The Burning Man (25 page)

It was a pretty industrial area, with minimal foot traffic and no sidewalks. There was an electrician, a metal shop, and a motorcycle dealer on the same street. He parked down the block from the unremarkable cinderblock building that housed the SpeedyShip office and warehouse. Got out of the new car his mother had bought for him, and glanced up and down the street. There was a guy messing with a vintage Indian motorcycle out in front of the dealership, but he was paying way more attention to his bike than to Kieran.

Gnawing anxiety about Olivia made it difficult to concentrate, but he needed to stay sharp if he was going to pull this off. He arranged his face and body into what he hoped might be a relaxed but businesslike demeanor, trying to give off the impression that he was just an ordinary working stiff doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

These are not the droids you’re looking for.

There was a driveway down the right side of the SpeedyShip building that led to the parking lot in the back. On the left was a chainlink fence that separated the driveway from the lot for the metal shop. Standing in the metal shop lot, beside a beat-up old Chevy Nova, was a lone man in a dark suit and fedora-style hat. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would work at a metal shop. He seemed to be watching Kieran from under the shadow cast by the brim of his hat.

That made Kieran nervous, so he tucked his chin down into the collar of his jacket and kept on walking like he had every right to be there. Like maybe he was late for work, and didn’t have time to worry about some weird guy staring at him. He thought he did a pretty good job, but still felt much better once he turned the corner into the SpeedyShip parking lot.

Out back, there was a wide-open loading dock stacked high with packages of all different shapes and sizes. A girl in an unflattering red polyester uniform was sitting on the edge of the dock smoking a cigarette. She had a curly, strawberry-blond bob haircut and big hoop earrings, and was flirting with one of the drivers, a burly guy with a shaved head and a goatee. He was also smoking.

They both seemed too into each other to pay much attention to Kieran.

He slipped between two of the delivery trucks and peered into them through the side windows. One was clean and orderly inside, and the other was full of fast-food wrappers and crumpled paperwork. The messy truck was perfect for two reasons. First, because the lazy driver had left his red uniform jacket on the passenger seat, balled up with one sleeve pulled inside out. But more importantly, he’d also left the key in the ignition.

So Kieran stuck his head around the back of the truck to look over at the smoking lovebirds on the loading dock. They had finished their cigarettes and the guy had his thick arm around her waist, leading her over to the back door. As he pushed the door open and chivalrously held it for her to enter, he glanced back around the lot, clearly worried about being seen with his female companion. Kieran ducked back out of sight, and he was pretty sure he’d done so before he could be spotted.

Nevertheless, he waited for a handful of seconds before risking another peek around the back of the truck. The lovebirds were gone—having disappeared into the warehouse for whatever tawdry liaison they had in mind. Kieran clenched a fist, cheering silently on the inside.

He got behind the wheel of the truck and grabbed the jacket. It was cheap and uninsulated, much thinner than his own parka, but he put it on anyway. It smelled disturbingly like Cheetos. He placed his own coat and backpack on the passenger seat, then keyed the ignition and got the rattling heater going. It brought the interior temperature up from death-by-hypothermia to a brisk, sleigh-ride kind of feel. Far from toasty warm, but better than nothing.

It was going to be a long drive to Potsdam.

Red Oak Road was in the middle of nowhere, east of the university and hidden from the highway by a grim platoon of bare, witchy trees. Kieran missed it the first time, and ended up having to double back along US Route 11.

A relentless, sleety rain had begun to fall, and it wasn’t making it any easier, but the thought of Olivia trapped in that creepy hospital drove him to keep going. When he finally found the turn-off, the big, bulky messenger truck shimmied and slid across the icy tarmac, nearly dumping him into a drainage ditch. He kept control of the reluctant vehicle, and managed to keep it on the road as he powered through the turn and barreled down the side road.

There were no visible addresses along Red Oak, but there were also no buildings or houses—or structures of any kind—for more than a mile. He finally spotted a large, foreboding L-shaped building that could have been anything, standing on the left side of the road. That had to be it.

