In the Blood

PROLOGUE WALKING IN TWO WORLDS

Outside Las Vegas, NV

March 15

JON BRONLEE CRACKED OPEN the door and peeked out into the motel parking lot. Car bumpers and hubcaps gleamed in the bright Nevada sunshine, flashed dazzling light into his slitted eyes. Perched atop a weathered-wood telephone pole, a crow caw-cawed.

Nothing moved. At least, nothing Jon could see.

He wished he’d never slipped that damned security disk into his pocket. Wished he’d never smuggled it and the padded mailer he’d discovered on Moore’s desk out of the center. Wished to hell he’d never looked at either.

As if on cue, and for the thousand-millionth time, his mind chanted: Gonna sell it and make a helluva lot of moolah. Enough to retire decades early, enough for me and Nora to live easy, enough to send Kristi to gun-free private schools.

Greed was one helluva con artist, convincing him to pooh-pooh the consequences—you’ll be rich and long gone before anyone even notices—until everything had gone to shit.

Yeah, a big old explosion of shit—a regular shitplosion—and then greed suddenly had nothing to say.

The nightmarish images captured by the med unit’s security camera flared behind his eyes again for the thousand-millionth time. The woman’s scream looped through his mind on endless repeat, a scream that had abruptly ended in a wet gurgle.

And a splash.

Jon desperately wished he could go back in time, back to D.C., back to that night, and rewind events. But since he couldn’t…

With a fresh mailer tucked under his arm, he stepped outside and sweat instantly sprang up on his forehead. He caught a whiff of Old Spice as his deodorant kicked into overdrive. The rumble of a diesel being downshifted on the highway behind the motel rolled through the taut, heated air like a steel barrel across blacktop.

He hurried to the motel office, pushed the door open, and walked inside. The AC-cycled air cooled his face. He stopped at the counter and a balding man reeking of BO and nicotine bellied up against the other side.

“Help you?”

Jon placed the mailer on the counter. “You have mail service here?”

“Yup.”

“Great.” Jon poked the mailer with a finger.

With a sigh, the man scooped up the mailer, strolled to a box marked MAIL at the end of the counter closest to the door, and dumped it inside.

With muttered thanks, Jon left the office and sprinted back to his room. He chained and locked the door, then collapsed on the bed and stared at the water-stained ceiling. He needed to plan his next move, but his mind refused to move forward. Instead, it kept padding back to the center, snuffling at the past like a nose-to-the-ground dog.

Jon had scooped up his share of corpses during his ten years on the interagency cleanup crew, and the cleanup at the Bush Center for Psychological Research had been routine. Bodies outside in the snow, a pair of security guards—one slashed throat and one broken neck. Two more bodies inside; one dead agent, one dead serial killer. Hard to say what killed the agent, but bullets had done in the bad guy.

Routine had ended at med-unit one.

Had ended in a exam room inexplicably filled with twisting, thorned blue vines.

Had ended in a puddle of liquid gleaming on the tiled floor.

Stomach acid burned the back of Jon’s throat and he swallowed hard. He tried to shut out the scream drilling through his mind. Managed only to muffle it. He wondered what it’d be like to gaze into that pale, beautiful face as you disintegrated.

Moore had screamed. Loud and long and liquid.

A dark thought slithered through Jon’s restless mind: Maybe he’d been meant to find the disk. Maybe it’d been fate, and not just greed. His hand, guided.

During cleanup, his crew had discovered that lightning or something had zapped the center’s main transformer. The surge had fried almost everything; the computers, the security cameras, you name it. Everything except the med-unit cameras; apparently they’d been wired to a different system.

And then curiosity or greed or fucking fate had crooked its finger….

In the days following the cleanup, his team had started dying, one by one. Heart attack, unforeseen, what a shame! Husband caught her with another man and shot her, then himself. Can you believe it? In debt, committed suicide, man, unbelievable!

Yes. Yes, it was. Unbelievable.

Jon had gone on the run. Across the country. Dashing from one dingy motel to the next, terrified to look in the rearview mirror or even out a café window as he scarfed down a meal. Afraid of who he might see.

He’d considered giving the disk to the media, but realized they’d think him a wack job with too much free time and the newest version of Final Cut Pro to play with. He’d even considered sending it back to the center, but suspected that it would be too little, too late. Then, last night, it had dawned on him who needed to see the disk.

Dr. Robert Wells.

Even after Wells had retired from the center and the FBI and moved to Oregon, Jon had kept in touch. His little girl, his honey-haired Kristi, was alive and healthy because of the genetic work Wells had performed while the baby had still been inside Nora’s womb, defective and doomed. As far as Jon was concerned, he owed the doc a debt beyond measure. He hoped that the disk and its contents would help Wells prepare for what was coming, equip him to survive it.

