The Jericho Deception: A Novel (23 page)

“You’re going to pay for this.” His voice boomed off the white tile.

He twisted her wrist upward while digging his fingers into the tendons on the soft side of her forearm. Her hand opened as if he’d pressed a switch on her arm. She watched his eyes follow the razor’s path as it bounced across the tile.

Then she remembered her other hand.

The syringe!

He’d been so focused on the razor he hadn’t noticed she’d picked up the syringe.

She struck.

She’d given countless injections to the capuchins. She could jab and plunge the medicine into an arm or leg before they knew what was happening. Usually she distracted them for a moment with a piece of banana or
slice of orange, but her attacker was already distracted. She had no idea what this syringe contained or what effect it would have on the man, but she had a suspicion it wouldn’t be good for him. She aimed for his bicep, which was the size of both of her legs combined. The problem, however, was that all the injections she’d given were with her right hand. With it she could operate the plunger without looking. In her left hand, the syringe felt foreign.

“Ow! Shit!”

The needle pierced his shirt and sank into hard muscle. She willed her left thumb to manipulate the plunger, but it seemed to move in slow motion.

Suddenly, the revelation came to her. Engaged in a battle for her life, she was shocked that her mind went anywhere except for the task of escaping. The vision was brief. She was back in CapLab watching Anakin interact with the larger, more dominant capuchins, just as she was now fighting off a larger, more dominant attacker. Now she knew what made Anakin different. She understood what was wrong with Ethan’s Logos machine.

She never saw the hand that released her wrist and struck her across the face. The blow lifted her off of her knees and knocked her head into the pedestal of the porcelain sink. Her vision blurred as she sank to the floor. The tile was cold against her back. Her head rang, and she felt the fight abandoning her body. She heard him mutter something unintelligible. Her eyes refocused in time to watch him pull the syringe from his arm. The plunger was still in the extended position.

In one smooth motion, he pushed down on her shoulder with a weight that threatened to crush her bones into the floor and injected the contents of the shot into the fleshy part of her arm.

She thrashed under his weight, but he just pushed harder. Seconds later, a warmth spread out from her arm to the rest of her body. Her mind raced through the possibilities—she was well versed in a number of drugs from her work with the capuchins, and none were appealing. The warmth in her body took on a weighty quality, as if her blood had turned to liquid lead. Her attacker’s hand still pinned her to the cold floor, but she realized with a sickening in her gut that she was losing the ability to move. She glanced at her
outstretched arm and tried to lift it. The lead flowing through her blood pinned it down. She saw the tips of her fingers quiver.

The man released her and sat back on his knees. She waited for the inevitable tunnel vision that would narrow down to complete darkness as she slipped into unconsciousness from whatever sedative he’d injected into her. Whatever this creature had in mind for her, she took some comfort that at least she wouldn’t be aware of it.

But something was wrong.

The fluorescent bathroom fixture on the ceiling burned as bright as ever. The face leering at her exposed body stayed in focus. His chapped lips parted in a smile that revealed a gap between his front two teeth. He was enjoying her terror. Drops of blood rolled from his forehead and fell onto her cheek. She felt them crawl toward her mouth. She desperately wanted to wipe her face, but now she couldn’t even move her head.

With a fear deeper than she thought it was possible to feel, a single realization shot through her mind:
I’m paralyzed!

“P
rofessor Lightman?” a deep voice asked from the other end of Ethan’s cell phone.

“Allen Wolfe?” He collapsed into the worn leather sofa in his apartment’s living room. He’d been trying to contact the director of the Neurological Advancement Foundation for the past week. He was relieved but also surprised that the foundation’s director was calling him at ten o’clock at night.

“First, let me tell you how sorry I am for taking so long to get back to you. I’ve been traveling, and I just learned about Elijah’s death this morning.” He paused, his words catching in his throat. “As I’m sure Elijah told you, we’ve been friends since grad school. I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

Ethan tilted his head back on the sofa’s cushion. Wolfe sounded genuinely saddened. “Something strange is happening that I can’t control and don’t even understand.” He should probably sound more confident, but he was out of options. Despite his disturbing discovery in the library of the true nature of Wolfe and Elijah’s history together, he sensed that the director was the only one who would be able to help him.

“I spoke with Sam Houston earlier today,” Wolfe said. “He is quite concerned about your program, and he mentioned an investigation into certain financial improprieties.”

The words spilled out of Ethan as he explained his discovery about the money in his account. He’d spent most of the day on the phone with the bank and still had no explanation of who had authorized the transfer of the money
from the project’s account into his. He laid everything on the table for the director. He had no choice but to gain his trust.

“I really don’t know how the transfer happened, but I swear to you I had nothing to do with it.”

Then a thought ran through his mind that he didn’t care to explore. Was Elijah responsible for the financial irregularities? Could his death have been related to money? He couldn’t believe his mentor would be involved with anything so crass, but what other explanation was there? But then he replayed in his mind again the events in the library.

“Ethan, I think we should meet and discuss these events in person.”

“Yes, I would appreciate that.” A sense of relief passed over him.

“I’m tied up for the next few days and can’t make it to New Haven. Would you mind flying to me?”

“Not at all.” He remembered that the foundation’s offices were in Dallas, and the idea of getting out of New Haven to someplace warm and sunny appealed to him, especially if it also provided the answers he desperately needed. “I can make reservations now.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll have my assistant arrange a flight for you and send a car to pick you up first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Son. Your work is truly visionary, and after this tragedy with Elijah, it’s the least I can do.”

