The Sleepless Stars (2 page)

“Esme?” Flynn asked, interrupting his morbid thoughts. She was as devoted to Esme as he was—they would both die for Esme. Or kill. And they both had no doubt that it would come to that.

“Finally fell asleep.” If you could call that restless twitching sleep. When Angela Rossi told him about her fatal insomnia, he’d studied the disease, fascinated by the bizarre symptoms leading to a horrific death. He’d hated the thought of a friend suffering that—had even once promised her that he’d help her end things if she wanted.

But he never in a million years dreamed he might be facing the prospect of his own child suffering such a cruel and relentless fate.

A shadow flitted across Flynn’s usually neutral expression. “What’s next?”

It took Devon a moment to lock away his anger and focus on logistics. “First, we find anything we can on Almanac Care.” The corporation that had funded the creation of the artificial fatal insomnia. “What else have they been involved with? Any connection to the children and Angela.”

“After losing contact with their lab, they’ll come looking for answers.”

“Let them.” Devon had no remorse for killing the men in the Almanac lab—only that they’d gotten so little information before the building exploded. “When’s Louise getting here? We need her to help Angela.”

“Louise is on her way. Angela’s up at St. Tim’s.”

He jerked to a stop. Angela, with her strange gift of communicating with people in comas, ripping their memories away, was their best weapon. “I told her not to leave the tunnels.”

Flynn shrugged. “What do you want me to do, lock her up?”

“No. We need her cooperation. Keep an eye on her.”

She hesitated, looking past him to the room where the children were.

“The best way to protect Esme is to find the men behind Almanac.” Men like Dr. Tommaso Lazaretto, who’d pretended to be helping the children and Angela while secretly running a lab producing the very prions that had infected them. Tommaso was dead now, taking his secrets with him to the grave. Or wherever Flynn had disposed of his body. “You finished cleaning up?”

Flynn bared her teeth at that, revealing a hint of her own tiger yearning to be set loose. If she’d had her way, she would have tortured Tommaso for the information they needed—only the doctor had stolen her chance and committed suicide first.

“Time to see what secrets Daniel has been hiding.” Their feeble plan to save the children, hell, save the whole damned world. Amazing the things you’d place your faith in when you ran out of options.

“I’ll go get Angela.”

“Don’t let anyone see you.”

She didn’t bother to acknowledge his words, simply slipped into the shadows and vanished.

I STOOD IN
the bell tower of St. Timothy’s Cathedral, watching Cambria City’s faithful stream out after the final evening Mass on Christmas Day. I wasn’t among them—I’d pretty much given up on religion twenty-two years ago when I was twelve and my dad died.

St. Tim’s had thick stone walls and two square towers. The bells were long gone from both—although they were still rung via electronic recordings, calling the faithful to worship. The tower I was in was about fifteen feet square on the interior with a foot-wide, waist-high wall surrounding it. Twenty feet overhead, you could still see the massive iron grid that the bells had been suspended from, but the opening in the floor where their ropes had once dangled was now covered by thick particleboard.

The December-almost-January wind slid across the river to rustle my hair, sending dark curls cascading against my face. If I tried very hard, I could imagine Ryder’s fingers doing the same. The thought made me shiver, an addict past due for a fix.

People will break your heart.

With their cruelty, their thoughtlessness, their narrow-minded blindness. When you’re an ER doc, you’re not surprised by this. But no amount of time can harden you against the most painful heartbreak. The heartbreak that comes from trying your best to save the people you love. And sometimes failing.

A shadow separated itself from the corner where the staircase opened onto the tower. Flynn stepped into the moonlight in that eerie, silent way she had.

“I don’t understand why you torture yourself like this.” Flynn craned her head out over the bell tower’s ledge, appraising the lethal fall to the stone steps below. Her expression was clinical as she added the tower to her catalogue of potential kill sites.

Last night, I’d seen Flynn kill—in self-defense. She’d been efficient and merciless. Rumors were that Daniel Kingston had not only trained her in the arts of industrial espionage—surveillance, hacking, social engineering—but that he’d also turned her into an assassin. After last night, I was beginning to believe those rumors.

