Deep Sky (5 page)
Authors: Patrick Lee
T
hey landed at Telluride Regional and rented a Jeep using the perfect false identities that, in recent years, all Tangent personnel traveled under. Travis drove. They rolled into Ouray from the north at a quarter to six in the morning, the still-dark streets of the town all but empty.
Travis swung left off of Main Street onto the valley road that led to Rebecca Hunter’s address. He thought he could see the place already, high in the darkness above town. A cabin in a little pool of light, seeming almost to float in the void. The emptiness around the place disquieted him on some level. His hand went to the shape of the SIG Sauer P226 holstered beneath his jacket. In his peripheral vision he thought he saw Paige do the same.
There were entities they could’ve brought along to make this trip less dangerous, but Tangent rarely sanctioned taking Breach technology outside Border Town. The risk was obvious: if things went badly, the entities could end up in someone else’s hands. It’d happened before, with one of the most dangerous things ever to emerge from the Breach: a full-body suit that rendered its wearer perfectly transparent in every kind of light. The resulting misery and violence had plagued Tangent for years before they recovered the damned thing—no one wanted to go through it again.
“Wonder if she’s an early riser,” Paige said.
“She is today, like it or not.”
They pulled into the cabin’s drive sixty seconds later, the headlights sweeping over a landscape of low evergreen shrubs and scattered pines, all shrouded by a four-inch layer of snow. Travis killed the lights and the engine and they got out. Their feet crunched on gravel beneath the powder.
The cabin was single-story, closer to small than big. Maybe two bedrooms in there, depending on their size. No sign of movement yet. There was a light at one window, but Travis had seen that long before they pulled in. If Rebecca—Carrie—had noticed their arrival, it wasn’t evident from out here.
There was an older model Ford F–150 nosed up against the place, matching the description in the DMV registration. Its tire tracks, all but erased by the night’s snowfall, led back out to the road.
A layer of rock salt had been scattered around the cabin’s entry to a radius of ten or twelve feet, reducing the ground there to moist gravel. Travis and Paige crossed it and went to the door, a heavy construction of knotted pine planks with no window. Its one notable feature was a peephole. Travis pressed the doorbell and heard the chime sound inside.
For five seconds nothing happened. He was reaching for the button again when a light came on at the far end of the house, to their left. Another ten seconds. Then footsteps, drawing close and stopping. Travis imagined Carrie Holden standing right there with her eye to the peephole, a foot and a half away from them. What could they look like to her? What could any two strangers look like at 5:50 in the morning? It occurred to him that she might simply refuse to open the door. He wondered what they would do in that case, but only for a second—the lock disengaged and the door swung inward eight inches, and Carrie Holden stared out at them through the gap, clad in a quilted robe.
She looked older than in the DMV picture, as Travis had expected; the license had been updated three years ago. Maybe sick with something, too—her features seemed drawn and pale—though she was perfectly alert. Her eyes went back and forth between the two of them.
“We’re with Tangent,” Paige said. “We need to speak to you—Ms. Holden.”
If any of that startled the woman, she didn’t show it. Her eyes stayed fixed on Paige’s. Then she exhaled softly and nodded, not upset but nowhere near happy, either. She pulled open the door and stepped back to admit them.
I
nside, the cabin was close to what Travis had pictured: the cozy side of rustic. Timber walls, rough-hewn beams supporting the vaulted ceiling, potbellied woodstove on the hearth. The huge living room window was a living postcard of Ouray. Travis could think of worse places to hide out from the world.
Carrie didn’t offer them anything to drink. Just led them across the entryway into the living room, sat in a chair facing the couch and left them to conclude that they should sit too. They did.
“This is Travis Chase,” Paige said. “And my name is Paige Campbell.”
Carrie nodded, politely if not quite kindly.
“I’m not coming back to Border Town,” she said. “So if that’s what you came to ask about—”
Paige cut her off, shaking her head. “We’re just looking for information. We need to know about an old Tangent investigation called Scalar. Do you remember it?”
As before, the woman showed no trace of surprise.
“I remember it to the extent I knew about it,” she said.
“Can you tell us what you know?”
“Why would you need me to? You’re with Tangent, you should have better sources than me.”
“We don’t,” Paige said. “The reasons would take a while to go into, and they wouldn’t brighten your day. Can you just tell us? I’m sorry to be this blunt, but it’s important. Something’s happening, and it relates to Scalar, and we need to know as much as we can.”
