Outbreak: A Nightshades Novel

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Vampire prairie dogs,” Ruiz supplied.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Well, I’ve got a couple of new suspects for you to interview,” Alex offered.

  Ruiz sort of brightened, but Hadley just looked suspicious. “Thing is,” Alex continued, “you have to promise not to shoot them.”

  “At least, not right away,” Lindy said from the doorway. She turned sideways so Sloane and Reagan could enter.

  Sloane attempted a smile. “Hi, all,” he said cheerfully. “We’re here for the assassination committee? Oh, whoa.”

  Both Hadley and Ruiz had scooted their chairs from the table and reached for their weapons. Sloane immediately angled his body so it was between Reagan and the guns, but Alex raised his hands. “Whoa, guys,” he said. “They want to help us get Hector.”

  “Why do you think you can trust them?” Hadley replied immediately. It was not an unreasonable question, but Alex let Sloane answer.

  “If we wished any of you harm,” he pointed out, “we could have done that by now.”

  “You could have tried,” Lindy muttered behind him.

  Reagan stepped forward, raising her chin. “Hector lied to me,” she said clearly. “He told me he was going to unite the shades, to give us a leader. I didn’t know until this morning that he was planning to do it through fear.” She shook her head. “Terrorizing humans is not the way to peace.”

  “Hector doesn’t care about peace,” Lindy snapped. “He just wants power. And recognition.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Reagan said, her voice a little weak. “Just like I didn’t know that he was the one who transmuted me.”

  Hadley’s eyes widened, but Alex’s thoughts spun off in a different direction. “Recognition,” he repeated thoughtfully.

  Lindy’s head turned toward him. “Tell me you have an idea.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t worry,” Chase assured her. “That’s definitely his I-have-an-idea face.”

  “Uh-huh. How long before he tells us about this idea?” Hadley asked.

  Chase shushed her. “Don’t derail him. You’ll scare it away.”

  Alex ignored all this and focused on Lindy. “You said Hector wants recognition, specifically from you—and he wants everyone to think he’s the once and future king of the shades. Right?”

  She nodded. Alex said, “It must have really pissed him off when we caught him killing teenagers and put his name on the news.”

  “It really did.” This was from Reagan, who still looked rueful. “He rants about it all the time. I’m not sure he even means to send out those thoughts, but they bleed through.”

  “Okay.” Alex nodded to himself. “Okay. Right now, Hector is stirring things up without claiming responsibility, getting the humans into a panic and making the shades nervous about persecution. Presumably he’s going to push everyone toward riots in the streets, and then he’ll swoop in and save the day as the recognized shade leader. He’s hoping Lindy gets blamed for it, but really that’s just a bonus.” He looked at Lindy. “Lindy, how many humans know exactly what you look like? Besides the people in this room.”

  She blinked hard. “Um. Sarah, Palmer, and Noelle. A few people from my old office in Cincinnati, but they didn’t know I’m a shade.” Her eyes went distant for a second as she really thought it over. “The federal agent who drove us to the airport in Cincinnati.”

  He’d been right—she had never met Harding in person. There was a photo of Lindy in the FBI database, for her ID, but it was slightly blurry—he had suspected her of moving a little at just the right moment. Alex felt himself lighten for the first time since he’d woken up in Lindy’s bed.

  “Okay, dude,” Chase said impatiently. “What are you thinking?”

  Alex grinned. “Hector wants the world’s shades to just voluntarily place him on this imaginary throne, right?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “So I’m thinking we steal the imaginary throne right out from underneath him.”

  Chapter 17

  ALEX EXPLAINED THE IDEA, and proposed sort of a loose plan. They all kicked it around for another half an hour, revising and filling in details, while Hadley ate her cheeseburger and Ruiz covertly stole most of her French fries.

  Finally, Chase scrubbed the back of his head with his palm. “Alex, man,” he said. “I’ve been on board with many a harebrained plan of yours, but this is by far the most harebrained.”

  “That’s not a no,” Alex replied. He was looking at Lindy, who seemed to be suppressing a smile.

  “It’s crazy,” she told him. “And kind of stupid. But I like it.”

