovery – eventually. Chypp decided to take a break from school while he mends, so he does office work for Halliday, using a wheel chair when his leg gets sore.

Chyll stayed home too, instead of going to the University. She's taking sophomore classes at De Anza and Mission, both local junior colleges.

Anyway, an hour later I was sitting at a desk in an office room at Halliday's. The two copiers were next to each other, and the twins chatted as they worked. Every twenty pages or so, they'd bring the copies over so I could check them out, punch holes, and slide them into one of the four white binders.

Actually it was Chyll who brought over the pages; Chypp stayed sitting in a tall chair while he worked. To copy the large notebooks they placed them face down on the glass platen, but didn't close the tops completely - they wanted to be gentle to keep from stressing the book bindings. So when Chyll made copies, the flash of light from her machine glinted off of the blue metal brace on Chypp's knee.

I'll have a lot more to tell about the twins later; for now, let me just say that both of them are remarkable, excellent, and absolute treasures.

Chapter 15: Invitation

Day 3: Wednesday late afternoon

The facilities tech had just left, and Niles was sliding the new door key onto his key ring when the desk phone rang. He wasn't in the mood for talking – it had taken longer than expected to get the lock changed, and was now nearly 6 PM.

But he recognized the calling number as Kelsey's and answered.

"Niles! Glad I reached you. Trinity just phoned – she said she'd tried you but didn't get through."

"Oh, uh – yeah," Niles said, "I needed to take care of a few things in the office. That meeting today put me behind schedule. Sorry - I must have turned my phone off and forgotten to turn it back on. So what's all this about Trinity?"

"She's on her way back – gets into SFO around 8 tonight."

"What? Trinity's coming back now? What about Phil?"

"No, just Trinity. I guess she and Phil aren't doing so well. Anyway, she needs a ride home. She tried Marley's number, too, but of course he didn't answer. I told her that he couldn't make it, that he's in the hospital. She asked why, but I didn't tell her anything else. I figured that you could when you pick her up."

"Me? Pick her up?"

"Yeah. She could hire a car, but I thought that one of us should meet her; preferably you, dear Niles."

' _Jesus!' he thought, ' Today's just full of goddamn surprises_.'

But he kept his voice even and said, "Sure, okay – I can do that. Do you know the flight number?

"Got it written right here." She read him the info and he said he'd look up the flight status and exact arrival time.

Then he said thanks for the message and was about to hang up when Kelsey added, "Niles, what do you think about what Reid said today?"

He wasn't sure exactly what she was meant, and so gave a neutral answer. "Oh, I don't think Marley's in all that much trouble. Stealing dangerous drugs from the Waxman and selling them to the outside world? Nah – no way he could be doing that."

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean... about Julian. Do you think there's a chance it wasn't suicide? That he was murdered?"

Niles was quiet, thinking about what to say – had to be careful here – and she waited in silence on the other end of the line. Finally she heard him clear his throat and say, "Well – that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Who would profit by killing Julian? I just can't see it."

"Maybe it had something to do with what he was working on down at the Mission. Do you know what it was? He never told me anything about it."

"Ahh, I really have no clue," Niles said, hoping his voice sounded even and not evasive. "Some project with Phil, and they were pretty tight-lipped about it. Maybe we can ask Phil when he gets back, but don't expect much new info."

He waited for a few seconds, but she didn't say anything, so he continued. "Look, Kelsey, we both know that Julian was a troubled man... you remember what an emotional roller coaster he was on – riding high one week, plunging down the next."

"But that was before, Niles, before we, um – broke up. After he started on that new project – whatever it was - and... started up again with Trinity, he seemed to be back on an even keel. He looked like he was enjoying life."

"Well, maybe that was just what he looked like on the outside. Maybe on the inside he was still living with a demon."

"Okay, maybe... but why would Marley make up a story like that? He had to be talking about Julian - it couldn't have been anybody else."

"Kelsey, I think we need to talk directly to Marley about that. We're getting the story third-hand now – we hear it from Reid, who hears it from this friend of Marley, and he claims to have heard it from Marley when they were both high on something – drugs, alcohol... whatever. I don't think we should waste too much time on it until Marley himself gives us the straight story, and tells us who told him in the first place."

"Okay, good point," she said. "Maybe I'll go visit him at the hospital and see what he's got to say."

No way, Hell no – we can't have that, Niles thought silently to himself.

But what he said to her out loud was, "Good idea, Kelsey. Let's give him another day to recover though – we don't know what his condition is. If you can wait until Friday, we can go together; I'm curious, too."

"Alright," she said, "it's a deal. We go together on Friday."

And so she hung up, and he let out a deep breath.

He had mixed feelings about Trinity coming back just now. With Reid checking around, he didn't want anyone on the inside of the plan to be questioned, so better if Trinity just stayed put down at the field clinic. On the other hand, maybe she could help with Marley. Somehow he needed to get that big bozo out of the hospital and squirreled away for a few days. There was just no way he wanted Kelsey or Reid or Victor or anyone else pumping him for information.

At the same time, operations here at the Waxman needed to be shut down and the product shipped to the clients, and Marley was the best one to do it.

So he pulled up the United website and keyed in Trinity's flight number. Okay - yes, got it. Take-off was on time... progress was normal... landing in San Francisco at 7:50 PM. She'd already have gone through customs and inspections in Miami, so once she got into SFO it should just be a matter of getting her bags and going outside to the Arrivals area.

He checked his cell phone; sure enough, it was turned off. Was he getting more forgetful lately? Maybe – but didn't that kind of stuff happen to everybody?

He turned it back on and sent Trinity a short text: Meet at Arrivals, 8:10 PM. If you're not there I'll circle around. Look for my gray Lexus.

He glanced at the time again – ten after six. He'd leave at seven and take Hwy 280 up to 380, then down the hill to the airport. Traffic could be a bit thick, but at seven the car pool lanes would open up and that should help.

So – he had forty or so minutes to kill. Time enough to think up some plan for getting Marley out of Bayview? No, not really... this was going to go deep into the night.

Shit! This was a prickly problem.

He set his phone alarm for thirty minutes, then opened the second drawer on the left side of his desk, took out a glass, went to the little refrigerator in the corner and dropped in three ice cubes. Then from the large lower drawer on the right side he pulled out a bottle of Drambuie and poured in an ounce or so.

When the warm golden liquid hit the cold ice there was a pleasant tiny cracking sound. Then he took a sip and smiled. OK, that's better.

Now - where to start? Maybe at the beginning... God – could it really be three years ago that he got into this tangled mess? He leaned back, closed his eyes, and let the images come back to him....

***************

He was sitting on the veranda outside his bungalow at the Layard Clinic, having been there for nearly a week. His lab freezers at the Waxman already had a world-class collection of fungus, molds, roots, and berries, but he came back here each year to scout for new sources. This was the twenty-second year in a row, and he knew the local area and people about as well as any non-native could.

It hadn't changed very much in that time, thanks mainly to two factors: the first was an aggressive government policy for protecting native habitats, and the second was that this area was seen as an economic backwater - no great commercial discoveries had ever been made here. Probably that second factor was more important, since policies have a way of caving in when commercial interests lean on them.

Which, as he was about to learn the next day, was already in the works.

But up to then, as far as he knew, there hadn't been much local exploration for natural resources. There were rumors a while back that satellite imaging had detected high value deposits of certain metallic ores, but the rumors quickly faded away.

His own research was different. Over the years his lab had identified a dozen or more native plants with economic potential, and some had found their way to commercial markets. Unlike mining or other exploitation of the land, the commercial development for these types of products had little negative environmental impact. Plant seeds or cuttings were taken to outside locations and grown in large greenhouses under controlled conditions. After harvesting, all processing was done in factories far removed from the jungle, and a reasonably high portion of the final profits was returned to the local native people.

So it was all good, but the success stories so far had been modest at best. He still hoped to hit the big one – the multi-billion dollar killer application - and that was what kept him coming back.

But, to tell the truth, the whole process was wearing a little thin; each year the work got harder, the back muscles a little sorer, the knees a little stiffer. Thanks to his track record and reputation, there was still grant money to fund his work, but that was on the decline too.

If he was going to hit it big, he needed to do it soon.

So far, this was good trip; he'd been hiking out to the north each morning and getting back late each afternoon. He planned to canoe out to the big river early tomorrow and catch one of the fishing boats cruising by. Many of them doubled as a kind of local taxi service, and for a few dollars they'd take him down river to a small valley that he visited the year before. He'd discovered three new species on that trip and was sure there were more just waiting to be found.

But that was tomorrow; today's work was done. It was evening now, and he'd just finished a game of cribbage with Wayne Gresham. The air was still warm, but he had a cold beer in his hand and felt at ease until he noticed a curious grin on Wayne's face.

"I got a card yesterday." Wayne said. "No name on it, but take a look at the writing." He handed it to Niles and sat back, watching him. Niles read the card.

Finally found it – I think. Been damn long enough, eh? But what's a little time? Regards to N & T, and love to K.

He checked the front. It wasn't a postcard; it was a photograph of a Time magazine, dated two weeks ago. The picture itself wasn't important; it was the date that counted.

He looked at the writing again, then up at Wayne.

"It's from Grant, isn't it. So after all this time without a word, he's still alive? How did you get this?"

"It just appeared in my mail bag. Somebody snuck it in there, but I don't know who or how. I thought you might be interested – you must be the 'N' he's referring to. The 'K' has to be Kelsey, right? And the 'T'...."

"That has to be Harolde – you know, his birth name is Tol-yana. He started going by Harolde when he got to the Mission, and that's how he introduces himself to outsiders like you and me, but Grant usually called him by his tribal name."

He tapped the edge of the card gently on the table top, thinking back. "Those two always had a special bond; Harolde knew the wilderness better than anyone else, and took Grant to places that no outsider had ever seen. I was lucky enough to go with them once or twice. If I'd been able to go with them more, who knows what discoveries I could have made...."

"Well, they were good for each other, that's for sure," said Wayne. "Without Grant, Harolde probably would have been sent off to that prison camp, and without Harolde, that whole Mission set-up of Grant's wouldn't have worked out so well."

Another beer led to a third, the talk mostly about the mystery man Grant Theroux. When Niles headed off to bed that night, he wasn't sure whether to be glad or mad about the card.

He decided to go with mad.

Grant had run the Mission, but had never been a Missionary. Oh, he was a good man, maybe even a great one, and the Mission was a real benefit to the people; the gardens produced an abundance of food, there was shelter for everyone in times of need, and the little school was a window to the big outside world for the curious children.

But for Grant, it was more than that. It was a base of operations from which he could take off into the deep interior in search of... of what? Niles thought that it had something to do with Kelsey's mother, but that was a topic Grant refused to talk about.

They had known each other since college days. After graduating, Grant took off and spent the next ten years traveling the back roads of the world. Then one day he showed up with a baby girl; he said that she was his daughter, but wouldn't say a word about her mother.

A few weeks later, Grant set off to the jungle and found a dilapidated Mission in the remote regions. It had been started by monks a century or more ago, but was in bad shape and was all but abandoned. He convinced two of the remaining clerics to stay and help rebuild it, spending his own money and a small amount of government funds. He hired a few men from the local tribes, and volunteers from the nearby Layard Clinic, including Niles and others on their field trips, pitched in when they had the time.

Within two years they had six acres of well-tended crop fields, a small schoolroom, a large barn and workshop, living and dining quarters, and a soccer field. He had converted the old monastery into a rambling mansion with a maze of rooms large and small. He even installed a deck on the roof with a telescope. It wasn't real big – eight or ten inch diameter lenses – but on a clear, dark night it provided amazing views. Grant ground the lenses by hand, and it was one of his prized possessions.

Then there were the visiting scientists who came to the area to study the people, the plants, the animals, the weather, the archeology, the medicine – you name it; Grant hosted them all with free room and board, and academics from all over came through and spent a day, a week, even sometimes a month or more.

Even though there was no church – Grant had little patience for organized religions – everyone still called it "the Mission".

It was an incredible achievement.

But eventually Kelsey grew up and moved away to California, and, as the property was pretty self-sustaining, Grant began spending more and more of his time away on his own mysterious travels.

Then, about five years back, he hit on something that inspired him to leave one morning and never come back. He always played life on the high stage, always had large ideas. If he was onto something, it must have been something big.

Over the years he and Niles had gone together on many treks into the wilder parts of the jungle. It had paid off well for Niles – he had collected dozens of medicinal plant samples and had witnessed – even assisted - shamans in plying their craft. And that was almost entirely thanks to Grant's connections; he seemed to know and be trusted by everyone – he just had that knack – and it opened doors to secret rituals that would otherwise have been slammed shut in Niles face.

That knack was something that Niles knew that he himself lacked, and it bugged him. It also bugged him that Grant was so damned secretive about his personal life. He had a very small circle of close friends that he confided in, and for some reason he kept Niles out of it.

When he disappeared, Niles was staying at the Layard Clinic just a couple of miles away - but Grant hadn't said a word to him, hadn't said why he was leaving, or where he was going, or when he'd be back.

What bugged Niles the most was that he hadn't offered to take him along. Then the years went by, and Niles decided that Grant must be lost or dead.

But now, here was this card. Damn him!

In that sour mood, Niles fell into a fitful sleep. He was still thinking about it early the next morning, when he heard a knock at his door.

"Dr. Stratton." He recognized the voice as one of the lads who carried messages around the clinic.

"Dr. Stratton, you have a package. I'll leave it here on your table."

He pulled on a robe, tugged open the door, and saw an envelope, a little larger than a standard sized manila folder, on the card table. It was made of a thick Fiberglas material, flexible but sturdy, and was labeled URGENT AND PERSONAL in large red letters. When he opened it, all he found was single sheet of paper.

It was from a contact of his in the government finance office. Niles had dealt with him for several years, and knew that he was very well connected to money, both private and public.

The note printed on the paper was brief:

Driver will pick you up at west gate 9 AM this morning. Overnight accommodations have been arranged.

Be prepared for top level discussions with potential for exceedingly high rewards. This is a confidential communication – do not discuss it with anyone, and bring this note with you.

Regards,

LL

Well - so much for the fungus hunting today. He checked the time – just past 7:30. Good – plenty of time to clean up and get breakfast.

An hour later he was back in his bungalow, stashing a few items into a small backpack. "Overnight accommodations" could mean anything from a pleasure yacht to a blanket on the ground under a Kapok tree. He thought about the pistol he kept on the shelf in the closet, but decided against it.

But his camera – yes; and small voice recorder – yes.

Breakfast was brief; he sat alone, not wanting to talk to anyone, especially Wayne. It was funny – last night he couldn't get Grant's card out of his mind, and this morning he'd forgotten about it completely.

The part of the message 'exceedingly high rewards' sounded good, but what did 'Be prepared for top level discussion' mean? Pretty vague, even ominous.

His contact, who'd initialed the note "LL" was someone he'd exchanged phone calls, texts, and emails with over the last ten years, but had rarely met face-to-face. They'd collaborated on a series of reports covering commercial opportunities of natural products from native plants and animals, with Niles supplying the science and LL supplying the business acumen and political contacts. The reports generated lot of buzz; proponents saw them as opportunities for native people to get a fair share of profits from foreign companies, while opponents saw them as exploitation and draining of natural resources.

Money had flowed in from both sides, either to study the economic potential or the environmental impact. LL had final say over who got contracts for the studies, and had sent several toward Niles. Most were small – no more than a few hundred dollars – but they paid for supplies, expedited travel visas, and fast-tracked licenses to export materials to the Waxman.

Yes, LL was not someone to ignore, no matter how cryptic this note was, so at 9 AM Niles stood outside the west gate, backpack in hand.

The jeep that arrived was muddy on the outside, but the seats were clean. The tires looked new, the engine ran smooth, and under the mud the paint looked fresh. The driver wore khaki pants, a dark blue shirt, a baseball cap, and dark glasses. He stopped just outside of the gate, and when Niles approached he held out his hand – not in greeting, but as if waiting to be given something.

"Message, please."

It wasn't said as a question, more like an expectation. He looked to be in his early thirties, in good physical shape, clean-shaven, and was armed with a large pistol in a shiny black leather holster. Military?

Niles handed him the note from LL.

After a casual glance, he tucked it into a shirt pocket and nodded toward the passenger seat. Niles barely had time to toss his pack in the back and climb in when the driver wheeled the jeep around and started away. The dirt road was narrow, overhung with tree branches in places, and rutted with potholes filled with rainwater. Progress was slow but the way was familiar; they were going in the direction of the old Mission. But how far?

"Where are we headed?" Niles asked, trying to sound casual.

The driver's eyes flickered toward him briefly, then moved back to the road and he shook his head.

Which could have meant, "I don't know," or "I know but I'm not going to tell you," or "Don't ask stupid questions," or "Go screw yourself".

Okay, that wasn't much help. Might as well just sit back and enjoy the ride... which turned out to be surprisingly short: after just a few minutes they turned left onto a wider, well-maintained road.

"Ah," Niles thought, "the Lodge." He hadn't been out there this year, but usually tried to spend at least one night there on each trip. They had a good chef and a decent wine cellar, pretty rare for this area. Sure enough, after another ten minutes they reached the edge of the lake. It was a stretched oval of dark, black water, nearly two miles long and just over a half-mile wide. In the center was a circular island about a hundred-fifty yards across.

The main Lodge building, two stories high with tall windows and decks at each level, sprawled across the center of the island. The design was a pleasant blend of curves and arches, and meshed well with the surrounding jungle. In total size it was not large – no more than twenty guest rooms, but this wasn't really a tourist area. It catered to people who wanted a remote getaway from the outside world – honeymooners, writers, the occasional naturalist, wealthy folks looking for seclusion. There were also several cabins on the shore, tucked in among towering trees, for people who wanted even more privacy.

Two sea planes were moored near the center or the lake, and a small motor boat was just leaving one of them, carrying two passengers toward a dock on the near side of the island.

There were other docks here and there around the edge of the lake; one was at the end of the road, and the driver eased to a stop next to a set of wooden stairs. He reached into the back, picked up the Niles' pack, and in one smooth motion swung over the top of the jeep door and onto the ground. Niles climbed out his side, not quite as gracefully.

Two young men came up the stairs. One was a Lodge worker, a local kid wearing a tank top, shorts, and sandals. The other was dressed like the driver and, also like him, wore the opaque sunglasses and a pistol at his hip.

The driver reached into his pocket and passed the note to the second man. Like before, he glanced at it briefly, nodded, stowed it into his shirt pocket, and motioned toward the stairs.

Nile took his pack and started down, feeling like a baton in a relay race getting handed off from one runner to the next. The military precision, the stoic, impassive demeanor of the men, and the weapons had him wondering about that phrase 'top level discussions'.

He'd spoken to reps from one government agency or another a number of times, but the military? That would be a new one....

So why? Why now? And - why here?

A small boat was waiting for them in the water below. As they clambered in, he heard the jeep start up and drive off.

The soldier-type crouched in the front, with Niles in the middle row. The kid sat in the back and fired up a small, very quiet outboard motor. They eased their way across to the island in near silence until, twenty yards from the dock, he cut the engine and glided the last part. Another tank-topped kid caught the boat as it slowed to a stop and secured it with lines at bow and stern.

Time to get out and see what this was all about.

****************

The buzzing of his desk phone startled him, pulling Niles back to the present, and he almost spilled his Drambuie.

"What the Hell...?"

The caller ID showed just the last four digits, so it must be an in-house Waxman number.

He picked up. "Yes, hello, who's calling, please?"

"Dr. Stratton – Hi, this is Petrov. Sorry to disturb you... I'm over in the greenhouse – we got a little electricity problem here. Anyway, I just wanted to check to see if Manny got your lock changed."

"Oh, yes – it's just fine now; he did a good job."

"Okay, that's cool, then. I woulda called earlier, but we got a helluva mess here. It's gonna be a late night taking care of it. You don't have anything out in Greenhouse #2, do you?"

Niles tried to think... Where did Marley keep his tree stocks? There were some on the balconies, but was that all of them? Damn it! He should have kept better track of things, instead of just trusting Phil and Marley.

"I'm not really sure. Are you shutting off the power?"

"For a bit, yeah, but hopefully not for too long. I'll fire up a portable generator, but I'll have to shut down most of the lights in the warehouse. Just to be safe, though, maybe you should move your stuff into Greenhouse #1. It's got independent circuits."

"I'll check on that, and uh... get things moved if we need to. Thanks for the heads-up. Anyway, Manny took care of the lock for me, so everything's fine here."

"Alright then, doc, have a good evening - Bye."
Chapter 16: Lodge

Day 3: Wednesday late afternoon

Niles grimaced; a greenhouse problem might not directly affect them, but, then again... he just didn't know. It was one more headache; one more reason to get Marley out of the hospital and get everything cleaned up and moved away from here.

He glanced at the time – another fifteen minutes till the alarm would go off. Still a bit of Drambuie left... he swirled the ice in the glass, took a long sip, sat back, plopped his feet on the desk, and looked across the room at his reflection. He had a large mirror installed on the far wall of his office many years ago. Not that the office was all that small – it was the largest on this floor of the building – but he still felt cramped in it. Most of his time these days was spent in the board room: staff meetings, planning meetings, interdepartmental project updates, policy reviews, budget committee... too much time sitting in rooms with four walls and no windows. At least these mirrors gave the illusion of more space, and the large photos on the walls – outdoor shots he'd taken over the years - helped to make the office work bearable.

But he still missed being in the field, under the jungle canopy: the heat, the sweat, the sights, smells, sounds, and taste of being absolutely surrounded – immersed – in the throb of life and the hunt for something new.

"Something new? Don't go there," he grimaced, "or else the guilt will start coming...."

What's that they say about riding a tiger? It's all good as long as you keep riding, but how do you get off? Right. So - how did he get on this tiger in the first place?

He closed his eyes, his mind drifting back again....

Yes, okay - the boat had just crossed the lagoon to the Lodge....

*****************

The soldier-type in the bow seat stepped out onto the dock and motioned for Niles to follow. As they started up the wooden walkway, a white-coated waiter scurried down to meet them. He took Nile's bag, said "This way, por favor" and led them toward a side entrance to the main lobby.

They went up a wide staircase to the second story, then down a hallway to about the middle. The waiter slid a card into a sensor, a door swung open, and they went through.

The room inside was spacious and tastefully elegant: high ceilings, marble tiled floors, king-size bed, sofa and coffee table, desk; large closets, bathroom with Jacuzzi tub. A sliding glass door led out to a long balcony overlooking the lagoon.

But no TV, no radio, no internet, no daily newspapers – this was meant to be isolated luxury in a fairly tame jungle.

Niles slid the glass door open and glanced out. The lagoon was dappled with morning sunlight filtering through the tall trees; the black water rippled gently in the slight breeze, making the light sparkle and glint – definitely a prime photo-op. He reached into his pocket for his camera – a small but powerful waterproof Sony – and snapped off two quick shots.

The waiter opened the refrigerator, took out a liter bottle of carbonated water, wiped the top with a towel, and popped off the cap. He poured a glass half-full, handed it to Niles with a smile, then bowed and left.

The guard was standing motionless just inside the door. "When you are ready, we should be going. The meeting is about to start. You are the last to arrive."

He spoke in friendly enough way, but he still hadn't taken off his opaque sunglasses, so it was hard to read much emotion in what he was saying. But Niles got the implied message: 'Important people are waiting for you. Don't keep them waiting long. If you want to take a leak, be quick about it.'

So Niles was quick. He washed his hands, splashed water into his face, smoothed back his hair – regretfully thinning – and came back out of the bathroom.

His escort was still standing in the same place. "When we go," he said, "you will leave your camera here in the room. If you wish to keep it, I advise you to take no more pictures."

Friendly but firm, so Niles regretfully laid his camera on the bed . His escort nodded, opened the door, and motioned for him to go through. Once in the hallway, he pulled the door closed behind them and handed Niles the small plastic card that the waiter had used to open it.

Niles said "Thanks" and slipped the card into his shirt pocket.

They made their way down the stairs, out the side entrance, and followed a gravel walkway around to the back of the main Lodge. The path was bordered by well-tended shrubs and trees. There was no low underbrush to hide strange critters, no lines of ants marching by, no centipedes or tarantulas nestled on the walls, no bats hanging in dark corners. The island was an oasis of civilized jungle, near enough to the real thing that surrounded them on the shore, but protected from the seamier side that might upset queasy types.

They went past a small swimming pool and stopped outside of a wooden building shaded by a canopy of tall trees. It was one story with a light brown tiled roof, about the size of a small cottage. Two more soldier-types – same pistol and sunglasses motif – stood by the front door, casually talking with a third man.

This third man was different: His hair was longer and ragged; he wore dusty camouflage pants, muddy black boots, and a blue work shirt. He had a machete hanging from his belt and was smoking a pipe. Something about him looked familiar, but he had his back turned and Niles couldn't see his face.

But as they got closer, he turned and nodded toward Niles. "Nice of you to join us, Dr. Stratton. I was starting to wonder if you'd make it."

"Colo...?" Niles said, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Mmm... You'd be surprised at all the places I get to. Not like the old days, huh?"

Obviously not. Colo was a local; Niles remembered him as a kid hanging around Grant's Mission, not so much for the school, more because he had nothing else to do and wanted to check out the girls. He'd been a troublemaker from the start, and Harolde had kicked him out after a while. But life was funny – now that Grant was gone and the Mission was rented, Colo worked there for the nuns, doing random maintenance and upkeep. Niles ran into him every now and then, but they never really talked. Supposedly Colo was involved in COR, a radical group that wanted all outsiders kept out - no foreign investment, no government regulation, no visitors, no exceptions.

So what the Hell was he doing here?

What made it even stranger was that the soldier-type with Niles reached into his shirt pocket and handed Colo the note - the invitation from LL. Colo looked at it intently, then laughed. "No problem," he told the others. "I know Dr. Stratton personally. I assure you that this is really him. And we have nothing to be concerned about."

He shoved the note into his pants, turned, and poked his pipe toward Niles. "Nothing to worry about; isn't that right... Niles?"

This was a different Colo than he'd had seen before; more confident, more aggressive.

More threatening.

Colo laughed and waved to the two men at the door, and they stepped aside as he and Niles walked through.

The room inside was about 25 feet long by 20 wide, with a conference table running down the center. There were white boards along the right side wall with a box of markers set nearby. Someone had drawn several maps of the area, with surprisingly good detail on one of them.

A large atomic chart – the Periodic Table of the Elements – was taped to another of the white boards. It looked strange and out of place; Niles hadn't seen one that large since chemistry class decades ago. One of the rows of elements near the bottom of the chart was underlined in red ink, and some of the individual elements were circled.

Several men – he didn't have time for an exact count – and at least two women were in the room; some were standing, others seated, and a few gathered around the white boards. It was an interesting group; from the accents, clearly multi-national and multi-ethnic. Two men stood at one of the maps, gesturing and talking; one of them sounded like east coast US; the other appeared African and spoke with a crisp accent. Two ladies were tapping the circled elements on the atomic chart and seemed to be politely arguing. The dark haired lady looked eastern European, while the other had flaxen blond hair – Swedish? Nearby a Japanese man was chatting with someone from India or possibly Pakistan.

There were others that he couldn't place so easily.

But one of those seated he recognized immediately - an anthropologist named Grenvil, a man that Niles had clashed with before. Grenvil considered Niles to be exploiting the jungle for commercialism, not science, and Niles saw Grenvil as an opportunistic headline grabber, out to make a name for himself.

He felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Ah, Dr. Stratton – you're here – good." It was his host - the man who'd sent the note signed LL. "Let me introduce you to our moderator, Mr. Greene."

"Pleased to meet you," Niles said, shaking hands.

"The pleasure is all mine." Mr. Greene had a mellow, smooth voice, like a highbrow television newsman. "We're happy to have you here, you and Mr. Grenvil both. My hope is that after today's discussion and tonight's... mmm – reflection, that the two of you will have some ideas to share with us tomorrow."

He smiled, nodded, and said, "OK then, let's get ready."

As he made his way to the front of the room, Niles sat down, feeling more puzzled than ever. Apparently he was going to be given information today, then was expected to analyze it tonight and give his opinion about it tomorrow.

Or was there more to it than that?

Mr. Greene stood in front of the long table and clapped his hands once. "Thank you all for coming here. You've each been briefed with general information regarding the economics of this opportunity. During today and tomorrow I hope you will learn more about the details that will go into converting this opportunity," he paused for a dramatic few seconds, then added, "into a reality."

Everyone stopped their chatting and took seats. Niles sat with his back to the white boards, across from Grenvil, who looked surprised to see him. Just as things were getting settled, a door in the side wall behind Grenvil opened and two more men entered. Those already seated on Niles side of the table looked up at the new arrivals; those seated on the other side swiveled in their chairs to look. A wave of quiet murmurs swept around the table. .

The two men surveyed the scene for a few seconds, then sat at a small, separate table near the wall.

Niles recognized one of them from newspaper pictures, although they'd never met: A government heavyweight known as a 'friend of the people'. He had no clue about the identity of the second man, but there was no mistaking the impact of his presence. He wore power like an aftershave; it radiated out of him, and several of those in the crowd stood, quickly bowed toward him, and sat back down.

It was hard to tell his age with the shaved head and the one gold earring, and he wore the same dark sunglasses as the soldier types. An attendant handed him a cup of something hot – coffee or tea, probably. He accepted it with a curt nod, and as he slowly sipped it he looked intently at the back of Grenvil's head for several heartbeats; then lifted his head lifted slightly to fasten his gaze on Niles.

It was hard to tell – with the dark glasses – exactly where he was looking, but it felt to Niles like he was being stared at by a cobra – sharp and unblinking, almost hypnotic. Not pleasant, not something you'd easily forget. Without shifting his eyes, he leaned over and said something to the politician sitting next to him.

Niles noticed how quiet the room had become. He glanced to his right; Mr. Greene stood at the front of the table, hands folded behind him, a faint smile on his lips. He was looking at the two men who had been studying Niles. After a few more seconds, they looked back at him and nodded.

And so the meeting started, like a thousand other project sessions Niles had sat through before, except that this time there were no handshakes, no introductions, no name tags. You were either one of the in-crowd and already knew the other people, or you weren't, and didn't.

"Yes, then," said Mr. Greene in his mellifluous voice. "Let us begin." The room lights dimmed slightly and a projector mounted in the ceiling came on, sending a soft shaft of light beaming downward. The effect was quite remarkable: a world map appeared, hanging in mid-air just above the table top. The image rotated slowly – completing one turn in maybe twenty seconds – so that regardless of where you were sitting, you had a complete view, though one that shifted slightly with time.

"The term 'third world country' is largely outmoded these days," he went on. "It's frowned on by most pundits as pejorative, politically incorrect... uncool."

"And yet the concept is still valid: the third world has been characterized as having a large dependence on industrialized countries for their economic livelihood, relatively poor human rights records, and either unstable or repressive governments. The latter two of these traits are often false and should be disregarded; but the first – the dependence on industrialized nations – is undoubtedly true."

"On the map before you, individual country boundaries are not shown; instead, the industrialized regions of the planet are shown in red, and what we might consider third world regions are shown in green. Go back twenty, thirty, even fifty of more years, and the map would look essentially the same. The move from third to first world is a prodigious jump, and is not tied to wealth alone. Consider the oil-rich states of the middle-East; many are enormously wealthy, yet they have largely failed to make the leap. Why? – Because they provide only a raw material – oil – not finished goods; they have little or no domestic infrastructure for converting their raw material to high value commercial products, for nurturing a highly educated, well-paid middle class, for driving an entrepreneurial spirit."

"But now consider China. They are blessed with vast material and human labor resources, and for many decades supplied these resources for the economic use of the industrial nations. And for that time, they remained what we would consider 'third world'. But that has changed; they no longer simply mine their resources and send them away; now they harvest them carefully, fashion them into high demand goods, and market these goods world-wide. And as the world leader in some of the rarest high-value resources, they have a corner on certain markets."

He paused, and the image of the map floating in the air changed subtly; part of the east-Asia region changed from green to red.

"And so they made – or at least are in the process of making - the leap. This has been their time to make it, and they are showing that it is not an impossible leap. But - it is a difficult one."

He leaned forward and placed his hands on the table. The image of the map faded and the lights came up slightly, allowing him to shift his gaze from face to face, pausing to look at each person in turn.

"Now - it is our time. But for us to make that leap requires more than just economic opportunity; it demands planning, perseverance, and most of all, it demands guts. Guts to make difficult choices, to see them through – all the way. Getting half-way to success... even ninety percent of the way, and then stopping, still equals Failure. We are either in all the way or not at all."

Niles looked around the room. The words were a little too dramatic for his taste. Grenvil was scowling, but then he always seemed to be upset about something. Niles glanced at the cobra-eyed man (as he thought of him now) in the shadows. He wasn't looking at Mr. Greene; instead he was scanning the other faces in the room, gauging their response to the words. He seemed pleased enough – most of the people were sitting up attentively; a few were jotting down notes; no one looked bored.

Mr. Greene nodded, the lights dimmed, and the ceiling projector soundlessly activated. Once again, a soft beam of light fanned out toward the table top and an image appeared, suspended in the air. It looked unfamiliar at first, but when it rotated and gave him a full view, he recognized it immediately.

"I've always liked this area," Mr. Greene said. "It goes by many names; most often it's called the '5 Corners', but its shape reminds me of a hand – the hand of a master craftsman: strong, rugged, and bold. The fingers are these five mountain ridges and the rivers that flow through the valleys between them, tributaries that join to form the mighty river that you all flew over coming in here this morning. The entire region is wild mountain and forest terrain spreading over parts of three countries."

He aimed what looked like a laser pointer at the image, and a small, bright red dot appeared on the outer edge of the large interior valley. "The Lodge where we're sitting right now is right about here – near the side of what I consider the 'palm' of this hand. This central part – nearly twenty five thousand square kilometers - is one continuous, fairly flat ecosystem, and is mostly blank space on geological maps. Sure, the main geographical features are known - waterways, lakes, marshes – and a reasonable amount is known about the indigenous peoples and the plant and animal life, but what lies a few meters below the surface...."

He spread his hands and shrugged.

"Would you agree with that, Dr. Stratton?" The question caught Niles by surprise – he thought that he would have the same anonymity as everyone else here. Apparently not. He started to stand, but didn't want to draw more attention to himself, so he sat back and cleared his throat, glad for the low light.

"Well, I've trekked and camped over this area for nearly thirty years... um - we know a reasonable amount about the plant life – that's my area of expertise. But there's still a lot more to learn - we discover new species every year. About anything else, I can't say."

"Thank you," said Mr. Greene smoothly. "And Mr. Grenvil, what is your opinion?"

Grenvil's eyes widened and he stood up. "I... have no opinion. This is a fragile region, and the people living there do not welcome outsiders."

"No opinion? But Mr. Grenvil, you are well known to many of the indigenous people, aren't you?"

Grenvil scowled and blushed. "I wouldn't say 'well known', but I've travelled through the region and made acquaintances with some of the locals. But as I said, they do not welcome outsiders, especially commercial developers."

Niles pursed his lips and thought. This 'opportunity' that Greene is talking about has to be some sort of commercial venture – what else could it be? And Grenvil had just stood up and placed himself firmly in the opposite camp. A dangerous move.

"Well, thank you, gentlemen," Mr. Greene smiled. "You are both exactly right - most of this area is undeveloped, and most of the world wants to keep it that way. Our governments feel the same. Whenever an oil, or mining, or other type of company files a petition to set up a pilot plant in the region, they are invariably turned down. To do otherwise would be to invite the wrath of international environmentalists and our homegrown isolationist groups - like COR."

All of those requests by developers were based on pure speculation, he explained. "They never present any hard evidence for large deposits of easily accessible fuels, so there are no firm economic reasons to grant these requests. Besides, the companies involved have little interest in anything as commonplace as oil, natural gas, or coal. What they really want is to gain a base of operations from which they can freely explore, at the ground level, for more valuable resources."

He paused and looked unhurriedly from face to face around the room. His gaze rested for the longest at the two men at the side table. Niles saw them nod, almost imperceptibly, and then Mr. Greene continued his story.

"There have been rumors of important metallic ores being found here, but very little credible work has been done. The rumors are based on rock samples sitting in display cases at university geology departments. These rock samples are claimed to have been collected in this region many years ago, by academic anthropologists long since retired. But even if there were strong evidence for high value ores, would there be any urge to investigate further, to develop the area, to exploit the opportunity?"

He spread his hands and smiled.

"Probably not. Even just sending in survey teams would cause a major... ruckus. This area is not just a national treasure, but a world heritage site, and the home to many of our sacred native peoples. We, of course, are responsible for preserving that heritage, and so would never consider violating it. Unless...."

Again he looked from face to face; clearly, he wanted everyone's attention, and now he had it. Then he continued in a slow, low voice.

"Unless there were a drastic event, a tragedy that threatened the existence of these native peoples; something that _required_ us to take action."

He paused, then smiled, set down the laser pointer, and moved to a nearby chair. He leaned back in it and lit a cigarette with a gold lighter - an expensive gold lighter. As he snapped it shut, a second man, younger but already balding, moved to the front of the room. When he picked up the pointer, the image of the map hovering in the air faded. It was replaced by a glowing, sharply focused chart: the periodic table of the elements. It looked pretty much the same as the one Niles had seen taped to the white board.

"What an amazing achievement this is," said the new man. "On a single page we can list the atomic building blocks of the universe. And not just list them, but arrange them in a logical sequence according to their structure, and show how their structures determine their key behaviors and reactions. We see how the elements fall into kinship groups and can make predictions of how newly discovered elements will behave."

"But that's not what I want to talk about. So \- let's simplify things a bit. We don't need most of this, so let's just focus on...."

As he spoke, most of the chart dissolved away. The remaining boxes rotated, danced, spun, and shifted - pulsating, almost alive. Really quite a remarkable effect. The final figure looked like this:

"Ahh – beautiful, isn't it?" He smiled broadly and spread out his arms. He didn't seem anything like Mr. Greene. Where Greene's voice was smooth, melodious, almost hypnotizing, this one – he introduced himself as Izaak – spoke fast and seemed nervous. But he obviously knew what he was talking about.

"Welcome to the world of Rare Earth Elements."

***************

The jangling of the phone alarm brought Niles back to the present. He sat up, shut it off, and glanced at the Drambuie – the ice had melted, but there was still a trace of amber liquid left. He swallowed it in a quick gulp, got up, rinsed out the glass, and then splashed a double hand-full of cold water onto his face.

Okay - time to hit the road and pick up Trinity.

He'd get back to thinking about the jungle Lodge later.
Chapter 17: Trinity

Day 3: Wednesday evening

The drive to the airport was uneventful; a few sprinkles of rain, but little wind. The cloud cover, light traffic, and lack of street lights on Highway 280 made it dark and pleasantly dull, which gave Niles time to think.

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, making a mental list of what needed to be done. The most urgent was to get Marley out of Bayview and stowed away somewhere safe. That needed to be done before Friday, when Kelsey planned to visit him and ask a few touchy questions. And they also needed to clean their stuff out of the Waxman as soon as possible – all of their stuff, which might mean waiting till the weekend when the place would be relatively empty.

His eyes flicked briefly to the dashboard clock: seven-twenty eight. Good – he was already half-way to the airport, so figure another thirty minutes... plenty of time to meet Trinity.

Okay then: How to get that damned fool Granger away from the hospital?

This wasn't the first time that Marley'd made a cock-up of things, but it never involved the police before. This time it could blow the whole project.

Which would be a big flaw; a big, fatal flaw

The miles ticked by as he hummed, tugged at his lip, and tapped the steering wheel. Christmas music was playing on the radio, pleasant enough usually, but right now he needed silence so he tapped the 'Off' button. Okay, better... not that the carols were bad; they were just repetitive and distracting, and he needed to concentrate.

And after fifteen minutes he'd roughed out a plan.

The first consideration was access: If Marley was unconscious it would be tough to pry him loose from his room, so they'd need a cover story. Suppose a close relative arranged to move him to a private care facility? That should do it... but who?

Someone like Marley's brother or sister would be great. As far as Niles knew Marley had no siblings, but if Trinity were to show up acting all sisterly and concerned, it just might work.

If they had a doctor from the private care facility to escort the patient out of the hospital it would be even better. "Okay," he muttered softly, "that'll be me."

Even so, with Marley unconscious there might be resistance from the hospital staff about letting him leave. Best, then, if he wakes up.

And Niles thought he knew how to make that happen.

Marley's body should have worked through any alcohol or other common recreational drugs since Monday night, but the frog toxin – which he'd named Exo-C when he published on it years ago - might be keeping Marley's nerve synapses jacked up. The stuff bound very tightly to particular nerve cell endings, making them fire in unpredictable patterns. It caused a complicated mixture of neurotransmitter bursts, lags, desensitization, more bursts... a chaotic scene. In low doses this caused vivid hallucinations; in high doses it led to a metabolic crash and an almost catatonic sleep, similar to a coma. To bring Marley back would require two things: first, get the toxin off of the nerve cells, and second, speed up his metabolism.

So he would inject Marley with a two-part chemical cocktail; one would be a fast acting antidote, able to displace Exo-C from the nerve cells quickly, and the other would be a stimulant like adrenaline, maybe spiked with a little caffeine. He briefly considered Benzedrine and even cocaine, but... ' _No, we'll stay away from those for now_.'

The antidote had been discovered by a PhD student in his lab, and the pure form existed in only a few places in the northern hemisphere. One of those places was the big minus 80° Celsius freezer in his lab at the Waxman.

Many years ago, when Niles first watched tribal elders using the Spirit Door toxins, he'd suspected that antidotes existed. While some users fell into the deep sleep, the more experienced shamans took large doses routinely. It gave them intense but temporary out-of-body visions with no ill effects.

At the time, he'd considered three possible explanations:

The first was that some people were naturally resistant. The second was that by repeated use they built up a resistance. The third, and most likely, reason was that they had taken something ahead of time that dampened or even nullified the extreme effects of the toxin.

And that last one turned out to be right. It was another example of the remarkable skill and knowledge that these native wizards had for balancing combinations of natural substances to achieve exactly the desired effect. As with many other things, it had been thanks to Grant Theroux that he had found this out. The friendship and respect that the shamans felt for Grant had opened them into revealing their secrets to Niles.

Still, it was quite a hunt: Niles and his students screened hundreds of different leaves, roots, berries, and bark samples, until – Eureka! – they eventually found it: a small alkaloid that bound tightly to the toxin, popping it off the nerve receptors. After characterizing it chemically and establishing dosage/activity relationships, they published the findings in journal articles, and then...well, it was pretty much forgotten.

Like so much of his career – overlooked and undervalued.

It was about 10 minutes after Trinity's scheduled landing time when Niles reached the turnoff from the freeway to the airport terminal. Traffic was stacking up due to holiday travelling, so he cruised slowly until he found an empty spot to stop near baggage claim. Security guards were pacing along the lines of waiting cars, motioning for the drivers to keep moving, but hadn't quite reached him when Trinity walked through the revolving glass doors. He jumped out of the car and waved; she saw him and came over, wheeling a large black suitcase and carrying a big canvas purse.

She slid into the front seat while he shoved the suitcase into the back. There was no welcoming hug, no 'Hello', not even a tight-lipped smile from Trinity, so he got into the driver's side wordlessly and pulled away, moving to the left lane and merging with the traffic.

The silence in the car continued as he reached the exit lanes and headed back onto US 101, turned up 380, and merged onto 280 southbound. Once there, he settled into one of the middle lanes. The rain had let up, and, even with the wet roads, it was a fast, easy cruise homeward.

Trinity keeping quiet was unusual; normally she was extroverted, quick to smile and easy to talk to. That – along with her extraordinary looks – was what made her so alluring, especially to men.

Well, maybe she was worn out from the travelling; but Niles sensed that it ran deeper than that. Was she pissed about something? Probably, but he never had the knack for figuring out the feminine psyche – one of the reasons his two marriages had failed. Whatever, he couldn't waste time worrying about that now; he needed to tell her about Marley, needed to get her thinking about his plans.

Still, why not start with something bland, just to get her talking, and get into the prickly stuff later?

Alright then; he glanced sideways at her. "So...how'd you like it in the big forest?"

"How'd I like it?" She laughed softly. "Totally zero at first. You didn't tell me that it's a cyber dead-zone down there. No internet, no phone service, radio reception only for two hours a day. But I got used to it after the first week... started hanging out with the clinic people. They're way overworked there – people come in from all over and they only have two doctors and three nurses. So I helped out in the office. Piles of papers and stacks of manila folders on the shelves, on the floor – everywhere. I spent my time getting it sorted out and showing one of the nuns how to keep it up. After doing that for two weeks, I started liking the place a lot, and the people too. What they're doing there is pretty amazing. If I was just doing that, I would have loved it. But I also had to deal with that butt-face Phil."

'Ahh," thought Niles to himself: It was something about Phil that upset her.

"Trinity," he said, "I arranged for you to get six weeks away from the Waxman so you could spend the time down keeping Phil on track. We're at a critical stage in the project right now, and I need him to stay focused. You know what a bag of worries and panic attacks he can be, and we can't risk him losing his nerve."

He glanced over at her, catching her eye as she turned to face him. "So," he said, "it was sweet of you to do the medical angel bit," then added with a tinge of acid in his voice, "but that wasn't your job – watching after Phil was." She turned away and lapsed into silence again. When this had dragged in for another five minutes, Niles heaved a sigh and said, "Look, I know you're not happy about this arrangement, but it's important - and you're getting paid plenty for it."

"You know what," Trinity finally said, "you can go to Hell and take your bloody arrangement with you. I just don't give a damn. Phil is an egotistical clown – he thinks he's smart and cool, but he's just a spineless, shallow jerk. I can only pretend for so long."

She coughed and rummaged in her purse, found a breath mint, and popped it in her mouth. "I should've asked you to bring me a burger and fries. I'm starving – we were lucky to get stale crackers on the plane. Look, Niles, when I got down there, Phil was going off to his lab every morning and not coming back to the Clinic till dark. For the first week I tried to smile and sound interested like you wanted me to, but you know what? – He wasn't interested in anything but himself... kept carrying on about what a big shot he was and how nobody appreciated him. And he was drinking a lot. A whole lot. So I moved into another bungalow and left him alone after that. What a sorry sap – he made me want to puke, and I told him that. Then two nights ago he drove in bragging to anyone who'd listen about his great results and how he was going to be so rich. He was drunk and started pawing at me in the Clinic office... tore my blouse right in front of Wayne Gresham. I smacked him a good one, bloodied his lip."

"Brilliant, Trinity," Niles said, shaking his head. "Just brilliant... then what happened?"

"Huh! I packed my stuff, caught the boat to Salvata and hopped a plane. And here I am."

"And Phil? What's he doing now?"

"How the Hell do I know? I'm done with him."

Niles took a deep breath, then another, slow and steady. He rubbed his temples, then the bridge of his nose, then his chin, all the while trying to watch the road. Why were people so difficult? His project was solid, clean and brilliant; but the people working on it were so flighty, so difficult, so... so....

So human? Yes, and what did Trinity mean about Phil bragging to everyone about his results? Mr. Greene said something similar on the phone, about Phil yakking to the nuns.

What an idiot! Didn't he know that loose talk gets people killed?

Niles opened his mouth to ask more about it, but Trinity cut him off. "And what's going on around here? I finally dump that douche-bag Phil, and when I come back home Kelsey tells me that Marley can't meet me 'cause he's in the hospital. So instead I get picked up by Dr. Niles-bloody-Stratton himself!"

Her outburst didn't upset him – it actually made him smile, made the tension he'd been holding in all day dissolve away. Like many other days, he'd been playing the role of the pretentious, slightly doofus professor for Victor, for Kelsey, and especially for Reid.

But when Trinity got in the car, the charade evaporated.

It was funny, their relationship: sometimes he was fascinated by her, and sometimes he almost feared her. But at least he could be himself around her: No pretenses, no charades. She was one of the few that he could say that about, and for that he was grateful. So he went on, in a calmer voice: "We have a problem, Trin. And you and I are going to clean it up."

"Problem?" She said, "like what?"

"Oh, just that our friend Marley got hopped up, went crazy at some lake in the hills, and got in a tussle in the mud. He's been passed out in a hospital bed for the last two days, and the guy he fought with is snooping around the labs at the Waxman."

"What – is he a cop or something?"

"No," Niles said, "but Aquino wants us to treat him like one. You know Victor... always worried about the Waxman reputation, always freaked about scandal."

"Jesus!" Trinity hissed, "I had a hint from Kelsey that something serious was going on, but she didn't give any details. So what about Marley - is he gonna be okay or not?"

"Oh yeah," Niles said, almost a sneer. "The guy's as strong as an ox, but sometimes he acts like one, too. It's just a drug reaction – the big fool was drunk, taking pills, and... licking a frog."

"Licking a frog?" Her voice rose in disbelief and she grabbed at his shoulder. "What kind of ridiculous crap is that? Nobody licks a frog!"

Niles shrugged. "These are very special frogs. They have hallucinogens on their skin – something like LSD - and more dangerous things too. Most people - most rational people - don't lick them. But Marley's not like most people." He glanced over at her and shook his head. "If he got a big dose, he could be tripped out for a week."

"Holy... is this one of those critters that Phil sent back"

Niles nodded. "Marley should have left the box in the specimen lab. But he didn't. Instead he decided to do a little, uh, evaluating on his own."

She was quiet for a minute, and he said nothing, letting her digest the info.

Then she cleared her throat and asked, "So, what're you gonna do?"

"Not just me: We. You and I are going to get him out of that hospital. Tomorrow night."

"Well, it he's in a coma, how the Hell do we do that?"

"I have a rough plan. Not a great one, but if we act like we know what we're doing, we can carry it off."

She stared at him for a few seconds, then said, "Okay. What am I supposed to do?"

"You're going to be his sister. His loving, well-to-do sister, who wants to have him moved to a rich, private clinic. Which means that you sign the papers to get him checked out of Bayview. And it has to be done before any nosy visitors get to see him, especially Kelsey or Reid."

"Reid? Who's that?"

Niles shook his head. "Later. I'll tell you about him later. All you need to know now is that he's the guy that put Marley in the hospital and is now going around the labs asking questions."

She thought that over for ten seconds, then nodded, "Alright – about Marley: How're we going to move him when he's passed out. We'll need an ambulance, right?"

"That's my part. You're the concerned sister, I'm the doctor from the new facility. I'm going to wake him up - at least, I hope so - right after we get there. When the nurse comes in to check on him, he should be conscious and able to talk. They'll use a wheelchair to take him down to the hospital door, but at that point we'll be free to put him into our car and leave."

"Hmmf," she snorted. "Sounds pretty iffy to me."

"I didn't say it was a great plan, but if we're decisive and act like we're in charge – it will work."

A few more seconds of silence, then she asked, "What're you gonna use to wake him up?"

"Do you really want to know? I didn't think you knew much about the pharmacology of drugs."

"I don't. But tell me anyway. I want to get the feeling that _you_ know what you're doing."

Niles smiled. "Alright, it's like this: the chemical on the frog skin slows down your metabolism and sends you into a kind of semi-sleep state. But it speeds up your brain activity – that's why shamans use it – to get into altered states. They feel like they're flying through the world at light speed, when they're actually lying semi-conscious on a straw mat. They have intense visions. Reality warps, bends, and twists back on itself, and they become one with animal spirits."

"Really?" She smiled. "Sounds like it might be wicked fun to try."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "Depends on your definition of fun. I've seen permanent damage - psychic damage – by first time users. It was damn stupid of Marley to binge on alcohol and street drugs at the same time."

"Yeah," Trinity nodded, "Marley can be a bit of a fool. But you still haven't said how you're going to wake him up."

"We have an antidote at the Waxman. I'll give it to him while you're handling the paperwork."

"And he's gonna wake up," she snapped her fingers, "just like that?"

"Yep. Just like that."

He could feel her staring at him, not saying anything, just staring. After thirty seconds he let out a deep breath and sighed. "Okay - maybe not, but this is our best shot. This whole project is balanced on a knife edge right now. Tomorrow night Marley either has to come with us or die right there. No other choice... we can't leave him to wake up on his own, in the middle of an investigation and spill his guts."

Trinity looked out the window and slowly shook her head. "Holy friggin Hell," she whispered.

Chapter 18: Coincidence

Day 3: Wednesday evening

I'm always a little suspicious of coincidences. Oh, I don't deny they happen; it's just that in my line of work there's often something a little insidious behind them. But this one was clean, I'm sure. In fact – immaculate.

It was about 8:00 Wednesday evening. The twins had finished copying Marley's notebooks, and I was just snapping the binder shut on the final collated sheets. Chypp was leaning on his cane, sipping the last drops of his Frappuccino; Chyll was cracking her knuckles and stretching.

"Okay," she said. "I don't need to see another Xerox machine for a while. What're you gonna use all the copies for, boss?"

"They're part of an investigation. Don't really know where it's going to lead. I'm in the 'just nosing around' stage right now."

"Those books had some pretty deep molecular biology in them. I couldn't make sense out of all of it, but what I did understand looked complicated."

"Really?" I said, surprised. "You were moving pretty fast over there... you had time to read the pages while you were copying them?"

"Not carefully, but I had a chance to glance at them."

"You glanced at them? Okay, and...?"

"Well – I took biochem classes last year, and I worked as a student helper in the labs. So I know a little bit about it. Anyway, I could tell generally what was in the notebooks, but not the details."

"From glancing at them?"

"You know Chyll, boss," said Chypp, easing into his wheelchair. "She looks at something once and it's in her brain forever."

"Nooo," Chyll shook her head, "not always. But sometimes, you know, if it's something I'm interested in.."

I had to smile. We all knew that Chyll was the champ at crossword puzzles and memory games. She has one of those minds that remembers things easily. Through hard work and practice, I've trained myself to be pretty good at that too - it comes in handy in my job. But she just has it naturally.

Chypp, on the other hand, didn't have the photographic memory, but was a great organizer and had a strong practical sense for knowing what to do at the right time.

Twins: nowhere near identical, but a great team.

"So how're you gonna use them?" Chyll persisted. "Are there some spooky dark secrets in there?"

Then Chypp chimed in, "Yeah, like are they cloning zombies or something?"

I smiled. "You two have been watching too many movies."

"Not movies," Chyll said. "Ice-Ax IV – Chypp sits up all night blasting vampires and zombies."

"Don't listen to her, boss, that's a load of BS."

"Ice-Ax IV?" I muttered.

They both looked at me, then at each other, then broke out laughing. So here I am, a twenty-eight year old dinosaur, out of touch with the latest video craze.

Chyll patted my shoulder. "Sorry, boss. Anyway, what is the deal with the notebooks?"

"Oh, I'm following up on a little, um... altercation from Monday night. It was -"

"Altercation?" Chypp interrupted. "Yeah, dad said that you got in a fight Monday night, took somebody out big time."

"What?" Chyll's voice rose an octave, "I didn't hear about that! How come dad didn't tell me?"

"You had your door closed, studying. Anyway, what happened?"

I shook my head. "There's not much to tell. It was over before it started. The other guy was hopped up on drugs and lunged at me with a broken bottle. I tossed him into a table... the table broke, he went unconscious, and is in Bayview now, still passed out."

They were all attention now.

"So boss, was he a big ugly guy?" Chyll asked.

"Yeah, like some narco-acid freak?" Chypp added.

I laughed again. "Yes, no, and maybe. He's big – bigger than I am, anyway, but not ugly. Actually good-looking, and built like a Muscle Beach stud. Drug freak? That's what we're trying to figure out. Whatever he was on is something new for around here. Powerful hallucinogen of some sort. The guy works at the Waxman Institute – "

"Waxman?" Chyll clapped her hands. "I know about that place. One of my teachers was there for a while. They do a lot of cool stuff – even work with NASA on exobiology. Is that what these notebooks are all about?"

"I don't know yet, but I want to know. Do they contain recipes for cooking up new drugs? Or are they just somebody's innocent research notes?"

"Oh, I get it," Chypp said. "You're going to give these copies to Vico, right?"

"Who's Vico?" Chyll asked.

Chypp looked at her and shook his head. "You don't know Vico? - Vico Moretti, works in the Forensics Lab down stairs?"

"No, tell me about him."

"Well, he's a consultant, not a full-time employee." I said, looking at Chyll. "His day job is in bioinformatics and genetic engineering, and he only comes in here when we need him. Anyway, yeah, it's tempting to give him a copy, but the books aren't ours. They belong to the Waxman, and probably have proprietary stuff in them – you know, patentable data – so it's better to have one of their own scientists look at them."

"But," I continued "the problem is that the person I'd like to use... I can't get in touch with tonight - don't have her number. I'll try to reach her at the Waxman tomorrow."

And that's when my phone went off. It was over across the room, so Chyll slid her chair over, swooped it up, and tossed it to me in one smooth move.

I caught it and checked the number: local, but not familiar.

"Hello, Reid here," I answered.

"Reid," a pleasant voice said. It hit me with a little jolt of adrenaline.

"Kelsey - I was just talking about calling you, but didn't get your number today."

"Really? That's good to hear." Her voice was light and playful sounding; much happier than when I'd last seen her.

"Victor gave me your card," she went on. "I guess I left it in the conference room when I rushed out. He said I should call you if I thought of anything useful."

"And did you?"

"Think of anything useful, you mean? Well, maybe. The first thing is – I wanted to apologize for running out like that."

"No need," I said. "It was my blunder. I didn't know that Marley's story would dredge up old memories."

"No - please don't worry about that. The past – the good, the bad – is just that – the past. I know that clearly now, thanks in part to what you said. Whatever feelings I had for Julian disappeared years ago. He moved on in his life, and I moved on in mine. That is, until his life ended. After that, something kept nagging at me. And then, hearing what you said today, about someone being murdered, and that maybe it was Julian, made me realize what was bothering me. All this time I've been thinking that he committed suicide, and that somehow I was partly responsible, because I'd kicked him out. It was... oh God – sorry Reid, I don't mean to rattle on like this. "

"No, please. I like to hear you rattle on, so keep going."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and when you're done, I have a favor to ask."

"Well, okay then. I was surprised and, I guess, shocked to think that he'd been murdered, but," she let out a big sigh, "honestly, I felt a wave of relief, like – I don't know what, exactly... Angst? Stress? Emotional poison? – Whatever. I just felt it draining away, a catharsis, and I hadn't even really admitted it to myself that it was there in the first place, not consciously, anyway. I know now that I've been feeling guilty this whole past year. It wasn't something I talked about to anyone – even to myself - but it was there, and making it impossible to really bury the past and move on in a... a healthy way."

"And now you can?" I asked.

"Maybe. Kind of," she said. "I mean, emotionally, yes, I think I can bury that part of it. But I need to know for sure that it wasn't suicide. I want to know why someone would kill him, and what he was involved in. You were talking about how there might be a drug connection here... so was Julian involved in something like that? Do you think that was behind it?"

"Kelsey," I said, keeping my voice soft and even, "we don't know anything for certain about any drug connection. That's just a possibility. No real proof at all – but the potential consequences are serious enough that the Drug Unit wants me to check it out. It's not really even an official investigation; more like a fact finding mission. I'm just digging into the background, looking for possible leads. But there's something here that might tell us a lot more."

"What is it – anything I can help with?"

"I hope so. Marley's lab notebooks."

"Really? How'd you get those?"

"From the guy Marley was with Monday night. He's scared of legal entanglements and so's being helpful."

"Ah," she said, a smile in her voice. "You mean the guy Marley was with when you knocked him out?"

"Kelsey – that's not exactly what happened –"

"I'd like to have seen that," she went on before I could say more. "Marley's a big dude and he's got an ego just as big. If you knocked him out, you probably made yourself an enemy for life. But you made a lot of friends, too. He's not popular around here. He threatened a couple of the grounds crew for moving his trees and yelled at the janitors for cleaning Phil's lab. He said that people were getting too near his stuff. There've been complaints to HR. Niles and Trinity had to step in and pacify everybody."

"Interesting," I said. "It might be worthwhile talking to Niles and Trinity about that. Didn't you say that she's off on a field trip? Any idea when she might be coming back?"

"Well, guess what? – She's on her way back now – should get into the SF airport later tonight."

"Huh! You think she might be coming in to work tomorrow?"

"I don't know. It sounded like she had a pretty horrid trip. Why - are you coming over to the Waxman?"

"Yes, because of the notebooks; if there was anything illegal going on, it might be in there. I read a few pages, but didn't understand much. I want to come by tomorrow and give the notebooks to Victor, but also give you a copy. Maybe you could take a look and tell if there's anything more than just innocent notes in them."

"Sure, but I can't promise that I'll be able to make total sense out it."

"That's okay; anything you can do will help. I'm just looking for something to show that there either is or is not a problem here."

"Okay, got it. Yeah, it would be good to see you tomorrow. That actually brings up the other reason I wanted to call. You remember in the lab today, we were starting to talk about UC Davis and the stuff that happened back then, and said that we should get together to chat about it some more?"

"Kelsey, I'd love to get together with you, but all that stuff was years ago. Are you sure you want to hear about that ancient history?"

"Absolutely yes – but the deal is, I'm going away next week, and I'll be gone for a few months, so... it would be nice to see each other before I leave."

I sat there, hearing her say this, almost like a third person listening in. Was she really saying that she wanted to meet and swap old stories about our lives? You understand, suspicion is part of my business. It's woven into the fabric of my job. On the other hand....

Screw the suspicion.

"I'd like that a lot," I said, and meant it. "Maybe we can catch a late lunch tomorrow."

"Perfect. I know a good place."

And so we went on for another minute, then I rang off, smiling. Until the other part of what she'd said hit me: "...going away for a few months."

"Damn!" I whispered.

I set the phone down and looked up. Chypp and Chyll were staring at me expectantly.

"Boss, I only heard one side of the conversation," Chypp said, "but it sounded like you were making a date."

I said nothing, just stared back.

Chyll leaned close. "You're going to the Waxman Institute tomorrow?"

"Yep. I have to give these notebooks back to Victor Akino; he's the director. And I have to meet Kelsey – she's going to read over these copies."

"I'm going with you," Chyll said.

I gave her one of those 'What are you talking about' looks and opened my mouth to say 'No'... but then I thought: ' _Well, why not_?'

"Okay," I nodded. "You want to meet here or have me pick you up at home?"

"I'll just take my bike. I know where the place is – just tell me the time."

By her 'bike' she meant the Honda 250cc motorcycle she buzzes around in. She calls it 'Wanda', for Christ sake.

I've tried to talk her out of it a dozen times – no success. It's not real big, but plenty fast, real zippy, and powerful enough to go from zero to out-of-control in a heartbeat. I told her that riding dirt bikes can be a blast of fun, but riding street bikes with all the crazy commuters - it's just way too easy to get into serious trouble.

I've even told her The Story in all its grisly details. It's not something I tell everybody, you know; it's the story about what happened to me in college, about why my life direction changed. It's the one that Kelsey was talking about.

But none of that fazed her.

"Wanda and I are one," she always says. "At least for now."

Don't ever give your motorcycle a name; once you do that, there's no going back.

So I just shrugged and said, "Alright. Let me make another call."

I looked through my wallet and pulled out Victor's business card. He might not be in his office now, but he'd scrawled his cell number on the back.

He answered on the second ring.

"Mr. Durham – thanks for calling. This is good; I wanted to ring you up, but I left your card on my desk at work."

"Really," I said, "what did you want to call about?"

"I was thinking more about what you said earlier today, about an illegal drug operation involving Waxman staff."

"Mr. Akino," I said, "I'm not saying that there for sure is an operation there; I'm merely scouting around a bit to see what, if anything, might be going on."

"Well that's the point," he said. "The Waxman name is very important. If you find evidence of a drug ring here, we need to root it out completely and immediately. The Waxman reputation can withstand a bit of scandal. But if word got out that we knew of something and suppressed the information, or failed to take action, that would be a major hit. We absolutely cannot allow that to happen."

"Okay," I said, "so you're saying that you want me to push forward on this?"

"Yes, definitely. We'll give whatever help we can."

"Excellent. I'd like to come by and see you in your office tomorrow morning. I have something to give you, and a proposal to discuss."

"Okay, sure; how does ten o'clock work for you?"

"Ten o'clock – good. Seeya then."

"Okay, thanks for the call."

And that was that. I looked over at Chyll.

"Got it boss, 10 AM. I'll be there at 9:30."

"9:30?" I said.

"Yeah. I want to walk around the grounds, kind of map it in my head. You know - check out the outside before we go on the inside."

I had to smile. "Chyll, you're going to make someone an amazing partner someday."

"Someday?" She arched one eyebrow and cocked her head sideways, looking at me intently. "That day's gonna come a lot sooner than you think, boss."

Chapter 19: Presentation

Day 3: Wednesday night

It was nearly ten o'clock by the time Niles dropped Trinity off and arrived home. After taking a hot shower he sat in the rocking chair next to his bed, chewing over ideas for shutting down the local operation without snagging any unwanted attention. He'd always been a stickler for details - that's how he ran his department and how he ran his life – and wasn't satisfied with the plan he'd told to Trinity. It was full of 'ifs' and 'maybes'; everything had to go just right, and real life just didn't work that way

At midnight he finally muttered, "To Hell with it" and reached for the switch on the bedside lamp. The photo on the wall caught his attention, and he smiled. It was a large black and white print he'd made himself, one of his favorites: Ariama, with pretty face and large, clear eyes, leaning against the balcony railing at the jungle Lodge. A light breeze was fluttering her long dark hair and she was laughing softly. She wore only a soft cotton towel around her waist, and the early morning light caught the curves of her breasts perfectly; they seemed almost to glow, the dark nipples contrasting to the tan of her skin.

He'd taken that shot during the summer at one of the project meetings. Another would be coming up soon and he couldn't wait to see her again. Those were always stressful times, but being with Ariama made it bearable. More than that, actually: she made it delectable. She was the one innocent and clean person in this misbegotten project. How often had he wished he could just chuck the whole thing and go away with her?

Many times... especially lately.

But that was impossible now. Things had gone too far; too much money spent, too much blood spilled... and anyway, they were so close to finishing.

They'd met at the first meeting, that very first night, after he'd come up with the Act of God plan.

He smiled again at the photo, shut off the light, and lay down.

Did he love her? Yes, he was sure of it. Did she love him? She said she did, but how would she feel if she knew what he was really working on?

What then?

Act of God... Jeez, what a misnomer.

He stared into the dark, up at the ceiling; the room was totally black – he liked it best that way, for sleeping – but in his mind's eye the image that Izaak had shown was fresh and colorful....

* * * * * * *

"Yes, the REE- Rare Earth Elements." Izaak's voice had a strange quirkiness to it; English was obviously not his native tongue. He tried to compensate with enthusiasm and colloquial expressions, but it still didn't sound quite right.

"Not your usual household names, but these super-elements are already major players in your lives and will be everywhere in your children's and grandchildren's lives. If you want to find a treasure trove of natural resources, these babies should be at the top of your list."

"Sure, oil, gas, and coal are still power players on the international stage - for now - but their grip on the future is fading. Gold and diamonds? They're not just expensive bling, but actually have some high-tech uses. But, like the outmoded energy resources, they're nothing to base a new national economy on, certainly not one that will let you climb out of the third world quagmire that Mr. Greene described. But now these beauties..."

His laser pointer circumscribed the names on the chart, stopping to underscore each one.

"A hundred-fifty years ago, when coal was king, nobody knew or cared about these guys. But a hundred-fifty years from now, in the future, nobody's going to care about coal; it'll be relegated to the fossil graveyard that it came from. Pretty much the same with oil. But these oddly named rare earth beauties - Praseodymium, Neodymium, Samarium, Europium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Ytterbium - they're going to be primary shapers and drivers of the 21st and 22nd centuries."

"We're talking about vital components in communications, nuclear power, aerospace, defense and medical industries; optical fibers and amplifiers, electric cars, smart bombs, precision guided missiles, computers, TV's, lasers and masers, electrical relays, chemical catalysts, new ceramic and steel materials. They have incredibly strong magnetic properties – think mag-lev trains - and the applications list will grow, and grow... and grow."

"Governments and corporations, driven by the demands of war, medicine, transportation, commerce, and the information age, hire brilliant people and give them deep budgets to find elegant new uses for these elements, uses which would have been undreamed of a generation or two earlier. They're probably working in secret on a dozen critical uses that we don't even know about yet."

"And there's no reason to suppose that this will change. The advancement of cutting edge technology is tied to the pace of achievements in materials science. A more detailed list of their properties, current uses, and potential future uses, along with their values, is shown in your handouts. Please note that the dollar amounts are given in units of trillions – that's trillions – of dollars."

Niles looked around the table. Each of the other people had a manila folder containing a thin stack of papers, and a few had the folders open and were slowly paging through the sheets. Well, not everyone had a folder – he and Grenvil had been skipped over. Why?

Maybe the others were investors of some sort, while he and Grenvil were here for some other purpose. But what?

Meanwhile, Izaak kept on in his slightly off-key voice.

"Even more interesting is that these elements are not just oddly named, but mis-named as well. Why, you ask? – Because in fact they're not rare at all. Most of them are more abundant in the Earth's crust than tin or iodine, and all are much more abundant than mercury or gold. So... what's the problem?"

He looked around the room, grinning.

When no one said anything, he went on, "Of course, the answer is that overall abundance of an ore is really not so important; much more critical are two other factors: first, finding an easily accessible location that has an unusually high ore concentration and second, the difficulty of processing the crude ore to get the pure metal."

"The sad truth is that only a very few high concentration deposits of REE's have ever been found; and the purification processes are complicated and generate bad environmental pollutants. Most of the high value deposits are in China. In fact, China holds a strangle-hold on these materials, forcing the industrialized nations to dance to their tune and pay whatever price they set."

"But what would happen if another nation – let's call it Nation X - discovered the true Mother Lode of these elements within their borders. Suppose they could harvest the ore and sell it to the world market – would they become a world leader, a major economic power?"

He tapped the laser pointer against his fingers and shook his head. "No, of course not. It would be the same as if Russia or the USA suddenly flooded all of their gold reserves onto the market, or if OPEC suddenly increased their oil production ten-fold, or if a mega-amount of high grade diamonds were suddenly released: the glut on the market would cause the price of the material – gold, oil, diamonds, or rare earth elements – to plummet. Oh, the industrialized nations would be happy – they would get the pure metals for rock bottom prices; but Nation X would end up getting very little for their treasured resources and \- would have made an enemy of China."

"No, the key is not to flood the market with a supply of raw material. So then: what to do... what to do... what to...do....?" His voice trailed off, he set down the pointer, and walked slowly back to his chair. The image of the rare earth elements faded and disappeared.

The lights stayed dim and the room stayed quiet, mostly. There were a few soft murmurs and rustling noises as people looked through the figures on their handouts. The man just to Niles' left was spreading out papers in front of him, and, by craning his neck slightly, Niles could just see a few tables and pie charts. He wished the lights were a little brighter; he could see numbers, but not clearly. He was just leaning a little closer when he heard Mr. Greene's voice.

He must have gotten up again while Niles was busy trying to catch a peek at his neighbor's papers. Reluctantly, Niles turned away and faced to the right, toward the front of the table.

"It really is amazing what remote sensing from satellites can tell us," Mr. Greene said in his smooth voice. "They show a myriad of underground structures and formations, ancient lakes and roads, even cities long buried, clues of prehistoric catastrophes – natural or man-made. Thanks to the space probes sent to evaluate extraterrestrial bodies – asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, large planets, moons – new technology has been perfected that can reveal detailed subsurface geology and evidence for the presence of interesting materials."

"As you would expect, this technology has been used to map a portion – but by no means all – of the Earth. The data are usually closely guarded secrets by the nations lucky enough to have any. Some file them away and do no more; but others pursue and investigate, interested in knowing more about what may lie in their future: What can the data tell us about earthquake possibilities? How about the threat of volcanic activity? How much subsurface fresh water lies buried? Or - what about more valuable resources? In order to know for sure, though, the remote sensing data must be followed up with investigations by teams at the ground level."

The image of what Mr. Greene had called the Five Corners region appeared again, hovering just above the table; it slowly zoomed in until just the center portion, what he had called the 'palm of the hand', showed. As before, a tiny red dot toward the edge marked the location of the Lodge.

"You may remember the unfortunate crash of the military Flight 1067 last year. It was an old, heavy plane and should have been retired from service. But it wasn't, and metal fatigue and bad weather allowed a wing to crack, and one of the engines broke off. The reported crash site was here."

He clicked the button on the laser pointer and a small, bright blue dot appeared near the center of the map.

"Thirty-nine soldiers were listed as killed, though due to the sensitive nature of their mission, no names were released to the public. And despite two weeks of diligent searching by army teams on the ground and air surveillance teams in helicopters, over several hundred square kilometers, the black box with pilot voice recordings was never found."

Niles remembered reading about the tragedy; there was a short account in the international news, but the story quickly faded. From the nods and serious faces around the room, he could see that the others remembered it, too.

Then Mr. Greene smiled. "Of course, it's not surprising that no names were released, or that no black box was found, because the crash never really occurred. Oh, there was a plane in distress, alright, but it made a safe landing at the Salvata air field. A few wise leaders," his gaze flickered briefly on the two men at the side table; "yes, a few quick thinkers realized the opportunity that this presented. And as it turned out, the air and ground search teams were able accomplish their real mission: to substantiate the clues from the satellite data."

"What was needed next was to send in a small team of experts to analyze core samples, map the extent of deposits, and evaluate the difficulty of extraction at an industrial scale. A team was sent in, under an appropriate cover story, and spent nearly four months quietly working; we still have a geologist out there analyzing core samples. To make a long story short, they found that the potential wealth here is... vast. But - the difficulties are formidable. As both Izaak and I have stressed, having a vast potential is only the beginning. Being merely a raw material supply house for the world gets us... nowhere. We must – must – develop the domestic capability to manufacture and market finished goods throughout the communications, defense, high tech, medical, and aerospace industries."

He paused, set down the pointer and the image of the jungle map faded. The room lights stayed dim, but a soft spotlight came on, shining down on Mr. Greene.

"You've each been given a prospectus that covers this material in much more depth than we've discussed in this brief introduction. And for each of you, additional information has been added that relates to your specific area of expertise. In a few moments we'll break up for lunch, and then meet in small workshops. There, we will discuss in detail what needs to be done in each of these areas. Every one of you has been selected as a leader in your field, and as such you will be expected to play a critical role. This is not just an immense national opportunity; it is an immense personal opportunity for each of you, and you can expect to be compensated appropriately. At the top of your folder is a number. That number refers to a room in the Lodge. Please be in your assigned room in exactly one hour."

The spotlight faded, the room lights brightened, and people rose and started shuffling out. Most were quiet; a few whispered in low tones. No one seemed to pay any attention to Niles or Grenvil.

Except Mr. Greene, who walked over and motioned for them to sit back down.

"Gentlemen – you no doubt noticed that you did not receive a folder of information like the others. That's because your roles will be more confidential – much more. If word were to get out that we were asking an international expert in computer hard drives to set up a facility in our capital, it would cause some interest – but not a great deal. However, if word got out about what we will discuss with you, it could stir up an international hornet's nest. I'm not just talking about mere discretion here; I'm talking about secrecy. Nothing that we discuss will be revealed outside of this little group, not even to the other people who just left this room. They have their roles to play; they have no need to know yours."

Niles looked around. In addition to himself, Grenvil and Mr. Greene, the two men at the side table were still there. Looking to his left, he was surprised to see that Colo had come in and was slouching in one of the nearby chairs, casually lighting his pipe.

Grenvil cleared his throat. "You're telling us this because we can help you in some way. But I'm no expert in mineralogy or economics or whatever else you're talking about. So what is it that you think we can do?"

"Actually, you've already been helping. Remember the team of experts that we needed to put into the field? We thought that it would take several months for them to do their work, and we wanted to keep it quiet; so, we needed a cover story for having them in there for so long. Thanks to you, we were able to do that."

Grenvil frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Your five month anthropological project with the Moz: living with them, studying them in detail. We graciously provided you with access to do that. Exclusive access, after having denied similar requests from other film-makers. And we provided you with a crew to record your adventures. Well, as it happens, three of them were also experienced mineral geologists, experts in commercial mining ventures. They performed their own work as well as yours."

Grenvil shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "How did they do that?"

"It was quite easy. For most days you were out following hunting or food foraging parties, or going off to record marriage rites, birth and burial ceremonies, and generally poking your nose into every aspect of their daily lives. Our experts had plenty of time for what they needed to do. The weekly supply helicopters brought in whatever you needed for your work; but they also took out whatever mineral and ore samples our team had collected."

Grenvil's frown deepened. "So I was your cover story? That project was all an empty sham?"

"Not at all!" Mr. Greene smiled. "Benefits for everyone concerned, Mr. Grenvil! You got awards, speaking engagements, and a television documentary; I've heard that you're writing a book. In return, we were able to get initial information on the size and composition of the rare earth deposits, the difficulty of extracting the crude ores, and the extent of processing needed. Everyone wins."

"Everyone?" Niles said. "I can see this heading down a dangerous path, if not for us, then for the native people."

The politico at the side table spoke up. Although Niles had seen him on TV and the internet, and read quotes from his speeches, this was the first time he'd actually heard him speak. His voice was higher than Niles had thought it would be.

"Dr. Stratton, Mr. Grenvil," he said, "here is the situation. You are absolutely right. Development of the reserves could destroy the integrity of the region. It would disrupt the habitats and have dire consequences for the native people who live here. They would either need to adapt to a new lifestyle, or be... um...eradicated. Obviously, we cannot allow that to happen. The indigenous people are an important cultural heritage for the entire world, and it is our duty to preserve that heritage."

This is a Helluva time for a political speech, Niles thought. What exactly was his point?

"But," the man continued, stabbing the air with his pen, "What if in order to preserve them it was necessary to move them ahead of time, before any industrial work began? What if there were a threat, an... Act of God, which required a well-meaning government to relocate them to a new, safe homeland? Would it not be our duty to do that?"

He looked directly Grenvil. "Would it not be our sacred duty to do that?"

He stopped, waiting for an answer.

Grenvil frowned. "This is very complicated. I need to know more before I can answer."

"And you shall know more," the man said evenly. He turned to Niles. "Dr. Stratton? Would it not be our duty to save those people?"

They were all looking at him, waiting for an answer. So he smiled and said without hesitation, "Yes, it would be the duty of every good person to do that. But what you're really saying is that if there were a reasonable justification for evacuating them, it would leave the region empty... unoccupied... available for you to move in equipment and get to work."

Mr. Greene tapped the table. "Yes, put bluntly, that is exactly the point, the reason why you are here. You are going to help us find that Act of God."

He paused for a heartbeat, two, three, then continued.

"The requirements: It must be sudden and lethal. It must be perceived as an incurable threat, not easily solvable by routine medical treatment, but requiring total evacuation. After the relocation is complete, it must be able to be eliminated. We wish the actual means for eliminating it to be easy and certain, but we will report that we are using harsh chemical treatments on the landscape, with the explanation that it is necessary to eradicate the threat. The treatments will be harsh enough to require removal of topsoil. The stripped land will be unusable, preventing the return of the displaced peoples... and the digging will provide a good explanation when we announce that we have stumbled, quite by accident, over the REE deposits."

"Now: Whoever creates the initial threat – the Act of God - will also be in the best position to eliminate it after it serves its purpose. And the genius who eliminates the threat will be seen as a savior of humanity. The world will know nothing of this first part, only the savior part. You will be heroes, decorated and revered. And, need I say – very well compensated."

"After the threat is eliminated, the region will remain a wasteland for some time, unfit for human settlement but perfect for economic development. Some of the money coming from this will be used, of course, to help the displaced natives and to eventually restore the jungle – it will be a noble justification for the work."

"But the loss of habitat," Grenvil said, his voice rising, "the destruction of the rain forest, it could jeopardize hundreds of plant and animal species... it could endanger the planet."

"Oh, I think that's overdoing it a bit," said the politician. "A challenge for a few species? Yes; but their extinction? No; we will relocate endangered species, as we will do for the people. As far as the loss of the rainforest - well, a great amount of deforestation occurs every year now. We will put an end to that. Not only will we create new laws to prevent it, but the new economic system we put in place will remove the need for further deforestation. People will be moving to the cities to work in the commercial boom times. Again – it's a win-win situation all around."

Grenvil's lip curled as he shook his head. "I can't believe that this... this scheme has the backing of the government."

Mr. Greene's response was mild and unruffled. "The entire government? – No... merely the progressive elements."

"Progressive!" Grenvil almost spat out the word. "Don't you mean 'rogue elements'?"

"Progressive... rogue," Mr. Greene smiled, "pretty much the same thing, really. They had access to some early data and generated the initial idea. But that would go nowhere without the assistance of a generous and farsighted group – the Consortium. You needn't worry yourselves about those details; we each have our role to fill. Mine is to provide the direct management in the field and to supply you with necessary resources."

He paused and nodded deferentially toward the second man at the table. "The Consortium is the provider of the funding... and, ultimately, of your compensation."

Niles bit his lip and kept silent, inwardly agreeing with Grenvil. What the politician said was ridiculous; did the overblown fool really believe his own naive rhetoric? Maybe he'd spent too much time in board meetings or having lunches with lobbyists. No, the actual impact on the region could be devastating for decades, maybe centuries.

On the other hand, Niles had spent his whole professional life scrounging around various jungles, and what had he gotten out of it? A steady job at a modest salary, a handful of publications and patents, but also a cracked vertebra, a torn rotator cuff, several bone fractures, malaria, innumerable insect bites, rashes, blisters, and he'd lost the tip of his left index finger to a monkey bite. Wasn't he due some payback?

So he leaned forward, looked directly at the Mr. Greene, and asked "What exactly does 'very well compensated' mean?"

Mr. Greene's eyes narrowed briefly; then he nodded and opened his mouth. But before he could say anything, the mystery man at the small table held up his hand.

"I'll answer that, Mr. Greene."

Mr. Greene looked surprised, then said, "Thank you, General."

"General?" said Niles. He hadn't meant to say it out loud, it just kind of blurted out. Well, anyway, that would explain the other soldier types being here.

Grenvil looked sharply at Niles, then swiveled around in his chair to look the men at the other table. Niles couldn't see his face, but he'd bet that Grenvil didn't look happy.

The man now called the General removed his glasses and looked at Niles impassively for four or five seconds. With the glasses off, the eyes weren't really cold and hypnotic, not like a cobra, but it was still a penetrating gaze, and, yes, seemed more than a little threatening. It made you feel uneasy, and Niles could feel his heart thumping in his chest.

"Dr. Stratton." The voice was a clear baritone, with the crisp pronunciation of the very self-assured. "I hold no official military rank or government office, but I do have certain powers and influence. So it may be convenient for you to think of me as the 'General'. And you may believe my words, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant to your ears. I like your direct question. I think we've made a good choice in you."

Then the eyes crinkled and the mouth curved into a smile. "Take a billion US dollars as a starting point. If you are able to carry out all of our ambitious program, the compensation will rise well above that."

A billion dollars? Did he really say a billion... as a starting point?

"Let me summarize the situation," he continued. "We have a goal: Long term progress to become a major global power player. And we have identified a mechanism by which to do this: Supercharge the economy by developing commercial applications of high value metals for the 21st century and beyond. Now - there are four requirements to make this happen."

"First, we must have abundant resources for the Rare Earth Elements... the REE's. This has been confirmed in the 5 Corners Region by satellite imaging and by ground level investigators. Second, we must develop new industrial capabilities. We need to be able to mine and process high volumes of ores to yield the pure rare metals, and then transform the metals into a wide range of finished high value goods. This means growing critical domestic businesses to meet the international demands. All of these are in the planning stage, with small teams of experts such as you saw here earlier."

"Third, we must form strong economic ties to international partners, to break the current monopoly held by China. This will not start until after our commercial infrastructure has begun to take shape. To start talks any earlier would be to invite questions before we are ready to answer them."

"And fourth: we must have a justification to harvest these resources from an environmentally and culturally sensitive site. This is the critical step; without it, nothing else can be done. We hope – no, we expect that one or both of you will give us nothing less than that Act of God, an event of such magnitude that we will be obligated to move the native people – for their own sake – to a new home, allowing us – after a waiting period - free access to the REE ores."

"A waiting period!" Grenvil blurted out. "That won't do you any good – as soon as you announce that you've found exploitable resources here, everyone will know that it was a set-up. The world's outrage will bury you!"

"Mr. Grenvil, we are aggressive, not foolish. We will not be making that announcement. After eliminating all traces of the Act of God, we will invite in teams from the world powers to investigate; the British, the French, perhaps the USA or the UN... almost certainly the World Health Organization. They will be there to confirm that the threat has been contained, but we will contrive to have them 'accidently' discover the REE ores. They, not us, will make the announcement."

He smiled, a cat having caught the canary smile. "And what has been discovered cannot be undiscovered. The discussion will then be how to make the best use of these high value materials, and we will suggest – meekly – that they are best used for the benefit of the displaced peoples. Once we have established a foothold in the region, it will be quietly revealed that the true extent of the deposits is surprisingly much greater than initially thought. By then the precedent of development will have been set; there will be no going back, and we will usher in a golden age for our countries. World outrage? – No... more like world applause, I think."

Grenvil pounded the table. "An age of exploitation, pollution, industrial waste, habitat destruction, and environmental disaster – you call that a golden age?"

"I do. I'm talking about converting an economy from largely tourist based into one which is a high-tech world power. That future comes at a price. Those willing to pay the price will enjoy the benefits. Those not willing to pay will be..." He leaned forward, fixing Grenvil with an icy stare, "... ground underfoot."

He sat back. That had been a short but very lucid summary of the morning's meeting, and confirmed that the General was the man in charge around here.

But it was all so bizarre. Niles raised a hand and said, "General, I must ask: if the magnitude of this project is so high, how can it be that you are only asking two people – Grenvil and me – to play such a critical part? I'd think that you'd want a whole platoon of experts working on this."

The General grinned. "As a matter of fact, we did solicit ideas from other scientists... eleven others, actually. Nine of them were unable to come up with anything that we had confidence in. The other two, working together, did give us a reasonable plan; reasonable, but not with a high probability of success. So we felt the need to have a backup – a second plan to develop in parallel. And that is why we brought you here."

After ten seconds of silence, Grenvil coughed softly, frowned, and asked, "So then... what happened to those other nine people?"

"A fair question," the General said, though the grin disappeared, "deserves a fair answer. So remember this one: All of this must - MUST - be done in the strictest secrecy. Everything depends on careful, coordinated timing of each factor. If even a hint of what we're discussing gets outside of this small group, the entire enterprise can fail. This means that you will not be provided with large teams of people to assist you, nor can you hire large staffs to work on your project. The number of people must be kept to a minimum; keep this in mind when you formulate your plans. The price of success is staggeringly high wealth; the price of failure is equally staggering loss, and – need I say – the personal consequences will be... severe."

Niles could feel a shiver of cold zip along his spine.... What in Hell had he gotten into?

More silence – but before it became uncomfortable, Mr. Greene stood up and smiled. "Very good. Let's have lunch then, and relax for a bit. I will meet with you, Mr. Grenvil and Dr. Stratton, individually in your rooms. If the two of you wish to combine your thoughts, bounce ideas off of each other, or whatever, that would be fine. Our little group here – just us - will reconvene tomorrow morning, at which time you can give us your initial thoughts. This is acceptable, gentlemen?"

Niles wished he had gotten a better night sleep last night, but he nodded, "Yes."

Grenvil only shrugged, still frowning.

The soldier type escorted them back to their rooms. Niles used the card to open his door; as he went in, the soldier bowed slightly, turned, and left.

There was a silver tray on the desk, containing a sandwich, a bowl of hot soup, a plate of warm biscuits and butter, chocolate bars, and a carafe of iced tea. Niles munched the sandwich and looked around the room again. Quiet and comfortable – an ideal place to think, plan, and write without any electronic distractions.

The General's voice played again in his head, ticking off the points that they demanded:

"Let me summarize," he'd said, "you will create a threat that must appear to come out of nowhere; be fast acting; be lethal; and we must be able to make it disappear completely."

Alright then; Niles needed something that would cause panic, something seen as a runaway disaster, but would in reality be something he could control at will.

Maybe generate some form of epidemic in the local area? It had to be nasty enough to attract the attention of the outside world and justify the evacuation of a native population. But it also needed to be easily eliminated, so that after the relocation, development teams could safely enter the region.

How to do all that? Hmmm... complicated...

He knew of several intensely virulent diseases being studied in labs around the world. To work with them in relative safety, the disease causing agents – usually bacteria or viruses – were normally weakened, or 'attenuated', so that they couldn't survive outside of the lab. There were variations on this theme, like removing one virulence gene from one strain and another virulence gene from a second strain. By themselves, each one was harmless, but if you combined them you could get an active infection, which could be amplified into an epidemic. And by eliminating one of them, the epidemic would disappear.

Okay, okay, that was a possibility... but exactly how to safely spread the disease, then eliminate it later?

Think...think.... He would need to find an infectious agent that can't survive in the wild, doesn't have any natural host, and won't recombine genetically with any indigenous virus or bacteria. And he would need to disperse it using a similarly weakened or short-lived vector – probably an insect of some sort. It would have to be one that would spread very quickly, then die out just as quickly.

He had enough scientific contacts to get a hold of attenuated agents for bad-ass diseases, and also several attenuated vectors, but he would need a matched pair, and that could be a problem. The best agents might not fit the best vectors, and vice-versa. So... maybe he would need someone to juggle that.

Okay - a tough problem, yes, maybe damned tough; but not insurmountable.

"And I don't need all the details now," he reminded himself, "just the general outline, something to tell them in the morning."

The waiter came by during the afternoon with another tray - a sandwich, fresh fruit, bottled water, coffee. It was a warm afternoon, and the waiter also provided a loose cotton shirt, shorts, and robe. Light and comfortable for pacing around the room or just sitting and thinking, and Niles was doing plenty of both.

It took a few hours and a few dozen pages of scribbled notes, but by early evening he was fairly certain that he could do it – with plenty of money and the right kind of help. He would need an expert in toxins, and also someone who knew about the spread and control of epidemic diseases. Then there would have to be a good biochemist, a top pro in molecular biology.

The talent pool in the Bay Area should be deep enough to find the right people, not just able, but willing to do... well, whatever was needed. And they could use the labs at the Waxman.

"Yes, it just might work," he thought to himself. Audacious; edgy; chancy – but it just might work. He tossed the last of his coffee into the sink and opened the cabinet near the wine glasses. He ran his eyes over the dozen liter size bottles and selected a dark red Malbec from Argentina.

He poured a glassful, took a long sip, and walked out onto the balcony. It was a beautiful moonless evening; the lower parts of the sky were blocked by the tall trees on the shore, but directly overhead the stars shone with laser brilliance.

He'd finished about half of the glass when he heard a knock at the door.

The waiter again? What now? He set the glass on the balcony railing, sauntered casually to the door and opened it slowly.

And standing there was Mr. Greene, in swimsuit and tank top, a towel draped over his shoulders.

"Good evening, Dr. Stratton. I've just been down for a swim. In the pool, I mean; much safer than the lagoon, what with the piranha. Will you be able to provide us with an action plan tomorrow. Or - do you need more time? Or, like Mr. Grenvil, do you wish to decline this opportunity for personal reward and professional glory?"

"I have the outlines of a plan," Niles said. "It needs more work to fill in the details, and I'll have to recruit some expert help. I haven't talked to Grenvil yet, but I might need Colo to be available. And we'll need to spend money – maybe a lot - to make this happen."

Greene nodded, looking pleased. "How long will it take to develop the plan and put it into action?"

"I think two or three years, if all goes well."

"That is acceptable, although that would be the outside limit. Colo will indeed be available to help in any way he can. Money will not be a problem. We look forward to hearing your outline tomorrow morning."

He smiled reassuringly. "Now - it is time for you to relax. Have a pleasant evening."

With that, he turned and walked down the hallway. Niles started to close the door, but a soft voice called out.

"Dr. Stratton, sir, please, I have refreshment for you."

He stood back while a slender woman in a white robe glided into the room. She carried a crystal tray with two glasses and a bottle of gold liquid. She dimmed the room lights, walked out onto the balcony, and set the tray onto a small wicker table. Niles followed her slowly, unsure of exactly what was happening. With a demure smile and graceful ease, she filled the two glasses from the decanter and handed one to him.

He started to say something, but she put a finger to his lips. Stepping back, she shrugged and the robe slid to the floor. Her slim breasts glowed in the moonlight, and the soft curves of her hips swung enticingly as she bent to lift her glass.

"Dr. Stratton, sir, please, I would like to shower. Would you join me?"

Ariama.

He nodded and started to reach for her, when a soft rapping came at the door. He heard a hoarse whisper calling out "Stratton – open up."

Grenvil - Damn the man!

He looked at Ariama bleakly, but she just smiled. "I will prepare our bath," she said in a sweet, melodic voice, "and be waiting for you when you finish with your visitor."

He wrenched the door open and Grenvil burst into the room.

A very upset Grenvil.

"There's no way in Hell that I'm going to get mixed up in this," he said.

Niles didn't answer right away. He didn't like Grenvil – never had. Grenvil called himself an 'anthropological journalist', but Niles thought that he was more like a news-hound looking for ways to promote himself. He had written magazine articles and narrated a few PBS specials, but his main claim to fame was the work with the Moz people, and now that looked like a government ruse.

"Oh? What's the problem, Grenvil?" Niles said softly, with a bit of a sneer in his voice. "You've been mixed in stuff before. How did you get those contracts for selling museum pieces? And the exclusive rights to publish tribal language studies – studies that you didn't do yourself? Don't tell me that you didn't fill a few hands with money, and make a bunch for yourself doing it."

Grenvil screwed up his face and waved his hand.

"So what. Everybody does that stuff. But this \- what they're talking about... is insane! I'm leaving. Tonight. I know people around here – forest people. They'll help me get out. If you're smart, you'll come with me."

"You're crazy!" Niles told him, "This isn't a science panel interviewing you for a job. These are ruthless, powerful men making a high stakes gamble. They're not going to let you waltz out of here. Don't be stupid."

"Sounds like you like their gamble, maybe you're anxious to jump in?"

"Maybe I am. I've been slogging along for too many years, watching amateurs like you get the attention. I'm overdue for a break – a big break, and this is a chance to get it. I've got an idea of how to do what they want, and there's room in it for you. We don't have to like each other to work together."

Grenvil shook his head. "Forget it. I'll be reading about you when you get sentenced to life in prison, Niles."

"No, Grenvil," Niles said. "More likely you'll be dead by tomorrow. Once they let us in on this, there was no going back. There's just no way they'll let any word about this leak out. You're either in -- or you're dead. You heard what the General said about those other nine. I've been thinking about it: Remember Chapette and Norita, how they died in that plane crash in September? Or Nindoza getting hit by that truck in October?"

"Well they won't get me," Grenvil sneered. "Once I'm away from here, I can melt into the jungle. They'll never find me, and as soon I get near internet access I can blow the lid off this whole fuckin' mess."

Niles laughed, then said softly, "Then you were a fool to say "No" to Greene. He told me that you had "declined" their offer. That's just another way of saying "please shoot me" to them. You'll never make it."

Grenvil backed out of the room, shaking, and pointed a finger at Niles. "I'll see you in Hell," he growled, and stalked away.

Niles shut the door quietly, then turned and slowly walked to the bathroom.

Ariama, naked skin glistening with a patina of steam, smiled and beckoned. He slipped out of his robe and smiled back.

Grenvil, Greene, and the General were already gone from his mind.

Ariama spent the night in his bed and helped him dress and prepare in the morning. His presentation went well, the General was pleased, and Greene handed him the first of the yellow envelopes.

He wanted to look for her afterwards, but Greene insisted on him leaving right away. "You have an ambitious program, Dr. Stratton. Best if you get started now. The young lady will be here when you return."

And so he was driven back to the Layard Clinic with a hundred things to think about and a hundred thousand dollars cash in his breast pocket.

One thing he tried hard not to think about was what might've happened to Grenvil.

He would find out, in time.
Chapter 20: Pictures

Day 4: Thursday morning

Before heading over to the Waxman I called Slim Sanchez. He was on a stake-out and couldn't get away, but had a few moments to chat.

Slim's been working the drug scene for a long time, but frog licking was a new one to him. He remembered the Waxman, though; three years ago one of the janitors was caught selling cocaine that he'd stolen from the lab.

"Cocaine?" I asked, "Why did they keep cocaine in the lab?"

"There's all kinds of shit there, man" Slim laughed. "Totally legal, too. They get a bundle of grants to study the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, you-name-it effects of all that stuff. Your tax dollars and mine, man. So they have licenses to import whatever they want, directly from the best sources."

"Who's doing the drug work there?"

"Ah Hell – I can't remember the names. It's spread out, you know, around the departments. But the guys in Toxicology bring in the weird heavy stuff."

"Toxicology?" I said, "You mean Niles Stratton's department?"

"Stratton? Yeah, Stratton - he's one of the main guys. The stuff he had in his lab – hooowee – small quantities but worth some sweet cash on the street. After that incident though, we put more controls on them, paperwork mostly: permits, inventory records, background checks on staff, better security systems...."

"And they go along with it?"

"Hell, I dunno, anymore. They maintain the records themselves. The government was supposed to send in an auditor once a year, but I don't know if they still do or not. We haven't had any more trouble from them, though, so maybe they've got their act together."

He coughed, spat, then continued "But hey – it's kind of a mystery place out there, you know. We only found out about the coke because the janitor tried to sell some to a narc. So what else is going on out there that we don't know a damn thing about?"

Yeah, I thought, what else indeed....

"Oh Reid," he went on, "another thing I need to tell you: There won't be no charges filed against Granger or Clovis, but the Captain still wants you to dig around for another day or two. He's big on being proactive, heading off trouble before it starts, and I gotta agree with him on this one. How's that sit with you?"

"Yeah, that's all good with me," I said. "I'm just on my way out there now."

"Good, good. If you don't find any more in the next coupl'a days, we can drop it."

"Okay," I agreed. But something about this case was bugging me – I didn't want to give up on it. Maybe it was Marley's story about somebody getting murdered, and the possible connection with Kelsey's ex-husband.

Or maybe it was just that I wanted to see Kelsey again.

Then I realized that Slim was still talking.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't catch that."

"I was asking about that big goofy brother-in-law of yours. I heard he was feeling sick when he got on the plane yesterday."

Damn! That's right – I meant to phone Trina and see if they got in all right. Maybe tonight....

"I haven't heard anything more, Slim. I'll talk to him soon and let him know you were worried."

"Nah – don't go doin' that now. I don't want him to think we're all soft and mushy back here. Just maybe say that the Captain was, ahh, inquiring."

"Alright, that's cool. Anyway, thanks for all the info. I'll keep you posted if anything interesting pops up."

"Sounds good, man – catch you later."

The trip to the Waxman went fast and I turned into the parking lot at 9:45, driving slowly along the far side, looking for Chyll's Honda 250.

There it was, parked next to the display case with a map of the grounds. There were photos of shore birds and seals around the outside of the map, and an inset mentioned something about coyotes. Walking trails were shown as green dotted lines. One of them wound up toward the main building, circled around by the greenhouses, and went out along the edge of the Bay. Someone that could be Chyll was walking on it, but at that distance I couldn't be sure. It looked like her orange sweater – the one with the Giants logo on the front.

I pulled out my phone, hit her number, and waited. Sure enough, the figure in orange stopped and reached into her pocket.

"Hi boss, you here?"

"Yeah, just arrived. I'm standing at the map by your bike, watching you."

She turned and held up a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the morning sun, then raised her arm and waved.

"Okay, right, I see you now, too."

"I'm going into the main building to see Victor Akino. Do you want to join us now, or hook up later?'

"Is he the head of the place?"

"Yeah, I think his title is General Director."

"Then sure, I want to meet him – I might be working here someday. Unless I stay at Halliday's, that is."

I had to laugh. "Chyll, you're just in your second year of college – you gotta finish that first, then you'll probably go on to some sort of grad school. Don't rush things too much – you're only nineteen, right?"

"Twenty, boss - Chypp and I turn twenty next month. Anyway, it's never too early to plan, right?"

Okay, I had to agree with that; except, plans can end up in the dumpster. For me, my life plans disintegrated at age twenty. And then there's Chypp, getting his knee blown out in a robbery... who would have seen that one coming?

But everybody's got to have goals, and sharp kids like Chyll should have high ones. So I said, "Absolutely right. I'll meet you in the main lobby. It's at the front, around the other side of the building from where you are now."

"Okay boss. On my way."

It was windy and cool, and there weren't many clouds in the sky. Not many birds, either, just five or six perched in the trees. I looked at them; they stared back, silent, seeming to be at ease around people - must be the safety of the Baylands sanctuary. As I got closer to the building, I could see the bushes and small trees on the ledges around the upper stories. More birds were circling around up there, noisier than the ones down here.

There was a dumpster at the end of the parking lot, near the trail leading to the steps and front door. It was off to one side, where a garbage truck could get easy access. A maintenance guy was just pushing a wheel barrow up to it, whistling softly. I nodded 'Hello', and glanced at the wheel barrow as he came by.

Dead birds – maybe three or four. And a dead squirrel, too.

"Out hunting?" I smiled and joked.

"No way," he said, smiling back and dropping the handles of the barrow. He pulled a small towel out of his back pocket and wiped his face. "Been finding a few of these lately."

"Where, exactly?" I asked, more curious now, thinking about the ones I'd seen here yesterday.

"Just below the ledges on the far side of the building. Jose's been tossing 'em there."

"Why would he do that?"

He looked at me, shrugged, and picked up the wheel barrow handles.

"Wait, please," I said. "I'm just looking around for anything unusual going on, and could use a little help. Nobody's in any trouble - Victor Akino just asked me to check things out."

"Mr. Akino? Yeah, we heard he was talking to somebody." He scuffed the ground with a booted toe, then said, "We got nothing to hide, we just clean up around here. Jose's in charge of outdoor maintenance, so he checks on the plants up on the ledges. He finds dead birds and squirrels by one of the trees, but doesn't want to carry them down through the hallways, you know... might gross out the visitors. So he just tosses them over the side. Then we come along later and pick'em up, like I'm doin' now."

"Is it always the same tree?"

"I think maybe so. But you need to ask Jose."

"OK, thanks. Is he around now?"

"Yeah, sure, he's in the building somewhere. Jose Montes."

"Thanks again. You've been a big help."

I wasn't sure what it meant, but curious deaths at the Waxman, even if they were birds and squirrels, might be significant.

Worth checking out, anyway.

Chyll was waiting outside the front doors when I got there. We went in together and walked to the guard's kiosk. She was looking this way and that, eyes wide.

"Wow – this place looks great, doesn't it, Boss? I think I'm gonna like it here."

I had to smile. Chyll just has that casual confidence about her that made you believe that she really could do whatever she put her mind to.

We signed the visitor register and I asked the guard to let Victor know that we were here. He punched a number on the console in front of him, waited a few seconds, then spoke into the wireless headset the was wearing.

"Mr. Akino – Good morning, this is Carl at the front desk. Mr. Durham is here."

He paused a second, listening, then nodded and said, "Yes, I'll tell him," and looked up at me.

"I'm sorry, sir, but he says that he's stuck on the phone – some unexpected trouble somewhere. Anyway, he said to apologize to you and that he'll be another thirty minutes. If you want to get a coffee or pastry, our cafeteria is just down that hallway. He says it won't cost you anything – he'll pick up the tab later."

"Okay, thanks. We'll check back in a half-hour."

He nodded, smiled, and went back to his newspaper.

I had gotten used to the waits during investigations. They came up again and again, like speed bumps in a hectic day. At one time I was irritated by them, but now I accepted them, even looked forward to them.

Chyll had already strolled over to the large side wall and was looking at a display of plaques and pictures. I sauntered over to join her. The plaques were about a foot square, a brass plate on polished walnut backing. Each one was a commemorative of a patent granted to the Institute, authored by the staff. There were at least thirty or forty - probably more - but I didn't count them.

Off to the side of these was a bank of photos. Some were the usual mix you see at most companies – picnics and softball games, a few candid funny shots of people in Halloween costumes – but there was one section of a dozen that stood out: large prints, a few in color, most in black and white, all jungle and forest shots.

"These are really good," Chyll whispered, and I had to agree. Whoever took them had a good eye for lighting and composition: parrots in flight, a jaguar perched on a large tree branch, half-camouflaged in the leaves, long boats silhouetted by morning sun and kicking up a spray as they moved through the water, young men climbing trees, women whacking open fruit gourds with machetes, sunlight filtering into dark lagoons, and tired looking people sharing a meal over a campfire.

There were others like that last one, photos of the Waxman staff out on field trips. One showed a younger Niles, sporting a short, dark beard, holding a handful of large round leaves and grinning. He was pointing at something, but you couldn't tell what.

Another one, also of Niles, this time with three other people in it. They were sitting at a folding table in a small clearing in a forest, laughing and holding up glasses of what looked like red wine. One of them was a teenage girl that looked a lot like Kelsey. The other two were men, neither of whom I recognized.

"Yeah, that was one of my first tastes of wine. I was just sixteen, but we'd hiked fifteen miles through the brush that day and needed something to get our spirits back."

I glanced over my shoulder. Kelsey was standing there, smiling.

I smiled back. "Oh – I didn't hear you come up; guess I was concentrating on the pictures."

"Yeah, they're good ones, huh? Niles took most of them, and did the prints himself. He's got a great eye for photos, doesn't he?"

"Definitely – these could be in an art show. The places where these were taken... is this where you grew up?"

"Uh-huh." Pointing to the one with the wine glasses, she said "This one is about thirty miles north of the rest. We were on week-long trek. Niles was looking for his Carnunculus flowers, and Julian and my dad were visiting with the local folks in that area."

"Which one's your father?" I asked, surprised. "Both of these guys could pass for your older brother."

Kelsey laughed and tapped the figures in the picture. "The shorter one is Julian, and the tall, thin one is my dad, Grant Theroux. Julian was eleven years older than me. So if I was sixteen, then he was twenty-seven. We had met the year before, when he and Niles came to work there for the summer, and then they also came back the next two summers."

"Dad was in his thirties when I was born, so he must have been nearly fifty in this picture. He's older than Niles, but you're right - he looked way younger. People used to accuse him of finding a secret fountain of youth. Once, when he and Niles had been drinking, I heard them arguing about it."

She looked over at me and added, "But I think he just had lucky genes. And hopefully, I've inherited them."

"You must be Kelsey." It was Chyll, and I realized that I hadn't introduced them yet. Damn! What an idiot I am sometimes....

"Kelsey," I said, "this is my... partner, Charity -"

Chyll yelped, "Boss! Nobody but my English teacher ever called me Charity!"

She leaned forward and shook hands with Kelsey. "Please, call me Chyll."

Kelsey laughed and nodded. "Sure – and yes, I'm Kelsey. Happy to meet you, Chyll."

Then she glanced at me and said, "Reid – you didn't tell me your partner was so young and pretty."

Chyll actually blushed slightly, and then said. "Well okay, the truth is that I'm not really Reid's partner, not yet anyway... I'm a student over at De Anza, but my dad and brother work at Halliday's. Reid is letting me tag along today."

"Actually, she's casing the joint," I said. "She plans on working here someday."

"Really?" said Kelsey. "That's great. What are you majoring in?"

"Mmmm – I don't exactly know yet. I'd like to do something like Forensic Biochemistry."

Kelsey smiled. "What a great idea. I don't know what the job market for that is, but it sounds interesting. You know, I'm going away for a few months. Maybe when I get back we can talk more about it. And if you want, you could work in my lab a few days a week, in between your classes. If Reid can spare you, that is...."

They both turned and looked at me, Kelsey with a sly smile and raised eyebrows, Chyll with a big grin and a 'thumbs up' gesture.

"Hey," I said, "anything I can do to get the two of you together – consider it done."

I turned back to the pictures and was about to ask where Kelsey's father was now, when I heard her sudden in-drawn breath. She was looking at woman who had just come through the front door, and there was very little of the milk of human kindness in that look.

The newcomer was tall and slender, with a statuesque figure and long legs. She was damned attractive and walked like she knew it.

"Welcome back, Ms. Garrett," said the guard, setting down his newspaper and smiling up at her.

The lady leaned over the desk, lifted off the guard's hat, and planted a loud kiss on his bald spot. She plopped the hat down backwards on his head and said "How's it hangin', Carl?"

The guard laughed, shook his head and said, "You'll be the death of me someday, Ms. Garrett."

She laughed, waved a lazy good-bye, and sashayed away down the corridor.

"Let me guess," I said. "Trinity?"

Kelsey nodded, watching her go. "The one and only. I'm surprised she came in today. She just flew in last night; I figured she'd rest up and come in tomorrow."

"Well, it's good for me that she did. I'd like to talk to her about what Phil and Marley were working on, and also see if she might know something more about Julian's death."

"I don't know how much she knows about his death," Kelsey said, "but she knows a lot about Julian. How much she'll tell you though...."

I looked at her, waiting for more.

She looked back, first at me, then at Chyll, then at me again, and then gave a quick shrug of her shoulders. "Okay, you're going to get the whole story anyway, so here's a quick snapshot, so that nothing surprises you later."

She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then continued. "Julian and Trinity were together before he and I got married. I never even knew she existed until after we were divorced though, and she started working here. Then I found out that she blamed me for their break-up. And to top it off, after Julian and I separated, they got back together again."

"Were they still together when he died?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "He was never the most faithful guy. But she took his death harder than I did. She has a lot of friends here, but so far the two of us've never hit is off. We've just never been able to settle that business about Julian."

"Maybe we each blamed the other a little for his suicide." Her eyes got a little moist and she continued, "Reid, if we were sure that he didn't commit suicide, it could change a lot of lives."

While she dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex I reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder.

"You know, Kelsey, you're really a likeable person."

She blinked. "Really? Where'd that come from?"

"I dunno," I said with a smile. "Being with you makes me feel that way."

She smiled back. "Thanks."

After another few seconds, she coughed softly and added, "Last night, on the phone, you mentioned something about Marley's notebooks."

"Right," I said, getting my train of thought back on track. "I was going to talk to Victor first, but he's tied up on the phone. Maybe we can get together now to go over it."

"Sure. I was just on my way to the lab to pack for the trip. Let's all go up together."

Chapter 21: Ledge

Day 4: Thursday late morning

Kelsey's office is right next to her lab, and as we passed the door a young guy popped out and waved.

"Dr. Theroux – I got two more boxes done, but Dr. Lenz called and wants me to get back down to the animal room. We've got some new arrivals to log in."

"Okay Dez," Kelsey said, "Maybe we can finish up tomorrow."

"Oh sorry, I won't be here tomorrow. Me and a few of the guys are heading to Tahoe for a long weekend – going snowboarding. I'll be back Monday though, will that work?"

"Let's wait and see. I'm flying out Monday, but there might still be some packing left. Check with JZ. Anyway, have a great time at the snow, and thanks for all your help."

A quick wave and Dez was gone down the hallway.

"How much do you still have to do?" Chyll asked.

"Good question - let's take a look."

Inside the lab four cardboard boxes, each about two feet on a side, were sitting on the floor near the fume hood. There were flasks, beakers, and other bits of glassware I didn't recognize on a nearby bench.

"Hmmm," she tapped her finger on the bench, thinking. "Probably just another two or three boxes. This stuff needs to go next."

Chyll picked one of the pieces, a small conical flask with fluted internal ridges. "We have stuff like this in my student lab," she said, "but never use them... what's it for?"

"Oh, that's for doing tissue extractions. A lot of this is overkill, but I'll need that one for sure."

"What'll you be looking for?" Chyll asked

"There's always something to find – metabolites, enzymes, genetic markers. Maybe a new defense chemical, or an allelotrophic factor from a plant..."

"Allelotrophic?" I asked "What's that?"

"Wait - I've got this," Chyll said. She held up a finger. Her eyes blanked out of focus for a half-second, then snapped back to normal. "Chemicals released by one plant that affect the growth of other plants, usually to keep them from crowding it out or stealing nutrients."

I love eidetic memories; why can't we all have one?

"Yeah, good." Kelsey nodded to Chyll, then turned to me. "Plants can't run away from competitors like animals can. They have to stay and fight. You might think of them as your cute, green buddies, but they're actually ruthless warring machines. They make hundreds of chemicals to attract and help friends or to repel and kill outsiders... insects, microbes, even other plants.. A lot of them affect us - anything from making you itch, to giving you hallucinations, or poisoning you. But a few of them turn out to be wonder drugs, and we're always on the lookout for those."

She pointed toward the boxes. "I heard that Phil installed some expensive new equipment at the Clinic, but he didn't say what. So that's why I'm taking down a lot of my own supplies. Anyway, let's deal with that later... I'm ready to get a cup of tea and hear about those notebooks."

"How about if I give you a hand with the rest of the packing?" Chyll asked.

Kelsey smiled, "Sure – that'd be great, if Reid can spare you."

Chyll looked at me. "What do you think, boss... maybe while you're chatting up Trinity, I can be here helping Kelsey."

So it was agreed, and we headed out the door toward Kelsey's office. She has a filtered water dispenser near her desk, with one of those nozzles that gives you instant hot water. Chyll filled three cups and plopped in tea bags while Kelsey cleared space on a small table and I set three chairs around it. We each took one of the cups and sat down.

I opened my briefcase and pulled out the binders with the notebook copies. They made quite a stack on her table – four white binders filled with white paper. Kelsey gave one of them a quick riffle with her thumb and said, "Wow – how many pages are we talking about here?"

"Three hundred sixty-two," Chyll said between sips of tea. "I counted'em."

Kelsey whistled. "How soon do you need me to look through it?"

"Well, sooner is better than later," I said. "The police want me to spend another day or two, max, on this, so I plan to do what I can and get a report to them next week. But I know that it'll take time go through these books carefully – a lot longer than just a few days. I'll tell them it's just a provisional report, and then send them a follow-up if you find anything useful. And - Victor's a little worried about all this. I think he's willing to hire Halliday's to do a more thorough investigation; if he does, we'll have more time. I know you've got other stuff going on, so take however long you need. And I'll make sure you get paid for it.

"Reid," Kelsey kind of laughed, "you don't need to pay me for this."

"No, really," I said. "If we were asking one of our consultants to do it, we'd be paying plenty. It's your expertise we're using here, and you deserve compensation."

"Compensation? Okay - How about you buy lunch? And maybe a dinner or two."

I smiled. "Lunch, dinners, sure – that'll be on me. But Kelsey, Halliday's has plenty of money, and charges clients plenty more. I'll see that you get your fair share."

"Well, we can discuss that later," she shrugged. "I'm not just a random consultant, though. Like I was saying on the phone last night, I have a special interest here: I want to know more about Marley's story. Was Julian's death a suicide or murder? And if murder, then why? He spent most of his last year away from here, and I know nothing about what he was doing."

"Nothing at all?"

"Oh – It was something about vectors and diseases. I just presumed it was malaria, but I never really got any details."

"Right. Vectors, diseases...." I wasn't consciously thinking about where to go next, but random associations were popping around my brain. "Kelsey, have you been noticing any dead birds or squirrels around here lately?"

She looked surprised. "Yeah, for the past month or so."

"Where, exactly?"

"Outside, on the grounds, near the side of the building. I see them when I go out to the Baylands trails for lunchtime walks."

"Any idea how they get there? Or what's killing them?"

"Mmmm..." Her eyes flickered around the walls, thinking. I noticed again how pretty they were. Dark hazel today.

"No, I never really gave it much thought. Just figured natural causes, maybe predators. Or the weather - it's been a really wet winter."

I nodded. "True, but one of the groundskeepers told me that Jose Montes has been finding them up on one of the ledges and throwing them over the side. At the end of the day they collect them and toss'em in the dumpster or the incinerator."

"Really?" She sounded puzzled. "That's kind of... bizarre."

"Yeah," I nodded again. "Do you know Jose?"

"Sure, he's works in Facilities & Maintenance. The guy's great at fixing almost anything."

"Does he take care of the plants growing up here?"

"Everyone's supposed to be responsible for their own stuff, but Jose maintains the equipment. Like, for instance, the watering is done by automatic systems on timers, and people can set them for whatever program they want, but he's in charge of making sure it's all working."

"Can you get in touch with him?"

She looked up to where a laminated sheet of paper was pinned to the wall.

"This has most of the phone extensions for the Institute. Let's see – General Maintenance – Jose Montes. He's almost never at a desk, but his cell number is here."

"Could you ask him if he's free to meet us in a few minutes?"

"Okay, sure."

Ten minutes later we were in the hallway outside her lab, shaking hands with Jose. He was in his 50's, medium height, wearing jeans and work boots. He had a phone clipped to his belt and a small backpack slung over one shoulder.

I asked him about the birds.

"Yeah, I see dead birds and stuff lately."

"Only lately?"

"Yeah. I been here for maybe 10 or 11 years. Sometimes dead animals on the outside grounds, but never up here on the ledge. Only this past two months."

"Where do you find them?"

"Outside one of the laboratories, next to the trees."

"Could you show me?"

"Sure, but it's a long walk – up one story and all the way around the other side of the building."

"That's alright. I want to see the area anyway."

"OK, then – let's head out the door in the back wall."

We went out onto the ledge and up a flight of stairs. From the ground it had looked interesting, but up here on the 5th floor it was very impressive. The ledge was maybe twenty feet wide and ran completely around all four sides of the building. Coming out of Kelsey's lab had put us on the north-facing side, looking up toward San Francisco. We turned right, winding our way through potted plants, vines with big flowers, small trees, and even a patch of lawn grass. Every now and then there was a small table with a few chairs. We turned the corner, taking us along the back, or east-facing, side of the building. It was a great view of the mid-south bay from here – the bridge spanning the water between San Mateo and Hayward to the left, and the Dumbarton off to the right. We passed an ice chest with a note taped on: "Bert's Private Stock -- Help yourself". I glanced at Kelsey and she shrugged. Jose laughed and said "That's Bert Fellows. He brings in home-made beer for everyone to try. It's a little yeasty, but pretty good."

We turned the next corner, now walking on the south face. There was much more sun exposure here, and the plants were different from the ones on the north-facing side. About midway along was a section roped off from the rest, just outside of one of the labs. A big sign said "Experiment in progress. Do not disturb." Inside were large pots containing small trees - only five or six feet tall, but with lots of leaves and fruit. The whole group was covered by netting. When we got closer I could see that the net was chewed through in a half-dozen places.

"Goddamn squirrels" said Jose. "I patched that net many times. No good though. The squirrels and birds just tear new holes in it. I don't know why – maybe they're attracted by the smell... or maybe they got a death wish."

There was a pleasant aroma in the air around the trees, kind of a citrusy-lemony type odor.

"A death wish? Is this what's killing them, Jose?" I asked. "Is it the fruit?"

"Wait –I know that smell," Kelsey said, sounding a surprised. She was peering through the netting. "Yeah, these are Kanja trees – I remember them from when I was a kid. They grow wild down in the rainforest, but almost nowhere else... and I've never seen them around here. The fruit smells nice but isn't much good – very little nutrition value. But the native people swear by it as a medicine for reducing fevers. Niles has been talking about working on Kanja for years, but I didn't know anyone was actually doing it."

A few pieces of the fruit – they looked to me like small yellow plums with dark blue spots – had fallen off the trees and rolled out of one of the holes in the net. Kelsey reached down to pick one up, but Jose stopped her.

"Please," he said. "The young guy who works in this laboratory here, he says that he sprays the trees to keep insects off. He says "Don't touch with bare hands". I think maybe it's the chemical spray that's killing the animals. I'll toss these bits into a plastic bag and get rid of them."

While he went off to a nearby supply bin I asked Kelsey whose lab we were next to. She put her face to the window, but the darkened glass and the bright sun on this side of the building made it really tough to see inside.

"I can't tell for sure," she said. "All of the labs have the same basic design. I'd need to get a clear view of the inside to be certain. Can you see anything in there, Chyll?"

"Benches... not much equipment... looks pretty bare in there, but you're right, it's really tough to see inside."

"From where we are on the ledge, I'd guess that it's either Laney Stagg's or Phil's; let's see if Jose knows more."

When Jose came back I asked him if he knew whose trees these were.

"I don't know", he answered, "the young guy who I talked to works in this lab here, but I don't know his name. I don't see him much."

"Why would that be? He must spend a lot of time on these trees, right?"

"Oh yeah, he sure does," Jose said. "He cares for them like family, and they produced a lot of fruit that he's already collected. I can tell when I come by in the morning that he's been tending them. He leaves me notes about watering and fertilizing. I think maybe he works at night."

There was a door right behind the trees leading directly into the lab, but it was locked. I looked at Kelsey, and she nodded. Then I reached in my jacket pocket and took out Marley's ring of keys.

The third one I tried turned easily in the lock, and the door swung open. Kelsey looked in briefly and said "Yep". I looked in too, and recognized it; we'd been in there yesterday.

Phil Poley's lab. Marley's lab.

I heard a rustling behind us and turned to see Jose at the railing. He'd put on work gloves, scooped up the fruit, and dropped them into the plastic bag. "I'll toss these over the side and get them later, then throw them into the incinerator."

"Wait, Jose," I said, but too late. He'd already let go and the bag was floating down to the dirt below. "Don't burn up that fruit just yet. Could you store it somewhere instead? I want to look at it later."

He looked surprised, but nodded. "Yeah, sure; we got a freezer in the equipment shed by the greenhouses. I'll pick the bag up later and put it in there for you."

"Thanks." I wasn't sure what to do with it, but Lester had mentioned Marley working with exotic trees and weird fruit.

Anything to do with what Marley was working on interested me, and until we got something from the notebooks, this fruit and the dead animals were the only leads we had.

Chapter 22: Tea

Day 4: Thursday late morning

After thanking Jose for his help, Kelsey, Chyll, and I went through the ledge door into Phil's lab. It looked like no one had been in there since yesterday; the benches were still mostly empty except for the one with the dismantled instrument and scattered electrical parts.

Chyll was impressed though, and wandered around checking out the chemicals and equipment. "What sort of work do they do in here?" she asked.

"Phil used to run a very active lab," Kelsey said. "He had a half-dozen techs and post-docs investigating toxins, mostly from plants and microbes. But then a couple of years ago he cleared everybody out – found them jobs in other labs - and brought in Marley for this new project. Marley's background is in genetic engineering – way different from what Phil used to do."

"So you think he's been juggling the genes in those Kanja trees? How tough would that be?"

"Well, the basic idea is straightforward, but actually doing it can be a nightmare. To modify a trait in Kanja, he'd first have to know the genes that control that trait. If he's lucky, it would be just one, but a lot of times several are involved, and finding them could be tough. After identifying the right gene, he'd make variations in the DNA sequence, maybe adding or deleting tiny bits. Next he'd link these various constructs to controlling elements – sections of DNA that control in which tissue the gene gets expressed, and how much it gets expressed. Then he'd re-insert these new gene packages into host cells, grow them in cultures, and check to see if he's got everything right. If he does, then he'd grow complete plants and test them to see if they display the new trait the way he wants. Or it could be simpler... it all depends on what he's trying to do, and no one but Marley and Phil know what that is."

"Unless," she added, looking over at me, "someone else around here knows, but isn't letting on."

"Yeah," I nodded, "that's what I'm thinking too. Don't people around here share information?"

"Usually, yes," she said. "Some people are secretive - they don't want to share any credit for their work. But others like to blab about what they're doing and Phil is one of the biggest blabbers... he loves to brag. So it's pretty strange that he's quiet this time. If anyone else knows, though, it would be Niles. But he says that he doesn't ."

"And you trust him?"

She paused for a few seconds, then nodded. "Yes, I do. Still, though, it's strange, because he should know – as department chairman, he's supposed to be aware of what all the projects are. Maybe not the details, but he should know the goals, budgets, timelines... those sorts of things."

"Okay," I said, "if he's not keeping a close eye on their activity, is it possible that they could be telling him one thing, but actually working on something else?"

"You're thinking a big drug project?" She shook her head and laughed softly. "Well, maybe, but it's Phil we're talking about here. He's just not that type, he's kind of a wimp, really. I can't see him heading an illegal, secret research program... not Phil."

"What about Marley? How well do you know him?"

She shrugged. "Not well at all. I'd never met him before he started here, and since he usually works at night, I don't see him a lot. He's not real friendly; when I pass him in the hallway he doesn't say much, but sometimes he kind of leers at me, and that creeps me out. I really don't like to be around him."

We'd been talking while walking back to her office, and when we got there the tea was cold. Chyll made us fresh cups while I rinsed out the old ones.

"Uh-huh," I said, "that's pretty consistent with what we found out about him. Marlon Clancy Granger has quite a reputation in genetic engineering circles, in kind of a rogue way. He has a Berkeley PhD and did post-doctoral work at Stanford; has a raft of publications and a few high profile patents. Apparently he's still making money off of the royalties. We tracked down his employment history and talked to people that he'd worked with. Turns out he's been fired from two jobs, once for showing up strung out on drugs and the other time for getting into fights with employees – not verbal squabbles, actual fist fights. Everyone agreed that he was a loner, didn't share data or collaborate with other scientists. But they also said that he was a wiz at the lab bench, and was extremely good at solving difficult problems. That why companies were still willing to hire him, even with that rocky history."

"Normally that wouldn't work here," Kelsey said, "With all of our government grant support, we're supposed to maintain high ethical standards... and we mostly do. But rules can get bent, and if there's a specific project under the direction of a senior staff member, it's pretty much up to that person to select the candidate with the best skill set. And they don't often get refused."

"So who would've actually tracked his hiring?" I asked. "Do you have a department that checks references, validates employment history, citizen status, degree certificates, arrest records... that kind of stuff?"

"Sure, we have a Human Resources function – and you already saw her: Trinity Garret. She keeps all the employee records."

"Ohhh." I sipped the tea. It was some sort of herbal green tea, hot, good and packed with antioxidants. I made a mental note to get some.

"Trinity, huh? I guess it's about time to meet her."

Kelsey smiled and wagged a finger at me. "You be careful now. She's a dangerous vixen. Cloud your mind. Make you think evil thoughts."

Chyll piped up. "You want I should come along as your chaperone, boss?"

"Chyll," I said, "I think that if you were there, Trinity might be the one who's intimidated. No, I'll handle this one myself."

That was when Kelsey's desk phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID.

"It's Victor," she said, and punched the speakerphone button.

"Hi Vic, what's up?"

"Oh, hi Kelsey. I'm trying to find Reid Durham. Carl said that he saw you with him in the lobby – do you know where he might be now?"

"I'm right here Victor," I said. "Since you were busy, Kelsey was nice enough to show me around."

"Good, good. I'm sorry about earlier, Reid – an unexpected problem came up, but if you've got time now, I can meet you in the Blue Conference room in five minutes."

"Excellent. See you then." And we hung up.

"Well, I guess meeting Trinity's gonna have to wait," I said, walking over to the sink with my empty cup.

"Oh – don't worry about that," Kelsey said. "I'll clean up you after you leave."

"Hey – I live alone, don't forget; I've been doing my own dishes for years. Besides, I want you to come with us to this meeting."

They brought their cups over. I washed, Chyll rinsed, and we were ready to go in two minutes. As I picked up the briefcase and started down the hallway to the stairs, Kelsey glanced at me and muttered, half under her breath, "So...you live alone, huh?"

Chapter 23: Reputation

Day 4: Thursday late morning

Three minutes later we walked into the Blue room. Victor was sitting at the table leafing through a manila folder, but closed it and stood when we came in.

"Thanks for coming, Reid - sorry to keep you waiting."

"Not a problem," I said, and motioned toward Chyll, but before I could start the introductions, she leaned forward and shook his hand.

"Dr. Akino, I'm pleased to meet you. My name is Chyll Nguyen. I'm helping Reid now, but I'm hoping to work here at the Waxman someday."

He shook her hand slowly and smiled, first at her, then at me. "Good, good. I like outgoing young people, especially those who know what they want and aren't shy about saying it."

That was about it for the small talk. We sat down - Kelsey, Chyll, and me on one side of the table, Victor on the other. I took Marley's notebooks out of the briefcase and set them on the chair next to me.

I started the ball rolling by mentioning that Captain Mills was still interested in heading off any potential drug problems, and thought that I should spend another day or two, max, looking around.

"Good," Victor said. "I hope that's enough time. I understand the Captain's point of view: he wants results, but is short on staff and budget. My viewpoint, though, is the same as we talked about last night."

He rubbed his forehead and his eyes wandered around, like he was searching for the right words. Finally he looked back at us and said, slowly and deliberately, "Preserving the good name of the Waxman is absolutely critical. That's the bottom line, but that doesn't mean suppressing anything. If you find that there's a drug situation here and we take care of it before it becomes a big problem, then that's okay; not ideal, not wonderful, but okay; we will have done our job. But if it comes out that there's a major problem that we knew about but hid from, then all Hell would break loose."

His lips pressed into a grim smile. "Heads would roll...upper management heads for sure, and maybe on down the line. It wouldn't be the first time we've had this kind of a problem."

I nodded. "You had a janitor stealing high-grade cocaine from the Tox labs and selling it on the street. Is that what you mean?"

Akino frowned. "Yes. That was nearly three years ago. I was an assistant then; Jack Hogarth was the General Manager. He resigned after that, and the Security Chief left, too. They weren't exactly fired, but they were 'encouraged to look elsewhere for employment'. As I said, the Board of Directors is very serious about the Waxman reputation. That's when I was promoted to this job, and I'm not ready to leave just yet."

"No doubt," I said. "It's a pretty nice place to be in charge of. I heard that after that incident, you put new regulations in place for tracking restricted items. Are those still in effect?"

"Yes," Victor nodded. "I'm not directly involved in that, though. The oversight committee elects a Control Officer, one of the senior staff who would be knowledgeable about the types of dangerous substances we have here. Then that person keeps the records for all of the relevant departments."

"And that person is...?" I had a suspicion about the answer, but I wanted to hear Victor say it.

He took off his glasses and tapped them on the table. "I think you've already guessed: Phil Poley."

Bingo.

"So," I said, "Phil keeps all the records, most likely in his office. Whoever has access to his office would know all of the dangerous no-no stuff in the entire place. He's away off somewhere, so out of the picture, but Marley Granger has keys to open more doors than he ought to. And probably one fits Phil's office."

"Yes," he said a little sourly. "That's about the size of it. But really, it's just suggestive, right? Just circumstantial... I mean, do we have any hard evidence that Marley was actually selling anything illegal?"

"No," I shook my head. "All we have is conclusive evidence, based on the blood work that Kelsey did, that Marley took stuff for his personal use. No indication that he made anything available to anyone else."

"And how much legal peril does that put him in?"

I smiled. "Possibly none." I told him what Slim Sanchez said, about no charges being filed.

He thought about that for a few seconds, then said, "The items he had in his possession are legal for authorized staff to use in the lab. The problem is that they are restricted to staying on the Waxman grounds. We could choose to pursue internal disciplinary action against him, but if we chose not to do that, then as far as actual repercussions... there would be none, right? And given that no charges were filed, the whole legal problem would evaporate, right?

I nodded, slowly. "Yep. Officially."

"Wait a minute," Kelsey sat up, sounding agitated. "He took those capsules from my lab. He was definitely not authorized to have them."

"I understand," Victor said. "I'm just considering possibilities. Taking those capsules is certainly grounds for termination, but not grounds for criminal charges."

"So you're in favor of just dropping the investigation?"

He held out his hand, palm up. "Decidedly not! No, I'm just looking at the best way to handle everything. If we can avoid criminal charges and quietly terminate Marley, that would be good. If we can also do a thorough investigation to determine what – if any – other problems exist, and eliminate them quietly, then also good. I'm trying to come up with a way to do both."

He looked at me. "How about if I handle the Marley employment situation as an internal matter while you continue your investigation. I want you to be thorough, take whatever actions you need, and I'll back you all the way."

"So are you saying that if a quick police investigation doesn't show anything, you're willing to hire Halliday Inc. to look into this more thoroughly?"

He nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

"Okay," I said, "and what if I find that there's a bigger problem that your senior staff not only know about, but are actually leading? What then?"

He cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead again. "Then we do whatever needs to be done. But do you have any evidence for that?"

"No, none, other than Marley's story about a murder. It might be just his pipedream fantasy... but maybe not."

"I understand," he said, but didn't sound happy. Then he looked at Kelsey.

"Sorry to pull you into this, but Reid thought you could help out with some notebooks." He glanced over at me and went on, "Did you talk to her about that yet?"

"Oh yeah – already done." I lifted the notebooks off the chair next to me and stacked them on the table. "Here are the originals. Chyll and her brother made copies, and we gave those to Kelsey in her office."

He looked at the books, then back at Kelsey. "That's a lot of reading. Aren't you leaving soon for that field work?"

"Yes, on Monday," she said. "So I won't get started right away; once I'm away from here, though, I'll get going on them."

"Right," he nodded, and looked back at me. "Well, I can see that this could take a couple of weeks. What about Marley? How's his health situation?"

"Good question," I answered. "Last time I checked, he was still out of it, but when he wakes up and the doc lets him leave, he could come back here soon. Don't shove him out the door right away; I want to talk to him."

Victor pursed his lips. "Umm – you know, Marley can be a little difficult."

"Yeah, I already found that out," I smiled. "Which is a good reason not to tell him that Kelsey has the notebooks. That's absolutely something that he doesn't need to know."

"Right," he kind of mumbled, "uh, right."

Then he nodded at Chyll and said more loudly. "Alright then, I guess that about covers it. This's a helluva mess, but if we want the Waxman to still be around for this young lady to work here, then we have to do whatever's necessary."

"Better take these," I said, and pushed the notebooks over to his side of the table. "You should probably keep these locked up, just in case."

"Just in case? Oh, you're thinking that there may be drug recipes in them?"

I shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe Kelsey can figure it out."

"Okay – got it," he said, sounding pleased. "Alright then, I'll be waiting for any further word from you. Like I said, feel free to look anywhere and get whatever help you need, but if at all possible, let's keep the information confined to our little group."

"Agreed," I nodded. "Until I'm ready with a final report, it'll be just us in this room."

Victor smiled and nodded back, then added, "Oh, and Niles of course. Surely we should include him in the loop \- I want to give him the notebooks for safekeeping."

I sighed. "That's not the way I'd handle it, but those books are Waxman property, so you do what you think is best. Just keep involvement to a minimum, please."

And so - handshakes all around, and we parted.
Chapter 24: Victor & Niles

Day 4: Thursday early afternoon

Shortly after noon, Niles walked into Victor's office.

It was a large one, befitting the General Director. The wide window to the right of his ample desk looked out to the north; the equally wide one behind his desk looked to the east. He was standing at that one, his back to the door, watching sail boats skimming over the choppy waters. Some were tacking against the southerly winds; others, with their spinnakers up, were racing northward.

"Hi Vic – just got your message. You wanted to see me about something?"

"Yes, thanks for coming so soon, Niles. What a beautifully clear day. Check out those the hills across the Bay. Man, they look crisp and clean... wish I was out in one of those boats right now."

"Yeah, it's a pretty sight, Vic, but probably not what you wanted to see me about, right?"

"Right," Victor turned and frowned briefly. "Grab a chair. I've got, um, something to show you."

They sat at a small conference table under the north-facing window. There was a small stack of books on one side; Victor slowly pushed them over to Niles and leaned back, not saying anything.

Niles picked up the top book, casually opened it, then sat up, startled. He quickly paged through the others.

"Marley's lab notebooks? Why are they here? How'd you get them?"

"Reid Durham – the fellow who was here yesterday – gave them to me an hour ago. Apparently Marley left them with a friend, who passed them on to Reid."

"Really," Niles said, trying to keep his voice calm. "Oh yeah, I remember Reid mentioning another person... what was his name again?"

"I don't recall. You know, I don't think he told us. It might be worth finding out, though. Waxman notebooks are not supposed to leave the building – our patent attorneys are very clear on that. We all know it, and Marley should, too. It makes me wonder what else he might have taken out of here."

"What else?" Niles said. "Oh – you're thinking about drugs, right?"

"Yes, that, and of course, the little frog. We know nothing about this other person, Niles. But he might know a lot about us , or at least about Marley – and it could be damaging to the Waxman reputation. I'm thinking of hiring Reid to investigate; you remember that he's not a regular cop, right? He works for Halliday Inc."

"You said something before about that, but I don't know much about Halliday... what do they do?"

"They're a private firm," Victor said, "kind of like the Waxman in a way. We're specialists at R&D for biochemical products; they're specialists in investigations and confidential private services. They've asked us in the past to help out with some of their work, and I've met their top executives. Very impressive. Anyway, they hire out their expertise to government agencies – like local police departments; that's how Reid got involved in this case. He was sent here to do a surface evaluation of possible drug problems, but, given the potentially serious nature of this issue, I think I want to have him dig a little deeper."

' _Damn!_ ' Niles thought to himself. ' _Damn, damn, damn!_ ' He could feel his pulse start to race, but he willed it to slow down, tried to keep his face calm and blank.

"What exactly do you mean by 'dig a little deeper'? You're not going to have him prying into our work, are you?"

"Oh no," Victor said quickly. "No. Not interfering with anything, not sticking his nose into any of our research - ."

"Good," interrupted Niles. "A lot of our work is very delicate and –"

" - except maybe Marley's," Victor finished.

"What? What about Marley?" Niles sounded confused.

"Marley's project, yes," Victor went on in a soft voice, almost like he was talking to himself. "Maybe Reid should look into that. I realized last night that I don't really know much about what Phil and Marley are doing. I've been so busy here in the office that I've lost track of individual projects."

"That's to be expected," Niles said. "It's not the job of the General Director to run internal affairs. You're the face and voice of the Waxman to the outside world."

"Okay," Victor leaned forward, fixing Niles with a penetrating look. "Maybe that's true for my position, but what about you, Niles. You're the chairman of their department. Surely you know what they're doing."

Niles looked back, outwardly calm, but inside of his head alarm bells were clanging. He did a little mental scrambling... how much to tell Victor? Whatever he said had to sound convincing, had to be consistent with whatever Reid might find out.

Okay then, give Victor a story with a shade of the truth, just enough to make it all plausible.

"It's covered in their original grant summary, Vic, in the Statement of Work section, just like in all of our other grants. I don't recall the exact wording, but it involves a tropical fruit with a lot of potential as a natural medicine."

"That's pretty vague. You could say that about almost anything. What about the details? And, could that all just be a cover story? Do they give you regular reports?"

"Uhh, no, not regular reports. It's a fully funded three year project; they give me summaries every six months and seem to be on track."

"On track for what? Why do they need a genetic engineer like Marley on the project?"

"Again, Victor," Niles said, keeping his voice even while he tried to make up a plausible lie. "It's spelled out in the grant details. The active medicinal factor is present in the fruit, but only in a very low concentration. They're trying to work out the genetic controls governing the levels of the factor, and trying to up-regulate its synthesis. If they can get it high enough, we can license it for commercial production."

"Mmm, okay." Victor seemed calmer now. "I do recall Phil saying something about that – vaguely. I'm glad you remember, 'cause I sure don't."

I should remember it, thought Niles; Phil didn't write any damn grant summary - I did. And it never left the building for any non-existent funding agency, so don't ask about that, too....

"In any case, though," Victor continued, "I don't really trust Marley; he hasn't exactly made a good impression on people around here. I think it would be prudent to have Reid check out his work."

"Reid check out Marley's work?" Niles shook his head. "How's he going to do that – he's no molecular biologist."

"No, he's not. But I told him that we'd help. He made copies of these notebooks, and I agreed that he could give them to Kelsey to read through. If she finds anything compromising, she'll let us know."

"Kelsey?" Niles frowned - this was not good. "She's sharp in her field, but Marley's work is pretty high level – she'll have a tough time following the details."

"She doesn't need to follow the details. I just want to know that what's in his notebooks matches what's in that grant summary you just gave me, or if he's strayed into doing something else. I'd like you to help out, too."

Niles stared at Victor for five, six seconds, then nodded and said, "Good idea, Vic. Let me read over the notebooks instead of having Kelsey do it. I'm closer to the project than she is."

"True, but she's a lot younger than you are, and more up to date with the latest lab techniques. Let's face it Niles, you and I are old-school."

Niles smiled weakly, and tried another tactic. "Maybe, but Kelsey's going away for a few months. It'd be a lot easier to have me read over the books here, where I could talk to Reid right away if I found anything."

Victor looked back at Niles, unsmiling. His mind was made up. "No, I want Kelsey to do it. Besides, she'll be seeing Phil next week, and she can go over the books with him. He can clear up anything that's obscure."

"But what if your worries are right?" Niles leaned forward, a concerned look on his face. "What if Phil and Marley are into some illegal drug project? You'd be putting Kelsey in a dangerous spot."

"Also true... So now it sounds like you're thinking that they might be into something criminal, too?"

"No, no of course not, um – it's just that...." Shit! Niles thought. He felt trapped – whichever way he went with this, it would turn out wrong. Better to just give in.

"Okay, Vic – I'll go along with whatever you think is best, and be happy to help out."

"Excellent," Victor mumbled softly, but he seemed distracted, like he was thinking about something else.

After ten seconds, he looked back at Niles with narrowed eyes. "Three years of solid funding, you say. Remind me: who's the source of the money?"

Damn it! Niles cursed to himself and tried to remember the name of the fake money agency he'd used.

"Something called Trident, I think. It's a small, anonymous, and very private venture run by a reclusive billionaire. We met with his representatives, but have never met him personally."

"That sounds a little loose... a little short on the facts. How do we know that the funding isn't laundered money from some drug kingpin?"

Niles shook his head and smiled, "Really, Victor? You've been watching too many old Mission Impossible episodes."

"No," Victor said, still unsmiling, "I read the newspaper and come across stories like this. Factual stories." He sighed, "We need to find out more about this fellow behind Trident. Maybe I'll ask Reid to look into that as well."

Niles kept his face impassive, but under the table he was clinching his fists until his fingernails dug into his palms.

He cleared his throat, and said in as calm a voice as he could muster, "Good idea, Vic. Let me help Reid with that. I can put him in touch with the Trident people."

"Excellent," Victor said again, now finally smiling. "Niles, my friend, I knew I could count on you. We're the senior leaders here, and it's up to us to preserve the good name of the Waxman."

_Sure thing_ , thought Niles. _You can definitely count on me to preserve the good Waxman name. I'll start by making sure that your damn private agent isn't around long enough to interfere in my plans. And Victor, my friend – you'd better watch your step too._

But what he said out loud was, "Okay, Vic. Marley's a bit of an unknown, but I've got a lot of trust in Phil. I don't think there's anything for us to worry about, but I agree that it's a good idea to have Reid poke around for us."

"Right," Victor said. "But - let's keep all of this just within our little group. No need to have anyone else involved. Just you, me, Kelsey, Reid and... what's her name... Oh yes, Chyll."

"Chyll? Who's that?" Niles asked.

"Oh, a young lady Reid brought with him this morning. She works at Halliday's... says she's his assistant." Victor smiled, "very young, very pretty, very smart – and she says she wants to work here someday."

"Really," Niles nodded, smiling back. But it was a cold smile, and to himself, he added, Really – well, I wonder if she'll live that long.

"Oh, and Trinity, of course," Victor added. "I heard that she came in this morning."

"She did?" Niles said cautiously. "I didn't see her."

"Yeah, around ten, I think. Anyway, I called her right before you got here, told her to expect a visit from Reid. He should be getting to her office any time now."

"Ahh... okay, then, good," Niles said. "I'll take the notebooks to my office and keep them safely locked up. Catch you later."

And with a quick parting wave, he was gone. Not back to his office, but back to the central lobby and down the opposite hallway to Trinity's.

Her door was open. He stuck his head in and saw that she was alone; good, Reid hadn't gotten here yet... or had he already been here?

"Trinity," he hissed in a loud whisper. "Why the Hell did you come in today?"

She looked up from her desk. "Well that's a nice greeting. I came in to take care of a few files. I've been gone for weeks – work stacks up, you know. I was planning on leaving early, but Victor called. He said that there's an investigator who wants to see me. Not sure what it's about."

"What do you mean, you're not sure what it's about? It's about Marley, and Phil, and... everything. I didn't want you here today."

She rose up from her chair, came around the desk, folded her arms, and leaned her head slightly to one side.

"And yet, here I am," she said matter-of-factly, a slight smirk on her lips.

He shook his head and sighed. "Alright, alright - forget it. Your insolence can drive a man over the edge. Sometimes I don't know whether to kiss you or to spank you."

"Niles," she said lazily, "You don't get to do either one. That's not part of our arrangement. Never was and never will be."

He opened his mouth with a retort, but closed it again, looking at her closely. She really was remarkably good looking... maybe they could use that to their advantage.

"Okay then," he said finally, "when did Victor say that your, uh... investigator would be here?"

"He didn't, but it better be real soon. I'm beat and wanna leave early. I'm still officially on vacation."

Niles nodded and dropped his voice to a whisper, "Play him along. Try to find out how much he knows and where he's going with it."

She raised one eyebrow and frowned. "I'm a little tired for games right now."

"Trinity," he leaned closer and said, "Trinity – it's important."

She stifled a laugh and said, maybe a little too loud, "It's all important to you, isn't it, as long it helps you. But you really don't give a damn about anyone else."

"Not just me." He shook his head. "It's important to all of us. We're in this together."

"In this?" She repeated, "In this? I don't even know what 'this' is. You 'head-in-the-clouds' academic types never tell my anything."

He narrowed his eyes and went back to a whisper. "Trinity – don't go getting all sensitive now. We need to be careful. This is not a good time to have anyone snooping around."

She yawned, shrugged, and turned back toward her desk. "I'll see what I can do. Don't expect much, though; like I said – I'm tired."

"Well, get rid of him quick, then, and go take a rest. But don't forget – we have plans for later. We're getting Marley out of Bayview tonight."

Chapter 25: Trinity

Day 4: Thursday early afternoon

The brass plaque on her door read 'Angelina T. Garret, HR Admin'. It was open, but I gave a little courtesy knock as I walked in.

The office had high ceilings, blue and maroon walls, and was twice as big as Kelsey's. Her desk was on the left side, near a large window set in the back wall. Probably would have given a great view of the Bay if the blinds weren't closed, but they were. There were two file cabinets near the desk and a small round table in the center of the room. It had only two chairs - good for one-on-one meetings between an employee and the HR rep.

She was sitting in one of them, and casually motioned me to take the other. As I slid into it, she gracefully leaned forward, holding out her right hand. We shook wordlessly, as if each of us were sizing up the other. I'm not sure what her reaction to me was, but I felt a flush of warmth and hoped it didn't show on my face.

Trinity – or Angelina - was the most beautiful lady I'd ever met in person: long dark hair with auburn highlights, brushed to a shine. Big eyes, long lashes, flawless and very light-golden skin, classic good looks. Very little makeup – just a wisp of eyeliner and a light shade of lipstick. She wore small but glistening diamond earrings and a thin gold necklace with a diamond pendant.

Aphrodite would have been green with envy.

Her blouse was cut low, and she sat comfortably, almost posing, used to being looked at and totally at ease with it.

Then her smile broadened and her eyes sparkled briefly – so yeah, I think she noticed. She held my hand a few seconds longer than customary for an introductory handshake, gave final gentle squeeze, and slowly slid her hand away with a slight brush of her fingernails against my palm.

Then she was leaning back in her chair, head cocked to one side, looking at me in much the same way that I'd looked at her.

"You have a cut on your forehead," she said softly, almost a murmur, "and one on your cheek, too. They must sting... would you like me to get you some lotion?"

Okay – I'd been warned - this lady knew how to turn up the heat. It was effortless and perfectly natural, though, and that made it all the more effective.

I shook my head slowly and smiled. "No thanks, they're nothing much. But they do relate to why I'm here."

"Mmm, why you're here," she nodded. "Then you must be Mr. Durham. Victor phoned a coupl'a minutes ago and said that you were coming to check into some..." She paused, leaned forward and said in a melodic voice with just the right touch of humor, "nefarious goings on around here."

She kept her eyes locked onto mine. They were a deep greenish-blue and mesmerizing.

And she knew it.

Did she want to keep me a distracted, on the defensive? She seemed to be interrogating me instead of vice-versa, but doing it in such a velvety smooth way that I almost welcomed it.

My response? – I'd been here for less than a minute and already wished that she worked for Halliday. I admired her technique, but wondered about her motivation.

"Yes, I'm Reid Durham." I said. "Ms. Garret, there's a Waxman employee in a coma at Bayview Memorial. It's possible that he got some strange stuff from here that helped put him there. And I want to find out how true - or false - that is."

She held up hand, like a crossing guard stopping traffic, then dropped it down on the table. "Hang on a sec. The way I heard it, it wasn't just drugs that put Marley in a coma, it was a fight." She looked again at the cuts on my forehead and cheek.

"It was with you, wasn't it?" She was still speaking softly, but her voice took on a sharp edge.

"Uh-huh, and he's lucky to be alive – not because of any fight with me, though. Because of what he was pumping into his system. I want to know exactly what it was, how he got it, who else might have it, and if he's spreading it around the outside community. That's why I'm here."

She tilted her head to one side, eyes locked onto mine, and said, "And this has what to do with me?"

Her voice was barely above a whisper; I had to lean closer to hear better; and as I leaned forward, so did she.

Our faces were maybe a foot and a half apart, max.

So close that I could smell a faint rose scent. It wasn't anything like perfume; more light and pleasant, like fresh bath soap... like she was just stepping out of the shower.

Much more sensuous than perfume.

I fought to stay focused. "Well, for one thing, you identified him correctly; yes, it's Marley Granger we're talking about. You have his employee records. I'd like to see them."

"HR records are private," she said, arching one perfect eyebrow.

"Yeah," I nodded. "And dying from a drug overdose is a very private way to go out. We're hoping it doesn't go that far with Marley or anyone else. But if we want to be sure, we need to open some private doors."

She was quiet for a few heartbeats, then glanced toward the corner to the left of the door. "Tell you what, Mr. Durham - there's a fresh water cooler over there. If you grab us each a glass, I'll see if I can find Marley's file."

