The Dark Side of Angels

by Steve Hadden

  “The daughter. That’s it. Coordinate with Seattle. Ask them to provide twenty-four-hour surveillance on the lab and get Emily Covington in custody. And get a National Crime Information Center bulletin out on Sienna Fuller.”

  The agent heading the ops center entered the room out of breath. “Kern County sheriff just reported shots fired near the Alta Sierra Ski Area. Heavy snow is hindering their investigation, but a vehicle found in the garage of the cabin involved is registered to Sienna Fuller.”

  “Any victims?”

  “No, sir.”

  Reed knew this meant one thing: Covington probably escaped and was still alive, but she wouldn’t be for long if he didn’t find her. He turned to Connelly. “We’re going to Washington.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Kayla sighed, leaned back in the driver’s seat, and welcomed the wet pavement. After driving in the oncoming lane all the way down the mountain back through Wofford Heights, her nerves were frayed. But the maneuver followed the tire tracks of a vehicle that had ascended since the snow had fallen, leaving the downhill lane unmarked. They’d all agreed that driving in the right lane and leaving tire tracks in the virgin snow would signal their route to authorities and the assassins.

  This route wasn’t Kayla’s first choice. She now measured her life in hours not days, and running out of time was the one thing that would kill her for certain. But the shortest route, into Bakersfield and then up Highway 99, would have thinner traffic and a greater likelihood of being spotted. On Sienna’s suggestion, they’d head over to Interstate 5 and hide among the masses headed north. And while it added an hour to the trip to Seattle, it improved her odds of avoiding capture. Sienna had switched places with Harrison and was still pecking away at her tablet in the backseat.

  Kayla eyed her in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure we can’t drop you in Bakersfield? You don’t have to be a part of this. You can tell them we kidnapped you.”

  Sienna didn’t even look up. “No. If I lie about this and someone finds out, it will throw shade on everything I’ve done. Besides that, I have more questions. I can best help us all by staying with you. Keep it one hundred, you know.”

  Kayla glanced at Harrison and shrugged.

  Harrison nodded.

  “What do you mean by help us all?” Kayla asked.

  “When this story gets published, I’m sure sentiment toward you will shift. At least with law enforcement. Maybe even some of your critics. That would help you. They can’t deny that someone else is involved.”

  “I want to be clear,” Kayla said. “My most important goal here is to preserve my work.”

  “In order to do that, you have to survive. And based on what you told me, in order to survive you either have to find who’s behind this and get the treatment back or re-create it in just a few days. I can help you find out who’s behind this and get the FBI focused on the same thing.”

  “You can send that from here without them finding us?” Harrison said.

  “Yes. I have a cellular connection to the paper’s network. It’s secure. No one can trace it. The paper would never cooperate with a subpoena to get the SIM card.”

  Kayla glanced in the mirror and saw Sienna look up. “What’s in the article?” Kayla asked.

  “I’m sending them a few tweets and a feature article about this whole mess. You, what you were working on. The assassins.”

  Kayla had wanted this all along. But after hearing it out loud, she wasn’t so sure. “If you tell everyone what I was working on, it will start a riot.”

  “They’re already rioting.” Sienna passed the tablet to Harrison. He held it up for Kayla. The article was from the Union-Tribune. The headline read, Human gene-editing protests erupt. The photo was of a rancorous mob in front of a UCSD lab. Kayla snapped her attention back to the dark road as it dove down into the Kern River canyon. Harrison handed the tablet back to Sienna. Kayla saw her drop her head again and continue to type.

  Kayla kept her attention on the road, but one thought had been nagging her all the way down the mountain. She eyed the rearview mirror again, then leaned toward Harrison and quietly said, “That assassin could have killed me back there. Why didn’t she fire?”

  “You said you surprised her. But I agree. She’d be expecting that. Are you sure you hit her?” he said.

  “Yes. She dropped immediately.”

  “You still think you killed her?”

  “I’m not sure. She dropped to the ground.” Kayla glanced at Harrison. “But why didn’t she fire?”

  “I can only think of one reason.”

  “Me, too. She wanted me alive.” A chill blew through her.

  Sienna stopped typing. “Do you think they want you for your expertise?”

  “I think so.”

  “So that means they want to make more. Or modify it in some way. If they just wanted to stop the development, they’d just kill you.”

  Sienna’s frankness sent a shudder through Kayla. Kayla gave a troubled look to Harrison, who reached across and gently squeezed her shoulder.

  “The question is who’s after you and why,” Sienna said.

  “Harrison and I ruled out the US government. And they’re well equipped. That means it’s someone who wants to control this technology. Either to end it or use it.”

  “Sounds like some well-funded non-GMO radical, a foreign government or a terrorist organization,” Sienna said.

  Kayla didn’t like that cast.

  “Oh, wait,” Sienna said. “It could be someone who has a grudge against you, Dr. Covington. Anyone you can think of who would fall into that category?”

  “I can’t think of anyone who’d want to do this,” Kayla said.

  Harrison added, “There’s probably a few jealous scientists who didn’t get the credit Kayla did, but no one who would have the resources or the mentality to kill all those people.”

