And he had said: I’m a detective. What did you expect?
He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
Oh, Christ, what an idiot.
He remembered her telling him that her parents had a place on a lake somewhere, and so he’d called her mother and tricked her into revealing its location.
But that wasn’t the only reason I called her mother, was it? Can’t think about that now.
He’d just assumed...Christ; he assumed that’s where she’d go. But she wasn’t here. No way. There was nobody here, and there hadn’t been, by the looks of things, since sometime last summer.
The truth struck him like a blow to the head. Jesus, a couple of days ago he’d given Laura directions to his place, thinking if she ever needed a sanctuary she could go there, never considering even for a moment that’s where she might take Wolf. But that must be what Laura had done, thinking Jennings would figure it out if anything went wrong. Christ! She’d out detected him and he’d fucked up and let her down. And he was supposed to be the big, bad detective. How could he have been so stupid? He grabbed his phone from his pocket and speed dialed Laura’s number. It rang several times before going to voice mail. “Shit!” he said and dropped the phone back in his pocket.
His place was more than twenty miles back on Long Lake. He made tracks for his car, spun around and got the hell out of there.
Chapter 102
Fisting Laura’s gun, Wolf slipped quietly out the door and made his way carefully around the house. The moon had long since been swallowed by clouds and now lightning pulsed on the distant horizon.
He stopped at the corner of the house, waited, and watched. Someone had followed them here and he was pretty sure it was Cavanaugh. Wolf was sick of that man being a thorn in his side. His intention was to catch the bastard hiding in the shadows and put him out of commission once and for all. It would be so gratifying. Yet Wolf hesitated. If he killed Cavanaugh then he would finally become the murderer they’d all decided he was to begin with.
But Cavanaugh wasn’t the only presence out here tonight. Wolf sensed others hiding in the shadows. He tried to make sense of them even as he understood that he and Laura were in grave danger. He knew on some deep, instinctive level that vast biological changes occur when an organism senses danger. Adrenaline floods the cerebral cortex, jolting the heart rate and commanding the brain to make the most intuitive of all biological decisions—whether to do battle or flee. He was thinking more like an animal than a human being now. With the return of memory, something inside him had changed. He put his nose in the air and sniffed, and he smelled them.
Instinct told him to flee, yet reason told him he could not leave Laura here defenseless and alone. If he stayed he would risk capture or even death. Capture would mean arrest and return to prison. He could not go back to that place. Not now, not after what he’d just remembered. Not after what he now knew.
He had a brother, a gentle giant who was connected to these murders in a way that defied comprehension. But Sam wasn’t a killer. Of this Wolf was certain. Instead he was some sort of pawn. Sam’s inability to communicate in a traditional fashion caused people to take advantage of him. Whatever he’d done had been done out of loyalty or obedience, nothing more. Not because he’d wanted to, but because he’d had to, because he’d been trained to be a good soldier.
Yes, that was it in a nutshell. They had all been trained to be good soldiers, and when the architects had discovered the real truth about them, the real truth of what they’d been fooling around with, that’s when they’d cut their losses.
But something had gone wrong and some of the kids had survived, and now they were beginning to remember and things were starting to happen. And the architects were back and this time they planned to finish it once and for all.
Wolf moved out of the shadows and began making his way around the house.
“Hey, Danny,” a voice behind him whispered, and Wolf whirled. The object touched him on the side of his neck and Wolf’s body convulsed. He felt the burn and smelled scorched flesh, but it was all too distant to make much sense of. His knees buckled and the world went away.
Chapter 103
Laura’s phone went off for a second time. She turned it off and sat it on the kitchen counter, her body tense with fear. She was spinning wildly looking for some sign of Wolf. She saw nothing and now she was weaponless.
“Wolf?” she called again. “You son-of-a-bitch, where are you? Don’t do this to me.” She selected a carving knife from the rack on the counter. Fisting it tightly she tried to do a thorough search of the house but the only illumination was from the big room’s guttering fire, which was minimal. When she began to move away from the fireplace the darkness closed in on her. She had no flashlight and a goddamn knife for a weapon.
Stupid woman!
It was no use. She could not see anything. Through the wide, tall windows the moon had vanished. It appeared that a deck of clouds had moved in, obscuring it. “Shit!” she cursed, moving back to the counter and rifling through the drawers there, searching for a flashlight. But she did not find one. She remembered a broom closet near the front entrance. She felt her way along the wall until she located it, found the knob and opened the door. This was impossible. She could not see a damned thing. She got down on her hands and knees and felt around on the floor, up to the shelving unit at the top. Her hand landed on a metallic cylinder. Bingo! Now if it works.
