When they reached the north tower, Decker used the keys to remove the padlock that held the chains in place around the main doors, and then found the key to unlock the doors.
Decker slipped the rifle from his shoulder. If he needed the gun he wanted it ready to go. Mina, who had refused a gun, carried a baseball bat, holding it in her hands as if she were about to step up to the plate.
“Stay close.” Decker cast a sideways look toward Mina. “If you see anything untoward, don’t keep it to yourself.”
“Works for me.” Mina glanced around, nervous.
“Then let’s see if we can find a monster,” Decker said, and he stepped across the threshold into the building.
48
Dominic Collins yawned, stretched and took a sip of coffee from the mug sitting on the desk in front of him.
For the last three hours he had been reviewing the feed streamed from the camera set up in the quarantine wing and recorded on his laptop via a secure wireless Internet link.
It was hardly exciting work.
The creature held captive within had spent most of its day curled in a ball in the corner of its cell. The only time it had any external interest was when Dominic made an appearance, and then it would lunge, angry and violent, at the thick glass wall that kept it confined.
Even though these outbursts of rage still disturbed him, Dominic did not flinch anymore. His lack of reaction only infuriated the beast further, and on at least one occasion Dominic feared that it might cause itself injury. He had reached out, his hand hovering over the red panic button that would fill the chamber with a mixture of gasses that Adam Hunt assured him would render the creature unconscious. So far he hadn’t actually needed to push the button, but the time was coming, in the next day or two, when he would need to enter the cell and take blood samples, remove some of the strange scales that covered the creature’s body, and do a full examination. Being that close to the creature, actually sharing a room with it, even while it was sedated, filled Dominic with dread. The time would come when he would have no choice, however.
But for now he was merely observing, which, while mind numbing, was better than actually getting inside the cell with the beast.
He stood and paced the room, leaving the feed running. The video surveillance hadn’t provided him with any useful information thus far. He doubted that it would, but there was a protocol to follow. Besides, it delayed the inevitable physical exam and up close testing.
Dominic grabbed his mug and turned toward the coffee maker he’d set up on an old examination table, because it was pointless to pause the feed and walk to the canteen every time he wanted a refill. He picked up the carafe and was about to pour the coffee when a strange, chilling wail floated from the laptop.
49
Decker was frustrated. They had been searching the tower for two hours and so far had not come across any sign of the creature that had attacked Mina. Part of the problem was the sheer size of the search area. The building was huge, and the creature might be on any one of the fifteen floors, or it might have left the tower altogether after its encounter with Mina. It would take a whole army of people days to search the entire place, and they didn’t have the time or the manpower.
“We are going to be here forever at this rate,” Mina said, echoing Decker’s own concerns. “This is a complete waste of time.”
“I agree,” Decker said. “I suggest that we focus our efforts on something a little more fruitful, like the bag.”
“Of course.” In her eagerness to relay her encounter with the creature, Mina had forgotten all about the bag. ”I have it at my apartment. I hid it just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want the sheriff to find it. That was before I knew…” Her voice trailed off as she contemplated what had happened to Wilder.
“I know. Just try not to think about it.” Decker reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t we go back to your apartment and take another look at the bag, see if we can find a clue to help explain this mess.”
“You think the bag is tied to the creature somehow?”
“I have a hunch.” Decker’s thoughts returned to the book Mina had brought by earlier, and the mention of experiments, laboratories. If nothing else, their hours spent searching the tower had convinced him that he was right, there were no labs here. That meant they must be hidden somewhere, if they still existed, and the key cards, the cell phone, might hold the answer.
“So what are we waiting for?” Mina said. “Let’s go take a look inside that bag.”
It didn’t take long to retrace their steps through the tower and make their way back to Mina’s apartment. Once there, she led Decker into the bedroom and stopped at the walk-in closet door.
“It’s in here.” Mina disappeared and came out a moment later carrying the bag. She placed it on the bed and took hold of the zipper, pulling it back.
Inside was the bundle of key cards, the stack of plans, and the cell phone. Decker reached in and pulled out the phone, turning it over in his hands. “This isn’t very old. Whoever stashed the bag must have put it there recently.”
“So turn it on, let’s see if there is anything on it,” Mina said.
“Not so fast,” Decker replied. “It will need charging.”
“Damn.” Mina looked disappointed. “Is there a charger in the bag?”
“I don’t think so.” Decker rummaged around but came up empty. “What about your charger?”
“I don’t know.” Mina went to her bedside table. “Give me the phone.”
“Here.” Decker handed it to her and watched while she fumbled with the charger.
“It won’t fit.” She shook her head. “That’s a shame.”
