The Blonde (7 page)

The very thought of it formed a cold, dark knot in Jack’s stomach.

“With this system, it would take a second to pinpoint Callie’s position, and the police would be able to recover her minutes later. Abductions would become a thing of the past.”

Jack thought about this. “Unless the kidnappers got smart and learned how to turn these nanomachines off.”

“Not possible. There are too many of them. Self-replicating, using blood waste as raw material. All the benefits of a virus, none of the weaknesses. Except if they leave the body. With nothing to feed on, they die. But once inside, there’s no getting rid of them.”

“You seem proud of these things.”

“I worked in the lab that created them. That’s my job. Was my job, back in Ireland.”

“You don’t have the accent. Though you did slip and say ‘flat’ a short while ago.”

“I’m trying to blend in, boyo,” she said in a thick brogue. “But now you’re here. And now it’s only you and me and the Mary—you know what I call these things?”

“No, what?”

“The Mary Kates. You know … those blond twins? The Olsens? They’re just like these little things. They’re everywhere.”

So Kelly here has tiny machines named after a pair of barely legal blondes running around in her blood. Right.

“There’s one more special feature, and this impressed the shite out of everyone. The Mary Kates, you see, can not only track your location; they can tell us if there’s someone in the room with you. The abduction angle again. It’s meant to help rescuers pounce on the kidnappers, not the victim.”

“So right now, these Mary Kates know I’m here with you.”

“Yes. They detect you’re less than ten feet away from me. They’re picking up your brain waves and heartbeat. Very sensitive, these girls.”

“Fucking creepy.”

“Not as creepy as what I’m about to tell you. Remember?”

“What?”

“If the Mary Kates detect that I’m alone, they’ll travel to my brain and make it explode.”

Edison Avenue

T
he bag was not as heavy as he’d thought. The average human head was about six pounds—two for the skull, a quarter for the skin, and three for the brain, and spare change for water and fat and such. But this Adidas bag definitely felt lighter than six pounds.

Maybe it was all the blood and brains that had spurted out.

Nice, huh?

Kowalski wondered how far he’d have to travel with it. A plane was out of the question. Homeland Security would x-ray his $19.95 bag and see Ed’s goofy mug staring back up at them. Most likely, CI-6 would dispatch someone local to recover it, analyze, do whatever they wanted with it. That’s DHS, folks. Keeping America Safe, One Decapitated Head at a Time.

He placed the bag on the floor of the backseat, propping it up on one side with a box of Kleenex and on the other with a hardback copy of a fitness book called
The Lean Body Promise
. Weight loss wasn’t going to be a concern for Ed anymore. He’d already lost about six pounds today.

Ah fuck it. Katie would have laughed.

After double-checking his exit route on the Tribeca’s GPS system, he opened the garage doors and drove down the driveway to the street. He pulled Ed’s cell phone out of his pocket— he’d found it in Ed’s bag. Then he dialed the Hunter’s home number, helpfully written in pen on the kitchen wall phone. The home line was wired to his jerry-rigged gas-main detonator. Simplest thing in the world. One phone call, one massive basement explosion.

Kowalski pressed the Send button, appreciated the white-hot
blast that blew out the first-floor windows and sent a booming echo rolling through the neighborhood.

Then he saw Claudia Hunter dive through a second-floor window, tuck and roll down the grassy hill on the side of the house, struggle to her feet, then take off behind her neighbor’s house. She was gone before all of the beads of glass showered the lawn below.

Holy crap.

That
was impressive.

Kowalski knew he’d gone easy when he was strangling her with the dental floss. But her pulse had been shallow; she’d been checking out. Apparently, she had other plans.

Kowalski popped out of the car, thought about it, then grabbed the Adidas bag from the backseat. No telling how long it would take him to run Claudia down. He wasn’t about to leave his objective behind to be recovered by some dumb car thief.

Up the driveway, behind the house, down the hill, Ed’s head bounced around in the bag.

Hey, buddy. It’s your wife
.

Claudia was a fast runner, even in bare feet and a summer nightie.