  “Can I ask you a few questions, Kayla?”

  Kayla eyed Harrison, who nodded again. The two-lane road wound down the canyon. There was no traffic. Kayla wanted it to stay that way all the way until Bakersfield. Once there, she’d need some traffic to help screen them from any astute sheriff’s deputy or patrolman. She guessed they were fifteen minutes from the valley floor and prying eyes. She pulled up her hood. “Okay.”

  “Tell me about your family?”

  “My father is a retired programmer. My mother was a high school math teacher.”

  “I already know everyone’s background. Tell me about your relationships with them.”

  “My father and I are close. Been that way all my life. Especially after Mom died. When I was in eighth grade, he and my mom convinced me that a girl could make a living in biology. I owe him everything.”

  “Sorry about your Mom.”

  “Thank you. It was a long time ago.”

  “What about your ex-husband, Jenson Covington?”

  A calculated, concentrated hate boiled in her stomach at the mention of his name. She checked Harrison, who’d either ignored the question or was concentrating on the road ahead.

  “Dipshit.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite get that.”

  “I refuse to speak his name. After what he did to me and the kids, I refer to him as Dipshit or not at all.” Kayla detected a grin sprouting on Harrison’s face.

  “What did he do?”

  “He destroyed my family and my relationship with my daughter.”

  “Was it because of your son?”

  Kayla slammed the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “You’d better drive,” she said to Harrison. She got out and they switched places.

  Harrison pulled back onto the road.

  Kayla looked over the seat at Sienna. “My son had nothing to do with it. He was only an excuse. Dipshit used Joshua’s illness and then his death to poison my relationship with my daughter. He was an average molecular biologist who didn’t like having a wife who was a better researcher. He blamed me for our son’s death.”

&n
bsp; “What happened with your son?”

  The bittersweet heaviness of love and guilt swamped her again, and Kayla took a moment to gather herself. “Joshua had glioblastoma. It’s fatal, as you probably know. He was given eighteen months at the outside.” Sienna frowned and lowered her gaze, while Kayla continued. “No mother can stand to watch her child die. It’s just not supposed to happen that way. And this was in slow motion. It’s a cruel irony that I was already doing work on immunotherapy oncology treatments, and as soon as he was diagnosed, I pivoted my work to focus on glioblastoma. I got accelerated approval for the treatment from the FDA in eight months based on the fact that we could shrink the tumors. I got Joshua into phase four confirmatory trials. Any good mother would have done the same thing. I had a chance to keep my son from dying. Maybe a month longer, maybe years. But even one more hour with him would have been worth it. Of the forty-four people in the trial, thirty-eight had a reduction in the tumor, and some of those are still alive today, after ten years.” Kayla felt tears roll down her cheeks. “Two had no change.” She wiped her cheeks with her hands. “And two died. One of them was my son.” She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled some of the pain. “We determined it was a toxic immune response.” Sienna was quiet, and Kayla could hear the hum of the tires on the pavement. “He died five months earlier than his prognosis.”

  Kayla heard Sienna sniffle. “I’m so sorry.”

  Kayla turned to the backseat. Sienna’s cheeks were wet and she’d stopped taking notes. Kayla gave her a gentle smile, then noticed the glaze over Harrison’s eyes. She refocused on the darkness ahead. “And my husband told everyone, including my daughter, that I killed my son. We were divorced three months later.”

  “What about your daughter, Emily?”

  “You remind me a little of her. She’s about your age. She’s a molecular biologist with her own lab in Seattle.” Kayla didn’t tell Sienna that Emily built a moat of independence around her and that she had the same sense about Sienna.

  “What’s your relationship like now?”

  “It doesn’t exist. A relationship isn’t a relationship if it’s only one-way. I still send her letters after all these years. I get nothing back. But I imagine her going to her mailbox and shuffling through her mail and stopping on my letter. I think she knows I still love her and always will.”

  “She never answered.”

  “Not one.”

  “Okay, ladies, stay low,” Harrison said. “We’re entering the edge of town.”

  Kayla saw the light ahead and heard Sienna slide down. She did the same.

  “Kayla? One more question.”

  Kayla kept low, level with the glove box. “What is it?”

  “Why are we going to Washington?”

  Kayla suddenly felt her life counting down with every heartbeat. “To save my life.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Artemis rubbed the bruise below her collarbone and enjoyed the pain. The vest had done its job. It had also kept her one hundred million-dollar meal ticket alive. While she hated being shot, especially by an amateur, the pain fed her hunger for vengeance. Her contingency plan had more moving parts and exponentially increased the risk, but it would inflict the type of pain that someone like Covington would find intolerable.

  She sat in the leather captain’s chair of the rented Citation X jet that was the first step in her plan. The three team members already in Seattle were the second. Forrest napped next to her, just across the aisle. The Airshow display on the bulkhead showed them halfway to Seattle already. Light turbulence rattled the jet and Forrest stirred.

  “Two hours out?” he said.

  “Yes. You were out for ninety minutes.”

