The Sleepless Stars

by C. J. Lyons

  Feeling slowly returned to the rest of my body. I raised my hand and sought out Ryder’s pendant. Still there—somehow I knew that meant I really was back.

  A tear escaped my closed eyes. I was back. And without the cure. Without anything that might help save the children. Except Daniel’s accusation that I was the reason why they were dying.

  Opening my eyes, I looked around. Definitely Daniel’s room and Daniel’s bed, but I was no longer touching him. Even so, I squirmed as far away as I could from where he lay beside me. I couldn’t see the monitors, but his chest was still rising, although his breathing was slower than normal.

  “Drink this,” Flynn said, approaching me with a glass and a straw. “Did you get anything out of him?” she asked without waiting for me to finish.

  My throat was too parched for me to talk yet. Definitely my Flynn, the real Flynn, with her abrupt, to-the-point manners. As I sipped the electrolyte cocktail, I raised my free hand to my head, felt the EEG monitor pinching my scalp like a tight-fitting swim cap. Louise should have gotten some great readings, given what Daniel had put me through. I blinked the rest of the eye gel clear and scanned the room for a clock—I’d been gone for almost three hours.

  I’d had longer fugues—almost died from one a few days ago that lasted over a day—but had never been inside someone for that long. No wonder my brain felt as if it’d gone through an industrial-sized shredder.

  Flynn steadied the glass for me as tremors shook my body. “You okay, doc?”

  I nodded, let her take the glass away before I dropped it. “C-cold.”

  She felt my forehead in a most uncharacteristic maternal fashion. “You’re burning up. Louise, she’s burning up.”

  Louise was already coming around the bed, leaving Daniel’s side where she’d been monitoring him. “Does this usually happen?” she asked.

  My teeth were chattering too hard for me to form words, so I nodded. It usually wasn’t this bad, but we could argue semantics later. She checked my vitals, popped a few pills into my mouth, held the glass as I drank and swallowed. Flynn hovered, watching closely. Sometimes I had the feeling that if Flynn was a normal girl who’d lived a normal life, she could have been anything she wanted—her powers of observation were so finely honed that she quickly learned almost any task.

  Like now, handing Louise a small handheld testing unit without Louise asking. “Checking your electrolytes, see if I need to start an IV to rehydrate you faster.”

  As if I didn’t know that already. See how quickly you can go from being in charge of an entire emergency department to being a helpless patient? Already feeling better, I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine.”

  She ignored me, poking my finger and letting the blood drip onto the testing strip. I yanked my hand away, a drop of blood staining Daniel’s silk coverlet. Flynn was right there with a bandage and another glass of electrolytes.

  I drained it even faster than the first, my hands steadying, the chills fading. The fog clouding my brain also receded. I tried to sit up, wanting to get off the bed and farther away from Daniel. I didn’t make it very far, the room swimming around me. But Flynn anticipated my needs and helped me move from the bed to a chair near the fire. A fireplace in a bedroom—such extravagance only punctuated just how out of place I was here in Daniel’s house, fighting a family who, according to him, had even more money and power than the Kingstons.

  “I need a pad and pen.”

  Flynn rummaged in the bedside table and handed both to me. The paper wasn’t the recycled hospital scratch pad I was used to. Instead, it was heavy, with a cloth-like texture. And the pen was an old-fashioned fountain pen. As I sketched the formula for the PXA reversal agent, I imagined Daniel sitting here, jotting down late-night notes to sack the economy or pillage a competitor. My eyes barely open, I dumped everything I could remember onto the paper, then handed it to Louise.

  “What’s this?”

  “Daniel gave me the PXA reversal agent.”

  Her eyebrows raised as she scrutinized my notes. “This is...astounding. Your EEG while you were writing it just now—it wasn’t what I would expect from someone copying from rote memory. More like the pattern of someone reliving an experience.”

  “You said the fatal insomnia affects my thalamus. That’s the area where sensory and somatic nerve tracts are concentrated. Muscle memory,” I explained to Flynn. “Why did you pull me out?” I asked them both. “I didn’t get much more than this formula.”