“Leaving Ryder was a sound strategic decision,” Flynn continued. “He’s not on their radar. Yet.” She meant the mysterious, unknown people who’d created the fatal insomnia.

If you wanted to create a real-life zombie apocalypse, then prions—which also cause mad cow disease—are the way to go. Abnormal proteins, they can’t be killed because they aren’t alive to begin with. Unlike viruses, they can’t even be sanitized. The only forces known to destroy them are extreme heat, the equivalent of what a crematorium produces, and caustic lye. Neither of which a human can survive.

“C’mon,” Flynn said. “It’s time.”

“No. I just need—” Leaning over the railing, sandwiched between two weathered and pock-marked gargoyles grimacing at the worshippers below, I searched the crowd, scanning for one figure who stood out from the rest. I needed to see him, one last time. Know that he was all right. Then I could go, do what needed to be done.

We were at war. Me, Flynn, Devon Price, and my best friend, Louise Mehta, the closest thing to a medical genius I’d ever met.

Four of us up against an unseen, powerful enemy who had threatened the lives of everyone I cared about.

Including Ryder. As I looked down on the people weaving their way down the icy steps of St. Tim’s, the white-gold light of the full moon seemed to favor one figure in particular. His stride appeared slower than I remembered but just as determined. As was his posture. A man who believed, yet who did not rely upon faith or miracles. Detective Matthew Ryder knew better than that. He depended on no one except himself to get the job done.

A lot like me that way—probably why we’d connected so quickly when we’d first met at Thanksgiving in my ER at Good Samaritan. Make that my former ER. Thanksgiving was when I’d held a dead nun’s heart in my hand during a trauma resuscitation and heard her speak to me. Side effect of my fatal insomnia, this strange ability to talk to not-quite-dead-yet people, their memories emptying into my brain.

Now, as I watched Ryder walk down the steps, his overcoat flapping against his legs like a superhero’s cape, I reached for the antique Pashtun pendant he’d given me. Inside a disk of amber as golden as sunshine was a silver tree of life. Touching it calmed me, centered me—but not as much as the man himself. When we were together, my symptoms improved. I could actually, finally sleep. I felt almost...human.

No more. We couldn’t be together. Not when anyone close to me suddenly had a target on their back.

I needed answers. Fast. Before my mind and body deteriorated to the point where I was helpless, unable to care for myself or protect the children also infected with this ghastly man-made plague. Which was why I’d been hiding in the tunnels below the streets of Cambria City, preparing to ransack one more mind.

Daniel Kingston. Ruthless billionaire entrepreneur, father of the sadistic serial killer I killed last month, and, I hoped, the man with the answers I needed: Who created this new form of fatal insomnia and how did we stop them?

I couldn’t save myself; I was too far gone, I knew. But I had to save the children. It was the only way I could atone for Jacob’s death. I’d been powerless to save him. But no one else. That was my solemn vow. No one else would die fighting my battle.

“Ryder is more use to us without you around drawing attention to him,” Flynn continued her dissection of my former love life. “He can go where we can’t go, ask questions we can’t ask, gain valuable intel. But he can’t do any of that if Almanac realizes he’s tied to you.”

“I can’t risk Ryder. It’s got nothing to do with tactics. I can’t lose him like I did Jacob.”

Our enemy had tortured my ex-husband and then, as he lay dying, forced me to enter his mind in order to test my abilities. My stomach clenched, trying to control the nausea roiling through me at the memory. I’d lived through the pain and anguish Jacob had suffered on my behalf. I’d been inside him when he died.

What they’d done to a man I’d once loved—simply to test a theory? Never again.

I turned away from Flynn, my words more for myself and the night wind than for her. “The only way to keep Ryder safe is for me to leave his life. Forever. He can’t be any part of this.”

“Good luck with that.” Flynn sniffed in derision. “Guy like Ryder, he’s not going to give up so easy—not going to give you up. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. But he was a soldier, he’ll understand the importance of a strategic retreat. Build some cover, create a little maneuvering distance, do what needs to be done, then maybe...”

I hated the spark of hope her “maybe” ignited. Hope was the enemy. I had to guard against it if I was going to find the strength to do what needed to be done. I drew my breath in, letting the frigid air singe away any thoughts of Ryder or a future.

