Harvey Bennett Mysteries Box Set 3

by Nick Thacker

  “She’s not?”

  “I’m starting to figure out what exactly is going on around here. And no, it wasn’t Victoria at all.”

  She turned a full circle, meeting everyone’s eyes.

  “It was her father.”

  45

  Ben

  “What are you talking about, Jules?” Ben asked. He had been watching Julie pace for over a minute, but he had moved to the side of the locked door, where he was now standing, leaning against the cool stone wall.

  He was seething. Livid, even. Mad at himself, for not listening to Julie when she’d told him there was something going on with Victoria. Angry with Reggie and Mrs. E for blindly following her, and upset with Victoria for… whatever it was that was happening.

  “I’m saying her father made her do this.”

  “Garza got to her?” Reggie asked. “You think he somehow convinced her to betray us? And then lead us here to wait for his men to kill us?”

  Julie shook her head. All three of their dive lights were on and pointed at Julie, and while her face was lit with an orange glow, it did little to illuminate the room around them. They’d examined the room thoroughly and found nothing. No benches or chairs, no electricity or lightswitches, no more of the fabric faux walls.

  The room was cold, dark, and oppressive. In Ben’s mind, it was a perfect reflection of their captor.

  “No,” She said, her voice lower. “Think about it. Remember Philadelphia? His experimentation with that drug?”

  “Scopolamine,” Reggie said. “The ‘date-rape drug.’ Nasty stuff.”

  Ben suddenly realized what Julie was implying. “He would have had to perfect it — back then, it was little more than a ‘zombie’ drug. Knocked people out, even though they were effectively sleepwalking.”

  “And sleep killing,” Julie said. He heard her breath catch in her throat, and he didn’t need to be reminded of the nightmare she was referring to.

  Before their first trip to Peru a couple months ago, Julie had shared with Ben that she had been having terrible nightmares.

  Unfortunately, as Ben and the others knew, the nightmare was no simple manifestation of her subconscious. It was a memory, one they all took part in.

  He remembered the event as if it had been yesterday. The loss of their leader and good friend, Joshua Jefferson.

  His mind fell back into the scene, fighting against his own judgement.

  Julie.

  He wanted to call out to her, to see if his words had returned. He opened his mouth and felt the dizziness grow once again.

  Julie.

  She was there, the man called The Hawk standing next to her. He had just shoved a needle into her arm…

  Ben tensed up, also curious about what drug Vicente Garza had put inside her. What would it do? How long would it last?

  And, most importantly, what were the side effects?

  Ben tried to shake away the memory, one of the top-three worst events he’d ever witnessed.

  Julie’s head fell backwards, her eyes open wide. She began to mumble, loudly, and Ben could hear it from his position against the back wall.

  The soldier in front of him didn’t move, didn’t divert his eyes from Ben.

  Julie’s head snapped forward again, and she looked right at Ben.

  He recognized the look now. The slightly drunken appearance, the dazed expression of dead eyes.

  Victoria had the same look, he realized. It was far more subtle — Victoria had been able to look around, to respond to their questions, albeit in a stilted, forced sort of way.

  The memory continued.

  He watched her face, trying to determine if the woman he loved knew who he was in that moment. If she could see him. Her eyes flitted back and forth once, quickly taking in the rest of the room. At this point there was no one behind Julie. She sat in the center of the gymnasium, her back to the opposite doors, and all the Ravenshadow men as well as The Hawk and Daris Johansson were standing or sitting in a wide arc around Julie.

  He, Reggie, Joshua, and Derrick were all standing with their backs to the wall in front of Julie, but they each had a soldier, weapon drawn, guarding them.

  Julie’s face scanned Ben’s, but there was no reaction. She was blank, empty.

  “Ms. Richardson,” The Hawk said. His voice had changed. No longer was he the confident leader, the intimidating figure of power for his men. His voice was calm, almost gentle, and as he addressed Julie, Ben wondered if the man’s voice was part of the test — perhaps the tone of the man’s voice affected Julie in some way.