When he got closer, he saw a small, unassuming sign that read
STEUBENVECKER-COLESON CENTER FOR GENETIC RESEARCH
in a forgettable san-serif font. Beside the name there was a corporate logo, a kind of threedimensional M.

Genetic research? Not a hospital. Not even a psychiatric treatment facility. Was he in the wrong place? If not, what would Olivia be doing in a facility for genetic research?

What the hell was going on here?

When Kieran turned onto the driveway, he discovered that there was a security booth beside the open gate. The guard inside didn’t slide open the steamed-up window until the truck had pulled close beside it.

“This 100 Red Oak?” Kieran asked, trying to sound bored and a little hassled, like he just wanted to get this over with and finish his shift.

“Yup,” the guard replied, barely looking up from a small portable television that showed a basketball game on the screen. “Help you?”

He was heavy-set and morose, with thick black eyebrows and a low, werewolf hairline. He couldn’t have been more than a year older than Kieran at the most. The nametag above the left-hand pocket of his stiff navy uniform shirt indicated that he was H. Aulard.

“Delivery for a Doctor Eric Lansen,” Kieran said.

“Right,” the guard replied, gesturing back over his shoulder with a gloved thumb. “Parking garage is on your left.” Eyes still on the screen, he handed Kieran a laminated parking pass. “Park in one of the six spaces marked ‘delivery,’” he said. “And leave this pass on your dash.”

“Will do,” Kieran said, but the guy had closed the window before the second word was out of his mouth.

Kieran rolled his own window up as protection against the spitting sleet, and drove to the entrance of the underground parking garage. This was too easy, and that ease made him feel more anxious, rather than less. This was only the first level of the game, and he had no idea how many more levels he’d have to pass through in order to find and save Olivia.

* * *

He parked the truck as instructed, left the pass on the dash, and grabbed a package he had doctored up with a fake address label. He picked up a SpeedyShip clipboard, and left the truck unlocked in case he needed to make a quick getaway. The lot was massive and eerily silent, lit with jaundiced yellow bulbs. He felt like he was about to walk into a Hong Kong-style shoot-out. All he could do was channel his inner Chow Yun Fat, and try to stay frosty.

The cars in the lot were all bland, standard models, all gray and blue and tan. Nothing red. Nothing sporty or edgy. The only visible signs of character or individuality were the occasional Darwin fish-with-legs symbol or nerdy stickers that said things like
SMEG FOR BRAINS OR MY OTHER CAR IS THE DEATH STAR.
Nothing that would seem unusual or out of place in a legitimate scientific research facility.

There was a door leading to a stairway on his left, but it was locked and required a key card to open it. To the right there was a bank of elevators sitting beneath a small sign that read: to lobby. Other than walking back up the ramp and around the outside of the building to the main entrance, this seemed like his only viable option.

The waiting area by the elevators was clean, well lit, and utterly devoid of character. There were two cameras that he could see. Probably more that he couldn’t. This might have been any corporate office building anywhere in America. He pushed the button and waited, pulling his bored wage-slave act tighter around him like a protective overcoat.

The elevator arrived and he got in. There was just one button, marked L. He pushed it. The doors slid silently closed.

A minute later, they slid back open, revealing a large, open lobby with gray marble tile and lots of floor-to-ceiling windows, currently fogged over and dripping with condensation from the contrast between the cold outside and the hot, stale, recycled air inside. Overhead there was a large, ugly modern chandelier that was obviously meant to look like stylized DNA, but looked more like a drunk and bedazzled ladder.

In the center of the big echoey space was a reception desk made of the same gray marble as the floor, so it looked more like the floor had developed a rectangular tumor. Behind the tumor-desk was a sturdy woman with a wide, low forehead, small, dark eyes, and a white stripe in her black hair that made her look like an exasperated badger. She looked like she might be related to the guy at the gate.

As Kieran approached her, she made her displeasure abundantly clear with a chorus of long, weighty sighs.

