The Big Sheep (28 page)

“Did you hear what I just said, Roy? You don't even know her.”

“I knew Priya before I even met her,” said Roy quietly. “I've always loved her. And I always will. It doesn't matter what she's been through. I don't expect you to understand.”

I sighed. The fact was, I did understand. That's exactly how I had felt about Gwen. How I still felt, if I were being honest. Once somebody got into your soul that way, you weren't ever the same.

“In that case,” I said, pushing my thoughts of Gwen away, “the best thing for you to do is to talk to Flagship about getting your job back. Watch over the clone they've got working on
DiZzy Girl
now. She's as real as any of them.”

“No,” said Roy. “Even if I wanted to do that, Selah is never going to let me near Priya again. I think she suspects I know about Priya's death. If I show up at that set again, I'm going to be the next casualty of Selah Fiore's insanity. I don't even dare to go home.”

“So what do you want?” I asked.

“I need to find her,” said Roy. “The real Priya. She's in danger, I know it. She needs me.”

“Look, Roy,” I said. “Keane and I are working on it. If and when we find Priya, you'll be the first to know.”

“No,” said Roy firmly. “I'm going with you.”

“Roy,” I said, “I appreciate all your help, but Keane isn't going to—”

At that moment Keane walked in. “Keane isn't going to what?” he asked.

“Roy wants to go with us to rescue Priya,” I said.

“Okay,” replied Keane, regarding Roy thoughtfully.

“Okay?” I said. “Just like that?”

Keane shrugged. “We may need his help with the sheep.”

Evidently, Keane had finished whatever he was doing in his office, and we were now going to try to rescue Priya and the sheep. I didn't like our odds, but at this point I was committed.

Keane called Pavel, who swung by in his Suburban. Two hours later Keane, Roy, and I were looking down on the Solana Spa and Resort in Malibu. Keane instructed Pavel to remain in the Suburban, parked just down the road, and to be ready to meet us at the resort entrance.

The place was a green oasis perched on top of a cliff that fell away steeply to the Pacific. A tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire encircled the resort, with a cluster of mission-style buildings, a swimming pool, and tennis courts taking up about half of the fenced-in area. We were two hundred yards or so from the entrance, lying on a rocky bluff across the winding highway that ran up the coast. Keane held up a pair of binoculars he'd brought along, surveying the resort, but there wasn't much to see. Except for a single security guard walking the perimeter, the place seemed to be deserted.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now we wait,” replied Keane.

“Do we even know Priya is in there?” asked Roy.

“No,” said Keane. “Nor do we know the sheep is in there. We're acting on pure conjecture. If you've got any better information, feel free to share with the group.”

Nobody had anything further to offer, so we sat there, roasting in the sun. We had been there for nearly two hours before we saw any activity. People began emerging from bungalows and making their way toward one of the larger buildings. Mercifully, by this time a breeze had picked up. The temperature dropped, and clouds were moving in off the Pacific. I hoped that Biblical rain held off for a bit. We weren't equipped for a flood.

“Looks like the afternoon shift is starting,” I said.

“Yes,” said Keane. “But nobody is leaving. I think there is only one shift. They're on Belgian time.”

Sure,
I thought.
Why not? If you're going to pretend to be running a research institute in Belgium, you might as well go all out.

We continued to watch for some time, but couldn't see much of interest from our vantage point. After another hour, we sent Roy to get some food. He returned a while later with sandwiches and drinks, and we had a brief picnic on the bluff, taking turns with the binoculars. By the time we had finished, the sun was nearing the horizon. All the staff—we had counted about two dozen people—had gone inside.

But then, just before the sun began to set, we saw some movement. I couldn't make out anything but silhouettes against the glare, but three figures seemed to be moving toward the cliff's edge.

“What's going on, Keane?” I asked. He was peering through the binoculars.

“Looks like two men and a woman,” said Keane.

“Priya?” asked Roy anxiously.

“Hard to say,” said Keane.

