Hybrid (49 page)

Reisch climbed out of the car and Pushkin followed. They hadn’t seen any signs of life for hours; the high desert was cold, wind-swept, and completely dark. The night sky was alight with a universe of stars, and a full moon was just beginning to rise over the mountains to the east. Off in the far distance, two dark shapes glided through the thin air; a pair of eagles out for a late night flight, completely oblivious to the larger plight of humanity, or the more immediate plight of Reisch. “Three or four miles up the road, there’s a farm,” he said to Pushkin’s ghost, and pointed to a small collection of lights. He was angry, but consoled himself with the fact that he had been tested before and had always prevailed.

“I guess we walk,” Pushkin said staring up the road, and Reisch looked at him questioningly. ”We could always wait for someone to carry us, but I’m guessing it will be a long wait.”

Reisch retrieved his small oversized suit bag, slung it over his shoulder, and started down the dark street. Pushkin started in on him in less than fifty paces.

“Why do you always use German cars?” The steaming sedan had been an almost new Audi A8; Reisch found it in a Pueblo used car lot, and with less than ten thousand miles on it, he could never have anticipated its failure after another one hundred.

“Usually, they are quite reliable,” Reisch said slightly defensively. “Why do you always speak in English?”

“I speak the language you speak,” Pushkin answered.

Reisch walked on pondering Pushkin’s answer. “If they admit to finding two, they probably have found more,” the German said after a long pause. “It had to have been Amanda,” he said simply. “She saw everything.”

“You’re probably correct. It’s possible Avanti told them, or they simply stumbled on to it, but I think she’s responsible.”

“I’m responsible. I should have listened to you and everyone else. If I had done this in Miami as I was supposed to, none of this would have happened, and I’d be safely away.”

Pushkin’s silence was accusatory. “What are you going to do?” he finally asked.

Reisch thought quietly. There were still nine more moles out there; the plan could still work, but their margin of error had been erased. “I’ll wait, and do what’s necessary.” The weight of the two vials sewn into his coat became a little more noticeable.

“Morning, Greg,” Linda Stout said quietly. She was the first female detective in the small Colorado Springs Homicide Unit because seventeen years ago Greg Flynn had taken a risk.

“Hey, Stick,” he said swinging his old chair away from the window and facing the six-foot-one-inch senior detective. Lisa weighed less than one hundred and thirty pounds and the nickname had plagued her since junior high. The only person in the world who could use it without the threat of imminent physical harm was her old boss.

“I see the office still fits,” she said.

“It’s only temporary,” he said to Linda and to God’s ear. Rodney Patton was in a Los Angeles hospital being treated for the infection he had helped to stop.

“I’m sorry about your priest,” she said somberly.

“He was a good man,” Greg said softly. Oliver had been flown home to Chicago to join his sister and parents five days earlier, and both Greg and Lisa had resolved to celebrate his life and not mourn his passing. “What have you got there?”

Lisa carried a folder that bulged with police reports. “A hunch about our German friend.” Greg waved her into the office and into a desk-side chair. “We found the car he had used to run down our officer last week. It was in the garage of an auto repair shop. That same auto repair shop reported that one of their customers had a Mercedes SUV stolen from their parking lot the very next day, just before the curfew started. With all that was happening, no one followed up on it or put the two together.”

“It’s taken almost a week to make that connection?” Ordinarily Greg wouldn’t have been so critical, but the nonstop stress was eating away at his restraint.

“We’re down to a skeleton crew. The FBI took the BMW and left the grunt work with us, and frankly, we dropped the ball.” Linda looked away and Greg felt bad about his comment.

“So the bastard is probably driving a Mercedes SUV. This is a break, Linda,” Greg tried to pump up his deflated protégée.

“I hate to burst your bubble, but the Pueblo police found that car a half hour ago. It was in the long-term parking lot at the airport. It’s been there for days. I called the FBI and they’re on their way down there.” Linda shuffled through the papers in her file while Greg waited for her hunch. “The airport only had inbound military flights, so we know he wasn’t leaving. The assumption everyone is going to make is that he stole another vehicle from the lot, but I don’t think so. There are cameras on all the entrances and exits, and he knew about them.” She pulled out a security photo that showed the black hood of a Mercedes SUV; the interior was obscure by a large starburst of light. “He used some sort of laser to screw-up the image. None of the other photos for the next two days were hit by a laser. I think he stole something within walking distance, and based on his pattern, I’ll bet it was from here.” Linda had pulled out a satellite map and pointed to what could only be a car dealership. “There’s a fence along this road, and that’s the only security this place has along that section of the lot.”

Greg looked up at Linda. “This is excellent work.”

“Good, because I used your name to get the manager of that lot to check out his inventory. It didn’t make the Feds happy, but I said that you were willing to talk with the assistant director if necessary. We should know something within an hour or two.” Linda beamed with satisfaction.

Even with Greg Flynn’s good name, it took more than four hours before they heard back.

“We’ve checked three times and the entire new and used car inventory is accounted for. The only thing that may be missing is the Audi, and I’m not sure it was still here. It’s the owner’s ex-wife’s car, and she pretty much comes and goes as she pleases. She brought it in for an overheating problem about ten days ago.” Don Weiland, the general manager of Turner Jeep and Audi, told Greg over the phone. “It will take some time to get her number from our computer, but I do have another option.”

