Mason smiled then, a horrible smile, what teeth remained stained with blood. “I’ve decided I’m willing to take that risk. Are you?”
Tom tensed, and just as he saw Mason’s finger twitch on the pistol’s trigger, he heard the strangest of sounds. It was like a tennis ball being thrown off a wall, and he watched as Mason’s one good eye rolled up into the back of his head. He pitched forward into the room, revealing Victoria Lovett, heavy plumber’s wrench in hand, standing in the doorway.
The expression on Victoria’s face reminded Tom of shattering glass, a steely resolve suddenly disintegrating into an expression of overwhelming grief. But it was there for only the briefest of moments as she quickly looked away from him and down the hall.
“You need to get out of here right now,” she said, looking back again with that fleeting shadow of sadness. “The gas is building up and—”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you doing this?”
“There’s no time for that.” She tossed the wrench onto the bed, moving down the hall toward the Arsenaults’ bedroom. “You need to get them up and out before the explosives detonate.”
“Explosives?” Madison cried.
“The ones I set in the basements here and next door,” Victoria clarified.
There wasn’t a moment to lose. Marty and Ellen were shaken from their drug-induced stupor and helped from the room. The drug given to them by Mason must have been wearing off, and the two were able to be guided trancelike out into the hall and toward the staircase.
“Is there a fire?” Marty asked, sounding like he’d had one too many drinks.
Madison explained that yes, there was indeed a fire, and they had to leave the house as quickly as possible. The two didn’t argue, following her down the stairs.
Tom leaned against the door frame, his head swimming from the simple exertion.
“You’re hurt.” The only mother he had ever known came to his side.
“Why are you helping us?” he asked, avoiding her touch.
She didn’t answer, bearing some of his weight as she helped him from the room and toward the stairs.
“Let’s just say I’ve had a change of heart,” she said as they carefully made their way down the staircase to the small foyer.
The door had been left open, and Tom felt the air from outside flowing in to dissipate the powerful aroma of gas.
“Go,” she said, pushing him out the door onto the front porch.
He stopped, turning around. “Where are you going?” he asked her.
“Go,” she said again, and he watched as she removed what looked to be a car starter from inside her pocket.
“You can’t,” he said, again feeling his reality start to crumble all around him. “I need you,” he croaked. “I… I can’t lose everything.”
For a moment it seemed as if his pleas might have actually had an effect, and she stepped toward the doorway—toward him—but the disfigured form of Mason Lovett suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, grabbing her from behind and drawing her back inside.
“No!” Tom screamed, throwing himself toward the house. Victoria struggled with her husband—her partner—and Tom watched as she reached out to grab hold of the door, slamming it closed in his face.
He tried to get it open but couldn’t, and then he felt hands on him and an urgent voice spoke in his ear as he was dragged backward, away from the house.
“Come on!” Madison cried as she hauled him down the steps and onto the front lawn, just as the world exploded in a blinding flash of fire and thunder.
It was like the sound of the ocean inside a seashell, except for the ringing. He didn’t recall ever having heard ringing when listening to a seashell.
Tom lifted his face up from the cool, damp grass of the front lawn and looked around. Bits of flaming debris lay scattered; the heavy aroma of burning wood, plastic, and other pungent smells choked the air.
The gash in his side throbbed as he started to stand, and he was positive that he’d let loose an audible yelp, but he couldn’t hear it over the sound of the ringing in his ears.
Tom managed to get to his feet and turned in the direction of where his house should be. It was gone, as was the house next door to it; all that remained were the stone foundations and piles of burning wreckage that had once been the two homes on Burrows Place
.
“Tom?”
Over the ringing he thought he heard his name and pulled his attention away from the rubble to see Madison limping toward him.
His heart skipped a beat at the sight of her. Even though her clothes were filthy and her face was covered in soot and drying blood, she was still an amazing sight.
He met her halfway, and she fell into his arms. They held each other for what felt like hours, and by the time they let go, the noise in his ears had started to subside. Far off in the distance he could hear sirens wailing and guessed it would only be a matter of time before the police and the fire department arrived. For a moment he wondered how he was going to explain what had happened.
Honestly, Officer, I really am an assassin for a secret organization.
Tom squinted through the billowing smoke toward the top of the street and caught the yellow glow of headlights.