  She turned to look at The Hawk.

  “Hello again, Ms. Richardson. I’m glad we could talk in front of the rest of these people. Ms. Richardson, do you see these people?”

  The Hawk made a point of drawing a wide half-circle with his open palm, showing Julie the room.

  “I do,” Julie said.

  Ben’s heart raced. He hadn’t heard Julie’s voice since…

  Since before the phone call.

  He’d heard her scream, cry out, beg, but he hadn’t heard her in so long. Her normal, day-to-day voice.

  He was hearing it now.

  Whatever was affecting Julie was causing her to be completely collected, at ease. She felt no strife, no pain, and she had no care in the world for the four men — four friends — standing by at gunpoint.

  Whatever agent had affected Julie then was affecting Victoria now. And Ben knew it didn’t end there. He fought to make sense of the drug, to recall what he knew about it.

  “Ms. Richardson, please take this weapon.”

  Julie reached up and took the weapon.

  “Ms. Richardson, you know how to handle this weapon, correct?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  “Good.”

  The Hawk walked forward a few paces, toward Ben’s wall.

  “Ms. Richardson, please follow me.

  Julie stood up and trailed behind The Hawk. When Garza had reached the side of the gym Ben was standing on, he stopped. He moved sideways over to the soldier standing in front of Joshua, then stopped again. Julie followed, now standing next to Garza.

  “Ms. Richardson, who is this man?”

  “Joshua Jefferson.”

  “And do you know him well.”

  “Reasonably well. We’re friends.”

  “I see. And how long have you know Mr. Jefferson?”

  Julie thought for a moment. “Probably six, seven months.”

  “And do you like this man?”

  She nodded. “I like him. He’s a good friend, and a good leader.”

  His heart sank.

  Ben didn’t want to remember the rest of it. The nightmare that had turned out to be very real. It had ended in the worst way possible.

  His mind, however, had other plans.

  “Ms. Richardson, please shoot Joshua Jefferson in the head.”

  Julie immediately complied, her arm coming up quickly. She aimed, and Ben saw Reggie lurch forward, catching his soldier off guard. Julie was now behind Reggie and the soldier, and Ben couldn’t see her or Joshua.

  But he heard the gunshot.

  46

  Ben

  Ben shuddered. The nightmare was there, forever lodged in his subconscious, ready to make an appearance just when he thought he was safe. He was a man accustomed to torment, to personal demons and dark pasts, but he had worked hard — for a long time — to compress those demons into a finite space within a dark corner of his mind.

  In his inability to purge them completely, Ben had created a prison-like vault for them. A place they could live and exist and occupy nothing dangerous, but he insisted on controlling their access to the rest of his mind.

  His system was, clearly, not perfect.

  Julie stepped forward. “Ben,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  He swallowed, a hard lump that took longer than normal to go down. He felt like he wanted to cry, but he sniffed in a sharp smack of air and looked down into her eyes. Whatever dem
ons I’m facing, she’s facing them even more.

  She had pulled the trigger.

  “Ben, he drugged me,” Julie said. “And I think he did the same thing to Victoria. To his own daughter.”

  Reggie nodded. “He’s been testing it. Ever since we stumbled into his gymnasium lab in Philly. He’s been perfecting it.”

  “And those Exo things,” Ben said. “Remember how we didn’t even know there were people inside of them until they started moving?”

  “They were in a trance,” Mrs. E said. “This ‘zombie’ state you mention, it seems to be medically induced, as you say, but how then is Garza controlling them?”

  “It’s not pure scopolamine,” Reggie said. “Unlike that, which is an antiemetic in smaller doses and simply knocks you unconscious in larger quantities, Garza’s figured out some other chemical or chemicals to combine with it. In Philly it was just the borrachero, which is the plant scopolamine comes from. It’s native to Peru, but I’m thinking that what he’s been extracting isn’t just the borrachero.”