“Go on,” Greg encouraged. He was chasing down this lead while the FBI traced the seventy-three cars that remained in the airport’s long-term parking.

“GPS. I sold her the car myself, and I know that it’s got a GPS transponder. I’ve got the security code right here; you guys should be able to access the locator service and know exactly where it is in about ten seconds.”

“This guy is a pro; if he stole the car he would have disabled any transponder in under a minute,” Greg said dismissively.

“Yes, he probably would,” the car salesman said. “If he could find it. The one we installed in Mrs. Turner’s car is brand spanking new and specifically designed to prevent anyone from tampering with it. Just to reach it, you would have to dismantle the steering column. It can be done, if you have two or three hours and a cartload of replacement parts. What this guy probably did was to dismantle the factory-installed navigation system. Trust me, if he’s still got it, you got him; just get on the Net and see.”

They had allowed him to return home and wait like everyone else for the quarantine to be lifted; except no one else, at least no one Phil knew, had a company of the U.S. Army “protecting” him. It wasn’t all bad, for six days he had hidden behind the walls he had grown up with and luxuriated in the mental isolation. The soldiers had positioned themselves far enough away that their thoughts were reduced to subtle whispers in Phil’s mind, and his biggest challenge was living without the Monsters in his mind. For the first time in his life, he was alone in his own head.

The day after returning from Los Angeles, he tried to resume The Routine, or at least as much of it as house arrest would allow. He got up exactly on time; made up his bed as he had always done; ran on the treadmill with the same intensity and precisely the same distance as always; ate exactly what he was suppose to eat, but instead of his life feeling familiar, it felt alien. Yesterday morning, he put sugar on his Wheaties and nothing happened. This morning, he quit running twelve minutes early simply because he was tired, and still nothing happened. He was seriously considering not making his bed, or perhaps getting up late to see how far his luck would stretch.

“Hello,” a voice said from his living room.

Phil nearly dropped the glass he was washing, and a moment later, the air around him started to hum with static electricity. A small discharge shocked him as his hand brushed the faucet. He turned to see a snowy Amanda Flynn track wet footprints across his immaculate entranceway floor.

“Good morning. Sorry about popping in on you unexpectedly, and about the mess.” She said with a smile; she stripped off her jacket and more snow fell to the floor. She was dressed in a faded pair of jeans and a sweater that would make a high school boy lose sleep.

“Good morning,” he stammered, reacting more to her figure and the mess she was making than to her sudden appearance. Not knowing what to do next, he simply stared, a wet glass in one hand and a towel in the other.

She took a step into the kitchen and Phil stepped back. The air between them hummed like a power line. “We have some logistics to work out,” she said. “If you stay there, I can swing around you and sit over there.”

Amanda motioned to his dinette set, but there was at least ten feet of clean floor between her muddy boots and the chair. “Okay,” he said, and closed his eyes as she walked around him. When he opened them, there were six new boot prints on his kitchen floor.

“You did well in Los Angeles,” she said while slowly lowering herself into one of his polished kitchen chairs. She stretched out and Phil split his gaze between her long legs and the puddle that was forming under her boots. “Have you heard about Rodney Patton?”

“He’s pretty bad; his size makes it more difficult,” he said slightly distracted.

“When do you get out of here?” Amanda said, looking around his pathologically clean house.

“I’m not infectious anymore, so I suppose when they let me,” Phil said automatically, but he was struck by the realization that he could come and go just as easily as Amanda did.

“I’m trying not to read you, but some thoughts I just can’t avoid.” She still was smiling, but her face had become a little more serious. “We’re going to need a whole new set of rules, aren’t we?”

“There are others besides us,” he stated the obvious.

“I know. A generation of mutants, sort of like the movie
X-Men
.”

Phil hadn’t seen a movie in decades. “Yes,” he said. She made him feel awkward; it was one of his own personal emotions, and in a strange way, it comforted him. Unconsciously, he had started to borrow emotions from the minds around him, but Amanda’s presence triggered the old familiar clumsy feeling.

“I would like to try something,” she said, and Phil’s heart was suddenly in his throat, afraid of what she would say next. She had sealed off her thoughts completely, but he wasn’t so sure that he was as successful in hiding his own embarrassing thoughts. “It involves some risk.”

“All right,” he answered.

“I would like you to walk over here and take my hand. I’ve worked something out and I want to test it.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, my skin is already tingling.”

“Take a step, a single step, and see what happens,” she encouraged, and an unfamiliar feeling stirred inside him. He suddenly wanted to impress her; he was a thirty-seven-yearold man, and she made him feel like the twelve-year-old boy he never was, puffing out his chest as the pretty girl walked by.

He took a step and the tingling in his exposed skin didn’t change. The last time she had been this close, it wasn’t a tingling he felt: it had been a stinging, burning sensation. He took another, and still nothing changed. “All right, what’s different?”

He was only about four feet from her, and although the air was still charged, it wasn’t dangerous.

“Keep coming,” she prodded sweetly. He took another step and they were within easy reach of each other. Phil looked down and realized that he still was carrying the glass and kitchen towel; he quickly transferred the glass into his left hand. “Give me your hand.”