  They exchanged a look. “The readings—” Louise started, then stopped. I didn’t blame her. Fatal insomnia required a whole new vocabulary beyond typical medical jargon.

  “Was Daniel starting to die?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “It was you,” Flynn said in her usual blunt way. “You died.”

  “Not really,” Louise rushed to explain before I could register the shock. “But for a minute—less than a minute, a few seconds at most—your EEG went flat. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was certain it was equipment failure, except at the same time Daniel’s EEG suddenly lit up. As if he were somehow waking up from his coma.”

  My mouth went dry as I processed that. It must have been when Daniel had tried to imprison me in his false reality.

  Could he really somehow have used my own memories to jump-start his brain? No. I could explain a lot of what was happening to me—hell, medical science had already demonstrated the ability to transfer memories from one rat to another, so why not a human under the right circumstances?—but I could not fathom a reality where one person could take over another’s consciousness.

  “It was only for a few seconds,” Louise repeated, trying to be reassuring despite the puzzled expression on her face. “Then Daniel’s EEG went almost totally flat, while yours went back to normal. But your blood pressure and pulse were increasing, so I pulled you out.”

  “It was too soon. He was getting ready to show me—” I stared at Louise, not sure what to do with the anger that suddenly swamped me as I remembered what Daniel had shown me there at the end. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  She jerked at my tone of accusation, while Flynn braced herself as if facing an unexpected danger.

  “When you confirmed that I had the fatal insomnia gene, you tested my DNA along with Patsy’s. You knew she wasn’t my biological mother. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Louise’s features tightened into a frown, then her gaze shifted to Daniel’s still form, then back to me again, morphing into curiosity. “He told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could he know Patsy wasn’t your real mother?” Louise asked, still hovering between me and Daniel.

  “He knew my real mother. Was in love with her, asked her to marry him. But she said no, because she had a grand plan to save her family.” It was all coming back in a confused rush. From the looks on their faces, I wasn’t making much sense. I kept talking in the hopes of untangling the threads Daniel had woven through his memories. Memories that I now carried like a remnant of frayed cloth. “Her name was Francesca. Francesca Lazaretto.”

  “Wait,” Louise said. “Lazaretto? She was related to Tommaso?”

  I nodded slowly. “She was his mother. And mine.”

  Chapter 26

  TYRONE AND HIS men must have dragged Grey back to the top of the elevator shaft. Of course they did—they didn’t want Ryder to miss a single second of Grey’s torture. Muffled thuds followed by cries of pain echoed from the rock walls surrounding Ryder’s cage.

  Anguish sliced through him, but there was nothing he could do, not trapped down here. He couldn’t shut his hearing off, but he could focus on escaping, anything that might help him save Grey. Contorting his arms as best he could, Ryder felt along the surface of the handcuffs to where the key was broken off in the lock. Grey was right, the flimsy plastic key had snapped flush with the metal—except for a tiny shard that poked into Ryder’s numb fingers.

  He tried to grasp it and failed. No way would he
be able to use the jagged sliver to turn the key that was stuck fast in the lock.

  As he sagged against the metal wall of the cage, another scream pierced the blackness. The idea of giving up never occurred to Ryder. Instead, he quickly devised a plan B based on the variety of ways felons used to escape their restraints.

  He wasn’t flexible enough to pull his cuffed wrists to the front of his body, but if he could fashion a shim, he could slip a cuff open. One cuff open was all he needed. But first, he needed a thin sliver of metal, long enough to slip past the ratcheted edge of the cuff’s jaws. If Rossi was here, he could use one of her barrette clips. Not that he wanted her anywhere near this hellhole.

  He paced his cage in frustration, awkwardly skimming his hands along the metal supports and places where the wire mesh walls connected, searching for any hint of a metal spur he could break off. Nothing except a few useless flakes of rust. Despite its age, the cage was well constructed.

  A sudden silence descended from above him. No more sounds of protests or cries of pain. Had they taken Grey away? Or worse?

  The cage creaked and swung as it was raised. Ryder blinked to force his vision to adjust as light spilled down from above. The elevator stopped a few inches shy of the main floor. Before he could attempt to mount any resistance, two of Tyrone’s men hauled him out.