After all, Bad Seed had been Wells’s creation. If anyone knew how to contain Dante Prejean or S or whatever the fuck his name might be, it would be the doc.

Jon closed his burning eyes and prayed his absence had saved Nora and Kristi.

Knuckles rapped against his door.

Jon’s eyes flew open, his heart pounding hard and fast. Shadows hid the water stain on the ceiling. The light had faded from the room. He’d fallen asleep. Knuckles rapped again and a voice, low and confidential, spoke his name. “Bronlee? It’s Cortini. Open the door. We need to talk.”

Jon’s heart hurtled into his throat. He bolted upright on the bed and jabbed his fingers through his hair, trying to think. Cortini. He pictured her: shoulder-length coffee-dark hair, hazel eyes, elfin face, slender. Good-looking. Rumored to be vampire. Or a vampire’s beloved.

He’d learned about the existence of vampires when he’d joined the cleanup crew. Amazing how quickly he’d adjusted to that reality once the fact had been twisted into his face like a grapefruit half.

But, vampire or not, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Caterina Cortini tied up loose ends. And he was a major loose end. How did the saying go? If you see God, you’re already in heaven; if you see the devil, you’re already in hell; if you see Cortini, you’re already dead.

The doorknob rattled again. “Bronlee, we really need to talk.”

“Just a minute,” he croaked. “Gotta find my pants.”

Jon stood and padded to the bathroom, eased the door shut. Stood on the toilet and forced open the window. Grabbing the slick, tiled sill, he hauled himself up and through the window.

Even though twilight glimmered on the horizon, the heat of the sun-baked parking lot slapped him in the face. He gasped, sucking in the smells of hot concrete, sand, and diesel exhaust. He dropped onto the pavement.

“Looks like you found your pants.”

Jon whirled around. Cortini stood on the blacktop, one hip cocked, her gloved hands loose at her sides. His heart renewed its assault on his ribcage. His vision grayed and his knees buckled. A hand locked around his biceps. Kept him up on his feet.

“Breathe,” she said. “Slow, deep breaths.”

Not having much choice, Jon did as Cortini suggested. Gradually his vision cleared and his galloping heart slowed to a canter. He straightened, but Cortini didn’t release him. Her fingers felt as hard as steel around his arm. He spotted a holster bulge beneath her light suit jacket.

“Do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

Jon considered lying. Considered feigning innocence. But, looking into Cortini’s eyes, he realized there was no point. “Does it matter why I took it?”

“No. Not really.”

Jon nodded. Swallowed hard.

Cortini slipped a hand inside her jacket. “But I think it does matter that the rest of your team is dead because you took it.”

Cortini’s words hit him like a hard right to the jaw. He closed his eyes. Nodded again. “I’m sorry for that.”

“Be sure to tell them that when you see them again.”

Something in her voice opened Jon’s eyes; something weary and sad and exasperated. Her fingers slid away from his arm. She pulled out a silencer-lengthened pistol from inside her jacket.

“Let’s go inside and chat,” she said.

Figuring he had nothing left to lose, Jon bolted, his Keds slapping the blacktop as he ran across the parking lot. He stumbled as he hit the hard-packed dirt, sand, and scrub beside the highway. Blood pounded in his ears. His breath rasped in his throat.

The diesel-powered sound of a semi hauling ass down the highway thundered through the deepening night. Headlights lit up the road like twin suns, growing brighter with each step Jon took. No hands grabbed him to pull him back. Cortini didn’t shout his name. He dashed onto the highway and in front of those huge, glowing lights.

Squealing brakes and stuttering tires weren’t loud enough to blot out the wet sound of the scream still looping through his memory, Johanna Moore’s last breath.

Would he face the same fate?

The smell of burning rubber clogged his nostrils. His vision filled with light. Jon staggered to a stop, turned to face the rig, and closed his eyes.

CATERINA WATCHED AS THE rig, black smoke rolling off its locked-up tires, smashed into Bronlee. He splattered against the front grille like a low-flying june bug. Then his body bounced under the truck, the tires smearing what was left of him across the highway as the semi shuddered to a stop. The stink of burning rubber and scorched blood drifted into the air.

Caterina tucked the Glock back into its holster, then turned and walked back through the weeds and sagebrush to the front of the motel. Doors stood open. People clustered at the motel’s edge, staring at the highway and the semi jackknifed across the road. A grim-faced man spoke into his cell phone.

Using an electronic pick, Caterina unlocked the door to Bronlee’s room. She unhooked the door chain with a slender, steel pick, and slipped inside. She shouldered the door closed and glanced around the room. Open suitcase on the dresser, rumpled bedspread, a laptop on the table beside the curtained window.

