Immune (51 page)

Sitting cross-legged beside the suitcase, Eduardo selected one of the bands, running his fingers over the entire surface. It appeared to be metal, but not of a type he recognized, its surface refracting light in a way that gave it the illusion of translucence. The material flexed, but gave an impression of great strength and durability.

Could it be an artifact? His mother had spent her adult life looking for magical Incan artifacts, studying photographs and drawings of ceremonial pieces. But those had all been complex designs. These bands were elegant in their simplicity. Could one of these have produced the apparent trance he had watched Jennifer slip into?

Only one way to find out.

Eduardo slid the band he held over his temples in the manner he had seen Jennifer do, counting slowly backward from ten as he did.

Nothing.

Disappointed, he returned it to the zipper pocket before turning to examine the remaining band. It appeared identical to the first in every respect. So much for that theory. Eduardo started to place it back in the zip-up pocket alongside the first, then paused.

No use breaking old habits. In his book, thoroughness was next to godliness.

Spreading the band slightly with his hands, Eduardo slipped it into place on his head. For a moment, it seemed that the small beads at both ends adjusted themselves for comfort. Indeed, a low-frequency vibration began producing a relaxing massage.

Once again he felt disappointment. So this was just a relaxation gadget, probably something she got in a Sharper Image store.

A lifetime of close familiarity with pain did little to prepare him for the explosion in his head. It felt like a million holes had been drilled into his skull, each with a tiny micro-Taser inserted, simultaneously firing their fifty-thousand-volt pulses directly into his brain. He tried to pull the headband off but found he could no longer control his body.

Thoughts flashed through Eduardo’s mind. Was this it? Had he finally succumbed to an elaborate trap?

Shift.

The closet was gone. He floated in a transparent bubble in the vast darkness of empty space. A ringed planet darted by, its many moons careening away as his ship banked so hard that it seemed the gravitational strain would destroy it.

Then he saw it, flitting across his field of vision, far ahead. It expanded in a magnified view, surrounded by circles and crosshairs as his ship tried to get a lock on the target.

The long cigar-shaped craft he chased suddenly emitted a swirling vortex that rippled through the space between them, a narrow tube that bent and twisted his view of the stars on its far side.

His ship torqued hard right and dropped, the space-time ripple passing within a hundred meters of him. In response, a beam of solid red pulsed outward from his own ship, missing the cigar ship but pulverizing a small asteroid as he passed through a field thick with the spinning rocks.

Ahead, a blue planet with a single moon loomed large, and the other ship raced toward it. Almost simultaneously, both ships’ weapons fired again.

His red beam played across the cigar ship’s surface, bubbling and warping its hull as the Enemy’s vortex beam punched through his own ship. All maneuvering control lost, his ship plunged onward, and the surface of the blue planet rose up to meet him.

The imagery stopped. The closet returned.

Eduardo found himself leaning back against one of the shoe shelves, his legs still crossed, his arms hanging limply at his side.

His mind struggled to reorient itself. What the hell had just happened? An answer came to him. At least he thought it was an answer, although he couldn’t identify the symbols that floated in his brain.

Of course. The headset.

Eduardo reached up and removed the headband from its perch atop his head. Immediately the unfamiliar imagery stopped. But a strangeness lingered. All those years of torture and suffering at his mother’s hands had given him a special awareness of each and every nerve ending in his body. It was one of the things that made him strong and fast. He was aware of things long before others sensed them. Now, that awareness had been ramped to an altogether new level. It was as if he had been blind but could now see, deaf but could now hear. He squeezed his hand into a fist, and that too felt different.

Staring down at the seemingly insignificant metal circlet in his hand, Eduardo understood. He’d been right the first time. It was an artifact, although its origin and powers were far stranger than he had imagined.

Rising to his feet, Eduardo retrieved the other alien artifact from the suitcase zipper pocket and returned the now empty suitcase to its place on the shelf.

Then, with the artifacts clutched firmly in his left hand, Eduardo Montenegro made his way out of the building by the same route he had entered.

Yes, today his mother would have been proud of her son.

Gone!

Shock hammered the realization into Jennifer’s head like a wrecking ball smashing the brick of an aging tenement. She played back the memory of placing the suitcase on the top shelf, comparing it against the position from which she had just retrieved it. Not the same. As if she needed confirmation that the precious alien halos had been stolen.

Weak with dread, she stumbled out of the closet, her eyes stabbing toward the desk where she’d left her laptop. There it sat, untouched.

It didn’t make sense. Why would a thief leave the laptop and take the apparently worthless headbands? The answer came to mind before she finished the question.

Eduardo. He must have been spying on her as she awoke, must have seen her make the connection to the Second Ship.

God, she was stupid! Jennifer felt like grabbing her short hair in both hands and ripping out chunks of hair and scalp. But self-flagellation wasn’t going to solve her problem. She had to act and act quickly.

That sick son of a bitch had taken them, and she was going to get them back. Eduardo might be a monster, but he had no idea who he was dealing with.

Jennifer burst out the doorway with such force that she almost knocked down a maid.

“
Perdón, señora
.” Jennifer’s voice carried a deep sense of urgency. “
Donde está Don Espeñosa
?”

The woman recovered her equilibrium and pointed down the hallway. “
El señor está en la biblioteca
.”

Jennifer’s Spanish was nowhere near as good as Mark’s, but she could get by. The don was in his private library. Although Don Espeñosa loved it, Jennifer had only been in the room one time. The high-ceilinged windowless space, with its twin leather chairs, dark hardwood floor, and tall bookshelves made her feel that she was trapped at the bottom of a well. The thick odor of cigar smoke only added to the oppressive atmosphere that permeated the room. For a lover of books to abhor a room filled with them seemed terribly wrong, but that was how she felt.

