“Does he know this?”
“No,” Cole answers.
“Do they give him a warning if he tries to run?” Scott asks.
“Yes, and it’s painful.”
“I’m not seeing anything in the ranch logs about an escape.”
“There hasn’t been one.”
“So he hasn’t . . . felt the burn yet, if you will.” Scott’s smile is slight, but there’s mischief in it, and a hint of sadism. The guy must have already read Ed’s written account of everything that’s happened since Noah Turlington, who was then going by the name Dylan Thorpe, met a woman who’d recently changed her name to Charlotte Rowe. So Scott wouldn’t mind seeing Noah Turlington punished for some of the sins he committed as Dylan Thorpe; that’s a good sign, Cole thinks.
“There’s something that keeps coming up in the logs,” Scott says. “I apologize if it’s not worth mentioning, but it’s so frequent I—”
“Go ahead.”
“He wants to shave,” Scott says. “After he puts his TruGlass in every morning and does his mirror confirmation, he writes out a different note for us. Some are funny. Some are angry. But the subject’s always the same.”
Cole remembers the debauched sight Noah treated all of them to when Julia first insisted he wear her prized invention at all times. He wonders if Scott would think that was funny, too.
“Shaving,” Cole says.
Scott nods. “We could let him if you wanted. I mean, it’s doubtful our guys would get taken out by a Gillette. Also we could give him an electric razor. No blade.”
“I don’t want him shaving,” Cole says before he can stop himself.
I don’t want him looking anything like the man who used to reward me with deep, passionate kisses right after he inflicted just the right amount of pain.
“He’s learning to go without some things,” Cole says. “It’s good for him.”
The plane touches down on the runway with a brief jolt.
When their feet meet the tarmac, Scott’s right next to him, Secret Service–style, a definite change of pace from Ed. The man’s over six feet tall, rare for someone with a special operations background. When it comes to Navy SEALs in particular, shorter guys have an easier time making it through BUD/S. It’s all about endurance; six feet or more of man requires a lot of oxygen and blood to endure the hardships of running miles in thick sand and treading cold water for hours on end, more than is required by a guy in the five-foot range.
Two modified Suburbans are waiting for them right outside the terminal. They’ve got tinted bulletproof windows, tires capable of plowing through a blizzard. Cole’s barely taken a seat when Scott slides in next to him. Ed would have taken the empty passenger seat in front.
A right turn on I-70 would take them east toward Vail. Instead, they turn left. Then they make a quick right onto a twisty mountain road. They’re surrounded by slopes of pine blended with a few dry, exposed limestone faces and some determined patches of snow. A few miles west, the Rockies tumble down into a vast, arid stretch that extends into Utah. This land is where that eventual transition has its subtle origins.
The gate to the ranch used to be the traditional kind you had to get out and pull open. Now it’s a sliding electrified panel with an attached guardhouse, connected to miles of new fencing that run the property’s entire border.
When Cole was young, the only livestock here were a few horses, and they were mostly ridden and groomed by the staff. His father didn’t build the place because he loved animals. He didn’t even build it to commune with nature. He built it to give his privileged, delicate son some connection to something greater than himself, and because he didn’t believe in God, he was convinced that connection could only be found on the edge of a vast wilderness.
The driver slows down some as they descend the dirt road to the main house.
Cole feels a chest-constricting performance anxiety that could be memory, or it could be assaulting him from the present. He’s not sure. In the end, it doesn’t matter. He just wants his palms to sweat less, and he doesn’t want Scott to notice he’s having trouble breathing.
If he had a better place to keep Noah Turlington prisoner, he’d use it. But this is the only property his father left entirely to him in his will. Stonecut Ranch was built for Cole, and it still feels like his despite his loathing of it, maybe because the exterior looks exactly the way it did when he was a boy. The limestone cliffs that cup the far side of the glassy lake still look like the palms of a goddess; the gurgling brook still parallels the side of the dirt road as if it were dug by landscapers.
And there, in front of the house’s main entrance, amid precisely placed beds of flowers that are currently just green shoots and buds, is the same slab of obsidian his father put in place right after the ranch was completed. It looks like a tombstone, but there are no dates carved into it. Just a long quote. His father’s favorite.
Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Jacob Riis
The stone’s evenly split at the top to make it look like it just suffered a strike from a giant’s ax.
His father used to make Cole lay his hand briefly against it whenever they arrived.
Cole hasn’t repeated the ritual since the man died.
Giant logs along the house’s facade soar three stories to support the wings of the expansive A-frame roof. All in all, the place has always looked like a Greek temple Paul Bunyan tried to build out of local materials.
Even after the security team opens the front door for him and Cole walks into the great room with Scott on his heels, Noah Turlington doesn’t turn away from the room’s windows. They’re giant walls of plate glass, really, built to make the most of the stunning views of the twinkling lake and its border of limestone cliffs. But given how long Noah’s been held prisoner here, Cole has a hard time believing the man’s still enamored by the landscape.