She whirled at the sound of shattering glass. Loud footfalls were moving through the house toward her, steady and confident. How could that be? There was no light. Could the son-of-a-bitch see in the dark? He must be wearing night vision goggles? She tried to locate the flashlight’s on switch. Christ, it was one of those twist-on pieces of shit. The footfalls moved closer. Where the hell was Wolf? She ducked into the closet and pulled the door closed, fumbling with the flashlight. The footsteps halted just outside the door. She fisted the knife tightly and tried not to breathe.
Chapter 104
Laura stood perfectly still, the knife fisted so tightly that her hand ached. She heard breathing and waited for the door to open.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” a voice on the other side of the door taunted.
She was immediately on guard. There was something familiar about the voice. She was trying to put it together when the door was yanked violently open. Laura brought the knife up and simultaneously switched on the flashlight. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said, too stricken with surprise to allow the knife to finish its arc. “I should have known you were involved in this.”
“Surprise, surprise,” the voice said.
Laura never saw the object coming. It was heavy with a flat surface, and it hit her straight in the face with the power of a battering ram, shattering her nose to pulp. Pain shot into her brain with the intensity of a powerful electrical current, but it was short-lived. The world grayed over. Her hands opened reflexively, the knife and flashlight tumbling from them and clattering to the floor at her feet. Laura fell down a long, dark tunnel without end.
PART FIVE
THE ISLAND
Chapter 105
Wolf came awake on his back, his head pounding. He put his fingers to the place on the side of his neck where the Taser had touched him and winced. Jesus. He’d been branded. Realizing he was lying on something hard and uncomfortable he struggled to a sitting position and saw the gun. He retrieved it, wondering why his assailant hadn’t taken it, wondering why his assailant hadn’t killed him when he’d had the chance. Something didn’t add up. He tried to remember the moment before he’d been attacked. “Hey, Danny,” the voice had whispered just before he’d whirled. And that’s all he remembered. He shook his aching head trying to recall the voice or put a face to it. But it was no use, his brain was too sluggish. One thing he knew for certain. It wasn’t Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh had never called him Danny. He’d never called him anything but asshole. Again he felt the burn on his neck. Maybe he thought I was dead.
Wolf dismissed the thought. No, whoever did this wasn’t trying to kill him.
He had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been out. Laura, he thought, standing up on trembling legs. Christ, she’s in there alone and I’ve got her gun. What an idiot.
He moved gingerly down the length of the outside wall until he found the shattered window. He put his leg over the sill, easing his sore bulk into the house, careful lest he slice himself on a jagged shard of glass.
He moved stealthily through the big room spying light at the opposite end. Approaching the light carefully, the gun trained, he realized that it was a flashlight lying on the floor near an open closet door. Picking the light up, he shined it into the closet and saw blood on the floor. Was it Laura’s blood? He sniffed the air and decided that it was. But there were other smells here as well, mixing with the scent of Laura’s blood and confusing him.
What the hell?
Again he sniffed the air.
And what he smelled put him on guard.
Wolf did a careful search of the house and garage but did not find Laura. He came back into the main room, stopped and sniffed the air again for a long moment, this time concentrating, wanting to be sure his keen senses weren’t deceiving him. He played the flashlight all around, looking for...what? Then he saw two sets of prints in the blood and froze. In that moment he knew.
Laura wasn’t here, and that could only mean one thing. She was still alive. They’d taken her. They needed her. But they needed him more. It’s why he was still alive. It’s why they were both still alive. They’d kill her eventually but not until they had what they wanted from him. He’d let Laura down, and now he would need every last ounce of strength he could muster if he was going to save her.
In the kitchen he found a broom, and with it he quickly swept through the blood, wiping out all of the telltale prints, including his own.
He spied Laura’s phone on the counter, picked it up and dropped it in his pocket. Then he went in search of her purse. In a moment of panic he thought it wasn’t there, but then he found it, lying on the floor beside the couch. He fished around inside it until he located her car keys.
In the garage Wolf found a metal bar and pried open the garage door, got in the car and backed out of the garage, swung around and sped up the drive toward the road.
When he reached the main highway he stepped on the gas and headed south, back the way he had come, toward the city, his sight becoming clearer as he went, his gut leading the way.
Chapter 106
On the seat beside him, Laura’s phone went off. He eyed it for a long moment before picking up. “Hello.”
“Wolf!” the caller barked. “What the hell have you done with her?”
“Who is this?”
“Jennings, and so help me God if you’ve harmed her I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“I haven’t done anything to her, Jennings.”
“Listen to me, you little bastard, I’m standing in the middle of a blood pool in the living room of my house on Long Lake. It had better not be Laura’s blood.”
“Wait a minute,” Wolf said. “Your house? She told me it was Ruben Van Horne’s house.”
“I know what she told you. She’s a good cop and it was her insurance policy in case you got any murderous ideas.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, Jennings.”
