by Pamela Fryer
Chapter Nineteen
“Sir, I’ve tried the room twice. There is no answer.”
Miles punched the disconnect and pounded his fist against the steering wheel. He sat in a line of traffic a mile long. Another truck had overturned in almost the same spot as the one two nights ago, this one spilling gravel and shutting down the highway in both directions.
Please Lily, don’t do anything until I get there.
Maybe she was playing it safe, simply not answering.
His gut burned with guilt. She was heartbroken, and maybe she just didn’t want to talk to him.
Lily said she loved him, and he’d done nothing but turn and walk away from her. What a jerk.
And what a fool. Some people go through their entire lives never knowing such a gift as honest love. She’d given him her heart, and he’d been callous enough to toss it back in her face.
Finally cars started inching forward. It took forty-five minutes to crawl past the overturned truck, and it was noon before he made it into Woodland Park and to the Country Place Suites on Dale Boulevard.
Thank goodness, Lily’s rental car was sitting in the main parking lot. Miles went into the office and asked for Lily.
The man behind the counter was less than friendly. “We do not give out room information on our guests, sir.”
Miles got a dose of understanding for Lily’s frustration when Chief Billings had told her he couldn’t do anything without first checking the facts. He looked at the man’s nametag.
“Listen, Manoj, how about you let her be the judge of who she wants to see?” He forced a pleasant smile even as every cell in his body was primed to reach over the counter and take the man by the throat. “Would you please call her and tell her Miles is here?”
Without a word, the man punched three numbers on the dial pad. One one six. So much for caution. Miles pinned him with an irritated stare.
The building looked exactly like its sister hotel in Manning. Across the parking lot, the orange doors of each room in the two level building were visible on the open-balcony walkways. One door on the bottom floor stood open with a maid cart in front of it. Even in the office, with its glass door closed, Miles could hear the shrill ringing of a loud phone from within. It ended when the man hung up. He would bet the room had one sixteen on the door. Miles smothered the sardonic grin fighting its way to his face.
“She is not in, sir.”
“Her car is in the parking lot. Is there a nearby restaurant she might have walked to?”
Before the man could answer, a scream rose from the opened hotel room. A second, blood-curdling wail followed. Fear froze like a crust of ice on his skin.
Miles threw open the door and charged across the parking lot, gun drawn. Manoj’s running footsteps smacked the wet asphalt close behind.
As he reached the room a plump Hispanic maid wobbled into the doorway holding her bleeding head. She continued screaming, the sound as grating as a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
She saw Miles running toward her and the horror on her face multiplied. She stumbled backward into the room, holding up her hand in defense.
The woman relaxed a notch when she saw her boss behind him. “What happened?” Manoj demanded.
“Where is the woman who was in this room?” Miles shouted before she could answer.
“Mama!” Another maid entered the room immediately behind them, this one very young. They helped the woman onto the edge of the bed. The older maid continued to sob like an injured animal.
Miles stepped in front of her and forced her to look at him. “The woman in this room, where is she?”
“She doesn’t speak English,” her daughter said. She repeated the question in Spanish.
“El hombre grande la tomo’,” she wailed. “The big man!”
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Vince Luggo.
The manager shot into a stiff posture. “I assure you sir, nothing like this has ever happened here—”
Miles silenced him with a hand while he picked up the phone with the other. “Are you going to keep being a stingy prick or are you going to help me?” It took every ounce of strength not to throttle the man where he stood.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help, of course,” Manoj rattled quickly. He wrung his hands.
The phone sounded a shrill alarm in his ear. “Why won’t this damn phone dial out?”
“It requires office assistance.”
The manager started for the door and Miles urged him faster with a shove. “Move it!”
They ran back across the parking lot, leaving the injured woman and her daughter in the room.
“Dial 911,” Miles told him. He stalked behind the counter after the shaken manager. “Does this computer have internet access?”
Manoj nodded as he picked up the phone. “Yes. Yes it does.”
Miles opened a web search browser and it defaulted at SearchIT. He typed IntelliGenysis into the search bar and scrolled through the results. There was a link for “contact us” among the listed links at the company’s home page.
“Damn.” IntelliGenysis’ mailing address was a post office box.
Manoj stammered incomprehensibly into the phone. “Eh, eh, there has been a kidnapping from the hotel Country Place Suites. Five two five Dale Boulevard. Please send police and an ambulance. One of our employees was assaulted.”
As Manoj continued to talk, Miles found a paragraph on the “about us” page saying IntelliGenysis was located in the beautiful northwest forest off Highway 395. It was enough. He clicked into SearchIt’s map program and entered Highway 395 in the town of Woodland Park. He clicked over to the satellite image. Thank God for modern technology!
“Tell them the suspect is Vince Luggo and they should try to get your maid to identify him by his mug shot,” Miles told him. “L-u-g-g-o. You got that?”
“Yes, I got it, sir, yes. Vince Luggo.”
Miles zoomed out on the map program, found the satellite image of the compound, re-centered the map and zoomed back in. It was enormous, but exactly as Meiling Wong had described. The sixty private cottages sat on the backside of the property. A single road connected them to an immense, square-shaped building with a courtyard in the center.
