Blood Victory: A Burning Girl Thriller (The Burning Girl)

by Christopher Rice

  27

  Lebanon, Kansas

  Charley and Luke haven’t said more than a few words for a while now, and the audio feed from the Black Hawk trying to catch up with them is a bore, so Cole removes his earpiece, stretches his neck from one side to the other. Tries for a deep breath that ends up sounding like a growl.

  Are there yoga poses recommended for someone whose business venture is coming apart? He should really look that up before they do this again.

  If they ever do this again.

  His tablet’s split between two feeds. On the right, he’s got a view from the chopper’s nose cam as it fires through night darkness in pursuit of Charley and Luke. On the left, the feed from inside Mattingly’s truck. He’s amazed by Charley’s apparent calm, unsurprised by Luke’s loyalty, and, though he hates to admit it, envious of the simple bond between them.

  If he minimizes both screens, he can watch the digital map tracking the Black Hawk’s flight path and the ground path of Mattingly’s commandeered truck. But the map’s misleading. On-screen, the distance between the two flashing points seems deceptively small.

  In the bottom right corner of the map, a constantly fluctuating number provides Cole with more uncertainty than enlightenment. Using speed readings from the Black Hawk and Mattingly’s truck, the figure gives him an estimate of how long it will take the chopper to catch up with Charley and Luke. But it doesn’t factor in the drop-off of two men at the sight of the abandoned SUV and the paradrenaline vials within. Cole assured the pilot before he left that even though they had new orders and more distance to travel, retrieving the vials was paramount and he should take as much time as he and his crew needed to safely land and take off in the unfamiliar field in which they’d been left. In short, he’d tried to buy Charley and Luke as much additional time as possible without making his business partners even more suspicious.

  On the opposite side of the screen and at the top is the time remaining in Charley’s trigger window, a bright-red number counting down like a stopwatch.

  0:58:32.

  Remote dosing her shouldn’t be an issue. He can justify it later—if there is a later—by saying she was too valuable as a test subject to face down whoever these monsters were with just a gun in hand. And the only one who might realize he’s dosed her in the moment is Julia, since her team’s been given access to the network so they can monitor Bailey.

  So there’s nothing he can do for the time being. He’s dealt with every factor he can.

  With one minor exception.

  He’s alone in the main house’s ground-floor kitchen, feeling as out of place as all the shiny, untouched implements and utensils. There’s a coffee maker that still looks brand new because it’s never been used. The drawers, he knows, are full of untouched flatware. There’s even a framed photograph hanging beside the window above the sink—a sepia-toned black-and-white shot of open prairie that by day roughly mirrors the view. The window’s even got curtains. Hunter green with a gold stripe along the bottom. Plain, tasteful. The kind a semicloseted gay guy would buy for his dorm room and say his mom picked out. There’s a veritable commissary attached to the bunker below that’s actually designed to feed everyone on staff. This kitchen is just for show.

  Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure why they went to such trouble to create a false ground floor for the house. It’s not like he has meetings with civilians here, and the chance of someone wandering in by mistake is almost nil. Electrified fencing blanketed by motion-activated security cameras rings the entire property, and armed guards walk the perimeter twenty-four hours a day.

  As long as I can afford them, they do.

  If Stephen and Philip pull out, he might be forced to secure this place by locking the front door and pulling some furniture over the basement entrance to the bunker.

  He could kill time just as easily belowground, but there’s a task waiting up here. And even though he’s near to it, he’s avoided it now for just a little too long.

  The guards flanking the door to Noah’s room straighten as he approaches. He waves his hand and they part.

  Inside, Noah’s seated on the bed, back resting vertically against a mountain he’s made of the pillows, his elbows resting on his bent knees, staring into space with an expression somewhere between defiant and exhausted. He’s changed into a pair of heather-gray pajama pants and a V-neck white T-shirt. The outfit’s designed to send a message, Cole’s sure. I don’t expect to be let out of this room anytime soon, so enjoy trying not to look at the outline of my ball sack while you discipline me.

  Noah’s eyes track Cole’s every movement as he takes a seat in the chair across from the bed, but Noah doesn’t move a muscle otherwise. For a long time, neither man says anything, and after a while the sounds of their intermittent breathing starts to annoy Cole.

  “I’m not a coward,” he finally says.

  “Have they caught her yet?”

  “No.”

  “What happens when they do?”

  “I’m not a coward, Noah. A coward never would have gone to first base with you.”

  “First base. You mean, like, kissing?”

  “That’s not the part of our relationship I meant.”

  “Which part did you mean?”

  “The mad scientist part.”

  “Don’t confuse angry with insane. Not right now.”

  “Sane people throw chairs. Got it.”

  “I apologize for letting my outburst get physical,” Noah says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Now tell me what happens when they catch her.”

  “Both teams are mine; they answer to me. They have orders to assist her and then bring her back. That way I can give her what she wants and make The Consortium think I actually reacted to her going rogue.”

  “I’m talking about after.”

  “There’re some things I haven’t told you.”

