were the center of the universe. Darwin showed us that we’re only one small part of a big evolutionary system. Freud showed that there’s more to us than an ego and showed us that we have unconscious impulses influencing us, and that pushed us to try and understand ourselves better. This would be another huge step in that tradition. Death is the biggest mystery we face. And if reincarnation were ever proven to be real, it could open the door to a whole new exploration of . . . everything.”
I scoffed. “Not gonna happen though, is it? No matter what proof you might come up with, people will always find a way to shoot it down and say you’re wrong.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.” He looked around the walls. “Assuming we ever make it out of here.”
I left that hanging and came back to the most pressing question on my mind. “How’d Michelle take it? When you told her?”
“It troubled her. It always does, when it’s not part of one’s culture. But it didn’t take her long to accept it. She was very open-minded.”
That didn’t surprise me at all. “And you think Alex’s case stacks up?”
Stephenson didn’t hesitate. “I do. And it’s a really interesting case for me. It’s a more or less immediate rebirth—a soul finding a new home shortly after losing its old host. He was born, what, just under a year after McKinnon was killed? It doesn’t happen that often. There’s usually a gap—weeks, months, years even—which opens up a whole other question.”
“About where the soul goes during that gap?”
He nodded. “Exactly. We call it the interlife. And that’s another whole can of worms.” He was now standing by the door, staring at it. Then he turned to me. “Do you think we’re ever going to get out of here alive?”
“I don’t know.” I was being charitable.
He seemed to read it, and his face sank. He sucked in a deep breath to calm himself and ran his hands through his hair, pulling back tightly against his scalp. “What is this drug this psychopath is after? Why is he so determined to get his hands on it?”
I heard some shuffling outside the door, then a key rattled in the lock and the door creaked open.
“Maybe we’re about to find out.”
64
The two hard-faced goons nylon-cuffed my hands behind my back before leading me and Stephenson out of our cell.
We walked down a humid, centuries-old barrel-vaulted corridor that had a series of doors on either side. They had similar hinges and locks to the door of the cell we’d been kept in, and I suspected that’s where Navarro had been keeping the scientists he kidnapped over the months and years. I didn’t see any of them, though. The place was quiet and had an ancient solemnity to it, which, given what it was being used for, felt pretty perverse.
We were led up a stairwell at the far end of the hall and emerged aboveground, in another long and narrow corridor. This one, however, had a flat roof raised over a row of clerestory windows. Sunlight flooded the beige stucco walls, and the heat and the smell of the air immediately reinforced my suspicions. It sure felt like we were on Navarro’s home turf. Not far from the ocean was my guess. But that was about it. Which didn’t narrow it down to anything useful, not that I knew what I could have done with that information anyway.
We passed a room that had some antique exposed machinery in it, like mills or something from the last century. I guessed we were in some old factory or maybe what used to be an agricultural or industrial estate, which meant that wherever we were, Navarro was possibly living in plain sight among people who didn’t have a clue as to who he really was.
We were led through a steel-edged door and into a large room with a double-height ceiling. It had small windows about fifteen feet off the ground and its walls were lined with empty, faded bookcases that gave it the air of an old library. Sitting in the lone armchair in the middle of the room was the man I’d glimpsed in the darkness and upside down back at the safe house.
Raoul Navarro, undoubtedly.
El Brujo.
I was finally getting a good look at the soulless barbarian who had caused all this, and I made sure I committed every feature in his face to memory. Who knows, even if I didn’t manage to get him in this life, maybe— if all they were telling me was true—I’d get another crack at him one day. He was casually, but expensively, dressed and looked fresh and showered, the polar opposite to my current status. He was reading something before he looked up to watch us come in, and as he closed it carefully, I saw that it was the journal I’d first seen with McKinnon in his lab five years ago.
He noticed me looking at it and said, “You remember this, eh?”
I remembered that we brought it back with us that night. I also remembered how he got it back from Corliss. But I had something far more pressing on my mind.
“Where are Alex and Tess?” I asked, charging at him.
One of the goons held me back and gave my shoulder a deep pinch that sent a burning spasm searing through it and stopped me in my tracks.
“They’re fine,” Navarro replied coolly. “Why wouldn’t they be? They’re what I was after. You should be more worried about yourself, my friend. You’re the expendable one here.”
He studied us, then glanced at the journal again. “Funny how things never really change, even after all these years.” He held it up, waving it slightly. “This Jesuit priest, Eusebio de Salvatierra . . . he wanted to bring his discovery back to Europe and share it with the world. He wanted to let people know death wasn’t the end. But they wouldn’t let him.” He fixed me with a curious stare and asked, “Why do people always assume they have the right to dictate what others can or can’t try out for themselves?”
I kept an intentional vacant stare on my face for a moment, then I feigned a sudden awareness. “I’m sorry, was that rhetorical, or are you expecting an answer?”
He didn’t seem amused.
“Eusebio ran, and he hid, and he never did spread his great discovery. All he did was keep writing in this journal until the end of his days.” He smiled. “I intend to help finish what he started.”
“So that’s why you’re doing it? To help the rest of the world lose their minds?”
He looked at me quizzically. “Lose their minds? Have you even read this?”
I shook my head, and a tremor of unease rumbled somewhere deep inside me. “No. DEA had it. They said it was useless.”
Navarro smiled. “Useless? Maybe. But interesting . . . very. The one thing it doesn’t say, though, is how to make the damn thing.”
“What thing?” Stephenson asked. “What does this drug do anyway?”
“Oh, I think you, more than anyone, will appreciate this, doctor. You see, this drug, this miraculous concoction that Eusebio and McKinnon stumbled upon . . . it lets you relive your past lives.”
65
Navarro’s words just hung there, freeze-framed in midair like bullets in a
Neither I nor Stephenson said anything.
Navarro was more than happy to step in. “You see that? Your reaction,
