Next Victim (38 page)
Authors: Michael Prescott
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #Contemporary Women, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #General
The stars were fading. There was a glow in the east. A new day.
The side door eased open, and Larkin poked his head out.
"Tess? The mayor…"
"In a minute."
He left her alone. She thought about the story in the
Tribune
, the eight-year-old boy whose mother had gone crazy. She thought about the laboratory in Oregon under government contract to make chemical poison.
There seemed to be no connection between those two things, yet they had come together like the words and music of a song. An old song, as old as history. Insanity breeding insanity, the stockpiled weapons of war replaced by new and deadlier armaments, terror giving birth to new terror. An endless cycle, a loop circling from one generation to the next, returning always to the same point. A Möbius strip.
Sow the wind, harvest the whirlwind. And no one learned, ever.
Yet it was morning, and the sun was rising, and it was Easter.
That had to count for something.
Tess stood unmoving for a long time and watched the brightening sky.
Author’s Note
As always, readers are invited to drop by my Web site at www.michaelprescott.net .
The characters and plot of
Next Victim
are purely fictional, but the facilities, agencies, and procedures described are based on fact. The underground ATSAC command center in downtown Los Angeles does exist, but the installation is off-limits and highly secret. My depiction of it is based on the few available details, embellished by my research into similar installations elsewhere.
VX nerve agent is real, as are the antidote kits used against it and the emergency procedures initiated in the event of a chemical attack. Large stockpiles of VX remain in existence at several military bases, including the Umatilla depot in northeast Oregon. Officially the U.S. government no longer manufactures VX and will have disposed of its remaining inventory by 2005. A secret program to make new reserves of VX is my fictional invention—though perhaps not a wholly implausible one, given the realities of war in the twenty-first century.
I began writing this book before the terrorist attacks of September 11 and completed it afterward. By the time I finished, the story was more timely and less farfetched than I’d ever wanted it to be. Throughout this process, I received valuable and generous assistance from my editor, Doug Grad, and my agent, Jane Dystel. Special thanks to them—and to everyone else who offered me advice and help, as well as encouragement and reassurance in these difficult times.
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