Edge of Midnight (7 page)

So he was ending up behind bars today, after all.

August the fucking eighteenth. It never failed.

“Will it hurt?”

Dr. Osterman threw a reassuring arm around the shoulders of the girl he was steering into his private examining room. He flipped on the lights, enabled the video cameras. “Not at all. X-Cog 10 will just enhance your neural activity, and the electrical stimulation will augment blood circulation to selected portions of your brain,” he lied smoothly.

Caitlin’s eyes widened, intrigued. “Cool.”

Osterman gave her a smile brimming with charm. “Basically, we’re trying to use more of your already remarkable brain potential.”

Caitlin gave him a world-weary smile. “There are lots of drugs that help you use more of your brain,” she said. “I’ve tried a bunch already.”

He chuckled. “No doubt, but my approach is more systematic. I hope to develop ways to treat learning problems, enhance academic performance, and ultimately, contribute to human evolution.”

“Wow,” she whispered, her eyes big.

Osterman experienced a flash of doubt as to whether this was worth the risk. Caitlin’s test results were only borderline. Off the charts compared to a normal teenager, and extremely talented artistically, but she was more or less mediocre by his own standards. On the plus side, her family profile was perfect. She was a product of the foster system. Behavioral problems, drug problems, no nosy parents to ask awkward questions when she disappeared. And he’d been waiting so long for a suitable test subject. Helix Group needed results, if he was to keep getting this lavish funding. Demonstrable, profitable results.

Osterman tilted her face up, noting the lovely bone structure. She had big, startled brown eyes. Her lips were shiny with flavored lip gloss.

“You’re special, Caitlin,” he said gently. “This project is important. I can’t trust the others the way I trust you. Do you understand?”

She blinked in the bright light. “Uh, OK.”

He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You’re lovely,” he said.

Her eyes widened, startled. Osterman drew his hand slowly away. “I’m sorry, Cait,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

Caitlin’s eyes glittered with tears. “It’s OK. I, uh, don’t mind.”

Ah. Working with girls was so gratifying. It was difficult to find extremely gifted girls who fit his exacting social profile, but the ease of management canceled out that disadvantage. Just tell them they were beautiful and special, and the deal was done. It didn’t matter how smart they were. Girls were so vulnerable, so desperate for love and validation.

And he had discovered, by laborious trial and error, that his precious secret baby, the X-Cog neural interface, was easiest to establish and maintain with highly intelligent female subjects.

She batted her eyes at him. “You’ve got a good body,” she coyly said. “For an older guy.” The invitation in her fluttering glance was clear.

Osterman considered it, briefly. These girls were destined for use and discard, so he never had to worry about repercussions. Being married to his work, he preferred to keep his sex life extremely simple.

But all that bucking and heaving took on a tedious sameness after a while. And coming in contact with bodily fluids was unsanitary.

He preferred passions of the mind, when all was said and done.

He stroked her cheek. “Work first, play after. Into the throne.”

She clambered into the chair. Osterman snapped the padded wrist restraints on quickly. “Hey!” She struggled. “What is this? You didn’t say anything about tying me down!”

“Standard procedure,” Osterman soothed, snapping on the ankle restraints. He adjusted the rubber head clamp so that he could position the X-Cog helmet on her head. “Relax. You’re doing fine.”

Her lips really were beautiful, he thought, with a pang of regret. She was babbling anxious questions that he no longer bothered to answer. He was miles above her now, preparing for the grand event.

Cait might have grown into a beautiful woman, given other circumstances, he mused. But she was so damaged. One might go so far as to say he was giving her life a meaning it would never otherwise have had. Progress ground ever forward, for the good of humanity in general. And for Christopher Osterman, MD, PhD, in particular. He slid the needle into her arm, taped it, started the IV drip. He put his own master crown on. Now all he had to do was watch, and hope.

“Fucking pervert,” said a low, grating voice behind him.

Osterman jumped, spun around. He let out an explosive breath when he saw Gordon, his pet assassin, clean-up man and factotum.

Well, “pet” wasn’t quite accurate. Keeping Gordon on staff was like holding a tiger by the tail. One kept a tight grip. The corollary being that Gordon’s grip on Osterman’s own tail was correspondingly tight.

Osterman found the resulting forced intimacy quite unpleasant.

“Do not sneak up on me like that,” he scolded.

“You didn’t answer your phone. I figured you were playing doctor with one of your girlies back here in the pervert playroom,” Gordon said.

Osterman exhaled, and let that insulting comment pass. “Did you take care of that item of business you mentioned in your last call?”

“Ah.” Gordon chewed his lip. “There’s been a new development.”

