She blinked in shock. “The son of a bitch knows about the implant. He found the camera.”
“And we’ve seen nothing since,” Patterson said. “Bastard’s negated our best technology with a fucking eye patch.”
“Look, Colonel, I’m sure we can–”
“We can do nothing. I’ve been all over this. Now we can’t even observe the Offspring as planned. How are we going to know what they can do, much less catch sight of the others if they should come together, with a complete blackout?”
Sarah had a backup plan. Patterson had been certain it would never be needed, but now it was, just as she had predicted it would be. One of the things in life she knew for sure, was that she was quite a bit smarter than her boss.
“I can find them,” she said. “More easily now than before, actually. This is the first time he’s left their freaking mansion since the camera started working.” She scrolled back through the video that had been recorded overnight, backed it all the way up to the car ride. She let the recording play out again in slow motion, then paused as the flashy red sports car pulled into the drugstore parking lot. There were only three other vehicles there. But all of them had the same plates. “They’re in Maine,” she said. Then she moved the recording forward again, and strained her eyes as an invisible man took an eye patch from a white plastic bag. She backed up, and then moved forward again, frame by frame, until the words on the plastic bag were readable. “Cornucopia Village Market. They’re in Cornucopia, Maine. Or near it.”
Colonel Patterson was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You’ve impressed me Bouchard.”
“It’s still not quite enough. They might move. I think it’s time we put our secret weapon into use,” she said.
“Yes, I agree. Initiate it today.”
“Yes sir. I’ll do the groundwork first, deploy it tonight after hours.”
“I’ll see to it everything goes smoothly,” he said. “But remember, not a word to anyone else in the Division. This is eyes only, right?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “And don’t worry, sir. I’m sure I’ll be able to get close enough to retake the Offspring. I can still command de Courtemanche directly from inside his own brain.”
“Unless they find some vamp-sympathizer surgeon to take the device out first. You’d better believe that’s their next move.”
“If they try to remove it, they’ll blow his head off, boss,” she reminded him.
“I know that, Bouchard. The fail-safe was my idea.” It was not. “But if that happens, we still lose our connection to those Offspring. And we must get them back. I want that to be your top priority. Get those mutants back into their cages where they belong.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m counting on you, Bouchard. Don’t let me down.”
Sarah promised she wouldn’t and hung up the telephone. Then she used her secure computer to find a realtor near Cornucopia, Maine. She jotted the number on a paper napkin, then went to shower, change and pack for her trip. She would have to wait until business hours to make the phone call. And after that, she’d have a lot of shopping to do.
But that was fine. She had all day. Her plan couldn’t be executed until nightfall anyway.
* * *
With the children gone, the house I’d named Serenity seemed to have lost its soul. I rose at sundown, slipped out of bed before Roland had yet roused. My thin silk gown puddling around my bare feet, I went into the hallway, down the stairs and across the gleaming marble floors all the way to the back, to the kitchen. That was where everyone would usually be gathered when Roland and I rose. Either in the kitchen or the backyard. But the patio and pool and lawns beyond were deserted and seemed as bereft as my heart.
I felt my love coming behind me, sliding his hands over my shoulders, bending to kiss my neck. “I’ve brought you nothing but grief lately. And I’m more sorry for that than I can ever express.”
I tipped my head further, rubbing my cheek against his. “In my very worst times, you’ve stood by my side. You’ve loved me at my darkest, fought in my defense, saved my life. You know if our situations were reversed, you would stay by my side no matter what. And I love you every bit as much as you love me. Remember that, the next time you’re tempted to indulge yourself in guilt.”
I felt him smile, and his hand trailed over my buttocks, squeezed and turned me toward him. His left eye blazed into mine, and I lifted my brows and regretted leaving our bed too soon.
“Oh, sorry!”
