“Lucky guess.”
“You think Gabe’s inside somewhere?”
“He’s in there, all right.”
“Can we get him?”
Walt pulled back into the street and accelerated. “Not yet. We have a little research to do first.”
[115]
Mitch, who had pulled over to the side of the road in front of a trash bin, watched the Pontiac Sunbird slow down outside the entrance to the Institute. This was not a good thing. Not a good thing at all.
Odd as it might sound, he had grown to admire Mrs. Knight. She was one tough woman, stubborn and dogged. He still had some bruises to prove it. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that she was putting herself into the kind of jeopardy that could get her killed. She wasn’t supposed to know about this place, and now that she did, something was going to have to be done about her.
The Sunbird pulled back into traffic and started down the street, gradually accelerating until it disappeared into the horizon. Mitch watched it go with a feeling of dread, the kind of thing that sometimes settled over him when he knew things had gotten out of hand.
No sense following them any further. Not now. All bets were off now that they had found their way this far.
He waited for an opening in the traffic, and drove down the street, talking to himself before pulling into the Institute entrance. D.C. was not going to be pleased with this new wrinkle. He was a man who preferred that things went smoothly. When they didn’t, when the clamps got a little too tight, you couldn’t trust being around him, because you never knew what he would do. And this… this… he wasn’t going to like at all.
That was too bad for Mrs. Knight.
[116]
When the door opened, Gabe was watching Huckleberry Hound and absently scratching under the lip of his cast. He looked up, fully expecting to see Tilley step through, a slick smile on her face and a man or two behind her, just in case things got a little out of hand. That seemed to be the way things had shaped up around here. There were only two reasons that door ever opened. First, if she was bringing him a meal—and it wasn’t meal time, he knew that much, because he had just finished eating a tuna fish sandwich and a bag of potato chips for lunch. Or second, if she was here to take another stupid sample.
The worst of the sample taking had taken place yesterday. He had learned not to put up a fight when she was after blood. It didn’t hurt as much if he just closed his eyes and let her take what she wanted to take. But it hadn’t been his blood that she had wanted yesterday.
“We’re going to take another sample,” she had said, matter-of-factly. “And this one’s going to be a little different from the others. I don’t want to have any trouble out of you, do you understand? You can make it easy on yourself by just relaxing and keeping your eyes closed. If you do that, you’ll hardly even notice what’s going on.”
It hadn’t been that simple. Nor had it been as horrific as he had imagined after that little speech of hers. When he felt the first pin prick over his right lower ribs, he realized she had given him some sort of a shot.
“You rest for a few minutes and I’ll be right back,” she said. When she returned, she pinched him just below the ribs, complaining to herself that he was all skin and bones and they were going to have to do something about that. “How does that feel?”
“Tingly.”
“Good.”
She had him close his eyes again. Seeing the needle, she said, would only make the pain seem worse than it actually was. It hurt just the same, even without seeing the needle. Maybe that was because what he did see was enough to scare him half to death. Tilley had taken a knife and cut a slit into his side, just above his lower ribs. She was twisting and turning a needle in there, hunting around for just the right prize the way you hunted for the biggest stuffed bear at one of those crane-like vending machines you see at carnivals.
Gabe snapped his eyes shut.
“There,” she said, a moment later. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
He looked down and saw a Band-Aid covering the damage. It was one of those children’s Band-Aids, the ones with the bright colors and shapes, as if that could somehow make what had happened less horrifying for him. It didn’t. It made it worse, in fact. Because suddenly he had a longing to be home again, with his mother, where there were no needles, no antiseptic smell, and no stupid witch posing as a nurse.
God, how he hated this place.
Then late last night, he had rolled over in his sleep and the soreness had suddenly brought him awake. He had peeled back the Band-Aid and discovered a small black-and-blue circle where Tilley had pinched him. The slit underneath, where the needle had gone in, was barely visible.
So the worse of Miss Tilley’s taking had come yesterday.
And now, as she was stepping through the door, Gabe wondered what she was here to take from him this time.
[117]
D.C. followed fifteen or twenty feet behind as the man took his mid-morning walk along the paved trail that meandered alongside the Sacramento River. There was a hillside to their left, topped with a line of expensive Mediterranean-style houses. Patches of shade fell randomly across the path, just often enough to bring relief from the overhead sun.
D.C. picked up his pace until he was directly behind the man, then pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and placed it against the small of the man’s back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Webster? You’re going to shut down the whole project.”
Webster stopped without turning around, and though he appeared not the least bit unsettled by the gun in his back, D.C. drew a certain degree of pleasure from having placed it there. “How nice of you to join me. It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“You think so?” He shoved the barrel of the gun a little deeper into the man’s flesh. “You think Peggy Landau is enjoying it as much as you?”
“Landau? She a friend of yours?” Webster said softly. “Or one of those extra wives you have stashed all around the country?”
“You know who the hell she is. You’re the one who had her killed.” They stood in the middle of the path, alone for the moment, though that wouldn’t remain the case forever. D.C. nudged the man in the direction of a bench next to the river, and motioned for him to sit down. “What are you doing? Sending up a fucking flare so everyone in the world will know what’s going on?”
Webster grinned. It was a grin that D.C. had seen before, a grin that he had come to despise almost as much as he despised the man himself. “The flare was only meant for you, my friend.”
“Why?”
“Are you aware that your Miss Landau died of an overdose?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“They haven’t decided yet if it was an accident or not, were you aware of that as well?”
D.C. couldn’t believe it. “You’re setting me up? That’s what this is all about?”
Webster shrugged half-heartedly and gazed out across the slow current of the river. Someone passing by might look at him and think what a kindly old gentleman he must be, and how much he must be enjoying his retirement out here, taking in the peaceful sounds of the water. “It’s just a little insurance, that’s all. Just a little incentive for you. I wouldn’t want you to worry about it, but it is something for you to keep in mind.”
“This is on your own, isn’t it, Webster? The agency doesn’t even know you’re out of your fucking head, or you’re out here running around killing people, does it?”