  The first thing Ryder saw was Grey’s body, crumpled on the floor, dark blood slicking the rock wall above him. He wasn’t moving, except for the heaving of his chest as he took one wheezy gasp after another.

  The second thing Ryder saw was Tyrone’s smiling face. Ryder focused on Tyrone.

  “What do you want?” Ryder stalled for time as he scanned the area. They’d brought more lanterns, allowing him, for the first time, to make out details of his surroundings. A tarpaulin-covered stack of crates stood against the wall near where Grey was. Another of the makeshift tables had been placed a few feet in front of it. On it were more papers, pens and highlighters, rulers and staplers, the detritus of planning an op.

  Including paper clips. Several sizes of the wire kind—one of those might be useful to pick a lock, but wouldn’t work to shim one. Difficult, but maybe doable. Then he spotted the laminating machine and stack of fake IDs alongside a small pile of plastic shavings. And the slim box cutter used to trim them. Its thin metal blade would work as a shim—and then as a weapon.

  Plan beginning to form, he stumbled toward Grey as if he’d just spotted the federal agent. “You killed him!”

  Tyrone’s men lunged for him, but he moved a fraction faster, spinning to the side. Just far enough to stagger into the table, brushing his coat sleeve over it, sending the pile of IDs spinning into space. While one of the men bent to pick up the scattered IDs—all from Good Samaritan, Ryder noted in dismay—Ryder palmed the box cutter and slid it up his sleeve. The other man pulled him back to face Tyrone.

  “Idiot thought he could escape,” Tyrone said, wiping his hands on a rag as if Grey’s blood and sweat had contaminated him. “I’m sure you’re smarter than he was, right, Detective?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Tyrone nodded to the man nearest Grey. The man yanked Grey up by the hair with one sharp, vicious movement that made Ryder wince. Then he drew a semiautomatic pistol and held it at Grey’s temple. “Certain about that? Enough to bet your friend’s life?”

  Ryder steadied himself. He couldn’t shim his cuffs, not without attracting attention with his movements, and the box cutter wasn’t much use as a weapon, not while his hands were cuffed behind his back. All he could do was try to stall until they gave him a few moments of privacy.

  Grey’s eyes rolled toward Ryder as if he couldn’t focus. The blood and coal dust coating his face weren’t helping. His gasps grew louder, and one arm drooped—dislocated or broken, Ryder couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t,” Grey managed to get out before the man holding him kneed him in the kidneys. He crumpled to the ground. The man yanked him back upright, again placed the pistol to his temple.

  Ryder scrambled for something that might convince Tyrone to release Grey. “I’m sure if Special Agent Grey told you anything, he told you I have nothing to do with the warehouse explosion investigation. I wasn’t even on scene last night when it happened.”

  Tyrone narrowed his eyes. “But he said you know Dr. Rossi.”

  Easy enough for Tyrone to find with a quick Google search, so Grey had done no harm. “I do. What’s she to do with you?”

  “I’m asking the questions. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.” It was the truth, but Ryder still sold it with everything he had, keeping his voice level, his gaze focused on Tyrone, his breathing steady.

  Tyrone jerked his chin at the man with the pistol. Ryder tried to ignore the muzzle digging into the flesh beside Grey’s eye. But he couldn’t avoid Grey’s sharp cry of pain, despite Grey’s efforts to squelch it.

  “Where. Is. Dr. Rossi?” Tyrone asked, making it clear it would be the final time.

  Ryder didn’t flinch, kept his entire body still. He wouldn’t betray Rossi. Couldn’t condemn Grey by not answering. Either way, Tyrone would kill them both.

  “I don’t know. Killing us won’t change that. Neither will anything else.” Like torture, he didn’t add—not wanting to put any ideas in the heads of men willing to murder a federal agent. He kept his gaze locked on Tyrone’s, the rest of the cavern blurring around the other man’s face.

  Tyrone stepped toward Ryder, blocking his view of Grey. Tyrone’s scowl cleared, and he jerked his chin to his man holding the pistol. Ryder relaxed and dared a breath—Tyrone believed him.

