Clowns and Cowboys (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 3) (26 page)

Tapping her foot, she peered down the artery they’d just come through. The place was huge. They had covered maybe a quarter of it, if that much. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered.

They had to get those records and get out of here.

“We need to split up,” she said.

Parker didn’t like that idea at all. “We can’t split up, Miranda. How will we know when one of us finds the record office?”

“We’ve got our cells. We’ll text.”

He shook his head. “Not the best plan.”

“The longer we stay down here, the more likely someone will find us.”

He let out a breath. She knew he didn’t want to let her out of his sight, but he saw her point. “Five minutes.”

“What?”

“We check in every five minutes. And I say when to cut our losses.”

She met his gaze, wanting to stare him down, but she knew he was right. They’d blow everything if they stayed in here too long and risked getting caught.

She gave in. “Okay. Make sure everyone’s cells are on vibrate.”

“Already done.”

Right. Before they got here. She was losing her cool. Pull yourself together, she thought.

She took a deep breath. “You go that way,” she said to Parker indicating the direction they’d just come from, “and try going straight at the T. Yuri, you turn and go for the middle. I’ll head off this way.” Going back over the path where they’d started.

“Agreed,” Parker said, sounding as if he really didn’t. “Remember. Five minutes.”

“Five minutes.”

And she turned and headed down the corridor.

Miranda hustled across the polished linoleum wondering when Parker was going to call time. She shouldn’t have given into his demand but what was she supposed to do? Stand there and argue with him until somebody heard them? The man could be infuriating at the worst possible times. But she couldn’t think about Parker now. She had to concentrate on finding those records.

They’d already checked the closed doors on either side, so this time she didn’t bother. She went straight for the area where they hadn’t been yet, turning left then right, then left again, burrowing into the center. The heart of the place.

Her instincts played out.

Around the next corner she discovered a set of double doors that made her suddenly feel like she was in a hospital.

The décor here was different. The lights were more muted, the walls pale green with a waist high beige and brown strip running in a horizontal pattern.

A logo about the size of a pie pan had been painted in the center of the doors.

A dark green circle with two twisting bands inside. What was that called? Double…helix? DNA, right? The first indicator of what this place really was.

Whatever that symbol was, the sight of it made her blood feel like ice.

On the wall beside the door sat a fat round metal plate. Access. But what would she find inside?

No choice, she thought for the hundredth time. She reached out and gave the thing a push.

The doors opened and the helix in the logo split apart.

That was symbolic, she thought as she stepped inside.

She looked around and found herself in a wide open space. This one even more hospital like. A long stainless sink stood in a niche off to one side. Several rolling carts were parked along the wall across from it. The lighting seemed surgical, even though the air was less medicinal smelling here. The floor was a homey oak laminate, the doors along the walls were painted a friendly blue. But Miranda had a feeling this spot was anything but friendly.

The rooms—or whatever was behind those affable doors—seemed to be large, since their portals were spaced far apart. Time to have a look.

She moved to the first door. It had a window, though the glass was covered with a mesh barrier and too opaque to see through. No way to tell what she was walking into.

She put her hand on the knob and turned. It opened.

Hand on her weapon she peeked inside. Nobody here. But there had been.

Tables with clean white surfaces lined two sides of the large room. Matching white cabinets hung on the walls overhead, along with several shelves stacked with tube racks and colorful long-nosed bottles holding mysterious liquids. In the middle of the table sat a microscope and several odd-looking machines that did God knew what.

A lab of some sort.

She heard a hum on her left and noticed a refrigeration unit with digital numbers on the outside. It had a glass door. She inched over to it and peered inside. There were stacks and stacks of small round receptacles. The kind of container she remembered from some long ago science class in high school. The kind of container you grew things in. And each of these containers held and unidentifiable substance.

Her stomach began to churn. She felt dizzy.

Was this what she thought it was? The beginning of life for GenaPulse’s “experiments.” What else could it be?

This was how Yuri and Dashia and Layla started out? In…Petri dishes?

Struggling to keep her head, she stuffed her gun into her waistband and dug for her phone. She began snapping pictures. The microscope, the tubes, the machines, the unit with the organisms growing in them. Or at least that’s what she thought they must be.

This wasn’t the written documentation they were looking for, and a defense lawyer would argue it was just a regular lab, but these photos were proof of something. Especially with all that Layla and the Vargas had to say.

Done. She put her phone back in her pocket and drew her weapon again.

Fighting down the powerful urge to hurl yet again, she pushed open the door and got out of the room.

“Not that way, Yuri.”

Parker watched the large man come to a stop at the bend in the hall and turn around.

“Why not?” he said. “Ms. Steele said to separate.”

“It’s too risky. You don’t have a weapon.”

His thick Bulgarian brows rose to the top of his hairless head. “You disagree with her?”

Disagree? That was certainly an understatement.

He should have taken over the reins as soon as they left the hotel. Miranda was vigilant and determined, but she was inexperienced in an operation like this. In fact, he would have insisted on taking the lead when they found Harvey Hackett dead in his trailer if it hadn’t been for that stupid agreement he’d made with her on their first case.

Back then he’d imagined they’d take on a few surveillance jobs, a cold case or two. Nothing very risky. Nothing that would put her in so much danger.

He’d never been more wrong.

He never should have let her separate them in this God-forsaken labyrinth. But he knew what her reaction would have been if he had challenged her. And right now, they couldn’t afford a loud argument in these halls. He had a feeling they were being watched.

“Let’s go this way.” Parker said to Yuri and pointed down a passage they hadn’t tried.

Yuri seemed apprehensive. “Mr. Parker. What if I cannot find it?”

