Breakout (Alex Knight Book 1)

by C. G. Cooper

  But now, that photo of Keen shined in his mind. And the horrible truth, that a young man had possibly been killed to protect Knight and his stem cell work, came to rest on his conscience. Knight wondered why Stone would protect him. Why wouldn’t the man with the elfin grin simply wash his hands of the study and throw Knight to the wolves? Was Stone protecting the stem cell studies? And if he was, from whom?

  And then Knight realized Stone was protecting himself. If the stem cell work was brought to light, how long would it be before the head of the NIH came under fire for allowing such a study to be conducted under his nose? Professor Stone was covering his own ass and doing so with the death of an innocent man.

  The street lights were just blinking on when Sarah opened his door, a light knock echoing through the air as she stepped into his office.

  “It’s late, Alex,” she said. “Do you need anything before I go?”

  Knight looked up from his screen. The office lights were dimmed. Blunt and Jeffries were gone and their computers powered down. “No,” Knight said, uncertainly. He rubbed his tired eyes. “No. Except, yes, I do want some dinner.”

  “I can book you a table somewhere,” she said. “Or I can order in if you’re planning to work late. Or...” She tilted her head coyly at him and suggested, “You could buy me dinner?”

  He began shutting down his computer; the face of a young vaccine victim disappeared as the screen powered down.

  The restaurant that Sarah had chosen was busy for a Monday, but quiet enough for the two of them to talk. They sat opposite each other at a table big enough for four. A bottle of Chardonnay sat untouched as they talked and laughed.

  “My old boss was a nightmare,” she said.

  “As bad as Mrs. Blunt?”

  “Mrs. Blunt is not my boss. She’s just an office manager. She doesn’t really know what we’re doing. She just re-orders printer ink when we’re running low.”

  “That’s no way to talk about a colleague,” he chided playfully.

  Sarah scoffed. “She is so close to retirement she doesn’t care what I think or do. Lucky for her, I just get on with my work.”

  Knight picked up the wine bottle and silently offered to fill her glass. She shook her head and wrinkled her pretty nose in a polite refusal, her long, thick hair dancing and bouncing as she did so.

  “So, who is your boss?” He thought he detected a minor flicker of something, maybe guilt, maybe a secret, but it was gone and buried under Sarah’s bright smile.

  “I guess you are,” she said, then picked up her water glass and took a tiny sip.

  “So, you have to do what I tell you?”

  “Within the limits of the law.”

  The line stung slightly. There was no way she could know that he was here as part of some weird plea bargain to keep him out of jail.

  “I’ll keep it legal,” he said, feeling a sudden unease about the evening.

  She smiled at him. “Alex, I know this isn’t your ideal job.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on. You’re obviously overqualified. You’re here because some government bureaucrat decreed it.”

  “The president decreed it.”

  “Yeah, because a bunch of bureaucrats needed to justify their jobs. It’s all part of the game, and unfortunately, you were made an unwilling participant. But don’t worry about it. Drudgery can be made bearable by the company you keep.”

  The waiter brought their meals. Knight was suddenly ravenous.

  They got into the staff car together, laughing at shared jokes.

  “So, big spender, where are you taking me now?” she asked.

  “Wherever you want.”

  “Take me home,” she said, staring him in the eye.

  “Remind me again where you live.”

  “Your home, silly.” She kissed her finger and placed it on his lips.

  The journey was short and quick. It was late, and the traffic had died down. The city streets were quiet.

  Suddenly, there was nothing to say. They understood each other in ways they hadn’t just a few hours before. There was so much to be said. And yet, Knight thought, words would only ruin this understanding.

  The car pulled up outside Knight’s building. Knight tipped the driver and wished him a good night. The car sped off, leaving Knight and Sarah standing on the sidewalk outside Knight’s apartment block. Sarah stared up at the building.

  “It’s a long way to come up for coffee.”

  “It’s a bit late for coffee. I’d never sleep,” Knight said. And that was that.

  The pair stood in the elevator in silence, only sharing a few furtive glances at one another, fingers touching.

  They tumbled through Knight’s apartment door, wrapped up in each other.

  She pulled at the back of his hair, separating them slightly, and looked him in the eye. “Things could get weird at work. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He smiled and stared into her dark eyes. “Maybe it’s time to let things get weird.”

  The truth was that he didn’t want to live his life alone. Although his work would always dominate his thoughts and dreams, there were other things he wanted—needed—to share. That had become painfully obvious in the preceding weeks.

  “I’ll take a chance if you will,” she said.

  And they kissed as the city lights illuminated the room in a dim orange, shadowy glow. Neither of them needed to see. They just needed to feel.

  16

  Childs drove carefully along the highway, the GPS chirping every couple of minutes, letting him know he was on track. The small town outside the city was home to a former biologist who had been involved in a vaccination study. A file lay open on the seat next to Childs. He glanced at it whenever the morning traffic brought him to a stop.

