The Gamma Sequence

by Dan Alatorre

  Her expression stayed the same. Time to change subjects.

  “We’ll stop in a bit and get something to eat and a change of clothes.” DeShear rubbed the stubble growing on his chin. “A hotel would be nice, but it’s more important to get to Tampa fast, don’t you think?”

  Lanaya didn’t seem to hear him. He tried again.

  “You said the people who killed Dr. Braunheiser might be running out of time. But the disease—”

  “The Gamma sequence.”

  “Right, the sequence.” He didn’t necessarily want to make her have this discussion, but she seemed to need to unwind, and talking often did that for people. The subject might not even matter. “Do the killers know what’s involved?”

  “Yes, I believe they know.” She folded her hands in front of her and looked at him. There were bags under her eyes. “Angelus intended for them not to interact, but I think the company kept tabs on them somehow. That was the thinking on the black screen site, because we’d see hospital data. Where else could it have come from? They had to be tracking the Gammas. No one else knew. But in doing so, the company may have inadvertently tipped off some of them that they were being observed. In any case, the ones doing the killings certainly seem to know, and they are understandably concerned. It’s an extremely harsh way to die, and for Gammas, there’s no avoiding it.”

  DeShear shook his head. “They’re acting like it’s worse than death.”

  “In many ways, it is. It comes on with a harsh, persistent cough. Most people think they’re getting the flu or pneumonia, but after a week or so, the symptoms clear up. But this isn’t a virus, Hamilton. It resurfaces after about a month, accompanied by migraines and extreme fatigue. Kidney and abdominal pain follow. One by one, all the vital organs of the afflicted shut down. Lungs, liver. There is constant nausea, and symptoms associated with dementia. Some get massive skin sores that won’t heal. Everything goes at once.”

  He placed his elbow on top of the car door while he drove. “There has to be something the doctors can do.”

  “Most of the people go into the hospital, but about one third don’t. The result is the same either way.” She sighed. “No team of physicians can rectify every organ failing at once. In an average case, once the sequence has started, the subject spends the next ten months in severe, debilitating pain. And somewhere along the line, they get overwhelmed and can’t keep fighting. Only about one in five survive.”

  “No wonder they’re killing the people involved. Can’t be fun, knowing that’s waiting for you. What is a person supposed to do when they discover they only have a few weeks or months to live? I mean, before the bad stuff starts.” He glanced at her. “Have you thought about it?”

  “Not recently. I’ve been pretty focused on trying to stay alive. I suppose I’d get my affairs in order, say my goodbyes. Prepare my children for a future without me.” She turned to face DeShear. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged as he stared at the road. “I don’t have any family. No real affairs to get in order. I’d try to enjoy what time I had left, I guess. Go on a cruise.”

  “Some do that. Many of the afflicted choose to not endure the eight months of pain at all. That’s another indication they’ve found out about the sequence.”

  “I can understand that, staring at eight months of pain with death waiting at the end.” DeShear held the steering wheel and sat up straighter. “There was a cop in my precinct a few years back—got diagnosed with cancer. Young guy, headstrong. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Anyway, the cancer was already bad when they found it, so they told him to start planning. You know, like you said—get your affairs in order.” DeShear stared at the highway. “Watching what he went through, week after week, it was hard. We’d visit him in the hospital, me and the guys. Most days he wasn’t himself. He was a frail old man all of a sudden, and then he was in a lot of pain. Just nonstop. He was that way for a year, almost. I . . . it was a long year.” He glanced at Lanaya. “A lot of people would have found a way to end it and get out of that nonstop pain, you know?”

  Lanaya lowered her voice. “Did he pass away?”

