“Imagine a soldier who can outrun any animal on the planet, carry hundreds of pounds with ease. Communicate telepathically with his squadron, go weeks without eating or sleeping or regenerate lost limbs on the battlefield, and be completely controlled mind and body by military technicians thousands of miles away. Does this sound like science fiction to you? If so, then you’re not living in the real world.
“We are in a twenty-first-century arms race among a vast array of covert technologies that are presently under development. There will be a new kind of soldier, a genetically modified and artificially enhanced superhuman fighting machine that dominates the battlefields of the future. The engineering of these super soldiers is not only a top priority for the Pentagon, with black budget projects with classifications so high that not even the president of the United States has the clearance to access.”
“Holy shit.” Tomi gathered her things and research papers and headed out. Her mind whirled. The dots were right in front of her. The truth was in front of her. Shakily, she jabbed the elevator button and then paced while waiting for it to arrive.
“We were fucking government experiments,” she concluded. She’d figured out that Avery had been some type of mad scientist years ago when she’d first discovered her little parlor trick of being able to move some things with her mind. Shalisa Young’s murder case was her second clue. But discovering that this shit wasn’t about a lone crazed scientist, kidnapping teenagers and turning them into freaks, but was really about some shadowy government genetically modifying them to create some sci-fi super soldier was madness.
The image of Dr. Zacher floated back to her mind.
“Muthafucker.” At long last, the elevator arrived and she rushed forward and collided into Jayson.
“Whoa!” He reeled back with a laugh. “Where’s the fire?”
“Sorry, Jayson. I can’t talk right now,” she said, jetting past him and stabbing the button for the lobby.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. I gotta . . . take care of something.”
He frowned, but the doors closed in his face before he could fire off another question.
Downstairs, she bolted past security and jetted out of the building with a brain cloud circulating too much information. However, when she speed-walked into the parking garage, the hairs on her body stood as if a giant magnet had been turned on. She slowed down and glanced around.
Nothing.
She remained alert, not trusting her eyes. Someone was watching her. She resumed the beeline to her car, checked the backseat, and climbed inside. The moment she slammed the door closed, she exhaled. After another glance around the near-empty parking lot, she started the car. Ten minutes down the road, she relaxed. After another five minutes, she laughed. All that T4S shit had made her fucking paranoid. At the next light, she made another call to Abrianna’s phone and wondered if her paranoid friend had changed her cell phone again. They were two peas in a pod now.
The Agency was in a building that looked as if it doubled as a neighborhood tax preparation service. The brick building had to be at least a hundred years old and sat on a clean corner lot. The shades were down, but the lights were still on. Tomi climbed out of the car while wrapping her purse strap across her shoulders and then grabbed her research papers and crammed them into her tote bag. She felt like a bag lady as she hurried to the Agency’s front door.
“Oh, please be here.” She pulled on the handle. Locked. Tomi rapped on the glass door and then tapped her foot while she waited.
Laughter punctured the silence. Tomi craned her neck over her left shoulder to see a group of teenage girls huddled together as they strolled unevenly in heels too high. She watched their carefree gaiety as they passed whistling and game-spitting brothers on the street corner. When they didn’t get any play, the catcalling brothers fired off ugly and demeaning insults at the girls’ backs before the girls disappeared into a corner pool hall.
Tomi shook her head and then returned her attention to Castillo’s locked door. Is she here? She knocked again and attempted to make out if anyone was moving around inside. At long last, she heard a noise and then footsteps.
Castillo’s recognizable figure approached the door.
Tomi relaxed.
Castillo pulled back a corner of the shades.
“Hey,” Tomi said, waving.
Castillo frowned, but unlocked and opened the door. “What on earth are you doing here?” She glanced over Tomi’s shoulder to gauge whether she was alone.
“Would you believe that I was in the neighborhood?”
Castillo arched a brow as she evaluated the reporter’s mental state.
“Can I come in?” Tomi asked.
Castillo stepped back. “Sure. Come on in.” After Tomi crossed the threshold, Castillo took another glance around outside before closing and locking the door. “How did you know I was still here?”
“I didn’t,” Tomi said. “I took a chance.” She glanced around the office. It had an old forties Maltese Falcon kind of vibe. A large corkboard in the center drew her attention. It was filled with children’s faces as well as three-by-five index cards loaded with information under each one. “Working on a case?”
“Cases,” Castillo corrected. “Pro bono work.”
“Huh.” Tomi moved over to the board and read a few of the cards. “Missing children?” She turned and looked at Castillo with a realization. “This is really a passion of yours, isn’t it?”
Castillo shrugged. “Everybody got to have a hobby.” She walked over to a lonely looking Mr. Coffee machine. “Would you like a cup?”
“Sure. Why not.” Tomi glanced around for a chair that wasn’t loaded up with notebooks and folders. There was only one, and Tomi had the distinct impression that it was Castillo’s seat.
“Here you go,” Castillo said, handing her a steaming Styrofoam cup.
Tomi clumsily shifted her broken tote bag to one arm and accepted the cup.
