“Hello? Hello?” she said. “Where am I?”
Dear God, he never thought he’d hear her voice again.
He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and the breath quivering in his lungs. But he sucked in deeply and forced himself to remain under control.
Matt turned the video off.
“What are you doing?” Ash said.
“I’ll give you the drive and have a computer set up in your room. You can watch as much as you want there. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing else that will mean anything. The most important thing was for you to see that they’re still alive.”
Ash glanced at the envelope in front of Rachel. “You said you had different times marked. There must be something you thought I should see.”
“Moments, only. Things I thought might help convince you. But you don’t need convincing.”
Ash hesitated, then asked, “Were they told anything about me?”
Matt looked at him for a moment. “Yes. At first they were told you were sick, then later that you had died.” He paused. “I can show you that if you really want.”
A spike of pain shot through Ash’s heart. His children, how they must be suffering thinking both of their parents were dead.
He shook his head. He would have to watch at some point, but he wasn’t sure he could take it right now. It was enough to know they were alive, that they had survived the mysterious illness that had apparently taken everyone else around them. That he would be able to-
His head whipped around, his eyes finding Matt. “They survived the disease, but…but the explosion!”
“No,” Matt said quickly, shaking his head. “They weren’t there. They were moved as soon as your daughter could travel, two days after they took you in.”
“Moved where?”
“Some place where they…”
“Where they what?”
Matt glanced at Billy, so Ash did the same.
“What?” he asked. “What is it?”
Billy cleared his throat. “Captain, you have an immunity to this particular virus. They’ve been looking for someone like you. What happened at Barker Flats isn’t the first time some variant of this virus has been tested. But we’re pretty sure you and your children are the first to survive. It’s obvious you’ve passed your immunity on to them. We think they are…running tests on your kids. Using them to pinpoint this immunity.”
A mix of anger and horror flashed in Ash’s eyes. “Tests?”
“Mostly with their blood, would be my guess,” Billy said in his nonchalant way.
“The good news,” Rachel said, jumping in, “is that it means they’ll want to keep Josie and Brandon alive.”
“I need to find them,” Ash said, pushing himself up. “I need to go now. I have to get them back.”
Rachel touched his arm. “If you go now, you won’t get within a hundred miles of them. Your face is all over the television. You’ll be caught, then all three of you will be lost.”
Clenching his teeth, he said, “I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”
“We’re not asking you to do nothing.” Matt walked down the table until he was directly across from Ash. “We’re asking you to let us help you get them back.”
Ash was almost shaking now, his anger at those who had taken Josie and Brandon growing with each second. “How can you help me?”
Rachel smiled. “Let us show you.”
20
Hector Mendez arrived home at ten a.m. He lived alone in an old house on the outskirts of Victorville, California. The place had belonged to his mother, but she’d been dead for three years so it had been his since then.
That had also been around the time he and Lucy finally went their separate ways. It was his fault, and he knew it. He’d been a long-distance trucker when they were together, away from home for weeks at a time. He’d made some big stink about this being who he was and how he wasn’t going to change. But staying home by herself wasn’t who Lucy was either.
The irony, of course, was that not long after she left him, he gave up the long-distance work, and took a local trucking job for a regional bakery that had him home every day just about the time everyone else was going to their jobs.
His daily route started at midnight and took him from Victorville through Barstow, up to Sage Springs, around to Trona, then Ridgecrest, Johannesburg, Adelanto and finally home. His employer supplied mostly hotels, a few restaurants, and a couple of hospitals.
As was his habit, he and a few of the other drivers had breakfast at the local diner and then he’d driven home. Once there, he had his usual pre-sleep beer, watched one of the shows he’d recorded the night before, and went to bed.
He woke at three p.m., two hours earlier than usual. The reason was simple. He’d coughed himself awake. He headed into the kitchen where he hocked up what was in his throat, spit it into the sink, then got a glass of water.
He decided to take a couple of cold tablets, the non-drowsy type since he’d have to be up and moving around in a few hours, and went back to bed.
When his boss called at 12:10 a.m. to find out why he was late, the ringing of his phone reached his ears but his mind barely registered it. Thirty minutes later, when Karl, a friend who also drove for the bakery, knocked on his door, he didn’t hear anything at all.
Hector was dead.
Tamara Costello didn’t see the email from her brother until after lunch. She wasn’t used to checking for them on her sat phone. Ninety-nine percent of the time she relied on her smartphone for email. But finally she noticed the tiny icon glowing dully on her display, indicating she’d received something.
She’d actually become annoyed with Gavin. She’d been trying to call him, but kept going straight to his voice mail. The email, however, more than made up for his lack of communication.
Daniel Ash was in the Army. Could it be that this was some kind of military accident, and not an act of terrorism like officials were starting to characterize it? She couldn’t help but make the connection to the still unconfirmed report of an explosion at a military installation two nights ago. Had that been an Army base? It was something to check.
She had another live spot coming up in one minute. She tried her brother one more time, wanting to see if he’d learned anything more. Voice mail.
“Dammit, Gavin. Where the hell are you?” she said.
“Tamara, thirty seconds,” her producer, Joe, announced.
While she did consider trying to get independent confirmation on Gavin’s information, the thought passed so quickly through her mind it was almost like she hadn’t had it at all. The several times she’d relied on her brother in the past, his information had always proven to be accurate. And there was no question that the Ash in the picture from one of the links Gavin sent was the same man in the photo authorities had given to the media.
As she got into position, Joe checked the mic clipped to her shirt. The moment he stepped away, she looked at the camera.
“How’s this?” she asked.
Bobby, the cameraman, kept his eye on the viewfinder and gave her the thumbs up.
“Okay, we’re coming up,” Joe told her.