  “No, the kid was a fighter. He battled back. I’d get off work, I’d be tired or whatever, but I always went to go see him, at least a few times a week, usually more. I had to go. I felt like, if I didn’t, he might not be there the next time, and I wanted to be sure he knew . . .” DeShear’s voice wavered. “That somebody was still pulling for him. I went to that hospital for almost a whole year, and I never saw that kid give up. And he made it. He’s been cancer free for almost ten years now.” DeShear sniffled. “Whenever I’m in a tough jam, I think about him fighting death from that hospital bed all alone, with those tubes hanging off of him and all those machines . . . and I know that whatever challenge I’m facing, I can beat it if I just don’t quit.”

  Lanaya reached over and patted his leg. “I’m sure your visits were a great comfort and inspiration to him, Hamilton. Do you still see him since you left the force?”

  “Yeah. Harriman and I go to hockey games together when we can.”

  “Mark Harriman? No wonder he spoke so highly of you.” She sighed again. “That’s a nice story. I like a story with a happy ending.” She clutched the red and white shopping bag as she stared out the window. “I hope mine has one.”

  Chapter 13

  The hotel suite at the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac was littered with tissues stained with blood. The gold-colored trash can in the ornate bedroom overflowed with them, as did the one in the massive bathroom, where a large man stood vomiting in the steamy shower. Just beyond the rumpled bed, a cell phone rang on the nightstand. It vibrated against a box of prescription migraine medicine and an empty bottle of Pepto Bismol.

  Coughing, the man wrapped a towel around his wet, muscular torso and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “I’m checking in,” the woman on the other end said. “You weren’t answering. I got nervous. Is Maya with you? Or Britt?”

  “Not this trip. It’s only me.” He wiped his mouth as he sat on the bed. Blood smeared across the back of his hand. “What do you want?”

  “I thought we all agreed you wouldn’t be traveling alone now.”

  “I got new information, and it should be a fast trip. I’ll be back in New York tonight. Now—what do you want?”

  “Like I said, I’m checking in—like you asked me to.”

  “Right.” He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. I . . . I had a rough night.”

  “Aren’t the new drugs from Maya working?”

  He glanced at the desk by the window. The top was filled with bottles and syringes. “It’s hard to tell. Transfusions have worked best so far.”

  “You’ll have to wait. I don’t know anybody at the hospitals in Quebec, and I can’t just call and ask them to offer the blood and equipment. Transfusions cost a lot of money and they take time.”

  “Money, I have. Time is a different matter. Speaking of which.” He lifted the Patek Philippe wristwatch off the night table. “I need to get on the road if I’m going to get all the way up to Saguenay before our target wakes up and gets moving. She’ll be much harder to get once she’s at the lab.” He held the cell phone to his ear with his shoulder as he strapped on the watch.

  “Tristan, listen to yourself. You’re pushing too hard. You should rest up.”

  “Can’t.” He stood, leaving the towel on the bed and going into the bathroom. “I’m getting weaker every time. The steroids and HGH can only do so much. I have big spans of strength—days and days where I feel great—but they’re getting more spread out, and the crashes are getting worse.” He reached into his shaving bag and picked up a stick of deodorant, swiping it under his arm. “If I can keep mustering a few days here and there for transfusions . . .”

  “Do that. Rest up. We got this.”

  “You got this?” He frowned. “You completely blew the last assignment. It was a mess.”

  “We—”

/>   “I’m not blaming you.” He stared at his reflection, running a hand through his damp hair. “It was a bad idea—my bad idea. From here out, I’ll handle it.” Setting the phone on the marble counter, he pressed the speaker button and ran the deodorant under his other arm. “I have an easy target here, then another in Maryland. Then I can get two in Minnesota. That’s four in a week, and I might start letting the word out that they’re connected.”

  “How? It’s too risky going to the press. If we expose the others, they’ll be hunted down.”

  “I’m not going to the press.”

  “Well what, then?”

  He peeked at the large gun inside the shaving bag. “Let me worry about that.”

  “Yeah,” she huffed. “You’ll handle it—if you don’t pass out in the middle of the next one. You were running on fumes an hour after Tampa.”

