Darkness Falls (19 page)

It was just another excuse -- the last in a long line of rationalizations that had brought them there. The truth was that they had no idea what good calling the police would have done or what Michael Teague's ultimate plan was.

Then why hadn't she fought harder?

It was an easy question to answer if she could bring herself to look that far inward. She had her life back. No matter how precarious the situation, she'd escaped her self-imposed exile, Erin was with her, and she had a purpose again. Admittedly, that purpose was trying to fix a horrifying disaster that was entirely her fault, but after eighteen months of trying to think of a reason to get out of bed in the morning, she wasn't in a position to be choosy.

One call to the police, though, and it would all disappear again -- this time forever. She knew that ultimately she had no future, but it was hard to part with the illusion so soon.

"Okay, Erin. It's your plan. What now?"

He stared through the windscreen with nearly the intensity of Jonas. "Skip the country and leave this to the government."

"Then why don't you? I told you I could handle this alone."

"By turning yourself in? That's just stupid, Jenna."

"But sitting here doing nothing is so brilliant?"

Jenna had Jonas's duffle over her shoulder with her hand inside, aiming the German's own gun at him as they walked toward a sparsely populated parking lot. Erin was carrying a similar duffle with his own gun inside.

"Where's your car?" Jenna said.

No answer.

With the exception of the flight plan, the only thing of interest they'd found in the plane was a set of keys -- though Erin hadn't missed a single opportunity to point out that their existence didn't necessarily mean they would the find the car they belonged to. Just another excuse to head for the most convenient border at the highest practical speed. He'd probably only agreed to fly her there because Mexico was almost in sight.

Jenna counted three people in the lot and another two smoking in front of the private airport's office. She tried to tell herself that no one was paying attention, but every glance in their direction, no matter how brief, seemed to take on a probing quality.

"Tell us where your car is," Erin repeated at a volume that made Jenna glance back. The men by the office were now gazing lazily in their general direction. They perked up even more when Jonas stopped short and spun around.

"Keep going," Erin said.

The German pointed to the hidden gun. "Shoot me."

"Don't fuck with me, man. I swear I'll --"

Jonas moved forward at a speed calculated to be too slow to startle them into shooting but too fast for Erin to overcome his surprise and maneuver away. The gun was causing him to abandon his well-tested defenses in favor of a weapon that he wasn't sure he could bring himself to use.

Jonas took advantage of Erin's hesitation and swung a fist into the gash in his side, doubling him over and causing him to drop his duffle. The gun was exposed now for everyone to see, but at least he managed to keep hold of it as he tried to protect his ribs from another attack.

"Jonas!" Jenna shouted, pulling her own gun from her bag and aiming it at the German as he landed a vicious kick to Erin's chest, toppling him and slamming the back of his head into the asphalt. Her weapon seemed impossibly heavy, shaking in rhythm with her accelerating heart rate. She'd never purposely harmed anyone, but now she was aiming a gun at another human being.

Jonas ignored her, leaping forward and landing with one foot on Erin's wrist, pinning his gun. The blow to the back of Erin's head had obviously been as bad as it sounded and he was unable to react other than to swing a limp fist into Jonas's shin.

"I said stop!"

At first, her voice seemed too quiet to carry much authority, but there was something in her tone that made the German pause.

To Jenna's surprise, her hand had steadied, as had her heart. "If you don't back away, Jonas, I'll kill you."

She wished that she could have said that the words didn't seem to be her own or that they were the product of panic, but it wouldn't have been true. She meant every word. She wasn't going to let him hurt Erin anymore. Even if it meant pulling the trigger and having to stand there and watch the consequences of that action.

Jonas seemed to come to the same conclusion. He smiled thinly and stood upright, retreating a few feet before stopping again.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll see each other again."

Erin had regained enough strength to begin sitting up and Jonas turned, sprinting across the now-uninhabited parking lot while Jenna watched him over the sight of her pistol.

"Are you alright?" she said, helping Erin to his feet and glancing back at the office. The two men were no longer out front, but she spotted one of them peeking through a window, talking quickly into a cell phone.

She grabbed the bag off the ground and supported as much of Erin's weight as she could as they rushed toward the lines of parked cars.

"I'm sorry," he said, haltingly. "I should have stopped him. The gun . . ."

She desperately pushed the UNLOCK button on the key fob as they continued forward. "It's not your fault, Erin. None of this is your fault."

The lights of a white Toyota compact flashed a few cars in front of them and they stumbled toward it. She shoved Erin into the passenger seat and ran around to the driver's side.

"You're bleeding," she said as she started the car and threw it in reverse, squealing the wheels as she headed toward the airport's exit.

He shook his head violently to clear it and pressed a hand to his side. The fabric of his shirt was matted with blood.

"I think it's stopped," Erin said, still sounding weak. "Your stitches actually held."

She threw the car to the left, slamming him into the door and getting them off the main road as sirens screamed in the distance.

"That's it, Erin. As soon as Jonas gets to a pay phone he's going to warn Michael. You have to call the guy running the investigation and tell him what happened."

He didn't answer her, instead opening the glove box and riffling through the papers inside.

She swung the car onto an even quieter street and glanced in her rearview mirror before rolling to a stop. "Call him, Erin. Now."

"No. We can find them. There's got to be something here." He continued going through the documents he'd discovered, but after a moment just let them fall to the floorboard.

"Erin . . ."

