Undisclosed (8 page)

The ECG monitor started beeping faster.

“Travis,” Laura said, dashing around the bed and gripping him by the arm.

“Let me go.” He pulled his arm away. “I need to find Dad.”

“Not in this condition, you’re not,” she said, blocking his way. It had been a long time since his mother had taken such a strong tone with Travis. He could count on one hand the number of times they had argued.

The door to the side of them flew open and Ryan entered, holding two steaming cups of coffee in his hands. He had on a black Radiohead T-shirt and his hair was in complete disarray, as if he had slept with his head against a wall.

Travis and Laura stared at him.

“Uh, I can come back if you want,” he blurted out, already turning to head back out.

“No, it’s fine,” said Laura, motioning for Ryan to enter. She snatched up her cigarettes off the side and shot Travis a stern but loving look. Ryan stepped to one side, handing her one of the coffees.

“Thanks, Ryan, maybe he will listen to you.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Travis, who was now sitting back on the bed.

The door drifted closed behind her.

Ryan ambled over to the bedside, slumping down on the chair.

“You probably could use this,” he said, extending the foam cup to Travis.

“I could use it? Have you seen your hair this morning?” He smirked.

Ryan shook his head and softly laughed. Dropping into the chair next to him, he flipped the lid off the coffee and took a sip. “Uh, yuck,” he said, screwing up his face. “They really scraped the bottom of the barrel on this one.” He spit the coffee back into the cup.

“It’s probably been fermenting on the counter for the past week and they’re just nuking it,” Travis said, rubbing his fingers on the bridge of his nose.

“Ah, you gotta love hospital coffee,” he commented, tossing it into the garbage.

“So what happened?” Ryan asked as he walked over to the flowery curtains and tugged them open. Both of them were bathed in sunshine; it was morning outside and the sky was clear.

“That’s what I want to know,” Travis said. “I didn’t crash that truck, though.”

“I dunno, Travis, the doctors said you took quite a bump to—”

“Someone took him,” he said, cutting him off and getting back into bed.

Ryan frowned. “What?”

Travis hesitated before he spoke.

“I know this is going to sound insane …” He trailed off, staring ahead, deep in thought. His mind flashed back to those dark, piercing eyes, the car door flying off and the girl—he tried to piece together in his mind the events, though they weren’t much more than indiscernible snapshots, before turning to Ryan.

“There were others and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, they weren’t like you or me.”

Ryan gave him a long, serious look before bursting into laughter

“Okay, you got me. Whatever they are giving you, can I get some? You are a classic!” he said, shaking his head

Travis continued staring at him.

Ryan’s laughing trailed off as he could see Travis didn’t have that usual joker’s glimmer in his eyes that he usually had when he was winding him up.

“You’re serious?” he said.

“This was scary, man, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Travis said. “When you see someone with eyes as black as the ace of spades rip a door off without even touching it—it kind of rules out ordinary, don’t you think?”

“His eyes were black? What are we talking about? Brown, green?”

“I’m talking zero white. There was nothing but darkness,” he said, looking as if he was pondering what he saw. “Ry, I might have been disoriented and upside down, but I know what I saw. He looked like you and me, but his eyes were nothing like ours,” he said, and his eyes widened. “And that door? That door ripped clean off those hinges without any effort.”

Ryan looked serious.

“Do me a favor. Is there any way you can go and look at the truck?” Travis asked. “They would have towed it to the local wrecker’s. Maybe you could—”

Laura came back in, followed by the doctor.

“Ah, good to see you are awake, Travis,” the doctor said, glancing at Travis and then flipping through the chart in his hand.

“Well, I had better get back.” Ryan jumped up, grabbed up his green jacket and started towards the door.

“And I’ll look into that,” he said, briefly turning his head towards Travis and giving him a reassuring half-nod, then casting a quick glance at Laura.

Travis replied, “Thanks.”

Laura was looking from Ryan to Travis, as if trying to decode what she had missed. As Ryan left, the doctor continued to flip through his chart, furiously jotting down notes.

He began checking Travis’s vitals. “So how are we feeling?”

“All right—I guess,” he muttered.

“I would say you were pretty lucky. You only suffered a mild concussion. However, I would like to keep you in overnight, just to run a few more tests.”

“There’s no need, I’ll be fine.”

“It’s not an option.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Laura said.

With that the doctor left the room and she plunked herself down beside his bed.

“You know you don’t have to stay, I’ll be fine here. I’m sure you need to get some sleep and by the way, the mail is piling up at the store,” Travis said, not wanting to bring up the topic of his father again.

“You sure you’re going to be okay? I can come back later this evening and check in on you.”

“Ah, no need, you should probably get some rest yourself,” he said, noticing the dark circles beneath her eyes and how her eyes sank back into her head.

Laura stood up and kissed him gently on the forehead. As she headed out she paused for a moment at the door. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he replied, nodding.

She gave a brief, loving smile, and then the door closed behind her.

* * * * *

Scott’s feet dragged along the marble floor as two of Kaine’s men carried him into the office, dropping him in a heap in front of Harlan’s desk. Harlan came around in front of him, cigar in hand. Scott looked a state—clothes torn and stained, blood covering the front of his shirt. Blood dripped from his lip where Kaine’s men had already taken it upon themselves to rough him up.

“Scott, I expected more from you. Evans. Yes. But you … that’s disappointing.”

Scott raised his weary head and gave him a look of disgust.

