Sick (13 page)

He grabbed his cell phone and typed in a text:

Maybe you should report from the middle of the road next time. HA!

He sent it to her, muted the TV, then returned to his computer.

Five minutes later, as he was still trying to narrow things down, his phone rang. Expecting his sister again, he answered the call without looking. “Hey.”

Though the line sounded open, no one said anything.

“Tammy?”

Still nothing. He looked at the display.
Blocked
.

“Who is this?” he asked.

A click, and the line went dead.

“Whatever, man.” He dropped his phone on the table and returned his attention to his laptop, all but forgetting about the call.

Forty minutes later, he hit pay dirt.

It was a picture of a group of Army officers in a Fayetteville, North Carolina, newspaper from a few years earlier. The officers were from nearby Fort Bragg and had given a presentation to the local high school. One of the men in the photo was identified as Lieutenant Daniel Ash, and the more Gavin looked at him, the more he was sure it was the same guy in the photo shown on PCN.

“Nice,” he said, congratulating himself.

Several minutes later, he located information indicating that prior to being stationed at Fort Bragg, the lieutenant had spent a short time at Fort Irwin outside Barstow, California—less than sixty miles from Sage Springs. Where Ash had gone
after
Fort Bragg, Gavin wasn’t able to discover yet. Still, he knew Tammy would want to hear what he’d learned so far.

He grabbed his phone to call her, but for some reason he didn’t have a signal.

“What the hell?”

He
always
had a signal at home. It was one of the reasons he’d picked this apartment. In his business, he couldn’t afford to live in a cellular dead zone.

He decided to copy the links into an email and send them to her. He wasn’t sure if she could retrieve email on her sat phone, but she’d get it at some point. A split second after he hit SEND, he got an error message telling him his cable modem was not currently connected to the Internet.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Now he was really annoyed. He glanced at his TV. With the exception of a blue box across the center of the screen that read
Channel Currently Unavailable
, the screen had gone black. Apparently, the whole cable system, or at least the part that came into his building, was out of commission.

Just his luck that both it and his cell phone would go out at the same time. Maybe they were tied together somehow. A massive communications glitch. That should make the news. Well, if anyone was still getting a signal so they could watch it.

He set the email to send as soon as the connection returned, and got up to grab a soda out of his refrigerator. As he was deciding whether he wanted to make a sandwich to go with his Dr. Pepper, someone knocked on his door.

He was barely out of the kitchen when whoever it was pounded again, more urgent this time.

“Just a minute,” he yelled.

He looked through the security peephole in his door, but the person outside seemed to be covering it up. Had to be Dustin. He was always doing asshole things like that.

“Hilarious,” Gavin said loud enough so Dustin could hear him. Donning a reproachful smirk, he opened the door. “What the hell are you bothering me for at this—”

“Not a word.”

It wasn’t Dustin. It was a man holding a gun pointed at Gavin’s face.

“Sure,” Gavin said, then realized he’d broken the rule and added, “Sorry.”

The man stepped toward him, backing Gavin into the room. There were two others behind him, both big like the first man, wearing similar dark suits, and also armed.

Once everyone was inside, the last man in shut the door.

“Anyone else here?” the first guy asked.

“No,” Gavin said, shaking his head vigorously from side to side. “Just me.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying.” Gavin’s voice cracked a little, and he could feel his hands shaking at his side.

The two other men headed into the hallway that led back to the bedroom. They were only gone about thirty seconds before they reappeared.

“Clear,” one of them said, then stepped carefully into the kitchen with his partner.

There was another “clear” and they both returned.

“Your name’s Gavin Costello?” the first guy asked.

“Yes.”

The man touched a Bluetooth headset mounted on his ear. “We’re secure. You can release the building.” He looked at Gavin, then nodded toward the desk. “That your only computer?”

“What? Uh, no. I have a Dell in my closet.”

“Is the laptop the only computer you
use
?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. You want it? It’s all yours.”

Who the hell were these guys? If they were trying to rob him, they were the best-dressed home invaders in history. Whoever they were, though, if they just wanted his computer, great. They could take it and their guns and leave.

The main guy glanced at the other men. “Grab it.”

The slightly smaller of the two took the laptop from the desk. “Phone,” he said, then raised Gavin’s cell into the air so the others could see it.

“Bring it,” the main guy said. “That your only phone, Gavin?”

“Yeah. Yeah, only one. I don’t even have a landline.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Gavin tried not to show his relief. They’d be gone in just a second. And he was going to be okay.

But then the man grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the door. “You, too.”

“What? Why me? What do you need me for? You got my computer. You’ll get good money for that.”

“No more talking or I pull the trigger.”

The man said this so matter-of-factly that Gavin bit his lip to keep from saying anything.

• • •

The main guy said, “We’re secure. You can release the building.”

Five seconds later, two doors down the hall, Mrs. McFadden’s cable came back on.

Good thing, too. One of the local stations showed reruns of Perry Mason every day at noon, and she hadn’t missed an episode in over a year. The moment the TV signal had gone out, she’d tried calling the cable company, but there’d been something wrong with her phone, too. Now all was right with the world again, and Perry would be on in just a few minutes to embarrass that stuck-up Hamilton Burger like he always did.

