“What do you mean?” He looked like he was caught in something.
Spell it out.
She went out on a limb to ask the direct question. “Do I get a gun or are
women
not allowed to handle firearms?” She rolled down her sleeve and buttoned the cuff of her uniform shirt.
“Oh, oh yeah. Eventually. After your probation period.”
“And when is that?”
He handed her a binder. “About three months after you finish reading these.”
She smirked. “Then I guess I’d better get started.”
* * * * *
An impending springtime storm darkened Allison’s room, the weather decline corresponding with Zach’s increasingly sullen mood. Reid neither showed him, nor followed him, there. He used the excuse to get away from the new hire and Zach was afraid he knew why.
“Good afternoon, Zach.”
Nixon’s smile and presence made him uneasy.
“Good afternoon.” Zach tried not to show his concern for Allison’s sudden and rapid decline. If she saw his worry and panic, her fight would be that much harder. She looked to him for strength.
Allison mustered a pained smile. “Hey,” she said in a dry whisper.
“Hey.” Zach poured her a cup of ice water from the pitcher on her tray and set his lips to her warm forehead. “How are you feeling?”
She sipped the water and her cracked lower lip left a bloody kiss on the rim of the white Styrofoam cup. “I’m okay,” she said, the gravelly tone slowly leaving her.
He opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a small tube of petroleum jelly.
The task kept him from falling apart
. He set the tube on the blanket next to her and washed his hands, afraid if he touched her lips that he would transfer germs. Several rounds of chemotherapy had her immune system so far down that she was susceptible to everything. He hadn’t even reached for the paper towel by the time she put the salve on herself.
Nixon lowered the head of her bed and examined her increasingly swollen abdomen. “Can you rate your pain for me, Allison?”
“Ten.” The word barely came out. She turned her head to hide her tears, but Zach saw her reflection in the darkened window.
Nixon drew up a dose of morphine and added it to her IV. He didn’t ask her if she wanted it and she didn’t argue as he prepared it.
They had done this dance before
. Zach wondered how long Nixon planned on keeping it to himself that her disease was measurably worse.
Long enough to force him to do his bidding was his guess.
Nixon hit the call button and a young, redheaded nurse appeared in the doorway.
“Yes, Dr. Nixon?”
“I gave Mrs. Keller another dose of morphine, but she needs to be freshened up. Now might be a good time to do that while she’s comfortable.”
The nurse nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Nixon set his hand on the blanket covering Allison’s leg. “She’s going to get you in a clean gown and sheets and help you wash up while I talk to Zach outside, if that’s okay with you.”
Allison sniffled and nodded, folding her blanket over in embarrassment, but not before Zach saw the rose bloom of blood seeping through the covers.
“Zach, will you join me?” Nixon stepped out into the hall and held his hands under an automatic sanitizer dispenser.
Zach waited for him to step away and did the same, rubbing his hands together. His chest was heavy with anxiety and he feared the worst, more so when Nixon’s Hyde persona emerged.
“The news isn’t good, Zach. Allison’s kidneys are shutting down and she’s showing end-stage effects from the cancer.” Zach pinched his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying. “I’m afraid if we don’t move up the timeline and introduce the new therapy, she might not survive until after the trials.”
Zach thought about the lab rat’s suffering and demise, the Ids conditions and treatment, and then about committing Allison to the stony earth next to his mother.
Hope or no hope.
He simplified the options to their most base terms. “What are the chances she’ll become infected? What are the chances you’ll find a
cure
for the infection in time to save her if she does?”
“We’ll start slow. We’ll introduce a weakened strain of infection to start working on the tumors to buy her some time. The lab experiments are working. The new subject is showing no side effects at all. No viral spread.”
Zach’s shoulders rolled forward and he lowered his head.
This is what you’re here for.
Admittedly, he didn’t know what he was agreeing to, not really.
The treatment is Allison’s only shot.
“And if she becomes infected?”