“Where is she, then?”
“They’ve taken her.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I’m not sure I believe it yet.”
“Try me, Wolf. I’m ready to believe most anything right now.”
“Jennings, the only thing I know for certain is Laura’s in big trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m after them.”
“How do you know where they’re going?”
“Listen, Jennings, I know you probably don’t give a shit about this, but Laura has helped me to remember things I’ve been repressing since I was a child. I now know where I came from and what they did to me there. I know what they did to all the kids in that orphanage.”
“You mean the brainwashing?”
“Yes, but there’s something else. Something I’m just beginning to remember, something I may never understand. I think it’s the reason they tried to kill us. They couldn’t take the chance that we would ever talk about it.”
“Give me a clue, Wolf.”
“Not yet. I need to think about it first, make sure I’m remembering it correctly. It’s something the government’s been hiding from the public, something no one was ever supposed to know about.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Wolf.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s all I’ve got. I need to go there. I need to make sure it’s real, figure this out on my own.”
Jennings pounded the steering wheel in frustration. He knew that a rogue faction within the CIA, headed by Spencer, intended to eliminate all those who might point fingers. He knew that they were afraid the survivors would talk, but he’d assumed it was because of the things they’d done to them. Now Wolf was saying there might be another reason for the cover up.
But nothing else made sense. What could it be? And what did the murder of innocent women have to do with it? And what about the church? What was their connection to it all? There were far too many questions without answers. He needed to find Laura before she too became a victim. “Who’s killing these women, Wolf?”
“I’ve got a theory, but I need a few minutes to think about it, sort it all out in my mind before I can be sure.”
“Wolf, if you know something, you have to let me in on it.”
“I told you I don’t know anything yet. I’m working on it.”
“Now you listen to me, Wolf. If you know where the killer’s taking her then you’ve got to tell me. I got her into this mess and it’s up to me to get her out. You can’t do it alone.”
“I think they’re going back to where it all started.”
“You mean the island?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“What the hell does Laura have to do with it?”
“I think she has everything to do with it. I think she’s connected to it all in some insane way.”
Jennings croaked out a dry laugh. “That doesn’t even make sense. Of course she isn’t!”
“How did her father die, Jennings?”
“What?”
“You heard me. How did her father die?”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“I think it does. I think it has everything to do with it.”
“It was unsolved,” Jennings said. “They never got the guy.”
“Cavanaugh was there. He saw. He knows. And you know too, don’t you, Jennings?”
“I don’t know anything,” Jennings said. “I’m still trying to figure this mess out.”
“Cavanaugh’s wife is dead, isn’t she?”
“What? How the hell do you know about that?”
“I see things, Jennings. About time you realized it. Laura’s father had figured some things out and when he threatened to expose them he was murdered.”
“But who the hell is killing innocent women?”
“I think it has something to do with me. Leave it alone, Jennings, this isn’t your fight.”
“They’ve made it my fight, Wolf, by taking the person I care most about in this world. Listen, let me help you. We’ll go together. We’ll straighten this out. I promise.”
Wolf didn’t believe Jennings for a minute. He suspected that if he told Jennings where he was he’d be sitting in a jail cell while Jennings and his men went over to the island like gangbusters and royally fucked things up. “I can’t do it,” Wolf said. “I’m sorry, but this is something I have to do alone.” He pressed the off button.
“Shit!” Jennings said and stared at the dead phone in his hand.
Chapter 107
On the way out Jennings called the st
ation and asked to speak with Robeson. He was told that the chief was out and to try his cell phone. Robeson picked up on the first ring. Jennings told him everything; he told him about Laura, about Wolf’s sudden memory return, and about where Wolf was headed and why.
There was silence on the line. “Are you still there, Red?”
“Yeah, Rick, I’m here.”
“Well?”
“You think I’m stupid, Rick? You think I didn’t know you had her working this case? What I don’t know is why. Why her? Why Jack Higgins’s daughter?” Jennings heard anger rising in Red’s voice.
“I had a feeling, that’s all,” Jennings said.
“A feeling about what?”
“That her presence here might help me to understand a little more about why her father’s murder was covered up.”
“Well, have you figured it out?”
“I’m still working on it, but I think I’m real close, Red.”
There was a long silence on the line before Robeson replied. “Listen, Rick, we’ll straighten this out. We’ll get her back.” Robeson’s voice was suddenly conciliatory and Jennings knew he was being had.
“I’m on my way in,” Jennings said. “I want a chopper fueled and a team waiting when I arrive at the airport.”
Robeson grunted out a short laugh. “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re getting yourself into, Rick.”
“Then why don’t you fill me in.”
“The feds brought in their own chopper. I’m on my way to join them. We’ll be taking off in five minutes.”
Apocalypse Island Page 33
