Section III, “The midnight ride….”
Nick drove to Angellina’s apartment, wary of the risk that entailed, and warier of the risks if he didn’t. He parked nearby in a large shopping mall, then ducked and sprinted all the way to her door, trying to watch in three directions at once as he did so. He made it without feeling like he had been observed, so he quickly knocked. Angellina asked quietly from behind the door, “Who is it?”
“Angellina, it’s me. Open up, it’s worse than we first thought.”
Nick heard the security chain scrape across the mechanism and fall against the doorframe. He slipped inside quickly, then closed and locked the door again. Her hair was down, and she was dressed only in a white tee shirt and heavy dark blue running pants, but he thought she wouldn’t have looked better in anything by Gucci. He also noticed her eyes looked a bit red, and she appeared to be developing faint dark circles under her eyes.
“Hey, are you okay?” Nick asked, concerned.
“Yea, I haven’t been sleeping too well. Whenever a loud truck goes by, I keep thinking somebody is breaking in to get me. This is getting hard. Weren’t you supposed to be here yesterday at four?”
“Oh, man. I knew I was forgetting something. This investigation is really burning me out, too. I’m on edge 24-7. I’m sorry I forgot.”
“I know. You don’t have to explain.”
Nick took a step forward and she fell against his shoulder. Of their own accord, his arms enfolded her in a great protectionary bear hug. He thought she felt absolutely incredible, and that this was just the most natural thing that should happen.
“You can protect me, right, Nick?” Angellina asked quietly, her voice muffled by Nick’s Hawaiian shirt.
“Of course. But I think maybe you should get out of here for a while. You have anywhere safe to go?”
“No, not really.”
“No relatives or anything?”
“Just friends from Coral Haven.”
He decided that would be bad. Nick thought of suggesting that she should move in with him for a little while, so he could protect her better, but that probably wouldn’t be received well, anyway. Besides, he had to question his own motives here, too. Was this purely for her protection? He quickly decided something else would probably be better.
“Anyway, ummmm, how did you like my office?” she asked, attempting to inject a little humor into what was rapidly becoming a very dark and complicated conversation.
“Your office, yea. Nice, but where do you get coffee?”
She laughed, then sniffled, then cried quietly against his shirt. Nick wondered how this was going to end up.
“You must have found something really bad to risk coming here,” she stated, after a time.
“Yes, it looks like Jack was murdered, too. Someone added some code to his plane’s fly-by-wire computer system, that under very specific circumstances would cause an ‘unrecoverable incident’.”
“’Incident’, huh? You mean ‘crash’, right? Well, I don’t know much about that, but wouldn’t that be incredibly difficult? A complex aircraft like that?”
“Yea, it would be. These guys are pros, maybe Minisoft pros. How’s that grab ya?” he asked, quietly.
“Everything's grabbing me lately. I’m scared, Nick. Really scared. I don’t know what they were doing to Holly, but I don’t want to end up that way, too.”
“I know, I don’t want you to end up that way, either,” and he found that he meant that with all of his cold cop heart.
“Did you know we were roommates for a little while?”
“No, I didn’t,” Nick’s danger radar went on full alert.
“Yea, but she moved out because of health problems, right before she married Jack. She had a lot of strange ailments that nobody could explain. She was in to see the company doctors almost every day, and they brought her in-house for treatment for a while. Nick, I don’t have any proof, but I don’t think that all her sicknesses were natural.”
“Come again??” Nick said, surprised to the soles of his size 10 shoes.
“I think the docs at Coral Haven were doing something to her. I don’t have any proof, just female intuition, but this smells bad. Really bad. I didn’t think of this earlier, because everybody was so shaken up, but I’m starting to worry now. What if Coral Haven is more than just an elaborate entertainment complex?”
Nick found himself imagining all sorts of wild, preposterous thoughts, but is flying an airplane without control cables any more preposterous? Seeing a dead man’s last minutes in living color on a 40 inch picture screen in a lab basement, crazy? Now he really felt cold chills. He decided to send Angellina over to see his friends at the police station. They always had a safe house or two ready to go, and they still owed him a couple of favors. He would call them all in now, and go in debt if he had to. Realizing this made him even more wary. *Now I have two people’s skins to worry about.* This prospect both depressed and exhilarated him, and he wondered if adrenaline high’s were habit forming. He wondered what to do next, and some of the possibilities scared and thrilled him simultaneously. Almost as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, she saved him the thorny problematics of having to make a decision.
"How about you stay, tonight."
"Here, you're sure?", he asked, wondering what 'here' entailed, exactly.
