“Excuse me!”
Lund turned and realized she was blocking the aisle, a stern-faced woman trying to get by. She steered her cart to one side, then leaned forward on the push handle.
“Trey, I’d really like to help you. But whatever else is happening, I can’t ignore the fact that you’re AWOL right now. For God’s sake, think about it … the Coast Guard, your commander, your friends. They all think you’re dead.”
Another silence. “Maybe I am.”
“Trey, I want to help you.”
“Let me guess — I should proceed to the nearest Coast Guard facility and turn myself in? Look, I know it’s part of your job to track down AWOLs, but I’m not some E-3 who’s running from a child support payment or who got caught in a drug deal. You know the condition I was in after that accident — I did not leave Kodiak of my own free will.”
“I understand that.”
“My life was taken from me! And … and there’s something else, Shannon. Something that overshadows the very fact that I’m alive. I don’t know how to explain it, but believe me when I say I can never go back to Kodiak or the Coast Guard. I can never be what I was. In that hospital — they changed me.”
“Who changed you? How?”
Silence.
“Trey, I only want to help!”
“They gave me an ability to do things, Shannon. Things you could never imagine. A few days ago I wouldn’t have thought what’s happened to me is possible. It’s a curse more than anything. The whole world is mine for the taking, yet at the same time I feel … I feel so damned isolated.”
Lund didn’t know how to respond. She felt like a crisis counselor. He wasn’t making sense, sounding more unbalanced by the moment. Was it the damage to his brain? she wondered. The ensuing silence stretched too long, and she felt him slipping away. “Trey, I’m coming to help you. I’ll be on the next flight. I want you to go to Boston, meet me there tomorrow.”
No response.
“Trey, I won’t ask where you are, and I won’t tell anyone I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I will be in Boston, whether you like it or not. You have my number, call me tomorrow.”
Silence.
“Trey, please! Sooner or later you have to trust someone.”
A click, followed by silence. Lund stood still, but only for a moment. She left her cart and her fish where they were. By the time she reached the parking lot Lund was already talking to Alaska Airlines.
24
DeBolt turned off the burner phone and set it on the Buick’s passenger seat. The car was parked on a dirt pad along the remote road he’d been navigating. Straight lines had gradually surrendered to casual curves, and the forest had gone thick. The hills here were more demanding, the air still and noticeably cooler. Sharply angled shafts of light cut through a high canopy of maple and aspen, accentuating shadows on the road before him.
The hospital where Joan Chandler had worked, according to the tracking data on her phone, was half a mile in front of him. It had been ten minutes since he’d left Route 9, and in that time DeBolt had seen only one other vehicle, an official-looking sedan with a state-issued license plate — a plate he should have run, he realized only after the car was gone. Would his abilities ever become second nature?
He looked up and down the road, and tried to imagine why anyone would put a hospital in such a remote location. There wasn’t a town within miles. The only answer he could think of was reinforced by the government car he’d seen leaving. Was this a DOD facility of some kind? Intentionally remote to be out of public view?
DOD.
In spite of the remoteness, his prepaid phone had a good signal here, and he had parked the car wanting to give full attention to his call to Lund. It felt good to hear a familiar voice, and while he couldn’t say she was on his side, DeBolt felt reasonably sure Lund wasn’t part of the threat. He supposed he could research her later, find out everything possible about Shannon Lund of Kodiak, Alaska. And if he saw no red flags? Would he do as she asked and go to Boston? His mood took a downswing when he remembered what happened to the last person he’d trusted — Joan Chandler.
Wary about what he might find at the end of the road, DeBolt decided to go the rest of the way on foot. He left the Buick where it was, and set out climbing a slight incline. He soon encountered a dirt side road, and curious, he followed it. A hundred feet into the woods he saw what it was — an access path for an electrical substation, a quarter acre of transformers and capacitors and whatever else such a facility was made of. It was all surrounded by a tall concertina-topped fence. As DeBolt walked nearer, he felt an unusual sensation. It began as a tingle in his head, and then the screen in his right eye went to static, like a television that had lost its signal. He heard a buzzing sound in one ear that he’d never noticed before.
Unnerved, he moved back in the direction of the road, and the symptoms immediately abated. He studied the substation, and the high-voltage wires that ran outward on easements north and south. DeBolt walked slowly back toward the fence and the symptoms returned. High voltage, he thought. Electrical interference. It interrupts the signal, or scrambles … whatever is in my brain. It made a certain sense, and he logged it as a curiosity, wishing once again someone had given him a damned owner’s manual.
With November’s long dusk falling, DeBolt set out again along the main road, riding a carpet of fallen leaves over what looked like new pavement. The leaves were wet and soft beneath his feet, cushioning every step and muting the sound of his progress. He’d never before cared about silence, but now it seemed comforting. Even important. Yet another revision brought by his new and grave existence.
DeBolt soon saw a second fortified fence in the distance, this one marking a larger perimeter. He slowed as he approached it and saw signs at regular intervals.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FACILITY
NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION
There was an access camera and card scanner at the entrance — both made nonsensical by the fact that the sturdy double gate stood wide open. He neared the access point, then came to a halting stop. DeBolt had been expecting some kind of hospital or clinic. What he saw was unidentifiable. It was hard to say how big the place had been, but the word “hospital” seemed generous. What was left standing would fit in a single dump truck. Everything was charred, and while three of the four walls remained partially intact, everything between them had been incinerated to ground level. Gray ash predominated, and what little remained vertical was stroked with slashes of black attesting to the ferocity of the inferno. A singular wisp of smoke trailed upward like the remains of a dying campfire, and an acrid chemical stench replaced the fresh forest air.
DeBolt saw two vehicles nearby, one a red SUV emblazoned with the words FIRE CHIEF and the other a Crown Victoria, government plates similar to those on the car he’d seen leaving. He recalled what Lund had told him: Joan Chandler’s cottage had exploded. DeBolt recognized that disaster for what it was — a blunt attempt to hide and corrupt evidence. Was that what he was looking at here? The aftermath of another slash-and-burn cover-up?
He started walking again, and noticed someone in the Crown Vic, a hunched figure highlighted by the glow of a laptop screen. A large man in a fire department uniform was picking through the wreckage with an iron bar. The guy with the iron bar saw him coming, and quickly came to intercept him. His tone wasn’t welcoming. “Sir, can I ask what you’re doing out here?”