Osterman waited, hands clenched. “And that is?”

“Kevin McCloud’s brother made contact with the girl.”

Osterman stared. “What do you mean, contact? You were supposed to kill her. How can he make contact with a corpse?”

“I hadn’t concluded the job,” Gordon said. “He talked to her today, at her bookstore. The one that I burned to the ground last night.”

“Burned?” Osterman gaped at him. “Have you gone crazy?”

“You told me to work up a stalker scenario, didn’t you?” Gordon’s voice was faintly sullen. “I took you at your word, Chris.”

“I was thinking dirty letters, slaughtered cats, that sort of thing!”

“I can’t go from dirty letters and dead cats to homicide,” Gordon protested. “You need natural buildup. The violence has to escalate in a way that makes sense. Trust me. I know my abnormal psych.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Osterman muttered.

“Watch the snotty remarks. As I was saying, McCloud talked to her. Then he pulled her out of her car before my bomb could go off.”

“Bomb?” Osterman’s voice rose in pitch. “What bomb?”

“Chunk of Semtex I’ve had lying around. Don’t worry, I wasn’t showing off. Any fool with access to the Internet could build it. I rigged the final touches this morning, while everyone was looking at the fire.”

Osterman’s heart thudded. “This was supposed to be a discreet hit! A bomb in a shopping district? I thought you were a professional!”

Gordon looked hurt. “Think outside the box, Chris. My stalker craves attention. It fills the void inside him. The bigger the gesture, the more he imagines that it will impress the object of his deranged love.”

“Your pseudo-psych bullshit is not a justification for—”

“I enter my character’s personality structure, and follow its directives,” Gordon lectured, enjoying himself. “That way, each crime has its own coherence. Which keeps me, your buddy Gordon, from leaving a signature. In fact, the lack of a signature is my signature.”

“You’ve explained your criminal philosophy to me before. It won’t keep the cops from investigating the shit out of this!” Osterman fumed. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison!”

“Oh, prison wouldn’t be so bad. With that pretty face of yours, I’m sure you’d be very popular.”

Osterman forced himself to breathe. “Are you showing a desire to stop the downward spiral of violence? Is this a cry for help, Gordon?”

“Fuck, no.” Gordon’s toothy grin was cheerfully manic. “Nothing will stop my downward spiral. I live for this shit.”

“The Helix Group will not help us, if the police find your tail.”

Gordon’s shrug was casual. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine. Back to McCloud. As I said during the Midnight Project fuck-up—”

“Do not say the name,” Osterman ground the words out.

Gordon rolled his eyes. “I told you we should take out Sean McCloud in a preemptive strike—”

“I didn’t want the body count to get higher,” Osterman snarled.

“You always get squeamish at the wrong moment,” Gordon complained. “That girl passed the info on, and went into hiding.”

“Then why haven’t they come for us? We haven’t heard anything in fifteen years,” Osterman argued. “He might have been passing by. A burning bookstore attracts attention. Or did that not occur to you?”

“Yeah. Right. Coincidence.” Gordon hawked, and spat on the floor tiles. “McCloud is on to us. He guessed my bomb. He knows, Chris. The question is, do we kill him now, before trouble has time to begin?”

Osterman stared at that hateful glob of yellow mucus, and contemplated ways of killing Gordon. He did not like cleaning up his own messes, but things were getting seriously out of hand.

On the other hand. The prospect of training someone new was daunting.

“I should question the girl before I put her down,” Gordon mused. He glanced over at Caitlin. “Speaking of which. Want me to dump this one for you? She looks like a shredder to me.”

Oh, God, he’d forgotten all about Caitlin. He turned, and knew instantly, as Gordon had, that the attempted interface had failed.

She was twitching, straining against the restraints. Broken blood vessels marred the whites of her eyes. Her mouth was wide, as if she were screaming, though she made no sound. Hallucinations, no doubt. X-Cog had paralyzed her motor functions, but the side effects had fried the rest. Or maybe the electrical stimulation had been too aggressive. He made a note to dial it down for the next subject.

He averted his gaze. That silent scream effect was grotesque.

“Nice titties,” Gordon crooned, fondling them.

“Stop that,” Osterman snapped. “Let’s get back to McCloud. And the girl. Just kill them, for God’s sake, and get it over with.”

“So let’s talk fee adjustment. And take off your pervert crown.”

Osterman lifted off his master crown, and carefully smoothed back his thick, glossy dark hair. “I’m paying you a fortune already.”

“McCloud is high-risk. Ex-special forces. One brother who’s an ex-fed, another who’s a private investigator. Those men are going to be unhappy. It may be necessary for me to relocate. That takes capital.”