"I don't own any guns. You have a big one, and you know exactly how to use it, if needs be. I won't get any sleep if I don't feel safe. When you're around, I feel like nothing can touch me." She arched her eyebrow again, in that way that he was coming to know so well. "I'll sleep on the couch, if you want," she volunteered.
"No, no, this is your house, after all. Hardly be chivalrous, would it? You know, I don't have any other clothes."
"I don't care. I wouldn't trade this time for anything in the world."
She disappeared into her bedroom for a few moments, then emerged in a new outfit. She had brushed out her hair quickly, and changed into something he believed was commonly called a 'nightshirt'. The shirt was quite faded, as if from repeated washings, and was logo'd with extremely faded letters 'Choices', and some sort of small emblem. From the condition of the hem stitching, he figured that it must either have some sentimental value, or just be too comfortable to throw away. He remembered that the shirt she had worn when they went diving sported the same logo, and wondered what the significance of this particular company was. It moulded to her contours in excruciating detail, and he had to occupy his mind with looking at small items on her curio shelf, to keep inappropriate thoughts from wildly caroming off the interior of his skull. He wasn't too successful. They spent a good portion of the day watching satellite TV or just talking on her oversized, overstuffed burgundy couch, then she headed off to bed, and he spent half the night listening for strange noises, and a quarter of the other half convincing himself that he should be here at all. He couldn't convince himself how much longer he could remain honorable, as their growing attraction definitely would turn physical, as well.
The following morning, Angellina made him pancakes and orange juice, then they prepared to head to the police station. Nick couldn't help but wonder about such a strange dichotomy, that he had just spent a night in the house of by far the best looking woman he had ever met, slept on the sofa alone, and was now taking her into protective custody. *What a bizarre world I've moved into,* he mused.
On the way, she brought up something that he immediately wished he had caught. She spent several minutes, staring out the car window, seemingly rather unfocused, then turned back to him suddenly.
"Why didn't Holly's sensors alert the monitoring station that she was in trouble?" she added without preamble.
"You mentioned……….."his eyes frosted over for a second or two. "The pulse monitor. I can't believe I didn't think of that first. Are there tapes or something of all the sensor readings?"
"As far as I'm aware of, yes, but I don't know how they are stored, CD, DVD, hard disk, tape, or what. What do you suppose we will see?"
"We are not going to see anything. I need to get to see this myself. You are going to stay put. I can't keep my mind on keeping you safe and taking these guys out at the same time."
"Are you going to be able to analyze these yourself?" she asked pointedly.
"I'll get John to help."
"Wouldn't the monitoring station tech have to be involved, too? Okay, I give."
She became uncharacteristically silent the rest of the drive. Nick discussed Angellina's situation with his old friend Captain William ‘Snakeeyes’ Smith, when they reached the station. Nick had flown with Bill in the Gulf, and knew he could be trusted implicitly. She hugged him again and told him to be careful. Nick left the precinct with a heavy heart.
He drove home, then waited by the phone with baited breath until the caller ID identified the police department line coming in from Bill’s office.
“Yea, Pantera,” he answered, in case it might be someone else in the precinct using the phone.
“Nick, the package has been delivered safely.”
Nick breathed a huge sigh of relief. This was their pre-arranged signal that Angellina had made it to the safe house okay, and was now holed up under the watchful eyes of three of Bill’s best officers.
“Thanks, Bill. I owe you one.”
“No, Nick. You don’t. Good night.”
Nick hung up the phone carefully, almost gingerly, then tried to get some sleep.
The following morning, Nick slipped over to John’s lab again, this time with a far more dangerous and sinister plan in mind.
“John, I need to hack the Coral Haven central computer.”
“Yea, sure. Anything else you’d like while I’m out, like maybe the Crown Jewels of the English Royalty?” John asked sarcastically.
“I’m serious. I think I am going to have to break in there and see what they have hidden in the rest of that complex, if anything.”
Nick proceeded to fill John in on Angellina’s suspicions about Holly Williamson’s unexplained ailments and sudden death. John looked more and more alarmed as he went further into his story.
“Okay, I think we can work this. Now, of course they will try to track the breach as soon as they detect it, so I’m going to use a packet router to switch our phone number to a phone booth in Milan, Italy, via London, Tokyo, and Vancouver. Kinda cool, huh?”
“High tech cat-and-mouse game, isn’t it? I hope we don’t end up taking the cheese.”
"Or being eaten by the cat," John deadpanned quietly while powering up some other equipment.
