After the Dark

Chapter five Smart Alec

Alec’s plan had merit.

Just the same, Max — finally shaking off the shock of Logan’s abduction, not to mention the aftereffects of the Tazer — had a plan of her own in mind.

And between the two of them, she thought, they might just be able to get Logan back alive.

She and Alec sat at the kitchen table in Logan’s apartment and discussed their respective approaches. All of them — the other Terminal City insiders who were joining them in their efforts, Joshua, Dix, Mole — had come to feel that the kidnapping had an economic motive.

It was an easy enough conclusion to reach. Kidnapping for ransom had been around since the beginning of time, of course, but it had really made a splash in a post-Pulse United States, where money was hard to come by and even harder to hang onto. That made the privileged few, the wealthy who’d been largely untouched by the Pulse, prey to predators like the Furies.

Which meant that at some point a ransom note would be delivered, or a call or an e-mail would come in.

“If they were smart,” Alec said, “they’d have snatched you, Max.”

“You think they coulda managed that?”

“Why? Would you have argued with ’em, while you were doin’ that Tazer dance?”

This was a good point, but she didn’t acknowledge it, saying, “Why am I a better kidnap choice than Logan?”

“Logan’s the one with the money. You kids don’t exactly have a joint checking account yet, do you?”

This, too, was a good point.

Max said, “We don’t have any way of tapping into Logan’s coffers... not unless we can hack into various banks or somethin’.”

“Which is where you come in,” Alec said.

While Alec put his plan into action, Max would contact Logan’s family in hopes of gaining their financial assistance. She only hoped the Cales would still be capable of coming up with the cash for whatever undoubtedly lunatic ransom demand the street gang would make.

The Cale family’s money woes had begun in earnest when Logan’s uncle Jonas was gunned down by a hoverdrone programmed by Jonas’s business partner, Gilbert Neal. The deal that Neal had made after he killed Jonas cost the family millions; fortunately, Jonas wasn’t the only rich Cale in the clan.

Logan’s uncle Lyman — a legendary reclusive billionaire who was often compared by the media to that twentieth-century fruitcake moneybags, Howard Hughes — lived in a compound on Sunrise Island, a private island in Puget Sound. All Max knew about the eccentric uncle was that he was estranged from the rest of the family, with one significant exception: he was said to love his nephew, Logan. Logan rarely talked about him, though Max sensed that the two of them got along very well.

The media also reported that Lyman Cale’s estate had cutting-edge high-tech high security. And Max knew it wasn’t like she could let the old boy know she was coming to call. Wasn’t like Lyman Cale was listed in the white pages... and Logan’s computer was so encrypted that not even the cyberadept Dix could make a dent in it.

That meant she would simply have to flex her old cat-burglar muscles to get inside Uncle Lyman’s compound and have a friendly chat with him about his favorite (and kidnapped) nephew. The prospect worried her not a whit — she’d had a good teacher in Moody, back in L.A.... Few could rival her breaking-and-entering skills.

While she was doing that, Alec would be infiltrating the Furies.

“I know those guys,” he said. “Used to run into ’em, in certain parts of town, back when I worked at Jam Pony. They were always tryin’ to recruit me.”

“Isn’t everybody?” she said with a faint smile.

“It’s a gift,” he said, returning the smile.

Seemed to Max that Alec thought everybody wanted him for everything. He appeared certain that all women wanted to jump his bones and all men longed to be like him. It was a small world he lived in, but he was happy there.

“Maybe it’s a little late in the game,” Alec said, “but I figure I can look those bros up, and tell ’em I’ve finally come to my senses and realize the only future for me is as a Fury.”

Such was Alec’s plan — not very complicated, especially by Alec’s Machiavellian standards, though the element of egomania marked it as his.

Barely sixty minutes had passed since the abduction, and they were ready to roll. It did not warm her within that she would have to trust Alec; she’d just found out that the steadfast, dependable person she figured she could trust the most in the world had lied to her — and now she was putting her faith in a handsome congenital liar.

And while Alec could go out and work the streets immediately, she would have to wait for nightfall to see Logan’s uncle. Good as she was, like most cat burglars — most cats, for that matter — she was at her best under the cover of darkness.

