A wooden sign attached to a post had faded yellow letters that might once have been orange: welcome to bailey's ridge.
"Looks like one of the locals tried some kind of tourist thing several years ago," Cavanaugh said.
He glanced down at indentations in the long grass, where a vehicle had recently been parked. Then he motioned for Kline to walk along a furrow in the grass toward the picnic benches. A trampled area around one of the benches attracted his attention, as did cigarette butts, the paper of which looked fresh.
"This was where your men watched for me, right?" Cavanaugh asked. He peered down at the paved road that went through the pasture. "From here, they could see pretty much everything that happened down there. Yesterday, what made you think I'd use the next lane?"
"It's the only area where the trees have been cut back from the road. Until a month ago, a chain-link fence used to be there. The dirt was disturbed when they ripped the poles out. The sanitiz-ers tried to smooth the dirt and put in bushes, but it's obvious the landscape's been changed. Every other lane that seems to go nowhere is made of dirt and has weeds and potholes. That lane's as smooth and weed-free as can be. Beyond the trees, it becomes paved."
"How did Prescott and his controllers get permission to block off a historic site?" Cavanaugh asked.
"Prescott didn't need permission. This property's historic, but it isn't owned by the government. It's his."
"Is it safe to go down there?"
"Nobody's around. The lab was abandoned as soon as the project was terminated."
"But where's the lab?"
Kline pointed toward the valley.
"I don't see anything except a burned-out farmhouse," Cavanaugh said.
2
"The first time Bailey's farmhouse was destroyed was in 1864," Kline explained as they drove along the road through the pasture, approaching the burned structure. "After your Civil War, the new owner-an industrialist who'd made a fortune selling munitions to the government-bought most of the land around here and had a mansion built where Bailey's house had stood. The original cellar was incorporated into the design. Stones from the original house were used in the walls."
"You should have been a historian."
"My father was." Kline's voice was filled with regret.
They reached the scorched, collapsed building and got out of the Taurus.
Despite the devastation of the burned timbers and the blackened stones from the fallen walls, Cavanaugh was able to get an idea of how impressive the mansion had been in its heyday. He imagined pillars and two long porches, one above the other, people standing on them, waving, as horse-drawn carriages brought brightly dressed visitors. "It's a shame Prescott's controllers had to destroy it."
"They didn't destroy it," Kline said. "Prescott did."
Cavanaugh and Jamie looked at him.
"Prescott's controllers confined him to the mansion when they terminated his project," Kline said. "A man doesn't devote himself to researching fear unless he identifies with it. If he's paranoid, he's going to become more so when he sees signs all around him that people consider him a liability."
"Fear's his primary emotion," Cavanaugh agreed. And now, thanks to him, it's mine, he added silently.
"To protect himself, Prescott did something his controllers could never have anticipated, given how proud he was of this property," Kline said. "One night when his fear became especially intense and he was certain he was about to be killed, he burned the mansion down. Because he looked so heavy and out of shape, his controllers had misjudged him, putting a few guards on him, while the majority were devoted to keeping intruders such as myself off the property. In the confusion caused by the flames, he was able to slip away into the darkness. The fire was only half of his tactic, however. He also released the hormone as the mansion burned. Under its influence, the guards panicked and shot at what they thought were attackers coming through the flickering shadows. Several got killed by their own men-another mess that had to be cleaned up. The shots brought the guards from the perimeter. Meanwhile, Prescott stole one of their vehicles and smashed through a fence at the back of the property. He abandoned the vehicle in a nearby town, where he had a car stored in a garage that he'd rented under another name."
"Just goes to show-paranoia's a survival trait," Jamie said.
"Where's Prescott's lab?" Cavanaugh asked.
"In back," Kline said.
They rounded the jumble of scorched timbers and stones and approached a similar ruin, but this one looked as if it had been a barn.
"The fire Prescott set didn't spread this far," Kline said. "A few days later, his controllers were responsible for this one. It was part of their sanitizing. An efficient way to get the job done."
"The lab's underground?"
"Under the barn." Kline pointed toward where blackened wreckage had been moved to form a path across the barn's concrete floor. He indicated a hatchlike slab. "That's the entrance."
"You and your men cleared this? Weren't you afraid of being caught?"
"By whom? I told you the property had been abandoned. There's no reason to guard this place. There's nothing here for Prescott's controllers to worry about."
Kline suddenly groaned. As Cavanaugh gaped, Jamie screamed, seeing blood fly from Kline's forehead. A faraway shot echoing, Kline toppled face-forward into the dirt.
It happened so suddenly and so unexpectedly that Cavanaugh was momentarily controlled only by his startle reflex. Until now, after the tension of what had happened in Rutherford's condo, he had managed to keep his nervousness at bay. This was supposed to have been a fact-finding mission, not a confrontation. Now the unaccustomed fear that Prescott's hormone had created in him and that he had struggled to subdue took possession of him again. But his fear for Jamie was even greater. His muscles responding like tightly wound springs abruptly released, he dove toward her, pushing her down with him next to the barn's wreckage.
A bullet kicked up dirt beyond their heads, but this time, the shot was close and loud, almost simultaneous with the bullet's impact.
A second shot tore up dirt near their feet. Cavanaugh felt the sharp vibration through the ground.
At the mansion, charred boards scraped against each other, shifting, creating gaps. Blackened rocks toppled. The ruin had seemingly come to life, portions of it able to move, assuming independent shapes. One by one, black-clad figures rose from ashes, soot, and grime, their faces streaked with carbon. They aimed assault weapons.
One of the camouflaged men fired a burst at the ground next to Jamie. Dust flew. The ground shook. The roar was overwhelming.
Then the shooting stopped, and in the sudden silence, which was broken only by the ringing in Cavanaugh's ears, he managed to control his trembling arms and raise them in surrender.
Pale, breathing rapidly, Jamie imitated him.
Slowly, unsteadily, they came to their feet.
"If they wanted us dead"-his mouth dry, his words like paste, Cavanaugh murmured, doing his best to assure her- "they'd have shot us by now." He hoped he was convincing, that his voice didn't sound hollow. Heat seared his stomach.
Stepping from the mansion's ruin, the dark camouflaged figures continued to aim their weapons, which Cavanaugh recognized now as MP-5 submachine guns. Like the men who'd rappelled from the helicopters the night of the attack on the bunker, these men obviously had special-operations training. One of them stared past Cavanaugh prompting Cavanaugh to glance apprehensively in that direction.