Nixon shrugged. “The hybrids are our best hope for a cure, but there’s a temporary solution. Ben developed an injection that inhibits virus replication. It’s meant for those who work in the lab in case of exposure, but no reason it doesn’t apply to Allison. Any treatment in her condition is to prolong her life until the full scope of the experiment, cancer treatment and infection cure, comes to fruition.”
Zach could prolong weighing the options forever and neither would be more appealing than they were right then. The nurse and two orderlies walked between them, the blood-soaked sheets hard to miss. “What do we tell her?”
Nixon shrugged. “Nothing we don’t absolutely have to.”
10
.
The old F150 clicked and ticked for seconds after Billy parked in the Nixon Center parking lot. His nerves were frayed, but his longing to bring his sister--the last of his immediate family--home strengthened his resolve. He downed a swig of bourbon from the bottle in his lap and wiped the tears from his pimply cheek.
Thank God his parents weren’t here to suffer this.
He looked at the missing persons posters taped to the cracked dashboard, one for Penny Hammond and the other for his sister, Amy, who’d been gone almost a year. The creased paper flapped in the breeze from the open window.
What did the two have in common? What hadn’t he noticed?
The only similarity was the same lead he’d been chasing: the Nixon Center.
Amy ran with a pretty rough crowd, drug addicts and dealers, and everyone in Strandville knew it. Mitch, a Nixon Center security guard, seemed a blessing to her until neither of them came home. Investigators figured Amy was either in trouble and running or sick of the small town she’d been complaining about since she was fourteen. Neither of those things made sense to him.
She left too much behind.
He refused to believe she’d go without saying goodbye.
Penny Hammond was only eighteen, three years younger than Amy. She graduated from Strandville High the previous June and was college-bound in the fall after taking some time off to complete a mission with church.
He’d done his research.
The two couldn’t be more different except that Penny went missing after a visit to the Nixon Center clinic for her college vaccines and physical.
Billy looked at the benign appearing center and shook his head.
I know you’re in there. You have to be.
He sighed and peeled the posters off the dash, folding the tape to prevent it from sticking to anything else
. Please, someone in there, know something
. He was dry on leads and desperate.
Willing to deliver himself into the lion’s mouth to get her back
. It wasn’t his first time taking on the Nixon Center, but it was his first time alone. He took a last pull off the bottle of bourbon and sheathed his hunting knife.
One could never be too careful.
* * * * *
The soothing sound of a running fountain filled the meditation garden. Zach sat, head in hands, on the eucalyptus bench overlooking the koi pond yet to be stocked for the summer. The decision hadn’t been easy, but he had agreed to let Nixon start the treatment.
“Hey.” A soft, female voice came from behind and he turned around to see Miranda standing with her hands in her uniform pants pockets.
“Hey.” He checked for signs of Reid or Nixon.
“Mind if I sit?”
He pushed over for her to have a place next to him on the bench and tried to look less nervous.
Everything he did against the center risked Allison
. “How’s the reading going?”
Small talk. That’s all this is.
Reid had separated them once already.
She loosened her tight ponytail and rubbed her temples. “It’s killing me. My head hurts worse than my arm. “I don’t know how you got through it.”
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t do either the blood work or the reading, but was keeping out of it.
Especially with Allison’s upcoming treatment.
“So, who is Allison?” Miranda asked.
Had he said her name out loud?
“Reid said that Dr. Nixon wanted to meet you in Allison’s room. You know a patient here?”
He’d forgotten that Reid had mentioned her. “Allison is my wife. She has cancer.” He hadn’t realized how much he needed to talk about it.
Miranda frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
Zach held up his hand. “…have any way of knowing. It’s okay.”
A palpable tension grew between them in the subsequent moment of silence.
Miranda’s expression grew sad and longing. “I lost my daughter almost a year ago.”
He hadn’t asked for a confession and didn’t want to get close to her, but something about her was genuine and he could see she needed to talk. “What happened?”
