Chupacabra (14 page)

The cameras followed Luther into the Amazon River exhibit, where he swallowed a hot dog while he watched a gigantic anaconda swallow a rabbit. If she’d had any lingering doubt that it was Luther, the doubt was gone now. None of the other peds watching the snake had the stomach to eat.

Luther fished his cell phone out of his sock with his hot dog– less hand, put it to his ear, smiled, then looked at something above his head. The smile was replaced by a look of alarm, then terror. He was talking, but there was no audio in the exhibit.

He has to be talking to Marty. Where is he? What’s Marty telling him?

Whatever it was had scared Luther. His eyes went wide and it looked like he was going to faint as he slipped the phone back into his sock. A second later he bolted out of the exhibit, causing a minor riot as he pushed his way through the startled snake watchers. The cameras followed him outside, where a burly security guard was waiting. Luther tried to get around him, but the guard was faster than he looked. He grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down. A glowering Butch McCall came into view. He jerked Luther to his feet, then he and the guard marched him down the path away from the crowd.

Butch had a short conversation with the guard. The guard shrugged and walked away, leaving them alone.

Grace glanced at the time stamp. This had all happened as Noah was walking her back to the mansion, which explained the strange exchange she’d overheard with Butch and Noah in the keeper area.

Luther was yelling at Butch, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Butch looked like a grizzly bear contemplating homicide. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a syringe, wrapped his arm around Luther’s skinny neck, and plunged the needle into Luther’s arm. Luther went limp almost immediately. Grace’s eyes flew open in shock as an elevator popped out of the ground from nowhere. Butch threw Luther over his shoulder and stepped inside. A few seconds later the door opened again. Butch dumped Luther into the back of a golf cart and drove down the same corridor she’d been in with Noah that afternoon. He stopped outside a door marked 222, set Luther on the floor inside, then left, locking the door behind him.

The video ended. She stared at the blank screen for a full minute, trying to calm herself and piece together what was going on.

Marty was in the Ark. She was convinced of that now. And he had somehow eluded Ark security. Noah’s night sweep had nothing to do with homeless people or pests.
Although a lot of people consider Marty a pest of the first order.

The sweep was all about Marty. So was the sudden trip to Paris. Noah wanted her and the hatchlings out of there. He didn’t want her, or the dinosaurs, anywhere near Marty, or anyone else from Cryptos Island.

She rewound the video to the place where Luther got the cell phone call and played it back, pausing it when he looked up and grinned. She couldn’t see what he was looking at, but she knew what it was.

The dragonspy. Which means Marty has seen what I just saw.

She hoped he had called Wolfe, or the police, but knowing Marty, she doubted he had called anyone. The boy she once believed was her twin brother wasn’t big on asking for help even when he needed it.

She reached into her pack, opened a cleverly concealed pocket inside, and pulled out the dragonspy Luther had flown to her aboard the
Coelacanth
. She hadn’t even looked at it since she had arrived at the Ark. Without light, the solar batteries had gone dead, and without a Gizmo, there was no way to fly it, but as soon as it charged up they would be able to track her. They would know where she was. She laid the little bot on the desk beneath the light, wondering how long it would take for it to come to life. While she waited for it to charge, she began searching through the live video feeds for Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall.

If I’m going to help Marty and Luther out of the Ark, I need to know where Noah and Butch are and what they’re doing. I need to know if Luther is still in Lab 222. I need to know where Marty is. I need to get off the third floor. I need to …

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, having learned that panic destroys all hope of useful thought.

Marty’s and Luther’s lives are at risk. My life is at risk, or it will be soon. The one thing I need to do right now, above all else, is to think. No more mistakes.

When Grace opened her eyes, the panic was gone, but the sense of urgency was still there. She thought about her reasons for coming to the Ark. The first reason had been to stop Butch McCall from killing Laurel Lee.

Mission accomplished.

As far as she knew, Laurel and everyone else who had been aboard the
Coelacanth
were alive and well.

