No Man's Land

by David Baldacci

  “Damn,” exclaimed Knox.

  Building Q was just up ahead.

  Knox looked behind her and then back at Building Q. Then she stared up at Puller.

  “So you think she passed Building Q on her way to the Bristows’?”

  “She had to. And even at that time of night Building Q would have had guards posted outside.”

  “Wait a minute, then some of them should have seen your mother pass by.”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  “And the wooded area? Why did you take a picture of that?”

  “Because it would have provided cover for someone waiting to jump her. So if something happened to her, I’m betting it would have happened there. And if no one from Building Q reported seeing my mom pass by, although she would have been in full view of the perimeter guards, then whatever happened to her must be connected to Building Q.”

  “And what, the guards were told to say nothing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what do you think happened?”

  “Paul told us about his last victim, Audrey Moore.”

  “Right. But her body was never found.”

  “I checked on her. She was a chemist. And she disappeared on the same night my mother did. No one connected it because no one knew from where Moore had disappeared.”

  “What are you getting at, Puller?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. “My mother was taken because she saw Audrey Moore being killed by Paul.”

  Now Knox seemed unable to find her voice.

  Finally she said, “But Moore’s body was never found. All the others were.”

  “That’s because he didn’t have time to dump her body.”

  “You think your mother frightened him away?”

  “No. I don’t think anything could frighten that guy. I think Paul had to run for it because he was interrupted by people who could kill him or imprison him. Again.”

  “Building Q. Claire Jericho!”

  Puller nodded. “Paul never saw my mother. He never laid a hand on her. It was the people from Building Q. She saw things she couldn’t possibly be allowed to tell anyone.”

  Knox let out a gasp. “So you’re saying she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  Puller nodded. “Yeah.”

  Knox’s brow furrowed. “And Bristow? When she never showed up at the Bristows’ he probably assumed she didn’t care about him.”

  “And he killed himself,” finished Puller.

  “The problem is, how do we prove any of this? We’d need a miracle.”

  “Maybe I have a way to get one.”

  He pulled out his phone and punched in a number.

  Anne Shepard, the recently fired scientist from Atalanta Group, answered on the second ring. She did not seem pleased to hear from him.

  “You promised me that if I helped you—” she began.

  “I had nothing to do with your being fired,” interjected Puller. “That was all Claire Jericho’s doing. I never even talked to anyone at Atalanta Group. Then she called me in and told me she had fired you. She must have found out some other way.”

  “Well, either way, I’m out of a job.”

  “Maybe I help you, you help me.”

  “How?”

  Puller arranged for them to meet Shepard at a café in Hampton. She was waiting for them at a back table.

  He sat down across from her with Knox next to him. They ordered coffees and Puller plunged right in.

  “Do you know the owner of the Grunt, Helen Myers?”

  “No.”

  “But you knew Quentin had the room upstairs?”

  “Well, yeah. I wasn’t the only one who knew that. He would bring other people from the company there sometimes. In addition to the ladies.”

  Knox said, “Did they ever tell you what went on up there?”

  She looked at Knox. “I don’t know who you are.”

  Knox pulled out her official creds.

  Shepard’s jaw dropped and she assumed a more contrite expression. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “Did anyone at Atalanta Group ever talk about what went on up there?” Knox asked again.

  “Some of the women. It seemed like only the really good-looking ones got to go with Josh. I never made the cut.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “That things got a little wild. Too much alcohol.”

  “Drugs?”

  “No, they never mentioned that, but then they probably wouldn’t have. They have contracts too that forbid that.”

  “They forbid too much alcohol too,” noted Puller.

  “Yeah, you pointed that out to me already,” said Shepard sarcastically.

  “Sex?” asked Knox.

  “There was some, yeah.”

  “The women and Quentin?”

  “No one ever said they’d had sex with Quentin. But there was a bedroom and couples would slip off there. It was all consensual,” she added hastily. “And no one was paying for sex.”

  “Did any of your friends ever mention Myers coming into the room?”

  Shepard thought about this. “Once,” she said. “It was kind of weird.”

  “What was?”

  “Well, my friend said that Quentin spent a lot of time with her.”

  “Well, so what? Maybe they’re friends.”

  “Yeah, but Quentin likes the young babes.”

  Puller took out his phone and showed Shepard the screen grabs he’d taken from the laptop of the man who’d met with Myers at the Williamsburg Inn.

  “Look familiar?”

  Shepard gasped. “Where did you get these?”

  “Never mind. Just tell me what they are.”

  “They’re stuff Atalanta Group was working on.”

  “Cell mutation? Organ regeneration? I thought you were into exoskeletons and liquid armor, for the military.”

  “I am, but we have a number of related projects. And in the past I worked on those two.”

  “Cell mutation?” said Knox. “How does that help the military?”

  “Well, cell mutation isn’t always a bad thing, like with cancer. There are lots of positive attributes to the technology. For instance, it can be used to help soldiers heal faster by bulking up levels of white blood cells.”

  Puller thought about this and something seemed to click in his head. “Would any of this have a commercial application, outside the military?”