When his father was alive there were enough bronze statues of animals stationed around the great room to make the place feel like a petrified zoo. Cole’s had them all removed. But he left the dark wood and leather furniture exactly where his dad placed it. Thank God there were never any antlers on the walls, or skulls, or moose heads to deal with. His father wasn’t a hunter. The man’s relationship to the wild was subtler, more personal.
Cole remembers lots of long walks and hikes. Whenever there was a flash of frightening movement in the nearby brush that would make Cole want to turn tail and run, his dad would take him by the shoulders and make him wait until whatever had caused the disturbance emerged. It didn’t matter if it was a deer or a bear. He was intent on turning his only child’s moments of fear into patient wonder, intent on connecting him to a world beyond housekeepers and chauffeured cars and his privileged classmates at his elite private school. Perhaps those things might have been easier to accomplish if the property hadn’t sported a multimillion-dollar palace for them to retire to each night, but Cole would never have suggested such a thing. The house and its library were the only things that made his visits here bearable.
Now the house is, appropriately, a prison.
For someone else.
Cole drops a thick spiral-bound file onto the coffee table with a loud thud.
Noah turns and, without so much as a nod, moves to the file and starts leafing through it.
Two members of the house’s security team stand sentry by the front door, waiting for Cole to give them their cue. Scott’s closer, studying Cole with an intensity that makes gooseflesh break out on the back of his neck.
Standing, Noah flips pages with increasing frustration. “This is . . .” The words leave him as he flips more. “This is just a rehash of the footage. There’s nothing . . .” Noah looks into Cole’s eyes for the first time. Whatever he sees there causes him to raise the
entire file in one hand and hurl it to the floor.
The security team, including Scott, start to move in. They stop when they see Cole’s raised hand. Maybe Cole’s small but satisfied smile also calms them.
“I was hoping we could talk alone,” Cole says, “but if you’re in a tantrum-prone mood . . .”
“What do we have to talk about?” Noah asks.
“Since you’ve made clear you reviewed the footage, do you have anything interesting to say about it?”
“Nothing earth-shattering. I could have given you my analysis over the phone.”
“This is more secure, obviously.”
Noah’s grumble sounds pregnant with unspoken profanity. He throws himself down onto the nearby sofa. Then his focus lasers in on Scott.
“Who are you?” he asks Scott.
“He’s my new director of security,” Cole says.
“What happened to Mr. Clean?”
“He’s moved on.”
“Why?”
“I’m not here to discuss personnel issues with you.”
Noah glares at Scott. Scott glares back. “I bet the job interview was long and hard.”
“Would you like me to stay?” Scott asks. “Or would you like to be alone with Mr. Wizard here?”
“Lazy,” Noah mumbles, “I hate lazy jokes. Why make a joke at all? Just make a face, pretty boy. It’ll earn you more points with this one.”
“Why don’t you step out for a bit, Scott? Noah seems aroused to distraction by your presence.”
Scott nods, gives Noah a fierce, lingering look, then gestures for the two house security guards to follow him outside.
Once they’re gone, Noah says, “This is good strategy. I approve.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Sleeping with your security director. It gets him more invested in you.”
“You used to be direct, Noah. Now you’re just crude. Have you had lunch?”
“Come on. You know I don’t subscribe to the puritanical separation of sex and profession. Some of the greatest warriors in history fucked their comrades. It’s what made them fight to the death for them in battle.”
“Not everyone’s a warrior.”
“You better hope he is. For your sake.”
“Noted. I’d like to talk about the—”
“I am. I was, at least.”
“For what, though? That’s never clear.”
“Zypraxon.” He smiles. “And paradrenaline. Which you’ve had preserved since the Pemberton takedown, but you’re still not giving me access to.”
“You don’t own the contents of Charlotte Rowe’s blood, and you never will. That’s not how this is going to work. Once we get started, your focus will be the drug.”
“The drug works because it manufactures paradrenaline in the bloodstream, and so far that process has killed everyone except for her. I can’t make a study of one without the other, Cole.”
“Your area of focus will be where I say it is, and it will commence when I say so. That’s the deal.”
“Fine, then. You have the drug’s new formula. What do you need me for? If you’re going to wall me off from the real miracle in all this, you might as well just bury me in a shallow grave.”
“You disappeared for three years. If it takes longer than five months to get the island back up and running, I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”
“How much longer? I’m sick of this place.”
“My labs, which I built for you, cost millions to operate, secure, and keep secret, and I can’t come up with that money overnight, as you well know. If you wanted to put all of this on a timetable of your choosing, you should have consulted me before you involved Charlotte without her consent.”
“I did.”
“You did nothing of the kind.”
“I told you I wanted to test it on women, and you freaked out and pulled the plug.”
“We’d already killed four people. I was pulling the plug anyway.”
“So what? I still consulted you.”
“This is childish nonsense, and it’s beneath a man of your intelligence.”
