were a rare and precious artifact. Roland said, “I dumped them outside because I didn’t want to kill anybody.”
Just my luck. I get the world’s first psychopathic killer with a conscience.
Like many agents, Gundersson carried a backup weapon, a SIG-Sauer P232 that was a popular conceal-carry weapon. He fished it from the inner pocket of his vest, hammer-dropped the safety off, and held it behind him without breaking his surveillance of the window.
“Seven shots, just pull the trigger,” he said.
The forest had been quiet for a couple of minutes, and he wondered if Mark Morgan had taken out a couple of the black jumpsuits. Harding had told him about Morgan’s cop training, but it was hard to imagine a trainee tackling guys who were by all appearances professionals.
If Morgan’s on Seethe, then maybe the rules don’t apply. No wonder so many people are willing to kill for this stuff.
He felt the fingers on his wrist and the SIG pulled away. Wendy whispered, “Your gun’s cold and short.”
Bet you say that to every man except your husband.
“Just go to that window across the room and fire a round every couple of minutes,” he said. “Try not to be too predictable or they’ll know you’re a decoy.”
“I’ll do it,” Roland said, although he still sounded groggy.
“Do you want to risk your wife banging you in the head again?”
A staccato burst peppered the side of the cabin, a couple of rounds flying through the window above their heads. Wendy scrambled away on her hands and knees and Gundersson couldn’t help looking at her undulating rear.
These people are going to get me dead, one way or another.
“Roland, can you yell something to Mark?” Gundersson said. “Let him know you’re still alive in here?”
“He won’t be able to yell back. It would give away his position.”
“Have you considered the possibility that Mark is on their side?”
“Yeah. And I’ve also considered the possibility you’d pull that trick to make me paranoid. You might be on their side, too.”
“Yeah, like I’d fake playing a firing-range dummy? Or give a loaded pistol to Wendy? We’re beyond that, Roland. We’re just going to have to trust each other.”
Roland sat rubbing his head. Across the room, Wendy had reached the window and crouched beneath the ledge. She said, “Should I shoot now?”
“Yeah,” Gundersson said. “Just squeeze the trigger once.”
Wendy fired and the interior of the cabin thundered. Sheet rock dust snowed from the ceiling.
“Uh…I think he meant for you to point it outside,” Roland said.
“Call Mark now,” Gundersson said. “Tell him Wendy’s shot and you’re alone.”
Gundersson stood and peered around the edge of the window. A shadow darted between the trees, but he didn’t fire. He couldn’t risk hitting Mark or any other innocent bystander.
Though at this point, he didn’t think anybody was truly innocent.
Gundersson glanced at Roland, who had unrolled Wendy’s painting. He recognized the basic form of the figure she’d been working on the day before, but it was shot through with connected lines and letters. The new graffiti was smeared a little, as if the acrylic paint hadn’t completely dried before the canvas was rolled.
The images clicked into place, pulling him back to high school chemistry, the periodic chart, and Mrs. Stallworth’s chalkboard.
A chemical compound.
The one people were dying over.
Hidden right in front of his eyes.
This was the secret she’d whispered of, the reason she’d seduced him in exchange for his help.
He glanced at Wendy, and saw that she knew he’d put it together. A cold smile crossed her face, a ghost of the expression she’d worn the night before. It was a reptilian face, shaped by survival and the Monkey House experiments.
“It’s like a living thing,” Wendy said. “An organism. Seethe wants to survive, and it will do whatever it needs to do. Kill whoever it needs to kill.”
Gundersson had never gone in for Good versus Evil debates. He’d accepted his work for the government as Good, because the United States had a moral role as leader of the free world. And his work helped the country remain free.
At least, that’s what he’d always told himself. Or it could have been the Captain America comic books he’d read as a kid, the wearing of the red, white, and blue as a badge of honor.
But was saving Seethe really in the country’s best interests? Was his idealism blinding him to the terrible damage the substance was already inflicting?
And what if it fell into terrorist hands? What if it crept across the globe, and the madness and mayhem proliferated a billionfold?
“Shut up, Wendy,” Roland said, reaching the window beside her.
“Once it’s in you, it never gets out,” Wendy said.
“Shut up,” Roland repeated.
“You can water it down with Halcyon, but-”
Roland covered her mouth with his palm, and she struggled to break free. “I told you to shut the hell up!”
Gundersson was so fixated on the sick drama before him that the nearby burst of automatic weaponry seemed a normal part of the mad tapestry, the perfect syncopated soundtrack for the end of sanity. The reverberation deafened him, bullets spraying across the interior of the cabin as the walls erupted in pocks and scars. A framed painting above the mantel fell from its perch, and an oil lantern shattered.
Then the shooter filled the frame of the window, sweeping machine-gun fire and stitching the walls, but he’d sprayed too high. Gundersson reacted, lifting his Glock and squeezing off five rounds. The face disappeared in a gout of blood and the corpse flopped backward.
The man must have rushed the window while Gundersson wasn’t watching, perhaps growing desperate when he realized his comrades were being picked off from behind.
Which meant this wasn’t a mission designed to capture.
It was all or nothing.
He’d told Harding most of what he knew. And if his own government was willing to kill all involved to suppress Seethe, then Gundersson’s idealism was shot to shit.
Freedom, like Seethe, would destroy you in a heartbeat and never mourn your loss.
CHAPTER FORTY
My wife’s fault. If not for her, I’d have heard Scagnelli sneak up on us.
Scagnelli lowered the binoculars after the last round of gunshots.
“I believe that was the last one,” he said. “Right, Mark?”
Mark and Alexis sat side by side on a sunlit boulder, a little away from the creek and perched on a ledge so the cabin was visible in the valley below. Scagnelli had taken their weapons, and Mark’s restlessness caused him to twitch. Memories of the Monkey House danced in his head like primitives around a bonfire. He wanted to leap from the boulder and run screaming through the trees, raging at the intense awareness of sunlight and breath and the rushing water and the crisp, naked rocks.
But that final shred of self, the vestige of his ego, hung like a spark in the darkness, the lone, distant star in a rapidly dimming universe.
Alexis.
He forced his hands to quit shaking, gripping the slack fabric of his pants.
“Only three,” Mark said, the words feeling strange on his tongue, as if language were a lost thing. “There were only three gunmen.”