The room smelled stale. Like Lysol and old tobacco. Like lost hope.

The rig’s headlights illuminate Bronlee as he swivels to face it.

Caterina blinked the image away. Who the hell opts for a messy roadkill suicide instead of a well-placed bullet into the skull?

She crossed to the laptop and folded it shut. Then she went to the suitcase and rummaged through the wrinkled tees and jeans and boxers. Blank postcards. A few photos. She picked one up. A pudgy little girl of about ten or eleven, her grin framed by brown curls, sat on a swing. The fingers of her right hand flashed a peace-sign vee.

Sorry about your daddy, sweetie.

Slipping the photo back in with the others, Caterina continued searching the suitcase. No sign of the security disk. But a mailer bearing a BUSH CENTER FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH return address caught her eye. She pulled the envelope free, then closed and latched the suitcase.

The MAIL TO name, neatly written in black felt-tip pen, was DANTE PREJEAN. Caterina recognized the flowing penmanship—a dying art in the twenty-first century—as belonging to Dr. Johanna Moore. The Bureau’s missing ADIC of Special Ops and leading behavioral scientist.

Caterina frowned. Wasn’t Prejean part of Bad Seed? One of the study subjects?

She didn’t know a lot about the project because she didn’t need to; her job didn’t require it. All the same, she knew it involved the development and study of sociopaths, a decades-long study that had ended abruptly a couple of weeks ago with a big, messy bang and clusters of bodies in two cities—New Orleans and D.C.

So what would the missing Dr. Johanna Moore be mailing one of her study subjects? Peering into the torn-open mailer, Caterina caught the silver gleam of a CD.

Interesting.

Caterina tossed the room for anything else Bronlee might’ve stolen, but found nothing. Returning to the dresser, she picked up the suitcase. She tucked the laptop under her arm and walked out of the stale, empty room.

She crossed the parking lot in quick strides, while sirens banshee-wailed through the heated desert night. Blue, white, and red lights whirled and strobed across the crowd gathered at the highway’s edge.

Caterina dumped the suitcase inside her rented Charger’s trunk. Sliding behind the wheel, she placed the laptop and the envelope in the passenger seat. She drove out of the motel parking lot and headed east toward the interstate.

The rig’s headlights illuminate Bronlee as he swivels to face it.

Something besides Caterina had scared him out onto the highway and in front of the semi—something unknown, and that disturbed her.

Bronlee hadn’t tried to bluff his way out, hadn’t tried to bargain, not even for the safety of the grinning little girl in the swing. And even though that meant he’d already dumped or sold the security disk, it didn’t explain his final action.

As Caterina steered the Charger from the dark highway onto the I-15 on-ramp and hit the gas, why kept circling through her brain. Why wasn’t a part of her job. Wasn’t supposed to be a part of her vocabulary. And that had never been a problem.

Until now.

She could’ve sworn she’d seen relief on Bronlee’s face as he’d faced the rig.

Caterina’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She tried to focus on the road and the white lines blurring past alongside. Why droned and buzzed in her mind like a fly trapped between windows. She switched on the radio and country-tinged music twanged from the speakers.

The droning and buzzing faded as she concentrated on the song lyrics. I hear the train’s lonely whistle blow / and I pour another drink / I lift a glass to you, Joe / because of you my heart’s on the brink…

Miles rolled past underneath the Charger’s tires and song after song rolled through Caterina’s mind. Spotting a blue REST AREA sign, she swung the Charger onto the exit ramp, pulled around to the far side of the restrooms, and parked.

She listened to the car’s engine click and tink as it cooled. She rolled down the window and hot, dry air smelling of baked sand and diesel exhaust wafted into the car.

Her mother’s words played through her mind: You walk in two worlds, Caterina. Dangerous worlds. Never forget that. As a child, you learned a truth most mortals never uncover—they are not alone. So you must listen to your instincts, cara mia. Always.

Caterina unfastened her seat belt and retrieved the mailer from the passenger seat. She dumped the CD from the envelope, then swung open the laptop. She pushed the on button. And slipped the CD into the hard drive.

A list of files popped up on the screen, each marked with a letter of the alphabet. Caterina tapped a finger against her lower lip as she studied the headers. Dr. Moore had addressed the mailer to Dante Prejean. How had Special Agent Bennington referred to Prejean during his debriefing in D.C.?

Dr. Moore warned us—that’d be me and Agent Garth—that E and S were on their way home, led by Thomas Ronin. But Ronin never showed. Only E and S and a third individual—an unsub.

E had been Elroy Jordan.

Caterina clicked the file marked S and began reading.