Heart of Danger

  “The entire community must want fiercely to be off the grid. Who are they?”

  He stood staring down into the huge atrium, muscles working in his jaw. It looked like he was literally chewing on his words. Three people crossing a grassy area looked up and waved. He nodded curtly.

  “Mac?” Catherine hesitated, then put her hand gently on his forearm. It was covered by his fleece sweatshirt. The only thing she felt was hard, warm muscle. And a shiver running through her system.

  He jerked and she pulled her hand away as if she’d touched a hot stove. Regretting her instinctive move the instant she’d made it. Nobody liked to be “read” by her. Why could she never remember that?

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  He shrugged. Clutched the railing with white knuckles and looked out over his domain.

  She had no idea where this compulsion came from but she had to know about this place. A place she’d never heard of and could barely even imagine existed, though she was looking right down at it. A place out of space and time.

  “Why do you want or need to stay off the grid?” Her voice was low because her throat was tight. It almost hurt to get the words out and if she hadn’t burned with the need to know she wouldn’t have asked the question.

  He looked down for several minutes. Another person looked up and waved. The pathways below were busy with people bustling to and fro. Very few couples. No children at all.

  He wasn’t talking, though judging from the bulging jaw muscles, the words were right there in his mouth.

  She swallowed. “Remember, Mac, you’re going to MIB me. Whatever you tell me will be lost to me, forever. I’m a neuroscientist and I can tell you that memories after administration of Lethe are physically lost, together with a few million neurons. So there’s no way I could talk, ever.”

  She eyed him hungrily, happy he wasn’t looking at her. The memory of Mac McEnroe would be lost to her, too. She’d never had a physical reaction like this to any man in her life before and it was possible she never would again. Even the memory of her body heating up, of the shivers of recognition and danger and desire would be lost forever.

  “Mac?” She tried again. “It seemed as if Stella wanted you to talk to me. She said something about me joining the community. I guess she meant the community here?”

  He closed his eyes as if in pain and took in a deep breath. Wow. She’d touched a nerve, a painful one.

  Well, of course.

  Catherine Young didn’t do communities. She was always rejected like foreign tissue. In her family, in the small town in Massachusetts she grew up in, in college and graduate school, at her first job in Chicago. By the time she got her current job she didn’t even try to fit in. She just went in to work, did her job, went home. Any attempts at joining groups inevitably failed.

  Different, different. She was different.

  Never mind. She’d formulated the words in her head but they hadn’t left her mouth when he turned fully to her, eyes pinned to hers. And to her vast shame, having him look at her so intensely made her knees weaken. She had to consciously stiffen them to stay upright.

  This was terrible. Her own body was rebelling against her, turning her weak when she should be strong. Mac waved a big hand at the scene below. An elderly gentleman saw, thought Mac was waving at him and waved happily back.

  “This was originally a silver mine. It was panned out and abandoned way back in the 1950s. I knew about it because I grew up in a series of foster homes down in the valley. They weren’t the kind of foster homes that kept a close eye on their kids. All they kept their eye on were the bank accounts, to make sure the state paid on time. When I was fourteen, I found a motorcycle abandoned in the junkyard. I’m good with my hands. I scrounged parts, built it up. Spent the next four years until I joined the military exploring. Found this place. When we needed a hideout, I brought us here.”

  He needed a hideout? Catherine didn’t go there. Of course he needed a hideout. This was a hideout, like the famous Hole-in-the-Wall in the Wild West. A place where, if you could find it, if you could make your way there, you’d be safe.

  She looked around, then back at the man who was watching her so steadily. “You did some work.” That was an understatement. What she was seeing wasn’t an abandoned mine. It had been turned into a high-tech town.

  “Yeah.” One side of his hard mouth turned up and it took her a second to recognize it as a smile. A smile seemed like the furthest possible thing his face could do, something completely alien to it. And yet—and yet it was a nice smile, small though it was. “We had to.”

  He stopped, head cocked, and tapped his ear.

  “Yeah,” he said suddenly. “Roger that. Coming right now.” And he grabbed her elbow and started walking, grim-faced once more.

  Smiling time was over, evidently. And whatever had happened, it involved her. She looked up at him, searching for clues. His face was so hard, so remote. Nothing at all could be read there.

  Catherine trotted to keep up with him, wondering whether she was moving to her doom. If she was, she was moving toward it fast.

  They walked along the corridor until they came to the glass-enclosed elevator. It whooshed down so quickly and silently it was almost like flying, opening onto the floor of the atrium.

  Mac took one of the pathways and Catherine followed. It was like plunging into a forest. The greenery was even denser than it appeared from above, a thick green canopy that wouldn’t be out of place in Amazonia. The air here felt cooler, smelled incredibly fresh, as if it were the outdoors instead of in some kind of high-tech cavern.

  It wasn’t just a city park, a pretty break in a wall of buildings like most city parks were. It felt primal, not decorative. Utilitarian, all that beauty a side effect. Every now and again she saw signs of small-scale cultivated crops. A pumpkin patch with plump orange pumpkins the size of boulders. Another small patch of artichokes. They passed a grove of oranges that smelled divine, rushing past it so fast she barely had time to smell it.

