51
THE WILLOWS
HOME OF B. B. MADDOX
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
“You failed again, Quince.”
Quince hated that tone of voice, disappointed and condemning at the same time, and something more, a promise of punishment. It made the hair on the back of his neck stir. Quince always hated coming here, hated the monstrosity of a house that was a cold museum to him, two of its rooms pretending to be in some ancient English house. Even the air smelled old, closed in, stale. But Dr. Maddox had ordered him to come here and not to his big office at Gen-Core, so he’d had no choice.
He cleared his throat. “Yes, but it wasn’t my fault.”
“Your failure the first time wasn’t your fault, either? It could have been done so fast and easy and clean, Quince, before you even left the hospital on Monday.”
“But I told you, sir, they’d placed a police guard on Enigma Two’s room. I don’t know why. What was I supposed to do, kill the guard, too?”
“If you hadn’t panicked, if you’d been smart enough to cause a diversion—well, it’s over and done with. I am not unreasonable, Quince, I’d already forgiven you your failure to kill him on Monday morning, but Monday night? I even gave you a workable plan to divert the guard. Everything should have gone smoothly. According to Burley, there wasn’t even a guard there when you arrived, he’d been pulled off duty, and Enigma Two was without protection. All you had to do was slip into his hospital room and inject the potassium chloride into his IV.”
Quince had been an idiot to confide in Burley, but she’d commiserated with him, and he’d poured it all out. And then she’d gone running to Dr. Maddox the minute his back was turned. Didn’t Dr. Maddox know by now that Quince would never lie to him, just as Quince had never lied to his father? Or was Dr. Maddox torturing him for his own amusement?
He wondered if Burley had told Dr. Maddox the exact truth or colored what had happened to make him look worse. “Sir, that woman, Kara Moody, was there, sitting next to him, holding his hand, talking to him. I couldn’t understand why she was even there. He attacked her on Sunday—”
The cold, precise voice interrupted him. “So why didn’t you kill her, too, Quince? You’re strong enough. You could have quickly snapped her neck. Why didn’t you?”
“I thought you might have further use for her.” That was the truth as far as it went. Quince wasn’t about to admit he hadn’t thought of killing her, then everything had happened too fast, all of it unexpected.
Quince watched Dr. Maddox’s worry beads glide smoothly through his fingers, faster now, which meant he was getting agitated. “Sir, she saw me, picked up the water pitcher and threw it at me, then she flung herself over him and screamed her head off and she wouldn’t stop. I could hear people running toward the room. I had no choice but to get out of there before security came. You wouldn’t have wanted me to get caught or to have to kill any police.” Why didn’t Dr. Maddox see he’d behaved exactly as the professional he was, given the circumstances.
He listened to the worry beads clack in the silent stale air. He could think of nothing else to say. He didn’t move, waited, barely breathing.
Lister slowly nodded. “You may think Burley really dislikes you, Quince, but she doesn’t. She knows she owes me her complete loyalty. She knows what would happen to her if she failed to keep me informed, just as I expect you to keep me informed about the results of her assignments. Now you’ve left nothing out, either, and that is very wise of you.”
Lister waved his hand toward an uncomfortable high-backed chair covered in green brocade. “That isn’t why I asked you here today in any case. Stop standing there like a stick, Quince. Sit down.”
Quince sat down carefully on the edge of a chair that looked fragile and ancient. Or was it a reproduction?
The silence lengthened. Dr. Maddox paced the long living room, the worry beads threading through his fingers, faster now.
Quince eyed the man who’d taken control from his father, B. B. Maddox, a man Quince still loved, though he spent most of his time upstairs now in a wheelchair, his eyes blank as a slate, in that ridiculous bedroom. He remembered the long ago afternoon B.B. had approached Quince when he’d been only eighteen years old and fresh out of juvie for stealing cars for a chop shop on Culver Street. He’d taken Quince’s skinny shoulders between his large hands and said, “I hear from Detective Lancey that you’ve got a brain. Is that true?”
Quince remembered he’d been terrified but determined not to show it. He didn’t know who this rich man was and he wasn’t about to show weakness, that way led to bullies with knives and piles of hate at your door, so up went his chin. “I’m bright as the sun, that’s what my mother always told me before she died.”
The large man had studied his face, slowly nodded. “Your name is Jubilee Quince, an excellent name. What I’m going to offer you is the chance for a different life. Do you want to try it on for size?”
Quince had never regretted taking B.B. up on his offer. He’d always done whatever B.B. had asked him to do until that day fifteen years ago, when everything changed. He looked at B.B.’s son, Lister, as brilliant as the old man was, maybe more so, given what he’d accomplished, not only for his father, but for Quince as well. Out of habit, he looked into the gilt mirror hanging on the wallpapered wall beside the fireplace. He studied his reflection, raised an eyebrow, then smiled at it. He still marveled but was finally coming to accept that the young man he saw in the mirror was who he was now, who he’d become again. And all of it was thanks to this man with his fricking worry beads who liked to scare the crap out of him.
He said into the deadening silence that underlay the clacking worry beads, “Sir, has the adjustment you made brought any benefit to your father?”
