The Sleepless Stars

by C. J. Lyons

  No more. We couldn’t be together. Not when anyone close to me suddenly had a target on their back.

  I needed answers. Fast. Before my mind and body deteriorated to the point where I was helpless, unable to care for myself or protect the children also infected with this ghastly man-made plague. Which was why I’d been hiding in the tunnels below the streets of Cambria City, preparing to ransack one more mind.

  Daniel Kingston. Ruthless billionaire entrepreneur, father of the sadistic serial killer I killed last month, and, I hoped, the man with the answers I needed: Who created this new form of fatal insomnia and how did we stop them?

  I couldn’t save myself; I was too far gone, I knew. But I had to save the children. It was the only way I could atone for Jacob’s death. I’d been powerless to save him. But no one else. That was my solemn vow. No one else would die fighting my battle.

  “Ryder is more use to us without you around drawing attention to him,” Flynn continued her dissection of my former love life. “He can go where we can’t go, ask questions we can’t ask, gain valuable intel. But he can’t do any of that if Almanac realizes he’s tied to you.”

  “I can’t risk Ryder. It’s got nothing to do with tactics. I can’t lose him like I did Jacob.”

  Our enemy had tortured my ex-husband and then, as he lay dying, forced me to enter his mind in order to test my abilities. My stomach clenched, trying to control the nausea roiling through me at the memory. I’d lived through the pain and anguish Jacob had suffered on my behalf. I’d been inside him when he died.

  What they’d done to a man I’d once loved—simply to test a theory? Never again.

  I turned away from Flynn, my words more for myself and the night wind than for her. “The only way to keep Ryder safe is for me to leave his life. Forever. He can’t be any part of this.”

  “Good luck with that.” Flynn sniffed in derision. “Guy like Ryder, he’s not going to give up so easy—not going to give you up. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. But he was a soldier, he’ll understand the importance of a strategic retreat. Build some cover, create a little maneuvering distance, do what needs to be done, then maybe...”

  I hated the spark of hope her “maybe” ignited. Hope was the enemy. I had to guard against it if I was going to find the strength to do what needed to be done. I drew my breath in, letting the frigid air singe away any thoughts of Ryder or a future.

  Below me, Ryder reached the sidewalk. He stopped, the rest of the crowd flowing past him. He turned back and looked up. At me.

  I held my breath and closed my eyes. Pressed myself deeper into the shadows of the archway, rough stone digging its fingers into my spine. There was no way he could see me. Yet, I was certain he did. That was Ryder’s gift: He saw me, the real me, no matter how far apart we were, no matter how much I needed to hide.

  He would always see me. Even if it might get him killed.

  Chapter 3

  RYDER NAVIGATED PAST the piles of freshly plowed snow heaped up against the curb at the bottom of the steps leading away from St. Tim’s. He knew Rossi watched him from the tower, but as much as he wanted to rush to her side, he understood the danger.

  She was safe for now, hiding out with Devon Price. But the faster he found the men behind all this, the faster she’d be back where she belonged: in Ryder’s arms.

  The night was cold, although during the day, the temperatures had risen above freezing, leaving the snow now contained beneath a crackling coat of ice. He’d sleepwalked through the holiday celebrations, smiling and nodding at his family gathered around the dinner table, shoveling food in his mouth that he didn’t taste, tearing wrapping paper and beaming thanks for presents he now couldn’t even remember.

  All day long, he found himself making mental notes. Things he wanted to talk to Rossi about, stories he wanted to share, even how it’d felt to fire his weapon last night, take the kill shot. He’d been a soldier before he joined the force, had taken lives and never, ever talked about it, not with anyone...and yet, here he was, searching the holiday table for Rossi’s face, anxious for a moment alone with her so he could spill his guts.

  When had she become such an essential part of his life? How could he have been so careless, so reckless? To find her and then lose her so quickly?

  Anyone who knew him would shake their head in disbelief. Not Ryder, they’d say. Not Mr. Detached, Mr. Cool Under Pressure. He’d never lose his head, much less his heart.

  They’d be wrong.