  “I’ll be fine. The transfusions help a lot.” He picked up the brown plastic medicine bottle from the counter and shook a few pills into his hand, swallowing them without water.

  “But it doesn’t have to be only you. We can help. I know the last one went wrong, but—”

  “You’ve been helping, and I’m grateful. But less blood on the hands of others is better.”

  “That’s not realistic.”

  “That’s how I want it. Now, I really have to go. I’ll see you in New York.”

  She sighed. “Do you ever think we’re wrong about all this? Not in what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it?”

  “Every day. And every night before I go to sleep. I wonder if what I’m doing makes me worse than they are.” He crossed the room to the window and stared out from the majestic Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, gazing over the lights of the Quebec City skyline. The castle-like hotel towered over the old city. In the distance, the big river rippled and flowed, casting shimmering reflections out from its dark, curving swath.

  He swallowed hard, a knot forming in his throat. “But I think about innocent kids suffering and I remember how this started. Then I don’t worry anymore. It has to be done, and this is the only way. And now I know I’m the only one who can do the job.”

  “Other greyhounds would probably step up if they were asked. Or if they knew.”

  “But I’m not just any greyhound.” He squared his shoulders and stared at his reflection in the glass. “I’m the Greyhound. And as long as I’m breathing, the job stays with me.”

  Chapter 14

  DeShear’s eyelids had been getting heavy as he passed by the odorous paper mills and swampy roadside ponds of southern Georgia, but the blue flashing lights in his rearview mirror took any sleepiness out of him. He gripped the steering wheel and glanced at the speedometer. Seventy-one. No way any cop—not even a Georgia highway patrol trooper with a quota—was going to pull someone over in the middle of the night for a measly one mile an hour over the limit.

  Lanaya sat with her eyes closed and her head resting against the door, her red and white shopping bag in her hands.

  She finally gets some sleep, and now a state trooper’s going to wake her up.

  But why is he pulling us over?

  It seemed too quick for the Atlanta police to connect all the dots and track them down, but it still wasn’t good. If the officer started looking around the inside of the car, he’d find a big bag of cash, a few unregistered guns—who knows how many felonies those were involved in—and he’d haul them in on suspicion. Then, while they were sitting in a holding tank, the authorities would eventually link them to the park shooting and the hotel assault. Sitting in lockup would also make things pretty easy for anybody who wanted to put some bullets in them—just wait for the arraignment, follow them outside to the car, and pop, pop, pop.

  It was simply a can of worms DeShear didn’t want opened right now. None of that helped protect Lanaya’s family or stop the killers.

  DeShear flipped on the rental car’s emergency flashers and eased the car toward the side of the road. He drummed the wheel as options raced through his mind.

  It can’t be about Centennial Park. There hasn’t been enough time. The hotel incident wouldn’t get attention this far away. It’s not feasible that it was related to the killers, and if the killers were connected to the police, they’d have used the cops earlier in the game.

  But it didn’t matter. He’d find out soon enough.

  “Lanaya, wake up.”

  She didn’t budge.

  “Lanaya.” He tapped her on the leg. “Hey. We’re getting pulled over by the police. Wake up.”

  That did the trick. She gasped and sat upright, clutching her bag to her chest. “What’s going on? And what’s that smell?”

  “The old paper mill, the Georgia swamps . . . Georgia in general. We have a state trooper pulling us over. Try to act calm, like you did when you went to the airport.”

  She swallowed hard, nodding.

  He eyed the shopping bag. “See if you can—without bending over—see if you can slide your big bag of money under your seat.”

  “Why? It’s my money. We didn’t steal it.”

  DeShear held his hands out. “Look at us. Do you know what a Georgia cop thinks when he finds a couple of sleepless people, dressed like they’re practically homeless, driving a car in the middle of the night with thousands of dollars in cash—ten minutes from the Florida border?”

  “Drugs?”