She thought back on the estate of Jared Sterling, the computer billionaire she’d had a run-in with when she first got to Seattle. Sterling’s estate had boasted state of the art security and she’d cracked that, hadn’t she? Of course, she’d also been caught and had to kick the asses of four armed men, just to jump the fence again with her skin intact; but she had gotten in. Could Lyman Cale’s estate be any tougher?

Probably.

So Max decided the best thing she could do in the daylight was some research on what awaited her on Sunrise Island.

As she and Alec rose from the table, each to pursue a plan, Alec looked at her with something akin to sympathy.

“I gotta hand it to you, Max — you’re taking this well.”

“Logan’s not in any danger, not immediately — he’s too valuable.”

An atypically grave expression took over the handsome face. “Max... I hate to say this, but... in a certain number of cases like this, the kidnappers just ice the victim right outta the chutes. A lot of people have paid ransom money for a corpse.”

“You’re saying this why?”

“You just need to face that.”

“If he’s dead, what can I do about it? If he’s alive, we’ll get him back.”

Alec nodded, smirked humorlessly. “I thought you were just holdin’ it in... Anyway, I kinda got a hunch what you’ll do about it, if he is dead. Just remember, I’m not really a Fury, okay?”

And he gave her that cocky grin.

Max smiled a little and nodded. Probably were quite a few females who wanted to jump those bones, at that...

And the deadly government-trained killing machine, the female X5 who knew a thousand ways to destroy her enemies, sprang into action — heading to Logan’s computers, to do research.

Alec cruised his motorcycle on up to the checkpoint at Sector Eight. Trying to blend in, he wore a black ensemble of jeans, a turtleneck sweater, and a leather jacket. He flashed his old Jam Pony ID, held up an envelope he’d stuffed with old newspaper clippings, and got waved through by the sector guard who was too busy with the long line of pedestrians to pay much heed to a pain-in-the-ass messenger.

What with the difficulty of passing from sector to sector, and with gas so high and the streets and highways in such wretched shape, many businesses used services like Jam Pony, which meant the sector guards found messengers an all-too-common annoyance, and had a nice habit — nice from Alec’s point of view, anyway — of just waving ’em through.

As he accelerated out of the checkpoint, Alec kissed the Jam Pony ID. This had been the easy part, he told himself; he’d only needed to be a little bit lucky. No time to get cocky. Getting into Sector Eight? A snap. Finding the information he needed and getting back out alive? A whole ’nother deal.

Sector Eight — tired and old and tucked beneath Portage Bay — served as the base of ops for several street gangs, and the Seattle P.D. seldom ventured far beyond the checkpoints. This far north, the shabby urban landscape provided lots of places to stash a body out of the way of prying eyes, official or otherwise.

The Furies operated out of Lakeview Cemetery and Volunteer Park, but had also been known to frequent the woods around Interlaken Boulevard and the Broadmoor. Once a very popular golf course, the Broadmoor now housed a good-sized Jamestown that provided plenty of potential victims for the ruthless violence of the Furies.

Alec knew the Furies manned an observation station atop the Volunteer Park water tower. So this seemed as good a place as any to start. Not at all surreptitious, a man clearly confident about who he was and what he was doing, he rode into the woods, and then, not far from the tower, parked his cycle and strolled forward to within twenty yards of the building.

The tower was four squat stories of faded red brick, rising through the trees like a huge fat chimney, topped by a conical roof perched there like a Chinese farmer’s bamboo hat. The structure seemed vaguely medieval to Alec, as he drew closer, though the historical edge was taken off by black spray-painted Furies graffiti.

Within the brick facade, a giant metal tank had at one time been filled with water. Talk now was, the tank was piled with the bodies of those who got in the way of the Furies. Alec figured this was an urban legend — after all, the only smell was of pine trees — but nonetheless he didn’t know anyone who had been brave enough to go find out for themselves.

The way — a white, recessed door also adorned with Furies graffiti — was guarded by a pair of the bangers. In broad daylight, Alec saw only one way to do this: walk up like you own the place. It wasn’t a foreign approach to the X5.

