She looked up at him with a smug smile. He turned and walked to the elevators.
At 6:50 that evening, Lacey stood in the atrium dressed in shorts, a blue tank top, and sturdy tennis shoes, ready for a warm evening of walking about. She stared at the tiny red tree frog crouched on a branch at eye level as tour groups and a never-ending stream of smaller parties trooped around her, all wandering the portions of the zig that Swain had opened to the public for the weekend’s open house.
Parrots squawked overhead and soared from branch to branch, the rush of the stream and waterfall damping the echoing chatter of the visitors. The frog, which appeared to glisten with moisture, did not move. As it had not since she’ d arrived ten minutes ago, but that was not unusual for tree frogs.
She glanced around at the
ping
of an elevator car. Its doors rattled, disgorging passengers, but Reinhardt wasn’t among them. As the waiting tourists pressed into the car, she wondered for the fiftieth time if she was being stood up and should just go over to the dining hall while there was still time. The degree of her disappointment at the possibility he wouldn’t show surprised her. Though after what he’ d endured in the unity meeting, she could hardly hold it against him.
Experiencing a post-traumatic flashback was bad enough, but doing so in front of a hostile audience had to be mortifying. At least he’d done little more than go stiff and pale, clutching the padded arms of his chair as his gray eyes widened at the sight of horrors no one else could see—and, coming out of it, knock Gen’s black box off the table as if it were a suddenly discovered cockroach. Her heart went out to him.
But she still hoped he’ d come. She hadn’t told him about the note attached to the blue plastic frog left outside her door because she’ d feared being overheard:
My father is not what he appears to be. Meet
me in the Vault tomorrow night, and I will show you.
When she’d first brought the frog to him, she’ d hoped—prayed— there’d be some way for her to talk to him privately. So when she’ d heard him say they needed to talk—and how about tonight?—she could hardly believe it. She frowned at the unmoving red frog, and decided to give him five more minutes.
A repeating cascade of notes finally penetrated her musings, and she realized it was her cell phone. When she answered she had to plug one ear to hear over the rush of the waterfall. “If you’re waiting to see that little guy move,” said Reinhardt’s familiar voice, “you’ll be there a long time. He’s plastic.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s you! You can see me here? Where are you?” She looked around.
“Don’t gawk about like that. We’re trying to be discreet here.”
“We are?”
“There’s a shuttle leaving for the campus overlook right about now. See if you can get on it. If not, take the next one. I’ll meet you up there.”
“A shuttle?”
“They’re running every fifteen minutes tonight. Don’t say any more—just go. I’ll watch till you’re on.”
“Okay.” She flipped the phone shut and left the atrium, heading across the crowded main lobby, a cavernous, high-ceilinged chamber whose west wall was a mosaic of glass panels—clear, opaque, and reflective. Reinhardt was probably watching through one of them. She didn’t let herself look up, though, and concentrated on threading her way through the milling crowd, dodging around the little knots of people who’d stopped to look at the various freestanding displays or huddle over their visitor’s guides to see which way they should go. When she finally reached the front doors, the sky-blue shuttle van was just pulling away.
Disappointed but resigned, she waited by the sign that said Overlook Shuttle Boarding. It wasn’t long before a second shuttle drove up, unloaded its few passengers, and she got on. A handful of visitors joined her, and within five minutes they were on their way.
The van followed the paved road through a gap in the man-made berm that rose on the campus’s north side, hiding it all from the highway a half mile away. Once through the berm, the road curved westward in gentle ascent through a landscape of chaparral and juniper, following the berm and then rising above it with the natural landscape. At length they reached the crest of a tall ridge, where a series of covered stone-worked ramadas were scattered along the eastern slope between stands of oak and madrona. A narrow, paved service road continued on, looping round the property and giving access to outlying campus installations.
The shuttle drove around the small but very full parking lot and pulled up to a curbed sidewalk to let off its passengers and pick up those waiting to return to the campus proper. Lacey had been told that in cooler weather the Institute held cookouts and parties at the overlook as part of their social enrichment program.