Osterman was tantalized by the fantasy of Gordon disappearing from his life forever. “How much do you want?”

Gordon named a sum. Osterman stared at the man, appalled.

“You’re welcome to call someone else,” he taunted. “Feel free. I’d be happy to wash my hands of this. Because you’re bugging me, Chris.”

“Too much,” he said testily, already making the calculations in his head, liquidating assets, transferring this, converting that.

“Your slush fund should cover it. And the big boys at Helix won’t have to worry their pretty little heads, right? We’ll keep it between us. He jerked his chin at Caitlin. “Want me to load her up?”

“Yes. I’m sick of looking at her. I’ll mix up a dose of heroin and fentanyl. Inject her right before you dump her. Don’t let her asphyxiate in the trunk of your car. It looks suspicious to the forensics techs.”

“Might take her a while to finish dying,” Gordon warned. “You want to risk her ending up in the emergency room?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Osterman adjusted the knobs. “She’ll have so much cerebral damage, she won’t be able to tell them her own name.”

Gordon whistled softly. “Now that’s cold.”

The silence behind him made him suspicious as he loaded the syringe. He turned, to see Gordon peeking under Caitlin’s shirt.

“Why do you do that?” he snapped. “It’s disgusting.”

“Why does a man do anything? Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can, Chris. Because he can.”

Osterman shuddered with distaste. “You are such an animal.”

“So throw me a chunk of meat.” He moved his hand down to caress her crotch, and snatched it away with a hiss of distaste. “Yuck. She’s wet herself. I’ll back the van up to the cargo door. You got any more body bags? I don’t want her leaking in my trunk.”

“I’m almost out. It’s really hard to get those in bulk,” he said.

“Yeah, ain’t life difficult? Is that one of your annoying passive aggressive ways of asking me to get some more of them for you?”

The door swung shut on their wrangling, leaving the vidcams to record the subject’s response to X-Cog NG-4. Wrists straining, heels drumming. Face locked in the rictus of an endless, silent scream.

“I don’t know why you’re so pissed with me,” he said plaintively. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He paused for a moment. “Yet.”

Davy made a snarling noise. There was a squeak, and he was staring at a detached drawer, its handle torn half off. Rubber bands, nails and other detritus rattled onto the kitchen floor. He flung it away.

“Hah,” he muttered. “If I weren’t so pissed, that would be funny.”

The sun was long since hidden behind Endicott Bluff. They hadn’t bothered to light up the kerosene lamps yet. In fact, considering Davy’s current mood, perhaps the kerosene lamps were best left unlit.

Shadows were swallowing the room. The west window was a light show, ranging from fire-edged pink to mauve to deep, cobalt blue. A star hung in it. OK, a planet—Venus, if he recalled Dad’s astronomy lectures correctly.

But Davy wasn’t enjoying the sunset. He assaulted the cupboard, and another handle came loose. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Goddamn flimsy rotten piece of shit.” He hurled it against the opposite wall.

Crash, the handle hit a picture. Sean winced as glass shattered.

This was unnerving. Davy usually maintained near-pathological control over his emotions, with the notable exception of his passion for Margot, his new wife. On a normal day, it took the emotional equivalent of a catastrophic earthquake to make him lose his temper.

Davy rummaged through the cupboards. “I know there’s a bottle of Scotch around here. Unless you drank it and didn’t replace it.”

“Nope. I wouldn’t drink that stuff if you held a gun to my head. Would you calm the fuck down? You’re making me tense.”

“I’m making you tense?” Davy spun and kicked the swinging door. Smash, and one side dangled forlornly from its bent, twisted hinge. “I’m the one who bailed your ass out, and I am making you tense?”

“You did not technically bail me out,” Sean pointed out. “I was not technically under arrest! I didn’t—”

“Nah, just hanging out in the interrogation room for fun, chatting on the technical aspects of car bomb construction with local officers of the law. All of whom think you’re a delinquent. Many of whom, like Roarke, have personal reasons to hate your guts—”

“That’s not my fault!” Sean protested.

“You’ve been using that excuse ever since you learned to talk!”

“Well, sometimes it’s valid. And you did not bail me out,” Sean said obstinately. “No money changed hands. And you guys are my alibi for last night, so there’s no reason to get all—”

“Oh, yeah? How lucky is that? How does it look, that you’re so fucking unstable that your brothers have to follow you around to make sure you don’t hurt yourself when you go out drinking and whoring?”

