Fault Lines

by Thomas Locke

“Gabriella McLaren.”

  “May I see some ID?”

  “Of course.”

  Charlie remained planted by the entrance as Gabriella accepted the plastic key. She politely refused the receptionist’s offer to show her upstairs, then turned to Charlie and said, “Come with me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Charlie Hazard, willing servant. He followed her to the elevator, where Gabriella pushed the penthouse button. The entire ride, she stared at the elevator doors and panted softly through slightly parted lips.

  She let them into a massive suite overlooking Central Park. Charlie gave the rooms a quick sweep, then joined her at the living room windows. The park was laced with springtime green and rimmed by New York bling. “Must be nice.”

  “We need to sit here.” She indicated the space between the sofa and the window.

  “On the floor?”

  “We are safe here.”

  “You’ve seen this in one of your . . .”

  “I have, yes.” She tucked her skirt in about her knees, reached into her purse, and came out with a palm-sized video camera. “I’m very glad you are here, Charlie. Can you operate this?”

  “I need to keep my hands free.”

  “I told you. We are in no danger.”

  The camera’s operation was clear enough. He looked through the monitor. The camera focused swiftly, the viewfinder crystal clear. He zoomed in on a beautiful woman wearing a grim and tragic mask. He set the camera in his lap. “Can you tell me what’s happening?”

  She was silent so long he thought she was not going to respond. Then she said, “Everything is so new. Three weeks ago, we designed a series of trials around the instructions to determine what risk we faced. I discovered something that forced me to realize how much I was willing to ignore, how our safety in the Vero hospital was just a myth.”

  Charlie had no idea what she was talking about. But he could hear the strain in her voice, see the fear in her eyes. He disliked his position, behind soft furniture that would offer them no protection from gunfire. He was also unable to see what might come through that door. If he raised his head he’d be instantly silhouetted by the window behind him. It was a sucker’s spot. A beginner’s hideaway.

  Gabriella was saying, “Each time I go hunting risk, I am given specific images. Usually this is matched by a snapshot sensation. Sometimes the emotion is clearer than the image. My last trial, the accompanying sensation left me numb. I wish I could be that way now.”

  Charlie stopped fidgeting. “What was it that shocked you, Gabriella?”

  “You will see soon enough. If I talk about this, I will . . .” Her face went taut as a mask. She bit her lip, struggled, and forced herself to steady. “Right now I want to tell you what happened after. Usually we close a search for risk by asking, ‘Where do we go next?’ This time, instead of finding safety, I found myself looking at another danger. I saw a room as big as a cave. No windows. Four tiers of computer stations rising like an arena. The stations and the people face a wall of huge flat-panel displays. The sensation was of raw power and a frigid coldness.”

  “You’re talking about the Combine?”

  “I do not need to name this thing to know it is a bringer of death.” She spoke with the steady conviction of a scientist dictating results. Every word carefully spaced. “A woman with white-blonde hair stood on the top tier. She spoke to a slender man, possibly Indian, I’m not certain.”

  Charlie knew she described a standard war room. The screens were the war room’s eyes on the world. Incoming data streamed constantly. The analysts were arrayed according to task and seniority. The top tier was reserved for people with the power to send peons like Charlie to their death. “Did you see what was on the screens?”

  “You were being hunted by a team of men in blue SWAT suits. I did not see you, but I knew it was you they were after. The men ran across a lawn toward a one-story house. I was so frightened, but I did not understand why.”

  A private group able to afford its own intel war room and a mercenary attack force drawn from Delta . . . Gabriella had every right to be scared.

  Charlie started to tell her this had already happened when he heard the sound of a plastic key being inserted into the door.

  Their location was all wrong. He should never have allowed himself to be trapped back there. Armed with nothing but a camera to record their demise.

  Then he heard laughter.

  A woman, probably quite young, said, “Oh, cool. A suite. Wow. What a view.”

  An older man said, “Yeah, from where I’m standing the view is fabulous.”

  “Oh, you.” The young woman’s voice had the hard-edged quality of too much too soon. “Where’s the champagne?”

  “Go check in the other room.”

  Charlie thought he recognized the man’s voice. The one time he had heard it before had been in a penthouse lab.

  The man followed the woman across the carpet, entered the bedroom, and said, “Here, let me open the bottle.”

  At the sound of glasses clinking, Gabriella took hold of Charlie’s hand. Her grip was so tight, her entire body trembled with the force she applied to his fingers.

  The woman in the other room said, “What’s in the box?”

  “Open it and see.”

  There was a rustle of paper, then, “Wow. My favorite blue.”

  “I know.”

  At the sound of a passionate kiss, Gabriella released Charlie’s hand and reached for her purse. “I’m going to end this.”

  He was about to reach over and keep her from using what he assumed was a pistol. But her hand emerged holding papers.

  “Bring the camera.” Gabriella rose from her crouch, crossed the room, opened the doors, and said, “Hello, Byron.”

  The woman jerked out of Byron’s embrace and demanded, “Who are you?”

  “I’m his wife.”

  The young woman slapped the man cowering in the bed beside her. “You told me you were divorced.”

