Blood Diamond (48 page)

“Okay. What do you need?”

“I need you to check out a company called Basin. They should be located somewhere in the Montreal area. Also, there’s a man I want you to track down. His name is Alan Fredrick.” I paused, considering what else I could ask her to do—something that would keep them busy so I could have time to locate the warehouse and make my way back to the downtown area before they realized I wasn’t at the hotel. I sucked in a breath, remembering the medical equipment on board the
Wave Dream
. “Ask Richard and Gerald for help, okay?”

“Sure. Why can’t you do it yourself, though?”

I forced out a chuckle. “Aren’t I supposed to be sleeping? You like your new phone, so I thought you might enjoy calling around and snooping for information while you checked out the universities. Also, suggest to Richard to look into any schools dealing with medical research.”

“Medical research? Why?”

“Wasn’t one of the diamonds found with a bunch of medical equipment?” I asked. Faking a yawn, I paused before saying, “I should get off the phone. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure. I’ll ask Richard about it and see what we can dig up while we’re out. Go to sleep, Jackson. We’ll come get you for a late dinner, okay?”

I smiled at Evelyn’s stern tone. “Love you,” I murmured.

“Ditto,” she replied before hanging up on me.

I handed the man his phone back. “Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

“I take it your business partner is also your wife?” he asked, pocketing his cell.

The truth of it, that Evelyn was willing and able to dirty her hands with me, drew a genuine laugh out of me. “I’m a lucky man.”

“Good for you.”

I scratched the back of my head, staring at the ruins of the bridge. “I don’t suppose you know where the easiest place to get a taxi from here is, do you?”

“Good question. With the bridge out, it’ll be a nightmare. You’ll need to hike to Marshall. It’s six or seven streets down. You can catch a bus from there.”

“Thanks, man,” I replied, taking one last look at the destruction. While Fredrick and his accomplice were dead, the Mercedes and their bodies lost in the rubble, I wasn’t out of options quite yet.

Several police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances arrived as I started my walk westbound in search of Basin’s warehouse. The dead howled their triumph in my head.

~~*~~

When I thought of a warehouse, a large sprawling building came to mind. The cracked concrete structure was a perfect match for the state of the highway. I suspected Basin’s sign had once been white, but years of exposure to the elements and city smog had turned it a splotchy gray.

There were no cars in the lot and the place was dark. I circled to the back, where I found a locked door. Rust stains streaked the metal. Clouded windows lined the building, hiding what lay within.

With the bridge out, the highway was abandoned. If anyone did work in the neighboring buildings, there were no signs of them. Instead of asphalt, the lot was covered in gravel. It took me several minutes to find a rock large enough for my needs.

I used it to knock on the door. The place remained silent.

Regarding the rock for a long moment, I shrugged, secured my grip on it, and smashed it through the nearest window. The crunch of breaking glass satisfied me almost as much as the quiet. It took several more blows to open a hole large enough for me to poke my head inside.

If there was an alarm, I saw no sign of it in the small room serving as a supply closet. I double-checked for the telltale boxes and corner cameras. With my heart beating frantically, I unlocked the window and slid it open.

Working under the assumption there was a silent alarm, I climbed inside, dodging the glass on the floor. Cardboard boxes filled the room, and turning to the nearest stack, I hauled the top one down, set it down, and went to work opening it. Inside, I found vacuum-sealed bags filled with a black powder. Each had a label, written in an eclectic mix of French and English.

I found one word I recognized: carbon.

“Diamonds,” I muttered, returning the packets to the box and setting it back where I found it. Squeezing my way through the narrow passages, I found a door leading deeper inside the building. Holding my breath, I gave the knob a firm twist.

It opened.

The sterile, white room waiting for me whipped the ghosts into a shrieking frenzy. The medical equipment was the same as they remembered, right down to the examination table in the center of the room. Disinfectant burned my nose, and I sneezed.

