Zach rushed over to help her and Reid pushed him away. “Not a word to Nixon about what happened here or I
swear
, it will be the end of your wife.”
* * * * *
Allison.
Zach wanted to run down the halls shouting her name. He had to get her out of here.
God, what did he do?
She couldn’t take the treatment. The cost,
the risk
, was simply too high.
“Allison.” He turned the corner into her room and found Nixon at her bedside.
No!
He was too late. He covered his mouth with his hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Zach froze, his heart palpitating.
The Hyde peeked through Nixon’s smile. “It’s working better than we hoped.”
Allison sat up in bed, not slumped but fully upright and looked the best she had since her admission. Her toiletry bag was open in front of her, a mirror propped up on the corner of her tray where only the crust of a sandwich was left.
The first solids she’d eaten in days almost completely consumed.
She pulled a soft bristled brush through her black hair and curled the ends under. “You were right. Dr. Nixon said you thought I should take the treatment.”
And now we’re trapped
. The realization was bittersweet.
Nixon unfolded a small wheelchair. “Allison would like some fresh air before the rain sets in. She’s not strong enough to walk on her own, but I’m hopeful she will be soon.” He lowered the railing and swung her stick-like legs over the bedside, bending her knobby knees.
Allison wrapped her arms around Nixon and transferred to the chair. “Well, aren’t you going to say something?”
A tear spilled down Zach’s cheek, one he knew would be misconstrued as pure happiness. He bent down and kissed her with Nixon’s stare at his back.
She could never know the terrifying truth, that she was in more danger well than sick.
“What can I say?” he asked with a forced smile. “You look amazing.”
14
.
Miranda jabbed her elbow as hard as she could into Reid’s Solar Plexus.
Women’s self-defense 101.
“Get off of me,” she shouted but Reid kept coming.
Like a bear on cat tranquilizer
. The risky hit only made him angrier.
“Foster, get out here,” he shouted.
The door lock clicked.
Why was everyone ignoring this?
Reid grabbed a handful of her hair and swept her feet out from under her.
She went forward in slow motion, her hands out in front of her to brace the fall.
Why was he doing this? S
he wasn’t sure what she’d done so wrong.
She was only trying to help the kid out.
The cold, white tile bit into her knees and forced the bones of her arms up into her shoulders.
Reid flipped her over and pinned her on her back. She struggled to get her knee to his groin, but he had expected that and controlled her legs with his weight.
I’m not giving up.
She yanked her wrist free from his one-handed grip and went for his eye socket. He balled up his fist and drew back and that was the last thing she remembered.
* * * * *
Billy staggered into the four-room cabin his grandparents willed to him and Amy.
Home sweet home.
The thirty-acre parcel of land was worth more than the house and since Amy went missing, he rarely locked the front door. Hope let him believe he might one day come home and find her waiting for him on the couch. What he got, instead, was Frank Krieger. The deep lines carved into the old man’s weathered face told of a life of suffering and loss; first his wife, then his daughter, Holly, who was one of the earliest girls to go missing.
“Jesus H. Christ, Billy. What happened to you?” Frank stood up and straightened his enormous belt buckle.
“Didn’t see that crucifix there?” Billy pointed at the ivory Jesus affixed to the wall behind him. His grandmother had one in every room. He dangled a cigarette from his split and swollen lip and held out the pack to Frank. The bourbon had long worn off and he took a beer from the old Kelvinator fridge that barely kept things cold. The motion of pulling the vintage handle set fire to the lower right side of his rib cage. At least two, he figured, were broken.
“I quit, remember?”
“I do.”
But his longing was obvious.
“You bring your kit?”
Frank, a paramedic in his younger days, now served as unofficial emergency care for local hunters and men too dumb to avoid bar brawls. He held up a black medic pouch and went to the sink to wash his hands. “You went up there alone, didn’t you?”
