Grant listened, thinking that two guys would be spread pretty thin in there, and the sooner he got inside, the better. Staying in the shadows, he moved toward the side door and slipped inside, weapon in hand. A long hallway lined with offices led to the front of the building. Looking into a few, he saw that some of the rooms were totally empty and others had desks and chairs that could have just been delivered from a rental furniture company, making the first floor look like it was designed to function as a buffer zone between the exterior and the upper floors
At the end of the corridor, he could see a security guard glued to the window, watching the men outside dealing with the burning car. Cole snorted. So much for the guy’s doing his job. Before reaching the front of the building, Grant stepped into a stairway and hurried up, stopping at the door to listen.
When he eased it open, he found himself in another hallway with offices. Moving quietly, he looked in a few doors. Up here some of the offices were clearly in use, with computers and papers on the desks and coffee cups sitting next to some of them.
Still, he encountered no one and climbed the stairs to the next level. At the end of the hall, he came to a large room where he saw a very strange sight.
The place was full of beds. He had a good view of the nearest ones and saw sleeping men and women hooked to machinery. The beds moved, shifting the sleepers from time to time so that they were never lying in one position for long.
A surge of excitement rippled through Grant. Could one of them be his brother? Before he could find out, he saw that there was someone here besides the sleepers, a man dressed like an orderly stood beside one of the beds, massaging the legs of a sleeping man. His back was to Grant who quickly crouched behind one of the beds. The guy stopped, made notations on an electronic notepad he carried, then went on to another patient.
Voices from down the hall alerted Grant that someone was approaching, and he slipped between two of the beds where he hoped he couldn’t be seen from either direction.
A man and a woman walked in, talking intently.
The orderly turned. “Dr. Hamilton. Dr. Wardman.”
“Carry on, Durant,” the man said.
Grant took a quick look. The man was in his fifties, Grant judged, and dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt. She was a pretty young brunette, probably in her thirties, wearing an outfit that looked like a medical scrub suit. She seemed to be in an agitated state, and the man was apparently trying to calm her.
Judging from the name of the lab and the man’s apparently superior status, Grant would guess he was Hamilton—the guy who’d given the facility his name—and she was Wardman. But he could be wrong.
“We were expecting you back earlier,” the one he assumed was Hamilton said.
“I couldn’t get away sooner.”
“And we couldn’t exactly break the neural connection if you were with any of them.”
“Right.”
“Why couldn’t you leave?”
She hesitated. “We had talked about my slipping away after the initial adjustment period, but everybody was nervous. They decided to stick together in the bar, and there wasn’t an opportunity to be alone.” She dragged in a breath before saying. “From their reactions, I think there should have been an orientation session—so the subjects would know what was going on.”
“I wanted to see how they’d react without that information.”
“Badly,” she answered, sounding like she was trying to rein in anger.
“How so?”
“They were worried, frightened and confused.”
“Uh huh.”
His answer made it sound like he wasn’t going to give on that point. Changing the subject, she blurted, “And it wasn’t anything like I expected.”
“Nothing?” the man asked, his voice growing sharp.
“Well, some of it was what we talked about before I went in. The environment was totally detailed, perfectly realistic. Landon did a marvelous job with the setting.” She hesitated.
“What?”
“Well, one of the patients noted that the outside temperature was the same as the inside, which wouldn’t be true in India.”
“Okay. What else?”
“They all noted the lack of hotel staff. Someone asked about the liquor in the bar. If they drank from a bottle, would it be replenished in the morning?”
“I honestly don’t know. We’ll have to ask Landon.”
She went on in a rush. “And what happened to Jay Douglas?”
“How did it appear from your end?”
“I encountered him in the lobby. He was . . .” she stopped and thought. “I’d have to say acting paranoid and hostile. He attacked me.”
Hamilton winced. “But you were okay? No—physical—damage?”
“One of the patients knocked him out.”
“Which one?”
“Mack Bradley.”
When he heard his brother’s name, Grant felt a hot flare like an electric shock inside his chest. She’d said Mack Bradley. His brother. Mack was here. But he was one of the patients? And what did it mean? The patients were lying in these beds, but Wardman had said Mack saved her from an attack. How could he do that if he was a sleeping patient here?
Grant was trying to puzzle that out, but the doctors were talking again—apparently about the guy who had gone nuts. And Grant had better listen for clues.
“His records showed that he was mentally stable before he went in. Apparently the environment was too much for him, and he flipped out—for want of a better way to put it.”
“And now?” the woman pressed.
“We kept close check on everybody. He went absolutely flat on the Glasgow Coma Scale. We could tell something was wrong, and we pulled him out, but we couldn’t save him.”
“What was the terminal event?” she asked, her voice going high at the end of the sentence.
“A cerebral hemorrhage.”
The woman answered with a sound of acknowledgment, then asked, “What about Ben Todd? About his sense of taste?”