He stepped out of the woods and walked straight at the two guards, who wore black T-shirts and jeans, like all Furies. They were small for guards — maybe that was why there were two of them he thought — both about the same height, a good four inches shorter than he was, and stick-skinny. They didn’t appear terribly bright, either — both looked to be on the dim side of forty watts.

Alec smiled as he approached, nodding, waving casually, and the two guards looked at each other, as if each hoped the other might have managed to form a thought. Then the same thought formed in both their limited minds, as they simultaneously pulled pistols from the waistbands of their pants and leveled them at Alec.

The guy on the left had a revolver which had probably last been fired before the Pulse, the one on the right brandishing a small caliber automatic that belonged in an old lady’s handbag.

Pitiful. The only thing that made the Furies formidable was their numbers — they were the largest gang in Seattle, a mix of Latinos and Russians, mostly.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Alec said, his hands rising easily in a gesture of surrender, his smile never wavering. “I’m a friend, fellas... you know Manny?”

This was one of the two Furies he’d met a year or so ago and spent some time with, drinking beers they’d paid for when they were trying to recruit him.

“Manny not here,” the one on the left said.

“Manny not here,” echoed the one on the right. “You see Manny here?”

“I would have to agree,” Alec said. “Manny not here — where Manny?”

The one on the left sighed heavily. “Manny not here!”

If he didn’t find somebody smarter than a footstool to deal with soon, this was going to be a lot harder than he’d thought.

“How about Stefan?” he tried, dropping the name of the other Fury he knew.

The two guards looked at each other again, then returned their thick gaze to Alec.

“Stefan not here,” one of them said, and that was it, Alec was fed up with these two. Another minute with them and there was no telling what kind of permanent damage he might do to his own IQ.

One more question, any question, should be all he’d need. He asked, “You two related?”

When they looked at each other this time, Alec plucked the guns from their hands, in a two-handed move, and flipped the pistols around so they were pointing at the guards, who gazed at him with eyes and mouths open.

“This is where you put your hands up,” he advised the pair.

Four hands shot skyward.

“Good, fellas. Nice reflexes.”

The one on the left turned to the one on the right. “You screwed up.”

“I screwed up?”

His brain hurting, Alec said, “Shut up and turn around.”

They did, facing the tower now.

“This is stupid,” the one on the left said to Alec, “what you’re doin’.”

“Well,” Alec said cheerfully, “you’d know.”

And — in another two-handed move — smacked them both on the back of the head with the gun butts. Firmly. Both guards dropped to the sidewalk with little sound, a couple of skinny piles of kindling.

Alec tucked the guns in his waistband, then dragged the two guards, one at a time, into the underbrush. He tied them up, using their own belts and shirts, then returned to the now unguarded door.

It opened in on a white metal stairwell, the only light provided by the sun glinting through the doorway. On his left was the gray, riveted body of the metal tank, which might have once been white, but time and lack of care had bruised it gray, more Furies graffiti decorating it.

The stairs circled the tank and led up into darkness. Alec had no clue how many Furies were up there; however many, there was bound to be at least one smarter than the bonehead guards. He had a miniflash in his pocket and considered using it, only he didn’t want to give away his position, so it stayed put.

The X5 had abandoned his like-he-owned-the-place approach; now that he’d taken those guards out, he was officially an invader, trying to maintain silence as he crept up the steps. His rubber-soled shoes made no noise and he kept his breathing relaxed and regular.

After four minutes and over one hundred stairs, Alec came around a turn into light — the entrance to the observation deck must’ve been standing wide open. This didn’t surprise him; the Furies were probably up and down these stairs all the time. They had guards posted downstairs, didn’t they?

At the top of the stairs, Alec plastered himself to the wall and gazed through the open doorway.

The floor was concrete, the brick, occasionally graffitied walls punctuated every eight feet or so by arched openings, which may at one time have been glassed-in windows but now stood open to the weather. The gray bulk of the inner tower made the observation deck a relatively narrow glorified covered walkway that curved around.