  She turned to Reagan, and her expression hardened. “But this whole thing is pretty much riding on you. You get that, right?”

  Reagan, for her part, looked properly terrified. “Yeah.”

  Lindy softened, but only a little. “On the other hand, if we can pull this off, you get everything you want. That has to feel good.”

  “Not quite as good as I thought it would,” the younger shade admitted.

  Sloane squeezed her hand. “You’ll do great.”

  Reagan gave him a surprised look, and Alex realized that the young woman had no idea Sloane was in love with her. Jesus. Even he knew that.

  “We need a reporter,” Hadley said thoughtfully, pulling them back on track. “Preferably someone national, but willing to come here.”

  “Hector wants us to go to the East Coast, so that’s the last thing we’re gonna do,” Lindy explained to the other shades. “We set a trap here.”

  Hadley looked at her fellow BPI agents. “Do any of you have contacts?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Chase raised his hand, looking a little sheepish. “I dated someone at CNN in New York,” he explained. To Alex, he added, “Remember Felicity Watts?”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Is she still speaking to you?”

  “Of course,” Chase said, feigning insult.

  Sloane looked amused. “Bit of a ladies’ man, are we?” he said to Chase. Ruiz snickered.

  “Get her on the phone,” Alex told Chase. “Find out how soon she can get someone to Chicago.”

  Chase pulled out his cell phone and headed for the cabin door. While Chase was making the call, Alex turned to the rest of them. “Assuming phase one works—”

  Sloane rolled his eyes. “Are we really calling it phase one?”

  “Assuming phase one works,” Alex continued, with great dignity, “we need a location for the actual trap. Something contained, but as far away from civilians as possible.”

  “Somewhere out in the country?” Ruiz suggested.

  Lindy shook her head. “He’s as comfortable there as anywhere else. Woods, open land, rocky cliffs—anything you’ve got around here, we’ve lived in it at some point.”

  Sloane started to speak, but Lindy was tilting her head to the side, thinking. “Hold on,” she said. “He does dislike water. Maybe something near a beach, or an island?”

  “How much does he dislike water?” Alex asked.

  She shrugged. “He almost drowned when we were children. He’d be fine on a boat or anywhere his feet can touch, but he hates deep water. If that helps.”

  “The water cribs,” Hadley said suddenly.

  They all looked at her, and Alex said, “The what now?”

  “Ruiz, do you have that Chicago map?”

  Ruiz handed her a street map of Chicago. Hadley unfolded it and slid a couple of blank pieces of paper under the edge that represented Lake Michigan. She consulted her phone, and kept talking as she drew on the paper. “We learned about them in school. In Chicago we get our water from Lake Michigan—but during the mid-nineteenth century, the city also dumped sewage in the river, and the river dumped it into the lake. People got sick. So they came up with a plan to build a structure way off the shoreline that would protect the water from pollution. Kind of like a circular stone fence.” She drew some small circles, with lines connecting them to shore. “The
n the structure was connected to the city via underground pipes.

  “This is rough, but you get the idea.” She lifted her hand, and Alex could see that she’d drawn a bunch of circles at various points offshore, with little names beside each one. He counted ten of them. “They called them water cribs, because they protect the water like the walls of a crib protect a baby,” Hadley went on. “The first one was Two-Mile Crib, then Four-Mile Crib, and then they named a bunch after prominent Chicagoans. The point is, they’re like tiny man-made islands, and you can only get to them by boat.”

  “Are they still operating?” Alex asked. “I don’t want to mess with the city’s actual water supply.”

  “Let’s see.” Hadley consulted an article on her phone. “Yeah, looks like two of them are still in operation. Of the other eight, though, a bunch of them have been demolished, and one, the Lawrence Avenue Crib, is now surrounded by Lincoln Park. But these two”—she pointed to two of the circles—“are still standing, and abandoned.”

  It sounded promising, at least. “Do we have satellite images?” Alex asked.

  Ruiz opened the laptop, and pecked out the Google Earth website with his index fingers. “Let me,” Hadley said, sliding the laptop toward herself. After a moment she looked up at Alex. “The commercial mapping satellites don’t display that far off the coast.”