  “He is,” Gabriella said, and dropped the papers in his lap. “Just as soon as he signs both copies.”

  20

  They rode in silence back to Gabriella’s hotel. Her attention remained fixed upon the side window. Charlie doubted she saw anything at all. The taxi driver was a slender, dark-skinned man whose last name had seventeen letters. His license was displayed on the scratched plastic window between the front and rear seats. At every stoplight he stared into his rearview mirror, looking first at Gabriella, then over to Charlie, then back to Gabriella again. He probably assumed Gabriella’s sorrow was Charlie’s fault.

  The taxi let them out at the Millennium Times Square. The lobby was a vast marble and granite tomb. Gabriella’s room was on the fifty-ninth floor. To Charlie, the room looked like a suede-lined cell. The small window overlooked a neighboring building. The lighting was muted and the décor too dark.

  Charlie said, “We shouldn’t stay here any longer than we need to.”

  “I registered under Speciale, my maiden name, using an old passport.” She spoke in a careful monotone, holding on to control by will alone. “We are safe here until tomorrow morning.”

  Mentally he repeated her name. Gabriella Speciale. It suited her perfectly. “You saw this?”

  “Yes.” Gabriella lay down on the bed and covered her eyes. Her face twisted up tightly, then relaxed. “I’m sorry you had to witness that, Charlie.”

  “You never have to apologize to me. Especially for something that was totally not your fault.”

  “I’ve known about this side of Byron for some time. He liked to show me off. Other than that, he treated me well. He treats all his investments well. Among his banker cronies, Byron was known as a white-knight investor. Even so, I suspected that he was incapable of committing himself fully to anything. He is like a lot of very rich men, I suppose, who treat life as a personal playground and rules as something that only applies to mere mortals. His other ladies, Byron saw like a fine meal. He had his hors d’oeuvres, his mai
n courses, and his desserts. Many, many desserts.”

  “The guy,” Charlie said, “is a loon.”

  She might not have heard him. “Byron made a polite attempt to hide his desserts from me. And I politely pretended not to see. Or hear, when people told me what they had observed, the kindness dripping from their mouths and their eyes like poisoned honey.”

  She went silent and remained in that same position as he ordered them up a meal and sat staring out the window at the city. He met the room-service waiter at the door, signed the bill, and locked and bolted the door. Gabriella joined him at the table but ate very little.

  She continued to check her watch, until Charlie asked, “Something the matter?”

  Gabriella sat up straighter and said, “I have a problem. I am scheduled to make an ascent. But I can’t. Not tonight.”

  “That’s what you call these experiences, an ascent?”

  “We wanted a term without baggage. Ascent works well for many reasons.” She waved that aside. Charlie had the impression she was slightly disappointed, as though he had asked the wrong question. “I cannot possibly attain the state of calm required for an ascent. Stress skews the results. Sometimes it . . . is not pleasant.”

  He filled in the first blank. “But you need to find out what comes next.”

  “We always work in teams of two. One ascends, the other acts as the compass. There are set directives, which the team works out together in advance. The last question we have been asking since this crisis started is, ‘When should the next ascent take place?’ Sometimes there is no answer. This time it was very clear, very precise.”

  “You want me to do this.”

  “If you will.” Gabriella glanced at her watch. “The ascent should begin in seventy-three minutes.”

  “Do you think I can?”

  She spoke very carefully. “There is no reason I know of why it should not work.”

  “That you know of.”

  She looked directly at him for the first time since entering the room. “Everything about you is an anomaly. All our other successful ascenders are brought up through stages. They remain at Base Level through several sessions, until they are fully comfortable with the concept. Gradually they are taken higher. Some ascend—a minority. Most of those who do never manage to move more than a few inches from their bodies. You are the first, the very first, to ever arrive and ascend and travel on the first go. You are certain you have never done anything like this before?”

  “No.” He listened to the echo of those words in his brain. Anomaly. Ascender. Travel. “I never have.”

  “That is such an astonishment. Most people are terrified of ascending. They say it is like approaching death voluntarily. The body is left behind. At some core level of the psyche, far beyond what we are able to consciously control, the ascender must face that most primal of fears. This is why we are so careful to introduce the transition in stages. It is also why we laid out the protocol for meeting you as we did. If we brought you in and followed the agreed-upon protocol, and you ascended and moved to the next room and read the note, then my associates agreed to leave the hospital and their beautiful new lab. Because they knew it was impossible for you to accomplish all this.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and start getting things ready?”

  “Will you stay and protect us, Charlie? Even if things become dangerous?”

  Charlie started to ask what she knew about the threats they would face. But her fractured gaze halted him, at least for now. All he said was, “That’s my job.”

  21

  Reese had always loved New York. The twenty-four-hour rhythm matched her own psyche far better than the more laid-back Southern California vibe. New York’s avaricious edge was sheathed in an extremely elegant bling. Like a carbon steel sword kept in a scabbard of silk and emeralds. She crossed the hotel lobby and smiled in anticipation of unsheathing her own hidden blade.