  “Oh yes. Take the cell mutation. They can be engineered so you can live off your fat more efficiently. You do that, the forty-billion-dollar weight loss industry disappears. With regeneration you can heal faster, have a better immune system. We can take on Alzheimer’s and heart disease. Old people can potentially have the energy, physical, and cognitive levels of the young. Pain blockers that last up to a month. The health care industry is a three-trillion-dollar beast. Some of this stuff could make people wealthy. I mean Bill Gates wealthy.”

  “But not Atalanta Group?” asked Puller.

  “Well, we’re a military support contractor. And you know the military isn’t really permitted to pursue commercialization of products.”

  “But you do undertake this sort of research?”

  “Well, yes, we have to in order to do the work we’re contracted to do. But it stops with the military applications.”

  “But someone could commercialize it?” said Puller.

  “It would have to do with who controls the patents. The IP rules my world. You control that, you control everything.”

  “And you don’t know about that? The ownership of it?”

  “You’d have to talk to legal about that.”

  “Right,” said Puller, tapping his spoon against his cup.

  “Is someone stealing technology? Is that what this is about?”

  Puller fixed his gaze on her. “I don’t know. Can you steal from yourself?”

  Shepard never had a chance to answer.

  Puller had grabbed her arm and thrown
her under the table.

  The bullet hit right where Anne Shepard had been a second before.

  Chapter

  59

  JOSH QUENTIN WAS driving fast.

  And he didn’t look happy, because he wasn’t.

  He could have been killed at the Grunt. Just the thought made him want to pull his Maserati off the road and throw up.

  He feared death because he simply had too much to lose.

  Hell, I have everything to lose.

  He was young, handsome, charming, and the ladies loved him. On top of that, he was wealthy. On top of that, he was on the cusp of far greater wealth. And he was only thirty-two.

  No one was going to take that away from him. He had come from nothing and there was no way in hell he was going back there.

  He pulled into the garage of the beach house and saw her car parked in the next bay.

  Well, this had better be good. He was a busy man.

  He opened the door into the house.

  A moment later everything went dark.

  * * *

  Quentin slowly opened his eyes and saw his knees and then the floor.

  He raised his head slowly. The pain shot through his skull with just this simple movement. He felt like he might be sick.

  Then something grabbed the back of his neck and jolted him straight up. He cried out with the pain before his gaze came to rest on Rogers.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he screamed.

  “You took your time getting here. Myers called you last night.”

  “What the hell business is it of yours?”

  “I have some questions for you.”

  “Questions? For me? You’re a fucking bar bouncer.”

  Rogers tightened his grip on the man’s neck just enough to see the slight bulge in Quentin’s eyes.

  Quentin swung a fist at Rogers, who easily deflected it.

  “Questions,” said Rogers again. “And you take another swing at me, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  Quentin’s gaze fell on Myers, who was seated across from him and tied to the chair she was in. “You bitch! You set me up.”

  “He was going to kill me, Josh,” said Myers pitiably.

  “Great!” spat Quentin. “Now this psycho’s going to kill us both!”

  Roger cuffed him on the jaw. “Shut up.”

  Quentin howled in pain until Rogers gripped him by the chin and twisted him around so they were eye to eye.

  “Questions. You answer them, I don’t kill you.”

  “Bullshit. You think I’m stupid?”

  “I don’t want you. I want her.”

  “Who?” said a bewildered Quentin.

  “Claire,” answered Myers. “He wants Claire Jericho.”

  Quentin took a moment to process this and then a wary look came into his eyes. “You want to kill Claire? Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Josh, don’t be crazy,” barked Myers.

  “Shut up, Helen,” snapped Quentin. “I’m not giving up my life for hers.”

  Rogers looked at Myers. “It’s your only way out.”

  “And you won’t kill us if we deliver Jericho to you?” said Quentin.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But we can identify you,” pointed out Myers.

  “I’m not going to be around.”

  She looked at his pale face. “Those scars. Are…are you dying?”

  Rogers didn’t answer her. He turned back to Quentin. “Where is she?”

  “Not so fast,” said Quentin. “If I’m talking about my life, I need to have some assurances.”

  Rogers gripped Quentin’s neck harder.

  Quentin gasped, “Look, if you kill me you’ve got no shot at her.”

  Rogers relaxed his grip. “Where is she?”

  “She’s in one of two places. Chris Ballard’s place near here. Do you know where that is?”

  Rogers nodded.

  “Or at Building Q at Fort Monroe. Do you know it?”

  “Intimately,” replied Rogers. “But which one?”

  “I can find out. It’ll take one phone call.”

  Rogers was about to say something, but Quentin added, “You can listen in. I’m not screwing around with my life, okay?”

  Myers said, “Quentin, please don’t do this.”

  He ignored her. “But she has security. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “That’s not your problem, it’s mine.” Rogers held up Quentin’s phone, which he’d taken from his coat jacket. “Text her. Tell her you need to meet her here.”

  “I’m not sure she’ll—”

  Rogers gripped Quentin’s neck again. “Be persuasive.”

  Rogers watched as Quentin took the phone, gave his message a few moments’ thought, and then started to type.

  When he was done he looked at Rogers for approval.

  “Send it.”

  Quentin hit the send button and Rogers took the phone away from him. “Now we wait,” he said. He looked over at Myers, who was quietly sobbing. “Look, if Jericho shows up I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you crying?”