And the frogs. Dead. Mutilated. It was too bizarre and inexplicable to be real.
Oh, Lord! I must be hallucinating again.
But . . . were hallucinations this vivid? The water cold on her toes where it reached over the thick soles of her flip-flops, the plastic bucket hard and cool against her bare leg, the dank stench of frog, the sucking sound of the water trickling through the clogged drain . . .
For the first time she lifted her eyes from frogs and tank and saw the words scrawled across the peach-colored side wall in fat black marker:
HIS EYES ARE OVER ALL HIS CREATION
She frowned, closed her eyes tight, opened them again. The tank, the frogs, the words were still there. And the words made no more sense than the rest of it.
She closed her eyes again, clenched the bucket hard, seeking to feel some sign that she wasn’t really in the frog room but back in her bed dreaming. She took several deep, calming breaths, assuring herself of this, and trying to make herself wake up.
But the sick, surreal scene remained when she opened her eyes.
Oh, Lord, what is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? Surely
I’m not that stressed! I thought things were getting better.
. . .
“Do you like it?” The voice spoke low and raspy almost in her ear, catapulting her forward and around with a shriek. One foot landed on frog bodies and slid out from under her. Flailing for balance, she tumbled backward, landing with a splash on her bottom.
He stood in the open doorway, grinning at her, taller than she remembered him. There was the chipped tooth. The dirty blond hair with its short, bristled Mohawk, the heavy brow, the ice-chip eyes, the big boil on his forehead, larger than it was last night. He’ d smeared mud across his grizzled cheeks—streaks of tan and reddish brown— which only added to the wild look.
“I did it for you,” he said, stepping into the room.
She scrambled away from him in a backward crawl, hampered by the oversized, unbuttoned lab coat until her own movements pulled it down off her shoulders. Freed of it, she surged backward, only to hit the wall. He stopped a few feet inside the room, the hard blue eyes traveling downward from her face, over her wet T-shirt and skimpy shorts, her protective lab coat now a wet, rumpled mess beneath her. The muscles alongside his right eye twitched. His mouth opened slightly and the tip of his tongue darted out, running lightly across his lips. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come.”
A squall of revulsion sent her scrambling sideways and over the fallen tank, putting it between them. Using it to maintain her balance, she finally got her feet under her. Only to realize she was trapped. And if he had the strength to pull over that tank, what could she do to resist him?
“Oh, Lord, let me wake up! Let me wake up. Let me wake up.”
“Wake up?” he asked, startling her. She hadn’t realized she’ d spoken the words aloud. “Yes. Let us wake up together.”
He stepped back, his eyes never leaving her own, the tic in the right one working rapidly.
Oh, Lord, please . . . please . . .
He was reaching back to shut the frog-room door when the elevator pinged and both of them froze. The doors trundled open. Footfalls echoed in the silence.
Again, Lacey was first to react, screaming for help at the top of her lungs and leaping over the tank for the discarded bucket. As she grabbed it and flung it upward, her feet slid out from under her and she went down again. But not before glimpsing him dodging the bucket, his face full of undiluted fury.
But incredibly the stranger ran. She heard one of the heavy lab room doors slam, a rapid thumping of feet, and suddenly Dr. Reinhardt stood in his place.
“He was here!” she cried. “Just now. I think he ran out through Poe’s lab again.”
Reinhardt vanished, ignoring her cries to wait. She got carefully to her feet and finally had the presence of mind to kick off the treacherous flip-flops and put them into the bucket.
From the hall Reinhardt’s voice echoed back to her: “You sure it was Poe’s lab? ’Cause the door’s locked.”
“No. Not sure.” She heard the
beep
and
click
of a security lock disengaging and reached the hall in time to see Reinhardt disappear through the doorway of his own lab at the hall’s end. A warning rose to her lips and died there as the light flicked on and nothing happened. He’ d left the door ajar, and she glimpsed him through the crack as he moved around the room beyond. A desperate disappointment flooded her as she realized the stranger had gotten away. Again.