At the third window down from where Alec watched, three Furies sat in a sandbag bunker. One Fury took a turn as sentry at a window, using binoculars — but not in the direction Alec had come, luckily; the other two bangers were playing cards and good-naturedly bitching at each other about the game.

The one with the binoculars looked to be in his early twenties, with dark hair, another Latino; like the rest of the Furies, he wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans — it wasn’t much of a uniform but it was theirs. The card player on the left was a big, heavy guy with long, stringy dark hair and a middle European look. Brushing bangs out of his eyes, he said, “C’mon, Hutt, play a damn card.”

“Jack of spades,” Hutt said triumphantly as he dropped the card on the pile. He was thinner than his opponent, but his hair was the same dark, stringy mess, and he had a similar ethnic cast — the cardplayers might be brothers.

“Ha,” the fat one said, snapping up the card.

“Think you got the winning hand there, pal?” Alec asked.

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice, the fat guy looked up; none of the trio had heard the stranger’s approach. “Huh?”

Alec’s casualness froze the three dopes.

“I like my hand better,” the X5 said.

And he swung his right fist, connecting with the side of the fat guy’s head. The fat guy’s eyes rolled back, he wobbled for a second as cards filtered out of his hands, then he just fell over on his side, unconscious.

Hutt had already started to rise, but Alec’s spinning kick dropped him, cold.

The sentry, facing Alec now, hurled the binoculars, but Alec ducked the throw and stepped forward, his hand closing over the guy’s windpipe.

“Hey,” Alec said. “I’m a guest.”

The guy wasn’t much more than a kid himself, maybe twenty, zits covering his face, his eyes bloodshot, his skin the color of wet newspaper. He squeaked but that was all he could get out, and when Alec increased the pressure, the squeak turned to silence.

The idea — a quick revision of his plan, now that joining up with the Furies seemed less likely — was to squeeze info out of the sentry, find out where Logan was...

Then Alec saw something that hadn’t been apparent from the doorway — off to the left, around the concealing curve of the inner tower, was a second sandbag bunker, six windows away, with three more Furies, two of whom were rushing toward him and his captive, the third furiously punching numbers on a cell phone.

The sentry Alex held by the neck became suddenly useless, and the X5 popped him with a straight right. The guy pitched onto the sandbags and took a nap. Finding out Logan’s whereabouts had become secondary to survival.

The bangers running up to him spread out, so despite the relatively closed-in area, Alec couldn’t get them both at once — unlike the guards below, these two weren’t complete morons... unfortunately. The one to his left — a stocky Latino — came in with a long, looping right that Alec ducked, and countered with a right that caught the guy in the solar plexus, air bursting out of the Fury as his body slapped to the cement.

The second one, a burly Russian, pulled a knife and advanced, waving the blade back and forth. Presumably this had intimidated opponents in the past; Alec disarmed the guy, just slapping the blade from his grasp, and caught him on the chin with a left hook that sent him down for the count... a long count.

The one with the cell phone, a medium-sized blond guy with short hair and light blue eyes, took one look at the wreckage of his friends and flew off running in the other direction. Must’ve been stairs around that way, too...

But he had already done his damage: his cell phone call had summoned the troops — feet were pounding up the nearer stairs, a small army headed toward the observation deck, a metallic echoing too much like machine-gun fire for Alec’s taste. An X5 was first and foremost a soldier, and Alec knew all about when it was time to retreat. He went to one of the archway windows.

The four-story drop was just too far to risk, even for a transgenic. So he stood on the ledge and gripped the edge of the Chinese-hat tile roof; he might be able to perch up there and wait it out until the reinforcements left. As if doing a pull-up, he clambered up and lay against the roof, just listening to the show within the observation deck.

The first voice he heard, he recognized: Manny, the Fury he’d met almost a year ago.

“Christ,” Manny said. “What went on up here? Hutt doin’ crank again?”

“From what I heard on the cell,” someone else said excitedly, “it was one guy — all over everybody! Who the fuck can fight like that?”

The next voice was cooler, more in control, probably the guy in charge. “Stefan, you and Woodrow secure the far end.”

