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CHAPTER FOUR
Luke dreams...
...He stops at the doorway of the lab and looks back at the blood- splashed scene one last time. The space is illuminated with a strange blue light. An odd mix of equipment is scattered around the room. The chemistry apparatus on the long workbench looks new, but the heavy-duty gardening tools stacked against one wall are old and rusty.
He knows he should remember the details. He’s a professor of history. Details are important. But he does not have time to examine his surroundings closely, because two men in white coats are sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. Their throats have been cut. He is holding a scalpel in his right hand.
He turns and tries to decide how he will escape. He is confronted by a vast chamber lit with a violet-and-acid-green radiance. The space is crammed with luminous plants, glowing mushrooms, and curtains of thorn-studded vines. Here and there he sees flowers that look like the open jaws of snakes.
He uses the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. The atmosphere is too warm and too humid and it is charged with a disturbingenergy that threatens to dazzle his senses. Everything about the underground gardens is wrong. Colors are too intense, the light is eerie, and the plants are rustling and murmuring to each other. He senses that they are trying to decide if he is prey.
Tightening his grip on the scalpel, he sets out on the path through the gardens of hell...
The ding of an incoming text brought Luke out of the nightmare. For a flash of eternity he was caught in the frozen dimension that marked the border between sleep and the waking state.
He surfaced on a rush of adrenaline, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and grabbed the phone. He stared at the new message, half afraid to believe his eyes.
Today. Seattle. Address and final instructions will be sent at four thirty a.m. Cash only.
Seattle.
He had assumed that, if the informant came through, the meeting would take place in the anonymity of a metropolitan area, either Portland or Seattle. He had stationed himself in a motel that was roughly midway between the two cities.
He checked the time. It was just going on two. There would be no traffic at that hour. He had time to get to Seattle by four thirty.
He got up and crossed the room to the duffel bag and the small day pack sitting in front of the door. The duffel contained a few changes of clothes, shaving gear, a second pair of boots, and some other basics. He had been living out of it and under a new identity since he had lost an entire night to amnesia three long months ago. The pack held the essentials he would need if he was forced to run—the cash he had accumulated in a series of small ATM transactions, the pistol, and the documents required to establish yet another identity.
He knew how to disappear. He had learned the art soon after entering the foster care system. A few years spent as an analyst in the intelligence world had provided him with the knowledge he needed to fine-tune the process. You picked up a lot of useful tips interviewing bad actors for a living.
When he had been forced to vanish three months ago he had worried initially that his two years as a college professor had robbed him of his edge. He had been relieved to discover how quickly the old skills came back.
CHAPTER FIVE
Talia parked ona side street as the instructions had stipulated. She checked the time again, hitched the small pack over one shoulder, and got out of the car. Extracting the pepper spray from the pocket of her puffy, thigh-length down coat, she locked up and went briskly toward the unlit house. There were no sidewalks and no streetlights in the semirural neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The only illumination came from a cold moon.
It was early morning—not yet six o’clock—but this was the Pacific Northwest and it was late fall, so there was no sign of dawn. She was running on adrenaline and nerves and very little sleep. The fact that there was a thousand dollars in cash in the pack put her even more on edge.
The text from the anonymous informant had come in at three thirty a.m., yanking her out of a dream involving a dead man staring up at her from the bottom of an industrial-sized recycling bin. The meeting was to take place at precisely six o’clock. The address had been sent thirty minutes ago. She had been behind the wheel of her car, waiting, when it arrived.
There was no porch light over the front door. She used her cell phone flashlight to make sure she had the right address. Her pulse was racing and she could feel a cold sweat trickling down her sides.
Following instructions, she walked along a weedy path to the rear of the small house. She was relieved to see that a light glowed weakly over the back door, as promised in the text. She went up the two porch steps and knocked twice. Hardly able to breathe, she listened intently, expecting—hoping—to hear footsteps in the front hall.
There was no response.
A crushing disappointment slammed through her. It was followed by a surge of anger. She had been conned. Okay, so it wasn’t the first time a determined podcast listener had suckered a member of the team into checking out what proved to be a phony lead, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating. The rush of emotions kicked up all of her senses. She was suddenly at full throttle. Currents of icy-hot anger swept through her. She wanted to scream at the trickster.This is my life and the lives of my friends you are screwing with, you sadist.
Damn it, she would not succumb to pointless rage. She fought a silent battle on the back porch and managed to regain control. It was her own fault. She had allowed herself to believe that this lead would pan out. It had looked so promising. After over six months of false tips she should have known better than to think this one would be any different.
And here she was standing on a stranger’s back porch in the dark with a thousand dollars in her pack. A belated attack of common sense struck. She started to turn away and go back down the steps. But something stopped her—a whisper of panic, not her own. It shaded rapidly into... unconsciousness? Sleep? It did not feel like the echo of a recent death, but it wasn’t good.
Something terrible had happened inside the little house at the end of the street. Yet another reason to get out of there. Now.
Instead, she took a breath, braced herself, and gingerly touched the door handle...
...The burn seared her senses. She yelped and yanked her fingers off the metal knob. The sudden move caused the unlatched door to swing inward on squeaking hinges. The gloom of a deeply shadowed kitchen loomed.
For a tense moment she just stood there, trying to decide what to do. There were answers to be had inside the house, she was certain of that. She needed those answers and she was willing to take risks to get them, but there were limits. She had pushed the envelope far enough this morning. She needed backup and she knew who to call. Roger Gossard owed her a few favors.