There was no room for nerves on this expedition. And as Miranda had said, they were running out of time.

He put on his most confident smile and gave Yuri a pat on his muscular arm. “You’re doing fine. It’s been a long time. I’m quite sure it will come to you in bit.”

The giant still seemed doubtful, but he nodded and turned in the direction Parker had indicated.

As they hurried along Parker tightened the grip on his weapon. In a place like this, you never knew what might be around the next corner.

The open, hospital like space was still empty when Miranda stepped back into it from the lab room. Still fighting the gag reflex from what she’d seen in the refrigeration unit, she followed the curve of the wall around to a small alcove with a sign marked “Elevator.”

Uh oh.

This was probably where the staff would come in to work. When that would be she had no idea but she’d better get going.

She hurried along the wide passage and the wall began to curve the other way. She continued to follow it, wondering if she was heading for a dead end. But at last it recessed, revealing another set of doors.

Without stopping to think about how hard she was shivering, she pushed them open.

Gazing at the large circular space, she rubbed her arms, her fingers running over her own goose bumps. The temperature seemed to be ten degrees cooler in here. The air smelled very pure.

Dark screens hung along the walls. Beneath them monitoring machines stood idle. Narrow counters lined the room. Portable tables with tiny drawers were scattered about and covered with sharp-looking surgical tools. Overhead big pie-shaped lights were suspended from moveable pipes for easy adjustment. The piping was a twisted mass of white that must be terrifying to wake up to. Or fall asleep to.

The lights were positioned to aim at the single bed in the middle of the room.

The operating table.

This must be where they performed surgeries like the one they’d done on Yuri to remove his growths. It also had to be where they harvested the organs before putting their “experiments” to sleep for good.

Then she noticed the straps on the bed to hold the patient down. And the tubes hanging from the ceiling. IVs. Take the organs then pump the subject full of cyanide, and that was that.

Stretching out a hand Miranda leaned against one of the counters and sucked in air. She felt like she was about to heave again.

Keep it together, keep it together.

As she struggled to force in several deep breaths to clear her head, she spotted another door on the opposite side of the room. Summoning all her strength, she sucked up her nerves and hurried toward it.

###

Behind the door she discovered a long narrow room.

An equally long table stood against one side of it. Oblong cardboard boxes and particleboard containers had been piled atop the table. Against the wall hung masks and protective caps and aprons.

At the far end of the room was yet another set of double doors. This pair was made of menacing-looking metal. She moved over to them, shivering. She had a feeling she knew what she’d find behind them.

She pushed them open anyway and stood blinking in an unlit space.

She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. This area was much warmer than the operating room. And the darkness was a stark contrast. Had they changed interior decorators here?

No, something told her this space had just the atmosphere they intended.

At last she could make out the single bulb that hung over a large gray metal chamber in the middle of the room. A conveyor belt, as wide as a human body, ran into a door recessed in the chamber. A door just big enough for a small casket. One of those particleboard containers. The chamber ran all the way to the ceiling like a chimney.

Controls blinked along the side of the unit and there was an odd smell in the room. Like…ash. From behind the closed door came a low rumble.

She stepped over to the chamber and dared to put her hand against it. Hot. There was a fire burning in there.

Long handled shovels leaned against the opposite wall. On the floor at her feet was something hard. She bent down to examine it and her stomach turned to lead. Somebody had missed a bit during cleanup. It was a bone fragment. This was where they got rid of the bodies.

The cremation chamber.

Her gaze followed the length of the space to another door. Where did that one lead? Outside? To the yard? Where they buried the remains?

Her hands shook as she reached for her phone and took shots of as much of the place as she could. These would make a defense attorney turn to jelly.

But after another minute she couldn’t take it anymore. She was shaking and sweating bullets like she had a fever.

She had to get out of here.

She turned back and headed through the hall, now relishing the icy cool air. She thought she was retracing her steps through the lab but she must have taken a wrong turn.

Before her stretched a curving peach painted wall she hadn’t seen before. She followed it around and found a long partition made of frosted glass and etched with the double-helix logo she’d seen before.

Behind the glass she could hear soft moaning, whimpering.

Heart pounding, she put her hands against the surface and found another access button. She pushed it and the glass door opened.

She stepped inside and immediately knew what it was.

A hospital ward of sorts. There must have been more than two dozen beds. But what lay in those beds broke her heart in two.

Kids. Various ages. Some maybe only two. Others five, ten? She couldn’t tell. But each one of them had some sort of horrible disfigurement.

One little dark haired boy lay sucking the end of an arm with no fingers that was almost too short to reach his mouth. His other arm was twisted around his back.

The blond girl in the bed next to him was as skinny as a doll. The next child had grotesque looking bumps all over his face and arms. That was the condition Yuri had had.

A red-headed girl lay in the next bed, breathing through a machine. Her stomach looked like it was outside of her body. The boy beside her had no legs and no lips.

They were all asleep. Or kept asleep by drugs. The whimpering came from the sounds they made as they slept. The muted subconscious cries of the weak and helpless. They were all so lost and alone. Abandoned by their creators. About to be destroyed.

Miranda had been angry plenty of times in her life. She’d seen more injustice than most. But just now a rage more powerful than any she’d felt before began to well up in her, billowing and seething like an ocean geyser.

She stood, fighting back tears as her gaze went from bed to bed.

If it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to save these kids and get them out of here.

But to do that she had to keep her head. She forced down a deep breath and once more she took out her phone. She took photos of the patients. The boy with no lips. The girl with the thin limbs. The child with the bumps. She turned the recorder on and stood letting the machine take in their soft cries.