“No,” Lister said. “Hannah told me there’s been no change at all.” He resumed his pacing, said over his shoulder, “There is no longer a way to eliminate Enigma Two. He’s very well protected now the FBI knows he’s under active threat. All we can hope is he sinks deep into the coma and never wakes up. Or if he does wake up, we can hope he won’t remember much of what happened to him, or if he does, no one will take him seriously, since they all believe he’s a madman.”
Quince said, “But, sir, I did try to kill him, and they know that. Surely they’d listen to him if he woke up.”
Quince saw Dr. Maddox didn’t want to hear this. He’d already constructed his theory and he would stick to it. He waved his worry beads at Quince. “This is what concerns me, Quince. If Enigma Two does wake up, he may remember where he was kept. Since he escaped from the Annex, he would be able to take them there. We can’t risk it. I want you and Burley to drive to the Annex right away. Take a Gen-Core delivery van, it won’t be missed. Remove all the servers, the pheresis units, everything medical that can’t be explained. Put all the finished drugs and the frozen plasma stores into the portable freezers and pack them all into my powered storage unit. Then I want you to burn down the Annex. And, Quince, use that magnificent brain my father assured me you have, make it look like an accident, a faulty gas main, whatever. Call me when it’s done.”
Lister watched Quince walk from the living room. He waited until he reached the door and called out, “Quince, there will be no more failures, do you understand?”
Quince nodded. Lister listened to his footsteps across the large entrance hall, heard him close the front door behind him.
Lister slid his worry beads in his pocket. It was time to check on Ella Peters and Alex Moody, Enigma Three. He trusted Ella implicitly, as his father had, but he hadn’t expected he’d have to call on her services quite so soon. They’d planned to leave the baby with his mother so long as Enigma Two remained a useful subject, but his escape had upended that careful plan. Now Ella was dealing with a newborn, by herself. A pity he wouldn’t have the mother to use as his next research subject. She would have been Enigma Three, not her baby, until the child grew large enough to join her as a research subject. He’d wanted to wait until both mother and baby were home, on their own, before acting. Enigma Two’s escape had changed everything. Lister knew the FBI was deeply involved. They didn’t have his brilliance, but he wasn’t a blind fool, he knew they were good at what they did. He didn’t see how they would find him, though, unless Enigma Two came out of his coma and told them, which meant he had to get ready.
Lister sighed, turned at the top of the wide staircase and walked down the long hallway toward the south wing. Another long hallway led him past guest rooms, a music room, a movie room, until he reached the old nursery, and he prayed, his whispered words echoing in the empty hallway, Let Enigma Two never wake up. Make this incredible child my crowning achievement.
Lister knocked on the nursery door. He heard Ella’s soft-soled shoes after a moment coming quietly to the door. She eased it open, saw him, smiled, and quickly put her fingers to her lips. “Alex is sleeping. Come look at him, Lister, he’s beautiful, a perfect child.”
“Don’t be sentimental, Ella. He will be our perfect subject, combining the genetic strengths of Enigma One and Enigma Two. He is my father’s best hope, the best hope for all of us.”
She walked to the crib, looked down at the sleeping baby, lightly touched a fingertip to his thick black hair. Lister frowned at the besotted look on her homely face. What Ella saw was a baby she thought beautiful. What Lister saw was a triumph, the culmination of all his research, all his efforts, all his experiments. Alex Moody would show him how to save his father and then how to save himself.
He said more to himself than to Ella, “I wish we could have waited until he was older, taken both him and his mother. Now we must care for him ourselves until he is old enough to begin running our tests.”
She turned toward him, her back pressed against the crib, as if protecting the baby. Her voice was sharp. “Lister, Alex is far too young for you to be considering any tests, anything that would hurt him.”
He put out his hands. “Yes, Ella, of course he is. I assure you I do not wish to torture him. I want to protect him and nurture him as much as you do, perhaps more so. I’ve spent a great deal of time and money finding his mother, assuring her pregnancy, and I found her only because she’s a cousin of our first subject, Enigma One.” He shook his head. “You remember how surprised and pleased I was when I found they shared the same structural variant, the same DNA inversion I found in his genome near the HLA gene complex on chromosome six.”
Ella usually didn’t understand his talk about genomes, most of it was gobbledygook to her, but she knew enough to be impressed. She said, “Well, it was a shame that Enigma One died. You told me what an excellent subject he was.”
“Yes, he was drug-resistant and a strong responder, almost as strong as Enigma Two. And now, Ella, this baby is my finest creation. He combines both of their genetic gifts. His value to me will be incalculable, worth far more than Gen-Core itself.” He added, his voice low, heartfelt, “Don’t ever forget, Ella, this is the child who will save my father.”
Ella looked at the sleeping baby. “But you don’t know yet, Lister, how he’ll do, whether he really will tolerate your drug.”
“He will, I know he will.”
Ella listened to the baby sucking on his tiny fingers. Enigma Three. No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, call him that ridiculous name. His name was Alex Moody, and he was a helpless baby, not a test subject, not yet. It wasn’t fair to expect him to carry the weight of all that hope on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have to carry anything. Then she thought of B.B. and sighed.