  “And they don’t take kindly to that. Now, shove it under the seat without bending over. He’d see that from his patrol unit, and it would give him probable cause to search our car, and then he’ll find our guns. Try to slide the bag, and then kick it the rest of the way with your foot. If we don’t give him a reason to search the car, we’ll probably be fine.”

  “Probably?”

  “We don’t know why he’s pulling us over yet. Maybe the rental agency caught the fake ID. Did everything go okay at the airport when you went to get the car?”

  She stared straight ahead. “Yes. Why? Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? Take the ticket. Or talk your way out of it. You were a cop.”

  “I don’t think that’s our best plan of action.” He pulled the car to a stop, glancing at the GPS. A blue car icon pointed down a purple highway, bordered on the right by the big green patch of a swamp. The Florida border wasn’t on screen yet, but it was close. “These southern Georgia boys like to write their tickets. Just sit tight and act like a sleepy wife on a long, boring road trip. We went to Gatlinburg for the week.”

  The silhouette of the officer approached, one hand shining a flashlight into the rental car, the other resting on his gun. DeShear peeked at the side of the road. The narrow emergency lane had a short span of grass next to it that disappeared down a hill, no guard rails.

  The officer was shorter and rounder than most state troopers. DeShear continued to hold the wheel with both hands, forcing himself not to drum his fingers. After the officer had come a few steps closer, DeShear slid a hand onto the armrest and pressed the button to lower the window. The sharp, cold wind bit his cheeks.

  The beam of the flashlight bounced off DeShear’s face, then moved around the car’s interior.

  “Evening, sir,” the officer said, his breath making white puffs with every word.

  The accent was thick. Pure southern Georgia. And his uniform wasn’t the gray and light blue of a state trooper uniform and a Stratton hat. Some kind of county deputy, maybe.

  Why is he on the highway stopping us?

  “Evening officer,” Deshear said, squinting in the bright light.

  “License and registration, please.”

  “Sure. Why did you pull me over?” DeShear rubbed his eyes. “I had the cruise control set at seventy.”

  “Welcome to Chipley. It’s fifty-five through here, right on to the Florida border.”

  He pronounced “here” as “hyah,” with two syllables.

  “Well, I’m sorry, I used the cruise control because I wanted to be sure not to speed.” DeShear reached for his wallet.

>   “And you didn’t pay attention when it went to fifty-five.”

  DeShear winced. The whole situation that was now putting them in potential jeopardy could have been easily avoided. “No. Guess I missed the slower speed limit sign.”

  “You and everybody else in a rush to get to sunny Florida.”

  Over the officer’s shoulder radio, the dispatcher calmly gave instructions to another unit.

  “Do y’all have the registration for this car, sir?”

  “Suh” was another one, said southern style. In Atlanta, there wasn’t a discernible accent at all.

  “Uh, it—it’s a rental.” DeShear shrugged. “Let me look for it.”

  Stepping back from the vehicle, the officer shined his light on Lanaya. “Take your time.”

  She held completely still, more likely from fear than DeShear’s earlier instructions, until the light passed from her face.

  DeShear dug his wallet out of his pocket and withdrew the license, contemplating his next move. He couldn’t risk the officer running his ID. The computer might not have the car flagged, but it might have him. He glanced in the rearview mirror at the flashing blue lights behind him.

  “Here you go.” He held the license up, but didn’t extend his hand outside the window. “I’ll check the glove box for the registration.” He leaned a little toward the glove box, inching his hand further into the car.

  “That’s fine, sir.” The officer reached for the license.

  The dispatcher came on again. “Unit 454, we have a make on your tag.” Static interference garbled the last part. It sounded to DeShear like she said, “TSA reports 10-29-F. Proceed with caution.”

  DeShear recognized the code. The vehicle was wanted in connection with a crime, and by TSA. His heart pounded. They couldn’t get picked up.

  This guy’s not highway patrol or a county deputy sheriff. He might not have dashboard cameras.

  The officer frowned, leaning forward for the license with one hand as he pressed the mic with the other. “Say again, Dispatch.”