Page 92 of Heart of Danger
Dead.
Lee strode down the corridors,listening to the guards sounding off. There’d been a break-in, an equipment cart had made it out of the compound and had been abandoned closed to the outer perimeter.
No one had any idea who had been in it.
Lee knew, or he suspected. The two men at the entrance, who kept an eye on the vidcams swore that nothing amiss had happened, but Lee knew that someone had come for Patient Nine.
Patient Nine was the key. Someone knew that and someone had stolen two years’ of work from him and perhaps his future with it.
He’d quickly fast forwarded the security monitor recordings. It looked like Patient Nine was still in bed, drugged so heavily it was as if he were in chains. But something about the monitors didn’t convince him so he was here, on his way to Nine’s room.
If Nine was gone…
He stepped into the room.
Nine was gone. Disconnected from the machinery, not ripped from it. He’d been disconnected by someone who knew what they were doing.
Oh yes. Catherine Young.
He keyed in the code for the entrance security. “Who entered the premises this evening besides those who were scheduled?”
A pause, then one of the guards answered. “Ah, Dr. Benson, sir. He entered at 3:17 am.”
“His emergency contact number is listed. Call and tell me where he is.”
“Ah, sir, isn’t he?—”
“Now!”
“Yessir.” The line was kept open and Lee listened as the guard called Fielding and asked where he was. He didn’t hear Benson’s answer but he knew where he wasn’t. At Millon. “Sir.” The guard sounded confused. “Dr. Benson isn’t here. He’s in Boston, visiting his sick mother.”
Lee closed his eyes, then opened them. The guard was squawking in his ear but he paid no attention.
“Tell security to stand down from the cart and send a team of techs to gather forensic evidence. If there is a molecule of DNA or extraneous material, I want it.”
“Yessir.”
Through the bedlam of the sirens, Lee slowly made his way down to Level 4. The building was deserted, the evacuation protocol having been followed to the letter.
At the entrance to Level 4, the sirens suddenly disengaged. Security would be doing a sweep up in the upper levels, gathering evidence, interrogating the night shift workers. They wouldn’t be coming down here, Level 4’s secrets were safe.
Lee walked to the entrance of the door where Patients 21, 22 and 23 had been kept. They’d been comatose. No one person could have carried four men away.
So this was an organized raid. Could Catherine Young have organized it?
Nothing he knew about her suggested that she could have done so. She was a brilliant researcher, a fine scientist, but not a leader. Her personality was quiet and withdrawn. But the fact was, she was missing, and his lab had been raided.
If she had anything to do with this, he would hound her to the ends of the earth.
In the meantime, he wouldn’t let this stop him. In fact, he’d found something very interesting in Young’s brain scan. Something he could use, build upon.
This was a set back, nothing more.
Nine and the other patients were close to death, anyway. He’d been deprived of their brain tissue, that was all.
But he was getting closer to his goal.
No one could stop him.