“Yes, Badar,” Stefan said. This voice Alec recognized, too — a pity Stefan and Manny hadn’t been around when he came calling; this wouldn’t have played out so bad...

On the other hand, he had struck a sort of gold.

Badar, he knew, would be Badar Tremaine, leader of the Furies and generally considered the biggest badass for three sectors. Alec had never spoken to the gang leader, but had seen him around, and like most everybody else in Seattle, he’d heard plenty about him — tall, slender, with black hair usually swept back in a tight ponytail, Tremaine had close-set dark eyes, a perpetual stubble, and skin the color of oiled leather.

The good news was that Badar undoubtedly would have either approved or masterminded the Logan Cale kidnapping. Alec clung to the edge of the roof, hanging over a bit, listening intently.

He heard four feet pounding down the observation deck toward the far end.

“Savage!” Tremaine again. “You and Dante guard the stairs at this end. Make sure the deck is secure.”

Again Alec heard two men run back to the door. The wind was whipping at him, and ruffling the nearby trees; but his transgenic hearing stood him in good stead. He was in a decent position up here, as long as no Fury below saw him, clinging to the roof in broad daylight.

That would be... unfortunate.

“Manny, this is just the sort of setback we don’t need right now.”

“I know, Badar.”

“Sounds like maybe it’s one of Cale’s transgenic friends dropped by... Hit the woods, scour the area, check the Jamestown. Find the bastard who did this.”

“And bring him to you?”

“Just kill him.”

“You got it, Badar.”

“Don’t screw it up! Nothing can interfere with our plans — Cale’s worth too much to us. The ransom note has been sent, but you can’t trust these transgenics. What we had up here may be their idea of paying up... God only knows if these mutant freaks even understand the concept of money.”

Alec fought the urge to swing over the rail and kick the crap out of Badar Tremaine.

“If everything remains on schedule tonight,” Tremaine was saying, “I want you to move Cale first thing in the morning.”

“The troll?” Manny asked.

“Yeah.”

The troll? Who the hell was the troll? Alec wondered. Was that some bizarre reference to Logan?

“Everything’s secure, Badar.” Stefan’s voice again. “There’s no sign of who did this, but we found one of the sentries hiding on the back stairs.”

“Bring him to me.”

Alec quickly thought his situation through: the blond sentry, the cell-phone caller who’d summoned the troops, had been on the back stairs. Badar and his Furies had come up the other stairs — soon they would figure out that their intruder hadn’t gone down either of those stairways, hence could only have gone out a window...

He looked down and decided again that trying to land safely from this height was a really bad idea. He could swing in and take on the room of gangbangers, but if they captured him, or killed him, what he’d heard would go unreported to Max.

Even if he prevailed, the other Furies might simply kill Logan, rather than risk another confrontation.

The wind whispered to him, through the sun-shimmering leaves.

Alec heard them.

Picking out the nearest, tallest pine tree, he jumped.

Sunrise Island, site of Lyman Cale’s compound, was just east of Vashon Island in the sound, and a boat could be launched from Three Tree Point. The ride to Sunrise would be shortest at that point — less than half an hour — though, after that, things got a little hairier: Max figured on electric fences, dogs, guns, security staff, the whole nine booby-trapped yards.

She wasn’t looking forward to the trip, but Dix hadn’t come up with any other ways of contacting the old man. Jonas Cale’s older brother, Lyman, had made his money years ago and controlled a massive bank account that was separate even from the formidable wealth of the Cale family money.

Max found a recent online video of Lyman addressing Congress from his compound. A world class recluse, the old man hadn’t set foot on the mainland since the Pulse. In the video, as he droned on about “the need for economic opportunity in this climate of fiscal unease,” he gave the appearance of a vibrant older man. Silver-haired with a distinguished spade-shaped white beard, he revealed flashing blue eyes that reminded Max of Logan’s, and a short straight nose over a wide, thin-lipped mouth.

The old boy certainly wasn’t half bad to look at; she wondered if she were possibly viewing a snapshot of Logan at that age. That such a thought would form again, unbidden, was a positive sign... Maybe she was getting past the Seth thing. Maybe Logan Cale was worth growing old with, after all.

Assuming he wasn’t already dead...