“It was a long shot.” Decker wondered where the charger could be. Whoever owned the phone must be staying locally, or else why stash the bag? That meant they must either be sleeping in the temporary accommodations erected for the tunnel workers, or they were renting a room at the motel down by the docks. He could make some inquiries, but since he didn’t have a name, or a description of the phone’s owner, it would be difficult. “We’ll have to put the phone aside for now.”
“Wait.” Mina pushed past him and headed toward the living room. “I have an idea.” She continued on to the kitchen and opened a drawer. A minute passed while she threw items onto the counter top, discarding them with grunts of annoyance, but then she found what she was looking for and held it aloft with a victorious cry. “This might work!”
She handed him a different phone charger. He turned the phone over, and discovered, to his surprise, that it fit perfectly. “Good call.” He found a plug and set the phone down.
“It was for my old phone that died a few months ago. Figured it might work.” Mina looked pleased with herself. “Are we going to turn it on?”
“We won’t get any answers if we don’t,” Decker said. He pressed the power button, glad to see the screen light up.
“Well?”
“Give it a minute.” Decker sensed her crowding him, peering over his shoulder to get a look at the phone.
“Here we go.” The phone came to life. Decker’s eyes roamed the home screen, but all he saw were the standard apps preinstalled from the factory. It didn’t appear that the owner of the phone had added anything. Next he clicked over to the recent calls and stopped. They had found what they were looking for.
Mina saw it too. “There’s only one number.”
“Yes.” Decker scrolled through the call list. “Sometimes outgoing. Less often, incoming.”
“Looks like the calls were placed about the same time each day, at least the outgoing ones, and they go back a while.”
“There’s less of a pattern to the incoming calls.” Decker noted the times, early morning, afternoon, night. Only the outgoing calls stuck to a routine – 6 P.M. each evening. He noticed something else too. The last time the phone was used was a couple of weeks previously. Since that date, there was no activity, which, more than likely, meant that
the phone was either turned off or the battery had exhausted itself. Decker suspected the latter.
“What does this mean?” Mina asked. “Why the same time every day?”
Decker pondered for a moment, and then it dawned on him. “They were checking in.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. Why make a call at the exact same time every single day to the same number? The most obvious answer is that the owner of the phone was calling someone, a boss or colleague, to update them, or tell them where they were.”
“Makes sense.” Mina nodded. “But why?”
“Now that is a very good question,” Decker said. “A better question might be why they stopped making the calls.”
“Not to mention, who was on the other end?”
“I know one sure way to find out.” Decker lifted the phone, his finger poised over the number. “We call it.”
50
Silas Mitchell lay on the bed in the dingy hotel room and stared up at the ceiling. On the floor next to him lay the worn and stained comforter that he removed every day after the maid cleaned the room. Why she thought that he would want it put back on the bed was a mystery. It was disgusting and dirty, and although he worried that the sheets may not be much better, at least they got laundered once in a while. More than once over the last week he had contemplated taking the comforter and consigning it to the dumpster out in the alley, where it belonged. But he was sure there would be another, equally nasty, piece of bed linen waiting in the wings, so it would be a pointless endeavor. Besides, he was already paying way too much for this roach-ridden hovel. The last thing he wanted was to be charged a fee for destroying the comforter. So instead he pulled it from the bed every day, and then, as if by magic, it found its way back onto the bed every morning while he was out at breakfast.
Silas would not normally deign to stay in such accommodations. His usual haunt was the Ritz-Carlton, and if one of those was not handy, a Hilton or Sheraton. The town of Shackleton Alaska had none of these. What they did have was the Baldwin Bay Inn and Suites, so here he was, at least until he could locate his two errant partners.
The last time he heard from them was a couple of weeks ago, and since protocol required that they report in each and every day when they were on a job, it didn’t take long for him to figure out something was amiss. Sure, they had missed a call once or twice before, but always with good reason, and never this many times straight.
Jerry Boyle and Boyd Atkins were nothing if not methodical, and they understood the need to work as a team. They located the merchandise, retrieved it, and Silas found the buyers. It was a perfect arrangement, one that utilized each of their talents, and they all made a good living doing it. Actually, they made a great living. Except that now Boyd and Jerry were missing, and that was a problem. To make matters worse, he had no idea where to even look for them.
It had occurred to him, on more than one occasion over the last two days, that the pair might simply have taken off, made a run for it with the merchandise. He found it hard to believe. They had been a team for ten years, but the facts spoke for themselves. Their room at the motel had been cleaned out, and their bill paid in full, cash. This, in itself, was not unusual. The nature of their business required them to keep a low profile, and once in a while it became necessary to disappear if the authorities got too close to them. Since they always travelled under assumed names it was easy to relocate. But this was different. There was only one hotel in town, and after they checked out two weeks ago they had not rented another room under any of their other usual aliases. There were only two reasons for that. They were running, cutting him out of the deal, or something bad had befallen them.
Either way he had no idea what to do next.