“Apparently his taste center sustained damage. He seemed otherwise normal?”
“Yes. He was aggressive. What you’d expect from a lawyer.”
“I want to talk about the anomalies in the environment. Like the clouds you mentioned?”
“Okay.”
Grant raised his head enough to see her again. She looked like she had come into contact with something completely outside her experience. Something she feared and could not explain in rational terms. “And the things in the woods.”
Hamilton kept his speculative gaze fixed on her as though he thought she might be suffering from some kind of mental problem.
Before she could say more, Grant heard a discreet electronic ping.
The man held up his hand for her to stop talking, then pulled a cell phone from a holster on his belt.
“Hamilton,” he said, confirming Grant’s assumption.
He listened for a moment, then said, “That was Wilson. There may be a security breach in the building. I have to go downstairs for a few minutes.”
“Can’t he take care of it?”
“He wants to talk to me in person.” Hamilton turned to the orderly. “Come with me.”
The two men hurried out of the room, leaving Grant alone with the sleepers and the woman.
She stared after the departing figures, then ran a shaky hand through her hair before starting toward one of the beds,
“Just a minute,” Grant said, standing, the gun held down by his leg where she wouldn’t see it yet.
The movement must have startled her, and she whirled, staring at him with a mixture of astonishment and hope.
“Mack? My God, Mack?”
Chapter Sixteen
“You said my brother saved you from an attack?” Grant said.
Her eyes never left him, but now it looked like she was considering her earlier reaction to him when she’d said, “You’re not Mack?”
Slowly she took
a step closer, staring at his face. “No, you don’t have the scar on your chin.”
“Yeah. I’m Mack’s brother, Grant,” he answered, punching out the words, “And I want to know what the hell is going on here? You reacted like you thought I was him. Where the hell is he?”
Her expression took on a look of confusion. “Don’t you know? I mean, didn’t you give permission for him to join the program?”
Grant fought a surge of anger and his own confusion. “Christ. What is this, some kind of shell game? What program? Mack was supposed to be dead. I went to the funeral home and opened his coffin, and there was a blank-faced dummy inside instead of him.”
She drew in a quick breath, her eyes widening as she took that in. “But I thought. . .”
“What?” he demanded.
“That the families had agreed.”
Somehow he kept himself from shouting. In as normal a voice as he could manage, he said, “I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on since I opened that coffin. Is my brother alive or dead?”
He waited with his heart pounding, watching her face contort as she gestured toward one of the beds.
“He’s there. I was just going to see him.”
“You’re Doctor Wardman?”
“Yes. Lily Wardman.”
Grant followed her past several beds where men and women were lying with their eyes closed, hooked up to wires and tubes.
Mack was occupying the next bed. His skin was pale, and his eyes were closed. He looked like he was barely alive.
Grant struggled forward, feeling like his arms and legs were suddenly weighted down with lead.
“Mack?” He reached out and touched his brother, startled and at the same time reassured that his skin was warm.
When they’d been boys, they’d had a special bond between them, a kind of private communication. It was like they’d been able to speak to each other without speaking words.
They had lost the ability as their bodies had changed from boys’ to men’s. Now he reached out, calling to his brother, trying to get through to the unconscious man on the bed.
Mack? Can you hear me, Mack? I’ve been searching all over hell for you. I finally found you, in some kind of lab. Can you hear me, Mack?
His brother’s lids fluttered, and his eyes opened, focusing on Grant. Beside him, Lily Wardman gasped.
“Mack?” she said.
His lips moved, but no sound came out.
She stepped forward, reaching for his hand, squeezing it. “Mack? Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”
He kept his gaze focused on her. “Where are we?”
“At the Hamilton Labs.”
But Mack’s eyes had already closed again.
oOo
Mack Bradley felt his vision blur. He reached for the wall, steadying himself against the solid, vertical surface. For a moment the hotel vanished, and he thought he saw another scene. Then it was gone.
He fought to ground himself, and finally his vision cleared. Lifting his head, he looking around. He was still in the hallway of the hotel. He would swear he’d seen his brother—just for a moment. And heard Grant calling him inside his mind—the way they’d done it when they were kids. After the ability had slipped away, they’d been frustrated by not being able to rely on a form of communication that they’d taken for granted. But they’d finally had to accept that it wasn’t coming back
Just now Grant had said something to him—mind to mind. And he’d had the strong impression that Lily was with him, which was even more confusing. Or had he been talking to Lily and not Grant. That was even weirder.
He didn’t know where Lily had gone. And he didn’t know where his brother was, either.
“Grant?” he said aloud and also silently. “Grant, is that you?”
It was curious to be reaching out to his brother in the old way now—after all this time. But if it was going to happen anywhere, why not in this place where the laws of physics had no meaning?
He felt a buzzing in his brain, like Grant was still trying to speak to him. But it was only a buzz, as though the power of that first jolt had dissipated.