  Reese entered the Plaza Hotel’s main restaurant, her stride stretching the fabric of her dress to its limit. She wore a silk sheath of midnight blue, so dark as to appear black under certain lighting. Not that any male in the Plaza’s main restaurant was particularly concerned about the color. The poisonous looks shot her way by matronly diners only added to the night’s pleasure.

  The Plaza had recently undergone a complete renovation that cost over two hundred million dollars. The main restaurant shouted money in typical New York fashion, as in, too much is never enough.

  When she had tracked down Byron McLaren in the hotel bar an hour and a half ago, the man had appeared positively stricken. But now he rose from the table and greeted her with a kiss and a smile and the words, “My day has just gotten a billion percent better.”

  The maître d’ leaned over close enough for Reese to smell his hair gel as he bowed her into her chair. Byron beamed with pride of temporary ownership as he announced, “Let’s pick up where we left off. The lady will have a glass of your finest champagne.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Matter of fact, bring her a whole bottle.”

  “One glass is fine,” Reese said. “But thanks just the same.”

  Now that he had recovered from whatever had rocked his world, Byron McLaren was actually quite handsome, in a preppy sort of way. Reese knew a lot of girls went for that boy-who-never-grows-up look. But she was not one of them.

  Of course, Byron’s real magnet was the fact that he was extremely rich.

  He had let that one slip within the first ninety seconds of Reese sliding into the seat next to his that afternoon. At the time, however, the man had seemed to be reading off somebody else’s script. Reese had let him assume she found him attractive, or at least liked the look of his wallet, which had gradually brought the man back to life. He swiftly began what was no doubt his standard windup, regretting how he couldn’t fly her up to this great little bistro outside Boston, as delivery of his new Gulfstream was two months late. Something about the factory only having one set of the special gold fittings he had ordered, and they’d given them to the sultan of Brunei, can you imagine?

  Byron gave her a full-frontal inspection and said, “I’ve got a weekend booked at a resort on Tortuga, and I was just sitting here wondering who I could find—”

  “Actually, Byron.” Reese leaned forward and gave him a smile strong enough to draw glances from other tables. “This meeting is not entirely pleasure.”

  She gave him a minute. Byron recovered well, which was good, because there was a lot of ground left to cover. He said, “So your coming on to me in the bar, that wasn’t a chance thing.”

  She scratched a fingernail down the back of his wrist, enjoying the subtle shift of control. “No, Byron. It wasn’t.”

  “What, you’re looking for venture capital, is that it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I swear, you people. New York is like a hive for desperate fund seekers.” He showed a lot of affected movement when he was nervous, unnecessary motions that took up a great deal of space. Like an actor who suffered from an inferiority itch whenever the spotlight moved away. Byron shot his cuffs, lifted his hands and smoothed his hair, then flung his right arm over the banquet. “My, if this doesn’t just cap off a perfect day.”

  “Byron, did you hear what I said?”

  “I’ll give it to you straight and save us both a lot of trouble. I do all my finance work through Citi. I invest where they say. And I never let chance encounters develop into funding.”

  “Actually, Byron, the part about Citi handling all your money is not true.” She always preferred to hold such confrontations in public. Meeting her prey in the spotlight of their choosing reduced the power of their scenes. They feared embarrassment heaped upon whatever horror she had to bring. Which in Byron’s case was quite a lot. “How much do you actually know about your wife’s research?”

  “Gabriella? She doesn’t have a thing to do with my investment capital.”

  “I’m not here about your portfolio. I already t
old you that. Please answer the question.”

  Talking about his wife clearly heightened the man’s unease. That was unexpected. “I financed her project.”

  “Byron, I want you to try real hard and move past the money issue. I asked you about her research.”

  “I know enough. And this isn’t amusing any longer.”

  When he attempted to lift his arm to signal the waiter, Reese froze him with three little words. “Bank of Geneva.”

  The sensation really was exquisite. Grabbing a man by a most sensitive body part—the wallet. And wrenching with delicate precision.

  Reese drew a folded sheet of paper from her purse. “These are your accounts, Byron. All five of them. Surely you recognize the numbers.”

  “B-but this is . . .”

  “Completely confidential. I know.” Moments like this were what kept her in the game. She was offered jobs all the time, usually by Combine members. This was what held her. The rare moment when the Combine’s power was truly hers to wield. “Now here, see at the bottom of the page, this series of zeros? These were your account balances exactly an hour ago.”

  Byron’s skin went waxy as the blood drained away.

  Eighty-seven million dollars. Secreted away and supposedly safe in a tight little Swiss bank on the shores of Lake Geneva.

  Gone.

  She anchored the page with her cell phone. “You can call and check this out, Byron. We’ve got time.”

  Wordlessly, Byron slipped from the booth and stormed from the restaurant. Or tried to. Reese had the distinct impression that something had already disarmed and wounded the man. Whatever he had been through that afternoon had marked him deeply. She was debating whether she should call in and have Patel try to discover what that might have been, in case it affected their own situation. But Byron chose that moment to return to the table.

  He slumped into his seat and took a heavy slug from his glass. Spent a few moments staring at nothing. Drank again. Reese realized the man had had some work done on his face, and by someone extremely good. She saw the faint trace of scar tissue along his hairline, accented by the man’s evident strain.