“Whoa! Harsh words! Those girls were not whores! They just like to party! They were very sweet, cute, ah—sexually emancipated—”

“Aw, shut up,” Davy snarled. “Imagine the scene if we hadn’t followed you. Can you tell us where you were the morning of August the eighteenth, Mr. McCloud? Uh, well, Officer, I was having a drunken clusterfuck with some chicks that I met at the Hole, but I don’t remember their names. They had nice butt cheeks. Gave great head.”

“I do, too, remember their names!” Sean pondered for a moment. “Their first names, anyhow,” he amended.

Davy snorted like a maddened stallion and kicked the wall.

“It’s not like you guys have to follow me around all the time,” Sean argued. “I’m usually a good, solid citizen. It’s only on August—”

“The eighteenth, yeah. Think about it, if you remember how that’s done. Is it in your best interests for anybody to remember that today is the anniversary of your twin brother’s truck bursting into flames?”

Sean sat without breathing. “Maybe not,” he conceded.

Davy slammed both fists onto the countertop. The jars rattled nervously on the shelves. “Where the fuck is my whiskey?”

Sean got up with a frustrated sigh. He spotted the bottle, in plain sight on top of the propane refrigerator, and handed it to his brother.

Davy yanked out the stopper and sloshed a shot into the glass. He drained it, and fell into the chair. It creaked under his weight.

A heavy silence fell between them. Davy was a master at heavy silences. Sean was not, as a rule. He liked movement, dynamism, noise. But he felt tired enough to stare blankly into the dark today.

He chose his words carefully when he finally broke the silence.

“You’ve already ripped my head off about my past stupid stunts,” he said. “I don’t feel like getting lectured for them all over again.”

“Oh, no.” Davy poured another shot. “No, you did plenty of brand new stupid stuff. The last time you got within a hundred yards of Liv Endicott, you landed in jail. Did that fun fact flash through your head?”

“If I’d stayed away, Liv and Madden would be fine particles in the stratosphere, and there would be a crater where the Trinket Trove Gift Emporium used to be.” Sean pointed out. “Be glad that didn’t happen.”

“That’s not the fucking point,” Davy muttered.

“Then what is the point? For Christ’s sake, enlighten me.”

“The point is, you’re doing it again. Putting yourself in the worst possible place at the worst possible time! Throwing yourself in front of a locomotive because you’re bored, or someone dares you, or you want to impress some girl. Or you feel like shit and can’t handle your feelings. You never apply logic. And I’m getting déjà vu. I’ve said this all before.”

“Many times,” Sean confirmed, his voice heavy with resignation. “Lecture 967. Impulse Control. Part C: Actions Have Consequences.”

“And you know what burns my ass the most?”

Sean cringed. “Uh…shoot, Davy, I’m not sure if I do.”

“This is all about your dick!” Davy yelled. “You can’t keep your pants zipped to save your life, so you end up in custody, surrounded by people who would love to see you burn in hell. Every fucking time.”

“What was I supposed to do? Slink away like a whipped dog?” Sean flung his hands up, helpless. “The thing with the police, I don’t know why the fuck that keeps happening to me. I swear to God, I don’t go looking for them.”

Davy snorted. “Right. No clue. Like when you lost your scholarship and got thrown out of school. Why? For boffing the Dean’s trophy wife. No thought for consequences. No thought for your future. Your brain just kicks back and lets your glands run the show.”

Sean fidgeted on his chair. “She came on to me,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, don’t they always. I bet she had to tie you down.”

Sean tried to recollect the details. “Now that you mention it, she was pretty adventurous that way. She had a closet full of fun toys—”

“Zip it, you smart-ass punk. I’m not in the mood for your crap.”

“When are you ever? I don’t blame the woman. Hot, sexy thing, married to a physics nerd with dandruff in his eyebrows. I was just a squeeze-toy for her. And she was so good at squeezing my—”

“Shut your flapping face before I put my fist through it.”

Sean leaned his face in his hands. It was dumb, to goad Davy when he was all cranked up like this, but once he got on a roll, he couldn’t help himself. He was just wired that way. He got up and peered into the fridge, hoping he’d left a beer from a previous visit.

Oh, joy and rapture. He had. He twisted that sucker open and wandered over to the west window to drink it, leaving Davy to stew by himself at the table. Sunset had faded, mauve shading to smoky gray beneath the rectangle of cobalt. Beyond the meadow rippling in front of the house, the pine and fir forest looked dense and impenetrable.

It reminded him of when he was a kid, bedding down at night. Shivering at the dangers Dad said lurked out there. There was a real monster on the loose tonight. Thinking about Liv. His neck prickled, like a ghost had touched him.

Maybe one had.

