by Shanon Hunt
Layla sucked in her breath.
“Layla is so involved in the community that she’s practically never in her room. I have no way to evaluate her.” Sister Pauline winked at her.
She couldn’t appreciate the teasing or the compliment. Please let me stay, Father. Please let me stay.
Finally, Brother James turned to Dr. Jeannette, and Layla froze. This was it. “Dr. Jeannette, how has Layla been doing in therapy? How has she been dealing with her memories?”
Layla avoided Dr. Jeannette’s gaze and looked down at her hands. They were trembling.
Dr. Jeannette didn’t speak. Not a word, for five seconds. Ten seconds.
The wait was agonizing, and Layla finally looked up right into Dr. Jeannette’s piercing eyes. She desperately wanted to look away, but she held Dr. Jeannette’s stare. Dr. Jeannette’s jaw was clenched and slightly quivering. Fear engulfed Layla again and she wanted to sit tall and be brave, but she cowered in her chair as if she were going to be struck.
At long last, Dr. Jeannette smiled to everyone at the table.
“Layla’s been doing wonderfully,” she said in her singsong voice. “Our therapy sessions have been very productive. Her memories from her poisoned life are slow to return, but I don’t see that as a hindrance in her progression toward purification.”
“Excellent. Thank you, everyone. I will discuss it with the Father this evening, and I know he will be thrilled to get Layla started.” He turned back to Layla. “Sister Layla, it’s with great pride that I inform you that you have been called for purification. You will begin your conditioning as soon as you meet with Dr. Jeremy.”
Layla’s eyes filled with tears—tears of joy, tears of relief, tears of exhaustion. But she smiled as she cried and looked around the table as all her mentors applauded her. All but Dr. Jeannette, who busied herself writing notes in her pad.
“And as a congratulation, I brought you a gift. This book was donated for our library, but I recall you’d mentioned it was one of your favorites. It happens to be one of my favorites, as well. I’d like you to have it.”
Layla took the book from Brother James and hugged it to her chest. Had she told him she loved this book? She didn’t remember.
“Thank you so much, Brother James. Thank you.” She held the book out to look at the cover, then hugged it again.
***
Today was the best day of Layla’s entire life.
She lay in her bed, unable to sleep. It was early, not even ten p.m., but she no longer attended evening devotions. She was a trainee now and would soon attend her first day of conditioning. The next phase of her life would begin in just two days, and she couldn’t imagine how she would survive until then.
She picked up the book Brother James had given to her. The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Hmm. She ran her fingers over the cover. A man wearing a black mask held a sword, while a woman with long, flowing hair—Layla could only assume she was the actual princess bride—stood by his side. The book was slightly worn, but it didn’t matter to Layla. It was a gift from Brother James to her.
Layla opened the cover, breathing in the musty smell of the old book. It reminded her of something. A smell from her past that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
She fanned the book pages and inhaled again, savoring the moment. Finally, when she could hold out no longer, she turned to the first page and was surprised to see a handwritten inscription inside.
To my beautiful girl,
As you wish.
Brother James
She didn’t understand the note, but her stomach filled with butterflies. What could it mean?
She skipped past several pages of introduction and stopped to look at the map. The Cliffs of Insanity. The Fire Swamp. It all sounded so familiar. She smiled. Then she turned to page one and began reading: “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
What a wonderful first line.
Chapter 46
Allison’s office window vibrated as she slammed the door shut and she flinched, thinking it might shatter. She glanced through the window to see Carol jump up from her desk and look worriedly over. Allison mouthed “Sorry!” and opened her laptop to appear to be addressing an urgent matter. Which she was.
She leafed through the patient documents that Elaine had showed her. Four of them listed no known address or phone number, so she started with Jake Graventoll. She picked up her receiver, then set it down. What if the FBI were monitoring her calls? Couldn’t they do that from the office of a known fugitive?
She rifled through her purse and retrieved her cell phone. She dialed the number on Graventoll’s profile, but it was out of service.
“Dammit,” she whispered as she moved to the next profile.
Mark Vespe. She dialed and let the phone ring eight times before hanging up.
The third number was picked up after a single ring.
“Hello?” A male voice.
“Uh, hi, is this Eric Sparks?”
“Hang on.”
She heard a loud whisper on the other end of the phone. “Carla. Carla! It’s them.”
A woman took the phone. “Hello? Who am I speaking with?” She sounded frantic—or maybe angry?
“My name is Allison Stevens, and I’m with a biotech company, Quandary Therapeutics. I’m looking for—”
“Listen to me, you fucking bitch. You owe us $50,000. Do you hear me? We want our money right fucking now. We followed all your fucking rules. We didn’t talk to the cops. Now give us our money!”
Allison sat stunned, unable to breathe, let alone speak.
“You killed my brother with your stupid drug. I lost my brother because of you fucking bastards!” The woman screamed into the phone. “Now give us our fucking money!”
Finally, Allison spoke, barely a whisper. “I don’t know what you mean.”
That seemed only to infuriate the woman further. “I have your number now, you fucking bitch. I have your number! I’m gonna track you down. I have friends who will fuck you up. I’m gonna kill you.”
