Chapter Forty
The smell of fresh roasted coffee and pancakes was the real reason I woke up. I had flopped over on my back, dragging the cover with me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out where I was until I heard Leon’s voice.
“You gonna get up or lay there like a dead fish?”
I grunted and rolled out of bed, heading for the outhouse. I snatched a cup of black coffee and a pancake before I let the door slam on my backside. The sun was just coming up over the outcrop of rock and bathed everything in a scarlet coat of fire that turned golden. I stopped to admire it, hardly noticing that I was barefoot or that the ground was cold.
When I was done admiring the view, I used the facilities and hurried back to the food. Leon had set me a plate of chipped blue metal and piled it with pancakes. Blueberry, bacon, and walnuts. He even had real maple syrup and butter.
“There’s a cold cellar back in the mountain,” he said watching me eat. “There’s hard cider stored there but I wouldn’t recommend you getting into that. It’ll knock you on your ass. The rest is stuff I don’t want to spoil. The food that will spoil, we’ll eat up right away. One of my buddies is a survivalist, he has enough food stored in here for a year.”
“Whaffheffinktheworlffgonnand?” I said around a huge mouthful.
“What? Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“He thinks the world’s gonna end? That if it does, he’ll actually make it up here?”
“Yeah. Crazy. Would you wanna survive if your whole family was killed, civilization and the world ended in an apocalypse?” he asked. His face blanched as he realized that was what had nearly happened to me. “Sorry.”
“Where did they bury Rachel?” I asked instead.
“They found her body in her car at the airport. The autopsy said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. Fake, of course. Even her uncle hasn’t made waves but quietly arranged for a Christian funeral.”
“I want to pay my respects,” I said quietly expecting a big fight but he only nodded.
“How will we get there?” he asked. I was grateful for the ‘we’.
“I need some money to get a suit.”
“Why? You can just pop into a store and lift one,” he pointed out.
“Shoplift?” I raised an eyebrow. “You condoning theft and breaking the law?”
It was his turn to shrug. “What are you going to do, Lacey? How long do you plan on hiding out here?”
“What was the big plan before I was kidnapped from your custody?”
“Smuggle you north into Canada and disappear onto the reservation up there. We still could, if we can get past the road blocks.”
“Roadblocks aren’t a problem anymore,” I argued. I explained how I could freeze time and use it to get past trouble and had an idea how I could use it to travel the spirit realm and go where he suggested.
“What is this? Some kind of magic?”
I gave him one of those looks. “No, quantum physics.”
“Hey, I’m in construction. I don’t know nothing about physics.”
“Anyway, I’ve never been to a real department store.”
“Never? Your parents didn’t take you shopping?”
“I have memories of my grandmother but I’m pretty sure most of them are implanted and not real,” I mused. “By the way, my real name is Lakan. My friends call me Lake.”
He shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, Lake. Do you think this thing would work with me?”
“Dunno. Why don’t we try it? Where did you have in mind?”
I grabbed him around the waist and froze time, at the same moment that I stepped into the yellow realm. Taking giant strides, I followed the images in Leon’s mind to the place he was thinking about without dwelling on the idea that the soul stealers could be just outside the bubble we were traveling inside. My ears popped and I staggered forward onto concrete floors in a small restroom stall. I heard a toilet flush and called out for Leon. He came out of the stall next to me looking stoned.
“Man, do I have a headache,” he complained as I ran over to the sink and washed my hands.
“Where are we?”
“If we’re where I think we are; the Brooks’ Brothers store at the Galleria in Chesapeake Mall.” He popped his head out the door. “Yup.”
“You can’t use your credit cards,” I said.
“I thought you were just going to -.”
“Oh. Yeah. Let’s go. You know anything about suits for a funeral?”
“Yeah, but there’s usually a very nice gentleman who’ll help you out,” he snickered and flopped his wrist. I stared at him suspiciously. He dragged me into the men’s shop and the salesman was a fashionista who picked out a dark blue suit with a pale cream shirt, narrow blue tie, dress shoes, and socks with an overcoat suitable for a funeral. It was no effort to alter the electronic cash register and charge it to someone else’s credit. I made him think we had paid cash. The total came to just over six hundred and thirty dollars. He thanked us and I gathered the bags, walking out to the main concourse on the second level.
“Now what?” Leon asked and I dragged him back to the area of the restrooms. It wouldn’t do to let anyone watch us disappear. Back at the cabin, I hung my new clothes in the closet and took a nap. All the running around had made me tired.
*****
“The boy was riding in the SUV with a Leon DeCarlos,” Morrell said reading the hospital records. “He’s the owner of Cherokee Engineering and Construction, one of the largest contracting companies on the east coast. His office said he’s on vacation - he goes fishing and hunting somewhere in the Appalachians.”
Chase said, “Get me his license plates, make and model of all his vehicles and does it have lo-jack?”
“His main vehicle is a Cadillac Escalade with everything,” Morrell returned. “We’re tracing it now. Albans is in our custody: the team is bringing him to the safe-house for questioning.”
