you could get your head blown off the moment you step out of the car. Or they have the house rigged with an IED, get you and all of us out of the way.'
Casey didn't answer.
'The Sandman did that, remember?'
'Nothing's going to happen,' he said.
'How do you know that?'
'Because I'm a special case.'
She waited for him to explain.
When he didn't, she said, 'Why are you a special case?'
'They've tried to kill me,' he said. 'Twice.'
'When?'
'First time was in late 2001. Darren Waters was at a private treatment facility, but I had found one more suitable for his… condition. We moved him to a safe house while we made arrangements, setting up an alias for him, and this group found us and tried a stunt like the one they pulled at the Rizzo house. Waters survived. I did too, along with Sergey.'
Casey placed two fingers underneath the edge of the desk.
'Second time was about five months after the Sandman case,' he said. 'I had moved away and remarried under a different name. Somehow they found us. We made it out of that one okay, but I reached out to the Bureau for help — my wife was pregnant — and they offered to put us into sort of a… I guess you could call it a special witness-protection programme. Only a handful of people know about it.'
'People you know and trust?'
'I know where you're heading, and no, I don't know these people, nor can I say with any confidence that I trust them. Could this group have people on the inside? Maybe.'
'Probably,' she said.
'Computers are a more likely bet. Everything's stored on them now. You know your way around them, you can sit somewhere halfway across the world and find people's lives like this.' He snapped his fingers. 'Get in and out without leaving a trace, usually.'
'You know they're good with computers?'
'No, I don't. That's what's infuriating about this group. We don't know much of anything. They snatch kids and they disappear — the kids and the group.' He lifted the corner of the desk with his fingers. 'We know they've been doing it for at least four decades, maybe even longer, but we don't know why they're doing it.' The desk legs hung two inches above the floor. 'One of them escaped, and for all practical purposes he's a vegetable. Oh, and the best part is that anyone who gets close to these people winds up dead.'
He let go of the desk. The legs slapped against the floor as he turned to her.
'Now I hope you understand the reasoning behind all this subterfuge,' he said. 'I wanted to keep you far away from this. Now you're in the middle of it and you can't go back to an ordinary life. You realize that, don't you?'
'I'll go to the former Rizzo home,' she said. 'I've been in there, I know my way around.'
'Didn't you just tell me that one or more of these people would be watching to — '
'I can get inside the house without being seen.'
'And how, exactly, are you going to do that?'
'Simple architecture,' Darby said. 'They won't see me coming, I guarantee it.'
49
Darby started with the most important part — how she was going to get into the house undetected — when Sergey snapped his phone shut.
'Plane touched down,' Sergey said, and then went on to explain how federal lab technicians were now riding inside a van, on their way to the safe house in Sarasota. The tech Casey liked, Drake, had already set up the equipment needed for the video feed.
'You know those small lights you can wear on your forehead?' Sergey said. 'The one attached to the straps, looks like a miner's light? Drake's going to be wearing something like that, only instead of a light it'll have a video camera. We just tested it out, got a crystal-clear picture. What he sees, you'll see. What he hears, you'll hear. It'll be like you're walking in there — '
'How many?'
'Just Drake. Nobody else — '
'The agents you had guarding my family,' Casey said. 'There were eight of them, right?'
Sergey nodded.
'And?' Casey prompted.
'All dead,' Sergey said. 'I don't know what went wrong yet, Jack, but I swear we'll — '
'Is the video feed set up?'
'In about an hour.'
'Van out front?'
Sergey nodded. 'Now, about the Rizzo house, I'm thinking — '
'Talk to her, she's already got a plan, a solid one.'
Then Casey whisked past them, and Darby saw the ghosts of his dead wife and unborn daughter hanging in the man's frightened eyes. She watched him open the door and push his way past the bodies, wondering how much violence and suffering a person's mind could take before it broke him.
The door shut and Darby looked at Sergey, expecting to see some of that brash cockiness she'd witnessed at the BU Lab when the man had played the role of the army officer, Billy Fitzgerald, the second-in-command of the facility. She didn't see any, but he straightened, puffing up his chest as he took in a deep breath. With Casey no longer in the room, Sergey was going now to give her the lay of the land, take this moment to lecture her about who was in charge around here. He came up to her and she was surprised to find what looked like compassion swimming in his tired brown eyes.
Darby said, 'You have a problem with me being here, let's get it out on the table right now before we get moving.'
'I wish you weren't here, but not for the reasons you think. I'm assuming Jack told you why he wanted you kept inside the quarantine chamber.'
She nodded.
'He was adamant about that — about not wanting you anywhere near this,' he said. 'Truth be told, I wanted to bring you into the fold from the beginning, after we found out what had happened at the Rizzo house. I told Jack you'd seen these people up close, for one, and with your background and experience, I argued it would help to have a pair of fresh eyes. I've been working this thing far too long now.'
'How long?'
'Since they took my son.'
He saw the confusion on her face and said, 'Jack didn't tell you about Arman?'
'No.'
'They took him when he was five,' Sergey said. 'Came into the house in broad daylight and shot my wife when she answered the door. Fifteen years ago, this happened. Arman would be twenty today.'
'I'm sorry.'
'My fault. I should have… I was a young hotshot profiler full of drive and ego and thought I could crack this group. Maybe you can help me now. Let's hear this plan of yours.'
She told him. The man listened to her intently, without interrupting, and when she finished, he thought it over for a moment and then nodded.
They discussed equipment next, Darby giving him exact names and specifications.
'I can do that,' Sergey said. 'Okay, let me make some phone calls. I'll meet you out front in a few