“Sorry!” Eric and Tamara spoke at once, stumbling into each other in the kitchen doorway. They’d spent the day here, but the plan was for them to head over to Maxine and Lou’s as soon as we had established our plan of action for the evening.
“We were looking for—”
“Breakfast?” I asked, not moving my eyes from Roland’s. I found the eye-patch ridiculously sexy. It suited him. And we had committed piracy, after all, according to the US Government. “It’s in the refrigerator, dear. Help yourself.”
Tamara rattled around our kitchen. “I’ll heat some for everyone,” she said.
“I’ll help,” Eric said.
I was still gazing up at my husband. “Ironic, isn’t it, that in the weeks surrounding our actual pirating of The Anemone, you lost a leg and took to wearing…that,” I nodded at the eyepatch.
“Bitterly ironic,” he agreed.
I shifted closer, my entire body pressing to his. “My sexy buccaneer.”
I saw his amusement, the teasing curve of his delicious lips. “Get me a–a pint o’ grog or something. Wench.”
“Ah…careful now.” I kissed his chin and restrained myself from pulling him on top of me on the kitchen table, but only for the sake of our guests.
Tamara was stirring a pot over a burner, and the scent it emitted made my mouth water. “We do have a microwave, you know,” I said, and I pointed to the device, which was directly in front of her. She could hardly have missed it.
“Oh, no. We don’t use that anymore. Eric has found that heating blood in that thing, or even water, changes it on a molecular level. And not in a good way.”
“It’s true,” Eric said, nodding. “I’ve sworn off the thing.”
“I do that with most modern contraptions,” Roland said. “And frankly, having one inside my head is damned disturbing.”
“Roland….” My tone held a warning.
“They must know by now that we’ve discovered the implant, love. Besides, the Malones’ handy device found no sign of any kind of microphone or GPS inside my head, so we can assume it’s safe to speak aloud.”
“Yes, and I find it difficult to imagine even DPI has developed technology advanced enough to read our thoughts,” Eric said. “But at this point, it doesn’t really matter.”
“We’ll find out, once we get our hands on the surgeon who put it there,” Roland said. “Speaking of which, have we heard from Lucas?”
“I haven’t checked,” I replied.
We took our evening beverages and headed back through the house and into the library. The emptiness of the place hit me anew. I supposed it would continue to do so until we had the children back.
How had I become so attached in so short a time?
I went around behind the corner desk, where the largest iMac computer to be had, held court. I had taught myself to use the things, though Roland refused to even try. I opened the email program to see if Lucas had sent anything in response to the call I’d placed to him before bed.
“Yes, here’s something,” I said. Lucas had sent an email, and I read it aloud. “‘Dr. Sarah Bouchard. 1979 Cherry Street, White Plains.” I blinked, looking up at the men. “This is it? This is the surgeon who put that thing inside you? Just like that?”
“I told you Lucas was trustworthy,” Roland said. Amazing that he could sound so smugly self-satisfied when his life was on the line.
“And you trust this?” I asked. “How do you know it’s not an ambush?”
“We�
�ll know,” he said, setting down his mug on the desk, “when we get there. Where’s my cloak?” He seemed almost excited. Eager.
I found his optimism contagious. “Perhaps,” I said, “you should take the time to get dressed first. Though I hate to give you any reason to cover up that delicious chest of yours.”
He looked down at his shirtless torso and baggy pajama pants, then smiled up at me. Yes, he was optimistic. Even hopeful.
“If we must,” he said. And he headed back through the house and upstairs.
* * *
Dr. Sarah Bouchard carefully reinforced the blocks around her mind, as she had been trained to do by her employers, before she tapped on the door, then opened it and walked carefully inside. Gamma F-2, the albino Offspring who’d died at the age of two only to revive on the autopsy table just as the first incision began, lay in the bed, sleeping, and Sarah didn’t want to startle it and end up like that poor lab tech. He was in a burn unit, and still listed as critical.
