Darkness Falls (31 page)

Udo came around behind him and shoved him forward with strength that seemed impossible for his thin frame. He pressed the gun into the back of Teague's neck as they walked through the main lab and into the back room.

This time, when the pain flared in Teague's head, it was immediately followed by a numbness that collapsed his knees. His vision swirled sickeningly, but he could still hear the rattle of the chain being removed from the gun cabinet and feel the cold of the links as they closed around his neck.

"Think about what we've accomplished, Michael. Think of the importance of it." The lock snapped shut and Udo took a step back. "And think about Jonas."

Chapter
44.

Erin Neal slipped into Jenna's room and then stuck his head out the door to look down the empty hall. He kept expecting to see guards, but there were none. Just an empty, silent corridor. Was Mark Beamon stupid? Or maybe he was really clever. Sure as hell he wasn't the trusting type.

"Erin, what is it?"

He closed the door quietly and turned to look at Jenna for a moment before walking to the minibar for a beer. He wasn't ready yet.

"You want a drink?"

She shook her head.

His knock had obviously woken her, leaving her staring at him through reddened eyes, wearing nothing but the Canada T-shirt she'd bought from the hotel souvenir shop. Her hair was different now and didn't tangle around her face the way it used to when she was awakened from a deep sleep.

But it was still Jenna. Here. Alive.

"It's after midnight," she said. "Did you think of something?"

"No."

Her look of disappointment wasn't doing much for his confidence, and his heart was pounding uncomfortably. He pointed at the bed in the center of the small room. "I just want to talk. Why don't you sit down?"

She eyed the mattress nervously and then shook her head. "I'm fine."

He forced an easy smile, but silently cursed himself. He hadn't intended that as the clumsy come-on it had sounded like. This was going downhill fast and he needed to turn it around.

"Okay. Here's the thing. I want you back." He managed not to wince at the sound of his own words. Smooth.

"What?"

"Did I stutter?"

Oh, good. Anger. That was going to work.

Fortunately, even after all this time, she knew him well enough to just let it go. "I guess I'm saying that I don't understand why."

It was a reasonable response, but he wasn't sure how to deal with it. There was a simple truth here -- that he'd always loved her and screwing him over while destroying the world as he knew it wasn't enough to change that. Strange but true.

"I've met a lot of nice enough women since you've been gone, but they all seem a little crazy and a little boring. You're just crazy."

Instead of the smile he'd hoped for, her expression turned despondent. "No offense, Erin, but you obviously don't get out much. After everything that's happened, I'm the best you can do?"

"Do you mind if / sit down?" he said, easing into the room's only chair and clutching his beer like a security blanket. "So that isn't an answer."

"I don't remember a question."

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you? Will you come back to me?"

"I . . . I don't know," she said, beginning to pace across the room. It caused her T-shirt to drift up and expose the bottom of her underwear. Blue.

It was strange what triggered memories --sometimes nothing more than a smell or a brief glimpse of something completely trivial. For him it was dumping his laundry into the washer and not seeing those stupid blue panties.

"Say it, Jenna."

"Say what?"

"You're obviously thinking something. Say it."

"I'm thinking how much I've lied to you.

And since I've gone so far down that road, whether I should just keep on going." "Yeah, it's worked out so well."

She stopped and turned to face him. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

He wasn't, but he nodded anyway.

"Okay. I loved you when we broke up and I still do. My feelings never went away. I'm not sure they even faded any. No matter how much I tried to forget my life before."

Suddenly the constriction in his chest that had been there so long disappeared. He took the first deep, unfettered breath since she had disappeared, feeling the air fill parts of his lungs unused for almost two years.

"Whenever I was away from Bozeman, when I didn't think anyone was watching, the first thing I'd do is find a place to get on the Internet and Google you. At first, there was always something new, but as time went on there was less and less. I knew I was the cause of that. It's what I woke up thinking about every morning and what I was thinking about when I finally went to sleep every night." She looked dowri at the floor and let out a short laugh. "Listen to me. I'm standing here talking like I'm the victim."

Erin didn't know what to say. Or maybe he was just afraid he'd say the wrong thing. He had the distinct sensation that he was balancing on the edge of a razor.

"How many boring, crazy women?" Jenna said, breaking the silence.

"What?"

"Since me."

"I'm embarrassed to say."

Her expression turned enigmatic, the impenetrable mask he'd come to read as a moment when she didn't know how to feel.

"More than fifty?"

"I wouldn't be embarrassed to say that. Three. And none lasted more than two weeks."

"I'm so sorry, Erin."

"You?"

"If it's any consolation, that's three more than me."

It occurred to him for the first time that as bad as his life had been over the past couple years, hers hadn't been any better. At least he'd had the freedom to pursue happiness if he'd chosen to. She'd been trapped on all sides.

"Why'd you do it, Jenna? Why would you get involved in something like this?"

"I don't think you could ever really understand, Erin. You're all about studying minute details and weighing alternatives. I --"

"You're a scientist, too. A good one."

"But not a perfect one. A human one. I have beliefs and things I love beyond reason. I walked into this with my eyes open. I wanted to be part of this. And now I regret the hell out of it. But I still remember the feeling."

"If you'd have just thought about --"

"I know, I know," she interrupted. "I read your book fifty times. You're just terribly smart -- every footnote in place, all the logic perfect, all the research unassailable. But sometimes truth can't be distilled down to a bunch of equations."