If those trapped within the blood diamond had died in the room, I didn’t sense it with my witchcraft. Turning in a slow circle, I took the place in, wondering what the assortment of equipment did and how it could be used against the supernatural.

Tucked in a corner was a tiny desk with a computer. I sat down in the rolling chair and moved the mouse. The system purred to life. A login prompt taunted me. The primary user was listed as Basin Research 1.

For some, hacking into a computer was child’s play. For me, it was a living nightmare I avoided. I preferred working with data, not trying to crack my way through security systems using obscure methods or brute force.

Without a password, all I could do was pull the plug, hope I didn’t break anything, strip out the hard drive, and pray I found something of use. It’d cost me a lot of time, and without knowing how long it would be until someone returned to the warehouse, I couldn’t afford to waste a moment.

I cursed, punching my fist against my knee. Brute force would get me nowhere. I had no idea if the system had a failsafe designed to prevent someone—me—from typing in a random passphrase in the hope of winning the technological lottery.

~Preserve humanity,~
the ghosts shrieked when I rolled the chair back to get a better look at the tower underneath the desk.

Dead people weren’t supposed to talk, give advice, or demand my obedience, but the ones trapped in the blood diamond ignored the rules, screaming at me when I hesitated.

With a shrug, I rolled my way back to the desk, pulled out the keyboard tray, and started typing in various combinations of the phrase. On the fourth try, after removing the space and swapping some letters for numbers and symbols, I was in.

It took me all of twenty seconds to come to the conclusion that the person in charge of the computer was an idiot. They used an older operating system, one with so many security holes I was amazed it hadn’t been hacked already. If it didn’t have a connection to the internet, I’d have to resort to grabbing the important parts and making a run for it.

I let my breath out in a relieved sigh. It was connected. Logging myself into a disposable email account, I compressed every file I could find in batches small enough to transfer. In order to obscure my tracks, I sent them to an auto-forwarding account. After ten forwards, it’d reach one of Zachary’s accounts.

Hopefully, he would be able to make sense of the data.

I made a point of gathering all of the program information I could as well, sending it off. Maybe Zachary could figure out what to do with it.

While waiting for the emails to finish sending, I stared at my watch. It had taken me two hours to send off the data. Until I was finished with the computer, I couldn’t leave. Whatever was on the machine might lead me to those behind Jacqueline’s death.

It might include how Basin was creating the blood diamonds. While I recognized some of the equipment, I had no idea how they could be used to strip the supernatural of their powers.

The only certainty was the fact that Basin was somehow behind the deaths of those trapped within the blood diamond. I couldn’t let the machines remain.

If I did, they’d be used.

First, I needed to deal with the computer. Drumming my fingers on the desk, I waited on the system, my anxiety growing with each passing minute. When the final file was sent, I drew a deep breath, held it, and went to work wiping the system.

Once I erased every file I could find, I shut the computer down. To make certain no one could recover any of the data, I needed to damage the hardware. Standing, I prowled around the room, checking each of the three doors. I found a janitorial closet, complete with a toolbox. Armed with a hammer and screwdriver, I unplugged the computer, cracked open the case, and took savage delight in smashing every single piece of electronics I could get my hands on.

With grim satisfaction, I went to work on the medical equipment. The ghosts lingered as I crushed and shattered the setup, going so far as to unplug everything I could and mangle the cords beyond repair. I overturned what I could until nothing remained intact.

It took me a little over an hour to wreck the place. Sweat dripped down my face. Tossing the hammer on the floor, I clenched my teeth. Would the loss of their data and equipment be enough to put a temporary stop to Basin’s operation?

I did one more pass around the place, kicking at the debris in my frustration.

It wasn’t enough. Delaying them didn’t ease my anguish over my daughter’s death or satisfy my lust for revenge. I didn’t want to break their equipment and steal their research.

Nothing short of destroying them and leaving their plans in utter ruins would do.

~~*~~

I meant to leave, but the ghosts had other ideas.

Time lurched; one moment I was on my way to the back door to make my escape and the next I was back in the janitorial closet.