  “Definitely not,” Julie said. “And it’s absolutely been run through his labs. Nothing in nature can cause that sort of stupor and then be used to ply someone to do what you want.”

  “And only what he wants,” Ben said. “She wouldn’t listen to us.”

  “That’s true,” Reggie said. “And that’s a big deal. There’s something deeper going on with it for it to be ‘activated,’ or whatever is happening, by just Garza’s voice.”

  “Is it his voice?”

  Reggie pondered it for a moment. “No idea. I just can’t think of what else it could be. I mean that’s the only thing unique to Garza, right? None of us sound like him.”

  Ben shook his head. “But to create a designer drug that responds to that exact timber and vocal frequency? Reggie, you and I have a deep enough voice that it would fool that drug into thinking we’re Garza, at least a bit. It should have confused Victoria somewhat.”

  Reggie nodded. “Yeah, true. Still, it’s weird. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Weird is an understatement. We need to keep our eyes up. Since he brought us here, he probably doesn’t just want to kill us or he’d have done it already. That means there’s a good chance we’re next in line to be his mind control guinea pigs.”

  “Sounds fun,” Reggie said, waving his prosthetic arm in the air. “I’ve actually benefited from his experiments in the past…”

  Julie shot him an ugly glance. “Not funny.”

  Reggie shrugged. “A little funny. Anyway, what’s the plan now? I have a feeling we’re not going to have much time before —”

  The giant metal scraping sound returned, and all four of the team members were silenced.

  “They’re here,” Reggie said. He stepped backwards, disappearing into the shadows next to the door. Ben and Julie closed in next to one another, Ben putting his arm around his new wife. Each of them were holding their rifles, but there seemed to be a shared understanding that they wouldn’t attack the intruders.

  It could be Victoria, Ben thought. Maybe the injection wore off, and she’s coming to help us.

  He didn’t voice this to Julie, but he could almost sense that she felt the same way. Julie’s breaths were steady, slow and even. She was focused. Nervous, but expectant. He hoped it would prove fruitful — that he was right about it being Victoria on the other side of the door.

  He was wrong.

  Two Ravenshadow men appeared in the doorway, both holding nasty-looking modern assault rifles, some kind Ben didn’t recognize. They had attached flashlights, and the wash from the lights pierced through Ben’s eyes, blinding him.

  He immediately threw his hands in the air, allowing his assault rifle to fall by his side, still harnessed over his shoulder. It swung back, out the way. Julie did the same, and the first of the men entered the room.

  “Get on the ground!” he shouted.

  The second man stood in the doorway, but Ben saw that his eyes were on Reggie. The two soldiers were locked in a silent fight, neither wanting to make the first move for fear of getting their partners killed. Reggie finally gave in and put his arms up, too.

  Ben and Julie slowly retreated to their knees, their hands still in the air. Ben could feel the cold, unforgiving stone floor through his pant legs. His knees were already sore, and he hoped the Ravenshadow soldiers would make quick work of whatever it was they had been ordered to do.

  “Remove your weapon,” the man said. His rifle’s barrel was pointed directly at Ben’s face. Ben knew he wasn’t going to shoot him, but it was still a bit unnerving. He slowly began working the strap of his rifle up and over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the standoff between Reggie and the soldier in the doorway. He wondered if his best friend had any tricks up his sleeve.

  They had been in the middle of discussing a possible plan when the Ravenshadow men barged in, so Ben wasn’t entirely sure where Reggie thought they had left things. He knew Reggie wasn’t the type of man to just wait around for Ben’s orders, but Ben also knew he wouldn’t risk the lives of his friends.

  As it turned out, Reggie didn’t need a plan at all. Before Ben knew what was happening, he heard a low-pitched growl emanating from the space behind the door, in the far corner of the room. A massive shadow lurched and crawled over the ceiling, followed by an even darker, more ominous shape.