The helipad was clearly visible at the northwest corner of the roof. The tiny red landing pad with its reflective-white H put the gigantic facility into staggering perspective.
Miles couldn’t escape the heart-stopping dread squeezing his chest. Jesus, even if I can get inside, how will I ever find Lily?
The narrow road continued through what looked like a mile-and-a-half of fenced-in woodland before arriving at the main entrance. It stopped at a single guard shack, but it was no small shanty. He wondered again if the guards had started carrying weapons since the FBI had taken an interest in them last spring.
Miles scrolled the map program around until he found the perfect spot.
“Bingo.”
Chapter Twenty
Lily worked her tongue around a cottony mouth. Her eyelids felt like they were made of coarse-grain sandpaper. She blinked several times to straighten her vision. The ceiling swam into focus, unfamiliar and strange.
She jerked as terror barreled down on her, only to find her hands bound above her head. She would have screamed had she not had such a raspy throat.
“There there, now.” A beautiful Japanese woman in a lab coat walked over, smiling. “You not worry, you are very safe here. Please drink.” She lifted a glass of water with a bendy straw.
Lily wanted to refuse, but was too thirsty. It was cold and tasted pure, but it didn’t ease her worry. If Colton wanted her kept drugged, she would never taste it.
“Where am I?” she asked, even as she knew. Through a fog, the memory came back.
The hotel room. The screech of the maid behind her. A glimpse of Vince Luggo. A foul-smelling cloth clamped over her mouth. Arms as strong as steel lifting her out of her chair. The fading sight of the maid lying on the floor below.
The woman set the cup down and walked toward a doorway in the impossibly white room.
“Wait, come back!”
Ignoring Lily, she pushed a button on an intercom. “She is awake, now.”
“Don’t leave. Please.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder, still smiling, and left anyway.
Lily struggled against the binds. She was lying on a padded examination table with her hands bound above her head in buckled leather cuffs. A cotton ball was taped to the crook of her elbow. Someone had either taken blood or given her an injection.
A blast of icy fear rushed over her.
Lily swallowed down her rising stomach. It didn’t matter what they had done to her. Getting Annie to safety was all that was important.
The door clicked shut. Her fuzzy gaze found Colton Reilly and her stomach lurched. She shoved backward on the padded examination table with her feet and struggled to a sitting position.
The cold dread in her stomach multiplied as she realized her clothes had been removed. She was dressed in drab, olive green scrubs and slip-on sneakers exactly as Annie had been wearing the day they’d met.
Colton had the audacity to smile at her as though he was a perfectly normal person, not a kidnapper and a killer.
He wore an expensive black pinstripe suit with a blue silk tie. His too-perfect hair was shellacked into place. He even had a California tan.
“Give me Annie and let us go.”
His oily smile broadened. “Direct and to the point. I like that.”
“I want to see her.”
He strolled over as carefree as you please, still wearing his greasy, crazy grin. “Of course.” He reached for the binds and unbuckled one, then the other. “I apologize for these. I wanted to be sure you didn’t fall off the table.”
Lily shrank away, rubbing her right wrist. She hopped off the table on the opposite side and backed away. Her legs quivered and her vision slid to the left. She blinked until the wooziness passed.
“What is the meaning of this? Why have you brought me here?”
“Ah, Lily. I admire your courage. You always did strike me as stronger than your sister.”
She shivered at the reminder. Whatever Cassandra had become was a product of his doing.
“Come, I want to show you something.” He held out his hand. Lily glanced at it, but stayed where she was. Heaven help her, she was afraid to ask about the needle prick in her arm.
“You’re safe here, Lily. I promise you.”
She snorted. That, she severely doubted. “I want to see Annie.”
His grin remained, but Lily recognized the waxy falseness of it. The true monster within hovered under a thin disguise.
The hand he extended waved impatiently. Lily took a cautious step forward.
“There will be no secrets from you here.” He punched a code into the wall unit and made no attempt to keep her from seeing it. She shuddered again. She remembered Meiling’s warning. He was a tyrant who would use fear tactics to keep her inside. He already had—by murdering her sister for running away.
He pulled open the door and lifted his hand to urge her in front of him. Lily didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but she knew the danger he posed wasn’t from simply walking down the hall together.
Her legs were stiff and Lily felt like she was walking through a bad dream. She swallowed, afraid to look down and acknowledge the bandage on her arm.
“We have a top-notch facility here,” he began, unconcerned with her distress. He stopped at an elevator bank and plugged in the same code.
Seven eight two seven.
Silent doors glided open, revealing an elegant elevator cab with soft lights and amber mirrors that looked like they had been stolen from the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
“Where are we going?” Lily asked gently as they stepped inside. She would do nothing to incite this man’s anger. She would give the impression she was a soft-spoken, gentle woman. She would have one opportunity for escape, and when she seized it, she wanted it to come as a surprise.
“Don’t you want to see where your sister lived?”
