Chapter 24
Sean cast an approving glance over Miles and his brothers as they waited in the muted, hushed elegance of the Helix reception area.
Not bad, he thought. They cleaned up nice. Sean’s Ferragamo suit was too wide in the shoulders for Connor, but only a gay man would notice. Davy in his own Brooks Brothers suit had a stodgy, don’t-fuck-with-me-or-I’ll-club-you-over-the-head-with-my-stock-portfolio style happening, and Miles looked hot and hungry in Sean’s gray Armani. With his hair gelled back and the mirror sunglasses, the kid looked like a cross between a prosperous young gangster and a human sports car.
With all the crap eating at his nerves, still it did his heart good to see those slobs spiffed up. The only false note in this pageant of male sartorial splendor was the scabby bruises on his own battered mug.
The phone in his jacket pocket let out a soft chirp. He pulled it out to check. Message from Liv. He pulled up the text. Read it. Stared.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said, in a loud, carrying voice.
“Shhh,” Davy hissed, as the receptionist gave him a snooty look.
“What is it?” Con snapped, under his breath.
“Liv’s cracked the code. She’s found Kev’s tapes.” His low voice felt strangled in his throat. “She says they’re at the public library.”
Everybody’s jaws flopped, in the direction of the mauve rug.
In the stupefied silence, the receptionist spoke. “Mr. Urness? Mr. Parrish will see you and your party now. Marta will show you the way.”
A stunning trophy secretary, blond, of course, greeted them with a brilliant smile, and gestured for them to follow her through the plush office complex. Wow. Deep carpets, picture windows, aromatherapy. Mosaic this, feng shui that. A fake waterfall bubbled away in a wall alcove.
The muted tones of mauve and cream made him feel sedated.
The blonde was twitching her taut, perky ass in the pencil slim skirt for their benefit. He fastened his eyes onto its jerky, back and forth sway, thinking about the peachlike contours of Liv’s ass. How he loved to grip her hips, sink his aching prong into that slick heaven between her thighs. And she was a freaking genius, as well as a sizzling sex bomb. She’d solved the puzzle. Hot damn. What an amazing woman.
He jerked himself back to reality as the blonde gestured them into a big corner office, like a game show hostess displaying their prize.
Charles Parrish was a distinguished guy, with silver hair. He shook Davy’s hand, then Con’s, then Miles’s. Sean hung back, avoiding the guy’s gaze until the very last moment. Then he gripped Parrish’s hand and stared into his face. “Hello, Mr. Parrish. Remember me?”
He saw it, in an instant. The smile went rigid, the flutter in the eyelids, the change in lip color. The involuntary tug as the guy sought to free his hand. Sean let him go. He’d learned what he needed to know.
“What are you…” Parrish looked around at the rest of them, confused. “Who are you? I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you from anywhere, Mr…? Please, refresh my memory.”
Sean sighed. Another lying rat bastard with something to hide.
“My name is McCloud. So’s theirs.” He jerked his chin at his brothers. “I believe you met my twin, Kevin, when you were a company rep for Flaxon. I see from your face that he made a big impression on you. I want to know the exact circumstances of that meeting.”
Parrish backed up, sidling to get on the other side of his desk.
Davy caught his wrist. “You’re not going to call security,” he said. “This is a friendly conversation, Mr. Parrish. We don’t want to mess with your corporate empire. We just want to know about our brother.”
Parrish’s jaw tightened. He stared wildly around, from face to face. “Well. I did have a rather odd incident, back then, if that’s what you’re referring to, but it’s so long ago, I really don’t know if—”
“Just tell us.” Sean’s voice was getting sharper.
“All right. A mentally disturbed man got past the security in the Renton office of Flaxon, and attacked me. It was a terrible experience.”
“What did he tell you?” Con asked quietly.
“He was raving,” Parrish said defensively. “He was convinced that a mad scientist was conducting illicit experiments. Murdering people in one of our buildings. All kinds of absurd stories.”
Sean’s skin crawled. “I see,” he said slowly. “What did you do?”
Parrish threw up his hands. “What could I do? I did what anyone would do! I called for help, I got security in, I had him confined!”
“And then?”
Parrish frowned, perplexed. “What do you mean, ‘and then?’”
“What happened to him?” Davy growled.
Parrish shrugged. “I let Flaxon’s corporate security do their job.”
“You mean, you delivered him back into the hands of the people he was running from.” Sean’s voice was flat. “He risked everything to come to you and expose what they were doing. And you sold him out.”