“Let’s skip with the condescending speech, shall we? When the police hear about—”

“Don’t act as if you don’t know what’s going on here. Your activities have been monitored closely since the beginning. Do you really think we could run an operation this large, for this long, without being able to detect cracks forming in the framework? I just didn’t think you were stupid enough to carry it out.”

Weak and in pain he lifted his head. “Where is my son?”

“Where is our data?”

Scott kept his mouth shut.

“Fine, then while we sort out this inconvenient hiccup, you’ll continue your work.”

“Where is my son?” he demanded.

Harlan gestured to the men. “Get him cleaned up and put him back to work.”

Scott attempted to resist as the men dragged him out, but it was useless; exhaustion and pain made struggling impossible.

“Harlan—if you lay one hand on my son, I’ll …”

The doors closed with a hiss, blocking out his threats.

Chapter Seven

A stream of hot shower water poured over Travis’s head as he leaned into the wall, stabilizing himself with one outstretched hand on the slippery blue-tiled wall. Steamy fog circled up around his badly bruised body, misting up the patterned glass of the shower stall.

Who was the girl? What did she think he knew? Who were the others?
Their voices resounded in his head; images of the man with steely, dark eyes filled his mind—so many questions and few answers. He rinsed the soap from his hair, relishing the heat as it wrapped his body like a blanket and eased his aching bones.

Still lost in thought, he stepped out of the shower onto the cold floor and toweled himself dry.
Who spoke with Mom? Surely someone saw them that night?

One thing was for sure; he wasn’t going to lie around waiting for the answers.
But where to start?
He pondered the next step while slipping on the fresh pair of jeans, T-shirt and hoodie his mother had brought him.

It was now dark outside. A heavy downpour of rain battered against the glass window, and tree branches creaked as they spread like veins against the lightning-filled sky.

He sat on the side of his bed and tied up the laces on his boots, listening attentively to the local news on the television, hoping to catch even a smidgen of news about the crash, but there was nothing except a replay of a news conference during which chairman Harlan Kaine had announced the upcoming grand opening of tours through Los Alamos Laboratory. It was monumental news that had been making headlines on major newswires, as the place had always been off limits to the general public. They were testing it first with the schools; two classes had already gone through. Apparently the tours were meant to help bridge the gap between the Lab and students who would later become future employees. Inspire them to work hard and give them insights into work at LANL and what their future could hold there. Though Travis had his suspicions.

He scanned the cramped room, looking for anything to wet his sandpaper-dry mouth. On the side table he spotted a bottle of water, and he leaned forward and grabbed it. He twisted the cap and poured it into a cup, then tipped a plastic white ice bucket towards him. “Great!” he sniffed; it was empty. There was nothing worse than warm water.

Grabbing the bucket, he went outside into the corridor, ambling down the long hallway of doors. The place was a complete maze; he’d be lucky if could find his way back to his room.
Now where is that damn ice machine?
he thought. He paused at the elevators and realized he was on the third floor. He scanned the different floor levels and decided to see if he could find it on the next floor down.

On the second level he held the elevator door ajar. Peering down the hallway, he saw an illuminated sign that read
Ice
above a door.
Finally!

* * * * *

On level one, two men, immaculate in appearance and dressed in long black trench coats, approached the nurses’ desk and inquired as to what room Travis Marshall was in. The nurse inquired to the nature of the visit, and the two men told her that they were following up on the crash. She tapped a few times on her screen and apologized for the delay, saying their computers had been running slow all day.

“Okay, he’s on level three, room 309,” she said. “However, I’m going to have to ask you to come back during visiting hours.”

Without a word, the men walked away.

Seconds later the nurse looked up and saw them waiting at an elevator. It was obvious that either they hadn’t heard her clearly or they were going to be another pain in the ass, and how she loved those types.

She jumped to her feet, waving her hand in the air. “Excuse me—hello, visiting hours are over,” she said.

All her commotion had caught the attention of the pudgy middle-aged security guard reading his paper. It was probably the most action he had seen in years of working there. So little ever occurred at the hospital that when things did go awry, just having him show up seemed to calm any overexcited visitors or patients looking for an argument. Hopefully, that was all that would transpire tonight, the nurse thought. As the nurse explained what had occurred, both of them were completely unaware of three more figures stealthily slipping past them and making a beeline for the building’s stairwell.

* * * * *

The clatter of ice echoed out into the hallway, and Travis emerged from the room into the dimly lit corridor. The medical center was eerily quiet, like a large hotel with more empty rooms than filled ones, not exactly the place you wanted to be on a stormy night, that’s for sure. The hallways were made even narrower by unused hospital gurneys, chairs and equipment lined up against the walls.

Travis repeatedly tapped the up button on the elevator. Patience wasn’t exactly one of his virtues and it was pretty much a given that if there was a need to use an elevator it always had to be on another floor. He leaned against the wall, turning his head sideways and staring towards the end of the hallway; from where he stood he could see the rain pelting against the large window.
Maybe it isn’t a bright idea to leave tonight
, reflected Travis.
Without the bike or a lift back I’d be thumbing it in the rain and there’d be nothing open at this time of night anyway.
Ah,
I will camp out here and leave first thing
, he told himself.

He turned and gazed down the other way. After a few seconds, two people emerged into the darkness from a side door; they looked his way and began walking towards him. A few of the overhead lights were out and so he wasn’t sure if it was just some patients or staff. He could just make out their silhouettes.