A stab of longing hit her heart. Cassandra. How awful to spend day in and day out trembling under Colton Reilly’s brutality. Her life here must have been like a dream that had turned into a nightmare.
The elevator doors slid open and Lily gazed at the halls through her sister’s eyes. Life in the maze of a macabre science experiment. Colton led her down a hall and around a corner. There were no windows anywhere.
Colton stopped before a door with a Japanese symbol.
“It means Maple,” he explained as he keyed in the same code at the pad beside the door.
Had Cassandra been locked in? Or did she have her own code that Colton’s overrode?
The lock released and he opened the door. “Because of its difficulty, all the subjects learn Japanese and English as their primary languages. Intense learning stimulates the production of brain cells.”
Annie spoke Japanese? It was only one more incredible revelation about the amazing child.
Lily found herself staring at the most luxurious apartment she’d ever seen. Classical music tinkled from a stereo system beside a stone fireplace, but there was no television she could see. Lily knew there wasn’t one—Annie hadn’t known how to turn on the set in the hotel room. They must use digital learning somewhere, because Annie was comfortable enough with the television images, she’d simply never watched an entertainment program.
Regret sat heavy in her heart as she remembered the look of pure amazement on Annie’s face when she’d first seen Big Bird and the Cookie Monster, her mouth a perfect circle that turned into a delighted smile.
“What are they?” she’d asked. For a moment, Lily was so surprised by the question she hadn’t known how to answer.
“They’re puppets,” she’d explained, and Annie had repeated the word three times, as if she liked the way it popped from her lips.
Modern leather furniture gleamed in the wan light spilling through the only windows she’d seen yet. Lily crossed the room and peered out. They looked over an enormous courtyard.
The apartment was on the third and top level. Across the immense courtyard, a group of children performed tae chi exercises in perfect symmetry, led by a single adult. There were a few little blond girls among them, but not Annie. The adult lifted a whistle to her lips, revealing the windows were completely soundproof. No wonder Annie’d never heard a cricket chirp before.
This was nothing but a gilded cage. She turned back to Colton. He had strolled across the room to look at the bookcase.
“Annie has read all of these tomes.” He slipped a leather-bound volume back into the case. From her vantage point, Lily made out Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Little Women, The Diary of Anne Frank. They were books for children much older than six, but it didn’t surprise Lily that Annie had read them. In the car on their first day together, Lily had asked her about school. Annie hadn’t known what grade she was, but had been able to solve rudimentary algebraic problems in her head.
“I want to see her,” Lily repeated. Too late she wished she hadn’t sounded so demanding.
“Of course. I only wanted to bring you here for some of your sister’s things.” He strode into the bedroom, not asking her to follow. Lily’s heart thudded as she entered behind him.
The cherry wood dresser in the elegant bedroom had not a single speck of dust on its glossy surface. Colton stood beside it, holding a gold chain.
Lily caught her breath. Cassie’s twin locket.
“I think Cassandra would want you to have this, until Annie is old enough to wear it.”
She reached out and took it, careful not to let their fingers touch. The gold locket stirred an emotional whirlwind of memories. Lily had one just like it at home. In it were her mother’s photo, and Cassie’s. She didn’t flip this one open, knowing it was her own photo next to her mother’s inside.
“Thank you,” she said. She wasn’t grateful.
She recognized the gesture as a manipulative ploy, but she wasn’t quite ready to challenge him. She clasped it around her neck.
He fixed that false smile to his face again and gestured with a hand. “Shall we?”
She turned and preceded him. Lily was thankful to leave the apartment. There was something darkly unpleasant about it.
She thought of Miles. The image of his handsome face chased away the chill leeching into her bones. When she got out of here and Annie was safely with her, she would go to him and tell him she would wait as long as it took for him to be ready for a new life. A surge of hope filled her heart and gave her strength.
Colton turned the opposite direction when they arrived at the end of the hall. “I haven’t publicized it yet because my work here is highly confidential, but my scientists have identified the gene sequence causing galactosemia. My top people are already working on the gene therapy which will someday eradicate it from human existence.”
He gestured with a hand to urge her to the left, down a branching hallway. She skirted around the corner to avoid coming too close to him.
“My scientists make groundbreaking discoveries in half the time of our competitor laboratories. I’m doing amazing things here, and my employees live better than the average person. Meiling Wong has a nice house, doesn’t she? But it’s nothing compared to how she lived here.”
Lily clenched her jaw as a gasp caught in her throat. How did he know she’d been there? Dear Lord, had Meiling been harmed?
“Cassandra was safe here,” he said with a lilt of arrogance clinging to the edges of his voice. “I don’t know what possessed her to take Annie into the dangers of the outside world. She had a perfect life here. Look what happened to her when she left.”
He stopped at wide, double doors and entered the same code. Seven eight two seven.
“You insult my intelligence,” Lily returned evenly. Did he think her a fool?
He pushed one door open and stepped forward onto a wide walkway.
“Life will be good here for you too, Lily.”
Ripples rolled over Lily’s flesh. She was so stunned by the sight before her it took a moment for his words to register.