  Again, everyone they met waved hello to Mac and looked curiously at Catherine being tugged along. The looks weren’t hostile in any way. Just curious. One man dressed in work clothes with a tool kit belt tried to stop Mac, who rotated his index finger—later— and whizzed past.

  They pulled up in a side corridor where Mac ran full tilt toward a white door. Catherine was about to shout at him to stop when the door slid open at the last second. She rushed through it behind him and it slid closed behind her the moment she crossed the threshold.

  Chapter Seven

  Arka Pharmaceuticals Headquarters

  San Francisco

  “Still gone, boss.” Baring was reporting from outside Catherine Young’s home, a very modest bungalow not far from University Drive.

  “Video,” Lee replied, and a holo appeared in front of him. The outside was unassuming. Real estate prices were extremely high in the area and young professionals couldn’t afford much more than what Catherine had rented. “Get inside.”

  Baring picked her lock and entered.

  Interesting.

  The outside was bland, but Young had turned the inside of her home into a jewel.

  Very interesting.

  Lee had always considered Young an excellent researcher with nothing else to her. He had his security team check everyone’s finances as a matter of course, with a bot checking for unusual income or expenditures. Young’s finances had never triggered a trip wire, ever. Her only income was her salary, and she saved 10 percent of it regularly, the rest going to normal expenditures and the maximum allowed in the company 401(k) plan.

  Young was the most talented and least interesting of his employees. No boyfriends, few social contacts, no vices.

  Maybe the inside of her house could be considered a vice. It was decorated to within an inch of its life. Lee was impressed and a little uneasy. A hidden artistic streak was out of character for Young. He’d have felt better if the house had been as bland as she was. As she app
eared to be.

  The inside of her house was such a jewel he wondered uneasily what else Catherine Young might have hidden from him.

  “Got something, boss.” Baring and his two colleagues had cleared each room, finding nothing. Now they were in her bedroom. Baring stood at her bed. The tiny but powerful video camera mounted on his shoulder showed Lee exactly what Baring was seeing.

  Young had a big down-filled emerald green comforter on her bed. Next to the edge was a square indent, the size and shape of a small carry-on suitcase. Some neatly folded clothes lay on the comforter as well. Clothes that had been discarded.

  Young had packed a bag for a trip.

  Scenarios raced through Lee’s mind. He was almost certain no information had been stolen from the lab because they had stringent security measures in place. No researcher was allowed to take data home with them. That didn’t mean she hadn’t figured out a way to smuggle data out. He was now faced with a very tedious security inventory that would interrupt work flow and slow his schedule down. Not to mention the fact that their best scientist was now gone, perhaps selling secrets to third parties or the U.S. government or the Iranians.

  She was, of course, a dead woman walking, but first they needed to find her.

  “I want you to go through her house inch by inch and I want some information on where she’s gone by the time you’re done. Is that clear?”

  Baring nodded. “Yeah. How careful do we have to be?”

  Lee thought of all the trouble Young was causing him at a very delicate moment in the project. “Take the place apart if you have to,” he said.

  “Yeah, boss.” Baring turned away.

  Morrison was checking her laptop, and Lee could hear breakage in what he supposed was the kitchen and he watched for a moment as Baring began methodically slashing all soft surfaces in her bedroom. Cushions, pillows, comforter, mattress. Then he began taking apart a dresser drawer.

  It had beautiful lines, what the Americans called Shaker furniture. Lee was a man who appreciated simplicity, beauty. Pity. Still, if there was anything hidden in it, Baring would find it.

  He listened and watched for a moment more. “Don’t come back here until you can tell me where she is,” he told Baring, and pressed a button.

  The hologram winked off.

  Chapter Eight

  Mount Blue

  “Sitrep,” Mac barked, asking for a status update, coming to a halt. Catherine skidded to a stop behind him, panting, resisting the urge to plant her hands on her thighs and lean over, gasping for breath. He wasn’t winded. His deep, low voice contained a note of menace. “What the fuck is so urgent I had to come running and bring her?” He shot a thumb in her direction.

  There were two men in the room, some kind of high-tech paradise. There were monitors everywhere, most the fancy, very expensive hologram type. There must have been fifty of them. Her company lavished money on its equipment and even she didn’t have this kind of computing and screen power. She saw other equipment, some she recognized, some she didn’t. There must have been a million dollars’ worth of gear in the room.

  There were two men in the room, sitting on transparent Ergonos, the most expensive office chairs on earth. She’d asked for one but it had been denied in the last budget round. She’d even contemplated buying one for herself but they cost more than her car.

  Though invisible, they were made of some kind of material that molded itself to each body that sat in it, programmed to provide exactly the right kind of support precisely where it was needed.

  The two men in the room looked as if they were sitting on air but there was nothing delicate about them. One dark, one blond. Both looked tough, no-nonsense. The blond one was manipulating images so quickly she could barely grasp what was showing on them, flicking them away with movements of his fingers, like a keyboard artist playing some arcane tune.

  Though there was one image . . . then it was gone.