Marty and Ellen had noticed them as well, getting to their bare feet in their pajamas on the other side of the blackened foundation that was once their home. Marty waved at the four black sports utility vehicles that emerged from the thick smoke.
“Who are they?” Madison asked, a hint of caution creeping into her voice.
Tom didn’t answer, watching as two of the vehicles parked, blocking the street, while the other two pulled up in front of them.
A nervous sweat broke out on Tom’s brow; he didn’t need the senses of an assassin to know that something wasn’t right.
Men dressed in dark suits and wearing sunglasses emerged from the vehicles, circling around to protect a man who was last to exit.
Tom had tensed, ready for another fight, when he realized that he recognized the man.
“It’s good to see you still alive, Tom,” Christian Tremain said, walking toward him. The men surrounding Tremain reached inside their coats for their guns, and Tom prepared for the worst.
“Stand down,” Tremain ordered, and the men withdrew their hands, eyeing each other nervously. God only knew what they’d heard about him—what they knew he was capable of.
Tremain stepped closer. “I’m truly sorry about this,” he said, looking at the burning wreckage of the two homes, and for some strange reason, Tom actually believed him. “I wish we could have figured out your location sooner.”
“Who are you?” Madison suddenly asked. “Who is this, Tom?” she asked him, not waiting for Tremain to answer.
“He’s the man I was sent to kill,” Tom said flatly.
Taking hold of his arm and moving closer, Madison continued to stare at Tremain, studying his appearance. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, a tie spotted with stains, and a wrinkled trench coat that looked like he might have slept in it. It wasn’t a look that inspired much confidence, but then again, it was all Tom had at the moment.
“I offered to help you before, Tom, and the offer still stands,” the man stated. “Come with us and we’ll do everything we can to help you understand what has been done to you.”
Tom turned his head to focus on the remains of his home—at the wreckage that seemed to embody what had happened to his life. A single person had done this to him; one man had taken it all away.
“I want to meet the guy responsible for this,” he said, tearing his sight away from the devastation. “I’ll go with you, but you have to promise me that I’ll get a chance to meet Brandon Kavanagh.”
Tremain nodded slowly. “I’m sure that can be arranged,” he said, gesturing for Tom to accompany him toward the waiting vehicles. “A team has been dispatched to take him into custody, and I’m certain that after he’s processed, we’ll be able to arrange for yo
u to—”
“So that I can kill him,” Tom stated coldly, a little startled by the words that left his mouth but meaning them just the same. He doubted that the old Tom would have been able to go through with such an act, but the old Tom wasn’t around anymore.
“Why don’t we discuss this back at headquarters?” Tremain said as he opened the passenger door of the SUV for them. “We’ll get you patched up, and then we’ll talk about Kavanagh and what he’s been up to.”
Tom agreed with a nod, helping Madison up into the vehicle before getting in himself. Tremain closed the door, leaving them alone in the backseat of the SUV.
Tom watched through the front windshield as Tremain talked with his agents, discovering with distant surprise that he was able to read their lips. He, Madison, and the Arsenaults were going to be taken back to home base—to the headquarters of something called the Pandora Group, in Washington, D.C., for debriefing. He had never been to Washington—that he could remember, anyway. He watched the agents herd the still-confused Marty and Ellen into the back of another of the vehicles.
“Tom?” he heard Madison say, and he looked into her eyes. He wanted to smile at her, to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but he just couldn’t find it in himself.
“What you said to Tremain?” she said. “What you said about killing the man responsible for doing this… Was it you, Tom? Was it you talking or…”
“It was me,” he said, looking away from her and out the window, past the Pandora agents discussing their next course of action to the smoldering remains of what had once been his home—what was left of his life. “It was all me.”
Epilogue
Brandon Kavanagh stepped over the body of the dead Pandora Group operative on his way out of his office. He had said that his name was Sommerset and that he had been ordered to bring Kavanagh in for questioning.
Like hell he was.
Kavanagh left his office and never once looked back.
He had known they’d be coming for him once they had finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together. I wonder what finally gave it away? he pondered, stepping through a bullet-riddled security door. Could it have been the attempt on Tremain’s life? He smirked. Of course it was, but it wouldn’t have fallen apart so quickly if something hadn’t gone wrong with Sleeper One.
A flash of anger coursed through him then, and he quickly suppressed it. There was no need to get upset.