"Thanks; I don't want this to be confrontational. We'll get good answers a lot easier if we're open, friendly, and helpful to each other. So please – it's Reid. And I can call you... Angelina?"

She broke out in a little laugh – almost a snort – and said, "Angelina? – That's my formal name. My business card name."

While she was softly humming and riffling through the middle drawer of one the file cabinets I finished filling the two glasses. After a few more seconds she pulled out a manila folder, bumped the drawer shut with her hip, sashayed back to the table and set the folder down in front of me.

I handed her one of the glasses; she reached out, clinked it against my glass and said, "Trinity. My friends call me Trinity, Reid."

So we drank. It was icy cool water, but she was still looking at me intently with those bright eyes and I felt the flush creeping into my face again.

Damn!

We sat back in our chairs; I put down my glass and picked up the folder. The top page was an application form, filled out in black ink by Marlon Granger, no middle name given. Then there was an offer letter, signed by Niles Stratton, Ph.D. It stated a high salary but didn't specify a job title or the type of work involved, just mentioned "technical responsibility for special projects".

"Didn't he work for Phil Poley," I asked.

"Yes, that's right," Trinity said.

"Then why's the offer letter from Niles?"

"Maybe Phil was out of town at the time. Or maybe he wasn't the one who chose Marley. Or maybe... maybe you should ask Niles instead of me."

I made a mental note to do just that.

Across the bottom of the letter was scrawled "OK - M Granger", which I suppose meant that he'd accepted the offer. That was it: Two pages.

I looked up. "Are all the personnel files so sparse?"

"Oh no. Some are so thick you could put them under the short leg of a pool table. Many people have been here for years, some for decades. Marley's case was different. Special hire, didn't go through the usual channels."

"What about personal information, reference checks, health plans, next of kin, employee benefits, performance reviews ? Don't you keep track of that sort of stuff?"

"For regular employees, yes," she shrugged, "But Phil paid Marley out of his research budget. He wasn't a Waxman employee with the usual benefits. Phil listed him as a special consultant to the project. As a contract consultant, they could settle those other issues any way they liked."

"My HR job has a lot more to do with the status of regular employees," she went on, "than in tracking the marginal ones. We have so many students and visiting scientists on sabbatical come through here that it would be an incredible time drain to track all of them thoroughly. Until I get more help, it's better for me to focus on the permanent staff."

She took the file back to the drawer, slid it into the proper spot, and returned to the table, gracefully folding herself into her chair. "Marley Granger was really good in the lab – at least, that's what Phil said. He usually worked at nights, did his job and went home. Most people never even talked to him."

"But he talked to you though, right?" It was a bit of a guess, but a good one.

"You're right, he did," she admitted after another sip of water. "Not a lot, but he trusted me more than he did other people."

"But with those other people," I asked, "was there any friction? I heard that he had more enemies than friends."

"Okay, yes, he has issues dealing with other people," she nodded. "Socially awkward, overly aggressive, quick to take offense. Gets into conflicts too easily. That's why he mostly worked at night – to stay away from other people."

"So no friends? No one else I should talk to?"

"Friends? I never met any. He's an introvert, doesn't go in for company parties, pot lucks, department sports teams. He works out a lot at our company gym, though, but always by himself."

"Yeah, I noticed. Seems like the young ladies would go for him. But he wasn't seeing anyone?"

Okay, it was a bit of a trick question; I already knew about Lester. But plenty of people are bisexual, and besides, I wanted to see just how well she knew him. "Oh, a couple of the ladies hit on him. Made fools of themselves." She smiled and shook her head. "But I don't know if it led anywhere. Nothing long-term, anyway. Marley has his own agenda."

"Actually, I already knew that. Did he ever mention anyone to you? Anyone he confided in?" I wasn't going to reveal Lester's name, but did she already know it?

Her eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips, thinking. After a few seconds, she nodded. "Yes, a couple of times. A rich older guy... I don't recall the name though, and I think it's a pretty one-sided relationship."

"Uh-huh, if it's the same one he was with Monday night, I think you're right. But apparently he feels comfortable enough with him to talk openly. One story, in particular, has me worried that Marley might be mixed up in a drug production scheme, and that senior Waxman faculty are involved."

"Other faculty?" She looked doubtful, shaking her head slightly. "Like who? Did he give names?"

"Not exactly, but he mentioned circumstances, and it seems to fit with involving Julian Chambers."

"What?" Her eyes widened in surprise and her voice rose. "Why would you think that?"

"Marley told Lester that one of the Waxman senior faculty was murdered, and that it was covered up as a suicide. Kelsey thinks that it has to be Julian. Victor and Niles say that he was involved in a project with Phil Poley and Marley, but they don't know what it was. So I'm thinking that a common motivation for murder is money, and exotic drug production would be a high money secret project. Alright then, given that, what do you really know about Marley's work here?"

I was watching closely as I said this, and the effect on her was like a gut punch: Her brows knit, her mouth slightly open, her face pale.

She sat motionless for six, seven seconds, then reached for her glass but missed and knocked it over. I grabbed a few paper towels from a stack near the water dispenser and brought them over. She still hadn't moved, so I dabbed up the little puddles, then refilled her glass and put it into her hand.

She took a sip, coughed softly, and muttered, "Thanks. Sorry. What you said... it surprised me."

Then she stood and brushed at the water spots on her clothes. "Reid, I had a tough day travelling yesterday. Didn't get much sleep. I'm tired and a little stressed."

"No, it's my fault," I said, "I didn't think that story would affect you so much. But please – do you know anything about what Phil and Marley are working on? And if Julian was involved?"

"No. I don't know what it is, but I know what it's not: It's not drugs." Her big, beautiful eyes started to fill with tears and she went on, "Julian would never have done that."

It was an interesting transformation. When I came in here, she'd been cool and in charge; now she was shaken up and emotional. But I believed what she said... or, rather, I believed that she believed what she said.

I wasn't so sure about it myself, though.

"Sorry," she said again. "I can't help you, and need some rest. So if you don't mind... " She held out her hand for a good-bye handshake.

I took it but didn't leave right away. Instead I said, "Trinity, what about Phil? Doesn't he talk to you about their project?"

She didn't take her hand away, just kept up the same gentle pressure on mine. "No," she shook her head, "never. Don't believe what people say - he and I aren't really close... that's all just a sham. And, before you ask, I have no idea when he's coming back."

I let go of her hand and turned halfway toward the door. "Okay, thanks for seeing me – get some rest now. It was good meeting you, Trinity."

But before I got fully turned she clutched at my sleeve and pulled, then stepped close and hugged me. It wasn't a strong one, but an honest one with a gentle squeeze and her head on my shoulder.

After three or four seconds she leaned back and smiled, "Thanks – for what you said about Julian. It's a shock, but means a lot to me. A whole lot."

Then she stepped away and nodded – my cue to leave. As I went out, the door closed behind me with a solid click.

Well – to say that Angelina Trinity Garret was quite a piece of work would be a big understatement. Not just beautiful, but sharp. Manipulative? Yes, probably that too. Still, I was impressed by what she'd said, and also by how she'd expressed it.

But there had to be way more that she'd not said.

Chapter 26: Murder?

Day 4: Thursday early afternoon

After Reid left, Trinity leaned back against her office door, eyes closed and trembling slightly. His story about murder sent everything she'd believed for the last year into a tailspin.

She tried to get her head around it, tried to understand the implications:

• Julian did not commit suicide

• Someone murdered him

• The murder was arranged by someone inside the plan

So then: Who, and Why?

The 'Who' answer could have two parts: Person 1 – someone powerful enough to sanction and set up a killing; and Person 2 - whoever pulled the trigger.

But how would Marley know about it? He'd never been down to the Mission, never even met anyone from down there, so he must have heard about it from someone up here. The obvious choices were Niles and Phil.

Phil may have relayed the story to Marley, but he couldn't have been directly involved. He's not a decision maker, just a minor cog who does what he's told.

Niles, though... yeah. Wasn't he was one of the inner circle? He was up here when Julian died, but could have been involved in the decision, right?

She pushed away from the door and walked slowly back to her desk, picking up her water glass on the way. After a quick a sip she slumped into the soft leather chair and grimaced. Would Niles really do that to Julian? Could he do that to a friend, someone who'd worked with him and trusted him?

No, she decided, he couldn't. He acted like a pompous jerk sometimes, but agree to murdering Julian?

No.

There was someone else up here though, or at least Niles claimed there was: a Mr. X who watched them and reported back to the Consortium. Now who the Hell could that be?

Another mystery – one more in a long line of mysteries. _Damn it! Why don't they ever tell me what's really going on?_ Niles always said she was important to the plan, but never gave her any details... said it was better for her not to know

When you came right down to it, she was as clueless as Reid about what Niles, Phil, and Marley were up to.

She kicked at the side of the desk in frustration, then tried to take another drink of the ice water. But her hand was shaking and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest, so she set the glass down and tried to slow her breathing.

Alright – think. What did she remember? A tear welled up in her left eye, and was joined by one in her right. There was that phone call, Julian's last call to her, right before he died. He sounded very emotional, and that's what had struck her at the time, that he was in trouble. But she couldn't get down there to help him, and so she spent the last year believing he'd killed himself in a pit of lonely despair.

But what were his words? What exactly did he say? It was something like, "I can't keep doing this anymore. I've found out what's really going on, and I'm going to destroy it all."

Trinity realized now that he wasn't just sad and despairing - his actual words showed something more – he was upset, angry, and determined to take violent action.

And that's why he was killed – because he was a threat to whatever the project, the goddamn project, was... and to the goddamn people in it, too.

So he didn't commit suicide.

They murdered him.

She didn't wipe her face, just let the tears flow. They spilled over and trickled down her cheeks and fell onto the desk, where they made tiny dome-shaped puddles at first. As she silently watched, the puddles joined together.

Somehow, that was comforting.

Chapter 27: Invitation

Day 4: Thursday mid- afternoon

It took only a couple of minutes to climb the stairs to the 4th floor and reach Kelsey's lab. Niles was standing at the far end of the hallway; when he saw me, he waved and started walking over. Sounds were drifting out of the lab - the rattle of paper being crumpled, the whoosh of boxes sliding over the waxed floor, Chyll's chattering voice.

I stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene.

JZ pushed a box to the stack against the wall, then went back to her bench at the far side of the room; Chyll was shoving crumpled balls of paper into the nooks and crannies of another box to cushion the glassware inside; and Kelsey was bent over a third one, wrapping it with strapping tape.

It took maybe ten seconds for them to notice that I was there; Kelsey straightened up, her face slightly flushed and her hair in disarray – one lock of light brown hair was drooping down her forehead, and a her blouse had come untucked on her left side.

She smiled at me - an open, warm smile. I smiled back, thinking that it was hard not to do the comparisons between her and Trinity.

Trinity – tall, statuesque, with a perfect face and figure; Kelsey – shorter, also pretty though in a tomboyish sort of way, but blessed with a natural athletic grace and friendly smile.

There was something they shared in common, though: they'd each been haunted by guilt during the past year. Guilt over Julian's suicide - either that they were somehow responsible, or at least could have prevented it - but failed.

And each of them was feeling liberated by the idea that it was murder, not suicide. It seems strange that learning that a former lover had been murdered would be a source of relief, but in this case it was very true. There's a lesson in that, something about how a suicide does more than kill yourself; it also kills the spirits of your loved ones.

Think about it.

By then Niles reached the door and broke into my little reverie.

"Reid," he said, "good to see you again. I didn't know you were planning on being here today."

"Oh, there were few things to do and people to see. Actually, Niles, you're one of them. I was hoping to get more info about what Marley and Phil - and Julian - were working on."

"Ah – I was just telling Victor about that. He had the same question. I don't know all the details, but I can give you the general idea."

"We already have a head start," I said. "Jose Montes gave us a tour around the ledge. We spent some time looking at Kanja trees outside of Phil's lab."

While I was talking I watched him closely for any reaction. It was brief - the slight widening of his eyes, the flaring of the nostrils, the tightening of skin at his temples - just milliseconds, really, but there it was.

The Kanja meant something, and our knowing about it meant something, too.

Niles coughed softly, apologized, coughed again. Finally he said, "Oh yes, that's right," but his voice sounded strained. "I remember now that they were working with Kanja, but I haven't checked up on them. How do they look? The trees, I mean. Are they in good shape?"

"Well, I don't know what a Kanja tree is supposed to look like." I smiled and shrugged. There were the dead animals, of course, and the fact that Jose wore gloves when he touched the fruit. But I didn't say anything to him about that; figured I'd hold off until I knew more.

By then Chyll and Kelsey had finished their last box and come over to join us.

He turned to look at them then smiled and put out his hand. "I'll bet you're Chyll," he said. "I didn't know that Halliday operatives could be so young."

Chyll blushed slightly and shook his hand. "Not really and operative yet. Just doin' what I can to help Reid and Kelsey."

"Sorry Chyll," Kelsey said. "I should have introduced you. This is Dr. Niles Stratton – he's the chairman of our department."

"Oh!" Chyll shook his hand again. "Good to meet you, sir."

"Please," he said, still smiling, "just call me Niles."

Then he glanced at me and went on, "Like I was saying, Reid, I met with Victor. He said that he was interested in having you look into things around here."

I nodded, waiting. There was something else on his mind.

He cleared his throat. "Vic said that you brought in Marley's notebooks and gave a copy to Kelsey. He asked me to get involved, too. So I wanted to find you and tell you that, um... I'm ready to help out any way I can."

Okay – that was it – he wanted me to know that he knew about the notebooks.

Or was I being cynical? Maybe he genuinely just wanted to help. Well, I'd be glad to accept any info he could provide, but I'd be cautious about sharing any info with him.

So I just nodded and said "Thanks," and he said, "How about if we go out for a late lunch. We can get a start on discussing things."

I looked over at Kelsey; she gave a tight-lipped smile and shrugged her shoulders – so much for our chance to chat about old times.

"Okay, sure," I said. "Just let me know when."

Kelsey spoke up, "I was thinking of taking Reid to Harolde's old place in a half-hour or so. That sound okay?"

"Perfect," Niles nodded. "I can't be ready that fast, but I could meet you there in an hour."

"Good," she said. "That works - seeya then."

Niles waved good-bye and went off down the hall. Kelsey waited a few seconds, then motioned to the stack of boxes. "What do you think?"

I shrugged. "It looks like a lot to be taking to a jungle clinic."

"Uh huh, you're right. But once we got rolling, it was hard to stop. Chyll was loading stuff in boxes faster than I could tape them up. Probably the best thing is to leave them stacked there – at least they're well packed and ready to go. I can wait till after we're down there and ask JZ to send stuff as we need it."

"Makes sense."

She nodded. "Yeah. So – I guess Niles invited himself to our little private lunch."

I laughed softly. "Yeah. But we can hook up another time - when exactly do you take off?"

"Monday, mid- morning. Less than four days away. "

"Mmm," I nodded. Then I had a flash of inspiration – it hit me like a tiny jolt of adrenaline.

"Kelsey – your little son... how old is he?"

"Stevie's four, almost four and a half."

"Does he like circuses?"

She looked blank for a second, then said, "Oh – you mean those flyers someone stuck on everybody's windshield yesterday?"

"Yeah. What do you think? How about if I take you and Stevie?"

She thought for a few seconds, then nodded and smiled.

"Sure – he'd love it. It'll have to be Sunday afternoon, though – that's the only time we've got."

"Perfect," I said.

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and turned toward her office, still smiling. "I'll be back in a sec. As long as Niles is coming along today, I think I'll call Harolde and see if he can join us too. You'll like meeting him."

As she walked away, Chyll whispered to me, "Good job, boss."

"What d' you mean?"

"The circus flyer. Using it to get a date with Kelsey. I think the two of you are perfect for each other."

I looked at her. "Chyll -"

She held up her hand. "Hey boss, I'm only givin' my opinion, that's all."

The funny thing is... it was beginning to be my opinion, too.

Chapter 28: Walking Palm

Day 4: Thursday late afternoon

Forty minutes later Kelsey and I arrived at the Walking Palm. It had only a moderately sized interior, but a spacious outside seating area covered in thatched palm. Tables were separated by small fountains, urns, and statues, making each one feel private and cozy.

"It's popular with the college and high tech crowds, and can be tough to get a table at lunch or dinner. But we're in-between right now, so we should be okay. Plus, Harolde can usually get us in."

We'd driven over together, just the two of us, in my truck. She left her car at the Waxman parking lot ('No problem – I'll get a ride in from Laila tomorrow to pick it up') and Chyll had gone back to Halliday's to bring lunch to Chypp. Niles said he'd be along later.

Kelsey hopped out as soon as I parked and waved to someone standing near the front door. "Harolde!" she called. As we walked over, she said, "Harolde is like a big, protective brother. I already told him a bit about you."

We reached the steps before I had a chance to ask what exactly she'd told him.

He was heavyset, medium height, with copper skin, and looked to be in the early forties. As we got closer, I could see that the heavyset-ness was due to muscle, not fat. His head was clean-shaven, he had a gold loop through his right earlobe, and dark blue tattoos on his forehead and temples.

An impressive figure.

Kelsey gave him a quick hug, then grabbed my right arm and squeezed. "Thanks for coming, Harolde. I want you to meet Reid."

He looked first at her arm wrapped in mine, his eyebrows rising, then he smiled broadly and put out his hand. "Reid, nice to see you." It was a rich baritone.

"Thanks," I nodded as we shook, "good to meet you too."

"Okay," Kelsey said, "now that we got that out of the way, are we going to get a table?"

Harolde glanced at the hostess with the reservation book. She smiled, "Whenever you're ready, Mr. Theroux, just take your choice of tables in the courtyard."

We went down a gravel path, circling around the inner area. Harolde knew what spot he wanted; it was near the back under a shade tree, a circular glass table with four bamboo chairs. He and I sat opposite each other, with Kelsey between us on my right.

"Theroux?" I asked, looking at them both, "same last name?"

"Kelsey's by birth," Harolde laughed. "Mine by choice. I worked for her father at the Mission. He saved me from an unpleasant fate – helped me in many ways. When I came to America, I needed a last name. It seemed natural to use his."

Kelsey told the story of how Harolde came to be at the Mission – about the poachers, the judge, the prison sentence, the work-release.

"When I first arrived there," Harolde said, "Grant'd had the Mission for just over a year. Kelsey was a mere babe, hardly walking. I was a teenager, strong, full of energy. Grant put me to work – hard work, but he gave me a room of my own, all the food I wanted, some money... not much, but more than I needed, and I learned to read, write, and do numbers."

A waitress arrived with beers for everyone, set them down on the table, then noiselessly glided off. Harolde raised his glass in a toast, took a sip, then set it down and leaned forward.

"So Reid, what brings you into young Kelsey's life?"

Kelsey gave a little laugh and looked at me. "Sorry, I should have warned you. Harolde can be a little abrupt. He still sees me as that child in the forest."

"No problem," I said. "Better to speak out than beat around the bush." I gave him a quick summary of what was going on and how Kelsey was helping.

He had more questions, but we heard a crunching on the gravel walkway (one of the reasons I like gravel – tough for anyone to sneak up) and Niles came around the corner.

We all said 'Hi' and a fresh beer appeared for him. He took a long drink, then looked at Harolde and said, "So what do you think – it looks like they changed the layout back here, and dropped a few items off the menu."

"Yes," Harolde nodded his head, looking around. "A lot of change, actually. But that's OK – it's not mine anymore, it's Rudy's."

Kelsey tapped me on the arm and said, "This used to be Harolde's place. He started it, grew it to a success, and then sold it last year."

"Very cool," I said. "So you're another successful Bay Area entrepreneur."

He laughed. "Not exactly. I left the Mission after Grant leased it to the nuns and disappeared. I came to California to join Kelsey and my sister. I had money, but no job, and no idea what to do. It was actually Niles who suggested opening a restaurant."

Niles took another sip of beer and said. "Years ago, on my first field trip down there, I lost nearly 10 pounds, and I was already thin to begin with. But after a few more times I got used to the, uh, unusual food, and started liking it. And the strange thing is, whenever I got back to the States, I felt healthier than when I'd left. Most of that was probably from the exercise, but some of it was from what I ate. Getting Harolde to open a restaurant here seemed like a good idea. You know Californians - any organic food with mysterious health benefits, the more bizarre the better... they love it."

"I borrowed money from Niles and started this place with my sister," Harolde said. "She had followed me to the Mission, took care of the garden, and together we cooked. Between the two of us, we knew a lot of original recipes."

"They made some pretty amazing stuff," Kelsey said with a half-smile, half-grimace. "Tasty and I guess nutritious, but you didn't want to know all the ingredients."

"Hah! Actually, it was mostly vegetarian," Harolde smiled. "Mostly, but the secrets are in the spices and the sauces, and how fast or slow you cook – those make anything palatable. Some of the dishes went over well, some didn't, but overall things were a success. After three years, it became too popular, too big for me. I was spending all my time running the business instead of enjoying a restaurant. So last December I sold the Palm to Rudy Tedesco, paid off the loans, and got ready to go home for a long visit."

"Paid me back in full, with plenty of interest," Niles nodded. "One of my best investments ever."

"I come back every now and then," Harolde said, "just to say hello and see how it's going."

"So Harolde," I asked, "how was your visit back home?" I was curious about the timing, you see, because it would have been right about when Julian died. Had he been there?

He was quiet for few seconds, looking at me as if evaluating something. Finally he slowly shook his head and said, "Oh, it, uh - didn't work out."

"Don't tell me," Niles laughed, wiping a bit of beer foam from his mustache, "you made a promise to Grant to watch over the ladies, and couldn't leave them, right? Isn't that the real reason you came to California in the first place?"

"Certainly part of it, yes," Harolde nodded. "But..." he looked at Kelsey, as if weighing his words, then said, "well, my main reason for going there would have been to see Julian."

"To see Julian?" Niles sounded surprised. "I thought that you two had a falling out."

He sipped his beer once... twice... then cleared his throat. "Kelsey, the night you finally told Julian to get out - do you remember the last thing I said to him?"

"How could I forget? I've replayed that scene in my head a hundred times. You told him 'We were once like brothers, Julian, but now I think that someday I will kill you.'"

A heavy silence plummeted down around us, like the sudden drop of a theater curtain. I eased back in my chair, drank my beer and said nothing, waiting to see who would break it.

Finally Harolde did. "Yes, and at the time I meant it. If he hurt you, or Laila or Stevie, I would have broken him. But I didn't hate him – I felt sorry for him. He was lost." He swirled the last bit of beer in his glass, downed it, then went on, "But after a while, he found himself again. It was right after...." He suddenly stopped, frowned, and his voice trailed away.

Kelsey tapped the table and said, "Harolde, for God's sake, just say it – he got better after he took up with Trinity again."

Harolde raised his glass over his head and held it there for four or five seconds; a waitress appeared from nowhere. "Mr. Theroux – another round?"

Niles said yes; Harolde and Kelsey went for a decanter of the house red wine; I asked for coffee. Let the alcohol loosen their tongues; I wanted to hear and remember what they had to say.

After she left, Harolde looked at Kelsey and shrugged slightly. "Alright, yes, that was part of it, but what really got him going again was his new work. The night before leaving for the Layard Clinic he stopped to see me. He was actually cheerful. We had a good talk and parted... well, if not as friends, at least no longer as enemies."

The waitress arrived with the beer, the wine, and two glasses. I filled the glasses and passed them to Harolde and Kelsey. Harolde tried the wine, looked pleased with it, and went on with his story. "Julian called me last November. He sounded agitated, angry, and maybe scared. Said he didn't know who to turn to." Harolde's voice trailed off and he took another drink, a longer one this time. When he set his glass down, he sighed and slapped the table. "What he wanted was for me to get him out of there, to help him hide. 'I'm being watched,' he said, 'and my only hope is to melt into the rainforest .' I told him I would go down and help, but before I could get there... he was dead."

"And you never thought that his death was suspicious?" Kelsey's voice was strained and tense.

"Suspicious...?" Harolde said, slowly, "no. Unfortunate - yes. A tragedy – yes. Look, Kelsey, after you told me this story last night about someone being murdered and it being covered up as a suicide, sure, now it seems suspicious. But back then, I thought that he'd just collapsed mentally and shot himself."

He looked around at each of us. "We all thought that... right?"

After a few seconds Kelsey nodded and forced a smile. "You're right, Harolde. Yes, back then we had no reason to suspect anything else."

"Harolde," I said, "did Julian ever tell you what about his work was so interesting at the start? And what was bothering him so much at the end?"

Harold shook his head. "He never gave me any details. Would I have understood, even if he had? - No."

As he said this, I was watching Niles, who was casually studying his beer, as if not paying attention to us.

It was time to get him involved in the conversation, but I wasn't sure how. Then Kelsey made it happen. "Niles," she asked, "what do you think? You must have known what it was all about."

The question seemed to catch him off guard; he paused, took a drink, and shook his head. "Sorry. I really don't. I was telling Victor about it earlier today. The main idea of Phil's project involves genetic transformation of Kanja to increase production of a useful medicinal. That's about all I know."

"Okay," Kelsey nodded, "that explains why Marley was involved, but what about Julian? How would he fit into that kind of work?"

"Uhh, well..." Niles swirled the beer in his glass for a few seconds, thinking, then shrugged, "Remember, after Julian lost his funding - and his marriage - he was an emotional basket case. I asked Phil if there was any room on his project for him, that it didn't matter what, just get the poor guy involved in working again. Phil said he'd think of something. And he did - but never told me what it was."

Kelsey kept pressing. "But Niles, you must have the project paperwork in your office, right? You keep copies of all departmental projects, don't you?"

He frowned and shifted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable with the direction of the questions, but responded smoothly. "Yes, of course. But this program isn't funded by public grant money or commercial investment. I tried to explain that to Victor. This is a private affair, and the information is restricted. I have a project summary, but that's all."

"And Julian never came by to tell you anything?" Kelsey's voice took on a sharper edge. "You and he were close friends, right? Why wouldn't he talk to you?"

Niles took another sip of beer and grimaced. "Look, I wish things were different, but he was busy getting the project set up, and I had a lot going on, too. We just never got around to talking about it. And then he left for the tropics, and we never saw him again."

"But he was down there doing something for a year before he died. Didn't you contact him at all during that time?" Kelsey sounded upset now, almost accusing.

Niles set down his beer, took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead, as if considering what to say. After moment, he sighed. "I called. Three or four times. But all he wanted to talk about was changes that were going on down there. New construction, new people – stuff like that. Nothing about his work. Really, you need to talk to Phil about that. Or Marley."

Kelsey didn't look happy to hear this, and I could feel an air of rising tension.

Harolde picked up on it too, and clapped his hands.

All eyes turned to him, and he smiled. "Please friends, it's best for us to have some food now and discuss the rest of this later. Whatever the final answers are – good or bad – we'll be better able to deal with them with happy stomachs."

A waitress appeared with menus, but Harolde waved them off and said that he'd order for all of us. After calling for several dishes that I'd never heard of, he finished with "And please bring the appetizers right away."

She nodded and whisked off, leaving us in silence. Kelsey finished her glass of wine and poured herself another. When she sat back to take a sip, she glanced at me, very casually inclined her head in Niles direction and raised one eyebrow. The message was clear: she didn't trust what he was saying.

I gave a brief nod: I didn't trust what he was saying either.

The waitress was back three minutes later with a tray of steamed veggies, thin strips of crisp beef, and a three bowls of unfamiliar sauces.

The next hour and a half were spent sampling a half-dozen dishes, some easily identified, some mysterious, most tasty, a couple kind of nasty. The conversation shifted, switching from hashing over sad memories to more upbeat topics.

Niles talked about photographic trips and safaris and Harolde told about his early life.

"Up to the time I was sixteen, the only white men I'd seen were a few missionaries passing out bibles. We didn't pay much attention to them. We had our own moral code, our own beliefs, our own customs."

He was looking at my left arm as he said this. I have one tattoo, a band of eagle feathers, circling all the way around the forearm, and another, a circlet of triangular wedges and wavy lines, around the left bicep.

"I wear my tribal markings here," he said, pointing to the tattoos on his forehead, "and on both shoulders, both legs. What about yours: just nice decorations, or do they mean anything?"

I smiled and pointed to my upper arm. "My grandfather's people live in northern California. These wedges and wavy lines are a Yurok design. They signify the mountains and Klamath River. The linked feathers are a Karuk symbol, something about the eternal circle of life. When I turned thirteen, Grandpa took me to a man in Happy Camp who did the inking. At first my mom was so mad at him she couldn't talk. But I've always loved them, and after a while, she did too."

Later, Niles was telling us about the time he spent the night in a tree in Sumatra so that he could get early morning pics of orangutans, and I'd just finished another mug of coffee, when the phone in my pocket buzzed. The caller ID showed Autumn Kool. I nodded and went to an empty table, away from any other ears.

"Hi Autumn, how are the gaming tables treatin' the boss?"

"Would you believe it," she answered in a sing-song voice, "a whole day and not one roll of the dice, not one draw of a card. Mr. Mars has a problem."

"Uh-huh," I said, starting to get a bad feeling about where this was leading. "Which is why you're calling, right?"

"Right. Reid, Mr. Halliday needs you to come here. It's no big thing, just a little, uh, search and delivery operation. But he really wants you involved."

"Autumn, I'm kind of involved here right now. Remember the Waxman Institute deal?"

"Reid, this is just for one day... or two at the most Eddie will be at the airport at eight this evening. He'll fly you here and stay. As soon as you're done, he'll fly you back. Tomorrow... or maybe Saturday, no later than that, though, I promise."

"Autumn, this job I'm working on looks like it involves a murder -"

"Reid," she cut me off. "Mr. Halliday says 'Please'. He says that it's important. He says that he'll owe you one if you do this. It's a family thing - Caden Mars is Kirk Halliday's brother."

Wow - Mr. Halliday said 'Please'? That doesn't happen often.

He said he'd owe me one? That never happens.

So I couldn't say 'No' to that. But it was OK to whine a bit.

"Autumn," I groaned, "alright. But no later than Saturday morning."

"Agreed. Meet Eddie at the usual spot, OK?"

"Alright. Anything special to bring?"

"I'll send you a text in a few minutes. You'll need to stop by the office to get one or two items. I'll let Chypp know to have them ready for you."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"No – that's it. Kisses and hugs, Reid – see you soon."

When I got back to the table, Niles was smiling. "Had enough coffee, Reid? Ready for a scotch?"

I shook my head. "I wish, but no thanks. No time."

Kelsey looked concerned. "What's up? Bad news?"

"Not really bad, just but a bit of extra work. I'm being called off to Vegas. Gotta leave tonight - in about two hours."

"Oh," said Niles. "Flying out of San Jose?"

"Yeah, but not a commercial flight. Halliday has a private jet. I'll drive right up to it, hop in and zoom off. No tickets, no lines, no security screens, no baggage checks. No hassle - except that I have to go."

I looked over at Kelsey. "With any luck I'll be back sometime Saturday."

She had a little frown, like she was thinking about our Circus date, but she bit her lip and didn't say anything. Good – we'd talk it over later, by ourselves.

"Well, I'll be away for the next few days, too," Niles said. "Heading down the coast to Morro Bay, just above San Luis Obispo. It's my winter photography junket."

"Down the coast?" Harolde asked. "You're taking Highway 1? Could be a tough ride in this weather."

Niles nodded. "All the better for getting interesting shots, huh? It's hard to beat that coastline any time. But this year, with all the storms and rockslides, the skies and the shores should be incredible. Then after that I reverse direction and head north nearly to Oregon."

He looked over at me. "Anyway, I'll be gone for a few days. Maybe I'll see you next week, Reid, if you come by the Waxman."

I shrugged. "That depends on what goes on with Marley, and when Phil gets back. I'll be in touch, though."

Harolde finished the last of the Burgundy and said, "You haven't sat back down... does that mean you're leaving right away?"

"'Fraid so," I nodded, and looked at Kelsey. "Whenever you're ready. I need to stop by Halliday's on the way."

"No problem," she grabbed her purse and started to stand. "Whoa," she muttered, reeling a bit. "I haven't had that much wine in a long time. Let me hit the Ladies Room on the way out."

Harolde and Niles also stood, and as we turned toward the restrooms, I took out my wallet and asked about the tab. It must have run to nearly three hundred dollars, but Harolde waved his hand and said, "No - all taken care of. Rudy and I have an, um... an arrangement."

So I said that I'd leave the tip, but he waved his hand again. "All taken care of."

I smiled and put a fifty dollar bill on the table anyway. "Let's just sweeten it a bit."

He smiled broadly. "Very nice, Reid. It was good, real good, meeting you."

When we got to the parking lot, Harolde took off first. "Got a date with Bianca tonight – basketball game at Stanford."

As Kelsey and I climbed into Atlas, I called to Niles. "Have a good trip."

"Thanks," he answered, "I will. And enjoy yourself in Vegas. Come back rich!"

We both laughed, I fired up the truck, and eased out of the parking lot. Niles was standing near the entrance, chatting on his phone as we went past. He didn't seem to notice us.

I looked over at Kelsey. "Niles is a tough guy to figure out. The more I see him, the less clear he becomes."

"Hmmm... poor Niles," she mused. "I've known him for most of my life – and he is kind of a strange bird. But he's been good to me. Got me this job, which was a first for the Waxman, 'cuz of their anti-nepotism policy. Julian was already there, and some people were resistant to hiring his wife. But Niles lobbied for me, and the Board of Directors bought into it and gave me the offer."

At the end of the driveway, getting ready to turn onto the main road, I looked over at her profile: beautiful forehead, eyes, nose, lips, chin. But she was shivering as she spoke and I realized that there was a chill in the air. When the sun went down, a cool breeze'd kicked up from the Bay.

I keep a couple of warm cotton blankets behind the driver's seat, and while I was reaching back to get them she went on. "He's changed in the last few years, though. Spends a lot of time travelling to meetings and has let his lab run down. And he seems distracted and secretive. I don't know why he was saying that stuff about Phil's project. He and Phil have worked together for twenty years... there's no way that he doesn't know what that project is. Same with what Julian was doing."

"Agreed," I said, "He's not giving straight answers. But I won't be able to make any real sense out of it until I talk to Marley and Phil, so for now I'm going to let it go."

I found two blankets, pulled them into the front, draped the first one over her legs and tucked in the other around her arms and shoulders.

She laughed and looked at me. Her cheeks had a pink tint and there was a glow in her eyes; sure, part of it was the wine – but maybe not all of it.

"So Harolde's not the only one looking after me, huh?" she said, smiling.

I smiled back. "Do you need a lot of looking after?"

She was quiet for a few seconds, then said softly, "I haven't for a long time... but I could get to like it."

In vino veritas?

Chapter 29: Halliday's

Day 4: Thursday evening

It was a pleasant 20 minute ride. Kelsey, bundled in the blankets, sighed contentedly and mumbled about being sleep deprived.

"That wine went straight to my head, and I didn't sleep hardly at all last night... kept thinking about stuff."

"Stuff? Like what?"

"Oh, about Julian, and Kanja, and going back home." Her voice sounded muffled and was getting quieter. "And about you...."

"Me? Why would thinking about me keep you awake?"

"Oh, you know...."

This last part was barely above a whisper. I peeked over; her eyes were closed and her breathing snuffled in the blanket. I reached out and slid it away from her face.

She didn't seem to notice.

I turned off of Highway 280 at Sand Hill Road and headed west toward Portola Valley. It wasn't quite seven yet, but was already plenty dark. The sun had set behind the hills and there are no streetlights out here.

Halliday Inc. is away from the road and surrounded by trees - oak, pine, redwoods, madrone. It is not an obvious place – a lot of it is underground. Even on a satellite map, you would hardly notice anything was there.

There's a fence around it, tall and sturdy, no guard – just punch your code into the keypad. If the gate opens, then you're still employed.

It opened, so I drove through, pulled into the underground parking area and stopped near an elevator entrance. Kelsey was still sleeping and I didn't want to wake her. I also didn't want to leave her, so I took out my phone and keyed in Chypp's number.

He answered on the second ring.

"Hi boss. I've got a package for you, uh, something that Ms. Kool wanted you to have."

"Excellent," I said. "Is Chyll there? I'm down in the garage now – can she bring it out to me?"

"No, Chyll is off having fun, which is what I should be doing too, except that Ms. Kool said that you'd be swinging by here and I should wait."

"Sorry Chypp. I'll be right up there." I didn't want him to have to come down here, not with his leg brace and cane.

"No problem, boss. I saw you drive in... you know, the gate camera, and I started down. Seeya in about two seconds."

I opened the door of the truck and got out just as the elevator doors slid open. Chypp started over, the cane in his left hand, his right arm curled around a small metal box.

We met in the middle and he handed me the box. It was smooth, featureless, and moderately heavy. It had no key, no combination lock, no obvious way to open it at all. We call it an L-Box and use it for transporting sensitive material. To open it you have to phone it – yes, it has its own phone number – and if it identifies you as a trusted source, it will answer. Then you need to enter a code, a rather complex one, and if the box accepts it, the lid slides open.

Otherwise you can shoot it, hammer it, drop in in acid, or try a buzz saw, but you won't get anywhere. No number and no code = no entry. Period.

We have variations on these boxes that are even more strict. One has a small needle set in a slot; you place your finger in the slot, it jabs you, and takes a drop of blood for analysis. If it identifies you as a trusted soul, it will open. Another is tied into the GPS satellites, and will only open within ten feet of a specific location on the surface of the Earth. And you have to know that location ahead of time.

"Before you ask," Chypp said, "I have no clue what's inside.. This L-Box was in one of Mr. Halliday's file cabinets, already locked. For all I know, it's empty."

Not likely, I thought. We walked over to my truck together – Chypp's little Toyota was parked nearby – and he was going to take off when I did.

"Sorry you had to stay late for me," I said.

"No problem, boss. Ms. Kool said that it was important. She also said that you would be in a hurry and might be grumpy."

"Me? Grumpy? Have you ever seen me grumpy?"

He was silent for maybe three seconds, but when I opened the truck door he peeked in, then said, "Yes, I have. But not now, and I can see why."

"She's beautiful, boss," he went on in a hushed voice, looking at Kelsey, who was peacefully asleep. "Is she the one you're cooking up the date with?"

"Jeez, Chypp – it's just a fun time at the circus. But you're right, she is beautiful."

I thanked him and told him to go meet up with Chyll and have fun. He waved goodbye, then hobbled to his car, fired it up, and zipped away. I started more slowly, wondering when to wake up Kelsey to get directions to her home. But before I reached the gate a muffled voice came from the blanket.

"Did you mean that?" the voice asked.

"Mean what?" I asked back.

"About me being beautiful."

I laughed. "Yes, yes, and yes. I meant it completely."

"Good" the voice said; then she snuggled back against the seat.

Five minutes later, when we got near Hwy 280, I gently squeezed her shoulder and said "Can you tell me where you live? I'll key it in to the GPS and you can go back to sleep."

She sat up and stretched. "Sorry," she yawned. "Okay, let's see... we're on Alpine, right?

'Yep," I nodded.

"Okay - when you hit 280, just head south, toward Los Altos."

After a few seconds she yawned again and said, "God, Reid, my mouth tastes like a barnyard. D'you have any breath mints or anything?"

I pointed to the glove compartment; she opened it and took out a container of Altoids. She flipped the top off, popped one into her mouth, then held it out to me and said, "Want one?"

I have a policy – one of several – that I try to live by, that goes like this: If someone offers you a breath mint, thank them and take it – you probably need it.

"Thanks," I said, "sure."

After that it was "take this exit and head toward the hills." Then a left here, a right here, and "it's just up ahead."

As we got near, I could see a large place with well-kept grounds. Even had a horse corral.

"Wow – looks like you've done alright for yourself," I said.

"It's not mine – it belongs to Julian's parents. They let us rent it for a cheap price. It's great for Stevie, but I'm on one salary, and it's getting to be a stretch. Plus living in a place owned by the ex-in-laws, now that we're divorced, is awkward. We'll probably move soon."

The long driveway was in the shape of a loop, which would make it more convenient if you were taking a horse trailer in or out. The house was at one side of the loop, a small barn and tack room at the other. I stopped the truck near the patch of lawn in front of the house. Kelsey opened the door on her side then looked back at me. "Do you have time to meet Stevie and Laila?"

I glanced at the dash clock: 7:40, and I still had to swing by my apartment to get a few clothes. Hmm...

What the Hell - Eddie could wait a while longer.

"Absolutely," I said, climbing down. "We can't be going to the circus without meeting each other, right?"

Chapter 30: Checkout

Day 4: Thursday evening

Niles stood in the parking lot holding his cell phone, watching Kelsey and Reid get into the truck.

"Goodbye, Reid," he whispered, "go to Vegas, and don't rush home – in fact, if you're really smart, you'll stay there." No such luck, though; he knew Reid would be back. But maybe not for a couple of days... and that might be enough time to work things out.

Job 1: Get Marley away from the hospital and stowed away somewhere

Job 2: Shut down operations at the Waxman

Send the final products to the Consortium

Clean up all evidence

Job 3: Get rid of Reid

That last one – getting rid of Reid – was an order he'd gotten right before coming to the Walking Palm. It came as an 'anonymous' text... anonymous because it was unsigned and from an untraceable number, but an order nonetheless, because it carried the authority of the General. It was from the same damn spy that'd been watching him for the last year or so... someone monitoring activities at the Waxman and reporting directly to Greene.

He had a good idea who it was, but wasn't certain. And what could he do about it anyway?

Nothing. The Consortium has eyes everywhere.

"Alright, enough self-pity," he muttered and mentally kicked himself for drinking so much beer. He'd need to be clear-headed to spring Marley out of Bayview, and it was time to get started.

Trinity answered on the third ring. "Yes, Niles, I got your message – you still want to go through with this?"

"Want to? Hell no, but we've got no choice. Meet me at the hospital in a half-hour. Park away from the front door and wait inside your car. I'll find you."

He walked to the unmarked white van, opened the door, and slid into the driver's seat. After starting the engine, he reached under the passenger seat and pulled up the small zippered bag hidden there.

It contained a few very special items that he gathered that afternoon, after leaving Reid in Kelsey's lab. His first stop had been the medical treatment center. Every lab had a first-aid kit for handling minor cuts and such, but the medical treatment center was used for more serious injuries. There was full time EMT at a desk in the front area, with an exam room off to the side. A door in the back wall of the exam room led to a small pharmacy, stocked with meds of all sorts, both OTC and prescription items. The door was kept locked at all times, but Niles and a few other senior staff had pass keys for emergency use, after hours or on weekends.

So it was just a matter of waiting for the right time. He knew that Armando almost always took a twenty minute break at 2:00, after everyone else had finished their lunch.

Niles hung out in the mail room, paging through the new issue of Science, but not really paying attention. When he saw Armando leave the treatment center and go by on the way to the lunch room, he slid the magazine back into his mail slot and casually walked down the hall. It took only seconds to slip through the exam room, unlock the pharmacy door, and open the refrigerator. The inside was stuffed with small boxes, vials, and tubes. He was in a hurry, but took the time to carefully scan the shelves, pick out two small, white cardboard boxes, open them, and take out a single glass ampule from each.

He wrapped them in separate paper towels and tucked them into the zippered bag. Just to the left of the refrigerator was a workbench. He found the drawer labeled 'Injection Materials', picked out two 1-cc disposable syringes and two 20-gauge needles, and dropped them into the bag along with a package of sterile gloves. On the way out he took one of the white lab coats from the rack near the door, turned off the lights, and left.

Total time: less than three minutes.

Then it was down the hallway to the stairs and up to his lab. These days it was dark and empty, but he still kept all the tools and equipment from the old days. Standing against the back wall was a tall freezer, set to keep a steady temperature of minus eighty degrees Celsius. He opened the door, shuffled through a stack of boxes on the middle shelf, and pulled one out. "Ahh, yes." He rifled through it, finally selecting one of the smaller plastic tubes. As with the ampule from the pharmacy, he wrapped it in a paper towel and placed it carefully in his zippered bag.

Which he now stowed on the seat next to him as he pulled out of the Walking Palm parking lot.

It would normally be a ten minute drive to Bayview, but it took nearly twenty in the early evening traffic. That was okay – "No need to rush," he reminded himself, and hummed a little tune to slow his breathing and relax, mentally reviewing what needed to be done. The overall timing of the sequence of actions was critical, and each individual step had to be done carefully, unhurriedly. There was no room for anxiety or haste.

The Bayview parking area wound in graceful curves from the roadside to the hospital front doors, and he cruised around slowly, looking for a spot up front. Not much available in the closer Visitor sections, but there were several open spaces in the emergency parking zone. He pulled into the middle one, shut off the lights and engine, and waited. It wasn't long before Trinity's sleek and shiny Porsche came into view. She eased into a spot fifty yards away.

Niles casually strolled over and rapped softly on the driver's side window. She looked up, startled, and opened the door.

"Where'd you come from? I didn't see your car anywhere."

"That's 'cause I didn't use it; borrowed a Waxman van – one of the unmarked ones. It looks more official for transporting a patient to another facility, and besides, I don't need my license plate showing up on any surveillance cams."

"Oh – but it's okay if they see mine?"

"You'll be fine - there aren't many cameras down here. But I'll need to drive right up front to the patient loading zone to get Marley."

She exhaled slowly, looking a little nervous. "Thought of everything, haven't you?"

"Not by a long shot," he said. "There are a thousand things that could go wrong – not the least of which is that Marley might not wake up. Ever."

She didn't say anything, just stared at him, and after a few seconds he shrugged. "Of course, that might not be so bad... it would take care of a big problem."

"Jesus, Niles – you can really be a cold fish, sometimes."

He arched one brow and said in a low voice, "If he goes down, he goes alone... we don't get dragged down with him. Marley's got no one to blame but himself. He knew what he was getting into when he took this job."

"When he took this job? And just what job is that, Niles?" She leaned forward, poking him in the chest. "And what about Julian - what was his job? You never got around to telling me."

His face was grim. "Their jobs are their business. Your job is your business. Tonight your job is to help me settle this situation one way or the other. Marley's a bloody fool – he's been getting screwed up on drugs every weekend, and this time he went too far. Licking that frog was pure idiocy. We'll save him if we can, but lose him if we must. No regrets, either way."

Trinity looked down at the ground, slowly shaking her head. Without looking up she said, "Alright, so when do we get started?"

"I'll go now. You wait five minutes, and then go into the Admissions Office, like we talked about. Ask for Sandy. She's the one I called earlier, and told that Marley's sister would be coming by. I already filled out most of the forms and faxed them to her. You won't have much to do, especially after you show her this."

He held out a manila folder; Trinity opened it and glanced at the title of the paper inside. "Advanced Health Card Directive... what's that?"

Niles laughed briefly, not much more than a quiet bark, and said, "Something that everyone should have but most people don't. It's a legal document stating who can make health care decisions for someone who's incapacitated. I filled it out in Marley's name and put you down as his authorized agent. It'll pass a casual inspection – no one here knows his real signature."

"It has a Notary Public's stamp and signature on it too," Trinity said. "How'd you manage that?"

"Victor's secretary Joanie is the Waxman in-house Notary. She keeps her materials locked in her desk, and thinks the lock is secure. It's not."

Trinity skimmed through the document. "So this says that I can decide whether Marley should stay here or be moved?"

"Exactly," Niles nodded. "It says a lot more than just that, though. I checked the boxes to give you complete authority to take him off life support and donate his organs. As long as he's in a coma, his life is pretty much in your hands."

"Jesus," she said. "And this is legal?"

"Perfectly. So you shouldn't have any problems. Be insistent that moving him to your home clinic has to be done tonight. _Has_ to be."

"Yeah, I got that part."

"Okay, good. After you get in there, it'll probably take you at least a half-hour to get the checkout and transfer paperwork finished. No need to rush - I'll need that time to get Marley ready. When it's all signed and approved, a nurse will escort you to Marley's room. If things go right, he should be awake when you get there. After that it's easy - we just bring him down here, load him into van, and take off. You go on home; I'll take him to my place overnight. Tomorrow... well, I don't know yet. We'll wait and see what kind of shape he's in. If you run into any problems with Sandy, call my cell. I'll be in Marley's room, but I'll try to answer. Any questions?"

She shook her head, but as he turned to go she snagged his arm and whispered, "Wait – tell me again how you wake him up."

He sighed, trying to stay calm. "Alright - I picked up a few items at the Waxman before coming here. What one drug can do, others can usually undo. I'm going give Marley an injection – actually, two injections. If he's going to wake up at all, it should be fast. He won't be totally lucid and conversational, but should at least be able to confirm that you're his sister, that I'm his personal doctor, and that he wants to be released into our care."

Trinity nodded, checked the time, and got back in her car. "Okay, five minutes, then I go see Sandy. Don't worry; I'll get it done."

Niles checked the time too, then nodded and walked up the path to the Bayview lobby, moved unhurriedly past the information booth and coffee shop, and stopped at the elevator bank. He waited with three other people, casual and relaxed, not making eye contact with anyone. Once the doors opened, he stepped inside, pushed the button for the 6th floor and stepped to the rear of the elevator. As he had hoped, the three others got off before him. When the third one exited at the 4th floor, he leaned forward and pushed the 7th floor button.

Now alone in the elevator, he opened his briefcase, took out the neatly folded white lab coat, slipped it on, and clipped the nametag reading Dr. Katzer onto the breast pocket. Lou Katzer had retired from the Waxman years ago, but a few forgotten items – like nametags – were still around in the old storeroom.

It wasn't a great ruse, but it was better than using his own name. Anything to confuse casual curiosity.

At the 7th floor J wing entrance, he went to the nurse's station and identified himself as Dr. Katzer of the Diamond Institute (a name he made up on the spot), part of a team evaluating Marley Granger. The nurse at the desk said that she didn't know about any evaluation, but Niles handed her Reid's Halliday business card, saying that he expected him to be along later. Meanwhile he would like to examine the patient to see if he could be moved to a private facility.

"OK," the nurse said. She checked the visitor log. "Yes, Mr. Durham was in here yesterday. We moved Mr. Granger to another room though. He's no longer in the restricted area. Just go down this corridor, take a left, and look for room 732."

Niles thanked her with a smile and started off, feeling a sudden rush of relief - no guard, no restrictions. He'd been ready with a story about providing security at the private clinic, but it wouldn't be needed now.

Okay – first hurdle was crossed.

He found 732 and kicked away the doorstop as he walked in. The door closed with a subdued whoosh.

The room lights were dim and the curtains were drawn back. A light rain beat against the windows and wind skittered leaves around the parking lot below, but no sound reached inside.

It was very quiet. Eerily quiet.

He closed the curtains, turned up the lights, and peered at Marley's face. Slack-jawed and pale, a few days growth of beard, but still breathing, still alive.

"How deep under are you?" Niles wondered. "Let's find out." So he leaned close and slapped Marley's face, sharp and loud. If he was faking or only sleeping, it would have stung him awake.

"Look at me, pig shit" he hissed. "You're not going to fool me, so don't try to play dead. "

No response.

Niles straightened up and nodded. Okay, Marley wasn't faking it, he really was out. And might stay that way \- the Spirit Door can be a one-way trip: you plummet through and never find your way back.

"Maybe, just maybe, that's happening right now," Niles said softly. "But I'm not going to let you go without a fight – there's still work to do. Later, you can sink into any la-la-land coma you want. But not...just...yet."

He opened his briefcase and took out the zippered bag. There was a plastic tray on the table next to Marley's bed, and Niles emptied the bag onto it: syringes, needles, gloves, the plastic tube from his -80°C freezer, and the glass ampules from the Med Center.

The liquid in the plastic tube had thawed but was still very cold, so he put it between the palms of his hands and rubbed back and forth to warm it . He moved gently and carefully; with too much heat and agitation the solution would begin foaming, a sure sign that the delicate protein inside was denaturing and losing its potency.

After fifteen seconds it was ready. He slid a needle onto one of the syringes and sucked the liquid from the tube into the barrel of the syringe. It was a pretty hefty dose of the antidote, but as far as he knew it wasn't poisonous, and he wanted a fast response, so why not?

Niles set down the syringe and pulled back the sheet covering Marley's right arm.

Sure enough, there was a needle with plastic tubing hooked to a vein in the back of his right hand. It was a line that the nurse kept in place to administer drugs or take blood samples; instead of inserting a fresh needle every time, it was easier to do just one insertion and leave the needle in, clamped off.

He pulled the needle off of his syringe and dropped it back into the zippered bag. Then he hooked his syringe into the Luer fitting at the end of the plastic tubing hanging from Marley's hand, loosened the clamp, and very slowly pushed home the plunger.

When that was done, he filled the syringe with sterile saline from a bottle next to the bed, and injected that to wash any residual antidote out of the tubing and into Marley's vein. Then he tightened the clamp, removed the syringe, and put it back into the zippered bag. He glanced up at the wall clock; Trinity should be at the Admissions Office by now.

It was tempting to get going with the second injection, but no - the antidote needed time to displace the frog toxin from Marley synapses. An hour or more would be best, but they didn't have that long. Fifteen minutes would have to do.

There was a large analog clock on the wall, with a round white face, a short black minute hand and a long red second hand. But fifteen minutes can seem like forever when you're waiting and counting the seconds, and the hands seemed to be crawling through molasses.

After four minutes he gave up watching, went to the window, and peeked through the blinds. The sky was dark – no stars showed through the clouds – and the lights in the parking lot made little circles of glistening yellow light on the wet asphalt. There were a few airplanes cruising in from the south, moving toward the SF airport. He watched them go slowly by, then turned around for another look at the wall.

Christ! Only another four minutes had gone by. But it was time to prepare the next injection, which would be a mixture of the liquids in the glass ampules. He took a small file, similar to a fingernail file but with a firm triangular blade, scratched a thin score line on one side of the first ampule's thin neck, then wrapped the paper towel around it and gently pressed. The glass neck broke cleanly at the score mark.

He put a needle onto the second syringe, lowered the needle into the clear liquid inside the ampule, and slowly drew back the plunger, half-filling the syringe barrel. By repeating the process with the amber liquid in the second ampule, he ended with the syringe filled up to the top mark.

As with the first syringe, he attached it to the plastic tubing that led to the vein in Marley's wrist, but this time didn't loosen the clamp. Not yet; needed to wait another... mmm – almost three minutes.

The sudden sound of the door swooshing open made his shoulders jerk and sent a quick chill running down his spine. He'd been so keyed up tinkering with the syringes that he'd blocked out everything else. Damn it! It couldn't be Trinity yet, could it? He swiveled around and saw a nurse backing into the room, pulling a small cart.

She hadn't seen him yet.

With a quick motion, he turned away as if he hadn't heard anything, and focused his attention on Marley. He counted slowly to six, waiting for his pulse to quiet down. Then he straightened up and casually turned around. A young nurse was standing at the door, looking puzzled.

"Oh, hello" Niles said, hoping he didn't sound as awkward as he felt. "Is it already time for a check on the patient?"

"Yes, we look in on him every hour, just in case he's showing any signs of regaining consciousness."

"Ah, good. Well, he hasn't yet, but it looks like he's about to. I'm here representing the Granger family. His sister is down stairs now, arranging for him to be moved to our private clinic."

The nurse left the cart at the door and walked closer. She activated the computer screen on the bedside table while studying the name tag on Niles' lab coat.

"Doctor Katzer? I'm Noreen Kent. I don't think we've met. Are you a regular staff member?"

"Oh, no," Niles answered smoothly. "I have my own clinic. The Grangers have been my patients for years, ever since Marley was a lad. Have you been caring for him since Monday night?"

"No," she said, "I've been away on a holiday. My shift just started a few hours ago, so I don't know this patient very well. But I do know that we get special cases here. Let me just check to see what his medications are, and when he's scheduled for another dose."

She pulled a chair to the computer console and sat down, just inches away from Marley's right arm. As she started scrolling through patient charts, Niles eyes widened and he felt a split second of panic.

Christ Almighty! He hadn't pulled the sheet back over Marley's arm. There it was, the syringe dangling from the inlet tube, the needle sticking into the back of his hand... and Noreen's elbow was almost brushing against it. All she had to do was look back to notice the whole thing. And she would know that he put it there.

And... and then what?

Sure enough, she clicked off the computer screen and turned toward Granger's side. But she didn't look down at him; instead she was looking at Niles. "His vital signs are good. In fact, they've getting better all the time, and no meds due for the rest of the night. So I'll be off now - sorry to have bothered you, Doctor Katzer." As she talked, she gently pulled the sheet over Marley and neatly tucked it under his chin.

Niles smiled and nodded, and with that Nurse Noreen Kent pushed her cart out the door and on toward the next room.

When the door clicked closed, Niles let out a long-held breath and muttered, "Okay, heart, you can start beating again."

It was now almost eighteen minutes since the first injection – hopefully enough time for the antidote to work its effects. But was there enough time left for the second injection to do its job? He wanted Marley to be awake and semi-lucid when Trinity and the discharge nurse got here.

No time to waste then. He flipped the sheet back, loosened the clamp, and pushed the syringe plunger in; slowly... steadily... just like the first time. The drug cocktail oozed down the plastic tubing and into Marley's vein, where it then rushed through his system. Niles counted to ten, then tightened the clamp and removed the syringe. As with the antidote, he did a saline chase injection, then dropped the syringe into his zippered bag and put the bag into his briefcase.

He'd seen this response before, but is still amazed him at how fast the human nervous system reacted to excitatory drugs and hormones. Marley's breathing rate jumped and his eyes opened, moving from side to side, not really seeing clearly, but beginning to focus... starting to get that "Where the Hell am I?" look in them.

Niles leaned in close and whispered, "Welcome back to planet Earth."

It took a few more seconds, but Marley's eyes finally fixed on Niles. He blinked rapidly three or four times, then said in a raspy voice, "Drink? Mouth's dry."

Niles picked up the controller for the bed and pushed the button to raise it to a semi-seated position. Then he poured half a glass of water and held it out.

Marley had trouble holding the glass at first, but after a moment his grip steadied and he raised it to his lips. He drank, coughed, handed the glass back, and looked around, slowly taking in the whole room. Niles stood by silently, waiting for him to finish. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute.

"Okay," Marley finally said, his voice stronger now. "I'm sitting in a hospital bed. I get that. A little groggy, and my feet hurt. So why am I here? What happened?"

Niles handed him another glass of water. "Think," he said. "What do you remember?"

Marley squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them and rubbed his forehead. He drank more water, coughed again and shook his head. "Weird ass dreams... but before that, um... I don't know."

"Does a frog mean anything to you?" Niles asked. "How about a fight?"

Marley thought for a minute, looking this way and that, trying to make sense out of things.

"Okay," he finally said. "I was having a few drinks with a friend... uhh, yeah, there was a fight ....then I was falling on something."

"What about the frog?"

Marley's stared ahead, eyes narrowed, trying to think. He broke into a grin. "Oh yeah – one of Phil's little red and blue guys. So that's what I got whacked out on."

"Among other things, yes," Niles said. "You also whacked into a wooden table up in the hills. And you didn't fall; you were tossed like an overstuffed beanbag. By someone better than you."

"Better than me?" Marley shook his head. "That part's a little foggy."

"It'll all come back to you, if not tonight then by tomorrow. You didn't completely fry your brain. But we can't wait around here in your hospital room. We have problems. Trinity is down stairs now, signing the check-out papers. She's posing as your sister, and I'm your family's doctor. We're telling the hospital people that we want to transfer you to my private clinic."

He spoke slowly, giving Marley a chance to understand. "When the nurse comes in here, you need to be awake, you need to identify us, and you need to agree to be moved. Trinity is your younger sister; I'm Joe Katzer, your family doctor. Got it?"

Marley looked at him blankly. "I remember some son of a bitch, yeah. I wanted to kill him. Crazy.... I think I'd like another crack at him."

Niles voice hardened. "You might get that chance, and it could be soon, but damn it, you need to focus on what we're doing now. Did you hear what I said? Trinity is your sis-"

"- I got it," Marley interrupted. "Yeah, just \- get me outta here."

"Alright then," Niles said, feeling a bit calmer. "This is Thursday – you've been here since late Monday night. You'll be spending the next couple of days at my place, laying low and resting up. I expect you'll be having a busy weekend."

Marley didn't answer – memories of Monday night were beginning to crystalize in his brain.

"That son of a bitch," he whispered again.

* * * * * * *

Thirty minutes later a nurse wheeled Marley through the large glass doors at the Bayview entrance as Niles pulled his van into the patient loading zone. Trinity helped Marley get into the back seat, covered him with a warm blanket, and got in next to him. Niles drove to Trinity's car, out of sight of the hospital doors, and pulled over while she got out.

He rolled down his window, motioned for her to come over, and said in a low voice, "I won't be coming in to work tomorrow. I want to get away for a few days and plan things out. Marley'll stay at my place. He's got work to do this weekend at the Waxman. I'll be in touch later and let you know what to do next. Until then, just act normal."

She watched them drive off and then looked up at the sky, which was just beginning to drizzle. As she turned toward her car she shook her head. "Normal? After what I heard from Reid today? I don't think so. Nothing's been normal in my life for a while now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon."

Chapter 31: Off to LV

Day 4: Thursday night

We got off the ground okay and headed southeast. Eddie's a good pilot, but flying near or over the Sierra Nevada in a stormy winter – not my idea of a relaxing way to spend the evening.

Nothing to do but leave it in his hands and try, though. It's a small jet with two seats up front for pilot and copilot – a young guy named Grady, in this case; Halliday has a policy that calls for two pilots when taking a corporate jet. There's a cushy area in the back with table and seats for six passengers. There are also lots of windows, a bathroom and kitchen, and the seats fold down to make beds, so it's easy to kick back and snack, nap, or sight-see.

Once we were in the sky, though, there wasn't much too look at - clouds blocked the view of anything below - and I wasn't hungry or tired, so I had an hour to do nothing but lean back and think.

After a few minutes I took out a sheet of paper and wrote Not Involved on the left side and Involved on the right side. True, I still had to figure out what was going on, but it seemed like something was, and this kind of mental exercise helps me stay organized.

I wrote Kelsey, Harolde, and Lester on the left side, and, on right, Marley, Phil, and Julian. In the middle I put Victor and Niles. I drew an arrow pointing left from Victor's name, indicating that he probably belonged in the Not Involved group. With Niles, I had arrows pointing both directions, with question marks over them.

He's an odd character – seemed to have strong connections both ways. Kelsey's known him since she was a kid, and he'd clearly been helpful to her personally and to her career. He'd earned a high level position at the Waxman, and Victor seemed to trust him. On the other hand, in spite of being the chairman of his department, he claimed to have little detailed knowledge of Phil's project, and essentially no knowledge of what Julian was doing.

Plus there's the drug history thing: Slim Sanchez said during the scandal three years ago, Niles' lab had a lot of dangerous stuff. When the tighter regulations were implemented, he, as chairman, should have been front and center in their enforcement... yet, again, he claimed to be out of that loop.

Then there's Marley's offer letter, which was signed by Niles, not Phil. But the funds are coming straight out of Phil's grant, not departmental money. So who is Marley really reporting to?

I added one more name to the center section: Trinity. No idea how she fit into all this, but she was tied in one way or another and needed to be somewhere on the list.

So then I wrote NEXT in all caps, and under it started a list:

• Marley

Need to talk as soon as possible; health an issue?

• Phil

Must to see him as soon as he gets back. When will that be?

Or can Kelsey question him when she gets down there?

• Niles

Have him show his paperwork on Phil's project

Push for more info on the private source of Phil's funds

• Notebooks

What info do they show about Marley's or anyone else's activities?

• Why were animals dying?

What kind of insecticide spray was Marley using – if any?

Could it have killed them?

If not, what else may have?

Need to have their carcasses tested.

• Kanja fruit

Genetically modified? If so, how?

Would that be consistent with Niles' story about medical uses?

Or could it explain the dead animals?

How can we test it for toxins?

• Lester

Go over the murder story with him again. ANY other details he may remember?

Finally, I drew a line under it all and wrote SHIFTING FOCUS.

This started out as an evaluation of the Waxman as a potential source of new street drugs, the purpose being to prevent it, and that's why Captain Mills put me on the case. From Victor's point of view, the investigation was broader in scope and more in depth - including both the drugs and a potential murder \- the purpose being to maintain the Waxman's good reputation.

Then there was the personal angle: Both Kelsey and Trinity wanted to know what could've been so important that it drove Julian to take his own life, or to make someone murder him. It meant a lot to them personally, to know for sure that he hadn't killed himself. And if proving that would give them peace of mind, then it meant a lot to me, too.

I felt like I needed to get up and walk around, to stretch a bit, so I went over to the refrigerator, took out a small can of tomato juice, and poured it into a glass with ice. Funny thing about tomato juice – I like it, but about the only time I drink the stuff is on a plane ride.

On the way back to the seat, my phone chimed three notes – must've got a text.

It was from Trina: Reid have U talked to G-Pa yet? Axel is better, kids doing fine, everyone sez Hi. Luv, T

Okay, right... I made a mental note to call Grandpa Lincoln tomorrow, then felt guilty and dialed his number. It rang four times and went to his messages. I left a brief "Hello", said I'd try again later, and closed with "Luv you."

The tomato juice tasted really bland, so I dosed it with a shot of pepper and garlic salt. Much better, and as I flopped down in my seat and sipped it, my mind went back to riding in the truck with Kelsey, and then later, at her place, meeting Laila and Stevie.

Laila was Harolde's sister, but, unlike him, seemed shy and reserved. Stevie was very outgoing and talkative, though. Everything interested him, and within ten seconds, he was pointing to the long scar running down my right arm.

"Can I touch it?" he asked. Laila shushed him, said it was rude to ask that, but I nodded, "Sure." He asked how I got it and I told I hit a big, sharp rock (which was kind of true).

"Why'd you do that?"

"I fell off a motorcycle." (Also kind of true.)

"Did it hurt?"

"Nah – didn't feel a thing." (Mostly true, for the first few seconds anyway, as I rolled and skidded across the mud and gravel... then the white-hot pain seared through my right arm and leg, and I saw splintered bone ends piercing through my forearm.... Well, Stevie didn't need to know that part, yet.)

"Oh," he said, and then ran his finger around the tattoos on my left arm, the same ones Harolde had asked about. I told him that my grandfather was a Native American who lived up north, near Oregon.

"You're a Indian?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting up. "For reals?"

I said yes, but just part only. Then he said that he knew where Oregon was and ran off. He was back in thirty seconds with a book about northern California and Oregon. There were pictures of mountains and rivers and lakes, and some of the native tribes, mostly fishing and hunting scenes. He pointed to one man and said, "Is that your grandpa?" I studied it carefully, then shook my head. "No, grandpa is much bigger than that."

"Is your grandpa as big as Bigfoot?"

"No," I laughed, "not that big, and a lot better looking."

When I left five minutes later, Stevie and I were fast friends. He gave me a hug and smiled when Kelsey said that I'd be back in two days to take them to the circus.

Then, as I was getting into the truck, Kelsey gave me a hug too, a good strong one.

"How'd you get to be so good with kids?"

"My sister says I'm just a big kid myself."

She laughed, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and whispered, "Be safe and come back soon."

While I was musing over that last part the plane gave a bump, another one, and then lurched sideways before smoothing out again. Tomato juice sloshed over my hand and dripped into my lap.

"Sorry Reid," Eddie called out. "Minor turbulence ahead. I'll try to go around it."

We banked slightly to the right and my knee hit up against the box that Chypp had given me back at Halliday's.

" _What's in it?"_ I thought. _"Something important?"_

Yeah, for sure.

And then, _"Why'd they need me? Something dangerous?"_

Probably.

"Be safe...." Yes, well, getting through this damn plane ride without spilling anymore juice would be a good start.

Chapter 32: Wake Up

Day 5 Friday Morning

The alarm went off at five-thirty the next morning. Niles slapped the off-button and sat up. He wasn't in a good mood – too much of the night had been spent lying awake, thinking and re-thinking about what needed to be done.

Too damn much to do and too damn little time. No way around it though. Okay then - stand up, stretch, yawn, shuffle to the bathroom....

He cranked the space heater setting to 'High' and stood next to it, enjoying the hum of warm air, then leaned into sink and splashed cold water on his face – eight, nine, ten times - toweled dry, and pulled on a robe. It was still dark – sun wouldn't be up for at least an hour – but he glided easily down the stairs to the kitchen. Walking in the dark never bothered him; he'd slogged hundreds of miles at night on trails over mud, rock and sand, so a smooth hardwood floor was no problem.

In a week or so he'd be in the jungle forest again, and this time would be the biggie, the culmination of three years of planning, pushing, and prodding. And who knew about it? Almost nobody outside of his little group; the hand-picked few whose accomplishments had been remarkable.

Really - quite remarkable. It was a shame that they wouldn't all be able to share in the rewards. Some though; yes, some would, unless they unraveled like Julian had done... and Phil was doing. And now it looked like maybe Marley was coming apart, too.

A pity. But we can't let it happen just yet.

Niles opened the refrigerator, unzipped his small leather pouch, and took out a glass vial and syringe. Time to give Marley another dose. Last night's injections brought him back to the land of the living, but he'd need another kick-start this morning. Niles fitted a needle onto the end of the syringe, inserted it through the rubber cap on the vial, and drew in a half- cc of the clear liquid.

On the way down the hallway he carried the loaded syringe very carefully, not wanting to drop it or, worse yet, stick himself. Inside Marley's bedroom, the light from the bedside lamp was a soft amber glow, just bright enough to see him sprawled on the guest bed. Niles stared down and whispered "You're on thin ice, my friend. If your fate was up to the Consortium there might be something else in this syringe. But you're lucky – I still need you, so here's a little wake-up call instead."

Marley's right arm was curled over his chest, but Niles gently grabbed his wrist and straightened it out. One thing about Marley – even after laying pretty much inert for three days, his muscles were still well defined and the veins stood out like blue cables. It was easy to slide the needle into the cubital vein on the inside of the right elbow.

Niles pushed the plunger home, and the liquid swam into Marley's blood. After a few seconds, he pulled out the needle and pressed a small square of sterile gauze onto the spot. After another minute he lifted the gauze and checked for blood: none, except for a tiny red dot on the gauze. Okay – good. He straightened up, put the syringe and gauze into a plastic baggie, dropped them into the leather pouch, and left the room.

During all of this, Marley hadn't budged. But two minutes later, his eyelids fluttered open. He saw an unfamiliar ceiling and mumbled, "What the Hell...?" His voice sounded odd; his lips felt dry and puffy. He closed his eyes and tried to think.

Foggy headed. Fuzzy images of riding in car, and... a hospital? Yes, he'd been in a hospital room, and then Niles and Trinity were talking, not making much sense. Hmmm....

With something between a sigh and a groan he sat up, the memories becoming sharper. Was this Niles' house? As he rolled out of the bed a sharp, stabbing pain shot through his thigh. Looking down, he could see that it was bandaged; now what had happened there? He fumbled his way to the bathroom, turned on the lights and stared at the mirror. The face looking back was thin and needed a shave (" _How long've I been out?_ ") - but was clear eyed and sober.

Well, that was a welcome change. Maybe a little detox time was good every once in a while.

After using the toilet and taking a long hot shower, he felt better. Better than he had in a long time. But hungry, yes, very.

So he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked down the hall toward the smell of fresh coffee. When he appeared in the kitchen door, Niles poured him a cup and motioned to a chair at the breakfast table.

"Feeling alive yet?"

"A little shaky, but getting better."

"Good," Niles said. "You have today to recover. It's going to get busy tomorrow."

Marley tried the coffee. It was strong and hot, and he could feel the hit of the caffeine. After two days of no solid food – just an IV tube - this was a jolt to his system.

A good jolt, though. Just what he needed.

Niles set a tray on the table and sat down.

"Try some. Noah's bagels. Got some blueberry schmear, too. They're best if you toast 'em first."

Marley looked through them slowly, then grunted, picked up a sesame, and bit into it without toasting or adding any cream cheese. Just hot coffee and a cold bagel – that was fine for now.

Niles leaned back, folding his arms and crossing his legs.

"Today is Friday, about six in the morning. You've been zonked out since late Monday night. Or maybe early Tuesday morning - anyway, that's seventy-something hours. Why? You might've had a knock on the head, but that didn't put you under. Hell, you probably never even felt the knock because you were so screwed up on drugs. Not common street ones, though; stuff you found in the freezers at the Waxman. And you topped it off by sucking on a frog."

"By what?" Marley looked confused, but only for a moment. Then his face cleared and he laughed. "Yeah, huh, but so what? I've been working my ass off on your pet project, Stratton, and what I do on my private time is nobody's business."

"Well it wasn't so private this time, Marley. You're damn lucky - you could have been in a death coma; instead, all you got were a few bruises and some seriously needed sleep. A lot happened while you were out of it, though, and we have damage control to do. It starts like this...."

Niles told him about the incident at Grant Lake with the mountain lions, but emphasized the fight with Reid, how he'd taken Marley down so easily and was now probing around the Waxman.

Marley seemed to be listening carefully, but didn't appear bothered. His only response was to shrug, get up, refill his coffee cup and open the refrigerator.

"Got any eggs?"

"In the drawer on the bottom, next to the lettuce. You don't seem too concerned about Reid."

"I'm more concerned about breakfast - somethin' besides just a bagel. If I run into him again, I'll flatten him, okay? Anyway, what the Hell? He can't stop anything – I've finished all the tough lab work. Nothing left but harvesting and final cleanup"

Niles sat quietly for the next three minutes, letting Marley fry two eggs and toast another bagel. Then he waited another five minutes in silence while Marley ate.

But enough was enough and his patience wore thin; he leaned forward and said, "Tell me again - are you sure you feel OK now?"

Marley pushed away his plate and nodded. "Yeah, much better. Feet're a little sore, but other than that, I'm good."

"Are you?" Niles smiled. "Well, then maybe you won't mind too much when I tell you what an idiot you are."

Marley glared back. "Excuse me? What was that?"

"Oh – you got a problem understanding? Why – have I got a speech impediment or are you just dense? – I said that you're an idiot." Niles said it calmly, but emphasized the last word.

Marley hunched forward in his chair, alternately squeezing and unsqueezing his thick hands into hard fists. Then he relaxed and actually smiled. "Okay, so maybe I went a little too far. But it was just one time."

Niles shook his head. "From what I hear, you've been out of control a lot lately. But even if it was just once... the Titanic only hit one iceberg; Lincoln only got shot one with one bullet; Hiroshima only got one bomb. The point is, sometimes even once is too much.".

Marley laughed, "You're just jealous 'cause you don't have the balls to do stuff like I do."

"Don't confuse balls with brains, Granger. Tell you what – next month you can blow your mind ten times over for all I care. Until then, though, keep your goddamn head screwed on straight. I don't give a fuzzy damn about your sex life or your drugs. But I give a big damn about having an outsider snooping around."

"Snooping? He can't get into my lab," said Marley. "I changed the locks and have the only keys. Not you, not Victor, not Waxman Security, not even Phil can get in."

Niles rolled his eyes. "For someone who's supposed to be so brilliant, you really are a dumb shit sometimes. Where do you think your keys are?"

Without waiting, he went on "They're in Reid's coat pocket, that's where. He's been in your lab and in your apartment, too."

Marley frowned, but didn't say anything. Niles leaned forward and tapped the table. "What do you have there that you don't want anyone to see?"

Marley slowly swirled the coffee around and around in his cup, thinking, then, without looking up, said, "The apartment's empty, almost. I hardly spend any time there – I'm mostly out and about or at the Waxman. The lab looks pretty much like any other lab; he won't find much there. I keep my critical stuff – vectors, tissue samples, gene constructs, special reagents – in the freezers or in the liquid nitrogen room. Everything's labeled with my own codes... nobody could make any sense out of it without my notebooks, and I keep those with me all the time."

"Really," Niles stared with a mocking, unpleasant grin. "Really – then maybe you can tell me where your notebooks are?"

Marley stared back. He felt like pasting the old creep in the jaw, but instead he sipped the coffee and tried to think.

"My backpack. Yeah, they're in my backpack. Gimme a second to remember where I left it."

"Don't think too hard, you might blow a capillary and give yourself a stroke," Niles said, shaking his head. "I'll give you a break: Here's the answer: you left your backpack with your queer-ass friend, and he gave it to the goddamn snoop, and the snoop gave it to Victor, and Victor gave it to me. So your backpack is in my office at the Waxman."

"Don't call him that," Marley said.

"Don't call who what?" Niles asked.

"Lester. His name is Lester. Don't call him a queer-ass; he's a good guy."

Niles stood up, leaned in close to Marley, and went on in a menacing voice. "Well your 'good guy' sold you out. Not only gave your notebooks away, but also told Reid about a senior Waxman researcher who everyone thought committed suicide, but who actually was murdered. Now - where could he have ever heard a strange story like that?"

If he meant to intimidate Marley, it didn't work. Marley's eyes narrowed and he raised his right hand, holding the index finger an inch from Niles' nose, and answered in a tone just as menacing.

"Get out of my face, Stratton. I've done everything you wanted, and faster than anyone else could have. And all I've gotten from you are promises. I'm getting pretty goddamn tired of empty promises – you better come up with some of those millions you've been jabbering about."

Niles glared at him. "You still don't get it, do you? We've been hired by very heavyweight people to do a job. If we do it well, then we get paid well. If we screw it up, then we disappear. No drama, no warning; we just disappear. Like a light switch being flicked off."

"And we have some very upsetting problems: For one, before Reid gave your notebooks to Victor, he made copies and gave them to Kelsey. She's going to be reading them and reporting back on anything unusual. For another, your, uh... good friend. Besides the bit about someone being murdered, he also told everyone that you work on 'strange fruit trees', so Reid and his partner have been out on the balcony with Jose, checking out your Kanja. Now, what else you may have blabbed to your friend about the project - or about me - I don't know. And what else he may have sang about, I don't know. But it all worries me. Greatly. And I don't think the Consortium is too pleased, either."

Marley didn't say anything, just glowered and tapped his thumb softly on the table top. After ten seconds of silence, he pushed his chair back from the table, walked to the sink, dumped out the last bit of coffee from his cup, and pulled open the refrigerator.

"Got any juice? I'm tired of coffee, but my mouth's still dry."

"Check the shelves in the door," Niles said. "Should be some orange juice there."

Marley grabbed a bottle, unscrewed the cap, took a long drink, and leaned back against the sink. He coughed and shook his head, then took a second drink, set the bottle down, folded his arms, and looked at Niles.

"Alright," he finally said, "Don't worry about this Reid guy. I'll break his goddamn neck. And I'll think of something to do about Lester. Sometimes when I get high, I get a little talkative, so I actually don't know what else I may have told him... could be anything."

"That's just great," Niles shook his head. "Okay then, you've had something to eat and drink, your brains and balance are better, your emotions are intact – at, least, you seem like the same son of a bitch you were before. So it looks like you survived your trip through the Spirit Door. You were lucky, this time, but maybe next time you won't be."

Marley shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I like it on the other side of that door. Better than the shit-hole life I've got here."

Niles spread his hands and slowly shook his head. "Your life can get a whole lot better if we take care of business."

Marley shrugged again and took another swig of juice.

"So," Niles continued. "Can we have a useful discussion now, instead of just yammering back and forth at each other?"

Marley nodded. "Okay. Lead off."

"Alright," Niles nodded in return. "First, we need to handle Reid, but don't just jump in and do anything rash. We have to take him out carefully, and probably not here. I have a rough plan in mind, but need to work out the details. So let's just keep that one on the shelf for now. Anyway, he's gone to Vegas for a day or two, and we've got other, more urgent items to deal with."

Marley came back to the table, sat down, and said, "Like what?"

Chapter 33: Plans

Day 5 Friday Morning

Niles pushed a sheet of paper across the table. Marley turned it around so he could read the cramped handwriting:

• Send Kanja fruit to Phil

• Eliminate all traces of Kanja trees at the Waxman

• Notebooks

• Get Reid to Klamath

"I'll call Jose later this morning," Niles said, "and tell him we need a couple of his crew to stick around for some evening work, and to have one of the maintenance trucks ready. People leave early on Fridays, especially in December, so most everyone should be cleared out by 6 PM. But you wait till 8:00, anyway, then show up and get busy. Give whoever's there to help you a hundred bucks each, and have them load all of the Kanja fruit into boxes and onto the truck. Don't go through the Waxman shipping and receiving people – I want this to be a little more anonymous. Instead drive to FedEx, the one on Zanker road, and talk to Reuben, the night manager. He's cool – we've used him before. Send the boxes to Phil by air, as quick a delivery time as they can do. The cost doesn't matter. You've got his secure address, right?"

Marley nodded. "Yeah, I've sent stuff down there before. It goes to that Salvata air base, right?"

"Uh-huh, that's the best way. They have military clearance; be sure to use our ID code, and whatever we ship out will go directly to them, no problems with customs, inspections, or any other hassle."

"Okay," Marley nodded. "I can get that done pretty fast, but getting rid of the trees'll take more time. Why don't we just leave them there on the balcony? Once the fruit's gone, they'll just look like any other little trees."

"No," Niles shook his head. "We need complete closure. We can't leave genetically modified trees hanging around the Waxman."

Marley grimaced. "I worked hard on those, Niles. No one else could have done it like I did, in less than two years. I hate to just destroy them."

"No," Niles said again. "The whole point of the project was to get the fruit, and now we've got it. We don't need the trees anymore. Look, I agree – you did a bang-up job, a great job. Anyway, you've still got the germplasm frozen away, right? You could grow a new crop of trees if you needed to, right?"

Marley nodded, but didn't look happy. "Yeah, okay. But it'll still take most of a day to get rid of everything."

"Fine – Just make sure it gets done. Have Jose get a few guys to help you on Saturday. Slip them a hundred bucks each, too. Do whatever you need to do – just make sure to burn everything. Be thorough - we don't want anything left."

"What about Reid? You think he might show up? I wouldn't mind gettin' my hands on him."

"All in good time. Anyway, like I said, he's in Vegas, so he won't be nosing around the Waxman. I don't know about his twerpy assistant, though." Niles thought for a second or two, then shook his head. "Nah, I can't see her coming around by herself."

"Her?" Marley half-asked, half- growled, "Who's that?"

"He's got some... I don't know – she doesn't look much older than a kid, really... anyway, she was with him out on the balcony with Jose, taking pictures. I don't want her snooping around tomorrow and reporting back to him."

"So how do I recognize her?"

"Female. Asian. Looks kind of like Lisa Pham in finance, only younger."

"Like Lisa, huh?" Marley smiled. "She that cute?"

"Yeah," Niles said slowly, "she is. But don't get any stupid ideas - you're in enough trouble already."

Marley didn't say anything, just kept smiling; but it was a crude smile, more of a smirk, really. It reminded Niles that he didn't like Marley, had never liked Marley, and that when this was all over, it would be a pleasure getting rid of him.

But first things first.

"How 'bout we go on to the next item on the list: Notebooks."

"Sure," Marley said, "what about 'em?"

"What about them?" Niles voice was rising. "Like - what's in there that could give us a problem? Anything that Kelsey could figure out?"

Marley took another sip of juice and cleared his throat. He didn't look real comfortable.

"Mmm – I have tables of chemicals, buffer formulas, the usual stuff; I describe how I do the transformations, how I grow the cells into plants, but I use my own codes for what the genes are, and the constructs I make from them. She shouldn't be able to understand much of it."

"What about testing for biological effects, the rat stuff that Phil's doing? What'd you write about that?"

"Yeah, I put something about that... I mean, it makes sense – that's how we tell how effective all my work really is. But I didn't put in a lot of details."

"Not a lot of details," Niles said, shaking his head, "but some, right?"

"Yeah, some. Ah, Hell, I don't remember what I wrote, exactly."

Niles closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, wishing for a moment that he'd just left Marley in the hospital. He splashed a half-cup of coffee into his mug, dumped in a large spoonful of sugar, and swirled it too hard, spilling some on the back of his hand.

It was only luke-warm and too sweet, but drinking it calmed his nerves.

He turned toward Marley, feeling a little better, and said, "I want you to try to get those books back – but for Christ sake be quiet about it. Kelsey'll be busy getting ready to leave on her trip. Wait for a chance to sneak into her house and get out with the books. Don't get caught. Don't raise Hell. Don't confront Kelsey. Don't end up in jail. If it looks like you can't get the books easily, then don't try; we'll leave it up to Colo."

"Colo? Who's that?"

"Oh yeah," Niles said with a slight grin. "The two of you haven't met, huh. Well... he's someone at the Mission, down where Phil is. Where Kelsey's going."

"And you think he can handle it?"

"Well – he'll have a lot more freedom to operate down there than you will up here. Plus - you might think that you're a bad-ass, but you're not in his league. You'd be smart to stay away from him."

Marley opened his mouth to say something, but Niles spoke first. "Okay, enough about that. Just get the notebooks if you can, but don't push it." He glanced at the time: nearly seven o'clock. "Look, I want to be out of here soon, so let's get on to the next item."

Marley looked down at the list. "Get Reid to Klamath? What's that mean?"

"Yesterday, before we got you out of Bayview, I had a chance to look up Reid's background. Seems he has a strong connection to Northern California, especially around the Klamath River."

"Okay..." Marley said, "so what?"

"Like I told you before, we can deal with Reid better if we can lure him away from here. Last night after you were passed out, I went on-line looking for something useful. It turns out that the Klamath River is the big hot-spot for Sasquatch sightings, and there's an annual river rafting trip every December. This year's going to be a wild one, what with all the rain we've had. The river should be higher than it's been in years. Easy for accidents to happen. A lot of the area's in a national forest – pretty rugged wilderness. No phone coverage, no internet; just wild river and mountains, and that's the attraction for Bigfoot junkies. People at the Waxman think that I'm just heading out for a photo shooting trip, but I booked a spot on that rafting trip. Now, if we can get Reid up there somehow... we can make sure that one of those unfortunate accidents does happen."

"Whoa," Marley grinned. "Kill the bastard? I didn't know you had it in you, Niles."

Niles frowned. "I don't. Just thinking about it makes me sick. But it's not my decision - the word came from higher up: clean this up and get out of here. Don't leave loose ends."

"Higher up?" Marley grunted, still grinning. "So you take orders too, huh? Well, how're we gonna do it?"

"Not sure yet," Niles shrugged. "Still working on it. I'll come up with something this weekend and let you know."

"So when is this rafting trip?"

"It leaves on Sunday. I'll be there for the start, and you can meet up later. Just make sure you get everything finished here first."

Marley nodded. "Okay then - get the fruit loaded and sent, then get rid of the trees and anything else... and try to get the notebooks."

"Right," Niles said, "and plug the leak, of course."

"Plug the leak? You mean Lester? He's got his hang-ups, who doesn't? He's one of the few guys I trust."

"Yeah, well you can trust him all the way to a prison cell, or maybe the gas chamber, but the Consortium doesn't. They must remain completely anonymous. Completely. No rumors, no trails, no wagging tongues. While you're sitting here today getting your strength back, think about what else you might have said to Lester, and how much more he could spill to the wrong ears."

Niles leaned forward, shaking his head. "Marley, the leak must be plugged, and, like I said about Reid – the decision is out of our hands."

He sat back, letting the words sink in, then got up and tossed what was left of his coffee into the sink, rinsed out the cup and put it into the dishwasher.

Marley said nothing, just sat still with a scowl on his face. Niles left the room, but returned a minute later wearing a jacket and carrying his car keys.

"I'm going now," he said. "I have a few things to take care of at the Waxman, then leave for my road trip. I'll talk to Jose about dropping a truck off here for you to use. Stay inside during the day, and don't go back to your apartment. I'll call tomorrow night, once I've got things figured out about Reid."

With a quick nod, he was out the door. Marley heard the car start up and drive off, but didn't move. He sat in silence, thinking about what had to be done.

The Kanja fruit? Yeah, he could handle that alright, but he hated to burn the trees. They'd taken a lot of work, and were unique, genetically. His unique trees. Ah, but what the Hell....

Notebooks and Kelsey, yeah. Maybe Niles had a soft spot in his head for her, but Marley didn't. They were his books, and damn it - he didn't want anyone else scrounging through them. If she got in his way, too bloody bad.

But Lester? What to do about Lester?

Goddamn....

Chapter 34: Vegas

Day 5 Friday evening

Today was kind of a lost day for me. I'd been chafing at the bit to be back in the Bay Area looking into the Waxman business, and – sure, I'll admit it – back close to Kelsey. Instead, I'd spent the day wading through problems with Mr. Caden Mars.

It was an effort, but I managed to box up all of that frustration and desire and store it away. But it was evening now and time to open the box up.

That was a technique I'd learned years ago, when life started hitting me with some pretty hard shots. One of grand-dad's friends worked with kids who scrambled along the margins of society, where it was easy to get frustrated and feel crunched, easy to end up in the gutter, in a prison, or an asylum.

"Life means functioning, doing, moving," she'd said. "Not big grand things, just little things... the nuts and bolts of living – you gotta eat, you gotta excrete, you gotta look out for stuff comin' at you. If you spend too much time worrying about what might've been and whining about what's wrong, instead of thinking about what's in front of you and what you need to do about it – _need_ to do about it – then you're not just standing still, you're sliding backwards. So take all that other stuff and put it in a box; make a little closet in your brain and shove that box in there. Then get up and get busy on what you need to do. If you can't figure it out by yourself, find someone to help. Later, at night when you're fed and resting, take that box out and sort through it. If you're lucky, the next day or next week or next year you might be able to make some of those 'might-have-beens' come true. But good luck usually doesn't just happen – most of the time it takes a damn lot of work to be lucky."

When I got a little older, I heard a simpler version of that called 'delayed gratification': Don't get paralyzed by focusing on what you want but can't have; instead, take care of business now but keep aiming at that reward. If you play it right, it'll come later.

Easier said than done, huh? Anyway, most of today was spent going around in a black Chevy Tahoe that Mr. Mars rented. His personal driver Alban was at the wheel; I was in the passenger seat, and Mars sat in the back next to Autumn Kool.

Short version of a long story: Mars and his wife went through a bitter divorce last year, and dividing up the assets had been a Hell of a mess. She disposed of some of his prized art collection just to piss him off, and he was trying to recover it. He hired a team of private detectives to locate the pricier pieces, and they tracked two paintings – each worth in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars – to casinos here in Vegas; they were being held as collateral for gambling debts that the ex-Mrs. Mars had incurred. The debts were only in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars, and the paintings were worth vastly more than that, so the casinos agreed to return them to Mr. Mars if he cleared it all up. But arranging that had been a tricky process. We first drove over to the Hoover Dam to meet the detectives, then headed back to the inner sanctum of each of the casinos to view the paintings and authenticate that they were the originals. Finally came the negotiations for completing the payoffs and the artwork transfer back to Mr. Mars.

Alban got us from place to place; Autumn handled communications and scheduling; Mr. Mars did the authentication and negotiations. And me? I mostly just provided comfort and support, tried to be a calming influence.

"Sometimes tempers and egos get heated, and the casinos have their private muscle," Autumn told me. "We'll feel better if you're there with us."

That was today; tomorrow we head to the bank, then to each of the casinos to transfer the cash and pick up the paintings, which we'll take to a very expensive and elite art handler for shipping to Mr. Mars' new place.

All straightforward, though time-consuming, so even if everything goes smoothly I won't make it back to the Bay Area until tomorrow afternoon. If there are any glitches, though... but let's hope not; we have plans to go to the circus tomorrow night, and I don't want to miss it.

When all the running around for today was finally done, I came back to my hotel to relax. It was a very nice room – Mr. Mars doesn't skimp on comforts – and the refrigerator at the bar had a selection of imported German beers. I picked out a Pfungstadter, took off my shoes, leaned back on a plush leather chair, and opened up that emotional box I mentioned earlier.

It was something to think about. I'd just met Kelsey two days ago, then saw her again yesterday... and here I was, already missing her like crazy.

'Strange,' I told myself, "you've been in love before, right? Or have you? – Maybe not. You've definitely been in lust before, that's for sure, but you've never been hit like this."

So I called her and she answered and we chatted and gushed for a few minutes and I told her how my day was and I asked her how her day was, and then she said, "I saw Marley at the Waxman a while ago."

"What?" I said. It caught me by surprise like a cold splash of ice-water in the face. That shouldn't have happened, but I'd let my guard down, had forgotten about Marley in the joy of the moment.

"Yeah," she went on, "I stayed late, getting some last things packed up, and went by our department library to return a few books. I was walking by Phil's lab, and there was Marley out on the balcony talking to a couple of the grounds crew."

"Did he see you?"

"No, I'm sure he didn't."

"Good. He may or may not know about you having copies of his notebooks, but stay away from him in any case. You're not going back there tomorrow, are you?"

"No, I'll be home." Then, with a little teasing lilt, she said, "waiting for my handsome date to come back."

And so we chatted for a few more minutes, then rang off.

I drummed my fingers on the plush leather and sipped the beer.

Then I phoned Slim Sanchez.

"Yeah," he said. "I heard about it this afternoon. Dr. Lund phoned to tell me. It seems that Marley was checked out of Bayview last night by his sister and her personal doctor. They said they were taking him to their private clinic. Lund said he'd never heard of that doctor or his clinic, but Reid, my man, it's no concern of ours. Like I told you before, no charges were ever filed, and we're ready to let it all drop and move on."

I thanked him, said good-bye, and had another beer.

What Slim said made sense from the official point of view – there was nothing definite to chase down, nothing to justify the committing of more resources.

But just let it drop and move on? Just end it?

That's not how I felt.

As far as I was concerned, the case was just beginning.

Chapter 35: Phil

Day 5: Friday evening

Afternoon rains had stopped and the sky around the Layard Clinic was clearing nicely. The grounds were still wet and the air steamy, but the night ahead should be clear and beautiful. Phil Poley stepped out of the shower, toweling off leisurely, more than ready to enjoy it.

His small bungalow was one of eight on the Clinic grounds used by visiting scientists, staff, and guests. No two were alike in detail, but most had a similar floor plan. The accommodations were minimal- a large front room with a desk and bookshelves; along one wall was the kitchen area with a small refrigerator, sink, and stove; two small bedrooms behind this; and to one side, a bathroom with shower. The front room was large enough for personal touches to be added, and over the years visitors had left drawings, wood carvings, maps, and other knickknacks. A tradition was to bring two books with you and leave them on the shelves when you left. It was expected that one would be something technical in your field, and the other any popular fiction, the more exciting and racier the better.

Each bungalow had a covered veranda running around all four sides. No matter the time of day or the month of the year, you could always find at least one side shady. There were comfortable chairs, card tables, and reading lights set here and there, and parts of it could be closed off with netting to keep out bugs.

Phil draped the wet towel over the shower door and checked out his hair in the mirror. A lot of gray was showing at the roots; he should have re-dyed it yesterday, but then he hadn't known yesterday that he'd have a date tonight.

Especially since it was over between him and Trinity now. Things had been getting worse for a while, and after their blowout last week she'd finally pulled the plug. He'd never been able to figure out why a goddess like her had come onto him in the first place. The good times hadn't really lasted long... actually, just long enough for him to get the lab work set up down here, and then Trinity seemed to lose interest. Well, what the Hell \- it was fantasy dream while it lasted, and now that it was over it was actually a relief, like a mystery cloud lifting.

Why were women so damn hard to figure out?

"Her loss... she's gone away, and sweet Phil has a date with a new cutie," he sang to his reflection in the mirror.

Veronica arrived by helicopter yesterday, the day after Trinity left for California. She was a journalist, looking to do a story on the jungle clinic, and spent the first few hours interviewing the staff. But when she learned about Phil, she gushed with enthusiasm. "With your background and experience, Dr. Poley," she told him, "I could do a feature article on just you alone."

Well, why not? He'd been underappreciated for years, so why not get a little recognition? Especially from a sharp, pretty lady? OK, maybe Veronica wasn't as hot as Trinity, but she was pretty enough and, best of all, she was actually interested in him, asked questions about his work - something Trinity had never done.

He studied his reflection: would a goatee make him look more sexy? Or just older? Maybe he'd ask Veronica's opinion.

How cool to find a journalist who wanted to write about him... of course, he couldn't let her know exactly what he was doing just now, but he could show her his earlier work, right?

This morning they took off in his jeep and had a fun time. He was tempted to take her to the Lab right away, but that was top secret. So he drove to a swampy field and showed her three poisonous flowers and a dark yellow mold that he'd discovered a few years back. She asked questions, took pictures, and smiled – really smiled at him.

Later, when they stopped for a picnic lunch, she'd leaned close and brushed her fingers across his cheek. But when he reached for her, she pulled back laughing, eyes twinkling, and said, "Wait till tonight."

Then she asked to see more, and before he knew it, he was driving to the Mission. And once there he had to take her into the Field Trial room and show her the cages, right?

Right?

She'd wanted to take photos but he said, "No – sorry, I'm going too far just showing you this much." And she'd understood, even borrowed his backpack to put her camera into. "It'll remove my temptation if I keep it out of sight."

That's when he remembered. Veronica still had his pack – he'd never gotten it back from her.

"Shit!" he winced, "shit, shit, shit, shit... Shit!"

His pack was where he kept his medicine kit, and he needed that kit for tonight.

Yeah - for years now he'd had a tough time getting it up. At his last physical the doctor nodded. "ED. Happens all the time; more common than you think," and gave Phil a prescription for a generic brand of nitrous oxide enhancer. "Take two capsules a couple of hours before having sex," the doc said. "If you're in a hurry, just put them under your tongue and let'em dissolve. The drug'll get into your system faster that way."

But the pills were in the medicine kit, which was in his day pack.

"Shit!"

He snatched a robe from the closet and was scrambling to get it on when a faint knocking came from front door. "Now who the Hell could that be?" he wondered, and when he jerked the door open, there was Veronica, hand raised to knock again.

"Oh... uh, hi," he blurted, a little embarrassed but pleasantly surprised, "I was just coming to see you."

"Really?" Her eyes sparkled. "And I was looking for you, too. I was hoping to get my camera from your backpack."

" _Yes_ ," Phil thought smugly, " _she wants me, and I won't disappoint her_...." Then – Wait a minute....

"But Veronica, that's why I was looking for you – you have the pack, right?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm sure I don't. It's back at the Mission, remember? I set it down outside of your lab so I wouldn't be tempted to take any photos. I thought you took it afterwards."

"Oh no," he said to her. To himself he said " _Damn! Damn! Damn!"_

"I, uh, I could drive there, but It'll take about an hour to go and come back."

"Oh would you?" she said, putting her hand on his arm. She leaned closer and whispered, "You're such a dear."

Phil wanted those pills. He really wanted those pills.

It took less than a minute to pull on a shirt and pants, grab his keys, and get to the jeep. In the last few weeks he'd driven the road to the Mission twenty times, but it seemed to take longer this time; always does when you're in a hurry, right?

Sure enough – when he got there the backpack was right where she said, just outside the lab door. How had he not seen it before when they were leaving? Strange....

On the way back to the jeep he unzipped the side pocket and took the pill bottle out of the medicine kit. Yes, there were still plenty left. He shook two into his hand and slid them under his tongue – might as well get them working right away.

The trip back to the clinic was uneventful but long; the sun was setting and visibility was getting tough, so he had to drive more slowly. But tonight... yes, tonight would make it all worthwhile. With a grin, he popped open the pill bottle and put another two capsules under his tongue.

This might be an all-nighter, and he wanted to be ready.

The clinic grounds were dark and quiet when he pulled in through the gate and skidded to a stop near his bungalow. He bounded up the stairs and through the door, tossing the backpack on the couch on his way to the bathroom. In the rush to get the pills he'd forgotten to shave after the shower, and wanted to be clean and smooth for later. "Don't want to leave a whisker burn on any tender areas," he said out loud, and smiled at the thought.

First though, toothpaste and a toothbrush. This was the first time he'd let the pills dissolve under his tongue, and the taste was surprisingly bitter. As he brushed his teeth, his mind wandered back to the day with Veronica. "That may have been a little stupid," he thought, "showing her the rats and all, but there's no way she could know what it was all about. 'Just a routine toxicity study' I'd said... and she didn't take any pictures.... Of course if Niles finds out, he'll blow a gasket."

He spat out the used toothpaste, rinsed, and laughed. "That's 'cause Niles hasn't got laid in years, mate. But you, buddy," he said, pointing to his reflection, "are going to make tonight a memorable one."

Next came the lather and razor. He shaved quickly, but nicked himself two or three times. "Damn – I thought the light in here was better. Why is it so hard to see?" He grabbed a Kleenex and dabbed at the cuts, then rinsed his face and pulled the robe around his shoulders, suddenly aware of how chilly the room had become.

"Weird," he muttered. "It was bloody hot an hour ago...."

The bedroom was pleasantly warmer, and he felt better while slipping into dark pants and a loose cotton shirt. It was one that Trinity had given him a few months back. "Your clothes are too friggin' dippy," she'd said. "Try this one."

Yes, she had a good fashion sense, he had to admit, and the shirt did look good on him. But his fingers fumbled with the buttons, and then he started coughing and had to spit into a tissue.

"Now why is it getting so dark in here? Are those goddamn solar panels working or not?"

He clicked on more lamp switches.... Okay, that was better.

But then he felt an odd, buzzy sensation in his throat, and the bitter taste in his mouth was coming back. He coughed again, leaned down to spit into the trashcan and was surprised to notice that it wasn't saliva – it was blood.

"What the Hell? – Where's that comin' from?"

As he straightened up a heavy wave of dizziness washed over him. It was blessedly brief, passing quickly after he leaned against the dresser to steady himself.

But it was unnerving. Damned unnerving.

"Jesus, I'm getting jumpy." He opened the top dresser drawer, took out the bottle of Isle de Clair cognac, poured a shot and tossed it down. But when he tried to pour a second one, the glass slid out of his hand and bounced on the wooden floor.

"OK, OK, maybe one's enough," he muttered and bent to pick up the shot glass...and kept going, slipping down to one knee. It was hard to straighten up, and when finally he made it he took a deep breath, shook his head, and checked the time.

"Still have a few minutes till I meet Ver - Vernilla...Veronka... Jeez, what's with my tongue?"

"Maybe if I lie down for a bit, get my wits back..." but once on the bed, his throat burned even worse, and a stifling stiffness clutched his chest. He closed his eyes, concentrated on slowing his breathing, but couldn't get control of it.

When he opened his eyes everything looked fuzzy, and the room light seemed even dimmer.

He forced himself to his feet and fought through the dizziness to stumble into the bathroom.

What he saw in the mirror was a man with pinpoint pupils, pale, blotchy skin, quaking muscles, slack-jawed and gasping for air.

A man in bad trouble... a man who'd been poisoned. His mind began automatically clicking through the dozens of toxins it could be, but the effort quickly drained his energy.

That had to be it, though, right? He felt like laughing, but couldn't get the sound out... it was funny wasn't it? Here he was – Philip Poley, a world-class expert in toxins - turned into just another silly SOB watching himself dying from poisoning.

Even standing up was difficult now, no matter how hard he gripped the porcelain sink. Even worse was how hard it was to breathe.

And it was getting harder.

And harder.

And then he was tilting sideways and sliding down. First one knee touched the floor, then both; then he slowly slumped backward, flopping against the wall. As he lay there, feeling consciousness oozing out and darkness oozing in, there was time for one last garbled thought:

"Trinity...no – Ver - Veronica?... Damn you!....What the Hell did you do? How did... you did you did... did who did... How..?"

Chapter 36: Circus

Day 6: Saturday afternoon

Eddie landed the small Halliday jet at Mineta Airport, San Jose, and eased into our company hangar. It was small, but secure and private, and I was glad to be back.

The ride had been smooth; in fact, the entire trip had been smooth and efficient. We picked up the cash from the bank by early morning, exchanged it for the artwork by mid-morning, and delivered both paintings to the art dealer by late morning. By early afternoon Mr. Mars was shaking my hand outside the hotel entrance and Alban was pulling up in the Tahoe, ready to drive me to the airport. Autumn had already arranged for Eddie to be prepping the plane for departure as soon as I arrived.

"Thanks again for everything," Mars said; he had a firm handshake and an honest smile, and seemed genuinely relieved to have this business finished. "Reid, you've been as good as advertised. Kirk told me that I could count on you, and he was right."

By 'Kirk', of course, he meant Mr. Halliday. I hadn't heard anyone but Autumn casually refer to him be his first name before, but didn't she say that Mars and Halliday were brothers? Either there was more to the family story than met the eye, or one of them was using an assumed name.

Whatever... their business, not mine.

"So I owe you one," Mars went on, handing me a card. "If you need something, let me know and I'll see that you get it." It was about the same size as a business card but the only thing on it was a stylized drawing of a Roman war helmet, like something Caesar might have worn. Under the helmet was a phone number, freshly written in blue ink. That was it: no words, no names, just the picture and the number.

A nod, a pat on the shoulder, and he went back inside the hotel. I climbed into the passenger seat, but before Alban pulled away, Autumn came to my open window.

"Kirk wanted me to say 'Thanks' too. He and Caden don't see each other much, but they still help each other when they can. That offer from Caden must be real; he doesn't give out those cards easily, and that's his private number."

I smiled and said, "Well Autumn, please tell Kirk and Caden that they're very welcome."

She laughed, gave my arm a soft squeeze, and waved good-bye.

Traffic was blessedly light getting to the airport; Alban drove me through a private security gate right up to our plane, and in a few minutes we were airborne. We made it from Las Vegas to San Jose in less than an hour; I spent the time working on a crossword.

I'd left my truck parked next to our hangar, so three minutes after Eddie cut the engines I was driving away. It was already past three in the afternoon, and show time at the circus was six o'clock. I wanted to get there by five so that Stevie could see the clowns and the animals warming up outside the big tent. That left me some time to get home, get cleaned up and changed, then get over to Kelsey's.

Some time, but not a lot. While on the plane, I thought about what Kelsey said last night, about how she'd seen Marley at the Waxman. Would he be there today too? Maybe; it was tempting to drive over to take a look. But that would blow at least a half-hour, longer if he was there and we got to talking... so it was a no go for today.

Tomorrow, sure; I'd drop by and see Lester. If he was really as close to Marley as he claimed – or maybe wished – then chances are he'd know something.

But not today.

By four-fifteen I'd picked up the mail, had a quick bite to eat, showered, changed, and was back on the road. Kelsey's place was twenty minutes away, so it would be a crunch to reach the circus grounds, find a parking place, and get out to the big-top by five.

I'd called her on the way home from the airport to let her know that I was back and would try to pick them up at four-thirty. It would be close, but I'd probably miss by five minutes.

They were ready when I pulled into her long driveway, and started climbing in as soon as I came to a complete stop; I didn't even have a chance to get out and open doors for them. Stevie and Laila took the back seat; Kelsey slid into the front. She was wearing light blue cotton sweat pants with a gold tank top, and carried a maroon cotton hoodie and small backpack in her lap.

"Got everything?" I asked.

She held out the backpack. "Snack bars, water, sweater for Stevie, a few personal items... yeah, I think so."

I looked at her bare arms and shoulders. "What about you? Gonna be warm enough?"

She glanced in the back, saw that Laila and Stevie were busy getting their seat belts on, then leaned close to me. "Warm enough?" she whispered in my ear, "that's your job, isn't it?"

I turned my head and gave her a quick kiss. She leaned back with a smile, clipping her own seat belt.

Lilacs... her lipstick tasted like lilacs.

We couldn't find a close parking spot, so it was a bit of a walk to get through the gate and around to where the performers were gathering before their grand entrance. I hoisted Stevie onto my shoulders and we set off at a fast pace. I was wearing an old Sacramento River Cats baseball cap, but Stevie took it off and plopped it backwards onto his own head.

When we reached the back of the big tent, most of the people had already left to find seats. The animals were still milling around though, and some of the clowns were joking with the handlers. There were two city cops working security, and as luck would have it, I knew them both.

Stakovsky had been on the force for years – I don't know how many, but plenty. He was still a patrolman, one of those guys who was good at his job but had no interest in rising up the ranks. He liked being responsible only for himself and his partner. With higher level positions, you were in charge of more people, and with that came more headaches and more stomach aches, and he had no use for that.

Everybody knew Stakovsky, everybody liked Stakovsky, and it seemed like he knew and liked everybody, too.

He saw me with Stevie and called out, "Hey Reid – when's the last time you been on an elephant?"

"Never," I said, and he waved us over.

A minute later Stevie and I were on the back of Marnie, one of the bigger, but also one of the older and more serene, elephants. The trainer, a little fellow named Hutch, said, "Marnie's got room for one more," and boosted Kelsey up to join us, sitting between Stevie and me. She put her arms around him, I put my arms around her, and it was all good - really good. Marnie shuffled around in small circles, Stevie clapped his hands, Laila took pictures, and I thought Stakovsky was going to bust a gut laughing.

After that Hutch let Stevie sit on one of the show horses, a beautiful Arab named Ali Baba. He had a gold saddle, gold bridle, and long mane and tail that shimmered like shining water in the breeze.

We heard music starting up inside the tent and made our way in, just in time to see the ringmaster swoop in on a zip line from somewhere high up in the rafters. He landed with a flourish, the music hit a crescendo, a cannon boomed from behind him, sparkles and confetti filled the air, and the show started.

What a show it was....

Two hours and forty minutes later, the grand finale ended, the last bows were taken, and everyone stood up to leave. We'd had pretty good seats – again, thanks to Stakovsky – with a close view of the trapezes, clowns, and acrobats. Stevie called out "Marnie!" when the elephants paraded by and "There's Ali Baba!" when the trick riders performed. We stuffed ourselves with hot dogs and cotton candy, and by the end of the show Stevie was sitting on my lap, still excited, but slowing down.

I wanted to let the traffic die down a bit before leaving, so instead of heading directly to the truck we went out back and said good-bye to Hutch and some of the performers. One of the clowns gave us a juggling lesson; I was impressed by how good Laila was at it ("I used to juggle apples and eggs when I was a kid," she said, "so beanbags are easy").

It was close to ten o'clock when I pulled up at Kelsey's front door. Stevie fell asleep on the ride home, but woke up fast when we arrived. He jumped down from the back seat and started running into the house, but stopped suddenly, turned around, and ran back.

He didn't say anything, just gave me a big hug, then a big smile, and skipped away toward his room. Laila called out, "Bath time, Stevie! Get your jammies and meet me in the bathroom in two minutes. I'll start the water running now."

That left just Kelsey and me standing in the doorway. She leaned in close and gave me a slow hug, her head resting on my shoulder, her hair brushing against my cheek.

"Thanks Reid. That was the best fun Stevie's had in... maybe ever. Laila takes him to the library or the park with our dog, and Marge – she's Julian's mother – takes him shopping, but I've been too busy to get out much with him." She still had her head pressed against my shoulder, and I lowered my head, kind of nuzzling against her hair. "I read to him and we play games, but we haven't gone on many outings. That's one of the reasons I want to get away with him to the Mission, back in the jungle, where we can do more stuff together."

She raised her head but leaned even closer, pressing her body tight against mine. "The trouble is, now that I've finally got that arranged, you come along and mess me up."

I leaned down and tasted the lilacs again. When her tongue slid across my teeth, there was a hint of cotton candy, too, but that just made it all the more delectable.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" I mumbled.

"Nothing planned," she murmured, "Why, what do you have in mind?"

"I was thinking that we could get out for a hike and a picnic... maybe I could come by mid-morning... say around ten or eleven... and we could make a day of it."

"Uh-huh," she said, her lips kind of nibbling at the side of my neck, "that sounds good. Anything else?"

"Mmmm, well, we never had that talk...the one where we bare our souls to each other."

She opened her eyes and looked up at me with a smile. "I was hoping you'd say that, Reid. That's what I really want – someone who wants to tell me everything about himself and wants to hear everything about me...that's what any woman really wants."

Now it was my turn. I bent down and nuzzled against her ear and whispered, "Anything else?"

"Yeah," she murmured, "we're flying out on Monday. I agreed to let Stevie stay Sunday with Julian's parents, since they won't be seeing him for a few months. Laila will be spending the night at her brother's, so I'll be all alone. Unless...."

She stood on tip-toes.

Lilac... cotton candy... a hint of mustard... it was all good.

Very, very good.

Ahhh - and that's when my phone went off. I ignored it the first time, but ten seconds later it went off again.

"Cheg ur dam fone," Kelsey mumbled. At least, I think that's what she said. It was hard to understand exactly, with our lips closed around each other.

So I reached in my pocket and pulled it out and looked at the caller ID

"It's Victor," I said, and touched the answer icon.

"Reid, sorry to bother you. Do you have a few minutes?"

"Uhh... is it important?"

"Wayne Gresham just called me. Phil Poley is dead."

We were close enough together that Kelsey heard it, too. Her head snapped back and she said, "What?"

Chapter 37: Phone Call

Day 6: Saturday evening

"Reid," Victor said, "Is that Kelsey's voice I hear?"

"Yes," I told him. "We went to the circus... you know, the one in town this week. You've probably seen the flyers."

"Oh, right – I had one plastered on my windshield a few days ago."

"Uh-huh, that's the one. We just got back to Kelsey's place – haven't even gone inside yet."

"Victor," Kelsey said, "how about if we go in, get a cup of hot tea, and call you back on a speakerphone. I want to hear about this, too."

"Sure, good idea. In say... ten minutes?"

"Less," she said, "more like five."

He rang off and Kelsey looked at me. "What's going on, Reid? Why is this happening?"

I took her arm and we walked inside. "I don't know. Let's wait to hear what Victor has to say before we start speculating."

She poured water into a small electric boiler, one of those cute kitchen gizmos, and in forty-five seconds we had two cups of boiling water. She dropped in tea bags and set the cups on the table. We pushed two chairs close together and each took one of cups.

It was a cinnamon-spice flavor - tasted tangy and sweet. Not as tangy and sweet at Kelsey's lips, but that would have to wait for a bit.

I keyed Victor's number into my phone, set it on speaker, and placed it on the table between us. He answered right away.

"Okay," he said, "you got your tea and are sittin' down?"

"Yes, we're both here," Kelsey said. "So tell us how it happened."

"Well, I don't have a lot of details. Wayne's not sure either, but he said it looks like a heart attack. Kelsey – did Phil have any history of heart problems?"

"Not that I ever heard of. Could there something in his personnel file?"

"Probably not. There should be a name for medical contact, health service provider, that sort of thing, but no actual medical history. That stuff is confidential anyway – no way we could get it. But maybe you could, Reid, if you use your Halliday connections."

"Maybe," I agreed, "but what about Niles? He's known Phil for ten or fifteen years, right? He might know something."

"I thought of that," Victor sighed, "and gave him a call already. Couldn't reach him though - he's off on one of his camera junkets and won't be back for a few days."

I remembered him saying something about that when we were at the Walking Palm. "Yeah, he said he was going along the California coast, poking around backwoods areas, and that it might be tough to reach him."

"A helluva time for him to leave," Victor sounded a little exasperated. "Wayne asked if I would get in touch with Phil's next of kin, but I have no information at all about that, either. He was single, wasn't he?"

"Divorced," Kelsey answered. "Years ago... I think it was back in Texas. No kids – at least, he never mentioned any."

"Well, I'll give Trinity a call. His personnel file should have emergency contact info. But it's going to be damned awkward telling her about this. I mean, weren't they going together?"

"Actually, they'd broken up," I said, "and apparently weren't really close in the first place. She told me about it on Thursday, seemed to have no regrets."

"Huh," he said. "Well, I'm always the last one to hear about stuff like that, which is fine because I try to ignore personal relationships unless it affects job performance. From what I could tell, though, it seemed to help Phil's."

"Yeah," I added, "apparently the whole relationship story was pretty much a sham to boost Phil's ego."

There was a moment of silence. Nobody seemed to want to follow up on that.

So I went on, "Getting back to Phil's medical info, I wonder if Dr. Lund could find out. He can ask around... make it a semi-official medical inquiry."

"Good," Victor said, "it's worth a try, 'cause if Phil did have heart trouble, this is probably just an unfortunate, but not wholly unexpected, event. But if he didn't, if he was as healthy as he acted, then, uh, then...."

His voice trailed off for a few seconds, then came back suddenly loud. "Reid, when Wayne told me about this, the first thing I thought of was what you were saying on Wednesday, about one of our senior staff being murdered, and it being covered up as a suicide. Uh, sorry, Kelsey, but if that's true, that has to be Julian, right?"

"Yes. If the story's true, it has to be Julian." Kelsey's voice was even and unemotional, but as she said it she took my hand and squeezed gently.

Victor cleared his throat and went on, sounding a little raspy, "And now Phil, down in the same place, even about the same time of year."

"Vic," I interrupted, "didn't Wayne have anything else to say? Anything that sounded unusual or suspicious?"

"He said that Phil was... I think his words were 'grumpy as Hell' right after Trinity left, but 'happy as a clam at high tide' the next day. Apparently some magazine writer came by to do a story, and Phil thought he was going to be a star. On Thursday evening everything seemed just fine, but Phil didn't show up for a bridge game. Wayne went looking for him and, uh, found him dead in his cabin."

"No sign of a struggle, no sign of visitors, nothing broken or missing?"

"Well, he didn't say anything about it, so I guess not."

"Poison?" I asked. "Did they do an autopsy?"

"Mmm...Wayne did a quick one, not very extensive. Again, he said it was consistent with a heart attack. No signs of snake or spider bites, no swollen areas, no discolored, blotchy spots, no head wounds or other trauma. As far as he could tell, Phil just suddenly keeled over and died."

"Right," Kelsey agreed. "They're not equipped to test for many poisons down there - that's not their purpose. They give shots, treat diseases, and deliver babies... they don't do forensic science."

"He also told me that they can't keep the body for long," Victor said. "No way to preserve it. So they'll probably cremate him tomorrow, if they haven't already done it."

"Wait," Kelsey said suddenly, squeezing my hand again. "Did Wayne say that he'd save some blood samples?"

"Yes, he did say that. A couple tubes of blood, but that's all."

"That could be useful. I'll ask JZ to pack up reagents for testing the blood for tropical poisons, and she can send them to me at the Layard Clinic. The irony of it is that she'll need to get the materials from Phil's lab here. He was the one who studied all those toxins and put together the tests in the first place."

"Good idea," I said to her. "I've still got the keys to his lab – I can let her in."

I turned back to the phone. "Was there anything else Wayne had to say about it?"

"No," Victor answered, "that's about all."

"Okay then," I went on, "we talked earlier about preserving the good name of the Waxman and the need to determine for sure whether or not there's a hidden drug operation going on. To do that, I need info, and was hoping to get a lot of it from Phil – he was the key person to tell us the details about the project, about what Marley was up to, and what Julian was working on when he died. But now this.... It just seems like Phil's death is very convenient timing for somebody. The question is – Who?"

"You're right," Victor said. "Julian and Phil both working on the same mystery project, down in the same place; both apparently healthy and both dying suddenly. The deaths could be explained away – one a suicide, the other a heart attack – but it seems like a damn strange coincidence. And on top of it, I can't reach either Marley or Niles to ask them what's going on."

Yep. And like I said before, I don't like coincidences.

"Victor, maybe we can come at this from another angle. If we knew who was funding Phil's project, could we approach them for info?"

"If it's a public funded agency supplying the money, then definitely," he answered. "But Niles says that it's a private party. As of right now, I have no clue who they are."

"How does that happen?" I asked.

"Oh, it's a trap that can hit private research institutions like the Waxman. As the faculty rise to more senior positions, they get increased autonomy and we tend to trust them more. And the more we trust them, the less we hold them accountable. In some cases, the seniority and trust raise to a level where the accountability can sink to zero. There's much more oversight and governing in public institutions, but... well, not here. People sometimes hire us to develop products in strict confidence... it's really not all that different from Halliday's. And that leaves us vulnerable to this kind of situation: an undefined project funded by semi-anonymous money, reporting to no one but the un-named outside client."

"At least we still have Marley," Kelsey said. "He's got to know something."

I glanced at her. "That's right - you saw him at the Waxman yesterday evening."

"Marley, out of the hospital?" Victor sounded surprised. "And back here?"

"Yeah," Kelsey said, "out on the 4th floor balcony talking to a couple of Jose's crew."

"Apparently he was checked out of the hospital," I added, "by persons unknown on Thursday night, right after I left for Las Vegas; another conveniently timed coincidence."

"Huh," Victor sounded both puzzled and frustrated. "Kelsey, could you tell what they were doing on the balcony? You didn't talk to him, did you?"

"No, I was just passing by and saw them through the window. They had a wheel barrow and a pallet of boxes. But that's all I noticed. I didn't stop for more than a few seconds."

"Christ Almighty," Victor said slowly. "I'm starting to regret agreeing to let you have his notebooks. This whole situation may be a big innocent mess, but maybe not. If it's genuinely dangerous... if the mystery person funding the project is some criminal wacko, then I don't want you involved, Kelsey."

"Thanks, Vic," she said. "Really – thanks for being concerned. But like I told Reid, this means a lot to me. If we can find out for sure that Julian did not commit suicide and that he was murdered instead, then, dangerous or not, I want to be a part of this."

"Okay," Victor sighed, but sounded reluctant. "The murder angle - I can't believe it, but I also can't afford not to believe it; the consequences to the Waxman could be outrageous. So Reid - I'll talk to Autumn Kool on Monday about officially hiring Halliday's to look into this, even if the police are dropping it. And I'll be glad to give you whatever help you need."

"Good," I answered. "Maybe you can use your status as Waxman Director to talk to Lund about Phil's medical history, and try to get personnel records from Trinity."

"Excellent," Victor said, then after a few seconds, "I guess that's it then. Sorry to spoil your Saturday night with news like this, but I thought you'd want to know right away."

We spent another minute or two on more mundane chit-chat about the circus, and then said good-bye.

I turned toward Kelsey, about to say something romantic, when she said, "About the notebooks - realistically, it'll be a few days before I can spend much time on them. Monday afternoon on the plane at the earliest, or maybe not until whenever we get to the clinic. And once I start, it'll take a few more days to get through them. And I don't guarantee being able to understand everything."

"Don't rush," I nodded. "Take your time - travelling safely is more important and a lot more urgent."

"Speaking of safe," Kelsey brushed the fingers of her right hand through my hair, gently ruffling it, but she had a concerned look on her face. "Do you think Marley knows that I have these books?"

It was a disquieting thought, and one that had occurred to me, too.

"Honestly – I don't know. Maybe I should stay close by, just in case."

She ruffled my hair again, with a more playful look this time. "A quick mover, aren't you!"

There was the sound of small running feet nearby, and I realized that we'd only been back at her place for fifteen minutes. Stevie had finished his bath, brushed his teeth, put on his jammies, and was peering at us from around the hallway corner. Next to him was the face of a large reddish-brown dog eyeing me suspiciously.

"Mommy, are you going to tuck me in?"

"Yes, honey, I'll be right there."

And so we got up and walked to the front door. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll lock everything up, and we have Kashiri. She won't let anybody sneak in."

Then she leaned closer and sighed. "I'm still mommy tonight, but tomorrow night..." she raised her eyebrows, smiled, and kissed me.

I went outside and waited on the doorstep until I heard the click of the lock and the clack of the deadbolt sliding home. Then I did a slow walk around the grounds.

The yard was big and beautiful, with lots of trees, bushes, and deep shadows. And then there was the horse corral – too many really good hiding places. It took twenty minutes to go over it all thoroughly, and in the end I didn't find anything but nature at its finest.

Okay then; time to slide into Atlas and drive home.

Chapter 38: Night Visit

Day 6: Saturday night

Lester finished cleaning up after a light dinner. It was a simple but tasty meal – green salad, basmati rice, a glass of red wine – and so it took only a few minutes to wash the dishes and wipe down the stove. He poured another glass of red and leaned against the granite countertop on the kitchen island, feeling a little lonely.

Usually at times like this he'd go down to the Sky View Lounge two floors below to catch the evening music. It made no sound up here - the intervening floor, used for storage, effectively insulated his penthouse from the outside world. But somehow going down there didn't sound appealing.

Or, with the click of a button, he could turn on his Omni system. It was expensive, state-of-the-art, and would instantly suffuse the room with his favorite soft jazz. But he wasn't up for that either; he felt nostalgic, wistful, and – yeah – lonely.

It was almost a year now since Milos left to go back to New York, and Lester still hadn't been able to kick the vague feeling of emptiness. The breakup had been unexpected and painful, and since then he kept his emotions carefully guarded. Sure, he was popular with the party set, and there was the occasional fling, but no one had really touched him, had made him feel those gut-level highs and lows.

Until, that is, he ran into Marley, in a chance encounter at a nearby Gold's gym. Lester wasn't dedicated about working out, going three or four times a month to spend an hour on the treadmill and weight machines. But when he passed by the free-weights room and saw Marley in a tank top and tight shorts, muscles glistening with sweat... well, the effect had been sudden and intense.

He'd always been a good talker, and it was easy to strike up a casual conversation. It turned out that they shared interests in jazz and in tinkering with old electronic equipment.

So Lester invited Marley to his penthouse to check out his music collection – he had well over a thousand albums in various media, including classic vinyl going back to the 1930's – and his array of old radios, early computers, oscilloscopes, and the like that he rescued and repaired.

They hit it off well, and soon Marley was coming over twice a week.

Physically and temperamentally, they were polar opposites, but that actually worked out well – no strife or competition, no pretension, no awkwardness. It was easy to just kick back and have fun.

And then there was the drug connection, which they also shared: As "the candyman", Lester had access to routine recreational drugs; and Marley brought over stuff that was in a whole different league. He never said much about where it came from, and it didn't really matter anyway. After sharing a couple of joints or a few or Lester's pills or some of Marley's crazy stuff, the whole world seemed hilarious, mysterious, and bizarre.

It gave them a private haven, a welcome relief from being squeezed by the stress of life and other people. They had both suffered loneliness and rejection, felt outcast from their families, didn't have many friends.

But on the positive side, Lester had money and Marley had brains – Jeez, the weird science stuff he talked about made Lester's head spin – and when they got high it was like "screw the whole damn world – we don't need'em."

Lester found it easy to shed tears with the laughter, but Marley was more of a hard case. Whenever Lester started to get emotional, Marley would shake his head and glare. "C'mon man, I just want a few laughs, a few drinks, and a few zingy times. Don't go getting all blubbery on me."

That hurt, but Lester was willing to swallow his pride and accept that for the other part... the sex part. It had taken a while to work up to that, and for Lester was a big deal; but for Marley sex was just a trinket, a bagatelle, almost insignificant.

"Hey Les," he'd said once, "if you want to give me a blow job, I won't say no, but don't expect me to return the favor."

Lester's other friends told him he was being taken advantage of: Whenever he and Marley met it was always at his place; he provided most of the food and drinks; the sex was only one-way; and, in the morning, Marley took off for work and Lester was left to clean up.

But he didn't mind - it felt good, real good, when Marley was with him. So what if the emotional investment was mostly one-sided... aren't most relationships that way?

He took another sip of wine and glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantle. It was a beautiful porcelain and teak clock, a gift from Milos. He noticed with a sigh that it was nearly ten o'clock. Marley sometimes came over on Saturday nights, so not having him here tonight felt quiet and disappointing.

Images from last Monday night had been haunting him all week, the mountain lion inching up on them, ready to pounce; Marley laughing, acting so brave and foolish - it would have been a massive turn-on if it hadn't been so scary – but the worst was seeing that other guy - Reid - smash Marley into the table...and then he was laying there, unconscious and bleeding.

Even thinking about it made Lester's stomach hurt.

On Tuesday he found Marley's hospital room and sat next to his bed until the nurses asked him to leave. Then he came back on Wednesday evening for the same thing.

So what happened on Thursday? They told him that Marley had been checked out into his sister's care. But Marley said that he was an only child... so what was going on? He wasn't at his apartment – Lester went over there that night, then the next day, and then earlier today.

Where was he? Who was he with? And why hadn't he called?

The sudden ringing of the phone made him jump. He snatched it off of the desk and frowned; it was a strange number with no identification. Who'd be calling at this hour?

Still, it could be important, so....

"Hello," he said.

"I'm outside by the back alley door. Come down and let me in, and do it so no one sees you."

Marley.

Lester felt a sudden jolt of adrenaline, could feel his heart rate speed up.

"The back... you mean the door by the parking garage?"

"No, the one by the dumpster. I don't want anyone to know I'm here."

"You don't need to worry," Lester tried to sound reassuring, but was still flustered by the suddenness of the call. "No charges ever got filed, so no one's looking for you."

"Les, just cut yakking and come down here, now. We can talk later."

Getting someone into his place unseen was nothing new. He'd been doing that since high school, sneaking classmates into his bedroom at the family estate. They'd all been boys his age, sometimes giggling, sometimes nervous, always excited.

He wasn't giggling or nervous now, but he was definitely excited.

Five minutes later they were back in his penthouse. No one had seen them, no one had heard them. Big money generates big privileges, and having a private elevator was one of them.

Marley dropped his backpack onto the granite countertop; Lester gave him a big hug, then stepped back to look at his face and arms. No bandages, no bruises.

"Hardly a mark – you were really lucky."

"Luckier than Durham will be if I catch him again," growled Marley.

"Oh, don't think about that," Lester said. "Reid is alright... he drove us down the hill to the hospital. I never would have made it in my car. Then he came to visit the next day. We had a good talk... he seems like a good guy."

"Drove us down the hill, huh?" Marley sneered. "That wouldn't have been needed if it he'd minded his own business instead of interfering."

"But Marley... that lion... I dunno, it seemed pretty dangerous. We could've been hurt really bad."

"Jesus, Les," Marley shook his head. "You're such a wimp sometimes. What's that about him visiting you, though?"

"Well, we just chatted a bit. He had a few questions.."

"Which you were glad to answer, huh?" Marley's voice took on a hard edge. "So what'd you tell him?"

"Nothing – really, almost nothing. I said that you were a sweet boy, and that we liked to have fun together. That's all."

Marley's voice softened, and he patted Lester on the shoulder. "Okay, let's forget about it. How about some food?" He reached into his backpack and pulled out a frozen vegetarian pizza and a fresh T-bone steak.

"I already had a light dinner," Lester said, "but a little pizza sounds good. I'll get the barbeque going for your steak." He set the oven temperature to 400 and went out the sliding glass door to the private balcony where he kept the barbeque. When he got back in Marley was pulling something else out of his pack - a small red plastic box.

"Ohmygod, you didn't bring another one of those frogs, did you?"

Marley laughed and shook the box, listening to the rattle. "Nah...got some new fun stuff here, Les. You're gonna like this. A lot."

* * * * * * *

Two hours later Lester was flopped in his lounging chair, wrapped in a maroon and gold silk robe, humming an old tune. He felt light-headed and a little dizzy. It'd been a fun evening – the best in a long time.

Marley poured himself a whiskey and sauntered down the hallway, wearing only boxer shorts. He went into the room at the far right corner, the one Lester used as a library. From the desk in the middle you had a spectacular view - north to San Francisco out the tall front window, and east over the Bay and hills through the side windows. It was an inspirational sight, and Lester loved to sit there while writing in his journal. "My private memoirs," he liked to say, and during their smoky, boozy nights together he'd read some of them out loud. Marley thought most of it was flowery drivel, but there were also a few insightful stories about his family and past relationships.

After what Niles had said about Lester talking to the cops, though, Marley decided to check and see what Lester had written about him.

The journals were kept in a neat row on the center shelf of the tall oak bookcase – one for each year, going back at least at least twenty-five years. He grabbed the volumes for last year and this year, sat at the desk, and flipped through the pages while sipping his whiskey.

Nothing... nothing... nothing... then – yeah, sure enough there was his name.

What it said was pretty harmless, so he shrugged and kept looking. And found more... a lot more – way too damn much more. Twenty minutes later he closed the books and looked out the windows, shaking his head. Jesus! – Lester had written a description of nearly everything he'd been working on with the Kanja trees, including the toxicity testing being done by Phil. "God! Did I really tell him all that? I must've been zinged out of my fuckin' mind... if Niles saw this he'd go nuts."

"And how much of it did good old Les tell Reid? Damn!"

He stuffed both books into his backpack, tossed down the last of the whiskey, and went back to the den. Lester was burbling softly, his head swaying with the music, almost \- but not quite – asleep.

Marley continued on into the kitchen and picked up the small red box from his backpack. It was a lot emptier now: the joints were the first to be used - special stuff, really strong - and they'd both enjoyed it; then there'd been a brief spate of passion followed by a mellow lethargy. That made the next step – the red pills – easier. Marley had given three to Lester and pretended to take the other himself... but had actually just tossed it in the toilet.

Now he put on a pair of thin plastic lab gloves, opened the box and poured the last items – two yellow capsules - onto a paper towel. He filled a wine glass about a quarter of the way with an expensive Chianti, set it in the sink, then pulled open the capsules and dumped the powder in to the glass

After gently swirling the glass to dissolve the powder, he wrapped the empty capsules in the paper towel and stuffed it into a zippered pocket of his backpack. He'd been careful to get all of the powder in the glass and not spill any, but he was treating this as a laboratory procedure, not a kitchen job. So he carefully wiped the outside of the glass with a wet paper towel, dried it with another, and stashed both used towels into his backpack. Then he set the glass on the granite island and rinsed the sink with plenty of cold water.

Okay then - ready for the next step: he carried the wine glass to the living room and said in soft but cheerful voice, "Here you go Les, try this."

Lester looked up, heavy lidded, and waved his hand lazily. "I'm doin' okay... don't really need any...anything else."

Marley sat on the arm of the lounging chair, leaned down, and whispered in Lester's ear. "I'd really like you to try this."

Lester blinked and smiled in foggy surprise. "Oh, well, okay then... sure... if you say so."

Marley held the glass to Lester's lips and tilted it upward. As Lester drank, he looked at Marley, pleased to be waited on like this.

"Just a bit more... go slow, don't want you chokin' on it...."

When the glass was empty, Lester leaned back and sighed contentedly.

Ahh, yes. Life was good.

"Okay," Marley said. "You rest now; I'll be right back."

"Uh-huh," Lester smiled. His breathing deepened; in less than a minute he was asleep.

Marley went back to the kitchen and rinsed the wine glass, thoroughly washing any residue of the drug down the drain. Next he picked up the leavings from the steak, washed, dried, and put away his dishes and whiskey glass, tidied up everything, and went back to the den. He put on his clothes, straightened up the couch, checked the bathroom, and wiped down whatever he thought might have his fingerprints on it.

Then he poured a small dollop of Chianti – just an ounce or so –into the glass and carried it back to the living room, feeling a little uneasy. He liked Lester, and there weren't too many people he could say that about. But it was time. The relationship had run its course, and had to end before things got out of control.

Or maybe they already had?

He reached down and placed his fingers first over Lester's wrist and then on the side of his neck. No pulse.

No breathing.

No response of pupils to light.

Peaceful, quiet... a gentle way to go - Lester deserved that. A gentle soul deserved a gentle exit.

Marley turned on the television, tuned it to an old movie channel, and dropped the remote into Lester's lap. Then he placed the wine glass in Lester's hand and let it fall to the floor, as it might have done during a sudden heart attack. It should look like Lester was having a normal, quiet, and private evening, expecting no trouble, when the grim reaper paid an unexpected visit.

Okay then, anything else? Marley checked each room once more, then nodded and picked up his backpack.

Before leaving, he looked back one last time, feeling a genuine pang of regret. But there was no choice, right? He had to clean this up, had to plug the leak,

And now it was done.

"Adios, Candyman," he whispered, "I'll miss you."

Marley eased out the door and glided noiselessly away into the night.

Chapter 39: Finding Lester

Day 7: Sunday

I was up early the next morning for a quick workout and shower. Actually I hadn't slept all that well, thinking about Marley and Phil. And Kelsey, too – especially about her, and how this mess could be dragging her into danger.

So I decided to grab a coffee and bag of scones and head over to Lester's, but didn't phone ahead first. On the off-chance that Marley might be there, I didn't want Lester alerting him. If he was there, I wanted a face to face meeting.

It was just before 9 AM when I reached the Pax Turrim parking lot, and five minutes later I was stepping out of the private elevator into the entry room outside of Lester's penthouse.

But I wasn't alone. Three ladies were standing near the open door; one of them was Charlotte, who I'd met here on Tuesday, and the other two wore uniforms with name tags.

Charlotte looked surprised when she saw me and came closer, whispering in a low voice. "Reid, how'd you find out so fast?"

"Find out...?" I asked, thinking that I wouldn't like the answer.

Charlotte took my arm and pulled me toward the other two ladies. One was holding a set of rosary beads and the other was wiping her eyes with a washcloth. They looked up when they saw me and Jill, the one with the washcloth, started talking.

"Poor Mr. Clovis is dead."

The rosary bead lady, whose nametag read Maria, crossed herself and nodded. "We found him inside, looking so peaceful. I thought he was asleep."

Just then a red-faced, slightly beefy man in a gray suit came out the door. He started to ask the ladies something but stopped when he saw me.

"Are you the lawyer?" he asked, looking doubtful.

Before I could answer, Charlotte stepped up and patted him on the arm. "This is Mr. Durham, Alonzo. He's an investigator who was working with Lester." Then she glanced at me. "Reid, this it Alonzo Toscan, our security chief."

"Investigator, huh?" Alonzo said, shaking my hand but with a suspicious look in his eye. "You got any ID?"

I nodded and said sure, then gave him two business cards. One was mine, from Halliday's, and the other belonged to Slim Sanchez.

"You can call Sgt. Sanchez." I said, still smiling. "He'll verify that I'm working on a case. Lester was a valuable witness, not a suspect. Is it for certain that he's dead?"

"I'll phone this number first," he said. "We can talk later." And with that he turned and disappeared through the door.

Charlotte looked up and me and smiled. "Lonzo's a good man," she said, "just being careful, you know, in a serious situation." Then she seemed to remember that this was indeed a serious situation and stopped smiling.

I turned toward the other ladies, and asked quietly, "Do you always clean the penthouse this early in the morning?"

"Oh yes," said Jill. "Mr. Clovis goes to church every Sunday morning. He likes us to do the cleaning while he's out. When he gets back at nine-thirty, we're usually just finishing."

"And he always brings us something fresh from the bakery," Maria added. "Such a sweet man."

A moment of silence passed while we all nodded; then I went on, "Please, could you tell me how you found him?"

Jill nodded. "We came in the door like we always do, and heard the TV playing. We thought Mr. Clovis went out in a hurry for church and accidentally left it on, so Maria went into the living room to shut it off."

"And he was just sitting there in his big chair," said Maria. "I told Jill that he was still sleeping and maybe we should go out and come back later, but when she came in and looked at him she said 'How come he's not moving?' and we looked closer and we couldn't see him breathing."

"I shook him by the shoulder, just a little shake at first, then a bigger one, but he still didn't move. So I called Ms. Charlotte. We knew she was his good friend."

"I came up right away and one look told me Lester was dead, so I called Lonzo. He asked Raghav - Dr. Singh, one of our tenants on the ninth floor – to come and take a look. He's in there now."

"Okay," I nodded, then looked at the ladies again. "After you saw Lester, did you move anything around? Do any more cleaning up?"

"No," said Maria. "After we shook him and he didn't move, we came out here and waited."

I thanked them and turned toward the door; Lonzo was standing there looking at my card and nodding.

"Okay, Mr. Durham, Sgt. Sanchez says that you're doing some job for the DIU and that I should give you whatever help I can. Which is pretty much nothing... I have no clue what happened. If you want to know more, you'll need to go inside and ask Dr. Singh."

"Ah, thanks," I said, and meant it. "Is he finished up in there?"

"Almost. Just filling out a death certificate. Heart attack, he says, death was fast and quiet. Next step is to contact the next of kin and then have the body picked up. I have to go down to the office to check Lester's account info, see if he's got any family. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"He told me that he's from around here," I answered, "so he should have family nearby. But I don't think he was real close to them. He has a sister in the area for sure. If you can reach her, let her know what happened and ask her to come over. But just her, please; I don't want lots of people tramping around here until we know more about how he died. There's also the financial angle – Lester was pretty well off, so when you look through his records, try to find a phone number for his lawyer or accountant, somebody who would know about a will or trust that he might have established."

"Okay, I'll check," Lonzo nodded. "You gonna be here for a while?"

"Probably a couple of hours. Could be more."

"Okay, I'll let you know what I come up with."

"Mr. Durham," Jill said, "what about us? Can me and Maria go now, or do you still need us here?"

"You can leave whenever you'd like," I smiled. "I'm sorry you had such a shock this morning."

"We're sorry too," Maria nodded, "sorry for poor Mister Clovis." She crossed herself, slipped the rosary into her pocket, and the ladies moved to the elevator door with Alonzo.

Charlotte hung back, then came close and spoke in a soft whisper.

"A couple of hours, you say?"

"Probably something like that, why?"

"I want to talk to you before you leave. In private. I'm not completely sold on a simple heart attack."

"Why not?"

She shook her head slowly and handed me a slip of paper. "Here's my number. Call me before you leave."

When the elevator doors opened, the four of them stepped in and disappeared.

I went through the entry way and down a short hall. That opened into a wide, well-furnished kitchen to the right and a comfy looking den to the left. Dr. Singh was sitting on a stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen, just setting down his phone. "Oh, hi. You must be Reid. Lonzo said you were working with Lester...?"

I nodded. "Yeah. He was helping out... a good guy. What do think happened?"

As we shook hands he said, "Looks like a massive heart attack, but we'll want to do an autopsy to be sure. The Medi-Van will be here soon to take him to Bayview Memorial."

"Any idea about the time of death?"

"Mmm... probably around midnight. Maybe a little later, but not much."

He gave me a quick rundown of his inspection of the body. I nodded and asked, "Did you know him very well?"

"Somewhat... we didn't socialize together, but chatted occasionally. We both liked jazz, and when the lounge had our kind of music, we'd be there. Les was a likeable guy, outgoing and conversational. He had his opinions about the world, but was easy to get along with."

"What about medical conditions – did you discuss any of that?"

"Not really, just that he went for checkups regularly."

"Did you ever see him at the lounge with anyone else?" I was thinking of Marley.

"Well," Raghav said, sounding a little reluctant, "Les had a few... younger friends, I guess you'd say. He brought them along sometimes, but mostly he came alone."

"Okay." I could ask more about that later. "How about if we take a look at him and you tell me what you see, as a medical guy."

It was nearly four hours later when I got out of there.

During that time I'd called Slim and let him know what was up. I told him that there was no evidence of any foul play, and that the doctor put down a heart attack as cause of death, but that I was a little uncomfortable with it. He agreed to send over a couple of guys to take pictures and document the scene; I agreed to record the witness accounts and that would be that – unless the autopsy showed anything unusual.

Two cops that I hadn't met before showed up about an hour later with cameras, notebooks, and fingerprint gear, and spent thirty minutes doing their thing. Right after they left Lonzo came back with a tray of coffee and a tall, thin lady. He set the tray on the kitchen table, introduced the lady as Mrs. Campisi, then smiled and left.

She looked a lot like Lester, but in a good way. She had his slender, angular build and high cheekbones, but unlike him had a full head of thick light brown hair and a firm handshake.

"Hello," she said, "I'm Nora...Les's kid sister." I gave her my name and offered her one of the scones I'd brought. She said 'No thanks', but I went ahead and had one, along with the coffee.

We sat on the den sofa and she asked for details about Lester's death. Raghav had left two hours ago, when the ambulance arrived to take Lester away. So I told her what I knew about it, and added, "There'll be an autopsy over at Bayview. They'll be able to tell you more in a couple of days."

She nodded, tight-lipped but dry eyed. She knew a lot about Lester's past, but not much about his present. "We weren't real close... we met for lunch every couple of months, but he never introduced me to any of his friends, never invited me over for any parties."

She sighed. "Well, what could I expect – I never invited him over to my place either. It wasn't that we didn't care about each other – we did – but our lives just moved in different circles. My husband didn't get along well with him, and our older brother Hugh disapproved of Les. He called him some really awful names, and I was kind of caught in the middle. I guess I could have done more, but..." she sighed again, beginning to show a little emotion, "but I didn't. Poor Les!"

After about twenty minutes I asked her to take a walk around the apartment. It was spacious and beautiful, sparsely but elegantly furnished. The views were spectacular, as you might expect. Nora was impressed, and so was I. She took a lot of pictures with her cell phone – I wanted her to document to her own satisfaction what was here, in case anything went missing.

When we got to the library I asked her about the missing journals. While the cops were here we'd looked over the place pretty carefully, and noticed the journals numbered with each year, all carefully filed. Every year except the last two, that is. Lester had been holding one of them, referring to some of his recent entries, when I was here last Tuesday. I wanted to look through them now to see what else they might say about Marley or the Waxman.

But they weren't here.

Strange....

"No, I haven't seen those in years," Nora said, then smiled wistfully. "He started keeping journals back in junior high, and was almost obsessive about it – had to write something every night – and he was mercilessly thorough. Actually, that's what started him and Hugh fighting – Les put some stuff in there about Hugh that was pretty embarrassing."

"So he continued it over the years?"

"Oh, yeah. He loved his journals. The missing ones have to be around here somewhere."

"Maybe," I agreed. But I didn't really think so; we'd looked pretty thoroughly.

She said that Lester kept a will in a safety deposit box at his bank. She didn't know where the keys were, but Lester's lawyer would have one. The name of the lawyer? She couldn't remember, but had it at home somewhere, and was sure - pretty sure, anyway – that she could find it.

That about covered everything.

We said good-bye, and she gave me a quick hug. When she pulled back, I could see a little moisture in her eyes, a slight tear starting to run down one cheek.

I think Lester would have liked that.

The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside. As they slid closed I caught a glimpse of her dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

I pulled out my phone and tapped in Charlotte's number. In less than a minute the elevator arrived again and she stepped out.

She didn't say anything, just walked inside to the kitchen and sat on one of the tall oak chairs. Then she shook her head and said, "I talked to Raghav Singh. He said that Lester was sitting as peaceful as could be, all by himself in his leather chair, watching a movie at midnight, when his poor heart just gave out."

"Well, we're waiting for the autopsy report, but for now that's the official opinion. Is yours different?"

"Yes," she said with a defiant look. "That's not what happened,".

"Really?" I asked, feeling a little grim. "Why's that?"

"People make fun of me 'cause I smoke," she said softly, "all these regulations about 'No Smoking' indoors. Now I have to go out on my balcony whenever I want to light up."

"Okay," I nodded, "and...?"

"Well, you know Lester's a vegetarian, right?"

"Yes," I nodded again, "he told me that last week."

"Right. So he never cooked meat inside his kitchen. Whenever he had one of his, uh... guests over, he would use his barbecue."

She coughed - a smoker's dry cough. "It's on his balcony, right? My apartment may be four floors down from here, but my balcony is directly under his, and I could always smell it when he was cooking burgers or a steak, so I knew when he was entertaining a friend. Like that big, good looking one with the sandy hair he's been seeing lately. That one really likes steaks."

That much I remembered from Grant Lake, and I could see where she was going with this. "And the barbeque was on last night?"

She slapped the table. "You bet. Lester was out there humming some old song and cooking a steak at 10:30, and somebody else was with him. Then that somebody was out there at 12:30 cleaning up, but there was no humming then. But there shoulda been... Les always did his own clean up after a party... he was real fastidious about it."

"You were out there that whole time?" I asked, smiling.

"No, not all of it. I go out maybe every half-hour. Just in the evenings - I don't smoke much during the day. But sometimes I can't sleep so well at night."

I was thinking that probably the cigarettes had something to do with that, but she'd probably heard that one before.

"So," I said, "Lester was entertaining somebody last night up until about the time he died."

"Or after," she nodded. "It could be that when Lester had that heart attack, whoever it was panicked and ran out." Her mouth tightened into a grimace. "It he'd stuck around and called 911, Lester might've been saved."

"Yeah... could be," I said, neutrally.

Charlotte shook her head. "But I don't think so. Look, we both know what went on in there, right?"

"What do you mean, Charlotte?"

She fixed me with her icy look again. "C'mon, Reid, you know – the drug parties, the sex parties, and Lester had all that money. Very tempting. I think that whoever was there last night killed Lester."

She nodded again and added, "Murdered poor Lester. So - Did they take anything? Could you tell if anything was gone? "

"It's uncertain," I said. "We're still doing an inventory, but the place looked neat... not ransacked."

We chatted a few minutes longer, then I asked her to write down whatever she remembered, and told her that I'd check back later it we found anything new. She smiled, glad to be a part of the action, and happily went back to the elevator.

After she'd gone I went out onto the balcony. Sure enough, there was a small but expensive barbeque next to the railing.

I peeked over and could see the lower floor balconies directly underneath, so it made sense that smoke could drift down there. Whoever cleaned the barbeque last hadn't done a very good job; there were a half-dozen popcorn-sized bits of steak stuck on the grill. They were still soft and looked edible, as they would if they were from late last night.

So maybe Charlotte was onto something... maybe whoever was here last night had a hand in Lester's death. But not over drugs or sex or money.

I was thinking about the missing journals; about Marley disappearing from the hospital; about Phil's death.

I wasn't _totally_ convinced that they were all linked together.

But I don't trust coincidences.

Chapter 40: Secret Smile

Day 7: Sunday afternoon

Did I mention about the Open Space Trust before? It's a network of hiking trails, greenbelts, parks, old estates, and other wildish places scattered around the Bay Area. They were either donated or bought with tax dollars, and are managed and preserved by common folks for the use of common folks. Many have docent led hikes for those who want to learn more about the history, flora, fauna, or geology of the area, but you can also just go on your own any time of the year.

Chypp used to be one of the docents, before the leg injury, and Chyll still is. They tried to talk me into it too, but somehow I just couldn't seem to find the time. I still like to get out to the trails every now and then, though, and this was one of those times.

After the circus last night, when I mentioned going on a hike to Kelsey, I had Rancho San Antonio in mind. It's a good place for novice strollers looking to spend a leisurely hour away from the city, or for hikers wanting a day of reasonably challenging trails. There's a fairly short (about a mile) flat walk that leads to a small farm, where kids can check out pigs and chickens and such, and families will usually go out just that far, have lunch, and walk back. But there are also longer, steep trails looping around the back areas, and, for the ardent types, trails snaking off for many miles into the hills.

