She coughed and he was afraid she’d vomit, which would definitely taint her charisma. He pushed the pills against her mouth and this time she took them willingly, although her tongue acted numb and uncoordinated.
“Halcyon,” he said, squirreling the name away in his memory.
Sounds like something I should know more about, if I want to do my job right.
She was already on the ropes, sliding lower into the water, her head lolling. He was doing her a favor. The blade would have been messy and probably hurt a lot, even with all the painkillers coursing through her bloodstream. This way, she’d just drift off to a land where it was okay to kiss the guys.
He sat through two more songs by Fleetwood Mac, and he decided he didn’t like the band. Anita was right. Stevie Nicks was depressing as hell. Made you want to slash your wrists.
Anita snorted, and her breathing was uneven and shallow. Scagnelli carefully placed his gloved hand on top of her head and lowered her into the water. A few bubbles rose, creating more froth that veiled her angelic body. She gave a couple of spasms but didn’t splash him this time.
When they were done with one another, Scagnelli stood and picked up his clipboard. “We’ll have your phone working by tomorrow, Miss Molkesky,” he said. “You have yourself a good evening, and don’t hesitate to call if we can ever be of service.”
A quick search of the cottage revealed nothing significant, and her bedroom was disappointingly clean, without even a dildo under the bed. He’d been instructed to look for any strange pills or medications, but all she had were plenty of prescription meds. He took her cell phone just in case she’d stored any numbers or messages, but otherwise he left the place as he’d found it.
He let himself out and retraced his trek across the lawn. The moon was up, a curved scythe of white against the endless night. It looked sharp enough to slice a hole in the never-ending darkness and reveal whatever lay behind.
The other half of the story.
Scagnelli headed for his rental sedan and the next assignment. Unfortunately, the boss wanted Dr. Alexis Morgan alive. But a job was a job.
CHAPTER FIVE
Alexis fired up her home computer and scrolled through the data she’d compiled on her husband.
She’d induced Mark into intermittent brain scans to “test her equipment,” joking that she couldn’t have found a cuter guinea pig, and then buried the files in a different research project.
Of course, the vector machines had multiple backups of all images, logging time and subject as well as the operator of record. She’d carefully constructed fake records so that, on the books, Mark was listed as “Donnie Davis,” a student volunteer who was one of hundreds being examined for a benign analysis of brain-wave patterns before and after exposure to certain kinds of images.
The theory was that the stimulation would trigger heavier frontal-lobe activity than usual, although Alexis was pretty sure the effects of recreational drugs, collegiate hanky-panky, and the latest trending Twitter topic offered far more stimulation. But the experiment was the perfect smokescreen for her analysis of her husband’s head.
The only question now was whether someone else had cracked into his head.
The MRI revealed hundreds of slices, a series of images that tracked across the entire brain. In “Donnie’s” images, tiny lesions were identifiable as deposits of iron left by leaking blood. Such lesions were fairly common in older people and were associated with stroke, Alzheimer’s, or certain types of risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking. His anterior cingulate cortex, an area that processed rewards and punishments, displayed minimal activity, while his amygdala, the primal emotional center of the brain, appeared overstimulated.
Scans of her own brain, conducted by her graduate assistant Haleema, revealed no such damage. However, Alexis was convinced the lesions were caused by Mark’s exposure to Seethe, the designer rage drug developed by Sebastian Briggs. The brain was such a highly individualized and unknown organ that reactions would vary widely, and until she could compare images from David, Anita, Wendy, and Roland, the other Monkey House survivors, she was shooting in the dark.
The irony was that Mark had the least exposure of all of them, yet he’d suffered the most intense long-term effects. She suspected he’d built up no tolerance, the way the original subjects had. Which made him ripe territory for unlocking both Seethe and Halcyon and finally using them for good instead of evil.
Damn, Lex. There you go with that “evil” thing. Briggs wasn’t Satan. He was just another mad scientist trying to save the world.
Might be a cautionary tale in there for you. Maybe the world doesn’t need saving.
The real records and notes wouldn’t be safe in the lab. Burchfield would never let it go. And his holy-roller sidekick Wallace Forsyth, her old nemesis from the president’s bioethics council, wouldn’t abandon a divine mission once he’d heard the trumpet sound.
Her home office didn’t have fancy equipment, but it was relatively easy to keep secure. Unlike the neurosciences labs, no one else had access. Mark didn’t even have a key, though she let him nose around in it every once in a while to avoid arousing suspicion. Ever since he’d caught her hiding the Halcyon she’d stolen from the Monkey House, she’d made an effort to stay transparent.
Not that his mistrust had eased.
Outwardly, the room had all the trappings of the after-hours home office: a desk, computer, bookshelves, filing cabinet, and a bulletin board feathered with notes. It would withstand a search by Mark, the police, and possibly even national intelligence agencies. The biggest lesson she’d learned from Briggs was you stored as much of your information in your head as you could.
That was the one place into which, as far as she knew, no one would be able to hack.
She’d devised a code for her written research records, and while it could be cracked, she used a cross- referencing system that would yield only the pieces but not how to put them together, like a Rubik’s Cube of chemical compounds.
The powerful computer, which mirrored many of the records from the lab, held nothing that would give away her search for a new Halcyon formula.
If Darrell Silver hadn’t been arrested, she would have cracked the puzzle by now. But failure and difficulty only made her more determined. Maybe even obsessed.
“I’ll save you, Mark,” she whispered, tracing through her notes once more.
A sudden knock caused her to bolt upright in her chair. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. Mark had begun going to bed early since the headaches had started.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Who do you think? Why did you lock the door?”
She minimized the computer images and opened the door a crack. “I thought you’d be asleep.”
“What’s going on in here?” He wore a tattered Carolina Tar Heels T-shirt and striped pajama pants, and his Glock was in his hand. He barely seemed aware of it as he scratched his thigh with the barrel.
“I’m working on that study I told you about,” she said, gauging his mood. “You know, the brain activity of college students.”
“Got any dirty pictures I can look at?” He chuckled, but there was no humor in it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Took four aspirin.”
“It’s not getting any better, is it?”
His eyes looked haunted, wrinkles of fatigue around them. “Sometimes I feel it like a pulse. Like a glowing wire up my spine.”
“Maybe we should see a specialist.” Alexis hated to even make the suggestion, because then Mark Morgan would be a public case and she’d lose control of his treatment. But Mark had even more reason than she to stay away from the machineries of modern health care.
“I worked for a drug company, remember? A shady, powerful company. For all I know, they want me comatose or dead. I wouldn’t take a prescription medicine if my life depended on it.”