Carrie nodded, but only vaguely. Her hands, as fragile looking as the rest of her, moved nervously on her knees.
Travis studied her face. The stretched skin. The withdrawn eyes.
The voice alone was strong. Surprisingly so, for someone apparently ill.
He glanced at the end table next to the couch. Its base had shelves for magazines, all of them cluttered with old issues of
Newsweek
,
National Geographic
, and some local paper.
There was also a notepad with a pen clipped to it, its front page covered with phone numbers and random pieces of scribbled info. No doubt the pad had been there for as long as the cordless phone cradled atop the end table.
Travis indicated the pad and met Carrie’s eyes.
“Mind if I take notes?” he said.
She nodded again.
Travis took the pad, unclipped the pen, and turned to a fresh page. He began writing something immediately, though Carrie hadn’t spoken yet.
“Please start with the basics if you can,” Paige said. “What was the investigation about? What were we looking for?”
For a long time the older woman said nothing. Then her hands went still and she looked up at Paige.
“I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “Before I say anything, I need to hear whatever
you
know about Scalar.”
“I just told you,” Paige said. “We
don’t
know anything. Just the name.”
“Here’s the problem,” Carrie said. “There are at least a few people outside of Tangent who know that investigation by name only. People in the government—people in
several
governments. Those people were
kept
from knowing more than just the name, and for good reason. It’s not unthinkable that such parties, should they manage to find me here, would pretend to be with Tangent and ask me for information.”
Paige was already shaking her head. “Ma’am, I can assure you—”
“There has to be
something
else you know about Scalar,” Carrie said. “Some detail to prove you’re not an outsider.”
Travis turned the page he’d written on and began writing on the next. After only a few seconds he turned that one too, and continued on a third.
For a moment, pondering Carrie’s demand, Paige appeared lost. She pulled her bangs back from her forehead and stared into empty space in front of herself. Then she looked at Carrie.
“In the archives index in Border Town,” Paige said, “on Level B48, there are seventeen entries devoted to Scalar. The first is dated June 4, 1981. The last is dated November 28, 1987. All seventeen of them are lined out in blue ink. Is that good enough?”
Carrie looked impressed. But still undecided. She took a breath to speak, but before she could, Travis finished writing and set the pen aside. He turned the pages back until his first was on top, then calmly handed the pad across to Carrie. The move surprised her, but she took it and read the few lines Travis had written:
Nod if the real Carrie Holden is still in this cabin.
If you make a sound I will kill you.
By the time the woman looked up from the pad, Travis had drawn his SIG Sauer and leveled it at her face.
S
he didn’t make a sound.
Her hands began to shake again, and she lowered the notepad to her lap.
Travis was too focused on the woman to see Paige’s expression, but whatever her reaction was, it didn’t freeze her. Or lead her to a different conclusion from his. She drew her own weapon and aimed it at the woman.
Travis raised his eyebrows and pointed at the pad with his free hand, prompting her for an answer.
The woman swallowed and seemed to consider her options. She didn’t have any.
She nodded forcefully. Yes, the real Carrie Holden was still here.
Paige began speaking, her tone as casual as Travis had ever heard it. Anyone listening to an audio feed of this room—as someone undoubtedly was—would’ve heard no hint of tension. “If you need me to, I can put you in touch with other Tangent personnel to confirm we’re who we say we are. We need your information, Ms. Holden.”
Travis gestured for the woman to turn the page. She did.
How many are watching this place?
Nod if they are inside.
She thought about it. Raised a hand and extended all four fingers and her thumb. Then she shrugged and added the index finger of the other hand. Five, maybe six.
She also shook her head, slowly and deliberately. No, the watchers were not inside the cabin.
“Maybe you’ve guessed,” Paige said, “but the thing that’s going on right now is tied to Garner’s assassination last night. Which in turn is linked to Scalar. How, we don’t know.”
Nothing she was saying was especially sensitive—the people listening in almost certainly had that information already.
Travis gestured again: turn the page.
The woman complied.
Say you need to use the restroom.
Make no other sound.
Another swallow. A final moment of decision behind her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I need to use the powder room,” the woman said, and before the last word was out, Travis set his gun aside and lunged across the space between couch and chair. He got one hand over the woman’s mouth and nose before she could change her mind and scream, and looped the other arm around her neck, sliding right down onto the cushion beside her as he did it.
