It was the scent that woke
her. For a while she had been hearing
voices but none made sense. She was
drifting in and out of sleep, and the sleep was very comforting. In a dream that she kept returning to, she
was trying hard to remember her name.
She knew it started with an M.
But was it Mary? Or was it
Molly? She couldn’t quite be sure. Neither of them seemed right.
Then that scent. Astringent,
antiseptic and unpleasant by association with something she couldn’t remember
either. Then it hit her. There had been an accident once and she had
been at the hospital visiting a friend when the victims were brought in all
bloodied and dying.
That was where the scent was from, a hospital, which meant…
“Nurse, she’s waking up!”
She opened her eyes and they hurt, everything was foggy. She reclosed her eyes. Awareness spread, and
her head hurt, badly. She started to
panic, where was she? Was this really a
hospital?
“Monique?” A woman’s voice that
sounded familiar. Monique – that was her
name. She tried to remember what had led
to her being here but pain was the only thing that responded.
She opened her mouth slowly and reclosed it. Her tongue felt unusable. With barely a breath, wincing at the pain,
she managed the most natural question.
“Where… am I?”
“Oh God, thank God,” the familiar
and excited voice whispered. “Monique,
you scared me!”
“What happened?” she whispered back.
“You’ve been in a coma for a whole week, girl.” The voice was sounding
more normal.
“Jessica?” Of course it was. Things were coming back.
“Yes, your boyfriend carried you here one week ago, said you fell and
hit your head against some workbench or the other.”
Her eyes came open. “Tyler,” she
was remembering, “where is he?”
“He left last night. Lord, have
mercy. Is what you get yourself involved
with child?” She was now speaking
forcefully.
“What? Why?”
“I get the call after you been here for a day. Him say him was calling names out of your
phone, that him didn’t know any of your friends and ask me if I was close to
you. Then him tell me where you were and
what had happened. Him and him friend deh
here for full three days camp out in them car ‘til the friend wife come,
seemingly from foreign, and she and the friend leave.”
“Where is he now?”
“That’s what mi telling you. Last
night them bring in the friend, dead as nit.
Police them tell him there were a lot of shots fired and they were
called by alarmed neighbors. They found
him at the house dead from bullet wounds to the chest and the place
ransacked. Your friend asked them ‘bout
the wife and they said she was not found.
So it look like seh the criminal them gone with har.”
Monique felt an alarm ringing in her, terrifying her.
“Mi don’t understand. How so much
bad things a gwaan round this boyfriend of yours? You hurt, him friend dead…look here, you try
don’t have anything else fi do with this man.
You hear me? As soon as you feel
better you try find a way to cut it off with him.”
She lay there feeling horrible.
What the hell had happened? The
gun, it had to have been about the gun.
She remembered the lab and that infernal invention clearly now. She tried to sit up but couldn’t even
budge. Alarmed even further she tried
feeling her fingers and toes, and could.
She felt relief.
“Him leave you a video message on the phone.”
Tyler sat in his uncle’s office,
ashen, confused, nerves being chemically burnt by toxins of fatigue and
vengeful emotions. Mark Gibbs stepped
into the room, looked at him and stopped.
“You don’t look so well.” Then he
was walking to his glass-topped mahogany desk.
He stopped again, rested his right hand on the back of his brown
leather-wrapped high-back chair.
“Brad is dead; the project stolen.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
Finally he drew the chair out and sat.
The room was well appointed, as it should be; Mark Gibbs was worth at
least 4 billion US dollars. The neat off-white
carpet was lit in places by sun that came filtered through a battery of windows,
each of which had an inner clear panel and outer one-way mirror panel that
sandwiched a vacuum to keep out the cold and electronic snoops.
Tyler was now looking out one of these.
“You don’t sound so surprised.”
“Do you really expect me to be?
I’m watching everything.”
“Oh right, you’ve got satellites tracking us, our phones are bugged…
couldn’t any of that technology let you know that we were about to be
attacked?” He had to be careful not to
cast blame where blame wasn’t due. But
the tiredness was sapping his usually rational mind, letting him think with his
sorrow and anger.
“I did know. And I tried to warn
you. But I kept getting your damn
voicemail.”
Tyler’s vision did a spin. His
phone… he had turned it off when he carried Monique to the hospital. Oh God no.
But for that accident Brad might still be alive and the project
safe. His soul griped, but he forced the
thoughts down; more important things first.
“So you know who has the generator?”
“It’s in my possession.”
“What? How did…?”
“Brad called his wife, that Celine, and told her the project was
complete. My techs stayed tuned to
Celine’s phone. The next person she
called was Morton.”
Tyler’s head shrunk, it felt like it did. Bowing it, he was thankful he was
sitting. “Celine…”
“We tracked them all the way back to this country and had men waiting
for them on the road to QuTech.”
“Where is Celine now?”
“My men didn’t feel like killing a woman. I told them to let her go.”
Tyler didn’t think he could do otherwise, despite the death of Brad.
“Wonder how they will feel about helping me to kill Morton? I need a team and some weaponry; he’s not
getting away with this.”
“Brad was a fool to marry the ex-sweetheart of his enemy. I’ve got more important things for you to
focus on right now. Do I have your
attention?”
Tyler actually had to drag it away from the image he had of him
confronting Morton.
He frowned and looked at his uncle.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked gruffly. “My friend, one of the world’s most brilliant
scientists, is dead because Morton couldn’t let bygones be bygones! I want him dead!”
“No shouting in my office. Contain yourself.”
“You’ve got your project. I’m
tired, and I have a close friend in a coma.
I’m requesting some time off.
Could I get that?” He was too tired to be angry anymore. But that wouldn’t stop him from being bitter.
“You can rest on the flight. If
your friend is in a coma she won’t miss you.”
Tyler just stared.
“Eleven months ago I had JJ in the Scottish highlands searching for some
documents that are of some significance to me.”
“Documents in the Scottish highlands…”
Tyler sighed. “Are you kidding
me?”
“These documents are over four hundred years old.”
“And they are important because?”
“That’s my business. If you want
my help with your revenge on Morton you’ll do this for me first.”
“Or maybe I’ll just go after Morton on my own.”
“You were a Marine, but not in special ops. You’re not trained to penetrate the kind of
defense Morton must have all propped up now.
Plus any failure will be sure to draw some payback on that pretty little
girlfriend of yours lying helpless in that hospital bed.”
“You know what she looks
like?”
“Paid a local detective to investigate her; she checked out all right.”
Tyler almost laughed. “So what
became of JJ?”
“We spoke by phone when he returned to the nearby town. He was going to upload the video footage he
took. The video never came. Never heard from him again, so I sent Peter
Holt up to find out what happened. Peter
says the local authorities found him dead in his rented apartment. The place didn’t seem broken into. It’s a mystery to them, and they’re not
releasing his possessions to any but a relative or I, his employer.”
“So why didn’t you go?”
“You must be kidding.”
“They finally relented not a half-hour ago to allow the release of the
stuff to a close relative of mine, which would be you.”
“You contacted them and arranged this before you’d even seen me.”
“Well I knew you were here and would be willing.”
“Right… So all I have to do is get up there, collect his stuff and those
documents, and return?”
“Well…to get the documents you’ll have to break into a house as old as
they are. There isn’t much info to go by
except that the entrance to the basement where the documents are is concealed
in the first fireplace on the right. Lever
behind the mantel… That’s it. A team
will assist. Pilot has the location. Off you go.”
Tyler sat, feeling heavy. But
with a deep breath he managed to get out of the chair and then out of the office.