  They both turned to look at her and here, too, she saw stone faces. Completely without expression.

  The dark one stood, moved away from the Ergono. He gestured with his hand. “Have a seat, Dr. Young.”

  She looked up, startled. He wasn’t quite as tall as Mac but he was still much taller than she was. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mr. . . .”

  “Nick.” His voice was low. Abrupt. “Please sit. We’ve got something to show you.”

  Show her? She sat and nearly moaned at the absolute comfort of the chair. It was important not to look down because she’d see herself ostensibly sitting on thin air. Some got so dizzy they couldn’t use Ergonos.

  “We’re here,” Mac said. “She’s here. So what is it that couldn’t wait?”

  “I set up a bot, boss,” the blond one said. He looked like a surfer who killed. Sun-streaked hair, colorful Hawaiian shirt with golden parrots and acid green palm trees, and a shoulder holster. “On principle. Just a little program set to notify me if anything of interest happened at 27 Sunset Lane in Palo Alto. Set it up last night.”

  Catherine gasped. “That’s my address!”

  “Yes, it is.” Mac nodded at the surfer. “So?”

  “Yeah, well Dr. Young here doesn’t believe in security apparently.” The surfer shot her a disapproving look, blue-green eyes narrowed in disapproval. “Not one vidcam, not one. And your lock is crap.”

  She was being criticized! Catherine drew in an outraged breath. “First of all, the house isn’t mine, it’s a rental, so elaborate security systems would be a waste of money. And that lock isn’t crap! I had it changed when I moved in! And I’ll have you know it’s top of the line.”

  The surfer looked at Mac. “A Stor lock.”

  Mac made a disgusted sound in his throat.

  Surfer Dude continued. “So though the good doctor here lives in trust of her fellow man, it’s a good thing her neighbors don’t. There are vidcams both in the house across the street and the house across the backyard. I hacked them and fiddled with the settings so we had front and back views and set up another bot to send a signal if there was movement at number 27, and sure enough, here’s what I recorded ten minutes ago.” He flicked two fingers and a hologram appeared in front of her.

  Her sharp intake of breath sounded loud in the room. The images were silent but eloquent.

  A bald man, not tall but broad-shouldered, dressed in black, leading two other men up the small walkway to her front door. They buzzed once, twice. Waited.

  “You know them?” Mac asked quietly behind her.

  “The man ringing my doorbell is Cal Baring. He’s head of security for Millon. I’ve seen the other two around, but I don’t know their names.”

  Baring made the researchers’ lives almost impossible with his constant demands for security. All in-house phone conversations were recorded, which made communication dull and stilted. The protocol for entering and leaving the research labs was so tedious no one left the premises during work hours, ever.

  Catherine had worked in Boston, which had a miserable climate compared to Palo Alto, but researchers often stepped out into the company park for a breath of fresh air and a break. Not at Millon. At times she felt like a prisoner.

  Baring himself was a humorless thug.

  He moved his head a few inches left and right, his hands worked at waist level, and . . . her front door opened. To anyone not paying attention, it would look exactly as if he’d opened it up with a key.

  Baring and his goons walked in, bold as you please.

  “Hey!” Catherine reached forward, her hand passing through the hologram. It was so clear and perfect she’d forgotten for a second she was watching something far away.

  She had no idea how far away because she had no idea where she was.

  “So much for top-of-the-line locks,” Nick said, and the blond man clucked his tongue and shook his head. Clearly at her insanity.

  “That was ten minutes ago,” the blond said. “Now I’d really like to know what they’re doing in there.”

/>   “So would I,” Catherine said heatedly. “But unfortunately, if I didn’t surround myself with paranoid security outside, I sure don’t have a surveillance system inside my own home.”

  Surfer Dude cocked his head. “Hmm, I don’t know about that. What’s your email?”

  She looked at the blond. “What?”

  “Your email,” he repeated patiently. “Because I have a little trick up my sleeve. But it has to be your personal email, not the company one.”

  “Cee-dot-young-at-gmail-dot-com.”

  “Do you use a desktop or a laptop at home?”

  “Both, actually. A desktop in the guest bedroom which is my study and a laptop in the bedroom. We’re not allowed to take our work laptops home. For security reasons.” She steamed at the thought of Baring enforcing that rule while waltzing into her own home.

  “Great.” The blond was typing furiously. “Because I think we’re gonna have to know what they’re doing all through the house. So I will just work my magic, switch them on and . . . voilà!” he ended on a note of triumph.

  It was magic, because there were two holograms, side by side. Like a 3D movie. One showing her bedroom, from the point of view of the table where her laptop sat, and the other in the study, looking out from the monitor of her desktop. Crystal-clear images of the three men, crossing back and forth.

  Surfer Dude had somehow remotely switched on her computer webcams without activating the screens. That was seriously good hacking.

  No sound, though. The men went about their business in complete silence.

  No, wait. “Clear!” a voice shouted offscreen.

  “Clear! Clear!” two other voices echoed.

  The man in her bedroom was looking at her comforter, fingers tracing something.

  “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

  “Something made a dent. He’s tracing the edges,” Mac said quietly behind her.