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“Zoe, listen to me.” He used the deep voice he’d assumed in the DeepWeave audio, which Zoe had absorbed for hours every day as a child. “Take out the Melimitrex, and inject it into your thigh.”
He was repeating instructions that had been drilled into her already, but any excuse to keep her bound to the sound of his voice. Her hands shook violently, but she managed to pry the syringe out of the foam case. She flicked a drop from the needle. Tap, tap. She’d worked as a nurse, after all. She stabbed it into her thigh, through the waterlogged cloth, and flung her head back, baring her teeth.
He watched her vital signs. Melimitrex VIII was always a gamble, albeit a better one than it had been in the previous seven generations of the drug. It was the result of decades of trial and error. Calibrated to the individual’s height, weight and body chemistry, each dose stimulated the glands with a brutal kick. Other components included a powerful painkiller and a mood enhancer similar to cocaine. He only administered that drug in the most dire of circumstances. Its success rate hovered around sixty percent. The fate of the unlucky forty percent, well, suffice to say that it was painful to watch, and blessedly short.
Not that he had any choice. Zoe would be unconscious in minutes without an intervention. He saw the moment that the drug started to work. Her breathing deepened, her heart rate steadied.
She flung her head towards the sky again, nostrils flaring. Trust Zoe, to make a fuss, and carry on as if she were on stage.
He made his voice solicitous. “Do you feel better, my dear?”
“Oh, yes,” she told him. “I feel wonderful now.”
“Excellent. Listen, Zoe. I will recite a verse to you now. It will give you strength to do it. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Her voice quivered with emotion. “Oh, yes. Please.”
He slowly recited Zoe’s Level Ten Endurance verses. King was very proud of his Level Ten Endurance commands. They unlocked hidden reserves of energy and mental acuity, releasing endorphins that had the same effect as a passionate emotion. The strength one read about in Reader’s Digest articles; say, an eighty-year-old crone lifting a car off her stricken grandchild. But what was the difference between chemically simulated passion and real passion? Nothing. It was all chemistry.
“Listen carefully,” he told her. “Go to the vehicle, and—”
“I have no weapons,” Zoe blurted. “They disarmed me. Ranieri—”
“Is gone,” he cut in. “Ranieri is no longer your concern. They rolled the vehicle off the road. Take what you can carry, hide the rest. Dispose of Hal, Jeremy and Manfred as best you can. I don’t want their bodies scattered before the clean-up team arrives. Mark the spot with a tracker. We’ll calculate the best route for you. No one will be able to meet you for a few hours yet.”On account of your bad planning, you cretin.
She hemmed and hawed. “But what…but I—”
“You must be strong, Zoe,” he told her. “When the extraction team comes to get you, they will put you on a plane, and bring you to me.”
She blinked rapidly as she stared up into the sky, eyes welling full of tears. “You will?” Her voice was that of a lost, hopeful child.
“Of course. You’ve been very brave. You’ll be rewarded. I promised.” There was only so much a satellite could pick up. But he fancied he saw Zoe’s eyes dilate, her cheeks flush. “Now go!”
She leaped to obey, climbing like a mountain goat. The promise of a Level Ten reward series could move mountains. Whatever worked.
At the moment, he could not afford to be fussy.
CHAPTER19
Lily glanced around at the people gathered in the room, lit with mellow lamps and big squishy couches. She felt shy, and on the spot.
“He has to lock it,” Lily repeated. “That’s what Howard said. That Bruno has to lock something. That he’d understand when he saw it.”
“But you didn’t. So what the hell are you supposed to lock?” Sean gave Bruno a look that was almost accusing.
Bruno shook his head. “Not a fucking clue.”
“Strange, ” Sean mused. “It would make more sense if he was supposed to unlock something. A code, a door, a safe, a password?”
“That’s all Howard said.” Lily felt as if she’d failed them somehow. “I didn’t get it, either. Then the nurse interrupted us. The one who murdered him.” She hugged her knees, sinking deep into the plushy couch. After weeks spent trying to avoid notice, the relentless, concentrated attention of this group of people made her feel like she was going to collapse in on herself, twitching and babbling.
Their attitude didn’t help, either. Not that they were rude. Far from it. They’d saved her ass, patched her up, fed her, clothed her, given her painkillers and antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, plied her with caffeine and sugar. But even so, she sensed a wary wait-and-see feeling in the air. The vote was still out on Lily Parr.
Bruno sensed it, too. It made him defensive. He sat right next to her, his arm flung possessively across her shoulders, daring them all to disbelieve a word she said. Touching, since yesterday, he hadn’t believed her, either. Who would? She wouldn’t, if she were them.
All of the McCloud brothers except for Kev were there, Davy and Con and Sean, as well as Sean’s wife Liv. Their hostess, the terrifyingly beautiful Tam Steele, was the owner of the house perched on the cliff over the Washington coast, near the coastal hamlet of Cray’s Cove.
Aaro was there, too, looking sullen and traumatized after his ugly morning adventure. His eyes were haunted shadows. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. There was an ethereally beautiful, dark-haired girl named Sveti who sat in a corner, listening. She had sad eyes, a faint accent. Lily hadn’t yet puzzled out her relationship to the others. And Miles, a muscular, shy guy with a big nose. And Zia Rosa dominated the room like an out-sized paleolithic goddess. Bruno’s aunt resembled a huge bulldog, with black bouffant hair and a shirt with fuscia polka dots and a pink plastic bead necklace. Zia Rosa scrutinized Lily with an expression that could only be described as hungry. It was unsettling.