Two sharp raps on the door preceded Jennifer’s entrance into the drug lord’s inner sanctum. Don Espeñosa sat in the rightmost reading chair, a fat Cuban cigar wedged between the index and middle finger of his left hand, a hardcopy of Dean Koontz’s
Watchers
open in the other. His angry look faded as he saw who dared to interrupt his private time.

“Ah, Jennifer.” The don set his book aside. “So you decided to take advantage of my library after all.”

“That’s not why I came.” Jennifer’s tone caused Don Espeñosa’s left eyebrow to rise. “Something has been taken from my room. Two pieces of personal jewelry.”

The drug baron motioned to the other chair. “Sit down and tell me about it. None of my staff would dare take anything in this household.”

Reluctantly Jennifer forced herself to sit, although the tension in her body kept her at the forward edge of the chair.

“It wasn’t your staff.”

“You saw the thief?”

“Not exactly.” Jennifer hesitated. Don Espeñosa had said Eduardo was a personal friend, but there was no substitute for directness. “I believe Eduardo took them.”

Don Espeñosa’s eyes narrowed. “You are sure of this?”

“I am. There were two decorative headbands, gifts from my mother. I want them back.”

The drug lord smiled. “Such spirit in so small a package.” He puffed deeply on the cigar, breathing out a large plume of smoke before continuing. “Eduardo is a friend, but he is also a man of strange passions. I told him not to touch you, but it would not be beyond him to take a memento from someone such as you.”

Jennifer’s anger bubbled over. “Then make him give them back.”

“Unfortunately, he left the estate thirty minutes ago.” Noting her distress, Don Espeñosa put a hand on her arm. “Do not worry. I will send word that I want them returned as soon as he gets back from his business trip.”

Jennifer made no attempt to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Knowing what he was like, why did you introduce that man to me?”

After another long draw on the cigar, Don Espeñosa leaned back in his chair. “You know I have developed a fondness for you. In my business, such sentiment can get a man killed. I have known Eduardo for several years, and he possesses a number of unusual talents. He was here because I asked him if I could trust you. Before he left, he stopped in to tell me.”

Jennifer felt her chest constrict. “And his answer?”

The glowing ash at the end of the Cuban had grown so long it threatened to tumble to the hardwood floor at any moment. “He said I had stumbled upon a great treasure, a true prodigy. And he said I could trust you not to leave me.”

“Did he say how he knows this?”

The Don’s eyes locked with hers. “Because you love your parents. Because you don’t want Eduardo paying them a special visit.”

Her psychic ability left no doubt in her mind. Don Espeñosa was telling her the truth. There would be no leaving for Jennifer Smythe.

Loading docks are never located in the best parts of town, and Manhattan Island’s were no exception. It was a rough place, where men got hurt on the job and where some men got hurt as part of much darker business. It wasn’t exactly where Freddy wanted to end up, but burrowed deep in the ass end of a long-haul truck, hidden amongst the cargo, he hadn’t been in position to ask the trucker to drop him someplace more convenient. For that matter, the way he’d been passing in and out of consciousness, he was lucky to have awakened at all.

He’d picked this particular truck out of the others at the Kansas City loading docks for two reasons. First, it had a shipment headed to New York. Second, it was pulling one of the new canvas-sided trailers, the kind that were so common in Europe. Perhaps that hadn’t been such a great move. While it made it easier for him to slip inside, it did the same for the wind, and November wasn’t the greatest of times for a ride from Kansas to New York in a windy trailer. Especially with an infected leg.

Freddy leaned back against the warehouse wall, struggling to catch his breath in the dark alley. Funny about that. He’d sliced himself badly on rusty barbed wire, but that was healing up nicely. Overconfidence was what was busy killing him.

Should’ve known the feds would be all over his cell phone. Hell, he had known it. Just hadn’t expected them to be on his ass the instant he used it. Who would’ve thought the people trying to shut him up were that good? And his editor hadn’t even answered. Gutless bitch.

Only incredibly good luck and a passing train had saved his ass. If you call catching a bullet in the left calf lucky. Now he looked the part of a drunken vagabond, having swapped his old clothes and a C note for his current wardrobe, courtesy of a Kansas City wino named Phil. The filthy garb was probably what had infected his wound.

Maybe he should’ve grabbed some of that new juice they were injecting into those poor bastards below Henderson House. Freddy shuddered. No thanks. He’d take his chances with gangrene.

Freddy felt his left wrist for his watch. Gone. Shit, he’d given that to the wino, too. Really hadn’t been in a good bargaining frame of mind when he’d made that deal. He looked around. Judging from the level of activity on the docks, it was somewhere between midnight and four in the morning. Good. That gave him a little time to do what he needed before it got light.

As a kid, he and some of his pals from the neighborhood had often come down to check out the docks after dark. Between that and a couple of news stories that had brought him down here later in life, he had more than a passing familiarity with the area. Although cell phones had killed off the old-style payphones, there were still a few around the docks that the phone company had never bothered to take out. At least that had been true a couple of years ago. If they were still there, if he could get to one, and if it still worked…if, if, if…

For three and a half city blocks, Freddy staggered and swayed through the dark buildings, his near perfect imitation of a drunkard more the result of his bad leg and raging fever than any brilliant acting on his part. Just as despair began to consume what little hope remained, he spotted it. While the chain that had once held a phonebook had long since snapped off, the metal-wrapped cord and handset remained intact.