“What for, Parrish?” Connor asked. “For a corner office?”
“I had no reason to think that his stories were true! And I resent…” Parrish’s voice trailed off. “My God, you’re as crazy as he was.”
Sean gave him a big, wide smile. “Oh, yes. At the very least.”
Parrish started backing away.
“Helix is worth about two point five billion,” Miles commented.
“Yeah,” Sean said. “Interesting. Looks like the people who fucked Kev over are doing real well these days. Makes a grieving brother wonder. I guess karma hasn’t caught up with them yet, but you know what? I think payback time is coming around. What do you say, guys?”
“I think you’re right. I smell payback,” Con agreed, his voice soft.
Davy just gave Parrish his thinnest, most menacing smile, all the scarier for the stodgy business suit. The man shrank against the wall.
“What in God’s name do you want from me?” he demanded.
“We have one name,” Sean said. “Osterman. Who is this guy?”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re—”
Thunk, he was pinned to the wall. Sean held him there, one hand twisted into the lapel of the man’s costly suit jacket. He dug his finger into a sensitive bundle of nerves beneath his ear. Parrish shrieked.
“Watch it, Sean,” Davy said, in the low, even warning tone he’d used during Sean’s freak-outs since he was a little kid.
Sean ignored him. “Listen to me, you greedy buttfaced asshole,” he hissed. “You fucked up my brother. I am not kindly disposed towards you. I am going to get to the bottom of this. I am going to find every last one of the shit-eating worms who did this to him, and I am going to rip their guts out. Decide right now if you want to be on that short list.”
His finger dug imperceptibly deeper into that nerve bundle.
Parrish flailed and struggled, mewling. “Please,” he whispered.
Sean eased up. “You got something helpful to say?”
Parrish managed to nod. Sean lifted his hand. “Let’s hear it.”
The man rubbed the spot, surprised it was not a bleeding hole. He gasped with each indrawn breath. “I had no idea—no idea—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Connor said. “No idea about what?”
“Osterman,” the man gasped out somewhat more slowly. “He’s…he’s a researcher. I would never have dreamed…he’s an extremely distinguished scientist. Brilliant. I can’t believe that…the Haven is a legitimate research facility, in spite of being so secret, and—”
“The Haven?” Miles broke in, his eyes big. “You’re kidding!”
Sean swiveled his head. “What? What’s the Haven?”
“The guy who’s been recruiting me,” Miles said. “Mindmeld666. The Haven is his outfit. Which means that Osterman must be—”
“The Geek Eater,” Con finished softly.
Parrish’s breathing sawed heavily in the appalled silence.
“Where is the Haven?” Sean asked him.
“I don’t know,” Parrish replied. He shrank back as Sean raised his hand. “No! Please, no. I swear. The facility moves around, and the only people who know where it is are the people in the brain potential program. They specialize in product design, and those designs are realized by our development team. My own daughter participated in the program some years back. It produces spectacular results—”
“I don’t want a promotional brochure. I want to know where that murdering psychopath is,” Sean snarled. “And I don’t believe that you don’t know. Just like I don’t believe that you never checked Kev’s story. You were in on this from the very start, weren’t you, Parrish?”
“No! You have to understand how crazy it sounded!” Parrish was getting desperate. “It was wild paranoid jabbering! He claimed to have been strapped down and tortured for days, but he was strong enough after his ordeal to pick up a security guard and throw him through a plate glass window! The man needed thirty stitches!”
Parrish’s yammering receded as Sean’s mind seized one detail, and focused on it. “Shut up,” he said, cutting through the babble.
Parrish’s voice cut off abruptly. “Huh? What?”
“Clarify something for me,” he said. “You said Kev claimed to have been tortured for days. Kev wasn’t missing for days. I saw him the morning of the seventeenth. Right before I got locked up.”
Davy and Con exchanged startled looks.
“Where are you going with this, Sean?” Davy asked softly.
“What day did he come to see you?” Sean persisted.
Parrish blinked rapidly. “I don’t remember.”
Thunk, back Parrish went, flush to the wall, Sean’s finger putting painful pressure on the now bruised nerve center under his ear.
“Think harder,” he suggested, his voice deceptively gentle.
Parrish sucked air. “Ah…let me s-s-see. The day he came, I had a b-bicycle in the office. For my daughter’s eleventh birthday party.”
“What’s your daughter’s birthday?” Davy asked.