It's also near a Catholic cemetery, where my mother is buried. I try to get out there at least twice a year, once on her birthday and once around Christmas... which reminds me, it's almost that time.

The trouble is that Rancho San Antonio is too popular. Unless you're early, finding a parking space is a challenge on a Sunday, and would be especially tough today – what with all the rain and cold weather lately, this was the first even partly sunny weekend for the last month. And we were way past being early; dealing with poor Lester had blown that timetable away.

It was nearly 12:30 when I pulled into Kelsey's driveway and parked under one of the big oak trees in her front yard. There was familiar looking silver SUV already there, with an ice chest on the ground nearby. After a few seconds I realized where I'd seen it before – at the Walking Palm.

It was Harolde's.

He was just coming out the house with a large picnic basket, followed by a lady carrying a couple of blankets. They slid them into the SUV along with the ice chest, and then came over as I was getting out of the truck.

"Reid," Harolde smiled as we shook hands. "Kelsey was getting worried. She thought you were standing us up."

"Harolde," the lady said, "don't say that." She came closer and took my hand too. "The truth is," she said, "that Kelsey is pining like a school girl waiting for you."

"Now who's talking too much?" Harolde laughed.

The lady still had my hand in hers. "So you're Reid. I'm Bianca."

I leaned forward and gave her a light hug. "Bianca – it's great to meet you."

"She's been trying to civilize me for the last two years," Harolde said, "but it's not going so well. I think I'm just not civilize-able."

She glanced at him. "Well, that's an understatement." Then she looked back at me and added, "But maybe that's why I love him."

Then she said that Stevie wasn't quite ready yet, that Kelsey needed another five minutes, and went back inside. Harolde asked if I'd had a chance to look around the place yet; I shook my head, "Not in daylight."

"Okay – let's take a quick tour."

We went down a stone pathway that curled around the side of the house. In the back was a large oval patio, red-brown cement stamped with geometric patterns. There was a narrow lawn - no more than ten feet across - running behind it; beyond that the ground sloped gently upward to a broad flat area. Fruit trees, shrubs, and wild flowers were scattered around the slope; the flat area was surrounded by a green wooden fence about four feet high, and had several low buildings on it.

Harolde waved his hand toward the buildings. "Horse corrals, a small barn and tack room, a nice workshop with old power tools. Built in the mid-1950's. Julian's great-uncle bought it back then for something like $50,000. You couldn't touch it today for a hundred times that much."

"Julian inherited it, then?" I asked.

"No," he shook his head. "This place belongs to his parents. You'll meet them sometime, I'm sure. They let Kelsey and Stevie stay here because he's their only grandson. Probably they'd let them stay for free, but Kelsey insists on paying them rent – she doesn't want to owe them too much, or let them feel like they can control Stevie. They're kind of manipulative, and wealthy enough to do that with, uh, well, with a certain trampling style."

He shrugged his shoulders and continued, "They're not intentionally unkind people, just self-centered and not shy about it."

We started walking again, following the stone path as it wound around the other side of the house.

"So how long has Kelsey been here?"

"Nearly a year. They used to live nearer the Waxman but had some trouble, and Julian moved out." He glanced sideways at me and added, "You heard about that already, yes?"

When I nodded, he went on. "Right after that, my sister Laila moved in to help with Stevie. And then when Julian died, Kelsey had to manage everything on her salary alone. So his parents, Martin and Marge Chambers, offered to let them stay here."

"Very lucky," I said.

"Well, yes, overall lucky," he nodded. "I think it was a good move and a bad move for everybody. A good move for Kelsey because this is a wonderful place for a young kid. A good move for Martin and Marge because it keeps their grandchild within arm's reach - they were worried that Kelsey was going to bolt to the tropics after Julian's death. A bad move for Kelsey because it puts her under their influence, makes her beholden to them. And a bad move for the Chambers' because Kelsey is beginning to resent their intrusions, and someday _will_ bolt."

I hadn't expected him to be so open with his comments; maybe that was the way he'd been raised in his tribal community. It was refreshingly honest, and I could see why Kelsey liked and trusted him.

By then we'd completed the circle and were back in the front yard. Kelsey, Laila, Bianca, and Stevie were already there. Stevie ran over to give me a high-five, and Kelsey came over more slowly to give me a hug. It was all cozy – maybe too cozy. I mean, I felt welcomed and genuinely happy to be with them, but there was a tiny voice, my little inner emotional guardian, tapping at my brain, saying, " _What's with the instant family? Are you sure you're ready for all this?"_

I told it to shut up. At least for today....

"So – where to?" Kelsey asked.

"Rancho San Antonio will probably be too crowded now," I said, "so how about Picchetti Ranch?"

Harolde nodded. "Isn't that a winery? I remember catering a wedding there back when I still had the restaurant."

"Yep," I nodded back. "Winery, hiking area, part of the Open Space Trust, and a fun place for a picnic. At least it used to be – I haven't been there for a few years. There was a big lawn to spread out on, with peacocks and chickens roaming around. It's out past Steven's Creek Reservoir; probably twenty minutes to get there. We need to be careful with Kashiri – she'll have to be kept on a leash."

"Not an issue," Kelsey said. "We dropped her off with my in-laws earlier. Marge and Martin have a big place in the woods. Kashiri will be happy there."

"Alright - I guess that's it then. Shall we hit it?"

"Sounds good," Kelsey said, and Harolde added, "How about if Bianca and I take the SUV and the rest ride with Reid?"

Thirty seconds later we were off.

And a half hour later we were on a trail winding past the grapevines and through the nearby woods behind Picchetti. It's mostly shady and usually well maintained, but it had taken a beating in the stormy weather. Today it was muddy, slippery in spots, and nearly washed out in two places – but that just made it all the more fun.

At one point Bianca and Harolde stopped to get a closer look at the wildflowers. Stevie hung back with them, giving Kelsey and me a chance to move a few yards ahead.

She squeezed my hand, and in a low voice said, "What happened this morning, Reid? You didn't say much about it earlier."

I glanced back at the others, then turned to face her. "Do you remember the guy Marley was with Monday night? The one who told me the story about the murder being covered up as a suicide?"

She nodded. "Yeah, sure."

"Lester," I said, "a good man. A little troubled by life, but friendly and caring... though maybe attracted to the wrong types. We found him dead this morning."

She squeezed my hand tighter. "Oh...was it, um, natural causes? Or something else?"

"The doc who examined him thinks it's a heart attack. But a heart attack doesn't necessarily mean natural causes. I have a bad feeling about it. No proof... but Kelsey, are there toxins at the Waxman that can kill someone and make it look like a heart attack?"

She chewed at her lip for a few seconds, then sighed. "I think so. Phil would've known for sure, but that's a no-go now. Niles would probably know."

"And Marley?" I asked.

"God," she whispered, "you think Marley's involved?"

"Maybe," I shrugged. "He might have been with Lester last night, and that makes me wonder."

"But if Marley was Lester's friend, why would he kill him?"

"A good question. Maybe to keep him quiet. Lester may have known more than he told us about what Marley was doing. Which leads us to those damned notebooks. I wish now that I'd never given them to you."

By then Stevie caught up to us, his hands cupped around a wriggly worm. "Mom!" he shouted, "uncle Harolde says that he used to eat these!"

"It's true," Harolde said, walking up with his arm around Bianca. "Food got scarce sometimes, and a big pot of worm and cabbage soup could last for days."

Stevie's eyes sparkled as he asked, "Mom, can we do that?"

"Not today," Kelsey said, taking the worm from his hands and gently placing it on a leaf near the muddy ground. "This little guy needs to stay here with the rest of his worm family."

* * * * * * * *

An hour later we were lazing on the lawn in front of the winery. Laila had stretched out two large blankets and arranged the picnic supplies while the rest of us went for the hike. We got back with wet shoes, muddy knees, and a little out of breath – perfect for kicking back and having a beer. Harolde brought a six pack of his home brew, stuff he makes in his garage.

We finished sandwiches and fruit, and were enjoying a bit of ice cream. Conversation was light, which was perfect, really. I'd had enough of thinking about murder and death. Bianca told me how she and Harolde met and about their junkets up and down the coast.

"I especially like the back parts of Olympic Rain Forest, west of Seattle," Harolde said. "If it was warmer, I'd almost feel at home there."

"Too wet for me," Bianca shook her head, smiling. "I'm a California kid like you, Reid. I like travelling and all, but at the end of the day – give me the Bay Area."

The rest of the afternoon oozed by. Everyone seemed to be talked out and just wanted to relax in the sunshine. While Laila and Stevie took off to find the restrooms, Bianca and Harolde stretched out on the blanket, doing the Sunday crossword.

Kelsey rested her head on my lap, and for a while I thought she was sleeping. I was doing my best to maintain my composure, but you have to remember that I was wearing thin tennis shorts, and when she exhaled, her warm breath on my bare thigh was, mmm... stimulating. I tried to be discrete, but it wasn't working; her effect on me was becoming a little too obvious.

And then I thought I saw a secret smile on her lips.

Yes, I'm sure of it.

Chapter 41: Index of Suspicion

Day 7: Sunday evening

As cool winds blew in from the coast, the warm afternoon gave way to a chilly evening. We gathered up our picnic gear and stored most of it in Harolde's SUV. He and Bianca were planning on staying at her condo in San Mateo tonight, then heading out to Lake Tahoe in the morning.

"Snow and ice still fascinate me," Harolde said. "Never saw anything like it till I came to California. We try to make it up to the Sierra a few times a year for skiing. I'm terrible at downhill, but do OK at cross-country."

The plan was for Laila to stay with them tonight. I would give Kelsey and Stevie a ride to the SF airport tomorrow, and we'd pick up Laila on the way.

Harolde gave Kelsey a big hug – "Won't see you for a few months... wish I could be with you, back home. Who knows? – Maybe we'll get down there."

But it wasn't likely. Bianca was a fun lady, a good partner for Harolde, but not really the outdoor type. She liked her shopping malls, restaurants, and theaters; skiing at Tahoe was fine, as long as they stayed at a first class lodge. So the chances that they would join Kelsey at a jungle outpost? – Essentially zero.

Stevie, Kelsey, and I piled into my truck – she had rigged up a child seat in the back – and waved good-bye to the others. When we reached Hwy 280, we headed north for a short way, then turned west toward Los Altos Hills.

"Julian's parents live fairly close to us, just a mile or so away. That's part of the problem. Marge likes to pop over any time she wants. She loves Stevie, but we've never really gotten along. And she treats Laila like some kind of hired help – it gets embarrassing. She's a bit of an IRUHA. Poor Martin tries to apologize for her, but he's caught in the middle."

I glanced at her, raising one eyebrow. "IRUHA?"

"Oh- did I really say that?" She laughed hard, rocking back and forth. "Sorry, that's an expression we made up as kids back at the Mission. I haven't used it for years... but it does fit Marge."

By now I was smiling too. "IRUHA?" I said again, "please translate."

She leaned close and whispered in my ear, "It stands for Iron Rod Up Her Ass. You know, someone who has no sense of humor, thinks they know what's best for everyone else, and is really rigid in their beliefs."

"IRUHA," I repeated. "Yeah, I've known people like that... usually guys, though."

"Well it works either way," she nodded. "Just say His instead of Her."

Then she kissed my hand and leaned back to check on Stevie. He was playing with a coloring book, but when he saw her looking at him he said, "Mom, I don't wanna stay with Gramma Marge."

"It's just for one night, honey. We're going away tomorrow and they won't get to see you for a long time. They're going to miss you a lot, so they really want to have you with them tonight."

He stuck out his lower lip, then said, "When are we leaving?"

"Around lunch time. We'll pick you up and all drive to the airport together."

"Is Uncle Reid coming to the airport?"

"Yes, honey."

"Is he coming on the airplane with us?"

"No, honey, he's staying here."

The lower lips pouted out again. "I want him to come."

I looked in the rear-view mirror at his face; he was looking me, nodding.

"Why won't you come, Uncle Reid?"

I had no good answer, so I just smiled. "Can't do it this time, sport; but I'll be here when you get back."

A couple more turns and we were on a wide street with gentle curves and no sidewalks. All of the houses were set far back from the street, and most had gates, big lawns, and fountains. "Pull into this one," Kelsey said, then keyed an entry code into her phone and the gate slowly swung open.

The house wasn't exactly majestic, but it was imposingly large - you had to climb a wide flight of stone steps to reach the double front doors. Martin Chambers was walking down the steps with Kashiri before we'd come to a full stop. I guess the security system alerted him that a car was coming through his front gate.

He seemed amiable enough – smiled and shook my hand when Kelsey introduced us – and was genuinely happy to see Stevie. Not as happy as Kashiri though, who yipped and jumped with excitement.

Marge, on the other hand, stood at the top near the door, waiting for us to come to her. Which we did, after a minute of fairly mindless chatter, (Me: "Great grove of Redwood trees. Did you put them in yourself?" Martin: "Oh yeah - when we first moved in there wasn't much in the yard. I had a big pickup like yours. Used it for a lot of yard work.").

That was when we hit the first snag; Marge reached out to take Stevie's hand, but he shrank back and grabbed mine instead. Her eyes blazed briefly, but Martin stepped in and smoothly ushered us through the door, into the entryway. Tall ceiling, marble tiled floor, bright chandelier, a gilded mirror, a mural of swans and water lilies – all genuinely beautiful, but in a cold sort of way.

It was meant to be impressive; it was not meant to be welcoming.

And that matched the look on Marge's face. When Martin introduced us, she glared at me and said, "Niles told us about you. You're the one who beat up the young man who works at the Waxman."

"Reid in an investigator, Marge," Kelsey said, trying to stay calm. "He doesn't create problems, he solves them. Sometimes he runs into nasty people. The 'young man' you're talking about was crazy high on drugs and attacked Reid first. You should be honored to have someone like him in your house."

Marge looked somewhat dismissively at Kelsey, then back at me. "I don't mean to be offensive, but I don't want my grandson associating with people that use guns for a living."

I reminded myself that this was a good time to stay calm. Marge was clearly upset, and it made no sense to pour gasoline on the fire.

"I'm sorry, Reid," Martin said apologetically, "But you see, our son took his own life; he... shot himself, far from home, in a fit of loneliness and depression. The pain and the disappointment have never left us."

They were all looking at me uncomfortably, waiting for my response. I could smile and nod silently; or I could mumble something bland and innocuous; or I could try something useful, like laying my cards on the table and bringing Marge and Martin into the picture.

I decided to go with choice three. Looking at Marge's stiff posture and thinly veiled distress, I knew I'd have to hit just the right blend of sympathy and formality.

So I said, "I empathize and completely understand, Mrs. Chambers. A gun took your son's life; a truly tragic event. If it'd it been my son, I might feel the same way."

She looked momentarily puzzled, but recovered quickly and came back with, "Thank you, but I don't see how you can possibly understand. If you haven't been through it, then you just don't know how I feel."

Martin started to say something, but I spoke first. "Mr. and Mrs. Chambers, I'm involved in an investigation right now. It's pretty murky, and I don't know exactly where it will be leading; but I hope one thing it will do is to solve your son's murder."

They both stared at me with strange looks on their faces. Then they looked at each other... then back at me. Marge opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Martin said, "Murder?"

I stepped forward, took Marge's hand in both of mine, and looked at her intently. "Mrs. Chambers, I do understand. I understand that when a son dies, it's absolutely heartbreaking for the parents. But when that death is a suicide, it's a double tragedy: it kills your spirit. You're not just sad, you're also wracked with remorse, wondering what you might have done – but didn't – that could have saved him."

I nodded toward Kelsey. "Your daughter-in-law has been feeling that way for the last year, and I'll bet you have, too. But please - stop torturing yourself. I think Julian was involved in something dangerous and was murdered when he was about to expose it. That's what I'm trying to find out."

Marge's eyes grew moist; she squeezed my hand, then said in a small voice, "Let's go into the kitchen and get a glass of ice tea. Can you please tell us more... Reid?"

She and Martin led the way, with Stevie and Kashiri following along. Kelsey took my arm and leaned close to whisper in my ear. "Wow – nice job. Marge never invites anyone in for ice tea."

I leaned down like I was going to whisper something back but gave her ear a wet kiss instead. She scrunched her shoulders and yelped softly.

* * * * * * *

An hour and a half later it was dark and we were pulling out of their driveway. The discussion in the kitchen had gone well. I wanted to be honest with the Chambers, to get them to understand where I was coming from, without making any promises or telling them too many details.

"We're still gathering information, and right now have no definite proof of murder. But it fits with other events swirling around. Just before his death, Julian phoned someone up here indicating that he was in danger and wanted to get away. He was found dead shortly after that. Another person up here, someone on the inside of that project, claimed that a senior Waxman researcher had been murdered, and that it was covered up to look like suicide. And in the last two days, two other people related to the investigation have died under questionable circumstances."

Martin set down his ice tea and rubbed his forehead. "I don't get it, Reid – this project of Julian's. What was it?"

I was about to answer, the usual blather about it being too early to tell, but that we were working hard on it, when Kelsey jumped in first. "This place we're talking about - I used to volunteer at the medical clinic nearby. Dr. Gresham works there. He's really good at diagnosing problems and helping people, but doesn't have a lot of equipment for doing modern tests, so I asked him how he did it. He said it was a matter of gathering as much info as he could, then thinking hard. First he'd compile a list of signs and symptoms from the patient, and then combine this with their health history, lifestyle, and risk of exposure to whatever they could have run into... that last part was based on his years of experience in the area. If there were any useful tests that could be done, he tried to do them. He'd arrange all this information in a table. The objective was to create what he called an 'Index of Suspicion', a numerical scale rating the likelihood of any specific disease or condition being involved. The higher the Index number, the more certain he felt that he had the correct diagnosis."

She glanced at me, then back at Marge and went on, "Right now, Reid is putting everything together to make his own Index of Suspicion. But it's not easy."

"With Kelsey's help," I added quickly. "One of the recent deaths was close to where Julian died - the same place that Kelsey's leaving for, tomorrow."

Marge looked at her. "Oh my God – that sounds dangerous. Are you sure it's safe to go?"

Kelsey shrugged slowly. "I grew up down there, Julian was found dead in the house where I lived, but we have no idea why he was there. If we're ever going to find out what really happened, someone's got to go there and poke around. And I really want to find out, so... yeah, I'm going. For my own peace of mind, I have to."

Marge coughed quietly. She'd been looking back and forth from Kelsey to me, trying to make sense of this new idea that her son had been murdered, and hadn't touched her glass of ice tea. Finally, she spoke up, barely above a whisper.

"That's very brave of you, dear. I'm not sure I could do that. But who, or... or why would anyone want to kill Julian?"

Martin reached over and patted her hand. "Those are the big questions. That's what Reid and Kelsey will find out for us."

Marge got teary-eyed and admitted that, yes, she had been feeling guilt and anger over Julian's death, and yes, most of the anger was aimed at Kelsey. "He was our only son... and you came from the outside, from..."

"Uh-huh," Kelsey said, a slight hard edge to her voice, "I was the 'jungle gypsy,' right? Isn't that's what you called me at our wedding?"

Marge winced, and her cheeks colored. "I'm so sorry..." she said, "That was inexcusable. And was mean of me. I really am sorry, Kelsey."

Kelsey let out a deep breath and nodded. "That's okay. Let's just forget it."

"Thank you," Marge said, sounding deflated. "I won't, but I hope you can."

Meanwhile, I was looking at Stevie. He was sitting on the floor next to us, playing with a toy robot. Like with all kids, it was easy to forget that they were listening, maybe not understanding every bit of the context, but hearing every word.

In the end it was hugs all around. When Kelsey and I got in the car, Stevie stood between Marge and Martin, waving good-bye with one hand and petting Kashiri with the other. I couldn't help wondering what he was thinking.

Someone should talk this over with him later. Best if it was Kelsey, but if she wanted, I would volunteer.

As we drove away, Kelsey glanced back at them and said in a low tone. "Do you realize that was the first time Marge hugged me since the reception line at our wedding. And the only reason she did it then was because it was 'proper protocol'. I think she's been mad at me for the entire last five years."

When we reached the end of the driveway I stopped the truck and looked at her. "Not anymore," I said. "She has a new-found respect for you."

Then I leaned close, almost nose-to-nose with her, and murmured, "And I'm finding out how easy it is to fall in love with you."

Chapter 42: Ambush

Day 7: Sunday late evening

When we left the Chambers' driveway a light rain was starting. By the time we reached Kelsey's it was coming down hard. The wind had kicked up too, sending leaves and small branches skittering around the roads. The few streetlights were obscured by the trees, and Kelsey's long driveway had no lights at all.

So it was no wonder that we didn't see it coming.

I pulled into the carport to get some shelter from the rain while we unloaded the truck. The idea was that we'd bring the picnic stuff inside and then collect the bags that she and Stevie had ready for their trip – a suitcase and a backpack for each of them. Laila had already put hers in Harolde's car this morning.

That meant going across her driveway – maybe thirty feet – to reach the narrow front lawn. She went first to unlock the door, while I came more slowly with my arms full of towels, blankets, and Stevie's muddy shoes.

We carried everything to the laundry room, dumped the towels and blanket into the washer and set the shoes in the sink. Kelsey started the washing machine and rinsed off the shoes while I took the two suitcases to the truck. When I came back she held up the shoes, now clean but still damp, and asked if I'd seen Stevie's jacket.

I shook my head, "No, it's probably still in the back seat...it could've slipped down to the floor."

"Right," she said. "I'll go take a look."

She went out while I scooped up the two backpacks. By the time I got out the door she was just turning away from the truck. Like I said, it was dark, but the jacket zipper glinted in the light coming from the open front door of the house. When we met in the middle I saw the other light too, a sudden flash of brightness off to the right. Not much sound, just the burst of fast moving headlights.

I shoved the backpacks hard into Kelsey, knocking her backwards, and tried to dive sideways.

Didn't quite make it, though; something clipped my side and knee hard as it whooshed by, spinning me to the ground where I bounced and skidded and slid into the blackberry bushes. Then it was gone – disappearing into the night just as fast as it had appeared. I barely had time to see the tailgate of a white pickup. Whoever was driving must've been waiting at the far end by the horse corrals, and then come barreling down just when the rain, wind, and darkness would make it hardest for us to avoid.

And silence – it had made almost no sound.

"Reid!" Kelsey yelled, running over and kneeling down next to me. "Oh my God – are you okay?"

I sat up, then stood, and took inventory... a bloody elbow, pants torn below the knee... shoulder throbbing... a few bits of gravel embedded here and there. "Yeah, I'm fine – what about you?"

She came into my arms and we hugged. "I'm good," she said. "When you whacked into me, it surprised me but before I had time to think that truck came out of nowhere... so fast, and so quiet."

She gave a little shiver and hugged me tighter. "You saved my life."

I just nodded, then turned my head, coughed, and spat; it tasted like blood.

"Reid, your lip is bleeding. Let's get inside where I can take a look."

So we did, but first I picked up the backpacks, put them into my truck, and fetched Stevie's wet jacket from the ground. When we got inside, Kelsey was shaking – the post-shock adrenaline rush.

"Who was that?" she said.

"It had to be an electric car – almost no engine noise. So who has a white, electric pickup truck and hates you?"

"Waxman."

"Waxman... what do you mean?"

"Waxman trucks," she sighed. "They're white. They're all electric. Someone was driving a Waxman motor pool truck."

"Someone like Marley?"

"But why would Marley..." she stopped, then nodded and sighed again. "The notebooks?"

"Maybe. Do you still have'em?"

"I put them in the backpack you just took out. Was it torn, or was the lock on it broken?"

"No."

"Then they're still in there. Do you think he might come back tonight to look for them?"

"I don't think so... but if he did, I'd like to be here waiting. He wouldn't get away this time."

"No, Reid. I don't want to stay here tonight."

I could see that she was probably right, but my blood was still boiling and I was mad as Hell. "Wouldn't it be fun to catch the son of a bitch and wring his damn neck?"

She came closer, dabbed my bloody lip with a wet washcloth, then kissed it. "No, Reid," she said softly. "I promise that it'll be more fun if we spend the night somewhere else."

My anger gave one last jangle, and then... evaporated.

Yes, she was definitely right. We finished cleaning up, and in ten minutes were out the door.

And twenty minutes after that we were in my apartment. She was in the living room, checking through her bags to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything; I went into the bedroom, pulled off my shirt, and looked in the large mirror on the wall.

The cut lip and gashed elbow weren't bleeding anymore, but there was a scrape going from my right shoulder diagonally across my chest. The left knee was a little swollen and there was a spatter of blood on my calf and shin. Something on my back, just below the right shoulder blade, stung a bit. I could see a red mark in the mirror if I twisted around – was that dried blood? Maybe....

I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then stripped off the rest of my clothes and tossed them in the corner. Listening to the water splashing down made me think about Lester for some reason. Was Marley the one he was barbequing for in the rain last night? And was Marley there later, when Lester slid quietly into the great dark void?

Had Marley made it happen?

I could mention it to Slim Sanchez tomorrow, but Lester's death was officially listed right now as natural causes. Slim wouldn't be able to do anything unless Lester's blood tests showed up positive for something strange.

And what about tonight? Was Marley driving that truck? I couldn't prove it, but then again, who else could it be? If he was the one, then this made twice that he and I had tangled; I didn't think it'd be the last.

Yeah, something told me that we'd meet again, and I felt in my gut that one of us had to kill the other. Marley was too goddamn dangerous to ignore, and Kelsey might not be safe until he was taken out, permanently.

"Threaten me, watch out," I told the mirror. "Threaten Kelsey - death sentence."

Steam was billowing out of the shower stall, so I opened the glass door and climbed in. The water was hot and stung the raw and bruised parts, but my muscles soaked in the heat and felt better. The tension and the knots loosened, and I even stopped thinking about Marley. I aimed the water at the top of my head and just stood there, not soaping up, not even moving. Just stood there, letting the water run down my face, around my shoulders, over the scrapes on my chest and back, down my legs, onto the floor, into the drain. It was steamy and mesmerizing....

"That's a nasty little nick on your back. Let me wash it for you."

She was standing behind me in the shower – I hadn't even heard her come in.

So much for the alert guardian.

Soft hands rubbed my back gently. I winced when the soap hit the wound, but she made it better with a wet kiss on my shoulder. I turned around and looked into her hazel eyes.

"I've got a bit of a scrape here, too" I said, pointing to my chest.

"Yes, you do. Let me wash it." And she did

We turned so that the water showered down onto both of us. I folded my arms around her and caressed her back as she worked the soap along the scrape down from my shoulder. It was tender, and as she finished one spot, she would let it rinse, then kiss it. She was in no rush, and neither was I. It took a full minute for her to reach to my navel.

She didn't stop there....

After a bit I said, "I don't think the scrape went that far down."

She looked up and smiled. "Mmm - just checking to be sure. Don't want to take any chances, right?"

Well, who was I to argue? She's the doctor....

Then it was my turn to soap her up. Was there ever a bar of soap that lucky?

We stepped out of the shower and toweled each other off, then looked into the mirror, me standing behind her. She took the clip out of her hair and it cascaded around her shoulders, reaching down to her auburn nipples. Her golden brown skin was smooth and clean and bare of any other hair.

It took my breath away.

She reached her arms up and arched her back, tilting her head to kiss me under my chin.

"You know, lady," I murmured, "we make a darn good looking couple."

"Mmmmm" she said.

I thought that meant yes, so I picked her up and carried her through the doorway to the bed. She started whooping and laughing, "Careful Hercules! Don't throw out your back!"

I lowered her onto the bed and kissed her, slowly, deeply. She kissed back just as deeply, then sighed and whispered, "Reid, I want you. Now."

Chapter 43: Reid's Bio

Day 7: Sunday night

Sometime later I was lying stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It'd been a grueling weekend, but really – I don't think I'd ever felt this good before.

"Take me now, Lord, I'm ready. Life can't get any better than this."

"What's that?" Kelsey asked from the bathroom, where she was freshening up and brushing her hair.

"Oh, nothing... I'm just thanking the spirits."

She glided back in, naked and beautiful, slid onto the bed next to me in a sitting position, then leaned down onto one elbow and gave me a quick kiss.

"Thanking them for what?" she whispered.

"For everything. For life. For you." I traced a line with my fingertip, starting at her right wrist, slowly brushing up her arm, over her shoulder, down to and around her right breast, and across her ribs. I looped around her left breast and stopped just over her heart. Then I leaned forward and kissed that spot, letting my tongue trail over some of her fun parts.

"Most especially for you."

We locked eyes for five, ten seconds, then she leaned down and kissed me again.

She flashed a smile – warm and honest. "I feel the same."

Fatigue was starting to ooze over me; I felt myself sinking into the mattress. But her fingers brushed along the scar on my right forearm, then gently tapped the odd bump just above my wrist.

"Tell me about it," she said softly.

"All of it?" I answered.

"Everything. Start at the beginning. I want to know about what made you the way you are."

There was no choice, right? When was the last time I'd told anyone my life story – exactly never, that's when. And don't forget, I was tired and achy – but really happy – so I rambled a bit.

The story came out something like this:

"My father's side of the family is Irish. They immigrated to the US in the 1840's during the potato famine in Ireland, and came to California in the early 1850's. It wasn't for the gold. They homesteaded in the hills near Woodside and raised horses. Work horses mostly, for hauling timber to a local lumber mill."

"They didn't get rich, but they did all right. When the Civil War hit, there wasn't much fighting here in California, but they made good money selling horses to the cavalry... which is pretty ironic, seeing as how I'm 25% Native American."

"Really?" She smiled, "Tell me about that."

"Well, jump forward a few decades. My grandfather on my dad's side traveled around the state studying water resources. One of his trips took him to the Klamath River area. He liked it and started taking his family there for summer vacations."

"He loved to go fly fishing for steelhead in the rivers and for trout in the creeks, and every now and then he caught a salmon. So my dad grew up spending every August in one campground or another. On one of those trips, when he was a teenager, he met a pretty young lady."

"Her parents were an interesting mix – Danish mother and American Indian father, who was a great athlete. He'd competed on local swimming teams and played semi-pro baseball for a few years. Later, in his thirties, he started a river guide service, and my two grand-dads became good pals and fishing buddies. That's how their kids – my parents – met."

Kelsey was listening intently, her eyes locked onto mine. She started brushing the back of my hand again, softly.

"A few years later they got married. Settled in San Mateo, and had a couple of kids – my sister Trina and me."

"Are they still there? I'd like to meet them."

I kissed her fingers and smiled. "That'd be nice, Kelsey, but they're no longer with us."

"Oh... sorry. What happened?"

"Dad died in car crash when I was six. With mom it was a skiing accident. – she was out with friends and took a bad fall into some sharp rocks, going pretty fast. Punctured a lung and her spleen. By the time they could get her down the mountain to a clinic she'd bled out. I was ten when that happened."

"Ten? My God, Reid - what'd you do?"

"Aunt Clair – dad's sister - came to live with us. She got along well with Trina, but it didn't work out too well for me...so I got shipped north to Yreka to live with my grandpa."

"Which one?"

"Grandpa Lincoln – the Yurok/Karuk."

"And how was that? Good times? Bad times? Tough times?"

"All of the above, but usually good. I stayed there through eighth grade, but spent most of my time either helping him on the river or with him in a field playing ball. He knew everything about pitching and hitting, and was relentless about drilling it all into me."

"How'd that go," she asked, running her fingertips over my chest and down below my stomach. It felt kind of halfway between a tickle and a soft electric sizzle, and I started to have an obvious physical response. She laughed and moved her hand back up to my shoulder. "Calm down, big boy... we're having a love-chat here. We'll tend to 'junior' later."

"Not too much later, I hope. Anyway, it went okay. I didn't do so well in school, but learned a lot about responsibility and dedication on the ball field. Lincoln started out pitching me tennis balls, slow at first, then full speed. After three months we were using regulation baseballs, and in a year I'd learned to pitch pretty well. He taught me a curve, slider, screwball, different kinds of fastballs. I remember the first time I struck him out. He laughed and laughed. Picked me up and hugged me. And it got better from there. When high school started, I made the varsity team as a freshman."

"Were you still living with him then?"

"No. He wanted me to go to a bigger school, and sent me back to the Bay Area. We'd always stayed close to Trina – she used to spend the summers with us on the Klamath – so moving back to her and Aunt Clair was no big thing."

"What about making new friends? Was that tough?"

"Yeah, at first. I didn't know anybody and felt like an outcast until that first baseball season. Then I suddenly had twenty friends. That's the beauty of sports – if you make the team, you have an instant bunch of friends."

"Plus you were really good, right?"

"Mmm, yeah, I was OK. Made all-league that first year. By my junior year, the pro scouts were hanging around our games. After my senior year, they offered me a minor league contract with the SF Giants. Now that was a thrill.... "

I drew her head down, and kissed her. "Not as big a thrill as tonight with you, though."

She laughed and pushed herself back up. "Liar! God, you are Irish, aren't you, with blarney like that!"

I sat up and looked into her eyes. "I mean it. An offer of pro ball is a big ego boost for a seventeen year old. But I'm twenty-eight now, and being here with you tonight, feeling like this... is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Her brow knitted in a slight frown and her eyes grew moist. She laid her head on my chest for maybe ten seconds, then raised up with a serious look on her face.

"Thanks, that means a lot to me. And I do feel the same way."

Then she brightened and flashed a smile. "But \- what happened next? You didn't sign the contract, did you?"

"No. Grandpa was against it. 'You're a damn good ball player,' he told me, 'but there're a lot of damn good players out there. A few get lucky. Most never do. Don't assume you're going to make it big in the majors, cuz the chances are you won't. Go to college, get a degree. If you do alright on your college team, you'll get drafted again. Sign up when you're older, not now.' I don't remember the exact words, but it was something like that. I can still feel his grip on my arm and see the hard look in his eye."

"Pretty smart of your grandpa."

"Well, he had another reason. He planted a few acres of grapes the year before that and wanted me to go to UC Davis to major in viticulture. The idea was to start a family winery, and he hoped I'd take over the business someday."

Kelsey smiled. "Like I said, pretty smart of your grandpa."

I nodded. "Yeah, looking back on it, it's obvious that he was a hundred percent right. At the time I wasn't too happy about it, but he was insistent, and managed to get me a scholarship to go to UC-Davis. So off I went."

She brushed her hand lightly over my head, kind of curling her fingers this way and that in my hair. "That was the same year I started, fresh from the rainforest."

"I want to hear all about that," I said.

"You will, but not now. Tonight's the time for your story, not mine. So tell me -what happened? You were a big star there, then kind of disappeared...then came back for a while... then disappeared again. And where did Jewel go?"

I coughed, surprised. "How do you know about Jewel?"

"Come on, man," she laughed. "Like I said, you were a big star there. Remember me telling you about my roommate, how she loved sports, went to all the baseball games. About how she had your picture above the bathroom sink?"

"Yeah, that's crazy. I can't believe she did that."

"Well don't go getting too fat-headed, my handsome prince... she had pictures of a bunch of other guys there too. But you were one of her crushes. She had some classes with Jewel and they talked about you."

I shook my head. "Incredible. Anyway, that first year at UCD went really well. We went to the college world series and I made All-American. After the season, the Giants gave me another offer, and that time I took it. Grandpa wasn't happy, but I promised that I'd stay in school."

"But something happened, right?" It wasn't really a question. She knew that something had happened.

Well, now was a good time to talk about it.

"Yeah. I played that summer for the Sacramento Rivercats, the Giants' triple-A farm team. That was a big step – jumping directly from school to AAA ball, just one level below the majors, but I did pretty well. That fall I went back to UCD for my sophomore year. Since I'd gone pro, I couldn't play for the school team anymore, so I lost my scholarship; but used my signing bonus for college expenses. Pro coaches and pitching instructors came by for training visits, and when the next season started with the Rivercats I was ready. It turned out really well – we came in first and I got called up by the SF Giants in September."

"Wait a sec," she said, tapping my chest. "What does getting 'called up' mean?"

"Oh, sorry. When minor league players do well, sometimes the parent team moves them up to test them in the majors. It's a big deal, something everyone in the minors dreams about. So one of the San Francisco coaches drove to Sacramento and picked me up on a Friday night. On Saturday I was in the dugout next to all these major leaguers... that was pretty mind-blowing. Then on Sunday I got put into the game in the seventh inning. I pitched the last three innings and gave up a couple of hits, but no runs."

"I don't know much about baseball," she smiled, "but that's good, right?"

She looked so beautiful, I had to smile back. Then, "Yeah, that's good. Anytime you don't let the other team score any runs, that's good. Over the next two weeks they put me into five or six more games, and I continued to do well... even had an interview on ESPN. After the season ended in October, they invited me to come to spring training in February with a good shot at making the team. And they gave me a big money bonus. At that point I thought I had it made. My future was secure."

"And you were going with Jewel then, right?"

My smile turned into a tight-lipped grin and I kind of half-shook my head. "Kelsey, do you really want to hear all that?"

She brushed her fingers down both of my cheeks and massaged my shoulders. "Reid, I have a four-year old son, and I want to be able to tell you about his father... how Julian and I started, why we got married, why we broke up. There was some fun, but a lot of pain, and stress, and tears, too. Those are important parts of my life, and I want to share them with you. So I want you to share your life with me, too."

I kissed the back of one of her hands, then turned it over and traced one of the lines on her palm with my fingernail. "These little creases off of your life-line say that you will have at least three kids... so you have two more to go."

She laughed and nodded. "And I think I know who I want their dad to be."

We locked eyes for a few seconds, and then I said, "Alright then. I met Jewel at some frat party. I don't remember exactly when or how, but I'm sure a keg of beer was involved. Anyway, we started dating and she came to a few of my games. She wasn't that interested in baseball, but when I got called up to the Giants, she came along and had a good time shopping and hanging out with the other players' wives. And when she saw my bonus check her eyes lit up. We were both really excited \- for me, it was the chance to play in the majors; for her, it was the money and the prestige."

"I bought her a fat diamond ring and we got engaged. To celebrate, we went to Tahoe that December with some friends. That was almost exactly eight years ago. I was twenty, about to be married, about to be rich and maybe famous. I felt invincible. After a day skiing, one of the guys and I hopped on motorcycles and took off for a quick spin around the lake. It'd been stormy, was getting dark, the roads were icy...there were rocks and tree branches scattered around, so it was totally stupid to go out there. But like I said, I felt bullet-proof. Well, I came around a curve going fast, swerved to miss a rock, hit a slick patch, and went down hard. Skidded for hundred feet through gravel and whacked into stone wall. If that wall wasn't there, I would have gone over the edge into the water, which was deep and freezing. That would have been the end of it, but the wall was there, so I was saved... kind of. Luckily, I had a helmet on, so my head was OK, but my right side got trashed. Broken leg and arm, severe damage to the shoulder and wrist. My buddy called an ambulance, but it seemed like an hour till they got there. I just laid on the ground, torn up, bleeding, and pretty much stunned."

Kelsey ran her fingers along my right shoulder, down to the wrist. "These are the scars?"

"Yeah, from the injuries and also from the surgeries to repair them. I have an artificial shoulder joint, a titanium rod in my arm, and carbon-fiber implants in my wrist. Needless to say, my pitching days were over. No pro career, and - no marriage. When Jewel knew for sure that I wasn't going to be rich and famous, she dumped me. Didn't even come into the hospital to say good-bye, just texted me saying that the engagement was over. And - she kept the ring."

Kelsey kissed my shoulder. "Do you still carry other scars... the ones on your heart and soul, that don't show?"

I shook my head. "Oh, for a while. But they're all faded now. The next six months were mental Hell though, a ton of resentment and anger, most of it aimed at myself. I dropped out of school during the heavy tissue repair surgeries, but went back to UCD the next fall and started my junior year over again. Mostly, though, I worked on rehab, at the gym every day, hour after hour, first just stretching and yoga, then weightlifting and even martial arts, lots of it. Whatever I could think of to build back up."

"I know," Kelsey nodded. "I saw you. I went to the gym a lot too, mostly for jazz dance and racquetball, but I remember seeing you there day after day, gleaming with sweat. You always looked damn good to me."

Well, what could I say about that? "Thanks. I wish I'd known you back then."

"Back then I was a different person," she said. "Focused on different things. It wouldn't have worked out for us. This is our time now, with all that other stuff behind us... for both of us. It's better this way."

I nodded, and she fixed me with a questioning eye, "But there's more, Reid - you're not done with your story yet. Halfway through that year you disappeared again. I didn't see you in the gym anymore. That was six and a half years ago. Where'd you go? What'd you do?"

"Uhhh... that year was a tough one for me. A lot of the people I'd been hanging out with drifted away from me. Or maybe I drifted away from them – it's tough to tell which. I made new friends, mostly other people going through rehab for one thing or another, and we still keep in touch. Strong people... not physically, but they have a lot of guts. It was tough to keep my mind on classes, though, and my grades went down. My own rehab program went well – I was stronger and in better shape than I'd ever been, but the flexibility and quickness weren't there. I'd never be able to throw a 98 mph fastball or break off a sharp curve again. I'd just turned 22 and my life had gone from having everything to having nothing."

"Grandpa came to visit and told me it didn't make any sense to sleepwalk through school collecting bad grades, that it was better to drop out for a while and find something else to do, to get my spirit back. He wanted me to come up and work in his vineyard, but I said no. I needed to get far away, needed a complete change. Trouble was, I had no idea where to look. So... I joined the army."

"Really? For how long?"

"Four years active duty, and some time in the reserves after that."

"Did you go anywhere interesting?"

"Oh, lots of places – not all of them interesting, though, and I met a lot of people – a few good friends, but most of the others I'd like to forget."

"And what'd you do?"

"Oh, Kelsey... not a whole lot that I'm free to talk about. It was a special investigation squad. Classified duties. We jumped out of planes. Spent time sleeping in the mud and snow. Got into a few tight spots, but managed to get out. Mostly I learned that you can do a lot more than you think you can. When you feel dog-tired, beat, and can't stay awake any longer, or keep going, actually you can... you just make yourself do it. I mean, when I was a teenager I went up a lot of the California mountains - Mt. Whitney twice; White Mountain once... Half-Dome, Mt. Shasta in the snow, but that was all because I wanted to. It's a whole different thing to do really tough stuff when you don't think you can, but you make yourself do it anyway. That's the best lesson of the military. Anyway, it was for me."

She laid her head on my shoulder and we were quiet for a minute or two. Then she whispered, "Okay, after that, when you got out. What then?"

Wow, I was way more used to asking other people questions than getting the grilling myself... but if she really wanted to know more about me, then why not tell her?

"Okay. By then Trina was married to a good guy, Axel. He's a local cop who'd worked with Halliday agents on a few cases. At first he tried to talk me into joining the police force, but I told him that I'd had enough of wearing uniforms and going through a chain of command. So then he said why not just join Halliday? He set up an interview for me, and it went well. I've been with them for two and an half years now."

"And you like it?" she asked.

"I do. The people are great – mostly, and the work is challenging. I get a lot of independence, and best of all... how else would I have met you?"

She laughed and slid on top of me, her soft skin molding to mine, her warmth washing over and into me. She leaned close and whispered, "Thanks Reid, for trusting me, for telling me all that. I know you're tired, but tomorrow I have to leave... so if you still have any energy, maybe we can take care of Reid-junior now."

Was it just an hour ago that I thought that life couldn't get any better?

How wrong I was....

Chapter 44: Brandy & Rain

Day 7: Sunday night

Niles unwrapped the plastic cover from the motel glass and poured in two inches of brandy. He'd checked in an hour ago, and had just finished the last of the fries and tacos from the fast-food place up the street.

The rain was pelting down pretty good outside, but the news promised a clear day tomorrow; the storm front was supposed to move southeast. Another one might come in Tuesday, but at least for the next day and a half the driving should be okay. He was a few miles outside of Eureka, and would be up early in the morning heading northeast through Hoopa, and then up along the Klamath River. It meant covering at least a hundred miles, and the roads could be dicey; there had already been a few rockslides reported along Hwy 96, and for every reported one there were probably three unreported.

The plan was to meet up with Rafting Party 13, a seven to ten day trip down the Klamath held every December. It had started out as the Riverwatch party, and was meant to measure winter water flow in the river and the various creeks that fed into it. Some of these creeks go back many miles into the surrounding mountains and drain vast areas. During a particularly wet winter – like this one – there could be enormous sudden surges in water levels. All it took was for a slide to dump mud, boulders, and a few trees into one of the bigger creeks to making a temporary dam. Water would back up quickly, and when it eventually broke through, a fast moving torrent filled with rocky debris would cascade downstream, scouring out everything in its path. A key measurement in anticipating this was an unexpected drop in a creek's water flow, indicating a blockage upstream. Then - watch out! Trouble was surely ahead, unless some hearty souls climbed upstream to break the dam.

It was hard, dangerous work. The alternative was to just get the Hell out of the way and let the flood come. Most times, this was okay – minor water surges cleared out scrub brush and poison oak, leaving clean beach areas and shorelines. Trouble was, though, that a particularly bad flood could take out roads, campgrounds, and houses, too.

This whole area is also the hotbed for Sasquatch sightings, and a few years ago Bigfoot trekkies started signing up for the trip. They figured that dark winter time, when most campers and fishers were away, was the best chance for finding the big beasts.

Unlike most rafting trips, the primary purpose of Party 13 was not the thrill of the whitewater; instead there were frequent stops and overnight stays to give the Riverwatch folks time to hike up the creeks and canyons, and also to allow the trekkies a chance to scout for Sasquatch sign. That's why the uncertainty about the time – seven to ten days or even longer; conditions changed from year to year and so did the duration of the side-hikes and measurements.

For most winters, it was a fun time with day activities followed by hot food and campfires at night. This one would be different; the Klamath was the highest and wildest it'd been in many years, and the rafting would be damn dangerous in spots.

Which was exactly what Niles wanted. He'd studied the trip route carefully, and aimed his plans at Wednesday night or Thursday morning, when the rafting party should be camped at a rocky beach just ahead of a hellacious bit of whitewater... the perfect place to spring a trap.

The ideal spot for an unfortunate tragedy, away from any support systems, away from any suspicious eyes.

But more than careful planning and exact timing, it would also take plenty of luck to make it work. Reid was a smart, tough SOB who knew the local area well.

It was no accident, no coincidence that Niles was heading out on a rafting trip on a river that Reid was intimately familiar with. Ever since Vic Akino had shown him Marley's notebooks and talked about hiring Halliday's to snoop around, he'd known that Reid was a danger.

Then the word came to remove him. More than just 'a word' - it was an order, really, passed to him by the local contact, the goddamn watcher who kept an eye on him and reported everything back to the Consortium.

So he'd needed to come up with method to do it, and on the evening at the Walking Palm, when Reid told him about growing up around the Klamath, the idea of using this rafting trip sprang into his head.

But it all hinged on Marley and Trinity playing their parts perfectly; they had to do more than just lure Reid up here; they had to goad him, make him mad enough to take chances, to be vulnerable to a surprise attack.

Yes, it was a good solution to a gritty problem.

Ahh, the brandy went down easy, and Niles felt the warm glow suffuse through veins and muscles; but his mind was troubled. God, he wanted to relax... he'd poured his soul into this project since day one. How many sleepless nights and quarts of cold sweat had he spent on it?

Plenty.

And success was sooo close now. If he could just get through the next few days and leave here cleanly. Tidy up the loose ends and exit without leaving any trail.

He tossed down another slug of brandy and stared moodily at the rain. Somewhere in the back of his mind a tiny voice was screaming at him: _When did you start using those bullshit euphemisms?_ ' _Tidy up loose ends and leave no trail' \- those just mean killing inconvenient people, right?_

"Go away," he whispered to the voice. "You think I like this? I only do what needs to be done, so just fuck off."

But the voice wouldn't give up that easily: _You talk about snuffing out lives like snuffing out a candle. Are you really this far gone?_

Yes, the killing twisted at his guts... and would it end with Reid? What about Marley? If there was ever an unpredictable loose cannon, he was it. And Kelsey – what if she found out too much when she got to the Mission? And then there's Trinity? What about her?

"Christ Almighty!" he muttered, then poured another two inches of brandy into his glass and flopped into the leather recliner. As he stared out the window the tree branches bending in the stormy wind reminded him of himself; ever since he'd tied his future to the Act of God plan he'd been bending and twisting, caught up in an ethical swamp.

"Act of God," he muttered. He was feeling the alcohol and it made him a little maudlin and lonely.

"Ridiculous name, but fitting. How many millions - even billions - of people have died in the name of a god? Doesn't matter what god – Amen Ra, Marduk, Baal, Zeus, Odin, Yahweh, Shiva, Allah, Ahura Mazda, Xolotl, or any other. Doesn't matter... choose any of'em. The one thing they all have in common is that people – lots and lots and lots of people – have died in their names.

So what was the big deal about a few more?

The Plan must move on; the Consortium could not be denied....

Chapter 45: Separation

Day 8: Monday

Morning came way too soon.

It had been a strange night; I'd fallen asleep quickly enough, but woke up around 3 AM. Kelsey was curled up next to me, breathing softly. I stroked her back gently, feeling the slight indentations along her spine, the undulation of her ribs... the smoothness of her shoulders.

Mmm – beautiful. I felt warm, and happy, and incredibly lucky. Totally contented.

But, little by little, a nagging unease crept in.

Something was wrong about this business with the Waxman, but I couldn't pin down what it was. There was too much mystery around Phil Poley's project - what was it all about and who was funding it? The answers were missing, but shouldn't be. Someone knew, but wasn't talking. And why so much death? Julian and Phil for sure; probably Lester too. Were there others?

It seemed certain that there'd be more: like either Marley or me. Or both.

And how to for sure keep Kelsey's name off that list? I didn't like the idea of her leaving, but at least it would get her away from Marley. On the other hand, she was going to ground zero, right where Julian and Phil had died.

Damn.

So I lay there quietly, my body relaxed, soaking in Kelsey's warmth; but with my mind going round and round and round.

After two hours or so, I drifted off until nine, when music filled the room. I had the alarm volume set on low, but it was a loud piece by Grieg - part of his Peer Gynt work \- really good, but a little too invigorating for a morning wake-up.

I reached up to tap the snooze button, but didn't quite make it – something was holding me down.

Something beautiful.

Kelsey had snuggled close and had her head resting on my left shoulder. By raising slightly and stretching my arm way out, I was just able to reach the button and the music faded. I sank back down and felt lips at my ear.

"How long do we have until that goes off again?" she murmured.

"Nine minutes," I whispered, shivering slightly as a warm tongue played with my earlobe.

"Mmmm... not long enough. I think you'll need to tap it a couple more times."

"Easily done."

* * * * * * *

It was right about 10 AM when we finally got out of bed. After we'd freshened up, showered, and dressed, it was past 10:30. I cooked a couple of veggie omelets and had orange juice and coffee ready by the time Kelsey finished in the bathroom. We ate on the balcony; there aren't any other tall buildings close, so there's a good view of the nearby hills. Skies were cloudy and slightly breezy, but no rain... altogether, a very pleasant breakfast.

We took our time. Kelsey told me more about what she planned on doing during her trip, and had a few questions about what I'd told her last night, mostly about my family and what it was like living with Grandpa and no mother.

"Actually, it sounds a lot like my life," she said, explaining she too had grown up with a strong male figure but no mother, although Laila had been a good substitute.

"Odd thing, though" she went on, "I'm not positively clear about my relationship to Grant. He's a wonderfully loving, patient, man who gave me a great upbringing. But is he my biological father? I just don't know; he was very open about discussing any and everything with me, except somehow we never talked much about my birth. As time passed it didn't seem important to know, and anyway I was interested in other things... like working at the clinic, and getting off to college, and seeing the world. It wasn't until I became a mother myself that I started wondering about my own mom."

"And by then you'd lost touch with Grant?"

"Umm... kind of," she nodded. "He sends three or four cards a year, just short notes saying Hello, or Happy Birthday to Stevie... but it's always a one-way communication. He never gives a return address or a contact number, so there's no way to reach him."

"Isn't that kind of strange?" I said. "To be such a large part of your life for all those years, then to drop away so completely?"

She nibbled at the last bit of ciabatta toast, then sighed, "I think he'd been itching to get away for a long time, and only stayed at the Mission to give me a good start in life. After I came to the States he waited until it looked like I could make it semi-independently. Then he left to go after... mmm, whatever it is he's looking for."

"Uh huh," I nodded. "But why do you say 'semi-independently'? Weren't you on your own?"

"Harolde," she said. "He didn't just randomly show up in California. I think Grant sent him here to be near me. Same with Laila. And where did Harolde get the money to start a restaurant? It didn't all come from Niles' loan... most of it had to come from Grant."

I nodded. "So while you're down there, is there a chance you'll be able to find him?"

She raised her coffee cup for the last swallow, but paused and looked at me over the rim. "Grant is one of those people who always knows what to do, always seems to have good health, and the respect of the people around him. If he's still alive, he's probably doing well... wherever that might be. Is there a chance to find him? I hope so. I'd love to see him again, and love for Stevie to meet him. But it won't happen unless he wants it to happen." She reached out and stroked the back of my hand. "Reid, I'd love for you to meet him, too. He'd like you, and you'd like him."

Well - after that we cleaned up the dishes and got on with the day; it was going on noon, and she wanted to be at the SF airport by 6 PM.

We went back to her house first, to be sure that everything was alright after last night's events, and it was: no break-ins, nothing out of order, nothing missing. Automatic watering systems were all set; whatever needed cleaning was clean, whatever needed locking was locked, whatever needed arranging was arranged.

"Reid," Kelsey said, sounding puzzled, "I expected to find that someone had broken in. If it really was Marley last night, and he wanted his notebook copies, why wouldn't he have come back after we left?"

"Maybe he wasn't actually all that interested in the notebooks," I shrugged. "Maybe he just wanted to throw a good scare into us."

"Why?"

I shrugged again. "Yeah... why? I dunno."

Then it was off to the Waxman for a last check of her lab. Everything was all set there too, and, after a last round of good-byes, we got away.

Next stop was at the Chambers' to pick up Stevie. He was glad to see us and anxious to leave, but Marge insisted that we stay for a cup of tea and a chat. She seemed more relaxed today than last night – and while not exactly 'friendly', she at least smiled and was cordial. A half-hour later we walked back down the long hallway, toward the front entrance. Martin and I had gotten ahead of the ladies, and stopped to let them catch up, giving me the chance to check out the pictures on the wall. One was of Julian wearing a cap and gown and waving his diploma; another was Julian and a young, pretty lady sitting by the swimming pool. I started to move to the next one, then swung back for another look.

Yes, the pretty lady was definitely a younger Trinity.

There were at two more of Trinity and Julian together – one laughing and skiing; another playing pool in the game room - and there was one of Trinity and Marge, arm in arm at a dinner party.

There were a couple of pictures of Stevie, but zero pictures of Kelsey.

I looked over at Martin and raised one eyebrow, but didn't say anything. He caught my drift though, and coughed softly. "Yes," he nodded, "it's a bit embarrassing. I'm afraid that Marge blamed Julian's death on his morbid mental state, and she blamed that on Kelsey. So their relationship has been , um, somewhat prickly."

He frowned and continued, "But what you were saying last night... if you could prove that Julian was murdered because of some, uh, strange scheme he was involved in... I believe it would absolve Kelsey in Marge's mind."

I looked back along the hallway. They were walking slowly toward us, each holding one of Stevie's hands while he jumped, twisted, and giggled between them.

"Things are already improving," Martin smiled. "Let's hope it continues."

"Martin," I said softly, not wanting the ladies to hear, "I don't know what your feelings are in all this, but I'll tell you this much: Kelsey is a strong woman, a helluva strong woman. She'll do fine with or without Marge's support. But consider Stevie: he'll have a happier life if he has loving, caring grandparents, who respect, honor, and love his mother. It would be a wise thing for you to make that happen."

His head jerked slightly and he turned a little pink; I don't think he was used to being talked to that way. He frowned again and compressed his lips, but after a second exhaled and said, "Your right. Blunt, but right. I'll do what I can."

It was nearly four o'clock when we gave final pets to Kashiri, waved good-bye, and eased down the long driveway.

"Mommy, I'm hungry," Stevie called out ten seconds after we turned onto the street.

"Didn't you have lunch at Grandma Marge's?"

"No, I don't like her food. She doesn't have anything fun."

"Okay, honey," Kelsey said. "We'll get something right after we pick up Auntie Laila."

"Try this," I said and passed him a granola bar; I keep a few of them in the glove compartment, along with the Altoids, a magnifying glass, and my .357 Magnum... which Kelsey saw when I was digging around for the granola bar.

She glanced over at me and whispered, "Loaded?"

I shook my head. "No, it's unloaded, and the bullets are hidden. But close by and easily loaded, if you know how."

"And where might they be?" She asked with a slight smile.

I wasn't in the habit of telling most people where they were; in fact, only Axel and Chyll know my hiding places. But Kelsey wasn't 'most people', so I showed her.

She sat back and smiled appreciatively. "Very tricky. Are you a good shot?"

I nodded and simply said. "Yes."

Then I smiled and added, "I grew up with guns. Grandpa took me out shooting in the woods a lot, just plinking cans, but it was fun. Then in the Army I got special training."

"Mmm," she said, and didn't ask any more, which was good.

"Okay, then you can teach me?"

"Sure, if you're really interested." And so we chatted about local shooting ranges, general types of firearms, and gun safety. Gramps was very big on gun safety, and I am too.

The time went by quickly, and at four-thirty we were pulling into the driveway at Harolde's condo.

Stevie was asleep in the car seat, so I stayed with him while Kelsey went to get Laila. They came out a minute later with her suitcase and large purse. Harolde and Bianca had left early that morning for the ski slopes, so there were no long good-byes this time.

Stevie woke up as soon as the ladies got in, and when he saw Laila he grinned and shouted, "Mommy! Can we eat now?"

"Sure, honey," she said, then reached over and rested her hand on my arm. "There's a Carl's Jr a few blocks away. Is that okay with you?"

I nodded, Stevie whooped and clapped his hands, and Laila rolled her eyes. She's not a fan of fast food.

The airport was less than a thirty minute drive away, so there was no need to rush, and instead of the drive-thru lane we parked and went inside. It was Famous Stars and curly fries all around, and a half-hour later we were back on the road. Even Laila looked happier.

Kelsey held my hand and chatted as we drove, but as we got near the airport she got quieter and her grip got tighter. I felt it too - neither of us wanted to let go, and when we unloaded their luggage and finished the curb-side check-in, there was a knot in my stomach.

I wrapped her in my arms and looked into her eyes. "Kelsey, I don't want you to leave."

She leaned in close, her hand brushing the back of my neck, and whispered in my ear, "You've known me for barely a week, and I'll be away for at least four months. You might forget me, unless...."

I kissed her and said, "Unless what?"

She pulled back to peer up at me, a serious look on her face. "Unless you come down to be with us. Can you? Can you, Reid?"

Well, could I? I was due time off. Autumn Kool knew that I hadn't taken any vacation in a year and a half. So....

"Yes," I said. "But not until this mess here is straightened out. But really Kelsey, we've both been down the infatuation road before, and know that it doesn't work. Take a month. After that, if you still feel the same way, still want me to come down, then I'll do everything I can to get there. Deal?"

She nodded. "Deal."

"Okay then," I said and pulled her close. It was a hug to end all hugs. We kind of molded... no, melted into each other. I don't know how long we would have stayed like that if Stevie hadn't pushed in, prying us apart.

"Mom! Mommy! Auntie Laila says we hafta go!"

And so we oozed apart, slowly. Kelsey had pink cheeks and wet eyes, and I might have had the same.

I watched them go to the sliding doors and wave one last time before disappearing into the International Departures terminal.

And then waited another ten seconds, just in case they forgot something and came back out.

But they didn't, so I climbed into Atlas and pulled into the traffic.

It was a little past six now, and getting dark. The roads would be clogged, so it could take an hour and a half to get home. But I wasn't going straight home, or to Halliday's, or to the Waxman.

No, I was heading to Marley's apartment.

Chapter 46: Note

Day 8: Monday

It was after 7:30 and dark when I rolled down the street just outside of Marley's apartment building. His place – a small flat on the second story – was visible from where I parked.

Couldn't see any lights through his windows, but he might've been in one of the back rooms. So I sat and waited for another thirty minutes.

Every now and then I carefully scanned area with my binoculars – a good 7x50 set. It wasn't so much for the magnification; it was the light gathering power that really helped with night vision.

Still no lights, no shifting shadows, no movement - no sign of life.

Okay - give it another ten minutes... then time for a visit.

There was a wrought iron fence around the apartment complex, but the gate was unlocked. After that, a narrow lawn with a cement walkway leading to the wooden stairs. I went up silently, easing past the kitchen window of the unit next to his. Someone inside was making popcorn, and I could hear the laugh-track of a TV show. I couldn't make out any words because the volume was low, which was good because I was listening for any sounds coming from Marley's place.

Nope – nothing.

I found the right key, slid it into the lock, and slowly pushed the front door open. There was nothing in particular I was looking for. I'd been in here on Wednesday and checked everything out, and wanted to see if anything was different now... anything to suggest that Marley had been here since leaving the hospital.

But as far as I could tell, nothing was moved or changed, nothing was added or missing. I'd set up a few simple indicators on Wednesday, and they were still in place.

That left two questions:

First: Would he come back here soon? In case he did, I taped one of my Halliday cards to the refrigerator and wrote this on it:

"Marley - If you want your keys, call the number on this card and let me know how to contact you. If you don't call, then after a week I'll give the keys to Victor Akino. Maybe you can explain to him why they open so many Waxman doors."

And the second question: Where was he staying now?

If he had money, it could be anywhere, but somehow I doubted that. Marley didn't have many friends; Lester's place would have been my first guess, but with Lester dead, that possibility evaporated. What about the Waxman? There must be plenty of open lab space to sack out in... except that I had his keys.

So - maybe with Trinity?

Or what about Niles?

Yeah, what about Niles' place? I didn't know his address, but I could have it in two minutes if I called Halliday's.

Somehow, though, I didn't really have the energy just now. Maybe I was missing Kelsey, or maybe my leg was bothering me after getting whacked by the truck last night. In any case, I didn't go.

Would things have turned out differently if I had?

Probably yes.
Chapter 47: Reagents

Day 9: Tuesday Morning

Early the next morning I was at a table in Le Boulanger, sipping coffee and munching on a sesame bagel. You'll find me there most mornings; it's not quite a ritual yet, more like a pleasant routine. The pastry is fresh, the coffee strong, and the people friendly – a good way to start the day.

I was still in a bit of a funk. Didn't sleep so well and couldn't get Kelsey off my mind. A persistent throbbing in my leg was part of the problem, too, and also my arm where the skin had been scraped off on the graveled driveway. It was barely 7 AM; I'd start thinking about what to do today in a few minutes... or maybe an hour; right now I just wanted to remember yesterday.

A dozen images and feelings sifted through my mind, the warmth of the memories spiced with the slight tang of loneliness.

And then my phone went off. I was used to getting calls at any hour of the day or night from Autumn Kool, or Chypp, or Axel, even from my sister, so this was no surprise. Still, it was a bit of a bother.

Breaking into my reverie, I mean.

But it could be important, so I mentally sighed and, with an effort, pulled my mind into the present. When I saw the calling number, though, I sat up a straighter and smiled.

Kelsey – calling from far away.

I said "Hi" and she said "Hi" and I asked her where they were and she said they were on their way to somewhere I'd never heard of.

"Our boat takes off in a few minutes, and we'll pull into Salvata four hours later. It's a grungy old town, not really known for anything except as a jumping-off place to the remote interior. Not much there – no roads leading anywhere... just a few shops and bars, a church, and a small airport."

"And guess what?" She laughed, "There's a bordello attached to the back of the church."

"Really," I smiled in return, "How'd that happen?"

"Well, the bordello was there first. They did good business when land developers and building crews were around, and there were a lot of them when land was cheap and available. But the government put clamps on that a few years ago, so business, uh, drooped."

I could almost see the twinkle in her eye when she said that.

"Why'd the government do that?" I asked.

"No one seems to know – but the whole area has been pretty much shut off from the outside. They said something about saving the native people and preserving the rainforest, but nobody really believes that."

"Anyway, when business sagged the madam sold the back half of the building to Father Ravelli, and he was glad to get it. Then a year ago the government stepped in again and changed the airport from civilian to military. Business went back up, but when madam tried to buy back the rooms, the good Father wouldn't sell. So – church and whorehouse share one big building."

"And everyone is good with that?" I asked.

"Sure, the ladies love it" she said. "They get Sundays off. Father Ravelli even pays them to clean the church, do his laundry, make candles, tend the garden, stuff like that."

She was silent for a few seconds, and then said in a loud whisper, "Which reminds me, my sweet love, do you know the difference between Sunday and the rest of the week for those ladies?"

"Uhh... no, I give."

"On Sunday they have heaven in their soul, the rest of the week they have seven in..." she cracked up laughing before she could finish, and I joined in, shaking my head.

"Okay," she said when she got her breath back, "just a little earthy humor. Ahhh – anyway, the airport's mostly off limits to civilian flights. Not always, but the flights are few and unpredictable, which is why we're taking a boat to get there. Then to leave from there we take another boat. There's no definite schedule; it carries mail and supplies to local villages, and leaves whenever the captain feels like he's got a big enough load. If we're lucky, we should be at the Layard Clinic sometime late tomorrow... it not, then maybe the next day."

"Sounds delightfully relaxed," I said.

"You know, it really is," she agreed. "Salvata's a crummy pit, but it's surrounded by beautiful wilderness. I love it down here, and the more remote, the better. Funny – as a teenager I couldn't wait to get away to the towns. But now I'm getting excited about being back."

"I know what you mean," I said. "You know that line in the bible about being born again of the water and the spirit... that's what it's like for me when I dive into the Klamath after being away. I feel renewed, clean, reborn."

"Reborn in the river," she said softly. "Yeah. But there are other ways...Reid, after being with you Sunday night, my spirit was reborn – or at least revived. Monday morning was like waking up from a long, unhappy sleep and feeling alive again."

I started to answer, but she jumped in, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Sorry Reid... enough of the mushy stuff. I don't have much time and need to tell you about Marley's notebooks."

"Did you find something?"

"Yes," she said. "I haven't read them carefully, just skipped through a few parts during the plane ride. The books are full of jargon and abbreviations, like he was using a code. But the parts covering the last two months mention a major experiment that's either going on right now or just finished. He calls it Field Trial 2. It's an extension of Field Trial 1, which was done earlier. Apparently Trial 1 was a great success, and they have high hopes for Trial 2."

"Any clues about what these Field Trials are?" I asked.

"Not much, except that Trial 1 was a small scale test of only part of their system and Trial 2 is expanded and uses the nearly complete system. We're going to need Phil's notes to find out what the final complete system is, but there's a clue in Marley's last few pages. He wrote a short list of reagents to send down to Phil for the Trial, and says that two important ones are stored in liquid nitrogen tanks near Julian's lab."

"Okay," I said. "Phil must have been running this Field Trial just before he died. So the big question is – 'Did he finish or not'?"

"Right," she agreed. "And he must have been doing it somewhere near the Clinic. I'll try to find out more when I see Wayne Gresham."

"Yeah, good. Why was this stuff in Julian's lab instead of Phil's? And why would they be kept in liquid nitrogen?"

"Remember," she said, "Julian spent years working on epidemic diseases, how their spread through a population is either promoted or stopped. Most people around here live in tribes small enough that you'd think that a virulent outbreak could wipe them out fast. But that hasn't happened, as far as we know - at least not in the last few thousands of years. They must have adapted, must have gained resistance factors in their gene pools."

"What about outbreaks like smallpox and Native Americans?"

"Sure," she agreed. "If a new vector or new disease is introduced, the old resistances may not work. Genetically speaking, there is selection pressure for new resistance genes. How strong that pressure is depends on how virulent the disease is. Once gained, the resistance factors may persist in populations for many generations, and finding them indicates that a particular disease passed through the population at some time in the past. So the presence of – and genetic frequency of – particular resistance factors gives a kind of map in time of the movement both of diseases and of populations. That's what Julian was studying, at least until he lost his grants and ended up working with Phil. So he'd collected hundreds of blood samples from different ethnic groups and dozens of disease vectors and stored them in little tubes, all kept in liquid nitrogen."

"And they still there? He's been gone for – what – over a year now, right?"

"As far as I know, they're all still there," she said, voice a little tight. I didn't really want to be discussing Julian with her – I mean, I'd just as soon forget all about him – but there was no getting around it. He sounded like a troubled but bright guy who had some tough breaks, and ended up getting involved in this mess... whatever the Hell it is.

"His lab's been locked up since he died," she continued. "His faculty position was never filled, so the department didn't need the space. The environmental health and safety people cleaned out his refrigerators and chemical stocks, but they wouldn't have touched his cold storage containers. I asked Niles about it once, and he said that Julian's samples were irreplaceable, too valuable to lose, even though no one was working on them."

"I'm telling you all this, Reid, because if anyone wanted to hide something in a secure place, where no one would find it, then Julian's tanks would be the perfect spot."

Made sense. I asked, "Would Marley have access to them?"

"Not normally. Most dangerous bio-agents are restricted. Rooms and freezers are locked. Most of the staff, including Phil, would have only limited access, depending on the nature of their work. But Niles and the Waxman Facilities Chief have master keys to everything. And - we know that Marley had a lot of keys he wasn't supposed to have. So...."

"Kelsey, if he could get to this stuff, how easy would it be to ship it to Phil?"

"Very easy," she answered. "Pack the tubes in a Styrofoam box with dry ice and send it off. Material gets shipped back and forth between Waxman and clinics around the world all the time. No one inspects the boxes all that carefully."

"Really? Okay, so... what's the Facilities Chief like?"

"Archie Gray. He's been there for at least 15 years. Before that he ran the facilities at one of the UC campuses. A very competent, kind of a no-nonsense guy. His assistant is Dylan Petrov – also very solid."

"Okay, let's consider them in the clear for now. Which means that Niles may be in on this, or maybe Marley stole and copied his key."

"Right," she said, "and since you have Marley's keys now -."

"- I should get on over and see just what these reagents are," I said, completing her thought.

"Exactly."

"Okay, but if there are hundreds of tubes in these tanks, how do I know what to look for?"

"Let me check Marley's book," she said. "Okay, one reagent set is labeled Yp-H – that's capital Y, lower case p, then dash and a capital H. The other is labeled Tau, like the Greek letter. He writes that ' _individually they're not much, but together they're a blockbuster_.' On the next page he mentions plans to send Kanja berries, both Control and KT. I don't know what the 'KT' means, but I'll keep looking. And maybe when I get to the Layard Clinic I can find Phil's notes."

"Tell me about Kanja berries again," I said.

"Sure. Kanja is a small tree that grows wild down here. People have used the berries as medicine forever – centuries, at least - to bring down fevers. When I was a kid, I got pretty sick once. High fever, headache, vomiting. Grant made a mashed-up mix of Kanja berries and some other stuff. Very bitter taste, but worked really well."

"Sounds like good stuff. I'll ask Jose to give me a closer look at those trees on the balcony," I said. "Maybe we can figure out just what Control and KT mean."

"Good idea," Kelsey agreed, but before she could say more a voice sounding a lot like Laila called out from the background. Kelsey said something in response, then spoke to me again, "Sorry, Reid. Laila says that the boat to Salvata's ready to pull out and we gotta go."

"Wait... wait a sec," I said quickly, before she could ring off. "I've been sitting here for an hour, pretty much just thinking about you."

"Yeah?" She had a little lilt in her voice, as if waiting for more.

"Kelsey, I –"

I know what you're thinking – that I should have said, 'I love you', and you'd be right. But I'd been burned going down that road before, and, after all, we'd only met last Wednesday. Be bold but be smart Grandpa told me. The bold thing would be to blurt out 'Kelsey, I'm crazy in love with you,' but the smart thing was to be cautious.

It took just milliseconds for all that to flash through my mind, and in the end, 'smart' won.

"Kelsey, I miss you... a lot."

She was quiet for two or three seconds, the asked, "Anything else?" The lilt had become a flirt now.

I laughed at myself. I wasn't being smart, I was being an idiot. It was time for boldness.

"Yes – I love you, and want you in my arms now and forever."

"Mmm," she sighed softly. "Thanks - I needed to hear that, Reid. I'll call again when I can, but that won't be for a while. Until then, keep thinking about me... about us."

A horn blasted somewhere nearby, and Laila yelled again, more insistent now.

"Okay, I'll be right there!" Kelsey called out. Then into the phone she whispered "I love you too."

Silence.

I held the phone for a few seconds longer, but the silence stretched on, so I dropped it back in my jacket pocket and looked at the notes I'd scribbled down.

Kanja Control and KT, whatever that was. And Yp-H, and Tau, frozen in Julian's liquid nitrogen tanks. Were the right keys on Marley's ring?

Only one way to find out.

Chapter 48: Liquid Nitrogen

Day 9: Tuesday Morning

It was too early to be going to the Waxman just yet; better to arrange a meeting with Vic Akino to check out the laboratory together. When would he be likely to show up? I had his cell number from the other night, and decided to call after eight

There were forty minutes to kill, so I went Googling.

First item: liquid nitrogen. Sure, I knew it was like liquefied air, which is mostly nitrogen, and was really cold. But what else?

I entered 'liquid nitrogen, laboratory, biological agents' and got immediate hits – lots of them, with pictures.

Labs store liquid nitrogen in tanks about the size of an under-the-counter refrigerator, or a little larger. These tanks are like overgrown thermos bottles, very well insulated, and the temperature inside gets down to about minus 196°C – that's minus 277°F – damn cold on any scale.

That's way, way colder than winter at the South Pole on Mars.

And what is it used for? Biological stuff – cells, enzymes, genes, bacteria, viruses, anything, really – doesn't just stand still; that's what make living things alive. They move, change, grow, get contaminated or mutate or whatever.

You can slow down this continuous change by cooling the stuff down, and you can essentially stop it altogether if you keep it cold enough. Even liquid nitrogen is not quite that cold, but it's pretty good; cancer cells, stem cells, and Smallpox viruses have been stored that way for years, and still grow just fine when they're thawed out.

And how many people have been 'cryogenically preserved' – you know, frozen in liquid nitrogen - waiting to be regenerated in the far future? Probably at least hundreds; could be lot more.

So it made sense for Julian and Marley to keep their bio-reagents in liquid nitrogen. We knew that Julian was storing disease vectors; what about Marley?

Next I entered "Yp-H". There were a several hits, but none of them looked relevant: YPH is the three letter code for the Inukjuak airport in northern Quebec. It's also an acronym for the Yeast Protocols Handbook and a few other items, but they use "YPH" in all caps, not the "Yp-H" notation in Granger's notes.

"Tau" had way too many hits in fields ranging from science to arts and films; far too much to sift through in less than an hour.

I was going for a coffee refill when my phone went off again. Before I could even say "Hello", an excited voice on the other end said - "Boss – are you OK?"

"Chyll," I said, "yeah, sure, why wouldn't I be?"

"Why not? 'Cause you were hit by a truck Sunday night, and got scraped up pretty good by the gravel."

"Chyll," I said again, "how d'you know about that? You haven't seen me since last Thursday."

"Kelsey texted me. Told me all about it... said that you might get into another fight with this Marley dude. She wants me to keep an eye on you."

I mentally digested this for three or four seconds, then said, "Kelsey told you all that? When?"

"About five minutes ago."

I had to shake my head and smile. Kelsey and Chyll - what a combo.

"Chyll," I said yet again, "I appreciate the thought, but I've been on my own, looking out for myself, for a lot of years now."

"Sure thing, boss, but you can't blame the lady for being concerned, right? She cares about you... maybe a lot. So tell me, what are you up to now?"

"Just finishing coffee and scrounging up some info on liquid nitrogen."

"Uh huh, I know about that stuff – we used it in chemistry and physics labs last term. So, when're you going over to the Waxman?"

"What makes you think I'm going there?"

"C'mon boss - Kelsey's text. She says you're going there this morning and that it could be dangerous."

I sighed. "OK, yes, Chyll, Kelsey phoned me this morning. She found references in Marley's notebooks about items stored in liquid nitrogen at one of the Waxman labs. They might be significant, but that doesn't mean they're dangerous. I just want to find out what they are, where they came from, what they're used for... anything that'll help explain what's going on. I'm about to call Vic Akino and arrange for a visit at around 8:45."

"Alright," she said. "I'll be there by 8:30, waiting in the lobby."

"Hold on," I started to say, but by then the line was dead.

I took my refilled cup back to the table and checked the clock on the wall: ten after eight, time to make that call.

Victor answered on the second ring; from the background sounds he was probably walking outside.

"Oh, hi, Reid. I'm just getting out of the parking lot and should be in the office in five minutes. What's up?"

I asked to meet him right away, but didn't say why. No sense in tipping your hand ahead of time, no matter how safe you think a contact may be. There was no particular reason to suspect him, but no particular reason to trust him, either. I didn't want to get to the liquid nitrogen tanks and find them freshly opened and Marley's stuff missing.

"Will it take long?" he asked. "I have a ten o'clock meeting with the budget committee. We want to earmark money to hire replacements for Phil and Julian."

"Really," I said. "Hiring anyone soon?"

"No, but it's not simple to do. First we set out a budget; then form a search committee. They identify candidates and arrange for interviews. If we like them we'll ask them back for a second or third round. It's a long process - six months, at least, probably more. We should have started last year when Julian died, but other things consumed our time. I'm concerned now, though, that the Tox Department may be in trouble if we put off any longer. Two of the senior faculty are gone, and I don't know how much longer Niles will stay on. "

"Niles leaving?" I asked. "Isn't he one of your main directors?"

"Yes, he is, but he pretty much shut down his lab this last year, and has been spending a lot of time away on business. I just get the feeling that he might want to leave soon."

"Right," I said, not terribly surprised. The more I learned about Niles, the less clear of a picture I had; there was something murky and hidden about him. But what?

"Well," I went on, "to answer your question – I don't really know how much of your time I'll need, but it is important. Maybe even very important."

His breathing got louder and there was a faint clop-clop-clop as he went up the steps to the front doors. Then he stopped, cleared his throat, and said, "Okay Reid, I'll ask my secretary to reschedule the committee for after lunch."

"Thanks," I said, and meant it. "See you in about thirty minutes. Oh – one more thing. Is Mr. Gray – your facilities head – there today?"

"Archie? Yeah, he's supposed to be at that budget meeting."

"Okay, thanks," I said, and rang off.

If Marley's key ring contained one to cold storage tanks, then we wouldn't need to bother Archie Gray. But if it didn't, we still needed to get past the lock, so I wanted him available just in case.
Chapter 49: Cold Storage

Day 9: Tuesday Morning

Traffic was light and I rolled into the Waxman parking lot by 8:35. There were maybe twenty cars in the lot, along with two bicycles and one motorcycle. It had a Peninsula Open Space decal on the gas tank and was Chyll's, of course.

The morning had started out foggy, but that had burnt off and now the sky was almost clear. A cold breeze gusted through the trees, skittering leaves around on the ground. I shoved my hands in my pockets and started on the dirt path toward the front doors. My attention was caught by a squirrel near the dumpster; it was pawing at something and was being watched by a curious crow standing on the dumpster lid.

The crow fixed me with a beady stare and cawed twice, but didn't fly away. It seemed like it was deciding whether or not to fly down and challenge the squirrel for whatever that tasty morsel was.

As I passed closer, the squirrel saw me and ran off, apparently not as brave as the crow, and I noticed what it had been looking at: not a tasty morsel, but another squirrel, quite dead.

I was still thinking about that when I reached the steps and made it through the doors to the lobby. Chyll was leaning against the guard's kiosk and already had a visitor's badge pinned to her shirt.

She waved as I got near.

"Been waiting long?" I asked.

"Mmm - Not too long," she said. "Maybe fifteen minutes; I get through traffic snarls faster in my cycle than you can in your big old truck."

"You be damn careful. If your father sees you weaving in and out of traffic, he'll take that bike away from you."

"A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do," she shrugged and smiled.

The guard was a big man whose name tag said 'Cole Matson'. As I signed in I nodded and asked, "Carl's not here today?"

Cole smiled back. "Oh, sure, he's around. We alternate days at the kiosk. Gets a little boring sitting here, actually; I'd rather be out walking the grounds."

"Makes sense," I agreed. "I hate sittin' around too much, too."

He checked my name, then glanced at a clipboard. "Dr. Akino said to let him know when you arrived; I'll ring him now."

Two minutes later, Victor Akino came down the hallway to greet us, and a minute after that we were in the Blue Conference room, the same one that we'd used last week. Victor closed the door, nodded a greeting to Chyll, and asked, "So why the urgency, Reid?"

I told him about the phone call from Kelsey, about the liquid nitrogen tanks, and about the reagents.

"I don't know what 'KT' means, but the 'Yp-H' notation sounds familiar. It could be, um... well, let's go take a look before I start throwing guesses around. Shall I call Archie for the key to Julian's storeroom?"

"Not yet," I answered, pulling out Marley's key ring. "I still have these. Some of them are Waxman property, some aren't. I'm still sorting that out, and will hand them over to you when I'm finished. But right now I want to see if there's one on here that opens doors in Julian's lab."

Akino frowned. "Marley - yes. I hadn't been in this morning more than five minutes when one of the interns told me that he saw Marley here on Saturday."

"Really?" I said. "What was he doing?"

"He was out on the balconies with the gardeners, clearing out trees and packing up supplies. Looks like he's closing down the project, now that Phil is gone. But he should've talked to Niles or me before doing anything like that. "

"The gardeners... do you happen to know their names?"

"I don't, but I can ask Jose Martinez. He's the head groundskeeper and should know who was on duty over the weekend."

"I met Jose," I said. "Good guy. I'll check with him myself. Maybe you can see who else Marley interacted with, especially if he shipped out any boxes. We'd like to know what was in them."

"Okay," Victor answered, "sure, I can try."

Doctor Victor Akino, director of the prestigious Waxman Institute, wasn't used to nosing for information like that, but the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. So with that, we left the room and started down the hall to the stairwell.

On the way I glanced at Chyll, and she held up her notebook.

"Got it all written down, boss. Check the guard's logs to see when Marley was here. Ask Jose who was working Saturday. Check with gardeners and shipping department to see what Marley was doing. Look through Phil's lab to see if anything is missing."

"Impressive," I said.

She smiled. "I've been spending time with Autumn Kool and Mr. Halliday. She's gotten so she can almost read his mind - I'm going to be like that with you."

Clearly, this was another of those times when it's best to say nothing... so that's what I did.

When we reached the third floor lab, the hallway was empty of people.

"This is a rare sight," Victor said. "But with Julian and Phil gone, Kelsey off to the Layard Clinic, and Niles away on personal leave, this section is nearly vacant. Wasted space doesn't sit well with the Governing Board. That's one reason why we're in a hurry to bring in more faculty."

We stopped at Julian's lab and I started trying keys. Sure enough, one of them opened the door. I took out my Sharpie and marked a J-L on it.

Once inside, we flicked the wall switches and room lights came on. There were benches, a fume hood, and a sterile cell culture hood. Various kinds of glassware were arranged in neat arrays on shelves, and a few large pieces of equipment sat on the bench tops, covered by plastic sheets.

"Now, where would the liquid nitrogen tanks be?" I wondered, scanning the room.

"How about in there," Chyll called out, pointing to a door in the far wall. A large sign said 'Biochemical Freezers' and below that a smaller sign said 'Keep Door Closed' in red letters.

"Right, that's it," Victor nodded.

This room was locked too, just as Kelsey said it would be. While I was trying Marley's keys, a quick burst of Beethoven's fifth symphony started up. Victor whispered a quick "Sorry" and pulled a phone from his jacket pocket.

"Victor here," he said by way of answering. "No, the meeting is postponed.... What's that?.... Oh, maybe this afternoon, I'm not sure.... No, everything is all right. No, I haven't gone away anywhere, I'm up in Julian's lab right now.... No, Julian's lab...Yes, that's right, Julian Chambers.... Okay, thanks....You too.... Okay, yes, see you later."

He put the phone back in his pocket and said "Once you get off the bottom floor, cell phone reception in lousy here. We've tried for years to get it better, but with the nature preserves surrounding us, we just can't get the permits...." His voice trailed off as he noticed that I was looking at him, very intently. He cleared his throat and said "Um – is there a problem, Reid?"

"Who were you talking to," I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Just one of the staff, asking about the budget meeting. You remember, the one that I had to postpone."

"Right. Asking about the meeting, and asking where you were."

"Yes," he said, then "Oh, I probably shouldn't have told her that we're in Julian's lab, huh."

"I did kind of want it to be confidential. So – who was it you were talking to?"

"It was Trinity. Trinity Garret."

" _Jeez!_ " I thought silently. _"Of course, it had to be her."_

Out loud, I said, "So, Victor, was Trinity supposed to be going to the budget meeting this morning?"

He thought for a moment, then looked up, a little puzzled, a little embarrassed. "No," he said slowly. "She wouldn't have been on that invitation list. For the hiring committee, sure, since she's in human resources. But not for this budget meeting...."

Okay. So the cat was out of the bag. Where would it go?

The next key worked; the lock turned, and we were in the storeroom. I labeled the key "LN" and slipped the ring back into my pocket.

Chyll flipped on the lights. The room was surprisingly large – at least twenty by twenty feet. Along one wall were two more sterile culture hoods and a tall two-door cabinet. I opened the doors; inside were boxes of lab supplies – some fancy looking pipettes and a microscope, but nothing dangerous or unusual.

There was a bank of freezers along the opposite wall, with temperature gauges set at minus 80°C – plenty cold, but nowhere near liquid nitrogen. "Ah – there they are," said Victor, pointing to a row of four squat cylinders against the adjoining wall. They were about three feet high and not quite that in diameter, with a small opening at the top.

There were two pairs of padded blue gloves, several safety goggles, and two large white binders on a rack next to them.

"Here," Victor said, picking up the gloves and goggles. "Put these on before you open the top. I haven't worked with this stuff in years, but I know how dangerous it can be. It'll freeze your fingers solid in a few seconds."

So we each put on goggles and Chyll and I put on the padded gloves. We opened the top of one of the tanks, peeked inside... and saw rows of small cylinders, completely covered in a pool of very, very cold, clear liquid. I slowly pulled up one of the cylinders; it was like a sieve, with dozens of small holes in the walls, and the liquid nitrogen flowed out and back into the reservoir as I lifted it. Hanging from the walls of the cylinder were a half-dozen metal rods, each containing at least ten small plastic, screw-top vials.

Each vial had a ten digit number written onto it.

"That should correspond to a number entered into one of the white binders," Akino said. "Each number should identify the material in the tube and the date when it was stored."

Chyll flipped quickly through the books. "Okay, let's see...right, each page has a column for serial number, then a column for name, a column for date, a column for number of vials, and a column for source."

She hummed an unfamiliar tune while flipping through pages. "Nope, nothing here about KT, boss... not here either.... Wait, though – here's a whole column of Yp-H tubes. It says they're in tank three, cylinder number six."

"How many tubes are listed?" I asked.

"Let's see...." She slid her finger down the page and said "Twenty-six."

We opened tank three, found cylinder six, and slid it out. There were six of the metal rods inside; the first one contained ten vials labeled 'Yp-H' in addition to the ten digit code. The second rod contained seven more labeled the same. The next three rods were empty, but the last one contained four vials labeled 'Tau Tox', but with no code number.

"Only seventeen of the Yp-H vials here. That means nine vials are missing. You sure there's no listing for Tau or KT?"

"No boss," she said. "Nothing about Tau and nothing about KT."

Victor cleared his throat again and asked "Please – what is listed as the source for the Yp-H vials?"

Chyll opened the binder. "For the source it just says 'Hillen'. That's H-I-L-L-E-N."

"Ahhh," he said, nodding rapidly, "Okay, I thought that might be the case."

"So who or what is Hillen," I asked.

"James Hillen," he answered. "One of the early staff members at the Waxman – a contemporary of Niles. He's a brilliant man, but had a bad falling out with our Board of Directors and resigned. Still keeps contact with the scientists here, though, and is well respected in his field."

"Which is?" I prodded.

"Epidemic diseases and how they spread, whether directly from person to person or by some vector, like mosquitos or fleas or other mammals. He focused on hemorrhagic disease pathogens, especially the Marburg and Ebola viruses and the Yersinia bacteria."

"Ebola? He was studying Ebola here?"

"No, he never had live Ebola or Marburg virus here – he worked with those at government labs on the east coast. But he did a lot of work with _Yersinia pestis_ here."

"Boss..." Chypp started to say.

I held up my hand. "Just a sec, Chyll. _Yersinia pestis_ from Hillen.... There's our Yp-H notation."

"Right," Victor said.

"Boss," Chyll broke in, " _Yersinia pestis_ is what causes plague...Black Death."

I glanced at Akino.

He nodded.

Chapter 50: Garden

Day 9: Tuesday Mid-morning

I hung the metal rod back onto the cylinder and slid it - very slowly - into the liquid nitrogen tank. Then I carefully placed the cap back on, stood up, and turned to Victor.

"Black Death? You're keeping bubonic plague here?"

"Well, it must be just a research tool," he said, pursing his lips. "A non-infectious mutant, weakened in some way."

"Some way?" I asked. "Like what, exactly?"

"Well, I don't know. We'll have to ask him."

"Him?" I said. "Julian Chambers is dead. Marley Granger has disappeared. Niles is on vacation. So – ask who?"

"No, no - not them," Victor said quickly. "I mean, ask Jim Hillen."

"Didn't you say he was gone?"

"Gone from the official Waxman staff, yes. But he drops by here every now and then for seminars, or just to say 'Hello'."

Things got quiet for a few seconds while I tried to put this together. Marley and Phil were running tests using bubonic plague and something called KT. They've already used rats... how long till they were trying it on people? KT was an unknown, but they keep the plague bacteria right here, stored in little frozen tubes.

Little frozen tubes that I was holding in my hand thirty seconds ago.

Jeez....

"Has Hillen been here lately?" I asked.

"About two weeks ago, I think. We could check the sign-in register to see which day."

"Do you know why he was here?"

"We didn't have a chance to talk, just waved to each other in the lobby. I was on my way to a meeting."

"Dr. Akino," Chyll asked, "was there a seminar scheduled that day?"

"Um..." he hesitated, thinking, then shook his head. "No. No, there wasn't."

"So could he have been here to meet with Niles or Marley?"

Victor frowned and nodded. "Yes, that's possible."

"Would he have his old keys to the labs?"

"Oh no, definitely not. Plus the locks would have been changed since he left."

"Okay," I said. "Could you call him, please? Ask him how long it will take him to get here."

He looked at me like I was kidding, then, when he saw I wasn't, his frown grew deeper. "Well, I can try, but I have no idea if he's available or not."

"Convince him," I said.

"You really think it's that serious?" he asked, sounding uncertain.

I didn't answer, just looked at him and nodded slowly.

"Well then, let's give it a try." He walked to a wall phone, took out a pen, and punched in a number. "Hi Joanie... Yes, it's me. I need you to look up the numbers for James Hillen. You remember him? Good..... Yes, office, home, cell... yes, all of them, please." Then, after a moment, "Okay, thanks, Joanie."

He held out a Post-It. "Got three numbers. One of them ought to work. What say we go back to the conference room and grab a coffee while I call him?"

"Sounds good," I said.

There was a sink and soap dispenser near the door. Chyll and I washed our hands, then we locked up and went back down the stairs.

I didn't feel like more coffee, but there was a juice machine in the lobby, and I got us a couple of mango-cranberries.

When we got back to the conference room, Victor was just hanging up. "Good news," he said. "Yp-H is not dangerous. Jim agreed to come out here right away and tell us all about it if I'd buy him lunch."

Not dangerous? Then what were Marley and Phil doing with it?

"When did he say he'd get here?" I asked.

"About an hour. Maybe by 10:30 or 11:00."

"Okay, thanks" I said. "You've still got my cell number, right?"

When he nodded, I went on, "Chyll and I are going to look up Jose and try to find out more about Marley's weekend. Give me a call when Mr. Hillen gets here, okay?"

"Alright," he said. "If you need anything else, I'll be in my office."

We waved a quick good-bye went to the guard kiosk.

"Hi Cole," I said, "can you give me a contact number for Jose?"

"Would that be Jose Martinez or Sanborn?"

"Sorry, for Martinez"

He zipped through a phone roster, punched a few numbers into his desk phone, and waited a moment or two.

"Hey, compadre!" he said with a smile, "It's Cole in the lobby. I got someone here who wants to talk to you."

He handed me the phone and I chatted with Jose for a minute. He said yes, he remembered me, and that he was up on the fifth floor landing - the outside area with all the plants - cleaning up the mess from the weekend.

"Perfect," I said. "That's why I want to see you. We'll be there in five minutes or less."

I passed the phone back to Cole with a "Thank-you" and Chyll and I headed for the stairs. When we reached the fifth floor hallway, we turned left and went through a large metal door leading outside.

It was an impressive sight, all those unusual trees, shrubs, and vines. Strange leaf shapes and flower colors, some bizarre, some beautiful.

Some both.

"You know, boss," Chyll said as we made our way toward the space outside of Phil's lab, "I checked over the list of Waxman patents. These plants all make chemicals of one sort or another - poisons, hallucinogens, things that temporarily paralyze you, other stuff that makes you stronger, or faster, or less sensitive to pain. They get a lot of money to study them. I'll bet plenty of it comes from the military."

"Yeah," I answered. "Kelsey grew up around some of these plants. If she was here, she could tell us interesting stories about them."

We pushed through a few more rows of large potted bushes and Chyll said, "Boss, I think you're in love."

"Chyll," I barked, but with a smile, "where do you get off -"

"Don't deny it boss. You know that I walk in your stomach."

I laughed. 'Walking in your stomach' is a Vietnamese expression meaning that you understand a person's thoughts or, better, their gut feelings. It means that they can't hide anything from you.

"You know," I nodded, "sometimes I think you do."

Jose was standing next to a half-dozen large and sturdy wooden pots. They were the kind you could grow a medium-sized tree in, but were empty now. He was leaning over the railing and shouting to someone down below. Then he waved his arm and three of his workers lifted one of the pots, balanced it on the railing, and tipped it over the side. A few seconds later there was a dull thud as it landed.

I peeked over to see where it hit, expecting to find a pile of splintered wood. But the crew on the ground had laid out a wide stack of straw, a couple of feet thick, and the pots were landing on it, bouncing, and staying in one piece.

We waited while Jose repeated the process until all of the pots had been shoved over. Then he told the guys to sweep up the dirt and walked over to us.

"Hello again," he said, and shook hands with both of us. Then I asked him about Marley Granger.

"Yeah, these are his pots," he answered. "Chic and Roberto spent most of Saturday cutting the trees. Today we get rid of the pots. We don't break them, though - we built them right here in the workshop. We'll clean 'em up and use 'em for something else."

I looked around but didn't see any tree parts lying around. No branches or leaves, not a twig – just loose dirt scattered around.

"So where are the cut-up trees?" I asked.

"All burned. Mr. Granger was very positive about that. 'Burn everything' he said, 'Everything'. We even dug out the roots and burned them, too."

"What about the berries?"

"Hmm – I dunno. Hey, Roberto," he called, "ven aqui un momento."

One of the workers set down his rake, walked over, and began talking with Jose. I know a little Spanish, but they spoke too fast for me and couldn't catch it.

"Okay," Jose said, turning back to us, "Roberto says that they picked the fruit and saved the good ones. But the ones that had been eaten by birds got burned."

Roberto must have understood what Jose was saying, because he nodded, then added "birds and las ardillas, muerto. Burn all."

"Las ardillas... that means squirrels, right?" I asked.

"And muerto means dead," added Chyll.

Jose nodded, exchanged more words with Roberto, then turned back to us.

"You remember last week, you saw the nets we use around the fruit trees to keep the birds off?"

I nodded.

"Si," Jose continued, "Roberto says that the nets had tears in them, like maybe something chewed through, and when they took them down they found birds and squirrels inside, all dead, lying next to the trees."

"Any idea how they died?"

"Fruta," said Roberto, and added another rapid sentence or two in Spanish.

"Si, yes," Jose agreed. "Mr. Granger said they died from eating the fruit, the purple berries. He told Roberto and Chic not to touch the fruit with their bare hands."

"Jose, this is important. Did you already burn the birds and the squirrel, or are you just planning to burn them."

He went back to the wall and shouted down to the crew below. After a few more shouted exchanges, he came back.

"Okay, so here's the deal. The trees have all been burnt. All parts, roots, leaves, branches that Roberto and Chic tossed over, were put into a big pile and burned. But the dead animals are to be put into the incinerator that we use for hazardous waste. They're in a garbage bin down there now. Rango says he'll burn them later today."

"No, wait," I called out, a little too loud, then, in a calmer voice, "Jose, it's important that we examine them first. Is there a refrigerator or freezer where Rango can keep them for a few hours?"

He thought for a moment then said, "Yeah, in the equipment shed."

"Good enough," I said. "Please have Rango put the dead animals in there as soon as he can."

He walked back to the wall and called down again. After a minute of exchanged shouts he looked back over his shoulder and said to us, "Okay. Rango will stop working on the pots and put the dead animals in the freezer."

"One more thing," Chyll said, "have him wear gloves, put them in a plastic garbage bag and seal it. And wash his hands and face afterwards."

Jose shouted down to Rango again, got what sounded like a rude response. They both laughed and Jose looked back at us, nodding. "He says you must be really hungry because they won't taste too good now."

We all got a good laugh. After a few seconds, Jose shook his head and asked, "So, anything else?"

"Yeah, actually; did Roberto or Chic or anyone else help Granger take boxes out of the lab?"

"Maybe," he shrugged. "Let's ask."

The crewmen had almost finished sweeping up – the dirt was pushed into a small pile and one of them was using a smaller broom and a shovel blade to dump it into a wheel barrow.

Chyll leaned down and started scuffing through the dirt pile with the toe of her shoe. She called out "Boss, can we get a plastic bag?"

I looked over at Jose, and he pointed toward the corner. One of the men went over, came back with a box of sandwich baggies, and handed it to Chyll. She put her hand in one baggie, and, using it like a glove, picked up a small branch, from the dirt pile. It was just a twig really, but it had four or five semi-squashed berries still attached.

"Is this from the trees?" she asked.

"Si, arandano," said Roberto.

Jose nodded, "Yes, that's the fruit. They look like large blueberries, no? But Mr. Granger says 'No arandano' – he call it 'Kanja, and says 'Do not eat'.'"

Chyll, careful not to touch the fruit bits with her bare hands, slipped them into another baggie and sealed it with a twisty-tie.

Roberto and the other men talked to Jose for a minute or two, gesturing toward the lab, then pointing down below.

"They did move stuff," Jose said to us at last. "Large plastic buckets, sealed with heavy lids. Roberto says there were twelve or thirteen, but Chic says only ten. He also says that they dropped one of the buckets and cracked the lid, and they had to get another lid from the storehouse. The buckets were lined with bubble wrap on the inside and filled with fruit from the trees."

"What'd they do with the buckets?" I asked.

Chic stepped forward and answered. Unlike Roberto, he spoke English well. "We took the buckets down the freight elevator to the shipping dock and loaded them into a pickup truck."

"Whose truck, do you know?"

"Just one of the Waxman motor pool trucks. They all look alike. When they were done, Mr. Granger drove away. He came back about two hours later and left the truck. We didn't see him after that. "

"Thanks, Chic. Last question – did the boxes have anything written on them? Any names, addresses, anything like that?"

Chic and Roberto chatted for a minute in Spanish, then Chic asked for Jose's pen and clipboard. He handed it to Roberto, who quickly wrote something, tore off the page of paper, and handed it to me, at the same time saying something to Jose.

Jose nodded, then said "Roberto says that Mr. Granger took a big black pen and wrote this on all of the buckets, top, sides, and bottom."

I looked at the paper. In block capital letters it said KANJA TAU.

Okay... there was something about the Kanja fruit that could kill birds and squirrels; was it anything to do with Tau toxin?

Did the Kanja fruit contain the Tau toxin?

Kanja Tau. KT.... Yes, that had to be it.

Chapter 51: Hillen

Day 9: Tuesday Mid-morning

We went back around to the inside hallway and walked down to Phil Poley's lab. I pulled out Marley's keys and then saw that they wouldn't be needed. The entire knob and lock had been knocked off – completely out of the door - leaving just a bent hole where they'd been. The door was now held closed by a long strip of duct tape.

It must've taken a sledge hammer and a strong arm, and would've been noisy; it was probably weekend or night work.

"Ayaah!" hissed Jose, "who would do this?"

I raised an eyebrow and said softly, "Someone who was missing their keys. One guess who that might be."

He peeled off the tape and opened the door with a light push. Once inside, Roberto and Chic showed us where the buckets of fruit had been stored - in a walk-in cold room, kept at refrigerator temperature. It was empty now except for the cracked bucket lid lying on the floor. It had smear of purple gunk on the inner surface; maybe from squished berries when the bucket was dropped?

Jose said that he'd toss the lid out, but I said that we wanted to hang onto it. He looked surprised and started to say something, but then his phone jangled. As he answered it, I pushed the lid over to a corner and glanced at Chyll.

"I'm with you on that, boss," she said. She set the plastic sandwich baggie with the fruit onto the cold floor next to the lid. "You want to collect this lid, the fruit, the dead birds and squirrels, and I bet you want me to fetch a vial of that Tau stuff from the liquid nitrogen, too."

"Definitely," I nodded. "For now though, let's leave all this here till we figure out how to test it."

Everyone said that Marley was a cracked but genius molecular biologist. Okay then... if we could connect the bucket lid to the Kanja berries that Chyll had picked up outside, and connect the berries to the chemical in the frozen Tau vial, and then connect the chemical in the vial to the birds and squirrels... yes, then we'd pretty much know that Marley had created genetically engineered Kanja plants that produced the Tau toxin.

Fine, but what then? What exactly was the Tau toxin? It seemed to be able to kill birds and squirrels. What about people?

And how did this link up with plague?

We also knew that Marley shipped his Kanja fruit somewhere on Saturday. Where? Almost certainly down to where Phil had been... and where Kelsey was going. It must have been Phil who ran the Field Trials.

But with Phil gone, who was going to run the next Trial, one maybe using humans?

For a sickening second Kelsey's face popped up; I shook my head... no, no way, she couldn't be involved. Her going down there now was just weird timing - a coincidence, right?

Damn, though, I hate coincidences.

No way she could be involved... could she?

No, I told myself, No, no, and Hell No!

Okay – who then? It had to be Marley, or Niles, or maybe someone already down there. Maybe someone who had just killed Phil?

I felt a small cold knot in my stomach, and wanted to get in touch with Kelsey. I wanted her to be on the lookout for danger and stay far away if she saw any.

On the other hand, she was a smart, gutsy lady who knew the area and the science as well as anyone. Could she somehow intercept the Kanja shipment? Or at least find out where it was going and who was receiving it?

So there I was, torn between wanting her to completely avoid the situation, or asking her to jump into the middle of it; cautiously, yes, and carefully – but still, jumping in and getting very involved.

There was a slight problem, though: she'd said this morning that reaching her by phone would be tough, and that I should wait for her to contact me.

So okay, then, I'd wait, but not idly. There was plenty to do here: First figure out how we're we going to test all this stuff. There had to be people here who could do it... after all, this was the world famous Waxman Institute, right?

Then there was James Hillen, who should be able to clear up some of the mysteries around Yp-H and Tau. I checked the time and turned to Chyll: "Forty-five minutes since we left Akino. Hillen could be getting here soon... we'd better get back downstairs."

Jose told Chic and Roberto to finish the clean-up and get down to the repair shop as soon as possible. "That was Rango on the phone," he said to us. "There's a broken pipe in Greenhouse 2, and he had to shut off the water. The scientists won't like that, so we got to fix it pronto."

He said that he'd stay behind to let the Maintenance department know about the broken door lock and try to get it fixed later today.

We shook hands all around and I thanked the guys sincerely - they had given us a lot of good info.

When Chyll and I got to the lobby we looked the conference room, but Victor wasn't there. Chyll sat down and said she'd check emails, and I went to the guard kiosk.

Cole looked up and asked, "Hi Mr. Durham. Did things go okay with Jose?"

"Yes, thanks, just fine. Do you know if James Hillen had arrived yet?"

"Oh - Dr. Hillen's coming today?"

"Yeah, you know him?"

"Sure, we all do. Used to come all the time to see Dr. Chambers, but... you know, not so much lately."

"Yeah, I understand. But he does still come sometimes?"

"Uh-huh, maybe every couple weeks."

"And when he's here, who does he visit?" I asked.

"He usually asks for Dr. Stratton. Sometimes Dr. Poley."

So, Niles and Phil... what about Marley?

"Anyone else?"

"Not that I noticed," he said, "I mean nobody in particular. But he's friendly with everyone – just an all-around nice guy."

"What about Marley Granger?"

"Oh, well... yeah, if Dr. Poley was out, then he'd go up to the lab with Granger." He leaned closer to me and whispered, "Dr. Hillen is one of the few guys who could stand that son-of-a bitch."

I smiled and nodded. "I take it that Marley's not too popular?"

"Hell no! The guy's got a problem. He either ignores you or treats you like shit, unless he needs something... then he acts like your best buddy. Then as soon as he's got what he needs, he ignores you again. He's like a social retard with that complex... you know, the Greek kid who fell in love with his own reflection?"

"You mean Narcissus?" I guessed.

"Yeah, that's it: a social retard with a Narcissus complex. Plus he's gets a little grabby with his hands on some of the girls... when Keesha told me about it, I told him that I'd kick his honkey ass if he did it again." Cole stood up as he said this; a big black dude, his big hands clenching into ham-sized fists.

"Did Marley seem concerned about that?"

"Not really, he just laughed," Cole frowned. "The guy's a hard-case. But I meant it. Lucky for him he mostly works nights."

Then he smiled, a little embarrassed, and said, "Sorry, Reid, uh, no offense meant... about the 'honkey' comment."

I laughed and gave him a quick high-five. "No offense taken, Cole. I'm planning on kicking his honkey ass, too."

He sat back down with a smile and I asked, "So - if I wanted to leave a note for someone, what's the best way?"

"There's a bank of mailboxes inside that room there," he said, pointing to the far wall. "Everyone has their own box; you just drop your message into their mail slot. Most people check it every day."

I thanked him again and went to the mail room. There were envelopes and paper on a shelf along one wall, and rows of mail slots on the opposite wall. In the middle were the usual company info posters about tax regulations, seminar schedules, potlucks, staff softball team practices, and the like.

I took three sheets of paper and wrote "Gracias! Buy a good lunch - Reid" on them, then tucked each one into an envelope along with a $50 bill. I put one into the slot labeled Jose Martinez, another into Roberto Lopes, and the third into Chico Domingo.

The mail boxes weren't closed; they were just slots where anyone could leave a notice or an envelope, and the user would reach in and collect it. Many of them had an envelope or two, and almost all of them had a white sheet of paper with a notice about next year's holiday schedule. I glanced at the date it had been written: last Friday.

I also looked into the slot labeled Marley Granger. It was empty. That fit with him being here over the weekend.

When I came out of the mailroom I saw Victor at the kiosk, shaking hands with a dark-haired man who carried a briefcase. Must be James Hillen. Victor said something to Cole, then went to the conference room. Hillen walked with a slight limp, favoring his left leg.

Cole picked up his phone, but when he saw me he set it down and waved.

"Dr. Hillen just arrived, Reid," he called out.

I waved back, said "Thanks," and went over to the conference room. Hillen was standing at the front of the table, smiling and chatting with Chyll. He took a manila folder out of his briefcase, laid it on the table and was setting the bag on the floor when he noticed me.

"Oh, hi Reid," said Victor. "This is Jim Hillen. Jim – meet Reid Durham. I told Jim that we've hired you and Chyll to investigate some possibly serious events, and asked for his cooperation in giving whatever info he can."

Hillen nodded. "Glad to help. The Waxman is dear to me, even though I've had my differences with the Board. I'll do whatever I can."

"Thanks," I said. "We're hoping that you can clarify some points about a few, um, reagents. Our questions might seem a little intrusive, but it's important that we understand as much as we can about them."

Hillen nodded again, a little tight-lipped, but apparently ready to help.

Victor smiled and said in a light-hearted tone, "As you know, Reid, Jim was one of our star scientists - you got what – four patents?"

"Six, actually," said Hillen with a grin as we shook hands, then found seats.

"Oops, sorry," said Victor. "Why don't we start with you telling us a bit about that?"

Hillen laughed softly. "We began as an epidemiology department, focusing on disease transmission. That was my specialty and was why Julian was brought on. But Niles wanted to switch our focus to high value biochemicals, and hired Phil. The stuff he could get out of jellyfish, snakes, frogs, spiders, leeches, was just amazing. We put that together with what Niles was doing with plant chemicals, and Julian and I studied how they all affected diseases. That's how we got the Epi-Tox department name: Epidemiology and Toxicology. And we expanded from there, beyond the medical into other more classified biological applications"

I recalled what Chyll had said a few minutes ago about the Waxman patents and their potential military uses, but didn't want to press Hillen on this, so I just nodded and kept quiet.

Hillen smiled and went on. "That work led to a lot of patents and licenses for new products that not only made Waxman Institute famous, but also rich."

"Of course," he said his eyes narrowing, "the scientists never seem to get much of those riches. That was a sore point between me and the Board, and led eventually to my resignation."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Victor shifting uncomfortably in his chair, but Hillen didn't seem to notice.

"But as I said, I still care about the people, and enjoy coming back for visits."

"Speaking of that," Victor said, "have you heard about Phil?"

"Yes," Hillen said, shaking his head. "Niles called and gave me the news. Incredible - a heart attack on a field trip? He's been down to that area a hundred times. And he wasn't even forty-five, was he? The last time I saw him he looked fine."

He frowned and looked down at his hands, lost in thought. I waited for a few seconds, then spoke up.

"A new question, Jim: The Epi-Tox department accumulated a lot of valuable and potent biochemicals over the years. Do you know of any problems with any of them?"

"I don't quite follow," he said, trying to adjust to the new line of thought. "Do you mean did we have any safety issues, accidental exposures to the staff, stuff like that?"

"Yes, and also any accidental releases to the environment. Or were any ever stolen and sold for drug use. Or maybe for some bioterrorist activity?"

He leaned back in his chair, thinking. He looked at Victor, who nodded, then turned to me.

"Okay, a few years ago there was an incident. The roommate of a technician in Phil Poley's lab died suddenly one night. The hospital sent us his blood samples to test, and we found a high concentration of one of the hallucinogens stored in Nile's freezer. It turned out that the technician had been stealing it to sell to a few private friends. After that we tightened up protocols to have double or triple containment. All toxic or psychoactive chemicals are stored in locked rooms inside of the labs, which are also locked."

I thought about the Tau and Yp-H stored in Julian's lab. Yes, it jibed with Hillen's story of double-lock security.

"That's all, just the one incident?" I asked. "What about the diseases you studied. You must have worked with some dangerous ones."

"Yes, but the real dangerous parts of the work were done at high security federal labs, not here. At the Waxman we used with the less dangerous forms, so-called attenuated forms, of the disease organisms."

Just then there was a quick knock at the door, then without waiting for an answer, Victor's secretary stuck her head into the room.

"Is this a good time?" she asked.

"Oh hi, Joanie," smiled Victor. "Yes, it's perfect."

Turning to us he said "It's almost 11:30, and I promised Jim that we'd feed him if he came to see us. So Joanie's here to take our lunch orders."

She came in the rest of the way and handed out menus from the rooftop cafeteria. I checked the boxes for pesto chicken on toasted ciabatta bread, a brownie, and raspberry juice.

"Oh cool," Chyll said, "Macadamia nut cookies! Can I get an extra one for Chypp?"

"Yes, of course," said Joanie with a smile. "Our baker makes them fresh and they're really good."

She took the orders, waved goodbye, and promised to be back soon.

There were a few seconds of silence while we looked at each other, then I said, "So, Jim, what I'm really interested in is learning essentially everything about Yp-H."

His eyes widened in surprise, then dropped down to stare at his hands. The question seemed to have caught him off-guard. Finally he coughed, then looked up and asked, "Does this have any... legal repercussions?".

"We don't know yet," I answered. "It might be part of a routine clinical test project. But it could be something a lot bigger. Maybe even with international importance. Right now, I'm just trying to gather information."

Chapter 52: Plague

Day 9: Tuesday Noon

James Hillen closed his eyes, thumbs rubbing his temples, then sighed and stood. On the wall behind his chair was a white board, the kind used in classrooms with dry-erase markers. He paced back and forth next to it, thinking, then stopped, looked at the three of us, and took a deep breath.

"How much do you know about bubonic plague infections?"

"Well, they killed a helluva lot of people," I said.

"And are caused by the bacterium _Yersinia pestis_ ," said Victor.

"And are usually transmitted by flea bites," said Chyll. "Wasn't the last big outbreak in London back in the 1600's?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and - unfortunately –no," Hillen said, ticking off the answers on his fingers. "Plague has certainly killed many, many millions of people, and yes, it is an infection by _Yersinia pestis_ , which humans usually pick up from flea bites. The London outbreak is well known because it's a major European city and because Daniel Defoe, among others, wrote about it. But a much larger episode was also much more recent. Around 1900 an outbreak started in China and spread around the world, hopping from one seaport to another. Something like fifteen million people died."

"Plague in one form or another has been with us for thousands of years. It's never completely gone away - waxes and wanes, yes, but it's always with us. Even now, there are several thousand cases around the world every year, and the rate could be increasing."

"The big difference between now and before is the mortality rate. Go back a hundred or more years, and it was a death sentence. And not just for those who caught the disease. The panic, the religious hysteria, the scattering of populations was a mortal blow to towns, ethnic groups, and cultures."

"But now, thanks to early diagnosis and antibiotics, about ninety percent of infected people survive. And with increased survival, there's a decrease in the panic and hysteria levels. Plague has become a manageable problem, but nonetheless, still a problem."

"The increased survival," Chyll asked, "is that world-wide, or just in developed countries?"

I glanced at her; a very perceptive question. Maybe a critical question for what we could be dealing with.

"Good point," nodded Hillen, "excellent point. We don't have thorough studies on recovery rates in areas with minimal access to antibiotics or effective disease tracking systems. Many cases would go unreported, or be mistaken for something else, and, yes, mortality rates could be high."

"But," he added "did you know that the Bay Area – right here - was once a hot spot for plague?"

"Really Jim?" Victor sounded surprised. "I never heard that."

"It's true. More than a hundred people here died from plague during the first half of last century. Today we pretty much only find it in a few wild mice, and there's very little risk to humans. But it's still the same organism – _Yersinia pestis_." He waved his hand toward the walls and said, "There are infected animals running around in the hills right outside."

"I go hiking on these trails all the time," Chyll said. "What's the danger?"

Hillen smiled. "Probably at least ninety-nine point nine nine nine and so on per cent safe. To tell the truth, it's hardly worth worrying about. But – it is a little sobering to remember that the microbe is still around us, and probably always will be."

We were mulling over that when there was a knock at the door and Joanie came in wheeling a small cart.

"I'm baaack," she said with a grin, and started passing out sandwich containers, drinks, chips, brownies, cookies, and napkins.

We all welcomed the break, and the food, too. Chyll and I ate quietly for a few minutes while Hillen and Victor reminisced about old friends. I thought about the KT samples that we needed to test, and wished that Kelsey was here. Could it really be just one day since she left?

Seemed longer. Where was she was right now?

And then tinkling chimes started playing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

"Oops!" said Chyll, sitting up and pulling her phone out of her sweater pocket. "My Christmas ring tone," she laughed and stepped to the far corner of the room. After a short whispered conversation, she slid back into her chair with a satisfied smile.

"Sorry!" she said to everyone, then, leaning toward me, went on in a low voice. "That was Chypp. While you were in the mail room, I called and asked him to check on something. I'll let you know later what he found out."

I nodded but didn't say anything; Hillen was up and leaning against the white board again. He was looking more relaxed now, as if the lunch break had given him time to gather his thoughts and regain his composure.

"Thanks for the lunch, Vic. Shall we go on now?"

I set my juice bottle down. "Yes, please. Jim, you mentioned before that you did the dangerous part of your work at outside labs. So then, what exactly is Yp-H? And how does it fit in with other work going on here?"

He nodded, took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and began:

"Yp-H is one of the Yersinia mutants we developed a few years back. It was a marker for tracking transmission of bacteria through animal populations - mice, rats, squirrels, or whatever. We could track it by taking a blood sample and doing a relatively easy test for a genetic marker that we'd tagged into the bacteria. It's a straightforward concept: If an individual is infected and the bacteria are present, then so is the marker; if the individual is not infected, then the marker is not present. By testing many members of a widespread population over time, we would see how fast and how far the bacteria spread. It's a pretty safe way of following a potential pathogen. I say 'safe' because, under normal conditions, the YP mutants cause no lasting harmful effects. We have 'removed their teeth'."

"What do you mean, 'removed their teeth'?" I asked.

"Well..." he began, then stopped and paced for a few seconds, thinking.

"Okay," he said finally, "consider this: We have trillions of bacteria on our skin or in our guts. Trillions – from dozens of bacterial species. But we don't even notice them unless they cause a problem. So why do a select few cause problems, while the vast majority are mostly safe- or even beneficial - to us?"

"It's not the presence of the bugs themselves that's gives us a problem, it's the chemicals they make and our reactions to them. Harmless chemicals do essentially nothing to us. But if the chemicals mess up our immune system, or help the bacteria to invade our tissues, or interfere with our metabolic processes, then we get sick. We call the chemicals that cause these problems 'virulence factors'. They help the bug grow at the expense of the host."

"Different virulence factors cause different sicknesses with different symptoms. Some are mild, and we recover in a day or a week and go merrily on our way. Other times the problems can persist for years."

"And sometimes they kill."

"Yersinia are like that; little bacteria that carry a big wallop, or maybe I should say, different big wallops, because there are three types of plague infections. What type you get depends on where the Yersinia are in your body, and what virulence factors they're making."

"In one type of infection, you get the classic bubonic plague: Yersinia multiply in the lymph nodes, causing large, painful swellings. The virulence factors they make affect critical organs in your body, causing fever, headache, weakness, and death."

"In a second type, you get what's called septicemic plague. Instead of collecting in the lymph nodes, the Yersinia grow directly in your blood stream. The virulence factors they make cause a massive interference with the blood clotting system. What you get are millions of tiny blood clots forming, clogging up small blood vessels in your major organs, messing up their function. As if that's not bad enough, in the next phase your blood won't clot – your normal clotting factors have been used up. So you start getting internal bleeding – lots of it. It's almost always fatal unless treatment is started within a day or two of infection."

"In the third type you get Yersinia growing in your lungs. As with the other forms, you get massive loss of function in critical organs, leading to death. But to make things worse, since it's in a person's lungs, they can pass it on to someone else just by coughing – the bacteria don't need the bites of fleas anymore to spread."

"How can the same bacteria make different virulence factors?" asked Chyll. "Don't they all have exactly the same DNA?"

"Another good question," said Hillen with a nod. "The answer, surprisingly, is 'No'." He turned to the white board, picked up a black dry-erase marker, and drew a large oval. Inside of it, in blue, he drew a large squiggly line. Then, in red, he drew several small circles.

"You're probably all familiar with the idea that genetic information is coded by DNA, right?"

We all nodded, and he continued. "Different organisms – bacteria, yeast, plants, animals – all have their DNA packaged into large strands called chromosomes. The exact type of DNA you have on your chromosomes is what makes you be you. Simply put, corn has corn DNA, humans have human DNA, and bacteria have bacteria DNA. That's really a gross simplification, since we all share most genetic information, but the details are what make each species unique."

"Think of this large black oval as the cell wall of one Yersinia bacterium. The large blue squiggle is its single large chromosome, containing all of the genes needed for Yersinia to be Yersinia."

He paused for a few seconds, then went on. "Okay – well, it turns out that in addition to the large strand of DNA that is common to all Yersinia, they also have small, extra bits floating around inside of them. Those are the little red circles I drew here and here. These small extra bits of DNA are called plasmids, and they have only enough genes to code for just a very few proteins. It's usually the genes on these tiny plasmids that code for the virulence factors, not the ones on the large Yersinia chromosome. So different strains of Yersinia may have different plasmids, and so cause different types of infections."

"What we did in our lab was to remove the natural plasmids and replace them with ones that we had constructed artificially... ones that coded for the marker signals I mentioned earlier. At the time, we were doing this with many different types of bacteria – Yersinia was just one of them. It wasn't easy, but if we did it right, then when we kicked out the plasmids we got bacteria that grew just fine in cultures – metabolized normally, divided normally, did everything just as they should – but were no longer able to cause severe diseases. At most, you would get mild flu-like symptoms. We made something like six or seven different types of modified Yersinia; Yp-H was just one of them, and if I remember right, it was an intermediate variety. It didn't have all plasmids removed, so it would cause a moderate but not lethal infection."

"These plasmids you're talking about – are they like viruses or something? Are they alive?" asked Chyll.

Hillen looked at her, nodding silently, then folded his arms and leaned back against the white board. "You have one good question after another, don't you," he smiled. "Alive – well, that would be a stretch... but it makes you think about what being alive really means. Plasmids do have their own DNA, but they only live inside of another cell – they don't have any ability to live on their own. But then - does anything really have the ability to live just on its own?"

He shrugged and shook his head. "No – nothing does. A plasmid depends on living inside of the bacteria to survive. In the same sort of way, we depend on living on the Earth to survive. We gain food, water, oxygen, heat, and everything else we need from the environment around us. The Earth is our host. And the plasmid gets everything it needs to thrive and multiply from the environment around it, which happens to be the inside of a host cell. So – is it alive? Depends on your definition of life. Of course, you could take it down even further, to a single gene, a point that Richard Dawkins raised some years ago. And what about prions and transposons? The more we learn about the universe inside the cell, the more we realize how mind-blowing it is."

That was all interesting – actually very interesting, but I didn't want the conversation to skew off into philosophy just now. Some other time, sitting around a campfire, or in the evening with a glass of wine, sure - but not just now.

I'd been jotting down notes while Hillen talked, not every word, just the high points, and had finished drawing his picture of the cell with the circular plasmids inside when Chyll tossed out another question.

Like I said before, she's got this amazing memory for details. So just when he was starting to sit down, she said, "Dr. Hillen, you said earlier that the Yp-H strain of Yersinia could cause an infection, but it wouldn't be serious because you had 'removed its teeth'."

"Yes," he agreed, "we removed the virulent genes. It's essentially harmless now."

"Okay," she continued, "but is it possible to restore those teeth? I mean, suppose someone was exposed to something else... a chemical or another pathogen that might not be a big problem on its own, but did the same sort of thing that the missing virulence genes would normally do. Then would the combination of Yp-H and this other agent act like the wild-type Yersinia? Would it be lethal?"

Hillen stopped in mid-sit and stared at her. His face turned pale and I think he even stopped breathing for a few seconds. Then he slowly stood up again, paced back and forth next to the white board for nearly a minute, then abruptly turned and faced Chyll. "The short answer to your question is 'Yes'. The idea of a co-infection by two microbes, each relatively harmless in themselves, but when present together complementing each other's deficiencies... and so becoming a fatal situation... yes, that's definitely possible. But unlikely, or at least, very rare."

"What about something simpler, like exposure to a toxic chemical instead of having a second microbial infection?" Chyll persisted. "Would that be enough to, uh, 'restore the teeth'?"

Hillen drummed his fingers on the table. This line of questions was clearly making him uncomfortable. He stopped his finger tapping in mid-strum and looked piercingly at her.

"Remember, the cause of death in a blood-borne Yersinia infection is a massive collapse of the clotting system, resulting first in a myriad of tiny blood clots, followed by extensive internal bleeding. But Yp-H is a very limited microbe, causing a relatively mild blood infection. It may cause fever and muscle aches, but none of the deadly effects on blood clotting. That would require a complex interaction between the virulence genes and the person's own enzymatic systems, and with Yp-H, we've done a good job of knocking out those virulence factors. You'd be hard pressed to restore them all with a single toxin."

Chyll nodded. "But it wouldn't be impossible, right? Like maybe for a particular hemotoxin?"

"Unlikely," he said quickly. "It would need to have a wide range of effects and be unusually powerful."

"Okay," Chyll said, keeping her voice soft and courteous, "so you don't know of any that might do that?"

Hillen leaned back and tried to smile, but it looked forced and awkward. Then he slowly shook his head. "No."

That was it, just the one word. But his body language screamed to me that he was lying.

The atmosphere in the room had become strangely tense, although I wasn't sure why. In any case, I thought it best to shift to the next subject.

"Jim," I asked, "Are there stocks of Yp-H here? Or do you keep them in your own lab?" We already had the answer, of course, but I wanted to know how much he knew about it.

Hillen took a sip of water and seemed to regain his composure after shooting one last curious glance at Chyll.

"Oh, they'd definitely be here," he said. "Anything developed here remains here. I may be an author on a patent, but the rights to keep and use the items are always retained by the Waxman."

"So where would the Yp-H be kept?"

"Down in the basement, in the Pathology Department. They have the largest and best controlled facility, so it makes sense to use them as a central storage location."

"What about the liquid nitrogen tanks next to Julian's lab?"

"Well sure, if someone was actively working on that particular cell line, then yes, it could be kept there."

"Was anyone working with Yp-H?"

He shook his head. "Not that I know of. At least, no one said anything to me about it."

I nodded. Maybe his contacts here weren't as close as he thought. Or he could still be lying. But again - why?

After that, there didn't seem to be much more to cover, so I stood and reached across the table to shake his hand.

"Thanks Jim, that was great - informative and interesting."

"My pleasure," he said with a smile, then reached out to shake Chyll's hand.

"Very sharp, young lady," he nodded to her. "You have a quick mind and a lot of guts."

Chyll bowed her head briefly and smiled. She didn't say anything, but I knew she was pleased.

Chapter 53: Tau

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

After Hillen and Akino left the room, Chyll tapped my arm and said in a low voice, "Alright, boss, remember when you went out to the mail room and I stayed here? Well, I called Chypp and asked him to dig up some info. That phone call a few minutes ago – when I had to whisper – that was him calling back."

"Info on what?"

"Before that I'd gone online and entered 'Tau,' 'toxin' and 'Waxman' into the search box, just looking for anything that might pop up, and got a few hits. The top one was a quote from an article titled "Physiological Effects of Central American Frog Toxins". It said, 'A family of related polypeptides act as cardiotoxins and hemotoxins. We have designated the most potent as 'Tau'. The authors are Julian Chambers, Russell Keynes, and Philip Poley, from the Waxman Institute."

"Ahh - okay," I nodded, "now I see why you were asking Hillen about that. What'd Chypp have to say?"

"Well, there wasn't much else. That article was just a summary paper, published four years ago. A second, longer article came out a year later. Then nothing after that – it was like they stopped working on Tau, or at least stopped publishing on it."

"Did he send us copies to read?"

"No – they're not available. He could only get an image of the first page. There was a note attached saying that for reprints you need to contact the authors directly."

"Huh," I was surprised. "I thought that once an article was published, it became openly available. You might have to pay a fee, but you wouldn't be refused access."

"Chypp said that's not always true unless the work was funded by public money, like an NIH grant. The Waxman is a private institution, and they keep control of their work. Also, this isn't a regular journal – it's a Waxman in-house journal, published by them and dedicated to their own research."

"Okay... who'd you say were the authors, again?"

"Julian Chambers, Russell Keynes, and Philip Poley."

"Well, it might be tough to get a reprint. Two of them are dead, and we don't know who Keynes is."

As we were talking the door opened and Victor came through, smiling apologetically.

"Sorry to take so long," he said, "but we ran into Trinity at the kiosk and she and Jim wanted to chat for a bit."

Trinity? I wondered how long she'd hung around the lobby, waiting for them to come by so she could 'chat for a bit'. And why did she care?

Good questions to think about later; right now, I was wondering if Victor might know Russell Keynes.

"Chyll," I said, "tell Vic about the Tau articles."

She explained what Chypp found. Afterward, Victor shook his head. "That work was done right here? And published right here? My God – how did I not know about it?"

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, almost knocking off his eyeglasses. "The bureaucrat's trap: Too much time spent in the office. Or travelling... or in planning meetings, and not enough time spent keeping up with what's going on in right in front me."

"It's a common problem," I commiserated. "But, if this is a Waxman journal, can you help us get copies?"

"Sure – the originals will be in our library. Joanie can make copies, but why don't we just go see Russ Keynes?"

"He's here?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "right upstairs. Runs the Analytical Lab on the second floor. If Russ was an author on the paper, then he must have done the purification and analysis work."

I shot Chyll a quick smile, then said to Victor "So if we wanted to have someone analyze the Tau vials from the liquid nitrogen, and maybe a few other items too, then he would be the guy, right."

"Absolutely. He's got state of the art equipment and is an expert at using it. You want something analyzed, he's your man."

I had been thinking of taking the samples to Halliday's labs. We've got equipment and experts too, but they'd be starting from scratch. If Russell Keynes had already worked with Tau, he must have the test methods already figured out.

"Can you give him a call?" I asked.

"Sure."

There was employee staff roster on the bulletin board and a phone on the table. Victor checked the roster, nodded, keyed a number into the phone and set it on 'speaker'. A voice answered on the second ring.

"Keynes here, how can I help you?"

"Hi Russ, this is Victor. I'm wondering if you have a few minutes to talk about work you did a while back with Phil and Julian."

"Phil and Julian? Uhh... what stuff would that be?"

"Something you called Tau toxin. You got a paper out of it."

"Oh right," he laughed. "I can't forget that \- actually got my name on two journal articles."

"Speaking of which, do you have any copies? We'd like to take a look at them later."

"Definitely. I've got a few dozen nice glossy reprints gathering dust in a drawer. That work never caught on, never became big news, so I don't get many requests for them. I'll sign one of each for you, Vic."

I chimed in with "Hi Russ, that sounds great. My name is Reid Durham. I've been talking to Victor about the Tau project. Could you just briefly tell us what it involved?"

"Okay, just let me think for a second... mmm... yeah, Phil brought these frogs back from one of his trips, and said that they had poisonous gunk covering their skin. Julian wanted to do studies with rats to see how potent it was, and to do that he needed the pure agent. So they asked me to purify the toxic chemical from the rest of the gunk, and that's what I did. That was the first paper. Then they set up a collaboration with a pharmacology prof back east to find out exactly how the toxin worked. That was the second paper."

"And the reagent you purified, that was Tau?"

"Oh, uh... it was FP-7 at first. Frog Peak Number Seven. That's what I called it, based on the chromatography separation patterns. The secretions on the frog skin contained a lot of junk, and it was a Helluva challenge to get the purified poison. But hey - I managed to do it. Julian wanted to name it Tau Toxin and I had to admit that Tau Toxin sounds a lot sexier than Frog Peak-7."

"So you were purifying Tau and giving the pure toxin to Julian and the pharmacologist to do their studies?"

"Yeah, purifying it from frogs at first, and then later from rat blood."

"Rat blood?"

"Right. They would feed different doses of the toxin to rats, then take blood samples every few minutes or hours, if they were still alive. I'd analyze the samples to measure the toxin levels at each time point. They were trying to find out how much was needed to kill them, you know, the minimum lethal dose."

Chyll made a face. "Doesn't sound like much fun for the rats."

Keynes gave a short laugh – more of a bark, really – and said, "You're right about that. I'm not a big fan of it either, but that's how the business of studying poison works."

"Speaking of poisons, Russ, we have some dead birds and squirrels, and it might be the Tau toxin that killed them. Would you be able to test their blood?"

"Man, I don't know about that. If they've been dead for a while, it'd be pretty tough to get a good sample. I could tell you if the toxin is present or not, but not exactly how much of was there."

"That'd be good enough. Are you going to be around for a while?"

"Yeah- yeah. I'm in the middle of an analysis right now, so I can't leave the lab for an hour or so. But if you come up here we can talk about it, and I can give you copies of those articles."

Victor looked at me and I nodded. "Okay Russ, we'll be right up there. Thanks for everything."

"No problem," he said. "Seeya in a bit."

Victor shut off the phone and we stood up.

"Seems like a friendly guy," I said.

"Oh, yeah, everybody likes Russ. Not only is he really good at his job, he also organizes our softball and bowling teams. You can't help but like him."

As we started out the door, Chyll said, "Wait a sec, boss," and stopped. "While you're chatting with this Keynes guy, how about if I get the dead critters and those berries and the bucket lid, and bring them up to his lab? Maybe he can get started right away on the tests."

I nodded. It made good sense to get everything together and get the analyses going as soon as possible.

"Okay, if you don't mind going by yourself. Do you know where the equipment shed is – where they guys stored the critters?"

"Not really, but I can probably get directions from the guard at the kiosk"

"Okay - better yet, have him page Jose. Maybe he can show you where the shed is and help carry the stuff, too."

We stopped at the kiosk and asked Cole to page Jose Martinez. Jose called back right away to say that he was upstairs talking to Ed from Maintenance about fixing the door to Phil's lab. He said that he'd be down in a minute and take Chyll to the freezer.

"Okay, thanks Jose," I said, then turned toward Chyll. "Call me if there's any problem, right? Anything at all."

"No worries, boss" she grinned. "There won't be. Seeya in fifteen or twenty minutes."

Right. No worries... if only that'd been true.

So Chyll went down the hall to meet Jose, and Vic and I went upstairs.

Russ Keynes' lab was smaller than Kelsey's or Phil's, but was packed with equipment. He was sitting at desk looking intently at a computer monitor. A line was tracing its way across the screen, kind of like the heart-beat monitors you see in hospital rooms. The line moved up to a sharp peak every few seconds, then dropped back down again. Each time it went up, Russ would tap a stylus onto a number bank displayed on the screen.

After five or six minutes, he leaned back and waved to us.

"Okay, sorry to make you wait, but I had to finish that run before taking a break."

"No problem," I said. "Thanks for taking the time to see us."

"Hey – anything for Doctor 250!" he said with a grin.

"Oh my," Victor sighed. Turning to me, he said "I rolled 254 for the bowling team once last season. It was a total fluke, but now everyone expects me to do it every time."

Russ laughed, pulled open a file drawer, and started flipping through a stack of papers.

A minute or two passed, then "Got'em!" he said triumphantly, and set shiny reprints of the two journal articles onto his desk.

He closed the drawer and pushed the papers over to us. "This is the first one; it came out just over four years ago. The second one came out the next year."

"But you stopped working on it after that?"

"My involvement stopped, yeah, but as far at the other guys..." he shrugged. "I'm sure they were still working with it, just not publishing. Then Julian took off for field work, and I never saw him again. And Phil...." His voice trailed off.

He stared at the papers, then shook his head and said in a lower voice, "Jesus! I can't believe that I'm the only one these guys still alive. That's just too bizarre."

I'd started reading through them, but quickly got bogged down in the terminology.

"If you don't mind, Russ, I'll pass these on to Kelsey to read through. She's a lot better suited for this than I am."

"Oh," he said, "you mean Kelsey Theroux?"

"Right," I answered.

"Okay, yeah, she's cool," he said. "One of my favorites. You know, she's a good natural athlete. I've been trying to get her on the softball team for a couple years now, but she's always got something else goin' on. I heard she's taking off for a few months."

"Yeah," I nodded, "but she's agreed to help us out on this. So, if it's okay with you, I'd like to give these reprints to her."

"Sure, sure," he said. "No problem."

"Great. But for now though, maybe you can give us a summary of what they're about?"

"Well, I can try. I don't remember all of it – Hell, I never even knew all of it; I was just the purification guy – but I'll tell you what I can."

We sat around his desk, which was cluttered with stacks of computer printouts and bits of hardware, and he started his story.

"Alright, um... about five years ago, Phil called and asked if I could come up to his lab. When I got there he had a big fish tank on one of his benches. Inside this tank were a bunch of little orange frogs, maybe an inch or so long. He tells me that these little guys are really deadly; they've got poison on their skin, but nobody knows exactly how it works. So he and Julian are going to study it. We put on gloves and he picks up one of the froggies and hands it to me. It was a docile little guy, didn't try to jump away or anything."

"'Run your finger along its back, gently,' he tells me, and I do it. There's this thin coating of sticky stuff on its skin – not slimy, more like slick and tacky. 'The poison is secreted onto the skin' he says. 'We think it's a small protein, and we need you to purify it for us.' And - that's pretty much how it got started."

"After a few weeks I worked out a good purification method, but it was tough getting enough for them. Julian was using up the pure stuff as fast as I could make it, injecting it into rats, rubbing it on their skin, putting it in their food and water– different ways of exposing them. He found out that rubbing it on the skin didn't do anything, but when either injected or eaten was effective – killed'em quick. The way it works in nature is that if you touch the frog with your hands, then lick your fingers, you're in trouble. Or if you eat the frog raw... but strong heat kills the poison, so if you cooked it, you'd be OK."

"It's not as toxic as ricin or botulinum, but close. The lethal dose depends on body mass, so a rat can take more than a mouse, a cat more than a rat, a monkey more than a cat, and a human – well, we never tried it on humans... but even then, the amount would be small. It's really powerful jazz."

"So," I asked, "is that what you'd call a cardiotoxin?"

"Uh... no, not really. The frog secretions do contain a weak cardiotoxin that causes an irregular heartbeat, but wasn't fatal in the rats. The really bad-ass poison, the one that kills, is more of a hemotoxin - something that screws up your blood. That was what we did in the second part of the work, with Dr. Harrison."

He rolled his chair back a few feet and opened a cabinet door. Inside was a small fridge, like you'd see in a dorm room. He pulled out a Coke and asked if we'd like one.

We said no – it hadn't been that long since lunch – but he popped the top on his and took a swig. "Need my afternoon caffeine and sugar," he said with a smile.

He rolled back to the desk, set down the can and asked. "You know much about blood clotting?"

Funny - Hillen had just been talking to us about blood clots, about how plague can cause massive problems with it. But he didn't explain much about how it all works.

"You get a cut, you bleed," I shrugged. "It clots up and stops. Unless you're a hemophiliac – then you just keeps bleeding. That's about all I know"

"Okay, you've got the basic idea. But I meant the process of how blood clots. I didn't know much about it until I went back east to work with Dr. Harrison. I was there for almost three months, making Tau and helping with the testing, so I had time to learn a bit. It turns out that blood clotting is a very complicated, highly controlled process – lots of enzymes involved, dashing around, catalyzing little reactions in a closely coordinated fashion. But there's one main enzyme, called Thrombin, that makes the actual clot. There's a lot of it in your blood; normally just sitting around in an inactive state... like it's always there, but sleeping. When it gets woken up, it becomes active – very active, very fast."

He took another drink of Coke and raised one eyebrow. I nodded, "Right, I got that much."

"Okay then. What Dr. Harrison found out is that if when Tau gets in your blood – either directly or by being absorbed through your small intestine – it spreads around the body and starts activating Thrombin, which then begins making clots. Clots come in different sizes, from teeny little microscopic dots to clumps the size of marbles. When thrombin gets activated in just one spot – like if you had a single wound – then a large clot could grow. But if you get a jillion simultaneous Thrombin activations, then you get a jillion small clots forming, and these get hung up in the little nooks and crannies of your organs. They're too small to cause immediate death – too small to cause a heart attack or a stroke – but they play Hell with the normal function of these organs. Then after a while you've used up all of that reserve, inactive Thrombin. So now there's no more to activate, and your blood can't clot, even when you need it to. You start getting internal bleeding everywhere. Eventually you bleed out and die. I've heard that kind of thing happens with Ebola infections."

"Ebola?" I said. "What about septicemic plague?"

Russ shrugged. "I don't know... never heard about that."

"We're just learning about it, too," I said, then added, "Wait a sec, Russ, let me think about this."

He nodded and sipped more Coke while I walked to the window and stared out at nothing. Just staring, and thinking. Jillions of small clots? Bleedout? That's exactly what Hillen had been talking about with the plague infection in your blood....

I turned and looked at Victor Akino. He was looking at me.

"Sounds like what Jim was saying about septicemic plague, doesn't it?" he said.

I nodded. What Russ told us was exactly the description of the power that had been removed from the deadly natural Yersinia to make the 'toothless' Yp-H mutant.

So Chyll was on the right track when she asked if anything could restore those teeth. Hillen had said 'No'. Didn't he know about Tau?

He must have... so maybe he just thought that _we_ didn't know.

Mixing Yp-H and Tau... is that what they were doing in those Field Trials, the ones mentioned in Marley Granger's notebooks?

Doing that would restore the power of septicemic plague. But if you just wanted to kill someone, all you'd need was Tau. So why include Yp-H?

Unless... unless... hmmm.

Unless you wanted it to look like a natural plague infection, but have control over the severity of it... to be able to stop it by shutting off the exposure to Tau.

Why in Hell would anyone want that?

While I was mulling this over, I heard Victor say, "Russ, you said that you were sure that Julian and Phil were still working with Tau. How do you know that?"

Russ shook his head. "I didn't mean them, exactly. It was the new guy Phil had in his lab."

"You mean Marley Granger?"

"Yeah, that'd be Granger, alright," Russ said with a little nod of his head. His grip on the Coke tightened and the can crinkled slightly.

"You're not a big fan of his?" I ventured.

He shrugged. "Ahh – no, not really. Anyway, Marley wanted to do DNA analysis of Tau - you know, clone and sequence the gene, that sort of stuff. I helped him on and off for a few months, but he was tough to work with. Really secretive. Didn't share results, never gave any progress updates. Mostly I just analyzed samples for him. Then nothing for a while, until a couple of weeks ago when he showed up with a rack of test tubes."

"What was in the tubes?" I came back to the desk, more attentive now.

"Not sure what it was... a dozen test tubes of purple-blue squishy stuff. It looked like mashed blueberries, but it didn't smell like anything I recognized. He wanted me to measure how much Tau toxin was in each one."

"And what'd you find?"

"Well, I ran'em through the extraction and testing procedure that I worked out before, for the blood samples. Turned out to be an even split: six tubes had zero toxin, but the other six were loaded with the Tau, very high concentrations."

Mashed blue fruit? Had to be Kanja berries, right?.

"What was Granger's reaction when you showed him the results?"

"He was friggin' ecstatic! About the only time I ever saw him smile. Bought me a six-pack of Guinness – which I thoroughly enjoyed, thank you very much. Then he told me to keep my big trap shut about it."

He took another drink of Coke and sat there with a lop-sided grin.

"Why did he want you to keep quiet?"

"Oh, I dunno. It's not that unusual a request around here. Most people keep their research quiet until they get it published – they don't want anybody else claiming credit."

"Was Marley planning on publishing?"

"No way. He was extremely hush-hush about it. Even insisted that I turn over my notes and machine print-outs."

"Is that something people usually ask?"

"No, it's not. And so I told him 'Hell no, I need them for my records'. He was super- pissed, 'You better keep your damn mouth shut about this' he said."

"So then what'd you say?"

"Mmm... two things. First I said that professional ethics require me to keep all results appropriately confidential. Then second, I told him to go fuck himself."

We all laughed, then I asked, "But you don't mind telling us about it now?"

"Nope. The key words here are 'appropriately confidential'." He nodded at Victor and continued with a smile, "I figure that if the Waxman Director personally asks for information, then I have no choice but to answer."

I could see why Victor said that it was easy to like Russ. He excused himself to check on a machine that was making clicking noises, and I started thinking about Marley's little trees. Little Kanja trees that had been transformed to produce Tau toxin in their berries....

Speaking of which, where was Chyll? She should already be here with the critters and the other stuff. It had been over thirty minutes since she'd left with Jose – better give her a call, make sure everything's alright.

I took out my phone, keyed in her number and got a single ring, but it cut off right away.

Russ looked over and grinned. "Phone reception sucks around here, man. It's good down on the first floor, where all the office types are, but up here it's pretty spotty. You'll have better luck if you go out onto the balcony by the plants."

"Okay, thanks. Where's your door leading outside?"

"There's one in the wall behind you, but I keep it sealed to stop any dirt or leaves from blowing in – gotta keep this lab as clean as possible. To get to a regular exit door you'll need to go out to the hall and take a right. Sorry!"

"Okay, not a problem." As I started toward the door I called out to Victor, "Just need to make a quick call to Chyll."

"I need to take off too, Reid. Gotta get back to the office. Let me know later how everything works out." And with a wave to Russ, he went out and down the stairs.

Once through the outside door to the second floor balcony, I saw that there were fewer plants here than on the ones up higher. Still green and pretty, but not like the jungle on the upper levels. I went to the outside railing and looked over . Victor had said that Russ's lab was underneath Phil's, and I could see that he was right. The thick mat of straw on the ground was below and off to the left, though Rango and the guys weren't there.

While I was looking down my phone gave a little 'ding' and a text message popped up.

It was from Chyll, just one word, in all caps: HELP!
Chapter 54: Trapped

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

While Reid and Victor climbed the stairs to Russ Keynes' second floor lab, Chyll and Jose went down the hall to the left and out a door at the far end. A cool breeze blew in from the bay, but the sun was bright and twinkled off the sides of two large greenhouses near the parking lot. As they got closer Chyll noticed a smaller building between them.

"That's the equipment shed," Jose said, "where we keep tools and supplies. There are refrigerators and freezers for stuff that needs to be kept cold... one in the front, another one near each of the side doors, and two more in the back."

"Which one has the dead animals?" Chyll asked.

"I don't know – we'll need to ask Rango. He's around here somewhere...maybe trying to fix that broken pipe in Greenhouse 2."

When they reached the shed, Jose keyed a code into a lock and slid the door open. Once inside, Chyll realized that the shed was bigger than she'd thought at first – more of a warehouse, really; a single room, but at least a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, and with a high ceiling. It'd just looked small from a distance, sandwiched between the larger greenhouses.

Sunlight, streaming in through small, dusty windows along each side, did little to dispel the darkness. Jose clicked a switch and a bank of overhead lights came on, but it still seemed dim.

"Sorry, miss," Jose said in his formal way, "We're installing new lights in the left greenhouse, and that circuit is shut down for a while. The left and center light banks in here run off of that same circuit, so we only have just the right side lit up."

"No problem," Chyll said, as her eyes slowly adjusted to the low light. "What about the refrigerators, though. Are some of them shut off, too?"

"No, no" Jose said, shaking his head. "Refrigerators and freezers have their own dedicated circuits. They should be okay."

He went forward a few steps and called out "Rango! Esta en aqui?"

There was no answer from inside the room, so he walked to the door on the right side, pushed it open and shouted, "Rango! Donde estas, cabron?"

There was an answering call, but it was too far away for Chyll to make out the words.

Jose waved "Hermano! Ven aqui!"

Rango shouted something back; Jose laughed and called out to Chyll.

"He's out in back, working on one of the trucks. I'll go see what he's doing and ask him about the birds and squirrels. See you here in maybe five minutes."

Chyll waited all of five seconds, then decided to start looking on her own. If there were only a few freezers, it shouldn't be tough to find the one holding the sack of critters.

The nearest was right here near the front door. a standard kitchen variety, with refrigerator underneath and smaller freezer on top. She peeked inside and saw a few bottles of juice, four paper bags, and a twelve pack of Gatorade. The paper bags contained an apple, a hard-boiled egg, a plastic container of meat loaf... must be the leftovers from today's lunches. The freezer had a stack of small frozen pizzas, just the right size for the nearby microwave. Okay – the employees used this one for their food, so they wouldn't have put the dead animals in it.

She closed the door, straightened up, and looked around.

There were two long lines of shelves running down the center of the room. They ran toward the back wall, but in the dim light she couldn't see all the way to the end. She started down the right side, weaving around sacks of fertilizer and boxes of who-knows-what. The lighting was okay along this side, and it was easy to find the find the refrigerator near the side door.

It was packed with brown glass bottles, and the freezer held a rack of small white boxes. She didn't take the time to read the labels; it was obvious that the critters weren't in there, either.

Toward the back it was dark and kind of spooky, with lots of tripping hazards. Flashlight... where would they keep flashlights? The workbench near the door where they'd come in was covered in tools - a good place to look.

She went back to the front. Sure enough, there was a rack above the bench containing wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, and yes, flashlights. She tried three, chose the brightest one, and took off down the center aisle. Even with the flashlight there were deep patches of shadow near the tall shelves, which ended abruptly halfway down the room. In the back half of the room the shelves ran sideways; if you worked here all the time, it probably made sense, but it seemed like a maze to Chyll.

She wound her way around and eventually found the two refrigerators against the back wall, one on either side of a padlocked door. She was just opening the first one when she heard voices coming in from the front.

Must be Jose and Rango.

The refrigerator was empty, but there was a cloth sack in the freezer. She pulled it out, set it on the floor, and shined the light in. Yes - there they were: two little black birds and one sad looking furry squirrel, all quite dead and quite cold. The squirrel's little eyes were open, as if death had caught it by surprise; the furry whiskers around the mouth were stained blue.

As Chyll straightened up and shut the freezer door, the voices grew louder. She drew a breath to call out to them, that she'd found the right freezer, but stopped, suddenly alert.

It wasn't just Jose and Rango... there was another voice, angry and abrasive.

"What the fuck were you thinking? I told you to burn everything! Everything means everything! Now where the Hell is that bag of dead animals?"

"I'm sorry," said a second voice – this one sounded like Jose. "It's not Rango's fault. Mr. Durham asked me to -"

"Durham? That goddamn snoop? Is that who you're talkin' about?"

"Mr. Durham? Si, yes," said Jose, rattled by the other's outburst. "Mr. Akino said to help him, do whatever he asks. So he asked us to save these birds and squirrel, and not burn them, just keep them cold."

"Jeeezus!" shouted the other man. Then, in a calmer but still menacing voice, he went on "Okay, look, we need to get those animals. I want them, and I want them now. Reid-bloody-Durham cannot have them, comprende?"

"Yes, yes Mr. Granger, I understand. Rango – Donde los puso?"

A third person answered in a low voice. Chyll thought she heard 'trasera' or something like it.