“It’s Dr. B,” Sarah whispered from the open door. She didn’t step inside. She might need to pull it closed in a hurry. “I need you to wake up.”
The Offspring rolled onto its side and opened its eyes. Creepy violet eyes. Sometimes they were purple, like amethyst stones, deep and sparkling. But other times, they lightened, first to lilac and then to pink. That was when it was truly dangerous, when those eyes went pink.
“Please, don’t hurt me anymore,” it said. “I don’t want to burn you, too.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Gamma. And I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you either. I’m going to take you out of here. Right now.”
The childlike creature blinked, white blond lashes almost angelic. It was so easy sometimes to forget it wasn’t an adorable, frightened little girl. “You’re taking me away from here?”
“Yes, but we have to hurry. Come on.”
“No.” It shook its head and cringed beneath the covers, crowding as close to the wall as it could. “No, it’s a trick.”
“It’s not a trick. I can’t let them hurt you the way they’re doing. I have a nice place, one they don’t even know about. Come with me. I promise, you won’t regret it.”
The mutant lay there, thinking, mulling with its sharp mind. They were smart. Smarter than they had let on, smarter than Sarah had known. She’d been with them from the beginning, but had left the research vessel Anemone for a briefing with Colonel Patterson just in time. The Coast Guard cutter had picked her up only hours before the vampires had taken the ship.
“Look, it can’t be worse than staying here, can it?” she asked, trying to sound kind and caring. “There’s a world out there you have never seen, a world where...children,” she had to force the word out, “have good, happy lives. You’ve been here since you were just a baby. But you can live differently.”
That bit of logic seemed to tip the scale. It nodded hard and threw back the covers. “All right. I’ll come with you.”
“Good. Hurry now. We have to be careful.”
It hurried across the room to stand beside Sarah in the doorway. Bouchard caught herself almost reaching down to take its hand. So easy. So easy to forget.
“What about the cameras?” It asked and it looked up toward the camera mounted high in the far corner of the room.
“I disabled them, but they’ll come back on in a few minutes. Come on. Hurry now.”
The Offspring thinned its lips and followed Bouchard out of the room and down the hall. It was obedient all the way down the hall, and on the elevator, which it had ridden before as the lab where its daily testing happened was one level down. This time, though, the elevator took them all the way to the ground floor where the exit doors were unlocked and the guards on break. Bouchard led the creature through the front doors, and outside into the dark night.
It stopped there as a stray breeze blew its platinum blond hair into motion. It touched its own face as if unsure what that feeling was. Bouchard realized it had never before been outdoors, except perhaps, when they’d taken its lifeless body from The Anemone. It had revived, but it had been sick, terribly sick, for a long time.
Sarah waited only a second or two before reaching for its hand. Tiny and warm in her own. It was a necessary evil. “Come along, now, before we get caught. My car is right—”
“What is car?”
“I’ll show you. Come on, now. Come on.” Bouchard clicked her keyring to unlock her Mercedes, opened its passenger door. “You sit here, and I sit there,” she said, touching the respective leather seats. “This machine carries us to where we want to go. It moves much more quickly than we can move on foot.”
Gamma F-2 blinked and said, “I can move very fast, you know.”
“Yes, I know. But this can move even faster. Go ahead, sit down.”
Gamma did so, hopping up onto the seat, then inspecting the entire dashboard with curious purple eyes. “Good, very good. I need to buckle this around you, now. In case we have to stop quickly, it will protect you. I will be wearing one too.”
It was examining the seatbelt, turning it in impossibly small hands. Its eyes were wide with fear, but still dark. It nodded twice. “All right.”
Sarah buckled the seatbelt around it, and thought it probably ought to be in a safety seat. That went by size, didn’t it? Or weight? Or was it age? She wouldn’t know. She had no experience with children. “Now I need to close this door. And I’m going to go to the other side and get in from there. You see?”
It nodded twice, but slowly.