“The t-twenty-third of August. Tomorrow, actually.”
Sean let go of the man so abruptly, Parrish stumbled forward and fell to his knees. Miles took the guy’s elbow, helped him to his feet. Ever the sweet nice guy. Somebody was going to have to slap some mean into that kid, because the McClouds couldn’t seem to manage the job.
That and other random thoughts ricocheted senselessly through his head while paralyzing shock rolled over him. August twenty-three?
They had buried their brother on the hill, near the little waterfall that he loved, on the twentieth of August. Twenty-three? What the fuck?
He put his hands on his knees, tried to get some blood back into his head. Swooning dead away in front of Parrish would not do wonders for his hard-core, meaner-than-shit intimidation machine.
Fortunately, Con and Davy’s meaner-than-shit machines were in fine working order. He just hung on, concentrated on staying conscious.
An ungentle hand stabbed him hard between the shoulder blades some time later, to get him marching down the corridor. Past the red-hot blonde with the take-me eyes. No security personnel stopped them, no police were waiting. Parrish was going to play both sides until he could tell which way to jump. Prick.
When they got to the parking lot, Davy seized him by the scruff of the neck and slammed him against the SUV so hard he almost howled.
“I told you we weren’t going to get physical,” he snarled into Sean’s face. “And you lost it. Both times. We do not need this kind of trouble, punk. If you cannot hang on to your shit, I will tie you and gag you and stuff you into the trunk, I swear to God.”
Sean glanced to Connor for support, and got just a twitch of his mouth and a shrug. “I’ll hold you down while he ties you,” Con said.
He looked at Miles, who gave him his what-the-fuck-do-you-want-from-me look. He grunted, shrugged. Whatever. He was too boggled to get his feelings hurt. He rubbed the lump on his head as he got into the vehicle. “The twenty-third of August,” he murmured.
Davy pulled out of the lot. “I knew that would set you off,” he said grimly. “It was fifteen years ago. The guy could be lying. Or just wrong.”
“And if he’s not?” Sean said. “We put a body in the ground on August twentieth. If this guy saw Kev on the twenty-third, then…”
“Who’s lying up there on the hill?” Connor finished.
There was a stony silence in the car while they pondered this.
“Didn’t you…aren’t there…dental records?” Miles faltered.
Con shook his head. “None of us ever went to a dentist until we were adults. Dad was dead sure they’d implant transmitters in our teeth.”
“Oh. Uh, never mind,” Miles mumbled. “Maybe DNA?”
“Forget it,” Davy said harshly. “It doesn’t matter. Kev is dead, Sean. There’s no other reason he would not have contacted us. They got him. Face it, deal with it. We can’t spend our whole lives like this.”
Sean shook his head.
“Fuck,” Davy’s voice was bleak. “This means another freak-out?”
Sean met his brother’s furious eyes in the mirror, and stared into them calmly. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
Con looked miserable and worried. He massaged his bum leg.
“Great,” Davy muttered. “So now what?”
Sean shrugged. “That’s obvious,” he said. “We go to the library.”
“First, we run you through a series of tests to identify your learning style. Dr. O personalizes each subject’s program,” Jared explained, as he merged onto the interstate. “The tests are the hard part, but it’s just the first couple of days. Then the fun begins.”
Cindy stared out the windshield, bug-eyed. Tests? Her goose was cooked. To a crunchy crisp. “Wow.” Her voice strangled. “Super cool.”
Jared waited for some enthusiastic, intelligent, intellectual comments from her, but anything she said would betray her for the bubbleheaded idiot that she was. In over her head. And going down.
“Uh, OK,” Jared tried again, gamely. “So. I liked that abstract you wrote about predictions of formant-frequency discrimination in noise based on model auditory nerve responses. I even showed it to Dr. O. I was thinking, maybe we could try combining temporal and rate information for a smaller population of model fibers, and tune them—”
“Um, could we talk about non-technical stuff?” Cindy rubbed her damp palms over her jeans. “I really prefer to get to know people talking about, like, you know. Normal stuff.”
“OK.” Jared looked baffled. “What’s normal?”
“You know. Everyday life. Movies. Current events. Fashion. I believe in being well-rounded. You can’t sit around obsessing on plane wave solutions all day, you know? You gotta make space for red cowboy boots, and espresso brownies, and the Howling Furballs.”
Jared frowned. “Who the hell are the Howling Furballs?”