Her second reason for coming to the Ark was to find out about her mother, Rose Blackwood.

Mission definitely
not
accomplished.

She’d discovered virtually nothing about her mother. She stared at Noah’s computer screen and realized the answers might be in one of the thousands of files on his hard drive. But there wasn’t time to look.

She selected several folders and dragged them into another email to Marty.

She hit the
SEND
button. While she waited for the files to load, she continued her video search for Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall. There were hundreds of cameras, but the thumbnail feature made it easy to scan for people because of Noah’s rule of emptying the Ark at night. It was likely that anyone she saw would be in on Luther’s abduction and the search for Marty. At least she hoped they were still searching for Marty and hadn’t caught him. Better yet, she hoped he had already left the Ark and was miles away, although she knew this was highly unlikely. He would never leave the Ark without Luther.

She clicked the thumbnail for Lab 251. The hatchlings were asleep, as was Yvonne on a cot not ten feet away from the snoring, farting duo. She was about to move on to another thumbnail
when Yvonne started to stir and opened her eyes. A moment later, Noah Blackwood came into view. Grace turned up the audio.

“Sorry to wake you,” Noah said, not looking at all sorry.

Yvonne sat up. “No problem. What’s up?”

“Marty O’Hara and Luther Smyth are here.”

“Where?”

“We’re not exactly sure. I think Marty’s up top. Luther is in the ductwork.”

Yvonne looked up at the ceiling and frowned. Grace smiled.

“We’ve locked the Ark down,” Noah continued. “So there’s no place for them to go. The problem is that Luther is taking out our surveillance cameras one by one.”

That explained why some of the cameras weren’t working. Grace almost cheered. It was so Luther. She could just picture him pulling himself along, wreaking havoc for what Butch did to him.

“We need to flush him out,” Yvonne said.

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” Noah looked over at the hatchlings, seemingly unaffected by the terrible odor Grace knew was there. “How are they doing?”

“I did a complete blood panel this morning and everything appeared to be normal.”

“Since they are the only two in existence, we have nothing to compare ‘normal’ to,” Noah pointed out. “Normal unto themselves, then,” Yvonne said. “There have been no changes since they arrived. Their appetites are good. They are alert when they are awake and almost comatose when they are asleep. Their behavior is consistent and predictable.”

“Can they be trained?”

“Any animal with a food drive like theirs can be trained. But at this point they’re food stupid. When they’re hungry, which is basically any time their eyes are open, a starvation panic mode sets in. We may want to separate them to see if the competition is contributing to the panic. I suspect it is. I can’t start any training until we get rid of their codependence and imprinting on each other. I think —”

“I understand the theory,” Noah said impatiently, cutting her off.

Grace had spent a good deal of time in her grandfather’s library reading about developmental behavior in animals, and she could not have disagreed more with Yvonne. The hatchlings were only a few weeks old.

In spite of their size, they’re just babies
, Grace thought
. Yvonne wasn’t in the Mokélé-mbembé nest in the Congo. She didn’t see the dead mother with the vultures feeding on her. It was more of a lair than a nest … a secret nursery carved in the jungle thousands of years before and occupied by generations of Mokélé-mbembé. From the layers of bones covering the lair, it was obvious that Mokélémbembé carried its kills back to the nest to be eaten. The hatchlings were not separated at feeding time.

“You’re the trainer,” Noah continued. “And we will have a perfect opportunity tomorrow to begin the separation.”

“Another lab?” Yvonne asked.

“Another country,” Noah answered. “I’m flying them to Paris in the morning. After tonight, I have a feeling that our current location is going to become too hot for our sleeping friends here. Which brings me to the real purpose of my visit. I need your help getting Luther out of the ventilation system before he completely blinds us.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Noah glanced over at the hatchlings. “How long will they be asleep?”

“Unless they’re disturbed, several hours. Maybe a little longer this time of night.”

“It shouldn’t take that long,” Noah said. “I want you to put CH-9 in the ventilation system and get that kid out of there.”