  He walked down the street, past the Kingston Tower housing complex, his coat hanging open despite the wind off the river. Instead of heading home, he continued down to the wharf, where there’d been an explosion and multiple fatalities last night.

  One of the vehicles found at the scene was registered to a Dr. Tommaso Lazaretto. Who just happened to be the same doctor helping Louise Mehta care for Rossi’s fatal insomnia, and who just happened to be the doctor on duty when Rossi’s ex, Jacob, died, and who just happened to have left Good Samaritan in the middle of his shift before vanishing. Last person seen with him? Dr. Angela Rossi.

  Rossi, one minute giddy with joy, telling Ryder she couldn’t wait to move in with him, that they’d face her uncertain future together...and a few hours later, he comes home to find a Dear John letter?

  The skin at the base of his skull drew taut—like it used to in Afghanistan when a sniper had his squad in their sights. Rossi had left to protect him. Which meant the threat against them was bigger than he’d imagined. He hoped to find some answers here at the scene of the crime, a thread to pull on, anything to begin to unravel whatever she’d become tangled up in.

  Crime scene tape shredded by the wind tried and failed to cordon off the block surrounding the building’s wreckage. The explosion and resulting fire had leveled the warehouse, leaving only the steel support beams and piles of brick in its wake. The stench was unlike anything Ryder had encountered before—acrid, but not like smoke from a typical fire. It burned his nostrils and mouth. He pulled his scarf up higher as he approached the scene. Any evidence that had survived the explosion was now covered in firefighting foam, rendering it useless as far as forensics.

  No one challenged him. No one had been left to secure the scene. Which confirmed Devon Price’s warning that Ryder’s department had been compromised. Ryder wasn’t surprised. Disappointed was more like it. Most of the men and women he worked with were honest, dedicated public servants. But the taint of corruption had invaded the ranks at every level, starting at the top. It was obvious Ryder could no longer trust in his own department—another reason why he missed Rossi. Despite her illness, she was as solid as any man he’d gone into battle with.

  The street ended at the wharf—empty now except for a lone barge awaiting cargo. No signs of any activity until Ryder spotted a man leaving the relatively intact building still standing between the exploded warehouse and the water. That building was supposed to have been abandoned, slated for demolition when the city had funds, just like its neighbors.

  Ryder picked his way through the rubbish—the fire department had done a good job of clearing it into piles that were easy to navigate around, despite the puddles of water beginning to freeze, but that would also play hell with any attempt at evidence collection—and approached the man where he stood on the building’s front stoop. The man was Caucasian, mid-thirties, clean-cut, wearing a suit and coat that were almost mirror images of Ryder’s own, although more expensive and better tailored.

  “Cambria City Police,” Ryder identified himself. “Can I see some ID?”

  The man remained on the building’s steps, placing him above Ryder, but given the black ice and firefighting foam slicking the concrete, he was at a tactical disadvantage. The fact didn’t seem to bother him. He took his time assessing Ryder, not moving, keeping his hands in plain sight.

  Law enforcement, was Ryder’s own assessment. But no one he knew. Arson investigator, maybe? They were county. Or someone from the state, sent down from Harrisburg?
But on Christmas Day?

  “You realize this is a crime scene, right?” he continued, gesturing with a hand for the man’s ID, keeping his other hand free and close to the pistol holstered on his belt.

  The man smiled. It was a slow, contented creasing of his mouth that somehow put Ryder at ease. A feeling he immediately combated. Alone at a crime scene, this was not the time to relax his guard.

  “Actually, Detective—”

  “Ryder. Matthew Ryder.”

  “Detective Ryder,” the stranger continued. His accent was from everywhere and nowhere at once, giving him an air of cultivation that went along with the expensive suit. “This is now my crime scene. Michael Grey, FBI. Okay if I reach into my coat for my credentials?”

  Ryder nodded. The man slipped two fingers inside his coat and retrieved a slim leather wallet. He held it open for Ryder to read. Proper federal credentials, the photo was Grey, and the seal and other details were correct.