“They’re an acid punk band that’s doing some cool multimedia stuff,” Cindy explained. “They’ve got a totally wild sound, and the engineer uses the signals the musicians generate in real time to create a freaky interactive light show. I’ll show you their website, if you want.”
“OK. Great. Sounds interesting.” He sounded bemused. There was an uncomfortable silence that Cindy wanted desperately to fill, but she didn’t dare push her luck. Then Jared spoke again.
“I get the impression that you’re not happy to be here,” he said.
Duh. “Look at it from my point of view,” she said. “I’m a girl all alone with a guy I just met, going to a place I’ve only heard of on the Net. Anybody would tell me I’m brain dead.” Yeah, like her entire family.
“You’re not,” Jared said. “I know you’ve had bad experiences.”
She had? Shit! She hadn’t read the transcripts of Mina and Jared’s chats, so she didn’t even know her own back story. Yikes!
But Jared was talking earnestly on. She tried to concentrate.
“…wanted to tell you that I understand where you’re coming from,” he said. “I’m an orphan, too. In foster care since I was seven.”
“Really?” She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Get out.”
“I did high school at Deer Creek.”
She blinked. “You mean the reformatory?”
“Drugs,” he confessed. “I set up a meth lab in my foster father’s barn, all by myself, when I was in the ninth grade. Dr. O heard about it. He came to meet me. He thought any kid who could get into that much trouble at age thirteen had to have potential.”
“Wow. That’s totally wild,” Cindy said weakly.
“When I got out, he invited me to the Haven.” He paused for a moment, and added “It’s the only real home I’ve ever had.”
“Wow,” she said again, feeling totally inane.
“Maybe it could be, you know. A home for you, too.”
She tried to smile. He seemed like a genuinely sweet guy. But the corners of her mouth felt like they had weights attached to them.
“So where is the Haven, anyhow?” she asked.
Jared chuckled. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
He must have heard the thud as her stomach froze into a solid chunk and hit bottom. His gaze darted to her face. “That was a joke,” he said. “You know, jokes? Hah, hah? Very funny? Irony, and all that?”
“Hah, hah, hah,” she echoed thinly. “Very funny, Jared.”
“I didn’t mean to freak you out. We never tell new recruits where the Haven is until we get there. It’s part of our mystique. You’ll see.”
“Oh. Yeah,” she muttered. “I can hardly wait.”
A six-foot-three blond guy in a Versace suit with a black eye attracted more attention than he wanted today, he reflected as he strolled through the library. Con and Davy agreed that only one of them should go in, and they’d opted for Miles, but this moment was a turning point in his life. He was goddamn well going to be present for it.
The two librarians were checking him out. The older one, an iron-gray lady shaped like a pigeon, was giving him a disapproving look over her bifocals. The cute younger one, with the bobbed strawberry red hair, was blatantly scoping him whenever the older one’s back was turned.
He heaved an internal sigh. No quick in-and-out, then. He had to do the leisurely browsing masquerade for Strawberry Red’s benefit.
He made a big show of flipping through the card catalog. Then he wended his way through the library, making stops at the magazine racks and the local newspaper, moseying with elaborate casualness toward the Historic Collection Room.
Through the glass doors, into the paneled room full of cracked leather sofas, brass reading lamps, hidden alcoves. This was where he’d had his historic tryst with Liv. The first time he’d made her come.
A feeling of foreboding took him by surprise, twined together as it was with the surge of lust and longing that came over him whenever he thought of Liv. Prickling his face, his balls. An urgent, go go go feeling.
This wasn’t about Kev. Something was up with Liv. The certainty buzzed in his head. He had to finish up here, and check on her. Quick.
He snapped open the clasp on Davy’s briefcase, scanning shelves for the reference number. The distinctive smell of old books was heavy in his nostrils. Anxiety pricked him, harder. Hurry. Hurry. Go go go.
Closer…almost there…and there it was. 920.0797 B63. It was a thick red leather tome, stamped in gold. He reached for it, with a hand that trembled—
“Can I help you with anything?”
He practically jumped out of his skin. He turned with a gasp.
Strawberrry Red stood there, smiling at him. “Hi.”
He let out a shaky breath, and smiled back. “Whew. Startled me.”
“So sorry,” she said demurely. “Can I help you find anything?”
“Oh, not really. I was just, ah, poking around,” he said helplessly. “I’m a history buff.”
The wattage of her smile went up a few notches. “A history buff? That’s funny. So am I. There are some beautiful historic sites in Endicott Falls. Are you just passing through?”