"In the back," said Jose. "Rango says he put them in the freezer in the back."

"Well, let's go get'em and get the Hell out of here" said the first voice.

Chyll snapped to attention. Damn! They were coming back here.

Damn, damn, damn! But which way were they coming – around the right or left? " _I can't stay here,"_ she thought, _"but if I go the wrong way and run into them...."_

She shut off her flashlight and started sliding toward the left wall, where it was much darker. _"If I can just make it to the side door, maybe I can get away."_

The footsteps were getting louder and lights were bobbing around as they came nearer. Waiting was tough – it took all her will power to stand still and not take off running. But when she was sure that they were coming down the right side and not the left, she bolted for the corner - and almost made it. Her light was still turned off, and the darkness hid the edge of a wooden pallet poking out into the aisle. Her right foot caught on it and a stab of pain zinged up her shin; but thankfully there was little noise – the pallet, loaded with heavy sacks of sand, didn't budge a millimeter.

She hopped and slipped and grit her teeth to keep from crying out, but kept her balance and managed to stay on her feet.

The critter bag flew from her hand, though, thumping softly against the sand sacks, and rebounding back toward the refrigerators. As she turned to go back for it, Jose came around the far corner.

Their eyes locked for a fraction of a second, then she dove behind the pallet.

More footsteps. She heard a freezer door open, and Rango's voice saying "Aii – ha ido!"

That door closed and the second freezer door opened. "No aqui!"

"What do you mean it's not here? Where the fuck are they?"

Lights flashed around the area and one of them spotted the bag. "Si! Aqui!" said Rango.

Someone picked it up and opened it. She heard the first man say "Okay, good, we got'em. But what's the bag doing over here? How'd it get out of the freezer?"

"Maybe," Jose said hesitantly, "maybe Rango made a mistake and dropped it here?"

"Try again, compadre," said the first voice. "This bag is cold. The dead bodies are almost frozen. Someone just took them out of the freezer. Who? You were here before, just a few minutes ago, weren't you? Who was with you?"

"Nobody..." Jose started to say, when Chyll heard a smack and someone fell heavily onto the sacks of sand. One of the sacks burst open and a gout of sand shot up and spattered the area. The fine grains dusted her hair and face.

" _Jesus, don't sneeze!"_ she told herself, or maybe prayed....

She was already pressed against the floor, but tried to make herself even smaller and lower. It must be Jose lying on the pallet; it looked like the back of his hat above her, less than three feet away. He started to sit up but was pushed roughly back down.

"Don't get me pissed off, Jose. We've gotten along okay so far, but I'm leaving today, and don't plan on ever coming back. I want to make a clean break – nothing left behind - and I don't want any mysteries. If someone's been in here to get this bag, you need to tell me who and why. Now!"

Chyll held her breath. What would Jose do?

Five seconds passed.

"There is nobody else, Mr. Granger," he said at last. "Maybe Roberto or Chic saw the dead animals in the freezer and thought 'Why is this garbage in here' and tossed them out."

Five more seconds of silence. Then -

"That's good," said the first voice. "Fast thinking, Jose. You're a bright guy – that's why you're the supervisor. Could even be true."

"But I don't believe it. I think someone was in here just a few seconds ago. And I think they're still around here. So let's take a look... all of us, together. And we won't stop till I'm satisfied."

Jose got back on his feet, brushing off his clothes. As the first man started walking right past the pallet, one boot skidded on the sandy floor.

"God-damn!" he hissed. "Why's it so friggin' dark in here?"

"The work on the greenhouse... you remember?"

"That's still not done? Well, what the Hell, it don't matter to me. Let's go - and stay next to me while we look around this miserable dump."

The whole time he was talking, he was standing next to the pallet; his boots only inches away from Chyll's feet. All he had to do was step back and he'd trip over her.

She forced herself to breathe slowly, very slowly and shallowly... quiet, yes, keep quiet. She wanted to shrink back even farther, but there was no room – her shoulders were already jammed against the wall. What if he turned and saw her, what could she do? Was there anything she could throw?

No.

Her body ached to jump up and run, run... RUN.

But he turned and started moving toward the darker left side of the shed, shining his light ahead of him. Jose said something to Rango, then followed behind the first man.

Rango hung back, shining his light this way and that, then grabbed a broom from somewhere and started sweeping the sand toward the door. When he got to the end of the pallet, he shined his light behind it to check for more spilled sand.

The light hit Chyll full in the face. Rango drew in his breath with a sharp "Ah!" She held a finger to her lips and waved to him to move the light.

He immediately switched it off and looked around. The other two men had rounded the corner and were making their way along the side aisle. Rango looked back at Chyll, nodded, and quietly set the broom against the wall. He motioned toward the back door, then reached into his pocket and took out a ring of keys. He removed one, set it down on the floor near her feet, then straightened up, nodded, and moved off toward the other two men.

Chyll waited until he'd gone around the corner before sitting up and straining to hear any sounds. The voices of the men, muffled by the stacks of supplies, seemed to be fading. Good – that meant they were getting farther away. She inched forward and reached for the key, but froze when a sudden vibration buzzed in her pocket.

"Sweet Jesus!" she whispered as a surge of adrenaline zinged along her spine... then realized that it was her phone.

She reached into her pocket and broke the connection; there was no way she could talk now. When her heart rate calmed down, she took a deep breath and checked the caller ID – it was Reid. Could she get a message to him? It took just a few seconds to send a quick text, then she crawled out from behind the pallet and grabbed the key.

With her flashlight off, it was almost completely dark near the back wall, so she moved slowly, taking small steps to avoid slipping on the sand. Once at the door, she slid her fingers along the center until they hit the padlock.

Gripping it tightly with her left hand to keep it from rattling, she slowly slid the key in and turned it. The lock popped open with a small 'click' and a moment later she was tugging on the door to slide it open.

The door screeched like an angry eagle – _"Damn! Why hadn't somebody oiled it?"_ -and a shaft of sunlight streamed in. It was like turning on a searchlight, blindingly bright after the darkness inside. Between the noise and the light, the men had to know where she was.

And sure enough, shouts and curses came from the middle of the shed. Flashlight beams zoomed this way and that... something crashed and broke, and running footsteps came toward her, getting loud way too fast.

Chyll slipped through the opening and threw her shoulder against the door edge to shove it closed. It screeched but banged shut with solid thump, and she saw that there was a latch on the outside too. "Yesss!" she said out loud, slid the padlock through the eyebolt, and closed the lock just as someone grabbed the inside handle and gave a hard tug.

Then a kick. Then more kicks. The door shook and rattled, but stayed closed.

Chyll took off at a sprint. It wouldn't take them long to go around to one of the side doors, and she absolutely, definitely, did not want to be here when that happened. She circled around behind one of the greenhouses and stopped to catch her breath. There was a fence running between the greenhouses and the line of white trucks parked nearby. At the far end was a gate, but it was closed with another padlock.

Trapped.

Chyll closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, willed her muscles to relax, and opened her mind. An image of Chypp flashed before her; it was the time when they were lost in the woods, maybe twelve years ago... she was starting to cry and he said, "Cut it out, sis. Panic is as useless as tits on a boar hog." Just thinking about it made her smile.

So, ten seconds later when she opened her eyes, there was no panic. A damned strong sense of urgency, yes – but no panic. With a quick but thorough scan of the area she noticed doors on the back of each of the greenhouses. Okay then... Jose said that his crewmen would be working in one of them, fixing a broken pipe.

Which one?

She turned in a circle, trying to orient herself to the layout of the buildings. Greenhouse 2 would be the one on the right, wouldn't it?

As she started that way, her phone vibrated again; this time she snatched it out of her pocket and answered.

"Boss," she said, trying not to sound as hyper as she felt, "I've got a little problem here...."

Chapter 55: Jump

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

"What do you mean 'a problem'?" I said, "And what was that text about?"

"Can't talk much," Chill said in a soft voice, sounding a strained and breathless. "I'm okay right now, but somebody's chasing me."

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Between the two big greenhouses."

"Okay - don't hang up! I'm going over there now."

I leaned over the wall to see where the greenhouses were, and noticed the mat of straw below. It couldn't be more than a twenty foot drop....

So I grabbed the top of the railing and vaulted over.

And hit the straw with knees bent, arms outstretched, and went into a forward roll. It was a little jarring, but not too bad. The leg that was messed up by the truck at Kelsey's...yes, that leg screamed at me a bit, but I ignored it.

Chyll was in trouble. To Hell with a little bloody leg pain.

The greenhouses were across the field on the right, a good quarter mile or more away, with the ground rocky and full of ruts from all the recent rain.

Did we still have the phone connection?

"What this's all about? Who are you hiding from?"

Her voice wasn't much above a whisper, and it was tough to hear clearly while I was moving. "From someone who's really frosted about Rango saving the dead critters for us. The dude was going on like a maniac. He knocked Jose down and threatened him, and now he's hunting for me, too."

"Who it is?" I asked, but, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, I knew who it had to be.

"The guy with the Kanja trees -"

"Okay," I cut her off. "It's Marley. Where is he right now, and where exactly are you?"

"He's just coming out of the tool shed. I'm hiding behind a greenhouse and can't go any farther unless I get over the chain-link fence."

"Can you climb over?"

"Not easily. It's got that barb-wire wrapping around the top."

"Can you get into the greenhouse? Maybe you can get through there and back here to the main building."

"Yeah, I'm gonna try that. I'm just about at the door."

I heard a rattling sound, and she said, "It's locked, but I hear voices in there." She knocked two, three, four times. "I don't know if anybody heard me... and I don't want to shout or knock louder."

"Okay," I said. "Hang tight. I'm coming as fast as I can. If Marley sees you, don't worry about noise. Yell and kick the door as hard as you can. Then run like Hell. Do not try to talk to him; do not try to reason with him. Just run. If you have absolutely no other choice, go over the barb wire. Better a few cuts than a broken neck, which is what I'll give Marley when I get hold of him."

"Right, boss, got it. Come quick."

Chapter 56: Confrontation

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

Sounds of heavy breathing and footsteps got louder, but Chyll couldn't tell from which direction. No time for caution now – she started pounding with both fists on the locked greenhouse door.

"HEY!" she shouted. "ANYBODY! Open up, PLEASE!"

Now she could see them; they'd been walking forward and looking left and right to catch sight of her, but the pounding on the door gave away her position.

Marley was big alright; at least as tall as Reid, but heavier, very muscular - and very pissed, too. He was scowling and pushing Jose and Rango in front of him, but when he saw Chyll he slowed down and broke into a grin.

"Well, what's this?" he called out in kind of a sarcastic sing-song. "You that cop's little pussy pal? You know, I hear that he's not really a cop... so when I pound the shit out of him, no one's gonna care. Just like no one's gonna care what I do with his little cunt assistant."

"I am sorry, miss," Jose said. "He made me tell him....." His hat was gone and there was more blood on his lip; Rango's too.

She instantly hated him, and backed away, ready to run but also looking for a good-sized rock. When he got near enough, she was going to brain him.

Or give it one Helluva try, anyway.

A scraping sound, like metal on concrete came from behind her as the greenhouse door was shoved open. Two men came out.

"Que pasa?" One of them said.

"What's with all the pounding and shouting?" said the other.

She spun around quickly, her heart racing, feeling even more desperate now. Then she recognized them as the men who'd been cleaning the debris from the landing, the ones that had shown her and Reid the bucket lid in the lab.

"Chic...Roberto!" she yelped. "Help me! This man punched Jose and Rango, and now he wants to hurt me."

They'd been doing plumbing work on the watering system; Chic had a wrench in his hand and Roberto held a length of PVC pipe.

"No, hey man, I'm not going to hurt her, Chic," said Marley. "Just maybe scare her a bit. I really only want to ask her some questions...find out what she's been up to. She's been digging around in my stuff, and I want to know why. "

Chic said something to Roberto, then stepped forward and put himself between Chyll and Marley.

"Maybe you just ask your questions from where you are," he said.

"That won't do. I need to make sure she's telling the truth. Step aside, compadre."

Chic called to Rango in rapid Spanish; Chyll couldn't make it out.

"Si!" said Rango.

"Rango says that you slapped Jose, and him too, same as the girl says."

Turning to Jose, he said "That true, mi jefe?"

Jose slid away from Marley and moved quickly toward the other men. "Si," he said, wiping his lips and showing them the blood.

"Maybe you didn't hear me," said Marley. "I said get your ass out of the way, Chic."

The tension in the air was thick enough to feel, to breathe; Chyll was sure she could taste it.

Roberto said something to Rango, then the other two men moved in, standing next to Chic, forming a wall. They weren't big men, not like Marley, but they were all hard men. Hard muscled, not from the gym weight room, but from swinging sledge hammers, lifting crates, and moving sacks of cement. That's why they had been hired – to do the heavy lifting and cleanup.

Chic stared at Marley with narrowed eyes. "And I say to you, senor, that if you come any closer I might bury this wrench in your skull."

Then he spat on the ground.

Marley's eyes flashed and his hands twitched and Chyll could tell that he wanted to jump forward. There was no fear in those eyes; he seemed like a bull, ready to paw the ground and charge.

It was damned scary. Marley took a step forward and said "Amigos, you're scaring the young lady. Just back away and let me talk to her."

"I'm not afraid of you, you bastard," hissed Chyll, then she spit on the ground too. She felt her muscles tighten. If Marley did charge and Chic fought him, she was going to jump in, too.

Marley leaned forward more - but didn't charge. Instead, he looked past the men, his eyes boring in at Chyll. Then he smiled. "Lucky for you that you got your little army here. Well, what the Hell - I got what I came for." He held up the burlap bag, swinging it slowly back and forth.

"And this is all I really need, so - I'll be going now, and I won't be back, which is lucky for all of you. Don't follow me, and don't any of you ever run into me again. And warn Durham to keep outta my life, permanently. Or else I end his, permanently."

He stared at them pointedly for three or four seconds, his lips twitching in a malevolent grin, then turned and loped quickly toward the trucks. It took him only seconds to open a back gate, yank open one of the truck doors, and fire up the engine.

He peeled out with screeching tires and a spray of gravel. Someone was coming around the far end of the greenhouse, toward the gate on that side.

Marley swerved the truck, driving right at him. With the gate locked, whoever it was had no escape, and would be pinned against the fence in a few seconds.

"Boss!" Chyll yelled, and ran forward.

Chapter 57: Partner

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

There was barely time to dive to the ground and roll around the corner of the greenhouse. The truck glanced off the rounded side of the building, missing me by inches; then the driver gunned the engine and screamed out of there. Bits of rock and dirt zinged off the corrugated metal siding and left pockmarks on my arms.

Goddamnitall! That made it twice in less than two days I'd been spilled into the gravel by a white truck.

I was just getting to my feet and brushing dirt out of my hair when I heard the sound of the gate being unlocked, and a second later Chyll grabbed me in a tight hug.

"Boss," she said again, her voice cracking with emotion and tears welling up in her eyes.

I hugged her back. "Hey, you alright?" I asked, looking her but at the same time trying to see through the dust at the truck bombing out of here.

"Now I am," she said, breathing hard, wiping the tears away with her shirt sleeve. "But I'll tell you the truth.... I was shit-scared in that shed. I don't know how Marley missed seeing me, or what he would have done if he had...."

Jose and the others came over, everyone talking at once in a mix of Spanish and English. Chyll let go of me and gave each of them a hug, especially Chic, who looked embarrassed.

After a minute everybody's blood pressure calmed down and I managed to understand most of what happened. A few more handshakes and hugs, then we all said "Adios", the guys went into the greenhouse, and Chyll and I started back to the main lab building.

"Boss," she said on the way, "I lost the birds and the squirrel. Marley got away with them. I'm sorry."

I gave her shoulder a light squeeze, "Chyll, I don't care one damn bit about them – not even one single, bleeding bit. You - I care a lot about. When you said that you were trapped down here and that Marley Granger was hunting you, all I wanted to do was get here and kill him."

"You know, he feels the same way about you."

"Uh huh, you're right," I nodded. "I think that the next time we meet, only one of us will walk away. The other one'll be in a body bag."

"Don't say that, boss! You'll get me all worried."

So we walked on in silence. When we were almost to the steps, she said, "I still feel bad though, for losing the critters. It's going to mess up our testing, right? I had the sack right in my hands. If I hadn't stumbled against those sand bags, I'd have gotten away."

"No," I said, "it won't mess up anything. The papers that Russ Keynes gave us prove that the Tau Toxin is deadly. The smear of berries on the bucket lid is the key. If we show that it contains Tau, then that means that Marley has genetically engineered the Kanja to be lethal. What we need to do next is find out why."

I told her what Keynes had said about Tau being a hemotoxin, about how it messed up blood clotting and could restore the teeth to Yp-H, just like she'd thought.

"You were brilliant," I said. "So you see, we don't need the dead critters. Marley can have them."

She thought about that for a few seconds, then said, "You mean that I went through all that for nothing?"

"No," I answered with a smile. "When you went to get them, we hadn't talked to Russ yet and didn't know that they weren't necessary. You went through all that because you're a brave young lady and a helluva good partner."

We didn't say anything more for the rest of the way; but just as we were reaching the top of the steps I heard her say softly, "So, boss says that I'm a helluva good partner.... Cool!"

Chapter 58: Blood

Day 9: Tuesday Afternoon

An hour later we were signing out at the kiosk. We had given the bucket lid, the baggie of Kanja berries, and one of the KT vials to Russ Keynes. He promised to analyze them as soon as he could, but said that his schedule was pretty swamped for the next two or three days.

I stopped by the mail room again, this time to drop off a note – and a fifty dollar bill – to Rango (full name Juan Durango). I had left notes for Jose, Chic, and Roberto before, and didn't want Rango to feel left out. There'd only been four of the fifties in my wallet; now there were none – but it was money well spent.

It had been an informative and eventful day, but was actually still early – about two-thirty in the afternoon - and I hoped that we could catch Dr. Lund at Bayview Memorial. His card, with his personal cell number on it, was in my shirt pocket. I fished it out and called him while we walked to the parking lot.

He picked up on the third ring.

"Hey Mister Durham, nice to hear from you."

I laughed. "Good one – you must've logged my name and number into your ID file."

He laughed in return. "Exactly. I thought you might call after we had a chance to look at Lester's body."

"So you remember him?"

"Kind of hard to forget him. When Marley Granger was here, Lester sat next to his bed for hours, worry-faced and very anxious. I ran into him a half- dozen times. Then Granger suddenly snapped awake and left – which was pretty strange. And now Lester is back, but this time he's very dead."

"Yeah, that's what I want to see you about. Look, do you have any time this afternoon? Maybe a half-hour or so?"

"I have a four o'clock meeting with the safety group. I'm OK before that, or after five. You pick."

"I'll come now. Seeya in... thirty minutes."

I slid the phone back into my sweater pocket and turned to Chyll. "Ready to visit the hospital?"

"Hospital?" she said. "Look, boss, I'm good, really. Just whacked my foot on that wooden pallet, but it's okay. No need for any hospital."

I smiled. "Not for you, with you. I want to see one of the docs about Lester Clovis. You still want to keep going on this case, right?"

"Yes, absolutely. I got a personal interest in it now."

"Okay, good. You said something about Granger leaving and not coming back, didn't you?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"What exactly did he say?" I knew she could probably recite it word for word.

She thought for a moment, then said, "Mmm - He mentioned it twice, actually. Once in the shed; he told Jose that he was leaving today and didn't want anything left behind. That's why he told the guys to burn everything about the Kanja trees. The second time was behind the greenhouse. He told us all that that he was going now and wouldn't be back, and said not to follow him. It sounded like a warning... and a threat."

"Didn't give any clue about where he was going, huh?"

'No. Maybe he's finished with his part of the project, and just wants to bug out somewhere far away."

"Maybe," I nodded, but wasn't convinced. "But that only works if he got paid big money for his work, right? And who would have paid him?"

"Okay," she said slowly, "Then there's gotta be a mastermind somewhere, with brains and money. It could be someone far away that we don't know about, or it could be someone here, maybe someone we've already met."

"Yeah," I agreed. "In that case, it's a short list: Niles... Hillen... maybe Vic Akino. Not Julian or Phil; from everything we've heard about them, they seem more like followers, not leaders. Plus I think that they were eliminated when they became no longer useful. "

"What about that Trinity lady?"

"I don't think so," I said. "She's smart, but I don't see her as a criminal mastermind type."

"And no one else, huh?" She said it in kind of a funny way.

"Not of the people we've met. I don't see anyone else here with the right kind of background, knowledge, leadership ability, and cut-throat mentality."

We'd reached the parking lot by then and were almost at her motorcycle.

"You're in love, aren't ya, boss?"

I looked at her, a little puzzled. "What d'you mean?"

"Love is blind, huh? Look, I like her too, a lot. But we gotta consider the possibility, right? She's got the brains and the talent, and seems pretty fearless."

She meant Kelsey of course. As the mastermind.

I stopped walking and sighed. "Okay, Chyll, that already crossed my mind. I don't believe it though... or maybe I just refuse to believe it."

"But it's kind of eating at your soul, isn't it, boss?"

I nodded slightly. "A bit," I said, and turned toward Atlas.

She grabbed my sleeve and went on, "Look, I don't believe it either. Just bringing it up, right? You taught me to look at the entire landscape, remember?"

I smiled down at her. "You're right. I need to separate my heart from my head on this one."

She smiled back. "You're a champ, boss. Now - bet I can beat you to Bayview..."

And with that she cranked up her motorcycle and zipped out of the parking lot. By the time I had Atlas started and in gear, she was already half-way down the access road and picking up speed.

I rolled into the Bayview parking lot fifteen minutes later and spent another three or four looking for a parking place. Finally found one toward the back of the Visitor's area. Chyll was already there; she arrived well before me, got one of the motorcycle parking spots near the front doors, and was waiting with a victory grin.

"You owe me a Starbuck," she said.

"Chyll," I frowned, "I told you before that racing a dirt bike can be a lotta fun, but racing a street bike is stupid."

"Boss!" She looked hurt. "I didn't speed – I just hit the green lights, you know, creeping up between the lines of stopped cars. It's legal and safe."

"Legal, yes. Safe? Not always. Just be careful, okay?"

"Yes, yes, I know, boss. And I am careful. Jeez! You sound like my brother or my dad sometimes."

I put my hand on her shoulder, looked her in the eyes, and said slowly. "I ain't your dad... but we both tell you that because we both care a lot about you. You'll be telling this same thing to your own kids in twenty years or so."

Her face softened and she smiled again. "I know, thanks."

We started through the doors and headed toward the elevators. Lund's office was on the fourth floor, but there was a crowd of people waiting at the elevator bank - so we went through the access door to the stairway and started walking.

Slowly though; my leg was pretty tender after getting spilled in the gravel. There were no other people in the stairwell, so we had a chance to talk on the way up.

Chyll asked, "What are you expecting to find out from Dr. Lund?"

"I forget exactly how much of this I already told you, but here's a quick run-through: Marley had a relationship with a fellow named Lester Clovis, a basically harmless guy who had a lot of money but not many friends. He tended to dote on the ones he had, and I think Marley was taking advantage of him. The two of them were raising Hell up at Grant Lake last Monday night - that's how I got involved in the first place."

"Okay," Chyll nodded, "yeah, I knew some of that."

"Right. Well, Marley got messed up and spent a few days in the hospital. On Thursday he checked out unexpectedly and has been hiding somewhere... didn't go back to his apartment, anyway. Now he wants to get away somewhere and doesn't want to leave behind any loose ends. But Lester's a problem. During their intimate moments, Marley spilled more info to Lester than he should have. Lester's the one who told us about a senior Waxman researcher getting murdered and it being covered up as suicide, and also about Marley running some mystery project involving fruit. And he also gave me Marley's notebooks. What else does he know that he could blab about? Only he and Marley know for sure. That makes him a big liability: How can Marley make a clean break for parts unknown with Lester still here? But then Lester suddenly has a heart attack – how timely and convenient – and the problem is solved."

"So you think Marley killed Lester? Maybe using some of the Tau Toxin?"

"It's possible. I want to ask Dr. Lund if Lester had any history of heart problems. I want to find out if he had blood clots anywhere else in his body. But most of all, I want a sample of his blood to take to Russ Keynes."

"Okay, yeah," she said. "If there's Tau in his blood, then that would explain a lot."

"Almost everything. If the Tau is there, how did he get it? He and Granger did drugs together, so a lethal toxin could have been injected or hidden in some food or drink."

By then we were near Lund's office. His door was open so we walked right in. He had two chairs across from his desk, and after making our Hello's and introducing Chyll, we sat down.

"This is good, Reid" Lund said. "I was hoping you'd come by. If you hadn't called me, I would have called you."

"Really? Why?"

"Because, although the cause of Lester Clovis' death in rather mundane – heart attacks happen to lots of people every day – his circumstances are unusual."

"Yeah," I nodded. "I've been feeling the same way, and want to hear what makes it unusual. But first - let me start by asking some general questions."

"Okay, go ahead," he said.

"Alright: If a person is having a heart attack, how would they know? What would be the main signs and symptoms?"

"Well, they usually feel a crushing tightness in the chest, like they're being squeezed hard. They also have chest pain; it may be light or severe, sometimes radiating down the left arm. They sweat. They're short of breath. They feel weak, dizzy, out of energy."

"Would they be instantly incapacitated? Unable to move or call for help? Drop dead just like that." I snapped my fingers.

"In severe cases, yes; but most of the time they're conscious, able to tell someone that they're in trouble. Maybe able to phone a friend or dial 911. Severe cases are almost always in people who already have a history of heart problems, or are in generally poor health. Someone who is in good health would normally not just drop dead immediately. I mean, it does happen... but it's usually not that way."

"Interesting," I said. "Lester was sitting in his leather recliner, wearing a light cotton robe. He had a glass of wine, and a box of chocolates next to him. The television was on. His cell phone was on the table nearby. He didn't look like he'd suffered chest pains or any other discomfort. I think he was just sitting there enjoying life when – Boom! – He died. Just like that. Which makes me wonder - could it have been anything other than a heart attack? Maybe you can tell us what it is that you do to arrive at that diagnosis."

"Well," Lund thought for a few seconds, then shrugged. "Besides the signs and symptoms, there are tests that we can do, indicators we look for - their EKG shows a distorted pattern, we find cardiac enzymes in the blood."

"And that's unusual, right?"

"It's unusual to see proteins that are normally found only inside of intact heart cells circulating freely outside, in your blood. That would mean that some of your heart tissue has died and the cells have broken open, spilling out their contents."

"So -- if John Smith comes into the ER with those symptoms and he's positive for those tests, you're certain that poor John is having a heart attack."

"Yes, that's almost right... but it can be dangerous saying that you're 'certain'. Better to say that the results are 'consistent with' him having suffered a coronary infarct – a heart attack, pending further analyses."

I laughed. "Easy, doc. We're not lawyers, here. We don't need to split hairs – I just want your educated opinion. But, what if John Smith is already dead? He can't tell you about any chest pain, and maybe a bunch of his cells have already broken apart like in any cause of death. Is there anything you can do then to decide that he had a heart attack?"

He nodded. "A heart attack is caused by a blood clot getting stuck in a coronary artery, one of the blood vessels that supplies oxygen to the heart tissue itself. When that happens, the area of the heart that's fed by that artery starves and may die. In an autopsy the doctor can often find the clot in the artery. It might be small, but they usually find it."

"Not always?"

"No... but in Lester's case it was no problem. We found large blood clots in several of the coronary arteries."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk, and looked at us closely.

"Not just one," he said, "several. It would have shut him down pretty fast."

"And that's unusual?"

"Considering his health condition, yes. Very."

"How so?"

"Lester suffered from atrial fibrillation. Are you familiar with it?"

"I've heard of it, boss," said Chyll. "My grandpa has it."

"Does he take a blood thinner?" asked Lund.

"He takes some pills – I don't know what they are, though."

"Uh-huh. Atrial-Fib is a condition in which the heart beat is irregular. Blood doesn't circulate as smoothly as it should; instead of moving around swiftly, it sits for a time in small pools, just kind of jiggling for a while. When this happens, you can get clots forming, increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke. To minimize this, people may take drugs that inhibit the enzymes that make blood clot. They're commonly called blood thinners."

Blood clotting enzymes – that's what Jim Hillen and Russ Keynes were talking about earlier. Why was everything revolving around this?

"You need to be careful, though," he continued. "It's very important to take just the right amount of blood thinner. Too little, and it's not effective; you might still get clots to form. Too much, and your blood won't clot when you need it to. You can get uncontrolled bleeding into your brain or other organs, or maybe you can't stop bleeding in you get a severe cut."

"The right amount is figured out for each patient individually, and they usually check every now and then to make sure that they're taking the correct dose."

"So... the weird thing is, Lester came into the clinic just last Wednesday to test his clotting time. It was perfect - right where it should be. The nurse there said that he's an excellent patient; very careful about taking the exact right dosage. OK, then - why does he suffer a massive heart attack on Saturday night? It shouldn't have happened."

"What if he was exposed to a drug that activated Thrombin?" I asked. "Would that overcome the effect of the blood thinner?"

He thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, it certainly could. I'm impressed – you know about Thrombin, huh?"

I didn't tell him about the discussion with Russ Keynes. Instead I just smiled. "Not a lot, but I've heard about it."

"Right," Lund nodded, "Lester had massive clots, and it killed him quickly. Whatever drug it was must have caused an almost instantaneous activation of Thrombin. What could have done that? – Not anything he would normally be exposed to."

"The people at the Waxman might be able to help us there," I said. "Any chance of getting a few tissue samples from Lester's body?"

"Sorry," Lund shook his head. "The Neptune Society picked up his body yesterday. He's already been cremated."

"Oooh - that's not good," I grimaced. "We could really use a slice of heart tissue, maybe some of his stomach contents... and blood; especially blood. It could've told us a lot, maybe that he was murdered, and how it was done."

"Murdered, huh" he nodded slowly. "Okay, how much blood do you need?"

"Don't know," I shrugged. "Is there any available?"

"I can get you maybe as much as five milliliters."

"Really? So you still have Lester's blood here?"

He leaned back in his chair, took a drink of cold coffee, and nodded. "There was a case here a few years back where it was very important to establish time of death. A woman and a man married later in life, and each had adult children from a previous marriage. Both were well off financially, but neither of them had made a will. So in the event of the death of one of them, the entire estate would automatically become the property of the survivor."

He coughed and went on. "If only they'd had a living trust... but they didn't. Well, they got into a car wreck on Hwy 1 up by Devil's Slide and both died at the scene, not instantly, but within an hour, and before any medical help could get to them. Now, whichever one died last would have briefly inherited everything, and their children would be the benefactors. The children of whoever died first would be legally entitled to nothing."

"The pathologists running the autopsies did a battery of tests, and determined that the lady died first."

"About six months later, her children took the case to court, and it got loud, rowdy, and bitter. Eventually the judge tossed all of the evidence out and ruled that the money would be split evenly. That makes good sense, and seems like the morally just way to do it, but that's not why the judge made that ruling."

"He made that decision because the lady's children brought in an expert witness who said that even though the conclusion of the pathologists may have been right, to be certain the tests should be repeated by an independent lab, using more recent test methods. But that couldn't be done because there wasn't enough blood and tissue saved to do another complete set of tests. It had been kept for a while, then tossed out."

"The lady's children had waited just long enough to go to court. Very lucky timing, or very sneaky. Either way, they got several million dollars."

"Interesting," I said. "So does that mean good news about Lester?"

"Yes," he answered. "We are now required to save blood or tissue samples from everyone who dies here, or from anyone who is autopsied here, for 10 years, locked in a freezer at minus 80° Celsius. We have a whole room of freezers, just for that."

"Which means," he continued, "that his blood is almost certainly here in our basement. Normally you'd need a court order to get it, but in this case... I think I can spare some for you. It might take a little time, though. Do you want to wait for a couple hours, or would you rather stop by in the morning?"

"I can swing by and get it in the morning," Chyll said.

"Good," Lund nodded. "Let's say... nine o'clock?"

"Perfect."

And that was that. Chyll went back to Halliday's to meet up with Chypp, and I drove home. I wanted to take off my shoes, pop a cold drink, and think. It had been one helluva day, and there was a lot to think about.

Was it really just this morning that Kelsey called and started us moving on Yp-H and Tau?

Chapter 59: Ouch!

Day 9: Tuesday Night

The red digits on the dashboard clock glowed 7:10 when Trinity pulled off the main road and turned into her driveway. She'd stopped at the gym before coming home to catch the evening aerobics class, something she tried to do at least three times a week. Back when she'd been actively modeling she was big on swimming, and that had kept her muscle tone up and her weight down. But since starting at the Waxman her days were spent at a desk, so she'd joined the local fitness club last year.

The long driveway curved around a stand of oak trees, keeping the wide parking area shielded from the streetlights. It was actually Phil's place, not hers, but she'd moved in a few months ago after he left for the field trip, and hadn't been back to her little apartment since. Now though, with Phil dead, how much longer could she stay?

There was an ex-wife, but they'd never had kids. Sisters or brothers? None were listed in his personnel file. One of the perks of being in HR was access to personal info, and Phil listed only two names for emergency contacts; one of them was Niles Stratton, and the other was herself.

Which was kind of ridiculous, really. She and Phil never had more than a very casual, very low-key, relationship... it didn't even qualify as a 'fling.' But being seen with her must have meant a lot to him – a man with few friends and no life outside of work - and he'd actually named her as beneficiary for his 401k account and Waxman employee life insurance policy. Of course, after their blow-out argument last week, he said he was going to change that, which was okay with her... she had no particular desire for his money anyway.

But he'd died before making the changes, and her name was still on the books as beneficiary. So it appeared open-ended as far as how much longer she could stay here. She would take over paying the bills and property taxes, and see what happened in the long run. Maybe nothing would.

These and other random thoughts were idly drifting through her mind, when she was jolted into hyper-awareness: her headlights flashed on a white pickup truck parked near the garage. She automatically looked at the license plate, ready to jot it down, and saw that it started with WAX.

It was from the Waxman motor pool.

Marley maybe? When she got out of her car she noticed that lights were on in the house and soft jazz music was drifting through the open door.

Yeah, it had to be Marley.

She went to the door quietly and crept in carefully, not quite sure what to expect.

They hadn't seen each other since the hospital checkout, and hadn't talked or over a month – since before she'd gone to the jungle clinic.

Not in the entry way...not in the living room... not in the den. Ah, there he was, sitting at the kitchen table looking at his phone, sipping a bottle of Kirin beer. It looked to be less than half-full, and there were two empties on the floor next to him.

"Well," she said, "just walk right in and make yourself at home, why don't ya?"

He didn't look up, just took another drink and belched softly. "You got a problem with me being here? The last time I looked, this place belonged to Phil."

"Well I've kinda gotten used to it, and I plan on getting a lot more used to it. How'd you get in?" She walked nearer and put her hands on the table across from him. "The last I heard, you'd lost your keys."

"I know about the door key Phil hid near the fountain out back," he said, then looked up at her. "Oh, maybe you didn't know about that one?"

Trinity straightened up and glared. "I'd tell you to go to Hell, but I was actually thinking about calling you later."

"Why? Feeling lonely?"

"Not for you," she laughed, "that's for damn sure. No, I had some news that I thought you and Niles might be interested in."

He took another swig of beer and nodded. "Like what?"

She went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of iced tea, then sat down across from him. "Reid was at the Waxman today. He met with Jim Hillen."

"I saw Reid," Marley said, "him and his little Vietnamese sidekick. I know about them poking around my lab, but what were they doing with Hillen?"

"I caught up to Victor and Jim as he was leaving. We chatted about nothing until Victor went back to the blue room, then Hillen got serious. He wanted me to pass a message to you and Niles – about how he'd told Reid all about something called YPH, and thought that they'd stumble onto Tau soon. I think that's what he called it, but he was talking fast in a whisper, so I couldn't hear too well. Oh – and one more thing... he said that he expected Niles to have a proper sense of urgency. Does any of that mean anything to you? What're YPH and Tau? And what'd he mean about urgency?"

Marley tossed down the rest of his beer and set the bottle on the floor, all the time looking intently at Trinity. Then he shook his head and said, slowly and evenly, "Are you really that much out of the loop? Didn't Julian or Phil or Niles tell you anything about what we're doing?"

She looked back just as intently. "Julian never said anything about it, and Phil and I never really talked about anything. I asked Niles once, but he just said that the less I knew, the less trouble I'd get into."

"And you were okay with that?"

"No. I called him a pompous jerk, but he just laughed and ignored me."

"Incredible," Marley muttered. He took a deep breath and went on, "Well, from what I hear we're working for some very big people who have very big money, and a few lives lost here or there don't mean a damn thing to them."

"A few lives lost? I don't get it..."

Marley slowly shook his head. "What do you think happened to Julian and Phil? And they're not all, honey... I just winked out someone Saturday night, someone I actually liked, just because he talked too much. And we've got one or two more to go before we're done here. That sense of urgency Hillen was talking about? He means our plans for handling Reid."

"Our plans? What plans? Is that why you're here?"

"Yeah, our plans. Niles, me, and you. You have an important part to play. Do it right, and we might all be okay. Mess it up, and you can kiss that cute ass of yours good-bye."

Trinity closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead, and drew in and slowly exhaled a deep breath; then, without looking up, said, "Marley, I don't get it. I'm not following... where are you going with all this?"

Marley popped open another beer. "The project we've been working on for the last few years is done. At least our part up here is. The next phase is to move down to the, uh, the 'action site'. I'm going down there next week. So's Niles. I don't know about you, that's up to the bosses. But none of us – and that means you too, doll face – are safe as long as Durham is walking around."

Trinity frowned, looking unconvinced. "What d'you mean? Reid is some big threat to us... to me? Just 'cause he's asking questions to Jim Hillen? What's the big whup about this YPH stuff, anyway?"

Marley just stared at her, drinking beer and not saying a thing. After a minute, Trinity stood and backed to the refrigerator, not taking her eyes off of Marley. "I need to get something to eat."

She turned away and put two pieces of bread into the toaster, then poured a cup of milk. When the toast popped up, she smeared a thick coat of peanut butter onto each piece and ate them silently, her back still turned to Marley.

When she was done she filled the cup with water, rinsed her mouth, and spat into the sink. Then she poured herself a glass of Sherry and sat back down.

"Okay," she said slowly, "now what was that about Julian? A year ago Niles said that he shot himself. And now Phil has a heart attack, right?"

Marley waved a hand dismissively. "Julian died of a gunshot, yeah, but he didn't pull the trigger. And Phil's heart attack? Again yeah... but what caused it? He was given a whomping dose of a poison, enough to kill a horse, that's what."

Trinity's face turned pale and she felt dizzy. She asked, "So what Reid said is true, then - Julian was murdered. And now you're telling me that Phil was, too?"

"Ah," Marley smirked, "you've been talking to Durham, huh? Getting cozy with him?"

"We talked in my office last Thursday, yeah. He's a lot more honest than you or Niles or Phil ever were. And I like him." She leaned toward Marley and went on, "And I trust him... a lot more than I can trust any of the rest of you."

"Trust him?" Marley laughed softly, then louder, then stopped and slapped the table. "You can trust him to put a noose around your neck, and that's all. But we're not gonna let that happen. He's gotta go, and here's how we're gonna do it. "

He set down the beer bottle and waved his cell phone at her. "When you came in I was looking at this video text Niles sent. He's on a river rafting trip in some national forest near Oregon. Phone links up there are touchy, but he managed to get this message out. It's given me a good GPS lock on where they'll be camping tomorrow night. I'm going to be up there tomorrow morning to meet them. We need to convince Reid to be there tomorrow night, and you're going to make that happen."

She stared at him for three or four seconds, took a sip of Sherry, and said, "Let me guess - you want to get him out in the sticks, away from the Bay Area, so you can..." her voice trailed off.

Marley set down his phone, grabbed the beer bottle and took a long drink. He coughed, wiped his mouth, and nodded. "Yeah, exactly. Get him isolated so we can kill him." He said it matter-of-factly, like you might say 'change your socks'. No malice, just flat words: "so we can kill him."

"What makes you think he'll go?" Trinity asked, feeling a little dizzy; was Marley really serious? "Why wouldn't he just wait for Niles to come back here? It'll only be a couple of days."

"That's where you come in, dearie. Do what you're good at: convincing men to do foolish things. You're going to call him in the morning, in great distress. You'll tell him that Phil and I had a secret project going on. You don't know what it is, just that it's big. Then you tell him that Niles found out and means to blow the whistle on us, but I told Niles that I'd break his neck. So he's hiding out on this rafting trip. But I found out where he is and went up there to get him. So Reid has to get up there quick to save Niles, and maybe catch me. Embellish it however you want... just get him to go."

"How's he going to be able to find you?"

Marley smiled. "I gotta hand it to Niles. He's a bloody fool sometimes, but he knows how to put together a plan. He found out that Reid grew up around the Klamath River, and used to work there as a guide. He won't be able to resist going back to his old territory to find Niles and nail me. Plus I gave him a little extra incentive – I nearly ran him and Kelsey over Sunday night, and I threw a good scare into his little friend earlier today. He'll be plenty pissed at me right now, and won't ask anyone else to look for me... he'll want to do it himself."

"I don't like it," Trinity said. "He's a good man and smart. He's going to ask questions, like 'How do I know all this?' and 'How did Marley find out where Niles is?'... and even 'Why am I telling him this now?"

Marley pursed his lips, thinking. After a few seconds, he nodded and said, "Good questions." The he went around to her side of the table and told her to stand up.

He looked down at her and grinned. "And here are your answers: You know all this because Niles told you right before he lit out. You're telling Reid all of this because you want to save Niles and because you hate me. I know where Niles is because you told me. And you hate me because I forced it out of you."

She didn't like the look in his eyes - malicious, smirking... dangerous.

"What do you mean, forced it out of me?" She put her hand on his chest and shoved. It was like pushing against an oak tree; he didn't budge. She tried to back away but bumped into the table behind her.

Nowhere to go.

"Gotta give the cop something to see, right? Something to make him believe you... something to make him hate me even more, right?"

She hadn't been wearing much after her workout, just the sports bra and shorts, and in one quick move he ripped off the bra and tossed the tattered fabric against the wall. Then he pushed her down on the table and lowered his mouth to her left breast.

"You pig!" She slapped at him, but it was useless. "Get off me!"

His laugh was muffled and mean... and then the sharp sting as he bit down, hard.

"OWW!" she yelped, "What the Hell...?" But he stopped as suddenly as he started, stepping away from her with a self-satisfied nod. The bite mark was bright red; in another hour it would be purple.

"Sorry about the tit bite, Trinity, but Reid is a sucker for pretty ladies in trouble. Show him that and tell him what a creepy son of a bitch I am. That'll get him to hurry his ass up north to save Niles."

Trinity stood, breathing hard and immensely angry, and slid sideways to the counter near the sink. Once there she snatched a butcher knife from the drawer and spun around to face him. "You're such a flaming dickhead," she spat out, and pointed the blade at his crotch. "Don't ever come near me again, or I'll cut off. All of it."

Marley shook his head. "Threats don't mean much to me, pretty lady. I've had lots of them before, and yet here I stand... still intact."

His eyes dropped to gaze at her breasts and he nodded appreciatively. "Looks perfect... but maybe just to be sure I should do the other one too."

Trinity didn't budge... didn't shrink back or cower. There was no fear in her eyes, only venom. "Try it, asshole. Go ahead."

Marley laughed and sauntered to the door, then stopped and turned. "Trinity, really, I am sorry about the tit bite. But you need to have something to convince Reid that I'd forced the info from you. It was either the bite or a black eye and a split lip. You got nice breasts, but your face is a genuine classic... I wouldn't want to mess it up. Look, despite whatever hate you feel about me, you need to get him to go up there. There is no option. None. If you fail, your life will be worthless... you'll be next on the list and you won't be able to hide from the people running this show."

Thirty seconds later he was accelerating away, spinning gravel. She locked the door and slammed home the dead bolt, feeling shaken and trapped.

Lie to Reid and put his life in danger, or not lie to Reid and throw her own life away?

She walked slowly to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The bite mark surrounded her left nipple, two curved lines of reddish-purple.

She washed it twice with soap, rinsed off, and picked up a tube of aloe cream. But then set it down, unopened. Alright, if the situation was as damn serious as Marley said, then let the bruise flame up in all its glory. She put her hands on her hips and turned this way and that, checking her reflection. The bite made for an interesting focal point, like raw body art.

She wondered what Reid would say about it tomorrow morning.

Chapter 60: Call for Help

Day 10: Wednesday Morning

It was a beautiful morning, mostly blue sky overhead and no rain yet. That was a rarity for the last month, so I got out for a two mile run over a dirt and pine needle trail at a nearby park. It was much needed after last night; I'd stayed up late thinking about Yp-H, about Tau, about blood... but mostly about Kelsey and what kind of entanglements there might be.

Sleep hadn't come easy, and the six o'clock alarm came too soon. I turned it off and stayed in bed 'til nearly eight.

But by nine-thirty I'd finished the run, a shower, a cup of coffee, and was working on a bagel sandwich when my message alert dinged. Probably Chyll, letting me know that she'd picked up Lester's blood and gotten it over to Russ Keynes, right?

But no. It was a picture... a sharp focus, close up, full color shot of a lady's breast, pale and shapely, with a prominent rosy nipple in the center. Okay, that was nice, but what made it more interesting were the two rows of purple-red bruises.

The message below just read, "Reid, please help! -Trinity"

What the Hell?

I tapped in her number and she picked up halfway through the first ring – must've been waiting with the phone in her hand.

"Reid," she said, sounding breathless, "I'm in trouble. Can you come here now?"

"Trinity," I said, keeping my voice calm, "that photo you sent. What's up?"

"That's why I need to see you... it's Marley." Her voice ratcheted up a notch from breathless to semi-desperate.

"Marley? Is he there now?"

"God no - he just left. Reid, he's crazy!" Her breathing grew loud and rapid, raising the bar to full-desperate now. "Please... you gotta stop him. How fast can you get here?"

Okay, the message was clear enough: beautiful lady in dire need of help, calling to me to give it. But it was Trinity, after all, so I had to be a little suspicious.

But then, there was that picture. Photo-shopped? – Couldn't tell; these days you can fake anything. It looked real though, and painful, and mean... just like something Marley might do.

"Gimme your address. If it's anywhere nearby, I'll be there in twenty minutes."

The street she gave was in the foothills near Saratoga; the side of the valley with lots of trees.

"Yeah," I said. "Twenty minutes. Hang tight."

On the way over I rang Chypp at Halliday's and asked him to check out the history of the address. It was in a rich section of town; I was mildly surprised that Trinity could afford it on what was probably a modest salary. But who knows? – In the Bay Area, smart people can make millions on timely investments; maybe she was one of those.

"San Marco Terrace," he said. "Uh huh... here it is. The owner is listed as Philip Poley, Ph.D. Want me to look up his background, send you a quick bio on him?"

I started to say "No," then thought better of it. "Sure, go for it. I don't need too much depth, but a short bio would be good. Focus on recent publications and business affiliations, places travelled in the last three years, and any family background. Thanks."

"Sure thing, boss. Hey, wait a sec - this says that Poley is a Principal Scientist at the Waxman Institute. That's where you and Chyll were yesterday, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Jeez, that must have been amazing. Chyll couldn't stop talking about it last night. She said she was super scared but also really jazzed by everything that happened, and couldn't wait to get going on it again today. And she was up and out the door early this morning. Very un-Chyll-like."

"She went to pick up a tube of blood from Bayview," I said, "and get it over to a lab at the Waxman. By now she should be done – I was expecting her to call and let me know, but haven't heard yet."

"No surprise there," Chypp laughed. "She rushed out of the house pretty fast this morning. I heard her motorcycle racing away before 8:00, and when I went downstairs, there was her phone sitting next to the tea pot. She must've been in a hella-hurry."

"Ah, okay. Well, if you see her later, just tell her that I'm on my way to see Trinity Garrett, and that I'll let her know what I learn this afternoon."

"Got it, boss. You want her to meet you at this San Marco place?"

"No, no need."

I wasn't totally convinced of that, though, so when I pulled into Trinity's driveway I stopped and carefully scanned the area: No sign of Marley or his truck, but he could easily be hiding inside.

My phone rang just then; it was Chypp – maybe calling with info about Phil? "Hey Chypp," I said, "that was fast, but I don't have time to go over things right now."

"No, boss, it's me – Chyll. Chypp told you about me leaving my phone home, huh? I wanted to call and let you know that I got the blood to Russ okay. He says that he'll have the results by late Friday."

"Good, that's good. Did Chypp tell you that I'm at Trinity's?"

"No, he's on the computer. I came in the door and grabbed his phone to call you. If you're with Trinity, how come I didn't see you out there?"

"No," I said, "we're not at the Waxman; I just got to her house. She sent me a picture this morning... asked me to call her. She sounded pretty upset, wanted me to come out here."

"A picture? What kind of picture?"

"Uhh... just a photo of... um... something that she said Marley did to her."

"Marley!" Chyll almost spat out the name. "Him? I'm still half shaking from when he threatened me. What'd he do to her? Send me that photo, boss, I wanna see."

"Chyll -" I started to say, then thought: Why not? If she's wants to be my partner on this....

So I forwarded the picture to Chypp's phone, and ten seconds later heard Chyll explode. "Holy shit! - Oh, sorry boss, but that looks really nasty. Are those teeth marks? What else did he do?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm here – to hear Trinity's story and see where it leads us. Look, this may or may not be real... it could be a set up, so I want you to call me in forty-five minutes. If I answer, fine. If not, have Slim Sanchez get over here quick and tear the place apart. Tell him to be thorough - I might be under the floorboards."

"What?" It was almost a screech. "What're you talking about? That ain't funny, boss. You think Marley's in there?"

"Almost certainly not, but I can't be sure. Anyway, Trinity's peeking out the window at me, so I'm going in now."

Be bold, but be smart. Right; so before opening the car door, I took a pistol – the small one, not the .357 \- out of the glove compartment, popped in a full magazine, and snugged it into the shoulder holster I'd put before leaving my apartment. It was under a loose blue hoodie that concealed the bulge nicely.

When I reached the end of the walkway Trinity had the front door open and a look of relief on her face. As I walked in she shut and bolted the door, then turned and melted into my arms. It was quite a hug – she kind of pasted herself to me and wriggled this way and that.

"Thanks for getting here so soon," she murmured. "Sorry to bother you, but I was so scared."

"No problem," I whispered into her hair – she was quite tall, reaching to my eye level, even barefoot as she was.

Ten seconds later she pulled back with a shy smile. Two things were clear now: first, she wasn't wearing anything under her short silk robe, and second, she knew that I was packing a gun.

"Trinity, what's going on?" While I said that I was looking at her face: her long auburn hair was mussed up, but that could have been intentional; the big green eyes were a little bloodshot, but that's easily done. Her cheeks were flushed pink and there was a dribble of blood and an odd blue mark on her swollen lower lip.

For answer she shook her head slightly, eyes getting moist; she still had hold of my hand, and pulled me along into the next room. It looked like the den or maybe a game room...pool table on one side, a card table on the other, and a large fireplace at the far end. A couple of recliner chairs and a leather couch were arranged in a semi-circle around the fireplace - a cozy spot to share a brandy and conversation.

Only now it was a little messed up – the large mirror over the fireplace was shattered, as was at least one of the floor lamps. A few vases or plates must have bit the dust too – shards of broken glass and porcelain were scattered pretty much everywhere. In a strange sort of way it reminded me of the scene at Grant Lake last Monday night, with the shattered picnic table and broken beer bottles on the muddy ground.

There was also a cue stick, broken it two. The upper half was near the broken mirror; the lower half was on the floor near our feet.

The tip of the cue was bloody.

I let go of her hand and circled the room slowly. When I got back to Trinity I leaned close for a better look at her bruised cheek. Then I moistened a finger and gently brushed it. Blue powder rubbed off.

I bent down and picked up the broken cue stick. "He hit you with this?"

She nodded, "Yes – not hard, though. More of a light poke, but it hurt and cut my lip."

"And all this?" I waved my arm at the damage in the room. "Why?"

We walked over to the leather sofa. She brushed off bits of a broken vase and glass, then took my hand again and sat down.

"Please, sit next to me."

I didn't move. Instead I pulled her back up and smiled. Like I said, the sofa faced the fireplace at the far end of the room. Sitting in it, I'd have my back to the door.

But it was slick tile floor, so it took only seconds to slide the sofa around a hundred-eighty degrees.

Now we sat, our backs to the fireplace, facing the door. She held my hand again, keeping me close, and let out a long breath.

"He came in this morning. I'd just finished my shower and was walking to the kitchen to get a little breakfast. All I had on were my undies... I wasn't expecting anyone else to be here."

"How did he get in?"

"Phil has a couple of places in the yard where he hid keys in case he locked himself out, which he did a few times. Anyway, Marley knew about them. So he just unlocked the back door and came in. I'd just poured myself a cup of tea and walked in here to water the plants when I heard him laugh."

She gave a little shiver and squeezed my hands. Either this was real or she was doing a damn good acting job.

"He was standing next to the pool table, drinking out of one of Phil's liquor bottles. I asked him what the he was doing here, and to get the Hell out, but he just laughed again. When I tried to walk past him – I wanted to get more clothes on – he shoved me back and threw the bottle across the room at the mirror. And then he grabbed one of the cue sticks. I thought he was going to hit me, but instead he held it in both hands and snapped it in half."

Breaking a cue stick in two with your bare hands could be pretty tough, but I remembered what he'd done before with the booze bottles; so yeah, I could see him doing that.

She went on, one knee starting to brush back and forth lightly against mine. "He threw one end across the wall, then grabbed my arm and dragged me around the room, smashing lamps and vases with the other end. Then he shoved me down onto one of the chairs and pointed it at me. He said something like 'Have I got your attention now' and I said 'What do you want' and he said 'Where's Niles?"

She stopped talking then, so I waited a few seconds and then said, "That was it? All he wanted was to know where Niles is?"

She nodded silently, eyes starting to tear up again.

"Why is that important? And why would he ask you? And why would he be so violent about it?"

A tear trickled down her right cheek; she sniffed and wiped it away with the back of her wrist, momentarily letting go of my hand. She looked vulnerable and fragile and wildly attractive at the same time. The top of her short robe, almost diaphanous, had fallen halfway open in the front, and like I said... she wasn't wearing anything underneath.

She swallowed hard and went on. "Niles came over Saturday morning. He said he had to get away, that he knew something about Phil and Marley, and that Marley was out to keep him quiet. I thought he was nuts, but he said, 'No, it's the truth. If I can make it past Wednesday, everything will be alright, but if Marley catches me before then, he might kill me.' Then he told me where he was going, in case there was some emergency, but said not to tell anybody else."

"Wednesday? What's happening Wednesday?" I asked.

She shook her head and another tear trickled down. She didn't wipe this one away, instead keeping hold of my hands. Her thumbs were lightly brushing the backs of my fingers... it was pretty distracting.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything else about any Wednesday or anything else, only that he knows something and Marley wants to keep him quiet. He didn't tell me any more except where he was going. It's some river rafting trip up north. He said he'd be safe there 'cause no one could trace him. Even his phone wouldn't work very well."

Phone wouldn't work... what did he mean by that? And a river rafting trip. I thought for a few seconds, then... what about in a National Forest? Some of them had marginal phone reception.

"Okay," I asked, "so where did he go?"

She shook her head. "I don't remember. He left me a flyer, but Marley took most of it. This is all I have left." She reached into a side pocket of her robe and fished out a crumpled bit of paper. It'd been torn apart and half of it was missing – the half with most of the useful info: company name, contact numbers, dates and locations of the trips. The scrap she gave me just had a series of photos: a raft shooting through white water with foam spewing in the air, high hills covered in pine and redwood trees, a string of steelhead and salmon, and a pencil sketch of a very large, hairy creature.

Obviously Bigfoot... Sasquatch... and then I recognized some of the scenes, too.

They looked an awful lot like the Klamath River.

"Can this be right?" I looked up at her. "It looks like the area where I grew up."

She nodded, lip quivering slightly. "That's what Niles said. That you told him about this place last week, and that gave him the idea to go up there. He said it seemed like a good place to take pictures, and an even better place to hide."

I stuffed the flyer in my pocket and looked at Trinity again. "So Marley knows, too?" Except, I thought, he's got the part of the flyer with the exact location. If I needed to find Niles, I might have to search the whole length of the river – maybe a couple hundred miles.

She took my right hand; now she had both of them again, and squeezed. "I had to tell him. He was crazy! At first I told him to go to Hell, but he slapped my mouth with that cue stick and cut my lip. So I slapped him back, a good one, right on his face, as hard as I could."

"And what'd he do then?"

"You already know. He grabbed my throat and pulled me up, and then sucked my left boob into his ugly mouth and bit down hard. I screamed and hit him, but he just laughed. Then he shoved me back onto the chair and said he'd get a butcher knife from the kitchen and cut them off, both of them, if I didn't tell."

"And then?"

"And then I told him. I'm no hero, especially not for a ditz like Niles."

"You think he would have done it?"

"What? Do you mean cut me?"

I nodded.

She shook her head. "No. He was just being a bullying prick... but I wasn't going to let him get near my breasts with a butcher knife. He's changed lately. He's always been a little different, a little hard to get along with, but he never used to be so violent. Anyway, I told him whatever I knew, and I gave him the flyer. He ripped it in half and took the part he wanted."

"And then?"

"And then he left."

Trinity didn't say anything more. After a few seconds I nodded and said, "Alright - are you ready to swear out charges? We can get him for unlawful entry, for assault, and destruction of property, too."

She looked down at the floor and bit her lower lip, thinking, then shook her head. "No. I don't want to bring any charges against him."

I gazed around the room; the damage was mostly surface, probably not real expensive. But still, this was a chance to put Marley in jail. "You're sure about that?"

She looked up at me and nodded, at first tentatively, then emphatically. "I'm sure. No charges. I don't want him to have any more reason to come after me. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder for him to sneak up and...and do whatever."

Okay, I was good with that. After the threats he'd made to Kelsey and Chyll, to me, and now to Trinity and Niles, I wanted him in my hands, not sitting for a few months in jail.

Maybe this rafting trip hunt would end it between us, one way or the other.

Trinity coughed just then, and I realized that she was looking at me curiously. She raised her hand to wipe her bloody lip, but she was still holding my hand, so it was actually my right wrist that she wiped her lips on. She held it there for an extra heartbeat or two, and I felt her tongue slide along my back of my knuckles.

I'll confess that it was a little electric thrill and wasn't totally unexpected. I gently disengaged my hands from hers and stood up, but she stood up with me, still staying close. Her robe fell open a bit more and I could see the side her breast and a few reddish-purple marks.

Be bold but be smart.

The smart thing to do may have been to get out of there right then; just let Marley and Niles sort out their own situation, and then deal with whoever came back. But that wouldn't have been bold.

The bold thing to do was to go after them. But then that meant that the smart thing to do was to verify the evidence first.

Right?

"About those bruises," I began, but she frowned and held up a finger.

"You think maybe they're fake? Or maybe that I bit myself?"

"Trinity," I said, "there so much crazy, contradictory stuff going on that I'm not sure what to believe."

Her frown softened, then turned into a slight smile. She shrugged her shoulders briefly, and the robe fluttered silently to the floor, a little pool of silk at our feet.

She held her arms out sideways and leaned toward me. "What do you think now?"

Was she talking about the bruises? Maybe... or maybe not. I bent down for a closer look, though. The skin was scratched and broken on the red streaks, the purple spots were raw, slightly swollen, and symmetrically spaced; a few had slight indentations in the center. No puncture wounds or torn marks though, which was consistent with what she'd said – that the bite was meant more as a bullying threat, rather than a vicious attack.

With her arms outstretched, I could smell fresh deodorant and bath soap. She must have showered again after Marley left, but that made sense; you'd want to clean up after someone bit you, right? Her skin glistened slightly - she'd probably rubbed on a light lotion, but there were no signs of any make-up to enhance the bruises. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't look anywhere else; I dropped my eyes down to her feet, then very slowly came back up to her shoulders, sweeping from side to side. Other than the bruises, there were no other marks or injuries \- her body was alluringly perfect.

Wow.... Okay then, I straightened up and nodded, "They look real enough to me."

She took in a deep breath and gently waggled her shoulders back and forth. "They are real," she said with a little laugh. "Completely real."

There she stood, naked, beautiful, and unashamed, a look of confidence on her lovely face. The quivering lip, the teary eyes, and the quavering voice were all gone now.

Then she leaned close and put her mouth next to my ear. "Stop Marley and save Niles, Reid," she whispered. "And please take me along with you. I don't want to stay here alone"

I drew back and nodded. "Alright. But we need to leave now."

She scooped up the robe and slipped it on in one swift, graceful motion, then grinned. "Good. Just give me thirty minutes to get ready."

"You've got twenty," I said, "starting right now."

She laughed softly, spun around, and glided away.

"Don't forget warm clothes, something waterproof, and good hiking shoes," I called out, and went outside to get some much needed fresh air.

I took a couple of deep breaths, shook my head - and then my phone went off.

Yep – forty-five minutes, exactly.

Chapter 61: Inevitable

Day 10: Wednesday Mid-Day

It was Chypp's phone number, but it was Chyll talking.

"Hi boss, just checking in. How'd it go?"

"Good, very good," I answered, stretching and taking another deep breath.

"Really? Cuz you look a little flushed. What were you doin' in there?"

I stopped in mid-stretch. "Okay, where are you?"

"Right here, in your truck." I looked over and saw her arm waving out of the passenger window. "I came over as soon as we hung up before, and was waiting here in case you needed anything."

"And if I had needed you?"

"Then I would have been in there in two seconds, ready to kick some ass."

An image of Chyll flattening Marley with a drop-kick popped into my mind. That would have been cool to see, but I was glad it hadn't come to that - the reality would have been tragically different.

I reached the truck and leaned in. She was holding a pearl tea and had a small bag of chips on her lap. "Didn't I say to call Slim Sanchez? If there was real trouble in there, I wouldn't want you near the place."

She got a hurt look on her face and I was immediately sorry about saying that. I reached out and gave her arm a gentle squeeze.

"Sorry Chyll. Other than Axel, there's no one else I'd rather have next to me in a pinch than you, and I mean that. It's just that I don't want you taking on someone like Marley. He's mean, strong, tough, and smart. Right now he's on his way up north to find Niles, and I need to get to Niles before he does. First, to keep him in one piece, and second, because he knows more about this situation than anyone else."

Chyll's face brightened. "I know that you're just worried about me, but you shouldn't be, at least not so much. Anyway, when do we leave and how do we get there?"

I smiled to myself. It was funny how fast things progress; one week ago Chyll was starting her winter break from college and wanted to tag along with me to see the Waxman. Now \- she assumed the role of a full partner in an investigation.

Trouble was, it was a thorny and potentially explosive investigation.

"Boss?" she prodded.

With something like this, you were either a hundred percent in or a hundred percent out. There was no in-between.

I decided to go with 'in'. I was bringing Trinity along because I didn't completely trust her story and wanted to keep track of her. What I mean is, if she was lying, then I wanted to keep her where I could see her, and if she was telling the truth, then she could be in more danger from a deadhead like Marley, in which case, it again made sense to keep her nearby.

But she could be mighty distracting, and I needed to stay focused. Maybe with Chyll along, Trinity would cool her jets.

"We leave right away," I said. "Call Chypp and ask him to get Eddie on the line, please. Let me know as soon as he's on."

I needed a couple of minutes to think through details. It seemed like I'd just started when Chyll tapped my shoulder and handed me the phone. "Got him, boss."

I nodded 'Thanks' and took the phone. "Eddie – this is Reid. You available for a quick trip?"

"Available? Uh... kinda. Me and the fellas are at the maintenance shop cleaning up. How quick do you mean?"

"Like right now. This is top priority, Ed. We need to fly about 400 miles north. When we get there we need to cruise up a river until we find some people. It could be as much as another hundred miles. There won't be any place to land a plane, so I was hoping you could get the Spy Copter ready."

"Whoa!" He whistled. "The Spy Copter, huh. Okay, let's see - I haven't looked at that baby in almost a week, but its maintenance is up to date, so... okay, I guess that's do-able. When did you say? Right away?"

"Yeah, we want to meet you now and leave. We're in a helluva rush, Ed. When can you be ready."

"Jesus, Reid, um... give me a couple of hours. I'm only five minutes away from the hangar, but I'll need to check it out, make sure it's completely green-light ready. Anything special you need to bring along?"

"Actually yes – once we spot the people we'll need to get down to them. It's best if we can land on an open spot upstream from where they are and blow up an inflatable boat. We'll float down to them while you fly downstream to another clear landing spot. We'll pick up one of the people and meet you down there when we can."

"Cruise up a river," he said, "locate people, keep going upstream and land. Blow up boat, get back in the air and go downstream. Land and wait. Then at some point you'll float down to me. Then we all fly back here. Is that about it?"

"Perfect, Eddie."

"Okay, cool. How big a boat do you need? "

"Big enough for four," I said. "There'll be three of us flying up with you and should be four flying back."

"Okay, man," Eddie said, "I'll have the guys get a boat and air pump loaded in for you. Let's see - it's about eleven now. Give me until one, maybe even one-thirty."

"Alright, thanks Eddie. I owe you another six-pack."

"Excellent," he laughed, "I'll be looking forward to it. Make it some imported stuff this time, okay?"

"You got it," I said, then clicked off and handed the phone back to Chyll.

She dropped it into her backpack and looked at me. "Three?" she asked.

I nodded. "You, Trinity, and me."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Trinity? She's coming along?"

"Yeah. Think about it – who do we know that might be involved in whatever's going on?"

"Julian and Phil," she began, "but they're both dead. Marley and Niles, but they're not here. Maybe Kelsey? But she's not here either. Mr. Akino and Dr. Hillen are also maybe's, but they seem unlikely. So... okay, I get your point. The only one that's right here with us is Trinity. But boss, we don't really know how involved she is. Maybe not very much."

"True," I agreed. "But it's the same with Niles. Maybe he's in deep, or maybe he just knows something useful – which is what Trinity says. Or maybe she's lying. In any case, when we pick up Niles I want her there to face him. I want the two of them to hash it out in front of us until we get a straight and complete story. Anyway, I don't want her to slip away. So, wherever we go, she goes, at least, for a while."

"Okay," Chyll nodded slowly, then went on, "When do you think we'll be getting back?"

"If we're really lucky, late tonight. But more likely tomorrow."

"So that means we should bring a change of clothes and something waterproof, right? Especially cuz you told Eddie to pack an inflatable raft – that means we might be getting wet."

"Yep. That's what I told Trinity. But I don't want to take time to drive to my apartment... do you think you could zoom by Halliday's and grab some things from my locker? And get your own stuff, too."

We all have lockers at Halliday's for keeping whatever we want. Most of us keep a random assortment of gear for the gym, the pool, or the martial arts training rooms.

"Sure, like what exactly?"

"Windbreaker, swimsuit, extra sweater. If you see any clean socks and undies, grab a pair, please. Oh - and take this."

I handed her the scrap of torn flyer. "Niles left this with Trinity. It's part of an advertising flyer from the rafting company. Marley got the other part with all the info on it. Give this to Chypp and have him look up companies on the Klamath River, especially ones that do winter runs. See if he can match these pictures with any on their websites. If he can, have him call them and find out what their route is for a trip going on right now."

"Okay, boss, no problem. I'll get over there right away and get Chypp going on this. And then I'll grab our stuff and meet you at Eddie's tool shop in an hour. Cool?"

"Very cool - thanks, Chyll. Trinity and I'll stop and pick up sandwiches on the way. Got any requests?"

She put on her helmet, cranked her motorcycle to life, and revved the engine once or twice. As she started rolling down slowly away, she called out, "Anything with lots of veggies, and maybe some fruit juice. Seeya in a bit, boss."

Then she disappeared around the bend near the oak trees.

Three minutes later Trinity came out of the house, locked the front door, and walked over carrying a small backpack.

"Was that a motorcycle leaving?" she asked. "Who was it?"

"Yeah," I answered, "that was Chyll. She's coming with us to find Niles."

"Really?" She frowned slightly. "Chyll... is she one who was with you at the Waxman yesterday? Kind of young and very cute?"

"That's her," I said. "Also very smart, capable, and, at the moment, my partner."

Trinity's frown deepened. She turned away to stow her backpack in Atlas, then climbed into the passenger seat.

I got in behind the wheel and started the engine, but didn't put it in gear. Instead I looked over at her and smiled. "That seems to bother you. Why - jealous?"

She glared back at me, with no humor in her eyes. "No, and that's not funny. You're putting her in danger. She's just a kid. What if she runs up against Marley?"

"She already has," I said, and thought about how bad it would have turned out if Rango and the others weren't there.

"Look, you might be right, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. The plan is to get in, get Niles, and get out. We should be able to reach him long before Marley can. In these weather and road conditions, it'll take him at least ten hours to find the rafting party, hike down to the river and reach Niles. And he's been gone for what... only two, two and a half hours?"

Her shoulders slumped a bit and she looked uncomfortable.

"That is what you said, isn't it?" I asked.

She nodded without looking at me and said, "Yes, something like that, I think."

"You think?" I reached over and put my hand on her shoulder. "Trinity, is there anything you want to change about your story?"

She blinked a few times and kind of bit at her lip, then slowly shook her head.

"Okay then," I went on, "as long as that plan works, we're better off having both you and Chyll along. Even if Marley is nearby and we manage a quick getaway, it's still better to have you both there. But - if it comes to an actual confrontation, then both of you get out of the way fast. Leave him to me - I don't want either of you getting hurt."

Her face softened and she exhaled slowly, actually looking a little sad. "You're a good man, Reid," she said in a low voice, then turned away and looked out the side window. She slowly shook her head and said in almost a whisper, "A good man in a bad situation."

* * * * * * *

The guys had a little trouble finding the right size inflatable boat, and Eddie wanted to do a few extra safety checks, so it took longer than expected to get off the ground. But once in the air, the flight went smoothly.

This was a new one for me. The Spy Copter was a recent addition to the Halliday fleet, and I hadn't flown in it yet. Everything about it was a pilot's dream: lightweight, fast, reliable, very maneuverable, and with lots of high-tech gizmos. It was a sort-of gift from the specialty aerospace company run by Kirk Halliday's younger brother, the sometimes wayward Mr. Caden Mars, and wasn't in general production. That's why I added the 'sort-of'; there was no charge, but we were expected to be a sort of beta tester, putting the copter through its paces and evaluating the plusses and minuses. So far, according to the pilots, it was all plusses.

With big tinted windows, interior climate control, a cabin quiet enough for casual conversation, and a small bathroom with a shower, it was also great for passengers. There were five plush seats; I sat in the front, next to Eddie, with Chyll and Trinity taking two of the three in the back.

Chyll had been in large commercial airliners before, but never in a small plane or a helicopter, so she spent the time listening to her tunes and staring out the large side windows. She had the occasional comment about the terrain below –which was genuinely beautiful – but mostly just listened, watched, and snapped pictures.

Trinity lay back in her seat with her eyes closed. Dozing or not? – Hard to tell.

Me? I was thinking about what to say to Niles when we found him, and what to do with Marley when we ran into each other, as I knew we must. We had a score to settle, and today or tomorrow or the next day, it had to happen.

It was inevitable.

Chapter 62: Scramble

Day 10: Wednesday

But of course, it wasn't just two or two and a half hours since Marley sped out of Trinity's driveway; it was more like sixteen. He'd driven most of the night, stopping once for take-out food, twice for gas, and once at a rest stop near Willow Creek to get two hours sleep.

For the last while he'd been driving along the Klamath River, and morning light was just beginning to brighten the sky when he reached the point on the road nearest to the GPS heading that Niles texted him yesterday. He pulled into a wide, shady turnout and cut the engine.

The Waxman pickup was an older model gas/electric hybrid, in good running condition for hauling material around the local area, but not meant for long trips. The rumble of the road, the thrum of the engine, and the whistles of wind blowing through tears in the insulation around doors and windows made for a noisy ride. In the hour-after-hour-after hour night-time driving; it finally became a jumble of white background noise. But when he stopped and turned everything off, the silence hit his eardrums like a sudden release of pressure. All the little sounds - the tick-tick of the engine cooling down, the squawk of a blue jay, the whine of a nearby mosquito, even the rasp of his breathing - were sharp and crisp.

There was half a Hershey's bar on the passenger seat; he finished it slowly while peering out the window: Sky was mostly cloudy, but seemed to be clearing up. During the night, though, it had rained off and on, so the ground was muddy and the air chilly with the kind of dampness that seeps through your clothes and bites at your muscles.

Marley stepped outside, stretched, and walked across the road to the edge of the long embankment. From up here, the river was a green and silver ribbon snaking silently below; getting down there would be a long and dangerous scramble, with loose rock, slippery footing, and no trail.

On the plus side, though, the way was only moderately steep and coated with pine and madrone, so, if nothing else, he could slide from one tree to the next to make his way down.

Not comfortable, not graceful, and not easy - but it could be done. More than that, it had to be done. The info he'd gotten from Niles was that the rafters would be camping on a wide, sandy beach just upstream from a long range of very fast, very high rapids. In a normal summer, this would make for a fun but not dangerous ride. In a normal winter, it would be a thrilling speed trip through fast, deep water. This was no normal winter though, and right now the heart of the rapids turned into a foaming maelstrom, and the sandy beach was underwater. Niles expected that the rafting party would arrive well before noon, pitch their tents on a nearby rocky bar, and stay for a few days to explore the area and give the water level a chance to drop.

He also wrote that the camp would be on the other side of the river near a creek. This had to be the right place – not only did the GPS match, but through his binoculars Marley could some serious whitewater, and just upstream of that a creek winding down the far hillside and ending near a thin rocky beach

Okay then: scramble down to the river, hike upstream to a stretch of calm water - no telling how far that might be - and swim across. Then hike down the other side to the camp site. Marley had no boat or wetsuit - just two plastic garbage bags to put his clothes and shoes in. Maybe that would keep them from getting completely soaked, but he was going to get thoroughly wet and cold, no way around that.

Ugh – right now that seemed like the least fun thing he could think of doing. He shivered a bit and muttered, "That assbite Stratton better show up soon."

He was tempted to just say, "Screw it" and keep driving north. His part in this whole project was almost finished, right? Already done enough to get all that money they promised, right? But he knew he'd never get any of it until that goddamn snoop was taken care of, and Niles could never do it on his own.

Alright, he told himself, don't think about it anymore. Just get moving.

So he grabbed his pack, shoved the truck keys under the floor mat, and closed the door without bothering to lock it. When and if he got back, the truck would either be here or not; he'd deal with that later. Right now he had to focus on getting down to the river, getting across to the beach, and – most important – getting rid of Reid.

* * * * * * *

It was early afternoon when two rafts, each holding six people and crammed with gear, pulled up onto the rocky beach. Everyone jumped out, grabbed a rope or a handle, and tugged the rafts up clear of the water.

Chris, the lead guide, was tall and sandy haired, with an air of competence and authority. He'd been leading trips on various stretches of the local rivers for the last three years, and was thinking of moving on to do something else soon. But not quite yet. These winter trips were his favorite: the water was deep and fun and there were no other boats on the river. Plus the people along for these rides were usually pretty interesting.

But he'd never seen the river like this. Crazy high... crazy, crazy high, and fast. Even crazier was something he noticed when they got near the shore: Someone was already there.

How the Hell...?

"Hey, Ali," he called to the other guide, "check this out."

She was just pulling off her life jacket and toweling her hair. "Yeah, what's up?"

Chris nodded toward the equipment shed against the hillside. "We got company."

"Whoa!" she said, "how'd he get here?"

"Dunno... I'll go ask. Can you get the unloading and set-up started?"

The group had been on the river for two days now, and setting up camp was already a smooth operation. Individual gear and food were stowed in water-proof canisters strapped into the center compartment of the rafts. Some overnight equipment was kept there too; but certain campsites, like this beach, had permanent storage sheds. Lanterns, cots, tents, tarps, folding tables, portable barbeques, propane cylinders, and medical supplies were kept there for the winter trips, when they would normally stay for two days. On this trip the stay could be longer; from what the guides had seen of the river levels and water speed, there was no way they'd risk taking paying customers on the next set of rapids.

But that was okay; this was a special area. Besides the creek that gushed down the hillside, there was a trail leading up to a wide flat area containing the remnants of a gold rush settlement. It wasn't big, wasn't even a tiny town; more like a stopover and resupply point for miners trekking through the area: a barn, machine shop, small store, and three or four cabins. Most of the structures were meager remnants of what they'd once been, but a few still had roof and walls intact. It was a recognized historical site, but so remote that no one but rafting parties visited it anymore.

"Sure," Ali nodded, and called out directions. The rafters started unloading the boats and carrying containers toward the high side of the rocky bar, away from the river's edge. One of them didn't move though. He stood, watching Chris walking over to the stranger leaning against the shed.

"Well, he got here," Niles thought. "But he'll probably be pissed that I wasn't here waiting for him."

Marley'd been lounging in a folding camp chair, leaning against the shed wall, but he stood up when Chris got near. Chris stopped a few feet away and surveyed the scene. The lock on the shed door had been busted off – that must have taken a heavy rock and some strength – and this stranger had helped himself to a chair, a blanket, and some food.

Chris folded his arms and looked at the stranger curiously. "So what's up, man, you okay?"

Marley nodded. "Yeah, I am now. I was a little wet and cold when I got here, though."

"Uh huh. When was that? And how'd you get here?"

"Came down the hillside this morning. Swam across upstream a ways. Made it here about an hour ago."

"Just like that, huh?" Chris went on. "Just showed up from nowhere? You got any plans, or you just want to break into our stuff?"

Marley looked at the broken lock and shrugged. "Like I said, I was wet and cold. Hungry too. As far as plans... I'm just here for a little gold panning."

"Gold!" Chris laughed. "Here? This time of year?"

Marley shrugged again. "I read that a lot of money got taken out of these hills. But that was a century or two ago. I also read that the miners used the placer method...you know, blasting away the hillside with jets of water, then sluicing the residue."

Chris eyed Marley more cautiously, then nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's right. Those old peckers destroyed a lot of the land around here. That's why we have so many rocky bars on the river. They washed away the dirt, took what gold they could get, and left the mess behind."

"But they didn't get all the gold," Marley said. "There's a lot left buried in the hills – just like it was before – which is why they needed those big hoses. They've been gone for a long time now, but every winter, especially really wet ones like this year, the rain fills up these creeks and they wash away new ground... kind of like natural placer mining. I figured I could do a few test pans near the creeks around here. Starting with this one."

It was a good story – one that Marley put together Sunday night, and he'd stopped by a hardware store to pick up gold panning equipment before visiting Trinity last night.

Chris shook his head. "You wouldn't be the first one to think that. I've seen other guys grousing around these hills looking for gold. But I never saw one nuts enough to be out here in weather like this."

Marley coughed and spat. "I don't like competition. I like to poke around on my own."

"Yeah," Chris took a step toward the shed, "so you didn't expect us to show up, huh? Just thought you could trash our shed and grab what you wanted?"

"Hey man, take it easy," Marley snapped. "I'm starting to lose patience with all the questions. I told you why I'm here. I told you why I took some of your stuff – it's friggin' cold and I'm wet and hungry. Most of my supplies washed away when I swam across the river. So just calm your ass down – I'll pay for whatever I took."

He pulled a wad of wet cash out of his pack, peeled off a hundred dollar bill, and held it out. Chris looked at it in silence for ten seconds, then shifted his gaze to Marley's face and broke into a thin smile.

"Forget it, man," he said. "We get druggies vandalizing our stuff every now and then. I was pushing you a bit to see if you were one of them. But I don't think you are. I don't know if you're a miner either – you don't look like it – but anyone who climbs down these hills and swims across the river in this weather can't be all bad. Crazy, but you got balls, man. Tell you what: you can have a blanket and sleeping bag and some food for free; we've got plenty extra in the shed. But here's the deal: when we go, you go too. I don't want you staying here after we've gone. Agreed?"

Marley put the money back in his pack and nodded. "Deal," he said.

Chris waved toward the people unloading the boats. "We'll be setting up camp next to the hillside, near those blackberry bushes. You can join us if you want. We'll have hot food in an hour."

Marley half-smiled. "Hot food sounds good, but I won't be staying in your camp. I like to be off by myself."

Chris shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just don't go messing around with the cabins."

"What cabins would those be?"

"Up this trail a bit," Chris motioned. "They're like historic monuments. Best if you stay away from them."

"No problem," Marley said, "If there's no gold buried under the floorboards, I have no interest in'em."

"I don't know about any gold... I'm just tellin' you to leave them alone. They're old and fragile."

"Got it," Marley nodded. "Don't worry."

While this was going on, Niles helped to set up camp. He kept one eye on Marley though, and wondered if he'd been able to sell Chris on a good story for being here. The original story – that Marley would be joining the rafting party – fell apart. There was no space available, and besides, Marley wouldn't be sticking around after disposing of Reid... he planned to disappear as quickly as he'd arrived. After five minutes Niles saw Marley and Chris shake hands and start walking toward the rest of the group.

It must have worked.

He'd need to play it carefully here. He didn't want the others to know that he and Marley knew each other, but he also needed to talk privately to Marley about what went on with Trinity.

Chris introduced Marley to the group, camp got set up, hot food was prepared and wolfed down. It was only late afternoon, but the day's work was done, so a campfire was started, bottles of wine were opened, a few joints were lit, and Marley told everyone his story.

Most of them thought he was crazy or at least a little weird, but a couple of the Bigfoot trekkies were goggle-eyed.

One, a ponytailed brunette named Jolene, was especially entranced. "Wow," she cooed, grabbing his arm, "you really climbed down that mountain side and swam the river? And you're gonna find gold?"

"That's right," Marley murmured softly, flexing his bicep.

She leaned closer and giggled, squeezing his arm tighter.

No one seemed to notice but Niles. He grit his teeth, pressing his lips into a tight line. _"Goddamn it, Marley,"_ he thought, _"stay focused. We're here to get rid of Reid, not get laid."_

He managed to catch Marley's eye and motioned with his head toward the latrines. Marley waited for a few seconds, then stood, whispered something to Jolene, and slowly ambled away. She blushed and watched him go, then filled her glass with Chablis and took a big swallow.

When Marley reached the latrines, Niles was waiting. No one else was in hearing distance, but he kept his voice low just in case.

"Don't get your nose buried too deep there," he said. "We're here to do a job and get out."

"Take it easy, man," Marley muttered. "Did you know that Reid was at the Waxman with Jim Hillen yesterday?"

"What?" Niles said, too loud, then in a calmer voice, "what were they up to?"

"First Reid and Akino were poking around in Julian's liquid nitrogen tanks. Now, how would they have known about those?"

When Niles shrugged, Marley went on, "I had plenty of time to think last night while driving. They must have gotten it from my notebooks... which means that your little pet Kelsey has been reading them."

Niles started to say something but Marley pushed him back a step and glared. "Yeah," he said, "and then they met with Hillen to learn about Yp-H. And if they know about that, then they probably know about Tau, too."

"You got rid of everything, right?" Niles said, trying to regain control of the conversation, but Marley laughed softly and spat.

"Yeah, sure, all the trees and fruit, but I caught Reid's little cunt assistant trying to get some dead birds, ones that had eaten the transformed Kanja. I stopped her from getting the birds, but even so, they might've pretty much guessed everything."

Niles was quiet for a few seconds, then asked, "What about Trinity? Did she convince Reid to come up here?"

"I told her not to call Reid till this morning, so I'd have enough head start to get here first. She's damn good at making up stories, though, and shouldn't have too much trouble getting him to chase after me. Especially after she got a little extra incentive to hate me."

"What's that mean?" Niles said, "You didn't hurt her, did you?"

"Nah," Marley growled, "hardly touched her. Just scared her a bit."

Niles hissed. "All that stuff with Julian's lab and talking to Hillen just ratchet's up our urgency. We've got to stop Reid here and now."

"You're sure you're up to it, man?" Marley voice was mocking, but his eyes were dead serious.

"Actually, no," Niles sniffed. "Unlike you, I'll never be ready for something like this, but we've been given no choice. Either Reid gets the chopping block or we do. Stay focused on him. He knows this area well - maybe too well. That's why I chose it - I was sure we could lure him up here. But he could know some tricks, so we need to be ready. Watchful. Eyes open. And that means zipper closed, buddy."

Marley placed his hand on Niles' shoulder and squeezed gently. Then he leaned closer and whispered, "Fuck you, Stratton. I busted my ass driving all night, scrambling down that miserable cliff and across the river, and when I got here - wet, freezing cold, and hungry - you're nowhere to be seen."

"We were delayed," Niles said, "the water's rough out there. Two people fell in the river and it took a while to fish'em out." He tried to pull away, but Marley's grip held him back.

"My part in this is just about finished - I shuffled the genes in the Kanja for you. I picked and shipped the fruit for you. And tomorrow I'll kill Reid for you. But don't tell me what to do with my dick." Marley's grip tightened momentarily, just enough to make Niles wince; then he took his hand away and tapped him on the chest. "You think that hanging out with Lester was all I did? My gate can swing both ways, buddy. After I put Reid underground I plan on enjoying myself with his little assistant. And when we get to the jungle next week, I'll have a little fun with Kelsey before getting my notebooks back. Clear enough?"

Niles pulled away and rubbed his shoulder. Marley turned and sauntered back toward the campfire.

"Yes," Niles whispered, "it's clear alright. Very clear that your part is just about finished. And so are you."

Chapter 63: Trinity

Day 10: Wednesday Afternoon

When the copter took off, Trinity felt her heart in her throat. For the first thirty seconds they hovered over the tarmac, rising slowly while the pilot fiddled with controls and chatted over the radio. Then they quickly rose higher, paused briefly, and moved forward with a sudden rush.

The quietness was pleasantly surprising; no gushing of wind, no loud whizzing of rotors, no engine roar. Weren't helicopters supposed to be really noisy? Eddie, the pilot, had walked her around the copter and blabbed about some of the features. She only half listened, but caught the gist of it.

Which was something like this: the copter did have rotors, but they were small and only used for stabilizing and hovering. Even then, they weren't the primary controllers. Thrust for movement, up, forward, backward, even turns, was provided by banks of powerful mini-jets arranged in a complex pattern and armed with high-tech noise cancellation. They could be controlled individually or in groups, and were mechanically and electronically completely independent; if one failed, it was hardly noticeable. Even if half of them failed, Eddie assured her, they could still fly adequately and land safely.

"Okay then," she'd asked, "that sounds great, but complicated. How good are you are doing it all?"

"Uhh," he blushed, but looked pleased at her question. "I was part of the original testing program, but I'm still learning the nuances of the controls. It's complicated but not difficult... I mean, there's a lot to do, but it's pretty intuitive. You could learn the basics in just a few minutes. After we get off the ground and are going straight and level, you could give it a try, if you like."

"Thanks," she'd said, "but no. I'm going to sleep."

"Okay," Eddie looked a little disappointed. "Maybe on the way back, if you change your mind."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Maybe."

That was a few minutes ago, before they'd gotten airborne. Once up, she looked at the sailboats and windsurfers gliding over the water, at the bridges crossing the Bay, even a couple of planes approaching the SF airport. The cloud cover meant that there wouldn't be any stars visible, but the views downward and sideways were super.

They moved west and north, skimming over the hills and hitting the coast near Half Moon Bay. She heard Reid say something about following the coastline to Eureka, then heading inland.

Okay, fine... she leaned back in her seat, looking at the back of Eddie's head. She ran into that too often - unwanted attention from eager young men. She'd learned to deflect it, sometimes gracefully, sometimes rudely. Eddie seemed nice, though, and she hoped his feelings weren't hurt.

Her eyes drifted over to the Reid, who was pointing at something out the side window, giving a good view of his profile. She watched him in silence, her lips curving into a smile. Everything she'd seen from Reid, she liked. He was good-looking, strong, dependable, easy to talk to, and easy to trust. And he seemed to have an inner strength and self-confidence that made a person feel safe. So different from Niles, from Phil, and especially from Marley. Julian had had some of those traits, but not the dependable one... or the inner strength, either.

Her brow knit in a little frown as a cold chill crept into her stomach; then she blew out a heavy breath and closed her eyes. Whose side should she be on in this? Was she really going to go along with the scheme to lure Reid into the woods and kill him?

It just seemed too fantastic, too unreal.

The copter was moving level and smoothly now, and the slight sensation of forward movement was relaxing. She felt herself sinking into the plush cushions but was roused by bothersome thoughts which went something like this:

" _What if I don't help out and the whole damn plan flops? What would be the down side? Niles and Marley say that if it fails, we're all dead. Maybe for them that's true, but why me? I don't know anything... Christ! How did I get myself messed up in this?"_

But she knew exactly how it started: Money. Niles had promised tons of money. Three years ago when she was hungry and drifting, that seemed very, very important. Now? Not so much. She had a good job – not a great one, but she could make a career out of it. So money wasn't a big issue anymore... it was her personal life that was still in the dumps.

And as long as she kept letting Niles tell her what to do, it always would be. But how to break away? She opened her eyes and saw Reid watching the instrument panel; he noticed her looking and gave her a nod and a smile. She smiled back, then glanced sideways at Chyll, who was wearing earbuds and looking out the window, her head gently swaying to whatever tunes she was hearing.

The soft, melodic hum of the engines was more than relaxing; it was hypnotic, and as her eyes closed again she had a vision of herself as a small moon floating in space, being tugged by the gravity of two large, opposing planets. Niles was on one of them, along with Marley and the Consortium - whoever they were; and on the other stood Reid and Chyll, beckoning to her. And there she was, in the middle. It was easy to want to move toward Reid, but it was scary and dangerous. She knew first-hand how vicious Marley could be, and if Niles was right about the Consortium, then... then... Oh Sweet Jesus, what to do?

Memories of this morning wafted through her mind, of how she'd prepared the trap for convincing Reid to go chasing after Marley and Niles. She could see herself standing in Phil's living room, holding a crystal brandy decanter from the liquor cabinet. First she sloshed a few ounces on the floor, then walked to the fireplace and studied the mirror.

Pretty, yes, but nothing special - not an antique heirloom or anything. So she wrapped the neck of the bottle in a dishtowel, raised it in both hands and smashed it against the mirror: once, twice... three times.

Both mirror and decanter shattered and glass shards flew everywhere; the towel protected her hands, but slivers of broken glass ended up in her hair, and one of them cut her lip.

Her first though was 'Damn! But then she tasted blood and knew it was actually a lucky break. A cut lip... uh-huh, one more thing to blame on that prick Marley. She tapped her toe, looking around the room, thinking, then noticed the rack of pool cues.

Yeah, good.

Breaking one of the cue sticks wasn't easy, but by leaning it against the coffee table and jumping on it twice, she managed to snap it nicely in two. The fat end made a good club to smash a vase and one of the lamps. She took the thin end and dabbed it against her bloody lip, leaving a red smear in the cue tip and a small blue chalk mark in her lip.

Okay, good - the scene of destruction was set nicely. Now for the best part.

She wrapped a handful of ice cubes in a rough, wet wash cloth and rubbed hard on her left breast. Ow! – But it made the bruises stand out in vivid colors.

The cold made the nipple stand out too...

Perfect. Now snap a quick pic with her phone and send it to Reid.

And then just wait for his call, which should come soon. She began taking fast, deep breaths to sound hyperventilated and distraught, and sure enough, after the sixth one her phone buzzed.

"Reid, please help me. Come over - now!"

Yes, the set-up had been perfect. The story she made up and told him was perfect. She'd been perfect.

So then... why wasn't she happy about it?

* * * * * * *

"Hey, are you awake?"

Trinity jerked her head up and opened her eyes.

"Oh - sorry to startle you," Chyll said. "I wanted to ask if you'd like a snack or a cold drink. I know you and Reid stopped for sandwiches, but my brother gave us a cooler with some goodies." She held up a bag of trail mix in one hand and a Power Ade in the other. "Interested?"

Trinity started to shake her head, then remembered that she hadn't eaten anything today. Yeah, they'd stopped to pick up sandwiches, but she hadn't had one - didn't have any appetite at the time.

But the trail mix looked good. And so did the drink.

"Sure, thanks," she said, reaching out as Chyll passed them over. The Power Ade was ice cold and good, not too sweet, and went well with the saltiness of the trail mix.

They were moving inland now, above a rolling carpet of green trees with occasional bare scars where loggers had been working. The ground showing through was mostly a reddish brown, with occasional small lakes popping into view. Trinity looked away from the side window, over at Chyll and smiled. "Thanks, these are good. Your brother, huh? Do you both work with Reid?"

"Yeah," Chyll nodded. "Twin brother. We turn twenty in about two weeks."

"Around Christmas?"

"Yep. Right on Christmas day. Our dad works at Halliday's part-time as a martial arts instructor. Chypp – my brother – has been there for a while, ever since his leg got busted up. He's still recovering, so he dropped out of school and works as a phone dispatcher and general computer geek."

"Ahh..." Trinity said, munching on another handful of trail mix. "Busted leg? How'd that happen?"

"Oh – he got shot. Walked in on a robbery at a store. Just bad timing."

"Wow," Trinity said softly, "how unlucky."

"Yeah," Chyll shrugged. "But the SOB who did it was even more unlucky."

"How so?"

Chyll smiled thinly. "Reid caught up to him."

"Oh," Trinity nodded, "is he in jail now?"

Chyll just looked at her and slowly shook her head. "No."

And didn't say any more about it.

Trinity leaned back and looked forward at Reid; he was holding a map and talking with Eddie. There was also a map on the display screen between the front seats; they seemed to be comparing the paper one to the electronic one.

Reid pointed to a bridge down below and said something about two rivers meeting there. He motioned toward one of them and Eddie dropped lower, following it upstream. The copter was moving more slowly, just a hundred feet or so off the water.

Reid swiveled around and smiled toward the back seats. "We're getting closer now, but we'll also be moving slower. They'll be somewhere along this river, but it could be anywhere in the next sixty or seventy miles."

Trinity reached into her purse and slipped out her phone.

Reid caught the motion and said, "Sorry, but that might not work well around here. The National Forest area has really bad phone coverage."

"OK, thanks," Trinity nodded and smiled. But she hadn't wanted to make a call; it was another plan she had in mind. If Niles was as damn sharp as he always made out to be, he should be able to figure it out.

Chapter 64: Spotted

Day 10: Wednesday Late Afternoon

Niles stood by the latrines, watching Marley strutting away toward the beach. He was carrying a gold pan and a canvas bag of tools – hammer and chisel, trowel, spoon, brush, a couple of small plastic bottles – in one arm, with Jolene draped around the other.

"What line of bullshit is he feeding her now," Niles whispered to himself. "I almost feel sorry for her." Well, what the Hell, until Reid showed up, it was really none of his business.

_If_ he showed up. But the trap was baited perfectly, wasn't it? So how could he resist?

Still, nothing was 100% certain.

If Reid believed that Marley started out from the Bay Area this morning, he'd think that Marley might arrive here at the beach some time tonight. Reid would want to get here first, so how would he do it? Could he be flying in? Niles checked his watch – it was nearly 4 P.M. The hill tops were still in sunshine, but down here at river level the camp was deep in shade. By five it would be twilight, by six nearly dark.

So the next few hours should tell whether Reid was coming or not.

Niles walked across the rocks to the rafts and reached into the nearer one to lift out his backpack. He undid the straps and pulled out a folded towel. After a quick peek over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, he carefully unfolded it. Inside was a silver revolver, shining dully in the fading light.

He'd bought it a year ago and only tried it two or three times at a local shooting range. It was lightweight and accurate, with just a moderate kick. He checked that the cylinder was fully loaded, then snapped it closed and imagined pointing it at Reid and pulling the trigger.

It wasn't a good feeling, but if Marley couldn't handle him, then Niles had to be ready. And then there was the problem of what to do with Marley afterward. The instructions passed to Niles were to eliminate Marley before leaving California.

While trying to wrap his head around that, he became aware of the sound of boots crunching on gravel – and getting louder. He slipped the pistol into the large side pocket of his windbreaker, zipped the pocket closed, and turned, trying to look casual.

Max – it was Max carrying his camera bag and smiling.

Max had a day job as software programmer, but his dream was to be a professional wildlife photographer. Make that a rich and famous pro photographer, and he'd signed up for this rafting trip to make it big: Get the million-dollar shot - a photo of a living Sasquatch.

"Did I say million dollar? I meant billion dollar, and this is the place to get it." He'd droned like that for a half-hour last night, then finally asked Niles, "So why're you here? You're not with the Riverwatch people, are you? And you're not one of our 'Squatch crowd either."

Niles said that he was a photo bug too, more or less to get Max to shut up. But then he went on, telling how he'd taken pictures of monkeys skittering over jungle trails, about how to balance bright and shadow areas under rainforest canopies, and about catching action shots of piranha attacking a bloody carcass. Max, suitable impressed, attached himself to Niles after that, sitting next to him on the raft today and following him around when they were camped.

Niles watched him getting closer and muttered, "Bugger you, Max. I should've kept my mouth shut last night."

"Hey," Max called out when he got nearer, "I saw you talking to that new guy over by the latrines. What do you make of him?"

The question caught Niles by surprise; he had hoped that no one had noticed. So he paused for a few seconds to think, then said in a half-bored tone of voice, "Ah, we just said Hello... nothing special. Why?"

"Cuz he's a little strange. He was saying all this stuff about gold panning, so I thought I'd go down by the water and get some pics of him and Jolene. I took a few shots of her, and she was all smiles and flirty, having fun with it, but when I tried to get a picture of him, he slapped my camera away. Then he said that if I pointed my camera at him again, he'd throw it in the river, and me with it. What's that all about?"

Niles stifled a laugh. He didn't want Marley drawing attention to himself, but he didn't want any photos of either of them, either. And Marley had a crude but effective way of preventing it.

"Maybe he just likes his privacy. Don't let it get to you. Hey, how about if you let me take a look at the pics you've taken on the trip so far? Maybe we can discuss the lighting and composition."

"Sure," Max said, handing over his camera. As he did so, Niles started coughing.

"Sorry," he said, between coughs, "...got something stuck in my windpipe. Could you grab me something to drink?"

Max nodded and hurried to the coolers by the campfire. As soon as his back was turned, Niles turned the camera on and scrolled through the shots Max had already taken. There were six of him and one of Marley, all from today.

He permanently deleted all of them.

When Max got back, Niles gratefully accepted the beer and handed back the camera with a few inane comments.

They strolled back to the camp tables, but they were mostly empty.

"Where is everyone?" Max asked.

Ali, the second guide, and Holly, a helper/trainee, were slicing veggies and opening cans of beef stew for tonight's dinner. She said that a few of the crowd went for a hike up the creek to check for erosion and soil water content, looking for clues about possible landslides, while Chris took the others up to see the historic site. "You heard about it, right?"

"Oh yeah," Max said. "A few beat-up old cabins from the mid-1800's. Is it true that you can still find iron tools and ceramic dishes there?"

"That's what I heard," Ali nodded, "but you can't take any of them. Aren't supposed to even touch'em, but, you know, people do anyway."

"Huh," Max said, "I'd like to get a few shots of those. How long ago did they leave?"

"Maybe five minutes. Just go up that trail there and bear to the right. You can't miss it. But there's no big rush. We'll probably be staying here for at least two more days. There's no way we can risk going down those rapids till the water subsides."

Max turned to Niles. "How about it? You feel like going up to the cabins?"

Niles shook his head. "No, you go on. I'm a little tired."

Max looked disappointed, but shrugged and took off.

"Hey Max," Ali called, looking up from her chopping block, "you got a flashlight? It gets dark quick around here. Don't go getting lost."

"Yeah," he called back, "got one. Don't worry."

Ali watched him go for a few seconds, then turned back toward Niles, shaking her head. "Don't worry? Yeah, right. We get bozos that wander off and get lost every year, even in good weather."

"Well, not me," Niles yawned, "I'll just hang out here."

He tossed the beer can into the recycle bin and sat in one of the folding chairs around the fire. Marley and Jolene should be somewhere near the shoreline, but he couldn't see any sign of them.

After a few minutes he got up and poured himself a cup of coffee; he didn't plan on sleeping tonight until things were settled, one way or the other.

The coffee tasted like walnuts and honey, but was hot and strong, and as he sipped and stared into the fire, it was easy to become half-mesmerized and dreamy. His attention faded and his focus turned inward, reliving sweet, warm moments with Ariama....

So when the humming started, barely noticeable, it didn't register in his conscious mind. Even when it grew louder, he was oblivious. It wasn't until Ali said in a near-shout, "What the Hell?" that he sat up and took notice.

People had gotten back from their various hikes, and they were all talking and pointing down the river. He moved to the front to see what everyone was so excited about.

A helicopter glided toward them, moving up the center of the river. It wasn't making much noise, but the sound was captured in the gorge and funneled to their ears. When it passed overhead, the rafting group waved and Max's camera clicked five or six times.

The copter turned, dipped lower, and passed over their beach again, like it was looking for a place to land; but there was no way – the rocky bar was too narrow, too sloping, and strewn with too many uneven boulders. So after hovering in the air for 10 or 15 seconds, it turned a second time and slowly continued heading upstream.

The sound of the copter quickly faded, but not the babble of the rafters.

"How in the..."

"Where did that..."

"Who was..."

Niles ignored them. He'd been trying to see through the copter's large windows, but they were tinted blue, and there was no way to make out who was riding inside. Then he noticed the flashes coming in a burst: one short, then one long, then one short. After an interval of about three seconds the burst was repeated: short – long – short. Another pause, then the sequence of flashes repeated again.

There was no doubt: – Morse code for the letter 'R'.

Who could it be but Trinity sending a message?

He'd taught her how to use her cell phone to send Morse code a few weeks ago, in case she was stuck somewhere in the jungle with Phil. "You can't make a call down there – no service – but your phone has other uses. You can send messages using light flashes if you can find an open space."

They'd practiced, and apparently the lesson had stuck. This message – the letter 'R' - must mean that Reid was here and that she was with him. They must be looking for a place to land. Okay, and then what? If they planned to get to the camp today, they'd have to be quick; it would be dark in an hour.

The nearest good place he could remember was a semi-flat meadow they'd passed this morning, but that was at least a mile back upstream and was on the other side. Swimming across and scrambling over the rock would be tough – damn tough. Marley did it in broad daylight, but to try it now it would be inviting a broken leg.

What if they were carrying a small boat? If that was the case, then they could be here in less than an hour.

Alright then - where was Marley? Did they catch sight of him? If they did, it could blow everything. The key to making this plan work was surprise – he wanted to catch Reid off-guard, and for that to happen Marley needed to be hidden, his presence unexpected.

Niles started walking toward the far end of the rocky bar, down where Marley and Jolene had disappeared earlier. He was about half way there when he met Jolene coming the other way by herself. She moved past him without stopping, without even looking at him, but it was easy to see that she'd been crying.

What the bloody Hell has that fool done now? Niles shook his head, then brushed his hand over the revolver in his pocket and smiled grimly. He'd had enough of Marley... more than enough. Getting rid of Reid was one thing, but Marley's threats against Chyll and Kelsey made Niles' blood boil.

When we're done with Reid, I'll spend a couple of these shots on you. This is a great place to get rid of people. Just drop'em into a deep sturgeon hole... they'll never be seen again.

Chapter 65: Inflatable

Day 10: Wednesday Early Evening

We found the rafting group camped on a narrow, rocky beach just above a long run of white water. There wasn't much space between the edge of the river and the hillside, so their tents were pitched tight up against the blackberry and huckleberry bushes. Behind that the hills, thick with old growth pine, madrone, and redwood, rose gently at first then steepened up fast. This side of the river had escaped logging and remained largely untouched since the gold rush days.

About a dozen people were milling around down below, pointing up at us as we cruised by. Trinity said she saw Niles. I was looking for Marley, but didn't notice him.

This spot looked vaguely familiar, but the place I remembered had a wide sandy beach, slow back-currents for easy swimming, and had always been a favorite place for fishing parties to pull in. The calm stretch of river was just above the rapids, and salmon and steelhead, on their way upstream, liked to rest up after the exertion of climbing through the white water. A nearby creek tumbled over the rocks and dumped in cold, oxygenated water, another treat for the fish. It was a great place to cast a line and haul out a flapping silver prize.

For the rafting buffs, it was a good spot to get out and scout the fast water ahead. Picking the best route around sunken logs or sharp rocks was especially important if you were in a kayak or inner tube. And almost everyone liked to go up to the miners' cabins. Last time I checked, there were still chunks of old iron machinery there - big, heavy stuff; all the little bits had been carried off by souvenir hunters long ago.

Anyway, I'd stopped at this same beach a few times before, but always in the summer or early fall. Gramps used to tell me that the water got high in winter, but probably even he never saw it like this.

Eddie looked at the ground, which was just a slender jumble of rocks, large and small, then over at me and shook his head. "Can't do it, Reid. No place to put down here."

I nodded, and we rose and started cruising slowly upstream.

"Wait a sec, Ed. Can you take us up the other side of the bluff? The road should be about two hundred yards up. I want to scout along it for a while."

"Sure thing," he said, "but it's gonna get dark pretty soon. Don't you want to get on the river before that."

"Yeah," I nodded, "but this'll just take a few minutes. I'm looking for a white truck."

It didn't take even that long.

"What's that over there?" We'd just reached the road, and Chyll was pointing at something ahead and off to the side, tucked under some trees.

Eddie brought us closer, and the whitish blob snapped into focus; we could all see it clearly now – a dirty white pickup.

I glanced at Eddie. "Can you land here?"

He looked this way and that, then grimaced. "Maybe, but it'd be hellish chancy. Road is curvy and damn narrow. Overhanging tree branches, and that cliff on the side. Probably not safe."

"Okay," I had to agree – he was the pilot. "Let's not chance it." It was a little frustrating because I really wanted to do two things: check the license plate to see if it was a Waxman truck, and then pop the hood and rest my hand on the engine. If it was still warm, he hadn't been here long. But if it was cold, then he could be anywhere; maybe even already at the beach.

How would that jibe with Trinity's story? Not very well.

But there was no way to land, so no way to check. Should we continue to believe Trinity? I thought again about the bite marks, and was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt... but cautiously.

I turned and looked back at her. "What do you think?"

Before she could answer Chyll handed me her phone. "Check it out, boss." She'd snapped a picture of the back of the truck and enlarged it to a point where the license plate was moderately readable. The numbers were blurry, but there was no doubt that it started with the letters WAX

When Trinity saw it she nodded. "Yeah, that's his truck."

"Alright," I said. "So that means he's up already up here. We need to get to Niles right away."

Eddie eased back down the side of the bluff and started cruising upriver again.

"What about there?" He was pointing at a flat, grassy area, maybe the remains of an old orchard. There was no sign of any human activity now, but it gave us what we needed: open space to land, free of big rocks, and away from trees, poison oak, and blackberry bushes. Normally this spot would be high above the river, but with the water level up so far, we'd only have to carry the boat twenty or thirty feet before putting in.

The river between here and rafters' camp was deep, but slow and mild - not exciting if you were out for thrills, but exactly what we wanted. The stretch right below the rafters' camp was a different story – that was the place for the thrill seekers.

Okay then - when we got our boat ready, we could just float down to them.

So we landed and while Eddie hooked up the air pump to our little boat, the ladies went behind some nearby reeds to pee. I stepped behind the copter and did the same. Chypp came back with a little smirky smile on her face, but didn't say anything.

With all of us helping, we had the boat inflated, our gear loaded, and were ready to shove off in less than ten minutes. We carried everything to the edge of the river and waded in about knee deep in a little spot of dead water between the main current and the backwater. The sandy bottom gave good footing and made for an easy place to get aboard. I held the raft steady while Trinity climbed in. She managed it OK, but sloshed an inch or so of water into the boat. Chyll slipped in over the side gracefully, and then I pushed us out a bit and hopped in - not quite as gracefully.

It was supposed to be a four person boat, but was plenty crowded with three of us plus two backpacks. Chyll and one of the packs were in the front. I took the middle, holding a paddle. Trinity and the other pack were in the back.

Snug, but comfy enough, as long as we didn't move around much. The upriver breeze kicked up a fine spray; between that and the water in the bottom of the boat, we were all pretty wet. It would be important to change into dry stuff later, before it got too cold.

Well, at least it wasn't raining.

I turned and waved the OK signal to Eddie, who was revving up the copter. He rose into the air and hovered while I used the paddle to ease us into the main current. It caught us and took us along as a leisurely pace – maybe about as fast as a person would casually walk.

So far, so good – no leaks, no one fell in, everything was smooth, and we had made good time getting started. Not great time, but good enough. At this rate, it would be twenty minutes or so until we reached the rafting party.

Well – that would just have to do. In this high water season, with the light dim, it was best to just float along, using the little oar for steering only. Trying to rush in a tipsy raft was inviting disaster.

I gave Eddie another All-OK wave. He waved back, rose up higher, and moved off slowly. The original plan was for him to find a landing spot downstream of the rafting party, where we could rendezvous after picking up Niles. But there was no way we could get four people through those rapids below the rafting beach in this tiny boat.

Unless we could get the use of one of the large professional rafts – not very likely – we would have to wait till morning and hike out. So I'd asked Eddie to find the closest reasonable place he could on that side of the river, set down for the night, and just wait for us.

The current here was strong and steady, but not fast. All we had to do was keep toward the middle, away from the back-currents, and enjoy the ride.

"If we're quiet," I said in a low voice, "we might see some deer or martens... maybe even a bear."

"A bear? No thanks," Chyll laughed, then asked, "but a marten - what's that?"

"Oh, kind of like a river otter; about the size of a big housecat, very sleek and graceful, with a longish tail. They live along the edges of the river. They glide along the shore but spend a lot of time in the water. Very cool creatures."

"Are they dangerous?"

"No, no – not dangerous, unless you're a fish."

"What was that about bears?" Trinity asked.

"Sure, they come down to the river for a drink. But we're perfectly safe out here."

"You mean that bears don't swim?"

"Oh no, that's not what I mean – bears are great swimmers. It's just that they try to avoid people, not chase them. The only time you'd have a problem with a bear around here would be if you startled one on a trail. Even then, they would almost always run away – unless they had cubs. But we're not going to startle anyone out here in the middle of the river, so they'll have plenty of time get away from us."

There would be an almost full moon tonight, but, with the steep bluffs on both sides of us, it wouldn't be high enough to see for another couple of hours. Even then, the clouds might obscure it. But the cloud cover was spotty, and we could see a few stars just beginning to wink on in the sky here and there. The upstream breeze was dying down now, and the water surface was almost glassy smooth.

It was beautiful - just flat out beautiful.

After a moment or two of pleasant silence, Trinity asked in a hushed voice, "So, Reid, did you really grow up around here?"

"Mmm, not exactly. When I was a kid I spent summers up here with my grandfather. He lives on the Klamath, but not around here - more north... that's the upriver direction. He had a regular job in a hardware store, but used to pick up side money guiding fishermen on boat trips, and usually took me along with him."

"Must have been fun," she said.

"Well, I mostly set up camp, cleaned fish, tended fires, hauled garbage, and washed the gear when we were done. But it kept me out of trouble and I earned a few bucks, and... yeah, looking back on it, it was fun."

"Did you come down this far?"

"Sure, way below this, even. Then later, when the fishing wasn't so good, white river rafting companies signed gramps on as an advisor and trip planner. He knew every set of dangerous rapids, every backwater, deadwater, and beach. I helped out for a while, even as a guide a few times."

"So you got to know this area pretty well?"

"Yeah, but, you know, it changes every year. Sometimes only a tiny bit; other times a lot, if there were heavy rains. Then there are a lot of fires during the dry seasons. That burns off ground cover and leaves dead trees, ready to collapse. When the next winter's rains come, you get floods, rockslides, and roads and bridges wash out. This winter is an unusually wet one, and the water's very high right now."

She was sitting behind me, and since it was such a small boat, I had my back turned toward her as I talked. She reached up and brushed her hand on my hair and the nape of my neck, squeezing my shoulder.

"You sound like you love this place," she kind of cooed.

"I do," I said. "I really do."

"I can see why. It's so beautiful. Thanks for bringing me."

Chyll half-turned and caught my eye, giving me one of those _'Careful boss, she's drawing you in'_ looks. I smiled and nodded that I got the message.

Conversation lagged after that. We meandered down the river, each of us in our own thoughts.

I breathed in the air – breathed deep. It smelled familiar and good. I dipped my hand into the water and let it slide through my fingers.... had an urge to jump in... and, if this wasn't a business trip, would have.

But - this _was_ a business trip, and I needed to focus on what lay ahead.

My thoughts were rambling around like that when Chyll suddenly piped up. "Hey boss – you hear that?"

A roaring sound, fairly faint, but growing steadily louder and dead ahead.

"Ahh -That's the heavy white water. It's still a few hundred yards away, but it means we're getting close to the camp."

And sure enough, around the next bend there they were, off to our right-hand side.

We started paddling, trying to move quickly but also cautiously; we didn't need any more water sloshing into the boat. And we weren't all that steady – there was a real danger that we could tip over if we weren't careful.

So we cruised toward shore slowly and quietly. They had a cozy looking camp set up, with tables, lanterns, a campfire, a scatter of small tents. Voices of people singing... then clapping and laughter.

A fun sounding group; how would they feel about us crashing the party?

Chapter 66: Beach

Day 10: Wednesday Evening

We landed about twenty feet upstream of their rafts. Chyll, who was in front, nimbly hopped onto the beach as soon as the nose of our little boat brushed the shore.

I stepped over the side into shallow water - about ankle deep - and held the boat while Trinity swung out. She grabbed the backpacks, taking one herself and passing the other one to Chyll, while I tugged the boat the rest of the way onto the land. It made a grinding, scrapping sound going over the rocks until I tipped it up sideways and dumped out the several gallons of water that'd collected inside.

But the singing and laughing at the campfire masked our noise, so no one heard us – yet.

That lasted maybe another five seconds.

"JESUS – IS THAT A SNAKE?" yelped Trinity.

Her voice cracked through the air like a banshee's wail, and that was all it took to get everybody's attention. The singing and laughing stopped - everything got real quiet.

Then Chyll was grabbing Trinity's arm and hissing, "Whaddya mean snake? Where?"

"Easy," I said, trying to keep my voice low. "There aren't any dangerous snakes here. Only water snakes – cute, harmless things."

Was that the shadow of a smile on Trinity's lips? If she'd wanted to announce our arrival to everyone within a hundred yards that was the perfect was to do it....

Anyway, our surprise entrance was blown now – no chance of a quiet sneak-around to check out the scene, maybe to see who might be lurking out of sight nearby.

Someone was coming toward us carrying a flashlight. He stopped about 10 feet away and held the light at our feet, not our faces, which told me it was someone experienced. It's bad form to flash your light into people's eyes, blowing away their night vision.

Unless you mean to, of course.

"Hello," he said, a touch of curiosity in his voice. "You're from that helicopter that was buzzing us a while ago, right."

He didn't sound happy, and I couldn't blame him.

"Yes," I answered. "Sorry to barge in on your group – we don't want to disturb you, but we're looking for someone. If we find him, we'll be on our way."

"On your way?" He laughed. "You don't plan on trying these rapids tonight, do you?" His light played over the ground behind us, stopping on our little boat. "Especially in that."

"Yeah," I agreed, "that would be insane. No, I just mean that we'll be off to spend the night on our own, then figure things out in the morning. If we can't get a ride in one of your big rafts, we'll hike out."

"Hike out?" He sounded amused. "Hike out where? Up to the road? You might get there, but it'd be damn tough. And then what? You got a car waiting for you?"

"No, we'll go along the edge of the river and hook up with our copter. It's parked downstream a ways."

He was looking at us uncertainly, obviously a little suspicious of just what the Hell we were up to. I had to admit that it looked pretty incredible – a helicopter appearing out of nowhere and dropping off three strangers to invade there campfire party, especially in a remote place like this. There were various ways to play it, but the easiest way to get cooperation was to come across as good guys in need of assistance.

"We need to contact one of your passengers. It's a personal issue... an important one."

He was still looking skeptical. "You came all the way out here for a personal issue? It must be awfully damn important."

More footsteps crunching on the gravel, and someone else - a lady - came up and said, "What's going on, Chris?"

"Dunno, Ali," he said, "that's what I'm trying to figure out."

Before either he or I could say anything more, Trinity stepped up and held out her hand.

"Hello," she said, shaking first with Ali, then with Chris. "I'm Trinity Garret. We need to find Dr. Niles Stratton. He and I work together at the Waxman Institute. There's a critical situation, and he needs to get back there right away."

"The Waxman?" Ali nodded. "I've read about it... secretive research center, right?"

Trinity laughed, and the mood lightened. "Not secretive, just unusual. Anyway, Niles is one of the biggies, and there's a major shake-up in the Board of Directors. It's just business stuff, but Niles needs to be there. A lot of money is riding on it."

She sounded cool and convincing, and I had to smile in appreciation. A minute ago she'd been screeching like a little kid about a snake, and now she was calmly selling a story that she'd probably made up ten seconds ago.

And the raft guides seemed to be buying it.

"Niles?" Ali said. "I saw the Dr. in front of his name on the sign-up sheet, but thought he was an MD taking a holiday."

"No," Trinity shook her head slowly, "PhD. Department chairman, a big wheel. I think he's half-expecting to see us... he knew something might be happening, and left his, uh, travel plans with me."

We had them pretty much convinced, so to seal the deal I added, "A few years ago I worked as a guide on the Klamath, just like you're doing now. But I never saw high water like this. You might be stuck here for a few days, right?"

Chris stepped closer, stopping about three feet away, so that we could clearly see each other. He was quite tall – had me by several inches, and looked lean and fit. I kept what I hoped was an open, honest look on my face and continued smiling.

He was mentally weighing my story; if we'd done it right, all the proper boxes had been checked:

• We're harmless

• We've taken some risks in the night to get here

• I'm a Klamath River junkie, just like you are

• And – most important - we need your help so spend the night safely

After a few seconds his gaze moved to Chyll, then to Trinity, then back to me. Finally he nodded slowly and his face softened.

"So you know this area," he said, sounding friendlier. "You're right - this is usually a short stop here, and yeah, it'll be longer this year. You're welcome to come to our campfire and dry out. We've got plenty of food, but not much space –the sandy beach is under water and most of the rest of the area here is boulders – no place for tents. We had to pitch ours up against the hillside... there's no room for any more."

"A little warm food and a chance to change into dry clothes would be great," I said, nodding my thanks. "As far as a place to stay, that won't be a problem. We'll find our own space. But what about Dr. Stratton?"

Ali started to say something, when Trinity started forward. "Here he comes now."

"Trinity!" a voice called out, "and Reid – so you made it here okay!"

It was Niles, of course. He came up close, gave Trinity a quick hug, and shook hands with Chyll and me. He acted agitated, upset.

"Dr. Stratton," said Ali, "are you OK?"

"Yes," he answered, breathing heavily, "I am now. You see, I was kind of hiding out here."

Ali looked at me with an inquiring eyebrow raised, then back at Niles. "Hiding out? Because of a board meeting?"

Niles looked a little blank, but before he could say the wrong thing Trinity spoke up. "Ali, the, uh, incident that requires an emergency board meeting is rather tragic and confidential. And we think that the, uh... the other side had planted an agent here to stop Niles from getting to that meeting. Without his vote, there would be hard consequences... maybe even a takeover."

Chris laughed. "What? You mean, like spy stuff? 007?"

"No," Trinity laughed too. "Nothing exciting like that. Just boring corporate sabotage... not dangerous to life and limb, but a major economic threat"

Niles nodded, getting the idea now. "That's right," he said smoothly, "the threat."

I was thinking of how to gracefully ask Chris and Ali to leave us alone when Chyll said something like "oomph!" and stumbled, dropping her backpack near Chris, reaching out for support.

He caught her in his arms, she said thanks, he picked up her pack with his left hand, she said thanks again, then shivered and coughed.

"You're soaked," he said softly, right hand lightly squeezing her shoulder.

"And freezing," she agreed with another shiver. "You got anything hot to drink?"

"How about hot chocolate laced with Drambuie?" Chris smiled, "Or a mocha with Kahlua? I'll fix you one while you change into dry clothes."

"Yum!" she said, "lead the way!" She flashed a quick glance back at me and went off with a grin. Chris carried her pack in one hand and kept the other on her shoulders while he led the way with his flashlight.

After a pause Ali and I followed along, with Niles and Trinity a few steps behind us.

We went about halfway in silence, then Ali quietly said, "This story about an agent being planted on us would sound ridiculous, except for that other new guy showing up out of nowhere."

"Other guy?" I asked, suddenly very interested.

"Yeah," she nodded. "When we got to the beach this afternoon there was somebody already here. Said he climbed down the bluff and swam the river to look for gold. Pretty damn strange. Kind of like you and your helicopter."

I looked at her. "Where is this guy now? Back at the fire?"

"No," she shrugged. "Don't know where he is. He didn't show up for dinner. I don't think anybody saw him since your copter flew by... except maybe Jolene, and she doesn't look happy right now."

I glanced back at Niles. He and Trinity had stopped and seemed to be in a somewhat heated conversation.

"Jolene," I said to Ali, "could you point her out to me? I like to ask her a few things."

"Sure," she answered slowly. "But get dry and grab some food first. Then while you're getting your gear for tonight I'll bring Jolene over. She's pretty young and kinda naïve. You won't mind if me and Chris stay with her while you talk, right?"

"No problem," I smiled.
Chapter 67: Was She?

Day 10: Wednesday Evening

Niles and Trinity lagged behind Ali and Reid on the way to the campfire. It was easy enough for Niles to feign difficulty walking over the rocky ground, stumbling once or twice and complaining about sore ankles.

Trinity hung back with him, using her flashlight to help them see.

"Congratulations," Niles whispered. "I don't know how you did it, but you managed to get Reid to come up here. You haven't lost your touch."

"Actually," Trinity kind of hissed, "I've just about lost it with you. Right now I'm stifling an urge to slug you... and I might lose control any second."

"Slug me? Whyever would you do that?"

She glared at him. "What happened to Marley while I was down in the jungle? He was always a little wild, in kind or a fun way... but yesterday was no fun – he's crazy violent now. What'd you do to him?"

"Me? – Nothing. But Phil and I spent years collecting drugs that bend your mind and body. They're stored in our freezers... some in Kelsey's too. Marley broke into the labs, took what he wanted, and started experimenting on himself. You're right though - it's gotten bad. The only way I can control him is with promises of money."

"Yeah, well I don't want him near me again," Trinity said. "Ever."

"Don't worry," Niles said grimly. "I'll take care of him – in due time. But first we need him to remove another thorn in our side."

"By which you mean kill Reid, right?"

"Not my choice," Niles said. "For Christ's sake, we have to do what we're told to do, otherwise we'll end up like... like...." His voice trailed off.

Trinity shook her head. "You mean like Phil and Julian, right? Marley told me about that, about how the order came down from on high to eliminate them, and you were okay with it."

"No!" Niles said too loudly, then looked around and lowered his voice. "I didn't know anything about either of them until after it was already over. Trinity, they were my friends, I would never have willingly agreed to –"

"Oh, cut the crap, Niles," Trinity said. "I don't believe you. But what you did or didn't do before doesn't matter now. What does matter is what you do next."

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Look, I've been thinking. There must be some other way to handle this. Killing Reid is a bad step. I don't like it."

"Keep your damn voice down!" he hissed again. "And don't start questioning these decisions. If you can't stand to see your precious Reid get deep-sixed, then close your eyes and keep the Hell out of the way. But don't interfere."

Trinity turned away and started walking again. They were close enough to the fire now that Niles could make it over there without needing the flashlight.

Or, if he fell down and broke his neck, so what?

She started to shiver, but it had nothing to do with being wet and cold. Was she really ready to stand by and let Marley kill Reid and Chyll?

Was she?

She had to make a decision, one way or the other, and stand by it... but how?

Chapter 68: Jolene

Day 10: Wednesday Late Evening

When I reached the campfire, Chyll was sitting on a tree stump roasting a marshmallow and chatting with a couple of other young people. They had a stack of Hershey's bars and an open box of Graham Crackers on a large rock next to them. She was having a good time – a smile on her face, and a small streak of chocolate on her lower lip.

"Hey boss," she called out, "want me to fix you a S'more?."

"Sure;" I said, then, when I got right next to her, added in a low voice, "Trinity and Niles stayed back a bit. Looks like they want to have a private chat, and I'm going to let'em. Try to keep an eye on them while I go see the guides."

She nodded and looked past my shoulder to where Trinity and Niles were whispering and gesturing. I walked over to where Chris and Ali were cleaning up the dinner table.

"Ya hungry?" Ali asked. "We've got leftovers \- just pastrami and green beans with cornbread, but it's hot and good."

I nodded, "Actually, yes, thanks - that'd be great."

She handed me a paper bowl and I scooped up some food from each of the pans.

While buttering the cornbread, I smiled and said, "So Chris, we'll stay somewhere around here tonight, but we'd like an early start tomorrow morning. Is anything left of the old bluff trail leading down to Orleans?"

He shook his head. "You can pretty much forget that. With all the mudslides these last few winters, there's hardly anything left. Better to just hike along the edge of the river. Trouble is – most of the flat, sandy areas are under water now, so you'll be scrambling over rocks. It'll probably take an hour or more to go a mile, and you'll be lucky if no one bangs a shin or twists an ankle."

"What about the rafts?" I asked between bites. The beans were pretty bland, but the pastrami was tasty and cornbread is always good.

Ali shook her head. "We're maxed out. Our boats are full, and anyway we plan on staying here for another couple of days. There's another boat in the storage shed, but we'd need to inflate it."

"That's right," Chris added, "we could do that in the morning. There's a propane generator in the shed and it hooks up to an air compressor. But you'd still be facing these rapids, and that's no stroll in the park. There are two bad sections, each one about a quarter-mile long. This first one right here is especially tricky – a lot of swirls and dips. You'll get spun around like a top and take on water. There's a Hell of a big rock in the middle and the currents funnel you right into it. If you're not skilled with the paddles you'll hit it dead on, and you could flip over. But you said you been here before, right?"

"Yeah," I said, "not with the water this high, though. But that sounds like the best plan. We need to ask another favor though: Do you have any sleeping bags and blankets you could loan us for the night?"

Ali nodded slowly, "Plenty of both in the shed. But no tents and no cots. You'll have to sleep on the ground, and that pretty much means on rocks."

I finished the food, tossed the empty paper bowl into the trash, then said, "Don't think we'll need any tents... we'll stay at the cabins."

"Uh, you know," Chris said, a little hesitantly, "those cabins are historical sites. You can't mess them up."

"Don't worry, we'll be careful, I just want someplace safe and out of any rain. We'll be away in the morning, as soon as it's light enough to get moving."

"Somewhere safe?" Ali asked. "Oh, you mean from that other guy, the weirdo hunk?"

"Speaking of him," I nodded toward Chris, "didn't you say that he was already here when you arrived?"

"Yeah," Chris said, "lounging on a camp chair next to the equipment shed. He'd broken the lock and helped himself to a few things."

Well, that sounded like Marley, alright. "About what time was that?".

"Oh, about three-thirty... maybe four," Chris said. "I wasn't paying real close attention."

Okay then: he climbed down the bluff, swam across the river, hiked down and was already here waiting for them. And had time to break into their shed? He probably reached the beach at least a half-hour before the rafters... and it would have taken him an hour and a half to get here from the road... so that meant he parked his truck up there by two or two-thirty, and that meant leaving the Bay Area by seven AM or earlier.

How did that fit with what Trinity had told me this morning?

She'd sent the boob pic around nine thirty, and gave me the idea that Marley'd left just before that.

But then she'd taken a shower before calling me - I remembered the rosy scent of the soap... so he must have left earlier.

The times didn't quite add up, but they almost did. It was close enough, with the uncertainties in Chris' time estimate and the length of Trinity's shower, and in my guess at how long it would take to go from the road to the campsite, that I could still believe her story.

But just barely.

Chris was still talking, and I'd missed what he just said. I asked him to say it again.

"I said that I gave him a little hard time at first, but couldn't really be mad. It must have been a Hell of an effort, and the guy was obviously cold and hungry."

"Yeah," I nodded, "He must have been in a rush. Can you tell me who he talked to when he was here? And do you have any idea where is he now?"

Chris shook his head. "The only one I remember him saying much to is Jolene."

"Not Niles?" I asked.

Ali and Chris looked at each other, then Ali said, "Um, yeah, they were over by the latrines at the same time, but that doesn't mean anything... does it?"

"I didn't really notice that," Chris shrugged. "As to where he is now... well he didn't show up for dinner, but that was no surprise - he didn't plan on staying here with us. He's probably off somewhere looking for a place to bed down by himself."

"Okay," I said to Ali, "what about Jolene then? Do you think you could get her to come over here for a few minutes?"

"Sure." Ali set down the stack of spoons she was drying and eased off toward the campfire.

When she'd gone, Chris's turned toward me, a serious look on his face. "Why all this interest in Jack? Before you said he wasn't dangerous. Is there something more you should be telling us?"

"Jack? Is that what he called himself?"

Chris nodded, "Yeah."

"Well, that's not his real name, but it's as good as any, for now. Look, Chris, I don't want to get you worried, but you should be aware and cautious. I don't think he's a danger to any of you, but he can be a violent person. That's why I don't want us to stay near your camp. If there's any trouble, I want it to be between him and me only."

"What about Jolene?" He asked. "Is she in any trouble?"

"No, not from us, and probably not from him. I just want find out from her what his state of mind was and if he told her where he might be spending the night."

A minute later Ali was back with a young lady and introduced her as Jolene. She was short, tanned, with freckles and a nice smile.

We shook hands and I smiled back. "Hi Jolene, I'm Reid. I'm hoping you can tell me about Jack."

Her smile faded. She looked nervous, and glanced at Ali and Chris.

"It's cool," Chris said. "Reid is just trying to help."

Ali added, "We already told him what we know, but we thought that you might know a little more."

Jolene looked back at me, nodded, and said "Sure," in a soft voice.

"Good, thanks. Do you mind telling us what he was like, what he talked about, how he acted?"

"At first I thought he was really great," she said, slowly at first, then faster. "I mean, climbing down that hillside and swimming the river, how brave is that? And he seemed so smart."

"Okay," I nodded, "what about later, when you went down to the river with him?"

"Well," she blushed a little. "He looked good, you know, kinda handsome and really toned...and so sure of himself, like he knew how to do everything." She bit her lip and scuffed the sand with her foot. "So yeah - I thought it would be fun learning to pan for gold, and asked him to show me."

"How'd it go?"

"Not good," she said, shaking her head. "Really bad, actually. We got to the river and he scooped a bunch of dirt and gravel into the gold pan, and then knelt down by the water. But he didn't seem to know any more than I did. He dropped the pan and everything washed away. Then he did it again and I laughed and he got a mad and told me to try it myself. So I filled the pan with dirt, but when I squatted down by the water he slid his hand inside the back of my swimsuit. I dropped the pan and jumped up. He just laughed, and I felt like I'd made a fool of myself."

This was sounding a lot like Marley.

"And then you came back to the camp?"

She kicked at the sand some more, then said, "No, not right away. I was mad, but I also felt like it was maybe my fault... like I'd been, you know, leading him on. I told him to watch where he put his hands and he said what's the problem, that I'd come down to the beach to get laid, hadn't I? And that made me really pissed. I mean, who knows –it might have come to that, if he'd been nice. But why did he have to be such an arrogant asshole?"

Yep – Marley alright.

"And then that helicopter showed up," she went on. "That was you, right?"

"Yes," I nodded, "What'd he do then?"

"Grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down and told me to keep still. We knelt there and watched but we couldn't see much except for some flashes of light, and then he started laughing. But it wasn't a fun laugh; it sounded, you know, kind of nasty."

"Flashes of light?" I asked, "what do you mean."

"Just flashes of light coming from inside of your copter, like someone was using a flashlight or a camera."

I didn't know what that meant; best to think it over later.

"And after we flew away, what happened?"

"He got up and stuffed his gear into his backpack. Then he slapped me on the butt and said, "Maybe next time," and walked away. Didn't say goodbye or anything... just left. Made me feel really cheap, you know. That's when I came back to the camp."

"When he walked off, which way did he go?"

"He started out following the creek bed up the hill, but I didn't exactly pay attention. By then I was just glad to get away from him."

I waited a few seconds, but she didn't have any more to add, so I smiled and said, "Thanks, Jolene, that's really good info. Don't feel bad about what happened - it's nothing you did. I know who Jack is, and he's not a good person. He's a jerk to everybody. And you were lucky – he can also be dangerous. Maybe you got a good life lesson there."

"Yeah?" she brightened up a bit. "Well, that makes me feel a little better. So you're looking for him?"

"Not really," I answered, "that's not the main reason I'm here. But we might run into each other."

She stepped forward and grabbed my sleeve. "Well if you do, could you give him a good whack for me?"

I had to laugh; so did Chris. "Sure Jolene, I'll give him a good one."

She smiled again, happier now to have told her story to a sympathetic ear, and bounced back to the campfire to join the rest of the group.

I turned to Ali and Chris. "She's great. And thanks for all your help, too. Probably we should get the sleeping bags and blankets and head out to the cabins."

The sky was dark now, with a few stars twinkling between breaks in the clouds. It was calm here at ground level, but there must have been a wind up high because the stars would disappear, then, after a few seconds, jump out again as the clouds scudded across the sky.

The air quality was excellent, a very pleasant break from the Bay Area. As long as you didn't wreck your night vision by looking too long at the campfire or lanterns, the stars were bright points of light and I could even pick out a few constellations.

Beautiful... genuinely beautiful. But I'd have plenty of time to enjoy it later; I didn't plan on getting much – or any – sleep tonight, now that I was certain that Marley was here. How much of a woodsman was he? Not much, I hoped, but didn't really know. If he was a babe in the woods, so to speak, he'd probably find a secluded spot and stay there all night; or, if he tried to move around, would make so much noise that I'd hear him.

On the other hand, if he was an old hand at roughing it, he might be able to slip up silently anytime and anywhere he wanted.

Chapter 69: Cabin

Day 10: Wednesday Late Evening

"Okay," Chris said, "I'll haul some gear out of storage. If you get your crew over here, we can get'em fixed up."

"Great, thanks," I nodded, and walked to the campfire with Ali.

Chyll was laughing and had melted marshmallow on her fingers and chin. Niles was watching her and smiling, but looked a little strained. Trinity was sitting off by herself, sipping red wine from a paper cup. She was staring into the fire with one of those moody, lost-in-thought looks.

I picked up a napkin, wet it from the water bottle, and handed it to Chyll.

"Time for us to split."

She wiped her chin and hands, tossed the napkin into the fire, and, still smiling, waved goodnight to everyone. Trinity tossed down the last of her wine and chucked the cup into the fire. By the time we got back to the shed, Chris had three sleeping bags and six blankets stacked just inside the door. He pointed to a shelf of flashlights and battery lanterns. "Need lights?"

"No," I shook my head, "we have our own. Just the bags and blankets."

"Any food? Midnight snacks?"

"We packed food, too. Not much, but enough to get by for tonight."

"What about chocolate bars," Chyll said. "Could we get a couple?"

"Sure," Chris nodded, "check in that box on the second shelf. How about water or soft drinks or packets of coffee? We've got plenty."

"Uhh... sure," I said. "A couple cans of Coke would be great, thanks."

We gathered up our stuff, but before we started off, Chris said to me in a low voice, "Look, you sound like you know what you're doing, but it can be rough out here. If we're lucky, it won't rain tonight, but it can still get pretty freakin' cold, and those old cabins don't have much insulation. Plus I know you're concerned about Jack... or whatever his real name is. If you change your mind in the middle of the night and want to come back here, you can all bunk down in the shed. Just let me know – I'll be in the center tent. I'm a light sleeper, so don't worry about waking me up."

"Okay," I answered, shaking his hand. "Thanks for the offer. I hope we have a quiet night, but if you hear any loud racket up there, it'd be a big help if you could come check it out."

He nodded, then said, "How about having Chyll and the other lady stay here with us? I won't let anything happen to them."

"I believe you," I said, and meant it. Chris looked big and competent. On the other hand, tangling with Marley would be tough for anybody, especially if he was hopped up on something. And I didn't want to divide us up. I wasn't sure if Chyll was in danger, but I wanted her close by just in case.

"Thanks, but I need to keep us together."

He nodded again, "I understand."

So off we went into the night, hiking along the wide dirt path that sloped up the hillside. When we moved into the trees it got darker but also warmer, as the trees blocked both the open sky and most of the wind.

It also got spookier. Niles had already heard about the cabins from Ali, so I asked him to lead the way. Trinity followed a few steps behind him, then Chyll. I came last. That way, I could keep everyone in sight and also use the added light from their flashlights to see further into the surrounding woods.

Even at our slow pace we took less than five minutes to reach the little meadow. It was a patch of level ground nearly a hundred yards long by fifty wide, and was high enough above the river to be safe from winter floods, but close enough for easy access. There was a small creek nearby providing cold, fresh water, which is probably what had attracted the miners to build here way back when.

Two cabins, each maybe 15 feet on a side, were in the center of the clearing. The full moon was coming over the bluff now; in the pale glow of light we could see the remains of three other buildings, not much more than scattered boards and rubble. Another, larger, structure off to the right looked firm and solid, except for a caved-in side wall. It may have been a barn or workshop; we could see barrels along the far wall and a stack of decaying sacks – burlap or heavy canvas – in one of the corners.

"This is sooo eerie," whispered Chyll, shining her flashlight at every strange, lumpy shape.

"Really," Trinity whispered back. "I'm totally spooked out."

The roof of the nearer cabin had partially collapsed, but the farther one was intact. The door in the front was latched closed and each of the other three walls had a window that was boarded over.

The latch sprung open easily, and we went in: me first, then the ladies, then Niles.

The inside was bare and fairly clean, with a soft and dry dirt floor, a rickety old table, and an empty wooden footlocker. After smoothing the floor as best we could, each person laid out two thick blankets on the ground for padding and insulation, then their sleeping bag, and lastly another blanket on the top for warmth.

Chyll claimed the exact center of the room –"As far as possible from any weird crawlies on the walls." Then she lay down and seemed to go to sleep right away.

Trinity set up her stuff near the back wall, by one of the shuttered windows. She said she'd like to sit up for a while – "Just want to meditate in the dark for a few minutes," - and asked Niles if she could use his backpack to lean against.

Niles laid his blankets and sleeping bag near one of the side walls and sat down on it, unlacing his boots. I had a whole list of questions for him, and needed a whole list of answers from him, but this didn't seem like the best time or place to get into them. Well, it could wait till morning. Right now I just wanted them safely tucked down inside the cabin, while I kept a surreptitious watch from the outside.

So I reminded them that we'd be up and away early in the morning. "The sooner you get the lights out and get to sleep, the better. I'm going out for a bit - don't wait up for me."

I slipped out the door quietly, with minimal use of my light, and looked for somewhere dry and comfortable.

It would be a long night; I hoped it would be a quiet one, too.

Chapter 70: Dark Thoughts

Day 10: Wednesday Night

"Well," Niles thought to himself, just starting to drowse off, "coming up here was a big risk. A helluva lot of planning and rushing around, but it's all going to work out."

Yes, everything was fitting together nicely. In the morning, he would create some diversion and Marley would jump Reid. Only this time, Niles would come to the rescue... sort of. A change of plans that Marley wasn't aware of.

A well placed bullet would get rid of Marley, but – unfortunately - too late to save Reid.

Chyll would be a witness to it all, and would swear that Niles had done all he could, but had been unable to prevent Reid's death, and he'd been forced to shoot Marley to save the others.

Yes, he would be a hero.

When he got back to the Waxman he would convince Victor that Marley was the entire problem, and with him gone... well, there was no need to continue the investigation.

Well, it had to be done, didn't it? As soon as the genetically modified fruit were sent to the field lab, that surly son-of-a-bitch had outlived his usefulness and was just one more potential leak that needed plugging. Still, it was a messy business that gave him a sour stomach.

" _Can I actually kill someone? Actually pull the trigger?"_ He tried not to think about it too much... if he did, he would freeze up. _"Damn it all to Hell! But there's no choice, right?"_

It was blessedly peaceful inside the dark cabin – no noise of traffic or neighbors or ticking clocks... not even crickets, this time of year; just the hypnotic, constant whush of the river. So relaxing... so easy to shove nervous thoughts aside and fade away....

Across the cabin floor, Trinity wriggled against the pack she'd borrowed from Niles and wondered why it was so damn uncomfortable - "What's poking me in the back?"

But most of all she wondered where Reid had gone.

He'd slipped out the door right after they got settled and said "Don't wait for me." Why not? What was he up to? Call of nature? Maybe. Or could he be scouting around? Marley was out there somewhere.... Niles plan was for Marley to wait till the morning, but that lamebrain might try something tonight.

Talking to Reid today... flying in the copter... floating down the river... watching Chyll laughing and playing at the campfire... Trinity realized that she liked them, could be friends with them. And she didn't have many friends.

Was she really going to sacrifice them to save creeps like Marley and Niles?

God, how she wanted another cup of wine - or maybe the whole bottle.

"Damn it!" she hissed, twisting uncomfortably, "what the Hell is poking me?"

She leaned forward and pulled the backpack around to her left side, undid the snaps, tugged off the top cover, and shoved her hand inside. It took only a few seconds to find the problem: something metallic and hard, wrapped in a thin cloth towel. She pulled it out slowly, unfolded the towel, and gasped.

A pistol?

It was impossible to see in the deep darkness, but Christ yes, it sure felt like a pistol....

She carefully slid it a few inches into her sleeping bag, on the side away from Chyll and Niles, and then flicked on her flashlight.

Oh yes, a pistol alright: Sturdy and impressive – very impressive. There was an icon of a horse on the handle, and lettering along the barrel. She could read "Python 357", and below that smaller lettering that she couldn't make out.

She lifted it up. It was surprisingly heavy, but well balanced, and the grip felt comfortable. The barrel was a little longer than the width of her hand. Maybe four inches? Trying to be quiet, she sprung open the cylinder and checked – yes, it was loaded.

Fully loaded.

She slowly closed the cylinder, trying to be absolutely silent, then lifted the pistol, turned it this way and that, and felt... powerful. And then she pointed it at Niles. One tug on the trigger....

But no, that was impossible. She didn't want to shoot him, just to stop him from shooting anyone else... especially Reid. The best way was to keep the pistol herself - so after a moment's pause she folded it back in the towel and slid the little bundle down toward the bottom of her sleeping bag.

She felt more in control of the situation now, and, because of that, strangely at peace. She'd made that decision... the one about whose side to be on. Her earlier anxieties faded, replaced by a sleepy feeling of relief.

"Tomorrow," she whispered softly, "will be a better day."

Chapter 71: Nightwatch

Day 10: Wednesday Night

The inside of the workshop would have been as dark as a cave if it weren't for the collapsed wall and holes in the sod roof. Even at that, the moonlight leaking in gave only vague shape to the shadowy lumps of neglected equipment.

I'd brought three blankets from the cabin; one to sit on, one to lean my back against, and one for a cover. It was snug and cozy; I'd set up my little spot between an old forge and a large anvil. The forge still had a scatter of charcoal inside and there were rusty tools hanging on the wall nearby. The camouflage was good: to anyone peeking in, I would just be one more shadowy lump.

As to who might be peeking in, well, there was only one person to be concerned about. He was out there somewhere - that was certain; what was uncertain was whether he was bedded down for the night or creeping around. The thought had occurred to me that he also might have thought of staying here in this workshop, and I'd scouted it silently and very carefully before settling in.

My spot was dry and I was reasonably comfortable except for my leg, which was throbbing after the exertion today. That was the upside; the downside was that I could only see about a third of the meadow. But I had a good view of the two cabins, and that was my primary focus. If anything was going to happen, it would happen there.

Now that I was more or less relaxed, I had time to sit and think. Plenty of time, probably... it was barely after eleven o'clock, so another seven hours until the beginnings of daylight. Chris had given me three Cokes and a bag of beef jerky from the rafting shed; the caffeine and salt should keep me perked up.

I quietly popped open the first can and took a sip.

Okay, point one: What about those flashes of light that Jolene saw coming from the inside of our copter? They must have been a signal of some sort, and who could have sent them but Trinity?

And who would she have been signaling? If Niles, then why wouldn't she tell us?

But if it was Marley, then she must have known that he was already up here. In that case, then instead of this being a rescue mission for Niles, it looked like a setup... a very dangerous setup. And instead of being the rescuer, I would be the quarry.

But if this was a setup, it had been convincingly done - the bite marks and bruises on Trinity's breast were real. I wanted to trust her, but...

It was a sticky situation, but not one I entirely regretted. I'd wanted to confront Marley and also to find out what was really going on with the Waxman mystery project; it looked now like I might get a chance at both.

While my mind was wrestling with this, my attention was suddenly caught by a change in the moonlight along the left side of the cabin door. The door appeared to swing in, not more than a few inches, but enough cause a shift in the lighting.

Someone was coming out, and doing it carefully and quietly.

Whoever it was tiptoed away one step at a time, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. But their next step took them full into the moonlight, about fifteen feet from the cabin and maybe fifty feet away from where I sat.

Chyll – it had to be. She stood with arms outstretched and began slowly turning in circles.

I didn't want to broadcast my location, but she was clearly wondering where I was. So I twisted the end of my flashlight lens down to where it would give only a pencil thin beam, and when she next turned toward me, gave her a single, brief pulse of light.

She immediately stopped turning and slid back into the shadows. She blended in, disappeared, and I lost track of her.

Five minutes passed with no further sign.

Then a soft voice, maybe ten feet behind me, whispered "Boss, I'm here."

I jerked slightly, but only very slightly, I hoped. I was glad that she was close by, but not pleased about her getting so near without me noticing. I told myself that Marley couldn't have done it, that only a sylph-like spirit - like Chyll - could have....

Without looking back, I nodded, and she silently slipped next to me.

"Got an extra blanket?" She whispered, her teeth weren't exactly chattering, but the air was pretty cold by now.

I slid over and she eased onto the blanket I'd been sitting on. Then she tugged the top blanket over too, wrapping up inside it.

"Ahhh, good."

That had taken what – maybe ten seconds? – And she now had two-thirds of my blankets. I still had the one I had been leaning against, and didn't plan on giving that up, too.

"Hey, what's this?" She said, still keeping her voice to a barely audible whisper.

"My Coke," I answered, equally quiet.

"Cool, thanks," she said, taking a big swig.

The carbonation hit her and she burped softly. "Sorry!" she whispered, covering her mouth.

"No problem – but what are you doing out here?"

"Couldn't sleep. Something's screwy about this whole deal."

"Tell me," I said.

"Well, a few minutes after you left the cabin, Niles got out of his sleeping bag and went over to Trinity. He probably thought I was asleep. Anyway they started arguing, but were whispering so I couldn't make out most of the words. Trinity seemed really pissed at him, and I heard both your name and my name mentioned. Their voices got louder and she said something about 'Go to Hell, I'm not gonna help,' and he said 'Yeah, you will, you just don't know it yet.' Then he went and crawled back into his sleeping bag. I didn't want to be anywhere near them, so I counted to a thousand and then came out here."

I started to reach for the Coke, but she seemed to be enjoying it, so I shrugged and popped open the second can.

"We got pulled into a sticky situation here, Chyll."

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, boss - that this whole story about Marley hunting Niles is just a bunch of BS. That what they really want is to get us up here alone, with no one else around, and no way to call in any help."

A quick mind, right? She'd picked up on it right away. Except...

"Not us, Chyll – just me. They weren't counting on you being here. And now I wish you'd stayed behind."

"What're you talking about, boss? We're partners, right?"

"Partners in an investigation - yes. Partners in a firefight – no. At daylight, I want you to get down to the rafting camp and stick close to Chris and Ali."

I could have expected tears, sniffles, protests... but that wouldn't have been Chyll. Instead she just whispered, "Whatever you say, boss."

Which, of course, meant just the opposite. But this wasn't the time or place to get into it, so I let it drop.

She sipped her Coke in silence for a minute, and then said, "So you think he's around here somewhere, maybe close by?"

"Yeah, probably."

"And maybe he saw me come outta the cabin?"

"Could be."

"And so when I was out there peeing and sneaking around to find you, I might've stumbled onto him?"

"Yes – you could've. I was worried about that, and primed to jump out there if I heard anything. But I don't think he's doing much more than hunkering down somewhere, trying to stay warm. He's a strong, dangerous sonofabitch, but doesn't know his way around here in the dark."

"But what if he's got some of those night-vision goggles?"

"Yeah," I whispered, "unlikely, but it could be. Nothing's for certain, Chyll; that's why I'm sitting out here keeping watch."

She shifted closer to me and leaned against my left shoulder. "Did you bring a gun, boss?"

"Yes, but it's in the copter. Eddie asked me to leave it with him."

"So what's our plan then?"

"Stay here, keep quiet, and keep a watch out for him. If he tries for the cabin, I'll see him going in, just like I saw you coming out."

"You want that I should keep watch too?"

"No, get some sleep. One of us needs to be fresh in the morning."

"Okay."

Another couple of minutes rolled by in silence while we sat, looking and listening, then Chyll whispered, "It's so spooky. When I was trying to sneak in here, I felt like ten ghosts were watching me. What'd this place used to be?"

"My grandfather told me that there was a small village here once, kind of a religious center, and there were a lot of trails leading in here from around the hills. It was abandoned long ago, but the trails were still used. During the 1850's, when gold miners needed to pack their equipment up and down the river, they stumbled on the trails, and that made this a perfect place to set up a stopover and resupply point."

"Somebody had the bright idea to build a store, a tool shop, a tavern... probably a brothel too. Miners could buy equipment, get a meal, a drink of whiskey, play some cards, maybe get a bunk for the night. Whoever ran this place made a lot more money than any of the miners ever did."

"Uh-huh," she whispered. "I bet lot of gold dust and blood've been spilled here. And a few ghosts wander around too, right?"