“Don’t be afraid,” Sarah said, and then she closed the door slowly, giving only a slight push at the end so it would latch without making a loud sound that might startle the little beast. She hurried around to the driver’s side, pulled her door open, and got behind the wheel.
So far, so good, she thought. As least her dress wasn’t smoldering yet. She started the engine, put the car into gear. “All right,” she said. “Here we go.”
The Offspring’s eyes went very wide and their purple lightened to lilac. It clutched the arm rest on one side and the console on the other as Sarah drove the car through The Sentinel’s parking lot and out through the front gate, which opened at her approach, and finally she was on the road and the gates were closing behind her.
From here on, she was off the books. Off the record. And the only person in DPI who knew anything about her mission, where she would be or who with, was Colonel Patterson.
She truly wished she trusted him more than she did.
Chapter Thirteen
Roland and I left immediately, taking my car and heading for White Plains while Eric and Tamara drove to join the children at Maxine and Lou Malone’s place, 40 miles away. It was the second time I’d made this ridiculous trip of late, and I resented it. But Dr. Sarah Bouchard and I had some words to exchange. And I was eager to get started.
For once, my beloved Roland didn’t complain about the drive.
Eric and Tamara had argued that they ought to come with us, but I had refused. I wanted them with the children, protecting them, no matter what.
On the way, I used my phone’s bluetooth connection to phone Maxine and Lou on the private line they’d told me to use, and Maxine answered on the first ring, not even bothering with a greeting. “How is Roland? How is everything going?” she asked.
I glanced at the dashboard, from whence her voice seemed to emit, automatically, and shook my head. She was always running on high speed, that one. “Roland is fine at the moment,” I said. “We’re well on our way to White Plains to see the surgeon who put this thing inside him. I expect it to be a good time.”
“I really didn’t need to hear that. Try to restrain yourself, Rhiannon. Tam asked me to remind you that you need her alive to help Roland.”
“Believe me, I am well aware of that.”
“You know she might be expecting this, right? She might’ve already gone into hiding.”
“If so, we’ll find her. Maxine, I need to talk to my children.�
�
“All right, but first, listen, if all else fails, check the garbage.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“If things fall through, if you hit a dead end—don’t overlook Dr. Evil’s wastebasket or trash cans. Check them.” Then she said, “Here are the kids. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.”
Gareth’s voice came over the line. “Rhiannon?” he asked. “Where is Roland?”
“I’m right here, son,” Roland said. “I’m right here. And I’m all right. Can you call the others around?”
“We’re here,” Nikki said. “When can we come back home?”
“For Pete’s sake,” I heard Tamara call from somewhere in the background. “We haven’t even got started on our learning to have fun marathon! Lesson One, Hide and Seek, as soon as you get off the phone.”
I nodded to myself, knowing Tamara’s childlike spirit would soothe the children. I was very glad she was with them. “You’ll be able to come home soon, love,” I replied. “Very soon. We’ve found the doctor who can fix Roland’s head. We’re on our way to get her now.”
“Good,” Ramses said.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing so far, children.”
Nikki said, “Eric has been teaching Christian how to be a vampire,” she said. “They practiced in the backyard, and we got to help.”
“Eric says comp-competion–competition–makes it more fun,” Gareth said.
“We can jump as high as they can,” Ramses said proudly. “But Eric can run faster.”
“You’ll get faster as you get older, you know,” Roland said. “Taking that into account, you might be faster than all of us by the time you’re grown.”
“And we’re already better at jumping from tree to tree,” Ramses bragged.
“You’re more coordinated than we are,” I observed. “More graceful. That’s beautiful, children. I had thought the vampire the most graceful creature in existence.”
“I’m not graceful at all,” Christian said, and I heard laughter. Not the children’s, of course. I’d not yet seen them laugh. But I heard the musical emotion flow from Maxine and Roxanne, from Lou Malone and Christian.
The Rhiannon Chronicles Page 17