~Down,~
the ghosts ordered.

The pouch containing the diamond, which rested over my heart, warmed. I shook my head, at a loss of why I was in the closet and how the spirits expected me to obey them. A shudder ran through me.

The dead weren’t supposed to control the living, yet I had no recollection of them taking over long enough to walk me into the closet. If I fought them and attempted to leave, would they try to take over again?

We both wanted the same thing. Drawing a deep breath, I went to work shoving the supplies out of the closet. If they wanted to go down, I needed to find the floor under the mess I had made.

Ten minutes later, I found a trapdoor tucked into the corner of the closet, hidden beneath a plastic shelving unit. Pulling it open revealed a staircase leading down. Like the lab, it reeked of disinfectant, and was painted a sterile white. Flickering fluorescent tubes illuminated the way down, and the accompanying hum put me on edge.

I closed the trapdoor behind me.

The stairs went down at least four stories below the warehouse, and my ankle protested each and every step. By the time I reached the bottom, I was bathed in sweat and limping. A hallway stretched out for as far as I could see, and the ghosts urged me to hurry.

They wanted me to jog. My ankle limited me to a walk, one that required me to stop every few minutes to rest my foot. The spirits shrieked their impatience and frustration.

While I could filter out their ceaseless cries, I couldn’t ignore the biting chill spreading through me, centered on the blood diamond hanging around my neck. My teeth chattered. They numbed my ankle enough for me to adopt a brisk walk.

I was grateful that I had worn sneakers instead of dress shoes.

Thirty-five minutes after descending the staircase into the tunnel, I found another flight of steps leading down. Halting to catch my breath, I listened. All remained silent.

A steel door waited at the bottom, and when I opened it, I froze, sucking in my breath.

The harsh and burning stench of disinfectant wasn’t enough to mask the rot lingering in the air. The barred doors of a prison lined the narrow corridor. Each cell was barely large enough for someone to stand or sit. The still quiet of the grave smothered me. Step by trembling step, I headed down the hall.

The prison was devoid of life, but not of death. Hundreds of imprints stained the white walls and floors. There were so many of them that instead of names, they were more like the chill of an autumn wind tearing leaves from the trees.

Setting the thirty-minute timer on my watch, I jogged through the prison.

While the Inquisition wasn’t innocent, at least they treated the supernatural with some respect and dignity. The Inquisition had prisons; everyone who joined stayed in one of the cells for at least a week, both as a warning and as a demonstration.

Their cells, however, were more like small hotel rooms. For Fenerec without control, they were a place of safety. Those lost to the influence of the moon couldn’t escape from the silver-laden walls. For witches, they were places of retreat. Charms, herbs, and magic kept rogue powers at bay.

I had plenty of reasons to hate and fear the Inquisition, but my brother would never have condoned Basin’s activities, of that I was certain. The cages weren’t fit for dogs, let alone people.

It took me twenty minutes to reach the end of the cells. My need to destroy everything that Basin was and represented surged, and the dead fed on my lust for violence and revenge.

Basin would fall, and one way or another, I would see it happen.

~~*~~

The prison led to another tunnel. Instead of stairs, the passage sloped down, descending deeper into the earth. Tire tracks scuffed the floors, and I followed them.

I found a second prison.

The living dead occupied the cells, and they stared at me with unseeing eyes. They sat in their cells, clad in white hospital gowns. Men and women, most barely old enough to classify as adults, waited in eerie quiet.

Not all of them haunted me through the blood diamond. I reached out for the nearest cell and gave it a tug. It opened.

There wasn’t even a way to lock it. I clenched my teeth and crouched in front of the woman. When I touched her, she flinched away like an abused animal. Her name was Kayla, and she had died a year ago.

The ghosts raged within me, howling their discontent that I wasted time instead of setting them free. Loosening my tie and collar, I pulled out the pouch from under my shirt. A bloody glow seeped through the seams. I pulled out the gem, grimacing at its heat.

“All or none,” I snarled at the rock and the dead contained within it.