Allison disconnected the call. Jesus Christ. Her breathing was shallow and fast. She glanced down at the one remaining profile with a phone number, Karen Richmond. With quivering fingers, she started dialing.
But before she could finish, a text message popped onto her screen. It was a video. She tapped the small triangle in the middle of the screen.
A man dressed in a football uniform pulled off his helmet and tossed it aside. He looked into the camera. “Okay, ready?”
“Yeah.” The cameraman panned out to get the full view of the street.
“Okay. Hi, I’m Eric Sparks. Welcome to Jackass Live Edition!”
Eric started running at a full-out sprint. The shaky camera turned to follow him. Eric headed straight for an oncoming pickup truck, which seemed to be accelerating as it approached him. It looked like he was playing a stunt man version of the game chicken.
It took less than five seconds for the truck to meet Eric at what had to have been twenty or thirty miles an hour. Eric sprung off his feet to hurdle the oncoming vehicle. His leading foot landed with a sickening twist on the hood of the truck before his body cartwheeled. His head slammed into the windshield and then again on the tailgate as the truck sped past. The impact should have knocked him unconscious, if not killed him.
Instead, he sat up, shook his head as if clearing the cobwebs, and looked directly into the camera with a bloody smile.
“Did you get it? DID YOU FUCKING GET THAT SHIT?!” he screamed, his words noticeably slurred.
The video ended, and Allison read the message that followed: “This is what you turned him into. Rot in hell, bitch.”
A picture of Eric Sparks lying unconscious in a hospital bed appeared next, as though the video wasn’t convincing enough. Sparks was dead. The LXR drug had killed him. It had made him crazy, just like the chimpanzees.
Oh god.
The tingle in Allison’s fingers spread up her arms and through her
body, until every muscle trembled.
Another text message: “You killed my brother, bitch. Now I’m coming for you.”
She dropped her phone onto the desk as if it had burned her hands. She stood up. Her legs buckled underneath her, and she collapsed back into her chair. She lay her head on her arms and closed her eyes.
So this was it. Austin had used her to pay for an illegal drug study that killed a subject. He’d framed her for this heinous crime. She might not rot in hell, but if she didn’t figure out how to get herself out of this, she’d certainly rot in prison.
Chapter 47
Malloy looked up at a gentle rap on his office door. Wang stepped into the office and closed the door behind him.
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend,” Wang said.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“I received a call last night from my supervisor in Newark. My assignment here with the Phoenix office has ended. I’ll be returning to New Jersey this afternoon.”
“I assumed that would be the case. Thanks for all you’ve done for us.” Despite Wang’s unwavering formality, Malloy had grown fond of him.
“Sir, since I’ll be back at my desk job, what if I called around to a few biotechs on the East Coast? Just see if we can get any leads? I know a lot of people there. Maybe if we hit the streets …”
Malloy was touched by the gesture. It was evident that Wang wasn’t just a bureaucratic desk jockey, and Malloy could see he was bothered by what could only be a bribe by some big-money pharma lobby. But like Garcia, Wang didn’t understand the stakes, and Malloy wasn’t willing to allow the man, who had a lovely wife and daughter back in New Jersey, to put himself or his family in harm’s way.
He scowled and stood up from his chair, leaning over his desk. “Agent Wang, which part of ‘the case is closed’ did you not understand?”
Wang rocked back a step, startled. “None of it, sir.”
“I don’t know how you do things out there on the East Coast, but here we follow orders. Our criminal justice system was built on integrity, and part of that integrity requires compliance, even if we don’t have full understanding of the reasons behind decisions that are made above our pay grade.”
Malloy hated himself. He sat back down and turned toward his computer.
“I understand, sir.” Wang left without another word.
“Shit.” Malloy shook his head, disgusted, and picked up his phone receiver. “Garcia, get in here.”
Garcia sauntered in and stood against the wall. He stretched a hairband off his wrist, pulled his hair back into a ponytail, and waited.
Malloy slumped over his desk with both hands wrapped around his coffee cup. The heat from the sunlight, which poured into the room through the west-facing windows, had long since overpowered the building’s ancient AC system, but his hands were cold and clammy. He walked to the window, hoping the sun rays might form a fireball to blast right through the window and stop him from what he was about to do.
None came.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began.
He didn’t have to do this. There had to be other ways.
“Maybe we need to take a more aggressive approach.”
Fuck. There it was. Out there, goddammit.
Garcia remained silent, and Malloy wondered if his message was too subtle. He could still back out.
But Garcia answered. “Yup.”
It’s Tyler Steele. Garcia’s voice still rang in his head. He kept his gaze focused in the parking lot. “I sure would like to know what bank account deposited $50,000 into Karen Richmond’s secret account.”
He instantly regretted it and turned quickly, trying to find a way to take it back.
Garcia nodded. “Week or so.” He left.
Malloy slowly returned to his desk and sat down, staring vacantly at his computer screen. His lips tightened over his teeth in an effort to hold in the barrage of curse words he needed to spew. He banged his fists on his desk, sloshing coffee onto his lap.
“Shit.” He rolled his chair backward and brushed off the droplets.
