“I composed every word of it. Preston had the hardest part.”
“Publishing it under his name?”
“You got it.”
“I hated it.”
“Good,” Aidan said. “You were supposed to. But you apparently didn’t buy it.”
“Not a word,” Nathan said. “And for some reason, Preston lied when Bennie and I confronted him. He said Alkott’s thugs made him write it, not you.”
Aidan scratched at his beard. “I’m guessing Alkott’s men threatened Preston. They forced him to feed you that story to keep you searching for my whereabouts, so Alkott could keep tracking you two.”
“I see…so Alkott assumed I would call off the search if I found out you composed that letter, faked your suicide, and didn’t want to be found...with the assumption that if you weren’t being held captive and had Ian’s device completed, you would have found a way to get it me.”
Aidan tossed another glance toward the doorway. “Alkott’s assumption was correct. I would have contacted you the minute Ian’s device was completed. As I said, I had no idea that my grandson was in a life or death situation. I assumed you and Bennie were merely playing detectives, trying to get to the bottom of my disappearance. Unfortunately, Bennie dragged you into a wild goose chase and wasted weeks of your time.”
Nathan’s stomach suddenly felt queasy. Ian was trapped in Sanctuary 87 without his parents, and he could have been using the last two weeks searching for some other way to save his son. Part of Nathan wanted to strangle his father for not contacting him sooner. The other half wanted to strangle himself for listening to Bennie.
“Do you have hard evidence that Alkott’s been following us?” he asked his father.
“My team intercepted several satellite conversations between Alkott and the agent who’s been tracking you. The agent’s voice was garbled during the calls, and voice detection technology was unable to generate any leads.”
“Care to tell me why it’s so important to stop that missile, that you’d be willing to fake your own death? You left your family in shambles, dad.”
“How’s your mother handling things?”
“She’s devastated. What did you expect?”
“God forgive me,” Aidan said, shaking his head. “I only did it so I could temporarily work off the grid without being hunted by the authorities or Alkott. My colleagues and family members had to believe I was dead so my suicide would appear authentic. The authorities bought it, but Alkott didn’t.”
“Who is on Black Ghost?” Nathan persisted.
Aidan looked at his watch and threw another worried glance in the direction of the doorway. The sun was rapidly dropping behind the Black Hills, tossing eerie shadows across his father’s face. “We need to adjourn this pow-wow before we’re found out and the mission is blown.”
“Why can’t you tell me more, dad? Why is Black Ghost so important?”
Aidan made a quick step forward and grabbed Nathan’s jacket collar with both hands. He got in his face and stiffened his eyebrows. “Because if Alkott’s men decide to interrogate you, they’ll use any means necessary to extract the information they want. It’s best for both of us if you didn’t know the specifics. Got it, son?”
Nathan studied his father’s dark, intense eyes. He’d never seen this side of him before, never seen him so deadly serious.
“Okay, dad, I get it…mind letting go of my collar?”
Aidan released his grip and straightened his cowboy hat. “Sorry. I just need you to understand the gravity of this situation. If the mission succeeds and we’re able to stop the missile from hitting Black Ghost, then we stand a chance of dismantling the entire Barrier system.”
“What? How?”
“We’re going to hijack the Barrier system, that’s how.”
Helicopter blades echoed in the distance.
“They’ve found us,” Aidan muttered.
He made a few anxious laps around the inside of the maintenance building, his walking stick digging into the dirt with every step as he circled back to where Nathan stood.
“Let’s get out of here,” Nathan said, moving toward the entrance.
Aidan seized Nathan’s wrist, jerking him back around. “Stay put if you want to live. Do as they ask, but stay silent. Even if I don’t make it out of here alive, my team will carry on without me.”
“But dad—”
Aidan pulled Nathan close. “Listen to me, son. The mission must succeed. The lives of Ian and millions of people in the Sanctuaries are on the line. You need to find a way to buy my grandson two more weeks. You hear me? That’s all the time my team needs to pull this off.”