"Okay, I'll do it. But first we have to get you out of here. Get you somewhere safe."

It was a beautiful fantasy. She'd run somewhere sunny and unspoiled and he'd follow in a year or so. Then they'd spend the rest of their lives swinging in hammocks and drinking out of coconuts while governments collapsed, economies crumbled, and people struggled to feed themselves.

"Eventually, I'm going to have to own up to what I did," she said. "To explain."

He didn't seem to hear, instead fixating on a small screen in the dash.

"Erin? Are you listening to me?"

He didn't answer, but reached out and turned on the car's GPS.

"It couldn't be this easy," he mumbled as he touched a house-shaped icon on the screen.

A moment later the car was filled with the pleasant voice of a woman asking them to turn left at the next street.

Chapter
24.

"Erin . . . I'm so sorry."

His infamous temper had completely failed him and he just sat there, hands drooped across the wheel and head resting against the window. Static had drowned out the NPR story for a moment, but then the voices inevitably faded back in.

"That's a fairly strong statement," the interviewer said.

"I stand by it. The information comes from a well-placed source and we've talked to a number of people in the field to corroborate it. At this point, I feel comfortable saying that the government believes that the bacteria were created by Dr. Erin Neal for the specific purpose of destroying the world's oil supplies."

"To what end?"

"Neal's a well-known radical environmentalist who's written a number of papers and even a full-length book on the subject. The theme going through all of them is that environmental destruction is inevitable and unavoidable. Obviously, he found the solution he was looking for. A final solution."

"A final solution," Erin said quietly. Now they were comparing him to Hitler.

He threw open the car door and walked away from the vehicle in a vain attempt to escape the sound of the radio.

"Is there any word as to whether Neal is in custody?"

"I think we can assume that he hasn't been captured at this point. I should mention that he has a history of violence and should be considered quite dangerous."

He heard the passenger door open and watched Jenna's shadow come up behind him.

"Erin. I'll fix this. I swear I will."

He laughed. "How? How are you going to fix it, Jenna? If they think it's me, they've been through my house and they found all my data on that bacteria."

She put a hand on his shoulder and, despite everything, he couldn't pull away.

"I'll call Homeland Security and I'll explain everything. I'll tell them that it was me. That I stole it. I'll make them listen to me."

"And based on all your credibility, they're going to just let me walk off into the sunset?" He pointed back to the car, where the interview was winding down. "Time to wake up and see the real world, Jen. I'm a radical environmentalist with a history of violence."

Her hand slid from his shoulder and she took a hesitant step back. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I was only --"

"I don't want to hear it right now, okay? I really don't."

He stood there, staring through the heat haze at a distant metal building and the abandoned oil derricks beyond.

"Do you think he's still in there?" Jenna said.

He shrugged. "If he gets cell reception, Jonas would have called him by now. Maybe they're long gone. Or maybe they're waiting for us."

He pulled the pistol from his waistband and gazed down at it for a moment before fixing again on the distant building. "All I know is if I'm going to crash and burn, I'm fucking taking him with me."

Since the building had no windows and only one flimsy door, they had few options. Jenna grabbed Erin's arm as he stepped in front of the door, but he pulled away and slammed a foot into it. It buckled and he jumped through, holding his pistol in front of him with both hands, a technique derived entirely from the hundreds of cop shows he'd watched as a kid.

Not that he expected it to matter much. Most likely, Teague and Udo were hidden and ready for him, their crosshairs lined up on his chest. But what else could he do?

Jenna slipped in behind him holding Jonas's pistol in a similar fashion, though as far as he knew, she'd never fired a gun.

The inside of the building was a jumble of tables, overturned chairs, and wrecked research equipment. Erin continued to search for movement, peering over the sights of his pistol as he swept it back and forth across the room. Everything was still, until he spotted Jenna moving along the wall to a door at the rear.

"What are you doing?" he whispered loudly. "Get back here."

She ignored him, continuing silently forward and then jumping through the door. He ran after her through the debris and found her standing in a similarly wrecked room with her gun now hanging loosely at her side.

"Empty," she said.

He took a moment to examine the interior of the warehouse more closely. It was even more torn apart than he'd first thought. Drawers were lying upside down on the floor surrounded by broken glass, microscopes looked as if they'd been beaten with hammers, and the door had been ripped off a large incubator at the back. The refrigerator looked undamaged, though, and he opened it, reaching for one of the beers at the back. German. Big surprise.

"What's with the drinking?" Jenna said. "I thought you'd given it up for good."

"Me too," he said, deftly using the edge of a counter to pop the top off.

There were three televisions still intact in the back room and he found the remote to one of them on the floor. He pressed the POWER button and was suddenly faced with himself. Or more precisely, a photo from his college yearbook -- probably the only thing the media had access to at this point. Kind of ironic, really. All the people who had turned on him after his book was published were probably now closing ranks and telling the reporters to fuck off.

He launched the bottle in his hand at the television, smashing the screen in a spectacular spray of foam and sparks. But it didn't make him feel any better. Not even a little.

When he turned back into the main part of the warehouse, he found Jenna tossing the beer she'd found in the refrigerator out the door.

"What the hell are you doing?" he said, running toward her.

"Someone left in a hurry," she replied, arcing the last bottle through the air and watching it shatter on the rocky ground outside. "All the computers have their hard drives torn out and the filing cabinets are empty. That pile of ashes we saw outside is probably what's left of their documents."