"Could be. And not just white men's ghosts. A lot of the mining works were built by Chinese who lived and died around here. And don't forget the thousands of years of native spirits. Yeah, this place is probably packed with ghosts."

"Good," she whispered with a nod and a smile. "I'm cool with that. I always feel that ghosts are trying to help us, not harm us."

And that was that. Not another word. In thirty seconds she was asleep.

I leaned my head back against the wall and stretched out my legs, trying to keep loose, and checked the time: just after midnight.

My thoughts kind of rambled around after that. I tried to review what we'd learned from Hillen, what we'd seen in the liquid nitrogen, and the bits about the dead critters... but my thoughts kept coming back to Kelsey.

The picnic... the circus...the run in with Marley at her house... and what happened later, in my shower....

And saying good-bye at the airport; was that really just two days ago?

In my heart I knew that there was no way she could be involved in any of this.

Knew it. Absolutely.

Now, if my heart could just convince my head.

"Kelsey," I whispered softly, "I wonder what you're doing right now."

Chapter 72: Alive

Day 10: Wednesday

Kelsey, Laila, and Stevie had been on the river for about three hours when they reached the long narrow channel leading to the lagoon. The pilot swung into the channel easily, as if he'd done it hundreds of times before – which he had.

Their boat was really just a glorified canoe, thirty feet long with one small outboard motor, and the trip from Salvata had seemed endless to Stevie. Poking his hand in the water and playing with the bow wave as they churned along was about the only fun thing to do. As they slowed, the bow wave lessened and he stood on his tiptoes, stretching to reach the water line.

Laila sat nearby, one eye on the scenery, the other on Stevie. "Don't lean out so far! Do you want to fall in and get eaten by the piranha?"

"Uncle Niles said that piranha only bite you if there's blood in the water," he answered in a sing-song voice.

"Uncle Niles doesn't know everything," Laila said.

Stevie sat back. "How much longer?"

"Soon," she said. "You see those tall trees with the branches shaking?"

"You mean those big ones? Way over there?"

"Yes. Do you know why the branches are shaking, Stevie?"

"No... is it an earthquake?"

"No, no - we don't have earthquakes here. They're shaking because monkeys are jumping in the branches. That's how they go from one tree to the other."

"Monkeys? Really?" He stood up to see better.

Laila put a hand on his shoulder "Get down! Do you want to fall in?"

"No, I want to look at the monkeys."

Kelsey was sitting a few feet away, holding one of Marley Granger's notebooks.

With just the one engine, progress was slow even though they'd been moving downstream, and it gave her a chance to read. Marley's writing was confusing at best, full of short, staccato half-sentences, jargon, and abbreviations, and had nothing to do with a scheme for producing new recreational drugs. The story it told was much more ominous, with references to critical doses, synergistic lethality, and controlled spread of disease.

She wanted to call Reid again to learn what he'd found in Julian's freezer tanks, to let him know about the dark details in the notebooks, and... well, because she missed him. A lot.

But that would have to wait.

While they were on the wide river, with the shorelines hundreds of yards away; there hadn't been much to see besides the long stretch of water on either side. But now that they were in the narrow channel, bright green foliage was everywhere, with splashes of red, yellow, and even blue flowers. Fruit hung over their heads near enough to touch. Birds flitted through the bushes and a long line of leaf-cutter ants marched along the shore, carrying their awkward burdens.

The jungle throbbed with life, and after the wintry Bay Area temperatures, the sultry heat down here was wonderful.

She closed the book and leaned forward, stroking Stevie's back. "We're getting close," she told him. "Maybe tomorrow I'll show you where I lived when I was your age."

"Is that the Mission where you and Uncle Harolde and Auntie Laila lived?"

"Yes, that's it. I haven't been back there since before you were born."

He was quiet for a moment, then said "Why can't we go today?"

"It will be too late today. We need to unpack and move into our cabin and have some food. We'll be too tired to go today."

"I'm not tired," he said, leaning over and poking his hand back in the water.

"Well I am," said Laila, "and I told you to keep your hand out of the water!"

He sat back and pouted. "Mommy, tell me about the monkeys in the trees."

And so she told him how she used to climb the trees to chase the monkeys, but could never catch them – they were too high and too swift. And she told him how his grandfather Grant had two pet monkeys that used to sit in her lap while she fed them fruit.

"Where's Grandpa Grant now?" Stevie asked. "Is he waiting for us?"

Kelsey pulled him close and hugged him. "I don't know where he is now, honey. I haven't seen him in a long time."

"Is he with daddy?" he asked.

Kelsey hesitated, then said, "I don't know.... Maybe they're together."

"Oh," said Stevie. "Do you miss him, mommy?"

"Yes." Her voice had a little catch in it; she felt her eyes growing moist. "I miss Grandpa Grant very much."

"What about daddy? Do you miss him very much, too?"

Kelsey looked at Laila, who raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

"Of course I do, honey."

Stevie was quiet for the next few seconds, then said, in that casual honest way that children have, "I don't miss daddy. He was mean. I wish Uncle Reid was here - he's nice."

She hugged him again and smiled. "I wish he was here, too."

A mass of foliage ahead drooped down almost to the water level, and they had to duck down low to pass through it; once on the other side, though, the channel opened up into a wide lagoon. The black water was just over a quarter-mile wide and just under a half-mile long. On the right hand side, about half of the way to the other end, was a large flat clearing. Several buildings were scattered around it, one of them two stories high.

The Layard Clinic: it looked freshly whitewashed, with well-groomed grounds, and was larger than Kelsey remembered. That must be a new building on the left... and what was that circular open area behind it? Was that a landing pad for a helicopter?

The boat's mate in the middle seat stood and held up an air-horn. Two short blasts, spaced five seconds apart, announced their arrival. Kelsey remembered that from when she was a kid. The two blast signal meant incoming boat, no emergency. Three quick blasts, repeated several times with a five second space in-between, meant patients on board needing immediate assistance.

In either case, someone would come down to the dock to meet them. She could see two people moving there now. One was a young man she didn't recognize; the other, taller and white-haired, must be Wayne Gresham. Noticeably older and a little thinner, but still a striking figure.

The pilot slowed their speed to a crawl, then cut off the engine completely and they drifted in close to the dock. The mate hopped out and tied ropes, one from the bow and one from the stern, onto wooden posts. With the boat secured, the pilot handed the luggage to the younger man, who he called 'Tanza', while Wayne helped the passengers climb out.

"My Lord!" he said to Kelsey. "It's been nearly six years and you don't look a day older. How do you and Grant do it?"

She hugged him and said, "Wayne, you're such a flatterer - your eyesight must be getting dim!"

"No," he said. "These old eyes are just fine. And Laila – it so good to see you."

Stevie broke in with a whoop. "Mom! Look!" She hadn't noticed before, but there was little monkey, no bigger than a cat, standing next to Wayne.

"His name is Muru." Tanza said. "He's a young squirrel monkey, perfectly tame. He and his sister Lili live in the compound. Want to shake hands?"

Stevie put out one hand cautiously. Muru reached up, gently grabbed his index finger, and shook. Stevie looked back at Kelsey bright-eyed with excitement.

A minute later they were making their way up the wooden plank walkway to the clearing. Tanza pushed the cart filled with luggage and Muru pranced along holding Stevie's hand, while Laila, Kelsey, and Wayne chatted.

He told them a little about what had changed and what had stayed the same since their last visit, who was still around that they might remember, who had moved on, who had married, and who had died.

After a bit, they reached the bungalows that lined the right side of the compound. "We added two more," he said, pointing to the far end. "That gives us a total of eight. Five of them are occupied now. You'll have number two, this one here. It should be quiet – no one's on either side of you."

As they climbed the steps, Wayne pointed to bungalow number three. "That one's being remodeled. We had quite a storm recently, and a branch from that big tree crashed onto the roof in the back. Didn't do a lot of damage, but we need to fix a few things."

He nodded to the bungalow on the other side of them, number one. "This was Phil Poley's. Poor bugger... he won't be needing it anymore."

"Wayne," Kelsey said, "what happened to Phil? How did he die?"

"Didn't Victor Akino tell you?"

"No, no details. Just that he'd died here last week."

"Umm..." he glanced at Stevie and Laila, "it's probably too much to go into just now. Maybe we can talk later. How about this evening, over a brandy. It should be a beautiful night, a good night to catch up on news."

"Okay," Kelsey nodded. "I want to find out about what he was working on here, too."

"Well, I'll tell you what I can, which isn't much. He was damned secretive about it. Anyway, get yourselves unpacked, washed up, and settled in. Tanza will take your bags inside; just let him know what rooms to leave them in. Dinner's at seven in the cafeteria, so you have less than an hour."

With a smile and parting wave he was gone.

The bungalow had a large, wide central room with three more rooms in the back. The middle one was a bathroom with shower, while the ones on either side could be used as either bedrooms or offices. There was a small kitchen area along one side wall of the large front room: refrigerator, sink, and counter-top with microwave and coffee pot. Along the opposite wall were bookcases, a desk and storage cabinets. The front wall held a large fireplace and three comfy overstuffed chairs. In the center of the room was a wooden table that could be used for eating or playing games.

On either side of the fireplace were large windows covered with curtains and drapes. After unpacking, Laila made a pot of tea and hummed an old tune while she passed Kelsey a cup. Stevie played with a box of carved wooden animal figures that he'd discovered in a dresser drawer. Kelsey leaned against the back of the couch, sipping her tea and gazing out the window.

She was seeing it now, but remembering it as it was – God, could it really be a dozen years ago when she worked here as a teenager?

What a time that was... she had been over the moon with infatuation for Julian back then. It made her almost blush to think about the things that she did with him, sneaking into the storage rooms for two minutes of teasing and kissing.

But she had gotten over blushing a long time ago; had gotten over Julian, too. Especially the last four years - really ever since Stevie was born - had been a puzzle. Julian had become distant, uninterested in his family. It was worse than the dark depressions he used to get; at least then, she knew it would pass. But this was something different. She had been confused, angry, had argued with him. Then came the time when he slapped her, and much worse, slapped Stevie. He moved out and she ceased to care.

All the spark, the infatuation, the hormonal humming and buzzing faded... faded... and went out, replaced by emptiness. Emotionally, she was drained.

And so it stayed, until Reid came into her life. Then - Wham! - in just a few days, she'd been transformed. Oh sure, the little voice of reason in her head warned, _'Wait, wait – this is just another infatuation.'_ But it was too late - the dam inside her soul shattered, and a flood of emotion burst out. And with it came an explosion of desire, of need, more intense and visceral than she'd thought possible.

It was a catharsis of the first degree.

"I am alive again," she whispered, and smiled.

Chapter 73: Veranda

Day 10: Wednesday

It didn't take long for Stevie to push the box of wooden animals aside and tug at Kelsey's arm.

"C'mon, mommy – when can we go outside?"

Laila chimed in, "We'll never get him to sleep tonight unless you let him get out and run around for a while. He's been cooped up too much today."

Kelsey stood up, shaking off her reverie, and sighed, "Absolutely right."

She set her tea cup down next to the sink and took Stevie's hand. "Okay, little champ, let's go see what's out there." He kept hold of her hand while they went through the door and down the steps, but when they hit the grass he took off, skipping and running.

And away they went in kind of a meandering zig-zag around the clinic grounds. Daylight was just starting to fade, so they kept near the center of the compound, away from the creek and lake. Kelsey ran into a half-dozen people who remembered her - two of them had even known her as a child – and stopped to chat every few minutes. Stevie, impatient to be moving, scrambled up the small trees or ran around and around the large ones till he got dizzy and tumbled down laughing.

So the hour drifted smoothly by until they heard Laila calling. "Hey, am I the only one famished around here? We haven't eaten since that tomato sandwich on the boat."

It was nearly nine o'clock by the time they finished dinner, said hello to more old friends and met new ones, wandered back to the bungalow, and got Stevie tucked in to sleep. Kelsey was just coming out of the bedroom when she heard a soft knock at the front door. She opened it and there was Wayne, holding a decanter of brandy and a tray of glasses.

"Still want to chat about Phil?" he asked.

"Yes, yes I would," she smiled, stepping onto the veranda and quietly closing the door.

"Will Laila be joining us?"

"No, I don't think so. She's a little tired from the travelling, and is already lying down with Stevie."

"Oh, right." Wayne set the brandy bottle on the bamboo table and they eased into wicker chairs with soft cushions. He dropped ice cubes into two of the glasses, added two inches of brandy to each, and passed one to Kelsey.

They clinked glasses and he said "Welcome back, Kelsey. Welcome home."

She took a sip. Mmm...delicious. Funny, she thought, how she'd drifted away from drinking alcohol the last few years, except for the occasional glass of red wine with dinner. But this had been a hectic trip, and they were here now, and it was a beautiful evening, and – well, a relaxing drink just seemed perfect right now.

"Home," she rolled word around in her mouth, tasting it like the brandy. "My home... yes, I guess this is."

He nodded. "So - will you be going to the Mission soon?"

"Oh yeah, for sure – maybe tomorrow or the next day. I told Stevie that I'd show him where I grew up."

"Well, when you do, maybe you'll find some answers to your questions."

She leaned back, taking another sip. "What do you mean?"

"About Phil. You were asking about his work. Like I said before, he was damned secretive about it. He ate here; he slept here; but he took off in his jeep every morning and didn't come back till near dark. Oh, he'd socialize a bit, y' know... have a few drinks, and liked to play bridge. But wasn't much for conversation, and never talked about his work except to brag about his lab."

"His lab? I thought he was working at the clinic. He had another lab down here?"

"Oh yeah – none of us ever saw the inside of it, but he used to say how it was set up with first-class equipment – better than what he had at the Waxman."

"Really... and where is this lab? I mean, he'd need electricity, water, a road, a place to send and receive supplies. Where would he find that?"

Wayne swirled the ice in his glass and cleared his throat. "Like I was saying... when you get out to the Mission, you might get some of your questions answered."

"The Mission? Phil had a lab at the Mission? That's still leased out to the uh... the Blessed Sisters of...something, isn't it? And they turned it into a Catholic convent, didn't they?"

"Holy Cross, yes, Sisters of the Holy Cross – nice ladies. Two of them volunteer here several days a week. They also grow a lot of fresh veggies and give them away to anyone in need. The monastery buildings, the lecture hall and classroom that Grant put in, and the outside areas are all part of the lease. But not the old main house. Something in the agreement... you see, when Grant left, he let them have the property for fifty years, but he stipulated that they not use his house."

"Right," she said. "He had a lot of personal stuff in there, but I'd have thought that the nuns would store it all away – maybe in the old gym – and use the house for their living space."

Wayne shrugged. "Kelsey, you know as well as I do why he didn't want that. He's planning on coming back, and wants his private quarters to be intact."

"Planning on coming back – when - in fifty years?" She laughed and took another drink. "Yep, that sounds like Grant, alright."

"And I think he'll do it," said Wayne with a smile, "once he finishes whatever chase he's on now."

Another sip, then, "You're serious, aren't you," she said.

"Completely," he replied. "Completely serious. Of course, if he doesn't come back, then the whole place'll belong to you."

"Yeah, I thought about that," Kelsey nodded. "But I've never seen his will, and um... does he have any other relatives? Maybe I have brothers or sisters or cousins somewhere."

Wayne swirled the brandy-ice mixture and took a long drink. "Maybe... he had his secrets, that's for sure."

He coughed softly. "But that's another matter. We started off talking about Phil."

"Right," Kelsey nodded. "You said he was bragging about a new lab with all kinds of classy equipment. So - where is it? Did he take over one of the Mission buildings?"

"Ooh no, not exactly."

When he didn't say any more, Kelsey said, "Okay, Wayne, now you've got my curiosity up. Any brandy left in that decanter?"

Wayne poured another inch or so into each of their glasses, then leaned forward.

"I haven't been to the Mission in over a year," he said, "but I've heard from people that... well, let's just say that there've been changes out there. All the more reason for you to go out and see for yourself."

With that he sat back, and they sipped in silence for a minute. Then Kelsey asked "Okay then, next subject: How exactly did Phil die."

"You know," he said with a frown, "it was the damnest thing. Happened right after Trinity Garret left. That would have been... mmm – a little over a week ago, right? They had a big row the night before. She was planning on leaving the next day anyway, but that made for an uncomfortable scene. In the morning she left on the supply boat - the same one that you came in on - when it went back on the return trip to Salvata."

He set down his glass, and scratched his ear. "A day or so later, we heard a helicopter landing. Now, we have that pad over there, but it's not used much; mostly only to take serious cases out to one of the nearby hospitals."

"But on that day there was a passenger – just one - a real pretty, well dressed lady who said she's a journalist, and that she's here to do a magazine article on bush medicine. But once she found out that the famous Dr. Philip Poley was here, she fastened onto him like a barnacle."

"Phil? Famous? Are you serious?" Kelsey smiled. "He was fairly well known in his slice of the toxicology field, but not much outside of that. And anyway, Phil wasn't hot magazine material."

"Exactly," Wayne nodded. "That's what we thought, too. But the lady – Veronica – saw it quite differently. At least, she convinced Phil of that."

"Now that I can see," Kelsey smiled. "Phil was pitifully gullible when it came to women. He was an introverted wallflower until Trinity got her hooks into him. After that he started acting like mister suave ladies' man, but it just made him look dopey."

"Yeah," Wayne laughed. "We could all see it happening. Phil was a sucker for a compliment from a pretty lady. Anyway, he and Veronica seemed to hit it off. That afternoon he invited her to go see his lab – and off the two of them went in his jeep."

Another sip, then, "They got back late in the day and had dinner in the cafeteria, sitting by themselves in a corner. Afterwards, she got up to go and Phil stopped by my table. 'Veronica's going clean up and I need to take care of a few things,' he said. 'But d'you wanna join us for a rubber or two of bridge on her veranda? Say in maybe an hour?' I said 'Sure, Lucy knows bridge, I'll talk her into making it a foursome,' and he left. That was the last I saw of him alive."

"An hour later, Lucy and I went over to Veronica's and we waited for a good thirty minutes. But there was no sign of Phil. I went to his cabin and knocked. No answer, but there was music coming from inside. I called out; still no answer, so I tried the door. It was unlocked, and I went in."

Wayne took another sip of brandy – a longer one, this time. "He was sitting on the bathroom floor, legs outstretched and back leaning against the wall. Except for his shoes, he was fully clothed. There was a comb in his hand and a look of surprise on his face."

Kelsey shook her head sadly. "Poor Phil. At least it must have been quick."

"Faster than quick," Wayne said. "He must have collapsed immediately. It looked like a sudden heart attack or stroke."

"Did you try resuscitation?" she asked.

"There were no signs of life... no pulse, no breathing, pupils were contracted and fixed. He was even starting to get stiff."

"Really? Isn't that a bit fast for rigor to set in?"

"Yes, it's rare, but not unheard of. I did a cursory exam, but we're not set up to do thorough autopsies – you know, we focus on preventive and emergency treatment here. But everything I saw was consistent with a massive heart attack."

"What did you do with the body? Burial? Cremation?"

"We were hoping to get word from his next of kin about what they wanted, so we stuck him in the large ice cooler. Let's see... that was Thursday night. I called Victor but didn't hear back from anyone, so yes, on Sunday we held a little service for him, then cremated. Same as we did for Julian."

He grimaced suddenly. "Oh sorry, Kelsey - I didn't mean to bring that up."

"That's okay, Wayne. You must have known that Julian and I were separated. He'd... um, moved on."

Wayne coughed uncomfortably and refilled his glass. Yes, he knew about it. After all, Trinity had been down here with Julian before she'd been down here with Phil. And that was a puzzle: Julian could be a strange bird sometimes, but was still bright, good looking, and interesting. Phil though... was there ever a blander guy? Sure, Phil knew his toxins inside and out, but had pretty much a zero personality. He could understand why an amazing looking lady like Trinity might be with Julian, but with Phil? No, it didn't make sense. Plus she didn't even seem to like Phil; she stayed in a separate cabin and helped out around the clinic instead of spending time with him.

So, anyway... what was it that Kelsey was saying? Oh yeah -

"Moved on?" Wayne said, refocussing. "Let's see - I guess it was right about two years ago when Julian came back. During the first three months Trinity came to visit a few times, but after that he was mostly on his own."

"Mostly?" Kelsey asked. "Which means... what?"

Wayne shook his head, coughed, and said, "Sometimes I flap my lips too much. Just forget I said that, please."

Kelsey stared at him for few seconds, then nodded. "Okay, I'll try. But how did he act? Happy? Sad? Moody?"

Wayne added more ice and brandy to his glass, then pursed his lips, thinking. Finally he nodded and said, "No – he acted pretty upbeat, like life was okay, but he wasn't real interactive. I mean, he would smile and said 'Hello,' to people, and was congenial enough at breakfast. But kept to himself during the evenings, and, you know, was gone all day. So really, we didn't see him all that much."

"But when you did see him – he didn't seem depressed?"

"No. He wasn't all happy and cheery, but he didn't get into those black moods like he used to."

"What about his last week," Kelsey said, "did he seem at all suicidal?"

Wayne frowned as he took another drink. "No, not that I could tell. Something must have happened right before the end that pushed him over the edge. He didn't show up for dinner that last evening, and our night nurse noticed him driving off very early the next morning. It seems that he went Mission for some reason, and that was the end of it. Maybe we'll never know what really happened."

Kelsey slowly twirled her glass, watching the amber fluid spin. Wayne obviously believed in the suicide story, and she wasn't quite ready to bring up the possibility of murder yet. There was a lot more she needed to find out before feeling certain about that.

So... "Wayne, I think all of us at the Waxman were stunned by the news, and accepted it at face value without asking for more details. But I'd like those details now. Could you tell me what you know?"

"Sure, but there's really not a whole lot. One of the caretakers found Julian sitting in a chair in Grant's old library. He was dead from a gunshot wound. The gun was on the floor next to him and there was a note under his arm. Surely you've seen it?"

"A photo, yes, but not the original." Just one word: 'SORRY', a hasty scribble printed in all caps, like it hadn't been well thought out. At the time she was glad that it was so blessedly short, without any rambling sentimentality.

Now, though, she wondered - was there any evidence that Julian had written it? Suppose you shot someone and wanted to make it look like a suicide; you'd want to have a note, right? But suppose that you had no idea what the person's handwriting looked like, or what they were likely to say? Then just print 'SORRY' in all caps; that would cover anything and everything, right?

She realized that Wayne was still talking. "...was an investigation, but very rudimentary. Constable Okaly took a statement from Colo -"

"Colo?" Kelsey interrupted, surprised. "Do you mean Colo the Cheat? Was he the one who discovered Julian?"

"Yes, well, no one calls him 'the Cheat' anymore, but yes, it's the same Colo that you knew back in the Mission. He works there on and off now, as a general handyman. He said that he heard a shot coming from inside the big house and went to investigate. He went upstairs, and... well, there Julian was."

"Heard a shot? Wayne, I thought Julian died in the middle of the night. What was Colo doing there then?"

"Yeah, um... he said something about working nights to put in irrigation pipes, but who knows the truth. Maybe you could check with the nuns."

Kelsey nodded, "I feel like I don't know the truth about much of anything anymore... but damn it, I'm going to find out."

Wayne opened his mouth to say something, then frowned and closed it.

They sat in silence for another minute, then Wayne stood up, emptied his glass in one last swallow, and said, "Well, you must be tired, Kelsey. Sorry the conversation meandered to sad times."

Kelsey reached out and squeezed his hand. "Really Wayne, I meant what I said earlier. I have no sad feelings about Julian, just curiosity. Whatever happened between us is long over. I've moved on. In fact, I have a new, um... boyfriend."

"Oh," Wayne smiled, "well, that's good then. Let's just let the past be in the past."

"One more question, though" Kelsey said, "about Veronica. Is she still around here?"

"No. The morning after Phil died, the helicopter came back and took her away. We haven't heard a thing from her since. Of course, it's only been a week, but I had hoped to see or hear something about the magazine article."

Kelsey set her glass on the tray. "Okay, thanks for everything. I do feel a little sleepy now... maybe it's the brandy. I'd like to make a phone call, though, but I can't get any service out here on my cell. Any chance I can use one of the clinic phones?"

Wayne laughed softly. "My, young lady, you have been out of touch for a while. We haven't had any phone coverage for a year."

"Really? Oh right - I remember Trinity saying something about that. How do you get by then?"

"We use the Lodge. They're the only ones around here with working phones."

"Why? What happened?" Kelsey said, surprised. "Five years ago everyone was all excited about getting hooked into the satellites. I thought it would all be a done deal by now."

Wayne nodded. "Well, it was a done deal and damn good for a while. Then a year ago it all went to Hell... I tried to find out why, but just got shuttled from one agency to another. Basically this whole area – a couple thousand square miles – is off the grid, except for the Lodge. For some reason, they still have a clear link to the outside world."

"Huh," Kelsey said. "Doesn't it seem strange that the Lodge would still be hooked in, but not your medical clinic?"

Wayne shrugged. "There've been other strange decisions lately. I don't know who's making them, or why, and have stopped trying to figure it out. I just want to focus on keeping things going smoothly here."

"Well, you've done great. The clinic looks bigger and better than ever."

"Bigger, yes. Better? – I don't know about that... but thanks, anyway."

She stood and stretched. "Is there a jeep I could use to get over to the Lodge? I'd like to try making a phone call tomorrow."

"Sure," he said. "You can take the one Phil had. It's parked in the garage next to our little ambulance. I'll get you the keys in the morning."

"Okay, great – thanks."

A quick hug and Wayne was away, slipping quietly down the stairs to the grassy area below. There were dozens of small solar lights scattered around the grounds, so it was easy for him to find his way in the night.

Kelsey went into the bungalow, locked the door, and shut off the lights. She walked softly to the bathroom and turned on the water to the shower.

"Magazine article?" she whispered. "Poor dumb Phil...I don't think there was ever going to be a magazine article."

Chapter 74: Morning at the Klamath

Day 11: Thursday Morning

The time oozed by....

I tried to stay focused on the here and now, straining to pick out any nuance of the suspicious or unusual. There was a light patter of rain at around two A.M., but it only lasted fifteen or twenty minutes - just long enough to make the ground slick. That was good; I was listening for any sound of a foot slipping followed by a muffled curse, and in the morning, I'd scout around for any fresh boot imprints in the soft earth.

But other than that the hours dragged by, with just the soft rattle of a mild breeze through the branches and the occasional sleepy snuffle from Chyll. The clouds passed away to the west and a few stars poked out again; the moon came back too, giving a silvery blush to the wet trees.

The background rush of the river – more of a pleasant hiss than a roar – kept everything from being totally soundless. But it was a hypnotic hiss, dulling my alertness, lulling my senses, tugging my attention away to memories of jaunts on the river with Gramps... and thoughts about the people who'd cruised through this place way back when.

My kinfolk, whose bare feet had made these trails so long ago – they'd trod these hills for at least many hundreds, maybe thousands of years. But the early Europeans – Spanish, French, English, Russian - and maybe also Chinese who'd sailed near the North American coast centuries ago, had all missed this area.

That changed big time in the 1800's. Up these rivers came the early miners with the gleam of gold fever in their eyes. And after them came the mix of others - grifters, drifters, the occasional settler – some of them stopping at this clearing, staying at this little clutch of cabins during their noisy heyday.

This spot must have seen a lot of livin', a lot of lovin', and its fair share of violence, maybe even here where I sat, leaning against a blanket with a hunting knife in my hand. Could be it would see more, soon.

Violence, I mean.

So, yeah – the time oozed by.

Oozing... oooozzzing....

Whoa!

I must have dozed off for a few seconds – or at least kind of phased out – because I heard a snort and realized that it came from me.

A sudden, cool rush of adrenaline snapped me awake and I shook my head, wrenching my attention back to the here, to the now.

This was no good. I needed to do something. Sitting there in the damp cold not only dulled my alertness, it made my muscles tight and my back stiff. Not good if I needed to move fast.

So I stood – carefully to not make any noise – stepped back maybe six feet into the darker interior of the shed, and did a few stretches – legs, arms, back, neck, hands, repeated a second time, then a third, each time longer and harder.

Okay, now I felt looser, better, and warmer. I was just sliding back toward the blanket when a brief beam of light zipped across the clearing. It was fast – less than a second \- and came from the area behind the cabin. Another one, then a third... then no more.

A signal between Marley and Trinity? Or Niles?

Or both?

I could go into the cabin and see who was awake, but what then? I'd be inside the cabin with at least one adversary, and another one outside.

No good.

Or I could sneak around the back and try to catch Marley. But in the dark, and with slippery footing, the chances are he'd hear me coming before I saw him, unless I got lucky or he got stupid.

So better to wait here until daylight, then go out the back way and swing around; maybe catch him from behind. I don't like indecision; I like having a plan, even if it's not a great one. And this wasn't a great one, but, given the circumstances, it was a sensible one,

I eased down on the blanket and took a swallow of Coke, but didn't really need it. There'd be no problem staying awake now. That flash of light was more effective than a dousing with ice water.

More time passed.

At around 5 A.M. the moon began sinking below the bluff to the west, and our little clearing got darker... darker... then totally black. Okay, not totally. A few stars still shone through the openings between trees, but it was impossible to see anything on the ground now, not even the cabin door.

But it would be just as dark for anyone else out there, and if they got careless with the flashlight again, it would be easier to spot them. So I was good with the change.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.... By 5:30 the sky started brightening. Another few minutes and it was just light enough to see; not well, but at least clear outlines of most things. I stood, stretched, and gently tapped Chyll on the shoulder.

One dark eye opened. "Time already?" she mumbled.

"Just about," I whispered. "I'm going to take a stroll around. If anything happens, don't come after me."

I waited a few seconds to make sure she heard that, and then said it again. "Don't go out there after me, Chyll – doesn't matter what you hear. If I'm not back in thirty minutes, you stay put until you're sure that no one sees you, then move fast. Don't go near the cabin. Get down to the rafting crowd and ride out with them, OK?"

"What do you mean, don't come after you? What might happen?" Both eyes were open now.

"Don't know. But if I can't handle it, then you just lie low and get away."

She pushed herself up to a sitting position, wide awake. She spotted the can of Coke, took a long drink, and said, "Sure, alright. Whatever you say, Boss."

Her tone of voice wasn't convincing.

"Jesus, Chyll, this could be deadly serious. Don't do anything stupid."

She watched me slide my knife out of its sheath, then just smiled and shrugged.

I moved out, very quietly, making a slow circuit around the area. I had walked it twice last evening, right after we got here, to familiarize myself with the rocks, logs, bushes, low spots, and other tripping hazards. So I had a pretty good idea of where to go – but still picked my steps cautiously to avoid snapping a twig or rustling a branch and stayed in the deeper shadows.

Stopped a few times just to listen. Surveyed the area silently, carefully, before moving ahead. Someone had been out there a few hours ago. Were they still around?

No sign of anyone. Nothing moving, no unusual sights or sounds.

So I repeated the circuit, moving a little faster, intentionally making more noise this time. I was ready to let anyone out there know that I was out there, too, and coming for them.

Daylight was bright enough to see almost everything by now: the dirt trail winding off to the left, going back down to the rafting beach.... the hillside behind our clearing, covered with trees and mossy rocks. It was even clearer around to the side above the river. I stood near the edge, peering down; was anything moving there?

It was a sheer drop off, a good twenty feet or more, straight down to the water, which was moving fast and looked deep. There were dark shadows of boulders and lots of fast, splashing water out toward the middle of the channel, which narrowed down to no more than a couple of hundred feet wide at this point. I automatically studied the white water, picking out the best path, looking for patterns in the currents like I'd done as a kid. This had always been a dangerous stretch, but now it looked almost suicidal.

The river was roaring and tumbling in full force, and I realized that I'd let my attention wander. Not good. In this noise, someone could come up from behind and...

I caught a darting movement in my peripheral vision and swung around, bending at the knees and bringing the knife up waist high. No, it was just a squirrel scampering around the leaves. It had been tugging at something shiny, and I stepped over to check it out.

I squatted down and poked with the knife blade. Candy wrappers – Hershey's almond milk chocolate and one or two others from granola bars. Exactly the kind the rafters had in their storage shed, like they'd given us last night.

They were partly stuffed into a beer can, and there were bits of chocolate and chunks of granola scattered around. I tipped the can on end and a dozen or so drops dribbled out.

If it still had beer in it, then it hadn't been here long. And I didn't remember seeing it last evening when I walked the circuit. Could I have missed it? – Sure, maybe. But if it had been left there the day before, then squirrels or blue jays would have already carried off the crumbs and other goodies.

The ground was soft and spongy here, and there were clear marks – scrapes, scuff marks, a deep depression like if someone had knelt on one knee for a while. This could have been where that pulse of light had come from last night – so I knelt down and looked across the clearing. If someone had been here, what could they see?

The back of the cabin, that's what.. And in the middle of the back wall was the boarded up window. But how well was the window covered? Completely, or just mostly? Could there still be gaps? Holes? Cracks?

And what had Jolene seen from the helicopter? Flashes of light; they had to be signals of some sort. And Marley was in this spot last night, signaling again.

He must have been wet and cold, so it must have been an important signal.

Was he watching me now?

"Here I am, you son of a bitch" I whispered. "Come and get me if you can."

Creaking sounds came from up ahead. Someone must be opening the cabin door and walking on the porch. From this angle, I couldn't see the front, but a moment later Trinity appeared on the side and hopped down onto the grass. She stood still for a moment, cradling a small bundle in her right arm and rubbing her left hand through her hair. She looked like she'd just gotten up – she had on jeans and a cotton blouse, with her sweatshirt draped over one shoulder; but no socks, shoes were untied, and her hair was kind of sticking out here and there.

Very un-Trinity like.

She turned and started walking, coming right toward me.

I stood up, slipped the knife back in its sheath, and gave her a wave.

She stopped with a startled look on her face and began smoothing her hair and straightening her blouse – the neckline was a little askew - but gave up after a few seconds.

Then she started forward again, looking embarrassed. "Oh, hi, Reid. Sorry, I look like Hell, don't I? Forgot to bring my makeup and hairbrush, and didn't have time to get fully dressed. I didn't want you to see me like this."

Didn't want _me_ to see her? I couldn't help wondering if she was expecting someone else. You know who....

"Trinity, you look fine," I said, and meant it. Even freshly woken up, she had a natural grace and fresh beauty that you don't see often. "But maybe you didn't sleep too well?"

"Sleep? Not much. I kept imagining all kinds of spooky stuff out here."

"Yeah," I nodded, "I was awake too. Didn't see anything spooky though - it was actually pretty peaceful."

"Well it wasn't peaceful in that cabin, what with Niles snoring. Jeez – I was ready to stuff a sock down his throat."

I didn't say anything, and after a second she continued, "Anyway, I'm rushing off for a morning pee. Then I'd love a shower and a cup of hot coffee."

"I'm afraid that a shower's a no-go, and coffee's a long shot. Maybe we can get some from the rafters when we bring back their stuff, but we can't stop for long – we need to start back to Eddie and the copter. And watch out for this cliff here. There's a straight drop to the water, which is deep, dangerous, and damn fast."

She looked over at it warily and shuddered. "Wow - OK, yeah... thanks. I'll be careful."

I went back to the workshop. Chyll was still inside; she'd folded up the blankets and was stuffing the Coke cans into a small paper bag.

"Find anything? "she asked.

"Enough to make me think that we weren't alone out here last night. So I'd like to get moving right away. Let's get Niles and the rest of our gear out of the cabin."

As we started walking, Chyll jumped in front and turned toward me. "I would have come running out if something had happened. I wasn't going to let you go it alone, Boss, no matter what you said."

"Yeah, I know" I answered with a smile.

When we got through the cabin door Niles was inside, rolling up his sleeping bag.

"Ready to get out of here?" I asked.

"Yes, just about. Give me a couple of minutes to get everything packed."

I strolled to the back of the cabin and casually asked, "How was the sleeping last night?"

"Good, good," he answered with no hesitation. "I learned years ago to be able to sleep anywhere. This is a pleasant country park compared to a lot of the places I've stayed."

"Didn't wake up during the night?" I asked, bending down to peek through the cracks in the boards covering the back window. There was a gap between two of them, maybe a half-inch wide and four inches long. I looked around the floor; yes, there were foot marks in the dirt. Someone had stood here last night; that didn't prove they were flashing signals, but it was more than possible.

"No. Well - just the once," he said. "Some random noise, I think. Trinity must have heard it too – I heard her mumbling something. Anyway, I dozed off again pretty soon."

I fished the small flashlight out of my shirt pocket, flicked it on, and shined the light on the window boards. There were cobwebs around the space in the gap, except near in the center. Someone had wiped them away, and brushed off the dust, too.

I bent down and took a closer look at the floor. Yes, definitely clear foot prints. Trinity was as tall as Niles; probably smaller feet though, but not by much. The prints were smooth and rounded at the toes; no individual toe prints.

What had I seen this morning? Trinity walking toward me, shoes untied, no socks.

No socks – she slept barefoot last night.

I glanced at Niles; he was just lacing up his boots. There was a pair of thin waterproof slippers next to him, the kind backpackers like in cold weather. He started to stuff them into his backpack, then stopped suddenly.

"What the Hell!" It was kind of a gasp, a mix of surprise and anger. He had his back to me now, and started rummaging through his pack quickly. After maybe five seconds he dropped it, snatched up Trinity's sleeping bag and shook it out. Then he tossed that down and stood, hands clinched and shaking.

"Lose something?" I asked.

In a harsh whisper, he hissed, "Where is she? Where...is... she?"

"Trinity?" I answered calmly. "Outside, tending to a call of nature. Why? Something wrong?"

"No," he said quickly. Too quickly. Then, after a second, added, "I mean yes. I, ah – I've lost something."

We went outside, Niles and Chyll carrying their stuff, me carrying Trinity's. Niles dropped his on the porch and turned to me. "Which way did she go? Please, it's important that I talk to her."

I nodded toward the river. "Up that way."

He stood for a moment, then he said in calmer voice, "Okay, thanks. I'll be right back."

And with that he took off, moving fast.

Chyll watched him hurrying off and whispered, "What's up with him? And what was he talking about when he said he lost something?"

"I don't know," I said, "but he's lying about what happened last night. Marley's close by here, and he knows it."

"So," Chyll said, "do you think they're getting their stories straight now, agreeing on what lies to tell us when they get back."

"Could be," I agreed. "So maybe we should –"

That's when we heard the scream, a mash of pain and panic and rage all in one long screech.

Trinity.

It came from where I had seen her last, by the beer can and candy wrappers.

By the spot where someone had knelt, signaling and watching.

By the cliff above the rapids.

Yeah, that spot.

I grabbed Chyll's shoulder. "Go down to the beach with the rafters now. Don't stop, don't look back. Just get down there and stay with them. Get to the helicopter when you can, and call Autumn Kool."

She nodded.

I moved off fast, but not in the straight line direction that Niles had taken. I wanted to circle in from the side, try to see what was happening before stumbling into an unknown scene.

A little voice in my head was telling me to go down to the beach with Chyll instead.

"It's a trap," the voice warned. "You can't trust Niles or Trinity."

I ignored it, but the closer I got to the ledge, the more insistent it became.

"It's a set up," the voice was louder now. "You know Marley's hiding there, waiting to jump you."

Another scream, this one stopping short, like it had been choked off. I pictured the cliff, with Trinity dangling over the edge.

Not a good picture.

The voice was yelling now, "They're going to kill you - "

"Shut up!" I told the voice.

Chapter 75: Morning at the Clinic

Day 12: Thursday Morning

Stevie was up early the next morning, ready to explore and play. He climbed onto Kelsey's bed holding two small wooden lions and began clacking them together while humming softly. The clacking and humming got louder and soon he was whooping and roaring.

Kelsey opened one eye and peered at him. "Stevie, honey – what time is it?"

"I dunno," he answered in a singsong lion's voice. "But I'm hungry. Mommy, when can we go find Muru?"

She had to think for a second... Muru? "Oh, you mean the little monkey? The one who was holding your hand yesterday?"

"Yeah. Can I play with him today?"

"I think so. Okay, let me get up and we'll go have some breakfast. Is Auntie Laila awake yet?"

"No, she's a lazy-bones," he said and laughed.

Kelsey sat up, smiling, and stretched. It was not quite 7 AM according to the clock on the night stand. She stood, doing more stretching. The mattress was a little on the firm side, but that was okay. The pillows were overstuffed, though, so she'd tossed them aside and instead folded one of the thin blankets and shoved it into a pillowcase. That worked well, and all in all she had gotten a good night's sleep.

A little foggy headed – probably thanks to the brandy with Wayne – and another hour would be nice, but with Stevie already up and moving, well....

Thirty minutes later the three of them were showered, dressed, and on their way to the cafeteria. Breakfast was simple: scrambled eggs, a bagel, fruit, and tea. Over the years, Wayne had set up a self-sufficient food supply. The eggs were from chickens that roamed freely around the grounds; the fruit and vegetables - even the tea - were grown in local orchards and fields, some of it at the Mission. Milk came from nearby goats, and they made their own butter and simple cheeses. Spices, flour, and a few other essential were boated in from Salvata, and each morning they baked bread, muffins, and bagels. Meat was scarce, but the fish were plentiful and fresh.

The food was all provided in the kitchen, but there was no cook on morning-duty, so you prepared your own breakfast. Two local teenagers did the clean-up and dishwashing, one of Kelsey's first jobs when she had started here. She remembered how excited – and bewildered – she had been that first day.

Yes, it was good to be back.

They were sitting at a table for four, although they were using only three of the chairs. A minute later though, a small hairy hand reached up, grabbed the bamboo edge of the table, and Muru swung into the fourth chair. He sat there, perfectly well mannered, while Wayne placed a tray of fruit slices in front of him. Muru chattered briefly, then reached out, picked up a slice, and began munching.

Stevie was transfixed. "Can I feed him?" he asked.

"Well, I think you'd better let him do it himself," Wayne said. "If you pick up his food, Muru might think that you're trying to steal it. I'll give you some treats later that you can feed him."

"Okay," said Stevie, not taking his eyes off of the little monkey.

"Wayne, please stay and join us," Kelsey said.

"Oh, no thanks. I've already eaten, but if you care to meet me for a coffee in my office later, we can discuss a few points that we didn't get to last night."

"Sure. Give me twenty minutes?"

"No rush. Whenever you're ready."

With a smile and a wave he left. Muru watched him go but stayed at the table, peacefully eating the fruit.

And twenty minutes later Laila, Stevie, and Muru were walking around the compound while Kelsey carried a cup of coffee into Wayne's office.

"Right," he said. "Are you still wanting to make that phone call today?"

"Yes. Actually I'd like to go this morning, if it's okay."

"Sure, no problem. Just let me give you these." He rummaged through desk drawer, pulled out a small ring of keys, and held them up. "Phil had these with him when he died, but you might as well have them now. This first one's to the jeep – you remember how to use a stick shift?"

"Oh yeah, I'll never forget that. Grant had me driving his old red pickup truck when I was twelve."

"It's still going strong," Wayne said with a laugh. "Sister Marcellina drives it in twice a week to help out around here. Quite a lady – she was actually a French army medic before taking her vows."

He spread the other keys out on his desk and pointed to them one by one. "This next one unlocks the front gate at the Mission."

"The gate is locked?" Kelsey asked. "We never kept it locked before."

"Well, it's locked now. The fences have been built higher and stronger, too."

"What's up with that? The nuns guarding their veggies?"

Wayne shook his head. "No, it's like I was saying last night – there've been changes since you were here last. I can't explain what all they are, but you'll see when you get there. Anyway, there are other keys on this ring, but I have no idea what locks they open. At least one of them must be for Phil's lab, though."

There were five keys on the ring: one for the jeep, another for the front gate; that left three unknowns. She looked carefully at each one, then reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a large brass key attached to a loop of braided leather.

"This is my key to the main house, Grant's private home," she said. "It's been in my desk drawer for the last few years, but I brought it down with me just in case I had a chance to use it."

"Right," Wayne nodded, smiling. "The big oak front door of the old mansion."

"Yeah, the Mansion" she laughed. "We used to call it that when I was a kid, huh. God - I haven't been inside of it for...I guess five years."

She set her key next to one of the keys on Phil's ring. It was a perfect match.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at Wayne. "Why would Phil have a key to Grant's house? His lab wasn't inside there, was it?"

Wayne started to shrug, then stopped and pursed his lips. "No, Phil had something more modern – a new, separate building. But that wasn't around when Julian worked out there."

The realization came to Kelsey like a quick shock. Brief and mild, really; but still a little startling. Julian had been found dead, slumped over the table in the library at the mansion. So he must have had a key, but why? Somehow, in all the hub-bub around his death, she'd never wondered about that particular fact before.

Kelsey looked at Wayne sharply. "I thought Julian was doing field work in the villages and clinical work here with you. What was he doing at the Mission?"

"Field work – yes, maybe some. But clinical work? Here?" Wayne shook his head. "No. He had some sort of facility set up at the Mission. He spent almost all his time there; mostly only came back here to eat and sleep."

Wayne cleared his throat and frowned. "I don't know what he was doing, but it must have been important. After he died Niles came down right away, and wouldn't let anyone else get near the place for a couple of weeks. Even had the nuns moved out, down to the old church at Sangria. That's when they put up the locked gate and beefed up the fence. Colo even patrolled the grounds with a rifle for a while."

"Really?" Kelsey sounded surprised and puzzled. "I didn't hear anything about that. Niles told me that he'd take care of everything about Julian, but I thought he meant paperwork – I didn't know he actually came down here. Why would he do that?"

She stopped and stared out the window while Wayne sipped his coffee and watched her. Then she looked over at him and said, "You make it sound like he wanted to clean something up - or maybe cover up - whatever Julian was working on. Do you think that's true?"

He nodded. "I think that's exactly right. Julian's body was found on a Sunday morning. I didn't call Victor at the Waxman until Monday. Niles showed up here on the Tuesday... that's pretty damn fast. It's like he knew about it before I called. We had Julian's body in our big refrigerator room, but nobody'd done an autopsy, not even a proper forensic examination to look for wounds. I was thinking that maybe I'd take a look, but Niles handed me a paper - signed by you - to have the body cremated immediately. Then he went right out to the Mission, and I didn't see him again for another three days."

"Paper? I never signed any cremation paper. I didn't sign anything about Julian. Besides, my signature would've been meaningless, we were already divorced."

"Yeah," Wayne nodded, "I know that now, but at the time I didn't. So we went ahead with the cremation."

They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds, then Wayne cleared his throat again and said, "As far as what Julian was working on, um, there's a bit of a problem about that. After the body was brought back here, we gathered up his things in case someone came to collect them. I thought you would be the one to show up, but it turned out to be Niles."

"I never had any intention of coming down here," Kelsey said. "I just didn't see the use."

"Well, I understand that now," Wayne nodded. "But back then I wasn't so sure. Anyway, I had Lola and Chinto clean up his bungalow and pack away his clothes and whatever else they could find. Lola came to me and asked what she should do with some half-burned papers they found in his fireplace. I was mad at first – thought he'd been burning our books; but no, they were his own lab notes. It must have been only a small fire though, and he must have left right away, because the papers weren't much burned... mostly just singed."

"So," Kelsey said, "do you still have them?"

"No. I kept them in my desk for a while, but when Phil arrived, he asked for them right away."

"But did you look at them first?"

"Well, yes, a bit, just to see what kind of shape they were in. Some were half-burnt, but many were completely intact."

"And?" she said.

"Well, that's all, really. Phil said that he was supposed to pick up the work where Julian left off, so I passed the notes to him. He was happy to get them."

"Wayne," Kelsey said, sounding a little impatient, "I mean - what did you see in the notes? What were they about?"

"Oh, sorry. Well, l just glanced at them. There were a lot of sketches of mosquitoes, some of them very detailed. And a diagram...um, a flow chart, about inducing mutations and selecting progeny. References to chemicals and enzymes, but like I said, I didn't pay a lot of attention to exactly what was written, just whether it was still readable and not charred."

"Mosquitoes?" Kelsey said, "He worked on mosquito-borne diseases years ago, but that was in Africa, before I met him. What was he doing with them here?"

"I have no idea." He drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking, then said, "Hang on a sec, though - one of the other docs might be able to help with that. He was the only one around here that Julian talked to very much. This morning he took off to make the weekly rounds at the villages, but should be back later. Maybe by early afternoon? If you're back here, we can ask him what he knows."

Kelsey nodded, then stood and looked out the window again. From here, the clinic grounds looked large and impressive; but years ago, when Grant took her up in a small plane, she could see that the clinic and the Mission were just tiny blips of lawns, shrubs, and whitewashed buildings surrounded by an immense ocean of tall trees, sweeping vines, and leaves of every shade of green. It made her realize that what seemed to be the major parts of her life were just tiny blips in the whole, vast world. She remembered the feeling – the thirst – to get away and experience that vast modern world. But now her lips twisted into a rueful smile and she wondered: Had it been worth it?

"Wayne, it was way too easy to fall out of touch with life here. I got caught up with college, then my work at the Waxman. And was so busy with Stevie and... those difficulties with Julian. I always meant to come back here - these are my roots. But I just couldn't seem to find the time. This place was always, always, very important to me, but those other things seemed more urgent, more demanding of immediate attention. Now that I'm back here, though, most of those things don't seem urgent at all. Strange...."

Wayne came around the desk and patted her shoulder. "Many years ago I was a resident in Internal Medicine in Emory University. We had a weekly seminar series, and one Friday a visiting doctor named Francois Layard gave a lecture about the challenges he was facing at a clinic he'd just started. I was blown away, and asked to meet him for dinner. We talked all evening, and in the end he invited me to visit here. So I did. This place was tiny, remote – it took four days to get here then – and poorly equipped... but was doing incredible work for the local people. I stayed a month, then went back to Georgia, got involved in my practice, and almost forgot about this place. Almost. But I couldn't quite put it completely out of my mind, and after six months knew that I had to return. Nearly forty years later I'm still here. Francois died twenty-five years ago, and I expect to die here too, someday. But I can't imagine being anywhere else. This place is my home... and it's your home too. I'm glad you finally came back."

Kelsey nodded. "Me too. Thanks for everything, Wayne. I'll go make that phone call now. I probably won't get to the Mission today; I want to go by myself first, before taking Stevie. So I'd like to leave him and Laila here while I check things out."

"That's smart," he said. "The road to the Lodge is still in the same place, but in much better shape than it used to be. It still dead-ends at the docks. If there's a boat there, you can take it across the lake yourself. If there isn't a boat there, just ring the buzzer and someone will row out to get you."

"Right," she said. "I remember all of that. Is Mister Ball still running the place?"

"No," Wayne shook his head. "He's long gone. They have a guest services desk with a concierge in the lobby now. Lu Donnel is his name. Tell him that you're from the Layard, and give him my card. He'll let you use the phones and send me the charge."

Kelsey thanked him again, left her coffee cup in the cafeteria, and walked out into the sunshine. The air was warm, the sky blue. She took a deep breath and smiled.

This was going to be a good day... wasn't it?

Chapter 76: Lodge

Day 11: Thursday

Kelsey checked in on Laila and Stevie; they were busy making their own nature video with Muru and a parrot, Arara, who lived on the grounds. Arara chattered in a mixture of Amazonas and English words; Stevie tried to copy him while Muru chittered and hummed in the background. Laila recorded it all, moving this way and that to get the best lighting and viewing angle.

Kelsey didn't want to disturb them, so she just waved a quick good-bye ("Have fun – I'll be back in a couple of hours") and went to the covered shed where clinic vehicles were parked.

It was a small motor pool: two jeeps, the ambulance – really just an old pickup with a tall camper shell – and a motorcycle. Kelsey tossed her day-pack into the passenger seat of the left jeep and fired up the ignition. It started right away, and, after letting it warm up for a few seconds, she let out the clutch and eased toward road at the north gate. Another road led out from the south gate; both were covered in powdery dirt, frequently muddy, and often in need of a machete to clear away encroaching bush.

The north road started out following the rim of the lagoon, but soon turned inland. After a mile it split, with the left side leading through dense jungle and ending up at the Lodge, while the right side went to the Mission. Both roads, she remembered, twisted and turned wildly, sometimes dipping into streambeds, and intersected by smaller trails.

And Kelsey loved it. Cruising along in the open air, sucking in the humid morning breeze, ducking to avoid drooping vines and dangling leaves - every twist, every turn was like seeing an old friend again.

Damn! It was good to be back here....

She found the fork in the road, bore left toward the Lodge, and was surprised at the condition of this section. It was wide, level, and smooth, the potholes filled in and brush cleared away from the sides.

"Business at the Lodge must be good," she thought. "Or else..." Hmm – or else what? Why improve this section of the road unless more traffic was using it? And then - where would that traffic be going? Didn't make a lot of sense unless there was other construction going on too – one more thing to ask about tomorrow at the Mission.

But first - make this phone call.

The road ended at the edge of a small lake. A roughly circular area about a hundred feet across had been leveled and covered with a thin coating of gravel. Two jeeps and a muddy pickup truck were already parked there Kelsey skidded to a stop at the far end, next to a wooden stairway that led down to the boat dock.

She gazed around slowly, listening to a mix of tiny noises, envisioning the variety of creatures making them. And far off, there were human voices.

They were coming from the small island in the middle of the lake, where the Lodge sat like a jewel. The late morning sunlight glinted off the large windows and slate roof tiles; tendrils of white smoke curled up from two of the four chimneys.

"Beautiful," Kelsey whispered, then grabbed her pack and vaulted out of the jeep. In thirty seconds she'd glided down the stairs, stepped into the little boat, and untied the ropes holding it to the dock. There were oars stowed along the sides of the seats and a small outboard motor attached to the stern. She studied the motor briefly, then turned a knob to open the gas line, set the choke, and pushed the red starter button.

The engine purred into life and she was off, slowly snaking her way across the water. When she got close to the island, two young boys – no more than ten or eleven years old – ran down the wooden gangway to meet her. As she eased the boat alongside the dock and cut the engine, they lashed lines to the clews fore and aft and held it steady while she climbed out.

She smiled and said, "Thank you for your strength and bravery," in the local tribal dialect. Their eyes widened and they laughed – 'Who was this strange lady who knew their language?'

The younger of the two took her hand and led her up the gangway to the Lodge, in the way that village youths were taught to treat their elders. It was a bit embarrassing at first, being helped like a respected older lady, but she welcomed his attention; she hadn't been to the Lodge in years, and didn't really know her way around.

So when he opened the large front door and ushered her in, she turned to him and asked, "Telephone?" and he led her to a desk at the side of the lobby. There he bowed, turned, and skipped away without a backward glance.

A fortyish-looking man behind the desk closed his book, stood, and smiled. He studied her for five, six seconds, as if deciding which language to use. "English, yes?" he guessed, then, without waiting for an answer, went on, "How may I help you? Room and cabin check-in are done at the Reservations counter."

She returned the smile. "I'm not here for a room; I came to make a long-distance phone call. I was told that phone service is available here."

The man looked a little dubious. "Phone service available?"

"Yes," Kelsey said, and handed him the card that Wayne had given her. "I'm staying at the Layard Clinic. Dr. Wayne Gresham assured me that I could make a call from here. He said to speak with a Mister Lu Donnel."

The man looked at the card and brightened, "Oh, my friend Dr. Wayne – yes. I am Lu. Certainly, I will make a phone available to you. Please sign the register."

She hesitated for a moment, vaguely uncomfortable with signing her name. 'Oh well,' she thought, 'what's the big deal?'

So she picked up the pen and scrawled K Theroux.

Lu Donnel pointed to the left side wall, where three glass doors led into closet sized rooms. Each contained a small desk, a chair, and a telephone. "Please," he waved his arm, "choose any of them. You must understand: there are no private phone links in this region. All calls must be done through our Lodge satellite system. You will find directions in the room. They are reasonably sound-proof, but the lines are not guaranteed to be secure."

She thanked him, chose the middle room, went in, and closed the door. What Lu was basically saying was that no one could make a call on their own phone; all calls had to go through the house lines and could be monitored.

Would anyone care to listen in on what she and Reid had to say to each other? The idea would have been laughable a year ago, but now she thought about Julian and Phil, about Marley's notebooks, about the military in Salvata and the jeeps at the dock... and about Wayne saying 'things have changed here.' A prickly sensation of being watched tingled on the nape of her neck, and she felt the sudden urge to jump up and run.

But she shoved it down and said out loud, "No. I'm going to talk to Reid. If anybody wants to eavesdrop, bloody well let'em." So she spent three minutes reviewing directions on the Placing Calls placard taped to the wall, then nodded and said, "Okay, let's give this a try."

She followed all of the steps carefully and keyed in Reid's cell number at the appropriate point. But the phone call failed to connect.

So she repeated everything twice... and twice more failed to connect.

Which was no wonder; this was a busy morning for Reid.

At that moment, given the time difference, he was circling through the trees above the Klamath River, moving swiftly toward a nerve jangling scream.

Chapter 77: Flashpoint

Day 11: Thursday Morning

I came around to the cliff from the left, the hill side, instead directly from the cabins, wanting to move fast while also checking the surroundings. My senses were on high alert, trying to expect the unexpected, but my attention was being diverted by the sounds ahead.

When I reached the clearing Trinity was sprawled in the dirt with a smear of blood across her cheek. Niles was standing over her, shaking his fist and growling something, but I couldn't make out his words in the noise of the river. Was it real or staged? And if so, then Marley was probably close by.

But where?

As I turned to take a quick glance behind, Niles bent down, grabbed Trinity by the hair and wrenched her head back, sending flecks of blood into the air. He had a wild look in his eyes and drew his hand back for a swing. She threw up her arms to block it, then saw me. The look in her eyes was strong with fear and a plea for help.

It was time do something. Trap or not, I wasn't going to let him land that blow.

So I leaped forward, crossing the twenty feet between us in a heartbeat, caught his wrist in my left hand and thunked my right palm hard into his shoulder. He staggered back and I kept him moving, driving him another step and heaving him to the ground. He landed hard on his side, skidded on the slick mud and lay there, sucking wind and glaring. After a moment he pushed himself to his hands and knees with an angry look on his face, talking and waving, but it was hard to hear clearly. Something like "...don't understand..." but the rest was too garbled to make out.

Then Trinity's sat up straight and shouted, "Reid! No!" pointing to something behind me. I swiveled around in time to see Marley jump, arms outstretched, reaching for my throat.

" _Damn!"_ the thought flashed through my mind. _"Where the Hell was he hiding? If I hadn't gone to pull Niles off of Trinity, I would have seen him."_

Okay, those weren't the exact words flashing through my mind, because I only had a millisecond or so. It was more of a sensation, an impression... a regret.

And he was on me in a blur.

I had time to lean and twist a bit and his hands caught my shoulders instead of my neck. We went down in the dirt, rolled, and came up again, tangled together.

No time for clever feints and jabs. No time for slick judo take-downs or nerve blocks. He slammed me with a head butt, then wrapped his arms tight around my chest and pushed toward the cliff.

I pushed back. I'm no light-weight, but he had me by at least thirty pounds and was shoving with all of his strength. My leg was having a bit of trouble; as I shoved back there was an electric sizzle of pain in the knee, a reminder of the damage from two hits by Marley's truck.

The pain itself wasn't a problem - I could block that out – but we were sliding nearer to the cliff and I couldn't get the leverage to stop. What would happen when we got there? If he released his grip to push me off, that would be all the opening I'd get to turn the tables on him, to throw him over instead. It was a slim chance, and I got mentally ready for it. But if he kept holding on, kept squeezing and shoving, then we'd both go over.

I got myself ready for that, too.

He was breathing hard, raspy hard, and sour – probably mine was, too. His eyes had almost that same faraway look that I'd seen back at Grant Lake. Almost. But this time they were brighter and a lot more fierce.

Like before, his pupils were enormous – he had to be on something, and whatever it was made him reckless.

"Can you fly, copper?" He grunted, shoving us nearer the edge. "When I toss you over, what are you gonna do?"

"Can't fly," I said hoarsely, between clenched teeth, "But I can swim... and I'll take you down with me... and drown you like a rat."

"Huh! Not bloody likely." It was almost a chuckle. He was enjoying this – actually smiling.

By sliding my left foot slowly back I got an idea of how much space we had. Not much – maybe ten inches.

I tightened my grip on his arm with my left hand and leaned in hard with my right shoulder, then released the grip of my right hand and slid it down my side – down toward my hunting knife. If I could get it out, I'd hit whatever target was most available: a thrust and slash up and under his ribs would rupture his spleen and he'd bleed out fast... but maybe not fast enough. Burying the blade deep into his left armpit wouldn't kill him, but it would paralyze his arm and I could escape his grip.

But all that meant nothing if I couldn't reach the knife in time, and time was running out fast.

That's when I grit my teeth and got really mad. Emotion is a valuable tool, and anger can be used like any other tool. At the wrong time, anger is counterproductive – makes you overconfident and blind to danger; but at the right time – like now – it gives you a boost in intensity and strength.

So I pictured Marley threatening Chyll... attacking Kelsey... biting Trinity. And how I'd been wanting this confrontation, wanted to bust... this... son of a... bitch... in two....

I bent my knees slightly to lower my center of gravity and shoved till I thought my neck veins would burst. Our boots scraped and slid on the mud... and I started slowly to push him back; not much, but slightly, and my hand inched closer to the knife handle.

If I could just get it a little farther....

Then a flash of fire off to the left and an earsplitting CRACK. Something hot streaked along my ribs, like a white-hot fireplace poker, followed immediately by a blistering lance of pain. Marley let out a grunt and blood squirted from his shoulder onto my chest. We'd been shot, both been hit with the same bullet.

Who pulled the trigger?

Strength ebbed from my left arm and I lost the grip on his shoulder, and with it any chance to keep shoving him back. He coughed and blood leaked over his lip, but he shook his head, spit, and pushed hard. My boots slipped and we slid back toward the cliff again.

"Scared?" He hissed. "Hurt you, didn't it? Guess what? I didn't feel a thing. Not a goddamn -"

A second thunderous CRACK shattered the air, deafeningly loud – it must have been from closer than the first one. At the same time something zipped by my ear and a gout of blood gushed out of Marley's neck, splattering across my face. It was impossible to tell which came first: crack, zip, or blood gout – they all happened at once.

Another second passed, or maybe two... or five? – All sense of time was fractured right then. Voices were shouting, but they faded away. I guess that's because we were both over the edge now, in freefall. Marley's hands slipped away from me I felt the rush of air ruffling my hair and just had time to suck air into my lungs when we smacked into the water with a stinging slap.

We hit like a ton of bricks, tearing us all the way apart, and plunged under, bubbles roiling and boiling all around. The water was a crazy maelstrom of currents going in all directions, and as I spun, tumbled, and went deeper, everything became very dark and very quiet. It was impossible to tell which way was up, so I stayed limp, like I'd been taught as a kid.

Grandpa's face seemed to drift up close, his voice reminding me, "If the river pulls you under, don't fight it. The river is way stronger than you'll ever be. If you fight it, you'll just use up your air. And don't panic – trust the river. It will carry you for a while, but if you stay calm, it'll bring you to the surface. Wait till you're close, and only then start swimming."

"But what if you're tossed into the rapids, Grandpa, you know - the big ones? What then."

"Well, that's more of a challenge," he'd tell me. "It's even more important not to panic. When you get to the surface, lie flat to avoid rocks and branches. Point your feet downstream - that'll keep your head mostly out of the water. Look for the V-shaped deep water currents and head for them, even if that puts you in the middle of the river. When you see a big rock sticking out of the water, try to get around behind it – on the downstream side. Even in big rapids, there will be a slick of dead-water or slow-water right after a big rock. Get in that dead-water and catch your breath. Look around, see what's ahead, and make your plans for the next stretch. Try to find patches of deep water and learn to recognize back-currents. Use them to work your way to the shore."

No, I didn't hear all those individual words. It all came in a flash, kind of single gestalt moment, though for a brief microsecond I actually thought I could hear his voice: "Don't panic, boy...."

Okay, all that was all fine, but there were more problems that I forgot to ask him about back then.

"What do you do if you've been shot? If your left side isn't working too well? And you're cold and got no sleep and can't think too clearly?"

"What then, Grandpa?"

Chapter 78: Chyll

Day 11: Thursday Morning

Chyll reached the edge of the clearing near the cliff just as Reid was shoving Niles away from Trinity. She'd heard what he told her ("Get down to the beach with the rafters now. Don't stop, don't look back."), but had, of course, ignored it.

What was he thinking, telling her to split?

She had no fear of facing off against Trinity or Niles; Marley was a different matter, but if he was there – especially if he was there – then Reid might need her.

Besides... Yp-H, Tau, the dead critters, and now this crazy business at the river was just bizarre, and she had to find out where it was all going. So after watching Reid leave and waiting thirty heartbeats, she took off down the trail after him.

And now she stood, watching Reid toss Niles like a big ragdoll. Trinity rolled onto her side and pushed herself up to a kneeling position, fumbling with a rolled-up towel in her lap. She was facing away from the men, toward Chyll, and when Trinity looked up they locked eyes.

Trinity opened her mouth and shook her head, eyes wild. Then they got scared and her look shifted to Reid and Chyll heard her shouted "No!"

But the warning came too late. Something whacked into Chyll and she spilled down onto her hands and knees. It was just a glancing blow, not a direct hit, and didn't really hurt – more of a surprise, but enough to knock her off balance.

Whoever it was, was big and moving fast, directly at Reid. Chyll sat up, brushing twigs from her hands, and recognized him immediately: Marley. A jolt of adrenaline sent a shiver along her spine as she flashed back to the greenhouse, remembering the sour taste of fear.

Where'd he come from? How had he gotten behind them? Had he been hiding in the wrecked cabins, under the scattered, broken boards? Or - maybe under one of the rotten logs, with all the bugs?

Ugh....

Chyll jumped to her feet, feeling the fear dissolve into a blaze of anger, just in time to see Reid turning and Marley slam into him. They went down hard on the muddy ground, locked together in a desperate embrace.

Chyll knew in her gut that this was an embrace of death... that only one of them would survive. The impulse to jump out there and start swinging was strong, but that would have been next to useless; so she stifled it and instead quickly looked around for a heavy stick to bash with - a good, sharp one to split that bastard's skull.

Even as her eyes searched, a part of her was shocked at the blood-lust that seized her... this was new feeling, and, even more shocking, not an unpleasant one. There was a good piece of wood just a few feet away - a stiff madrone branch, two feet long and as thick as her forearm. Good for whacking knees or heads.

She leaped and snatched it up, then quickly spun around to see what was happening in the clearing.

Reid and Marley were on their feet now, rocking back and forth, shoving, scuffling, and sliding nearer and nearer to the cliff face.

Trinity was on her knees, unfolding her towel and pulling out a pistol – big and shiny and deadly looking. She brought it up in both hands, pointing at the struggling men.

Niles got to his feet and shouted something at Trinity, but when he started toward her she swung the pistol in his direction, and he backed away, shaking his fist and cursing.

Then Trinity brought the pistol back toward Reid and Marley. The two men were almost right at the very edge of the cliff, about fifteen feet away from her, with Reid on the far side.

Chyll stood motionless, one of the few times in her life paralyzed with indecision.

" _Damn! Damn, damn, damn! Is she aiming at Marley? She told me that she hated him. If I knock the pistol out of her hands, I might be stopping her from saving Reid."_

" _But what if she's aiming at Reid!"_

The thoughts – not the actual words - flashed through her mind in a fraction of a second; not as full sentences – more like frantic pictures or impressions, and they spurred her into action.

"I gotta have that gun myself!"

So Chyll dived toward Trinity, reaching out, stretching, but....

The pistol went off with a thunderous BOOM, louder than Chyll thought a gun could sound. She'd been just inches away from the barrel when the flame spat out. Movie guns didn't sound like that. Nor did the .22 automatic she'd fired at the shooting range in Halliday's basement. Trinity felt it too; she rocked back from the recoil and had to put her left hand on the ground to steady herself.

Chyll saw blood spurt from both Marley's back and Reid's side. At that angle of fire the bullet must have passed through both of them. So which one was Trinity aiming at?

Or could it be both?

Trinity pushed herself up straight and raised the pistol to fire again, but Chyll was ready. She leaned forward and slashed down with her stick. Trinity yelped and the gun spun out of her hands.

Niles scrambled for it but Chyll hurled the stick at him, heard a satisfying thump, dove onto the ground, scooped up the gun and rolled toward Reid and Marley all in one smooth motion.

She came up on one knee hearing Marley's gravelly voice, taunting Reid and laughing, already half- shoving him over the cliff.

Without a microsecond of hesitation or conscious thought, Chyll swung the barrel toward Marley and squeezed the trigger.

The pistol went off like a thunderclap. Her hand buzzed, her ears zinged and rang.

But she was only dimly aware of that; she was transfixed by the spout of blood spurting out of Marley's neck like a fountain, and by the blood covering Reid's face...

"Oh My God! I shot them both!"

And then they were rolling off the edge and tumbling into the air.

A second of frozen disbelief, then she jumped forward, leaning over the edge, just in time to hear the kuh-whump! of their bodies plunging into the water, to see the spray of mist shoot up, followed by foaming bubbles rising from deep below. They had both vanished - like they were sucked into another dimension.

She felt her heart pounding against her chest wall. Thump-thump one...thump-thump two... thump-thump three... thump-thump four.

Where are they? Why don't they come up? Why....why? WHY?

Something moved behind her and she spun around, half crouching, left arm in front and right arm drawn back to deliver a Kia strike. Then she remembered that she was holding a pistol and straightened up.

Trinity was stumbling toward her, eyes wide, saying something.

Chyll couldn't make out the words. She raised the pistol and Trinity stopped, holding out her hands and shouting hoarsely.

"Please. I only meant to help. I never wanted to hurt him."

Just which 'him' did she mean? Chyll pointed the gun at the ground between Trinity's feet and said, "Stay back," her voice shaky.

"Stay the Hell away from me" she repeated.

Trinity sank to her knees, tears welling up in her eyes.

How odd. When Chyll first saw Trinity, she seemed tall, glamorous, self-confident, and dangerous. Now, kneeling in the dirt, face streaked with tears, her hair in disarray, with a swollen lip and blood smeared across her cheeks, she just looked sad and fragile.

Another thought hit her – Niles! What had happened to Niles?

Chyll glanced around left and right. Niles was nowhere to be seen.

With a cry of exasperation, Chyll wheeled around, arched her back and threw the pistol as far as she could. It flew in a tumbling arc up, out, and down, hitting the raging river with a tiny, soundless splash.

"Christ almighty, I just shot them," she shouted. "I just SHOT them!!"

She ran along the edge of the cliff, trying to spot bodies in the roiling water, talking to herself.

"Okay, okay, stay calm. Look slowly and carefully. Wait - what's that floating, over there? A log or a person?"

Then Trinity was next to her, pointing and talking. "It looks like something alive... yeah, that's a person's head. Jesus! - Why isn't he moving? The water's just carrying him along...."

Carrying who along? Which one was it? She didn't remember what Marley'd been wearing – it all happened so fast, and there had been too many other things to think about. But Reid had been wearing... um... light brown shirt, yes, and black jeans.

She sidestepped further along the cliff edge, trying to watch the water and her footing at the same time.

There! Below and off to the left – wasn't that another head popping up out of the water? And sinking back down, then popping up again. He was being carried out toward the middle – wait - no, he seemed to be moving there on purpose.

He was swimming with one arm; one arm wearing a light brown sleeve.

Her heart jumped when she saw that. Yes! Reid is alive!

But why was he going toward the middle of the river?

Trinity was beside her again. "What's he doing? Where's he going?"

"I don't think he's got a lotta choice," Chyll shrugged. "Probably just trying to stay afloat."

But he seemed to be heading for a big rock looming out of the middle of the current. It appeared to stick out at least four feet above the surface, though it was tough to tell from up on the cliff. White foaming water surged around both sides, but directly downstream of the rock was a dark smooth slick, a triangular shaped calm spot.

The swimmer got close, thrashed around, looked lost, and then managed to get into the slick. After a bit more struggling he reached the back of the rock and hung on, breathing hard. They could see his shoulders and head shaking - but he looked safe for the moment.

Chyll jumped and shouted and waved her arms; there was no way he could hear her over the noise of the river, but maybe he would see her... and after a minute, yes, he raised one hand – his right – in a brief answering wave.

But what to do next?

If only Chypp or Autumn Kool were here; they were more practical than she was, always seemed to have good ideas. But they were four hundred miles away.

She would have to get help from somewhere else.

Chapter 79: Rescue Operation

Day 11: Thursday Morning

"What the Hell are you people up to?"

Chyll swung around. Chris, the rafting guide, was running toward them and shouting. He stopped about ten feet away, arms folded across his chest, breathing hard and looking angry.

"I told you - this place is a state historic reserve! Were those gunshots? What are you doing, shooting squirrels - or just having fun blasting away at the cabins?"

That was when he noticed Trinity kneeling on the ground, bloody and disheveled. He walked over and squatted down, peering closely at her face.

"God! What happened to you?" His voice softened and he looked up at Chyll.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, quieter now. "Where are the others?"

Trinity answered in a flat, unemotional voice. "Oh, we've been blasting alright, but not at squirrels. We shot your missing man."

She motioned toward Chyll. "She and I."

Trinity wiped her lips, streaking blood across the back of her hand. "He's was a druggie and a killer. And he came after us. Oh God - It must sound awful, but – look, he jumped Reid.... and there was this fight, and we... we uh –"

"We shot the son of a bitch," finished Chyll.

Chris stood up and walked closer, looking puzzled, finding this hard to believe. He gazed intently at Chyll for a few brief seconds, then looked back at the blood on Trinity's face, on her hands, at the purple bruise on her arm from where Chyll had whacked her with the madrone branch.

"Did he do all that to you?" he asked.

Trinity hesitated, glancing at Chyll, then nodded.

Chyll broke in, sounding urgent. "We can talk later. Reid needs help now! He's stuck -" she waved an arm toward the cliff, "out there."

"Out there?" Chris sounded doubtful. "You mean, he's in the river?"

"Yes!" Chyll said, turning and pointing. "Hanging onto that big rock."

"What, this one here? I don't see anybody..."

"No!" Chyll's voice was loud and impatient. "No, the big one – there, in the center. Don't you see him?"

It took a few seconds, then Chris got it. "Whoa! Yeah, I see him now. He has a grip on that boulder, but not a very steady one."

"Yeah, well, there's one more thing," Trinity said. "He got shot, too."

Chris shook his head, "Okay, I heard two shots, and now you say that two people got hit. So what gives? What went on?

Chyll ignored the questions. "Look man, Reid is in bad trouble - hurt and stuck out in the middle of all that.... He's gonna die if we don't get him back to shore. So - will you help us?"

Chris grimaced, thinking, then shrugged, "I've gotten people out of worse fixes, but I had better equipment and more time then. Let me get down to the camp and see what we can come up with. If we can't think of anything else, I'll try to swim down to him."

"Through that Hell-hole?" Trinity half-laughed in disbelief. "That's suicide."

Chris shrugged again. "You could be right... but we might have no choice."

He turned and started jogging toward the trail to the beach. Chyll was a half-step behind him. "If you're going out there to get Reid, I'm comin' with you."

He glanced back at her and shook his head. "Probably not a good idea. It's gonna be a tough go out there."

"I'm coming with you," she said again.

This time he just nodded, and they made it the rest of the way to the beach in silence.

Once there, Chris waved his arms and called out, "Hey, everybody - over here, quick."

He kept walking toward the rafts. Most of the people were just moving out of their tents - yawning, stretching, looking for coffee, but they stopped whatever they were doing and gathered around Chris and Chyll.

"We've got an emergency rescue op," he said, "and don't have much time."

There was a babble of questions, especially about the gunshots, but he held out his hands to shush them, and pointed toward the rapids.

"Somebody's stuck in the middle of that, about two hundred yards downstream. He's hurt and hanging onto a rock – not too steady. I'm going to try to get him outta there."

He shot an inquiring look at Chyll, who was standing next to him. She nodded, and he turned back to the crowd, "Actually, we're gonna try – she and I. But we need some quick help."

There were more questions, but he waved is hands and shook his head. "Later. Right now I need Hank and Jiang to get two of the medium sized inner tubes out of the shed and inflate them, then bring them down to the beach. Ali – can you show them how to fire up the compressor?"

She nodded, "Sure," and the three of them took off.

"Helen and Jolene," he said to two nearby ladies, "can you please get three life jackets? Two extra-large and one -" he glanced again at Chyll, then added "- small. Bring them down to the beach, too."

"Darla, can you go over the shed and have Ali show you where the first aid kits are? Have her give you a red one, not the green. Put it into one of the small packs, the little ones that Velcro onto a life jacket."

He turned to another of the group, Morgan, and asked him to bring a pair of small, light gloves and ten feet of light nylon rope to the beach. Then he stood, eyes closed, thinking to himself. After a moment he nodded and looked at Chyll.

"Okay - that's everything, I hope. Let's go take a look at the little raft of yours. That's probably our best choice, but we need to make sure."

"Oh- wait," he snapped his fingers. "You shouldn't go out there in those clothes. Long pants, sweater...they'll soak up water, slow you down, maybe even drag you under. Are you wearing a swim suit?"

"No," Chyll shook her head. "I'll just go in my undies."

"Yeah, you could," he nodded, "but..."

He turned and quickly scanned the young ladies just turning to leave, then called out "Hey Lynn, got a sec?"

Chyll remembered her from last night when they were roasting marshmallows. She'd seemed friendly, and yes – they were about the same size. Lynn came over and Chris said in a low voice, "Can you help us out? Chyll needs to borrow a swim suit –you have a spare?"

She nodded, said "Yeah, sure," and took off running toward the tents.

Chyll watched the other people moving fast too, trying to get their tasks done as quickly as they could. Everyone was rushing, which is exactly what she wanted, but it was already taking too long. Thinking about Reid clinging to that big rock in the middle of that cauldron of Hell made her stomach ache.

What a damn mess!

Yes - but there was no time to dwell on that now, so she shoved the thought aside. Later – she'd sort it all out later.

If there was a later; after all, she was going out into that cauldron too. That was something else not to think about .

Just do it.

" _Don't think about it first or you'll freeze up."_ The thoughts zipped through her mind. _"Just do it, like when you pulled the trigger and blew that hole through Marley's neck."_

The memory gave her a little shiver, but she shoved that aside too, then turned and went down to the water's edge. Chris was already there, inspecting their little boat. He was kneeling, checking this and that, and seemed pretty satisfied

"Yeah, good," he said. "It's strong rubber, not plastic, fully inflated, no air leaks, no holes in the bottom. The bow section is extra thick, which is good because I'll be ramming it into that boulder out there. It's got two oars, but I'll only use one. It's a little on the narrow side, but that will actually make it easier for me to control. It'll be a tight fit to carry both of us and the gear, but we can make it."

Just then Lynn came running up. "Here you go," she said, a bit out of breath, and handed Chyll a red one-piece swim suit. "Not real new, but I hope you like it."

"It's perfect," Chyll said, "Thanks!" She gave Lynn a quick hug, then started stripping.

Lynn tapped Chris on the shoulder and said, "Just keep your back turned, big boy. No peeking."

Chris laughed and did as he was told, but Chyll didn't care. This was no time for modesty. She tossed off her clothes and pulled on the suit in a flash. Lynn picked up the clothes and bundled them under her arm. "I'll hang on to these for you."

It was about then that Ali came over with Darla and the first-aid kit. She set it down inside the raft, and a few seconds later Helen and Jolene arrived with the life vests.

Ali looked at the gear, then at Chris and Chyll, and shook her head.

"I can see what you're up to," she said. "It's chancy. I mean really chancy. Maybe we should use the radio-phone to call in professional help."

"Good idea, but no time," Chris answered. "That would take what... an hour at least, maybe two? He's in bad trouble out there and needs help right now."

"So -" she nodded and turned to Chyll. "What about your copter? Can you use that?"

Chyll spread her hands, "It's parked somewhere downstream. I don't know how far. Eddie was s'posed to find a landing spot and wait for us. We were gonna hike out this morning"

"Can you get in touch with him?"

"No," Chyll shook her head. "Reid might know a way, but I don't."

"Actually," Chris broke in, "I'm planning on riding the raft down to wherever the copter is. If I find it and we get going fast enough, we can try to air lift Reid out of the water. The problem is Reid took a bullet in his side... he'll need help getting into the lifting harness."

He put his hand on Chyll's shoulder. "And that's where Chyll comes in."

Ali raised her eyebrows and slowly shook her head. "Pretty crazy. I hope you know what you're in for. Those rapids are enormous and that water's moving like a freight train."

Chyll shrugged. "Reid is my boss and my good friend. And I think I'm the one who shot him. So I am going to do this."

Ali nodded, tight-lipped. "Okay.... Good luck."

Hank and Jiang were the last to get back to the raft, right after Morgan brought the gloves and rope. Each one was carrying an inner tube, smallish ones that would fit a mid-sized car, not big truck sized ones. When they dropped them on the beach Hank asked, "So what's the plan?"

"Yeah," someone else said, "are you really going out there in this?"

Chris exhaled and cleared his throat. "You've been great, everybody, but there's just no time to explain anything. Thanks for all your help, but the best thing you can do now is go get some breakfast and let Chyll and me get ready. Except for you, Ali – I'd like you to please stay."

People meandered away slowly, reluctantly. As soon as they started moving, Chris handed the small life vest to Chyll and took one of the X-Large ones for himself.

As they put them on, he said in a low voice, "It's not that I didn't want them here, it's that they'd be bombarding us with questions and we don't have time to deal with them."

He checked Chyll's vest, tightened a couple of straps, then picked up the red first-aid kit and stuck it to the Velcro patch on her front-left side, while she put on the gloves. Then he lashed the two inner tubes tightly together, side-by-side, using the nylon rope, and tied the other X-Large life vest to them.

As he worked he spoke rapidly to Chyll and Ali.

"Alright, when we take off, you'll be in the front holding these inner tubes. I'll be in the back with the paddle. Don't worry about steering – you just kneel there and keep the tubes from falling out. I'll get us to the big rock, and that's when you spring into action – literally."

"I'm going to ram the raft into the exact middle of the rock – or as close as I can get to it. If I do it right, the raft will tilt up a bit and pause for a fraction of a second before getting pulled around the side and on down the river. In that split-second pause, you'll leap off the raft and onto the rock. You have to take the tubes and life-vest with you, so be ready. When I say 'Go' don't hesitate, no matter how crazy it looks. Just jump out as far as you can. Try to land on the tubes; that'll cushion you from the rock, which will be slippery, cold, and very hard. If you land wrong it could mean a broken wrist or trashed leg."

"Once you're on the rock, scramble over to the other side, where Reid is. Get him strapped into the life vest. If you want to wait for me to get back with the copter, that's cool, but it may take a while. Otherwise, each one of you grab one side of the tubes and push off into the rapids. The tubes may not be big enough to sit on, but they'll you keep your head out of the water. If you're lucky, you'll have one helluva fun ride. Once you hit calm water, get over to the side as fast as you can, because there's another bad stretch of rapids right below this one."

Chyll nodded.

"But," Chris went on, "If we don't hit the rock just right, we'll get swung around the side of it pretty fast. You'll still need to leap off; try to get into the dead water behind the rock and reach Reid. If you can't get to him right away, though, just ride down the rapids to the calm water by yourself."

Chyll shook her head. "I'm not leaving Reid there alone. That's not gonna happen."

Chris smiled. She had guts, and he was liking her more and more.

"Don't fight the river," he said, "you can't win. After you make your leap, I'll keep going down until I find your copter. We'll be in the air and looking for you as soon as possible. If Reid is still at the rock, we'll get him off, don't worry about that."

Chris pulled off his shoes, hoodie, and sweat pants, leaving him in blue swim trunks and a gray tank top. Ten seconds later they were in thigh deep water, climbing into the little boat while Ali held it as steady as she could. Even this close to the shore, the current swirled and the boat rocked and dipped.

Chyll went in first, to the front, kind of squatting and holding onto the tubes. It was awkward and hard to balance, but she wanted to be able to leap out fast, so kneeling or sitting wouldn't do. Chris got in back, kneeling and holding the paddle.

It was loud out here, and he raised his voice to be heard.

"The reason I wanted the red first aid kit is that it has morphine syrettes," he said. "I don't know how bad off Reid is... don't use them if you don't need to, but if he's in real bad pain then go ahead. But not until you get out of the water – otherwise he might be too woozy to hang onto the tube and get through the rapids. One more thing: take this."

He leaned forward and clipped a small plastic and metal tube about an inch long onto her life jacket. "It's a short range radio, only good for about a one mile distance, but that's enough for around here. We have just two of them, this one and another on my vest. It's waterproof, so no problem if it gets wet. But it's not shock proof, so try not to bang it on the rocks. If I call you, you'll hear my voice directly, but if you want to answer, push the little red button on the side."

"Okay," she nodded, "got it."

"Alright, if you get messed up, call me. If I find your copter, I'll call you."

She nodded again.

"One last thing," he said. "The second guy... what happened to him? Are there two people to rescue?"

Chyll shook her head. "He went over the cliff edge too. But don't worry about him. He's in a lot worse shape than Reid. Let's just get going."

Chris had to smile. "You're a brave one. Reid is lucky to have a friend like you."

Then he glanced back at Ali and nodded. "Okay, shove us off."

A push from Ali, and the little raft moved out. As the current caught the bow, it pulled them both forward and sideways with a twisting motion. Chris countered the twist by first digging the paddle in, then stroking strongly. He alternated this pattern, first on one side, then the other, and managed to keep them moving more or less straight.

And so they shot out – fast! – picking up even more speed as they moved closer to the center. They hit a trough, water spray drenching them, then bucked up and over a half-submerged log. Something hard whacked their right side and the boat tilted and curled as water poured in. Chyll lost her balance and nearly toppled out, but managed to grab one of the straps on the inside wall of the boat. She hung on tightly with her right hand while holding down the inner tubes with her left, leaning and straining to keep from falling out.

With a sudden jerk they sprang free and spun half way around... then came a series of strong whitewater rapids, plunging them down, shooting them up, wrenching them sideways, tossing their little boat like a beach ball.

Down – up – down – up, over and over and over, each time with another gush of spray washing over them. The sound of the river hammered their ears; the force of the current was tremendous; only Chris's strength and experience kept them from flipping over a dozen times.

Everything was happening double-quick, so fast that there was no time to be scared. In fact, Chyll felt really jazzed, hyper-focused - very alive... and realized that she was actually enjoying this.

And then - Yes! There it was: a dark, massive lump jutting into the sky, looming ahead of them.

From the shore it'd looked big – ten feet wide and sticking maybe four feet above the surface. Here, in the river, with your head just above water level, it looked enormous.

E-frigging-normous.

Chris was saying something, but she couldn't make out the words and didn't want to take her eyes off the boulder. Her attention fixated on it, and she suddenly felt no sensation of moving; it seemed as though they were standing still and boulder was rushing at them like the front of an 18-wheeler.

"Gotta time this right... no second chance...."

She let go of the strap, gripped the tubes in both hands, leaned forward, tensed her muscles, took a very deep breath, and then heard Chris shout.

"GO!"

Chyll leapt out – exploded out, really – clutching the inner tubes. She landed on the top of the rock, rolling and bumping. The surface was wide but it wasn't flat – it was rounded, smooth, and very slippery with wet algae and bird droppings.

She skidded out of control and went clean over the other side.

As she flew off the edge, her left arm whacked something hard; she lost her grip on the tubes and plunged into a gushing maelstrom of bubbles, swirling water, and noise.
Chapter 80: Cliff Watch

Day 11: Thursday Morning

Trinity knelt near the edge of the cliff; not too near, but close enough to see some of what was going on. By leaning out and looking upriver, she could make out the pebbly shore where the rafts were pulled up.

It looked like Chyll and that guide - Chris? – had just gotten there. He was waving his hands and people were starting to crowd around. They must be planning something to get help to Reid.

But what?

When she looked down the river she could seem him clearly, still hanging on to the back of that big rock and not moving much; just enough to keep his head above water. He seemed to be secure, but it was comical in a grim way: all around him the river was blasting like mad, water gushing and spraying, but there he was, in a little slick of calm water, a tiny, personal oasis in a stormy, turbulent, and very wet desert.

Secure for now, yes, but precarious, very precarious. If he moved five feet in any direction, he'd be in the middle of Hell.

She called out to tell him that help was coming, but he didn't seem to hear.

So she shouted louder, "REID!" and again, "REEEEEEDE!"

"He'll never hear you in that torrent."

The sudden voice from behind startled her, and she spun around – too fast - and lost her balance. A hand grabbed her wrist, pulling her back from the edge. When she looked up, there was Niles looming above her, grinning.

She shoved his hand away and stood up, swaying slightly. Most of the shakiness she'd felt after the fight and gunshots had passed, but the sight of him brought it back.

"You jerk!" she spat out. "What're you doing, sneaking up on me? How long were you standing there?"

"Trinity, please," he said in soothing voice. He was looking at the action on the river, not at her. "Calm down. You did pretty well, overall."

Now he turned, looking into her face. He reached out to touch her cheek, but she swatted his hand away angrily.

"I'm ready for you now, you miserable shit. You surprised me before. Snuck up and called, and when I turned around you sucker-slapped me – hard!"

"Trinity – I'm sorry, there was no choice. It had to _look_ real. And for that to happen, it had to _be_ real."

Wasn't that the same thing Marley said to her about the tit-bite?

"Shove it" she said hotly. "I'm getting damn tired of being knocked around and then apologized to."

"I'm serious," Niles went on. "It was the only way. We had to draw Reid out here, had to let Marley catch him with his guard down, and it was almost perfect. He was focused on you and me and didn't see Marley coming."

"Almost perfect," he repeated, narrowing his eyes. "The only thing wrong was that I wanted to be in control when the two of them started fighting. But you had my pistol. Stole it right out of my knapsack last night, didn't you."

"You're damn right!" she said, "and it's lucky for you that I don't still have it. If I did, you'd be coughing lead out of your lungs right now."

Niles laughed. "I doubt it. You're not a killer. Besides, when you fired that shot, it nearly knocked you over. And you almost missed both of them from only six feet away."

His smiled faded. "You know, when I found out you'd taken my pistol I, uh, got really pissed, and, yeah, slapped you too hard. Really, I'm sorry about the bloody lip. But if you don't have it now, then who does?"

"You want your goddamn gun - good," Trinity sneered and pointed toward the whitewater. "Go get it! Chyll threw it out there, right in the deep part. So why don't you just jump your sorry ass into the river and look for it?"

His face flashed surprise, but that dissolved into another smile. "Wow... incredible. That's exactly what I was going to do – she just saved me the trouble. I'm no killer either, Trinity, but I thought I'd have to use that pistol on one or maybe both of them, and then toss it in the river to dispose of the evidence. But you and Chyll did it all for me – shot Reid, shot Marley, got rid of both of them. "

He started laughing, "And got rid of the gun, too. Perfect!"

Trinity shook her head. "Go to Hell. I don't want to hear any more about your perfect plans... they make me sick." She turned back to see what was going at the beach. There was more action now - people were breaking into small groups and moving away in different directions.

"But you need to hear this," Niles persisted.

"One way or the other, they both had to end up dead, with or without you being involved. With Reid out of the way, there are no more inconvenient questions, no road blocks to stop our work here. Regrettable, but that's the plain truth. Same with Marley, though I feel sorry about him. He was an unbearable buffoon at times, but had his strong points, and he delivered on his promises. Problem was - outside the lab he was undependable... talked too much... got into trouble with the law... drew attention to himself. With our Project, being undependable means disaster. So, the word came down that he had to go."

"The word, the word, the Fucking Word," Trinity shrugged. "That's what happened to Julian, right? And Phil? The Fucking Word came out, and it was 'KILL,' right? Wasn't that it?"

When Niles didn't' answer, she went on, "So who tells you the Word, huh? Who's the big shot that sends down the death sentence?"

"The one who relays the message to me is someone you know... but the one who makes the decision is someone you should hope you never meet," Niles face was grim. "If people know too much, then when they become unreliable or no longer needed, they seem to get eliminated. By keeping you ignorant, Trinity, I'm also keeping you from being a threat... and protecting you."

"So then what about you?" Trinity said, sounding unconvinced. "How do you fit into all this? What's your way out?"

"I don't know," Niles shook his head. "But I can't stop yet, not till it's finished."

"Finished?" Trinity's voice rose higher. "Finished? You can consider me finished as of now. So just stay away from me, you and your goddamn Consortium."

"Don't be a fool," Niles said, slowly moving closer to her. "You can't escape them. None of us can. Plus – you might still have a role to play."

She heard him step closer, could almost feel his breath on her shoulder.

Trinity wasn't looking at Niles, but she felt him getting nearer, felt the little prickles of warning tingling at the back of her neck, and quickly slid three or four steps sideways. Her attention was split between the river – Reid off to the left, Chyll and Chris off to the right – and Niles, who was still drifting closer. She wasn't ready to fight him – no way she'd win that – but she thought she could run faster... then, with a sinking feeling remembered that her shoes were loose, the laces untied.

Slowly she slid the left one off, then quickly kicked off the right. It bounced and skipped over the cliff edge, disappearing into the rushing water below. The ground beneath her bare feet was soft and damp... mostly grassy and fine grained dirt. As long as she didn't slip or step on anything sharp, she should be okay.

When she spun and faced Niles, he was stopped, looking at her curiously. She folded her arms but kept her knees slightly bent and her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to sprint away.

Niles smiled suddenly, but there was little warmth in it. "Oh for God's sake, Trinity, relax. I have absolutely no intention of harming you. I like you – always have. And I'd gladly get you out of the Project if I could, but I can't. Not yet, anyway. If Reid escapes that mess out there, we'll need you."

"For what?" Trinity asked. "What are you talking about?"

Niles answered in what he hoped was a soothing voice. "Because of what he could've found out. Reel him in, just like you did with Julian. Like you did with Phil. I know you can do it. Make him trust you, and find out what he knows about Yp-H and Kanja and..." he hesitated for a moment, then finished, "and plague."

"Why Pee What?" Trinity said with a frown. "And plague? What're you talking about?"

"Never mind now," Niles said. "Just make him trust you, get him to talk. I'll figure out what to do about it later."

She stared at him, getting madder by the second, then growled. "Forget it. I'm not your lackey anymore. And if you're wondering about whose side I'm on, I'll tell you. That shot I took? l was aiming at Marley. I wish you were down there in the river instead of Reid."

Niles shook his head. "Brave words, but stupid. Remember: Julian lost his nerve. Phil talked too much. And Marley became undependable. They all outlived their usefulness – and now they're all dead. Don't outlive your usefulness, Trinity. Don't throw your life away."

He turned and looked out at the river, then spat and said in a lower voice. "And you're wrong about me. I'm not quite the monster you think. I don't get any joy out of this, but I know what has to be done and try to have the guts to do it. You need to do the same. If things go right, we may still get very rich and breathe easy."

Trinity was still shaking from her outburst, still feeling the heat of anger. Breathe easy? Her throat was so tight that she felt like she might never breathe easy again.

She looked away, trying to shift her focus back to the beach. Just two people there now; Chyll and Chris. He was kneeling down, looking at something in the boat, but it was impossible to tell what.

A quick movement at the corner of her eye... Niles coming at her? No – he was moving away, fast, back up the trail, past the cabins, and out of sight.

With a mental shrug she dismissed him from her thoughts.

Maybe from down at the river level she could do something to help. Was there a way get from here down there without climbing down this cliff? There had to be a trail somewhere... right?

Only one way to find out: get moving and look. She started jogging slowly in the downstream direction, but had to be careful. The ground was loose and slippery, and a mis-step could send her into watery oblivion. After maybe two hundred feet she paused: What was that, just ahead? Not much more than a narrow scrape of a path that a deer might use to go for a drink of water. It was steep and slick with wet grass and mud, but seemed to go all the way down, and there was nowhere else to try, so....

The first three careful side-steps went okay, but on the fourth her front foot skidded; she picked up speed, fell backwards, landed with a muddy splat and bounced and slipped the rest of the way down. The end came in a rush, totally out of control, plunging her into a shallow pool at the river's edge. The water was less than four feet deep with a sandy bottom; not dangerous, but plenty deep enough to get thoroughly drenched.

Ouch and yuck - she was wet, bedraggled, with mud on her shirt, sand in her shorts, and minus some skin from her right knee and elbow. But she'd made it down with no broken bones, and was moving, doing something instead of standing on the cliff yapping with Niles.

But Oh – wouldn't a tall mug of strong coffee be good right now?

Chapter 81: Shoot

Day 11: Thursday Late Morning

I'd been hanging onto that damn rock for... how long? Not sure - lost track of the time, brain a little woozy.

Okay – more than just a little. The twin shocks of being slammed by the bullet and plummeting into the water had dulled things, but the adrenaline rush of flailing through the rapids to find safety had shoved me into a razor sharp focus.

For a moment.

But as the danger of immediate death faded, so did that sharp focus. Breathing evened out, heart-rate slowed, and my brain was slowing, too. Couldn't really hear much except the river, which was a steady roar.

And here I was, hanging on and waiting – for what? The high water wasn't going to ease up for at least a month, and no one was going to swim out here and give me a life jacket. So why not just push off?

It wasn't that staying here was tough; there were good hand-holds, and hanging on was easy. As long as I stayed close to the rock, the water was calm enough... though a few feet away it got wild real fast.

Well, I guess I just wasn't ready. Didn't feel up to leaving. In my tiny haven I was safe, and I'd be in trouble out there when I shoved off. So there was no rush, right?

Except that the water was cold and that was sapping my strength. Plus there was a burning sensation zinging along my left side, running pretty much from armpit to hip. Not much actual pain, though - the cold water might be keeping it numb. Or maybe my nerves were weirded out.

I could raise my left arm a little, but not above shoulder height, and couldn't grab anything with my left hand \- no strength. There wasn't much blood, but maybe the water was washing it away as fast as it bled out. I winced and looked down. There was a big rip in my shirt – why hadn't I noticed that before? \- And I could see torn flesh underneath. It didn't look like a bullet hole; more like a ragged gash. At the bottom of it was something whitish – a rib? Nothing seemed to be splintered, though \- no bits of bone poking out.

Anyway, here I was - stuck in a tiny island of calm in the middle of a Hellish riffle; but at least I was alive. Which was more than Marley could say, if that hole in his neck meant anything.

Okay, then, make a plan. Think of a way out of this. Someone had waved from the cliff next to the cabins, so they know where I am. Must have been Chyll and Trinity. Maybe they'll try something...

My brain seemed to meander in circles, not coming up with anything useful, and I was getting closer and closer to the 'Oh, the Hell with it' moment and just letting go.

And then I heard something like a squeal, looked up - and saw a miracle. Chyll was flying off the top of the rock – how could that be happening? Her arm whacked my head and she hit the water with an enormous splash.

Where she landed was off the side, not right behind my big rock. It was a transition zone, kind of a border between the backwater and the ripping whitewater of the current. She came up sputtering and I pushed off the rock with my right hand and reached for her with the left, trying to keep her from drifting any farther away. I got a grip of sorts on the back of her life jacket and tugged her closer when something bumped into the back of my head. I shot a quick look over my shoulder and saw...an inner tube?

Now where'd that come from?

I latched onto it, trying my best to stay in the dead water, but we were sliding farther and farther away with every split second.

"Chyll," I said, "grab onto the tube! Wrap your arm around it – quick."

"No, boss, we gotta get back to the rock. They'll bring the helicopter to pull us up."

"Not going to happen," I shook my head. "We have to ride this out."

Her eyes got big and she nodded, knowing what was coming. We each wrapped one arm – my right, her left – around the tube and got sucked out into the fast water, swirly-whirly and relentlessly strong. The water level was so high that we shouldn't hit any rocks – I hoped - and she had a helmet and lifejacket, so if she could just keep her grip and avoid getting tangled in a submerged log, she should be OK.

"Keep your feet up and in front of you," I shouted. "Try to stay shallow and DO NOT let go of the tube, no matter what."

At least that's what I meant to say, but the last words got lost when we dipped into a trough, got shot up into a curling wave, and my face got buried in bubbly foam.

We were out in the full fury, plunging under, popping up, being tossed and whipped around like a toy. If we lived, this would be the wildest and maybe the funnest ride of her life.

If we lived....
Chapter 82: Will it cleanse mine?

Day 11: Thursday Late Morning

There was no trail along the river banks, but the way was mostly flat, and the surging winter high water had scoured away bushes, branches, and other tripping hazards. So as long as Trinity stayed close to the shore her progress was fast, even though she was barefoot. Her skinned knee throbbed, but the exercise raised her spirits – plus, the sun had come out and the air felt warmer than in weeks.

It had been so frustrating to stand on the cliff and watch Reid struggling in the river, and to be unable to help. At least now she was moving, and splashing through the sandy shallows and climbing over the occasional boulder was exhilarating. She couldn't remember doing anything like this in... well, ever. Most of her life was spent in cities, traffic, and smog. The forests and rivers in northern California were totally new.

Whatever gut-wrenching drama was happening, this was beautiful country.

When first starting hiking downstream she'd meant to keep sight of Reid, but here at water level it was much harder to see him than it'd been from above. The big rock where he was stuck was obvious enough – that was impossible to miss - but he was so hidden behind it that she couldn't even be sure that he was still there.

That thought – that he'd lost his grip and was even now tumbling down the rapids – spurred her on faster. After a hundred yards or so the river widened into a deep stretch of slow moving water, before narrowing again and funneling into a second set of mighty rapids. Just ahead of her was a small but inviting beach, a good spot to stop and think about what to do next. She waded the last few feet through a narrow backwater and abruptly stopped – a body was lying face down at the sandy edge, gently rocking back and forth as the water alternately pushed in or pulled away from the shore.

Her heart leapt – 'Ohmygod Reid?' and with a sick feeling she plutched through the water for a closer look.

No... it was Marley.

Dead?

Her shoulders slumped and a queasy feeling gripped her stomach; but she steeled herself to take a closer look. With slow, reluctant steps she shuffled closer, then knelt down and saw a jagged tear running through his tricep.

"That must be the first bullet – the one I fired," she whispered. "Could that have killed him?"

After splashing a few handfuls of water on the back of his neck to wash away the sand, she saw another hole just below his hairline. It was the entry wound from the second bullet and wasn't much bigger than the tip of her index finger.

Her brow frowned and she wondered, "What about that one?"

It wasn't easy, but she took a deep breath, grabbed his other arm, and dragged him mostly out of the water. Turning him over was even tougher; she had to get down low, dig her feet into the sand, and push... push... push hard. When he finally rocked passed the tipping point, he rolled over unexpectedly fast, and she tumbled down onto him.

"Ugh!" She recoiled quickly and sat back, staring at his neck.

The exit wound from that second bullet made a hole larger than her thumb, just to the side of his Adam's apple... raw, ragged, and streaked with tiny tendrils of ripped flesh where only smooth skin should be.

Trinity nodded, remembering the blood spurting out; this shot must have torn through an artery. If his heart were still beating, blood would be gushing out. But it only oozed slowly, so his heart must be silent. She let out a soft sigh, leaned closer, wiped the sand off of his face with her wet blouse, and felt sudden tears in her eyes.

Marley with the hard muscles, the brash self-confidence and the vain good looks, but the flawed personality. Marley, who could be smiling and sensitive one day, then flare into a cruel bad-ass the next.

Well - he didn't look like such a bad-ass now.

She leaned away and sat with her head in her hands and a knot in her stomach, not wanting to look at him anymore, at his body... his dead body. Oh - she'd seen death before, but not like this. Not someone that she'd shot. So what if her bullet hadn't been the fatal one? When she'd pulled that trigger she was mad with rage and fear, and had every intention of killing him.

So that made Niles wrong... she was a killer after all, and knew that if she faced that situation again, then yes - she'd pull that trigger again. Choosing between Reid and Marley was clear: she'd choose Reid every time.

And then what? Turn the gun on herself? Maybe... she'd lain awake early in this morning, spiraling down emotionally, wondering why her life had taken so many wrong turns. The pistol would have been a way out, but Chyll had gotten it away from her, had fired the fatal shot - and then tossed it in the river... and with it her chance to end it all.

So then, what next? She threw a pebble into the water and lay back, closing her eyes _. "To Hell with Niles and all his damn plans. I just don't care about any of it anymore. What happened to us, Julian? Years ago I thought we were together for life. Then I lost you... then got you back, and lost you again. Where did everything go wrong?"_

The sand was warm and comfy, the air so peaceful - just the dull, constant roar of the water; her mind drifted....

But even as she sank into the daze of self-pity, something was nibbling at her reverie, nagging at the edge of her attention: Voices? Yes, there were voices coming from somewhere. Or no, it was just one voice, dim at first, but louder now, shouting for attention.

"No," she whispered out loud, "go away. I can't take any more."

Chyll - the flash of recognition snapped her wide awake. She opened her eyes and sat up, shading her face against the morning sun. The voice was Chyll's, calling for help, but from where?

What was that in the water? A log? No, it was moving. A person? Wait – there were two people out there trying to swim to her small beach. But they were struggling, drifting downstream toward the second set of angry whitewater.

"Oh God," she felt her heart race. "Reid and Chyll, and they're not going to make it - they're gonna get pulled down."

For two, three, four heartbeats she watched, transfixed, then ran to the edge of the water and dove in. She was a good swimmer - had even taken a lifesaving course at the YMCA as a teenager - but a big river with murky water and stiff currents in full winter surge was an unknown challenge.

The dive was not elegant; she hit with a whoosh and a splash, went under, glided and kicked, came up, took a breath, then stroke, stroke, exhale... stroke, stroke, inhale... stroke, stroke....

It took only seconds to cross the backwater and hit the main current, which was minimal here in the wide zone between the big rapids. But she could still feel its tug, could sense it pulling her downstream. A flash of regret, the beginning of panic stabbed at her heart – _What am I doing?_ But it lasted just a second - maybe just a fraction of a second, and in her mind she screamed, _Niles – get out! And you, Marley, and Phil. And you too, dammit, you too, Julian. Just get out of my life, all of you!_

She swam with anger, and with desperation. They were close to each other now, then closer... then together, and she hooked her left arm around the tube and began pulling back toward shore. Chyll swam strongly too, but Reid was hardly moving, doing little more than just hanging on.

Pull, pull, stroke, stroke. The current was increasing – not a good sign – but she didn't want to look, didn't want to see how near they were to losing it. Just grit your teeth and pull, stroke, breathe.

And after a bit the current began to ebb, momentarily disappeared, then started in the other direction. Yes - they were in the back current, almost to shore. Thank God, a little farther and they'd be able to touch the bottom, just a little more.

Keep going....

And three minutes after she'd jumped in – it seemed much longer though - they crawled onto the beach and flopped down, breathing hard. Trinity, on hands and knees, looked over at Reid lying nearby. He was flat on his back, eyes closed and drawing in deep breaths. Somewhere along the line he'd lost his shirt. There was a wet red streak on his left side, slowly growing bigger as blood seeped out.

Chyll, sitting on the other side, raised a hand in a tired salute. "Thanks, Trinity. We wouldn't have made it without you. You saved our lives." Then she pulled off her helmet and lifejacket, tossed them aside, and shook her hair, spattering water droplets on the sand.

That's when she noticed a fourth person lying about ten feet away. She looked quickly back at Trinity, who just nodded and said, "Yeah."

Chyll walked the few steps and knelt down, leaning over the body, staring at the ragged hole in Marley's neck. He didn't seem to be breathing.... No – he definitely wasn't breathing. She touched his face, running her fingertips along his cheek.

The flesh was still soft, still felt almost alive, but was cold, too cold for life

She leaned closer, just inches away from his face, and softly whispered.

"Marley Granger, can your spirit hear me? You're dead, dead as all get-out. And I killed you."

Drops of water fell from her hair and plinked down onto his forehead, making tiny splashes. A final baptism, she wondered? "Is the water from this mighty river strong enough to cleanse your soul?"

She had a vision of herself standing on the cliff, pulling the trigger, feeling the kick of the pistol, hearing the roar, seeing the gore, and shuddered.

"And will it cleanse mine...?"

Chapter 83: Cable

Day 11: Thursday Late Morning

Once Chyll and I were pulled into the rapids, the ride was a reckless and wild whirl. We slid over a few rocks, but luckily they were smooth and we got nothing more than light bruises. The high water kept us above any submerged logs, a good thing as getting snagged in a mesh of branches can be a death-trap.

We were tumbled and pitched, sank and rose, spun in circles, got sucked under and popped up.

Again. And again.

But we always kept hold of the tube and always kept track of each other. And then - it was over... probably took only thirty seconds. But it was one Hell of a half-minute.

There was no pain – action has a way of dulling that – and my attention had been focused on hanging on, so it wasn't until we hit the slower water and needed to start swimming that I noticed how tough it was to move. My right arm was good, but I needed that one to grip the tube. The left one was the problem – no coordination or strength. My legs were alright and I was kicking okay, and Chyll was pulling for all she was worth, but we were sliding downstream faster than we were going toward the shore.

Before long – like maybe ten seconds - it became clear that we weren't going to make it, so I switched my attention from the shore to the cataracts looming ahead, looking for the best place to hit them. It was a dicey moment: I wanted to urge Chyll to shove off on her own and swim away. She could probably make it to the beach okay; but if she couldn't, then she'd be way better off here, hanging onto a tube, than going down the white-water with just her life-vest.

That was when we felt a thump and an arm reached over from behind me and hooked onto our tube. I swiveled my head and saw Trinity, who spat out a mouthful of water and shouted "C'mon!" With her and Chyll both pulling we started gaining on the river, started moving toward shore faster than going downstream.

I suppose I could have been the selfless gentleman and let go, let them get to safety. But they'd both be eternally pissed at me if I did. We were going to get there together or not at all.

The ladies swam and pulled, I struggled and kicked, and damn if we didn't make it. When we hit the shallows and could stand, we all staggered onto the sand, breathing hard.

A body, just a few feet away - someone sleeping? But no; as I slumped to my knees I saw it was Marley, looking very dead. I still wasn't clear on exactly what had happened up on the cliff; one second we were locked together, both of us bleeding from a gunshot, then his neck exploded spattering blood on my face, and over we went. Sure, it was a second gunshot - but who pulled the trigger?

Well, so much for him.... I flopped onto my back and closed my eyes, still gasping a bit but soaking in welcome sunshine. The water temperature in the river wasn't frigid like the ones in the Sierras that come from snow-melt, but it was still damn cold if you're stuck in it for an hour in December, and the chill had gradually sapped my energy. But along with the blissful feeling of returning warmth came an awareness of a growing torment along my left side.

Ignore it.

Not like ignore it and it'll go away; more like ignore it because thinking about it won't help. Think about something else instead, like how to get out of here... and what happened to Niles... and that Trinity just saved us...

Wait – repeat that last one: Trinity just saved our lives. And risked hers in swimming out to save us.

What to make of it? Yesterday I had a pretty strong suspicion that she was involved in the Phil-Marley-Niles mess; and last night I was sure that she'd lied to us about when Marley had left her place to drive up here. Early this morning I wondered if she was sending messages to Marley from the cabin last night. And then there was that first gunshot – whether she'd been aiming at Marley or at me, she'd hit both of us.

And now – she'd saved our lives.

What to make of it? But my brain was a little tired, so I decided to just accept it and think more about it later, when thoughts could come straighter. For now, just lay here on the sand and be grateful for the sunshine.

Chill was moving and whispering something, but I couldn't hear what she said, and frankly wasn't real interested anyway. My focus was slipping and I dozed off for a minute or two, but a strange hissing and a tinny voice jogged my attention. It sounded like an old radio or a bad telephone.

I cracked open one eye and saw Chyll unclipping something small from her life-vest. It was crackling and buzzing with soft static, but there was definitely a voice calling her name. It sounded like Chris.

Aha – a short range radio... I'd brought one too to keep in touch with Eddie, but mine was somewhere in the bottom of the river now.

Chyll pressed the send button and said. "You're not too clear, but I can make out most of your words. Where are you now?"

She released the button and his response came back right away. "I... your copter... air rescue. Almost... take off. Are you still... rock?"

That got my attention, and I pushed myself up, listening carefully.

"No - couldn't stay there," Chyll answered. "We shot on down till we hit calm water. We're at a little beach now, just below the first set and just above the second set of rapids."

"Okay," Chris said. "I know exactly where that is. Are you both alright?"

He was coming in much clearer now. Maybe they'd lifted off, and the transmission from up in the air was better.

"Yeah," Chyll said, "we're good. It was pretty freaky comin' down the rapids, but we made it, thanks to Trinity – she saved us, got us to the shore."

"Excellent, that's excellent," Chris sounded relieved. "Just stay there and we'll come get you."

"Okay, but this beach is tiny- way too small to land the copter."

"We won't land. We're gonna drop a cable harness and winch you up."

"Whoa. Um... you sure you know how to do that?"

"Oh yeah. Been there on both sides – ridden up on cables, and also run the winch, pulling up people and gear. Spent four years in the Navy. No problem."

No problem? Chyll looked over at me and grimaced when she saw the blood on my left side. I gave a thumbs-up sign and tried to smile encouragingly.

She shook her head and looked at Trinity, who just shrugged her shoulders.

"Alright Chris," Chyll said into the microphone. "If that's the only choice, then we're ready."

Trinity didn't sound real ready. "Riding up a cable? How safe is that?"

"Don't worry, it'll be okay." I said, trying to sound reassuring. "Eddie'll come down as low as he can, and there'll be a harness around you, so you'll be secure."

"But what if the cable breaks?"

"Then you'll just have a short drop onto the sand or the water. It won't be all that high."

All true, most of the time. But not all of the time. A close friend of mine died when the cable snapped during a rescue in the mountains, but there was no sense in telling Trinity or Chyll about that.

Anyway, there wasn't time for more chatting – we could hear the helicopter coming upriver, and soon we could see it too; a few seconds more and it was right next to us. Chris had the door open on his side and was waving. Eddie pulled over to hover above the beach, about thirty feet off the ground.

There was a pulley attached to the roof of the copter, just above the top of the passenger-side door. A cable hung down from the pulley, with what looked like a large life vest attached to the end.

Chris was wearing the vest. He said something to Eddie, then calmly stepped into space. Eddie worked a lever and the cable fed out, lowering Chris to the ground. He unzipped the vest but didn't let go of it. The copter was weaving slightly – not much, but slightly – and he didn't want the vest to go flying off.

"Okay, you see how easy it is. Who's first? I think we should send Reid up last. He'll probably need help to get out of the vest and into a seat."

Chyll came over to me and leaned in close to speak in my ear. "Boss, are you doin' okay? Ready for Eddie to haul you up?"

That beach was warm and cozy, and I would have been fine staying there for a while, but I also needed sewing up before the rest of my blood oozed out. "Yeah, good," I nodded. "Don't think I could arm wrestle a kitten, but I'm ready to ride out."

Chyll jumped up and went back to Chris. He was looking at Marley. "You got a fourth person here. He doesn't look too good."

"No, he's not," she said, "He's uh... he's dead. But we need to take him along, too."

No sense saying any more about it now. Chris was too far away to see the bullet wound in Marley's neck, but he'd notice it before long.

"Okay," Chyll said, "hook me up." He held the shoulders of the vest while she turned and slipped it on and zipped it up. There was a flap that came up between your legs and hooked on at the waist, so you could kind of sit during the ride.

Chris patted her shoulders and asked, "You ready?"

She looked up at him and shrugged. "Ready as I'll ever be. Let's hit it."

A moment later she was yanked off her feet and rose into the air. When she got up to the door, Eddie stopped the winch. She grabbed a handle on the side of the copter, swung inside gracefully, and shrugged off the vest - the whole operation took just a few seconds.

She pushed the vest back outside, but Eddie didn't lower it down. Instead he motioned for her to come forward. She told me later how he'd shown her what to do.

"It'll be a lot better if I concentrate on keeping us level and stationary and let you handle the cable winch." In a few simple directions, he showed her how to run the controller. It was a joystick apparatus, pretty easy to understand. "Just go slow and careful. Keep it smooth when someone's harnessed up in the vest. Don't jerk them up – just use steady pressure. Got it?

She nodded and leaned out the door to see better, then gently pushed the stick forward to lower the cable and vest to the ground.

Chris caught it and held it for Trinity. She rode up pink cheeked and white knuckled, but made it okay. Chyll helped her out of the vest and sent it back down again.

This was my turn. It took longer to get me rigged up. The vest pressed right against the tear in my left side, so Chris pulled off his own tank top, folded it, and used it as padding. Chyll made the ride as smooth as she could, but my lips were pressed into a grim smile when I reached the top. They got me out of the vest without any trouble though, and Trinity helped ease me to into one of the back seats. Eddie nodded a quick 'Hello', and I managed a wave in response.

Marley was tougher. Chyll gave Chris more slack in the cable to get the vest around him, but it took a few minutes before everything was ready. Eddie was doing his best to keep the copter motionless, but it still drifted and swayed slightly.

Chyll let out more cable.

Finally Chris waved and Chyll pulled the stick back. Marley rose in the air, arms and legs dangling like dead weights.

Well, what else would they do? When he was lying on the sand, you could have thought he was asleep if you hadn't seen the hole in his neck. But watching him hanging from the cable like that, loose and limp and twisting slightly in the wind... well, he just looked... dead.

Getting him inside the copter cabin, out of the vest, and onto the floor was not easy - the space was cramped and he was heavy. Chyll and Trinity pulled him this way and shoved him that way until he was arranged on the floor between the front and back rows of seats. It was a wonder that one of them didn't fall out of the open door.

NOT easy, not at all. But they managed.

Then Chyll lowered the cable down one more time. Chris came up quickly. As he unzipped the vest Chyll slid the door closed. Good – that was a lot quieter, and felt a lot safer, too.

She sat on one of the front seats, next to Trinity, but twisted around and looked back to where I was sitting.

"Boss - how're you doing?"

"Fine, much better now," I smiled. Trinity had passed me Eddie's thermos of coffee and a box of biscuits while Chyll and Chris were dealing with getting Marley pulled up. It was the first thing I'd eaten since last night, and it perked me up. Still a little low on energy, but feeling much better than an hour ago.

As I got more awake, I became more aware of my left side. It still hurt like a sonofabitch, but wasn't life threatening - just sore as Hell.

Chris sat on one of the back seats next to me, with Marley sprawled on the floor by our feet. I pulled the tank top that Chris had given me away from my side and held it out. It was wet with blood.

"I don't suppose you'll be wanting this back?"

"Consider it a gift," he smiled. "You may still need it."

I nodded and pressed it back against my side; the pressure felt good and would slow the bleeding. "Thanks," I said, and meant it.

As the copter rose up higher, Chris said, "There are hospitals in Arcata and Eureka to the west and one in Yreka if you want to go east. It won't take you too long to get to any of them. I can give you directions, but I can't go with you – I need to get back down with my rafting party."

"We'll go to Happy Camp," I said.

"What?" Chris shook his head. "There's not much there – a clinic for emergencies and stuff like that, but not a big hospital. You'll be a lot better off going to Eureka."

"Thanks - I know you're right about that, but we've got other, uh, considerations." As I said that I glanced down at Marley; Chris looked surprised at first, then nodded. By now he'd seen the bullet wounds in Marley's arm and neck. His eyes wandered up to Chyll and Trinity, who were both turned, looking at him silently.

He smiled. "I guess you know what you need to do, and how best to do it. Not my place to question you."

I nodded. "Chris, you were really good down there, like handling emergencies is nothing new."

"Yeah," he said, answering me but looking at Chyll. "I was telling her that I'd done this stuff in the Navy. Just got out a year and a half ago; didn't have much else going on, so I hooked up with this river rafting outfit."

"Hey Eddie," I called. "You got any cards?" He looked back at me with a raised eyebrow, then tossed me his wallet. I fished out one of the Halliday business cards and handed it to Chris.

"Look me up when if you're ever in the Bay Area. We could probably find something for you there."

He slipped the card into a pocket in his life vest. "Thanks, maybe I'll do that. But right now, I need to get back to my group. I know you can't land on our beach, but if you just drop down kinda low above the water, upstream where it's calmer, I'll just jump in. It's pretty deep there."

Eddie nodded and circled down toward the beach where the rafters had camped last night. People were standing near the shore looking up at us. Some of them were waving, others seemed to be calling out something. Eddie moved to the center of the river and kept the copter hovering about twenty feet off the water while Chris slid the door open. He yelled "Hello" to the crowd on the beach, then looked back at us.

"Okay, take care, everybody." As he turned to go, Chyll grabbed his left arm with both of her hands and said "Thanks Chris. For everything...you were great."

He looked down at her. "Me? Nah. You were the brave one. Riding that tiny raft – jumping that big rock – shooting those rapids. You're the real champ."

After a moment of locked eyes, she raised onto her tip-toes and gave him a quick kiss. He looked over at me with a big smile, "I think I'll take you up on that offer."

Then he leaned back and rolled out the open door. He turned in the air and splashed in feet first, gave us a quick wave, and swam toward the shore. I had to smile too. Chris was good looking, athletic, sharp, probably early to mid-twenties, and seemed like the kind of guy that Chyll could get along with.

She slid the door closed with sparkling eyes, and Eddie called out, "So where's this Happy Camp place? Gimme some directions."

"Just follow the river, thataway" I said, pointing. "It's the next town you'll come to, but we're not going all the way in. Once we get near I'll show you where to land."

It would take a few minutes to get there, and I could feel the blood soaking through the tank top. The bleeding had slowed but never stopped. The coffee and biscuits had livened up my spirits, but they were starting to wear off. It would've been great to stretch out on the back seat and close my eyes for a while, but I needed to stay alert - needed to make a phone call or two.

Okay now, think... what was grandpa's number?

Chapter 84: Getaway

Day 11: Thursday

While Trinity, Chyll, Chris, and Eddie were scrambling to rescue Reid, Niles was disappearing into the woods.

The plan - removing the threat of Reid and maybe Marley, too - had been hastily made but would have worked if Trinity hadn't discovered the pistol in his backpack. That is, it would have worked if he'd been able to shoot at the men struggling on the cliff edge.

But that was a big, big 'If.'

When he'd devised the plan late last week, the idea of shooting someone was merely an abstract future possibility. But when he awoke this morning and thought about the reality of actually pulling the trigger – murdering - Reid and Marley, it sent chilly prickles of sweat down his spine.

And then a minute later he found that Trinity had taken the pistol... and didn't know whether to be outraged or relieved.

Well, whatever; he'd done what needed to be done - Marley was almost certainly dead and Reid was barely hanging on. However distasteful, it was over and out of his hands now. Time to dismiss the whole thing from his mind and get moving. There was still much to do

Ideally, he'd take another day or two to clean up the last loose ends at the Waxman; but there was no chance for that now. After disposing of Phil last Friday, Mr. Greene called for a full meeting of the inner circle of the Project, to be held immediately. Niles was expected to give a timetable for final activation of the next phase. So he moved fast, trying to recall the travel plans and flight connections he'd thought about Sunday night in the motel outside of Eureka.

The first thing to do was to reach the stack of old boards where Marley had hidden last night. That took just a minute, and he found Marley's backpack under a rotting oak plank. He opened all the zippered compartments, dumped everything on the ground: snack bars, a towel, two pair of socks, gloves, a flashlight, and yes – the keys to the Waxman truck. He slid the keys and snack bars into his pockets, put everything else back, then took off wearing his own pack and carrying Marley's.

Skirting around the rafter's camp was easy; they were watching the action on the river downstream and ignoring anything going on upstream – which was where he was headed.

After a half-mile or so it looked safe to cross; the river was wide, but the current was slow. He stripped, put his clothes and pack into a black plastic garbage bag, and tied it closed. Next, he dropped three heavy rocks into Marley's pack, then waded out to about neck deep and let it go.

It immediately disappeared into murky depths. Sure, in a few months the water level would drop and the pack might show up, but by then it would be a ragged, muddy wreck; no one would pay much attention.

He went back to shore, picked up his own stuff and waded out again, going waist deep before pushing off into a slow backstroke.

Damn – water was cold! But that thought brought a little glow of satisfaction: if it was this tough for him, then Reid must be in real trouble...

Ten minutes of slow, steady swimming got him to the other side. Once on the rocky beach, he toweled off, dressed, and began the long climb up the side of the bluff to the road. It was moderately steep, with loose, scrabbly rock; but there were plenty of bushes and trees to hang onto. He zig-zagged his way up slowly, carefully, and as quietly as possible.

At one point he heard a whooshing sound and flattened himself behind a clutch of huckleberry bushes. A copter cruised by just above the river level; he was actually looking down on it. Interesting - an unusual, sleek shape, not like a typical helicopter; it had to be the one that Reid had come in on last night.

So where was it going?

There were only two possible answers: either they'd plucked Reid out of the water and were headed to a hospital... or they were searching for something.

Something like me? The thought spurred him into moving faster.

He was clear on what to do next. After reaching the road, drive the truck to the rafting company parking area and exchange it for his car. From there, continue north on Hwy 96 and take Interstate 5 to Yreka. Then call Hank Glade. Hank was his contact at the Waxman motor pool, and he'd be royally pissed to find out that one of his trucks was up here, but for a couple hundred bucks he'd send a man up get it, no questions asked.

For a couple hundred more, he'd also send a man to Yreka pick up Niles' car.

Why Yreka? There was a small airport just outside of town where he could hire a private plane to Las Vegas. If the timing worked out right, he could catch the late night COPA flight leaving Vegas for Panama City. In a day or two the General would send one of the Consortium planes to pick him up and fly to the army base at Salvata. With luck he should be at the Lodge late Saturday or early Sunday.

It was critical to get out to the Mission right away, to see what shape Phil left things in. The Field Trial might not be finished, so he'd need to find Phil's notes - and Julian's too, for that matter. 'Gotta get word to Greene,' he thought. 'Have him send Colo out to collect them.'

It was a real pisser that they decided to pull the plug on Phil right now, when things were at such a critical stage... and that raised another thorny issue.

Kelsey.

He tried to get her to wait for a few months, but she'd been so bloody insistent on going down there now – damn it. She was dear to him; he'd watched her grow from a gap-toothed little girl to the smart and capable Dr. Kelsey Theroux. But the Consortium had no room for sentimentality; if she was in the way, then - dear or not – she would be removed.

In his heart, he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

But in his head, he knew it would.

And that would present him with a helluva choice: to stand aside and let them kill Kelsey, or to shield her somehow.

Was there a third way?

Chapter 85: Needlework

Day 11: Thursday Afternoon

A half-hour later we were gathered in the shade of a big oak tree about a mile away from town. People camp here in the summer, but it was empty now. There were picnic tables with fire pits and a primitive bathroom not far away. Eddie had landed in a nearby field, and we carried blankets and gear to this little clearing and laid them on the grass. I was sitting on one of the blankets, leaning against the tree; we'd found more coffee, a half-dozen chocolate bars, and a small sack of trail mix, so I was feeling pretty good, considering.

Eddie was sitting on a table with his feet on the bench, looking at me with a puzzled frown. His eyes moved from face to my bloody side and back again. "Okay," he finally said, "why here, Reid? Why not just go to a hospital in Eureka? Or better yet, just head back to the Bay Area?"

"We can't go back just yet," I shook my head. "I want to talk to a coupl'a people first. They should be here in a few minutes... not long."

I took a bite of chocolate and wriggled into a more comfy position. The bleeding had almost stopped, and my side was wrapped in a clean towel. The pain had receded to just a dull ache. Either I was getting used to it, or my nerves had gotten tired of complaining.

We had phone service here - not real good, but enough for Chyll to get in touch with Chypp and let him know that we'd be back in a few hours. "Have him get word to Autumn Kool to have somebody watch Niles' house. Let us know if he gets there, when he leaves, and where he goes. Also have someone hang out near the Waxman in case he shows up there."

After they talked for a minute, Chyll looked over and asked, "Should he ask Sgt. Sanchez to arrest him?"

"No," I said. "Definitely not. We've got nothing to arrest him for. He hasn't done anything that we know of \- yet. Let's just track him, see where he leads us."

"Okay," she nodded, and chatted for a while longer while I tried to relax. The buzz from the coffee and chocolate was starting to wear off, and my energy level was dropping again.

Even after all that had happened, it was only just mid-day; but I'd been through the wringer, and wanted nothing more than to sleep for a while. So I closed my eyes and my mind drifted to thoughts of Kelsey... I should call her... let her know about Marley... ask more about that field trial... tell her to be careful...

The winter breeze was light but had an icy bite to it, and I began to shiver slightly. But then Kelsey was wrapping me in a warm blanket and I looked up to thank her and... it wasn't Kelsey. Trinity, with a concerned look in her beautiful green eyes, was tucking the blanket around my shoulders and brushing my forehead with her hand.

She whispered "Fever" and Chyll answered something but I didn't catch it. Probably I dozed off for a while after that... the next thing I felt was a hand on my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to a familiar and welcome sight.

"Hi Gramps."

"Kuutach," he said, a worried look on his face. It means grandson; he hadn't called me that since I was little, but it felt good to hear it again. I reached out to take his hand and we smiled. The little nap had restored some of my energy - a bit - and mostly cleared the fog from my mind.

A nearby voice said, "Can you get him to lay down here?" It was Doc Pierce, a family friend from way back. He'd covered the picnic table with a white sheet and was opening his black bag.

I looked around and nodded to Chyll, Trinity, and Eddie. "This is Lincoln Bartell, my grandfather, and over there's Dr. Joshua Pierce. He's is going to take a look at my little trauma."

Eddie helped me up onto the table, and we watched the Doc lay a syringe, magnifying glass, needles, and a few other items onto a clean towel. He was in his mid-sixties and had seen pretty much everything there was to see in the way of backwoods injuries.

Chyll came over and started to shake Gramps' hand, then leaned in and gave him a big hug. He was solid; slightly under medium height, but broad-chested and thickly muscled. The lines on his face showed nearly eighty years of living mostly outdoors, but his voice was strong and his smile was big.

And he was smiling now, as he looked down at her. "You must be Chyll – Reid said you saved his life."

She stepped back and looked him in the eye. "He said a lot about you, too – it's great to actually meet you."

"Well, the pleasure's mine, and I mean that."

"And you must be Trinity," Lincoln said, stepping over and taking her hand, "Reid says he owes his life to you, too."

I didn't catch what else they said – Doc was washing my wound with sterile saline and it stung a bit – but Lincoln, Chyll, Trinity, and Eddie all chatted and laughed.

You can't say Gramps doesn't know how to work a crowd....

When he came back to the table to inspect the damage, I was lying on my right side, with my left arm up in the air. Doc Pierce asked him to hold the magnifying glass and a flashlight as he worked.

"Light's not too great here and my eyes aren't much better," he said. "But this wound needs to be thoroughly cleaned before I start stitching."

After three or four minutes the Doc said, "Huh," straightened up, and started loading a syringe with clear liquid from a glass vial.

"Linc says you were rock climbing and fell, scraped your side on way down, and landed in the water. Is that right?"

"Yeah, that's about it," I agreed. It wasn't a great story, but it was the best we could cook up in short notice to cover the type of injury I had.

"Well, that's good." he said, "'cause if it was a gunshot wound, I'd have to report it. But it wasn't, right?"

"No, just a helluva fall and scrape."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Thing is, if I didn't report a gunshot wound my license would be in jeopardy, so it a good thing it's not...."

"Then again," he went on, "I'd have thought that there'd be dirt or little bits of rock in the wound if you'd scraped it on a cliff face, and that the scrape would be a wide and shallow. This is narrow, with a pretty deep gauge running along the center."

"Well, I was in the water for a while. That probably washed out any debris. And maybe what I hit on the way down was something hard and sharp"

"Uh huh," he said. "And the shape of the injured flesh shows that the trauma came from the top-front and cut toward the lower back. Most times in a fall a scraping trauma starts in the low and cuts upward as you fall....."

"Probably I was twisting as I fell, trying to grab onto any handhold I could get."

"Uh huh. No abrasions on your fingers, though, and no other bumps or scrapes. Unusual for a bad slide down a rough cliff."

He injected the local anesthetic and was starting to sew it up as he talked. I ran out of answers and so kept quiet. He moved with swift, practiced strokes chatting while he worked. "I'll do what I can, but the flesh is pretty torn up, especially here, where it goes right down to the bone. You probably have at least one cracked rib - can't tell for sure without an X-ray. You're going to have a helluva scar, though, and be pretty sore for a while. But you're lucky - no major damage. "

"How about you, young lady," he said to Chyll. "Were you rock climbing too?"

"No, not me," she said. "I was down below, taking pictures. I didn't see him fall, just heard him hit the water."

"Then you jumped in and helped haul him out?"

"Yes, that's right, we both did – me and Trinity."

"Uh huh," he said. "And where about was this? Nearby or far away?"

"I don't know... not too far, I think."

"Hell, Josh, enough with the questions," Lincoln said in kind of a groan. "Concentrate on sewing him up, for Christ sake!"

"Just tryin' to get information for my report, Linc."

"Dammit Josh! There ain't gonna be no report! If we'd wanted a report, we'd have gone to the clinic."

Doc Pierce looked at Grandpa, then at me, and then nodded. "Okay, but when you do go to a hospital for a thorough exam, and they ask you who sewed you up, just tell them it was Bigfoot. Don't mention my name, OK?"

"Alright. Thanks, Doc," I said.

"Uh-huh." He kept working at it: sewing, bandaging, taping. Another car pulled up and Grandpa went over and I heard a muffled conversation.

Eventually Doc Pierce said he was ready to go; it probably hadn't taken more than twenty minutes, but when you're the one getting the needle, time tends to drag. He stripped off his gloves and shoved them into a plastic bag, along with the syringe, needle, leftover thread, gauze pads, and anything else he'd used, and then handed the bag to Lincoln. "I expect you'll want to dispose of this," he said.

Gramps nodded.

I sat up and pulled the blanket around my shoulders. Doc opened his bag and took out two plastic pill bottles. He dropped them into a small white paper bag and handed it to Chyll.

"The white capsules are an antibiotic," he said. "Take two now, then one every four hours for the next ten days."

Chyll tossed out the remains of my cold coffee, poured in some water, and shook two capsules into my hand.

I swallowed them.

"And," Doc continued "this other bottle has some pills that'll kill the pain. Take two of them now, too. You may not feel much pain yet, but you will. Be careful with these, though. They'll kill the pain, but they'll make you a little loopy."

Chyll doled out two of these tablets and I swallowed them.

"You'll be in charge of these?" he asked her. "See that he takes them when he's supposed to, but doesn't take too many."

"Yes, I will," she nodded.

"Okay then. Remember though - this was just a rush job. You should get to a full service hospital to be thoroughly checked out. Rock falls can be tricky – might cause internal injuries that don't show up right away. And the same goes for, uh, other types of traumatic injuries. "

I shook his hand. "Thanks Doc. I'll do that."

Grandpa came back then with two more men. I recognized one – Bill Lakeside – but not the other.

"Reid, you remember Bill, right?" When I said "Sure - hi Bill", he continued, "and this is Otter - " He stopped, looked over, and said "Otter, just what the Hell is your real name?"

"That's all there is," Otter said. "Just Otter."

Bill grinned and started to slap me on the back, but held up just in time, looking embarrassed. "Sorry," he said. Then he held out a paper bag. "Linc said you'd all be hungry, so I stopped by the cafe on the way over." He reached in and pulled out an assortment of beef, chicken, and veggie sandwiches.

We all dug in gratefully.

While we ate, Grandpa pulled Bill and the Doc aside for a whispered conversation. After a few minutes he came over to us and said, "Bill's gonna give Josh a ride back to town. Otter and I'll hang around for a while."

As we made our good-byes, Eddie handed ten $100 dollar bills to Doc Pierce. He fanned them out, looked at them, then over at me. "A lot of money for a little bit of time."

"Worth every penny, Doc. Thanks for the needlework... the confidential needlework."

He looked at me a moment longer, then nodded, shoved the money into his wallet, and got into Bill's car. As they drove off, I picked up my cup and asked Eddie if he had any more coffee. He said yes, but that it was stone cold.

It tasted great anyway.

"Doc's a good guy," Grandpa said, watching them go. "Bit of a stickler, but we can trust him all the way."

Then he turned to me. "You said something about another problem. Care to give more detail?"

I sketched an abbreviated account of my run-ins with Marley, without mentioning his name. I didn't say anything about the Waxman or plague or toxins; just let them know that Marley had deserved to die, and we'd been involved in making it happen.

"Doc didn't need to know about it; we don't want any death certificate. Another thing we don't need is a police investigation about how he died. Nothing good can come of that. It would be a giant hassle for..." I looked at Chyll, then at Trinity, then back at Gramps. "...for all of us. It's best if he just disappears. Anyone interested in him can figure that he's off in the woods or out joyriding in Hawaii - I don't care, as long as no trace of him turns up again. Ever."

Otter nodded. "So where's he right now?" His voice was low and textured, like a rake being pulled over gravel.

"In there," I nodded toward the copter, then stood and walked toward it... not too fast, but I made it without help.

On the way, Grandpa stopped at his truck and grabbed a large canvas bag, maybe seven feet long, with a brass zipper.

Marley fit nicely.

Getting him in wasn't easy. It took three of us – Otter, Eddie, and Grandpa – to slide him off the copter floor and carry him to the bag. Chyll held it open while they maneuvered him in, then started zipping it up.

Before closing it completely, she paused for one last look at his face. I could see her lips moving – a prayer? – then she zipped it the rest of the way. She stood up, her eyes moist. I glanced over at Trinity. She was pale faced and wet eyed, too.

Well, what the Hell... even Marley deserved a few tears, I guess.

The three guys carried the bag to Gramps' truck and opened the door of the camper shell on the back. It took just few seconds to slide the bag inside, covered it with a tarp, then toss in the plastic sack containing the used medical stuff.

As he closed and locked the door I asked, "How much trouble is this going to be for you?"

Otter coughed softly and I looked over at him. He was wearing faded jeans and work-boots, with a thick corduroy vest that had a Pro Rodeo decal sewn onto the upper left side. His eyes were pale grey and he had tattoos of stars running down both arms. There was another, larger one on his left bicep that read "Semper Fi".

"None," he said.

I nodded and we shook hands. It was like gripping tree bark.

Grandpa gave me a hug – gingerly, to avoid squeezing my left side – waved to everyone else, and they drove off.

As their truck crunched over the dirt road, Trinity came up next to me.

"What are they going to do with him?" she asked. Her voice sounded small, with a hint of a quaver in it.

I put an arm around her shoulders and tried to sound reassuring. "Make him vanish. How and where... those are things we don't need to know. Better that way."

"Jeez," Eddie muttered, "that Otter's a piece of work. What dark alley did he come out of?"

"There are a lot of guys from dark alleys around here," I answered. "Who knows? If my life had been a little different... that could be me."

Chapter 86: Trinity

Day 11: Thursday Afternoon

We watched Gramps and Otter turn onto Highway 96 and drive away with Marley. They wouldn't be going far before turning off and heading deeper into the Siskiyou Mountains, the range that runs along the border between California and Oregon. I had no idea where exactly they were going, nor any desire to find out; there were plenty of wild, empty stretches out there, places where a body could disappear for eternity, and wherever they chose was fine with me.

Ten minutes later we'd gathered up our stuff and climbed into the copter. Eddie was going over routes for the fastest way home as he revved the engines, but I told him that I wanted to swing by that parked truck – the one that Marley had left on the side of the road above the river.

"Just want to see if it's still there," I said when he asked why. He didn't know what-all had been going on with Niles, and I didn't want spend time explaining it just now.

He shrugged and nodded, "Okay, man. Let's see if we can find it."

So we cruised along at a moderately slow pace, keeping the road in sight. I was sitting in the front next to Eddie; the ladies were in the back. Nobody was talking. It'd been a weird, busy day, and everyone was dealing with their own thoughts.

The time passed quietly and my concentration got a little fuzzy. After a bit, though, I heard Eddie say "I don't get it," in a kind of puzzled way.

"What?" I answered, trying to get my attention back in focus.

"The rafters' beach is down there," he said, pointing off to the right, "and the truck was over on the other side, just about here. Wasn't it?"

Chyll was leaning forward now, arms across the back of my seat. "Yeah," she nodded, "it was on the road, about a quarter-mile on the upstream side of the beach."

"That's what I thought," Eddie said. "Parked under that Oak tree in the clearing up ahead, uh...right there." He pointed out the front window, and I recognized the spot – yes, that's where the truck was.

It was empty now.

I leaned back and nodded to myself. When I'd first met Niles, he'd come across as a soft academic type, but I could see now that he had a lot more grit than that. He'd made it away from the cabins, across the river, and climbed up the bluff – no easy hike. And then he'd gotten away in the Waxman truck.

Yeah, a damn lot more grit than I'd given him credit for. It made me wonder what else he was capable of.

"Which way do you think he went?" Chyll asked.

"Upstream leads to Highway 5; downstream heads toward 101," I answered. "He could take either way back to the Bay Area, but we'll still be there first."

"Unless he doesn't go back at all."

It was Trinity's voice; her first words since we left Happy Camp.

"Not go back...." I let the words roll around in my mind for a few seconds, and thought I could see what she meant - but didn't like where it led.

I swiveled around toward her, but the sudden motion tweaked my side and my ribs felt a stinging jolt. I sucked in a quick breath and Chyll squeezed my arm.

"Looks like the anesthetic's worn off, huh Boss?"

"Yeah. You got more of Doc's pills?"

"Uh huh, but it hasn't been very long since you had the first two. Remember he said they might make you a little loopy."

"Right," I nodded. "Okay, no pills yet. I need to think straight for a while."

Then I looked at Trinity. "It sounds like you know something more than we do."

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and just shrugged. Then her shoulders slumped a bit and she said quietly, "Maybe. It's all confusing... I don't know where to begin."

Her eyes were pleading for something; but not sympathy. Maybe help?

I was feeling ragged, but also energized. The feeling wouldn't last long though; it was best to get things hashed out now before it faded. So I stood, a little shakily, and moved to the back seat, next to the window on the right. Chyll was on the other side, with Trinity in the middle.

"Okay," I said, "I'll start, and lay out what we know. You can fill in the gaps with what you know."

She sniffed and nodded. "Okay, I'll try."

"Alright," I went on, "We don't have this all figured out yet, maybe not even halfway figured out. But here goes...." I went over what we'd found so far, starting with the fight at Grant Lake and going up to the point of Marley shipping the toxic fruit and modified plague bacteria to an unknown destination.

"It looks like somebody's planning on using it to cause a helluva problem, but what? And where? And why?"

It'd taken fifteen minutes of yakking to tell the story, and now I stopped to catch my breath; trouble was, though, that each breath came with a stab in the side. The rib – I think it was the third one from the bottom – must be broken. Doc had cleaned the wound and sewn up the torn flesh, but all the movement in the river probably ground the broken parts against each other. Had little bitty bone splinters punctured their way into the muscles?

It sure felt like it.

"Any more Coke around?" I asked.

"Here Reid," Trinity reached over and handed me a half-full can. "Have mine."

I thanked her and took a long swig. It was warm – we'd run out of ice back in Happy Camp – and had a strange aftertaste of lavender. Lavender? I glanced at the top of the can, then at her lips... and then had to smile; even with everything else going on today, Trinity had found time to put on lipstick.

I closed my eyes to do a little mental pain blocking exercise and felt a gentle nudge. Chyll was holding out two of Doc's pills. "Okay," she said, "you're looking stressed, boss. Better to have you loopy than hurting."

I could have shut out the pain if I'd needed to - really needed to – but this wasn't one of those times, so I swallowed the pills thankfully.

Then I took another sip and went on talking, trying to look at both Chyll and Trinity at the same time. "But there's not enough evidence – hard, meaningful facts - to get the police involved. Someone could argue that this is all part of a legitimate research project... and we don't know enough to prove them wrong. If there even is something wrong. That's the frustrating part – we could be caught up in the crime of the century, or a squabble at an academic tea party."

"But there are some nasty indicators. The deaths: Julian was first, rumored to be a murder covered up as suicide. Next Phil - was his death natural or arranged? Lester, who was involved with Marley and may have known too much. And then Marley himself. What was he doing attacking us? Why did he try to run me down at Kelsey's? Why did he threaten Chyll? What's so important that it's worth killing for... and dying for?"

"This can't have all been for nothing, but how do we find out more? If you're right about Niles not going back to the Waxman, then the trail might be going cold – at least here. The next link must be somewhere else, like - wherever Marley sent his stuff."

That thought immediately reminded me of Kelsey, and I shoved it away just as fast. No, she couldn't be involved. Couldn't be.

Couldn't be.

"So what's next? It would sure help if we could find someone who was on the inside from near the beginning."

I set down the Coke, reached over, and took Trinity's hand. It was warm and moist, like the slight sheen of sweat on her forehead and above her upper lip – those perfect, lavender coated lips.

"Is there anything you'd like to add?" I said, trying to sound easy and non-threatening. "We've got an hour or two to listen to whatever you want to say... but please, let's have the truth."

She looked uncomfortable, unsure of herself. I liked that. When we'd talked before – in her office and in her living room – she'd been smooth, self-confident, flirty, even a bit edgy. She was nothing like that now, unless she was an even better actress than I thought. "I know less than you think," she said slowly, "and half of what I think I know is probably wrong. That toxin and plague stuff you were talking about - I never even heard about that before. They never included me in any planning, so I didn't really know what was going on. I was just supposed to keep certain people... motivated."

"Motivated for what?" I asked.

"I don't know. Really - I don't, and now - everything is collapsing around me. Two weeks ago it was all smooth and good. I was at that jungle clinic, enjoying helping out the people there. Phil was working at his lab near the Mission and seemed pleased with his results. Then things started unraveling. Phil and I had a blowout argument. Then I came back here and Marley was changed. He was always a little wild, but now he was crazy and... and violent. And Niles was nervous, jumpy like I'd never seen him before."

A long pause; another sigh, then she went on "And now he's run out. And Phil is dead. And Marley's dead. And next it's going to be... me."

She sniffed and her eyes teared up. Chyll passed her the plastic bottle of water she'd been sipping at since Happy Camp. It wasn't much, but was better than the warm Coke. Trinity smiled a grateful thanks and took a drink, but coughed softly and water dribbled over her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand and took a deep breath.

Then she said in a low voice "Or you Reid, or Chyll. Or all of us. All three of us could be next."

She heaved a big sigh and shivered. A bit dramatic? Despite everything – the knitted brow, the welt on her forehead, and hair in disarray – she was still an eye-catching beauty, the kind a guy would want to hug, and comfort. And she knew it, had used it to her advantage before. And now? I reminded myself that she'd been believable yesterday when she was lying... and an image flashed into my mind, an image of Bogart in the Maltese Falcon telling Mary Astor that she was "damaged goods."

Was Trinity damaged goods? No, I didn't think so... didn't want to think so. But could we trust her, believe her?

Another image, this one of her diving into the river and pulling us out, getting Chyll and me safely out. Saving our lives.

"We're not going to let that happen, Trinity. But you've got to help us."

She nodded. "Okay... how?"

"Let's start with information. How'd this all begin?"

"The project?" She shook her head. "No clue. Like I said, Niles never told me much."

"Well, for you then. How did it start for you?"

Her eyes shifted from me to Chyll, then back at me, and she swallowed hard. Chyll handed her a Kleenex, then reached over and gently stroked her hair. It was a sweet but incongruous moment – Chyll being like a big sister to Trinity – and it wouldn't have happened yesterday.

But a lot had changed since then. Trinity wiped her eyes with the Kleenex, then leaned over, kissed Chyll on the cheek and whispered, "Thanks".

Then she took a deep breath and began:

"For me, it started when Niles wanted to get Julian involved in this new project. He'd learned about me one night when he was drinking a bottle of wine with Julian's parents. They'd known each other for years, ever since Julian started working in Jim Hillen's lab. I'm not sure how my name came up, but Marge – that's Julian's mom - you met her, I think – she, uh... never liked Kelsey. She's kind of a snob, you know, used to say how her great-uncle was some baron or duke. Anyway, she didn't think that Kelsey was high class enough for her super-genius son. I guess they were getting pretty soused, and she started showing Niles old photo books of Julian at Stanford, and there were pictures of me and him together. That was back when I was working as a model, mostly in SF or LA, but every now and then in New York or Paris."

"Julian and I had met at a reunion party for Palo Alto high school, his ten year reunion. I was a senior at Paly then, and me and my friends worked as hostesses for school events. Anyway, we met there – he didn't have a date – and we hit it off."

She shrugged and went on, "Well, we dated for a couple of years after that. Marge always liked me, always told Julian that he should marry me and we'd have beautiful kids. We mostly got along well, but he wasn't easy to be with. Did you know he was bipolar?"

"Yes," I said. "Kelsey mentioned it."

"Well, he wouldn't take his meds, and had some big-time mood swings. When he was feeling up, he was really fun to be with – outgoing, happy... convinced he was going to win the next Nobel Prize."

She shook her head and went on, "But when he was down, it was really tough. He'd turn inward, wouldn't talk, wouldn't show any emotion, didn't want to be around anybody. Including me."

"At first I tried to help him, but that went nowhere. So we just made up our own coping mechanism. When he was feeling high, we went out together and had a blast. When he was feeling low, I left. Took off to the big city for a week. That worked well enough, and I figured we could build a good life together. And I just assumed he felt the same way."

Her voice drifted away and she got that faraway look in her eyes. When the silence dragged on for fifteen seconds, I cleared my throat and asked, "OK, then what happened?"

"Then... huh!" she said, slowly, "One day he came back from a trip to the jungle clinic, and he was on a high like I'd never seen before. All he could talk about was this girl who was really smart and interested in his work, and how great it was to talk to her, and how he was going to teach her all this stuff and help her go to college and blah blah blah. We got into a bang-out big argument and yelled at each other. He called me a dumb bitch who never really understood him, and I called him a stuck-up prick and walked out. I flew to New York the next day and didn't see him again for... it must have been at least five years."