And then his phone rang.
51
Decker waited.
Next to him Mina fidgeted, listening to the phone ring. It had been her idea to put it on speaker, but now she felt an inexplicable nervousness.
“Hello?” The sudden voice blaring from the speaker caught them both unaware.
After a long pause Decker replied, holding the phone a few inches from his mouth. “Hello.”
“Who is this?” The voice sounded frustrated. “Let me speak to Jerry.”
“Jerry can’t come to the phone right now.” Decker glanced at Mina. Now at least they had a name, something to go on. “If you tell me your name I can have him call you back.” It was a long shot, but worth a try.
“Who is this?” The voice repeated itself. “How did you get this phone?”
“Why don’t you tell me who you are?” Decker countered. “Then I will tell you who I am.”
“Now look here, I have no idea how you got your hands on this phone, but you had better tell me who you are right now, and while you are at it, what you did with Jerry.”
“So Jerry is missing?” That was interesting. It explained why the bag hadn’t been recovered.
“If you have his phone then you know damn well that he is.” The voice rose in pitch, just a little. “Now either put him on the line, or else.”
“Like I said, Jerry isn’t here. Why don’t you tell me who you are? I’ll let him know you called.”
“Not a chance.”
Decker opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the line went dead. He looked down at the screen and spoke. “He wasn’t much help.”
“No, but he did give us a name,” Mina said. “At least we have something now.”
“It’s a start,” Decker agreed. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for when he made the call, but like Mina said, at least they had a name. Now all he needed to do was figure out who Jerry was and what had happened to him.
52
Dominic Collins paced back and forth in the lab that now doubled as his makeshift monitoring station. On the screen behind him, relayed via the camera set up in the quarantine wing, the creature still stood in the middle of its cell, head turned toward the ceiling. There was no sound now, however. Dominic had spent ten minutes listening to that eerie, godforsaken wailing, and then turned the volume down. Something about the strange vocalization rattled his nerves.
The door flew open and Adam Hunt entered.
Dominic turned toward him, slightly disturbed that he hadn’t heard the other man’s approach. He knew Adam had trained with the Marines, but the way he just appeared, as if by magic, was as frightening as the creature in the cell down the hall.
Almost.
“What have you got for me?” Hunt pulled up a seat and dropped into it. The chair groaned under the weight of his muscular frame. “This had better be good. I have a lot to do.”
“It’s that thing.” Dominic waved a hand toward the monitor. “The monster you have me studying.”
“What about it?” Hunt glanced toward the screen, and then turned his attention back to the scientist.
“It isn’t acting…” Dominic searched for the word he wanted. “It isn’t acting right.”
“Acting right?” Hunt leaned back. “You’ve been down here with it for a whole two days. That’s hardly enough time to determine what counts as normal behavior for something like that.”
“I know.” Dominic said. “I am a scientist after all.”
“Then what?” There was a tinge of annoyance in Hunt’s voice. “Please enlighten me.”
“It’s been very predictable so far.” Dominic swallowed. His lips felt dry. “It lunges at the glass whenever I’m near. It cowers in the corner most of the time when I’m not. It eats, it sleeps-“
“Is there a point to this?”
“Yes. Bear with me.”
“Then hurry up,” Hunt said. “Cut to the chase.”
“Right.” Dominic wished he had a glass of water. “Well, it isn’t doing those things anymore.”
“I can see that.” Hunt’s eyes flicked to the screen, to the video feed of the creature in the middle of the cell, silently wailing. “So what is it doing exactly?”
“It might be better if I
show you, or rather, let you listen.” Dominic moved to the monitor. He reached out and brought the sound up. As he did so the dismal wail filled the room, plaintive and dreadful. Dominic suppressed a shudder.
“So?” Hunt said. “It’s making a noise. Hell, I’d make a noise if I was stuck in there too.”
“It’s not just the noise,” Dominic explained. He turned the volume down again, thankful to get rid of the creature’s lament. “I’ve noticed other things too. It appears to be changing. I need to ask you something.”
“Go on.”
“You said that this used to be a man?”
“Yes.” Hunt nodded.
“How long ago?”
“A few weeks.” Hunt cupped his hands behind his head. He came across too calm for someone talking about a mutated monster, Dominic thought. The man appeared to have ice running through his veins. “There were two of them. They were trying to steal one of the old experiments.”
“Yes, I read that in the report you filed.” Dominic nodded. “I also found the old scientific notes rather interesting. It seems they were working on some kind of super soldier serum. That’s not the official name of course, but it seems to fit. Nasty stuff. It didn’t quite work out for the test subjects back in the day.”
“It didn’t exactly work out for our two thieves either,” Hunt said. “They succumbed to it pretty quick.”
Cold Sanctuary (John Decker Series Book 2) Page 17