“May I help you?” she asked, as if the words themselves were acutely painful.

“SpeedyShip,” Kieran said, pointing to the patch on his stolen jacket. “Got a package for Doctor—” He paused and looked at the label, for effect. “—Eric Lansen.”

“Fine,” she said, holding out a stubby hand with long, French-manicured claws that made the badger image even harder for Kieran to shake. “Let’s have it.”

When Kieran didn’t hand her the package, she looked at him like he was an idiot.

“What’s the problem, kid?” she asked.

Kieran had to think fast.

“I need his signature,” Kieran said. “The sender paid extra for return receipt.”

“I’m authorized to sign for all packages that enter this facility,” the badger lady said. “It’s not a problem.”

Think. Think. Think.

“Look,” Kieran said. “My boss has really been riding my ass on these return receipts. If the client wants it hand-delivered, then it has to be hand-delivered, or else the recipient can claim they never received it. Come on, man. This is my last run for the day.”

She looked at him as if he was a bug she wanted to squish.

“Lansen’s office is on the third floor. That’s a level-D security area,” she said. “D-clearance personnel only. So, you’ve got two choices. You can let me sign for it, or you can return it to the sender and tell them to mail it to his house. There’s no other option.”

Kieran’s brain was racing, chasing its tail, desperately scrabbling for some way around this obstacle, when he heard an elevator door open.

A trio of researchers in lab coats stepped out from a second bank of elevators Kieran hadn’t noticed before. Two men and a woman. One of the men was older than his companions and was pushing a small cart piled high with overflowing file folders. The younger two were engaged in flirtatious banter, laughing and ignoring the older one.

As they moved closer, Kieran spotted a plastic key card balanced on the top of the stack of files. A large, red letter D was visible on the face of the card.

“I’d better go call my boss,” he told the badger lady. “Find out what he wants me to do. I’ll be right back.”

He backed away from the desk, and then turned at the last moment, deliberately bumping into the guy with the cart. Several of the file folders fell off the stack, dumping their contents onto the floor, along with the key card.

“Aw, man,” Kieran said. “I’m so sorry. Here, let me help you with that.”

He set the SpeedyShip clipboard down on top of the key card and helped the bewildered man collect the fallen files.

The couple paid no attention to the spill, and went off to make out in a broom closet or wherever they were headed. The badger lady’s phone rang, and she picked it up and started chatting, eyes drifting away.

When all the fallen files were stacked back up on the cart, Kieran picked up the clipboard and the key card beneath it, palming the card and slipping it into his hip pocket.

“Thanks,” the guy said without looking at him.

“No problem,” Kieran replied over his shoulder, already making a beeline back to the elevator.

Of course, it wasn’t there. Kieran pushed the button about a hundred times in the thirty seconds it took for it to arrive.

Stay frosty,
he told himself.

He put his hand in his pocket, closing his fingers around the pilfered key card as he stepped through the sliding doors.

The ride down seemed twice as long as the ride up. When he arrived on the garage level, he pretended to check something on his clipboard, surreptitiously confirming the location of the cameras.

One was pointed toward the elevator doors and one was pointed into the garage. Standing by the elevators and looking down the row of cars to the slot where he’d parked the truck, he couldn’t see the door to the stairway. The bulk of the truck was blocking his view.

With luck, it would block the camera’s view, too. Of course, there might be other cameras hidden around the parking area, but that was a chance he had to take. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before the guy with the cart noticed the missing key card.

The only thing to do now was to go for it. So he walked around the back of the SpeedyShip truck as if he was about to get into the driver’s side, and then paused. Standing with his hand on the door handle, he couldn’t see the elevator. The locked stairway was about fifteen feet away. If he crouched down in between the rows of cars, he ought to be able to make it to the door without being seen.

Kieran had to force himself to breathe and stay calm. His heart was letting him know that it wasn’t thrilled with this covert mission routine.

When he reached the door, he paused for a moment, ears humming with strain as he listened for any sign that security was coming for him.

All he heard was his own skittery, irregular heartbeat.