He was left with the confusion of trying to sift through who had spoken to him. Grant or Lily? Could they be together somehow? Both trying to talk to him.
He spoke aloud, calling out to his brother, then Lily, alternating their names.
But neither of them answered, and Mack sensed there was no point in continuing to try and reach them again. At least not now.
oOo
For a moment Grant thought he’d gotten through to the man lying in the bed. Then the connection disappeared like a fantasy he’d conjured in his own brain. Fighting a deep sense of defeat, Grant looked up to see the woman staring at him with an expression that wavered between compassion and something he couldn’t quite read. But perhaps her reaction was similar to his.
“I think he heard us,” she whispered. “He . . . he spoke.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve tried to get through to him before, but he never said anything back. This time was different.” She tipped her head to the side and looked at him. “He responded to you first.”
“As you noticed, we’re twins. We could speak to each other in our minds when we were boys. Then it . . . went away. We hadn’t done it in years—until now.” He gave her a defiant look. “I’m not making it up.”
“I know. I saw him open his eyes. I heard him say something,” she said, like she was trying to remember the details of a dream.
Grant looked toward her, feeling his gaze sharpen as he fought to keep his balance in a world that had suddenly tilted to the side. “Wait a minute. You thought I was him when you first saw me. Walking around—not lying in this bed. Did you meet him when he was okay? I mean, what’s going on?”
She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Not here. Well, I think he was responding to me here because I spent a lot of time with him. But I went into the virtual reality with him and the other people you see here.” She stretched out her arm, indicating the people in the other beds.
Grant’s eyes narrowed. “How about speaking English. Virtual reality? Maybe you’d better back up a couple of steps.”
“Right. You don’t really know about the program,” she acknowledged, then seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “Okay, this lab was designed to give people with severe brain injuries— another chance at life.”
“You have a way to wake them up?” he asked. “Like was that what just happened with Mack?”
“I’m sure he’s going to wake up, but not the ones who suffered catastrophic brain injuries.” She swept her arm toward the sleeping men and women. “All of these people, including Mack, are in a coma here, but at the same time, they can be in a virtual world where they can have something close to a normal existence.”
He listened to her voice catch on the word “normal.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. It was supposed to be pretty much like this world. Well, somewhere different. A nice place where they could relax. A luxury hotel.”
He still wasn’t quite getting it. Or maybe he didn’t want to. “A place to relax? What are you talking about?”
She turned one hand up. “As far as they’re concerned, they’re at a hotel in a lush foreign setting so they wouldn’t be focused on what was happening back home. That was the theory.” She made a low sound. “But when they woke up, they were all worried about where they were. We should have thought about that,” she added, as though making a mental note.
“You mean they woke up in a strange place and were trying to figure out why?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I was in there with them. That’s where I was talking to Mack,” she answered softly.
The gentle way she said it, made him study her carefully. “Talking?”
She flushed and looked away, then started speaking rapidly. “But something happened
in there that we didn’t plan. Some outside force has gotten in. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“Uh huh.” The whole thing was beyond weird, especially the last part, but he wanted to know what was going on with his brother. “And what are you saying about Mack, exactly?”
He saw her swallow. “I told Dr. Hamilton he shouldn’t be part of the experiment. His neck got twisted when he had to bail out of his fighter jet. His lower brain functions were compromised, but they seem to be coming back. I mean, we both saw him wake up—briefly.”
“And that means he’s going to wake up and get out of that bed?”
“We don’t know yet. There’s no way to predict his recovery in this kind of situation.”
Grant nodded, knowing she was doing the medical tango—dancing around predictions when you didn’t know what was going to happen. Still, he was about to press for more information when a sharp voice interrupted the private exchange.
“What is going on here?”
The question came from the man who had left the room earlier—Dr. Hamilton. He stared at Grant.
“Bradley?”
“Yeah.”
“But that’s impossible.”
When he reached for his phone, Grant raised the gun he’d been holding and at the same time grabbed Dr. Wardman and pulled her back against his chest.
She gasped and tried to wrench herself away.
“Stay still and you won’t get hurt,” he said, punching out the words.
When his captive quieted, he looked at Dr. Hamilton.
“Put your phone away, and don’t come any closer to me,” he ordered. “You’re going to tell me how I can get my brother out of here and back to a normal life.”
Chapter Seventeen
Grant noted the look of panic that flashed across the doctor’s features. Was he worried about his colleague getting hurt or that Grant was going to screw up his experiment?
As though he had settled on how he should be reacting, he said, “Don’t hurt her.”
“I won’t, if you cooperate,” Grant answered in a hard voice, acting like he was a two-bit thug who’d broken into this place to steal drugs or something. “Tell me what’s going on here,” he said, asking the same question that he’d asked the woman and wondering if he was going to get the same answer.
Rx Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #10): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel Page 10