Billy sat at the old farmhouse table and took a long sip from the bottle hoping to numb up and avoid a lecture. He raised a hand to the right side of his brow and wiped the fresh blood spilling from the worst of his visible wounds. “Shit, that smarts.” Frank put on a pair of rubber gloves and turned Billy’s face to the light. He pressed the swollen area north of Billy’s eye and Billy yanked away. “Cut it out, would ya?”
A knowing grin spread across Frank’s aged face. “Not until you tell me how this happened. You went back there, didn’t you?”
“So what if I did? You want Holly back and I want Amy. Nixon has ‘em up there, I know it.”
Frank sniffed. “Is that Bourbon I smell? You went to the Nixon Center alone and
drunk
?”
Billy forgot the spill and regretted not having changed his shirt. “Not drunk, buzzed.”
“I can only guess, then, that your condition is courtesy of Max Reid.” Frank opened a package of suture material and cleaned the split over Billy’s eye.
Billy clenched his teeth to get through the pain. “Hang on.” He held his hand up and finished the beer.
Bourbon was more effective.
“All right, go.”
Frank pulled the jagged edges of the wound together and a trickle of blood ran from between them. Billy closed his eye when the moisture tickled his lid.
The first stick sent a shock wave through Billy and he struggled to hold perfectly still while Frank secured the first suture. He’d never been at the mercy of Frank’s geriatric pace before—a slowness that, when someone else was the patient, had more than once sent him into hysterics—and decided he never wanted to be on this side again. The second suture was easily as painful.
“How much longer?”
“It’s a nasty, jagged thing you have here. Probably another ten or so stitches.”
“Ten or so stitches is
not
a time frame.”
Frank pulled the next one a little harder and made his point. “It’ll take as long as it takes. Why don’t you tell me why you went up there while I work?”
Billy sighed.
He owed him at least that much.
“Another girl is missin’. Name’s Penny Hammond. Her parents came into the shop a couple o’ times. Turns out the last place anyone had seen her was the Nixon clinic. I took her poster and Amy’s up there to see if anyone recognized ‘em. I just thought…” He paused. “I dunno what I thought, but I wasn’t expectin’ Reid.”
Max Reid was the prime suspect in an unsolved serial murder case and secrets like that couldn’t be kept in a town as small as Strandville. After three margaritas one night at the local watering hole, Missy, the Court Reporter blabbed that it was Nixon pulling the strings on a certain Public Defender and judge.
Reid was a local legend.
Frank dabbed at the fresh bleeding with a square of gauze. “How did you get out of there?”
“I almost didn’t. A woman guard distracted him and I ran.”
Frank tilted his head. “A
woman
working for Nixon? Something’s not right there.”
Billy could see Frank calculating. He blinked and the tight wound tugged from the swelling. “What are you thinking?”
Frank snipped the last thread. “That she might be another way in.”
15
.
Nixon waited for the lab results to confirm that the timeline Michael, his former employee and Miranda’s physician, had given him was correct.
That her eggs were ready to be harvested.
Nothing about her hire date had been an accident. Everything had been carefully calculated except for Reid’s assault, which hopefully didn’t affect the in-vitro. Nixon looked through the observation window at Miranda sedated on the Operating Room table. Her face was bruised, her chin swollen. “This isn’t the condition I wanted her in. I’m going to have to monitor her for a brain injury on top of everything else now.”
Reid shrank from the scolding, mumbling something and stopping before he finished.
Nixon heard a hint of confession lingering on the tip of Reid’s tongue and suspected he knew the problem. “Did you take care of Billy Porter?”
The answer better not be no.
Savage killer instinct was the only reason to keep a guy like Reid around.
Everyone had a purpose.
He shook his head in the negative. “It was Miranda or Billy. I knew you wanted her.”
Nixon held up his hand. “I wanted them
both
.”
The door swung open and Ben came in wearing surgical booties, a jacket, and a cap that covered his bald spot and took ten years off his age. He glanced between Nixon and Reid. “Should I come back?”