“She was stillborn.”
He resisted wiping the tear from her cheek. “Do they know what happened?”
Miranda nodded. “They tell me it was a genetic disorder, some CR something or other that I’m a carrier for. It’s rare.”
CRA-3. Shit.
Zach recalled his conversation with Nixon. Miranda was the key to the cure, CRA-3 deficient.
She’d never see more than those binders.
The job was a fake.
A way to get her here. How did Nixon know?
He wanted to tell her to leave, to run and never look back, but his protective instinct for Allison wouldn’t let him warn her. There were too many unanswered questions.
Too great a personal risk
.
“Zach, are you all right?”
He’d done a poor job at hiding his thoughts and didn’t know what to say next. Reid stepped out from behind the bushes and Zach was relieved not to have to say anything at all.
11
.
Reid shook his head and clucked his tongue most of the way to the basement. “You have a knack for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, Keller.”
“I wasn’t looking for her. She found me.”
Reid held up his hand. “Take it up with Nixon. He told me from now on you’re in charge of the ward.” He swiped the magnetic stripe on his badge through the key card reader and entered.
The large room embodied his worst fear.
Human
captivity.
The darkest side of Nixon’s experiment
. Twelve beds, six on each side, jutted out from the walls with nothing separating them except for blue and white curtains hanging from tracks in the ceiling. Five of the beds were occupied.
Miranda, the sixth victim, likely on her way.
Four-point leather restraints held them all in their places.
Reid pulled a plastic food service cart from behind the door. “I had Ben do the honors of whipping up lunch, but in the future, you’ll handle it. You know where the microwave is.” He laughed and lined up four plastic bowls of gelatinous, brown mush.
Zach wrinkled his nose. “They’re expected to eat that?”
“They get the same meal, three times a day, except for the two post-ops. They get what they need intravenously or through a feeding tube. Neither of which are our problems. Nursing staff handles that. You can start on that side.”
Zach wheeled the first bowl of food on a tray to a woman late in her pregnancy. He avoided eye contact, but could see from her slumped posture that the fight had long gone out of her. He pushed the tray close enough for her to reach it.
“I can’t eat that again. Please, I’m going to be sick.” The mid-thirties woman held her engorged belly. “I need some crackers or something to settle my stomach.” She raked her fingers through her strawberry blonde hair and when she tucked it behind her ears, he noted the faint scars of a woman who had seen more than her fare share of stitches.
He wished he had something to offer.
He wasn’t cut out for this
.
Reid shook his head disapprovingly. “She knows better, Zach. She’s testing you. No refunds, no substitutions.” An eager grin spread across his face.
No surprise.
“Annie, you have to eat.” The brunette in the next bed tried to coax her, a southern drawl coloring her sweet voice. “If you eat, you’ll stay healthy. You’ll have this baby and be able to go home to your girls.”
No way was Nixon ever letting any of them out of here, not for their sakes or anyone else’s.
Zach turned to see Reid fidgeting with his two-way radio.
“Hello, this is Reid. Do you hear me?” The basement played havoc with cell phones and radios. “Hello, do you hear me?”
Zach went to the next bed and when he was sure Reid was busy he turned back to Annie. “Hang in there. I’ll see what I can do,” he whispered.
“Thank you.” The brunette answered on Annie’s behalf and took her food without complaint. “She’s had it rough since the beginning.” Zach read the name Carlene on the chart hanging from the foot of the woman’s bed. Not quite as old as Annie and certainly not nearly as world-weary, he guessed she was in her late twenties. Her pregnancy barely showed.
“Hello, what was that last part?” Reid was still shouting into his radio. “Keller, you’re going to have to handle this. We have a problem upstairs. Meet me in the Security Office when you’re finished.”
Zach nodded, half relieved to have Reid away from him and half worried that with him gone, the instinct to let every one of these women free would take over.