After a few backyards, Kowalski paused to stash the bag in a child’s tree house. The structure was fairly complex, with two separate entrances and stained, smooth pieces that were too perfect to have been assembled by hand. The bag was slowing him down, and he didn’t want to damage the contents too much. Or leave it back in the car, where a curious cop might spot it.

Kowalski checked the ground for a weapon, saw what he wanted, picked it up, and raced after Claudia.

Goddamn
she was fast.

Sheraton, Room 702

S
o if I walk across the room, and you stay here on this couch, you’ll die.”

“In about ten seconds. Give or take a second.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’d say try it, but I’d rather you not. It really hurts.”

“Why is it ten feet? I mean, why not nine, or eleven? Is it ten feet exactly?”

“You know, it’s a bit hard to make careful scientific measurements when it feels like your brain is going to explode inside of your skull. But based on available evidence, I’d say yeah, this microscopic noose around my neck stretches to damn near exactly ten feet.”

Jack considered this.

“Hang on. You obviously don’t work in a lab all by yourself. Can’t your colleagues help you out? Fix this fatal error in the program? I don’t know … give you a blood transfusion?”

“They’re all dead. It’s why I left Ireland.”

Kelly looked at him, her eyes pleading with him to shut the fuck up and listen. Saying, This is going to be a difficult speech, so I’d prefer it if you stopped asking questions and let me tell it my own way.

At least that’s what Jack read her in eyes. He was familiar with that look. Theresa had mastered it long ago.

“I’ve always known that my line of work is dangerously competitive,” she said. “We’re not officially part of the government, but we’re not independent, either. We sign confidentiality agreements like you wouldn’t believe. And we’re required to attend exhaustive seminars on lab security. But all of that doesn’t mean fuck on a bike when five thugs with Kevlar suits and Rambo knives
storm into your lab one morning and start slitting your coworkers’ throats.

“These guys, whoever the fuck they were, wanted the Mary Kates, and all of our project research. They left two of us alive to gather it up—yours truly and my boss. He managed to trigger a self-destruct sequence on our servers, but they got wise to it, stopped it, and they cut off a hand for being uncooperative. I’m not sure if he’s alive or dead.”

“And you?”

“I jumped through a window and ran.”

“Then how—”

“How did I get the Mary Kates in my blood? Lab accident. The time we were ambushed, each of us already had a fair amount of the little buggers in our systems. It’s one of the things we were, um, trying to perfect.”

“So the fatal error was introduced, and the satellite was still fixed on you.”

“Exactly.”

“And you haven’t been alone since then?”

“Grand, isn’t it?”

She rested her hand on his forearm. Her skin was soft and warm.

“Let me get this out before we go any further: You don’t have to believe me. In fact, I think you’d be crazy if you did. There’s a box full of printouts and a USB memory stick full of research that will corroborate my story. It’s in San Diego, in case anything happens to me.”

She paused. “Are you listening?”

Jack had been staring down, processing it all. “I am.”

“Thank God. I’d hate to think you were zoning out while I was telling you vital information that might be useful in the event of my premature death.”

“I was just—”

“Never mind. If I buy the dirt farm, go to the Westin Horton
Plaza, downtown near the Gaslamp Quarter. At the front desk, ask for a package for Mary Kate.”

“Should I write this down?”

“No way, boyo. Memorize it.”

Jack scratched down the initials anyway: MK, WHP, SD.

“Okay, I got it. Mary Kate, Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego. But wait…. Can’t you try to locate your boss? Isn’t there a chance he’s alive?”

“Even if he were, that would be difficult. I don’t know his name. He referred to himself as ‘the Operator,’ and nothing more. He was obsessed with security. But now all that’s fucked, isn’t it?”

Behind the Edison Avenue House

T
here
she was. Running along the banks of a rock-strewn creek that flowed behind the properties. You got yourself a smart woman, Ed. Instead of racing out into an empty street, where she could be easily picked off, she decided to follow a central path away from the danger, most likely planning to emerge when the danger had passed.