He would just have to review the data and determine what had gone wrong, making sure that it never happened again. There was far too much riding on his future plans for this to stop him. What was it his grandmother used to say when things looked particularly grim? “Think of it as just a bump in the road.”
There were more dead Pandora agents lying in pools of blood along the hallway, and he did exactly as his grandmother had instructed, stepping over the bumps to move forward with his journey. She would have been so proud to learn that he’d taken her lessons to heart.
The door at the end of the battle-scarred corridor began to open, and he removed the gun that he had used to murder Agent Sommerset from inside his coat pocket.
His head of security, Noah Wells, stepped through the doorway into the hall, a smile on his usually cruel features.
“Don’t shoot,” he said dryly, raising his arms in mock surrender.
Noah had been with Kavanagh from the beginning, and Kavanagh doubted that there was anyone in the world more loyal. It was like having a really smart pit bull at your side at all times.
Kavanagh returned the weapon to his pocket as Wells held open the door for him to exit. “All members of the Pandora security team sent to close us down have been dealt with,” Wells said casually as Kavanagh passed by him into the lobby. “It’s not pretty out here.”
And he was correct. It looked like a major offensive had occurred there: dead bodies of Pandora operatives as well as his own security team littered the floor, their blood mingling as it coagulated on the Italian marble. The project’s receptionist, Karen, lay facedown on her desk, phone clutched in a blood-spattered hand. Only here did he allow himself to experience the slightest pangs of emotion.
“That’s too bad,” he said, looking from Karen’s body to Wells. “She made an excellent cup of coffee.”
Wells nodded. “Yep, she certainly did. Not bad on the eyes either.”
Kavanagh hated to leave his facility. They had done good work here, made the kind of advances that allowed them to be where they were today. He had overseen the transmittal of all pertinent data to their new base of operation himself, wiping all hard drives clean with a small electromagnetic detonation as soon as they had given up their bounty. Pandora would have to get their information from somewhere else if they planned on continuing their pursuit of him, as he was certain they would.
“This is it, then,” Kavanagh said. He looked around the lobby one last time, for old times’ sake, and then headed for the door.
It was beautiful outside, and he breathed in a lungful of West Virginia summer air, replacing the stench of gunfire and blood.
A sleek black helicopter waited in the parking lot, its blades beginning to turn as the two men emerged from the building.
“Do you want to do the honors?” Wells asked, holding out the transmitter that would detonate multiple explosive devices placed all around the building, eliminating any stray evidence that the Janus Project had ever existed.
“No thank you,” Kavanagh said as he descended the steps of the former psychiatric facility. “I know how much pleasure you get from blowing things up.”
Wells chuckled as he pointed the transmitter and hit the button. “I’m just a big kid at heart,” he said. The muffled whoomphing sounds of powerful explosions could be heard from inside.
Kavanagh glanced over his shoulder as he crossed the lot, catching sight of the facility’s windows exploding outward, tongues of orange flame reaching out to lap the sky.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do about Sleeper One?” Wells asked as they walked, crouching slightly the closer they got to the helicopter and its whirling rotors. “I can’t imagine the boy being in the Pandora Group’s custody will be good for us.”
Kavanagh considered the question for a moment. “At first I looked at that as a real problem,” he responded, waiting as Wells opened the chopper door for him. “But then I remembered a little something my grandmother used to say.”
Wells chuckled as he slid into the seat beside his employer.
“Why are you laughing?” Kavanagh asked as he strapped himself in.
“It’s nothing, just that your grandmother must have been a fine woman.”
Kavanagh tapped the seat in front of him, signaling to the pilot that it was time to go. “She was a ruthless bitch,” he answered in kind. “But she understood how things worked and how things could be twisted to work specifically for you.”
Wells gazed out the window as the chopper rose vertically into the air. “And what would she have said about this situation—the situation with Sleeper One?”
Kavanagh smiled, remembering the old woman, nothing but skin and bones, confined to her wheelchair. God, how she had scared him.
“She would have said, Brandon, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”
Wells laughed as they flew over the burning building that once housed the secret operation known as the Janus Project.
“I’m going to make lemonade, Wells,” Kavanagh said as he closed his eyes to think about the future. “Lots and lots of lemonade.”
End Of Book One
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Sleeper Code Page 18