Dusk was deepening to night and they hadn’t heard from Alec yet; she couldn’t wait any longer. The ransom note had shown up at Terminal City early this afternoon — delivered by a Jam Pony messenger, no less — and Max now knew the depth of their trouble. The message — addressed to Max, boldly, arrogantly signed “The Furies” — said that if she didn’t bring $4 million to Gas Works Park tomorrow at dawn, Logan would die.

It troubled Max that the note had been addressed to her — they knew of her friendship with Logan, knew it ran deep enough to convince them she could raise this fortune, either from the Cole family or by Logan trusting her with his finances.

Four million or forty million, what was the difference? Without Lyman Cale, she had no chance of saving Logan. His cousin Bennett — now in charge of Jonas’s millions — would just as soon see Logan dead as alive. At least Jonas had liked having Logan around just to have someone to persecute; Bennett didn’t even care enough about Logan to hate him — all Bennett knew was one less cousin meant a larger stake for him, when the Jonas Cale fortune eventually got split up.

The night was clear but cold as Max eased the “borrowed” boat out into the water. She was amazed at how easily she slipped back into her old ways. Telling herself that it was for Logan helped muffle the micron of guilt, but in truth she felt comfortable in the role Moody had schooled her in. In some dark part of her, it felt good, breaking the rules again.

The borrowed boat had a big outboard; while she didn’t know much about the difference between boat motors, she was well-acquainted with the concept of “bigger means faster.” Manticore had also trained her to operate most any motorized vehicle, so racing across Puget Sound in someone else’s speedboat was no prob.

The sound lay quiet and glassy smooth, and Max’s new toy skimmed along the surface at just over thirty miles per hour. That might be too fast, given that it was dark and she didn’t know for sure what lay in her path; but she was anxious to make contact with the elder Cale, and the thought of Logan’s dilemma drove her mercilessly.

So she dropped the hammer and roared through the night. The moon was a big bright white ball, a hole in the sky letting in light that made this leg of the journey easy; but it would provide more illumination than she would want, on landing.

Still a mile away, she cut the engine, anchored the speedboat, and took a smaller rubber raft the rest of the way. Dragging the raft up onto the shore, she was surprised that there seemed to be no walls around Lyman Cale’s compound. The old man owned the whole island, and the mansion and two guest houses were the only ones on the tiny private piece of land. A massive forest made up the perimeter, but she knew — from her net research — the mansion sat in the middle.

Slow-scanning the woods in front of her, she looked for lasers, electronic eyes, dogs, anything... and found nothing. Moving carefully, she started inland. By her estimate, she was only about a quarter mile from the big house when she saw the first hint of security — a guard dressed in black leading a Doberman around the perimeter. The guard had on TAC team fatigues, including a balaclava that covered most of his face and a Kevlar vest, and he carried an automatic weapon that hung loosely from his right shoulder.

Max’s enhanced night vision gave her an advantage over both man and beast, but when the dog’s nose went into the air, and the animal’s head cocked in her direction, she knew she had trouble.

“What is it, boy?” the guard asked.

The guard was about to key the mike attached to the left shoulder of his uniform when Max put on a burst of speed and outflanked the pair. She came right up behind the guard, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned, she smiled pleasantly at him.

This unexpected behavior coming from an attractive young woman froze the guard, and he said only, “Huh?”

Or at least that was all he got out before she kicked him in the groin, a dry heave of pain groaning up out of him as he doubled over: Before that groan could turn into something louder, Max delivered an uppercut that lifted the man off his feet and deposited him in an unconscious heap next to the surprised dog, which had backed up at this blur of movement.

Now, however, baring its teeth, the Doberman prepared to launch itself at Max; before it could, however, she yanked a baseball-size hunk of hamburger from her pocket and lobbed it to the dog, who caught it in mid-flight, swallowed the thing practically whole. Chewing, licking his chops, the creature took a menacing step toward her, eyeing her — giving Max a chance to toss him some more burger before taking care of business.

The Doberman made several slow threatening steps her way when it began to wobble, went glassy-eyed, then dropped onto its stomach, as if the urge for a nap had overridden everything.