Ethan stared out of the window from the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car and into the mist that was the early New Haven morning. The events of the past few days seemed surreal. He’d dedicated his career to helping people and to studying the human mind. So why did he feel as if someone was deliberately trying to ruin his life? He wanted to take some action to fix his predicament, just as he’d thrown himself into his research after Natalie’s death. The long hours had paid off then; the Logos worked. But now he was being handcuffed from doing anything.

Turning the cell phone over in his hand, he dared to allow a glimmer of hope to pass into his thoughts. At least he’d get some answers from Wolfe. He
pushed away the voice in his head that cautioned that maybe he wouldn’t want to hear the truth. But he had to know. Then he would act.

The motion of the car turning right brought him out of his thoughts. The driver followed the signs into the New Haven airport, but instead of heading toward the departure terminal, he pulled down a smaller side street labeled with a green sign that read “FBO.”

Never been this way before
, he thought.

He dialed Rachel’s number. He wanted to let her know about his call with Wolfe and his trip, but the call rolled straight to voicemail, just as it had last night. She and her roommates must have been out late. He needed to hear her voice, but if he was honest with himself, Houston’s off-handed reference to speaking with her had also disturbed him. Could Rachel be playing a role in the bizarre events of late? He shook his head. He didn’t think her involvement was any more plausible than Elijah’s. He knew that if he closed his eyes he would be able to smell her hair and feel the way her skin felt next to his.
No
. He had to stop that line of thinking. He looked up to see the car pull around the side of a metal hangar building and stop at a gate.

He leaned over the leather seat toward the driver, a Middle Eastern man dressed in a dark suit. “Excuse me, but where are we going?”

“To your plane, Sir.”

My plane?

The driver rolled down the window and punched a call button on the gate’s security keypad. “I have Professor Lightman for his flight.”

The chain-link gate rolled open and the car pulled through. They turned right, following a concrete road past three airplane hangars. When the driver approached the fourth, he slowed. The large rollup hangar door was open, revealing a sleek white jet. The car stopped a few feet from the metal staircase that led up to the plane’s open door.

Wolfe sent a private plane to fly me to Dallas?

His confusion morphed into anticipation. He’d never been on a private plane before. He’d seen them parked along the runway, but usually they were much smaller than this—narrow metal tubes, low to the ground, with three or four windows. This one was the size of the commuter plane he and Natalie
had taken to Maine one summer, but with jet engines rather than turboprops. Eight windows punctuated the flawless white paint on the fuselage, and the wingtips angled upward at right angles.

He grabbed his overnight duffel from the seat next to him. He hadn’t asked Wolfe how many days he’d be in Dallas, so he’d packed for two. Without waiting for the driver, who was walking around the car, he opened his own door and hopped out. A figure appeared at the top of the stairs and waved him up.

“Welcome aboard our G-V EP, Professor.” The man wore a cracked brown leather bomber jacket with patches that had various military and flight insignia on them, a white shirt and black tie, and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses even though the morning was gray.

Ethan climbed the metal stairs, taking care not to slip on the aluminum treads, which were damp with the morning mist.

“Uh, hello.” He stuck out his hand. “You’re the pilot?”

“Captain Jason Hart.” The pilot’s handshake was firm and his smile warm.

“I wasn’t really expecting this. I thought I was flying commercial.”

“Dr. Wolfe wanted to make sure you arrived without delay. He’s asked me to take good care of you.” He ducked his head of short black hair and entered the plane. “Let me show you in.”

After stooping to step inside, Ethan’s eyes opened wide. Every inch of the cabin was covered in creamy leather or polished blond wood. To his left he caught a glimpse of the cockpit, where the copilot was checking over an array of multicolored digital displays that looked considerably more high-tech than the rows of switches and blinking lights he’d seen in commercial planes. He passed a bar/kitchenette whose wood surfaces beckoned him to reach out and feel the silkiness of the finish. The fixtures were all a shiny gold without any sign of a smudge or fingerprint.

“Sit wherever you like.” The captain motioned to the various seats, which ranged from plush single recliners to sofas that were arranged to look more like a living room than a plane. “The lavatory is the door to the left there. The other door in the back leads to the bedroom, but it’s being refurbished, so it’s locked.”

The plane has a bedroom!

He plopped down in a club chair whose supple leather seemed to caress his body. Although money had never much mattered to him, he realized that he could get used to traveling like this—no security to go through, no baggage claim, no parents with screaming kids.

The pilot bent over, pulled the stairs up, and swung the door closed. He called over his shoulder, “Once we’re airborne and settled into our flight plan, I’ll come back and check on you. We can go over the food options in the galley then.”

“I’ll be fine with just a water. How long’s the flight—a couple hours?”

The whine of the plane’s engines firing to life filled the cabin.

“Couple of hours?” The pilot chuckled. “The computer is showing twenty right now, but that depends how long we’re on the ground in Paris. The French aren’t the quickest at getting us refueled.”

Twenty hours! Paris!

He sat up straighter. “We’re not flying to Dallas?”

“Dr. Wolfe hasn’t been in Dallas for some time,” Hart laughed. “You’re going to Egypt.”

“P
rofessor Lightman, we’ll be landing in ten minutes,” the captain’s voice crackled over the speakers.

Ethan yawned and pushed himself upright on the leather sofa. As luxurious as this plane was, traveling halfway across the world was still exhausting. He dropped his head first to the right and then the left, stretching his neck. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his face. The day-old stubble scratched his palms. He imagined that the bedroom under renovation in the back had a shower in its lavatory. He stood and walked to the door to test the knob, but as the pilot had said, the door was locked.