Of the eighteen other apartments in the building, there was only one additional person home, a man named Frank Bushnell. He worked graveyard dispatch for the police so he was sound asleep. The outage passed without him ever knowing anything was wrong.

In apartment 11, Gavin Costello’s apartment, as soon as the cable kicked back in, the laptop’s Wi-Fi reconnected with the Internet. While the main guy was telling one of his associates to grab the computer, the email program was going through its normal cycle. This time, after confirming that it was once more connected to the cyber world beyond Gavin’s walls, it sent off the single message waiting in the queue, finishing its operation just seconds before the associate slammed the screen shut.

• • •

A few hundred miles southeast, Tamara Costello’s sat phone pinged with an incoming email. At that moment, though, Tamara was on camera and didn’t hear it arrive.

19

The moment Rachel said that Josie and Brandon were still alive, Ash’s vision went gray.

In his mind, he could hear Josie’s cry, and feel how cold she’d been as he tried to keep her warm. He could even sense Brandon’s fear as they were being led out of the house at Barker Flats.

But most of all, he could remember the numbness, the horror, the disbelief, and the total devastation he’d felt when the voice in the ceiling had told him his children were dead.

When he finally regained his senses, he was on the ground, one leg tucked under him, with no idea how he’d gotten there. Rachel was kneeling on one side, while Pax was doing the same on the other.

“Are you telling me the truth?” he whispered.

“Let’s get you back in your seat,” Rachel said.

She and Pax lifted him to his feet and helped him into the chair.

While they were doing this, Matt walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the tape-covered envelope. From inside, he removed a folded legal-size envelope and a thumb drive. He handed the envelope to Rachel, and took the drive over to the control panel.

“We’ve already watched these,” Matt said. “They might not be easy to look at, but you need to see them, too.”

He stuck the drive into a port and hit several buttons.

The television screen was black for a moment, then gray, then…

A room, not too dissimilar from Ash’s cell at Barker Flats. Only this room had a door that was open, and a window that Ash got the sense didn’t look to the outside. The shot was from up high and angled down.

Lying on the bed was Brandon.

Ash couldn’t help but lean forward. Here was his son. He hadn’t seen Brandon’s face since they had been separated. He remembered now what he told his son at that moment. “Go with them. It’ll be okay. You’ll see me in just a bit.”

He’d believed it then, because that’s what they had told him. But it wasn’t true, so the last thing he had told his son was a lie.

“I made some time notations on the back of the envelope,” Matt said to Rachel.

Ash could hear her flip the envelope over, but he didn’t look. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen.

“Oh-six twenty-seven,” Rachel said.

The image started scrolling quickly forward, then slowed back to real time.

“This is six-thirty in the morning, just a few hours after you were both brought in,” Matt explained.

Brandon looked like he was asleep. Suddenly the door pushed all the way open, and someone in a biosafe suit came in. The person knelt down next to the bed and put something on Brandon’s forehead.

A few moments later, a voice said, “Temp, ninety-eight point five.”

Ash thought back. Six-thirty meant he’d been in his cell for at least four hours. By that point, he’d already been told that Josie was dead. But Brandon? He didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t think so.

“Next,” Matt said.

Rachel read off another time code. “Ten twelve.”

That, Ash knew, was definitely after when he’d been told about his son. No way it was later than that.

Once more the picture raced forward before resuming normal speed. The time stamp in the lower left read 10:12. The boy in the bed was still Brandon. And he was very much alive.

“Stop,” Ash said.

Matt hit pause.

“Skip ahead.”

“How far?”

“Nowhere in particular. Just let it run.”

Ash just wanted to see Brandon move, Brandon alive, Brandon definitely there longer than the voice had led him to believe. One hour, two hours, three, four. It was all the same, all revealing the lie he’d been told.

“Stop,” he finally said. “Is there video of Josie?”

“There is.”

“Show it to me.”

Her footage was more painful to watch. She was still ill. But she wasn’t dead. Ash made Matt speed through the footage like he had with Brandon’s, this time not stopping until Josie sat up.

“Play it,” Ash said quickly.

The image snapped to normal time. Josie had a hand on the wall, steadying herself.

“Hello? Hello?” she said. “Where am I?”

Dear God, he never thought he’d hear her voice again.

He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and the breath quivering in his lungs. But he sucked in deeply and forced himself to remain under control.

Matt turned the video off.

“What are you doing?” Ash said.

“I’ll give you the drive and have a computer set up in your room. You can watch as much as you want there. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing else that will mean anything. The most important thing was for you to see that they’re still alive.”

Ash glanced at the envelope in front of Rachel. “You said you had different times marked. There must be something you thought I should see.”

“Moments, only. Things I thought might help convince you. But you don’t need convincing.”

Ash hesitated, then asked, “Were they told anything about me?”

Matt looked at him for a moment. “Yes. At first they were told you were sick, then later that you had died.” He paused. “I can show you that if you really want.”

A spike of pain shot through Ash’s heart. His children, how they must be suffering thinking both of their parents were dead.