He’d been thinking about that account ever since Lyle Richmond confessed. It was like a bad earworm, constantly nagging him to get off his ass and do something. He’d contacted the three other victims’ families and gotten nothing. Either they hadn’t gotten paid, or they didn’t know anything about the source of the payment. It was possible they were lying, but it didn’t matter. If they weren’t going to give it up, he certainly wasn’t going to pressure them. It was risky enough contacting them at all, given the circumstances of the case’s closure.
But it had taken great courage for Lyle Richmond to come around. Sure, he did it because he was a man of God and probably thought his seat in heaven was at risk, but the man was clearly suffering. Malloy owed it to him to do his best to find the bad guys.
He got up and walked back to the window, where he stood with his hands on his hips, arching his back to relieve his aching lower back. He felt old. Old and tired and achy.
Lyle was just an excuse, he knew. Quite simply, this was all about Tyler Steele. He wouldn’t let Tyler’s death go unpunished any more than his own son’s. But it was difficult to ignore orders, especially when the consequences of ignoring them had been made perfectly clear. And he had a lead, goddammit, something to follow other than scientific babble beyond his comprehension. A bank account was something he understood.
Follow the money. Every law enforcement agent knew it. Find the source of the money, and you find the source of the crime. But it wasn’t easy to follow the money when you couldn’t get a warrant, and right now, asking for help from a judge would likely get him fired. Or worse.
So now he’d done what any emotional cop who’d lost his objectivity would have done. He’d thrown his morality under the bus and gone for the nuclear option: Garcia’s special gift.
Garcia’s gift came in the form of a vast concealed network of ethically challenged associates who helped each other from time to time with just this kind of thing. Garcia didn’t hide the fact that he had connections. The bureau had tried to recruit him precisely because of his channel into various hacking groups, and Garcia had refused their offer precisely because he wasn’t ready to give it up. It was a valuable helpline when he needed to access it, but Garcia also didn’t want to, as he had put it, wake up buried alive in a box six feet under somewhere in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
Malloy had told Garcia from the beginning he didn’t want to know anything about the network, and he’d never asked him to use it. Ever. Until today. It seemed like a small, inconsequential request, and Garcia’s reaction—or more accurately, his nonreaction—probably meant that it was. But Malloy still felt ashamed, like a recovered addict who’d finally broken down and taken the hit. He wondered if this was the start of the downward spiral of his career. It happened to cops, he knew. Once they started working outside the law, it became too easy to continue. The golden seal had been broken.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he stood in front of the unforgiving Arizona sun. He’d done enough unscrupulous work for the week. He packed his things and went home.
Chapter 48
Layla was ten minutes early as she approached a small group of inductees standing together in the garden. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who was excited to be getting started with conditioning for purification.
“Layla! Oh my god!” Nicole ran over and threw her arms around her. “How come you didn’t tell me?” She punched Layla in the arm a bit too hard.
Layla only smiled and enthusiastically greeted the others. “Sofia! Jonah! You guys were both selected?”
“This is so exciting!” Sofia exclaimed as she hugged Layla. “We’ll be in the same class.”
Jonah hugged Layla, too, picking her up off her feet. “Well, the Princess of Pain finally gets her calling.”
“Don’t call me that.” She grimaced. The nickname had been around for as long as she’d been here, but she hated it. It
was disrespectful to the process of purification, and she was certain that the father didn’t approve of that kind of arrogance.
“Uh, could someone direct me to the trainee party?” A voice came from behind them.
“Isaac!” Nicole squealed, causing Layla to flinch.
Isaac dismissed Nicole and high-fived Jonah. Layla caught a brief glimpse of Nicole’s crestfallen look and couldn’t resist putting an arm around her friend’s shoulder to cheer her up. As melodramatic as Nicole could be, she had a good heart.
“Who else is starting?” Sofia asked.
Sister Mia came over. “This is it, the five of you. Congratulations again, everyone.” She hugged each of them. Then her face became somber, her voice reverent. “Let’s sit in the garden together.”
She led them to a quiet, secluded spot and lowered herself into the heel-sit position. Her hands lay gently across her legs, her head lowered slightly. Layla and the others followed her lead and lowered themselves into the same position, whispering “Thank you, Father,” as they exhaled to release the pain of the pressure against their bruised shins. They sat silently, breathing in and out.
Finally, Sister Mia began. “Today I’m going to introduce you to the next phase of your journey, conditioning for purification. Let’s express our gratitude to the Father and thank your own body and mind for what you’ve been able to accomplish.”
Thank you, Father, for this opportunity and for giving me strength. Thank you, Layla, for accepting the gift of the Father, the gift of strength in mind and body, for enduring what was necessary to progress to this stage of purification.
“During the induction phase of your journey, you learned how to devote yourself—your entire being, mind, body, and spirit—to suffering,” Sister Mia said. “You’ve endured extraordinary physical pain and sleep deprivation to help you overcome significant, even profound, mental and emotional obstacles. Reflect on your own development and give thanks.”
Thank you, Father.
“As a result of your exceptional effort and endurance, your complete dedication to the Colony, and your devotion to the Father and his work here, you are among the very few chosen to become pure.”