  “Of course there are.”

  “Oh, what does that mean? Like you’re so transparent?”

  “Six months. Six months, Cole. I’ve worked in your lab for half a year now under constant surveillance, cut off from the world. This is the first time I’ve left, and I didn’t request the trip. I have been the best little boy at Graydon Pharmaceuticals, and the whole time you still haven’t given me access to a single vial of stable paradrenaline.”

  “Kelley Chen and her lab are doing good work on the paradrenaline studies.”

  “Obviously not or there’d be progress.”

  “We’ve manufactured a poison. A very effective one.”

  Noah is startled silent by this update. Truth be told, it’s not really an update. The news is a little over half a year old; he just hasn’t told Noah about it until now, partly because Noah was on probation for a big chunk of that time, but largely because, in Cole’s opinion, it’s never been very good news. Noah wasn’t expecting it, that’s clear.

  “A poison?” he asks.

  “We used a paradrenaline sample to wipe out cancer cells. The catch was, the cancer returned a short while later. A supercharged version of it that could kill tissue samples within minutes. Paradrenaline plus cancer equals instant death, apparently. Congratulations. It’s our first success, other than, you know, Charlotte. Stephen’s thrilled.”

  Although, given his current behavior, you’d have trouble telling.

  Noah’s stunned expression contorts into a grimace.

  “A poison,” he whispers, as if it’s a dirty word.

  “It’s not what we were shooting for initially, but it’s something.”

  “Well, give me back my breakthrough and I’ll give you a lot more than something.”

  “It’s not a breakthrough.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Electricity was not a breakthrough until they figured out how to use it without setting the world on fire. You made a drug that works in one person, Noah. One. And the by-product is not exactly rolling out the way we thought it would.”

  “It work
s. That was the breakthrough. I’ll give you more when you stop punishing me.”

  “This was supposed to be the beginning of that.”

  “Oh, I see. And now that I threw a chair the sanctions are going to stay in place?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “There’s a lot you haven’t said, apparently.”

  “Because I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”

  “What’s it going to take?”

  “Calling me a coward in front of my staff isn’t a good start.”

  “Don’t be petty.”

  “OK. Then maybe it’s because you almost killed Charlotte Rowe.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. No. Uh-huh. No way.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I’m not relitigating Arizona. Put me on a plane. Throw me in a cell again. I don’t give a shit. Enough, already. You’ve made far more questionable calls than I did with her. And we both know good and well you’re not still pissed because of what I did to Charlotte at that wellness center. You’re pissed about what I did before. To you.”

  “Enlighten me, then.”

  “I left.”

  “I stopped giving what you wanted, you stopped sleeping with me.”

  “I left you.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He’s fully prepared for Noah to sneer, to turn away, to do any manner of things that would suggest he finds Cole’s resentment tedious and pedestrian and beneath the worthy glare of his attention. But Noah stares into his eyes with an intensity that shortens Cole’s breath.

  “See, that’s just it, Cole. That’s where we’re different.”

  “How?”

  “You drew this big separation between what we did in the bedroom and what we were doing in the lab. But for me, it was all one and the same. It was ours. It was us. And when you shut down the project without a word of warning, you dropped an ax on all of it. On me. I had to find out from the security director because I requested a flight to a lab that wasn’t operational anymore. And then, when I saw you again, you treated me like I’d jilted you at prom, when you were the one who took our dream and shattered it into a million pieces. I wasn’t your high school boyfriend. I was the man you were going to change the world with.”

  “You showed up out of nowhere after years demanding I throw together the funding for this on a moment’s notice. I wasn’t treating you like an ex-boyfriend.”

  “What, then?”

  “I was treating you like a whore because you were acting like one.”

  “I didn’t offer to fuck you again. I offered you Charlotte Rowe.”

  “She wasn’t yours to give.”

  “Apparently she was because here we all are. And I’ve slept with your whores. With you. And they give you a fraction of what I can.”

  Maybe it’s the wording, but Cole can’t control his laughter. Noah looks away quickly, turns his back to Cole as he swings his legs to the floor and moves to the side of the bed. Is he trying to hide anger or amusement? Cole’s not sure. Then he sees Noah’s back is shaking, and he realizes the man’s laughing as well. Maybe it’s the hypocritical judgment in the word whore. As if either of them has the right to judge the world’s oldest profession given how many people they’ve killed.

  After a while, he says, “I’m not a whore.”

  “Sex worker is the more appropriate term.”

  “I’m not that, either.”

  “And I’m not a coward,” Cole says. “I didn’t build this place because I’m a coward.”

  “OK. That’s a fair trade, I guess.”

  “I’m glad you agree.”

  As the anger leaves the room, it unveils softer, more frightening emotions Cole fears he won’t be able to control.

  “Charley’s always said that if you’d told her what Zypraxon could really do, she would have let you test it on her.”

  “So we are going to relitigate Arizona?”

  “No. I just . . . Bear with me, I’m headed somewhere with this.”

  “Charley’s wrong.”