She stepped off the van into the baked atmosphere of what was still late afternoon in June, though it was nearly 7:30. Not seeing Reinhardt, she joined the swarms of people meandering the looping path between the four ramadas and the parking lot. Most went straight to the walled overlook for a quick scan of the campus, then returned to the shuttle pickup site to go back.
She strolled slowly, stopping to read the identifying signs for local vegetation and spending a good amount of time at the overlook, picking out the various buildings according to the large metal map bolted to the wall. It offered an exceptional view of the ziggurat, whose many mirrored surfaces were just now catching the rosy glow of the setting sun so that it gleamed like a jewel against the rumpled purpling hills behind it. From the overlook she could clearly see the long downsloping water channel that traversed the stairstepping levels and ended in the waterfall that greeted visitors arriving at the front door. It also served as imitation of the great stairways by which the ancient priests ascended to the tops of the original zigs, to offer sacrifices to their gods.
Suddenly her stomach growled so loudly it drew the attention of the woman standing next to her. Embarrassed, Lacey moved on. She circled the loop twice, then climbed up to the farthest and highest ramada, where a cement table and benches stood empty on the platform. By now ravenously hungry, she settled on one of the benches to wait, her back resting against the edge of the table.
Her position offered a good view of the overlook area, as well as the campus, the latter scattered with a lot more outbuildings and fenced car parks than she’ d expected. There was even a helipad complete with orange wind sock on a pole and two parked choppers. Though she could not see it, she knew a third chopper sat atop the zig for Swain’s private use.
“Sorry I’m late.” Reinhardt’s voice startled her so badly she jumped, then turned as he hiked out of the brush from the ramada’s south side.
He wore a black baseball cap, a khaki-colored army T-shirt, and jeans over hiking boots. A gray daypack hugged his back, and a pair of binoculars dangled from his neck. He wasn’t wearing his glasses—had probably exchanged them for contacts again—and in the ruddy light of the setting sun his gray eyes looked almost hazel. “I hope you like burgers and fries,” he said, lifting the thermal bag he carried in his right hand. “I picked some up at the Resort Café before I left. They gave me the bag to carry them in, so hopefully they’re still warm.”
“You brought dinner!” she cried in astonished delight. “That’s awesome! I don’t care if they’re stone-cold, I’m so hungry!” She swiveled her legs over the bench to face the table as he set down the bag and slid off his pack.
“I’ve got a salad in my pack, if you’d prefer that,” he said, sitting down across from her.
“Can we have both?”
He pulled a boxed salad from the pack, followed it with bottles of cherry-pomegranate juice, napkins, and utensils.
“You’ve thought of everything!” she exclaimed. “I’m amazed.”
“I’m not always on total disconnect,” he said with a sheepish grin.
As they ate, he got right to business, relating his experience Saturday night in the animal facility when he’ d chased Frogeater down the stairwell to the locked pump room door. She listened in horror as he recounted the details of his subsequent arrest by Institute security, their discovery of Manny’s body in the frog tank, and his private interview with Swain, during which he was shown the surveillance video of someone dressed like him loading a body onto a gurney at the Vault’s rear loading dock.
“He really
is
keeping the corpse in the Vault, then?”
“That’s what he said.”
“But why would he want to blackmail you into staying? To hear him talk—in private, anyway—you’re an unstable, paranoid psychotic.”
Reinhardt grimaced as he plucked the last French fry from the orange paper that had wrapped his hamburger. “For one thing, that sort of talk is primarily designed to get you to distrust me so he can advance his plans for you unhindered. As for why he’s blackmailing me . . . ?” He popped the fry into his mouth and chewed, fixing his gaze on the ziggurat at her back. A gentle breeze kicked up around them, rustling the oak trees and the grass, and carrying snatches of conversation from the visitors meandering about on the ridge below them.
Finally he swallowed, sighed, and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. Could be part of his plan to break me from my Christianity, his desire to own my soul, or something else entirely.” His gaze returned to her. “Did you read the articles?”
“About the missing girls?” She reached for her juice. “I did. And then I tried to confirm online the information in that report on the international sites, and I have to tell you I found nothing.”