“No, you coming here every few weeks with another crumb, pretending you’re consulting me when really you’re just keeping me from the most important work, that’s childish nonsense, Cole. For Christ’s sake, at least let me shave.”
“What’s your opinion of the footage?”
“My opinion? I’d like to know how you disposed of Richard Davies.”
“That’s not an opinion. That’s a question about something that’s none of your business.”
“My opinion is that nobody should be surprised by her speed of regeneration. It’s in keeping with everything else we’ve learned about the trigger zone. The only reason we’ve never seen it before is because we’ve never subjected her to trauma that severe. I don’t know how you could in a lab, and I wouldn’t recommend it. But obviously the healing agent is paradrenaline, which you still won’t let me analyze, even though there was a time when you and I would have killed to get a single vial stable and under control.”
“We did kill, and we still didn’t get it.”
“Willing test subjects who knew the risks. The only subject who didn’t know the risks survived and has changed the whole game, but people are still treating me like I killed her.”
“Actually, we’re treating you like you raped her, which is more accurate.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Yes, I understand that psychopaths often grapple with the issue of consent. But hopefully it’s clear to you that there were a dozen things that could have gone wrong with what you did to her. All of them horrible.”
“And yet none of them came to pass. And you have what you want for the first time. But you’re not letting me anywhere near it because . . . I don’t know, you have some desire to punish me for the fact that I stopped sleeping with you when you shut down my project.”
“I’m not punishing you. I’m giving you time to figure out who you’ll need to be when this comes together again. If I put The Consortium back together, if I get the funding and the labs running again, you will be a man among men, a worker among workers. No more mad rogue stuff. So reflect now on how you’ll accomplish that. Because if you treat anyone involved in this the way you treated Charlotte, I will fucking end you, do you understand me, Noah?”
Cole’s not sure how to interpret Noah’s expression. The glaze in his eyes makes him look both angry and distant, but his thick beard makes the rest of his face harder to read. It’s also not a typical posture for him; slouched down on the sofa like a sullen teenager, his hands resting on his stomach. The only clothes he’s been allowed are T-shirts and pajama pants, and now they complete the look of a hungover ne’er-do-well, drying out at his parents’ mansion. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Fine,” he whispers. “On one condition.”
“We’re not negotiating.”
“Stop calling me Noah.”
There’s something in his voice that Cole’s never heard before. Pain. Pure pain, complete with a weak tremor and a breathiness that suggests it’s threaded with fear. In all the time they spent together, ranging from the intimate to the professional, Cole never heard the man before him use a tone quite like this one. It’s ironic given the request, but Cole wonders if this is the first time he’s hearing Noah Turlington’s voice and not Dylan Cody’s.
“I’ll consider it,” Cole says.
He picks up the file from where Noah hurled it to the floor and sets it gently on the coffee table between them. “This is more than just a crumb. It’s got detailed analyses of all her levels for four days after her regeneration. Study it. Make sense of it. Tell me if you see something that surprises you. And maybe then I’ll let you shave.”
“Thank you,” Noah says quietly. But suddenly he flinches as if from an invisible blow. He raises one hand to his temple and bows his head. Cole’s so startled his anger leaves him. His first thought—
the security team’s been listening in, and they’ve decided to play a little trick with Noah’s blood trackers meant to punish him for his attitude.
But Noah recovers too quickly. Suddenly, he’s staring at Cole again as if nothing’s wrong.
“Are you all right?” Cole asks.
“Fine,” Noah says, “just a little headache.”
“Take a walk. Get some air.”
“I’ve had my fill of mountain air, thanks. If anything, that’s the problem.”
“Oh, well. Be grateful. Your problems could be so much worse than that.” Cole turns and heads for the door. “I look forward to your report, Noah.”
“Cole!”
Cole stops, but doesn’t turn.
“How is she?” Noah asks.
“Very happy,” Cole says. “She’s got a boyfriend now. They’re making a nice life together. Peaceful. Stable.”
He walks out the front door before Noah can call his name again.
They’re airborne by the time the email comes through.
It’s from Kelley Chen, who’s running lead on the paradrenaline research.
Even though it’s only two words long, Cole has to read it several times before the shock wears off.
Complete Elimination.
When he gets to his feet, Scott perks up, but Cole dismisses him with a wave and moves to the sleeping cabin at the back of the plane.
Once he’s slid the door shut behind him, he calls Kelley from his sat phone. As usual, she answers without a formal greeting. “It’s early, but I thought you should know.”
“Complete elimination means what exactly?” he asks.
“Exactly what I said.”
Kelley isn’t one for wild swings of emotion, but there’s a tremor in her voice right now. It’s excitement; it has to be. Or more precisely, it’s her failing effort to suppress it.
“How much paradrenaline did it take?” he asks.
“All of it.”
“OK. Well, we have more from the Davies operation we can—”
“No, we used that, too. We’re out. We need more.”
“You just decided to use the whole batch?”
Blood Echo Page 15