Below me, Ryder reached the sidewalk. He stopped, the rest of the crowd flowing past him. He turned back and looked up. At me.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. Pressed myself deeper into the shadows of the archway, rough stone digging its fingers into my spine. There was no way he could see me. Yet, I was certain he did. That was Ryder’s gift: He saw me, the real me, no matter how far apart we were, no matter how much I needed to hide.

He would always see me. Even if it might get him killed.

RYDER NAVIGATED PAST
the piles of freshly plowed snow heaped up against the curb at the bottom of the steps leading away from St. Tim’s. He knew Rossi watched him from the tower, but as much as he wanted to rush to her side, he understood the danger.

She was safe for now, hiding out with Devon Price. But the faster he found the men behind all this, the faster she’d be back where she belonged: in Ryder’s arms.

The night was cold, although during the day, the temperatures had risen above freezing, leaving the snow now contained beneath a crackling coat of ice. He’d sleepwalked through the holiday celebrations, smiling and nodding at his family gathered around the dinner table, shoveling food in his mouth that he didn’t taste, tearing wrapping paper and beaming thanks for presents he now couldn’t even remember.

All day long, he found himself making mental notes. Things he wanted to talk to Rossi about, stories he wanted to share, even how it’d felt to fire his weapon last night, take the kill shot. He’d been a soldier before he joined the force, had taken lives and never, ever talked about it, not with anyone...and yet, here he was, searching the holiday table for Rossi’s face, anxious for a moment alone with her so he could spill his guts.

When had she become such an essential part of his life? How could he have been so careless, so reckless? To find her and then lose her so quickly?

Anyone who knew him would shake their head in disbelief. Not Ryder, they’d say. Not Mr. Detached, Mr. Cool Under Pressure. He’d never lose his head, much less his heart.

They’d be wrong.

He walked down the street, past the Kingston Tower housing complex, his coat hanging open despite the wind off the river. Instead of heading home, he continued down to the wharf, where there’d been an explosion and multiple fatalities last night.

One of the vehicles found at the scene was registered to a Dr. Tommaso Lazaretto. Who just happened to be the same doctor helping Louise Mehta care for Rossi’s fatal insomnia, and who just happened to be the doctor on duty when Rossi’s ex, Jacob, died, and who just happened to have left Good Samaritan in the middle of his shift before vanishing. Last person seen with him? Dr. Angela Rossi.

Rossi, one minute giddy with joy, telling Ryder she couldn’t wait to move in with him, that they’d face her uncertain future together...and a few hours later, he comes home to find a Dear John letter?

The skin at the base of his skull drew taut—like it used to in Afghanistan when a sniper had his squad in their sights. Rossi had left to protect him. Which meant the threat against them was bigger than he’d imagined. He hoped to find some answers here at the scene of the crime, a thread to pull on, anything to begin to unravel whatever she’d become tangled up in.

Crime scene tape shredded by the wind tried and failed to cordon off the block surrounding the building’s wreckage. The explosion and resulting fire had leveled the warehouse, leaving only the steel support beams and piles of brick in its wake. The stench was unlike anything Ryder had encountered before—acrid, but not like smoke from a typical fire. It burned his nostrils and mouth. He pulled his scarf up higher as he approached the scene. Any evidence that had survived the explosion was now covered in firefighting foam, rendering it useless as far as forensics.

No one challenged him. No one had been left to secure the scene. Which confirmed Devon Price’s warning that Ryder’s department had been compromised. Ryder wasn’t surprised. Disappointed was more like it. Most of the men and women he worked with were honest, dedicated public servants. But the taint of corruption had invaded the ranks at every level, starting at the top. It was obvious Ryder could no longer trust in his own department—another reason why he missed Rossi. Despite her illness, she was as solid as any man he’d gone into battle with.

The street ended at the wharf—empty now except for a lone barge awaiting cargo. No signs of any activity until Ryder spotted a man leaving the relatively intact building still standing between the exploded warehouse and the water. That building was supposed to have been abandoned, slated for demolition when the city had funds, just like its neighbors.