  Forrest’s expression hardened and Artemis knew what was coming.

  “This is getting risky. We should think about just killing her and taking the lower offer. Live to fight another day.”

  Normally, Artemis would handle such protest with a bullet. But the part of herself she hated the most, the part that cared for Forrest, was strong. “I have this under control.”

  “That bitch could have gotten lucky and shot you in the face.”

  “I wouldn’t have let her raise her weapon that high.”

  Forrest shook his head. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’d have killed her and this would have been over. We’d be on our way to the islands.”

  “With only enough to live well between jobs. This is about getting out. For good. That’s what the hundred million gets us.”

  “It’s no good if one or both of us are dead or in Leavenworth.”

  “Won’t happen. This angle is better. She’ll come to us.”

  Forrest shifted in his seat and Artemis wondered when he’d get to what was really pissing him off.

  “You know that I’m with you either way, but helping the MSS doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “I don’t focus on the technology and what the Chinese will use it for. I just focus on the mission and our retirement. I want out. I’ve done this long enough to know that if we don’t get out soon, we’ll end up in body bags. Seen it again and again. And besides, remember the US government assholes killed our entire team. Then they left you out there to die.”

  “Copy that. I …” Forrest reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and read it. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “The FBI found DNA back at the boat shop.”

  “What? Do they have a match?”

  “Matched it to our mission in Paris.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Don’t know. But it’s only a matter of time. We’re domestic terrorists. And Paris was on the books. CIA will cave and AFDIL will give them access to their database.”

  Artemis knew Forrest was right. They’d both given DNA samples when they enlisted, and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory’s privacy protocol would be breached in the name of national security. “This moves up our timetable.”

  “No. This makes my point. They ID one of us and we’re done. I’ll call and have the team stand down. Meet us at the airport and we’ll set the trap for Covington. We know what she’s driving. We can ID her and take her out. Quit screwing around with her.”

  Artemis faced Forrest and stared. But she couldn’t flush her feelings for him. They’d been together long enough that he could read her mind.

  His face softened. “I’ve seen that look before, and usually someone gets killed.” He looked away out the window. “I got it. We’ll go on with the plan.” He turned back to Artemis. “But the FBI and the CIA are lit up. This thing is getting very public. It’s not going to be easy.”

  Artemis erased the thought of having to kill Forrest. “Get word to the team to execute the plan now.”

  Forrest typed into his phone, then paused. “Do me a favor. If we get trapped, I’m not going to Leavenworth.”

  He didn’t have to finish the request. They’d both talked about it before. They shared a smile, and for the first time since she’d enlisted, she felt a pang of sadness when she imagined putting two slugs in the back of his head.

  CHAPTER 49

  The SZENSOR headquarters was quiet, but as Neville read Sienna Fuller’s article, that silence turned into emptiness. With each word Neville read he felt part of the life he’d built crumble. He paused and stared out his office window toward the Seattle skyline framed by the jagged profile of the Olympic Mountains in the distance. It was just after nine on Sunday morning, and as the late winter sunrise arrived, the streets on the edge of Bellevue were deserted.

  To the right, he could see Medina. It had all started there for him, under the watchful eyes of his mother. She’d kept him safe and loved. She’d ignored the social awkwardness that had forced him into her arms again. After four years of homeschooling throughout high school, she’d given him her knowledge of the sciences tempered by strong Christian values. He’d leveraged that into SZENSOR and its forty-story headquarters and his thirty billion dollars in personal wealth
. After she died, he’d met Charlotte and grew their business and their family. Now a young reporter was taking a wrecking ball to it all.

  He read the rest of the featured article on the San Diego Union-Tribune website. Sienna Fuller had told the world about the technology that could relieve them of the pain of aging and the cancers and other diseases it triggered. She’d declared Covington’s innocence and revealed the involvement of a team of assassins who were responsible for the attack on her lab and the killings. But the most disturbing revelation was the fact that Covington had been forced to inject herself—and the treatment was working. That fact would crush the nationwide protests he’d so carefully orchestrated. Supporters would outnumber his protesters by at least four to one and his work to save the human germline would evaporate.

  The data they’d hacked provided one silver lining. The treatment needed to be stopped within five days or Covington could die. And if she didn’t have the second treatment, she’d be gone by next Tuesday. But this morning the disapproving look on Charlotte’s face said she knew. She knew he’d kept something from her. She didn’t say a word when he left for the office, but she didn’t have to. Neville was certain she’d be in soon.

  Max Wagner appeared in the doorway and Neville waved him inside.

  “Did you read it all?” Neville asked.

  “I did.”

  “How bad is it out there?”

  “It’s pretty damaging. I called the team and asked them to ramp up the social media attacks on the treatment and the government’s position. We should rally the anti-GMOers, but it won’t be enough. Hell, I want to try the stuff if it works.”

  “When are we getting it?” Neville asked.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “At this point it won’t matter. Charlotte already knows I’m keeping something from her.”

  “My contact has gone radio silent. Nothing.”

  Neville sank into a quicksand of doubt and worry. “What the hell is going on?”