Sorry, Mrs. Hunter, Kowalski thought. This danger has a job to finish.

Pumping hard, Kowalski closed the distance. His fingertips caressed the smooth stone he had picked up back at the tree house. Dense little sucker.

“Claudia!”

Always better to use the first name. Increases the likelihood that someone will respond to you.

She didn’t turn, but she slowed for a second, and in that instant a tiny bit of hope seemed to drain from her body. That was
all Kowalski needed. He hurled the stone at her head; direct strike. Claudia’s knee buckled and she tripped forward into the creek.

Kowalski didn’t slow down. He needed to confirm death— failing that, induce death—then recover the head and get the hell out of there. Behind him, in what was not quite the distance, the Hunter home burned like a three-story stone bonfire.

Claudia still had a little fight left in her. She was lying faceup in the shallow creek, despite the fact that Kowalski had seen her fall face-first. She’d had enough energy left to flip over. He admired that. Face your attacker, rather than hide from the inevitable. Kowalski could imagine her calling up her last reserves of strength just so she could spit on him as he approached.

He felt for a pulse; it was fading rapidly. She was on her way out.

He thought about leaving her as is. Investigators could surmise that she’d fallen and banged her head while fleeing from a burning house….

Okay, yeah, that was crap. Her neck needed to be professionally snapped.

Before he did that, though, Kowalski surprised himself by thinking about leaning over and kissing her forehead.

He didn’t of course.

Instead, he placed his left palm on her chin, and his right hand around the back of her neck. Then twisted …

Why would he think things like that?

… hard.

Now, back to the tree house. Back to Ed’s head. Back to his handler, back to his mission of vengeance before wrestling with the inevitable, crippling grief of losing Katie and their baby….

Kowalski reached up again, felt around. Got a splinter, but nothing else.

The gym bag?

Gone.

Sheraton, Room 702

W
ill you stop?”

As she spoke, Kelly had kept inching closer to him, and Jack tried to keep some personal space. It was starting to freak him out.

“What?”

“Look, I swear I won’t walk away. You sit on your end of the couch, and I’ll sit on mine. I’ve had a long fucking day, and it’s only getting longer. I need to process this stuff.”

“Then go, Jack, go. Process away.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. She seemed upset.

Great. He was feeling guilty about a woman who had tried to kill him. No, even better—was
still in the process
of killing him. The poison was still running through his veins.

Kelly opened her eyes. “Look, forget everything I told you. You can believe me; you can think I’m crazy. You can write a story about this, or you can go off and never think about this again. I ask one thing of you: a night’s sleep. I’m begging you. Just lie next to me in bed until morning; then I’ll give you the antidote and you’ll never have to see me again.”

Jack looked at her. She did look exhausted. Exactly like he felt.

“What if I take the antidote from your bag when you’re sleeping? How do you know I’ll stay?”

“You haven’t tried taking it so far, Jackie boy. You’re not that kind of guy.”

“You’re so sure of that?”

“Besides, it’s a bit tricky. I dosed you with luminous toxin. Nasty stuff if not treated correctly. I need to step-dose you out of it. You find the antidote, by some small miracle, you have to know how to take it.”

“Luminous
what?
”

“I’m a scientist, Jack. I’ve got access to all kinds of disturbing chemicals.”

“Okay, say I get your bag and take it to a doctor. Tell them what you told me. That you gave me luminous tox—”

“
Toxin
.”

“Toxin. Right. Luminous toxin. You’re not the only scientist who knows how to deal with that stuff.”

“Whatever you say. But if you try to leave this room while I’m sleeping, at least linger in the hall for a few seconds so you can listen to me die.”

Jack looked at the digital clock next to the bed: 12:54
A.M.
He had his appointment to keep in less than eight hours.

“I just need sleep.
Please
. Let me sleep.”

So did he. And for the first time all evening, Kelly sounded somewhat rational. Maybe she’d calmed down a bit by talking this stuff through. An idea formed in his Jack’s mind. He found himself saying, “Okay.”