  Dr. Norman Scarfe had retired recently and left the city with his wife, who had died shortly after the move. What really interested Childs was the fact that Dr. Alex Knight had recently paid Scarfe a visit.

  He pulled up into the driveway of Scarfe’s house, alongside the wide lawn with its lightly branching trees. Next to the house lay a pile of compost bags and a shovel. The soil in the flower bed had been dug out and replaced. A pile of earth, presumably excavated and waiting removal, lay at one side of the driveway.

  Childs walked along the small path across the front of the house to the main entrance. He climbed the few steps up to the veranda. To one side of the door was a small table. A glass and pitcher of what looked to be iced tea sat on its top. The glass was half empty. The pitcher was cold to the touch, but there was no ice. It must have been sitting outside for the entire night, he thought.

  He rang the doorbell. A strumming chime sounded within the house. Childs waited a few moments before ringing the bell a second time. He listened intently but could hear no movement from inside. He went a few steps along the veranda and looked through a large window. No signs of activity. And no sounds.

  He walked back along the veranda and looked in through a second window. This time he could see through an open interior door to the back of the house and what looked to be a kitchen. A small window at the back of the house was open. He stepped down off the veranda, walked around the house, past the mound of soil, and up the drive to the closed garage, hoping to find some access to the backyard.

  A tall gate between the garage and the back of the house was shut. He tried the latch. The gate swung open. He glanced around the large rear garden, looking out for the doctor before he stepped through the gate.

  At the back of the house were a wide window and a set of tall sliding glass doors. Childs could see the entire kitchen area. A large central worktop dominated one end of the cooking space; on the other was a small tile-topped wooden table. A mug and an open, well-thumbed-through newspaper sat on the table.

  He could see further into the house through the rear window: the hall and the front door, the banister and the bottom step of a staircase leading to the upper floor. And then Childs spotted it: fee
t dangling into the hall, suspended somehow, the rest of the body hidden from sight.

  Childs tugged at the handle to the glass doors. They were locked. He pulled out his 9mm, took careful aim, and blasted out the lock. Glass shattered and a burglar alarm sounded, loud and shrill. He stepped inside and ran across to the hall. As he approached, he could see the doctor, hanging from the top rail of the upstairs banister by a length of rope. The face was blue, the tongue swollen and protruding. The man’s eyes were red and wide, staring into oblivion.

  Police sirens came to mingle discordantly with the shrill sounds of the burglar alarm. Childs tucked his FBI badge in his breast pocket and opened the front door, hands raised.

  “Step outside. Kneel on the ground,” a nervous deputy shouted at Childs, his weapon leveled.

  “Special Agent Childs!” he identified himself, standing still with hands raised as the deputy came forward cautiously. Childs nodded toward his breast pocket, and the deputy slowly removed the badge as Childs remained still.

  The deputy took a good look at Childs’s badge and then holstered his gun. “I can switch off that alarm,” the deputy said, returning Childs’s badge.

  “And then seal off the area, Deputy. We’ve got one dead inside. This is my scene. OK?”

  While the deputy sealed off the area and went into the mechanical operations of dealing with the scene, Childs studied the pile of soil at the side of the house. The earth had been removed and replaced, presumably for gardening purposes. The flowers in the newly prepared beds were roses. The roses were bunched together and leaning against the side of the house. An unfinished job. Why would Scarfe go through all the trouble of replacing the soil only to plant his roses in this haphazard manner, and then go and kill himself?

  One bag of topsoil was untouched, and there was more space in the flower bed for the extra bag. And then there were the gardening stakes, left beside the shovel with a roll of green twine.

  Definitely an unfinished job.

  He studied the soil some more. There was a disturbance in the heavy scatter that lay across the drive. The more he looked, the clearer it became: two people had been here.

  Childs could see where Scarfe had been kneeling at the flower bed. He went back inside and looked at the body. Sure enough, the knees were soiled. He walked back outside. It didn’t take long to spot fingerprints in the dirt, and scuffs made where someone had stood up, and the footprints of two people walking side by side. The leftmost one, he guessed, was the doctor. In the other set, one foot dragged slightly, perhaps an older man—presumably Scarfe—walking somewhat awkwardly after having knelt for quite some time. The second set of prints belonged to someone taller, Childs guessed, or at least heavier.

  The dirt covering the drive was more than a scattering of dust. It was half an inch thick in places. He could not detect any patterns from the soles of the shoes. But he had the story: At some point, Scarfe had been interrupted in his gardening work by a tall, or possibly heavyset, man.

  Alex Knight was a good foot taller than the dead man.

  At this point it was all an educated hunch.

  He walked back down the drive to his car when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at the display. The number was restricted.

  “Childs here,” he said.

  “I sent you the data from the lab,” said a young female voice.

  “Who is this?”

  A pause. Breathing. “I hacked the stem cell lab, cracked the encryption, and sent you the data.”

  Childs stopped in his tracks. “OK. May I ask to whom I’m speaking?”

  “I’m the hacker. They set up that young tech to take the fall. He didn’t rat out the lab. I did.”