She sagged weakly against the wall, shaking like an old woman, as much from reaction to the adrenaline recently surging through her veins as from cold. With her shorts and T-shirt drenched from all the falling and splashing, and her lab coat lying in the puddle of dead frogs and water, she had nothing to ward off the chill of the very well-conditioned air. Gooseflesh puckered her arms and legs, and her teeth were chattering.
Reinhardt emerged from his lab and pulled the door shut behind him, then stopped when he saw her standing there.
She pushed away from the wall, dreading what he would say next. “You didn’t see him, did you.”
He stood motionless for a moment, then gave a start and strode toward her, slipping off his lab coat as he came. “Here, you’re all wet,” he said. “No wonder you’re shivering.” He wrapped his too-large coat around her as if she were a child. She pulled its front edges together before her as her throat closed and tears blurred her vision. For a moment she wished he’ d wrap his arms around her, too, for right then she wanted nothing so much as to cling to someone safe and let the storm of fear and heartache and frustration pour out.
But he touched her only enough to get the coat around her shoulders, then abandoned her to step into the vandalized frog room.
“I didn’t imagine this,” she called after him. “He was real! He was here!” She heard the rising pitch in her voice and cut herself off, knowing her words were more for herself than for him. She drew a deep breath, then stepped into the doorway. He was staring at the words on the wall.
“You see them, don’t you?”
“I see them.”
“And the frogs? The overturned tank?”
His head turned toward the tank and he nodded. She couldn’t see his face.
“I’ll admit I could have written those words on the wall,” she said. “I didn’t, but I could’ve. I could
not
have tipped over that tank, however.”
“No. You couldn’t have.” He sounded almost dazed. Once more his gaze tracked over the various elements of vandalism in the small room, then he turned abruptly and met her at the door. “Nor do I believe you tore the legs off all those frogs. Come on. This place isn’t safe.”
Taking her arm, he steered her out of the doorway and down the hall toward the elevator. “For all we know, your friend is hiding out in Poe’s lab, and I don’t like it that security’s not down here yet. That tank had to make quite a boom when it fell, so even if the surveillance cameras didn’t— Well, no matter. You’ll be safer elsewhere.”
They stopped in front of the elevator, and he punched the single Up button. The doors opened immediately. But as he started to guide her into the car, she pulled free of him and stepped back, forcing him to turn and face her.
“If security’s not down here yet, shouldn’t we call them?” she demanded. “I mean, if their systems are down, and he
is
in Poe’s lab, they might still catch him.”
“We’ll go straight up to security, if you like,” he said. “But right now we need to get out of here. We have no idea where that nut case has gone, and someone who can do the things he has done is not to be trifled with.”
With that he convinced her. She stepped into the elevator and he followed closely, slapping the One button for the security station as he entered. The elevator’s doors rumbled closed and the car lurched upward, stopping moments later, one floor up.
But when the doors slid open onto the security center, Lacey stood motionless, staring past an empty waiting area to the receiving desk, where a young female officer sat reading a paperback book. Behind her stretched a roomful of desks and computer screens, most of them unmanned. From all appearances, it was a quiet, uneventful night.
Reinhardt had said there were surveillance cameras in the AnFac. Surely if they were down, someone would have noticed. And he was right about the boom of the tank falling. Even if they couldn’t see it, even if audio transmitters were out, only one floor up they’d have heard it with their ears and felt it in the trembling of the floor. Shouldn’t
someone
have come to investigate?
Especially
if their surveillance feeds were down?
How could they not know what happened! Last night they were all
over it!
For the first time in hours she returned to her thoughts of a cover-up. In that vein, she could all too easily imagine how things would go should she approach the desk. How she’ d tell the pretty blond officer that she’ d seen the same intruder tonight as she’ d hallucinated last night during her fit of hysterics.
This time there was the tank and the frogs, of course. But last time there’d been her wound and the destruction of Poe’s lab. . . . Maybe they’d just been waiting for her and Reinhardt to leave and were even now down there cleaning everything up. . . .
If she told the girl her story, they’d no doubt hustle her down to the clinic again, claiming there was nothing on their surveillance cameras. Maybe they’d even blame her for the tank and the frogs. Hysteria sometimes gave people extraordinary strength—and given her record, who would be surprised if she were to jerk the legs off all the frogs?