“Let’s go visit the good doctor,” Chase grinned but there was no humor in his smile.
The safe house was already crammed with most of Chase’s teams and they had been busy. On the conference table were piled surveillance reports and files on both the doctor and the two teens who had called in the tip. There was another pile on Cherokee Construction and Leon DeCarlos, including his friends and associates.
In a small room in the basement of the main warehouse, two men stood at the door while Albans sat in a metal folding chair zip-tied to its frame. He looked dazed and frightened; he had not come up out of the Taser’s effects used to subdue him. He kept saying something about the ‘Senator’. In another room at the opposite end of the basement warehouse, a young girl, and her boyfriend were lying on the cement floor. They were tied and unconscious, being watched by Cameron and two of that team.
Chase walked into the room with the doctor and slapped the man in the face until coherence came back into his eyes. “Dr. Albans. I’m Allan Chase and you have something I want.”
“Allan Chase - the Director of the NSA?” he sputtered. “What do you want with me? Did the Senator send you?” His eyes looked wary.
“Senator who?”
“Lourdes. I know some important people.”
“Ah,” Chase drawled. “I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Where is Lakan Strongbow?”
“Who?” Albans asked frowning. He shook his head and Chase saw that he did not know.
“You might know him as Lacey Hamilton. The boy you claimed died in your hospital from a subdural hematoma.”
“You mean the girl? She did die and was cremated. I paid for the services myself,” Albans protested.
“You mean the child dressed as a girl. The people might believe that, Dr. Albans but you and I know better. What did you do with the trackers implanted in him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he retorted and Chase stepped back. He turned to his agents. “Bring Cameron in, Morrell. Tell him I need everything he can wring from the good Dr. Albans.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent left quietly.
“You’re going to torture it out of me?” Albans sneered. “What about my constitutional rights?”
“Oh, we don’t use torture,” Chase laughed. “Dr. Cameron has lots of synthetic drugs he’s developed in the last five years, one of which will make you tell me everything you hold most secret and dear. Things you even keep from yourself. Unfortunately, it does fry your brain.”
The door opened and the tall, handsome man in jeans and suit jacket entered carrying a medical bag. He had the coldest blue eyes Albans had ever seen. Behind him, another agent pushed into the room a wheeled table and a light. Efficiently and quietly, the doctor set up a sterile tray and drapes for his instruments. Needles, vials and IV ports.
Albans gasped as he recognized him. “You’re that geneticist that was kicked out of hospitals for experimenting on humans!”
Cameron looked up. “You’re about to reap the benefits of that research, Dr. Albans.” Deftly, he wiped off the man’s wrist with alcohol and inserted a butterfly into the vein, injecting 20cc of a pale blue liquid. Immediately, Albans felt a heat race up his arm and center in his chest. From there, it pinged in his joints and his head had an instant ice cream headache.
“So, Dr. Albans, tell me about Lacey,” Cameron prompted and for the next hour, he did. When he finally stopped, blood pooled from his eyes, ears, and nose. He screamed a thin bleat that dwindled as if he had forgotten why he was crying. Liquid brain matter dripped from his ears. After that, it was only a matter of minutes before his vital functions ceased as the master computer that ran the body was no longer functioning.
“You have what you need, Chase?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Except for the present location of Lakan.”
“He didn’t know?”
Morrell interrupted. “This DeCarlos has a hunting cabin near Bloodroot Mt. We can chopper in almost to it.”
The door popped open and one of the techs stuck his head in tentatively as if he were afraid of what he might see. “Director? Cameras have picked up a feed in a mall in Chesapeake. It looks like DeCarlos and he was with a teenage boy matching the subject’s description.”
“Chesapeake? How the fuck did he get there?” Chase snapped.
“He bought a suit for a funeral,” the tech added helpfully.
Chase’s eyes narrowed. “Little Bear. He’s going back to her grave. When was the funeral?”
“Six months ago. She’s buried in Red Rock, near Otseno’s ranch,” Cameron added.
Aiken came in, stared at the crowd, the dead doctor and added that they had found the garage where the two teens had stashed the boy. They had also found his backpack with stolen IDs, cash, and camping gear. One of the IDs processed belonged to a Dwayne Peebles who had been forensically tied to a burning marijuana patch and meth lab near Albans’ mental clinic.
“So he escaped and ran through the woods coming up on the dealers,” Chase mused. “Where is he now? When was he sighted in this mall?”
“11:30 am today,” Aiken answered.
“It’s not possible,” Cameron muttered. “Unless he’s…slipping. Slipping through time and space. Chase, we have to get this kid back before he falls into somebody else’s hands and before he can be hurt. He’s too valuable to be loose.” Cameron’s eyes were frantic. “What if he’s killed in a car accident? Or drive-by shooting? We’ll lose something worth billions!”
“How? How do we track him down without his implants?” Chase demanded.
“He’s going back to visit Rachel Little Bear’s grave,” Aiken cut in.
“We need to set a trap for him there,” Cameron agreed. “And then, we need to find DeCarlos’ cabin.” Chase nodded and the team set about doing both.