  “Okay, would you like to come down and tell me this in person?”

  “No.”

  “How did you get my number?”

  “I hacked the FBI and got your number. Where do you think I got it?” The voice had turned impatient.

  “Do you have any proof of what you’re telling me?” Childs asked. “Anything else you can offer besides a phone call?”

  A sigh. “I was going to prove it to you, but the NIH deleted all the CCTV footage of the lab from before the raid. I think they’re covering up the fact that the dead guy was actually there working at the time they said he’d been dismissed. They said he was on drugs. I don’t know about that, but I do know he wasn’t the whistleblower. I was.”

  “Why then,” Childs said, patience strained, “did you do it? What was the point of hacking this particular lab?”

  “The encryption,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “It stood out like a beacon. It was begging to be hacked. It’s all about the challenge. But I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “OK,” Childs said with a sigh. “I’ll look into it. How can I contact you?”

  She laughed mockingly. “Nice try. Just watch out, Special Agent Childs. This goes deeper than a stem cell lab.”

  And with that, the call disconnected.

  He stood in the driveway, replaying the conversation in his head. Deleted footage? He shook his head.

  One man was ripe for questioning on the matter, and Childs got in his car to pay him a visit.

  17

  The morning had come too soon for Knight.

  He stretched out through the tangle of bedcovers. Sarah was up and about. He could hear her heels clicking across the floor toward the bedroom. He sat up and gathered the covers around his waist.

  She leaned in through the doorway, a pose he’d seen from her so often in the office but for the first time here at his apartment. A surreal sight for sure.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “I’ll be a little late to the office, OK?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Everything OK?”

  “Mom again,” she said with a smile and an accompanying eye roll.

  “I see. No worries.”

  “See you later,” she said as she turned and let herself out.

  He fell back onto the bed. She was something special. And she had come along at just the right time. If he wasn’t being forced into this pointless job, he wouldn’t have time for dates and relationships. She seemed keen on him, too. He was a good judge of people, and he could tell she enjoyed his company. She listened, but she also talked openly. She’d told him about herself, and he liked what he heard. They were comfortable together.

  Comfortable. A word he’d never associated with a woman before. Of all the times to get comfortable, he thought.

  He wondered how comfortable they would be in the office with their colleagues, the dour Mrs. Blunt and the hopeless young Mr. Jeffries, around.

  Yes, he thought, they were comfortable together, but there was something hidden, something mysterious about her. He wondered if he would discover what it was, if the mystery would fade. He wondered if she would let him in. He hoped she would.

  He called for a staff car to come in an hour and rolled out of bed. He might get some work done if he could stop thinking about Sarah. Her silhouette wouldn’t leave his minds eye. Maybe a workout first.

  Knight finished his morning run on the treadmill in record time. If he’d been in a track event, he would have smashed the opposition. It seemed that all he needed to improve on his best times was the thought of this one entrancing creature.

  Professor Stone was entering the vast reception area of the National Institutes of Health building when his cell phone rang. He looked at the display and gave an annoyed grunt before answering.

  “Why didn’t you pick up last night?” he barked.

  “I was busy.”

  “What a wonderful excuse for a paid escort.”

  He knew it stabbed her. It gave him a pleasant jolt to say it.

  “That was uncalled for,” she said with obvious restraint.

  “Oh, get over it, Sarah. You’ll hear worse in your life, I assure you. Are you getting closer to him?”

  “You could say that.”

  The old jealousy kicked in. “Too close
?”

  “Close enough,” she said. “David, I can’t watch him just from my desk. I’ll have to interact.”

  “I thought you were a professional. I think I’ll have to find another position for you besides horizontal.”

  Stone’s voice, raised as it was, reverberated within the large, glass-walled reception area. The few staff at the elevator and the security guard looked over at him. He lowered his voice. “Perhaps you should meet me for a debriefing. This morning. You know where.”

  “I’m expected at the office. I’ll meet you later, at your place.”

  Stone growled harshly into the cell phone. “You need to understand I have the authority to break you into a million pieces.”

  “Oh, threats now?” She sounded dismissive, which only made him angrier.

  “Don’t test me. I’m not a man to be crossed.”

  “You know, you talk like a super villain.”

  Stone spoke quietly and roughly into his cell phone. “Remember, Sarah, I can replace you. There are thousands of eligible whores who can easily fill those well-worn heels of yours. Debriefing. One hour.”

  Stone ended the call, feeling the rush of power and triumph.

  What a waste of talent. Sarah Hansen had been an excellent choice for someone to get close to Knight. She was just the sort of woman he liked.

  But there was one man to whom she belonged, and that was David Stone.

  She was wasted on Knight. And David Stone despised waste.

  18

  Knight breezed into the office, flicked on the computer, and began skimming through endless nonsense about poison vaccines and various other conspiracies. He knew how medicine worked, how blind trials were conducted, and how these vaccines were as safe as humanly possible. But he was here to do a job, so he dutifully opened the next report and read.