Forsyth pulled his Blackberry from his pocket and opened it, casting the room in greenish light. Mark was standing, while Dominic Scagnelli was sitting on what appeared to be a metal bed frame that had no mattress. Forsyth blinked and made out the weak glint of gray in Mark’s hand. A gun.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw that Scagnelli’s hands were bound to the bed frame with a short electrical cord. A surge of rage rolled through Forsyth, but he suppressed it, knowing Mark had the advantage.
For the moment.
“Hello, Mark,” he said. “I’m glad you honored my request to meet.”
“It would feel really good to kill you right now,” Mark said. The coldness in his tone projected its chill into Forsyth’s heart.
“I understand. I felt the effects of Seethe myself, remember?”
“Yeah. I remember. That’s the problem.”
Forsyth glanced at Scagnelli, whose shoulders slumped in defeat. “I see you met the protection we assigned to you,” Forsyth said to Mark.
“I don’t need no fucking bodyguard. I can take care of myself.”
Forsyth calculated a couple of options, deciding diplomacy still had a chance. And diplomacy worked best as a tool to get fools to lower their guard. “Obviously,” he said. “But it’s your wife you should be concerned about.”
Mark emerged from the shadows of the corner of the room. His eyes were wild and his gun hand was quivering, the scar on his mouth imitating a reckless grin. “What about her?”
“Haven’t you heard? Anita Molkesky is dead. An apparent suicide, but you know how things work when corporate assets are at stake.”
“Anita?” Mark wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “She was…it was just a matter a time.”
“It’s a matter of time for all of us, Mark,” Forsyth said in the soothing tone he’d once used to win over witnesses for the prosecution and voters for the moderate conservatism he’d projected. “But CRO doesn’t give up easily when millions are at stake.”
“They said they were done with Seethe and Halcyon. We all agreed-”
“CRO never agreed to anything. We live in a corporate police state, Mark. The government was stolen from the Christians and given to the corporations. And all of us are bottle caps on their checkerboard. You, me, Senator Burchfield, your wife, Dominic there-”
“I tried to tell him,” Scagnelli said, causing Mark to swing the barrel of the gun in his direction.
“Shut up,” Mark said. To Forsyth, “What about Alexis?”
“CRO got to her. They have her working on Halcyon. She’s their new Sebastian Briggs.”
“Bullshit. I would have known. I live with her. I sleep with her.”
Forsyth gave a sad shake of his head. “But ain’t you wondered why you don’t feel right? Feeling a little unsteady, blacking out, getting eat up by sudden rages? And it’s getting worse, ain’t it?”
“I–I’m fine.” The gun lowered a little.
“It’s Seethe. Your wife has been using you as her guinea pig. It was too risky for a full-scale trial, after what happened in the Monkey House. But there were still refinements to be made. And once you left CRO-”
“How do you know all this?”
Ah, the shadow of a doubt. A liar’s best friend.
But Mark was unstable, so the diplomacy game could turn in the blink of an eye. Or in the time it took him to squeeze the trigger.
“That’s what I’ve been looking into,” Scagnelli said, and Mark didn’t swing the gun at him this time. “Burchfield had to distance himself from the whole deal. Once you run for president, you can’t go near the dirt. We hacked your wife’s research records and found out Halcyon was still in play.”
Forsyth picked up the narrative thread, pleased that Scagnelli had caught on to the con game. Despite Scagnelli having botched the snatch of Mark, Forsyth might yet have to give the man a bonus, assuming they survived this encounter. Of course, right after the bonus, he’d probably have to fire him. Or silence him another way. Scagnelli was good, but there were dozens of Scagnellis out there, and all of them would be only too happy to eliminate their failed predecessor as on-the-job training.
“Senator Burchfield obviously wants to tear down the Monkey House once and for all,” Forsyth said.
“I know, and he wanted to bury us monkeys along with it,” Mark said.
“He’s none too happy that CRO started this back up again,” Forsyth continued, deliberately overlooking the senator’s threats to kill the trial subjects a year ago. “And he’s worried that CRO will back one of the other candidates. He may lose his health-committee chair if he gets the nomination, and they’ll be looking for stronger allies who’ll introduce their legislation.”
“I used to write that legislation, remember?” Mark said. “You don’t have to preach to me about the corporations running the country. I don’t trust CRO and I don’t trust you.”
Apparently Seethe had infected him with a special brand of paranoia. Forsyth still vividly recalled his own journey through hell after exposure to the drug. It had left him on his knees and praying for deliverance, certain he was in Satan’s grip. And he had a calling to inflict that hell on others.
“None of us can afford to let the word get out,” Forsyth said. “Especially your wife.”
Mark gripped his forehead as if fighting off a migraine or mild seizure. If Forsyth were a man of action, he would have taken the opportunity to dive for the gun. But Forsyth was sixty-five, and he trusted his brains more than his muscles.
“If you kill us, there will be a major investigation,” Forsyth said. “Your wife and I served on the president’s bioethics council together, and you and I are both connected to CRO. It wouldn’t take long for enough of the truth to come out. And you know what your wife did.”
“She didn’t kill anybody!” Mark’s outburst echoed through the empty house.
“Of course not,” Forsyth said. “But we know easily they can fabricate evidence.”
“And she isn’t developing Halcyon and Seethe for CRO. She’s not like Briggs.”
Forsyth had come to believe Briggs and Dr. Morgan were very much alike, because he understood the ambitions of each. But they both shared the moral weakness of serving science instead of the Lord, and so were destined to fail. But Satan’s work could inflict a lot of suffering before the final redemption.
The trick was in making the Archangel’s sword look like the devil’s tool.
“We want to protect her from CRO, Mark,” Forsyth said. “And we want to protect you from her.”
“I don’t need any protection.”
Scagnelli made a feeble attempt to rise, but Mark stabbed the gun toward him. “For the record, I don’t like cheese on my pizza.”
He stormed past Forsyth, bumping into his shoulder hard enough to hurt.
“They’re watching you, Mark,” Forsyth called after him. “We can help.”
After the front door slammed, Scagnelli lifted one hand, dangling the electrical cord he had worked free. “I could have jumped him and wrung his scrawny little neck,” Scagnelli said. “But I figured you need him alive.”
“For now,” Forsyth said. “Only for now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Alexis found the house empty, her first realization was that she had nowhere to turn.
The wall of secrecy she’d built, and the fear of failure, had isolated her more than she’d let herself believe. She’d carried on with her regular research work and her teaching duties, but she’d become so obsessed with cracking Seethe and saving Mark that she’d created yet another Monkey House.
And it was the house in which she was standing, the one she shared with her husband. The relics of a past life that decorated the living room-degrees, awards, golfing trophies, photographs of happier times-served to mock her now. She couldn’t go to the police, she couldn’t trust the government, and she couldn’t even count on the one person she’d vowed to keep no secrets from.
Because their life together was a lie.
She didn’t bother trying his cell phone, because it was on the couch, the silent TV flickering with last night’s sports highlights. The BLET car he’d taken was still in the driveway, and she wondered if he’d been arrested for