  “That might not be a bad thing,” Alex mused. “If we can’t see it, neither can Hector. Are there people out there?”

  “Not really,” Hadley said. “In the nineties everything was automated. The Coast Guard patrols out there to make sure some idiot civilians don’t trespass on the cribs, but that’s about it.”

  “I might be able to talk Gil into backing off the Coast Guard,” Alex said. He looked at the map again. “Which one of the inactive cribs is the newest?”

  She glanced at her phone, and tapped a circle on the map. “This one, the Jane M. Byrne Crib. It was built in 1948.”

  “Let’s focus on that one,” Alex said. “It’s probably the least likely to kill us.”

  “How will Hector know where to find us?” Hadley asked.

  “As soon as we get to the water crib I’ll turn the phone on,” Lindy replied. “If he doesn’t track the phone or call me, I’ll call him.”

  “And what, challenge him to a duel?” Ruiz said, sounding more curious than anything else.

  Lindy wasn’t offended. “Something like that. I’d bet that he’s tracking the phone he left at Roza’s house. I think that was part of the point of killing her, so he could both taunt us and find me. So we’ll use that against him.”

  Alex glanced around the room. “The wi-fi’s surprisingly good here. Anyone else have a laptop or tablet?”

  Sloane raised an index finger. Alex nodded. “I want you and Hadley to work on getting me as much information on the Byrne crib as possible. Blueprints, anecdotal descriptions, photos, anything. Drive into town and buy a printer if you need it. I’ve got some cash.”

  Chase came back into the cabin, and Alex looked over at him. “She’ll do it,” he said. “She’s gonna bring a whole team, and she said if I’m lying or wrong . . .” He cleared his throat. “Well. Bad things. But they’ll be on the next flight.”

  “Good. In the meantime, I want you and Ruiz to go back to Noelle and see what she has for us. Ruiz can fill you in on water cribs on the way.” He paused, then added, “And you better check with Palmer and see how he’s coming on getting methamphetamine. You guys might need to knock over a shitkicker bar in Wisconsin or something.”

  Ruiz did a fist pump.

  “Do you want me to go with them?” Reagan offered, pushing her dark hair behind her ears. “I can help with the, uh, Wisconsin shitkickers.”

  Alex shook his head. “They can handle it. You and Lindy need to get ready for tomorrow morning.”

  He shot Lindy a quick look, but she just nodded. Apparently her ice wall of Reagan hatred was starting to thaw. “Okay,” Alex said. “I’m going to see about getting us some boats. Let’s get moving.”

  Chapter 18

  GABRIEL RUIZ FOLLOWED AGENT Eddy out to the SUV he’d rented earlier in the day, feeling some trepidation. He didn’t mind the assignment itself, but being with Eddy worried him. Ruiz had been mesmerized by Hector’s people on two separate occasions, and it had really fucked up his head both times. What would it be like to have Hector mesmerizing you nearly every day, for weeks? Could Hector have left some kind of time-release order in Eddy’s mind? Was he going to suddenly flip out?

  “Maybe I should drive,” Ruiz offered.

  Eddy just shrugged and tossed him the keys, but when they were seated in the SUV, the younger agent turned to him. As assistant SAC, Eddy technically outranked him, but Ruiz had almost two decades of experience on him, and Eddy was usually pretty mindful of that.

  “Just so you know,” Eddy said, “Lindy thinks I’m in the clear. It’s been too long since Hector last mesmerized me. There’s no way I can still be under his influence.”

  “I wasn’t worried about it,” Ruiz lied. “But . . . good to know.”

  * * *

  They got ensnared in the Saturday-night traffic as they drove back into the city, and Ruiz found himself desperately wishing for some bubble lights and a siren. By the time they made it to Noelle Liang’s office, Ruiz was worried about her even being there. “You think she went home?” he said. “It’s getting late.”

  Chase shook his head with confidence, and Ruiz remembered he and the engineer had been friends before any of this. “Trust me, she’s still there.”