He left plenty of space between the crook of his elbow and her throat—he had no intention of strangling her. Instead he pressed his bicep to one side of her neck and his forearm to the other, in a sleeper hold—a blood choke, as they’d called it on the force in Minneapolis. Full compression of the carotid arteries on each side. You could kill someone if you weren’t careful with this move, though admittedly Travis wasn’t all that concerned for this subject.
She lasted seven seconds, then went limp against him.
On the possibility she was faking it, he took hold of her left index finger and pried it radically backward toward the top of her wrist, far beyond the ninety-degree limit it was built with.
She didn’t react.
She wasn’t faking.
He lowered her to the chair and stood. Paige, already on her feet, handed him back his gun. He holstered it, then crossed the room to the hallway and the half bath there, wide open and empty. He closed the door loudly for effect, then turned back to find Paige right beside him.
She leaned close and whispered against his ear. “They won’t buy this for long. We’ve got a couple minutes, tops.”
He nodded.
She drew back, then pressed in again. “I suspected, but I wasn’t sure. How’d you know?”
“She didn’t react to your last name. She should’ve, if she was close with your dad.”
“I thought the rock salt out front was overdone. Should’ve just been a path to the truck. Now we know why there was so much.”
Travis nodded again. Sometime last night a group of people had descended on this place. Maybe they’d parked on the road and come around behind the house to hide their footprints. Maybe the woman—the decoy—had rung the doorbell alone and gotten Carrie Holden to open up. Whatever had followed had been fast and brutal, and left lots of tracks going in. All of which had been erased by the salt.
Travis indicated the woman on the chair. “Find something to bind her with. I’ll find Carrie.”
Paige headed for an open closet near the entry. Even from here Travis could see random articles of clothing inside. Long-sleeved shirts whose arms would do fine as makeshift ropes.
He turned his attention farther down the back hall, past the bathroom. There were two doorways at the end, facing each other, both open. One room dark, one lit.
He hadn’t bothered to ask, in writing, whether Carrie Holden was still alive. Partly that was because he’d been in a hurry, but mostly it was because he’d assumed she was. Anyone who’d gone to this much trouble to set a trap for him and Paige must have a good reason to take them alive—it would’ve been far easier to open fire on the Jeep the moment they pulled in. Certainly that approach wouldn’t have required finding a passable lookalike. It followed that the aggressors would keep Carrie alive, too—the more Tangent prisoners, the merrier.
He advanced along the hall.
Dark room, lit room.
The decoy had been waiting in the lit one. She’d turned on the light when he rang the doorbell. It seemed likely that Carrie was in that same room: the impostor would want to keep an eye on her.
It occurred to Travis that the woman could’ve lied about the people watching this place: they could well be inside right now. They could be in either or both of the rooms ahead. In any such scenario he was outgunned. It almost wasn’t worth drawing his SIG. He drew it anyway. If someone was about to take him out, he might as well return the favor as best he could.
Behind him he heard Paige tying the woman’s wrists and ankles. The sound was vague, indistinct. To a listener it might have been someone shifting awkwardly in a seat.
Travis covered the last ten feet of the hallway at a fast walk, reached into the dark room to where the light switch had to be, and flipped it.
Home office. Big oak desk with a laptop and a green glass-shaded lamp and a scattering of papers. No closet. Nowhere for anyone to hide.
Travis spun in the hall and faced the other room. Carrie’s bedroom. Bigger than the office. Walk-in closet on the far wall, full of clothes and random boxes. No one hiding there, either. No one hiding anywhere, here. There was only Carrie Holden herself, bound and gagged with duct tape on the floor beside the bed, staring up at him with wide and alert eyes.
He holstered the gun and crossed to her, kneeling and putting a finger to his lips as he met her stare.
He removed the tape from her face first; it was triple wrapped but the overlap was sloppy, leaving the lowest layer exposed at the edge. Travis tore through it easily and pulled all three pieces aside. Carrie took a deeper breath than she’d probably taken in hours.
“Do you have a gun here?” Travis whispered.
Carrie nodded.
“Are you good with it?”
Another nod, accompanied by a look—mild annoyance at the question. Which boded well.
Travis considered what he’d seen of the cabin’s layout so far. One fact stood out: there was no back door. No easy way in or out but the entry he and Paige had used.
That was good.
He met Carrie’s stare again as he turned his attention to the rest of her binds.
“We can make it out of here alive,” he whispered, “but you have to do exactly what I say.”
As he freed her wrists he began to explain the plan.