“That’s because the report is a copy of a top secret government document. And I do hope you’ve shredded that disk like I asked.”
She stared at him, struggling to get her mind around what he’ d said.
Top secret government document?
“Are you a spy?”
He looked pained. “It’s a recent development.”
“Who sent you? CIA? FBI?”
“Hmm.” He seemed bemused. “I’m not really sure. Could be either one, or Army Intelligence . . . And they didn’t exactly send me, they positioned me. Then let me know what they’d done.”
The K-J evaluator
had
mentioned he’ d likely done intelligence work when he’d been in the military. “I thought you had a medical discharge.”
“I did. They said I’d gone mad from my exposure to the elements after an extraction mission gone wrong. I was the lone survivor, and at first I
was
quite insane. Raving, terrified, unable to sleep, unable to trust anyone. Whatever I said about my experience, no one believed.Of course, the mission had been officially expunged from the record by then, so there was no hope of confirmation. They just wanted it all to disappear. Including me.
“They gave me a medical discharge. Blamed it on my daughter’s death and the problems I was having with my ex-wife . . . At least that way I had benefits and they paid for my treatment.”
He paused and drank from his bottle of juice. “Once I got the notion to go for the genetics degree, I just shut the door on my past, like it was someone else’s life.”
“But now you’re having flashbacks again.”
“After ten years of being ‘clean.’ ” He crumpled the hamburger’s paper wrapper and stuffed it into the bag. “The first one hit about twenty minutes after I’d taped up the cut on your arm in the prep room last week. The most recent was a couple of hours ago in the unity meeting, as you saw.”
She nodded, thinking back to this afternoon. “Is that why you knocked Gen’s box off the table? Because of something in the flashback?”
He grimaced. “Yes. In fact—”
She watched his thoughts jump track as he speared her with a gaze of horror.
“You have one of those boxes, don’t you? From last week’s meeting.” He went on before she could answer. “You’ve got to throw it away.As soon as you get back to your room. And don’t just throw it in the trash. Throw it out the window.”
“I don’t have a window. I’m in the basement, remember?”
“Then take it to the dumpster.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Dangerous. You haven’t heard any voices, have you?”
“Voices?”
“Or been troubled by strange dreams?”
She frowned at him. “You’re starting to sound paranoid again, Dr. Reinhardt.”
“I’m probably going to sound worse before I sound better. Just remember before you condemn me what everyone thought of you when you claimed there was an intruder in the AnFac that night. And you never even got to the part about his taste for frog legs.”
Her frown deepened. “All right. I’ll throw it away. But can you at least tell me how it’s so dangerous?”
“It’s . . .” He paused, seeming reluctant. “It’s some sort of mind control device.”
“A
mind
control device?”
“Just promise me you’ll get rid of it.”
“I’ll throw it in the dumpster as soon as I get back tonight.”
He accepted that, and they fell silent—his sudden fanaticism about the box leaving them adrift in a sea of awkwardness. She wanted to return to the subject of his flashbacks. What was he seeing? Was he remembering what had happened in Afghanistan? And why now? What could some military extraction mission in the Middle East twelve years ago have to do with Swain and Kendall-Jakes?
She had just worked up the nerve to reopen the subject when he suddenly stiffened, eyes narrowing as they fixed on something in the parking lot. She turned to see a shuttle disgorging yet another load of visitors, among whom he’ d apparently seen someone who interested him. Indeed, he now picked up the binoculars that he’ d set aside on the table and focused them toward the milling group.
“I think I’ve seen that guy down there in the red hat back at the zig.
In a security guard’s uniform. You ready for a little hike?” He lowered the binocs from his eyes and slid the carry strap over his head, then stood and stepped over the bench, reaching for his day pack.
“As long as it’s not too far,” she said. “I meant it about the blisters.”
“We’ll just go up the ridge a bit. There’s a rock formation there that’ll give us a good view of the sunset.” He pulled a dark blue ball cap and a dark denim shirt from the day pack and told her to put them on. As she did, he zipped up the pack and swung it onto his shoulders, in the process of which she was shocked to glimpse a pistol grip protruding from the back waistband of his jeans.