  “You think she’s lying?”

  “No, I just think she’s wrong. No one can know how they would have reacted after the fact.”

  “Guess there’s no point in asking, then.”

  “Asking what?” Noah asks.

  Cole has stared down killers, made decisions that have cost lives. But in this moment, he’s beset by a fear and anxiety so total he can feel sweat along his spine and a deep chill in his bones. Noah’s intense stare worsens both sensations.

  “If I’d discussed it with you first, shutting down our first go at this, I mean, would you have stayed?”

  When the silence between them becomes too long for Cole to bear, he says, “I get it. No one can know how they would have reacted after the fact.”

  “Something like that,” Noah says quietly.

  It’s not the answer to the question that fills Cole with shame; it’s that he had to ask it in the first place. And that, he realizes, is the real curse of having spent time in Noah’s arms. For years, he’d convinced himself he was above all the conventional models of relationships that bedeviled straight people. Told himself that being gay liberated him from the expectation to marry, to raise kids, to compromise his professional obligations to a biological clock. But the truth was darker and more painful, and until Noah he’d been able to ignore it. Deep down, he’d convinced himself that what happened to him as a boy had so damaged him he was incapable of needing someone in a romantic sense. That sex for him could never connect to intimacy, only transitory pleasure. Then along came Noah, and when he realized there was a man in the world who could fuse both things for him, Cole was afflicted by the terrible realization that he’s capable not just of needing someone, but of hungering for them. Obsessing about them.

  He’d reacted by searching for a dozen ways to blame Noah for the effects he had on him. To depict Noah as a drug and he the hapless addict. He leaped on the man’s every flaw as if it were an epic moral failing and in the process became such a shrieking hypocrite, someone with the fragile people skills of Bailey Prescott had ended up calling him on it.

  In the end, it all feels like yet another reason to avoid romantic entanglements altogether.

  But that’s easier to do when he’s got Noah confined to an island half a world away.

  “You were going to tell me something, something you hadn’t told me before.” Noah’s studying him, maybe the way he studied Charlotte back when he was pretending to be her therapist. “Is it about the boys?” he asks. Cole is genuinely confused, and it must be showing on his face because Noah adds, “The last thing you said to Charley. About your father. How he forgave some boys who did something to you when you were young. I thought maybe . . .”

  Cole’s face is hot, and he’s afraid his cheeks just turned a telling shade of red. It’s not the memory that’s doing it but the idea that Noah would invite him to share that secret with him, that Noah believes they’re capable of sharing secrets from which they can’t reap scientific glory or a massive financial reward.

  “I know where they’re going,” Cole says. “I’ve known for months. I’ve got a secret ground team waiting for them. Nobody knows about it except for Bailey and my security director.”

  “That’s good.” A new light is coming into Noah’s eyes. “This is good, Cole.”

  “I’m glad you’re impressed.”

  “You have an address?”

  “A town, but it’s not a very big one. Amarillo, Texas. They’re headed in that direction now, so it looks like we were right.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “A letter we intercepted. In a manner of speaking. Surveillance cams caught Mattingly opening it, and we were able to zoom in and screen cap it. He tore it up a few minutes later, but he wasn’t as thorough with the envelope. We pulled the pieces, and we were able to put the postmark together. We were already taking the mail out of his trash every day. This was the first thing he tried to destroy.”

/>   Approval emanates from Noah, and even though Cole is trying with all his might to ignore it, he’s savoring it.

  “And why’d you keep it a secret?” he asks.

  “I think The Consortium’s conspiring against me. Maybe not Julia. I wasn’t sure about her until tonight. But I think Stephen and Philip are in cahoots, and I think tonight was about forcing Charley to defy them so they’d have pretext to confine her in a lab and end the field operations.”

  “That’s why you wanted me to see the second call,” he says.

  Cole nods. “Everything changed after paradron.”

  “The poison?”

  “I gave it to Stephen. It’s his now. Since then, I think he’s lost his taste for the rest of this.”

  “You just gave it to him?”

  “That’s how The Consortium works, Noah. A breakthrough becomes the property of whoever’s business relates to that specific area. Stephen’s in weapons, so he gets poisons. It’s the only way to justify all of us contributing substantially to the funding.”

  “Fine, but I’m having trouble believing Stephen would suddenly need to start messing with everything just because you guys made one little poison. There’s a huge potential here for everyone if we all keep working, and if he’s trying to dial this down, there’s got to be some bigger agenda at work. And what about the killers? We don’t get any more to study if Charley stops going after them.”

  “Maybe he thinks we have enough.”

  “We have two. That’s not enough of a sample for anything.”

  “I’m just saying, since we gave him paradron, he’s been a nightmare. Nothing’s right. Nothing’s safe enough. He wants nine planning meetings about every move, and he doesn’t spend them giving any actual ideas, just picking stuff apart. It’s like he’s done.”

  “Done with what, though?” Noah asks.

  “Operations like this.”

  “It’s his first one.”

  “I know, and I think he wants it to be the last,” Cole says.