  The crack of a gunshot split the silence.

  Tyrone stepped aside, giving Ryder a clear view of Grey’s body as it slumped to the floor, the side of his head covered in blood. Ryder’s breath caught, but then his training took over, and he forced himself to exhale slowly and breathe in again.

  No one in the cavern moved or said anything—not even the other men gathered in the shadows at the front. All eyes were on Tyrone, including Ryder’s.

  “That was Grey’s last chance. Now it’s yours.” Across the cavern, the man with the pistol stepped away from Grey’s body and aimed his weapon at Ryder. “Where is she?”

  Ryder ignored the man with the gun to stare at Tyrone. “I don’t know.”

  Tyrone pursed his lips. The man with the pistol waited, his face expressionless. Ryder felt strangely calm—maybe because he was certain that even if he did know where Rossi was, he would never tell them. Not because he was any kind of hero, not even because of his military training, but because she meant that much to him. He only wished he’d had a chance to let her know exactly how much.

  Finally, Tyrone smiled and patted Ryder’s cheek with a move straight from The Godfather.

  “Good for you, brother?” Tyrone called over his shoulder.

  Ryder watched in amazement as Grey climbed to his feet and walked into the light. He knifed the side of one hand against his head, slaking blood, mud, and coal dust from his miraculously uninjured face. One of the men handed him a wad of napkins to finish the job. “Took you long enough.”

  “Had to make sure he wouldn’t give us anything else of value.”

  “Told you I already got everything. But, as usual, I do all the hard work so you can have your fun and games.”

  Grey smeared one of his “wounds” with the back of his hand across his mouth and licked his lips. “Ketchup and barbecue sauce. Nice combo.”

  The two men now stood side by side. Same deep-set eyes, same mouth. Literal brothers?

  “Who are you?” Ryder asked. He would have preferred to remain silent, less risk of further betrayal, however good intentioned, that way. But he needed to stall them, give him time to come up with a plan to stop them before they could go after Rossi and the children. Thank God, Grey didn’t know more than Price’s name—something he would have found anyway as soon as he looked deep
er into Rossi’s history.

  Pretending to be an ally, gaining your confidence, faked torture and execution—it was a manipulation that went back to the ancient Greeks, had been finely honed by the Gestapo, and yet still he’d fallen for it. He’d been so desperate for any chance to save Rossi.

  This was exactly why she’d left. To protect them both. And still, he’d betrayed her.

  “Kill him now?” Tyrone asked, raising his own pistol.

  “No. Wait, you imbecile. He’ll make a useful hostage to compel Rossi.”

  Tyrone looked disappointed as he holstered his weapon.

  “Why do you want Rossi? What do you want? Why target her and the children?” Ryder peppered them with questions. If they stopped to answer even one, it would buy him time. Not that he was going to break free any time soon, but maybe, if he could get one of them close enough to use the box cutter...even with his hands restrained behind his back, he could swipe at their groin or femoral artery.

  Tyrone tossed Grey the phone he’d taken from Ryder. “He got a text verifying Grey’s ID. I couldn’t trace the number, but it’s probably Price’s.”

  “Of course you couldn’t trace it. Let me.” Grey removed a tarp from a stack of crates. A laptop waited for him. While he worked, Tyrone paced in front of Ryder, a smirk filling his face.

  “It’s all a lie?” Ryder asked. Not because he cared about the answer, but because he needed to keep them talking, engage them while he figured out a new way out of here. Now that he knew they wanted Rossi, he had to make it out alive in order to warn her. The only thing he’d given Grey was Devon Price’s name, and Price was smart, could take care of himself—and he’d never give up Rossi, not with his own daughter’s life on the line.

  “No,” Tyrone answered. “Special Agent Michael Grey is real enough. Assigned to a secret task force overseas in the Philippines, so it was easy enough to assume his identity here in the States.”

  “That story about the Somalis, West Virginia?”

  “Oh, West Virginia was also real. One of our brothers managed to lose part of his cohort in Atlanta. We,” he gestured to Grey, “tracked them to West Virginia. But there was no church burning, nothing like that. Mother prefers us to operate under the radar, so to speak.”