“No,” Nixon said. “Where are the lab results?” He would deal with Reid later. Miranda was the more pressing issue.
“We’re good to go.” Ben held up the lab report and Nixon read it for himself.
Perfect.
He’d have to commend Michael on his accuracy. “Is the ultrasound ready?”
“Yes and she’s prepped, fully sedated. Martin is monitoring her.”
Nixon choked back his anger and issued clear instructions even Reid couldn’t screw up. “I want you to listen to me carefully,” he said to Reid in a tone fit for a child. “Keep an eye on Zach Keller. Do the evening feedings, take him around, whatever it takes to keep him busy. Stick by him. I don’t want him left alone with his wife until I have a chance to speak to him about what happened. We’ll deal with the Porter issue later.”
Ben opened the observation room door and Nixon went through it, nodding to Martin and offering no other greeting.
Martin adjusted the flow on Miranda’s IV “You’re all set, sir.”
Nixon sat down on the metal stool.
This is the one you’ve been waiting for. Your cure.
Miranda’s legs were wide apart, above hip level in the stirrups. Her bottom hung slightly over the edge of the table.
Nine months. The medical community would praise him. Patients would line up to be treated at the center. He would be a god.
He inserted the ultrasound wand into Miranda and steadied his shaking hand.
Get a hold of yourself.
He lined up the firing guide with the follicle, advanced the needle, and aspirated an egg.
Steady now. Steady.
An error now meant waiting another entire month.
He was short on time.
And those looking to interfere were only drawing closer.
* * * * *
The carousel stuttered and stalled when an oversized length of arm caught on the side of the microwave. Zach barely noticed the smell as it heated.
The first sign of dwindling humanity
. Each feeding grew easier, a fact he resented as a sign of an early unwelcome change forced on him by Nixon.
“I can do this alone,” he said to Reid, not bothering to mask his contempt.
Reid was unusually quiet and brooding. “
No,
you
can’t.
” He took the arm out, injected it, and added it to the pile.
Zach followed him to the cells, the tension increasing between them. Neither had said a word about what happened in the Security Office. Zach couldn’t stop thinking about Miranda. He rehearsed, in his head, different ways of asking what Reid did with her and decided against all of them.
He’d caused enough trouble already.
Reid lifted the pass-though door and tossed a chunk of leg on the floor of Pop’s cell. He didn’t knock or taunt and Pop barely acknowledged the feeding.
It was the noise that drew them.
Confident that if he were quiet there would be no issues, Zach opened the next one. A terrible stench overcame him. He covered his mouth and nose and peered through the small opening.
Reid turned his head away, but said nothing.
The mutilated corpse in the cell had all but melted. Its slick skin reflected the artificial light and its mouth hung open, black voids replacing its teeth. A swamp of sickening, foul juices spread beneath it.
“What do we do with this?” Zach asked.
“Fuck,” Reid mumbled. “I guess we see if it’s headed for the incinerator.” He retrieved an aluminum pole with a vinyl-coated noose from the kitchenette and took his two-way radio from his hip. “Clarence, this is Reid. Do you hear me?”
A deep voice came through the static. “Have an issue, do you?”
Zach looked around, wondering how someone would know that. There were cameras along the hallway.
“Just open the fucking cell.” Reid clipped his radio back on his belt. “The only way in and out of these cells is through the Control Room at the other end of the hall. Clarence and Travis are the monitors.”
An alarm buzzed and the door popped open.
Zach avoided the swinging pole as Reid angled himself to step inside the cell. Nervous sweat ran down his armpits and back.
Don’t let this thing wake up.
Every warning Nixon ever issued flew through his mind.
No bites, no scratches.
Reid slid the loop over the infected man’s head and tightened down on his neck.
Zach stayed behind him. “What are we looking for? It has no pulse.”
“It’s not eating. Here.” Reid held out a vitamin syringe he took from his uniform shirt pocket. Zach didn’t immediately reach for it. “Come on, Keller. I’m not in the mood for this shit. Stick him.”