“But I want to be involved, for Ian’s sake. How can I help?”
“Don’t further involve yourself, Nathan,” Aidan shouted, the helicopter descending nearby. “And for God’s sake, please don’t let your mother know we’ve talked, or what’s about to transpire. She’s already been through one funeral.”
The helicopter landed in a clearing. A drone appeared and hovered low over the building. Bennie exited the helicopter, followed by two men in dark suits. The men walked behind Bennie as they entered the building, guns aimed at his back. Three men in tactical gear emerged from the helicopter. They rushed in and surrounded Nathan and Aidan with automatic weapons.
“Don’t move,” one of the suited men ordered. The other one shouted into a satellite phone. “Yes, Chairman, we’ve got them. I’m holding all three men in an abandoned maintenance shed near the Mt. Rushmore ruins.”
“Sorry, Nathan,” Bennie said with a look of despair, hands over his head. “I had no choice in this. I did it for my granddaughter. Chairman Alkott said he’d have her deported to a Sanctuary if I didn’t cooperate and keep you hunting for Aidan. She’ll die out there without the monthly recalibrations to her brain module. I can’t let that happen. She’s all the family I have left.”
“Traitor,” Aidan snapped. “How long have you been working with Alkott?”
“Since your funeral,” Bennie said, dodging his cold stare. “Do you really think I wanted to make this choice—between my lifelong friend and my granddaughter?”
“Shut up…both of you,” one of the suits barked, jamming his gun barrel into Bennie’s back. “Benjamin, is this man Aidan Gallagher?”
“Yes,” Bennie mumbled.
“You’re one hundred percent positive? Chairman Alkott will tolerate no errors.”
“Yes, I’m positive. This man is Aidan Gallagher.”
Nathan stood speechless and stiff, like the wooden pawn he’d been since the day he met Bennie at his father’s greenhouse. He should have listened to his gut…and Sarah. Both had warned him that Bennie couldn’t be completely trusted. Same with Preston. Alkott got to both men, making the meeting in San Francisco nothing more than a rehearsed stunt designed to keep poor Nathan on the move, believing his father was in deep trouble and needed help. Now that Nathan thought about it, the exchange between Preston and Bennie did seem a bit melodramatic, but it achieved its end goal. Then there was the toilet seat incident at the cabin, the work of Bennie, not one of Alkott’s men.
Way to go, he chided himself. Nathan had played his part marvelously.
Aidan dropped his walking stick and pulled a metallic object from his coat pocket. He pressed it against his chest with both hands—a molecular separator!
“Are you crazy,” Bennie shouted. “You’ll kill us all.”
“Drop it or your son dies,” the suit nearest to Nathan yelled, ramming his gun barrel into Nathan’s shoulder blade.
“You won’t take me dead or alive,” Aidan said, arms shaking, voice quivering. “Alkott will never get the chance to sweep my cerebral cortex for the names of my colleagues.”
Bennie let out a nervous laugh. “That kind of technology doesn’t exist. Now put that thing down and be reasonable.”
“It exists and you know it does…traitor.”
“Drop your weapon now, Aidan.” The man struck his gun
barrel hard against Nathan’s back. He fell to the ground and groaned, gasping for air. Hot pain coursed down his spine.
“Get up!” the man ordered.
Nathan obliged, rubbing his back as he stood.
“Do I make myself clear, Aidan?” the man repeated. “Drop your weapon or I’ll pull the trigger on your son.”
“Don’t forget what I told you, Nathan,” Aidan said, looking at him with intense eyes. “Don’t give up on Ian.”
The man pressed the gun barrel against Nathan’s skull and started to squeeze the trigger, but Bennie interrupted, “Aidan’s really going to do it. We have to get out of here!”
Aidan tipped his cowboy hat with one hand and pressed a button on the molecular separator with the other.
“No!” Nathan shouted, lunging toward his father.
A flash of blinding light.