"The modeling business didn't go so well for me. I didn't have my heart in it anymore... couldn't focus... missed a few photoshoots. Had to switch agents – my first one died of AIDS. And a few months later switched again, and somehow lost my connections. That whole gig can be so cut-throaty sometimes. Unless you're at the top, it depends on either who you know or who you blow, and I just wasn't into that scene. There I was, just in my early twenties, but a lot of the spots I used get were going to bouncy eighteen year olds with top agents. To make it worse, I didn't really care, like I'd lost my enthusiasm for life."

"Trouble was, though, that I'd never had any other job, hadn't been to college, and didn't know what to do. I called Marge and we met for lunch. She gave me a few thousand dollars. We kept in touch; she let me know was going on with Julian. She said he was unhappy, but I dunno... maybe it was her that was unhappy. Anyway, back on that night when they were all drinking she gave my name to Niles, and he started looking for me. I was working at a ritzy bar up in North Beach, waiting tables, occasional topless dancing, but that's all. Didn't have any boyfriends, didn't really have any social life. I hated it there, but didn't know what else to do... drunk guys were hitting on me whenever I danced, and the bouncers had to shove them away. So I shaved my head, pancaked on dark makeup, and got a nipple pierce... but that seemed to just get the weirdoes even more excited. Then one night Niles came in and offered me a job at the Waxman Institute. Just like that – offered me a job!"

"I thought he was just another crummy old lech, but he showed me his business card, told me about Marge, and I knew about the Waxman from Julian. 'Doing what?' I asked, and he said that he'd find something for me. Two weeks later I was an assistant in Human Resources. Me! – With a desk job; wearing business clothes - What a laugh! I had to wear a wig for the first few months, till my hair grew out. But you know what? I got good at it, damn good, and earned my way up to manager. Niles may have given me the job, but I worked hard once I got it."

A sniffle, another Kleenex, a sigh, and she continued. "And - there was Julian, right in the same building. When he first saw me he was so surprised he couldn't talk. By then he and Kelsey were married and had a kid... but he didn't look happy, and I could tell that he was still attracted to me."

She blushed a bit. "Hey look, it's not like I came on to him or anything, but I couldn't help running into him now and then. After a couple of months, Niles invited me out to lunch. We went to some pasta place and spent the rest of the afternoon there, and he told me why he'd really wanted to hire me."

I waited, but she didn't say more. I prodded her gently, "Must'a been a great lunch; thinking about the bottle of Chianti?"

"Huh? ... Oh sorry, no, I was just thinking about when it was. It must have been nearly three years ago. Anyway, Niles said that he wanted to, um, 'recruit', yeah, that was the word he used - 'recruit' Julian onto a special project. It was the chance of a lifetime, he said, and Julian would be eternally grateful, but he needed to get pried away from the dead-end spot he was stuck in now. "You've seen him," Niles said. "You see how depressed he is." And it was true - I had seen it. At first it made me glad – like sweet revenge, you know, for leaving me. But after a while it wasn't sweet anymore. I just felt sorry for him."

"Shake him up," Niles told me. "Rattle his cage. Make him feel like a man. Get him to stop feeling guilty about leaving Kelsey and his kid, and once he's free of all that, I'll convince him to join me, give his career a fresh start."

"And then he said that Julian had to be fully committed to this new project, and that Kelsey couldn't know anything about it."

Trinity leaned forward looking me in the eye and gripping Chyll's hand. "Look – it's not like I was breaking up a happy marriage. They were already split apart – their relationship was dead. Julian had moved out weeks before and was sleeping in his lab. But he was down in the dumps emotionally, and Niles wanted me to get him excited about life again... and, um, also to keep him from talking to Kelsey."

"Wait," I said, suddenly perking up, "wait – you're saying that Kelsey wasn't part of this project? Isn't involved... doesn't know what's going on?"

"Kelsey?" Trinity laughed softly and shook her head. "No way. Niles, Julian, Phil, and Marley – they were always worried about keeping Kelsey and Victor in the dark. I think Jim Hillen knows about at least part of it, though. He used to come around a lot and talk to them. But Kelsey – definitely not."

I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath that I didn't know I'd been holding in, then sucked in another one. So Kelsey was in the clear, and I felt a pang of guilt about having those creepy doubts.

Creepy doubts about people you want to trust have been my friend in the past. In my work, it's healthy to have them; they've saved me before and probably will again. But it felt good to get rid of them this time.

I heard Chyll's voice and opened my eyes. She was stroking Trinity's wrist and saying, "God - you make Niles sound like a puppet master. Did he have this all planned out right from the beginning... like when he first started searching for you in San Francisco?"

"Yeah," Trinity nodded. "Incredible, isn't it. Niles is a brainy son of a bitch, I'll give him that. When he brought me on, he said all that mattered was to get this project done on time. He said we all had roles to play. Marley and Phil were already signed up, but he also needed Julian. So my first job was to get him, to put him in the mood to join. After that, Niles and I were supposed to draw attention away from the others. He was going to be the ditzy academic, and I was to be the company vamp, the sexy babe that people watch and talk about. Niles said that if people were laughing at him and gossiping about me, they wouldn't be paying attention to the other guys."

Trinity looked at Chyll, then at me, then looked embarrassed and shook her head. "Maybe I took that role a little too seriously. Like... like when you came over on Tuesday, and I dropped my robe and was naked. I'm sorry, but I really wanted to convince you to come up here looking for Niles, and..."

"No apology needed," I smiled, "I wasn't too offended."

"Yeah," Trinity laughed, "I guess you weren't. You took your sweet time checking me over."

I felt a small but sharp kick in my right shin and glanced at Chyll. She was looking at me with one eyebrow raised, half amused, half accusing. I nodded. "Yes, yes... guilty as charged."

"Nothing to feel guilty about," Trinity said. "I set you up. I wanted you to look me over, and I wanted you to agree to take me up here with you. I knew that Marley and Niles had cooked up some plan to hurt you - both of you. "

She wrinkled her brow and her eyes grew moist; she whispered 'Sorry," then, leaned sideways and gave Chyll another quick kiss on the cheek. Finally she leaned forward and squeezed my hand. "I wanted to warn you, but wasn't sure how. I didn't think you'd trust me, and, well... I didn't trust you."

A little cocoon of silence dropped around us then; three people who'd looked into the face of Death today - looked at it together - and walked away, also together.

And we all felt the bond of trust that held us together now.

After maybe twenty seconds, Chyll looked at Trinity and said, "So then, getting back to what you were saying... when Niles wanted you to, uh, rattle Julian's cage, what'd you do?"

Trinity's lips turned into a rueful smile, and said softly, "What do you think? Niles offered me more money than I could make in ten years working at my regular job. All he wanted was for me to seduce a man that I still loved. So, yeah. It took me a week of flirting and teasing to get him in bed. Within two weeks he was telling me that he loved me, wondered why he'd ever let me go. I gotta admit, it made me feel pretty damn good to hear that. He was hooked, and happy, and when Niles offered him a spot on the project, he leapt at it. His own lab was at a standstill since he'd had lost his funding, so he was grateful to get a shot at something new."

"Yeah, Kelsey said something about that," I said. "Wasn't there a scandal about faked data?"

"That was false!" she said, her cheeks turning pink. "One of his old grad students - a guy named Ken something - sent a letter to Julian's funding agency, asking to have his name removed from the papers they had written about their work. There was never an accusation of faked data; but the fact that he wanted his name removed raised people's suspicions. The upshot was that Julian's grant wasn't renewed."

"Why would Ken do that?"

"Julian couldn't figure it out, and Ken wouldn't talk to him. It was all kept hush-hush, but Julian was crushed, and caved in to depression.'"

"Niles," Chyll said suddenly. "It was Niles, wasn't it? He paid Ken to do that, right? To wreck Julian's work so that he'd join the new project."

Trinity nodded. "Very smart. Yeah, it took me a while to figure that one out, but it had to be. Niles torpedoed Julian's career, then when he was at the bottom emotionally, reeled him into his own project. And - I was one of the lures Niles used to make it happen."

She coughed quietly, took a sip of water, and went on. "I was still mad at Julian for leaving me and going with Kelsey. But when we got back together I got over it, and we had a year, a pretty happy year for both of us. After he went to down to the Mission, though, things went downhill. I went with him at first, but couldn't stay. After I came back here he phoned or texted nearly every day, but that faded. The last three months he didn't call at all and wouldn't answer my calls. Until right before the end. He phoned and sounded really stressed... said he needed help, was sorry if he'd hurt me. I told him that I'd come down when I could, but he laughed and said it wouldn't do any good, there was no time. That was the night before...."

Trinity closed her eyes and her voice faded on that last part, to the point where her lips were moving but no sound was coming out.

Chyll looked over at me, then began stroking Trinity's wrist. "Trinity," she whispered, "what happened next?"

Trinity shook her head slowly, then said in a small voice, "He needed me. I'd waited years for him to say that. But... before I do anything to help, he was dead."

She bowed her head briefly; when she raised it, silent tears were coursing down her cheeks. Chyll took more Kleenex from the box and gently dabbed them away. I wanted to give her time to release the emotions that needed releasing. It was only right, so I kept silent.

A minute went by, then two, and the pain in my ribs started kicking up again. Probably I should have been lying down on my right side to take the pressure of my left, but there was more to learn from Trinity. So while Chyll was focused on dabbing the tears and murmuring sisterly encouragement, I fished out two more of the pain pills Doc Pierce had given her.

She saw me pop them into my mouth and shot a disapproving glare as I washed them down with a swallow of warm coke.

"Boss," she whispered, "Doc said to take it easy with those."

"Yeah," I whispered back, "but Doc's not the one who got shot and broke his ribs."

I meant it to be funny, but Chyll got a hurt look in her eyes - which I didn't understand at the time, but would a day later.

A deep breath, a sigh, and Trinity wiped her eyes and nose with the Kleenex. Another deep breath, then she looked up at us with a small smile.

I smiled back. "So you believed the suicide story about Julian?"

"I didn't want to, but that was what we all heard. Especially after Niles got back."

"Wait," I said, "Niles went down to the Mission? Right after Julian's death? I didn't know about that... neither did Kelsey."

"Nobody knew, except Phil and Marley and me. Niles wanted it kept quiet. Anyway, when he came back he swore that Julian shot himself... gave me ugly details. Back then I trusted him, so yeah, I believed the suicide story."

"But you don't now. What changed your mind?"

She wiped her eyes again, blew her nose, thought for a few seconds, and then said, in a much steadier voice, "Ahh, I guess it started with Phil. It was last December - just about a year ago - when Julian died, and after a couple of months I became accepting of it. Not happy, but accepting, and buried myself in the job. Then one day – it must have been last July or August, Niles came to my office and said that Phil was falling apart."

"What did he mean by that?"

She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Something about Phil being spooked and wanting to quit. I said, What does that matter to me? And Niles says that we can't let him do that. If he quits now, the project goes down. And we'll all go down with it. He was real, like... adamant about that. All of our lives are on the line, he said, all of us."

"He sounded really worried, so I asked him what he was gonna do about it, and he said that it was up to me, that Phil had no real life, flat...no spirit. He needs some passion, a spark, he said. Give him a little courage... make him feel like more of a man."

Trinity reached down with her right hand, picked up the water bottle. She was still holding onto Chyll's hand with her left and didn't seem to want to let go.

After taking a long drink, she set down the bottle and laughed softly. "God – the emotions are just running all over the place today. I've cried more in the last few days than I have in years. I haven't talked about this stuff to anyone – anyone – before. Didn't really have anyone I trusted."

So I reached over and put my hand on top of theirs. "Interesting, isn't it," I said with a smile, "how fast you can bond with people when life-or-death are involved."

Trinity nodded slowly, looked out the window, then over at Chyll, then down at the floor, and said softly, "Alright – full disclosure: Sleeping with Phil was... not awful, just boring. It worked, though. He perked up, took on a whole new attitude. I played along, and it didn't take much of my time – maybe just an hour every couple of weeks - he wasn't exactly Mister Testosterone. After two months even that stopped, but by then people thought we were an item, and he reveled in it. He was a talker though, and I found out what had spooked him; it was about Julian dying. He was freaked by it, but wouldn't say why. I get it now... Phil and Marley must have known all along that Julian'd been killed, and that it could happen to them, too."

My hand was still resting on hers and Chyll's, and Trinity reached over with her other hand and brushed her fingertips along my wrist, tracing the patterns of my veins... a light tickle, a light electric tickle.

"Then you came to my office last week, with that story about a murder being covered up as suicide, and said that it was Julian. Wow...I spent a lot of hours the next few nights, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking about that. Then Marley said something about it Monday night, and Niles last night... and I knew for sure that it was true. And they were using Julian's death – and Phil's too - to threaten me."

She leaned forward and looked deeply at me. It was late-afternoon now, the clouds were darkening overhead, and the sunlight was already starting to fade; but her emerald eyes were bright and intense, drawing me in.

"Last night I found that pistol in Niles' backpack, and took it. I wanted to kill him, and Marley too," she shrugged, "and then me. This morning I was sitting by the cliff, staring at the river, trying to get my courage up, but then things happened so fast. Niles caught me off-guard, attacked me from behind. Then you appeared out of nowhere, and saved me. Then Marley jumped you and... it was all so quick, so crazy."

There was something I wanted to ask, but I was having a hard time thinking straight. Trinity was still looking at me with those mesmerizing eyes, but a look of concern came over her face and she reached out, grabbing my shoulder.

"Reid, what's wrong?"

Then Chyll's voice: "Yeah, boss, you don't look so good."

A cool hand touched my forehead, and, "Boss, you got a fever. Lie down... get some sleep."

"Take a drink," Trinity said, and held the water bottle to my lips. I swallowed too much and almost coughed and sprayed everybody, but - thank God - didn't.

The cool drink and the little adrenaline rush snapped my mind back into momentary focus. I whispered, "Thanks – better now," then cleared my throat and went on, "Trinity - Victor told everyone that Phil died of a heart attack. You sound like you don't think so."

"No," she shook her head. "That can't be. He was a bozo and a bore, but his heart was healthy enough. He was a vegetarian, really careful about what he ate, and liked to jog. No. They killed him. The same ones that got to Julian. Poor dumb Phil - he was right all along to be freaked out."

I leaned back and looked out the window, trying to put together everything she'd said, trying to get a better picture of it all. Something didn't make sense... why would the ones behind the project – whatever it was - want to kill Julian and Phil?

They wouldn't - unless that was the wrong question. Maybe instead I should be asking _when_ they would want to kill Julian and Phil.

And that would be – either when they became liabilities, or when they were no longer useful. Uh-huh, that made a lot more sense.

Suppose Trinity was right, that they – whoever 'they' were – killed Phil. If it'd happened six months ago, it would have been because he was falling apart, wanting to quit – had become a danger to the security of the project. But Trinity had 'cured' him, and he'd been back on board, working hard. So then... getting rid of him now might mean that he'd finished his part.

Which meant that the project – whatever it was – was coming to a head.

Speaking of heads, mine was feeling more woozy all the time. But I couldn't fade out just yet. The project... the project... what could it be? Something involving high level funding, several years of expert science, and the casual snuffing out of unneeded lives meant one of two things: big money or big power.

Or – maybe both: money and power?

"How the Hell do we find out what going on?" I was talking to myself, but must have been muttering out loud, because Trinity said, "Try looking in Niles' safe."

I turned and looked at her. The sudden movement made me dizzier, but I blurted out, "His... what? Niles has a safe? Where?"

"In his office," she said calmly, a look of concern still on her face. "It's in the wall, behind that big map."

"What's he keep in it?"

"No idea... it's his big secret. I only know about it because of Marley. All those keys he had. He liked to snoop around at night. Once when he was in Niles' office, he felt something behind the big wall picture, and there was this safe."

"Did he get it open?"

"No. Anyway, he said he didn't. But if Niles is hiding anything, that's where it would be."

I nodded and closed my eyes, then slid down so I could rest my head on the seat-back. After a few seconds a soft hand pressed lightly on my forehead.

"Boss," said Chyll. "You still got that fever. Enough of the talking... you gotta rest now."

After that I must have drifted off. When I opened my eyes, we were just putting down onto the Halliday parking lot.

Chapter 87: Landing

Day 11: Thursday Evening

Eddie cut the engines and it got real quiet. When the doors were slid open, cold air blew against my face and I could hear the tapping of raindrops. A shadowy face leaned in and peered at me. It took a second or two to bring everything into clear focus, then – okay, yes, it was Autumn Kool. She raised one eyebrow and shot a questioning look at Chyll, who nodded and whispered something I didn't quite catch.

"Eddie," Autumn said, "help Chyll get our man into the car, please." As far as I was concerned, staying right here was fine if someone would just close the damn door.

But I knew that they were going to prod and push me to get going, so I waved them off and got out by myself. Not real steady on my feet, though, so Eddie steered me to a dark SUV parked close-by. Autumn opened the back door and motioned for me to get in. "We'll be at the Stanford Hospital in fifteen minutes," she said. "They have a room waiting for you."

"No – no, I don't need that... just a good night's rest in my own bed. I'll be fine in the morning."

"I'm afraid it's already all arranged," said a voice from inside the car. "We want you checked out completely. Nothing but the best."

No need to look in there; no mistaking the voice: Mr. Kirk Halliday himself.

And no use arguing, either. "Unnecessary, sir, but I appreciate it."

But I didn't get in right away - instead turned and leaned against the door, looking back toward the copter. Trinity was standing there looking a little lost.

"Who's the tall lady, Reid?" Autumn asked. "Someone you just happened to meet on the way that needed a lift?"

Chyll spoke up. "She's been helping us out, Ms. Kool, and saved Reid's life. We owe her."

Then Chyll leaned in closer and whispered, "Boss, after you passed out up there, we talked some more. She's pretty scared now – thinks that all of our lives are in danger, and is afraid to stay at that place, you know, Phil's place - where we met her yesterday. I was thinking that maybe we could hide her out at Halliday's?"

"Autumn won't be too keen on that," I whispered back. Halliday's didn't have guest sleeping quarters, but something could be scrambled up. On the other hand, Halliday's did have a lot of sensitive secrets. I trusted Trinity – sort of – but didn't want to cause any trouble. So only one thing to do –

I fished the keys out of my jacket pocket and held them out. "Don't lose track of her, Chyll. Stay close and stay safe." She nodded and swept the keys out of my hand.

"The brass one opens the outside gate; the silver one unlocks the front door."

She nodded, and I went on. "And the gold one opens the gun cabinet in my bedroom. They're loaded – you know that. Don't use'em if you don't need to... but if you do, then don't hesitate."

Autumn Kool, ever the efficient, was already on her phone. "Hello, Chypp? Yes, they've all arrived safely. Mr. Halliday and I will be taking Reid to Stanford Hospital. Your sister and a friend need a ride to another destination. Could you please send another car out here right away?... Oh, really? Okay, then, that would be just fine."

She looked over and said, "Chypp just left for the night. He's already on his way and will be here in less than a minute. He can take you wherever you need to go."

"Perfect," answered Chyll, then to me said, "Don't worry boss, I've got this covered. You just go and get better." A quick hug and she was gone, skipping back over to Trinity.

I leaned down and slid into the back seat next to Mr. Halliday. Autumn closed the door, got into the front passenger seat, and nodded to the driver. It was Ted, one of the engineers, at the wheel. He glided out of the parking lot smoothly. I chanced a look back and saw Chypp's little Toyota pulling up next to Trinity and Chyll.

Okay, good. Now I could relax.

As I leaned back, the gray man next to me cleared his throat. "Eddie called ahead. He told us about a gunshot, falling off a cliff... about some wild ride in the river and stiches in your side. Honestly, Reid, you look like Hell. We'll get you a good night's sleep, along with a few X-rays and maybe an MRI."

I started to say something, but he held up his hand. "Not now. If nobody's life is in imminent danger, then let it wait. Tell me whatever you want later."

He was right; it could wait. I closed my eyes. This was one fine, comfortable ride alright.

Chapter 88: Mission

Day 12: Friday

Kelsey eased her jeep out of the north gate, hoping for a more successful day today. She was looking forward to spending time at the Mission; with any luck, it would turn out better than yesterday's visit to the Lodge.

Yeah, that'd been a bust: after failing to reach Reid on the Lodge phone, she'd tried Chyll but that had failed too. Then Niles; and finally Trinity.

Fail and fail.

Could the satellite system be faulty? She tried the number for the Waxman main desk – and got an immediate answer. "No, sorry, Dr. Stratton and Ms. Garrett weren't in yesterday and I haven't seen them yet this morning."

Alright then - the system was working, but no answer from Reid. Or Chyll, or Niles, or Trinity.

Damn it! So while the drive to the Lodge, anticipating a fun chat with Reid, had been a breezy joy, the ride back was just the opposite: long, dusty, and frustrating.

But it's hard to stay grumpy when your four-year old son is jumping into your arms and busting to tell you about his day, so, once she got back to the clinic compound, life looked brighter and more cheery.

Still, it was odd... not being able to reach any of them.

The rest of Thursday was spent with Laila and Stevie. After lunch, they went for a drive out the south gate and meandered along the river, pulling onto side roads every now and then to visit old friends.

And after the welcoming hugs and smiles, each one they saw had the same questions:

Where did Grant go?

Is he in good health?

When is he coming home?

It was embarrassing to admit to them that she didn't know, but that was the plain truth. She wondered the same questions herself.

On the return trip they stopped at a sandy beach for a picnic and played until nearly dark. It was a full day, and Stevie and Laila both napped in the back seat on the way home, which gave Kelsey some alone to wonder again about the phone calls: Why didn't they answer?

Sleep was tough to come by that night, and Friday morning came too soon. But she got up early, energized by the anticipation of the visit to the Mission and restless to get going. After a quick breakfast, she packed a light lunch, waved goodbye, and took off.

Halfway there she came to the crossroads and slowed to a crawl: a left turn would lead to the Lodge; was it worth making another try?

"No," she whispered under her breath. "Maybe on the way back... maybe."

And so she revved the engine, let out the clutch, and moved off toward the right. Now that the Lodge turnoff was behind her and the Mission lay ahead, she felt the tension of the missed phone connections fade away. She spun around corners and splashed through puddles, and recognized the dips and rises and turns ahead, and the memories brought a smile to her lips.

Stevie had wanted to come with her this morning, but Laila promised to take him and Muru to the butterfly dome. That was a large enclosure –the size of a small circus tent - at the back of the clinic compound. Butterflies of crazy beautiful colors flitted through the air, landing on your shirt, your hair, or, if you were lucky, on your outstretched hand. Laila had been telling Stevie about it for days, and he was excited to finally see it.

At breakfast, Tanza asked Kelsey if she needed directions to the Mission, but she laughed and said that it wouldn't be a problem - she'd made the trip many dozens of times before, on foot, by bicycle, by car, even a few times on a horse. She knew the road and trails and all of the short-cuts, even the ones through swamps with ants as long as your toe and tree limbs covered with tarantulas.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when she'd been riding in the back of the old red truck with Julian, Harolde and a couple of young friends, going from the Mission to the Layard Clinic that last time. Grant was driving with Laila in the middle and Niles on the passenger side of the front seat. Once they reached the clinic, they partied at the central courtyard, with wine, singing, and laughing into the small hours, then spent what was left of the night dozing in the cabins. In the morning she, Julian, and Niles took the boat down to Salvata and so away to California.

That had been the last time she'd seen Grant. He had given her a long, long hug, standing there on the little wooden quay before they shoved off. He had tears in his eyes when he said "Good-bye Dolly – I love you. Have a wonderful time in the outside world – It's going to be both bigger and smaller than you think. I'll let you figure that one out. While you're gone you might hear some strange things about life back here. Don't believe all of it, and come back – but not until you're ready."

'Dolly'... she had almost forgotten the cute nickname that Grant used to call her. Funny... he'd always been a wonderful, caring, nurturing, inspirational figure in her life, but she'd never gotten in the habit of calling him 'Dad'. It was always just 'Grant', like everyone else called him. She remembered wondering, when she was very young, where her mother was, but hadn't given it serious thought until she'd had her own child. Then she would lie in bed, holding Stevie, and wonder: "I must have been held by my own mom, nursed at my own mom's breast... how can I not remember?"

The part about the outside world being big and small at the same time made more sense to her now – about how the varieties of opportunity and technology were immense out there, but that most of the people led compartmentalized, boxed-in lives.

Honestly, she hadn't spent much time thinking about her old home after settling in California. Life seemed so bright and brash and freaky. Going from the Mission to the SF Bay Area was an incredible – INCREDIBLE! – culture shock, a spine-tingling fantasy, a mind-blowing carnival of lights, action, and noise – and so many people! Who had time to think about anything else?

It made her smile, now. Well, she'd ridden the crazy roller coaster and it had taken her high, high up and down, down low... and now it had brought her back here.

And it was so good to be back.

But – it wasn't clear just exactly what she was back to. What would it be like at the Mission today? No Grant, no Julian, no Harolde or Laila... she pictured other faces - kids, friends, helpers. Would any be around?

Well, Colo, maybe, with his rifle. What was he up to? And the other stuff Wayne talked about, the secretive lab work going on there... what had Julian been doing? And Phil, what was going on right before he died? And what had really happened to him?

So the thoughts and feelings drifted through her mind, and the miles passed quickly, until after one more turn, there it was: the Mission entrance.

The gate was already open and pushed off to one side, so Kelsey drove right in, slowly, looking this way and that, soaking in the sights. "Pretty much the same," she thought to herself. "Garden looks bigger... actually, the place is in better shape than when I left." As she got closer to the main building it was obvious why: A half-dozen ladies were working on the grounds, digging, planting, picking fruit, pruning trees. They wore loose fitting but comfy looking grey dresses and white scarves. Most of them also had on cotton gloves and sturdy work boots.

Sisters of the Holy... hmmm... she forgot what exactly it was. In any case, they seemed organized, practical, and efficient.

She slowed to a crawl when she reached Grant's private home – the 'Old Mansion'. Out in the field, maybe two hundred yards away, there was a large section of land - at least a couple of acres - covered with rectangular black panels. Strange - now what were those? And near it was a new building, oval shaped, not real large, maybe two stories high. There weren't any windows.

That was curious; Phil's new lab, maybe?

The Mission HQ building was just ahead, so she stopped the jeep and walked over the dirt path to the entrance. There used to be three-foot high Egyptian ankh above the door; now there was a crucifix. She paused and looked around for any other changes. The old wooden stump that they'd used for knife-throw practice was gone, a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi and a flower garden in its place. Likewise gone was the large treehouse that she'd used for sleepovers and club meetings; it was now replaced by small, brightly colored birdhouses. She turned, looking this way and that, and noticed that the ladies in the field had stopped their work and were watching her. None of them moved or spoke; they just watched.

Did they have a vow of silence? She hoped not; so she waved and called out "Good morning" to them, and after a few seconds two or three of them waved back. Smiling, she went through the open door into the lobby. It was mostly unchanged: the same high ceiling, same large fans slowly whirling, same tall windows letting in streams of light. A fortyish-looking lady, also wearing the grey dress and white scarf uniform, rose from the desk facing the door and came to greet her.

She took Kelsey's right hand in both of hers and smiled. "Welcome, I'm Sister Ayla – you must be Kelsey."

"Yes... you knew I'd be coming?"

"We don't have a lot of modern conveniences, but we're not exactly a cloistered convent either. No phones, no television, no internet, but we do have a radio link to emergency services like the Layard clinic. We don't use it often – we value our privacy - but for important messages, yes. So I knew you were coming - Dr. Gresham sent word a few minutes ago."

Her English was perfect, but spoken with a lilting accent that Kelsey couldn't quite place. Not from around here, and not from the USA either... her dark complexion suggested Africa, but her intonation was more like Eastern European.

Kelsey gave a mental shrug; maybe when she got to know her better, she would ask....

"Did he say why I was coming?"

"He said that you wanted to look over Mr. Theroux's private home. He also said that you might want to wander around the grounds a bit, as you grew up here."

"Yes. Will that be any trouble?"

"Oh, no. Please feel free to go wherever you like. The outsides of the buildings are pretty much the same as when we moved in, but we've changed the interiors. Mainly to convert rooms into private quarters for our sisters, but we also enlarged the kitchen and added a music room and a chapel - rather a pretty one."

Then, with a smile, she added, "I don't see how we could refuse you, anyway. Dr. Gresham says that you may be our landlady."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Anyway, I promise to intrude as little as possible. Thanks for your help."

Kelsey started to go, then hesitated and turned back. "Excuse me... I was wondering... what do you have out in the far field? The large black rectangles?"

"Ohhh, you mean our solar panels," Sister Ayla said. "Pretty, uh... pretty cool, huh? The army people came and put them in a while back. They said that we could use some of the power for our needs; it actually helps a lot."

"Why would the military be putting in a solar station way out here?" Kelsey asked.

"They didn't say. But it means a lot of free power for us. We upgraded our electricity and get to run air conditioners now – something we never had before."

"Ahh – that's nice. I remember that it used to get awfully hot sometimes."

"Yes, and for a while, the mosquitoes... with the AC on, the sisters could keep their windows closed at night."

"Mosquitoes?" said Kelsey, "I don't remember having a big mosquito problem here."

"Well, we never did until about a year ago. Then it was suddenly bad. It mostly went away after a few weeks, but it was scary for a while. Almost all of the sisters got sick."

"Oh, malaria?"

"No, something like pneumonia. We actually had to leave for a month. When we came back, there were air conditioners and window screens on all of the rooms. And since then we haven't seen many mosquitoes. Still, it's nice to have the AC."

"Yeah, I'll bet. And um... the oval white building in the field. That's' new too, isn't it?"

"Yes, about a year, maybe a little less. Dr. Poley used to work out there. We heard that he passed away last week. Poor man – he was always so polite and talkative. We prayed the rosary for him last night."

"So that was his laboratory? That's where he, uh, did his science?"

"I suppose so," Ayla said, "but we never went inside. The building is strictly off limits, and is kept locked up."

"You say it was just built a year ago?"

"Yes," Ayla said, "at about the same time as the solar panels were installed. I suppose they use the power for whatever they're doing out there."

"Okay, that makes sense," Kelsey agreed. "What about before that, though... wasn't Julian Chambers working out here, too?"

"Dr. Chambers? Yes, but he used the main house, Mr. Theroux's house."

"He had a lab inside the house?"

Ayla shook her head. "I really have no idea what he had inside the house. It's not part of the lease agreement, so we had no reason to question his use of it, no reason to ask him about it. And he didn't talk to us much... at least not to most of us. Not like Dr. Poley did."

"Sister," Kelsey said slowly, "doesn't it bother you to have mysterious laboratories on your convent grounds?"

Ayla stared at her for a few seconds, as if weighing her answer, then said, "Who are we to be bothered? We are servants of the Lord. If He is bothered, He will do something about it."

Then she suddenly smiled, leaned closer, and said in a whisper, "But just between you and me, Kelsey, yes, it bugs the Hell out of me. The army people fly their helicopters in here to bring supplies to that building. They land in the fields, scare the livestock, leer at the nuns... it makes us all very uncomfortable."

"What could they be doing out here?" Kelsey asked.

"We have no idea – but it must be connected with Dr. Poley's work. They come twice a week... in fact, they're due today. Wait a while and you'll see."

A nod, another handshake, and Kelsey went out the door, heading back toward the main house. She looked around the grounds as she went, but saw no sign of Colo.

Good. She'd never liked him before, and didn't feel like seeing him now. Except – didn't Wayne say that Colo had been the first one to find Julian body? Yeah... it could be interesting to hear what he had to say about that.

But later. Right now she'd rather be alone.

It was a short walk back to Grant's private home, a two story rambling structure surrounded by a garden of short hedges, tall trees, statues, and wild flowers. The total area was maybe an acre. Kelsey could feel a lump in her throat and her pulse start to quicken as she got near.

She went through the garden gate and made her way slowly along the narrow path. It wound past the life-sized statue of Eternal Springtime (did that scandalize the nuns?) and up to the high double front doors of the main house. Kelsey found the right key – a large skeleton type – and let herself in.

The door closed behind her with a solid ka-thunk. It immediately got very dark, but she instinctively reached out and hit the light switch. Several floor lamps and a chandelier came on, not exactly flooding the place with light, but providing enough to see clearly. The furniture was mostly covered with white sheets and the windows were shuttered – that explained why it was dark even in the daytime.

Was there a slight scent of the incense Grant used to burn on special holidays? No, no such luck. She'd been afraid that it would be musty or even moldy, but it smelled fairly fresh and clean, thank God.

After a nostalgic fifteen minutes looking here and there, she went up the wide staircase to the second story and down the upper hallway. She stood outside the library, pursing her lips, tapping her toe, then shrugged and pushed the door open.

" _So this is where they say Julian shot himself,"_ she thought - not in words, but in impressions, in feelings. _"It must have been just there, at the main table... maybe sitting right in that exact chair."_

It felt eerie... a little creepy... hairs on back of neck standing up... but not sad. No, no sadness, no tears, no anger. The Julian that she'd been infatuated with ten years ago, the one she'd married, the one she'd had a child with, seemed like a different person from the Julian who died a year ago in this room.

She went to that chair and sat down, looking at the faint veneer of dust on the glossy oak table, and sighed. Her eyes wandered along the high shelves covering most of the wall space. They held books of every genre, both fiction and non-fiction. For as long as she could remember, Grant had insisted that she read at least one book every two weeks. He didn't care what kind - he just wanted her to read, read, and read some more.

The rest of the wall space was taken up by statues, comfy chairs next to lamps, maps, pencil sketches, and a few photographs. Strange - along one wall there were fifty or more boxes stacked up, each of them two feet or so on a side.

That was odd - those didn't used to be here.

In the middle of the far wall was another door, a tall, solid one that led – if Kelsey remembered right – to a large store room. That was where Grant kept 'his extras' – stuff he'd collected here and there around the world, but had no room to display in the rest of the house. She remembered spending rainy days in the store room as a child, exploring hour after hour. It was like being in a fantasy land.

She pulled herself out of the chair, shivered slightly, and walked over to the boxes. When she peeked under the lids of a few of them she recognized some of those familiar old treasures. Sure enough, this was Grant's extra stuff... what was it doing out here? Why wasn't it in the store room?

She glanced at the door and saw a large steel latch, sealed with a padlock. It was silver and brass and very solid looking, and had the word "Master" etched into it. And she was sure that it wasn't there before.

After staring at it thoughtfully for a moment, Kelsey reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out the ring of keys that Wayne had given her - the ones that had been Phil's. Yes, there was a brass key labeled 'Master'.

The key glided smoothly into the lock and popped it open. She folded back the latch, turned the door handle, and walked through.

For a few seconds, all she could do was stand and stare.

What had been going on in here?

The room was twenty feet wide and a little more than that long, with a high ceiling - larger than she'd remembered, but then it had always been crammed with strange stuff. It wasn't empty now, but what it contained was damned surprising.

Surprising, all too familiar, and totally out of place. It looked more like a lab at the Waxman than a store room at the Mission mansion.

There was desk next to the door, a bench holding mixing equipment and jars of chemicals; a refrigerator/freezer combo in the corner; a portable sink had been installed along one wall, with a large water reservoir over it and a sealed collection bin underneath. The lab coats hanging on the wall pegs were unusual... more like full body suits, with hoods, face shields, and respirators.

And the large environmental chamber in the middle of the room – what was that doing here? It was a cube about eight feet on a side, with a door on the near end. There had been a large glass viewport in the middle of the door, but that was shattered now. The chrome latch had been smashed and the handle was missing, so the heavy door was wired shut. Kelsey unwound the wire, dropped in on the floor, then dug her fingers into the space on the side of the door and pulled. At first nothing happened, but as she pulled harder the door slowly swung open with a whine of rarely used hinges.

The inside was lined with shelves, but the shelves were empty. Several dozen dead insects were scattered on the floor. _'Must've gotten in through the broken window,'_ she thought.

There were pock marks peppering the outer face of the door, and the viewport window - a double layer of thick glass, meant to permit viewing while also providing thermal insulation - was now just scattered shards on the floor.

"This is crazy," she muttered, shaking her head. But then the whole room was crazy. "Julian... what were you up to here? Was Phil working on the same thing?"

This was followed up by another idea, even more jarring: "And what the bloody Hell has the army got to do with it?"

She turned to the the desk, hoping for clues, but found the top bare except for an old calendar. The drawers contained a scatter of pens and blank notepads, but no papers, journals, or books. While searching, she became vaguely aware of a clattering racket outside. She tried to ignore it, to focus, but the noise tugged at her attention.

It was a persistent, rhythmic whump-whump-whump, dim at first but growing louder fast. Then it got very loud.... and faded.

A helicopter? Flying right overhead?

It must be what Sister Ayla had been talking about.

The large window against the outside wall was boarded up and sealed, so she shut the room door, put the padlock back in place, and went to one of the library windows. The field below stretched into the distance, with the nuns moving toward the main convent building, looking up as they went.

There was an overhang jutting out from the eaves of the roof around the library, blocking Kelsey's view of the sky overhead, so she went out to the parlor area at the head of the stairs. A tall bay window gave a wide, unobstructed view.

A large helicopter was slowly descending near the strange curved building, kicking up a huge dust cloud. This wasn't a small commuter or sleek TV-news whirlybird; it was large and sturdy, made for moving equipment or troops, and was painted in camouflage patterns.

The nuns pulled their scarves around their faces and hurried away faster.

Chapter 89: Garden

Day 12: Friday

As it touched down, four figures wearing army fatigues climbed out.

A truck moved toward the landing area, and Kelsey felt a warm buzz of recognition; it wasn't just any truck; it was Grant's old red pickup, and seemed to be still running OK. The driver stopped near the copter and three men piled out.

Who were they? – No way of telling at this distance.

The seven of them chatted for a minute or two and then started transferring boxes from the copter to the back of the truck. She tried to count the boxes, but lost track as the men stacked, then moved, then restacked them. It seemed like at least fifteen, though.

With a few waves and claps on the back, the soldiers clambered back aboard and took off in another whooshing dust cloud. They flew back over the house; Kelsey couldn't tell exactly what direction it was taking, but had a good guess: Salvata? - It must be, back toward that military base.

The old red truck moved slowly from the landing spot to the white building, the one that Ayla said Phil had been using. One of the men drove while the other two rode in the back, straddled across the boxes to keep them from tumbling over.

They stopped near the side of the building and all three men got out. One of them pushed open a large sliding door, and they began shuttling the boxes inside. The interior was dark and Kelsey couldn't make out any details at this distance, and remembered with a pang of frustration the binoculars that she'd left in the jeep.

Well, too late now....

Moving the boxes into the building took maybe five minutes in all; when they were done, the three men piled back into truck, spun it around, and took off quickly back toward the main gate. Kelsey was leaning close to the window, almost touching the glass, trying to get a clearer view of their faces.

Maybe it was the motion of her hands that caught their attention, or maybe it was when she pulled the drapes apart to see better. In any case, the truck screeched to a halt and one of the men jumped out.

He held up his hand to shade his eyes and looked toward the house, gesturing to the other two men, pointing.

"Damn!" Kelsey whispered. He was pointing at the window, at her. Had he actually seen her, or just noticed the movement of the drapes?

She shifted to the side, trying to hold the curtains steady, but realized immediately that it was pointless trying to hide. The men were looking at her jeep now; they must know someone had driven here from the clinic.

It probably wasn't big thing for a visitor to drive out to the Mission; but for the visitor to be standing inside of Grant's private home, spying on them from an upstairs window... well, they might see that as a problem.

Maybe a big problem.

Which was exactly what Kelsey didn't want; she'd hoped to come here, say 'Hello' to everyone, and casually look around. The soldiers and the men in the truck hadn't been concerned about hiding their movements; but then, at the time, they thought that the only ones here were the peaceful Sisters. So... just how confidential was the activity?

That depended on what was in those boxes, and Kelsey realized with a cold shiver that somehow she would have to find out. Yes, she would have to get into that building and see just what was in there and what it was being used for.

But not now, not today. Today she would play the part of a nostalgic visitor who was just here to rekindle old memories.

She counted slowly to twenty and then chanced another peek. The truck was coming to a stop in the yard below, just outside of the garden fence. The doors flew open and a man climbed out, the same one who'd been pointing up at her from the field.

He wore a red headband and had a pistol in the holster hanging from his belt. He said something to the two other men, and they all laughed. One of them opened a cooler and took out what looked like a beer; the other one leaned against the truck and lit a cigarette.

The first man though, the one with the pistol, casually lit his pipe, all the time looking up toward Kelsey.

She made no attempt to move aside this time; instead she raised one hand in a slight wave. He nodded and raised his pipe in return.

Colo Logan. Older, heavier, a scruffy beard... but still unmistakably Colo.

Colo the Cheat.

Like other kids growing up nearby, he'd hung out at the Mission school off-and-on and learned something about the big wide world beyond his village. But academics weren't Colo's strong suit, and he'd been caught more than once lying about his work. That sort of stuff never bothered Grant much. He always said that you made your own way in life. All he could do was to give you opportunities to learn; if you chose not to use them, then so be it – that was your decision. That's why there were never any tests, never any grades at the Mission school. Instead there were reading assignments and discussions, lots of field trips and practical projects, both individual and in teams. You learned about physics, chemistry, biology, and mechanics by direct experience: You tried different solutions to a problem and saw why some succeeded and others failed. As long as you didn't interfere with the other kids, you could either do or not do any or all of the work, as you chose. But if you did interfere, then there was trouble.

Other than that, there were few restrictions and life was simple and open. Clothing was minimal during the hot times, and they all went swimming together, mostly naked, in the nearby creeks. But the same rule applied: don't interfere with anyone else; no bullying, no pestering, no selfish agendas.

Colo was three years older than Kelsey, and when she turned eleven he started following her around, trying to catch her alone in the forest. One time he tore her blouse off and she kneed him in the groin and ran away, leaving him writhing on the ground and cursing at her.

She told him that if he came near her again she'd tell Harolde, and that made him stop. At least, stop with Kelsey. But he got one of the other girls pregnant, and then her brother, a big kid named Juko, caught him and beat the tar out of him... and Grant sent Colo back to his home village with a warning: 'Don't come back'.

And yet, here he was. Kelsey hadn't talked to him in more than ten years, at least. But she'd seen him a few times while volunteering at the clinic. She used to walk there and back, and three or four times noticed Colo watching her from behind a tree. After that, she started carrying a machete, but that got to be too heavy, so Grant let her drive the truck.

Well, Colo was a jerk back then. And now he was carrying a pistol. Was he still a jerk? Either way, there was no avoiding him.

Just act casual and direct, she decided. Say something simple like "Hi Colo, I just came to visit the old house, but I'm leaving now. Good-bye, seeya around," - and then drive away without looking back.

So she went down stairs and out the tall double front doors, closing them firmly behind her, making sure to hear the lock click in place.

He was standing in the garden, nonchalantly puffing his pipe and looking at the Eternal Springtime statue. "I always liked this one," he said. "Inspirational, huh? Don't you think?"

Kelsey walked up closer and stopped, keeping the statue between her and Colo. "Very inspirational," she said, brushing her hand along the smooth curve of the woman's leg. "That's why Grant kept it here. This whole place is inspirational to me. And that's why I came back."

"Really?" Colo coughed and waved the pipe, sending a cloud of smoke curling into the air. "You haven't been here for, what – at least five years? And now you come back at this time?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why? What's wrong with that? What's so special about this time, Colo?"

He said nothing for a long moment, just kept leaning back and smoking. But his eyes roamed around the female figure in the statue, then shifted to roam over Kelsey.

She felt pinpricks of discomfort, and wished she had that machete again.

But instead she told herself _'Just brave it out,'_ and stood, arms crossed, a defiant look on her face, waiting for him to answer.

"You didn't bother coming here when your husband died," he said finally, and waved his pipe toward the doors behind her. "Right here, in this house. Grant's house. Your house. But - you come snooping around now. Strange timing."

He spat, wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve, and continued. "Yeah, I heard you'd be back, but not for a coupla' months. Tell me, does Dr. Stratton know about it?"

"Niles?" she blurted out, a little surprised. She hadn't expected his name to come up. But thinking back, she remembered how Niles had urged her to stay in the Bay Area: "Give it another year or two. It'll be better for Stevie if he's a little older." Then, after she'd gotten the funding and started making travel plans, he'd wanted her to delay until summer. "We need you here at the Waxman, Kelsey. Why not wait for a few months?"

Need her for what? This new project was a boost for her career and for the Waxman, and could lead to major international collaborations. Victor and the Board were highly in favor of her getting an early start.

So why had Niles wanted her to delay? She'd brushed it off and mostly forgotten about it until Colo brought it up.

Hmmm... puzzling.

"What does he have to do with anything?" she said cautiously. "I came here to visit the place where I grew up, to show my son how I used to live, and to work with Dr. Gresham at the clinic."

Then she added, "Not that it's any business of yours."

Colo smiled, looking smug. "Yeah, I thought not. Mister Niles didn't want you here now, did he?"

She felt herself getting worked up, and walked around the statue to look him directly in the eyes.

"And what are you doing here?" she asked, although it sounded more like an accusation than a question. "Are you forgetting that in Grant's absence, I'm the owner of this whole place?"

He laughed softly. "This whole place? Your dear old Grant Theroux leased his estate to the convent ladies for fifty years, and we're paying them to use part of it for our own work. You don't have much say-so in any of it."

"This house," Kelsey said. "He didn't give over his home. It's still private, and that includes this garden and the statue that you're leering at."

"This old place... maybe. You could talk to a lawyer about that, if you could find one around here – which you can't." He pointed at the upper window with his pipe, "Did you have a good time in there? Did you go into the library, where your husband shot himself?"

"I went inside the front room and looked around," she said evenly, "but not the library. Maybe another time."

"Really," he sounded doubtful. "You were standing at that window up there, right outside of the library door... and you didn't go inside?"

Why should I tell this little weasel anything, she wondered... but also didn't want him to know that she'd seen the equipment in the old store room. "I was about to go in when I heard that God-awful clatter of the helicopter. So I looked out to see what was going on, and...."

"Yeah, okay, sure. I almost believe you." He nodded and rolled his eyes. "Maybe you should let me to show you around in there. Show you where he sat, where he pointed the pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. Did you know that it was me that found him there? That I was the one who cleaned up the splattered brains?"

' _Damn him!'_ \- He was trying to rile her, and it was working; but she struggled against showing it, and tried to keep her voice even. "Yeah, I heard. And I wondered, how did you know what happened? And how did you get in? The front door locks automatically, and Julian wouldn't have left it open. And another thing - who's this 'we' you're talking about that's paying the nuns for using the area? And what's that white building out in the field? And those boxes you put in there - are they supposed to be lab supplies? Who's going to use them now that Phil's dead? And what the Hell is an army helicopter doing landing here at the Mission?"

"The smart lady has lots of questions, huh?" He scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot and grinned. "You always were the smart one, weren't you Kelsey? Yeah, you went off to college while I stayed here, shoveling bird shit and catching frogs for the scientists. Those friggin' scientists."

Colo spat again and went on. "And what did I ever get from them? – Nothin'. To them, I was invisible, just a local grunt to fetch whatever they wanted."

He took a step closer to her, then another. She stood her ground, didn't back away. "But those days are all behind me," he growled, his voice rising. "I work for important people now, bigger than your precious Julian, way bigger than that that puke livered Phil Poley."

His voice dropped to a menacing hiss. "And a real smart lady knows when to stop asking questions."

With a sly smirk, he poked the mouthpiece of his pipe against the shirt button between her breasts. "Are you that smart, Kelsey?"

She slapped the pipe away, scattering bits of glowing ash onto the back of his hand.

"Go to Hell, Colo."

It was a tense moment. He grimaced and his eyes widened, and she could read his anger. But she was just as angry. They had unfinished business, unfinished anger going back years, and they both knew it. And neither was ready to back down.

The problem was that all she had was her anger; he on the other hand, had his anger and also a pistol.

Very tense; difficult to tell how it would have ended, if not for –

"Oh, hello there! We thought you might be thirsty after your work, so we brought everyone a cold drink." Ayla and another nun, younger, came into the garden carrying a pitcher of juice and a tray of glasses.

The other two men from the truck were trailing in behind them. Colo backed away from Kelsey, narrowed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and gave a slight shake. Then he turned toward the nuns and said in a controlled voice, "Thank you, Sister Ayla. How could you tell that we needed you?"

She ignored Colo's question, instead looking at Kelsey and chatting aimlessly about the flowers and the statues while Sister Riosa filled the glasses and passed them around.

Everyone else drank in silence.

"Okay," Colo broke in after a minute. He handed the glass, still half-filled, back to Sister Riosa. "Thanks for the juice, ladies, but we need to get going."

"Will you be back this afternoon?" Ayla asked. "I was hoping you might fix the roof on the seed shed."

"No," Colo answered, but he was looking at Kelsey, not Ayla. "We'll be at the Lodge this afternoon. Setting up the cabins and conference room, you know, for the guests."

"Ahh, but tourist season won't be here for two or three months, and our shed roof needs repairing now."

Colo turned toward Ayla. "Did I say 'tourists'? No, I said 'guests'. A difference... but it doesn't concern you. We can come back here in maybe... two days." He looked back at Kelsey, his eyes still smoldering. "Or maybe tomorrow. Don't forget my offer about showing you the library. It's not a good idea for you to go in there alone. Too many bad memories. Could be, you know - dangerous."

The emphasis was on the last word: 'Dangerous', and it seemed to hang in the air like a lit-up neon sign.

Then the three men turned and ambled away slowly, going past the red truck to a smaller, beat-up looking pickup. They were joking to each other in tribal dialect so Ayla and Riosa wouldn't understand, but Kelsey had no problem following it. One of them said that he'd like getting "some of Riosa's sweet juice on his tongue," and they all laughed.

Colo glanced back as he opened the driver's side door. He pointed his pipe at Kelsey and smirked, knowing full-well that she understood what they were laughing about. "Remember," he called out, "be careful."

The other two men jumped into the back as he started the engine. Ten seconds later they were through the outer gate and down the road... out of sight, out of hearing.

Chapter 90: Ayla

Day 12: Friday

In the sudden quiet, Kelsey turned to Ayla. "Thanks," she smiled. "That was lucky timing."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Ayla smiled back. "After that helicopter landed in our field, we kept a watch on what was happening. We knew you'd gone into the big house, and when Colo came swaggering into the garden wearing his pistol I got worried, but didn't know what to do. Riosa had the idea to fill a pitcher and act like we just wanted to bring a refreshment."

"Well, it not luck, then it's your quick thinking and bravery that I have to thank."

Ayla poured another glass of the red juice and took a sip. "He's a good worker, you know, he and his men have been very helpful. But I don't like the way they look at us and talk about us. We may not understand all of their words, but we still get their meaning. It's not... gentlemanly."

"No!" agreed Sister Riosa. "It makes me feel naked and shamed, especially that Colo. I don't like being around him."

Ayla nodded. "I don't let him be alone with any of the sisters. He probably wouldn't really do anything, but it makes us all uncomfortable."

"Don't underestimate him," Kelsey shook her head. "He'd do anything and everything if he thought he could get away with it. I've known him for twenty years, and don't trust him one bit. If he's that bad, why don't you complain to his boss? Who arranged for him to work here?"

"It was the same man who came down after Dr. Chambers passed away," Ayla said. "He seems nice but we don't see him very often."

"It was right when we had that outbreak of mosquitoes," Riosa said. "He came by, very concerned about our health, and, um... helped us to move away."

"Wait," Kelsey held up her hand, "are you talking about Niles? Dr. Stratton?"

"Yes," both nuns chimed in at the same time.

Kelsey looked away, back toward the house, thinking. Colo's obviously more than just a handyman. He's involved in whatever's going on in the white building... and knows about the lab behind Grant's library... and – and he says he found Julian's body. So what is he really doing out here? And what does that say about Niles? How does he fit into all this?

Kelsey realized that Ayla was talking and looked over, forcing a smile. Okay, she'd think more about all this later... maybe over a cognac with Wayne.

"Sorry," she said, "I missed what you saying."

Ayla laughed softly. "Oh no, my fault for interrupting your thoughts. I was just asking if you enjoyed your look around – other than bumping into Colo, that is."

"I did, yes – very much. It was really good seeing the old place again."

"And the library," Ayla said, "why did Colo say that about you not going in there alone? It sounded like a threat, like he was warning you off. "

"The library is where my ex-husband died. About a year ago."

"You mean Dr. Chambers, the man who... he was your husband?"

"At one time, yes. But we'd been separated for over a year. Not a married couple anymore."

"I thought he was married to that other lady, the tall one who stayed with him sometimes," said Sister Riosa. Then immediately she blushed and said, "Oh, I'm sorry."

"Don't be... really, that's okay," said Kelsey. How many times would she need to say this to people? "Like I said, we weren't together. Whatever he did was his business. I didn't care."

Which wasn't completely true, of course. Sure, she'd fallen out of love with Julian just as completely as she'd been in love with him once, and sure, he could do whatever he wanted. Still, when he started seeing Trinity and seemed happy again, there'd been a few days of - mmm, what? Injured pride?

To be honest, yes.

But that was then. Way back then. Life was different now - so much better. That was part of the sweetness of being with Reid. She felt happy when they were together in an honest and open and equal way, ways that she'd never felt with Julian. And Reid seemed to feel the same about her, and that restored her pride, her faith in herself. Sure, it was just beginning, but that was enough... for now.

What a bad love can destroy, a good love can restore. And that was important. Because of it, she felt stronger, more in control - the way she used to feel as a teenager: young, strong, capable of anything.

Somehow, over the years with Julian, those confident feelings had eroded away without her even realizing it. Now they were coming back, and it was good to feel that way again.

So with a faint smile, Kelsey turned and said, "I guess Colo was talking about the library because he was the one who discovered Julian's body there."

Riosa wrinkled her brow. "Maybe. But also, maybe not. All those horrid shots – We couldn't really tell what happened."

All those horrid shots? Kelsey stared at Riosa, her mind momentarily whirling... then she shook her head.

"The story we were told was that a caretaker \- Colo - heard a single shot," Kelsey said slowly. "Just one, and went into the house to investigate... and found Julian sitting at the library table, dead."

The two nuns glanced at each other, then at Kelsey, in silence; neither one seemed ready to say anything.

"So that isn't what happened?" Kelsey looked at each of them in turn.

"Is it?" she repeated.

Finally Ayla sighed. "Everything was very confusing. There was a lot of noise and activity. We're just not sure."

Kelsey frowned, wondering what they were concealing. They weren't exactly lying, but they were definitely holding back, not telling the complete story.

Riosa turned to look at Ayla, as if waiting for a signal. But Ayla just said to her, "Sister Riosa, it's almost time for afternoon service. Would you please take the pitcher and glasses back to the kitchen?"

Riosa bowed her head briefly, said "Of course," and turned to go. But before leaving, she knelt for a moment at a small cairn of white stones near the Rodin statue. After a few seconds, she crossed herself, stood, and left without looking back.

"What was that about?" Kelsey asked.

"Please," Ayla sounded worried, "please Kelsey, we're a cloistered order. Our mission is to tend to the health and spiritual well-being of those in need. We try to, um, minimize involvement in situations that could endanger our mission."

"And yet you are involved," Kelsey said. "Something is going on. What it is, I don't know yet, but it has me worried, and I'm going to find out. Anything that you know about it... about that strange building, about the military activity, about Niles and Phil... about Julian's death... all of that is important."

Ayla stepped forward and placed her hand on Kelsey arm. "We pray for guidance, but we leave judgment up to the Lord."

"Good," Kelsey said, sounding a bit harsher than she intended, "do your guidance praying tonight. I'll be back tomorrow – or the next day. Maybe I'll show you the room behind the library, and then we can look together inside that white building. After that, you tell me what kind of guidance you received."

Ayla nodded and looked troubled. "Yes... yes, okay. Kelsey, just because we focus our lives on faith and charity, doesn't mean that we hide from trouble."

Then she smiled, a little weakly, and gave Kelsey's arm a gentle squeeze. "Nor from simple, honest pleasures."

"Those vines are grapes," she said, pointing toward the fields behind the solar panels, "and after evening prayers, we sometimes have a glass of our own red wine. When you come back, share a glass with us. And, if the Lord wills, we will share what we've seen with you."

Kelsey looked into Ayla eyes for long seconds, then slowly nodded and smiled.

"Okay then, thanks for..." she hesitated, then shrugged and said, "for everything you've done, and everything you will do."

And so they walked together out of the garden. Kelsey glanced curiously at the little pile of white stones, but said nothing. When they reached the jeep, she had an impulse to drive to the white building and bust in – right now.

Get in and see why someone was still moving stuff into it after Julian and Phil were already dead. Get in and see just what the Hell was going on out there.

But no - better to leave and go back to Stevie and Laila, to give this all a little more thought before rushing into action prematurely.

So she climbed into the driver's seat and fired up the engine. A parting wave and she was off, pausing at the gate for one more look at the place that had been her home for so many years.

Her gaze roamed over the fields, the trees, the monastery buildings, Grant's old house, and came to rest on the upstairs window. It was the one outside the library storeroom, the one covered with plywood. And as she looked, Riosa words flashed into her mind: _All those horrid shots._

The door on the environmental chamber with the smashed latch, yes; and the shattered glass viewport in the door, also yes; and that boarded up window in the wall.

And Julian, of course, dead from a gunshot wound.

All those horrid shots.

Right, but who was doing all the shooting?

Chapter 91: Colo

Day 12: Friday

Colo heard Kelsey's jeep go by and smiled to himself. He'd parked his truck in a narrow clearing just past the Lodge turn-off - not visible from the road leading from the Mission to the Clinic - then told Egardo and Bejek to take off and walk to the rest of the way. They'd grumbled, but grabbed a bottle and left.

After that he leaned back, put his feet up on the dashboard, lit his pipe, and waited.

It hadn't taken long. Good – it meant that those damn nuns hadn't been too talkative. And now he could go back and check on things.

With a slight grunt he leaned forward and tapped his pipe out into an empty beer can. Then he sat up, started the engine, and pulled onto the road. A left turn at the fork, and he was off, heading back to the Mission.

The gate was locked, but it took just a few seconds to open it and drive through. No need to be sneaky; the blessed ladies were all inside, having a meal and preparing for afternoon prayers – good for the body, good for the soul, and a sensible way to keep indoors during the heat of the afternoon.

And also a good way to keep away from him; he was still pissed at Ayla for busting into the garden with that ridiculous story about juice. He'd wanted to push Kelsey a little more, to find out why she was really here, what she really knew. And – yes – he was still pissed at her, too, even after all these years. She'd refused him before when they were kids... made him feel like dirt; well, he'd have his way with her yet.

He parked near the garden fence and walked past the trees and statues, pulling the big silver key from his pocket as he got near the high double doors. Once inside, he went straight upstairs and into the library. Kelsey said that she hadn't gone in there, but there was no way he was going to trust her.

So he checked around carefully, looking for moved furniture or open boxes, books off the shelf, scuff marks in the dust on the table... anything that could prove she'd been lying.

Nothing was obviously out of place or disturbed.

The door to the storeroom was locked and hadn't been forced open, but could she have a key? After the new lab had been built in the field, Niles had taken whatever he wanted from this storeroom and then told Colo to clean it out.

Well, Hell, that big chamber in there was damn heavy. He remembered what a pain in the ass it'd been to haul it in there, and he wasn't keen on hauling it away. "Anyway, fuck him. I ain't his damn lackey. If Niles wants it moved, let him do it himself."

So he just put a big padlock on the door and left it at that. And so what? No one ever went in there.

Colo stopped at that thought. Wait... Phil Poley went in a few times, and that meant he had a key. And where were his keys now? They should still be in his bungalow at the Clinic – it hadn't been cleared out in the week since he'd died. But what if Gresham had gotten them?

And what if he'd given them to Kelsey? Colo swore, and spat on the floor. Christ yes – that was Poley's jeep she was driving.

He pulled out his own key ring and opened the lock, then pushed the door open and clicked the light switch. The desk looked the same as he remembered – cluttered with papers, and the lab coats and shelves looked about like he remembered, except... except – something was wrong with the door to that big environmental chamber.

He was sure he'd left the door closed tight. Not just closed, but wired shut.

The wire was on the floor now, and the door was wide open.

"Kelsey, you lying bitch. You did a little spying in here, didn't you? And now I've caught you."

Not good, not good at all. Niles won't be happy. The Consortium won't be happy.

Then his frown turned into a grin and he nodded. "But you won't be happy, either, Kelsey, and I'll have the pleasure of making sure of it."

Chapter 92: The Elephant

Day 12: Friday morning

My phone alarm woke me up late the next morning - late for me, anyway; it must have been nearly 9 AM. I remembered getting to the Stanford Hospital the night before and being poked and prodded and rolled here and there in a wheelchair, when all I really wanted was to sleep, which eventually they let me do.

The window blinds were drawn down, so the light in the room was very low. It was also quiet - no ticking or whooshing of pumps or valves, and I couldn't feel any IV needles, so that was all good. Okay then - just lay still for a few seconds and take inventory: All of my parts seemed to be there – nothing missing that I could tell, and that was a relief. There were bandages around my chest and left side, a patch of some sort on my right shin, and gauze tape wrapped over my right thumb.

I thought about that for a while; memories came back of gunshots – that explained the chest bandages. Then the fall into the river, Marley and I locked together in a death grip that split suddenly when we slammed into the water... and then a mad scramble to get over to that big rock in mid-stream. There was a life-saving refuge behind it, but not a calm and peaceful one. Fast water still rushed by on both sides, pushing me this way and that, and the current underneath was tugging at my feet. I remembered scraping my thumb over and over trying to hang on to the sharp ridges of that rock; my hand would slip off, and I'd grab on again... and again... and again. Why I kept at it, I'm not really sure.. If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have known that it was just using up my strength, and I would have shoved off and tried to make it down the rapids while I still had energy left.

And I would have surely died. But then somehow Chyll came splashing in and we went shooting down that whirling maelstrom of fast water together.

Maybe that was where I gashed my shin.

Well, so much for the outside. What about the inside? Nothing felt too broken or squishy, and I could move my arms and legs okay. But when I sat up there was a sharp stab just under my ribs, left side. I took a deep breath and felt it again. Damn! Something in there wasn't right... any twisting motion set off a zingy bolt of pain.

So I moved very carefully, and managed to make it out of bed and into the bathroom. When I was done and washed up, I slipped into the robe that was hanging on a wall peg and walked to the window for a peek through the blinds. The sky was overcast and the ground looked wet, but it wasn't actively raining at the moment.

Okay, what next? Getting out of here would be good, but a hot shower would be better. First, though, I should check with someone to find out what was under the bandages before getting them soaked.

I stuck my head out the door to wave at a nurse.

But there was no nurse in the hallway; instead there was an office chair with a small coffee table in front of it. A laptop computer sat on the table and Autumn Kool sat in the chair, casually typing.

"Good morning," she said without looking up. "I figured that if you were going to laze the morning away, I might as well take care of some memos from Kirk."

"Right," I said, "well, I'm up and ready for breakfast. Shall we head out for coffee and bagels?"

"Mmm, not quite yet," she said, smiling up at me. "We'll have a conference with the doctor first; let him tell you what he found, what do to about it, that sort of thing. Why don't you go back and lie down – I'll get some coffee for both of us."

Like last night, no one was asking my opinion. Still no use arguing, though; just go along with it. For now.

Five minutes later we were sipping coffee. I was in the bed with the head area raised and she was sitting on the mattress down by my feet. "We have twenty minutes or so until Dr. Morgan gets here," she said. "You were pretty out of it last night, but you look more like your usual steely-eyed self now. So if you really are feeling better, how about giving me a rundown on what went on during the last two days?"

And so I went through it. Not all of it, not all of the little details, but enough to give her a sense of the problem and a feel for the characters involved.

"Where I am right now is stuck in place. I need to get moving, though – need to go over to the Waxman and see what's in the safe in Niles' wall. If there's anything useful there, I'll go where it leads. If not, then I'll track down Niles and wring the truth out of him."

"But what if he's already told you the truth? That this was a drug scheme by those two people, Marley and – the other one..."

"Phil," I said.

"Yes, thanks, Marley and Phil. What if it's just their little drug project? And now they're both dead. End of the problem, end of the trail, right?"

"Sure, if that's the whole story. But then why did Niles run off? And who killed Phil? And for that matter, Julian? There's more to this than I know about yet... there's some dangerous science involved, and I want to know what it is."

"So you're going to just walk into Niles' office and crack open his safe? With no evidence against him? How legal is that?"

"How legal? Not at all. But I'm not bringing the police in on this – it's my show."

She looked at me with narrowed eyes, one of those long looks you get from someone when they're going to give you a lecture. Then she said, "Reid, we're not the FBI; we're not the CIA. You know that as well as anyone. We're an organization of special people with special talents and special equipment who can perform special services. But we don't chase after villains or plots just to save the world. We hire our services out to other agencies, other governments, sometimes to certain other people. The key word here is 'hire'. So tell me, Reid, who's hiring us on this one?"

Luckily, I was ready for that. "The Waxman," I said smoothly. "Victor Akino – he's worried about their good name... he wants us to investigate."

"Was worried, you mean. Yes, I talked to him about this a bit on Monday – no details, but we did set up a temporary working agreement. We've done business with the Waxman before, so I know what Victor is like. You're right that he's very concerned about their reputation, and doesn't want any negative press about the Waxman. With his backing, I'd be OK with you searching staff offices on their premises. Without his backing though... well, it would be a slippery slope, legally. And - he may be satisfied that the situation is resolved now. The investigation he wanted was focused on Phil and Marley; with them dead and their project over, what's to make him want to go any further?"

She reached over and poured me a second cup of coffee. It was hot, sweet, and tasted great. I began to feel energized; even the pain in my side wasn't so bad....

I took another sip and said, "But if there are other people involved, then their project isn't over, in fact it'll probably just get worse. Autumn, I don't want to quit on this now, and I think Victor will agree. But with or without his backing, I want to keep pushing at it."

Autumn looked at me for a few seconds, then smiled and took off her glasses. After slowly cleaning the lenses with a tissue from the bedside Kleenex box, she put them back on and gave me that piercing look again.

"So who is she?"

It caught me in mid-sip, and I had to swallow and look innocent at the same time.

"Who d'you mean?" I asked.

"Young men don't go slaying dragons just to preserve truth and justice," Autumn said. "At least, no young men that I've ever met. If you want to go off on this noble quest... then there must be some damsel in distress involved."

I set down my cup and smiled. "You're too much."

She answered with a straight face, "It's part of my job description to be too much. That's why Kirk hired me."

"Okay," I nodded, "you win." I told her more about Kelsey – her background, her position at the Waxman, how Marley's story about the murder affected her, why she wanted to find out more, and her trip to the Layard Clinic.

"Aren't you worried about her? Being down there, I mean... if that's where both this Julian person and Phil Poley died – or maybe were both murdered – is she in any danger?"

"That's the big question," I said. "I wasn't happy about her going down there, but she was determined to do it. They'll be staying near the Mission where she grew up. Supposedly that's run by an order of nuns now, so I dunno... that sounds pretty safe, at least on the surface."

"Uh-huh," Autumn said, "but you think there's something spooky under the surface, don't you?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Before she left, I gave her copies of Marley's lab books to take along and read. There must be something important in them. Lester Clovis gave me the books last Wednesday. He was found dead on Sunday morning. That night Marley tried to run Kelsey and me over in her driveway. I think he wanted to stop her from getting at those books, and he wanted to stop me to from digging around the project. So, sure, he's dead now; but Trinity's convinced that there are more people involved. The problem is that she doesn't know if they're up here or down there - or both; just that they're dangerous. But, to answer your question: yeah, I'm damned worried about Kelsey."

Autumn nodded, walked over to the window, hummed a tune – it might have been an old Christmas carol, then came back and sat at the foot of the bed again. She tapped my left big toe and said, "OK, Prince Valiant - you know, we still have DJ on the payroll."

I smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that."

"Yes, he's called Mr. Shockey now, and we hire him out as a security advisor. He does training and demonstrations to banks and law groups. He doesn't do safecracking anymore."

"But he could, right? If Mr. Halliday asked him, he would, right?"

"If Kirk believed it was necessary, then, yes, DJ could be available. But not today, and maybe not tomorrow."

"Is he still in Vegas with Mr. Mars?" I asked.

She laughed, "Reid, no one's supposed to know that."

"But I do know it – so, when does he get back?"

"He should finish his duties later today. He might come back right away, but... well, you know how he loves the craps tables."

I was about to say more, but there was a discrete knock at the door; it opened and a young black man in a white coat came in: Dr. Morgan.

He asked what I remembered about last night and I told him, "Not much." I must have been pretty out of it; he said that he'd given me a thorough physical exam and run me through a couple of imaging machines.

"We found a lot of minor stuff," he said "contusions, abrasions, some deep bruises, a few old scars – but you also have a cracked rib. There's a streak of torn flesh cutting across it. Tell me – was that from an up-close gunshot?"

I remembered what Doc Pierce has said. "No, uh-uh. I fell while rock climbing. Must've hit something sharp on the way down."

"Okay," he nodded thoughtfully. "That might explain it... kind of. You also have a shallow but wide cut on your right leg, just below the knee, and some scrapes on your right thumb. I don't think you'll lose the nail, but it'll be painful for a day or two. You must have whacked it when you fell."

I smiled and nodded back. "Yeah, I think you're right."

"Somebody did a nice job of sewing you up though. Did you go to a doctor before you came here?"

"No," I said. "One of the guys in our hiking party was an army medic. He always carries a big first aid kit. So he did a quick patch up job."

"Hmmm... it was a darn good patch-up job. I left his stiches in place, but treated the wound with antibiotic cream and covered it with these bandages. You'll need to keep them on for the next two days at least. We'll give you some replacements in case you want to change the dressing. Same for your leg. You can take the bandage off of your thumb whenever you want – I just put it on to keep you from banging it on something while you slept. You should come back in two weeks so I can take another look at the rib. It's a minor crack and should heal quickly, but will be painful."

He paused for five seconds to let that all sink in, then went on. "Your left side is going to hurt for a while – there's no way out of that. I'll give you a prescription for pain pills if you want; otherwise just take whatever works for you. So with that, you're free to go. But remember, the best thing for you is rest – don't go out raising Hell for a while. Best if you just go home and go to bed for the next day or two."

"Got it," I said. "I'll be careful."

"Yes, for your own sake, please do that. If you tear those stiches you'll start bleeding again and you'll end up back here."

I nodded, we shook hands, and he left.

"Nice man," said Autumn. "Listen to what he says, Reid. We'll get you checked out of here and take whatever bandaging supplies they give us, but I want you to go home and go to bed."

She leaned a little closer and then said, "Alone."

I smiled and nodded my head. "No worries there."

"Hmm, yes, I want to believe you. But that young lady that you brought with you last night was very striking. A bit disheveled and worn out, but quite alluring, and the way she was looking at you...."

"Striking and alluring - yes," I nodded, "and she's also involved in this mess right up to her beautiful neck. I want to keep her close by, but no worries – she's not my damsel in distress."

Autumn stood up, smiling curiously, and stepped up to the head of the bed. She put her hand on my right shoulder and looked me in the eye.

"Reid, don't bullshit me, please. You've only known your lady dear for a week and she's six thousand miles away... and this long-legged beauty who saved your life is staying with you in your apartment. Your one-bedroom apartment. Just be careful, please. I don't give a damn who you sleep with, but don't tear open those stitches – you're a very valuable Halliday asset."

She straightened up and gave me a wink. "Besides, Kirk and I care a lot about you. Okay, enough about that. I called Chypp twenty minutes ago. He should be downstairs soon, so let's get you checked out and away from here."

"And DJ?" I asked.

"Yes, I already texted him – and took care of his hotel bill and reserved a flight for him for early tomorrow morning. That way he gets his craps tables tonight and you'll have to rest. He'll contact you after he gets back."

"You did all that? When? We just talked about him a few minutes ago."

"When Dr. Morgan was giving you the rundown on last night's tests. No need for me to listen in – I'd already seen your chart."

I had to smile. That's why Autumn Kool is, well, so cool: She gets stuff finished and put away while most people are thinking about starting.

Getting checked out went smoothly. Autumn had completed all of the paperwork and taken care of the fees before I'd even woken up. I signed my name on a waiver form and got a ride to the front door in a wheelchair.

One of the Halliday SUV's was parked just outside the entrance, with Chypp at the wheel. Chyll jumped out of the passenger seat and held the door for me. Autumn walked over and peeked in the back seat. It was empty. She nodded, shot me a quick smile, and looked over at Chyll.

"Reid is feeling a little weak, Chyll. The doctor has ordered him to go home and rest today - you'll see that he does exactly that, won't you?"

"Absolutely, Ms. Kool, Chypp and I'll see to it."

"Good," she said, "then I'll be going in to the office. Give me a call if you need anything." She started to walk away, but stopped in mid-stride, turned around, and walked over to the driver's side of our SUV. She pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, scribbled for a few seconds, then tore off the page and handed it to Chypp.

"Chypp, this is DJ Shockey's phone number and flight info. He'll be coming in to San Jose from Las Vegas in the late morning. I'd like to send him a message that you'll meet him at the airport. Does that work for you?"

Chypp glanced at the paper and said, "Yes, Ms. Kool – no problem."

"Excellent. Our Prince Valiant here is anxious to talk to him. After you collect him, just take him to Reid's. Probably a good idea to have some sort of late breakfast fixings ready. DJ isn't an early riser, so he probably won't have eaten."

"No problem about breakfast," Chypp said. "Trinity made super omelets this morning – she's really a good cook."

"Ahh," Autumn smiled. It was kind of a smirky smile. "So the young lady is still there?"

"Oh yeah," Chyll said. "We both had a tough time getting to sleep last night – she's was pretty nervous, um...." She looked over at me and said, "You know, boss, like what we talked about in the copter - she's sure we're all in a ton of danger. I think seeing Marley get zipped up in that bag and hauled away freaked her out. And – shoot, it kinda freaked me too. She's afraid to go home alone, and wants to stay with us for a while."

"Okay," Autumn said, rolling her eyes. "Just remember, Chyll: Reid's job today is not to comfort ladies in distress, it's to rest and recover. And it's your job to see that he does that and only that."

"Yes, ma'am. No worries."

Autumn nodded and walked over to another black SUV parked nearby. Logan was at the wheel, and when he pulled out and drove by, he smiled and waved and we all waved back. He's one of our operatives, kind of like me, but about ten years older, and has been with Halliday's longer. He doesn't do much field work now; he's more of a 'personal assistant' – i.e., body guard - for Mr. Halliday and Autumn.

Anyway, after they left, I eased into the back seat on the passenger side. While I was clipping on the seat belt, Chyll ran around the car and got in the back door on the driver's side, sitting next to me.

Chypp glided the SUV out of the Stanford Hospital parking lot. His leg injury may have put the kibosh on swimming and skiing, but it never slowed down his driving. He pulled onto Sand Hill Road, went west and turned onto 280 south.

Then he looked in the rear view mirror and caught my eye. "Prince Valiant? What'd Autumn mean by that?"

"Ahh – nothin'," I said. "He was a character in old comic strips... a knight at Camelot. Actually, it was a pretty cool old strip – real good artwork."

"So she thinks you're meaning to go out to save maidens and slay dragons?"

"I don't know, Chypper. Maybe so."

"Well if anyone can slay dragons, it's you, Boss," said Chyll. "Or should we start calling you Prince Boss now?

I glanced over and said with a smile, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that – and please don't let me hear it again."

Then I swiveled around as much as I could, what with the bandages and all, and looked at Chyll. "But seriously, young lady, I want to tell you that I really admire your strength and your bravery. I owe you a lot. If you hadn't ridden out to me on that raft, I might still be hanging onto that big rock... or I might be sixty feet down at the bottom of the river. And Chyll – I just spent a night in the hospital getting all my nicks and scrapes taken care of, but what about you? You tumbled over those same rocks and rapids. You must have gotten banged up too."

She flashed a smile. "No boss, I came out of it just fine."

"That's BS," Chypp said. "Boss, she could hardly get her shirt off last night to take a shower. Her knees are all skinned and she's got a bruise the size of a baseball just behind her right shoulder."

"Oh stop," Chyll said. "It's hardly anything."

"Can you move your arm okay? Do you want to get your shoulder X-rayed?"

"No way, Boss – I'm fine. It was a little stiff last night, but it's all better now."

"That's more BS," said Chypp. "She took two Advil last night and more this morning."

"Oh, shut up, Chypper – I was a little achy before, but it's okay now. Trinity massaged my shoulder and back with some hot oil this morning. Everything's fine."

"Everything?" I said. "You're sure about that?"

She was quiet for a few seconds, then in a low voice said, "Reid, there is one more thing, I was trying to figure out how to tell you."

This must be serious - she never calls me 'Reid'.

"Okay," I said, "spill it."

"You know how you were fighting with Marley and you got shot?"

"Sure – what about it?"

"Well, I think it was me that shot you."

I started to laugh – then stopped; she was dead serious - her eyes were filled with tears.

"Okay," I said gently, "so, tell me about it. How'd you get the gun?"

"I grabbed it away from Trinity, after she fired the first shot, and I ran up by you and Marley. He and you were twisting and shifting around, and I was weaving around trying to get the right aim, but any second he was going to shove you over, so... I pulled the trigger. God - I couldn't believe how loud it was."

She closed her eyes. Two tears slowly trickled down her cheeks, and her voice sank to a whisper. "And then there was blood all over your face, all over your chest... and you both fell over the edge. I was so freakin' scared...."

Chypp had the radio on KDFC and they were playing some instrumental Christmas music. The volume was low, so it made it easy for saying what needed to be said. Chyll had started the ball rolling, about being worried that she'd hit me with that gunshot. But that was only part of the story. There was another big elephant in the room - that she'd definitely killed Marley.

I looked at her in silence for a few seconds, then took her right hand and gave it a light squeeze. "Chyll, it all happened pretty fast, but Marley and I were in a life-and-death struggle, and it wasn't going well for me. I remember the two shots clearly. The first bullet – the one that Trinity fired – grazed Marley, but it hit me. That's the one that broke my rib. For a few seconds after that I had no strength in my left arm; and couldn't grab anything with my left hand. That gave Marley a big advantage. He was sure to finish me off... I was dead meat."

"Then came the second shot. That one went clean through Marley but missed me completely. All that blood you saw on me was his. You saw the hole in his neck later, right? The bullet must have blown through his carotid artery. He was dead before he hit the water. Chyll, you saved my life with that shot. And later you saved me again when you came down the river and got me off that rock." She opened her eyes then, and I smiled. "Chyll – you were brilliant. You're not just my partner, you're my hero."

More tears, this time maybe of relief instead of grief. After a bit, she said in a small voice, "Boss, did you ever kill anyone?"

"Yes."

"More than one person?"

"Yes."

"Why? I mean, how did it happen? Tell me about... one of them."

This isn't my favorite topic, and in fact I mostly never talk about those things. But right now it was part of saying what needed to be said.

I thought for a few seconds. The stuff when I was in the military? No - that was still classified, don't go there.

So then, hmm.... "Alright," I said. "About two years ago. Axel and I were in a firefight with two druggies in the woods near Steven's Creek Reservoir. One of them had the drop on Axel and was about to pull the trigger. I yelled at him, he turned toward me, and we both snapped off shots at the same time."

"His hit a fence post just off my right side; mine hit him just above the heart, shattering his aorta. He dropped like a stone and gurgled... and, uh, bled out in a few seconds. When his buddy saw that, he tossed down his pistol and gave up."

"You know Chyll, I felt pretty jazzed about making the shot and saving Axel's life, but I also remember having a knot in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't a pretty scene - it was messy, bloody, and gruesome, and the memory stayed fresh for a long time. It's still there, just not so fresh anymore. Probably that's how it'll be with you, too."

After another minute or so she leaned back and heaved a big sigh. "You know, when I saw him lying there on the beach, all wet and pale and dead, I was glad. I hated him for making me so scared at the Waxman, for what he'd said to me, and for attacking you. So I looked into his dead eyes told him that it was me that killed him, and that if he wasn't already dead, I'd kill him again."

She coughed and wiped her nose. "But... after they zipped him into that bag, I didn't feel so happy anymore. And last night, you know, I kind of kept thinking about it. Boss, d'you really think I saved your life?"

"Yes, Chyll, I'm sure of it. If you hadn't pulled that trigger, it would have been me they were zipping into that bag."

She squeezed my hand and stared into my eyes for maybe ten seconds, like she was looking for something... like 'truth' from me and 'strength' within herself.

And I think she found both of them. Because the teary eyes took on a steady glint, and she smiled and said, "Thanks, Boss. And you know what? I _would_ do it again."

Catharsis? Or transformation?

Maybe both.

Chapter 93: Exit Wound

Day 12: Friday

Kelsey's drive back from the Mission was fast, bumpy, on the edge of reckless: downshifting and accelerating into the curves, drifting around corners, flooring the gas pedal on the few long straight stretches. It was dusty, loud, and maybe a little crazy, but also therapeutic. She'd left the Mission in a dark mood, but, by the time she neared the clinic, the frustration had been worked out, and she drove the last half-mile in relative serenity.

It was quiet when she eased through the north gate and slowed the jeep. A few people were sitting in the shaded central courtyard or swinging in hammocks, enjoying the early afternoon warmth. Two nurses in white coats were walking between the reception office and the treatment rooms; one was reading from a clipboard, while the other carried a tray of syringes and glass vials. A half-dozen children stood nearby, looking nervous.

"Must be vaccination day," Kelsey thought. She remembered hating to get the shots when she was little, then being pretty much OK with it as she got older. But after starting to work at the clinic, she got to give the shots to the other kids, and that was really cool.

Yes, it all depended on which side of the syringe you were on.

She parked in the little motor pool, dropped the keys into her pocket, and walked to their bungalow. Laila was sitting on the porch outside, leafing through a magazine.

Kelsey plopped down into a bamboo chair next to her. "God - what a morning."

Laila smiled sympathetically and leaned forward. "Tough? Like - what happened?"

"A lot. The place looks mostly the same, but there've been some changes. The nuns are taking good care of it, though. I met a couple of them... they're friendly enough. And I went through the old house. It's in good shape – you'd hardly know that Grant's been gone for five years."

"The library," said Laila, "did you go in?"

"I did, yes. No big thing. No ghosts, no bad karma." She didn't say anything about the store room being converted into a lab. She was still trying to process it herself, and didn't feel like discussing it all quite yet.

Except with Reid. Damn! Why didn't he answer his phone yesterday? Maybe I should have tried again today.

"What else?" Laila asked. "Something must'a happened – you don't look so happy."

"Ohhh... I ran into Colo. We got into an argument."

"Colo! That little snake – what's he doing there?"

"Well, supposedly he does odd jobs. Handyman, you know, maintenance and repair, that kind of stuff. But he works at the Lodge too, and was involved in whatever Phil and Julian were doing. And - he seems to have some link to the military. I don't have it all figured out yet. I need to think for a while, then go back there again when he's not around."

"Good idea," Laila said, "Stevie and I want to see the Mission too, but we don't need to see him."

Kelsey drummed her fingers silently on the table, lost in thought for a few seconds, then looked at Laila and said, "I don't think we should take Stevie there yet."

"Really?" Laila sounded surprised. "I thought you couldn't wait to show him where you grew up, all the places you hung out at as a kid."

"Yeah," Kelsey said slowly. "But there's something wrong out there. And I'm not comfortable taking him along until we know what it is. You either, Laila. You should stay away, too."

"Me? Why?"

"Because you're my closest friend and Stevie loves you. If anything happens to me, he'll need you."

"What kind'a talk is that?" Laila frowned, speaking in a harsh whisper. "What do you think is going on out there? Is this some fool idea Reid put in your head, about people murdering each other?"

"Laila, please," Kelsey said, "I don't know... maybe. I'm just trying to be careful."

Laila looked at her a long moment, then sat back and smiled. "You're falling for him, aren't you."

It caught Kelsey by surprise, but she had to smile back. "Maybe, yeah. But – changing the subject, tell me about your morning. What'd you and Stevie do?"

"Huh - okay," Laila gave a ten minute summary of visiting the butterflies, scrambling down a muddy trail to the creek, tossing pebbles into the pools, looking under rocks for bugs, racing around the lawn, Stevie climbing a tree and swinging on a vine – which snapped, sending him tumbling on the grass, and all of this with the little monkeys Muru and Lili tagging along.

"First Stevie was copying Muru, jumping and climbing, but after a while Muru started copying Stevie, doing summersaults and tossing pebbles. I got some really good videos."

"Nice," Kelsey smiled, "Let me see later, OK?"

"Yeah, for sure. Then we had lunch right before you got back. Stevie was so tired he could hardly eat. He's sleeping on the big couch now, just inside the door."

Kelsey got up and peeked in on him. Like most four year olds, he was a ball of energy when awake, a little angel when asleep. She pulled the light blanket around him, kissed his cheek, and walked as noiselessly as she could to the desk against the side wall.

There were various papers and books on the desk top and in the shelves behind it, but what she wanted was in a lower drawer. She slid it open and took out one of the two white binders inside – a copy of one of Marley's lab notebooks. She tucked it under her left arm, eased the drawer closed, and slipped out the door.

"I missed lunch," she told Laila softly. "Maybe I'll go see if there's anything left in the café."

"Okay," Laila answered, looking up from her magazine. "I'll probably take a little nap myself as long as Stevie's asleep. Once he wakes up he'll want to go out again, so I better be ready."

Kelsey leaned down and gave her a hug. "Laila, you're such sweetie. We're so lucky to have you with us."

The cafeteria was almost empty, but a big pot of hot soup was on the stove with a stack of biscuits nearby. She lifted the cover off of the pot and gave a sniff – some sort of tomato stew with lots of veggies, a little on the spicy side. There was a large garden in the back of the clinic, and all of the vegetables were fresh, organic, and tasty. The stove was turned off but the stew was still hot, so she filled a large bowl, snared two biscuits, and found a seat near the window.

She'd already gone through most of the notebook while they were in the boat from Salvata, so she opened to the middle and read slowly while eating. It was hard to focus, though; her mind kept turning back to the Mission. After five minutes she gave up on both: closed the book, shoved the Mission thoughts aside, and ate in silence, trying to enjoy the view of the lagoon out the window.

That worked for maybe thirty seconds; she dipped a biscuit into the stew, took a bite, munched, swallowed... then pushed the bowl aside. Somehow, she didn't have much of an appetite.

"Back already?"

Kelsey looked up – Wayne was coming over, carrying a glass of ice water.

"Oh – I got in about a half-hour ago. Checked in on Stevie and Laila, then came over here to grab some lunch."

"Good – and how was the visit?"

She hesitated for a few seconds, wondering where to start, and finally just said, "It was okay, but I think it raised more questions than it answered."

He pulled up a chair and sat across from her. "Oh–like what?"

"Alright. Like what was Julian up to out there? He had a secret lab set up in a storeroom behind Grant's library. The old mansion was supposed to be off-limits, just kept closed up. But he had some kind of operation going on there. Then, after he died, it wasn't so secret anymore. Somebody put up a big new building in the field – it has to be that lab Phil was so proud of. There must be ten acres of solar panels near it for power. And while I was there, an army helicopter delivered a shipment of boxes. They put the boxes into the new building... but why? With Phil dead, who's going to use whatever's in them?"

"Ah, so you saw the changes I was telling you about." Wayne took a drink of the water, then asked, "How much of a chance did you get to go inside and look around?"

"Well, I got into the Grant's house, but not into the new building. Yet. But I will."

"No ghosts in the library, huh?"

"No, no ghosts, and no bloodstains on the carpet. But it looked like someone shot up the lab in the back. Wayne, do you know if Julian took a gun out there that last day? And if he did, then why?"

"I can see this is going to take a while." Wayne checked his watch and nodded. "I've got a half-hour till afternoon sick-call, so let me grab a cup of tea. Want one?"

"Sure, thanks – a little sugar, no cream please."

While Wayne went for tea, Kelsey's mind continued to gnaw on the gunshot problem:

At least two shots must have hit the environmental chamber, and there was that window covered with plywood; was it shot out too?

Did Julian do the firing? If so, why would he want to destroy his work?

And did he then turn the gun on himself? Could it have been suicide, after all?

Or was there a second person there, with a second gun?

What was it Riosa said? - _All those horrid shots_.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Wayne sliding a cup across the table. The tea was rich and dark and she nodded her thanks. He sat down and squinted as he sipped the steaming brew.

"Okay," he said at last, "you wanted to know if Julian had a gun with him. I never saw him carrying one, but when we cleared out his bungalow, we found six boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells."

He took another sip, then added, "But no shotgun."

Would Julian have kept boxes of ammunition without having a gun? Very doubtful. So if it wasn't in his room, then...

"Wayne, he didn't die of a shotgun wound, did he? I never heard the complete story, but I just imagined him sitting at the library table, pointing a pistol at his head, and pulling the trigger."

Wayne set down his cup, took off his glasses, rubbed his forehead, then carefully put his glasses back on.

"Alright," he said. "Julian died early in the morning, probably before daylight. Colo brought his body here in the afternoon, wrapped up in a tarp. He said that the local constable had completed his investigation, and told me cremate the body immediately. I said that we'd take care of it, and he left. But we didn't cremate right away; I wanted to call his family, see what they wanted to have done. Strange thing, though – we suddenly had no phone service. It went out that morning and hasn't ever come back. So we stored the body in the ice room, and that night I took a look at him. Like I said about Phil, we don't do detailed autopsies here, but I was curious. After all, I'd known Julian for better than ten years, and I at least wanted to be sure that it was really him."

Wayne picked his up his cup and leaned back, sipping and looking out the window with that narrow-eyed look of someone recalling past details.

Kelsey waited, five, ten seconds, then had to say something.

"And?" She prompted.

Wayne turned back toward her and set his cup back down.

"Oh, sorry... just picturing it again. Kelsey, I'm no forensics expert, and I've only treated a handful of gunshot wounds – mostly from hunting accidents. The only suicides we've gotten around here have been by poisoning or falls. But it was strange: Julian had only one gunshot wound, and it had definitely killed him. But not to his head. He was shot in the chest, through the heart."

"Really," Kelsey said, holding her hands out as if shooting herself in the heart. "That seems like an awkward way to do it. Not impossible, just awkward."

"Yeah," Wayne nodded, "that's what I thought, too. But the wound was made by a pistol or rifle – definitely not a 12-gauge shotgun. If a pistol, then it could have happened that way. With a rifle or shotgun – no. Either way, it must have been a powerful weapon that hit him. Ribs in front and back were shattered, lots of soft tissue destruction. The impact would have killed him instantly."

Kelsey's mind flashed on the pistol Colo was wearing. It looked big and powerful, but she really didn't know much about calibers, bullet sizes, or fire-power; as far as she knew, Grant never kept firearms around the Mission, so as a kid she'd never used them.

But she'd seen movies, and a sudden thought came to her: "Wayne, was there an exit wound in his back?"

"Yes," he said. "A large one. There must have been a lot of blood."

Okay then - was there a hole in the chair back? If Julian was shot while sitting down, then there should be. But if he'd been shot somewhere else - like in the storeroom and then carried to the chair....

She tried to visualize the chairs around the table, but it was no use. She'd sat in one of them, but hadn't paid any attention to the back.

"Damn it!"

"Sorry," Wayne said, "I didn't catch that."

"Oh – nothing," Kelsey said. "I was just wishing that I'd been more observant."

"Don't we all!" He said. "Trying to diagnose some of these tropical diseases can be a nightmare. We try to notice everything, but it's difficult. It does get easier with time and experience, though."

"Yeah," Kelsey nodded, swirling her tea. She'd done scientific investigations before – lots of them – but never analyzed a suicide or a murder. She wondered - What would Reid do? And wished for the hundredth time that he was here.

They sat in silence for a minute, each one lost in their thoughts. Kelsey heaved a big sigh - it seemed like the more she learned, the more confusing it all was.

What to do next?

Chapter 94: Ice Water

Day 12: Friday Early Afternoon

Wayne checked the time and cleared his throat. "Afternoon sick call starts in about fifteen minutes. Just enough time for one more cup."

He went to the urn and was back in thirty seconds with fresh cups for both of them. "If it's just the usual runny noses and minor diarrhea, Juni and Marra can handle it, no problem. Anything more serious, I should be there. But you said you had more questions: like what else?"

Kelsey shrugged, "Too many to go over now. But the biggie is the same one I've been gnawing at for the last couple of weeks: What was Julian working on? Can you remember anything he might have said about it?"

Wayne blew on hot liquid, then took a tentative sip. "Well, okay, let's start with what he liked to work on. The patterns of disease spreading, right? Remember how he used to yammer on about that kind of stuff - which ones run their course and disappear, which ones hang around but stay in isolated pockets, which ones become epidemics. He'd been working on that ever since he first started coming here, when you were just a long-legged girl running around barefoot."

"Right," Kelsey nodded, "that was what he studied for years. But it all stopped when he ran into money problems... his outside grants dried up, and the Waxman wouldn't advance him any internal funding."

"Really? I didn't hear about that."

"Yeah," she went on. "We couldn't figure it out. 'Politics,' he said, 'Goddamn politics.' I never knew him to have any enemies, but he was sure someone was out to get him, and it broke his spirit. We'd already drifted way apart and our marriage was in bad trouble, but that was the, uh, the last straw. He went over the edge... became very bitter, even abusive – and we split up."

"Jeez, that must have been tough," Wayne scowled. "So what happened then?"

Kelsey shrugged. "It's a puzzle. After we split, he spiraled downhill, personally and professionally both. He had a technician and two student interns, but they left, and he didn't do anything but mope around for a month or two. Then suddenly – wham – his life did a somersault. First he and Trinity became an item, then he hooked into a new project that Phil was doing. Supposedly they were getting a load of money from a private mystery source. In a couple of weeks he left the Bay Area to come down here... and I never saw him again."

"I didn't hear about that," Wayne said, "but then, Julian and I weren't close. Long time ago - before the two of you were together - he and I had a few clashes about medical treatments. He had his ideas based on academic study, and I had mine based on working with patients in the field. It was one thing chatting about it over a beer, but when he came into the clinic and started telling the nurses to change what they were doing, he got to be a real pain in the ass. I told him off, and we had a prickly relationship for years because of it."

'Ahh – okay, I noticed that you two never spoke much," Kelsey said, "but never knew why. Yeah, he could be a bit overbearing - had a tough time admitting he was wrong about anything."

Wayne coughed softly, wiped his lips, and took another sip of tea. "Uh huh. But he had one, uh, I guess you could call him 'friend' here; our other senior doctor. Good guy, named Vari. Hang on - let's see if I can get a hold of him."

He pulled a small device – it looked like a glorified pager – from his pocket, keyed in a number, and set it on the table. "You haven't met Vari yet – he was away when you got in yesterday and didn't get back until late this morning. He's been with us for three years now – a specialist in Family Medicine, and a real godsend; born in a village a ways down the river, and speak the local dialects fluently. These days, he does most of our field visits while I stay here at the clinic, which is good 'cause I'm getting too old to make the rounds. And the people really like him. It took me years to win their trust, but he connected right away. A good guy and a good doctor, too. Anyway, he knows a lot about infectious diseases, which is why he and Julian got along well."

The speaker beeped softly and a voice said "Hey Wayne, what's up?"

"Hi Vari," Wayne answered. "I'm down in the cafeteria with someone you should meet. If you're not busy, could you join us for a bit?"

"Uh – sure. Gimme five or ten minutes, okay?"

"Good, thanks."

Wayne slid the device back into his pocket. "It's really a small ham radio – perfect for fast messaging around the local area. The range is only a few miles, max, but it's really useful. What with phone service being out, this is about all we have. It's like the old days."

Kelsey was looking at him curiously. "Ayla told me that she was able to call a policeman the day Julian died."

"Right," Wayne nodded. "That would have been right before we lost service."

"Uh huh," Kelsey said, "And you say the service has been off ever since. You don't think there could be any connection, do you?"

"Between Julian's death and this whole area losing phone service?" Wayne frowned slightly, then shook his head. "Well, I see your point... but that would be pretty far-fetched, don't you think?"

"I don't know what to think anymore."

Wayne nodded, then ran a hand through his thinning gray hair and checked his watch. "Okay, still got a few more minutes. Let's see - we were trying to figure what Julian was up to."

"Yeah, and you said that you and he didn't talk."

"Right, but I still hear stuff from other people. I mentioned that the nuns volunteer here, didn't I?"

"Yeah, two of them, you said."

"Right. Well, they told me that Niles used to visit Julian. They didn't know Niles, of course, but after they described what he looked like, I knew it had to be him. Now, you said something about Phil having the grant money, but he never came down here until after Julian died. Before that, it was always Niles."

"Huh," Kelsey said, "that's another thing I didn't know. Did he stay here at the Clinic?"

"No, at the Lodge, for a few days every couple of months. He'd go out to the Mission or else Julian would go to the Lodge to see him, every day. I heard from one of the nuns that they had a Hell of an argument one time – a real shouting match."

"Any idea when that was?" Kelsey asked. "Was it close to the time when Julian died?"

"Mmmm – I'm not sure... you'd need to ask the nun. Her name is Shari."

Wayne waited while Kelsey jotted down the name in the margin of the binder paper, when went on, "And then there was Trinity. She came down a few times during the first six months that Julian was here, but not the last six."

"Was she helping him out?" Kelsey asked, "Working with him at the Mission?"

Wayne smiled. "Not really. She went out there a couple of times, but mostly stayed here with us. Julian wouldn't get back till after dark, so Trinity got to hanging around in the clinic and helping us out. She's good at organizing files and creating spreadsheets. Really streamlined our patient record system. Anyway, while she was in here with us, she'd complain about what he was doing out there."

"I remember her going on about 'the damn rats and damn mosquitos'. I thought she was talking about a pest infestation, but she said no, that's what Julian was spending all his time with. 'He keeps feeding these weird bacteria to mosquitos and then studies their guts. If I didn't love him, I'd think he was nuts.' That's what she said."

Kelsey nodded. 'If I didn't love him...' That was the reason that she couldn't really be angry at Trinity. She knew that Trinity really did love Julian, had been in love with him before she'd come into the picture.

But what was that about mosquitoes again? Didn't Ayla... or was it Riosa, say something about that? She made a note to check with them.

"Why mosquitos?" she asked. "He wasn't looking at malaria or yellow fever, was he? Or Dengue?"

"I don't think so," Wayne said. "Those're pretty well controlled around here. Big problems other places, just not so much here, at least for the last thirty years."

Kelsey nodded. And the bit about feeding them bacteria... what did that mean?

Wayne glanced at his watch and stood up. "Time for me to go. If sick call is slow, I'll come right back; I'd like to be here when Vari shows up. Okay, see you in a bit."

Kelsey watched him set his cup in the sink and walk past the cooking area and out the door in the back of the room. Her own cup was nearly empty, so she got up, stretched, and went for a refill. She added two packets of sugar, grabbed a clean spoon, and carried it back to the table.

It was a beautiful early afternoon, and she stood near the window, slowly stirring the hot liquid and looking out toward the sunny courtyard.

But what caught her eye wasn't the courtyard, but the window itself; there was a strip of gray duct tape on both sides, covering a small crack in the glass. She was staring at the tape, her mind in neutral, when things began to connect:

• The broken door lock and shattered viewport in the environmental chamber

• The smashed window in the outer wall of the storeroom, now covered over with plywood

• The sudden mosquito outbreak that sickened the nuns, and was serious enough to have them moved away for a month.

They had to be Julian's mosquitoes. He must have been growing them in the chamber and studying them in the secret lab. And somebody – could it have been Julian? – had taken a shotgun and blown the room apart.

Why, why, why?

And it cost him his life. The suicide story had to be complete but carefully constructed bullshit, she felt sure of that now. She also felt certain that the nuns knew it; and Colo. And Niles, too – he had to know.

Maybe... maybe he even arranged it.

That last thought came out of nowhere, but hit her like a bucket of ice-water.

The spoon slipped out of her fingers, glanced off the edge of the table and clattered onto the floor.

'No, that couldn't be true, could it? I mean \- for Christ sake - Niles?'

Chapter 95 RIDL

Day 13: Friday early-afternoon

Kelsey reached down and picked up the spoon absentmindedly while trying to deal with this new perspective of her lifelong image of Niles. It didn't seem to fit... but that didn't mean that it couldn't fit. Like every other person on the planet, Niles had his dark moods, personal secrets, and moments of insecurity.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Wayne coming through the side door, chatting to a younger man - slender, medium height, with a shock of black hair over his handsome face.

"Kelsey," Wayne said when they reached her table, "meet Vari – Dr. Vari Kulkette." As they shook hands, Wayne turned to Vari and said, "Kelsey's one of the locals – grew up at the Mission and left a few years ago to get her PhD in California. She works there now at the same place that Phil Poley and Julian Chambers were. You remember Julian, right?"

"Sure. The guy that shot himself last year, right?" Vari nodded. "The one who had the tall lady with him for a while? I still think about her, about what a help she was around the clinic."

Wayne winced slightly. "Yeah... he's the one. Anyway, we're trying to figure out what he was working on, and I was telling Kelsey that you were about the only one around here that he talked to. Could you tell us what you know about it?"

Vari looked uncertain, his glance shifting from Wayne to Kelsey, then back again. "I guess so. Um, it's nothing confidential, is it? I don't want to be saying anything I shouldn't."

"Vari," Wayne said in a low voice, "Julian was Kelsey's husband. They shared work until their marriage hit a snag and they separated – that's why he was with Trinity, the, uh, tall lady. Anyway, you wouldn't be revealing anything confidential – but you might help us understand what led to his death. So, if you could remember anything...."

Vari bowed his head at Kelsey apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't know."

"No problem," Kelsey smiled. "We're trying to piece together what he was doing and who he was working with. So far we don't have a lot."

"Well, I'll add what I can," Vari said.

It was a small table, not much larger than a card table. One side was pushed against the wall, which came up to below shoulder height. Above that was a long window, giving a good view of the outside.

They each sat on one of the open sides, Vari directly across from the wall. He rubbed his cheek with the side of his thumb and gazed out the window, thinking.

"Okay, where to start? I spend a lot of time going around the area – we try to visit each of the big families every couple of months - and the people in the villages see almost everything that goes on and love to talk. So, I get to hear a lot of gossip. And of course the nuns at the Mission don't miss much either, and once you get to know them, they can be pretty talkative, too. Anyway, Julian hired one of the local kids to help him."

"Really?" Kelsey said. "That's news. Did you meet him?"

"Yes, one afternoon at the Mission. I went there to check on Sister Doren." He glanced at Wayne. "Remember – she fractured an ankle working in the fruit orchard? And we put her leg in a cast?"

Wayne nodded. "Sure, I remember that. Her ladder broke, right?"

"That what she claimed'" Vari smiled. "Anyway, we met in their dining hall, and there was this young guy having lunch there. Ayla introduced him as Zane, and said that he was working with Julian. Nice kid – laughed a lot and got along with everyone. That was the only time I saw him."

"Do you know what he was doing?"

Vari squinted slightly, thinking, then shook his head. "Not exactly, but his family said that he had to stay at the Mission and couldn't come home because he might carry germs."

"Carry germs?" Kelsey said. "Huh! I'd like to talk to him – d'you know where he is now?"

"No one's seen him since Julian died – he never did go back home. I'll ask around the villages the next time I do a circuit."

"What about the nuns?" Kelsey asked. "You think they might know something?"

"It's worth a try," Vari nodded. "Zane used to get his meals there. Sister Dulcinea's the head cook – she probably knew him as well as anyone."

He waited while Kelsey jotted down a few notes. When she finished and looked up, he added, "There was another scientist who used to visit. He and Julian worked together for the last few months, right before the, uh... the end."

"Oh – you mean Niles Stratton," Kelsey said, "visiting from the Waxman, right?"

"No, someone else" Vari shook his head. "I heard about Niles. Julian used to complain about him to me - he wasn't happy with Niles. But no, I was talking about Raoul Montes. He's a big name in mutation research. I learned about his work during my med school days, and when Sister Doren told me that he'd been at the Mission, I went to the Lodge to try to meet him. But when I got there, the assistant manager said he'd never heard of him."

Vari glanced at Wayne. "I didn't tell you about this 'cuz I wasn't sure what to make of it. You see, Kelsey, we know this manager pretty well - he comes here every month for a checkup. I said to him, 'Look, I know Dr. Montes is here – why lie about it?' And he whispered, 'Dr. Vari, please – don't ask, just go.' Then he nodded toward two men sitting in the lobby. 'If they find out you're asking these questions, it'll make trouble for all of us. Please - just go'. So, I did."

"What the Hell?" Wayne said. "That's pretty strange."

"Yeah, it sure is," Kelsey mused. "Mosquitoes, bacteria, mutation - and secrecy; I don't like where all this is going."

Vari nodded. "I can tell you about part of what Julian was doing, and it fits in with Montes. I mentioned to him one time that I'd spent a semester working in a lab doing RIDL. He perked up and started asking a lot of questions."

"Okay, hold on now," Wayne said. "Sorry to show my age, but what's RIDL?"

Vari smiled. "You've probably heard about it, just maybe with a different name. It stands for Release of Insects with a Dominant Lethal gene."

"Ahh okay, that sounds kind of familiar. But can you, uh, explain a bit more? It's been a lot of years since I took a Genetics class."

"Sure. Here's the basic version: you remember that your DNA is strung along strands called chromosomes, right? And that the DNA is organized into units called genes? And that the DNA in these genes spells out a code? And that your cells have a way to translate that code to make proteins? And it's all set up so that particular genes code for particular proteins?"

Wayne held up his hand. "Okay, slow down. That much I remember, but if it gets much more complicated, you're going to lose me. So keep it simple, okay?"

"Alright," Vari said, "You've heard about genetic transformation? That's the process of taking a gene from one organism – it could be from viruses, bacteria, plants, or animals – and putting it into another organism."

Wayne nodded, "Okay, yeah. Go on."

"Right, then imagine that you insert a special gene into the cells of a mosquito, and this gene codes for a protein – let's call it Protein K - that will kill the mosquito. But just because the gene is there, doesn't mean it's active. As long as the gene just sits there quietly, it's totally harmless. But if it gets activated and starts making Protein K, then - BAM! – the mosquito dies. That makes it a lethal gene, a killer gene. So the trick is to be able to control whether it's active or not. And that allows you to control whether the mosquito stays alive or dies."

"Got it," Wayne said. "I'm clear on that."

"Good," said Vari. "Here's where it gets elegant. You may remember that genes are composed of several different parts. One of these parts is the coding region – that is, the part that gets read by the cell to make the protein. Another of the parts is a control section. This usually sits near the coding region and acts like a switch. When the switch is in the 'Off' position, then the gene is 'silent'- no Protein K is made and the mosquito stays alive. But when the switch is in the 'On' position, then Protein K is made, and the insect is killed. The beauty of the system is that you can control the switch by what you feed the mosquitoes. As long as you keep feeding them a repressor substance, the switch is kept closed; but when you stop feeding them the repressor, the switch automatically opens up, and Protein K starts being made. When enough of it accumulates inside the cells, the mosquito dies."

Wayne set down his cup. "Let me see if I got this: the repressor you're talking about is a chemical that binds to the control switch and keeps the gene in the Off position. But if there's no repressor, then the switch automatically flips to the On position?"

"Exactly," Vari nodded, "that's pretty much it, in a simple system. It can get a lot more complicated, though."

"Hey - That's already complicated enough," Wayne frowned. "So what is this repressor chemical, anyway?"

"Ah, well, there're several different ones that do the job. To be most useful, it needs to be something that the mosquito can't get out in the wild. That way, you can keep them alive in the lab as long as you want; but after you release them, they slowly run out of the repressor. For a while, they're just like any other wild-type mosquito; but then, after about two weeks they all die."

"Okay, very interesting," Wayne said, "but how is this useful?"

Vari nodded. "Right - well, the whole point is that when you release these mutated mosquitos into the wild, they mate with normal mosquitos and pass the lethal gene onto their progeny. Remember, since it's a Dominant gene, it only takes one copy to do the trick. You need to release a new RIDL population every month or so, but if it works right, then over a relatively short time there's a steady decrease in the mosquito population. Maybe not to zero, but to levels too low to cause an epidemic."

"Oh my God," Kelsey whispered. She flashed on a memory from two years ago. She had gone into Julian's lab to see him about some tax issue – they'd been separated for a while by then, but still had mixed bank accounts, stock investments, health plans... and filing taxes was turning into a hassle. She found him in his office talking to Marley. The white board on his wall was covered with diagrams and notes on gene structures and mutations, and there was a large, crude drawing of a mosquito in the middle. She'd wondered briefly what it was all about, but was too distracted by the tax problems to ask.

Besides, would Julian have told her anything? Probably not.

"What's that, Kelsey?" Wayne asked, turning to her.

"Oh, I was just remembering something. Vari, did Julian say anything about why he was working on mosquitos when they aren't much of a problem here? Was he going to use these RIDL mosquitoes somewhere else?"

"What he told me, was that it was a model system for tracking disease movement through a population, but who knows if that was the truth? – Not me. Anyway, he had the lethal part of the gene figured out, and was pretty sure about the best way to control the On/Off switch. So in the lab the mosquitos would grow just fine, but after releasing them into the wild they would live an active life for a short time, and then all die. He was pretty proud of all that."

"Mmm, okay," Kelsey nodded and sighed. "When was all this, Vari?"

"Uh, let's see... he died in late December, right? It must've been early September when he finished the RIDL work. After that he was onto the next part of his project."

"The next part?" Kelsey leaned forward. "which was...?"

"Sorry," Vari shrugged. "We didn't talk about that part much. Except that he solved a tough problem by using a simple trick. Something to do with enzymes... or maybe it was inhibiting enzymes. I don't recall, exactly."

They sat in silence for ten or twenty seconds, sipping their tea. Kelsey let out a deep breath.

"So we don't know much about the last stuff he was doing?"

"No," Vari said. "But he used to sit here late at night or early in the morning having coffee and writing up his notes. Sometimes when I was up early for village rounds or up late seeing an emergency patient I'd run into him, and that's how we got to talking in the first place. You know, at the end, he tried to burn those notes, but a lot of them survived. If you could find them, they might help you figure out that last part."

"Yeah, I told Kelsey about him burning the notes," Wayne said, shaking his head. "Strange that he'd do that, but you know, Julian used to get into those funks every now and then."

Kelsey looked at Vari. "Julian was severely bipolar... manic/depressive. He could be genuinely brilliant and inspired one month, then the next month not have enough energy to get out of bed. He coped with it fairly well, unless something severe happened in his life. With us, it was his career troubles that set him off and that led to our marriage going bust. But what could have happened down here to drive him over the edge?"

"I dunno," Vari said. "Maybe something at the Mission. You might ask the maintenance guy out there - he used to run errands for Julian. Like bringing him supplies, or driving his visitors over from the Lodge. His name is uh...."

"Colo?" Kelsey asked.

"That's right, Colo Logan. You know him?"

"Yeah, I know Colo," Kelsey said with a slight grimace. "He won't be much help."

"Colo was one of the lads at the Mission when Kelsey lived there," Wayne added. "He was a troubled boy, and he's turned into a troubled man."

"Ahh – well, that fits with what I hear from the villages. Colo isn't real popular. The word is that he sells drugs to the kids, but no one wants to challenge him because he has 'friends' in the military."

"Speaking of that," Kelsey said, "what's with all the military activity? When I was a kid, we never saw an army uniform around here. Now there's a base at Salvata, the soldiers installed a solar panel grid and a new building at the Mission, and an army helicopter landed there this morning to unload supplies."

"I've noticed stuff, too," Vari said, "and heard about more. New dirt roads being plowed, surveying teams hiking around, and some sort of drilling operation going on in a few places. You won't see anything in a newspaper, but the people know about it and don't like it - but don't know what to do. Something large is happening quietly, carefully, and unnoticeable to outsiders."

There was a muffled BEEP, then two more in quick succession. Wayne sat up and checked the screen on the radio from his pocket. "Gotta go," he said. "Kid just arrived with a head wound. I may need your help, Vari."

They all stood; Kelsey and Vari shook hands and said that they'd each try to find out more, and then meet again.

"Sorry to rush off," he said. "I really enjoyed meeting you."

"Same," Kelsey smiled. "It's time for me to get back to Laila and Stevie anyway. I hope the head wound turns out okay."

"Thanks," Wayne nodded, then spun and headed away quickly. Vari hesitated, waiting until Wayne had disappeared around the corner, then he turned back to face Kelsey.

"I can give you one more name. Like I said before, I don't want to, uh – compromise anybody or let any gossip get started, so please keep this confidential."

Kelsey nodded, a puzzled but interested look on her face. "Tell me more," she said.

Vari glanced over his shoulder, then sighed and said in almost a whisper, "Sister Shari. Go to the Mission and ask to see her. Ayla may not let you, though. Shari's in seclusion. As a doctor, I get to visit her, but they might be resistant to let in anyone else."

"Why?" Kelsey asked, "what's going on?"

"Nothing now," Vari kind of smiled. "It's about what went on before. Shari used to bring lunch to Julian when he was working. They'd sit in the garden and eat together. The story is that afterward they'd go into the house together."

He lowered his voice even more, and went on, "Kelsey, the tall lady – Trinity – was only here for a couple of weeks, total. The rest of the time Julian was by himself."

He frowned and went on, "Look, the reason I was allowed to see Shari is because she was pregnant. With Julian's child. If anyone knows what he was doing, it's Shari."

Kelsey's mind did a flip... then she had to smile too. Yes, when Julian was in a down mood, he was Hell to be with; but when he was up – in the manic phase – he could be very attractive, even charismatic, as she'd found out herself as a teenager.

Poor Sister Shari - Ouch! On the other hand, it meant that Stevie had a sibling – or a half-sibling - and she wondered what would happen to the child. Then - "Wait," she said, as the realization of the timing hit her: "Julian died a year ago. The child's already born."

Vari's radio pager beeped and Wayne's voice piped out, "Vari, where are you? Are you coming?"

"Be there in twenty seconds," he answered, then looked at Kelsey.

"Little Kalita is nearly five months old. She's staying in seclusion with Shari. As you can guess, it's pretty tough for them."

Then he nodded, waved good-bye, and left quickly.

Wow... what to make of all that?

Kelsey went outside, stretched, and slowly walked back to her cabin, her mind roiling with thoughts of RIDL, mutations, burnt notes, Julian, and Shari.

At least, it was, until she was halfway up the steps. That's when the screen door burst open and Stevie flew out.

"Mom! Where were you? Let's go – I want to show you how I can jump across the creek. Where's Muru, did you see him?"

Kelsey shoved aside the thoughts and mysteries, and whispered to herself, "Alright - it's Stevie time."

She picked him up and gave him a big kiss on the cheek while he tried to wiggle away, then they ran down the stairs, hand in hand, and skipped across the lawn.

Chapter 96: Breathless

Day 12: Friday night

The late afternoon drifted by in a rush of activity. When they'd been in California, Kelsey and Stevie spent the evenings together, but during the day she was busy at the Waxman. Being able to spend sunshine hours with him was a treat, and reminded her of what she missed by focusing so much on work.

It's a tough dilemma, and one that most working parents get caught in – especially single moms. Keeping a roof overhead, food on the table, and clothes on everyone's back means that someone needs a paying job; and if you're the only breadwinner in the family, you have no choice. The guilt feeling that creeps in, about not spending enough quality time with your kids, is just part of the deal.

Having Laila definitely softened the guilt, but didn't eliminate it.

So it was a fun afternoon, which led to a late dinner – luckily before Stevie started wearing out. Laughing and smiles turn into whining and crankiness pretty fast when energy runs down and hunger hits; one of the prime parenting skills is knowing when to pull the plug on activity and get some filling – and hopefully nutritious – food. Laila was better at that than Kelsey, who tended to want to stretch out the fun time too long

And Laila was the one who clapped and called out, "Dinner time – let's get the hands washed and go to the cafeteria." The four of them – Stevie, Laila, Kelsey, and Muru – shared a table; by the time they were done it was getting dark. A bath and a story came next, and eventually – at nearly 11 PM - Stevie was asleep and Laila was lying down with him.

Which gave Kelsey a chance to get some alone time – also a precious and needed commodity. Today had been a whirlwind of activity, and now, sitting on the veranda, looking at the stars and listening to the sounds of the jungle was one of the few moments she'd had to relax. The sounds were both wild and familiar; she'd grown up listening to them at night, and found them comforting and refreshing.

But while her mind started out quietly musing, it didn't take long before images of Julian, Phil, Shari, Kalita, and mutated mosquitoes pushed their way in.... and the next twenty minutes were spent trying to recall and organize what she'd seen and heard: Grant's library and the lab in the storeroom, the army helicopter landing in the field, the strange white building, a bristling conflict with Colo, interesting but unfulfilling talk with Ayla and Riosa, and thoughtful discussions with Wayne and Vari.

So much! What a day it had been; maybe it was time to end it, go to bed, and continue in the morning.

But on the verge of getting up a new thought struck, and she paused, then pulled Phil's key ring from her sweater pocket. 'I wonder,' she whispered softly, and spread them apart to look at each one. Yes, as she hoped, the large copper colored one was definitely a Clinic residence key – it must go to the front door of Phil's cabin.

Wayne said that Phil used Unit #1, at the far end of the line, just fifty feet away from hers. In the week since he died the inside had probably been cleaned up, but what about his stuff - clothes, personal items... notebooks?

Would those still be there?

In thirty seconds Kelsey had jumped to her feet, gone into the living room - quietly, so as not to disturb Stevie or Laila – retrieved a flashlight from the desk, and was out the door again, heading down her steps and turning left.

But she wasn't alone; a lantern was bobbing up and down on the dirt path that wound around the Clinic grounds. Whoever was carrying it had just passed by the boat dock and was heading this way.

Instant decision time: go back up her steps, fade deeper into the shadows, or keep moving forward.

Kelsey chose to move forward. She kept her own light off and walked directly toward the lantern, going past Cabin #1, curious about who it was. When twenty steps separated them, the dim pool of the light on the ground revealed only dark boots; at ten she could see jeans and a hefty walking stick; at five, the lower part of a light blue jacket.

When they came together she heard a surprised "Oh!" and the lantern was raised to shine on both their faces: Tanza.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't see you there."

"I was a little surprised, too," she answered, smiling. "Out for an evening stroll?"

"Part of my job," he nodded. "Evening patrol. We have someone on 24 hour duty for emergencies, but they stay in the treatment room. I go out twice during the night and walk around the area, just checking that everything's okay."

"Really? You do that every night?"

"Only for the last week," he shrugged. "It was spooky at first, but not so bad now. I carry one of the two-way radios, and Wayne said that if I find a problem, to just call him. 'If you see anything, don't get involved,' he told me. 'Just call. Let me take care of it.'

"Wouldn't security cameras be easier?" Kelsey asked.

Tanza laughed, "Heck yes, way easier! But there's no way – we're just not set up for anything like that."

Kelsey nodded. "Okay... but what kind of problem are you looking for?"

"The night nurse saw someone trying to break into one of the cabins last Saturday. She shined a big light at them and shouted, and they ran off. Wayne wants me to do this night patrol for the next week or so, until we get it all cleared out."

"Get what cleared out?"

"The cabin," Tanza said. "Cabin 1 – that's the one that they were trying to break into."

"Oh," Kelsey nodded again, trying to act nonchalant but feeling a chill tingling down her spine. "What's special about that one?"

"Good question," Tanza shrugged. "That's where Dr. Poley stayed. Wayne thinks that he had some valuable stuff in there. I asked, 'You mean like money?' and he said 'No, probably just science stuff.' So, yeah, I don't know what it could be. I haven't gone inside."

Kelsey was still looking at Tanza, but her eyes had snapped out of focus, her mind spinning: ' _Who would be trying to get into Phil's cabin?_ ' One likely face appeared – Colo. And ' _Why?_ ' There had to be something important in there, something related to the project.

"You all right?"

Kelsey attention snapped back. Tanza was holding the lantern closer, a concerned look on his face.

"Uh... yeah. Sorry – I was just thinking."

"Okay," he said, lowering the lantern. "You looked a little spaced out there."

"No," she shook her head. "Just tired. I had a really busy day, and wanted to take a relaxing stroll before hitting the bed."

"You want to walk around with me? Just to be safe?"

"No, that's okay," Kelsey yawned. "Thanks anyway, but I'll just be out here for a minute or two."

"Okay," Tanza nodded. "I better get going and finish my walk-around. See you in the morning."

"Right."

As Tanza moved away, the little circle of light grew dimmer, and then disappeared completely as he turned a corner near the cafeteria.

"Okay then, Phil died last Friday – exactly seven days ago," Kelsey said to herself. "And the next night someone is breaking into his cabin."

Why break in? If Colo just showed up and asked for Phil's stuff, would Wayne have handed it over to him? No, she decided, he wouldn't. But he probably would to Niles, though, since whatever Julian and Phil were doing was related somehow to the Waxman.

So if the stuff is that important, Colo's going to try again, or else Niles is going to show up soon and demand it.

"Either way," she whispered, "I'm getting in there first."

She counted to sixty - a minute ought to be long enough for Tanza to get around to the other side of the yard – then began climbing the stairs to the veranda of Cabin 1.

Slowly, carefully... even so, many of the steps creaked and squeaked as she went up. The sounds would be lost in the rustling of the leaves in the wind, and surely be unheard by Tanza or the nurse at the night desk. But they seemed like the wailing of a banshee to Kelsey's hyper-sensitive ears – and she momentarily froze in mid-step each time before continuing up.

Once at the top, she moved toward the door, which put her under the veranda roof. Starlight was blocked, and, from this height and angle, there was no glow from the small solar lights that dotted the walkways below.

Everything in front of her was impenetrably black. How far was it to the door? And – where exactly _was_ the door? There was no way she was going to turn on her flashlight here, but stumbling into a table, or knocking over a chair, or running into the wall could be a disaster. So she crept forward, inch by inch, right hand outstretched in front, trying to visualize her own veranda and hoping this one was the same.

It took most of a minute for her hand to touch the far wall, or – no, not the wall; it was a screen.

' _Yes!'_

Was it a window or the screen door? She slid her hand to the left until reaching the edge, then downward, hoping find a latch.

And there is was. Okay - turn it clockwise and slowly pull it open....

Good; now find the lock on the front door.

' _Got it.'_

And slide the key in... _'No, not that way, upside down'_... okay, good; now turn – slowly! – and push.

The door swung open noiselessly. She glided inside, eased the screen door closed, then slowly pushed the front door shut.

And exhaled.

Her pulse was thumping, her senses were razor sharp... and she was thoroughly enjoying this adventure. "I haven't had this much fun since Tavi and I snuck into the boys' shower room with our arms loaded with ice-water balloons."

Now that had been excitement, and it still brought a smile to her lips even after all these years. Ahh... to be ten years old again.

What to do next? Turn on the flashlight, yes; but what about the stray light getting outside? She leaned against the door picturing the inside of her cabin's front room: where were the windows? What kind of shades or drapes did they have? How did they close – did you just slide them or was there a string or cord to pull? And how much furniture was in the way?

There was just no way to take care of it in the dark, so she put her hand across the face of her flashlight, turned it on, then opened a tiny crack between her fingers for the light to shine through.

The next few minutes were spent slowly shuffling around the walls of the room. There were several windows; the largest had curtains on a rod, two others had drapes with pull strings, and the smallest had wooden shutters. She managed to secure them all, but, even then, was careful about using her flashlight.

A brief look was all it took to show that there were no personal items in this room. It had been thoroughly cleaned and made ready for the next tenant, just as Kelsey's cabin looked when she arrived two days ago.

The first bedroom was also neat and organized, as was the bathroom; but the second bedroom was different. The floor had been swept, the bed made, the dresser and cabinets wiped down, but there was a stack of clothes on the bed, with more hanging in the closet: jacket, pants, shirts, two belts, and a hat.

And, on the shelf above the hangers, a small stack of maps. There were three of them: the first was of North America, and the second of South America - both of these were large, continental scale. But the third was a different – a detailed topographical map of the local area.

She'd never seen one like it before, and was unaware that such a detailed map even existed. Grant had been an avid collector of maps, but one of his regrets was that the local area was always shown as a featureless green – no detailed survey had been done.

At least until now. This one was clearly not a commercial map; the reverse side was blank – no name, date, credits, price or anything else. There were wiggly lines drawn on it in pencil and two or three X marks in red; were these added by Phil or someone else?

But the time to think about that was later; she put the first two maps back on the shelf, then folded the third and slid it inside her shirt.

Alright then - the cleaning crew had tidied everything up and consolidated Phil's clothes into the second bedroom. But what about notebooks?

Where would the cleaners be likely to put any books they found lying around?

In the bookcase, of course.

In her cabin the bookcase was in the front room, next the big desk and the comfy overstuffed chair. Probably the same here. She knew that Phil liked to read in the evenings with a glass of sherry, so that was the best place to look.

Okay then, move back into the front room, keeping the flashlight mostly covered – letting just enough light through her fingers to make out shapes... and – yes, there it was.

This bookcase was taller than hers, but held fewer books. The three upper shelves contained just small statues, rocks, and ceramic knick-knacks. The lower two shelves were lined with books though; most were paperback novels, others hardback travel or text books, with a few histories and biographies. That was all of it, except for one black binder at the end of the bottom shelf. She pulled it out and saw that it contained several dozen pages – maybe fifty in all.

Some had charred edges.

She carried it to the hallway near the bathroom to be away from the front room windows before opening it. The handwriting on the first page was unmistakable - absolutely, positively Julian's.

The realization sent a brief wave of emotion through her – elation, yes, and relief too, but also mixed with a tinge of sadness. Kelsey shut the binder and silently gave thanks to any spirit that might be listening.

And – was that a noise? Faint, at first, but there it was again, something like a long scratch, mixed with the tick-tick-tick of crackling glass, coming from the front room. She quickly turned off her flash and stood frozen, then peeked around the corner, straining to hear and see more.

Something was moving by the left outside wall of the front room; the window drape was fluffed up, as if being blown by a wind. After a moment of silence, a section of window glass popped out and fell to the floor. Then a hand poked through the opening, followed by an arm, twisting and snaking upward.

A small but sharp click as the latch was popped open, then the window started rising... up, up, until she heard a raspy whisper, "Good enough – stop!"

It wasn't loud – just the opposite. In a normal room, in daytime, she might not have caught the tone of the voice; but tonight, in the silence of the cabin and with her senses keyed up, the speaker was unmistakable: Colo-damn-Logan.

' _Hell!'_ she thought, ' _another two minutes and I could've been gone.'_ This was immediately followed by, _'Holy Christ – what am I gonna do now?'_

The first person was already half-way through the window, too small and too slender to be Colo. He must still be outside, but was starting to move in. "Hurry!" came his hoarse whisper, "Can you move faster?"

"Calm down," came the answer. "Just get your fat ass in here and shut up."

Kelsey realized three things: first - that they were speaking in a mixture of local dialect and English, although the second speaker had an odd, not-native accent; second – that the second speaker was a woman, and third - she spoke like she was the one in charge.

What to do? Start by melting silently down the hallway into the first bedroom, then find some place to hide. Do it quickly, and do it in the dark – now was definitely not a good time to use her flashlight.

So she moved by memory of what her own cabin looked like, thankful that whoever did the cleaning had put everything away; there were no wastebaskets, chairs, night stands, lamps, or other stray stuff in the middle of the room to trip over.

Okay then, the walk-in closet was along the left wall, right? It was plenty big enough to hide in, but also empty - all of Phil's stuff was in the other bedroom... which meant that anyone looking in here would spot her immediately.

What about under the bed? No good - not enough room.

What then?

Footsteps, getting closer. A flashlight, beam no wider than a pencil, zipped down the hallway, shining into the bathroom, then it got closer... closer... and they were in her room.

The closet door slid open and the light flashed around.

Kelsey was huddled in the laundry basket. As in her cabin, it was large enough to hold all of the bedding, allowing the cleaners to carry all of it at once to the washing machines. Plenty of room for her to crawl in and cover herself with blankets and pillows.

And best of all, it was in the corner, discretely hidden behind the tall dresser; people didn't want the dirty laundry out in plain sight for everyone to see, right?

After a few seconds, the closet door slid shut and the flashlight briefly flicked over the bed, walls, dresser... and laundry basket. Close enough for her to hear Colo's breathing and smell the pipe smoke on his clothes. It made her want to gag, and she had to stifle the urge to cough

"In here," came the female voice from the other bedroom – and the flashlight moved away.

If they were looking for the notebook – and what else could they be after? – they weren't going to find it in obvious places like among Phil's stuff or on the bookshelves.

And then what? Would they give up? Or search more thoroughly, looking at less obvious places like dresser drawers and laundry baskets.

Ugh!

Sure enough, they left the second bedroom and moved to the front room. Kelsey heard books being dropped on the floor and kitchen drawers being pulled out and slammed shut.

Apparently they were more concerned with being thorough than being quiet.

After a minute, footsteps got louder closer, then came into her bedroom. She hoped- hoped- hoped it was Colo; he'd already looked in the closet, and so probably wouldn't look there again.

But if it was the other one, the woman, then she'd probably slide open the closet door and shine her light inside. And then she'd see Kelsey, who'd abandoned the laundry basket and moved in there. She set the binder on the floor and gripped her flashlight tightly. If the closet door started opening, the time for hiding would be over.

She would step forward and swing as hard as she could.

But the smell the pipe tobacco drifted around the room and into her hiding place; it was Colo.

She breathed another silent 'Thanks' to the spirits.

Dresser drawers rattled as they were opened and searched, covers were pulled off the bed and tossed aside, and, sure enough, the laundry hamper was turned over and dumped out.

Then another set of footsteps softly padding into the room. "Anything?" – It was the female voice.

"No," came Colo's complaining whisper. "Why didn't you get the papers before, way back when?"

And the even-toned response: "I was not sent to find papers, I was sent to neutralize a threat. I accomplished that job - you blew yours."

"Neutralize?" Colo's voice rose an octave, and he barked out a quick laugh. "That's a Hell of a way to say it."

"How I say it doesn't matter, and doesn't change anything," she whispered. "What happened was unfortunate and unplanned, but unavoidable. I would have preferred a different way. The result was the same, however – mission accomplished."

She paused for a second or two, then went on, "But this book - you know Dr. Stratton wants it. Why didn't you get in here last weekend, before they cleaned this place?"

"I'm nobody's fuckin' lackey," Colo spit out, getting louder. "Especially not one of those prick-headed professors."

"Wrong," she said in a soft monotone. "You do what the General tells you to do. If he tells you to get books, then you get books. If he tells you to piss in your coffee cup, you piss in your coffee cup and drink it with a smile. Right now he's told you to do what Niles wants. So – shut up and do it."

"Go to Hell," Colo said. "Maybe I do you, instead?"

"Try it and you'll be wearing your dick pinned to your collar."

Kelsey had to smile in silent admiration. Whoever she was, the lady seemed unperturbed by Colo's outbursts. Even her threats were spoken in mild, even tones.

"Now think," she said, "if the book is not here, where could it be? In the white lab?"

"No, Hell no – I looked there."

"Well then, where?"

Silence for four, maybe five heartbeats; then Colo, in a menacing whisper, hissed, "One of the damn doctors, or maybe...."

His voice trailed off. The lady waited only a moment, then said, "Or maybe what?"

"Or it could be an old friend of mine who just showed up. A prissy cunt named Kelsey."

"A what?"

"Never mind," he snickered. "Julian Chambers was her husband – at least, for a while. That ought to make you like, bonded to her in a bizarre way, huh?"

"And she is your friend... why?"

"I knew her as a kid out at the Mission. If she's got the book, I'll get it, don't worry."

"No," the lady said emphatically. "Best for you to do nothing about her or the doctors. You methods are too coarse. Niles should be here soon. He's more subtle than you are - let him handle it."

"And," she added as they walked back toward the open window, "I'm not the worrying type. But if this book doesn't turn up, you should be."

Three more minutes passed in silence before Kelsey took in a deep breath and relaxed her grip on the flashlight. She could feel her heart thumping, and leaned against the back wall while a wave of dizziness rose, then ebbed and died away. Okay – ready now: she slid the closet door open very carefully, one inch at a time - just enough to slip out sideways - and moved cautiously toward the front door. Her senses were on high alert – it was virtually certain that Colo and the lady had left; but still....

Dim shafts of light were coming in from the broken window – they hadn't bothered to pull the drapes closed – and a careful scan of the room confirmed that, yes, they really were gone.

Good; now to get out of there and away.

Once the decision to move out was made, she went quickly out the door and down the steps. A brief pause at the bottom for another check of the area, then a dash to her own cabin.

After getting through her own front door and sliding home the dead-bolt, she flopped down on the sofa with a grateful sigh. Tension drained from her muscles and her heart rate slowed to normal, but her brain was spinning, trying to make sense out of what she'd seen and heard.

More grist for her mind to sift through, as if there wasn't already enough from everything else that had happened today.

Yeah. Getting to sleep tonight would be tough.

Damned tough.

Chapter 97: Yegg

Day 13: Saturday

It was the sound of a toilet flushing that woke me.

The clock next to my bed read 8:30, which meant that I'd been in bed for nearly ten hours. Yesterday had been a laid back day, kind of a time-out from the case. Coming back from Stanford Hospital, Chypp dropped me and Chyll off at my place shortly before noon, then he and Trinity went out for groceries. Autumn'd given him the company credit card, which was nice. When they got back we had a late lunch, and the rest of the day just drizzled by.

No one seemed to want to talk about the Waxman, plague, blood tests, or anything like that. Especially not gunshots. But Trinity wanted to know more about the Klamath area, so I told about spending a few months a year up there with Grandpa. Then she asked about what my parents thought about it and so I told about how they died while I was young... and then the rest of the story kind of spilled out, about how Trina (she's my sister, remember?) and I lived with an aunt for a short time, then I moved in with Grandpa Lincoln for a while.

I told her about Jewel and my time with the Giants and how my career, my engagement, and my future all went down the drain, then the rehab and Army and all. She'd been pretty open about her past during the helicopter ride back from the Klamath, so I figured I owed her the same openness.

And I also let her know - without going into too much detail - about Kelsey and me.

Trinity was easy to like, and I could feel a magnetic tug drawing me toward her. From the way hers eyes sparkled when she listened to me it was obvious she was feeling the same way. But that was a boundary I wasn't ready to cross, and openness, full disclosure, and honesty now could save heartbreak and disappointment in the future...I hoped.

Later that day Chypp brought over a jigsaw puzzle, a three thousand piece monster that kept us occupied until I ran out of steam around ten o'clock. I'd popped a couple of the pain pills at around nine. That took care of most of the pain, but didn't do much for the fatigue. They stayed up to keep going on the puzzle, but I headed to bed and pretty much slept straight through the night.

So as I was saying, it was the toilet flushing that woke me up. My apartment has two bathrooms, one adjacent to the main area and one linked to my bedroom, like an en-suite master, and yes, the toilet flush came from that one.

The shower started up, the glass shower door clicked open, and then shut. It was all easy to hear because the door to the bathroom was wide open. Steamy vapor and cherry scented soapy smells wafted out, accompanied by a lilting humming. After five or so minutes the shower was turned off and the door clicked open again. The humming got a little louder, and I could hear someone toweling off.

Another minute, then Trinity came around the corner with one towel wrapped around her hair and another one wrapped around her torso.

"Oh hi," she smiled. "Chyll was in the other bathroom, so I just came in here. And I hope you don't mind – I used some of your toothpaste."

"My house is your house," I smiled.

"No, Reid," she said, turning serious, "it's not. But it's really good of you to let me stay here. All that stuff that happened the last few days got my nerves jangled. I don't think I'm going to be comfortable until this whole thing is settled."

"I know," I nodded, "it's got me wondering too. Yesterday wasn't a lost day – we needed it to get our energy up – but I'm anxious to get rolling today. I meant what I said though: You're welcome to stay here for as long as it takes."

Trinity stood still, just looking at me, then came up close and leaned down. Little drops of water fell from her hair onto my pillow and sprinkled my face, while the towel around her waist slipped most of the way off.

She said in a sultry voice, "Reid, I owe you a lot, and I want to give you something special."

Before I could answer, she straightened up and flashed a big grin, "So how do you like your omelet? With ham and bacon, or just cheese? Mushrooms and bell pepper? Avocado?"

I laughed, she laughed, and as she drifted toward the door I called out, "Three eggs, cheddar, avocado, and a small pile of very crisp bacon. And rye toast, please. Gimme fifteen minutes to get there."

She smiled again, trying without much success to tug the towel back into position. "Got it... Boss Valiant."

* * * * * * *

It actually took more like forty-five minutes. I wanted to take a shower too, but there was no way to do that and keep all the bandages dry, so I took the damn things off. The shower and hair washing felt great; the trouble came afterward. My left arm was much better than yesterday, but still not real nimble. I managed to bandage my leg, but had to have Chyll help with getting new chest wrappings on.

Breakfast was great; like Chypp told Autumn yesterday, Trinity has a knack in the kitchen. By the time we finished eating and cleaned up the mess, it was past 10:30 – late enough to call Russ Keynes and ask about the testing. Since it was Saturday, I thought that he wouldn't be at work, so I keyed in his cell number.

He answered on the second ring and I started out by saying, "Hi Russ, this is Reid Durham. Sorry to bother you at home on the weekend – "

But he interrupted with, "Oh, hi Reid – it's not a problem, I'm here in the lab. I usually come in for a couple of hours on Saturdays to catch up on stuff or clean the equipment. You're calling about the Tau testing, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, well, the quick answer is that it's there in both the fruit and the blood, but in way different levels."

"How about the blood – was there a lot?"

"Hell yeah – enough to kill a horse, easy. I'll need to grab the data sheets to give you the actual numbers."

"How much longer are you going to be there today?" I asked. "If I can get over there quick, before you leave, I'd like to stop by and see you."

"No rush," he said, "I got some stuck sensors on a fraction collector, and it wrecked a series of assays that were supposed to run overnight. So I have to repeat them all – the whole damn lot I probably won't get out of here till after five."

"Ouch," I said, "sorry to hear that. But if you're going to be there for a while, it makes it easier to hook up. We're planning on coming to the Waxman a little after noon today, if I can get Victor Akino to agree to it. How about if I stop by at around one or one-thirty and we talk Tau?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Sure, just come on by."

"Okay, thanks. Seeya then"

I set down the phone and looked over at Chyll and Trinity, who were both looking at me.

"Lester was murdered," I said.

"Ohhh," Trinity groaned softly. "Marley, right?"

I shrugged. "No absolute proof, but... yeah, it has to be."

Chyll asked, "Do we call the police, boss?"

"Not yet," I shook my head. "It's important, but not urgent. There's no one to hunt for – Marley's dead, and we don't want any questions about how he got that way. Niles may or may not be involved, but we're already looking for him. Later - we'll contact the police later, after my brother-in-law Axel gets back. Lester's sister, Nora - she deserves to know, too. But if we bring them all in now, we'll get tangled up in a mess of interviews, discussions, and paperwork. It'll play Hell with our investigation, and I don't want any delays."

"So then, what do we do next?" It was Trinity asking.

"Get hold of Victor, and get his approval to search Niles' office. Then meet with DJ Shockey. After a quick lunch we'll head over to the Waxman and see what we can find out. I presume you both want to come along?"

They nodded, and Chyll said, "Boss, I've heard DJ's name mentioned around Halliday's, but never met him. Who is he?"

"He's a yegg," I answered, "and a damn good one."

"A what?" Trinity asked.

Chyll gave a little laugh. "A safecracker. A yegg's a safecracker."

"Very good," I said, "and you learned that how?"

"I dunno," she laughed again. "Probably heard it sometime."

Yeah, and what goes into Chyll's brain stays there. Remarkable.

It was pushing 11:00 by now, which meant that Chypp should be here with DJ in a half-hour or less.

Time to call Victor.

* * * * * *

By 12:30 we were in Atlas, on our way to the Waxman. Trinity was driving with Chyll in the passenger seat; DJ and I rode in the back. That way I could sit a little bit sideways, which eased the pressure on my left side, and also go over the job with him.

After he and Chypp arrived an hour ago, we had a light lunch and chatted while. Chyll, the ever curious, had a lot of questions about how to break into a locked safe; DJ said that just talking wasn't enough - you had to get your eyes, fingers, ears and especially your brain involved, and actually do it, over and over.

"Like fine art," he said, "Michelangelo wasn't built in a day."

"Don't you mean Rome?" Trinity asked.

"Rome, Michelangelo – whatever," he shrugged. "The point is, being good takes time. Being very good takes even more time, unless you're really talented or lucky."

"How about with you?" Chyll wondered, "Is it time, talent, or luck."

"All three," he laughed. "My luck ran out when I got busted a few years back. But then Mr. Halliday worked out a deal for me, so I guess my luck came back."

Finally he told Chyll that he'd show her sometime on one of the Halliday safes, and she grinned a wide-eyed smile.

My talk with Victor went well, after we got past the parts about Marley being dead and Niles disappearing. Those bits shocked him, but only a little; he already had his suspicions, especially about Marley.

"I never trusted him," Vic said. "He was just too abrasive to too many people. But Niles? We worked together for a lot of years. Maybe I never really knew him; not well enough, anyway. Whatever he's wrapped up in, whether it's the same project that Phil and Marley were doing or something else, I fully support you getting to the bottom of it. And if we can keep the police and newspapers out of it, so much the better."

Okay then – Victor gave us the go-ahead to search Niles' office, and his agreement to keep quiet about it.

That was all we'd wanted. There was no need to tell him any more than needed to get it, so I said nothing about Lester being murdered or what Trinity told us about our lives being in danger. And nothing about there being a safe in the Niles' office wall, either.

Essentially I was suggesting to him that whatever Phil, Marley, and Niles were up to was more of a nuisance \- a scandal - than an international crime plot.

Best to keep it that way, at least for now, since even Victor, harmless as he seemed, might be involved. Or, if we found something significant in the safe and told him, he might blab about it to the wrong person.

And there were just too many unknowns to start people speculating. Otherwise pretty soon we'd be buried in rumors, guesses, and bad leads.

So - keep the cards close to the vest and guard the evidence. Speaking of which, I was anxious to talk to Kelsey. To find out what she'd learned from Marley's books, yes, but mostly just to hear her voice. The more we learned about this crazy project, the more I worried about her, and Stevie, and Laila.

After I phoned her yesterday and again this morning and didn't get through, Trinity told me that the Layard Clinic and Mission had no service... that we'd need to wait for her to phone us from some place called the Lodge.

If it was just a matter of waiting, I'd be okay with it. Like when I was a kid camping in the hills, we'd have to wait for rain showers to ease up; or on the river we'd have to wait for the salmon and steelhead runs to start; or, like last Wednesday, when I sat up all night waiting for daybreak. Waiting like that is okay because there's no ultimate worry. You know that sooner or later the rain will stop, the fish run will start, and morning will arrive.

But when there's uncertainty involved, then you have both waiting and worrying – and I'm not okay with that. And waiting for a call from Kelsey, and worrying that it may never come, that something might happen to her....

Not good. But it's even worse to spend too much time dwelling on things that are out of your control, so I shoved those worries into a back corner of my mind and turned to look at DJ.

"Okay, here's what's we need to do...."

Chapter 98: Tau

Day 13: Saturday

The walk from the parking lot to the Waxman entrance was beautiful - sky was mostly clear, a moderate breeze, lots of birds, and a few squirrels foraging in the grass.

"Huh," DJ said. "I used to see these buildings when I was driving across the bridge and wondered what they were, but never got out here to look at'em up close. Very impressive. And what're those - trees up on the balconies?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Most of them imported from one place or another. All part of the work here."

"Ahh," he nodded in return. "And those curved buildings, the ones with the clear sides... greenhouses?"

"That's right," Trinity answered. "They're divided into different zones on the inside. Individually controlled to match each plant type's native environment. Very expensive."

"Ahh," DJ said in a softer voice, "so the good people at the Waxman don't cut corners when it comes to spending money. Makes me even more interested in seeing what's in that safe."

Ten minutes later we'd climbed the steps, gone through the lobby, signed in, and were heading down the hallway toward Niles' office. Victor had left word with the guard to expect us, and having Trinity along helped speed things up. .

When we reached Niles office, the door was locked, of course, but I'd expected that and pulled Marley's wad of keys out of my jacket pocket.

But none of them worked. I glanced at Trinity, a questioning look on my face.

She looked surprised too for a few seconds, then – "Oh, that's right, Niles had the lock changed after he found out about Marley snooping around. Sorry – I should have thought to tell you. It might be tough to get anyone from Facilities here on a Saturday, but I can try giving them a call."

"How about if we wait just a bit?" DJ said. "Let's take a look first."

He unslung his small backpack and set in on the floor, then got down on one knee and studied the lock. After maybe fifteen seconds he nodded, unzipped the front pocket on his pack, and took out two screwdriver type tools... except they weren't screwdrivers. Both had long, thin blades, flat on one side and kind of saw-toothed on the other, but with different saw-tooth patterns.

He slowly inserted the blades into the lock. Ten seconds of fiddling and shifting, then, while holding the tools carefully in place, he winked at Chyll and nodded toward the door knob. "Young lady, would you please give it a try?"

She reached past his shoulder, turned the knob, and the door swung open.

"Nice," I said, and Trinity clapped softly.

DJ bowed, picked up his pack and stood aside while I went in by myself and turned on the lights.

The others stayed outside while I scouted for cameras. It was possible – even probable – that Niles had one or two, and they could be transmitting my image to his phone right now. That, of course, didn't bother me at all... in fact, I wanted him to know that I was still alive and on his trail.

But there was no sense in letting him see the others.

The office was large – much larger than Kelsey's, larger even than Victor's, but sparsely furnished: desk, three chairs, a long bookcase, two file cabinets, a few pictures and achievement plaques on one wall.

A careful five minute search showed no cameras, so I opened the blinds and ushered the others in.

As the room brightened, we could see that the painting behind the desk wasn't actually a painting; it was a poster-sized color print of a lake surrounded by tall trees and lush flowers... probably a photo shot by Niles years ago. Very impressive, with perfect lighting to give it a haunting, mysterious aura. Whatever else he might be, Niles was a damn talented photographer.

Trinity and I took the print down and leaned it against the far wall. And there, in the newly uncovered wall space, was a flat brass rectangle about one foot high and two feet wide. In the center was a large dial, and next to that a recessed handle.

DJ pulled over a chair and sat, his eye level with the dial. As with the door lock, he just looked and studied. After a minute, he slowly turned the dial one revolution to the left, then one to the right. Finally he nodded and looked back at me.

"Straightforward," he said. "Nothing complex. But it'll take a little time."

"How much?" I asked.

He spread his hands. "Hard to say; maybe an hour. Could be more... or I might get lucky."

"Okay, good enough," I nodded, then turned toward Chyll and Trinity. "While DJ's doing his tricks, I'm going to see Russ Keynes. I'd like you two to go through the desk and file cabinets. Look for anything that mentions Tau toxin or Kanja. Also anything about what Marley was doing, or that mentions Julian or Phil being on a project together. Focus on the last three years."

"Got it, boss," Chyll said.

Trinity started clearing off the desk top. "We can stack any interesting papers on here and sort by subject" she said. "And we need to keep track of where each was found so that we can put them back. Niles won't know we were ever here."

Maybe she was just naturally organized and systematic, or maybe it was something she learned by handling dozens of HR records. And I liked the bit about leaving no trace behind.

Back in the hallway I stopped to get my bearings and try to remember which way it was to Keynes' lab. That triggered a memory of jumping from his outside ledge after Chyll's phone call, when she said that Marley was chasing her.

And that brought back memories of how scared Chyll had been... of Jose getting punched and knocked down... of Kelsey being threatened, Trinity's bruised breast, and how Marley'd tried to run me down twice; a hard-headed, hard-muscled bully who ended up being killed by a young lady less than half his size.

With guys like that I wished I had a magic wand to bring them back to life, just to kill them again.

Anyway, thinking about the ledge jump reminded me of where it was - on the second floor, right below Phil Poley's lab.

On the way there it came to me - something that'd been lurking in the back of my mind ever since the Klamath, something that had been teasing at my attention, but hadn't been able to break all the way through until now.

Harolde.

Yes, Laila's brother. If anyone could tell me more about what it was like down where Kelsey was – the Clinic, the Mission, the Lodge, even the Salvata military base - it had to be Harolde. He'd known Julian, and probably Phil as well, and he must still have contacts down there. So how much would he know - or be able to find out - about what else was going on?

I pulled out my cell phone and put in a reminder to call him, and by then had reached Keynes' lab.

The door was open, so I went on through. Like before, he was sitting near one of his machines watching a computer screen. It showed a graph of some sort, with a line slowly moving from left to right. He seemed pretty focused on it; so I just stood back and kept quiet, not wanting to break his concentration.

The line moved up, reached a sharp peak, and then quickly came back down. After a few seconds it did it again, then twice more in rapid succession, only this time the peaks were smaller. Russ watched for another minute, then flipped a toggle switch and the screen changed to show a new line, this one smoothly climbing in a straight path as it traced its way across the screen.

He gave a satisfied grunt, leaned back, and glanced over his shoulder at me.

"Hey Reid, good seein' you. I think this baby can run on her own now – the elution pattern looks right, the gradient is steady, and the bloody fraction collector is finally working."

I wasn't sure what that all meant, but that wasn't what I came for, so I just smiled and said, "Great to see you, too. Is this a good time to talk?"

"Yeah, yeah – let me get you the printouts."

We sat at a long table and he showed me a series of chromatograms, pointing out particular peaks, valleys, control samples, calibration markers, and what showed up in the fruit and blood.

After a barrage of data and explanations, I held up my hand. "Okay, Russ, it looks to me like there's a lot less Tau in the fruit than in the blood. Does that tell us anything about lethal levels?"

"Yes," he nodded, "the blood was packed. Like I said over the phone – enough to kill a horse. Maybe two horses. Whoever's blood that was would have died fast."

"What if there was a high level of alcohol in the blood? Would that slow things down?"