Kev had helped him today. For some reason, that thought made him feel less alone. He knew better than to share it with Davy, though.

“I want to see the e-mails that stalker sent to Liv,” he said.

Davy laid his head on the table, and bonked his forehead heavily against the rough slabs of wood. “See? This is how it always begins.”

“He used the word ‘explosive’ in his note. That was what made me think of a bomb. I want to see the other letters. I want to feel their vibe.”

“You’re not a cop,” Davy said. “You’re not her bodyguard. Or her boyfriend. Wanting to bone her does not give you the right to stick your nose or any other protruding body part into that family’s problems.”

Sean took the final swallow, and tossed the bottle, sinking it into the trash basket. “You and Con got all over my ass this morning for being so self-serving and frivolous. I get interested in the welfare of somebody else, and you jump all over my ass again. I can’t please you guys. I might as well not try. Have you got a set of beacons on you?”

Davy’s face hardened with suspicion. “Why?”

“She needs to be tracked. She needs twenty-four hour coverage, with a four man team, until they nail this guy. Her people are idiots.”

“So knock on the door of Endicott House,” Davy said. “Lay out your proposal. See how warmly they welcome your suggestions.”

Sean paced the kitchen. “Do you have the beacons?” he repeated.

“They’d have the cops on you the instant they laid eyes on you.”

Sean shrugged. “Who says they have to lay eyes on me?”

“I’m having a stress flashback.” Davy bonked his head on the table. “My brother has decided to break into the house of the richest guy in the county and seduce his sexpot daughter, under his nose.”

“I’m not going to seduce her,” Sean said crabbily. “I’d go through the front door and talk to her right in front of her mother if I could, but those people think I’m festering sewage sludge.”

“No. They think you’re dangerous, mentally unhinged festering sewage sludge,” Davy corrected. “If they catch you, your ass is grass.”

“If you didn’t have a set of beacons, you would have said so by now. So stop yapping at me and hand them over.”

Davy got up, kicked his chair out of the way and grabbed a bag that sat next to the kitchen table. He yanked out a ziplock bag full of sheets of cardboard, each with radio transmitter beacons attached to it.

He flung them onto the table. “Here. Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks,” Sean said.

“Don’t thank me til we find out if you end up in prison.” He plucked out a strip of foil packets and tossed them on top of the beacons. “Take those.”

Sean stared down at the condoms. “Hey. You’ve got the wrong idea. I don’t plan on fucking her. I just want to—”

“Plan? Of course not. You never plan. You lack the part of the human brain that governs planning.”

“I resent that remark,” Sean said. “I just don’t want Liv to get offed by this prick just because her parents have the brains of slugs.”

“Take them.” Davy’s voice grated. “I’m not asking you to be responsible, because that would be a contradiction in terms. I’m just asking you to face reality. I know you, Sean. If you sneak into that girl’s bedroom, you’ll end up fucking her. It’s a mathematical certainty.”

Sean stared at him, dismayed. “Chill, Davy. You’re scaring me.”

Davy’s grim expression did not change. “Put them in your pocket.”

Sean folded the condoms up and tucked them into his jeans. “Anything to calm you down,” he said. “See? It’s done. Better now?”

Davy turned around, and stood in the dark, fists clenched.

Sean stared at his brother’s back, barely visible in the dimness. “This feels strange,” he said quietly. “Usually I’m the one freaking out, and you and Con are the ones talking me down. What’s up?”

Davy’s eyes glinted in the shadows of the room. “Did it ever occur to you that this day on the calendar really rots for me and Con, too?”

Sean held his breath, and willed his knotted guts to relax. “It’s crossed my mind,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not much help with that.”

Davy’s laugh was dry. “Sure you are. It’s one mother of a distraction, chasing around after you, trying to keep you from getting killed or maimed or imprisoned, or whatever. Who has time to mope?”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Sean said dubiously. “Do you have low blood sugar, or what? You should eat. I’d cook you something, but you’ve trashed the kitchen all to shit. Grab yourself a burger on the way home. Is Margot waiting dinner for you?”

“Nah.” Davy’s voice was hollow. “I’ll just, uh, crash here tonight.”

Sean froze, playing and replaying his brother’s comment in his head. “You mean you’re voluntarily sleeping more than a millimeter away from Margot’s voluptuous body? What is up with that?”

Davy’s shoulders lifted, and dropped.

“What’s going on?” Sean demanded. “You asshole. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Don’t tell me you’re fucking this up. Did you fight? Did she throw you out? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Davy said testily. “And no, she didn’t. And it’s none of your business. We both just need some, ah, breathing room.”