  Mrs. E.

  47

  Edmund

  An hour earlier, he had returned from his walk, stopped in at the hotel’s business center, and logged into his Vatican email account. He had never been great with computers, but even he surprised himself with the speed with which he was able to connect. I must be getting younger, he thought, coyly.

  When he saw the email — return address somehow obfuscated into an unrecognizable sender — he had nearly gasped out loud. He had no doubt the email had been sent from the company that was brokering the deal between St. Clair and the Orland Group.

  It was written in English, but English was a language he had much practice with. It took him mere seconds longer to read the note than it would have had it been written in his native Spanish.

  Father Canisius, we appreciate your willingness to jump through so many hoops, and for the same reason I must apologize. You have no doubt grasped the delicacy of the situation, if not the full reasons for it. I assure you, however, keeping these matters and our dealings out of sight of the public eye are of the utmost importance to all parties involved.

  I hope you will grant me one final request in this transaction. I understand you have been meeting with Ms. St. Clair, and she tells me you are prepared to finalize the deal and get home. I must ask that this final phase be conducted in person, yet out of sight of prying eyes.

  Canisius was not terribly excited about the proposition of meeting the seller and the broker in person, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Throughout his years working for the Vatican, he had been privy to many deals like this one — deals that the Church felt would come across as a bit unsavory to the general public. He knew the Church had worldly needs as well as anyone, and therefore he had signed off on meeting requests that would begin the acquisition process for weaponry for Vatican police officers and the Swiss Guard that operated in their precinct.

  In another unlikely purchase, the Vatican had purchased a telescope at the observatory on Mount Graham, in Arizona. While no one doubted the Church’s interest in the study of heaven and the celestial bodies in it, this was the same church that persecuted and executed people for their belief that the stars were, in fact, other suns.

  So Canisius’ feelings of his time in Peru had been one of muted acceptance. He didn’t want to be here, but he was finally understanding why he was. This deal was one that would mark the beginning of a new era for the Vatican, and one that would push the Vatican back into relevance. He had hoped and prayed for that very thing for most of his nearly seventy years of life.

  If his superiors back home wanted
him to be here, he decided he needed to be here. He was done second-guessing them. If the deal was to be conducted with the utmost secrecy, for whatever reason, then all the better they had chosen him. He was a well-known cardinal, but he was a professional, and he was not swayed by politics or press.

  He was about to log off when he noticed that another email had hit his account a while earlier. He frowned as he read the sender’s name.

  Brother Archibald Quinones.

  He did not recognize the name, but then again just because he was a Jesuit did not mean he should know every one of the other 16,000 Jesuits in their order.

  He did not receive any mail from the general public, as his email address was strictly for work only, and he had never shared the address with anyone else. Still, it did not seem like a fake sender, or a junk message. He opened the email.

  Father Canisius, I have been trying to reach you for some time, the email began. Canisius settled back into the chair in the hotel’s business center. He continued reading.

  My name is Archibald Quinones, and I work with an American group you may have heard of called the Civilian Special Operations.

  Canisius nearly jumped. The CSO? he thought. The same group that illegally infiltrated the Vatican earlier this year and nearly cost us a fortune in security reassignments?

  The email was short, to the point: Quinones wanted Canisius to call him, as soon as he got the email. The man had left a phone number and told Canisius that he, too, was in Peru, though he did not specify where.

  Canisius knew there was a payphone nearby, but he wasn’t sure he had any coins, and certainly not any in Peruvian denominations. Besides, he wasn’t even sure payphones were connected to anything anymore — they might be standing around as some sort of nostalgic decoration; he’d seen stranger avant garde art exhibits back in Rome.

  He wrote down the phone number on an index card he found in a stack next to the computer station, and then he returned to the front desk, where he tracked down the concierge and asked what he thought was a simple question.