  They didn’t have a shade with them to grease the wheels, so they had to go in the front of the building and show their IDs to the security guard. As far as Ruiz knew, being on suspension pending inquiry wasn’t enough to bar them from going into the building to visit a friend. This was more or less what Eddy told the security guard, who scrutinized their IDs carefully but let them sign in.

  Ruiz hadn’t been to Liang’s lab before—he hadn’t even met the woman—but apparently Eddy and Noelle were pals, because he led Ruiz down the twisting hallways with no hesitation. But when he twisted the knob on the door marked “Liang, Noelle,” Ruiz heard the lock engage. Since Chase Eddy was technically his superior, he refrained from saying, “I told you so.”

  “That’s weird.” Eddy frowned and knocked on the door. “You hear that?”

  Ruiz leaned closer, and heard some kind of foreign pop music practically vibrating through the door. “Liang!” he yelled, pounding on the door with a closed fist.

  The music went down, and they heard someone unlocking the door. It opened a crack, and a woman’s face peered in the gap. She had black hair chopped in an asymmetrical pixie cut and safety pins lining her white lab coat for no apparent reason. “Chase?” Her gaze shifted to Ruiz and back. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Gabriel Ruiz. He’s part of our pod.”

  “Oh, okay. Hi-Gabriel-I’m-Noelle,” she said in a rush. “Come in, quick.”

  “What the hell is going—” Chase started to say, but Liang was practically yanking them inside, closing and locking the door behind them. Ruiz and Eddy both looked around the room and gaped.

  The space was huge, with rows of tables sort of like in a college science lab. At one table a city cop was sitting in front of a stack of paperwork, holding a pen. She was white, with a close-cropped haircut and her badge hanging on a chain around her neck. She barely glanced up when they arrived. Special Agent Gil Palmer was sitting in the back left corner of the room at a big metal desk, wearing what looked like noise-canceling headphones. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he appeared to be fast asleep.

  Then there was the back right quarter of the lab, which had been sectioned off with enormous sheets of thick plastic, like the kind used on construction sites. One flap was held open with wooden clothespins, exposing a weaselly-looking man in cutoff shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He was wearing goggles and thick rubber gloves, and waved uncertain
ly as they walked in. His eyes were darting between them and the city cop.

  Eddy said it first. “Noelle . . . what the hell’s going on?”

  “Oh! Right. Sorry, I’ve had a lot of coffee. About . . . a lot. Introductions!” She clapped her hands and led them over to the cop’s table, like a tour guide presenting a new specimen. “This is my friend Liz Bassett, she’s a CPD narcotics detective. Palmer you already know—I’d wake him up, but we just got him down for his nap—and the walking stereotype in the back is Ricky Martin—his actual name, by the way, no relation to the singer, and don’t ask him why he insists on going by Ricky instead of Rich or Richard because that conversation is twenty minutes of nowhere.” She paused to take a breath, and finished with, “Ricky cooks meth.”

  “Used to cook meth,” the weaselly man corrected. He hadn’t objected to Noelle’s characterization of him, but that might have been because she was talking too fast for him to understand. “I’m coming out of retirement for one night only.”

  “Sure, Ricky,” said Liz Bassett. She nodded at Ruiz and Eddy. “He’s one of my CIs,” she explained.

  “You have a meth lab going in an FBI building?” Eddy looked scandalized, which would have been a little funny if Ruiz didn’t feel the same.

  “Get back to work, Ricky!” Noelle called over her shoulder. The cook grumbled something at her, but he pulled the clothespin and went back into his sectioned-off area. Then she turned back to them. “Yeah, well, I realized I couldn’t have just any methamphetamine—I need high-quality materials for my experiments. Who knows what kind of shit these local rednecks put in their drugs? So Ricky’s been teaching me how to make it. It’s not that hard, really. I mean, the instructions are on the internet, but Ricky’s actually been a pretty good resource, once you get past the body odor.”

  “He’s a good cook, you gotta say that for him,” Bassett agreed, without looking up from her report forms. She finished one page and flipped it over, pulling the next one closer to her. “Ricky’s problem is that he’s only good at cooking meth.”

  “Plus the name thing, that’s definitely a second problem,” Ruiz pointed out.