Before then, he had to know what had happened here. He had to know if Julia was still alive.
The clinic was dark, and the flashing lights made it hard to see anything. He hurried forward into the reception area and nearly slipped and fell. The floor was slick with something dark. He knew what that meant instantly.
“Oh, no,” he said aloud. He crept forward until he found the receptionist’s desk. Blood had splattered all the files lying there, and a woman’s body lay slumped, motionless, in the chair.
Biting his lip, he used his artificial hand — it didn’t have any fingerprints — to gently lift her head.
It wasn’t Julia. It was the receptionist, the one he’d seen comforting Julia in her grief. There were two dark holes in her face, one in her temple, one in her cheekbone just below her eye. Blood oozed from both of them as he moved her. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You had nothing to do with this, you didn’t deserve…”
“Chapel?” he heard someone shout, from behind him.
It was muffled, distorted, but it was definitely Julia’s voice.
He made his way deeper into the clinic, past the examination rooms, past a shelf loaded down with prescription dog food. “Julia?” he called. “Where are you?”
“All the way at the back,” she called out. “Is he still there?”
“He’s gone,” Chapel called. In the dark he stumbled forward until he found a door at the back of the clinic. A heavy, reinforced steel door with a massive lock. Bending down he saw that the paint on the lock plate had been scuffed. There were three long oval spots where the paint had been blasted away.
Laughing Boy must have tried to shoot out the lock. That almost never worked — Chapel had been taught that much when he was trained by the Rangers — but it looked like Laughing Boy had failed to find any other way to get the door open.
“I’m coming out,” Julia said. The lock mechanism clicked, and the door swung open. Chapel got a look inside and realized why a veterinary clinic needed such a heavy door — the closet beyond was lined with shelves stocked with pill bottles of every type and size and description.
He only had time for a quick glance before Julia rushed out at him, a scalpel in one hand. “Tell me you don’t work with him! Tell me you didn’t set all this up!” she demanded.
“I swear it,” he said, holding up both hands.
She stared at his left hand, and he realized it must be covered with blood.
“He killed Portia,” Julia said.
“I know. But he’s gone now. The police frightened him off.”
Julia shook her head. Then she dropped the scalpel to clatter on the floor and rushed at him, wrapping her arms around him. “Make this stop,” she pleaded. “Make it stop!”
But Chapel knew that was one thing he couldn’t promise.
Laughing Boy was hunting down everyone who had come into contact with the chimeras. He was killing them and burning their bodies, just in case they’d been exposed to the virus. Just because he’d been thwarted once didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again. He would come back for Julia, track her down wherever she went, no matter how much police protection Chapel might arrange for her.
There was only one thing he could do.
“I have a plan to keep you safe,” he told her. She pressed her face against his shoulder and sobbed noisily. “I can protect you from him, and from the chimeras. But I need you to trust me.”
“Seriously? That’s not going to happen, Chapel!” she wailed, pounding on his good shoulder with her fist. “After everything that happened today, you think I’m just going to put my utter faith in you?”
“I need you to—”
“I’ll give you a chance,” she said. “Don’t blow it.”
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+14:55
Dealing with the police took way too long. For a while they had Chapel in handcuffs and were ready to take Julia into protective custody. Eventually, though, a detective had come running over, waving his cell phone in the air. He huddled up with the cops for a while. Chapel had no idea what they said to one another, but when they were done they took the cuffs off and let him go.
As soon as he was free, his own phone chimed to tell him he had a new text message. It came from the number (000) 000-0000 and contained only two words:
yr welcome
Once the cops left, Chapel and Julia headed back to the public park, where the helicopter picked them up. It took them to the private section of Newark Airport, where all the corporate executives stored their G5 private jets. The plane waiting for Chapel and Julia looked the same as all the others — sleek and expensive.
“Does it secretly turn into a robot?” Julia asked. “Or maybe it has hidden missile systems that flip up when your enemies least expect it.”
Chapel grinned at her. She’d been through so much trauma that day but she was bouncing back, delaying her grief and anger and fear because there was still work to be done, still places to be.
There was something about this woman. Something in the way she kept surprising him. She had been smart enough to lock herself in the drug closet when Laughing Boy came for her. She had seen through his necessary lies.
It didn’t hurt that her delicate features were perfectly framed by her mane of fiery red hair. He followed her up the stairs of the private jet and tried not to be too obvious about enjoying the view.
“It’s just a way of getting from point A to point B,” he said. “Normally I would take military transports. There’s always a transport going from one base to another. My boss decided I needed to get to Atlanta in a hurry, though, so he swung — this—”
He stopped because as he climbed aboard he got his first look at the interior of the jet. Instantly he knew it had to be Hollingshead’s personal plane.
Most of the cabin except for the cockpit had been turned into one spacious sitting area. Four leather-covered seats faced one another in the middle of the space. They were huge and looked extraordinarily comfortable. Chapel, who was running on fumes at that point, saw at once that they could convert with a button press into reclining beds.
Clearly no expense had been spared in making the plane cozy — and elegant.
The walls of the fuselage were lined in rich, red wood, polished to a nearly mirror finish. The overhead lights were designed to look like tiny chandeliers. At the back of the cabin was a massive oak desk with built-in bookshelves. Chapel took a closer look and saw the books were real. Black elastic straps held them in so they wouldn’t fall out if the plane hit any turbulence.
Hidden speakers in the ceiling played classical music at a low volume. The plane smelled not like recirculated air but like leather and sandalwood.
“This is nicer than my apartment,” Julia said. “Bigger, too.”
A narrow door beside the desk opened and a woman in a navy uniform came out, bearing a tray with two cocktail glasses on it. “Good evening, sir, ma’am,” she nodded, and brought the tray over to a mahogany coffee table that sat in the middle of the four seats. “I’m Chief Petty Officer Andrews, and I’ll be looking after you tonight. Please, have a seat and buckle yourselves in. Our flight time to Atlanta will be a little over two hours, once we’re in the air. Can I get you anything while you wait for takeoff? Magazines, blankets, food?”
Chapel hadn’t eaten all day, not since breakfast. It was the first chance he’d had to think of it. “I could use a sandwich,” he said.
“Certainly, Captain. I have a nice roast beef with cheddar in the back. I’ll just put that together for you. Ma’am?”
Julia looked up at Chapel like she wanted approval to ask for something. He shrugged.
“I guess… I could use a salad or something,” she said, eventually.