‘I want to see Lieutenant Zamora,’ she said as she was shoved along.
One of the officers grunted a reply. Moments later she was propelled into an interview room and searched, a USB hard drive lodged in her pocket was taken from her before she was dumped down into a chair behind a bare desk that was bolted to the floor. The cuffs were looped through a steel chain welded to the legs of the desk, and locked in place.
‘Coffee?’ asked a female officer.
Saffron shook her head, watching as the woman left and shut the door behind her. Ten long, slow minutes passed as she sat alone in the room, barely able to hear the sounds of officers passing by outside the door. Then, finally, a man walked in. He had the deep tan and grizzled gray hair of the seasoned New Mexico trooper, and for some reason she was relieved when he closed the interview room door and sat down opposite her.
‘My name is Lieutenant Enrico Zamora,’ he said. ‘You asked to see me?’
Saffron nodded.
‘You’ve seen the hard drive?’
‘My colleagues are examining the contents as we speak,’ Zamora said. ‘Right now, I’m trying to understand what it all means.’
‘Have you seen the CCTV imagery, taken from the Aspen Center’s data banks when I raided their laboratory?’
‘Yes,’ Zamora said. ‘You’d placed it first on the list of files. It shows a man named Tyler Willis being dragged from the Bio-Science Division building by four men.’
‘Who had removed their disguises, so it should be easy to identify them,’ Saffron said. ‘They were working for Jeb Oppenheimer of SkinGen. Jeb, my grandfather, was responsible for the abduction and murder of Tyler Willis, and the abduction of a woman named Lillian Cruz. He is still holding her against her will.’
Lieutenant Zamora scribbled in his notebook as he spoke.
‘And you’re telling us all of this now. Why?’
Saffron quickly explained to Zamora the evidence that Jeb Oppenheimer held, of her role in the death of an activist years before, and how he had used it in order to force her into attacking rival companies and obtaining data that had put SkinGen years ahead of the competition. Zamora listened to every word of it before speaking.
‘And you’re coming clean now in order to bring him down?’
Saffron shook her head.
‘Jeb is hunting people out in the desert near Carlsbad,’ she said. ‘One of them is a friend of yours, Ethan Warner.’
Zamora’s eyes locked onto Saffron’s. ‘Ethan’s out near Carlsbad?’
‘Listen to me. Ethan Warner’s partner, Nicola Lopez, she’s being paid by Jeb Oppenheimer to betray Ethan. I saw them meet, and when I confronted her about it she freaked.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ Zamora asked her.
Saffron raised her left arm slightly and ducked her head, biting the fabric of her sleeve and yanking it up her arm. The sleeve was stained with blood and clogged with fragments of scorched skin. The underside of her arm was a ragged, bloody mess of welts and blisters where the fire had burned her.
‘This is what she did to me. I barely got out of there alive,’ Saffron said, her voice taut against the pain.
Zamora stared at the hideous wounds and then got up from the desk, opened the door and shouted down the corridor outside.
‘We need a medic down here, right now!’
He walked back to the desk, leaving the door open.
‘I need you to tell me exactly what they’re up to out there,’ he said. ‘Does it have anything to do with a man named Hiram Conley?’
Saffron sighed as she realized that Zamora knew more than she had suspected.
‘There are a group of men who live out in the Pecos and they’ve been there for a very long time. For some reason, these guys don’t age. They’re the same age now as they were when serving in the Civil War Jeb Oppenheimer wants to experiment on them to produce a drug that prevents aging in human beings, and sell it to the rich and powerful while withholding it from the poor. His plan is to breed people that he considers underachievers out of the population.’
Zamora nodded.
‘That’s what Ethan believed,’ he said. ‘But without proof, I can’t go in there and arrest Jeb Oppenheimer or search for evidence that he’s involved in anything.’
‘You’ve got video of Jeb’s men abducting Tyler Willis!’ Saffron snapped in disbelief. ‘What more do you want, a gilt-edged invitation?’
‘The law doesn’t work like that,’ Zamora shot back. ‘Just because you say those men are working for Jeb Oppenheimer doesn’t mean that we can prove it is so. The video footage is evidence enough to apprehend the men, if we can find them, but it’s not enough to issue a warrant for Jeb Oppenheimer’s arrest.’
‘Jesus.’ Saffron shook her head. ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that right now, Jeb Oppenheimer could be torturing people to get what he wants. I heard what happened to Tyler Willis. Are you going to stand by and let the same happen to that medical examiner?’
Zamora shook his head.
‘Not for a moment, but we have to take this one step at a time. Where exactly were Warner and Lopez heading?’
‘You’ll never find them without me there,’ Saffron replied quickly. ‘It’s too remote, and the place they’re searching for too small to find.’
Zamora leaned on the desk, glaring down at her.
‘We have patrol teams and we can call in helicopters,’ he growled. ‘You give me a twenty-square-mile radius and we’ll have Oppenheimer’s men in custody within the hour. You hold out on me, and I’ll make damned sure you spend the next twenty years looking at the walls of rooms just like this one.’
Saffron bolted out of her chair, the chains around her wrists yanking painfully.
‘I’m already going to be doing that!’ she shouted. ‘This isn’t about me!’
‘How can I be sure of that, after the stunts you’ve pulled over the years?’
She glared at him.
‘For a moment there I thought you were probably smarter than the rest of your team,’ she snarled. ‘Your patrol cars and goddamn helicopters will be useless in finding those men out there, and most likely Ethan and Lopez.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Because they’ll be underground.’
Zamora was about to ask how she knew this when the desk sergeant hurried into the room with a phone in his hand.
‘Enrico, there’s a guy from the DIA on the phone. You need to listen to this, believe me.’
Zamora frowned as he took the phone.
‘Who is this?’
‘Douglas Jarvis, DIA, Washington DC. I’m calling regarding an urgent matter involving a man named Jeb Oppenheimer of SkinGen Corp out of Santa Fe. Are you familiar with the man?’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ Zamora said carefully as he glanced at Saffron. ‘What can I help you with?’
‘Sir, our agency has evidence from Butch Cutler at USAMRIID suggesting that SkinGen may have in its possession a Level-Four bio-hazard material obtained illegally from a cemetery in Alaska. We also believe that it is the intention of Jeb Oppenheimer to genetically modify this material to create a pandemic specifically designed to target the populations of developing nations and reduce, or eradicate, their populations. We need your men to obtain a warrant immediately for the arrest of Jeb Oppenheimer and a search of all SkinGen premises.’
Lieutenant Zamora stood for a long moment in the center of the room and tried to digest the magnitude of what he had just heard.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked, and felt stupid for having done so.
‘Believe me,’ came the reply, ‘I wouldn’t be making these claims if I wasn’t positive. I’m on my way to the United Nations building as we speak, and I’m awaiting a call from the FBI agents on site in Alaska to confirm the exact nature of the hazardous materials.’