John warmed up another computer, and in about five minutes he was in. He first accessed the complex’s main map, showing all corridors, doors, security checkpoints and computer access terminals. Then he broke into the medical files section and downloaded all he could find on Holly Williamson. Nick looked over the medical files he had pulled and quickly turned a nasty shade of pale.
“John, look at these. Are these what I think they might be? I'm not exactly sure.”
“Hoooh, boy. Yup. Recombinant gene sequencing. Somebody over there is doing some genetic engineering and I’m sure they aren’t looking for a cure for cancer. Nick, this is really big. We need to tell someone now.”
“We can’t. Not yet. This won’t be enough evidence. I think the main medical library computer is isolated from the modem network, so no one can do just what we are doing right now. There should be more with this, but there isn’t. This could be animal research. That is only slightly illegal. They would get a good group of attorneys and get off. We need to get proof that they are working on humans, and the whole place goes down. Lock, stock and barrel. You with me?” Nick asked.
“Nick, you have that ‘I’m about to commit four felonies’ look again.”
“I’m gonna have to go in. There isn’t any way around it. They will simply shut down and move out if we turn this in now.”
At that second, John's computer beeped insistently, three times.
“Yea……oh boy, they found us. I have to shut down, now. Their mole program has already figured out that the signal is coming from the United States, not Italy. If I stay on-line, they will track us to here eventually. Pulling the plug…..now.”
John clicked a software button and the modem screen turned gray, signifying that the program was still open, but had disconnected.
“By the way, John, where did you get that program?”
“I wrote it, Nick. Think you can buy that stuff from Minisoft?”
“One never knows.” Nick answered.
John laughed.
“Who is going to go with you? You are going to need a doctor or genetics expert to sort the stuff for you. You can’t just carry the whole lab out, and if you just grab and dash at random, you’ll probably get the wrong items.”
“True. Where do I get a doct….”
Nick’s heart clamped tight as he knew what he would have to do, and whom he would probably have to take with him.
Nick called Capt. Smith again.
“Bill, I need you to bring that package back to the station with you tomorrow. I need to take a look at it again.”
“Okay, Nick. You’re calling the shots. See ya on the A.M.”
Nick figured he got about 45 minutes sleep total between 10 P.M. and 6 A.M. He loaded up his Compaq laptop, the DVD-ROM’s containing the purloined maps and medical information, his .44 automag, and drove to the police station, his head on a three hundred sixty degree swivel the whole time. Angellina had been brought in in a blacked-out police Suburban and driven to the station’s underground parking garage. She was waiting in the building for him when he came in. Bill met him at the door, took him to a locked interrogation cell, then left him. Angellina rushed over to him as soon as the door closed. She threw her arms around him, then pulled him tight.
“I couldn’t think of anything else in that dark house. I had three cops guarding me, and all I could think about was your safety.”
Nick stroked her long, blond hair quietly, and squeezed her tighter.
“I’ll be fine. I wasn't sure where I was on your list yesterday, when you got so quiet on me. That wasn't characteristic of the Angellina I'm getting to know."
"Put that one down to too much stress. I didn't want you to leave, and I guess that's how it chose to come out."
"I understand. Over and done. New business is, we just have one big problem. This is it.”
He took a deep breath, then plowed into an explanation of what he and John had discovered, and what he had stored on the DVD disk. Angellina shook her head sadly, not appearing too surprised at what they surmised were the illegal depths that her employer had sunk to. He didn’t want to tell her that he thought that she would need to go, too, but she had already figured that out. Angellina didn’t believe Nick had risked her safety to bring her here just for a quick medical consultation.
“…..So when we get in there, if we find what I think we are going to find, I am going to need you to tell me what information would be the most damaging if it were released. Do you remember enough from your pre-med classes?…”
“I’ll get ‘em. Don’t you worry. I can’t believe the moral degeneration this represents. This goes way beyond just gambling and prostitution. This is positively Frankenstein-ien. Did you get to check her sensor records?”
"No. I didn't ask for them, and they weren't in the data dump. I don't want them to see how many pieces of this puzzle we've already assembled. Especially Silvero. There's something dark about him, he knows a whole lot, I'd venture."
Nick was surprised at Angellina’s outburst, but somewhat comforted that if she felt this strongly about bringing their whole house of cards down, she should have the mental fibre to see it all the way to the end. He also wondered about his own reasons. *Do I really hate these men, or what their stupendous money represents?* Nick realized that this gave him the same type of gut-twisting thrill that flying a strike mission engendered. Coupled with that, the feeling he had when he had taken the oath of an officer in the United States Air Force, and then the police force. *To serve, and protect. You guys are going down. Real soon.*