“Give me those,” said Roy. Keane shrugged and handed him the binoculars. Roy watched the figures for a few seconds. “It's her,” he said. “It has to be. They're going to throw her off the cliff!”

“Don't be ridiculous, Roy,” said Keane. “They're not going to hurt Priya. At least not like that.”

I took the binoculars from Roy.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“If I had to guess,” I replied, “I'd say watching the sunset.”

The two men had escorted Priya—I was fairly certain it was her, or one of the clones—to a vantage point where she could see the sun setting over the Pacific. It was the kind of thing you'd do for someone who was sentenced to death.

Roy grabbed the binoculars back. “We have to rescue her,” he said. “Now is our chance!” He started to get to his feet, and Keane and I both immediately leaped onto his back. It was all we could do to keep him down.

“We'll never get near her, you idiot,” Keane snapped. “If we're going to have any chance to rescue Priya, we need to wait until it's dark.”

“That could be too late!” Roy cried, still straining to lift himself against our weight. “They're going to kill her! Or worse!”

I wasn't sure what Roy was imagining, but I didn't have any trouble believing Selah Fiore was capable of devising a fate for Priya that was worse than death.

“Roy,” I said. “Keane is right. If we go down there now, they'll see us coming. We'll never even get through that fence, and Priya will be no better off.” I didn't add that going after Priya now would also ruin our chances to retrieve the sheep.

Roy struggled for a little longer, but his heart wasn't in it. Finally he lay down on the ground, and Keane and I got off him. We watched as the sun set, and the men escorted Priya back inside. There was nothing we could do now but wait for it to get dark.

Half an hour later, we crept down the bluff and crossed the street. The resort complex was dark except for the light cast by a few halogen bulbs on the buildings. The single security guard meandered slowly around the perimeter. The wind was blowing hard now, and we were being pelted with big sporadic raindrops.

“I've seen department stores with tighter security,” I whispered to Keane as we crept along the southern fence.

“Presumably, Selah was counting on secrecy to protect her operation,” said Keane.

I nodded, but couldn't help thinking that Selah's reliance on secrecy hadn't prevented us from finding this place. Either somebody had screwed up, or this was a trap.

We made our way along the fence toward the cliff. The western edge of the resort was open to the cliff side, but the fence extended far enough down the rocky face to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to approach from that direction. If we had rock-climbing gear, we could have done it, but wire cutters were a simpler solution. We waited until the guard was walking toward the north side of the resort, and then I started snipping away at the bottom of the fence. After a couple of snips, Roy pushed me aside and grabbed the wire cutters. He cut through the fence like it was made of string and then pulled open a gap large enough for us to crawl through. I went first, followed by Keane. Roy started to crawl through, but I held up my hand.

“We need somebody out here to keep an eye on the security situation,” I said. “I'll call you when we've got Priya.”

I could see he wanted to argue, but then he thought better of it. “All right,” he said. “But if I don't hear from you in fifteen minutes, I'm going in after you.”

I nodded, and Keane and I took off across the lawn toward the nearest structure. We skulked from building to building, while Roy gave us updates on the location of the guard and other employees via my comm. For the most part, the complex was quiet, but occasionally someone would leave the main building to return to what I took to be the living quarters, or vice versa. All the entrances seemed to be protected by palm-print scanners. Our plan was to grab an employee on the way to the main building and use them to get inside.

“Remember,” whispered Keane as we watched the entrance to the main building from around a corner, “our priority is the sheep.”

“That may be your priority,” I said. “It isn't mine.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and if Keane replied, I didn't hear him. I darted across the grass toward a diminutive young man in a white lab coat who was approaching the main building. Coming up silently from behind him, I put my left hand over his mouth as I pushed the barrel of my SIG Sauer against his neck. I was a head taller than he was, so I had to lean down to speak ominously into his ear. “I'm looking for Priya Mistry,” I said. Shorty froze in fear, and I could tell he was thinking about trying to make a run for it. I put the barrel to his temple and felt the fight go out of him. He pointed toward the building, and I gave Keane a nod. “If you scream, you're dead,” I said, and gave Shorty a shove forward. I wasn't lying; I'd shoot him if I had to. I didn't know what Shorty's job was here, but he clearly knew about Priya, which meant he had to know she was being held against her will. That made him guilty of kidnapping, at the very least.