He shook his head. "Two plus two equals four, Jen."

"That's not the way the world works, Erin, and that's why you've never quite fit into it55

They fell silent again, but this time it was Erin who broke it. "So does this mean we're back together?"

Her eyes widened. "Have you been paying any attention at all to what I've done? To the fact that there probably won't be a future for any of us?" *

"Now who's being overly logical?"

She turned and looked through the sheer curtains at the lights beyond. Erin stood and came up behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and pressing against her back. The city seemed strangely bright after the electricity rationing in the U. S.

"There's not much we can do now," he said, feeling her warmth sink into him. "Maybe blowing up his place in California will stop him. Maybe it won't. Either way, it's time to think about what's next."

"Next?"

"I have a lot of money that may not be worth the paper it's printed on in a few months. We could buy a floatplane, load it up with supplies, and head to Alaska. If Teague follows through with this, then we can wait it out there for a few years."

She pulled away, but wouldn't look at him. "Until everyone's dead, you mean? Until Mark and his new family have starved or been murdered?"

"There's no reason for us to die, too." "You mean there's no reason for you to die. There's every reason for me to."

"What good would --"

She turned and pressed her mouth against his, silencing him. When she pulled away, the look of surprise on his face finally got him that smile, sad as it was.

"Maybe for one night, we could pretend none of this ever happened. Do you think that's possible anymore, Erin?"

Chapter
45.

Stepping from the relative quiet of the hotel hallway into the chaos of the commandeered conference area was disorienting. But then, just about everything felt disorienting to Erin that morning -- the sunlight that had cut through the blinds to wake him, Jenna's naked body draped across the mattress next to him. Even his own face in the mirror. Something about it seemed different, but he wasn't sure what. Maybe everything. Probably nothing.

Jenna gripped his hand as they nudged past the conservatively dressed men and women darting around the room. It seemed that overnight Beamon had managed to move his entire staff over the border to Canada. No small feat these days, and an indication that he still had the government's support, though there was no telling how long that would last.

They stopped behind a man securing computer cables to the floor and Jenna tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me. We're looking for Mark Beamon."

He pointed toward a storage room at the back and they started for it, Beamon's angry voice becoming audible when they were still twenty feet away.

"Jesus Christ, Jack! What are we talking about here? You said I had a free hand and I used it."

Erin slowed. "Maybe this isn't a good time, Jen. We should go."

"Go where?"

He didn't bother to resist as she dragged him forward, increasing uncertainty paralyzing him.

The problem was that he seemed to have lost his ability to read Jenna. He'd been shocked to find her still there when he woke up that morning, and wasn't sure if it was just because she didn't have anywhere to go or if it was something more.

What he was certain of, though, was that at least for a few hours, it had felt like none of this had happened. Now he just had to convince her that they had a shot at a future. Not a normal one, of course. Maybe not even a long one. But a future nonetheless.

"Jenna, we really need to think through whether there's anything we can do at this point. Could we just go somewhere and talk for a little while?"

She ignored him and continued into the tiny room where Mark Beamon was pacing around a table with nothing on it but a single speaker. He glanced up at them, but otherwise didn't acknowledge their presence.

"A free hand doesn't mean the authority to call in a fucking air strike on U. S. soil!" Jack Reynolds said through the speaker. "What the hell were you thinking doing something like that without talking to me first?"

"Talking to you about what, Jack? It's not like I killed anyone. Hell, we had the fire out in a couple hours. What's the goddamned problem?"

The concern on Jenna's face was visible as Beamon continued to circle the table, stooped in a way that made him look shorter than he was. He obviously hadn't shaved that morning and the red of his eyes suggested that the half-empty bourbon bottle on the floor hadn't been shared with anyone.

"You're asking me what the problem is? You used the U. S. military to blow up an important piece of evidence!"

Beamon rolled his swollen eyes. "We needed to make sure that Teague knew he didn't have anywhere to run."

"Then why the hell not just send video of our people going through it?"

"I thought blowing it up would have more emotional impact," Beamon said.

The next few words Reynolds uttered were unintelligible, choked with a rage that Erin couldn't figure out. He hadn't agreed with the decision, either, but there was no denying the twisted logic of it.

"Do you have any idea how complicated the economic coordination of this thing is now, Mark? And you can multiply that by a thousand if you let this son of a bitch release the modified bacteria. The government could have used that facility as a command center."

Beamon's lip curled and his face darkened to the point that Erin almost felt compelled to back away.

"If you think I'm going to watch Carrie and Emory die while you and your political cronies hole up in California with a bunch of high school cheerleaders, you're seriously mistaken, Jack."

The speaker went silent for a few seconds. "Did I just hear you right, Mark? Are you implying that you did this to keep that facility out of the hands of the U. S. government?"

Erin felt his eyebrows rise. As near as he could tell, that's exactly what Beamon had said. And people thought he had a temper.

"You can take it any way you like, Jack."

Another brief silence. "I want you on a plane back to the United States, Mark. Now."

Beamon calmly lifted the speaker and held it a few inches from his face. "Why don't you come up here and get me?" Then he ripped the cord out of the wall and threw the speaker on the floor. When he turned back to them, there was a pleasant, if strained smile on his face. "So you two look well rested this morning."