  “What’s your business here, Special Agent Grey?” Ryder asked. The man stepped down to join Ryder on the street.

  Grey didn’t answer Ryder’s question right away, instead turned away from the crime scene to look out across the river. Without any boat traffic, it was a vast inky blackness stretching to the tree line on the opposite side where the mountain rose above the riverbank. Cambria Mountain was home to several abandoned coal mines, and most of the forest was off-limits because of the pollution they’d left behind.

  “I could ask you the same thing. May I see your identification, Detective?”

  Ryder reached for his wallet and held up his own credentials for Grey to scrutinize. “Want to call the station, verify that I am who I am?”

  “No. But tell me why you’re here, Detective Ryder. Your name doesn’t appear on my list of investigators cleared to be on this scene. Interesting that you’d show up now, after everyone else has gone.” Grey’s tone centered the spotlight of suspicion on Ryder.

  “You’re right. It’s not my case. But it’s not every day that a building blows up under such suspicious circumstances.”

  “So you’re spending your Christmas prowling around a crime scene because you’re curious? Why do I suspect that there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  “You still haven’t told me why the FBI is involved.”

  “No, I haven’t.” Grey smiled, and Ryder thought he wouldn’t answer. Feds were like that, loved hoarding their intel. But finally the agent relented. “Your people asked me to see if our Evidence Recovery Team could help.” Grey gestured with one hand to the crime scene behind him.

  “Pretty hopeless, if you ask me,” Ryder said. Even though he hadn’t spoken to Rossi about what had happened here, Devon Price had filled him in with enough details for him to know that the lack of evidence had little to do with the fire or the efforts to put it out and everything to do with the actors who had set it. They’d basically melted the building and everything—and everyone—inside it with lye.

  Extreme tactics. From the same men who’d tried to kill Rossi. Leaving Ryder to play catch-up, trying to ferret what little info he could from the uncooperative fed.

  “Ever seen anything like this?” he asked Grey.

  “Using caustic lye to cover up your tracks? Definitely not your typical meth lab.” The story the city had decided to go public with. “Or any other kind of drug-manufacturing process. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Detective? That’s why you’re here.”

  “Like I said. Just curious, is all.”

  “Curious. Good word.”

  Cagey was one thing, especially as Grey was right—Ryder had no authorization to be at this crime scene. But still, Grey was beginning to annoy him. Ryder wanted to know more specifics—and then he’d see if the Fed’s story held up. After all, if his own department could be bought, no reason why a federal agent couldn’t. “Which field office are you from? Harrisburg?”

  Grey shook his head, staring at the barge. “DC.”

  “WaFO?” Ryder used the shorthand for the FBI’s Washington Field Office in charge of Quantico and the labs there—including the evidence response teams.

  “No. Pennsylvania Avenue.” The Hoover Building. Which meant administrators and special investigations. Like domestic terrorism. Grey extended a business card embossed with the FBI’s seal. “Go ahead and call, if you like. The desk agent can verify my identity.”

  “Where’s your partner?” In Ryder’s experience, no Fed ever went anywhere alone—they were like women, even went to the bathroom in pairs. “Or your team?”

  Grey turned to him, his smile widening to reveal more perfectly aligned teeth. “Just me. And I was never even here. If you get my drift.”

  Ryder narrowed his eyes. If he couldn’t trust his own department, he was glad to have the Feds involved, but he hated cloak-and-dagger bullshit. Too easy to deny and walk away from—make that slither back into the shadows—after the shit hit the fan.

  Which it always did.

  What the hell had Rossi gotten involved in?

  Chapter 4

  FRANCESCA LAZARETTO’S PHONE rang. Ignoring her brother’s withering glare from the head of the table, she left the annual Christmas gathering of the family’s leadership and stepped outside to the Hotel Danieli’s private terrace. The lights of San Giorgio reflected in the rippling black waters of Venice’s Grand Canal. The city sparkled, jewel-toned holiday lights adding to its already magical ambience.

  “Report.”

  “No sign of Tommaso,” Tyrone told her. “But we’re following several leads.”