The shock wave blew everyone backwards.
Nathan’s back smacked the concrete behind him with a thud and he landed on his side.
After what must have been several minutes, he sat up and spat out scalding ash. It was all over him and tasted dreadful, like burnt hair. He brushed off his face and looked around.
One of the two suited men located his gun, stood and pointed it at Nathan.
Bennie stumbled to his feet, bathed in soot. He pointed at the cowboy hat, trench coat and blue jeans where Nathan’s father had stood just moments earlier. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Aidan really did it. There’s nothing left of him but his clothing.”
“Along with this grime,” the other suited man muttered as he brushed at his clothing. He wiped his cheek and pointed his gun at Nathan.
Bennie ran over and picked up the molecular separator. He gasped and threw it down. “It’s set to maximum and we’re soaked in radioactive residue. If we don’t get to a decontamination facility in the next thirty minutes, we’re all dead.” He bent down and picked something up. “Besides his clothing, all that’s left of him is this wedding band.”
“Sir, we should bring back the ring to prove to Alkott that the man who annihilated himself today was Aidan Gallagher,” a tactical officer shouted to one of the suits over the noise of the blades. “According to our intelligence, he and his wife’s names are engraved on the inside of the band.”
“Get it and let’s get out of here,” the suit barked.
The tactical officer took it from Bennie and led the way. Alkott’s men escorted Nathan and Bennie to the helicopter, one of them commenting that the discharge took out the drone.
Nathan boarded the helicopter with a gun to his bruised ribs and was shoved into a seat in the back.
Bennie was ordered to get in the back as well. He collapsed beside Nathan, but Nathan did not look at him.
“I’m so sorry, Nathan,” Bennie kept muttering. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t think Aidan would do something like that.”
Nathan looked down in horror at his father’s charred remains as the helicopter lifted into the sky.
20
Previously
Jillian’s eyelids opened. A bright light struck her retinas. Where was she?
“Relax, Jillian,” a voice said. “You’ve suffered severe brain trauma and have undergone two surgeries to repair a severed artery in your neck. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you’ll be fine.”
The voice belonged to a man and it sounded familiar.
She tried to move her arms and legs. It felt like bricks were strapped to her ankles and wrists, and her feet dangled over the edge of a hard table.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
“Deep below the surface of Ellis Three, in the Archives.”
The voice came from somewhere across the room. She couldn’t make out how close it was. Her head was throbbing.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Who do you think I am?”
Jillian strained to harness her thoughts. She searched through blurred, scattered memories. It came to her. “Elliot Gareth?”
“Good, Jillian, good. Your memory is returning. I expect a full recovery after several more rounds of synaptic therapy.”
Grotesque images flashed before her eyes. Collin’s mangled body, shrapnel plastered on his chest and face. Blood everywhere. All over the cockpit. Yes, she remembered. Encounter Five crash-landed on Ellis Three and she’d bounced in and out of consciousness a dozen times before concluding it was her turn to die as well. She had started to give up the fight but then somebody came to her. A voice from the desert outside the spacecraft. A hand on her shoulder.
“My team,” Jillian whispered, “were there any survivors?”
“I’m afraid not, Jillian. And it’s a good thing I got to you when I did.”
“Does Leland know where we are? He knows the landing coordinates.”
“Relax your mind, Jillian. We are well hidden. Leland’s men searched the desert above us and found nothing.”
“How do you know?”
“I am able to monitor all activity on Ellis Three through satellite imaging. Now, close your eyes. Things will be clearer when you awaken.”
_____
The next time Jillian opened her eyes, the room was dark, and a soft bed and pillow replaced the hard table beneath her. She sat up and waited for her pupils to adjust to the darkness. There didn’t appear to be any windows. She heard the hum of a machine nearby, maybe a generator of some sort.
She caressed the right side of her neck. A raised patch of tender skin at least six inches long pulsed with each heartbeat.