He considered that for few seconds, then shook his head. "Nah – or maybe just a fraction. Might be an advantage, actually. If they drank enough and passed out, it would make the Tau effect totally painless. They'd just go out like a light switch, peacefully."

Was it like that for Lester? I hoped so.

Russ pulled over another sheet of paper and pointed to a hand-written table he'd scribbled down. "About the fruit though: I did some calculations based on the mass of a full- sized Kanja berry – it's about like a small plum or large blackberry - and an average adult's weight and blood volume. The concentration of Tau is low, so eating just one wouldn't have much effect. A half-dozen, though, would be enough to kill an average sized adult.. But I didn't know how much Kanja a normal person eats, so I asked around. One of the guys in Tox said that people usually don't eat any - it's not a normal food. It's only used as a medicine, taken it in small amounts to treat fevers. So unless a person was already sick and had a persistently high fever, they probably wouldn't be exposed to a lethal dose."

I nodded, and sat back, thinking that over. It could be that the particular sample we got was not typical – like maybe an early version of the modified Kanja that wasn't so potent. But that didn't seem right – all the Kanja had been gathered together and shipped at the same time. Would Marley have shipped a mixed batch of berries, some with lots of Tau and others with little?

Maybe, but not likely. Okay, so the low level of Tau was probably just what he wanted.

But why?

That needed more intense thinking, so I stood up and slowly paced around the table. Russ looked at me like he was wondering what I was up to, so I stopped and said, "Thanks, that was great. I owe you a six pack, or maybe a case. Right now though, I just need to let this sink in and see where it leads."

Pacing while thinking helps, but fresh air is even better, so I went out into the hallway and through the door to the ledge. I leaned my elbows on the railing and let my mind sift through it all. Okay – no one consumes Kanja unless they have a fever. Kelsey told me about Grant treating her with mashed Kanja, and about what Marley wrote in his notebook about regular Kanja and K-T.

K-T had to be Marley's label for modified Kanja, the berries that contained Tau. But they only had a low level of the toxin, so to consume a highly dangerous amount, someone must be treating a persistent, high fever.

And why might someone have a persistent, high fever? Probably there could be lots of reasons, but... but....

Is this what an epiphany is like? A little buzz, an 'Aha' moment? Yes - I remembered what else Kelsey had mentioned that day when she was talking about the Field Trials: Yp-H.

Wild type _Yersinia pestis_ will give you plague and kill you quick. The mutant strain, Yp-H, would make you sick and miserable, but it wouldn't kill you because it wouldn't cause um... umm – what was it Hillen had said... disseminated vascular something or other, where it makes millions of tiny blood clots.

No, Yp-H wouldn't kill you because it's missing that particular virulence factor.

But it does have other factors - ones that lead to high, persistent fever.

Now suppose you wanted to treat the fever; if you lived here, you might go to a clinic or pharmacy and get any of a wide choice of meds.

But in places far from a clinic, and where Kanja is part of traditional medicine, that's probably what people would use. If they had normal Kanja, it would knock the fever down and they'd probably feel much better.

But if instead they were using the K-T – the stuff containing Tau – then they could run into a problem. A big problem, as in death.

Why would anyone want to create a situation like that? Who would want to kill people in that devious way? – It didn't make sense, at least in any world view I had.

Hmm... I stared at the grounds below, musing on what could be going on and why. Time ticked by, leaves scattered and swirled around, and clouds twisted and spun in the high-up winds. None of that helped me come up with any good answers, though. Obviously I was missing some key information.

Like where was the money behind all this coming from? Once we learned that, the rest of the story would probably unravel quickly.

While I was thinking about that my phone pinged – it was Chyll calling.

"Hi," I answered, "how's it going?"

"Good, boss. DJ just got the safe unlocked. You want us to wait for you to get here before opening it?"

"Yes, please – gimme two minutes."

I went back through the outside door, poked my head into Russ's lab and said "Thanks again," then headed down the hallway to the stairs.

Maybe whatever was that damn safe would expand my limited world view.
Chapter 99: Safe

Day 13: Saturday

When I reached the office Chyll and Trinity were putting papers back into the file cabinets. Chyll looked up and shook her head – "Sorry boss, we didn't find anything good. Lots of business and research files, tons of stuff about budgets and staff meetings, but nothing about what we wanted."

"Yeah," Trinity added as she slid home the final drawer. "Maybe he keeps all that at his house. He lives by himself and probably has a home office."

"Could be," I said, "but we'd need to get a court order to look there. Poking around here is one thing - we just needed to get Victor's 'OK' for it. But to break into Niles private house we'd need to convince a judge, and I don't want to go that far just yet."

While saying that I was looking at DJ. He was sitting at the desk, leaning back in Niles' chair, sipping a beer. He raised his bottle in a quiet salute and smiled.

I had to smile back. "Your trademark, right?"

He nodded. "Yep. After getting a safe open and taking out the goodies, I always put a bottle of beer inside and locked it back up. That way when the poor bugger opened it again, at least he'd have a good German pilsner to make up for his loss."

"I remember reading about that. It was your undoing, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," he frowned. "I always liked to leave expensive, imported stuff. Eventually some smart cop traced the beer to the guy I bought it from, and he ID'd me. Next time I went into his shop, there was John Law with his handcuffs."

"The Hell of it is, I'd been buying beer from that guy for fifteen years." He shrugged and took another sip. "Just goes to show, you can't trust anybody."

Then he laughed and pointed to his pack. "Got another one in there, if you're interested."

"No thanks," I shook my head and looked at the safe. The door was slightly ajar, maybe a quarter-inch open. "What'd you find?"

"Nothing yet. Got it unlocked but didn't open it - been waiting for you."

I nodded, "Thanks," then looked at Chyll and Trinity.

"Ready?"

Trinity nodded and Chyll said, "Boss, we're beyond ready. We blew by that point an hour ago."

"Okay then." I put on a pair of light, tight-fitting gloves and we all went behind the desk. I wasn't worried so much about leaving fingerprints; it's just that we'd already run into plague bacteria and Tau toxin, and I didn't know what else might be here. I remembered Slim Sanchez telling me about all the 'weird heavy stuff in Stratton's lab' and figured – Why take a chance?

The door of the safe was surprisingly heavy, but swung open smoothly and quietly. Inside were two flat boxes, stacked on one on top of the other, and a ceramic cup. I set them on the desk and checked for anything else – but there was nothing.

I half-expected to see the lens of a motion-activated camera mounted in the back wall of the safe. It's a common enough security precaution, recording the time of any intrusion and the face of anyone looking in. I didn't see one, but the possibility didn't worry me, anyway. If Niles came back and found that I'd been poking in his safe, then so what? He'd know that I suspected him, and that didn't bother me at all.

Maybe it would pressure him into making a mistake.

Okay – the safe was empty, completely clean and shiny, with no secret compartments.

The cup was interesting; it was ancient-looking but sturdy, with a smooth, almost glossy inside. At one time it may have been in an ancient temple, filled with wine or mead... or sacrificial blood; but now it held only dozen or so small ceramic disks, which I dumped out into my hand. They looked decorative and fragile, and after a brief scrutiny I returned them to the cup and set it aside.

Next came the boxes: once the lids were removed, we all gathered around the first one - looking expectantly \- but saw only a thin stack of papers, folders, and spreadsheets. Nothing seemed significant to me, so I asked Trinity to take a look. She riffled through and shook her head.

"Mostly personal stuff, like certificates and diplomas, merit awards from the Waxman. Important to him, but not what we're after."

"Uh huh," I nodded, then put the lid on, slid it back into the safe, and turned to the second box.

"Okay, let's hope for better luck with this one."

Chyll was already peering at it. "There's a bunch of pictures," she said. "Anything else?"

"Dunno," I answered. "Let's find out."

I lifted out a stack of at least a dozen 8x10 inch photos and laid them in an array across the desk top. Some were black and white, others in color, all with sharp focus and attention to lighting and composition – obviously more of Niles handicraft.

"Oh my God," Trinity said, pointing to the first one, "that's Julian."

It was a black and white shot of a 40-ish looking guy standing next to a tall tree. There was a large statue behind him, and he was gesturing and talking to a shirtless teenage boy who was holding a small cage. The cage looked to be about two feet on a side; two or three small animals were inside, but I couldn't make out what they were.

Chyll leaned down to get a better look, then straightened up and smiled. "Ah, rats. Not white ones, though."

Rats? I thought. Field Trial 1?

"That's the garden at the Mission," Trinity went on. "Julian had a lab set up inside the big house with all his stuff."

"Who's that he talking to?"

"A local kid. His name is Zane. Julian really liked him – he worked hard and was almost always smiling. I only went out there twice, so I didn't know much about what they were doing. I thought it would be romantic, you know, working at this beautiful old estate, but he and Zane spent all their time in that upstairs lab. It only had one window, and they were really into their work, so there wasn't much for me to see or do. I spent more time talking to the nuns."

"Okay," I said, "if they worked together, then Zane must know what the project was all about. After Julian died, did he stay on, helping out Phil?"

She knit her brow, thinking, then after a few seconds shook her head. "No, I don't think so. When I went to see Phil, I stayed at the Clinic and helped out there instead of going to the Mission. But he said that he worked by himself, so Zane must have been gone by then."

"Boss," said Chyll, "If we get word to Kelsey, maybe she can find him, ask him about it?"

"Exactly what I was thinking."

There was another shot of the same garden area, a close-up of the statue that was behind Julian and Zane in the first picture. The statue was beautiful and sensual and looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't know anything else about it.

"Eternal Springtime," Chyll smiled. "Beautiful, huh? One of my favorite Rodin works."

"You know this statue?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure. I have a copy in my bedroom, only mine's just six inches high. This one's life size... must be really expensive."

I had to smile. Chyll doesn't know everything yet, but she's on her way to getting there.

We moved on to the third picture. It was another one of Julian, this time standing next to a large metallic chamber with a thick door. I recognized it as an environmental control chamber; I'd seen several of them here at the Waxman and at other places I've been, both biotech and high-tech companies.

I glanced at Trinity. "This must be in his lab, right? Any idea what he was keeping in the chamber?"

She shook her head, "Mosquitoes, but I've got no clue why. Whenever Zane went inside he wore white cotton coveralls, with gloves, a hood, and face shield, so it must have been dangerous in there."

As I was thinking about that, Chyll called out: "Hey boss, check this one."

She was pointing to another of the pictures. It looked like the same lab, but not in the same condition. There were papers and broken glass on the floor, and the door of the environmental chamber was off-kilter, like it was warped or the hinges were twisted. And the little window in the door – the glass viewing port – was smashed through. We could also see that the window in the wall behind the chamber was shattered. And one more point: this photo was in color, and there were clear smears of red on the walls, the chamber door, and the floor.

"Blood, right?" Chyll said. "Looks like a lot."

"What... is that Julian's blood?" Trinity sounded shaken. "Jesus, what's next - a picture of his dead body?" Her voice was unsteady and she started to sway a bit. DJ popped out of the chair so fast he spilled part of his beer, then helped her to sit down.

She looked up at him and nodded a 'Thank you', then looked back at me.

"Reid, I've been in that lab and I've seen the library. There's just no way there'd be blood all over that room if he was sitting at the library table when he, uh... pulled the trigger. No way in Hell."

"Trinity," I said softly. "We can't even be sure it's human - maybe it's the rats. And anyway, a little blood goes a long way in pictures."

It was a mesmerizing photo, though, and we all stared at it for another thirty seconds. There were still six others we hadn't looked at yet, so I slid the bloody lab shot aside, pulled the others over and laid them out close to Trinity.

"Okay then," I nodded, "d'you recognize these."

Unlike all the others, the first of these six wasn't a close up; it was a panorama shot of a field with a white building in the middle. The building wasn't finished though – there were stacks of material on the ground and workers were bolting together the upper part of a wall. There were two helicopters parked nearby.

"It looks like the white building where Phil worked. It wasn't there when I went down to see Julian, though, so it must have been built after he died. I never went inside - Phil said it was strictly off limits."

"And look," she went on, pointing to the next picture, "there he is in his lab get-up." It must have been taken inside the new lab in the white building. Phil was wearing a lab coat, gloves, and safety glasses and standing next to two cages about the same size as the one in the picture of Julian and Zane. The cage on his left had a capital letter A in the upper corner; the cage on the right was labeled B, and he was holding a large card that read Field Test #1.

There were two rats in cage A, one climbing the sides and the other staring out at the Phil. Cage B also contained two rats, but these were both lying flat and looked very dead.

Field Test #1 - Kelsey had mentioned it over the phone, but seeing this picture made it real. Especially cage B, the one with the dead rats.

And it made me wonder about Field Test #2, the 'more complete system test.'

I slid those pictures aside and pulled over the last three. Each one was a close up of person, not a posed full-face-on picture though; more like a candid shot of them doing something. Niles clearly wanted their faces to be the focal point.

"What about these people? Ring any bells?"

She picked up the first one and studied it. It was a shot of a man in a business suit, moderately handsome, well groomed dark hair, wearing sunglasses. She shook her head and started to set it aside. DJ, who was sitting in another chair across the other side of the desk, held up his hand and said, "Wait a sec. Check the back – something's written there."

Trinity turned it over; on the back it read "Mr. Greene – real name unknown. Facilitator, organizer."

She set it down and picked up the second one, looking at the back first. It read "The General – the real power and driving force."

The face on the other side was that of an older man, gray haired, square-jawed, and imposing. He was squinting slightly but looking directly into the camera; his eyes were dark and hard – a no-nonsense, formidable figure. The face looked familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd seen it before.

"No, I don't know either of them" Trinity said, setting it down. "This one though...." She picked up the third picture and checked the back; it was blank. "Don't need anything written on it. This is Colo, a real slimeball."

"Really," Chyll said, "like why? What'd he do?"

"It wasn't what he did. I mean, he didn't actually try anything, but the way he looked at me made my skin crawl. I made damn sure I wasn't ever alone with him. He's one of the reasons I stopped going to the Mission and stayed at the Clinic. I liked hanging out with the nuns – some of them are pretty funny – but with that little bastard leering at me all the time...."

She dropped the picture; for a second I thought she was going to spit on it.

There was one more picture – a pretty lady. She had a beautiful smile, giving cute little crinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her lips were slightly open, like she was about to say something, and she looked happy.

Trinity lifted it by one corner and checked the back; "Ariama" was printed in small, red pencil letters.

"Wow," she said, turning it back over again. "I'm impressed. Niles, I didn't know you had it in you."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"She loves him," Chyll said. "The look on her face – whoever took this picture, she loves him."

"Yes, you're right," Trinity nodded.

"So," I said, "you're saying that in addition to being manipulative and insufferable, Niles also has a soft loving side?"

She arched one eyebrow, "Who knew?"

Well, not me, that's for sure. It just goes to show the hidden levels that can lurk in a person's heart.

There was nothing else in the box, and no more boxes in the safe. So we hadn't found a diagram of the project plan, or a flow chart of activities, or a stack of cash.

But we had the photos, and they must be significant.

"You want me to make copies?" Trinity asked. "There's a copier next to the file cabinets."

"Yeah, thanks. How about making two copies of each one."

"Okay," she said.

"Just a sec," Chyll waved her hand. "Let me finish." She was moving from picture to picture, taking photos with her cell phone.

"Good, good," I said. "If Kelsey gets to somewhere with phone service, maybe we can send her the pictures."

But when would that be?

The more I learned about this, the more it seemed like the action would be down where she is, not up here... and so I didn't want just to send her electronic copies – I wanted to hand deliver them instead.

But how – and when – was I going to do that?

Chapter 100: Winter Eggs and Marionettes

Day 13: Saturday

As she feared, sleep was hard to come by for the first hours of the night. Finally, at some time well after 3 AM, Kelsey got up, brewed a cup of herbal tea, and sat in the front room to think. But her whirling mind gradually slowed, and the couch really was quite soft and comfortable, and with the blanket wrapped around her it was so warm... and before the tea was half-gone she'd faded into a silent slumber.

It was way too short of a time later when Stevie tugged at her robe. "Mommy, why are you out here? Are you okay?"

She propped one eye open, reached out a hand to pat him on the shoulder, and said, "Yes, honey, just a little tired."

He brightened up and smiled. "I'm hungry. Auntie Laila says we can go eat now. Are you coming?"

"Easy there, sport." It was Laila, putting an arm on his back and gently shussing him toward the door. "Let your mom rest."

As Stevie ran out onto the veranda, Laila looked back in at Kelsey. "You alright?"

Kelsey sat up and stretched. "Yeah, just fine. Had a busy night – I'll tell you everything later. What time is it now?"

"Nearly ten. We're gonna catch a late breakfast and then head over to the library. One of the nurses is showing the kids how to make puppets."

Kelsey smiled. "Laila – you're such a dear. What ever would I do without you?"

"Like I said before, you'd get a damn sight less rest, that's what. But – not to worry; I enjoy this stuff almost as much as Stevie does."

It was tempting to lie back on the cushions again, but images of notebooks and mosquitoes drifted through Kelsey's mind, followed by memories of hiding in the closet, listening to Colo and the mystery lady.

God! – How'd she managed to stay hidden when they were so close? Colo must have been only a few feet away when he was searching the bedroom. Her fingers still ached from gripping the flashlight so tightly, ready to brain him if he'd slid open the closet door.

"But could I really have done that?" She thought the answer was 'Yes', but it was the sort of thing that you don't know about yourself until you're in the situation, under the pressure and tension of the moment.

She was glad that it hadn't actually come to that.

And the mystery lady, so calm and self- assured: who could that be?

The lady and Colo traded barbs about finding the book and about who might have it, and there was something else... something that struck Kelsey as odd.

Colo's words replayed in her head: 'Julian Chambers was her husband. That ought to make you like, bonded to her in a bizarre way, huh?' And then he'd laughed that disgusting snicker of his.

'Bonded to her?.' Did he mean she was having an affair with Julian? But then why would he add 'in a bizarre way'? No, it couldn't be that.

The icy tingle started just below her sternum and seemed to dance up to her throat. She leaned forward, the blanket tumbling to the hardwood floor as the thoughts struck, each short sentence hammering home.

It wasn't suicide.

Julian didn't kill himself.

He was murdered.

So - there must be a murderer.

It seemed far-fetched, and yet Kelsey felt it to be true with cold certainty: last night she'd been listening to Julian's killer – the calm, self-assured, soft spoken mystery lady.

Well – there was no going back to sleep after that.

An hour later, Kelsey had finished her shower, eaten a light breakfast, and was sitting at the veranda table with a coffee and a small stack of papers: Marley's lab books, the binder containing Julian's notes, her own notes from Vari's RIDL talk, and the map from Phil's closet shelf.

Where to start?

The obvious choice was the binder. What was so important about it?

She flipped open the top cover. Wayne had said the pages inside had been rescued from the fireplace, and they showed it. Some were completely intact, but most had some degree of fire or smoke damage. They must have been torn out of the original notebook and tossed into a pile along with other papers, then the whole stack dumped into the fireplace.

Someone had salvaged them from the ashes and used a 3-hole punch to knock holes along one side, then put them into this binder. Most had a page number in the upper corner, but with some even that part was gone. It was possible in these cases to guess the order from the context of what was written on them... but there were many gaps, since at least half of the pages from the original notebook were missing.

Still, what remained was enormously informative, if not in detail, then at least in the overall project plan. The first pages, especially, laid out the background and general approach.

When she began to read, it seemed at first like a curious mix of the naïve and the inspired, a simple idea that couldn't work. As she read more, though, it increased in scope and complexity and looked oddly promising.

Then, further on, it began to appear that there might be complex intentions hidden under the surface. She read slowly, stopping often to think; then went through everything a second time, jotting down notes and points to look up later.

The first page began with a simple, straightforward statement, written with Julian's impeccably neat penmanship:

Vaccinations are commonly used for people and domestic animals – horses, cows, cats, dogs. But not for wild animals like rodents and bats, which may serve as reservoirs for epidemic diseases in humans.

The reasons are obvious: there are vast numbers of wild critters, and access to them is difficult. But is there a natural system that we can adapt to do the job?

For example: Mosquitoes

When Niles first proposed this idea to me, I thought it was impractical, but after discussion with Jim Hillen realized that it could be an interesting model system for understanding disease transmission and control.

We put together the development plan described below, and Niles assured us that resources and money would be plentiful.

Kelsey set the binder down, took up her coffee cup, and wondered what Niles name was doing there. He always claimed to not know much about the project... that it was all Phil's idea. But this clearly put Niles as the real driving force.

She picked up the binder and continued to read.

Basic idea: When a mosquito bites, it injects salivary proteins. If these contain bacterial or viral pathogens, the disease is passed on to the bitten victim. But suppose that instead of a virulent pathogen, the mosquito saliva contained an attenuated pathogen, one which could elicit an immune response rather than cause the disease. Would this not be the same as inoculating the victim with a vaccine?

Issues and questions:

1. Do mosquitos bite these wild animals?

\- Yes, in most cases

2. Is there a barrier to transmission of desired proteins or vaccines by mosquitoes?

-Yes, see the article below, reprinted from the St. Lucie, Florida public health blog:

"For a disease to be transmitted by mosquitoes, certain conditions must be met; (1) the disease causing agent (for example a virus) must be ingested by the mosquito, (2) the disease agent must be able to survive and reproduce inside the mosquito, and (3), the disease agent must be injected into the new host.

Most infective agents, such as flu viruses, cold viruses, and bacteria cannot be transmitted by mosquitoes because they cannot survive inside the mosquito.

For example, if a mosquito bites a person with the flu, the flu virus is easily ingested by the mosquito but quickly dies.

But some agents, such as the dengue fever or west Nile virus, when taken up by a mosquito from an infected host, are able to survive and reproduce within the mosquito and move to the salivary glands, where they can be injected into a new person, thus transmitting the disease."

Julian had underlined the key points above, then focused on these issues:

While most infective agents die, others survive, so it is not impossible to use mosquitoes to transmit vaccines; rather, it is a matter of controlling their survival in the mosquito stomach and mouth parts so that they can be delivered to the new host.

The survival of bacteria or viruses depends on them not being destroyed by mosquito digestive enzymes. Those that are digested will die and those that are resistant to the enzyme action will survive.

If enough survive, at least some will move to the salivary glands and be injected into the new host.

So our problem becomes this: How to we ensure that our vaccine will survive the digestive enzyme onslaught?

Julian listed a range of approaches to solving this problem, including creating bacteria with modified cell wall structures, or new strains of mosquitoes that lacked key digestive enzymes, or other new strains of mosquitoes having modified salivary glands .

At the end of that paragraph he noted:

I discussed genetic modification approaches with Marley Granger, and he rejected them as taking too long, being too complex, or having too many side issues.

But here's a possible simple solution: Feed the mosquitoes a blood meal containing the vaccine (attenuated bacteria or virus) plus digestive enzyme inhibitors (especially for trypsin & chymotrypsin; also pepsin?). The digestion of the blood will be prevented, keeping the mosquito unsatisfied; it will regurgitate the undigested bacteria into its mouth parts and seek a new victim to bite. And so the vaccine will be spread.

This must be done quickly as the bacteria may survive for only a short time inside the mosquito. So: raise mosquitoes in the lab, treat them, then quickly release large numbers.

3. Will the enzyme inhibitors kill the mosquitoes, or will they recover after release into the wild?

\- Unknown; if they recover, they will be competitors against any new groups of treated mosquitoes that we may release later. So it is better if they do not survive.

4. Potential complication: Will the mosquitoes be a problem for any nearby human settlements?

\- Possibly yes. To minimize this we must carefully target only remote animal populations and use mosquitoes that survive for no more than two days after release.

How can we ensure that they will die a short time after release?

\- Use RIDL mosquitoes. They are genetically designed to die quickly once away from the lab.

5. How can we store large numbers of mosquitoes for rapid transport to various locations?

\- Use Winter Eggs. Most Anopheles mosquitoes hibernate, but a few, like Anopheles walkeri, lay "summer eggs" which hatch in the summer, and larger, insulated, "winter eggs" which lie dormant until spring, when they hatch at the coming of warm weather. The winter eggs may be kept in refrigerators or freezers for easy storage and shipment.

Underneath all that, Julian listed a concise summary of his plan:

• Use mosquitoes to inject animals with vaccine, allowing them to raise antibodies against the disease

• Mosquitos must be treated to be able to transmit the vaccine. We must prevent the vaccines from being broken down by mosquito digestive enzymes

• Mosquito populations must be controlled – use RIDL

• Mosquitoes must be able to be stored and shipped – use Winter Eggs

Jim Hillen provided us with YpH – a perfect test system. The bacteria normally won't survive in mosquitoes. I'll try to set up a system in which they WILL survive and be transmitted by the mosquitoes to rats.

Key points to test for:

1. Can we determine how much of the YpH is transmitted in a single bite?

2. How does this amount relate to the minimum amount needed to elicit an immune response?

3. After exposure to the mosquitoes, do the rats develop YpH infection?

4. Do the rats develop antibodies against YpH?

5. Will the treated rats be resistant to infection by wild-type Yersinia pestis?

The rest of the pages contained lists of equipment, supplies, biochemicals, reagent formulas, assay procedures and test data. After page ten he began using 'we' instead of 'I', and mentioned Zane by name in several spots.

Because the book was so fragmentary, with so many missing sections, the details were difficult to follow, but they made good progress in a short time.

• He and Zane generated RIDL mosquito strains

• They completed the enzyme inhibitor work

• They proved that treated mosquitoes successfully transmitted YpH to the caged rats.

• The rats produced antibodies against _Yersinia_

But they never got to the Winter Egg work, and also didn't try exposing the rats to wild-type plague bacteria. As Julian wrote: Too dangerous to use without better containment facilities; need a new lab to do that. There was also no mention of Marley's work with Tau and modified Kanja. Could that have been what the white building was for? To be used with dangerous bio-hazards?

Still, Julian was pleased with the overall results, and seemed to believe that this project was going to be a boon to controlling Explosive Epidemic Episodes – the 3E's, as he liked to call them.

But when Kelsey reach the last page in the binder, she found a chilling change. It was only half there, and even that half was crinkled and brown from the smoke. At the top was a wavy streak of ink running across the width of the page, like Julian had slashed at the paper with his pen. Below that the printing was a cramped, slanted scrawl – gone was the neat, measured penmanship. It reminded Kelsey of the notes he sent her when their marriage was disintegrating and his stress level was through the roof... when he was spiraling downward into depression.

The words were strung out with no punctuation:

Zane how did this happen my fault my fault Christ how could I be so blind

He must have written it just hours – or maybe minutes – before he died. He wrote, tore out the pages, tossed them into the fire, then drove to the Mission, and....

And what happened next?

Kelsey closed the binder, swallowed the last of her coffee, and checked the clock: just past 2 PM. She was fired up to jump into the jeep right now and head out.

Time to get the rest of the story from Ayla and Riosa, whatever they'd been holding back. And Shari...if Vari was right, then whatever she knew could be the key to understanding what drove Julian over the edge.

But it was still plenty early, so best to stop in and see what was up with Stevie before leaving. The little library, right? That was where Laila said they'd be.

Kelsey closed her eyes and visualized the Clinic compound, mentally moving through the grounds. Hmm, hmm... yes, okay – the library was in the small blue building around the back of the reception area.

First though, what to do with Julian's notebook? She didn't want to keep it in her cabin – that might be inviting trouble. Carrying it with her in the jeep had too much risk of damaging the fragile pages. Wayne could lock it away in his office... but no, that might be putting him or the clinic in harm's way if Colo came around again.

Why not just put it back in Phil's cabin? Make it some obvious place – like the desk top, so that if the bad guys came back they'd see it and be on their way.

What they wouldn't know was that she had taken photos of every page.

There weren't too many, but getting the lighting just right was tricky for the more smoke damaged ones. With a little trial and error she was able to strike a good balance of daylight, the desk lamp, and the camera flash to increase the contrast between the black ink and the dusky brown paper. It took about twenty minutes to finish the complete set. With no phone service she couldn't send them to anyone, but at least she now had a readable record for her own use.

The map? Probably no one but Phil knew about that, so she slid it into her backpack. Marley's notebooks went back into a shabby cardboard box on the closet shelf, the same place she'd been keeping them since they all arrived on Wednesday.

Kelsey stashed the binder with Julian's notes into an old, rumpled backpack and stepped out onto her veranda. The nearby yard appeared empty and quiet; too late for lunch, too early for afternoon sick-call, so she walked casually down her stairs and over to Cabin 1. Another quick glance to be certain that no one was near, and then she quickly mounted the steps. It took just seconds to unlock the door, slip inside, place the pack onto the desk, and slip back out.

Three minutes later she was peeking in the front window at the library. Stevie and two other kids were sitting at a table surrounded by paper, cotton balls, paste, crayons, string, and Popsicle sticks. They were busy making copies of the Marionette puppets dangling just over the table top. Stevie was working on a monkey; the girl next to him had a half-finished jaguar, and the boy across the table was attaching strings to a lumpy parrot.

Kelsey went through the door, gave Laila a quick hug, and said 'Hi' to Jeena, the nurse who was teaching the kids Stevie looked up and smiled, "Mom, come here – lookit what I made!" She knelt down between him and the little girl, clapping appreciatively at their handiwork. Stevie asked her to help make the handles, then handed her the scissors and asked her to cut pieces of string. It wasn't long before she was cutting patterns, stitching fabric, and stuffing cotton balls to create her own puppet butterfly.

An hour later they were all outside, making their little creatures dance and twirl. Laila brought a tray of sandwiches and drinks, and the afternoon breezed by in a riot of fun. It wasn't like Kelsey forgot about the nagging questions gnawing at her curiosity, but this afternoon was better spent as more Stevie time.

The Mission wasn't going anywhere, and the nuns would still be there tomorrow.

And tomorrow would come soon enough.

Chapter 101: Map

Day 14: Sunday

After all the head-scratching and pondering over Julian's notes yesterday morning, the afternoon was a refreshing playtime with Stevie, and that carried into a fun family dinner, with games in the evening. It was just the kind of spirit renewal that Kelsey needed, and sleep came easily that night.

Sunday morning she woke early and well-rested, was showered and out the door while Laila and Stevie were just beginning to yawn and get up. Twenty minutes later, she'd finished a bagel and coffee, packed a sandwich for lunch, waved good-bye, and was on the road. The air was still cool, and, with the top down in the jeep, the wind whistled through her hair.

It felt great.

She zipped along contentedly toward the Mission, wondering if Ayla and Riosa would be ready to talk freely. What was the source of their reluctance, anyway? Was it just their nature to avoid the sordid and mundane dealings of the world? Or had there been threats against them? Maybe - but they didn't lack courage or guts; after all, they'd swept into the garden just when Colo seemed ready to go for her throat, and Ayla controlled the volatile situation masterfully.

Could they be protecting someone? Shari, perhaps?

Well, whatever. In any case, Ayla said that they'd pray for guidance, and hopefully they got the right answer.

As those thoughts were sifting through Kelsey's mind, she heard that familiar whup-whup-whup again. The same army helicopter passed overhead, close enough for her to feel the downdraft from the rotors. It was coming from somewhere off to the right, but wasn't going in the direction toward Salvata... more likely, it was heading to the Mission.

"What the Hell?" she whispered. They couldn't be bringing in more equipment or lab samples – that would be coming from Salvata. No, they were flying in from the interior, and, from their height, somewhere close.

She shifted into neutral, drifted to a stop, and reached over to grab her backpack from the floor near the passenger seat. Okay... where was it? Front pocket – no... side pocket –mmm – yes, got it. She fished out the map – the one from Phil's closet – and spread it across the steering wheel. One of the areas marked with a red X was a short way off to the right from here... maybe a mile or less. A narrow pencil line was drawn in, connecting it to this road just past the turnoff to the Lodge.

Kelsey stowed the map on the floor, shifted into gear, and started forward. Going to the Mission while the soldiers were there didn't seem too attractive - no sense in risking a confrontation. Besides, the nuns might be less reticent with no one else around, so it was better to wait until the helicopter was gone before she arrived.

So why not spend some time checking out this red X? If that was where the copter had come from, then she might learn something by poking around out there.

As she neared the turnoff to the Lodge she slowed down to a crawl, checking for any sign of Colo's truck. Everything seemed clear – no unusual sights or sounds, no recent tire tracks, and no dust floating in the air. Once past the intersection, she continued of move very slowly, looking for a road heading off to the right... and there it was: narrow and obscured by leaves and vines. Without the map she would have missed it completely, as she had on Friday.

The first hundred feet were barely passable, but after that the road widened and overhead branches had been cut back. It was still in marginal condition; most likely hastily built and poorly maintained, but with no major ruts or fallen branches blocking the way Kelsey could ease along at nearly ten miles an hour. The trees were thick on both sides, blocking the view beyond about fifteen feet to both left and right, and grew together to form a sky-obscuring canopy overhead. On foot, an experienced trekker could make good progress through this type of jungle, but a novice would be disoriented in minutes and quickly lost forever.

The sudden break in the foliage came as a surprise; after a sharp turn to the left and a short uphill climb, the road descended into a clearing about two hundred feet across – maybe an acre, or not quite. There was a small hut near the center and at least a dozen white poles with red flags scattered around the grounds in a vaguely regular pattern. When Kelsey got out of the jeep and walked around, she could see that each flag had the number "1" followed by a letter: 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, etc. On the side of the hut – and on the roof, too, she now saw, was a large red "1" in bright red paint.

On the ground next to each white pole was a round metallic plate about the size of a dinner plate. She knelt next to the first one to lift it up for a closer look, but it was surprisingly heavy. By hooking her fingers underneath she was able to pry it up and see what was underneath: a circular hole four inches in diameter; she peered in but couldn't tell how deep it was, and dropping in a pebble didn't help much.

She set the plate back down and did a quick circuit around the area. On the far side of the hut was a clear space where the ground looked scuffed and wind-scoured; a likely spot for a helicopter to land and take off. But what caught her attention was the jeep parked nearby. It had a trailer attached, and mounted on the trailer was what had to be a drilling rig. There was a small but powerful looking engine in the middle of the trailer; on one side of this was a stack of hollow metal tubes and fittings, and on the other were several long drill bits with GX Diamond stamped on their edges.

"Uh huh," Kelsey nodded to herself. She'd never seen one of these in action before, but it explained the holes next to the red flags: the jeep towed the trailer around the ground to a desired spot, then the drilling rig was assembled. The hollow tube would fit inside the shaft of the drill bit, and as the diamond tipped drill bored into the earth, a core sample would be collected inside the hollow tube.

The core could be collected, sliced, and analyzed inch-by-inch to determine the type, amount, and depth of any soil or rock that was present. It was a common enough test method for agronomic or geologic studies.

Someone was doing some sort of soil analysis out here – but what?

The hut was just a roof and thin wooden walls, with a dirt floor and one window on the far side. That let in just enough light for her to see a lantern sitting on a small table. It was a battery lamp and with one push of a button it lit up; but the light level was dim, and what it showed was stark, dusty, and drab. The room was no more than ten feet on a side, with just one table and one chair; no bed, no stove, no food, not even a coffee cup. There was a bench along one wall containing a tall stack of cylindrical metal canisters. Kelsey imagined someone sitting at the table with a big knife, slicing one of the rock core samples into three or four inch sections and putting them into the canisters; yes, that must be what they were for. The canisters came in three colors: red, blue, and green.

A paper tacked to the wall above the bench had the words 'High' written in red ink, 'Midrange' in blue, and 'Low' in green. There were tally marks next to each color; someone must be tracking the number of each type they found.

A stack of white plastic buckets was piled on the floor near a 55-gallon drum. The top was off, and Kelsey could see that it was about two-thirds filled with rock fragments. Was this the junk bin for samples that didn't rate high enough to be put into the canisters?

That all made sense... kind of. But there wasn't any analytical equipment: nothing to measure density, moisture content, or grain size, and the lamp wasn't bright enough to do careful color judgments. So how, she wondered, did whoever was doing the work decide whether a particular slice was to be scored as High, Midrange, Low, or junk?

Okay, anything else? Yes – something under the table, in a box. It was small but sturdy and heavy walled, so Kelsey sat on the chair to undo the latches and lift off the top. Inside was an instrument of some sort; in the shadows it was tough to see details - just that it had dials, controls, and a wire leading to a metallic tube about six inches long with a flared end.

When she lifted it out and set in on the table, though, it was immediately obvious - a Geiger counter. What was that doing here?

Is that how the samples were sorted? – By how radioactive they were?

This was something totally unexpected, and her mind felt numb dealing with it, like trying to think through molasses. Up to now, everything she'd learned involved something medical – genetics, disease spread, vector control... the sorts of things she was familiar with.

But rock core drilling and radioactivity were new twists, and chilling ones, too.

'Okay,' she whispered, 'The map with the red X's must be Julian's or Phil's. And it has to be connected to what they – and Marley – were working on. And it was something Niles wanted.'

Kelsey stood up, feeling a tightness in her stomach, and started out the door - but stopped mid-way and looked back. There were at least a dozen deep holes in the ground outside; someone had collected rock and soil cores from all of them. Once sliced, they would have filled hundreds of canisters. But there were none inside the hut, and none outside either.

So where were they?

The helicopter had been coming from this direction, and seemed to be heading toward the Mission. That white building... yes, that damn building might hold more secrets than just Phil's lab.

She snatched up the Geiger counter, jumped into her jeep, and sped away.

Chapter 102: Rats

Day 14: Sunday

Less than twenty minutes later Kelsey reached the Mission gate. By now her nerves had calmed down a bit and she drove through slowly, carefully scanning the area: Okay – there was no helicopter near the white building, nor any sign of Colo's truck anywhere.

No sign of people either, but it was early – maybe the nuns hadn't started their field work yet. She let the jeep idle slowly forward, still looking around the yard, and came to a stop near Grant's old mansion.

Once the engine was off she could just make out the soft sounds of singing. The words were French, but the tune wasn't familiar. One of the voices came on louder, taking up the solo lead, crystal clear, melodic, and rich. A high level talent, hidden away in a jungle cloister.

Other voices took up the chorus, and the volume blossomed. How many nuns were here? Wasn't it eleven? It must take all of them to keep the melody and the different harmonies so well blended.

Or maybe not quite all; someone was coming out of the convent main door, her uncovered, dark hair tumbling around her shoulders and dancing in the light breeze. She also wasn't wearing the usual nun's gray robe, but instead was wrapped in a simple black shift, and was barefoot.

She walked across the small grassy area and into the garden near Grant's house, no more than forty feet from where Kelsey was parked, but totally unaware of her.

And as she reached the clearing near the Eternal Springtime statue, Kelsey could see why. The young lady was carrying a small bundle and singing softly. A few steps closer, and Kelsey could see a little pink face peeping out of the blanket.

A baby; yes, of course, it had to be: Hadn't Vari said that there was a baby – Julian's baby – here at the convent? And that the mother was hidden away?

Times like this - when all the other nuns were in the chapel – must be her chance to sneak out for a little sunshine.

So she swayed and cooed happily to the babe, slowly gliding around the statue, until she came to that little cairn of white stones, the same one that Sister Riosa had knelt at to offer a prayer.

She stopped at the stones and bowed her head, her lips moving soundlessly - a silent prayer? After a few seconds she continued her circle around her garden until coming face to face with Kelsey, who smiled and extended her hands.

"Hello, Shari. I'm Kelsey. You and I have a lot to talk about."

Shari's eyes instantly changed from light and carefree to dark and frightened. Clearly, she was not ready to talk, but instead slid sideways, slowly at first, then faster, and then took off running. Once at the convent door she stopped and turned, looked back intently at Kelsey for five or six heartbeats, then shook her head and disappeared inside.

But Kelsey was not about to be deterred so easily. Not with all the damn mysteries and all the damn question marks that needed some damned answers. So she strode across the lawn and into the convent lobby.

No one was there; Shari must have scurried away, and there were four hallways leading off in various directions with no clue as to which one she may have taken. Kelsey paused, tempted to go searching, but reluctant to barge into the convent's private quarters.

On the other hand, she was the owner – at least in name – of the entire property, and this was an important matter. But which hallway to take?

The decision was made moot by the arrival of Sister Ayla and a half-dozen others on their way out for morning chores. When they saw Kelsey all the lighthearted chattering stopped and they stared at her in silence.

The initial moment of surprise passed quickly, though; Ayla clapped her hands and said something to them about carrying on with their tasks. She spoke in simplified Spanish; it was a compromise language meant for easy communication, since the individual nun's native languages might be French, Portuguese, Spanish, one of several nearby Amazonas tongues, or even English.

So they filed out quietly, some smiling at Kelsey, others looking more wondering and curious, but all obedient to the Mother Superior's directions. All except for Riosa, that is; she stayed behind, standing next to Ayla at the big desk.

"Nice to see you again, Kelsey." Ayla smiled, "but a little early for that glass of wine."

"Maybe later," Kelsey smiled in return. "Right now I'm trying to solve a few riddles, and I think the answers - or at least some strong clues – are here."

Ayla looked back, her smile fading. "Yes, such as?"

There were three points that Kelsey wanted to pursue: first, a chance talk to Shari; second, to hear the true story about the night Julian died; and third, to get inside the white building and look around. All were important, but she might meet some resistance in asking for either of the first two. The third was on more common ground, and it might help Ayla and Riosa to see the danger of the situation... and that, in turn, might make them more amenable to agreeing to the others.

' _Okay then,'_ Kelsey thought; _'let's go with the white lab.'_

Putting a serious look on her face, she asked, "Did a helicopter land here this morning? About an hour and a half ago?"

Riosa glanced at Ayla, then and Kelsey, and nodded. "Yes. Most of the sisters were finishing breakfast and getting ready for morning services, but Sister Claire and I were taking leftover fruit to the compost pile. We noticed a jeep parked next to the white building, and the big sliding doors were open. A helicopter landed in the field and some men got out and began unloading boxes. Another man came out of the building and met them. The men from the helicopter were dressed in green army clothes, but this other man was wearing jeans and a brown shirt. They carried the boxes into the building, and then the helicopter flew off. The other man closed the sliding doors and drove away."

Kelsey smiled, "And you saw all of that from the compost pile?"

Riosa looked at Ayla again and blushed. "We were curious, so we walked closer, but stayed behind the trees. They didn't notice us. The man from the jeep seemed to be giving directions to the soldiers, so we thought maybe he was taking over Dr. Poley's work. I didn't recognize him though. Maybe he hasn't been here before."

"No," Ayla said. She'd been listening tight-lipped to Riosa, but finally spoke. "This man has been here at least twice, once with Dr. Poley and last month with some people from the Lodge. He introduced himself to me the first time... a courteous man, but not very friendly, I think. A Mister Bramm. He said that he looks at rocks."

Kelsey nodded, thinking to herself _'Rocks? Yeah, that fits,'_ then said out loud, "I'm going out there. It's time to see inside that building. I'd like you to come with me."

"Yes," Ayla's answer was unexpectedly quick. "I'd like that, too. We came here for a life of peace, contemplation, prayer, and service to the local people. But with soldiers flying in at any hour of the day or night, delivering strange packages for scientists to do strange, secret work... it is tense and worrying, not peaceful."

"The door is locked," Riosa said. "How do we get in?"

Kelsey pulled Phil's key ring out of her pocket. "With any luck, one of these will open it. But if not, I'm getting in anyway, even if I have to break down the door."

"Then let's go now," Ayla said, "while I still have the courage and before any soldiers come back."

The three of them piled into the jeep and rode across the field. As they got closer, Kelsey was surprised to see that the building was not as imposing as it looked from a distance. Large, yes: roughly oval-shaped, a hundred feet long and twenty feet high. But not heavy and solid; the outer walls were thin corrugated aluminum, painted white to reflect the sun and nailed to a wooden framework. It had been built quickly – sometime earlier that year when the nuns were moved away – and apparently wasn't meant to be part of a long term project. More likely it was designed for work that needed to be done quickly, after which it could be easily dismantled.

And also a place for work that needed to be done away from prying eyes - there were no windows and only the one large sliding door. From the air, it would look like just one more building at the Mission, maybe a barn for the good sisters. Who would suspect anything else?

Unless they noticed the electric cables snaking over from the solar array, which they almost surely wouldn't. Those were housed in a thick-walled plastic/carbon fiber pipe set into a narrow ditch, so that the top of the pipe was just below ground level. There were shrubs planted here and there along its length. All in all, it was essentially invisible.

Okay, now what about opening that door? It was secured with a large padlock, similar to the one on the door to the room behind Grant's library, the one that Julian had used as a lab. In fact, this one was more than similar; it looked identical. There was only one key labeled 'Master' on Phil's ring, and Kelsey had already used it to open that lab door.

Could it be?

She slid the key into the lock and turned; the lock popped open. Well, it made a kind of sense to minimize the number of different locks and keys needed - either a sign of good foresight or a sign that the different building projects were put up using whatever materials were at hand, including a batch of padlocks linked to the same key.

Unlike the walls, the door was heavy and sturdy, but slid open easily on hard rubber wheels. With no windows, the interior was dark, but not quiet; there was a low hum coming from somewhere toward the center. Kelsey and Riosa had both brought flashlights and were able to locate a panel of four toggle switches. Ayla clicked them to the up position one by one, and with each click a bank of fluorescent lights flickered to life.

There was plenty of light now, and it showed that the inside was more complex than just being one large room. The outer walls were actually just a shell built around a much more solid second structure. The floor of the outer area was bare, smooth dirt, but the inner room was raised several feet off the ground, resting on cement piers and wooden planks. There also was a gap of four or five feet between the roof of the inner room and the ceiling of the outer building. All of this would keep the inner room insulated from the noise and heat of the outside world.

The space between the outer wall and the inner structure was about twenty feet, and this gap looked like it continued all the way around – so if the outer walls were about a hundred feet on a side, then this inner room was about sixty. Like the outer walls, this inner room was slightly oval rather that square in shape; but still should have over 3000 square feet of floor space, plenty for a good sized lab.

It had to be where Phil was working.

Kelsey and the nuns walked up a wide ramp to the door of this inner room. It was unlocked; when they pushed it open they felt with a rush of cool air and heard the soft hum of air conditioners.

Why use the power to keep a large room cool when no one was working in there now? It couldn't be just for the rocks, so what else was here?

Just inside the door was another set of switches and with two clicks more ranks of fluorescent bulbs came to life. The inner room, now bathed in soft light, showed a curious setup: along the left side wall was a short shelf containing common glassware items – beakers, flasks, and graduated cylinders; next to it was a large desk with papers and books stacked across the top. A lab bench ran along the rest of this side of the room. Against the right wall was a second desk, somewhat cleaner, two large refrigerators, and a tall freezer set to maintain a temperature of minus 80° Celsius. .

Nothing too unusual about that; the curious part was in the middle: four large, walk-in environmental chambers. They looked very much like the one in the room behind Grant's library, the one with the broken viewing window and bent door hinge.

Kelsey went to the nearest chamber; it was a cube about eight feet on a side, plugged into a large electrical outlet, and attached to venting pipes leading up through the ceiling. A panel near the door displayed the internal temperature and humidity – a comfortable 20° Celsius and 40% relative humidity – as well as oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and the day/night lighting cycle.

A white card was taped to the front just below the window in the door. A large capital '2-A' was printed on the card in red ink. By stepping to the side and looking down the line at the other chambers, Kelsey could see that they were all the same size and all had white cards on the their doors, but the letters were "2-B', then '2-C; and finally '2-D' on the fourth one.

"What can these be for?" Ayla asked. She was peering through the view port into the inside of Chamber 2-A, but it was too dark to make anything out.

"I'm not sure," Kelsey answered softly. "Let's take a look."

Riosa shook her head. "Do you think it's safe?"

Kelsey took a quick look around. There didn't seem to be any protective gear – like gowns or face masks – so she shrugged and said, "It's probably okay."

And so saying, she turned the heavy latch and pulled the door open. An inside light immediately came on - not overly bright – but enough to see clearly. The chamber walls were about six inches thick, so the inside floor space was roughly seven by seven feet. A two-foot wide shelf ran along the left and right sides, allowing for a center aisle about three feet across.

All three of them crowded in, closing the door behind them. The inside was snug, just roomy enough to give an up-close view of rat cages - twenty of them, ten on each shelf. In each cage was a medium-sized white rat, looking perfectly healthy. They had exercise wheels, plenty of wood shavings, little rat toys to gnaw on, and each cage was attached to an automatic feeding and watering system. With the controlled environmental conditions, life was pretty good in here; maybe a little boring, but dry, cozy, safe, and comfortable.

After observing for a minute, Ayla, the last one in, pushed open the door and they moved back into the lab.

"Rats are God's creatures too," Riosa frowned, "but not my favorites. What's this all about?"

Kelsey shrugged. "Looks like Phil was doing some sort of test, but I can't tell what. Let's check other chambers."

She flashed on a memory of Marley's notebook \- about a Field Trial Number 2. Could this be it?

The rats in Chamber 2-B were not as healthy as the ones in 2-A. Three looked sick, and there were two empty cages. The other fifteen looked okay, though not as lively and active as the ones in 2-A.

Chamber 2-C was pretty similar to 2-B – it held three empty cages. The rats in the other seventeen were various stages of health, some shivering slightly, others asleep, and the rest passive, unmoving.

A brief peek inside was all that was needed for these chambers.

That left 2-D. This one had a thick sheet of Plexiglas bolted over the window. As she peered through it, she could see why. Something had shattered the window, leaving a ragged hole a few inches across in the glass. The Plexiglas panel had a rubber gasket around the edges, and made an effective seal. Kelsey rested her hand on the door latch, but didn't open it just yet. She was thinking about the reagents Marley'd sent to Phil for using in Field Trial 2.

Turning to Ayla and Riosa, she said, "It might be better for you to wait outside this time."

"Gladly," Riosa said, sounding relieved, but Ayla shook her head.

"No, if you go in, I will too."

"Alright," Kelsey nodded, "then let's make it quick."

When she pulled open the door, they were hit by an overwhelming odor of decay, and when they stepped inside it was clear why: Chamber 2-D was a charnel house. Twelve cages were empty, and the other eight held dead rats. No survivors.

Kelsey and Ayla backed out and closed the door very fast.

Ayla crossed herself and coughed. "Mother of God, what does all this mean? What's been going on here?"

"I have some vague ideas, but I'm not certain" Kelsey answered. "Let's look at the desk. Maybe there's something in the papers that'll tell us."

As they walked over, she continued, "This looks like a setup for measuring the effects of toxins. Four chambers housing four test populations... each population must have been exposed to something different. The first chamber, 2-A, is probably the Control, where the rats weren't exposed to anything. The other three chambers could be where the rats were given increasing concentrations of some toxic agent, or maybe were exposed to three different agents. We won't know until we get more info."

Something was nagging at her memory... what else did Marley's notebook say? She closed her eyes, trying to reconstruct the conversation with Reid, about what to look for in the in the liquid nitrogen tanks...

" _One reagent set is labeled Yp-H. The other is labeled Tau, like the Greek letter. Don't ask me what they mean, but he says that together they're a blockbuster."_

Ahh, okay - together a blockbuster, but maybe individually they're comparatively harmless? Yes, that could explain what they saw in the chambers: the rats in 2-B and 2-C might have been exposed to just one of the reagents, either Yp-H or Tau. They caused moderately harmful effects to both populations, but were not devastating. But maybe in 2-D they were exposed to both Yp-H and Tau, and wham! - All dead.

Riosa was already at the desk, riffling through the stack of papers; she looked up and asked. "What are we looking for?"

"Anything hand-written by Phil," Kelsey answered. "It could be in a hard-bound notebook, or a binder, or even 3x5 notecards. Anything that mentions rats."

Riosa was shaking her head. "No, I haven't seen anything about rats... lots of stuff about mosquitoes, though."

"Mosquitoes – that's right!" said Kelsey. "That's what I drove over here looking for – info about mosquitoes. What've you got?"

Riosa handed her a small stack of papers – Xerox copies of nine or ten journal articles. Kelsey shuffled through them quickly; sure enough, some dealt with handling RIDL insect populations, and the rest with how to generate, store, and use mosquito winter eggs.

She glanced across the room at the refrigerators and freezers and started toward them when Ayla suddenly called out, "Wait - take a look at this." She was kneeling on the floor next to the desk; looking through the bottom file drawers and holding up a thin green book.

"That's a Waxman lab notebook," Kelsey nodded. "It's probably Phil's - check for anything about rats. All this looks pretty recent, so just skip the older stuff and focus on the last month. I want to take a look over here."

The refrigerators were half-again larger than a standard kitchen model and looked new, with doors that latched closed to ensure a tight seal. The first one contained only standard laboratory chemicals, but the second was packed with stacks of flat, white trays. They resembled egg cartons, except that they were heavier and had tight covers.

She pulled one out, snapped open the lid, looked in for a few seconds, then put it back. After checking three more, she closed and latched the door, then leaned back against it with folded arms, frowning slightly.

"You don't look real happy," Riosa said. "What did you find in there?"

Kelsey took a deep breath and said, "It's easier to show you than to tell you."

She opened the refrigerator again, drew out one of the plastic trays, and slid the lid partway back. Riosa stared at the stacks of moist wafers coated with little dots. Each dot looked like an elongated bit of jelly, roughly about the size of a comma on a printed page of typing. She glanced up and shook her head. "I don't understand... what are we looking at?"

"Mosquito eggs," Kelsey said. "Each of these disks contains several hundred; each of the plastic trays contains many thousands... and there are at least a hundred of these trays stacked in the refrigerator."

Riosa looked puzzled. "Why go to all that trouble? Are they special?"

Kelsey sighed; she really didn't want to explain about RIDL mutants right now, so instead just said, "Yeah. Julian and Phil put a lot of work into getting them. These eggs can be stored in the cold for months. You make them hatch by putting them in the freezer for a while, then taking them out... it tricks them into sensing that winter has come and gone. So you can keep them here as long as you want, then hatch as many as you want, whenever you want."

"My God" Riosa whispered. "Why would anyone do this?"

"That's the big question," Kelsey shrugged, and added "but I don't think we're gonna like the answer."

Right then Ayla interrupted with a loud, "Here it is," and stood up, tapping the lab notebook. "This tells what went on with these poor rats."

She passed the open book to Kelsey and stood back, shaking her head.

FIELD TEST #2 was printed at the top of both pages. Kelsey checked the date at the upper left – Tuesday, twelve days ago. Phil died on Friday of that week, so this had to be the last stuff he'd worked on.

There were Excel tables taped onto both the left and right hand pages. The table on the left side listed a series of reagents, concentrations, and conditions. The one on the right side gave the test results. It looked like this:

Below that Phil had written:

In this test we infected the rats in groups 2-B and 2-D by exposing them on the first day (Time 0) to RIDL mosquitos carrying live Yp-H bacteria. Then on the next day (Time 24 hours) we injected groups 2-C and 2-D with a low dose of Tau toxin.

By the following day (Time 48 hours) the results were conclusive:

Exposure of rats to only Yp-H or only Tau makes them sick, but in general does not kill them.

But the combination of both bacteria and toxin is 100% lethal.

This is only half of the final system design; we need to see the same results when we feed K-T to rats instead of injecting purified Tau toxin. This will be Field Test #3; I will start this after Marley sends us his harvest of K-T fruit.

Niles has assured me that it will arrive before January.

Of course, there really should be one more Field Test before moving on to the active phase of the plan, to show that all of this works on people, not just rats.

Any volunteers?

* * * * * * *

Kelsey lowered the book and gazed at the chambers.

"Holy shit..." she mused in a loud whisper.

Chapter 103: Tik-Tik-Tik

Day 14: Sunday

"Excuse me?" Ayla said, a little startled.

"Oh... nothing, sorry," Kelsey smiled.

That was the final entry in the lab book; did Phil write it on his last day?

Last day in the lab. Maybe his last day alive?

Well, he wouldn't be getting that bonus.

But what about this 'Consortium'? Who were they? And with Phil gone, who would be taking over the work?

In her heart she suspected the answer, though her spirit wanted to deny it: Niles.

What had happened to him? He'd been a lifelong friend and a surrogate father figure after she'd left here and gone to California. Years ago, when he was trekking with Grant, he'd always been sharp and competent; but lately he'd seemed distracted, forgetful, like he'd lost that sharp edge.

But now she had to wonder: Was that just an act to cover up what he was really doing?

"Well?"

It was Ayla's voice, and it brought Kelsey out of her reverie. The two nuns were looking at her expectantly.

"Well," Ayla repeated, "you look like you're figuring something out. What is it?" She waved her hand at the equipment in the room and added, "And what's the point of all this?"

Kelsey grimaced, then shrugged. "So far we've got a stack of clues, but no overall pattern that connects them. If the lab was all we found, I'd tend to believe that there was some obscure but good purpose to it. All of this has been the work of people that I've known and trusted for years, and it's hard not to trust them now. But I'm afraid that there's more."

"More?" Riosa said, looking around the room. "Did I miss something?"

'No," Kelsey said, "not in here. When we came through the outer door, did you notice the boxes that the helicopter delivered this morning?"

"Yes," Riosa nodded. "We walked right by them. Do you know what's inside?"

"Not for sure – we need to look. What we find could mean nothing. Or it might send my suspicions through the roof."

They went out the lab door, back into the space between the lab and the outside wall. There was a stack of about thirty white plastic buckets nearby; they looked the same as the ones in the hut at the core-drilling site, except that those had been empty.

These were not.

Kelsey unslung her backpack and took out a pair of heavy gloves. "Probably best to stand back a few feet," she said. "I'm going to open this bucket very carefully. If there's any dust inside, don't let it get on you, and don't breathe it in."

But when she lifted the corner of the bucket top and peeked inside, there was no loose dust – just a dozen of the metal canisters from the hut.

"Okay," she said, "here goes...." She set out the canisters in a row, slowly unscrewed the caps, and laid them on the ground. Then she reached into her pack, pulled out the Geiger counter, and glanced Ayla and Riosa.

"Ever seen one of these?"

Ayla shook her head but Riosa looked thoughtful. "I remember seeing pictures years ago of people carrying those at Chernobyl... something to do with radiation?"

"Yes," Kelsey nodded. "It detects radioactivity. You might also have seen pictures of old-time prospectors using them on rocks when they were looking for uranium. Modern labs still have them – anywhere that radioactive chemicals are used. "

"Okay," Ayla said, "are you saying that there's uranium in these buckets?"

"I don't think so," Kelsey answered. "At least, I've never heard of any uranium deposits around here. Why these rock samples are being collected and stored here, and how they fit in with the rats and mosquitoes...." She spread her hands and shrugged.

"But it's worrisome. I want to check out these canisters, then go to the Lodge and make a phone call. Maybe it'll start making more sense then."

She slowly passed the wand of the Geiger counter over the rock fragments in the open canisters, but there was no tik-tik sound response.

Okay, good; what about the next bucket?

"Kelsey," Ayla said suddenly, "there were boxes of gloves in the rat lab. Would it be good if Riosa and I put some on and helped you?"

"Yeah," Kelsey nodded. "That'd be great."

Riosa hurried back into the lab and returned in a few seconds with a box of gloves. They were the thin neoprene, and Kelsey told them to put on two pair for added protection.

The work went fast after that. Ayla opened buckets and uncapped canisters; after Kelsey finished scanning with the counter, Riosa replaced the caps and put the canisters back in their buckets.

Of the thirty buckets, twenty-two caused no response with the Geiger tube. In five others, a few of the canisters inside gave a weak response. But with the last three buckets all of the canisters caused a blurringly fast tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik, but only when probe tip was held very close to the powdery rock fragments. As Kelsey slowly drew the probe farther away, the sound rapidly faded. After pausing to think for a few seconds, she turned the probe sideways; the sound stopped entirely.

"Riosa," she asked, "I have some notepaper in my backpack – could you tear off a piece for me please?"

"Sure, alright," Riosa answered, riffling through the pack. Then after a few seconds, "Okay, got it – here you go."

Kelsey held the Geiger probe close to the rock fragments again, and once again there came the rapid fire tik-tik-tik. But when she slid the sheet of paper in between the probe and the rock, the sound stopped.

"Good," she said, "let's put the caps back on and put these babies away."

When all of the canisters were secured, Kelsey peeled off the gloves and reopened one of the buckets that gave no Geiger response. "Hopefully, the outside of this one's clean, so let's stash our gloves in here," she told the nuns, "and then close it up."

Lastly, she checked everyone's hands with the Geiger and got no response. "Okay then, we don't have any radioactivity contamination, but I don't trust whatever we touched in the rat and mosquito lab, so let's go wash up."

"Yeah," Riosa said with a shudder, "I've seen enough of this place."

"Right," Ayla agreed, "I'm glad we came in and saw everything, but I don't need to come back. I wish we could have it removed."

They went outside, slid the big metal door shut, and Kelsey replaced the padlock. As they got in to the jeep, she nodded toward the white building and said, "It will be. Grant may have gone away and leased the Mission grounds to you, but for me this place is still home. I don't want that building here - and I think I know who to talk to about getting rid of it."

They rode the short way to the convent in silence, but as they got out and started toward the door, Ayla asked, "Kelsey - when you were using that Geiger device... what did it all mean?"

Kelsey smiled, wondering how much to explain, how much to simplify. "How familiar are you with radioactivity?"

"A little, but only just a little. I know that it's dangerous. It can cause cancer, but it's also used to treat cancer."

"Right," Kelsey nodded, "how it affects you depends on the type and the power of the radioactive chemical. Radioactive decay is basically the process of an atom falling apart. It does that by releasing a particle from the atomic nucleus. Some particles have only low energy, but others are very high energy, but they can all cause some degree of damage to your cells. The Geiger counter probe is just a tube with an electric wire running down the middle. When a radioactive decay particle gets into the tube, it collides with the gas inside, causing a very brief pulse of electric current. The wire is hooked up to a speaker to makes the tik-tik sound."

"Okay, I guess..." Ayla said with a little frown, "but, what were you doing with the sheet of paper?"

"I was trying to find out what kind of radiation we saw, and how strong it was. This type of Geiger tube is made out of metal, and that's enough to block a lot of radioactive particles. So the end of the tube is sealed with a very thin mica window. You noticed that I had to hold the probe very close to the rock fragments to get much of a reading, right?"

Ayla and Riosa nodded.

"And when I turned it sideways, there was no tik-tik sound?"

They nodded again.

By now the nuns had finished washing their hands in the garden faucet, and as Kelsey bent down and soaped up, she continued.

"So that ruled out some types of radiation, but to narrow it down more, I thought I'd see if a sheet of paper could block it... and it did. That worries me, but I'm no geologist or atomic chemist, so I need to go online and find out more. But we have no access here. I really need to get to the Lodge and see about making that phone call."

"It's alpha decay, isn't it?" said a new voice.

They all turned toward the Mission doorway. Shari stood there, holding the baby, looking defiant.

"Thorium, it's thorium. That's what Julian told me. He said that all this would disappear... the fields, the Mission, even the forest, unless he did something. He tried, but they killed him."

One last defiant glare, and she spun and vanished from the doorway.

"Wait –" Kelsey called out, "Shari, I need to talk to you."

Too late; she was gone.

Kelsey turned angrily at Ayla. "Why do you keep her locked away? Why do you forbid her from seeing people? Is it because she sinned in your eyes, sinned by falling in love?"

Ayla looked genuinely surprised. "Locked away? Sister Shari has never been locked away, never been forbidden to see people. What she did by breaking her vow of chastity is between her and the Lord; it doesn't involve any of us. Some of the nuns are not as tolerant, and there are disapproving looks and gossip... but I told them that it's not our place either to forgive or to condemn. If Shari stays hidden, it is by her choice."

"Then..." Kelsey said slowly, "then I'd like to see her right away."

Ayla shrugged. "As I said, I haven't forbidden her to see anyone. I will also not command her to see anyone. This has been a very difficult year for her. When she is ready, she will talk freely to you."

Kelsey took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Shari must know something important, and she'd better be ready to talk pretty damn soon – they might not have long before this Consortium decides to move into the 'active phase of the plan,' as Phil wrote in his notes.

It was frustrating, but Kelsey didn't want to force the issue just yet.

Alright, then, she told herself, let that one go for now; but what about....

She turned and looked sharply at Ayla and Riosa. "Speaking of talking freely, I'm wondering – did you get an answer to your prayers?"

Riosa looked blank for a second, then laughed – a little nervously and a little too loud. Recovering her poise, she glanced at Ayla and said in a serious voice, "Sister, I think she means about Dr. Chambers. About what we were saying in the garden two days ago."

Chapter 104: Free Will

Day 14: Sunday

"Yes, thank you, but I understood her meaning." Ayla said, frowning slightly. "Let's go out into the garden. Sister Riosa, would you please bring along some cool water for us?"

She meant the little garden just outside of the Convent door, not the large one with statues outside of Grant's home. There were four wicker chairs clustered around a small glass table in the shade of a fig tree, and as Ayla and Kelsey sat facing each other Riosa brought out a pitcher of water and three cups.

Kelsey recognized them – they were part of a motley array of ceramic projects that she and the other kids had made one summer. Everyone had been so proud of their creations, with all the bright red and blue glazes in spiral and loop designs. Probably Grant kept them in the kitchen all these years; it was nice to see them still being used.

Riosa filled the cups and passed them around; Kelsey smiled, said "Thanks," and looked at the two nuns expectantly.

Ayla sipped the water, looking back at Kelsey over the rim of the cup, then set it down slowly and pursed her lips

She looked tense.

"Alright," she finally said. "I mentioned earlier that we came here to this beautiful place to live a life of contemplation, prayer, and service. We're not running away from the world of technology, we've just chosen a different life path. By doing so, we believe we are serving God, serving humanity, and serving nature."

"But the events of the last year threw unexpected challenges at us, beginning with the work of your ex-husband. He was a nice man and we accepted his being here, although Shari...." She shook her head and grimaced.

After taking another sip of water, she coughed softly and went on. "There were also visits by strangers, people from the Lodge who came at any hour, day or night. We accepted that, too, until the morning that Dr. Chambers... Julian, lost his life."

"After that, things went into a crazy spiral. We were moved away to the Santiago church for a month, and when we returned, there were those solar panels and the white building in our fields. Dr. Poley came here almost every day, and he was not as pleasant as Dr. Chambers had been. Helicopters flew in every week, noisy, kicking up dust clouds, with army men lurking around and leering at the Sisters. And Colo became much more, um... difficult."

She said that last part very fast, hardly drawing a breath, but stopped now and looked away, blinking rapidly. When she picked up the cup to take another sip, her hand shook enough to spill a few drops of water onto her skirt. She seemed not to notice it, but did use both hands to set the cup back down.

"At the same time, we lost our telephone and internet service. That wasn't much of a bother – we hardly used them– but it was another indication that things around us were changing, and we had no control over any of it."

"No control?" Kelsey looked quizzical. "Colo told me that you sub-leased your property to an outside group for their research. I thought that it must be some sort of government group, since the military are involved."

Ayla shook her head emphatically. "No! There was never an agreement like that. The lease our Order signed with Mr. Theroux actually involves very little money. He is letting us stay here almost for free on the condition that we care for the property, maintain the buildings, and share whatever crops we grow with the local people. Julian was working inside the Mansion, which was not included in the lease. I always thought that he had a separate agreement with Mr. Theroux. But after he died, we were visited by Dr. Stratton and another man, um...."

She paused, thinking, and Riosa said quickly, "Do you mean Mr. Greene?"

"Yes," Ayla nodded, "thank you, Dr. Stratton and Mr. Greene. They told us that we needed to move away temporarily, and that when we came back there would be improvements made. No permission was asked for or granted – they claimed that it was necessary for our safety, and we did what they wanted."

"And now," her eyes flashed with sudden anger, "we see what they really meant. Whatever is happening to those rats, and whatever is going on with those radioactive rocks... those are not improvements!"

Ayla bowed her head and closed her eyes. Her lips moved, as if silently praying, and when she opened her eyes a few seconds later, they were calmer. "You asked if we had received an answer to our prayers. I think that what we saw in that white building is our answer. That is how prayer works, at least for me. Answers don't come in words or in ideas or even spiritual revelations; instead the Lord shows me the truth of what is happening around me. I interpret the morality of what I see according to the guiding principles of my faith; but what action I take must be my own decision – that is what Free Will is all about."

Kelsey had been listening quietly, slowly rubbing her hands on the polished surface of the cup. Now she leaned forward, reading he faces of the two nuns.

"And...?" She said.

"Alright," Ayla sighed. "You want to know more about the morning that Julian Chambers died."

"Yes," Kelsey nodded, and looked at Riosa. "Remember, what I was told before was that Colo heard a shot - just one shot – before going into the house. But your words were 'All those horrid shots'. What did you mean by that? "

"I'm not sure what it means," Riosa said mildly. "It was very confusing. But what you were told is not what happened. We were in our morning prayers when we heard a loud BOOM and something crashing. Then another very loud BOOM, and the sound of glass breaking – I think it was the windows. Right after that there were other sharp cracking sounds... like gunshots, but not as loud as the first two. Then silence. But Colo wouldn't have heard any of it. He didn't get here until later."

Riosa grew quiet, but Ayla spoke up. "We ran to the door to see what was happening, but it was still dark. So a few of us went outside, here to our garden, to get a better look."

"Yes!" Riosa hissed in an excited whisper. "And we saw someone coming out the front door of your house."

"What?" Kelsey was puzzled – this was completely different from the story she'd heard back at the Waxman.

"It was a lady," Riosa continued. "When she noticed us watching her, she came right over to talk."

"That's right," Ayla said. "She seemed very self-confident... calm, composed, as if nothing had happened. She handed me a key, and said that it was to the front door, and for us to give it to Colo when he arrived."

"What about the shots?" Kelsey asked, "Did she say anything about those?"

Riosa shook her head. "No, just that there had been an accident, but Colo would take care of it, and we should stay indoors that day. And then she left."

"Left how? Did she drive away by herself, or was someone waiting for her?"

"Oh – she was alone. We heard a small engine start up near the main gate – it sounded like a quiet motor scooter, and then the sound faded away down the road."

"Do you know where she went?"

Riosa answered, "Later, when I went to volunteer at the clinic, I asked Dr. Gresham, but he didn't know anything about a lady on a motor scooter. So she must have gone to the Lodge."

The Lodge again, thought Kelsey. So much activity was centered at the Lodge; what was out there? Or maybe... who was out there?

She looked from one sister to the other and asked, "After the shots, did you go back inside the Convent and wait for Colo?"

Riosa glanced at Ayla, who chewed at her lip in silence for a few seconds. Finally she took another sip of water, grinned and said, "You know we all take a vow of obedience, but that applies to Church authorities as they express the wishes of our Lord. Whoever that lady was, she was not from the Lord. So – no, I waited until she'd gone, then told Riosa to call Constable Okaly and report gunshots on our property. Then I went to Mr. Theroux's house. I could see a jeep parked next to the garden, in the same spot where Julian parked every day. And when I looked up, I could see that one of the big upstairs windows had been smashed. There were pieces of broken glass and bits of plaster in the yard."

Kelsey looked up at the house walls. "Which window was it?"

"That one." Ayla pointed over to the large house. "The one that's boarded up now."

' _Uh-huh,'_ Kelsey thought to herself. _'The one in the store room... Julian's lab.'_

"So there you were, facing a mystery, holding the door key in your hand. Did you go in?"

"Yes. It was still quite dark inside and I had no flashlight." Ayla nodded slowly and squinted, thinking back. "I went up the stairs very carefully, holding the crucifix on my rosary so tight that it cut my fingers. At the top, there was a long hall leading to a large room. I went into it and turned on a lamp, just one; the light was dim, and I was very nervous. My heart was pounding, but I wanted to see what had happened. There were bookshelves everywhere, so it must have been the library. No one else was there, but the smell of gunfire was very strong. A door in the back wall had... I don't know how many – several - ragged holes torn through it, like it had been shot."

"And? Was it open?"

Ayla closed her eyes and shook her head. "It was locked – with a large metal padlock. I peeked in though the holes, but it was too dark to see anything."

"And you didn't hear anything... no one breathing, moaning, calling for help?"

"No, nothing like that. But I could smell blood."

"So..." Kelsey started to say, but her voice faded. She drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then started again. "So, Julian wasn't at the table? He hadn't sat down and shot himself?"

Ayla smiled sympathetically and shook her head. "I'm sorry Kelsey. No, he definitely wasn't at the table, or anywhere else in the library. He must have been in that back room, and... and must have already been dead. I started dragging a lamp over to shine it through the holes in the door, to see what was in there. But I couldn't stay any longer – there was a truck coming fast through the gate, so I turned off the light and ran down the stairs as quickly I could without tripping, and then went out the door. The truck skidded to a stop next to the Julian's jeep and Colo and another man got out. They came into the garden before I could get away, so I acted like I was waiting for them and gave them the key. He asked if I'd gone inside. I said 'No', but told him that we'd called Constable Okaly. That made him very mad – he began swearing at me. I thought he would hit me, but the other man pulled at him and they both went into the house."

"And what did you do then?"

"Nothing. Just went back to the Convent. Riosa brought me a cup of tea and we waited for the Constable to arrive."

"It took a long time," Riosa said. "More than three hours."

"Constable Okaly?" Kelsey slowly shook her head. "I don't remember him. Do we have local police?"

"Well, kind of," Ayla said. "There's a little station up the road, a few miles past the Clinic and along one of the side roads. The constable works by himself, and has been there for just two or three years...mainly to keep out poachers and city kids looking for drugs."

"The phone service was still working then," added Riosa, "so we could call. The constable had been sleeping, but said that he would come soon."

"And when he arrived, how did it go?"

Ayla sipped the water and shrugged. "Before he got here Colo came out of the house carrying a shotgun and put it into his truck. That must have been what made the very loud BOOM sounds. The other shots had to come from a smaller gun. Then he walked over to us, acting calm and even tempered – much different than earlier. He said that something terrible had happened – that Dr. Chambers had killed himself. And he apologized for being angry before, saying that he'd been worried about our safety. Then he said, 'I'll take care of showing everything to the constable and filling out the reports. You don't need to get involved.' And when Constable Okaly finally arrived, Colo took him by the arm and led him into the house. An hour later they came out, shook hands, and the constable drove off."

"And that was all? Did he ever come back for more investigation?"

"No, nothing more. Later that day, Colo and the other man carried poor Dr. Chambers' body out, wrapped in a sheet, and drove away. We found out later that they took him to the Clinic and told Dr. Gresham their version what had happened. But it wasn't the truth."

Kelsey leaned back in her chair and looked up at the sky, letting her mind soak in what she'd just heard. "There was a short police report," she told the sisters. "It was sent to the uh, to our main office in California. I was actually given a copy."

She let her chair settle back down, rubbed her forehead for a moment, and then continued. "It said that Julian was found in a library chair, slumped over the table. He'd been shot once, a pistol was in his hand, and a suicide note was under his arm. There was nothing about other gunshots, or about a shotgun. And nothing about a mystery lady, either. It's basically the same story that I heard from Wayne Gresham, so it sounds like Colo's story became the official one."

But Ayla's story painted a completely different picture - and there was no question of which one to believe.

Kelsey smiled at the nuns. It was only a little smile, and her eyes looked grim. "Thanks for telling me all this. It gives me even more to think about, to try to make sense out of... as if I didn't have enough already."

Ayla nodded and smiled back, but Riosa shook her head, a concerned look on her face.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But that's not quite all. There's one more thing."

"Sister Riosa," Ayla frowned, "what do you mean?"

"I'm sorry," Riosa said again, and bowed her head slightly, looking first at Ayla, then at Kelsey. "The day before Dr. Poley died, he brought a lady here and showed her around the white building. I was working in the field with the other sisters and he stopped his jeep to take pictures. He seemed very happy and said that the lady was going to write a story about his work and that maybe our picture would be in a magazine. We laughed about that and he drove away and I forgot about it until now; but Sister Ayla, I think it was the same lady... the same one that, um, might have shot Dr. Chambers."

Kelsey stared at Riosa, though not really focusing on her; instead she was looking inward, feeling some of the puzzle pieces snap into place. The mystery lady... the one who apparently shot Julian, must have arranged for Phil's death too; and she had to be – had to be – the same one who was prowling around in Phil's cabin late Friday night. Victoria, wasn't it? Yes, Victoria - sweet, beguiling, and very deadly.

She became aware of movements and sounds, and looked up to see Ayla and Riosa standing, their chair legs scraping the gravel.

"It's almost time for lunch," Ayla said. "Would you join us? Sister Carrera makes wonderful salads and baked fresh bread this morning."

But Kelsey had no appetite, and shook her head, "No thanks. It's time for me to get over to the Lodge and make my phone call. But I'd love to come back another day, and bring my son along for a visit. Maybe we can catch lunch then. "

Ayla smiled and nodded understandingly as Kelsey rose, finished her water, and handed the cup to Riosa.

"And Shari," Kelsey added. "I need to talk to her. Something happened to make Julian snap, to make him come here that night with a shotgun. He must have figured something out, and it must have frightened him very much. And Shari knows about it."

Ayla's smile faded, but she continued nodding. "I'll see what I can do. Come back tomorrow. Maybe she'll be ready to see you then."

Kelsey gave them each a hug, then climbed into the jeep and started the engine. She drove away slowly, looking to the left at the white building, still foreboding but no longer so mysterious, and looking to the right at Grant's big house, especially at the boarded up window on the second story. What had it been like on that dark morning just one year ago? Was Julian in there, trading shots with Victoria? It seemed that he must have blasted open the door to the environmental chamber, releasing whatever was inside. From what she knew now, that must have been mosquitoes carrying some disease. Then with a second shot he blew out the window. Was that intentional, or were other shots being fired also?

And, in return, he received a fatal bullet.

Or - had it been more complicated than that? How would she ever find out?

If not from Shari, then she would have to find Victoria.

Kelsey's face was grim when she reached the gate, and without pausing, hit the gas and sped away.

Chapter 105: Phone Call

Day 14: Sunday

It's hard to describe my feelings when that call finally came. I'd finished a simple Sunday morning breakfast – just coffee and a sesame bagel – and was gently toweling off after a careful shower. I'd pulled off the bandages - no sense trying to keep them dry - and after draping the wet towel over the shower door I leaned toward the mirror to check out the damage: not too bad. The angry, inflamed red color had faded and the stitches looked okay. As far as the other scrapes, things were scabbing up nicely.

Sure, it needed a new bandage, but there was no rush - the fresh air felt good. And Autumn Kool had sent over a tube of an Aloe/Vitamin E ointment that was 'guaranteed to reduce scarring and promote healing', so after enjoying the air for a minute or two, I smeared a generous amount of the goop onto the wounds.

Then, after trying a few deep breaths and feeling only minor twinges, I decided to see how far I could push it, and started some slow but serious stretching, like I do most mornings before running.

Some of this involves rather embarrassing positions, and, of course, I was in the middle of one of those when Chyll came waltzing through the door.

She was chatting on my cell phone and smiling, and her smile got bigger when she saw me, naked and splayed out. But she didn't miss a beat, just said, "Hey boss, it's Kelsey – she wants to talk to you, and... you look like you're ready for her, too."

She handed the phone to me with a wink, then backed out of the bathroom with a smirky grin.

"Kelsey -" it was a good start, but something caught in my throat, so I swallowed and started again. "Kelsey – I love you." It just kind of rushed out, unplanned, but sometimes that's how emotions work - they just leap out of your mouth.

She said nothing for a few seconds, but I heard the soft intake of breath. Then: "Reid – are you sure? For the first twenty-eight years of your life you didn't even know I existed. Then we had less than one week together. And now we've been apart for another week. So... take a deep breath, think it over, and tell me those words again."

Deep breath? Think it over? Forget that.

Without waiting a heartbeat I said, "Kelsey Theroux, I love you. I want you here with me right now, and don't want you to leave again. Ever."

Things got a little emotional after that, with a few sighs, tears, and sappy love murmurs that I won't bore you with. Suffice it to say that we were both feeling pretty high and happy.

Chyll must've mentioned something to her about my tumble into the water before handing the phone to me, because a minute later Kelsey turned serious.

"Reid, what's this about you getting banged up?"

"It's nothing," I shook my head. "Really, I'm fine."

"Don't lie," she chided gently. "Chyll said that a bullet cracked your ribs and you almost drowned, then got stitched up in a campground and spent the night at Stanford Hospital."

"Okay, I had scrape or two, but I'm good; maybe not quite 100%, but good enough to put a big smile on your face."

She laughed. "You should be so lucky – but tell me the truth now, or you might not get the chance to find out."

What could I do in the face of a threat like that? So I caved in and told her the whole story... maybe not all the details (what was there to gain by telling her about Trinity sending me the boob photo?), but enough.

She was surprised about Marley death, especially about the way it happened.

But not shocked.

"He lived life in the fast lane, and had a few demons. I thought he might die in a car wreck or OD on some crazy drugs. But getting shot in a death struggle with you? I wouldn't-a thought that. Something wasn't right in his head. It's kinda sad... he had a genius but warped brain."

Well, maybe he had some good points, but I never saw them myself. And maybe there were people somewhere who would be sad about his death, but I wasn't one of them. As far as I was concerned, the world was a better place without him, or any other warped genius brain, either.

But it was pointless to shovel more shit on a dead man, so I kept quiet.

About that, anyway; there was plenty of other stuff to go over. She asked where Niles was and I started to tell her about opening his safe, but then thought that that was jumping too far ahead. To make sense out of everything, we needed to step back few days.

So I said, "Kelsey, my love, let's go back to the day after you left, when you phoned from Salvata. You told me about Marley sending supplies to Phil, stuff that was stored in the freezers inside Julian's lab."

"Uh huh," she said, "the Yp-H and Tau... and also Kanja. Things Phil wanted for a Field Test. I found out a lot more about that today, but I'm still not clear on exactly what Yp-H and Tau are. Did you get anything on that?"

So the next half-hour flew by, with both of us wanting to tell what we'd learned and also both of us wanting to hear what the other one had to say. We'd each figured out a lot of what was going on, but neither of us had the complete story. I started with the liquid nitrogen tanks, then went into what Jim Hillen told us about Yp-H and what Russ Keynes said about Tau.

"Reid," Kelsey broke in, "that note in Marley's book about 'K-T' - that's gotta be Kanja linked to the Tau toxin, right?"

"Yes," I agreed. "Russ proved that Kanja fruit from the trees outside of Marley's lab contain Tau."

"Ah – yeah, that makes sense," she picked up on it right away. "Marley wasn't hired just to grow trees – he must have been hired to insert the Tau genes into Kanja. That would transform the fruit from being a natural medicine into an unnatural killer."

"But it wouldn't kill by itself," I said. "According to Hillen, Yp-H is mostly harmless. It causes a mild infection and a short-term high fever, and patients recover with no lasting effects. And it also can't be transmitted from person to person – all because it's missing a critical virulence factor. To be deadly, it has to be paired up with something that replaces that factor, and that's where Tau comes in. In most cases, Yp-H and Tau – by themselves - are no fun, but probably not lethal. But together they could be extremely deadly."

"Not just could be... definitely are extremely deadly," Kelsey said, and told me about the rats in Phil's lab at the Mission. "The ones that got only Yp-H or only Tau were sick, but most recovered. But the rats that got both Yp-H and Tau died. All of them."

"Okay," I asked, "very deadly for rats, but how about people? How likely would someone be to get both a Yp-H infection and a high dose of Tau toxin?"

"Very likely," she said, keeping her voice low. "Remember -Kanja has been used around here for centuries to reduce high fever. The berries taste really bitter, so no one eats them unless they're sick. If people were infected with Yp-H and their fever spiked, they'd look for Kanja. If they got the natural berries, it would help them. But if they got the K-T... Kanja-Tau... they'd be finished, and fast."

"And," she added, "the real Hell of it is that no one outside of the Waxman has a test for Tau. But lots of places have tests for _Yersinia pestis_. So if someone showed up dead from Yp-H & Tau and had their blood tested, it'd look just like they died from the natural plague. No one would suspect any genetic screwing around."

"But what about the disease not spreading?" I asked. "If it's like Hillen said, the Yp-H isn't transmitted from person to person. There'd need to be some other way to spread the infection."

"And there is," Kelsey said. "Whoever's behind this has got that figured out: special mosquitoes."

"Special mosquitoes? What's that mean?"

"Uhh," she sounded unsure of how to answer that one. "It's complicated, and I don't completely understand it all. But Julian worked out a way for mosquitoes to spread the Yp-H, and also a way to control the mosquito population, so that he could target a particular area for just a particular time."

"Christ! – Why would he do something like that?"

"I don't think he knew what was really going on. He believed this was a project to study ways of preventing epidemics. At first, anyway. Then when he found out what his work was really going to be used for, he tried to destroy it. But he ran into a problem and somehow died. I'm still trying to figure out that last part."

I nodded. "So what Marley said about the fake suicide was right?"

"Definitely. It was not suicide. And Phil too; his death was no accident."

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds, thinking about where all this might be going, and what had gotten it started in the first place.

"Kelsey," I finally said, "big picture then: Someone's arranging all this and someone's benefiting from all this. Any idea who? And why?"

"As far as 'why'," she said slowly," um...I stumbled across a place where somebody's drilling for rock samples, and some of those are radioactive. How that fits in with everything else, I don't know; but it definitely does fit in somehow. As far as 'who', I have no clue. But they must be pretty damn powerful. They were able to isolate this whole area from the outside world, and they have a lot of resources – putting in roads, new buildings, acres of solar panels, and -"

"Kelsey-" I broke in, "if they're all that powerful and you're by yourself, then how safe are you?"

"Good question. The Clinic and the Mission seem okay, but I'm a little leery about being here at the Lodge. It's the only place with phone service, though."

"The only place with service." I mulled over that for a few seconds. "Why would they clamp off communication everywhere except at the Lodge? Why leave that one place open? Unless –"

"Yeah," Kelsey interrupted, "I'm thinking the same thing: The only reason would be because they're using this place as a base for their operations."

"Right. So who stays there? Anyone you recognize?"

"Not so far. The Lodge has a reputation as a retreat for ultra-rich honeymooners, ultra-rich lovers looking for an exotic trysting place, or ultra-rich hermits hiding from the world. They provide exquisite service and privacy, with no questions asked. Other well-heeled tourists vacation here too, and I heard that when Julian or Phil had visitors, this is where they stayed. And that includes Niles."

"Niles," I said, "He dropped out of sight at the Klamath River last Thursday, the same day that Marley died. And speaking of Marley, he shipped out all of his Kanja fruit – the K-T stuff - earlier that week. It's probably headed down to where you are. Niles hasn't shown up at his condo or at the Waxman, which means that he could be on his way there, too. Is there someone there you alert about what might be going on? Any local police?"

Kelsey laughed, but it was a sardonic laugh. "Just Constable Okaly, and he can't do much. This Consortium – whatever it is – controls all the power around here. And they have a strong connection with the military base in Salvata. Look, I don't feel real good about being at the Lodge right now, but I've come too far to stop. I want to get a closer look at the people staying here. Some might be involved."

"Okay, Kelsey, I know how you feel. But how can you tell who's a regular guest and who's not?"

She was quiet for a moment, then said, "I can't, not directly, but there's a creepy guy that works here and at the Mission. I've known him for a long time. He's in on the Project for sure. I'll watch and see who he talks to... maybe that'll give me a lead."

"Sounds too dangerous," I said, feeling uneasy about this. Too many things could go wrong when you're alone in enemy territory. "What if they catch you watching? Have you got a quick escape planned out?"

She hesitated, then in a low voice said, "No. I'm just kind of winging it."

"Kelsey, please – if you don't have a quick way out, don't go in. Look, I've gone about as far as I can up here. Why don't you pull back and lie low for a few days till I can get down there... then we can go after the rest of this together."

"I'd love for you to be here," she said, "but I can't just stop and wait. If Marley sent the KT here, and Niles in on his way, then... then anything could happen at any time. And we're still too much in the dark to know what. Reid, I need to keep looking."

"Alright, alright," I said, knowing she wasn't going to change her mind. "If you're that determined, let me send you some photos – they might help."

"Photos? What d'you mean?"

"Niles has a safe in the back wall of his office. We broke in and didn't find much, but there was a small stack of photos. Some of them might match people you see at the Lodge. Is there any way we can get them to you? Do you have wireless access?"

"No," she said, "at least, no personal access \- everything goes through the satellite dishes on the roof. The Lodge controls the entire system. They want to please their guests, though, so they offer free document transmission and reception – but everything has to be sent to the concierge at the front desk."

"And how exactly do we send photos to the concierge?"

"Okay... mmm, there's an info booklet here in the phone kiosk. Let me look." I heard her riffling through some papers, and then she said, "Alright, here it is. There's a phone link, then a pass code that opens a portal for transmission. Once you're in, you can send whatever kind of file you want."

She read me the numbers; I jotted them down and then said, "Great – we'll send them right away."

I opened door and called to Chyll. She came in, I told her what we needed, and gave her the access number and pass code.

"No problem, boss," she said with a smile. "I'll have the pics loaded to my phone and sent out in five minutes. And I'm glad to see that you're enjoying talking to Kelsey."

As she left I wondered what exactly she meant by that, then realized that I hadn't put anything on – still wasn't used to not living alone.

Oh well....

"Was that Chyll?" Kelsey asked.

"Yeah. She's gonna get the photos to you now. How far away are you from the front desk?"

"Across the lobby. Maybe a hundred feet. I'll hang up and call you back when I've got'em. It might take a few minutes."

"Okay – one more thing, though. Some of the pictures have notes on the back. Chyll will copy them in the white border on the front. That way we don't need to send separate images of both sides."

"Good. Alright – bye for now; talk to you soon. I love you, Reid. Very much."

And that was it. Chyll got the notes on the back copied onto the front for each one and sent them all through the Lodge portal. A confirmation message came back, saying that the transmission was a success.

By then I'd gotten dressed and poured another cup of coffee, keeping my phone nearby so that I could pick-up as soon as Kelsey called back.

I sipped coffee and waited.

And waited....

But the call never came.

Chapter 106: Lodge

Day 14: Sunday

From the air the jungle stretches out in all directions in a continuous green mass. For centuries, the only sure way for outsiders to track their way through was to follow the waterways. Many were the unfortunate travelers who strayed even a few hundred feet inland, became disoriented and lost, and were never seen again. Even for Niles, who'd spent years trekking along trails, getting caught alone in the eternal shade of the dense rainforest canopy, with no sight of the sky and no feeling for the passage of time, was unnerving.

It was a fate that had haunted his dreams for years: flying in an old prop plane, hearing the cough of dying engines, plunging into the remote jungle, and wandering, unable to find a way out.

The dream had come more frequently lately, and he'd wake up with muscles tensed and mind anxious: No way out... no way out.

The memory of the dream had been bugging him for the last ten minutes because of where he was right now – in the back seat of an old Cessna, rattling, shaking, and cruising at five hundred feet above the ground.

But thank God it was just about over – the Lodge Island and lagoon were coming into view below. The morning sun was already shining fiercely, but the black water absorbed the light, sending hardly a glint or sparkle reflecting back. When the small seaplane finally splashed down and skidded to a stop, the armrests on Niles' seat were wet with sweat, and it was only after exhaling that he realized that he'd been holding his breath.

The flight had been short but rough; only made tolerable by the scopolamine patch behind his left ear. The army doctor at Salvata had given him a supply; without it, he would have been heaving his guts into the tin bucket next to the seat.

From the looks of crusty brown bits clinging to the inside walls, the bucket had been used a few times before.

The smartly-dressed captain in the next seat had had no such trouble. He'd smoked and looked bored the entire trip. Call him a bodyguard, a babysitter, or what-you-will; his job was to make sure that Niles and his cargo showed up for the meeting.

Besides the three people, the plane carried two insulated metal crates, each roughly the size of a coffin, loosely strapped to the wall behind the seats. Their shifting weight had meant for a swaying and bumpy ride, and the pilot had grimaced and sworn the entire way.

When the engines were finally shut down, the sudden quiet felt strange. The vibration was gone too; and they now bobbed gently and noiselessly in the water.

The pilot flicked a toggle switch on the center console and cargo doors in the side of the plane slid apart with a smooth whirr. When Niles leaned back and peered through the through the opening, he could see a boat leaving the wooden dock and motoring toward them.

It took ten minutes of grunting and arguing for the three men in faded fatigues to transfer the crates from the plane to the middle of their boat, and another ten to strap them in securely. Despite the clothes, Niles knew that they weren't regular army; they were part of Colo's private gang, the ones who did his dirty work with no questions asked. When the boxes were finally loaded, they yelled something to the pilot in a kind of Spanish/Portuguese slang; he yelled back, they all laughed, and the boat pulled away.

The bodyguard and Niles climbed into a second, smaller boat and followed behind the first. As soon as they were gone, the pilot fired up the engines and pulled away across the lagoon. He accelerated quickly, the propellers sending a stiff spray of spindrift backwards. The guard didn't seem to notice, didn't even glance back; but Niles held onto his hat and turned, face spattered with water, watching as the plane rose into the air, circled around once to gain elevation, then buzzed away.

He ran his hand across his chin, then leaned over the side of the boat and tried to spit. But his mouth was too dry, so instead he coughed softly and swallowed. Maybe it was the motion sickness drug in the patch... or maybe he was just nervous. Well, how the Hell could he not be nervous? This was make it or break it time.

The guard lit another cigarette and leaned against the rear seat, looking totally relaxed. _"Damn him,"_ thought Niles, _"is he staring at me?"_ But with those opaque black sunglasses, it was impossible to tell, so Niles turned away with another cough.

By then the first boat reached to the dock, and, after more grunting and swearing, the three men managed to load the crates onto wheeled trolley carts. They hooked up ropes and pulled the carts up the gangplanks and around the side of the Lodge to refrigerated storage rooms.

Well, this was it. There was no turning back now. The California operation was shut down and everything was delivered. Nowhere to go but forward into the final phase.

But that was the trouble – Niles had a hard time emotionally buying into the final phase. Up to now the project had been a mega-R&D challenge mixed with cloak & dagger intrigue, an edgy intellectual feast. But this next part was... worrisome.

Was this how Oppenheimer felt in 1945?

Ugh....

After the crates were safely unloaded, the larger boat pulled away, making room for the smaller boat to pull into the dock. Niles tossed his pack to two boys waiting below and jumped down. It was just a short drop - three or four feet at most – but he caught the heel of his left boot on the gunwale and landed awkwardly, cracking his shin on a nearby wooden stanchion. He was already tired and gritty-eyed from lack of sleep, and the flash of pain was enough to push him over the edge....

Or would have been, except for the sight of a slender figure coming out of the Lodge doors and hurrying down the walkway to meet him.

Ariama.

The pain, anxiety, and tiredness sloughed away, and a smile came to his lips.

Ariama.

They came together slowly, arms enfolding in tight squeezes when they met. Her lips were soft and warm and she smelled of flowers, but he kissed her with a troubled mind.

Could he ever be honest with her? Could he unload his headaches and worries? He wanted to tell her everything, but - what then? She always seemed the epitome of sweet, untroubled innocence... what would she think if she knew what his work was really leading to?

Would she hate him? He couldn't bear that.

The project, the goddamn project was eating his soul. And yet, if he hadn't signed onto it, they never would have met.

Each time he left her it was a little more difficult; each time he returned it was a little more intense. He didn't want to leave her again.

But standing on the gangplank nearby was a dose of reality that made his smile freeze: Colo, talking to the army captain. The escort, the guard, the watchdog... whatever he was, had finished his assignment. Niles and the crates were here; time for him to relax and let someone else take over.

With a casual swagger Colo sauntered closer, pulling the pipe from his mouth and calling out, "So the mighty Niles shows up. Aren't we lucky." in a mocking voice.

Ariama shot him a venomous glance and spat out, "You call him Dr. Stratton! Show respect!"

For a split second Colo's eyes widened, then quickly narrowed to thin slits. He pointed the stem of his pipe at Ariama and started to say something, but stopped and stepped over to the side of the walkway, where he spat into the lagoon.

Turning back with a sly smile and a slight bow, he said, "Dr. Stratton, then."

He was speaking to Niles but looking at Ariama, "I'm so happy to see that you and your cargo made it here. The General will be very pleased."

His eyes shifted to Niles and he continued, "Mr. Greene and the General won't arrive till tomorrow, so you've got tonight to prepare for the meeting. Make it good... they're bringing a special guest. You remember Mr. White?"

"Yeah, the senator. The one who gives this project political clout."

Colo started to laugh, but it turned into a cough and he spat again. "You can say that here, between us... but don't tell that to them. Right now, Mr. White is still only a little man, a senator from this insignificant area. But after you do your magic, that's when he gets political clout. This area becomes important. He becomes important. You become important. Even I become important."

His eyes flicked back at Ariama and he went on, "So be careful how you talk to me. You might wish you'd treated me better."

Niles' fist twitched; he wanted to slug Colo and tell him to go to Hell... but that would have to wait.

Instead he frowned and glanced at Ariama, but she didn't seem to be listening at all. She was nuzzling against his neck and had slipped her hand under his shirt to rub his back.

Very distracting. Colo noticed it too, and turned away, looking pissed. He spat again, put his pipe back in his mouth, and said between clenched teeth, "You should get ready. They'll want a complete update tomorrow. As I said, make it good. So far you scientists haven't fared too well."

' _Yeah,'_ Niles thought to himself. _'The damn dose of reality. Julian... Phil... Marley. All did excellent work, and all dead now. Just me left... but I'm not done yet - they still need me... at least for a while. But what then?'_

Niles gently disengaged from Ariama's embrace, and said softly, "Let's get out of the sun. I could use a cold drink."

When they got through the Lodge doors and into the cool interior, Ariama went to get fresh juice – laced with vodka and rum – for the two men; for her it would be just the juice.

Niles didn't want to let go of her, but needed the chance to talk with Colo alone. There were some important things to say to, and hear from, the little creep.

"Alright," he said in a low voice, "what's been going on at the lab since Phil died?"

Colo gazed back laconically, softly rattling his pipe stem against his teeth. "Nothing. Why?"

"Nothing!" Niles hissed. "I told you to clean it out. Collect the notebooks, get rid of the rats, and empty the chambers. Our main focus now is to set up the lab for handling the mosquitos - growing batches and preparing them for release - and for freezer storage of the modified Kanja. The General's going to want to know exactly what happened in those tests, how we did it, and where we go from here. So I need those notes... both Julian's and Phil's."

Colo's eyes flickered left and right, checking for anyone watching. Satisfied that no one was, he waved his pipe at Niles and said, "My men are scared of that lab. They think that whatever killed those rats could kill them, too. So they say to me, 'Tell the good professor to go fuck himself and do his own cleaning.' Sorry, their words, not mine."

Niles stared at him coldly. The system needed to be tested on humans; why not Colo? He smiled to himself at the thought, then said, "We'll go out there in the morning. I want to see the lab before meeting with the General. And what about the notebooks? Did you fail on that, too?"

"Fail? A strong word. After I got your message I looked in Poley's cabin at the Clinic. No notebooks there. Maybe they're in his lab. Or maybe someone else got them first."

"What do you mean?" Niles asked, suddenly alarmed. "Who else would look for them? Who else would even know they existed?"

Colo took his time relighting his pipe, but never took his eyes off of Niles. After finally waving out the match, he exhaled a cloud of smoke and said with a smug grin, "Who do you think? It shouldn't be hard for... a sharp scientist to figure out."

He could only mean one person: Kelsey. Damn it! Why did she have to come down here now? Why couldn't she have waited?

On the other hand, maybe Colo was just using her as an excuse for failing to find the books. Maybe she was at the Clinic, doing her project, unaware of anything else going on.

' _Yeah,'_ he thought _, 'maybe she's just –'_

And that's when he saw her, standing at the Concierge desk. She'd just been handed a manila folder and turned in his direction.

Their eyes locked, both of them momentarily frozen in surprise.

Niles waved and took a step toward her, trying to put a smile on his face.

But she stepped backward once, twice... then turned and ran toward the nearest door.

By then Colo noticed that Niles was looking at something and half-turned, catching sight of Kelsey disappearing through the side exit.

"What the Hell?" he muttered, and spun all the way around, dropping his pipe in a shower of sparks.

They both took off after her, slowed by skirting around groups of chatting guests and waiters carrying drink trays. Three of Colo's crew were having beers at the bar, and he shouted for them to follow.

The door Kelsey went through opened onto a narrow trail leading off in both directions, and the hard-packed dirt showed no sign of footprints. Colo sent one man to the right, toward the docks, and the other two back toward the gardens and meeting room.

Then he climbed a nearby flight of steps leading to a second story balcony. From there they could get a good view of the water on this side of the lagoon, but the island itself was mostly hidden by foliage.

"My men will flush her out of the bushes," he said grimly. "If she tries to swim for it, we'll see her from here or from the balcony on the other side."

He drew his pistol as he spoke, and was licking his lips in anticipation of using it. "Either way," he nodded, "the bitch won't get far."

The knot in Niles stomach grew tighter. Now what? Could he stand by and let this devious little punk shoot Kelsey?

No, no – he couldn't let that happen. But what if she did have the notebooks? What then? How much trouble could she make?

His mind worked furiously, looking for a way out.

"Wait," he said; it was almost a shout. "The thing is, even if she has the books, she can't do anything about it. The Consortium has this place sealed up. But I need to get those notebooks. If she's got them, we need her to tell us where they are. So don't shoot... put your gun down."

Colo didn't even glance at him; he had his eyes fixed on the lagoon, scanning left and right. "Put my gun down?" he sneered. "Not likely. You're worried about her, huh? Well maybe your sweet Kelsey's not as sweet as you think. When we were kids she kicked me in the balls and said she'd rather kiss a snake than me. I've owed her this for a long time."

He cocked his head to the side, looking up at Niles, and went on, "And no one's going to stop me. If you don't have the stomach for it, get your ass out of here."

Chapter 107: Glide

Day 14: Sunday

Kelsey crouched in the center of a small grove of banana trees. They weren't native to the island, but had been cultivated for the enjoyment of the Lodge guests, to pick fresh fruit as they strolled through the grounds. The trees were interspersed with Heliconia flowers, giving a thick cover of beautiful foliage; a good hiding place.

Good for now, anyway, but not for long.

She stared at the shimmering lagoon, readying herself for the swim. Yes, it was critically important to get away fast, but even more important to keep undetected. So she wanted to let the excitement of the adrenaline rush fade, to slow her mind down, to think clearly and move cautiously.

Not just because of Niles and Colo; no, there was a greater danger lurking in the lagoon: piranha.

Even when you know it's almost certainly safe, it's still tough to keep the knots out of your stomach. She reminded herself that piranha only attack if they taste blood or get excited by some forlorn beast thrashing wildly; so if she just smoothly eased into the water and drifted calmly across to the other side, everything would be fine.

But try telling that to her gut, especially now, when Colo's bastard henchmen were hunting for her. She could hear them crunching through the bushes, whacking branches with machetes, and calling to each other.

Every muscle fiber tensed, every nerve cell screamed at her to jump up and dive in –DIVE IN! - and get away.

Instead - she closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and held her breath until the impulse faded.

It took maybe twenty seconds, and when her eyes opened, they held a look of quiet steel. The crunching and whacking were getting nearer, though, so it was time to go.

Parting the flower stalks with her hands, she crept across the six feet to the edge of the water and slipped in... slowly, steadily, making barely a ripple, and, holding the photos overhead in her left hand, began gliding with smooth, splashless scissor kicks toward the far bank.

* * * * * * * * * *

"There!" Colo was pointing off to the left, toward the back of the island.

Something was moving in the water about thirty yards off shore. Kelsey? - It had to be, swimming in a slow zig-zag pattern, trying to keep to the shadows. She was holding one arm out of the water, carrying a packet of some sort.

Colo's breathing sounded like ragged panting. Or was he laughing?

"The beauty of this," he grinned, "is that I don't need to kill her. In fact, I don't want to. Just a little nick, a flesh wound... a little blood in the water, and the piranha will do the rest."

"N-No," Niles said; but it was tough to move. He was frozen, not wanting to watch but unable to turn away.

The ragged breathing suddenly stopped as Colo steadied his hand for the shot. It would be a difficult one for a pistol: a moving target, at least a hundred yards away, in the mottled shade. But there was plenty of ammo. So what if it took six or ten or more shots?

The anticipation made it even sweeter. Didn't want to kiss me, Kelsey? Maybe you'll like piranha kisses more?

When Colo finally squeezed the trigger, the sharp _Crack_ struck Niles like a thunder clap. All the sounds of the forest – birds, monkeys, bees, even the rustling of the leaves – vanished, replaced by a faint, high pitched ringing in his ears.

A gout of water kicked up about twenty yards beyond Kelsey. Colo muttered something about "High" and squeezed off another shot.

This time the splash was nearer, no more than ten feet behind her.

A third loud crack, and a third bullet snapped into the water just to her right. But this one also snapped Niles out of his paralysis, and he dove at Colo, knocking the pistol out of his hand and sending it skittering across the deck.

The dive was an awkward one, though, and after landing hard on his right shoulder, Niles was slow getting his feet. Colo was faster, rolling to one knee and pulling out his long hunting knife as he came up.

But he wasn't the fastest; Niles felt someone else glide soundlessly between them in a flash. He just had time to realize that it was Ariama, and watched in amazement as she slammed her left hand into Colo's chest, sending him sprawling back onto the wooden floor. In another fraction of a second she was kneeling next to him; she'd picked up his knife and pressed it tight against his throat, just to the side of the Adam's apple.

'Ariama!' He wanted to call out, 'Ariama, what are you doing? Watch out....' But she seemed to know exactly what to do, seemed to be totally in charge.

So he said nothing.

A bead of blood was pulsing up at the knife tip; all she had to do was lean forward and the blade would slide in through jugular vein and carotid artery. Death would be messy, quick, and certain.

And Colo knew it. His eyes flamed with anger, but he didn't move.

No one moved for a few seconds; then Ariama said in a calm, sweet voice, "Niles darling, would you please pick up the pistol and empty the cylinder?"

Without looking up, she held out her left hand toward him, palm up. After discarding the bullets, Niles set the gun in her hand.

She still had her eyes fixed onto Colo's, and still pressed the knife tip against his neck, but she slowly slid the pistol back into his holster.

"Okay, you have your toy back. Be careful how you play with it. I warned you before not to let your personal hates get in the way of what the General wants. I won't warn you again. If you want to do something useful, send one of your lackeys to watch the Clinic and a couple others to watch the Mission. Kelsey'll turn up at one place or the other. Bring her here... unharmed."

With unhurried grace she slowly rose and stepped away, reaching for Niles. But she paused, glanced back, and, with a wry smile, casually tossed the knife; it stuck with a solid thunk, point first, into the wooden planks between Colo's legs, an inch from his crotch.

"Remember: I said 'unharmed', or you'll be peeing sitting down for what's left of your short miserable life."

Then she turned her back on Colo and seemed to forget about him immediately. Her left arm curled around Niles right and their fingers intertwined as they walked down the steps. "Let's get to our room," she said softly. "You probably have some questions. It's time I gave you some answers."
Chapter 108: Decision

Days 14 & 15: Sunday to Monday Morning

For most of the trip, the view out the window wasn't much - partly because it was dark, partly because of the cloud cover. Even if it were clear, the only thing to see below would have been a flat expanse of ocean.

We'd been flying at something above 40,000 feet, at something over Mach 3. Mr. Mars didn't give us too many specifics. Remember - his aerospace company, small but highly cutting edge, develops technology for moving small numbers of people from here to there with great speed and great flexibility. You recall that the helicopter Eddie flew us to the Klamath in is one of their creations.

Caden Mars lives life in the fast lane, business and personal life both. So he gets into scrapes every now and then, and calls on big brother Kirk Halliday - half-brother, actually – to fix it up... which is why I'd been in Vegas last week.

The payback is that Halliday Inc. gets access to whatever Mars Manufacturing has in its pipeline, even prototype models like what we're in right now.

From the outside it looks like a pointy-nosed black triangle with the raised fuselage running down the middle. The length is about sixty feet and the wingspan at the widest point is nearly the same, although it seems to expand or contract as the pilot wishes.

The take-off angle is steep; not quite vertical, but steep enough to need very little runway, and it's the same with landing. Once in the air, it's fast, really fast; hypersonic, yes, though I wasn't told the top end it could reach.

Comfort? Mars thought of that, too. It can fit up to twelve comfortably – pilot and copilot/navigator up front; right behind them are four captain's chairs that swivel 360 degrees and tilt back for sleeping, plus two wide, plush bench seats in the back Of course, it's equipped with all the electronic gadgets you could want.

Empty as the view was below, the sight over head was magnificent. The ceiling is a ceramic/plastic/glass composite that is normally a very dark blue, but can be made transparent at the flick of a switch.

From this height there was no smog, no haze, no light pollution. The stars were crisp points of brightness and the Milky Way was a dappled sheet of glimmering speckles.

No flight attendant on board, but there was a well-stocked galley and bar in the front and lavatory in the back, so there should've been nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the glorious ride.

Except that was a no-go for me. I was chaffing to get this over, to get back on the ground and find Kelsey. But there were a few more hours and a procedural hurdle to go through first.

The front wall had a muted three dimensional display of the Earth (in amber lights, so as to not wreck your night vision), with our position given as a small, slowly moving red dot. Nearby clocks showed the time for major cities. It was nearly 10 PM back in California, which meant that about twelve hours had passed since Chyll wired Kelsey the photos. I'd waited an hour for her to call back, and when she didn't, started all this in motion.

There were five points to decide on:

• Where we had to go

• How we were going to get there

• When we could leave

• Who should come along

• What we should bring

For the first answer I called Harolde, who knew the area better than anyone, and also had a personal interest in Kelsey, Laila, and Stevie. He picked up on the second ring and said he was just packing to go fishing with Bianca. But when I told him the situation, he said he'd be at my place in thirty minutes, and "I'm coming with you."

That was good – I wanted to have someone along who knew the people, the languages, and the environment.

My next call was to Kirk Halliday at his private number. Autumn Kool answered, which shouldn't be a big surprise – their relationship is a complex but open secret.

"Oh hi, Reid. Feeling better?"

"Yes, thanks, Autumn. Look, something critical's come up, and I need some major help. Is Mr. Halliday available?"

"Mmm... no, he's not, sorry. How about if you tell me?"

"Okay. I need a fast way into the remote interior of South America. I want to leave right away and don't want to spend time in Customs, or waiting at borders, or going through weapons checks."

"I see. Rescuing after the damsel in distress... and how many people will be going?"

"Well, I'm not sure yet. Probably three to five."

"Alright, Reid, let me talk to Kirk. He'll know what to do; I'll try to make it happen. Give me an hour."

You gotta love Autumn; when I tell her that I need something outlandish and that it's critical, there's no "Why?" or "Are you sure it's important?" or "What the budget?" She just zeroes in on the logistics and makes it happen.

I set the phone down with a slight smile, knowing that things might work out, and was thinking about who else to bring when I noticed Chyll and Trinity looking at me.

Very intently looking at me.

"So we're going to the jungle to find Kelsey, huh Boss?"

I looked back at her, thinking of a dozen reasons why it wasn't a good idea for her to come along, youth and inexperience being the main ones. But I thought of myself at her age... and then about her dealing with Marley at the Waxman, about her putting a bullet through him in a very tense moment at the Klamath, and about her coming to my rescue in the rapids. How could I say 'No'?

And so I nodded and said, "Yeah, you know I wouldn't leave my partner behind."

Her smile got big and her eyes actually started to tear up, and that's when Trinity said, "Well I'm not staying here by myself. Look, Reid, I know you just called Harolde, but don't forget – I stayed at the Clinic, too, and went to the Mission... and saw where Julian and Phil were working. You need me to be there with you. And I don't want to be here alone."

"That's right Boss," Chyll added. "She deserves to come with."

I went back to the coffee pot and filled my cup for the third time. Not that I really wanted more, it just gave me time to think about how to answer that.

"You know," I said, sitting across from them at the kitchen table, "this is not a stroll in the woods. This is a search and rescue op. There's a web of trouble down there and Kelsey's caught up in it. Think for a sec: at least four people dead already – Julian, Phil, Lester, and Marley. And it would have been five - counting me - if you two hadn't been so heroic. We'll probably have to deal with some serious bad-ass SOB's when we get there."

I set down my cup and leaned forward, peering into their eyes. "Look, you've both already shown that you have as much guts and bravery as anyone, and in a pinch I'd trust you with my life. But when it hits the fan... I mean _really_ hits the fan... I want you both laying low and out of sight. The last thing I need is to be worrying about either of you in the middle of a firefight."

Chyll started to object, but, before she could say anything, Trinity put a hand on her wrist. "Okay, Reid," she said, glancing at both me and Chyll, "you're right. We'll help in every way we can, and we won't get in the way if the shooting starts."

I wasn't so sure about trusting that; Chyll has never been one to run from trouble; she tends to run head-on toward it, instead.

But what could I say? So we gave each other high-fives and moved on to the next consideration: Who else, if anyone, would be good to have along? Probably someone who knew how to handle Yp-H and Tau. Russ Keynes came to mind, but then I thought about Hillen.

Right, where was his number?

Trinity found his business card in my desk file. We had no luck with his office phone, but he answered his cell. He didn't seem too happy to hear from me, and wasn't at all keen on coming along on a trip to the remote Amazon. But when I described the problem to him and pointed out that he was the source of the Yp-H, and that he used to come to the Waxman and chat with Marley and Phil, and so must have known something about the Project... he caved in and asked when I meant to leave.

"As soon as possible," I said. "This evening, at the latest."

"What! I can't get ready that fast. I have a seminar coming up and my lab...."

"Mister Hillen... Doctor Hillen... I don't know how much of any of this will ever reach a newspaper. Maybe none of it will. But if it should, and if the Yp-H and Tau cause any deaths, that would trash your reputation. Maybe even land you in prison. You should jump at the chance to come along."

"Jesus!" he muttered. I could picture cold sweat starting to seep through his pores. "Give me a little time to figure things out. I'll call you back."

If he was trying to stall and wriggle free, it wouldn't work. Okay, I may have exaggerated a bit about the deaths and prison - after all, I didn't know what was really going on with the Yp-H and Tau stuff. "The only acceptable answer is 'Yes'," I said. "Call me in an hour, and I'll tell you when and how to meet us."

Okay, who else? I closed my eyes to think: What am I forgetting? So far we had a tough ex-warrior who was a native of the area, a scientist who was waffling but knew the bio-hazards, and two brave as Hell but inexperienced partners... and me.

Okay then, five of us. Maybe we weren't the Magnificent Seven, but we weren't the Keystone Kops, either. I'd put us somewhere in between.

Getting the arrangements sorted out took the rest of the day, and it was early evening by the time we assembled at Moffett Field's long concrete runway. We arrived in two Halliday company SUV's – Autumn and Kirk in the first one (driven by Max) and the rest of us in the other. We picked up Hillen on the way; it was a tight fit even though we'd kept our gear to a minimum (one bag each, plus another with weapons).

He seemed in better spirits now, and chatted with Harolde while I drove. "You know, I haven't been out in the field for years. It used to be part of my annual routine, but since leaving the Waxman and focusing on business, my time is consumed by meetings and administration. I'm looking forward to this, but, um, don't know if I can keep up, physically."

"No sweat," Harolde answered in his rich baritone voice, "the weather'll be warm, countryside is pretty flat, elevation only a few hundred feet above sea level. And you'll be mostly riding in jeeps. It'll be a picnic."

Hillen was smiling, but in the rear-view mirror I could see concern in his eyes. Something was worrying him... something that had nothing to do with his physical shape.

I filed that away for later consideration; right now I had more urgent things to think about.

We parked near the plane – it had no name yet, just a number code. Mr. Mars had flown in on it to meet us, just arriving a few minutes earlier. He was standing next to two men in gray jumpsuits: "Gil and Farris – this is Reid. He's saved my bacon a few times, so treat him right."

It was handshakes and smiles all around – all nice, all friendly. I was anxious to get going, but trying hard not to be pushy. When it came to flying, especially with prototype craft, it was good sense to keep quiet and let the flight crew decide when everything was ready.

Luckily, they seemed to be all set. "Just stow your gear," Farris said, "and we'll be off."

While he and Max put our stuff on board, Mr. Mars and Gil went over the flight plan with the rest of us.

"Alright," Gil began, "the air miles from here to where you need to get to is a little under five thousand. But the direct route involves flying over a lot of countries, and you'd need to get approvals and follow defined air corridors. Instead we'll swing way out into the Pacific, then come in over the ocean using empty flight lanes. It'll add nearly two thousand miles to the trip, but in this -" and here he patted the airplane wing – "that means barely more than a half-hour."

"Okay," Mars picked up the talking, looking straight at me, "Autumn says that you want to skip questions and check-points. Well, we can't do that completely, but we can minimize it. I pulled a few strings and here's the setup. You'll reach land on the west coast of Colombia at a small airstrip in Bahia Solano. There'll be an agent there to meet you. He'll give you the transport authority approvals while you refuel. Then it's back in the air and southeast into the Amazon until you get near your landing spot. Just tell Farris exactly where that is; he'll figure the best way to get there."

I looked at Gil. "There won't be any airstrip down there. Can you do a water landing with this? "

He smiled and shook his head. "Sorry; we'd float okay for a while, but couldn't take off again. We can do a grassy field, though, if it's moderately level."

"There's a helicopter landing pad at the Clinic," Trinity said. "It's surrounded by a big lawn. But even so, you'd probably have only a couple hundred feet, max."

Gil looked at Mr. Mars, then nodded. "Yeah, I think that'll do."

Mars laughed, "Gil's being modest. He can bring this baby down like a butterfly."

And so ten minutes later we were belted in and ready. The take-off was a revelation: not just quick, but also very smooth, especially with these comfy chairs. We made our way across the hills near Santa Cruz and west over the ocean at a quiet pace. Once clear of the land, though, Gil hit the accelerator.

For the first couple of hours, everyone kept to their self, checking out the accommodations and gadgets or getting a snack. Hillen poured himself a stiff Scotch, drank quickly, and dozed off.

The rest of us spent the next hour discussing the target area. I wanted to get a better feel for the place and the people: the good guys, the bad guys, and the in-betweeners. Kelsey had already told me a lot, but Harolde could offer another perspective.

And it was good; he's a natural talker anyway, which had helped make his restaurant a success. He had a lot to say about his life growing up and how it changed when he went to the Mission. Grant took him in and treated him... well, not exactly like a son, but as more than a hired hand. Grant made sure he had an education and learned skills - carpentry, electronics, and how to handle a computer. When the visiting scientists came through, Harolde was the point man for leading field trips and answering questions, and the respect he received in turn made him feel comfortable in the company of strangers, especially ones from the 'great North'.

But he became vague and almost reticent when I asked about who Kelsey's mother was and if Grant had any other children. Finally he shook his head, looked embarrassed, and said, "Look Reid, I don't know Grant's actual relationship to Kelsey, but there's no doubt that he cares deeply for her. The Mission was a place where he could raise her in a protective, nurturing environment, away from the outside world."

And when I asked where Grant might be now, Harolde shrugged. "I don't know. After Kelsey left, it was like... like some duty was finished, and he could move on to things that he'd been putting off for a long time. So, one day he just left. But first he set me up, me and my sister, with enough money to live comfortably. I could have stayed on as the Mission caretaker, but I had a hungering to join Laila and Kelsey. Grant is a great and good man, and I love him. But that doesn't mean I understand him."

* * * * * * *

Our stop in Bahia Solano was brief. Mr. Mars' local contact had flown in earlier and our meeting went smoothly. He stamped our passports, gave Gil a folder of transit authorizations, shook hands, and was gone - total time no more than twenty minutes.

Gil and Farris had been in a hurry to get going again, wanting to get away from any even remotely urban areas before daylight. This was an experimental plane with new design features and flight capabilities, and Mr. Mars didn't want any unnecessary questions or UFO reports hitting the internet.

So it was back in the air for the last leg of the journey, during which I must have conked out. I woke with a start when we suddenly slowed and began a steep descent. When had I fallen asleep? No idea, but it must have been at least an hour ago. The clock in the front wall gave the local time as 4:22 AM.

As we were coming down, Harolde called out softly, "Reid – off to your left. Those lights – that's the Lodge."

In the darkness I couldn't see much detail, just a small island with a shadowy building and a dozen lights scattered around. We glided past it in near silence, then, a few seconds later, almost – but not quite completely – came to a halt in mid-air. I could hear Farris saying something to Gil, who feathered us down in a slow spiral until we touched ground.

The Layard Clinic. We'd arrived.

Chapter 109: Home

Day 14: Sunday

The gunshot cracks were largely muffled by the forest surrounding Kelsey, but there was no mistaking the thumps as the bullets slammed into the water. She could tell they were getting closer, and, after the third one, took a deep breath and slid under. It was absolutely black – vision 0%. She tried to keep a grip on the photos, but felt all except one slip away. She shoved that one into her shirt and pulled hard with her arms while frog-kicking with her legs.

Stay deep, she reminded herself. Don't make any splashes... and no bubbles either, so don't exhale... just keep pulling, keep pulling.

She pulled and kicked until her lungs were bursting, hoping that she wasn't blindly swimming in a circle. And when she could stay under no more she broke to the surface and gulped air, tossing her head left and right to get the hair away from her eyes.

The water's edge was still twenty yards away, but it was quiet now. Had they given up? She slipped under again and glided across the intervening space. When her hands touched the vines that drooped down from the trees near the shore, she wrapped her fingers around them and pulled herself up onto land. Keeping low, and without looking back, she melted into the bush.

Her mind was automatically calculating the direction and best route through the brush to the Mission. There was no way she was going back to the Clinic; that might be a safer place, but Stevie and Laila were there. They absolutely had to be kept away from danger. So where was the old trail?

After crawling for thirty yards she reached a point where the dense foliage would effectively screen her from any spying eyes at the Lodge. She sat, collecting her breath, and sent her mind back twenty years, visualizing how the kids used to walk from the Mission to the Lodge for ice cream. Yes... okay, the trail ended at the dock near where her jeep was parked; but that was out of reach – someone with a pistol would surely be there, waiting.

Better to cut across the forest from here at an angle – like maybe 45 degrees? – and run across the trail well away from the lagoon. Then just turn left and follow it to the Mission.

Sure, sounds easy... but it wouldn't be. The jungle is not static and petrified; it is alive and moving, with an appetite for consuming and filling open spaces.

After ten years, the trail might be unrecognizable.

But what was the choice?

It wasn't an easy walk. The first half-mile wasn't really a walk at all; it was a climb, crawl, jump and splash through a maze of trees, vines, fallen logs , patches of swamp, and brush, with ants, centipedes, tarantulas, and monkeys for company.

But she found it, found the trail; mostly overgrown but thank God unmistakable, and the next mile and a half went faster, except for the creek crossings.

Still, it was well into the evening when Kelsey reached the brick wall around the Mission. She was tired and strung out - physically, mentally, and emotionally - but seeing the wall energized her, and it took only seconds to scramble up and over to the other side.

Smoke... the acrid smell of smoke. Not a wood fire, and not Colo's stinking pipe. Cigarettes, yes. Coming from where? Okay, over by the road, at the gate.

Alright, if that's where the watchers were, then by skirting around the back by the stables she ought to be able to reach Grant's garden from the far side.

But how to get through the front door without being seen?

* * * * * * * *

Shari was out for her evening stroll with her babe, a time when she could go about unseen and unchallenged by the less kindly of the nuns. As was her usual routine, she crossed from a side door of the Convent around to the garden in Grant's front yard. The half-full moon was low in the sky but bright enough to cast pale, elongated shadows, making it easy for her to find her way. Not that she needed it. She made the walk every night and could have done it blindfolded.

Usually she would be singing softly or humming a lullaby, but not tonight; there were two men hanging around the outside gate, smoking and shining flashlights in the brush. So she sat on the bench next to the Eternal Springtime statue, watching and wondering what was going on.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, but there was no hurry. Little Kalita slept peacefully on her lap and she had nowhere else to be, no other duties to attend to.

Every now and then the men said something to each other. They sounded angry and impatient, and she recognized the voices: two of Colo's gang, rough and unpleasant.

Were they waiting to meet somebody? No, they seemed to be searching. Did they lose something? Or... or were the looking for someone? The thought sharpened her attention and she began a slow scan of the area away from the front gate.

Her breath caught in her throat and her hand instinctively went to cover Kalita. Someone was moving very quietly, very stealthily, between the house and the Convent.

From that angle, whoever it was would be screened from the men at the road. But how could he have gotten in? Shari had seen some old trails leading into the forest, during her evening walks, but no one used them anymore. In fact, most the other nuns didn't even know they existed.

More curious now, but also cautious, Shari shifted around the statue to the shadow side, counted to twenty, then leaned out to look across to where the mystery person should be.

No one there.

Puzzled, she sat back and almost jumped out of her skin when she felt someone next to her.

"Shari," a soft voice said, "it's Kelsey. I saw someone here but didn't know who it was, so I came around from behind. Sorry if I startled you."

Shari nodded and swallowed, still feeling the prickly sensation of surprise on her neck, then whispered in a low voice. "Are you hiding from those men?"

"Yes."

"Are you in danger?"

"Not as long as I stay out of sight. I have the house key and was hoping to rest up here tonight, but I can't get through the door without those guys noticing."

Shari said nothing for a few seconds, then whispered even more quietly, "You were Julian's wife?"

"Once, yes. But it seems like a long time ago."

Shari reached out and took Kelsey's hand. "Did you love him?"

Now it was Kelsey's turn for a few seconds of silence. Finally, she nodded. "Yes, once, but that also ended a long time ago."

Shari let go of Kelsey's hand, and gently slid Kalita's blanket aside, showing her peaceful, sleeping face. "I loved him. I still do. Do you hate me for that?"

The question caught Kelsey by surprise, although maybe it shouldn't have. She laughed very softly, "No, of course not. Julian had troubles, an uneasy life. I'm glad that he found love with you."

Shari smiled. "Yes, he had troubles. I have much more to tell you, but not tonight. Go ahead into the house; the men will see someone out here and come to investigate. They will find only me and my little babe. They will laugh at me and say cruel things, but they will go away. And you will be safe."

Kelsey nodded, then leaned down, kissed Kalita on her forehead, then kissed Shari on her cheek.

"Thanks," she whispered, and walked quickly to the door. It was impossible to stay in shadows, so she might as well just brave it out. Sure enough, just as she slid the key into the lock, one of the men at the gate called out to the other. She managed to open the door a slender crack, slip through, and ease it closed just before the wall was lit up in the beams of strong flashlights.

She leaned against the wall listening to the sounds outside.

Boots crunched across the gravel, but stopped at the statue and one of the men grunted in surprise when he saw Shari.

"What are you doing?" He demanded.

"My evening walk... I go out every night with my baby. Why are you here?"

The other man laughed and said, "Ah, it's the bitch nun, the one who was fucking the dead scientist."

"Uh," the first man grunted at her. "And now you've got his little bastard brat to carry around. Get back in your room before I bend you over and show you what a real man can do. And don't ask what we're here for. It's none of your damn business."

It got quiet after that. Shari must have left right away, and the men's voices faded as they moved back to the gate.

Kelsey wished that she'd asked Shari for something to eat; she was ravenous. But maybe it was just as well – she was also bone-weary tired. Sleep now, and get food in the morning.

But sleep where? Her old room was upstairs; would it still have a bed in it?

Even in the dark she moved swiftly and quietly up the stairway, turned right, went down the hallway and through the door at the end. It smelled musty and stale inside, but was dry and warm, and there were pillows and covers in the closet.

Five minutes in the bathroom to wash up, then to bed. But first, a peek out the front window to see what the watchers were doing.

She moved to the second story window outside of the library, the same one she'd seen Colo and the helicopter through on Friday, and glanced out surreptitiously. The outside gate was closed; no jeep and no men. Kelsey stood on tiptoe to look down into the garden. No, no sign of anyone... wait - someone was there.

Shari – yes, it was Shari, kneeling at that little pile of white rocks, the one where Riosa had stopped to pray.

After a few seconds Shari rose and moved out of sight. Kelsey stepped back from the window, still puzzled, but decided to head to bed and call it a night. Curiosity could wait till tomorrow.

A knock, soft, but definite. Then two more in quick succession. Someone at the front door?

She glided soundlessly down the stairs to the door and peered through the peephole; Shari stood just outside, but she was just turning away.

Kelsey opened the door a crack and whispered, "Shari? Are you alone?"

"Yes. I just wanted to tell you that those men left. They think you're not coming here. I thought if you knew they were gone, you'd be able to sleep better."

"Thanks. I think I'll be able to sleep like the dead tonight. What about you? Going back to your room?"

"Mmm, not yet. I haven't been sleeping well for a long time. I'll walk around the gardens for a while longer. The exercise helps my mind, and night time is my best chance to be outside. Sometimes I stay out all night."

The lost expression on her pretty face and the forlorn tone of her voice were unmistakable; Kelsey's heart went out to her and she opened the door wider.

"So, you're feeling lonely and sad, a social outcast?"

Shari nodded. "All of that, and jittery too. I'm so messed up, Kelsey."

"We could both use a good rest," Kelsey said, "and you need a friend to talk to. Come on inside; I'm tired, but not that tired."

Chapter 110: Divine Love

Day 14: Sunday Night at the Mission

Ten minutes later Kelsey was sitting on the great overstuffed armchair in her old room, stifling a yawn.

The light in the room was low – just two candles. The windows were open to let in fresh air, and Kalita was sleeping peacefully in the center of the big bed.

When Shari carried in the tea tray, she set it down with an embarrassed smile. "I used to make tea for Julian every night, after he'd finished working. It was a happy time for us, but was all so new for me. I'd never been with a man before, and was swept up in love."

Kelsey filled the cups and took a sip, thinking that she'd felt the same way once with Julian. Well, it hadn't worked out for them; could he and Shari have done better? Maybe.... It made her wonder even more what had happened to him on that night a year ago, but now wasn't a great time to get into it; it could wait till the morning, when she was more alert. The tea was sweet, not too hot, and tasted great, but wasn't doing anything to restore her energy; if anything is was making her more drowsy.

Shari tucked a light blanket around Kalita, then picked up her cup and sat in a small chair across from Kelsey.

"But I've had a year now without Julian, and almost half that time with Kalita. And Kelsey, I'm so, so stressed. The Sisters tell me to go to Father Lorre to make my confession and beg God's forgiveness. The thing is - I don't feel like I've sinned, but I also can't reconcile what I did with my beliefs. I don't know what to do."

Kelsey leaned forward and smiled. "Shari, there's nothing to reconcile. There is no conflict. There can't be."

Shari looked confused. "But there is, given my belief in the teachings of the Church, and the lifestyle of a nun. How can I justify my actions - making love with Julian? Bearing his child?"

"No, Shari," Kelsey said. "If your actions are contrary to some outside set of doctrines, then those doctrines are not your real beliefs. Your real beliefs, your actual, internal ethics, are what you do. The old saying that 'Actions speak louder than words' is an understatement. Your actions cannot be contrary to your beliefs, because your actions define your beliefs."

"My father, Grant, told me this many years ago. Despite what anyone may say they believe, what they actually believe is what they do. Internal stress comes from refusing to accept that, from denying who you really are. Once you do accept that, the stress disappears. Oh – there can still be a disagreement between your beliefs and that outside set of doctrines, but that's an external conflict, not an internal stress. External conflicts are part of life; internal stress doesn't have to be."

Shari shook her head. "You talk as though a person can do whatever they want."

"No," Kelsey said, "not whatever they want, whatever they believe... unless someone's holding a gun to your head. Most of the time, though, you find out that you're the one holding the gun to your own head. All you have to do is set it down and walk away."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me, how old were you when you took your vows to become a nun?"

"Sixteen. Three years ago."

"So when you were sixteen - still a girl - you swore to a lifetime of poverty and chastity, and also obedience to an absolute set of totalitarian laws made centuries ago by men, bowing down to accept what they wanted you to believe. And you saw that as a good choice, while your love for Julian was a bad choice?"

Kelsey sipped the tea and went on. "Shari, it is exactly the opposite; swearing to those absurd vows as a child was the bad choice; finding love was the good choice. Living a life of denial is not what God wants from you. God wants you to live a loving, happy, fulfilling life."

"That sounds nice," Shari sniffed, "but I was taught that self-denial, self-sacrifice, obedience, and even suffering personal pain, are pillars of the faith... to show your spiritual devotion. And yet, I caved in to lust."

"Shari, do you believe in God?"

"Yes, of course."

"And that we are God's children?"

"Yes."

"And that God loves his children?"

"Yes, certainly yes."

"Do you love Kalita?"

"Yes, you know I do."

"Would you get joy out of seeing her suffer?"

"No, no of course not!"

"Then why would you think that God gets joy out of seeing His children suffer?"

"Suffer? Do you mean like... wars and disease?"

"No," Kelsey said, an intent look in her eyes. "Those are parts of life, parts of existence. Competition for resources, for territory, for mates is universal at every level of life... microbes, plants, animals. Nature is red in tooth and claw, right? But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean the willful infliction of pain on yourself and the denial of your human potential with the strange notion that somehow by 'offering this up as a sacrifice', God is pleased."

"So, again," she continued, "if Kalita thought that by beating herself with whips, crawling over stones with bloody hands and feet, or starving herself, that she was showing how much she loved you, what would you think?"

"I would think she was very wrong, that she had a terribly wrong idea of my love for her. Why would I want her to hurt herself to please me?"

"Exactly," Kelsey nodded. "Anyone who would derive joy and satisfaction from their children harming themselves must be a warped pervert. Do you think your God is a warped pervert?"

"What? No, no, no –"

"And yet you sacrifice your spirit and reject God's generosity by hiding behind those rigid, lifelong vows that you take as a child, denying your individuality, your strength as a woman."

"We... we do it to remove ourselves from the temptations of the world, to devote ourselves to praising God. Look at Sister Ayla and Sister Riosa. They feel a strong sense of their life's mission and are happy."

"Are they?" Kelsey shrugged. "Are they really? Perhaps... I can't see into their hearts. They made a decision that may give them a sense of fulfillment. But you made a different one, and, I think, a better one, because you praise God by gratefully accepting his generosity. Your God gave you a healthy body, a good mind, and a strong spirit. You are endowed with the capability to feel love, to feel joy, and to do good works."

"Shari, if there is one true purpose in life, it is to use those capabilities. Again, think of your own child; you have given her those same traits. Do you want her to hide them away in denial and self-suffering, or do you want her to live a strong, full, loving life?"

"I... I want her to have the loving life, of course."

"Right – because you're a loving parent. To think anything else of you would be insulting. Well then, don't you think the same holds true for your God? If He is a loving, nurturing parent, then He wants you live the full life, too; thinking anything else is insulting to God. He wants you to use those physical, mental, and emotional gifts that He has given you."

"So, Shari... this is a long way of saying that you have no need to feel shame or guilt. You fell in love with someone... and he with you...both of you as adults, following your hearts... and together you made a beautiful child. God is not angry. God does not need a confession or penance. God – the real God – not the warped pervert that many religions make Him out to be – is happy for you."

"You did what you were destined for: You found love."

An hour later, Kelsey was sleeping on the right side of the great bed. Fatigue had finally claimed her, and within seconds of blowing out the candles she was motionless.

But Shari lay awake on the left side, with Kalita snuggling between them.

She'd been going over, around, and through what Kelsey said about God's love and human passion. The words were not perfect, were not completely convincing... but there was something real in them that brought peace to her troubled mind and lightness to her heart.

Kalita stirred; it was time for her late evening feeding. Shari opened her robe; within seconds Kalita had found the breast and was suckling. A minute passed, then two, and the babe's eyelids began to flutter and droop; Shari felt her own doing the same.

In another minute all three were asleep. It was the best sleep Shari had since Julian died, one year ago.

Chapter 111: Zane

Day 15: Monday, early morning

It was still dark outside when Kelsey opened her left eye and peered around the room. One of the candles was lit and in its faint glow she could see Shari standing at the window.

The window was open and soft music was wafting through - faint sounds of a piano and voices singing in Latin.

"Up already?" she asked.

"Morning service has started," Shari whispered. "I usually try to go. Sometimes I even bring Kalita. A few of the sisters frown, but most welcome me. It's a pleasant way to start the day."

"Early, though, isn't it?" Kelsey said. "What's the time?"

"Service begins at five AM. Breakfast will be at six, and morning chores and field duties start at seven-thirty. Every day's the same except Sunday, which is for rest and meditation, and Father Lorre used to come and celebrate Mass. But things have changed – he was only here twice in the last six months."

"Did you talk to him?"

Shari shook her head. "No, I hid both times. I was afraid that he would make me give up Kalita or else leave the Mission, and I have nowhere else to go. Sister Ayla says that it's okay, that I can stay here, but... I'm not sure what to do."

"Shari, do you ever go to the Clinic?"

"Not for a long time. Dr. Vari came here to deliver my baby, and he comes back every month to check on us. He's such a nice man... but I haven't seen anyone else and haven't gone outside the Mission grounds for, um, I guess at least two years."

"Well, as long as you're comfortable staying here," Kelsey said, "and welcome staying here, that's fine. But Kalita will need to be around other children. You know, you could move to the Clinic and work there. They have room and always need help. When I get back I could talk to Dr. Gresham about it."

Shari smiled, but looked uncertain. "Thanks, but I don't know. I need to think."

"Sure," Kelsey said, "no rush."

After a yawn and a long stretch, Kelsey swung her legs out of bed and stood up, grateful that Grant had modernized the old mansion to make it more family livable. In addition to new lighting and ventilation, every bedroom now had its own large bathroom and shower.

So fifteen minutes later Kelsey came back, toweling off her wet hair. Shari had made another pot of tea and was sitting in the great overstuffed chair, sipping from a steaming cup. Kalita was still sleeping peacefully.

"Morning service over?" Kelsey asked quietly. "I don't hear any more singing."

"Almost; it's quiet prayer time now. Then they'll be starting breakfast. We could go down there. The sisters would be glad to help you."

"Sounds good," Kelsey nodded, "but I want to be sure that no one's hanging around the gate watching."

"Why are they looking for you?"

"I started rattling their cage," Kelsey said. "Went to the Lodge to use the phone. Colo and another man – Julian's boss – spotted me. I ran. They chased, and are probably still hunting for me."

"Julian's boss?" Shari sounded puzzled.

"Well, kind of like that. Niles Stratton. He's the chairman of the department where Julian worked back in California. And he's the one who got Julian involved in this project."

"Ohh." Shari drew a long breath, then whispered, "so that's how it started."

They sat in silence for a minute. Kelsey sipped her tea and watched Shari, but Shari seemed lost in thought.

Finally Kelsey leaned forward and said, "Yes, that's how it started, but how did it end, Shari? What pushed Julian over the edge? Why did he want to destroy his work?"

"Zane," Shari said quietly. "It was what happened to Zane."

"Wait," Kelsey held up her hand. "Wait a sec. There's something in Julian's notes. What was it?" She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, thinking. "Something he scribbled right at the end... something like 'Zane how did this happen' and then 'my fault, my fault.' What about it, Shari? Is Zane hiding here? Can I talk to him?"

Shari stared back for several seconds, then said, "Zane was in charge of feeding the mosquitoes. He had a special food for them and had to go into that big chamber in the middle of the room. But one day he was careless and didn't wear his hood, and got bit on the neck. Two days later he felt sick and got a high fever. Julian told him not to worry, that the fever would go away and he would get all better, and Sister Charila offered him some aspirin. But Zane wanted Kanja berries – he knew they were good for fever."

"Uh-oh," Kelsey said, "I don't like where this is going."

Shari nodded. "Yes, you're guessing right. There was no wild Kanja growing around here, but Julian had just gotten some in a box from California. He gave a handful of the berries to Zane."

"He was a beautiful boy, always so happy and ready to help," Shari whispered, shaking her head slowly. "But he died that night, and it wasn't a peaceful death."

"Julian was very upset. He called people in California - that's when we still had phone service here – one to Dr. Poley, and then another to this Niles person you mentioned. After a few minutes, Julian began shouting into the phone. He was so angry, like I'd never seen him. Then he smashed the phone against the wall and said that we needed to get away, but that he had to do two things first."

"The first was to bury Zane. He dug a grave in the garden. We had no coffin, so Sister Riosa and I wrapped him in a sheet. We put him into the grave and covered him with dirt and stones. Sister Didi made a small cross, and we all prayed and sang for him."

"The the cairn of white stones near the statue," Kelsey said, "that's where Zane's buried?"

Shari nodded.

After a few seconds Kelsey sighed and asked, "What was the second thing Julian had to do?"

"He said that we would go away in the morning, just him and me, going away together to have our baby somewhere safe. I was so excited, but scared too. I packed what I had and waited. All night, I couldn't sleep. Then I heard his jeep and knew that he'd come for me... but first he was going to, um, do that other thing."

"You mean, destroy the lab," Kelsey said. It was a statement more than a question; it was finally all making sense.

Shari nodded wordlessly, then said in a low voice, "Yes, but those shots, those horrible shots. A lady came out of the house and talked to Riosa and Ayla. They didn't know I was there, watching. After she left, I knew that I'd never see Julian again. I fell on the ground and cried. I was carrying Kalita in my womb and I cried for her... for Julian... for me... for all of us."

Kelsey went to the little pile of her clothes on the chair near the bed, and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper – the one remaining printout of the photos that Chyll had sent yesterday.

It was close-up black and white photo of an attractive lady, done with Niles' usual artistic touch. Her head was tilted slightly to one side, lips teasingly curved in a secret smile, eyes wide and looking directly into the camera.

Kelsey flattened it as best she could and handed it to Shari. "I know it was mostly dark then, and was a year ago, but is there any chance that –"

She was cut off by the sound of Shari's sudden indrawn breath. "Mother of God, yes - it's her. This is the lady who was there that morning."

Her arm dropped to her lap, the photo slipping out of her hand and fluttering to the floor. Kelsey stooped to pick it up and brought it near the candle. In the dim light she could just make out the one word printed in the white margin on the bottom: _Ariama_.

Chapter 112: Open

Day 15: Early Monday morning

Making love to Ariama had always been slow and sweet. This was intense, sweaty, and raw....

Her nails scraped his back as he lunged, again and again; she nipped his ear as his teeth teased her nipples. Their hands slid over slick, wet flesh and their fingers caressed and probed tender spots here... and here... and there.

And when she came, it was with a scream of release and joy.

Niles rolled to the side, gulping air and looked at her face as if seeing it for the first time. She had the same smile as always, the same cute nose and dimples, but the hot glow in her eyes was something new.

"Ariama," he whispered, "I don't understand. You're different. Who are you, really?"

She curled her left arm around his neck, pulled herself up, kissed him hard, then let her head fall back on the pillow and smiled.

"A lady who loves you. Isn't that enough?"

"I know that... I think. At least I hope I know that. And I feel the same way about you, but that's not what I mean. Your English is suddenly perfect; and the way you controlled Colo and handled that knife, and your air of authority. I don't get it."

She caressed his cheek, then smiled again. "My darling, to your friends you're Niles. But your professional name is Dr. Stratton. It's the same with me. To you, I am Ariama. But my professional name is Victoria."

The icy chill that shot down his spine made his shoulders flinch involuntarily. The sensation passed quickly, but she'd noticed it.

"You've heard that name?"

"I've heard Greene and Colo mention it, yes," he nodded slowly. "The General's trusted, um...assassin."

Ariama frowned. "A twisted exaggeration. The General has never assigned me to kill anyone, only to track small problems and solve them before they become big."

Niles could feel his mouth getting dry. "Problems like Grenvil? And Julian? And Phil? And... me?"

"I had nothing to do with Grenvil. You have to ask Colo about that. With Julian, I was told by Greene to bring him here. No harm was supposed to come to him – he was still a highly valued employee. His mind was troubled, though, and we knew that he was a threat to himself and to the lab, so I went there early to wait and talk to him. But he came with a crazed look in his eyes, carrying that shotgun. He wanted only to destroy, not to talk. His first shot blew out the chamber door, letting those awful mosquitoes loose; his second was aimed at me. I dove to the side and he missed but shattered the window. I drew my pistol and yelled 'Stop', but he ignored it... just reloaded and raised the gun to shoot again. When he pulled the trigger I dropped to the floor and fired back. He missed, I didn't."

"My bullets hit him in the chest and he died quickly, but with lots of blood. Killing him was never my intention. I felt sick about it, and sat next to him, worrying that I had failed, but mostly worrying about you. I knew that Julian was your friend; what would you think of me if you knew that I'd killed him?"

"So I phoned Colo to came over and collect the body. When he found out that the nuns had already called Constable Okaly, he decided to make it look like Julian had killed himself. You know the rest."

"With Phil Poley it was different. Greene told me that he wanted to get away, but that we couldn't let him. I was supposed to convince him to stay down here for another six months to do a magazine story. Just a professional relationship, but he was a pig and wanted to put his hands on me. So I gave him a little chava juice- or what I thought was chava. It was from a bottle that Greene gave to me, and should have only made him sleepy. Instead he died – so fast, in just a couple of minutes. It couldn't have been chava... Greene must have given me something else. I think he wanted Poley dead all along, and was just using me to get it done."

"So yes, you could say I killed them both... but in neither case did I mean to."

Niles was quiet for ten, twenty seconds. He wanted to believe her, and studied her eyes, cheekbones, the corners of her mouth for any signs of lying.

But for a professional, there wouldn't be any, would there? He glanced away and cleared his throat, then looked back.

"And me?"

Ariama sighed and squeezed his hand. "Okay – I'm being totally open with you. I was assigned to judge your commitment to the Project, and could have left any time after our first meeting, but I didn't. Something about you made me want to stay. You're a complicated man, Niles Stratton: so smart in some ways, naïve in others; strong and passionate, but also insecure. To some degree you're willing to do things that you hate, just as I've done. For a long time - really, almost from the start - I could tell that you were troubled by the Project, and I wondered how far you would go. Today, I got an answer when you jumped at Colo to save Kelsey. That's something I sensed in you from the beginning, and it explains why I stayed – and why I fell in love with you."

Niles turned onto his back, staring at the ceiling. His right arm was still under Ariama's shoulder, and he pulled her close.

"What would the General and Greene think," he said, "if I told them that I wanted out?" He glanced sideways at her and went on, "What would you think?"

"The General may not be so upset. He has a big picture view of the world, with many interests. You'd have to watch out for Greene though. For him, this project means everything." Ariama rubbed her chin against his shoulder and twirled her fingernails in his sparse chest hair. Then she murmured, "And he's very worried - the project isn't going so well. You've seen how Greene and White argue whenever they're together, right?"

"Uh huh," Niles said, "each one think's the other is lagging."

She laughed softly. "Yes. And the General's unhappy with both of them. There's a lot riding on tomorrow's meeting. If it doesn't go well... mmm... anything could happen."

He closed his eyes for a moment, his concentration split between her words and her playful fingers. Then he whispered, "Tell me more about Greene and the General."

"Greene has a lot more riding on this project than the General does," Ariama said. "The Consortium is a rich and powerful international force, and the General is one of their leaders. He uses that strength to attract investors to the project. But whether the project succeeds or fails means little to him personally – he already has more money and power than anyone needs. Greene is different. He is a little man who lusts for power. The General doesn't trust him, and keeps him on a short leash. Greene thinks that if the project succeeds he will break that leash. He is a dangerous man who will do anything. It wasn't the General that sent me after Julian and Poley, it was Greene. Colo fears the General, but gets his direct orders from Greene, and if Greene thinks you are crossing him, he'll tell Colo to kill you."

Niles grimaced. "So there's no chance of getting away?"

Ariama's fingers stopped twirling. "We can get away. Yes, Greene would try to kill you, but I wouldn't let him. But just getting away isn't the problem. Staying away - out of reach of the Consortium - would be. The only sure way out for us is if the General believes that we're dead."

"You'd come with me?" Niles felt a jolt of emotion – a mishmash of joy, relief, and excitement. "What about your, uh, career?"

"My career!" Ariama laughed, then gave him a quick kiss on the shoulder and sighed, "I'm over thirty, never married, no kids... never had time for that, with what you call 'my career.' Well, to Hell with it – I've got enough money, and so do you. There are still places we can go where no one's heard of the damned Consortium."

The conversation faded after that. Ariama's fingers tickled Niles' chest again, then playfully drifted lower. Niles nuzzled her hair and kissed her forehead, her eyebrows, her cheeks. Then he rolled over on top, kissing her lips as she pulled him closer, guiding him into her with a soft "mmm...."

"So," he whispered, mouth close to her ear, "are you Ariama or are you Victoria?"

"Yes," she said with a happy giggle. "Both, of course."

Chapter 113: Morning at the Layard Clinic

Days 15: Monday morning

We touched down at around 6:00 AM; the next half hour was pretty chaotic.

Farris helped us unload our bags and wanted to look for a bite to eat. Gil said that they should take off right away, and that they would get some food when they gassed up at the Bahia Solano airstrip. Farris said they should stay till the next night, so they could fly without being seen. They haggled for a few minutes, during which the sky got brighter, and then decided that waiting made more sense.

While we were piling our stuff on the grass, a young guy appeared carrying a rifle. When our plane was coming in, I'd noticed a low building nearby with the lights on inside. Trinity said it was the night office/ER room, but the guy coming out didn't look like a doctor; he was too young, and besides... there was that rifle.

He didn't come any closer, just stood nearby, more curious than threatening. I found out later that patients are sometimes air-evacuated from the Clinic to a large hospital, but very rarely air-lifted into the Clinic. A strange looking airplane landing on their lawn in the dawn hours had no precedent. Plus he was a little jumpy because two strangers with guns had been hanging around just outside their gate.

I started walking over to him but he waved for me to stop and state my business. Pretty strange behavior for a medical clinic, but before I could say anything Trinity came running over.

"Taz," she called out. "It's me, Trinity. We're looking for Kelsey – can you help us?"

The young guy's eyes got big and his mouth popped open in a smile. He leaned the rifle against the door and said, "Miss Trinity! But... you just left last week. You're... um, you're here for Kelsey?"

* * * * * *

An hour later we were all sitting in the Clinic cafeteria: Harolde, Trinity, Chyll, Hillen, Gil, Farris, and me, along with Taz and Wayne Gresham. There was hot coffee and cold juice, and fresh muffins were coming out of the oven.