“Let me clear off a spot for you.” Castillo went to one of the chairs and removed the piles of work.
“Your arm. I can do it.”
“I got it.” Castillo moved the clutter to a corner on top of a metal file cabinet. “Have a seat.”
Tomi smiled and sat down. When Castillo returned to the coffee machine to pour herself a cup, Tomi thought about how she was about to broach the T4S subject. It turned out that there wasn’t a good opening to tell someone that you were a walking, talking genetically modified quasi-government experiment. It didn’t roll off of the tongue.
Castillo broke into her private musing. “Soooo. What really brings you out here this late? Are you working on another story?”
“There’s always another story and always another deadline.”
Castillo nodded. “Are you doing anything on Cargill Parker?”
“Uh . . . I’m working an angle.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, uh. Marion Parker came by the office to see me earlier. She wants me to help her get in contact with Abrianna.”
“Oh?” Castillo leaned back in her squeaky office chair and propped her feet up on the corner of her desk. “I haven’t seen her in ages. How is she holding up?”
“Mrs. Parker?” Tomi thought it over. “Perfect on the outside, but a wreck on the inside.”
“Humph. So not much has changed.” Castillo sipped her coffee.
Tomi followed suit but was stunned by the bolt of caffeine that rocked through her veins. “Good Lord, this is strong. What is it?”
“It’s made with Robusta coffee beans. It’s not for the Starbucks lightweights.”
“More for the walking dead crowd, huh?” Tomi set the cup down and backed away.
Castillo gulped it down like it was spring water. “I saw you and Abrianna on that Greg Wallace show. It took a lot of courage to go on there when her father is gobbling up as many headlines as she is.”
Tomi nodded, but said nothing.
Castillo pushed, “Have you talked t
o Abrianna about this thing with her father?”
“We had a conversation. I know as much as the audience knows.”
Castillo shook her head. “I suspected a long time ago that he was abusing Abrianna.”
“You did?”
Castillo nodded. “Her X-rays from the hospital that night showed a lot of breaks that hadn’t healed properly. When her father showed up that night, he was a grabby muthafucka that I thought I was going have to take down for a minute. Plus, Marion was skittish as shit and told me that it was okay if I was keeping Abrianna hidden from them. They didn’t want to believe that Abrianna had run off again. I don’t blame them. I could hardly believe it myself.” She nodded toward the corkboard. “I’ve been running these kids’ photos and info through the Children’s Protective Service to see if any of them were swept up during the raid at the Lynnwood Club.”
“Any luck?”
Disappointed, Castillo shook her head. “One.”
“Damn. Well. That’s good news.”
There was that transitional pause again. Tomi still hadn’t figured out a way to bring up what had brought her there.
“Soooo,” Castillo said. “Should I kick-start the twenty-one questions, or are you going to tell me what brings you out here?”
“Maybe I should show you,” Tomi said, opening her tote and pulling out the piles of research.
Curious, Castillo leaned over and picked up a few sheets. “What’s this?”
“Research.”
“On Craig Avery?” She looked up.
“Him and this guy who approached me a while back, a Dr. Charles Zacher.”
“And who is he?”
“Craig Avery’s partner.”
39
Kadir woke in the middle of the night, pleased that Abrianna was still lying next to him. He inhaled her hair’s floral scent. It had been a long time since he had a woman in his life.
He paused his ruminations and opened his eyes again. What was he doing? He had no idea how she felt about him. He had no idea how she felt about anything. Sure, they had chemistry. Damn good chemistry. The sex was hot—but what else was there?
She had his back—but what did that really mean? They were buddies? Friends? Friends with benefits?
Kadir’s thoughts chased each other in a dizzying circle, killing his tranquil mood. His twin brother had often told him that he was too much of a romantic. He fell in love easily and hard. This time he had managed to do it with a damaged woman—who’d never been in a relationship that had lasted more than four months.
I still need to get my head examined.
Gently, Kadir eased his arms from around Abrianna and sat up. Before climbing out of bed, he stared at her. She was still one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on. She looked so peaceful—serene. Maybe too damn peaceful. Is she breathing?
Kadir leaned forward, unable to hear a sound. His gaze shot to her chest, but it wasn’t moving up and down. “What the hell?” Did she overdose? Panicked, Kadir went to press a hand to the side of her neck to check for a pulse, but the moment he touched her, she moaned lazily and rolled over.
Relief whooshed out and deflated Kadir’s lungs, but his heart pounded like a drum. When it returned to its normal rhythm, he chuckled at how he’d scared himself and climbed out of bed. He was still shaking his head over the incident after another hot shower and his morning prayer. While Abrianna slept late, Kadir resumed cleaning the apartment. As he worked, he worried about what his next step should be. He needed money, a job, and probably a new place to live. Those thoughts led him to his family. He needed to call and let them know that he was all right. He could only imagine the hell that he’d put them through during all of this.
No doubt his father would view it as another disappointment. He picked up the house phone, surprised that he still had service, and dialed their number from memory.
“Kadir!” Muaadh Kahlifa shouted after snatching up the line.