“How are you feeling, Jillian?” a man’s voice said in the darkness—Elliot Gareth’s. He had sent her an audio transmission two years ago, and she’d played it back at least a hundred times, mostly the part where he spoke about having information on Tyler. Every inflection in his voice was burned into her memory. She heard it in her sleep. In the cockpit. On the hover-rail.
“I feel like death warmed over, but thanks for asking,” Jillian said. The room sounded smaller and less cavernous than before. Cool air brushed against her cheeks. And her clothes. What was she wearing? A hospital gown?
“You’re most certainly not dead. In fact, you’ve made a tremendous recovery. Can you state your age, height, hair color and weight?”
“Fifty-two years old, five-foot-six, red hair with more gray than I’d like, one hundred and thirty-five pounds, give or take a pound or two.”
“Good, Jillian. And can you state the names of your former crew members?”
Jillian rattled off all six names in ten seconds.
“Excellent. I’m confident you’ll be ready to begin your training tomorrow.”
“How long have I been asleep, Elliot?”
“Eight days.”
“Why is it so dark in here?”
“Would you like more lighting?”
“That would be nice.”
A domed fixture in the center of the low ceiling sparked to life but stayed dim, hurling shadows of her bed around the room. She scanned the space. Metallic walls and a low ceiling. Sparsely furnished. There was only a nightstand beside the bed and a small table with a couple of chairs in the corner. A chartreuse floral arrangement in a vase on the table accented the room.
“Do you like the flowers, Jillian?”
“They’re lovely.”
“Excellent. A special person put them there.”
“Where are you, Elliot?”
“Nearby, monitoring your condition. We’ll speak again in time. Right now, I believe there’s someone else you’d enjoy seeing.”
A thick metal door opened on the opposite side of the room. Someone entered. A man—loose white clothing, dark beard peppered with gray, hair of similar color pulled back in a ponytail.
She rose to her feet, putting her hand on the nightstand to steady herself.
He moved closer. “Do you know who I am, Jillian?”
Jillian’s heart froze. The deep, husky voice. Brown eyes with golden speckles. Was this a dream? Was she h
allucinating? Was she even alive? Maybe there really was an afterlife. “Tyler, is that really you?”
“It’s me, Jillian.”
“I…I don’t even know what to say,” she said with a stammer, fighting for air. “It’s been so long. I thought you were dead.” She flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. She wished she could have clutched tighter, but every ligament and muscle in her body felt like they’d been through a meat grinder.
Tyler ran his fingers through her hair. She recognized the way they felt and moved.
“You need your rest, Jillian. The training will be demanding now that it’s just you and I, and we only have twelve weeks to do it. There’s so much we need to go over. Rest and I’ll fill you in on everything in the morning.”
“I’m rested enough.” She grabbed his wrist and pulled him onto the bed.
21
The phone on the nightstand jarred Nathan from his sleep. He rolled over on top of his bed and rubbed his eyes, daylight blinding him. Yesterday’s clothes and shoes were still on, head pounded, thoughts were cloudy and smudged. And his lips…what did he taste? Whiskey?
His phone continued to resound. He glanced at the screen, his eyes too hazy to see who was calling. A half empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s sat beside the phone. What in the world? He knew for darned sure he hadn’t kept that stuff in the house for years…alcohol had nearly wrecked his life and marriage ten years ago after finding out he was sterile and would never be able to give Sarah a child.
“Hullo,” he muttered with a slurred voice, immediately aware he was drunk.
“Nathan, thank God!” Sarah said. “The Kansas City police contacted me two hours ago and said they found you passed out drunk in bed with your clothes on. They said you were breathing and recommended you sleep it off.”
Nathan couldn’t deny this. “Where are you?”
“At a hover-rail terminal two hours south of the Mt. Rushmore ruins, on my way home. After you failed to come home last night or return any of my messages, I filed a missing persons report with the Keystone police. The deputy said they wouldn’t be able to conduct a search for two days, something about understaffing.”
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