It was all good, except that there was no Kelsey.

The first thing Taz did after realizing who we were and why we were here was to point out Kelsey's bungalow. We hoped that she, Laila, and Stevie would be inside sleeping, so Harolde and I went over and knocked quietly.

Nothing, so we knocked a little louder.

Then much louder.

After another minute the door opened a fraction of an inch. A cautious eye scanned us for three seconds, then the door burst the rest of the way open.

"Ayy, Tol-yana!" and Laila was hugging Harolde, tears running down her cheeks.

Later I learned that Tol-yana is Harolde birth name, and is the name his sister uses when they're alone or speaking their native tongue - which she began doing in rapid fire syllables, the words gushing out. I understood not a bit, but the tone of her voice and the look on her face weren't good.

Harolde patted her shoulders and whispered something, and she stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me, a little embarrassed. "Sorry," she said in English, still clinging to Harolde's arm, "it's just that I'm worried. Kelsey didn't come home last night."

"Where'd she go?" I asked.

"To the Mission, yesterday morning. She said she might be late, that there was a lot to do. Maybe she just stayed there overnight, but I don't know. I hate not having any phone...."

"Did she say anything about drilling or rock samples? Anything about radioactivity?"

"No," Laila shook her head. "Nothing like that. The Lodge, though – she wanted to go there and call you."

"Yes, she did, once. And was supposed to call me back a second time, but never did."

"Well, that's all I know," Laila said. "You should talk to the doctors, especially Dr. Vari. I can't go with you now, I need to stay here with Stevie. Later, after he's up, we'll see you. He'll be excited – he talks about you a lot."

Well, okay, I'll admit that that made me feel pretty good. "Thanks, Laila, I miss him, too. Alright, we'll talk to the docs and anyone else around here who can help."

Taz opened the cafeteria for us and we stored our stuff against one of the inside walls. Trinity started making coffee and heating the ovens; she seemed to know her way around.

"Well, I oughta," she said. "I was down here for two weeks last month. The original idea was to keep Phil company, but I hardly saw him after the first day. And anyway, I stayed in a separate cabin. I hate to knock the dead, but we just didn't get along. The people working at the Clinic, though... they're great."

Taz set down the last of our bags, then walked over and said, "Miss Trinity – Dr. Vari's gonna be happy to see you back so soon."

Trinity's cheeks turned a slight pink; Chyll noticed, of course, and said in kind of a stage whisper, "Hey Trin – ya got something cooking with one of the doc's here?"

She didn't answer right away, but a minute later, after we'd gotten coffee, she opened up to Chyll and me.

"So, yeah, Phil and I just never hit it off. The only reason I stayed anywhere near him was because Niles said I had to." She sipped the coffee and shook her head. "That was back when I listened to him. God, I can't believe some of the dumb stuff he talked me into. Anyway, I spent my time here helping out with patient records, inventories, supply chain... stuff like that. One of the doctors asked if I'd like to see the area, and I said 'Yes'. He drives a motorbike when he visits the villages, so I rode on the back with him. That was a blast... Dr. Vari Okaly."

She smiled at the memory and went on, "A cool guy. A good guy. You know, it's kinda weird - the first time I came here, with Julian, I felt bored and missed all the action in California. But this last time, working at the clinic and going to the villages was so interesting... and when I got back to the Waxman last week, it actually felt awkward. There was my job, and good money, but no real friends. I feel closer to you two than anybody else. So when you said you were coming down here, Reid, I had to come along. I had to give this place another chance. "

The door opened about then and an older, gentlemanly type came in. Harolde greeted him with a big handshake and Trinity went over gave him a hug.

I glance at Chyll with raised eyebrows, and she shook her head, "He doesn't look like the motorbike sort, Boss."

Which of course, he wasn't.

Harolde introduced him as Wayne Gresham, Director of Layard Clinic. I remembered Kelsey saying good things about him, and before long I could see why everyone liked him so much.

During the next half hour, over coffee and muffins, he told us what he knew about the whole strange situation, starting with Julian Chamber's death, the information blackout of the area, rumors about outsiders building roads, and what happened with Phil Poley.

Some of it I'd heard before, but it was good to hear it again from a local source.

"There's more," he finally said, "but that's about all the first-hand knowledge I have. Vari knows more about this than I do. He went out late last night on an emergency call, but should be back soon."

As anxious as I was to get moving, to go looking for Kelsey, I also knew that we were all feeling a little ragged from the travelling. A shower and change of clothes would be good for everyone, and we decided to meet back here in an hour to make our next plans. Maybe this Dr. Vari would be back by then, too.

So I thanked Wayne for the info and we carried out gear outside.

Taz said they had three empty cabins; he opened one for the ladies to use, another for Gil and Farris, and the last for me and Hillen. Harolde said that he'd clean up at Laila's.

As we were climbing the steps to our cabin, Varro, one of the clinic's volunteer handymen, came running over and handed Hillen a pile of towels. "Fresh and clean," he said with a smile, then bowed and quietly slipped away.

Hillen hit the shower first, while I lay down for a few minutes, which felt good on my ribcage. The seats in the plane were damn fine as far as seats go, but didn't match stretching out on a good mattress.

When he was done I took my turn, but brought the weapons pack into the bathroom with me.

After all, I still didn't know what side he was on.

Chapter 114: Bramm

Day 15: Monday

Kalita woke up with a soft cry while the ladies were discussing the photo.

"I don't remember hearing the name 'Ariama' before," Shari said, gliding toward the bed. "The only time I saw her was that morning, but I'll never forget. Everything about that day is scarred into my memory."

She started to do a diaper change, then decided that a morning bath was a better idea. Kelsey was glad to help, and in ten minutes the babe was warm, dry, and happily nursing while Shari cuddled her in the great chair.

Kelsey stood at the window holding the picture, studying the image as the morning light grew brighter. An attractive face, but not from the local area; high cheekbones and big eyes; a strong but shapely chin; her ears were pierced, but she wasn't wearing any earrings; a small scar... no, two small scars on the side of her neck. An interesting face, very pretty, the kind that could easily beguile a man, especially one like Niles... or Phil.

That reminded her, and she glanced at Shari, "Riosa said this lady was here last week with Phil Poley. You didn't notice?"

"I always avoided Dr. Poley. Most of the time he was in that big building, so it was okay, but when he was walking around the grounds I stayed out of sight."

"Why was that?"

"He came here to continue Julian's work, and I'd seen what happened to Zane. So I didn't trust him. After Kalita was born, I was scared for her."

"Ah," Kelsey nodded. "Sure, I'd feel the same way."

Her gaze drifted casually out the window, thinking about what the picture meant, when a metallic glint caught her eye: Was that someone driving across the field?

It didn't look like Colo's old pickup, and definitely wasn't one of the Lodge jeeps. Whoever it was parked next to the white building, and she could see it was a small truck with high wheels, made for moving over rocky off-road areas.

There was a small trailer attached to the back. A man got out of the truck, opened the large sliding door of the building, and began unloading containers from the trailer.

White buckets?

It was hard to be sure from this distance, but they looked like the same white buckets she'd seen in the shack at the drilling site. More rock core samples? Could this be the person who was doing the drilling?

Kelsey felt her pulse quicken at the thought: the stuff about Yp-H and Tau, the Kanja, and Julian's work with mosquitos, the whole bit about RIDL and even Phil's field trials... all that made some sense to her; but the connection to the rocks and radioactivity was a blank. How did it all fit together?

And even more important – where was it leading?

"If that's the guy who was using the Geiger counter, then I need to talk to him."

"What's that?" Shari asked.

Kelsey looked over at her. "There's somebody parked outside the white building. I need to go down there and see him."

"What if he's one of those men looking for you?"

"No, doesn't look like it. This is someone different. I need to go down there now, before he leaves."

"Well then, I'm coming too," Shari stood up, patting Kalita on the back.

"Uh... I dunno," Kelsey said. "We can't be sure it's safe. And anyway, you must be hungry."

"Okay," Shari nodded. "I'll stop and get us a little food. But be careful, and don't go away without me. I want to find out more about what happened to Julian."

"I won't leave," Kelsey smiled. "Promise."

They went down the stairs and out the front door together, then Shari and Kalita turned left toward the Convent while Kelsey went through the little garden gate and off toward the white building.

No one else was outside; it must still be before seven-thirty, too early for the nuns to begin chores. But it was plenty bright, so Kelsey felt particularly conspicuous and exposed crossing the field. When she was half-way there, the man at the truck noticed her and stopped his work. He took off his hat and leaned against the side of the trailer, wiping his forehead and waiting for her to get closer.

"Mornin'," he said when she reached him. "You don't look like one of the good Sisters."

Kelsey extended her hand and, as they shook, replied, "No, I'm not. My name is Kelsey Theroux. My father owns this place, and I'm curious as to what you're doing."

The man's grip was firm, the skin on his hands calloused and dry, and the muscles in his forearms were like firm cords. Medium height, with a deeply tanned face and short, grizzled beard – a man used to working outdoors, lifting, hauling, and digging.

He took a step back and looked her over with a critical eye, then said, "So you're Grant's kid."

"That's right," Kelsey answered. "You knew him?"

"No, I didn't know him, but I knew of him. He used to be a pretty big man around here, huh? But that was a few years back. I heard of you too... didn't you go off to the States?"

"Uh-huh. But I'm back now."

"Yeah," he muttered, his head cocked to one side, thinking. He must have come to a decision, because he stepped forward and put out his hand again. As they shook for the second time, he said, "Well, pleased to meet you, Miss Theroux. My name is Sandor Brammendle, but everybody just calls me Bramm. You been back long?"

"Not too long, no. But long enough to see a drilling site a couple miles away in the woods. There was a shack there with white buckets inside. Buckets just like these."

He dropped the handshake and stepped back again, then said with a slight smile, "You didn't happen to, uh... liberate anything from there, did you?"

"You mean the Geiger Counter? I borrowed it to check out the rock samples in the building here."

Bramm didn't say anything right away, just looked at her with that same critical eye. Then he whacked his hat against the trailer, knocking off dust, and ran a hand through his graying hair.

"So you been inside, then."

"Yeah," Kelsey nodded. "And I saw the canisters of rocks - the red, blue, and green. Are those all yours?"

"Mine?" He sounded surprised. "As in, 'Do I own them?' No, I collect'em, sort'em, and move'em here, but I don't own them."

"What's it all about?" Kelsey asked. "Why all the collecting and sorting?"

"Oh, it's um... it's a research project. Just mineral evaluation."

"Bullshit," Kelsey said with a smile.

"Excuse me?" Bramm sounded surprised, even a little shocked.

"I said bullshit," but this time Kelsey wasn't smiling. "If you've been working in there, you must have seen the lab. You must have known Phil Poley and what he was doing with those rats. Your rocks are connected. I'd like to know how... and why."

He was quiet again, looking at her tight-lipped. Finally he sighed, "Yeah, you sound like Grant's kid. Everybody used to say how smart you were. Well the smart thing now might be for you to back off. This is turning into one Hell of a mess. Don't get caught in it."

"Too late," Kelsey said. "I'm already in it."

"What d'you mean?" Bramm asked.

"I don't know how long you've been involved, but maybe these names mean something to you. Julian Chambers was my ex-husband. Phil Poley and I worked in the same department in California. Niles Stratton is the department head. And Colo and his jerk-hole goons spent the night hunting for me in the forest. I managed to get here and hide out. I'd still be hiding if I hadn't seen you unloading these buckets."

Bramm nodded his head and smiled thinly. "Okay. Well, I've met all those guys, and more. You sound like you're pretty well connected, but you left out a coupl'a key names: You heard of Greene? Mister Greene, he likes to be called, or Mr. White, and the General?"

Kelsey shook her head. "No, Bramm. I'm caught in the mess, but I'm not on the inside. I have some pretty strong suspicions about what's going on, except for whatever it is you're doing. That's why I need you to tell me about it."

Bramm shook his head, still smiling. "Well, you got guts, I'll give you that. What makes you think I'll tell you anything?"

"Because you're worried," she said. "You know there's trouble. I saw the note you wrote about the blue canisters: Too goddamn many – big BIG problem. What is it, Bramm? What's the problem?"

"Jesus," he said, and ran his hand through his hair again. He stared at her, squinting his eyes, chewing on his lip. "Alright," he finally said, "come on inside, I'll show you what I mean... not that we can do much about it, though."

As he turned to go he suddenly paused and looked across the field. "Now who's that?"

Kelsey turned to look, then said, "Her name is Shari. She was Julian's... wife." _'Okay,'_ she thought, _'an exaggeration, but just a tiny one.'_ Then, out loud, continued, "That's their child she's carrying."

"Christ," Bramm whispered hoarsely. "This whole damn thing is unravelling."

They waited for Shari to reach them, then Kelsey made introductions: "Shari, this is Bramm. Bramm... Shari."

There was no handshake this time, just a nod from Bramm and a smile from Shari.

"I brought us a snack," she said, holding out a small bag. "They're fresh out of the oven. Best if we eat'em while they're still warm."

"Great," Kelsey said, taking the bag and opening it. There were a half-dozen light-brown muffins inside, and the yummy aroma wafting out made her realize how hungry she was.

But, before digging in, she held the bag out to Bramm.

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and took one out, sniffing it appreciatively. "Been a while since I've had fresh baked anything," he grinned. "Thanks."

They began eating in silence, but after a few seconds Bramm cleared his throat and nodded to Shari. "How old's your baby?"

"Nearly six months," she smiled. "Her name is Kalita. You have any children, Mr. Bramm?"

He took another bite, chewed a bit, then said, "Yeah, but not around here. Haven't seen'em in a while."

"Do you live around here?" Shari asked. "I don't get away from the Convent much. I don't really know the area."

"I been knocking around here for about a year, year and a half. Mostly drilling out in the woods. I come in here every now and then, but not much."

"Oh," Shari said. "Drilling for oil?"

"No," he laughed softly. "There's not much oil around here. Rocks, mostly."

"Gold then?" she asked. "You're looking for gold?"

He finished the muffin, brushed the crumbs off his hands, then said casually, "I hear you're married to Julian Chambers."

Shari blushed and shot a glance at Kelsey, who shrugged and smiled.

"Yes," Shari nodded.

"Sorry about... you know," Bramm shook his head. "I heard he took his own life. It's a damn shame, having a pretty wife like you and a child on the way."

"That's just it," Kelsey said before Shari could answer. "He didn't take his own life – the Project, the damn Project, took it from him. That's what happened. He got sucked in and killed. Same with Phil Poley. And maybe you too, Bramm. We might all be on that list."

The silence got thick after that, Bramm staring at Kelsey, then shifting his gaze to Shari and Kalita, then back to Kelsey.

Finally he blew out a deep breath and said, "Yeah, okay, maybe so. Alright, let's go inside."

The large door was already rolled open enough for them to walk through. It was mostly dark inside until Bramm flipped one of the switches to turn on another bank of overhead lights. Even then, the light was dim.

"Sorry about the mess, I didn't plan on entertaining anybody. I was just going to unload the trailer and then start running some tests."

He walked past the stack of buckets to a workbench. There was a large map hanging from thin cables just above it. At first Kelsey didn't recognize it; there were no surface features like rivers, roads, or shaded areas indicating forests and lakes. It was a geological survey map, showing the sub-surface rock formations, and looked hand-made. There were lines and cross-hatch patterns drawn in different colored inks, with various notes and numbers jotted down.

She glanced at Bramm. "Did you do this yourself?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Took me more than a year. Started out with just a big blank sheet of paper. It covers an area of just over thirty miles on a side... near enough to a thousand square miles. The little 'X' marks are spots where I drilled and analyzed the core samples – like the one you found. So those are the only places where I have hard data. The rest is a combination of interpolation, extrapolation, and guesswork. But I think it's pretty accurate."

"It's very interesting," Shari said. "I like the colors. But what does it mean?"

Bramm laughed softly. "Well, it doesn't mean gold, there's not much of that around here. And not silver, or platinum, or oil."

"What then," Kelsey asked.

"Something potentially much more valuable, in the long run. You're looking at deposits of rare earth metals."

"How big?"

"Damn big," he said excitedly, tapping the map. "Look at how large these are! And deep, too. You got the mother lode here, the mother-fucking lode of...."

He stopped, looked and Shari. "Sorry, miss, I guess I spend too much time out in the field by myself."

But Shari just smiled and said, "Mr. Bramm, please – I don't understand. Why are these rare metals worth so much?"

He took off his hat again and spent the next minute rubbing his forehead, thinking. Finally he just shrugged and said, "It'd take the rest of the day to explain all that. Just take my word for it – the economic possibility here is enormous. Maybe even life -changing for a nation's economy, if done right."

"Except," said Kelsey, "that there are problems?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I need more time, more data, to be sure. But overall, it doesn't look good right now."

"That depends on where you're standin'." The voice came from behind them, at the door, and sounded sickeningly familiar. "Finding you all here looks damn good to me."

Colo came swaggering in, clicking his pipe against his teeth. "I heard that last part Bramm. Sounds like you better let the General know. That's why I came here – to bring you to the Lodge. We got a meeting later today. All the, uh, biggies'll be there."

He walked closer stopping next to the map. "All the biggies, like the General, and White, and Greene, and Stratton, and... me."

He leered at Kelsey. "Didn't know I'm one of the biggies, did you? Probably also didn't know that I could have killed you yesterday... but I had mercy. So you owe me."

He stepped closer and grinned. "I'll be collecting later today."

Kelsey laughed. "Don't count on it. The last time you tried that I left you puking in the mud."

The backhand swipe was fast; she should have anticipated it, but didn't, and it caught her hard on the left cheek, snapping her head to the side. The ridges on his gold ring cut a two-inch gash just above her chin line and across her lower lip. Blood spattered across his fingers and dripped down her neck.

She staggered back, eyes wide with a mix of surprise and anger. Shari screamed, and Bramm jumped forward, putting himself between Kelsey and Colo.

"Hey," he yelled, "what's that about?"

Colo looked at him sullenly. "Old times. She knows." Then he jerked his thumb toward the door, "Get in the truck. Both of you."

"But I'm, uh, not done yet," Bramm stammered. "My trailer...I need to unload and start my assays."

Colo waved toward the men standing in the shadows behind him. "Get the damn buckets out of his trailer and put'em here next to the others. Then clean the lab room. Burn the rats and wash the place up. When you're done with that, get back to the Lodge. But make everything look good – the General might want to come out for a look."

"Wait," he called as the men started moving. "Zip and Brocca – over here. Help this bitch get into the truck. You too, Bramm – and don't forget your map." Two of the men broke away from the group and came toward Bramm and Kelsey. Both had pistols tucked into their belts, and one had a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Kelsey wiped her sleeve across her chin and spit out a glob of blood. "Let Shari go," she said. "She doesn't know anything."

"I doubt that," Colo smirked. He was feeling powerful now, in charge around Kelsey for the first time in his life. "But I don't need her. Bringing you and Bramm in is enough."

He pointed his pipe at Shari. "So get your ass back to the Convent, and take your mewling brat with you. I don't want my men being distracted."

He took a step toward here, raising his fist; she shuffled back awkwardly, arms wrapped protectively around Kalita. At the door she stopped, cast a despairing look at Kelsey, then turned and ran across the field.

Chapter 115: On the Move

Days 15: Monday

It was nearly 9:00 when we all got back together. The regular clinic staff had finished breakfast, so Taz and Chyll made a late breakfast for us. It was a local dish made with veggies and bits of wild pig meat. I didn't recognize the seasoning, but it was good... in a curious sort of way.

Taz actually did most of the food prep, but Chyll seemed to enjoy helping and walked around the table, doling out the mix onto our plates.

One of the first to get a plateful was the fellow across the table from me – Vari Okaly. He'd arrived a few minutes ago and was having coffee in the cafeteria when we came in. The first person to see him was Trinity, and she rushed over to give him a hug.

His face broke into a smile and he nearly dropped his cup when he saw her. After a few whispered words, Trinity pointed at me and led him over for introductions. We took a table near the window, he and Trinity on one side, Harolde and I on the other. Chyll pulled up a chair and joined us when the cooking was done.

"No," Vari said, "I haven't heard anything about radioactivity, but there's been talk in the villages about somebody digging holes and collecting rocks. I've driven out the new roads – they're really more like wide rutty paths – and found three of the places they were talking about. It looked like a small but well organized operation, drilling cores for a mineral study."

"But wouldn't that have already been done before? Decades ago?" I asked.

"You'd think so, right?" He answered, between bites. "But private companies have never been allowed in here. I checked government records, publication records, even patent records and couldn't find anything. Either the studies were never done or the findings were kept secret. Whatever... it's being done now."

"Any idea who and why?"

He shrugged. "As to why – sorry, no clue. As far as who, I saw someone talking to Phil Poley at the Mission last month. They'd just finished unloading a trailer-full of sealed buckets. After the guy left Poley came over to chat – he was a talker – and started telling about how he was collaborating with this geologist, and together they were going to make news. He seemed pretty full of himself, you know, self-important - like he was on the inside of something big. Then he swaggered back and disappeared into the white building."

Trinity stifled a laugh, then said apologetically, "Sorry, but the image of Phil swaggering..." She shook her head, then went on more seriously, "Poor Phil. He loved to talk about who he knew and how important he was."

"That's may have been what did him in," I said. "We're dealing with dangerous people here, who have an unknown level of official backing. Could be government, could be military, or could just be a rogue splinter group. Whatever, we need to move carefully but fast."

"So Vari," I added, "we were hoping that you could give us some leads about Kelsey."

"Kelsey?" He frowned, "why, what's happened?"

"She went looking for answers to some of these questions, and now she's gone missing."

He nodded and closed his eyes for a few seconds, thinking. Then he opened them, cleared his throat, and looked at me with a frown. "Alright, so three possibilities: she's either still looking, hiding out, or has been captured."

I nodded. "Exactly how I've been thinking."

He glanced at Harolde, then at Trinity, then back at me. "Well, if she's still scouting around for clues, she could be anywhere... maybe at one of those digging sites or even at one the villages. If she's on the run, being chased, then she might be holed up in the forest, or hiding at the Mission. It she's been captured, she's probably either at the Lodge or at the military base in Salvata."

"Let's hope it's not Salvata," Harolde said. "Too big for us to handle. I think we start with the Mission, then go to the Lodge. If she's not at either place, we spread out and search the forest, starting with those digging sites."

"Agreed," I nodded, then turned to Vari. "Laila said that Kelsey wanted to see somebody special at the Mission, someone you told her about. Who?"

"Okay," Vari said slowly, "Kelsey was interested in getting into that white building to see what Phil'd been doing. That's one of the reasons she went to the Mission. The other was to talk to..." he stole a sideways look at Trinity, then finished, "Sister Shari."

Trinity had been listening to all this in silence, looking at Vari with happy eyes. But her eyes turned troubled and she let out a little gasp at what he said next, that Julian had fathered a child with one of the nuns at the Mission.

"It's been hushed up," he went on, "and I'm not one to spread secrets, but I tell you this because Kelsey was very interested in it. She thought that Shari might have inside knowledge about Julian and what happened. If you want to find Kelsey, start with Shari."

I nodded, leaning back in my chair, and looked across at Trinity. She was staring ahead impassively, but her eyes were moist. Chyll quietly stood, went around behind her, and whispered something in her ear.

They both smiled, then got up and walked out into the sunshine.

We watched them leave, then I looked over at Vari. "Can you get Shari to talk to us?"

"Maybe," he said. "I can try, anyway – she seems to trust me."

"When can you be ready to go?"

"Let me check with Wayne, to see what kind of patient load we have. If there's nothing pressing, I can be ready in fifteen minutes."

"I heard you were out all night on an emergency call," I said.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Part of the job. Just let me change clothes and splash some water in my face. See you in fifteen. Or maybe ten."

* * * * * * * * * *

Ten minutes later we were gathered around one of the jeeps next to the Clinic garage. I had the weapons bag open and Wayne was watching with a frown.

"Pretty heavily armed for a search party," he said. "Are you really expecting trouble?"

For a second or two I considered telling him about Marley at the Klamath River, or reminding him that Julian hadn't committed suicide, he'd been shot; or that Taz had seen two men with guns hanging around during the night. But it'd already been more than three hours since we landed here. Time to get going, so I just said, "Yes, Wayne. I expect trouble. Maybe a Hell of a lot."

Another example of what Gramps used to say: Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. 'It' in this case being the guns. If we had no trouble, then there was no downside to having them along. But if there was and we didn't have them with us, well....

I looked up from the open bag to the group gathered around:

• Harolde, who I had full confidence in as a fighter, but no idea if he'd ever trained with firearms

• Chyll, who had at least some training at the Waxman firing range

• Trinity, who probably had no exposure to firing a gun until the Klamath river, and that didn't work out too well

• Hillen, who I had no confidence in

• Vari, a smart and skilled doctor, which is always good to have along, but another unknown

• Taz, a gutsy kid who had his own rifle; but had he ever used it?

• Gil and Farris were watching, but this didn't involve them. Their job was to get us here, and they'd done that. Was it fair to ask them to do more?

There was no way I was going to let anyone near an automatic weapon; once they pulled the trigger on one of those, they could be as big a danger to their friends – or even themselves – as to any enemies. The shotguns could be just as wildly dangerous, but they're very effective at short range and don't require precision aiming. Pistols are good – really good – in close quarters combat, but only if in the hands of a trained user. Otherwise, they're mostly just a loud noisemaker.

Thoughts percolated around my brain: if we were going to be prepared for a firefight, then we needed to be well armed and ready. There wasn't much time for training and practice, but everyone had to know at least the elementary basics.

I started out with a short description of what we planned to do, then took another ten precious minutes to go over loading and using each weapon type.

"Remember," I said at the end, "stay down and out of sight unless you absolutely need to get involved. Then and only then do you start firing, and when you do, look before you pull the trigger – we don't want any friendly fire injuries."

When I finished, Farris stepped up and said he'd like to come along. "It's been a few years, but I was in the Air Force before linking up with Mr. Mars. I flew a few missions and a lot of patrols. I know it's not the same as ground action, but I'm not a complete novice, either. "

We shook hands, I said 'Thanks," and started passing out weapons: 9 mm Glock pistols for Harolde, Farris, Taz and me. Chyll and Trinity each received a tactical shotgun, 12-gauge with the short 18 inch barrel; the lighter weight Remington went to Chyll and the Benelli to Trinity. That meant we needed only two types of ammunition, the clips of 9 mm and the 12 gauge cartridges. I gave each person enough to do initial damage, and took along a bunch more in my backpack. Harolde and I also took good long-bladed, full-tang hunting knives.

Vari refused to take a weapon, and I didn't offer any to Hillen.

The jeep had room for only five of us, but there were two off-road motorcycles parked nearby. They were electric, not gas engines. One was a Yamaha and the other was a Zero SR, both very cool looking. "I've been using these for the last two years," Vari said. "They're so quiet - good for going through the trails without spooking the wildlife. The villagers don't like the noise and exhaust fumes of regular bikes, anyway. And the performance is great – very fast, easy maintenance, and will go a couple of hundred miles on a single charge."

Chyll's eyes lit up at that; "Boss, you take the jeep; I'll ride one of these babies."

So Taz drove the jeep with me in the passenger seat; Harolde, Hillen, and Farris squeezed into the back. Chyll took the Zero and Vari drove the Yamaha with Trinity riding behind him.

The bikes took lead with the jeep trailing after. Although the dirt road was damp after the light morning rain, traction was good and there was very little dust. We briefly stopped twice while Vari pointed out side roads, one leading left toward the Lodge and the other going off to the right, into the forest. If we didn't find Kelsey at the Mission, we'd probably be going up one or both of those later.

Our speed was slower than I liked, certainly slower than if I'd been driving on my own, but at least we were on the move. And it gave me time look around and appreciate what we were surrounded by.

Which was a vast canopy of tall trees, with occasional breaks into a clear sky. Other than birds hopping through low bushes, there were no other animals near the ground. Monkeys were moving through the upper branches though; mostly quiet but occasionally calling out with a howl. There was probably actually a bewildering variety of other creatures, but I didn't notice them.

Maybe another time, on a romantic stroll with Kelsey.

Yeah.

God, I was worried about her....

Chapter 116: Leverage

Day 15: Monday

The Project meeting was already underway in the little cottage behind the Lodge. People were sitting at tables near the front of the darkened room, with one person standing next to a screen showing a bullet list of discussion points. But when Colo shoved his little group through the door, all talking stopped.

As Kelsey got closer, she could see that it was Niles standing with a pointer in his left hand. He must've been explaining something to the rest of the group, none of whom Kelsey recognized.

No, that wasn't quite right; there was a woman at the table nearest to Niles who looked familiar... hmmm.

"Oh!" Kelsey clamped her lips to stifle her surprise. Was this the lady in the photo that Chyll had wired? The one that Shari saw at the Mission?

It was tough to be sure in the dim light, and she was dressed differently - which is to say, she was wearing more than a just wisp of silk around her waist - but her face and hair seemed to match.

No one spoke a word, but Kelsey could feel everyone's gaze as Colo prodded her and Bramm to the front. The silence was finally broken by Niles, who tried to smile but whose eyes betrayed a gut-full of tension.

"Kelsey – welcome. I'm glad to see you, but wish it could have been in different circumstances." He shook his head and stepped closer, dropping his voice. "You shouldn't have come here; you should have stayed home."

Kelsey let her own gaze drift over each of them, then settled on Niles. "California isn't my home," she said, an edge of defiance in her voice. "This is. And I'm not real thrilled with what you're doing to it."

There was a low chuckle from one of the men at a side table. "Well spoken," he said. "So you're Kelsey Theroux. I knew Grant many years ago... can't say we were friends, but there was a, uh, mutual respect between us. Dr. Stratton, maybe you can handle the introductions?"

That wasn't what Niles wanted to hear. If the General was willing to let Kelsey know their names – even code names – then he probably didn't plan on letting her leave the island alive.

Niles swallowed hard and looked around. There were two men leaning nonchalantly against the wall near the door, muscular men wearing dark glasses and automatic pistols. He looked at them briefly, then at Kelsey, but said nothing.

Instead he nodded toward the men seated at the table. "This is the General, a representative of the Consortium financing our operations. On his left is Mr. White, who spends that money to provide us with government and other resources, and on his right is Mr. Greene, who organizes and oversees the operations. These are code names, you understand."

Kelsey nodded. "Sure. So these... gentlemen... guide the operations forward, but who devised this plan in the first place, Niles. Was it you?"

Niles fidgeted uncomfortably with the pointer and shrugged. "Partly, yes. I, um..."

The General chuckled again and leaned forward. "Ms. Theroux, we requested - perhaps I could even say required - Dr. Stratton's assistance, and his team put together a very inventive approach to help us solve a major problem. Any ill feelings you may have should be directed toward me, not him."

Then he sat back and nodded, "Continue."

Niles cleared his throat and went on, "I see you've met Sandor Bramm, our geologist. Colo you already know, me you already know, and this," he said, nodding his head toward the lady, "is -"

"- Ariama," Kelsey finished for him, then turned to speak directly to her. "I have a photo of you, a very nice one that Niles kept in his safe." She shot a glance at Niles and caught the look of dismay on his face.

"And," she continued with a smile, "we almost met Friday night. I was in the closet at Phil Poley's cabin, just inches away when you and Colo were arguing about Julian's notebook... which I had in my hand at the time."

"You damn bitch," Colo growled, "you think that's funny? Do you know how much I sweated over that?" He stepped forward and drew back his arm to take a swing – but never got a chance to finish it.

Quick as a cat, Ariama exploded from her chair and clamped onto his wrist. They stood momentarily frozen, each struggling but not moving, until the General barked, "Enough."

"Colo," he went on in a quiet voice that cut to the bone, "I appreciate your initiative in bringing Bramm and Kelsey to the island. But inside this room you will do only what I ask and nothing more. Ariama, have Kelsey sit next to you."

Colo immediately dropped his hands to his sides, but the look on his face was silent fury. Ariama stepped around him to take Kelsey's arm, then stopped, peering at her swollen lip and the raw slice above her chin, still smeared with specks of blood wet enough to gleam in the dim light. Then she casually turned, and again with cat-quickness, lashed a backhand slap at Colo's right cheek.

He reeled back, spitting blood and muttered, "What the fuck?"

"I told you," she hissed, "not to harm her. Couldn't resist showing her what a big, bad man you are, could you?"

The General pounded the table. "Enough, I said!" Kelsey noticed that the two men by the door were now fully alert, pistols drawn. The General raised his left hand and the men relaxed.

"Victoria," he said in a voice used to giving commands, "or perhaps I should say Ariama, since Kelsey already seems to know you - escort our guest to your room and remain there with her until we call for you."

Without a word, Ariama bowed her head, took Kelsey by the arm, and left the room.

When the door closed behind them, Greene spoke up. "Colo – the book Kelsey mentioned... Julian Chambers' notebook... that's the one you spent the last week looking for, right?"

"Yes. I don't know what she did with it, but we'll get it from her." His voice was quiet, but still angry, and he added, "I promise you that."

The General ignored that last comment, instead turning his attention to Bramm.

"I'm glad you could join us. Sorry that we couldn't get word to you ahead of time, but this meeting was put together in a rush, and finding where you are in the field is always difficult."

"Yeah," Colo added, "it was just lucky we ran into you at the Mission. We went out there to unload the Kanja and clean up the lab. Surprised to see you there. Even more surprising to see you being so chatty with Kelsey."

"And so you dragged me here at gunpoint?"

The General looked at Colo and raised a questioning eyebrow. Colo shrugged and said to Bramm, "The guns were for Kelsey, not for you. But I noticed that you were getting a little talkative to her about the project. Maybe you needed a little quieting down."

"Talkative!" It wasn't quite a shout, but was plenty loud. "What was I supposed to do? She'd already found one of the main core-drilling sites and had taken my Geiger Counter. She knows damn well that those cores are radioactive. I didn't tell her anything she hadn't already guessed."

Greene leaned forward. "Bramm, being too talkative, unreliable, and betraying confidences are what cost Julian Chambers, Marley Granger, and Phil Poley their lives. Remember - you're not irreplaceable."

Bramm stepped forward, shaking with anger, but stopped short when the General raised his voice. "Gentlemen! This meeting is a comprehensive review of the project status. At its conclusion, I will be filing a report to the Consortium. Keep the information exchange moving forward. Make your threats and personal outbursts later, on your own time."

Greene nodded and leaned back; Bramm and Colo sat down near Niles.

The General waited in silence for ten seconds while breathing and testosterone levels dropped to normal, then said, "This raises an interesting point: in Chambers, Granger, and Poley, this project has lost some key contributors. No matter how necessary you claim it was, Mr. Greene, it leaves gaps in the project's future. Have you a plan for handling that?"

"Yes," Greene cleared his throat. "Later, after Niles give the technical summary, I'll give a status update. It's important, though, to bring Dr. Hillen here as soon as possible."

"Uh huh," the General said, sounding a little distracted. "But first I'd like to learn more about Kelsey." He looked at Niles and went on, "I understand she worked with you. Doing what?"

"Well," Niles began, unsure of where this was leading, "she's a full member of our Tox Department. Very good at what she does... used to be married to Julian Chambers."

"So she would be familiar with whatever he had written in that notebook?"

"Not the details, but the general procedures... yes."

"And she was a colleague of Phil Poley?"

"Oh yes. Their labs are close to each other and they shared equipment."

"Mmm," the General mused. "Could she possibly be an asset to our project?"

Niles started to laugh, then caught himself and turned it into an embarrassed cough. "Do you mean is she capable? – Yes. But would she do it? – I don't see any chance."

And immediately he cursed himself – _'Jeez, what an idiot! Saying that could be signing her death warrant.'_

So he quickly added, "Maybe... maybe though, if there was any way to convince her."

"Such as?" the General asked.

"I got one." It was Colo, who stood, looking smug.

"She's got her kid and his nanny staying at the Clinic. Maybe we could bring'em here."

"Yes," the General nodded. "And make them our guests, also. Give them the best room in the place, as long as Kelsey buys into our project. Yes, that might work."

The knot in Niles stomach ratcheted up another notch; involving Stevie and Laila? God damn! But maybe it would delay things long enough for him and Ariama to get away... and, yes, take Kelsey with them.

The General was looking at Greene now. "You mentioned Dr. Hillen a minute ago. What is his situation? We were told that he was arriving this morning."

Greene frowned, but nodded. "Yes, they landed at the Layard Clinic. He was with a group, and they were heading to the Mission. Varro- he's our agent there – wasn't able to bring him here, but did pass on a pistol to him, hidden in a pile of towels."

"Well, let's get him here right away," the General said. "Colo - send some of your men to the Mission lab. If he's not there already, he will be soon. Have them pick him up and bring him here immediately."

"Alright," Colo nodded, "you want me to go along?"

"No, take the rest of your men to the clinic. Meet up with Varro and bring the nanny and the child here. I want them completely unharmed. Do you understand? Completely. That's the only way we may be able to recruit Kelsey."

"Yes, yes, I understand." Colo was still rubbing his cheek, still wanted to lash out at someone. But nothing was worth getting the General pissed at him.

After he left, the General motioned to one of the guards at the door. "Now that Colo is gone, have Victoria bring Kelsey back here. I want her to learn more about the project. If she decides to join us, so much the better. If not, well...."

Chapter 117: View

Days 15: Monday

Kelsey and Ariama sat across from each other at a dark ebony card table. They were on a third story balcony, just outside of Ariama's Lodge room. It was one of the smaller but richer rooms, intended to be enjoyed by honeymooning lovers or to give solitude and inspiration to a struggling author. Ariama had poured each of them a glass of red wine, but neither seemed ready to drink.

It was late morning now, the sun was high in the sky, and Kelsey had a good view of the lagoon and front docks. All very beautiful, but not what she was interested in at the moment. Ariama faced the other way and could see the back of the small island, especially the trail leading to the cottage. Her chair also effectively blocked the door. Kelsey had no doubt that this was intended, a subtle reminder that she was little more than a prisoner.

Could she escape? Getting by Ariama would be a tough challenge; they were about the same size and both in generally good shape physically. But Ariama was clearly tougher - just way she carried herself when she confronted Colo and stood up to the General showed that.

And if Kelsey did get away, what then? She'd been trying to get to the bottom of this mystery for the past two weeks, and now she was right at dead-center ground zero. Well, almost ground zero... it would be best to be in that damn meeting room with Niles and the rest of them. So it made no sense to run away; instead, better to stay close and stay alert.

But stay careful, too; and be prepared for... well, anything.

She wondered for the umpteenth time what Reid was doing now. Was he still in California? – Had he decided to come looking for her? And if so, then how long till he got here? Probably a few more days, and by then would there be any time left to do anything?

It was Ariama who broke the silence. "How's your lip?"

Kelsey ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth and gum line. The bleeding had stopped, but there was still swelling and a dark purple bruise around the broken skin.

"It's okay," she said, then added, "Colo's lip probably hurts more. For certain, his pride does."

Ariama gave a quick smile and nodded. "He's a pig. I'll hit him again the next time I see him."

They laughed at that, then clinked their wine glasses and drank. Kelsey set hers down and the silence returned. She knew why; the question hovered in the air between them, needing to be asked.

So she took a deep breath and asked it:

"Ariama... did you kill Julian?"

Without a flicker of hesitation, Ariama answered. "Yes, I did."

She took another sip of wine, watching Kelsey over the rim of her glass, then went on, "This is what happened...."

The story was basically same as she'd told Niles earlier, of how she'd been sent to meet Julian and bring him to the Lodge, but that Julian had fired the shotgun at least twice, the last time at her, and she had finally fired back, hitting him near the throat.

But she added a few more details.

"Greene told me to bring him in for his own good... that he was having a psychotic episode, was suicidal and intended to wreck the lab. I thought that meant he would use a shovel or a crowbar - I never expected him to have a shotgun."

"But how did you know that he would be there that night?" Kelsey asked. "Who told you what the meant to do? It couldn't have been Shari... was it Niles?"

"Shari? Niles?" Ariama blinked in surprise. "God, no. It was someone that Julian phoned earlier that night, and told him he was going to destroy everything, then disappear."

"So this person called Greene let him know?"

Ariama nodded. "Yes."

Kelsey took another drink. The alcohol stung her cut, but she ignored it. "Alright, tell me then - who was it?"

"You haven't guessed yet? It was Hillen. Dr. James Hillen."

"Jim Hillen?" Kelsey voice rose in surprise. "He's involved?"

"Involved?" Ariama laughed softly. "He's on the inside... one of Greene's trusted inner circle. He suggested that Niles recruit Julian in the first place, and also someone named Marley. Both of them worked for him before. You'll probably get a chance to see him later today. He sent a message last night that he was flying down, and expected to arrive this morning."

"That fast?" Kelsey said, "just half a day to get here?"

"Faster - just a few hours. It's supposed to be an experimental plane. Very fast. Avoids radar. He said he's coming down with some other people from California, and that it was funny – he had to pretend to not want to come, when actually that was exactly what he wanted."

"Wanted to come here? Why?"

Ariama's smile faded. "To pick up where Phil Poley left off."

Silence came down between them like a dense fog, and they sat, not moving, just looking at each other. After fifteen seconds Ariama nodded. "Yes, it's true – I caused Poley's death, too. It was an unfortunate accident," she shrugged, "but I don't regret it."

Kelsey didn't want to get into an ethical discussion with Ariama; she needed to keep her talking and friendly. So she switched the conversation away from Poley, away from Julian, and back to Hillen.

"Where's this experimental plane coming from? And who's Hillen flying down with?"

"Mmm... I heard a name, but don't remember. Just that Niles was surprised to hear it. Sorry."

Kelsey could feel her pulse speeding up.

"Could it have been," she felt her throat get tight and coughed softly, then took another sip of wine and tried again. "Could it have been Reid? Reid Durham?"

"Maybe," Ariama was eyeing her curiously. "Or maybe not. But you hope it is, don't you?"

"Yes," Kelsey blushed quickly. "But also no. I want to see him, but don't want him running up against Colo's gang."

"Colo's gang!" Ariama spat over the balcony and watched the little wet glob drift down till it splatted against a Banyan leaf. "Scum from the big city. None of them gives a damn about anything but money and the whores at Salvata."

"You don't like them, do you," Kelsey said with a little laugh. "Why? Did they threaten you?"

"Threaten me! No," Ariama shook her head. "But it bothers me to see them, to smell them, to hear them giggling at their stupid jokes. Pigs – all of them, and Colo's the biggest one."

They both laughed at that, then drank more wine. As the laughter faded, Kelsey found herself admiring Ariama:

A curious person. So competent and self-assured. For her, taking lives holds no more moral dilemma than taking out a bag of garbage. But honest, open about her feelings, and, yes, very likable.

Finally she leaned forward and said, "Okay, now what about Niles."

"Yes?" Ariama looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"That photo he took of you is very striking, very beautiful. And whenever you mention him, you get that tender tone in your voice. What is it between you two?"

Ariama swirled the wine in her glass, the held it to her nose at drew in a deep breath. She exhaled with a slow, "Ahh," then went on, "it started out as a business assignment. Over time it became much more. For me, being with him was a relief from the kind of work I usually do, and he was a different person than I usually deal with... very smart and strong in some ways, vulnerable and unsure of himself in others. He says that he draws strength from being with me, and I began feeling the same way about him. It may sound a little sappy, but we fill in each other's blanks, if you get what I mean. We understand each other. I think it's love."

She took a long drink, emptying her glass. "And we both want to get the Hell out of here."

Kelsey's eyes widened, and jaw almost, but didn't quite, drop open. "Get away? But what about this project? Niles has been devoting himself to it for more than three years."

"Right," Ariama nodded, "and he hates it. Hates Greene, Hillen, Colo, the General, and even himself for being involved. He's been dancing to their bidding like a good marionette, but now he wants to cut the strings."

"And leave? Where will you go?"

Ariama shrugged. "Not sure. We'll move fast but without definite plans. That'll make us more unpredictable... harder to follow."

"Okay...." This was a new twist, and Kelsey wasn't sure what to make of it. "When are you planning on going?"

"Tonight, or maybe tomorrow. It depends how things go at this meeting."

"Oh," Kelsey nodded, a look of concern on her face. "I'll um, I'll miss you "

"No," Ariama said. "We're not leaving you here with the pigs. You'll come with us."

Kelsey sat back in surprise. It didn't seem practical, but then, what had, lately? Nothing. Just one twist and turn after another.

So she shrugged and held out her glass. "Any more of that wine?"

"A little. But we should go easy on it. Things are going to happen in that cottage room. There'll be yelling and cursing. It'll get pretty intense."

"And you want to be there," Kelsey said.

"I need to be there," Ariama nodded. As she spoke she stood and leaned over the railing, peering down at the trail below. One of the General's guards was walking briskly toward them.

"And," she added, "it looks like our invitation is coming right now."

Chapter 118: Jelly

Days 15: Monday

After some time on the road – probably just twenty minutes, but it seemed longer - we reached a fence with the gate unlocked and pulled over to one side. A large, old style but still impressive house came into view when we drove through, with a rambling series of one-and two story brick buildings just beyond it. As we got nearer I could see a new-looking white block of a building in the field to the right.

There were no people anywhere.

Vari stopped and Taz pulled the jeep up next to him. "That's Grant Theroux's old mansion," he said. "It's where Kelsey lived as a kid and also where Julian's body was found. Those buildings near it are the Franciscan Mission. They've been modernized and the big middle one is the main Convent for the Good Sisters. And that big, blocky lump in the field is where Phil Poley had his lab."

"Strange though," he said, looking around. "Normally at this time the ladies are out here tending crops or in the orchard. They could be having a late morning service...uh, but then we'd hear music. Maybe I can find Sister Ayla and ask what's going on."

"Okay, good," I said, "you find out what's up from her. I want to take a look inside where Poley was working."

Vari shook his head. "Might be tough. There's a big door with a heavy latch that's always kept locked, and the nuns don't have any key for it."

While Vari and Trinity went up to the Convent door, the rest of us drove slowly out to the white building. A small pickup truck hooked to a box trailer was parked outside the large sliding door, which was bolted and secured with a heavy metal padlock. It made me wish that we'd brought DJ Shockey along.

But we hadn't.

When Taz rolled to a stop I hopped out and looked over the truck. The hood felt just slightly warm to the touch, so it had been here for at least a couple of hours but not a lot longer; certainly not overnight.

The trailer was empty except for a tarp and some rope; the truck bed had a shovel, a length of chain, and a toolbox. I pulled open the driver's side door and slid inside. It was plenty dusty and smelled of oil, but other than a pair of work gloves and a jacket, was empty. Nothing was in the jacket pockets or in the glove compartment – especially no padlock key.

Not that I expected that there would be, but it was worth a shot.

As I was mulling that over Harolde was twisting and rattling the lock on the big door. After a few seconds he muttered a curse and started off toward a garden shed, which was a couple hundred feet away in a grove of fruit trees. The rest of us slowly circled around the outside of the building, checking for any other ways in. The only possibility we found was small service panel next to the electrical inlet box. It was about eighteen inches on a side and had two PVC pipes running through it – a really tight squeeze.

In five minutes we'd come all the way around and were back to the door. I was just considering shooting the lock off when Harolde came from the shed with a smile and a sledgehammer. "Wait," he called, "lemme give this a try."

The lock was large and heavy, but so are Harolde's arm and shoulder muscles. He bashed it once and nothing much happened. Then again, and this time the lock screeched and bent. On the third swing it disintegrated, flying into three pieces and spinning away into the field.

Chyll and Ferris clapped, Taz hooted, and I nodded and smiled. Hillen did nothing.

We rolled the door to the side and made our way in. There were no windows, and the inside was pitch black until Taz found a bank of switches. He flipped two of the toggles upward and a row of fluorescent lights came to life.

The lighting wasn't smooth and even, more like a mix of bright pools and dim shadows, but it was enough for us to see a dozen large wooden crates, a long stack of white buckets, and a three drawer file cabinet. Beyond that was another room with what looked like lab equipment on the inside.

"Chyll," I said, "could you check out the file cabinet, please? Taz – find out what's inside those white buckets. And Harolde, it looks like the lids on those crates are nailed. Maybe you and Ferris can persuade them to open with the sledge."

Then I turned to Jim Hillen. "How about if you and I go see what's in this inside room? It must be Poley's lab."

We went through the inner door and got the lights on; it looked and smelled freshly cleaned, like the walls and floors were just washed with bleach. There was a row of environmental chambers along the center with their doors propped open and their insides still wet. Several large floor fans were blowing gusts of air around the room and up toward ventilation ducts in the ceiling.

"Funny," I said, "Kelsey told me what she saw in here just yesterday - a smelly disaster with dead rats, uncleaned cages, and open bags of their food. Now it looks like the janitor crew just left."

Hillen didn't seem to be listening; he was standing at the far wall, looking through the refrigerators and freezers. "Yes," he muttered, sounding relieved. "Everything's all here."

"Everything?" I said, "Meaning what?"

"Why, the primary biological stocks, of course, the culture media for growing more, and the equipment and working solutions for downstream processing. All made and ready to go. Just lacking someone who knows how to use them."

I should've asked what he meant by that, or, better yet, should've just put a bullet through him; but right then Chyll poked her head through the door and waved.

"Hey Boss, look at this."

Trinity came into the lab carrying a stack of papers.

"And Harolde says those crates are crammed with expensive looking instruments and meters... stuff I don't recognize. It must be for what these papers are talking about. I'm gonna help Taz with the buckets. So far all he's found are rocks."

For the next three or four minutes Trinity and I skimmed through the papers, just reading the titles and glancing at the abstracts – subjects like Neutron Activation, Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry, and Delayed Neutron Counting. The common theme seemed to be analyzing rock samples for rare earth elements and measuring the amount of uranium and thorium.

Which, they said, are radioactive. Wasn't that what Kelsey said over the phone? That she'd stumbled across an operation where somebody was drilling and collecting cores?

Right. And it looked like that same somebody was setting up an expensive mineralogy lab to test the cores for... what? Rare earth metals, apparently - whatever those were - and they were setting it up right here, next to where Poley was working.

So there had to be a connection. But whatever was going on wasn't finished yet. The equipment was still boxed up, and, with Poley dead, his lab was out of operation.

We were sifting through the articles and Hillen was humming and poking around behind us, when the lab door flew open again and an excited young lady burst in.

"Please," she said in a rush of breath, "We need your help."

Who was this? Pink cheeks and worried face, eyes on the verge of tears. She swallowed hard and started over. "Sorry, my name is Shari. I was here with Kelsey when Colo took her away. And took Mister Bramm, too."

Trinity dropped her papers and went to Shari, taking her hand, "I remember you," she said. "We met before."

Shari's eyes grew even wider and she shrank back. "You... you're Trinity, aren't you. I saw you with Vari at the Convent, but was too scared to show myself. But then you all went out here, and I had to run over and tell someone what happened." She looked at me, swallowed hard again, and went on in a rush of words, "The people out there said that you're the one I should talk to."

So this was Shari, the one Kelsey was looking for. She knew something and it wasn't good. A pang of worry skipped through my heart, but I forced a reassuring smile and said, "Yes, we're here to help. When did they leave? And where are they now?"

Before she could answer, Chyll called out, loud and urgent.

"Boss! We got visitors. And they don't look too friendly."

"Damn it!" I whispered, "Wait here for a sec. I need to see what's up outside." But when I turned and started toward the door, Hillen hissed from behind me.

"Hold it right there, please. Don't open that door."

I glanced over my shoulder, irritated, and stopped; the pistol in his right hand was aimed at the center of my back. At a quick glance it looked like a Beretta, one of the pocket 380 models, small but very deadly at short range. He was about twelve feet away – too far for me to grab his weapon, but close enough for him to almost certainly hit me when he fired.

Probably I should have anticipated something like this, but there was so much going on that my suspicions of Hillen had faded into the background.

Well, no more. He shook his head and motioned toward the activity outside. "Those idiots took long enough to get here, but now that they have, you just stay still. Very still. After they take care of your friends, we can go to the Lodge. You want to see Kelsey? That'll be your chance."

"So It was you," Trinity said in a mix of accusation and surprise. "Niles said somebody was watching us, reporting on us. I thought it was Victor... but it was you."

"Victor? That desk jockey?" Hillen laughed. "No. Niles set up a great plan – I'll give him that - and brought me in right away. Hell, he had to – I was the source of the biologics. But Greene never really trusted Niles, so he asked me to watch over things."

He kept his eyes fixed on me as he spoke. "And things went okay until you started poking around. Then it got messy, especially when you had me come to the Waxman. I didn't mind opening up and telling you about Yp-H because you were supposed to be dead that week. Niles had clear instructions to eliminate Marley and you. And then Kelsey, later. But he didn't get it done. Couldn't finish the job. Too soft – he hasn't got the guts to do what it takes."

"And you do?" Trinity said, her voice dripping with scorn. "Niles might be a little strange – but you're just a sneaky creep... a miserable little shit."

Hillen's eyes flashed at her in anger for a second or two, but then he barked a quick laugh. "Such ugly words from such a beautiful mouth." and his pistol began swinging back and forth between Trinity and me.

I knew Trinity had guts – she'd shown that at the Klamath – but this was a reckless game she was playing, trying to get Hillen to shift his attention from me to her. Yes, a reckless and maybe costly game, but stealing people's attention was what she was good at. So I decided to keep quiet and let it play out until I got a chance to make my move.

The trouble was though, that the situation outside was going downhill fast. Yelling, then a scream, then the loud and rapid roars of gunfire, and another yell. The first shots were from rifles, and so must have come from the visitors, but the next were from the Glocks, probably from Harolde and Farris, but maybe Chyll, too.

After that came a long burst that had to be from an AK-47, mixed with the whining screeches of bullets hitting the walls and floors and ricocheting wildly.

Damn and double damn! That raised the stakes way too high. I had to do something, and do it fast.

Hillen's gun kept swinging erratically between Trinity and me, but more toward her now. She was being incredibly provocative, mocking his manhood and swearing at him mercilessly, all in that soft, sultry voice, tongue flicking over her lips, and hips swaying ever so slightly, sending a mix of subtle messages that was getting him royally pissed at her and excited by her at the same time.

The lady definitely has a talent for making a guy's blood boil, and it was working. Hillen's jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed, his face got redder, and he took another step toward her. The distance between us was now about eight feet, which I should be able to cover before he could get off a second shot.

The first one, though was a wild card.

Now or never: I tossed the papers into the gush of wind streaming from the two nearest fans and dove at him. The air blast scattered the papers like a flock of deranged birds. Shari screamed, Hillen's eyes flickered wildly, and his gun went off with an earsplitting CRACK.

And then I was on him, driving him back against the workbench. It caught him hard on the right side, low on the ribs, and he went down with a yelp of pain. His gun went off a second time, then clattered away toward the refrigerators. Instead of going after it he snatched a scalpel off the bench top and came toward me, stabbing at the air.

I had my knife out by then and wanted to take him alive; to find out what else he knew. But there was all that ruckus outside and I needed to get out there.

Then Trinity was shouting, "Oh God, he shot Shari. Reid, help us, he shot Shari!"

And that changed things... sealed things for Hillen.

He lunged at me with a guttural snarl, jabbing and swinging that little fucking scalpel, and I'd had enough of that son of a bitch by then and keeping him alive didn't seem important anymore. So I drove my knife into his throat just below the Adam's apple, and it went right through, the end of the blade poking out the back of his neck.

He jerked once and kind of gurgled... then sagged down and was quiet.

Trinity was sitting on the floor cradling Shari's head in her lap. Shari's dark blue blouse had a darker stain spreading across it. Her eyes were open, but blood was leaking slowly out of her mouth, foamy with air bubbles, so she must've been hit in the lungs. I wanted to help but there was more shooting and Chyll was yelling, "Boss, we need you here. There's a bunch of them outside and Taz is down. Where are you?"

"Reid," Trinity pleaded, "please - we need Vari. Now!"

I nodded and went through the door fast, in a low crouch. Vari was by the white buckets, kneeling next to Taz, whose shirt was matted with blood. I skidded to a stop and asked, "Is it life-threatening?" Vari shook his head, "No. Painful though... went through the tricep but missed the bone. Looks serious, but it's not." He gave Taz a pat on the back and said. "You're going to be okay." Taz nodded, but his eyes were dazed and uncomprehending. I grabbed Vari's shoulder and pointed to the lab. "Shari's in there. She's hurt bad. Hillen's there too, but don't waste any time on him."

"I heard shots," he said, anxiety suddenly in his eyes. "Trinity...?"

"Is okay," I said. "It's just Shari that needs you."

He nodded, tight-lipped, and moved away quickly. I patted Taz on his shoulder – the uninjured one, and said, "Hang in there. I'll get you something for the pain later." He looked back, eyes still not completely focusing, so I just patted him again and turned toward the others.

Chyll was crouched behind one of the wooden crates and Harolde was behind another. Farris waved to me from behind the file cabinet. From there they could cover the door, so no one could come in. But we couldn't get out either, and it was just a matter of time before the guys outside broke through in a truck. Or maybe just shoved the door closed, cut off the power, and left us cooped up in the heat and dark.

"Boss, we need to get out there and sneak up behind them," Chyll whispered when I reached her.

"Agreed," I said, "If we can find a ladder we might be able to use one of the roof vents. Otherwise we're stuck."

"What about that service panel we saw?"

"Not enough room - I'd never fit. We could widen it with the sledge, but they'd hear that and be out there waiting for us to crawl though."

"Don't need to widen it," she persisted. "I can make it."

I shook my head. "It's too tight. And besides, it's way, way too dangerous. What would you do if you did get out there?"

"Boss, I can get through," she nodded. "I know it. And once I get out there I'll go around the side. Catch'em by surprise."

Dangerous, maybe even foolish, but she sounded sure of herself. It was worth considering... if she could even just make a noisy diversion, the rest of us could go through the door and together we might take them out.

At least it was a plan, way better than sitting here waiting. And then there was Shari. She needed help - fast.

So I slid my Glock over to Harolde, which gave him two, and said in a low voice, "Keep the door covered. We're gonna try something." Then Chyll and I moved down the side wall, stopping on the way to scoop up the two shotguns.

It took a couple of minutes to get the panel off. First I cut two holes with the knife (not my favorite way to treat a good blade, but it was sharp and sturdy, so no harm done), then managed to get a good grip and pull. The edges were sharp and cut into my fingers, but the panel bent, then tore loose and I tossed it away. The PVC pipes were flexible and could be shoved to the side.

I poked my head through and looked left and right.

All clear.

Chyll handed me her Glock and took the Remington 12-gauge. It carried a load of six shells plus one in the chamber, enough to inflict a lot of damage – or at least inflict a lot of noise and fear, even if she didn't hit a damn thing.

She eased the shotgun through the open panel, then turned to face me.

"I'm a little scared, Boss," she said. "Nothing like when Marley was chasing me by the greenhouses, though. I've come a long way in the last few days."

She looked at the crawl space, then back at me. Her eyes kind of sparkled and she went on, "Hey – this is about the only time I'm glad to have small boobs."

I had to smile. "Chyll, you know what? Guys really don't care that much about big boobs – that whole thing's a myth. A big heart is way more important, and lady, you've got it. Remember, you don't have to get too close. Just open fire and make them think all Hell is here. Harolde and I'll get through the door and we'll have'em in a cross fire."

Then I leaned close and kissed her cheek. "Good look, partner."

She smiled. "Thanks... Reid. I better start movin' before my eyes get all teary and can't see anything."

And with that she slithered through, snatched up the Remington, and padded away quietly.

As I was making my way back to Harolde more bullets punched through the big door and slammed into the crates. When I reached him he looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "She went outside?"

I nodded and motioned Farris to crawl over and join us. While he picked his way I asked Harolde if he knew how many were outside.

"When I heard them I went out to see who it was. At least four of them - could be more though. They drove up in an old pickup. Two in the cab and the rest in the back. They pulled out their guns right away and I knew they weren't here just to talk."

"Do they look like military?"

"Nah – they look like scumbags," he grinned. "But mean-ass scumbags. They're not locals – someone brought'em in from the outside."

Okay, that was good to hear; if they'd been military we might need to worry about grenades or body armor. If they were a motley bunch of scrubs with guns, they were still dangerous, but less so.

Farris reached us with lines of blood running down his right arm. He saw me looking at it and shook his head. "No problem," he said. "Some of those bullets split open the canisters. Metal flew like shrapnel. A few of the pieces nicked me, but I'm alright."

I nodded. "You good to go then?"

"Oh yeah. No worries."

I nodded again and smiled my thanks, then told the two of them my thoughts while keeping one eye on the door.

"In a couple of minutes Chyll will be blasting away. That'll be our cue to get out there fast. From the sound of their firing they have somebody on both sides of the door, so we're going to have to cover both directions. I'll go out first and head for the left side of the jeep. That'll leave me exposed to anyone on that side but will shield me from anyone on the right. I'll take my chances with that. You two follow me out; stay low, move fast, and get between the truck and the trailer. That should give you some protection from both sides. Concentrate on taking out whoever is on the right – don't even look my way until you take care of that. If I'm down, ignore me and focus on your targets."

"I want to hit them fast and lay down a heavy blanket of fire. Make it intense but well aimed. We don't need to hit all of them – if we take out even just one or two the rest will probable make a run for it."

"Take this," I said, handing Harolde the Benelli 12-gauge and a box of ammo. "You've got five shells in there. Pull off the first two quickly, just for the shock value. After that pick out your targets more carefully. Farris – you have a pistol and two loaded clips. I'll have the same. Any questions?"

Both men shook their heads. Okay then, we were about as ready as we could be. I glanced back toward the lab and saw Vari coming toward us in a crouch.

"Reid," he whispered softly, "Shari's in very bad shape. I managed to relieve the pressure on her lung and stop the external bleeding, but there's severe internal damage. If we don't get her to the Clinic right away, she's going to die."

"We're working on it, doc," I said. "Doing our best. Things are going to get very hot in a minute, and you might have a few more cases to see to."

He smiled thinly, but his face looked strained. "Okay. Do what you need to do."

Taz seemed to have recovered somewhat, and crept over to us, using his good right hand for balance and holding his injured left arm tight to his chest. The dazed expression on his face was mostly gone, and he spoke rapidly to Harolde, but it was in the local dialect and I couldn't make out the words. Harolde nodded, then pointed at me and said in English, "He wants to know what he can do. I told him to ask you."

I handed Taz the third pistol. "Go into the lab room and see what you can do to help. In a few minutes we're going outside to kick some ass. If we win, we can get Shari and you to the Clinic. If we lose... well, then you'll be the last line of defense in there. Make it a good one."

A long burst of gunfire punched a string of holes through the wall and bullets twacked into the crates. Taz looked a little pale, but nodded, took a breath, and then he and Vari made a dash for the lab. The next volley from outside came in at a lower angle, the bullets kicking off the floor and spraying into the stack of white buckets.

Ten seconds later there was another burst from the AK, but this one had hardly started when it was cut off by a loud BOOM, followed quickly by a second BOOM!

We were up and racing for the door before the echo of the first one had faded. I rolled through, coming up fast and zig-zagged the remaining fifteen feet to the jeep, firing as I went.

Harolde and Farris were close behind. I heard two loud Booms from the Benelli followed immediately by the clanging of return fire hitting the truck and trailer.

There was more firing from behind me but I blanked that out of my mind and focused on what was in front: a body lying in the dirt about fifty feet away, just beyond the corner of the building. Two men were nearby. The one wearing a brown tank-top shouted and started running off around the side; the other one, who was shirtless, looked my way and raised his rifle.

He fired at the same time as I did, but he only got off the one shot while I followed up my first with three more. He buckled and fell, sprawling backward and lying still.

I took off at a run cuz that first guy was going after Chyll. There were more shots, the Crack from the rifle mixed with the Boom! of the shotgun. When I got around the corner I could see both of them lying on the ground. Only one of them stood up... slowly, yes, and a little unsteady... and it wasn't the brown tank-top.

Thank God it was Chyll.

I stopped to check out the guy, but the brown shirt was now shredded and bloody, with a ragged hole the size of a grapefruit in his chest. Then I turned to Chyll, who was wide eyed and shaking. I shoved the Glock into my belt and gave her shoulders a slow squeeze.

You might think that we'd been in a bad way, after Shari and Taz were hit and we were bottled up inside the white building, and you'd be right. You might also think that we were lucky to turn the tables and get so many of them at so little further cost to us, but there you'd be wrong. They had us trapped but didn't push their advantage; instead they got overconfident and just stood outside, individuals firing blindly through the door. All it took was an effective diversion to shift their attention and the fast shock of a coordinated team attack to knock them out - a classic maneuver that works more often than it should. But it all hinges on that diversion, which must be sudden, unexpected, and hit like a hammer... and Chyll had done it perfectly.

"You were brilliant," I said, "but are you okay?"

Harolde and Farris reached us by then, breathing heavily from the excitement and the exertion of the run.

"Yeah," Chyll whispered, then closed her eyes and leaned against me until the shaking stopped. After a few seconds she said a little louder, "Yeah, Boss, I'm good. When that guy came at me I hit the dirt and rolled toward the wall. He was running and his shots all went high. So I took my time and squeezed off two rounds, just like you told me. The thing is, though, I don't know whether to be proud or to throw up."

"The answer is be proud," Harolde said, "definitely. Don't feel sorry for them. These men have no honor. They would shoot Reid in the back and spit on him as they walked by. They'd do the same to you, young lady, except they'd rape you first. I would have slit their throats with pleasure."

"And this is not the end of it," he added with a wry chuckle. "If we're going to get to Kelsey, we'll be facing more just like them, especially Colo."

Chyll glanced up at me, an uncomfortable look in her eyes. I tried to sound reassuring, and said "Guess we better watch each other's backs."

She wasn't amused. "Boss, that ain't funny." Then she shoved one of the Glocks into her waistband and lifted up the Remington. "If they get near me, I'm pulling the trigger, and I won't stop till they're jelly."

The steely glint in her eye reminded me about what she'd said a few minutes ago, when she was crawling through the vent with the shotgun... about how bringing her with me for the last two weeks had been transformative for her.

What kind of little assassin had I helped create?

And how would that translate to her returning to college life in the Bay Area?

It was only then, after the adrenaline started to subside, that my ribs reminded me with a sharp twinge that it'd been only four days since they'd been shot and broken. There was a patch of wetness on my left side but I couldn't tell if it was dripping sweat or oozing blood, but it didn't matter either way. Whatever happened to me was trivial compared to what happened to other people today. Hillen and four gunmen were dead; Taz was wounded and Shari... God damn it, Shari was hanging on by a thread.

So I didn't even glance down at my shirt. Sweat stain or blood stain? Just didn't matter. We needed to turn our attention to getting Shari to the clinic.

As it turned out, there was no need to rush.

Chapter 119: The Gift

Days 15: Monday

The next twenty minutes were intense. Not the same way as the last few, when we'd been in a jaw-clenching, heart-pounding firefight. But just as intense.

If anything, they were deeper, more impacting, and I'll never forget them.

It began with Vari checking each of the men who'd been shot – and Hillen too, confirming that they were dead. The nuns brought out sheets and we wrapped the bodies and stacked them in the back of their pickup truck. Someone would drive them to the Clinic later.

But all that was secondary. The main drama was going on nearby, in a little gathering under the shade of a Jacaranda tree. Sister Riosa had spread a blue blanket on the ground. Trinity sat in the middle, cradling Shari's head in her lap and caressing her cheek.

"Do you think she'll survive the ride in the jeep?" Taz asked. "If we go fast, it's a lot of bumps and twists. If we go slow, it's an hour... will she last that long?"

Vari shook his head, a bleak look in his eyes. "She won't last another five minutes, either way."

"But she's conscious," Chyll whispered, "and talking."

"Yes, for the moment," Vari nodded, speaking very softly, "but her respiration is getting weaker. There's a lot of internal bleeding. That bullet was a large caliber slug. It didn't just puncture a lung, it shattered ribs and probably nicked her spine too. Shock, paralysis, massive blood loss, and organ damage. All we can do now is just make her comfortable."

Which is exactly what Trinity was doing, and doing well.

"Julian wanted to get away and start a new life with me," Shari said. Her voice was barely above a whisper, her breathing coming in rapid, shallow pants. "A fresh start. He had so many regrets about his old life... how he'd messed up his marriage, and... and about you, how he'd hurt you." She swallowed, licked her lips, and went on, "Trinity, he loved me last, but I think he loved you best."

"Please," her voice rose for a moment, her eyes pleading, and she squeezed Trinity's hand with the last of her strength. "Please, if you loved him, then love his child. Take care of our little Kalita."

Then her hand relaxed, her eyelids fluttered and closed. Her last, fading words were like a quiet exhaled breath: "She's yours now."

Trinity patted the sweat from Shari's cheeks and smoothed the hair back from her forehead, not willing to let her go. She looked up at Vari, who shook his head, then at me.

Tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. "Can I do that?" she asked in a hushed voice. "Can I really take the baby?"

"Yes," I nodded. "It's what Shari wanted."

Ayla stepped forward. "Around here a mother's last wish is sacred. If you're willing to accept the responsibility, then the babe is in your care. But you must be willing."

Trinity was still looking at me, a questioning, uncertain expression on her face. I nodded again, and she turned toward Ayla and held out her arms.

Ayla passed Kalita to her. It made an unforgettable image, one of those scenes that are both strange and sad, and yet somehow perfectly balanced at the same time: Trinity, sitting cross-legged on the blanket, with Shari's now peaceful head in her lap and Kalita in her arms. Trinity's face, always so beautiful, took on an extra glow.

Well....

I let out a deep breath, thinking that life and death don't cut you much slack, but every now and then you get a nugget that makes it all worthwhile. Shari didn't seem to have had much of a chance in life, but in her death she provided Trinity with a life-changing gift. I suppose that over a bottle of Scotch we could debate the meaning of salvation and fate.

But not now.

Yes, for sure this was a touching, tremendously poignant, and moving moment, and at any other time I would have taken longer to be part of it.

But not now

Instead I slowly and quietly slipped backwards, nodding to Chyll and Harolde and Farris.

"Boss," Chyll whispered, "We gotta go find Kelsey, don't we?"

"Yes," I said, looking toward the gate. "There's nothing left for us to do here. Plenty for us to do out there, though."

Farris had packed the jeep with our brief list of supplies: both shotguns and the three Glocks with plenty of ammunition, a pair of binoculars, a few snack bars, and some water. We could have taken the rifles, the AK-47, and Hillen's little pistol, but I left those in the truck with the bodies. There wasn't much ammo left, and besides, I don't trust other peoples' weapons until I have time to check them out – and there was no time for that now.

Alright then. We took a last look at the little group clustered around the blue blanket. I gave a final wave to Trinity; and she gave a little nod in return. Then we were off to the Lodge, Harolde driving with me in the passenger seat, Chyll and Farris in the back.

Yeah. It was an intense scene back there, but it was time to re-focus and look forward. I expected that we'd see a few more tense scenes before the day was out.

Chapter 120: Act of God

Day 15: Monday

The guard walked with Kelsey and Ariama from the Lodge to the cottage, their feet crunching on the gravelly path. He opened the door, ushered them in, then closed it and leaned back, folding his arms and looking bored.

Kelsey waited just inside to let her eyes adjust to the low light. The General and White were still sitting at the side table, while Niles and Bramm were at the larger table off to the right. Colo was nowhere in sight.

Greene was at the front of the room; on the screen behind him was a slide showing the words:

Summary

Success requires established infrastructure for:

Processing raw materials

Producing finished goods

Establishing marketing agreements

Transporting products to sales centers

Even in the dim light Kelsey could see the flushed skin color on his face and lines of strain around his eyes. Had there been an argument?

Greene coughed and tapped the screen with a pointer. "General, you must understand that each one of these items is an enormous, multi-faceted undertaking. It's true that things are moving more slowly than planned, but that's mainly due to Mr. White's failure to get government licenses."

"My failure?" White rose out of his chair and slapped the table. "How can you expect me to get approvals and clearances when my hands are tied? People ask questions, and you won't let me give them answers! If things are behind schedule it's not because of my failure, it's because of your insane paranoia for secrecy."

Greene took a step toward White, pointing his finger and both men started talking, voices raised and belligerent.

But a single word from the General quieted them both.

"Gentlemen," he said, his voice calm but edged with steel, "the Consortium demands only two things: that deadlines will be met, and confidentiality will be maintained. You two are being paid to deliver on those expectations. If you are unable to do so, then we will make the necessary adjustments."

White sat down, wiping sweat from his forehead. Greene stepped back, poured a glass of water from a pitcher at the table, and took a long drink. His hand shook noticeably, spilling a dozen drops onto the floor. Obviously he was worked up about something.

There were two empty chairs, one on either side of Niles. Ariama slid into the one nearer the screen; Kelsey took the other, sitting between Niles and Bramm.

Greene set down the glass and wiped his wet hands on his shirt – another sign of nervousness; he was a fastidious dresser, always careful about appearing neat, trim, and in control. Another cough, then he snatched up the pointer and waved at the bullet list.

"Yes, the commercial progress has been slow, even ground to a halt in some areas, but ultimately those don't mean much until we know the extent of the ore resources and have free access to them. Dr. Stratton went over the Act of God plan. Triggering that will give us the access we need. And Bramm is here to present his findings on the mineral resources."

Kelsey noticed a scatter of papers on the table in front of her, and began surreptitiously looking through them the while Greene was talking. One paper in particular caught her attention.

Main Points **:**

1. The Act of God must rapidly cause death to only selected subjects

2. Death must appear to be due to a dreaded, fast acting disease

3. The actual cause must not be obvious to medical investigators

4. Media coverage will exaggerate the severity of the problem to induce panic and a call for swift action

5. The swift action will involve relocation of the indigenous people

6. The cause of the deaths must be easily eliminated when it has served its purpose

7. No traces can remain

"Act of God?" she thought. "Is that what they call this?" She glanced at Niles and turned up the edge of the paper. He saw it and frowned, but nodded, an uncomfortable look in his eye.

White rose again, still stinging from Greene's criticism. "Even with all the challenges I've had keeping up with the schedule, we haven't missed any go/no-go decision points yet. But how is this so-called Act of God supposed to work after you got rid of Chambers and Poley? I'd call that irresponsible."

"They were the irresponsible ones," said Greene grimly. "And that made removing them necessary."

"Whether irresponsible or necessary," the General broke in, "it was still unfortunate. I wasn't happy to see Julian Chambers and Phil Poley terminated, Mr. Greene. You arranged that without my knowledge or approval. And now we hear that Marley Granger, who did the genetic transformation on Kanja, is gone. Mr. White raises a good point: given those losses, how close are we to starting the action phase of this plan, and what are the chances of success?"

Greene nodded. "Alright, first point: We already have our agent in place at the clinic. He made contact with Dr. Hillen this morning. Hillen was able to give him the toxin we'll use on the doctors, and he passed a pistol on to Hillen."

"Second point: The Kanja fruit shipment sent by Marley Granger arrived yesterday. Colo and his men have already stored them in the Mission lab freezers."

"Third point: Systems are in place to grow more of the modified _Yersinia pestis_ and prepare infected RIDL mosquitoes. All we lack is someone capable of handling that, and now that James Hillen is here, we have that person."

Niles sat, not saying a word, but his guts were churning. With that goddamn Hillen here, he was rapidly becoming unnecessary. So - what to do? Keep quiet and look for a chance to slip out the door with Ariama and Kelsey? And then somehow get away across the lagoon?

Fat chance for that to work. He had a lot of confidence in Ariama, but there were two guards at the doors, and maybe more outside. And Colo and his goons must be around here somewhere.

What else then? It was tempting to just get up and say, _"Well, everybody, it was an interesting project, but my part's done and I can't stand any of you and want to get the Hell out – so I'll be leaving now."_

Very tempting... but not a wise idea.

"Alright," the General said, snapping Niles out of his musing, "and what are the chances of success?"

"They're excellent," Greene answered smoothly. He seemed to be getting his confidence back. "Once we start, there'll be nothing to stop us. Success is guaranteed."

White got up again, shaking his head. "Your success comes at a cost, though, doesn't it? How many of our native tribes need to be sacrificed? These people, after all, are my constituents, and if I can't protect them it'll make me look God-damn bad to my fellow congressmen. I thought we planned to move them, not to kill them."

"Mr. White," Greene said, sounded smug, "you bought into the plan three years ago, and you're either 100% with us or 100% against us. There is no middle ground. But don't worry, very few natives will suffer - they're not our targets. We're aiming for greater visibility."

"Meaning what?" White asked. "Who then?"

Greene smiled. "The Lodge is the only place where television and social media coverage are possible. If we want maximum impact, the outbreak has to strike here. It will begin at the Mission, but quickly move to the Lodge. There are eleven of the Good Sisters at the Mission convent and perhaps two dozen staff and guests here. Unfortunately not many will survive - we intend to keep death rates at nearly 100%. Many of the Lodge guests are high profile, wealthy types, and their deaths will be ultra-newsworthy. But no outside news agencies will be allowed in. We will control all on-line reports, TV coverage, and interviews. Of course, a few of the natives must also be sacrificed - they can't be completely unscathed - and we'll play that up. In a month people will be insisting that we evacuate the area. It'll be perfect."

. "That sounds too easy to believe." White persisted. "The Mission and Lodge have close access to the clinic –people here won't be likely to use Kanja with modern drugs available."

"Well, that would be true," Mr. Greene nodded, "except that on the day when the first batch of Yp-H mosquitos are released, the clinic will cease to function – another news bombshell sure to raise public alarm.

"How d'you plan to do that?"

"With the same drug that was used on Poley. He was a perfect test subject: immediate death, indistinguishable from a heart attack."

He turned to Ariama and shrugged his shoulders. "That's the real reason why I sent you there – to get rid of Poley and to test the drug at the same time. I apologize for not letting you know."

Ariama's eyes smoldered. "You're a sneaky bastard, aren't you? I had no idea you were setting me up to kill him."

He shrugged again. "Being sneaky is often the best – it gets results quickly and quietly. In any case, now that we know the drug works, our agent at the clinic will use it to remove the two doctors - Wayne Gresham and Vari Kulkette. With them gone the rest of the clinic workers will scatter at the first sign of plague."

"So, Mr. White," Greene continued with a grin, "there'll be no medical support available when widespread plague symptoms become serious. The disease will strike with pinpoint accuracy where we want it and when we want it, for as long as we need it to, and we'll provide modified Kanja to everyone. Later, when our selected medical teams arrive, they'll declare a disaster and seal off the entire area. After a suitable time, clean-up teams will come in to deal with the problem, which, of course, will no longer exist due to the short life span of the RIDL mosquitoes. But the outside world won't know that – they'll think that the teams have courageously and successfully eradicated the vectors. We will be heroes... all the more so a few months later when follow-up experts announce the fortuitous discovery of a treasure trove of rare earth elements."

Kelsey couldn't contain herself any longer. She jumped to her feet, snatching another pointer off the table and shaking it menacingly at Greene.

"Perfect test subject! That's all you can say about Phil?"

Greene stepped back in wide-eyed surprise, holding his left arm out in self-defense, but Kelsey turned away from him and glared at the men seated at the side table.

"Murdering the doctors, annihilating everyone at the Mission and the Lodge, then sacrificing a few natives? Do you even listen to yourselves? What kind of warped God-delusion do you all have?"

"No delusions," Greene said smoothly, regaining his poise. "We have a solid plan to create major social and economic change. Consider how fast the rainforests are being decimated now: Can the current state of our countries stop that? No. But suppose instead we sacrifice a thousand square miles now, and in return generate enough benefits that there is no need to destroy more? Future exploitation would stop. Does this come at a cost? Yes, all significant change has a cost. It's a battle, and in every battle lives are lost. That small price will be paid now, but millions of lives will be improved in the future."

Kelsey stared at them, not sure of what to say next. Was there anything that could shake their megalomaniac fantasies? Probably not, so she stood there breathing heavily, but saying nothing. It was the General that broke the silence.

"Ms. Theroux, I understand your anxiety. But you might find it in your best interests to change your mind. Perhaps even join us."

"Join you?" She glared in surprise. "What do you mean by that?"

"You'll see," he nodded pleasantly. "Please take your seat. We have a few items left to discuss."

Kelsey hesitated, still defiant, still slowly waving the pointer, but curious to learn more, and saying anything else now wouldn't do much good. So she shot a glowering look at Niles and dropped back into her chair.

He didn't meet her eye, instead looking at Greene and the General, but seemed to accidently knock the paper that was in front of her – the one with the Act of God table on it – onto the floor. When she reached down and picked it up, she saw that he'd written something on the back.

' _Don't aggravate Greene. He's dangerous. Stay close - we'll look for a way to get out and stop them.'_

What did he mean by that? No way to tell, but she kept a firm grip on the pointer; it might come in handy if she needed to whack someone.

The General was asking another question: "What is the status of the next part of the plan - the mining operations?"

Greene cleared his throat and paused, collecting his thoughts. "All the equipment to set up a first-class geochemical analysis lab has arrived. Everything's boxed up in the Mission lab building. I expect that it will show us –"

"- a goddamn shit-storm," growled Bramm, erupting from his chair and glaring at the group.

Even the usually unflappable Greene was speechless at this outburst. He turned, slack-jawed, and frowned at Bramm. Niles stared, half in surprise and half in amusement; out of the corner of his eye he noticed the guards at the door perk up, ready to take action if Bramm moved any closer to the General.

But he didn't. He stood, hands on hips, glaring around the room.

"Haven't any of you been reading my reports? For the last three months I've been warning of problems. To make certain, I brought a truck-load of deep core samples – the deepest I've collected yet - to the lab this morning. I'd have been half-way through analyzing'em if your clown hadn't dragged me here."

"You'll have time to run your analyses when we're done here," Greene forced a smile, but the smile went no higher than his lips - his eyes were narrowed with anger. "As the General said earlier, this meeting was organized rather hastily. And as far as your reports, I glanced at them and wasn't impressed. If you have anything useful to add, do so now. But try to control yourself."

"Control myself?" Bramm laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You and White are pitiful. You sit here having a jolly discussion about your plans, but neither one of you really knows what it's taken to get this far, or what could happen once you pull the trigger on this thing."

He spat on the floor. "But before you count your billions of dollars, maybe you should find out. The men you mentioned – Julian, Marley, and Phil – weren't saints, but they did damn good work. Without them you'd be nowhere. And what was their reward? When they became inconvenient, you killed'em off. Well, guess what? I'm about to become inconvenient, too."

One of the guards left his post and started forward, reaching for his pistol. But the General raised his hand and said in an even voice, "Gentlemen, relax. Mr. Greene - that will be enough for now. Please take a seat. Mr. Bramm – I've been following your reports very closely. They do not reflect the optimism of Mr. Greene, and have raised some alarm among the Consortium. The financial success of the second part of the project is intended to justify the grimness of the first part. But if that's not the case - if the mining and development operations don't pay off – then the Consortium wants no part of it."

Niles was watching Greene as the General said this. The alarm on Greene face was sudden and intense. What Ariama said last night - about him having a lot at stake on the project - must be true.

But it was White who jumped to his feet and spoke up. "General, Bramm's worries are unjustified. He's lost sight of the enormous upside of our plan. Certainly there are minor costs, but the benefit to cost ratio is enormous, and –"

The General cut him off with an icy stare. "I'm here to listen to facts, not rhetoric. All information is important; especially unpleasant information." He shifted his gaze to Greene, and continued, "Even false information has value – it reveals the hidden agenda of the person delivering it."

Then he nodded at Bramm. "Continue."

While Bramm was walking to the screen and unrolling his map, Niles mind was reeling: This was the first time that he'd seen sharp dissention between White, Greene, and the General. He felt a flicker of hope. Maybe there was a way out, after all.

But it wouldn't be easy, and there'd almost certainly be blood.

After fixing the map to the screen, Bramm closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. When he opened his eyes again, they were calm. "Thank you, General," he said. "Sorry for my outburst, but I was worried that no one was listening to me, and what I have to say is critically important. You must hear it before starting down a path that might have no good ending."

He slapped the map with his index finger, first in one zone marked with red circles, then another. He spoke quickly, tossing out values for percent abundance of each rare earth element and their distributions, both laterally and with depth. He included figures for water tables above and below the surface, and how mining operations would influence runoff into streams that connected with major lakes and rivers. He spoke with confidence and authority, having immersed himself in analyzing the local topography, geology, and especially core samples for the last three years.

After ten minutes of rapid fire talking, Bramm coughed and paused to pick up a glass of water. While he was taking a sip, Greene walked to the map and studied it carefully. After a few seconds he turned and said, "I'm impressed by your work, Bramm, but not by your worries. There are no show stoppers here. Just the opposite, really: your numbers prove that the area holds enormous deposits of the rare earth elements."

Bramm set down his glass and frowned. "Show stoppers? Maybe not, but there are some pretty hefty concerns. First, the deposits go very deep, so extracting them means removing millions of tons of rock. Second, although all of the elements are here in high amounts, one of the highest is Thorium, and that's a very serious problem."

He paused for a moment, waiting for a comment; when it didn't come, he went on, "Thorium is radioactive. Not strongly, and it's got a very long half-life, so small amounts would be no big danger. But it decays to daughter elements that are also radioactive and more dangerous, and in large amounts can be a god-awful mess. The scale of mining here would be immense. If it's not done right, it wouldn't just be wrecking an ecosystem, it could unleash a monster. Once it gets into these waterways... I hate to think of the impact. "

"But this kind of mining is done now, right?" White asked.

"Sure, under careful controls for the environment, for the workers, and for all the downstream processing. But the people running this show," Bramm shook his head, "I don't see them being real concerned about stuff like that. Not out here in the wilderness."

"Not true!" White growled, slapping the table. "So we spend a little more time and money digging deeper, and we generate a bigger pile of rubble than we thought. And then we spend a little more in cleanup - so what? Trivial, compared to what we get back."

Greene was still standing, waving his arm impatiently. "Hold on - this is a positive, not a negative. I'm no scientist, but I know that Thorium can be the principal fuel for new generation nuclear reactors. If we become the world's main source, then that's all the more economic benefit."

Bramm, White, and Greene all started talking at once, but the babble was cut short by the door slamming open and a man rushing in. He made it nearly twenty feet before one of the guards tackled him.

"Wait!" He yelled, "I need to see Colo. They're dead, all dead."

Silence fell across the room like a heavy blanket. The man twisted in the grip of the guard, dusty, sweaty, breathing hard, and looking around the room anxiously.

It was Greene who spoke up. "You're Avro, aren't you?"

The man nodded, "Please... where is Colo?"

"He's not here," the General said, motioning the guard to bring the man forward,

"So, Avro," he went on, "Who do you mean is dead?"

Avro looked around nervously, but said nothing until the guard prodded him with a gun barrel. "Please," he finally blurted out, "I was one of the men Colo sent to the Mission. But there was trouble, and... and now they're all dead."

Greene walked up close to Avro and stared at him. "What are you talking about? Who killed them? Surely not a bunch of nuns?"

"No," Avro pleaded, "no, there were others. They had guns. There was a fight, and my mates were shot. And Doctor Hillen too, all of them - dead."

Greene started to ask more, but the General raised his hand. "Enough for now," he said. "I need to call a time-out. The issues raised by Bramm are a concern, and a shift from the original plan. Our original intent was very clear: create a new economy, based on manufacturing state of the art 21st century finished goods for overseas markets, using rare earth metals. Dealing with mining problems and selling nuclear reactor fuel may not be show stoppers, but they're definitely game changers. I need to go my Lodge room to discuss this with other Consortium members."

As he stood, he looked at Avro, then nodded to Greene, "I expect you to handle this. Figure out what happened and deal with it. Then you and Mr. White sort out how to proceed."

"Yes sir," Greene nodded his head. "Losing Dr. Hillen is a serious blow... but maybe our contingency plan will be useful."

Kelsey noticed that when he said the words 'contingency plan' his eyes shifted to her. What was that about? Before she could ask anything, the General and one of the guards slipped out the side door. The other guard stayed behind, his hand curled around Avro's collar.

Greene turned back to Avro with a rapid series of questions, but Kelsey was only half listening, still thinking about the what 'contingency' might mean.

But her attention was caught when Avro said, "I don't know who they were. Just three men and a girl. We had them trapped in the lab building but they got out and surprised us... and we had no chance."

Greene slapped Avro. "No chance? Then how is it that you survived? You ran away, right?"

"No," Avro pleaded, "I was told to wait at the gate in my jeep; in case they tried to escape. When the fighting was over I came here as fast as I could to tell you... to warn you."

"Warn us?" Greene sneered, "warn us about what?"

"That they're coming here. And if the General doesn't get army men here soon, they will kill all of us, too."

Kelsey turned, looking first at Ariama, then at Niles. "Reid," she whispered, "do you think it could be?"

Niles nodded but his face was grim. This could be the opportunity he needed to get away, but there was danger, too. _Reid must have escaped the Klamath. And now he's coming to save Kelsey. But what will his attitude be about me? If there's going to be a battle, then whichever side wins, it's best if I'm not here when it's over_.

Chapter 121: Crossing

Days 15: Monday

The drive to the Lodge was uneventful, ending up in a clearing next to a mid-sized lake, roughly circular, about a half-mile in diameter. We got out of the jeep and walked toward the edge, but not too close. The Lodge was on an island in the middle of the lake, and we could see people moving around.

I didn't want them seeing us.

"Before the Lodge was built, that island was a special place," Harolde said. "Young boys – and sometimes girls – used to swim across to it as a sign of bravery. They call this lagoon Pirang. It means the color red."

"How's that," Farris asked, "from here the water looks black as ink."

"Piranha," Harolde said with a grim smile. "They turn the water red sometimes – blood red."

"Oh..." Chyll wrinkled her nose. "So then how do we get across?"

"If we went down those steps we could send a signal to the Lodge, and then they'd send a boat over to pick us up. But I'm guessing you don't want that, right Reid?"

"Right," I nodded. "We don't know who's there or where Kelsey's being kept...or even why. There's almost sure to be a few more guys with guns, and they might not be as easy to take as the ones at the Mission. We need to go over to find out what's happening, but let's make it a surprise party."

I turned to Harolde. "Is there any way of getting across without being noticed?"

He thought for a few seconds, then said, "The surest way is to wait until dark. Piranha feed in the daytime, so swimming across at night is pretty safe. The lobby of the Lodge and the boat docks all face toward the front, so if we hike around to the back there's not much chance of being seen. We might even get lucky and find a canoe. There are cabins along the shore near the back of the lagoon; they're probably empty this time of year, but usually there's a canoe or two on the beach nearby."

"Is there a trail?" Farris asked.

"Uhh, yeah," Harolde said with half a smile, "not well maintained, but it goes pretty much all the way around."

"Okay," I said, "let's move the jeep behind these trees - best to keep it out of sight in case anybody else comes here. Then let's get our gear and head out."

Five minutes later we were making our way along a trail of sorts. The brush was thick in spots, and we had no machetes to clear it with; but that was just as well 'cause I didn't want to make a lot of noise and commotion. So we crept along fairly slowly, single file, with Harolde in the lead and me in the back.

We were traveling light – Harolde, Chyll, and I with the Glock pistols stuffed in our belts and Farris with the Benelli shotgun. I also had the backpack with water, snacks, and extra ammo, and carried the binoculars in my hand. About every hundred yards I stopped and scanned the island.

There was no sign of Kelsey, but plenty of other interesting stuff: a dozen or so people along the shore, some hurrying, others strolling arm-in-arm; two young boys fishing off of a wooden platform near the front dock, and next them a small airplane floating on pontoons. It was sleek and expensive looking, with twin engines; probably meant for six people max. There was a guy sitting next to it in a wicker chair, smoking and looking relaxed. He wore dark glasses and carried a pistol in a holster at his belt, and when the kids got too close, he stood up and waved at them to get away. Then he yawned and sat back down, bored but on guard, keeping the plane ready for someone important.

I wondered – Who?

When we reached about half-way around the lagoon the trail opened into a scrubby lawn with an A-frame cabin nearby. I unslung the pack from my back and Chyll started passing out water bottles and snack bars. It was a good place to take a break, and, like Harold had said, there was a canoe propped upside down on wooden blocks near the edge of the water. No way it would fit all four or us - probably it was meant for two people on holiday to float around in with a bottle of wine. And what a spectacularly beautiful place for it – dark water surrounded by tall greenery, blue sky and clear air like we never get in the Bay Area. Vines with yellow flowers and leaves the size of doormats wound around the roof of the cabin. I munched the chocolate, soaking in the beauty and lazily looking through the binoculars for the umpteenth time, when something moving across the water caught my eye.

A boat. It must have left from the dock and was gliding across the water toward the clearing where we had first driven in. There was a group of people waiting there, ready to be picked up and ferried across to the Lodge. When they were clustered together it was impossible to make out individuals, but when they spread out single file to get into the boat I could see four men, one woman, and a kid.

"What the Hell?" The kid was Stevie, and the woman must be Laila. Three of the men were strangers, but the fourth was Varro, who we'd met that morning at the clinic. "Sonofabitch," I muttered as things started clicking in my mind. I'd checked Hillen carefully before we left California last night, and he'd had no gun on him. But in the white lab this morning he pulled that pistol out from his coat pocket, so... Varro? I remembered that look on Varro's face when he walked past me and gave Hillen the stack of towels. The gun must have been stashed in the middle of it.

The goddamn gun that killed Shari.

I should have picked up on it, should have paid more attention to that sly grin. But I'd forgotten about it – too much other stuff going on, and it cost Shari her life.

Damn it and double damn it....

"Harolde!" I hissed, "check this out," and handed him the binocs.

He watched in silence while the boat crossed back to the Lodge dock and the people filed out. Then he handed them back to me and said, "Laila, Stevie, and that dog Colo. I'm going over now."

Colo... the name was familiar. Shari had mentioned him, had said that he'd taken Kelsey from the Mission to the Lodge. And now he had Stevie and Laila.

"Going over now?" Farris sounded surprised, and more than a little concerned. "What was that you said about piranha?"

"You're taking the canoe, right?" Chyll said.

"No," Harolde answered. He was already pulling off his shirt and shoes. "Swimming. We can toss our stuff in the canoe."

He and Farris each took one end and turned it right side up, then carried it to the water and set it in. Farris was careful to stay on shore, but Harolde waded out knee-deep. He pulled the Glock out of his waistband and set it in the canoe, but kept the hunting knife strapped to the belt of his hiking shorts.

Then he looked at us expectantly. "Coming?"

"You seem pretty unconcerned," Chyll said. "So how safe is it, really?"

"It's not that I'm unconcerned, it's more like I'm determined to get over there right away. Piranha are not as dangerous as the horror movies make you think. As long as there's no blood in the water, and we move slowly, we'll be okay. Thrashing around like an injured beast gets their attention and of course the smell of blood will get them really excited. But if we just ease across, we'll be fine. The guns should go in the canoe to keep them dry, and two of you should ride in it. An empty canoe drifting in the water might attract attention from the island but a canoe with two people slowly cruising across is a normal sight. Me and whoever else wants to swim can stay screened behind the canoe. It'll be good cover."

"Sounds like you already thought this out," she said.

"Actually I did it a few times before, as a kid with my mates. We'd sneak across to get food from the Lodge cafeteria. It worked okay then, and nothing much has changed around here, so if we're careful it should work now, too.

I was already stripping off my shirt and shoes. I tossed them and my Glock into the canoe, but, like Harolde, kept the knife tucked in my belt.

Chyll put her hand on my arm and said, "Boss, let me swim – your wound isn't healed and you shouldn't be soaking it in this water... is doesn't look too clean."

"Better if you're in the canoe," Harolde said. "You and Reid or you and Farris... a romantic couple on a lazy boat ride."

"Harolde's right," I said, "my side's tender but not bleeding. And Farris can't be in the water – his arm's still bloody from those cuts he got earlier."

She started to object but I shook my head. "No, Chyll, it's gotta be this way."

"Alright," she nodded, but didn't look happy. "But promise you'll stay right next to us, boss. If you feel something nibbling on you, sing out and we'll drag you in."

"Alright – I promise."

Farris and Chyll climbed into the canoe and Harolde and I pushed it out. By the time we were ten feet from the shore the water was over our heads, and with that dark color, there was no telling how deep it was. We swam slowly, our heads just barely out of the water and making no splashes, keeping the boat between us and the island. Harolde glided smoothly about six feet ahead of me, seeming totally confident, so I tried to put images of piranha stripping a buffalo to the bone in five minutes out of my mind.

But no such luck. The water was colder than I expected - or was that just cold sweat?

I'd estimated the distance to be a little over two hundred yards, maybe two-fifty max. We were aiming for the back of the island, away from the activity near the Lodge, but didn't go straight across; Harolde thought it would be more realistic if the boat meandered a bit. So, given our slow pace, it took us at least ten minutes to get over.

Seemed more like an hour.

Chapter 122: Island

Days 15: Monday

We finally reached the island, and while Harolde and Farris pulled the canoe onto the beach I looked around to get a better view of the area. The foliage was thick but well maintained - low shrubs, mid-sized trees, and lots of vines and flowers with narrow but smooth trails winding around. Compared to the wild bush we'd been hiking through on the other side, this was a lush and cultivated garden. Obviously the island was maintained as a "romantic jungle" for idle lovers – no slithering snakes or creepy tarantulas allowed.

But that didn't mean no two-legged snakes, and when Chyll tossed me one of the Glocks I started up the nearest trail. After a few yards I could see the thatched roof of a cottage not far away. Voices drifted down from somewhere up ahead, one of them sounding a lot like Laila, and she didn't sound happy. The nearby trees made it impossible to see anyone, so I sped up, but even while jogging my bare feet made no noise on the dirt path

And around the next bend there was Varro, just finishing up taking a leak in the bushes. I skidded to a stop and he stared at me in blank-faced surprise for a second or two - but then his eyes went wide with recognition and he took off at an awkward run, pulling up his zipper and yelping at the same time.

If I'd immediately taken off running I might have caught him, but the truth is that I was also surprised, and hesitated just a fraction too long. The trail was twisty but he was exposed for the first few yards and it would have been easy to put a bullet into his back... but I didn't want to do that. He was unarmed, obviously scared, and I had no firm idea if he was dangerous or not. He'd seemed harmless this morning at the Clinic, but then he'd given Hillen that gun, hadn't he? The one that killed Shari?

Indecision and hesitation are two mortal sins in combat, but unless you've got an absolutely clear judgment of who the enemies are and how dangerous they are, it's tough to act without thinking it through. And that takes a little time.

And that leads to hesitation.

So the bottom line is that I didn't pull the trigger, and he got away. But I followed after him, moving fast and also staying alert to anyone else who might be lurking around another corner.

It didn't take long for the trail to open up into a clearing twenty or thirty yards across. At one end a wide path led off toward the Lodge, and at the other end was that cottage. The door was open and someone was just coming out. Varro shoved past him and went through, dragging Laila with him. She pulled back and twisted her arm to get away, but it didn't work and they disappeared inside, the door slamming shut.

There were now four men in the clearing, including the one who'd just come outside. All four had guns raised and were looking around for whatever Varro had been yelling about, but only one of them was talking. He was waving a pistol in his right hand, pointing here and there, directing the others to get behind cover. That must be the one Harolde called Colo. When he turned I could see why he wasn't using his left hand – he had it locked tightly around Stevie, who looked completely bewildered.

Well... not a good situation. There were two ways to approach it:

\- The first was to barge in and hit them now, before they had a chance to get to their cover. If it hadn't been for Stevie being so exposed, I'd like this one, but I didn't want to risk a stray bullet in a heated charge hitting him.

\- The second was for us to fan out, letting them get behind whatever cover they could. But we'd have the advantage of knowing where they were hiding, whereas they hadn't seen us yet and so wouldn't know where we attacked from.

This seemed sensible and prudent, and I turned to whisper the plan to Farris and Harolde, who'd just come up behind me. But I never got the words out; Harolde had seen Varro dragging Laila into the cottage, and cool-headed strategy meant nothing to him.

Instead all Hell broke loose.

He dashed into the clearing firing as he went and emptied a full ammo clip before the baddies even knew what was happening. His first three shots cut down the nearest one, but he was running toward the cottage and the rest of his shots missed, hitting only dirt and tree branches.

But that was enough to throw everything into crazy confusion. Two of the bad guys scrambled for any cover they could get, firing their rifles blindly into the air. Colo recognized Harolde and cursed, but Stevie was shouting and kicking and Colo couldn't get a shot off. That would only last for a few seconds though; after that Harolde would be trapped against the front wall of the cottage while trying to feed a new clip into his Glock, an easy target for a volley of shots.

That's when Farris and I charged out. I'd tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the left, and I went out toward the right. Chyll had shown up just before then, but I motioned for her to stay put. That way she could cover us from behind, and also stay the Hell out of the thick of the action. After all, worrying about Stevie was gut-wrenching enough; I didn't want her getting exposed in a crossfire, too.

I went out fast and low, slanting toward Harolde and firing at the guy crouched behind an overturned picnic table. He got off two or three shots – it was tough to tell exactly how much firing was going on in all the chaos – but my bullets punched through the thin wooden planking of the table top and he dropped the rifle and grabbed his shoulder. That was enough – I didn't need to kill him, just take him out of the action. At about the same time we all heard the Benelli bark its loud roar twice and wood chips scattered into the air from a pile of firewood. The guy who'd been hiding behind that pile tossed out his rifle and stood, arms raised.

I was just thinking that maybe we could get Colo to give up and get Stevie safely away when the window of the cottage shattered and a pistol poked out, firing three-four-five rounds as fast as you could say it.

Whoever was shooting couldn't see much of what was going on out here because the first few bullets all went high, snapping off leaves from the trees, and the next two kicked up dust. None of them came close to hitting anyone, but it amped up the situation just when things were calming down. I rolled away and fired a few shots into the roof just outside of the window. I wanted to let whoever it was know that we were out here and ready, but didn't want to shoot into the cottage; Laila was in there, and who else?

Maybe Kelsey?

From where I rolled I had a good view around the back of the garden fountain, where Colo was crouching. Farris jumped around the far side and had him dead to rights in the sights of his shotgun, but stopped suddenly – Colo had Stevie hugged close to his chest.

Pulling the trigger was not an option. From that close range, the Benelli would have cut Colo in half, but it would have done the same to Stevie. I was glad he didn't fire, but I wish to God he'd jumped aside and let the rest of us close in.

That didn't happen, though. Farris motioned for Colo to toss his gun away and let Stevie go, but he might as well have been trying to reason with the piranha. Colo raised his pistol and fired one shot; Farris's head snapped back... he staggered to the side... and collapsed onto the nearby leaves.

And then Chyll was running past him as I squeezed off two quick shots, aiming for the top of Colo's head so as to avoid Stevie, but at this distance and awkward angle – I was still lying on my back, turned toward the window – good accuracy was impossible.

Harolde had reloaded by now and, as I scrambled up to go toward Farris, he began yelling into the cottage, careful to stay away from the door and out of sight of the window.

Chyll reached Farris just before I did and was bent over him, an anguished look on her face. I knelt down, looking at the neat round hole punched into the center of his forehead. There was only a little blood oozing out, but a red stain growing in the back from the exit wound.

Farris... a good man. Damn good man. This wasn't his fight – he came along just to help, because... well, 'cause he was a damn good man.

"Boss," Chyll said, looking up at me. There was no fear in her eyes, just determination. "One of us needs to get that son of a bitch, and the other needs to break into that little house with Harolde."

I was already on my feet and moving. "Take the Benelli," I called over my shoulder, "and consider the son of a bitch gotten."

Chapter 123: Carnage

Days 15: Monday

The emotions inside the cottage were running beyond fever pitch. The shouting and shots outside had erupted suddenly, out of nowhere, and had ended just as suddenly.

What did it all mean?

Varro, who'd just burst in dragging Laila, was leaning against the wall below the window, wide-eyed and breathing hard, twisting a pistol in his hands.

Bramm fidgeted near the screen, looking nervous and uncertain.

Niles stood a little to the left, arms around Ariama, whose eyes were narrowed in curiosity.

Laila and Kelsey were behind them, hugging. "What is it?" whispered Kelsey. "How did you get here?"

"Colo," Laila panted, tears on her cheeks, "and Varro. They grabbed me and Stevie... he's still out there."

"Stevie, out there?" Kelsey's voice rose from wonder to worry. "Who else? Who's doing the shooting?"

"It has to be Harolde," Laila said, "and Reid. I saw them this morning. They came for you."

Kelsey felt her heart jump. Reid! Here? Now? But they'd only just yesterday... could he be here already?

Mr. White still sat at the little table, but was anything but calm; his eyes were wide and scared and sweat beads dotted his forehead. Greene, arms folded and looking grim, stood near Raul, the guard left behind by the General. Raul was solid, impassive, and armed with a big revolver. "Call the General," Greene urged, "tell him to send more guards. We need to clean up whatever's happening out there."

But Raul was already listening to the ear jack of his phone. "Understood, sir," he said in a low voice, and nodded. He looked up, the one island of calm in the cottage, and slipped the pistol out of his holster.

He smiled at Greene. It was a grim smile. "Yes, the General agrees that it is time to clean up. But he wants to clean up the inside, not just the outside."

Meaning what?" Greene's brow creased into a furrow - he didn't like where this was going.

"Meaning that the time has come to prune a few branches. Some that're no longer necessary, others that got too big for their own good."

White pushed his chair back and tried to rise, but only made it half-way when the first bullet caught him just below the neck, driving him back against the table edge. As he fell sideways a second bullet punctured his heart. Even before he reached the floor, Raul had pivoted halfway around and fired two shots at Bramm, who stumbled backward, hands clutching his upper chest. Kelsey could see blood spurting through his fingers – the aorta must have been severed. Bramm's mouth worked but no sound came out; he slid down the wall to the floor in a sitting position, then rolled sideways and was still.

Without stopping, Raul continued his swing until he faced Niles, who stood open mouthed, paralyzed by what he was seeing.

In the years they'd been meeting here, there'd been hot discussions, arguments, even shouting matches... but this was insane... this was crazy.

And, he realized, this was the reality that he'd bought into... and that reality was staring him in the face. Not staring... pointing, actually. The barrel of Raul's big pistol, that is.

But Ariama stepped between them.

"What the Hell are you doing?" Raul snapped. "Get out of the way."

Instead Ariama folded her arms and shook her head. "No, Raul." Her usual calm self-assurance was gone and her voice quaked with tension, but she stood her ground. "Niles is off-limits to you. If anyone takes him out, it'll be me."

Raul stared at her, jaw clenched and unblinking. "I have orders from the General."

Ariama shook her head again. "The General says only that he must go, not that you have to do it."

Raul's eyes flashed anger, but only briefly. "Alright," he shrugged, "then he's your responsibility. Don't screw it up."

Dismissing them from his mind, he turned toward Greene, almost laughing. "That means you're next, and I don't regret it a bit. I've been standing at that door for three years listening to your yapping, and the more I heard the more I wanted to put a bullet between your bleedin' eyes, just to shut you up. So this'll be a pleasure."

Greene waved his hands and opened his mouth to protest, but no sound came out. The smooth, glib Mister Greene had nothing to say for once - he just backed off, arms raised in self-defense, which would do absolutely no good against a .357 Magnum from six feet away.

He had no chance, none at all....

Except at that moment the middle of the door split open with a tremendous roar. A second and a third roar quickly followed, and the rest of the door dissolved into smoke and splinters.

Before the echoes died away Harolde burst into the room looking left and right; he spotted Laila and Kelsey and noticed two bloody bodies sprawled on the floor. The danger seemed to be coming from the man at the side door with the gun, so Harolde swung his pistol in that direction. But he hadn't looked behind him, and missed seeing Varro crouching at the base of the window.

After a moment of petrified shock, Varro forced himself forward and fired three quick shots. Harolde was moving, the light was dim, and Varro's hand was shaking, so it was no surprise that two of the shots missed completely, punching neat holes in the screen at the front of the room. But the third caught Harolde just below the back of his right knee, and he went down with a crash. Varro leaned in to finish him, but by then Chyll was through the doorway.

She saw everything at once in a snapshot:

Harolde, ten feet away, curled over clutching his leg... Laila twenty feet away, moving toward him, a scream on her lips... Kelsey just behind her, eyes wide and shocked... and Varro slowly but deliberately hovering closer to Harolde, with his gun hand extended. There were others in the background, but they didn't matter; right now the problem was how to stop Varro without hitting Laila and Kelsey, who were directly in the line of fire.

They couldn't be moved out of the line of fire – so the line of fire must be moved away from them.

Without pausing Chyll dived forward, turning in the air, landing on her back and sliding between Harolde and Varro. She was nearly between his feet, looking directly up at him when she pulled the trigger.

The full force of the shotgun caught Varro just below the solar plexus and carried through chest and neck, taking out most of the innards. The blast carried him up and back, splaying him out against the wall, not far from where Bramm's body lay.

The gout of blood that gushed into the air splashed down on Chyll's face and hair, but she ignored it, just a quick backhand swipe with her sleeve to clear her eyes and she rolled to the side to see what else was happening.

There were two men standing near a side door; one was half-kneeling with his arms up and the other was pointing a pistol at him. But the blast of the Benelli had distracted the second man, and his head jerked toward Chyll.

And near them were Niles and a woman who looked a lot like the one in the photo from the safe. Niles was watching the two men, but leaning toward Harolde, like he wanted to jump one way or the other but couldn't decide which.

The woman was already moving though. Varro's pistol was still tumbling and bouncing across the floor toward the far wall; she slid down on her right side, caught it in the air, and spun around in one graceful move.

The man near the door saw what she was doing and turned, swinging his gun toward her in a tight arc – but she got shots off first.

One – two – three times her pistol barked and bucked in her hands. The white shirt of the man at the door puffed three times and three splotches of blood sprang out on his chest. His face looked shocked, in stunned disbelief... and then he collapsed, not all at once, but in parts - knees buckling, shoulders slumping, arms drooping, body folding and falling forward, ending up almost at Niles' feet.

And as he fell, the other man, the one who'd been cowering in fear a few seconds before, sprang up and dashed out the door.

Chyll felt that familiar sensation that came to her every now and then, in which she saw everything and everyone in crystal clarity, but all sound and motion were stopped. Frozen action. She knew that every detail would be etched into her remarkable memory forever.

And then Kelsey was next to her, kneeling and brushing the hair back from her forehead. The mesmerizing spell broke and Chyll sat up.

Kelsey looked at her closely, then hugged her.

"My God, Chyll, I saw all that blood on your face and thought you'd been shot. Tell me – what's going on?"

"I was going to ask you that," Chyll smiled, "we came down here to look for you and ran into this gang with guns. This whole last week's been totally crazy... but we can't talk now – I need to get back out there with Reid."

"Stevie," Laila wailed, "where's Stevie?" She was kneeling next to Harolde, wrapping a towel around his leg.

The towel was turning red too fast...way too fast. Niles came over and knelt down to look.

"He needs a tourniquet," Niles said, "Varro's bullet must've hit an artery. What've we got around here?"

Ariama looked around. "Not much," she said, then "wait – try this." She pulled off Raul's belt and passed it over. While Niles was strapping it around Harolde's leg, Chyll climbed to her feet and headed toward the door.

"Colo ran off," she called over her shoulder. "He's got Stevie with him. Reid went after them. I need to get out and help."

"Wait," Kelsey called, "I'm coming too." She bent down, kissed Harolde on the cheek, and gave Niles a hard look. "You'll take care of him?"

"Yes," Niles nodded, "yes, I promise."

After a quick squeeze on Laila's shoulder, Kelsey bolted out the door after Chyll.

Niles finished securing the belt, using the barrel of Varro's pistol to twist it tight enough to cut off blood flow. "Okay, that's a temporary fix, but he needs a doctor. Someone's got to get inside that wound and see what the damage is."

"There's a nurse and an ER station at the Lodge," Ariama said. "She's not an MD, but skilled enough for emergencies. She'll be able to handle it until we can get someone from the Layard out here."

"I'll go get her," Niles said. "You stay here with Laila. Don't forget to loosen the tourniquet for a few seconds every three or four minutes."

Ariama shook her head. "Let me go. Greene is out there, and maybe some of Colo's other creeps, too. If they see you...."

"No," Niles insisted, "Stay here and protect Laila and Harolde. You may know guns, but I've been going through swamps and jungles day or night for twenty five years. I think I can slip over to the Lodge without being seen."

She could have argued more, but why? There was no time – Harolde needed help now – so she nodded, kissed him hard on the lips, and whispered, "Be careful."

"And be fast," Laila added.

Niles smiled and was out the door, moving quickly in a slant toward the wood pile. As he went he looked left, right, back, and front. There was a man lying in the dirt with a bullet hole in his forehead, and two more on the other side of the clearing, but no sign of Greene or anyone else.

Okay then – to the Lodge.

Chapter 124: Red Lagoon

Days 15: Monday

Colo moved fast but awkwardly, dragging Stevie by the arm, and reached the floating dock a few seconds before I did. The wood planking was wet and slippery making him half slide, half run to get across. He was waving and shouting to the guard inside the plane, but the guy in there was intent on revving the engines and didn't pay any attention. With the roar he probably couldn't hear us. He might've seen us - we were only a few feet away – but with his dark glasses and impassive face it was impossible to be sure.

When I jumped from the walkway onto the wooded platform Colo was reaching up to tap his pistol on the windscreen. The platform rocked back and forth as I landed and that gave Stevie a chance to wriggle free. In a flash he pulled loose and dashed away, eyes wide and mouth open. Colo twisted around to grab for him, then saw me and froze. That didn't last long; with a snarl he swung his pistol toward me, but with the rocking platform couldn't keep a good balance and his shot went wide.

He dropped to one knee and put his left hand onto the deck to steady himself, then raised the pistol for another shot, and I did the only things I could: the first was to sweep Stevie off of the platform and onto the walkway with my left arm, and the second... well, I knew my Glock was empty, so I threw it. Now I hate – repeat hate – throwing a pistol; it grates against my senses to treat a finely crafted tool like a rock, but this was a life or death moment.

Or maybe not like a rock... more like a baseball. Colo was squatting there kind of like a catcher, and I hurled my Glock like I was still on the Rivercats and this was a dead heat fastball for the final strike. He raised his right arm – the one holding his pistol – to protect his face and the Glock caught him in the wrist, then glanced off and nicked him in the temple before banging on the side of the plane and splashing into the water. He yelped "Goddamn!" and reached his hand up to check his bloody forehead – a mistake; better for him to have focused on drilling me with his pistol. But he didn't and so when I leapt at him he couldn't get another shot off.

Instead we tumbled toward the back of the platform - my left leg ended up dangling over the edge. His breath was raspy and smelled like old tobacco and beer. I had the size advantage but he was surprisingly strong and still had that gun. I got a good grip on his neck with one hand and a loose grip on his right forearm with the other, and leaned my weight on him. I wanted to subdue him, not kill him... at least, not yet, since I still didn't know where Kelsey was and he should be able to tell me. But he thrashed around, twisting and kicking, and managed to whack hard me in the ribs with the barrel of his gun, scraping it back and forth across the stitches and ripping them open.

The bandage had come off while we were swimming across the lagoon, so there was no protection, and Damn! – Hot needles of pain zinged through my ribcage, I grimaced, and my grip on him slipped. He hit the same place hard a second time, spit in my ear, and began to slither away from under me. Then he wrenched his arm free and shifted the pistol around toward my face. I was able to knock it aside as he pulled the trigger, so the shot missed but the blast rang in my ears like my head was inside a church bell.

He rolled to the side and got halfway up, breathing hard and raising his pistol. I dropped down on my left shoulder and kicked out hard and my right heel caught him under the chin. The pistol flew out of his hand, skittering across the wooden deck into the water as he lurched back, slamming into the side of the plane. I got to my feet and we stared at each other. The guy in the cockpit had his sunglasses off now and was glaring at us, acting like he didn't care what we did to each other as long as we didn't mess with his plane.

Well to Hell with him....

Colo coughed and spat a bloody tooth into the water, so the kick must have done some damage. The he growled something in a low voice and pulled a knife from his pants pocket. It had a four-inch switch blade with a dangerously sharp point, but was meant for stabbing, not slicing, and that limited its use in a fight. Still, he was athletic and knew how to brawl, so it was a damn tricky situation.

I pulled the hunting knife out of my belt and held it up for him to see – a nine inch double edged blade of high chromium steel, sharp enough to shave the glue off of a postage stamp – then dropped into a crouch and started moving toward him. The plane was on his left side and the end of the deck no more than a foot behind him; he had nowhere to go and I could read the fear in his eyes.

"Give it up, Colo," I said, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded. "I don't really want to kill you... I mean, I do – but if you tell me where Kelsey is, then you just might get away."

"Kelsey? Bloody Hell! I thought you were here to stop the Project... but you came for her?" He broke into a grin and started to laugh, and that made more blood drip onto his lips, so he stopped and spat into the water again. "You must be that big bad agent from California she's been fucking. Yeah, I heard about you from Hillen. You're supposed to be dead."

"Didn't happen, huh," I grinned in return. "Forget it, Colo – just drop that little slum sticker and talk. Then maybe I won't feed your balls to the piranha."

I kept edging closer as I talked, wanting to keep the pressure on him. He slipped back as I came forward, and his heels were now halfway over the edge.

"Last chance," I said. "What's it going to be? You ought to start talking while you still have a throat left."

"Fuck you," he snarled. "The General's almost here and if I don't kill you then he will, so you got no escape. But I'm gonna do it first – he'll like that - then I'm gonna take care of your bitch Kelsey."

He stood there, glaring and growling, getting his courage up for a charge while I slowly moved even closer, both of us weaving little figure-eight patterns in the air with our knives.

I was watching his eyes though, not his knife. He wasn't going to throw it and was still a bit too far away to reach me, so why keep track of his damn knife? His eyes though... they would tell me when he was going to make his move.

And there it was: the faint flaring of his nostrils, the fractional widening of his eyes, the subtle change in breathing... and he came at me. Not directly though: first a fake to my right side, a quick jump to the left, then a leap to come in close with a quick thrust. I was ready for him though, and turned sideways fast, catching his right forearm and pulling him in as I slashed across his midsection with my knife. His shirt parted like wet paper and a foot-long line of blood sprung out underneath it.

He was sweaty and slippery though, and slid right out of my grip. His momentum carried him all the way around and he slammed into the plane again, this time face first.

With a groan he rolled sideways and leaned back, looking like a mess. Blood was running from the gash in his forehead, blood was smeared over his chin, and more blood was dripping across his stomach. Even his knuckles were bloody – he must have scraped them on the raw wood when we were rolling on the deck.

.

His breath was getting ragged and the first signs of defeat were starting to show – slumped shoulders, arms dangling loosely, mouth open, a pained look on his face. He looked ready to give up, but the door of the plane creaked open right then and we heard loud footsteps on the walkway. I chanced a quick peek over my shoulder; two people were almost at the dock, and their arrival seemed to give Colo a spark of renewed strength.

He straightened up and spat at my feet, then crouched and placed one foot against the plane. I could see it coming and held out my hand to tell him not to try it, but before I could say anything he launched himself at me with whatever power he had left.

It was a desperate move, but he wasn't going to quit, and I almost admired his grit. Almost... but watching the blood on his mouth reminded me of the bloody foam bubbling up onto Shari's lips, and then I thought about him gunning down Farris.

Desperate or not, though, his charge was effective. I still had my left hand out and the point of his switch blade caught my palm and went right through. But as he came close I lashed out, though not with my blade. My right hand was wrapped around my knife handle and I slugged him hard – really hard – in the jaw. If you've ever wrapped your fist around a roll of coins or a metal pipe, you know that your punch packs a Helluva a lot more wallop.

This was like that. I leaned into the punch and drove into him, feeling bone crunch under the impact. The force lifted him off his feet, into the air, and carried him off the deck into the water.

The lagoon water... Pirang, the red lagoon.

Colo hit, went under, and came up, coughing and half-choking on the water and his own blood. He floated about ten feet away from the dock, glaring at me, in no hurry to come back. The dazed look in his eyes told me that he'd had enough of the fight and was willing to wait for the guys with pistols and sunglasses to get involved. He coughed up more blood, spit out another tooth and started to swear at me, but that changed to a yelp and he slapped at something... then yelped again and spun around in a panic, splashing and kicking frantically.

The water suddenly went crazy - changing from flat and placid to a roiling, feverish, noisy maelstrom in seconds. Colo gurgled and disappeared under the surface, and the churning foam shifted from white to pink.

He didn't come up again.

Holy Christ Almighty... I've seen things before that would curl your guts into a knot - but this was over the top.

My energy was drained and I sat down, feeling all of the cuts, scrapes, bruises, and broken bones of the last week, then noticed that Colo's switchblade was still sticking through the palm of my left hand. I pulled it out, tossed it aside, and applied pressure with the thumb and fingers of my right hand to slow the bleeding. But I wasn't really paying it much attention; my eyes were fixed on the scummy foam flecked with red drifting in the choppy water, and my ears were listening to the people who'd just arrived.

"We're ready for takeoff at your command, General." It was the guard who'd been sitting in the plane revving the engines. Who was he talking to?

It took an effort, but I pulled my eyes away from the lagoon and turned to see who they were. The first looked like twin of the guy in the plane - same dark glasses, white shirt, and gun hanging off of a thick black belt. But the second one - the one the guard called the General – was different. He walked casually toward the edge of the dock, watching the water with an unconcerned eye. He had a certain presence, an air of authority, like a grim version of Kirk Halliday.

"Horrid creatures," he said with a slight smile. "You know, once they get into a feeding frenzy like that, they attack each other as much as the victim. Half the blood you see is their own. Of course, the other half is the poor son of a bitch... in this case Colo."

He shrugged his shoulders and went on, "I wonder though..." then turned his piercing gaze toward me, making a subtle wave with his right hand. Immediately the two guards drew their pistols and leveled them at me.

"Yes, I wonder if they've eaten their fill, or if they have room for more."

The dock was rocking again. Someone else had climbed on, and light footsteps padded toward me. The General gaze shifted from me to whoever was approaching , and his mouth curled into a small smile.

"They got plenty of room," a familiar voice said, "maybe even for three more."

I glanced back but already knew who it was: Chyll, of course, with her face, hair, and shirt smeared with blood, and the Benelli shotgun aimed directly at the General.

Chapter 125: Drifting in the Wind

Days 15: Monday

Without taking her eyes off of the men at the plane, Chyll leaned down and whispered, "I'm here, boss."

I reached up and gave her arm a little squeeze. Having strong support was great, but I wished that it was Harolde instead. My stomach knotted up a bit at Chyll being exposed to this. She was just an inexperienced kid, right?

Wrong.

The General took a step forward and cast a critical eye, starting at her head and slowly moving down to her feet, then back up again, pausing each way to look closely at the Benelli. And what did he see? – A five foot-three inch slender wisp, a blood smeared ragamuffin, yes; but he also saw the casual confidence in her stance, her unwavering grip on the shotgun, and the steely shine in her eyes when she met his gaze, unblinking, unwavering, and ready.

Especially ready. For anything.

His smile broadened and he nodded, looking almost pleased. "Young lady," he said, "are you quite certain that you want to threaten us with that shotgun? I need only raise my hand and a second later my guards would cut both of you down."

Chyll smiled back. "I respect that, but consider this: Double ought buckshot in three and a half inch shells, muzzle velocity 1200 feet per second. By the time your guards got me, most of you'd be welded into the side of your plane. The rest of you would be a bloody mist, drifting in the wind."

It wasn't just what she said... it was the way she said it – no tension, no dark tones; almost casual, really, even with a touch of humor, standing there with blood streaks on her cheeks, her arms, even matting her hair.

Even the General picked up on it, and he barked a quick laugh. "Damn! You remind me of a young Ariama. Where is she now? And Raul?"

The dock rocked a bit again, and a new voice spoke up.

"Dead, both of them. Bramm and White and Niles too. Greene got away."

I recognized Kelsey voice, and a cool inner sense of relief burst through me. Cuts, scrapes, and breaks – even my bloody left palm – faded, and the knotted muscles in my back relaxed; and then she was next to me, kneeling down, arms around my shoulders, kissing my cheek.

"You're saying that Ariama died, but _you_ escaped?" The General sounded unconvinced.

"Raul and Varro were firing their pistols... then Harolde and Chyll came in... bullets were flying everywhere," Kelsey said, sounding tired. "I hid under a table. Ariama was caught in the open, trying to protect Niles."

"Ah," the General nodded, then shook his head. "A pity, if it's true. But somehow I have my doubts - Ariama has a talent for surviving... and deception."

"Why did Raul do that?" Kelsey asked, an accusing edge to her voice. "We were listening to the fighting outside, then without warning he drew his gun and started shooting. I think he meant to kill everyone."

"Not everyone," the General shook his head. "Not you or other innocents. I was actually quite pleased with Dr. Stratton's results, but the business side of the project had become fragmented and far behind schedule due to Mr. White's inefficiencies. He and Mr. Greene made a poor team and the project seemed doomed to failure. Even so, things may have paid off, but then there were the concerns raised by Bramm."

He shook his head and shrugged. "It was time to pull the plug, and when projects close down, accounts must be terminated. Losses are to be expected."

He motioned to the guards and they holstered their pistols. One of them went into the plane to get the engines running again, and the other began loosening the cables that tied the plane to the wooden pylons.

The General turned back toward us. "You see, I represent a loosely bound but very ambitious coalition of powerful individuals – the Consortium. We have various grand plans; this was one of them, one of the grander and more ambitious, but not the only one. We wanted very much for this one to succeed. But there is one thing we want more, and that is secrecy. If a plan – no matter how grand - fails, but the Consortium remains anonymous, then we move on to other ventures. But if a plan were to fail and our involvement in it were to be known, there would be Hell to pay. Failure is merely an expensive error, and expense means very little. Money, in itself, means very little. It is the power that money brings that is the real pleasure. That's the real game of life, and exposure and loss of anonymity would knock us out of the game. I can't allow that to happen."

He looked toward the island, nodding and speaking softly, as if to himself. "Now, with Bramm, White, Niles, Hillen, and Colo gone, we've removed most of the links with enough knowledge and credibility to expose the Consortium. We'll have to do something about Greene, of course. Can't have him running around loose."

Having Chyll and Kelsey nearby had restored some of my strength, and I stood, casually holding my knife. The situation was still full of unknowns, and I wasn't sure what the General's next steps would be.

"So you don't see us a threat needing removal?" I felt pretty confident about being able to take out one of the guards. If Chyll and her shotgun could take remove of the General, that would leave only the guard inside the plane. It would be a tight go, and we'd have to time it right, but I liked our chances.

Turned out, though, we didn't need it.

The General looked directly at me, seeming to read my mind. "Within a week," he said, "teams from the Salvata base will dismantle most of the Mission lab and clean up the boreholes. When it comes right down to it, really very few people outside of the Convent, the Lodge, and the Layard Clinic have directly witnessed anything, and in a short time they will forget or ignore what they've seen. In any case, the outside world won't believe whatever people here may tell them. We don't take lives unless necessary, and, anyway, I like the three of you."

His eyes actually twinkled when he looked at Chyll. "Particularly you, young lady. In... let's say a year or two, I might have a position open for you. I'll check with you at that time."

She started to say something but he held up his hand. "Don't be surprised. I know who you are, and where to find you. All of you." His gaze moved back to me and he went on, "You most of all, Reid Durham. Dr. Hillen sent word last week, about how you were digging around the project. The Consortium has contacts almost everywhere, and I had some of these sources find out about you and this Halliday group. Most impressive record you have. So when Marley Granger failed to remove you, we weren't surprised."

His eyes brushed over the Benelli in Chyll's hands and rested on the knife in mine. And he nodded. "Knowing what I do about you, and seeing how you handled Colo, I have no doubt that you could kill us all, even though I have two armed guards. But that would give you momentary safety, at best. As I said, the Consortium has contacts almost everywhere."

He turned and walked to the door of the plane, but when he was halfway through, he looked back at us.

"You're on our radar," he said, "just as I must be on yours. Better for all of us if we just go our own ways, and let the future unroll as it inevitably must. Goodbye for now."

The guard followed him inside, pulling the door closed as the motors revved and the plane eased away from the dock. They drove slowly to the far end of the lagoon, then turned, paused briefly, and accelerated across the water. It took several hundred yards - most of the half-mile width of the lagoon – but they rose gracefully into the air, circled around twice to gain altitude, and then cruised over the tree tops and away.

Stevie was back on the dock by then, jumping up and down excitedly. I hoisted him onto my shoulders and we walked back toward the cottage, my right arm around Kelsey and my left around Chyll.

It'd been a Goddamn grim day, but we'd mostly survived, and as we made our way up the wooden pier I felt about as content as a man could be.

Chapter 126: Outcome

Days 15: Monday

Four hours later we were gathered in the Clinic cafeteria, having a simple but warm meal and taking inventory of our situation.

Getting here from the Lodge had been slow and arduous, starting with our return to the cottage. Harolde was sitting outside on a chair with his leg loosely wrapped in a towel and propped up on the wood pile. The Lodge nurse had managed to stop the bleeding; she said that the bullet had gone through his calf with minimal tissue damage, but the tibia was broken. It must've hurt like Hell, but only sign of strain he showed was a slight crinkling around the corners of his eyes.

Farris' body, covered in a cotton sheet, was a few feet away, but all other signs of the battle were gone. After giving Harolde a pat on the shoulder we went through the cottage door – or rather the space where the door used to be. There were fragments of wood dangling from the hinges, but the rest of it was a ragged hole. I glanced at Chyll; she just tapped the Benelli and nodded.

The inside was surprisingly clean. I'd expected a charnel house of bloody corpses strewn around, but instead found three of the Lodge cleaning staff washing down the walls and floor with a soapy disinfectant solution. Furniture was neatly stacked against the far wall and no bodies were in sight. Apparently there'd be no investigation by the local authorities, but that wasn't the surprise - the General said things would be cleaned up and people would forget what they'd seen. The surprise was how fast he'd set the wheels in motion.

"How many died in here?" I asked.

Kelsey answered, "Four. Raul, the General's guard, shot White - a politico, and Bramm, who was geologist working on the project. Then Raul was shot by Ariama. She's the one whose picture you sent me, the one who's with Niles. She's also the one who killed Julian and Phil, but you know, I don't blame her. Actually, I like her."

Well... I'd have to figure that one out later.

"Didn't you tell the General that she was dead? Her and Niles both?"

"Yeah, that's what we want him to believe. Ariama and Niles need to get away, far away. I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about Niles. I used to love him as a second father. Then lately I feared him as an enemy. It's complicated, but I want them to have a chance to work out what to do with the rest of their lives, without the Consortium finding them."

I kissed her cheek and smiled. "When I came down here, I thought we'd have to take Niles out to save you. But if you're willing to forgive and... well, not exactly to forget, but at least to let it go... then I am too."

"So -" I looked around the room, "you said there were four killed?"

"Yes," she nodded, "the fourth was Varro. He was one of Colo's men."

"Ah, the one who was at the Clinic?"

"Right. He's also the one who shot Harolde from behind."

"And how'd he die?"

Kelsey didn't say anything; instead she glanced at Chyll. Chyll just nodded and said, "He got spread around the room. That's why the cleaning ladies are scrubbing down the floor and that side wall."

Okay.....

There wasn't much else to see in there, so we went back outside and asked the nurse where the bodies were.

She shrugged. "In one of the Lodge refrigerator rooms. A helicopter from Salvata will arrive soon to collect them."

"Who set that up?" I asked. Not that I really cared what happened to their bodies; it's just that I wanted to know who was the Consortium contact organizing this clean-up.

She spread her hands and shrugged again. "Sorry, I can't tell you anything more. Look, it's best if you all get moving. Your friend here needs medical help, and you should get your own cuts cleaned and bandaged."

Then she looked at Chyll and smiled. "And what happened to you, young lady? With all that blood on your face and hair I'm surprised you can even walk."

Chyll shook her head. "No, it's okay. None of it is mine."

"None..." the nurse started to say, then looked down at the shotgun Chyll was carrying. Her lips tightened, she cleared her throat, and said, "Well, then maybe a good hot shower and lots of soap."

A babble of voices floated down from the path behind her and a few seconds later two boys from the Lodge came around the corner. One was pushing a wheelchair and the other was giggling and riding in it.

"Okay, good," the nurse said, sounding relieved to be done with us. "Now we can get your friend up to the dock and over to the Clinic."

* * * * * * *

And that's what happened. It was a balancing act to get Harolde, the wheelchair, and Farris's body across the lagoon in the little boat, but we managed it in two trips with the help of the boys. We needed two jeeps to get us all to the Clinic, the nurse driving a large one belonging to the Lodge and Kelsey driving ours.

Vari, Trinity, Kalita, and Taz were already there, and Wayne had just finished patching up Taz's shoulder. When they saw Harolde, Vari moved him into their surgery room and got to work, assisted by the Lodge nurse.

After two hours everything was done and people were resting. I'd been washed, stitched, and lathered with antibiotic cream. Chyll had scrubbed off the blood and gory bits, and now looked clean and bright. Kelsey had washed up too, but looked tired, and... well, wonderful.

In the cafeteria, the three of us were sitting with Wayne, having chicken lentil soup and muffins, surrounded by an almost unreal sense of calm.

Had it really been just this morning that we'd flown in here?

Had it really been just four days ago that I'd gone over the cliff at the Klamath?

Had it really been just two weeks since this whole thing started up at Grant Lake?

I looked at Kelsey, sitting just to my right. It'd been just twelve days since we'd met at my first visit to the Waxman, and now I couldn't imagine life without her. Then I looked across the table and met Chyll's steady gaze. She smiled as sweetly as ever, but those clear, dark eyes had seen a lot this last week, and the experience had been transformative for her. What direction would her life take after this?

The soup was good but I had little appetite. After all that happened today, it seemed strange to be peacefully sitting here eating. More than just strange; it felt out of place... almost insulting to those who'd died, especially Shari and Farris. I set down my spoon and looked out the window, letting my eyes wander around the grounds and my attention drift aimlessly.

From our table there was a good view of the north gate, and I noticed a jeep slowly driving in. As it came closer I could see luggage bags in the back and Ariama and Niles in the front.

They stopped near the cabins, got out, and walked around the grounds, arm in arm, chatting and looking at ease. A minute or two later they reached the cafeteria and came through the door.

Niles hesitated when he spotted us, then took a deep breath, exhaled, and came toward our table. Kelsey got up and went to meet them, nodding a hello to Niles and giving Ariama a hug.

But Niles had his eyes on me and came closer, stopping a few feet away.

"May we sit for a minute?"

I nodded. "Sure. Grab a coffee or tea if you'd like."

"No thanks," he shook his head. "Maybe on the way out. We won't stay long, but before we leave I want to see to all of you, and to find out how Harolde is doing."

He clearly wanted to say more, but seemed uncertain of where to start. Kelsey and Ariama got to the table just then and sat down. It was one of those times when people look at each other expectantly, but nobody talks.

After five seconds Wayne coughed softy. "Harolde is doing fine, resting in bed right now. Vari cleaned the wound and stabilized the broken bone. We'll wait a day before putting a cast on his leg. It'll be one of the new soft casts that can be put on and taken off easily. In two days he'll be walking with a cane, and in a week he'll be in rehab."

"What about the all that blood?" Niles asked. "I thought the bullet sliced through an artery."

"No," Wayne said, "that wasn't it. Harolde's been taking blood thinners for years, because he's a high risk for stroke or heart attack. That's why there was so much bleeding. The nurse at the Lodge picked up on that right away. She took off the tourniquet and wrapped his wound with a Thrombin patch."

Chyll nudged me. "Boss – that's what Russ Keynes and Dr. Lund told you about, right? About how Thrombin is the enzyme that makes blood clot and how blood thinners mess that up? So if a person on those thinners gets a bad cut they bleed like crazy... but you can save them by putting Thrombin on the cut."

Actually I'd mostly – not totally, but mostly – forgotten about that. But Chyll, you know, remembers everything.

Wayne looked at her and smiled. "That's right, exactly. The point is, the nurse was able to control the bleeding and probably saved his leg. She did a damn good job. I expect he'll have a complete recovery."

Niles let out the breath he'd been holding and sat back in his chair. The tenseness in his face relaxed a bit. "Thank God," he said, "and what about Stevie and Laila? How're they?"

"Fine," Kelsey said. "They're in the cabin now, helping Trinity get Kalita a bath and into bed."

Niles' eyes widened in surprise. "Trinity's here? And who is Kalita?"

I gave him a brief rundown on what happened at the Mission this morning and how Shari had given Kalita to Trinity with her dying breath.

"I'm truly, truly sorry about Shari," he said with a grimace, "but the thought of Trinity with a young baby seems so strange. I hope she can handle it."

"She can," Chyll said, sounding emphatic, "and will. I'm certain of that. Trinity is a loving and honest person, and my friend."

Niles looked at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "That doesn't sound like the Trinity I worked with, but maybe I was so blinded by this project that I never took the time to really get to know her."

"Same here," Kelsey admitted. "To me she was a rival whose beauty I could never match, and to her I was a rival who'd stolen her man. We had some time today to finally be honest with each other, and I agree with Chyll. Trinity won't be going back to California. She wants to stay here, work at the Clinic, and raise children with Dr. Vari."

"Wow..." Niles rubbed his chin and smiled. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. She's had a rough go of it emotionally, and deserves whatever happiness she can find."

"So what about you?" Wayne asked. "Heading back to the Waxman?"

Niles looked at Ariama and smiled, then answered. "No, that chapter of my life is over. It's off to a new beginning, like with Trinity. Except that I'm fifty-four years old."

Wayne laughed. "Well, if you can find Grant, he might be able to help you there. Fifty years doesn't seem to mean much to him."

"Yeah," Niles said, more seriously. "I've been thinking about that."

"Niles," Kelsey asked, "Are you really leaving the Waxman?"

"Absolutely. I'm going to contact Victor and have him pack and store whatever's in my office. It'll need to be cleaned out for you."

"For me?"

"Yes," he nodded, "I'm making a formal nomination to the Waxman Board for you to take over as the Department Chair. With Julian, Phil, and me gone, you'll have a chance to hire whoever you want and build a new department. I think you're the perfect person to do it."

Kelsey actually blushed and started to say something, but he added, "Please, not now. We can discuss the details later."

Then he ran a hand through his hair and shifted a bit uncomfortably in his chair. He looked first at Chyll, then at me, and said, "The other important reason I came here is to see you two."

Wayne pushed back his chair and stood. "This sounds like a good time for me to go for drinks. Anybody for coffee or tea? Or wine?"

We all agreed that tea and a bottle of wine would be great. Ariama said that she would help but he waved the idea away. "No, no. I'll be glad to do it. You have things to talk about."

While Wayne went toward the wine rack in the next room, Niles turned to me and held out his hand. As we shook he said, "Thanks. Last week I wanted you dead. Dead, because I was worried that you were finding out too much about the project, and I was scared of what the Consortium could do to me. I think in my heart I knew that failure was inevitable and I was dragging Marley, Trinity, and maybe even Kelsey down with me, just like Julian and Phil. I was nearly panicked, and couldn't see any way out."

"For a long time, being on this project was like speeding down a one-way track, pushed from behind by fear and pulled from the front by the lure of riches. Phil's death, though, was a wakeup call, and then the ordeal at the Klamath River... slapping Trinity, urging Marley to kill you... and maybe even you too, Chyll. I felt powerless to stop and yet I hated myself at the same time. But yesterday, when Colo was about to shoot Kelsey, I couldn't take anymore. I had to do something."

Ariama spoke up then. I really hadn't heard her say much before. She had a pleasant voice with a slight accent and good diction, like she'd been to a formal girl's school as a kid. "Niles saved your life yesterday, Kelsey. It was when you were swimming across the lagoon. Colo was shooting at you, aiming to just wound you and let the piranha do the rest. Niles knocked the gun out of Colo's hand, and knocked Colo over too."

She turned toward each of us, pausing to look deep into our eyes – then went on, "Life gives us chances to be a hero and also chances to cave in and be a coward. God knows that I've taken advantage of the chances on both sides. But then, doesn't everyone? Niles isn't perfect, but he's a Hell of a man and I love him. I'm far from perfect, and he loves me. If we stay together, our life may not be perfect, but it's got a great chance of being good, and that's all we can ask."

Niles smiled at Kelsey, then looked at me. "'Last night Ariama and I had a heart-to-heart talk, and realized that we both wanted to get out. We weren't sure how, though. The only certainty was that there would be violence, but we made the decision to find a way."

"Then you showed up today and gave us a new chance. But it came at a steep price. Shari and Farris killed, Harolde seriously wounded, you and Taz injured. I can't ever repay that debt, but I'll do whatever I can, anytime, whatever you ask. But first, we need to disappear from the Consortium."

After a moment of silence, Kelsey asked, "Where will you go?"

"To the river, for starters," Niles answered quickly. "We'll catch a boat and go downstream a hundred miles... or a thousand miles. Maybe we'll try to find Grant – I'd like to see him again. And then - who knows? The world is shrinking, but I hope it's still big enough for us to drop off the grid and find peace."

"But not tonight!" It was Wayne, returning with a tray of glasses and two bottles of red wine. "You'll stay here. We have empty cabins, and it's too late to catch a boat on the river. Tomorrow will be your new beginning. Tonight you spend with old friends."

The wine was good and the conversation better, but we were all tired and didn't finish even the first bottle.

* * * * * * *

Kelsey and I shared a shower and slept early, although I woke in the night and lay there with my right hand resting on her hip, listening to her breathing. The faraway coos and hoots may have been monkeys or strange birds - I couldn't tell – but there'd be plenty of chances to find out, since I wasn't planning on leaving anytime soon.

It turned out I was wrong about that.

The next morning we were awake early. Kelsey said this was the best time of day for a walk, and besides, Stevie was already up and busting to go running around with his little monkey friend. So we hauled ourselves out of bed – reluctantly – and got cleaned up, but it took me longer than usual to actually get moving. All the nicks, stabs, and scrapes I'd accumulated lately were sore and my muscles needed extra stretching to get warm and limbered up.

But finally we made it over to the cafeteria, got a mouthful of scrambled eggs and coffee, and started our stroll around the grounds. Stevie and Muru were prancing and jumping in the grass while Kelsey pointed out this and that, or stopped to introduce me to friends. When we reached the open field near the lake, we saw Gil sitting in the pilot's seat of the plane. He was wearing headphones and talking to someone.

He noticed us, took of the headphones, and waved for us to come over..

"Morning," he said, climbing out the plane door. "I was just talking to Mr. Mars."

Kelsey looked surprised. "You get reception here?"

"I do," he nodded. "Mr. Mars equipped this plane for almost anything. It has access to military communication satellites that aren't available to most civilians."

"So," I said, "you told him about Farris?"

"Yeah. He was pretty upset, but understood. Farris has been with Mr. Mars for more than ten years, but was always independent minded and a risk-taker. Hell, all of us are, or we wouldn't be in this business."

He scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot and went on. "Anyway, Mr. Mars wants us to bring Farris back for burial, and well... he wants his plane back, too. Don't forget, this is a new design. Some of the features haven't been patented yet, and he doesn't want it to fall into any competitor's hands."

"You want to bring Farris back for burial?" Kelsey sounded skeptical. "We don't have any embalming capability here. How will you store the body?"

Gil shrugged. "The plane has an environmentally controlled chamber below the seating area. It can hold the temperature anywhere from minus twenty to plus sixty Celsius. It's meant for transporting medicines, food, biological and geological specimens, reactive chemicals... that sort of stuff. I think we can fit Farris in there."

I could see where this was going, but had to ask the question anyway.

"That all makes sense, and Farris certainly deserves to go home, and obviously there's some urgency needed to get it done. So - when do we take off?"

Kelsey started to object, but Gil looked relieved. "Thanks, Reid. You're right. That's the other thing Mr. Mars insists on: Nobody flies alone. I'll be able to handle the piloting, but it's still damn foolhardy for anyone to go solo with an experimental plane. Lots of little things can happen, and someone else needs to come along."

"Understood," I nodded. "That'll be me." Kelsey squeezed my hand and said, "Reid..." but couldn't finish the sentence. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and to tell the truth, in mine too. She came into my arms for a long hug, then pulled back.

"Okay, I understand, too," she said. "But when?" She turned to Gil. "When will you leave?"

"Tonight, say by ten o'clock. I want to fly in the dark, when we'll be least observed. I've plotted the shortest route to the coast that avoids cities– it should take a little over an hour at medium speed. Once over water I'll kick the engines up, and we'll be home tomorrow morning."

Kelsey nodded, then squeezed my hand again "Well... I've got to get going on my research project anyway. That'll consume my time for the next four months. Can you make it back here by then? This is a wild, beautiful place and I want to share it with you."

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

"At least we have today," she said. Her eyes were fierce and her kiss hot, but Stevie was already tugging on my hand, dragging me away toward a grove of fruit trees.

"Watch what I can do," he shouted. "I can climb almost as high as Muru. Watch!"

* * * * * * * * *

The rest of the day sped by.

Niles and Ariama left at mid-morning, uncertain of exactly where they were going.

"Strange for me," Niles said. "All my life I've planned out my moves, and now we're off on a random wander. If we can't tell from day to day where we'll be, then maybe the Consortium can't track us. And after six months, maybe they'll forget about us."

"The General never forgets," Ariama said with a slight head shake, "but he might stop caring. He's not a vindictive person, just a thorough one. If he doesn't see us as a threat to their security, then he'll simply ignore us."

Harolde spent the day in bed, although he was feeling much better. Laila stayed with him while he was awake, bringing him food, playing cards, and making sure he was comfortable. She's a natural caregiver who derives pleasure from helping others – a remarkable woman, and I can see why Kelsey has become so attached to her.

Wayne drove Taz to his village, where he'll stay with his family for a week or two while his shoulder mends.

The rest of us hiked a bit, rested, ate, chatted, played, and generally spent the time in fun and sunshine.

And then - it was dark, almost time to leave.

Gil was inside the plane, making last minute calculations and getting the engines warmed up, while Chyll walked around the outside checking items off the flight prep list he'd given her. Harolde, Laila, and Stevie had already gone to sleep, but the rest of us were gathered near the door. I shook hands with Vari, and while I patted Kalita on the shoulder Trinity leaned close and kissed my cheek, and did the same to Chyll. "You two," she said, her voice husky with emotion, "I owe you a lot. A week ago I never would've imagined that I'd be here, and be so happy. My life was stuck in a whirlpool, going nowhere. Now I have a direction, a purpose, and a future. I love you both - come back soon."

Then we gave hugs and kisses to Kelsey. She and I had already made our private good-byes, longer and sweeter, that afternoon, but I whispered, "Love you" one more time, and climbed into the plane, sitting up front next to Gil.

Chyll pulled the door shut behind us and stretched out on one of the back seats, plumping up a pillow and getting cozy. As the others drifted back to a safe distance, we slowly rose into the air, hovered for a few seconds, dipped a wing in a last "Good-bye", and glided away into the night.

Epilogue

Four Months Later

At the moment we're in a small boat coasting down the narrow waterway connecting the big river to the little lake by the Layard Clinic. Bianca Leyton is in the front seat and I'm right behind her. When she heard about Harolde's injury she wanted to come down right away, but he told her to wait until he was recovered enough to show her around without needing crutches.

I would have left sooner, too, but Grandpa Lincoln ran into some trouble. It's all sorted out now, but took two months and cost me the tip of the little finger on my left hand. The crazy thing is, it ended up making a lot of money for Halliday Inc.

Probably I should tell you about it sometime.

After that, Autumn Kool arranged with the boss for me to take a four month leave, fully paid, which is why I'm coming down here now. I want to spend the first part here, but we'll need to return to the Bay Area in time to find a new home. Kelsey doesn't want to stay in the place owned by Julian's parents, and my apartment won't do at all.

Victor wants her back at the Waxman by mid-summer. Since communication services were restored to the local areas two months ago, she's been able to conduct interviews with job candidates on-line, and feels pretty good about rebuilding the Toxicology Department.

Chyll is back at college now, but looking forward to an internship with Kelsey when her lab opens in the fall. She's also been spending a lot of time at the Halliday shooting range, in martial arts training, and told Mr. Halliday that she wants to work toward being a field agent.

Hmmm... well, she's young, brilliant, and has a bright future in anything she wants to do. Personally, I'd like to see her go into some branch of science or medicine, but she's pretty strong-willed, so we'll see how that goes.

All in all, life appears to be good.

Kelsey and I have spent anywhere from five minutes to an hour talking every day. Let's face it - we still have a lot to learn about each other, but everything we've shared so far has been positive, and I expect it keep going that way. Which is why now is a perfect time for me to be getting here- she's almost finished with her research project, and we'll have time to travel a bit and really get to know each other without a lot of outside distractions.

The Salvata military base was closed down last month and turned into a civilian airport, but, before they left, a troop of soldiers filled in the bore holes and removed any traces of the drilling project. They were also going to tear down the white lab, but Wayne wanted to keep it as an addition to the Clinic. Given its large and stable supply of electricity from the solar panel array, his idea is to use it as a center for medical testing, outpatient services, education, and computer facilities. Probably they'll keep it open a max of three days a week to minimize intrusion on the nun's lifestyle. Vari, Trinity, and Sister Ayla are working with some of the locals to redesign the interior of the building to meet the new needs. A big project, but it should give big benefits.

We've just popped through a screen of low hanging branches and onto the lake. The grassy field near the Clinic is no more than a hundred yards away, and Stevie is skipping around and waving. There's a toddler nearby bouncing and laughing, and Trinity is next to them.

As we get closer I can see that she looks as lovely as ever; I heard that she's about three months along but from here can't see any baby bump on her tummy. Vari is lucky to have her, and she's lucky to have him... a good match for both.

And coming out the clinic door and running toward them is another lovely lady. Yes, it's Kelsey, definitely Kelsey. Her auburn hair is shorter than I remembered, but there's no mistaking her graceful ease as she glides across the lawn.

Yes, life is definitely good.

*** * * * * * *** End *** * * * * * ***