“I have limited control over Nine. I can’t guarantee Luther’s safety.”

“I’m not concerned about what happens to Luther Smyth,” Noah said angrily. “If he dies, he dies. As soon as he’s taken care of, we’ll send CH-9 after Marty O’Hara.”

“Sounds like fun,” Yvonne said with a smile. “I’ll just grab my gea — ”

The camera went dead.

Luther!
Grace thought, staring at the abruptly blank screen.
Bad timing!
She could just imagine him crouched inside the Ark’s underground ventilation system, gleefully yanking out cables and cords. But Noah’s last words terrified her. What kind of weapon was CH-9?

Grace got out of the surveillance program and quickly scanned the desktop. She found the folder marked
CH-9
, clicked it open, and stifled a scream. A video of a snarling, vicious animal appeared on the screen. It was lunging at the camera with its long white fangs snapping. Its fierce malevolent eyes glowed like red-hot coals. She fumbled with the track pad, and after several attempts managed to shut the video down. The terrible image was replaced with several folders marked
Chupacabra
.

She’d heard the name before, but couldn’t remember where.

She opened Noah’s search engine and typed in the name. Hundreds of links appeared. She clicked on the top one.

The description triggered Grace’s memory: She had first heard about the chupacabra in the same conversation she’d
overheard between Wolfe and Laurel Lee back on Cryptos Island. Wolfe had told Laurel that he suspected Blackwood was not only fattening up animals for his private collection, he was genetically engineering animals to put on exhibit….

“I wouldn’t put it past him to make a chupacabra in his lab, let it go for a while to build the myth, then recapture it and put it on display in one of his Arks … ,” Wolfe had said.

Wolfe had also expressed concern that Blackwood was going to clone Mokélé-mbembé so he could have them on display in all of his Arks.

The chupacabra is no longer a legend
, Grace realized with a shudder.
Noah Blackwood has made one. Or maybe more than one …

She opened a couple of the chupacabra files. It looked like CH-9 was the ninth version of the beast.

What do the others look like? Are they still alive? Are they hidden away somewhere on the third level?

There was no time to find the answers on Noah’s computer. She needed to find a way off the third floor. She needed to get below and find Luther before the chupacabra found him!

She pulled several CH-9 files into a third email to Marty.

She doubted Marty would pay any attention to her warning, but she had to try. She hit the
SEND
button and got up from the desk. She didn’t care if Noah Blackwood found out she had sent this email. There wasn’t time to wait.

I’m going home. I’m going back to Cryptos Island.

Her eyes teared up at the thought and she caught a sob before it turned into an all-out cry. This was the first time she had allowed herself to think about the possibility of going back to Cryptos. She missed Marty and Wolfe and Laurel so badly that it hurt.

No time for that now. I have to get out of here.

She looked down at the dragonspy and touched it. It moved … a little. She smiled.

It’s coming back to life just like I am.

She put it in her pack.

Noah’s desk had only one drawer. She opened it and nearly jumped for joy. Sitting among the papers were three key cards. Next to it was a two-way radio. She snatched up both along with the papers, which she stuffed into her pack. She attached the key cards to the lanyard around her neck and turned on the two-way. Loud static came over the speaker, followed by the voice of Noah Blackwood.

“Butch?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“Headed up top.”

“You haven’t secured the vents yet?”

“It took me a while to find the chain and padlocks. Everything here is electronic.”

“Well hurry. Meet me in Lab 222.”

“Is the kid back in there?”

“No, but the thing that’s going to ferret him out will be in a few minutes. Hurry. I’m going to head up to the mansion and take care of a couple of things in my office. I’ll see you below.”

Grace turned off the radio and put it back into the desk along with the papers she had put in her pack. The lanyard with the keys, she kept. She hoped that if Noah opened the drawer, he would see the radio and papers and not notice the key cards were missing.

She ran over to the elevator and tried one of the keys. Nothing happened. She quickly swiped the other two cards one after the other, then swiped all three of them again. The elevator door didn’t budge.