Page 68 of Heart of Danger
“That is really amazing but so’s this. Wait a second.” She held up a hand, closed her eyes, savored the big bite of pumpkin ravioli with chanterelle sauce. Oh God. Heaven. The wild sex, the God’s eye view that appeared in the blink of an eye, the stunning food. This was sensory overload. “Okay.” Her eyes popped open. “Ready for the view again now.”
She looked around the three walls. A rabbit crossed a small snowy meadow and stopped, nose wrinkling, sniffing the air. Satisfied, it hopped away. Off…screen?
Mac was chomping on a pulled-pork baguette and smiled secretively. “Watch long enough and you’ll see a deer. I saw a coyote the other day. That’s not all we can do, though. Watch.”
He touched something on the bedside table and all of a sudden the room was filled with sunlight, so blinding Catherine had to shield her eyes.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. It was a slightly different view, but the shape of the mountain and the valley below were the same. A blindingly bright sun rose over a hill making the landscape glow. The sky was the brightest blue in the history of blue skies and there were only small patches of snow on the ground.
“Sunrise, three days ago,” Mac said and picked up another sandwich.
She watched, amazed, as a hawk flew high in the sky, elegantly gliding on thermals. The sun crossed some invisible barrier and shot light down to the valley in glowing beams coming straight out of Hollywood. Except CGI could never make this stuff up.
“How can you afford all this fancy stuff?” Catherine asked. From what she knew of technology, this was at least several million dollars’ worth, shining into Mac’s bedroom. Then she realized what she said and clapped a hand over her mouth, appalled. “I’m sorry!” she gasped. “So sorry! It’s none of my business and?—”
Mac calmly reached over, pulled her hand away from her mouth, kissed her knuckles. “Don’t be sorry about anything, honey, ever. This is your community now, your people. Ask anything you want. And the answer to how we can afford it all?” Those dark eyes gleamed. “We steal it.”
Another bite of that glorious ravioli stopped on the way to her mouth. “Youstealit?”
He nodded, popped a slider into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “Yeah. Or rather, Jon does. He was on a six month mission to the Calderòn clan in Colombia, undercover as a California dealer. He came away with a lot of intel, enough to hack deep into their systems. When we need something, he just creams it off their accounts. Last week for example we bought a ton of seeds and fertilizer for Manuel, a new forklift and a crash cart for the infirmary. We’ve got a shopping list a mile long. Jon delicately goes in, takes the money and transfers it to a bank account in San Francisco in the name of a shell company and we all have black credit cards. So far several Calderòn lieutenants have been accused of embezzling from the boss and have been hung out to dry. Literally, on meat hooks. They ran the child prostitution business for the cartel. Couldn’t happen to nicer guys.”
“You’ve got quite a set up here, Mac.”
He stopped smiling, met her eyes. “Yes. We do. We’ve got a lot of people we want to protect. We want to keep this community safe.”
She stopped smiling, too. “And you think trying to rescue Nine will put them at risk. I understand that.”
“There’s no ‘try’ involved,” Mac said. “If we go in, we rescue him. But a lot of things can go wrong and there’s the possibility he’s not there, the possibility that you read him wrong.” He took in a deep breath, that broad chest expanding. “The possibility it’s a trap. No, don’t say it.” He put a finger across her lips. “I know—and Nick and Jon know—you would never deliberately lead us into a trap, but there’s a lot we don’t know about the situation.”
She kissed his finger, pulled his hand down from her mouth and held it. Felt his determination, felt his warring instincts—a desire to rescue a hurt comrade versus a desire to keep his people safe—felt honor and pride and dread. He wouldn’t be her Mac if he didn’t feel all those things.
“Are you guys still planning how to do it?”
“Oh yeah. We’re not rushing into anything without doing a full recon. Jon’s got drones flying overhead and Nick’s analyzing the results. Jon’s checking their computer systems with the codes you gave him. We’ll go down at the new moon and do a thorough check of the terrain and when our plan is solid, we’ll go.”
She was going with them but it wasn’t the time or the place to say that.
She reached up, kissed the side of that hard mouth. “My money’s on you guys.”
CHAPTERTWELVE
ARKA PHARMACEUTICALS
The next evening,after carefully reviewing the data from Level 4, Lee decided to check on the official patients, up in the official facility. One in particular. He most particularly wanted to visit Patient Nine. Formerly known as Colonel Lucius Ward.
Lee was still convinced Ward—now forever Patient Nine—held the key to a breakthrough, or at least his brain did. It was time to see what was inside that brain.
Lee waited until the day staff had left the facility, with only a skeleton crew and security, none of whom were going to bother him. The security guards changed shifts at 11 pm and that was when he walked down the empty hallways. He entered Nine’s room, quietly closed the door behind him.
Patient Nine was upright in a chair, bands holding his forehead to the back, bands holding his wrist to the arms of the chair, bands around his knees and ankles. The bonds had been tested and required 200 lbs of shear pressure to break, something Patient Nine could never marshal in his current state. He was completely immobilized.
Tiny sensors all over his body were transmitting every single biological marker to a highly secure computer. The data was visualized in holo charts next to Nine’s head.
Heart rate, brain waves, adrenalin level, all blood markers, even skin conductivity. Everything that made up Patient Nine, the very essence of Patient Nine, right there in white letters in the air.
A permanent IV line was established in a clavicle catheter, for the glucose solution feeding into his veins. Patient Nine had stopped eating a week ago, a pathetic suicide attempt which only made Lee angry.
Hewas the one to decide when Patient 9 died, no one else. And death was coming very soon. His use was at an end. The military history of Patient Nine had made him a perfect guinea pig for the testing of the various iterations of SL, as was the case for the other patients in Level 4. But they were recalcitrant, rebellious in the extreme and had turned out to be almost more trouble than they were worth. Like Patient Nine.