Which it had.

The Doberman began to snore as Max bent over the prone figure of the guard. The pill in the center of the hamburger had been a concoction courtesy of Luke, who had promised that the dog would be having happy puppy dreams for the rest of the night, no harm, no foul. That was good, because Max preferred not to harm animals, with the occasional exception of humans.

Of course, hamburger — any meat, for that matter — was a black market extravagance in today’s third world economy; still, Max felt this had been money well spent. “Stuff costs an arm and a leg,” a protesting Dix had said. Maybe so, but — from the look of that slumbering Doberman — thanks to Luke, at least the limbs lost tonight weren’t hers.

She lifted the guard’s radio and clipped the mike to her own shoulder; couldn’t hurt for her to hear what was going on around her.

Continuing on, she repeated the procedure with three more perimeter teams, her kicks taking out the guards, Luke’s special meatballs downing the dogs. She had just taken out the fourth — and what she figured to be the final outside man-and-dog guard team — when the radio crackled to life.

“Post One — report.”

Max said nothing — even if she’d known what to say, her unfamiliar female voice would have sent up a red flag. Knowing full well “Post One” was not going to be answering his page anytime soon, she approached the big house, a three-story replica of a plantation mansion out of the Civil War South. Though she’d never been east of the Mississippi in her life, Max had received Manticore training that included segments on Sherman’s march to the sea, with an emphasis on the folly of pitched battles such as Gettysburg; so she recognized an antebellum mansion when she saw one.

“Post One — report! Johnson, you there?”

Only silence greeted the dispatcher.

“Post Two, check on Post One... Post Two?”

More crackly silence.

She heard the dispatcher mutter, “What the hell?” Then a fire-type clanging alarm went off and light flooded the yard from the top of every building.

Max ducked into a hedge near the front door, getting out of sight. The lights had turned the front lawn into instant noon. She peeked out from the bushes to see half a dozen security men come pouring out the front door. The first four looked like your average rent-a-goons, but the last two were broad-shouldered, muscular paramilitary types. Both had close-cropped hair, one blond, one brown, and wore TAC fatigues like the others, only on these guys the clothes looked different, as if they knew what all the nasty toys were for. The clanging alarm stopped as they took off toward the water, running in two-man combat formation. By comparison, the rest of the crew seemed to be auditioning for a Chinese fire drill.

As the last of the guards disappeared into the darkness, Max came out from behind the hedge, slipped through the door, closed it and locked it. That wouldn’t keep the guards out for long, but she didn’t need long — she just needed to get past this insulation and locate Lyman Cale and explain the situation. Though Logan had said little about his uncle, what she’d heard was positive, and she just knew he would want to help.

The first floor of the house was not what she expected at all — no furniture in the entry way, the living room, or the den on the opposite side. Except where security teams had walked, a patina of dust covered the floor, and it looked like no one had cleaned the place in years.

In fact, it looked like no one had lived here in years.

As she made her way up the wide stairs to the second floor, Max listened carefully, hearing no one, nothing. Then, at the far end of the hall, she heard mechanical, electrical sounds coming from behind a closed door.

The lights were dim throughout the house, almost as if no one was here (but who or what were the guards guarding, then?), and she crept slowly toward the closed door at the far end. Opening it gently, as silently as she could manage, Max stepped into a stripped-down bedroom illuminated only by the light coming from a TV on a raised table to her right. The volume was turned low, and the light changed as the picture did. In front of her was a single hospital bed surrounded by machines, each whirring as they fed oxygen and IV fluids to a dried-up prune of a man, on his back on the mattress.

The figure in the bed wasn’t much bigger than Max had been when she’d fled Manticore. Stepping forward, she could see that the pruney lump was a very old gent with no hair, no teeth, and tiny black dots for eyes. Though the man’s eyes were open, he seemed to see nothing, but his short, straight nose sniffed past the oxygen tube in his nostrils, as if he could smell her.

As she realized what she was seeing, Max felt the bottom drop out of her stomach and a chill sweep over her.

From behind her an icy male voice intoned, “Say hello to Lyman Cale, why don’t you?”