“Hey, dad.”
What came next was a combination of praises to Allah and a steady weeping. At one point his mother wrestled the phone from his father and babbled a long stream of tear-filled questions. Soon enough, the conversation settled down and Kadir answered their questions: He was all right and yes, he was out of jail.
“You must come home,” his father insisted. “America is no longer safe for Muslims. I fear the day when we get a call and they tell us that they have finally killed you. If you were going to die, I would prefer that you do it here—in our homeland among our people.”
Kadir knew that this was coming. “I can’t do that, Pop. I’m still on probation and . . .” He glanced off toward the bedroom door. “I still have a lot of . . . stuff that I’m working on here.”
His dad didn’t like that answer and argued with him about ways for Kadir to get around the laws and get on a plane.
“Sound like Baasim came by his radicalization honestly.” Kadir chuckled.
“This is not a game, Kadir,” his father snapped. “I want you here!”
Hearing Kadir’s resistance, his mother’s wails intensified.
Kadir loved his parents, but the phone call had turned back to their usual frustrations with one another. By the end of the conversation, Kadir abandoned the idea of asking his father for yet another loan. He would have to find a job as soon as possible—as well as get another car.
“All right, dad. I’ll talk to you soon.”
His father hesitated, but then grunted his consent and goodbye.
Exhausted, Kadir returned the phone to its port and then sank his head into the palms of his hands. That call had taken a lot out of him. Before returning to bed, he caught a few minutes of the news.
“In tonight’s news,” the reporter began with the word prerecorded printed in the right-hand corner, “more heartbreaking details of the child sex-trafficking ring involving oil and gas billionaire Cargill Parker. As previously reported, Mr. Parker’s exclusive Lynnwood Club was raided two weeks ago after authorities received an anonymous tip about suspected illegal attivities involving minors as young as five years old. The authorities continue to have a difficult time identifying a number of the children and predict that it may take a long time to comb through numerous databases across the country and internationally. Federal prosecutors argued that Parker was a flight risk and he was denied bail.”
Kadir stared openmouthed at the screen. He’d seen Abrianna’s father once before on Shawn’s hospital TV. Then the man pled for Abrianna to return home. But that wasn’t this. He didn’t know what to make of this.
* * *
Castillo was well into her second pot of coffee when she finished reviewing all of Tomi’s research on T4S. Leaning back in her seat, she stared at Tomi for a long moment while the information still processed in her head.
“Well?” Tomi asked.
“My brain hurts.”
“Then we have that in common.” Tomi shrugged, but quickly grew agitated. “I mean, what the fuck, right? We were fucking lab rats.”
“I . . . know it may seem that way, but . . . maybe we’re missing something.”
“The man said that he wanted to talk to me about the powers Abrianna and I may have developed. What else could he have meant?”
“All those girls,” Castillo said, devastated. She closed her eyes and rubbed the tension from her forehead. Like instant recall, the images of the lifeless teenagers she’d failed to save scrolled through her head. After all this time, she was still connected to each and every one of them. The long hours, sleepless nights, her total obsession with the case that nearly ruined her career was suddenly fresh in her mind. But never once did she detect anything other than some sick fuck with some medical training.
Castillo took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s say that you’re right. What’s our next step?”
“Our next step?”
“Well, we can’t let him get away with it,” Castillo reasoned.
“They have already gotten away with it,”
Tomi said. “Avery’s dead and I doubt that we’re going to wrangle a confession out of that Dr. Zacher guy—and what? You think I want the world know that I’m some kind of freak? I’m not. I’m not!”
Without anyone laying a hand on it, Tomi’s cold coffee toppled over and splashed onto the floor. “Shit!”
Castillo leaped to her feet.
“No. No,” Tomi said, frazzled. “I’ll clean it up. It’s my fault.”
Castillo eyed her wearily as Tomi rushed over to retrieve the roll of paper towels next to the coffeemaker. “I don’t think that I’ll get used to you being able to do that.”
Tomi said nothing as she hurried to clean the mess, but it was clear that she was still upset.
“I don’t think that you’re a freak,” Castillo clarified. “And nothing that happened to you was your fault.”
Tomi stopped cleaning as a sob escaped her throat.
Castillo quickly went and joined her on the floor. When she put her good arm around her, Tomi turned and sobbed against her shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re going to figure this out.” She actually had no idea what they were going to do.
A minute later, Tomi pulled away. “Sorry about that.”
“There’s no need to apologize.”
“It hit me all at once, I guess. I’m fine.” Tomi resumed sopping up the coffee.
Castillo realized that she was basically asking for her space. She stood and moved back to her chair. As she glanced at the paperwork again, she struggled with this new wave of helplessness. “So . . . what do you want to do? I’m not sure why you even brought this to me if the plan is not to expose it.”
Tomi dumped the paper towels and the cup into the wastebasket and then shook her head almost hopelessly. “I don’t know. I guess I needed to tell someone. I guess I could’ve told my dog Rocky—who I need to get home and feed, but . . .” She sighed.
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