“Yeah. Sort of,” he said.
“If you have the time, I could show them to you. I get off at four. You see so much more with someone who knows the place intimately.”
Sean swallowed. “Ah, wow. That’s tempting, but I’m afraid I’m busy later,” he told her. “I’m having dinner with my fiancée and her family.” He gave her a you-know-how-it-is shrug.
She took it well. There was a brief, awkward moment while her smile stiffened, and she stepped back. “Well then. Another time. I’ll just leave you to browse. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Her heels clicked across the room. The door creaked open, fell to again with a sharp little thud, and he was alone again.
He almost sagged to the ground. From the adrenaline rush, from dumb relief for having gotten rid of her so easily, but mostly from blank, jaw-dropping shock, at having actually done that to a pretty woman.
He’d never turned down a cute girl before. No matter what was going on in his life. No matter how double or triple or quadruple booked his dick was. He had always, always managed to slot them in somehow.
Jesus. He hadn’t even gotten her phone number.
And his improvised excuse made him snicker. Dinner with his fiancée’s family, his ass. Talk about wishful thinking. They’d only shoot him on sight, and bury his carcass in the municipal dump.
He gripped the big book, lifted it out and peered into the shadows. Nothing. His heart fell. He groped. Still nothing. His heart thudded, his stomach clenched. He reached further, scrabbling with his fingers.
There was a niche in the wall. Something loose tucked into it.
He pulled out two dusty videotapes. Saw Kev in his mind’s eye, clapping. About time, Einstein. Give yourself a medal, why don’t you.
August twenty-third, Kev? What in the fuck…?
No. One thing at a time. If he let himself think of Kev’s post-death appearances on earth, he’d blow a fuse. He stowed the tapes, and pulled out the book with the fateful call number, leafing through it, just in case. It was titled The Founders of Endicott Falls: A True and Faithful Chronicle of Those Heroic Personages Who Forged Our Fair Township from a Savage and Ferocious Wilderness. By Joseph Ezekiel Bleeker.
Huh. Some ass-kissing scholar type, trying to score points with old Augustus. Probably wanted to marry the guy’s daughter.
He shoved the tome back into its space and beat hell out of there.
He had to call Liv, tell her he’d found the tapes. Thank her for being a genius, a goddess. Tell her that he wasn’t worthy to lick her perfect feet, and he was sorry he’d been such a rude dickhead.
And that he loved her, madly, till the end of time. Why hadn’t he said that last night, instead of all his macho, blustering bullshit?
Strawberry Red discreetly turned her back so she wouldn’t have to see his apologetic smile. Classy chick. He appreciated her delicacy.
He had his cell out before he was out the door. Liv’s phone rang, and rang, and rang. He got into Davy’s SUV, tossed the briefcase onto Con’s lap and ignored the questions while he pulled up Tam’s number.
She picked up instantly. “Sean,” she said crisply. “Brace yourself.”
“What?” he yelled. “What happened? Where is she?”
“I have no idea. She deactivated my alarms, took the car and left.”
“When? Oh, fuck. No. When?”
“Stop yelling in my ear. My alarm was deactivated almost four hours ago. Leaving me wide open in my studio, wearing head phones. I’m going to have a talk with her about that.”
“You were supposed to keep an eye on her!” he bellowed.
Tam snorted. “I was her host, not her jailor. If you’d asked me to confine her, I would have told you to go fuck yourself.”
“I do not have time for your crap, Tam—”
“So don’t call this number. I bet you were oh-so-masterful last night, right? Put your foot down, did you? Liv’s a real woman, not a dance club sex doll. A real woman has her own agenda. Get used to it.”
Sean hung up on her, tried Liv again. No luck. “Shit!” he hissed.
“Don’t you just hate it when they do that?” Con slanted a sympathetic glance over his shoulder.
Davy let out an eloquent grunt. “Tell me about it.”
Sympathy was not what he needed. He needed to see Liv, scream at her for scaring the shit out of him, and kiss her until she passed out.
“Is she wearing a beacon?” Davy inquired.
“There’s one in her cell,” Sean said through his clenched teeth, drumming his fingers. “Where’s the nearest X-Ray Specs set-up?”
“I’ve got an old Specs receiver Seth told me I could mess around with in my folk’s basement,” Miles offered. “I think I can make it work. I’ve got the software, too. I can install it.”
“Good,” Sean said curtly. “Let’s go.”