By the time the desk officer looked up, Lacey had talked herself out of making any sort of report and, avoiding eye contact, reached to push the Two button, which would take them up to the main floor lobby.
“I thought you were living in the tech dorm on floor B1,” Reinhardt said as the doors closed.
“I am,” she said quietly. “But I can’t go back there right now.” Thinking about being trapped in that tiny underground, windowless room sent a wave of claustrophobic-tinged terror rattling through her. She realized now that it was a good thing she’ d been sedated at the clinic last night, because she’ d never have been able to sleep otherwise. As would certainly be the case tonight. . . . Unless she took a couple of those sleeping pills the clinic psychiatrist had given her.
Or maybe I’ll
just doze on a bench somewhere until dawn. Or head up to Prep and
Supply to get a head start on the autoclaving.
The south service elevator opened directly into the Madrona Lounge, which was located on the main floor, tucked away behind the great atrium and welcoming lobby. Intended for faculty, it was generally off-limits to the public.
She crossed the small elevator lobby and entered the lounge which, at two in the morning, was dark and deserted. Smallish round tables attended by plastic molded chairs filled the carpeted room, a few illumined by overhead security lights, most of them shrouded in shadow. Potted ficus and metal cactus sculptures stood at intervals around the space, which was bounded on the south by a wall of windows. Outside, more tables crowded a small balcony, beyond which a decorative balustrade held back the night, where only a few tiny grounds lights flickered in the darkness.
A coffee bar stretched along the room’s east end, steeped in darkness save for the red lights of the automatic dispenser. The bar would open for business at 6:00 a.m.—and, yes, K-J employees had to pay—but for now it stood quiet and deserted, its curved glass cases empty except for a few bran muffins and crumbling pieces of leftover baklava.
To the west a wide hallway passed meeting and storage rooms on its way to intersect the main floor’s central north-south corridor.
Reinhardt came up beside her. “What are we doing here, Ms.McHenry?”
“I don’t know. I just . . .” She scanned the room, then turned to look up at him. He wore a blue plaid flannel shirt over T-shirt and jeans, his security keycard dangling on a blue lanyard from his neck. A faint red-gold grizzle gleamed on his cheeks, and behind his glasses, shadows cupped his eyes. In the dim light, he looked tired and more boyish than she remembered. Instead of the vaunted Dr. Reinhardt, or the absentminded geek, he seemed just a normal man.
“Did you see him at all?” she asked.
His eyes, which had been sweeping the room as if he expected an attack at any moment, came back to her. He didn’t have to ask whom she meant. “No. But I heard someone running and the door slam. And when I came around the corner, you were still in the frog room with the door open. . . .”
She held his gaze soberly. “I didn’t tip over that tank.”
“I know.” He drew a deep breath and let it out. “Why don’t you tell me what did happen?”
So she did, though there wasn’t much to tell he’ d not already seen. “You’d back me up, then?” she asked when she was finished. “If I went down and reported this?”
“Of course. Though I don’t think it would do much good.”
She recalled their conversation earlier in the day, when she’ d stopped by his office and he’d refused to acknowledge last night’s events, and abruptly knew why she had come up here. “We need to talk.”
He grimaced. “In that case, I’ll need some coffee. Shall I get you some, too?”
“No, thanks.”
She followed him to the machine and watched as he filled the paper cup, then added sugar but no creamer. She liked his hands—strong, well-formed, capable. He picked up the cup and led her to the table nearest the wall that framed the great window and sat down with his back to it, facing the room.
She settled beside him rather than across from him, and they sat in silence while he sipped his coffee and kept his eyes on the room.
Presently she said, “You lied to me, Doctor. You sat there in your office today and flat-out
lied
to me! You, the supposedly honorable, virtuous Christian!”
He grimaced but made no effort to defend himself. “I sin like everyone else, Ms. McHenry,” he said, eyes dropping to the cup on the table before him, cupped by both hands. “I just happen to have the liberty of being able to confess it afterward.” His eyes came back to hers. “And the situation is . . . more complicated than you know.”