Keane came up behind me. I held my gun on Shorty as he swiped his palm in front of the scanner, doing my best to stay out of view of the camera that would undoubtedly be watching the entrance. Protocol with these scanners was to require everyone entering the building to be scanned before entering, but I'd done security long enough to know that protocol was almost never followed. Civilized people held the door for one another, and no silly security protocol was going to change that. Nobody would look twice at a couple of people following Shorty through the door. That was the theory anyway.

The scanner blinked green as Shorty swept his palm over it, and the door swung open. Shorty went inside, Keane and me following closely behind, our faces downcast to avoid being seen on camera. Once inside, I got up close to Shorty, jamming my gun into the small of his back. “Take me to Priya,” I said. He led us down a hall to an elevator and pressed the down button. So far, so good: we hadn't yet run into any other employees, and hopefully our luck would hold. We got in the elevator. There was only one button, and Shorty pushed it. I got behind him, keeping my face down and the gun out of sight. Keane stood at my side. I'd given him the backup gun, and he held it hidden inside his coat.

“Where do they keep the sheep?” Keane said to the man.

“Priya,” I said. “We're getting Priya first.”

“Down the hall and to the right,” said Shorty, his voice tight with fear. “Room thirty-six.”

“Which one?” asked Keane. “The sheep or—”

But at that moment, the elevator door opened. Standing in front of us was a balding heavyset man with a blotchy red complexion. His name tag read
Dr. Henry Allebach
. The MIT scientist who had written the paper about memory transfer.

“Davis,” said Allebach. “I was just going up to…” He stopped as he saw Keane and me in the elevator. I gave him about a second and a half before he had time to realize we weren't supposed to be there and yell for security. It was long enough.

I clocked Shorty on the back of the head with the nine-mil and then pointed the barrel at Allebach, stepping over Shorty as he fell. “Not a word,” I said to Allebach. “Keane, get that guy out of the elevator.” While Keane dragged Shorty's limp body into the hall, I moved a few paces, keeping my gun on Allebach. I tried a few locked doors before I found a supply closet. “Drag him in here. Hurry.”

Keane dragged Shorty into the closet. I heard a faint moan, followed by the sound of a gun hitting a head again. Keane emerged from the closet and closed the door. “He should be out for a while,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay, Dr. Allebach. Take us to Priya Mistry. Room thirty-six, I believe.”

“You don't want to see Priya,” said Allebach.

“The hell I don't,” I said. “Go.”

He shook his head but began walking slowly down the hall. From the outside, the building looked like a hotel, but the inside resembled a hospital: bright-white walls, tiled floors, minimal décor. The place smelled like disinfectant.

“Pick up the pace, Doc,” I said, jabbing him in the ribs with the gun barrel. I didn't see any cameras in the hall, but there was a pretty good chance I'd been seen clocking Shorty in the elevator. We had to assume we didn't have much time to get Priya. We almost certainly didn't have time to get Mary the sheep, if she was even here.

We came to a T in the hallway. Allebach went right, and I glanced left to make sure the hall was clear in that direction before following. Whoever else was in the building was apparently busy at work, because the halls were empty. Room thirty-six was the last door on the right. Allebach paused and then turned to face me.

“Please, gentlemen,” said Allebach. “Leave her be. There's nothing you can do for her now.”

“We'll be the judge of that,” I said. “Open it.”

Allebach sighed. He waved his palm in front of the scanner, and the door slid open. I shoved him ahead of me into the dark room. “Keane,” I said. “Find a light switch.” The door shut behind us, and the blackness of the room was complete. I gripped Allebach's arm so I wouldn't lose him, and held the pistol barrel to his back. To my right, I heard Keane scrabbling around in the darkness. “Keane,” I said. “Light.”