  She frowned, although no creases marred her exquisitely maintained facial musculature. At fifty-seven, her skin was as flawless as any fashion model’s. She insisted upon it. A perfect facade was necessary to disguise the ravages her flawed DNA wrought.

  “His cohort is missing as well.” Tommaso’s cohort was in Cambria City, Pennsylvania, where he followed two dozen school-age children.

  She glanced through the windows to the dining room, met Marco’s knife-edged glare. Her brother. Younger than Francesca by two years, yet chosen to act as the family’s leader after their father died last year. Not because she was a woman, but because she bore the family curse, while stupid, shortsighted, self-serving Marco’s DNA was pure.

  It should be her sitting at the head of the table, leading her family into the future, saving them from the Scourge. Tommaso’s research cohort was her chance to usurp Marco, take her rightful place, save them all. “You lost track of two dozen families?”

  “Not me. I was tying up the final loose ends on the subjects who escaped Roberto.”

  Beyond the terrace’s stone balustrade, she looked past San Giorgio to where a cruise ship sailed out of port, its lights bright against the Lido shoreline. Roberto’s body was at the bottom of that same shipping channel. What was left of him after he’d taken a shotgun to his own face. The price of failure, if you were a Lazaretto. “Yes. The Virginia subjects.”

  “West Virginia.”

  Below her on the promenade, crowds celebrating the holiday shot glowing neon plastic disks in the air. One whizzed overhead before falling back to land on the walkway alongside the canal. Almost as annoying as Tyrone’s correction of her geography. Did she really care where a failed cohort was situated as long as nothing traced back to her? If Marco ever realized what she’d done, how far her research had progressed...

  She couldn’t risk Marco learning about the cohorts, especially not now when she was so close to success. All she needed was a little more time free of Marco’s interference. As soon as she had Tommaso’s research cohort, then another month, maybe two, and she’d be able to announce to the family that not only had she, Francesca Lazaretto, found a cure for the Scourge, she’d also cemented the family’s place of power for future generations.

  With one fell stroke, she would claim the Lazaretto legacy as her own. Poor Marco would be doomed to become a barely legible footnote in the centuries-old history of their family, while Fran
cesca would be forever lauded as the family’s savior.

  “We need Tommaso’s data—his was the only cohort producing favorable results.”

  “Or he was the only one smart enough to suggest that in his reports.”

  His snide tone surprised her. “You think he lied? To me?”

  “You’ve set a high price for failure.”

  “Keep in mind that the punishment for deception is even worse.” She left it to his imagination to fill in the details of a fate worse than death. From the moment of their carefully engineered conception, each of her children faced a death sentence far more horrible than most people could envision. Which meant her incentives tended to the extreme. What choice did she have, when she had the fate of the entire family in her hands?

  “Orders?”

  “Retrieve anything you can from Tommaso’s lab. Find his cohort and keep them under scrutiny. Bring me Tommaso.” She needed to debrief him face-to-face.

  At first, she interpreted Tyrone’s silence as hesitation. She was about to chide him then thought better of it. Of all her children, he was the one most like her. Not hesitation, then. Silence as a weapon, an attempt to force her to reveal her secrets.

  She waited. Two could play that game.

  “And Tommaso’s other assignment?” he finally asked.

  “What exactly do you think you know?”

  “He had a patient. A doctor. Angela Rossi. She has the Scourge. Her medical record makes for...” He paused. “Fascinating reading. She may be of interest to you.”

  Time to end the charade. “Don’t play the fool with me. You know very well who Angela Rossi is.”

  “She’s missing as well. Last seen with Tommaso. Before the laboratory explosion.”

  Damn. Was Tommaso attempting to outmaneuver her? Pursuing some misguided fantasy of playing the hero, returning home with the prize that would allow him to assume control of the family himself?

  Or perhaps he’d already betrayed her? Gone to Marco with the research—her research, the result of decades of her work. No. If he had, she’d be dead already. Marco might be stupid, but he also had a distinct knack for self-preservation. If killing her became more advantageous than the money and power her scientific endeavors provided the family, he wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of her.